Justin (23 page)

“Shit.” Justin raised his hands. “Give me a sec.”

“You’ve had twenty-four years.”

“I know. It’s complicated. What did Deanna tell you?”

“That you were off planet, that I couldn’t tell anyone about you, not even my adopted parents. Tell me why.”

She was going to make him spill everything. Not,
you’re my dad, that’s great, let’s go for ice cream
. Sybellie wanted to know who he was.
What
he was.

Justin cleared his throat and decided to get it over with.

“I’m Shareem.”

Sybellie’s expression didn’t change. “What’s Shareem? What planet is that from?”

“A Shareem is from Bor Narga, and he’s a man who looks like me.” Justin’s eyes narrowed. “And, by the way, if you ever see a Shareem who’s
not
me, you stay away from him. Don’t talk to him, don’t smile at him, don’t even let him know you noticed him. Promise me.” If any of them touched his daughter, Justin would explain how much he didn’t like that by cutting off the part that Shareem held dearest.

Sybellie fixed him with a steely look. “You still haven’t told me what a Shareem is.”

“You know, I’m glad you don’t know.” But Sybellie deserved the truth, and if she despised Justin for it, then she did. “Shareem were created in a factory. Made by a company called DNAmo, a long time ago. Most Bor Nargans don’t think we’re even human. But we are.” Talan had once proved, by making a DNA examination, that they were.

“DNAmo.” She looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard of them. Didn’t they manufacture the perfect servants, or something? Then they were shut down.”

“They were shut down because of Shareem. They did make the perfect servants—majordomos and butlers and maids—then they went on to creating slaves. Like me.”

Sybellie’s eyes widened. “You can’t be a slave. Slavery’s illegal.”

“Was a slave. Or—I don’t know if they ever managed to make us truly obedient. We’re all pretty good at doing what we want.” Justin curled his fingers into his palms. “We were pleasure slaves.”

“Oh.”

Was that an “Oh” of disgust? Surprise? Outrage?

Not something a man wanted to tell his daughter—
I was born and bred for fucking, to be the best at sexing women who paid DNAmo for the pleasure.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?” Sybellie’s voice was quiet.

He risked a look at her. She was studying him, but with intense interest, not derision. “For not being a prince or something equally impressive. For having been created in a vat full of chemicals, for being a slave who ended up as a dock worker on another planet. And now I’m back here, where I’m the lowest of the low. I bet this is not what you always dreamed your father would be.”

“I didn’t dream about it much, to be honest. I was curious, yes, but I realized how lucky I was to be where I am, with parents who love me.”

“Good,” Justin said fervently. “I’m glad they do.”

“And my real mother? Where is she?”

“Her name was Lillian. She was a girl from Pas City who signed on to be a guinea pig at DNAmo, to take part in experiments with Shareem. I won’t tell you what kind of experiments, but you can probably guess. When she found out she would have you, she quit, and I was shipped off planet. Now she’s a celibate in the Way of the Sun.” He smiled shakily. “Your crazy parents.”

“So you were never lifemates?”

Justin shook his head. “Never had the chance. They sent me off, and I never saw her again.”

“And you’re sure, one hundred percent sure, that the baby she had was me? And that you are the father?”

“If you want a DNA test, we can do that. I know a medic . . . she’s off planet right now, but she’ll be back soon. But even if you do take the test—you can’t tell anyone. It’s too dangerous. My medic friend is the only one we can trust to keep the results secret.”

“I’d like the DNA test,” Sybellie said. “But only so both of us can be certain.” She reached over and put her hand on his arm. “But I believe you.”

Relief flowed through him, and an elation that drove away every moment of despair and heartache of the last twenty and more years. He wished Deanna could be here to share the moment with him, but she’d be back. She’d be back, and Justin would never let her go again.

“Now tell me why it’s too dangerous for anyone to know you’re my real father,” Sybellie said.

“Because Shareem aren’t supposed to be dads. They created us to be sterile. Guess it didn’t work, at least not on me.”

“And so if people knew I was half Shareem . . .”

