by R. Lee Smith
Scott and Amber flushed together. He said nothing. She said, sullenly, “No.”
“Enough then,” he said curtly. “You have had your story. Now we are moving on. Gather your things.”
“We’re going to talk about this later,” Scott said.
It was not clear whether he were warning Amber or Meoraq, but in the event that it was him, Meoraq answered. “There will be time enough, I am certain, but if you cannot manage your words without lowing at one another like animals, I will drive you out into the wildlands where animals belong.”
Scott started to speak, but then obviously thought better of it. He shut his mouth and turned away.
The circle of humans began to break apart, withdrawing to their sleeping spaces to mutter amongst themselves as they packed. He could hear his name (or as close as they could manage to speak it) and he doubted it was spoken with favor or respect, but he would not be baited by that. He had promised Sheul patience and even now, when holding his temper felt so much like holding a knife in his chest and twisting, twisting, he would let his soul’s Father judge him honest.
Beside him, Amber was noisily punching her shiny blanket into her pack, the mark of his hand standing out brightly on her cheek, scraped raw and beaded on one edge with blood. He watched her for a time, wishing he had never begun the tale that had brought them to this moment, because although she certainly deserved a sounder cuffing than he’d given her for her outburst, it had utterly undone all the difficult mending of their first quiet talk this morning. He wanted that moment back, as clumsy as it had been.
He half-raised his hand twice, very much aware of the other humans, even though Amber herself did not appear to see them, or him for that matter, but in the end, he reached out and nudged at her with two knuckles.
She looked at him. In spite of her obvious anger, she kept her mouthparts pressed tight together, waiting on his word. So maybe it hadn’t all been undone.
“I forgive you,” he said.
She just looked at him for a while without any apparent change to her expression. Then her eyes shifted past him so that she could watch Scott.
“I don’t find you at fault,” he said after a moment. “This place is nothing but Gann’s poison. When we are away, things will be better.”
“Well, I’m glad you think so, lizardman,” Amber said, sounding anything but glad. “But I don’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure things are only going to get worse from now on. A fucking skyport.”
* * *
The walk out of the city went much quicker than the walk in. They no longer stopped each time a window lit up or a kiosk spoke to them. If a door opened, most of them passed it without even a curious glance at what might be inside. At one of the intersections, an insectoid bot replaced lamps that had been broken in the storm, and they all just strolled by like they’d seen giant metal centipedes doing linework all their lives.
It could have been because the ruins had lost the gothic oppressiveness they’d had in an impending thunderstorm. It could have been because they were hungry and wanted to be back in the prairie so Meoraq could hunt. It could have been because several towers had collapsed during the night and seeing them instilled everyone with a natural drive to get the hell out from under the rest of them. It could have been a lot of things, but Amber knew the real reason was Scott. Scott and the ship.
One night in a crumbling old ruin with a couple shiny tiles stuck to the wall had completely reinvented his sense of purpose. They were no longer pioneers fording their way across a desolate, alien landscape; now they were also castaways orchestrating their own rescue. Street after echoing street, it was Scott’s string of outrageous skyport promises and not Meoraq’s grim-faced guidance that kept them moving.
All the way down to the river, Scott talked. Each groaning, error-thick recording to issue from a corroded kiosk brought on a fresh promise of a working deep-space transmission tower. Every intact window or undamaged wall was greater evidence of a surviving skyport than all the rest of the broken ones. They passed a massive junklot where some unseen bot had towed thousands upon thousands of derelict vehicles, stacked into a single rusted brick filling the back of the lot end to end and easily a hundred meters high; the few vehicles which the tow-bot had missed remained where they had died in the street, most strip-salvaged and weathered away to nothing but a ring of rust and a few unusable parts, yet it was the bot who did it which Scott chose to point out as undeniable proof that a starship would still be able to launch itself and fly them home.
Amber heard all this and worse from her usual place at the tail of the marching line, and not just from Scott himself. He had shot the idea of a return to Earth into them like a drug and now they were all laughing and talking what-ifs and planning the first thing they were going to eat, the first place they were going to go, the first person they were going to sue. Humming, as the Candyman would say. Amber remembered what that felt like and she knew it wouldn’t last, although Scott managed to keep them going strong all the way through town and down to the river.
The waterfront district of the ruins was just like the waterfront district in any big city. The few surviving windows of the narrow storefronts they walked along promised all the same sleaze that Amber had seen peddled on her own street back home: Cheap rooms, knock-off brands, no-questions loans and quick cash for whatever you wanted to sell, booze and drugs and sex. Even worse were the commercial bots; unlike the maintenance units which were happy to ignore and be ignored by the aliens in their empty city, the commercial bots were drawn to them like missiles. They dragged themselves behind Scott and his group, croaking advertisements and error messages and occasionally sparking out or banging into debris. The most stubborn of these limped behind Amber for six blocks, plucking at her sleeve with a damaged tendril and offering up enticements such as, “Young ones, boy- and girl-meat. Be their first, safe and clean! We catch and release. They cry!”
