You should not romanticize this outlaw life
When the scars have been shown and the tales have been told
I'm telling you - something's missing
Don't make no excuse to sing the blues
Calculating the cost and the things that you lost
You'll realize - love's gone missing
Pat Briscoe - Drifting
Nyli III, A Country Town
For all intents and purposes, Nyli III, one of the known Lorath territories, was a backwater. It was known to be in the right band, Goldilocks-wise to support life, and it was currently doing so already for a small number of species. The Matriarchy's plan was to turn the place into a nature reserve for Lorath species which were rescued during the Moon Drop to let their populations return to flourish.
To whit, a good portion of the population on the planet was Lmanel, being suited to keeping an eye on the animals, and working on cataloguing the biology of existing species and mapping the planet out. Not to say the other castes of Lorath didn't have their roles; Someone had to do the infrastructure and record keeping while someone else kept military presence and kept order after all.
In one such town on the grasslands, powered by a geothermal plant drawing at a hotspot about twenty miles out of town and not far from bushlands with eucalyptus, wattle and acacia; and paperbark tea trees amongst dense, dry grassland. All living in an odd ecosystem which required bushfires to occur periodically to renew the forest and make it grow back even stronger. It was on fire when the planet was catalogued, and as the town was established, it was growing back already.
Lorath animals meanwhile, especially the ey'tis, enjoyed how abundant it was. The effects of the pollen on them were being documented. It seemed to make them more drunk and dazed than anything, rather than onerous and territorial. There also seemed to be venomous snakes, and quite an abundance of spiders too - deadly ones.
Even the people living here had something to enjoy, making flour out of the wattle, and oils from the paperbark trees. It seemed to make a good skin oil and something to ease the mosquito bites. In a little cabin off the beaten path of town, past the treeline and built next to a creek, a hand swatted a mosquito on their arm.
The cabin itself wasn't much to write home about, but for the sole occupant, it was the only home they'd had for the past two years. Today, the sole occupant had to go into town to buy something. The batteries for their AM radio had fizzled out. Though he was 'off the grid' and scavenging and salvaging, the sole occupant had some things they simply couldn't salvage. Couldn't run the mains power through here after all - it'd give him away. He gathered some gemstones for trade, pocketed them and went walkabout to town.
It was a ten kilometre walk into town through the bush with tough wearing boots, stained jeans, a wide brimmed hat, a small backpack, and a flannel shirt. The man had a shopping list for on the way back, a multitool, and an analogue chronometer tuned to the planet's native time. Nothing like a morning stroll to get some air in your lungs. The person also offered their services as a general busybody and go-to for small jobs around town in exchange for pocket change and goods. Nobody knew their name though.
As he stepped into town, he knew the old lady Nir'no usually had something for him in exchange for fixing her satellite dish a few weeks back along with other tech tasks, while the local supermarket chain needed someone who didn't ask questions to help unload stock, and the bakery needed someone to take the leftover bread to be recycled, reprocessed or given to the livestock owner in town.
By the time he arrived, it was a pleasant mid morning, with the sun beating down and people moving around. He didn't make a show of moving through the main streets of town and instead walked through the back alleys, which were just dirt road with each building's arse end to the wilderness. He even saw a pack of imported ey'tis hopping around and chewing on the long grass.
He wove onto main street to get in front of the newsagents, entering with a chime.
"Oh, hi," a plucky Lmanel boy in his 30s behind the counter said, recognising the man without knowing his name as they walked past and towards a rack of tools and supplies. "Come for more work here or...?"
When the bushwhacker returned placed a twelve pack of AA batteries in a box down on the counter, some tobacco and a jerry can. "Just these, please," he said, voice sounding like it didn't get much use in years. A moment later he dropped some gemstones onto the bench as legal tender, the gems rolling on the counter, the apprentice shopkeeper swatting one before it rolled off the counter.
When the boy evaluated the gemstones, they squinted and looked aside into an unseen staff area. A vibrant, toxic-greenish gem about the size of a small fist. "Hey, ma, I don't recognise this."
A moment later, a Lmanel woman in her 70s walked into view, dressed modestly and examined the gemstone, clicking her tongue as she turned it over in her hands. "A twenty carat peridot this size?" she said, incredulous, looking back at the bushwhacker with amusement. "You don't need this for some batteries, tobacco and a jerry bottle, mate."
She pushed the fist-sized gemstone back to the whacker and crossed her arms. "What, you wanna buy the store too?" she asked as the bushwhacker was looking for something cheaper, producing some amethyst rods with silver bands on them, readily denoting value. "That's more like it," she said as she took the stones, and returned some change. "See ya. Thanks fer fixin' nanna's telly the other day, we get all the good channels now."
