Abandoned, p.17
Abandoned, page 17
part #2 of Donovan Series
The three of them backed away, out of range, and waited.
“You like Dya, don’t you?” Kylee asked.
“I do. More than I thought I would. Once she relaxed . . . I don’t know. It’s weird. What people used to call a marriage of convenience, but the more I get to know her . . .” He ended in a shrug.
“Do you think you could love her?”
“Sure.”
“What about Rebecca?”
He glanced at her. “That’s a tougher call. She’s . . .”
“Coming to your bed eventually.”
“Kylee!”
“Think it through.” Kylee reached up, putting a hand on his arm. “What do you think Rebecca and Su are going to do? If you’re married to one, you’re married to all. That’s what husbands do. And if you say no? What’s Rebecca to think? Dya’s good enough, but she’s not? She’s running out of time you know. It won’t be long before she stops ovulating.”
Talbot stared down into Kylee’s erstwhile blue eyes. “You really are a dwarf, you know. A much older being hiding out in a little girl’s body.”
“I just don’t want you getting into trouble.” Kylee looked away as she draped one arm over Rocket’s shoulders. The quetzal’s skin reflected pearlescent reds and alternating waves of white which signaled contentment.
“I know,” he said with a sigh. “It’s just hard sometimes. And then I look around and see that it’s just us.”
She nodded. “Got to be pragmatic.”
“What do you think about that? Damien’s going to be a man soon, is he going to be your husband? I don’t see a lot of choice, gene pools being what they are.”
She frowned again. “I used to think so. Assuming he and I live that long. But since you showed up?” She raised a finger. “If I tell you something, you can’t tell anyone else. No one.”
“Okay, it will be our secret.”
“Only Rocket and I know. It’s just that, well, I’ve been thinking about the other people on Donovan. The ones in places like Port Authority. I think Damien would like a different wife than me. Not that he’s said, but, I kind of know. We’re family, but somehow it’s already uninspiring to think of Damien and myself. Granted, I’m only nine. I’m told it will be different after I sexually mature. But, Damien and I, we’re family. The few times we’ve talked about it, we both thought that we’d opt for artificial insemination.”
Talbot laughed. “Am I actually hearing this? Yep. You’re nine, all right. Nine going on twenty-nine.”
“You showing up has changed things.” She ran her fingers over Rocket’s sides, flares of color erupting under her fingers. “We’re wondering if maybe other people would show up and bring us new possibilities.”
Talbot sighed, his eyes on the dying chokeya plant where it twisted back and forth in ever decreasing gyrations. Turned out there was more than one way to die on Donovan.
“They might,” he told her softly. “The cargos from Turalon and Freelander have given the people on Donovan another lease on life. I’ve looked at the radio. It just needs to be plugged into a power source. We could call Port Authority again, but that’s a decision to be made by Rebecca, Dya, and Su.”
Kylee shocked him when she said, “There’s an aircar power pack in the back of the refrigeration room. I remember when Rondo put it in there. He said it would keep longer in the cold, and it’s wired into the photovoltaics to keep it charged just right.”
Holy shit.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I know that Su and Dya are worried. And, now that you’re becoming a husband and father, you are part of the family. If there’s ever an emergency, you need to know.”
“I see.”
“And the other thing is that, like Rocket, you’re my only other special friend. So I’m trusting you.” She gave him her best ravishing smile, “And since I’ve come to realize that you’re not a pedophile, I can trust you not to betray us. I can, can’t I? You wouldn’t, would you?”
The intensity with which she said it hit him like a thrown stone. “Not on your life, Kylee.”
She pointed. “Plant’s no longer dangerous. Let’s go cut it down and get it back to the lab. Dya wants the liquids. She thinks they expand and contract given electrical charges. If she’s right, it might mean a way to power things.”
“How would that work?”
Kylee glanced up at him and shrugged, saying, “How would I know? I’m only nine.”
