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Maracite
for Valeskah I'd said to her: "I would very much like to see what you're hiding underneath that cloak," half-drunk, careful to avoid slurring my words, not imagining for a moment that she'd take me seriously. All evening I'd kept forgetting she was a Maracite, that they don't think the way most of us do. The place was filled with all kinds of aliens, but she seemed the most alien of all, because she looked so human and behaved so differently. Abruptly, she smiled at me, revealing elongated incisors. Another Maracite trademark. It went along with the dead-pale-white skin, the elaborate sweep of blue-black hair, the dark-red lips, the black clothing and the air of mystery. She'd been drinking something that had turned her tongue light blue. Her right ear was hidden by her hair, which had been swept back from her left ear to show the modifications she'd had done to it. This was the next stage beyond piercing; I'd seen it before, a glittering hand-sized metal clamp on the side of the head, attached to the ear at several points like a rack, stretching the lobe and the upper rim, the flesh treated with chemicals or, occasionally slashed with a knife and left to heal that way. The end result was unusually pointed ears, frills and vanes like the fins of exotic tropical fish. I'd heard that the flesh, once healed, was more than usually sensitive; even erogenous. Her ear also had piercings, thick rings of chromed steel, loops of chain running from one point to the next which jangled quietly when she moved. In the dark recess of the venue where we'd met, she appeared as a triangular blur of white over non-reflective black, her forehead the base of the triangle, the v-cut of her cloak at the apex (it was frustrating; when she moved, the cloak swept back to reveal tantalising glimpses of her dress, flashes of silver on black, tightly wrapping her body). She had the longest eyelashes I'd ever seen. In the past fifty minutes of cautious, covert scrutiny (thanks to my Railer implants, I could hear Maracite whispers clearly) I'd established that her name was either Lizh or Vali. I was about to try and withdraw my drunken remark when another song started; her eyes widened and she took on the aspect of a small animal trapped in the headlights of a transport; blank resignation, fear and anticipation. As if in a trance, she left the bar and strode down to the dance-floor. This was the fourth time it had happened since we'd started talking; I watched them moving around each other, seemingly at random yet never touching, always just managing to dance around and not into their partners, hands moving in slow, sweeping gestures somehow pregnant with meaning, invoking things that only they could see. I was on the verge of understanding the pattern they were moving in when the song ended; they simply stopped moving and she blinked and looked about as if surprised to find herself out amidst the others. Returning to the bar (moving with a curious stiffness of posture, as if she’d broken her ribs) she apologised again: "When the call, we go." "Is it something in the music? I can't see any similarity in the songs which make you go off like that." She glanced down, ducked her head and smiled apologetically; a now-familiar gesture which said, "You don't understand and I can't explain it." >The Maracites had always set themselves apart from the mainstream of humanity, and having their own world had obviously accelerated the process, allowing them to pursue their own odd culture, habits, patterns of thought. They could speak Terran but had their own private language which sounded something like Latin, something like Russian and something like the hisses of mildly displeased cats or reptiles. Another one of them - a male, encased in what looked like a skin-tight suit of armour made of glossy black plastic - brushed past me, took her hand in his and whispered something in her altered ear. I picked it up, a string of syllables run together to form one long mellifluous word followed by a brief snatch of song in oddly-accented Terran: "He star-ted head-ing for the mo-tor-way..." He glanced back at me, face empty of expression; then he tilted his head to one side and smiled as if I'd started growing antlers and he was amused by it. Not taking his eyes off me he kissed the back of her hand and wandered off into the darkness. She sat facing me with that fascinating, faint smile, her eyes off to one side, following him as he left; then seeming to remember me, her eyes darted back to me and her cat-like pupils dilated. It was an old, corny trick, but it worked on a subconscious level; I didn't resist as she took my hand and led me away. I thought she was taking me to a private room somewhere else in the club, but the spiral escalator led up to the roof. One of the reasons that people hung around the Maracites (despite their reputation) was because they were allowed to build their own starships, possibly the only race in the entire Dominion with this privilege. The ship was in keeping with the Maracite style; black with gold details, spiky protuberances that had no immediately obvious function; a smooth, black metal gargoyle with faster-than-light capacity, the size of a twenty-seater bus. It crouched on the edge of the building, claws sunk into the faux-stone, facing out into the night. A Bythian scout-craft