Ancient, Ancient Read online

  When she had left her domed city behind, she reached for the sound module. With quick fingers, she programmed it to record the sound of friction, a static-like screeching bristling between her pod and the thick weightlessness of space. She amplified the sound, adding an echo, then slowed its frequency to match the beat of her pulse. She flipped through her archives and sampled sound snippets before selecting a loop of her siblings laughing through the hallways at home. She mixed in a distorted recording of her own voice, and the jumble of sound built into an aural assault. At Laki’s signal, the sound module found a unifying tempo and tamed the layers of noise into a repeating melody. Laki blended it with one of her preferred beats and blasted the mash-up into her pod—a newly created soundtrack for the moment.

  For a painfully short stretch of time, the music obliterated Laki’s worries. She turned the music up until she could feel it vibrating the soft translucent walls of her pod. She started by swaying her head back and forth. By the time her pod was approaching the twinkling lights of the Velvet Stretch, her limbs were flailing, her hips were swaying, her knees were gyrating. She had given herself so completely to the music that there was no space for anxiety, heartache, and other demons.

  At the entrance to the Velvet Stretch, Laki turned off the music. She pressed her palm to the thin wall of her pod to register herself with the concierge. As she waited for him to complete his procedures, images of lovers she had rendezvoused with started to flash through her mind. She remembered the sweetness of her sessions with Pemfi, the hilarity of hanging out with Benko, and one heart-stopping moment she’d had with Asla. She could hear Se-se’s nagging scorn ringing in her ears—“Do they even have marriage belts to offer, Laki?”

  She responded to the concierge’s questions absentmindedly, grinning at the memory of her usual entrance into the Velvet Stretch. Were it a normal visit with a rendezvous awaiting her, she wouldn’t be standing there, half listening to the concierge; she’d be flat-out ignoring him, crawling around her pod in search of props to enliven her rendezvous.

  “No rendezvous,” she told the concierge while in her mind she was remembering placing peacock feathers, a pouch of honey, and a latex strap on the floor of her pod.

  He slid his fingers over his data machine. “You only have clearance for the rendezvous-less zone. You must return to the concierge’s desk if you wish to enter another level.”

  Laki indicated her consent with the tap of her finger, then turned away. Everything else the concierge said was useless to her. He cleared her entrance, and she plunged into the Velvet Stretch.

  Savoring the freedom of flight, she went flitting through the rendezvous-less zone. Even though the Velvet Stretch was all about connection, she steered clear of other pods. She didn’t need a date or even a momentary flirt, she needed a private, remote area for her party.

  It had been quite some time since she had searched the Velvet Stretch for anything. Amongst her friends, she acted as if she harbored the same appetites that had defined her pre-maturation stage, but the truth was she had changed. She could no longer sustain the intense curiosity of her early days when she had roamed the Stretch, electrified by her quest to find a sexy someone whose love was so intense that being together would feel like a desperation, a feverish need.

  Her identity was so twisted up in her reputation that she didn’t know how to embrace a new facet of her personality. She had spent so much time orchestrating fantastic episodes full of intrigue and mind-blowing carnal consummation that solitude seemed like a foreign language. Who would she be if not voracious and doggedly determined to create magical encounters?

  Yet somehow the allure of the Velvet Stretch had faded. Gorging on pleasure and emotional intimacies began to tire, rather than excite, her. While pursuing her fantasies, she’d mysteriously transformed into a woman more interested in the workings of her own brain than the mysteries of a stranger’s heart.

  Laki found a lone star bar with a dim yellow glow. She lodged her pod right next to it, squinting before turning away from its glow. The way that it seductively illuminated her skin told Laki that it was the perfect location for the evening’s festivities. She checked the time module, then cursed softly. She realized too late that she hadn’t specified a time in the invitations—it could be hours before the first guest arrived.

