by Merry Farmer
“I still don’t want that rat Kutrosky and those sick bastards who actually support him anywhere near decent people.”
She snapped her mouth shut. “You just said you wanted us all to come together.”
Kinn shook his head. “Not all of us. Like I said, we got thirty-seven women to sixty-six men. Only, near as I can figure, Kutrosky has eighty-one women to fifty-nine men, if what my guys have been able to find out is true. See where I’m going?”
Grace blinked rapidly. “You want to trade with Brian?”
“No. I want two dozen of his women. Even the odds a little.”
Grace’s mouth went slack with surprise.
“Problem is, he don’t like me much,” Kinn went on.
“No.”
“And good idea or not, there’s no way he’s gonna just let us have ’em.”
He was right.
“So I was hoping you might go talk to him. Negotiate.”
She stared at him, stock still. “You want me to negotiate with Brian to have two dozen of his women switch over to your camp?”
In a certain light it made all the sense in the world, especially if she was going to stand by her belief that they had to do whatever was necessary, however inconvenient, to build a new civilization. At the same time, the sour feeling that those women were about to be traded like cattle unsettled her. Either way, it would cause trouble. She needed to talk to Danny.
The thought of Danny’s steady wisdom and lop-sided grin twisted her gut with guilt and longing. He wouldn’t like the situation any more than he would like the idea of her dealing with Kinn alone. There was no good answer.
“What are you willing to offer in return?” She faced the problem head-on.
“I’m willing to offer not to kill them,” he said.
Grace pushed out a breath. “You can’t kill anybody. How many times do I have to—”
“Okay, then I’m offering, I dunno, food supplies. Everyone needs to eat, right?”
It didn’t feel like much of a concession. In fact, suspicion of Kinn’s true motives buzzed like a mosquito at the edges of Grace’s thoughts.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go talk to Brian,” she said with a sigh, scratching her hairline and glancing up to the sky for an answer. She had a fair idea of how the conversation would go, but the more dialog they had on any topic the better.
“Great. Thanks.” Kinn slapped her on the arm as he would a fellow soldier and turned to go.
“Wait!”
He pivoted back to her. “What?”
“If you’re willing to integrate part of Kutrosky’s camp with your own, then why don’t I bring my people over the river to—”
“No.”
Her mouth hung open over the rest of her impotent words. “No?”
“No,” he repeated.
She shook her head. “But we could benefit each other. We have….” She swallowed her impulse to reveal the contents of the treasure chests and their camp’s advantage over the others. “We have resources.”
“I said, no.” He shifted his weight. “Not yet.”
She let out an exasperated breath. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
He answered with a smarmy grin. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”
Grace held out her hands, at a loss. “Do you need anything else? We…we’ve been lucky with our supplies. We have fruit, baskets….”
He chuckled, his eyes raking her from head to toe. “I need a lot of things.”
Her face and neck burned. “I….”
He shook his head and turned to leave. “Let me know if that dickwad Sean bothers you again,” he spoke without turning around, “and I’ll kill him for you.”
Grace watched him go. As soon as he rounded the bend, she hiked her skirt and dashed to the cliff. She took the long way around to where she’d left her boots and pack. She wasn’t sure how quickly she could forgive Sean for his aggression, but she knew she had to. He was the least of her problems.
The roar of the engine in the cramped, undecorated hallway had been enough to drive anyone insane. She had wondered for the thousandth time why she’d asked to be a part of the escort. A dozen soldiers had marched with her and the other members of the Justice Committee as they had approached the storeroom by the engine where Brian Kutrosky was being held in lieu of the low-security brig. Moving him to a cabin in a more habitable part of the ship didn’t seem like something she needed to be there for.
“Let’s get this mess over with.” Governor King, the man who would be the leader of Second City, muttered as he pushed to the front of the procession.
