Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  “Oh.” She almost sounded disappointed and Tom could feel a soft sort of panic, the kind that sneaks in a back door and settles down before you have a chance to prepare.

  “I ain’t got illusions here, so if you’re in the mood to beat the shit out of me, I can’t stop it, but you don’t go pretending that it’s a fair fight, got that?” He tightened his hands on the wheel until his knuckles turned white.

  “Get so angry,” Da’shay said in a distant voice.

  Tom gripped the wheel as hard as he could. “Fine. Law says you can take that out on me, and until I can find a way to put a bullet in the back of your head, I can’t disagree, but you don’t play mind games and call it anything other than what it is. You’re a sick fuck who enjoys hitting.”

  Da’shay tilted her head and stared at him until Tom thought he’d talked himself into a good beating. He’d done that plenty, only it’d been a long time since he’d done it by accident.

  “You get so angry,” she said in that same distant voice, emphasizing that “you” to make it clear she’d been taking about him and not herself.

  Tom frowned. “Oh.”

  “That’s why I liked your present.”

  Tom sighed. She’d been sounding almost normal and now she was all off on how he’d given her a present. One of these days she was going to figure out he’d been trying to help her enemies spy on her. And considering that she owned him, he just had no idea how that conversation was going to go. She slipped out of her seat again. Moving to the back, she opened the trap door that led into the cramped cargo compartment below and disappeared down it.

  Tom checked their direction against the coordinates she’d given him and kept on driving. His shoulders ached, either from being cuffed too long or from fighting the sand, and that was enough to keep his mind focused on the task at hand. The sun was setting when a hand landed on his shoulder and Tom couldn’t control his startled jerk of the wheel. “Damn it.”

  “There,” she said, pointing at a flat spot between two dunes. Tom looked at her. There wasn’t anything important near the spot she picked, but if she wanted to be here, he couldn’t come up with a good reason to not stop. The winds seemed to be coming from the east, so he parked as close as he could to the western dune and set the sand alarm. Dunes like this moved, and if they started moving fast enough to bury the car, the computer would wake them.

  Once that was done, Tom took a second to look around. “Right then, no diamonds in your water around here?”

  “Just one,” she said before she slid between the seats and then hopped out the passenger side door. Tom gathered up his leash so he wouldn’t trip on it and climbed down the ladder on his side. He’d slept on the floor last night, and between that and the driving, his back was stiff enough to damn near cripple him. He walked around the car, always keeping an eye on Da’shay who was kneeling in the sand.

  “Got water?” he asked her. She continued rocking slowly back and forth as she stared at nothing. Climbing back up into the car, he went through the trap door to check on the supplies for himself. She’d bought huge jugs of water, backup power batteries, lights, thermal blankets, windbreaks, food, piles of clothing. About the only thing he couldn’t find was a communication device. No handheld, no audiotap, no scanner. She was smart to not trust him with anything he could use to contact Captain Ramsay. She seemed to think the captain was fine, but then she seemed to think she was swimming in water with diamonds, so he wasn’t really feeling like taking her word for things.

  He grabbed a jug of water and some supplies before heading back out into the fading light of day. He could use the tires as anchors for the windbreaks and they could bed down under the car itself. That would give them more protection from blowing sands and he could change the alarm to warn them to check for anything moving in their area. Tom didn’t like the idea of not setting a guard, but Da’shay couldn’t be trusted to focus long enough to stand watch and Tom was too damn worn out.

  The sun was fading into a few last streaks in the sky when Tom finished. Wind breaks on three sides would keep the prevailing winds off them and a light dangling from one of the axles glowed just bright enough to keep them from banging their heads into the car’s undercarriage. Chores done, Tom wandered off a bit to add his own water to the ecosystem.

  “What’s that?” Tom asked as he walked up behind Da’shay, tucking himself back in after taking his piss.

