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  CHAPTER FIVE

  SEJAL’S JOURNAL DAY 4, MONTH 10, COMMON YEAR 987

  I turned my first trick today.

  There. I said it. Or I wrote it down, anyway.

  I’ve never kept a journal before. It’s kind of weird. I’m typing because I don’t want Mom to overhear me talking to the terminal. It’s an old, clunky thing, and you have to talk loud to get its attention. We can’t afford a new one, though.

  Okay, I’m not a virgin anymore. Or does this not count? It’s not like I let the guy screw me or anything. I’m not into men. Or does this mean I am? I don’t feel any different, and I don’t look any different. I’ll write it all down and maybe then I’ll know if something changed.

  I’m kind of scared.

  The voices haven’t gone away. I was hoping they would when I lost my virginity. I don’t know why I thought they might. Sometimes I think I’ll go nuts. They whisper and whisper and and I can’t quite understand what they’re saying. Grampy Lon says hearing voices is a sign of Silence, but I haven’t said much about that to Mom. Every time I bring it up, she changes the subject or just clamps her lips together. I know I had the test-twice-when I was little and that it came up negative both times. They take Silent kids away, so I can’t be Silent.

  Anyway. I was talking about the other stuff.

  I did it for the money. You don’t make much busking, that’s for sure, and there aren’t any jobs for a sixteen-year-old who can’t afford more school, not when slaves do the work cheap. No one gives a shit how many hours you spend studying on the nets, either. So I stood on the corner down by the kelp seller’s with my flute. I’ve been playing since I was six, ever since Grampy Lon decided to give me lessons, and I’m pretty good.

  Okay. The kelpies are at the edge of the market, almost into the business district, and there were lots of bureaucrats skulking around under the tall buildings the Unity sprayed up after the Annexation. The traffic was heavy, with both groundcars and aircars. Between them and the people on the street, it’s almost claustrophobic-perfect spot for a busker, I thought.

  I thought wrong. After three hours, my fingers ached and I had a quarter kesh — enough to buy lunch if I was careful. That was when Jesse wandered over.

  I met Jesse six months ago at the market. By then, Jesse’d been tricking for almost a year. He’s not that good-looking-scruffy black hair, heavy eyebrows, pointy nose, pretty good build-but he doesn’t work for one of the houses, which means he’s cheap and he can usually find a jobber. I think he lives on the street, dodging slavers and goons from the houses. One time the house goons caught up with him and beat him so bad it gave him a permanent limp. He started sucking a lot more jay-juice after that, and I think he tricks to feed his habit.

  Anyway. Jesse looked at the two coins in my hat and tossed in fifty kesh. I stopped playing.

  “Glory. What the hell is that?” I asked. I don’t talk the same at the market as I do at home. Mom would have a moon fit if she knew how much I swear and how bad my grammar is when I’m on the street-or in this journal.

  “Glory. It’s your share.” Jesse hooked his thumbs in his pockets.

  I just gave him a blank stare.

  “You see that guy across the street?” He jerked his head. “The one in the red shirt.”

  Automatically I glanced across the street. An older guy in red was leaning against one of the buildings. Traffic buzzed between us. The guy was lean and looked maybe forty, but for all I knew he had just left a fresh-up and was older than Grampy Lon. He looked nervous.

  “What about him?” I asked.

  “He asked if I knew anyone for a three-way. Pays fifty each. You in?”

  I grabbed the kesh from my hat and thrust it at Jesse. “Forget it.”

  “Come on, guy,” Jesse said. His thumbs didn’t leave his pockets, so I was left holding the kesh. “I haven’t had a jobber all day, and he won’t do just me.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not like he’s gonna fuck you or anything,” Jesse said. “All you got to do is lay back and relax. I’ll do the work.”

