The Fluffer

Marian heard the men coming before they were close enough to be seen, just like every noon, like every midnight. Of course, it wasn't the men she heard first, but her sisters of the trade employing their various method's of attracting attention; catcalls, whistles, flattery, threats - she heard it all, just like always. They all wanted to be chosen by the Chosen.

Once Marian finished the line in her stitch, she put down the dress she was mending, stuck the needle in the arm of her chair, and went to her open window to lean out. The morning haze had burnt off the city, leaving the air thick but breezy. A gust picked at the slender red braids that dangled beside her face. She inhaled deeply; she'd been in the city too long to cough or even smell the melange of chemophers in the air. The buildings and remains of buildings that crowded this section of the city hedged in her view, but she was in time to see the boat lift off from its pad on the other side of town. It was washed pale blue in the atmosphere, and the heat and water vapor made its lower half shimmer. It took a moment to stabilize its repulsor/thruster mix, then bounced off into the sky to become a dot, then nothing.

She tilted out further and twisted her neck to look down the street; the informal procession was still around the corner at Bank St., but the neighborhood's resident black cat dashed across the foot-rounded cobble of brick and cinderblock, anxious to be well-hidden before the parade caught her out.

Then the procession appeared. There were still around forty men, so less than half had been sniped off by the easy women waiting by the boat pad. Good. A handful of honor guards with poleprods walked at the front and back of the group of men, but beneath their helmets and half-masks they looked bored. None of the men ever tried to escape or made a real scene, not once they were already here. Most of the procession was comprised of women like her, swarming around and between the men. Women who shared her profession, anyway - very few were like her.

Marian let her eyes wander over the men, placing each of them within their category. Fighter. Lover. Haggler. Fatalist. There were only so many options. Some them were shirtless and well-muscled, and they strode smugly at the front of the procession as if they actually deserved all of the praise and flattery and appraising touches. How absurd. It was all just extra meat they'd accumulated on their body. What was so great about meat?

Her eyes moved quickly to the back of the of the crowd and fixed on one man in particular. "Man" was flattering; he was barely more than a boy, certainly not more than twenty years old. Poor kid. The lottery started at sixteen, but she rarely saw anyone near that young. He was wide-eyed and shut-mouthed and probably scared half to death, though he did a good job of hiding it. He looked observant, thoughtful. The women in the crowd mostly ignored him; it was a safe assumption that as young as he was, his worth wasn't much. Until the pickings started to thin out, he was a waste of their time.

Marian rested her elbows on the sill, cupped her chin in her hands, and stared at him. Her thoughts focused, aimed squarely at his head like a laser. Look at me.

He looked. At first it was only a glance, then he turned to stare. She wasn't like the women in the street, heavy with makeup and wearing brightly-colored skirts. She was a different kind of sight: tattooed over both arms with holy icons, plaited hair naturally red and sprouting from a band at the top of her head like a sheaf of wheat. Marian crooked her finger, beckoning, and after a look around him - a final judgment on his other options, he left the crowd and walked toward her.

She met him at her door. She hadn't invited him inside, but he seemed unusually hesitant at the bottom of her single stair. He met her eyes; his were blue like some precious stone, so striking and engaging that she had trouble breaking away to take a measure of his features and predict his character. His voice was as hesitant as his feet. "Are you a... you know, a fluffer?"

"Yes, dear - an Attendant." Marian leaned against her door frame. His face was promising; it told her he was honest and intelligent, but not wealthy. That suited her. Besides, she liked his eyes.

"Oh. Sorry - right. Attendant. Good. How do I- I mean, it's not like the ones out in the street. Do I just ask you, Ma'am?"

"Have you decided what you're going to do yet?"

He shrugged awkwardly in response, and glanced down at his feet as though that were something to be ashamed of.

"Tell me this, young man: Do you plan on taking any weapons, or do you have a speech prepared?"

He lifted his face to meet her eyes again. "No, Ma'am."

"Then come inside and take a seat. What's your name, dear?"

"Andy."

