The Forbidden Zone (6 page)

"Whatever is the matter?" His concerned look frightened me and I averted my gaze, instantly regretting my actions. I was trying to keep a tight rein on things, but that hold was suffocating me. There was only so much longer I could keep my feelings under wraps. One more day, that was all I had to wait. Then we could talk. Then I could express my anger at the lack of progress and learning. I wondered how Saidan managed to cope as the only genius in a sea of imbeciles. It was grating on my nerves every day.

I was glad when Lab Time ended and we went back to our rooms for Reflection Time. The door locked behind me, and I felt that familiar frustration rising up inside myself again. Normally, I would have taken a long run to work on the ideas running through my head, but Valeria's habit of keeping us locked up like animals made that an impossibility. Instead, I paced around inside my cage, annoyed by the science, by the lack of progress, even by the apparent lies I'd been told on Earth. Valeria was supposed to be one of the most advanced civilizations in the universe, and yet I found myself on what was almost a backwater colony—a dying world with people of fading intellect.

I felt so very alone. If it hadn't been for Saidan, I think I would have plotted a way back to my ship and left. The diplomatic ruckus would have been worth it to avoid five years of wasted time. Fifteen years if you count the trip. By the time I got home, the junior scientists at the Foundation would be the top dogs, and what would I be? A nobody, who'd spent fifteen years on a backwater planet with about as much freedom as a dog. Perhaps they should have sent a sociologist or psychologist instead, I thought. Valeria could have used a few shrinks.

I tried the door again. I wanted the cameras to sense my frustration, but nothing happened. There was a piece of me holding back because of Saidan. We were connected, and if I had gone off the rails at the system, he could have been punished as well. That was always at the forefront of my mind. Saidan, the only sane, rational person on this planet. Saidan, my friend. My only friend.

My own frustrations seemed to pour away like so much water as I considered the lonely twenty-eight years of Saidan's life. Before I came along, there had been nobody. Valerian society had dictated his life from the beginning. He'd been abandoned at the Children's Building, reared just like other Valerians. From there, he had followed the regimented pattern of life, learning his talent and moving to the Science Building, where his life's work had revolved around trying to analyze a patch of dead ground with a lab full of drones. Just the way he interacted with them was enough to tell me he'd never befriended any of them. I wasn't just his only friend; I was the only friend he'd ever had. The only person-to-person contact he'd ever known. The first true conversations in his life had been with me. I was floored by the thought, and I leaned against the side of my pod. Did he even know what it meant to have a friendship? To have a relationship? To fall in love, to be moved by another's company, to laugh, to live?

I resolved in that moment to show him everything that I knew. I had to. Even though I knew it could lead to heartbreak, I was determined that a few years of happiness lost had to be better than never experiencing it at all. He was soon to die, and I wouldn't let him die alone. Even if I had to stay longer in that wretched place.

Perhaps, I thought, I could take him with me. It might be possible for him to adapt to Earth's lesser oxygen with a little medical help. I could show him the world, the great wonders of books, music, movies, science, and architecture. He had a mind so brilliant that I knew he could handle it. He deserved to see it all, to experience the wonders of life before he passed.

He was showing me something, too. In all my years, I had never felt such tumultuous emotions. My relationships with humans had been fleeting, quick—lacking intimacy. I needed people around me to help with tasks, yet I never felt anything for them. They were tools to be used, their personal lives a distraction from the work. Lankis had been the only person I'd ever bonded with besides my parents, and even with him, it was his mind I wanted. I wanted to learn from him, but I'd found the stories of his love affairs tawdry and unnecessary, time he had wasted in his life that he could have spent on research.

You are not an island, Julian, no matter how much you want to believe it
. Lankis' words came back to me, a conversation that felt like it had happened only yesterday, but had been five long years ago. Perhaps he was right, and nobody could really live alone. The people who had been in my life on Earth had meant far more than I realized. It was only now, when severed from all contact, that I truly appreciated company. Saidan had it even worse than me. I suppose that's why we were drawn together.

