by Paul Kidd
“But what will I wear when I get out?”
“Well, I’m not letting you get back into that filthy gear. You can borrow some of mine.”
The rat girl set to work. She scrubbed at old, leather armor; underwear that was more dirt than cloth; singlet; shirts; pants; socks. It was sheer hard work. All the while, Xoota sat in her bath, life returning to her legs. The rat girl had managed to fold a little boat out of waxed paper, and had left it floating in the bath. Xoota heard the tough, unglamorous sounds of clothes being washed. She felt her skin tingling with cleanliness. She kept her eyes focused on her toes, feeling uncomfortable.
“Shaani?”
“Yes, yes?”
“Thank you.” Xoota dragged the words out of her darkest, most cobweb-slathered mental archives.
The rat wiped her tired face. “No problem, old horse. A pleasure.”
Half an hour later and two shades lighter, Xoota sat beside a little campfire sipping hot tea and eating damper, a bush bread made from grain and wattle seeds, and even a few bugs, herbs, and perhaps a rock or two. Her clothing and armor hung from a dozen different sticks and rails, all drip-drying in the cool, night air. Dressed in a blanket knotted at her shoulder, Xoota wriggled her toes at the fire, admiring the shine of her pink feet.
The earwig swarm sat on the rocks nearby, welcoming a load of warm damper Shaani had diced into cubes. The creatures ate with relish. They ranged in size from tiny babies to large adults; it was obviously a self-sustaining colony. The swarm was eager to be helpful. She glanced at her crossbow on a rock nearby; the colony had been kind enough to retrieve it from the ant-lion pit right after Xoota began her bath.
Xoota spread quince jam onto her bread and waved it at the earwigs.
“So, hey. You actually live here, yes? Here in this ruin?”
“For little bit. Sometimes in another place down road. Sometimes in the bushes, when rains come.” Several insects spoke at once, all in chorus, sitting up on their forked backsides while other bugs ate like starving wolves. “This place is good in Big Dry. Wig-wig stay here for water. Water is almost gone now.”
Xoota inspected the cracked ceiling. “So the reservoir must fill up during the winter rain.”
“But this year, no rains come. Only little bit. So water be almost gone. Maybe two months, then be bye-bye.” Several bugs sighed. “But boring. Boring. No one for I to talk to. Nothing new to do.”
Shaani poured soup into a saucer for the bugs to drink. “Well, you should come with us. Come to the villages. There’s always water there. And things to do.”
“Glee.” Bugs began to dance. “Glee. Glee.”
“Wait, we are partnering up with bug swarms now?” Xoota lifted one finger, about to pontificate, when one of her antennae twitched.
Danger.
Xoota cursed. Never stay at a water source. Stay nearby. Too many things like to come to the water and drink. Earwigs flowed in a carpet, moving alongside a crack in the concrete, some of them looking outside onto the sand, and others hanging back to pass on the news. Xoota grabbed her mace and her plastic shield. She was rummaging around, trying to find her crossbow, when Shaani went running past her with a pipe bomb in her hand. The quoll pointed at Shaani with her mace.
“No bombs. Not in here. One more of those things, and I’ll smack you.” She waved Shaani into cover. “Over there. Get your shovel. Douse the fire.”
The earwigs came bustling back. They seemed to always stay in fairly close proximity to one another. “Wig-wig saw. Is big pigs, maybe five, with stinky birds.”
“Have they got a krunch wagon?”
“What is wagon?”
“Okay, thanks.” Xoota hitched up her blanket and flitted over to the one point of exit into the upper world. She crept slowly, carefully up into the night air, moving with immense stealth. She settled between some sprigs of spinifex and carefully scanned the outside world.
Razorbacks.
There were five of them, war pigs in armor made from leather and metal. They were mounted on ragged, black cockatoos, which were aggressive and flightless, and they smelled bad enough to make the desert bushes wilt.
The war pigs were armed with flails and cleavers and crude bows slung across their backs. There was no sign of a wagon, though; razorbacks could sometimes pack some fairly heavy artillery. They were scouts for a war band, checking out the water supply, which meant a lot more razorbacks were on the way.
