A Fire in Arcadia
I: Kindling
© 2004 Warren Ockrassa. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-9742549-8-3
nightwares Books eBook ID: NWP-2004-0724
Published by nightwares LLC
http://books.nightwares.com/
This text may not be duplicated or distributed in whole or in part without prior written permission of the publisher or author, except in the case of text excerpts for the purposes of commentary or review.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Book 1:
Jektres
Secret Lives in Trees
The baffles went fast, as she knew they would.
Erekka gave a shout that was lost in the sounds of the condensers overloading, exploding before and around them with showers of sparks and molten ectmit. She couldn’t hear her voice over the noise, didn’t feel the heated globules of polymer as they splashed over her forearm. “They’ve breached!”
Her warning was unnecessary. The beamguns were crackling all around them now, lances of death crossing the smoky air as the last of the shielding collapsed. The annular particle fields blazed with a hateful violet glow. As a nip she had thought the color pretty. Now it meant copper fear and instant slaughter and she wondered if any colors would ever be the same to her again — red was now blood, blue the damned bruises she and everyone else got from the constant fighting, green the shade of a corpse left to molder among the trees of Arcadia. And purple. Fucking purple everywhere. Death tasted the air with purple tongues, looking for people to eat. Her people.
She kept her head down. The bucket was good for projectiles but would be holed as easily as her skull if one of the beams touched it. She launched the fallback flare (yellow, another color to hate) and instantly saw the motions around her; the fighters were retreating into the thicker trees. They triggered their metacamo and deliquesced into prisming bark, leaves and ground cover.
The front assault troopers began advancing, keeping their fire low and wide, cutting across the ground, hoping to catch at least a few of them at the ankles before they could make the security of the depths, the tree trunks too thick even for the beamguns to get through easily. She heard a gasp and chuff into the soil nearby and saw Tenette’s camo flicker. She had been hit. Erekka paused for the merest beat before catching Tenette’s eyes. She had lost both feet midway up her shins; they lay smoking beside her. She had her hands wrapped around an incend and nodded to her, a final gesture. Erekka dropped her face field long enough to let her see the recognition of her sacrifice, then tripped it again and shot back with the rest of the party into the depths.
As she retreated she saw five inert forms on the soil. Soldiers both like her and not like her. They were hers but wouldn’t speak or breathe again. The beams had lanced them and left them sundered with the bloodless wounds typical of the weapons. Most had died before even hitting the ground.
Academy mercy, she thought bitterly. Clean kills.
Still just as dead though.
She ducked her head as one of the troopers approached Tenette, expecting the concussion. But Tenette held on. She was waiting for more. Erekka felt a deep twist in her heart to consider the fem’s bravery. She had a mel back home, and would not be seeing him again. And she had decided to wreak as much vengeance as she could.
Erekka wondered, as she continued backing away, how much longer Tenette could hold out. She fired a few silenced rounds at the trooper that was standing over the fem’s still form, hoping to draw a few more to his side. Her low-yield autorifle projectiles were nothing against the shielding the troopers had, but could be annoying enough to bring a few. Tenette looked her way and Erekka could see the gratitude in her eyes. She knew what she was trying to do.
Four more men were closer now, close enough, preparing to fire in Erekka’s direction, and Tenette closed her eyes. Erekka turned her head and opened her mouth to protect her eardrums.
The concussion was tremendous. Erekka was driven back a meter, knocked off her feet by a huge invisible hand and left sprawled on her back. For a moment she felt like an upended tortug, legs and arms flailing in the air, and then she tucked her knees to her chest and flipped over her shoulders to her feet. The incend was still flaming and all five of the troopers were gone in it, scorched black. Tenette’s remains smoked as the incend’s field consumed them, shredding all organic matter, slowly guttering as the biochemicals in the charge lost potency. Fuck, those Scintillans could make some bad shit when they wanted to.
She turned her back and loped into the trees with the rest of her detachment, six fewer now than it had been just a few moments before. Somewhere, she hoped, someone on this Buddha-forsaken mudball was having a good day.
“Niko!”
He groaned. Why did she always have to call him that? Especially when he was playing with other nips?
“Niko! Supper!”
“Coming, May!” he called back, his cheeks crimson, as he began pulling on his togs. (He never wore them when he was swimming unless there were fems around, and then he just wore his clouts. But he preferred to swim bare, like every other mel he knew. Wet togs were awful: They took forever to dry in the humid air, and they chafed.)
Jektres elbowed him and spoke in a falsetto. “Niko-wiko, it’s time for dinny-winny!”
“Shuddup,” Nikolis said.
“Or what?”
“Or — or you can’t come to the party tomorrow!”
Jektres’s smile faltered, then flared again. “Ooo, no cookie-wookies or cakey-wakey for me?”
“Shuddup,” Nikolis said again, but this time he was laughing. “I gotta go or May’ll be all over me for being late.”
“Yeh,” said Jektres, “and then she won’t put you in your favy-wavy wittwe jam-jams.”
Nikolis threw a gob of mud at him. Jektres dodged most of it but some spattered brown across his skin, rich and dark against his copper. “See you, worm face,” he said.
“Yeh, tomorrow, worm breath,” Jektres said. “Ask your ma to make some of that jellyfruit mold, wouldja?”
“Algood,” Nikolis said, waving as he left.
“Spec. See you then, Nee-ko,” Jektres said, and Nikolis turned just long enough to cup his worm at him. Jektres returned the motion, their mocking salute, then decided it was time for him to swim a little more before heading back to his own homestead, rinsing the mud off his body and then floating on his back lazily for a while before getting out, drying languidly and all-skin in the air, pulling on his clouts and leaving.
Unlike Nikolis, he knew there would not be a supper waiting for him, that he would be making his own meal as usual, so he took his time heading back to the homestead. And he had other reasons not to be there often.
Nikolis bustled around the table outside the dwelcap. When the weather was decent (which was usually; it generally only rained late at night) they ate outside since the dinitchen was too small to fit all four of them easily. He was helping set the table, as always, while Oli and Day were washing from the day’s work in the orchards. He was beginning to chafe at the domestic chores. Tomorrow he’d be well into double digits and he wasn’t all that comfortable with doing women’s work all the time. He was a mel, not a fem.
As May brought out the tuber casserole she gave him an appraising look. “Your clouts are a mess,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. He wasn’t. She always said that, and he always said sorry.
“You’ll be in school again soon,” she went on. “Not as much time to play as you used to have.”
“Well Jek —” He stopped, wishing he could glue his mouth shut.
May nodded, suspicions confirmed. “I don’t like you spending so much time with that nip,” she said. “It’s not proper for a mel his age to be avoiding his education. And don’t you think he’s a little old for you?”
“He’s just two halfyears older, May, and —”
“Niko, we’ve talked about this.”
“You’ve talked about it,” he said, his face hot. “I’ve had to listen.”
May stared at him. “You’re behaving a little sparky for a nip who thinks he’s going to have a party tomorrow,” she said at last.
Nikolis lowered his head. “Sorry, May,” he mumbled. “But Jektres is my friend. And there aren’t many nips nearby.”
“He’s right,” Day said, stepping outside just in time to hear the tail of the conversation. He’d heard it before and knew about the conflict that persisted between mother and son, a vein that gave to faults from time to time. “There aren’t many nips nearby. So Jek’s not doing his schooling as he should. You know Nik’s doing well. Give the poor nip a little room.” He ruffled Nikolis’s hair and winked at him. “Mels will be mels, and he only has a few more halfyears left before it’s all behind him forever.”
May shook her head. “I don’t like that mel,” she said. “He’s trouble.”
“Remember what your ma said about me at first?”
“That was different.”
“It ended up differently, yeh — but you didn’t exactly get dragged into perdition by me, did you?”
May sighed. “No, I suppose not. Just to another planet.” She turned to Nikolis. “But you watch yourself around that nip,” she said. “If you get into any foolishness with him —”
“I know,” Nikolis said. “I won’t be able to play with him any more.” This was also part of the argument. Family Fight, Page Two.
May nodded at him and they went on with the supper preparations, the mood of the evening not changed in the slightest by their little flare-up. They’d both acted the parts so often by then that it was almost automatic, reflexive, and done with virtually no real feeling any longer. “Niko, get inside and change your togs. I won’t have mud all over the seats.”
“Algood,” Nikolis said, and did as he was told, changing his tunic and clouts and then pausing momentarily in the sani to pass a little water over his hands as well. He studied himself in the mirror and decided he might want to work on his his face too. It was smudged with mud and he scrubbed with a cloth until it was brown and his skin was clear, his hated freckles shining across his cheekbones and over the bridge of his nose.
Of all his features he most wished those would go away, even more than his dumb ears. Everyone stared at the spray of little marks and adults were the worst, always commenting on how adorable they looked. As if he wanted the poop-clout things on his face and lived only to have them called attention to. He quickly dried his cheeks and hands and then went back outside to mocking applause from Oli. “At last, the prince deigns to grace us with his presence,” he said.
“Better a prince than a princess,” Nik murmured to him as he sidled past on the way to his own place at the table. Keolit slugged his shoulder with uncanny precision, deadening it for a moment in that strange way he had. He always managed to get it just right. Jelly-armed, he sat down and they all started in.
Keolit kept nudging his leg under the table. It was a goad. Nik nudged back and then his brother upped the ante. The game was to see which of them could nudge the hardest without showing any motion above the table, while at the same time accepting the kicks of the other without wincing. Oli was good. Nik was usually the one that got caught.
Day and Oli talked about their work in the orchards while the game went on. Nikolis listened with half an ear. His conversation with May had stuck with him a little this time, especially the part where she said Jek was a little old for him. Jek talked about fems a lot, and Nikolis understood what that meant. Oli had been the same way when he was about fourteen or fifteen halfyears. Nikolis felt a little tightness in his chest. What if Jek decided he didn’t want to play with him any more? What if all he wanted to do was be with fems?
Why did mels have to start talking about fems all the time anyway? He knew that men and women got married and had nips — that was where he and Keolit had come from; after all, he wasn’t stupid — but there was a vast nebulous time in between that he didn’t understand, a time when a mel started thinking about fems and nothing else, before he got married. Something happened in there. Mels changed. They got goofy and acted really strangely when fems were around. Nikolis hated it. It was better with just mels. Then everyone could relax and be natural. When fems were nearby it was like he was dealing with two alien species, not just one: Fems, and fem-besotted mels.
Oli’s toe suddenly found the nerve just below Nik’s kneecap and his leg jumped reflexively. He started as his foot flew out under him and caught Day’s shin. Day jumped and glared at him as Nik said, “Ow! Knock it off, worm neck!”