Marian shut the door behind him, and closed the shutters on her window. The slats cut into the roof to catch rainwater let in enough filtered yellow sunlight to fill the room. Only the one room was hers, but it was large enough and easy to keep clean, and she kept it in good repair. The stairs that had long ago led down to the story below were filled with the same black, glassy concrete that went down for meters beneath the pavers in the street; now the stair well made a convenient alcove for her sleeping mat, and her other personal possessions remained out of the way behind a curtain along the wall. She walked him over to her chair, whisking away her sewing before he could prick himself on the needle or tear her stitch, and bid him sit.

As she took her reader out of its charging cradle beside the window and scanned the barcode on his wristband, she smiled at him. "Where are you from, Andy? Not Sydney, from your accent. But I thought that's where the last boat bounced in from."

"Christchurch, Ma'am."

"Ahh."

"You must have a good ear for accents."

She smiled again. "I hear them all. Tell me: how old are you, Andy? Certainly not so young that you have to call me Ma'am. I'm Marian."

"Sorry about that. I'm nineteen. Twenty in April. Would've been." There was no remorse or wry humor in his voice, no tear welling in his eye. "Youngest Chosen in the South Island yet, I think, but there was another nineteen in Wellington a coupla years back, and a seventeen out of Napier first year they ran the lottery."

"Ahh." It seemed to be a point of pride for him, so she kept up her smile.

She drew hot water into a daisy-patterned basin while preparing towels and a razor and soaps. "When was the last time you ate, Andy?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Right after the lottery was called, just like they said. I barely had time to make it to the station after. Missed saying goodbye to my sister - she was out of town."

"Ahh. I can't feed you a proper meal, you understand, but I have some crackers that are allowed - something like saltines - and of course I can give you water or tea."

"Yeah. Yes, please. A glass of water would be great, Marian. Thanks."

They barely spoke while she opened his shirt and washed his face and chest, then leaned him back in the chair to shave him. She touched him, even while she was slowly swiping the straight razor over his cheeks. She brushed her fingertips along his neck, around his ear, beneath his open chest. Men found that soothing, and it kept their minds from wandering toward what was to come. It made things go easier. She leaned over him from behind while she shaved his neck, and made sure that the top of his head nestled in against her breastbone.

He finally spoke again while she was swiping the curling hairs from his chest. "Are you going to shave me everywhere?"

"I can if you'd like. But it isn't necessary for Her, as long as you're neat and clean."

He nodded. He barely protested - just a modest blink and some hesitation - as she stood him up from the chair and helped him to slip completely from his clothes. While she soaked and soaped the sponge, she gave him a good opportunity to look at her bare back, at the mandala at the heart of the chains of tattoos that ran up her neck, over her arms, around her breasts, and disappeared at her waist behind the tartan-patterned fabric of her skirt. He asked that same question all of the thinking ones did: "Can you tell me about your tattoos? Is it allowed?"

"Of course it is." The water in the sponge was still warm when she wrung it out over his shoulders and began to scrub small circles. He was already pretty clean - they sterilized them on the boats, apparently - but the soap was perfumed with a scent that would make it easier for him. More importantly, it let Marian touch his body, to check for deformities, or scars, or infections, or anything she might want to warn Her to expect. It let her feel the energies in his nerve complexes. "The mandala on my back represents the Queendom, of course. You can see that, I'm sure, even if it's stylized: the ring, the walls, the seven outer gates, the jewel and the lotus and the godhead at the center. It's centered on my vital organs, which bind my soul to this physical body, much as Her Queendom binds Her to the material plane. From the gates of the city lead the seven paths to all the lands, and the stations along the way are elements of Her apocalypse. The stations are very specifically placed on the parts of my body that are most appropriate, so I am become a symbol of scripture." She stopped long enough to lift her arm and show him the back of her hand. "My right hand, for example, is the destruction of the London Enclave by the beam of light - the most famous example of Her might. At the base of my neck is the gridded globe, which is meant to symbolize the unification of the data networks with the wireless power mesh, which is the seat of preserved human knowledge. Do you understand?"

He chuckled nervously. "No. Not really."

"That's okay, dear. It's not a simple thing."

"I asked because I didn't see any other women with as many tattoos as yours."

