Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  Outside in her driveway, a woman’s voice: “Joe? This is the wrong house. See, 3182? Gavi’s in 3128.” Embarrassed laughter. Car door. The headlights, rolling away.

  Sarah pulled at her head, fingers plucking as she writhed until she managed to loosen the cord and pull the sack away. She shoved it aside, climbed to her knees, and threw up half a sandwich and kind of a lot of blood. She couldn’t look at that. She tried to call Fagin, could only manage a groan. Her stomach, her stomach, what did he do to her?

  She couldn’t stand up. She crawled to the back door on her hands and knees, pushed it shut, locked it. Pointless, she knew, but—

  The backyard light was on, catching the reflective tape on Fagin’s collar. He was hanging up by it, hanging on a fencepost, and he was…he was…

  Sarah screamed again, the sound no more than a caw of disbelief and anguish. She shouldn’t have done it; agony popped in her like a bubble. She fell on her face, hands digging at the floor, sobbing.

  ‘Get out,’ some cold, rational part of her thought. ‘Get out right now, while you still can. You know damn well who that was. You know he’s coming back.’

  Sarah crawled. Out through puddles of milk and melting ice cream. Out onto the cool concrete garage floor. Into the van, a climb that brought her twice right to the metallic edge of unconsciousness. Her keys were still in her pocket; taking them out took a lifetime. She opened up the garage door and drove.

  The outer gate of IBI’s community village wasn’t manned, just an electronic barrier with a card-reader, but she had to crank down her window by hand and then stretch out over her broken ribs to do this. The card fell from her fingers when she was done. She stared at it, sobbing, then left it in the street and fled.

  ‘Just come home,’ Kate had said. ‘Don’t call me, don’t fight, don’t storm out on anyone, just leave.’ And she wanted to now, she did, but she hadn’t gone a mile before she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. Her guts were burning and getting worse. She could feel her stomach swelling. She thought she might have peed herself, but was afraid to look down and see bloodstains on her jeans. She thought she might really be hurt.

  Hospital. Not IBI’s medical wing, but the real hospital in Wheaton. She drove down streets she barely saw, ran two stop signs and a red light, and had a cop on her tail she didn’t even see when she finally careened in through the emergency entry and banged up onto the curb to a stop. She waited there, curled around the steering wheel and drifting out of consciousness, to be found. ‘Just come home,’ Kate said.

  But now it was too late.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She didn’t come back. Not the next day and not the day after. When the third day came and went without Sarah, Sanford threw down the human computer he’d been restoring and went outside.

  T’aki sat in the dirt with his toy ship, not playing, not even watching the road anymore, but just sitting. Sanford sat beside him. They watched the early afternoon wind blow clouds over Cottonwood. It had stormed fairly impressively this morning. He thought it might storm again later tonight, but for now, the skies behind the drifting clouds were blue.

  “Did they make her stop coming?” T’aki asked finally.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did they see us in the van?”

  “I don’t think so.” Or they would have come for us as well, he thought, but did not say.

  T’aki crawled into his lap. He rubbed the boy’s head and watched clouds move. The sky was infinite today, blue and clear and inviting.

  Footsteps on the causeway. He glanced over and saw Sam coming toward him with three cans of beer dangling from plastic rings. A peace offering. He wanted to spit, but he had his son on his lap. He ignored Sam instead, ignored him while he was walking and ignored him when he stood at Sanford’s feet. The clouds crawled, rolling into shapes and out of them again.

  “What am I supposed to do?” Sam said at last, crossly. “Paint my shell with ashes and beg for forgiveness?”

  Sanford said nothing, but T’aki ground his tiny palps twice and blew air rudely through them.

  Sam switched his glare to the boy. “You know, if she liked you, she wouldn’t give a damn what I said. She’d be here right now, if she really liked you. You’re nothing but a job to her and as soon as she walks out that gate, she forgets you were ever born.”

