Alysha's Fall

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “I’ll find you a job,” he said.

  “No one will pay that kind of money to someone who hasn’t graduated,” Alysha said. She stared at him openly now, though he was still looking out the window. The warmth of the coat and the heat of the brandy gave her back some of her equilibrium, pushed away the ice of terror that had cast a pall over her body.

  “I’ll hire you to do odd jobs around the house,” he said.

  “Your opponents will love that. Favoritism will be the first and least of their accusations.”

  His eyes met hers then. Alysha’s ears flew back, but she did not shy from his gaze. “I may be a cadet,” she said, “But I have ears. I know you have enemies. Everyone in power has enemies.”

  She watched the tic in his jaw as it leaped and wondered how much pressure his teeth could withstand before they cracked.

  “I’ll find you a scholarship.”

  Her voice was a whisper. “I don’t know why you have to do anything for me.”

  This time when his eyes met hers, she did look away. The trembling started again, so badly that she almost dropped her glass; he seized it before it fell and set it on the table. Alysha wrapped her arms around herself and huddled in the embrace of the coat, trying to deny the weight of the shame lest it crush her.

  Brighthaven stood and said, “Change into something more comfortable.”

  Sheer panic speared her gut. Did he like his women in softer things? Was he afraid the jewels would scrape his skin raw? Was that the price of his aid? “I . . . I can’t take it off myself. You have to use the key.”

  “Turn around, then.”

  Alysha twisted, reluctantly letting the trench coat fall from her back and dipping her head so that her hair fell on either side of her neck to expose the back of the collar. She felt him draw near, felt the air compressing between them as he stood behind her. A light touch on her head and then the lock on the nape of her neck shifted, sprung free. The same sensation spread around her rib-cage with the relief from the pressure the harness exerted, and then the relaxation of the weight around her waist and hips as the unlocked belt slid down.

  “Now, change.”

  Repressing her shudder, Alysha stood and let the weight of gaudy gold and glass fall to a pile around her feet, then stepped out of it. She glanced at him, but he had his back turned to her. Surprised, she swiftly pulled on the anonymous dark blue sweatsuit she wore to travel to and from Phantasies. She folded the trench coat, laid it over the chair and drew herself slowly up, waiting.

  Brighthaven sat in the chair at the desk, sipping his brandy. “Get some rest, Cadet.”

  “Sir?” Alysha asked, incredulous.

  The commandant glanced at her, then stopped. He didn’t name it, but they both knew what she had been expecting. No reproach darkened his face, but it hardened. The thought that entered Alysha’s mind, that she had hurt him, startled her.

  “I said, ‘get some rest.’ ” He turned back to the desk. “If I’m not mistaken, the sophomore class will be doing five-mile runs tomorrow. You’ll need it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alysha said, staring at his profile as he studied his glass. She cleared her throat and added, “Thank you, sir.”

  Brighthaven made a noncommittal noise.

  Alysha slid into the bed and found her eyes straying to the starlight outside before she curled up, drawing the blankets to her breast. The pillows were soft, the covers warm, and she felt very safe. It did not take her long to fall asleep.

  It became a routine, almost a ritual. Brighthaven brought his work with him, purchased her key for the night no matter what color, and sat down at the battered desk to occupy himself while she slept alone on the broad bed. Her grades and her health improved steadily with the regular rest, until finally, one day in the Oak Grove, Laelkii commented on it.

  “You look a lot nicer without those dark hollows under your eyes,” the white Asanii woman said, kicking up the late autumn leaves with childlike enthusiasm.

  “I do?” Alysha asked, bemused. She followed alongside, arms folded behind her back and taking a deep breath of the cool air.

  “You do. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d found yourself a . . . less strenuous job.” Laelkii glanced at Alysha, pale gray brows arching.

  Alysha sobered, though she continued walking next to the white feline. “No. But I don’t work in the back rooms anymore.”

  “How’d you manage that?” Laelkii’s voice hovered between a discreet, low tone and the rising sound of incredulity.

