Mars/Venus

A story set on the planet formerly known as Haraway's World ...

I

We're lying on my bed with the sheets around our ankles. The sweat on our skin hasn't even cooled and already there's handspans between our bodies. I stare up at the ceiling and listen to her breath in time with the waves. The springs creak and I turn my head, see her rise up in the dark and push her hair off her forehead. "You know, you don't have to do this." I say this every time, at some point. She shrugs one shoulder.

"It's okay." She's looking at me, and I wonder how she's looking at me but I can't see. The light through the open doors only falls on my body.

"I know you don't like it."

"It's okay. It's not unpleasant."

'Not unpleasant' is about the best I can do. I think about leaving again and try not to let it show. I try something different. "Aren't you worried? If someone finds out."

Her hand's still in her hair, and I watch as her hand slides down to rest on her shoulder. "I wouldn't say I'm worried. You live pretty far away from anyone. Are you trying to convince me to not have sex with you?"

I don't say anything.

"Honestly Kloude, you get so weird when we fuck. Are other men like this?" She lets her head hit the pillow, then rolls on her side to watch me. I feel like an intellectual curiousity. I turn away and look up at the ceiling.

"I don't think another guy would be much different." I say.

"Weird." she says in an exaggeratedly breathy way, then giggles. She lies there for a little while, then sits up. "I'm gonna go, okay?"

And she leaves.

II

"Petra's just so ... I don't know, it's like she's in a different world to me sometimes."

I idly stir my cappuccino.

"It's not like we're not intimate. The sex is still good ... but there's not a lot beyond the sex. I mean she's a Green you know?" she pouts a little and put another couple of spoonfuls of sugar into what I know is good coffee. "She's supposed to be personable. I just feel so much like a toy sometimes, and I know what you're going to say, that I should talk to her about it. I have, it's just ... she's a Green, you know?"

I pick up my cup and drink then put my cup down and turn it in its saucer. I place my chin in my hand and consider her. If she isn't literally the most beautiful person on Tempest I would be surprised. When she lifts her latte the way her perfectly formed lips press against the glass is so innocently sensuous that it's basically unreal. There isn't a word to properly describe she she is. This wasn't deliberate, her mothers aren't wealthy, and I don't know if it really counts as natural. Maybe fluke.

"Meyer ..." Even if I didn't know Petra, and I do know Petra, I would know that she is just being treated like a toy. Greens with ultra-pretty rep-building trophy girlfriends are practically five a like. I'll admit that I've peeked into their open house with some of the Reds from the gym. I thought about confronting Petra about it, but it was so hypocritical to consider it. "I know you think that because I knew Petra when we kids that I've got some kind of insight into how she thinks, but I don't."

Meyer frowns a little and it breaks my heart. "I just thought ... you're more level headed than I am. You've been so helpful in the past too ..."

I turn my cup back and forth then pick it up. I say something cowardly. "Well, you like her right?" Of course she likes her. Everyone fucking likes Petra even when they're not a stereotypically Blue college co-ed with a double major in poetry and ditzy romanticism. I like her and she blackmails me every other week.

"I do ..."

"And you think she likes you?" I take a drink.

She blushes even through her tan and smiles in that self-indulgent way when you remember something special. "She whispered 'I love you' in my ear the other night."

I hold my cup for a moment and stare over it, then place it down. "Really."

"Uh huh."

I sit back in my chair and examine the room to gather my thoughts. We're the only people here. It hasn't been popular for a while now, but at least it isn't slandered any more. I look back at Meyer. She looks like she could practically float into space. "Really."

"Jeez Kloude, don't sound too surprised. It's not the first time someone has fallen in love with me." she sounds like she's trying to be indignant but I don't know if she's really capable of it.

"You don't say."

III

I stand in the garden of the house my father built. When I was a kid it wasn't so colourful or so full of orchids. The paint on the house wasn't so stylish. My parents didn't have time for that back then. The baobab palm remains, dry and grey now, but still alive. I touch its scales and look down at where I used to reach. I look up at the house and climb the steps to the veranda and cross the veranda and knock on the door. I lean against the wall and look out over the street. There's a woman in the garden opposite watering her garden despite the water restrictions. She's staring at me, then she waves. I wave back and the door opens.

"Oh hey sweetie!" She's carrying my youngest sister and when she puts her hand on on my shoulder and rises up on her brown toes they I get a kiss on both cheeks. I take my sister and ruffled her hair and hold her above my head as she tells me about the things she's been doing and the friends she's made and the shows she watches and how much she loved her birthday present and did I have another for her.

"Louisa leave your brother alone, God she's still such a handful ... look come on in, your mom is out."

She sends Louisa to another part of the house to play and I follow her into the kitchen. Half the wall is periwinkle blue and there's an old sheet dotted with paint spread out over one of the benches. "Sorry about the mess, I can't help myself sometimes." she gives me a guilty little smile. She's more aesthetically conscious than my mother. "You want some coffee?"

"You still using those instant capsules?" she sticks her tongue out at me and busies herself with the machine. She's small and fresh-faced, hard to believe she's a successful lawyer with four kids. She married my mother right out of college. If it wasn't impossible you'd think she'd gotten accidentally pregnant before graduation and they just wanted to make it look legit. She brings me over a mug and I drink it politely. She sits at the island and watches me.

