The Amber Columns (The City of Dark Pleasures Book 2) (10 page)

Chapter Ten -- O’Mara

The gate to the Chairman’s palace rises above the pristine streets of the district like a fine black spider web. A fine
electrified
black spider web. I can hear the tell-tale buzzing as I approach the terminal outside the gate.

“Good afternoon, Citizen O’Mara Tanner.” An actual person appears on the screen.  A human guard? That screams wealth, along with everything else – the carefully manicured hedges, the shining tile driveway, the high dome above the house. And the gate, the buzzing spider web gate. Not very welcoming, but I guess that’s the point. Wealth and menace.

“Your appointment has been moved forward to three o’clock as the Chairman is held up. Would you like to wait inside?”

What choice do I have? “That’s fine,” I say.

“Please step forward for a scan,” the guard instructs firmly.

I step up to the terminal and feel my implant buzz. This is a tense moment. There are all sorts of reasons I might not pass the scan. Who knows what their standards are here? I watch the scan results scroll down the screen as they come up.

Blood pressure- normal

Heart rate – elevated in normal range

Temperature – normal range

Implants – standard and contraceptive

Citizen is menstruating

Citizen’s weight is in a healthy range

It goes on. By the time the scan is finished, I feel like I’ve been licked all over.

“You’ll need to leave your media jacket at the guard station,” the stern guard says. “Chairman Portero’s secretary will provide you with a data stick to record the interview. Audio only.”

The spider web slides open and I step inside the compound.

As I reach the house a guard relieves me of my media jacket, going over me with a hand scanner to check for any weapons or other contraband, Over the years that I’ve worked at the News we’ve received several reports of suicide bombers and such who come up to the compound attempting to assassinate the Chairman. None of the stories were ever approved to release. The gossip was that the bombers are always Culls. I suppose they don’t have much to lose.

“Do you have any data sticks on you? Any other recording devices?”

“No.”

This new guard, a painfully thin woman with shorn hair holds her face in a pinched expression as she scans me, checking her results against the record on a nearby screen.

“What kind of contraceptive implant do you have?” she asks, unexpectedly

“The usual kind. I’ve had it for a while.”

“It’s not in the right position. You should get that checked.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem.” She puts her scanner away and waves her wrist pass across a reader by another large door. “My last one nearly fell out once. But I don’t need them anymore. I decided to marry a woman.”

“How nice,” I say. What else can I say? The contents of one’s vagina is a bizarre thing to be discussing with a stranger. She ushers me into the house and the heavy door swings closed behind me.

Before me is a long dim hallway, the high polished wood walls are adorned with multitudes of portraits and paintings, the floor is a checkerboard of obsidian and white marble. Ornate cabinets and tables line the walls and an opulent rug runs the length of the hall, leading to another large door at the end.

It creates quite an impression.

Before I reach the end of the hallway, a trim woman appears from an alcove.

“Please take a seat here. As you know, the chairman has been delayed.” She waves at a low upholstered settee. As I sit, she disappears through the door, clicking it shut behind her.

I take the time to try to calm myself down. The house is loaded with scanners, and although the bots are smart enough to know that I should be nervous, given this interview, I don’t want them to set any alarms off. I am nervous, but not for the reasons that the bots would assume. They can’t know what I’ve discovered about Trenoweth Portero. They can’t know what his son means to me.

This is not exactly an assassination attempt, but it’s something. Even I’m not sure what yet.

After about ten minutes of counting my breaths, the door opens and a stream of women exits, heads bowed, shuffling along in black dresses like ghosts. The door to the outside clicks as they approach and a young man holds it open for them. I can just see a bus outside.

The young man enters the house as the women begin to board the bus.

“They’re silent wives,” he says as he approaches me. He slumps into the settee beside me. I can see that he’s quite young, probably still a teenager. “One of them is my mother. But she’s an idiot.”

I swallow. Something about the way he looks at me is unnerving. And though it is not unusual for men and boys to speak disrespectfully of women, usually their mothers are afforded a little credit. “What’s a silent wife?”

“You’re not married?” the boy says. “If you were married you would know that. It’s in the harem wife contract. Or do you prefer women?”

“I’m not married.” I’m not going to tell him about my preferences. It’s not his business.

“A silent wife is one who has displeased her husband so much that she has lost privileges. If she wants to remain married, she gives up her voice, and other things.”

“What things?” I try to keep the horror out of my voice. I have heard that the harem wife contract is a troubling document, but I had no idea. Harem wives aren’t allowed to talk about it.

“The right to say no, mainly,” the boy says. “Well, the right to say anything at all, really. But the no thing is key.” He actually smiles. He smiles as he explains that his own mother has lost her right to not consent to sex.

I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. I press them into my skirt.

“One of my wives has been silenced already,” the boy continues. He leans back, looking at me expectantly.

I don’t take his bait. “I...I’m O’Mara Tanner, a journalist with the News,” I say instead, extending my hand. “And you are?”

“I know who you are.” His smile is oily. “Don’t you want to know why I silenced my wife?”

“Not really.” My heart is pounding now. I’m surprised my implant alarm hasn’t gone off.

“She asked too many questions,” the boy says. “And my name is Hamel Portero. The Chairman is my father.”

“Don’t the Chairman’s children go by other names? I thought they were all incognito.”

“You don’t mind asking questions do you, O’Mara? I earned the right to use his name.”

“Asking questions is my job,” I say. Though I don’t ask him how he earned his name. I don’t want to know.

“I don’t think women should have jobs,” he says.