Grace stepped aside. Sean was only a few steps behind the governor and narrowed his eyes at her as he passed. He still wasn’t speaking to her. She couldn’t really blame him. He had had the sentencing hearing wrapped up until she had raised her hand and turned his world upside down. There were even rumors he would be demoted for not having the effectiveness that the Project was looking for in a leader.
They reached the door and spread out in the corridor around it. Grace glanced sideways at the soldiers, lips pressed in a tight line at the guns they all carried. They were an antiquated, unnecessary danger.
The lead soldier, a big man with arms as thick as tree trunks, directed her to stand against the wall. She thought she’d moved to the right place, but he stepped out of line to take her by the arm and escort her to a different position further from the door.
She muttered a sheepish, “Sorry.”
The clang of the door opening focused her attention. She stood straighter and looked on with anticipation as four soldiers entered the room. They walked out less than a minute later with Brian Kutrosky between them.
He was worse for wear, his clothes rumpled and sweaty and his hair, what was left of it, unbrushed. But it was the way he winced, the way the groan and heat of the engine followed him out into the hall, that confirmed in Grace’s mind she had done the right thing in speaking for him.
She managed a weak smile as Kutrosky was marched past her. He saw her and stopped. He blinked, straightening and tugging at his shirt.
“Grace Hargrove.” His voice was overloud.
“Brian Kutrosky.” She raised her own voice to match. The doctors at the sentencing had assured them all that keeping Kutrosky next to the engine wouldn’t cause any permanent damage to his hearing or to his mental state. She doubted the doctors then and she doubted them now.
“I guess I have you to thank for this,” he shouted.
She shrugged. “I did what anyone would do.”
His eyes flickered down the hall to Sean, Governor King, and the others who had spoken against him. “I’ll remember that.”
The soldier who had moved her stepped forward and shoved him in the back, forcing him to move on to his new prison.
The camp was bustling with activity by the time Grace returned. The long walk had soothed her frayed nerves and helped her rationalize Sean’s behavior. She was able to smile at what they’d built when it came into view. Beth’s clearing had been made wider using the axes and saws from the treasure chests. The tents had been set up at a respectful distance from one another. Blue tarps had been secured over them as waterproofing, though there were still a few pools of rain dripping from the night before.
The central fire pit blazed, even in the heat of the day. Lauren and Lois worked roasting a small animal, a cross between a pig and some sort of dog. They were so easy to hunt and their meat was so flavorful that already there was talk of trying to domesticate them in herds. Lois’s broken leg was healing well, thanks to Danny and the soothing leaves he’d discovered. His plants were a big part of why, as far as Grace could see, people had dropped their prejudices against him.
The spreading rock formation that contained half a dozen shallow caves that supplemented the tents rose at the far end of the camp, like a pile of materials some great builder had forgotten. The trees on the far side from the river gave way to the natural orchard. Beyond that G
race could just make out the field where the majority of the men were breaking ground for planting. She spared only a cursory glance for the progress before moving on. If they had more people to work, there was no telling what they could do.
Danny was hard at work under the canopy that had been constructed near the center of the camp using the trees that had been felled and the last of the tarps. She made straight for him.
Carrie spotted her and jumped up from the pile of wet sticks she had been fashioning into baskets.
“Where have you been?” She caught Grace’s arm and stopped her before she could get halfway across the camp. “You know it makes me nervous when you go anywhere without me.”
“I’m a big girl, Carrie. I can take care of myself.”
The twitch of Carrie’s lips said she thought otherwise. “Sean said he was going out to find you hours ago. He came back alone.”
“I was on guard duty.” She shrugged, avoiding the issue of Sean.
“You? On guard duty?” Carrie asked her with a wry smirk and laughter in her eyes. Her smile punched right through the anxiety over everything that had happened.
“Me. On guard duty.” Grace leaned closer, hugging the book to her chest. “I’m still trying to get out of plowing the virgin soil.”
“Yeah, well, there’s been a lot of ‘plowing the virgin soil’ going on around here lately.”
