Chapter 2: Let's talk about all the good things, and the bad things, that can be.
The unofficial mayor of Terminal City favored the direct approach. Every transgenic knew this fact well enough, so knocking on doors wasn't really required. She walked right in and sat in an armchair across from Lila and Shalala, both of whom looked slightly nonplussed—but not truly surprised to see her. Max hunched over, resting her elbows on her thighs and folding her hands comfortably before looking up at the apartment's residents.
"Alec said you wanted to talk to me," she informed them cheerfully.
Shalala nodded, "We did. Thank you for coming."
"Can I get you anything? We've got beer, soda, and a pot of coffee that probably hasn't been sitting out for more than a couple of hours," Lila offered congenially.
"Nah," Max replied, "I'm cool. I'm mostly just wondering what's changed."
The pair on the sofa exchanged a look. "Nothing has changed, Max," Shalala said softly, "But that includes the fact that we are in the right."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Max asked with a trademark grin, "I can't overturn a vote."
"You could give it a trial period," Lila stated. "No vote, just a few weeks, two or three females allowed to go free during heat so that all of the males find out what it is like—really like—to fight for a potential mate."
"And have a couple of deaths on my head for breaking the Terminal City Pact?" Max held Lila's eyes steadily and answered, "No thanks. If you want me to hold a male vote for your trial period we can do that."
Shalala shook her head slowly. "It wouldn't pass. We've run our own polls, but we've also run the statistics behind them. There isn't a single male who's fought for a mate during heat that voted against our cause. A few with mates abstained, but even most of the mated voted with us. If they could just experience it, I know they would understand, believe even, that it is worth the outside risk to life and limb."
"You don't even know what it's like for them," Max argued, "You just like to sound like you do, but you only feel what you feel during heat. Frankly, I'm a little surprised you're such a big proponent of it. I'd have killed to have that birth control stuff that Manticore gave you guys. Hell, I still would. Too bad none of the lab techs were also transgenics; maybe they could mix us up a batch."
"You don't know any better than they do," Lila said earnestly. "Of course you can't be sated with an ordinary who isn't even a potential mate."
"Well," Max cut in, "Whether or not I 'let myself go' as everyone seems to be pushing me to do isn't really the point of this little talk. The point is how you plan to get the male vote in your favor, because there's no way you're doing anything without one."
"That's not fair!" Shalala exclaimed, "You're not even giving us a chance to prove our point!"
"You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I have the power to give you a chance at anything," Max said firmly. "This is a problem for the male transgenics to figure out, they are the ones who have something to lose here, and frankly I think it's completely selfish to try it any other way."
"It's about the community," Shalala snapped. "This is a problem that affects the entire transgenic community and women should have a say in something that affects us too."
"Affects us," Max agreed, "but it doesn't kill us. I don't think any woman who would vote to sentence a guy that didn't do a thing wrong to death should get a vote in the first place."
Lila cut Shalala's retort off with a gentle hand on the woman's forearm. "You're entitled to your own opinion, derived from your own experience, Max," Lila said softly. "You are right; doing as we ask would go against the Terminal City Pact. You've never been a proponent of our cause and we have no reason to expect you to take our side. Further, we know you have spent years of your life subjugating the instincts encoded in your DNA, you would never want to have a pair of males fight over you like some Discovery Channel documentary." Max took a deep breath.
"Look," she said, "Your trial period is a good idea. It's innovative and shows you're willing to look for a middle ground, which I appreciate. I'd be happy to speak in favor of it when calling for a vote, or do anything else that you think might help the vote swing for you. I just don't want to break the Pact."
Lila shook her head. "There's nothing you could do that would make the final vote in our favor," she murmured. "We already considered that route. Not that I don't appreciate the offer, but it's pointless."
"Then," Max gently informed them, "I'm sorry I'll have to leave you unsatisfied, because there's nothing I can do."
"Thank you for your time," Shalala murmured, not entirely impolite.
"Don't thank me," Max replied, "I did nothing to help you."
"No," Lila agreed, "but I think part of you wants to, so thank you for that."
