Early on in our relationship, I told Cassady about my childhood. About the loneliness and heartbreak. What it was like to live in and around the Rebus library. And my hatred of my father.9 And my impetuous decision to flee home, culminating in my arrival on Cúchulainn.
After an early point in the narrative, I started to tell lies. But even so, it was a big step for me. I’d never told anyone about my childhood before. And no one had ever asked. The guys I’d fucked, even Daxox, tended to assume I’d arrived in the world as a fully-formed adult. They weren’t interested in imagining the five-year-old Artemis with freckles on her nose and a cheeky stare. But Cassady wanted to know. She wanted to know everything.
And in return, as part of that whole sharing-of-confidences process I’d never experienced before, Cassady told me about Julia. A Soldier in the Corporation Military Division. Who had been, and still was, the one great love of Cassady’s life.
“Was she beautiful?” I asked.
“No.” Cassady smiled at the memory. “Too chunky to be beautiful. But strong. She could crush a stone this size, in her fist.”
I paused, considering that.
“Why?” I asked.
“No reason. She was a show-off, I guess. It was her party trick.”
“I get you,” I said, envisaging the trail of crumbled rock left in this Amazon’s wake. “Was she your first lover?”
“First female lover,” Cassidy qualified.
“Good sex?”
“The best.”
“Tell me,” I said.
And so she did.
“Did you ever feel,” said Cassady, a little while later, “when you were growing up, that you were the only sane thing in the entire universe? That everyone else was mad, or warped?”
I thought about it.
“No,” I said, at length. “I felt the opposite. I felt like everyone around me was totally sane, and I was the mad one. I had a very boring family you know.”
Cassady stared, rebuking me for saying the wrong thing. I shrugged, apologetically.
“I thought my parents were brainwashed,” Cassady explained. “Like zombies. Unfeeling, uncaring, not real human beings at all.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess, lots of children feel that way,” I suggested. “Not me but – I’m sure it’s pretty normal.”
“No, no it’s not!” said Cassady fiercely. “The point is, I was right. They were brainwashed. They were zombies. They were—”
“Soldiers with a capital S?” I interjected.
“Camp-followers. Bureaucrats, in other words, on a garrison planet.”
“Ah.”
“When I was ten years old,” Cassady continued, “my dad invited his Manager to dinner at our house. Mum cooked. She was a great cook. I served the wine. Dad spent the whole evening with a big smile on his face. As if he thought that he’d be executed if he ever stopped smiling. Mum flirted with the Manager. I’d never seen a grown up flirt before. She kept smiling at this gross, horrible little man, and touching his knee with her hand. And after dinner Mum and the Manager went upstairs and I heard them shouting and screaming, and although I was only ten, I wasn’t dumb. They were fucking. Dad and I stayed at the table, with the Manager’s Wife, who had very little small talk, and they all smiled big smiles at each other. For ages.”
“That’s – shit,” I said.
“They call it Droit de Seigneur,” Cassady explained. “Manager’s privilege.”
“I’ve read about it,” I said, softly. “It’s a concept that goes way back.”
“That’s how it is, on a garrison planet, you see,” Cassady explained.
“I was guessing that.”
“We served the Lemur 344 Barracks. Dad was an operations manager for the spaceport and training centre. Mum worked in the hospital, patching them up after their training exercises. You know how it was for Soldiers, back then?”
“I’ve read about it.”
“Give me the child, and I will give you the man. That’s what they say.”
“Francis Xavier, a Jesuit priest, he said that.”
“They mould minds in other words.”
“It’s not so hard.”
“Entire generations of children turned into warriors.”
“It was a fucker, no guffing.”
“When I was fourteen,” said Cassady, “I went to my first dance. The boys all loved me because I’m, you know.”
“I don’t know. Give me a hint?”
“Highly sexed.”
“Yeah?” I looked at her.
“I exude pheromones. Men find me irresistible,” Cassady conceded. “Women too, obviously.”
