Hidden Faults (8 page)

My communicator buzzed around three, when I had started on a second slow glass of temlido, having got myself into a complete funk.

It was my mother.

“Jodimai? Why are you home on a fine day like this?”

“Why are you calling, Mam, when you thought I’d be out?”

Logic had never been her strong suit. Strange to think she’d been a medic before we kids had started to arrive.

“Don’t be snippy with me, young man. Respect for one’s parents is one of the seven virtues.”

I repressed a sigh. “Sorry. Did you want something?”

“Jodimai, is something wrong? You’re being terribly sharp.” I stared at her screen-flattened features, feeling the alcohol, grief, a creeping numbness. I wasn’t up to duelling with her. “Very well. There’s the Festival of Grace in Light next weekend. Your father and I would appreciate you coming home and attending temple with us. Everyone from town will be there.”

Something broke inside me, and my reply came without any conscious thought. “Really.” I didn’t bother to mute the sarcasm in my voice.

“What do you mean by that remark, Jodimai?”

“Everyone, Mam? Every single person in the settlement? Even Huroi?”

She huffed a bit. “Well, obviously not
Huroi
. None of the paras—”

“Right. So that’s a lie right there. Doesn’t Marra consider that a sin?”

“Don’t you dare—”

“
And Da wants me to come? Don’t make me laugh. He thinks Grace in Light is a load of shit, same as I do. It’s
all
a load of shit!” I started waving my arms around in my anger, the temlido sloshing out of my glass as my voice got louder. “In fact, Mam, Marra’s a load of shit
too
! Marranism, Marra, the Children, the Temple—all worthless, lying garbage!”

“Jodimai!”

I stood there, shaking in my anger and my grief. “And you know what else, Mam?”

“Go on.” She used that deadly cold tone with Da when she was spoiling for a fight.

“I’m infertile. So it doesn’t matter how many shitting times I go to Temple, I’m never going to get into the Kingdom according to you, so why waste my time sucking up to Marra or you or the Children? That’s right. Infertile. Punished by your god, like Huroi. How do you like that, Mam? Your genes are tainted by sin too.”

The screen went blank, and then
The other caller has terminated
flashed up. I laughed and turned the communicator onto messages only and the notifier down to silent. Then I knocked back the rest of my temlido and grabbed my coat. If I didn’t go out, I’d end up like Neim, choked to death in my own bathroom.

The Low Town didn’t refer to the fact it sat further down the mountain than the rest of the old city—other parts clung lower still to the slopes—but to the fact the ‘low’ types hung out there. Traditionally the place of prostitutes and gamblers and other miscreants, now most of the paras in Vizinken lived there, along with other members of society who the Children of Marra and the more devout religionists disapproved of—like homosexuals. Some drug dealing took place there, but paras tended to drive dealers out of their immediate neighbourhoods, not liking the activity or the attention. Mostly the drugs were dealt in the north end of the city—or anywhere actual criminality occurred. The Low Town was poor rather than criminal, but still, no respectable,
normal
citizen went anywhere near it.

I was normal, but I wasn’t respectable—I just passed for it—and sometimes I felt more at home in the Low Town than I did in my own comfortable, family-friendly suburb. I wouldn’t normally go there during the day, or in the middle of summer—scarves and hats acted as useful covers when a person didn’t want to advertise their presence—but it was too early to go down by the river. So I jammed a cap on my head and turned my collar up as I got out of the veecle a half-demidec from the area. Veecles would only rarely take a fare to the Low Town, and asking would draw attention I didn’t need. A risk, certainly. A necessary outlet too.

I slipped down the grimy alleys, amazed as always that, though run down, they were more free of litter than the ‘respectable’ parts of the city. No children played on the streets. No para or their partner had been allowed to adopt or have a child through assisted insemination or egg donation since the terrors started, so the youngest anyone claiming a paranormal parent could be, was twenty-five. The non-paranormal residents were uninclined to breed—or at least keep their children—for other reasons. People could be seen, many moving in a shuffling, aimless way caused by naksen, alcohol or both. A few moved with more purpose, like me, but we seemed out of place here.

I headed to a smoke joint cum private club—a rarity in Vizinken, though common elsewhere. To gain entry to this club, you had to know the secret—you didn’t apply for membership. Instead you went to the liquor shop a few doors up the road and asked for a bottle of your favourite drink. Offering twice the cost got you the bottle and a ticket, unless the owner didn’t know you, didn’t like the look of you, smelled Security or the defs, or you were too cheap in your tastes. In those cases, you got change.

I was given the ticket. It was a way around licensing laws—the club didn’t sell alcohol, and that meant avoiding the routine licensing inspections—but also remarkably effective at keeping out trouble, and the reason I thought the club was worth the occasional risk. I badly needed a place to go today where I could be as true to my real nature as I dared.

I’d bought a bottle of temlido—it was too cold for jada, and besides I was in a mood for something stronger—and shoved it into the pocket of my coat before walking a little way down the road to the club itself. I put the ticket through a slot in the club’s old wooden door, and after a few moments, it opened a crack and I slipped inside.

The sickly-sweet odour of jetka weed drifted out to greet me. The smell could overwhelm a person until one’s nose got used to it—or shut down—but the muted traces of it I detected weren’t too unpleasant. The smoke room was at the back, but I had no taste for jetka. I’d tried it while a student once or twice, but it had only made me cough up a lung.

In front of the club sat a rough-looking food bar where you could order a cheap and filling meal, khevai to go with. The owners discouraged the drinking of alcohol in this part of the club. A mainly male clientele frequented the place, though a few women, all paras, came here too, for the warmth and the company, the cheap food, and the lack of disapproving gazes.

