Aeon Thirteen

by Aeon Authors

  “May I introduce My Lady Pearl?” Tomas gestured grandly to me. I smiled back at him, knowing how pleased he was to be able to use a fancy introduction he’d read.

  “Pearl?” One long stride, perfectly balanced on the narrow walk, brought Schnell up to tower over me. “Like the kingdom of heaven, indeed.”

  “They actually named me that because I was born with a calceus encrustation on my skin, artifact of a malfunctioning utero-unit,” I curved my lips, inviting him to comment on the irony.

  “Ironic that she turned out pretty, isn’t it?” Casidy threw in. “They fixed that skin problem. Obviously.” You could count on Casidy to ruin any moment.

  Schnell remained oblivious, however. I knew the look, open, almost boyish. The eyes go blank as they screen fantasies across my image before them. It takes a moment before a man’s brain will jumpstart and he begins processing reality again.

  “Welcome to Obidion!” Tomas announced expansively. He got the prize for coming up with the correct dialogue for this situation, though no one else was participating. Schnell picked up an ivory strand of my hair and let the length of it trickle back through his fingers.

  “A merchantman, seeking goodly pearls, who when he found one pearl of great price,” he said, “went and sold all he had and bought it.” 1

  “I don’t know those words,” I answered.

  “From an old, old book,” he said. I looked over at Tomas—he understood no more than I.

  “You know of books? Are you…natural?” Both Casidy and Tomas whirled on me, agonized shock on their faces—I don’t know if it was for the question or for the fact that I spoke it aloud. It didn’t matter, everyone would know already, would have been watching our transactions closely ever since the moment the computer code opened the hatch.

  “I am only a man,” The blue of his eyes sparked with silver. “What are you?”

  I answered crisply, as I had been taught from early childhood, “Prisoner B3-5-410.”

  “I like ‘Pearl’ better,” Schnell leaned closer. “Though you smell more of sweet than brine.” His breath along my cheek brought heat to follow it.

  I suppose his arrival was a sort of omen. It is obvious, in retrospect, that once one person pierced our machine bubble, that others would follow. We had lived alone so long that many of us had ceased to believe the Guards would ever return. My great-aunt had been alive during the Regular Session, but when she was barely into primary classes, Obidion had been declared Domesticated and shut down to maintenance level. Other than her, no one else even remembered what the Guards had looked like. We lived unobtrusively, as we had been bred, with Civilization safe from us. We had much to atone for.

  “My jewel!” I heard his voice, carried by the water. I had followed Schnell’s progress with our Senior Techs on the vids, as most everyone did. We talked of nothing else. They had verified that he was completely unencoded. Down to the molecular level, he was outside of the system. He wasn’t even Civilized. Exactly why he was here had not been broadcast.

  Schnell’s call had cut through the jumble of gossip. People reclining on the rocks about the pool sat up to watch him walk in, the duck cackle of their worries silenced so that only the splashing of the small waterfalls and the endless dripping of condensation from the glossy blue ceiling remained. The ST with Schnell nodded to him, walked to the edge and knifed into a dive that broke the suddenly stilled surface. Conversation resumed, a murmur on the edges, while glances flashed my way. Schnell squatted down near where I silently treaded water.

  “I taste a liquor never brewed…” He dipped his fingers through the water, “…from tankards scooped in pearl.” 2

  “Poetry or song?” I asked, dipping my head back in the water to make it slick. His eyes clung to the curve of my breasts floating high. How does the princess entice her rescuer? Certainly all of us were in distress, but I wanted this. A chance for escape. A chance to live in the greater world. I was not afraid, like so many Prisoners here.

  “Is there a difference?” His eyes gleamed as he looked over the pool. “Like a tropical lagoon of Earth. May I join you?”

