Chapter Ten
“Have you any news of Ander?” Draven asked Byron as they were finishing up dinner and a game of chess.
“None. But we have made two arrests.”
“Arrests? Were others involved in the operation?”
“No,” Byron said, scowling. “Superiors who used the sapiens.”
“Oh,” Draven said, grimacing. “Good.”
“Yes. The very thought of it is repulsive. Have you had much contact with saps?”
“A fair amount.”
“They really are filthy and disgusting animals. I didn’t realize what filth they are comfortable with until I bought my first one. And their smell is putrid. I don’t even like to enter their quarters it smells so bad. The thought of penetrating one of them is…I can’t…fathom.”
“There is no end to the perversity of man.”
“Well spoken, inspector. Well spoken. I tell you, I have a friend who admitted once that he fantasized about it, and to this day I see him differently. And he never acted on it. I mean, those poor pathetic creatures. They’re so helpless. I once bought one for her smell alone, and when I had to eat she screamed. It’s the worst sound. I sold her immediately. I prefer the silent ones.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Draven said, glad to find more common ground with his new friend. Byron had even more disgust for saps than Draven.
“I’ve found that the longer I own them, the less I can tolerate them. I try to make contact as brief as possible. Check mate.”
“One of these days, I’ll win a game.” Draven barely glanced at the screen on the table top. Byron always won. He didn’t need to cheat.
“You’re welcome to keep trying.” Byron leaned back and smiled. “I’d better get home. My wife is back from a long absence tonight.”
“Your wife?” What a strange word. Draven couldn’t remember the last time he’d used it. He could hardly remember what it meant. “You’re…wifed?”
“Married,” Byron corrected. “Yes. I’ve always been married.”
“How strange.”
“We chose not to dissolve our marriage as many others did. I quite enjoy her company.”
“You must. I don’t imagine I could live with one woman for that long. Although perhaps it would be nice to have one readily available.”
“I like it.”
“I won’t keep you from your reunion then.”
“Billiards tomorrow?”
“I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to redeem myself.”
After Byron left, Draven sat in his Mert for a few minutes. He hadn’t had a companion for some years. Sometimes he forgot the pleasures that came with having a partner. He started the car, slid from the curb, and turned away from his apartment towards Myrna’s. He punched a button on the dash and it began blinking. Her face appeared on the small screen below the button. He’d never gotten her out of his system.
The face in the screen went from a still photo to a blurry version of her actual face. He needed to get his screen fixed. It had been blurry since…since Myrna, in fact. “Draven,” she said, smiling with all teeth exposed. “How have you been? Still catching saps in the night?”
“About ten jobs since then, Myrna. What have you been doing with yourself? Still a sap handler?”
“Yes, Draven. You know I’ll never quit.”
“Indeed, I do,” he said, beginning to remember the differences that had separated them. “Can we put that aside for a few hours?”
“No, Draven. I have a man here. I’m attached.”
“Of course you are,” he said, turning the car as he spoke.
Myrna laughed. “You were coming over, weren’t you? So arrogant. You never change.”
“Neither do you, Myrna. Goodbye now.”
Her laughter still echoed in his mind after he hung up. He allowed his mind to conjure a few of the more erotic moments they’d shared before he stopped himself. That only made his longing increase. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he passed from the business part of town, with the solar screens, ads and bulletins scrolling constantly across the building faces, to the plainer residential area where he lived. He’d climbed halfway up the metal staircase outside his building when he remembered seeing Lira around. He went back down one flight of stairs and along the balcony to her apartment. She opened the door on the first knock.
“Hola, Draven.” She smiled and stepped away from the door to let him enter.
“Lira.” He captured her waist in his arm, pressing her soft, familiar body against his. She circled his neck with her arms and kissed him. “Do you have time for me?” he asked.
“I always make time for you,” she said, smiling up at him without releasing her hold. He fought the urge to shrug out of her claustrophobic embrace. She had one of those smothering personalities that he avoided, but it had been a long time since he’d lain with a woman, and she was fond of him. “Just stay here with me today.”
He smirked at the ease of her consent. “Of course I will,” he said, having no intention of doing any such thing. He felt himself moving away, as if only his body remained with her while his soul drifted away from her trapping neediness. He pressed his mouth against hers again, and she opened her lips and let him press his sensitive teeth against hers. A twinge of pain went up into the root of his teeth, and then their teeth hummed between them. Next to drawing sap from a human, it made him feel more alive than anything else in the world. But nothing compared to drawing a perfect sap into his body. Nothing compared to drinking Cali.