"So how's that attempt to get up close and personal with the Spire?"

"Please Hilla. You know how it is." I turn the mug in my hands. "If it was at Rekjavik then I wouldn't need to kiss-ass just for the opportunity to smell a request form for an academic examination. They cite all these community para-religious concerns but I fu- I know that TNU and Rek U are both screening it with x-ray lasers."

"Lasers."

"Lasers! The 'religious concerns' are just bull- well you know what I mean." she nods, her lips on the rim of her mug. Of course she knows, she has to deal with it too.

"Well you could always ask Louise how your father managed to get up close."

"Selfoss was different back then." I say that but it's not like I understand when or how it changed. Or if it really has changed at all.

There were footsteps and we looked to the door. My mother. She stood with her hand against the frame, the archetypal Red, tall and tanned and solid. Chestnut hair like mine. Dad always told me that I took after her more than him. She doesn't look much like my friends at the gym, but she's an adult. She suits her wife's tastes, not the tastes of the girls at the beach. She circles around the island and kisses Hilla on the cheek. Watches me.

"Hey mom."

"Hey."

IV

"God, check out the ass on that."

"Are you spotting me or what Claudia?"

She leans forward onto the bar and my arms almost buckle and she grins at me like it's a dare. I grin back - I was just warming up so it's not like there's much weight on the bar. I press it and her easily and sit up. The sun's hot and Claudia's right, the chicks are too. There's a pair of petite looking Blues in bikinis and short shorts coyly glancing towards the gym as they pass and Claudia gives me a wink and walks up to them. As she's chatting them up I stand and slip off the lighter weights. At the rack I grab a couple of 50 kilo disks and glance over. One of the Blues is chewing on her bottom lip and experimentally running her hand up Claudia's chiseled abs.

"I cannot believe her sometimes. It's been, what, fifteen seconds and they're both feeling her up."

"You jealous, Elliot?" I hold out a pair of weights for her to take and she gives me a dirty look. She's a lot paler than most of us at the gym and has a big smear of zinc sunblock across the bridge of her nose to prevent freckles.

"I get plenty of pussy, thanks."

"Uh huh."

"I get fuckloads more than you, Kloude."

I laugh and grab strip the rack of it's fifties and lead the way back to my bench. "Wow, good work El, you're getting more sex than a man on Planet Lesbos. I'm really proud."

She scowls and helps me load up the bar and when we're done she takes a step back and looks at it. Most of my friends are Reds. I guess they're more willing to put themselves in my shoes. The Red Rights movement takes big steps every year but that doesn't mean shit on the street sometimes. And, well, I'm a Red too, even if my passport says 'offworld template'. Anyway, as far as these chicks are concerned what matters is how much I can lift. It's pretty much all that matters to them.

"This is six hundred, right? I'm not miscounting?" I nod and she whistles. "Shit. Spot?"

Shrugging, I stradle the bench and lie back. As I drop down I see Claudia with her hand in her Blue friend's shorts and roll my eyes. I position my index fingers over roughly cut marks and push until I can feel resistance. Elliot hooks her hands under the bar and I lift it and bring it down to my chest and press it to full extension and then repeat. You can't fault the placebo effect and I get through fourteen reps before racking the bar. "Sunny is gonna freak if she hears you got within spitting distance of her record."

"She won't freak until it's my record." I say, wiping my forehead with the heel of my palm. As I pull my hand away I see a girl with short, messily spiked hair carrying a bodyboard on her head. Where the sun hits her skin she seems to gleam. She is short and slim and toned, her features at once rough and delicate. She slows as she passes to check out the girls in the gym like practically everyone else her age. She looks at me. Tilts her head.

El wolf-whistles and she sticks her tongue out and runs into the sand. She cranes around to watch the girl go. "Why can't we get more Violets around here? I'd give up Greens to get a taste of that."

"You don't even get Greens." I say, taking her by the shoulders and sitting her on the bench. She falls back and gives me a dirty look.

V

Meyer is standing at the bench slicing what passes for a tomato on Tempest as I work the cork out of a bottle of wine. I poor a glass and walk up behind her hook it around her bare shoulder. I help her drink and take a moment to stare. She has her golden brown hair piled artfully, exposing her nape and the gentle curve of neck into shoulder. I want to press my lips against her soft, latte skin. I want to hitch up her too-short skirt and fuck her. I step away. I remember a night where she'd spent the nice at my place, where after bottles of cheaper wine than this she confided that she hated being a sexual fantasy, hated the way that other women looked at her. She'd been so drunk but through her slurring she told me that was why I was her best friend. Because we're different genders. Because we can't sleep together.

I finish the glass of wine and refill it. "Was Petra mad when she found out I was bringing Sunny?"

"Oh, no, of course not." Meyer says, turning towards me and gesturing with her knife. I hold out the glass and tip it so she can sip, and she picks up the cutting board and scrapes the contents into the salad bowl. She reaches for the bag of mushrooms I brought with me. "You peeled them already! Anyway, Sunhwa is lovely-"

"You really should call her Sunny."

"-and we're happy to have her around. After all, Petra did say you could plus one."

