by Megan Hart
My fingers brushed the keyboard but didn’t push any keys. I didn’t know Declan’s code, or his District, or anything more about him than the scent and taste of him. He knew where to find me, but I had little hope he’d do so. How long had he waited? Not long enough and I couldn’t blame him. Hadn’t I been angry when I’d thought he’d ditched me?
The steam shower responded to the warmth of my body and switched on as soon as I stepped into the plazglass enclosure. Instant heat seeped into my body. The steam wrapped around me, and needles of nearly scalding artiwater pounded my flesh. It was just what I needed.
Kaelyn waited for me outside the bathroom with a glass of synthfruit juice and a slab of some sort of fragrant cake. “I ordered this for my Gemma.”
Even my disappointment couldn’t take away my sudden appetite. It had been hours since I’d eaten, and I’d worked hard today. I gobbled the food and drink, gave Kaelyn the plates, and ran my internal ultrasonic tooth cleanser. Then, still naked, I coated myself with waterproof protective dreamcream and got into my water bed.
The curved metal lid closed over top of me with a low, comforting click. Darkness instantly bathed me, and silence cloaked me. The water adjusted rapidly and perfectly to my exact body temperature, which had elevated slightly after the steam shower. I put the mouthguard between my teeth and plugged my ears, then slipped the duel-pronged flexicord into my nostrils and felt for the switch that would turn on the oxygen. The first two seconds of forced air were as stale and shocking as always, but then it was as though I were breathing regular air.
I slipped down into the water. Floating. The water caressed me, held me, lifted and dropped me, all as gently as a mother crooning her child to sleep. The slap, slap of it against the inside of the bed had the rhythmic quality of the sea.
I floated, aching for sleep and not finding it. No matter how I tried to tell myself it was stupid to pine away over a man I barely knew, my mind kept returning to his face. The way he whispered my name. The feeling of his hands on my flesh.
I floated. Thinking. Yearning. Would he try to see me? What would I do if he didn’t?
I’m an Op. It’s my job to find out who and where people are. With my access to Newcity’s database, System, it shouldn’t be difficult to trace Declan. The truth was, I was afraid.
No person had ever affected me this way, not even Steve. My ex-husband’s face rose briefly in my mind, but any memories of the love we’d shared had been replaced with the sight of his face on the viddy screen the last time we’d spoken.
His lip had curled in disgust, and his eyes hadn’t quite been able to meet mine. He’d asked for money, and I’d refused. I hadn’t asked him why he’d decided to dissolve our union. The answer had been all over his face.
It was too soon to imagine sharing my life with Declan the way I’d shared it with Steve. Yet I couldn’t stop my mind from turning over a picture of us, laughing together. Holding hands. Standing before our friends and family to share the vows that would join our lives as husband and wife. Loving him.
I had loved Steve once, enough to agree to bind my life to his. His touch had made my body respond. We’d even laughed together, though it seemed I only ever cried alone. If I hadn’t agreed to join him on the hoverbike ride, perhaps we’d still be married today. We might have had children.
That choice had been taken from me. I’d never create life or carry a child in the womb the doctors had determined unimportant to save. Compared to the organs that allowed me to live, lungs, kidneys, intestines, I suppose their choice made sense. But now I pressed my hands against the flat plane of my belly and imagined the scarred mess inside.
In our world’s past, motherhood had once been assumed to be the sole purpose of a woman’s life. Her role was to create, bear and raise children. Time had allowed women more freedom of choice, but motherhood had still been considered the shining icon of womanhood, the pinnacle of purpose for the female sex. More recent advances had further removed that assumption. Same sex pairings, artificial insemination and birth control reversible only by surgery had made having children more of an active choice than ever before. Women can choose to have a uterobot carry the egg and sperm joined in a laboratory rather than become pregnant themselves. We can choose our children’s gender, hair and eye color, genetically determined height and weight, resistance to disease and aptitude for tasks.
