Chapter Twenty Nine
Lisbet stared at her younger sister, Tiffania, in alarm. “Are you okay?” she asked, crouching to her sister’s level.
“No,” Tiffania said, biting the word. She put her palms on the floor to steady herself. “Do I look okay to you?”
Lisbet saw her bruises, her split lip, rug burns on her shoulders and her darkened wrist.
“If your escorts have gone, I’ll get a first aid kit,” Beck said, disappearing into a bathroom.
The people who had brought her had clearly dumped her there and taken off without any lead-up or farewell. They’d just unlocked the door, thrown her in, and locked it up again.
Tiffania stared after Beck in awe. “What is going on? Have I been in hell while you’ve been screwing Beckett Beltrose?”
Lisbet had no desire to explain the whole thing to her sister. “I’m gonna go with a yes,” Lisbet said simply.
“I could scream for a week,” Tiffania said haughtily as she flicked her blondish curls out of her face. She got to her feet and corrected what she could about her appearance. “I’m a mess. I didn’t even get to sleep after the party that ran all night. This morning I was shoved in a spacesuit, brought here, and abandoned. Do you know why I’m here?”
“I can guess it’s because Beck’s mining family is trying to talk to Vantz about me and Beck and they thought he’d be more likely to listen to them if you were here too because you’re my sister?”
“I’m glad you know something of what is going on,” Tiffania said stiffly like Lisbet couldn’t possibly understand much.
Beck strode back into the room with an ice pack and the first aid kit in his hands. He’d had the good sense to throw a shirt over his head. “You’re here as a hostage?”
“I plan to blame you both equally if Vantz abandons us,” she stormed angrily, the word ‘us’ seemed to include more people than just the three of them. “Why did you have to cheat on Vantz? He told you both it would piss him off and you did it anyway?”
“So you’ve heard all that?” Lisbet said with her gaze on the ceiling. “News travels fast here.” She clicked her tongue and then asked curiously, “What have you heard?”
“How Beck is the prodigal son. He left home taking all the money he could get with him and then returned home penniless, having spent it all on nothing–gambling, liquor, sex, drugs–only to come home with his tail between his legs begging for his daddy to help him. Everyone is disgusted that his father is willing to welcome him home. Didn’t you know, Lisbet? The party last night, the one where you were sneaking around like a phantom wearing a mask, was a party for him! And he left early!”
Lisbet was annoyed by the accusation that Beck had come crawling home when his father sent a helocarrier to shoot at them to force him to come home, but she was stunned into silence by the notion that the sickening party the night before had been in his honor.
Beck looked at Lisbet. He didn’t say a word, but his expression read, ‘Yes, in his own way, my deranged father loves me.’
“Tiffania,” Lisbet said, her understanding of Beck’s situation deepening. He needed to free the pleasure palaces… even his father needed to be free. “Do you have any idea how we could make these people take Vantz seriously? They have to evacuate.”
Tiffania snorted. “Who knows? How could anyone know? These people are monsters, Lissy. They’re monsters who live underground and pull people down with them. Do you know what was the first thing Antar did when I arrived?”
Lisbet shook her head in the negative.
“He broke off my Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet. The voltage that went through it wasn’t enough for him and he didn’t want the bracelet reporting to the corporation how many times he would shock me because he likes to shock beyond what is legally allowed and at a higher voltage. Antar needed to make a point. He didn’t shock me at first. He didn’t need to. He needed to break my bracelet to show me immediately that Sleeping Beauty Inc. was not available to protect me. They have no power here. He replaced my bracelet with one that looked enough like an official Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet not to be noticed and sent me to The Boiler Room to try to catch you. My real purpose is to catch you, so if I have to make a guess…” Tiffania said, glancing at Beck. “I’m here to make it harder for you and Beck to leave since you’re locked in here to stop Vantz from collapsing the mines. They’re such hypocrites down here. They say Beck’s the prodigal son when they’re hoping he’s their savior.”
“How did you put all that together?” Beck asked, opening the first aid kit on the coffee table.
