by John Shirley
“What’d you call me?!”
There was the boom of a gun then, and a scream; the chatter of an automatic weapon returning fire. Another scream. Quiet. Then a burst of laughter.
“Lookit that—they done killed each other! Ha!”
“Well, who gets their stuff? Let’s roll the bones for it!”
She shuddered and lay back down. Amazing they could even speak, these men, form something like sentences. They were animals in human form.
She waited, making up her mind. Tonight.
She thought about Zac, and Cal. She pictured them finding one another somehow. She imagined Zac taking care of Cal, getting their son to the nearest settlement. Then he’d organize a search party—a heavily armed search party—to bring her to safety.
But she couldn’t wait for that. It would take too long, if it happened at all. And it wasn’t all that likely. Zac wasn’t a terribly efficient guy.
She counted off seconds, minutes, to keep her mind busy. She ate a little of the salty, barely palatable puree in the food tubes; she drank a little water.
She’d need her strength …
Sometime close to dawn, the men quieted down. Marla pressed her ear to the hatch, heard someone snoring. They were asleep. Maybe there was a bandit standing sentry but chances were the guard would be looking outward from the bandit camp, watching for wild beasts or enemies.
Time to take the risk.
She took the uni and a few other items from her bag, stuffed them in her pockets with the remaining food tubes and a little plastic packet of water. She had no idea what the weather was like—probably cold at night, as in most desert places. She had only her tight traveler’s coveralls but they were designed to be insulated for anything but extreme temperatures.
She whispered, “Computer! Can you hear me? Please respond softly.”
“I hear,” came the soft, artificial voice.
“Computer—are you in touch with the Study Station? With anyone who can assist?”
“I am unable to establish contact. Mayday signaler is in the right-hand compartment. However it is likely nonoperational since it has not been recharged for three years. My own operational charge is nearly used up.”
“Okay, computer—open the hatch. If you can open it slowly, do so.”
“Opening hatch.”
The hatch of the lifeboat hummed slowly open. Cool night air, freighted with campfire smoke, drifted in to her. She took a deep breath, then got to her knees on the compartment cushion, looked furtively around.
She saw two campfires, one on either side of the low, flatbed truck a few strides away. Men were sprawled beside the guttering fires. She saw only one sentry, his back to her, about ten meters away, leaning on a large, pipe-like weapon.
She stretched a little, then climbed as slowly as she could out of the lifeboat compartment, feeling the truck bed with her feet.
She got her feet under her, crouched beside the lifeboat, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The moon seemed to glare down at her. She had the odd idea that it was watching her; that it might call out a warning to the bandits.
She took a long slow breath and then climbed off the truck, onto the sandy ground—and paused, wondering if she could get into its cab, start it up, drive it off into the darkness. Escape that way. But the sentry would fire that big weapon at the truck—probably some kind of rocket launcher—and he’d blow her up before she got far. Anyway, she had no idea if she could get the vehicle started. No, she had to go afoot, and quickly.
She crouched, hunched over, making her way to the deeper shadow away from the fires. She could smell the bandits—rank, rotten. She saw the shapes of cactus-like plants silhouetted against the gray background of the desert. She heard a sound, beyond the snoring of the men—breakers. An ocean. Beach somewhere nearby. It was like places back on the homeworld, where sometimes the desert reached the sea.
She hesitated. Right in her way was a big man sprawled on his back, sleeping in his helmet and goggles, mouth wide open. The stench of him almost made her gag. She held her breath and stepped over him with one foot, very carefully, wincing when her feet made a crunching sound in the sand. She was straddling him now.
She stepped over him with her other foot, teetering. Then she caught her balance, biting her lip with the tension. The man she’d almost fallen on stopped snoring and muttered to himself in his sleep. “Whuh bassud took muh … took muh fuggin’ …”
Marla waited. After an interminable time he resumed snoring.
She stepped over another man, who was curled up like a fetus—and then she was in the inky shadow beyond the firelight.
She headed toward the beach, thinking to follow it to some habitation along the sea.
