“Yeah, it was,” Elx said. “You should’ve seen her when she came in, carrying five of the ugly beasts in a bag like it was treasure, a smile as bright as Iamme on her face.”
“Sorry I missed that,” Kyle replied. Michelle, a human who’d been here for a few years, was a lovely woman, especially, Kyle believed, when she smiled.
“She’s probably sorry you did too,” Elx told him. “Lady’s sweet on you, Joe.”
Kyle laughed. “Right,” he said sarcastically. “Because I’m such a good catch.”
Elx fixed him with a clear-eyed gaze, and rose up from his seat on the steps. “Steady worker. Honest man, far as I can tell. No obvious addictions. Don’t get into a lot of fights. What’s wrong with that?”
“You’d have to ask Michelle,” Kyle answered. “If I was her, I’d go for me in a heartbeat.”
Elx clapped a hand on Kyle’s shoulder that almost knocked him to the floor. As was typical with Cyrian men, Elxenten was big and powerful, with the overdeveloped shoulder muscles that made him look like he was wearing padding. “Maybe I’ll just do that. After I’ve got a gut full of her hestum. Let’s go on back.”
Kyle reached the door first and held it open for Elx, who nodded his appreciation as he passed. The building had been, in its heyday, a mundane apartment building, and still served essentially that same function today with the exception that nobody collected any rent. The front room was a lobby area, its gold paint flaked and peeling. There wasn’t a corner in the place; every wall swooped and arced in reflection of the outside curvature. It was, Kyle thought, an interesting contrast to Starbase 311, which went to such trouble to hide its curved nature. Stairways wound up from the lobby to the various apartments above, and through the lobby there was a courtyard, shared with the other buildings clustered around. It was here, on a heavy grating over an open fire pit, that Michelle was grilling her fish. Kyle could see her through the small-paned double doors, the evening’s last slanted rays of light slipping through a space between two buildings and striking her honey-colored hair like a fireball bursting into life. She saw him watching her and laughed, waving her tongs at him like an admonishing finger. It had been a long time since he’d known a woman so alive.
“I told you,” Elx murmured behind him.
“It’s just wishful thinking,” Kyle rejoined. “You’re too old for her so you want to live vicariously through me. But you can’t do that unless I’m living in the first place.”
“Got that right.”
“Listen, I need a shower before I’m fit company for anyone, man, woman, or child,” Kyle said. “Do me a favor, tell her I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
“Unless I forget about living vicariously and just run off with her myself,” Elx said.
“If you do that, more power to you,” Kyle offered. He had a strong hunch that Michelle and Elx would still be in the courtyard, with some of the other neighbors, when he came back downstairs. Unless he hurried, though, it was anyone’s guess if there would be any of that hesturn left, and when Elx opened the double doors the scent wafted in with a cloud of smoke, sweet and intense. Kyle could almost taste the tender pink flesh of the creature, and he had to force himself to keep heading toward his own apartment and the shower he so badly needed. Between the heat, the hard work, and the wind that blew almost constantly, he came home filthy every day. The winds dried his sweat almost instantly but kept him coated with a layer of the city’s dirt.
The squatters who lived in this building tried to keep it clean, but there were limits. They could only rely on the strength of their own group effort to keep out others, who might not be so careful. And no one, having turned to living here when they were unable to afford a place of their own, wanted to then impose exclusivity on it. Anyone who wanted to sleep here was welcome to do so, as long as basic rules of behavior were followed. Fortunately, there were plenty of empty buildings in The End and a few other, similar neighborhoods scattered around Cozzen.
But there was a tendency for trash and litter to build up in the common areas, and Kyle had to walk through some as he climbed the stairs to the third floor, where his place was. He kept his own apartment as clean as any he’d ever lived in, which meant that it would withstand inspection from the pickiest Starfleet admiral there was, and he made a mental note to pick up the refuse on the stairway when he came back down to get some of that hesturn.
On such an arid planet, water was a precious commodity, and it was therefore carefully regulated. Every building had its share, even those that were officially empty, because to deny access to water was tantamount to a death penalty. In return, Hazimot’s citizens learned to use it sparingly. In most homes of the middle and upper classes, sonic showers were commonplace. Power derived from sun and wind was cheap and abundant, so even these squatters’ tenements had power as well. As Kyle entered, his apartment recognized that the daylight was fading and lights turned on. He went to the flat’s bedroom and stripped off his filthy work clothes, then into the bathroom for a quick shower.
When that was done he put on a tunic and some baggy pants of a light, cool local fabric. The clothing was meant to be comfortable in heat and still protect against the winds, and it did a good job of both. He didn’t have the build of a Hazimotian, but other than that he looked like he belonged here, and he found that he liked it that way. Kyle was pleased that he had found a niche here and fit into it so well. He worked because he believed in work, believed that a person had to do a job of some kind to contribute to society. He made a little money, and most of that he contributed, anonymously, to local charities, since he didn’t need much to live on.
But it still bothered him that he was so far from his real job, from Starfleet. They needed him, he was convinced, needed the services that only he could provide. On the Morning Star,during his month of solitude before he had disembarked on Hazimot, he had wracked his brain trying to fathom why he would have become a target. He had made plenty of enemies among Starfleet’s foes, but there was nothing— nothing—that should have made him an enemy of Starfleet. So there was something more going on, and he couldn’t figure out what it might be. He had gone over every job he’d done, every conflict on which he’d advised. And he kept coming up blank. If there was no reason for Starfleet itself to want him out of the way, he reasoned, then that left someone within Starfleet, acting for reasons of his or her own. Which meant, since he was no threat to Starfleet, that there was someone in the organization’s ranks pursuing a private agenda. Which, since that agenda ran counter to Starfleet’s interests, was treasonous.
Except for being unable to solve that problem, though, as the time had passed, he had felt himself healing more. He wished, from time to time, that he could talk to Kate, could describe to her how he was getting better and seek her counsel for continued improvement. The Tholian attack flashbacks faded, and he realized that there would come a day when he would even forget the details of that terrible event, as it drifted further into the past. The unreasoning fear that had propelled him off-planet had faded too. Now, he stayed away as a strategic ploy, not out of blind panic. But he remained at a standstill—he didn’t want to go home until he had a plan, and he couldn’t come up with a good plan until he had some sense of what he was facing.
Dressed and dried by the crisp, hot air, he went back downstairs, collecting the trash from the staircase as he went and tossing it into a recycling unit at the bottom. It was a simple chore; he couldn’t understand why some folks didn’t bother to do it at all.
The odor of the grilled hesturn had filled the lobby now, and other residents were coming down to see what was going on. Kyle nodded hello to a few of them, Templesmith and Blevins and Xuana, and joined the procession through the double doors out of the lobby. The suns had gone down and the firepit provided the only light, casting shadows that danced throughout the circular courtyard. Michelle had pulled her day’s catch off the fire and was bent over a table, cutting them into sections, one strand of her long blond hair clamped between her lips as she concentrated.