Clara stood at a table, watching the players at her table with an eagle eye. She knew that many thought she was just lucky, but the truth was—she was skilled. Body language and facial expressions were the best thing a carder could learn. Every creature that sat at her table had a tell. All of them. She could read excitement in something as simple as a drawn breath or the slight tensing of a finger. She let her eyes drift across the group casually, but there was nothing casual about any of her observations.
The human with the expensive suit and the Crag both had hands they thought could take the pot. The Borgite had already counted the cards and folded. The Habbin was sweaty and gross, but that was more due to its genetics than the game. However, the fast opening and closing of the gills at the base of its neck told a story that said nerves and a clear bluff.
So the human and Crag. She eyed them both. The human added a pile of credits to the table, a slight grin teasing his lips upward just a hair. The Crag didn’t move a muscle. Then it too added credits. Clara considered the cards in her hand. She had a four-eyed king, a double jack, and a high queen. She could draw two and hope for the best or fold and let those two battle it out. Either way, the table took five percent of the credits in the pile.
Clara couldn’t afford to take a five percent pot and then split it with Renall. She had her mother’s passage to pay before the body smugglers who’d bought her from serio-max would even consider sending her onward. Renall had refused to pay that. He’d simply said he had gotten her out and she already owed him for that.
Her anger was still simmering, even after the scan call that had let her see her mother and know for sure she was safe and sound, at least for now.
The Borgite lit a smoke stick. The acrid odor hit the already heavy air. The vents above Clara’s head whirred and clicked, endlessly cycling the air inside the hall. Air was not free on Orbitary; every creature there paid a surcharge to the committee to keep the air circulators, designed to take up as little of the atmospheric air and oxygen as possible, running. Everything on Orbital was about credits and the need to preserve the planet, which took a lot of credits and patience. Clara liked that the air was fresh and clean in the early mornings, but not so thrilled by the fact that, at the end of a night, the air had become thin and practically unbreathable. She longed to dash outside, under the vast arch of the heavens, and drag air into her lungs in great gulps.
The music pounded along. Girls, most human, danced and shimmied to the heavy electro-beat. The crowd was a mesh of aliens and humans. Business was good, and so were the tips flying at the girls via the interface kiosks that allowed the crowd to give credits to the girls via a system that utilized the numbers each girl wore pinned to their skimpy costumes.
The whirr of credits hitting and the click of the tethers that held girls to the stage meant a purchase had been completed and the Gurley had agreed to the customer. Clara wasn’t crazy about the prostitution going on around her, but she had to admit that she did applaud Renall’s decision to enforce the rule that the Gurley had to agree to the sale before the tether would release her.
The human’s pinkie twitched, just a fraction. Anyone else might have missed that nearly imperceptible motion. She didn’t. He was holding a hand that he wasn’t sure of. She drew two and tossed two. Now she held a ten, and a six. Nothing, in other words. She fought back a smile. Her eyes flicked up at the two still in and then quickly looked down. She shoved credits into the pot, still smiling and trying not to.
The human twitched, harder that time. The Borgite looked bored, his fingers tapping the tabletop. The Habbin grunted out. “I won the last hand. I won’t win this one.” He tossed his cards to the table, face down. Now it was just Clara and the human. He shifted. His eyes went to the credit. Clara said, “Oh. Well then.” Her hand hovered over the credits beside her. “House calls the right to raise the stakes.”
The man facing her swallowed. His eyes went to his hand, a sure sign that he was worried about what was in hers. He shifted. A bead of sweat appeared at his temple. He gulped out. “By how much?”
“Two thousand credits.”
It was a bold move. One that would screw her if he caught onto her bluff. She had been deliberate about hiding her joy at the fresh draw, but what if he considered the situation and decided she was not only bluffing, but to call her on it?
She’d lose, big, and she’d piss Renall off and end up with a cut of exactly nothing for a twelve-hour shift. The Habbin leaned close. The Borgite even managed to evince a little interest. The man facing her gnawed at his bottom lip, the stress clearly getting at him now.