Two of them stayed mounted, while three others fanned out cautiously toward the ruins. The three incoming razorbacks readied cleavers and shook out their flails, the chains clanking in the dark.
Shaani stayed hidden in the crevice. She gave a polite, concerned whisper. “Is it bad?”
“Bad. We’ve got five of ’em.”
“Are they butch?”
“Well, fairly heavy on the muscular side of things, yes.”
“Should we use a bomb?”
Xoota bit her lip. “The ones on bird-back would ride off and summon the entire tribe.”
“Can we just nip off unseen?”
“Not a chance.” Xoota read the ground. The sand was too open to give any cover. She felt for her spare crossbow bolts. “I don’t suppose you feel any neat new mutations coming on? Laser eyes, mind control—that sort of thing?”
“Um, no. Just the usual quickie healing. You?”
“Genius-level synapses—the usual.” Xoota tried to somehow make a plan. The only thing she could think of was damned risky. “Right, okay. I’ll open fire and draw them off. You sneak off west with the gear. I’ll try to join you later.”
“Most certainly not.” The rat gave her a lofty glance. “I can’t have you putting yourself at that sort of risk.”
“Well, what else can we do?”
“Well, certainly nothing that leaves you facing the foe alone. A rat is ever faithful.” Shaani prepared her shovel. “Species characteristic, old girl.”
Five huge razorbacks were closing in. Shaani and Xoota despaired, when earwigs popped onto the sand.
“Never mind. Wig-wig will fix it,” said the bug swarm.
Suddenly the air was swarming with earwigs.
Oversized earwigs, hundreds of them, glossy brown and black, wings whirring, pincers clashing, rose up from the sand and swarmed madly all around the razorbacks, buzzing, swerving, nipping, squealing. The pigs ducked and tried to cover their eyes, roaring as sharp forceps nipped at tender parts of their anatomies.
Xoota stared.
“They fly? I didn’t know earwigs flew.”
“Well, of course they do.”
Some nearby earwigs climbed onto a rock and their wings flicked open like switchblades. The bugs waved to Xoota and Shaani, then joined the swarm, making gleeful noises as they sped in to the attack.
“Squee!”
Razorbacks cursed and swatted.
Some earwigs were already nipping the riding birds, making them screech and rear. The loose birds broke and ran. Cursing, the razorbacks still on bird-back tried to get their mounts under control, only to have the birds bolt off into the wilderness. Of the remaining three razorbacks, two ran off madly after their cockatoos, bellowing and cursing. Only one war pig—the biggest—decided not to run. Shielding its eyes, it staggered into the shelter of the ruins, roaring in rage.
Xoota cracked it on the rib cage with her mace.
The gigantic pig staggered then swung wildly at Xoota with its flail. Xoota ducked and took the blow on her shield. Earwigs buzzed around the razorback’s eyes, making the monster snarl and curse. Xoota swatted the creature’s flail aside and hammered her mace down onto its neck. The blow simply rebounded off the creature’s hide.
Shaani smacked the razorback across its lumpy snout. Her spade made a noise like a ringing bell when she hit it, but the razorback simply shook its head and ignored her.
Xoota landed a solid blow on the enemy’s skull. Her cog mace was no laughing matter. The razorback staggered, half stunned. It shook its head, saw Xoo
ta, and gave a savage roar.
Shaani looked behind the pig and brightened.
The ant-lion pit.
Shaani held her little shovel like a battering ram and charged. She hit the razorback as it ducked beneath Xoota’s mace. The razorback staggered and its footing gave way. It spilled, tumbling down the side of the ant-lion pit, and landed in a crash and tangle of armor.
Two giant mandibles lashed up from beneath the sand, almost cutting the razorback in two. An instant later the creature had been yanked under the sand. Xoota could only stare.
Exhausted, Shaani leaned on her shovel. She wiped her brow then peered into the pit.
“Oh, it did regenerate. I say, you were spot on.”
The earwigs landed en masse on the sands. A few were bent and damaged but seemed to be healing. One battered creature simply stretched, glowed purple, and popped its cracked carapace back in place before trotting off to join the swarm.