At last, Amber swung on it and raised her spear, but either the bot recognized the threatening gesture or it had reached the end of its territory. Either way, it turned back and crawled away, its horrible litany of services and showtimes receding as the sound of water grew louder.
They crossed at one of the bridges soon afterward—the bridge that had been vomiting lightning all night long, in fact—and not only did Meoraq not try to stop them, he gave the order that marched them across.
“Please be kidding,” Amber had said, horrified. “Nicci, stay off that thing! What, was it some other lizardman telling us that these buildings could fall down any second and God alone was keeping them up?”
He threw her an impatient, annoyed glance as he pointed people onto the bridge. They went, not without hesitation, but they went. “God will hold the bridge if it is His will we move on,” he told her. “As I believe it is His will.”
“Well, I can’t say that’s the craziest thing I’ve heard today,” she countered, looking hard at Scott. “But only because I’ve heard so much crazy.”
Wasted. The only one close enough to hear her was Meoraq himself. Even Nicci was already heading out across the derelict suspension bridge of unknown age, spanning the freezing, storm-swollen river.
“This is such a bad idea,” said Amber, following.
Meoraq fell into step beside her. “We walk in God’s sight, Soft-Skin.”
“Yeah? Seems like he’s been doing a lot of blinking lately.”
“Do not be blasphemous.”
They walked. The sound of a hundred tromping boots on an otherwise empty bridge made an ugly sound that neither the perpetual wind nor the rushing water below could drown out. She imagined she could feel the bridge swaying in time with their steps, but she was not imagining the groaning, twanging, snapping sound above them as the ancient suspension cables had to carry them. Amber didn’t realize just how much she expected a collapse until she stepped off the bridge onto solid ground on the other side and felt, not relief, but the unmistakable rush of surprise.
She turned
around to stare for a while, but the bridge stubbornly refused to fall down, even now at the most blackly appropriate time.
At length, Meoraq tapped at her shoulder. “We are not stopping here.”
“It’s not fair.”
He frowned, rubbing at the side of his scaly snout for a few seconds before gruffly saying, “We will rest a short time then.”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t want to rest here. I don’t want to spend another damn minute here.”
“And yet here you stand.”
She threw him a scowl and started walking. Scott and the others were well ahead of her, beyond all hearing. She knew he was talking by the way he moved, gesturing at the windows as they lit up and at the commercial bots that came skulking in from the alleys. In his exuberance, he turned all the way around to make some point or another, walking backwards and pounding his fist into his open palm. She saw him see her, pause…and then wave her way and say something that made all the others look back.
“Deep breaths, Soft-Skin,” said Meoraq. “A count of six, deep and slow.”
“Don’t you even care what he’s telling them?”
His spines shrugged. “No.”
“It matters, you know.”
“Not to me.”
She didn’t argue the point, but she didn’t bother to hide her annoyance either and after several amused sidelong glances as she walked and fumed, Meoraq finally thumped her on the shoulder with two knuckles. “Hold a moment.”
“No. We’re not stopping until we’re out of the city, that’s what you said.”
He caught her by the wrist and stopped them both. Big scaly jerk. Far down the street, Scott apparently saw something interesting and led everyone around a corner and out of sight. All at once, they were alone—the last two people on the planet.
Meoraq too was watching as Scott and the others disappeared. Now he grunted, although he continued to gaze in that direction. “S’kot lies. Do you need me to tell you this?”
“No, of course not! But you’ve got this crazy idea that just because everyone knows that Scott talks out his ass, no one believes him!”
A snort of lizardish laughter. “Talks through his ass,” Meoraq murmured. “And farts from his face.”
“Focus, Meoraq. Our track record for disbelieving things just because they might seem stupid or dangerous is piss-poor. The only reason any of us are here is because we got on an untested ship and let them put us to sleep and shoot us into space.”
“No, you are here because it is where God willed you to be.”
The effort not to roll her eyes made her hand fly up and slap over her face. She rubbed her eyes wearily. “You’re killing me with that crap.”
“Truth does not care if it comforts you, Soft-Skin.”
They walked.
“Honestly,” said Amber. “It doesn’t bother you at all when Scott says your God’s voice is just a two-way radio?”
“Everything S’kot says annoys me,” Meoraq replied with a flick of his spines. “If he wished me fair weather and a warm bed, still it would be all my will to hold from slapping him to the ground.”
“He says there’s machines in Xi’Matezh,” said Amber, petty as that was.
If it was bait—and it was—Meoraq wouldn’t bite at it. “There may well be,” was his mild reply. “And if S’kot seeks to make himself their master, I will judge him for it. Until then, he can pour piss out of his flapping mouth all he pleases.”
“And you don’t even care who else he hurts with it.”
Meoraq glanced at her, then put his hand on her arm and stopped them again. “I don’t know humans, but I know fools. And I know the surest way to encourage fools to follow a wicked man is to tell them not to.”
Amber couldn’t argue.
“It is a long walk yet to Xi’Matezh,” said Meoraq, patting her on the head. “For now, his talk may be exciting, but it will pale with time. He will repeat himself and embellish on his lies, and doubts will grow. When we reach the temple and they see no reward for their wrong-placed faith, yes, it will be difficult, but they will come away stronger, for even the unkindest truth strengthens a man more than the prettiest lie.”
