Pet Trade

by Carol Van Natta

  “No, it’s okay, it’s just…” She couldn’t come up with the right word. Talking about her past brought on a sour stomach and leg spasms, which was part of why she didn’t do it often. “In the mandatory age-seventeen testing for minder talents, I scored high for animal-affinity minder talent. The CPS Testing Center agent said she got me a full scholarship at the CPS Minder Institute. Thrilled my parents, because I’d get the education they never had and couldn’t afford for me. I didn’t care, as long as I got to train my talent and work with animals.”

  “That’s not what happened, I take it.”

  “She chemmed me, gave me an illegal chimera implant to change my DNA’s biometric signature, and sent me as a counterfeit indenture to her cousin, a pet-trade dealer on a space station. She told my parents I died in a tragic interstellar passenger liner accident. Even sent them a memory diamond with my original DNA and a death payment. My bondholder made sure I knew that if I ever escaped and went home, they’d have to give back everything, which would bankrupt them.”

  She didn’t understand Axur’s reply, but the words were unmistakably curses. She envied his vocabulary.

  “The first bondholder was okay. He got me training and promised I’d be a contract employee as soon as he could afford it, if I kept quiet how he got me. Three years after that, a bigger company destroyed his business and bought all his assets for a fraction. Instead of freeing me, Breitenbahn imprisoned me on an interstellar research ship. He only cared about results. I was the only ‘employee’ who couldn’t leave, couldn’t complain, couldn’t fight back. And after all, I was just an indentured, subbin’ minder.”

  Usually, she’d be shaking uncontrollably at this point, but now, she just felt queasy. Maybe it was different because Axur was just a sympathetic voice in her ear, and she was hanging on to a warm, hundred-kilo dire wolf who could sever a man’s leg with a single bite.

  “Breitenbahn finally made them stop abusing me when the animals started dying because I was too damaged to care for them or help the designers.”

  “How did you escape? I’m assuming they didn’t suddenly find their lost ethics and let you go. You’re far too valuable.”

  “Shipped myself in a container of comatose bovines bound for a remote frontier planet. It was dangerous, but Breitenbahn hired this new guard from the indenture system who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He shot me with an equine tranq and…” She shied away from the hideous memory. “Anyway, Nuñez was inspecting the shipment and found me. She believed my unbelievable story and took me home with her. Fed me, gave me animals to care for, made me a part of her vet business, and didn’t judge. That was three years ago. I owe her more than I can ever repay.”

  “If I was still a Jumper, I’d invite some of my squad mates for a little vacation that just happened to coincide with the destruction of that ship.”

  “Thank you. I think.” She smiled. “I probably shouldn’t condone personal vengeance missions by elite special forces with access to really big guns and explosives.”

  “What can I say? We’re trained to take the initiative. Lowlifes like Breitenbahn are obviously a threat to the galactic peace.”

  “Well, if you ever get the chance, I hope you’ll let me save as many of the animals as I can. They didn’t ask to be there, either.”

  “I’ll add it to the mission parameters.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious. A vigorous gust of wind rattled the doors of the barn and blew in a cloud of pine needles. “Nuñez’s yaks say it’ll snow tonight. Do you have someplace warm for the birds of paradise?”

  “Her yaks talk? Never mind. I figured I’d bring their cage into my bunk area until I can fix up the barn.”

  She looked up at the roof of the chilly barn and watched the dust swirl. “I could keep them for the winter, if you like. I have geothermal heating.”

  “Feeding them will add to your costs. I don’t want to impose.”

  “You aren’t imposing. I offered.” She gently pushed the wolf aside. “You can keep my dire wolf in trade. Give her a name. She’ll love guarding you, and having the run of the valley when it snows. She’s built for the cold. She’ll eat a lot more than four birds, though. I’ll trade removing the tracers from the rest of your animals, and a barrel of nutritional pellets that would be good for all your canines, to make it even.”

  In the ensuing silence, she got to her feet and brushed off her butt.

  “Okay, we have a deal.”

