The salarian desert game, p.22
The Salarian Desert Game, page 22
“They’re just a bunch of kids, you know,” I say to her.
“Yeah, well, that’s what the desert game is all about, isn’t it? They’re not supposed to come out of it still kids. Not your fault or mine.”
“I’ll settle for them coming out of it. Do you have a safe place for us?”
“Them, yes. If they’ll agree to go there with me. You, I have to get to the Select. Did they know when they sent her that she can’t speak a word of any language spoken here?”
Chapter Twenty
We arrive at night. Nyah puts her finger to her lips and leads us through a pathway in the sand visible only to her. I notice small tubes sticking out of the ground and a series of three-foot-square indentations in the sand, each one surrounded by a low wood barrier, about forty feet apart. When I look closer at one, it’s a slat made of wood cactus, with the desert sand cleared away. Nyah stops in front of one.
She reaches down, fiddles with something on top of it, and slowly raises it. Inside I see a wide square hole, lined with wood, a ladder on one side. She motions us down inside. No one moves. It took a lot of convincing just to get them to follow a desert girl; they aren’t going down into the ground on her say-so.
“What is this place?” I whisper, because she’s urged us to silence since we got here.
“My parents’ old house.”
“Old house?”
“My father is now one of the leaders of our people. They moved to Sven’s settlement. So technically this house is mine and my sister’s, when we come back.”
I look down into the hole. “It won’t cave in?”
“It’s cut out of siltstone, a sedimentary rock composed of sand and clay. In certain places, like here, it lies eight to ten feet below the desert sands. We dig our houses out of it. So no, it won’t cave in.”
I nod at the girls to start climbing down the ladder. “Your neighbors won’t give us away?”
“I grew up here. I don’t think they would, but I don’t intend to tell them the girls are here, either. It’s better if nobody knows.”
Erity’s the last to go. I wait till she disappears down the hole. They’re all waiting below, in the dugout, because I told them it was okay. When did they decide to trust me so completely? They’re only a year younger than me, but it seems a decade since I was that confident nothing really bad could happen to me.
“I hope we understand each other,” I tell Nyah.
She waits for me to continue.
“They aren’t hostages. They’re your guests.”
“The Ruling Triad in Tokosha doesn’t need to know that.” Nyah grins.
I don’t return the smile. “But you need to know it,” I say. “You need to remember it every minute they’re here. You need to worry about it, because if you don’t keep them safe, I swear I’ll kill you.”
Totally impossible. Never in a hundred years will I be able to kill her. But I’m willing to die trying.
“I’ll keep them safe,” she says.
I lean closer. “I get it about your sister. I have a sister, too. She was a slave in the mine your sister blew up.” I let that sink in. “And after that I saved your life. So I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care what choices you’re given. This isn’t a choice. You keep these girls safely hidden.”
She doesn’t repeat her promise. I respect that. She’s given her word; if once isn’t enough, twice won’t make it so. But she meets my look and holds it, and I believe the girls will be safe with her.
I climb down to them. A short tunnel sloping downwards takes us to the living quarters. A kind of lounge area, furnished with chairs and benches, a kitchen with a primitive cook stove cut into one wall and chunks of wood cactus piled beside it, and three bedrooms — not nearly enough beds for all of us, but Nyah pulls some blankets onto the floor and we’ll manage.
The next day passes slowly even though we all sleep late in our dark, underground bedrooms. Each room has a chimney — the tubes I saw sticking out of the ground — which lets in fresh air and a small amount of light, but it’s way darker than the tents. I think we were all becoming sleep deprived, but maybe that’s part of the game. When I finally wander into the kitchen, Nyah has lit lamps to brighten the place and is setting out eggs and cactus milk while Erity slices up flat, round things she calls cactus bread. It’s wonderful for breakfast, okay for lunch, a little tiresome for supper, but no one complains. I figure that’ll change if they have to stay cooped up in here for too long.
Late the next night Nyah returns from checking outside to give me the all-clear. “Head straight north,” she tells me.
