Man on Top Pt. 02

"You can set a table," he said, "but it's still coming from the garbage bin."

"Not so," she returned. "I've got a lifeline."

"Really? An active bank account? Mine gave out nearly three years ago."

"I got a little. I also keep a few friends who owe me a string of favors." She read his look instantly. "They're not those kinds of debts."

"I didn't say—"

"I'm not offended. Judge away."

He rubbed the back of his neck, sheepishly. This Isis chick was all right. Still, a thought occurred to him.

"Hang on. How did you know I'd be back?"

"I thought, any guy who stakes out his own spot for a week and a half isn't moving on that easily."

He sighed. "I was trying to be inconspicuous."

"Oh, you were. Just not to me. You've got a lot to learn about this girl."

Apparently, that couldn't be more true.

**

If being hunted byone's own government was not bad enough, imagine the horror when the last Fertiles on Earth were suddenly found to inhabit a single country. All of the sudden you had foreign strike teams conducting covert missions to root out men and smuggle them back to far flung homelands. On several occasions, war nearly broke out of these illicit activities. When Cambodian commandoes posing as tourists came to the States, using intelligence they'd purchased at a premium from the Russians, things took a turn for the bizarre.

The team found its mark in a small Missourian town, kidnapping the man, drugging him and proceeding to stow away on cargo ship bound for the Gulf Coast via the Mississippi River transport system. A much larger freighter awaited, ready—had the plot not been uncovered—to take the Fertile half a world away. Cables intercepted by the Authority and later leaked revealed a farming plan sanctioned by the Cambodian government, one which hinged on the acquisition of a white man known simply by the translated code name as Cracker Alpha.

The Authority did not take kindly to these sorts of operations. They sent a wet work team to board the freighter as it entered maritime waters. The nighttime operation went so well, not one of the Cambodian strike force members had any idea their asset had been removed from the ship right under their noses. Several hours later, the C4 attached the ship's hull decimated the freighter as it made port in Cuba. The Cambodian government could have probably guessed with very little doubt what had transpired, but what could they do about it?

It bears mentioning, the Fertile who was rescued was said to be returning to a hero's welcome in his hometown. The entire town turned out with parade floats, confetti and a marching band to celebrate the reunion of their native son with his grief stricken family. Folks waited and waited there on the tarmac of that little airfield, until word arrived that the Fertile had inexplicablyvolunteeredto help the Authority with their little fertility problem. He was never heard from again.

**

"Check this out," Isis said, snapping open an old hard shelled red suitcase. Retrieving what appeared to be a desk lamp with a coffee-stained papier-mâché umbrella, she flicked a switch and placed it on the dining table. The light came on, and thetiny lampshade umbrellaslowly began to turn.

Isis turned on her radio and rotated the dial to a place between stations. She adjusted the volume until the sound emanating from within was a soft crackle. She then reclined on her couch bed.

"Now, lay back and watch the ceiling."

Soft orange-yellow light washed over the ceiling, trembling and flickering. It reminded him of something he'd not seen since his youth, and yet, he could not place it. The radio's faint crackle began to sound less like static, more like...

He smiled, remembering. "My father once took me camping in the Interior Mountains. Can you imagine it, camping for fun?Not quite like this. We built a small fire from sticks and these tiny tinder needles that covered the forest floor." He laughed then, his voice sounding strange to him. "It must have taken the better part of an hour to get the thing to catch. We had enough smoke to fill a train station. But when it took off, it was a sight. The heat was miraculous, and the sound..." He trailed off.

Isis didn't say a word, an unusual feat for her. She let him remain in that precious moment, feeling the warmth on his face again, a child without worry. But suddenly, he'd returned. He turned his head and regarded her, watched the way the light colored her skin. Her eyes were bright, flashing, never missing a thing. He started to open his mouth, to ask her where she'd come from, but in that unsettling Isis way, she answered the question he'd not yet asked.

