Chloe trailed off. Slava was shaking her head.
“What?”
“Who’s the last guy you had sex with, Chloe?”
Chloe sent her mind back, suddenly unsure. Some client or performance somewhere. Some detailed record of delightful perversion she was momentarily unable to pinpoint.
“It was Andrew, wasn’t it?”
“Of course not.”
“Then who? Where? When?”
Chloe thought harder. Where had she performed, other than by herself? What sex acts had she recently shown off, other than masturbation? Which instruments of flesh had entered her, save her own fingers?
It had only been a week since Andrew, but obviously the professional part of herself would have been hard at work compartmentalizing and delivering ecstasy to paying customers. It was what she lived to do, what she loved, where she derived her purpose. After all, what use was O’s prodigy without the bodily adventures to prove it?
“Hell, Chloe. I was half kidding — but you really haven’t fucked anyone since him, have you?”
“I’m sure I have. I just can’t remember.”
“You remember everything, Chloe. You’re a wiki with tits.”
Chloe was about to retort, but Slava was just shaking her head. This wasn’t dereliction of duty — Chloe was becoming someone she’d never been, and betraying her previous self.
But it wasn’t just this last time, was it?
Between her most recent time with Andrew and the time before, she’d had sex with no one.
And between that time and the time before … again nothing.
You remember everything, Chloe.
And right now, she remembered not remembering a thing.
Back in District Zero, Chloe could blame her unavailability on Brad, The Beam, and all the time she’d spent soul-searching — almost literally. But here on Voyos, she had no Beam, no Brad, no Andrew to distract her.
How had it escaped her that she’d done none of her real job?
How was she surviving, when sex had become her mirror twin’s food?
She was Chloe Fucking Shaw, O Escort. Had she really gone cold without even realizing it?
Slava’s eyes darted around the diner. She leaned lower, closer. “What Alexa said about you and Andrew. Is it really true?”
Chloe was suddenly very interested.
She leaned in to match, her voice low. “What did Alexa say?”
“Alexa came to me personally, after I moved my trip up. She pulled me aside and said, ‘The board has a lot of faith in you, Slava. You’re our top performer, and part of this company’s future.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But it has something to do with you. With both of us, together. I got that much when she started asking about what we’ve discussed before, the few times we hung out in DZ. She said, ‘You’re intuitive. That’s more important than you can imagine to us.’ And she’s right; I am. I intuited the fuck out of what she was really saying to me. Alexa was digging for information. On you.”
“Me?”
“You and Andrew. She was very interested in that. She wanted to know what you’d told me about him. What I thought about him. Then she asked me if I’d go to him for—”
“‘Go to him’?”
“And fuck him. To reset his clock.”
Something punched Chloe in the gut.
“And did you?”
She asked it lightly, because of course if that had happened, it should be fine with Chloe. Any escort — any enlightened person in the year 2060 — would feel the same.
Sex was sex. Flesh and fluid.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Slava seemed to search for an answer. Finally, she said, “I ‘intuited’ that it would be a bad idea.”
“A bad idea how?”
Slava met her eyes. Chloe wasn’t sure if Slava was referring to a negative consequence from Andrew’s end or from Chloe’s, but she’d anticipated fine. Unenlightened or not, a yes from Slava on that one would have unhinged her.
Who is Chloe Shaw?
Jealous, apparently.
Bigoted, apparently.
Neglecting everyone who’s counting on or investing in her, apparently.
“When I cut the shit and asked Alexa what she was getting at — when I told her that if she wanted me to leave home and fly way the fuck out to Voyos for an indeterminate period of time, she’d goddamn better play straight with me — she actually answered. Maybe because I’m top talent and it was easier to answer than fire me. Maybe because what she said about me being important to O — not as important as you, I gather, but important nonetheless — or maybe it was just because I caught her off-guard.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that she thinks you’re falling in love with Andrew.”
“Love?”
Chloe said it like most people would say cancer or Respero.
“Is it true?”
Chloe laughed. A hollow sound, more forced than intended.
“Is it true, Chloe?”
“I’m an escort. I don’t have time for love.”
“Compartmentalization is bullshit. You can’t have half and half. I do shit all the way. I’m all in as a performer; love would only cloud my decisions, and therefore my life. Some people act like you can have both. It’s crap. It’s one or the other. But Chloe? Nobody in your position ever chooses the other. Ever.”
“I’m not choosing the other.”
“I want to know,” Slava said.
“I’m telling you right now.”
Slava shook her head. “I mean that if you do this with him — with Andrew — I know you’ll go as all-in with him as I am with O. You’ll have to choose, and I think you’ve already started. I think Alexa knows and it scares her. But that’s not what I’m talking about, Chloe. I don’t want to know your choice. And now, I want to know what it’s like.”
“What what’s like?”
“Love.”
“There are plenty of people you could ask. Plenty of stories you could read.”
“Not like you. Not Chloe Shaw, who holds O’s power in her delicate little cock-stroking hands.”
