Элизабет Бир - Ancestral Night

I was choking, freezing up. I could not think of a snappy put-down to save my life.

And the best part about choking is that once you notice you’re choking you choke harder. Because becoming self-conscious is the surest way to get worse at something.

Antisocially, he said, “I’m Rohn. Can I at least buy you a drink?”

“No thanks,” I said, this being a much less personal sort of question. “I have one, and I don’t need any more obligations.”

“Free and clear,” he offered.

I ignored him.

“So what are you here for?”

I tapped the rim of my glass. The bartender glanced over to see if I needed a refill already, then set the flask back when I shook my head.

My neighbor simmered down, but as I was getting to the bottom of my glass I could feel him revving up for a fresh approach, contemplating angles and flight trajectories. All his spider legs, one by one, were focusing on me. They had tiny lights worked into their structure, which looked like nanotube and was probably as strong as it was low-mass. I might be judging him unfairly; the dress would be useful for a lubber in low-g.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m a pervert. I only like girls.”

“You could get that fixed. Isn’t it kind of sophipathology to only respond to one gender?”

I shrugged. “It’s who I am, and I like who I am.”

Little white lies. They get us through.

“…When there are literally thousands of options?”

“I also only respond to people with boundaries,” I said. “So I wouldn’t like you either way. And I’m not getting that fixed, either. So I guess I am a bigot as well as a pervert.”

You’d think that would be rude enough to send him packing. But you would be wrong.

Before Rohn could speak further Connla walked through the privacy screen and stood there for a moment, scanning the very sparse mid-shift crowd until he spotted me. I could feel my neighbor’s back going up, and concealed a smile.

Connla’s not my thing, you understand. But by most human standards, he’s awfully pretty. His homeworld went in for a bunch of hypermasculine gene tweaks among the early settlers, and just about every male-ID from Spartacus is roughly two meters tall with a chin dimple and big broad shoulders. They’ve all got a partial myostatin block encoded, too, which means they tend to be strong as hell and hungry all the time, because they don’t lay down much in the way of body fat—they just convert it into muscles.

As you can imagine, this is useful in some circumstances, and less useful in a cramped, resource-limited environment such as a tugboat. Connla’s a good pilot, though, and normally we don’t have to worry about how much he eats.

He was looking a little wasted from the short rations on the way in, but heads turned nonetheless. And a couple of sets of shoulders slumped in disappointment when he grinned at me and started over. I made a mental note of which ones and marked them for him in senso, just in case he was interested later.

Just because I don’t care for the prowl myself doesn’t mean I can’t be a pretty good wingperson.

My neighbor’s shoulders stiffened rather than slumping. His dress postured.

I continued my hard regime of ignoring him as Connla slid in beside me. He tapped the bar in front of him and said, “A double for me, please, and get my shipmate another of whatever she’s drinking. This a friend of yours?”

That last was directed at me, regarding Rohn.

I said, “Strategy club didn’t pan out?”

“Meets next shift,” he said. “We still going to be in port? Nice dress.”

“I’m Rohn,” said Rohn.

“Cargo inspection,” I said with a shrug. “And hull seal, I hope. Then we get our consumables. The derrick will have to wait for Core.”

“Won’t take long, seeing as how we haven’t got any cargo.” The drinks arrived. He downed half of his with a comfortable sigh.

I was still nursing the end of my first one.

“Anyway, I thought I’d come see if you’d found any action.” He touched my memory. “That one over there, huh?”

I didn’t answer. He was already looking through the senso.

Connla studied the young person appreciatively. I will say this for him: Connla likes his fun, but (unlike me) he’s not the least little bit biased by gender, augmentation status, or background. He likes wit and a pretty face, true—but who doesn’t? And at least one of those things is easy enough to buy.

Anyway, he’s got enough testosterone for the both of us, and he comes by it honestly—if you expand the definition of honestly to include “inherited it from grandparents who had it engineered in.”

Spartacus is an interesting culture. I’m rather glad he’s never brought me home to visit his parents.

I patted him on his arm. They’re touch-prohibitive where he comes from, but he’s mellowed a lot since we first started flying together. I suspect the conflict between skin hunger and social controls against admitting it is one of the reasons why he chases sex so much. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

He picked up his glass, gave me a sideways grin and a toss of his glossy black ponytail, and went.

Neighbor dude looked down at my untouched second drink. I picked it up and tasted it.

He smiled at me. “Are you and your shipmate…?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. I told you, I don’t swing that way. Too complicated.”

“Don’t swing to shipmates, or to masculine-identified types?”

It was really none of his business. But I was getting irritated. And I’d already told him how I felt.

More irritated. This one had no manners, and could not take a hint.

“Don’t swing,” I said. “I had that stuff turned off. Too much of a pain in the ass, quite frankly.” I gave him a wicked grin. “But as I said, and you failed to internalize, if I did like dealing with hormone surges and getting pie-eyed, give me a nice, soft, curvy girl-type any dia. Or one of those squidgineers, with the cartilaginous limbs and as many boobs as they decided to pay for. Now that’s hot.”

He backed off, finally, and I sipped my second drink, feeling peaceful. The truth was, after all that damned closeness where I grew up, the vulnerability made me nervous. You let your guard down to one person, pretty soon other people started creeping in over the razor wire and around the force fields, too. And then they inevitably hurt you, and what might have been a few chips and dents if your deflectors were working turned, instead, into a full-sledged meteor storm, leaving behind cracked bones and big, meaty gouges.

Better to just shut down the whole shebang.

I wasn’t here for shenanigans, anyway. I was here for dancing. Low-g dancing.

And the band my research had promised was just now taking the stage.

Sweaty, thrilled, feeling like my body was properly oiled and running like it didn’t need a tune-up for the first time in I didn’t know how long, I slid into the booth beside Connla and his new conquest. They were grinning at each other foolishly, but Connla had waved me over, so I figured I wasn’t intruding. Maybe it was Introduction Time, which meant he might like this one enough to keep in touch via packet after we shipped out. He’d expect me to remember which affair went with which port of call—which wasn’t too onerous of an expectation, given how much time we had to float around and gossip.

“Haimey,” he said. “Do you need another drink?”

“I’d love one,” I said. “Something long and not too poisonous.”

He ordered on the screen, and his new friend extended a hand. “I’m Pearl. So you’re a salvage engineer?”

Typically, he hadn’t picked the prettiest contender to move on, but one with a mobile face and an air of curiosity that made them charismatic. It’s hard not to like somebody who’s genuinely interested in you. Or genuinely interested in things , in general.