The Attachment Race

by Kevin Bliss

  “Is he dangerous?” Belinda asked the curly-haired man beside her.

  “I’m Charlie,” he said, extending a hand.

  Belinda shook his hand without thinking. “Is he dangerous? I saw him staring you down.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, he is dangerous…I suppose, but you know, he doesn’t want to get tossed out of here. I think he’ll be on his best behavior for the duration.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “His name? Clay. My name’s Charlie.”

  Belinda glanced back at Clay and Alisson (who continued to smile here and giggle there). Clay returned her smile, a little cocky at the success he seemed to be having with her.

  “What was he so mad about?” Belinda asked.

  “Clay? Oh, he just doesn’t like that they had the shoes mixed up yesterday. Some of us didn’t get a matching pair.”

  He gestured to his feet.

  “See, the black fits me…and the brown one’s a bit small. He and I have the same sized feet I guess. He wanted my black one. I’m already uncomfortable enough with one small shoe.”

  Belinda started to process the conundrum, but shook it off – nothing about their conflict mattered.

  “The girl. She’s my roommate. I need to — ”

  “And what’s your name?” Charlie asked.

  “I…uh, it’s Belinda. Please. Listen. The girl. That girl. She’s not…she really shouldn’t be here.”

  “I think most people feel like they shouldn’t be here,” said Charlie, removing his hands from his pockets and folding his arms.

  Belinda didn’t have time for the musings of Charlie. She started forward, toward Alisson. As soon as Alisson caught sight of her, a tense gaze came over her face. She spun and searched the area until she spotted a Watcher – one from Omicron, a portly man with buzz-cut hair. She spoke to him, pointed at Belinda and then backed away a bit. The Watcher made his way to Belinda, looking her over from head to toe.

  “Girl says you’re bothering her. Stop it.”

  “I’m not trying to bother her. She’s not herself right now. I don’t think she should be here.”

  “Not for you to decide,” the Watcher said. “’Sides, you got enough to worry about if you’re thinking of getting to know Charlie here.”

  The Watcher turned to Charlie and looked as if he’d like to spit on him. For the first time, Charlie became uneasy.

  “Charlie T. What sort of lies are you telling this woman?”

  “None. We’re not attaching. Just passing the time.”

  The Watcher sneered and went on his way, but not before warning Belinda that she was on the verge of being ejected if she continued to follow the ‘little girl over there’. There was no need, really. Once he was gone and Belinda turned to get an eye on Alisson once more, the ‘little girl’ was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Clay. She looked back at Charlie.

  “I’d tell you not to let him bother you…” said Charlie, “but he’ll do it. He doesn’t have many boundaries.”

  Belinda could see that Charlie had been deflated in some way. The Watcher had an effect on him. Who could say what their history was. Charlie struck her as the type who ‘thought too much’. Something about the way he crinkled his eyes in appraising the departing Watcher said that he didn’t wish harm on the man so much as he contemplated what made certain people the way they were.

  “Okay. So…good night,” he finally said to Belinda.

  Charlie was off, striding lazily in no particular direction with his mixed shoes and slightly offbeat manner. Belinda collected herself and began her search of the area anew. When she spotted Alisson from a distance, she resisted the urge to get any closer. Maybe Grace could help. If approached a little more gently, Alisson might listen to reason. Right?

  But Belinda had no idea where Grace was among the hundreds of people.

  And all at once, in the urgency to locate Grace, Belinda spotted Alisson, smiling and walking arm-in-arm with Clay, approaching the registration kiosk for attachment. One couple preceded them in line. The process was not a complicated one – less than two minutes and a pact was set: Alisson was within a hair of signing away the rest of her life. Belinda dispensed with caution and ran toward the kiosk.

  “Alisson,” she called out. There was too much conversation, chatter, laughing, hoots and hollers for her voice to have a chance to reach its target. The pair in front of Alisson shook hands with the attachment official completing the pact. Each party in the newly bonded couple looked somewhat happy, with a dash of repressed reservations as they stepped away to be announced.