“I wouldn’t have known that,” I lied.
“I was only fourteen. I knew nothing about all that. I just wanted to dance. I spent the night batting away roving hands. I didn’t want sex. I was underage!”
“There was no underage, back then.”
“Emotionally I was. Then she came over and sorted them out.”
“Who?”
“Julia. My first lover.”
“Ah.”
“She was the CO of the Regiment. A Colonel by rank. A tough bitch. Muscles like – well. Like granite, if granite weren’t so fucking squidgy.”
“You fucked her?”
“Not right away. Not for five years. She went to fight a war and when she came back I was nineteen. No longer a virgin, though I’d never slept with a man that I didn’t despise. I was third assistant manager at the spaceport. We were a family firm you see. We lived to serve. Me, my four brothers, my six sisters, my uncles, my aunts. We worked for the barracks. That was our life. We were conditioned too. That was my point, that’s where I started from. I always thought my parents were brainwashed, and they were. I always thought my teachers were robots, and they were, literally. My friends were the children of other civilian barracks managers, and they all lived to serve. It was our culture. We were a serf class. I saw it all so clearly when I was ten. But by the time I was nineteen I couldn’t see it at all. Because I was living it.”
“How’d they brainwash you?”
Cassady thought a moment. A reading lamp cast its soft radiance on her face. It highlighted the faint shadows of down upon her smooth skin. I was still getting that pheromonal arousal. But it was Cassady’s low, husky, intense voice that most captivated me.
“Attitudes,” she said. “It’s all about attitudes. They’re what define the normal. What everyone else believes, you believe. It’s incredibly powerful. Reinforced with dormant hypnosis, you know, as you sleep, they whisper stuff in your brain implant. Plus, infanticide.”
There was an awkward silence. I wondered if I’d misheard. But I knew I hadn’t.
“You’re guffing me?” I asked.
“No, it’s true. I remember dozens of babies who grew up into toddlers – little scamps, tousle-haired little monsters, you know? – then they just vanished. I never saw them again. They used to test for obedience at the age of three, you see, And after that, a lot of children were culled. It’s a winnowing process. Selection of the most docile.”
“You slipped through the net then.”
“I was a quiet one, when I was little. Hardly spoke. People thought that meant I was obedient. But I wasn’t. I was just a dreamer. A world of my own, that’s where I lived.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. As a child, I’d didn’t mix with children my own age, because there were none on Rebus. (Apart from one boy – who left after a year.)10
“And my dad was just a fucking – what’s the word for a man who has no balls? He was one of those. He never stood up for himself. The Soldiers used to – used to—” Cassady was lost in remembered rage. I preserved my tactful silence.
And as she was thinking about her past, I found myself comparing her childhood with my own, on Rebus. For ours was a so-called Free Planet, where there were no Soldiers. Just archivists.
And I was the daughter of a single parent. Jus
t me and my dad, in a big old rambling house. But we never spoke. Not about real stuff I mean.
That was what defined us, you see – the not saying of stuff. The old bastard never stopped talking at work. He was eloquent at lectures. Witty and garrulous at dinner parties. But when he was alone with me, it was as if he’d signed a vow of taciturnity. He savoured syllables as if they were his final fucking breaths.
It pissed me off, I guess. And it froze me. Stopped me feeling – anything for him, really. I felt like I never had a dad. Though I did! It was my mother who’d fucked off and abandoned me, after all.
And most of our evenings together, once we’d had a semi-silent dinner, were spent—
Fuck! Why am I telling you this? It was – forget it.
Back to Cassady’s story.
“So tell me more about the Colonel,” I said to Cassady. “You met, fell in love, many shags ensued – happy ever after?”
Cassady laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. The light from the lamp caught her skin again. This time it sparkled like the sun on water on a lake in the early morning. She was, in other words, I realised, crying.