Carrie nodded toward a tent at the edge of their camp with a grin. The flimsy side moved in a steady rhythm and muffled grunts carried across the distance. Grace blushed and looked away. She feigned a laugh and jabbed Carrie’s arm, but the scene with Sean and the conversation with Kinn were still fresh in her mind.
“God, I wish Sean wasn’t wasting his energy digging in that stupid field,” Carrie groaned.
Grace writhed in discomfort.
“When he got back here, the way he looked at me.” Carrie sucked in a breath. “I could have sworn he was going to jump me in the middle of camp. But then he went out to work in the fields instead.”
Grace cleared her throat. “We need to talk,” she started with deadly seriousness.
The flicker of fear in her friend’s eyes called for a change of tactics.
“Why are you waiting for him to come to his senses anyhow? It’s Sean. There is no sense there.” She snapped her mouth shut in a smile before her words could turn bitter. Carrie only heard the joke and chuckled. “Be aggressive. Seduce him. Make the choice for him.” Guilt at the quiet manipulation closed her throat.
“Distract him from you, you mean?” Carrie’s pretended casualness was destroyed by the seriousness in her eyes. She sucked in a breath that thrust her chest out as she glanced past the trees to the men in the field.
Grace couldn’t bear to witness the drama anymore. “I swear, Carrie. I’m not interested. I’ve got other ideas.” She peeked across the camp to Danny, at work in his laboratory. He wore the enigmatic smile that told her he was watching her even though he wasn’t looking at her.
“I still don’t trust him,” Carrie said, pulling Grace’s attention back to her. “But he’s grown on me. He…he knows what he’s doing.” She gave a resigned shrug and glanced out toward the fields.
“Look, I need to talk to Danny for a second, but there’s something I want to discuss with you later. I want you to come on an adventure with me tomorrow.”
“Ooh? An adventure?”
“An adventure. I’ll tell you about it later. But don’t tell Sean.” She winced inwardly at her final comment.
“Excellent. A secret adventure. My favorite.” She laughed and shooed Grace on with a knowing grin. “Go talk to Danny.”
Grace shook her head over the knot of anxiety in her chest. She turned to continue on to Danny’s canopy. Her smile melted once her back was to Carrie and her head throbbed with guilt. She hurried her steps until she was within a few yards of Danny. Then she slowed almost to a crawl.
Danny glanced up at her from the trays of plants he was sorting. His eyes were sharp as he studied her, the rest of his face expressionless. She set the book on Danny’s make-shift desk—one that had been salvaged from the wreck—and sank into one of the seats next to it. Danny watched her. She met his eyes and tried to give him a standard look of exhaustion to hide her inner turmoil. He saw right through her. They were both still.
He broke eye contact to reach for a small handmade earthenware cup next to his trays. “Here,” he handed it to her. “Drink this. I made it just for you.”
She took it from him, her fingers brushing his.
“It’s not going to make me throw up again, is it?” She sniffed the concoction. It smelled vaguely minty.
“That was not my fault, that was Crick’s fault,” he told her, sending a scathing glance to one of the furry gray hamster creatures in its handmade cage. “He neglected to inform me that the plant with spiky leaves and yellow flowers gave him stomach cramps. I think I’ll call it ‘cricksbane’ in his honor.”
“Crick.” She shook her head. “You’re just lucky those hamster things will eat anything you give them.”
“A useful trait…for us.” Danny winked.
Grace sipped from the cup. Her eyebrows shot up. It was a fair substitute for mint tea. “Mmm. Not bad. Good job, Dr. Thorne.”
“Let me know if it kills you in an hour or so.”
“Gee. Thanks.” She fixed him with a flat stare and put the cup back on the table.
A dead hamster on the table caught her attention. Its eyes bulged and its mouth was curled in a rictus and stained red.
“What happened there?”
Danny’s expression hardened. He showed her a bowl full of what looked like miniature cranberries.