  T’aki stared, trembled, then jumped up with a shrill skree and ran inside, his toy ship clutched to his shell. Sanford let him go, listened to the muffled squalling from the rear room, and then looked up at Sam and spread his arms. “What else is left?” he asked. “Just kick him next time. Tell him, oh, tell him his father never wanted an egg and that Ko’vi hates him.”

  Sam snapped away a beer and threw it at him. It bounced hard off his chest and rolled away. “I’m supposed to feel bad because your boy is making friends with the enemy? Fuck you!”

  “Sarah Fowler is not the enemy.”

  “She’s in it for herself, like all of them. She’s just too stupid to join their soldiers, so she prances around with paper instead, but she’s still one of them. She’s human and she’s IBI.”

  “She’s a good person.”

  “Sure she is. And when it all went bad at that stupid party she threw together, your good person took off and saved her own soft hide. Did you explain that to your boy when you were running from the fire bombs?”

  “Would it have made you feel better to see her killed by them?”

  Sam opened another beer and poured half into his throat. He sat down in the road facing him, out of kicking range, and glared. Inside, T’aki’s squalls had tapered off, but his heartsick cries still tugged at the air. Sam drank after each, palps snapping, and when the beer was gone, he bounced the empty can off Sanford’s chest and said, “Do you know the one thing that made you worth knowing?”

  “I can fix your guns.”

  Sam snorted through his palps. “You’re not the only mechanic in this piss-ditch and you’re sure not the best of them. No, what makes your so-called company just tolerable is that you’re still yang’ti after all this time. You never settled in. You still see this place for what it is and you still remember who you are. You know better than to trust a human.”

  “Because they’re all evil, is that it? And we’re all good?”

  “Because she’s IBI, you dumb bug! Every human who walks in through that fucking gate is IBI! She works for them! The only reason she’s here to hum in my ear all damn day, talking about what’s right and wrong, is because they pay her to do it.” Sam twisted around and spat chaw. “She can’t help. The best she could do was that stupid party and look how it ended!”

  “No one was killed.”

  “That’s the only thing you can say, isn’t it? You know, I’m old enough to remember going to a lot of parties where no one getting killed was not just a good outcome, it was more or less the only outcome.” He opened his last beer and started drinking, not tasting, but just pouring it in.

  “She tried to take a little of the desperation out of our lives for one night,” Sanford said.

  “Yeah? And now they only feel more desperate, don’t they?”

  “What is wrong with you?” Sanford asked disgustedly. “What had to break inside you to make any of those arguments sound sensible in what passes for your head? She risked her life for us. Are you so far gone that you can’t even see that? Or are you so far gone that you see it and just don’t care?”

  Sam recoiled and then only sat there, even his palps and antennae perfectly still.

  A shadow fell over them.

  Sanford looked around, one hand tensely drawn up. He hadn’t heard anyone approach, and it took several seconds before recognition set in and he was able to put a name to the yang’ti hesitating towards them.

  Baccus. Of all people. Baccus.

  He got up, and she stopped walking, her antennae dancing nervously on her head. She had something in her hand and she held it out now. Grey papers, pressed together. A human news-sheet.


  “They were reading it at the Heap-station,” she said, as Sanford took it. “I thought…you might like to know.” She looked around, hands wringing, then ran back the way she’d come and was soon gone.

  Sanford unfolded the papers, squinting at the narrow crush of human lettering. The news-sheet wasn’t fresh, and the ink had smudged, making a difficult task that much more difficult, but with patience, he could puzzle their words out. War in Syria. Gas tax expected to rise. President Dufries to sign new environment reform bill. He clicked to himself, turned the papers over, and there was Sarah’s picture: a bloody face, unconscious, pressed between two strangers, and the words IBI Worker Critical After Attack.

  “What is it?” Sam asked, fetching the beer he’d thrown at Sanford.

  A woman is in critical condition at Sacred Heart Medical Center following a violent assault in her home Monday night. Sarah Fowler, 24, is one of hundreds of new employees at the International Bureau of Immigration’s Cottonwood, where she works as a social services liaison to the residents. Fowler’s attack is only the latest in a string of bug-related violence worldwide that leaves many residents of the local community concerned for their own safety.

