Alysha's Fall

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Steel,” Alysha answered.

  “That’s more poetic than Tiell usually gets,” one of the women in the room commented as she rose, hurrying to their side. “Ach, but he got you badly, didn’t he, arii? Lie down! Rose, love, where’s the medkit? Merinlejetzal, look at all the blood!”

  “That’s Honey,” Rispa whispered.

  Alysha allowed herself to be coaxed onto one of the couches. As the women fluttered around her, she gazed at the room; like the halls, its upper portions had been papered in red velvet, the lower portions, like the floor, a worn wooden paneling. Several free-floating lamps hung in the corners. The room was otherwise filled with comfortable sofas and chairs, pillows strewn across the floor. A small desk had been set up beneath one of the cabinets.

  Rispa kneeled on the floor near Alysha’s head and petted her shoulder gently; the girl’s concerned gaze both reassured and disconcerted. Alysha was relieved when the youth glanced away.

  Honey returned with a bowl of hot water, a towel and the medkit. The older woman was a Harat-Shariin nat-tigress, her brown stripes widely distributed over her golden body. Unlike Rispa, Honey wore clothing: a veil over her muzzle, and two rings pierced through the tips of her breasts. As the Harat-Shar gently parted her legs, Alysha asked, “Do none of you wear clothing?”

  “None of us, you mean,” came another voice. A Tam-illee foxine, somewhat older than Alysha herself, entered her field of view. “You must be one of us now, or you wouldn’t be backstage.”

  “No, none of us wear clothing,” Honey answered as she gently began to clean the blood from Alysha’s inner thighs. “Tiell doesn’t like it.”

  Alysha had already put the manager together with the name “Tiell.” She tensed at the mention of it, and Honey’s hand stroked the top of her thigh. “Relax, arii-love. Those muscles have had enough abuse without you adding more.”

  “He won’t come here,” Rispa added from her shoulder, gazing at her with guileless gray eyes. “This is the common room, where we relax. We can’t close the door, but he doesn’t come in.”

  Honey’s deft work closed the wounds in her body and soothed the muscles outside it, and Alysha’s eyes rolled to the ceiling. She wondered what she had signed up for.

  As suggested by the cynical Harem Rose, Alysha squeezed in a few hours of sleep between her ordeal with Tiell and the operating hours of the club.

  “We’ll open around twenty mark,” Rose had said, offering her a blanket as she curled into the cushions of the sofa, “But he won’t bring out the shows until twenty-four mark. Until then, we’re just ‘Phantasies’, a night club. After then, we’re ‘Find Your Phantasies’, and Tiell trots out the illegal wares.”

  Despite her unease, her exhaustion guaranteed her a deep, dreamless sleep. She woke with the vague awareness of a heat in the bottom of her belly; when she isolated the sensation and felt the more subtle press of metal, Alysha jerked awake, claws shooting from her hands. “What—”

  “Don’t move!” One of Honey’s hands pressed her back into the pillows. “I’m almost done.”

  “What are you doing?” Alysha hissed between her teeth.

  “Rebuilding your hymen. We haven’t had any virgins for a while . . . since Rose, in fact, but the procedure’s always the same. Tiell’ll knock it out, we put it back for show, and then you dance for a few nights while the excitement of having an innocent drives the price of your blue key up.”

  Alysha’s stomach turned, but only the tip of her tail lashing against the side of the couch betrayed her disgust. “Blue key?”

  “Sure. We all sell our keys every night, unless we’re not feeling well. It’s the best way to make money. Usually Tiell chooses the colors for the night, puts them out, and then customers can buy them for as much time as they can afford between one and seven mark. White keys mean you’ll dance for him privately, but he can’t touch you. Blue keys mean he can rhack you. There are other colors, but if Tiell wants you to sell them he’ll tell you himself.”

  Her eyes glazed. “So I’ll have to . . . ”

  “Yes.” Honey looked up at her, tilting her head. “You’re one of Rose’s kind, aren’t you.”

  “Rose’s kind?”

  The tigraine nodded, withdrawing the instrument and flashing it with the disinfector. “You know how the Tam-illee are.”

  She felt a flush rising to her ears, but said quietly, “Actually, I don’t.”

