Cottonwood (24 page)

“I’m taking you home,” she told him and there, it was official—she was IBI and it didn’t feel any different after all. She guessed she’d been one of them all along. She got up and hunched across the van to squeeze in behind the wheel. She hit her head on the roof once. It hurt like a rotten tooth.

“You forgot to put my binders on,” the alien said behind her.

“I don’t have any.”

“Should I…” He looked around again, still holding his wrists together. “What do I do?”

“Nothing.” Helplessness and self-loathing swelled and popped in her like a black bubble. She started up the engine and moved the van forward. “Have a cookie.”

He looked at the mess on the floor. Hesitantly, watching her in the rearview mirror, he bent and picked up a handful of crumbles from the mangled bag. He ate them. Ate some more. Picked up the whole bag and poured it into his open palps, choking as he devoured them. His eye fell on the burger bag. She passed it back over Fagin’s whining head and the alien took it without comment. She heard him eating, the sick gagging sounds of his mouth and throat palps tearing at the food as he stuffed it whole into his maw. He picked at the wrappings, then ate them too. Found a napkin, coughed it out.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He didn’t seem to know how to answer, so he put his wrists together again and held them up where she could see them in the mirror.

She drove in silence. She told him to get down when they came up the long road leading to Cottonwood and he did, lying on the van’s floor with his legs drawn up and Fagin’s blanket pulled over him. Fagin wasn’t happy about sharing it and draped himself possessively over the largest lump. The alien did not object.

She swiped her card and they were in. All automated. So futurific. The streets were dark and clean and mostly empty—just a few families sitting around their yards after the family barbeque, walking the family dogs, laughing at family jokes. At the checkpoint, the security guard flagged her and came out from his office to see her pass, but it was the other one, the nice one. Small favors. He gave the van’s tinted windows a cursory glance, then caught sight of her face and whistled sharply.

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I had a little altercation in here earlier.”

“Lady, you got lucky. They showed us these videos when I signed up and this one guy? Kicked in the chest?” The guard shook his round head. “Left a hole you could put a football in, no kidding. This other video—never mind. So what are you doing here this late?”

“This little altercation of mine? I dropped my briefcase and ran out without it.”

“Oh girl, it’s gone.”

“I know,” Sarah said, forcing a weary smile. The weariness wasn’t tough to fake. “But I have to at least look for it. I’ve already had to ask for all new papers and manuals when they got dumped. How’s it going to look when I have to ask for the same stuff all over again, and by the way, can I please have a new briefcase?”

“I hear that,” he said sympathetically, passing her card back. “Want me to come help you look?”

The offer caught her by surprise. “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she said cautiously. “I just want to go in, look around, at least be able to tell that dragon in Supplies that I tried.”

“Want the spy-light on?” he offered.

“Oh God no. I don’t want to attract any more attention than I have to. I just want to look where I was and get out before they come over and eat the tires.”

He laughed. There was not a click from the back of the van. Fagin started snoring again. The guard heard. He stuck his head in, glanced once at the heap of loose food and rumpled-up plastic bags, and then saw Fagin lying on his unwashed quilt. With the alien hiding underneath it, it looked more like a cheap, lumpy dog bed, but only that. The guard’s broad face showed no suspicion at all. “Yeah, don’t get out if you don’t have to. You got a hell of a nice hors d’oeuvre back there.”

“I should have left him at home,” said Sarah calmly, her heart pounding. “But, you know, I came over all girly and didn’t feel safe. Like a labradoodle is so much protection.”

Fagin farted in his sleep.

“Well, you come over girly again, you just give me a page, okay? 99 on your paz, and don’t wait to get swarmed. Or even just blow your horn, huh?” The guard withdrew and gave her a comforting and earnest smile. “I’ll probably hear it and get some lights on you. Usually that’s enough to scatter them. I don’t like sending in the squads if I don’t have to. They’re harmless, most of them, you know?”

“I appreciate it—” Dip her eyes at his chest. “—Larry.”

His grin widened. “No problem. You’re not going to find it, though. That case is gone and your papers are patching cracks on some bug’s wall, guaranteed, but good luck to you anyhow.” He gave the van a slap, waking Fagin to a sleepy volley of barks, and returned to the checkpoint station.

