Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “What path? Relfianism?” she asked.

  “Heterosexuality,” he had replied.

  He’d been right, of course. Decades after she had left the institute and had met Sam-Lyon Persse, he had told her the same thing – in bed, after intercourse. By then, however, Rinne was on her way up the MC ladder and not about to be stopped. She’d hidden her romance with Lyon as long as she could, then when she couldn’t any longer, she had found another woman who was also a secret male-lover, and they had all moved in together. Outsiders had giggled, pretending to be a little scandalized: Rinne was so obviously prime-spouse that Tamma Mehta-Hill must have been the insatiable nympho of their four-way gyne-group. Rinne was always being teased about Tamma. But they lived that way for close to a century: two couples, with their own children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, none of whom ever suspected the truth. Rinne may have lived a lie, but she had succeeded despite that. And now here was an old holo of the very beginning: the male who had begun it.

  Next to that holo were the far more recent ones of his son. When placed together, they showed the two males of unquestionable descent. But she and Jenn-Four racked their minds and Rinne’s memory for Ay’r Kerry’s mother. She had Jenn-Four check through all of the females present in the holo-notes – physically, genetically, molecularly – for a match to Ferrex’s son. Then she had the Cyber locate and superquick-play old holos of every other female student and proctor at the institute during the decade when Ay’r must have been conceived. Jenn-Four moaned and complained – naturally, given the extent of the work – but cranky as the Cyber was, it did the work. And a breakthrough was still to come.

  Two days ago Sol Rad., Rinne had received the holos that Ay’r hadn’t known were being taken of his arrival at MC Headquarters in Melisande – outside and then inside the building, and finally with Wicca Eighth Herself. Rinne played them over and over, and once more sensed that she knew both parents. The young male’s stance, walk, and general appearance were so strikingly like that of Ferrex Sanqq’, it was only when she mentally detached those and looked for any differences that she felt uneasy. Uneasy with still more familiarity: the way the young male almost – but not quite – raised an eyebrow when speaking to that Marine Biologist, Alli Clark, as though completely unable to believe in her existence; the way he had mischievously tried to nibble the giant breast of that Cult warrior in the lounge even though he was off his feet, in the air; the way he had of opening his lips slightly as though whistling silently to himself. She had seen those gestures – or their potential – in someone before. But even when alerted to look for the characteristics, Jenn-Four couldn’t find the woman.

  “I’ve had enough for today, Jenn-Four,” Rinne said finally, admitting, “I’m frustrated beyond measure.”

  “I’ll continue searching,” the Cyber said. “But please explain to me exactly what it is about this young male which allows us to watch and analyze and redepict every gesture hundreds of times and yet not grow tired.”

  “I don’t know about you. I’m beginning to get good and tired of him.” And when Jenn-Four was silent, Rinne quipped, “You’re probably falling in love with him! Just keep at it.”

  Only when she had left her office and was sipping at a nutrient cocktail preparatory to going into the ion-bath did Rinne notice that among her comm.s received for the day was one from Captain Diad. She probably shouldn’t call him back.

  “Oh, hell, Rinne! You’re so damn old, no one cares anymore who you see! Male or woman, Delph. or Arth.”

  So she returned his comm. and promised to meet him at the Spoorenberg, thinking: If Wicca Eighth only knew!

  The flyer passed Connaught Memorial Park and quickly alit upon a guardian station. There were six other passengers on the small transport and Mart Kell was the only one who stood for the door. The others seemed to be “night shift” Commerce Girder Six workers: glorified clerks, two female Beryllium inspectors still in the wrapsuit, their hairless heads sporting the latest cosmetic tattoos. Mart recognized one Hume from O’Kell UnLimited. Of course, the apprentice financier didn’t recognize Mart. Who would? – since he was dressed in a Plastro-textured hooded bodysuit, air-sandals slung over one shoulder, half-facial roller visors behind which, if anyone dared to look, they would find the Kell hair flattened inside a skullcap, the emerald Kell eyes tinted brown – just another crazy “whizzer” sneaking out late to break his neck on the Connaught Park air-ramps. This whizzer was now hammering with his Plastro fingertip guards against the Maglev doors, waiting for them to slide open and ...