The bushwhacker didn't respond as he left the store with his gains. He did what he did best now in the park near the town square. Loiter, with a book, and roll himself some cigarettes with powdered duq skins and leaves in a plastic bag, interleaving the tobacco with them and making heedy rollies.
He'd found himself outside of some small coffee shop with a mug of something meant to be hot but with the time he'd taken, warm. A tall lilly like figure with a parasol, a long straw-hat and a pale slip-dress and synthetic sandals who was clearly out of place given all the southerners and dark chocolate auburn amber tones everywhere stepped in, the door ringing as she stepped inside.
She sat with a tall sundae of something, fishing into her pocket for a small paper-bag of unripened duqs, each resembling strawberries -- quite hard and very strong. She sat contentedly with a data-slate, dipping them through the cream, chewing and suckling on the fruit. It was nearly an hour before either she or... Keib acknowledged one another.
When the bushwhacker put a rollie in his mouth and flicked an old style fuel, flint, and steel lighter from Nepleslia open with a click to light it, he lifted his head up and the hat out of his eyes and saw the woman sitting far across from where he was. It couldn't have been. It couldn't have. Pervasive ey'tis, who probably breeds like the perverse little things too.
A stony glare from the man, bedraggled with a scraggly beard that covered most of his head and hair grown out and tied into a long pony tail, cleaned maybe once a week along with the beard. The radiation scar on his face, which he didn't have time to treat when he made his escape three years ago and slid under the radar, was the dead giveaway.
When nobody else was sitting at the tables in the coffee shop, and only they were left, the silence and history between the lady in the slip-dress and the hairy bushwhacker - or what he was before, could be collided with. He pulled his rollie out of his mouth and pointed it at her. "You," he said, blowing smoke out of his mouth.
She sat at what resembled the bar up on a tall stool; a leg perched over the other, milky fingers holding the small red fruit in her mouth as reddish eyes - her dead giveaway - stared back, framed in white. She hadn't taken off her long straw hat but her parasol sat up against the wood beneath. She blinked, lips wrapped as she bit down into the duq and chewed softly; she was not in the habit of answering a rhetorical statement with a question.
He tapped his rollie with an index finger to let some of the ash at the end fall onto the ground. "Guess under your nose works fer so long, hm?" He didn't sound like him, right now. The years had changed him on the run, adopting identities and staying ahead of both Lazarus and the Matriarchy in a goose chase that went to the Nepleslias and back.
Tipping the straw hat back some, she extended her other hand, offering him the remainder of the duq. It dripped pale pink clear liquid down her fingers as she watched, preferring to hold her tongue and read his expression. The man pointed to his rolled cigarette and shook his head.
She didn't seem to care, making a subtle wag of her wrist as she continued chewing on her half. In northern circles it wasn't a man's place to debate the offering of a woman though she didn't demonstrate any flavour of confusion, merely patience: She wasn't asking. The man frowned again, rubbing space under his right eyeball with his middle finger and staying where he was. He didn't feel like negotiating or moving, and the book he had on the table was up to a thrilling part too.
She was stoic now. Arm fixed. Eyes watching. He exhibited his own brand of stoicism, mostly stubbornness. A quality that was noted in his after-action report three years back.
Slowly, she began drawing her arm back, waiting for the rest of his sentence.
"I see you've been kissed by the sun," she replied, thumbing the fruit into her mouth, chewing -- only to lick at her knuckle, not interested in wasting any part of them.
"And you've still got a comfortable stone to live under," he chided back as the rollie was getting close to the filter, made from another rolling paper wrapped into a tight wad.
"They're better if you ingest them" she said, still suckling on the thing in her cheek.
"Much stronger."
He finished the rollie, dropped it onto the ground and scuffed it against the stone. "I prefer to keep my head clear," he said as he picked up the extinguished butt and put it in a rubbish pocket. "I can't just have the sensation of chewing duq out here streamed to me in the comfort of an apartment."
"You'd never do anything else?"
"Aside from having the Consortium's, and the Matriarchy's dicks rammed up my ass simultaneously, no," The man crossed his arms, looking up and showing the woman in white weary, slate grey eyes, "I wouldn't say I have plans in that state."
People seemed to be subconsciously avoiding the front of the cafe now, preferring to walk right inside or quicken their pace on the pavement. Only these two were stony enough to withstand the aura they'd created.
His pale friend seemed quite sanguine in spite of the mood, stirring her chilled cream and iced strangeness slowly into pale and pink tainted swirls in her glass with a long spoon with a tiny palm, held only in the tips of her fingers: her chin in the others, elbow making friends with the counter. The smile he knew but the canvas which wore it he didn't. A few years older. She'd grown.
"Sodomy doesn't seem like an ideal hobby for someone like you. You're not really built for it, are you?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Would've been preferable three years back," he looked down at the jerry can he'd bought, and grabbed it and stood up with it. "Cut to the chase," he said, scanning the horizon around this sleepy country town, which was no longer just sleepy, feeling dead.
