Desert World Rebirth

by Lyn Gala

  “Did she die in childbirth?” Temar asked. It was a logical question, since so many did, either because of the lack of water or lack of the right nutrients or the lack of any real medical help, but Shan shook his head.

  “No, she got hurt on the farm, and an infection set in.”

  Temar’s fingers tightened on Shan’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

  When Shan breathed in, the sound stuttered for a moment as he tried to focus on what he wanted to say. This wasn’t about him throwing himself a pity party. “When she was alive, my father would sometimes get… not angry, exactly. It was more like he wanted revenge on anyone who hurt him, even when it was only one of his sons making a stupid mistake. But Mom would step in and read him the riot act. She’d pull him to one side and rip into him in this soft voice.” Shan tried to figure out how to explain what he was feeling.

  Temar watched intently. “What would she say?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I’d catch a few words of it. She’d talk about his father, talk about the future. Sometimes I’d hear her talk about God or Div, who was the priest even back then. But she’d have this intensity, and Dad’s anger would turn into this embarrassment that would make him avoid the house until it was so late that Naite and I had gone to bed.” Shan pushed his plate away. “She reminded him that he needed to be good. She never raised her voice, but she would tear into him with this intense tone that would make him stop and really think about what he was doing. Sometimes Div would do that when people came to see him for counseling. But Temar, I never did. I never tried to warn people away from doing evil, so I can’t pretend that I didn’t have some part in the evil that grew in Landing.”

  Temar reared back. “You can’t blame yourself for the fact that other people chose to be evil.”

  “I was a council member. I was the priest. Who else is supposed to stop evil?”

  “I don’t know, maybe the people who are being evil?” Temar had this expression of utter confusion on his face.

  Shan scratched his chin. He hadn’t shaved yet, and he itched. “But I certainly didn’t have any inspiration from God when it came to Ben and schemes.”

  “And neither did anyone else. I was happy when he bought my contract,” Temar pointed out. “Shan, you’re not responsible for anyone else.”

  “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Shan whispered. Taking refuge in Cain’s excuse didn’t seem like a particularly good idea, but then again, Cain had committed murder. Chronic naiveté seemed like Shan’s worst sin. He hadn’t understood himself or his calling or Ben.

  “No, you aren’t,” Temar said firmly. “You didn’t see Ben’s evil, and you thought my father was evil when he was really just weak, and I thought you were some stuffy priest who didn’t have a life beyond reading the Bible all week so he could preach on Sunday. Clearly we all have some version of sandblindness that only affects how well we see other people.”

  Shan lowered his voice until it was little more than a whisper. “So, the planet is relying on two idiots to negotiate a treaty?”

  Temar made an expression of exaggerated horror. “We’re all doomed.”

  Shan laughed, the negative emotions slipping back into the shadows of his mind. “If we don’t live up to Lilian’s expectations, we will be.”

  “Then we’d better start doing a little research.”

  “Research? On what?” Shan asked.

  Temar tilted his head, looking at Shan in surprise. After a second, he leaned in closer and whispered in an earnest voice, “Which chemicals did they want to export? Where are the mineral deposits? What did they need other than optic-quality glass? How much optic-quality glass did they hope to export every year? How much water did we get shorted in the terraforming? How have the prices of raw materials changed in the last eighty years?”

  Shan leaned back in his chair, shocked at how much of an idiot he’d been. He knew all about the colonists’ machines, and he’d read their diaries and their journals. He knew how they saw Livre, and how much they’d hated it. He knew a lot of things, but listening to Temar’s quick list, he realized he didn’t know anything important.

  “Clearly, I’m a moron.”

  “What? No, you aren’t,” Temar quickly disagreed.

  “No, really I am.” Shan shook his head at his own foolishness. “Well, it sounds like we have some researching to do in the next week. I’m sure we can find the answers either in the relay station computers or in one of the downloads.” Shan broke off as he heard the door slam. He was on his feet, his heart pounding for no good reason, as Naite walked in the door.

