Master of None (9 page)

Once, in the center of the city, he had seen a gathering of women on the streets suddenly stop and bow low, hands pressed palms together and raised against their foreheads. Five people appeared clad in voluminous black sati, the ends drawn up over their faces. They walked slowly, their own hands pressed together and bowing slightly in response to the crowd with each step. With a shock, Nathan realized they were men. He stood gaping in surprise as they passed. One of the five stopped in front of him, staring back with mild green eyes in puzzled curiosity. He was nearly as tall as Nathan, his freckled skin light, his hair dark red.

“Bhraetae,”
the man said, his voice questioning.
Brother.
Nathan shook his head, speechless. Still puzzled, the man smiled, and walked on with his companions. Nathan watched them pass through the respectful crowd.

“Bhaqdah,”
a woman’s quiet voice said beside him. He jumped, glancing down at her. She grinned at him in a manner that made him uncomfortable. He had no idea what the word meant. “Bhaqdah,” she repeated, nodding toward the figures disappearing in the crowd, and laughed. He bowed to her quickly and escaped.

When his tutor arrived, it took a bit of complicated explanation before he realized the men were devotees of the Goddess, in the service of the temple. She wasn’t able to clarify why one of them had been a tall, green-eyed redhead.

Whereas the city’s lone temple was secreted behind high walls, a high-security fortress heavily guarded by Dhikar, nearly every neighborhood had its own kaemahjah, most of them unassuming buildings surrounded by modest gardens. He’d watched the men and women who frequented them, heard the faint music and laughter behind the screened windows. While it was not generally encouraged, not even naekulam were forbidden inside its walls. Once or twice, strange women recognized him, smiled and beckoned to him, their implication clear. He had bowed and smiled politely in return, pretending not to understand, and moved on.

He remembered too much of his childhood in an occupied country, and the succession of men in the enemy military police who’d adopted him as their unofficial mascot, perched him on their desks like a pet, his baby legs bouncing against their knees. They’d laughed and pampered him and given him sweets, most of them simply fathers missing their own children far away. But one or two had given him money in exchange for a few minutes of privacy in the shadows behind the barracks. It had seemed natural; they were nice to him, and he had
wanted
to make them happy in return. Although he hadn’t enjoyed it, none of them had ever done anything to hurt him.

Except once, the one who had smelled of sweat and had wanted something different, something Nathan’s small body wasn’t yet able to accommodate. When he’d been found, bloody and crying, his other friends had promised him they would make sure that man never hurt anyone again. True to their word, the bad-smelling man disappeared, although Nathan never questioned what might have happened to him.

It took several more years before his own sexual feelings fully developed, mixed up with feelings of guilt and anger and a desperate need to survive. Now that past seemed unreal, as if it had happened to someone else far away. But he was deeply, viscerally lonely.

He didn’t want to go back to the shelter, even though the day had been hot, his sati sticking to his sweating skin. He had reached the road turning toward the charity shelter, and stood looking toward its rooftops, unable to face another evening listening to conversation and laughter he was excluded from. He veered off and half an hour later found himself standing uncertainly outside a local kaemahjah.

A woman emerged from the cool shadows under the archway, eying him curiously. He adjusted the sati over his head, more to reveal his light hair and distinctly un-Vanar face, and felt as exposed as a street whore opening her coat to display what was on offer, both aroused and disgusted with himself.

As he expected, she recognized him, smiled broadly, and beckoned to him encouragingly. There were very few in the city by now who didn’t recognize the tall, blue-eyed naekulam with light hair and pale skin. He’d even seen pictures of himself in the media, shown to him by an astonished woman who had looked up from browsing the news on her reader to find him standing in front of her in the flesh. He couldn’t read the corkscrew script, wondering what it said about him, wondering when and how anyone had been able to record him in the first place. He was famous, and felt anything but.

Now that the Nga’esha had extended a nominal patronage, giving him a certain amount of protection, the uncertain hostility toward the alien in their midst had diminished. More often than not his novelty made him the object of fascination, but his ignorance still left him surrounded in a bubble of isolation. The woman spoke to him, and raised one eyebrow questioningly. He caught the word
thirsty
.