Still stunned by the violence of the razorback attack, Xoota looked down at the little bugs. “Hey. Ah … thank you.”
Wig-wig seemed well pleased.
The other razorbacks would be back soon. Xoota and Shaani swiftly gathered up their goods. Budgie kept glancing off to the north, where the noises of a distant war band could be heard on the breeze.
It was time to go. As the two women mounted up, the earwig swarm gathered all around.
“Wig-wig will come too.” The bugs seemed excited to be off. “Which way? Which way?”
“South, old bug.” Shaani pointed with her entrenching tool. “South and away.”
“Glee.” The earwigs flowed around them like a carpet as the women rode off to the south. They headed away from the deep desert, down an ancient, broken road. Xoota rode with her head held high; Shaani rode with a smile.
The quoll sneaked a suspicious glance. “What?”
Shaani’s whiskers gleamed. “You have underwear with little hearts all over them.”
With immense yet fragile dignity, Xoota lifted up her chin. “I found them in a ruin. They fitted me.”
The budgerigar flapped his little wings. “Who’s a pretty boy, then?”
“Oh, shut up.”
CHAPTER 3
Watering Hole. Not so much a town as a sad accident, the settlement had been formed on the Great Disaster, when a large tidal bore dumped an assorted collection of shipping right on top of a picturesque, seaside resort. To add insult to injury, a space vessel from a parallel dimension had materialized overhead and crashed down on top of the entire pile, splitting into three pieces and irradiating everything for three hundred kilometers downwind. With the entire ocean drying up and the death of all known civilization, the tourist trade had decidedly dropped off. It was, however, the site of the one and only constant water source in the entire desert lands.
Apart from that, it had absolutely nothing to recommend it. The village was home to a population of perhaps three hundred, spread across an intriguing collection of families, species, and sub phyla. There was a sturdy, fortified wall made from vehicles, old junk, and rubble. Beside the front gates there was a radioactive dust pit avoided by all except the few people who actually lived in it.
Most residences were inside either old, half-buried boats or one of the tall chunks of ruined spaceship. A collection of bamboo ladders, balconies, and laundry lines removed any sense of grandeur the old ship might once have had, but such is life.
There were smithies, stables for budgerigars and ambulatory riding plants, scrap dealers, street stalls, and a tannery. It all centered on the great stone watering hole—a deep, smooth-sided hole from which an old hand pump gushed water into buckets carried by the locals. Every morning, farmers worked to fill the water carts that took the precious liquid to the fields.
A tavern had pride of place for the village, carved into the side of a rusty tramp freighter. A painted board swung above the entry hole: Snappy’s Tavern—best in the west! Famous for its potluck stews and barium meals, it served as a hotel and impromptu meeting hall. The tavern was also home to a number of female “dance artists” who were not so much exotic as downright weird. Still, the lunchtime cat girl show always drew a steady crowd. The owner was an easy-going mutant crayfish, her bouncer was eight feet tall and sheathed in rock, and the waitresses could temporarily clone themselves during rush hour. All in all, it was a homey place—provided your home was inside a boat filled with weirdoes.
Dusty, hot, and tired, Xoota and Shaani tramped in through the door with Wig-wig swarming along at their heels. They brought with them baggage, a considerable amount of dust, and a good deal of thirst. Xoota headed over to the tables against the bulkhead wall, picking one as far from the dance stage as possible.
The tavern had high ceilings with a series of fans that dispelled a little of the heat. It was still an hour until dusk, but most life in the desert was nocturnal. The only patrons at the time were a group of locals avidly playing cards, three traders eating cheese, the cat girl snoring in one corner, and a man with light blue skin who sat at the bar, weeping into his beer.
Shaani took it all in with interest—an anthropologist studying her specimens. “Fascinating. So this is a tavern?”
“This is it.” Xoota swung a considering glance at the rat. “Surely you’ve been in a tavern?”
“Well, not really. The settlements down south have a few—but they weren’t really my kind of place.”
“Well, here’s where you get food, drink, a place to stay. You can do business, meet clients, make trades—”
“I much admire the lizards.”