  “The pool is open to everyone,” I tossed my head at the fifteen or so other people lounging and swimming, some watching Schnell with polite hunger as they discussed him. Another group, Casidy in the center, regained momentum with one of our classmates jabbing a finger in our direction. Their anger and fear began echoing. Perhaps Schnell didn’t hear them, for he seemed beyond their reach.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  I smiled. Then laughed. And for a moment I could see myself winging through the stars with him. Beyond the reach of all of this. Free of Obidion. Free of the Recovery System.

  He took my smile for what it was and peeled out of the synthsuit the STs had given him. People watched less politely now. There had been any number of speculations, rumors, and jokes as to whether his body would be deformed. Though everyone knew that we had evolved with embryos growing in utero, it seemed vaguely obscene now. Women also used to chew up food and spit it into infants’ mouths and people gave that up long before assisted reproduction was available.

  His body, however, was as miraculous as his existence. Perfect—so much so that I averted my eyes, to still the heat in my throat. I felt as if the code built into each of my body cells somehow diminished me, compared to the sheer raw life of him. Had everyone been this way before the Civilization?

  “You don’t act much like a rebel,” he said conversationally, sliding into the pool.

  “Excuse me?” I gasped.

  “Rebel?” he repeated. “Isn’t that why you’re all imprisoned here?”

  “That’s an interdicted word…” I began.

  “So execute me.”

  “You don’t understand,” I floundered.

  “The Guards are not here, Pearl.” He said gently. “The STs say you’ve been Domesticated for three generations. None of you have any idea what your ancestors rebelled against, ten generations ago.” A shadow darkened his eyes towards black. “The ability to even consider rebellion, or anything beyond these imprisoned half lives, has been bred out of most of you.” I knew then that he had heard Casidy and her friends, before they sidled out, almost fleeing, faces like fists. His emphasis on “most” echoed in my mind. I had always been special—perhaps I could be the bride of a hero.

  He grinned, glanced down towards the end of the pool. “Race?”

  I blinked a moment as he launched down the pool with powerful strokes. I followed, stretching every muscle, feeling the blood pumping down the length of my legs as I kicked hard and fast. Yet, I couldn’t begin to keep up, much less close the distance. Rebel. I had read the word, but had never heard it pronounced. We’d all thought the Recovery System would react. What other words might be spoken?

  Breathless with exertion and wonder, I swam up to Schnell where he rested beneath a vine-draped ledge. Impulsively, I grasped his shoulders, rather than the almost-rock.

  “Is it true, then, what some say?” I panted. “The Guards have left us so long because the Confederated Union is free again?”

  The logic, as Tomas explained it to me: Schnell was not from Obidion. The only way he could have come up through the dungeon was if the legendary spaceport on the Other Side was real. He could have docked and then hiked, crawled and cut his way through the labyrinth. This had been the base of operations for our ancestors before it became their—and later, our—prison. It would have taken days, but the old stories said that the base had been so good because every point was accessible on foot. The upshot was that Schnell had a spaceship. Only Guards and Executives had spaceships. Since Schnell was neither, he must either be an emissary of a free Confederated Union or…what? I turned the word over in my mind. A rebel?

  “Is that what the talkers say?” he asked me. I shrugged and looked down, unwilling to open a window into all the talk about him, especially the sort about pushing him out the airlock. My eyes snagged on a curious marking on his shoulder, a
lmost white against nutty skin. I touched it with one finger and looked up to find him watching me gravely.

  “A scar,” he answered. “From fighting.” He waited, watching as I had watched him once before, while the images dashed behind my eyes, of princes with swords, bombs and laser guns. Nobody fought. It didn’t exist. But then, neither did he. I accepted this gift and told him so.

  “What were you fighting for?” I asked, trying to look as if I’d said the word before.

  He wrapped his free arm around my waist and pulled me close against his body. The raw scent of him filled my mind.

  “Are you a virgin, Pearl?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Oh yes.

  “You’ve found no man here you wanted to be encoded for?”

  “Maybe I was waiting for you.” I floated up a bit, slid down against him. This was my moment.

