Steven Kent - The Clone Republic

“The view is beautiful,” I said, mostly because I was tired of looking at it and hoped to wake her from her trance.

“I could watch this all day,” she muttered.

God help us, I thought, but I did not say anything. There was no peace in her face. The girlish smile that had so lured me had vanished. Without it, she was more beautiful than ever.

“Do you think there are fish down there? Wouldn’t the waves kill them?” she asked.

“I don’t know anything about oceans,” I said, “but those currents look strong.”

“We have an ocean on Olympus Kri,” she said, prying her eyes from the view. She looked at me and smiled. It was not the same smile I had seen the day before.

“Does it look like this?” I asked.

“I’ve only seen pictures,” she said. “I’ve never gone out to the coast.”

She tightened her grip around my biceps. “You’ve probably seen all kinds of oceans.”

“I’ve only been to four planets so far,” I said. “One was a desert and one was toxic.”

“Poor Wayson,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve seen some amazing places. So exciting to spend your life on a ship traveling around different worlds.” As she spoke, her thoughts drifted, and her smile became more pure. She reached an arm around my waist and we kissed.

“Seen enough?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

We turned toward the car. Vince and Jennifer were already there, watching us and talking.

“Hey,” I said. “Vince, did you see that sign?”

The sign behind the car said “Scenic Area.” Above the words was the silhouette of a man in a cape wearing a primitive war helmet with a fin along the top. It was the insignia of our ship.

“What’s that doing here?” Lee asked.

Once we were alert to it, we spotted Kamehameha everywhere. He was on scenic signs and the sides of buses. There was a caricature of him on our map. Lee drove us to the spot on the way home. There, immortalized in an cast-iron statue with gold leaf, was King Kamehameha: “Conqueror of the Islands.”

“No wonder all of those officers vacation here,” Lee said. “The ship was named after a Hawaiian king.”

The statue stood ten feet tall and stood upon a pedestal that added another five feet. I read the plaque at the base of the statue. Kamehameha had been a warrior king who paddled from island to island by canoe and conquered villages with spears and clubs. He was also a statesman. Once he finished conquering his island kingdom, he set up treaties with France, England, and the United States of America that played great nations against each other and ensured his primitive kingdom’s survival.

This told me something about Bryce Klyber, too. The aristocratic admiral had selected our antiquated Expansion-class fighter carrier as his flagship because he liked the name. He liked the idea of the statesman warrior. He saw himself as both a statesman and a warrior, and he believed that his statesmanship ultimately differentiated him from the likes of Admiral Huang.

When we dropped Kasara and Jennifer off at their hotel in the midafternoon, Lee looked at me, and said, “Shit, now I’m stuck with you.” He was joking, but the feeling was mutual.

We moped around the villa until 1700, then headed down the hill. The sun had not even begun to set. The last of the tourists still lingered on the beach, lying on the sand or wading in the shallows. In another hour the sun would go down, and even they would leave. Younger, trendier tourists would commandeer the streets once night fell.

We could not find anyplace to park, so Lee drove around the block while I went to find Kasara and Jennifer. As I entered the lobby, I realized that I did not know their floor or room number. I did not even know Kasara’s last name.

“You’re late,” Kasara called from the second-story balcony. She was not much of an actress. She tried to sound angry, but she did a poor job of it.

I looked up. Kasara, wearing a sundress with an orange-and-red flower print, leaned over the rail of the balcony. Another Waikiki special, I thought. Her dress matched my shirt. “I’m half an hour early.”

“Come on up,” she said.

I skipped up the steps. Kasara’s apartment bore a striking resemblance to my room earlier that morning—her clothes were everywhere. She had two pair of dress shoes, tennis shoes, and slippers scattered around the outside of her closet. Her clothes were on the bed and furniture. A bra hung from the knob on the bathroom door.

And there was more. I saw two sinks through the open bathroom door. One was littered with cosmetics, brushes, and toothpaste. The other was neat, with a simple toiletry bag leaning against its mirror. That must have been Jennifer’s.

“You should have come earlier. We’ve been sitting around waiting for you,” Kasara said, brushing some clothes from a chair as she retrieved her purse. She fixed those sparkling blue eyes on me, and I became oblivious to the clutter as well.

As we started to leave, Kasara loped off to the bathroom and closed the door. Thinking that was very sudden, I turned to Jennifer. “Is she okay?”

“You don’t expect her to leave without touching up her hair?” Jennifer asked.

“But it was perfect,” I said.

Jennifer shook her head. “Wayson, that girl spends two hours every morning doing exercises, touching up her hair, and putting on her makeup. Then she spends another thirty minutes making sure it’s perfect before she leaves the hotel. But try to get her to clean up the room…”

It was Kasara and Jennifer’s last night in Hawaii. Lee and I wanted to make a big deal of it. In many ways, it would turn out to be the last night of my vacation, too.

Kasara wanted to go shopping for trinkets. Jennifer and Lee wanted to get out of Waikiki. Both ideas sounded good. We drove to the Honolulu Harbor. There we found a mall that would be far less crowded.

Kasara went on a spending spree. In one store, she found hats with “I LOVE HAWAII” stitched across their bills in rainbow colors. She bought five of them “for the other gals at work.” She also bought a case of locally made chocolates in the next store and canned oysters with cultured pearls in another. As we left, she saw a photo booth. Without even saying a word, she turned to me and rested her head on my shoulder, batting her eyelashes and pretending as if she was pleading for permission.

“What?” I asked.

She nodded toward the booth and grinned.

“Isn’t that a bit dangerous? What will your boyfriend say?”

“I didn’t tell you?” Kasara said. “We broke up.”

“When did that happen?” I asked.

Kasara shrugged and smiled. She grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the booth.

“They broke up?” Vince asked Jennifer while we were still in earshot.

“They will when she gets home.”

The thought of Kasara breaking up with her boyfriend left me both excited and scared. I ran my hands over my hair, trying to push it in place for the picture. Kasara slid onto the bench inside the booth and pulled me next to her. The people who designed the booth had kids or singles in mind. Even when I pushed in and squeezed against Kasara as best I could, my right shoulder still hung out of the door. We looked into a small mirror as lights around the booth flashed on and off.

Kasara let her hand slide up my thigh. I tried to ignore the jolt running through my body and look relaxed. “I didn’t think nice girls did things like that,” I teased as I stepped out of the booth.

“Nice girls don’t,” Kasara agreed. “Working girls on their last night of vacation do all kinds of things.”

“What kinds of things?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” She stepped closer to me and stared deep into my eyes.