  She’d drawn circles in circles, lines and swirls connecting plain brown rocks that she’d laid out in some pattern that didn’t make any sense. His leash hit his knee as he crouched down to look closer and Tom flinched at the reminder of his slavery. Even if she was right that they would have killed him, it was still hard to stomach knowing that she could grab that leash any time she wanted.

  “Was a genta girl here.” Da’shay carefully put a rock down where two squiggles met. Tom studied the drawing again. It sure didn’t look like any star chart he knew. Some rocks were far apart and others were so close together that if they’d been planets, her drawing would have put them in the same orbit. Command said she was a pilot, but for a pilot, she didn’t have any concept of scale. Then again, Command never said she was a good pilot. He shifted around and tried squinting at it from a new angle, but it still looked mostly like gobbledygook.

  “There was, huh?”

  “Born knowing too much, but not understanding anything.”

  “The not understanding anything part I get,” Tom said.

  Da’shay actually grinned at him. “Lack of socialization with cultural norms commonly affects those with inadequate parenting.”

  Tom sat on his ass and stretched a leg out to the side of her drawing. “Ain’t a bit of that makes any sense, you know.”

  She shrugged. “I know.” She pointed at her rock. “Genta girl wanted to understand her…” She stopped, her face twisting with frustration.

  “Total fucking craziness?” Tom guessed.

  She blew out a large breath. “Yes. Genta girl wanted to understand her total fucking craziness.”

  Tom raised an eyebrow and wondered just how insane Da’shay could get because right now she was talking almost normal and still managing to herself sound like a complete loon. Da’shay picked up another rock. “She went to…” she stopped again. At his rate they were going to be up half the night.

  “A new place,” Tom offered.

  “She went to a new place and met…” She fisted her dress and made a distressed little noise.

  “New totally fucking crazy people?” Tom guessed.

  She nodded, blowing out another breath like she’d been holding it forever. “She went to a new place and met totally and completely fucking crazy people,” she agreed. “And she was craziest still.”

  Tom snorted. “Not surprising.”

  She reached out toward her drawing and traced one of the longer squiggles. “So she wanted to see a new place and meet—”

  “New totally fucking crazy people,” Tom interrupted. She reached over and punched him in the arm just hard enough to sting a little.

  “Genta humans!” she said. “She looked toward a new place with genta humans and humans, but she was still crazy.”

  Tom rubbed his arm and glared at her. “Going new places doesn’t exactly make you uncrazy,” he pointed out.

  “It makes you unignorant.”

  “I ain’t even sure that’s a word,” Tom said, but he leaned in and waited for the rest of her story.

  “She’s unignorant now, but totally and completely fucking crazy people,” she pointed at rock number two, “worried that her crazy was too crazy. If she was ignorant and crazy they wouldn’t have to care. But they feared secrets spilling from a cup.”

  Tom frowned. That was making a strange sort of sense, and when Da’shay started making sense to him, he really did have to worry about his mental health. “You mean the genta girl learned something that people didn’t want her to know?” he asked.

  Da’shay chewed on her lower lip
and thought about that for a long time considering it was a pretty simple question. Her face twisted into something ugly.

  “She did something they didn’t want her to do?” Tom tried again. Da’shay kept making the same constipated face. He sighed, not sure what else to try. He rubbed the still sore skin over his slave mark and thought about it. “They just didn’t like her or trust her for some reason?”

  “Yes!” Da’shay reached out and grabbed Tom’s leg as if it were some sort of life preserver. “Totally and completely fucking crazy people just didn’t like or trust genta girl, so they,” she flinched, “vultures to pick. Skin sticking to the scab. Send genta girl back to full genta where she would wither.”

  Tom leaned back, bracing his hands behind him on the warm sand. “Ain’t following that a bit.”

  “Listen, listen, listen.” Da’shay pounded her fists against her own legs with each word, her face twisting with disappointment, before she went silent. Then she let herself fall backward so she was lying on the sand and looking up at the stars. Tom sighed. He could feel her frustration, her desire to tell him something and a little part of him felt and unwilling sympathy. She was smart, but she lived in a body that didn’t seem to be able to explain what she was thinking.

