The Seeds of Time (33 page)

“Take off your clothes,” he said, standing there, looking down at her.

Pitiful, Christ, so pitiful. So fucking predictable. What desire can do to you. Power came from not wanting anything; if you don’t want anything, you become superhuman. Nice thing to know. Now that it was too late. Clio unbuttoned her shirt rather more slowly than she had to. Pulled it back off her shoulders, sleeves still on, exposing her breasts, leaning back on her arms, arching her chest a bit. “Come here, soldier,” she said. She pulled on his belt, until he was kneeling in front of her. She kissed him, long and expertly.

When she pushed him away, his eyes were leaking all their desire.

“Here’s how it works,” she began, trying to punch up her voice into the feeling range.

“I can give you what you want. Everything you want, and some things you never knew you wanted.” She ran her hands down his torso to his crotch, and leaned forward to flick her tongue at his mouth. Leaned back. Pushed him gently back as he leaned in toward her.

“But not today.” Her voice dropped its sensual cloak, hardened. “See, today is Monday. Monday is the captain’s day. He likes me clean for him, so you don’t want your initiation today.” She looked into his eyes and smiled. “Trust me.”

“Tuesday is A Shift, those that don’t piss off Ferris. He’s lead worker. Wednesday is B Shift, Niemeyer takes care of that lineup. You beginning to catch the pattern here?” The rolling cold wave had passed through her chest
and was moving up through her throat, making her spew out her words as sweetly spiteful as she could. “Thursday is the captain’s office staff. Friday the maintenance crew. The shifts don’t think much of the cleaning grunts getting me, but I like to keep things fair. Saturday is lottery day, they do a gambling pool, one winner, he spends the night. Or she, if so inclined.”

Clio started buttoning her shirt. “You’re C Shift. So you get your turn on Wednesday.” She lay down on the bed, the grip of spite passing from her suddenly, leaving her tired, unimaginably tired.

The guard’s face was struggling to find an expression. Disappointment won out. “What about Sunday?” he asked, looking down at her long, perfect body.

“Day off.”

He watched her another moment, then turned to go.

“Oh, one more thing,” Clio said.

He turned back. Behind him, Clio’s scrawny roommates didn’t bother to suppress their delighted sneers.

“You bring me a gift. When you come on Wednesday. I’m in the mood for a half-pound bag of powdered milk. And, since it’s your first time, a blanket.” She closed her eyes, dismissing him.

He shuffled to the door.

“Oh, about the blanket.”

He stopped a moment, not turning around.

“Make sure it’s clean.”

When she heard the door creak shut, Clio knew he’d gone.

“Fucking A,” someone said in the gloom.

A baby began to cry. Clio turned over toward the wall, her chest now empty of bile.
So, I
am
still alive. Goddamn, anyway
.

A hand on her shoulder. “Clio.” It was Loren. “Clio, God, Clio thank you.” He rested his forehead on her shoulder.

“How’s the baby doing?”

“He’s not doing so good. Rita still doesn’t have her milk. The baby won’t suck.”

“Maybe the powdered milk is helping.”

“Helping?” Loren gripped her shoulder as he pulled his head back. “It’s the only thing that’s keeping him alive.”

“We’ll have more on Wednesday.”

“Clio.” Here a long pause. “I wish … Rita and I wish you didn’t have to do this. We don’t expect it. It’s hellish, a nightmare. But we owe you the baby’s life. I’d do anything for you, Clio, anything. I’d die for you, just ask.” His voice wavered into tears.

Clio propped herself up on her elbows. Pinned him with her gaze. “Get real, Loren. I’m not doing this for you or the damn baby. I don’t know anything about kids or babies. You think I’m going to turn myself into a fucking machine for a guy who’s too dumb to get his politics right?” Loren winced at the foul language. “Tell you why I do this, you think I want to be hauled out of here on some crazed asshole’s whim and raped and beaten? Think I want to get gang-banged in the guards’ quarters, with the dummies cheering the sadists on?” Clio watched as Loren’s face became more and more horrified. She softened a bit, but not much. It was the truth, let him hear it. You get too soft, you die. You love somebody, they’re ransom against you. He didn’t need to love her. Love was a liability where they were.
Toughen up, Loren. Learn how it is
. “Think I can let some pimply eighteen-year-old guard control my body, control me? I may not have much left, but what I got, I’m keeping.”