"Sit down. Its just us."
"How can I trust you're alone?" He recalled a previous ambush.
She pointed upward toward the sky with her spoon, lips parting into a toothy smile. Her eyes never left his. For someone who was supposed to be older than him, she wore youth like a red scarf and adored every minute of this. He tipped the brim of his hat up and looked up, while one eye remained on her. Weird New Tur'lista quirk, that.
In the deep blue, a tiny glitter, just briefly as if she'd asked for it, winking in the ocean-sky above. The bushwhacker clicked his tongue. With the jerry can in hand, he stepped closer, and sat down across from the woman, putting the can down beside him as he put his hands on the table. He looked like shit this close up.
"Aiesu Kalopsia," he said.
"Mar'zhaz Keib" she smiled, eyes soft, like a memory or some long lost girlfriend.
Birds were singing. Quietly, but they were. Keib took off his hat and placed it on the table to her side. Aiesu remembered at the roots, his hair was black and he was only dying his hair white. Now, it'd grown out completely black, hair dye a luxury that couldn't be afforded. At the very tips, though there were streaks of white which hadn't washed out.
And the scar. Covering the left side of his face, he didn't stick around on Lor for the cosmetic surgery to repair the damage, and it'd consumed his flesh, becoming raw, taut, and stippled.
"You ah..." she started out, taking another plump duq again, into the cream and then her teeth - each probably worth more than most people would see in a month, eyes watching children playing by some great tree of a breed her training couldn't name given that she wasn't a botanist. She thought on what it would have been like, eyeing the gluttonous fruit in her fingers before she spoke.
"The commoner look suits you."
"Sunburnt and half dead, more like," he grabbed another rolly cigarette and his lighter from a front pocket, one he prepared earlier. He placed the filter end in his mouth. "What use do you have for a burnt up grape like me? Can't just be saying hello."
"Well, you're wine in the making for one" she smiled, finishing another duq -- sliding the paper bag over to him. Her face was still cradled in her hand, still watching. His eyes gazed lazily towards the bag while he thumbed his lighter open with one hand, and pulled the top of the bag down with his other fingers gently to peer at the contents.
They glistened. Each like bowling balls of warm heat, dotted and studded with tiny black shapes, rounded like pores into the body; widening like pears toward their bottoms, shining a dull glossy red like tomatos or peppers. The scent was sweet; a plastic tray catching what little juice they wept inside the paper bag.
"Well, we're going into some big beyond. We're not looking for a captain or anything, I just though it would be good for my own psychological makeup if I got some closure on this episode before proceeding with the mission."
Keib grabbed the bag and pulled it gently by the tray inside to his half of the table. "Tell me more," he said.
"Well... There's a lot of uncharted space nobody's willing to go anywhere near because of pirates everybody says but the real reason is mostly down to insurance: the telescopes say there's nothing interesting over there but... Well. Telescopes have lied to us before, haven't they?" Keib remembered what a telescope that saw the Mok'ro said about it, eyes looking past Aiesu as he sneered at the memory welling up.
"Sore point? Well, I'm going to be gone for a while. A higher function in the consortium said I should deal with my baggage and according to a construct screening you're baggage."
"Whoever told you to do that knows you too well," he sighed as he took some introductory puffs of his duq rollie. "I'm surprised people look out for you."
She was already reaching for the fruit again, becoming more liberal with the cream.
"Well, I'm a consultant. I am consulted. My consultation is only worth something provided the rest of me is still working. Apparently you left an impression on me... And a three million HS bill. I'm happy to foot the tab, but its out of character for me, sadly."
"Characters change, Aiesu."
"Oh they do, absoloutely. Absoloutely, which is why I'm here."
"In that case, can I have a word in private," he said, looking straight into her eyes, "with you?"
It took her a moment to work out what he meant - her own eyes gleaming back, laughing quietly to herself. She grew louder, hand hiding her mouth as her eyes squeezed shut, tittering as she tried to cool off. There'd been some wild misinterpretation on her part and she'd spelled it out rather than kept it to herself.
"Well, you never told me what MOTHER was, either, you promised."
"Agnosia," she replied.
"And I was jumping out a window with a bedsheet rope, yes." He said, misattributing the agnosia to her instead of getting the hint. "Couldn't stick around with the security."
When she didn't reply immediately, he blinked. "Could you be frank with me for a moment?"
"I can."
Keib adjusted his posture, sitting up and levelling his shoulders. "What is MOTHER, really?" All he knew, which he could still remember was 'artificial'.
"A mind." She replied. Keib tapped his temple with his index finger, running it in circles in front of his ear.
She frowned for the first time now. "How big?" Keib pushed.
