“Outside of this, I’m fine Regina. Work’s going great, and all’s well with the world.”
Regina smiled, bringing up dimples in her round face. “I believe you. You seem. . . .relaxed. Even here. But work’s what you think of first. What about the rest of your life?”
Jaguar paused, smiled at her blankly.
“Social life, love life, personal growth, family and friends—the rest of your life, Jaguar,” Regina prompted.
“Oh. That. Well, that’s fine, too. I’m singing a lot with Moon Illusion—when I can, of course. Gerry’s pretty upset when shit like this happens and he has to do his own singing.”
“And?” Regina asked.
She was fishing for something, and Jaguar thought she knew what. Regina, perpetually single, always encouraged her workers to establish solid relationships, even to start families, though more often than not that meant they left their work here. Jaguar tried to take the conversation elsewhere.
“My people on the Home Planet are well. I was there recently with—” she stopped herself, realizing she was about to say with Alex. “With an assignment,” she amended. “You really have to let me take you to Thirteen Streams sometime. You’d love New Mexico.”
Regina laughed. “Don’t try your evasive tactics with me. I won’t let you wiggle out of this. The grapevine says you’ve taken a lover.”
Jaguar offered a cool smile. “Do they think that’s a first for me?”
“Oh, Jaguar. This is me. You and Alex—are you together now? At last?”
She wanted to say yes, wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to share her joy, especially with Regina, mentor, model, and the closest to a mother she’d ever had. Her example showed Jaguar how a woman might find her power within this very male system. She and Diane spent quite a few nights sitting at Regina’s table after hours, drinking wine and arguing with enthusiasm about various theories of rehab for prisoners. They’d come to be seen as a triumvirate of powerful women, some of the men referring to them as the three witches, asking how their last cauldron had gone, the sharpness of their fear cloaked within a jovial, joking manner.
And Regina, who’d seen her pain at Diane’s abandonment, also saved her ass from being fired altogether. She’d sent her to Alex, and would certainly be glad of her happiness with him. But Jaguar was reluctant to give up any secrets here. Too many ghosts, and all of them listening. Too much knowledge might put Regina in a bad position at some point. That was either paranoia, or her finely honed instinct for danger, her capacity to pick up on the smallest signal of it in a face, in a gesture, in the air. Either way, she’d listen to it.
“People have been talking about me and Alex for as long as I’ve been on Three, Regina,” she said. “I’d think they’d get tired of it by now.”
Regina showed clear disappointment. “Then it’s not true?”
Jaguar was a lousy liar, but she had a talent for evasion, and she used it. “I can get sex anywhere,” she said, “but a really good supervisor is hard to find. You think I’d risk it?”
Regina sighed. “I’ve said this to you before, Jaguar. Love is worth a risk or two.”
Jaguar grinned. “Yes, Mother. I remember. And our work should be part of that love, caring for the prisoners as if they were our own children.”
Regina laughed. “I remember saying that. Vaguely. How much wine did we drink that night?”
“Too much. And some tequila got in there somehow, I think.
“Those were good days,” Regina said, sounding wistful. “But—well, if you’re happy, I’m happy for you. Are you? Happy?”
“I’m happy to be alive,” she said. “Happy my hair is looking as good as it is. Happy about a really good tequila. How’s everything with you? Anything interesting going on?”
“I’m getting old, Jaguar. The most interesting thing in my life is waking up in the morning.”
Jaguar laughed. “Not this week.”
“You may be right. Ah—here’s the scanning station.”
They passed into a small grey room, where red lights blinked as they were scanned for weapons, drugs, any suspect object. Jaguar’s glass knife passed through undetected, as always. For as many new sensors that were invented, humans came up with a way of sneaking past them.
“That’s fine, then,” Regina said, when the lights all turned green.
They moved through the open space beyond the entrance checks, and from there into what served as the streets of the bubble domes—broad corridors banked by housing facilities. They were the equivalent of hotel suites, row upon row of numbered doors that all looked the same except for the small decorations some people put on their doors to help them find their own rooms after a night of carousing at one of the pubs or lounges.
“Do you need anything before we get to your room?” Regina asked. “We can stop at the market.”
“I just want to settle in. I can shop tomorrow—I mean, I think I can. What’s my routine here? Has a schedule been set for me, or am I supposed to wing it?”
Regina chuckled. “Nobody would dare let you improvise, Jaguar. No, we’ve got a pretty full schedule laid out. Piles of records to go through, tours, interviews with Diane’s co-workers, sessions with Francis. And you’ll be attending daily meetings so you’ll understand our system as you investigate.”
She stifled a groan. Alex was right. They wanted to kill her. Death by meetings. “Great,” she said as heartily as she could. “What’s first on the agenda?”
“Tomorrow is orientation, and a training on our new psychotropics. You’ll find that interesting. We’ve seen some great results with this generation of Alitrans. They lower mutoid anxiety levels considerably.”
Without thinking Jaguar opened her mouth and let some untactful words fall out. “Nice to know the miracle of science can relax the slaves,” she said dryly.
Regina stopped walking and regarded her with pained courtesy. “These are my programs, Jaguar. I’ve developed them very carefully, with our prisoners’ welfare in mind. ”
Jaguar regretted the sharpness of her words, though she continued to believe they were true. It was something she’d argued about with Regina in the past, and she would continue to do so.
“Sorry,” she said, “I’m tired and my mouth got ahead of my brain. And don’t get me wrong. I like work programs for prisoners.”
“I know. We talked about it often enough. But you’ve been making lots of noise against these. Frankly, it’s troubled me.”
“It’s not your vision that’s wrong,” Jaguar said. “It’s the connection between the prisoners and your economy. The Planetoid’s getting dependent on what they do. Last time that happened—well, we both know what came next.”
Before the Planetoids, prisons on the home planet swelled to house millions, most of them poor or mentally ill, racially or geographically disadvantaged. They became an industry, a complex system of economic interdependency. When they were no longer supportable the states started release programs, but they let all the wrong prisoners loose while cutting social welfare programs that might help them adjust. Those prisoners began the ritual killing that became the Killing Times. The Planetoids were built to make sure that never happened again.
“We both also know there’s lots of people who believe empaths started the Killing Times,” Regina noted.
Jaguar paused, looked to her. “You’re not one of them, are you?”
“Of course not,” Regina said. “I’m saying your sight may be limited by your experience,