by C M Weller
Her bandages helped against the sharp floor of the tunnel, but not a lot. She was going to catch trouble for it, but now was the time to find things out. Before people got her doing other things. She found the slide-tube, the one that had messed her up and scared her, last time. There were still noises. Knocking. They weren't as scary now as when she'd fallen and got herself all cross-wired. There was a flickering orange glow. Not fire, because fire would have gone out one way or another. There just wasn't a lot to burn in this place.
Sahra sniffed. Old burned things. Metals and things. Charcoal. Something greasy and oily and foul. And something off. Like rotten meat.
This was about where ore processing was.
This was where people, masters and the strange thing known as Eon had been blown up and had died.
The orange flicker came from lines in an almost-rectangle on her less-useful side.
The 'haint' was still knocking in a pattern. Sahra knocked the 'open-up' pattern on the lit rectangle. If anyone was alive, out there, they'd know to open it up for her.
No opening door. Just the same pattern as before.
She felt the door and found the catch. It was finger-hurting work, and tough to move, but she got it to shift enough so she could shove open the little door.
Sahra had only seen ore processing once. It used to be a big place, with hot ovens for metal and carts that ran on rail tracks. Everything that used to be standing up was leaning against other things or had fallen all the way over. Rails that used to stretch over places where other tracks and carts went underneath, were now bent and dribbly-looking.
Sahra poked one.
Stone cold.
Someone hadn't been able to get out on time. Something had fallen on them, and something burned them. Sahra cleared her throat and said a prayer. She said it slowly and carefully.
"God and the angels, rest this soul. Rise them up from the darkest hole. Keep them safe and whole and snug... in thy gracious loving hug. Amen."
*
Pain. It was an old companion. Eon was used to it. He had been waiting days for rescue, tapping out a standard emergency code by balancing his semisolid weight on a loose piece of wire. He'd been metabolizing things he hadn't ingested since the earliest days, when he didn't know that some things were not properly food.
He left the bones. They must have had family. That family would want something to bury.
He'd absorbed the radiation that had flooded this area as a result of the explosion. He'd even found a way to metabolize the heat. Now he was scraping carbon and using the thin light from the remaining lamps to turn the foul air into oxygen and create sustenance for himself.
And now, someone was sharing this space with him. Not a proper rescue. Just one very grubby little slave.
Eon stopped tapping and pulled what was left of his mass up and over the ore feed tube between them. She had found a body he hadn't reached, yet.
He didn't know slaves had a religion.
He watched in stunned disgust as the girl kissed her hand, and then patted a carbonized hand.
It hurt to have a voice.
The girl turned. Wiry stock. Young. Possibly underfed, but who knew what rations decided was enough. Pale one, under the grime. They hadn't been in fashion for years. It was difficult to do anything decorative with their hide.
She gasped, her mouth open.
"...moosh puppy..." the human whispered with a grin.
What?
"Goo' boy. Goo' boy. Justa minit. I'm'a gitcher some stuff t' eat."
Moosh... Puppy?
Racing bare feet pattered against the deck. The little slave returned, arms loaded with loose slag nuggets. They were coated with her blood, but he was that hungry. He was unique. He could metabolize anything. Sometimes, several times over.
"Goo' boooooyyyyy..." the little human cooed. "C'm on. I'm good people. I'm nice." She stretched less to offer him the next piece. Coaxing him to come closer. "I know what'cha are. Y'ur a Mo-she-can sssuh-lime dog. Only a li'l one. That makes you a moosh puppy."
Oh. The slime dogs. Of course he looked like them in his native state. They were - according to his own research - his genetic cousins. Less and less close, what with the Tu'atta messing with their genetic makeup.
And, given that the Majestrix, who had previously sworn her love for him, was not rushing to his aid... All he had was this little human.
How low we fall when we try to climb...
Eon acted like a young Moshikaan slime dog. Cautious. Not trusting. Letting her - he could see she was a true female when she crouched - believe that she was a good trainer.
