“It was scratching before you woke up,” said the boy, still throwing and catching the rubber ring.
“Where did you find that?” asked Sima.
“In the wall by the junk.”
Sima sat cross-legged on the warm floor, snagged a fruit from the pile, and ate. Soft scratching came from the back end, like a cat testing the lower rear hull.
“See?” asked Lissa. “You hear it now?”
“Yeah.” She shivered and glanced at the axe. Damn. Those things can go out in the day, too. We’re in big trouble. I don’t wanna have to kill an animal, but if it’s going to eat my kids, I’m—My kids? She blinked. The spontaneous thought left her at the edge of crying. After sixteen years, she finally had a taste of a true loving connection to other human beings… and they’d all probably be dead in days. If we’re gonna die anyway, I might as well fight a tiger.
Once she finished her fruit, Sima tossed the rind out a hole in the wall and hovered there for a moment breathing outside air. Since the breeze coming in the damaged hull felt cool, she worried that they would overheat. Staying inside might be as dangerous as opening the door. The pod worked out fine at night, but with the sun beating on it, they could all suffer heatstroke.
“I gotta do something.” Sima walked into the gap between the outer stasis pod and the debris fall, approaching the torn-open cabinet full of circuit boards, hoses, tubes, and machine parts. “Bracelet, is there any way to get the air conditioning back on?”
It scanned the components.
‹Try re-seating board 3a, 12, and 18.›
“What?”
Three blue laser dots appeared on circuit cards.
‹Pull those out and push them back into their sockets.›
“Okay.” She did.
‹Reconnect that fiberoptic data line.› Another laser dot indicated a loose cable.
She picked it up, waited a second, and plugged it in where another dot appeared.
‹Push the red square button by the emitter.›
Sima looked around until the dot appeared. She pushed the button, but nothing happened.
‹The logic unit is broken. We don’t have the parts to fix it, but you might be able to initiate the system with a bypass. Locate a scrap of wire at least sixteen inches long.›
She hunted around for a while, but no such wire existed. She did, however, find a thin metal strut narrow enough for her to bend. “What about this?”
‹You will experience a painful shock. I would rather not.›
“I’ll take a shock. It beats heatstroke.”
‹Fine. Touch the two ends as indicated.›
A pair of blue dots appeared, one on a metal connector, the other on a tiny square of copper on the bottom surface of a removable card. Sima bent the strut into shape and, cringing, gingerly extended it until the metal touched the ends at both places.
Nothing happened.
‹I am sorry, Sima. The capacitor is discharged. This lifeboat sustained too much damage in the crash. We cannot repair the environmental control system without parts you have no way to obtain.›
More scratching at the back made her skin crawl.
“What about scavenging parts from Austin’s pod?”
‹Are you referring to the one that fried when he attempted to open the lid?›
“Oh… right.” Sima grumbled.
She dragged herself out and sat by the kids again, head in her hands, elbows on her knees. Glumness spread from child to child, and eventually even Juan stopped bouncing his makeshift ball. The bracelet projected holographic butterflies on the floor.
‹This is a game. Catch the butterflies for one point each. You will need to sit still.›
“Hey… wanna play a game?” asked Sima. “Catch the bugs. Each one’s worth a point.”
Juan looked up, smiling.
“Yeah!” Lissa clapped.
Austin glanced at her with a ‘you’re only trying to distract us from our inevitable, slow death’ expression, but he nodded.
The game lifted the kids’ spirits. They played for a while, though none had the energy to move faster than a walk or jump for any ‘butterflies’ that floated too high off the ground.
Lissa drooped after maybe a half hour. “I’m too hot to breathe.”
“My head hurts,” said Austin.
“Okay. We can’t stay inside all day. We’ll get sick.” Sima picked up the axe. “You three stay right here.”
Lissa sniffled, too overheated to even cry properly.
Ignoring the simpering, Sima walked to the hatch and opened it. A blast of cool air filled the lifeboat, chasing away the stink of sweat and dried urine. She stepped outside, axe held at the ready, and crept around the corner toward the back end. Her back against the hull, she walked sideways, clutching the axe in both hands.
