by L. K. Rigel
"Hey, Mike." Jake joined them from the bar, holding a drink. It seemed impossible that she'd first met him only a few hours ago, standing just so with an iced latte. "Meadowlark."
She didn't have feelings for Jake. The world was cracking up. She wouldn't have feelings for anybody. But she was disappointed when he took the chair on Mike's side of the sofa and not the perfectly good empty seat at her left side.
Jake was a little taller than Mike, and his good looks were definitely natural. His foo-foo drink had an origami dragon impaled on a floating strawberry. He swallowed half the pretty concoction in one gulp then bit into the strawberry, his lips stained by the fruit.
"I see you're taking good care of our girl."
Cripes. It made her all tingly inside when he said our girl.
Mike's guttural hmm felt territorial, practically a growl.
"I didn't think you'd be back so soon," Char said.
"I almost didn't make it back at all. The Junque's com system is buggy. I had trouble docking."
"I'll send a tech to help Rani," Mike said. "It's the least I can do. And Jake. I'm sorry about Tyler."
"Excellency. How fortunate to find you here." Without asking, a heavy middle-aged man sat down beside Char. He ignored her though he spilled out of the chair, his knee pushing into hers. Now this was the model of an incompetent mid level bureaucrat, eager for face time with his superior.
Mike leaned back and spread his arms on the sofa. "Reynaldo," he said. "I take it you received the contract?"
Excellency. Char sighed. What else did she not know about Mike?
Reynaldo's young companion sat across the cocktail table from Char. When he saw Jake, he almost jumped out of his seat. His gaze darted about the Blue Marble then back. "Hello, Jake."
"Why hello there, Geraldo." Jake finished off his strawberry.
"Where's Rani?"
"Nervous?" Jake's chuckle was devious. "Let's see. The last thing I heard Rani say about you was 'when I see that insect again, I'm going to squish him like a fly.'"
"Ah." Geraldo blanched.
"You got lucky. She stayed at the V for some R&R."
Vacation Station. Most Coveted Destination Not On Earth was its false motto. The actual most coveted destination not on earth was not the V but the "I" -- the Imperial Space Station.
Geraldo seemed highly relieved that seven-foot-tall, muscle-bound, no-nonsense Rani was taking R&R on the V. He turned his attention to Char, openly examining her as if he was evaluating a horse.
If Rani didn't like this unctuous little man, then Char liked Rani more.
Two servers, a male and a female, set trays on the cocktail table. They were dressed alike as someone's fantasy of sex slaves. If you could call it dressed. Naked but for leather belts and harnesses and short leashes hanging from their chokers.
"Excellency," Reynaldo said, "allow us to celebrate."
At first, Char thought the servers were shaved, but they must be mutants, naturally hairless, as both were bald and without eyelashes or eyebrows as well as other body hair. Like Rani, they hadn't gone ghost. As of yet, anyway; the male was dangerously thin.
Supposedly, mutants were not allowed off planet. Mike avoided her questioning look, and the others didn't seem to think anything was amiss. Certainly everyone accepted Rani being in orbit.
Geraldo pulled the female server to him and buried his face in her stomach. He ran his hand over her buttocks and moaned a little. Char looked away, only to realize scenes like this were happening all over the bar.
This was why she'd always resisted coming up here. She would never be one of the sophisticated people.
Reynaldo sighed. "Not now, Geraldo."
Geraldo tweaked the server's nipple and slapped her backside. "Run along then."
Jake's face was a blank, but Char felt certain he'd be glad to join Rani in squishing Geraldo like a fly. Good. She'd help.
Mike didn't seem to notice anything amiss. He tasted the champagne offered by the wine steward and pronounced it acceptable. "To Sanguibahd."
The trays were loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables and dips and sauces. Char's mouth watered. The colors alone were exciting -- bright reds, greens, and yellows. It had been a year since she'd had anything from hydroponics. Store-bought food was so bland, sometimes she'd go for days on protein drinks and lattes and vitamin pills.