Sarah drove in through the gates and down the causeway until the lights behind her weren’t quite so bright. Aliens skittered in front of her, just beyond her headlights, darting away to vanish in the alley behind the row of homes. She navigated her way carefully down increasingly narrow streets beyond the main causeway to a dark place and parked in front of a house she didn’t know. She wasn’t alone; there was no hope of that. There were eyes all around her, watching from windows, from rooftops, from behind rusted washing machines and railroad cars.

“Do you want the food?” asked Sarah. “You can have whatever you want. Fagin, don’t be a pest. Sit down.”

The alien looked at her, hesitated, then scooped up the cans of dog food. Fagin whined, but came when she called him again and sat. The dome lights came on when he opened the door; he shut it fast and too hard. He darted into the shadows and ran off down the causeway, turned the corner, and was gone. A few calls went out, but they were not, to her human ear, the same calls warning that IBI was here. The aliens watching her did not disperse. Neither did they come closer.

Sarah drove away, making her way carefully back into her territory and then onto her causeway. There was no light in Sanford’s window when she passed his familiar house; if he was home, he was probably hiding with his son from whatever evil IBI van was cruising the streets at this hour. But when she neared Samaritan’s trailer she saw that he was up, leaning against the rails on his porch with a beer dangling from his hand, watching her. He’d taped his shell where Sanford had cracked it. The tape was reflective, glowing pink in her headlights. As she watched, because he knew she’d be watching, he raised the hand that held his beer and pointed.

Her briefcase was lying in the dirt next to an old cut-up oil drum. Sarah paused, parked, and got out. She picked it up, opened it. Untouched. She got back in the van and returned to the checkpoint gate. Samaritan watched her go, pink slashes and steady eyes in her rearview mirror.

“No kidding,” said Larry the security guard when he saw the case.

“I don’t understand it either,” she said, too tired to come up with another lie, only wanting to get away before he stuck his friendly head in and noticed how much flatter Fagin’s quilt was now.

“Once in a while, you get lucky,” Larry said, and grinned, waving her on.

‘Once in a while,’ thought Sarah, driving home. ‘Lucky me.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

She didn’t come back for two days. Sanford told himself she’d done it before, that it was normal, that it didn’t mean anything. But he worried. He knew T’aki was worried too, mostly because the boy did not ask questions.

But on the third day, as Sanford sat teasing connections together on a tricky piece of micro-circuitry—had to use picks for it and hold his breath and if he scratched the damn thing, it was no good to anyone and fifty chits as good as burnt—he heard the alarms go up: Human in Cottonwood, human coming this way, and, almost as an afterthought, IBI coming.

T’aki jumped up and ran outside. Sanford let him go. He worked through his magnifier in painstaking points of solder, all his attention fixed and steady, but he listened and after a very long time, heard the voice he’d hoped to hear…and one other, somewhat less welcome.

“Give it back!” Hers.

“I think it suits me better.” Sam’s.

“Give it back, I said!”

“Come and get it! Jump! Jump!”

“You jerk!”

Sanford snapped his palps sourly. Ten more points of solder and he could put this down awhile. Ten more points. He glanced out the window, holding his hands motionless.

Sam had something, some kind of a cloth flap, in his hand, waving it high over the human’s head while she tried to snatch at it. Once, twice. Then she gave up and turned away, her face red and angry, trying to stalk off as if she were not defeated. Not until Sam triumphantly hung the cloth flap on his head did Sanford realize it was a cap. IBI’s logo was emblazoned above the visor. He’d seen dozens of humans wearing caps like that over the years, but Sarah never had. Sanford looked back at his circuit board, thinking; on Sam, the cap was merely ridiculous, but on Sarah, it would have covered the grotesquely swollen and shaved patch of her injured scalp.

“Let go of me! Ouch! Let g-go of—ow!”

Sanford looked out the window again. Sam had Sarah by the arm and was dragging her towards his house. Sanford stood up, realized he still had the circuit board in his hand and looked at it. Scratched. Ruined. He tossed it on the floor.

“Stop it! Let go!”

“Hold still.”

“Let g—ow!”

Sanford opened the door and went outside. He clicked, heard T’aki answer aggressively right behind him, and started walking.

