Slavemakers (14 page)

SHE COULDN'T BE
sure, but Aisha Rose thought she might be dying.

Mama had told her that on the dreamed earth, people used that word all the time. “People would say it,” she said, “even if they didn't mean it. Didn't come close to meaning it. ‘I'm dying here,' they'd say, and no one would give it even a second thought.”

Aisha Rose, days out of Nairobi, heading east across the savanna, realized that was another difference between the dreamed earth and the one she lived on and would die on. Back then, before the dream ended, you could say almost anything and mean something else, and everyone would understand anyway.

You could say you were starving, or chilled to the bone, or terrified, or dying, and mean that you hadn't eaten in a few hours, or you needed to put on a sweater, or that you were nervous about something, or that you
were merely very bored. And no one would take you seriously. They'd know you were exaggerating, and that you likely had never been any of those things, not really. Nor had they.

But back then, it was to your advantage to say things you didn't really mean. On a huge and crowded earth, filled with floods of people like the ones in the pictures she and Mama looked at, you'd be invisible if you weren't noisy. No one would listen. You'd be drowned out.

But life was different now. If words themselves mattered at all—and Aisha Rose had begun to wonder if they did, even as she continued her nightly recitations—then they only mattered if they meant something. They only mattered if they were true.

*   *   *

THE TRUTH: AISHA
Rose was chilled to the bone.

Huddled beneath a thorn tree that she was too weak to climb, she watched the sun descend toward the western horizon. Even the last trailing outskirts of Nairobi had dwindled and finally disappeared. Now all that was left was endless bush stretching in both directions. She was already starting to shiver.

These were the patterns of her days on the savanna. Midday here in the bush was so hot that the sweat slid off her body in sheets—except when she couldn't find enough to drink. Then her sweat would dry up, her tongue would swell in her mouth, the sun would twist her thoughts into disorganized fragments, and she would find herself losing minutes, even hours, as she staggered forward, one step at a time. Or, finally, retreated to the shade to rest and wait.

At first, when the heat began to ebb, when the sun began to lose its blistering strength, relief would almost overwhelm her. But it wouldn't last long, because she knew what the night would bring. In just a few hours, as soon as the chill began to seep—and then flood—into her, she would crawl under a blanket of leaves, a leafy fallen branch, or some vines.

It didn't help much, but it was better than nothing. Sometimes she had nothing.

Inevitably, the shivers would begin. Her teeth would click together, her skin erupt in a mass of goose bumps, and she'd shake so hard she thought that her translucent skin might split to reveal the bones planted so shallowly beneath.

Her whole body possessed by the cold, except for her left hand, the one she'd cut, which throbbed with heat. The palm was swollen and an angry red, and her forearm was beginning to get puffy, too. Within a few more days, she wouldn't be able to use the hand for anything.

Finally, dawn would arrive, the day would begin to warm, and she'd get back to her feet. Start her hejira east once again, every goal stripped away but that one.

But she was beginning to hear voices—not Mama's voice; Mama was silent—telling her she wouldn't make it. She would die days, miles, before she reached her destination.

Telling her that she could die here, or she could die there. Why fight to keep going?

But she didn't listen. She fought, and kept going, each day, as the sun rose and blasted her, and fell and tortured her.

*   *   *

AND AISHA ROSE
was starving.

When had she last eaten? Yesterday? No, the day before. A green fruit plucked from a bush she did not recognize, fruit that had sat in her stomach like a stone. Some fat white grubs she'd found under a rock. And then some pink baby mice she'd dug out from their den and eaten raw, as their mother screamed at her from some nearby bushes. (The mother was too fast to catch, or Aisha Rose would have eaten her, too.)

Two days before that—or was it three?—she'd come upon the remains of a kill. She'd spotted it from miles away, of course, because of the vultures she'd seen circling above it and, as she drew closer, perched in the branches of nearby thorn trees.

And then, as she came even closer, moving as silently as she could through the dense bush that dotted this stretch of savanna, keeping upwind, the east wind always in her face, she could smell the kill as well. The rank odor of rotting meat.

The kill itself was shielded by the low bush, so Aisha Rose couldn't see what it was, or what predators might still be around, until she was so close that her heart was pounding from fear. The blood rushing through her veins made her more alert but also caused her feverish head to spin, her vision to cloud.

Finally, she reached the edge of a small clearing and could identify the kill: a zebra. It had undoubtedly been taken by lions, but by now the big cats had eaten their
fill and abandoned it, leaving behind the pungent odor of their urine and the scattered remains of their prey.

The zebra's skeleton had been pulled into pieces. The bones were stained brown with old blood and yellow with gristle and scraps of meat that the lions had left behind. Here and there, strips of skin showed the black-and-white pattern.

