The Stars Change

by Mary Anne Mohanraj

  In ordinary times, Gaurav might complain of unfair treatment, might even lodge a complaint of species discrimination. Captain Raj had made enough disparaging remarks that the whole station knew that the captain had it in for the non-humans among them. Jelly-heads have jelly for brains. You can't trust something with tentacles where arms should be. The captain's favorite, repeated so often that even the lowest cadet could repeat it verbatim, was the all-purpose: If they come where they're not wanted, they should expect trouble. The captain usually avoided the saurian-specific humor when Gaurav was in the same room. Usually. How many lizards does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None—they fall asleep first. Ha ha ha. In ordinary times, that sort of thing could get even a senior officer fired—but not now. These days, Gaurav kept his head down and tried to do his job.

  And tonight—tonight was a night for every non-human on the planet to keep his, her, or its mouth shut. No one had seen this coming; no one had thought that the Human First movement would ever progress beyond a few scattered bombs, a hate-filled rally or two. But over the last year, the movement had grown at frenetic, unbelievable pace. Serious money must be behind it, and their bought politicians had won elections in three separate planets—all in the same system, but still, a shock. And now those planets had declared war, and the rest of the Charted Worlds had no idea how serious the threat might be—so tonight, everyone was on edge. Waiting for the ball to drop.

  Technically, Gaurav’s job required that he haul these two in; screwing in a campus park was illegal, no matter how secluded it was. Normally, he would have done his job, arrested them, let them cool down in what passed for a cell in the campus police station. But hell. Gaurav had bigger things to worry about tonight; he didn't want to be tied up doing paperwork when he should be out here, smelling the air. His old partner had always said that a real cop smelled the air, listened to the night. Kris should know, since he'd actually been a real cop, before retiring from the city's force and joining the campus police.

  Kris said campus policing wasn't that different—at least not here, where the University of All Worlds took up almost as much space as the rest of the capital city. Between the twenty-block legal and diplomatic institute, the thirty-block medical research complex, and the sprawling madness of undergrad and grad departments whose programs had colonized buildings as far as even the reptilian eye could see, the University was its own little sub-city. With its bright and shiny upper class—the aforementioned diplomats and doctors—and its dingy underbelly. The non-human sector, the Warren. Gaurav lived there too. Because while there was no regulation requiring that non-humans live in the Warren, the locals sure didn't make it easy to live anywhere else.

  She really fucked beautifully, orange fur and all; it was a pleasure to watch her. Torment too. It had been a long time for Gaurav. Four months, two weeks, six days since that 'flyer bomb had gone off. The worst part, the very worst, was that it hadn't even been meant to explode—not at that particular moment. The moment when Kris was there on his 'cycle, hovering two meters away, pulling that man over for a stupid expired registration. But the man had panicked, or maybe the homemade, jury-rigged misbegotten excuse for a bomb had just failed. They'd never know; all Gaurav knew was that he'd ended up picking up the pieces of his partner and occasional bedmate from the pavement a hundred meters below.

  In the wrong place at the wrong time, but that was a cop's job, wasn't it? To go stick his pointy, scaly nose into all the wrong places, just to see what might explode. That's what Kris said. Their job to walk the front lines, so ordinary citizens could sleep safe and oblivious in their beds.

  Gaurav hadn't used to think that way—he'd taken this job because it was a job, that's all. Something to pay the bills. When he'd started, Gaurav figured that if he ran into any trouble, he would turn around and run the other way. He'd ended up on this world by mistake; it was just supposed to be a stopover on his ceremonial tour of the known galaxy, a reward from his parent-clutch for finishing his schooling. He'd landed routinely, toured the famed University city, and been ready and waiting for his next ship. But then the navigator on the liner he'd been scheduled to take out of Pyroxina had somehow, terribly, miscalculated on its way in; the ship had Jumped into nowhere, taking almost a thousand crew and passengers with it. Leaving Gaurav shocked and stranded here when the liner's parent corporation refused to refund his ticket. He’d signed the waiver; he’d known the risks.

