by Sean Grigsby
The orb changed color, from blue to green.
“Look at that,” Hurley Girly said. “It likes you.”
“What?” Sarah caught her breath. Was this thing alive?
The Daughters laughed, even Grindy.
“Hurley, you’re so stupid,” Ava said.
“This thing isn’t sentient.” Grindy swatted the hair from Ava’s eyes. “It changes color from the reactions of the different elements inside it. These poles,” Grindy pointed to the one above and the one below, “are what keep it from causing a nuclear explosion and sending us all to a worse Hell.”
Sarah watched it for a few seconds in silence, until buzzing hums and howls came from above the Daughters. An orange glow filled the dark of the spiraling track, getting brighter as it sped closer, the laughter and swearwords getting louder. Trouble was coming.
“Fuck me,” Ava said.
The Amazons hovered off the bottom of the ramp, stopping to block the only exit. Each of their faces dropped its celebration, turning into scowls when they saw Sarah and the other Daughters. The Amazon at the back even spit at the ground.
The baby was there, too. The woman who’d spit carried her in a sack strapped around her chest. It didn’t make sense, though, for this Amazon to be at the rear. At the receiving stage Sarah assumed the redhead had been the head of her gang.
“You get demoted, Farica?” Lena asked. “I hope so. Ass suits you.”
“Watch your mouth about our dearly departed,” Farica said with a frown that quickly flipped to a grin. “Wanted to show Rory the beauty of a cyclone parade through the city. Don’t want to go too fast with her, you know.”
The baby cooed in her sleep.
“You shouldn’t be riding with the kid like that,” Grindy said.
“Thanks for the advice, old woman. But I think I can call my own shots without your input.” Farica got off her bike and the others did the same. “Well, well, seems your own pretty little birdie hasn’t died yet.” She stomped over to Sarah with hands on hips. “You want to take one for the team, little girl? See if you can rang me before I break your teeth.”
The verbal attack came so suddenly, Sarah had to fight the urge to back away like some coward. She wasn’t ready for a fight.
“She knows about the truce,” Grindy said. “Just like you.”
Farica got in Sarah’s face, no longer talking. Her breath smelled like a boiling pot of dog droppings and wet rat. Pieces of whatever she’d last eaten hung in her teeth. Feeling for the brass knuckles in her pants pocket, Sarah hoped she wouldn’t have to use them. The rang gun might have been useless to her then, but the knuckles had no safety switch. Sarah kept her gaze locked on the crazy woman’s own shaky eyes.
Just a little more wiggling and the knuckles would be on Sarah’s hand. And then she’d swing.
Farica backed away and laughed. “I’m just messing with you, China Doll. Jesus, you sheilas are so serious sometimes.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Lena said, stepping around and putting a tight hand on Sarah’s throwing arm. She must have known what Sarah was planning.
Farica waved one of the baby’s limp hands. “Like I said. Showing Rory the Core.”
“Looks like we were here first.” Lena’s head twitched, just for a second, like she’d been zapped by a shipper guard’s electric rod. Clenching her fists, she shook it off, like she’d only been mildly annoyed by this rival gang. But Sarah had seen the monster trying to come out.
Farica pointed to her gang behind her. “Yeah, well, there’s the exit.”
“I’ll show you an exit!” Lena shouted.
“OK,” said Grindy. “Let’s all ease off. Farica, do you think your sheilas could give us a minute. I just need to refill some canisters.”
“Nowhere in the truce does it say we can’t be in the same place at the same time.”
“I’m asking as a favor,” Grindy sighed. “It’ll be easier that way.”
“I don’t owe you shit, old woman.” Farica raised the baby’s hand again and danced it in the air. Instinct made the kid wrap its pudgy digits around Farica’s index finger. Had to be instinct. Sarah couldn’t see any living creature choosing to show Farica a shred of affection.
“Fine,” Grindy said, as she hobbled to her cyclone. “I’ll come back later.”
