Root and BranchSylvie Althoff
5800 words Visual contact with target’s presumed location. Twila withdrew her finger from her wrist, ending her connection with her SilkNotes app so she could examine the little house beneath the towering forest of gold-and-green bamboo. The lean, red-haired woman breathed deeply, tasting the heady green smell of the place. The air was thick with the sounds of buzzing insects. Way up overhead a big black-and-white bird made lazy circles; her optical implant told her that it was something called a pied harrier. Location appears to be three simple wooden structures surrounded by jungle, she wrote through the link in her wrist, the software turning her thoughts into coherent if spare narration. Only road leading in is dirt, impassable to heavy vehicles even now, in the dry season. Map shows Mekong half a klick to the east, marking the border with Laos. No evidence of underground construction, nowhere to land aerial craft within ten klicks. Still no electronic signatures. Walking into this little compound was like stepping back in time: the main wooden structure had a tar paper roof covered with banana leaves, and the trees and vines grew over and through the central house and smaller ancillary buildings. The only modern touch was a half-hidden bank of solar panels on the roof of the main house—one or more of the buildings might be shielded to avoid detection of electronics, Twila mused. Behind the main house was a cleared-out space, maybe a garden. That made some sense for the home of a world-class genomicist, though it was hard to picture someone as accomplished as Charlotte Abrams being content to just putter around in the dirt. If she was even here. This could be yet another dead end, another waste of Twila’s no-longer copious resources she’d expended chasing rumors. Footsteps ahead—slow, lightweight. A gentle ripping sound, then another, like something being pulled out of the dirt. Structure occupied. Approaching to make contact. “Hello?” Twila called out, passing by the main house to approach the clearing at the back. She itched to peer in the windows, but she forced herself to keep her bearing inoffensive, friendly, harmless. In her sandals and fisherman pants, she looked like she could be any twentysomething backpacker who’d wandered off the trail to Vang Vieng. The garden was a vibrant knot of green popping out of three or four hand-dug rows, framed by the looming Thai jungle. A middle-aged woman looked up at Twila in shock. A local, by her eyes and her brown-red skin, wearing a T-shirt and cutoff jean shorts and holding a fistful of plants. She stared at Twila with something between disbelief and anger. “Hello there,” Twila said brightly. The other woman gave no answer, still as a statue with her dark toes in the dirt. Twila’s smile melted into an empathetic frown. “English? Speak English?” Still the woman didn’t move—not to set down the weeds, not to turn to face Twila. But something about her tensed in a way that set off alarms in Twila’s head. She fought the urge to reach for her concealed hip holster. The woman’s eyes flickered just to Twila’s left, and without thinking Twila wheeled to see a tall white woman standing ten feet away. “Oh gosh, you surprised me!” Twila exclaimed, laughing without taking her eyes off the newcomer. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure anyone was home, and—” “Who are you?” asked the tall woman, folding her arms. She was dressed in a ribbed tank top and dirty cargo pants, her pale hair streaked with gray. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, probably at the woman standing in the garden. Twila extended her hand with a smile. “Twila Fournier. I’m a journalist,” she lied. The tall woman made no move to accept the gesture. Instead she raked her eyes up and down Twila, lingering longer than she would have liked on the hip where she’d concealed her gun. Twila heard a rustling behind her and turned to see the Thai woman retreat into the main house. A dirty gray cat wandered into the garden from somewhere. “I came to ask if I could get an interview. You’re not an easy woman to get a hold of, Dr. Abrams,” Twila said with her shiniest smile. Abrams tapped her temple, her eyes still trained on Twila’s. “Implants off. All of them. Now.” Twila showed her teeth. “I was actually hoping I could s—” “Now. I’m not telling you again.” Twila winced. She hadn’t turned off all of her implants since she was thirteen years old; even when they were offline for a brief software update she felt naked, twitchy. But the look in Abrams’ eyes made it clear she had no room to negotiate, so Twila complied with a shrug, ignoring the sinking feeling in her stomach. She didn’t need any tech, she reassured herself, didn’t need her notes or extraction beacon or aiming-assist HUD; she’d done wonders with nothing more than her winning personality and expensive smile. “There,” Twila said lightly, extending her arms to either side. “Now …” She put out a hand once more. