Watching Yute (8 page)

“
Well? Do you have 20/20
gaydar or not?”

“
That’s what they say.”
Cipriana mumbled.

“
Well, have you ever been
wrong?”

“………
.”

“
Well?”

Cipriana replied quietly. “Not that I
am aware of.”

“
Okay then! That
established, why the heck did you stop me from telling you when I
first arrived?”

“
Because it shouldn’t be an
issue you feel the need to ‘confess’ to your C.O. or anyone. If you
were to tell me in regular conversation, that would be different.
Say, Cassidy, I was wondering something. Have you ever had a crush
on a straight woman?”

“
What? Do you think I have a
crush on you? You’re lovely and all, but I hadn’t-“

“
No no no,” Cipriana giggled
slightly. “I meant in your past experience. I could imagine that it
would be a risk that anyone gay would run... to fall for someone
that has no interest…”

“
Isn’t that a risk for
anyone, really?”

“
Yes, but… the risk of
rejection could hold a somewhat different…weight,
perhaps?”

“
Hm.” Cassidy pulled up a
memory. “Yeah. There was this girl… hmm.. she was just...
hypnotic.” She got a little lost for a moment. “Ohhh wow, talk
about your hard crushes. Then I made the mistake of opening my
mouth.”

“
And she was
disinterested.”

“
More like disgusted. She
was among the ‘being gay is fine as long as it’s not aimed at me’
crowd. And I guess I can understand that. Still… I felt like a
freak. It hurt like hell. For quite a while.”

Cipriana put her hand on Cassidy’s
shoulder. “I’m sorry to have made you dig that up,
Cassidy.”

“
Oh, no big deal.” Cassidy
snapped out of the dip in mood. “What makes you ask,
anyway?”

“
No reason, really.”
Cipriana smiled her soft smile, and wandered off towards the
cookies.

~~~~~

:::C /09

~~~~~

Kirison was in another bar, from a list
of bars that he had singled out as likely places to run into the
Aguei Rights Activists. He’d have to remember not to use the word
‘extremists’. That might come off a tad on the judgmental
side.

“
Hey, I’m looking for the
A.R.A.” He had said in many different bars, loud enough that he
might be overheard by the right people. He was prepared for the
idea that it might not turn into the most polite introductions, but
you have to start somewhere.

Most people told him they didn’t know,
and walked away. Some called him an idiot. One bar threw him out,
and said a number of very impolite things about him, and the
A.R.A., and threatened to call the cops.

Kirison was about ready to give up for
the night, when his question hit the right set of ears. A man
approached him who looked to be in his mid forties due to a life of
heavy substance abuse, but was probably actually in his early
thirties. His clothes were among the filthiest in the bar. He
either hadn’t had a job in years, or had been working hard at a
rough one all day. He mumbled so that Kirison had to strain to hear
him over the general bar din.

“
You think you’re gonna find
guys like that in a place like this?” The man looked around. “This
place is full of pussies, acting tough. You wanna see
tough?”

Kirison raised an eyebrow.

“
You do?” The man coughed.
“You’re a tough guy are ya? I dunno, you look like another wannabe
pussy to me!” He grinned a slightly evil looking grin, and chuckled
to himself. He wasn’t Aguei, but at this point, a lead was a
lead.

“
You sound pretty sure of
yourself,” Kirison said, “You know where I should be
looking?”

The man leered around to see if anyone
else was looking. “I know a place where some bad shit goes down.
Fucked up shit.” He rummaged in his pocket, while Kirison wondered
what filthy treasures might be in there. The man finally pulled his
fist out of his pocket, and forcibly jammed it into Kirison’s
pocket, dropping something in before removing his hand. He put his
index finger to his lips and said “Shhh, never got that from me,
right? Never saw me, right? Right?”

Kirison reached to his pocket to get
the item, but the man grabbed his wrist to stop him. “Never saw me,
right?”

“
Yeah. Alright, alright,
never saw you, never heard you, never smelt you.”

The man released Kirison’s wrist in a
jostling motion. “Alright, tough guy. Don’t mention me there,
either. And I wouldn’t let em see what I gave you either. And don’t
take it out of your pocket in here.”

“
Right, alright, you’re a
ghost, got it.” Kirison patted his pocket. “Thanks,
man.”

“
Eugh. Don’t thank me.
Fucked up shit going on there.” He shuffled off, disappearing
between the other, comparatively regal patrons of the
bar.

Kirison went into the parking lot and
looked in his pocket. A small, filthy stub of paper. On one side in
marker, it said “Ghripy - 1:30 - 250” and bore a small stamped
image of a star. On the other side, someone had written an address
in ballpoint pen.

He got into his car. It was 1:10am. He
could get to the address in plenty of time. He had a date with
“Ghripy.”

If the bar was in the bad part of town,
where he heading now was the “fucked up shit” part of town. Kirison
felt the need to be carrying a gun here, but it was too late for
that. He drove between buildings that had gone without maintenance
for untold years. Signage from stores that had been long abandoned
had faded from the sun, broken windows outnumbered the unbroken.
Some of the broken ones had blankets hanging across the opening, a
likely sign of squatters.

He came to an intersection with traffic
lights that no longer worked. He stopped just long enough to make
sure no other traffic was coming across the other way. The fact
was, he hadn’t seen another car in motion for a while. He crossed
the intersection as soon as he could, feeling like a vulnerable
target.

The address was a warehouse, in almost
as bad of shape as the rest of the neighborhood. There were quite a
few cars parked here, and loud excited voices coming from
inside.

Kirison parked, but before he got out,
a large man showed up at his drivers side window. Another one at
the passenger side window.

The one at the driver’s side knocked on
the glass and said loud enough for Kirison to hear, “You here to
play, or what?”