  A hospital spokesperson had no comment when asked if Fowler was able to identify her attackers, but did say that the possibility of a bug perpetrator has not been ruled out. Fowler received several serious injuries to the chest and abdomen consistent with powerful kicks or blows, the most critical of which has resulted in a ruptured liver and other internal injuries. Fowler underwent surgery shortly after her arrival at Sacred Heart and is listed in critical condition.

  A spokesperson from IBI has issued a statement expressing concern over the attack and that they remain interested in working with Sacred Heart to see that Fowler receives the best medical care. “The residents of Cottonwood are closely monitored and policed, and how a violent individual could have escaped to attack Miss Fowler in her home is our paramount concern at this time,” said IBI liaison Metcalf Hayes. “We’re hoping [Fowler] will soon be stable enough to answer some questions. In the meantime, stronger measures—

  The article was continued elsewhere. Sanford did not chase it down. He stared at the photograph, at Sarah’s slack and whitened face until Sam took the news-sheets away. Then he walked blindly to the corner of his house and leaned on it, staring into the open fields that lay beyond the causeway.

  He’d known better. Even if she hadn’t, he’d known better. She thought that she could face down the soldiers of IBI and fight them back with pieces of paper and bold lies, that she could apologize for it later and be forgiven. He’d known better, and he’d let her do it anyway.

  ‘But she’s human,’ he thought, and covered his eyes. ‘I thought they’d come for us, not her. She’s one of their own. She’s not supposed to be in danger.’

  And he’d known better than that the instant she put him in her van and took him to her home. And still he said nothing. He let her play the part of the humble penitent to the dark voice on the telephone and he ate her food and he never even tried to warn her.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sam said tightly. “Ruptured…liver? What the hell is that?”

  “I have to see her,” Sanford heard himself say. His hand scraped into a fist and punched futilely at the metal wall. See her? The picture in the news-sheet was as close as he would ever get. He may never see her again.

  “Liver,” Sam muttered, tearing back paper to find the article’s end. “That can’t be as important as it sounds, can it? Liver…What is this? Who cares about the fucking bugs? Why aren’t they talking more about the human with a fucking ruptured liver?”

  “I have to see her,” Sanford said again, just as uselessly.

  “Yeah? How much money do you have?” And when he looked at him, Sam clicked hard and snapped, “Do you have any money? Human money, not chits, and if it isn’t at least a few thousand, don’t even bother saying yes.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “All right.” Sam seemed to relax, only slightly. “I know a guy. A human in the Heap-station. He’ll get you started. It probably won’t come to anything,” he added, wadding the news-sheets savagely and tossing them in the ditch. “But without him, you’ve got no chance at all.”

  “A chance at what?”

  “It was in the tiny print in some of the papers they made us sign back in Fairfield. I keep telling you, read everything. Now they’ll probably deny it’s there, but I’ve never seen them take it back, so you just keep staring them down. It’s called a visa,” Sam said, just as he was getting ready to lose his temper. “And assuming they don’t shoot you just for asking, you’re going to have to buy it.”

  “A visa,” Sanford echoed clumsily. “What does it do?”

  “It lets you out,” Sam said and spat chaw. “Under guard. For an hour or two. They won’t let you touch her. I’m not even sure they’ll let you close enough to talk to her. You still want one?”

  “Yes,” said Sanford.

  Sam nodded, already turning around. “Then get your money and let’s go. Nobody with anything called a ruptured liver has time for you to fuck around.”

  * * *

  It took three days to arrange a two-hour pass for himself and T’aki. He turned every food chit he’d hidden below into human money, taking a ninety-percent loss in the exchange, just to be sure he’d have enough for the necessary bribes. They didn’t take it all (five hundred dollars to Sam’s ‘friend’ at the Heap-station, fifteen hundred to his friend in IBI’s visa department, and a grueling three thousand to the man who made the final approval), but they took everything they thought he had and then made him wait two more days without telling him anything.