There was a sudden startled silence, and then his father laughed. That was the signal for everyone else to unbend. May shook her head at him reprovingly, but not really angry, and Oli lobbed a biscuit at him. Nik caught it and took a triumphant bite, then stuck his tongue out at his brother. “Quite a leg you’ve got on you,” Day said. “Must be all that kickball you play.”
“And quite a mouth,” May said. “I’ve half a mind to scrub it with degreaser just to knock out the sludge.”
“Don’t,” Oli advised. “If he swallowed it it would get into his skull, and then all the sludge would run out his ears and he’d have to put insulation in there instead to keep his head from caving in.”
“Keli,” May said, “don’t ask for fights.”
Oli turned bright red at his mother’s pet name for him. Nik made a face at him, smirking. Niko was bad, but Keli was hideous. At least his brother had something worse than he did.
“Just like gravy, all brown and gooey,” Oli said, then kicked his voice up a couple octaves. “Ooo, May! Help me! My brains are running out!”
“Yeh,” Nikolis said, using the same tone. “Soon I’ll start sounding just like my brother!”
“Good one,” Day said.
“That is enough,” May said, and tried to glare at her husband for encouraging them, but underneath it she was smiling. Niko and Keli traded broadsides regularly, but she knew there wasn’t real malice behind it. It was just the way brothers could be. And anyway they were more like friends than siblings most of the time.
“I suppose I’ll toddle inside,” Day said, stretching. “Superb meal, love.” He kissed May on the cheek and then went in to watch the news 3cast. This was the sign that suppertime was over, and Oli went in to join their father as Nik (sigh) remained outside to help clear the table.
He got a huge armload of dishes from May and brought them into the dinitchen, sorting them into the washer. May appeared in a few moments with the leftovers — not much, as usual. She liked to say that feeding three hungry mels was like throwing her cooking into the sani bowl. No matter how much she put in, there was always room for more.
She pulled him over to give him a quick hug and peck on the forehead, then considered him a moment, smoothing his black hair back as he stared up solemnly into her face. He had her eyes, green. Not like Keli’s, which were blue like his father’s. Her mix ’n’ match mels, she called them sometimes; when they had been younger they used to get into arguments over who was Mix and who Match. Keli thought he should be Mix because he came first; Niko thought he was Mix because it almost rhymed with Nik. “You’re getting tall,” she said.
“I am?”
“You are. Are you looking forward to your party?”
“Yeh,” he said.
“Thirteen halfyears,” she said thoughtfully. “I guess that’s a waypost to a mel, isn’t it? But to fems too. I remember turning thirteen when I was a fem. I expected everything to be different the next day.”
“Was it?”
She ran her fingers through his hair, grooming it a little, liking its heft and smoothness, enjoying the solid shape of his skull underneath, wondering at how a head that large had ever made it out of her own body a decade and not quite a third prior. Her mel, her sweet child, moving into manhood like his older brother. He smiled at the gesture and she remembered how he had been, a fat-faced infant with no teeth, how his smile had been exactly the same. “No,” she said, “and yes. I still felt the same, but folks did treat me a little differently.”
“Yeh?”
“Yeh,” she said, and bent his head forward to kiss him on the crown. “Like now. Why don’t you join your father and brother in the family room. I’ll finish the washing. Algood?”
“Can I?”
“I just said you could, didn’t I? Maybe sludge is running out your ears after all. Or you’ve got mud plugs in them.” She turned his head to the side and peered in, then pretended to gasp in shock. “That’s where all the topsoil went! You growing tubers in there?”
“Aw, May, stop it,” he fussed.
“Get,” she said, scooting him from the dinitchen and giving his rump a little swat. He giggled and went.
She watched his retreating back. There was a shadow of his older brother in the carriage of his shoulders already, she reflected, a little like their father, both of them. He hadn’t sprung in height as much as Keli had by this age, and was a little on the slender side as well, but what Niko might have lacked in physical stature he made up for in spirit and wit. Both of her sons were delightful in their own ways. Mix and match.
Of course she was a little biased, she conceded to herself. But that didn’t mean she was wrong.
Erekka slumped onto a gun crate, unstrapping her bucket and looking about at her compatriots. They were all dispirited, sweaty, and grimed with soot and soil. She knew her own face was similarly smudged, almost a mask of filth that ended abruptly just above her browline where the bucket had covered her head. She passed around a bowl and cloth, letting her soldiers wash first. She was the captain, the detachment leader, and knew they knew this was one of her many little gestures of respect for them.
“Fuckin Academy,” Alissa said as she scrubbed at the dirt on her face. She looked around, counting. “They got six.”
“Five,” Erekka said. “Wounded Tenette, but she took five of them. And we got six others before the baffles went.”
“Tenette?” It was Melitto. She and Tenette had — they were close. Had been close. Tenette liked fems as well as mels.
Had liked fems.
Shit.
Erekka nodded slowly. “She used an incend. Beamgun got her but she wasn’t going down that easy.” She softened her voice as tears began to leave clean tracks on Melitto’s cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But she was — it was courage. Right up until she … got ’em.”
Melitto sobbed and leaned against Balia’s shoulder. Balia soothed her and then cleaned her face for her when the bowl made it their way.
“This is a bunk fuck,” Alissa scowled. “We can’t keep up like this.”
“We got more of them than they got of us,” said Roni.
“But there are more of them than there are of us.”
“Still —”
“Algood,” Erekka said. “Alissa’s right. We need to change strategy. It’s no good trying to take on one of their posts outright. They’re defended too well. Our portable baffles don’t have the rocks to face concerted fire for very long. They were never meant to handle assault tactics; they’re just for covering our sweet asses when we scuttle away.” She looked around at the circle of faces, took the bowl and began cleaning her features. “I’ve got another idea. I think a better one.”
“Anything’s better than being clusterfucked like this.”
Erekka winced as her arm flexed, looked down at it. Her metacamo was burned where it had been struck by the molten ectmit. She knew without pulling back the sleeve that there were welts and blisters on her skin. “They have portable shields,” she said, idly scraping off the charred polymer. “We can’t get those for ourselves. We can only sneak in the biotech from Scintilla. And they’re starting to say that —” she stopped.
“Say what?” Roni said. Suddenly everyone was paying attention, even Melitto.
Shit, Erekka thought. Well, they deserve to know. “Algood, this is what I heard down the pipe. Scintilla is under some heat from Interplan Council now. They don’t want the Scintillans abetting a terrorist movement.”
Everyone groaned.
“Fuck the IC,” Alissa said. “They can lick my ass.”
“That’s a fine sentiment,” Erekka said, “but it doesn’t help us much tactically. So there’s a possibility Scintilla might not be sending us much more biotech.”
“Then what the fuck do we do?”
“We grow the fuck our own,” Erekka said. “We’ll get some volunteers to go there and learn the shit, then come back here and help us set it up. But that’s for later, long-term. It’s covered. We need something new, and now, to handle the Academy worms.”
“I wouldn’t handle one of their worms if it was the last one left,” Balia said.
“Join the club,” Roni grinned, but there was no mirth behind it.
“I think we all joined that club a while back,” Erekka said, and the others laughed. “Well here’s what I’m thinking. We have two weapons they don’t. One is our metacamo. We can use that for guerilla tactics. Get ’em outside. One or two of us in the trees where they can’t see us. And silent low-yields can do the rest.”
“What else?”
Erekka winked at Roni. “Our tits and nooky. That’s the other thing they don’t have, and they sure as hell want it.”
“No shit,” Alissa smirked.
“So here’s what we do…” And she began to sketch the idea.
Intimacies and Their Risks
Nik woke with his chest constricted and felt a moment’s panic when he couldn’t move his arms either. He thrashed and then became aware of what was happening. Oli was crouching over him, pinning him to the bed, the covers drawn tight over his body. He was holding them down. “Leave off, worm face,” Nik said.
“Good morning to you too, little bro,” Keolit smirked. “And happy birthday.” He rolled off Nikolis to his side of the mattress.
Nik sat up, scrubbing his hair idly where it stood up. He had this one tuft that never seemed to lay down. “Oh yeh,” he said.
“Thirteen halfyears,” Oli said. He looked a little thoughtful. “The big one three. I remember that myself. I really felt like I was growing up.” His eyes focused on Nik. “And you were eight then, still just a little nip.”
“Yeh, yeh,” Nik scowled. He was well aware that Keolit was much older. And bigger. And taller. And stronger. And everythinger. And a real pain in the clouts sometimes.
“You’re not so little as you used to be any more,” Oli said, surprising him. “You’ll be —” He smiled.
“What?” Nik said.
“Oh, lots of things. Changing, inside and outside. Discovering what’s so great about fems, and you’re going to start really getting taller, and your voice might even drop soon.”
“Really?” Nik’s eyes were wide.
“Yeh, probably before your next birthday. Maybe you’ll even want a femfriend.”
Nik scowled and Oli laughed. “You won’t always feel that way about ’em, bro,” he said. “And pretty soon you’ll be big enough to work in the orchards with Day all the time. That’s good, because…”
The unspoken thought hung between them. Because Keolit would be going to the Academy soon. Nik wasn’t sure how to feel about that. He knew it meant he’d have the room — and the bed! — all to himself at last, but he also felt a funny tight feeling in his stomach whenever he thought of Oli leaving. For the first time it occurred to him that maybe Oli was unsure about it himself. “So,” he said, “what’d you get me for my birthday?”
Oli smiled and bopped him with his pillow. “Get your skinny little rear up and see,” he said. “You’re not having your party while you lay around like a lizard in the sun.”
Nik gave Keolit a whack with his own pillow, and they traded blows for a few moments before Oli tickled him and made him tumble, wriggling, onto the floor.
Breakfast was all Nikolis’s favorite morning fare. May made hot grainmeal with fruit jelly on it, served with thick slices of good yellow toast with plenten chunks in it. It was the best plenten bread in the area. Everyone thought so. Each halfyear she won awards for it at the fair. And there was citron juice with lots of pulp. Oli scowled at the beverage; he hated it when it had pulp in it. Juice is for drinking, not chewing, he always said. But it was his brother’s day so he kept his opinions to himself for once.
After breakfast they got the yard ready. Nikolis had invited several nips to celebrate with him, mels (and a few fems) from nearby homesteads. The closest one to theirs that had any nips was three kilometers away, and Jektres lived about two kilometers farther out than that. Nevertheless he was the first to arrive, on foot, his bare toes splayed with their freedom from footwear. As far as Nik knew, Jek had never worn shoes, not even sandals, not even when he was in town. Which wasn’t very often.