  He said nothing, watching me with a slight turn on one side of his mouth. I felt a stirring deep inside that might have been a small uncoiling of shame. I lifted the finger that had touched his scar and smoothed his tightened lips. He kissed the tip, sending a spark to dissolve that coil in my gut. “Why do I suspect there’s a price?” he asked.

  I lowered my eyes, fit myself more tightly against him, lifted my lips to his. “Take me with you,” I breathed.

  “And if I choose not to?”

  I pushed away from his shoulders, wiped the water from my eyebrows, cheekbones. Watched him with wide eyes while he studied me.

  It was perfect. I wanted him and I wanted what he could give. He wanted me and I would make sure he’d never regret that desire. But something in his face bothered me.

  “Is everyone free then?” I asked again.

  He pulled me back and kissed me in response.

  I told no one of our bargain, but they may have guessed once I scheduled the surgery. Part of the Domestication program involved breeding an impenetrable hymen into the women. Our vaginal canals were as sealed off as we had thought Level 137 was. This served several purposes the Regulations said. When a woman received the surgery, steps were taken to ensure that her genetic infertility—which also relieved us of the burdens of monthly bleeding—was complete. Apparently, there tended to be a kind of drift back towards fertility which could result in accidental natural births and thus monster children. Also, she would be tuned for her intended mate’s encoding. If another male attempted to penetrate her, the Recovery Alarms would sound. This eliminated rape, competition for females, and the possibility of us producing an unencoded child.

  Of course, people still amused themselves with other forms of sex-play but, as Tomas points out, what is forbidden, or rare, is desirable. Intercourse is a ritual with us that approaches Old Religion. And scheduling the surgery tantamount to posting the old Catholic church marriage banns. That last is Schnell’s analogy of course—I’ve learned much from him.

  According to Regulations, I had to wait three days between the request and the surgery. Which proved my undoing, and perhaps the saving of us all. So I hope.

  “The cabinet is formed of gold and pearl and crystal shining bright, and within it opens into a world and a little lovely moony night. 3 Such worlds I will show you, Pearl. And moons such as Blake never dreamed of.” Schnell poured the words into my hair as his hands roamed my body. My skin itched with tightness, as if all my blood pressed up beneath, swelling my body. I wound my fingers tighter in the red locks falling over his shoulders. As his hand trailed back up my thigh, up to cup my breast, the roaring in my ears surged. What had begun as a high whine down in the dungeon crested now and I felt something burgeon inside, almost to breaking. With a cry, I opened my legs and wrapped around him, trying to pull him down into me.

  “Shh,” he whispered, his hands stilling. “I will only injure you that way.” I held tight.

  “It’s not like the alarms will sound,” I said. “You said it yourself—the Guards will never return. All these rules are nonsense. What can the Regulations matter now?”

  He unwound my legs from his waist and lay back, cradling me against him.

  “The ambassador of Russia and the grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin.” 4

  “Do you stay awake nights looking up “pearl” poetry?” I asked with poor temper. “I’m forever having to research those ancient words you use.”

  He chuckled and stroked my arm in chaste affection.

  “Nothing is what it appears,” he offered. “Vermin—disease-causing organisms—may lurk in the loveliest settings. Where are you doing your research—in the Interdicted Files?”

  I sighed and tried to still the desire of my body. The potted trees of my garden room threw odd shadows against his face. They grew adequately in the artificial light, but I longed for real trees—tall, hugely round ones. On a real world. Leaves that fell in autumn and degraded into soil. Not frail yellow shadows that I sucked up in a cleaner hose. Now that I could see myself leaving Obidion, I felt a desperate impatience to go, as if time were running out.

  “It’s not hard to break the codes. It’s as if they didn’t try very hard to keep us out.”

  “And why do you suppose that is?” Schnell asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Has anyone else tried, before you?”

