Chapter 4

Chapter 4

He hasn’t showered or even changed since the concert. It’s delightful. Unlike the flawless hyperreal avatar of Devon Mujaba (which I’ve spent a lot of time with in the erotic simulation rooms), there’s a sheen along the real man’s shoulders and throat, dots of sweat on the fabric where his sheer blouse is open to the navel. A few stray pimples on his chest. He’s wearing overpowering fragrance mods that make him smell like a locker room. Stage makeup puddles under his eyes, leaving them in deep gloom, like someone who’s been crying over a dead soldier in a Dimokratía melodrama. I remember, vaguely, that Devon Mujaba was once in the Dimokratía military academy, until he defected with his family at the age of fourteen.

“Hello, Ambrose Cusk,” Devon Mujaba says as he steps into my suite. He smiles wryly. “Am I right to assume that you are not on Disponar for the Molina quincea?era?”

I close the door and lock it, then press a PepsiRum cocktail into his hand. “I am not here for the Molina quincea?era, no.”

Devon Mujaba’s warm fingers leave patterns on the self-chilling glass. He takes a long quaff. “I’m glad. That means my workday is officially over. I’d rather not be on duty right now. Or at least, not as a singer.”

“Lucky for me,” I say as I close the door. “Would it be a horrible cliché for me to now tell you I’ve been a lifelong fan of yours?”

He moves to the window and turns, resting his ass on the railing. It’s a little mesmerizing, the plump dimple of it. “It would be, a bit. But I happen to like clichés. I mean, have you ever listened to our lyrics?”

“‘I want your love, I need your love,’” I quote to him. “I guess it’s not the freshest line ever written.”

He grins. “Ambrose Cusk, we’ve only just met and you’re already teasing me. It’s a lot.”

“Ah,” I say, absently running my hands over my new skinprints, the glitter raised on my skin. “‘A lot’ is sort of a hallmark of mine.”

I watch his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he downs the rest of his drink. “Most would say you’re the more famous of the two of us. Unless you’re polling thirteen-year-olds. I have them locked down. Anyway, I do know who you are. And you know that I know. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come to the Cusk Suite. The rumor that you fled here after the rescue mission was canceled is actually the reason the Heartspeak Boys made the last-minute agreement to play this quincea?era after all.”

I flush. That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, and being flattered is one of my favorite sensations. I open the fridge and pull out another cocktail glass, rip off the secure seal and watch the glass frost up in my fingers. “On that note, I should warn you, since I’m not supposed to be here it’s just a matter of time before Cusk corporate stooges bash down this door to haul me home.”

Devon Mujaba accepts the glass, in the process letting his fingertips rest on the back of my hand. Staring into my eyes all the while. It’s an awfully obvious seduction dance we’re performing, but he’s executing the steps very well. “A ticking clock,” he whispers. “How dramatic!”

I nod ruefully. “I’m on a bit of a bender. You’re the climax before everything comes crashing down. I just felt I should warn you, in case you’d rather not be in the newsreels. Also, I might be hiding it well, but I’m quite drunk.”

He rubs his hands up and down his arms. It’s a nervous gesture that makes our act of theater fall away. Little danger hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “You’re not hiding it well at all, actually. And you’re warning me that I might be in the news for being found in the private quarters of the handsome spacefarer who’s also the world’s great hope? If that’s the sort of gossip attached to me, my publicist would deeply approve. Especially when I leak the explosive tidbit that it’s your academy lover who arranged it all.”

I slap the couch. “Sri! That’s how you found out so quickly that I was heading to Disponar? Sri made this happen? That dog!”

Devon Mujaba grins.

Of course. Bits of Devon Mujaba’s biography come back to me. A reel of him singing at a piano that made him a teenage celebrity, a poor kid turned rich who remembers his humble roots. Donating his income to charities fighting for human rights and animal welfare. Devon’s the hot-boy face of everything Sri cares about. Including... “You’re the global ambassador for the Union for a Better Earth!” I exclaim. “That’s how you know Sri.”

“Oh yes,” Devon says. “Sri and I go way back.”

By its own inscrutable logic, grief about Minerva comes from nowhere to knock me back. The sudden reminder of the great gulf between alive me and dead Minerva stops my breath. Devon Mujaba’s sexy smile disappears when he sees my face. “I’m sorry,” he says, standing up from the windowsill. “Did I say something wrong?”

I get my Cusk veneer back up, beam a bright, confident smile that I hope is worthy of my sister. I stand beside him at the window, my shoulders and hips meeting the heat of his. “No. Nothing wrong. Nothing at all. So tell me, Devon Mujaba: What’s your usual postshow ritual?”