"You don't have to be one of Her adherents to be an Attendant. In fact, most of my sisters feel the job is only grubbing after men's money."

"But you don't?"

"Are you wealthy, Andy?"

His laugh came easier this time. "Quite the opposite, I'm afraid."

"Then there you are."

The conversation fell off, mostly likely because Marian's hands and the sponge had moved down below his waistline. He didn't seem to be used to a woman handling his penis and scrotum quite as casually as she did; it only took a few subtle squeezes while she was washing him to produce an erection and make him think it was his fault. She smiled away his apology before he could begin to stammer it. "Would you like sex, dear? I'm not licensed to provide it since I kept my fertility, but I have a friend a few doors down who is very nice."

"No. No - I'm sure she is very nice, but I want to be... completely ready when I reach the door. Do you know what I mean? I heard someone talking on the boat about-"

"The Twelve Cities?"

Andy nodded.

The Twelves Stables would have been more apt. Being studded out to anonymous women must have been a male fantasy with how many time her Chosen told her about the Twelve Cities. It couldn't actually be a rational desire; certainly they couldn't be that blind to the reality of the numbers. Twelve cities and twelve thousand men per city might sound like an immense number, but when you considered the tens of millions of legal, fertile women left on each continent that were so very interested in sanctioned procreation - some as often as once a year... The man would have to be a machine, performing four, five, even six times a day, and he couldn't fake it. He wouldn't have his choice in mates, or the comfort of recuperating, or the allowance of the occasional failure. Too many young men like Andy were eager to take the place of an occasional failure.

But it wasn't fantasy she could hear in Andy's voice - it was more like determination and hope. His eyes were clear, not misty with lust. Marian could read it in his features: for him the Cities represented an opportunity - a second chance at a life cut short by a serial number and an unlucky lottery pick. It caught Marian by surprise then when he changed the subject. "How big is it - the, uhm, Queendom?"

While her sponge rubbed circles on his thighs, Marian wriggled one-handed into a rubber glove and rubbed her fingers into bowl filled with a thick, menthol-smelling balm. Andy sucked in his breath and shivered when the coated fingertips of the glove touched his scrotum. "It will help you win Her favor," she explained, but his shoulders were still tight as she worked the balm into the skin around the root of his penis. In proof of her point, though, his erection had begun to emerge again.

"You asked about the Queendom, didn't you? Have you seen a map of this area, Andy - an old one from before the Fall? Good. This city we're in now, Sixth gate, used to be called Princeton on those maps, and of course you know that Her touchdown was in Manhattan of New York. The Second Gate is the northmost of the seven, up in old Connecticut, and what parts of the Long Island that have not been covered by her Queendom are submerged."

His eyes widened. "That's huge! And They fill their whole Queendom?"

"It is very large - larger even than Lost Angeles Complex, and it may expand again soon. I don't know for certain that She fills her entire Queendom, though; there is speculation She is an ouroboros of sorts. Does that mean anything to you? Just know that you needn't worry about the inside of the Queendom; She will meet you just inside your Door."

He nodded, and complied as I lifted each of his feet in turn to dip them in to the basin, then dried them and fitted them into clean reed sandals. He was staring up at the slatted ceiling, or through it, and the way his mouth moved Marian though he might be doing math. "How many do they ...need per day?"

"There are Seven Gates, Andy, and Seventy Doors per Gate. A boat at midnight, a boat at mid-day, every day, makes for a little less than a thousand. Add in the Ninth Gate for the criminals and malcontents; I'm told that's easily another thousand per day."

"The ninth gate?" He accepted the robe she held open for him, and slipped his hands through each arm. "What about the eighth?"

Marian winced. It was an obvious question, but he should have known better. She glanced over at the window to make sure it was closed, to make sure she didn't see the shadow of someone listening outside to test her, then just shook her head at him.

"So that's about two thousand a day. It sounds like a heavy toll, maybe - especially when it's your number that's been called - but you have to understand that it's just a spoonful in a lake. Last I heard, the registered world population had gone back above four hundred millions. That's very high - more than you or I can wrap our minds around - and apparently more than she prefers. It's not greed on her part to take that many men - it's population control. It's benevolent stewardship."