rested next to it; over in the far corner was another Maracite ship, shaped like a stylised, over-detailed coffin. She led me over to a spot about five metres from the side of the gargoyle-ship and clapped her hands twice. The ship stood up on thick legs, hydraulic bronze-faced hinge-joints hissing, turned to face us with the general aspect of a large predator disturbed at its meditations. Two dim red running-lights mounted on the front came on, glowering at us; it emitted a bass rumbling just within the range of my implants, reinforcing the impression that it was a living thing. I took a step back. She stood there for a moment with her arms outspread in the attitude of crucifixion, then inhaled deeply, threw her head back and gave a shrill scream, a raw, frenzied cry of rage that must have hurt, a note that rose to a climax over a period of thirty seconds and then abruptly stopped. She let her arms drop, breathing heavily; the doors set into the front of the ship unfolded like the chitinous mouth-parts of a locust and a ramp extended down to her feet. "Some people just use a button," I said wryly, holding out my wrist and showing her the credit-transfer contact affixed there. She gave me a shy smile, ran her tongue over an incisor, took my hand and led me inside. I couldn't escape the feeling - reinforced by the odd, spicy aroma coming from the ship's airsystem - that I was walking into the mouth of a dragon. >The ship didn't have any traditional control consoles or displays; it looked more like a messy bedroom than a starship. Clothing, books, musical instruments, figurines made of broken glass and chromed things with less immediately obvious functions lay scattered around a huge, black-lace-canopied four-poster bed made of dark brown wood, the bedposts as thick as her waist, running from the densely carpeted floor up to the ceiling. I knelt and ran my hand through the pile; it felt like animal fur. It couldn't have been real animal fur, of course; that sort of thing had been illegal for hundreds of years. Still, it was a very good imitation. She was sitting on the end of the bed, her cloak wrapped around her body as if to keep out the cold, holding the lapels closed with her black-leather-gloved hands, looking very vulnerable. Thinking that she expected me to leap on top of her and behave like a stereotypical human male, I thought I'd try and throw her by behaving submissively; I crept closer to her on my knees and crouched before her, looking up through a fringe of hair. For a few moments we remained there, very still, eyes locked together. Her vertically-slitted pupils combined with her bizarrely-shaped ear and fangs combined to make a profoundly unsettling effect. Suddenly, she didn't look as human as I'd first thought, and I wondered if this was a good idea. Her gaze darted briefly down to her cloak, coal-dark folds still gathered around her, parting at the knees to allow a view of her leather boots; rows of glittering eyelets with dark purple laces threaded through them reaching up into the mysterious depths. She looked back at me and gave me that odd smile again, incisors making tiny dents in the pillow of her lower lip; then she leaned back, hands supporting her weight, and moved her feet a fraction of a centimetre apart. I supposed this was some subtle Maracite invitation, so I shuffled a bit closer and slowly parted the folds of her cloak, drawing them open from the knees upward. The boots went all the way up to her thighs, silver palm-sized disc hinge-plates set on either side of the knees, laces crossing a four-centimetre gap of pale flesh and digging into the skin near the top. I undid each knot in turn, loosened the laces and drew the boots from her shapely legs. Pushing the edges of the cloak further apart I exposed the hem of a tight leather skirt - actually a wide belt, tightened around her legs to the point where it constricted movement. My hands felt around the hem, looking for a buckle or catch; I found it at the back, a confusing array of buttons and metal plates that had to be twisted just so before it released. The strap had pressed a red mark into her legs as wide as my hand; she hissed with pleasure and spread her legs wider, hooking one foot around my waist. The rest of her dress was similarly brutal; there were wide crescent slits up each hip, with more laces digging into her soft skin which left cross-hatched marks when undone. Her waist was strapped into a corset which began just above her pubis and ran up to cup her breasts, reinforced with dozens of unrelenting, thick leather straps attached to wide chrome buckles, arranged in a line up her stomach. I unfastened each one in turn, releasing the dress and allowing her to breathe freely for the first time in days, judging from the welts on her skin. As I tightened the straps to allow the buckle-pin out of the belt-holes, she winced and smiled. The belts had pressed through the thin leather of the corset and had made a ladder of pale purple and blue bruises up her sides, slightly darker over her rib-cage. Her hips were patterned like corrugated cardboard where the laces had cut into her. I hesitated before touching the welts, not knowing how painful they were; she gently took my head between her hands and guided me down to her skin, and she hissed again as my lips touched the hot flesh... |
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