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Aaron Turner grows steadily closer to his raccoon friend Amy, and an unexpected request from his coworker Maria brings a slightly awkward twist to his friendships.

Now most of the major characters are established, including Jake Ellis, the wise cynic. The major action in this turns on the evolution of Aaron's relationships with "safe choice" Maria Wells, and the forbidden feelings he has for a certain raccoon...

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

Water, Paper and Clay, by Rob Baird. Part 2: "To fill the frittered minutes of a day"

---

It had been a chance encounter, and it seemed strange to me, in the weeks that followed my departure, how strongly it had marked me. Even Wells saw fit to comment on my mood, which had become notably more withdrawn -- you know how you can get, when you're spending your life holding out hope for an impossibility.

For three weeks, I steadfastly attempted to focus on the positive side of things. For example, the grain harvest was reported at fifteen percent over the projections -- courtesy of an unexpected bout of sun that Maria and I had both missed, earlier that May. The news spent several days, also, talking about the nuclear detonations and asteroid impacts that were catalyzing the Adhikari process in the Martian atmosphere. They attempted to make much of the irony of weapons of war being used to turn a planet inhabitable, and it was a fair point -- but I had to admit that I rather wished we'd had no nuclear war and no Adhikari process.

I shut my ears to the robotic voice of the autobus, when it announced upcoming stops -- as though the word 'Eleazaria' had become poisoned. Actually, that wasn't entirely wrong. It was, for me, coming to represent the whole of the failings of our race -- not just Ad Int; not even just the United States government that had come before it. The whole of our foibles -- racism, classism, suffering, disease -- I heaped upon the town. It was destroying people, I reckoned -- and, by extension, it was destroying me. As Donne had said, no man is an island -- no matter how much rain fell.

There was some cognitive dissonance, too, of course. I knew that Buchanan had probably never read the book I'd left. Maybe it was still in the café, waiting for me to reclaim it. Maybe it had been given away, or thrown on the fireplace -- paper books were increasingly rare, but maybe she didn't know that. After all, she wasn't the reading type.

Of course, the worst part of it all was not knowing. So it was that, in late June, three weeks to the day after I'd first stepped foot in Eleazaria, I got off the train there once more. The rain had eased up until it was only an uncomfortable mist -- indeed, you almost didn't need a jacket. I brought mine anyway, because it made me look like I fit in.

Amy Buchanan was behind the counter, tidying up, when I entered. Her short ears perked up when she saw me -- my entrance was obvious; I couldn't help noticing that I was the only customer there. "Welcome back, stranger," she said. If there was any deference in the tone, I couldn't immediately detect it. "Wasn't expecting to see you come back 'round here."

"I wanted some coffee."

She didn't press me further, only poured a mug and handed it over. It was burnt, and stale, and probably worse than it had been the first time -- but then, it hadn't really been my reason for visiting, had it? Still, I drank it without comment, as though there was nothing unusual at all in the ritual. Amy was the one who broke the silence. "I guess you were right," is what she said.

"I was right?"

"About books. About them being a way to get into somebody's head. I can't quite reckon whether that was your head or whether it was Morrison's head, but I got somewhere."

"You read the book, then?"

She smiled instead of speaking. Then, after pouring herself a mug, she looked at me across the countertop, her head tilted. Her eyes were bright, inquisitive -- green, flecked with something else, they were striking against her distinctive black mask. Now they danced. "Tell me something, though. Why did he stay?"

"Who, Jacques?"

"Mm-hmm, Jacques." Whatever might've been said about her class, her pronunciation of the name was flawless.

"Because... well, it wasn't that he believed everything that the barber told him. For me, I think that he made the decision on his own. France was proven, solid... but it was the old way, you know? There wasn't any promise of change."

"You're saying he wanted something to believe in?"

"I'm saying that..." Was it really that simple? Was that what we were looking for? No. "It's not just that. I mean, we do want to believe in something, but it's... it's shifted these days, you know? Two hundred years ago, we believed in science. Two thousand years ago, we believed in salvation. The trick is that it can't be outrageous. We don't want the truth -- the truth is that inner-city America was brutal and savage. But we don't want a lie, either -- nobody really believes that the Rocky Mountains are made of gold. What we're looking for is a story, I think -- a plausible myth."

"Did it come true? Do you think Richard's brother could really get him that job?"

The answer to this question depended, largely, on whether you were an optimist or a pessimist at heart. It wasn't uncommon to read Morrison's novel as a scathing indictment of optimism, as seen through the lens of its protagonist, a young man named Jacques. There were subtle clues that could nudge one in either direction -- to thinking that the ending of the book was either uplifting, and pointed the way to a better future for Jacques, or to thinking that he had been lied to once more, and was condemned to suffer in squalor. As for myself... well, I smiled at Amy, musing. "For me, I think he could."

"I'd like to think so," the raccoon said. "But it almost seemed to me that Morrison thought it wasn't genuine. It was almost like... almost like he wanted Jacques to have an unhappy ending."

One of the chief reasons for a cynical reading of the novel, of course, was that it was the defining book of my generation -- Morrison had published it only fifteen years before, when the scope of the tragedy that the Fires had been was starting to become clear. When the sun had finally faded from daily memory. The year after it topped the best-seller lists, Ad Int announced the Renaissance Project. "Some people think that," I explained. "Ted hasn't ever given a concrete answer one way or the other as to the most correct interpretation. I think he was probably trying to give us something to believe in. Or maybe he just looked outside his window, saw the rain, and couldn't bring himself to do that."

"It's funny that just a couple of lines could be so powerful," Buchanan said, softly. Then she reached beneath the counter, and retrieved the book. "Thanks for letting me borrow it, Aaron."

I pushed it back a few inches, towards her. "Keep it. I've... ah, by now I've practically got it memorized." Taken optimistically, the book could animate one's whole being -- one reason why I did so; I needed the encouragement.

Amy dropped the subject of the book then, as though not wanting to dwell on the gift. "I'm sorry I ran out on you, last time. I just wasn't expecting that."