Chapter Eleven
“Let’s go out,” Byron said, hooking his thumbs in his wife’s belt. “We haven’t done anything together for so long.”
“We’re always together,” Marisol pointed out, but she didn’t sound like she meant to convince him. People always had trouble believing they’d been together forever, since the Great Evolution. But Byron couldn’t imagine it any other way. He loved her, and that hadn’t changed in the two hundred years they’d been married. It would never change. She was as much a part of him as his name.
“Not always,” Byron said. “Besides, you know I can take an assignment somewhere else if you’re tired of me.”
Marisol smiled, and her unaffected manner reminded Byron all over again how lucky he was, and why he would never want to dissolve the marriage, although most everyone had done away with the tradition long ago. But Byron would never get a woman like Marisol again if he lived for two thousand years. And she’d been crazy enough to marry him, so he wasn’t going to convince her of the lunacy of that choice.
“You’re right,” Marisol said. “I can’t stand the sight of you. Leave, before I get so sick of you I make up an assignment just to get out of this godforsaken place.” She laughed in her crazy way. She’d said things like that hundreds of times before. But every time, Byron had the tiniest twinge of fear that one day she’d mean it. One day she would wake up and see the difference between them. As much as he loved her, there was that one awful thing about remaining with his pre-evolution wife—no matter how high he rose and what position of power he assumed, she would always remember his human existence.
Of course Thirds bowed before him, and scurried away in their pathetic manner at the approach of a Second. But even Seconds respected Enforcers. Byron had one of the most prestigious positions in the country, and everyone looked at him with awe and fear and respect. He had money and property, and gave his family everything they could want. Still, he knew that Marisol remembered. In a way, he was still a copy-editor’s assistant, and she, a model.
“It’s our anniversary this weekend,” he said.
She laughed. “How on earth do you remember these things?”
“I’ve had years of practice.”
“We could go out dancing?”
“Whatever you want, that’s what I want,” he lied. Although both he and Marisol had always been social people, thriving on the company and attention of others, she enjoyed crowds more than he did. Byron lik
ed talking to people, not having his skull vibrated by the terrible noise that Superiors called music, or worse still, awful music leftover from humankind’s productive years. Humans had left some good stuff, but invariably clubs played utter swill like Snakebite. Marisol would expect him to enjoy himself while smashing his body against throngs of vile Thirds, most of whom didn’t have jobs or brains at all.
Thirds were expendable, useless. During the Hundred Year War, so many people had gotten killed all over the world that the countries had to stop fighting and build up their force of soldiers again. Hence, the Third Order. But the six countries in existence at the time of the temporary peace had decided they liked things as they were, and the fighting had never commenced. So the War had ended, and the world stayed divided into the six countries that existed then. All six countries had stayed at peace for a hundred years now. The unfortunate part was that every country was left with a huge number of soldiers with no purpose at all—Thirds.
They had been made for a job, and the job fell through. They should have been destroyed the moment their uselessness became apparent, when the government found out the War had ended for good. Really, Thirds were more pointless than sapiens. At least sapiens provided food in return for their pathetic neediness. Thirds didn’t provide anything, except a workforce of cheap, replaceable labor. Most Thirds obeyed the law, in their cowering, hopeful way. Byron had to give them that. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to do something as degrading as inspect incoming sapien food.
So maybe Thirds were useful, in the way that daylight was useful—a nuisance, and best avoided, but necessary for the running of the world as Byron knew it. Once in a while Byron would find a Third worth his ration card, like Draven, and he’d try to help the poor bastard pull himself out of the Third Order sludge and advance. He hardly considered Thirds Superiors at all. They were more like hybrids, something between sapien and Superior.
Only the ones who had special talents should have been kept around after the Second Evolution, the ones worthy of the Superior title. Not like the social riff-raff that hung around South End waiting to pick off saps the minute their owners turned their backs, or dose up on drugs that would get them high but never hook or kill them (unfortunately), or stay out all day and night dancing at the clubs and never going to work, selling their papers to illegals for money to dance and drink sap and bang one out in the back alley with another dancer whose name they wouldn’t remember six seconds later.
“Dancing sounds wonderful,” Byron told his wife. She rewarded him with a smile and a kiss.
“Good,” Marisol said. “I have a new dress I’ve been waiting to wear for a few years now.”
Chapter Twelve
Again it was many days before Draven went back to Estrella’s. He took an assignment in Las Vegas and stayed longer than he’d anticipated when he’d accepted the task. The extra pay he received for travel and inconvenience made up for his time away. When he returned, he dined with Byron and lost another game of chess.
