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 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, Sunshower is lovely, 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