The Bleeding Crowd (7 page)

“Will you just smile and say ‘thank you’ like
most people when they’re complemented?”

“I don’t need you to artificially bolster my
self-esteem.” She placed the book on her desk. “Especially when you
have a vested interest in trying to win me over.”

“I might have ulterior motives, but it
doesn’t make everything I say a lie. You are pretty, and obviously
the name suits you and your profession.”

Dahlia rolled her eyes. “Thank you. However,
you don’t need to spend time complementing me.”

“So what do you want me to say then?”

She shrugged. “You talk about anything in the
camps?”

“Depends on the person I’m talking to. Some
of my friends are actually very deep.”

“You have friends?” Her eyebrows rose.

“No,” he deadpanned, “I’m a complete social
outcast.”

“Sorry.” She moved to her closet, pulling her
dress off and throwing it into the laundry chute. “I’m still
working out how you all deal with each other socially.”

He let his eyes rove over her before
speaking. “We’re still social creatures like you are. We might be a
little more violent, but even if it is a genetic predisposition, I
think this system only perpetuates that. The more limited the
resources, the more people are going to fight for them. And not
just men.”

“They give you what you need, don’t they?”
She turned to study him. “You’re healthy.”

“Yeah, but there’s always inequality. Even
you haven’t found a way to get around that. Not all of you can have
and do the same thing.”

“No, but we know our places and have come to
terms with that.” Dahlia turned to her closet, unsnapping her bra
and pulling out a nightshirt from the closet.

“Can you stop that?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Stop coming to
terms with—?”

“Changing,” he said. “It’s really
distracting.”

Frowning, she faced him. “Why?”

“If you aren’t going to sleep with me, it’s
sort of like showing a starving man a steak and then eating it in
front of him.”

She blinked, pulling on her nightshirt.
“Sorry, I didn’t know it was that significant. The first ten years
of my life, I lived in a room with four other girls. I’m used to
changing in front of people.”

“Men are very visual,” Ben said. “Especially
when it comes to erotic images.”

“I wasn’t being erotic.” Dahlia shook her
head.

“Getting naked is erotic enough when you
don’t see women that often.”

She frowned, moving into the bathroom. “You
should work on writing a manual about men for us... well, dictating
a manual.”

“Maybe I will,” Ben said and waited for her
to finish. “Is this a hint that I’m supposed to make up a spot for
myself on the floor to sleep?”

“I’m not going to sleep.” Dahlia shook her
head, reappearing in the doorframe. “This is just more comfortable
than that dress.”

He nodded.

“I suppose if you really wanted to, you could
sleep on the other side of the bed. There’s space.”

“Moving up in the world, am I?”

“Well, sleeping on a mat seems so...
primitive.” She shrugged. “You don’t seem completely bestial. I
think you could manage to sleep in a bed with some basic sense of
decorum.”

“Now I definitely want to stick around more
than the next two weeks.” Ben smiled.

“Well, it’s three months before I
have
to switch. If you want to stick around it will keep me from having
to deal with that damn choosing ceremony thing again.”

Ben nodded with a smile.

She stood beside the mattress and motioned
for him to move over. “You’re on my side of the bed.”

“Isn’t it all your bed?”

“I always sleep on the left. I usually have
books and things on the right when I’ve been working in bed.”

“So, I’m a thing?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Do you want to sleep
on the floor?”

“I’ll be good.” He held up his hands in
innocence, dropping them to shift to the other side at once.

She studied him for a long moment, sitting on
the bed a little self-conscious. “What are the camps like?”

“What?”

“Well, we never hear much about them. I can’t
say I’ve ever spent the time hypothesizing how you live. What are
they like?”

He shrugged, but said nothing.

“Completely horrible?”

“Not completely.”

“Sort of horrible?” she continued.

“Well, it isn’t a day at the spa.”

“How many people... men...” she amended. “How
many men live there?”

“Men aren’t people?”

“Are you constantly going to be doing that?”
She frowned.