I laugh but Meyer doesn't get it. She tosses salad in splashes of balsamic and aahs for another mouthful of wine and I dutifully serve. It is at this exact moment that Petra makes her entrace.

"Would you stop fucking feeding my girlfriend alcohol?" she says.

"Language, P." I reply, rolling the red in the glass.

"Get fucked. Oh, wait, you can't." she says before seizing Meyer's lips with hers. I see the Blue's knees almost buckle and when they part Meyer is gasping. Petra reapplies her lip gloss and glances at me with her silver-blue eyes, then tenderly touches Meyer's hip. "Why don't you take a break? I can finish here."

They kiss again and Meyer leaves. Petra fiddles with her blue-black fringe and raises an eyebrow. I offer her the glass and she empties it. "So do you have good news for me or what?"

"How entertaining is it going to be if I say no?"

She clinks the glass onto the bench and pulls a punnet of chillis towards her. I'm suddenly not entirely sure what salad they're making. "Kloude."

"Look, they don't take military prowess very seriously on Surface, and you were a kid during the war anyway."

She rolls her eyes and they catch the downlights in a dizzying way. "Before I'm fucking old, K."

I try to shape the idea in the air in front of me. "What I'm getting at is that the Emberi isn't really impressed by Petra Peria Petrovich."

She taps the chopping board with the tip of her knife. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means exactly what I said. Prima facie."

"Then what fucking good are you!?" she jabs the knife handle in my direction. "You lived there for fuck's sake!"

I raise my palms. "I told you, Dad and I lived in an immigrant town, I'm not directly familiar with any Heja. This was always friend of a friend stuff and I told you it was a long shot."

There's a long silence where she leans back against the bench and stares up at the ceiling. I pour her another glass of wine and push it towards her. As she grabs the stem she lowers her face and squeezes her nose. We consider each other for a moment, so I check out the glitter dusting her cleavage and give her a thumbs up. She kicks me in the shin playfully. "Dick." she drains the glass in one swallow, dabs her mouth and reapplies her lip gloss. "Do you think this dress is too much without a bra? I kind of expected a better response."

I pull out my persocom and get Petra in the frame, thumbing through AR layers until I find her evening's look. There are the usual mindless pleasantries about how nicely done her make-up is and how the satin matches her hair. Sunny's left a geotag across Petra's chest that says 'gr8 pair of plump tits!!! Would squeeze :9' and, painfully, it's the comment with the most rep value that evening. "Do you like it?" I say, blandly.

Petra tilts her head and gives me a sad smile. "You would fucking starve without me." she pauses. "And you will if you don't get your shit into gear re: the hydrogen thing. There are a lot - a fucking lot, K - of Violet votes riding on it."

In the end the salad wasn't too bad. The salt-crusted fish is well beyond their skills. When one of Petra's friends compliments Meyer on the meal she squirms in her seat. They think it's adorable, modest embarrassment, but I know it's because she can't cook for shit. All their food is made by an elderly neighbour over the back fence. Meyer just hates to lie. I nudge Sunny in the bicep and loudly tell her that I think the fish is excellent. She loudly agrees. Petra quietly plots to ruin us.

"So what do you do exactly, Sunwha?" asks a prim looking Green. Her name's Logan. Technically speaking she's Petra's partner, but it's a pretty lopsided relationship. Sunny reckons they're sleeping together, but she's just saying that because Logan blew her off earlier in the evening.

"I'm in construction. I'm site forewoman at Development B."

"That's quite the job. Part of the New Development Plan for downtown Selfoss." Logan says. She glances at Petra. "I feel like I should have heard of you before."

"I'm kind of new to the position. There were some reshuffles ..."

A perky blonde speaks up. She's new to P's little circle. She shyly introduced herself to me earlier as Delilah. "Isn't Development B one of the bigger parts of the NDP? That's really impressive, Sunhwa!"

"Yes." Logan says. "It is. What about you, Kloude? Meyer told me the other day that you're actually a xenoarchaeologist. How's that treating you?"

I toy with the flesh that peels cleanly off the bone and look up from my plate and give her a smile.

VI

"I'm telling you, calisthenics is the best for cardio. It also helps develop functional strength. And besides, you're always complaining about how little flexibility you have." Claudia gives me an incredulous look. "I'm serious!"

"It still looks kind of stupid."

"How did you get shredded with that kind of attitude?" she flips me the bird. "Anyway, you going to do these skull crushers or what?"

She opens her mouth and says: "Why hello there."

I tilt my head slightly as Claudia arranges herself more luridly on the bench. I look over my shoulder. There's a gleaming girl with spiky hair and a tight body. The ring in the corner of her bottom lip catches the sun. She's got a lot of them, actually: a stud in her nose, a few in her ears. I make a bet with myself that she's got a barbell in her tongue. It takes a moment but I realise I've seen her before. We don't get a lot of Violets on the beach, so this one has been turning some heads. "Hey." I say.

"Hi. Um." she's got a kind of drawly accent. "I've just been wonderin why you ain't wearing anythin up top."

"Pardon?" I glance at Claudia, who shrugs one sculpted shoulder.

"Well, it's just, I dunno if you noticed but your, um, boobs are showin." I blink at her, and Claudia bursts out laughing. "What? What's so funny? She's the only one walkin around like that and it's kinda queer."