Come on, Clara thought. Fold or go. I’ll keep upping it until you call or fold. Her face betrayed nothing. The man twitched a final time. His cards hit the table, face down. He said, “I fold.”
Clara smiled at him and laid her cards down on the table, starting with the king. The man looked paler as each card hit. Clara held her final card and then laid it down. The Habbin released a phlegmy howl of laughter. The Borgite smiled. The man leaped to his feet. His voice shook with rage. “You goddamn bitch! You bluffed me!”
“It’s all part of cards,” the Habbin said in a genial tone, but there was a lethal current flowing across the table now. “Don’t be a sore loser. It’s not polite.”
The man glared at Clara. She stared right back at him refusing to drop her eyes. Bluffing was what she had done, and it was indeed all part and parcel of the game.
Renall’s voice cut in. “Well-played game, all of you. Dealer, clear your table.”
Clara gathered credit chips with steady fingers. The man, sensing he was outnumbered, began a slow retreat. The Habbin and Borgite wandered to the stage to ogle the goods on display. Renall hit a button and the walls, transparent but solid and strong as steel, that made up her cage, descended and the table began to lower until they came to a rest below the gambling floor and on the Lower.
Renall waited until she gathered her credits to raise the walls and step out. He spoke curtly, “That is all. Table up.”
She stepped out quickly. The table slid upward, ready for a fresh dealer and set of players.
Renall eyed her. He was angry, and it showed in the way his lips had gone flat and his eyes narrow. He said, “That was too risky.”
“I had him. I obviously did, as he folded.”
Renall’s long hand yanked through his hair. “You could have cost me a lot of credits.”
Her chin came up. “But I didn’t.”
His chin came out. His eyes flared darker. His nostrils quivered. “I don’t care that you didn’t. Play a safer bet.”
“Then I’d run the risk of not winning larger pots. You said win well. I just did. I took in ten thousand credits on that game.” And that meant five hundred credits for her. Added to the rest of what she had made that shift, she had a pretty little pot.
Renall didn’t bend at the mention of the sum like she thought he would. “Listen to me; I won’t argue this one with you. If you lose a massive amount of credits because you choose to bluff a hand, then you will have to pay back the losses.”
“No I won’t.” her temper hit nuclear heat. The insufferable jerk! ”I am a dealer. Sometimes we lose. That is the way the game is played. If I bluff a hand and lose, then I lose. It’s the chance you take, and if you try docking my earnings, I’ll lose every game until I bankrupt your entire hall!”
Renall’s square white teeth clenched. “What did you just say to me?”
“You heard me. You keep finding new ways to take my earnings, and so far I haven’t said anything about it, but this is where I draw the line. I am already stuck with three indentures I didn’t ask for and the debt for my mother’s passage, on a body ship no less instead of a much cheaper passage, and now you want to…”
He got closer. He stared into her face. “You find me to be unfair?”
“I find you to be an asshole!”
Her heartbeat sped up. That lust she always felt every single time she got too close to him hit, weakening her knees and resolve. How he could manage to excite her so was anyone’s guess.
Renall hissed in a breath. He muttered, “Of all the impossible…”
He stepped closer. Their bodies collided. Her head jerked up. Their eyes met. Her lips parted and then his mouth was on hers. His lips, hard and warm and soft too, took over her senses, sending them reeling in a thousand different directions at once. Clara sagged against him, feeling the strength of his body and the sure and hard flesh below his suit.
Her breath caught in her throat as the kiss deepened, triggering lust so fiery she wanted to rip his clothes away, and hers as well, and make love to him then and there.
Clara shoved away from Renall’s tall body. Her senses were still in overdrive. Her lips puffed and plumped from his kisses. She stared at him, bemused by both the kiss and his expertise at it. She was equally confused by her willingness to kiss him.
He was an alien. He was a creature that held the keys to her future in his tight grip, and he also held the fate of her family in that same grasp.
She knew, better than anyone, that she could trust nobody. She managed to drag air into her aching lungs. “Don’t think that kissing me will get me to see things your way; it won’t.”
He nodded. “I was just about to tell you that you shouldn’t assume my kissing you meant you and I were in agreement.” His fingers plucked the chips from her hands. He counted them quickly, shifted a five hundred credit to her hand. Then he turned on his heel and walked away!