“Do not eat the red berries. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a poison act so violently or so fast. It was not pretty.”
Grace made a strangled noise in her throat. “You definitely need to let everyone know about them in your lecture tonight.”
“Oh, I will. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to see any more death.”
A sudden twist of remorse blanketed his features. Just as quickly it was gone. He hadn’t been particularly close to Peter, but Peter’s death still affected them all, instilled the fear of God in them. Danny’s nightly lectures on the beneficial plants he’d found and the hazards he’d uncovered were the one thing that stopped her camp working and brought them together in rapt attention.
Danny returned to his work, sitting in the chair next to Grace’s and taking a sip from the cup he’d given her. He shot her a wicked grin before putting the cup on the desk. He made a few notes about his plants on a stack of papers fastened to the clipboard from ES5. He had insisted on taking paper notes from the beginning, and when their last handhelds ran out of batteries, she understood why. Paper was limited, though, so he wrote in miniscule letters.
She watched his profile as he recorded his findings. He was steady, patient. If the primal instincts that Kinn called aggression were attacking him he wasn’t letting it show.
She glanced out across the camp, wondering if her people were taking care of those base instincts on their own or if they would become a problem she would have to worry about. Maybe the Secondary Protocol was a good idea after all. Her eyes settled on the still writhing tent for a moment before she glanced down. They had almost an equal balance of men and women. Clearly coupling wasn’t something she had to worry about. Except when it came to Sean. And possibly Kinn.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me what has you wrapped around the axle.” Danny brought her out of her embarrassing thoughts with his steady voice. He didn’t miss a beat in his work.
She took a deep breath to prepare for her confession and looked up. “I spoke to Kinn today.” The words felt clumsy. She had spent an hour on the way home longing to tell Danny everything, and now she didn’t know how.
“Oh?” His eyes stayed fixed to the page but his face flushed.
“He popped up out of nowhere just in time to stop Sean from�
��.”
Her courage faltered. She dropped her glance to her hands knitted together in her lap. When she felt Danny’s eyes boring into her, reading what she was too ashamed to speak, she peeked up to meet them. He was perfectly still, hand poised over the paper, huge eyes furious.
“Kinn tells me that his men are starting to feel…aggression, he called it, about women. He thinks it’s some sort of primal mating instinct since humans are technically an endangered species on this moon, and I have to agree. He asked me to go talk to Brian Kutrosky to see if Brian would be willing to let some of the women from his camp move to Kinn’s camp to even out the gender imbalance. Kinn’s men have apparently done reconnaissance, and Brian has twice as many women as men. I said I would go out there tomorrow to negotiate. I’m not sure it will do any good. I’m going to ask Carrie to come with me, so you don’t need to worry about me on that account.”
She ran out of things to babble about.
Danny hadn’t moved a muscle since she started talking. His jaw was hard and his lips pressed in a line. Her body ached with shame and she couldn’t hold his gaze.
He took in a breath and set his pen and clipboard down, back rigid.
“Did Sean hurt you?”
The cold timbre of his voice made her hands go numb. She liked having someone looking out for her, but not if it caused trouble. Her restless eyes settled on the dead hamster.
“No.” She shook her head and cleared her throat when her voice cracked. “He just tried to…kiss me.” She couldn’t look at him. “Kinn stopped him. He makes a valid point about aggression though.”
The way Danny continued to stare at her, blue eyes blazing behind his glasses, made her feel like she was under a microscope. She squirmed in her seat.
“Did Kinn get the point across or do I need to…have a chat with Sean over a bowl of red berries?”
As much as it was a relief to know that he could have a sense of humor over the incident—if that was a sense of humor and not a death-threat—Grace still burned with discomfort.
“Look, can we not talk about this? Ever?” she said in a hush, meeting his eyes warily. “I’ve known Sean for ages. He may be misguided, but he’s not a…. Can we not talk about this?”