  She felt the silence of the Stretch invade her pod. If you weren’t hopped up on adrenaline, or some other intoxicant, and distracted by your frantic search for a rendezvous, you would immediately notice the Velvet Stretch’s profound lack of sound. The depth of its silence was stunning, yet it had taken Laki years to notice it. She had been too focused on the pods of strangers, and the anatomy of the people ensconced within them, to take note of the majestic expanse of deep space. Now, she was older and irritatingly aware that she was just a noisy little fleck in an infinite field of silence. The loudest thing in the vicinity was her thoughts, thoughts she had come to the Stretch to escape.

  She sat on the floor and flicked the sound module on. Instead of hearing the song she had just mixed, she heard a deep voice say, “Let’s do this by starlight.” Her back stiffened. A heat sparked in her chest and shot straight down into her pelvis. She looked around, but no one was there. The voice repeated:

  “Let’s do this by starlight.”

  “Fogo,” she whispered, remembering the owner of that voice—the last rendezvous she had had in the Stretch and, quite possibly, the last rendezvous she would ever have.

  She touched her waist, running her fingers over the concealed marriage belt, then leapt up to examine the sound module. She didn’t remember making a recording that night, and she couldn’t understand why his voice was filling her pod now. She vibrated her fingers in front of the sound module, commanding it to spin Fogo’s voice into a faster loop. She rubbed one hand over her body, guiding it downward to grasp between her legs as Fogo invited her to do it by starlight over and over again. With the other hand, she added the sound of dripping water to the background and mixed in her favorite song—a love-laced anthem by Mahini.

  A soft smile spread across Laki’s face. She no longer felt engulfed by the Stretch, not while lust was tingling through her and enfolding her in its embrace. She lay back on the floor and stretched out her limbs. She watched the twinkling lights around her as she ran her hands over her skin, stopping to apply extra pressure here or added caresses there. Singing along with Mahini, she shrouded herself in arousal and buried time with repeated, focused strokes.

  Time had long since abdicated to pleasure when Laki felt her pod rock. Disoriented, she sat up and looked around. Her surprise melted into delight when she saw that her friend Zaha had arrived. Laki scrambled to her feet without remembering that her cloth was hiked up over her hips and hanging open. With a rueful grin, Laki fixed her cloth.

  As her pod fused with Laki’s, Zaha shook her head. “You’re so predictable,” she said into the hole that was opening between their pods.

  Laki pushed her hands into a pocket in the wall of her pod. She felt the cool wetness of the disinfectant splatter against her hands, then she felt heat as her hands were dried. When the hole between their pods was large enough, Laki ran over to Zaha and embraced her.

  “You’re predictable too, you know. I knew you’d be the first to come.”

  “So that little show was for me?”

  “Yes, consider me your maturation welcome committee.” Laki bowed with a mischievous grin.

  Zaha laughed. “Last day! And you’re up here making jokes and playing with yourself. I thought you were going to be a mess.”

  “I am a mess; why do you think I was half-naked on the floor? It’s the only cure for panic that I’ve ever known.”

  “Well I hope they’re open-minded in your mother-unit, you can’t…”

  Laki held up her fingers to silence Zaha.

  “At this party, we will not speak those words. We’ll pretend that I have no date with the veil tomorrow and that you won’t have to give everythin
g up in…” Laki paused and looked at Zaha. “I forget. How many days do you have left?”

  “Well…” Zaha said, and theatrically pointed to the top of her pod. Laki looked up and saw a thin silver marriage belt hanging there.

  “You’re saved!” Laki yelled. They both squealed. Laki hugged Zaha, but she froze when she looked at the belt again. Her arms dropped away from Zaha, and she fell silent.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “No, nothing. I’m sorry.” Laki stumbled over her words as she stepped closer to examine the belt. “That looks like my friend Pemfi’s belt.”

  “Pemfi’s? It is. You know him?”

  Laki nodded, but offered no explanation. She was, she knew, an idiot in so many people’s minds. Her friends, her lovers, and especially her sister Se-se thought she was sacrificing herself for no good reason. She didn’t know what Zaha would think if she knew how many marriage belts Laki had turned down, if she knew that the last time Laki had seen Pemfi’s marriage belt, he was holding it out to her with trembling hands and she was shaking her head, telling him, “I can’t.”