Frustrated and pissed at herself for kissing Renall, Clara took off down a long hallway. Her chambers were situated at the top of a staircase, but she didn’t take it. Instead, she went to the nearest exit door and stepped out of it. The sky, a dazzling orange-blue that came across the heavens at night, was filled with the cold prickling light of millions of stars. Clara stared up at them as she breathed in long gasps of fresh air. Her fingers clutched the credits. Her heart throbbed painfully. Her emotions tangled and ached. Air rushed into her lungs with so much force and oxygen, she felt dizzy.
Homesickness hit. A sharp cramp of missing everything she had ever known set in and stayed. Old Toronto, with its underground lakes and long blank corridors, its crowded below earth tenements and the illegal gambling and the tension, her family and everyone else she knew was so far from her reach now.
She straightened; her eyes watered but the tears didn’t fall. She’d had to take that chance on that last hand. She had a very expensive passage to pay for. Renall had first put her into a position of having to pay that passage and then he’d condemned her for doing what she had to do. He was impossible and an asshole, so why had she kissed him?
She didn’t have an answer to that. She entered the complex again, using her thumbprint to gain access to the higher levels where her chamber was. She passed a few Gurleys hurrying toward the stairs and their shifts, and a few carders as well. She nodded and kept walking. Despite their shared living and work arrangements, none of them were close. Life was too tenuous and the future too uncertain for friendships. People were always too busy watching their backs to trust anyone else to watch it for them.
It had been different back home. Alliances were often the only thing that kept someone safe, or out of the rasp of the Capos that prowled the districts, always on the lookout for captives and lawbreakers. Of course, there were people who would trade a person they were close to for their own benefit. It had happened to her, and so she understood, but still, she missed having someone to confide in and to just hang around with as well.
Her life had become a sterile thing made up of tables and sleep, and the occasional walk outside, and it chafed at her being, abraded her soul, and battered her heart. The only thing that kept her going was the hope she could get her family back, and to do that, she had to take risks and make credits—lots of them.
Her chamber door slid open. Clara stepped inside with a new set of worries. What happened after her debts to Renall were paid off and her family’s debts too? They could leave Orbitary and be free, but where would they go? They could never go back to Old Toronto, and she had no idea what else was out there either. She was not even sure she wanted to know.
Her eyes took in her chamber. It was sparse and utilitarian. The bed was a wide thing and raised on a short dais. The drawers of the small dresser held the clothes she had been given upon arrival. There was a narrow window that looked out over a loading dock and a small strip of green belt, and a chair and table. A wall held a panel that had been keyed for her voice and DNA. She opened it and stowed the credits inside the small safe; a smile tried to come up at the sight of those credits but wouldn’t. Not even that could make her feel better just then.
Nothing else.
She took a seat and hit a button on the table. A voice answered, and she ordered her solitary dinner, then clicked the off switch and sat there staring down at her hands.
Loneliness swamped her. She knew, on one level, that that loneliness was probably what had caused her to kiss Renall. She was starving for contact, something deeper than the daily interfaces she had become accustomed to. That had to be it.
She leaned back in the chair, trying to convince herself of that as the minutes clicked by. There was a light tap at her door, and she went to it, thinking it was her dinner.
It wasn’t. It was Renall.
Her body tensed. “Yes?”
His face wore an expression she hadn’t seen before, but he quickly smoothed that expression away. “Clara, I’m sorry that I condemned you.”
She studied his face. Was he sorry he had kissed her too? She wanted, so badly, to be sorry that she had kissed him, but she wasn’t. In fact, she was really considering kissing him again, which just served to puzzle her further. “I understand why you did.”
He asked, “May I come in?”
Say no. Inviting him in is the dumbest thing you could ever do. She cleared her throat. “I suppose.” What? Had she just said that? It seemed like she had, and he took that invite and entered. The door closed and they stood regarding each other. Clara’s defenses slammed home. She wrapped her arms around her middle and asked, “Was there something else?’
Probably a bad question but it was too late to take that back.
