Page 4 of Double Bind (Cosmic Mates #6)

“Where’s Marshall?” Faith asked. As expected, Amity’s friends had shown up at her cabin to go to dinner together.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “He went out about an hour ago.”

Faith and Bragg exchanged a wry glance.

“We didn’t fight.” At least she hadn’t thought so. She’d racked her brain for what she might have said to precipitate his abrupt departure. They’d seemed to be getting along, having a decent conversation. She’d even started to forgive him a little tiny bit—and then he’d stormed out.

And they say women are moody! Ha!

“Let’s go to dinner. Marshall can do whatever Marshall does.” At least I have friends. She and Faith went way back, and John seemed like a nice guy—unlike her cold, emotionless pseudo-husband.

Was she destined to be unlucky in love? Cosmically cursed? Even the Cosmic Mates match had been a dud. She shuddered at the disastrous encounter with the Nagarian. But since she’d just joined the matchmaking service, she’d remained hopeful that eventually they’d find her a compatible match. Then Marshall had entered the picture.

Now she was locked into a loveless, fake marriage after which she’d be another year older.

Being single hadn’t bothered her quite so much until Faith had married. Her whirlwind romance had emphasized the loneliness of Amity’s life. The man had fallen head-over-heels cray-cray for Faith—and she felt the same way about him. Amity was happy for their good fortune but a little jealous, too. Faith, a decade younger, was on her second, albeit last, husband.

Don’t I get a turn?

She shrugged into her hand-me-down coat and slipped her pay card into the pocket. She’d always been the charity donor, never the recipient. It humbled her to depend on the goodwill of strangers for basic necessities. If not for them, she wouldn’t have a warm jacket or a change of clothes.

But she did not intend to be dependent for long. Tomorrow, she’d begin her job as a weaver. A weaver! She really did feel like she’d been dropped into a reenacted pioneer village.

“As soon as I get paid, I’m buying some clothes,” she announced as they left the cabin.

After Marshall’s abrupt departure, she’d explored every centimeter of the unit and found a long flat footlocker under the bed. It contained sheets, blankets, and a couple of pillows. She dressed the bed—trying not to think about the awkwardness of sharing it with Marshall—

and then unpacked her duffel, stowing her two hand-me-down outfits in the footlocker. A pair of warm boots, which, unfortunately, didn’t fit, and a long-sleeved granny-like shift she assumed was a nightgown, completed the entirety of her wardrobe.

“We’re looking forward to getting paid, too,” Faith said. “However, our first priority is getting a box and figuring out what we can use for litter for Rusty.”

“I should have saved the rice I shook out of my clothes. I had enough down my shirt to fill a box,” Amity joked.

Faith laughed. “I’m still finding rice in my clothes and shoes.”

“How is Rusty?” she asked.

“Adjusting well. He made himself at home on our bed. We took him outside to go potty. It’s like having to walk a dog. And it’s not going to work when we start our jobs. It’s too cold to leave a window open for him to come and go, and I’d be afraid he wouldn’t know where he lives and wouldn’t find his way home.”

“I’m not sure I can find my way home!” Amity said. “The units all look alike. There’s nothing to distinguish one from the other.”

“Like clones,” John quipped.

There weren’t so many housing units that she couldn’t eventually find hers, but she pictured herself entering the wrong house. “Which one is yours, by the way?”

“Fourth one down from yours,” John answered.

Okay, a dozen units in the row. We’re third from the end; Faith and John are four down. Got it.

Exiting the residential neighborhood took all of a minute, and they entered the town crescent. Perhaps a dozen people moved around, entering and leaving the various buildings. She couldn’t help gawking at the diversity of aliens.

One head.

Two heads.

Red head.

Blue heads.

Red and blue described more than hair. There was a veritable rainbow of skin tones. She spotted aliens with multiple arms, antennae, horns, eyes like flies, and wings. Fortunately, there were no half-man, half-snake Nagarians.

“It looks like the mercantile is still open,” John said. A man resembling a giant stick bug entered the tiny store. “You want to stop in and see what they have for Rusty?”

“That’s a good idea!” Faith said.

“You two go—I’ll save us a table in the mess hall.” She eyed a group of little green men or perhaps women entering the dining facility.

“Thanks! We won’t be long!” Faith said, and they parted company.

Amity surveyed the town as she walked. My gosh this place is small! Work would occupy her days, but then what? Would she and her taciturn husband sit in their cabin and glower at each other all night? That sounds like loads of fun. Again, she wondered what had set him off. They’d seemed to be having a nice conversation.