"We don't know."
He looked at the ground now, taking his rollie out of his mouth and looking at her. He'd struck a nerve with her, perhaps the first, but it'd also pulled a chord in him. MOTHER, an intelligence, probably artificial, size unknown. Her frown was contagious. "Different subject." The flannel was fitting as he'd changed topics like a truck driver changes gears with a clunk. "If my bill's clear with the Matriarchy, probably means I can serve. Where did you say you were going again?"
"The outer darkness is what the pen pushers call it.. Out past the northern colonies and the Gartagen territories. We're probably going to use Biesi as a staging ground."
"I mean the ship, the captain, the mission, Aiesu," he said.
"We don't have a name yet, but the vessel is a new classification designed specifically for the mission. The mission itself is self-governed; the captain's perogative as to duration, longevity, when to pull back. The Matriarchy is invested heavily but on a technical basis, its primarily a consortium venture, though with very little meddling on our part."
"What we've seen has asked some difficult questions. With his mission, we want an answer."
He looked over to the bag of duqs on the side and peered into it. One of those looked mighty tasty right now: But soft, there were still questions. "I am pretty good at answering questions, however catastrophic," he snerked, taking what happened in his stride for once. He looked up before Aiesu could speak. "Not as captain, fuck that."
"You're saying you're interested in the mission?"
"Desk job in space, I'm hoping."
"Your desk would be in unknown territory."
"Speaking of unknown territory, how much mileage did you get out of Merril?" He asked, putting his fingers above his head like cat's ears.
"She's still with us. I can't say much more than that."
"Did you know that if you massage her like this," he said, putting his hands forward into an imaginary back, "with a New Tur'lista, it makes her-"
Aiesu tilted her head some. She let a pale leg slide down beneath the table, lifting the other to prop it ontop as she switched them over.
"Her...?"
He made a little explosion sound with his mouth, grinning, "Pooughf~"
She visibly flinched.
"She asked for a massage before becoming a crazy frame-sized house cat, just before the Mok'ro mission started. I gave her one," he said.
"Wishing you had bigger hands? Or maybe..." her smile returned.
"Just for your ladies to know if she gets all wound up. Offer her one," he made finger guns at her, "say Keib told you."
"Actually, she's eaten four constructs. My model, specifically. I don't care to meet her again."
His smile faded. Oh well, at least he could count on her to be beastly. "Sounds like her. Anyway, this ship. Get me on it, maybe a science position. I've survived a first contact scenario with a hostile being and few casualties, still got that feather in my cap."
"What makes you think you're in any position to be begging?" she smiled, sweetly again.
"I dare you to find someone else with the skills who won't work for basically free."
She was about to open her mouth. "Constructs and AI don't count."
"I'll think about it: You're baggage. Why would I want you on the boat?"
Her leg brushed up against his under the table. Not a little girl any more. Keib's leg recoiled - it'd been a long time since anyone had touched him there. It was a strange feeling, like seeing your niece go from being small enough to fit inside the dryer to being big enough to know not to put the family pet there, among other things.
And on Lor, what happened between an uncle and his niece was their business and nobody else's. "Because we're not going to get everything resolved between us over duqs and small talk here," he said. He wasn't really in the baggage department, if anything it got lost in transit. "Maybe I'm just crazy for something to do rather than stewing in my own juices and looking over my shoulder like an overripe duq."
"Fine" she said. Eyes still. Forward. Cold for just a moment before she began stirring her cream.
"Is there anything else you'd like to discuss?" she asked. Keib looked away and shrugged his shoulders. To be honest, he didn't feel like regaling her with all the ways he eluded hers and the Matriarchy's notice for three years - only a sucker told you how they did it. He saw some ey'tis in a field rolling around and ... getting busy.
Her gaze followed his, eyeing the action in the distance. Slow breaths, remembering she was breathing the same air, thanking herself for being a construct with her synthetic mind, sealed off from the whims of her body as she shifted her leg again, feeling an uncomfortable heat in her belly.
And then he asked her.
"Wanna fuck?" He spent too much time around Nepleslians, eyes on the canoodling ey'tis.
She flinched, visibly surprised by his statement, her glass clinking as if he'd just shouted at her with such quiet words. Her cheeks became warm and pink as capillary response followed, her unnatural control fighting it as white returned. Her lips folding into an unsure smile, flattered and seriously contemplating it - knowing that if he knew it affected them, then...
"Excuse me?"
Keib clarified by making his left index finger and thumb into an O, and pointing through it.
"Let's face it, its one way to deal with baggage, especially out here in the bush," he said, having walked past plenty of bouncy Lmanel of various ages having a shag in secluded groves and grottoes in the trees, by chance.
"Here?? Now?!" she stammered. Furry, unplucked eyebrows wiggled at her in response.