I still had choices. Too many of them in my opinion, but I could still be a mother if I chose. But I didn’t want a child without a father, and I didn’t want a home without love.
I wasn’t afraid to make love with Declan, but I was afraid to love him. I’d gone down that path before, with Steve, and had my love torn from me like meat in the teeth of feral beasts. The accident had stolen more from me than my internal organs; it had taken my marriage.
I floated, dreaming. I couldn’t maintain the melancholy thinking of Steve and my accident always brought me. The water soothed away those old aches, which is why I invested the money in the water bed to begin with. No matter what befell me during the day, no matter what might wound or scar me, sleeping in the water, the real water, always made everything better.
I spread my legs to feel the water caress every part of me. In the silence, the beating of my heart became the thud of ocean waves. I thought of my holo program and the blue ocean I’d created.
In the blackness, I couldn’t be sure if my eyes were open or shut. Soft sparkles of color drifted through my vision, like tiny stars. If I reached out my hands to either side, I’d feel the warm inner lining of the water bed, but I chose to keep them resting on my stomach. I wanted no tether, nothing to ground me. I wanted to float, to drift, to let the day slip away from me.
Despite the warmth and gentle rocking of the water, I couldn’t relax enough to fall asleep. Tension coiled through my body, my thighs, my shoulders, my neck. I stroked the smoothness of my belly and felt the tension even there, muscles jumping beneath the skin.
The situation with Relava preyed on my mind. She hadn’t needed to be destroyed, but desperation had driven her recklessness. She’d lost her life because of her own fears. Still, my responsibility in the fiasco bothered me.
My hands smoothed lower, to the swell of my thighs. The muscles there ached, but the warm water would relieve the pain by morning. My fingers touched the sensitive inner flesh, and the skin there trembled at my touch.
If I’d met Declan tonight as planned, we surely would’ve ended up making love. His hands would’ve touched me where my own caressed me now. I let my fingers drift a little higher, to brush the soft lines of my pussy and my swelling clit. I closed the third finger and thumb of my left hand on that spot. Just behind the bundle of nerves was the switch that forced my body into instant sexual arousal. I didn’t need to press it. My touch against my flesh and the thought of Declan was enough.
I parted my legs farther, and the water lapped at my openness. I rocked my hips against my hand. The stars in my vision grew brighter, sparkled, pulsed in time to the throb of my arousal.
I slid the first two fingers of my right hand inside my opening and felt the slickness even the water couldn’t wash away. My hips jumped, and my clit began to heat. I moaned in the back of my throat, the mouthpiece muffling the sound. I slid my fingers in and out, deeper, harder, imagining them as Declan’s cock. My other hand stroked my clit in slow, rhythmic circles that brought me to the edge, then eased me back.
The water sloshed. My knees bumped the sides of the tank as I drew them up to tilt myself further against my hands. I thrust my fingers slower, and slid my left hand up to caress my jutting nipples. The water licked at my erect clitoris, teasing it, taunting it. No matter how I pushed against it, the pressure wasn’t enough to send me into orgasm. I teased myself with it until my body became a blast of sensation, and even the stars in my eyes faded into a white hot glare.
At last I could hold out no more. I left my breasts and slid my hand once more down to my cunt. Once, twice, I tweaked my clit with my
thumb and forefinger, and my orgasm bolted through me hard enough to arch my back and slap the water against the tube. I waited a second or two, and paused in the stroking and thrusting, then once, twice, again, and a second, milder series of contractions rippled through me.
Spent, I let my hands fall to my sides. The water calmed. I floated. Then I slept. If I dreamed, I don’t recall it.
My internal clock woke me, and I slid seamlessly from sleep to consciousness without the startlement that so often accompanies the change.
I pressed the rubber button and removed the flexicord and other gear. The lid of my water bed slid back to reveal a room, dim in deference to the blackness to which my eyes had grown accustomed, but still bright enough to make me squint briefly. I felt no sense of urgency, and for a moment couldn’t think why. Then it struck me. Today was my scheduled off-day.
