by R. Lee Smith
Their eyes met—Amber’s and Nicci’s—with half a camp and whole worlds between them. This time, Amber supposed she was the one who looked like their mother, the Bo Peep who wasn’t playing for sympathy, the Bo Peep who had none. “You better say you’re sorry when he gets back. And you better act like it too, at least as well as you act like a fucking baby.”
“Hey now,” someone said in a startled voice, and someone else, one of the ladies, said, “Hey nothing. We need him. She’s lucky I didn’t smack her.”
“Amber!”
“Go somewhere else for a while.” Amber made her first savage swipe of wax across the mat. It took a surprising amount of force, but the violence struck a satisfying resonance down in the Bo Peep part of her. “I love you, Nicci, but I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
Beneath the wind and the rasp of wax scraping over scales, she could hear Scott telling Nicci that she didn’t have to grovel for Meoraq’s amusement, that if their guide insisted on an unfair dispensation of resources, she could always come stay in his tent, and furthermore, if Amber was going to insist on fomenting a hostile environment within the confines of his camp, she might just find out that she wasn’t welcome on the ship when they reached the skyport.
“Why don’t I just fly a pig home?” Amber snapped, shoving harder. The wax left whitish smears across the top of the hide and she had to stop and wipe them away. “I declare there will be a pen full of flying space-pigs. You’re right, Scott. That’s so much easier than facing reality.”
Scott’s jaw tightened, but it was Nicci who balled up her fists.
Amber stopped waxing and glared up at her through the hanging tangle of her hair. “You don’t want to mess with me right now,” she said flatly.
Nicci faltered to a stop, hesitated, and then clapped her hands over her eyes and cried, “I wish you’d just let me stay home!”
“So do I,” said Amber. “Shut up, Nicci. I mean it. Unless you’re really crying, you shut the fuck up.”
Nicci stared at her, pale and silent. Her eyes were dry and open wide. She shivered. Amber didn’t. The wind was cold. Amber, it seemed, was colder.
Slowly, Nicci turned around and stumbled away, either back to Scott or back to her friends from the Resource Tent. Amber didn’t really care at the moment. She bent her neck and went back to work. Her arms began to hurt. She worked harder. She worked until that was all she could feel.
6
Days. Nights. Wind and rain and walking. They left even the shadow of the ruins on the horizon to make their way through a dense, swampy thicket. Three days later, they left that behind to climb a steep, stony incline onto a crumbling stretch of what Meoraq called a road. They followed that another three days before Meoraq herded them off it and east again, back into the plains, which were growing increasingly hillier.
The only animals they saw in all that time was a single group of corrokis lumbering south, which Meoraq had led them cautiously around, downwind and at such a distance that the car-sized monsters blurred into an uncountable blob. There were no more saoqs, although Amber occasionally glimpsed old spoor that proved they had passed through. The streams, swollen by all the rain, held no eel-things, only frothy, storm-clotted water. When he went hunting, he brought back only bitter leaves and tough roots to eat, and he had a tendency to slap the people who complained about it.
She could understand his frustration, even though she wished he could find another way to express it. But he shouldn’t have to do everything himself. Once she felt confident enough about identifying these edible, if unappetizing, food sources, Amber began to forage for them as they walked. Meoraq did not comment, except to drop back now and then to point out some new kind of plant as they passed it. Even with his coaching, she didn’t manage to fill her pack very often, and what she had didn’t go far, but she made sure Nicci had something every night even if no one else did.
And Nicci thanked her, sometimes. They had both said some sorries in the last few days, but sorry was a piss-poor bandage for the other things they’d said, and the things they still weren’t saying. It wasn’t the same as it had been and probably never would be, but at least they were talking again. They walked together during the daytime, unless Scott was giving one of his inspirational skyport-themed speeches or the ladies from the Resource Tent were having a gossip-fest. After they stopped for the day and Amber got done filling flasks, lighting fires and putting up Meoraq’s tent (her chores, she thought of them now, and Meoraq probably thought of them the same way because he didn’t bother telling her to do them anymore), Nicci would come and keep her company, at least until the food was gone. And every night, as Amber took the first watch, Nicci used the mat. Amber didn’t always wake her when her shift was over, but she usually did. Sometimes Nicci cried a little when she had to move off onto the cold, rocky ground, but not if Meoraq was close enough to hear her. He was still carrying the lhichu root he’d gathered; Nicci had not apologized, had not said one word to him, refused to even look at him when he was talking. So it was better…but it was still pretty bad.
Meoraq was unfamiliar with the silent treatment and day by day, his tolerance for it thinned. He spent a lot of time now just staring at Nicci with his spines flat when he thought no one was watching and then staring at Amber the same way. She didn’t know what to tell him, but “Go ahead and hit her,” was what she thought the most often, which only made her feel worse.
It couldn’t go on like this. Scott, Nicci, Meoraq, Amber herself—everything and everyone was a thread away from snapping.
But for right now, she didn’t have to worry about that. Right now, it was the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere and Amber was alone, standing her watch.
