The steely eyes didn’t waver. “What’s with Aguila’s scars? And the dressed-like-a-barbarian circus clothes?”
Dan hadn’t seen that one coming. “Don’t underestimate the Supervisor. If you go up against her, you’d better be prepared to take on the whole of Corporate Mine. She got the scars putting her ass on the line, fighting mobbers. Um, flying predators. The colorful and vicious little fuckers come in flocks that, trust me, you really don’t want to mess with. She dresses like she does because she could give a shit about the old Corporation, and her people know it.”
“She got a man?”
“Nope.”
“Pity. That’s nice packaging around a very competent woman.” He smiled. “Could be most interesting. I have a fondness for beautiful women who can handle themselves.”
Dan raised his glass. “If you’re going to make a play for Aguila, I salute you! But be warned, she shoots people who disappoint her.”
“You ever tangled with her?”
Dan gave the man a heartless grin. “We have what’s called détente. She keeps to her world, and I keep to mine. Her people come here to relax, which they need, and I make money, which I enjoy. It’s mutually beneficial. Beyond that, we’re both very careful not to upset the balance.”
“What about these contracts?”
“That’s how Donovan works. A relic of the Corporation. The contract is absolute law. Just be damn sure you know what you’re getting into.”
“And this Shig Mosadek?”
“From your tone, I gather you don’t think much of him.”
Benteen shrugged, his eyes on the guys at the pinochle table as one shouted over a lost hand.
“Another one you don’t want to fuck with. Sure, the guy comes across as a roly-poly absent-minded dreamer with his head in the clouds. He’s sharper than he looks. A third of the triumvirate. What’s important for you to know is that the people here love him.”
“What’s the triumvirate?”
“Shig Mosadek, Yvette Dushane, and Talina Perez. Shig’s the ideas guy and anointed holy priest, Yvette does the down-to-details management, and Perez is the enforcer. Or was. Hard bitch all the way through. Got herself infected with a quetzal and crossed some of the ‘decent folk.’ She’s run off to the bush somewhere. Status uncertain. In the meantime, security is handled by Trish Monagan. Young, idealistic, but you can cow her when it comes to a bluff.”
Benteen stared thoughtfully at Angelina as she was calling for a new shooter. “And how do you fit into the mix?”
“Me? I’m just a humble businessman.” Dan leaned forward, pointing a finger. “Here’s the thing: Donovan ain’t the fucking Corporation. You remember the old fairy tale of the goose and the golden egg? You can become richer than Croesus, but don’t piss off the goose. You’ve got to let these hardheaded local bastards do it their way.”
“And what’s their way?” Benteen’s emotionless stare was like a challenge.
“They don’t take orders worth a shit here. And you don’t fuck around with the townsfolk. I mean it. Unlike back in Solar System, these people solve their own problems in their own way. Hard world, hard people.”
“And the blonde?”
“Allison. A rare vintage.” Dan smiled thinly. “Let’s call her the boss’s special reserve.”
Benteen nodded pleasantly.
And if you don’t get what I’m saying, Art’s going to have a moment of glee when he slits your throat and drops you on the other side of the fence.
34
Talina and Kylee had taken shelter under a stretched tarp. The usual afternoon rain was falling from beneath black and oily clouds. Occasional lightning burst and sent its thunder rolling across the forest.
Under the awning, Talina had a fire going. A pot filled with chia, teff, sunflower seeds, walnuts, chunks of squash, and the ever-present staple of garlic bubbled over the flames.
The day had been a hard one for Talina. Half the time she couldn’t think. When she did get hold of a thought something else would steal it away, leaving a totally unrelated image, emotion, or inclination in her head.
And she kept having flashbacks of the broken potsherds on the tile floor, how they’d scattered, but now it was different, with some shards concentrated here, other shards over there, all backed by Mother’s shriek of disbelief and horror coming from the kitchen door.
Too many damned people in her head. Or, in this case, a little girl and six or seven quetzals.