  5

  * GDAT 3241.254 *

  Three months after meeting Bethnee, Axur pedaled the stationary generator cycle in his barn to give his anxiety a better outlet than churning his gut. Kivo had suddenly taken ill, and Bethnee had insisted on borrowing Nuñez’s flitter and coming in person, despite a howling snowstorm. Axur had sequestered himself in the barn so as not to distract her. She’d grown more tolerant of his physical proximity in their various interactions since they’d first met, but Kivo needed her full concentration.

  The earwire idea had worked so well that first day that he’d created a better, customized version for her and convinced her to wear it everywhere. It helped make up for the lost camaraderie of his fellow Jumpers, and Bethnee seemed to enjoy having someone to talk to as well. She’d dubbed it the Axur-net.

  They discussed the animals, and laughed about how unprepared each of them had been to find themselves homesteading on a frontier planet. He’d at least had extensive Jumper survival training to fall back on. She grew up on city streets and had spent the last eight years in space.

  Jumpers weren’t good at waiting and wondering. They climbed into planetfall mech suits and kicked ass. He pedaled.

  Two hours later found him adding worrying to the list of things he wasn’t good at. Kivo had crashed twice, and each time, Bethnee had pulled him back from the brink. The last time she’d talked to him through the earwire, she’d sounded exhausted and distant, and she hadn’t responded at all for the past ten minutes.

  She was competent and smart, but something Nuñez had said one day, about a migraine headache being blowback from overusing her minder talent, had Axur thinking Bethnee might be in trouble. He wasn’t trained to treat minders, because they weren’t allowed in the Jumper Corps, but he was trained to treat humans. Despite what some ignorant zero-heads still thought, all minders were human. After five more minutes of plaguing himself with visions of calamity, he went back to his living quarters.

  Kivo lay quietly where Axur had left him. Bethnee lay behind him, eyes closed, one arm and one knee draped loosely over him like a lover’s. Kivo’s breathing was steady. The tufted tip of one of his tails moved, and he swiveled one large ear toward Axur as he stepped closer.

  Bethnee didn’t so much as twitch, and looked pale and sweaty. If she’d been awake, she’d already be edging away.

  He called her name softly, then louder, but got no response. He couldn’t use his salvaged autodoc, because he didn’t know how Bethnee would react to waking up in an enclosed cylinder little bigger than a cremation tube. That left his bed, which easily held him and various pets, so it wouldn’t make her claustrophobic.

  He gently extracted her from around Kivo and carried her toward the back room. She felt warmly female in his arms. He felt guilty even thinking it, because it would terrify her. He had no business wanting a woman who’d been treated as a subhuman, and beaten or worse to force compliance. Hell, the thoughts terrified him. He was the opposite of attractive, and had enough baggage of his own to open a tourist shop at the spaceport. He couldn’t see how it would end well for either of them.

  She began to convulse just as he got her to the bedroom door. He let her legs drop so she could throw up without hurting herself, but he couldn’t catch enough of the mess with his cybernetic hand to keep it from soaking her shirt and pants. The stomach-churning smell assaulted his nose, but as a former battlefield medic and current household servant to nine pets, he was used to dealing with all sorts of unpleasant odors and substa
nces.

  By the time he got her into the fresher, she was barely responsive.

  He sprayed her off as best he could, but she wasn’t wearing her waterproof work tunic, and was soon soaked and shivering.

  Telling himself he was looking but not seeing, he removed everything but her underwear, then draped her with one of his blankets and carried her to his bed. He quickly found her veterinary scanner and used it on her.

  And since he was already being unethical by examining her without her permission, he evaluated her bad left leg, with its deep, ugly scars and distorted tendons and muscles. He swore in several languages as he dressed her in one of his tunics, then covered her up with more blankets. Since she had been a Concordance citizen, her kidnappers—he refused to call them bondholders—could have had her injury fixed for free anywhere in the Concordance. They’d purposefully left her untreated for years.

  He couldn’t ever return to the Jumpers again, and he was in no position to organize a mission against Bethnee’s captors, but he did send a fervent prayer out to the constant stars to exact the justice he couldn’t.