I shook my head quickly. "No, it's my fault. I was too aggressive; I didn't even stop to think about what I saw saying. It's not right of me to just assume anything about you."

"You mean, like just now when you assumed I wouldn't have read Gold Mountain?" She said it flippantly -- I wasn't certain whether something in my mannerisms had given me away, or whether she was just, as the Brits say, 'taking the piss' a little.

"I'm just happy somebody else seems to like it as much as I do."

"Well, I guess that's alright," she said. "I guess you probably like it because you see yourself in Jacques, don't you? Dreaming about the future an' all, hoping that those dreams come true? I know what you mean by that..." She took a moment to pause. For a moment, as she stared past me, through the wall and out into the night, her whiskers were the only things that moved. "You know, Aaron, I do want to go places. I suppose that's probably why I got mad at you, right? Because you were making me think that I wanted to be somewhere else. Only I guess you were just reminding me of what I already knew..."

"I might've just been being pigheaded," I offered. "But either way, I think you seem like the right kind of person to be somewhere else -- if you wanted."

Amy's smile was a little sad; knowing, I think, that what she or I wanted was irrelevant. "Sometimes I do forget it, though. You can't have that, really -- it ain't gonna fall into your lap. If you're gonna go anywhere, you got to be dreaming about it first, yeah?"

My heart went out to her, in a way. It might've been true that you could get nowhere without dreaming first, but it was definitely true that you could get nowhere by dreaming alone. The unspoken thing, which neither of us saw fit to address, was that social mobility for a class five was a joke. Really, it was the punchline too -- Ad Int couldn't have cared less about people like Amy. She probably knew this, but it was her willingness to believe something different that made her so unique amongst the people I knew -- including myself. I probed a little. "Don't you wonder, maybe, if that dreaming kind of obscures something, a little? Gives us the wrong impression?"

"No," she shot back immediately. "Everyone says so, but they're wrong. Dreaming is what gives us purpose. Christ... there's so much wrong with the world -- and you think that, sure, I know, but I live it, every day. All these people, all these... what did you call it last time, all these alcoholics on a stipend? They ain't got no money, no. But that's not why they're poor, Aaron. They're poor because they don't got any dreams, either. And they use it like an excuse -- like a way so they don't blame themselves. They say that dreaming ain't worth somethin' 'cause if it turns out that it is, then they're really penniless, you see? And if they can ignore dreams, then it's always somebody else's fault that they ain't worth nothing." She declared this last part almost angrily; her eyes were filled with a passionate fire. It was if she was daring me to counter her. "You people, with your fancy office jobs and all that shit, you can get away without dreaming just because you can pretend your money's worth something. Well, fifty years from now -- when somebody else is writing the book about us -- all your money's just going to be a number, nothing more."

"I sometimes lose sight of that," is all I said. "But you're right, of course. And I try not to forget that you need to have something to believe in..."

"You'd better," she warned. "Else you're just like them. Just like everybody else -- an' that means y'ain't got a right to give me a book like that."

We kept talking, then, about other things that were mostly unrelated. My mind was elsewhere, trying to figure out what was going on. She was no simpleton; I didn't know what disadvantages happened to keep her working the graveyard shift of an unoccupied coffee shop. It was entirely possible, of course, that there was no disadvantage at all beyond her class. And while, mostly, I marveled at what fuel might be stoking the fire she'd shown, I considered other things too, as they emerged.

Buchanan, I learned, was her mother's surname -- her father's was long lost, with the man himself. She'd never met him, which was common enough in the class five settlements. Her mother told her that he, too, had been a raccoon, and since she didn't look as though anything else was mixed into her heritage I thought that was likely.

In many ways she was like Maria Wells, but the product of a different upbringing. Her positions, though passionate and strongly defended (there was very little she didn't have an opinion on), were unlike Maria's also uneducated. Sometimes they reflected a knowledge of the world that was fifty years out of date. I didn't know what, exactly, I thought about her -- nor what I wanted her to be. As the night wore on, though, I began to realize that I was going to be spending a lot of time in the café.

We both put off departure for as long as possible. It was nearly half an hour beyond the café's normal closing time when she finally allowed that she should shut things down (or, at least, when she finally said this with the intent of doing so). And I, too, was overdue at my residence -- not that anyone would notice or care. As I stood to go, I had a second thought, and reached into my attaché case to pull open a slim computer, handing it over to her.

"What's this?"

"Some of my library -- what I had with me, anyway, but you should be able to put other things on there. Uh, Heinlein, Carter, Atwood, Levin... they aren't all the same kind of book as Gold Mountain, and some of them are quite a lot older. But I think you might enjoy reading them all the same."

She grinned, taking the computer from me. "Thanks, Aaron," she said. I bowed, and departed, and left the Eighth Street Café for the second time, in one of the best moods I'd had in years.

*

The following Monday, Vasily Dezirian asked to meet me for lunch. It wasn't an unusual occurrence -- we were old friends. He'd finished his dissertation two years ahead of me, which made him just senior enough to take a position of responsibility, and just junior enough to get thrown into something like Renaissance. He was the overall director of the biology side of the Project, which made him very busy -- lunch was the only exception; he took it religiously.

"How's it been going, in sequencing?"

I laughed. "We're about thirty percent of the way through our proposal. This one ought to be final, I think -- I'd like to have it tested and written up by September. That might be a pipe dream; I don't know. The commit date is mid-October, isn't it?"

"October 17th, yes." The 'commit date' was when we were supposed to have all our plans finished -- so that they could begin loading the big spaceships. It had already been pushed back once, but Dezirian privately told me that he felt certain that this last attempt would be successful. I was still a skeptic. "Do you need to make any changes downstream?"

Maria and I were responsible for programming the sequencing of species reintroductions on Mars. We did not, however, have control over what species we were to have available -- that was the responsibility of the Selections Department, half a dozen scientists so prestigious and so dedicated that they were generally unable to come to any consensus. "So far, only minor ones. I passed my recommendations back to Selections about two weeks ago and haven't heard back yet. That's just for buffer, though. We can make do with what we have."

