Chapter 10

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All warnings from chapter 1 apply to this one too.

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"Let us go out," Iason says into Katze's hair. It feels good, he thinks, to hold him like that, pliable, close, unshielded – or at least that's what it seems, and Iason likes this particular illusion. It is strange to him to know and not wanting to know, and he can sense the tension inside him like a cold current.

"Out where?" Katze murmurs, his breathing warm against Iason's shoulder.

"Anywhere. I'll cover up."

A small laugh, and Katze pulls back a little to glance at Iason. "You couldn't hide to save your life. You're too tall, too-"

Too Elite. Too Other.

"I know," Iason says as he lets go of Katze. "Let's just pretend for a while.

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They drive through the night in silence, and soon they leave the city behind, Orange Road fading into nothing. The twin moons brighten the dark sky into a dusky purple, and high above, lonely in the night, shimmers the Star of Amoi. Below stretches the desert, drained of colour.

Katze is behind the wheel. He has shut down the autopilot, and Iason sits next to him, not in the back as usual. Katze is smoking, filling the car with the stink of cheap cigarettes. Iason lays his hand on Katze's thigh, stroking lightly.

"Dana Bahn," he says quietly as the dark mass of the old mining station rises from the pale desert landscape.

"I found this book," Katze says, ash dripping in showers of glowing and fading little flakes. "In the restricted section of the library. A handwritten paperbook."

"The Diary," Iason says.

"You know it?"

"It was written by an inventory that had been trained as a bio-engineer. He decided to throw away what he had and side with the mob that perished at the station." Iason doesn't use It as Raoul does. There is, however small, an acknowledgement that - he thinks - won't go unnoticed. A gesture so minute, a less attentive mind would miss it. Not Katze.

"I didn't know-"

"After Dana Bahn was resolved, Jupiter's Code was amended to prevent this kind of education. It is unsuitable for non-Elite and leads to trouble."

He knows he has hit a nerve because Katze makes no reply. The car hobbles on an air turbulence and rises to clear a heap of rubble. Roads are not needed anymore out here since hovercraft have become the transport of choice, and nobody has bothered repairing them. In the city – at least at Eos and the pleasure quarters – they are still a sign of prestige and a functioning urbanity.

Katze slides the side window open and tosses his spent cigarette butt out. It disappears like a dull shooting star.

"He calls it the Siege," he says, his voice cool and quiet over the hum of the engine. "I didn't know you were starving them out down there."

"They were given an opportunity to surrender. We were patient."

Katze's grip is tight on the leather-covered wheel. "In the slums," he says, keeping his eyes on the faded road, "you learn that there's two kinds of people – immediate enemies and potential ones. That's simple. It works in Eos too."

"But?"

"No but."

"Is it Raoul?"

Katze shrugs. "That's where stuff gets complicated. And you... you don't fit in anywhere."

The remark, offhand, an afterthought, cuts Iason to the quick. He thinks that maybe he's been too transparent, and that the kind of insight he notes in Katze is as dangerous as the knowledge now forbidden to non-Elite. He finds that he'd wished for Katze to acknowledge whatever they have. A chance, perhaps. Something positive at least. And he wonders whether Raoul has been right after all.

Xxx

Iason's wristphone hums, a persistent, distinctive sound, the frequency designed to bore into the most distracted mind.

Not now, he thinks, yanking the messy linens off the bed, throwing them on the floor. He lies down on the bare mattress and pulls Katze with him. His hands slide over Katze's body firmly, and he doesn't try to hide his hunger. "My name," he murmurs into Katze's kiss, "say it."

As in the shower, where he has watched Katze seek release while chanting and groaning...

"Iason," Katze grunts, clutching at Iason's biceps. "Iason..."

Iason rolls over, presses him onto his back and hovers over him, his hair shading Katze's face. "Let me," he demands, his voice tight with urgency.

Katze doesn't seem surprised, and he doesn't argue. Iason watches his eyes slide shut, lashes trembling, then open again, just a little as he leans in. Katze is still, his breathing barely there as Iason's lips touch his. There is no thunderclap, no storm of emotions. The moment is soft, like butterfly wings.

