Pandora: Liminal Space Book 2

Chapter Twenty-Three

"Journal Record Four, beginning."

"Ship technicians who don't have the educational background to be engineers aren't under the oversight of the science lab. This is a lucky thing for them, because if they were, Martina would have fired most if not all of them by now. One paragon of intellect decided that the environmental controls for the ship needed to be tweaked, and fourteen hours later we're drenched with sweat and using power up at a disgusting rate. The self-proclaimed mastermind couldn't fix it, none of his buddies could fix it, then the ship's engineering department had a look and determined that the programming that controls the air and water temperature has been pretty much demolished, and it's going to take another eight or nine hours to get something jury-rigged enough to be functional.

"What this means for me is that right now, it's hot enough to melt in my apartment and the halls aren't much better, but I'd boil alive if I tried to take a shower. The only bright spot so far has been that my first aid class was cancelled, although I'll probably regret that when some natural collapses in the hall outside my door due to heat exhaustion or something. Also...I'm starting to reconsider my vanity at this point. This hair has got to go."


***


Garrett wasn't sure why he kept his hair long. He didn't actually do very much with it, just tied it out of the way while he was working and let it hang loose the rest of the time. Women seemed to like it more than men, although his lovers had been known to use it as a handle at times, and since Garrett had no genuine desire to attract women and didn't care to style it for himself, he never thought about it much one way or the other. Until now.

Right now he was lying in a pool of sweat, his limbs akimbo on the polyblend sheets. Cotton. First thing he was having shipped for himself: cotton sheets. Polyblend didn't stain but it didn't absorb either, so he was left damp and miserable. The fan just blew hot air. The water...the less said about that, the better. And then there was the mass of pale blond hair spread across his pillows was achingly hot, and heavy when he tried to tie it up.

Well, why don't you whine about it a little more? That's sure to help. Garrett mentally slapped his subconscious, then reached over and grabbed his communicator. He asked for Lila.

"Hmm?" her voice responded tiredly a few moments later.

"You cut your own hair, right?"

"Sometimes. Why?"

"Because I'm dying, and the gods demand a sacrifice to save my life. It's either my sanity or my hair, and I'd rather keep my sanity. Want to come play high priestess?"

There was a long pause. "It took me a moment to work through that one. You're seriously strange, Garrett. Are you sure you want me to cut off your hair? It's so pretty..."

"Utterly sure. It's just hair, it grows back."

"But it's so pretty."

"Lila, you can have it if you like it so much. Just come over here and cut me into something that doesn't look stupid."

"Aw honey, you don't look stupid," she said soothingly. Garrett caught up after a second and groaned.

"Me walking right into it is no excuse to make terrible jokes. Will you help me or not?"

"Sure. I'll be right over."

"Thanks." Garrett turned off the communicator and flopped back onto the bed, then remembered that he was stark naked. Clothing would be uncomfortable, but being ogled by a coworker he wasn't interested in fucking would be worse. He slipped on a pair of loose shorts, thankfully synthetic cotton, and forced himself to drink another glass of water. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror above his dresser and tugged mournfully on a lock of sodden blond hair. "It's not you, it's me," he told his hair seriously, then went and sat down in the living room. A few minutes later the door chime sounded. "It's open," he called.

Lila walked in, carrying a small bag of supplies. She wore a loose, formless dress that looked comfortable rather than flattering, and her bright red hair was pulled up in a knot. "Goddamn, it's hot," she said as soon as the door closed behind her.

"Is it?" he asked languorously, "Really? I'd barely noticed."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't start with me, Mister 'I'm Always Hot'. I know you were thinking it," she added as she sat down beside him on the couch. "And do you own any clothes that don't make you look like a meal? Jeez, have a care for the rest of us."

"Why, do you want to taste me? Are you sure you wouldn't just prefer a beer?"

"Senator Dowd probably wants to taste you, and no, I wouldn't prefer a beer. Your beer is undoubtedly warm and undrinkable, like everything else since those morons went above and beyond," Lila replied sarcastically. "And while I do like to look, I don't want to taste you, because I prefer men who wouldn't think sleeping with me was a chore."

"Like Shekar."

Lila pulled out an automatic clipper. "I'm not sleeping with Shekar."

"Not for his lack of trying."

"I won't be sleeping with anyone I work with, Garrett; it would be too confusing. I'm going to Pandora to start over, and I don't want to screw up my job."

Garrett watched her take out a very shiny, very sharp pair of scissors. "You're not a natural though."

"Not really. One in five shots of Regen gives me an adverse reaction, but I'm on additional meds that compensate for it. If I choose to reproduce, however, thanks to some squirrely genetics from my folks, I'm almost guaranteed a natural child." She shrugged slightly and pulled out a comb. "I want any children I have to grown up feeling comfortable, not caged." She looked at him assessingly and changed the subject. "How short do you want to go?"

"Short enough that my hair doesn't hang down and touch my skin."

"That's very short."

"If you make me look like a marine, I'll kill you," he warned her. He could just picture the look of Robbie and Wyl's faces when he spoke to them next if he had a butch haircut. Robbie would be incredulous and Wyl would choke himself laughing and...no. Just no.

"Fine, no marines, but no complaints about what you do get either," Lila said, snapping the shears menacingly. "Now scoot over here, shut up and let me work." He obeyed, and a moment later she made the first cut, the thick sheaf of hair separating with a smooth schick.

Immediately his head felt lighter, as if he'd had lead weights dangling from it instead of fine white-gold hairs. The next two thick snips got rid of the rest of it up to the nape of his neck, and then Lila paused.

"We need to cover you with something, so the hairs don't get everywhere. Ordinarily I'd just say take a shower afterwards, but in this case..."

"Right." Garrett got up and walked back into his bedroom, finally deciding on his pillowcase as a protective cloth. He had to wash the damn thing anyway. He came back in and saw Lila staring at the picture he had wrapping his room, as though she'd never seen this one before. Then again, maybe she hadn't; he'd only had it up for five days. "It's Taua'i."

"Wow, in the hub of the central system."

"I lived there for a lot of my life," Garrett reminded her as he sat down again.

"I know, but you never really talk about it."

"There isn't much to say."

She picked up the tension and changed the subject. "It looks gorgeous there."

"Great beaches," Garrett said. "Cool breezes, lots of protected zones. Almost as watery as Griffyn, but way better developed. It's a resort world."

"It sounds lovely."

"A lot of it is." A lot of it wasn't, too. Taua'i was populated with the spoiled rich of the central system and the people who worked to cater to them. You could get almost anything you wanted there if you had enough money, but there was none of the oversight of a place like Ceyla City. "Everything to excess" was a fine philosophy for the hopelessly insipid, but the culture of obsequiousness there was grating to anyone with a true need for independence after a while.

Lila wrapped the pillowcase around his neck, letting it drape over his shoulders. "What really made you decide to exchange all that for Pandora?" She picked up the scissors and started snipping, using the comb with her other hand.

"I didn't exchange it for Pandora. I went to a lot of different places for work, and when I didn't have work I tagged along with my dad whenever he wasn't actively pursuing a military operation. I organized his personal staff, ran some of his campaigns..."

"You and your dad sound really close."

"We are." Nowadays.

"So what, you just felt like you needed a change from your high society ways?"

"Something like that." Garrett still didn't know what he was looking for, but he did know he hadn't found it on Paradise.

"Hmm."