"Hopefully so. Six weeks before the commit date... well, you can amend a plan, I guess, but it'd be damned hard to rebuild one from scratch..." He mulled his next words over a bite of roast beef sandwich. "But I hear you are ahead of schedule, so if anyone could do it, I guess we'll have to have faith in you, won't we? Yun has high praise for you, for what that's worth."

"What we're doing?" I shook my head. "Every week it's a new roadblock to get over. We shouldn't get praise, brother -- we should get gold medals and the national goddamned anthem."

The big Anatolian wolf laughed, his shoulders moving with the sound. "It's probably easier for the Olympic competitors, you know? At least they know where the hurdles are. But I'm glad to hear that things are going well. Enough time for you to relax a bit?"

"I think." Well, I had been relaxing, so that was probably more or less true. "Yeah, yeah, it's been getting easier, now that you mention it."

Vasily was a big man, but his dense fur was lustrous, and he carried himself in a way that made him look regal. The effect disappeared when he flashed his trademark grin -- something about it made him look like a bear, shaggy and good-natured and impossible to resist. He gave me this grin now. "You know, then, you really ought to be thinking about settling down."

"Settling down?" I repeated the phrase as though I might've misheard.

"Well, they increased the housing allowance by fifteen percent last month, you know." I'd heard something about it. It was a bribe on Ad Int's part, trying to get people to marry. This was transparently their goal: some research or another demonstrated that it was good for everyone. It made things more stable, they said. And of course, although they did not admit this part, heterosexual married couples were more likely to have children.

"You're one to talk, aren't you?" Dezirian himself did not fit into this latter category and was, so far as I knew, unmarried, although he and his boyfriend had lived together for as long as I'd worked at the Project. "Besides, I don't have any prospects right now, you know?" It wasn't entirely inaccurate, though there were complications to the answer that I knew Dezirian was about to raise.

"I know," he echoed. "If only there was an eligible partner for you... maybe in your office somewhere. Wait!" He set his sandwich down, feigning the sudden strike of an idea. "Who's that woman you work with? Marta somebody?"

I sighed. "Maria." Vasily and Wells were decent friends -- since before I'd joined the Renaissance Project, actually, I think; Wells had started the year before me.

"Maria! You know, I've heard that she is actually quite fond of one of her officemates. It turns out there's another Alsatian right in the same building! What are the odds?"

"What are they," I muttered. "We work together, brother. You don't think that's going to create conflict?"

"I bet you could get dispensation from Yun." The grin returned again. "Besides, you two are both reasonable adults. Come, come, Aaron -- what's the downside? Why are you holding back?"

The simple answer was that the woman who had been dwelling in my thoughts lived in Eleazaria, but I indulged the wolf for a moment. "Wells? She's... whip-smart -- probably smarter than me... friendly, a good sense of humor..."

"Very pretty -- for one of you shepherds."

That was true; to the extent that I cared about physical appearances, Wells was quite attractive -- of good genetic stock, one might say in our line of work. "Yes, very pretty..." In actuality there was no reason why I should not like Wells, and indeed I did -- as a coworker and a friend. We'd never attempted to cross that line. I wasn't entirely certain what was holding me back. "I don't know, Vasily, actually. Now that you mention it."

"There are a lot of benefits for couples, in this government," Dezirian said. His tone had become a little more serious. "But that's not really why I suggested it -- I hope you know that. You and Wells... I think you'd make a nice couple. I know you don't really care about stuff like that, but..."

But what? Dezirian was right -- I'd never really felt the need to seek out a companion. And he was right that, on paper, Wells was ideal. There was something missing, though, some gulf between theory and practice that I couldn't quite puzzle out. I steered him away from the conversation, to avoid having to come to any conclusions, and we spent the rest of lunch lost in trivialities.

*

"Wait, what did you say?"

Amy cocked her head. "That some of the words were a bit confusing -- I had to ask somebody what a lot of 'em meant, I guess because they're so old. It's not a bad thing, god knows..."

"No, no. Before that."

She paused, trying to recall. "Oh... right. I just meant that, you know, I'm used to heroes being really black and white, you know? Like they are in the movies. Ahab ain't so simple, an' I really like that. He's different from the others -- ain't so boring."

Our discussions, late at night in the Eighth Street Café, were becoming routine. What had started as every Friday had quickly become every other day -- arguments, nearly always, and nearly always about books. "But Ahab wasn't the hero..."

The raccoon looked at me as though I had missed the point of Moby Dick entirely. "Of course he was."

She had a lot of free time, both inside the café and out -- apparently, she occupied most of it in reading. As a consequence she was going through three or four books a week, and frequently they were ones I had not read at all, or had not read for some time. Moby Dick fell into this latter category, and I tried to remember it. "But he was... a tragic figure, consumed by the need for revenge. He destroyed himself; his crew, his ship. He was a madman." It was a rote interpretation, drawn from what I could recall.

"He was driven," she countered. "He pursued what was most important to him -- he didn't let anyone tell him that it wasn't worth it. Dreams are like that, Aaron -- they ain't always simple and they ain't always nice and clean. But you have to chase them anyway, don't you?"

"It killed him."

"We all die eventually, Aaron -- sooner rather'n later, these days. That's no matter, is it? It ain't what kills you, anyway -- it's what you do when you're alive. Now, you say that he was driven by revenge, an' I guess maybe that's true. For me, though, I think it's one of those... ah, what you were saying, that it's a metaphor, is that the right word? A metaphor for the things we choose to pursue. Hell, Aaron, what are you guys doing at the Renaissance Project? You're sacrificing your life for something that most people don't understand -- they call it wasteful, silly, destructive. Say we ought to be spending our resources elsewhere. Look around you -- I can see their point. But you wouldn't give it up, would ya? That's how dreams work -- that's what makes Ahab a hero. He was willing to die for something, and not take shit from any busybodies what thought he ain't got the right to do it."