Marian couldn't be sure she'd convinced him, but he remained silent after that, which made his opinion moot. He let her groom his hair and satisfy herself with her final touches, and he nodded when she turned him toward his reflection in her mirror for validation.

The street out her front door was quiet again - almost somber. Women - most with dull-colored scarves tied over their heads - walked silently about their business. Marian led Andy by the hand, and didn't comment when she saw Anys with her Chosen a few hundred yards ahead. She turned Andy down an alleyway and took a different path. Though her steps on the uneven cobbles were certain - she'd had more than twenty years of practice, after all - his were less so and he required some steadying.

It was more than two kilometers of gradual uphill climbing before the broken rooflines were submerged in the still wave of glassy black concrete. Here there were no cobbles, and the black surface was never worn down; instead of smoothing it flaked, leaving shards and newly sharp surfaces for the unwary. But she kept a firm hand on Andy's arm, and watched his step for him as he stared up and ahead. She had the Queendom Wall memorized now, with all of it's straight-sided minarets and bulging buttresses curving out in shapes that merged seamlessly from geometrical to organic. As they reached the top of their climb, Andy's sharp would begin to see the relief designs in the Wall, she expected. Most of her tattoos were replicas of symbols found somewhere along its perimeter. She turned him just a bit, enough to redirect him to the wide arched gateway: the only visible break in the Wall before it shrunk to a black thread on the horizon. There was no choosing different paths from the other Chosen now; a dozen other men and their Attendants trudged ahead of them, standing out against the black of the Wall and the Gate in their white robes. The Wall seemed close now, but it was an illusion; the men closest to the Gate were specks beneath the massive arch. But the walk was downhill now, and Andy's steps were sure, and it was only another quarter-hour before they were passing under stretching gateway themselves.

Just inside the mouth of the Gate, the open space split dozen and dozens of times into long hallways that stretched away like the fronds of a palm fan. Marian stopped, and Any hesitated a half-step ahead of her. He could see it now, the first real sign of his doom: Attendants and their Chosen walked together down several of the hallways, but from another few only the women returned.

"You have to choose which Door is yours, Andy."

"Does it matter? I can't tell one from another."

"Just pick the one that feels right to you. It matters as much as you make it matter. You won't be able to choose a room that's already in use, but that's the only guidance you have."

He nodded, and spent several minutes looking down the hallways. Marian watched him closely, but couldn't tell how he was deciding; still, he seemed certain when he finally chose the thirty-second Door. It was a power of two - a propitious number in its own way. She followed him down the hallway to the unmarked black door at the end, and once there she snapped his wristband free of his arm and fed it into the glowing slot beside the door. The yellow glow faded to blue, and the door slid inwards with a rasp of stone.

Andy glanced back over his shoulder. Marian nodded once, and he shouldered through the gap beside the door.

The room on the other side of the door was small and spare; only just big enough to accommodate a matching door opposite the door they entered through and a window beside it, as well as a stool beneath the window. The window was heavily tinted, and an ambient bluish light spilled out of the edges of the ceiling, picking out the raised ridges of the glyphs and geometric patterns shaped into in the wall.

"This is it, Andy. I stay here, as do the robe and sandals, and you go forward." Marian inclined her head toward the window. Through it they could see the continuation of the room's two side walls angled slightly out and sinking down into the wet, marshy ground. Strange, broad-leafed grasses sprouted from the standing puddles and clumps of moss. Where the walls disappeared into the ground a dozen meters distant, another wall curved up toward the sky, but it was different: it was organic and lumpy, and subtle shades of color played beneath the glistening green and beige skin. Surface features - bulges, creases, and pores as large as windows - moved very slowly to the right, counter-clockwise.

Andy's eyes drunk the sight in while Marian slipped him out of the robe and stepped him clear of the sandals. He nodded as if he understood. "That's it, then - the ship. It really does look alive, like they said."