"My father was chief researcher with the Global Survey. He headed up the fertility studies back when everyone supposed our problem was environmental. He was making a lot of friends within the Authority, and as such, our lifestyle changed considerably. We were paraded to one fund-raising event after another, the kinds of events where donors were the people running banking cartels, illustrious world resource managers, heirs and heiresses to fortunes as old as the Crusades.

"My sister was—you should have seen her—she really was the most beautiful creature. These were the early days of the Infert Crisis, an era—brief as it happened to be—when the lights of society considered it their privilege to acquire Fertiles like breeding stock. Within the higher echelons of wealth and power, this disgusting game began where men and women deemed genetically superior were traded like prized stallions and mares. These fools actually saw the crisis as a chance to right what they believed was a flaw in the race, one that had cursed the world with abominations such as welfare queens, reality televangelists, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and PETA."

He laughed, and Isis looked over at him. "Sorry," he said.

"You think I'm joking," she warned. "The holders of forty percent of the world's wealth stood at those banquets and talked nonchalantly about how wonderful the sterility issue was. I know, I was there. I actually heard them repeatedly call it acleansing. This was back when the Authority was assuring people it was a Third World problem. Never mind that it'd been happening with increasing frequency on these shores. Fools!"

She fell silent a moment, before continuing.

"My father was a coward. Fearful of what the Authority would do to him should he refuse, it was at one of these sordid galas where it got proposed that my sister be paired with the Fertile son of a Spanish import magnate. Mind you, the two had never met. But to these people—these horse traders—it made a great deal of sense. From here our story spirals into one of those well-worn tragedies. No one seemed to care that my sister was already in love with another man, even engaged to be marred. He was simply swept aside, and to be sure my sister did not make her way back to him, they dumped his body into the ocean halfway between this continent and the next.

"How do I know this? How can it be that I would know what they did with the body? Because after my sister was dragged kicking and screaming into this Spanish heir's castle, she made her refusal quite plain. She would never love this man, never give herself to him while she loved another. So, in an effort to make her understand just how helpless her plight was, he told her what they'd done to her beloved."

"Oh," he said, agape. "That's the most awful thing I've ever heard."

"Well, then prepare yourself. Rather than be shackled to this man she didn't know, this man who'd admitted to having her fiancé murdered, my sister threw herself out of the highest window of his stupid castle, right into the river Douro."

He was all but speechless. "I'm can't imagine such a thing," he finally said, then a in a low, shocked voice, uttered, "I'm so sorry." For her own part, Isis seemed oddly detached from the whole thing. It was as though the horror had happened to another family and she was simply relating the juicy details, drop by drop. "Where were you during all this?"

"I was going to school and working at the same time for the National Women's Organization. I was in charge of a nationwide research study ten years in the making. At one point, I was doing so much flying, especially to rural and out-of-the-way locales it actually made sense for me to get my pilot's license. I remember taking a trip to some tiny town in the West Virginia when I was radioed to return to Washington. In less time than it took for me to land, fuel up and take off, I got back in the air only to find myself being escorted by a pair of Authority jets. Now, what does that tell you about how eager the power players were to have this thing go off without a hitch?"

By month's end, I'd been told that my job at the NWO was made redundant. Threatening my father's position, they made it clear that I was to take my sister's place."

"Are you shitting me?"

"So, there I am, ring on my finger, housed in that man's gaudy monument-to-self,installed in my dead sister's very bedroom—the one overlooking the Douro—and left to stare down at the river she'd chosen for her grave. The newly cast iron bars were clearly meant to prevent a repeat performance."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I'm here now. The would-be Casanova tested Infert shortly after finding himself incapable of knocking me up. A waste of three years of my life," she said with a sigh. "But happy endings don't come without a dose of suffering."

He smiled compassionately. "You've still got your optimism, I'll give you that. I wouldn't exactly call this a happy ending."

She smiled. "We're not there yet."

**

He'd nodded off at some point. When he woke, the only light shone in the dirty windows from the amber streetlamps outside. Instinctively, he gazed over at the other couch where Isis should be bedded down. Only, she was not there. By now, he'd become partially accustomed to not finding her there when he woke in the morning. She was an incredibly early-riser, but it must be the middle of the night. Maybe she'd gone to the staff bathroom. He didn't feel tired so he lay a while, staring at familiar shadows cast on the walls and ceiling.

