A Second-Hand Emotion

[hwrnmnbsol]

It was bright but cold in the high towers. Sirella sat with her mother in the spa and discussed matters in hushed voices. In the high towers, somebody was always listening.

"Zulka's a good match," insisted Nuadha. "He's young, promising, and a member of Third family. Do you realize what it would mean if we could cement the Third and Fifth families together? We could be Second, and in line for the top spot, with luck."

"I know," said Sirella blankly, looking at her toes in the pedicure bath. "I still don't want him."

"Such a selfish daughter!" clucked Nuadha. "Doesn't care about family or politics or anything but herself! You'd throw everything away for stupid emotions. Hormonal imbalances. Imagine!"

"Mother," implored Sirella, "I want to feel something."

"You do?" Nuadha glanced over her daughter shrewdly. "Very well, if that's what it'll take to bring you around. There are ways, you know. It's never worth it, but there are ways." She sucked her teeth pensively.

**

There was a place in the warrens Dasha liked to go. It was a tea shop. It was crowded and the tea was worse than what she could get at home, but nobody there knew her or her clansmen. She could meet Davin there in safety.

She peeked in the bead-stranded doorway but didn't see him. He had promised to come. Disappointed, she backed out through the curtain. Strong hands grabbed her from behind. She shrieked, flailing and kicking, and squirmed around to face her assailant. Laughing eyes, intensely blue, locked with hers.

"Davin!" scolded Dasha, pummeling his chest, but she couldn't help blushing and smiling. "You scared me to death, you fiend."

"Then I must have caught you being naughty," Davin teased. Dasha snuggled up into his strong arms.

"Not as naughty as I'd like to be later," she purred. Just then bright lights shone in both the lovers' faces, blinding them.

"Dasha, Machinist Green Nine?" demanded a harsh voice. "Here, step away from her, lad."

"Who wants her, then?" said Davin stubbornly. Men dragged him away, men wearing SecForce armbands. Their chief turned Dasha's face in his gloved hands and smiled crudely.

"Well, now," said the policeman, holding Dasha's face where the overhead camera could plainly see her square-on. "That doesn't really matter, does it?"

He was right. It didn't.

**

Sirella trotted from room to room, communicator to her ear, half-heartedly fleeing her mother. Nuadha doggedly followed.

"No, of course I'll see you," Sirella said huskily into the communicator. "I was thinking we could meet, perhaps after my polo lessons?"

"Tell him," Nuadha hissed, "that you can even skip your lesson if he would like." Sirella covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

"Mother!" she snapped. "We are trying to have a private conversation here!" She put her hand down. "What's that? Oh, yes. I'd like to see you in your riding gear too." Sirella tittered, twirling her hair idly with a finger.

"Tell him you never wear undergarments while riding!" Nuadha suggested. Sirella pushed her away.

"Never mind that, dear Zulka," sang Sirella. "That's just my old crow of a mother in the background. Far, far in the background." She glared at Nuadha, then turned to continue her gay chat with a boy she wanted – the picture of a girl in love.

The medicinal patch on her bare shoulder was exposed as she turned away. "Yes," muttered Nuadha to herself. "Hmm."

**

Davin stood in the Machinist Green commons outside Dasha's corridor. Machinist Greens stared at him with unfriendly eyes. Maybe it was just that he was so obviously a Hydroponic. Or maybe it was that he had flowers, powder blue hydrangeas, grown in his own unit. Dasha liked them; she said they set off his eyes.

Dasha's aunt let him in. She wasn't any more friendly, but she remembered being young and in love. She showed him to the door where Dasha's family lived. "Twenty minutes and they'll be back," she said brusquely, then melted into the shadows.

Davin went in. The apartment was a single room with eight cots. Dasha lay on her belly in one, a bandage swathed around her neck with a mass of cottex bulging on her nape. Dasha's eyes swiveled to watch Davin enter; her head never moved.