The mess hall resembled a cafeteria with a buffet line feeding into an open-seating area with long tables arranged in rows. A line snaked to the cashiering booth manned by a gray-scaled man with a jutting lower jaw.

“Amity!”

Startled, she let out a squeak, turning to see Marshall getting up from a bench.

“Oh, you’re here.” She pressed a hand to her chest.

“Seemed like the best place to meet.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“I needed some air,” he said.

We have air in the cabin. She stifled the waspish retort. Much as it would be justified, it wouldn’t help the situation. If the year was going to be bearable at all, they would have to find a way to get along.

“Bragg and Faith didn’t show up?” he asked.

“They did. I offered to get a table while they stopped in at the mercantile. They’re shopping for Rusty.”

“The cat? That’s a priority?”

“They need a litter box for him. Food, too, probably.” She scanned the room. “Looks like we have to go through the line, pay, and get our food before we can get a table.” She eyed the crowded dining room.

“Place is filling up fast. Maybe we should go through the line,” he echoed her thoughts.

“I hate to start eating without them, but that might be best,” she agreed reluctantly. Besides not wanting to be rude to her friends, she’d been counting on them to serve as a buffer between her and Marshall.

They joined the growing queue.

When they got up to the alien cashier, she handed over her card. “What’s on the menu?”

“Horniger for you.” He blinked at her card in his claw and then a beam of light shot out of his eyes. He handed back the card. “Enjoy your meal.” Did he just scan the card with his eyes?

She gawked as he read Marshall’s card the same way. “Did you see that?” she whispered as he joined her in the buffet line.

“Yeah. Freaky,” he agreed.

“Do you think he’s an organic being or a robot?” She snuck a peek over her shoulder. He didn’t look like an android.

“Could be a mix of both—like a cyborg—or just an alien. Did you realize we could understand him?”

“The translators are working!” She fingered the tiny hearing aid-type device tucked into her ear canal. They could have gotten subcutaneous translators, but Marshall and John had been opposed to having any device implanted in their bodies, and, influenced by the men’s objections, she and Faith had opted for externals, too.

“And Lucento,” Marshall added.

“You’re right! I didn’t realize.”

The buffet held a multitude of warming trays filled with exotic foods, food being a generous euphemism. Eyeballs stared up from one tray. Pink larvae squirmed in another. Oh stars, they’re alive. I’ll starve to death before I’ll eat that. Or eyeballs. She shuddered.

A four-armed alien server peered at a screen. To her cautious relief, he dished out what appeared to be beef roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. “That’s horniger?”

“Yes, and mashed tuber with savory sauce. Your pay card is coded with your species designation and food compatibility.”

She hoped horniger tasted like beef or pork. Even lamb would be okay. Anything but larvae and eyeballs. The server dished up and handed over Marshall’s portion. “Get your dessert and drinks at the end of the row.”

After collecting the rest of their meal, they moved into the dining space. None of the tables had space left for four, but a robo was cleaning up a recently vacated table for eight, and they made a beeline for it. As soon as the space was clear, they set their trays down. Amity shrugged out of her coat and placed it on the bench to save a place for Faith, while Marshall did the same for John.

The little bot wheeled away. “It’s reassuring to see a robo—at least Artisan’s Loft has some advanced technology. They should have the cashiering and serving line automated.” She slid onto the bench.

“Then those refugees wouldn’t have jobs.” He sat across from her.

“Good point,” she conceded.

Déjà vu. We’re sharing a meal together again. With a pang, she recalled the intimacy of their one-and-only date. The mess hall was much bigger and more impersonal than the bistro, but the white noise produced by the meld of alien tongues created a bubble of ersatz coziness and privacy. Proximity obviously affected the translators—up close, she understood what people said, but from a distance, she heard an indistinct hum, unable to make out a single word.

She squinted at the long cashier line. No sign of Faith and John yet. Awkward. She squirmed. “Food smells good.”

“It does, but not as good as the lasagna at Bea’s Bistro.”

She’d had such high hopes for that night, but the romance had been an illusion with an ulterior motive.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her head snapped up. “For what?”

His eyes were somber. “For our date. For misleading you. I regret that I couldn’t be honest.”

“I get it.” She lifted her shoulder in a dismissive shrug. Let’s not go there. “You had a job to do, and you weren’t that into me.”