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Katze knows enough about this business to keep a shred of control, if only to not get hurt. He is guiding deftly, until Iason wraps him into a crushing embrace to hold him still. Iason has no patience, and Katze bites his shoulder to stifle a gasp as they become one.

Fresh heat burns through Iason with a small delay, starting as a knot in his stomach and gaining in intensity as it spreads through him, until it hits him – the second he meets Katze's gaze that all but sears him.

They have trespassed.

Amoi is as it has always been.

Jupiter remains silent in her hall.

Yet everything has changed, for in this moment their crime makes them equal, and Iason – instead of being mortified – feels a blast of relief he's not known before as he lets himself go at last. They fall, they spin, and they are no longer gentle. Iason rips Katze's clothes open and Katze claws into Iason's hair; they bite and kiss and grunt, tearing at each other. It takes seconds, eternities, for them to get naked. Iason has been a keen and precise observer, and what he lacks in practice, he makes up for with passion, long suppressed and finally given a vent.

Lust swamps him as they crash into one another; and there is nothing submissive in the way Katze yanks him close to kiss him, deeper, harder, teeth clicking; they're bruising each other as they hurtle towards a feverish release. Katze's nails leave bloodshot halfmoons on Iason's flushed skin as they slam together once more, and relief comes in white, silent waves. Splinters of oblivion sink into Iason's mind as the fire brightens and subsides a little at last. They're melted together, frozen in time, flesh and skin and sweat, as their breathing evens out and their pulse slows, until Katze groans and sags.

Iason keeps caressing him, painting wet patterns on the redhead's pale belly. A faint dusting of copper, silky to Iason's touch, trails from Katze's groin up the shallow ridge to his navel and fizzles out just below his chest. A thick stainless steel ring pierces Katze's bellybutton. It looks incongruous on his spare, sinuous body. Iason runs his fingers over Katze's ribs, counting in the rhythm of his breathing. He feels the textures of skin and flesh as he brushes over one firm dusky nipple and on over the prominent collarbone, tracing the sweep of a bony shoulder and taut upper arm.

He wonders, puzzled, how this act could be worth the risk they've taken, and at the same time it's screaming at him how he could ever have lived without it. Base, animal instinct overwhelming reason and culture, it has suffused him with a kind of pulsing energy that is new to him. He feels fresh and elated, ready to take on whatever stands in his way. The thought that something of him is now buried in Katze makes Iason's blood hum, and instead of sating his curiosity, it has only been stoked. He wants to do this again and again, until he feels that he has rooted himself too deeply to be dislodged. An idea dawns on him, something as shocking as it is simple, and he locks it where he thinks Jupiter cannot find it – that perhaps he has found the flaw in Jupiter's scheme. He does not want to think further yet, not then.

Katze's breathing deepens. Iason can feel his pulse jump and hear his heart thumping.

It is better than the shows. It is better than anything Eos has to offer. And beneath the bliss of the moment, Iason starts to resent Jupiter, for having taken this from her most privileged, most gifted creations. A machine, it drifts through his mind, how is this possible? He resents the doubts that have crept into his mind, and the idea that he, the most powerful man on Amoi, cannot reveal what he has done with Katze. Custom, law and reason forbid it; he's separated deeply by position and origin from Katze, a gulf that cannot be bridged. And as if a spotlight had been thrown at it, he can see it all at once now, black and white, in sharp contrast, every connection, every reason, the strings that weave the stiff, unyielding web that forms the structure of his world. And the last detail, the one that makes him feel cold inside – that he, like all Elite, is missing something every non-Elite on Amoi has, and that he is sharing it with the lowest creations on the planet, the ones coming from Raoul's lab. Created by the plan of a machine, he isn't born free.

xxx

Iason's buzzer goes off again, and this time he pulls back to take the call. It is an invitation to a business dinner with Raoul and other Elite. It is unexpected and, he thinks, surprisingly unwelcome. Yet the rank and wealth of the Elite concerned would make it rude to refuse even for Iason. Without wasting time on resenting it, he rises and starts getting ready.