May tutted over Jek’s bare feet, insisting they were too filthy to be allowed inside without a good washing first. “Clean ’em off or take ’em off,” she said. Nik shrugged at him helplessly.
Jek dutifully sat a moment and ran some water from the outside spigot over his soles, then shyly handed a crudely-wrapped little package to Nikolis. “Happy birthday,” he said. “It’s not much.”
“Thanks, Jek,” Nik said. “You didn’t have to bring anything.”
Jek shrugged and looked at his toes.
“Wanna go in and play 3cast?”
“Yeh,” Jek said.
* * *
After a while longer all the guests had arrived and the family room was filled with the tumult of nips jockeying for position at the 3cast console. May and Oli took turns supervising. Day said he had to be in the orchards and seemed glad to be able to escape the din. When it got to be too much for everyone, May shooed them all outside with a kickball. “Get a game going for a while,” she said.
They chose teams quickly, three on three. Nik and Jek were on one side, along with a fem named Renetta who was pretty spec, even though she was a fem. The other side was the other two mels and the fem Nik knew from his gradation. All of them were of about the same age and in the same school level except Jektres, who never went. He was older and the outsider, and all the other nips idolized him for his independence.
They played against each other for a seven-point match (“One for each full year,” Keolit said, rounding up), setting up impromptu goals using disposable plates rolled up into cylinders and stuffed into the ground. Oli was scorekeeper and referee. Nik and Jek had several strategies between them; Renetta seemed to catch on to them fast and played well too, really playing almost like a mel. Nik was impressed. They were able to just eke a victory and then it was time for the treats.
May had baked a big cake, frosted with her special glaze, and had remembered to make a large jellyfruit mold for Jektres. She softened at him when she saw his obvious delight. He could be annoying, Nik knew, but he charmed her as well. Most adults, really. Jek just had a way about him.
Next was time for him to open his presents. Most were practical and greatly appreciated. He got several new changes of togs, sandals, and even a backpack from Renetta. She smiled and blushed at his thanks. “I thought you might want to put things in it,” she said. “You know, like if you’re walking and you see something interesting.”
“Nikky and Netta, sitting in a tree…” began Jektres mockingly. Nik punched him. But he smiled too. He sort of liked Renetta, but would never have said so out loud.
Jek had given him a 3cast game, one of his own that he knew Nik coveted. “Wow,” he said. “Thanks, Jek.”
“It’s algood,” Jek shrugged. “You like it?”
“Yeh!” Nik said. “It’s spec!” Jek beamed.
“Here, bro,” Oli said, passing him a small flat package. “This is from me and May and Day.” It was heavy.
Nik opened it and gasped.
“So you don’t have to keep using mine all the time,” Keolit said.
“Thanks, Oli.” He held it up so the other nips could see. It was a pad, and a good one. Solid and well-shrouded in padding and sealing. One of the Academy-standard types that could be dropped without breaking, sat upon, even taken underwater.
“That’s spec,” Jek said. “Whatcha gonna do with it?”
“Uh,” Nikolis said. He wasn’t sure.
“Classwork?” May said hopefully, taking some empty platters back inside.
Nik rolled his eyes. “Oh — maybe I can keep a journal, like Oli does.”
“I knew you were snooping,” Keolit said, and boxed his shoulder.
“No,” Nik said. “But I see you writing in it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Really…” And then he saw the smile on his brother’s face. “Oh, you’re a bearded worm,” he said without rancor.
“At least my worm has a beard,” Oli smirked.
“At least I can find my worm without a microscope,” Nikolis shot back.
“Hey, you want to spend all your time looking at your worm, that’s your problem, bro. But keep it to yourself, algood? I don’t want to know about your hobbies.”
Jek laughed. That was a pretty good one.
They went into town and watched a 3cast, then stopped for supper and ice treats. Oli was the one who went with them; May claimed she had work to do at the dwelcap. Keolit knew what she was doing — so many nips, so young, were a bit much for almost anyone — and he took it on only a little grudgingly. He was tall and solid, two meters at least and covered in muscles from his work in the orchards, and had a deep commanding voice that well matched his imposing presence. He had no trouble keeping the nips under control.
On the way to town he got them all lined up in a row and then called out Academy marching cadences. All the nips, even the fems, fell in line, playing trooper and enjoying the game. When they were well out of earshot of any adults Oli let the cadences get a little risqué.
All the fems of Arcady
Are double-jointed at the knee
They can bend in lots of ways
That is why they’re such good lays
Push in
Pull out
Push in, pull out, make the fems all give a shout!
Nik and Jek and the other mels laughed while the fems made faces at the words. (Except for Renetta, who didn’t seem to care, singing along as lustily as the mels.) Jek laughed harder than Nikolis, who didn’t really grasp the whole meaning, but didn’t want to let on.
After the 3cast and feast the little group broke up as the nips went along their individual routes to their homesteads until it was just Nik, Jek and Oli at Nikolis’s dwelcap. “Wanna go to my place?” Jek said.
“Yeh,” Nik said. “You bet. Let me ask May first though.” He left Jektres outside while he went in to plead for release. Jek heard enough to know Nikolis’s mother was giving her token remonstrances of resistance, but also knew by her tone that the invitation would be accepted.
He was glad. When Nik was around his ma seemed to pay a little more attention to him. The right kind. And he liked it when Nik stayed overnight. It was better than when he was alone. He didn’t have any sibs and envied his friend; he wouldn’t have minded having a brother, especially one like Keolit, who was spec.
Nikolis was pretty spec himself, though, even if he was only just thirteen today, and sometimes he wondered why his friend liked spending time with him so much. Jektres didn’t think of himself as anything special, but Nik seemed to really enjoy his company. Maybe because they could cut loose and really hang. Without adults around all the time to always be asking stupid questions, they were free to do whatever they pleased.
It didn’t really matter why Nik liked him. He was just glad he did. Most of the nips kept away from him. He knew their folks were the reason. Adults were a little afraid of him.
Some adults.
Soon enough they were trotting off together, Nikolis toting a change of clouts and his new pad in his new backpack. (“Renetta likes you,” Jek needled him. “Maybe you should’ve asked for a birthday kiss.” Nik punched his arm, not wanting to admit he sort of liked the idea.) Jektres was carrying an ectmit bowl of jellyfruit mold, an extra that Nik’s ma had made for him because she knew he liked it so much. Jek thought, not for the first time, that he would have traded places with Nik in a second. He also knew his friend felt the same way about him. It was strange how they seemed to envy each other that way. Each wanted the other’s life.
Well, he thought, if Nik really knew, he wouldn’t want my life at all. And not even my friendship.
On the way they stopped at their best swimming pond, dropped their togs on the bank, and played and splashed for a while until it was dusk, then put on their clouts and hiked barechested the rest of the way to Jektres’s dwelcap, their tunics in Nik’s pack.
Jek’s ma wasn’t in when they got to the homestead by their overland route, a common enough event that neither mel remarked on it. They played 3cast for a while and then Jek pulled up his collection of pictures. He knew Nikolis liked looking at them, and he did as well of course. “I got some new ones,” he said, paging the display. “Here.”
The fems were pretty, Nik supposed, but he knew he probably wasn’t much of a judge. And anyway he didn’t care about their faces, because none of them had any togs on, and he was always fascinated by their bare bodies. He loved to look at their globes and the place where hair grew on them.
He wondered why fems grew hair at all. He knew it was good for a mel because then his worm and sack stopped sticking to his legs; he had been pleased by the advent of his own sprouting for that reason (plus it had meant he was maturing). It had been awful the way everything stuck together down there sometimes, especially on really humid days. Jek had some pretty thick hair going too, more than Nik’s, but it wasn’t as complete as the growth around Oli’s worm. And Oli’s worm was lots bigger than his own, or even than Jektres’s, and Jek wasn’t exactly small.
Some of Jek’s new pictures had mels in them too, putting their worms inside the fems. He could actually see them going in and it made his own worm throb up with an urgency he still didn’t quite understand, even though he knew it had to do with Doing It. It was one of those mysteries he knew he wasn’t supposed to grasp until he got older, but sometimes he wondered what all the fuss was about, why it was such a big deal if people Did It together (especially if they weren’t married), and even why his own body reacted as it did to the pictures.
Jek’s worm was standing up too, and after a while he switched off the 3cast, doused the lights and dropped his clouts on the floor, climbing nude onto the bed. Nik followed suit and listened for a moment to the sounds of Jek as he played with his worm. There was a little rhythmic hiss of his hand on his skin, and then Nik began playing on himself as well, sneaking looks at Jek’s body in the starlight that filtered in through the window. In a little while Jek gasped and Nik saw the melstuf come out of him, and that made him have the feeling too, though he didn’t make as much stuff as Jek did. He knew he would when he was older, and that was another thing he was looking forward to.
After they were done Jek dozed off, lying on top of the covers and letting his stuff dry on himself, and Nik waited for his worm to relax. It always took it a while after he had the feeling. Jek told him once that after he started making lots of melstuf his worm would relax quicker when he was finished. He didn’t know why but he guessed it was because all that stuff was how his body knew he was done.
He felt the twinges of guilt that always came after one of these sessions. He knew it was bad for him to look at pictures of naked fems. And it was even worse to look at pictures of naked mels putting their worms in the fems. Only married men and women were supposed to do things like that, and only in secret, where no one could see them. And he also knew he wasn’t supposed to play with his worm, ever.
But it felt so good when he did it.
And what was really bad, he knew — really, really bad — was how good he felt when he looked at Jek, when he was naked and standing and playing with his worm, and especially how good it made him feel to watch the stuff come out of him. Mels were never supposed to feel like that about other mels. If anyone ever found out he felt that way, he would have to go to Retraining. That was what happened to mels who got dirty with other mels, who even wanted to get dirty with them. Benders, they were called. Mels who liked mels were called benders, but he didn’t know why.
He closed his eyes and tried to think about other things. But the vision of Jek’s bare body alongside his own was what surfaced in his dreams, dreams in which he did things with Jek that would have landed him in more trouble than he could imagine, if he actually were to do any of them.
Erekka readied her rifle, the butt nestling against her shoulder. She propped its barrel on a tree limb and settled against the trunk, then began her deep breathing, the sniper’s relaxing motions, steadying her whole body with a mix of tension and calm so her aim would not waver. It had been twenty minutes by her chrono since Alissa and Balia had approached the post’s perimeter and been quietly let inside. She was fairly sure they’d be emerging soon and she had to be ready.
She tripped her metacamo, Roni doing the same the next tree over, and they disappeared against the foliage. They couldn’t keep the fields on too long; the batteries wore down quickly. Fucking fourthhand surplus. Still it was better than nothing.
