Cottonwood (28 page)

His son. He touched the small face, slipped his fingers along the neck joint, brushed at the flicking palps. His son. His family.

An hour passed. Maybe two. They talked of the weather and other camps they had been transferred from. They complained about their neighbors and the garbage and the stink. Now and then, some bitter mention was made of humans and chaw was spat. Now and then, quiet mention was made of those who had been killed, who mutilated, who had simply been taken away and never returned. Not much. When these things are all around, it does no good to stir up talk.

T’aki fell asleep. Sanford watched his antennae twitch as he dreamed. He bent once to share breath, and then was embarrassed because the other men at the fire stopped talking to watch him. He felt conspicuous and lonely.

“I think I know you,” one of them said suddenly. “Down by the water-wall where the eggs were burnt this last ten-span?”

“Yes?” Sanford glanced up. He didn’t recognize the old man addressing him.

“You know the little yellow-head who comes out that way? The caseworker?”

“Isn’t that the stupidest thing yet?” another one grumbled, and spat chaw. “I have one, apparently.”

“We all do,” said a third.

“What for?”

“For watching us, that’s what for. I pissed on mine. He hasn’t been back.”

Another beer was passed.

“Yellow-head is strange,” the old man remarked. He coughed out a bit of bone from his own meal, looked at it, and ate it again.

“They’re all strange.”

“Are you talking about Hummer?” the third asked, and did a remarkably good imitation of Sarah’s distracted, off-key singing, enough to make T’aki stir and mumble in his sleep. “Hell, I’ve seen her. All smiles and sunshine and singing her songs.” He drank his beer, crushed the can, tossed it at the fire. “At first anyway. Not so much anymore.”

No. Not so much anymore. Sanford touched his son’s hand, moving the tiny fingers so that they touched his receptor pads in return.

“I almost feel bad for her,” the third remarked.

Another man at the fire recoiled, buzzing harshly. “What in fuck’s name for?”

“She reminds me of me,” the third answered, staring at the fire. “When it all started to sink in. She’s got that same look, every day I see her, like her chitin’s cracking open, every day a little more. I hate seeing that.”

Stunned silence.

“Why?” someone finally asked.

“Because I hate humans. And you could almost believe that one knows what’s going on here. You could almost believe it’s killing her to see it. And when you see it on her—” He spat chaw into the fire. It sizzled and smoked. “—it all comes back to you.”

They all thought about that until the third one shifted and looked irritably around. “Why the hell are we talking about Hummer anyway? Who started that piss-talk?”

“I did,” said the old man. “She brought Ni’ak’we back. After the black van took him away, she brought him back. With food. She’s going to get herself killed,” he added, as Sanford and the others buzzed at this astonishing news. “If you see her, tell her to tuck her yellow head in before one of her human friends bites it off. She might listen. Probably not.” He stood up, stretching out his aged joints to lubricate them, and limped away. Someone else came to the fire. Talk began again, this time about the storms so common to this area.

He’d ought to go home.

Brought Ni’ak’we back. Sanford didn’t know who that was, but ‘brought back’ implied whoever it was had been out. Brought him back. With food.

Sarah.

Sanford got up and left the fire. He started for home, then changed his mind, not without a dull sense of disquiet. He knew of a place—he’d never been, but he knew of it—and he went there now, under darkness, with his son in his arms. Because he didn’t know what else to do. His thoughts would not lie still and he wanted to be touched.

It was bigger than he thought it would be: an amalgam of trailers and modular storage sheds, all pushed together with crudely-fashioned roofs and side-rooms built on to make it all one shelter. A yard had been enclosed with chain fence for the children, many of whom were up and loudly playing even at this hour, under electric lights. There were a number of women lounging outside, washing clothes, drinking, cooking, watching the children, or just talking. Some of them were playing a game, one Sanford didn’t know, with a large red ball and a netted hoop, leaping and punching indiscriminately at each other in great enjoyment while small crowds of men watched and cheered. The smell of sex was eye-stinging.

They pissed on the outer walls, of course. To advertise. The piss baked in the sun, corroded the metal, and the female pheromones turned the whole thing a screaming shade of blue. Sanford could feel his belly-flaps warming, wanting to relax. His claspers swept the air beyond his control, gathering scent in hungry flutters.

