Merry jingly, everyone! :D
52. Rhapsody of a Beautiful Life
I gave Tren a day to cool off before I went to see her again. I figured she'd just been upset over our being outed, and once she'd had a chance to calm down, everything would be fine. So I waited until the next afternoon, then went to visit her in the factory, to make sure the air was clear before I swung by that night.
But even as I approached her, I could tell something was wrong. Tren sat hunched over her stencil like a rabbit hunched behind a clump of weeds, waiting for the fox to sniff her out. Her entire body was tense, tight, and I could see her hand shaking on the paint gun's valve.
The stools on which they sat were fixed to the ground, but 511 and 513 sat on the left and right edges of their respective seats, as conspicuously far from Tren as they could get. As I came closer, I saw 511 let her hand slip on her paint gun, sending a jet of spray paint arcing over whatever Tren was supposed to be stenciling. Tren didn't move, except to bunch her muscles further, and I saw 511 and 513 exchange a smirk over her head.
As if that weren't enough, just then another girl in a grey jumpsuit walked by, loaded down with a stack of porthole panes for waxing, and casually shifted their weight to one arm as she passed Tren. With the other, she grabbed a handful of Tren's hair and yanked savagely, jerking her off her stool. Tren hit the floor with a stifled unh and the slap of her cheek against cement, and the girl with the porthole panes spat at the back of her head.
"Sell-out slut," she hissed as she stalked away.
"Tren!" I cried out and ran to her, horrified at the sight of her crumpled on the ground. Grabbing her hand, pulling her to her feet, I blinked into her eyes and found them bloodshot, wet. "What's wrong? What's going on?"
"Not here," she said hoarsely, keeping her eyes down and her voice low. "Let's just—can we go somewhere else?"
"Yeah, yeah. Of course."
As soon as the doors to the spare room clicked shut, Tren broke down in a jumble of sobs and shouts, her hands flying from my shoulders to her temples, her face flushed with what could've been anger or fear. "You see? Do you see what it's like for me now? This is why I wanted to keep us a secret! They hate me, they hate me—they're calling me a traitor, they're calling me a whore, saying I forgot everything you took from us and I think I'm better than them.
"What you said to Effa only made it worse. Nobody speaks to me except to insult me. Nobody looks at me except to glare. They're stealing the blanket off my bed and the food off my tray, shoving me out of the marching line, harassing me whenever they get a chance—I'm sure Meer and Val are trying to stop me making my quota, so Effa will beat me. I can't live like this, Vix. I just can't!"
I wasn't sure if she was going to fall into my arms sobbing or fling herself at me and claw my eyes out, so I took a step back as I tried to calm her. "It'll be fine, Tren. I've been asking you to come and stay with me all this time. If you can't live in the barracks anymore, you can come live with me."
"One prison to another," she muttered, shaking her head. "I'd go stir-crazy in that place. Besides, it would be a Band-Aid at best; I couldn't stay there forever."
I chewed on that a minute, considering what other options I had. Then – all of a sudden – I remembered a conversation I'd had with Mom a few days ago, and all of the pieces fell perfectly into place. "I know what to do!" I burst out, triumphant. "I know what to do.
"My parents are bringing the Armada to Earth in just a couple of days, to visit me and see how I've been handling the planet; when they come, I'll get permission for us to take my ship and leave here forever. We could go anywhere, Tren. Anywhere in the whole universe, and you'd never have to work – or deal with these horrible people – another day in your life."
To me, it sounded positively paradisaical, but Tren remained restless. She swallowed, wiping away the crescents of tears that gleamed under her eyes, smoothing hair made messy by what I figured had been a sleepless night. I longed to save her – to take her away from all of this: the blood-colored skies and metal-smelling barracks; the people who didn't appreciate her, who didn't understand us – so badly it was all I could do not to grab her right then, and take off before her doubts could drag us down.
"Are you sure you'll be allowed to leave?" she said. "What about your job?"
"I'll quit. Mum can find a new director. Don't worry, Tren, it'll be fine; my parents give me everything I want."
Tren sniffled and rubbed the moisture from her nose with a rumpled sleeve, looking less than comforted. "I guess it's my only choice," she mumbled, looking at the ground. "I mean, the last thing I want is to make what they're saying true—but—I don't know what else to do. They'll never forget it, seeing me with you, and they're never going to forgive me. If I were them—I wouldn't forgive me."
"It'll be fine," I said again, pulling her into my arms and squeezing her tight. "It'll be great. You'll see."
I took her back to my complex after that, and brought her to my room. There, I flipped on the TV and flopped onto my bed, rhapsodizing about the beautiful life we'd lead on worlds beyond the stars; for her part, Tren paced and bit her nails.