She was right. In a few more minutes the two fems reappeared, eight mels in tow. Shit, she thought. Four each. Good on you, fems. And fuck you, you selfish bastards.
It wasn’t uncommon for fems to visit the posts and draw some troopers into the woods for a little midnight play. That knowledge was her power. And these mels were about to be a lot more thoroughly fucked than they could have dreamed.
The fems led the mels beyond the lights at the post’s perimeter, into the trees, toward the ambush. The mels laughed at each other’s jokes, making lewd gestures toward the fems, who were playing their parts perfectly, appearing to want the attention. Both Alissa and Balia, she knew, had bodies that mels could not get enough of, beautiful faces and lovely forms, lithe and graceful, athletic and healthy. Only their short haircuts gave them away as being soldiers, and those were covered now by wigs.
They waggled their hips suggestively and blew little kisses to the mels, luring them farther away from their lives. The mels cupped their worms at the fems, a gesture she hated. It was so fucking pubescent. Real men outgrew the gesture about a week after their voices changed.
Well enjoy, nips, she thought grimly. What you see tonight will be the last you ever see.
The little group halted in the clearing near her tree. Subliminally she heard a light rustle, very quiet and gradual, from the perch alongside hers as Roni drew her weapon to a better firing angle. Erekka sighted down her own rifle, getting a bead on one cluster of mels. She was to take the ones that went with Balia; Roni was to focus on the ones with Alissa. She felt her world close around her, her intent and will centered only on the field in her scope. In the channel, yeh.
The group split up into two clusters of five and the fems began undressing as the mels looked on, making little whoops and catcalls as they watched. Their attentions were fully focused on the fems as they slowly bared themselves, and that was the signal, and Erekka sighted on the first and squeezed gently. The rifle went fet and she saw the first mel die, his skull flying apart in wet pieces, drawing a bead on the second and firing before the first could even drop. She got three that way by the time the fourth had realized what was happening, but it was too late for him as well. Balia had drawn her blade and slit his throat before he had any opportunity to cry out.
Meanwhile Roni had silently dispatched three others from her hide, but the fourth just managed to break away from Alissa. Erekka swore silently and got a workable sight on him, sinking a pellet between his shoulderblades just before he could raise an alarm. He jerked and pitched forward and twitched and she sent three more slugs into him, fet fet fet, and then he stopped moving completely.
Balia and Alissa, meanwhile, were rapidly drawing their metacamos on, triggering the fields before the garments were even fully in place. Erekka began climbing down from her perch and knew by the rustling of the tree near hers that Roni was doing the same. In the metacamo her progress was marked only by a shimmering silhouette on the bark. Close watching would show the profile of a human, but there was no one left alive to watch except her own soldiers.
Alissa closed her camo over her torso and Erekka was given a single surreal glimpse of her disembodied head hovering in empty air before she drew the hood over her bucket and that, too, faded from sight. Balia was already invisible and the four fems quickly stole away into the night, leaving the dead mels to lay where they had fallen.
Erekka permitted herself a moment of elation. Despite the near escape of the one mel, she knew she could count this new strategy as a wild success. And she knew her detachment’s morale would soar.
That, more than anything else, was what mattered to her.
Relationships and Politics
Nikolis and Jektres passed a lazy morning, playing some 3cast together for a while and swimming in one of the ponds near Jek’s homestead. They played Academy, Jek as always appointing himself General Orekkio, leaving Nik to do the grunt work like stockpiling mudball ammunition. Then they set up small stone markers (“Resistance soldiers,” Jek said) and lobbed the mud, imagining the wet splats to be the concussions of grenades or, if they hit one of the soldiers square, flying guts.
Jek accused Nik of being a traitor to the Academy, a Resistance defector. Nikolis denied it but Jek pinned him and bound his hands behind him with his own clouts, then stood him against a tree and heaved mudballs at him until he was covered scalp to heel in the brown glop: Firing squad. Nik worked his hands free and chased Jek, finally tackling him and wrestling with him, getting them both well covered in the mud by the pond’s bank. They broke and stared at each other and then began laughing; they were barely recognizable as human any longer. “It’s near midday,” Nik said at last. “I should get back.”
“Algood,” Jek said, ignoring his gut’s twinge. “Don’t forget the backpack your femfriend gave you.”
“Shuddup,” Nik said, glad the mud was covering his face enough that his blush didn’t show. They put on their clouts and started back to Jek’s dwelcap.
“You like Renetta?” Jek said.
Nik shrugged.
“I think she’s pretty spec. For a fem, I mean,” Jek added.
“Then why don’t you ask her for a kiss?”
“Cause she’s still a nip,” Jek said. “She’s only twelve! Doesn’t even have any globes yet.”
“Well I was twelve until yesterday but you hang with me.”
“Yeh, but I’m not asking you for a kiss.”
“Good thing too,” Nik said. “I’d —”
“What?”
“I dunno. Fart on you or something.”
“Oh, big threat.”
“You haven’t smelled one of my tuber casserole farts. Oli says it’ll strip lacquer at fifty meters.”
Jek made a disparaging sound. “I can clear an entire field with one of mine. Plants all just turn brown and shrivel.”
“That’s not farts,” Nik said. “It’s your armpits.”
Jek boxed him. “Worm neck.”
Nik punched back. “Worm face.”
Jek punched again. “Worm breath.”
Nik shoved him. “Go gargle with melstuf.”
Jek broke into a run. “Naw, can’t, you drank it all,” he called over his shoulder.
Nik chased after him as he ran to the dwelcap. “I’ll show you what to drink!” he said. “I’ll pee in a cup and make you drink that!”
“Well I’ll pee right in your —” Face, probably, but Nik never found out. Jek had stopped short at the main portal.
Jek’s mother was there, looking a little irritated with her son. She got even more angry when she saw Nik, and then really angry when she fully saw how muddy they were. “Jektres Ellet, you march yourself right into the sani and wash, and I mean now. And you, Mister Tekkru,” she said, rounding on Nik, “you better damn well do the same. I’ll not have everyone saying my mel is filthy or that I let him play with dirty friends.” She scratched the back of her head and scowled. “Now!”
Jek and Nik retreated to Jektres’s bedroom. Jek rolled his eyes and Nik nodded in silent sympathy. His mother was in one of her moods. Some days she could be very nice, almost like any ma, and other days she was — well, like today. It always seemed to happen after she had left for a while.
Nikolis didn’t know where she went when she disappeared. He thought Jek had some ideas, but his friend never wanted to talk about it. Nik didn’t press it. The one time he had, Jek had become angry with him, even cried a little (which had frightened Nik quite badly), and told him to go home.
They dropped their clouts and scuttled into the sani, taking turns standing under the shower spray and washing each other’s backs, then dried themselves quickly and went back into Jek’s room. Nik dressed rapidly, his clouts still crusted with mud but serviceable, then let Jek lead him out the dwelcap’s portal. They paused a few moments when they heard his mother’s voice call from inside. “Jeki, sweetie, mama’s going to have some guests tonight.”
Nikolis saw Jektres’s body tense, like his muscles all locked together at once. He’d seen this before as well, and also didn’t really know why Jek acted like this. What was wrong with guests?
This was another thing Jek refused to talk about.
“Algood,” he said quietly. “Look, Nik, you can’t come by for a couple days. The guests will be here a while.” His lips were thin and white.
“I know,” Nik nodded. “Stop by when they leave, algood?”
“Yeh,” Jek said softly, and Nik shouldered his pack, wondering why his friend stared after him as he left. Jek’s eyes were hooded and he had an almost lost look on his face. Like he was wandering among the trees and watching his last hope for getting out, getting back home and safe, just walk away from him.
“So what did you and your melfriend do?” Oli said while Nik got the supper table set.
“Looked at naked pictures and played with our worms,” Nik shot back.
“Hey, bro, go easy.”
“Yeh, well,” Nik said, setting the cups down harder than he needed to.
“What’s wrong?”
Nik paused. Keolit meant it, he could tell. He was really asking, not just talking. “Well, his ma’s having guests again.”
Oli nodded. He and Nikolis had talked about this before.
“Why do you think Jek gets upset when she has guests? And why does he make me stay away for a while?”
Keolit sighed. “I don’t know, bro,” he said.
And Nik could see it. Suddenly he could see it. Oli did know. He knew something that Nikolis didn’t, but he didn’t want to tell him what it was.
“Oli —”
Keolit put his hand on Nik’s arm, gently, and Nikolis felt a deep stab of fear in his chest. For just a second he thought Oli was going to tell him, and in that same second he was certain he didn’t want to know. He never wanted to know. Because he could see a sorrow in his brother’s eyes, and it was a sorrow for Jek, and that sorrow frightened him in ways he could not name. “She … she just wants to be alone with her guests, that’s all.”
Nik felt the moment slip past but that didn’t slow his frantically lunging heart. “Then why doesn’t she send Jek away too? Like over here? He could sleep in the family room with me…”
Keolit shrugged and let his hand fall away from Nik’s arm. “I guess because he’s family,” he said, and Nik could see the secrets rolling in his brother’s eyes.
“Oh.”
They were silent for several bad heartbeats. Keolit kept seeming like he was about to say something else. And then he did, but it didn’t make any sense to Nik. “Some guests you don’t want to have.”
“Then why does she have them?”
Oli looked into the distance. “Sometimes that can happen,” he said at last. Then he focused on his brother again. “Have you ever talked to May or Day about this?”
Nik finished setting the table, wondering why his fingers kept shaking. Why he was so terrified. Why this conversation was so bad. Why it kept making less and less sense to him as it went on. “No.”
“Don’t. Algood?”
“Why?”
“Because if you do, they’ll never let you see Jek again,” Oli said. “And if Jek’s mother ever asks you to stay when she’s having guests, you leave.”
Nik nodded.
“I mean it, Nikolis,” Oli said. “Promise me. If she’s having guests and she asks you to stay —”
“Algood, I’ll go. I will, Oli.” His heart was hammering faster than he ever knew it could and he wanted, oh how he wanted, for the discussion to close. He felt like he was walking in a bog full of quickmud, that if he stepped the wrong way just once, just a little, something awful would happen to him. Like the whole world was suddenly full of hidden traps, traps he couldn’t see, wouldn’t be able to see until it was too late.
“Good, bro,” Oli said, and then went inside to wash up for supper.
Nikolis thought he’d be relieved when his brother finally left, but the silence was worse. All he had for company now was his own feelings. And that wasn’t good.
Erekka reclined on her bunk, drawing Alissa against her with a contented sigh. After the success of their first attack all her detachment had celebrated. They had forbidden means for doing so. What she and her leftenant had done was only one of the ways.