  Laki put her hand to her mouth as she remembered his stung response.

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “What’s the difference?” she had asked.

  “The difference is if you can’t, it’s beyond your control. If you won’t you’re just being a stubborn rub.”

  Coming from Pemfi, the curse had sounded like a foreign language, but in his anger he had wielded it masterfully. Zaha looked at Laki, an expectant expression on her face, but Laki didn’t speak; she just let out a long slow breath. She couldn’t throw off the memory of Pemfi, how she had wrapped her arms around him and spoken softly. “You want to make this hurt? You want to make me hurt?”

  “You’ve been hurting me for years,” Pemfi had whispered in her ear. “But do you know what’s really going to hurt? Getting locked in a mother-unit. It’s going to kill you. They’re going to take away your pod and your props, and your life is going to change forever.”

  She had pushed him away and assured him that she could handle it. He hadn’t believed a word of it. Not Pemfi, not after she’d spent so many nights telling him of her nightmares. He’d offered her a marriage of friendship, begged her to let him save her, but she had wanted to save herself.

  Laki smiled at Zaha, hoping her face looked warm and reassuring rather than shaky and uncertain.

  “He’s a good man, Zaha. You’ll have a good life.”

  Then she pressed Zaha into a tight embrace.

  “But what is this?” Zaha asked pulling away from Laki. She put her hands on Laki’s waist and felt the marriage belt through Laki’s dress.

  “It’s…” Laki felt the pods jostle before she could answer. She turned and saw that Benko had arrived.

  “Ben-ben!” she yelled.

  As the walls were thinning where Benko’s pod met Laki’s, she said to Zaha, “It’s a long story…not what you think.”

  “So you’re not getting married?”

  “Who’s not getting married?” Benko asked stepping through the opening into Laki’s pod.

  “I’m not getting married,” Laki said.

  “But there’s something under her clothes, look,” said Zaha.

  Benko held Laki by the hips and examined the bulge. He pushed at Laki’s waist, feeling the belt through the cloth of her dress. “It’s thick.”

  “It’s just a loan,” said Laki. “Pretend it’s like any other belt. Did you bring the screen?”

  “What kind of freak gets a thick marriage belt and doesn’t get married?” Benko asked.

  Laki smacked him on the back. Turning smoothly, he smiled at Zaha and held out his hand.

  “I’m Benko, and you are…”

  “She has a marriage belt hanging in her pod, and she is getting married. Did you bring the screen?!”

  “Wait!” Benko held up his hand. He stood in the middle of the three pods and cocked his head to one side.

  “What are you looking for?” Laki asked.

  “Not looking. Listening. This mix is depressing.”

  He walked to the sound module in his pod. He sped up the rhythm of Mahini’s song, then mixed in a hard, fast beat. Zaha went to her sound module and added the sound of an animal yelping, then punctuated it with intermittent high-pitched tinkling sounds. They looked at each other and grinned.

  Laki did a little shimmy. “Nice.” She kissed each of them on the cheek.

  The pods shook suddenly. Laki, Benko, and Zaha stumbled a bit. They looked up to see two pods joining them at once. Laki waved at her arriving friends then shot Benko a look.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll go set up the screen,” he said and walked toward his pod.

  Laki linked arms with Zaha, and they walked over to where Laki’s friends’ pods were fusing with the party. When the pods merged, the space Laki and Zaha were standing in expanded.

  Zaha saw Benko float away in his pod.

  “Where’s he going?” she whispered in Laki’s ear.

  “Setting up the screen,” Laki said.

  “What’s the screen for?” Zaha asked.

  “Oh, you’ve never been to any of Laki’s parties?” one of the newcomers asked.

  Zaha shook her head no. She and Laki glanced at each other before Laki leaned in to hug each of the newcomers and kiss them both on the cheek.

  “I see,” said the other newcomer. “You met in the Stretch.”

  Zaha laughed loudly. “No, we met at a mother-unit training.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  “I’m going to go help Beni,” the first newcomer said and walked away.