  “I am listening. You don’t talk so clear,” he said, trying to be nice about it even if she was still frustrating him.

  “Don’t listen,” Da’shay disagreed, but she sounded too tired to argue the point much.

  Tom shrugged. “Listening’s not one of my big skills. If it was, I would be able to listen to other men and figure out what they say to make women smile at ‘em.”

  “She likes curves too,” Da’shay said.

  “And see. You don’t make any sense. That’s why I don’t listen,” Tom complained.

  Da’shay rolled onto one side, sand sticking to one of her cheeks as she looked at him. With the dim light coming from the shelter, she looked even more otherworldly. The blue was almost invisible as only her silhouette stood out against the white sand, and there was nothing in that shape that suggested a genta. Instead she looked like a sprite that had crept out of one of the books his ma had read to him when he was very young.

  “You want to listen to other men who talk to Becca and make her smile at them.”

  “Well,” Tom shifted uncomfortably, “yeah.”

  Da’shay shrugged. “Becca likes curves too. Men have too many angles. She likes curves.”

  “Wait.” Tom sat up. “Becca likes women? She’s been ignoring all my offers because I’m a man?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, fuck. Why the hell couldn’t she say that instead of leaving me trying to figure out a way to make her see me for two years?” He looked up at the stars. “Better yet, why am I even listening to you? You’re probably as wrong with this as with your star chart.” Tom said that, but something in his gut said that Da’shay was telling the truth. Fuck. Two years he’d tried to impress Becca and she never would have given him the time of day. Fuck fuck fuck. Why was he such an idiot?

  “She likes curves, but she likes you. You like her curves.” Da’shay’s voice was soft and Tom glared at her, daring her to pity him. If she wanted a fight, that would cause one.

  She sighed. “Vultures.”

  “We going back to that?”

  Her mouth twisted up into something that might have been a grin or a grimace. “Less likelihood of bloodshed discussing vultures.” She sat up and studied her chart for a long time. Finally she pointed to the second location. “They sent vultures.”

  Tom really hated charades, and that’s what he felt as if he was doing. He was a fucking slave stuck in the charades game from hell. He sighed in defeat. “Fine. Vultures are something that can be sent.”

  She nodded.

  “Wait.” Tom leaned forward. “You said something about vultures when you were kidnapping me and selling me into slavery.” He was trying to inspire some sort of guilt, but Da’shay only smiled.

  “Not the slave center. In the garage. Drive off the road and vultures wait to pick your bones.”

  “Huh. I thought you meant real vultures and this planet ain’t got any.” Even in the low light, Tom could see the weariness and desperation in her face. “Fine. It ain’t like I’m thinking it now. They’re something that can pick your bones and they,” Tom pointed at the second stone, “sent them. That ain’t enough for me to go on, pea brain.”

  She frowned and lay back down. The night was starting to cool and a breeze swept down off the sand dune. Tom closed his eyes and let the sand tickle over his skin. It’d been a long time since he took time off the ship to do anything other than drinking and chasing doxy. A whole long time. This planet was reminding him of his youth in all sorts of ways that Tom wasn’t sure he really wanted to remember.

  “If you see the totally and completely fucking crazy people, they’ll send to gnaw your brain, little bits all chewed away. Don’t look.”

  Tom felt his stomach sour and his eyes came open as she reminded him of blindfolding him. There was something about being blindfolded that played on a man’s fears. After he’d mouthed off to the woman who came to do the branding, four big guys had come and put him on his back, pinned him down while a fifth strapped him down so that Tom couldn’t even move while that annoying cheerful woman had carved up his chest with a laser, and that still hadn’t put him in nearly as bad of a mood as being blindfolded.

  “Send who to gnaw? Wait. Are you saying that the people from there,” Tom pointed to the second rock, “were the ones I couldn’t see?”

  Da’shay nodded.

  As much as he’d rather pretend that little moment of joy had never happened, Tom thought about that room where he’d been blindfolded. “He didn’t call you Da’shay.”

