Chapter Text
CHAPTER NINE
"They're beautiful, aren't they?", Call exclaims, sharing a mutual look with Ripley as they marvel, side by side, at the view from the Betty's cockpit. The clone can't help herself and reaches out a hand to draw her closer.
She is just as thrilled as she is, at the thought of where they are.
When she'd suggested her idea, nights before, Call had pleasantly surprised her by jumping on her neck. She'd found herself surrounding her tiny frame with her arms, supporting her weight. She had felt so light. It had felt so natural to hold her in her arms.
"You have no idea, Ripley! I've been dreaming of being there for sixty-four years!", she had exclaimed two inches from her face, making her linger on the roundness of her lips.
"Wait, what? Seriously, how old are you?", she had asked, bursting out laughing.
"One hundred and eight!", the android had replied distractedly. "Hey! Don't make that face! You're two hundred and ninety!"
She clasps her hand to her side, smiling, guided by the motion of tenderness that the memory brought to her.
"They're just fucking holes in the ground, people!", Johner looks at them with a half envious, half disgusted look on his face, finally rolling his eyes. -What a waste of meat!-, he muses, before remembering that one of them is a clone with a questionable sense of humor and acid blood, and the other is a fucking robot.
"They're not just fucking holes, you moron!", Vriess apostrophizes him, maneuvering the shuttle some fifty feet above the top of the trees that adorn, along with cenotes and various scattered constructions from both the Mayan and Spanish domination eras, the Yucatan Peninsula.
"They were formed by the impact of the meteor that shaped the Gulf of Mexico. And you won't believe it, but they are all connected by underground canals and the water is always clear and pure!"
"We should take a trip sometime", Ripley whispers in Call's ear, causing a shiver to run down her spine.
"Yeah, but forget about making me plunge!", the android retorts in a serious tone.
It's not long before the landscape changes, giving way to a huge expanse of solidified lava rock.
"Did you know that back in the days of the Aztecs, this valley was a lake?", Call asks in a low voice, taking some privacy even among the other two companions. Her hand plays affectionately with Ripley's.
"Not before I began reading your book, but I need to correct you, our friend Mixtli says there were five lakes connected to each other", the hybrid playfully points out, intertwining their fingers together.
Call rolls her eyes, smiling at her.
"What the fuck happened to this place?", Johner asks, looking at the black expanse on the surface.
"In 2249 the Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl volcanoes, southeast of the valley, exploded simultaneously, swallowing everything up to Tenochtitlan, only the northernmost districts escaped the calamity", Call excitedly narrates.
"Tenoc-what?", Vriess asks.
"Mexico City. After decades of diatribe, the population wanted to return to adopting the ancient Aztec name, just as they slowly resumed speaking Nahuatl, abandoning Spanish", the android continues.
"Fucking colonists!", the young man comments with a disgusted face, veering east.
The two women can't tear themselves away from the window, while Betty approaches the archaeological site of Teotihuacan. It is immense and totally deserted, proving that no one has been traveling for tourism for a long time now. Call orders Vriess to touch down not far from the Temple of Quetzalcoatl.
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"One last thing, girls", Vriess stops them, before they get on the ATV and drive away. He leans out of his wheelchair and pulls four identically sized wrappers from under the seat, handing them one each.
"Poor Elgyn had the good sense to secure these before he got himself killed", he declares to the puzzled faces of the two.
Johner jerks away from the wall on which he was leaning, and the bored look of moments before is morphed into an expression of keen interest.
"That's six hundred thousand credits each. They'll come in handy."
"Oh, slow down! What the fuck is this? And what the fuck does Ripley have to do with it? She wasn't part of the deal!", Johner protests, already on the warpath.
"The deal was three hundred and fifty thousand each and three hundred thousand for the maintenance of the Betty!", the boy asserts in a confident manner. He had figured the upset, preparing in advance.
"You want your part as agreed, Johner?", he challenges, watching him deflate and spread his arms.
Call and Ripley snicker in amusement at the altercation, pleased with how Vriess handled the situation.
After a handshake with the boy and a nod to his uncouth companion, still annoyed by the split of the reward, the clone heads towards the ATV, leaving a moment of privacy to Call and Vriess.