“Oh, you know,” he says. “My boyfriend and I have a free-pass policy for concert nights. I do sometimes pick someone out of the audience to invite to my room. Normally I have to look a little harder, send my fixer out to get bracelet details. I don’t usually have a celebrated beauty dressed and skinprinted like a Roman demigod and presenting himself on a dais, delivered to me by his generous academy lover.”

“ Demi god?” I say with mock outrage. “Excuse me!” Then his words sink in and I blush. He came here just to meet me. And Sri made it happen. My drunken fingers drift to my new decorations, the gold and silver vines. When they reach my temple, they knock my circlet askew. “I was feeling impulsive. Do you like the look?”

He lifts the circlet off my head. My hair rises, made temporarily weightless by the gentle pressure of his hands. Devon Mujaba’s hands. “I do. Very much.”

I flop dramatically onto the couch, letting my body lie flat, arms overhead like a bathing vixen. The couch is the pink scallop design that was popular in the 2450s, nearly the length of a bed. Perfect seduction furniture. “Would you like to kick off your shoes, lie down for a bit?” I ask.

He removes each sandal with the heel of the opposite foot, crushing the expensive leather in the process. It’s so charmingly irresponsible; I can’t help but grin. He lies beside me. Triggered by his changing pulse, new, bright notes rise from his fragrance mods, far more sophisticated than the locker room assault from before. What’s it closest to? Dragon fruit and... is that fennel? “You don’t waste time, do you, Ambrose Cusk?” Devon asks.

I shrug, then allow myself to run my hand down his arm. “Who knows how much time we actually have?”

He strokes my face, then leans in and kisses me. It’s a slow start but then, once his tongue is in my mouth, the intensity doubles. The PepsiRum, the sumptuousness of the pleasure satellite, the softness of Devon Mujaba’s lips, the elegant angle of his neck, the glow of the skin I just touched—it’s almost enough to make me forget the sorrow and anger inside me. Almost.

“I want to feel you closer to me,” he says.

I lie on my side, so our thighs press.

“Closer.”

Our robes fall open as we line up our bodies. I feel the soft, smooth heat of someone I’ve long fantasized about. Whom I’ve actually had sex with in avatar form, though it was nothing like this. I decide that would be too awkward to bring up. From the sound of it he’s probably had sex with my avatar already, anyway.

“That’s better,” he whispers. He nuzzles my neck, then moves up so his lips are right in my ear. “I have something I need to tell you, Ambrose Cusk.”

“Mmm,” I say, with a catlike stretch of my body. “What do you have to tell me?”

“It’s about why I dropped everything to come see you,” he whispers. His voice is almost inaudible, no more than a slight rustle. The sound makes my hair stand up, whether from lust or something more like fear, I don’t know. “Don’t speak back,” he says. “The lice in this room can pick up anything. Just listen. And keep making out.”

What?

This is not a sexy thing he has to tell me. Shit. I’m still turned on—making out with a stranger is always a bit of a performance, anyway, so this isn’t so much of a left turn—but I’m also on high alert. I sigh as he nibbles my earlobe. Why couldn’t this just have been about getting it on?

“The Heartspeak Boys don’t throw impromptu concerts without very good reason,” he whispers. “Sri didn’t send me as an amuse-bouche. This is not an idle hookup.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I whisper.

Devon doesn’t take the bait. “I came up through the Dimokratía military academy.”

“I know,” I say. “Your childhood’s a lot like Sri’s. Your family sold you after they defected, because they didn’t have enough money to raise another child.”

“We didn’t call it ‘selling,’ of course, but yes. I was paid to leave my family and go work in the entertainment hostels of Fédération. Just like how the tax exemptions from Sri getting into the academy saved their family. Once I was alone and vulnerable, I was used like a toy. It’s no coincidence that Sri and I were both drawn to the Union for a Better Earth after starting life like that.”

“And I’m clearly drawn to you both, since I started the day in Sri’s arms.”

“I took the very little that life handed me and made a plan. I decided I’d scrape together whatever power I could, and use it to change the world. With the fame of the Heartspeak Boys, I finally have cards to play. We are big enough that both countries make exceptions to have us perform there. I still play concerts in Dimokratía. Nothing public, of course, but the elites there enjoy their indulgences, too. I’ve spent more than a few weekends at President Gruy’s lake houses.”

“Ooh. I’d like to hear about those,” I say.

“Stories for another time. The point is I’ve spent my life building this persona of gooey-pop-sexy Heartspeak Boy intentionally. It is a weapon, if used right, and I’ve been waiting for the right target. For the right opportunity to make a move. And the longer I wait, the more I’ve grown my devoted following, the more power that final move has, once it comes.”

Adrenaline is spritzing my neck. “That move is... this?” I ask.

“Ambrose,” Devon says, “I know you were never intended to go rescue your sister.”

“Mmm,” I say, keeping up the act even though my heart isn’t into making out anymore. My heart thumps just as hard as if I were still kissing him. How does he know this truth?