When the scars have been shown and the tales have been told
I'm telling you - something's missing
Don't make no excuse to sing the blues
Calculating the cost and the things that you lost
You'll realize - love's gone missing
Pat Briscoe - Drifting
Nyli III, A Country Town
For all intents and purposes, Nyli III, one of the known Lorath territories, was a backwater. It was known to be in the right band, Goldilocks-wise to support life, and it was currently doing so already for a small number of species. The Matriarchy's plan was to turn the place into a nature reserve for Lorath species which were rescued during the Moon Drop to let their populations return to flourish.
To whit, a good portion of the population on the planet was Lmanel, being suited to keeping an eye on the animals, and working on cataloguing the biology of existing species and mapping the planet out. Not to say the other castes of Lorath didn't have their roles; Someone had to do the infrastructure and record keeping while someone else kept military presence and kept order after all.
In one such town on the grasslands, powered by a geothermal plant drawing at a hotspot about twenty miles out of town and not far from bushlands with eucalyptus, wattle and acacia; and paperbark tea trees amongst dense, dry grassland. All living in an odd ecosystem which required bushfires to occur periodically to renew the forest and make it grow back even stronger. It was on fire when the planet was catalogued, and as the town was established, it was growing back already.
Lorath animals meanwhile, especially the ey'tis, enjoyed how abundant it was. The effects of the pollen on them were being documented. It seemed to make them more drunk and dazed than anything, rather than onerous and territorial. There also seemed to be venomous snakes, and quite an abundance of spiders too - deadly ones.
Even the people living here had something to enjoy, making flour out of the wattle, and oils from the paperbark trees. It seemed to make a good skin oil and something to ease the mosquito bites. In a little cabin off the beaten path of town, past the treeline and built next to a creek, a hand swatted a mosquito on their arm.
The cabin itself wasn't much to write home about, but for the sole occupant, it was the only home they'd had for the past two years. Today, the sole occupant had to go into town to buy something. The batteries for their AM radio had fizzled out. Though he was 'off the grid' and scavenging and salvaging, the sole occupant had some things they simply couldn't salvage. Couldn't run the mains power through here after all - it'd give him away. He gathered some gemstones for trade, pocketed them and went walkabout to town.
It was a ten kilometre walk into town through the bush with tough wearing boots, stained jeans, a wide brimmed hat, a small backpack, and a flannel shirt. The man had a shopping list for on the way back, a multitool, and an analogue chronometer tuned to the planet's native time. Nothing like a morning stroll to get some air in your lungs. The person also offered their services as a general busybody and go-to for small jobs around town in exchange for pocket change and goods. Nobody knew their name though.
As he stepped into town, he knew the old lady Nir'no usually had something for him in exchange for fixing her satellite dish a few weeks back along with other tech tasks, while the local supermarket chain needed someone who didn't ask questions to help unload stock, and the bakery needed someone to take the leftover bread to be recycled, reprocessed or given to the livestock owner in town.
By the time he arrived, it was a pleasant mid morning, with the sun beating down and people moving around. He didn't make a show of moving through the main streets of town and instead walked through the back alleys, which were just dirt road with each building's arse end to the wilderness. He even saw a pack of imported ey'tis hopping around and chewing on the long grass.
He wove onto main street to get in front of the newsagents, entering with a chime.
"Oh, hi," a plucky Lmanel boy in his 30s behind the counter said, recognising the man without knowing his name as they walked past and towards a rack of tools and supplies. "Come for more work here or...?"
When the bushwhacker returned placed a twelve pack of AA batteries in a box down on the counter, some tobacco and a jerry can. "Just these, please," he said, voice sounding like it didn't get much use in years. A moment later he dropped some gemstones onto the bench as legal tender, the gems rolling on the counter, the apprentice shopkeeper swatting one before it rolled off the counter.
When the boy evaluated the gemstones, they squinted and looked aside into an unseen staff area. A vibrant, toxic-greenish gem about the size of a small fist. "Hey, ma, I don't recognise this."
A moment later, a Lmanel woman in her 70s walked into view, dressed modestly and examined the gemstone, clicking her tongue as she turned it over in her hands. "A twenty carat peridot this size?" she said, incredulous, looking back at the bushwhacker with amusement. "You don't need this for some batteries, tobacco and a jerry bottle, mate."
She pushed the fist-sized gemstone back to the whacker and crossed her arms. "What, you wanna buy the store too?" she asked as the bushwhacker was looking for something cheaper, producing some amethyst rods with silver bands on them, readily denoting value. "That's more like it," she said as she took the stones, and returned some change. "See ya. Thanks fer fixin' nanna's telly the other day, we get all the good channels now."