"Delicious." She bit into a red-orange cherry tomato. "I can taste the nutrients."
"We stock from orbit when we can," Jake said. "Food up here beats anything grown in the ground."
"I've always wanted to see the new hydroponics annex." The thought of it brought Char's old life back.
"I'll take you after dinner." Mike ran his fingers over her wrist.
"You're into hydroponics?" Jake looked surprised.
Why shouldn't he be? Why shouldn't he think she was an unproductive ornament, saved from the chaos below because she was related to Mike's fiancée?
Mike pulled his hand away as if he again realized that she wasn't Sky. "Char helped design the annex."
"That's generous. I was an intern. I was in my doctoral program working with the design team, but I quit before it was installed."
"Quit?" Geraldo practically sneered.
"Char's sister was with Tesla," Mike said. "She's been in mourning."
"Half the planet is in mourning," Geraldo said. "And the other half soon will be. No one has the right to withhold their … gifts anymore."
"Artless." Reynaldo licked his fingers. "But true. The survival of the human race might well come down to one woman's refusal to give what she can. It's what this project is all about."
The two tipped their glasses to each other.
"The land around Corcovado is blessed." Creepy coming from Geraldo, hardly the reverent type. "We've discovered a natural artesian aquifer. Clean fresh water. A pristine environment to keep the girls healthy. We're calling it Sanguibahd."
He must have come up with the name himself, he was so proud of it.
"Blood City," Char said.
"A sanctuary for fertile females."
"But no one has a natural pregnancy anymore."
Women's fertility had long been undependable. In the Gulf Spill of 2010, the oil company used dispersants in their attempts to conceal the gravity of the disaster. Those chemicals infused endocrine disruptors into the ecosystem. At first the local fish, plankton, and birds were affected. But the slick spread to currents that channeled the whole mess into the Atlantic, and the tainted birds and plankton and fish were subsumed into the food chain.
Within ten years half the women on the planet were infertile. Another quarter suffered from incompetent uterus syndrome at six to seven months. A generation later, some said the infertility had tapered off. Some said it was getting worse. The Imperial Census knew the truth, but the information was classified.
To be safe, most babies were baggers now, engineered at dedicated hospitals.
"Sanctuary." Char said. "Safekeeping from pollution?"
"Pollution. Mischief. Fertility wasted on the undeserving." Reynaldo licked his fingers again. "Raptors."
"Raptors? But that's just a rumor!"
Jake shook his head and Reynaldo chuckled.
Geraldo said, "If you don't see it on the television, it must not be real?"
Char was beginning to feel hopelessly naïve.
Mike's com sounded in his ear, so loud she could hear it. His self-important vibe put a stop to the group's conversation until he ended the call.
"Something I have to deal with." He stood up. "Reynaldo, Geraldo, you need to go back down. Keep away from the Pacific Zone. In fact, stay completely south of the equator."
So her guess had been right. IHS was going to quarantine the Pacific Zone.
"Char, I'll contact you after I take care of this. We'll go see the hydroponics annex." He left through a side door followed by a security detail that must have been watching them the whole time.
The station had gone int
o nightside over an uninhabited stretch, but now the dark blank beneath them gave way to a jewel-like phantasm of light. Char had no idea which city they were over or if they were north or south of the equator. This was an entirely new way of being alive in the universe, with night and day changing every ninety minutes.
The light from below reached into the Blue Marble's nooks and crannies. With Mike and the Blood City boys gone, the open groping in the bar was harder to ignore. Jake didn't seem to care for it; he was playing with the origami from his empty drink.
"You said you like this place?"
"No. I said it was interesting." He displayed the paper figure on his flat palm. "I do like the dragons."
The sex in the Space Junque had been a one-time thing, that's what she'd told herself. At the time, she never expected to see Jake Ardri again. But she hadn't been with anyone since Brandon, and she found herself thinking about how good Jake had felt.
Jake stood up. "Let's get out of here."