The fems had cracked a barrel of malts, smuggled to Arcadia with the last shipment of Scintillan arms. It was part of their reserves, something saved aside for their victories. They had damned little opportunity to use them.
The Scintillan malted brew was not at all like the stuff they distilled (illegally) here. It had less kick to it but didn’t leave their heads full of boulders. Somehow the engineers on Scintilla had worked up a way to make a brew without the punishment the following morning. They could consume all night without being wrecked the next day. And they had done so with abandon, and then they had shared some nicotine leaf and a little ganj — more forbidden pleasures — and then the detachment had split into partner pairs for sweaty, blissful delights. Delights of skin and mouth and body.
Alissa kissed her gently. Erekka regarded her. “You were brilliant, lover,” she said at last.
“Thanks. You were too.”
“No — I meant before. At the ambush.” She thought a moment. “Well, you were also brilliant just now of course.”
Alissa pretended to be insulted. “As an afterthought, she said.”
Erekka chuckled easily. “I have several more afterthoughts in mind for you. But that’s not what’s important right now. I think we’ve got a way.”
“They’ll stop the mels socializing,” Alissa said.
“Yeh, they’ll try,” Erekka conceded. “But they won’t be able to stop them all, completely. And even if they do — think about it. Those mels will go bugshit. They want to get laid, you know that. And if they’re forbidden fems…”
Alissa laughed aloud at the thought. She affected the voice of a 3cast shock-story commentator. “Moral decay in the Academy ranks! Post commandants left helpless as mels turn to mels in corrupt perversion!”
“Yeh,” Erekka laughed with her.
“Gutted from the inside, fucked from the outside,” Alissa said, then kissed her left breast. “I’m very proud of you.”
“Why?”
“Because it works. We all know it does now. And you heard how the brigade leader reacted. She was pretty damned happy. This is gonna spread, lover — and when it does, look out Academy.”
“You may be right about that,” Erekka said.
“I am,” Alissa said. “And you know it. You’re a walking talking breathing honest to shit fucking genius, fem. Talk about getting the mels by their rocks.”
“You’re sweet,” Erekka said, and kissed her. Alissa responded in kind and their bodies began to heat again. Erekka felt the warming happening in her, felt the moisture begin to gather as her nipples firmed, knowing her leftenant’s body was beginning to do the same. Again.
“Hm,” Alissa said, her hand coasting along Erekka’s belly to the curls at her hips, then a little lower, feeling her readiness, as their kisses increased in feeling, depth and flavor. “About those afterthoughts…”
“Yeh?” Erekka breathed against her lips.
“I think I have a few in mind for you as well.” And her fingertips found that place, that one greatest place on Erekka’s body, and for a little while they weren’t soldiers camped in a bivouac, engaged in a desperate and slowly failing cause; they were two beings of light and joy that interwove into one as they floated on a river of warm clear energy and the breeze sighed among the trees.
Jektres came by after three days. Nik was working with his pad, writing some journal notes. He had decided to try to keep the journal going, because Keolit did, and he said it was worth doing. Day agreed. May had smiled, saying that as long as he was doing something to work his brain she was happy.
Jek looked pallid, a little fatigued. Like he had lost some weight or hadn’t slept, or maybe like he’d been sick. There were dark moons under his eyes. Nik pretended not to notice. He’d seen this before in his friend. After the guests. “Hey,” he said.
“Yeh,” Jektres said.
“The guests gone?”
Jek looked haunted for a moment. “Yeh,” he said.
“Algood. Wanna go to the orchard?”
“Sure,” Jek said, and his smile was real, but it was hurt too.
Nik wondered, but was afraid to know, and knew not to ask.
They worked among the trees, donning stilts to make their patrol easier. They were helping Day and Oli by finding leafworms on the branches and pulling them off, casting them (at first) onto the ground. Their fat green bodies burst when they struck the soil.
“Look out!” Nik said. “Resistance at three!” He lobbed a worm toward Jek, who ducked it easily as it sailed in an arc over his head and spattered against a trunk several meters behind him.
“Yeh?” he said. “Well, that’s what you think!” And he shot a fast salvo at Nik. He managed to dodge the worst of it but several of the leafworms splashed over his chest and shoulders.
“Oh, suck that,” he said, and threw even more at Jek, who retreated rapidly under the hail of larvae, then came up laughing and sputtering, his face sprayed with the green and yellow guts of the bugs.
“Eat these worms,” Jek called back and returned fire as the battle was well and truly joined, and by the time evening had settled they were both soaked with bug parts, their bare chests slick and slimy, their clouts sopping with wet entrails. It was even in their hair. They were called in to supper by May, who looked on them with a combination of mirth and disgust.
“At least you’re doing something useful,” she said. “Barely. Inside. Shower. You staying for supper, Jek?”
“May I?” he said, his eyes wide and clear. Nik shook his head. Jektres really had it down.
“I suppose I can’t send you home on an empty belly,” May said. “And your clouts really need a good washing.”
Nik knew that meant Jek would be staying the night.
Spec.
“C’mon,” Nikolis said. “We need to clean off.”
Jek nodded and followed him inside to the shower as May shook her head after them and sighed. “I don’t know what to do with those mels, Tom,” she said.
“Feed ’em,” her husband said, watching them also. “They got bedamned messy, but they also disinfested about thirty trees between ’em. That’s good work by any measure.”
May smiled and kissed him.
Jek borrowed some clouts from Nik. They were a little tight on him, he said, but they would do. Nik smirked at the way Jek’s worm filled them out. It looked like he had a tuber stuffed in there or something. Jek saw the look and socked him.
They sat around the table outside and ate and laughed together, and Jek kept watching Nik and Oli as they bantered. Brothers. That was so spec.
It was so easy for them.
He looked at Nik’s folks and wondered what it would be like, to have a ma and da right there all the time, always caring and paying attention, and always paying attention in the right way. Just a ma and a da and no one else. No guests. And maybe a spec bro too.
When he was here, with them, he felt almost normal. Like he really fit in someplace. Just a regular mel with regular friends who liked him, adults who didn’t give him those awful suspicious looks, who didn’t avert their eyes when they saw him coming or say to their nips Don’t go near that mel, he’s nothing but trouble. People who took him for what he was, or what he wanted to be: A mel. Just a mel.
He studied Nikolis. He wondered if his friend had any idea. How lucky he was, and how much Jek wanted his life, and how bad his own life was by comparison.
Keolit nudged his arm. “If you don’t want that polt, just say the word.”
Jek came back to himself. “Right, yeh,” he said. “Like I’ll give up these good vics.” Actually he almost wanted to give his food to Keolit because — just because. Because he was Nik’s bro, and he was a good mel.
When Nik had first brought Jek to his homestead, just a few months ago, and said May, Day, this is Jektres, and he’s my friend, Jek had waited. Waited for the looks, for the questions, for the problems. They hadn’t happened. Nik’s ma had just said, “Hello, Jektres, it’s good to meet you.”
And then Jek had seen Oli, and he got fairly worried fairly fast. Because Oli was not stupid, Jek could see that right away, and he was very large, and he imagined that the first thing he’d hear from him would be You stay away from my little brother or I’ll turn your ass to paste, but what Oli had said instead was, “Hey. You staying the night?” And when Jek had stammered that he didn’t know, Oli had said, “Well if you are you’d better get inside and clean up, because May hates mud in the bedroll,” and Jek had looked between Oli and May and Day and Nik and had understood that if he wanted to stay that night, he was welcome to.
Nik and he had known each other for maybe four hours stretched across two days by then, and Keolit’s open acceptance of him had given him a feeling he’d never had before. He’d never felt welcome at anyone’s dwelcap until that afternoon, and he did end up staying the night. The first of many, as it turned out.
But now, instead of giving up his food to Nik’s unbelievably spec brother, he lifted the joint to his mouth and took a bite and was glad he did, because May’s cooking was always amazing. It crackled between his teeth, crispy outside and soft and warm and tender inside, full of very good, very fresh flavor. Not like the soggy, packaged stuff he usually ate. This was made just a few minutes ago in the dinitchen inside, rolled in crumbs and spices and fried in a pan full of popping hot oil, not months ago in some factory someplace to be frozen and carried in a truck and reheated wetly in the micro.
“You cook the best polt on Arcadia, Missus Tekkru,” he said to May.
Nik rolled his eyes helplessly as May beamed. “Thank you, Jektres,” she said. “I think I have a little jellyfruit left if you’re hungry for dessert.”
“You’re real spec,” Jek said around a mouthful of cooked bird.
Oh come on, Nik thought. What a wet brown load in the clouts. But he admired Jek a little as well.
It was so easy for him.
They made a little nest of bedrolls in the family room before the 3cast. Everyone sat around a while and watched some crystals together, and then May and Day left, cautioning them to be good and not stay up too late. Nik and Jek and Oli nodded.
They played some games for a bit, Oli matching against Nik and Jek in one of his favorites, a heavy dropship sim. He played the Resistance soldiers on the ground (a severe handicap) while they played the Academy dropship pilots, Nik flying as Jek manned the weapons. Oli won, but not by much, and then stretched. “It’s late, mels,” he said. “Can I trust you two to turn in before daybreak?”
“Yeh,” Nik said. Probably not.
“Algood. Sleep tight, troopers.” He went down the little passage to the bedroom, leaving the two friends alone.
Jektres slipped out of his clouts and wriggled into the bedroll next to his friend. “Wanna play again, or just talk, or what?”
Nik set the console aside and tripped off the 3cast, then removed his own togs. “I’m tired of games right now,” he said. “We can talk or whatever.”
“Algood,” Jek said.
Nik felt his stare on him.
“Nikolis…”
“Yeh?” Suddenly his heart was doing it again, like it had the other day when he and Oli had had their bizarre conversation. It was the sound of Jek’s voice. Something in it was … dangerous, almost.
“Look. Nik. Someday I might leave the homestead.” Jek shook himself. “I will leave it.”
“Yeh, course.”
“No, I mean soon. Like in another halfyear, when I’m sixteen. Or maybe even before then.”
“Oh.” The silent dwelcap was suddenly too silent. The shadows were all listening.
“So if I do could I maybe come here and get work in your orchard?”
Nik considered. “Well you’d have to ask Day. But why would you leave?” He wished he hadn’t asked. What if Jek actually told him why?
“You don’t know,” Jek said.
“I’m not a dumb little nip,” Nik said.
“No — I know you’re not. I mean, oh shit. Nik, I —” and he stopped. And he shook. And Nikolis realized Jektres was crying.