The bushwhacker didn't respond as he left the store with his gains. He did what he did best now in the park near the town square. Loiter, with a book, and roll himself some cigarettes with powdered duq skins and leaves in a plastic bag, interleaving the tobacco with them and making heedy rollies.
He'd found himself outside of some small coffee shop with a mug of something meant to be hot but with the time he'd taken, warm. A tall lilly like figure with a parasol, a long straw-hat and a pale slip-dress and synthetic sandals who was clearly out of place given all the southerners and dark chocolate auburn amber tones everywhere stepped in, the door ringing as she stepped inside.
She sat with a tall sundae of something, fishing into her pocket for a small paper-bag of unripened duqs, each resembling strawberries -- quite hard and very strong. She sat contentedly with a data-slate, dipping them through the cream, chewing and suckling on the fruit. It was nearly an hour before either she or... Keib acknowledged one another.
When the bushwhacker put a rollie in his mouth and flicked an old style fuel, flint, and steel lighter from Nepleslia open with a click to light it, he lifted his head up and the hat out of his eyes and saw the woman sitting far across from where he was. It couldn't have been. It couldn't have. Pervasive ey'tis, who probably breeds like the perverse little things too.
A stony glare from the man, bedraggled with a scraggly beard that covered most of his head and hair grown out and tied into a long pony tail, cleaned maybe once a week along with the beard. The radiation scar on his face, which he didn't have time to treat when he made his escape three years ago and slid under the radar, was the dead giveaway.
When nobody else was sitting at the tables in the coffee shop, and only they were left, the silence and history between the lady in the slip-dress and the hairy bushwhacker - or what he was before, could be collided with. He pulled his rollie out of his mouth and pointed it at her. "You," he said, blowing smoke out of his mouth.
She sat at what resembled the bar up on a tall stool; a leg perched over the other, milky fingers holding the small red fruit in her mouth as reddish eyes - her dead giveaway - stared back, framed in white. She hadn't taken off her long straw hat but her parasol sat up against the wood beneath. She blinked, lips wrapped as she bit down into the duq and chewed softly; she was not in the habit of answering a rhetorical statement with a question.
He tapped his rollie with an index finger to let some of the ash at the end fall onto the ground. "Guess under your nose works fer so long, hm?" He didn't sound like him, right now. The years had changed him on the run, adopting identities and staying ahead of both Lazarus and the Matriarchy in a goose chase that went to the Nepleslias and back.
Tipping the straw hat back some, she extended her other hand, offering him the remainder of the duq. It dripped pale pink clear liquid down her fingers as she watched, preferring to hold her tongue and read his expression. The man pointed to his rolled cigarette and shook his head.
She didn't seem to care, making a subtle wag of her wrist as she continued chewing on her half. In northern circles it wasn't a man's place to debate the offering of a woman though she didn't demonstrate any flavour of confusion, merely patience: She wasn't asking. The man frowned again, rubbing space under his right eyeball with his middle finger and staying where he was. He didn't feel like negotiating or moving, and the book he had on the table was up to a thrilling part too.
She was stoic now. Arm fixed. Eyes watching. He exhibited his own brand of stoicism, mostly stubbornness. A quality that was noted in his after-action report three years back.
Slowly, she began drawing her arm back, waiting for the rest of his sentence.
"I see you've been kissed by the sun," she replied, thumbing the fruit into her mouth, chewing -- only to lick at her knuckle, not interested in wasting any part of them.
"And you've still got a comfortable stone to live under," he chided back as the rollie was getting close to the filter, made from another rolling paper wrapped into a tight wad.
"They're better if you ingest them" she said, still suckling on the thing in her cheek.
"Much stronger."
He finished the rollie, dropped it onto the ground and scuffed it against the stone. "I prefer to keep my head clear," he said as he picked up the extinguished butt and put it in a rubbish pocket. "I can't just have the sensation of chewing duq out here streamed to me in the comfort of an apartment."
"You'd never do anything else?"
"Aside from having the Consortium's, and the Matriarchy's dicks rammed up my ass simultaneously, no," The man crossed his arms, looking up and showing the woman in white weary, slate grey eyes, "I wouldn't say I have plans in that state."
People seemed to be subconsciously avoiding the front of the cafe now, preferring to walk right inside or quicken their pace on the pavement. Only these two were stony enough to withstand the aura they'd created.
His pale friend seemed quite sanguine in spite of the mood, stirring her chilled cream and iced strangeness slowly into pale and pink tainted swirls in her glass with a long spoon with a tiny palm, held only in the tips of her fingers: her chin in the others, elbow making friends with the counter. The smile he knew but the canvas which wore it he didn't. A few years older. She'd grown.
"Sodomy doesn't seem like an ideal hobby for someone like you. You're not really built for it, are you?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Would've been preferable three years back," he looked down at the jerry can he'd bought, and grabbed it and stood up with it. "Cut to the chase," he said, scanning the horizon around this sleepy country town, which was no longer just sleepy, feeling dead.
