Freedom - 1 (Robin in Genosha)

by D Benway

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their unlovely woe
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know,-
But that roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of terror, thy anarchies,
Mirror my widest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother--! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved-and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.
O Wilde, Sonnet to Liberty

* * * * *

I'm early getting back from my boat. I park my car in front of the house, and retrieve my kit bag from the trunk. It's a perfect September spring morning. The sky is blue and cloudless. The air is dry, with none of summer's damp. The trees are about to bloom. The sun lights up the front of Rhodes' House with a warm yet very sharp light. It's perfect. I must get my camera and capture it.

I run up the stairs, taking one at a time. If I were taller, I'd be able to do two, but I can't. I'm the average height of an American woman, Bruce once told me. I never know what he means when he says things like that. The landings are deserted, as everyone is at breakfast. Everyone, that is, except Col.

When I get to the room, he's there, holding court in his bed like he usually does. His bed is nearest the window, and the sun is shining in on him. He's wearing torn jeans, as he usually does, and no shirt. The sun picks out every detail of his chest. He laughs, and I can see the muscles rippling under his skin. We're alike in that way, we both have almost no body fat at all, but he's ever so much more muscular. We have the same jet black hair. He's much taller than I am, but then, most people are.

"It's not polite to stare," someone says.

I look up. He's got that Cassandra with him again. Bloody American. Bartholomew's in the corner, working on some video game, paying no attention to anyone. Col's got a new friend this morning, another blonde, this one natural. She looks familiar. I've seen her on the fields, coming or going to something athletic.

"I have to get my camera," I say, trying not to stutter.

I hate how he does this to me.

"Going to take a picture of me?" says Col.

"No," I say.

I feel myself flushing as I get the camera out of the wardrobe. Its weight is reassuring. It's solid, very solid. It's an old Contarex, almost as old as my mother would be. I clench my teeth. No. It's as old as the Mercedes Bruce gave me.

"Why not?" says Col, grinning and flexing his muscles.

"The building," I say. "I want to shoot the front of the house."

"The house?" says Cassandra. "Why take a picture of something that's dead? Take pictures of us, Rob."

She gives a completely fake and lopsided grin, the kind that goes into pictures that rest at the bottom of drawers forever. She's wearing one of those stupid oversized jumpers that's twelve sizes too big for her. It has no sleeves, so that all may see how she's written on herself. Her hair is shorter than it was yesterday, and what I can see of it is mauve, a colour which does not occur in nature. She has the mandatory blue and white print scarf in her hair. She's so bloody American. The first time I met her, I asked her ten questions and since that time I've been able to predict almost perfectly what she will wear, what music she listens to, whether or not she will like a film, and what cliche she will trot out whenever anything of importance is discussed. There's no bloody way I'm taking a picture of her.

"Because the light is perfect," I say.

"Yes," says the blonde girl. "It is."

I leave the room before anyone can introduce us.

* * * * *

I don't make it to breakfast. Apart from that, it is a completely ordinary day. I make it to matins, then morning lessons, dinner, afternoon lessons, and tea, after which I spend the evening in the library. I don't see Col all day, and when I return to my room, I find him asleep.

He has a way of sleeping that keeps me awake. He never feels the cold, so he sleeps only with a single sheet. It always slips down as the night progresses. On good nights, it slips all the way down to the waist of his trousers. If he's asleep, as he is now, I often watch for hours, watch him breathing, watch him turning over. I stare at his back, I stare at his chest. I close my eyes and imagine walking over to his bed, naked. I imagine going down on my hands and knees, as if at prayer. I imagine undoing the buttons of his trousers, to reveal his full arousal, then taking the filthy thing into my mouth and letting brute nature take its course.

It won't ever happen, at least, not that way. He's a former mutate. He spent five years encapsulated in a containment suit. The suits were modified versions of machinery from the stars, designed to help an alien race live for years in the vacuum of space. Their self-containment meant that all bodily wastes were recycled, and this required that certain very unpleasant surgeries be performed. Those who have now been fully de-encapsulated have to relieve themselves via tubes into bags, and aren't expected to last more than five years before succumbing to infection or suicide. Col didn't have this difficulty, as he had never had anything there in the first place. It seems that he can naturally live off of sunlight without ever eating, and that he produces almost no waste products, disposing of what little he does through a musky aerosol.

He's very careful about not showing me any of that. I've never seen him with his pants off. He even wears a prosthesis. I saw it once, and thought that it might be a tool for perverse autostimulation. It was not until Col referred to it as a prosthesis that knew what it might be. I learned the details from a file I found on Bruce's computer. There, I also found that Col rarely goes to class, can barely read at the third form level, and is one of the most popular boys at School. He's only here because one half of our students must be mutants. The files also gave me a list of all his close friends, and access to the files on Cassandra, which were rather sparse compared to ours. Bruce wouldn't be happy knowing how I've breached his firewalls, but I'm careful and it saves me from going to that dingy old tomb where he lives.

Still, I can't complain. Col's still the man of my dreams. I've never said a thing to him about it. I don't dare. It's October, and there are still six weeks of term left. I don't know what I'd do if he laughed when I told him. He has to have noticed, but he never says anything about it. Not this morning, not ever. He always leaves me guessing. He leaves everyone guessing.

I retreat into my alcove. It was once my study when I had this entire room to myself, but I gave Col the original bedroom because I can easily make my way out onto the rooftops through the window on my side when I have to make a nocturnal visit to Bruce, and also because if I open the closet door just so, I can watch Col for hours in the mirror on the door without being obvious about it, or so I hope. Its glass runs from floor to ceiling, so when I look at my reflection in it there's a lot of empty space above my head. I've still got my jacket on, but my tie's undone, askew. I think that this is me, as others see me. Col is Col is torn jeans and nothing else. Bruce is Bruce in a 3 piece black suit, tie perfectly centered in a perfect Windsor knot. Bartholomew is Bartholomew in a jumper, baggy pants, and asbestos-soled shoes. Cassandra is Cassandra when she's dressed in a fashion borrowed from one or all of the lower American castes. As I slide my nightshirt over my head, I wonder who the other woman was. I can't remember what she was wearing at all.

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