“I was thinking, last time we played,” Byron said, drawing his finger along the touch screen on the table to move a rook to the next space. “Maybe you would like to dine with my family.”
“Your family?”
“Yes, my wife and I, and our two children.”
“You have children?”
“Yes, a boy and a girl.”
“Yes, of course, I’d be honored,” Draven said quickly, hoping Byron hadn’t taken his questions as hesitation. He kept his opinion of children to himself, as well. He always feared insulting someone of the higher order.
“When do you have a night off again?”
“Four nights from now.”
“Very well then. We’ll play games and my children will tell you that you’ll never win.” Byron laughed, and Draven did his best, hoping the children wouldn’t tell him anything at all. Perhaps they wouldn’t even be there. Perhaps they had other little vermin to play with.
“I look forward to that pleasure,” Draven answered. He wanted to excuse himself, but he couldn’t until Byron signaled the end of the encounter. Draven itched to get a bite of Cali before sleep.
“You look anxious to be going,” Byron said. “Have you acquired an attachment?”
“No, just a sapien I quite enjoy over at another restaurant.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“I did not wish to be rude, sir.”
“Nonsense. We’re friends here. At ease, soldier.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So does this restaurant have chess and games?”
“No billiards. Only a bar and a restaurant. The bar has the usual table games.”
“Then maybe we should meet there next time.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. But it would be quite convenient. Do you know Estrella’s?”
“Quite well. Their sapiens are always of the highest quality. Tomorrow night after work then, at Estrella’s.”
“I’d be delighted.”
Byron excused his underling, and Draven slid behind the wheel and started the car before he’d finished closing the door. While on assignment, he had craved the familiar scent of Cali, the warm nutty flavor of her.
He went into the bar at Estrella’s and spotted the hostess with the long teeth. “Hello again,” he said to her.
“Hi, stranger,” she said. “What can we do for you today? Something on tap as usual?”
“I was wondering if I might procure employment at your establishment.”
She looked him up and down. “You might. You look for work as bouncer?”
“That is the position I’m inquiring about.”
“You follow me to Estrella’s office, and she will look over your credentials.”
“Of course.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a look at your credentials for me,” the hostess added.
“I’d be interested in your opinion of them,” Draven said, smiling at her. He liked her cute manners and accent. “Perhaps after we get everything settled and I’ve eaten, you’ll be off work.”
“I didn’t think you’d agree so quick.”
“You’re an attractive woman.”
“Thank you. Here is Estrella’s office. See me on your way out?”
“I will.” He went inside the impeccably clean office of Estrella, the establishment’s owner. She checked his file in the database and switched his employment, all of which took longer than he would have liked. Still, he’d wanted a new job for a while, and he had several hours before daylight. The familiar restlessness had set in after the raid on 28 Flavors, and even his assignment in Las Vegas hadn’t quieted his discontent. He wanted more excitement, better pay, less physical contact with sapiens—especially the distasteful kind of contact he’d had with the sapien prostitute.
On top of that, as a bouncer he would have easy access to Cali when he grew hungry, and he could enjoy her scent while he worked, inhaling her aroma the whole night. And he could admonish the man who fed on her so carelessly. He would remind anyone drawing from a sapien in his section to close the marks properly. It was just plain laziness not to spend the two extra seconds closing up. Only someone lazy or callous would leave marks like Cali’s at every feeding.
Draven passed from the bar section into the restaurant and glanced around in surprise, as if his eyes could tell him something his nose couldn’t. “Where is the sap I frequent?” he asked Cali’s bouncer.
“It is no longer offered on our menu.”
“Why not?”
The bouncer offered Draven a small frown. “Because she’s been taken off the menu.”
“Is she still residing here?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Why?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
“And where could I find her? I have a taste for her.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“So where is she?”
“I’m sure I don’t know that.”
“Would you be
so sure if I had ten anyas to offer anyone with this information?”
“Maybe a little less sure.”
“Would you happen to know if I had more than that?”
“I seem to recall something about her being purchased by another restaurant.”
Draven pressed twenty anyas he’d received for his trip to Las Vegas into the bouncer’s palm. “This information is valuable to me.”
The bouncer glanced at the bill and back at Draven quickly, raising his eyebrows. “I see that. She was sold to a place on the south side of town. The Sap Haven, I believe.”
“The Sap Haven? What was wrong with her?”
The bouncer stepped back to the wall and watched a man sit down at one of his tables. “I wish I could help you,” he said to Draven, not looking at him. “I don’t have that kind of information. But I’m sure you can get what you wanted from her in a place like that.”
The Superiors Page 6