Justin’s worry returned. “I have no idea what they’d do to you. Test you, sequester you, open you up and have a look inside. At best, they’d classify you as Shareem, and then no more graduate degree, no more nice house on the Vistara, no more friends. No more anything. I can’t do that to you.”

“You mean they’d say I wasn’t human. Or not completely.” Sybellie looked somber but not afraid. Deanna had said she was smart. “And on Bor Narga, non-humans don’t have the same rights as humans.”

“We are human,” Justin said. “My friends have proved that—ladies of other Shareem. But the Bor Nargans won’t admit it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess because Shareem represent a time before sexual inhibition, when things around here were a little crazy.”

“We all study that in history. Bor Narga was once a barbarian culture, with women little better than slaves. But that was a long time ago. No one would want that again.”

Justin shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I think people believe that if Shareem are allowed to run amok, society will degenerate back to barbarian times.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Try telling that to the ruling family. They like ruling. Anything they see as a threat to that, they stomp.” Justin opened his hands. “That’s the way it is.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Sybellie, no,” Justin said quickly. “Keep your mouth shut. You don’t know about Shareem, you don’t know I’m one, and you have nothing to do with me. I won’t see you again. I just wanted to today. At least once.”

She gave him another patient look. “I can help Shareem without revealing I am one. No one will know without checking my DNA against yours, right?”

“I think so. My medic friend knows all about that shit.”

“Then I won’t take the test, if it makes you feel better.” Sybellie lifted her chin, a stubborn little tilt that made his heart burn.

“But you want to be sure,” Justin said.

“Not if it endangers us. What if someone else saw the results?”

“Katarina would destroy the results before that could happen.”

“It’s still risky. If you’ve been looking for me all this time, have been following me around wanting to talk to me . . . then you must be sure.”

“But . . .”

Sybellie shot him an exasperated. “Now I know you’re my dad. You’re driving me crazy.”

Justin started laughing. Happiness tore through him, and his heart broke.

He reached for her, elation filling him when she didn’t shrink away.

He gathered her into his arms. Sybellie seemed shy at first, but then she put her arms around him, her body feather-light, and Justin had the joy, for the first time, of holding his daughter close.

*** *** ***

Justin swore that the sandstorm was the shortest in Bor Nargan history. He and Sybellie spent it talking about everything—her life, her studies, her hopes and ambitions. He learned that she was very good at soccer and met her soccer companions every day after practice for a little snack before midmorning classes—the other three young ladies in the coffeehouse.

She wasn’t as good at poetry and music, she confessed, but not bad at finance. Her mother liked that—her adopted mother—who half-owned a bank. Sybellie would probably end up working there, hence why she was going for a higher degree in techno-finance.

Justin let her rattle on, happy to sit back and listen to her. Sybellie asked about him, and he gave her a truncated version of his life on Sirius, but he quickly switched the topic back to her.

All too soon, the safe siren sounded and the shelter’s doors slid back, revealing the street coated with sand, the sunshine as strong and clear as ever.

“I guess I’ll have to go to class after all,” Sybellie said. “They don’t cancel for sandstorms—they just push back the schedule for the rest of the day.”

Justin made no move to start the car and drive out. He feasted his gaze on his daughter’s sun-streaked hair, her fresh, round face, her smile.

He couldn’t let this be the last time he talked to her. He wanted to know more and more, to talk away the empty years.

“Sybellie, when—”

Sybellie gasped, her face paling as she looked at something behind him. Justin jumped around to see five patrollers in front of the car, pointing guns at him.

What the fuck?
Justin popped the door to ask the question.

Five stun pistols trained on his face, and two pairs of hands hauled him out of the car. He found himself shoved face-first against its side, a stun gun digging into his ribs.

“What, sheltering from sandstorms is illegal now?” he ground out against the car.

“What are you doing?” Sybellie cried, having climbed out the other side.

The patrollers ignored her, which made Justin relax a little. They hadn’t come for her.

“Three witnesses watched you abduct this woman,” one of the patrollers said. “And I know we’ve had trouble with you before. You’re finished, Shareem.”