Max smiled slightly at the females before leaving their home. The problem with the Naturalists was that they were activists who had once been soldiers. They were used to fighting battles and either getting their way or not getting another shot—the in-betweens of politics left them a lot of confusion. Still, as sympathetic as she was to the people behind the cause, she really couldn't back their idea. Manticore was responsible for a lot of junk in their DNA, even if Max didn't have any "junk DNA". When she was in a bad mood, Max blamed them for the fact that she would never go vegetarian and actually got a sick sense of pleasure out of killing live chickens that people scored for her. Heat was something idiotic that she blamed them for no matter how she was feeling.
Female heat was a practicality of life that Max had lived with since she was thirteen. The fact that most ordinaries looked like she was killing their puppy when she told them that—and how old he had been—really helped with her belief that Manticore was the root of all evil. Or maybe just a branch, the Familiars were the root after all. Max was prepared to go into heat three or four times a year and want to get with any remotely available male in sight. Max was not prepared for the fact that when she went into heat she would release pheromones that would make every X in her vicinity go primitive and get as pumped up about mating with her as she was about mating with them.
Luckily, Max had already been sedating and restraining herself to keep from killing Logan when they made that discovery. She also knew it was a combination that worked, so she was able to suggest it after the first few deaths. It was whole heartedly embraced and the resolution that the Naturalists hated so very much passed easily. Not that everyone followed her lead. Syl just locked herself up at home with Krit, which was perfectly fine. Max's only political problem with heat was the way males showing off for a female tended to kill one another, the whole mating vs. falling- in- love- over- an-extremely- extended- period- of- time- and- waiting- for- something- bad- to- happen- which- it- invariably- did was more of a personal dislike.
Still, Max felt bad for the Naturalists. They were learning that things didn't always go their way, even in a place like Terminal City that was designed for transgenics to live happily. That they even had to experience that made Max feel like she'd failed them, even though there was no way she could accommodate them. So as Max wandered through the streets of TC and decided she needed cheering up, she found her way to the home of one person she definitely hadn't failed.
"Hey there lil' fella!" she was greeted warmly by Joshua, who even looked up from his painting to acknowledge her.
"How's it hanging, big fella?" she answered, not bothering to suppress a grin at his paint covered overalls.
"New painting," he said, waiting for her to walk around and look at it. "Terminal City, Seattle," Joshua added. "Or maybe not, Max like the name?"
"I think it's appropriate," Max said, marveling at how well Joshua seemed to have mastered pointillism. It was an extremely well drawn view of Seattle, the space needle and many of her favorite landmarks looking almost like a photograph, but Terminal City was almost as detailed, made up of millions of tiny dots—a little brighter and more colorful than the rest of post-pulse Seattle. Max looked at the painting for a little while before speaking. "I'd say the artist is trying to express not just the fact of Terminal City being separate from the rest of Seattle, but the dream of Terminal City—that it is almost a different reality."
"Part right," Joshua grinned at her, "all right for what you said, but more too. Because Terminal City isn't all here yet—will be soon, but not yet—that's why it's tiny dots."
Max smiled. Not only at the fact that he was right, but also because after all this time he still used phrases like tiny dots to describe complex artistic concepts that he probably grasped better than any other person alive. She wondered sometimes if it was his tongue. He read and wrote in complete sentences just below the level of Dix the Transgenic Dictionary, but when he spoke aloud it was as though he was a child, unable to get his mouth around the more difficult words, or even keep himself from speaking in the third person. Was there just something too primitive about his body that kept his mind a prisoner? Whatever the reason, his art was the best voice he had and Joshua used it.