He can feel Katze watching him, and in the mirrored walls of the room he can watch in turn – a myriad reflections of Katze's wiry body, sprawled out amid messy sheets, baring himself in a way that to Iason looks provocative, shameless, disgusting and curiously, overwhelmingly alluring all the same.

He shrugs into his black, high-collared shirt and begins to close the buttons. "What do you feel?" he asks into the stillness, one of the many questions that drift through his mind.

Katze wriggles his foot, reaches for a corner of the sheet and pulls it a bit higher by gripping it with his toes – not enough to cover his modesty, Iason notes, more to keep his legs warm. "What do you mean?" He sounds hoarse, sluggish, in need of a cigarette.

"What do you feel for me?" Iason specifies coolly, smoothing out the shirt.

Katze lets his head loll back, staring at his image in the ceiling mirror. "Gratitude, I guess," he returns lazily.

Iason continues to dress. His formal clothes look imposing but to get the effect right they have to be worn properly, and putting them on is a complex, boring and fiddly task. Hidden ties and covered buttons, padding, hooks and ribbons to hold things exactly in their allocated place – he recalls the lessons all Elite have to take to learn how to dress properly. He could have had a dresser, a status symbol that most Elite covet, and a job that for some of the highest-ranking ones is done by blue or red Elite. But Iason dislikes the idea of someone knowing him so intimately. He thinks of how Katze drags on his clothes in the blink of an eye. The comparison strikes him as odd.

"Is that all?" he asks, turning to look at Katze directly.

Katze shuffles back so he can lean against the headboard of the bed, hands relaxed by his sides. "I like you," he says, a touch unwilling. "Looks and all that." A small break, and then he adds, "You know, there's no point wasting time on this. I mean, trying to like an ice block is pointless, right? So I'm trying to be realistic."

Iason, in spite of himself, feels annoyed and amused at the same time. He decides to push this a little further and perhaps make Katze squirm and bare more than his body. "I am an ice block?"

Katze blushes wildly. "I didn't say that," he replies cautiously, and suddenly alert.

"Yes, you did." Iason reaches for his coat of office and drapes it over his arm. He enjoys this game of putting Katze on edge to make him drop his act. "Do you find me attractive?" he asks, and the way he says it sounds blunt rather than vain. A plain, straightforward question, free of pretenses.

Katze's throat bobs, and the red on his cheeks deepens, but his answer is prompt and almost challenging. "Yes."

"Is that why you let me do this? Sleep with you?"

"No."

Iason strokes the folds of the coat. He isn't wearing gloves yet, not even house gloves, and enjoys the way the soft wool caresses his skin. "Then why?"

Why are we not allowed this? Why do we comply?

Katze shrugs. He drags the sheet up over his stomach, covering himself at last. His gaze breaks away, erring across the room, before dropping. "Because I wanted it too. I had this idiotic idea when you asked me to help you with Noram's books-"

"I found you interesting."

"Sure."

"From the first moment you pushed your way past that old man."

Katze bites his lip. He plucks at a fold of fabric.

"I want you to teach me," Iason says calmly.

Katze doesn't look up. "What?" he queries sullenly.

"This thing you call feeling. Teach me how to feel."

Katze glances up, a half-smile on his lips, his eyes searching, incredulous. "It's nothing you can teach, or learn."

"Everything can be learned."

Katze shakes his head. "Iason..."

"Try me," Iason demands. "Affection – how do you recognise it?"

Katze leans over the edge of the bed, gathers his clothes, and gets up to get dressed too. Iason counts six seconds before Katze turns back to him, clad in his white house suit. "It's about signals. You'd look for a word, tone of voice, a glance... and touch. Most of all, touch. Like breaching a barrier."

He runs his hand through his hair that flares like a copper halo around his face, and then he laughs and moves to leave the room, but Iason catches his hand.

"Like this?"

Katze tries to yank it back. Iason is prepared and holds fast, easily. Katze's fingers clench into a tight fist. "It doesn't work with Elite," he retorts crossly. "Look, I've got work, and you've got this meeting. I'll be here if you need me."

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On to chapter 11.