Awakening (39 page)

The two long lines worked as efficiently as any factory machinery, quickly delivering the plasscrete from the back of the lorry to the hopper of the processing plant. An hour later, Kayla was surprised to see half the load was already gone. “Faster than it took us to load it, that’s for sure. We had a few helpers in Mendin too.”

“No job ever takes long with allabain,” Lak said. “We have so much kin.”

With that last word, Lak fixed her gaze on Kayla. The allabain girl quickly motioned with her fingers, making the crude K that stood for Kinship. Kayla wanted to ask her about Raashida, to confirm that the GEN girl was at the village. But with the supervisor right there, Kayla didn’t want to take the chance.

The last chunks of plasscrete traveled down the lines by mid-afternoon. Risa and Kiyomi swept the last of the dust to the road. Kayla tugged off her gloves and slapped them against the bay door, dislodging as much of the raw plassfiber as she could. Risa and Kiyomi did the same, then Kiyomi tucked all three pairs in a storage box by the top of the hatch ladder.

Risa was busy paying off the workers with a stock of dhans Councilor Mohapatra had sent on. A few of them received many times what the others had, including Lak. Which meant they were all Kinship. Lak and the others would keep only some of their wages. The rest would be used for Kinship business.

After they’d been paid, the GENs headed into the processing plant. Kayla wondered how much of their extra pay would line the lowborn supervisor’s pocket.

The allabain started off together through the mud, some of them arm-in-arm, moving in the direction of a holo hedge that marked the border between Amik sector and trueborn Sarada sector. Despite their efforts to stay clean, the men’s flowing pants were spattered with muck up past the knees, and the women’s skirts were heavy with mud.

Lak hung back, catching Kayla’s eye. Kayla looked to Risa for confirmation and the lowborn woman nodded. Kayla snagged her shoes from where she’d left them and hurried to catch up with the allabain girl.

Lak hooked her arm in Kayla’s without hesitation. “Raashida is still with us,” Lak said.

“How is she?” Kayla asked.

Lak grew serious. “She falls ill, then recovers, over and over. I’m told she died again, then resurrected.”

“And they think she’s a goddess?”

“If by
they
you mean the other allabain,” Lak said, “some do.
I
think there’s something wrong with her circuitry that makes her heal, then lets her get sick again.”

They reached the berm the holo hedge had been built on. Here the packed gravel pathway had shed the recent rain and the going was firm. A relief not to have to slog through the mud even though the gravel pricked Kayla’s mud-caked bare feet.

The path meandered roughly parallel to the warehouse district, then gave way to a wilder area where the road ended and junk trees competed with sticker bushes and chaff heads. On the trueborn side of the hedge, the larger growth had been cleared away, a few junk tree stumps still poking up through expanses of manicured scrap grass.

The line of allabain threaded through a break between two
massive sticker bushes. Kayla and Lak slipped through last and into the village.

The allabain had pitched their tent-like bhaile amongst the junk trees and sticker bushes, a natural barrier of Lokan scrub surrounding their village. The ground was as well-drained as the path beside the hedge, and the bhaile clustered in a circle around a central open space dotted with a junk tree or two and three or four sticker bushes. The scrap grass had been beaten down by many feet.

Kayla waited her turn behind the others at a cistern made of plasscine sheets around a frame of cleverly bent sticker bush branches. Kayla sighed with pleasure as she finally rinsed the yellow mud from her feet and legs. Then she slipped her shoes on.

Across the open space, a crowd knelt around a bhaile that was slightly larger than the others. A tall allabain man stood guard at the door flap.

“That’s the headman, Tekin,” Lak said. “He decides who sees Raashida.”

They started across the open space. “Do they all want her to heal them?” Kayla asked. “That’s what made Gemma ill, healing too many at once.”

“I heard about Gemma,” Lak said. “Some of the ones near Raashida need healing, some just want to worship her. It’s Raashida who insists on touching all of them. Even though it makes her sick.”

“The ones she heals—do they sicken again like she does?” Kayla asked. “Or do they keep their health?”