I’m totally crazy. Who in their right mind hunts tigers with an axe in their underwear?
She stopped a few feet from the rear corner. The scratching continued along the back wall. Okay. Sima trembled in fear. It hadn’t seen her yet. She could probably make it back inside before it caught her. But she couldn’t let heat or big, annoying cats hurt her children.
Before the shaking grew so bad she couldn’t stay upright, Sima took a deep breath and whipped around the corner with the axe raised high over her head in both hands.
And stared at a piece of thin metal flopping in the wind.
She lowered her arms, glaring at the stupid scrap of duralloy making the scratching noise that kept them all hiding in miserable heat for hours.
“Argh!” shouted Sima.
“Did you kill it?” yelled Austin, still inside the pod.
She stomped around to the door. “It’s a piece of metal. Get out here before you all drop from heatstroke.”
Lissa darted outside and fell to her knees in the grass, hugging nothing. “I love the air.”
“Ugh.” Austin wobbled out, woozy.
Sima grabbed his shoulder to steady him as Juan rushed by.
“What do you mean a piece of metal?” asked Austin.
“Look…” She walked him around back and pointed at the fluttering scrap.
He grumbled. “Guess the cat is afraid of light.”
“Yeah. Come on. Let’s get to the water. We all need to drink.”
Sima scooped Lissa up and hurried into the jungle, carrying her to the closest available water, the river where they usually went swimming. She held the kids back from jumping in right away as it felt like a bad idea to go from overheating to cold water so fast, but did encourage them to stick their faces in and drink until they couldn’t swallow another gulp. She did the same, and rolled over on her back, light headed.
“Can we swim a bit? I’m still hot,” said Austin.
“Wait a little more.” Sima raised her arm. “Bracelet, please chirp in like an hour or when you think it’s safe.”
‹Understood.›
For a while, everyone rested beside the river, occasionally drinking more and enjoying a cool breeze coming in off the water. Once the beep went off, everyone rushed into the water. Sima didn’t bother peeling her sweaty undergarments off, as they quite needed a rinse as well.
23
Full Tribal
Late the next morning, after a surprisingly quiet night without giant cats, Sima collected the kids, planning to head into the jungle on a fruit-retrieval mission. They emerged from the lifeboat, neither Juan nor Lissa wearing anything.
Sima pointed at the hatch. “Put your pants on.”
“They’re dirty,” whined Lissa.
“I washed them.” Sima folded her arms, clutching the axe. “They’re as clean as they can get.”
“It’s hot,” said Juan.
“Yeah. It’s hot.” Lissa nodded. “And they’re still wet.”
Sima looked down at her feet. “I know it’s hot, but those things are small. They won’t make you hotter.”
“I don’t wanna,” said Lissa. “They fall off anyway.”
Juan shrugged.
“You have to,” said Sima.
“Why?” asked Lissa.
“It’s rude to walk around naked.”
Lissa looked at the jungle, then back up at Sima. “We’re alone. They threw us away like recyclables. Nothing matters anymore. Not school. Not laws. Not pants. We’re gonna die here, aren’t we?”
A huge lump closed off Sima’s throat. She knows she doesn’t have a lot of time left. Aww, hell. It’s not hurting anyone. If it makes her happy, whatever. “Fine… whatever. Just stay close.”
Lissa smiled.
Juan darted off. Lissa went after him, both giggling.
Sima shook her head, watching them run into the jungle. “We’ve gone full tribal.”
Austin picked at the waistband of his briefs. “Not yet.”
“You’re not gonna go nature-boy too?” asked Sima, grinning.
He fell in step beside her, following the smaller kids. “Nah. Feels weird.”
“It makes sense, kinda.”
“How you figure?” asked Austin.
“I bet you had a real home for a while, right?”
He shrugged. “I guess.”
“How long were you on the street?”
“Like a year.” He squinted past a haze of light brown hair at her. “What about you?”
