Lise, DM Arnold [bearly read books .TXT] 📗

The white Varadan sun washed the city with harsh morning light. A shaft streamed through a sill window and across Lise's eyes. She sat up with a start, dimly recalling her mother's attempt to rouse her earlier.

She rubbed her eyes and arose from the thin pad on the floor that served as her mattress. She wrapped a threadbare towel around her torso, climbed the stairs from the basement and stepped into a courtyard, walled on four sides by abandoned and crumbling four- and five- story apartment buildings.

Pushing open a gate, Lise walked onto the street. There was no vehicular traffic, as this sector of Vyonna had long been walled off from the rest of the city. Sitting in the middle of what once was a busy boulevard was a latrine, fabricated from scraps of corrugated metal and positioned atop a manhole opening into a sewer. She rapped on the door. “Occupied,” came a reply.

She folded her arms and waited until the structure was vacant, then stepped inside and voided her bladder. She headed back to the courtyard, filled a bucket from a standpipe, stepped behind a low screen formed from a pair of old doors and began washing.

As she dried herself she realized she was not alone in the courtyard. Sitting on a low wall was a figure -- another Novo Homonid. He was about the same age as she -- nineteen years. Like Lise, the boy had green skin, orange eyes and no hair. He held a pad of polysheets.

“Tagg!” she exclaimed. “Were you watching me bathe?”

“I was sketching you,” the boy replied.

Lise turned her back and wrapped the towel around herself.

“Come look,” Tagg said.

She rolled her eyes and walked toward where Tagg sat. “Don't you have a job to go to?” she asked.

“No -- I was let go. My owner hasn't found a new one for me yet. I'm not strong enough for most of the work that's out there. Instead I go to the park in Sector Ten and sit and sketch. I sell my drawings to white folks.”

“You sell your drawings?” Lise asked. “Let me see that...” She took his sketch of her portrait. “Tagg -- this is really quite good.”

“You can keep it.”

“I was afraid you were sketching me...”

“Nude? I'd like to do that, Lise. Maybe you'd pose for me. I'll bet it would sell.”

“How much do white folks give you for your sketches?”

“Whatever they want,” Tagg replied. “Mostly almost-used-up scrip cards ... enough so I can buy more pads and marking pens. I hope I don't get a new job. This way I keep more scrip than when I was working.”

“Don't let on to your owner that you're doing this.”

“I won't... The whites can't believe they were done by a novonid.”

“They believe we're not capable of very much. Don't the constables harass you?”

“The park is patrolled by a woman cop. She bought a drawing from me. I always check to see if she's the one on duty. Otherwise, I go elsewhere.”

“What you're doing isn't illegal -- is it?”

“No. So long as I don't cause a nuisance. Lise... Come up to my apartment and pose for me. My roommates all will have gone to their jobs. We'll have privacy.”

“I can't,” she replied. “I'm starting my job today, and I can't be late.”

“YOU have a job? That's right -- I heard you had been registered.”

She pointed to the serial number tattooed on her left clavicle: RAA005010. “I must go.”

“You remember where my apartment is?”

“Of course, Tagg.”

“Come up and pose for me sometime. I'll make a deal with you. Pose for me and if I sell it, you can have the scrip.”

Lise carried the sketch into her basement dwelling and set it on a bench. She slipped into her clothing -- a bandeau to cover her breasts, short shorts and sandals: a costume designed to expose the most of her green skin to sunlight. The garments were new -- provided by Ramina. She headed up the stairs to the courtyard, through a gate and down an alley.

Her stepfather had warned her against using the alley. Before she was registered, Lise had ventured outside the basement and adjacent courtyard only after dark. Then, she stayed inside or close to the Green Zone, and went out only to scavenge food or other necessaries.

Not all novonids lived inside the Zone. Many more lived in housing provided by their owners. Some in the workforce were quartered in barracks. Others who were valets or maids had comfortable rooms in the homes of the owners they served. Most grocers catered to these owners by stocking one shelf of novonid food.

Some shopkeepers -- the considerate ones -- would stack expired cans for the taking in the alleys behind the stores. After all, they couldn't be sold after the expiration dates. Spiteful ones would crush the cans, mixing the contents with detritus. Giving it away, they reasoned, reduced demand for the product they sold. Novonids in the Zone held scrip -- how they come by it isn't the shopkeepers' affair, and as tender it is just as legal as that of the whites.

After dark, after curfew Lise would creep through tunnels under the streets and emerge outside the perimeter to scavenge what expired cans she could find, or discarded cooking grease from the fry shops. Being registered changed that. The serial number on her shoulder meant no bounty hunter could turn her in for the reward on renegade novonids. Now she could roam in broad daylight, and she was just becoming accustomed to it.

With daylight came safety -- the brothel on the edge of the walled-off sector would be quiet, and the thugs would be off the street. Even the tower-mounted cameras the constables used to patrol the perimeter of the Green Zone would be given only cursory glances.

Lise approached a heavy gate and lifted its latch. It creaked on its hinges and she passed through it. She was now outside the Zone. Her heart accelerated. Outside the Zone in broad daylight would mean certain death to an unregistered specimen of her kind. Grott had told her in excruciating detail the fate of the bounty hunters' prey.

The lucky ones would be shot dead on the street. Captured novonids would be locked in a dark room. Deprived of sunlight, the chloroplasts giving their skin its green color would stop producing sugars to fuel their bodies. Their metabolism would slow and after several days they would become torpid. Then, unable to resist, they would be carried to the death chambers...