T’aki woke up, his own immature claspers twitching. He rubbed at his eyes and looked around, confused.

One of the females overseeing the yard noticed him and came his way, showing her hands and bobbing her antennae in a friendly fashion. T’aki bobbed back politely enough, but clutched Sanford’s neck tighter, whispering, “Where are we?”

“I need to talk to someone,” Sanford said, setting his clingy son down. He rubbed the boy’s shoulder-joints as he studied the strange men and women who surrounded the Blue House. Some were armed; all seemed, in some indefinable way, unsavory. “Just for a little while.”

“Big people talk?”

The words, her words, gave him a sting. “Yes. I won’t be long.”

“Look at all the children.” T’aki crouched close at his side, but craned his short neck forward, hands wringing in excitement. “Look at them all!”

“It’s two chits to watch the boy,” said the woman on reaching them. “We have clean water, no charge.”

Sanford clicked agreement, then knelt down and took T’aki’s hand. He rubbed the soft receptor pads while waiting for her to leave again, and when they were alone, softly said, “Piss.”

“What?”

“Piss. Right now. Don’t undress. Just do it.”

Hunching, palps stuttering with embarrassment, T’aki obeyed. A tiny damp patch appeared on the groin of his breeches and he looked at it in wide-eyed dismay. Sanford reached down and gave it a good rub, opening his hand fully to get the piss all the way on his own receptor pads. He wanted the scent mark, just in case.

“I’m going inside,” he said. “You play with the other children—”

“I peed on myself,” said T’aki woefully.

Sanford picked up a handful of dirt and rubbed it over his son’s groin until the area was just dirty and no trace of wet remained. “Play with the children and do not leave the yard with anyone. Not with anyone. Even if they tell you they are taking you to see me, do you understand?”

Oh, why was he doing this?

But T’aki nodded, that queer human affectation. Sanford patted him.

“If you get in trouble, scream as loud as you can. I’ll be just inside. There won’t be trouble,” he added.

“It must be a big talk.”

“Yes.” His gaze wandered; his claspers sniffed the air. “Go on now.”

T’aki went, looking back over his shoulder until he passed through the fence. He was swallowed by children and, in seconds, romping and squealing with the rest of them entirely free of care.

Sanford paid the two chits and went inside.

The first room was no larger than his home, crowded by men packed onto Heap-scavenged furniture. They lounged without speaking or looking at one another, drinking beer sold for ten chits a bottle or eating canned food sold for three. Notices on the wall discouraged the spitting of chaw, and advertised the availability of ferment and fresh meat upon request. The only light came from strings of lights tacked to the ceiling like stars. They had a radio somewhere, emitting human songs softly, almost subliminally. Again, he thought of Sarah and shook it off hard. This was not the place to think of her.

Presently, a female came to the front room to replenish the food and drink and exchange a few words with the small child taking chits. She saw him standing there and waved.

He clicked a greeting back at her. It felt foolish to wave in return.

She came over. “Twenty chits,” she said.

He paid, but it surprised him. Two to watch the boy was one thing—they provided toys and clean water—but twenty for this? He found himself wondering how much she earned in a night, then thought of Sam and the things he claimed he’d done for extra food, and then, disturbingly, of Sam’s hand squeezing Sarah’s chest.

“Are you ready?” she asked, tucking the chits away in her vest.

“Yes.” The smell was overwhelming. He’d been ready before he’d even reached the door.

She chirped at him cheerfully and moved the curtain, leading him into the rest of the building. The hall was narrow; the rooms which lined it, small and sealed away behind curtains. He didn’t mean to look, didn’t want to, but there was a television in one of them and his eyes went that way before he could stop himself. Through the torn curtain, he could see the image of humans mating on the monitor, shoving at one another with hard grunts and muted cries. The figures watching this joined in silence, motionless but for the male’s rubbing of his partner’s shoulders, their pheromones as thick as smoke.

“You like the videos?” the woman whispered, and he came away from the curtain fast. Her eyes were narrow, knowing, playful. “Sometimes it’s fun to watch them. Only one chit extra for a room with videos.”