“You don’t have to take this shit,” Lena said. “Tell them to go.”
“Can’t we all just get along?” said Farica.
The other Daughters stayed silent, caught between loyalties. Sarah remembered her promise to support Lena. No matter what. And besides, she already had the brass knuckles in place.
Grindy got on her bike and stared at Lena with tired eyes. In the ever-changing glow of the Core, they looked dark and foreboding. “Let it go, Lena.”
Lena’s arm twitched, probably aching to shoot her rang. But after a moment she got on her cyclone, as did the rest of the Daughters. The tension reaching its peak must have woken the baby. Her cries echoed from the Core as the Daughters rode back out to the city. No one said anything the rest of the way home.
Sarah sat on her bed, staring at nothing through the window when Sterling knocked at her door. The sound jolted her from thought, and the only thought she seemed to have when she found the time to be alone was whether this was really happening.
She smiled and nodded at Sterling. The woman came over and sat at the end of the crate bed. Her face was long and tanner than the others, but still watery from the lack of sunlight.
You’re fitting in well, Sterling signed.
“It’s hard to tell. I feel like I’m a constant screw up.”
That just shows you care. I’d be worried if you were apathetic.
Sarah smiled and laughed softly.
Where did you learn to sign?
Sarah shrugged. “My father traded free plumbing jobs to the lady down the street who taught it. He thought it would help me make money later on. And I was never good at learning other spoken languages. What about you? I guess you learned early.”
My father thought it was a blessing for me not to have a voice. My mother secretly took me to a mosque where they taught ASL. I went every day during the week. Until my father found out.
“Is that why you got sent here?’’
Sterling tilted her head a little and the dweller lights from outside caught in her eyes. Sarah wondered what she’d have to do to get eyes like that.
Nothing so simple, Sterling signed.
“Can I ask you something?”
Sterling nodded. A strand of her dark hair fell across her face.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sarah said, “but doesn’t it make things harder that you don’t have a voice? In the gang, I mean.”
Shrugging, Sterling signed, Most of Lena’s commands on the road are hand signals. And it doesn’t take words to ride or shoot. We’ve made it work. And with all the spare time we have here, everyone learned to sign so they could bitch to me about something I’d rather have ignored.
“I really wanted to hit that woman today. Farica. I’ve never wanted to do anything more in my life. Lena stopped me before I could.”
Horror sees everything, Sterling signed.
“Could I have done it? Would that be allowed by the truce, if I used my left hand?”
I’m not your mother. You don’t have to ask me for permission. As long it’s your left hand, I’ll have your back.
“Why is the truce so important?”
Sterling took a deep breath and sat there a moment. The truce gives the ones already here a chance. Things were tougher before you came.
“That’s hard to imagine.”
It was every woman for herself. The gangs provided protection to the dwellers who swore loyalty to them, but we could only do so much. When you hear an expression like “the streets ran red with blood,” I’ve actually seen it. Guts don’t clean off glass streets so easily.
Sarah latched onto something to change the subject. “Why didn’t
Lena pick a dweller, someone already here to replace Loveless?”
You saying she made the wrong decision?
“No!”
Sterling laughed, breathy with no weight behind it. It’s the rules. If you don’t get picked from the box, you’re a dweller forever. Most dwellers are just glad not to be on the Amazons’ menu.
“What happened to her? Loveless, I mean.”
Sterling looked away. It’s not my place to say.
Sarah ached to see Sterling’s eyes again, especially since she’d clearly said something to upset the mute Daughter, but, after a while, not being able to come up with anything to say, Sarah stared through the window again, into the night where the streets twisted in steep curves.
A horrible feeling gripped her from inside. She didn’t know where it had come from, but it was like a premonition without any hint of what it meant. But it was coming, whatever it was.
“Is there any way the truce could end?” Sarah said, turning back to Sterling.