Chloe forced another laugh, feeling its bite, looking suddenly around as if they might be overheard. Which they could very well be. The entire island was owned by O.
“I don’t hold any power,” Chloe said.
“Maybe,” Slava said. “But did you know Alexa has a cochlear implant?”
It was hardly news. Most people wealthy enough to afford Crossbrace cochlear implants had them installed, same as more and more people were installing retinal heads-up displays.
More add-ons meant a more intuitive, more natural connection to the network — a connection that, as The Beam rolled out, would feel as intimate as skin on skin. The Internet was something you accessed. Crossbrace was something you lived. But The Beam? The more Chloe used it, the more she became convinced that The Beam would be something you were.
“I’m sure she does. So what?”
“She was talking to me so carefully, Chloe. The words she chose, the way she puts things. It wasn’t quite natural. Alexa’s right; I am intuitive; I’m great at reading between the lines. And I’m sure that when Alexa was talking to me about you and Andrew, someone else was listening.”
“Why?”
“Maybe that other person was whispering in her ear, telling her what to say. Maybe they were just listening, and her careful speech meant she was hiding something from that other person — something a natural conversation with me might accidentally reveal.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I have no idea.” Slava shook her head. “But I don’t think you have any idea what might be riding on all of this. The way she sent me after you, I think she wanted you here. Can you think of any reason she’d want you on Voyos?”
Chloe felt, rather than heard the answer: To help me learn what I need to learn. To let me fi
nd the truth so that O can know it, too.
“Not really.”
“Can you think of any reason they might be interested in you beyond your commercial appeal to the company’s bottom line?”
All those tests. All that buried history uncovered by The Beam, about O and its manipulations of not just the sex industry, but society as a whole. All that Brad has hinted and suggested. The sneaking feeling, growing larger each day, that my entire life has been orchestrated. That someone has been watching me all along. That increasingly, nothing in my world has ever happened by accident.
“What’s this about, Slava? Just spit it out.”
“I’m worried about you. Or at least for you.”
“Why?”
Slava’s darkly outlined eyes ticked around the diner. She needed to get something very heavy off her back, lest it crush her.
“I didn’t go quietly,” Slava said. “I’m a loudmouth. I told Alexa to just fucking say what she wanted instead of beating around the bush. I must be worth something because she didn’t yell or threaten to fire me. She answered my questions in that same guarded way, telling me some shit that I think is true and a whole lot that I think were lies.”
A tiny smile.
“But I rattled her, Chloe. I got under her skin. And once — just once — she slipped. Alexa made a mistake and said something I don’t think she meant to. Maybe even something she doesn’t realize she said. It’s what convinced me that I was right about someone listening in. Because when she snapped, she wasn’t really snapping at me. Whoever was on the other end of that implant? That’s who she was shouting at.”
Creeping dread climbed Chloe’s spine.
“If you have a secret—” Slava said, “—if you really are feeling Andrew and holding back on Voyos because of it, I’ll keep that secret. I’ll cover for you. I’ll help, because fair is fair, and some motherfuckers aren’t playing on the level. I believe in playing full out if you’re going to play at all. But someone is playing both sides, Chloe. I don’t know the details, but someone — and maybe several someones — are betraying you … and probably have been for a while.”
Chloe reached forward, suddenly touched, suddenly ashamed that not long ago, she’d believed she had no friends of flesh and blood. She took Slava’s hand. And, feeling a storm of interior fear but holding her exterior calm, she said, “What is it, Slava? What did Alexa shout that you think was meant for someone else?”
“She was furious that Andrew was somehow causing problems for O, but she didn’t see a way out —like the whole company was caught between a rock and a hard place. She kept asking me about him. Him and you. She was pretending to be curious, but I could tell that she wanted to scream.”
“But what did she say? What did she yell?”
Slava looked around again. Swallowed. Then she met Chloe’s eyes.
“She said that they hadn’t spent sixty years on you, just to lose everything because of some goddamn kid.”
CHAPTER SIX
Sixty years.
Either Slava had heard Alexa wrong — or, increasingly unsure and with her paranoia re-firing, it was even possible that she’d heard Slava wrong.
She’d sat with Slava for another few minutes after that, then finally left. The conversation hadn’t been over; Chloe just couldn’t take any more. Slava had watched her walk out, still naked as befitting any proper Voyos guide, and done nothing to stop her.
It had felt logical. But now, alone in her old home, Chloe wondered if it had been a sort of fugue. Maybe a breakdown.
So yes, she might have heard Slava wrong.
Imagined nuances that weren’t there, imbuing their conversation with sinister undertones even though it had only been a chat.
Barring that, Slava was mistaken.
Or barring that, Alexa had misspoken.
Or been talking about something entirely different.
Slava had read the situation wrong, because although Chloe had felt observed these last few months and was now feeling like eyes might have been on her for years before (paranoid though that still seemed), there was one glaring problem with what Slava had said: Chloe wasn’t sixty years old. Her mother wasn’t even sixty years old.