It should have been getting better. Instead, Talina’s brain seemed to be fragmenting, thinking in a lot of different directions all at once, and she could only catch a glimpse of herself among the various threads. Just like those damn potsherds.
Sometimes she’d just find herself sitting, dully staring at the ground. Nothing. Everything. A limestone temple in the forests of Chiapas. A fight with another quetzal. A lecture at the academy from Officer Ryan. Her mother’s homemade tortillas. Clemenceau’s thin-lipped smile as his eyes narrowed. The feel of a bullet as she leaped at another version of Talina in the canyon. The scratchy rug against her bare back when she had her first sex with Pablo Ruiz. The fulfilling sensation as she snapped a chamois’ neck in two between her jaws. Rondo locking her away in her room for knocking Taung down that time when he took her tablet and deleted her homework.
Endlessly they spun out of her mind, broken and unconnected.
“Talina?” Kylee asked as she stirred the stew.
A starscape just off the crescent horizon of Mars . . .
“Fuck you! Wake up!” Kylee was shaking her.
Talina dropped her head between her knees. “It’s like I’m falling apart, kid. Thought I was getting a handle on it, and now it’s all mush inside. You think that’s what Whitey wanted? He gave me a molecule that was like a computer virus? Something that scrambled the server? Nothing’s coherent anymore.”
“It’s probably brain remodeling.”
“What?”
“I think you’re like a newborn. You have to grow new brain tissues.”
“Is there anything you don’t know?”
“Torrey was a historian as well as an agronomist. When he died, that was pretty much it for history. All I know is that Earth was full of history.”
Talina blinked, chuckled. “How about getting quetzal molecules out of my system? You got anything for that?”
“No. Who was Buck Berkholtz?”
“Why’d you dredge him up? Crap. Don’t tell me you got a memory with good ol’ Bucky in it.”
“You mentioned him that first day. Said you hadn’t been used like that since you were dating Buck Berkholtz.”
“Yeah. Right. Bucky. In the academy. He was pretty hot stuff. Smart, fast, and deadly handsome. Not so much on grades, but he aced the operational training, you know?”
She could feel Kylee’s gaze on her.
“I thought I was pretty hot shit, too. Seemed natural that we’d team up. Thing was, he liked everything rough. Hell, I was young, thought I was tough. Every time we . . .”
“What?”
“Why am I telling you this? You’re ten.”
Kylee gave her that toothy kid smile. “Come on, Talina. As if I’m ever leaving here.” She glanced away as the guilt rose. “You’re my only human friend. The rest, they’d kill my ass, right?”
“Damien and your family wouldn’t.”
Her face contorted, pain reflected in the pinch of her mouth, the scrunching of her nose as if she were fighting tears. Fists knotted, she turned away. Fought for control, and asked, “You said the other day that Damien had a girlfriend?”
“Yep. Sally Montoya. She’s helping him with his geometry.”
“He always wanted to meet new people.” Kylee stamped a foot. “How’d this get so fucked up?”
Talina could see the tear that streaked the little girl�
�s cheek. Kylee dropped to the ground, eyes on the distant forest.
“Where’s all this profanity coming from? Girl your age ought to mind her mouth.”
“Who gives a damn? Huh? It’s not like Dya’s gonna come back and send me to my room for bad behavior.”
“Hey, I got some of your molecules, remember? I know how much you miss your mother and Su and your brothers and sisters.”
“You know I can’t go back!” she shrilled. “I was there. I saw! And I didn’t care! I didn’t understand. Death’s different for humans than it is for quetzals.” The little girl ran her fingers through the dirt just back of the drip line where the rain was pattering. “It’s like . . . forever. They’re just gone.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a problem all right.”
“If I die it won’t hurt anymore. I can just be gone, too.”
The way she said it was like a skewer to Talina’s heart. She forced a memory of climbing high in the forest canopy out of her head. Fought to focus on Kylee. Okay, no wonder the kid’s language was going to hell.
