HISAKO
Age fifteen
The room was musky with dirty socks. The boy on the bed beside me reached for my breasts. I pushed his hands away.
“Why don’t you want me to kiss you?” he said.
“I don’t kiss with those.”
“They’re hanging out of your shirt like you want somebody to touch them.”
I pulled the shirt both up and down for better coverage. It was the only piece of clothing like it I had, the only one I could afford, which was funny because it used less material than any of my other clothes. It folded down into a square the size of a meal bar and fit into the outer pocket of my backpack – fortunate, because my mother would have never let me out of the house wearing it. “It’s a style,” I said. “Not an invitation.”
Or maybe it was. It was something. I’d worn it because I knew I would end up at Maki Hakala’s house after school. It was either go there or go home, and I was never going to let Maki, or anyone else from school, see where I lived. Maki lived in La Mur in a mansion and had proudly shown me a thousand year-old, non-functioning android named Trevor that Maki had gotten grounded over when he’d drawn a mustache on its face. “It came right off,” Maki assured me.
I had never seen a corpse, but Trevor sure looked like one to me. Yet, there he was, sitting in the Hakalas’ formal parlor in his very own chair. Creepy. “Touch him!” Maki had urged. “Go ahead. He’s still warm!” Super creepy.
Maki was bad at nonchalant. He leaned back on his pillows. “Hey, whatever. You’re the one who wanted to come over here.”
Buying the shirt had eaten up a month’s allowance and left me nothing for a stim or a meal or anything else we might have done. Maki had plenty of money, but I didn’t want him to get the idea that I owed him something.
“Are you hungry?” he said. “We have one of the only working food assemblers in Versailles City. All it can make are, like, chicken bars, but they’re okay.”
Food assemblers and androids were United Americas technology, which meant no one knew how to make or fix them anymore. Even trying to take them apart resulted in a meltdown or explosion, or so my Intro to Engineering teacher said. The food assemblers, back when they worked, had been able to make food out of reclaimed proteins and algae and shit.
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “We could do our homework. That was sort of the point of this.”
“Was it?” He leaned toward me and smirked.
“That’s what lab partners do.”
He flopped backward on the bed. “I don’t want to.”
“Let’s clean this place up then.” I reached for a pillow but spotted several things on the floor, even on the bed I was sitting on, that I had no interest in touching. “Or we can watch something.” I woke up his entertainment system and told it to play the action movie channel out of New Berlin.
Maki sighed. “Get up for a minute.” He straightened his comforter and bedspread and lined up the scattered pillows against the headboard. I let him put his arm around me as we watched the film.
It was really stupid. Some guy was running around in a torn shirt fighting robots. There was a woman in it, too, but she didn’t do much more than get in trouble and throw herself on torn-shirt guy whenever the robots showed up. I was barely paying attention to it, but I hadn’t realized that Maki wasn’t either until he cleared his throat and started reading.
Nibble
Hair like bristles,
sharp like spines
Scales ran down his body,
but there was no greater love than mine.
Tail like a paddle,
tiny ears slicked back,
he made a little squawk,
when I snuck him in my pack.
He was beautiful,
but not as beautiful as a real cat.
He was charming,
but not as charming as other pets.
But I still love him.
Though he Nibbled at my socks.
“Give that back!” I said.
“You’re the one who left it unlocked.” He rose to his knees and held my reader over his head. “Did you write that?”
I lunged for it, getting my chest in his face.
“Nibble, nibble!” Maki twisted and somehow ended up on top of me, the reader just out of reach. “Did you write it?”
“I wrote it a long time ago. Give it to me!” I squeezed my fingers into a fist. “I’m going to hit you so hard!” He laughed and handed over the reader. EuroD boys like Maki had good manners, as long as they thought they were relating to someone within their own social class. Mine were less refined. I really would have hit him.
“I had a cat once,” he said. “The maid forgot to feed it or something. We got home from New Berlin, and it was dead under my bed.”
“Is that why your room smells so bad?”
“Funny,” he said. “Mother fired the maid and recorded a video of me crying to go in her personnel file. She probably never worked again.”
“What was its name?”
“Meghan something. I can’t remember her last name. We usually just called her The Maid.”
“No, the cat’s name.”
Maki stared blankly for a few seconds. “I can’t remember. I didn’t get a chance to play with it much. It was always sleeping. I just remember being upset when it was gone. I was on medication for a couple of months until I got over it. Mother said she was tired of seeing me snotting around.”
“I was upset about Nibble, too. He got out by accident and someone ate him.”
He put his hand to his mouth. “Sandcats are basically lizards, right?”
“I wrote the poem a couple years later. My dad liked it. He used to read me poetry when I was little.”
“Weird. Is he a teacher?”