In another three minutes she stumbled over a rock, fell headfirst … and slid down a sandy slope on her stomach. She came to a stop on the edge of a beach. She could see the moonlit wavecrests silver against blue-black, glimmering beyond the dark swath of sand.
She got to her feet and looked around—which way now? The bandits were roughly behind and to her right, so she went left.
She got a hundred meters down the beach—then stopped when a light struck her full in the face, dazzling her eyes. She stood there, frozen, terrified, not sure which way to run.
The light beamed from a flashlight held in a man’s hand. The light angled down, so she was able to make him out.
The man holding the flashlight was brawny, with long black hair flowing over his broad shoulders and a lantern jaw. He wore loose pantaloons, and an open vest over his bare chest. He was just getting out of a longboat pulled up in the surf. Beside him stood two other dark, rugged men. All three of them were heavily armed.
One of the men, bearded and scarred, pointed at her and said, “Vance—look! It’s the woman! It must be! Grunj ain’t gonna be happy! The idjits have lost her!”
“So they have,” said Vance. “But we’ve found her!”
Cal Finn had a choice. Hide in one of the dark crevices that might end up being dens for skags—or move toward that twinkling red light he saw in the distance.
After what Mom had read in the uni about the bandits, he figured the light might well belong to one of those bloodthirsty gangs.
Some of the bandits are cannibals, she’d said.
But suppose the light was someone looking for him—maybe his mom, lighting a fire to attract his attention?
Even if it was a bandit—it was late, and dark, and he was hungry. If they were asleep, just one or two bandits, they might not wake were he to slip into their camp and steal some food canisters, say, even a weapon …
The gnawing feeling in his belly made the decision. He had to take a look.
Cal crept from one pool of darkness to the next, guided by moonlight. He froze in place more than once when he heard the rustling of something moving out on the plain, expecting that unidentified something to leap out at him, tear his limbs from his body. He kept envisioning the skag’s three-jawed toothy maw trumpeting in rage.
But half an hour later, he’d made his way to the base of a hill of boulders, about thirty meters high. Firelight flickered red and yellow near the top. He couldn’t see anyone up there.
A narrow path wound between boulders, and up the steep, sandy incline. It was mostly in shadow, picked out by moonlight here and there. Anything could be waiting on that path.
Cal plucked up his courage and pressed on, climbing the hill, hands stretched out in front of him to feel his way as quietly as he could.
Soon he could hear a campfire crackling; could see sparks wending their way up to extinguish in the night sky. He got down on his hands and knees and crept close to a boulder on all fours, feeling strangely like one of the desert’s wild animals.
Creeping closer to the firelight, Cal peeked around the edge of the boulder and saw the camp just a step or two away. On the other side of a campfire, a big, dark-skinned man lay on his back, his head propped up on a folded coat, goggles pushed back on his forehead, a rifle of some kind in
his hands. He was snoring softly, mouth slightly open. Cal couldn’t see the rest of his face because of the shadows in the way. A random tumble of old bones lay to one side, including a skull. Not good. Maybe this guy was a cannibal.
Still—it was just one guy to sneak by. Cal noticed an open metal box on the far side of the fire from the sleeping gunman. Looked like the kind of thing someone might store food in. He could swipe the box. Maybe it’d contain a communicator of some kind, something he could use to call for help. But he had to do it silently …
Heart hammering, Cal crept forward on hands and knees, wincing when his stomach growled. He kept moving, hoping the crackle of the fire would cover any little noises he made.
He got closer to the box, closer still … then heard a clatter, loud as a fire alarm in his ears.
Cal looked down, realized he’d stumbled into a piece of string stretched tautly over the ground between two half-buried sticks. And strung on one of the sticks a cluster of empty tin cans was dancing, jangling together.
He jumped up, turned to run—and stopped in his tracks as a big, rough hand closed around his throat. He found himself looking up into the grim face of a scowling black man—the one who’d been sound asleep a minute ago.
The man’s grip tightened around Cal’s throat, and he demanded in a rumbling voice, “Who the hell are you?”