“Give me the co-ordinates.” I reach for my compass, which I’ve clipped to my belt.
“When you get close enough, they’ll find you, if they want to.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. They’ve already been bombed once.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I do, but you might run into the wrong person.”
No use wasting my breath. I go into the lounge area to get my pack. It’s lighter now; I took out everything unnecessary, even my jewelry box. I wrapped my tools, which aren’t that bulky, in a cloth and stuck them inside my shirt. I sling the half-empty pack over my shoulder.
“What are you going to do?” Kama asks.
“I’m not sure. But the Select I came with, she’s with the leaders of the desert people, trying to resolve this conflict. And she can’t speak a word of Salarian.” I give them an ironic grin, which makes several of them laugh. They probably think I’m joking.
Kama doesn’t laugh. “I was wrong about you,” she says.
“I was wrong about you, too.”
She nods once, as if that’s done. No need to belabor the point. My kind of apology entirely.
I look around at them. The only reason they’re here, and not safe at home, is because they wouldn’t leave me behind in the desert. I’m suddenly so choked I don’t know what to say.
“Don’t get all blubbery,” Kama says. “Mucks up the sunlenses.”
“It’s night time, I’m not wearing them.”
“Yeah, well, no need to embarrass yourself, anyway. Just go.”
“Be careful out there,” Akako adds.
I nod. “Thank you,” I say to all of them. I glance at Nyah, who’s come in behind me. “You can trust Nyah,” I tell them. “And Kama’s second in command. When they agree, do it.”
I don’t grin till I get to the tunnel, out of their sight. No one else appreciated the humor in that, but I’d give a lot to have a little cam somewhere, so I could watch Nyah and Kama working things out.
At the end of the tunnel, right below the hatch, Kayo is waiting. She has her pack slung over her left shoulder. Her right forearm is still wrapped in bandaging and her face looks pale and weary but determined.
“You’re not coming,” I say.
“Yes, I am. You won’t survive in the desert, you missed most of the training.”
“You won’t survive another sting.”
“Kenja gave me her tube of antidote.”
How have I deserved this loyalty? She knows what she’s offering. I can’t accept it, though. “I’m not Nyah. I can’t keep you safe out there, Kayo.”
“I know. I’m going to keep you safe.”
“I can’t carry a tent to sleep in, I have to travel fast, and a tent might be seen.”
She gestures to her pack. “Extra flexsheet, three containers of repellant, two full bottles of D-doc juice.” She smiles proudly. When I don’t smile back, she adds, “I’ll just follow you, you know.”
She will, too. “Don’t slow me down,” I say, reaching for the hatch. Then I stop, and look at her standing there. “Kayo, you’d be the first person I’d pick for my triad.”
“Me, too.” Erity enters the tunnel behind us. She’s carrying her pack.
“Erity, no. You’re safer here.”
“Oh, what’s the fun in that?” she says.
I’m lining up my arguments when Kama joins us. Carrying her pack! She holds up her hand. “Don’t waste your breath. I left Kenja in charge. She’ll drive that desert girl even crazier than I would have.” She doesn’t actually grin but the look in her eyes tells me she was on to that.
I’m not in a laughing mood, now. “You realize we’re going to get ourselves killed out there, don’t you?”
“It’s all part of the game,” Erity says.
“What game? This isn’t a game! Death isn’t a game! It’s the end. It’s never seeing someone again. Ever!” I sound a little hysterical. I make myself stop and take a breath. No one moves.
“We know that.” Kama breaks the silence. “We drew lots. I lost. Now open the bloody hatch.”
“You can so go back without me!” I shout.
“Well, I’m not going to.” Kama shoves past me and opens the hatch herself.
***
Even with Salaria’s double moons I wouldn’t be able to make out the path between the houses if Nyah hadn’t marked it with her footprints just before coming back down to us. We follow it carefully, in single file, so Nyah won’t be faced with questions she can’t answer tomorrow because her neighbors heard people walking over their roofs in the night.