“She’s been here two weeks. Early on, someone brought in a Scratch-infected GEN. That’s him.” Lak pointed to a
powerful looking GEN toting a large bucket of water in each hand. “After she touched him, it took a day for his Scratch scars to heal. He seems almost better than he was before.”

Tekin spotted them approaching and nodded a greeting to Kayla. When she came up alongside him, the gaunt, grayhaired man towered over her, although he was aged and slightly built. No match for Kayla’s strength if she’d been inclined to push him aside and carry off Raashida.

Tekin might have seen some of Kayla’s calculation in her eyes because he planted his feet wider and threw back his shoulders. “Are you here for a healing? Dhartri is resting.”

Kayla recalled what Aki had said in Esa sector. The worshipers of Iyenkas, the dual gods become one god, considered Raashida their daughter, Dhartri. The healer. Tekin was clearly a believer, zeal burning in his eyes. Kayla wondered how she would persuade Tekin to let her take Raashida back to Risa’s lorry.

As she puzzled over that difficulty, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her around. To her utter shock, she saw it was Abran. What looked like the mark of a sticker bush thorn slashed through the tattoo on his left cheek.

Kayla yanked her arm free. “What are you doing here? How did you even get here?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He looked back over his shoulder, toward the warehouses. “You have to leave, now.”

“You don’t have the right to tell me what to do,” Kayla said. “When you’re such an idiot. You ran away, didn’t you? You ran away from the only people who could keep you safe.”

“You’re in danger,” Abran said, glancing back at the warehouses again. “Please, come with me.”

He tried to take her arm, but she backed away, colliding with Tekin. The gaunt lowborn gave Abran an appraising look. “Are you here for healing?”

“No, he’s not,” Kayla said. “He needs to leave.” What was he doing here anyway? Especially right when they’d found Raashida?

Just then, a dark, slender hand pushed aside the door flap of the bhaile. Raashida, tall and slim and beautiful, emerged from the tent and approached Abran. The beads braided in her hair clacked softly as she moved.

The GEN girl must have been in a well cycle, because there was no sign of Scratch on her dark face. She tipped her head up to Abran, and she appeared even more radiant than she had in the mural the Esa allabain had painted of her. Like Gemma, Raashida glowed with whatever process burned inside her.

“You’ve hurt yourself,” Raashida said, reaching for Abran’s left cheek.

Abran shouted, “No!” and tried to pull back.

But Tekin had moved behind Abran, his hands on Abran’s shoulders to hold him still. The crowd had surged to their feet, forming a wall around Abran. As Raashida’s hand cupped Abran’s cheek, he cried out as if in pain.

Kayla yanked Tekin’s hands off Abran and pushed against the crowd to make space. But Abran was still crying out. He pulled away from Raashida, and his hands flew up to where hers had been on his face.

“Let me see,” Kayla said, taking his wrists and tugging at them.

Abran resisted. She managed to get his right hand clear. She could see nothing wrong, no wound or mark.

But his tattooed left cheek was bleeding. Blood dripped between his fingers.

“Drop your hand, Abran,” she demanded.

He shook his head. Kayla, out of patience, pulled it away.

And his tattoo slid off with it. Peeled away from his left cheek, leaving raw, bleeding skin.

Kayla stared at the slick of blood. The complex circuitry that should have been under his tattoo was missing. Tiny bits of crude electronics dotted the raw skin.

As she watched, the skin healed. From Raashida’s touch or the punarjanma he’d been using? Taking a cloth an allabain offered her, Kayla swiped away the still wet blood. The bits of electronics came with it, dotting the cloth.

Abran’s red-brown cheek was smooth again. Bare. His tattoo stripped away with the last of his lies.

“You’re no GEN, are you?” She felt a hundred times more an idiot than him for not seeing it before now. “What are you? Lowborn? No, a lowborn wouldn’t be so treacherous. You’re a denking, chutting trueborn.” She looked him up and down contemptuously. “Minor-status, yeah? No demi would pretend to be a GEN.”