  “I’m not into guys, okay?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? It ain’t sex, Sejal. It’s money. M-O-N-E-Y.” He glanced at my hat. “You been busking here all day for that?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  Jesse sidled closer. He smelled like sweat and cheap leather and suddenly I flashed on him. I do that sometimes. It started about six months ago, and it isn’t anything I can control or shut off. It scares me shitless. It’s hard enough dealing with my own feelings without someone else’s crowding in, and right then Jess was a real jumble-up. He was hungry for food and he was really hungry for jay-juice. He was nervous and he was hopeful. One thing he didn’t feel was lust. The flash faded.

  “Listen,” Jesse said. “This guy’ll give you fifty kesh for half an hour. He probably won’t even last twenty minutes.”

  My mouth had gone dry and I snuck another glance across the street. The guy was still there. I tried to sense what he was feeling, but the flash didn’t work. It never does when I’m trying.

  “Fifty kesh, Sejal,” Jesse repeated. “You ever earn fifty kesh in twenty minutes?”

  “No,” I answered, but not as loud as last time.

  Jesse gestured at my flute. “You’ve been playing the wrong instrument, man.”

  I looked at him. In that moment I could have pushed him away with my mind. That’s something else I can do, and it always works. It’s like I’m reaching out and pulling strings that make the other person dance, and I can do it to a bunch of people all at once. I’ve been able to do that for about three months now.

  The first time was by accident. I was on my way home from busking with two kesh in my pocket when a big guy grabbed me and another one put a knife to my neck. A third one was with them. I was too scared to even think. I just shoved at them with my mind. I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like I could feel this… place around me, and I reached through it to them. I reached hard at two of them, and they just froze where they were. The third one got scared, and I reached through that place and flipped his switches and make him really scared. He ran away.

  I haven’t told anyone about that, either. Not Jess or Grampy Lon, and definitely not Mom. I don’t know if it’s related to flashing on what people feel. It probably is, but who can I ask?

  “Listen, just help me this once, okay?” Jesse said. “You don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again, but you’ll still have that fifty. Twenty minutes, man.”

  I looked at the guy. His hair was lighter than mine, almost brown. At least he wasn’t ugly. Jesse had told me about some jobbers who were really fat or who didn’t wash, but this guy looked okay. Fifty kesh. More than a month’s rent.

  “What’s he want us to do?” I asked.

  Jess grinned and lead me across the street.

  At least the guy didn’t want anything strange. Jess was right-all I had to do was lay there with my eyes shut. I didn’t know whose mouth was on me or who was making the bed shake. The hotel room was stuffy and musty-smelling and the sheets were a little damp. The mouths and the motion seemed to go on and on, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

  And then I reached out with my mind the way I did to those two guys. I didn’t want to touch this guy like that, but I did. I reached through that place and found him all hot and horny. I flipped his switch and gave him the mother lode of all orgasms. He yelled, and something warm spattered my leg. Then he flopped down to the mattress. I kept my eyes shut. My teeth were clenched so tight my whole head hurt.

  “Shit,” Jess muttered. “He fainted.”

  Jess wet a washcloth from the bathroom, wrung some water over the jobber’s face, and then wiped my leg. When I opened my eyes, the guy was up and dressing. He had a big smile on his face.

  “Any time you boys are up for that again,” he said, “I’ll pay double. Glory.”

  He gave me and Jess another twenty kesh each and lef
t. I glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes. Seventy kesh.

  “What the hell happened?” Jess almost whispered, staring down at the kesh in his hand. He was still naked.

  “I don’t know.” I pulled my clothes on. “Look, is that it? Are we done?”

  “We’re done, man, unless you want to file for taxes.”

  I didn’t laugh. I just left.

  Now I’m in my room. Mom’s getting ready to go to a meeting. Her whole life is meetings. She’ll probably want me to go and take care of the little kids, but I think I’ll tell her to fuck off.

  Well, probably not like that. I love Mom and all that, but sometimes she’s a real pain. She’s always dealing with some neighborhood disaster at some neighborhood meeting. She acts like the whole place will fall to pieces if she doesn’t keep it up.

  I wonder what she’d say if she knew what happened? I bet she’d throw a cat. So how the hell am I going to tell her about the money?

  I’ll save it. If I get enough, maybe I can buy us passage of this rockball and we can move someplace where the wind doesn’t smell like fish.

