“I’ve got three partners,” xie says as xie waves away the lynx—it dissipates into thin air. “We don’t cohabit so you and I will have total privacy. If you haven’t, ah, haven’t changed your mind.”
“What do you want done to you?”
“What are you willing to do?”
Ovuha smiles. In this light, she knows her teeth would glint, alluring as a tiger’s. “Surprise me. I can do… quite many things. I do not receive, of course.”
Xie stares at her, mouth parted, then shivers. “There’s—a few tools.”
These tools are various: a standing frame of solid metal bristling with restraints; a sensory deprivation helmet; a rack of iron rods—some sharp, others blunt—that can be switched to frigid cold or scorching heat. Atam lays out the terms and has them recorded by xer guidance. It is a mercenary arrangement, businesslike, and it surprises Ovuha that Atam remains as eager and desirous as ever by the time they’ve settled the details. Not that she’s new to such acts, and she knows the terms must be explicit and comprehensive beforehand. But this is the first time she’s engaged in sex this transactional. Or blatantly so, at least. She has fucked people for reasons other than chemistry or connection before because their lust was useful to her, could be braided into loyalty. Like anything else, it is a tool.
Atam transfers access to the apartment’s lighting to her, though xie retains control of particulate images that would activate in place of a safeword. Ovuha takes her time, though she counts the hour against when Suzhen would expect her home.
First she cuffs Atam in place, an easy task given that the frame has been tailored to xer, and arranges xer spread-eagled but still—for the most part—dressed. Little by little, she dims the lighting. She circles the frame and Atam, running her hands over the metal rods on their rack, letting them clang and tinkle. Some are very small, tapering to a needlepoint. Atam watches her with the same captive attention a fawn might watch a panther that has chased it across kilometers uncounted, has at last run it down.
Xie is far from unlovely, and on impulse Ovuha grabs xer jaw, kisses xer hard. Atam whimpers as she bites and scrapes her incisors over xer lips, and presses an iron rod across xer throat. Not with enough force to threaten the integrity of trachea, but it is enough to make xer groan and push against xer restraints.
In the quiet, xie pants.
Deliberately she brushes xer hair out of xer face, strand by strand, almost tender. She doesn’t say anything; that way the fear—and for Atam, desire—heightens. The sensory deprivation helmet is soft in her hand, almost like gossamer, a pretty lavender shade. It hardens, once activated, into something more like carapace.
For an instant, she thinks of an entirely different mask, which she wore so often and for so long it was more her face than her current one could ever be. But she lets that thought fall away and affixes the helmet’s parts to Atam. It holds on well, like everything else tailored for xer, slipping over xer eyes and then xer ears. She chooses to leave Atam’s mouth free. The block on xer sight and hearing is thorough—Ovuha claps her hands right in xer face. No reaction.
Under pretext of selecting a rod, she takes cursory looks at the bedroom, but she knows whatever she does would be recorded and she doubts Atam would have anything lying about that’d be relevant. She touches every piece of paraphernalia Atam has laid out for her. But no reaction occurs and her hidden implant remains inert. Once more she very much misses her sensors, the apparatuses and heuristics that scan and measure and summarize. Almost like additional organs, an additional line of perception better attuned than sight and hearing.
She chooses a rod that is almost a knife: it is whetted to cobalt keenness, so much that light seems to scrabble for purchase on its frictionless edge.
They have agreed that Atam’s clothes are fair game. She finds a point of entry, slices down from collar to chest. Fabric rips nearly without sound, parts to reveal skin as luminous and unblemished as porcelain. She turns the implement in her hand to a low temperature, eight degrees Celsius, five degrees.
As she works, she wonders why Atam wanted a potentiate; as xie cries out and arches into the iron’s subzero touches, she develops a theory. To Atam, to any citizen, she represents unfettered violence, the essence of the colonies and the exodus. Made safe, now that she is contained within Anatta’s system, subjected to Samsara’s civilizing influence. But exciting nevertheless, a touch of piquancy xie cannot find in partners born to Anatta. A fetish.
She turns the rod warm, hot, scalding. She stops at forty-seven degrees. With careful attention she avoids lingering on any one spot too long. Despite Atam’s preferences for damage—and xie prefers a good deal—she doesn’t intend to leave more than second-degree burns.
Xer perfect skin reddens. Xie thrashes.
By the time Ovuha is done, Atam hangs on the frame, limp and loose-limbed. Xer eyes are half-shut when she removes the mask, mouth ajar, saliva trailing down one corner. A low, hoarse moan as she unstraps xer. Wrists and ankles in pristine condition—the restraints are well-cushioned. The house drone wheels over to help, though Ovuha has no trouble carrying Atam to xer bed in her arms, the only position where she won’t chafe xer developing blisters.
The drone emits instructions to her in a low, thrumming voice that she imagines belongs to one of Atam’s partners. Ovuha knows how to give first aid, but she follows along regardless.
“You’re amazing,” Atam whispers, not opening xer eyes. “Though I would have liked you to brand your name onto me…”
“A little much for a first encounter, surely.” She peels off the disposable gloves, hands them to the house drone. Every burn she’s inflicted on Atam is coated in protean; they will heal without blemish in a day or two. This is merely play. “Would you like me to stay around?”
“I’ll be fine. Could I—hire you again?”
“We will see.” Whether she needs to strum this thread, whether Atam provides that connection she needs. But then she cannot survive here on Suzhen’s grace alone—even a simple social tie could prove useful, could shore up her disguise. A little like accruing armaments, ammunition, in preparation for combat. She expects Suzhen will take offense at the analogy. More often than she should, Ovuha imagines what it’d be like if they had met under different circumstances. The trajectory that would have occurred in place of their freighted asymmetry. But if Ovuha succeeds, that could still be hers. She may rewrite the crossing of their paths.
Homeward. Two stations from where she is meant to get off, a message pings her portable. From Rachel, the husband of the Wyomere family to whom she’s given language lessons. He is asking if he can see her in a nearby hanging garden; he would like, he says, to thank her properly. Ovuha considers ignoring him, but something piques her curiosity.
The hanging garden is quiet this time of the day, filament trees thrumming like harps. The ground reflects the sky and the sky alone, admitting nothing of Ovuha or any other pedestrian, not even their shadows. A wealth of sky, stretching on and on. So many arrivals are shell-shocked by it, by the glassy atmosphere that can be breathed in and breathed out again without risk to lungs or brain. The light that is inexhaustible and open, alien to those who have spent all their lives in pinprick corridors and carotid tunnels, have known nothing beyond compressed existence within decaying stations.
Rachel is waiting for her in a gazebo that from afar looks like a bauble suspended between sky and sky. He greets her with news that he’s found work, good work that he wouldn’t have gotten without fluency in Putonghua. “It’s a fine kind of job,” he says, proud, “and the client wants someone articulate.”