My father was currently in jail because his drinking buddies were political radicals and wanted terrorists. “He does a lot of things.”
“I don’t really know what my father does. Some kind of business. He makes a lot of trips to Versailles Station and New Berlin. He has a mistress there and another son.”
“He has four kids?” I didn’t know anyone who had more than three children. Maki’s sister was two years older and an absolute termagant. His little brother was twelve.
Maki crossed his arms. “He’s very rich. He can have as many kids as he wants.”
“I bet your mother’s happy about it.”
“She has a lover somewhere. I heard them talking once.” He very obviously cast about for a new subject. “Do you still write poetry?”
“I’m more into music. I play a few instruments.”
His eyes brightened. “I always wanted to learn how to play something. I asked my father for lessons, but he said it would be a waste of money.”
“There are programs you can put on your reader that would help,” I said. “I can show you.”
“There’s no one to play for. My father is never home, and Mother barely notices I’m here.” Maki’s mouth twisted. Somehow we’d gotten back to his family troubles, and he wasn’t happy to be there.
“You got a new maid, right?” I elbowed him. “Play for yourself, silly. Play for Trevor. Play for me. We can start a band. What do you want to learn?”
“Drums, maybe? Every band needs to have drums, right?”
“You could do drums. Or we could use a program for that, and you could learn guitar.”
“Let me show you something.” Maki told the entertainment system to stop the movie and summoned his personal channel. “Play Spaceman Thirty-Seven,” he said. The screen changed from explosions and computer-generated blood to a man sitting in a hallway with a guitar. The image quality wasn’t great, like it had been broadcast at low power or had traveled a long way. The man was handsome but melancholy, his hair dark and curly.
“I know him,” I said.
It had been a few years since I had looked at Adem’s picture. I’d even deleted it off my reader.
Maki’s jaw dropped. “You’re a Spacehead?”
“What?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.
“This is an old, old song called ‘The Midnight Special.’ It’s from Earth.” Adem sang in English. He wasn’t great on guitar, but he had a good voice. The song was a yearning, lonely thing even though the lyrics didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
When the video ended, Maki told his system to display a list of all the vids on his channel. “I’d never guess you were a Spacehead, too.” He licked his lips. “I only have a few dozen of them, but I know a guy who says there are more than a hundred.”
“What are you talking about?” His excitement irritated me.
“The Spaceman!” He made an effort to calm down. “He works on a freighter. He makes these recordings every once in a while and broadcasts them. People who collect them call him the Spaceman, so we call ourselves–”
“Spaceheads,” I said. “Clever.”
“I know, right? Do you want to hear some more?”
Adem’s face was frozen on the screen. I was his, bought and paid for. I’d read the contract. It didn’t require virginity like some did, but it strongly suggested I avoid serious relationships. It would keep me from ever falling in love. I leaned back against Maki’s pillows, my hands gripping his bedspread.
Maki started another video. This one was more playful, about a man whose father had given him a girl’s name. It was more talking than singing, in French this time, and I listened closely to hear if he said anything that sounded like Hisako. He pronounced the “s” in “Sue” without a lisp or whistle.
“Like I said, I have more,” Maki said when the “Sue” song was over. “Dad lets me use his nearsmart to look for them sometimes. It’s kind of cheating, but–”
“Why do you collect them?”
“I like the music. Most of it. He does different stuff all the time.” He studied the image on the screen. “Mostly it gives me something to do that a lot of the other kids don’t.”
“Do you want to learn how to play like that? I can teach you, and you can make your own videos.”
His smile was adorable. “Really? There’s a fan site where people post covers of his songs. I visit it all the time.”
“I can teach you to play better than him.”
“I don’t care about that. If I could just do it good enough–”
“Better.” That was suddenly very important to me. “You can be better. Play another one.”
My fiancé started singing another song. I pulled my shirt off over my head and dropped it on the bed. Maki’s eyes widened. I had his full attention. “This is an invitation.”
NEARSMART DOCKING HANDSHAKE:
TRADER SHIP HAJJ X773 TO
VICTORIA STATION X252, FREEDOM
Ship Length: 400 meters
Ship Width: 53 meters
Engine Type: Fusion, MK IV
Crew: 87
Registry: The Trader Union, Sadiq family, 2207
Captain: Maneera Sadiq
Chief Medical Officer: Abdul Sadiq
Pilot: Lucy Sadiq
Cargo: Helium, smelted aluminum, rice, pharmaceuticals, refugees.
Ship History: Constructed in Earth orbit by the United States of America, 2127. Granted to the Caliphate. Launched as the Biriir ina, 2129. Named changed to the Morgan Freeman, 2263. Name changed to the Hajj, 3000.
Flight Plan: Docking and unloading, Victoria Station. Expected departure to Gaul in thirteen days.