Very cynically, Orwell had once had his character, Winston Smith, make this claim: if there is hope, it lies with the proles. I was starting to understand that view -- set apart from Ad Int's propaganda, Buchanan's ideas were nothing if not unorthodox.

That itself -- I realized this in a sudden flash -- was what Wells was missing. She was smart, and probably well read, but her ideas carried the weight of a lifetime dealing with Ad Int. Buchanan was more unencumbered: when she said something, it was more likely to come from the heart. And she had no problem admitting what Ad Int refused to, which was that the Renaissance Project was deeply unpopular.

That was not, really, especially surprising. We were well-paid, and well-fed, and well-protected -- at a time when slums like Eleazaria contained most of what remained of humanity. More than that, we were spending prodigious amounts of energy and raw materials on what, to many, was a simple pipe dream. I didn't necessarily agree, but it was refreshing that somebody else was willing to tell it to my face.

I had been in love exactly once, and it was back in high school. She was a girl in my geometry class. I'd started out tutoring her, and then we'd naturally fallen into that mutually-obsessive delirium of teenaged attraction. Hormones, mostly; actually, I'm certain we made plans to start a family, though as it turned out she was infertile. Medical testing confirmed what should've been obvious, after the first summer we spent together -- young and reckless, as teenagers are wont to be.

When I was a junior, we took the Provisional Aptitude Assessment, the PAA -- they still called it provisional, though it had been around almost a decade when I took it. Out of twelve hundred possible points, I scored eleven hundred and fifty. Maddie scored nine hundred -- respectable, and enough to be placed into a class three billet. There was, however, no way we could possibly end up in the same schools. I went to Harvard; she went to a vocational school, where she learned to repair busses.

After her results came back, we filed an official protest together with the Assessment Board. They turned it down -- who gives a damn about two starry-eyed teenagers trying to fight an entire political system? I idealistically pledged to join her at her college. It wasn't her who talked me out of it, it was my parents.

I have never been good at sticking to my principles.

It was a learning experience. What my parents wanted me to understand was that the rules were there for my protection, and that if I worked within Ad Int's guidelines I could make something of myself. That there were sacrifices that occasionally needed to be made, but making them would produce a long-term happiness. That was not what I took away.

Instead what I took away from it was that the system could destroy your life at any time, and I never bothered to try to get in touch with her again. I know now that she wound up marrying a technician at Boeing, which is about as happy an ending as you can get. For me, I gave up on romance, mostly. I dated a few times, in school and after, but my heart was never in it.

Now, at long last, my heart was thawing. Or, perhaps, I was starting to realize that I could love again; that as adults we were transcending the limits put upon us as youth. I wasn't certain that I wanted to spend my life with Buchanan -- yet. But it was no longer something I viewed as out of the question.

It pleased me to think that this was not some crude plebeian pairing bred only out of physical attraction -- Ad Int placed so much emphasis on genetics that one could sometimes get caught up in a very functional view of relationships. It was the ideas, more than anything else, that drew me to Amy. The way she was capable of getting to the point where a bureaucrat would've talked around it; the way she stridently fought the party line where anyone more orthodox would've simply repeated what they'd been taught in school. Like I had, about Moby Dick.

Happily, I concluded that it was no longer my work that kept me going. I had something outside of the office, which paradoxically made the office itself more bearable. We continued making progress at a breakneck pace, and by the time we had settled in the rainbow trout and some of the larger ferns, I was ready to say that I was in love.

*

I could, of course, always count on Jake (class two, upper echelon) to provide the countering point of view. "In love? Ah, Jesus, Aaron, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"It's possible that it could simply be an infatuation," I admitted, and the cat harumphed. "Possible."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but what's your class again?"

"What's your point?"

Jake Ellis was a cat of some fashion, like Yun but stockier. I suspected some mountain lion in his heritage, judging by his face. Now, though, as his tail lashed and he leaned forward, he looked nothing so much as a predator, stalking. "Nobody is going to take you seriously, is my point."

"Why not?"

"Because nobody believes in love, damn it. What the hell do you think this is? Are you courting? Did you ask her father for permission? Jesus H. Christ, Turner. You hook up with someone four classes below you and you expect anyone to think it's because of the mythical power of romance?"

I considered myself to be a cynic -- my coworkers did, as well. We all thought, though, that Jake was far and away the most jaded of us. This was, no doubt, due in some part to the way he tended to eat by himself, and his decidedly dim view of our conceits. Whatever the reason, next to him I looked like a pollyanna. "Are you saying you don't believe me?"

Like most cats, Jake was capable of a witheringly scornful look, a facial expression that suggested that what had been said was beneath him somehow and did not require his contemplation. This he now turned on me. "I'm saying that I believe you, at least as much as I believe anyone who says they're in love."

"I don't follow."

"And you call yourself a biologist?" Ellis himself was an engineer, working on the life support software both of the arks and the upcoming settlement on Mars. "Love doesn't exist, any more than Zener cards tell you about your psychic potential. It's what we do instead of just rutting like animals when we go into heat. And now here you are, prattling on like Romeo about a coffee shop clerk. So, now, I'll buy that your neurotransmitters are currently aligned as to make you think this girl is your soulmate, fine. But..."

He could be incredibly unflinching, which was useful when I needed advice and murderously frustrating when I wanted to debate something with him. In this case, though, it was the advice I was looking for -- debating Ellis on the topic of romance could end only in self-destruction. "But?"

"If you tell Yun, Yun is going to shrug it off and think you're just going down the class ladder for a bit of sport, isn't she?"

"Oh." Yes, that was probably true. To some degree this worked out in my favor. It was not surprising, after all, that a class one and a class five might wind up together, at least in a purely transactional sense. It was, indeed, almost expected for such things to occur -- though neither I nor Dezirian partook, and I could not imagine that Jake himself did.

"Look." Throughout the conversation, Jake had been busy reworking a circuitry diagram -- I had no idea whether it was for work or for pleasure. Now, he set his pencil down, and met my eyes again, the scorn having ebbed slightly. "Look," he repeated. "I'm just saying, be careful who you start talking to, that's all. If word starts to get around, it might not go so well for you. Fifty years ago, I'm sure you could have an inspirational story about romance between the classes. Nobody's looking for that these days."