"Sit down. Its just us."
"How can I trust you're alone?" He recalled a previous ambush.
She pointed upward toward the sky with her spoon, lips parting into a toothy smile. Her eyes never left his. For someone who was supposed to be older than him, she wore youth like a red scarf and adored every minute of this. He tipped the brim of his hat up and looked up, while one eye remained on her. Weird New Tur'lista quirk, that.
In the deep blue, a tiny glitter, just briefly as if she'd asked for it, winking in the ocean-sky above. The bushwhacker clicked his tongue. With the jerry can in hand, he stepped closer, and sat down across from the woman, putting the can down beside him as he put his hands on the table. He looked like shit this close up.
"Aiesu Kalopsia," he said.
"Mar'zhaz Keib" she smiled, eyes soft, like a memory or some long lost girlfriend.
Birds were singing. Quietly, but they were. Keib took off his hat and placed it on the table to her side. Aiesu remembered at the roots, his hair was black and he was only dying his hair white. Now, it'd grown out completely black, hair dye a luxury that couldn't be afforded. At the very tips, though there were streaks of white which hadn't washed out.
And the scar. Covering the left side of his face, he didn't stick around on Lor for the cosmetic surgery to repair the damage, and it'd consumed his flesh, becoming raw, taut, and stippled.
"You ah..." she started out, taking another plump duq again, into the cream and then her teeth - each probably worth more than most people would see in a month, eyes watching children playing by some great tree of a breed her training couldn't name given that she wasn't a botanist. She thought on what it would have been like, eyeing the gluttonous fruit in her fingers before she spoke.
"The commoner look suits you."
"Sunburnt and half dead, more like," he grabbed another rolly cigarette and his lighter from a front pocket, one he prepared earlier. He placed the filter end in his mouth. "What use do you have for a burnt up grape like me? Can't just be saying hello."
"Well, you're wine in the making for one" she smiled, finishing another duq -- sliding the paper bag over to him. Her face was still cradled in her hand, still watching. His eyes gazed lazily towards the bag while he thumbed his lighter open with one hand, and pulled the top of the bag down with his other fingers gently to peer at the contents.
They glistened. Each like bowling balls of warm heat, dotted and studded with tiny black shapes, rounded like pores into the body; widening like pears toward their bottoms, shining a dull glossy red like tomatos or peppers. The scent was sweet; a plastic tray catching what little juice they wept inside the paper bag.
"Well, we're going into some big beyond. We're not looking for a captain or anything, I just though it would be good for my own psychological makeup if I got some closure on this episode before proceeding with the mission."
Keib grabbed the bag and pulled it gently by the tray inside to his half of the table. "Tell me more," he said.
"Well... There's a lot of uncharted space nobody's willing to go anywhere near because of pirates everybody says but the real reason is mostly down to insurance: the telescopes say there's nothing interesting over there but... Well. Telescopes have lied to us before, haven't they?" Keib remembered what a telescope that saw the Mok'ro said about it, eyes looking past Aiesu as he sneered at the memory welling up.
"Sore point? Well, I'm going to be gone for a while. A higher function in the consortium said I should deal with my baggage and according to a construct screening you're baggage."
"Whoever told you to do that knows you too well," he sighed as he took some introductory puffs of his duq rollie. "I'm surprised people look out for you."
She was already reaching for the fruit again, becoming more liberal with the cream.
"Well, I'm a consultant. I am consulted. My consultation is only worth something provided the rest of me is still working. Apparently you left an impression on me... And a three million HS bill. I'm happy to foot the tab, but its out of character for me, sadly."
"Characters change, Aiesu."
"Oh they do, absoloutely. Absoloutely, which is why I'm here."
"In that case, can I have a word in private," he said, looking straight into her eyes, "with you?"
It took her a moment to work out what he meant - her own eyes gleaming back, laughing quietly to herself. She grew louder, hand hiding her mouth as her eyes squeezed shut, tittering as she tried to cool off. There'd been some wild misinterpretation on her part and she'd spelled it out rather than kept it to herself.
"Well, you never told me what MOTHER was, either, you promised."
"Agnosia," she replied.
"And I was jumping out a window with a bedsheet rope, yes." He said, misattributing the agnosia to her instead of getting the hint. "Couldn't stick around with the security."
When she didn't reply immediately, he blinked. "Could you be frank with me for a moment?"
"I can."
Keib adjusted his posture, sitting up and levelling his shoulders. "What is MOTHER, really?" All he knew, which he could still remember was 'artificial'.
"A mind." She replied. Keib tapped his temple with his index finger, running it in circles in front of his ear.
She frowned for the first time now. "How big?" Keib pushed.