The dragon fruit and fennel scent from Devon’s fragrance mods comes out even stronger as his own pulse rises. “I see you know this, too,” he whispers, his lips so close to my ear that they tickle my skin. “Most of the people in Dimokratía believe, like most of Fédération does, that the rescue mission was scrubbed in favor of a last-minute switch to settling a new colony. They’re surprised and moved and hopeful, and most of all distracted. Just as your mother and the presidents intend. But the Heartspeak Boys played for President Gruy and his cabinet last month, and partied with them afterward. One of the undersecretaries thought he could win me over by revealing that the distress call was fake. That it had to be faked, for the spacefarers to believe their lives had a purpose, and to spin out this Scheherazade tale of rescue to keep the two countries away from war for as long as possible. Of course, with the killing of the secretary of defense today, that’s proving moot as we speak.”

Through my drunkenness, I realize that I’ve been avoiding processing the assassination news I’d heard earlier. You get to wallow for a while , my drunkenness responds. I run back over Devon’s words. “Dimokratía is in on the lie?” I say, taking the opportunity to nibble on Devon’s earlobe. For verisimilitude.

“Yes. Your mother, and both presidents. All in on it. And that’s where I might finally know something you don’t,” he continues. “The Aurora is being readied. Dimokratía’s own equivalent to the Endeavor , funded by us and with the same base Cusk tech. This new colonizing trip will be a joint mission.”

A joint mission. A second ship. In the shock of everything my mother was telling me, I’d never considered that even now she wasn’t revealing everything. She had the chance to come completely clean... and she still held back information?

“Ouch,” Devon says. I guess I nibbled his ear a little hard.

I wait for him to say more.

“Here’s the thing,” he whispers. “A Dimokratía spacefarer was training to go on a solo rescue mission, just like you, only his was supposed to be a national secret. It’s not known to the media, but his presence was mandated by the Dimokratía leaders if Cusk wanted to use their resources. The Aurora is intended to be joined to the Fédération Endeavor in orbit. It will have a crew of two.”

A second spacefarer. I can’t believe it. The rug’s being pulled out again. “What do you know about him?” I ask this question into Devon Mujaba’s mouth.

“Quite a bit.”

“Have you met him?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’ve come to you from meeting him.”

I want to ask Devon everything. But I have no reason to trust him, and we’re both traveling dangerous currents of state secrets and corporate espionage. The sorts of things that could get even celebrities like us disappeared or killed.

Me and this stranger stop kissing, lay our heads on the couch’s pink cushions, stare into each other’s eyes. His saturated bamboo-green irises flutter side to side as he gauges my expression. “Why are you telling me all this?” I ask.

“Because. With this great lie, and news of the assassination down below spreading like wildfire, we have a one-time opportunity to demolish the world’s political system. Incremental reform hasn’t worked. The world must be broken to be rebuilt.”

“Broken!” Breaking both the Earth’s countries? What does Devon want, anarchy?

“Ambrose! Think about the lies that are being spread in your name. At the subterfuge that’s been done to you, and the dishonor to your sister’s legacy. You must be furious!”

Oh, don’t start me tapping into my fury. Not when I’m exhausted and drunk on PepsiRum and ginned up by the hot boy next to me on the couch.

“You don’t know the half of what I’m furious about,” I say acidly.

He darts the tip of his tongue over his lips. “Care to share?”

I’m about to say something reckless. State secrets level. But he’s right, why should I have any loyalty to Fédération? Devon Mujaba has treated me with more respect than anyone at Cusk mission control ever has. Than my own mother ever has. “Clones. Twenty clones of me are on that ship. Living their lives out as a lie, thinking they’re rescuing my dead sister, until the last survivor settles a new planet.”

He stares at me, aghast. “No. Why?”

“Yes,” I say, shocked to find a tear-struck sound in my voice at the end of the word. “So they won’t despair in space and kill themselves. Revelations on all sides, Mujaba.”

“My god,” he says, voice rising above a whisper. “How are you okay right now?”

I shake my head and nod it at the same time, place my fingers over his lips to remind him to be quiet. “I don’t like to talk about the feelings part,” I manage to whisper.

“That’s fine,” he says. “We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

The PepsiRum makes the room tilt. Wild Ginger must have a calming add-in, because I know I’d be swirling the drain with despair right now if it didn’t.

But the add-in is working on me at the same time as big feelings. I feel somehow both serene and eager, like I’m suspended over an infinite void, about to tumble to nothing... but sort of jazzed by the doom of it all? Horror and peace living side by side, all at once. Thanks, PepsiRum. “Was this all—was getting the chance to tell me about the Aurora your only reason for playing this gig, for accepting my invitation here? I still don’t get why you’re taking this risk.”

