by Alex Wells
“Every day, I promise.” Even if the letters would collect up for months before the next rift ship came to Tanegawa’s World, she would give them a daily accounting of her life to read.
He pressed a purse into her hands. “Tuck this into your shirt now, don’t take it out till you’re at the ticket counter. I’ve counted it out, it’s all there.”
Mag nodded and tucked it away. Then Papa crushed her with another hug, the money digging into her belly hard enough to make a bruise.
“It’ll just be a year or two,” Papa whispered. “I promise.”
“I’ll find us a good place. And if I make any money extra, I promise I’ll send it back.”
The speaker made another noise, and there was that voice again. It near made her sick. “Final call for passengers to disembark.”
Papa helped her lift the little trunk off the train. It wasn’t that heavy; she could carry it easily enough on her own, but she knew it made him feel better. He gave her one last kiss, then stepped back into the train car so a man on the platform could shut the door.
Like Mama had back in Rouse, she stood on the platform and watched the train until it was gone, shielding her eyes with one hand as it wended into the shining buildings.
She sniffled, her throat tight, but no tears came as she picked up her trunk and walked it slowly to the building just off the platform. Heat radiated off the gray synthcrete and glass facing in waves, like it was a second sun. The salt hardpan heated her feet, even through the thick, new soles of her boots.
As soon as she crossed the threshold, stepping through a nested set of glass doors, the air turned cold enough to make her shiver. She looked around, feeling like a bumpkin, craning her neck to spot where the cold air came from as she took her place near the end of the line. The cold air dried her sweat, and she enjoyed the feel of it; it was never this chilly except in the dead of night, and only then outside of the town. Dozens of screens had been set into the wall, two large ones over the ticket window displaying endless scrolls of news, weather information, scheduling times. She’d never seen even one screen so fancy – the few in Rouse were blocky, thick affairs with bad color and simplistic rather than photorealistic graphics, the images often jumping and stuttering with interference. These were smooth and bright. She almost wanted to touch them. It must be nice, she thought a bit sourly, to have so many fine things you could waste them on telling you that it was damned hot outside.
When it was her turn at the window, she pulled the purse from her shirt and handed it to the ticket clerk, a man in company blue with tiny round glasses perched on the end of his nose. He was going bald, what hair he had left iron gray and cut close to his skull. “What destination do you want?”
“Honest sir, I don’t know where the ship’s going. But it don’t much matter. I’d like to go as far as that money will take me.”
His eyebrows jumped a little, behind his tiny glasses, but he counted out all of the big chits and folded bills silently. “This will take you three stops, and you’ll have a little left over.” He consulted a screen. “The third stop will be Poseidon.”
Mag licked her lips nervously. “What sort of place is it?” Maybe it would be better to take a closer stop, save the money and hope that’d get Mama and Papa off world sooner. But instinct told her to get as far away as she could, to use as much of the money as possible for its intended purpose.
The man pushed his glasses further up on his nose. “A very watery planet, I hear.”
She tried to imagine that, and couldn’t. It sounded far too exotic. “What sort of work is there?”
“Fishing, mostly. Other related industries.” He frowned slightly.
She wanted to ask if the work was scarce, if it was all owned by TransRift like Tanegawa’s World, a million other things. But she could tell that he was getting impatient. He was nice, and polite, but that didn’t mean he was on her side. “I’d like the ticket for Poseidon, please. Thank you sir.”
He named the price, counted a small pile of chits into her purse and handed it back to her. She tucked it carefully back into her shirt, so no one could try to steal it. He handed her a ticket next, explaining that it was all general boarding, that she was on the cheapest fare and would have to share communal quarters with everyone in steerage, that food was provided as legally required but only at base nutrition and anything fancier would be extra, and that the journey would take four weeks due to insystem flight speeds and loading times on world.
Mag did her best to listen, wishing that she’d thought to bring a flimsy to take notes, but then he handed her a little folder that he said contained the details of everything he’d just explained. He tucked a thin metal sheet into the booklet – her ticket. “Keep this safe and be ready to present it at any time. If you lose your boarding pass, I will be unable to provide you with another.”
Mag nodded, tucking that into her shirt as well. “Sir, can I ask…”
He raised his eyebrows at her. He seemed a little impatient, but not unkind. “Yes?”
“What’s it like? To fly in one of those things? I don’t even know why they call ’em rift ships and not space ships.” She had vague recollections of history lessons, and remembered that the colonization of the myriad distant worlds had happened by way of space ships.
“They fly through space, but only enough to travel between rifts. And rifts…” The clerk frowned slightly. She couldn’t tell if he wasn’t certain of his answer, or just not certain how to explain it in a way she could understand. “The ship makes temporary holes in space itself and flies through them. What’s on the other side is called the ‘rift’, and distance doesn’t work the same as it does here. So a distance that would take centuries to travel like it used to can be crossed in a few hours.”
“What’s it like, in the rift space?” she asked, fascinated.
The clerk shook his head. “Nothing I can describe, little miss. You’ll find out yourself, soon enough. Just don’t go eating too soon before you’re scheduled to cross the rift. It affects some people in a very bad way.” He reached under the desk and brought out a little pamphlet, which he offered her. “This ought to cover a lot of your basic questions. Read the safety information first, it’s the most important.”