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Abrams. May I call you Charlotte? Or Lottie?” “What do you want?” Abrams answered brusquely. Twila reached to call up her script on her SilkNotes, then remembered she’d turned off her implants and clutched her hands together uselessly. “It’s, ah … well, I came to speak to you, Dr. Abrams. I’m writing a story about the Ipsum-3 Uprising.” Twila hoped Abrams found her blush as charming as everyone else did. For a face as precisely sculpted as Abrams’, Twila found her expression unnervingly cold, her hazel eyes cruel behind thick plastic glasses. There was something almost pretty in the older woman’s face, a flash of the pointy kind of elegance Twila had read about in the fawning profiles of Charlotte Abrams from previous decades. “That was a long time ago,” Abrams said. Twila nodded. “I’m doing a ten-year retrospective. You know, looking back on the fallout of Warner-Hettering’s SyLFs. I shouldn’t need more than—” “I’ve already said all I have to say on that subject,” Abrams growled. “My statement is available on the normal channels.” “I’m not looking for an official statement. I’ve already reached out to Warner-Hettering for that angle.” Twila swallowed. “I came out all this way to hear your side of things, Dr. Abrams.” “I signed an NDA.” Twila shrugged and started throwing out the journalistic terms she could remember on the fly—off the record, on background, not for attribution. She wouldn’t ask anything related to confidential intel, she would send Abrams a copy of the story and give her full veto power over the whole thing. By the end her smile muscles were feeling the strain. Abrams’ mouth twisted in disbelief. “You trek all the way out here to talk to me, and on my say-so you’d trash your story just like that?” “Just like that. I’m here to help you tell your story, Dr. Abrams. I think people could stand to hear something other than the polished corporate version of events, don’t you?” The tall woman met her gaze now, but only for an instant before Abrams was tramping across the yard toward the house. “I don’t have anything to say to you, Ms. Fournier.” She stopped at a side door and glowered at Twila. “You’ll want to start heading back to Wiang Kaen, or wherever you came from. The road isn’t safe after it gets dark. We’ve seen elephants in the forest.” With that she retreated into the shadows of the house. Twila took a moment to collect her thoughts. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Abrams,” she called in a singsong voice. “I’ll report your concerns to my colleagues, and we’ll return to speak with you at a more convenient time. I suppose it won’t be as difficult to reach you next time.” Twila kept her eyes on the foliage over her head, smiling and counting ten seconds, twenty. “In here,” Abrams’ voice echoed from behind a screened-in window. “Implants stay off.” Sunlight the color of brass filtered through the window screen, scattering a thousand Baroque shadows across jugs of water, paperback novels, a sleeping cat, unlabeled notebooks, plastic dishware, cat food cans, wads of mosquito netting, a vase full of fresh-cut flowers, children’s art supplies, a second sleeping cat, boxes of pipettes and syringes, a wooden folding screen with pictures of elephants. There was a table somewhere and at least one chair. Hushed, angry voices slithered out from a darkened doorway. Twila craned her head and spotted an overflowing laundry basket and a queen-sized bed before the conversation was extinguished. Abrams stepped into the main room, closing the door behind her. “Sit there.” Abrams gestured to a couch already occupied by a pile of quilts and a wicker basket full of shoes. Twila looked askance at her hostess, who had perched herself on the arm of a nearby armchair that had been claimed by a ginger cat. Twila moved the basket onto the floor and sank into the distressingly soft sofa. The shoes were of two different sizes, she noticed. “All right,” said Abrams warily. “Let’s make this quick.” Twila took a moment to examine the other woman. From her research she knew Abrams’ endocrine system was virtually superhuman, her physiology almost indistinguishable from that of a cis woman half her age. Yet the celebrated scientist looked every one of her fifty years, her face creased with worry-lines, teeth grinding as she regarded Twila in turn. Twila licked her lips, then grinned. “I don’t suppose I could borrow a notebook? I had been expecting to transcribe our interview, you see.” “I don’t suppose you could, no.” “Well then,” Twila continued, looking around helplessly, “could I impose on you for a bottle of water? It was quite a hike getting here. Maybe a pot of tea, if you haven’t already sent your help home?” “My h—” Abrams caught herself, but not soon enough for Twila to catch a glimpse of a different flavor of anger. She muttered and