“If I could get my head together, I’d go out in the forest and hunt Diamond and Leaper down.”
“Why?”
“Be one less thing to worry about, wouldn’t it?”
Kylee said nothing, just made a fist in the dirt.
Talina struggled through a memory of her first time in Transluna, getting lost in the terminal. The feeling of panic that she was going to miss her flight to . . .
She was in Rocket’s head, bouncing as Kylee threw a triple-knotted rag in the air. He raced out, two eyes on the flying rag, one to keep track of where he was going. Leaped, grabbed the rag out of the air. She felt Rocket’s claws rip into the damp soil as he whirled, tail slashing the air. Mouthing the soft rag, he turned and started . . .
“Give me a damn break!” Talina scrunched her eyes closed, wondering where she’d lost the trail of thought. “What were we talking about?”
“How quetzals transfer knowledge. Leaper and Diamond think Flash made a mistake. That humans are bad. And they’re right. Look around. Rocket’s dead. Mundo Base is a failure and falling to pieces. It’s all for nothing.”
“Maybe their TriNA isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. They don’t understand humans.”
“We’re just as goofy. DNA? Just mixing and matching? Got a lethal mutation? If DNA was smart, it’d weed itself of the genetic load.”
“The . . . what?” Talina was trying to concentrate despite half of her mind chasing through the bush after fastbreak.
“Don’t you know anything about biology?”
“Not since I was in high school. And that was a long time ago.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not going to survive then. I like being ten and smart instead of thirty and dumb.”
Even as the Kylee said it, Talina watched her face redden.
“Then you go and mouth off like that, and it reminds me you’re still ten. And a kid.”
Kylee bit her lip, looking off to the south.
“So what did Dya do when you mouthed off like that?”
“I got extra duty. Had to clean the toilets or some such.”
“Good thing I’m not your mom, huh?”
Talina could see the drop in the girl’s face. Watched her bite off a comment. Probably something like, “Wish you were.” Words Kylee blamed herself too much to say.
“There’s Flash. Finally.”
Talina shook off a memory of Trish and how guilty she’d looked the time she’d been fourteen—and first come home drunk.
She fixed her eyes on the causeway that bisected the fields. Just past the tree line came Flash, his hide a mottled pattern of browns, greens, and teal.
Kylee stood, stepping out in the rain, waving.
As the quetzal fixed its three eyes on the girl, two shapes burst from the trees, moving so fast they were blurs.
Flash must have heard them, for he barely turned his eyes back when they hit him. Even across the distance, the meaty thump of the hard bodies came loud and painful.
Flash shuddered under the impact, stumbled, hit hard on his breast in the mud.
Over the distance, Talina couldn’t tell which of the younger animals had him by the back of the neck, but the second had fastened its jaws over the head of the tail where Flash’s lungs vented.
Holy shit, they’re strangling him!
Flash bucked, whipped his muscular frame back and forth. Sodden dirt flew; plants were ripped from the ground.
Across the distance, a whistling howl, like an unloosed fury, carried through the rain. Shrill squealing, an odd, bagpipe-like harmonic, and grunts of pain and rage sent Talina’s quetzal into a frenzy that knotted her stomach and caused her to gasp.
She stumbled to her feet, reached for her rifle, and shouldered it. Through the optic, she tried to pick a target. In the thrashing of the beasts, she couldn’t be sure of a shot. Not without hitting Flash.
Taking a chance, she fired a round a couple of feet above the battling titans. She could have spit for all the effect it had.
Or did it?
Through the optic, Talina could see that Leaper and Diamond had changed their tactics and were dragging Flash back toward the safety of the trees. In the process, they used the older animal’s body as a shield.
Flash’s struggle was waning. The slapping of his tail had weakened; each pitch of his body had less energy than the last.
“No!” Kylee was screaming, tears and rain running down her face. “He’s my friend! My only friend!”