He did eat the grime off her hands when she patted him. And the filth off her body when she lifted him up. It would do him no good to eat her. She was his ticket out of this tomb.
*
Sahra giggled. "You tickle." She raced from pile to pile of rubble, feeding her new friend bits and pieces from rubble piles everywhere. Just the right size for a Moshikaan pup. She told her new friend the story of a little tunnel rat who found a whole litter that had gone astray. By the time the masters had found out, they had bonded with the boy and they had to use him as their master. And it came with freedom for his whole family!
Maybe they wouldn't let her whole family go, since this was just one, but there was going to be better times and more food and better food with it.
She looked all around the whole room. Up and down and criss and cross. Her friend was looking better for the love and food.
"You need a name," Sahra decided. "Sumpin' easy t' rememb'r. Sumpin' I can say wifout praktiss."
The Moshikaan slime pup squirmed through her arms and tickled as it licked her.
Sahra giggled. "S'imy." She had trouble, sometimes, when some sounds came together. "Tha's it! I'm'a call ya Simy! 'S easy an' short an' I can say it."
Simy burbled a little bit.
The klaxon rang, even in here, it was loud and shrill.
"Oh no! I gots ta work. An' I gots ta leave ya. 'M sorry, Simy. I'm'a come back soon's I can. Promise."
She dashed away, up the tilted tunnel and through the sharp space and through twists and turns an up a high climb and finally to the check-in point she had to turn up at. She was out of breath, but she was also there ahead of the master in charge. And she somehow made it with a lot less grub all over than she should've had from messing around in the wreckage of ore processing.
She kept her view on the floor in front of her knees and did everything she could to get her breathing slowed down again.
*
Eon considered the girl. She had helped him, true, but she had helped out of a selfish motive. Every slaves' dream - a better life. Yet he had to wonder...
There was no profit motive for prayer. No reason why any slave should say sacred words over remains, which were beyond caring. No reason why she would apologize for moving bones into neat piles, or to a body once she noticed he was eating the flesh off a charred corpse.
Animals didn't do such things.
But he'd been shown why they were animals. Smart animals, yes. Animals that could do very clever tricks... but animals all the same.
Maybe... what he'd been shown was wrong, in some aspect.
Eon physically retreated from that thought, metabolizing the carbon dust that coated everything as he moved. No. There had to be another reason.
Perhaps they were mimicking their more civilized Tu'atta masters. Though Tu'atta faith was a little more complicated than the theism that the damaged child's poetic prayer indicated. Damaged or inbred. She could barely talk. An investigation might prove her deformed or mentally deficient. If anyone bothered to investigate.
It hurt less to move, now. Thanks to the child feeding him whatever she thought a 'moosh puppy' liked. Even though his going was slow, he absorbed and metabolized as much as he could get away with.
He couldn't climb like she did. Not yet. He had to get his strength up. And get it to the point where he could make his upright shape and for
m enough words to convince someone, yet again, that he was an intelligent being worthy of some respect.
Slapping the little rat around would not help him reach that goal.
Eon felt an inner chill pervade his viscous mass. He needed her. He needed a slave to survive.
He had to treat her correctly, or she would run off and leave him with no resources at all.
Servile to a slave.
Ugh.
A far fall, indeed.
But he would climb back up again.
Somehow. Someday. He would be back on top.
This little inbred rat was just going to be his first stepping-stool.
Rattling in the slag feed tube. Eon flattened himself against the wall and listened. "Simy... Here Simy. Gotcher some stuff."
Ah. His step-stool had arrived.
She had things in her rat-cart. Rubbish, mostly. And one hand held the tails of... four evriyong. All alive and wriggling.
Pests.
She'd bought him rubbish and pests.
Then he remembered. Human slaves were also pest control, because they regarded the filthy little lizards as a tasty snack. Innards and all.
*
"Hungee?" Sahra dangled a wriggling lizard in front of Simy.
Simy cowered a little. He didn't know evriyong were good eating. In one quick move, she flicked the lizard against a pole, knocking it dead. Then she placed it in front of her friend.
