A planet is different enough from a Ship that we wouldn’t expect population to be restricted as tightly as ours, but some planning is necessary. There is no excuse for eight children in one family—and this just counted those present and walking. Who knows how many older and younger ones there were? It was sickening immorality.
It frightened me and filled me with revulsion. I was frantic. There were too many things going on that I couldn’t like or understand. I held Ninc to a walk to the far edge of town, but when I got there I whomped him a good one and gave him his head.
I let him run a good distance before I pulled him down to a walk again. I couldn’t help wishing that I had Jimmy there to talk to. How do you find out what’s going on in a strange land like this one? Eavesdrop? That’s a lousy method. For one thing, people can’t be depended on to talk about the things you want to hear. For another, you’re likely to get caught. Ask somebody? Who? You can’t afford to be too casual about that, you know. Make the mistake of bracing a man like that Horst and you might wind up with a sore head and an empty pocket. The best thing I could think of was to use a library, and I wasn’t any too sure that they had anything as civilized as that here. I hadn’t seen anything in Midland that looked like a library to me—only a stone building with a carved motto over the door that said, “Equal Justice under the Law,” or “Truth Our Shield and Justice Our Sword,” or something stuffy like that. Hardly a help.
There were signs along the road that said how far it was to one place and another. One of the names, Forton, was in larger letters than the rest. I hesitated for a long moment, caught between the sudden desire to become a turtle and the thought of continuing as a tiger. You know, turtles on old Earth sometimes lived for a hundred years or more—tigers nowhere near that long. But after a moment I kicked Ninc and continued along the road. What I wanted was a town large enough for me to find out answers without being obvious and a place large enough to get lost in easily if that turned out to be necessary. I’ve seen days when I was glad I knew of places to get lost in.
In the late afternoon, when the sun was beginning to sink through its last fast fifth and the cool air was starting to turn colder, one last strange thing happened. I was, by that time, in hills again, though less rugged ones with slopes that had been at least partly cleared. It was then that I saw the scoutship high in the sky. The dying sun colored it a deep red. The only thing I could think of was that something had gone wrong and they had come back to pick us up.
I reached down into my saddlebag and brought out my contact signal. The scoutship swung up in the sky in a movement that would drop the stomach out of anybody aboard. It was the sort of movement you would expect from a very bad pilot, or one who was very good, like George Fuhonin. I triggered the signal, not really feeling sorry.
The ship swung around until it was coming back on a path practically over my head. Then it went into a slip and started bucking so hard that I knew for certain that this wasn’t hot piloting at all, but simply plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn’t one of ours. It wasn’t radically different, but the lines were just varied enough that I knew it wasn’t ours.
My heart stopped turning flips and I realized that I was aching all over again. Maybe the gravity was heavier here after all. I shouldn’t have expected it to be George. I knew as well as anybody that they just didn’t come back for you until the month was up.
But this was one more question. Where did the ship come from? Certainly not from here. Even if you have the knowledge—and we wouldn’t have given it to any Mudeater—a scoutship is something that takes an advanced technology to build.
A few minutes later, still wondering, I came across a campsite almost identical to the one I’d seen earlier in the day, down to the well and the high-walled log pen. There were several people already in the process of making camp for the night and it looked so tempting that I couldn’t resist. There were a number of sites on the slope and a little road led between them. So I turned off the main road. I originally picked a spot near the log structure, but it stank horribly there and so I moved.
I set up camp and ate my dinner. Before I was done, the wagon driven by the old man who had waved hello to me swung into the camp. There was a tent about thirty feet from me with three young children and their parents. The kids stared at me and the bubble tent and one of them looked ready to talk to me, but their father came out, shot me a look sitting there drinking my soup, and hauled them away.
After dinner a joint fire was started up by the old man’s wagon and people gathered around it. I was attracted by the singing. It wasn’t good but it sounded homey. Everybody in camp was there, so I thought it was all right for me to come, too. The kids from the next camp were given places in front and their mother, poor helpless thing, was given a stump to sit on. I just stayed in the background and drew no attention to myself.
In a little while, the kids’ father decided it was time for their mother to take them back and put them to bed, but the kids didn’t want to go. The old white-haired man then proposed that he tell a story, after which the children would go with their mother. In the old man’s odd accent, as I sat there in the light of the campfire beyond the circle of people, the story seemed just right.
He said, “This story be told to me by my grandmother and it be told to her by her grandmother before her. Now I tell it to you and when you be old, you may tell it, too.”
It was about a nice little girl whose stepmother had iron teeth and unpleasant intentions. The little girl had a handkerchief, a pearl, and a comb that she had inherited from her dear dead mother, and her own good heart. As it turned out, these were just enough to find her a better home with a prince, and all were happy except the stepmother, who missed her lunch.
The old man had just finished and the kids were reluctantly allowing themselves to be taken off to bed when there was a commotion on the road at the edge of camp. I turned to look, but my eyes had grown used to the light of the fire and I couldn’t see far into the darkness.
A voice there said, “I be damned if I’ll take another day like this one, Horst. We should have been here two hours ago. It be your fault, and that be truth.”
