51. Whispers in the Night
Look, Vix, Tren had said in the beginning, if you want this to happen, we've got to start doing things differently. You can't just show up at the factory and start making out with me. Think what you want about it, but I'm not going to be like your mom; if being with you means being known as 'the girl who sold out to become an Irken concubine', then you can just forget this whole thing.
So come to my complex, I had said. At night, in secret, or even during the day—you can tell them you're on some kind of special assignment.
No, she'd insisted. You want me, you come to me. Come to my barracks at night, when it's dark and everyone's asleep. If we're quiet and you don't stay too long, no one but Effa—no one who matters—will know you've been there.
So I came to her. Every night, no matter what else I had to do. I made time for her—time to head to her barracks when the grounds were quiet and the factories empty, stealing beneath the brightly-lit windows of the officers' compound, past Mum's statue in the square.
I passed my palm over the reader and lifted my chin at Effa, sitting sullenly on guard duty at one end of the barracks, unable to do anything but press her lips together and nod back. She sat in a small circle of light emanating from a disc on the wall, but beyond it the barracks were pitch black. Ten rows, ten bunk-columns each, and every bunk-column ten beds high. A thousand humans, all asleep except for one.
Well, not all. The barracks reminded me of a huge tin can on its side, and every noise made in it echoed; I heard sniffles and muffled sobs bouncing off of the walls as I padded down the rows, having doffed my boots at the door. Even some who were asleep cried out in their nightmares.
The sounds of the barracks were my friends, during those nights, as they camouflaged the creak of Tren's bed when I climbed in beside her, disappearing under the thin scratchy blanket and wriggling up to her side. I'd spoon up to her back, and wrap my arms around her, and slide my head into the crook of her neck—breathing her scent, feeling her hair tickle my nose—and eventually, she would roll over and concede to kiss me. Then, we would do one of two things.
Sometimes, we'd just talk. Quietly, in tones a shade softer than whispers, so that our voices wouldn't penetrate the barrier of the blanket pulled over our heads. I'd switch on one of my pak-mounted lights, dimmed down to almost nothing, so that we could just see each other in the darkness – the glimmer of an eye, the curve of a cheek.
"What is that thing, exactly?" she asked once of the tiny light, her face bathed in its blue glow. "The thing on your back, I mean. All of the Irkens I've seen wear them, but I never—I mean, is it just a glorified pocketknife or what?"
"It's a pak," I said, a bit at a loss to explain something I had always taken for granted. "It—uh—does things. Everything. It's how I can speak English to you even though I never learned it, how I can go without sleeping or eating for weeks at a time. Plus I think I might die without it, maybe. I'm not really sure. Everybody else would – everybody who's all the way Irken, anyway – but my mum never explained if I was the same."
"Seriously?" She snorted. "Wow. Sounds like the mighty Irken race isn't so mighty after all."
"I guess," I said shruggingly, willing to agree with anything so long as I was lying next to her.
Another night, she reached over and cradled my face in her hand, smoothing her thumb along my cheek. I felt her flinch, like she always did, when my scales retracted at her touch. "You're so weird-looking," she said musingly, and I wrinkled my nose.
"Uh, thanks?"
"Well, you are." She slid her thumb wanderingly over my jaw, and I realized I didn't care what she said, provided she said it while she touched me this way. "You're so human, but at the same time so…not." She paused to play a moment with a lock of my hair, hanging loose over my shoulders since I'd stopped wearing it in pigtails. She'd asked me not to, so as to distance me from the Irken scum, and I had agreed. "How does something like you even work?"
"Ask my mum. I'm not the one who made me."
Tren sort of sniffed at the notion, all the while exploring my face with her hand. "It must be weird, too, being you," she murmured, almost to herself. "Looking out from behind those eyes. Does everything look purple to you?"
I stifled laughter. "Uh, no. Does everything look like black-and-blue bullseyes to you?"
"Okay, so that was a dumb question," she admitted, rolling her eyes. "Still. I think I'd shit myself, if I looked in the mirror and saw your eyes."
"You really know how to give a girl a compliment, Tren."
"Oh, shut up." She leaned in and kissed me, bringing warmth to the cold mattress, the blanket that didn't keep out the chill of the barracks' steel walls. The taste of coconuts made me dizzy, smiley, half-drunk on happiness. When we pulled apart, I laid my head just an inch from hers on the pillow.