‘Says the man who thinks he’s going to find God there,’ thought Amber, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it, no matter how rotten she felt. He was trying to comfort her. It wasn’t his fault he was terrible at it. What she said, as neutrally as possible, was, “I think you’re seriously underestimating how pretty this lie is.”
“He can’t promise you anything better than God.”
“Of course he can. None of us have ever met God before and we’re just fine with that. We are!” she snapped when he rolled his eyes. “And for that matter, so are you! So you may want to see God when you get there, but you don’t need to. You can live without it if you have to.”
“Live without God?” he said with a lizardish smirk.
“Live without meeting God. Look, all I’m saying is, it’s impossible to miss what you’ve never had.”
“I’ll have to meditate on that, but in this moment, I do not agree. I know a man,” Meoraq mused. “Blood-kin of mine…a friend…who misses very much, or believes he misses, the birth-right that should have belonged to both of us, but which only I achieved. He stood some of the same training. He has at least some understanding of the struggle and pains which I endure, but he misses it anyway. Because it seems so much easier to him, I suppose.”
“I think you’re confusing missing something with wanting it.”
“Perhaps. So. Do you miss your old land—” He looked at her, head cocked, unsmiling. “—or do you just want it?”
To her profound irritation, she had no idea how to answer that.
Meoraq grunted and flicked his spines. “It doesn’t matter anyway. A man may want, or miss, many things in his life, but in the end, we all serve God.”
“Go ahead, lizardman. Pound it in with a hammer.”
“Eh?”
She was saved from having to explain that admittedly snotty remark by the sudden reappearance of Nicci, running down the street toward them, alone. Adrenaline filled her mouth with the taste of metal and she would have bolted forward to meet her except that Meoraq had better reflexes. He caught Amber at her first twitch forward and thrust her behind him, his hooked sword already in his other fist.
Nicci scraped to a stop immediately, her mouth open in a round hole of alarm, both hands flying up in a helpless gesture of surrender.
“What’s wrong?” Amber demanded, ducking under Meoraq’s sword-arm where he couldn’t snatch her back so easily. In theory. “Where is everyone? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Nicci stammered, still staring at the sword in the lizardman’s grip. “We found something, that’s all. Commander Scott wants you to see it.”
“I give no obedience to S’kot!” Meoraq hissed, advancing. “Before you carry his commands to me, you had best ask yourself if you are willing to stand in his place for my answer!”
Nicci backed up fast, stumbling over the broken curb and falling against the wall of a shop whose steadfast commercial bot immediately moved to open the door for her.
Amber gave Meoraq a sharp swat to the bicep, which had to have hurt her a lot more than him, but he actually staggered like she’d hit him with a truck. He turned all the way around to look at her, his spines fully forward and quivering, but she refused to be intimidated. “What’s the matter with you?” she snapped. “Don’t you threaten my sister!”
To her great surprise, Nicci chimed right in alongside her. “Why do you always have to push us around?”
Meoraq kept his eyes on Amber for as long as it took the insistent commercial bot to gronk politely for their attention three times. When he finally broke that stare, it was with a pensive upwards glance and a private word with his god. Then and only then, did he lean back and clip his sword back onto his belt. “So. We will see this machine you have found, but you can tell that cattle’s ass who pr
etends to lead you that we are not carrying it out of these ruins.”
“We couldn’t even if we wanted to,” Nicci said, her brows pinching together in a look of lofty scorn that Amber hadn’t seen to quite that degree since her teen years. “Why do you always have to be so negative about everything Commander Scott does? And after everything he does for you?”
Meoraq’s spines rose—not flicking forward, but coming up slow until they stood at full extension. “What a remarkable thing to say,” he said in a dangerously mild and distracted way.
“He found something amazing!” Nicci insisted, now openly glaring. “Something that he knew you were going to want to see most of all! And here you are, jumping to conclusions and…and…stabbing him in the back!”
Meoraq smiled. It was not an edgy, tooth-filled, predatory smile at all, but almost a dreamy one. His eyes unfocused briefly. The smile broadened.
“We’re coming,” said Amber.
Meoraq’s hand dropped over her shoulder and squeezed. “In a moment,” he told Nicci. “Leave us.”
“You don’t have to leave,” said Amber, but Nicci was already moving rapidly down the street.
Meoraq watched until she was good and gone, keeping his hand comfortably locked on her shoulder despite her efforts to shrug it off. It took several minutes, and each one stretched out thinner and longer, until the small greyish blob that was Nicci turned a corner and vanished. Immediately, Amber went on the defensive. “I’m sorry she said that, but what do you expect?”
“Cattle will bellow and beetles will bite,” he said scornfully. “S’kot will talk out of his ass and his fool people will repeat him. I don’t concern myself with N’ki’s behavior. I concern myself with yours. So.” Suddenly his scaly face was right in front of hers. “What am I about to say to you?”
Her mind went wonderfully blank. “How many guesses do I get?”
His face got even closer, as improbable as that was. “You,” he said, “hit me.”