Joshua spoke to just as many people as Max did, and he was the real savior of the transgenics no matter how much praise Max received. Rita had proven one of the truest friends a transgenic could have when after the siege she approached them with a solution to any possible money problems. The next issue of the Artist's Weekly reran their review of Joshua No. 1 with the added information that it was the first work of a transgenic artist. The lucky woman who bought it now had a piece worth a lot more than the twelve thousand she'd originally paid. Joshua was being hailed as the Andy Warhol for the Transgenic Era and all of the earlier work that Max had saved from his fireplace sold immediately and for a lot more than Max would have thought. It seemed everyone wanted to see the world through the eyes of a transgenic, and luckily, Joshua wasn't one of the greedier transgenics. He would have had every right to keep the money and no one would have said a word to him about it, but he simply handed it to Max. Max knew exactly what needed to be done, and Joshua didn't doubt that for a minute.
Joshua's work bought and paid for Terminal City. Every building within the fences that still kept ordinaries safe from the biotoxins was owned by the TCT only a few months after the siege ended. Granted, no one tried to jack the transgenics on barely habitable buildings that no one else had any use for, but the cost of their little corner of the city eventually added up to several million dollars. A million—a number that Max was scarcely used to thinking about and she'd gone through a lot more money than most of the other Transgenics had in the outside world. But "A Portrait of Ames White" was sold to the Premier of China for one point four million dollars and "Annie at Peace" brought a million pounds even from the Queen of England. Joshua made more in the months immediately following the siege than Max had stolen in thirteen years. Almost made her think that she should give up fencing and start painting art.
Joshua was gifted, though. A few other aspiring artists in TC made their attempts—and not all of them were bad—but Joshua was the best from the beginning. At least, according to Rita and the rest of the art world, Max was more of an art history buff than a modernist.
"So," Max asked, breaking herself from her little flashback, "what do you think we need to do to connect the dots?"
Joshua laughed and shook his head. "That's Max's job. Joshua wouldn't take Max's job for a river of paint and a mile of canvass."
There it was: what Max really liked best about Joshua. The best thing he could think of, that anyone could ever give him, was just more room to make art. He was really happy, and no matter how many Isaacs and Naturalists she was responsible for, she was responsible for Joshua, too. That was why seeing Joshua always made her feel better.
"How are things going with you know who?" she asked, mimicking Alec's smirk unconsciously.
Joshua blushed. "Don't know who, Max," he said, dipping his brush back in his pallet.
Max attempted to refresh his memory, "Sweet, about five seven, eyes like the ocean, legs from here to there…"
"Drop it, Max," Joshua growled, shooting a look over his shoulder at one of the few Annie paintings he'd kept for himself. Max knew it was one of his first—painted while she was still alive.
"You can't do that Joshua," she said softly. "You can't spend the rest of your life alone just because you can't be with your first love. Going after Sarah won't mean you care any less for Annie, and the fact that you cared for Annie once won't change how you feel for Sarah."
"Joshua knows that, Max," the deep dog-faced man answered, and she knew he really did understand. "Joshua will act on it when Max does." Max swallowed. He was right; people in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones. She was tempted to stay there and talk through things with him, knowing that it would put a lot of things in perspective for both of them, but she didn't have time. She also didn't really want to; she'd had her quota of Logan Talks today with Jondy and Alec.
"Listen," Max said, "I've got to swing by the hospital, Sparky got hurt today, but I'm going to swing by Tourniquet later tonight if you want to meet up and get your swerve on."
"Get my swerve on," Joshua agreed, laughing. "Hope Sparky's okay."
"I'm sure he'll be fine," Max agreed, tossing a goodbye to her friend as she left him to his painting.
Max took the quickest rout to the Terminal City hospital by climbing the nearest fire escape and leaping from building to building. This also made it convenient for her to swing into one of the rooftop greenhouses to buy a bouquet of get well flowers. For the media's information these greenhouses grew a great deal of the food required to support Terminal City—and they did—but they also grew a few more luxurious items. After all, girls in TC still liked roses and sick people still needed flowers, and was it Max's fault that a few transgenics seemed to have converted to Herbal's religion since the escape? There were also quite a few medicinal plants grown, just in case they were ever cut off from drug companies again. Maria, an X3, who truly loved plants and seemed to have a particular affinity for their care offered a perfectly arranged bunch of wildflowers when she heard they were for Sparky. Max felt like she should be paying more than ten bucks for them, so she slipped another twenty under an empty pot when Maria looked down to wrap them. The florist would know who it was from, but she probably wouldn't do anything about it at that point. Max was used to this sort of deception to keep from feeling like she was cheating the people who she served.