In truth, she was very glad to see him again.
Objects in Space
Below the window to infinite space, Jake was spread like a feast on Char's bed. Maybe the erotic activity in the Blue Marble had stirred her up. Maybe all the talk about fertility. But evidently her long self-imposed celibacy had come to its end.
Or maybe Jake alone had brought her out of it. Sitting between his legs, she ran her hands over his thighs and leaned forward to kiss the skin below his navel. He fondled her breasts, and she reached up to his shoulders, stretching alongside him like a cat. She inched up to nuzzle his neck and pressed her naked skin against his.
She slipped under him and pulled him over. His warm strength poured into her, filling her with a sense of well-being. He was melancholy and grateful -- or she read her own bittersweet pleasure in his sad groans.
She pulled him in, arching her pelvis and urging him to the deepest place he could find.
When they were exhausted and satisfied, Char lay quiet on Jake's chest. She listened to the strong bu-bump of his heartbeat and the air moving through his lungs. He needed a shave. One of her favorite things about a man, that stubble at the end of his day.
He was easy to be with. He didn't want anything from her. Not like Mike -- not that she had feelings for Mike, cripes.
She liked Jake's independence. Sex usually complicated things with men. Either they couldn't wait to get away from you afterwards, or they wanted to keep you in a pumpkin shell. Jake promised neither.
"I have a confession to make." He kissed her forehead. "In the Junque on the way up, I did want to go for your precious parts."
"I knew it."
They took a shower together. "Twice in one day," she said. "My life is suddenly the picture of luxury."
"Oh, you mean the shower? I thought that smug look was on my account."
"Well, it has been a while since I've been with a man."
"Um, not that long."
"Oh, that didn't count." She blushed at the reference. "That was chaos sex."
"And this was more on purpose?" How sweet. He looked hopeful.
"Right." She kissed him and stepped out of the shower.
She headed for the closet but changed her mind and put on the same outfit. Silly, but she wouldn't want Mike to notice that she had changed clothes.
Then she saw her other flight pants out the corner of her eye, the ones she wore on the ride up. She uttered a little cry and snatched them off the floor. Trembling, she unzipped the pockets until she found it.
"Char?" Jake was at the bathroom door, his stubble almost gone and her razor in his hand.
"My necklace." How could she have forgotten? It was like forgetting Sky. She wrapped the black satin cord around her neck and kissed the silver half heart. "My sister wore the other half."
"Sisters are good." He popped into the bathroom and back out again with a clean face. "I love all my sisters. Almost all."
The Emperor had a hundred concubines. An exaggeration, but Jake surely had more sisters than he knew about. Char had only the one, living or not.
Watching him dress, she remembered something from the Blue Marble. "Jake, tell me about the raptors."
"It's true." He pulled on his boots. "I've seen eagles and peregrines myself. Rani saw ospreys, and I've heard about vultures."
"How is it . . ."
"Possible? How is any of this possible? It's all part of the big contamination, I guess. Every species is vulnerable to mutation. Humans completely hairless. Birds becoming giant monsters."
Bing-bong. An alert chime rang with a message on the room's compad. It wasn't Mike. Special Bulletin. Please access Channel One.
Jake continued. "When I dropped Rani at the V, a guy in the bar swore he watched someone teleport. I mean, that's one of the ludicrous ones, but some rumors are going to be based in fact."
"How big was the raptor you saw?"
"They fly in pairs. The bald eagles were the largest. I'd say their wing span was close to thirty feet, tip to tip."
"How is this kept secret?"
"No reporter will touch that story. They'd lose access to everything else. But it's not so secret. There's plenty of chatter on the grid."
"Whack chatter."
"Exactly how the Emperor wants you to think of them." He certainly had no love for the Emperor.
"What about on Vacation Station? The observation deck."
"It seems their telescopes have been broken for some time."
Shibad. Raptors had mutated, truly. Even so, the stories had to be embellished. Birds feeding humans to their chicks, intestines ripped from people's bellies while they were still alive.