When enough time had passed that he assumed Isis had gone out, he acknowledged his own need to take a piss. He got off his couch bed, navigated the pike path as he liked to call it, and padded toward the foyer where the large staff restroom was. Soft light spilled into the foyer and as he put a hand on the door, he heard the sound of water splashing over the tile floor. He took a step back. Isis was using the restroom after all. But the sounds were those of someone taking a shower. Leaning forward, he spied through the crack in the partially open door. He was unable to see Isis, but immediately realized that the industrious girl had been busy.

Hooked to the sink was a garden hose. From there, it looped up over a ceiling joist and hung attached at the other end to a crude garden shower. How she'd procured such implements, he could not say. When suddenly Isis stepped into view, he caught his breath sharply.

She was entirely nude, covered from neck to foot in a thin white foam of sudsy soap bubbles. Her body was lean and long, her smallish breasts perfectly round, the nipples pert and youthful. Her stomach was smooth and tight, transitioning almost seamlessly to her pelvis. He watched as Isis ran her hands over her skin, pushing a piece of bar soap over her tummy and down between her legs.

She reached up to the shower nozzle, and that's when he noticed something he'd missed before. A bulky battery-operated device had been hooked to the hose before the nozzle. She flipped a switch there and some soundless apparatus must have started working because after testing the water a few times, he watched as she stepped beneath the cascading water without so much as a shiver, and began washing the soap from her body.

Where on Earth had she found such a thing? So interested was he that his hand nearly pushed the door open until he remembered that he'd been spying on her, she was nude, and this whole thing was wildly inappropriate. Best to go back to bed and casually bring it up later. But he did not return to his couch, not immediately. He watched the water traveling over the floor where it had sought the path of least resistance that led it to a back-up drain near the corner of the restroom.

"Not tired, either?" she said, and he looked up to see that Isis had turned and was now staring directly at him.

He took a step back into the foyer, out of the light where he wrinkled his face and cursed to himself. His spying certainly didn't seem to bother Isis.

"Come in here if you're bored. You can sit on the toilet and we can chat."

He exhaled slowly and pushed the door open. He made a conspicuous effort at averting his eyes.

"Really?" she said. "Now we're modest."

"I was just—I had to pee and—I heard water sounds."

"Yep, I know."

He stepped into a stall, but was so embarrassed that at first he was unable to go.

As if on cue, Isis began to whistle. He stood there a moment longer, trying to relax. After what seemed like an eternity, the flush crept out of his face and he was able to pee. When he flushed, there was a moment that the sound drowned out the splash of water, then Isis squealed. He stepped quickly out of the stall to find her standing beside the cascading water spout, arms wrapped around her body.

"Fucking cold! Even my heater couldn't keep up with that blast. Gotta remember that next time one of us uses the toilet while the other is showering." He used the opening to ask about her about the heater.

"Isn't it great?" she said. "We used to use one when the electrical went on the fritz. Takes batteries, and is pretty effective at taking the chill out of the water. I mean, it's not steaming as you can see, but it's bearable."

"Where did you get it?"

"I keep it in my bag of tricks. I'm pretty good at roughing it ever since I went on the lam, but a girl's got needs and a better-than-freezing shower is one of them."

"It's quite impressive." Isis had gotten back under the water, and he stood there a while staring up at the device, unsure where else to look. Finally, he exhaled and nodded. Then he started to make his way awkwardly toward the door.

"Oh, you're not going to keep me company?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, you're probably tired. I don't seem to sleep that much anymore. It gets boring, you know. Used to listen to my radio, but..." she smiled, sheepishly, "roommates."

He laughed uncomfortably. "Right. Well, I guess I'm not really tired either."

"Just have a seat over there," she said and pointed. "We can talk about any old thing."