He shrugged all innocence. “Well, I don’t
have an exact number, but there are generally twenty men to a
barrack, and twenty or so barracks around the camp, so whatever
that comes out to.”

“400,” she said.

“Did you do that in your head that
quickly?”

“Twenty-squared is 400.”

“You’re sort of scarily smart.”

“It’s why I’m a doctor,” she said

He nodded.

“So there are only 400 of you?”

“Only?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Just, there’s something like 30,000 of us in
the metropolitan area. I know some of those are under twenty, but
all the same, it seems a little imbalanced.”

“Well, we aren’t all at the same camp. Boys,
anyone under fourteen, are in a children’s camp. The rest of us are
split up so we can’t organize.”

“Organize what?” She knotted her
eyebrows.

“A revolt, I’m guessing.”

Dahlia recoiled before recovering. “You would
revolt?”

“Me personally? No.” He smiled. “In general,
I think that’s what your government is worried about happening,
though.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s not out of the realm of reason,
is it?” He shrugged. “Like I said, I have no plans of any malicious
intent, but we’re all locked up and used purely as studs. Some
people might resent that.”

“I thought you liked sex.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, “but I’m talking in
general.”

“You plural don’t like sex?”

“We do, as a whole, but I’m sure there’s more
we could do with our lives. Ever think that I might want to be a
doctor?”

Dahlia blinked. “You want to be a
doctor?”

“Well, not me personally, but I as an
ambassador for men.”

“Men aren’t much suited to healing, are
they?”

“Testosterone doesn’t make us incapable of
helping people.”

She moved, pressing her back to the headboard
and pulling her legs up to her chest. “But you don’t want to be a
doctor.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I like to see blood
as seldom as possible, but I’d like the choice.”

Dahlia laughed. “Even I don’t have the
choice. We’re assigned to what we’re best at, or what will serve
the community the best. Choice is a benefit of freedom, but
sometimes your choices are made for you.”

“You always have a choice,” Ben said.
“Choosing to take someone else’s choice for you is a choice.”

“Then you have a choice.”

“Just no good ones.” He lay down, resting his
head on his hands.

She didn’t reply, just watched him as he
stared at the ceiling.

He finally looked at her, studying her face.
“Can I kiss you?”

She frowned. “What?”

“Don’t you know what kissing is? Or was that
a rhetorical ‘where did that come from’ what?”

“I have a general understanding of the
concept,” she said cautiously.

“Well then, can I?”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

“You really don’t find me sexually attractive
at all?”

“Does sex have anything to do with this?”

“Well, kissing is sexual, and so it’s just
adding to the string of you shooting me down.”

“I told you I’m not interested in sex. If you
stopped asking, I’d stop ‘shooting you down’ as you put it.”

“I’m male.” He smiled. “I have no impulse
control, remember?”

“If you want to argue that you’re just as
suited to the jobs women do, the things women do in general, I
don’t think you can use that as an excuse.”

“If you want to argue that I’m not, you have
to agree it is.”

“Watch out, Ben.” The corners of Dahlia’s
mouth twitched with a bit of a smile. “That was almost logical.
You’ll ruin your original argument if you start to sound
logical.”

“Talk about your Catch-22s.”

“Your what?”

Ben sighed. “For someone who’s supposed to be
the educated one you sure are ignorant about a lot of things.”

She frowned deeply. “Do you think you’re
making sense right now?”

“It’s a phrase that means if you prove one
part of an argument, you disprove the other part, so, no matter
what, you’re screwed. I think it used to be a book.”

“Never heard of it.” Dahlia shook her
head.

“I doubt you would have, come to think of it.
It was written by a man after all. It had to do with war.”

“I’ve never heard of a man writing a book,”
Dahlia said.

“Of course not. You haven’t heard of anything
that happened before 2200. I’m sorry, year 0.”

Dahlia considered her words. “What
happened... before 0? In your 2200.”

“Thomas Dumas was murdered.”

“Who?”