  It wasn't a bad place to be stranded. Cold for his liking, but the people were nice enough. Had been nice enough, before all this trouble started. Surprisingly traditional, many of them, and mostly vegetarian, which he really couldn't understand. His people didn't have that option, even if they'd wanted it. Kris had explained some of the history during the long nights on patrol, how the first wave of South Asian immigrants from Old Earth had been religious refugees. They'd been homesick, Gaurav supposed, had clung to the old traditions as a way of reminding themselves of who they were. Religion, clothing, language, food.

  He could understand that, the homesickness. Sometimes Gaurav missed his parent-clutch's den fiercely, and the poor efforts he'd made towards reproducing the cave in his standard-issue apartment were revealed for the meager illusion they were. A few grey sheets tacked onto the walls, some red heat lamps, were no substitute for the real thing. Not without the warmth of a body beside you at least, warming your nest. Sometimes, in the darkest nights, Gaurav dragged extra sheets into his bed, molded them into the semblance of a figure, just to have something to hold on to.

  Now, of course, a few hundred years after its colonization, this planet had shaken off much of that longing, that holding on. The children only half-understood their parents' yearnings, and the grandchildren had no idea at all. A hundred splinters arose from the original three religions, and non-human influence brought in completely new ones as well. But more than anything else, the discovery that this planet was a wormhole hub, linked to a dozen different worlds, and the growth of the university in response, had changed everything. The university had forced flexibility on what might otherwise have become an insular, rigid little planet.

  Gaurav would have liked to go to university, but he wasn't smart enough to get in. Thick as a brick, Captain Raj used to say. Gaurav was built like a brick too, bigger and stronger than most humans. Big and strong were advantages for a cop. He was slower-moving than the captain would have liked. But most days, all that a campus cop needed to do was loom in a threatening manner, so Gaurav did okay. Looming. Waiting for something better to come along.

  He'd just been marking time until Kris arrived, forcibly retired from the real force at eighty, but still too energetic, too passionate, to spend his days knitting at home. Energetic enough to still do extra training, and harass him into doing it too, until Gaurav could almost keep up with him. Passionate enough to drag his bewildered partner into bed on occasion, and hadn't that been a surprise. The first time still inscribed, sharp as a hunter's tooth, in his memories.

  Gaurav had been in the patrol car at the end of a long shift, complaining: "You just don't understand how hard it is, being the only saurian on the planet." He was a whiny brat back then, two years on the job and technically an adult, but with too many habits of adolescence.

  "Oh, I'm sure you're not the only one; it's a big planet." Kris answered absently, his eyes fixed on the screens, scanning the readouts for trouble.

  "The only one I've seen in three years!" He sighed. "If I don't get back home, it's going to shrivel up and fall off."

  That got Kris to turn to face him, finally. "Do they do that?" he'd asked.

  "No, not really! It's an expression!" Didn't humans know anything about any species other than their own?

  Kris raised a slender eyebrow. "Maybe you should go visit a professional. Some of them are quite open-minded. There's one down on Iskander Road, Chieri—"

  He shook his head. He wasn't that desperate. Not yet.

  A funny, slow smile slid across Kris's face. "Too proud to p
ay for it, huh? Well, maybe a man could help a lizard out." And that was when Kris reached out, across the 'flyer's gearshift, and put his hand on him. Right there. Gaurav almost crashed the damned machine.

  Gaurav had known even then that humans would look askance at their mutual gratification. For one thing, they didn't seem to approve of large age differences between sexual partners, and Kris was almost sixty years older than he was. But Gaurav had a hard time telling how old humans were, anyway—there were enough youths coloring their hair that a white-crowned head was no reliable indicator. Kris was a little wrinkly, it was true—but nowhere near as wrinkly as Gaurav was. He could only see the difference if Kris were standing right next to a young human his own age. So age wasn't a problem for the two of them. Or gender—Gaurav's people were generally flexible. The species thing did pose a few difficulties; for one thing, Kris was surprised by how slow Gaurav was, in everything. And more than once, Gaurav had misjudged his own strength and bruised his partner. But Kris adapted beautifully. And when the captain really cut loose on Gaurav, Kris would whisper wickedly in Gaurav's cold ear that Kris liked him thick as a brick. Gaurav had loved Kris a little for that.