We walk all night. My compass, automatically set at the start of the game to guide me to the nearest estate as soon as I left the circle, keeps trying to get me to turn back, or veer off east or west. I turn off the speaker and the locator and use it as our ancestors did, for direction only, heading straight north as Nyah said.
At dawn we stop for a meal of dried cactus and strips of snake seasoned with desert salt, sitting on a flexsheet. Kayo still thinks it’s desert chicken and eats it willingly. Kama frowns — she’s not the kind to baby anyone — but I casually reminisce about the time Kayo saved my life when I was stung by a scorpion back at camp. Kama snaps her mouth shut and eats her “desert chicken” in silence.
As soon as I’ve eaten I get up and start walking. We can be seen for miles in the desert and there’s nothing we can do about it, so the sooner we reach the settlement, the better. Unfortunately, Nyah told me it’s nearly a hundred miles away. Three days hard walking in the desert sun before we’re safe. I glance behind me. Kama should make it. Erity might.
I stop. “Kayo, give me your pack.”
“No. I’m fine,” she pants.
“Give it.” I grab it off her shoulder. “Your job is to look out for…” I’m about to say desert people, but I don’t want to scare her. “…sweetwater cacti. We need to keep replenishing our liquids.”
When the sun reaches its zenith I finally stop. Kayo has found a sweetwater cactus. She stabs her spile into its globe-shaped belly and we take turns refilling our bottles. Then we spread out two flexsheets to lie on.
“Kayo in the middle,” I say. They don’t argue. She’s been bitten once; all the antidote on the planet won’t save her if it happens again. We lie down and pull a third flexsheet over us, its rough side up to diffuse and deflect the sunlight, so we won’t cook alive in our sleep underneath it. It’s white, like everything else on this planet; with luck, we’ll just look like another mound of sand.
We’re walking again three hours later, barely refreshed from a too-short sleep in the relentless heat. The hottest part of the day is over, which means it’s still hotter than any other habitable planet in the human universe. I think I would let myself be captured by Out of the Desert if they promised to let me sleep in an air-cooled tent before they killed me.
It’s too hot to talk. It’s too hot to think. We just keep moving, one foot in front of the other, northward. We suck in the heat with every breath and sweat it out again. The desert stretches away from us, horizon to horizon, empty and silent. I have never known such silence. It’s as heavy as the heat, an invisible entity pressing in on us until the sound of our own heartbeats, our breathing, seems alien and unwelcome in this hot, silent world. We have brought noise here: aircars and construction, voices and technology; city noises springing up and mining noises burrowing down and now, explosives. We have disturbed the vast silence of this world and only our death will restore it…
“Movement!” Erity cries. “Get down!”
For a second, stupid with the heat and the silence, I don’t understand. Then I drop to the ground like the others. I squint into the east where she’s pointing. “Where?” I whisper, still caught in the spell of the silent desert.
“I see it,” Kama murmurs.
“I don’t.” Kayo shades her eyes. “Oh. The wind?”
“I don’t think so. It’s too steady.”
I’m still desperately trying to pick out anything anywhere in this vast emptiness. Erity aligns her head with mine and points. I stare, willing myself to see it, whatever it is. “Is it coming this way?”
Erity sighs and stops pointing.
“It’s too far to tell,” Kama says.
“If it is desert people and we’ve seen them, then they’ve already seen us,” I say. “There’s nowhere to hide, and we’re losing our head start.” I remember the pace Nyah set for us when we left the camp circle, and I know I slowed her down. We’ll never outrun them, but we have no other choice than to try. If it is desert people. If it’s not just the wind stirring the sand, or a sunlit mirage.
“Let’s go before someone gets stung.” I stand up. It feels like making a target of myself, like shouting to the distant whatever, come and get me! I think I see a streak of red on the white sand and my heart stammers, but I push it aside. There’s no time for imagining things, no time for fear. I check my compass and start walking north. Fast.
Chapter Twenty-One
Something is following us. We’ve increased our pace, but still they’re gaining on us. I can see them now, not individual shapes yet, just something bobbing on the eastern horizon.
