Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  “Why did you go on ahead?” Starlock asked Luck.

  Still looking at her food, Luck said, “Because I intend to find out what’s happening.”

  * * *

  After they’d all eaten, Starlock set up the tent he’d brought. The four of them and their sleeping bags fit snugly inside. Moonlight preemptively placed herself and Rocky in the middle with Luck and Starlock on opposite sides. Then Rocky said, rather gallantly, “I don’t want you to be cold, Luck, so I’ll take the outside.” Which meant Luck was lying between him and Moonlight. Luck’s skin was almost crawling with the awkwardness of it as silence settled over the tent.

  She felt herself drifting off when she was startled awake by a voice coming directly into her ear: “This is the first time we’ve slept together.” It was Rocky, mercifully speaking in a whisper low enough that neither of the others would be able to hear.

  “We’re not sleeping together, Rocky,” Luck whispered back. “We’re just sharing a tent.”

  “Would you like me to kiss you?” he breathed. “We won’t get in trouble. Everyone knows—”

  “No,” Luck hissed.

  “What if you kissed me?”

  “That’s the same thing, so no.” She struggled to put sufficient force into the nearly inaudible words.

  “Why not?” Even through the whisper she could hear a whine in his voice.

  “We’re not Paired,” she whispered back.

  “We will be.”

  “Maybe,” Luck allowed. “But not for years.”

  “One year and seven months,” Rocky murmured, as if the calendar of Luck’s life were written inside his eyelids and he referred to it all the time. Then, breathing into her ear canal, he suggested, “I could touch your breasts. Girls like that, don’t they?”

  “Go to sleep!” Luck hissed, moving her arms up to cover herself.

  Rocky lapsed into silence then, and in a short while she could hear him breathing evenly in sleep. Yet Luck fancied there were shifts and movements in Moonlight’s and Starlock’s sleeping bags, the sound of hands seeking each other out, of lips touching….

  For the second night in a row, she wriggled out of her bag and climbed out of the tent, moving as silently as she possibly could. Once outside, Luck was cold, but glad of the distraction provided by the sharp air. Their campsite was at the base of a forested hill, with tall fir trees all around. The night sky hung above the trees’ pointed crowns, magnificent with stars.

  She walked to the small brook near the edge of the clearing and knelt down. Her reflection greeted her on the surface, blurred and dark. She splashed cold water over her face for a long while, reveling in the biting chill. And then she jumped in alarm when a hand grasped her elbow. It was Starlock, of course, crouched just a foot away.

  Luck, in no mood to appreciate his talent for sneaking up on her, pulled her arm away and stood. He placed a finger to his lips, took hold of Luck’s arm again, ignoring her reluctance, and stepped across the stream. Starlock led her quite a distance into the trees, far enough that they could be sure of their privacy.

  “I didn’t sleep with Moonlight,” he whispered.

  “You obviously weren’t sleeping,” Luck said, tearing her arm away from him again.

  “She—she kept saying how scared she was to sleep out in the wild. The others got annoyed and made me stay in the tent with her.”

  “Starlock, I saw her all tangled up with you.” She almost spat the words.

  “I was fully dressed!”

  Luck paused. That was true. He’d been clothed when she’d seen him, but—

  “No. I saw you. You were holding each other. I’m sure the two of you are clever enough to work around clothing.” Her voice rose above a whisper.

  “Shhh! Do not wake her up, please! Luck, she’s worried about me. She’s worried about you. I’m supposed to be her mate, and now things are…confused, and she wants to keep me with her.”

  “So you slept with her to make her feel better?”

  “I didn’t— Look, she kissed me a couple of times and I didn’t push her away, okay? That’s the truth. But they were childish kisses.”

  “Wonderful.” The word felt like acid in her mouth.

  “You told me to leave you alone, and you were right!” Starlock said in exasperation. “You know I probably have to spend the rest of my life with Moonlight. I can’t be rude to her—I can’t tell her that I don’t want her. What happens when the humans get the Rez back under control, Luck? Even if it takes a few months? If they don’t send all of us away for crossing the border, then I’ll be Paired with Moonlight and she’ll make me sorry for rejecting her till I’m ninety.”

  It was the longest speech he’d given her in years.

  Luck turned from him, frustrated and shivering. “I know,” she said eventually. Because she did know. It was why she hadn’t ordered Rocky to go away; it was why she put up with him even though he irked her deeply. She was going to have to live with him eventually. “It’s just—imagine you had found me like that with Rocky.”

  “I would break his neck,” Starlock said without hesitation. “I’d punch his freckled nose into the back of his head.”

  “Then it’s good you didn’t hear him trying to get under my shirt earlier.”

  “What?” hissed Starlock. “I’m going to snap that carrot in half.”

  Luck smiled, but the smile felt like it was floating on the surface of her face and reaching no further inside. Now that her anger was fading, she was excessively aware of Starlock’s closeness. There was a magnetic pull between them, so that it took effort to remain where she was. She whispered, “I’ve started to hope….”

  “Me too.”