“Hey,” he said, reaching out and patting Jek’s shoulder awkwardly. “Hey.” He felt stupid saying that. But he didn’t know what else to say. “Hey.”
Jek wiped his eyes. “It might not happen,” he said. “But if it does will you stick up for me?”
“Yeh,” Nikolis said. “Course. We’re friends.”
“You’re my best friend ever,” Jek said. “Ever.” And he pressed himself close to Nikolis, so close he could feel Jek’s heart beating in his chest, and it was beating very fast, as fast as his own.
“You’re my best friend too,” Nik said, not sure what to add. It seemed weak next to Jek’s open feelings. He didn’t know what else to say, but he could say something that sounded almost right, and he did. “It’d be spec if you were my brother.”
Jektres sobbed suddenly. “Yeh,” he said. “If I could be your brother I’d do it in a second. Even if it meant my ma had to die.”
Nikolis whirled inside. What had he meant by that? His ma dead? “Uh. Yeh,” he said, around the clench he felt deep through his middle. “Oli’s a good bro but if you could be my bro too I’d like that.”
Jektres sobbed a while longer, then finally pulled away and smiled weakly. “Worm kisser,” he said.
Nik laughed, mostly from relief. They were back on ground he knew. “Worm rancher,” he said.
Jek slugged him. “Worm.”
“Worm,” Nik said back.
“If you ever tell about this I’ll smother you,” Jek said.
“You’re a cloutload of poop,” Nik said.
Jek was up again, suddenly energetic. He pinned Nik’s shoulders, straddling him. “I mean it,” he said.
“Eat my worm,” Nik said, squirming. “I won’t tell. I won’t tell that you love a mel.”
Jektres studied him in the gloom. “Better not,” he said at last, letting Nik go and settling once more into the covers beside him.
“Algood,” Nik said, wondering why he was so exhausted after this talk, and why his worm was standing up. And why he was so scared to know that Jek’s was standing too. He had felt it there, pressing against him as he lay helpless, pinned under Jek’s hips. The word bender floated across his mind and he shoved it aside frantically. Not me, no way. I’m not a bender. And neither is Jek.
“Hey Nik.”
“Yeh?”
“You ever think about … dying?”
Nik shifted a little. “Sometimes.”
“Yeh?”
“Yeh.”
“Like when?”
“Uh. There was this mel I knew named Farrak, about two halfyears back. From school.”
“Yeh?”
“Yeh. And anyway, he was swimming one day alone, and something happened. No one really knows what or how. They think maybe he was playing around some of the tree roots, you know how they can stick out where the mud’s soft? And he got stuck under them or something, and he couldn’t get out, and he drowned.”
“Oh. Was he your friend?”
“Sort of,” Nik said. “I mean, we never really did much together, but I knew him.” He didn’t like thinking of Farrak. Any time he did, he got a tight, frightened feeling in his chest. The idea of it — never seeing his family again, just going away, ending — it was terrifying. And lonesome. To die there, under the water, just a meter away from the surface and the air, to be trapped and know he couldn’t get out. It made him want to cry, just thinking about it.
He wondered if Farrak had cried, or if it had been over too quickly for that, and somehow the thought of him crying was worse, the thought that he had time to know that he was dying, time to feel sad about everything he would miss and to cry there under the water, and die all alone with no one to help him or save him, was — terrible. Unfair.
“I think about it sometimes,” Jek said quietly.
“Yeh?”
“Yeh. Like, you know, doing it on purpose.”
Nik’s chest got tighter. “What do you mean?”
“You know, like shooting myself, or maybe putting a rope in a tree, and putting my neck in it and jumping out.” He was silent for a moment. “Sometimes I do that, put a rope around my neck. You know, just to see what it’s like.”
“Uh.” He thought of that, of Jek climbing a tree with a rope around his neck and jumping off. “You’re not gonna, right?”
“No,” Jek said, but he sounded almost like he was thinking about it just the same. Like no meant maybe someday. “They say when you do that, when you hang like that, your worm gets really hard and stuff comes out at the end.”
“No way. Why?”
Jek shrugged. “Maybe it’s just, you know, your body doing it for the last time or something.”
“That’s — sick,” Nik said.
“Yeh,” Jek said, but he sounded a little thrilled at the idea. “D’you think that happened with your friend?”
Nik swallowed. “Dunno,” he said. Had it? Had Farrak drowned with his worm standing? That was worse than thinking of him crying. More frightening, but he wasn’t sure why. He felt queasy. “Don’t, Jek,” he said. “Don’t do it.”
But Jek was asleep, taken that fast. He was always so tired after the guests left.
It didn’t come as easily for Nik. He worried, tossing restlessly on the floor of the family room. Was Jek trying to tell him something? Was he trying to say that he was thinking about … that he wanted to make himself die?
Why?
And what the hump was Nik supposed to do about it?
Why was life suddenly so cloutload humping hard? Just because he was thirteen?
He hoped not. If this was how May and Day and Oli and Jek lived all the time, he didn’t want any part of it.
Actions
This time it was Melitto and Balia, not Alissa. If they kept using the same two fems every time, Erekka knew, they’d be recognized. Well, probably. Lots of fems visited the Academy troopers. But she didn’t want to take the chance.
There were only six mels this time that came outside the post, and she wondered if they were being cagey. Probably they were. But she also knew they were mels and couldn’t resist the lure of cheap, easy sex.
As they drew into the clearing she saw they were being cautious. Two of the mels took point position, keeping uneasy watch over the surrounding trees, while the others turned their attention to the fems. Fuck. They’d have to take the guards before anything else could happen, then.
Roni’s rifle went first, catching one of the watchmen, and Erekka’s own weapon went a heartbeat after. The headless corpses slumped to the ground as the other four mels — already half spooked — pulled their sidearms and turned outward, looking for their attackers. They didn’t have much imagination. They were peering along the ground plane, amid the trunks, and three didn’t see where the other slugs came from as they were killed silently. Melitto buried her blade in the spine of the fourth, the mel closest to her, and gave it a vicious twist, her hand over the trooper’s mouth to stop him crying out. He dropped and twitched, paralyzed below his gut but still alive, as she climbed on top of him.
Erekka felt a little sickened as she raced down the tree, but wasn’t able to get there in time to stop what happened next. Melitto castrated the mel and stuffed his organ into his mouth. His eyes were wide with horror as she ran the blade up into his head, through his lower jaw, into his palate, and then his brain. He jerked once and died with his own penis nailed to his tongue.
Balia already had her camos on and pulled Melitto away. “Fucking wormsucker.” She spat on the face of the mel she’d dispatched.
“That is enough, soldier,” Erekka hissed at her. “Put your fucking camos on and get moving.”
Melitto scowled but did as she was ordered.
Back at the bivouac Erekka let her full fury rage. “What the fuck were you thinking, you dumb twat?”
“I was thinking that fucking mel needed to die.”
“And that was the way you thought it needed to happen?”
Melitto shrugged. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Erekka took several breaths. Melitto didn’t get it. “Look. You mutilated him. And you did it in a way that’s really gonna piss off the other mels.”
“So what? Let ’em get pissed.” Several of the other fems nodded.
“Shit, fem. It’s one thing to blow their stupid heads away. But you do that shit to a mel and the others are not going to let it go by very easy. They’re gonna ramp up their watches now, they aren’t gonna trust any fems for a while, and they’re probably gonna start heavy patrols. You got any idea what that will mean?” She looked around herself at her gathered detachment. “It’ll mean they’re gonna try to find us, try a lot harder than they have till now. And if they get one of us it’s not gonna be easy.”
“So we’ll make sure they don’t get any of us,” Melitto said, but she was cowed now.
“It’s too late to undo it,” Erekka said. “You landed us in the fire. We’re just gonna have to be ready for them. I want double guards from now on.”
The fems groaned.
“Stow it. Double guards. Melitto, you take the first watch.”
“I’ll do it too,” Balia said.
“Good. The rest of you stay in your metacamos. Never take them off. I mean it. Not even to take a shit. Just drop the flaps. And no more hot meals for a while.”
“Fuck,” Melitto said.
“Don’t you give me any mouth at all, soldier. We can’t heat anything. They’ve got IR and they’ll fucking use it. Cold rats until I say otherwise. No more showers, no more hot water, no hot fucking anything.
“You got a problem with it, you’re free to leave any time and go back to the farm.”
Melitto mumbled something as she turned away.
“What was that?”
She paused. “I said yes, Captain,” she said, and gave a sharp salute.
“Fucking right,” Erekka growled, returning it. “Get your ass out there and keep your eyes open.”
“Sir,” Melitto said, and stomped outside.
Balia glanced at her, part apology and part support. Erekka nodded, tightly, then softened and nodded again, and watched her as she went to her duty with Melitto.
Fuck it all, she thought. Fuck it all twice with spikes on. This may get pretty bad.
Jek’s clouts got mostly clean, but there were some traces of green on them still. He shrugged. “Most of my clouts got stains,” he said to May, accepting them and drawing them on himself, modestly keeping covered in the bedroll as he did so.
She sent a quick look to Day, who nodded just a little. “Yeh, well. I’m taking Niko to town today to get him some school togs.”
That’s not true, Nik thought. He already had enough togs, especially after his birthday party. He pulled his own clouts on, then stood up beside his friend.
“So I was thinking maybe you’d come along and I could get you some too.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Jek said.
“It’s algood, Jektres. You should have some decent togs if you’re going to be starting classes.”
Jek almost said something but bit it back as May watched him shrewdly. Nik had to admit his friend could be pretty smart when he wanted to be. “Yeh,” he said at last, “well, maybe I could use some clouts.”
“And tunics,” Nik needled. Jek rarely wore anything on his upper body.
“Yeh, tunics,” he said. When May turned away he scowled at Nik and slugged him, but he wasn’t angry. Nik rubbed his arm and grinned. Jek was about to discover what clothes shopping with May was like, and then he’d be really peed.
“How do they fit you?” May said as Jek stepped out of the changing booth.
“Algood, I guess,” he said, looking down at himself.
She pulled him over, turned him around and stuffed a hand under the waistband over his rear, shifting the clouts back and forth, up and down a few times. Jek looked shocked and turned pale and Nik wondered why. May didn’t notice, intent on her sizing of the clouts. “They’re a little loose and a little long,” she said, “just past your knees. But that’s good. You’ll grow into them.”
“Yeh,” Jek said, looking obviously relieved as May withdrew her hand. Nik sort of understood — he also hated it when she did that because it was so embarrassing — but Jektres looked like he was about to mack his lunch all over the floor. His hands were shaking. He almost looked like he wanted to run away.
May was already handing him several more pairs of clouts. “These are the same size, but try them on anyway.”
