Chapter 3: Neck Meet Chopping Block

The leaf high didn’t help with the pain. More like it killed John’s need to care. While both the hurt and the swelling in his hand ballooned, he wandered the lower levels, killing time until he was ready to go back into the Easterbrook residence. He always found the simple design of the lower levels upsetting, the long, straight hallways lengthwise, the horizontal hallways that did nothing but curve upward. He had grown up on Level 2 among the sweeping lines and oval rooms, as close to the nature of Level 1 Leadership got without entering the agriculture caste. The upper class didn’t need to use every square centimeter. The architecture here was as utilitarian as its residents.

John waited until six o’clock, when his husbands and wives would sit down to eat dinner, and went back up. The main hallway of the Easterbrook residence had paintings, thick canvas, representations of past Easterbrook dancers of historical import. They also served as noise dampeners for the rest of the house. Further down the hall, the dining room door stood open. The buzz of the rest of the Easterbrook’s poured out while they chatted with each other over the food and caught up with the events of the day.

Careful not to touch the grime, John pulled off his athletic shoes, a conscious effort with his undamaged hand. He put his other hand to the wall to balance himself. A fresh pain shot through his arm as if he needed reminding of his injury. John picked up his shoes—the use of the non-dominant side uncanny—and placed them in the shoebox on his rack beside his boots, dress, and pointe shoes.

He snuck past the dining room and caught a glance of the back of Frantzisca’s head. She fed her blood daughter, Olympia. John would know those profiles anywhere. He had known Frantzisca since he took ballet lessons with her, before even she became an Easterbrook. When he found himself drowning in the troubled, turbulent Leovard ocean, Frantzisca kept his head above water. She was the flotsam he clung to, the outstretched hand he reached for, the sunlight that died him off. After she took the Easterbrook polyname, he followed her into the caste family. Fucking any of his wives sparked joy, but he made love to Frantzisca.

And Olympia, well… she was his blood daughter. No father was supposed to claim a child as his, but—against all odds—Frantzisca didn’t pass on her jet black hair. Olympia had blond hair. It even turned wavy if it grew more than a few centimeters, same as his. One of the other husbands had dirty blond hair, but she looked like John. Everyone saw him in Oly, even if they wouldn’t say so.

John moved past the living room, past the stairs up to the sleeping pods, and into the laundry room. He unzipped from the edge of his sleeve, under his armpit and down to his hip. He squeezed the zipper in his pained hand. The bone fragments inside ground together. So did his teeth. John held his breath and sucked in scant breaths when the pain got too great. From the edge of his sleeve, he unzipped under his armpit and down to his hip. With his left hand, he pulled the collar up and over his head.

“Do you need assistance with that, sir?” The mechanized voice came from behind.

John shuddered. Alfred, the house robot, stood behind him, a helpful grin on his bendable plastic face. Of all the robots, John couldn’t stand the ones that approximated human anatomy the most. Like corpses come to life.

“I got it.” John pulled on his cuff, slipping this swollen hand under the flexible fabric. He suppressed a grimace. “Maybe you should help with dinner?”

“Lady Frantzisca requested that I make some chicken nuggets for our Olympia. Apparently, my chicken liver pate is too rich for the youngling.”

“Get on that.”

Alfred gave a curt bow and exited the laundry room. The pressure of the sleeve became too much to bear. Something was wrong. A night of rest would do his hand good. All John needed to do was get up into a sleep pod upstairs. Simple plans were best.

John stripped down to his underwear and tossed the filthy jumpsuit down the laundry chute. He draped himself in a bathrobe, white fluffy fabric with a black embroidered ‘E’ on the chest, and left the laundry room.

“Daddy!” Oly stuck her head stuck out the doorway of the dining room. The three-year-old’s stubby legs moved quick. Before John realized, she already stood at his feet, holding out her arms. He lifted her with one arm and gave her a hug. The toddler didn’t understand how caste families worked. She had lots of fathers, but John was her daddy.

Frantzisca followed the girl. “Oh, John. It’s not good.”

Caught. All he had to do was get up the stairs, and he didn’t even manage that. “What’s not?”

“Where were you today?” Paul, the Easterbrook patriarch, gray of hair and beard, still with the lithe muscles from the workout that ballet provides, appeared in the doorway. “You know what today is?”

Oly looked up at him with those beautiful brown eyes, her mother’s eyes.

“Yeah. I know.” John didn’t.

“Did you remember,” Paul marched up to him with purposeful strides, “you had to teach that new class today?”

It felt like the bottom of his stomach dropped. A metallic taste flooded his mouth. He forgot. His schedule changed, and he forgot. John had seen the change, but he couldn’t bring himself to think about any more than he had to, so he didn’t let it enter his mind at all.

Paul put his hands on his hips, arms akimbo. “You were expected to teach the leadership kid. We let you into the marriage to represent Easterbrook interests within Leadership. I had to cover for you today.”

The marriage might have been not the best idea. It had sounded good to his physicality for living. Not only that, but the Easterbrooks were hetero-alternative, a rarity among the bi-normative population of Hadfield station. He wasn’t interested in sleeping with guys. John was weird like that. However, politics infiltrated life in the ballet troupe, same as the Leovards. That stink left over from the leadership caste lingered no matter where he escaped.

“I’m sorry.”

Oly was quiet.

Paul’s eyes drifted down to John’s swollen hand. His head cocked to the side. “Where were you?”

John didn’t dare tell him. “I forgot the lesson.”

“Yeah, well, that kid will find another troupe to get lessons from. We have a family meeting tonight about whether you will remain in the marriage.”

Frantzisca’s spine straightened. “You can’t be serious.”

Oly let out a wail. Frantzisca pulled her out of John’s arms and pressed her to her chest, patting the girl’s back.

“I’m afraid I am serious. We gave you a home when you wanted to escape your family, and all you wanted to do since is escape this one, too. Find somewhere else to sleep tonight. If I have anything to say about it, you won’t be welcome in the Easterbrook residence anymore.”

John’s mouth was agape. No words came out. He wasn’t happy as an Easterbrook, but divorce? No way he’d become one of those losers smoking his life away in a gaming café. How did it come to this?

“The worst part of it?” Paul didn’t bother to turn around. “I thought one day you’d make a great patriarch, but raging bulls don’t lead.”

All he could do was watch Paul’s back while he wandered off.

Frantzisca bounced the crying girl in her arms. “What are we going to do?”

If this happened a few years earlier he would take her away with him, but what would they do? Start a new troupe? Frantzisca would make a fantastic matriarch, but John being the patriarch, doing what Paul does? No way. And there was Oly. John wasn’t about to let her grow up casteless if they failed.

Alfred walked up to his side with a folded black jumpsuit in his hands, held out in offering. “Might I suggest going to a hospital and getting your injury treated. I’m not a doctor, but it appears as if your hand is getting worse.”