For a moment, I sank back into the water, but couldn’t stay there for long. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d taken a day of leisure. My job had been life for so many years, even the idea of actually staying home on my off-day for any reason other than an emergency seemed like craziness.
The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. I got up from my water bed and wiped off the dreamcream, then tossed the towel in the disposal. I stretched, the tiny joints in my back popping and crackling. Yesterday’s strife and disappointment seemed shoved far back in my brain, and today stretched out in front of me with colors glowing like Solaria sunshine. Bright.
“Is my Gemma going to work today?” Kaelyn’s fair head peeped around the corner. “Is my Gemma feeling sick?”
“I’m not sick. It’s my day off.”
Her brow furrowed. “But my Gemma does not take her day off. She always goes into work anyway.”
“Not today.” I gave myself a glance in the mirror. “Today I think I’m going to…relax.”
She probably wouldn’t have looked more aghast had I said I was going to eat filth. “My Gemma is sick!”
I laughed and drew her closer to me. “No, Kaelyn. Just…I’ve been thinking. Life is too short.”
Her wings fluttered against my bare arms. “Is it something I’ve done wrong? Is my Gemma going to send me away?”
My heart twisted a little at her assumption that any change in me was a reflection of her status in my household. I smoothed her hair gently away from her forehead and held her still until her wings ceased their beating. “No, Kaelyn. I’m not going to send you away. I would never do that. I love you.”
The dark fathoms of her eyes brimmed with tears. She flung herself against me, shaking with the force of her emotion, and I realized something that shamed me. I had never told her I loved her before.
“Oh, I’d hoped and hoped, but I never thought my Gemma would…oh!”
I rubbed her back, feeling through her light shift the thin knobs of her spine poking up in the space between her gossamer wings. She clutched me harder. I held her for some long moments, neither of us speaking.
When she pulled away, she seemed almost shy. “When my Gemma bought me from the slave trader, I was afraid.”
“I know that.” I let her stand back from me.
She nodded, and her delicate features wreathed into a smile. “But my Gemma has been so kind, never working me too hard. Caring for me. They took me from my home when I was very small. Away from my family.” She paused as if to consider her next words. “I’ve thought in my heart, felt in my heart, for a long time…”
“Yes?” I prompted her.
“I wondered if my Gemma treated me so well because I cost much money, or because she loved me as I loved her. Because I’ve lost my mother, my Gemma, and…”
Tears stung my own eyes as her words sunk in. “Oh, Kaelyn. I didn’t realize.”
She nodded again. “My Gemma doesn’t want me to think of her this way. I understand!”
“No, Kaelyn.” Again, I drew her close to me, this time so I could look deep into her eyes. “For a long time, I couldn’t feel much of anything. But I’ve always cared for you. And I’m honored that you feel for me what you did for your own mother.”
The petite, winged creature I’d bought for three months’ salary had no idea of the gift she’d just offered me. “I’d be honored to have you as my daughter, Kaelyn.”
She threw herself at me again and wrapped her arms around my neck. She hugged me so fiercely the air squeezed from my lungs, and I had to pry her off. She stepped back, her wings for once ceased in their constant fluttering. She looked more serene, and her eyes shone with a glow I recognized as happiness.
She drew away and clapped her hands. “I will make my Gemma…” Again, the shy pause. “My mother, breakfast.”
I laughed and shook my head. “All right.”
With a flutter, she left the room. I stared after her for a moment. I had a Elovenian for a daughter. I grinned. Stranger things had happened.
Again, I dressed in a flowing dress of soft artisilk and slipped flat sandals instead of heavy boots on my feet. I made a quick diagnostic check to be sure my internals were still functioning—unlike the hapless Relava, I placed a lot of importance on my personal maintenance. If something went wrong inside me, it would be far more serious than a simple faulty ignition. In the unlikely event any of my organs failed, I’d die. It seemed a fair trade for never being sick.