“He was... well.” Ben paused, released a long
breath, finally sat up to face her. “You see, there used to be a
world council that was the government, before Patience became
supreme leader or whatever you call her. It was called the
Directorate.”

Dahlia nodded slowly. “Where did you hear
about this?”

“Oral history,” he said. “Like we get
everything else.”

“I don’t know if you can trust that to be
accurate then.”

“History is subjective no matter where you
get it. People change things. The big things, the main facts,
always stay the same though.”

She allowed him to continue. “Thomas
Dumas?”

“He was the PD of the Directorate. Prime
Director or something like that. Really, it just means he was the
leader of the world.”

“And he died in... 2200.”

“He was assassinated.”

She frowned.

“Murdered,” Ben tried again.

“Killed on purpose, you mean?”

“That’s what murdered means,” Ben said.

Dahlia pressed her lips together. “I suppose
the next question then is why?”

“So you guys could switch over to this
system,” Ben replied.

Frowning, she pursed her lips. “You think
women killed him?”

“You weren’t always in charge, you know.”

She studied him for a long moment. “Well,
it’s an interesting story if nothing else.”

“It’s not just a story, it’s true.”

“Even if it is, I’ve never heard of it.”

“No offence.” He smiled. “You haven’t heard
of a lot of things.”

She stiffened. “I’m better educated than
you.”

“About some things, maybe,” he said, paused.
“Some things, definitely, but not in everything.”

She stared at him for a long moment before
shaking her head. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”

Ben didn’t try to stop her from moving around
to finish getting ready for bed.

Chapter Five

It had taken twice as long for her to fall
asleep as normal. Despite her large bed, another body made Dahlia
self-conscious. Then at eight, like every morning, the chimes went
off jerking her awake, bad night of sleep or not.

She frowned, her stomach feeling oddly heavy.
Sometime during the night, Ben had turned over and now had his arm
resting just below her ribs. Turning her head, she studied his face
for a second before pushing his arm off and slipping out of bed.
Unlike all the women she knew, he didn’t wake, just shifted
slightly and continued sleeping.

Dahlia crossed her arms and studied the old
scars on his chest. One on his shoulder ran almost directly along
the top, down from his neck, snaking back and forth, as if it had
been cut purposefully, or at least he had been relatively still
when it was cut. The men cut each other enough over in the camps so
it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that someone had
held him down and cut just to inflict pain.

“Don’t you know staring is rude?”

She started, lifting her eyes to his
face.

He didn’t seem to have his eyes open. “Should
I be flattered?”

“Why would you be?”

He stretched lazily. “You were staring at my
chest.”

“The scar on your shoulder, technically.”

“Ah,” he said.

“It’s sort of oddly shaped, don’t you
think?”

He frowned. “What shape should a scar
be?”

She moved to him kneeling on the bed to look
at it closer. “See? It sort of looks like a snake from this angle.
The body goes along the top of your shoulder and the head’s here,
at the acromion.”

“The acromi―what now?”

“The part of the scapula that hooks over to
meet where the clavicle ends,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment. “I got about
half of that at best.”

“Scapula.” She placed her hand on his
shoulder blade, put the other on his collarbone. “Clavicle. Your
scapula goes up here and curves to meet where the clavicle stops.
That curved part is the acromion.”

He watched her follow the curve of his
shoulder blade to a part directly above his armpit.

“There,” she said after a moment. “Feel that
bump? That’s the acromion. And the scar goes just about there.”

“And you think it looks like what?”

“A snake.” She ran a finger along the
scar.

He shrugged with his left shoulder, letting
her study it.

“How did you get it?”

“Same way I got the other ones,” he said.

“It looks smoother than the others.”

Ben watched her studying his shoulder, and
then catching her chin, kissed her.

She froze in shock, pulling back at last, her
eyes wide. “Why did you do that?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to.”

She stared at him for another moment before
moving away. “I’m going to get breakfast. Is there anything you
like specifically? Or...” An end to the sentence didn’t come to
her, she let it trail off.