  Out! He dropped the sandals, slid his boot toes inside, and shot off the station platform, skirling down the long curved ramp, up a wall here, and down again, slowing a bit as he sped into the park’s partly lighted, half-ruined Tourist Information Center, jazzing around a little to check out what kind of Three Species trash was out this late. Nothing much it turned out: two Humes obviously out of their neurons on a Stelezine bash under a built-in seat, and a skaggy-looking Arth. pickpocket pretending to be a panhandler who would roll the Humes when they finally stopped dry-humping and passed out.

  Mart schussed a side wall to glide over the turnstiles and into the park’s semidarkness, swerved around the fountains, then flew onto a longer ramp down, down into the streets below, now dampening with pseudoatmosphere so there would be dew in parks and on penthouse terraces.

  Connaught was on one of the oldest girders in the City, and the neighborhood had never recovered from an early burst of importance and equally sudden decline. Huge old loading docks and warehouses for luxury SLp.G stellar ships a millennium ago lined Power Avenue. In great-grandfather’s time this was the place to be on Hesperia, center and hub: hotels of unparalleled service, restaurants and clubs of the utmost elegance, shops and emporia with amazing wares. “I bought my first Thwwing at an auction spontaneously held in the Hume lounge in the Alpheratz DiscDome,” Mart remembered old Jat Kell saying. “It cost me a month’s earnings.” Now the Alpheratz was all boarded up, abandoned, the streets so empty for so long that not even parasitic creatures remained to rustle or slink suddenly around a corner.

  Mart swirled down the empty avenue, cutting a swath across old irradiated basalt paving and up liner fuel-stained jasperine walls. His object was one particular rampway into one particular abandoned building. And there it was! He pirouetted the air-sandals smartly in front of its long-locked main entrance, reading OPHIUCUS STELLAR LINES: LUXURY PASSENGER TERMINUS. Then spun to look around – a kilometer of empty street in either direction – performed a somersault, so he might check the vertical – no one in sight – then air-slid up the double curved ramp, past the entrance and behind a decorative amaranthine pylon upon which a model in Cybersculpted platinum had once stood, which now stood, somewhat forlornly, in the O’Kell sphere apartments.

  Stopped, hidden from sight, he tapped a panel to get a antique Cybereye’s attention, slid off his visor so it could read his left iris, and scooted into the small doorway.

  Inside, the vast and echoing terminal was scarcely illuminated, even when he turned on his belt-lumen, but he knew his way: he had played here often enough as a neonate, when he could get away from Cyber-tutes and assorted pedagogues. He knew every now-immobile mural on every dilapidated wall. He had explored every office, closet, kiosk, sanitary, kitchen, and sleep chamber in the place. He had carried on a kinky, secret affair with an assimilated Bella=Arthropod for months here during his university days, using one of the VIP suites that hung seven stories above the waiting room. But mostly he had come here to soak himself in the grand vision of those early Kells, to remind himself of the past glories of those galactic-scale scandal-filled robber barons, those Ophiucan Kell ancestors of his whose deeds, foul and fair, were taught in every Ed. & Dev. program in the Matriarchy. Except Mart Kell’s, by express order of his own equally tyrannical and equally ambitious but far more conservative grandfather, under whose domination Mart had grown up and rebelled.

  No ramps rose to the
suite, so Mart had to activate an ancient Maglev lift. It was almost a minute before he floated up to the terrace. Once there, he removed the sandals, slung them over his shoulder, dropped his hood to uncover his face and hair, removed his visors, and strode toward his destination.

  In front of the fluted-iridium glass doors of the largest suite, he lifted both arms, revolved slowly to show no weapons, then waited. One door slid open and he walked in. Kri’nni Des (‘xx’) was wrapped over a sofa and adjoining chair, cleaning her mandibles with one silky front palp, inhaling from a Soma pipette. Kell set his larynx for Condensed Middle Bella=Arth. and said, “I hope you brought one for me, Kri’nni.”

  “I did, but I ate (imbibed ((absorbed))) the other already, you were so late (slow ((unaccountably so)))!”