  Chapter 13

  TEMAR could see the way Shan relaxed once only Naite appeared in the doorway. They were both as jumpy as sandrats. The council would have been better off choosing negotiators who didn’t start at shadows, but Temar suspected it was too late to change plans now, and he wasn’t going to allow Shan to go off-world alone. Naite sat down at the table, shadows under his eyes. Grabbing an apple, he looked at the serving platter. “I don’t suppose you saved any food?”

  “We would have if we’d known you were coming back this morning,” Shan answered, and he already had an edge to his voice.

  This time Naite didn’t rise to the bait. He gave a grunt and started eating the apple. “I’m heading out to Blue Hope this morning, so load your bike and let’s get moving.”

  Temar exchanged a concerned look with Shan. Naite didn’t look awake enough to drive anywhere, much less a full day across the deepest part of the desert.

  “Did you get any sleep last night?” Shan asked carefully. He still earned a nasty glare from Naite.

  “I’m fine,” Naite snapped.

  “But did you sleep?” Temar asked. It was a valid question, one that Naite wasn’t answering.

  Naite gave a huge sigh and considered Temar for a long time. They had an unusual relationship. In a lot of ways, Temar turned to Naite for advice. He’d run a farm and he’d learned to live with nightmares so vivid they could make a man break out in a cold sweat and wake up screaming. On the other hand, technically, Temar owned Naite and would for another two years. Naite had certain beliefs about slavery and what it meant, even if Temar never enforced any rules with Naite. With another sigh, Naite finally answered. “No, we debated until after dark, and then I spent the night waking people up and gathering supplies.”

  “If the council is trying to keep things quiet, waking people up to gather supplies isn’t the best way to do that,” Shan said, disgust in his voice.

  “I’ll make sure the council knows you disapprove of their methods,” Naite answered dryly.

  “What supplies?” Temar asked before Shan and Naite could get into it.

  Naite got up and headed over to the sink for a glass of water. “Dee’eta sent quite a bit of glass.” Normally Naite’s voice boomed loud enough to be heard across fields, but he kept it soft. “She said she has more to send later in the week, optic-quality, but she sent along supplies of various forms and colors of glass she produces. Bari pulled together a database of family names. He figures there will be folks who want to know where their distant cousins got to.”

  Temar cringed as he realized they would have cousins out there in space, cousins who might not appreciate the fact that the council had condemned more than a hundred and fifty people to death—forty-three from Landing alone.

  “Kevin sent along some finer pieces of woodworking, and Lilian is coordinating the council, gathering up all damaged tech to send up with you. I think she’s hoping you two can talk them into fixing a few hundred datapads, communicators, computers, optic lines, motherboard chips, and random crap,” Naite finished and then drank his water in huge gulps.

  “Can we take that much up?” Temar asked, turning to Shan.

  Shan shrugged. “Probably we can. These systems are usually designed for carrying raw materials, so if you don’t have a big enough lift payload, it isn’t worth the fuel it takes to break away from gravity.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not g
oing to hold my breath on you getting the shit fixed, but most of it is trash if we can’t get it repaired, so no loss there.” Naite put his glass back on the counter. “Bylla is outside with the hauler, and we’re scheduled to be in Blue Hope before the end of the day, so move like you have sandcats on your ass.”

  “Bylla?” Shan asked.

  Temar looked at Shan, surprised he didn’t recognize the name of the new priest. “Bylla Sullivan, the priest,” he said softly.

  Shan cringed. “Oh.” He didn’t hide his embarrassment at not knowing the woman’s name.

  Naite snorted.

  “And has she had any sleep?” Shan demanded.

  Sometimes Shan’s emotions changed so fast that Temar couldn’t keep up, and he could feel his anxiety rise as Shan’s soft shame at his own ignorance turned to a sharp verbal jab.

  “We can all sleep after we’re sure they aren’t going to blow us all up,” Naite snapped back.