retrieved a small bottle of water from a half-finished pack lying on the floor, and she tossed it at Twila. “There. Now, let’s get this over with.” “All right …” Twila began, choosing her words with great care. “Okay. Ten years since the Ipsum-3 Uprising. The beginning of it, anyway, the attack on W-H’s orbital platform by a group of the company’s artificially created laborers known as synthetic life forms—SyLFs.” It was hard to keep thoughts of money from her mind as Twila uttered that sibilant little syllable. “Have you followed any of the stories of captures of missing SyLFs over the last few months?” Twila watched Abrams carefully, but her face could as well have been made of molded plastic. “We don’t really get a lot of news out here,” Abrams replied in a low voice. “That’s not a no.” She sighed. “I’ve heard some of the reports, in passing.” “Do you have any insight about the condition in which the SyLF called Augue-1 was finally found? That was the one dispatched by peace officers last December.” “What condition are you talking about?” Twila shifted in her seat, unable to recall how she’d prepared for this question. “You designed SyLFs to—” “I didn’t design anything,” Abrams blurted. “I was part of a team, a large one.” “All right … your team designed SyLFs to be ideal workers, right? Generally human-shaped so they can use human tools and such on the W-H orbital facility. But not human, clearly. Obvious differences in their … brain chemistry, I guess. Built to be more compliant workers and such.” “Smashing success there, obviously,” Abrams grumbled before Twila could say it herself. “They were also designed to be visually distinct from real humans. Purple skin, no hair or navel. Genderless. Couldn’t be mistaken for one of us if it got loose.” Abrams snorted. Twila leaned forward. “Augue-1 was found living in Lower Normandy posing as a human man. How could a SyLF have managed such a thing?” “No idea,” Abrams answered instantly. “And if you give it a little consideration?” “A little, a lot—wouldn’t make a difference. I’ve been in Thailand since Ipsum-3, how would I know what was happening on the other side of the world?” “Theoretically, then, not personally. How would a SyLF disguise itself as a person? Surely you would have some idea.” Abrams’ lip curled, but she half-closed her eyes and rubbed her hands against her knees in thought. “Theoretically? He would have needed a surgeon of some kind, though I can’t imagine how that would be coordinated—SyLFs are wanted by every world government. He’d need to locate a sympathetic doctor, secure means of payment, avoid detection in the medical system …” “Assuming all that happened—is it possible? Medically possible?” She shook her head. “I’m not that kind of doctor, Ms. Fournier. Apparently it is possible somehow, if Augue-1 did it.” “All right, if not how, then where? “Where what?” “Where might a SyLF choose to go, if it were evading capture? Or if it were seeking some way to disguise itself as a human?” “I already told you I don’t know,” Abrams snapped. “What the hell are you asking me for, anyway? Are you here for my story or here to look for SyLFs? Or to hide one?” Twila’s mind raced at these accusations, but she kept her posture straight and let her irritation show in her voice. “Do you know how many of your colleagues on the Warner-Hettering SyLF design team were killed in the Uprising? How many more were hunted down and murdered by that rogue SyLF until it was captured in Berlin last winter?” The change in the doctor’s bearing was small but dramatic, her posture collapsing like the air had been let out of a balloon. “What, so you think they … you think one of the missing SyLFs might come after me?” Abrams’ voice was small and scratchy. “I’m here for a story, like I told you.” Twila cleared her throat. “But is that a possibility you’ve considered? That a SyLF might come after you—maybe even the leader of the uprising, Ipsum-3 itself, since it’s still at large?” Speaking it out loud, it sounded ridiculous. As brilliant a mind as Charlotte Abrams, and she hadn’t once anticipated such a threat? Hadn’t taken even perfunctory safety measures? Twila smiled and reached out a hand to put on the scientist’s knee in reassurance but felt Abrams bristle before she could touch her. “I’m not an easy woman to find, you said yourself,” Abrams said in a tired voice. “But if any of them do come after me? I deserve everything those poor creatures might ever do to me. We all do, after what we did to them.” Twila started as Abrams rushed to her feet, but the tall woman only grabbed another bottle of water. She opened it, drained half, then looked around the room, avoiding Twila’s gaze. Abrams ran a finger along the back of a skinny black cat sleeping on a pile of laundry, then turned her focus to a vase of frilly, electric-yellow cut flowers in a vase on top of a bookshelf. After a few minutes of silence Abrams spoke. “That should be