“Why?” Jek said.
“Because we can’t be sure unless you try them all.”
Jek looked over to Nik for help, but he just shrugged and rolled his eyes. He didn’t understand the logic of it either, but that was how May was when they were buying togs, and she wasn’t to be argued with. Nik watched his friend sigh in surrender and turn back to the booth, but didn’t have much time to be amused at his discomfort as his mother turned to him next with another armload of clothing. “As for you, Niko — stop acting like a tree. Get these clouts on and let me see how they fit you.”
“Yeh, yeh,” he said, retreating into his own booth.
“You dress up pretty well,” May said to Jek over supper. The mel flushed.
“Yeh,” Day said. “Gotta beat the fems away with a stick I bet.” Keolit snorted.
Jek smiled in embarrassment, fingering the cloth over his chest. He had come away from the shopping with eight tunics, six pairs of clouts and sandals. Nik knew this was probably the greatest quantity of new clothing his friend had ever had before in his life, and was pretty sure that whatever he usually wore was second- or thirdhand. It looked like it anyway.
He did look different in the new togs and his mood had changed when the shopping had mercifully come to an end. He seemed to stand a little taller and look happier, and had decided to wear some of them for the rest of the day, even putting on the sandals. May had noticed it as well and, as they walked back to the homestead, had laid an arm across Jek’s shoulders for a few moments, telling him that he was a handsome mel and that he’d surely have a femfriend before he knew it. He had tensed at first, looking green again for a few seconds, but relaxed bit by bit, then sighed with clear relief when May let him go.
Why did it bug him when May touched him like that? (As he walked, her other arm was gathered about Nik’s shoulders, and he had learned long ago that it wasn’t worth shrugging it off. Besides, Jek didn’t seem to think it looked weird; he glanced at them from time to time with what appeared to be envy.) Nik wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but also wasn’t sure why he wasn’t sure.
Something was going on with Jek. And he was becoming increasingly certain, the more he wondered about it, that it was something very bad, maybe not even something he could imagine. He tried to think of terrible things that could happen to people, like drowning or burning or crushing, or being crushed by a tree that was on fire and drowned in mud under it, but the worst he could think of was being eaten by something bigger, and that wasn’t what was happening to Jek.
Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening, his mind whispered, but you can’t see it because what’s eating him is invisible, and he shivered with a supernatural chill.
By the time they got back to the dwelcap Jek had learned that May wasn’t going to bite him, and offered to help Nik set the table for supper. May rewarded him with a peck on the cheek and he turned pink as Nik smirked at him. He made a face after May left and gave him a good box on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you warn me?”
“About what?”
“About how your ma is with togs.”
Nik laughed. “It was more fun watching you find out for yourself.”
“You are a total worm face,” Jek said.
“Oh, suck a worm and swallow, you bender,” Nik answered.
Jek got very quiet and finished setting the table without another word.
What the hump was going on with him?
Nik walked Jek back to his dwelcap. It was late and Jek didn’t suggest that they stop for a swim, but Nik thought maybe it was really because Jektres didn’t want to get his new togs dirty.
Jek turned to him at the portal. “I guess it didn’t totally suck,” he said, referring to the trip to town.
“Yeh,” Nik said.
“Tell your ma thanks again for the togs. That was pretty spec of her.”
“Sure,” Nik said.
“Well.” Jek looked lost for a moment, then shocked Nik by putting his hand on his shoulder. “See you.”
“Uh,” Nik said.
“You can’t stay tonight. Sorry. Ma wants me around, but just me.”
“Oh. Are you having … guests?”
Jek dropped his arm to his side. “No,” he said. “She just wants us time, that’s all.”
“Oh.” So maybe she’s in a better mood tonight, he thought. “Well, see you then.”
“Yeh.”
Nik turned to go, then stopped and turned back. “I’ll be enrolling at school end of next duoweek. You should come too.”
Jek hesitated. “Dunno.”
“C’mon,” Nik said. “School’s not so bad. Sometimes it’s pretty dumb but there’s spec stuff about it too.”
“Like what?”
“Well,” Nik said slowly, thinking, “some of the mels are pretty spec.” Inspiration hit. “And there’s fems too. You might like one of them.”
“Maybe,” Jek said.
“And it’s not all day, there’s time to play and swim after. And you could be on the kickball team.”
“I don’t think so, Nik,” Jek sighed.
“Why the hump not?”
Jektres lowered his head. “Well … promise you won’t tell.”
“Algood.”
“I … I don’t read too good.”
Nik felt relieved. He had been afraid Jek was going to say — he didn’t know what, but something he might not have wanted to hear. Because the invisible thing that’s eating me won’t let me go. “That’s all? So what? Not every nip reads great, Jek.”
“I’m pretty bad at it,” he said.
Nik shrugged. “So I could help you.”
Jek brightened a little. “Yeh? You’d do that?”
“Course. We’re friends, right? And friends help each other.”
“Yeh,” Jek said softly. Then he nodded. “Yeh. Algood. I’ll try it.”
“Spec,” Nik said, smiling hugely. “Well, night, worm neck.”
Jek smiled back. “Night, worm face. See you.”
“Yeh.”
As Nikolis walked the five kilometers back to his own homestead he felt light. Something good had passed between them. He wasn’t sure what or what it meant, but Jek seemed happy, and so he was as well.
It was bad.
There were low flights all night over their bivouac. It was deep in the trees and well covered, and had enough IR shielding to keep their body heat from being detected, but the noise of the craft coasting overhead in search patterns had made them all jumpy, punchy. The craft came often enough that they couldn’t risk bugging out. They were stuck for the duration. No one had slept very soundly, and Erekka had not slept at all. She knew she was not alone in that.
This was no good. It couldn’t keep on like this. If they didn’t sleep they’d start getting sloppy, and then they’d get dead.
When daylight finally broke she passed around some seds, doping a third of her fems. They’d sleep in shifts, enough left awake to defend them if it should be necessary and help evac the sleepers, who would be dazed if they had to be wakened.
It looked as though they were going to be nocturnal creatures for a while.
Melitto was sullen and withdrawn. She had finally seen the full consequences of her actions, how they had made her fellow soldiers suffer, and was very displeased with herself. Erekka didn’t lean on her. She didn’t need any more shit on her plate right now.
Midday she watched the first group of sleepers surface, then doped another third. She wasn’t going to take any of the drugs if she could avoid it. She’d have to get by on catnaps. She wanted to keep lean in case they needed her, and she was certain they would within the next few days. She could make it that far, she knew; she had techniques for altering her mind processes, learned a few halfyears ago when she had met an itinerant monk from Pollux. (He had later been detained by the Academy, accused of spreading enemy propaganda, and that had been the last she had ever heard of him.) If she could hold out, keep them all together for maybe a week or a duoweek, much of the heat would be past and they could return to something like a more regular schedule.
Or so she devoutly hoped.
Sleepless nights and days of frustration ground on as they all huddled.
* * *
“Hm,” the administrator said, looking over Jek’s enrollment form.
“He’s new,” Nik said. Jek elbowed him but he went on. “He moved here from, uh, Taliesin, I think.”
The administrator looked Jek over carefully. Poop. Why did he have to say Taliesin? Jek didn’t look even remotely Talec. It wasn’t true, of course, or he thought not; Nik didn’t know when Jek had come to Arcadia, or from where. He might even have been born here, as he and Keolit had been. He’d met Jek only a few months earlier, bumping into him at a pond neither one of them had ever visited before. They’d played Academy together and swum a while, and even that quickly knew they were going to be friends.
Jek had secured his mother’s permission for him to enroll, but it had apparently been quite a fight. Nik was surprised at that. He thought Jektres’s mother would be happy that he wanted to go to school. Instead they had shouted at each other for days. Nik had overheard some of the arguments and was shocked, not just at the fighting, but at the language they used at each other as well. Jek knew a lot of words Nik didn’t.
“It’s because of that snotnose nip, isn’t it?” she had been saying when Nik was close enough to hear one afternoon, preparing to drop by and ask Jek to play.
“Don’t call him that,” Jek said.
“Ooh, you don’t want your little melfriend insulted?”
“Knock it off, you bullock-rimming bitch. Go and suck some strem.”
“Don’t you ever talk to me that way, Jektres Ellet, or I’ll —”
“You’ll what?” Jek’s voice had been low and it scared Nik worse than the shouting. It sounded dangerous.
“I’ll have you in Retraining,” Jek’s ma said.
“And then how would you make your fucking gelt? Get some other fucking brat to take my place?”
“Don’t try me,” she said.
“Fuck,” he said. “Every cunt-gobbling mel in five hundred klicks already has.”
There was a slapping sound and Nik had retreated to the trees at the yard’s perimeter, waiting for something to change. In a few minutes the portal slammed and Jek stalked into the forest. Nik popped up behind him. “Resistance on your six!”
Jek jumped and spun around, his eyes huge, then slugged him. “Don’t do that shit,” he said. There were red streaks across his cheek but Nik pretended they weren’t there.
“Leave a skid in your clouts?” Nik taunted, scooting away. He was filled with nervous energy and a sick feeling, but he wasn’t going to let Jek see it. If he did he’d know that Nik had overheard the fight.
“I’m gonna leave a skid on your face,” Jek said, and chased him all the way to the pond.
Two days later Jektres had shown up at Nik’s dwelcap. He was sporting a large shiner. May gasped when she saw it and began fussing over him. “How in the world did you get that?” she said.
“I was jumping off a tree and slipped. Hit the ground pretty hard.” He didn’t look her in the eyes as he said that.
“You be careful, Jektres. I don’t need Niko picking up bad habits from you.”
“Yeh, you don’t,” he said quietly.
As May went inside to get some ice, Nik studied his friend. He and Keolit traded a look, and Nikolis could see that his brother was thinking the same thing. Jek had not fallen out of a tree. He’d not fallen out of anything. His black eye was not an accident. “Must have been a pretty tall tree,” Oli said musingly.
Jek flushed. “Yeh, well, I guess it was,” he said. “I was lucky. Could’ve busted my head open.”
The space around the table was awkward. Nik tried to banish the pall. “Not your head. It’s too solid.”
“Worm neck,” Jek said, but it was more of a reflex than anything else. Then he seemed to perk up a bit. “Well, ma says I can enroll, anyway.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Nik said.
“Yeh,” Oli agreed. “Spec. Way to go, mel.”
“Thanks,” Jek said, fingering his shiner absently, and suddenly, completely, Nik knew how it had got there, that his mother had struck him while he had been fighting for the opportunity to go to school with Nikolis, with his friend, and it ruined his appetite because he felt like it was all his fault.