Claudia gasps for breath, wiping her eyes. "Honey, that's not a girl."

"Eh?"

"He's a man, you know?" the Violet tilts her head back and forth like she hasn't heard the word. Because she hasn't, obviously. "Jeez, you are from the deep bush. Don't look it up on your lace, it'll blow your brain clean out the back of your skull."

Claudia spends several minutes and then several minutes more explaining the concept of my sex to the Violet. She sits down on my bench and periodically checks me out, her face contorting as she tries to internalise it. She asks me a couple of questions which I try to answer it. When it's all over she says: "I do not believe you. These pictures have to be fake. You and yours are just fuckin with me."

This time it's my turn to laugh and I bend forward until my elbows are resting on my knees. This girl is a bad stereotype of Violets, and I live in a bad stereotype of Tempest. Claudia sighs. "Kloude I am determined to teach this girl something. Just show her your cock, then maybe she'll believe us." I shake my head and wave my hand and keep laughing.

"I do not believe you and am willing to take this through to its conclusion."

"Man you two ... there is bad porn on half a dozen worlds that follows this exact sequence of events." I say, rearing up and resting my hands on the bench behind me. "So I think Austen is just going to have to stick with her preconceptions, Claudia."

Claudia clicks her tongue and Austen frowns at me, but I shoo her off the bench so I can pick up the easy bar and lie back for some skull crushers. I can tell the Violet is watching me.

VII

I find my sister sitting in the shade of the big walnut tree in the reserve beyond my mother's garden. She has a camel coloured cigarette between her lips and is struggling with her lighter like pretty much every teenager in history. I watch her as she makes it spark in her hands then toss it into the grass. I don't bother to sneak but she doesn't hear me until I say "Need a light?"

She jumps and fumbles for her dropped cigarette. When she looks up at me she's glaring, challenging me. "Don't tell Mom." she says.

"Which one?" I ask as I walk over and sit down.

She scowls. "You know which one."

I smile and raise one hip so I can pull out my Zippo. I flick it open and light it and offer it to her in one move. She eyes me then leans forward, takes a drag and blows smoke. "Thanks."

We sit without speaking. She's fifteen years old and her Colour has been decided for three years. She's starting to look more and more like our mother, more like me. Like a Red. "What do you think?" she says after a while.

"About your girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

When I glance over she has expectant eyes and smokes some more. I look away. "You know I'm not here to make you feel better about your fight with Mom, right." she nods. For a moment I remember those same shouted arguments about bullshit I had with my father, and how sometimes he'd end them by just knocking me on my ass. That's never happened to Anais, and never will with either of her mothers or any woman she cares to date. It makes me smile and she looks at me strangely. "Sorry, sorry. Anyway, how old is this girl again? Nineteen?"

"Eighteen."

"Eighteen and a half."

"So nineteen." she frowns behind her hand. "As good as. She's going into college, Ana, you're still in secondary."

"Mom is fifteen years older than Mom!" she says and I roll my eyes.

"They were both adults. You're still a kid, kid." she opens her mouth to protest but I hold up my hand. "The fact you want to argue proves my point."

It's an obviously tautological argument but she smokes and considers the implication behind it. Of course, if it was so easy to understand growing up intellectually then being a teenager wouldn't be such bullshit. She stubs out her cigarette on the heel of her sandal. "I really like her though."

"Yeah, we all really like them. That doesn't mean they're not bad for us."

She smiles. "You sound like Mom."

"Hilla uses more negatives in her sentences." I reach out and touch her head. "Look, I'm sure this chick is fine, but she's got different priorities to you. She'll try her best but it won't matter in the end and you'll get hurt. That's what worries Mom, you understand?"

Ana looks at me down the length of my arm and then looks away. "I guess."

VIII

It's a big night for Sunny, so we decide to have a big night. The gymgirls invade the beach house bar down from where we work out as the sun is going down with the intention to drink the place dry. The other Colours that have come to party get swept up into our enthusiasm. Public decency laws have already been broken, and I promise the owner that I'll make sure that nothing comes of it. When she gives me a flat look I drop 'Petra Peria Petrovich' into a sentence. She grins at me and cracks open one of the good import beers and says she'll keep a couple aside for later if I need them. Then she winks and starts pouring shots of tequila for Elliot and the girls hanging on to her.

"Having fun?" she shouts over the music.

"You kidding?" I reply and she grins.

"Hey girls this is Kloude!" Two of them peer around Elliot's body, the other clings to her arm. "He is the dumbest fucker I have ever met but he's proof that not every spare is useless. You just gotta make them Red!"

The girl closest too me looks kind of shocked. "I don't think you should call him that even if he is male!"

"Don't worry about it sister, this stupid dyke couldn't insult me even I wasn't this buzzed." El downs a shot of tequila and holds out her fist and I bump it with mine. The chick looks a little confused and I raise my eyebrows at her as I take a mouthful of beer. She picks up one of the shot glasses and stares at me.

"Are you really a Red?" she really has to shout, but she's got a cute voice. I nod. "Wow." she swallows the shot in one go and Elliot grabs her by the shoulder and kisses her deeply. I can see pale golden running down her chin.