And it was Sarah he thought of again, Sarah. He recoiled, palps snapping, and the woman rolled her shoulders in a human shrug and kept walking. She brought him to an empty room and drew the curtain. As he stood awkwardly looking for a bed, she undressed perfunctorily and hunkered down on the floor, her vens open.

She hadn’t even asked him to piss. It unnerved him. Perhaps sensing it, she chuckled and said, “You can if you want to, mister, but I can see you’re old enough.”

And so was she, if only just. Her vens winked at him, dark and wet. Sanford slowly unwrapped his breeches, but not all the way. He felt strangely reticent about being naked here. This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped.

What had he been hoping for?

He extruded his spermatogus and mounted, settling gingerly until she had all his weight. She was well-braced, as solid in her practiced position as a statue. He heard paper rustle and looked down around her head. She was reading a magazine.

He wanted to leave…but his belly was heavy almost to the point of pain, and he was here, wasn’t he? He’d already paid.

‘Just push her down,’ he thought in a nastily unexpected imitation of Sam. ‘Push her down and get inside. You know it’s what you want.’

He wanted to leave.

Sanford shifted and entered. She was fully open; he penetrated completely and expelled right away, wanting nothing but to get this over with. The endorphins took him. He floated, tension easing, for a count of ten. She waited until he was all the way back before releasing her own catalyst. Their fluids combined, igniting him to fresh chemical heights for another ten-count, one better and brighter than before.

“If you want to go again,” she said as he came back, “it’s only five chits, but you have to wait outside until you’re ready so I can work.”

Pleasure curdled into chaw.

“No, thank you.” Sanford disengaged and quickly wrapped his loins.

“Egg?” she asked, stretching.

The thought of bringing a child out of this moment was obscene. “No.”

She squatted over a pail and expelled the glistening jelly of their merging. “Is that all then?” she asked.

He hated himself. “Yes.”

“Would you like to share breath? Three chits.” She spread her palps and leaned forward.

He looked at her hand, open and expectant before him. He wanted to be touched. The radio in the other room sang to him.

“All right, well…good night then. Ask for Zho’d’kan’ when you come again. You’re cute.” She waved to him again and pulled the curtain.

Sanford went out to collect his son. T’aki pestered him a little while about the big talk and then quieted. It was late. They went home.

CHAPTER TEN

Right up until the end, Sarah wasn’t sure it was going to come off at all. She’d done as much as she could do the night before: mixing up her dad’s top-secret barbeque sauce in one five-gallon bucket and some store-bought teriyaki marinade in another, loading plates and cups and condiments into the van, and emptying all her plastic tubs of her meager possessions so they could be transformed into coolers. She’d been up since seven this morning doing the rest. It took so much more time than she’d expected—slicing tomatoes and onions, de-leafing lettuce, packing up chips, cookies and buns—and she still had to go buy the meat because her refrigerator was too small to let her do that early.

She didn’t even try the village grocery store down the street, not because she didn’t think they’d have enough, but because she thought anyone on base buying a few hundred pounds of meat just might look suspicious enough to warrant alerting security. Now that it was the eleventh hour, she’d become positively paranoid about that.

At the ShopALot in Wheaton, Sarah stretched her IBI credit card to its last eleven cents, buying twenty boxes of the cheapest beef patties, two hundred fifty pounds of frozen chicken, every last package of beef or pork from the value section, and fifty pounds of assorted hearts, tongues, and tripe. It completely filled two carts.

She was feeling pretty proud of herself as she sat out in the parking lot, dumping bags of chicken into buckets of sauce, when she suddenly remembered they were going to need charcoal. And so, back into the store she ran with her own bank card to buy thirteen bags, which was all they had on the shelves. And back again for a lighter. And back again for ice for the drinks, which she realized only after she was loading it into the van was block and not crushed. She didn’t have time to take it back; it was already five o’clock and she’d told Sanford four or four-thirty.

She drove fast back to Cottonwood, the van so laden that she could feel it pulling thickly to the right every time she touched the brakes. She ran into trouble at the checkpoint, which she’d fully expected even before she saw it was the jerk guard, but she was ready for it, producing her printed authorization and a copy of the permit and plan, which was supposed to have been posted for ten days prior to the event.