  The gray Karaka’An cleared her throat. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me,” the Asanii said.

  Alysha told her. Laelkii listened, brown eyes growing wider and wider and ears sagging in absolute astonishment until by the end of the story, the older woman could only shake her head. “You know, if I hadn’t been talking to Alastar, I don’t think I’d believe it.”

  “Believe it,” Alysha answered with a pang of worry. “Alastar? Who’s she?”

  The Asanii nodded, resuming her trek beneath the old trees with their shedding leaves. “She’s a girl I met a few weeks ago. I like her a lot. . . . Karaka’An like you, very calm and unruffled. She’s in science and computer studies. Anyway, she told me the other day that Brighthaven’s been looking a little gaunt, but it makes sense now. He’s got your circles under his eyes.”

  The image struck Alysha so powerfully that she halted mid-step, eyes. Laelkii only noticed a few steps later and back-tracked through the carpet of golden leaves. “Alysha?”

  “You’re right,” Alysha murmured, calling up the commandant’s face and tracing all the new lines on it.

  “Well it makes sense,” Laelkii said with a shrug. “He’s not exactly the kind of guy who’d ask you for one side of the bed. And sleeping in chairs, or not sleeping at all, is hardly good for you.” She looked up at her friend. “He must think you right the Balance to go through that kind of insanity for you.”

  Alysha said nothing.

  Brighthaven pocketed his data tablet with a sigh of utter frustration. Alysha hadn’t been lying about scholarships. He couldn’t find any that hadn’t already been taken by cadets whose parents didn’t need the money. The human leaned against the shabby desk in the room, rubbing his forehead, trying to massage the headache away. He had almost missed the chance to buy her key in the evening. The couch had been so comfortable when he’d gotten home . . . but his internal clock had jolted him awake in time to reach Phantasies for the performance. Her teachers had been reporting in delighted surprise that she was alert in class and her grades now easily outpaced every else’s. Some of them had set up after-hour work studies with her because she was too far ahead. Even West, who’d originally brought the problem to his attention, had come to him about her improvement, just before asking him if he was getting enough sleep.

  It kept the long hours bearable.

  He had the feeling that he was being watched. Brighthaven glanced toward the bed, puzzled.

  She was awake, and looking at him.

  “You should be asleep,” he said, after his numbed brain finished fumbling for something to say.

  “So,” Alysha replied, “should you.”

  “Pardon?”

  The Karaka’An sat up in bed, dragging the blankets around herself, her hair in disarray around her shoulders. For a brief moment, he saw her not as one of his cadets, but simply a proud woman . . . wearing very little clothing. Disconcerted, he focused on her pale eyes, wondering how else lack of sleep would affect him.

  “I appreciate what you’re doing for me, sir, but it won’t be long before you’re too run-down to do your job. I don’t think it would be difficult for most people to see whose good health is more necessary to the well-being of the school: the commandant or one of its cadets.”

  “Forrest, our unjust system put you here. I am not going to rest until I get you out.”

  “The world is not just,” she said, though she’d hesitated.

>   “And that relieves me of the responsibility?”

  A shiver rolled through her body, but she rallied. “It’s only a matter of time until someone follows you here. What then?”

  Brighthaven lifted a brow. “I’d like to think I’m a little better than that.”

  “At least take a few days off,” Alysha said, her voice soft, almost pleading. “I can survive a few days.”

  “Can you?” Brighthaven asked brusquely. “Or are you going to come back with another shattered arm the way you did on the pedestal?”

  He saw her flinch at the memory; he was hard-pressed not to join her now that he knew how she’d paid for the wounds she’d inflicted during a fight with a senior prankster. Though he would never admit it, part of the reason Brighthaven kept coming back to Phantasies was to atone for what he’d forced her to do by requiring her to pay for the medical bill of the senior cadet responsible for the incident. A senior cadet with less sense and honor in his entire body than in Forrest’s smallest finger. He’d also stood on the pedestal, and resented it.

  “I’ll survive,” she said again.

