Free Accidental Creatures by Anne Harris Page A

heard you have a houseguest,” he said.
    “She’s from GeneSys,” offered Pele.
    His eyebrows went up, “GeneSys?”
    “She is not, Pele,” said Chango, and then to Benny, “she’s not.”
    “Well you said her father worked for them,” Pele noted.
    “That’s not the same thing is it? Besides, I was speculating.” She looked at Benny again, “She’s a sport.”
    “Oh, yeah, that’s what I heard.”
    “What did you do, Hyper,” Chango turned on him, “broadcast it?”
    “No,” he protested, “I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret, that’s all.”
    “Yeah, I mean, what’s the big deal?” said Pele.
    “I guess,” she said warily, “It’s just that she’s understandably timid around people, Benny, and when she finally comes out of Mavi’s house, I don’t want people staring and talking about her.”
    “C’mon, Chango,” Benny said, “This is Vattown, everyone stares, and everyone talks about everyone else.”
    “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that.”
    “Then she’ll have a chance to find out.”
    “C’mon Benny, at least let her get her bearings. Be cool when I bring her around. No sport jokes, okay?
    And see if you can’t get Vonda and Coral to be a little less their usual selves.”
    “Oh, you don’t ask for much.”
    “You know you can influence them, if you want to.”
    Benny raked his hands through his thick hair. “But at what cost?” he cried, looking beseachingly at the ceiling.
    “Benny,” a young woman with straight brown hair falling to her shoulders walked up to him. Her eyes darted over to Chango for an instant, and then flickered away with a dismissive toss of her head.
    “Orielle’s coming later tonight, want to go in on a liter?”
    “Sure, Vonda,” he said, “Mind if I pay you Monday?”
    “Yeah, I can cover it until then. Hey, did you see next month’s production run? They had it posted this afternoon. They must be crazy if they think we’re gonna get all that fiber grown with just the people we have now.”
    “Overtime,” said Benny.
    Vonda made a face, “How much overtime do they expect us to work?”
    “Hey, it’s time and a half.”
    “Yeah, it’s also prolonged exposure.” During the course of the conversation, she had slowly turned so that her back was to Chango, who still sat there, staring at her. “Hey, there’s Val, c’mon, he’ll buy us drafts,” she took Benny by the arm and they drifted away. Chango watched them disappear into the crowd and then she turned around, resting her elbows on the bar.
    “Shit,” said Hyper, “I can’t believe you guys still aren’t talking, after all this time.”
    “What do we have to talk about?” asked Chango, and she drank her beer.
    “You used to be best friends.”
    “Yeah, well, things change, don’t they?”
    “You don’t still seriously believe she falsified Ada’s tests, do you?”
    Chango shrugged and shook her head, “Not really. I don’t know. I know Ada didn’t dive blasted, that’s all.” She drank her glass empty, set it back down on the bar, and left. oOo
    For three days Helix sat in “the pink room”, as Mavi and Chango called it. She would have been bored out of her mind if it weren’t for Chango, who remained at her bedside most of the time, playing cards with her and regaling her with stories of the comings and goings of Vattown.
    “I saw Hugo today,” Chango said, shuffling the cards. “He lives with Benny, an old friend of my sister’s. She and Benny and Hugo were in a dive team together years ago. Now Hugo has vatsickness. He’s been off work for months. Benny and Hugo are lovers, or at least they were. I don’t think Hugo is up for much but lying in bed nowadays. Mavi sent me over there with some morphine for him. That’s about all he consumes now, morphine and water, maybe a little soup. But today he was having a good day. He was sitting up, and we watched soap operas on the holonet, the interactive ones. I asked him if he’d like to play a