“These people are very confused,” Tiffania said breezily as she turned the kit to face herself. She pulled out the antiseptic and then hesitated tugging on her spacesuit. “Can I use your bathroom? I can treat myself and I don’t need either one of you gawking at me while I’m doing it.”
“Antar did all that to you?” Lisbet grimaced at Tiffania’s bruises.
“Oh chill,” the younger sister recommended. “You should see the girl he normally beats. She’s the one you should pity. That girl needs a vacay. Besides, I’m less afraid of Antar because no matter what happens, he won’t own me for long.”
“But he broke your bracelet. How is Sleeping Beauty Inc. going to retrieve you when your contract is over and your bracelet is gone?”
“Did you miss seeing Mars when you were in The Boiler Room? Antar isn’t going to let me leave when my contract is over. The Sleeping Beauty Inc. representative who sold me warned me that he might not. She didn’t pound me over the head with a tumbler and scream, ‘They hide the bodies! They hide living bodies in caves and once they get you, they’ll never let you go!’ She said things like ‘can’t ensure your safety’, ‘sheltered here’, and ‘might not understand how dangerous it is on Mars’. I wasn’t listening to her. I was so angry at our father for allowing you to be sold, allowing Cassica to be sold, and then having the nerve to be furious at me because I wasn’t selling… because no one wanted me.” Tiffania narrowed her eyes when she said the last line. “Because of his debts and his deep misunderstanding of the downward flux in the diamond market, Father didn’t understand that diamonds were over. They are scraping diamonds off poop in the asteroid belt and he’s shocked people aren’t paying the kind of top dollar they used to pay. He didn’t understand that his business was over. He took the money he got for you and tried to use it to save his business, not bury it. That was why he needed to sell Cassica. He threw me out because our house was up for sale. And like a fool’s daughter, I marched myself over to Sleeping Beauty Inc. and sold myself like a perfect little fool. I didn’t listen to a word the Sleeping Beauty rep said and I signed the papers!”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Why did you do that?” Lisbet asked desperately.
“Why? Why? Why? Who knows? Who cares? Maybe I felt left out. Maybe I felt that was the only way justice could be served. Maybe, my pride couldn’t stand that no one wanted to buy me as their wife. Who knows? I thought I had something to prove. I didn’t. That whole life that you and I had on Earth wasn’t real. It was like a dream where if you fall, you don’t get hurt. Well, my life is real now and it’s likely to be of short duration, but Antar had to be rushed to the medical lounge this morning because I punctured his lung with a steak knife.”
Beck’s eyes went wide and Lisbet gasped.
The moment hung while the two of them wondered how Tiffania had come from stabbing Antar to being there with them.
“Who brought you here and talked things over with you?” Beck asked.
“Hessia. She doesn’t care that I stabbed Antar. She thought the whole thing was hilarious, but she reminded me harshly that if I stabbed you, the golden child of the mines, it wouldn’t be hilarious. It would be heinous and I’d suffer in a way Antar was too pure-minded to think of.”
Beck nodded and took an unpleasant drag on his licorice-flavored cigarette. He’d clearly forgotten that was what he was holding and he exhaled with a putrid look on his face. “I need a real smoke,” he said as he disappeared into the back of the palace.
Tiffania closed the first aid kit. “I need a bathroom. Can you point me…” Tiffania looked around. “Never mind. I know the way. These places are all built the same.”
Beck returned with a haze of pumpkin pie steam surrounding him. “That’s much better. Where’s your sister?”
“In the bathroom,” Lisbet said weakly.
“She called you Lissy. Do you like that nickname?” he said like they had not been discussing the horror that surrounded them on the red planet. His expression read that there was still plenty to be happy about.
“Yeah,” Lisbet breathed, taking his cigarette and breathing in. “I like it. You can call me that if you want to.”
“We should get the cryochamber and fit it for two people instead of one,” he prompted. “Instead of using it for you and me, we should prepare it for you and Tiffania. You know, just in case my father comes back. She’s got her own space suit, so we should be able to get her on board a rover or a helocarrier.”
“You always think of everything? Will you be able to get out of here if your father has locked us up?”