  He couldn’t stand the look in her eyes, or his sudden awareness of her body. Brighthaven turned back to the desk and said, “Go to sleep, Cadet.”

  There was no sound from behind him, and then finally he heard the covers rustling as she lowered herself into the cushions. She tossed a few times and fell still. He let out the breath he’d been holding and returned to the data tablet and his thus-far fruitless search.

  He had scrolled through several pages of information when he noticed a silhouette reflected in the data tablet’s finish. He whirled around in the chair. “Forrest!”

  “Sir!” There was heat flaring in her ice-colored eyes. “There has to be an alternative.”

  Brighthaven leaned back, impressed and annoyed at the commanding tone. “It’s your fault,” he said finally, taking refuge in a wry joke, “that I don’t have the energy to simply put you in your place.”

  “It’s your energy that keeps people from putting me in my place every night,” Alysha answered evenly. “I don’t want to see the commandant of the Academe burn himself out. Better a few nights a week than none at all because you’re in the Medplex.”

  “Not a drop of altruism in you, is there, Cadet?” Brighthaven asked as she stepped away, tossing her hair behind her shoulders in an absent gesture.

  “I’ve as much altruism in me as you do, sir,” was the quiet reply.

  That gave him pause. He stood, slid onto the desk so he could look down on her. She was tall for a Karaka’An, and unlike most people whose height was a social inconvenience she did not try to detract inches with improper posture. “You like to think you know why I come here every night?”

  Alysha sat down again on the edge of the bed. Her dark, sleeveless nightshirt and hair faded into the shadows that swamped the massive mattress. “Only a fool would think he knows everything that goes on in someone else’s head.”

  Brighthaven sighed. He had been feeling older than his thirty-odd years lately. He scanned for the alternatives she’d demanded he find. “I can have someone else watch over you, then.”

  She was instantly nervous; he could see it in the flicking of her tail and the abrupt stiffness of her shoulders and mouth. “Are you sure that’s wise, sir?”

  “You wanted me to get some rest,” Brighthaven said, “Those are my terms. I’m not going to let you get abused just so I can rack up a few more hours of sleep. And don’t,” he said, interrupting her as she opened her mouth to protest, “give me anymore drivel about my sleep being more important than saving you from rape and physical abuse.” He smiled grimly as her ears sagged and she glanced away. “Doesn’t sound so acceptable in those terms, does it? I know someone I can trust. I’ll bring him over to meet you, and then I’ll get some rest and you’ll be spared. I’ll find you that scholarship and you can quit this place by the beginning of next semester. Does that sound like an acceptable plan?”

  Her reply dragged out of her mouth, a low whisper. “Yes, sir.”

  Brighthaven smiled.

  Alysha let herself into the back room through the dancer’s door in the closet, pulling down a wrap as she stepped into the room. The commandant became profoundly uncomfortable when presented with her naked body, even with the jewels layered across it. He preferred that she wear something over her costume until he could unlock it, and she didn’t mind. He made her feel self-conscious in a way none of the patrons ever had. Repulsed, degraded, certainly, but never self-conscious—that only came when she saw the human who moved as if he was wearing a uniform even when he wasn’t, the one who knew what she was trying to be, what she was forced to do to have a chance at it. Just thinking about it made Alysha’s ears darken.

  Her feelings about the commandant were profoundly mixed. She had always respected him; he was a fair man and guided the Academe with a careful and just hand. But now? Alysha looked in the mirror next to the bathroom door at the slender, hard figure who clutched the edges of the wrap to her chest. An uneasy intimacy had sprung up between them, born of seeing things they shouldn’t have and accepting them nevertheless. She had wanted him to respect her as she did him, to earn the school patriarch’s remote pride as the best of her class. She could only imagine what he thought of her now.

  The door slid open to reveal Brighthaven, and Alysha started away from the mirror awkwardly. An Asanii man stepped in behind him, a rusty brown with muddy cream running in a river from the bottom of his chin down his throat, vanishing into the neck of his tunic. He had shrewd, pale brown eyes set in a handsome, mobile face, and was much younger than the commandant, perhaps only five years her senior.