  What Kris really loved were the students, hapless as they so often were. He'd cared so damn much about them, he'd made Gaurav care too. Gaurav even knew this one—Kimmie. A grad student, a programmer; she worked with security systems, which was almost as if they worked in the same field, though he knew Kimmie was a hell of a lot smarter than he was. She often worked late but never called for escort home. He and Kris had kept an eye on her anyway, as they could, had exchanged friendly chat when they passed in the night. She was graduating this year, on her way out. He'd never thought to see the girl like this, naked on the ground. Beautiful, though. Good for her—Kris would have approved of her passion.

  Kris probably wouldn't approve of Gaurav playing voyeur, though. If it isn't your business, go find something that is. That was one of the things he used to say a lot. Gaurav's mouth quirked into a sad smile at the thought, and then he turned away from the pair flailing on the ground. Even though Kris was four months gone, his mark was on him, indelible. Gaurav thought he might spend the rest of his life trying not to let Kris down.

  In that moment of turning, a light flashed across the sky. Followed by a horrible, hollow boom from the heart of the Warren. From his home—the buildings composed of thin wood walls, so fragile, compared to the rock of a proper den. A moment later, fire blazed up, a pillar in the air. Gaurav's heart jumped into his throat. With all the speed he could muster, he ran straight toward the blaze.

  Crackles and Chokes

  The woman had smelled like dust, like dry, hot nights and parched dirt. That was what Rajiv remembered most, along with the fur—how could he not remember the fur? It was like making love under a blanket, but outside, skin bare to the cool, damp air. She—he hadn't learned her name—moved beneath him hot and fierce, sharp as a crackle of ozone in the air, a lightning bolt slicing down, piercing through his center. And then, just as they'd finished and she had rolled away, the missile streaked through the sky above them, landing, gods, too close. He could imagine the rubble, the devastation. The screams.

  For long minutes, Rajiv had waited, frozen naked on the ground, waited to see if there would be more, if this was the opening salvo in a rain of destruction that would kill them all. But there had been no more. Just the one. Several miles away, it looked like, too far away to even feel the impact—but on the university grounds, almost certainly, and the shock of that coursed through him. The woman disappeared, without a word, leaving him alone. Rajiv went home. When he walked in the door, took off his clothes and climbed into bed beside his sleeping wife, he could still feel electricity pulsing under skin that seemed too small, too tight, to contain his body. He had to discharge that energy. He rolled his wife over—gently—and began to make love to her.

  He loved to wake Amara up like this. Heavy with sleep, her thick body a weight in their bed like a marble statue, and he Pygmalion, bringing her to life. Sometimes he would start with lips against the back of her neck, a hand wound in her mass of black hair, tugging her head back, to give his mouth better access. She always said at night that she should braid it for sleeping, but she was too tired, too sluggish from her long day at the port, processing visas for what seemed an unending stream of visitors—students, parents, tourists, traders, business folk. All of that would stop now, Rajiv suddenly realized. There would be nothing for her to do, until the war ended.

  He hoped Amara didn't start braiding her hair. Rajiv liked it like this, dense and loose, and when she woke up in the morning, cursing at the tangles, he liked to help her brush them out. She would sit, cross-legged on the carpet at the foot of the bed, and he would sit on the bed behind her, tugging gently at the mess he had helped create. Now he lay beside her on the bed, twisted the fingers of one hand in her hair, but didn't pull—not yet. Rajiv didn't want to wake her that way. He started with a kiss instead, a kiss for his princess, his sleeping beauty. Amara had no patience for the stories in his head; she said that wasn't why she'd married him, to listen to his endless stories. He said, if she didn't like stories, why had she married an English professor? And she just shook her head, impatiently.