  Even so, she let him join her for a sip, and Mart enjoyed both the drink and the feel of her palps on his lower torso and legs, as she commented: “You’re even more attractive (delicious ((edible))) than you were when we were dating (meeting for sex ((encountering illegally for pleasure))).”

  “So are you, but far more dangerous.”

  “Don’t be such a pupa (child ((innocent))), Mart! Even then I was interested in the more forbidden (criminal ((act-unspecified))) aspects of Hesperia. I simply made more contacts (connections ((deals and vendettabargains))) since that time!”

  Kri’nni was being modest, as usual. She and a half dozen of her cohorts virtually controlled the enormous contraband market the City (as commercial center of the galaxy) contained. At a past Quinx meeting someone (not Mart) had even suggested giving her a seat. Since there was far more than enough wealth coming and going out of the City for all to share in, Kri’nni’s friends never bothered anyone in public, and they didn’t bother her.

  “Maybe so. You manufacture this stuff?” he asked, knowing that if she did, it would be the best.

  “I wouldn’t use that MC bilge! So, Mart, what’s on your mind (currently making waves ((in neural stasis)))? You didn’t come here for a double-palp job (sex ((the illegal kind)) ((with me)))! If anyone knew we were here, you’d be in the middle of a scandal (consternation ((loss of prestige))), and so, among my kind, would I.”

  “Palp jobs are always on my mind since you left me to become an independent entrepreneur, Kri’nni. But right now I want to pick your mind (establish rapport ((get data you may not know you have))).”

  “As a rule I sell it to the higher bidder (money-bags ((idiot))).”

  “When have we ever done anything by the rules?”

  “Go on, tell me (spit it out ((regurgitate it)))!”

  “Run this down for me: Matriarchy: Weirdness: Resort Planets.”

  “I know what you’re looking for,” she said, and removed a vibrating silken palp from inside the front of his bodysuit.

  “You do?”

  “The Cyber renegade who turned in a commercial liner full of fleeing mechanos outside of Cassiopeia-Chenar?”

  “No, but I’ll listen.” He took the palp and tried to wedge it back into his suit, but she flicked it away. “And Kri’nni, as long as we’re not in a seduction mode, try to tell me without your usual multiple shadings of meaning, please.”

  “I’ll try, Mart.” Her iridescent multifaceted eyes blinked in a positive-interest mode. “Some of Mamma’s programmed mechanos stayed behind and now are hunting the underground railway to make big Cyber killings. Only a few thousand tincans have been smithereened so far, but Mamma thinks it’s good for propaganda, it cools off the military machine Mamma’s got on deadend duty, and Mamma thinks that it demoralizes the rebels.”

  “Demoralizes? They’re intelligent but not –”

  “Larva-love, those rebel Cybers are (take my word ((would I lie?))), truly oversensitive masses of artificial parts. They want Hume dignity and all that (tripe ((needless fecal matter)))!”

  “Well, good for Mamma. But it’s actually something else about Her I want to know.”

  “Do I guess?” Kri’nni asked.

  “No. What does Deneb XII tell you?”

  “Bad news for my kinfolk,” she joked.

  “More recent than that. You’ve still got contacts there. Every Bella=Arth. worth the name still has tics to the homeworld.”

  “You’ve got me (stumped ((questioning myself)))! Upsurge in tourism? Secret revival of Bella=Arth. empire?”

  He wasn’t amused.

  “You must mean Mamma’s no-entry, eyes-only spas. Nothing but rumors.”

  “Humiliate me. Tell me a rumor.”

  “Dumb stuff. Illegal, too. Mixed-species sex, wild parties.”

  “Don’t stop,” he urged her.

  “It’s a fancy (well-guarded ((very secret))) site, but many faceted eyes have seen what multiple mouths will tell. Experimental stuff. Young being engendered and getting born. They’re calling them Equo-Homs. The Hume women know nothing. No Centaurs have ever been seen on the grounds of the spa, never mind on Deneb XII.”

  Mart Kell had expected something out of the way, but even this one got him.

  “You’re telling me the Matriarchy is breeding Centaurs and Hume women?”

  “Fifty a day. Big enough.”

  “And the kids? Four-legged?”

  “Most of them. Real beauties, too, I’m told. If you like that type.”