Talina dropped to her knee, stabilizing the rifle with as much bone as she could. Found the sight picture, tried to slow her hammering heart, and pressed the trigger.
Her rifle boomed. She lost the shot in the recoil, but when the gun dropped and she got her sight, the quetzals were just disappearing into the trees.
Kylee was running, already twenty yards away, and sprinting flat out.
“Kylee, no!”
Tossing the rifle to the side, Talina was hot on the girl’s heels.
The kid might have been ten, but it took Talina nearly a hundred yards to catch her. Together they tumbled into the mud, Talina shouting, “They’ll kill you!”
“Let me go! Let me go, damn you!”
Then Kylee cried out, “Flash! Please. Don’t hurt Flash.”
Coughing, panting, the little girl struggled in Talina’s arms, sobbing, “He’s my only friend. I want my friend!”
Stroking the child’s soaked hair, Talina pulled the kid to her feet. “Come on. Nothing we can do down there.”
“No! I gotta help Flash.”
Talina shot another quick glance at the tree line, her imagination conjuring images of what was happening to Flash’s body. “He’s dead, Kylee. And you don’t want to see what happens next.”
The little girl’s struggles ceased only to be replaced by wild sobs.
“Hey, there. Come on. We need to get back to the fire. There’s nothing you can do.”
“Everyone I love dies!”
“No, they don’t. Your mom, Su, Damien, they’re still just fine and missing you.”
The rain intensified, leaving Talina crouched in the mud, drops like pellets hammering on her head as she hugged the devastated child.
She kept her squinted vision fixed on the distant trees. Blinking as water streaked down her face. One thing was sure: Leaper, and probably Diamond as well, would be coming for Kylee. Maybe not tonight—given they had full guts—but soon.
They wouldn’t come headlong, or in a manner that would allow Talina the chance to shoot them. It would be from the side, tricky, and lightning-like in surprise.
And what the hell are you going to do about it, Talina?
35
The ache in Dortmund’s back brought him awake. Slanting morning light
poured through an uncommonly dirty window. He stared up at a low ceiling molded of plain white duraplast. The kind commonly used in utility structures. Two square light fixtures were fixed to the ceiling, of which, he remembered, only one worked.
He sat up, a flimsy blanket falling away. Blinking, he realized he was in a hospital bed, and all the events from the night before came crashing back like a really bad dream. First was that incorrigible young Trish who’d disrespected not only his position, but his person as well as she practically marched him to the hospital.
After that indignity, he’d spent a couple of hours sitting at a table in what was supposed to be a lab. Half the equipment had been stored along one wall, wrapped in plastic sheeting, mothballed because it didn’t work for lack of either parts or anyone skilled enough to repair it.
The table had been scarred, the only beverage being cups of mint tea. Nothing with caffeine. Damn it, what kind of madness was that? Didn’t they understand that caffeine powered all true scholarship?
The woman, Dya Simonov, had tried to explain, “We’ve got immature coffee trees from Turalon growing in the greenhouse. But it will take years. Either caffeine producing plants were never included in the original farm manifest for the settlement, or for whatever reason, they didn’t survive here. Which would be odd. Plants usually do well. It’s the livestock that failed miserably.”
“Livestock? They just let domesticated animals loose in a pristine environment?” he’d murmured. “Didn’t they take any precautions?”
“Sure,” Cheng had told him. “But Donovanian life was a lot smarter. Quetzals, it turned out, just loved beef and hogs. And chickens? They jumped on invertebrates, most of which didn’t digest but chewed their way out through the chickens’ bodies.”
Dortmund had blinked. The cretin actually thought he was talking about protecting the livestock?
“Once the survey was finally completed,” the round-faced Cheng continued, “the initial colonization was planned by Bill Tabor. He was the architect—”
“Of all the imbecilic fanatics!” Dortmund had cried. “That naïve young idiot isn’t smart enough to know his nose from his anus! He and his deluded followers are nothing more than evolutionist puppets, played by Corporate policy wonks.”
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