enough for your story, Ms. Fournier. The sun will be down in an hour or two … you should probably start heading back to town.” Twila rose slowly, keeping her hands visible. “I understand this is a sensitive issue. I’m sorry to have upset you. But if you have some reason to think Ipsum-3 or any other SyLFs may be coming after you? It would be safer if you told me. I could … I might know someone who could offer you protection.” “Not necessary, thank you.” Abrams’ eyes were full of fire, though her fingers were still brushing gently against the delicate yellow petals. “Just one more question, then, and then I’ll leave. You’ve told me how and where … how about why?” “Why what?” “I read that Augue-1 spent years working in a village bakery, even got married to a local woman. In fact, every one of the six SyLFs that were picked up by authorities this year had been living as real, flesh-and-blood people, apparently getting surgery to support their false identities—that’s how the last two were caught, turned in by doctors who care about following the law.” Twila struggled to keep her voice even. “Why would a SyLF go through all that instead of just running as far from people as they could get?” Abrams blinked. “You ask this like I’ve got any idea what’s happening in the mind of a SyLF.” “Even as one after another pursues surgery, adopts a human gender, tries to live as one of us? I’d think you would have a better idea than almost anyone, Doctor.” “Because I helped design them? Or because I’m trans?” Noise in the house, somewhere close. Twila glanced at the door behind her, her instincts lighting up with danger. Her gun felt heavy in her holster. “Look at these irises,” Abrams said coolly. Twila heard the command in her voice, so she swallowed and slowly approached Abrams by the bookshelf. Without the help of her optical implant, they just looked like flowers. “I’ve been growing those here for a few years now,” Abrams said in a faraway voice. “One dry winter like this, when I didn’t have anything better to do, I fiddled with the genetic code of this strain, tried all kinds of variations. Different colors, sizes. Introduced bits of code from local plants, gave them the mosquito-repellant properties of bee balm. That last one worked great, but only until they flowered. Easy fix, I just introduced a bit of code to keep them in their juvenile stage indefinitely. Enforced neoteny, like pruning a bonsai tree.” “Fascinating,” Twila muttered, her focus entirely on the footsteps in the adjoining room. “But however I fiddled with their code, they would always end up flowering anyway.” Abrams’ voice was growing louder, more certain. “There’s no changing what these plants are at their core. Even if I could prevent them from developing the way they do in nature, it’s still written in them deep down, and sooner or later it always comes back up. All I was doing—all my team was doing—was just pruning genetic branches, shaping the flower to suit our needs.” “Doctor, I—” “SyLFs are just bonsai humans: stunted, manipulated, but they’ve got all the same drives that we do. There’s no stopping those from growing and flowering in their own time. Gender, yes, but more than that—curiosity, kindness, independence. Abhorrence of captivity. All the things that make us human are in the SyLFs, too, root and branch.” Twila let Abrams breathe for a moment before she asked softly, “Is that all the genetic fiddling you’ve been doing here, Doctor? Irises?” A door slid open and Twila took a step back, alarmed. The woman from the garden entered bearing a plastic tray with two teacups and a shiny blue teapot. “Tea?” asked the dark woman, smiling at Twila in that syrupy Thai way. “No, thank you, Dara.” Abrams was at Twila’s side now, close enough to grab her by the wrist. “Ms. Fournier was just leaving.” Twila felt the sweat coming from Abrams as she was hustled out the door of the house, which closed in her face before she could speak another pleasantry. She put an ear to the door then saw movement through the textured window to her side—someone was watching her leave. With a heavy sigh, she started walking slowly back the way she’d come, glancing over her shoulder at the little house in the Thai jungle. The bronze sun dipped below the trees in front of her. She increased her pace. *** Waking from a nightmare of screams and failed gravity and shattered glass, Lottie Abrams saw that she was alone in their bedroom. The moon was shining through the window, bright as a spotlight on Dara’s place in the bed, where she had been when Lottie closed her eyes after they’d had wordless, insistent sex. Lottie fumbled for her chunky plastic glasses, finding them under a sleeping cat. “Dara?” she called out. The word died in the cool stillness of the house. Her feet were clammy against the threadbare rug. The old place was dark tonight, and far too quiet. The kitchen looked to be untouched since Lottie had cleaned up after