With the smile still lingering, Seth plopped down suddenly, and then leaned back hard. It was clear to Tate that Seth reveled in the faint squealing sounds that emerged from the chair as the tiny life-forms within shuffled their bodies to press back against the man’s buttocks and spine. Those that were damaged while trying to align themselves, were quickly eaten by their brethren and the resulting odor of their digestion filled the air around the chair.

Seth luxuriated in the fragrance. Tate worked hard to ignore it.

 

     “Now, where were we?” Seth asked rhetorically. He let his gaze wander over Tate’s gorgeous physique; the well-muscled neck, torso, arms and legs, the golden tan so exotic – and such a contrast to most of Seth’s other bedmates. Even those who ‘worked’ at keeping their bodies fit were severely lacking in comparison. Tate seemed unaware of how attractive his rugged beauty was within the pampered world of the HighHundred. There, tans were artificially applied, and scars and other imperfections were routinely removed. Seth rather enjoyed seeing those marks on Tate – the half-circle dent on his right thigh where he said a horse had kicked him, and the jagged scar on one shoulder where barbed wire snapped during a fence repair and slashed a ribbon from his skin. Yes, Seth decided as Tate shifted his position on the couch, he would find it… interesting, to have a livingcouch, or perhaps even a livingbed.

 

     The next morning, Seth watched with satisfaction as his security contingent propelled the first of the livingchair sales reps down the stairs into the foyer. He then turned his attention to the second rep.

 

     “So,” Seth said softly, “Let us see if you are the type that learns from others’ experience.”

 

     The young woman in front of him gave him just one stricken glance, and then lowered her gaze to the floor and said with only a slight catch in her breath, “You would like a livingbed manufactured to your specifications, which are: that the life-forms will continue to provide perfect support, and will continue to issue their… fragrance, even when you are… are... However you would like that fragrance to be milder so that… so that you can continue to…”

 

     “To fuck my bedmates into tomorrow,” Seth interjected amusedly.

 

     “-without the resulting odor becoming too strong,” the rep finished in a rush.

 

     “Yes,” Seth said. “And you don’t anticipate any difficulty in conveying that request to your employers?”

 

     The rep cast a glance at the bottom of the stairs where her coworker was being un-gently helped to her feet and assisted out the front door, and then whispered, “No. No, I’ll tell them.”

 

     “Excellent,” Seth said and added, “I’ll expect my new bed within two weeks.”

 

     Tate held his position off to the side of the other guests as they mingled in the reception room, awaiting Seth’s entrance. He was dressed in the clothes Seth had sent over, and suppressed a sigh at the tight fit. He should be used to it by now, but it was still difficult to think of clothing as costume, rather than protection from the elements.

 

     The first time he’d been in this hall, five years ago, he was still the gauche Eartholder who watched spellbound as cityscapes, one after another appeared and disappeared from display on the walls. He’d been raw with amazement that he had been invited to one of the Seth galas.

 

     Seth Stephen Sanger was not only sole head of one of the top families within the HighHundred, but also one of the few with connections to almost every ‘political’ power in the Society of New Nationalities. Seth’s direct and indirect control over virtually all aquaculture labs and distributors, and the dominance of aquaculture in food production, meant he had defacto control over the economies of nearly every nationality within SNN. With just an aside to an assistant, Seth could make virtually anything happen.

Now that was power, and that was what Tate wanted – no, needed. The ability to force change. Right away, not at some unspecific time in the faraway future, but here and now. He’d left the earthold for exactly this reason, to be able to work with people who could make a difference, who could make things happen.

 

     It wasn’t long though, and he realized he’d been invited only to serve as the jester beside the king; an uneducated and presumably unwashed source of amusement. 

 

 

---------END EXCERPT---------

 

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