A Glass of Tsilk by Julie Steimle (digital e reader .txt) 📖

“It is much easier to be critical than correct.”—Benjamin Disraeli—

Zormna stared at her glass of tsilk and grumbled to herself. She was an Anzer, and well deserved. And she had kept out of trouble. But whenever Alea Tengarr saw her in the hallways he gloated so much that she felt like wringing his neck—though that did not bother her half as much as that undercity boy she had caught the other day. She knew she had seen his face somewhere before and by the time she remembered where she had seen him, a lousy P.M. accused her of losing the boy. The P.M.’s accusations brought back all her anger and frustration at the whole rotten system. She had nearly forgotten it all in the quite living of the Alpha district.

It had been nice being home. Her duties as an Anzer were good. Alea Arden kept her busy, so she really had no reason to complain, except….  The boy’s face flashed in her head. His determined and exasperated expression as he wrestled her grip astounded her. No one ever fought as hard as he did. No one ever could fight her as hard as he did. It was difficult enough to keep him down but harder still to fight his unconquerable spirit. Zormna had been so proud of her success, even after the P.M.s lost him—but it was his face, like out of an important dream that she had somehow forgotten, and Alea Arden’s expression of sadness that puzzled her.

She stirred her drink and shook her head. Did Alea Arden know him? It was probable. Alea Arden did grow up in the undercity, and that boy was so entirely undercity even if he did look like a seer child. Her superior officer looked so…so…Zormna could not put her finger on it. He looked disappointed, but not in her. It was not even disappointment in the boy. Zormna stirred her tsilk and mulled over it all. No. It was the system. Zormna nodded at this conclusion. He hated the system.

A dull ache tugged at her chest and Zormna frowned. No…. That was not it. Not exactly anyway. It was something else.

“Zormna!” someone called to her over the crowd at Sandi’s.

“Oh, hi, Salvar,” she said, barely looking up.

Salvar ignored her unenthusiastic greeting as he trotted over to her table and leaned on it. “Me and a bunch of the guys are going to the public gym to watch Alea Prantz get his pants kicked at pronuk. Do you want to come?”

Zormna cracked a smile at the thought but shook her head. “I’d better not. Pronuk in my off hours never did me any good.”

Giving a shrug and a nod, he said, “You don’t have to come in. We’re also stopping off at the Ker’zep dance hall with a few civs we picked up at the arcade.”

Casting him a sidelong glance, Zormna said, “You’re hanging with civs? Since when were you interested in civilians, Salvar?”

With a blush he pulled on her hand. “Come on, Zormna. You’ve been mopey since yesterday. That boy’s escape doesn’t still bother you, does it?”

She shook her head slightly.

“I dunno. Maybe a little.” Then with fury, she said, “That P.M. had no right to storm in like that, making accusations.”

Salvar nodded. “I know. That boy must be his pet project or something, and he blew it.”

Nodding, she agreed. “I guess so.”

Again Salvar tugged on Zormna’s arm again to come with him. She smirked, shaking her head at him.

“If I come, will you quit with the pulling?” she said wryly.

Salvar smiled. He had her. They immediately left the restaurant, abandoning the still full, fizz-less tsilk sitting on the table.

They jogged out onto the balcony walkway just outside in the Surface Gate main hall where Aver Bren and Cadet Marsek waited with two middlecity blondes on the back of their flight scooters. One look at Zormna Clendar and the girls immediately shared glances with each other and at their third friend, a svelte strawberry blonde waiting on Salvar’s scooter.

“Is that your friend?” the girl on his scooter said, trying not to sound catty but still giving away her surprise that Salvar’s friend was not a boy.

Zormna strained a smile, knowing what was running though the girl’s head. Since her true emergence into womanhood, it seemed Zormna got nothing but snide remarks from the ladies of all castes.

“Do you have room on your flight scooter?” Salvar’s date asked him as he climbed on.

Zormna laughed. “I have my own,” she said, walking towards her top of the line Alpha issue, patting it.

Salvar rolled his eyes and started his motor, casting Zormna behave-yourself looks. She fluttered her eyelashes back at him with a mocking grin as she climbed astride her vehicle, then Zormna gave the girl a placid gaze and pulled on her helmet, strapping it securely then adjusting her gloves and jacket to fit.

Adjusting Salvar’s jacket around herself, his date pulled on his helmet also, and gave an excited giggle as he let his scooter hover. Her arms wrapped quickly around his waist. The other two officers lifted off at the same time, guiding their vehicles into the Surface Gate traffic. Salvar waited for Zormna to follow, glancing back as she revved up her scooter. She lifted off before he could give a word, practically leaping into traffic the way she always did.