Two slim gecko girls moved through the room, collecting glasses from tables. Xoota planted her booted feet up on the table. “Echo-gecko One, and Echo-gecko Two. They’re twins. Actually, sometimes they’re more than twins. There always seem to be a few of them around.”
Wig-wig was fascinated. There were a great many things to do and see. The swarm of glossy bugs flowing over the floor beneath the tables found some interesting discarded nuts and snacks then swept up and onto the bar. The insects sat themselves beside the blue man, who turned them a miserable glance and shoved a glass of beer in their direction.
“What can you do, man? What can you do?”
Multiple earwigs looked up at him and nodded solemnly. “Do,” they said in unison.
“She was supposed to meet me here. The bridal suite … our one-year anniversary. All booked and paid for. And now all I have is a note, a lousy note breaking it all off.” The man half collapsed over the bar. “Just right out of my life. Just like that. One minute she’s there then pow. Next minute she’s gone.” The man waved to the crayfish barkeep. “A round for my friend.” He hung his head. “She said I wasn’t able to understand her. She said he has two brains. That’s twice as much to ‘get’ her. But I got her. Me. Old one-brain. We had good times. I mean, does that all count for nothing?”
“Nothing.” Wig-wig looked distressed. A long chain of earwigs took turns drinking beer from a tankard made out of a dingo’s skull. Others clustered around the blue skinned man and wrung their forefeet in distress. “How could she do this to you?”
At the gambling tables nearby, several burly scrap miners were swapping predatory looks. A thin, gangly boy was playing cards with them, losing steadily. He was anxious and confused, unable to comprehend why every single hand was going against him. The laughter of the miners only made him more determined and confused.
Over at the dinner table, Xoota waved a finger and drew the attention of a gecko waitress.
“Geck. This is Shaani. She’s a scientist from down south. And, ah …” Xoota looked to Wig-wig over at the bar. “Yeah, the insect swarm is with us as well. Keep them away from the live food tank.”
The gecko wiped her hands on a grubby apron. “So … what can I get you?”
Shaani brightened. “Oh. Can I see a menu?”
Xoota cleared her throat. “Can we have three meals, please? One carni-insectivore, one omnivore, and …” What did ear
wigs eat, anyway? “Make that two omnivore. And three omega ales, please.”
“Ooh.” Shaani happily adjusted her spectacles. “Do you have any cheese?”
“I believe some has just spawned, madam.”
“Ah, excellent. Do please bring us some.”
The waitress left. Xoota looked uneasy. “I don’t have much money …”
“Oh, I have a little. What’s mine is thine. Never worry.”
“That’s just it, you never worry.” The quoll fixed Shaani with a dire glare. She looked around. “Where did that earwig swarm go, anyway?”
Up at the bar, the blue drunk poured his life’s woes out to Wig-wig, who sat there beside him, agreeing with every word. “She never loved me.”
“Never.” The insects wailed. “Never never. Waaah.”
“She was just using me all along.”
“She betrayed you.” Earwigs waved their forefeet. “Stabbed you in the back.”
“My life is pointless.”
“A total waste. Eeeee—no point going on.”
Xoota stomped up to the bar and pointed a commanding finger. “Will you stop that? Knock it off. You’re making things worse.”
“But she left us.”
“She didn’t leave you; she left him.” The quoll chased the bugs away from the weeping drunk. “Sorry, man. You just go right on with enjoying your evening.”
The blue-skinned drunk collapsed. The bouncer grabbed him by one ankle and dragged him off, transferring him to the back shed where he could sleep it off. Xoota returned to find their table filled with bowls of stewed, gray lumps; bread made with locusts and grasshoppers; and a platter of cactus-fried potatoes for those who ate vegetables. Tankards of beer gave off a faint green glow—omega ale at its best. Ignoring the biohazard runes on the tankard, Xoota drank gratefully and deeply, feeling it tingle right down to her toes.
“Ah.” Xoota put down her half-empty tankard. “Drink up. It puts hairs on your chest.”
“I have hairs on my chest already.”