Today I would put the past behind me once and for all, including Steve. I’d look forward to what the future might bring. I would start by finding Declan.
I would never know if I had a chance at a future with Declan, if I didn’t try to find out. The thought of telling him the truth—that I was neither metalgirl nor fleshgirl, but something in-between, made the pit of my stomach clench. The fear made me angry and made me think. How long had I allowed it to rule me?
In my work, I was fearless. I had to be. And in my private life…well, because of fear I hadn’t allowed myself to have a private life.
“No more,” I said. Yes, I thought of the way he’d made my body sing, but more than that, I thought of how he’d opened my heart.
There was always the possibility that once he learned the truth that I was mecho, he might turn away, as Steve had. As so many of the Newcitizens were beginning to do, led by the Newcity Ruling Council. I’d never know unless I found out. And I wouldn’t find out, unless I found him.
I still didn’t want to go into work, but with my home hookup to System, I wouldn’t have to. I barely noticed the plate of soft bread, articheese and synthfruit Kaelyn slid in front of me, though when she clucked at me to eat, I did. I unhooked the viddy screen and keyboard from the wall and put them on the table for easier access. With luck, my search wouldn’t take very long, but I wanted to be comfortable.
I punched in my personal ID number and waited for System to recognize me. When the modulated feminine voice replied, “GMMA 4121609, recognized,” I said, “voice command activated.”
“Activated.”
“Search: Declan.”
The viddy screen showed a flowing, random pattern of colors for approximately two seconds before a list of matches appeared. The system was working incredibly slow.
“Match: Declan. Two million, three hundred thousand, four hundred and seven.”
“Damn.” I thumped the table. I hadn’t thought his name would be so popular.
“Command not recognized.”
“Discard: All but first of multiple references.”
Again, the soft pattern of blues and greens, then the list of names.
“Match: Declan. Seven hundred and two.”
At least I’d cut the list down considerably. I hadn’t even reached the point where I had to use my higher clearance to gain information.
“Discard: Female.”
“Match: Declan. Five hundred and seventeen.”
Now I was getting somewhere. All of the remaining references were of a male Declan, and each was a reference to a different event. Now all I had to do was figure out which one was the one I needed.
“Hold or discard other data?”
“Hold.” If I couldn’t find the correct social reference to him, I might need to check business.
I’d finished my breakfast without paying attention. Kaelyn cleared my plates, her eyes still shining with the glow of joy. She hummed softly to herself and paused to lay her head against mine before moving back to the kitchen area.
“Match: Declan. Social. Three hundred and fifty.”
“Filter: Photos.”
“Hold or discard other data?”
“Hold.” I waited. Finding a picture of him would make everything else much easier. The answer came back.
“Match: Declan. Social. Photos. Seventy-five.”
“Show first match.”
A brief splash of color, then the screen filled with the face of a very handsome man. It wasn’t my Declan. The man’s toothy grin graced an advertisement for the Ultra Sonic Tooth Cleaner.
“Identify Citizen.”
“Offworld Citizen. D’clan Horduta.”
There was a problem with voice recognition technology. It wasn’t System’s fault, but the ad didn’t help me. I ordered another match, this time spelling out the proper name.
“Match. D-E-C-L-A-N. Social. Photo. Two hundred and four.”
At least the numbers were getting smaller.
The clip showed a man accepting an award for something, and shaking hands with several people. I scanned the background for a sign of my Declan—now I was starting to sound like Kaelyn!—but saw nothing familiar. The words marching across the bottom of the screen matched described the scene.
“Volume up.”
“…Frank Phillips accepts the Newcity Good Citizen award from Newcity Council Member Howard Adar.
The dialogue continued. “…Frank’s work with Oldcity plague groups earned him the award.”
The clip faded. “Reference entry. Declan?”
“Further information unavailable.”
“Replay.”
The clip began again. I scanned the background. “Stop.” I touched the viddy screen lightly. “Enhance.”