“That’s not it,” he said gruffly. “I was attracted to you, but—”

Yeah, but . That told her everything she needed to know. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, trying to discourage further discussion. “You’ve paid penance by marrying me.” She’d lost her appetite but poked at her meal and then took a tentative bite. The horniger tasted a little gamey but basically beef-like. She chewed. Swallowed.

“It’s not a penance.”

Faith, what is taking you so long? Weren’t men supposed to be the ones who hated to talk about relationships?

“I left the cabin rather abruptly.”

You think? “You don’t need to explain.” Hadn’t she been humiliated enough? The date. The pity marriage. She didn’t need to hear how he couldn’t stand her company.

“I left before I had a panic attack. I get claustrophobic.”

“So, marriage to me makes you claustrophobic.”

“No! The water closet triggered it.” A muscle ticked in his cheek. “The lavatory reminded me of the cloning tank.”

“Oh…” She widened her eyes.

“They say clones don’t recall their gestation, aren’t conscious until after birth, but I remember the tank, being closed in, seeing people outside.”

“How awful.” His experience sounded like a sci-fi horror vid. “You must have felt like a fish trapped in an aquarium.” She could imagine how claustrophobia could develop from such an experience.

“A very small aquarium.”

“Wombs are small.” Did fetuses feel constricted? Did they forget, or did they not have any awareness?

“Fetuses mature naturally and are born as babies. I went through infancy, childhood, and adolescence in the tank. I achieved sentience in the tank. And by tank, I mean glass cylinder, about the size of the lav in the cabin.”

“How long was the gestation?”

“About a year and a half. Scientists figured out how to accelerate growth.”

“It’s still a long time to spend in a tank.”

“Yes. I wanted you to know that the abruptness of my departure had nothing to do with you. The tightness of the lav brought on a flashback.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“We got off on the wrong foot,” he said.

Whose fault is that? Still nursing hurt feelings, she had a snarky retort at the ready, but she stifled it. He seemed to be offering an olive branch. It would behoove her to take it. For better or for worse, they were stuck with each other for a year. Why not make the best of it? They would never be a real married couple or lovers—too much had happened for that to occur—but maybe they could be friends.

“Maybe we did,” she said.

“Do over?” he asked.

“Do over,” she agreed.

“So, you emerged as an adult?” she asked. “Like how old?”

“They matured me to the age of twenty-five—the age the previous Marshall Clark clone was when he died. I don’t know what happened to the original, the progenitor, why he died at such a young age.”

“And you were in Dark Ops how long?”

“Two decades, marked from my emergence from the tank. The anniversary of my tank release is on the seventeenth. I’ll be forty-five or twenty, depending on how you count.”

“Let’s go with forty-five; otherwise, I’m a cradle-robber.” I went from spinster to cougar. “You’re not going to continue to mature at the same rate as you did in the tank, are you?” She imagined herself waking up next to a septuagenarian one morning.

“Thankfully, no. Without them pumping in the growth acceleration hormones, I’ll age at a normal rate.”

Half her meal was gone. She’d eaten the whole time they’d talked. The conversation was so fascinating, she hadn’t been aware of how much she’d consumed. “John took his own name. But you kept your progenitor’s?”

“At the time I came into being, clones were not permitted to have their own identities, but then there was an internal campaign to allow clones more autonomy.” His mouth twisted. “All hype, no outcome. The only thing clones got out of it was the right to self-name. By that point, I figured, what difference did it make?”

“Hey, sorry we’re so late!” Faith and John appeared at the table, trays in hand. “Thanks for saving us a seat!”

Enthralled by Marshall’s story, she’d forgotten about her friends. She kind of regretted they’d arrived when they did. Marshall’s expression had closed up; there would be no more personal revelations.

At least she better understood what drove him, why he’d done what he’d done. Freedom and autonomy meant everything to him. Yet he’d risked his liberty to rescue John, and he’d married her to ensure her safety. It was almost…noble. Perhaps she hadn’t been fair to him.

They picked up their coats and scooted over so their friends could sit. “Did you find what you needed?” she asked.

“Actually, yes,” Faith replied. “We found a container that’s the right size, which we filled with a seed grain to use as litter. They let us have it on credit. We ran to the cabin to set it up for Rusty—that’s what took so long.”

“As long as the cat is happy…” Marshall said drily.

She smothered a titter with her hand.

“Nice to see you two haven’t killed each other,” John said.

Amity looked at Marshall. “We had a…nice conversation.”