  Temar physically stepped between the brothers. “Why don’t you and Bylla grab pillows and throws and set up beds in back. You two can sleep during the drive out to the relay station.” Naite’s mouth came open, but Temar talked faster, before he could be interrupted. Sometimes it was an advantage owning Naite, because he tended to limit how rude he’d get with Temar. “Shan will even promise to drive slower and more carefully than he normally does. No extending the sails and letting the hauler head straight down the side of a dune.” Temar frowned at Shan.

  After a second, Shan gave a small nod. “I can do that,” he agreed. “Naite, why is the council risking this getting out? There may not be many communicators, but a few of the rescue teams have them, and you know that a dozen kids have trained hawks to carry messages. This is going to fuel rumors.”

  Naite nodded. “It’s going to get out that something big is going on, but a little panic will convince the others to act quickly. With the shuttle coming in a week, Lilian thinks the biggest danger is people wanting to debate this to death. So, we’re putting the planet on notice that something big is happening, and by the time it comes out that the inner planets are coming back, hopefully they’ll all be willing to back us since we’re already in place.”

  Temar could understand the logic. Lilian might be manipulative, but she was right that they didn’t have time to debate when the inner worlds were ready to show up on their doorstep. None of them even knew what the worlds wanted out of them. “It makes a twisted sort of sense.”

  “Lilian’s plans usually do,” Naite said. “I’ll grab some pillows and tell Bylla we’re bunking in back, but”—Naite poked a finger in Shan’s direction—“so much as one suicide slide down a dune, and I’m throwing you under the hauler.”

  Shan rolled his eyes as Naite stalked out of the kitchen. The second Naite left, the tension levels in the room dropped, and Temar took a deep breath.

  “Please tell me that I don’t act that bad when Cyla’s in the room,” Temar asked.

  Shan looked over. “Are we that bad?”

  “Yes.” Temar grabbed the plates from the table and stacked them on the counter. “So, what are we taking with us?”

  “All my belongings are at the station.” Shan frowned, a furrow between his eyes. Temar hoped Shan wasn’t about to call him on his fight with Dee’eta. Putting the leftover food in the cooling unit, Temar silently cursed Cyla for bringing that up. However, Temar finished with the food, and Shan still had the same frown.

  Temar went to Shan’s side and rested his hand on Shan’s arm. “What’s wrong?”

  Shan shook his head and the frown vanished, replaced with a more thoughtful expression. “They’re going to think we’re ignorant, poor people. I don’t know how we’re going to get them to take us seriously.”

  “Poor?” Temar sometimes had trouble believing it, but he was one of the richest people on Livre, right up with George Young and Lilian herself. If the rumors were right that she planned to divide her farm between three of her children, Temar would be one of the two richest people on Livre after her death.

  “Every single one of them owned hundreds of pounds of possessions. They would change clothing every day and sometimes during the day because they didn’t like how sand felt against their skin.”

  Temar’s mouth fell open. They didn’t like how sand felt? This was Livre. There was sand in the clothing, the food, the sheep’s wool when they sheared them and the goat’s hooves. Sand came in through windows every time a sandstorm raged over the valley walls. In town, things were even worse. There, the sand could drift up to turn the center road into an obstacle course. Parents would hang nets over cribs to keep the dust off young children when they slept. “They’d change clothes to get rid of sand?” Temar asked, not sure he could really wrap his mind around the concept.

  Shan nodded his head. “They did. I’ve read their journals, and they seem almost offended that their children would come in with so much dust clinging to their clothes that they’d track sand throughout the house.”

  “Why immigrate to Livre if you don’t like sand?” Sand was a way of life, even if you weren’t on one of the rescue teams that would go out after lost travelers or some craftsman who would head out into deep desert for salts or arsenic for glassmaking. Those people loved the desert, but even the town-born craftsman who never set foot on deep desert accepted sand as part of life.

  With a sigh, Shan shrugged at his own ignorance. “For the money, I guess. Some wanted to make a fortune and go home. A few of the early settlers did leave when they lifted the exports off-planet.”