Talbot threw his head back and laughed in a way he hadn’t for years.
25
At the first tickle in her gut, Kalico Aguila scrambled off the bed, slipped, and almost fell. She barely registered her surroundings. Caught a glimpse of a toilet through an open door, and charged headlong into the small bathroom. For the moment, misery dominated her universe, and she barely reached the toilet before her stomach pumped. And pumped. And pumped.
Finally, gasping, sweat beading on her face, neck, and back, she slumped down next to the bowl and ran fingers through her hair in an attempt to claw it out of her face.
She’d barely focused on the small room—duraplast everywhere—before the dry heaves wracked her body. For what seemed an infinity she tried to puke herself inside out.
As she again fought for breath, she squinted through eyes half-blinded by a stabbing headache.
“Dear God,” she whispered. “What the hell is wrong with me? Just let me die.”
“It’s called a hangover,” a not-so-sympathetic voice said from the door.
Kalico flinched, rubbed her mouth, and shot a sidelong glance to where Talina Perez, dressed in a coarse fabric robe, leaned against the frame. The woman had her head cocked, dark eyes knowing.
“A hangover?”
“The old-fashioned kind. In the world you come from, you just take a pill, and it directs your body to oxidize the alcohol molecules, moderates the headache, and stimulates your neural reflexes to the point you never have to feel the pain.” Talina gave an innocent flip of the hand. “Welcome to Donovan. No pills. Here, we do it the hard way.”
“Shit on a shoe, Perez, but you’re fucking depressing.” Kalico fought the sudden watering of her mouth, one hand to her stomach as she sat half-naked and sprawled on the bathroom floor. “Where in hell am I?”
“My place. I had Michegan and Miso haul your drunken ass over here where no one could see the spectacle. Figured you’d want to deal with the aftereffects in privacy.”
Kalico glanced down at her skimpy underwear. “Where are my clothes?”
“All folded neatly on the back of my chair where they’ll stay clean and presentable. I figured my sheets would just have to take their chances. Thanks for making it to the flushing god instead of spewing all over my floor and bed.”
“What next?” Kalico whispered, wishing her brain would stop hammering her skull into pieces.
“My suggestion?” Talina pointed at the cramped stall. “Take a long shower. It helps. Then get dressed, and I’ll have breakfast made for you.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because, much to my disgust, Supervisor, I think you were telling me the truth last night.”
“About what?”
“You don’t remember?”
Kalico squinted, realized it hurt to think. “Last I remember, I was sitting at the bar. Wait. You were bitching at me about being in your chair.”
“Why did you order Cap’s murder?”
“Cap’s . . . ? What? I never ordered . . . Why would you think I had Cap killed?”
“Yeah.” Talina sighed. “That’s what you said last night, too. It pains me to admit, but I actually believe you. Which is why you woke up alive this morning, and why I’ll make your breakfast. Meanwhile, you can suffer like the rest of us do after too much of Inga’s whiskey.”
“Wait. If I tell you I killed Cap, will you just shoot me? Put me out of this misery?”
Talina paused in the doorway, a dark eyebrow lifted. “Nice try, but you’ll be back to normal in a day or two.” And then she was gone.
Kalico closed her eyes, floated in the dark misery. “A day or two? Clap-trapping hell. Maybe I’ll shoot myself.”
When she finished her shower, toweled off, and stepped out of the bathroom in a weak-kneed wobble, it was to find her natty black pantsuit laid out at the foot of Perez’s bed.
She glanced around the small and Spartan bedroom, cramped as it was where the side of the dome curved down along the outside wall. The bed, a dresser and wardrobe, a chair, and a large trunk were the only furnishings. On the partitioning wall hung a series of holos, images that had to be Perez’s family back on Earth. A couple showed Perez and a muscular man dressed in quetzal hide. That must have been Mitch. In another, a younger Talina Perez smiled where she was holding a rifle in front of a dead quetzal; the admin dome could be seen in the background. A crowd was gathered around, all of them looking remarkably clean in freshly issued coveralls.