The reality of potential vomit made the thing seem even less like an adventure, though she took the pamphlet gratefully. A cartoon of a smiling man in a company blue suit waved at her from the front of the pamphlet, a little speech bubble saying: “Hi there! I’m Weatherman Bill. Ready to ride the rifts, little buddy?” Obviously intended for children to read, but she couldn’t find it offensive, not when she knew nothing at all. Mag hazarded a glance behind her and noted several people there. She probably should stop taking up the man’s time. “Thank you for all your help, sir. Where do I go now?”
He pointed off to the side. “Standard security and health screening, please. Once you’ve been screened, you will be directed to a waiting area. Boarding will begin in two hours.”
Mag tucked the pamphlet in the pocket of her skirt. Trunk held between her hands, she joined the next line. There were little glass booths lined up there, and men in green Mariposa security uniforms; most of them were old and all of them looked bored. Passengers stood in the booths while scanners moved around them and security men watched. Other guards waved wands over their belongings.
Tongue stuck to the roof of her dry mouth, she waited her turn. It didn’t look painful or indecent, but it was another hurdle to be crossed, and another thing she had never done in her life, more equipment she hadn’t seen. The screening only took a minute for each passenger, and then the security men waved them out of the booths to pick up their belongings, then sent them down another hallway. No one seemed the least bothered by any of it.
They told her what to do every step of the way when it was her turn. Stand in the booth, hold up her arms. She answered questions about where she was from, swore that she had no animals or plants or seeds in her trunk, told them which vaccina
tions she’d had and which ones she’d missed. “Proceed down the hallway and enter the next room on your left,” one of the guards told her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, trying to smile cheerfully.
“Nothing at all.” He didn’t smile, didn’t even look her in the eye, but that might not mean anything. She hadn’t seen them smile at anyone, or look anyone in the eye. “You’re missing two critical vaccinations. The doctor will give you the shots and then you’ll be set to board.”
It seemed so simple, enough that it made her knees a little weak with relief. So much for her paranoia. She took up her trunk and walked down the hall, just a short distance, and around the corner to a small room. There was no one waiting for her inside, but there was a little counter; maybe the doctor had just stepped out.
The door slammed shut behind her. She turned around, dropping her trunk. That was all she had time to do, because then there was a soft hiss, a scent both unnatural and sweet. Hands clutching at her nose and mouth, she collapsed to her knees.
She didn’t try to yell for help.
Chapter Five
Hob had seen the Bone Collector only once, a decade ago. He’d started out as a statue in a wet cave that had no business being at the heart of one of the great sand seas, undeniably made of stone. He hadn’t stayed a statue.
He also hadn’t changed one bit in the intervening years. His staff was straight and smooth, made of a yellowed, impossibly long bone, with a wildcat skull affixed to the top and surrounded by feathers bleached pale and carved bone beads on leather cords. He left the staff standing up in the sand, like an unholy signpost. The Bone Collector looked like he was made of living bone himself, or maybe cream-colored limestone like the cave she’d first seen him in: skin pale like he never saw the sun, waist-length tail of hair almost white and his eyebrows near invisible. He was dressed like a vagrant, clothing and gray leather duster ragged. His white shirt was buttoned all the way to his throat; chains of knucklebones and lizard skulls were strung around his neck, hanging over his chest. Strings of talons, so large they could have come only from the great eagles, decorated the edge of his rain cape and hung from his buttons. His waistcoat was deep blue and embroidered with constellations of silver stars, the color jarring when everything else about him was so pale.
She remembered the pop of that color, too. That first time she’d seen him, he’d transformed from stone to flesh in an instant, after she and Freki and Geri – then still wearing their pup names Francis and George – had wet the underground lake with the blood of a company man who’d wanted to break the Bone Collector to pieces with a hammer. He’d scared the hell out of her, changing like that, and she’d tried to stab him in the side with her knife. The blade had shattered against him and he’d laughed of all things, kissed her forehead, and said, I expected someone taller.
Well, she wasn’t some overhyped kid fresh off her first real knife fight now. “Took your time,” she called to him, rising to her feet. And then, to prove she remembered and she wasn’t scared, “Am I tall enough yet?”
He laughed, though he didn’t speak until he came to a halt in front of her. “Your feet seem to reach the ground. Didn’t Nick Ravani tell you the way to gain my attention?” He was her height, maybe even a mite shorter now, when he’d seemed to stretch for meters before. And slight, she realized; it was the duster and all the bones that gave him any sense of bulk.
“Nick Ravani don’t tell no one a thing unless he thinks it’s funny,” she drawled. “So what way would that be?”
“Blood, Hob Ravani. Blood calls blood; just a few drops in the sand and I will find you.”
Hearing her name come out of his mouth in that odd accent of his, those low tones, put a shiver down her back. She hid it with a shrug. “Or an eagle will show up.”
“That too. But I don’t think you’d have any trouble fending one off for an hour or two.” He tilted his head slightly to one side. “This isn’t a social call, I take it? It never is.”