  6

  * GDAT 3241.255 *

  Bethnee woke to unfamiliar… everything. The soft glowlight on the wall, the cat purring on her chest, the furry body at her side, the too-long sleeve of her shirt. Not to mention, a room that looked like the shell of an interstellar ship’s stateroom.

  The bed shifted, and a golden furry face appeared above hers.

  “Hello, Trouble.” Her voice sounded raspy and her throat hurt. The dog licked at her cheek, then pushed off from the bed and left.

  The furry warmth at her side stirred. Shiza, the square-jawed foo dog with the perpetual cute grimace and drooling habit, scrambled to his feet and shook himself, leaving a drifting cloud of curly golden fur.

  Bethnee cautiously reached out with her talent to Delta, the cat on her chest, just to make sure she could. She’d exhausted all her reserves to save Kivo because she knew how much Axur loved the beast. She didn’t even know if she’d succeeded. Or what time it was. Or how she came to be mostly naked in Axur’s big bed. That realization made her feel aware, but not wary. She put the thought aside for later.

  She sat up and discovered a veterinary fluids pump attached to the back of her hand. She was still staring at it stupidly when Axur appeared at the bedroom door.

  “How do you feel?” He touched a control on the wall to make the lights brighter.

  “Like hammered horse shi… “ She trailed off as she got a good look at Axur. She’d never seen him without winter clothes and his heavy cloak, and now there he stood, damp and naked except for the towel around his trim waist and defined abdominals. He’d tied back the coiled strands of his long, frizzy hair, revealing a well-muscled chest that was a blend of warm brown skin, a few scars to give it character, and a smooth transition to his cybernetic arm, with its mismatched synthskin patches and exposed biometal. “You’re stunning.”

  He blinked, clearly nonplussed.

  “Sorry.” She couldn’t stop staring. Didn’t want to, in fact. “From the way you talk, I’d thought you looked like a corroded, spare-parts cyborg from the serial sagas.” That was probably the lamest thing she’d ever said. “Sorry. I’ll shut up now.”

  He started to speak, but stopped himself. He seemed not to know what to do with his hands. “I’m not standing too close?”

  “No.” She tried to puzzle it out. Humans usually felt like phantoms to her, like she was listening to the wrong frequency. “Maybe I’m still being affected by talent blowback sickness, but right now, you’re not a ghost, you’re solid. Like one of Nuñez’s yaks.”

  He laughed out loud.

  She shrugged, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

  “I’m flattered. Truly.” His warm smile made her believe it. “Back to my original question. Your color is much better, and your temperature stabilized a while ago. How are you?”

  “I’ll live. How’s Kivo?”

  “See for yourself.” He turned aside, and Kivo stepped forward, looking as healthy as she’d ever seen him. Relief flooded through her. He launched himself toward her to put his first set of paws on the bed and joyfully lick her face.

  “Yes, all right.” She rubbed his ears. “I’m happy to see you’re alive, too.” The aches in all her joints and the post-fever lethargy melted away at the affection Kivo was broadcasting. In that moment, she could readily believe Axur’s theory that Kivo was an empath, just like Nuñez.

  “I cleaned your clothes. Your earwire and percomp are on the table.”

  She had a hazy memory of a brightly lit room, and throwing up. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven thirteen. Should be light out, but you can barely tell through the nonstop snow.” At their latitude and a ten-day from the winter solstice, they got less than five hours of sun per day.

  She was loath to leave the soft comfort of Axur’s loving pets and his big bed, but she’d already kept him from it for ten hours, and she had to return Nuñez’s flitter and get home. “Could I impose on you for the use of your fresher and something to eat?”

  “Please don’t kill me, but while you were unconscious, I examined your bad leg.” Axur sat at the other end of his small couch and sipped coffee from a large mug.

  A flare of unease spiked, but she smothered it. Nothing had happened. Axur was her kind, funny friend who talked to her every day. He wasn’t a brutal man who drugged her and inflicted degradation and pain. Axur was a warm, strong, stolid yak. “And?”