dinner. She could detect no lights or noise from the workshop next door, but she checked all the same—Dara used to spend long, sleepless nights in there. Lottie would leave her alone, lying equally sleepless in her bed before she finally went out to talk to her that one night, before the treatments, before she had started to call herself Dara, before it became their bed. The workshop was empty, the sample trays were untouched, the solar battery along the wall winking green. Lottie spied a notebook left out of place, but she recognized her own handwriting. That’s right, I left in a rush when I heard that “journalist” outside. She coughed, sour stomach acid crawling into her mouth again at the thought of their visit from Twila Fournier or whatever her real name might be. Lottie exited the workshop and called out again, though she didn’t expect an answer any longer. Now the fear was under her skin, jerking her fingers into anxious, useless little movements. She rushed to the entryway of the house and saw that Dara’s good boots were gone. She would be headed for the Mekong by now, or she was already downriver and gone for good. “Fuck.” Lottie didn’t give herself time to think before jumping into her flip-flops and running out the back door into the forest. Lottie had always stayed close to the house after dark, and the trail leading around the mountain was alarmingly unfamiliar in the white slashes of moonlight that pierced the canopy. Animal calls trickled across her bare arms, already gooseflesh in the night air. She ignored it all, running headlong down the dusty path, catching herself tripping over rocks but not slowing her stride. “Dara!” she shouted, her voice a croak between gasps of air. Her breath came fast, limbs aching at the sudden movement. Finally she paused to orient herself, realizing she should have reached the first fork in the path by now. She stopped and spun around the blue-black bamboo and teak looming over her head, and as she considered the situation her thoughts finally caught up with her. I can’t believe she would have left in the middle of the night like this! What is she even thinking? She’s thinking she doesn’t want to be stopped by your dumb ass, Lottie. I shouldn’t be going after her. She should’ve left years ago. I shouldn’t even be alive any more—certainly not out of some lovesick narcissism. But how far can she even make it before she’s found out? In the shadows of tree trunks Lottie imagined the small, fragile woman taken in by a kind smile and sold to sex traffickers or organ harvesters or off-planet slavers. If she wasn’t just clocked right away and turned in for the bounty. “Dara! Dara!” Lottie shouted. A handful of night birds took wing. She winced as her voice came back to her a hundred times, reflected from the treetops and the mountainside. Oh, awesome, she thought with a grunt. Make sure you get the attention of Fournier and whoever else might be sneaking around out here. Great move, genius. Peering through the darkness, Lottie took three quick strides down the path, praying that it led down to the river, that their little boat would still be tied up there, that Dara had only stepped out for some air and would call her an idiot for worrying needlessly and take her back to bed and everything would be all right. On the fourth stride her foot struck something hard and the trees swirled about her. Dead leaves crunched between her fingers and under her chin as she slammed into the ground. That’s what you get for running out without even a flashlight, you idiot. Lottie sucked in a breath, swiped the leaves out of her hair, pushed herself back up to standing, and raced off down the path that led to the river. At least, that was the idea. As soon as she bent her leg, though, she collapsed back onto the rocks and twigs with a yelp of pain. Trying not to hyperventilate, Lottie bit her lip as she checked each leg’s range of motion, pain lancing through her when she tried to turn her left ankle. Nothing seemed to be broken, but trying to stand only threw her back to the ground. Did you seriously twist your ankle? Lottie grunted and closed her eyes in exasperation. Pathetic. You are such a useless fucking girl. Her breath seized at the sound of leaves rustling somewhere nearby. Wood snapping, even closer. That nonsense about elephants echoed under her pulse. Lottie’s skin tingled, feeling like it was ready to peel off and run away. A flicker of light, blinding. Lottie shielded her eyes. Silence. “Did you seriously twist your ankle?” Through her fingers she saw the face she had twice helped make, the face she had come to love as much as she could ever love anything. Eyes, small and dark and close-set, twinkling with worry or contempt or both and yet beautiful as the stars. Dara sucked in her breath. “Can you walk?” Lottie shook her head, wiping tears away with the back of her dusty hand. “Of course not. Dammit, Lottie.” Dara gave a mighty