Tonight, she was standing her watch while sitting down, sacrificing her ass to the damp that was always in the ground these days so that she could huddle up over her folded arms and folded legs and conserve what little heat her body was putting out these days. She’d tried sitting on a rock for a while, but discovered that cold rocks never warmed up no matter how long you sat there and were full of jagged bumps and corners besides. Nicci was using the mat, so Amber moved to the grass off on the edge of camp, which was wet, but at least provided some padding between her and the hard earth. It had been years since she’d last been able to fold herself Indian-style on the floor, but she didn’t think of that yet. All she thought about was how cold it was getting, how wet her ass was, and how both her feet had gone to sleep some time ago and were going to wake up with that pins-and-needles thing. Meoraq would not approve of sitting, she was sure, but Meoraq did not appear to feel the cold as much as she did and he was asleep anyway, so the hell with his approval.
It was a dark night. Now and then, the clouds thinned enough for her to see a faint grey glow where this world’s moon hung, but it didn’t put out enough light even then for her to see anything. It would be a crescent of a moon, she thought. A mere sliver. And then that was all she could think of for a while: Earth’s moon, as curved and slender as a drawn bow in the night sky. They couldn’t ever see many stars in the city where they grew up, but the moon was still there. More yellowish-red than white, but that was the city’s fault, not the moon’s.
She was never going to see that moon again.
She may never see any moon again.
Amber brushed at her eyes and sure enough, they were wet. What a pussy she was turning into. Whatever happened to the old Amber, the tough Amber, the Amber who never let anything in? Who was this pathetic little orphan huddled in the wet grass crying over the memory of a friggin’ moon?
The wind changed course and gusted suddenly right in her face. She shut her eyes and bent her neck and leaned into it, dimly aware that Meoraq wouldn’t approve of standing her watch with her eyes closed either, but who could keep them open? It wasn’t like air at all when it got this cold, it was more like whips. Frozen whips. It was actually cutting into people now. When she looked at the faces around her during the day, she saw cra
cked lips and purple-red roses scraped into every nose and every cheek. She knew she looked the same; when she touched her face, she could actually feel the chapped rash the wind was growing on her.
She unfolded her legs, grimacing as blood rushed into her sleeping feet and woke them up. The lie of thick warmth that had cloaked them until now melted out and the pins took its place. Agony. Amber kept her jaws clenched tight and did not make a sound. Tough Amber. As Meoraq was so fond of saying, she was a master over her clay.
The pins and needles had their way, but when they were finally reduced to sullen stabs and that weak, watery feeling, she rolled herself onto her knees and up, using her spear for a crutch. There, she had to stand, waiting for the last of the weakness to pass before she started walking. At least she could turn her back on the wind.
And look at their camp. God. She knew they had almost fifty people, but couldn’t count more than a dozen between the dark sky and the low coals of their fire. And the ones she could count were just lumps sprawled out on the ground like corpses. Oh, and Commander Scott, of course, hidden away in his tent where the wind could blow all it wanted and never touch him. A living blueprint for how to build an asshole, as her own mother used to say. Pearls of wisdom from Bo Peep Bierce.
The second suckerpunch of homesickness hit her and this time, she pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes, first one and then the other, not wiping at her tears as much as shoving them back in. The real Amber would never go blubbering all over herself over her mother, who, she reminded herself brutally, she’d had to pick up off the floor and carry to bed damn near every night for the last three years, with Bo Peep puking up cheap booze and drunken rants the whole way.
Amber started walking, using her spear as both a probe and a cane to navigate around the stony ground as she circled the camp. Patrolling. She made it about halfway before she discovered that walking around after sitting down for long periods of time had an inevitable effect on one’s bladder, so she veered away from camp and went out into the plains.
‘And here I am,’ she thought disgustedly as she crouched down in the dead grass about fifty paces away. ‘Amber Bierce, Space Adventurer. I would sell Scott’s immortal soul for a single roll of toilet paper.’
The wind shook whatever unseen trees were close by extra hard and then finally died away a little. Amber pulled her pants up, tucking her spear between her shoulder and her chin like an oversized phone so she could tie her excess underwear off and tighten Meoraq’s belt around her waist…and then paused and looked around.
Sounded like the trees were still shaking. Not a lot. Not at all anymore in fact. But it had definitely lasted longer than the wind.
Come to think of it…what trees? They’d made their fire tonight out of dead grass and dried corroki dung. She knew because she remembered so vividly the colorful comments of those who’d watched her carry the stiff patties into camp. The nearest trees had been dark smudges in the distance.
But if it wasn’t wind in the trees…what was it?
Grass whispered on her left, and sure, that could be the wind, but there was something about the way it was whispering that raised the fine hairs on her arms to prickles. It wasn’t one long whooooooosh but more of a wa-whoosh wa-whoosh.
Like footsteps.
Amber got her spear in her hand and backed up, promptly kicking her heel into a protruding stone and nearly going down on her butt. She recovered, but heard quite clearly a low and oddly bony-sounding clicking or tapping sound, this time on her right.
‘Don’t run,’ she thought, even as her body tensed to do just that. ‘You don’t hear them very well. They might not hear you very well. They might not see you any better than you see them either. If you run, that’s all over.’