  She shook her head and watched him with large, dark eyes.

  “What did he call you?” Tom asked. It’d been a name, close enough to Da’shay, but longer.

  Instead of answering, she shook her head again. “Vultures gnaw and gnash. They picked my bones, whole thoughts gone.”

  Tom’s blood ran cold as he put pieces together. “Are you saying that those assholes sent some sort of doctor to rip up your brain so you wouldn’t remember what you saw?” He could feel his stomach churn. It wasn’t as though there was any cause for her to lie at this point. He was a fucking slave. She could take him to the next town and sell him without anyone ever questioning her. Ramsay would just assume Tom had been unlucky enough to get caught and the law on Nodar gave her the right to do what she wanted with him.

  Tactically, it might be smart to get a long-time crew on your side if you were handling a tricky captain, but Ramsay seemed to trust Da’shay more than Tom. True, Ramsay knew first-hand that Tom had done some mighty stupid things, and putting the tracker on her had just been the last and most glaring example of that, but still…it didn’t seem as if Da’shay needed him to talk Ramsay around. And when all the tactical reasons were gone, about all Tom could think was that she was telling the truth.

  “Rip and pull skin with the scab. Whole words gone. Go to say how I feel and all is cat’s cradle, yarn all ruined.” She traced the long line between the second location and where she said genta humans lived. “Run. Mice in a maze, all floating in space. Words all gone.”

  Tom closed his eyes for a second and tried to think that through. “So words are gone, but not just any words, the words you might use to describe these assholes?” Tom looked over at her. For a long time she stared back at him, chewing her lower lip. Then she slowly gave a single nod.

  “Well fuck. You have a lot of words missing, princess,” Tom said, suddenly not quite so comfortable calling her pea brain anymore. “I’m thinking there’s something mighty big that someone’s trying to cover up and we stepped in the middle.” He looked over to see if she agreed with that.

  “Cat’s cradle,” she said softly.

  Cat’s cradle. Carl and Evert had played cat’s cradle the year that disease had take
n about half the crop. Tom remembered sitting with his butt on fire from getting whipped after he’d ruined a batch of fertilizer. The two brats had taken ma’s knitting, a sweater some town woman had hired her to make, and they’d done cat’s cradle until the yarn separated into ugly strings that bunched and knotted. It’d been a fucking mess and all their ma had done was cry over it when she’d found her ruined work. Cat’s cradle. Tom didn’t need a translation for that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tom rolled over and pulled the pillow closer. His back ached, and he rolled the other way to ease the strain. It took a couple of seconds to realize he wasn’t pressed up against the cold hull of the Kratos.

  He blinked and tried to focus his eyes. The sunrise turned the white tarps pink and made Da’shay look almost purple as she rocked back and forth, mouthing silent words. Tom sighed. If he believed what she’d been saying last night, she’d had whole parts of her ripped away. His stepfather had tried to change Tom—tried to tear him apart. Some nights after taking a beating, Tom wondered if he shouldn’t just keep his mouth shut and learn to be the kind of person his stepfather wanted. Of course that feeling never lasted because he just plain hated the man. But Da’shay hadn’t even had a chance to fight. The idea of someone doing that turned his stomach. If it was true. Tom didn’t have a lot of illusions about his ability to outsmart someone, and that included Da’shay. It wasn’t that Tom doubted that people were evil enough to do exactly that—they were. He just didn’t know if he could trust himself to know the truth if it hit him in the face like a three-day dead fish.

  Fingering the chain leash still locked to his collar, Tom figured he wasn’t exactly in the best position to make a good judgment. A big part of him wanted to believe that she was the victim of some big plot, but that’s what good little slaves did—they blamed the world and believed that their owners were victims in the slavery with them. That allowed them to cuddle up to the people who enslaved them and never see that they’d turned into something less than human. But putting their faith in their owners didn’t protect them from being hurt or raped or sold off when they weren’t interesting or fun anymore.