Bing-bong. The chime rang again, and this time the message on the compad flashed continuously: Special Bulletin. Please access Channel One.
The monitor in the sitting room covered three quarters of one wall. The picture came up split into four sections, each showing a mushroom cloud and the name of a city: Montreal, Houston, Redmond, Mexico City.
They both stared at the screen. It took Char a few moments to realize the disaster unfolding was a live feed and not some computer-simulated war game.
"But all the nuclear weapons are gone." This couldn't be happening. With the Treaty of Pyongyang, the world's nuclear stockpile had been destroyed. That was before Char was born.
"Someone didn't get the memo," Jake finally said, his voice barely recognizable. He pulled out his com. "Damn them to the last circle of hell."
Beneath the mushroom clouds, the crawl continually updated: Defenders of Gaia deny nuclear strike. Estimated 10 million dead. EU on alert. Pacific Zone quarantine delayed due to North American strike.
On a repeating loop, a pleasant artificial female voice droned. "For your safety, please remain in your quarters." They were far above the range of any effects of a nuclear strike on earth -- the unacknowledged reason so many Imperial offices had relocated off planet -- but all over the station people had to be watching. And panicking.
"Do you have a com signal?" Jake muted the monitor. "I can't get through to Rani."
Char fooled with her com. "I'm down." It was powered up, but she couldn't send or receive. A new headline crawled over the monitor: Emperor and family unharmed in Machu Picchu.
Jake snorted. "Ten million dead, but the important thing is the asshole who created this mess is just fine."
The crawl changed: All ISS arrivals canceled until further notice. Departures advised to confirm at assigned docking station.
"I've got to go, Meadowlark."
"Rani?" She was his crewmate. Maybe more than that.
"The V is going to be invaded by ships getting off planet. The Imperial will be fine; its data links are too hard to come by." He kissed her -- with unexpected intensity. "If things get too weird, stick with Mike. He's a survivor. And he cares about you."
And he was gone. The feeling struck her that she'd had about the Pacific Zone, that same sense of finality. Jake wasn't coming back.
The monitor went blank and a
different artificial voice said, "Incoming message, priority one." Mike's avatar appeared in the lower portion of the monitor. Char touched it and Mike's face filled the screen. "Mike, what's happening?”
"So far it's only four cities, all on the one continent. The DOGs are denying everything, but they're behind it." He was calm and precise, as if he were performing on stage. The strong leader. "The Emperor is coming up. Just as a precaution."
That was big. The Imperial press secretary was always making noise about not being terrorized by the terrorists. That the media just wanted to scare people to drive up ratings, and the Emperor had no plans to go into orbit for his safety.
"Jake's gone to Vacation Station to get Rani," Char said.
"Good. Listen, Char, I've sent directions to your com. I need your help with something before the Emperor gets here. Please come. Right now."
Please. A word not usually found in Mike's vocabulary.
In the corridors the friendly green lights blinked like little pixies beckoning her on. After several passages and two elevators, the voice said, "You have arrived at your destination." It was a small docking bay with one aircraft, a hybrid runabout, part personal jet and part old-fashioned racer. Mike waved to her from the pilot's seat.
She climbed in. There was room behind them for four more, but Mike sealed the bubble canopy before she had secured her harness. "Aren't your bodyguards coming?" The racer lifted off without noise or force, and they floated toward the opening bay door.
"There's no security risk. We're going to check a glitch at the hydroponics annex. It's completely automated and empty. The agronomist has gone down to the planet."
Once the runabout was free of the station, Char felt like a mosquito compared to the massive station. It was huge, really, an actual city in space. Ships hovered about its perimeter, from passenger shuttles to cargo transports. More kept coming.
They were dayside now, but from where she sat she couldn't see the earth. Four nuclear bombs wasn't the end of the world, right? A hundred and fifty years ago, the Americans dropped two nuclear bombs in the eastern hemisphere. The world recovered.