The sun is falling. It’ll be dark soon. They won’t be able to see us, but we won’t be able to see them either, or tell how fast they’re coming. And they don’t need to see us; they’ve already had time to note our direction. We can’t turn aside. I have to get to Agatha, and anyway, there’s nowhere else to go.
Maybe it’s not Out of the Desert militants. Maybe it’ll be friendly desert people, who’ll help us get to the settlement. Maybe it’ll even be a party of Salarians trying to find us. Real rescuers. I don’t mention that hope out loud. We all know nobody comes for the girls who disappear in the desert game. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re laying bets on everyone who hasn’t turned up yet.
I glance behind to make sure Kayo’s keeping up, and notice clouds in the sky. Dark, heavy clouds lying low across the southern horizon. We’ve been looking east and didn’t see them forming. Rain, I think. Water. I imagine being wet, wet all over, and even the thought revives me, despite the danger from the east. “Rain!” I call, excited.
Kama looks behind. “Run!” she screams.
I’m thinking she means into it, but she veers off, northwest, as though she’s trying to run out of its path, and the others take to their heels, too. I look again and race after them. Tornado? I think. Hurricane? I’ve never been anywhere either could occur, but I’ve seen them in actionvids, with human bodies being hurled into the sky and houses torn apart by one or the other of them. I run faster.
I hear a low growl behind me, which quickly becomes louder, as if some ravaging beast has caught our scent. I risk another look back. The whole desert is being swallowed by the roaring wind at our backs. It’s reaching for us now; it whips around me, tearing at my clothes, a biting, stinging wind, laced with millions of grains of sand. We run flat out, run for our lives, and we’re losing.
“We can’t outrun it!” Kayo screams. “Get under your flexsheets!” Her words are torn from her mouth by the wind.
Nobody stops running, but Kama, beside me, slides her pack off her shoulder. The wind tears it from her hands and flings it behind us before she can reach inside. It disappears into the storm.
The wind is upon us now, buffeting us in every direction, its howl deafening me. The air is so thick with sand I can’t see. I’m breathing in sand, choking on it…
“Get down!” someone screams. Kama grabs my arm and pulls me down, and Erity falls beside her. We press together, protecting each other, our faces buried in our arms. We’re going to be buried alive! Kayo! Where’s Kayo?
She falls on top of us, arms and legs outstretched, cutting off the wind and sand. “Grab a corner,” she pants. “Help me hold it!”
I reach up blindly and grab the flexsheet Kayo’s trying to spread over us. Together we pull it over our heads and hold it against the ground. The relief is immediate. We can breathe again without inhaling sand. I wipe my face on my sleeve to clear away the grit and sand, and open my eyes. Squeezing aside, I make room for Kayo between me and Kama. The wind pounds against the sheet. It flaps it wildly around our legs until we manage to pin it down with our feet. And then we are as snug as if we were in a tent. A flimsy tent, barely able to shelter us from the wild fury of the sandstorm. Erity gives a shaky laugh.
“How long do these things last?” I ask, thinking, don’t say days, don’t say weeks. Some planets have storms that last for half their solar orbit.
“It could be hours,” Kayo says gloomily. It’s my turn to give a shaky laugh.
“I lost my pack,” Erity says.
I realize mine is gone, too. “Anyone still got their pack?” I ask.
“I do,” Kayo says. “I pulled it round in front of me.”
The rest of us lie there awhile wondering why we didn’t think of that.
“At least we don’t have to worry about getting bitten or stung,” Erity says. “Scorpions and snakes burrow down deep when there’s a sandstorm.”
We take turns sleeping, two of us holding onto the sheet while the other two sleep. No one’s going to be tracking us through this.
It happens after Kayo wakes me up, when she’s transferring her hold on the sheet to me, so she can rest. The wind grabs the corner of the flexsheet and tears it out of my hand, and with that advantage it’s impossible for the others to hold onto it. It whips into the air and away, and we can only lie with our heads pressed into the ground, trying to suck some oxygen out of the sand.