He shrugged, went to the nearest wall and slid down until he was seated on the tile floor. Water droplets occasionally struck his leg, but it was not an altogether uncomfortable experience. For one thing, when he looked up, he could now see Isis from an entirely different angle. Apart from a faint shock of light fuzz, her pussy was nearly bare. The lips were smooth, not the puffy sort that had always turned him on.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Did I tell you what I read when I went out yesterday?"

"No."

"Apparently, the Authority calls it amiracle. A lady gave birth."

"That would be the first birth in three years. So, there's another—er, there are Fertiles out there still."

"The boy's six," she said. "And the news is bigger than that." She closed her eyes and gazed upward so as to let the water wash over her face. "They've got some new test that can tell earlier than ever if a male is going to grow up Infert or not. Turns out he's bonafide. A new Fertile. Can you imagine that?!"

He sat numbly, eyes going unfocused, his mind thrumming for a reason he would not allow himself to be sure of.

"Don't you get it?" she said. "If this kid is the real deal, it's only a matter of time. It's over. The whole bullshit ordeal is over." The happiness in her voice was tinged with something else.

His mind was elsewhere, a sudden wave of nausea washing over him. But he had to know. "What do you know about the child? The boy?"

"They're being pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing."

"What if it's a lie?"

"I guess it could be. They mentioned the mother. I recognize her face from TV, even though I never knew anything about her. Some cocktail waitress-turned-socialite who got knocked up with the bastard after a random hook-up with a Fertile that had been apparently been flying under the Authority's radar."

His legs felt numb as a great weight seated itself on his chest.

"You don't look so good," Isis remarked.

"I'm fine," he said. He was fine. He really was, right? After all, this was a good thing, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The boy had a few years before he would come of age. They'd synthesize his spunk, mass produce it and everything would be back to normal. Ten years tops. He could lay low for ten years. He was only thirty-one, plenty of time to go back to a perfectly normal life.

But the boy, what would his life be like? He could imagine it'd already been hell, isolation, and who knew what other horrors the Authority was likely to conjure. It would continue to be hell. He'd be no better off than a lab rat, twenty-four hour surveillance, all the strain and pressure to do what the human race no longer could.

The tears fell from his cheeks before he knew they were forming. His head slunk into his chest, and he tried to cover himself with his hands, to sink into the floor, or find the bathroom drain and wash away with the water that coursed off Isis' body. Let it carry him to the sea, away from what he gradually know with certainty. That the Authority had his only son.

Isis was there in a moment, and even though she was wet, her embrace felt good.

"That poor boy," he blubbered through his tears.

Isis clutched him tightly. "Don't. You can't do anything about it."

"It should never have happened," he sobbed. "He shouldn't have happened."

Isis pulled back then, and peering at him, her eyes sharpened. "We do no good blaming ourselves. If things were different, they'd be different. We can only move on with what we've got."

He pulled her to him and kissed her mouth, still wet from shower. She broke their kiss, and pulled away.

Isis hesitated. She withdrew and got to her feet, crossing the bathroom and turning off the sink. He dried his eyes and got to his feet.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should not have done that."

But she did not respond. Instead, she fixed her hair in the mirror until it was tied in a ponytail. She then led him by the hand, out of the bathroom and from the foyer through the path to their living space. She did not let go of his hand until he was seated beside on her comfy little couch bed. Standing before him, wearing nothing but a sad smile, she climbed onto his lap, straddling it and enfolding him in a warm embrace.

"We cannot be together as lovers," she whispered. He looked up at her and nodded, though he didn't understand what she meant. "You see," she said, her voice halting and strained. "I told a lie." There was a moment when she did not say another word. Finally, she went on."It was not my sister who was torn away from the man she loved."

"It was you."

She exhaled. "A piece of me did jump from that tower, as much as had it been my own sister, a piece of me that will never feel that way again."

She kissed him and pushed him back onto the soft folds of her couch bed. Then she lay beside him. They held each other until he slipped into a fitful world of dream.

**

He'd woken to the sound of her radio; he was still in her bed, while she sat a few feet away, a long shirt draped over her. He felt a tired longing as he remembered the way she felt, the warmth of her skin, more alive than he could remember feeling in so long.