“Yes,” he said tightly. “Minor-status. But you have to go.” He tried for her arm again.

Kayla would have interrogated Abran further, but shouts rang out from across the open space. She caught glimpses of motion as the crowd shifted. Then everyone turned as one away from Raashida. Tekin blocked Kayla’s view of what was happening.

Then she heard a familiar zing of energy. Tekin cried out and crumpled at Kayla’s feet. She gaped at the shockgun blast that had taken away half the allabain’s face.

The Brigade had arrived.

Abran snatched at Kayla’s sleeve. “Come with me!”

She smacked him across the chest so hard he went flying. He landed a few meters away, his groan telling Kayla she hadn’t killed him.

Kayla looked around her frantically for Raashida, terrified that she would find her dead alongside Tekin. A handful of other worshippers had fallen to the Brigade’s shockguns. But the GEN girl had crawled over to Tekin and laid her hands on the allabain man. She sobbed out his name, shook his body. But her healing ability didn’t extend beyond Tekin’s death. He never stirred.

Kayla knelt beside her. “We have to get out of here.”

Raashida resisted, tried to reach for one of the wounded. But Raashida’s glow had faded, was nearly gone. If Raashida was like Gemma, trying to heal anyone else now would do her in.

Kayla grabbed Raashida around the middle and pulled her away. The GEN girl was weak enough that she barely struggled. Kayla urged her between the bhaile and into the thicket of sticker bushes. Kayla took a quick look behind them to see if any of the enforcers were in pursuit. But so many of Raashida’s worshippers had stood up to the Brigade, in some cases knocking the shockguns from the enforcers’ hands, the invaders seemed too occupied to notice Kayla’s and Raashida’s escape.

Kayla would have to circle around to make her way back to the lorry. The path along the hedge wouldn’t be safe—that was where the enforcers had poured into the village.

Raashida slumped against Kayla. “I should have stayed. They need me.”

Kayla wrapped Raashida’s arm across her shoulders, could feel the heat of fever. “You’re sick, Raashida. You won’t be able to do them much good like this.”

“Not Raashida,” the GEN girl muttered. “Dhartri. My duty to heal them.”

Raashida collapsed entirely then and Kayla had to drape the nerveless body over her shoulder. Up ahead, the scrub ended. Kayla could see the tops of the buildings and the roadway that ran along the front of the warehouse district. It would be tricky to get past that wide open area carrying Raashida.

As she dithered about stepping from the relative safety of the scrub, she heard the crack of a twig behind her. Sweet Infinite, she’d been followed after all. She whirled to face her pursuer.

Abran.
Denking hell.

“I’m sorry, Kayla.”

She took a step toward him, ready to finish what her blow in the village had started. But a prickle of energy crawled up her back and the world went fuzzy around the edges.

Raashida slipped from Kayla’s shoulder. Kayla slumped beside the GEN girl. As Kayla’s vision dimmed, she groped for Abran’s ankle, wanting to feel the snap of his bones against her fingers. But he stepped out of reach and everything went black.

K
ayla woke slowly, sick and dizzy, every muscle aching. She was propped up and swaying from side to side. She must be back in the lorry, her and Risa on their way to their next stop. It had all worked out, then—Risa and Kiyomi had rescued her from the enforcer, or they’d called in the Kinship to extricate her from the Brigade.

Then she opened her eyes. Her vision blurred and swam, but she knew this wasn’t the lorry. She was in the rear of a Jahaja multi-lev, leaning against the cool glass of the window. All four rows of seats in front of her were filled, two to a seat. They must all be allabain from Amik. In the dim overhead light, she recognized some of them as Raashida’s worshippers.

She couldn’t quite see the Brigade man driving the vehicle. But she saw the minor-status enforcer guarding them. He stood up front facing them, his ruddy, pockmarked face set in a scowl, an arm hooked around a pole for balance. He’d drawn his shockgun and had it ready.

They didn’t download me, thank the Infinite. Or it wouldn’t be me sitting here anymore.