Scouts (15 page)

Too soon, all too soon, I came. She smiled, stroking me all through my climax, spreading my semen all over her chest.

I lay there, panting, sweating, spots swimming before my eyes.

“Well, we are quite a mess aren’t we?”

Suna stood and surveyed her handiwork. Her breasts gleamed in the dim light. My groin and thighs, as well as my chin, felt cool from the drying sexual fluids smeared over them.

“Next time, I’ll bring some water.”

“We could just go down to the water and rinse off.”

“Won’t someone see us?”

“They might. But there aren’t any rules about taking a walk around the oxygen deck on your own time, are there?”

She had a point. We wrapped ourselves in our minimal attire and climbed down to the ground.

The warm, shallow water felt wonderful. Suna and I splashed about, rinsing off the evidence of our encounter in the hideout.

“So why is this called a
river
? I’ve never heard that word before.”

“I’m not sure why. That’s just what it’s called.”

For some reason, I found myself reaching out for her hand. I pulled her close and kissed her.

She gave me a gentle squeeze. “What are you thinking?”

I paused a moment for that to rattle around in my head. Why was I doing this? Wasn’t I devoted to Valka?

“My mentor taught me that I could care for more than one person at a time, and if she was asking me to develop a relationship with her, then I should be able to have one with you, too.”

“Relationship? That sounds serious.”

“A little. Why?”

“Challers, you have to know,” she said, shrugging one shoulder, “I’m not in this for a ‘relationship.’ I just want some fun once in a while, you know?” She spotted the furrow in my brow and squeezed my hand again, drawing me to a stop. “You’re a Scout. Sometime soon, very soon, you’re going to be going off on your cruise, and you’ll be away for a long time. I just don’t want you to think we’re ever going to have anything permanent.”

I could see her point. “I understand,” I said. “Just for fun.”

The next afternoon, while Shirley and I were on our way to the mess hall, we met Masters and Valka coming out.

Her smile melted away as our eyes met. “Challers.” Her voice wasn’t cold, exactly, but it chilled me to hear it.

My stomach clenched. I wanted to be anywhere else but there. I couldn’t think of what to say, so I just blurted out, “How’ve you been?”

“Well enough. You?” Her eyes seemed empty, somehow. Something was missing there.

I shrugged. “The same.”

We passed each other, the moment over, and I went into the mess hall. I caught a tear with the back of my hand and smeared it away. I wanted to turn around and call her back, but the words wouldn’t come. There was nothing to say.

I moped my way through dinner. Shirley sat across from me, silent.

“I miss her,” I finally said. It’s all I could think to say. I couldn’t talk about the guilt I felt over having given in to Suna the night before. I should have felt guilty about breaking two of Shirley’s cardinal rules. Instead, what I felt guilty about was giving something to Suna that, in my heart, I knew I should be reserving for Valka and Shirley. It was all very confusing, and I couldn’t talk about the things I had done. I couldn’t even start.

“I noticed.” Her eyes held sympathy.

“What did I do wrong with her?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Your relationship just wasn’t right for the Scouts. It didn’t fit in anywhere, so it just broke. It happens.”

“Is there any way to fix it?”

“Give it some time. You’re both going to be in the academy for a while. There will be other opportunities.”

I took a deep breath and tried to work up enough willpower to finish my meal.

A few minutes later, Trace walked in, trailing behind a tall, blond, muscular Scout with a swaggering walk. I could see why she didn’t like him as soon as I saw him. I tried to make eye contact, but she wasn’t looking up from the floor. Instead of the blustery woman I knew from the hideout, I saw a sullen child, her spirit beaten and subdued. The sight made my stomach twitch.

Shirley caught the direction of my gaze as I watched them getting their food. When they got to the end of the buffet, she waved to the big man. He smiled and walked to our table.

“Umber, may I introduce my new cadet, Challers Dizen.”

Clearly, they knew each other, but that came as no surprise. There weren’t that many people to know.

He nodded to me, and then to Trace. “Shirley, this is Trace Hom.”

They sat next to us and started eating.

I tried to make conversation, but Trace completely closed down any attempt at conversation, eating with mechanical deliberation. She answered questions in monosyllables and shrugs, and never looked up from her food.

I gave Umber a questioning look. “Is something wrong?”

“A little nerves before jump day,” he said.

“That close?” asked Shirley.

“Just four days.” He patted Trace’s back. “She’s doing great.”

Shirley rose from her seat. “In that case, we should leave you folks alone.”

I followed suit. “Nice meeting you,” I said. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

On the way out of the mess hall, Shirley explained, “The last twenty days or so of academy training, cadets aren’t allowed to have any orgasms at all. It can set anyone a little on edge.”

“Really, why is that? The discipline, I mean, not the on-edge-ness.”

“The longer you go without, the more orgone, and the farther the ship goes. The first jump is always to a distant, uncharted system. It’s something of a final exam, to see how much you’ve learned at the academy. The further you go, the better.”

“That sounds worth it.” I wasn’t going to say anything, but I was looking forward to a rest. Shirley had her hand in my pants every chance she got.