Cuffs bit into Justin’s wrists, but he clamped his mouth shut. Let them think what they wanted, let no one mention Sybellie’s name.

But Sybellie wasn’t a girl who sat quietly with folded hands. “What are you doing?” she repeated. “He was
helping
me.”

“He’s a Shareem, and a nuisance, ma’am,” a patroller said.

“He got me to safety. You leave him alone.”

“If he brought you in here, it wasn’t for safety. Did he touch you, ma’am? If so I can terminate him right here.”

“
Terminate
him?”

“It’s the death penalty for a Shareem to touch a woman without permission,” the patroller said. She was a big, muscular woman, with none of Deanna’s softness. “This one’s already wanted for violating restrictions. You can file your report against him down at the station, or from home. It’s up to you.”

“File my report . . .”

Justin lifted his head and glared at Sybellie. “Get out of here. Go. Get away from me—”

The patrollers banged his face into the car. Justin grunted, tasting blood.

“Stop that!” Sybellie shouted. “Do you know who my mother is?”

They didn’t care. Patrollers were ruled by the whims of the rich, but not when they were arresting someone who so obviously—to them—deserved to be arrested.

“Get the hell out of here!” Justin yelled at her. She couldn’t let her name be associated with his, not for a second.

He heard the thrum of stun guns, then heat sliced through his side. As blackness swam at him, he heard his own voice still begging Sybellie to go. He saw her reach for him, and he smiled at her, his daughter, so beautiful.

“Good-bye,” he said softly before he felt the bite of a second stun burst.

*** *** ***

Deanna gazed through the thick plasti-glass of the cell at Justin, who was sprawled facedown on the floor. They’d taken his clothes, and only a thin cloth around his waist protected his privates. It had fallen forward as he lay, baring his firm, smooth ass.

“Oh, Justin.”

Deanna put her hand on the glass, as she’d done when she’d first seen him in a cell, when he’d regarded her with Shareem-blue eyes full of anger.

He’d been worried sick that she’d find out about his daughter. She understood that now. From the look of things, he’d been worried sick about Sybellie this time too, which was why they’d kicked and stunned him.

“I can’t believe you’re vouching for him, Deanna.”

One of the arresting patrollers, a large woman called Vrina, stopped outside the cell, folding her muscular arms.

Deanna and Vrina had never had any conflict, but they’d never been friends, either. Vrina liked to walk around the docks harassing off-worlders in her spare time, while Deanna preferred to go home and read books to her mother.

Deanna shrugged, not explaining. Keeping Justin from termination had been tricky, and had needed Deanna’s official word that the Shareem worked exclusively for her now, with a backup statement from Brianne verifying this.

Katarina, the medic, told the patrollers that she’d shot Justin full of so many neutralizing drugs—at Deanna’s request—that he couldn’t possibly have gotten his cock up to do anything to the young woman in the car. Katarina had even provided documentation.

The three women were careful to not mention Sybellie’s name, and Deanna had forbidden her to come down to the patrol station.

Deanna had wanted to kiss Katarina and Brianne. Katarina had dummied up documents on the fly, and Brianne had serenely explained to the judge that she’d sent Justin to the Vistara on an errand, thinking that since Justin had been released last time at her request, she had the right to do that.

Justin had been granted a stay of execution, but for the last time, the judge had said severely to the three women. “Keep your pet Shareem at home where he belongs,” she’d finished and thrown them out of the courtroom in disgust.

Vrina looked at Justin on the floor and shrugged. “I don’t know what you see in him. He’s too hefty. I like my men to be smaller than me.”

So she could bully them, she meant. Deanna kept herself from rolling her eyes and said, “I like him the way he is.”

“Whatever.” Vrina pushed some buttons on her handheld. “Take him out of here. If someone finds him on the Vistara again, though, he’ll be terminated on sight.”

A square in the cell wall slid back, and Deanna walked in and fell to her knees beside Justin.

Justin woke from a wonderful dream of being wrapped around Deanna to find her here, next to him, her pheromones touching him. He was on the floor, mostly naked, and she had her arms around him.

Nice.

He jumped all the way awake, and groaned. Waking brought pain.