It's not long before the youngster reaches her, sniffing up her nose as the Betty lifts off the ground, raising a thick wall of dust and disappearing into the ionosphere in a matter of seconds.
An impulse of tenderness towards her encourages her to hug her at the waist, resting her chin on her shoulder and placing an affectionate kiss on her cheek, when she joins her by getting into the driver's seat.
They ride at a walking pace through the Avenue of the Dead, occasionally remarking on the various buildings parading on either side of it. The vehicle climbs effortlessly up the steep steps of the gigantic Pyramid of the Sun.
The cobblestone floor is no problem, given the amount of blankets they've spread over it. The worn boots of the two cast long shadows not far away.
"So, just so we can figure out what we can aim for, what's one million two hundred thousand credits?", Ripley asks, inviting Call to sit between her legs and encircling her with her long arms.
"Enough to live simply enough, especially if we get a little job on the side", Call replies, handing her a piece of chocolate that Ripley bites straight from her hand. "What would you like to do?", she asks her, as the sun in front of them kisses the horizon.
"Can we afford a kitchen? I've had enough of those shitty military bars!", the clone jokes, making her laugh.
"Well, if we settle in Tlatelolco we could also sell food at the city market, what do you say?", the android proposes.
"Great idea!", the clone comments, already imagining their simple and fulfilling future.
"Do you even know how to cook?", Call asks, turning to face her, amused, with a raised eyebrow.
"I have no fucking clue!", Ripley admits. "But I do know one thing", she adds, enjoying the look of expectation on the girl's soft features. "You handle the knives!", she declares, brushing her neck with her mouth. She likes the rough feeling the burn scar leaves on her lips.
When they woke up that morning, she was concerned, noting that the mark hadn't disappeared overnight. But Call had quickly explained to her, making her laugh at the absurdity of the explanation, that she hadn't wanted to 'bother' her nanobots with something so small.
Now that she thinks about it, though, she reckons she knows why the young woman didn't get rid of that mark.
"You know what? I like it, this burn", she whispers to her, kissing her gently again in that spot. Call presses against her, surrendering to the contact.
"I like it too", the girl confirms.
"I know", the other retorts in a vaguely cocky tone, making her giggle. "You have to do something, though, at least about the deeper one, because I really wouldn't know how to justify that weird thing glimpsed underneath", the clone points out, gently pushing away the hand the young woman instinctively brought to her neck, as if to cover a flaw.
"Don't. It's just us", she tells her, smiling quietly.
"Us... I like that", the girl states, smiling.
"And I think I'd even like to take a road trip for a few days to one of those cenotes, you know?", she confesses to her, thrilled.
"No way!", the clone exclaims with surprise.
"Yeah! I don't either! But I know that if you stay close, I might even get a swim. I feel safer with you around", she declares softening her voice.
"Then I promise I'll stick to you", the woman whispers hugging her close.
Soft lips linger on her forehead, then slide over the tip of her nose. Call closes her eyes briefly, only to open them again into Ripley's.
She would so want to focus on her gaze, but she just can't avoid the lingering glances that land on the young woman's lips. She covers one of her cheeks, extending her thumb over her mouth needing to touch them.
She is so caught up in her own desire that it takes Call's mimicking to realize that the young woman is moved by the same impulse. The look of wonder in her eyes as she feels her fingertips on her lips makes her abandon any purpose in holding back. There is no point in doing this, not anymore.
So she leans slowly, as Call reaches her halfway. It's easy, like coming home and setting yourself free, though neither of them has ever really experienced that simple act of everyday life, at least, until now.
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All along the way, both going there and coming back, Ripley teased her about making up her mind to want to visit a cenote, when by now they were over a thousand miles from the Yucatan Peninsula.
"Couldn't you have been bold when we were flying over the area with the Betty?"
And they both burst out laughing for the umpteenth time. The ATV trip lasted several weeks. They took their time.
Ripley was good at hunting, Call was good at orientation.
"Easy, when you have the entire map of the earth saved in your wonderful brain"
A couple of times the girl took a wrong turn on purpose, just to see how the clone reacted.
It was so easy to joke with each other, so easy to let their relationship flourish, to let it flow in such a natural way.
They avoided the towns for that long trip. They just wanted to build their 'US'. As if they couldn't get enough of each other.
