“So you’re going out there to shut her down?” the small woman asked.
Kal smiled at her glum expression. “Officially?” he said, and she took to the air so he could sip his beer. “Officially, I’m going out there to find the holes in her patch job on a human-created tactical virus she’s been monitoring. She tweaked it to supposedly have no effect on Inderlanders, and since it can’t replicate out of a lab and has no host to carry it out of the intended range, it should be relatively harmless to humans apart from the initial reaction. If I fix the holes she left in it, the enclave agreed to put me in charge of it.”
“The better engineer,” Orchid said, saluting him with her drop of condensation. “She’s going to freak out.”
He shrugged and sipped his beer, turning introspective. Perhaps this was the enclave’s way of keeping the world spinning the way they liked it. Trisk was talented, true, but she was a woman, and a dark elf to boot. “It’s rare that the person who invents something is the one who’s remembered,” he said softly. “It’s usually the person who makes it marketable or safe. That minor in business my father made me get has got to be good for something.” Kal’s focus blurred. It was easy to make money with the right product at the right time. Hand-over-fist easy. If nothing else, he could use the funds appropriated to her research to jump-start his own.
“You should just let the humans kill themselves,” Orchid said as she flew to her stash of nectar behind the TV. “The world would be a better place without them. It would be cleaner, for sure.”
Kal sat up, buoyed by his predictions but still feeling the sting of having to leave Orchid. “No. A world without humans, or even with too few of them, would be a disaster.”
“For you, maybe.” The small pixy flew back with a cup she’d made from the carapace of a large ant. “But not me. They need too much room, too many resources. We’re pushed into smaller and smaller spaces to avoid them. There’s nowhere left to be pushed. If there were no humans, we could come out of the closet,” she said in satisfaction. “We all could. Witches would let us in their yards, I bet.” She looked wistfully to her garden, thriving but limited because of the salt and heat. “They might even keep the birds out.”
“Inderland needs humans,” Kal said, his thoughts on what to bring and what to leave. Setting his beer aside, he stood.
“I don’t,” Orchid grumbled.
“Yes, you do,” Kal said, voice loud as he went into his room. “We all do. That’s why the enclave is treating this so seriously. Fewer humans means vamps would be tempted to prey on witches and Weres. They wouldn’t tolerate that, and we’d have another underground war.”
Kal stood in his room and frowned at the double bed. He’d been sleeping alone in it for the last few months, but it hadn’t always been so. Orchid insisted she didn’t mind the occasional visitor, but they all left with blisters caused by pixy dust. I’m not sterile, am I? Grimacing, he flung his closet open. If he could not engender children, even ones who never survived to term, his voice would never hold weight, especially if his family’s millionaire status was in danger.
Orchid followed him, sitting on the lampshade to sift a blue dust that pooled on the table. “My people thrived in the Middle Ages,” she said, oblivious to his dark thoughts. Their higher populations and rare sightings were probably how pixies and fairies had made their way into fairy tales. Fortunately, there hadn’t been a way to preserve images back then.
“Mine didn’t.” Kal looked at his suits, taking only one to hang on the back of the door. It would be easier to buy new. The ties, though, he gathered down to the last and draped on the bed. “We need the resources that a large population brings: advancements in technology, medicine, a higher standard of living. You like your sprinkler system, don’t you? The electric wire that helps keep the cats out?”
She nodded, and the light brightened as her dust hit the bulb. “I’d like a family more.”
“I’d like that, too,” he said softly as he cleaned out his sock and underwear drawer. “If I could, I’d give you an entire field surrounded by a forest.” Orchid didn’t need him, but only now, faced with leaving her, did he realize how much he needed her. Even his colleagues did little more than tolerate him. Some of that was probably his fault. Hell, it was probably all his fault. He held too tightly to his pride, but it was all he had left. He’d known his parents had been strapped lately despite the show of wealth, but until today, he hadn’t known why.
The light dimmed as Orchid grew depressed. “Six months is a long time to be gone,” she said softly, and Kal pulled his golf bag from the back, silently weighing the trouble of bringing it with the hassle of buying new clubs. Finally he took out his three favorite clubs and a putter, setting them on the bed before putting the bag back.