“A long time,” she said with a playful smile. “I heard you once beat a man to death.”
It was more than once. Again, I changed the subject. “Who's that guy?”
Liz followed my eyes to an offworlder sitting with a young cleavage-popping local. They were seated at an operating room table with a holographic autopsy-scarred corpse on top.
“That's Horst. Why do you ask?”
“He's been staring at you.”
“How do you know he's not staring at you?”
It wasn't so much what she said that made me smile. It was more the way she looked with that big girly grin, totally at odds with her naughty librarian getup. “Who is he?” I repeated.
“Just a businessman who likes to hang out in clubs like these.”
The offworlder's body was so perfect that he looked plastic, like he was some mannequin come to life. He was definitely watching me now, our eyes meeting uncomfortably. He held up his goblet in a long-distance toast. I toasted back, taking another sip of brandy that tasted like it came from a can. I set my goblet down on the rack, wondering if they'd used real blood to stain its surface.
The offworlder came walking over with his powder white skin and his inky black hair. He was wearing pressed black pants with a billowy white shirt and a black cape that left him looking two fangs from a vampire. He gave the back of Liz's hand a little peck and slipped into the chair next to hers. He held his hand out for a shake, and I brandished my shaking splinted right.
“My,” he said as he took his hand back, “looks like you had a bit of an accident.”
“Something like that,” I responded.
“I'm Horst Jeffers,” he said with a barely noticeable offworld accent.
“Juno Mozambe.”
“It's nice to meet you, Mr. Mozambe. I hope I'm not intruding. I just saw you and Liz talking, and I thought I'd introduce myself. So tell me, what is it that you do, Mr. Mozambe?”
“I'm between gigs.” An uncomfortable silence followed as he waited for me to elaborate. I didn't. Instead, I turned the question back on him. “How about you?”
“I'm a businessman,” he responded, matching my ambiguity with some ambiguity of his own.
“What kind of business?”
“I'm in tourism.”
He was still being vague, but I let it drop.
He turned to Liz and eyed her up and down. “You've really outdone yourself, sweetie. I just love this getup.”
She accepted the complement with a coy smile.
Sweetie? I thought she was Ian's sweetie. I asked, “How do you and Liz know each other?”
“We run in the same circles, she and I. Over the years, we've gotten to know each other. Quite well, I might add.” He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. Liz pecked his cheek in response.
I remembered what Josephs had told me about her: a woman like that's not exclusive.
I took a sip of my brandy and must've made a face because he said, “Tastes awful, doesn't it?”
“Like shit.”
“Don't you love this place?”
I took a look around the room. “Not bad, I guess.”
“No, not Roby's,” he said. “I mean Lagarto.”
“It's home.”
“Have you ever been offworld, Mr. Mozambe?”
“No.”
“So few of you Lagartans have. Have you ever wanted to?”
“No.”
He turned to Liz. “Now there's a man who knows what he has. You could learn a thing or two from him.”
Liz rolled her eyes at him.
Horst laughed an easy, flawless laugh. “She's been after me to take her up with me.”
Liz turned to me. “I'd like to see what life is like in the stars. What's so wrong with that?”
“You're not missing anything,” he said to her. To me, he said, “She won't listen. I'm amazed how many of you Lagartans sit down here feeling sorry for yourselves, thinking life is so great up there, but I'm telling you, I'd rather be here. If it weren't for my business calling me up a few months a year, I'd live here full-time.”
“And just what is it that you love so much about Lagarto?”
“Lagarto is real. You don't know what it's like to live inside a metal tube your whole life, where water comes from a faucet instead of a river, and food comes in plastic packages. Life up there is overrated. It's all so artificial. Do you understand me, Mr. Mozambe?”
I nodded politely as my brain tried to reconcile the fact that these words were coming out of this mannequin-man.
“There's no weather up there,” he continued, “none of this fantastic rain. It's always the same temperature, and the air tastes the same every day. It's a sterile existence in space, a miserable, sterile existence.”
Liz chimed in with a challenging attitude. “If it's so bad up there, then why haven't you all moved down to the surface?”
He put his hand over Liz's. “Because people are fools, my dear. They're so used to their disinfectants and their antibacterials that they can't get over the thought of breathing unfiltered air. They think that if they come down here they'll get sick on the water, or catch a nasty case of the rot. Some of these people haven't seen an insect in their lives, and you can tell them all you want about the marvels of bug spray, but they won't listen to you. It's only the adventurous spirits that make the journey. To me, you haven't lived until you've taken a dip in the Koba. You don't know what life is about until you eat meat from a monitor lizard that you killed yourself. And the people? I love your people.” He kissed Liz's cheek. “They have so much character. They live with the faces their parents gave them, with all their glorious imperfections. They get wrinkled when they get old, and they wear their scars proudly instead of having them erased. Your women carry their babies to term instead of gestating them in tanks. You see how impersonal a practice that is? How can a mother truly appreciate her child unless she's gone through the pain of childbirth?”
I said to Liz, “When did you say Ian was getting here?”
Horst looked offended. He wasn't used to being interrupted, but I didn't care. I was sick of hearing his bullshit. All that crap about us having “character,” and here he was pawing all over Liz, a drop-dead beauty. If he loved our “glorious imperfections” so much, then why wasn't he cozying up to some cross-eyed, acne-scarred, big- nosed, frizzy-haired, flat-chested gimp?
“Ah, I didn't realize you were waiting for Mr. Davies,” he said. “I'm sure he'll be along any minute, Mr. Mozambe. Sorry for rattling on the way I have. I'll leave you be.” With that, he stood up and went back to his autopsy table and sat next to his cooing cooze.
Liz had a slight grin on her face.
“Why are you smiling?”
“He's not used to being put in his place like that.”
“You like seeing him put in his place?”
“Sometimes.”
“What does he do?” I asked.
“He already told you. He's a businessman.”
“Do you and he…?”
“We used to. He was a lot of fun. But I ended it before it got serious.”
“You sure he got the message? It looked like he was trying to tell me something, the way he was getting so close to you.”
“He gets a little jealous from time to time.”
She ran her hand across the rack's surface and began fiddling with the shackle again. I found my eyes moving from one rack to another. She caught me in the act and smiled naughtily, fully back into her kinky librarian persona. I felt a good kind of stirring in my stomach that made its way down into my pants. For the first time in forever, I felt