“
I… I’m here to see Ghripy.”
Kirison said.

“
Aw, that’s a shame.” The
man said, his expression becoming slightly more friendly, “Ghripy
was great, but he had to be ‘retired’ a week ago. You’ll have to go
with someone else.”

Oh shit. What the hell was going on
here? ‘Fucked up shit’, just as the guy from the bar had said, so
it seemed. “Oh well,” Kirison said, getting out of his car. “It’s
not like I was married to Ghripy. He was great though!”

“
Go on in, man, there’s
still at least an hour of action left.”

“
Thanks.” Kirison left his
car, somehow feeling confident that he would come back to it later
to find it undisturbed with the two goons on patrol. Walking closer
to the warehouse, he could hear the group better. They were
cheering, as if a sporting event. He opened the thick wooden door,
and was overcome with the stench of many flavours of smoke,
underpinned with sawdust and drying blood.

About sixty men stood around, facing
the middle. Kirison stepped closer, and heard faint scratching
sounds between the cheers.

In the middle was a circle of sawdust,
walled by half a metre of clear plastic. In the middle were two
roosters, fighting. But not like roosters fight. They walked
sideways around each other slowly, sizing each other up.

One decided to attack, lunging toward
the other. The opponent sidestepped the attack, and jabbed its own
beak into his foe’s shoulder as the spectators erupted into
cheers.

Neither rooster squawked as one might
expect. They both jumped back, and resumed pacing around each
other, seemingly calculating their next move.

Kirison looked around outside of the
plastic wall. There were three desks. At one sat a man with a small
terminal, a lockbox, and a few piles of papers that looked very
similar to the one he had in his pocket. Betting slips. This man
was the referee or something.

The other two desks were on opposite
sides of the ring. Each one had a man in front of a laptop, facing
the ring. These two men also had a few cages around them with other
roosters, and a few other compact pieces of luggage.

As Kirison tried to dissect the men
with his eyes, the spectators erupted into cheers again. Kirison
looked at the ring. One of the roosters had lost a wing. It was
laying in the middle as the birds again resumed pacing around each
other, as if nothing had happened.

The bird with the new injury was barely
bleeding. Were the feathers soaking most of it up?

“
Aw fuck, he’s not gonna
last much longer.” One of the spectators bemoaned. Kirison stepped
up beside him and quietly, but casually asked. “Where are they
getting this tech? It’s like…”

The man glanced as Kirison, returning
his attention to the fight as he answered. “They say it’s not
nanites that keep em standing, but any idiot can see they work a
lot like the zombies from Autar. I think they just deny it, cuz of
all the new laws.”

Kirison raised his eyebrows and huffed.
Flat denial doesn’t stop a conviction when some sap leaks this
fight ring to the cops. He looked at the two men at their laptops,
controlling the birds. They didn’t look like the type to develop
this stuff on their own. He had heard about Jonathan Coll's
'trials' of his nanites with rats. It wasn't long before Coll had
turned that technology loose on humans. Kirison was desperately
curious about where this crowd got nanites and the controlling
tech.

However, he was also desperate to
distance himself from anything nanite related. What a setback… that
prick Jonathan Coll kills a few million people with nanites, and
the party’s over for everyone. Well, except for a pile of idiots
using the tech to mutilate roosters.

He considered calling the cops on them.
They could get dangerous, but… ahh, someone else was bound to
report them. Even making an anonymous call might somehow link him
to the mess, and he already had enough mess on his plate. Back to
the reason he came here. He turned back to the
spectator.

“
Hey, do you guys get any
A.R.A. in here?”

“
What’s that stand for?” He
jumped with a shout to cheer on a rooster.

“
Aguei Rights Activists. You
know, the guys that do those protest attacks?”

“
Huh? Naw, I don’t think so.
I dunno.” The guy was ignorant, but sounded honest.

Damn, the whole time since he got here,
the same two roosters were still ripping at each other. A simple
recipe can be really effective. He couldn’t bear to look at the
mutilated, vicious birds.

Kirison scanned the spectators. There
were only two Aguei here. An A.R.A. zealot isn’t about to hang out
with a bunch of chicken-torturing white northers.

Still… where did these bozos get
nanites, much less such complex ones? Someone’s bound to report
them soon. Someone would. It wasn't his problem.

Kirison quietly backed away and left,
the sounds of cheers behind him.

~~~

The next morning found Cassidy and
Eliot boarding a chopper, destined for Yute Central. Once they were
airborne, Eliot decided to start conversation. “So. Cassidy, was
it? How do you like the post so far?”

“
So far so good. The people
are certainly friendly enough.”

“
Yeah, can’t fault em there.
All the same, I’m a little glad to be out of there.” Eliot had a
somewhat grim tone that made Cassidy curious.

“
Why’s that? Dry air getting
to you?”

“
No. It’s just... maybe call
it burn-out, I don’t know, but now and then... It feels a little
odd around there.”

“
For a military
installation? I’d have to agree there. First names all the time,
for one thing.”

“
It’s… it’s not just that.
That’s no big deal. I guess it’s nothing really, I guess I’m just
going to enjoy getting back to the rest of the world.”

Cassidy wrote it off at that, but a
thought crossed her mind that provided opportunity for a dumb joke.
“Is it the ghost of the statue? OoooOOOOoooh...”

Eliot coughed, and looked at Cassidy
with a surprised expression. “Well…! Now that you mention it. It’s
that, partly.”

“
Oh, come on, you don’t take
that seriously? Marcus really seemed to like the story and
all..”

“
Oh no, Cassidy. Make no
mistake. It’s real. I have no cause to think it's bad or anything
but it’s there.” He suddenly sounded more like an aging teacher
than a soldier.

“
What….?” Cassidy paused.
“You’ve seen it? Must be one damn big ghost.”