Quarantine
by Pan
4:
“How the hell did they decide?” Cindy asked.
At first glance, it was quite shocking to see a woman among the quarantined men. A second glance was all it took to work out why Cindy was there—he was Deltasol’s one-and-only drag queen. Cindy Cox: drag queen by night, accountant by day.
“Come on Cindy,” Kunduz replied wearily. He owned the bar that Cindy performed at, and they’d come along in a shuttle together. On the trip, he’d asked Cindy if he was worried that he’d attract “undue attention” by bringing all his drag gear to the quarantine, but Cindy had shrugged the concern off.
It made sense—even in the dress, Cindy stood almost seven-foot tall, with the shoulders of a linebacker. Literally; during Cindy’s high-school years, Deltasol had allowed football, and Cecil (as he’d been known then) had been a linebacker.
“I’m serious, damn it. How the hell did they decide? We’ve been besties for ten years now…”
Fifteen, Kunduz mentally corrected.
“…and they’ve separated us! Why the hell are we even in dorms? Don’t this planet have medical?”
“You know how a quarantine works,” Kunduz said, but it was no good. Cindy was on a rant.
“Fuck that shit! Gimme a couch, a warm, pillowy bed. I don’t want none of this “dorm” shit. Fuck.”
“You done?”
“No,” Cindy grumbled, but he shut his mouth and started pulling his suitcases from the shuttle. “Dumb-ass planet.”
Kunduz remembered when Cindy had landed in the colony. It had been a pretty big deal—somewhere as remote as Deltasol typically had a handful of seed colonists, and newcomers only if there was a wave of platinum found, or someone fell in love over the datacatch.
Not Cindy—he’d arrived (as Cecil, of course) when he was ten. His family had been part of the genetic diversity program—there were a few black colonists, but five generations in, most everyone in the colony was a bit of everything. Purebloods were frowned upon, unless they came from off-world.
Kunduz had always thought it was a strange idea, sending in a married couple and their kid as essentially breeding stock, but the government was good at finding the right candidates for the diversity program, and within the decade both of Cecil’s parents had new children on the way.
“Okay,” Cindy said, lifting the last—and largest—of his suitcases, the one that Kunduz happened to know contained the majority of his party frocks. “I’ll see you at the meeting?”
“See you at the meeting,” Kunduz responded, and tapped the shuttle twice to continue it on its journey.