  Huh. The only way to get that kind of money is to keep tricking, and I’m not doing that again. Not in a hundred years.

  Mom’s coming. Better sign off.

  DAY 8, MONTH 10, COMMON YEAR 987

  I did it again. I shouldn’t have, probably. What if I got caught? It isn’t just the Unity, but the houses, too. The houses have it all staked out-who can trick where, what they can do. And they beat the shit out of anyone who bugs in on their territory.

  Anyway. I started off down in the market with my flute, not planning to trick. It was a good day-got two kesh in less than three hours. But every time someone dropped a coin in my hat, I kept thinking about how I got seventy kesh in twenty minutes.

  Jesse was tricking a ways up the street from me. He saw me and gave a little wave. A couple minutes later a guy-not the same jobber as before-walked up to him. They talked for a minute, then went off together, Jesse still limping. I looked down at the little coins in my hat. Then I thought, The hell with this.

  I collapsed my flute and shoved it into my pocket, then sort of casually walked over to the spot where Jesse had been standing. I left my hat where it was. Someone grabbed it and ran, but I didn’t care. My heart was beating hard enough to choke my throat. I leaned against the wall and hooked my thumbs in my pockets like Jess did. After a second I realized he did that to tighten his pants across his crotch. I felt like everyone was staring at my privates, but I didn’t move my hands.

  It ain’t sex, I told myself. It’s money. M-O-N-E-Y.

  My mouth dried up like a raisin. I didn’t know what the rules were. Do you look at people? Tell them you’re for rent up front? I should’ve asked Jesse.

  Just to make things harder, the voices started whispering at me again. I concentrated hard, tried to make them go away. I can never quite make out what they’re saying, and it’s scary. Sometimes they come at night, and that’s the worst. It sounds like ghosts breathing on me.

  And then this woman walked up to me as easy as you please and said, “Glory. You look like you’re lost.”

  Whisper whisper whisper whisper.

  I started to deny it, then realized the woman knew I wasn’t lost. What should I say? What would Jesse say?

  “Glory,” I answered. “It’s hard to find your way around this place.”

  “You need a ride somewhere?” She was about ten years older than me, a little heavy, with short brown hair. Her clothes looked really expensive.

  Whisper whisper whisper.

  “Um, sure,” I said. “I could use a ride.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Her aircar-aircar! — wasn’t that far away, but I was so nervous I could hardly walk. I wouldn’t get anything done if I was scared, so I started pretending I was Jesse. Jesse knew which way was up. I was Jesse, strong and smart.

  The voices faded a little bit, and that made me feel even stronger.

  In the aircar, the jobber put her hand on my thigh, but I was in control by then. “It’s a hundred,” I said, pulling the number out of thin air. She handed it to me.

  Her place was a rooftop penthouse, which meant she was a high-placer in the Unity. She landed on the roof near a door. A maid let us in. The jobber treated the maid like she didn’t exist, so I did the same. The maid ignored me, too.

  I tried not to stare at the penthouse, but it was hard. Thick carpets covered the floors, paintings and statues were everywhere-real ones, not holograms-and her bedroom was bigger than my whole apartment. I figured she liked the color blue because everything in her room was done in it. Blue carpets, blue walls, blue bedspread.

  The jobber shut the door and pulled me down on the bed without saying anything. I figured she wanted me to undress her, so I did. I was Jesse, who knew what to do. I opened up her shirt-she wasn’t wearing underwear-and pulled off her skirt. She just lay back on the bed with her eyes shut and didn’t move.

  That sort of startled me. She didn’t try to undress me or kiss me. She just lay there. Her breasts were like little pillows with spots of pink on each. I stared at them-I had never seen a woman naked before. I was hard as a rock. (See? I told you I wasn’t into guys.) That was when she started talking.

  She talked more dirt than a lot of the guys I heard on the street. Half of it was calling me names like “street whore” and “dick boy,” and half of it was telling what she wanted me to do. I was glad because I didn’t have to figure it out for myself.