All together, they zipped through the traffic, passing slower cars and service vehicles while weaving in and out as their training had taught them. The three girls on back giggled and screamed to each other as the boys flew faster to show off, zipping around a little recklessly. In fact Zormna was the one minding the traffic when it was usually the reverse, but then she was the only one that had to keep from bringing more marks against her record. As they journeyed, Zormna could hear through the helmet com the girls commenting to each other over the wind as they had not strapped their helmets on properly—chatter and gossip mostly so not worth listening to. But one gasped rather dramatically at a remark another girl made and they hissed more fervently that it was hard to ignore.

<<I don’t think she’s anything to worry about. He’s with you, not her,>> one said.

Zormna chuckled.

The girls looked back at her the moment they heard the laugh through their helmet coms, hushing up immediately.

Cadet Marsek dived out of the traffic, leading them to the curb near the sports center doors, landing with style. Aver Bren flew right on his tail, pulling alongside, followed next by Salvar then Zormna. Their passengers climbed off. As they started to fit their flight scooters among the other parked on the side, they noted to themselves the sheer number of Surface Patrol scooters that were among the parked vehicles. It wasn’t usual.

The girls started giggling again once they passed the helmets back to the boys, gathering in a cluster before the boys joined them on the walkway. Zormna took her time to unbutton her jacket and stuff her helmet into her seat, glancing up at her fellow officers who were in her mind grinning like dopes. Salvar had a broad smile with one arm around his date as he entertained her with stupid jokes that were meant to impress her. The girl laughed on cue, all perky and vapid to Zormna’s tastes, and he looked incredibly pleased with it all. Zormna shook her head with a smirk, joining them towards the doors.

As they walked through the game doors, they showed the man at the entrance their identicards and they passed through. The man gave the Surface Patrol officers polite nods, and he inspected the girl’s cards to make sure they were not expired. After they passed the first gate, Zormna, Aver Bren, and Salvar (who was now an Aver himself) walked over to the locker hall to check in their firearms. Cadet Marsek waited with the girls, gazing enviously at their weaponry that only officers in the patrol were allowed to have. Salvar took the key and clipped to the inside of his jacket pocket.

Strolling further into the large sports arena, they hardly gave the vaulted ceiling that opened into three levels with a large arcade a glance.  Instead they passed the ground floor gymnasium on the left and the long drinks bar on the right straight to the pronuk gallery where they could find spectators’ seats to watch private matches. Like all pronuk rooms, the observation seats were situated in the back behind the players where thick see-through glass gave outside viewers a look in but a sense of privacy to the players within. Alea Prantz was playing in pronuk room five.

Several Surface Patrol officers were already sitting on the stands, cheering the Alea. Seeing him play Zormna chuckled. That Alea needed all the help he could get. The man was playing against a tall undercity blond guy dresses in plain clothes with that the characteristic moppish haircut that had his bangs falling into his eyes and over the tops of his ears. Zormna could only pretend to cheer for the Alea, but her interest leaned toward the blond fellow who was a more than a fair player. He was good. Very good.

She watched the undercity boy’s moves, feeling drawn into each play as if she were competing against him herself. But then she leaned back with a chuckle, covering her mouth.

“What’s so funny?” the middlecity girl with Salvar said, looking annoyed.

Ignoring the source of the question, Zormna leaned over to Salvar and said, “I know his weak spot. He can’t hit the triple right from the low corner.”

The she leaned back again, laughing again at her discovery.

The girl scowled at Zormna for ignoring her. “Then why don’t you play if you’re so hot?”

With a glanced at Salvar’s date with a twitch in her frown, Zormna said nothing.

Aver Bren spoke up with a snort. “She used to. But she swore if off after they caught her and Cadet Lenn scamming a bunch of the other cadets.”

“I quit,” Zormna replied to him with bite, “because I didn’t want to be used in that way ever again, Aver Bren.”

Salvar smiled then leaned over to his date in a whisper. “Anzer Zormna used to be the best pronuk player in the Patrol until she played Cadet Kurtz. She doesn’t like losing.”

Zormna just rolled her eyes at him as he grinned back with a smirk. Turning her gaze back down on the game, she tried to ignore the girls’ snickers that chorused with their dates’. But the game below had paused. Alea Prantz was drinking something on the sidelines while the blond boy who had been leading the game by thirty points was being coached on the sidelines by another undercity boy who was more of the Orr’quarr ethnicity, a rare mix of red-black hair like that P.M. Dural Mezela. But this undercity boy kept his long mop of hair brushed sleek to the side of his face, his one hand stuffed in his undercity jacket as the other demonstrated