  Temar looked around at his neat home, with the metal struts that had been stripped straight off a drop ship. “Did any of them come here planning on building homes and families?” He felt a little like a child who had just learned that Saint Nicholas didn’t live at the top of the White Mountains. He wanted to think their ancestors had come here to build a new world, a better one. He didn’t want to think they were as selfish and greedy as the inner planets who had abandoned them.

  “Some did.” Shan sighed. “I haven’t read all the journals. I know one man came here seeking God.”

  Temar tried hard to resist an urge to roll his eyes. He loved Shan and he respected the man’s faith in God, but the church had been a pleasant place for Temar to escape from life—not a house of God. And if there was a God, he hadn’t shown much interest in Temar’s life. “So, these were materialistic people? Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “No, it’s….” Shan took a deep breath and started over. “If they don’t respect us, are they going to treat us fairly? They’re going to assume we’re dirty if we don’t change our clothes every day. If they know that most of us don’t own much more than would fit on the back of a sand cycle, will they assume we’ll trade away our world for a bag of toys?” Shan ran a hand over his face. “I’m probably overreacting.”

  Temar walked over and rested his hand against Shan’s shoulder as he leaned into him. “The night you found me here—” Temar stopped. For a moment, he could feel the rope around his wrists, a ghost impression that made him scratch the skin.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Shan said.

  Temar took a step back and shook his head. “I was going to the bathroom down here when I saw a figure out in the field.”

  Shan frowned, obviously not following the conversation.

  “There’s a toilet on the second floor,” Temar pointed out, looking up toward the second story. “I came down here because I had this ridiculous idea that if there was a little more space between me and Ben, it mattered. It didn’t. I mean, my hands were tied, and it didn’t matter what bathroom I used, but I came down here because I wanted a few more yards between me and the man who….” Temar swallowed and then forced the words past the lump in his throat. “Who raped me.”

  “I wish I could do something to erase all that.” Shan looked absolutely miserable, and that hadn’t been Temar’s point.

  Shaking his head, Temar walked to the door where he’d first seen Shan
out in the field. “I wasn’t logical. People aren’t logical,” Temar said, struggling to explain what he was feeling. “We can’t expect logic from human beings no matter what planet they’re from, so I think you’re right that they’re going look down on us.”

  Shan blew out a breath and closed his eyes. The expression on his face made Temar suspect that Shan had hoped he would dismiss the idea as paranoid. However, Shan was right. “So, what? We take a lot of changes of clothing?” Shan asked. He blinked several times and got a more thoughtful look on his face. “Actually, that might not be a bad idea.”

  “We could find out about fashion. Do the men wear jewelry? Is there some material that implies wealth?”

  “So, we con them?” Shan smiled.

  “I wouldn’t call it conning them as much as finding our inner Lilian Freeland and embracing the power of manipulation,” Temar said. He remembered how Ben would come on strong, his wide smile distracting everyone from the corruption inside. Manipulation worked better than most people wanted to admit. And if it took a little manipulating to protect his home, he could do that.

  “Our inner Lilian, huh?” Shan smiled. “If we can do that, they’ll never know what hit them.”

  Temar was still looking out the door, so when Shan patted him on the shoulder, Temar jerked and gave a little gasp. Immediately, Shan pulled his hand back, his smile fading. Hating his own weakness, Temar reached out and caught Shan’s hand and pulled him closer until Temar could lean back into Shan’s strength. Without a word, Shan carefully wrapped his arms around Temar. “We’ll win,” Temar said softly. “I don’t know what we’ll win, but we’ll win.” Shan’s arms tightened a little more, and Temar let his head fall back against Shan’s shoulder. They would. Neither of them would accept anything less.

  Chapter 14

  TEMAR looked at the cramped storage room in amazement. He’d always thought that the relay station rooms were obscenely large, large enough for several families to live in comfortably. However, after one week of unloading broken machines, trade goods, and raw materials, Temar was fairly sure they couldn’t fit another thing into the station. Shan was only sleeping two or three hours a night as he tried to sort the machines he could fix from those that truly needed the attention of the inner planets, and Temar had a bone-deep weariness that grew deeper as he thought about the coming trip.