Chloe paced the house while her mom was out, finally remembering to put on some clothes after a few nude minutes of disorientation, before calling the spa to report that she suddenly and inexplicably felt too ill for work.
The spa suggested a trip to the clinic; O had a way of patching up talent just enough to make it still workable in the way injured athletes were shot with steroids and repair nanos and then told to keep playing.
Chloe said no and dared the manager to challenge her. Then after putting her on hold for fifteen long minutes to check something, he’d simply let her go.
What had he been doing during those fifteen minutes?
What had Alexa really wanted from Slava, aside from the confusing, and possibly misheard, exclamation at the end?
Chloe’s relationship with Andrew was Chloe and Andrew’s business. No one else’s. She didn’t even know where to start arguing against Alexa’s intrusion. For one, it was none of her damn concern. For two, what possible angle would Alexa think she’d have to interfere?
Chloe wouldn’t listen if Alexa gave her advice about Andrew; she was a grown woman and able to manage her own affairs.
And Andrew? Nobody at O even knew who he was or had him on their radar … or at least that’s what Chloe had thought.
But the final thing was the most insulting. Even if Chloe and Andrew’s relationship was within their purview and line of sight (which it shouldn’t have been), many escorts carried on with personal affairs while working.
But even the girls who never bothered with formal compartmentalization always developed a casual form of the same thing. Ever since the original Pretty Woman, the idea of the prostitute who’d only kiss her true man on the lips had been standard behavior. You kept work on one side and your private life on the other.
Who the fuck was Alexa to imply that Chloe couldn’t handle Andrew while also giving her all to O?
Except that she wasn’t, was she?
Chloe had been handling her jobs in different ways — ways that kept her professional side nearly as virginal as her personal side.
She’d satisfied every client, but had done so in strange ways that she was only now consciously realizing. She’d pleasured herself while clients watched. She’d encouraged them without touching them. She’d dropped them both into VR worlds and gotten them off virtually rather than with her body. She’d made liberal use of toys. Of stimulators. Of projections and robots and nanos and sensitizers.
Chloe’s ears perked up.
Nicole was turning toward the house from the sidewalk out front, holding a small bag of groceries.
It doesn’t matter what Slava said, what Alexa told her intentionally or unintentionally, or what Slava thinks either correctly or incorrectly.
It doesn’t matter what Brad implied or what The Beam suggested about me, about O, about Alexa’s many disguises over the course of her life, or how O has manipulated the whole goddamn NAU in order to sell more sex.
All that matters is that this has to end.
One way or another, I have to know the truth.
I don’t care what it is.
But not knowing is driving me insane.
Nicole’s head visible in the living room window as she mounted the stoop.
The small noise of the doorknob as she gripped it; the slap of the lock as her handprint was recognized; the sound of the door swinging on its hinges.
You’re part of this, Mom. On purpose or by accident, you’re part of what’s happening to me. What O is hiding from me. What The Beam told me about you and the man who isn’t my father, obviously.
I don’t know if you’re keeping secrets I’ll be angry to learn, but I know there can be no more secrets about this.
About Clive. About me. Not anymore.
Chloe’s fist ba
lled. She stood in the living room as the door opened, breathing deeply and waiting.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Chloe?”
Nicole put a hand to her chest. Her heart had doubled its beat in the space of two seconds, the instant she’d noticed her daughter in the living room.
Chloe was frozen, sitting in her beaten-up armchair: the same spot she’d often commandeered for reading and video watching while still a kid living at home.
Her face was unreadable. On one level, she looked eerily calm, as if she’d been sitting in that same chair all afternoon, just relaxing after a hard day’s work. But to Nicole, the facade surrounding Chloe was exactly that.
She wasn’t watching a video, or reading, or sketching, or writing anything by hand in notebooks like she used to. She wasn’t even sitting comfortably, kicked back with her legs crossed. Chloe was instead sitting like a lord in a throne: hands on armrests, knees together, eyes forward. Waiting.
But Chloe said nothing.
“You scared the bejeebers out of me!”
“I was just sitting here.” Like her face, Chloe’s voice was empty.
Nicole cocked her head. She stepped forward, almost tentative. She set the groceries aside. A loaf of bread, perched at the top, dropped to the floor. Neither woman looked.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Everyone is asking about my well-being today,” Chloe said.
“Who else is asking about your well-being?”
“Slava.”
“Well, she’s—”
“Alexa Mathis.”
Nicole stopped moving. Now there was an inflection in her voice, and it felt wrong. “Alexa Mathis is on Voyos?”
Instead of answering, Chloe said, “Natasha Ryan.”
Nicole blinked. Alexa Mathis wouldn’t be on Voyos, but she’d be on the island much more than Natasha Ryan ever would be.
A feeling like a hand grew at the back of Nicole’s neck like it meant to choke her from behind.
“And that nice English fellow, Clive Spooner,” Chloe continued. “The man who hung the moon … or at least stole it for himself.”
“What are you talking about?”
The Voyos Reunion Page 4