I bite back a laugh. Until I see he’s not smiling. “How…” I clear my throat as my words catch. “How would anything get done if women didn’t work? There aren’t enough men. And they, I mean you’re all so busy with your families.”

“Bots,” Hamel Portero says. “Bots can do most things. Bots and lesbians.”

“Lesbians are women.”

“If you say so.” He huffs. “We’ll get slaves from the mainland, then. We can do it, you know. My father talks about invading all the time. The embargo has controlled us for long enough.”

His eyes drift down my body. When I was in high school, the few boys I ever encountered out in the city would sometimes do this. Sometimes it was lustful, but sometimes it was possessive, acquisitive, as though I was something they could simply purchase and take home to own. Many boys are raised to think this way, not only to view women as a product to acquire but themselves as consumers, with a duty to buy, to keep the economy healthy. The marriage economy. Men don’t naturally want more than a few wives any more than someone wants a vast collection of expensive wrist passes or shoes. They have to learn this consumerist desire.

Hamel Portero’s eyes make me shiver. There’s lust in them, and avarice. But there’s also something else, something hostile. And now that I look at him closely I see a little bit of Tully in him. But he’s more like the hateful Tully in the nightmares, the one inclined to malice and murder.

“Another one of my wives is about to get silenced.” Hamel says, turning his eyes towards a portrait on the wall.

“Why doesn’t she just divorce you?”

He seems surprised at this suggestion. “I don’t have to agree to that. I could have her status taken away if she insists. Then where would she go? The Pleasures?”

I make a conscious effort to tilt my chin up, reminding myself that this will all be worth it in the end. “Maybe that might be better. To her anyway. Why do you want to silence her?”

He slips his hand along the back of the settee and wraps his fingers around a handful of my hair. “She won’t let me fuck her in the ass.”

I stand so quickly my hair wrenches out of his hand, but not without making my scalp burn. I step away, crossing my arms, edging a few steps closer to the exit door. “Maybe if you like anal sex, you should fuck men,” I say.

His eyes blaze momentarily, but he recovers. “You’ve got a mouth on you O’Mara Tanner,” he says, standing up. “I wonder what it would feel like wrapped around my cock.”

I turn and take three steps away, stopping by a wall terminal. “Sentinel,” I say. Nothing happens. “A man is harassing me. Please send a guard.”

Hamel chuckles. “Do you think our security system is connected to the Authority mainframe? That wouldn’t do at all. This system only responds to voices of residents and staff.”

I ignore him, covering the distance to the exterior door in two seconds. “Open.” Nothing happens. “Open! Let me out.”

“That only responds to residents and staff, too.”

I press my hands on the heavy door as I hear him slither up behind me. This is what comes from never getting to know a man or boy, not in the years since my brother and father died anyway. Nothing has prepared me to deal with someone like this. Girls are told how men can be, but there are so few around that it’s not really a fear. And once you’re married, well, they say everything will be fine once you’re married. A husband protects you from everyone but himself.

No wonder so many people, so many women, prefer the Pleasures. At least there they have some control.

Hamel presses his body against mine, pulling down on my hair again. “Do you know why my father chose you to do the interview?”

“Let go of me.”

He pulls me by my hair, making me lose my balance and fall back on my ass. Before I can squirm away, he straddles me, his hands wrapped around my neck.

“I think Dad wants me to marry you,” he says as I tug at his fingers.  He slides his hips forward towards my face. I can see his erection bulging in the front of his trousers. “But you don’t seem very obedient. I only want obedient wives.”

I dig my fingernails into his wrist and hand. He glares down at me, but I know I’m hurting him. When he finally flinches, his grip weakens momentarily and I manage to wrest his hands away and flip over.

There’s a weird cracking noise and then I’m seeing stars and feeling pain exploding in the back of my head. Blood drips from my nose onto the expensive carpet.

“Hamel!”

I look up through watering eyes. Trenoweth Portero stands at the end of the hallway in the open doorway.

“Get off her, boy. That’s very undignified.”

I feel his weight move and roll away from him, scrambling back for the door, slamming it with my palm. “Help,” It comes out as a blood-bubbled whimper. “Help me…”

I don’t turn as the Chairman’s footsteps approach behind me. “Even if they can hear you, they won’t do anything except on my order.”

“What do you want from me?” I speak into the wood of the door.

He holds out a white handkerchief. After a moment, I take it, holding it over my nose as I turn.

Trenoweth Portero is not a tall man, but he looms above me, his dark eyes studying me with a glint of pleasure. His son stands deferentially behind him, a salacious grin on his face. At a glance I can see he still has an erection. I look back down at the carpet. “What do you want?” I repeat.

The Chairman squats down so he can speak to me at eye level. “I want you to consider the level of surveillance that is required to maintain a position such as my own.” He raises his eyebrows, expectantly.

“I don’t know what you are talking about. You asked me to interview you.” I’m fighting not to sob. This is much more frightening than I expected
. I’m
more frightened that I expected to be, even though I planned for this. I
hoped
for it. “I just came to interview you. I mean you no harm. I’m just an intern. I’m no one.”

He reaches forward, stroking my bloody face.

“Don’t say that O’Mara. You matter to someone, don’t you?”

“No. No one. My family are all dead.” Like I’m likely to be soon. What was I thinking, that I could take down the government single-handedly? That I could get the Chairman to confess to all his many and various crimes and corruptions? That anyone would care?

“I, on the other hand, have a very large family,” he says, as behind him, his son cracks his knuckles. “But you know that.”