Loren’s eyes were moist and a faint smile tugged at his lips. The baby’s squalls cranked up in volume.

Clio managed a scowl, and pushed him away. “Jesus, can’t you stop that brat from screaming?”

Loren squeezed her arm and stood up, moved back to his cot.

The screams pierced her aching head like nails. She closed her eyes, saw it again. The Amazon jungle bush looming up before her as she and Russo and Zee crashed through it, the drumming whacks of helicopters beating the air, villagers screaming as the gases seared their lungs. The smell, the smell that burned her face, ripped her nose,
throat. Tripping, elbows in the wet mush of jungle floor, mud clinging to her hands in clumps, and she, staggering on with monkeys joining the chorus of screams. Heard her own sobs, “God, oh God, you bastards, you killing bastards.…”

Opened her eyes on a plate of cheese, part of an apple. Loren sat next to her, his large brown eyes urging her to eat.

Clio turned her face, her stomach squirming. “Got some of that tea? The stuff that smells like raspberries?”

Loren bustled off. On the next bunk, Ed Coombs stared at the plate of cheese with a baleful eye. Clio put the plate of cheese on the floor between them.

“I can’t reach,” he said, his voice spun thin as the throat cancer invaded his esophagus.

“You gotta make some effort, Ed. You look like you’re giving up, sometimes.”

Ed leaned over. His hand stopped in midreach as a pale larva dropped from the ceiling onto the plate. Ed watched it inch its way toward the cheese. “I can’t,” he said.

Clio leaned over and flicked the grub away.

Ed looked queasy. “Piranha larva,” he said.

“They gotta live too,” Clio said.

“Live? They’ll outlive us all. Few years, they’re all that’s left.”

“Come on, Ed.”

“It’s true. It’s all part of the food chain. First the trees went. Without their habitat, the birds go. Without their predators, the insects reign. Insects are the only ones that are adapting. The rest of us poor bastards …”

“… are going to kick ass on these bugs,” Clio finished. She flicked another grub away as it dropped onto the plate from a nest in the ceiling.

Ed snorted. “Yeah. And the world is flat. And angels dance on the heads of pins. And UV radiation isn’t cooking us to death …” He broke off, coughing.

Clio saw Loren coming back and snatched two pieces of cheese, pressing them into Ed’s fist. Ed swung slowly over to protect the cheese from Loren with his back.

Loren’s brow was creased. “Clio, it’s a waste. It’s a
waste to give food to those people.” He picked the plate up and laid it on the bed beside Clio, sat next to her.

“Ed hasn’t been hungry for days. I’m gonna tell him no?” She stared up at the upper bunk, arm under her head. “He used to be a computer programmer. For Nintendo. In the time before. Raised—what do you call them—dahlias, won contests even. Drove an antique, some rare GM car, forget which. Always hunting the junkyard for parts. Found a kid living in one of those junked shells one time, took him home, they lived like father and son until DSDE came. His neighbors turned him in for Section Three, Deviant Lifestyle. Social and Drug Enforcement brought him here, along with the kid and his life partner. The kid died in a main-yard fight last month.”

Loren sighed, looking at the floor where the plate had been. “I know, Clio, but we’re all struggling to make it. Some of us are starving. Who’s going to live?”

“Not up to me to decide. Not up to you.”

Loren handed over a cup of cold herb tea.

Clio slurped at it. “Used to hate shit like this. Too healthy, no punch.” She inhaled the fragrance, raspberries, it was, with a faint dream holdover of ammonia and sulfur.

Loren watched her expression. “Not exactly the Sorrento. I’ll speak to the help.” Loren always called the barracks the Sorrento. Posh hotel, an outrageous wedding-night splurge.

“Yeah, do that. For what we pay, service sucks.”

He chuckled. Easy to amuse, was Loren. She looked down at the two remaining pieces of orange cheese. Took one, chewed it a long time. Need some go-power for tonight, girl. Chewed another. Pushed the plate away. “Not hungry.”

Loren pushed it back. “Eat anyway.”

“Son of a bitch, not hungry, OK?”

“No, not OK.” His motherly stance was ludicrous. Urging her on so she could work her night shift for him, for all of them in her barracks. Feeding the mule, and oh, the mule was tired.

“Cheese gives me bad breath.”

“That’s what the apple’s for.”

She ate the apple slice.

“Thanks.”

Loren beamed. “Compliments of the house.”

