The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson Page B

questionable legality.
    But I know his choice of location is a test. If I can’t get there on my own, then there’s no way I could be the one who did that graffiti; then I really am the ditzy waka I seemed.
    By the time I reach the internal node that marks the end of the first transport tunnel, my back is soaked with sweat. From here, the way is easier. The spider warehouse is down a short tunnel from the main node.
    I don’t have to worry about security bots or even a door blocking the way to the sleeping mechanical giants. Spider bots are so massiveand old there’s not much worth stealing. I climb down the ladder as silently as possible, but even my breath seems to echo off their giant silver bellies.
    “Hello?” I whisper.
    Nothing.
    I check my fono for the time, which is a few minutes after midnight. Is he late? Did he leave when I didn’t show up exactly on time? I shake my head and walk farther into the maze. No, not after going through all this trouble. He’d want to see who I am.
    “Gil is my friend,” I whisper, a little louder this time. “But the casters love him, and I don’t want them to know about this.”
    I look around and see nothing but my face, reflected and distorted in a dozen giant silver thoraxes.
    And then, something darker.
    “You’re the one from that first night, aren’t you? The girl with the lights.”
    He leans against a spider to my right. His white shirt is unmistakable; I don’t know how I missed him.
    “I didn’t think you saw me,” I say, after a thick swallow. The force of his physical presence is stronger than I remembered. My eyes trace the lean muscles in his arms before I realize what I’m doing and focus firmly on his eyes.
    “Did I?” he says nonsensically. “I must have. Gil was … memorable.”
    “He has that effect on people.”
    Enki smiles and steps closer to me. “So that explains the mural? I thought it was one of the grafiteiros from the verde, but of course not, it had to be someone who knew him.”
    Enki stops talking and walks around me, a man looking over an expensive bot he might just buy. I make myself still, though inside I am trembling and hot. I swore this wouldn’t be a fairy tale, and now it isn’t. But I’m afraid of what that makes it.
    “What do you propose, June Costa?”
    I move in front of him, deliberately cutting his circuit short. Before I can think, I reach out, touch his shoulder with my gloved hand, and feel the suck of the activating nanohooks. His eyes widen. I have bound us, and he knows it.
    He is so beautiful, so warm and cruel and distant that I think, without the connection, I might just run away.
    “You’re an artist,” I say. “And I don’t think anyone but me truly understands what you mean by that. Not that you paint or you sculpt or you see the world in colors. You mean that you manipulate, that you express yourself on objects and use them to express you. You mean that when you chose to be the summer king, you chose to use your own body as a canvas that no one could ignore.” I have to stop for a moment, catch my breath. If this works, not even Bebel can beat me for the Queen’s Award.
    “That’s very interesting.” But his pupils have dilated, turning his light eyes black. He is precisely my height, and our eyes are locked as firmly as my hand on his shoulder.
    “And in exchange,” I say, barely a whisper, “you die.”
    “It seemed a fair trade.”
    “Let me help you.”
    “Why should I?”
    “My name is June,” I say, “and I’m the best artist in Palmares Três.”

    It hurts, and I wondered for a while if the Aunties made it like that so we go quietly to the slaughter. But now I see that it has to be this way, that you cannot force the human body, the human mind in such unnatural directions without a payment. In the Tokyos, they have subverted this rule, continued their self-augmentation until the body itself became uninhabitable. They haven’t transcended the body as they say. Of course