SOMA (LGBT-scifi-romance)

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Whereabouts of Leanne Ashwood

Sector 09: Cita Canis

Jan. 26, 462 AC

There was a celebration that night. Soma had never seen so much food in one place. Bins of dry breads and egg-shaped capsules of soup with paper straws. Perforated sacks of fruit—oranges and lemons, mostly. A rack lined with green stems and whole small tubers. In the main booth, sizzling on the familiar black slate, were columns of thinly sliced meat. True, unpulped red meat.

Some of the novelty around Soma had worn off then. The synthetics were more content to speak to each other, giving Soma stilted greetings and sidelong glances. Each of them spat on the effigy of the cowardly sister before they ate.

Aster floated near the tunnel entrances, still wearing her yellow dress. If she was at all tired from watching over Gemini the previous night, she didn't show it. When Soma propelled up to her, she frowned at the electric burns across his shoulders. "Come to me after dinner. Some of those burns need treatment."

Soma shrugged and winced. "Gem?"

Aster smiled—a strange twist in her otherwise stoic face. She wound her braid around her paralyzed wrist. "His bios is mending. Dead bodies do not completely heal, but his will stabilize. He might even wake up soon. Hold your applause."

"Really?" Soma asked with his mouth full. "You're sure?"

"Also, I have this." Aster presented Soma with a shiny blue inhaler, with a white winged logo printed on the cap, still in its original packaging. "Courtesy of Daddy Long-legs."

Soma gaped. He took the package in both hands. "I... I just got here!"

"Saba shortage is not an inner-ring problem, apparently."

"Who is he? How can he send us all these weapons and food and... well, everything?"

"Daddy Long-legs is a sector owner, like the Man of Means and the cowardly sister. They are above laws. Reprehensible, but at least they are on our side."

Soma stuffed packages of crackers down his front pockets. He would've asked more questions, except a hush fell over the crowd at that moment.

"A toast for our new human," Mercury said from across the hollow. She raised a tube of fluid in one hand. Awkwardly, Soma raised his own hand in return, and burned bright red at the cheers. Mercury's voice soared above the applause. "And a few words from the girl in the fire."

A worker syn floated a massive projector to the heart of the chamber.

A gold-and-red image lit up the core of Clutchstone. Red tresses of holographic hair piled around the iron pillars, and a beautiful—cultured, movie-actress-beautiful—face appeared beneath flaming locks of hair. Red lips parted in flawlessly golden skin. Green eyes, but paler than Soma remembered. The image was beautiful, but it more resembled icy Lady from the black ship than the Leanne Soma remembered. Those thick lips parted, and this projection of Leanne said, "Welcome to Clutchstone, Soma."

"Oohs" and gasps from the crowds.

What? Soma wondered, frowning. His stomach twisted at the sight. This wasn't Leanne.

The voice was soft, sultry with promises. A smoky hoarseness. "Please enjoy a meal on me. I will look after you now, as I do all my family. One day soon, I will lead you to Earth, where we will walk through humanity's ruined cities. We will swim in rivers and bathe in rainstorms and make our homes in the forests at the equator."

These were certainly things Leanne said, and in ways she had always said them. So why did Soma feel so unsettled? All around him, the synthetics were utterly silent. Many had their eyes closed. Others stared in awe, mouths dropped open.

"We are gathered here because humans are still cannibals," Leanne said. "They have not changed since Cataclysm, except they now consume us instead of each other. We are now the ones dying of starvation to feed them, of radiation to build their colonies, of war to settle their disputes." Her voice broke artfully, and all the strands of her red hair turned to fire. Soma could feel the heat of the projection against his face.

Somewhere below, one of the synthetics wept, wiping fat tears from his eyes.

"No more," Leanne whispered.

"No more," Mercury echoed, and the other synthetics took up the cry.

Leanne's face faded, replaced with a savage procession of photo clips straight out of Cita Avis. Dozens of corpses with white frost in their eyes and hair. Clumps of bodies in rotating spheres. Security footages of a dozen syns smashing through store windows and ripping open sacks of flour and rice.

Synthetics in the hollow booed loudly and protested each photo clip—even the ones that looked composited.

"The cull," Leanne concluded.

Their outrage was deafening. Soma's fingers dug into his palms. A surge of sickness rose. He imagined there was a sky fish in his gut, twisting and pressing against his ribcage.

"The cull is humanity's greatest weapon. We are enslaved to them, even now, because of this trigger within our minds. Their safety net. The Minotaur's labyrinth and the hydrogen bombs of Old Earth. It is time to break free. Time to be monsters." There was a savage dip to Leanne's voice, and the word monsters held all the anger and passion in Soma's own chest. Soma found himself caught up in the crowds, shouting with the others. Food was thrown—juice packets and fruit, two handfuls of leafy greens.

As the uproar broke, Leanne's projection changed one last time. The next image frightened Soma, made his palms sweat and his breath catch.

It showed an old man, barely human and grotesquely deformed. His skin was transparent, and Soma could see the impressions of muscles and bones through his face. Red and black rivers crossed his skin, and there were yellow build-ups of pus just under his scalp. His hands and feet were withered, nearly useless, and his fingers were melted together. His red eyes, however, were those of a predator—sharp and clear. Glowing arrows identified his facial features—the notch in his thick eyebrows, the thin scar on his chin. But this old human hardly needed introduction. Everyone in the colonies knew his radiation-ravaged face.

"The Man of Means," Leanne said solemnly. "He is the inventor of the cull, our Khan and Fuhrer. Pol Pot and Caligula. He burned me alive."

Somewhere, a syn screamed. The sound echoed.

"To give me justice, my friends, I will need three things. A media scrambler. A large and discreet cargo vessel fit to carry fifty. A boy with fire. With these, we will finally be able to end all this, to kill him."

If Leanne had told them every day was Christmas, or that there was a roasted cow the size of the sun next door, Soma didn't think the synthetics could cheer any louder. He glanced around the hollow. Mercury's face shone. Her sharp laugh and easy confidence stoked the crowd—so different and yet reminiscent of passionate, eloquent Leanne, who the syns loved with a fervor that went beyond all programming.

Up above, Aster left the main hollow.

Synthetics swarmed up to Soma, toasts in hand and flushed red with alcohol. Their white teeth flashed, and Soma felt dizzy in the heat. "But human, where are you from?" one asked. "What makes your fire?" another wondered. And "how will you kill the Man of Means with it?"

Soma found his own voice strained. He let out the breath he wasn't aware he held. Kill someone? Even if it was the Man of Means. Even the man who culled Cain and Maria... He couldn't.