“No,” Cassady said. “They found out. Her superior officers. Fraternising with a ranked civilian. That’s an offence in the Soldier’s code. We were ranked you see. Whereas the casuals were unranked, you could do whatever you wanted with them. The barstaff, waiters, whores, you know. This was a garrison town remember. Most of the young people either waited tables or served booze or prostituted themselves. Soldiers are voracious. Food, sex, drink, mindless violence. It’s all the same to them.”
“I can imagine.”
“I was given an official warning. I had to go to the barracks; I was interrogated by the Colonel of the Regiment. He treated me like a whore. I promised to never see her again.”
“And did you?”
“Yes I did. Of course I did! Julia and me, we kept meeting in hotel rooms. We were so in love. She even said so. Imagine! A Soldier, saying, ‘I love you.’ But she did. Once, just once. She did!”
We were alone in the prison library. The pastel-coloured walls were outshone by shelves of brightly coloured books on real-wood shelves. The reading lamps cast their radiance in broad arcs, like glittering pools among black rocks. And Cassady’s quiet voice stroked my soul and tormented me with its barely hidden grief.
“We were careful of course,” she continued. “Covered our tracks. Used false ID. Camera distortion technology. I told my parents I was studying for a further degree, that’s why I was out so much. I had a place of my own of course, but I still had dinner every night at my parents’ place. But after dinner, I would go out ‘to study,’ and that’s when I met with Julia.”
Cassady was lost in memories. And when she remembered, it gave her a sadly pensive look. Her inner thoughts visible in her eyes, her lips faintly moving as she absent-mindedly whispered to herself. I could see why Julia had loved her so much.
“It all went sour,” she continued. “The brass found out, Julia was reprimanded again. And this time they gave her a direct order. That’s how it works you see. It’s hardwired in their brains. An order is an order.”
“It can’t be hardwired. Not literally,” I insisted.
“Indoctrinated. Whatever. They may even use a cerebral implant. But the fact is, Soldiers can’t disobey.”
“They can fight it though? A Soldier can fight the conditioning?”
“No.”
“No?”
“It’s impossible. No. It can never happen.”
I knew she was right. It pissed me off.
“So, we make people into monsters,” I said bitterly, “and then we train them, like animals. And then we use them to hunt and kill for us.”
Cassady shook her head. She looked me full in the eyes. And I shocked myself, for I was shuddering with desire.
“No, not any more,” said Cassady. “We let all the monsters loose, remember, after the Last Battle. That’s why places like this are full of ex-Soldiers. They don’t have a moral code. So they’re lost. No reason to be. Just the skills to kill.”
She was right of course. Giger Penitentiary used to be a bleak and lonely dungeon. This was where the rebels were tortured, back when there were rebels. Now it was overflowing with the violent, the disaffected, the insane, and the military.
“What was the direct order?” I asked. “That Julia was given?”
“To kill me. My guess is, they wanted to test her loyalty. So she came to me that night.”
And as Cassady told the tale in its broad outlines, I found I could visualise it all. The impressionable teenager, waiting for her lover in a typical Corporation Planet hotel room. One bed. One landscape painting in a vaguely expressionist style above the bed. One portrait of the Cheo on the ceiling mural. One light. One hanger for clothes.
Then the door opened and in walked Julia, a ball of muscular energy, eyes blazing. And Cassady was waiting for her, and pounced on her, kissing and groping and cherishing. And I could imagine the needy, desperate embrace, the two women hugging, and kissing again, and declaring their undying love for each other, over and over again.
And then, so Cassady told me, they laughed awkwardly, and sat on the bed.
And then, knowing Cassady, they would have talked about all the little things. What their days had been like, and what news and gossip they’d heard.
And Julia’s stories would have been far more exciting, I guessed. After all, she was training in space warfare, forcing her body to achieve impossible feats of daring. Cassady’s stories would just be about her everyday tedium; but Julia would listen as if they were tales of epic valour, and she would care. Because that’s what lovers do.