She seemed to have forgotten what to do when she wasn't working – when every second of her time wasn't carefully structured, and she didn't have to plow through everything with her mind on the next task on the list. Without Effa glaring at her back brandishing a shockrod, or the rest of her pod marching beside her, jostling her along. It had been different when I was playing by those rules, working myself into her schedule, but now I realized it was probably better she hadn't come here sooner. She'd have been like an animal in a cage.
But soon, all of that would change. I kept telling her that: soon, everything will change. It'll all get better. Trust me. I hugged her and kissed her, said the most soothing things I could think of, summoned a fleet of service drones straining under huge platters of human food. I ran her a warm bath of sterilized water-substitute, encrusted with flasks of sweet-smelling soaps, and dressed her in a gauzy blue gown that swept the floor when she walked.
She didn't say much (only muttered under her breath, about harems and concubines and all that other stuff she was always moaning about), nor was she in the mood to be touched – but I didn't care. I was finally getting to take care of her like I'd wanted to take care of her since we'd met, and I was so happy I could've sprouted wings.
The Armada wouldn't reach Earth for another three days, but Mom's fleet was nearby, and I was expecting her before the next day was out. I was sitting at a console in my bedroom – ostensibly reviewing a growing backlog of supervisors' reports, in truth unable to focus for more than ten seconds without glancing over my shoulder at Tren brooding on my bed – when the intercom buzzed.
"Director Vix, Commander Gaz has just arrived at the administrative complex. Would you like to receive her here, or shall I have her escorted to your quarters?"
"Um—I'll come get her. Thanks!" I bounced out of my seat and across the room, where my boots waited by the doors. "Want to come with me?" I asked Tren as I tugged them on. "You could meet my mom."
"Believe me, Vix," she said flatly, "if you're trying to get them to do us a favor, you don't want me meeting either of your parents. Ever."
"Okay. I'll be back soon."
I hopped on the capsule rail outside the director's residence, and arrived at the administrative complex in seconds. In the same receiving hall where I'd met my attendants months ago, Mom stood unaccompanied, surveying her surroundings with her hands on her hips.
"Hey!" I announced myself brightly, surprised by how good it actually felt to see her in person. Ever since my first day on Earth, I'd been too wrapped up in Tren to feel homesick or miss anybody; I hadn't expected the rush of happiness that came with Mom's familiar presence.
"How was the trip?" I asked after a perfunctory hug, more a brief meeting of bodies than a real embrace (Mom had never been a touchy-feely person). "Did you get here okay?"
"Sure, sure. Just fine." She took a step back and looked me up and down, whistling a falling note. "Wow. You're all grown up."
"What are you talking about? I've been here less than five months. Besides, we've been videoconferencing all this time; it's not as if you haven't seen me."
"Hey, if I say you've changed, you've changed. Don't argue." She reached out to finger a lock of hair that rested on my shoulder. "I didn't know you'd started wearing your hair down."
That much, I supposed, made sense; when we spoke, it was nearly always at night, when I'd have let my hair down anyway for bed. "Yeah, well. It's no big deal." I turned and inclined my head towards the archway that led out of the room, adding, "Come on. Let's go sit somewhere and talk."
We settled in a lounge off the receiving hall, with a plate of cookies and mugs of feeya delivered by a service drone. Sitting on a sofa across from Mom, I launched right into an explanation of my plan to save Tren from the self-righteous horde of her fellow humans, with all the enthusiasm I felt for our future together. I guessed that Mum would probably need some convincing, but I'd been sure that Mom, at least, would support me from the start. I mean, she was human; how could she not?
But to my disappointment, she regarded me skeptically all the time I was talking, even flinching a little when I got to the crux of the plan. When I finished, asking her what she thought, she set her mug on an end table and sighed. "Tak's not going to like it," she said.
"Well, I know that," I said lightly, striving to keep my hopes high. "Not at first. But she'll come around. I'm sure she'll come around, once I explain."
"Are you? I'd have thought after nine years, you'd know her better than that."
She pressed her lips together in a vaguely pitying smile. "Look, Vix, I'm not trying to rain on your parade here; obviously, you're crazy about this chick, and I think it's really cute that you want to play the heroine and spirit her away. I just don't know that your mum's going to see it the same way, and—well. It's her opinion that counts."
"Not necessarily," I argued. "You can convince Mum to do anything. You've told me so yourself."
"Okay, well I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not going to fight this battle for you. Sure, I think it's cute that you think you're in love with whatsername—"
"Tren, Mom. And I don't think I'm in love with her; I know I am."
"Whatever. Your little fling is all well and good, but it's not worth my bullying Tak into doing something she doesn't want to do – and trust me, babe, she won't. Besides, you're a big girl now, and it's time you started learning to go to bat for yourself; if you can command an entire planet, you can face your mum without me backing you up. As it is, you ought to consider yourself lucky just to be in a position to raise this issue with her. Most people wouldn't even get the chance to be shot down."
