Carnival-SA by Elizabeth Bear Page A

this was what combat training looked like on a gentle male, one whose strength wasn’t bent on reproduction and dominance. It suited him, she thought, watching his stocky, barrel-chested body glide from form to form without rising or falling from a level line. He finished as she watched, then paused, a sheen of sweat making his dark skin seem to glow in comparison with his loose white trousers. Then he bowed formally and dropped into slow-motion push-ups, alternating arms. Male arm strength. Which made it no less impressive.
    Katherinessen came from the shower a moment later, naked and dripping slightly. Wisps of mist hung around him, and green, gold, and blue lights glowed through the tawny skin in the hollow of his left wrist. He touched them; the mist drifted in spirals about his body, and his hair and skin were dry. Even the water droplets on the leaves of the carpetplant ended abruptly, five steps from the shower door. He was older than she’d thought, Lesa realized. He was a ropy man, long and lean, the fibers of his muscles clearly visible under the skin, but that skin had a soft, lived-in look. He moved in his body unself-consciously. She thought he might be showing himself off to his lover a little, which made her smile. He could be anywhere from thirty-five New Amazonian years to fifty; if he were a native she would have guessed thirty from the sparse gray in his hair and his relatively unlined face, but the Colonials stayed out of the sun; he might be much older.
    And that was without accounting for the OECC’s medical technology. She’d heard they could live into their second century in vigorous health. It worried her; these men were the equivalents of Elders, if men had Elders, and if the Colonial Coalition had any sense at all, they would be as wily and problematic as anyone in the New Amazonian Parliament.
    And they were men . Men with education and resources and the power of a multiworld organization behind them. But men, half crazy with evolutionary pressures half the time. The OECC couldn’t conquer New Amazonia; they’d proven that to everyone’s satisfaction. But if it ever decided that what New Amazonia had to offer wasn’t worth the trouble and loss of face its existence created—and if they could find enough reasons to justify their actions to the Governors—they could destroy it. Bang . As easily as Lesa could lay down her comb, open the closet door with a word to House, and pull out her formal dress.
    Lesa didn’t believe her mother’s confident prediction that the Governors would protect them. For one thing, as long as they remained an ungoverned world, they weren’t under the OECC’s ecological hegemony. The Governors might easily decide it was better to shoot first and reconstruct later, and they might be willing to destroy the Dragons’ legacy to do it.
    She dressed and found her evening holster on the hanger. It was supple red leather, detailed in gold, and it stood out against the sea-snake sequins of her flowing trousers.
    Kusanagi-Jones was finishing his push-ups when she turned back to the image in her blotter. He came up on his knees and rose with casual power, standing in time to hook Katherinessen around the waist as Katherinessen went by, and pulled him close.
    Lesa flicked the desk off and reached for her honor in the same gesture. Bonding the pistol into her holster, she frowned.
    All right, they were cute. But she couldn’t afford to start thinking of them as human.

    Angelo’s body was warm and firm through his gi. His hair tickled Vincent’s cheek and the crook of his neck smelled of clean sweat, quickly fading into the same toiletry licenses he’d been using for the last thirty years. Vincent wondered what he’d do if they ever took that particular cedar note off the market. It was a known smell, viscerally, and Vincent’s body responded. “Go get clean. It’s pleasant. Decadent. You’ll like it.”
    Michelangelo stepped back, his gi vanishing into curls of