"Oh," she said flatly. "Hello."

"Dasha, Dasha!" Davin said, rushing to her side and dropping to his knees. "Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"Not much," said Dasha neutrally. "And they paid Dadda very well."

"Paid?" Davin didn't understand. "Paid for what?" He rose to his feet angrily. "I don't care who they are; you're my girl!"

"Oh Davin, don't make trouble." Dasha looked tired, but there was something else in her eyes that Davin didn't like. It wasn't something new; it was an absence. "In fact," she said slowly, "I think you probably shouldn't come around here anymore."

Davin stared, hurt and numb. He dropped the flowers and fled.

Dasha sighed. She hadn't wanted to hurt him. But, dammit, he was in a different clan, and there were other boys on her corridor. Some of them were nice, even.

**

"I don't know why I'm doing this," Zulko grumbed. "You know I've never been one to care about fashionable cosmetic looks. I'm something of a man's man, as you well know."

"Of course you are," Sirella soothed. "And you know, darling, that I love you exactly as you are. You're perfect, simply yummy my sweet. So rugged; so dashing!"

"Well… that's good to hear, of course," said Zulko, immensely flattered.

"But you know, love," continued Sirella smoothly, "Ever since I set eyes on you for the very first time, I said: woof! Can you imagine that scrumptious man, that tremendously handsome face, with two pale blue eyes looking at me? The very thought sends shivers down my spine. Oh, darling; the things I imagine you doing to me, once you have the new irises! You simply cannot imagine." Sirella massaged Zulko's shoulders. He fussily fended off her hands.

"Yes, yes; all right," Zulko said testily. "I'm doing it. It's very strange, but I'm doing it." Zulko pouted a little as he walked up to the kiosk at the Elective Surgery Center.

Sirella hung back and watched her husband-to-be. Now, she thought, if only I could do something about his hands. They're all wrong, so pale and thin; the fingers are so weak. They should be thick and strong, those fingers – with dirt under the nails. Yes, Sirella thought, he ought to have strong, dirty hands.

Nuadha hung still farther back and watched her daughter. She wondered if there was any possible way Sirella could avoid screwing this up.

No, she concluded to herself. Probably not.

**

Davin was mucking out the cannabis boxes when Pettroch rapped on the glass. "Hey," he said. "There's a whore looking for you."

"I'm not dressed for whores," said Davin, removing his respirator. "Who is it, Irina, or one of her sisters? They need to stop sniffing around; they're never getting any prettier."

"No, not a Hydroponic," said Pettroch. "Some grease-monkey whore."

Davin's face froze. Then he dropped his shovel and ran out of the cannabis chute, in the process bowling over Pettroch in a manner that wasn't entirely accidental.

The Hydroponic Yellow Eleven commons had a fern garden in the middle, mostly still green, and fed with a trickle of greywater. Davin saw Dasha across the greenery and ran to her; she ran to him the rest of the way. The two drew up short a pace away from each other, but then some invisible magnetic force smashed them together, and nothing could have pulled Dasha out of Davin's arms in that moment.

"Oh, Davin," Dasha cried. "I was a fool, such a fool to even think of sending you away. Please take me back."

Davin covered her with kisses. There was still a small bandage on Dasha's neck, but she didn't even feel his hands behind her head as he crushed her lips to his. "We were never apart," he said, coming up for air. "Not really. How can I take you back if we were always together? I love you, I love you."

"Let's get married," Dasha pleaded. "I don't care how hard it will be. I can learn about growing things. Just be with me always; promise!"

"I promise," Davin said. He took her hand in his, and the two young lovers ran toward Davin's corridor, almost tripping over a pair of old pensioners in the process.

"Hmph!" grunted one of them. "She smells like engine oil, she does. Disgusting!"

"Oh, shoosh," said the other. "I think they're adorable. Young people in love! The world's a better place for it."

"I wonder," said the first sourly.