The first time they plunged into the clear water of the Ik Kil cenote, Ripley never let go of her gentle grip on Call, initially clinging to her like a frightened baby monkey, finally feeling free to show her fear and vulnerability.
After several days of 'shock therapy', they both enjoyed climbing down the vines, each time letting themselves fall from a greater height.
Then they jumped straight off the edge, playing at chasing each other, even free diving.
Until they became so familiar with the water that most of the time they found themselves laced together, risking drowning because they were too busy doing something else, rather than staying afloat.
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They moved back toward Tenochtitlan at some point, Call could speak fluent Nahuatl and Ripley learned it slowly over the years.
They found a way to get fake names and documents, not that bureaucracy mattered much anymore. But it was an obligatory precaution, to say the least. Only in their moments of intimacy and solitude could they not help but call each other as they were accustomed to doing.
They settled into a small, two-room apartment just north of Tlatelolco. They soon discovered that the clone didn't do too badly at all in the kitchen, as long as they didn't put a knife in her hand. But cutting ingredients, they agreed, was Call's job.
Occasionally Ripley would ignore this rule, just to do something forbidden. On a few occasions, she was unlucky enough to perforate a couple of pans, the very good ones, and even worse, irreparably ruin the cutting edge of Call's favorite knives, and had to buy lunch for a whole month for the friend who managed to get her some good quality chocolate, to make up for it.
Actually, they both knew there was no need to make up for anything, but the ritual was fun. It reminded them of those early days when they had grown bonded, in spite of their many differences.
For four days a week, they provided lunch to a number of regular customers who were busy in neighboring factories. They would join them on their trusty ATV. Esquites, Tamales and Nopales were never lacking on their daily menu.
Not infrequently, it happened that some of their clients, not necessarily male, paid one or the other a few 'too many' compliments, ignoring the relationship that the two did not make the slightest effort to hide. All those who tried, however, soon tired of pushing. The two were unequivocally committed and vowed to each other. And everyone agreed, some grudgingly, that they were indeed a very beautiful couple.
They paid lip service to the fact that it was a fair precaution and a good cover when they decided to make their union official, but they knew it was just excuses. They didn't need it, but they both wanted it.
Every now and then there were families who, after ordering their food, sat down to eat it not far away. Sometimes there were children, and Ripley's gaze turned slightly dark in these occasions, and Call always noticed it, saddened in turn by empathy and helplessness. At one time, Call had even suggested to think about a solution such as foster care, for example, but as they thought about it together, they realized that, in a sense, they would never be completely free from the risk of being discovered or detected. It was not appropriate to expose a child to such danger and what would follow. Fortunately, these were rare moments, compared to the serene and carefree ones, and by supporting each other, they always managed to overcome "the bad day".
At least once a month, they would return to Teotihuacan, away from everyone. They seemed to never get enough of reliving and remembering their first night on top of the Pyramid of the Sun.
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After almost twenty years, they were forced to move, not knowing how to justify the fact that neither of them was aging. To tell the truth, Ripley was beginning to have a few white strands in her thick hair, but they were so few that the only people who could notice them were her and Call.
Call, for her part, externally was still the same. She had no idea how much longer she would live. There were no reports that any of her kind had ever ceased to function from natural causes.
Slowly she had educated Ripley on her physiology and how she operated.
A couple of times the clone had chickened out, failing to wake her up in the morning. Call had warned her that it could happen, when, through wear and tear, some internal part would suddenly become damaged and her body would freeze her in that state until the nanobots had repaired the damage. But even knowing that, she couldn't help but watch over her all the time with the constant terror that she would never wake up again.
Call periodically kept in touch with other Autons who had escaped the Recall, but she was not interested in forming closer relationships. Her life with Ripley totally fulfilled her.
Their favorite time of day was when Ripley would sit in their huge, comfortable armchair in the evenings, Call would curl up in her lap, and they would read together. They had started with "Aztec", soon after settling in Tenochtitlan, the only paper book they had ever owned, then they had switched to digital, due to the impossibility of finding other physical volumes.
And their today and tomorrows always began with excitement from them, even if what they had planned for the current day was just another morning in the kitchen and then serving meals around downtown.
THE END