Slowly. Carefully. Simy edged forward and ate the lizard.
Maybe he wasn't old enough for hunting. That had to be it. She whipped the next evriyong for him and let him eat it.
"See, Simy? 'S much better fresh. Can't get nuthin' fresher, right?"
Burble-burble, went Simy.
"Good puppy. Good boy."
She began unloading her cart, in-between whipping lizards. "This stuff? I took it right outta th' master's li'l bin by their desk! They gotta air vent right b'hind. I jus' snuck in real quiet an' put it all in m' cart. An' then I put th' bin back." She grinned. "Stealin's okay if'n it's t' feed sumbody. An' I know ya gotta be starvin'. But Moosh-dogs c'n eat anyfin'."
She ran out of food for him real quick. It made her feel bad. And she had to work, too.
Last time a rat had a big find like this, they took the best stuff first and got caught out fast. And punished real bad. And worse, all the other rats who were faster than her found out first and picked it clean.
She had to be smart about this.
So Sahra started sorting. There was the really good stuff, the okay stuff, the sort-of-okay stuff, the not-very-good stuff and mass credit. Better known as junk. She also sorted out some of the tastier things for Simy to eat and, to her unimaginable joy, some tools.
They had been dropped into a grating she couldn't shift. Yet. Enough time and enough wriggling could get anything loose.
If she had tools... she could get at anything.
For a start, all the sharp stuff on the way in would be gone in a cold second. And those tools looked like Master business. The ones that didn't make a tattle-tale noise.
They needed energy, sure, but these ones looked like they could still be good. Sahra spent the rest of the afternoon wriggling the grate. And cussing.
*
Eon watched, absorbing as much as his wounded body would allow him. This child was smarter than she sounded - which wasn't hard, considering how she sounded. The more he observed, the more he realized that the gap between her actual intelligence and her presentation was increasingly significant.
This was one of the dangerous ones.
If he were still Overseer, he would have had her on a watch list and possibly isolated for study. But now he was presumed dead, and in an environment too toxic to recover any remains. His only recourse was to watch her himself. And discourage dangerous behavior.
Gently, of course. He was not yet autonomous enough to follow her around. He would have to use cunning to stop her.
Assuming he would need to. That grate was both heavy and well-anchored. She was not getting to those tools any time soon.
And, to be strictly honest with himself, listening to her attempt to swear was hilarious. Humour had a beneficial effect on healing, he had heard. Not that he'd ever wanted to try it. It sounded like a strictly organic thing. Something that required a brain that was not, for instance, almost the entirety of a beings' body.
It still felt better to be amused and be in pain than to just be in pain.
*
Sahra gave up. They'd be sounding the final whistle, soon. Okay, so. Mix of middling stuff that could be found any old where. Two tiny prizes from her really good stuff, and a big heavy panel that was almost way too heavy for her to lift. In fact, juggling herself and her cart into the tubes again meant that she had to unload and, with her cart stuck half in and half out of the tube, load it up again. Apart from the big panel, it gave it a genuine shuffled look.
She wished Simy sweet dreams and put all her muscle to hauling herself and her load all the way back to the check-in point.
It was tough going, but with the heavy panel on, none of the biggers wanted to beat her up for her haul.
She looked a bit more mussed than her fellow rats, up at roll call. And the master in charge of sorting made a noise at her haul.
"That's it?"
"It heavy," said Sahra. She didn't have to be careful about speaking low. Not yet. "Thought it worth sumpin'. Gots me some other stuff, under."
The young Taan, still growing out of his baby tail, also made a noise, but he was too young and didn't have enough merit to complain. He just let himself be bullied into moving rat-finds from one place to another.
Some rats behind her murmured, "Oooooh..." at the number as it came up on the scale.
"You lifted that? Alone?" boggled the master in charge.
"Heavy it. Lift brothers, me. Strong make, maybe?" Sahra tried. Judging by the laughter from both rats and masters, she'd said it wrong again.
"How big are your brothers?"