  Her mother had arranged the match, of course—she'd cared less about his interest in books and more in the size of his salary. But it wasn't as if Amara hadn't agreed to it. Probably she was just as involved in sorting through the possibilities as her mother was, but he would never know for sure. She would never admit it. Amara was a traditional sort of girl, the kind of girl he'd thought he'd wanted. Beautiful, skilled in the domestic arts, fond of children; a good sort of wife for an ambitious young professor. They'd wanted, expected, children, and maybe if they'd had them, she would have stayed happy in the life she chose. But they hadn't been blessed, and eventually, they stopped trying. Her family didn't believe in genetic interventions; they followed one of the more traditional branches of Hinduism, and tried to accept what the gods fated for them. Rajiv had never been able to resign himself so calmly.

  Rajiv's lips pressed against his wife's, gently urging them apart. He breathed her air, thick with sleep and still faintly laced with the cloves she chewed before bed. She still chewed cloves instead of using a sonic toothbrush. Backward, barbaric practices—he didn't know why Amara insisted on living as if she were still back on Earth, five hundred years ago. Living like her great-great-many-times-great-grandmother had. She talked of religion, of tradition, of fate. All Rajiv knew was that it would take no more than an hour in a doctor's office to fix all their problems—she could walk in, have a simple procedure, and be growing a child. Their child. It would be so easy. His fist clenched in her hair.

  Amara's eyes opened beneath him, startled. Her mouth opened, as if to speak, but he didn't give her the chance. He thrust his tongue in instead, plunging deep into the heat of her barbaric mouth. Rajiv rolled his body on top of hers, pushing up her thin cotton nightgown with fevered hands, urging her legs apart. And Amara opened for him, her legs moving apart, her arms coming up to encircle him. His mouth still hard on hers, he thrust himself into her, only in that moment remembering the other woman, a bare hour before. For a moment, he wasn't sure whom he was with, which woman he was fucking. And then he was back, back with his wife, one hand lost in her hair, and the other digging into her ass, pulling her to him with each mindless thrust.

  Afterwards, she pulled away. Amara sat up in bed, pulling her nightgown down, the sheets up, a barricade. "Why do you taste like that?" she asked him. Her voice was thin and tight, and her eyes were bright with sudden tears.

  "Like what?" Rajiv asked.

  She shook her head, her thick, tangled hair falling heavy around her shoulders. "Like—sand. Sand and dust and lightning."

  Rajiv hadn't planned to tell her, but in that moment, with that missile arcing across the sky, with the memory of the two women so close together in his mind, the feel of them, skin and fur, sparks
and tears, blurring together, he couldn't say anything but the truth.

  He said, "I had sex with someone else. A woman I met in the park. I don't know her name." And then Rajiv watched his wife get out of bed, pull on sandals and a jacket, and pull a bag out of the closet. Already packed—it took her no more than three minutes. How long had Amara had a bag packed, ready to carry with her out the door? They didn't have the best marriage—Rajiv knew that. His wife wasn't exactly happy. But he'd never expected her to leave him.

  It was only when Amara put her hand to the front door lock, letting it read her print and silently slide open, that he opened his mouth to ask, incredulous, "You're leaving?" How could his so-traditional wife walk out? Their marriage was written in fire and stone; she was supposed to think of him as her own personal incarnation of god. That was what she'd always said she believed, even when he'd mocked the very idea. Could a follower just abandon her god?

  "What did you think would happen?" Amara asked wearily, before walking out, letting the door slide silently shut behind her.

  Past Echoes

  Amara ran. She had started out walking, her steps slow but steady. Walking away from the exploded ship that had been her marriage. It hadn't been spaceworthy in a long time, leaking air, on the verge of decompression. But she had held on, slapping patches up as fast as she could, holding the ship together with wire and prayers and dogged determination—no one could ever accuse her of lacking willpower. She had committed to this marriage, and she had been determined to see it through. Until Rajiv had come home stinking of another woman, and blown a hole right through the heart of it.

  She'd known about his earlier affairs, of course. He was a terrible liar. Amara had known, but she hadn't been able to tell anyone, hadn't even been able to really face them herself. It was too humiliating. Especially since she had been the one to insist on a traditional, old-Earth marriage, complete with vows of lifetime loyalty. Rajiv would have been fine with a standard five-year renewable contract—if she'd signed that, then she would have been free to walk away at the end of the term, honor intact. But instead, Amara had forced him to marry her for life. And then she was stuck with the results.