He smiles, his fingers tweaking my chin. I don’t know if he’s doing it to appease surveillance, or because seduction has always been his way of accumulating power, or if he is feeling real warmth toward me. I’m not sure it matters. “It seems like the most unfair thing in the world, what they’ve done to you. And to that Dimokratía spacefarer, plucked from his training. He’s feeling this betrayal even deeper than you are. If you think you were raised for a mission only to have it snatched from you, believe me, he’s feeling it twice as hard. He doesn’t even have a family, friends, or the luxury of money to fall back on.”

“Devon Mujaba, with the heart of gold,” I say.

His expression clouds. “You don’t have to be ironic all the time, you know.”

“You’re a total stranger,” I say, pulling away from Devon and his ersatz green eyes. “You expect me to be my vulnerable self? Maybe you’re the one who needs advice on how to act.”

“Fair,” he says. He goes silent; I can sense him considering and censoring a thousand different tacks. And in that silence, my heart realizes Devon is more right than he’s wrong. Is there anyone I have ever been my actual insecure self with?

“This isn’t just out of blind sympathy on my part,” Devon says. “What’s been done to you is the symptom of a brutal system that fosters economic expansion as surely as it does suffering. Because we live in this version of the world, we don’t see it. But now, the lie and the turmoil down below... this is a moment when everyone can see it.”

“See it how?”

“We show them. We reveal the manipulation. Publicly. Pour fuel onto the unrest down in Brasilia.”

I roll onto my back, fingers twined over my chest. “How would that work, exactly?” I ask. “We drop an anarchist banner from Disponar? Paint angry graffiti on the Endeavor ? Go steal a clone?”

Devon Mujaba laughs. “None of those is such a terrible idea, actually. What could we accomplish together? I wonder.”

I chuckle, too, despite the self-pity welling up. “What if I joined the Heartspeak Boys and we did a guerrilla concert in front of the ship? We could have a new song, maybe. ‘Daddy Was Alexander the Great, but Mommy Just Fed Me Lies.’”

“Could be a hit. If I sing backup for you they could call me—what was Alexander’s lover’s name?”

“Hephaestion. And that would be hot. But. Well. I’m afraid you haven’t heard me try to sing.”

“Hey,” he says. “Singing well is not a prerequisite to being a Heartspeak Boy. You literally haven’t heard José Luis sing, either.”

“No!”

Devon nods. “Yes. She’s piped in.”

“Forget my false rescue mission or you betraying your country’s secrets. José Luis has been dubbed this whole time? José Luis?! That’s the scandal of the year.”

“She’s super cute, though.”

“Yes,” I say, “she’s super cute.”

Devon Mujaba opens his lips to ask a question, and I answer before he can even pose it, as I lay my hand on his chest. “Let’s go fuck things up.”

His eyes tear up. It reminds me that his whole life has led up to this. “Ambrose. Thank you.”

“But after. Let’s enjoy this for now.”

“I can go along with that,” he says, taking my hand and guiding it lower on his body.

Given the full-body workout Devon Mujaba and I gave each other, combined with the cocktail of synthetic depressants in my bloodstream from all the PepsiRum, I’d have expected myself to sleep the sleep of the ages. But instead I snap awake with the dawn, easing off Devon Mujaba’s delightful body and standing before the tall windows of the suite to watch the sun turn the clouds shrouding the planet below us from blue to purple green. I hadn’t expected to have this long before the Cusk goons came for me, and this morning moment is more peaceful for being stolen.

I imagine the storms below streaking through the red-and-pink dust that coats Mari. The refugees and peace councils, the academy and Cusk compound where I was raised, feel very far away from up here. Sunrise is even more beautiful when you’re above it.

Devon Mujaba is lain out on top of my black silk sheets, grappling a pillow. Totally naked. I take a moment to drink the sight in.

I don’t think he and I will be having sex again—both for all the usual one-night-stand reasons and because, after this trick I pulled, I have no doubt that my mother will make sure Devon Mujaba and I don’t cross paths ever again. I might not even leave the Cusk family compound ever again. Assuming it hasn’t been obliterated by a missile. I should check the news. What is happening down below?

What did I tell Devon last night? I think I remember, but the details are fuzzy. What did he tell me? A spacefarer. From Dimokratía. He’s probably also been cloned and stocked into a ship. Twenty of him, the sole companions for twenty of me.

I return my attention to the glory of Devon Mujaba’s body in my bed, then try to order breakfast via my bracelet. The word unavailable blinks in the air in front of me.

I slip on a robe and pad to the door. Locked.

I trigger the unlock function. Error.

So that’s why I was able to sleep in. I’m already in prison. Mother has found me, which means Devon Mujaba and I are in a holding cell. I debate waking him up to tell him, but what would be the point? We both knew this would happen. Guards will be barging in here soon. Better to let him sleep. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch him breathe, this human beside me.