Did he sound disappointed? “Old Nick’s brother’s been killed. Gunned down in the back, out on the dunes.”
“I don’t know why you’d need to ask me about that. The answer is obvious.”
Hob smiled grimly, because it was true. If there was another cause of people getting shot in the back in the middle of the desert, she’d yet to find it. Bandits didn’t waste that many bullets – even those making good money under the table from Mariposa employers. “Yeah, the who is damned obvious. But I need to know why. His wife didn’t even know he was dead till I told her. And Mag – his daughter – can you tell me if she’s OK? If she made it off world?” She tried to keep steady as she spoke, pretending that this was just another job, but her voice cracked on the last word. She needed to be sure. “You can do that type of stuff, right?”
“Did you bring a bone for me?”
Hob reached into her pocket, pulled out the stained, stinking handkerchief-wrapped bundle. “It’s Phil’s. He’s got no use for it anymore.”
The Bone Collector unwrapped the handkerchief and looked at the finger, seeming to be caught between pleasure and disgust. “Three bones… and still wrapped in meat. It will do. This will make it easier to find out the answers you want.”
“So you can do it.”
“I can try. Would you like to come back later?”
“It’s an awful long ride.” She hesitated, sucking at her teeth. “What’ll it cost?”
The Bone Collector shrugged, a small smile curving his lips. “For you… I would do it for free.” The way he said that made something warm curl in her stomach; she wanted to like it and had long since learned to never trust such feelings or such men. “But since I know that would worry you, I will give you a price. All of the water you have brought with you.”
Hob snorted. “You tellin’ me that you’re just coming up with a price to make me feel better ain’t exactly havin’ the desired effect.”
“If you’d not mind skipping this part of the little dance, we are happily back to no price at all.”
Exasperated, she said, “Why can’t you just make this a normal fuckin’ deal?”
“Normal.” He said the word like it was a foreign curiosity. “Nick Ravani and I… how has he put it. We ‘go way back.’ As do you and I, if I recall correctly.” The Bone Collector smiled.
“You could say that.”
“Then you have your answer. I don’t think any of us have too many friends.”
It was Hob’s turn to laugh, holding up her hands in surrender. “You’ve made your point. Friend.” It seemed strange that the man – if he even was a man – thought of her like that after only one encounter where she’d ended it by trying to stab him, but she wasn’t about to question it. She wasn’t that rich. “Fine then. You do it for free and I don’t bitch about it. You mind if I just wait around?”
He shrugged. “As long as you will be patient, and not interrupt me.”
“Contrary to what Old Nick’s been jawing, I got it in me to be patient.” Hob pulled her cigarette case, a battered thing made of steel that she’d taken off a bandit a few years back, from her jacket. She drew a black cigarette out and tucked it between her lips. A little pulse of the heat that always waited in her blood and she snapped her fingers near the cigarette’s end. A tongue of concentrated flame leapt, took, and then she sucked it into the end of the cigarette and turned it into a perfect, glowing cherry. That was one of Old Nick’s favorite parlor tricks, and the first one she’d mastered, even when he kept telling her she was too young to smoke. A little hint of witchiness they could get away with showing off where others could see, since it was easily dismissed. “You want me to stand downwind?”
The Bone Collector watched each small movement with strange intensity; at the sight of the little flame spitting from her fingertips, he smiled. “I would appreciate it. Why you have chosen to acquire Nick’s foulest habit, I cannot begin to guess.” He moved to another sand-filled cellar.
“Mayhap we li
ke how it tastes.” Cigarettes were still the only thing that soothed the fire in her blood, kept it from burning her inside to out. So she smoked just as much as Old Nick, leaving chains of ash and burnt-out cigarette butts in her wake. She’d never asked, but she guessed he did it for the same reason. Hob followed the Bone Collector with long, easy strides, sand and dust puffing up around the toes of her boots. She paused when he turned and gave her a long, level look. “You want me to back off?”
“Not at all. I’ve just never had someone be so curious.”
“I’m a curious sort.”
He laughed, the sound pleasant and musical, and she hated herself a little for liking it. This was business, Uncle Phil was dead, and she needed to have her head in the game. She’d sworn to never have her head out of the game again.
At the cellar pit, he unrolled the severed finger from the handkerchief and plunged it into the sand, holding it under as if he expected it to come alive and struggle. His face creased with a frown for a moment, and then he pulled his hand back up. Three clean finger bones sat on his palm.
“Nice trick.”
“I have many.” The Bone Collector sat down on the remnants of a stone wall. He moved the bones around on his palm with a few gentle nudges, then nodded to himself. “You must be quiet now.” He looked at her until she nodded in return, and then bowed his head, covering the bones up with his other hand.
At first, she thought it was a trick of the thin light coming from the moons; his face went pale, dead white, and that pallor spread, flowing up from the roots of his hair to the tips, moving down his neck and onto his jacket. And then she knew it wasn’t just a trick of the light when his waistcoat turned pale as the rest of him.
She shuffled a little closer, peering at him, but didn’t touch, didn’t make a sound. The very texture of the man had changed, from fluid and living to smooth and unmoving. Even the stray threads of embroidery on his waistcoat had gone still.