by Kate MacLeod
But towns on Amatheon weren’t simply small versions of cities. They had never been part of the prefabricated colonization plans. They had sprung up wherever people had gotten sick of life under the domes. Everything about the towns was different from the cities, starting with the fact that they were open to the world around them. Cities were accessible only through a small number of highly controlled gates. Towns, on the other hand, usually had a wall like Prairie Springs had to separate farmland from town and to keep the wind from filling the town with clouds of dust and wheat chaff. But in Prairie Springs, rather than a gate, there was a gateway, nothing more than an opening in the wall with no door and no guard.
The gate into Prairie Springs was too narrow for the rover, so Scout pulled off the road to park out of the way against the wall. Gert sleeping at her feet made it difficult to work the pedals, but she managed a respectably neat stop before killing the engine. The sudden loss of the engine’s hum was almost deafening and woke both the dogs.
Shadow yawned with a squeak, then hopped off Scout’s lap to stretch himself out. He had gotten a bit thinner over the last few days, but the muscles under his white fur were as tight as ever. He looked up at her, his dark eyes peering out of the bandit mask pattern of the black spot covering his head. Then he ran down the stairs to the back of the rover. Gert followed, the white tip at the very end of her tail a blur, the entire back half of her sleek black body wiggling back and forth as it powered that thumping wag.
“You guys are going to stay here,” she said to the dogs, who had both started jumping excitedly the moment she put on the old bush hat. Shadow sat down, his posture straight and formal. He knew what she meant. Gert just kept wagging her tail. It thumped so loudly against the leg of the kitchen table it must be hurting her, but she didn’t seem to mind. She looked up at Scout as if she really wished she knew what Scout meant.
Scout sighed. She needed to make training this dog a priority. “Sit, Gert,” she said. Shadow stiffened his already perfect sitting form, but Gert missed the hint. “Never mind,” Scout said. “I’ll just be a minute.”
She went over to the bunk beds built into the back of the rover and leaned into the bottom one. “Hello, Tubbins,” Scout said. The cat gave a soft mew. Scout gathered him up, pillow and all, and put him gently inside an empty plastic crate. She tapped the opening mechanism on the door with her elbow, keeping Gert back with her knee as the dog tried to get a better look at the cat in the crate in her arms. The cat hissed his displeasure. The two were most decidedly not friends.
“Down, Gert,” Scout said. As soon as the door was open wide enough, she stepped out, dropping to the ground nearly a meter below. She turned back to the rover. “Stay, dogs,” she commanded, then jabbed the mechanism to shut the door. Shadow remained as he was at formal attention, but Gert stood at the edge of the rover with her head out the door until the closing metal hatch finally forced her to step back.
Her eyes on Scout’s were full of abandoned hurt, then the hatch clicked shut.
Crate in arms, Scout walked through the gate into the town proper. Prairie Springs had grown since she had been here last, new homes built from prefabricated panels crowding into the spaces between the older homes built from repurposed storage containers. The Space Farer logo that had once adorned the containers had mostly been scrubbed away, but a few faded stylized rockets remained.
If things kept going like they had been, there would be a renewed zest among the Planet Farers for removing those soon. Scout hoped to be gone long before that point. She had seen enough Planet Dweller–versus–Space Farer conflict in the last four days to last her a lifetime.
When she reached the public house in the center of town, she saw that the massive doors angled into the ground on both sides of the base of the building had been thrown open wide to let air pass through. Scout could imagine that after four days of all of the townspeople huddling together down there to wait out the solar storm it needed a good airing out.
A group of children streamed in and out of the open doors that led underground, carrying out old laundry and empty containers and bringing in canisters filled with water and food from the back of the public house. It used to be that the coronal mass ejection events only reached the surface during rare, powerful storms, every year or so. Now they were happening more and more often. They lasted longer and were more powerful, too intense to risk being caught out of doors as Scout so nearly had.
This planet was scarcely habitable anymore, particularly not for a nomad like Scout. She couldn’t wait to leave it behind.
Scout climbed the steps to the public house, pausing in the doorway to let her eyes adjust to the dark interior. A public house was always dark compared to the bright sun outside; having once been a separate compartment of the spaceship that had brought the first settlers to Amatheon, it had no windows. After the cities had been established, the empty compartments were dropped from orbit, scattered in a network around the cities to house the early explorers when they ventured out from under the domes. The satellites that created the protective shield against radiation hadn’t been completed in those days and it was crucial that the explorers always had a shelter close at hand in case of solar storms.
After the days of the explorers, the compartments had briefly been supply depots, little used and in danger of being forgotten entirely. But just in the last few decades there had been a movement—nothing organized, just a general dissatisfaction with city life that led to more and more people living outside of the domes. The public houses with their ability to protect from coronal mass ejection events were the obvious choice for shelter.
Now the towns had largely outgrown that confined space, spreading out into separate buildings, but the structure that no longer actually housed the public was still the center of town life. Now they were part meeting place, part general store, and part bar. Scout’s work delivering packages on her bike had largely been between such public houses. The proprietors maintained a communication network so shortages in one community could be alleviated by supplies from another.