"You know," I said, intertwining our fingers (never more glad that I had four and not three, so that Tren's and mine laced up perfectly, and I felt every inch of the flower-petal skin stretched over her hands – the fine lines on her knuckles, the creases in her palms, the whorls of her fingerprints), "I've gotten lots of sideways looks throughout my life, but they were never about my eyes. People on the Massive used to think I was weird for having hair and ears and a nose, so…this is refreshing, I guess."
"That's another thing," she said grimly. "I can't even imagine being you—with them." She regarded me bitterly, with the same anger that always darkened her eyes whenever she talked about Irken anything. This time, at least, she wasn't angry at me. "How could you stand living like that? They must have been awful to you."
"Not really. They'd have liked to be, probably, but my mum wouldn't let them, and they all love her. I think they have to. Like, physically—they're kind of hardwired to. 'Cause she's so tall."
"Look, I'm sorry, Vix, but one of these nights you're going to have to figure out that every new thing you tell me about your mum just makes me hate her more." A scowl dug a deep groove between her eyes. "I don't understand. How could someone so horrible have raised someone as—well, as relatively okay as you?"
To me, Tren was a goddess, but relatively okay was the nicest way she'd ever described me. I ached with delight to hear it. "Mum isn't all horrible, you know," I mumbled into Tren's pillow. "They don't always do the nicest things, but she and Mom love each other, and they love me."
"People like them don't love anything or anyone. They only use and hurt people, and if they haven't yet, they'll hurt you too."
She pressed her lips to the place where my jaw met my neck, lingering there for a long while before speaking again. "You won't know what real love is," she whispered into my ear, "until you know what it is to be truly human."
I believe you, I wanted to say. I believe you. I'll believe anything you say, if we can stay like this forever. Instead, I was still and silent, blinking into her iridescent eyes. She carded her hand through my hair, and her nails combing my scalp sent shivers down my spine.
"You're such a funny color, too," she switched topics after a minute, cracking a grin. "Like a green bean. I bet you look just like one naked, huh?"
We'd never actually seen each other totally naked, even though one usually would be for—well, the thing we did when we weren't talking. It was hard enough as it was, with both of us wrapped up in the blanket, trying desperately not to make too much noise (not to mention that she was at least somewhat inexperienced, and I was completely new to the whole thing). We'd decided early on that undressing was too complex a maneuver for the space we were working with, and settled for what would be safe.
Which was still…oh, good seemed too small a word. True, it was awkward, the first time and lots of times after that; I didn't know where or how to touch her, and she started off not sure she even wanted to touch me. At first, I was just kind of pawing at her like an animal, shoving my hands and mouth here and there and everywhere, and she was wincing and taking me by the shoulders and pushing me away and hissing Vix, please. This is too weird.
She had to show me how to start from a kiss—how to move my hands from her face down to her neck, her shoulders, her breasts (who the fuck told you you should be calling them tits?) and undo the buttons of her jumpsuit, gently, without hurrying. How to caress instead of grabbing, explore instead of devouring. It was the most fun I'd ever had learning anything.
And when I did learn, things were better. I'm not talking about when Tren, having come around to the idea, slid her hand under the waistband of my leggings, and I felt some things I'd never felt before. That was nice, but it wasn't what I kept coming back for.
I came back for the part when I cupped her breasts in my hands and smoothed my thumbs over her nipples, when she sighed into the pillow while I kissed her neck, stroking the white triangle of skin exposed when her jumpsuit was unbuttoned halfway. When I journeyed lower and my fingers found the hot wet place between her legs, where a little part of me could inhabit a little part of her. When I made my fingers dance like she'd taught me, and she dug her teeth into her lip, and whimpered and pushed against my hand—that was the part good could never describe.
One night, a few blissful months after I'd first begun visiting the barracks, I had just begun to unbutton her jumpsuit when a small scrap of paper fluttered out onto the bed. "What's this?" I asked as I picked it up, curious.
"It's nothing. Don't—"
Before she could grab it and shove it back into her jumpsuit, I'd unfolded it, holding it close to the light. It was a battered square of paper no longer than my thumb, many times folded and unfolded, its colors greyed with age.
No—not just a piece of paper, a photograph, of a little human girl standing against a grey background. She had on a white sleeveless dress with a short poofy skirt, and matching white slippers. Her feet were planted heel-to-heel and spread apart, her arms positioned in front of her as if she were rocking a baby. She wore her blonde hair in a bun, and a big smile on her face.
"Who's this?" I asked, flipping it around to show her.