Max leapt from the last roof, caught the infirmary's fire escape and rode it down to just in front of the entrance, releasing it and hearing the satisfying whirr as it slid back up to its place. The number one best thing about living in Terminal City was that no one looked twice at her. She pushed the double doors open and was directed to room four.
Room four was nice. The window had a good view of the mural across the street and the curtains were an eggshell lace number that matched the sheets. It hardly looked like a hospital room, except the monitors in the corner and the IV in Sparky's arm.
"How ya' feeling?" she asked, pulling up a chair and straddling it.
"Better," he croaked, although she couldn't really imagine what was so much better about it. Most of the transgenic's face was wrapped lightly in gauze.
"Gotcha flowers," she said, finding a vase on the bedside table and placing the bouquet in it, promising herself to find water for it later.
"Thank you," he said, trying for a smile that actually hid his grimace. Max settled her self back in the chair.
"They treating you okay in here, Sparky?" she asked, focusing completely on him.
"No complaints," Sparky answered, mildly surprised that Max knew his name, but figuring they must have told her on the way in.
"Yeah, they say you'll be back with your guitar in a week or two," she informed him hopefully.
Sparky blinked. Did she have people to brief her on stuff like this? "I guess so, but it's going to be hell living without it until I get feeling back in the arm."
"Isn't that a little bit of an exaggeration?" the mayor of Terminal City asked. "You only started hitting Tourniquet backing up Jace, like, three months ago. Now all of a sudden you're gonna die if you can't?"
Sparky smiled, forgetting that it hurt like hell. "I learned to play just after you let us out, just because I didn't dare do it in public until three months ago doesn't mean I can suddenly live without it." He paused for a moment and shot her a surreptitious look from underneath one bandage. "Plus, I'm not sure Jace's voice can cut it without my accompaniment."
"Hey now, that's one of my sisters you're talking about," Max shot back playfully. "And she still has a bassist, a saxophone player and a drummer to fill in the cracks. If she wants to play without you, she so totally could."
"If she buries the band trying to, it won't be my fault," he shrugged. "But then she'll probably never speak to me again, meaning I won't get to hang out with Max, and he's an awesome little guy."
"He is, isn't he," Max agreed, smiling. An awesome little guy who wouldn't be in the world without Max—before she even went after Manticore.
"Yeah," Sparky said, suddenly in a serious tone. "An awesome little guy who only exists because his mommy made a mistake in a big way back at Manticore. That's proof enough for me that they had it all backwards about mistakes."
"A baby should never be a mistake," Max agreed. "I was there when Jace found out about Little Max and even then I knew she wanted to be a mommy, even if Vincent couldn't be a daddy. I know she had to deal with a lot when she found out he was dead, even if she hadn't spoken to him, or needed him for a year."
"She talks about him sometimes," Sparky said, so focused on the discussion that he completely forgot about the painful burns. "An ordinary that really was kind to you back at Manticore was something to cherish. I know I never met one. She talks about how he found her when she was in heat… how he loved her… how he showed her what love was. There wasn't really a lot of love around Manticore, so that's something, right?"
"Yeah," Max said staring through the window at the mural that showed ordinaries and transgenics living together peacefully, "but it isn't everything. Jace had to learn love from him, so even if he'd lived to be around, would they ever really have been on even footing? And how could he play daddy to a transgenic baby? Because Little Max has all of the genes, the kid actually managed to jump from his chair to the top of the refrigerator to raid the cookie jar last week. How could a lab tech keep up with that? Would he have even wanted to?"
"So you, the great proponent for integration, are saying we should stick to our own kind?" he asked, more than curious he was wondering if this was the clone he'd seen once or twice and heard more than a few stories about.
