Elizabeth Moon: Winning Colors

This one’s for Mary Morell, who introduced me to science fiction in the ninth grade, and then insisted the wonderful (!) stories I wrote in high school were lousy. (She was right.) And for Ellen McLean, who refused to be my friend in the first grade, only to be a better friend later than anyone could ask. And for all the horses, from the horse next door to the little bay mare who presently has her nose in my feed bucket, who enriched my life with everything from (a few) broken bones to the feel of going at speed across country.

Conspirators come in two basic flavors, Ottala thought. The bland vanillas, usually wealthy, who meet in comfortably appointed boardrooms or dining rooms, scenting the air with expensive perfumes, liqueurs, and good food. The more complex chocolates, usually impoverished, who meet in dingy back rooms of failing businesses or scruffy warehouses, where the musty air stinks of dangerous chemicals and unwashed bodies. The vanillas, when they cursed, did so with a sense of risk taken, as if the expletives might pop in their mouths like flimsy balloons and sting their tongues. The chocolates cursed without noticing, the familiar phrases embedded in their speech like nuts in candy, lending texture. The vanillas claimed to loathe violence, resorting to it with reluctance, under the lash of stern morality. The chocolates embraced violence and its tools as familiar and comforting rituals. No wonder, since when the vanillas chose violence, they employed chocolates for it.

Ottala much preferred luxury herself; she considered that a long leisurely soak in perfumed water was the only civilized way to begin the day. She too felt the little shock of surprise when she heard the expletives come out of her own mouth with no immediate punishment. Her skin preferred the sensuous touch of silk; her taste buds rejoiced during elaborate dinners created by talented cooks. But she could not confine her sensuality to the bland end of the spectrum. Vanilla was not enough. In her own mind, she considered her taste for chocolate an expression of unusual sensitivity.

What she tasted at the moment was the sour underbite of processed protein extruded into pseudo-sausages nested in pickled neo-cabbage. She sat on a hard bench, elbow-to-elbow with the rest of Cell 571, munching the supper that preceded the evening’s entertainment. Or so she called it; she was aware that her fellow conspirators considered it more important than anything else they did with their lives.

Her friends would not have recognized her. Her normally bronze skin had the pallor associated with the underbellies of cave-dwelling amphibians; her dark eyes were masked with blue contact lenses, which also gave her red-rimmed lids, the better to fit in with the locals. She wore the same dark, ill-cut coveralls and had the same fingertip calluses as the others; she had held a real job on the assembly line—with faked papers, which wasn’t that unusual—for the past two months.

It was all a great adventure. She knew things about her family’s company that she had never imagined; she would have incomparable tales to tell when she went back topside. Meanwhile, she could eat sour pseudo-sausage, drink cheap wine, use words her parents didn’t even know, and find out for herself if the reputation of Finnvardian men was deserved. So far she wasn’t sure. . . . Enar had ranked only average on her personal scale, but if Sikar would only look at her . . .

She finished her supper, as the others finished theirs. Odd, how the same custom held at tables high and low—everyone tried to finish at the same time. Across the room, Sikar stood, and silence spread around him. He was the contact from higher up, the man whose respect they all wanted. Even in the baggy dark clothing, he had presence. Ottala couldn’t analyze it; she only knew that she felt his intensity as a pressure under her rib cage. She wanted that pressure elsewhere.

As usual, Sikar began speaking without preamble. “We, the young, serve the old,” he said. “And the old can live forever now, and they expect us to serve forever. We will grow old and die, but they will not. Is this right?”

“NO!” the room vibrated to that angry response.

“No. It was bad before, when the old rich first set their hands against the gate of death, but a hundred fifty years is not forever. That is why our fathers and grandfathers submitted; they hoped to afford that process for themselves, and it was limited. But now—”

“They live forever,” a woman’s voice interrupted from behind Sikar. “And we work forever, and our children—”

“Forever.” Sikar made the word obscene. “Their children will live forever too; our children will DIE forever.” An angry rumble, indistinct, shook the room again. “But there is a chance. Now, while the government is shaken by the king’s departure.” They had discussed this, night after night, what it meant that the king had resigned. Would it help the cause, or hurt it? Rejuvenants littered both sides of the political scene; almost everyone rich and powerful enough to be a force in the government had been rejuvenated at least once. Apparently the hierarchy had decided: it was a good thing, and now they could act. Ottala pulled her mind back from its contemplation of the aesthetics of Sikar’s striking coloring—those fire-blue eyes, the pale skin, the black hair with the silver streak—to listen to his speech.

“But before we act,” Sikar said, “we must purify ourselves. We must not allow any taint of the Rejuvenant to corrupt our purpose. Are you sure— sure —that none among you harbors a sneaking sympathy with those old leeches?”

“No!” growled the crowd, Ottala among them. Her parents weren’t old leeches; they were merely idiot fools. When she had to say these things, she always thought of people she didn’t like.

“Are you sure ?” Sikar asked again. “Because I am not. In other cells, we’ve found those pretending to be with us, and secretly spying on us for the Rejuvenants—”

“Secretly spying” was exactly the kind of rhetoric that Ottala enjoyed. She curled her tongue around it in her mouth, not realizing until Sikar stood in front of her table what he was leading up to. The tool in his hands, though, clenched the breath in her chest. She recognized it; everyone did, who had ever changed fertility implants. It would locate even unexpired implants, and could be used to remove them. But—no one here had implants. She did.

“Put out your arms, brothers and sisters,” Sikar said. “For this is how we found the traitors before—they had implants.”

She couldn’t move. She wanted to jump and run; she wanted to scream, “You don’t understand,” and she knew that wouldn’t work. Sikar smiled directly into her eyes, just as she’d wanted since she’d first seen him, and the people on either side of her forced her arms out flat on the table. The tool hummed; even though she knew she could not really feel anything, she was sure her implant itched. The skin above it fluoresced, a brilliant blue.

“Perhaps she was a manager’s favorite—” said Irena, down the table. She had liked Irena.

“Perhaps she’s an owner’s daughter,” said Sikar. “We’ll see.” He pressed the tool to her arm; she had no doubt of the next sensation. No anesthetic spray, no numbing at all—the tool’s logic ignored her pain and sliced into her arm, retrieving the implant, and pressed the incision closed with biological glue. Her arm throbbed; she was surprised that she hadn’t screamed, but she was still too scared. Those holding her tightened their grips. Sikar held up the implant. “You see? And this tool will tell us whose it is.”