  “The meaningful sex kind.”

  “There’s another kind?” Alysha asked, trying to imagine it. A muscle along the edge of her thigh twitched convulsively several times, and she pulled herself into a sitting position to massage it.

  “Of course. There are my kind. The ‘hey great this is fun’ type.” Honey’s bow-shaped lips pulled upward at the corners.

  Alysha stared at her. “That’s . . . strange.”

  Honey put the instruments away and packed the medkit back in the cabinet. “Just don’t let your ways turn you bitter, the way they have Rose, all right, kara?”

  “I’ll try,” Alysha promised, aware of how unreasonable the request was.

  After pressing some food on the gray Karaka’An, Honey led her to the dressing room, already occupied by Rose, Rispa, and a cunning-eyed Aera stretched across one of the sofas as she applied her cosmetics.

  “Cinnamon, this is Steel, our newest. Tiell said to give her one of the ice costumes.”

  Cinnamon, the Aera, flicked a glance toward Alysha, then rose smoothly from her laze. Unlike most of the Core races, the Aera did not owe a majority of their appearance to any single Terran animal. Cinnamon had an extraordinary figure, tall with a waist Alysha thought she could fit between both her hands; an impressive bust balanced hips whose bones she could just see cresting through the luxurious coat of red-brown fur. The Aera’s long, swept-back ears trailed decorative tufts of coffee-brown hair, matching the thick mane that tumbled over her shoulders to the bottom of her buttocks. Tucked against her ankles, her feet wings shaded from pale cream along the inside folds to near black at their edges. The Aera’s eyes were a brilliant lime green; one of them had been elongated with kohl, the other only half-finished.

  Cinnamon said, “Welcome to our little Phantasies, Steel.” Her voice claimed all the surprising heat of her namesake and the sibilance of a Chatcaavan’s voice. “You’re quite pretty.”

  Alysha cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

  “Tiell has a good eye. The ice rack will suit you perfectly. In fact, I think I know just the one.” The Aera glided toward one of the two walls lined with closets. Tapping one open, Cinnamon rustled through the depths and withdrew something that sparkled under the lighting. “Here we are.” She returned and proffered it to the Karaka’An. “I hope you like it.”

  Like was not the word Alysha would have chosen. She ran her fingers over a harness composed entirely of gold and silver beads and amber gems. The belt hanging from the lower edge of the hanger left nothing to the imagination. None of it did, especially the locks on the backs of both items.

  “You’ll be needing a collar as well . . . best something plain. Straight silver, maybe,” Cinnamon said.

  Alysha’s gaze flashed up to meet narrowed green eyes. “Collar?”

  “Of course. You can’t have any illusions left, can you?” the Aera asked, one high brow arching delicately over her unpainted eye.

  “I am not an animal,” Alysha answered, the heat rising in her voice despite her intent.

  Cinnamon’s hand on her jaw came as a complete surprise, a trailing caress of long, cool fingers tipped with jeweled nails that flashed at the edge of her vision. She didn’t even remember to throw up her hands in defense, so swiftly had the Aera trapped the bottom half of her face. The trend toward such liberty with her body galled Alysha, and she jerked away.

  “Why are you here?” Cinnamon asked, a hiss of contempt, and, unaccountably, interest.

  Alysha bared her teeth, lips pulling back. “I need the money.”

  Cinnamon g
lided behind Alysha, her hand falling from the gray Karaka’An’s face. “Money.”

  “Is that too prosaic for you?” Alysha asked, teeth still visible. The other women in the room watched the discussion with avid interest, even little Rispa with her too-innocent eyes.

  Faster than she could turn, a hand clamped around her throat, and Cinnamon’s other hand sealed on something shockingly cold and thick. Alysha’s head flinched upward against the sudden pressure, and she heard the click. She began to twist around, a snarl erupting from her mouth, when the weight of something small banged into the back of her neck below the uncomfortable band. Stopping, she groped behind herself as Cinnamon watched until she came up with the weight, pressed her fingers around its shape until they traced the edges of a keyhole.

  “If it’s money you’re after, little sister, you won’t win it with prissy snarls and outrage, not by shrouding yourself in veils and robes. You don’t have to want it, but Wanderer damn it, you have to live with it.”