  A silence settled over the group. Then Laki slapped her friend’s arm lightly. “Don’t get all weird. You have a mother-unit.”

  “I know, but I don’t know anyone going into one…except you.”

  “So what? You think we’re contagious?”

  “No, it’s just that…”

  “It’s weird knowing you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with a veil on,” Laki said in a mocking voice.

  “Why get to know you when you’re just going to disappear after maturation,” Zaha added with a high-pitched wail.

  “Aren’t you depressed? Don’t you ever think about escaping?” Laki whined.

  There was a dangerous glint in her eye, and her relaxed stance had become combative. Her aggression with her peers had grown over the past year. All anyone wanted to talk about was maturation. And why not? It wasn’t a death sentence for any of them. None of her friends would be entering mother-units; they had no need. That kind of work was for girls who were hungry, girls with no choices, girls whose families couldn’t afford to have a mother-unit raise their children—girls who were relieved to have somewhere to go after maturation.

  “I’m sorry, Laki, I just…”

  Laki stared at her friend daring him to say something else that would wound. Both she and Zaha were highborn and fully endowed with the indignation of the privileged. But Laki had been orphaned and Zaha abandoned. Their intended futures had dissolved, making them interlopers among their friends and siblings.

  “I’ll go help Beni with the screen, too,” Laki’s friend said and left awkwardly without another word.

  “These blocks act like I have some fatal disease. It’s not my fault things turned out this way.”

  Laki was breathing heavily as her mind tossed through anger, shame, and guilt at blinding speed.

  “Tonight is not the night for this, Laki,” Zaha said.

  Outside, Benko flew by again, this time with a long piece of cloth streaming from his pod.

  “Tell me about the screen,” Zaha said.

  “The screen?”

  “Yes. What’s it for?”

  “To shield the party from peepers and crashers.”

  “Didn’t know you could do that in the Stretch.”

  “Yeah, we look like an empty part of the Stretch with the screen up.”

  “But then
the regulators can’t verify you, or anyone else in the party. Don’t they come looking for you anyway? Is this legal?”

  A slow smile spread across Laki’s face. She draped her arm around Zaha’s shoulders.

  “Well, maybe we’re bending the rules a little bit, but I don’t think we’re breaking any laws.” She winked.

  Zaha laughed. “So breaking the law relaxes you?”

  Laki giggled, then someone grabbed her from behind.

  “Okay, screen’s up,” Benko said, spinning Laki around. “If they catch us and they try to ban you, it won’t matter. You’ll be in a mother-unit.”

  “Ban you?” Zaha’s eyebrows went up. She turned to Benko, “By the way those words are banned tonight.”

  “What words?”

  Zaha mouthed “mother-unit” to him, and he nodded.

  “Right. So back to Laki getting banned, she can’t control her parties. Once she gets them started, they just keep growing and growing. The whole level gets packed. Nobody can get in for a rendezvous…”

  “But this one won’t be that big,” Laki interjected. “I only invited twelve people.”

  “Please,” said Benko. “The news will spread like wildfire.”

  Benko gripped Laki around the waist, and they swayed together. Laki grabbed Zaha’s hand and pulled her close. As the three of them moved against each other, more pods joined the party. Before long, Laki, Zaha, and Benko were sweaty and buzzing with the joy of movement. They were surrounded by many others who had joined them on the dance floor.

  Once the sweet vibe of languid ecstasy had engulfed all who were present, Laki decided it was time. She lifted her arm and aimed her finger at a pouch that was hanging from the top of her pod. She plucked, and the bag popped, releasing a wet blue fog into the air. Laki inhaled; an intense sweetness burst across her tongue. When she exhaled, her smile was a little wider and her limbs were a little looser.

  “She always has the best smoke at her parties,” Benko said into Zaha’s ear.

  Laki threw her head back and let out a long wordless moan. For the next hour, she didn’t speak a word to anyone. She was too busy flinging off her troubles and releasing her body in total surrender.