Horst said, “You signed on for good and bad. If you want to keep your teeth, you’ll quit your bitching and shut up!”
I had a good idea then what the pen was used for. I decided that it was time for me to leave the campfire, too. I got up and eased away as Horst and his men herded their animals past the fire toward the stockade. I cut back to where I had Ninc parked for the night. I threw my bedroll out of the bubble tent and knocked the tent down.
There seemed to be just one thing to do, everything considered. That was to get out of there as fast as possible.
I never got the chance.
I was just heaving the saddle up on Ninc when I felt a hand on my shoulder and I swung around.
“Well, well. Horst, look who we have here,” he called. It was the one who had made the joke about me being beneath the notice of a Losel. He was the only one there, but with that call the others would be up fast.
I brought the saddle around as hard as I could and then up, and he fell down. He got up again, though, so I dropped the saddle and reached for my gun under my coat. The saddle bounced off him and he went down again, but somebody caught me from behind and pinned my arms to my sides.
I opened my mouth to scream—I have a good scream—but a rough, smelly hand clamped down over it before I had a chance to get more than a lungful of air. I bit down hard—five thousand pounds per square inch, or some such figure, in a good hard bite—but he didn’t let go. I started to kick, but it did me no good. One arm around me, right hand over my mouth, Horst dragged me off, my feet trailing behind.
When we were behind the pen and out of earshot of the fire, he stopped dragging me and dropped me in a heap. “Make any noise,” he said, “and I’ll hurt you.”
That was
a silly way to put it, but somehow it said more than if he’d threatened to break my arm or my head. It left him a latitude of things to do if he pleased. There was enough moonlight for him to see by and he examined his hand.
“I ought to club you anyway,” he said. “There be no blood, at least.”
The one I’d dropped the saddle on came up then, shaking his head to clear it. He’d been hurt the second time and had gone down hard. When he saw me, he brought his booted foot back to kick me. Horst gave me a shove that laid me out flat and grabbed the other one.
“No,” he said. “You go look through the kid’s stuff and see how much of it we can use and bring it all back with the horse.”
The other one didn’t move. He just stood glaring. The last three men were putting the animals in the pen so it was a private moment.
“Get going, Jack,” Horst said in a menacing tone, and finally Jack turned away. It seemed to me somehow that Horst wasn’t objecting so much to me being kicked, but was rather establishing who it was that did the kicking around here.
But I wasn’t out of things yet. In spite of my theoretical training, I wasn’t any too sure that I could handle Horst, but I still had my pistol under my coat and Horst hadn’t relieved me of it yet.
He turned back to me, and I said, “You can’t do this. You can’t get away with it.”
It was a stupid thing to say, I admit, but I had to say something.
He said, “Look, boy. You may not know it, but you be in a lot of trouble. So don’t give me a hard time.”
He still thought I was a boy. It was no time to correct him, but it was very unflattering of him at a time when I was finally getting some notice from people to make a mistake like that.
“I’ll take you to court.”
He laughed. A genuine laugh, not a phony, curl-my-moustaches laugh, so I knew I hadn’t said the right thing.
“Boy, boy. Don’t talk about the courts. I be doing you a favor. I be taking what I can use of your gear and letting you go. You go to court and they’ll take everything from you and lock you up besides. I be leaving you your freedom.”
“Why? Why would they do that?” I asked. I slipped my hand under my coat slowly. I could feel the hard handle of the sonic pistol.
“Every time you open your mouth you shout that you be off of the Ships.” Horst said. “That be enough. They already have one of you brats in jail in Forton.”
I was about to bring my gun out when Jack came up leading Ninc. I mentally thanked him.
He said, “The kid’s got good equipment. But I can’t make out what this is for.” He held out my pickup signal.
Horst looked at it, then handed it back. “Junk,” he decided. “Throw it away.” He handed it back.
I leveled my gun at them. (Hell on Wheels strikes again!) I said, “Hand that over to me carefully.”
They looked at me and Horst made a disgusted sound.
“Don’t make any noise,” I said. “Now hand it over to me.”
Jack eased it into my hand and I stowed it away. Then I paused with one hand on the horn of the saddle.
“What’s the name of the kid in jail in Forton?”
“They told us about it in Midland,” Horst said. “I don’t remember the name.”
“Think!” I said.
“It’s coming to me. Hold on.”
I waited. Then suddenly my arm was hit a numbing blow from behind and the gun went flying. Jack pounced after it, and Horst said, “Good enough,” to the others behind me.
I felt like a fool.
Horst stalked over, reached in my pocket and brought out my signal, my only contact with the Ship and my only hope for Pickup. He dropped it on the ground and said in a voice more cold than mine could ever be because it was natural and mine wasn’t, “The pieces be yours to keep.”
He stamped down hard and it didn’t break. It didn’t even crack. Frustrated, he stamped again, even harder, and then again and again until it finally came to pieces. My pieces.
Then he said, “Pull a gun on me twice. Twice!” He slapped me so hard that my ears rang. “You stupid little punk.”