  It occurred to Belinda for the first time that Clay was easily twice Alisson’s age, and all kinds of eager about getting his deal sealed and processed. He placed one hand on the small of Alisson’s back, steering her forward. She turned her head, as if his nudge irritated her, but the start of a furrowed brow melted away and she giggled a little, letting herself be guided.

  Belinda was close enough to see the attachment official mouth the single-word question: Name? Clay looked for Alisson to go first. It was almost too much for him to wait until she’d uttered the three syllables. He leaned his head forward, nearer hers, as if to will the pronunciation. But before she said the word, something caught Alisson’s eye: Belinda rushing toward her. She became confused, tilting her head to one side as if abruptly waking from a dream.

  Did she even recognize her roommate? The expression on her face suggested a mind trying to grasp something unfamiliar, something wrong and just off.

  Belinda grasped Alisson’s hand, pulling her away from the man to whom she was about to be attached.

  “You can’t,” she said to the official. “This isn’t…it’s not like the others.”

  “Belinda,” Alisson said, taking a moment to focus on the face and realize it was her roommate. “What are you…this is…?” She couldn’t quite pull up the name of the man to whom she was about to attach.

  “Listen to me, Alisson: you’re not thinking clearly.”

  “Wait a minute,” Clay said, taking hold of Alisson’s other hand, setting up a potential tug-of-war. “This is none of your business.”

  Belinda ignored Clay. She spoke to the attachment official again:

  “Alisson. This is Alisson. She’s not in her right mind. Isn’t it…isn’t there a rule against attachments made under the influence?”

  “Influence of what?” the official asked. There was no alcohol, no stimulants of any kind at the Race – save the stimulant of human chemistry between two people agreeable to stepping into the unknown, hand-in-hand.

  “Alisson’s had Vroo. Tonight. And she’s not prescribed.”

  “This is — ” Clay sputtered and tensed. If it wouldn’t have landed him back in the compound of Omicron, locked away, he might have had a swing at Belinda. He was growing more desperate by the second. “…she should be kicked out. This isn’t allowed!”

  Alisson had turned her attention completely to Belinda. The haze that had been in her eyes seconds earlier was starting to melt. Realization. Memory. The gesture of Belinda Query toward Alisson Lisst in a desperate moment on the floor of the shitty dormitory room they’d shared for three weeks – whether wise or foolish – rushed back and everything froze.

  Clay grasped Alisson’s hand tighter as she started to pull away from him.

  “Wait. Everyone stop!” the attachment official said, holding his hands up. Krawl arrived on the scene. Clay began to plead his case.

  Krawl listened to Clay’s story. The attachment official continued to tell everyone to wait, to stop. Alisson pulled more insistently from Clay and her small hand managed to find a path away until she was free and stood beside Belinda. Spryte appeared. She looked from person to person, trying to decide to whom she should devote focus.

  Others – men of Omicron, women of Upsilon – none having any particular business in the mix, closed in. Some of the men knew Clay, asked him what was happening. The women who had come to know and like Alisson circled the growin
g dispute and studied her for signs of mistreatment or coercion. This was, after all, the little sister of Upsilon.

  Sides weren’t split down gender lines. Some of the Omicronians (with a knowledge of Clay) shouted that the girl was young enough to be his daughter. Things were turning ugly. All of the pent-up resentment and anxiety over the approaching separation from Mother Earth spilled into harsh words, pushing and shoving.

  Belinda worked to remove Alisson further from the epicenter of the conflict. But Watcher Krawl caught sight of the move and, like a predatory cat, sprung past Clay to take hold of Alisson. As if his life depended on it, the head man from Omicron was going to see that the young girl held true to a verbal commitment to attach with “his man”.