“Four, but I’m older. I was older than you are now when I ran away. We both had a normal life for a while. I think the others are more feral.”
“What does that mean?” asked Austin.
“Juan lived out in a bad place, La Propagación… the EGSF doesn’t even go there. The people who live there are even lower than Outcasts to Citizens. Wild and violent.”
“He’s not wild,” said Austin.
“No, but he’s also little. And Lissa, she’s so small… for her to wind up on the streets at six? Neither one of them really know what normal is.”
Austin shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.
“Found some,” shouted Juan up ahead.
“Fruit!” cheered Lissa.
“Ugh. Why can’t we have more chicken?” asked Austin.
“We will. Tonight for dinner. There’s only so much goop. I want to make it last. If we eat nothing but chicken, we’ll run out of it and wind up stuck with only fruit again that much faster.”
He nodded. “Oh. Okay. That makes sense.”
Lissa and Juan leapt on the stalk, their combined weight enough to drag the pod low so Sima could pick a bundle of the large, pointy fruits. Lissa carried four, Juan six, Austin eight, and Sima the water jug. After filling it at the river, she led the way back to the grassy field near the lifeboat, where everyone sat around in a circle and took fruit to eat. Sima gave Lissa a second one.
She made a sour face at it.
“You need to eat a little more, okay? Please? If you wanna get better, you need energy.”
Lissa sighed, something in her chest crackling. “Okay.”
“So what’d you get arrested for?” asked Austin, glancing over at Sima.
Juan rubbed his hand on a rind and pressed a bright purple-pink handprint on Lissa’s face, like some kind of tribal marking. He held his cheek out and she returned the favor.
She blinked at him, taken aback by the question until she wondered if it meant she’d finally earned his trust. “I wasn’t a criminal. I begged… The day I got picked up, a transport full of nutri-packs tipped over. So many of them scattered on the road it looked like an ocean of silver. I couldn’t help myself. A couple of other Outcasts ran in too, so I started jamming as many packets as I could into my pocket.” She squeezed Lissa at the memory of staring down the barrel of a rifle and screaming, Please don’t kill me; I’m just a kid! “The Seps caused the accident, and the EGSF was right there. They came outta the alley and shot some of the others who tried to run, accused them of bein’ Seps, but they weren’t. They said I was stealing even though the packets were all over the road.”
“That’s bull,” said Austin.
Sima stroked Lissa’s hair. “The investigator wasn’t a butt. He actually yelled at the EGSF officers for putting binders on me. Told them to treat me like an orphan, not a criminal.” He was nice. I wish I had someone like him for a father. Sima rubbed her wrist, remembering the two officers escorting her into the ship. She explained how the EGSF had kept their word, not using restraints on her again until she’d panicked at the sight of the boarding tube and fought as if being led to her execution. Maybe some part of me knew how this would turn out. “They treated me okay, but I freaked out hard at the starship, so they cuffed me and carried me in.”
“Yeah.” Austin licked red stains from his fingers. “The kid in the pod next to me was crying for his mother. He was old like you… had a beard too. Sobbed like a baby.”
“I think I saw him… You guys weren’t too far away from my pod.”
Lissa attacked her second fruit with surprising enthusiasm, making Sima smile.
“Some of the stuff that can happen to us on the street, maybe this isn’t so bad,” said Austin. “Guess they sent us here ’cause we’re ‘hard to adopt.’”
“What?” Sima blinked.
Austin gestured at her. “Well, you’re too old. I’m too brown… so’s Juan.”
“Brown?” Sima raised an eyebrow. “Peanuts are browner than you.”
“Lissa’s white,” said Juan. “Why she on the street?”
“All white kids aren’t rich,” said Sima.
“Mom an’ Dad made Pixie,” muttered Lissa. “Men came at night and shot them. The smelly one was gonna shoot me too, but the fat man hit him and told him not to ’cause I was too little. I hid under my bed and they left.”
“She’s too sick to adopt.” Austin sent a guilty look at the grass between his legs. “No one wants a kid who’s gonna die or cost a lot of money to keep alive.”