A buzzer marked the end of Reflection Time. I stripped and climbed into my pod without complaint. As I lay still, the pod closed over me, but that night it made me feel claustrophobic. I felt like I was back in the stasis pod, the small space slowly filling up with the cryogenic liquid like it was a countdown to drowning.

Suddenly, I felt like I needed out. I banged on the glass and it bent like it might break before the glass slid back.

The Sisters rebuked me. "Requests for the bathroom must be made verbally from now on. You have been given one penalty point for today's misbehavior."

The fight went out of me at once. Any thought I'd had that the cameras weren't really watching us was washed away by that. I stood up, walked over to the toilet and urinated, the frustration bubbling over in my mind.

"What do the penalty points mean, anyway?"

"The first penalty point is a warning. Two revokes all tasks for the day. Three will take away your protein bars for a day. Four, no Feeding Time or Reflection Time for two days. Five, five days locked in your room without food. Six, thirty days in the Re-Education Building. Seven, six cycles in the Re-Education Building. Eight: Electroshock. Nine: Lobotomy. Ten: Execution." The jarring robotic chorus of voices that were the Sisters recited the words with no hint of emotion while my mouth ran dry.

I shook myself off and tucked myself back in, trying not to think about what going to the Re-Education Building might entail. "How long does it take to work off a penalty point?"

"The points are permanent, off-worlder. They cannot be removed. Be sure not to misbehave again."

When the pod's glass cover slipped back over me, I made no further complaint. My heart was racing in my chest, pounding against my ribs as I lay still. One point just for a little rage. I wondered how many points would have been issued for Saidan's little chat with me? For our friendship? For every thought I'd had about him since my arrival? Did the Sisters know about us, and were they issuing their warning now? I didn't know, but I was scared. I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. I thought about claiming illness to escape the field trip with Saidan, but the rebellious heart inside of me refused to even consider the possibility. One point was nothing. I would go on as usual.

I needed to see Saidan like my lungs had to breathe. No matter the penalty, there was already no turning back.

I had presumed that we would return to the same site we had visited previously, but the bus took us by a different route and I quickly realized that we were going somewhere else. Saidan seemed to have a barely-contained smile behind the twinkle in his eyes, and I suspected he'd set up some kind of a treat by directing his research to a specific area of the wasteland. Despite the previous night's rebuke from the Sisters, I found myself becoming excited.

The broken roads gave way to dirt tracks, which the bus struggled to traverse. It eventually stopped and told us that we had to travel the rest of the way on foot. I honestly wondered if Saidan had chosen the location on purpose for this very reason.

I took a box of equipment and made a show of lifting it up the overgrown hill. The dirt was soft and sandy and I struggled to make it to the top, where Saidan was waiting with a smile on his face. Out of sight of the cameras, he seemed to come to life again, his genuine smile awakening a feeling of warmth inside me. I could hear a distant sound, like the rushing of waves, and I realized I was correct when I took the final step to the top of the hill and put the box down.

Even dead, the beach was a magnificent marvel of nature. The sand was pure white. A fresh, salty breeze blew across us and my gut reacted with excitement. The water reflected the sky in a brilliant purple. It was a spectacle, a place of wonder just for us. I found myself abandoning the box and rushing down the hill to the beach as if it might disappear like some kind of mirage. I fell knee-first into the sand, scooping up the soft grains and letting them slip through my fingers. I knew I was being unrestrained in a way I'd never been on either Earth or Valeria, but I was simply so grateful to see such a place that I couldn't hold my feelings in.

Saidan slowly descended from the hillside as I made my way down to the water's edge. The waves appeared to be purple, like foaming bubble bath rolling onto the beach. I was surprised to find the water was warm, and I had to fight the urge to strip off my bodysuit and jump naked into the ocean.

Saidan reached my side. "It's all dead, you know," he said. "There's no life here either. The ocean is sterile, the sand pure."

