But then why was she looking at the night sky with her eyes full of tears? Why did her hand stray repeatedly to her shoulder where Tam Hayes had touched her, as if to shelter that ghost of his warmth?
Why had memory begun to well out of her like some dark subterranean spring?
She knew only that something was wrong with her. And that she mustn’t tell anyone. If they suspected she was ill, they would send her back to the IOS, probably back to Earth.
Away from her work.
Away from Tam Hayes.
Away from her life.
Two days passed. The crisis at the oceanic outpost had been contained; the mood at Yambuku lightened somewhat, though Zoe noticed the biohazard people keeping their scrolls open on their desks, alert for news. She spent a morning doing a simulation walk through the lush terrain west of the Copper River, then took her lunch into the prep room of the docking bay, watching the maintenance crew ready the shuttle for Elam’s suborbital flight across the ocean.
Maintenance was an Engineering duty. Lee Reisman, Sharon Carpenter, and Kwame Sen waved at Zoe from the bay, and Kwame in particular stole a number of more frequent glances at her. Was he attracted to her? Sexually attracted? The thought was unsettling. Zoe had studied with peers at the D P facilities back home, but most of her classmates were heterosexual women or junior male aristocrats sporting orchidectomy badges. And Zoe hadn’t cared. The medical team had taught her a broad range of masturbation sutras, because that was expected to be her permanent sexual modality. It should have been enough.
But these days she was masturbating almost nightly, and when she did … well, as often as not, she thought of Tam Hayes.
Elam Mather entered the prep room and joined Zoe at the table, pushing aside a stack of checklists to make room for her coffee cup. The older woman nodded at her abstractedly but said nothing, only gazed at the shuttle work. Kwame kept his glances to himself.
Zoe said, “I hope you have a safe trip.”
“Hmm? Oh. Well, don’t wish me luck. It’s bad luck, wishing people luck.”
It was the sort of bewildering thing Kuiper people were apt to say. Certainly, Zoe had read all the histories; she could recount the founding of the Republics as well as any schoolchild in the system. But none of that dry knowledge had prepared her for the reality of a Kuiper-dominated community like Yambuku—the frightening fluidity of rank, the unabashed sexuality. Kuiper males were never gelded, no matter what their station in life, and the result was rather like being caged with zoo animals; these people made no secret of their urges, their assignations, their copulations…
“We’re not so bad,” Elam said.
Zoe stared. “Are you telepathic, too?”
Elam laughed. “Hardly. It’s just not the first time I’ve worked with Terrestrials. You learn to recognize that expression, you know, that sort of—‘Oh, God, what next?’ Zoe allowed herself a smile.
“Actually,” Elam added, “you’re adjusting very well for an Earth-bound hand.”
“I’m not Earth-bound. Any more than you’re Kuiper-bound. I mean … we’re here, aren’t we?”
“Good point. You’re right. We’re here. We’re not what we used to be.” She returned Zoe’s tentative smile. “I begin to understand what Tam sees in you.”
Zoe blushed.
Thinking: He sees something in me?
She dreamed that night of her first home—not the horrid barracks in Tehran but the soft, cool Devices and Personnel creche of her years.
The creche was located deep in an American wilderness enclave. The creche dome, green as crystal, seen from afar on picnic days, had glittered like a dewdrop on the rolling prairie grassland.
The nursery wards and creche pads had been as plush as velvet, all corners rounded, the air itself sweet-smelling and cool. And she had not known fear or doubt, not in the creche. Each of the nannies, many of them wholly human, tended one special child, and they were stern but kind, fat ministering angels.
She had changed her green jumper every morning and every afternoon, the simple cloth starched and bright. And she had looked forward to the evening bath, splashing with her sibs while lactating nannies with babies in their arms looked on indulgently from terraces above the steaming water.
In her dream, she was back in the bath pool, slapping waves at a yellow flotation ring. But the dream became disturbing when great, ancient trees—cycads or giant lycopods—erupted around the pool, a sudden forest. The voices of her sibs were instantly stilled. She was alone, shivering, naked in a woodland like no woodland she had. ever seen. She climbed from the creche pool onto a mossy shore. Black soil cushioned her feet; the rocks were dressed in velvety green liverwort. She didn’t know how she had come here or how to find her way home. She felt panic rising out of the clenched fist of her belly. Then a shade, a shape, appeared out of the humid fog. It was Avrion Theophilus, her own beloved Theo in his crisp Devices and Personnel uniform … but when she recognized him she turned away and ran, ran as fast she could run, ran uselessly while his footsteps thudded behind her.
She woke in the dark.
Her heart was hammering. It eased soon enough, but the sense of threat and electricity continued to vibrate through her body.
Just a bad dream, Zoe thought.
But she never had bad dreams.
She pushed the nightmare out of her mind, thinking again of Tam Hayes, of how she had touched him so unselfconsciously in the common room, of the fabric of his shirt, of his eyes holding hers for a fraction of a moment.
Something is wrong with me, she told herself again, oh God, as she reached between her legs and spread her labia with her fingers, finding the bump of her clitoris like a small, hard knot.
The orgasm came quickly, a wave of fire. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.
EIGHT
Elam Mather felt her usual light-headedness as the shuttle lifted from Yambuku into a watery sky. Isis fell away beneath her, but not far enough; this was a suborbital flight, half a world’s journey to the damaged oceanic outpost. Several hours’ flying time at the best speed the cumbersome shuttle could make. Planets, she thought, were simply too large.
The shuttle crew were IOS-based, and most of them were Kuiper-born, pleasant enough but not talkative. Elam settled down in an aisle seat by herself, her scroll tuned to one of the Terrestrial pop- novels occasionally dumped down the particle-pair link for the presumed edification of lonely outposters. This one (titled E. Quern’s Difficult Decision) was the story of a young girl from a mesomanagerial family, in love with a Family cousin who has mistaken her station in life. Alas, a tragedy. The young heir, on learning that he can’t decently marry our heroine, volunteers for an orchidectomy and. the girl slinks back to her commune, chastened but wiser. What crap, Elam thought. In real life, the meeting would never happen; or if it did, there would be no question of a love affair. The aristocrat would fuck the prole and forget her name the next day. Certainly no such well-connected male would ever consent to an orchidectomy. Gelding was a way to keep the salarymen away from High Family daughters, no more and no less. Kachos like Degrandpre were proud of their scars, but that was only because they had been bred to a life of glorified servitude.