  “I have to stop hoping, Starlock. Because it makes me feel like you’re mine. And if nothing is actually different…It was awful last night when I saw you two.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  She nodded, believing him now. In truth, she’d already known. It had simply been easier to be furious than to dwell on how much she wanted to be the one tangled up with him inside that tent.

  “You’re shivering,” he said. He took off his coat and draped it around her. She tried not to look at him, but it was hard. He was right there.

  Starlock stood away from her for several moments, and then, as if he could hold out no longer, he came closer and wrapped his arms around her. They hadn’t embraced in three years and Luck had forgotten how good it felt, your whole body pressed up against the other person. He was taller than he’d been the last time they’d done this—taller and stronger and warmer.

  “How could I sleep with her?” Starlock whispered. “Since we saw the sentries fall, all I can think about is that something might change. I imagine taking you back to that pool by the river—”

  “Stop, please stop.”

  But he didn’t stop; he leaned down and his lips found hers. For a moment, they were kissing, actually kissing, and it was startling how good it felt.

  Luck turned away, pushed him back to arm’s length.

  “We have to find out first,” she whispered. “Please. Or I won’t be able to stand it.”

  Starlock nodded, stayed away from her, though Luck could feel that magnetic force trying to pull them back into each other’s arms.

  “It’s good Moonlight and Rocky are here,” he whispered. “If it were just the two of us, I’d never stop.”

  6. THEY FOUND MORE THAN THE WALLED CITY

  They emerged from the forest the following afternoon to find themselves on an open ridge above a broad valley. But Luck and the others noticed nothing in the landscape except for the city. It was a mile or more away, encircled by a high wall. She had read about cities in old books, imagined what cities must be like…but in real life this one was immense. Tall glass build
ings grew up from the city center, elbowed each other for room as they rose high, high above the wall and speared the sky. These buildings were of every shape and color imaginable, sharing only height and glass as common traits. There was a pale blue cylinder that swayed on currents of air; a tall white column covered all over with sharp crystal facets like bristling diamond armor; a sort of changing geometric tower with rectangles and hexagons and trapezoids interlacing and shifting in and out of relief as though moved by the wind. Another tower reflected the sky and the city in every hue of the rainbow, the colors creeping across its faces in an ever-changing display. A dozen other buildings were connected by arching walkways to form a silver lattice that spread throughout the city. Luck had once read a book about a place called Oz, and the city within the wall reminded her of that.

  It took a few moments for her to notice the smoke rising from dozens of locations within the wall. Black plumes hung thick and almost unmoving in the air.

  “Buildings are burning,” she said.

  “I think those are power stations.” Starlock pointed to three of the nearest plumes. The buildings beneath the smoke were just visible over the top of the wall. All three were like blocks of shiny, braided pipes with the most enormous round chimneys Luck had ever seen. “I’ve seen pictures in our engineering books,” he explained, because of course at the Rez they used only solar panels and diesel generators.

  “Are the humans fighting?” asked Rocky.

  “And what’s that smell?” asked Moonlight.

  The breeze had just shifted, and an overwhelming odor had washed up from the valley below. It was a scent that had been slowly building in the air for the last hour of their hike, Luck realized, but only now, with the wind in their direction, did it fully make its presence known. Luck took several steps closer to the edge of the plateau, bringing the valley into view.

  “Oh, goodness. Look,” she said to the others. The words were hopelessly inadequate, and yet they were all she could manage when she saw the scene spread out beneath her.

  The other Protos joined her at the lip, so that all four of them quickly understood that the burning power stations were the least of the city’s problems. The real horror was below them. A mass exodus.

  Their plateau overlooked two enormous roads that issued from tunnels through the city’s wall. One of those roads came straight toward them, curved just beneath the hill on which they stood, then continued on to the south. This road was choked with land-going vehicles and dead humans. Withered corpses lay inside every car and littered embankments all along the roadway.

  “It doesn’t look like there was fighting,” Starlock observed. He looked physically ill as he surveyed the devastation.

  “They tried to get out of the city when the sickness—or whatever it is—hit,” Luck murmured.

  “And they kept going until they started to die,” Starlock said. “The fires…we’re seeing what happens when all the workers collapse at once.”

  It was quite clear where one vehicle had stopped suddenly, causing others to slam into it. This had happened again and again as some vehicles had gotten through, only to stall out farther down the road.

  “The ones who were still alive tried to get away on foot,” Luck whispered, looking at the corpses sprawled in the open. They were of every shape and size and color—not all of them with anything you could reasonably call a “foot.” Farther away were countless crashed air transpos.

  Luck had known that humans numbered in the millions, but that number had been meaningless to her before this moment. She was seeing more living creatures than she had ever seen in her life. Except that they weren’t living anymore.

  Pulling the collar of her shirt up over her nose, Moonlight whispered, “It smells awful.”

  The corpses had been dead for days at this point, and the fetor rose from the road in clouds and rolled toward them on the breeze. And yet it was not the stench Luck would expect from a dead animal.

  “It’s like death and toffee,” Rocky gasped, throwing an arm over the lower half of his face.

  This description was exactly right. It was, Luck thought, as if someone had mixed the scents of dead rats and butterscotch. She pinched her nose, fighting not to be sick.