  Krawl’s ferocity was something Belinda had never before seen. Sure, she’d watched the anger which overtook the otherwise placid faces of men and women who could feel the ground of Earth crumbling beneath them in the transition compounds. It was the fury born from fear of something which would change their lives permanently and in ways they couldn’t begin to imagine. But here was Krawl – safely fixed on Earth. What did he care about Clay? Clay was a lump of a man at best. Clay would be gone in hours and never cross Krawl’s mind again. There’d be a new batch of Clays to be confined, disciplined and forgotten. And another after that.

  Krawl had no stake in the fight.

  Except that Krawl was being told no – indirectly, though it may have been. It triggered a switch inside the canary-yellow uniform of the large man. Belinda could see that hand-in-hand with the ferocity was Krawl’s expectation – his certainty – that he could bend anyone or anything to his will. The embodiment of the powers-that-be on Earth.

  This was Krawl’s fiefdom: the clearing, the tents, the surrounding trees, the compounds in the distance, the oxygen and the light that everyone in the space shared. His realm and his rule. And, with the power of one hand, he grasped Alisson’s forearm and yanked so hard as to displace the girl’s shoulder. She fell in a crumple of fabric, blonde hair and slender limbs.

  Heads turned and people became still – internees and Watchers alike. And then, the only thing moving was a streak of bright yellow, flexed and directed. It hit Krawl in the chest and drove him to the ground, past Belinda’s line of sight and behind the legs and feet of a dozen or more people.

  Belinda had moved to Alisson’s side and tried to cradle the poor thing without doing further damage to the shoulder. Grace, drawn in by the commotion was there, too. The pair of them were at a loss, unable to say a word (even of comfort) to their roommate. People surrounding them drew a series of sharp breaths inward, as if flinching at something awful. It didn’t occur immediately to Belinda or Grace that it might be for a reason other than Alisson’s injury. But when she looked up where Krawl had stood, Belinda saw what had been that yellow streak passing her seconds earlier. It was Watcher Clame.

  The crowd shifted and stepped around one another, some trying to back away, others drawing closer to the spot where Krawl had pinned Clame, knees on the smaller man’s shoulders.

  Belinda, too concerned with Alisson, focused entirely on how to shield the poor girl and offer cover without adding to the pain in her shoulder. Grace positioned herself as a protective barrier between many watching the beating of Clame and Alisson – as well as her body would allow.

  The repeated sharp intake of breath caroming through the crowd, flinching groans and even some soft exclamations of “Jesus” became impossible to ignore. Belinda checked in again with the fight, through and past the legs and crossovers of the people between.

  The rage unleashed on Clame was a flurry of unchecked hatred and evil, as if on an inanimate object. Clame had stopped struggling. He hadn’t the consciousness or strength to even try freeing his arms. Belinda caught only brief, blurred views and looked away from the skull which had been reduced to blood and bone – a disfigured version of the plastic-faced Clame the women of Upsilon had become accustomed to seeing leer in their direction.

  “Krawl! Stop!” Spryte yelled as she pulled people apart from the beating and sent them scurrying. It was pointless. She alternated between yelling at her Omicronian counterpart and motioning for her staff of Watchers to get the women of Upsilon out of harm’s way.

  Belinda looked around for anyone who might be of help with Alisson. She kept her focus away from the beating that Clame continued to take at the hands of the behemoth from Omicron.

  Two of Upsilon’s Watchers moved up alongside Belinda and Grace with a stretcher. The thing would have had to be at the site of the Race already to get there so quickly, but Belinda immediately shook off questions of why they’d feel a need for stretchers at the Attachment Race. As they lifted Alisson onto the stretcher, a sharp crack made them tense up and nearly lose their hold. Belinda was in the best position to see: Krawl fell off Clame, his head opened up by the nasty end of a pitzer bullet. Debra Spryte held the pitzer, re-aiming it at Krawl’s men.

  “Any of you unholster your weapons, I’ll shoot you down.”