"Well..."

"Fine." He waved a paw to shut me up. "Almost nobody. My point is that fifty years ago, what you're talking about would've seemed sweet. Now it's just anachronistic. There are expectations that are made of you, when you start fucking around with the class structure like that."

"But they can't really stop me, now can they?"

"Of course not. But they don't have to make it easy for you, either. You think you're going to pick up the housing allowance? I bet you twenty dollars Yun thinks you're either keeping a hooker around or trying to game the system and kick somebody up a few notches. And how's that going to look on your yearly review, eh? They're going to suggest that you're difficult and that you don't play nice with the system -- which happens, I would note, to be true."

I frowned heavily, and I could feel my ears starting to droop. Everything that Jake had said was more or less accurate -- since the class triage system was supposed to be for our own good, anybody trying to circumvent it was, logically, acting against the best interests of humanity. Of course it would be impolitic to strictly forbid interclass dalliance -- especially since so many higher-class individuals weren't above taking some lesser creature to bed.

This last practice was, so far as I know, more common amongst women than men. For various reasons, fertility rates were low, and most class one and two men chose to hold out for a partner who could have children -- Ad Int propaganda encouraged this, in any case. Someone seeking a relationship where this was off the table was, therefore, forced to look lower. It was no longer exactly clear to me how my relationship with Amy would be perceived. I growled, my muzzle falling to the table wearily. "Christ on a crutch, Jake."

He tilted his head at me, and then he sighed. "Well, what's she like?"

When I spoke, it was half into the table. "Wonderful."

"Flowery language like that, she must be very inspirational," the cat said dryly. "You could at least tell me a little bit. Is she pretty?"

I lifted my muzzle, and then, after a moment, sat up, resting my head on my paws. "Cute, perhaps. She has very expressive eyes. And she's pretty insightful. She's been reading a lot, since we started talking -- I gave her some books, and that got her started... she says a lot of things I wouldn't have thought of by myself, you know? She's actually quite smart. I'm not sure what got her put in her class. She said she had a six-fifty on her PAA."

"Maybe not good at spatial? Maybe not motivated, really, come to think of it. The PAA's a bunch of crap anyway. Well, I'm glad you seem to like her. At least it's not just for her looks."

"Now who's the hopeless romantic?"

Jake laughed, and returned to his circuitry. "Ain't I just? Nah, Aaron, I'm happy for you -- really. Just be careful, alright? Just be careful."

*

Steeling myself, I went to talk to Yun the following day. I rapped on the door, and when she looked up, I forced a smile. "Do you have a couple of minutes for a personal question, ma'am?"

This provoked a raised eyebrow, but she nodded. "Of course. Come in and have a seat, please."

I did, smoothing down my jacket and then folding my paws in front of me -- trying to look as professional as possible. "Can I ask you about the class system? I'm curious as to how it works, as far as, ah, relationships are concerned."

Yun's eyebrow lifted again. "Oh, relationships?" Her smile widened. "Of course I can try to answer any questions you might have, Dr. Turner. What were you wondering about?"

"To begin with, I suppose I'm most interested in how cross-class relationships work -- I know it happens, but none of my old colleagues or friends have married outside their class, that I know of."

She nodded. "It doesn't happen all that often. It must be at least a little bit more difficult for you, being a class one and all... it's a smaller pool, isn't it? Well, generally, the way it works is that when it's applicable, they merge classes upwards, with one level of difference. So if you were a class one, then if you married anyone who wasn't a class one they would become a class two."

"You can't go down a level?"

"No... that wouldn't make sense, would it? The job you do or the importance it has to our community wouldn't have changed any. But, by being integral to your life, your partner would have increased their own importance. We've also found that relationships with minimal class separation are optimal in terms of stability."

"Wouldn't that mean I could marry a class four or five and they'd just... up and become a class two? That seems a bit odd, doesn't it to you? What's the point of the class system, then, if it's so malleable?"

Yun thought about this for a moment, as though the scenario had never occurred to her before. "I suppose they would? We don't... discourage that, exactly, but we don't go around encouraging it, either -- for the reasons I just mentioned. Our research has repeatedly demonstrated that more than two degrees of class separation is a key indicator for instability -- what with the difference in occupation, residence, and so on..."

I wondered if it was hard for her, pretending that what Ad Int had created wasn't a caste system -- that the reason to distinguish between types of people on the basis of a number was not only inherent but also for their own benefit. In all likelihood, of course, it wasn't very difficult at all -- that was the trouble with the government folk, was that they believed it. "Two degrees? I thought it was one."

"Well, the potential for adverse impacts on the relationship increases with any difference at all, of course. Dr. Turner. The ideal pairing is either within the same class or with a separation of only one. That's why the marriage and partnership benefits are limited to those relationships."

"Ah," I said. That explained why nobody Jake or I knew had done anything else -- Ad Int's marriage incentives were quite generous. Indeed, I half wondered if the Ad Int employees like Yun received any incentives of their own, for encouraging the practice. "So for me, that would be a class two, then..."

"Right." Throughout this all, Yun had kept the same grandmotherly smile. "If you were at a business, that might be a problem for you -- but there are plenty of eligible class twos in the Project." She was thinking the same thing Dezirian had been -- that I was, with her promotion (sorry, class transference), finally considering asking out Maria Wells.

Well, there was no reason to let her think differently. "Are there any legal ramifications I should know about, if I'm looking for a partner at my workplace?"

"Some things become a bit more complex... if you were to begin a relationship with an immediate subordinate or superior, for example, we would require a third party to supervise any command decisions. Of course, Dr. Turner, your immediate superior is Dr. Dezirian, if I'm not mistaken, and I don't think he's likely to be interested. And, also if I'm not mistaken, you only have one subordinate..."

"Right," I confirmed.