“How much you think we can sell ’er for, Vance?” asked Dimmle, as he leered at Marla. Sitting across from her in the boat, Dimmle was the bearded, scarred one, his face crisscrossed with old, blue-ink prison tattoos, mostly words, phrases like: Rip Up & Rip Off … Die Slow, Die Fast, But Die … Call Me 4 QuickFux … Mama, May I? … and … First the Knife.
“That I don’t know,” Vance said, rubbing his big jaw as he eyed Marla. He had his hand on the engine tiller of the open boat, steering without having to look where he was going.
There were six of them, five sea thugs and Marla, riding a ten-meter inflatable boat out toward an island—a dark blotch on the horizon picked out by a few lights. Vance was at the stern of the boat, to Marla’s left, where a glowing purple cylinder hummingly propelled them through the smooth sea. At the prow of the boat was an electric lantern.
Marla was thinking of throwing herself into the sea. She might drown, or be killed by some vicious aquatic predator. Better than dying slowly in the hands of human predators. Her hope of coming out of this intact had shriveled when they took her uni from her. Vance had it. “Won’t have you checking for signals, lady,” he’d said.
She leaned over a little, trying to reposition herself to dive in the water …
Vance shook his head. “Forget it, lady, you try to jump overboard I’ll grab you by the hair. And I’ll drag your pretty behind inboard—none too gently!” He grinned at her, his smile broad and gleaming white. Despite the threat, there was something boyish about this brawny man. Maybe this Vance could be manipulated, tricked into giving her a chance to escape, if she waited for her moment.
“You wouldn’t let me kinda rent her for a night, would you, boss?” Dimmle asked. “I’d pay ya good. Wouldn’t leave her the worse for wear. Mostly.”
Marla shuddered.
“Not a chance, Dimmle,” Vance said, his growl surprisingly affable as he went on: “You and the others’ll keep your hands off her or I’ll lop your fingers off and feed ’em to the Cruncher.”
Dimmle scratched his crotch meditatively. “Don’t do no harm to ask. We don’t see women away from the settlements much.”
The other men in the boat, gawking at Marla, nodded and sighed sadly at that.
“True, true, we don’t see ’em much,” Vance said. “Might be the raping, killing, dying thing that keeps them in the settlements. Of course, there’s always Broomy.”
Now it was the men’s turn to shudder. “Don’t talk about Broomy,” Dimmle said. “I’ve still got the scars on my thighs.”
“Looks like we’re almost home,” Vance observed.
Marla turned and saw the island looming up close to them. It wasn’t very big, for an island, maybe a couple of football fields’ worth of junk, spiky growths, steel barrels chained together, shacks, dirty sand, and hulking shapes she couldn’t identify in the dimness. Boats of various sizes, including a large, shabby houseboat, were tied up at a pier, and in a moment so was the inflatable craft.
“Okay, girlie,” Dimmle said, leering, pointing a pistol at her. “Climb out and don’t make a run for it—you’d run into worse on this island than you’d be running from.”
Marla climbed onto the pier, Vance, Dimmle, and the others close behind her. She walked ahead of them, the rising wind fluttering her hair.
Then they got to the place where the pier joined the island, and she stopped, confused. The island seemed to be rippling. Moving.
“Is there an earthquake?” she asked.
Vance stepped up beside her, chuckling. “You’ve a good eye, woman! Grunj’s Island isn’t solid land—it’s a vessel, several of them, chained and netted together, most of them hidden under all the camouflage we’ve laid down over them! We move it around at night, use it as a kind of Trojan horse to get to other vessels … Sometimes their crews just walk onto the island and we get ’em that way … Works dandy!”
“Oh, well, that’s …”
“Creative and resourceful!” Vance laughed. “I know! When we need a hideout—we just move the island. Come on, down this way …”
He led her along a “beach” covered with sand—as they walked along she could feel wooden planks under a thin layer of grit. Faces peered out at her from the shacks nearby … she saw tongues flickering, eyes gleaming, gun barrels catching light. There were footsteps behind them …
Vance turned to see Dimmle and two other men following. He hefted his assault rifle. “And where do you think you’re going?”