“They fixed me,” wheezed Lissa. “I breathed a lot of bad, but I’m not sick now.”
Sima’s heart sank. “Your parents were making Pixie in their home? With you there?”
“Yes.” Lissa coughed. “The police man said they would help me better an’ give me new breaths if I let them put me in space.”
Juan cuddled up to Sima’s side.
How did I become Mom?
“They lied.” Austin made a sour face and threw a fruit rind into the weeds. “Adults always lie.”
“My father took me to see the city,” said Juan, staring into nowhere. “He told me to sit onna bench and wait for him, but he didn’t come back.”
“Aww.” Sima squeezed him. “I’m sorry.”
Juan reached up to grab her arm. “We’re from La Propagación. Papa wanted me to get ’dopted by rich people in the city.”
Sima held him close. “I think I’d rather be an orphan in the city than have a family in that place. He had to love you very much to be able to give you up.”
“Bull,” said Austin. “If his dad loved him, he wouldn’t abandon him.”
Juan glared, but said nothing.
Lissa shook with another coughing fit. Sima slapped her on the back a few times until the phlegm broke and she sounded as though she could breathe again. She flashed a desperate ‘I don’t wanna die’ face. After another light cough, she took a few deep, quiet breaths, and spat up another pink-grey blob.
Sima stared at it. The unnatural hot pink made sense. Pixie. Her thoughts leapt back to finding Draz dead in his bunk at the Crash. A drug so prone to accidental overdose, the first trip could be the last. Why would anyone willingly inhale that crap? Even if a user managed the dosage meticulously, it could still kill them if taken often enough.
The girl grinned with a tear in her eye. “I’m getting better.”
“Yes, you are.” Sima forced a smile, trying not to think of what chemical damage might’ve been done to her lungs. If the finished drug turned out so deadly, how horrible would the stuff it’s made from be?
“What about you?” asked Austin. “You’re too pretty to be a street kid.”<
br />
Sima frowned. “My dad’s rich, but I don’t exist to him because my mother was a mistress. Mom thought she could get money out of him or convince him to marry her by having me, but he left her as soon as she told him about me. She kinda took care of me for a few years, but when I was nine, she decided I could ‘take care of myself,’ so she ignored me and went off on the hunt for another sugar daddy. Didn’t care where I went or what I did. I mean, she still bought food and let me cook for myself to avoid getting in legal trouble.”
“She kick you out?” Austin’s sour face softened.
“No. I ran away at twelve. The man she started dating hated kids. He tried to hit me, but I got away. Mom actually yelled at me for ducking because he hit his hand on the wall and started bleeding.” Mom’s new victim was such a creep, but I’m not telling kids about what he really did. Even the memory of the way he looked at her made her feel sick.
“The police took us all,” said Juan. “Made us get on the ship.”
Austin grabbed another fruit. “Yeah. No one wants us, so they sent us here.”
“Out of sight,” whispered Sima. “Citizens hated looking at homeless kids so they put us somewhere they wouldn’t have to see us.”
Lissa cried. “We’re s’posed ta get ’dopted and have a home an’ a mommy an’ daddy here.”
Sima rocked her. “Something went wrong with the ship. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Maybe they didn’t lie to us. The investigator sounded like he really believed it.”
“Yeah right,” muttered Austin.
Sima pointed off toward the river. “That other lifeboat was smashed. I think something hit the ship, like a meteor. Blew it up in orbit. If they were going to dump us, they would’ve ejected the lifeboats and left. Besides, if they just wanted to kill us, it would’ve been cheaper to shoot us on Earth.”
Austin stared at her for a long moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Costs a lot of money to fire trash into space, right?”
“Are we gonna die?” Lissa looked her in the eye.
Sima’s throat tightened. “No, sweetie. We’re gonna be okay.”
Austin made a face that said ‘BS.’
“What about you?” Sima raised an eyebrow at him. “How’d you wind up on your own?”
Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1) Page 25