Moving easily through the crowd I find Sunny half filling her glass with the imported whiskey we got her as a gift. She's telling her rapt and drunk audience about her achievement with extravagant gestures of the bottle. I come up from behind and swing my arm around her throat. "What bullshit is she peddling to you girls?"

"It is not is not bullshit, Kloude Zissou. It is in fact the total opposite of bullshit." she tries to point at me without tipping her drink and decides to drink it instead. "My little business made it into the centre pages of Prism magazine. And that is a score for every Red!"

One of Sunny's admirers whistles above the music and in response every chick in the building starts stomping on the floorboards and howling though I doubt many of them know exactly why. I'm proud of her and I whisper it in her ear. She gives me a big grin and I leave her to score for every Red another time. I make the rounds or am grabbed by my friends. I am introduced and make introductions. Claudia invites me to do body shots out of her latest pick-up's navel but I wave her off and as I turn away I run into Austen.

"Hey!" I say.

"Hey!" she says back.

"You want to drink something good?"

We walk out onto the nighttime beach with a bottle of Oceanian beer in each hand. It's still warm and there are couples in the sand. I lean against the rough wooden railing and balance one of my beers there and she joins me. After she empties one hand she reaches into my open shirt and runs it over the hard muscles of my chest. Her slim fingers are rough from the work that has toned her body. "I guess you really ain't a girl."

She pulls her hand away. I take a sip. "What made you change your mind?"

"Well I talked some with the other girls and they didn't really believe it but Lee Ann and Sue Ellen tell me that men are real." she drains a quarter of her bottle and shrugs. "I guess truth is stranger than fiction."

"So what are you and the 'other girls' doing in Selfoss?"

"We're agsci students from up near the Storm Belt. We finished our final exams and the faculty organised a beach holiday."

"And Selfoss is in the dry belt." 'Dry belt' is a phrase which here means 'three weeks of the year there is no rain at all' which is a pretty big deal. "So Violets studying agricultural science. You gonna crack the heavy metal issue so the rest of us can eat things that come out of the ground?"

"Nah. My mamas have a farm. I'm gonna help em improve it. There's a big farm out near us run by a co-op of cityfolk. I wanna show em what Violets can do."

Petra once floated the idea of starting a co-op farm because 'Violets love that shit' and more Colours involved will make a farm ultra-competitive. Violets are special but not special in the right way to keep up with that. I raise my bottle and wish her luck. "And what you do?"

"Mostly live off the incredibly generous social support system provided by the Tempesti government." I say, and she rolls her eyes. "I'm actually a xenoarchaeologist but that isn't going a lot of places currently. Mostly I do odd-jobs for a friend. I lived off-world for a while and still have friends from then. In a town like this that's pretty rare."

"You lived off-world?"

"Sure did."

"Where?"

"I was on Surface for a while. Then Oceania and Kanon but not for long."

"Wow." she says, rolling her bottle in her palms. "You sure are somethin else."

"Says the chick with more heavy metals in her bloodstream than an orbital frame."

Austen huffs and finishes her beer and starts on the next. "That ain't so special. When I go back home there'll be Violets all over the place. Not so many of you."

"When do you go back?"

"End of next week." I nod and raise my drink to my lips. "I don't wanna go back to the hostel tonight."

"I figured."

Her feet shuffle. "Do you think that's weird?"

It's too difficult to explain media stereotypes about 'curious Violets'. "You think I'd say so if I did? Seems kind of counterproductive to getting you into bed."

She giggles. "You ain't much different from a woman. In some ways."

IX

When I wake up I see her there, eye closed, pink lips parted, her arms bent with her hands resting on the pillow above her head. Her small breasts rise and fall with her breathing, the delicate wings of her piercing catching the light. Pushing myself up on to my elbow, I reach out and touch her. Her golden brown skin is warm from sleep and the sun. I run my fingers up her firm, flat belly and she squirms and smiles in her sleep. She mumbles when I touch her face. She sighs disappointedly when I pull my hand away. Almost as though she's awake, though she isn't. I stroke her ribs.

Her eyes flutter open, big and bright and honey brown. She smiles.

"Hey." she says.

"Hey." I say back, and she reaches out and touches my jaw and draws me forward till our lips lightly touch. Her fingers close on the back of my neck and I slide my arm under her body. We part and Austen strokes my face.

"You're a bad kisser." she says. "Like a kid."

"It's been a long time."

She gives me a wry little smile then pats me on the chest. I roll back and she straddles my hips and curls one arm around my neck and runs her fingernails up my side. I cradle her slim body against me and she rests her forehead against mine with her eyes closed. Her nose touches mine. Then her lips. It has been a long time, but that's not why it's so good. The way she lightly bites my bottom lip. The way she coaxes my teeth apart and slips her tongue into my mouth. The way her tongue stud presses into the edges of my tongue. She had been apprehensive when we walked up the door of my house. She had been apprehensive as I untied the strings of her bikini.

Then this girl had emerged. The Austen that others had known behind closed doors. This petite girl and her brash confidence. She was sometimes clumsy with me but she didn't care. She took my hands and pressed them to her body. She would whisper instructions as she nipped at my ear.

She kisses me and that's all I can think of of. Her. Austen.