"That would seem to add some... well, some unnecessary bureaucracy, wouldn't it?" She laughed self-deprecatingly, in acknowledgement of the irony. "If you're considering someone outside your department, I don't think you'll encounter any problems at all. And if you're looking within, well... your numbers have been very good, in terms of milestones. So long as they stay that way, I wouldn't be inclined to add any more restrictions."

I nodded slowly, and started to get up. "Well, thank you, ma'am."

"Of course! Just remember to go to DHW for a checkup, alright?"

I promised that I would, and slipped back out into the hall. The Department of Human Wellness checkups were largely perfunctory and, so near as I was aware, concerned entirely with fertility. I hadn't had a checkup in more than a year, though, and I didn't feel especially pressed for one.

I didn't think that Amy and I intended to have children, but I had to wonder what Yun would think if we did. On the one hand, it was an inter-class relationship and, as she had clearly said, they didn't go around encouraging that sort of thing. On the other hand, it would be offspring, and there was precious little of that. Even in my neighborhood, full of people who were settling down into stable careers, the sound of children was sparse.

On balance, Yun would probably be happy. Maybe she would even take credit for it -- oh, yes, I told him we certainly didn't discourage a relationship like that! Well, it was all irrelevant anyway, wasn't it? I'd gotten what I came for: no legal ramifications to a relationship with wide class spacing, only the rescinding of Ad Int's incentives. I could live with that.

*

Whatever my plans had been, I was beaten to the punch on Friday when, after work, Maria asked me if I would impregnate her. The question seemed to come out of the blue, and to her credit she was -- though obviously quite nervous about this -- very direct and to the point.

I was rather less so, and it took my brain some time to catch up. "Excuse me?"

She splayed her long fingers out, staring at the tips. "I know it's a bit of a strange question. Basically, though, I had a meeting with a specialist from DHW last week -- Yun required it as a condition of my class change, you know? They came back and... I mean... I can have children, and I was thinking... with the bonus, and all..."

She looked less certain of herself than, perhaps, I had ever seen her. "Ah, so you were thinking that you might try for it?"

"Yeah." Wells looked at the wall behind me, avoiding eye contact. "I know it's pretty sudden, but I was thinking that, you know, what with you being a class one and all..."

"They pay more for that, don't they?" Officially, this was because high-class relationships were more stable, and spent more time and energy on their offspring. And, again, we knew that the class system was not supposed to be stratifying -- certainly not eugenic. But it was, of course; Wells and I weren't self-delusional enough to think otherwise.

"Yeah." The shepherdess pinned her ears back. "I mean, that's not why, exactly, Aaron. I don't really have anyone else I'd ask, and... I mean, the cards are in our favour. Good genetics, good profiles... with my promotion we're in the ideal bracket. Yun thought that if I was willing to try, I ought to take the opportunity... before I get too old, I guess. So... here I am. I'd be willing to split the bonus with you, Aaron, obviously."

I blinked -- this thought hadn't really crossed my mind. Money was not generally a problem, and in this context it seemed almost like prostitution. "It's less that I'm concerned about and more... you know, aren't children a pretty big step for you? You really want to do that?"

Maria shrugged. "I wouldn't be carrying them to term. It would be the embryo thing, you know? Extraction, analysis, and then cold storage to Mars. We wouldn't want to trust the survival of the species to anything as imprecise as pregnancy, now would we?" She laughed, trying to inject a little levity into the conversation. It was true -- there were so many things that could go wrong in a natural pregnancy that Ad Int discouraged them, although they did little to discourage people from attempting natural conception. Doubtless this was simple pragmatism on their part.

"No, I guess not. Listen, I... I'm not really sure I'm ready for that, either. I mean, especially with the launch coming up, and all that, I... I guess, you know, I don't... I hadn't really considered settling down. I'm not sure I'm in a place where I can plan for that."

"Oh... I wouldn't expect you to be, Aaron." She fidgeted with her paws awkwardly. "God -- no, I'm not, like, trying to marry you or anything! That would be a terrible proposal." Again, the slightly nervous laughter. "I just can't reproduce by myself, and... well, like I said, who else would I ask? You don't have to trouble yourself over it at all, just that initial bit. We're not parthenogenetic, after all."

I was not good at standing up for myself -- that was where the "turn-tail Turner" epithet had come from, back at JDARC -- and I found myself being backed into a corner. "Well... I mean... alright, what would that entail, I guess?"

"Whatever you're most comfortable with," she said. "I mean, there's the scientific way, right, with test tubes and all that. Or there's the more, uh... the more biological way, you could put it? I don't mean to impose on you, so... whatever you're most comfortable with is fine."

I shook my head, waving the question off. "You're not imposing."

"Still, probably the weirdest way you've ever been propositioned, right?"

When I looked at her, she was smiling. "I think so," I admitted to her. "You do have a knack. When were you thinking would be the best time?"

"What are you doing tonight?"

Maria's apartment was on the outskirts of Tacoma, on the fourth floor of one of those garish, vaguely rococo buildings Ad Int had commissioned to show that we still believed in serious architecture. It looked out on a greenhoused park; at that hour, there were still a few people sitting within, amongst the plants. Community gardens were decidedly a sign of the middle class -- a social caste elevated enough to want to consume fresh produce, but not quite elevated enough to simply purchase it from abroad.

"Good tomatoes," she said, catching me looking. "Not so good apples, in the fall."

"They grow apples?"

"Sort of," she said. "One tree -- supposedly a transplant from a larger orchard... somewhere. I don't know how old it is. They planted a few more... you can just barely see them, towards the left there."

"I think I can, yeah."

She stood next to me, looking down into the park. "Planting a tree, now, there's an act of faith. You're basically saying that you trust that the world will still be around in ten or twenty years. Apples aren't like vegetables... they take a long time before they start giving you anything usable. Quarter of a lifetime, on some occasions. They planted those trees four years ago."

"Did you plant one?"

