BODY CHEMISTRY
1563 4D
They both have sentattar, plenty of it. Don’t worry. I’m going to rest a bit. Aoriver withdrew deep into Marra and she sat back. Engel‘s color had deepened, even the gray of his lizardskin patches looked richer. Marra dismounted. Engel opened his eyes, poked at his belly, and sat up to stare around the tiny room. His look came to rest on Frei, lying beside him.
Deen, her hands resting on Frei‘s chest, said, “Oortonel said this fellow’s been gene-infected, something about a virus and feline genes that I didn’t follow. But she says he’s going to be all right. She neutralized the virus, she says.”
Engel spoke in a hoarse voice. “That’s Arlen‘s stuff.”
“What, the virus?” Marra steadied Engel.
“Yeah. Where are we?”
“Just a few feet from where we found you and him,” Deen put in. “This is part of an herbal shop, at the crossing.”
Engel studied Marra‘s face and scalp. “Oh, Tarjeli‘s at Aswal Narr. What are you doing down here? This is a bad place for andros.”
A knock at the door. “Please? I need some seed?”
“Come in,” Deen said. “Sorry it took so long. We’ll be glad to—“
“Oh, Engel, it’s you! How are you feeling?” The shopowner went up to him and took his hand in her slim fingers.
He smiled at her. “Much better. But how’s my friend?”
Deen cut in. “He’s resting now. He’ll be fine.”
Engel stared at her. “How did you do all this?” The shopowner, still holding his hand, looked intently at Deen for the answer.
Marra‘s turn. “It’s the magic of herbs and good preparation,” she said primly.
Really, now. Aoriver, rousing herself from dormancy.
“I thought you needed some seed,” Deen snapped at the shopkeeper.
“Oh, yes.” The young woman placed Engel‘s hand on his thigh, patted it once, picked up the nearest bag of seed and left the room, looking back at him as Deen shut the door close behind her.
“Can you walk?” Deen asked Engel.
“I think so.” He swung his feet down and lowered them to the floor. A step, then another. He prodded his abdomen again, his coverall top still ripped and blood-soaked. His eyes widened. “Who are you? What did you do to me? The wound’s gone.”
“I’m Deen, she’s Marra. We’re just visiting the City for a little shopping. We’ve got— property out in the mountains. You were lying there with him in the street, and we, well, picked you up. Healing is something we try to do.”
Marra asked him, “And you?”
“Engel. He’s Frei. I was trying to get him to a clinic when a couple of bug soldiers decided they didn’t like me. If there hadn’t been such a crowd I could have slipped them.”
Andrew had mentioned a son. “Engel. That’s an unusual name, not like Rolfar or Linas. What’s your family, if you don’t mind the question?”
“Luce. My family used to live down in Sobi, from my grandfather on. We’re all Darko Hejj. My father moved us to the mountains a couple of years back, but it didn’t work out.”
“Your father’s name is Andrew, isn’t it?”
“You knew him?” Engel‘s eyes widened, and he took Marra‘s arm. “When did you know him?”
Marra looked at Deen, then both smiled at him. Deen said, “We found your father, alive, early last spring. Arlen‘s goons had worked him over, cut him up, the way you look. We got him back on his feet, and when he left us he was headed for your home again. Arlen did that to you, too?”
Engel‘s face worked from wide-eyed joy to a frown of concern. “Yeah. I thought they’d killed him, up there at Arlen‘s. He must’ve seen the house was burned. Everybody died except me, I think. That’s what those shits told me, anyway. But they lied.” He grinned, and his eyes sparkled with tears. “I’d love to see my father right now.”
“Ooh.” Frei, now sitting up, rubbed his lower back. “What, where are we?” Another knock at the door.
Marra said, annoyed, “What is it?”
The shopkeeper sounded petulant now. “I need the room for some work. Are you done yet?”
“We’re leaving now,” Deen said, opening the door abruptly to reveal the young woman’s face close up. The four of them moved uncertainly out under her intent gaze, Deen supporting a stumbling Frei, into the shouting, dancing throng. Looking back, Marra said, “Oh, and we really can’t share our recipes. It’s body chemistry.” The young woman shook her head and turned back into the shop.
Marra asked, “Where are we going?”
“Back to my place,” Engel said. “It’s not far from here, down and over a bit. We just have to watch for the guys who went for me, but I think they’re gone, because the militia spotted them. Madh will give us a bite to eat and we can talk and rest. I’m terribly thirsty and hungry. And I owe you.”
“Madhvi. She’s my partner.”
“Oh.” He had a woman. Inconvenient, considering how attractive he was, even with, no, especially with, those gray pebbled patches of skin he had, and the ears, and that mouth with the crooked corner.
She and Deen could have some real fun with these two guys, oh, it had been so long, she’d forgotten all this, how it made her face heat up and her spine loosen and move. And Aoriver and Oortonel just couldn’t wait to celebrate again. Maybe still, his woman, this Madhvi, might be open— but then Frei might have a woman too. She glanced at Frei, walking behind with Deen helping him weave through the celebrants. Just a boy, so smooth in the face.
So much like Vintarri, that was it, he looked just like skinny Vintarri back here so long ago, when he’d come to Marra‘s family cubby with street orchids for her, long mop of indigo-black curls, narrow dark-bronze face and big eyes, eyes so disappointed when she’d sent him away the seventh time with his flowers.
But Frei was prettier.
Ninety-one years old, looking and feeling like twenty, Marra walked among Corsang Run dancers in Rumchi Zone with a young man beside her and an alien in her body. How had all this happened?
She waved her questions aside, plucked at the blood-patch already drying to brown on her new coverall, and said to Engel, “Wait here. I’ve got to make a stop and replace this. It’ll only take a minute.” Without waiting for an answer she pushed her way off toward the street where she and Deen had shopped earlier.
When she returned, filled with the noise and jostle of the crowd, Engel had just drunk the last of a large bottle of brew. He started to hold it out to her, looked embarrassed, tossed it away. Before it hit the street, a scuttling child, all skinny grimy arms and legs, caught it and vanished into a corridor.
“Sorry we didn’t save you any,” Deen said, wiping her mouth, her eyes sparkling. “We needed a stim after all the—“
Marra said, “Never mind. Just tell me if you like this as much as the other one.” She turned to show them the new coverall, the same soft gray color as her last one but a tighter cut.
“Very nice,” Deen said, a sharp note in her voice. “It’ll look great as long as you watch what you eat just a little more than you do.”
“That is really nice on you,” Engel added, his eyes widening. Marra noted his look, and Deen‘s glare, with just a drop of satisfaction. She beamed.
Deen turned away, dragging a still-sluggish Frei. “Come on. We’re wasting time, and I’m hungry.” They moved off through the crowd’s din and pulse; Marra glanced around, then stared. From across the understreet, two huge gray-violet eyes stared directly at her, eyes separated by a shallow nasal ridge with two rows of small nostrils dotting it down either side. The eyes of a woman, dressed beautifully in a pale coverall, who turned and vanished behind a line of dancers covered in strings of jingling metal disks.