I looked up at him and said in a clear, penetrating voice, “And you big bastard.”
It was a time I would have done better to keep my mouth shut. All I can remember is a flash of pain as his fist crunched against the side of my face and then nothing more than that.
Brains are no good if you don’t use them.
Chapter 16
I REMEMBER PAIN AND SICKNESS AND MOTION DIMLY, but Hell-on-Wheels’ next clear memory came when I woke in a bed in a strange house. I had a vague feeling that time had passed, but how much I didn’t know. I had a sharp headache and a face that made me wince when I put a tentative finger to my cheek. I didn’t know where I was, why I was there, or why I ached so.
Then, as though a bubble had popped, the moment of disassociation was gone and it all came back to me. Horst and being knocked around. I was trying to push my way out of bed when the old man who had told the story came in the room.
“How be you feeling this morning, young lady?” he asked. His face was red, his hair white, and his deep-set eyes a bright blue. It was a good strong face.
“Not very well,” I said. “How long has it been?”
“Two days,” he said. “The doctor says you’ll be well soon enough. I be Daniel Kutsov. And you?”
“I’m Mia Havero,” I said.
“I found you dumped by the camp where Horst Fanger left you.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him. Everyone knows of him. A very unpleasant man—as I suppose he be bound to be, herding Losels.”
“Those green things were Losels? Why are they afraid of them?”
“The ones you saw been drugged. They wouldn’t obey otherwise. Once in a while, a few be stronger than the drug and they escape to the woods. The drug cannot be so strong that they cannot work. So the strongest escape. They be some danger to most people, and a great danger to men like Horst Fanger who buy them from the ships who bring them to the coast. Every so often hunters go to kill as many as they can find.”
I was tired and my mind was foggy. My head hurt, and when I yawned involuntarily it was painful.
Sleepily, I said, “It seems like slavery, drugging them and all.”
Mr. Kutsov said gently, “Only God can decide a question like that. Be it slavery to use my horses to work for me? I don’t know anyone who would say so. A man be a different matter, though. The question be whether a Losel be like a horse, or like a man, and in all truth I can’t answer. Now go to sleep again and in a while I will bring you some food.”
He left then, but in spite of my aching tiredness I didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t like it, being here. The old man was a Mudeater and that made me nervous. He was nice, being kind, and how could I stand for that? I tried to see my way around the problem and I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t rest enough to see things clearly. At last I drifted off into a restless sleep.
Mr. Kutsov brought me some food later in the day, and helped me eat when my hands were too unsteady. His hands were wrinkled and bent.
Between mouthfuls, I said, “Why are you doing this for me?”
He said, “Have you ever heard the Parable of the Good Samaritan?”
“Yes,” I said. I’ve always read a lot.
“The point of the story be that at times good will come from low and evil men. But there be books that say the story been changed. In the true version, the man by the road been the Samaritan, as bad a man as ever been, and the man that rescued him did good even to such a one. You may be of the Ships, but I don’t like to see children hurt. So I treat you as the Samaritan been treated.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. I’m not a bad person. I thought he ought to be able to see that. I didn’t understand how he could think so badly of us.
He added then, perhaps seeing my shock, “I be sorry. I don’t think as harshly of the Ships as most. Without the Ships we wouldn’t
be here at all. That be something to remember in these bad times. So be sure that I won’t tell that you be a girl or from the Ships, and rest easy. My house be yours.”
The next day he suggested that for my own good I learn to speak so that I would not be noticed. That was sensible. My mind wasn’t as foggy now and I was starting to worry about things like finding a way to contact the Ship. To do it, I might very well have to pass as a native. And if I didn’t do it, I’d definitely have to pass as a native, damn it.
I didn’t fully understand Mr. Kutsov. I had the feeling that there was more in his mind than he was saying. Could he just be doing good to a despised Samaritan? No, there was more. For some reason he was interested in me.
We worked on my speech for a couple of hours that day. Some of the changes were fairly regular—like shifted vowel sounds and a sort of b sound for p, and saying be for is—but some of the others seemed without pattern or sense, though a linguist might disagree with me. Mr. Kutsov could only say, “I don’t know why. We just don’t say it that way, be all.”
After he said that once, I just gave up, but he coaxed me into trying again. He coaxed me, and that was the sort of thing that made me wonder what he had in mind. Why did he care?
After a while, I began to catch on. I couldn’t tell you offhand what all the changes were—I think rhythm was a large part of it—but I did have a good ear. I suppose that there was a pattern after all, but it was one I only absorbed subconsciously. I got better after we’d worked for several days.
Mr. Kutsov said once, “Not like that. You sound as though you be talking around a mouthful of gruel.” Not surprising, since that was what he was feeding me, but in any case I was only repeating what I heard.
During those hours we talked. You have to have something to correct and with no textbooks at hand it had to be normal speech. As we talked, I made mistakes and he corrected them.
In the course of our talks, I got a fuller picture of the dislike of these colonists—for some reason, Mudeaters wasn’t the word that came into my mind anymore, at least, not most of the time—for Ship people.
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