"No, there's life," I said. "There's life in the way the waves crash onto the beach, in the way the wind blows, in the way the sand slips through my fingers. The forces of nature still exist even on this barren planet." I realized I was sounding like a Riva Melodia song. I wondered what Lankis would have thought if he could have seen me then. Would he have seen the changes already occurring within me?

"So, you like it?" Saidan stood, his hands on his hips, anticipating my response.

"It's amazing. Why is the water hot?"

"Geysers underneath the water keep it warm. Valeria is a very volcanic planet. Which just makes the death of its natural life an even greater mystery." Saidan sat down on the sand next to where I was standing. I sat down next to him.

"I earned myself a point last night." I'd wanted to confess it on the bus trip, but I didn't know if speaking of our points was appropriate. It just seemed to slip out in that perfect moment, and was amplified by the crashing of the waves.

Saidan said nothing for a long moment. I realized that the crashing of the waves sounded wrong without seagull cries to complement it. There was an eerie silence between waves that nothing could fill. It was a reminder that no matter how much I felt at ease at that moment, I was still a long way from home. I turned and looked at Saidan, trying to read his expression.

"I have six," he said. A huge wave boomed as it hit the shore, echoing my shock at Saidan's words. I'd expected him to be disappointed, perhaps, or to give me a stern warning, but I'd not expected to find out that he had six points.

"I was the first Valerian in a long time to need the use of the Re-Education Building," Saidan explained. "Thirty days in the worst place imaginable." He pulled his knees up to his face, trying to hide from an experience he obviously didn't want to revisit.

"What did you do?" I asked. I had to ask, and he must have known I would, because he didn't pause to ponder it, but simply continued on.

"I was curious. About mating. One of the more intelligent drones... he was willing to satisfy my curiosity." He lowered his head, as if to cover a great shame. I reached across with my hand, and with one tender finger lifted his chin to look at me.

"You were caught?"

"No. We never got that far. I thought about what I wanted to do with him, and the Sisters saw me pleasuring myself. Six immediate points were placed on me right then. If we had gone through with it—"

"You've got to be kidding me." I was both shocked and frightened. I hadn't tried to assuage my sexual feelings since I'd arrived on Valeria due to the lack of privacy, but I knew five years without even the touch of my own hand were going to leave me with some seriously blue balls. How Saidan had held back for so long I didn't know. I had no idea how any of them managed to survive in their society. I was starting to think that I didn't stand a chance.

"Kidding... you?" Saidan looked at me with a quizzical expression.

"You know, like when you tell someone something that's not true... because it's funny."

"I can't say I've ever done that. Do you think this is a joking matter?" Saidan looked hurt and pulled away from me.

I put my hands on his shoulders and turned him to face me. "Of course I don't think it's funny. Saidan, on Earth, that kind of behavior —pleasuring oneself—is considered absolutely normal. I had no idea it was prohibited. I could have earned myself a quick six points, apparently."

"Really?" He looked at me with wide eyes, as if I could erase his shame, and I wanted to. I wanted to show him every damn forbidden pleasure in the universe just so he would know that there was nothing wrong with him. Alarm bells should have been ringing in my head, but I wasn't acclimated to Valerian society. I wasn't raised to be afraid or ashamed of my body, even if I had never had sexual congress. That had been my choice, not anybody else's. I'd never felt or been forced into repression.

That was the first time that I really saw him, the first time that I understood that he was a sexual being just like myself. The first time that I laid hands on him and let myself realize that he was beautiful and desirable. That I wanted him—not just his body, but his mind and soul as well. The feelings frightened me, and I let the moment of tension between us slip away.

"I think I'd like to go for a swim." Saidan stood up and walked to the water's edge. He stripped himself of his jumpsuit with no hesitation and I saw his bare back, blue-green against a purple sea. His buttocks were round, perfectly formed. I secretly wished that he would turn around so I could see the rest of him. The papers I had read on Valeria had mentioned nothing about unusual alien organs, but then the Valerians weren't exactly forthcoming about their sexuality, either.