Sterling cleared her throat – strange, since she never used her voice. Grindy wouldn’t let that happen, Sterling signed. Neither would Lena. They know what it would cost. She put a hand on Sarah’s own, smiling gently, as if she’d never tried to be happy before.
The smile didn’t last.
But Lena has been losing her mind for a while. When Loveless died, it just made it worse. Horror needs a break. Leading this gang has worn her out. I don’t want it. But I know it shouldn’t be Lena. Not anymore.
Sarah shook her head. “I’d hoped the worst was behind me, in that space port they kept us all in. But… I’ve got this feeling… something I can’t shake. I’m beginning to think the worst is just around the corner.”
Chapter 12
“What are you doing in my port?”
Warden Cynthia Beckles was a wall of a woman, both in her large, imposing build and in the way she transacted business – at least, from what Dolfuse had heard. Sitting there in Beckles’ office was the first time she’d had the misfortune to meet the warden. Beckles wore her gray hair in a tight ponytail that ended in the middle of her back, and she stood tall enough that Dolfuse would have had to jump to grab the end.
On the wall to Dolfuse’s left, thousands of ID tags on silver chains meshed together in a pile, hanging in a glassless frame. A spotlight hung from above to showcase the “art”.
A monorail zipped toward the port as Beckles looked out to the courtyard four stories below. From this position, with her back to Dolfuse, the warden had asked her question. Between them, on a large white desk, a steak lay half-eaten and neglected.
“I came to see Spangler,” Dolfuse said. “A personal matter.”
Beckles turned, fingers red from squeezing her arms. Her eyes bulged like some junkie on a high. “Do you think this is some kind of laidback office where you can drop in whenever you like and have a chat?”
“No. But–”
“In case that scanner you went through didn’t give you a clue, or the guards marching around here, this port isn’t some visitors’ center. You came in through the public entrance. How would you like a tour of the back way in, like all the shippees?”
Was that some kind of threat?
Beckles shifted her jaw. An underbite, Dolfuse swore she had a touch of one. All the warden needed now was a large club and green skin to finish off the ogre look.
“I did get a glimpse of some of the young women to be launched,” said Dolfuse.
“That was nothing, senator. Those are shippees who were held back for extra… correction. It takes a while to break them, you see. These girls, these outcasts, aren’t fit for the military or society for that matter. I love each and every one of them, but they’re still animals. And Oubliette is their ark.”
“I didn’t take you as religious, warden.”
Beckles smiled and shrugged. She walked over to the desk and Dolfuse instinctively tensed. The warden bent down and retrieved a metal bowl that sang with clinking contents as she stomped over to the silver tag cluster hanging on the wall. “You see these?”
Dolfuse nodded, swallowing.
“They’re identification tags. Every girl gets one when they come to me.” She appreciated them as if she’d earned them in some hard-fought contest. “I give them a hug and wish them well before I take the tags back. You’re looking at a piece of every shippee that’s been through here. Even before I took this position. Thousands of them.”
The joy dripping from the warden’s words turned Dolfuse’s stomach, making her squirm in her seat. With a toss of the bowl, Beckles threw a new cluster of tags and chains into the air. They flew into the rest of the colorless collage by an invisible force. A few metallic clicks and they were stuck there for good.
“Magnets,” Dolfuse said.
“The strongest.”
“I apologize for any inconvenience I’ve been.” Dolfuse cleared her throat. “I’m sure you’ve heard of my continued support of your funding.”
Maybe that’ll get her off my rear end.
Beckles harrumphed. “Then you should know we don’t need any of you snooping around here like a bunch of bloodhounds. I treat these girls as if they were my own daughters, temporarily. We may not be the military, but this port has always been granted autonomy. It works better that way. For all.”
“Agreed.”
Dolfuse just wanted to get on the fastest monorail out of there. Tossing Beckles a few agreeable tokens was just the price of the ticket. It didn’t hurt her pride to do so. After all, Dolfuse was a politician.