"We don't know."
He looked at the ground now, taking his rollie out of his mouth and looking at her. He'd struck a nerve with her, perhaps the first, but it'd also pulled a chord in him. MOTHER, an intelligence, probably artificial, size unknown. Her frown was contagious. "Different subject." The flannel was fitting as he'd changed topics like a truck driver changes gears with a clunk. "If my bill's clear with the Matriarchy, probably means I can serve. Where did you say you were going again?"
"The outer darkness is what the pen pushers call it.. Out past the northern colonies and the Gartagen territories. We're probably going to use Biesi as a staging ground."
"I mean the ship, the captain, the mission, Aiesu," he said.
"We don't have a name yet, but the vessel is a new classification designed specifically for the mission. The mission itself is self-governed; the captain's perogative as to duration, longevity, when to pull back. The Matriarchy is invested heavily but on a technical basis, its primarily a consortium venture, though with very little meddling on our part."
"What we've seen has asked some difficult questions. With his mission, we want an answer."
He looked over to the bag of duqs on the side and peered into it. One of those looked mighty tasty right now: But soft, there were still questions. "I am pretty good at answering questions, however catastrophic," he snerked, taking what happened in his stride for once. He looked up before Aiesu could speak. "Not as captain, fuck that."
"You're saying you're interested in the mission?"
"Desk job in space, I'm hoping."
"Your desk would be in unknown territory."
"Speaking of unknown territory, how much mileage did you get out of Merril?" He asked, putting his fingers above his head like cat's ears.
"She's still with us. I can't say much more than that."
"Did you know that if you massage her like this," he said, putting his hands forward into an imaginary back, "with a New Tur'lista, it makes her-"
Aiesu tilted her head some. She let a pale leg slide down beneath the table, lifting the other to prop it ontop as she switched them over.
"Her...?"
He made a little explosion sound with his mouth, grinning, "Pooughf~"
She visibly flinched.
"She asked for a massage before becoming a crazy frame-sized house cat, just before the Mok'ro mission started. I gave her one," he said.
"Wishing you had bigger hands? Or maybe..." her smile returned.
"Just for your ladies to know if she gets all wound up. Offer her one," he made finger guns at her, "say Keib told you."
"Actually, she's eaten four constructs. My model, specifically. I don't care to meet her again."
His smile faded. Oh well, at least he could count on her to be beastly. "Sounds like her. Anyway, this ship. Get me on it, maybe a science position. I've survived a first contact scenario with a hostile being and few casualties, still got that feather in my cap."
"What makes you think you're in any position to be begging?" she smiled, sweetly again.
"I dare you to find someone else with the skills who won't work for basically free."
She was about to open her mouth. "Constructs and AI don't count."
"I'll think about it: You're baggage. Why would I want you on the boat?"
Her leg brushed up against his under the table. Not a little girl any more. Keib's leg recoiled - it'd been a long time since anyone had touched him there. It was a strange feeling, like seeing your niece go from being small enough to fit inside the dryer to being big enough to know not to put the family pet there, among other things.
And on Lor, what happened between an uncle and his niece was their business and nobody else's. "Because we're not going to get everything resolved between us over duqs and small talk here," he said. He wasn't really in the baggage department, if anything it got lost in transit. "Maybe I'm just crazy for something to do rather than stewing in my own juices and looking over my shoulder like an overripe duq."
"Fine" she said. Eyes still. Forward. Cold for just a moment before she began stirring her cream.
"Is there anything else you'd like to discuss?" she asked. Keib looked away and shrugged his shoulders. To be honest, he didn't feel like regaling her with all the ways he eluded hers and the Matriarchy's notice for three years - only a sucker told you how they did it. He saw some ey'tis in a field rolling around and ... getting busy.
Her gaze followed his, eyeing the action in the distance. Slow breaths, remembering she was breathing the same air, thanking herself for being a construct with her synthetic mind, sealed off from the whims of her body as she shifted her leg again, feeling an uncomfortable heat in her belly.
And then he asked her.
"Wanna fuck?" He spent too much time around Nepleslians, eyes on the canoodling ey'tis.
She flinched, visibly surprised by his statement, her glass clinking as if he'd just shouted at her with such quiet words. Her cheeks became warm and pink as capillary response followed, her unnatural control fighting it as white returned. Her lips folding into an unsure smile, flattered and seriously contemplating it - knowing that if he knew it affected them, then...
"Excuse me?"
Keib clarified by making his left index finger and thumb into an O, and pointing through it.
"Let's face it, its one way to deal with baggage, especially out here in the bush," he said, having walked past plenty of bouncy Lmanel of various ages having a shag in secluded groves and grottoes in the trees, by chance.
"Here?? Now?!" she stammered. Furry, unplucked eyebrows wiggled at her in response.