sigh, looked back over her shoulder, then turned off her flashlight. “Come on, already. Let’s get you home. You can’t stay here.” “Tell me something I don’t know,” Lottie grumbled. Dara looked around at the ground for a moment before glaring at Lottie. “Should I even ask what happened to your flashlight?” “Probably not.” “No flashlight, no real shoes … Jesus, woman, how many doctorates do you have again?” She stood astride Lottie’s legs and held out both hands. Together they lurched Lottie to her feet, and despite her small stature Dara took Lottie’s weight on her shoulders without complaint. It was slow going, especially with only one broken flip-flop. Dara tensed at every sound and shadow in the night, but every time Lottie tried to hurry their pace the pain shot fire through her limbs. Each step revealed another would-be bruise, another scrape on her shins. “Did you leave your bags at the boat?” Lottie asked through gritted teeth. Dara snorted and shook her head. “You didn’t even bring anything with you? Dara, what the hell are you thinking?” “I’m thinking I don’t want to take anything of yours,” Dara said in a low voice. “Anything that wasn’t given, I mean. I’m not a thief.” It’s your stuff, too, Lottie tried to say, but she didn’t finish the first syllable before her ankle collapsed under her, turning her words into a wail. “Shut up, Lottie,” said Dara once they got her back to her feet. “Just walk.” At last they emerged into their clearing. The moonlight painted their shabby little compound electric-white, the garden turned into a miniature forest of its own. It was an awfully beautiful place they had to themselves, Lottie thought for the first time in years. Together they limped to the house, and with one more grunt of pain Lottie collapsed onto the laundry-strewn couch in the main room. She closed her eyes and fought to catch her breath, jumping when a bottle of water and two pills were thrust into her hands. “Take these,” Dara snapped. “Dara, I—” “Not now, Lottie.” Her voice was full of nails, and she wouldn’t even look at Lottie as she began puttering around the cluttered room. “I’m thinking.” Lottie swallowed the painkillers as Dara flicked on the half-busted old floor lamp and started digging through the mess, retrieving the big backpack they’d found on the road last summer. One of the cats, the young tortoiseshell one, took the light and activity as a cue to start begging Dara, then Lottie for another dinner. Dara’s silence was thorny, but Lottie didn’t dare say anything, certain if she asked what she was thinking, it would send Dara back out the door for good. “Where were you—” Lottie asked anyway. “Where would you even go?” Dara sighed heavily. “Even if I knew, you know I couldn’t tell you, right? That if you knew where I was, once that journalist or whoever came back to find me, they wouldn’t ask nicely a second time. That would defeat the whole point of me leaving.” “I know that. I’m just … I don’t know, I mean, where could you even—” The look Dara shot at her made Lottie want to scurry away and hide under a shoe. “Oh, sure, yeah, there’s nowhere I could hide, not the way I look. Everyone would spot me for what I am right away. Is that it?” Dara was sneering now, the jacket she had been folding now crumpled between her fingers. “Dara, I didn’t mean that.” Lottie swallowed glass. “You look … you look perfect.” “Oh, no, of course, the brilliant Dr. Abrams’ genomic treatments are perfect, obviously! Your work is beyond reproach, nobody would ever guess what I really am. No, it must be my poor dumb synthetic brain that can’t handle the big, scary world, huh?” “No, I—” Dara rubbed her chin in a sarcastic pantomime, spit flying from her teeth with each word. “Hmm, a dumb little Thai girl who sounds like a farang and doesn’t know shit about Thailand? Must be a fugitive science experiment! Guess I’ll turn her in to be exterminated like the freaks I saw on the—” “Fuck’s sake, Dara!” Lottie snapped, slapping her hand on the wooden arm of the chair. The brown woman shook her head furiously and resumed packing. “That’s not what I’m talking about. I know you … you’re more than capable. Of course you could survive out there.” “I survived just fine before,” Dara grumbled. “I know you did.” “Even before everything, even the way I used to look, before your treatments, I still made it just fucking fine.” “Yes, you did.” “I survived well enough to make it here, didn’t I?” “I know. I just …” Lottie choke-coughed, her mouth thick with iron-tasting spit. She stretched out a hand, aching for Dara’s fingers to lace with hers. Even through the throbbing in her head and her ankle, something desperately tender welled up inside her. “I don’t want you to leave, Dara.” Dara closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, all the anger was replaced with exhaustion. “I know, Lottie. This isn’t about what you want. Or what I want, for that matter.” “Don’t go, then, if you