Now the enrollment seemed to be stalling. “Ellet, Jektres,” the administrator said.
“Yeh.” Nik nudged him with his foot. “I mean yes.” He shifted uncomfortably. He was in more of the togs May had bought him, and he looked like they made him itch everywhere.
“But under mother you’ve listed Kaletta Festren.”
This was the first of this that Nik had heard. Jek’s ma had helped him fill out the form, since Jek had trouble with writing as well as reading, so he hadn’t known the information on it.
“Uh. Well. She’s not my ma.” The administrator shot Jek a look. “I mean, she is, but I’m…”
Nik’s eyes got wide. Jek was fostered?
He’d never known that until this moment.
“I see,” the administrator said. He was looking over the bruise on Jek’s face. It had turned a really scary-looking black and purple with yellow at the edges, but Jek said it didn’t hurt much any more. Jek saw the look and reddened.
“Kickball,” he said. “I was blocking the goal, and — well, I sort of blocked it with my eye. Uh, didn’t get my arms up in time.”
Nik very carefully kept his face neutral.
“Ah.” The administrator seemed like he was about to say something else, then glanced quickly at Nik and just nodded instead. “Well, we’ll have to test you for aptitude in arithmetic, reading, writing and a few other things.”
Jek rolled his eyes but Nik nudged him again.
“That way we’ll know what gradation you’re ready to start in.”
“Algood. Uh, I mean, yes. Sir.”
“Good.” The administrator stood. “Come with me, Mister Ellet. There’s a kiosk through this portal. You’ll be testing with several other children. Listen to what the teaching software says, and follow the instructions, and I’m sure you’ll do well.”
Nikolis watched as Jek went to his tasks, wondering again about him, about what he had just heard, and why he kept coming back to the shiner, and to Jek’s ma, and to what he had said to her about being replaced.
“Missus Tekkru?”
May stood as the administrator came over to her. “Yes,” she said.
“Jektres has completed his testing.” In a moment Jek appeared. “Good, go and sit by Nikolis,” he said to him. “I’m going to have a word with his mother.”
Jek’s ma had not come; Nik didn’t know why, but May had said that was algood, as long as Jek had his papes and everything was ready to go. But she looked angry when she had said that, not because she was going along, but because Jek’s ma wasn’t.
“Algood,” Jek said, and slumped into the seat beside his friend. He looked crushed.
Nik was torn between his worry for Jek and what was passing between May and the administrator. The adults’ conversation was very low and they both kept glancing toward the two mels, and as it went on May looked more and more upset.
Jek was in a foul mood. “How’d it go?” Nik said, but mostly to break the silence. He thought he knew.
“I sucked poop,” Jek said. “I don’t know how you do this stuff.” He looked at Nikolis appraisingly. “You must be real smart.”
Nik shrugged uneasily. “You get used to it,” he said.
Jek laughed and it was hollow. “Right.”
“You do —” He stopped as May and the administrator broke their conference and May came back up the corridor toward them. There was a look on her face he’d never seen before and he wasn’t sure what it was. It looked like a mixture of anger and sadness.
“Come on, mels, let’s go,” she said.
“Am I in?”
“Yeh, Jek, of course you’re in. We’ll go and get some lunch and an ice treat and we’ll talk more after that, algood?”
“Yeh,” Jek said, and Nik didn’t know if he sounded relieved or afraid. Or both.
“Jektres,” May began as they walked back to the homestead, “is there anything you feel you want to tell me? About what’s happening at home?”
Nik felt his gut clench. Oh no. He tried to catch May’s eye, tried to tell her with his expression not to ask this, but she was choosing not to look his way.
“Uh. No,” Jek said.
“Like how you got that mark on your eye?”
“I told you,” Jek said. “I was playing kickball and got hit.”
Poop, Nik thought with a silent groan.
They walked on in silence for a few moments. “Actually,” May said, “what you told me was that you had fallen out of a tree. You told the administrator you got it playing kickball.”
Poop all over it.
Jek turned white, then red. “Uh, yeh, that’s what I meant. I mean I fell out of a tree. I don’t know why he told you what he did.”
May stopped and put a hand on his arm. “Jektres, I know what happened.”
Jek lowered his head and his shoulders began to shake. Nik stared at the ground and got very interested in some pebbles as May pulled Jek against her and put her arms around him.
“How often does she hit you?”
“Never,” Jek said through his tears. “Well, not much.”
“Once is too often,” May said, smoothing his hair. She glanced over to her son and opened an arm to him. “Come here, Niko,” she said softly.
Nik moved into the hug and put one arm around May, then tentatively put the other around Jek. His friend shook again, and then really started to cry. Hard.
“How long have you been living with her?”
Jek snuffled and wiped his eyes. “About eight halfyears now,” he said.
“And you’ve been putting up with it all that time?”
“I have to,” he said sadly. “No one else can take care of her. And who would want me anyway?”
“Jektres. It is not your job to look after her. She’s an adult and you’re a mel. It’s her responsibility to be taking care of you.” She kissed his head. “And as for your question, I can think of a few people who like having you around.”
Jek’s arm was now tight around Nik’s waist and he just stood there, not knowing what to say, letting May do the talking, hoping Jek would know he had the same feelings. He patted Jek’s back and his friend sobbed even harder.
“We love you, Jek,” May said. “I do, and Tomis, and Keli and Niko.”
They wouldn’t if they really knew, Jek thought bitterly to himself. But he nodded.
“I’d like you to stay with us tonight. Tom and I will go and have a word with your — with Kaletta.”
“Don’t!” Jek was suddenly urgent. “Don’t! Please! It’s not — I’m algood, it was just a fight, I know she didn’t mean it. We yell sometimes but she — please, don’t talk to her.”
“Jektres, I’m not so sure…”
“Please,” he said again. “Please don’t say anything.”
May was quiet for a few moments. Nik could almost feel her wavering. “If we keep out of it for now, you have to promise me something.”
“Uh, yeh.”
“Promise me that if she ever hits you again, for any reason, you will leave that place. For good. You’ll come and live with us, and if there’s a problem we’ll get the Academy in to clear things up.” She caught Jek’s face in her hands and tilted it up to hers. Nik looked up and was surprised to see that May was crying too. “She is never to lay a hand in anger on you again. Algood?”
“Yeh,” Jek sniffed. “Yeh, algood.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Yeh, I promise,” he said, and let May draw him close again, into the circle of their arms, and they stood like that a while on the lane, the three of them, silent, and then turned back to their journey.
As they walked May said, “And I expect you to stay tonight in any event.”
“Thanks,” Jek said. It was only one word but it carried much more feeling than Nik would have thought possible.
“I dunno, Tom,” Eleisa sighed. “Some days…”
Her husband drew her closer. After she had come back from enrolling Nikolis and Jektres she had been very quiet. The air about the supper table had been subdued, the mels not engaging in their usual attempts to irritate each other to death. He had been ready to ask her what was going on but caught the look in her eyes and the little shake of her head. After twenty halfyears of marriage he well knew what the gesture meant. She had told him everything after they had gone to bed, leaving Oli to look after the two younger mels. “Yeh,” he said. “I know. I can’t really believe it.”
“I couldn’t either. But you know Jektres has problems.”
“Sure. I just didn’t know they were that bad. It explains a lot though.”
“Yeh, it does. He hides it pretty well. He said that was the only time that woman ever hit him, but I’m not sure I should believe it.”
“Yeh,” he said. He had no reason to doubt his wife’s intuition.
“I told him if he needs a place to stay…”
“Of course,” Tomis said. “You know I’m behind you on this.”
“Wanna help me deal with that woman?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“You don’t think I can take her?” She wasn’t serious. Not really. Maybe. But she had very powerful maternal instincts, and they were beginning to extend now to Jektres.
“No, I know you could. But Jek is pretty tightly wound up in her life, and Nik’s wrapped up in Jek. If we do anything that hurts Jektres…”
“Yeh, I know,” Eleisa said. “We’d be hurting Niko too.” She drew a breath and blew it out in disgust. “Ah, what a load of crap. We came here to get away from this kind of … fertilizer.”
“I guess people are the same everywhere,” her husband sighed.
“I thought it would be different here. Not like Dog End. Arcadia’s still so unsettled. You know, less tension. Fewer crowds, honest work, honest people. Good people. And the Academy.”
“The Academy can’t keep everything in check.”
“Yeh. But still. This is what I get for believing adverts. Pastoral splendor my back end.”
“Be fair, Elli. For the most part Arcadia has been good. Life here has been good. The trees are thriving as long as they stay debugged, Keolit is a fine young man, and Nikolis is already well on the way down that road himself.” He propped on an elbow to look into the face of the woman with whom he had shared half his existence. “Of course that’s not Arcadia. It’s you.”
“And you,” she said.
He shrugged. “I had input, sure, but nips are raised by their mothers in the first few halfyears. That’s when they get the lessons they’ll carry through their lives. Oli and Nik have your mark all over them and you should damn well be proud, both of them and of yourself.
“D’you think Nik would have taken up with Jek if he didn’t have your heart in him? He must have known something was wrong. They spend so much time together he’s got to have all kinds of windows into that mel’s world we can’t even guess at. And he stuck with him.
“The other nips don’t have much to do with Jek. Some of the other folks around here have asked me why I let my son play with him. You too, I know they’ve asked you too. But Nik wasn’t gonna give up. And he was the one that convinced Jek to enroll in school. You gotta admit that’s damn close to being a miracle.”
“Yeh,” she said after a moment of consideration. “He is a pretty good mel, isn’t he?”
“The plenten doesn’t fall far from the tree, love.”
She kissed him, feeling better at the support she got from him, loving him for the way he had always loved her. A good husband, a good father, a good man.
“It’ll work out,” he said, laying himself down again. “You’ll see. You’re on the job now and that means look out trouble.”
“Trouble?” she said, drawing near.
“Yeh,” he said. “It goes away when you show up.” And he kissed her. “It always has. One look from you and all my troubles vanish, anyway.”
She nestled closer. “Mine too,” she said.
“I love you, Elli.”
“Mm,” she said, settling her head onto his chest. “And I find you acceptable as well.”
He smiled at her. “That’s an improvement. Last halfyear it was just tolerable.”
“Yeh, well, maybe someday it’ll get all the way up to likable.” She reached under the covers, her fingers light on him. “Speaking of plentens, I think I’ve found a ripe one.”
He laughed and moved closer to her, and they kissed, and they touched, and they whispered, and he gave her the kind of input she always enjoyed best.
“You gonna be algood?” Oli said quietly.
Jek glanced over to him, then away. “Yeh,