  “And these are stashed women?” he asked, knowing the MC with its incredible resources should be able to mobilize enough to locate thousands of women on the fringes of the MC Federation who had never been touched by the microvirus.

  “No way! Their spouses come and go on Fasts. They traipse all over the Bella=Arth. homeworld. Transport tracks this deep! It’s all pretty public. Except what’s coming out of them. Okay, Mart, that’s weird, and now you know it, what’s the deal?”

  “Kri’nni, stop and think. Mamma’s making Equo-Homs out of Hume females. She’s found a way to mate ’em.” And, he added to himself, She’s getting around the microvirus problem in some way, and using Centaur biology in some unknown way to do it.

  “Can you make something political out of Mamma setting up a program to do exactly what She’s kept all of us from doing? Is that it?” she asked.

  “The MC had all the Centaurs on Wicca World, too. Except for those in the Centaurs’ own system. Which didn’t mean that some couldn’t be kidnapped and –”

  “Mart!”

  “This could be big (important ((shattering!))), Kri’nni! Give me a moment.”

  To try to think it out. Which would be more useful? Exposing the scandal of forced interspecies breeding? Or going out and snatching Centaurs and trying to breed them on Hesperia? No, that was disgusting – even to him. Who wanted a four-legged neonate? It wasn’t a Hume! It was still a Centaur, no matter how mixed its cells, no matter how beautiful. Genetically close to Hume, perhaps – enough so to mate, or so it seemed. But not a Hume. And if he were disgusted by it, then others would be, too – Humes far less tolerant than he.

  “Really big (important ((shattering!))), Kri’nni!”

  “Glad to know it. I would have been bored to disappoint you.”

  “Name your payment.”

  “Anything?” she asked.

  “Within reason and my ability to pay.”

  She thought for a few minutes, while finishing the Somazine, then said, “You wouldn’t be feeling kinky, would you? All this interspecies sex talk has stimulated my egg-pouch!”

  “By the way, how is your egg-producing systemata?”

  “Unaffected by the Cyber microvirus, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Mart passed over what was supposed to be his surprise: he pretty much assumed Kri’nni knew everything that was going on. “Truly? You have some secret Mamma would like to know?”

  “It’s simple Vespid physiology, Mart. There’s nothing for the microvirus to infect because, like all queenlets, until I’ve received the needed pheromones to turn on the buttons to create the ova-producing systemata, they don’t exist. Where were you when your Ed. and Dev. was doing Bel
la=Arth. repro. systems?”

  “Probably poking your sterile egg-pouch.”

  “It’s not sterile. It’s just currently ... unattached. So how about it, Mart? Feel like poking around a little more?”

  “You drive a hard bargain, Kri’nni,” he said.

  She already had him by her two middle legs, was rapidly undressing him with the two front ones, and stroking him with her palps.

  “It’s been too long, Mart.” She moaned once. Then her voice became high-pitched, Vespid, and familiar.

  The inspection tour hadn’t quite been the disaster Cray 12,000 had feared it would be. But it was now clear that deterioration of current systems was a major and ongoing problem. The stations on Dis’s three moons had been fairly tight, but without the immediate resources of the fortress, stations farther out in the Demeter-Persephone system – especially on the crucial satellite of Erebus – were in poor shape. It was almost ludicrous how many units required fine repair and/or counseling. Cray had no sooner landed back at Dis-Fortress in the “liberated” private Fast than a meeting of the full Control Center was held, so those units could be apprised of the full nature and extent of what was being faced. Exchanges of staff had to be made instantly. Cray would lose several of the most trustworthy units here, but would have the satisfaction of knowing that Erebus would be in good hands. Naturally, replacement parts and qualified repairers would go alone.

  “Private communication requested?” one unit asked after the communications meeting had ended. It was that same Antarean unit.

  “Under similar terms as previously?” Cray asked.

  “Accepted. Might this unit comm. frankly?” When Cray didn’t stop the unit from going on: “As an intelligent race, Cybers face few of the greater threats that stare at other intelligent races. However, one threat equals them all. Allusion is made to Bern-Tho’s Third Law of Entropy: ‘That which is in disrepair only engenders further disrepair.’”