But they also used them for gossip.
“Can I help you?” a woman asked.
Scout’s sun-dazzled eyes took a moment to pick out the speaker, a woman with massive arms and red hair pulled into something between a ponytail and a bun. She was the proprietor, Ruby Collins. She had also once been one of Scout’s mother’s closest friends, back before she died.
“Hey,” Scout said, stepping up to set the crate on the counter.
Ruby peered at her suspiciously for a moment before her eyes lit up with recognition. “As I live and breathe, Scout Shannon!” she exclaimed. “I almost didn’t recognize you. I thought someone had stolen your father’s hat!”
“It’s been a few years,” Scout admitted.
“More than that,” Ruby said, coming around the counter to gather Scout up in a stifling hug. “You’re shooting up like a weed.” She released Scout from the hug but grasped both of Scout’s arms to hold her still as she looked right into Scout’s eyes. “You’re older in lots of ways, I reckon. You weather this last storm okay?”
“Well enough,” Scout said. “I sheltered with some strangers with political issues they took out on each other.”
“Sounds miserable,” Ruby said, then tapped the crate. “What’s this?”
“Just a cat that fell into my care. I can’t keep him, of course. The dogs are more than enough work. I have two now. I was hoping you might know someone who’d take him? He’s old but healthy. Goes by the name Tubbins.”
“Hello, Tubbins,” Ruby said, reaching into the crate to pull out the large orange cat. Tubbins was purring loudly. She turned him around in her hands to look into his yellow eyes. “I reckon I can take him. Could stand the company. It gets too quiet here at night now that the kids have grown.”
“Thanks,” Scout said. That was one responsibility she could check off her list.
“How much you want for him?” Ruby asked.
; “He’s not mine to sell,” Scout said. “But I was hoping you could help me with another thing.”
“Surely,” Ruby said, cradling the cat in her arms and scratching all around his ears. Tubbins purred in perfect bliss.
Scout took the tablet off her belt and set it on the counter, then pulled a single round reflective lens out of her pocket and placed it over her left eye. She closed her right eye as she tapped her way through the tablet’s menus. Ruby was frowning slightly as she watched. From what she could see, Scout was tapping away at a blank gray slab.
Scout found the photograph she was searching for and turned the tablet to face Ruby. She plucked the lens from where it had adhered to her face and held it out for Ruby.
“You have to look with this,” she explained.
Ruby looked skeptical, but she took the lens and copied Scout’s gestures. “Where did you get this?” Ruby asked, fascinated. Scout knew the feeling. This technology was far beyond anything they had on their remote, rural planet.
“It was sort of a gift from one of the strangers I waited out the storm with,” Scout said. “Have you seen the man in the photo?”
Ruby was looking around the room, watching as the display inside the lens fed her impossible amounts of information about the world around her: how far away everything was, the temperature and humidity of the air, the time of day to the nanosecond. Scout nudged the tablet a little closer and Ruby finally looked down at it. It looked like a featureless stone tablet to Scout now, but she knew that Ruby, with the lens on her face, could see the image of a man staring up at her.
“Can’t say that I have,” Ruby said after a moment’s consideration, plucking the lens from her face and dropping it next to the tablet. “Farlane McFarlane. Sounds like a fake name. He’s distinctive-looking, though, isn’t he? With that twist to the end of his nose. Let me ask the network,” Ruby said, disappearing into her office behind the counter, the cat still nestled contentedly in her arms.
Scout put the tablet and the lens away, looking back over her shoulder as something momentarily blocked out the sun streaming through the doorway. Someone must have just walked past; there was no one behind her now. Scout pushed back her battered bush hat to run a hand through her short blonde curls that had been molded down with sweat. She had only been out of the controlled environment of the rover’s interior for a few moments and already she was a stinky mess.
“I’ve got a lead for you,” Ruby said, emerging from the back room and pouring the cat back into the pillow-lined crate. “You know Flat Valley, just north of here?”
“I think so,” Scout said, although she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t alone on her bike anymore. The rover’s navigation system would tell her the way.
“Yolanda in Flat Valley knows your fellow. He’s not what you call a regular, but she’s seen him more than once. No one there knows who he is or what he’s doing for a living. He comes into town for supplies now and again. Just food, nothing suspicious, but they don’t like strangers in those parts. It’s a bit north of here.” She gave Scout a significant look and Scout nodded. She knew what Ruby was saying. North meant further from the cities. The people out that way tended toward a certain stubborn independence. They had fled from the people who had fled the cities in the first place.
“Thanks,” Scout said. She started toward the door but turned back. “Say, Ruby, did you guys feel an earthquake about midmorning?”
“An earthquake? Here?” Ruby asked.
Scout nodded.
“We don’t get earthquakes in these parts.”
“That’s what I thought. Still, something weird happened on the road here. Any strange rumors from the hills?”
“Just the usual,” Ruby said. “Bandits robbing folks. Rebels doing whatever it is that rebels do. If that’s the way you are going, you take care.”
“I will,” Scout said. “It was good seeing you.” She didn’t add, “one last time.”