When she pulls back she touches my lips lightly. "How you feelin?"

"I'm tingling a little."

She quirks her mouth. "In a bad way?"

"Hey, I'm a Red. I can handle a little viper like you."

"Oh really now?" she says with a remarkably toothy smile. "I wonder if you'll be sayin that again in twenty minutes."

We make love. We take a shower together. I make her breakfast. We make love again, and again, and again, then she naps against my body in the afternoon sun. I play with her messy hair and feel her breathing. Having lived in Selfoss for so long I had forgotten this feeling. Maybe I had never known it. I am not in love, but I don't want to let her go. Carefully holding her I stand and walk inside and lay her in the cool sheets of my bed. My persocom buzzes on the headboard and Austen stirs, but I whisper quietly in her ear and she doesn't wake. When I pick up my tablet I see Meyer's smiling face from her last birthday. Swiping the screen I walk into my lounge room and lounge on the lounge.

"Sup Meyer?"

"Hee, I got my first advance on the upcoming exhibition. The curator really likes my work so it's prrrretty huge." she's grinning ear to ear. "So I bought a new gun! You want to go shooting tomorrow?"

"I will never quite understand why you girls like unloading hundreds of rounds of live ammunition into the environment."

"Don't be like that Kloude, I know you like it too."

I roll my eyes and glance into my room. Austen's legs are askew and she rolls on to her side. "Can I bring a friend?"

"Well, yeah, of course! Sunhwa's already coming though. You should bring Anais too!"

"I'll bring the flag so you can drape yourself in it. Mail me the map data and I'll see you tomorrow."

She says her goodbyes and shortly after a window informs me that I have mail. I don't bother reading it but check my mail client out of habit anyway. I hop on to the gym meshsite and update the calisthenics schedule so it'll be starting a week late and I make bumbling apologies about why. Remembering what Meyer said about her exhibition I check the gallery site but it hasn't been updated. Austen takes my wrist and pulls my arm out of the way. We kiss for a long time.

We don't even leave the couch. Her hands are shaking on my knees, her fingernails bite into my flesh. I run my hand up her damp back, pressing my thumb into the line of her spine. Her shoulders rise and shiver. I trace the shape of her shoulder and throat with my fingers. "You have a beautiful back." I say. "You're in amazing shape."

"Yeah right. I seen them Reds at your gym. All them chiseled arms and backs and bellies." she glances back at me. "I seen you."

I run my hands down her sleek waist. "We're just show-offs. You're the real thing. I can feel the work you've done to get this athletic. It's sexy as hell."

She falls back against my chest, kisses me beneath the ear. Her fingers are in my hair, and in my hand.

"Slowly." she says, and I obey.

Later, when the sun has gone down and the only sound is the waves, we are together on my bed. She is sitting up, stroking my back. The moonlight catches the shine of her skin. I am watching her. She is watching the sky and stars and the sea. I remember what she said to me last night. The shaping of the geometries of her dream. The Sphere is vast and comprehends a hundred worlds and a hundred gods and a hundred hundred peoples. Women and men I don't know and will never know cast themselves as the torchbearers of the future and make men like me and women like her kill women like me and men like her. Yet here on my bed in my room she sits and has her small dream and it is not small. I am not in love with her, but I will be.

"I can't believe I've been naked all day." she says.

"That's not exactly the profundity I was expecting." I say, and she sticks her tongue out at me. Her fingers make circles between my shoulders. "Will you stay with me again?"

"Yeah."

"And tomorrow night? Will you stay with me then?"

Her hand runs down my arm, rests on my bicep. "Yeah. I dunno if I can handle that much fuckin again though so let's take it easy durin the day."

I smile. "It's not really the sex I'm most interested in." I push myself up and sit facing her. I touch Austen's face and she presses against my palm. Kisses my thumb. "Look, I'll ask outright. Do you want me, or do you want the novelty of me?"

She stops mid-kiss. Grabs my wrist with both hands. "Oh, wow, I don't ... you sure know how to ask a question, Kloude." Her fingers drum against my skin. "I guess ... I came to that party havin decided that I was gonna fuck you. I looked at pictures of men and of men fuckin women on the mesh with Sue Ellen and they didn't do much for me but I still decided it. I wanted to know how it felt to have a cock inside me. That's it. I guess that's what you mean by novelty?"

"That's what I mean."

"Okay. Well that's how I felt last night. At the party and when we were on the tram. That's what I felt right up until it actually was inside me and I realised you were inside me. Sounds kinda stupid when I say it out loud because obviously it had to be you. Ain't nobody else's cock." she chews on my thumb a little and looks sheepish when I grin at her. "But you were inside me and I could feel all this frustration and passion and desire all coiled up in you intense like. That first time I could only hold on to you. To you the person, if you follow me."

I nod.

"I felt all raw afterwards and I ain't felt like that since I was nineteen years old." she rests her hands on my shoulder and pulls herself into my lap. Her arms circle my neck and her legs wrap around my waist. "I liked that feelin and I liked you and I like you right now."