“Yes.” His voice was hoarse. “I am thirsty.”

“Come inside, and have a cool drink.”

The door opened into a dark, cool interior, the woman’s hand pressed genially against his back. He felt dizzy, as if he were falling inside, pulled into the dark, lost and oddly excited.

Whatever he might have imagined it to be like before, the reality was disappointing. The woman at the gate led him into a small office, plain in its furnishings. Like most Vanar buildings, the walls were curved, with no sharp angles anywhere, and textured with a light earth-colored plaster spread on by hand. Dilapidated pillows had been scattered along the low ridge running the length of the wall. Dappled sunlight from the carved screens of half-oval windows placed well above his head threw sharp patterns on the plain flecked granite floor, buffed and polished. No paintings or other decorations lessened the room’s austerity. A low desk of dark red wood dominated the room, littered with papers and cubes, the reader left powered down and silenced.

A younger woman in a plain saekah and kirtiya entered just long enough to hand him a cold glass of an infusion with a scent of saffron, and after wading through the usual confusion of garbled words and gestures, he gave her his datacard. She left him alone, seated on the uncomfortable ledge.

Already he regretted the impulse, trapped in an isolated office without his card, his nervousness building. He had finished the drink, and was debating whether or not to go in search of his card, when she returned in the company of a heavyset woman. He didn’t need the gold trim on her Middle Family sati to know she was an important official, her bearing itself enough. She held up an imperious hand to keep him from jumping to his feet. “Tah byát, bah’chae,” she said.

He greeted her with pressed palms and bobbed his head jerkily. “Large health, l’amae, and long fortune,” he blurted, knowing his mistake as he made it. Too late he remembered his knees were apart, and jerked his legs together. The heat on his face told him his skin had reddened with embarrassment. All he wanted now was his card back and to leave as quickly as possible.

She returned his pathetic salutation with grave dignity, her right hand held over her heart, and a slight bow. “Good health to you, young brother, and . . . long fortune,” she returned with an amicable smile. She spoke to him in rapid Vanar, a question from the upward inflection.

“My Vanar is very bad,” he said, one of the few phrases he knew correctly. “I apologize, please speak slowly.”

“Ah.” She settled herself behind the low desk and shook back the heavy gold bracelets on her arms before she laced her fingers together across the polished surface. “I am Mitaeb dva Shukvhar,” she said, pronouncing each syllable with exaggerated care. “Would you like another drink?”

He flushed as he recognized her use of the pronoun; she had placed him in lowest possible rank, the
you
usually employed for young children. “No, thank you, l’amae,” he said with as much self-respect as he could, and was careful to use the highest pronoun he knew, although he wasn’t sure of the proper verb form that went with it. The corners of her mouth twitched in what he hoped was amusement.

Mitaeb opened his card, examining it briefly before she slid it into the reader. The geometric patterns vanished, replaced by lines of data in the corkscrew script he couldn’t read. She spoke, and the younger woman bent to gaze at the screen, the two conferring as he waited, feeling invisible. They discussed his card at length, pointing to this item and that, Mitaeb doing most of the talking while the younger woman punctuated the conversation with occasional grunts of assent.

Mitaeb glanced up once at him, and asked skeptically, “Sahakharae?”

He gulped. “No,” he said quickly, and wished he knew how to explain the misunderstanding, he had changed his mind, he would just like to go now. She frowned as she tried to comprehend his mangled grammar. Then she leaned back, rubbing the fingernails of one hand under her chin before she finally shrugged, uncomprehending.

There was more discussion he couldn’t follow, except for words here and there that left him feeling more apprehensive. He caught the name
Nga’esha
and watched her associate lift one shoulder eloquently, perplexed.

Mitaeb popped his card out of the reader, tapping it against one palm as she studied him silently, then nodded to her associate. The younger woman indicated he was to follow her, and he stood. Hesitating, he held out his hand toward Mitaeb for his datacard, and received a look of amused surprise. When she made no move to give it back to him, he dropped his arm and allowed himself to be propelled out.