The barracks door slammed open. The pimply guard. Loren rolled his eyeballs, retreated to his cot.

The youngster stood in the doorway, staring down the occupants, daring someone to look at him. No one did. He strode over to Clio’s corner. Thrust a plastic grocery bag at her, twist-tied shut. Powdered milk, lots of it.

“Here’s your present.” He rocked back and forth on his heels, mouth set in a pout.

Clio took the bag, set it down on the bed without looking at it.

“I want you now,” he said.

“You’re early.”

“I can’t wait until Wednesday.”

Clio took a long sigh. “Today’s the captain’s. Told you.”

“He won’t know.”

“Yeah, he can tell.”

“Depends on how we do it.”

Clio shook her head. “He has spies.” She looked around the room. “Maybe even some of these. Probably are. Quarried folk who get special favors for ratting.” She smiled up at him. “Get lost, honey.”

He dove at her, smothering her with himself, his rancid breath. Yanked on her thick, short hair, trying to find her lips.

Clio murmured in his ear. “Want to know what happened last time somebody moved in on the captain? They used a nerve probe on his member. Heard the guy screaming all the way across the yard.”

He stopped thrashing on top of her. Tried thrusting at her a few more times. “Shit.” He swung his legs over the bunk. Raised his hand to strike, found himself firmly blocked by Clio’s grip.

“Bruises are off-limits too.” She raised her chin at him. “Captain likes his dates pretty.”

He nodded silently at her, over and over, like a windup mechanism. Finally said, “I’ll get you for this.”

“No, mister, you won’t get me for this. You’re going to be real nice. Learn the rules, learn some manners. Point here is, you want
me
to be nice to
you
. I can take you real high. But I got to be in a good mood.” She scowled at him. “Right now, I ain’t in a good mood. Now get the hell out of here.”

He pushed off the cot and fairly raced for the door. Crashed down the stairs outside.

Quiet sat in the room. A listening, waiting quiet.

A voice from the upper bunks said, “You go too far, Clio Finn.”

She snorted.
Too far? You can’t even imagine where I already been
.

Night sucked off the day, as the quarry grew dusky, then black. Moans and racking coughs pierced the dark barracks, marking the fatal course of the Sickness, while those who were uninfected cursed the disruptions of their sleep, cursed the baby’s cries. Clio strained to listen for the captain’s footsteps.

As the moon rose, the windows emitted a cool light. Clio stood by one, pressing her temple against the woodwork, squinting to see the prison yard through years of grime. Her nose grew cold near the glass. The temperature in the uninsulated barracks plunged.

At thirty degrees below it was too cold to snow. Three months of snow mounded around the backyard, disguising rocks, abandoned toys, frozen shrubs in a world of exotic alabaster. The day’s brief moments of sun had melted the thin top layer of snow, which, quick-frozen in the evening, now gleamed in the moonlight. Inspired by the beauty and fantastical landscape, Clio broke off a four-foot icicle dagger from the low eaves
.

“On guard!” she screamed at Petya, lunging forward with her sword, free hand waving behind and overhead like in the movies
.

Petya turned slowly, arms piled high with firewood. His eyes grew round in surprise
.

“Release that maiden, or I shall skewer you through and through!” She brandished the ice sword at his face
.

“Huh?”

“Release her, I say, or DIE!”

Petya carefully set the wood on the ground. He looked down at Clio from his six-foot height, prompting Clio to stand on tiptoe and raise the icicle high
.

“Mom will be mad if I don’t bring in the wood,” he said
.

Clio snorted. “So many have said, yet few have lived to repeat it! Make your prayers to your God and prepare to die, coward!”

Finally, Petya began to get it. They were playing, this was going to be a fun game. “Head them off at the pass,” he shouted loudly, but without expression
.

Clio grimaced. Wrong movie. “With this Sword of Power,” Clio declaimed, “I will vanquish all my lord’s enemies, and free the poor … and punish the rich. And you, my evil magician,” she said, advancing, icicle pointed at Petya’s chest, “shall be the first to DIE!” Petya’s arms flew up in surrender
.

Clio lowered her voice in an aside. “You can run, or something, because you’re really scared of me,” she said. Petya loved to play, but sometimes, in his serious childishness, he needed a little prompting. “First to DIE,” she repeated, menacing him
.

Petya’s hand came down on the sword, breaking it like it was an uncooked spaghetti noodle
.