Desert World Allegiances (5 page)

Temar glanced up, not sure what he was supposed to say. Naite made no secret about having been enslaved himself, but he hadn’t faced ten years.

“It does get easier. And the ability to think before acting is a skill worth developing. Work hard to please your master, and Ben will give you credit for it. He’s a fair man, and you could shorten your sentence by earning his respect.” Naite gave him another slap on the arm, and then he was gone. Temar watched Naite walk toward the line of storage sheds, lined up along the edge of town to keep the worst of the winds off the houses. As he walked, his footsteps made divots in the ground that slowly vanished as the wind shifted the sands. Out of some perverse need to test his bonds, Temar pulled against the leash, but he didn’t have more than an inch of room, and the bindings were far too well tied for him to free himself, even if he put in an honest effort to do so.

Instead, he watched Naite go into another of the empty feed sheds. Before Naite could come out with his sister leashed and ready to hear her sentence, Ben Gratu came out of the general store, already slipping his sand veil over his hat as he walked toward the sled. Time to learn to be a slave to his master. Temar’s stomach was knotting already.

Chapter 4

S
ITTING
in the passenger seat, Temar held tightly to the hand grip. With his hands still tied, he was having trouble keeping his balance as the sled lurched and bounced over the sand slopes. The engine whined as it pushed them up to the top of an enormous dune. For a second, they balanced on the ridge, and then the sled tipped over onto the downward side. Temar braced himself as the engine cut out to allow gravity to drag the sled down the far side.

“I have to admit, I’m a little flummoxed about what to do with you,” Ben Gratu said, once the noise of the engine had fallen. Only the wind answered, whistling past them as the sled slid down the sand. Clouds of dust followed them. Temar coughed. His own sand veil had come off when Landholder Young’s men had grabbed them, and the sand stung his eyes and made his throat burn. “We’ll be home soon enough. We need to get you a veil. I thought you were smarter than to wander around without one,” Ben said, but then the engine kicked on as they reached the bottom of the dune, and they couldn’t talk over the scream of the machine as it shoved them up the slope of the next dune.

In the past, Temar would have insisted he was smart, but now that was somewhat questionable. His wrists ached, not as much from the rope as from the fact that he kept instinctively trying to pull his hands in different directions as the sled listed from one side to the other. A smart man wouldn’t have ended up a slave, and a smart man would be smart enough to stop fighting the bindings. Obviously, he fell a little short of the mark.

With a final lurch, the sled reached the top of this new dune, and Temar could see the rocky ridge that marked the beginning of Spence Valley. His father’s farm was a narrow strip pressed up against the west rockface, with Young’s farm on the far end and Ben’s farm on the near end. Temar had driven past Ben’s place dozens of times, but now he’d be living and working there. The sled’s engine cut off again, and Ben deployed the sails from the sides to guide the sled toward the south entrance to the valley.

“I know you’re not the best on a plow, so maybe we can find some other work for you,” Ben offered. Temar wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. He’d work wherever he got assigned. “Your father always bragged about your math. He thought you’d join the skilled workers and take up pipe work, or maybe electrical or engine work.”

“I liked glass work,” Temar answered.

“He’d mentioned that,” Ben agreed. His hands were huge, and for a second, he concentrated on pulling on the yoke of the sled, forcing it south of the rock without slowing at all. Ben wasn’t as dark as most men, but his arms and hands were tanned as dark as Naite Polli. He wasn’t like George Young, who ran his farm from inside his house.

“He’d wanted you to have an apprenticeship.” Ben pulled the levers that retracted the guide sails as the sled finally slid to a stop near the south gate to the valley. Temar’s father had always made big promises about buying him an apprenticeship when they got a big crop in, but they’d never had a crop of anything other than pipe trap plants. Temar would probably spend the next ten years pulling weeds grown from seeds blown over from his father’s old farm.

Ben stopped, sat behind the yoke, and stared out at the heavy gates that protected the valley from wind and sand. The gates could only be opened in the afternoon, when the sand drifted south and the blowers could clear the gates. Open it in the morning, and sand would blast through the gate and bury good farmland. The blowers on the gate had only recently kicked on, and dust devils twirled and danced in the air as the machinery cleared the area.

“It’s going to be a long ten years if you don’t plan to talk to me.” Ben’s voice was gentle and soft, and that fatherly tone made Temar’s guts tighten. His own father had emotionally left them long before the pipe trap juice had finally killed him.

“I’m not trying to not talk,” Temar offered. They weren’t even at the farm, and he’d already disappointed his new master.

Ben reached over and put a hand on Temar’s knee. “Your father sometimes….” Ben grimaced. “Sometimes he talked bigger than he could carry through.”

Temar blushed. He knew he didn’t have a right to tell Ben to shut up about his father, but none of that made this conversation any less uncomfortable. Ben sighed.

“I don’t say this to make you silent again. Your father was a kind man, and the way he was at the end—that was more pipe trap juice than any choice of his. I’m asking if you’re as good with math and equipment as your father always claimed. Based on your adventure over at George’s place, I wouldn’t call you mechanically talented.”

“That was an accident.”

“I didn’t think you had done it on purpose. If I had, I wouldn’t have paid your slave price. What happened, Temar?”

While Temar was quiet by nature, he could feel Ben’s concern seep down into him. Pulling his bound hands into his lap, Temar stared at them and wondered how he could have ever been such an idiot. He should have gone to Ben Gratu for help in the first place—then he would be sitting, talking to him, landholder to landholder, instead of slave to master.

“Landholder Young was siphoning father’s water,” Temar said softly, fully expecting Ben to order him to stop making such wild accusations. Instead, Ben leaned back in his seat and studied him.

“What proof do you have?”