He became quickly lost in the maze, shuffled from one room to the next, the incomprehensible gibberish battering him. Dazed, he found himself in a small chilly room with two people, a man and a woman. The woman spoke cordially to him, then stepped out as the man began to remove Nathan’s clothing. Resigned, Nathan held his arms up as the man unwound his sati, then gestured for Nathan to strip off his short mati. His naked flesh goosepimpled, Nathan watched him fold them all neatly. The woman returned as the man stood in one corner, and she examined Nathan’s body with a brusque thoroughness he had not been subjected to since prison. She probed every surface and orifice of his nude body with complete indifference. Once done, she patted his arm as if he were a child, and left.

The man handed him a small paper cup, and after a few gestures, it was clear what was next expected of him before he was left alone. Nathan stared at the closed door numbly for a minute, stepped to it, and cracked it open to peer out. The man’s back was to the door, and he glanced over his shoulder as the door opened, smiling and nodding at him encouragingly. Nathan quietly closed the door.

There was nowhere to sit down in the tiny room, not even the usual built-in ledge, and he found himself leaning against the cold wall, his face cradled in the crook of his arm with his eyes squeezed shut, the chill air raising gooseflesh as he struggled to get an erection.
What a world
, he thought, massaging his slack penis.
I can get it up for a dying old woman, and now I’m trying to make love to a paper cup...

He tried to think of something erotic, trying not to remember the back alleys of Westcastle, floundering for nebulous images. His hand tired of pumping. “Come on, you son of a bitch,” he muttered, glaring down. His penis thickened slightly, and he pumped harder as it swelled. “Yes, that’s it, let’s do it . . .” And he suddenly remembered there was a strange man standing a few feet away, waiting for him to finish. His penis sagged.

After several more minutes of concentration and steady rhythm, he felt a tiny shiver in his legs and stomach. He watched the semen dribble into the cup, feeling more relief than pleasure. His hand ached, his penis was ruddy and sore, and he felt his back twinge from the awkward position. He hadn’t enjoyed sex less than this in a long time. He wasn’t sure if a glorified sperm bank was much better than straightforward prostitution.

He opened the door, and the man took the cup from him, snapping a transparent lid on it deftly, disinterested with the contents, then pointed to a small washbasin and took the cup away down the hall. The woman returned after he had replaced his clothes, and he found himself in a large, sunny room with a half dozen other men, most of them the oddly androgynous sahakharae. The others lounged on low settees, conversing in hushed monotones. Another man sat removed from them, also a naekulam but dressed in a white sati in considerably better shape than Nathan’s own. He sat absorbed in a religious book, judging by the way he silently mouthed the words while rocking slightly.

All but the pious naekulam gaped at him as he was left standing in the room, his alien blue eyes and light skin, his sati bundled clumsily around himself. One man leaned over and murmured something to his companion, who smirked maliciously.

Ignoring them, he sat cross-legged on a well-worn floor pillow, staring at his hands in his lap. Once in a while, a woman would appear, call out a name, and one of them would stand lethargically and plod after her. After what felt like hours, she stood in the doorway and said dubiously, “Nay-teen Kah-roo?”

“Close enough,” he muttered, and followed her back out into the maze, past rooms that looked somehow familiar now, and ended back in Mitaeb’s offices. He walked through dust motes floating in the shafts of sun through the carved screen, his white sati momentarily splashed with golden motifs. Mitaeb looked up as he entered, and they each went through the ritual greetings before he sat down. She came out from behind the desk to sit next to him, her thigh almost touching his, with the reader in her lap. Picking up his hand, she pressed it to the screen against an idealized swirl to record his fingerprints.

“This is your registration,” she said slowly. “Genetic registration. Understand?”

“Yes,” he said. He would have said yes even if he had not, anything to get it over with and be allowed to leave.

“Good anywhere. When you want, you come. If you don’t want, you don’t. No . . .” she said a word he didn’t know, but guessed it meant responsibilities. Or maybe problems. Or limitations. Or maybe something completely different. “Understand?”