X

Austen is sitting on my gun case with one leg crossed over her knee. She isn't wearing much: a short sleeved shirt knotted under her breasts and a pair of denim short shorts. I didn't have any fibrestock for my seamstress and this was all her party dress and bra could supply. When I offered something from my wardrobe to bulk it out she just gave me a little smile and told me that wouldn't be necessary. When I suggested she could snip some off her vaqueros she laughed and told me that her boots were real leather and that Mama had made them by hand and it blew my tiny mind.

"Car's late." she says, her chin in her hand.

"You know it ai- isn't." I say. "They're never late. You're just impatient."

She snorts. "Yeah yeah, whatever you say."

When the car rolls up I pick up the case and her sitting on it and carry her giggling and trying to balance. I gesture and the boot opens and she scampers in on all fours and slides easily into one of the front seats. I fetch the other cases and join her. We sit quietly for a moment then she leans over and kisses me. "We're going to be late." I mumble into her lips and she bites my bottom lip playfully.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say."

As the car rolls through the suburbs to my mother's house, we hold hands low between the seats, fingers laced together. Sometimes she glances my way and I glance back and that is enough. We don't need to speak. The car parks itself and I walk through the garden of my youth and up the stairs and knock on the door. My mother answers.

"Morning. Anais ready?"

"Who's the girl in the car?"

I half turn. "Austen. She's a Violet on holiday."

"Right. Anais! Your brother's waiting so get your ass into gear!" Mom puts her weight onto the door frame. "A Violet on holiday. She know what she's getting into?"

My eyebrows narrow. "Are you her mother, or mine?"

She opens her mouth to reply when Anais comes stomping down the hall. I give her a hug and she gives our mother a perfunctory peck on the cheek and I send her along to the car with the usual parental platitudes following after her. When she's out of earshot Mom continues. "I'm just realistic. You should be too."

"Excuse me?"

She crosses her arms and leans her shoulder against the frame. "You know what I mean. You saved your sister from a bad relationship. I appreciate that, Anais can be ... difficult. But don't be blind about this. This isn't Landing. Neither is wherever she came from."

I feel like she's slapped me. I try to speak but nothing wants to come out.

"Try to be mindful of who you are. And make sure that your sister is safe."

She closes the door in my face and I just stand there for a long moment. I return to the car and find Austen and Anais chatting away. I take my seat silently and Austen glances over, then a second time. "You okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah, sure. Just talking to Mom."

"Talking to Mom ranks right up there on the total bullshit list." Anais says. "She's a real bitch."

Austen glances between us as I tell the car to drive. "You don't like your mama?" she asks.

"She's just a teenager." I say, and Anais snorts.

"She gives you even more shit than me. I don't even know why you-"

"Anais." I say, and her face in the rear view window looks shocked. Austen sweeps in and changes the subject and we're not even halfway to the quarry before I feel better. Anais tells Austen about school and her new girlfriend - this one is her age - and the part time work she's doing for Sunny. We leave the town behind and head into the hills where the sun makes bars across the road. Before long we can hear the occasional crack above the whine of the engine. I touch the dash and it unfolds into a wheel and I swing us around into the quarry.

I don't know why it's called that. I guess it's because for about as long as Selfoss has been a town Tempesti have been coming up here to ablate the cliff face with gunfire. There's a few cars here in a rough semi-circle, and I park us and Anais jumps out to say hi to Sunny. "Don't run around like an idiot, idiot!" I call after her but she just waves her hand. Austen smirks at me and I shrug and shake my head. I see Meyer showing off her new gun to Logan and Delilah and a Blue from her artist collective.

"Ah, you brought it!" Meyer says as I walk up with my gun case. "And the friend you mentioned!"

"Meyer, this is Austen. Austen, Meyer." I put down the case.

"It's really nice to meet you, Austen. We don't get many Violets in Selfoss. Anyway, this is Logan, and this is Delilah: they're my partner's colleagues. And this lovely lady is Lucille and pretty much the finest artist you'll ever meet."

"She's such a dirty flatterer." Lucille says.

I sit on my case and clap my hands. "Come on, let me see this new toy of yours."

Meyer obliges and turns it over to me. It's a revolver, which is pretty rare, and she hasn't got the cylinder in. I look it over, aim down the sights at the grass. It's been custom tooled so it doesn't quite fit in my hand and the hammer seems smooth. The balance is interesting: usually these front heavy guns are a little unwieldy but holding it out at arms length it seems fine. "The capacitor's behind the cylinder, right? It's just got a weight near the muzzle."

"You bet."

"What is this," I've snapped it open to check the bore. "Seven, eight millimetre caseless ETC? And a revolver. Who makes a gun like this on Tempest?"

Austen is leaning over my shoulder. "De Vries did a line of leccy-therm revolvers firing full power case. My gramma had one. They're really rare now."

I turn my head to wear Sunny and Petra are showing my sister the proper handling of a payload gun. I hand the gun back. "So is this a secret from Petra? The collector's edition revolver, I mean."

"Well, not exactly."

"Kloude, I've been trying to ignore it, but what is up with that case?" Logan and Delilah had been standing aside after the introductions had been made. Now she steps over and toes me in the hip. "It's for a gun, right? Delilah could use it as a coffin."

"It's for a gun." I say. Logan looks incredulous.