Other than that, the room was as basic as the woman who lived in it.
Kalico dressed and ambled wearily out to the breakfast bar where a big glass of water and a steaming cup of coffee waited. The place smelled of beans, peppers, and corn. Perez stood over the small kitchen stove, a spatula in her hand, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Drink the water first. See if it stays down,” Talina told her. “Water’s cheap. You don’t want the precious coffee coming back up. I’d consider that a crime.”
“Where are my people?” Kalico sipped the water tentatively.
“Finnegan and Tompzen are outside. One at my door, the other keeping an eye on my plastic.”
Kalico glanced at the transparent patch on Perez’s wall. “That quetzal did that?”
“Batted my couch right through the wall. Tough beasts, quetzals.”
“I heard it broke Cap up pretty badly.”
Perez filled two plates with her concoction and brought them over to the counter. Setting Kalico’s before her, she slipped onto the next stool and stared thoughtfully at the breakfast. “Yeah. Crippled him. He didn’t have a chance when his murderer opened that valve.”
Kalico picked up a fork. “Something’s coming back. You said last night you thought it was Lieutenant Spiro?”
Talina gave her a sidelong glance. “She hated Cap and me. That’s no secret.”
“You ever think that whoever killed Cap might have actually done you and him a favor?”
“I do.” She paused, making a face. “But only when I’m really in the mood to hate myself for being a selfish and self-absorbed shithead.”
Kalico cut off a bite of the wonderful-smelling mix on her plate, tried it, and almost sighed at the flavors. Then the tang of the peppers set her mouth on fire.
“You think this is a remedy for hangover?” she asked hoarsely as she chugged water.
“You’ll have to trust me on this. Among my mother’s people, your malady is called la cruda. The Maya have been treating hangover like this for the last seven hundred years. It’s the vitamins, the heat. You won’t believe it, but you’ll feel better, quicker.”
“Yeah? Blessed vacuum.” Despite the burn, she savored another bite. “I used to handle spicy food well. Maybe it’s because I’ve been eating ration for so long. Fire and ice, what’s that wonderful taste?”
“It impressed me that you people eat rations over there.”
“What have I got that I can trade for these ingredients? I mean, seriously? What’s in this? This might be the single best meal I’ve eaten since spacing from Transluna.”
“Ground corn, a mix of refried pinto and Anasazi beans, a spice called achiote from one of the annatto plants in the greenhouse, bits of diced chamois meat, and my crushed chili rojo from ripe poblanos.”
“Seriously, what do you want in trade? I’ve got a lot of gold.”
“Gold is everywhere. How about a shuttle?”
Kalico stopped short. “A shuttle?”
“You have ten of them mothballed up on Freelander.”
“As you Donovanians say, damned straight I do.” Kalico might have been hungover, but all of her senses flashed onto high alert. “What would you do with a shuttle? That’s like handing you a key to Freelander.”
“Freelander? What would we do with it?”
“Strip it? Set up an orbiting colony? A lot of manufacturing and fabricating can be done in vacuum and freefall that’s impossible in atmosphere and gravity.”
“That’s where you’re planning on manufacturing your carbon-fiber cable, isn’t it?”
“It is.” The heat from the peppers had Kalico’s nose running, sweat dampening her lips and cheeks. It might have been illusion but she could feel the alcohol seeping from her pores.
Then Kalico added, “Assuming I can get anyone to set foot on that bucket for long enough to put together a factory. Freelander’s a death ship. You, um . . .”
“Go on.”
Kalico shot her an evaluative glance. “Listen. People see things up there. Flickers of movement. Shapes. Shimmers. Images at the edge of vision. Weird feelings, as if something unseen, out of sync in time, just passed through your body.”
“Ghosts?”