  Alysha stared at Cinnamon, her hand still clenched on the lock behind her neck. A thin shiver tried to run up her spine but she suppressed it at the base of her tail. She lifted her chin, since she could not bow her head against the intractable metal of the collar, and said crisply, “I’ll dress now.”

  Cinnamon smiled, lime-green eyes thinning to slits. “I’m certain you will.”

  She stood just behind the curtain, waiting out the last of the Harem Rose’s dance with ice in the pit of her stomach. With her ears flattened to her head she could just barely dampen the sounds of the beaded harness and belt swinging around her body . . . but nothing could tune out the sensation of the re-circulated air striking her naked pelt.

  “Are you ready?” Honey asked, turning from the view-space. “She’s done. The manager’ll wait a few minutes to let the crowd order more drinks, then he’ll announce you. He’ll do a short speech, then the music will cue and it’ll be just like this afternoon.”

  Complete with the rape afterward? Alysha wanted to ask, but refrained. That would come later, at the end of the week. She tossed her head, her hair swiping the tops of her shoulder blades. The ice remained inside, and she wondered if it would ever melt. Worse, could she dance the way Tiell wanted feeling so numb inside?

  “She’s on her way in—”

  “She’s here,” Rose said wearily, pushing through the curtain and wiping the sweat-drenched swatch of hair off her forehead. “Good luck, Steel. Have a great time.” As the Tam-illee descended the cramped walkspace, she added to Honey, “It’s an impossible crowd tonight.”

  The sound of Tiell’s voice boomed through the curtains. “And now for our newest attraction—the wild and cold-hearted Steel!”

  “That’s it!” Honey said, “Go, kara-love, go!”

  Alysha sliced through the curtains, her eyelids pressed against her cheeks; even so she could feel the heat of the lights on her body, pulsing. Slowly she opened her eyes, barely hearing Tiell extolling her innocence in carnal matters, the coming auction for the rights on her first night at the end of the week.

  People. The sheer number of people. The sight of them staring at her—all those gazes—the pressure of it wiped away every other sense and left her only vision. There had to be two hundred packed into the dark, smoky room, all of them eating her alive with their stares, eyes full of hunger, eagerness, lust, and the same carelessness of people presented with a toy brought for their amusement.

  She had seen more caring in the eyes of people playing with pets. More empathy in the eyes of people tossing a child a fin for a roll at the local bakery. More life in the eyes of aliens flashing past in her school texts, more understanding in them whose features had no relation to hers, no correlation to hers, than in people of her own race, of her own world.

  The hatred came back. Alysha couldn’t tell if it was directed at herself, at those who leered at her with such dispassion, at the universe. It didn’t matter. When the music slammed into her ears, she threw herself into motion. She pushed it past erotica into pornography. She moved sinuously, fluidly . . . went through the motions of selling herself . . . and then she poisoned it with her contempt, injected it with her hauteur, wore her hatred emblazoned as a cold sneer on her face. She used it to yell that she thought so little of them she didn’t even register their presence. She flung it in their faces, knowing it would get her fired and unable to do anything else.

  When the music finished, Alysha ground to a close, her hands falling to her sides. She waited for the inevitable.

  A hand grabbed her ankle. Startled, she glanced at the crowd only to find the bouncers holding it back as the frenzied watchers besieged the stage. There was no anger in their eyes, only mad desire. At the back of the room, listening to the hoots and cheers and whistles and snarls of lust, Tiell leaned against the wall and rubbed his upper lip. He met her eyes, and greeted her shock with a thin, small smile.

  Alysha fled behind the curtain, breathing hard, unable to see. She ran into Honey, who held her to keep her from falling, and all she could do was repeat, repeat because otherwise she’d scream until her throat burst, “It was supposed to hurt them. It was supposed to hurt them. It was supposed to hurt them.”

  To which Honey’s only reply, which Alysha remembered much, much later, was, “It’s the ones who don’t want them that they chase the more desperately.”

  “I have the money,” she announced, her voice hoarse.