Good advice. She had the best fucking advice at the worst possible times.
She walked, forcing herself to test her footing and cringing at each damp slap of grass hitting her legs. Her spear felt at once huge and weightless where she gripped it; she had a feeling that would change if she ever actually had to use it. The wind gusted again, once more right in her face. The sound of it roaring in her ears overwhelmed any little noise the…the whatever-they-were made in their pursuit. If they pursued. If they were walking this way at all.
But why wouldn’t they, for Christ’s sake? There was the fire! And as tiny as it was, it was still the only fire out here! The only light of any kind! She was following it, why wouldn’t they?
She ran—yes, now a run, and if she hooked her foot on one of these rocks, she had no one to blame when she tripped and broke her head open—and slapped at the taut wall of Meoraq’s teepee in what she hoped did not sound like the panic it sure felt like.
“I need you,” she said loudly. Over her shoulder, even louder: “Nicci, get up.”
Nicci squirmed under her blanket, but she raised her head, along with several other people. “Hunh? Why?”
Before Amber could answer, the flap of Meoraq’s tent twitched once and was thrown open. An entirely naked lizardman burst out of it with his breeches in one hand and his hooked sword in the other. “What is it?”
“I heard something,” Amber stammered, trying without success not to look at the featureless mound between his legs. Entirely naked. “I didn’t see anything, but—”
“Where?” he asked crisply, managing not only to step into his breeches and pull them up while walking, but also not letting go of his sword while he did it.
She pointed, saying, “I thought there were footsteps, too. I could have been mistaken about those, but I’m sure about the clicks.”
He cinched his belt and buckled it, tipping his head at her in that way that rather urgently demanded more information as opposed to just wanting it.
She clicked her tongue at him a little, and then shook her head because it was all wrong. “Like that, but not really. It was…I don’t know, bigger. Harder.”
One of the many people coming over to listen suddenly laughed and said, “What?” as several others sniggered.
“Oh grow up!” she snapped, and Meoraq reached out and caught her chin, jerking her firmly back to face him. “It was…I don’t know how to describe it. It was harder. Like…Like rock or maybe wood. It sounded…hollow.”
He released her at once and drew the other sword. “Stay here,” he told her curtly. “Get your people up and move them together. Build up the fire. Go.”
Barefoot, he ran agile as a deer over mud and around rocks and was gone.
“All right, you heard the man,” said Amber, wondering just what in hell she was feeling. It was relief, she decided. Relief that she’d done her job and now someone else knew what to do and was doing it. It had nothing to do with seeing the lizardman naked. “Everybody better wake up.”
“We’re not your people,” said Crandall, glaring at her even as he moved closer to the fire. “So fuck you, scale-bait.”
“What’s going on?” someone called. Maria, maybe, because it was Eric’s voice that answered, muttering, “Bierce is stirring things up again. It’s nothing, just come on over here for a few minutes.”
“Did she see something?”
“No,” Crandall answered loudly. “Someone saw her coming out of the lizard’s tent, so she’s acting like she was going to get him or something.”
“What were you doing in his tent?” Nicci asked.
“I wasn’t in his tent!”
“And he was bare-scaly-ass naked,” Crandall inserted meaningfully, tossing a few grass-bundles onto the fire. Burning ash puffed out and fresh flames caught, turning his smirk into a red-tinted leer. “So draw your own conclusions.”
Nicci’s puzzled frown became a gape.
“Oh for Christ’s—That’s not what we were doing!”
“What were you doing?” Nicci asked in a low voice.
“We weren’t doing anything!” Amber shouted.
Nicci’s dubious expression did not change.
“Get up,” Amber ordered, coming over to catch h
er little sister’s arm. “Go over by the—”
A beam of light hit Amber in the eyes. A moment later, Scott’s most commandingly pompous voice rolled out: “Is this your idea of a joke, Miss Bierce?”
She’d raised a hand against the glare of the flashlight. Now she lowered it, clenching it into a fist. She looked at him and then beyond him to all of them, so angry she couldn’t seem to pull a single face into focus. They were just a crowd. A staring, smirking, hostile crowd.
“Okay, everybody calm down,” Scott was saying. “Just go back to bed. We’ll sort this out in the—”
Something just out of sight in the plains let out a piercing shriek. Meoraq roared back, almost completely unheard beneath the commotion of people leaping up, scrambling back, grabbing each other and screaming.
“Stand together!” Amber shouted over the top of it. “Whatever you do, don’t panic! Make the fire bigger! Burn everything! Give me that,” she finished, snatching the flashlight out of Scott’s hand. The sound of something big thrashing and shrieking was dead ahead of her, but Meoraq clearly had that one. In the plains, she’d heard two.
“I didn’t say you could have that!” Scott said shrilly as she moved out into the plains. He backed up toward the fire, looked around to see everyone else already there and watching him, and then came after her. “Give it back! That’s stealing!”
She ignored him and ran as fast as she dared in the dark, completely unaware that he was running after her until she stopped to shine the light around and he snatched it out of her hand.
“There is no place in this colony for thievery!” he announced as she gaped at him. “Or for selfish, small-minded people who have hysterics to get attention!”