Scout settled her hat back on her head before stepping outside, hands in her pockets as she walked back to the town gate.
Beyond the town walls, the villagers were running farm machinery, harvesting the overripe grain. The constant whir of the motors filled the air, punctuated by bursts of thrashing sounds as the grain was pulled through.
Then Scout heard something else, something not quite drowned out by the roar of the machines.
Something was wrong. Her dogs were barking. Not happy barks or even warning barks. These were barks of raw panic.
She pulled her hands from her pockets and broke into a run.
3
The rover was taller than the wall, and even from inside the town Scout could see it was parked just where she had left it, off to one side of the road near the gateway. Still, there was something about its dark silhouette against the bright blue of the midday sky, like a bad omen. Something in the way it hovered over that part of the town, not letting the sun reach the wall to reflect blindingly back from the sheets of metal. Like it was creating its own little patch of darkness.
But some of that darkness was her own vision. Just a few days ago she had nearly died when someone pulled all of the air out of the room she had been hiding in. She had recovered, but she still had headaches and nightmares. She wasn’t well enough to be running again and her brain seemed prepared to knock her unconscious if that’s what it took to make her stop.
Scout clenched her hands into fists and kept her feet moving despite the frightening way her heart was pounding in her chest. Normally she loved that feeling, when she had pedaled as fast as she could for as long as she could, but this time it was different. It was like there was another muscle, some foreign muscle, wrapped around her heart, squeezing and squeezing. Choking. She could feel a wet warmth in her chest, like her heart was beginning to ooze out her own blood because of the squeezing.
But she wouldn’t faint. She wouldn’t stop. Her dogs needed her.
She burst out of the gateway, sending up a small cloud of reddish dust as she changed direction, then an even larger one as she skidded to a halt.
The door to the rover was standing wide open. Not how she had left it. A boy was standing in the open doorway, tossing a bag down to another boy on the ground. It jangled when he caught it. He handed it over to a girl no more than ten, who stacked it with a few others on the back of a wagon.
Scout had encountered their kind before, but only in the domed cities. Still, they looked the same as those she had known in the cities. They all had bedraggled hair, clothes either too large or too small but always old and faded to near unusability, and only half of them had anything at all on their feet. And yet, could you call them street kids, here where there were no streets?
Scout didn’t know quite what to do. They appeared to be robbing her, but then none of it was really her stuff. She had taken the crates of food, clothing, and medicine from the compound, since Viola, being dead, didn’t need them anymore. The crates full of broken machines and electronics had belonged to Ottilie and Ebba, who were also quite dead and needed none of them anymore. Thievery was a bit rude, but while Scout had never considered herself a street kid, they were all orphans like her. In a way, they were like her younger siblings. Annoying, and yet she felt compelled to take care of them as much as she could.
She had taken it all with her because she hadn’t wanted it to go to waste when she buried the compound. Why not just let them have it?
Then Shadow yelped in pain. It took a moment for her eyes to find him. He was no longer in the rover but was crouched under one of the front treads. A girl in a small, belly-bearing T-shirt and shorts that didn’t quite want to stay around her narrow hips was poking at him with a stick. Scout saw a bleeding bite wound on her shin but could summon little sympathy. No doubt that girl had earned it.
“Leave my dog alone,” Scout said.
The girl ignored her, trying to poke Shadow again. Not poke—spear. She was out for blood.
Even ill as she was, the speed of her r
eflexes was undiminished. Scout had her slingshot in her hand and fired a stone at the girl within one blink of an eye. The stone struck the ground just in front of the girl’s bare foot, sending up a plume of dust.
“Leave my dog alone,” Scout said again, a little louder than before. She started to take a step forward when she heard the distinctive whistle of a stone flying far too close to her ear, close enough to make the brim of her hat tremble.
“There are more of us than there are of you,” the boy on the ground said. He had no slingshot, but at the range they were from each other, he didn’t much need one. He had another stone in his hand, ready to throw if she moved.
“I can’t argue with your math,” Scout said, holding her hands where he could see them, empty slingshot in one hand, no stone in the other. With that stone in his hand ready to hurl at her she couldn’t risk more than a few quick, furtive glances at the rest of the scene around him, but she could see no sign of Gert. “Hey, Mr. Math. I had another dog?”
“That dog bit me,” the spear girl said, sounding near tears.
“I bet she did,” Scout said. Gert had bit her, not Shadow. Trying to stab him with a spear was so loathsome an act that Scout felt sick to her stomach just thinking of it. If she would stab an innocent dog, what would she do to one that had bitten her? “Where is she?”
The kids looked at each other without speaking. Their air of sullen guilt was making Scout’s heart race again.
“Where is she?” she repeated.
The little girl near the wagon pointed to one of the sacks, this one on the ground. Scout’s rising panic abated only a little when the sack twitched.
“You kids are monsters,” Scout said.
“She bit me,” the girl said again.
“Of course she did,” Scout said. She could hear the anger creeping into her own voice. “That’s hardly an odd thing for her to do when I left her to protect this rover and you decided to rob it.”