  The Seersan glanced up at her, his brows rising. “I see,” he said. Wordlessly, he handed her the form, and Alysha received it in equal silence. She retired to one of the chairs in the circular guard tower to fill it out. The gray Karaka’An faced away from the others in the room, shoulder jabbed into the cushion of the backrest, her legs tightly pressed together and her writing jerky with the stylus. The shock of the evening had not entirely worn off; she’d spent the night in the common room, alone until little Rispa had appeared near mark five and cuddled into the couch with her. Alysha had been awake, half-curled into a fetal ball and fighting a pressure in her throat that had been too much like tears. The young Tam-illee’s arrival had given her something else to focus on, and she had been glad of the company.

  It was behind her now. Her first pay for the night had cleared into her account, augmented by the amounts put down by those wanting to make a preliminary offer in the auction. And finally, she had the resources to pursue her goal.

  Standing, Alysha walked to the desk and handed the data tablet back to the Seersan, who glanced at it. A few moments later, he nodded and said, “I see you’ve been employed. You’ll be on a monthly payment plan?”

  “Yes,” Alysha answered.

  “Well then, it all clears.” The Seersan smiled at her and said, “Welcome to the Academe. You’ll find your room assignment on the bulletin board in Ralafin Park. Orientation today starts in an hour.”

  “Thank you,” she answered, swallowing past the lump in her throat. She turned and walked toward the door.

  The Seersan called after her, “I’m glad you made it in this semester, Cadet Forrest.”

  She had time to glance over her shoulder in surprise before she stepped outside the tower. Her heart pounded as she brought her eyes up to take in the campus, from inside this time. The flags of the Alliance and Fleet billowed lazily in the light wind, and the buildings with their cultured foot-paths and the old forest in the corner of her vision, the occasional sign of movement, cadet blue . . . slowly her eyelids fell down, shutting it out, and she felt herself reaching out for the side of the guard tower to steady herself. Her means, her ends, her two uniforms overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t move.

  Alysha righted herself and took the first step, shedding the night at Phantasies behind her. There was wind at her throat instead of metal.

  A Cold and Gentle Dark

  The candlelight gathered on the piano’s edge, smoldering in the ivory finish as in a strand of pearls. The young girl laughed and ran to the stool, gray tail whipping the air behind her. He
r hand lit, butterfly-unexpected, on the elbow of the elegant woman in cream-frothed lace; leaving off the caressing of the keys, the older woman touched her daughter’s hand with her own, and smiled. Is it born yet? the girl asked, brilliant blue eyes wide. Almost, the mother answered, her other hand sliding over the keys. Will it be a dancing song? the girl asked. It will.

  Alysha snapped her head back, the weight of her hair striking her back, arms thrust at angles as the beads and chains cut descending arcs through the heated air.

  No clouds marred the sky; a ceiling so piercingly blue, so coolly serene it mocked the short figures beneath it, belittled the tallest building that could have risen to its height. The lack of clouds pushed the azure out of reach, hollowed it into a bowl too far above the earth to be rent. The girl stared at it, older, though all those around her stared at the tree, at the brook, at the woman in lace. The older woman had bent, as if the strings that had held her upright had been broken and her power to move had been forever arrested. But the girl only stared up. Mother, is Father really gone? she asked later. He is, the mother answered, her hand drifting as if seeking. Will it be for always? the girl asked. It will.

  Under the heat of the stage lights, Alysha flung herself in a broad arc, sneering as she hit the stage. Her jewels followed a heart’s pulse behind, stinging her thighs. The roar of the room funneled to her from a great distance.

  The candlelight ran in thin trickles to the edges of the room, failing to defeat the shadows that fed on its corners. The flickering shadow of the older woman fell over the face of the girl, her tail a rigid coil beside her in the unheated cold, winter intruding into their home. The girl took one step forward, the wilted shape of her mother reflected on cool blue eyes. Will you sing again? the girl asked, her voice tight. Maybe, the mother answered, her hand limp at her hip. Mother, the money won’t last for long, the girl said. It will.

  She ran her hands up against the grain of her rain-gray fur, her fingers cupping her breasts and then smoothing down the sides of her body as she swayed. Alysha’s face had long since locked into its habitual mask. It was almost over.