“What did you discuss with my chief engineer?”
“Just seeing if he could look at a toy rocket for my niece. He’s good with that sort of thing.”
“I know.” Beckles put a thick hand on the back of her chair and dragged it from the desk. The chair didn’t have wheels, so Dolfuse endured every screeching second of metal-on-floor scraping.
“I need him to focus on those sorts of things for this port. I don’t want to see you in here again. Not without my permission.”
“If that’s what you’d prefer.”
“It’s what I command. In here, I am God. You’ve walked into my universe.”
Dolfuse stood. “Then, perhaps I should leave you to your flood. Oubliette being an ark and all.”
She clomped to the door.
Beckles waved a limp hand. “And tell all of your smarmy friends on the Hill to stay out of my hair. I’ve got enough to worry about, sending out their trash.” Her voice echoed off the walls. The warden said something else but Dolfuse was already on the other side of the door.
“Smarmy?” Vice President Martin nodded her thanks as the waiter set down a martini. “She used that actual word?”
“I didn’t wait around for her to call us all bloodsucking et cetera, et cetera.” Dolfuse stared at the drops of condensation trickling down the sides of her glass of water. Being in Martin’s presence ground her gears as much as Beckles, just in a different way.
“She sounds just as bitchy as I used to think she was. People don’t change, do they, Linda?”
“Only the good ones.”
The Terrace was Martin’s favorite restaurant. Even if Dolfuse’s staff hadn’t provided that information, Martin herself had made it known at least six times before they’d even received their basket of rolls. It was a politician’s haven most citizens couldn’t afford, and one of the only places serving real food.
Sharp laughter from the back of the restaurant caused Dolfuse to jump, lifting her head to see where the noise had come from. The light here hurt her eyes, given off by dozens of bulbs the size of sea shells, hanging from chandeliers or sconces.
“She really put you on edge.” Martin sipped her drink.
“That place,” Dolfuse said, “is awful.”
Martin eyed Dolfuse for a moment and chewed on a piece of roll. “How are you doing? Dealing with all of this?”
“Like a professional.”
“Emotionally?”
> “I don’t have time to consider my emotions at present, Madam Vice President. You’ve given me an important task.”
“Is that thing today with Beckles going to interfere?”
“Not unless she gives my guy a hard time. My main concern is this ansible thing I spoke to you about.”
Martin finished off her drink and nodded approvingly. “That chip I gave you, did you put it inside the drone?”
“Yes, but–”
“I have someone. Lundgate is his name. He’s an excellent programmer and drone pilot.”
“Are you sure it will work?”
“I don’t think we have a choice, Linda.”
She was right. Dolfuse couldn’t ask Spangler to risk his job again if it failed. This would be the only shot.
“Of course,” Dolfuse said.
“Another month or so?”
“Next shipment is five weeks from tomorrow.”
“Goddamn, that drink packs a punch.” Martin sighed and sat back in her chair.
The waiter arrived with their food: a big bowl of chicken alfredo pasta for Martin, only a Cobb salad for the senator. Dolfuse stared at the boiled egg slices and cubes of ham. She only ate like this when she was out with bigwigs, like Martin, and she always felt guilty. The people in her state, in the whole damn continent, had to live off rationed, heavily preserved, and fabricated junk.
“You’ve done good work so far, Linda.” Martin swirled noodles onto her fork. “I knew you were the one to get things done. And keep it quiet.”
“Of course.”
“We’re finally going to see what’s been going on up there.”
Chapter 13
“Come on, you big pussy, hit me like a girl!” Hurley Girly spit blood and motioned for Dipity to come at her again.
Dipity heaved and wiped sweat from her eyes, keeping the other hand in a fist. Another ill effect from the truce was that aggression became bottled up. Without other gangs to whale on without good reason, the Daughters of Forgotten Light had no one besides themselves to release a little tension.