don’t want to.” “What are you suggesting, then?” Dara asked. “Stay and wait for that bounty hunter to come back?” Lottie reached out to pet the tortoiseshell cat, who huffed and trotted out of the room. “We don’t know that she’s going to come back. Or that she’s a bounty hunter. She might actually be a journalist.” “You don’t really believe that,” Dara snorted. Lottie looked away. “No. I don’t.” “She was nicer than the last few who came by looking for a SyLF payday, at least.” “Or at least better at faking nice.” Dara shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, though. She had a gun.” “One she didn’t use,” Lottie said hurriedly. “She didn’t figure it out, Dara, you know she didn’t. If she had seriously suspected you, she would’ve pulled that gun and used it on one or both of us.” “Whatever you say.” “No, no, Dara, listen to me.” Lottie pushed on the ground to lean forward, but lay back with a grunt of pain. She could just make out Dara looking concerned through the stars dancing across her field of vision. “You were right. You were always right, you … none of them ever put it together. How many close calls have we had? How many bounty hunters or lost tourists or real estate developers or … or whatever?” Dara shrugged. “I don’t know. A dozen? More since Augue-1 in Normandy.” “And that was after they stopped looking just for SyLFs and started looking for people. But even once they learned some SyLFs were transitioning, they never even conceived one would want to be anything other than a white man. The people who even noticed you probably just pegged you as the girlfriend of another gross white tourist—a trans woman fucking a local girl, even, just to tick all the gross farang boxes. They don’t even see you, Dara!” The air in the room was close, still, every particle of dust hesitating in the silence. Dara’s fingers scratched absently at a stain on the backpack, her breath quiet. “Tell me something I don’t know,” she muttered. Lottie leaned hard against the arm of the sofa, having a hard time staying upright. Her pulse began to race with fear, but then she remembered taking the painkillers, remembered that she couldn’t have slept more than half an hour tonight. The light winked off, the darkness swelled and shifted in front of her, and then she felt the warmth of Dara’s hands. “Come on. Let’s get you horizontal.” “No,” Lottie grumbled, recoiling as much as she was able. “Not if you’re just going to leave.” “Dammit, Lottie, come on. Just—” “No!” Tears rushed up to choke her, disgust at her own childish behavior, but exhaustion and the drugs robbed her of any ability to care. “Just stay tonight. We can make a plan in the morning.” She couldn’t hear what Dara muttered, but when she felt herself pulled off the sofa she didn’t resist. When she was lowered carefully onto their mattress on the bedroom floor, Dara pulled the blanket over them both. Relief quaked out through Lottie’s lungs as she grasped Dara’s hands and squeezed them tight. After a few minutes a muffled voice spoke into Lottie’s hair, “Wouldn’t even need to leave if you’d let me take care of Fournier like I was going to. I had the tea all ready.” Lottie’s eyes shot open. “Dara, you wouldn’t …” She swallowed, feeling Dara’s arms stiffen around her. “Fournier might’ve had a team, like she said, and if they came looking—” “Never mind,” Dara interrupted. “I’m tired. Let’s not talk about it.” “You brought it up.” “Shut up, Lottie.” Her thin arms squeezed Lottie tighter. From her breathing Lottie knew Dara wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. The moon had disappeared behind the trees by now, and the room was dark and heavy. Lottie felt antsy, wanting to crawl out of her clothes though the air was cold. Instead she clung closer to Dara, and as one they breathed out a wretched, shuddering sigh. “It’s going to be okay,” Lottie whispered, her head rising and falling with Dara’s breath. It’s not going to be okay, she thought. You need to let her go. You’ve played God with her for too long, tried too hard to make her like you. You can’t keep pretending your love is worth anything, can’t keep pretending you can fix things. “It’ll be okay, Dara. I promise.” |
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Sylvie Althoff
Sylvie Althoff (she/her) is a queer transgender woman who works as a writer, editor, elementary teacher, and jazz banjoist. Her writing has appeared on recommended reading lists by Locus and Reactor, and has been published in venues including Escape Pod, Small Wonders, Tales of the United States Space Force, Saros, Inner Worlds, Lesbians in Space, and the Trevor Project benefit anthology Punch a Nazi. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her wife, musician and teacher Jenn Thomas; their dog, Nomi Malone; and their layabout cat, Pocket. She may be found at sylviealthoff.com or on Bluesky @sylvie-althoff.
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