Maria turned to me, and her ears drew back an inch or so. "I did," she said. Her tone was quiet, and somewhat shy -- as if trusting in the existence of the future was a guilty and uncharacteristic pleasure. "You can't quite see it from here. Sometimes I buy some fertilizer and go down to help it out a little -- isn't it strange, that I feel a bit odd about thinking we could do something good for the world?"

The shepherdess in her apartment was much softer than the hard-edged person who came to work and relentlessly killed the same trophic levels, over and over and over. I shook my head, and when I felt her paw seek mine I took it, and gave it a squeeze. "Perhaps it's a little strange, yes. But it's better than the alternative, isn't it? I probably would've ignored the greenhouse, myself."

"It's alright," she said. "You spend the same amount of time staying late at work, I think, as I do in the greenhouse. We're both out to help, in our own way."

I didn't say anything in response -- I didn't really have anything to say. The world was quiet, except for the soft beat of the rain, and it remained quiet as she took me by the hand, and led me away from the window.

Her bedroom, like everything else about the apartment, was small, but well-kept. It was thick with the shepherdess's scent, too -- comforting, and warm, and sweet. They say that species always smell better to each other than they do to others.

Hesitantly, she let my paws go, and then looked up at me. Her paws had fallen loosely to her waist; now they toyed gently with the bottom button of her blouse. One by one, she unfastened them, until finally the entire garment lay open, and she shrugged it off to let it flutter down to the floor.

Maria's soft, brown fur required only a little smoothing. She was warm beneath my fingers, and her ears pricked and swiveled as I caressed her. "Lay down," I murmured. With a nod, she slipped from my paws and sat on the edge of the bed. Her back arched momentarily as she reached to take off her bra; then, her soft eyes on mine, she reclined, settling into the sheets comfortably.

Had I been a better person, I would've admitted then that I didn't feel for her the same way she felt for me, and I would've left. But she was so open to me, then, so vulnerable... so instead I gave myself over to distraction. I stroked her soft fur down until it shone in the soft light. I caressed the swell of her left breast, teasing the stiffening nipple gently, and when she gasped and her muscles tightened I tried not to feel that I was merely playing a part.

On Fridays, we tended to dress down: Maria was wearing loose-fitting jeans, and they yielded to my thumb and forefinger without resistance. I pushed them down the shepherd's strong legs, along the grain of the fur, and for effect I took the waistband of her cotton underpants in one canine tooth, pulling them from her.

My cold nose nuzzled her leg and she took in a deep breath, sharply. It seemed that when it left her, she might've whispered my name. I kissed the fur of her inner thigh, inviting her to part her legs wider for me. She did, and as she did her fingers brushed over my ears. This time there was no mistaking the whisper.

The shepherdess let out a puppyish whine when my tongue flicked wetly over the lips of her sex; fingers closed around my right ear, tugging my muzzle closer. I lapped at her gently, and as I did the heady, spicy musk of her scent began to fill my nose. Of course, I managed to coherently realize. Of course, she's in heat.

That was, at least, an out. When my high school girlfriend had gone through her cycles I had tried to be demure and gentlemanly about it, to avoid adding any awkwardness to the already painful experience of teenagedom.

Now, though, I inhaled deeply, letting it filter into my brain. Nuzzling, kissing her slick lips deeply, I heard myself growl, and my ears flicked to the sound of a more plaintive whimper from the canine before me. I slipped my tongue into her smoothly, feeling every shuddering gasp.

Faster and faster, now -- panting shallowly as my tongue worked through her, spreading her folds with warm, wet velvet. The smell of her heat was soaking into my thoughts with the wetness that stained the fur of my muzzle and dappled my whiskers.

Maria's back arched; her breath was coming as a nasal whine, and every new touch to her seemed to make her twitch. I curled my tongue up, drawing it over her clit -- she cried out, then, and I suckled on it gently, teasing the sensitive flesh with the tip of my tongue.

She bucked sharply; her muzzle opened and she gave a sudden, lupine howl -- until her lungs emptied and she couldn't refill them, gasping, whimpering with the waves of pleasure that gripped her.

Her head lolled when she finally flopped back, eyes closed, ears splaying. I crawled up onto the bed with her, then, and she turned her muzzle to lap at me weakly, her eyes shining. It wasn't a proper kiss; I didn't let it become one.

Caressing my sides tenderly, she breathed in steadily deeper pants until she seemed to be mostly recovered, and I took time to take off my trousers, letting everything fall like forgotten promises to the side of the bed. Her legs hooked around mine, and when my length pressed against her Maria's eyes went momentarily fuzzy, before they met mine in a longing gaze.

"Aaron, please... take me..."

There was little resistance when I pushed forward to sink inside her, inch by inch, feeling the shepherdess slowly engulf me in sodden, slick heat. She moaned as I entered her, a lyrical, wavering sound that filled her bedroom with honeyed warmth as her tawny arms wrapped me in a tight embrace.

I began to thrust smoothly, rocking fluidly between her thighs. My arched back pressed my muzzle down and into the crook of her neck, so my breathing filled my muzzle with the shepherdess's scent. I let it control me, spreading tendrils of aching desire into my nerves.

My back flexed beneath the desperate grasping of her paws -- and her yelps, cried out in a steadily rising pitch, filled my ears. At every fevered thrust it became easier, easier to forget anything conscious -- to give everything over to raw, animalistic desire -- to drive myself into the keening shepherdess until we were both spent and ragged.

Claws scored my sides. Her eyes fluttered shut and her muscles began to lock up, her breathing harsh. My knot slipped wetly past her clinging lips as I strove to tie with her -- her walls contracting tight in the most natural embrace, trying to keep me trapped, locked inside her.

There was nothing rational about it, nothing evolved. Just the smoldering desire that gnawed on my animal brain and sent white sparks flashing through me every time I plunged back within her. Take her -- claim her for your own -- tie with your bitch. I growled, just as I felt her tremble and cry out beneath me.

I bucked savagely, thrusting into the writhing shepherd as she wailed her second peak to everyone in the complex. My hips pinned her; I held there as my knot swelled, until I was certain I couldn't pull out. A second thrust to push me as close to her as I could get, and I groaned headily as I joined her in release -- pleasure flowing from my buried shaft in rolling spasms.