"Well, you can be pessimistic if you want," I said, frowning, "but I'm still going to try. I'm not going to let Tren be miserable just because Mum's uptight about this kind of thing. How would it hurt her, if we were to leave Earth? There are a billion Irkens dying for a directorship, and one less human on the labor force isn't going to make a difference."
Mom held up a hand. "I'm not going to talk about it. You've told me what you're going to do, and I've told you what I think. Save the rest of your argument for Tak; you're going to need it." She picked up her feeya and took a sip, lingering at the rim of the mug to inhale its rich, sweet scent. "So Tren. I take it she wasn't eager to meet me?"
"Um, she's—not feeling well, I think."
"No, no, I get it. Traitor, sell-out, poser, skank. All these bitches are so jealous of me they can't see straight." Her lips curled into a smirk over the rim of her mug. "I guess you're serious about her, huh? Pretty big commitment, planning to take off into space with somebody after just a couple of months."
"Isn't that what you did?"
"Sure, when you weren't around and I wasn't so ancient. Sweet shit, talking about this stuff with you makes me feel old." Transferring her mug to one hand, she grabbed a cookie and popped it into her mouth, crunching as she spoke. "She's hot, right?"
"Mom! Ew!"
"What? If you're making this big of a deal about her, she should at least be hot. So—big tits, nice ass, what?"
"What would you know about hot, anyway? You made a big deal out of Mum when she was three feet tall and shaped like a pastry bag. Besides," I sniffed, nibbling daintily on the edge of a cookie, "Tren says it's not nice to say tits."
Mom snorted. "Hoboy." Tilting her mug to bring the last cooling drops of feeya to her mouth, she set it down, folded one leg over the other, and spread her arms out across the backrest of the couch, as if to clap the shoulders of two invisible people sitting on either side of her. "You said her officer caught you with her, right?" I nodded. "How were you dumb enough to let that happen?"
I shifted my gaze to the floor. "Didn't I already tell you?"
"No. You just told me you'd been meeting in secret, and a few days ago, her officer caught you. Officers aren't exactly known for being the brightest bulbs in the box – how'd Tren's manage to outsmart you?"
"It wasn't our fault," I protested. "We fell asleep! I'd been coming to the barracks at night, to her bed, and that night…after…" I reached for my feeya, hiding my quickly-warming face in the mouth of the mug. "We fell asleep."
Mom raised her eyebrows as understanding dawned on her face. "You were sleeping with her?" she said, somehow managing to sound simultaneously neutral and foreboding.
"I—fell asleep with her, yeah."
"You know what I mean, Vix. You're fucking this girl? Having sex with her?"
At least with the steam from the feeya moistening my cheeks, I could pretend that was why they felt so hot. Staring into my mug, I mumbled, "I don't know how that's any of your business."
"Look, hon, I honestly don't give a shit. You can eat this bitch til the cows come home, and I'll hand you a snorkel and a napkin. But there is something you should know." Her arms slid from the backrest and she leaned forward, lacing her hands on one knee.
"There's a big fucking shitstorm looming on the horizon for you and Tak right about now, and I bet you're both going to say some things you don't mean. She's going to piss you off, and you're going to want to piss her off right back. But for your own good, tell me – promise me – that no matter how angry you are, you're not going to let it slip that you slept with this girl."
I looked up from my feeya, brow knit in confusion. "Um, okay. I didn't even mean to tell you I slept with Tren, so why would I want to tell Mum?"
"It's not that I think you'll want to tell her. It's that she's going to nix your plan and you're going to get really mad at her, so I'm guessing you're going to try to hurt her, upset her. You heard the things we said at your birthday party. People lash out when they're pissed."
I still wasn't entirely buying it. "Sure, but I feel like if I were that angry, I could come up with something meaner than that," I said doubtfully. "I don't see how my having slept with a human could hurt her that much. She's been sleeping with you for twenty years."
"Yeah, and she loves it. But if she finds out, she's not going to say to herself, 'oh, how lovely, this delightful human girl is showing my daughter the same pleasures Gaz showed me.' She's going to think 'this filthy human girl is corrupting my daughter the same way that child corrupted me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let her be ruined like I was.'"
She worked her face into a scowl and affected Mum's accent speaking for her, and for an unpleasant moment I could picture how that scene would unfold. "Sure, it doesn't make sense, but I've known Tak for twenty years and I know how she is. It would probably be the worst thing you could say to her. And I'm warning you now, whatever you do, don't say it; however bad things get, they'll be immeasurably worse if you do."
"Okay, Mom," I said, sighing. "But I still don't think this is going to get as ugly as you keep saying."
"Don't you? Tak suffered what she considers the greatest failure of her life on Earth. She spent six years rotting in its gutters. She hates it and everyone who lives here twice as much as they hate her, and you're about to ask her to set a precedent for undoing her revenge." Mom shook her head. "You'd better get your armor."