“Oh, it is! To go where no one else has been, to find new planets, that’s the best part of being a Scout. The intelligence work, the diplomacy, the mail delivery, that’s fine, but really, I mostly like being out among the stars.”

“Intelligence work?”

“Scouts spend a good deal of time hunting down Pirate activity to call in the Fleet. Mostly, it means visiting a lot of empty star systems and making sure they’re still empty.”

I considered this while we walked. Growing up on Stakroya, the Pirates were always a nebulous threat, always out there in the darkness, ready to pounce. We got regular news reports about Pirate raids that would leave a station gutted and the entire population thrown out of the airlocks. It hadn’t happened to us, but we knew it could. They were the reason we needed the Fleet.

“Sounds like you don’t actually find them very often.”

“We don’t. There aren’t that many Pirates, but when you find them it’s big.”

“They don’t have Scouts of their own?”

“We’ve never seen any. Finding Pirates is an all-or-nothing affair. A thousand star systems, all empty, for every one that has a rendezvous point or a mining ship. Even then, if the Fleet isn’t on the bounce, the Pirates can slip away.”

We arrived at our quarters and I set out my tablet to prepare for our nightly mathematics tutoring session. I had mastered the coordinate transformations and had started working on some of the rather complex theories for time-synchronization. Faster-than-light travel did some strange things to clocks, and I needed to understand some of the things Scouts put in their computers to handle it.

As the lines of the night’s hologram simulation painted the air around us, I cocked my head. “Why don’t we have our classes this way?”

“This is supplemental to the classroom work.”

“Sure, compared to anyone else, but I’m not anyone else. Why can’t we just do what we do here for the classwork?”

“It’s for commonality of experience. When Scouts who haven’t studied together talk about something, they need to use the same language. They need to have taken the same course.”

“Physicality doesn’t work that way, though. I’m learning more about your body and my body. I don’t have a common experience with any other cadets.”

“This is what works, Challers. You and I are learning how to bring each other to the heights of ecstasy. With dedicated practice, we’ll be able to do that on a regular basis. It’s too much to learn everything for everyone. It’s impossible. After having gone through this process with me, though, your next partner will be easier to discover. Now, let’s start.”

All through my studies, the thought nagged at me, in the back of my mind, that I was being isolated. I wanted to talk to other cadets, and not just Trace. Valka wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. Trace wasn’t happy. Were there any who were happy? The whole situation was starting to smell bad and I had only been at the academy a few days.

Still, I managed to get through the material with some confidence that I’d be able to handle the next day’s class.

I waited outside the main portal, where I could just barely hear the music and voices from the promenade. Around me, the oxygen deck was quiet and dark. Shirley had fallen asleep early and the dark shift had only just started. Lucky break for me.

When a figure hurried out of the doorway, I came out of the shadows and joined her on the path.

Trace jumped at the sudden movement. “Challers! Vack-head! Don’t do that to me.”

“I wanted to talk to you about a few things before we met the others.”

“Okay, so talk.” She walked slowly, scanning the plants along the edge of the path.

“You’ve been here a lot longer than me. Tell me, are any of the cadets actually happy to be here? I’m not. Valka’s not. You certainly aren’t. What’s going on? Is the academy just one big sexual prison?”

She grunted. “There are a few who like it a lot, like Jonno Smarka. To him, this place is a paradise. Most seem to tolerate it well enough.”

“I know why Valka and I are upset. What about you?”

“It isn’t enough that the Scouts lied to us to get us here. Then they force us to either stay and be their sex robots, or throw us to the Fleet or the Merchants?”

“I have a feeling that it’s more than that for you.”

Trace stopped, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “I used to be a man.” She glanced at my face and turned away. “Pretty disgusting, hunh?”

“Well, it’s kind of odd, but after seeing what Suna did to herself, I wouldn’t say that. Why would I think it was disgusting?”

“Oh, vacuum take it! I’m leaving anyway; it’s not like it matters what you think. Come on, let’s get off the path.” She picked out one of the plants from the border along the road and yanked it out of the ground. I followed her between the green vine-covered frames of the vineyard.

“When I got to the academy, I didn’t really respond to my keeper. Didn’t find her arousing in the slightest. So they switched her for someone with a different temperament, a different body type. Still nothing. Finally, they took me in for some tests—had me watch a bunch of sex holos while they measured my responses. They found out my secret. I like men.”

Trace saw the puzzled look on my face and shook her head.

“Yeah, I know. Not supposed to be that way. I’m some kind of—I don’t know—freak. But they knew
just
what to do with me.” The sarcasm in her voice was sharp.

“And that wasn’t what you wanted.”

She sneered. “Of course not. I’m not interested in this kind of body on a sex partner; why would I want one of my own?”

“And they did it to you anyway?”

“They said that when my hormones changed everything would be fine—wait and see. Vack-heads. Besides, they didn’t give me much choice. What was I going to do, go back home? Everyone would know what I was. Forget the Fleet or the Marines. I’d be dead.”

“They’d kill you for that?”

“Orenva station has a strict code. My first—” She swallowed hard, closing her eyes. “My first lover was executed for ‘corrupt morals.’ If I went back . . .”