Dimmle cleared his throat. “If we could just, you know, share her around, for an hour or two, we promise not to leave any marks, boss!”
“I told you—no! I’ve got the woman under control—she’s staying in my den and I’m going to sell her first chance! We’ll end up fighting over her! Use your money, and buy some women at the slave market on the Coast if you want some!”
Dimmle snorted. “Those women! Precious few—and what there are is all used up and ugly! And some aren’t even women, some is just painted men! But this one …” He stuck out his tongue at Marla and wiggled it. “I’d like to taste ’er little—”
“Dimmle—back off!” Vance barked, cocking his rifle.
Dimmle’s mouth curved downward in a perfect inverted U, almost a cartoon of a frown. “Vance—you like to play boss. But you’re only second in command. Might be that Grunj’ll want to decide this.”
“Then let him—when he gets back from the land raid. Till then, I call the shots. Now go on to Hell Hut—there’s a case of whiskey behind the bar you can share with the boys! Knock yerself out!”
Grumbling, Dimmle led the other men away. Vance glared after them, muttering, “They’re getting uppity. Going to need a lesson, and soon!” He gestured at Marla with his gun. “And I’m in no mood for nonsense from you either, woman! Head on up the beach! I’ll be a step behind you.”
She shook her head, holding her ground. “ ‘Woman’ is my gender, not my name. My name’s Marla Finn. And if you want a good ransom for me, you’d better see to it no one molests me—no one at all.”
Vance raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Ransom? What makes you worth a ransom, woman? We listen real damn close to all the orbital chatter. Far as I’ve heard, ain’t one’s looking for you. If you’re the kind to be ransomed, there’d be a damn search party out already.”
Her heart sank at that but she lifted her chin defiantly. “My family is wealthy. They may believe I was killed when the ship exploded. But if we let them know I’m safe … they’ll pay to get me back.”
All lies, of course. Her family wasn’t wealthy—her parents weren’t even alive, and she wasn’t sure her husband and son
were either. Zac had barely scraped together the money to make the trip. But she figured if she could convince Vance that a ransom might be coming, she could stall him from selling her off to slavers.
“Marla, hey?” Vance flashed his bright grin at her. “I like it! I’m Vance Sletch, and proud of it! Wanted on seven planets! I kill only when I have to, lady, and I’m no rapist. Don’t enjoy it the way the others might. I like a woman to open her legs to me because she wants to. So you can stop fretting for right now—only, if Grunj decides to sell you to the slavers, why, no way to know how you’ll be treated. Some owners might treat you decent—some might treat you like a skag pup treats a bone, and it could go harsh with you.”
“But if you ransom me …”
“Ah yes. Just how much you think we could get for ya?”
She shrugged, tried to lie as casually and convincingly as possible. “A million or so.”
“Is that right?” He rubbed his prominent chin. “Well well well. You might be overvaluing yourself, Marla m’dear. But we’ll just see. Come along to the den, and we’ll get something to eat, and talk it over …”
Marla went along quietly—and gloomily. She was fairly sure that he hadn’t believed a word she’d said.
“What the devil am I gonna do with you?” the big black man asked, slapping a pistol in the palm of one hand as he glowered at Cal.
Cal was sitting on a low boulder at the stranger’s camp. The stranger holstered his gun—a relief to Cal until he saw the man crack his knuckles. Big knuckles in big hands—made a big sound.
Cal gulped. “You could let me go. Then I’d just … be outta your hair. Gone. Noooooo problem.” He stood up. “In fact—now that I’ve apologized for sneaking around in your camp, I’ll just go …”
That powerful hand clamped down on Cal’s shoulder, spun him easily around, and sat him down on the rock again. “Nah. You’re staying here. I don’t like X factors, mysteries, or riddles. I need to know who you are and what you’re up to. You say you crash landed in a lifeboat near here?”
“Sure. Down the gulch there, a kilometer or so.” Cal pointed.