Temar looked up in surprise at the interest in Ben’s voice. “I built my own flow meter and installed it on the irrigation. Water was taken from our pipes. And I tested the soil on Young’s land and ours. If it was leaking equipment, as Young claimed, I would have found saturated patches of ground where the water was escaping.” Temar looked up, encouraged by the surprise and belief he could see in Ben’s face. “I did tests every ten meters, over the full length of the irrigation pipe, and there wasn’t any leak. I would have found a leak and fixed it. And the pipe trap plant absorbs a steady four to seven jignots a week, more than that and the plant splits. The plants on our land show signs of wrinkling, so they’re getting three to four jignots a week, and we have a plant density of twelve per square rod, so that doesn’t account for the missing water, even if you assume there was a leak somewhere. Water is being stolen.” Temar could feel hope swell in him, pulling his words out faster and faster. Ben was staring at him in clear shock.

“Have you shown these results to the council?”

Temar shook his head.

“Great gods, boy! You have proof of water thievery, and instead of going to the council, you trespass on another’s property and destroy two tanks of water? What were you thinking?” Ben slapped the sled’s yoke.

“I wasn’t. Cyla wanted—”

“Cyla has a temper like a sandcat. I would think you had more sense.”

“We had gone to the council last harvest end,” Temar defended himself, feeling stupider by the second.

“With the evidence?” Ben leaned forward, his face tight with anticipation.

Temar shook his head. “I started collecting the data after the council dismissed father and Cyla when they made their accusations.” God, he was stupid. “Cyla thought we would find something conclusive. She thought I could find how he was siphoning the water from the system.” He should have talked Cyla into waiting a couple of months and going back to the council with all his calculations. They might not have taken his word for it, but he had detailed enough notes to get them to send someone to check his work.

Ben turned and stared out the front of the sled at the huge gates. The blowers had cleared the sand from the area, but he didn’t move. Slowly, he began to shake his head. “Your father always said you were far too bright to be a landholder. He should have found a way to buy you an apprenticeship.” Ben reached down to the floorboard between their seats and pulled the lever to release the wheels. The sled jumped and jerked and then settled on its fat, wide tires. “Boy, you sit put. This may not be as bad as it seems,” Ben said before he got out of the sled and headed for the main gate. For the first time since being grabbed, hope outweighed Temar’s despair.

Once they were through the gates, the sled rolled through the valley, the green crops just starting to push up toward the sun, and the sun filter making the air feel a little less oppressive with heat. The moment Ben passed the boundary onto Gazer property, the neat rows of seedlings gave way to clumps of pipe trap plant. The plants grew in a circle around a bare center. A newcomer might mistake one for a dozen different plants, but the real plant was underground, inside that ring of green leaves, waiting to trap anything heavier than a grasshopper that stepped on it. Of course, a person was far too heavy and big for a pipe trap to eat. A person’s foot would go right through the fleshy meat of the plant’s stomach and probably kill the plant. However, falling into a pipe trap was a good way to break a leg.

Ben stopped the sled in front of Temar’s home—what had been his home. Ben reached over and let his hand rest against Temar’s shoulder. “It’s infested with pipe trap seeds. They’ll more than likely burn all of this.” His voice was sorrowful, but Temar imagined he’d be glad enough to get rid of the source of so many weeds. “So, where do you have these notes?”

“My room.” Temar started reaching for the sled door, realizing a second too late that he needed permission before running off. He looked over at Ben.

“Go on, get them.” Ben waved him on, and Temar pulled the door open, the movement awkward with his hands tied. Hurrying through the house and trying hard not to look at all the possessions that would soon be stripped by whomever the council chose to give the land to, Temar reached his room. The sloping wall created a small niche on the floor, where he kept all his work, and he pulled out the box with all his carefully detailed records. Picking the box up might be a problem with his hands bound, however.

“Let me,” Ben said from the door. He walked in and picked the box up and settled it on the bed. “Did you show anyone these records?” Ben asked as he pulled the top off and started looking at the first notebook. Each page had observations that Temar had recorded as carefully as if he had done the work for class or for an apprenticeship application.

“My father.” Temar gave a lopsided shrug. By the end, his father hadn’t been able to comprehend much more than a child. The pipe trap juice made him high and happy by killing the brain cells that reminded him what a miserable life he had. From the time their mother had died, he’d been slowly killing himself. It’d taken nearly fifteen years, but he’d finally accomplished his goal. “I showed Cyla, but I’m not sure how much she actually listened to. She was angry.” Angry didn’t even cover it. Temar had actually been afraid of her temper, for the first time in his life. He didn’t think she’d hurt him, but he didn’t know how far she would go in her fury. Clearly she’d gone too far.

“She should have listened to you.” Ben sounded distracted as he flipped though pages of observations and calculations. “If anything, your father underestimated your math skills. Come sit here.” Ben patted the bed next to him, and Temar obediently sat down, resting his tied hands on his knees. His hands were starting to tingle, but he didn’t want to distract Ben from his intense concentration. His father and Cyla had never taken his notebooks very seriously, but Ben clearly did. “Do you have more?”

“No, that’s it. Isn’t it enough?”

“Oh, it’s enough. This could have been disastrous.”

“Could have been?” Temar asked, a bit of his old humor returning as he realized that Ben wasn’t dismissing his work.

“Yes, it could have been. If you’d shown these to someone….” Ben shook his head. “I’ll take these home to burn.” He dropped the notebook into the box.

“You’ll… what?” Temar started to stand up, but Ben reached out and grabbed his bound hands.

“I’ll burn them, and you won’t mention this to anyone.”

Temar’s chest tightened so that he could only take little rabbit breaths. Oh shit. He wasn’t just an idiot, he was the chosen high idiot of all idiots.