Sam had her flat against his outer wall, his knee pressed on her belly and one arm across her throat. He was looking at her head, at the black marks crossing the ugly scar. His thumb lightly moved over the bruises, very lightly, as Sarah struggled to free herself. She yelped when he touched her face. He came back to it, made her yelp again. His antennae flattened briefly, concerned.

“Admiring your handiwork?” she panted, pushing at him vainly. “I don’t think you even did that part.”

“Still worth admiring. Look up. Not at me, up. Oh, you’re fine.” Sam took the cap off and hung it on her head. “Big baby, squalling over nothing.”

“Do you have to be an asshole all the time?” she hissed. Her voice cracked.

“No,” said Sam mildly. “Not all the time.” He leaned back and rubbed his hand down over her chest. His fingers closed on one of her swellings. “Why don’t you come inside with me, caseworker? We’ll sit around and lick each other’s wounds.”

She retreated, both arms raised over her chest, and stumbled over her fallen case. Sam caught her before she could fall, but she fought free of him at once, slapping loudly and completely without effect at his chest plates. “You stay away from me!” she panted, once Sam released her.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sam said, annoyed.

“You said that right before you threw me off your porch into your stupid car.” Sarah snatched up her briefcase and swung back, her skin flushed red and small hands in fists. “You also said it when you had me pinned down on your stupid table! Maybe you think that’s cute—”

“I was drunk,” Sam snapped, his antennae low and his own hands balled tight. “You never been drunk and done something dumb?”

“Are you drunk now?” she shot back. “Are you drunk right here where you’re feeling me up in the middle of the street? Don’t you ever touch me again or I’ll—”

Then her eyes darted beyond Sam to lock with Sanford’s own and whatever else she might have said fell away. She tugged at the cap until it fit over the hairless part of her head and just stood there, her head low and face bright with color.

Sam glanced once behind him, dismissing Sanford as soon as he’d seen him and turning his attention back on Sarah. “Go on, then,” he said, stepping back. “Get out of here.”

She marched away, not looking at either Sanford or T’aki as she passed them.

As soon as she was gone, T’aki flared his palps and skreed with all the shrill anger of an outraged second-molt. Sam glanced down, contemptuously amused. He shifted a foot as for a playful kick, then thought better of it and leaned against his wall instead. “Cute kid,” he said.

“Go home,” said Sanford, and, “Not you,” when Sam straightened up. He waited, staring the other down, until his son had sullenly departed, and then said, “I want you to stop touching her.”

Sam turned his head and spat chaw. “Why?”

“She doesn’t like it.”

“Lots of things I don’t like, I put up with. Besides—” Sam flashed his claspers. “—sometimes they like it.”

“Are you trying to hurt her?” Sanford asked.

Sam’s claspers tucked in. He looked surly.

“Are you trying to scare her until she stops coming back?”

“Wouldn’t
that
be too bad.”

“Stop touching her.”

Noise behind them. Sarah, picking her way past the burned walls of the hatchery, where they still stood at all, calling for Baccus.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Sam said finally. “I’ve never hurt any of them.”

“Stop touching her.”

“I was checking her over, that’s all. Humans patched her together like a pair of breeches, didn’t fix a fucking thing. She needs a real medic.”

“She doesn’t need your hands on her.”

“Look, am I drilling where you’ve sprayed or what?” Sam snapped. “I’ll touch her if I want to touch her. Maybe I like the way she feels. You wouldn’t even know what to do with her.”

Sanford stared him down, his palps snapping.

Sam spat again, kicked at it. “Fine. Fuck you. Keep your little meat-sack for yourself. And keep her out of the Heaps,” he called back, walking away. “Or she’ll get an infection where those stupid humans sewed on her.”

T’aki was waiting up the road, halfway between him and Baccus’s house. He saw Sanford coming, glared after Sam, and tried to spit chaw, but was too young to produce it, really. Sanford gave him a tap to the head to discourage repeat efforts and went on past to see Sarah.

“Mr. Baccus?” she called, and tried to move the charred remains of a chair. She scraped it maybe three inches through the ash and debris, then held her blackened hands up before her eyes and stared at them. She looked around, picked her way toward a hole in the back wall and tried to look out. “Mr. Baccus?”