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I can count -- most of those times with you -- and now I want to get
somewhere. I want a family . . ."
Ben set down his glass and grasped her hand across the table.
"I know," he said. "I understand. Maybe I understand more than you think. I
want to offer you life, advances, progress."
Neither of them spoke for a while, but their hands conversed with each other
in the familiar language of lovers.
"OK," she said. She tossed off her wine, trying to appear lighthearted,
"what's the plan, man?"
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"I don't know the plan, yet," he said. "But I know the key. It's
information. Our business, remember?"
"Yes?" She refilled her glass, then his. "Explain."
"You didn't see any women in Flattery's security force, and you set out to do
a story, remember?
What happened?"
"Not approved, we never shot a centimeter . . ."
"And how many times has that happened?"
"To me? Not much. But then, there are plenty of stories to do, more than
I'll ever live to do, I
just find another one or take an assignment . . ."
"An important point," Ben said. He hunched over their little table, tapping
the top with his index finger. "If Flattery doesn't get flattered, the story,
whatever it is, doesn't get aired.
He is from a different world -- literally, a different world. He is from a
world that starves women and children because they are on the wrong side of an
imaginary line, and he won't allow them to cross it. We are from a world that
used to teach: 'Life, at all cost. Preserve life.'
Pandora has been adversary enough. We haven't been able to afford the luxury
of fighting amongst ourselves."
"So, I don't get where . . ."
"Half of the shows I do get dropped," Ben said. "It's not because they're not
good, it's because it's getting harder and harder to keep Flattery from
looking like the hood that he is. What would happen if people refused to have
anything to do with him -- refused to speak with him, feed him, shelter him
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-- what would happen then?"
She laughed again.
"What makes you think they'd do that? It would take --"
"Information. Show him up for what he is, show the people what they can do.
This whole world's been a disaster since Flattery took over. He promises them
food and keeps them hungry. He keeps us in line because we know what he can
do to us. If people knew they'd be no more hungry without
Flattery, without the Vashon Security Force, would they put up with him?"
"It would take a miracle," she finished.
She couldn't look him in the eye. This was the conversation she really didn't
want to have on their last night together. He leaned over and kissed her on
the cheek.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm running off at the mouth again. I interviewed a
group of mothers today who are petitioning the Chief of Security for news of
their sons and husbands who have disappeared. Another group, over five
hundred mothers, says that they had sons killed but there was never an
investigation, never an arrest. They say security did it, there are
witnesses. Now, I don't know about that. What I do know is that mothers are
the ones on the march. Holovision's refusing to pick up on it, forbidding me
to report on what people have the right to know. There has to be a way . . .
I'm just thinking out loud, is all."
He kissed her again on the cheek, then lifted her chin.
"I'll shut up now," he said. He kissed her lips and she pulled him down to
the carpet beside the table.
"Promise?" She kissed him back, and untucked his shirt from his pants so she
could get her hands under his clothes, onto his smooth, warm skin.
His hands unbuttoned her Islander blouse, unpeeled her cotton skirt and found
her bare under both.
"Pretty daring," he muttered, and kissed her belly as she undressed him.
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"You realize we're going to get rug burn."
"I thought you promised to shut up."
Her alarm went off again and startled Beatriz out of her waking dream. She
shut it off and sat up to give herself some energy. Ben had been right about
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