"All I'm saying is Jace might be looking for someone a little more… empowered… to take on surrogate father duties. And maybe she might be taking applicants," Max tossed him a lascivious grin and got up. "Sweet dreams," she purred, leaving him alone and speechless.
Max made her way to her apartment by cutting through the park. Hinting to Sparky about Jace was definitely her good deed of the evening. Jace was ready to get back into the dating game and Sparky obviously had a crush on her—it could really work out. Plus, even if he had uncles by the dozen, little Max could use a father.
The park had once been a group of four of the most decrepit, condemnable buildings in Terminal City, so Max knocked them down and shipped out the rubble. They planted grass and saplings to show how dedicated the transgenics were to putting down roots. The media loved it, even the statue in the center that Luke and Dix had torn from twisted metal and wrought of iron. It was a monument to fallen soldiers and everyone that had not survived life as a transgenic.
Cutting through the park wasn't really a time saving short cut. It was a shorter walk, but Max always felt the need to stop when she got there. Maybe she had to pay her respects to the monument. Maybe the trees reminded Max of forests and Manticore or other things better left forgotten. Maybe Max just liked to stop and smell the green and growing things. Whatever it was, she always stood for a moment when she passed through.
A kid, maybe seven or eight years old, sprang almost two stories to snatch the Frisbee from the air before it struck the statue. He whipped it back along the same path before he even landed. "Watch the tombstone, Fixit," he yelped. Max laughed inwardly, the tombstone was a good nickname for it.
Kids weren't uncommon in the park, even this late—Max wasn't the only X series with shark DNA after all, but for some reason these children playing made her want to stay and watch. Max's evening definitely seemed to be revolving around children and the way you got them—it was probably the fault of the Naturalists, making her think about these things.
The redhead threw the Frisbee exceptionally far and the third player blurred after it, catching it and falling into a shoulder roll to slow himself painlessly before whipping at the first boy. The three were all laughing and loving every second of freedom.
Max wanted one of those. She wanted a little Max just like her nephew who would laugh and make mischief, never knowing what a prison felt like. Watching her child grow that way, Max would forget what bars felt like. It wouldn't happen, though. No matter how good she was with children, Max wasn't exactly the mothering type. Then there was the fact that the guy she'd sort of assumed would be Daddy was marrying someone else.
Besides, Max had a whole city to take care of, she didn't have time for a kid. She didn't even have time for a shower before she was due for her appearance at Tourniquet. She took one anyway. It was cold, which was to be expected as water heaters were generally on the low end of Tech Ops' to fix list. She could have had it looked at within an hour, but she understood why her shower was less important than Sparky's power and she was sure someone else in her building would have a complaint or two on file. If worse came to worse she would take a look at it herself in a week or two. In spite of Caesar's mistake, Max was confident enough in her own tinkering ability to either fix the problem or realize when she'd made a mess of things.
Max didn't have time to fix her own water heater; she definitely didn't have time for a kid. There were diapers and you always needed a babysitter. It was definitely more trouble than it was worth; she was only thinking about it because it was her evening theme. Max could never handle a baby alone, and Max was definitely not taking applicants for a father.
Max dried her hair and slipped into a good comfortable party outfit. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about children, now was the time to think about dancing. She had a feeling she should know who was playing tonight, but she didn't and she didn't really want to take the time to search her desk for the schedule she knew was hiding in one of the drawers. Alec had probably borrowed hers indefinitely anyway—he liked to do things like that just to piss her off.
That thought had the desired effect, all the way to Tourniquet she focused on how inconsiderate Alec was. At the bar, Jondy spent a good portion of the evening trying to argue his good points while the gentleman in question spent a good portion of the evening picking up Syl's clone, Roxie. This would have been more than enough to keep her thoughts away from truly unpleasant subjects, but a higher power seemed to want to apologize for the earlier portion of her day—Sarah, the beautiful canine trans-human herself, appeared just as Max was finishing a dance with Joshua. It didn't take too much pushing on Max's part for the two to dance together. All and all the night improved vastly and by the next morning, Max was able to push the Naturalists, mating and children out of her head entirely.