And then, though Cassady didn’t say this bit, they would have taken their clothes off slowly and seductively, admiring each other’s naked beauty.
And finally, as Cassady acknowledged, they fucked, to music. For they always fucked to music. In fact, choosing the music to which they would fuck was the big decision of every day.
Tonight was Cassady’s choice, She had picked a numetal track called “Satan’s Spawn,” which was loud and diabolically repetitive. And I could imagine tongues licking and fingers touching and bodies intertwined as dark bass rhythms crashed and electric guitar riffs soared.
And after they had fucked, Cassady drifted off to sleep, naked on the bed.
At this particular moment in our relationship – when Cassady was telling me this story – I had never actually seen her naked. But even so, I could imagine her lithe slim loveliness and her bud-like breasts and her bushy womanhood and the curve of her tiny arse and her vulnerable sweetness as she slipped into post-fuck drowsy sleep.
And then Cassady woke up. And realised that Julia was strangling her to death with her two slim but powerful hands.
“I knew right away,” said Cassady, her face haunted by the memory, “what was happening. We’d never really fooled anyone. The Army always knew what we were doing, and where. Don’t you see, they wanted us to break the rules! That’s why the Army was so lax with security. Why they were always giving Julia free time, even after all the formal warnings. Fraternising between Soldiers and ranked civilians was supposed to be banned, but they were always organising dances between us, and the booze was always free. Because if you want to toughen up a Soldier, what’s the best way to do it? Tell her, or him, to kill the thing they love.”
I exhaled, finally, as she reached this point in her story. I’d guessed the twist, of course, but it still came as a shock.
“And she was strong,” said Cassady. “Very strong. But I’m not a fucking idiot, Artemis. I’m really not. I knew what might happen that night. I’d spent my spare time reading books about the psychology of warriors in the Corporation Empire. I’d read dozens of biogs of famous Soldiers. And so I took my precautions. I’d had blades implanted in my fingertips, for security. Released by a thought code. And when I woke up and her hands were on my throat I lashed out and I cut her face and her
neck, and blood gushed everywhere. But Julia carried on strangling me. There we were, the two of us, slithering on the sheets, blood gushing from her cheek and throat. Then I shoved her off the bed and slashed again, and this time I opened up her jugular. She died there on the floor of my hotel room. She bled out in the first twenty minutes. But it took six hours in all for her to actually die. That’s because they have oxygen implants in the brain, you see. They can survive almost any injury, but in the end, if there’s no oxygen in the brain, there’s no life. So I sat and watched her for all that time and Julia couldn’t speak by then, she could only stare at me. Defeated.
“And that’s when I—”
I grabbed Cassady by the throat with one hand and choked her. Her face went sunset-red. Her eyes goggled. And she looked, as you’d expect, utterly astonished at what I was doing to her.
We were still alone in the library. The surveillance cameras were on us, but I doubted anyone except the Dekon computer was monitoring them, and I controlled her. And my grip was unwaveringly tight. Cassady lashed out at me with one hand and I dodged the blow by tilting my head back. She fumbled and produced a shiv from a pouch in her side and lashed again and I dodged again.
I released my grip slightly, so she could breathe a little. And she continued to rain blows on me. They’d taken the blades out of her fingertips, but she had the shiv, and she was strong, and fit, and clearly trained in martial arts. But each blow she threw I dodged, like a man walking through a swarm of bees and evading every one.
Eventually I released her. Cassady gasped, and shook her head, and did all those recovering-from-choking things that people always do.
Then she lunged at me with the shiv. But I simply zen-glided her arm so the blow went past me even though I hadn’t touched her. She tried again and this time I took the knife off her and thrust it into my own breastbone.
The blade snapped.
“Augments,” I said calmly to Cassady. “I have ’em, every Soldier would have ’em. Reflexes enhanced. Skin toughened. My bones here, here, here and here,” I touched my body’s protected points with a fingertip to illustrate, “are stronger than steel.”
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