“Easily. I made escape routes,” Beck said pleasantly as he guided Lisbet behind the couch they were sitting on. He clicked on the panel and the cryochamber slid out on rails. “Thank goodness. For a second, I was afraid it wouldn’t be here, that my father was clever enough to remove it. Maybe he forgot it was here. He’ll remember if he comes back and can’t find anyone after he went through the trouble of locking us up. Let’s see if she powers up.” He clicked the power button and the blue display came on. “Even if there is enough power to keep you both asleep and safe, there isn’t enough room in this chamber for both of you. Why they put a whole dentist chair in here is beyond me.”
“I think they’re trying to stop it from looking like a casket,” Lisbet noted.
“Maybe. I’ll get my tools and remove the chair. With it gone, you can probably both lie down. Why don’t you poke around and see if you can find some padding to put in the bottom? They don’t even make corpses lie on slabs and the cheapest cryochamber Sleeping Beauty Inc. carries still has a little foam in the bottom.”
Lisbet put her hand on the couch and touched the blue velvet. “Am I going to be able to find something better than this upholstery?”
“Probably not, but if you use that, it’s going to look exactly like a casket on the inside.”
Lisbet looked at him with large eyes. “Let’s not kid ourselves. All sorts of things could happen so that we die in this cryochamber.”
“Don’t think that way,” he said, with a reassuring hand on hers. “Before I break into my father’s garage, I’ll leave the cave and send a message to Invocation. I’ll find out what the current evacuation numbers are, and who knows, maybe I won’t even need to steal a transport from my father. Maybe Invocation will be able to send someone to get us. Tiffania too,” he added pleasantly.
Lisbet allowed herself to smile. “It’s really no wonder you have been able to talk everyone into letting you do this mad thing… blow up the planet and all that. I think you could talk anyone into anything.”
Lisbet did not say all that she thought. Instead, she got on her tiptoes and kissed Beck. It was a kiss on the cheek that he turned into a kiss on the lips with a clever turn of his head.
When Tiffania came back into the living room, she looked at them like they were aliens, kissing in front of a cryochamber. “You two are making out like idiots while the world around you burns?” She said a few other things under her breath like ‘morons’, ‘even stupider than me’, and ‘friggin can’t stay here.’
“We’re finished!” Lisbet huffed in exasperation as she pulled away from Beck. “Do you like crowbars, sister?”
“Probably,” Tiffania said slowly. “I like hitting things and breaking things apart.”
Lisbet turned to Beck with a hopeful look on her face. “Do you have one?”
“To take apart the sofa? I don’t have a crowbar in my toolbox,” he replied soundly, taking another inhale of his cigarette. “You’re going to have to take knives or spatulas or whatever you can get out of the kitchen to pull this sofa apart. I have a power drill. And that might be all I need to get the chair out.”
Lisbet shrugged. “That sounds like fun too.”
“You two are weird,” Tiffania remarked sharply. “How long has this affair been going on? You two act like you were born to nail each other.”
“How long have we been together?” Lisbet asked, feeling tipsy.
Beck kissed the back of her hand before pulling away. “Not long enough.”
“You’re both idiots,” Tiffania chortled, while she pulled at the white bandage on her cheek. “No one is supposed to experience bliss in a pleasure palace. Not even the masters who claim they’re pleasured by all that happens are actually made happy. It’s all a lie.”
“I’d lie forever if I could lie with her,” he said wistfully before he headed over to the heaps of abandoned VR cages to retrieve his tools.
Lisbet patted her cheeks as if to wake herself up. “Don’t be confused about him. He might say stuff like that, but he’ll let us all die if he has to in order to terraform Mars.”
Tiffania nodded. “They told me he left his family to help Vantz remake the planet so… obviously.”
“Let’s rip apart the sofa. We need the upholstery to line our coffin!”
“We only get one? We have to share?” Tiffania whined. “I want my own coffin.”
“Don’t make me pinch your cheek,” Lisbet threatened, pointing to the bandage on Tiffania’s face. “We only have one coffin!”
Tiffania stuck her tongue out in disgusted resignation.