Thinking about it agitated her more and her heart began to pound. Lise fought back the fight-or-flight instinct, forcing her intellect to take control. This was now the order of things, she told herself. She was street legal. Killing or harassing a registered one was a crime severely punished. There was nothing to fear. She took a deep breath of Vyonna's air, polluted with ozone and the sterno-smell of burnt alcohol.

She walked on the pavement to a corner, looking at the buildings. Some nearby ones were familiar to her from her nocturnal excursions. Others she had seen only the tops looming above the wall enclosing the Zone. Traffic whizzed by. She looked up the street and down in the other direction.

Novonids were beginning to file out of the Zone. A crowd of them was forming on the corner at the streetcar stop. Lise headed in that direction, as it was her rendezvous point. She stood at the corner, her back against a building.

The whine of a gas turbine grew louder as the streetcar approached and stopped at the corner. Its driver kept the doors closed. The green-skinned throng, nearly all men, climbed onto an open platform at the rear of the bus.

Lise watched with some amusement as they packed onto the platform. “Come on, push together,” she heard an older man exhort, “we can all fit.”

The last of them pushed and squeezed onto the platform. A young man made room for one more and extended his hand toward Lise. She smiled and made a gesture saying, no thanks. The bus's turbine whined up and it pulled away from the corner. Then, she realized she would be riding that bus tomorrow and every day after.

Lise recalled the day her life changed. Her memory of it was vivid as if it were yesterday. She had been tending her garden of wild pomma in the courtyard; and soaking up afternoon sunshine. Her ears picked up the sounds to which they were acutely tuned: footfalls approaching. The sounds triggered an autonomic response -- a flood of adrenaline and her heart began to race.

She dashed into the basement apartment and hid behind one of the hanging sheets that served as a room divider. The door leading to the courtyard creaked open and she heard more footfalls on the stairs.

“Lise...,” she heard her mother call.

Lise pressed her hand against her chest as her heart slowed. She emerged from behind the sheet and stopped short at the sight of a petite, older, white woman with long grey hair. A tall white man accompanied her. Both were flanked by Grott, Rayla and one of Grott's acquaintances -- guaranteeing the white strangers safe passage into the green enclave.

“You must be Lise,” the woman said. “I've heard much about you.”

Lise backed away.

“Lise...” Rayla said. “This is Ms Ramina. She's going to register you.”

“Yes, child,” Ramina replied. “Don't be afraid. I've already purchased you from your previous owner. I'm your owner, now. All we need to make it official is a little sample for the DNA registry.”

The white man approached Lise and withdrew a lancet. “Hold still, Lise,” he said and took her hand. It only required an instant for him to obtain a drop of her blood. It took Lise several more instants before she registered the sensations.

The next day Ramina returned, again flanked by Grott and another neighborhood man. Lise followed them outside the Green Zone and into Ramina's car. A short drive took her to the breedery.

“This is my home,” Ramina said to Lise. “Now, it is your home, too, child. You're welcome here any time.”

Lise regarded the structure, a row house once affluent but now wanting maintenance. She saw novonid boys and a few girls of varying ages, watching her through the railing from a landing.

Ramina led Lise into another room containing an overhead lamp and a long, low table. “Lie on the table, child,” Ramina instructed.

Lise obeyed. The same tall man who had taken her blood stood with his back turned, assembling a stencil. This he affixed to her skin near her left clavicle with spirit gum. Next he brushed black ink into the openings and reached for an instrument. She felt a vibration as the instrument buzzed over her skin.

“Done,” the man said and removed the stencil. He daubed her with a cloth soaked in a solvent, and Lise felt a burning sensation.

She looked down and saw the mark: RAA005010. “That may be tender for a day or two,” Ramina said. “You are now an officially registered novonid.” Lise touched the mark and examined her finger. “Don't worry, child. It will not rub off.”

“Thank you,” Lise replied.

“Thank you, Mam,” Ramina corrected.

“Thank you, Mam.”

Ramina smiled. “We will work out the details of your employment. I will let you know once it's finalized.” She gestured Lise into the vestibule near the front door.

“Am I free to go?” Lise asked and then added, “...Mam?”

“After one small detail, Lise. I'm sure you are aware of your defect.”

“That I'm a one-shot ... Mam. Yes.”

“A pregnancy certainly would kill you, and likely the child you'd carry, too. However, that defect is confined to your uterus. Other components of your reproductive system are fully functional.” Ramina gestured toward one of the novonid children. “Have Fara come down.”

The boy bolted up the stairs. “Fara!” Lise heard him shout. “Ms Ramina wants you.”

A novonid youth descended the stairs, and Lise regarded the figure that approached. She was a female, but her features were a twelve-year-old boy's.

“This is Fara,” Ramina said. “She also has a defect.”

“Atrophied ovaries,” Lise replied. “I recognize the signs ... Mam.”

“You're a smart girl, Lise. How old are you?”

“Nineteen ... Mam.”

“Fara is twenty-one. She doesn't look it, does she?”

“No, Mam,” Lise replied.

“She looks more like a teenaged boy, doesn't she? Her womb is sound, though. In three day's time we will take you and Fara to a clinic where we will take one of your ovaries and give it to Fara.”

“Take an ovary? ... Mam?”

“Surgically remove one and implant it into Fara's body -- in the hopes she can become fertile and bear children.”

“My children ... Mam?”

“MY children, Lise. You, Fara and all her issue belong to me.”

“Yes, Mam. I meant ... the