Sahra gestured with two hands. One side showed how tall Tom and Ben had got, and the other showed how tall David was when he climbed her to stand up.
"Huh. Move on, move on."
All her finds tallied, Sahra cleaned off, including extra steps to take off her bandages, and show her hurts to the master at the other end. Where she got new wraps.
She walked home, tired from her work and sorta burning in her muscles. And she really didn't want a bothering from Darvan or a thin serving despite all the work she did.
But nobody should know. About Simy or her secret treasure.
Darvan was waiting at the entrance to their little corner of the slave maze. Had he done something to make Mama send him into the hall? No. He was smiling. He was waiting for her.
"Runt," he said as a 'hello'.
"Duvi," said Sahra. His old nickname, according to Paul. It was also a Master word for 'crap'.
"M'name ain't Duvi, Runt."
"M'name ain't Runt, Duvi."
He swatted at her head, but Sahra saw it coming and ducked. Only then did she run ahead of him so she could wash up and use the privy. Only the other way around.
Seconds after she got to the privy, Darvan got to pounding on the door. Making a fuss. Then some other sibs made a fuss at him making a fuss. And Seventh-Papa got to hollering and Mama got to shrieking and the babies cried because everyone was too loud.
When she emerged at the other end of it, no more than a handful of minutes after she got in, all she had to say in her defense was, "I hadda pee an' poop. Ain't worth this fuss is it?"
Darvan shoved her aside so he could take over the bathroom. Everyone listening heard a tiny little dribble just before the flush.
They knew he didn't need to go. And they thought less of him for the show he'd made.
Sahra got in a hug at Mama's leg before hiding from Darvan in her smallest scaredy-space. It smelled and folks liked to hide bad stuff in there, but Sahra knew how to dump the old and nasty stuff int
o an air vent she could just barely get open. She neatened up the rest of it so she had a touch more room. Listened to her family argue at Darvan.
You don't get it, she thought, this is how he wins.
Sahra hadn't worked out her way to win, yet, but it sure as air wouldn't be by being as big a pain as Darvan.
Dinner was a surprise, tonight. After Mama and Seventh-Papa and the babies got their food, Sahra got a heaping helping full of all the good things. She even broke the rules a little by whispering an amazed, "Thanks, Mama."
"Silence at the table," said Mama. But she didn't sound too angry about it.
It was an odd pattern that Mama danced, tonight. Around the table, back and forth. And making sure Darvan only had the broth and the bad bits. That Darvan was the last to get food.
Darvan was red-faced and almost steaming. He looked like someone had rubbed his mouth over with stink-water. And then offered him more stink-water to wash with.
And he was glaring seventeen colours of hot death at Sahra, including the one that lit up a whole room with its own light because it was hot enough to go all runny.
"I hear more than everyone thinks I hear," said Mama as she put away the big pot. "For instance, I heard that our Sahra earned three days' worth of rations on one cart-load. While Darvan wasted all his hours making goo-goo eyes at some girl."
"Sorta thing'd get you et in my Gempa's day," said Seventh-Papa.
Darvan turned even redder. Heat came off him and bent the air around him. He made worse and worse stink-water faces at his food, but had yet to pick up his chopsticks.
Sahra, though, was eating hers as quick as she could get away with it. No matter how crunchy or hard to chew it was. She never got this many flavours at once, come dinner time. She wasn't going to let it go to waste.
All the others were eating, even the babies. Sara watched Darvan's chopsticks all sneaky, by looking up while she bent over her bowl. He had his hand on them, but he wasn't picking them up. Even his hands were turning red.
"If you're not going to eat," began Mama.
The chopsticks and the hand holding them almost flew up off the table. The other hand got white fingernails holding tight to the bowl.
Sahra focussed on finding bits to eat. Not that she had much left by the time Darvan got busy on his meal.
He slurped the broth down with as much noise as he could make without catching trouble. Finished with a big belch that made the babies laugh and a mumbled, "...par'n..." that could hardly be heard over the babies' laughing.