Renall’s hands tugged at the tunic of his suit. He looked away then back at her. He finally spoke. “I know we don’t have any reason to trust each other, or even like each other.”
Her heart sped along. “I would have to agree with that statement.”
He smiled. A real smile. It lifted his cheekbones and lit his remarkable eyes. It changed his entire face, and Clara gaped at him, bemused by the sudden lightness she saw in him.
He said, “Me too. Look, I don’t intend to run this place forever. I have other plans.”
“Do you?” Her spirits plummeted. She had no plans, and if he was there to tell her he was selling the hall, where would that leave her? “Are you selling the hall then?”
“Not now.” His hands dropped to his sides. “I will, eventually. I…I intend to have my own world, well, a shared one with my brothers. That takes much in the way of credits and alliances.”
Hell yes it did. Her mouth dropped open. She blinked a few times. “I see. That’s…” Insane. A whole world? That was beyond mind-boggling. It was also a tricky thing to accomplish in a Federation like the one that aligned some planets with others and against more. She managed to ask, “Is that your…is that why you were angry? You thought I risked too much and that loss that could have happened could have undone some part of your plan.”
“Yes.”
At least he was honest. She had to give him that. She did understand suddenly, and she regretted her action too, but at the same time, she felt a slight frisson of resentment. She asked, “Surely you know that the larger the hand, the easier it will be for me to win my mother’s passage and then for us to win the rest of our family from first serio-max and then your debt. Naturally, that is a large incentive to take more risks.”
“I agree.” His lips, those kissable and clever lips, twisted into a grimace. “I just don’t know what to do about it. The other dealers are indentured for a set number of years. You alone are not. I know you know that and that the terms of your service here are private for that reason. I find myself in a situation where I do not quite know what to do.”
Me too. I don’t know what to do about how I feel about you. Because I want you, and I damn sure can’t trust you, and I am pretty sure you don’t want me. I also have no idea of who started that kiss, and if you regret it. If you wish it had never happened. She cleared her mind of those thoughts. “I see.”
Renall said, “I have an alliance. I must stay in it. So I also must apologize for kissing you. You see, I was not thinking properly.”
Her eyes closed and opened. Hurt came in. “You have an alliance?”
He nodded. “I do. I am already promised to the female child of a ruler of one of the planets in the system I shall be private planeting in. Their laws forbid sexual congress between betrothed, no matter whom that congress may be between. Also, they consider kissing sexual congress. So I have broken that agreement in part, and I have to ask you now to say nothing of it. I would rather forget the whole thing.”
“Me too.” She would. “I don’t want to cause you any…whatever.” Her pulse lowered and slowed. Renall had just made it very clear that he did not want her and that he could never be with her either. Not unless he wanted to toss away something of the magnitude of a private planet. No way was he going to choose a carder he barely knew over that, and she was not sure she could blame him for that.
Renall nodded. Relief was clear on his face. “Thank you.”
He headed for the door and out of it. Clara stood there, arms still wrapped around her body, thinking hard.
The loneliness came back. Her heart hurt. Her life felt gray and colorless and as stale and flat as the air being pumped through the room by the re-circulators. Another tap at the door sounded, and her heart sprang back into life. Was it him? Had he come back to say… “Oh for pity’s sake,” she muttered. “You really need to have an encounter with someone. Anyone. Release some of the tension so you stop mooning over him like an idiot.”
She pressed the button for the door and took her dinner tray. She settled at the table, staring at the food. Back in Old Toronto, she would have killed for that meal. Fresh fruit. Real bread and not just nutrition-loaf. A wedge of sky cheese, a porous and soft cheese made with the milk of goats found on Orbitary’s outer edges. A thin slice of protein shaped in an appealing way and covered with carb-rich gravy flavored with spices. A glass of wine made from actual roots and hanging fruits.
Everything tasted like dust. Everything around her felt hollow and insubstantial. Clara let tears come, her head bowing as she chewed and sipped and wished with all her heart that she and her family had never been caught and separated, and that she had never met Renall—because it was already very clear that he was doing a number on her emotions and that was one more thing she simply could not afford.