I hadn’t eaten all day, but I didn’t want a meal. Instead I walked up the narrow stairs to the ‘reading room’. Everyone here was male. Some were actually reading, sipping their drinks, enjoying the comfortable old leather chairs and the company of friends. Others kissed, groping discreetly. And others, like me, waited to see who might care to provide more than company.

A seat of some kind could always be had, almost magically, no matter how busy the place became. Today, it wasn’t busy at all, only twenty or so of us in a room that could hold—at a pinch—a hundred very friendly people. A two-seater sofa was free. I grabbed a glass from the rack near the door, and nabbed the sofa. I poured out a very large amount of temlido. I planned to be there a while.

Everyone seemed to have someone, so I was ignored—though in no hostile way—for nearly an hour. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t sitting alone and miserable in my house, and I wasn’t near my home communicator. I’d switched off my pocket one too. If people at work had an emergency—
another
emergency—they were out of shitting luck.

Men drifted in. One of the kissing couples disappeared through the side door to the three small rooms there—occasionally used for dossing, but more often for short assignations. Many of the men who came didn’t have anywhere else to go in private, couldn’t afford a room at an inn, wanted more than anonymous sex down by the river. Timo and I had gone a couple of times for that reason after we’d left university, before he decided that he couldn’t face the life I lived and wanted a family of his own. He’d stopped coming. I never had.

“Hey—seat taken?”

A slim, dark-haired man with the largest brown eyes I’d ever seen, smiled down at me.

I waved my glass at him. “Nope.”

He sat down, set a mug of khevai on the table.

“Want a shot in that?” I asked, indicating the mug.

“Sure. A little one.”

I handed him the bottle—my hands were too unsteady—and he poured a small amount into his mug. He gestured with the bottle towards my glass and I nodded. He topped me up and screwed the lid back on the bottle.

“I’m Tek.”

“Jodi.”

He sat thigh to thigh with me, the heat of his leg noticeable and pleasant even through thick wool. Being close was nice. I found myself wishing he’d put his arm around me....

Where the hell did that idea come from? I met him mere seconds ago.

But as quickly as the panic rose, it died. I calmed down. Of course I wanted physical contact. We all wanted that.

“You’re knocking that back pretty hard,” he said, smiling again. “Having a rough day?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Rough is breaking up with your boyfriend after you find him screwing someone else. My day is like being raped with barbed wire, coming home and finding your house has burned down, your pet rogan died in the fire, and your father died of a heart attack when he heard the news. And then breaking up with your boyfriend. ‘Rough’ would be an improvement.”

“Ouch.” He pointed to my glass. “That helping?”

“No. I can still—” My breath hitched. “I can still feel.”

He put his hand on my knee, rubbing a little. I looked into his sympathetic eyes.

“I killed someone.”

“I don’t think so.”

“A man is dead because of me.”

“Not the same thing.” His slightly common accent held a good deal of kindness. His hand rested warm and firm against my leg. I wished it was skin to skin. “I’m a good listener.”

“I’m not allowed to talk about it. Tell me it was my fault.”

“No. Don’t be stupid.”

“It was my fault. It’s your fault too.” He raised his eyebrows at that. “Normals. We made this society. Paras pay the price. And now you and I pay the price. Homosexuals pay the price because paras pay a price. Normals think we’re as bad as each other. And the drug addicts.”

“You’re not drunk enough. You’re still making sense.”

I made a rude gesture and sipped my drink. He was right about one thing. I hadn’t had enough to drink.

“The man who died was a para?”

I nodded.

“Something you did because he was a para killed him?”

I set the glass down on the table and rubbed my eyes with my hand. “Yes. I’m really not supposed to talk about it.”

He moved his hand, but only to find the one I had in my lap, and squeeze it. “You don’t have anyone to talk to, do you? Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“What are you, some moonlighting psych?”

“Nope. Just a stray rogan.”

I uncovered my eyes and looked at him. Long-lashed eyes, so ridiculously lush and lovely for such a narrow, masculine face. I felt I trusted him, but I had no idea why. I wasn’t prone to trusting people easily.

“You think about it a lot? Paras, deevs?” he asked.

I winced at the slang term. “It’s sort of my job. The first one. The second...I can’t exactly not think about it.”

“No.” He squeezed my hand again with his rough, calloused one. I wondered what it would feel like on my cock, my face. “Why do you do it, if you hate it?”

I jerked. “Hate what?”

“Your job.”

“I don’t hate it! My work’s shitting important.” I covered my mouth. “Oops. Rude. Twice today.”

“Twice?”

“My Mam. Told her...fuck.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, that’s rude. Now you’re drunk, Jodi.”

“Not enough.” I swallowed down the dregs in my glass, and reached for the bottle. He snatched it away. “Hey, that’s mine!”

“You need to slow down. They’ll throw you out....” He paused. His eyes grew all distant, and then in a single, abrupt movement, got to his feet, dragging me up by my hand. “We have to go.”

“Hey!”

“Jodi, come with me.”

I wanted to yell at him again, but the words wouldn’t come out. My legs wouldn’t obey my command to sit down, damn it, and I had no choice but to follow him, down the back stairs, letting him pick up our coats without even asking me, and then he dragged me out into the cold, nearly dark streets.

“Move.”

He pushed me up the street, and then grabbed my arm and pulled me into a dark, grim side alley.

Then I found I could move. “What the
shitting
hell are you doing!”

“Quiet!” He pushed me back against the wall of a closed down shop, his hand gagging me. “The defs are on their way to raid the club. You don’t want to be found there. Don’t yell or they’ll hear.”