She ordered the door locked and stripped out of her suit, leaving it tossed across the back of her chair. She placed her honor on the edge of the desk, avoiding the blotter so she wouldn’t trigger her system, and turned to face the wall. “House, I need a shower, please.”
There had been no trace of a doorway in the transparent wall before her, but an aperture appeared as she spoke and irised wide. She passed through it, petting the city’s soap‑textured wall as she went by. It shivered acknowledgment and she smiled. Lights brightened as she entered, soothing shades of blue and white, and one wall smoothed to a mirror gloss.
House was still constructing the shower. She inspected her hair for split ends and her nose for black‑heads as she waited, but it didn’t take long. The floor underfoot roughened. The archway closed behind her and warm rain coursed from overhead. Lesa sighed and closed her eyes, turning her face into the spray. Her shoulders and back ached; she arched, spread her arms, lifted them overhead and stretched into a bow, then bent double and let her arms hang, pressing her face against her knees, waiting for the discomfort to ease.
The water smelled of seaweed and sweet flowers; it lathered when she rubbed her hands against her skin. She could have stayed in there all night, but she had things to do. “Conditioner and rinse, please,” she said, and House poured first oily and then clean hot water on her, leaving behind only a faint, lingering scent as it drained into the floor.
Her comb and toiletries were in her desk. She dried herself on a fluffy towel–which House provided in a cubbyhole, and which she gave back when she was done–and sat naked at her desk, wrinkling the dirty suit on her chair, to comb through her tangles and spy on her guests while she planned her attack.
“Show me the Colonial diplomats.” There was always a twinge of guilt involved in this, but it washer job, and she was good at it. Her blotter cleared, revealing the guest suite.
Miss Kusanagi‑Jones stood in the center of the floor, balanced and grounded on resilient carpetplant, his feet widely spaced in some martial‑arts stance. Eyes closed, his hands and feet moved in time with his breath as he slid sideways and Lesa leaned forward, fascinated. She’d suspected he was a fighter. He held himself right, collected, confident, but without the swaggering she was used to seeing on successful males. As if he didn’t feel the need to constantly claim his space and assert his presence.
She wondered if this was what combat training looked like on a gentle male, one whose strength wasn’t bent on reproduction and dominance. It suited him, she thought, watching his stocky, barrel‑chested body glide from form to form without rising or falling from a level line. He finished as she watched, then paused, a sheen of sweat making his dark skin seem to glow in comparison with his loose white trousers. Then he bowed formally and dropped into slow‑motion push‑ups, alternating arms.
Male arm strength. Which made it no less impressive.
Katherinessen came from the shower a moment later, naked and dripping slightly. Wisps of mist hung around him, and green, gold, and blue lights glowed through the tawny skin in the hollow of his left wrist. He touched them; the mist drifted in spirals about his body, and his hair and skin were dry. Even the water droplets on the leaves of the carpetplant ended abruptly, five steps from the shower door.
He was older than she’d thought, Lesa realized. He was a ropy man, long and lean, the fibers of his muscles clearly visible under the skin, but that skin had a soft, lived‑in look. He moved in his body unself‑consciously. She thought he might be showing himself off to his lover a little, which made her smile.
He could be anywhere from thirty‑five New Amazonian years to fifty; if he were a native she would have guessed thirty from the sparse gray in his hair and his relatively unlined face, but the Colonials stayed out of the sun; he might be much older.
And that was without accounting for the OECC’s medical technology. She’d heard they could live into their second century in vigorous health. It worried her; these men were the equivalents of Elders, if men had Elders, and if the Colonial Coalition had any sense at all, they would be as wily and problematic as anyone in the New Amazonian Parliament.
And they were men. Men with education and resources and the power of a multiworld organization behind them. But men,half crazy with evolutionary pressures half the time. The OECC couldn’t conquerNew Amazonia; they’d proven thatto everyone’s satisfaction. But if it ever decided that what New Amazonia had to offer wasn’t worth the trouble and loss of face its existence created–and if they could find enough reasons to justify their actions to the Governors–they could destroy it.
Bang. As easily as Lesa could lay down her comb, open the closet door with a word to House, and pull out her formal dress.
Lesa didn’t believe her mother’s confident prediction that the Governors would protect them. For one thing, as long as they remained an ungoverned world, they weren’t under the OECC’s ecological hegemony. The Governors might easily decide it was better to shoot first and reconstruct later, and they might be willing to destroy the Dragons’ legacy to do it.
She dressed and found her evening holster on the hanger. It was supple red leather, detailed in gold, and it stood out against the sea‑snake sequins of her flowing trousers.
Kusanagi‑Jones was finishing his push‑ups when she turned back to the image in her blotter. He came up on his knees and rose with casual power, standing in time to hook Katherinessen around the waist as Katherinessen went by, and pulled him close.
Lesa flicked the desk off and reached for her honor in the same gesture. Bonding the pistol into her holster, she frowned.
All right, they were cute. But she couldn’t afford to start thinking of them as human.
Angelo’s body was warm and firm through his gi. His hair tickled Vincent’s cheek and the crook of his neck smelled of clean sweat, quickly fading into the same toiletry licenses he’d been using for the last thirty years. Vincent wondered what he’d do if they ever took that particular cedar note off the market. It was a knownsmell, viscerally, and Vincent’s body responded. “Go get clean. It’s pleasant. Decadent. You’ll like it.”
Michelangelo stepped back, his gi vanishing into curls of foglets. His body was still hard under it, blocky, the pattern of moles and tight‑spiraled curls on his chest at once familiar and alien, like coming home to a place where you used to live.
“Figures. We have to come to the last outposts of civilization for our decadence.” Tendons flexed as he glanced at his watch. “Be out in a few ticks. I’ve given you access to my licenses. Figure out what I should wear, won’t you?”
Vincent smiled to hide the twisting sensation. Dressing Angelo had always been Vincent’s job. Left to his own devices, Michelangelo would probably walk around naked most of the time. Not that most people would object–
Mind on your job,Vincent reprimanded himself, and set about trying to figure out what the New Amazonians would consider “formal.”
Uncertain what cultural conditions would apply, their offices had issued each of them a full suite of licenses, which, of course, did not include any hats. Formal fashions on Old Earth tended to be more elaborate than those on colonial planets, which cleared about half the database, but Michelangelo had the advantage of his complexion and looked wonderful in colors that Vincent couldn’t remotely carry off.