  “Cadet,” Brighthaven said, “This is Lieutenant Commander Harroway Sloan, my second at the Academe. You might have seen him from time to time.”

  Alysha nodded to the feline. “Good evening, sir,” she said quietly.

  “Hello, Cadet.”

  The commandant clapped a hand on Sloan’s shoulder. “He knows everything. . . he’ll take good care of you while I sleep.” A rueful smile. “The more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  Alysha smiled at Brighthaven, tail lashing once behind her.

  “He’ll trade off with me at the end of the week,” Brighthaven continued, “While he’s here he’s going to help look for a grant to get you tuition money. With two of us working it’ll take half the time. Any questions?”

  Alysha shook her head, and Brighthaven handed Sloan the black key. “Pleasant dreams, Cadet. I’ll see you tomorrow, Sloan.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Asanii man said.

  Alysha watched Brighthaven leave, relieved that he was going to be sleeping more often.

  The door cartwheeled as the Asanii’s hand latched onto her shoulder and hurled her by it onto the bed. Her claws irised from her hands, tearing through the sheets as she tumbled, shocked at the sheer strength the man had been hiding in his wiry frame. The shock was nothing to the terror and disbelief that threatened to make her vomit.

  A sly smirk pulled Sloan’s lips into a parody of his former mild and obedient expression. He glanced at the key theatrically, brows lifting and pursing his lips. “No . . . permanent damage, I believe the door-warden said?”

  “What are you doing?” Alysha hissed.

  “Didn’t you hear the commandant?” Sloan asked, “I’m going to take care of you.”

  The knot in Alysha’s stomach hardened and she backed away, baring her teeth. “The commandant will—”

  “The commandant will do nothing, because you won’t tell him.” He smiled and sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back against a pillow lazily. He toyed with the key, tracing its length with his fingernails. “Do you know why?”

  Alysha didn’t move, forcing herself to be calm. She jumped when something bounced off her wrist. She looked down and saw the gloss of a piece of 2-d film. Dismay sank its teeth into her even before she shifted it so she could
lift it to the starlight. It was a very clear picture of Brighthaven inside Phantasies, sitting at a table. Behind him on the stage the Harem Rose was engaged in “Hunted,” the new dance where one of the adolescent boys pretended to rape her. She looked away, gritting her teeth.

  “That’s right,” his voice was so reasonable Alysha wanted to tear his throat out. “There are plenty more where that came from, and that’s not the worst of the lot. . . . I’m quite handy with an image-editor. You should see some of the ones I made of him visiting the other girls in their private rooms. Quite damaging to him, wouldn’t you think?” He smiled at her panic. “So I’ll tell you what will happen if you tell him what I’m about to do. . . . The hour after you talk, all of the major news services in the Alliance will be pleasantly surprised by pictorial evidence of a sordid scandal involving the commandant of the Fleet Academe on the planet where Fleet Central bases all its operations. Can you imagine? They’ll have quite a festival trying dear Brighthaven.”

  “You can’t do this,” Alysha whispered, shaking in wrath and disbelief.

  “Oh, but I can,” Sloan answered, twitching the 2-d picture out of her numb hand. “You see, the newspacket is set to release automatically every morning unless I return and disable it. So don’t think of incapacitating me. It won’t do you any good, and it will only harm the poor commandant.”

  Her mind raced, trying to find solutions, trying to find a way out . . . but she could find none. Despair closed her throat. Slowly she gathered herself and shut it all away.

  How would it be different from any of the other patrons?

  Alysha shed her wrap and sat up on her knees, pressing them apart and resting her hands on her thighs, head dipped low to expose her neck.

  “Much better,” Sloan hissed.

  She only felt the first blow. All the rest were academic.

  “Find her,” Laelkii had croaked, “find her for me. She’s been avoiding me, and I know something’s wrong. Be my eyes and ears for me, arii. The computer says she’s not in her room. She’ll be somewhere she can see the sky.”