“Maybe. For the simple-minded. More like anomalies that defy our understanding of physics. At least in the kind of universe we’re familiar with. Hell, what can any of us know about the infinite variations in the multiverse? Wherever Freelander went it took one hundred and twenty-nine years to get here. It was damn spooky. Especially when the ship was only missing for three years in our universe and timeline.”
Talina chewed, swallowed, and gestured with her fork. “You don’t strike me as the superstitious kind. So, the ship’s really haunted?”
“You ask me, parts of it are still out of sync with time. Like it brought with it part of whatever universe it was in.”
“All right, that should put your mind at ease about us claiming your ship and putting a colony on it.”
“Then, why do you want a shuttle?”
“For the same reason you do. For its heavy-lift capabilities. Pete Morgan’s got an oil well out the other side of the Wind Mountains. We’re transporting two drums of oil per trip by aircar. A shuttle would haul the big twenty-thousand-gallon tank in one trip.”
“I could lease you mine.”
“You could.” Talina pointed with her fork again. “But, speaking of simple-mindedness, what happens if your shuttle suffers a mishap? Core malfunction? Some of the trees uproot one of their less desirable neighbors and toss it on top of your shuttle? Some computer glitch? Sabotage by an unhappy worker?”
Kalico stiffened, slitting an eye. “Is that a threat, Officer Perez?”
Talina started, her mouth puckering. “No. Pus and ions, where do you come up with this nonsense? The point I was making is that you’ve got one toilet-sucking shuttle on the planet, and you’re using it for a lot of chores it wasn’t designed for, like recharging cores for your smelter. Meanwhile, you’ve got ten up in orbit. If your shuttle breaks—no matter what the cause—how the hell are you going to get up and retrieve another shuttle?”
Kalico blinked, seeing it all unfold in her mind. “Holy shit.” She took a deep breath, feeling even more queasy in her stomach. “Am I really that stupid?”
“I don’t know,” Talina answered. “But I have an active imagination. Seriously, what happens if you lose your one shuttle?”
“At the mine I’ve only got space to park one. The service life for my A-7 is fifteen years. My people are scrupulous in their maintenance. To think of the shuttle failing . . .”
Talina sipped from her cup of tea. “Welcome to Donovan. It’s a whole new way of thinking about the unlikely . . . and knowing it’s probably going to take place.”
She paused. “Supervisor, this isn’t Solar System. More to the point, this really isn’t The Corporation. You, Shig, me, Yvette, we’re not—and we don’t have to be—friends. What we are is on our own. Abandoned. You have shuttles, a freaking haunted space ship, and a smelter. We have food, spices, talent, and a Donovan-trained population. Just like your people coming here to Port Authority for rest and relaxation, you have things we need. Between Port Authority and Corporate Mine, they’re the only two legs we have to stand on. Cut one off? How do we walk our way into the future?”
“Yeah, I think I was already coming to that conclusion.”
“The old way of thinking. For you. For us. Is going to have to change.”
Kalico scooped up the last of her breakfast, wishing it went on forever. Damn it, her farm was already failing, making her that much more reliant on Port Authority.
“We either figure out a way to work together, or in the end, none of us are going to make it.”
“What about Lieutenant Spiro?”
Talina didn’t bat an eye. “I withdraw my statement. Some of the old way of thinking isn’t going to change. Before too long either I’m going to kill her, or she’s going to kill me. No other way around it.”
26
When Talina Perez hurried into the hospital dome, it was to find Raya Turnienko in conference with her nurse and assistant, Felicity Strazinsky. They were standing over a bed where Terry Mishka—who had a farm out at the edge of the bush just west of the aircar field—had had a too-close encounter with a slug.
When Talina glanced into the room, it was to see Terry, flat in bed, leg elevated. A long white bandage ran from the inside of his ankle up about halfway to the knee, marking the site of Raya’s incision where she’d dug out the slug.
Terry had been lucky: he’d caught a ride on a wagon within moments after he’d felt the thing pierce his foot.
“How’s it look?” Talina asked.