But he understood nothing. They never understood. Marian prevented herself from allowing a disappointed sigh to escape from her lips; instead she folded the robe along its creases and set it on the floor. There was no ship, no them, only Her. The one who would appear to him in a moment wasn't just partially attached to a hive-mind, she was a fingerpuppet. She was a pseudopod shaped into a face his tiny mind would be capable of interacting with. It wasn't worth trying to explain it to him now.

Marian stepped up against his side, resting her temple on his shoulder and wrapping an arm around his back. Her free hand moved below his waist to remind his penis of the erection it would need soon. The essence of the balm was still in his skin, so it only took a few practiced strokes before he began to swell. She stepped in front of him to give herself one last look at his eager blue eyes, then pressed the button that slid open the inside door. "Go now, Andy. I wish you luck."

She really did. She wouldn't deny Her anything, of course, but Marian thought Andy might just be the type She needed in Her 12 Cities - obedient, gentle, young, healthy. He was pretty, too, and She had a sense for human beauty. Marian sat on the stool to watch and leaned forward as the door sealed behind Andy with a slurp of wet air.

She could see him coughing but couldn't hear him; the air inside the Queendom was much thicker with Her atmosphere, enough so that even Marian's lungs tickled while the door was open. Andy glanced back, but he would only see his own reflection in the window. He was alone now.

One of Her pores puckered, and began to turn inside out, quickly unrolling a thick tentacle that stretched out over the marsh grass toward Andy. He stood his ground, the brave thing. The tentacle was the same shades of olive and beige as the impossibly massive body it came from, and like that body it glistened with the sheen of mucous. The material world was a constant irritant to Her, they said; the mucous was just the outermost layer of Her defenses. A bulge of darker color shot down the semi-translucent tentacle at double-speed, and Andy finally took a step backward when it became clear that that lump would emerge just as the tentacle unrolled at his feet.

The end of the tentacle curled up and away from the ground and extruded a torso - the entire upper body of a slender human female. At least, it had close to the right shape. Her skin was a dark green specked with gold; her eyes and hair jet black, and she leaned with a weird, weightless grace. Her mouth curled into a mirthless smile, and her black eyes flicked from Andy to a screen above the window, then stared directly through the window at Marian and nodded slightly. Marian had known that face long ago, when it was slightly less lithe and slightly less beautiful and peppered with little human imperfections - when it had belonged to a friend. Marian nodded back.

Then the face was speaking to Andy. Marian couldn't make out the words the dark lips formed any more than she could understand Andy by staring at the back of his head. She doubted the two were even speaking the same language, though the Chosen men and She always seemed to understand each other.

They traded only a few thoughts before She was leaning against him with Her head on his shoulder, while her mucous-slicked fingers continued the arousal his erection. He stood submissively still, even when She slithered down his chest and pulled his phallus to Ger mouth for a taste. When She returned to the level of his face, she's licking her lips thoughtfully.

"Oh, no." Marian's hopeful expression fell, and she shook her head. The black eyes flicked through the glass and found her face again. "He didn't make it."

She was right. A second later the figure at the end of the tentacle had snatched Andy tightly into Her arms, and Her lips slowly stretched over his face and head. Her face distended freakishly: of course She had no skull, no jawbone in the pseudopod. Andy struggled as his airways were sealed; the men always did, even though it was pointless. It took only seconds for Her mouth to wriggle down over his entire head and shrink around his neck, and then the tentacle began reeling in its bait tip, along with its catch. Andy's hips bucked with the spasms of hypoxia. His legs kicked a few more before they were squeezed into the outside-in rolling tube, and he was just a flesh-colored lump traveling up through the retracting tentacle toward Her main body.

Marian sighed, and stood to gather the robe and sandals.

Her melancholy lasted only a few minutes into her walk back down the slopes of the Queendom crater and into the city. She had served well; she had done her best, and who was she to doubt Her decisions? Back in her room she placed the robe and sandals into the basket to be laundered, and checked her her new account balance. It had only gone up by a few hundred marks - an estimate on the ten percent of his net worth she had earned today. She didn't really care. She diverted all but a seventh part of it to the church. She pulled the curtain around her sleeping alcove and undressed before laying down on her mat. It would be dark soon, and then, not long after that, the next boat would come. Then the next, and the next, and the next. And she would be at her window, waiting.