She yelped again, but her walls held me snug, securing my knot, ensuring there was no place for my cum to go but deep inside. I filled her in long spurts, virile canine seed spilling hotly against her walls -- for a time she clenched her paws at my sides with every pulse, and in that moment, feral need running swift in my veins, I knew nothing but the desire to breed her, to see her filled with our strong young...

Then the strength left me and I slumped, panting heavily, begging for the animal that had let me mate with her so needfully to spare me the reflection of the afterglow. I closed my eyes -- then she squeezed my oversensitive length and I saw only the white of unbearable pleasure.

*

Propped on one elbow, minutes or hours later, my eyes wandered over Maria's face. She seemed to have softened; her sharp nose had become blunted, her tall ears looked fuzzy and indistinct as they pinned against a pillow. Her eyes were still closed; her breathing was irregular and shallow. When she looked at me again, her muzzle turned up in a smile that was utterly peaceful. "Aaron?"

I settled down onto my side. "Mm?"

The shepherdess turned as well, and draped an arm thoughtfully over my shoulder, her paw dangling precipitously in the air. "You mean a lot to me, you know? I mean... no, no... no, I'm sorry, that's not what I mean." Her words wandered, until she closed her eyes again to get her thoughts back. "When I said that I didn't expect you to marry me, or anything, that's what I meant, you know... there's no obligation or anything. Just... just this; you can be done, now, if you want."

From the tone of her voice I could tell that she meant this, at least literally, though the underlying sentiment was a mixed message -- to say nothing of the way she had begun talking. This meant that my reply was also subject to certain rules. I didn't want to commit to anything, but at the same time I had no desire at all to hurt her feelings. "I know."

Her errant paw toyed with the fur of my side. "I mean, if you don't, that's ok too. I'm just saying that I don't want to pressure you." She paused. "I talked to Vasily, first, to see if he thought it was a good idea to ask you. He was..." She stopped, looking for the right word.

There was no point in being demure. "Enthusiastic?"

Maria smiled, and her next breath was almost a quiet laugh. "Enthusiastic, yes."

"He likes to fancy himself as a matchmaker," I told her.

Her nod was so slight that it could almost have been mistaken for nothing at all. "I figured. I told him that... you know, that that wasn't really... I mean, we're coworkers, right? That's a bit awkward."

"We are, though... that's not unheard of, exactly. And we're professionals, I think."

"That's true. I guess it could work out. It's one of those things where... I hadn't really ever thought about it before, you know? I... before my promotion -- class switch, whatever the hell they want to call it..." She laughed; her voice was muzzy and dreamlike, and she took her time to meander back to her point. "Before that, anyway. I was spending so much time taking care of my mother that I never really gave any consideration to... well, to anything like... finding somebody."

Whether or not I wanted to be the person she had found, the touch of her fingers in the bare fur of my side was still ticklish; I twitched a little. "I think everyone's been that way, though. Everyone except Vasily, and... he's got no room to talk; he met his boyfriend in college, if I remember right."

"Yeah. They were roommates, at first. I don't... I don't have a roommate, though, just the office. There just aren't very many... good... guys there, you know? I mean there ought to be, but it always feels like you don't really have a whole lot of options. And I spend most of my time in the department, or... I guess sometimes we work with Sustainability... so there's Greg, I guess, he's available. But... don't take this the wrong way, or anything, Aaron, but... you are the only person I've ever really considered. It's just the work thing that's a bit of a... a complication, yeah? But you're right, I think we could work past that."

I didn't want to hide. In answering her earlier question, I had given the impression of defending our possible romance, which was not exactly my goal. Nor, however, did I want to abandon it on a false pretense. The issue with Wells had nothing to do with our sharing an office. "If we decided on that, yes, I imagine so."

"But you're not decided." It was not really the tone of a question, so I didn't answer. "It's alright, though, you don't have to be. I'm just babbling, Aaron; ignore me."

"You're not really babbling, Maria. I just don't always know what to say."

She nodded, and her fingers resumed their distracted staccato at my side. "I guess I can't blame you for that. Or... at least... I'm not making it easy for you." She took a deep breath. "Can I at least ask you something, ah, perhaps a bit presumptuously?"

It was a terrible way to begin a question. "Sure."

"I never really found out before, which was a very poor assumption on my part -- I'm sorry. I guess what I mean to ask is... ah, is there someone else, Aaron?"

"Yes." I didn't accord the answer a long, dramatic pause; I was not ashamed of the truth.

For her part she took this stoically, and nodded. "Well... oof. I am sorry I didn't ask first... I hope this is not too awkward for you?"

"It's not awkward, no. I would've told you if it was going to be awkward."

"Oh, good. Good," she repeated, in a louder voice. For a few seconds she was quiet, and I thought that I might be asked to defend myself, in some fashion. Then she just smiled at me, and gave my nosepad a brief kiss. "I hope you're happy, Aaron. That's the important thing."

"It doesn't make things awkward for you?"

"I don't think so." She could tell that it wasn't entirely a satisfactory answer; she looked thoughtful for another brief spell. "No, I meant what I said. I hope you're happy together, that's all."

And that was all. She didn't pry further; didn't try to figure out who my partner might've been. All the questioning was on my part, trying to figure out if I was making the right choice. I am not a person given to strong defense of my ideals; second-guessing is in my nature. Having someone else make my decisions for me helped also -- and now there was none of that, no easy answer.

It would've been so easy to settle down with Maria. It was the path of least resistance; we enjoyed each other's company, after all. The opposition was merely my belief -- quite possibly unfounded -- that I was looking for someone more exciting, someone to spark those whirlwind emotions of youthful passion again. That those feelings, in and of themselves, were justification for romance.

Reclining on her bed, lost and out of place, staring with craned muzzle away from the shepherd, up at the mottled white of the ceiling, I listened to the sound of Maria's breathing, growing more regular next to me.