  They remained in place, the Watchers of Omicron, looking back and forth between Watcher Spryte and their slain boss. They calculated possible moves. One of Krawl’s men took the initiative to dash behind a cluster of people from both transition compounds who were frozen in place. He set his pitzer for firing and got a round off before one of the Upsilon Watchers with a good angle on him, took the man down. The slain Watcher hit the ground just as the target of his shot – an Upsilonian completely uninvolved in the tumult – went down.

  Madness ensued. People ran in all directions. Most ran from where they thought the line of fire might continue, others in the general direction of their respective transition compounds and still more toward nothing in particular – just away from the chaos which enveloped the once tranquil clearing.

  Spryte ordered her Watchers to get the women back to Upsilon. It was the right thought, but much harder to do in the spinning, sagging hornet’s nest of people. Even the Watchers were difficult to assess – they wore canary-yellow whether they were of Omicron or Upsilon. But the two sides were hardly sympathetic to one another any longer.

  Belinda had been knocked to the ground, away from Grace and long left behind by the stretcher carrying Alisson. She got up and a rush of half a dozen people scooped her along unintentionally as they tried to run in several directions at once. Her second stumble in short order left her shaken on hands and knees. The best move might have been to curl up in a ball, play dead and hope no one stepped on her. But a pair of hands slipped under her arms and pulled her off the ground until she could get her feet coordinated and move on her own. Eventually the hands slid around her shoulder and guided her into the darkness surrounding the clearing. As she passed the final layer of torches, a quick look at the person running beside her revealed it was Charlie. He steered them to, then around and past clusters of trees, further into the darkness until they had to slow in order to navigate the wild by nothing more than moonlight. Belinda spotted others doing the same – running toward no specific destination, simply away. Her breath grew labored quickly enough that she didn’t have the air to ask where Charlie thought he was taking them.

  By the time Charlie came to a stop and the pair hugged the backside of a thick tree, both were so winded they doubled over and took several minutes to grasp for all fresh oxygen that could be had in the darkness of the forest with ongoing cries of panic or pain from some distance behind them.

  Part 3

  Departure

  Chapter 16

  “Do you…know…where…we’re going?” Belinda asked through short breaths.

  “Away.”

  Neither tried to speak again until full sentences could be formed. They peered into the darkness between them and the site of the Attachment Race. Human voices in pain could be still be discerned. Fortunately, none seemed to be getting any closer to where they’d ended up.

  They sat.

  “I’m sorry…your name…”

  “I’m Ch
arlie.”

  “Charlie. Right. I’m — ”

  “Belinda. I remember.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s…nice of you.”

  “I never met a Belinda before. It just stuck in my mind.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “Until we know what the state of things is? I say nothing. Lay low and stay safe.”

  “They’ll find us. Wouldn’t it be better if we turned ourselves in?”

  “Turn yourself in? To who? All the Watchers from Omicron are as likely to shoot you as anything. They’re part of the ‘Cult of Krawl’. Don’t think for themselves. I figure they’ll keep shooting every woman they see until someone rounds them up.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Omicron? Yeah.”

  Belinda leaned back and closed her eyes. Charlie’s logic made enough sense to rest at least a while longer.

  “I suppose this is a safe place for the time being,” Charlie said.

  Belinda remained silent, reflecting back on the insanity which arose from her attempt to keep young Alisson Lisst from being exploited under the influence of Vroo.

  “I saw you get in the middle of the attachment stuff. What was that about?”

  Belinda swallowed hard and felt tears come to her eyes.

  “I made a mistake.”

  “What was it?”

  She didn’t reply. There was nothing she wanted to share in this, her moment of shame and culpability. What if she’d never started taking the Vroo? For starters, she’d likely have gone out of her mind doing the kind of work the Council demanded of her. What if she’d let Alisson be discovered by Watchers – or reported the incident herself? They wouldn’t have let her go to the Attachment Race, but neither would they have punished her. No chance. Everyone loved Alisson. She was the little sister, wasn’t she?

  “It’s fine. You don’t have to tell. After weeks and months and years of this shit, I’m not about to squeeze anyone else to comply to anything.”