"My little sister." Tren snatched the photo and tucked it back into her jumpsuit, shooting me a glare. We lay there for a bit without speaking, without touching – her fingering the folded photo through her jumpsuit, staring at the mattress, and me praying I hadn't put her off being with me for the night.
"I had it on me when it happened," she said softly. "Can't even remember why, now. I managed to hide it while they were processing us, and I've kept it with me ever since."
"Oh." I tried to think of how to discuss the subject delicately, so that she wouldn't flip out like she had that day in my bedroom. "Why was she standing so funny?"
"It's a ballet position. We used to dance, both of us; that photo is from Picture Day at the studio we went to." That made sense, I thought. I'd always figured Tren for a dancer, with the fluid grace of every move she made; I looked at her and thought of milk poured from a long-necked jug.
"She was six, I think, when that picture was taken," she went on, after a deep, shuddering breath. "Her birthday was in November. Whenever it comes around—when I think it must have come around—I wonder what she would look like if she were alive."
I didn't know what to say. All I could do was lie there and blink at her, lost for words, as she scrubbed at one eye with her fist. "But it's better this way," she said, with renewed fierceness. "She's better off dead. I wouldn't want her to—to have to live like this—"
She sort of choked and fell silent, trembling, her eyes glistening. I wasn't sure what else to do, so after a minute I reached out to her and began where we had left off – undoing the buttons of her jumpsuit, gently, without hurrying. She sniffed and scooted closer to me.
When it was over – when she'd offered up her last spasm against me, hugged and reslicked my fingers, gasped into the crook of my neck – and we lay tangled up together, I thought I felt the cool patter of her tears on my neck. But I didn't say anything, or pull back to look. I just crushed a kiss into her hair as I stroked it, inhaling the smell of meadowgrass.
The next thing I knew, light was shining through the blanket, and my ears were filled with the sounds of feet. Feet shuffling amid blankets and swinging from the edges of beds, feet clanging on ladder rungs, feet thunking on a cement floor.
As I stirred, blinked about – registering the mattress, the translucent tent of the blanket, Tren shifting, just-waking in my arms – I heard other sounds: the rustle of bedclothes, strains of hushed conversation. The clacking of short, quick strides in boots, followed by Effa's strident cry.
"Move along! Move along! What's going on here?!" As her voice grew closer, the pieces fell into place, and my eyes snapped open wide. Tren, I tried to hiss in our remaining seconds, Tren, wake up, we fell asleep, but she was too groggy to understand. I heard Effa pushing past the rest of Tren's bunk-column, all assembled on the barracks floor, and realized it didn't matter anyway.
"512! How many times do I have to tell you—"
When the yanked the blanket off of us, letting the light rush in, Tren woke in one sharp blow. As she blinked up at the circle of eyes around us – the other humans, some shaking horrified heads, others snorting with contempt, and Effa boiling with barely-contained rage – the color drained from her face, and she gaped like a beached fish. She scrambled to sit up, push me away and pull her jumpsuit closed at the same time, but it was no use.
"512," Effa growled from between grit teeth, her eyes slit to near-nonexistence, "get up immediately, and join. The. Line."
Personally, I didn't have much reason to be embarrassed, or even flustered. I wasn't the one who'd wanted to keep us a secret in the first place, and besides, what could any of these people do? If anything, I was slightly indignant, at having been woken so abruptly by this uppity little officer who amounted to a clump of dirt in the ridges of my boot.
"She'll get up when I say she gets up," I said haughtily as I sat up, grabbing the panicking Tren by her arm. "Why don't you take the pod and move on, and leave us alone?"
Effa looked as if she'd have liked to murder me. "With all due respect, Director Vix—"
"If you respected me, you'd listen to what I said the first time. Or should I call my mum, and you can listen to her instead?"
Effa stood a moment glowering at me, all but shaking with bottled fury. Finally, she swallowed hard, whipped around, and waved her shockrod at the other humans, electricity crackling at the end of the black baton. "All right, move out!" she shouted. "Come on, come on! Last one in the barracks earns herself a lashing!"
The rest of the pod marched out in short order, with Effa snapping like a sheepdog at their heels. Satisfied, I flashed Tren a smile, and said, "There, now. That wasn't so bad, was it?"
Doing up the last of her jumpsuit's buttons with quivering hands, Tren jerked loose from my grip and got to her feet. She gulped down a thick breath, swiped her forearm over her face, and ran after the rest of her pod, without so much as a word for me—without so much as a glance at me, sitting bewildered among her bedclothes.