  “No,” I admitted, “but Tomas is reading them now, too. Everything he can find.” Schnell nodded, as if he knew already, his eyes distant, not seeing my trees or me.

  “And the Casidys are not,” he said.

  “Who are you anyway?” I muttered.

  Schnell raised his eyebrows at me. “Why, I am a warrior,” he planted tiny kisses down my cheek. “Don’t you know? And tonight, after the surgery,” his kisses descended to cover my breasts, “yours.”

  “My conquering hero?”

  “If you like.”

  “When do we leave?” I burst out.

  “Leave?” he pinned me down and began suckling a nipple. “When we’re having so much fun?”

  I groaned, swimming through red black heat.

  “You know what I mean,” I got out.

  “Who will you choose to be tuned to?” he asked, releasing me. He picked up a lock of my hair and twisted it into a ring around one finger.

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” I said, running my hands down his great back, feeling the stray pulls and puckers of the various scars. It seemed other men felt plastic next to him. “Since you’re unencoded, you could actually intercourse with any woman here.”

  “Alas, I seem to want only you.” His hands tightened on me and I smiled. “But you’ll have to pick someone.”

  “Oh I don’t know. Maybe Tomas. Once I’m gone they’ll free up his code so he can access another woman, as if I died.”

  Schnell nodded thoughtfully.

  “But won’t they all be free soon, too?” I asked. “I know you won’t say, but we all know it must be or you wouldn’t be here. The Guards are gone forever, the Confederated Union dissolved. Is the encoding broken?”

  He closed his eyes against my hair.

  “I have to tell you about the universe outside,” he began. And stopped, gazing at me. “I wish I knew if you are part of this. If what I see is part of it all, or if you are…”

  The Signal sounded just then. The Return Signal sounded. For a moment I couldn’t grasp it. The Signal I’d only learned in school, that I’d never heard broadcast, nor had my mother, nor her mother, not yet born when my great-aunt was in primary school.

  The Guards had returned.

  But I know now what he was going to say to me. I think I knew then. He wondered if his wanting me—the wanting I created in him—was part of why he came to Obidion or if it was a fatal distraction.

  We were all drilled in what to do. There was no question of what action to take—the advantage of cellular training, I suppose. Every fiber of me vibrated to that signal. The Guards had Ret
urned. The Guards had Returned. But Schnell—we all flashed on him as if he were part of our encoding after all—he would have to be hidden. Even those who had wished him dead and gone knew that, even those who suspected Schnell had somehow brought the Guards down upon us. We were all equally culpable. We would assemble for Prisoner Review. The Guards had Returned. Schnell must be hidden.

  I pulled out my Prisoner Uniform, never before worn, but stenciled with my numbers. I wondered if Schnell knew a poem with B3-5-410 in it. I managed to be dressed before the five STs scurried into my room. A full Council stood among my trees, already dressed in their flame orange Uniforms. They looked like teenage boys next to Schnell. I began to braid my hair as I listened to them babble, our most senior techs acting like children, asking Schnell what to do. Time had run out. The Guards had Returned.

  “You have at least two hours to prepare,” he soothed them. “The Return Signal is activated by their ship proximity. It will take them at least that long to position, dock, and calibrate the air locks. Most important: Is what I came for ready?”

  The Exec ST threw a look at me.

  “Never mind her—too late for niceties,” Schnell snapped out.

  “We’ve assembled the package, but we still have to finish some of the reprogramming…” the ST stammered. “It’s been so long, and none of us have actually set the SED.”

  I finished winding my hair into the regulation braid, all the time remembering practicing it in school, complaining with Casidy how antiquated it was we had to learn it. The encoding ensured we all wore it long, and the boys short. It would be odd not to see all those loose tresses around the station. But I wouldn’t see them, I reminded myself, I would be flown, out into the Universe. I hoped. Schnell shot out a hand to me and pulled me over, not pausing in his involved discussion of some machine I’d never heard of.