  “Completely repairable in any medical center with tissue-cloning facilities.”

  “And completely unaffordable. Homesteaders like me have to pay hard credit. Even settlers like Nuñez have to co-pay. This isn’t the Concordance, yet.” The swirling snow outside the window made her feel cold. She wasn’t used to windows. “I have a better chance of winning the galactic lottery. Or I would, if I had enough hard credit to buy a ticket.”

  “I know, so I have a deal for you. You give me Serena permanently, and come every ten-day to check on my pets and help me with two-person jobs. In exchange, I’ll design a procedure my autodoc can handle to reattach the torn ligament and repair the lateral quadriceps muscle that gives you the most grief. You’d have to stay off it for the day and eat a lot to compensate for the rapid-heal, but it should improve your mobility and strength.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You have an autodoc?”

  “Yeah, it came with the freighter. Running low on basic chems and anesthetics, though. I’ll need more afterward.”

  “Holy hells. Do you have any idea what a working autodoc is worth? And with your medic training and language skills? Nuñez was right. You don’t have to hide up here. Move into town, and they’d build you the clinic of your dreams. The settlement company couldn’t stop them or even take a cut.”

  A grim look settled on his face. “I can’t.” The conviction in his tone left no room for argument.

  She would have liked to point out that he was obviously lonely, based on how often he pinged her just to chat, but he knew what he could and couldn’t do. She disliked it when Nuñez pushed her, so she wasn’t going to do that to her only other friend on the planet.

  “You’ll need your autodoc supplies for yourself, so no deal on that. I’ll take the rest of the trade, though—Serena for the extra pair of hands and veterinary care.” The wolf in question was out in the blizzard, frolicking like she was a spring-loaded mountain goat instead of a dignified guardian. “Your place is better for her than mine.”

  He frowned and reached for his cup, but stopped to examine the exposed biometal knuckles of his cybernetic hand.

  She moved Shiza, the warmth-seeking foo dog, off her lap, then stood and stepped into her boots. Alpha, the darkest cat, helped by batting at the decorative lacings. Beta jumped her, Delta jumped Beta, and a battle royale ensued. It was a wonder Axur’s living quarters weren’t a constant shamble.

  She glanced at Axur, expecting to see him smiling at his silly cats, but he
was looking up at her pensively.

  “Ever heard of a Citizen Protection Service black-box project?”

  “Er, maybe?” She dredged up the memory. “Something about secret weapons?”

  “I am one.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but his bleak expression made her want to comfort him. “Because of your cybernetics? Lots of Jumpers have those, don’t they? You can’t all be weapons.”

  “Because of what’s in my cybernetics. The CPS secretly ‘volunteered’ me for a research group’s project that turned me into a continually broadcasting comm unit. I could probably uplink directly to the high-orbit galactic comms buoy from here.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not following.” She touched the earwire he’d given her and convinced her to wear, even when sleeping. “Is that how you made the Axur-net?”

  He stood and turned to her, shoving his hands in his pockets. If she took one step closer, she could almost touch him. It was the closest she’d been to him without the fear taking over her motor control to make her tremble with the imperative to run, to hide. She gave herself a mental shake to refocus on what Axur was saying.

  “...first in my squad to try out the new, better battery in my cybernetic legs. I woke up in a space station in a high-security research clinic, with a new cybernetic arm that I didn’t need, and a satellite uplink built into me. The assholes stole me and altered the records to make it look like I’d voluntarily signed on for their research project. They told me their goal was to improve field communications for Jumpers, but I soon figured out the real purpose was to intercept, decrypt, and twist enemy comms.”

  Her sluggish brain finally put together a piece of the puzzle. “Your cloak. It blocks your broadcast.” She looked around at Axur’s quarters, made out of the pieces of an interstellar ship. “This is incalloy, for transit space. That’s why you don’t have to cover up in here.”

  “Yeah. I added a countervalent grid, powered by the ship’s thousand-year batteries. It scatters my signal.”