  But in the end, it went through, which Sanford had more than half-expected it would not. Before dawn on the sixth day, they came for him, bursting in as for an arrest and laughing at him for throwing up his arms and dropping to his knees.

  “You Fred Sanford?” one of them asked.

  “And Son,” another added, and they all laughed.

  “I am,” said Sanford. He kept his arms up, his hands behind his head, and watched the first man consult his papers. It was a man he knew, a man he’d last seen at Sarah’s block party, knocking her to the ground.

  “So you want to see your caseworker,” the man drawled. “That’s so sweet.”

  Laughter.

  “Well, you’re lucky, bug.” The human folded the papers and tucked them away. “Because I want to see her too. You have no idea how much. If I’d known you roaches could still get a fucking visa, I’d have written one up for you the first day. Let’s go.”

  They took him to an armored van, him and T’aki, where they painted both their chests through a stencil in white paint with throat-stinging fumes, stamped the visa six times and finally allowed them to board. They sat in the back with the grinning guard while two other guards rode up front. T’aki was just as excited to ride as he’d been in Sarah’s vehicle. He kept wanting to hop up and look out every window, wanting to know if every building he saw lit up in the darkness was the hospital. Sanford kept his answers short, as if preoccupied, perhaps even angry. He was neither. He was, in fact, very alert and aware of the guard he did not dare to stare at, the guard who had punched a stack of solid ice the last time he’d seen him this close.

  T’aki had brought a plant, a little scrub of grass he’d found growing near the aqueduct. He’d packed it carefully in an empty can, which he’d wrapped in paper and painted. He held it against his chest, protective, patting it now and then in his excitement. He had asked ten times at least if Sanford thought it might flower soon. Sanford eventually stopped answering, because he did not know and because any answer he gave made the guards laugh harder.

  “They’ll never let that filthy thing in a hospital,” one of those up front said.

  “No, they won’t,” agreed the driver. “But they might take the grass if he ties a ribbon on it.”

  And they laughed.

 
After that, T’aki sat quietly, keeping his head down and stroking at the thin, green blades.

  The hospital was a much bigger building than Sanford expected, and even so early in the day, was crowded with humans. He’d never seen so many of them who didn’t carry weapons.

  But the ones who did were enough. They parked up close to the doors, opened the van, and immediately raised a commotion of gasps and shouts and screams from the other humans. Sanford was ordered down; he knelt and let his ankles be fastened to a hobbling rod, and his arms bound behind him, none too gently. They tried to do the same to T’aki, but had neglected to bring binders small enough, and so in the end settled for tying a collar around his son’s neck and fastening that to Sanford’s waist.

  And they took the plant. Perhaps only to get at his son’s little wrists at first, but in response to his leaping and loud protests, they took it all the way away, laughing, and threw it in a bin.

  “Now shut up,” the guard said, as T’aki skreed. “Or I’ll march both your butts back in the van. This ain’t the roach motel anymore.”

  “Quiet,” Sanford said. “Behave yourself. Be quiet.”

  “He took my—”

  “I will send you home myself. Be quiet.”

  T’aki was, his antennae flat in silent anger, snapping his palps in complaint. Sanford answered them with low clicks, the best he could do, and his son eventually quieted. A tap to the back from the butt of the guard’s gun prompted him to his feet and he started walking.

  Humans scattered ahead of him, some only darting back to watch from a safer distance, others in full screaming flight out of the building. The guard enjoyed this as well, playing to his audience by shoving Sanford, yanking on his binders, calling out orders and accompanying them with blows from his gun’s butt, just as though Sanford were a dangerous beast that needed breaking. He resisted none of it and kept his eyes averted as he was taken through the crowded halls, up a metal shaft, and along the acrid-smelling corridors, past rooms filled with machinery and sleeping humans. It did not look like a medical bay to Sanford, but a place of experimentation, of killing. He prayed appearances were deceiving. They often were, with humans.