"He almost never brings it out. Says it costs too much too use." Meyers says, tapping her chin. "It's actually a bit unusual that he did ... "

I stand up and brush my hands on my knees. I can feel Austen standing behind me. "Yeah, yeah." I let the lock taste me and the case unfolds. The girls stand around as I unpack and the pieces scissor apart and fit together seamlessly. When I stand it up to fit the optic, both Delilah and Austen are barely taller. Austen reaches out to touch it, as though it isn't quite real. "That's so big." Delilah sighs. "It's even bigger than yours, Logan. I mean that AM rifle you have."

"What is up with the grip?" Logan says, flexing her hand. "It's way too huge."

"That's because it was built for people with much bigger hands. I had an older friend on Surface who served in the Black Army. I got a mention in his will, and this was one of the things I got." I run my hand down its smooth shell. I remember sitting on his shoulders as the snow fell lightly around us and the things he said and which I have never forgotten. "The glassgun he used when he was a Hussar."

"Military hardware from another planet. From outside ZOCU, even!" Meyer always gets excited about this. She's more of a nerd than she's likes to let on.

"Well don't get too excited, it's demilitarised. It's not fully automatic any more, for example. And the optic is after-market."

"This thing was fully automatic at some point." Logan says flatly. A hundred and fifty metres downrange her my sister squeezes off a burst from Petra's payload gun and I can just hear the characteristic whine of a Tempesti railgun with an empty mag above the distant, singular boom of eight shaped charges detonating in sequence. Anais whoops as part of the landscape the size of a small house just sloughs off after a hundred thousand years of serenity. I raise my eyebrows at Logan, but she isn't impressed.

"So we just gonna stand around fingerin ourselves or am I gonna get to shoot this thing?" Austen says, kicking me in the shin lightly. I hand her the shoulder guard and when she looks at me funny I tell her to put it on tight.

We set up at the edge of what the locals consider to be 'the range'. Austen is lying flat on the grass bending her feet over her ass, watching as I pin the gun in place. When I look back to gesture her up she mimes a kiss and I lean my head towards the other women. She shrugs and then worms up and presses her shoulder into the stock. Reaches for the grip. It's a bit of a stretch so I feel for the tension in her shoulder. "You're lucky you're a Violet." I say. "Don't get complacent because I tied it down. I don't need to tell you how to handle a powerful rifle. I'm going to load it."

Components snap open to accept the mag. I place my hand firmly on her back, my finger tips quickly kissing her brown skin and she smirks up at me over the stock. She presses her check against the rest and lies there, breathing deeply and just sighting down the optic. Her small hand rises from the grass and takes the grip. Despite the difference in size she doesn't seem awkward. Her finger slips into the trigger guard and her breathing stops. There's a noise like an exploding ramjet and a flash which darkens my shooting glasses. A massive force that I can feel passing under my hand. There's a line of violet-blue drifting away in the wind, passing through a glowing hole in a chunk of rock that I could fit a fridge through. There's a depression in the ground the size of a dinner plate and eight inches deep.

"Holy shit! Owww." Austen rolls away from the gun, patting her shoulder and laughing almost deliriously. "Ow, ow, ow, what the fuck was that? God my teeeeeth! Kloude you cunt I can't believe I'm going to make you-"

Whatever she had to say next was lost in her laughter. After a while her laughter subsides to giggles and heavy breathing as she works her jaw. Meyer has walked over and leans down, pushing strands of hair out of her face. "Pretty intense, huh? Pure kinetic weapons are so cool."

Austen sits up, working her shoulder. "I thought you said it was demilitarised."

"It is! I ... actually don't know what that means in practical terms. You want to go again?"

"Fuckin yes."

Later as more people arrive and the girls have fired off as much glass as I'm willing to pay for, I take out my personcom and start taking some photos. Sunny with Logan's two-stage precision rifle cradled and making Delilah extravagant promises about what she can hit. Lucille and Petra stripping down an old IW-45 to swap in a new barrel. Anais blushing as Meyer helps her aim the De Vries revolver at a menhir about four hundred metres down range. I take a moment to tease her and when her face is bright red I snap another picture. I watch as she squeezes off a couple of shots and smashes the back half to dust. When I zoom in I can see a pair of glowing crater the size of my palm and about as deep.

"Nicely done, little sister." I say, showing her the photo. She's still blushing, but now she's smiling.

I walk over to the cars where Sunny has set up a picnic table. Austen is sitting facing out with her bare heels on the bench and my glassgun between her legs. I hold up my persocom and she spreads her knees squishes her boobs up. "Charming." I say.

"You love it." she replies, picking up a can of Kanon Cola - which is shit, by the way. Diet Storm is the business.

I hold up the photo to get a better look, then sit by her. "Maybe. Having fun?" she nods. "How are your fellow graduates?"

"I talked to Sue Ellen this morning. Sounded like we're all mostly doing our own thing, but we're going out for dinner tomorrow night." she leans in conspiratorially. "You wanna come along? I could do with showing off my new girlfriend."

"Boyfriend."

"What?"

"Never mind. And I don't know if that's really ..."

"Kloude are you okay? You been acting a little queer." She leans towards me, peers up at my face. "I know you said we should keep this kind of quiet like but this is a little more quiet than I was expecting."

Rubbing the back of my head, I look off to the side. "It's a little hard to explain. But I'll try ... just not right now."