  She climbed on top of me. All of a sudden I wanted out of there in the worst damn way. I didn’t like the way she smelled or looked or sounded, and I didn’t want her skin touching mine. Before she could do anything else, I reached through that place and made her come hard and fast. She screamed and fell sideways onto the bed. I was scared the maid would come running in.

  “What the hell did you do?” the jobber panted.

  I shrugged. Then I noticed the voices had faded completely.

  “Can you do it again?” she said.

  The words popped out before I even thought. “For the right money.”

  She gave me another hundred kesh, and I did it again. It was easy, and I didn’t even have to touch her much. So much for getting out of there.

  After that, the jobber went into the bathroom. I pulled my clothes on and looked around. She had four closets and her dresser was the size of freight truck. It occurred to me that I could probably hoik something worth a lot more than a couple hundred. And if the jobber walked in, I could just freeze her in place until I was done and she’d never know the difference. I even reached for her dresser. Then I stopped.

  Okay, fine-I’m a rent boy. Hooker. Prick for hire. But I’m not a thief. One thing you don’t do back in the neighborhood is steal, and I wasn’t going to do it here, either.

  The jobber came back in kind of a hurry, as if she’d remembered she’d left a potential thief in her bedroom. So fuck her. Less than an hour later, I was back at the market with two hundred kesh in my pocket. I felt pretty good. I was smooth, in control. People would give me money for easy work.

  I got home a little while ago. Mom isn’t here, of course, and I don’t know where she is. She doesn’t have a regular job. Like I said, the neighborhood takes up a collection to pay our bills and rent in return for all the organizing she does. Mom’s really the queen around here. No crime, no drugs, no wife-beating, and you keep a clean house or you’re out. Mom can’t legally make anyone move, but the Unity doesn’t give a shit what we peons do to each other, and when two dozen people show up to haul your furniture out to the street, you can’t do squat.

  Mom’s good at banding people together. Something in her voice forces you to listen to her. Besides, everyone likes living in a place where you don’t have to worry about jay-heads breaking in looking for stuff to steal and where there aren’t any gangs cruising the streets. Who’s going to win, a bunch of addicts hyped up like hummer fish or group of organized, motivate
d patrollers?

  So we’re all poor but honest folk around here. Mom got people to grow vegetables on roofs and in window boxes for sale down at the market for community money to pay for doctor visits and stuff. Some people raise small animals-chickens and rabbits and pigfish-and we sell them, too. Everyone contributes around here. If you don’t, the furniture committee shows up.

  Anyway. I tried to take a nap when I got home. My room is tiny, with a bare wood floor and a lumpy bed that creaks. There’s a little dresser and an even littler closet. Good thing I don’t have very many clothes. I thought about the jobber, who was probably sitting in her big blue room sipping a drink brought in by her maid, and my room seemed even smaller.

  I got out my flute and played for a while. Sad songs. I don’t know what it is. When you’re depressed, you want depressing music. You should want happy music to make you feel happy. When you’re depressed, though, happy music makes you want to puke.

  I want off this rockball. Only one way to do that, isn’t there?

  Mom’s coming. Signing off.

  CHAPTER SIX

  PLANET RUST, CITY IJHAN, PATROL GUARD STATION #4972

  Stone walls might a pris’ner make,

  But psyche binds the slave.

  — Travil Garr, Poems from a Merchant

  The door fell shut with a crash. Ara glanced around to take in her surroundings-tiny room, two chairs bolted to the floor on either side of a table, and probably no end of hidden surveillance devices. A sign read The Unity Punishes Only the Deserving. Kendi sat in one of the chairs, head in his hands. Ara sat down across from him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Get me out of here,” he whispered hoarsely.

  Ara nodded. “I’ve arranged to pay the fines. It won’t be long.” She reached across the table and grasped one of his hands. Kendi’s skin looked like it was coated with ashes. His eyes were bloodshot, a half-healed cut slashed one forearm, and the hand that Ara wasn’t holding shook slightly. He squeezed her hand with a thin smile before looking down at the table again. Outrage filled Ara’s heart at his condition of her student.