  “Look!” Starlock said.

  An air transpo had lifted above the city wall. It made an erratic, swooping turn and then flew directly toward the four Protos standing on the plateau.

  “They’re coming for us,” Moonlight hissed, clutching Starlock’s arm. She tugged him toward the edge of the forest. “We have to go. They’re going to take us for being off the Rez.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” Rocky asked, looking to Luck. “Should we hide?”

  Luck was scared that Moonlight was right, but she refused to agree. “I didn’t come this far to run away now.” She said it to Starlock and saw her own feelings echoed in his eyes.

  “What are you looking at her for?” demanded Moonlight.

  Starlock took both of Moonlight’s hands in his own and said, with all the calm he could muster, “The humans have other problems right now, Moonlight. You hide if you want. I’m not going to.”

  * * *

  The very dented transpo landed, rather hard, just yards from Luck and Starlock, kicking up a dust storm and forcing them all to crouch down and cover their eyes, even Moonlight and Rocky, who had retreated several yards toward the trees. The engines were cut abruptly, and a rear door came crashing open. Three figures in T-shirts and trousers in a pattern Luck recognized as “camouflage” spilled out onto the grass. Only—

  “They’re Protos!” Starlock said quietly. He looked to Luck for confirmation. “Aren’t they?”

  Luck watched the newcomers closely. There were no odd colors or improperly sized heads or extra limbs, though all three were so wobbly on their feet that it took them a while to stand up straight, and one of them never did. That one was coughing so much from the dust still swirling in the air that he clutched his knees and rocked back and forth to try to stop the spasms. The other two, also coughing, approached Luck, Starlock, Rocky, and Moonlight with something like amazement.

  “Hello, Fellows!” called the first one. He and his companions were young, perhaps in their early twenties, and all very dirty. With effort, he pulled himself fully upright and clapped a hand to his chest. “I’m Matt, and these are Jason and Raul. We greet you in the form Nature intended.”

  “I’m Starlock,” said Starlock.

  “And I’m Luck,” said Luck. “And you’re Pro—”

  “We—we greet you in the form Nature intended,” the newcomer repeated.

  When the Protos hesitated, the one still on the ground crawled forward and asked, “Aren’t you—aren’t you Naturalists? He says, ‘We greet you in the form Nature intended,’ and then you say the other part.”

  “Do you not learn the greeting in your bloc?” the first one asked, perplexed. “You’re supposed to say, ‘We are all Fellows in the Natural.’ ”

  Tentatively, with a glance at Starlock, Luck began, “ ‘We are all Fellows—’ ” but she was interrupted when the one who hadn’t yet spoken grabbed the shirt of the one called Matt in a fit of emotion and practically shouted, “It’s because they’re not, they’re not. Look! They’re, they’re completely black and completely white. And orange,” he added, with a nod to Rocky.

  The faces of the other newcomers fell into something like shock.

  “You don’t think they’re…?” began one.

  “For real?” asked the one still on the ground. “You’re saying they’re—for real?”

  Matt pounded his own chest for a moment as though to jump-start his lungs, and then he addressed the Protos with formal courtesy. “We are Naturalists. We don’t get mods, because it’s, like, a terrible thing to do. But you don’t have mods because—�
�� He paused to pound his chest again.

  “Because you’re Protos!” the other standing one said, taking over. “Holy fucking Daughter, you’re Protos!”

  Luck and the others nodded hesitantly, while Luck mused on his use of the word fucking (she’d read swear words in many books, but no one on the Rez ever used them). The three Naturalists—whatever that meant—hollered and punched each other’s shoulders and one even pulled up the fellow on the ground and put him into a headlock with affectionate amazement. All of this gave the impression that they had just been granted their most cherished wish. The Protos were baffled by this display.

  Eventually one of the newcomers broke off the roughhousing to cough for an entire minute straight. The other two sat on the ground in silence, catching their breath. Luck was reassured by their apparent harmlessness, though their coughing was troubling—coughs were rare on the Rez, unless someone got a lungful of smoke from a bonfire.

  “You’re not Protos?” Luck asked.

  “We wish!” said the one called Matt. “We’re just basic humans, a mix of everything.” He gestured at his own face and hair and then at his closest companion’s. The features of both men were rather unremarkable to Luck, except for a general appearance of having been drawn from many parts of the world and combined.

  Matt went on with joyous incredulity. “I saw you through the telescope from our lookout post, and I only thought about your shape, you know?” he said. “And whether or not you were armed. I wasn’t thinking about your color, or where you could have come from. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure that Protos were real. Miz Babbidge is going to flip.”

  * * *

  “I am not going inside that city,” Moonlight objected in a low hiss that was intended to keep her words private but carried quite clearly to Luck, “and neither are you, Starlock.”

  The Naturalists had excitedly demanded that the Protos come with them into the city, where they would be fed and briefed and maybe even celebrated, they said, by the rest of the Naturalists. (“You’re, like, hope for mankind,” the one called Jason had told them. “You’re what we all believe in.”) The Protos had retreated to a private spot among trees a good fifty yards from the transpo to consider this offer.