Around the clearing, vultures tore at the remaining flesh and squabbled among themselves, hopping in their froglike way, twisting their long, bare necks like snakes, and hissing at each other. As they took notice of Aisha Rose's presence, they turned and stared at her, unafraid.

At the far edge of the clearing, a family of jackals stood in a patch of tall grass, also watching her. Eight in all, but four were unlike any Aisha Rose had seen before. Instead of typical long, fine silver-and-tan coats, theirs were shorter, coarser, and speckled with brown.

Sick with hunger, Aisha Rose leaned against a tree and thought. She couldn't be certain that the lions weren't still in the area, or that a pack of hyenas might not show up at any moment to feast on what remained.

Including Aisha Rose. This time.

And even if the big predators were far off, Aisha Rose wasn't even sure she could fend off the vultures and jackals. The only smart thing to do was turn and walk away. There were so many risks, and every one of them gave her this same message. Leave.

But she was so hungry. If she walked away from this kill, she might not reach the next one. If there was a next one within walking distance.

Still hesitating at the edge of the clearing, she looked
down at her own body. Her hips jutted out under her tunic and her legs didn't look that much different than a gazelle's.

She knew she had longer than a day, but how much longer?

So she took her knife out of the leather sheath on her right hip, drew in a deep breath to calm her pounding heart and steady her whirling head, and walked forward toward the kill.

*   *   *

A FEW OF
the vultures took off from the ground, their heavy wings creating a breeze that blew the fetid air into her face. But the rest stayed where they were, opening their bloodstained beaks wide and hissing at her as she headed past them, to the zebra's vertebrae and ribs.

And she ate, pulling some of the soft flesh away from the ribs, breaking a smaller bone to suck out its marrow. Eating so quickly she thought she might choke but not caring.

She was so absorbed in her meal that she didn't see four of the jackals coming out of the tall grass toward her. At first quiet and then yipping and growling, showing their teeth, they were led by one of the strange doglike ones.

Aisha Rose stood as tall as she could. She shouted, though her voice emerged as a thin squawk. She waved her knife. She strode toward the jackals as if she didn't fear them even though she did. In all ways, she tried to make herself as large and threatening as possible.

It didn't work. None of it worked.

The jackals scattered at first, but soon enough—almost immediately—they started circling around her, keeping apart, waiting for the moment for one to come in and give her the bite that would start the bleeding. The first bite that might as well have been the last.

It wasn't really until that moment that Aisha Rose realized where she stood on the food chain.

On the totem pole, as Mama put it. Aisha Rose didn't know what a totem pole was, and had never asked, but she'd understood what Mama meant.

Lower than lions and hyenas, and jackals. Equal to vultures. Maybe.

She fled before the jackals had the chance to prove their superiority. When you were that low on the totem pole, you accepted the fact if you wanted to stay alive.

At least for another day or two.

*   *   *

THE NEXT MORNING,
back near the thorn tree, she found two treasures.

The first was a patch of sumeito vines, growing amid a jumble of boulders in a sunny spot beside a patch of woodland. As Mama had told her to do, Aisha Rose made a paste of torn-up leaves and sap she bled from the stems. Then, tearing off a strip of the filthy shift she wore—the only cloth she had—she strapped the paste to the angry wound in her palm.

Almost immediately she started to feel better. Maybe that was all in her mind, but that didn't matter. As far as she was concerned, everything was in her mind.

The second treasure was a nest of ostrich eggs, its
enormous guardian—the male who guarded the nest—out of sight somewhere. Six giant eggs, newly laid, lying there on the bare ground.

She knew that the adult would return soon, and that when he did, he would defend the nest. She also knew that his large size and powerful legs meant he could easily kick her to death and well might.

So Aisha Rose Atkinson, furtive mammal, lurker, egg-thief, human, took one of the huge eggs and carried it off to safer ground. Where she cracked it open with a rock, just as she'd seen the white vultures do, and ate and ate until she was covered in dripping yolk and her stomach bulged against the shrunken skin of her belly.

Then, stronger, unafraid, she stood and set out once again.

Kirindy Mitea, Madagascar

BY THIS POINT,
Malcolm was in such a ferocious mood nearly all the time that no one but Ross McKay and Shapiro—and Dylan Connell, but only to get instructions—would go near him.

Even as he found himself cracking the whip, using words he'd picked up in a lifetime among people who didn't care what came out of their mouths, he felt regretful. Even a little ashamed.

But not quite enough to stop himself. You didn't spend two decades dreaming about something and be calm when you were just weeks away from finding out if your hopes were to be realized or dashed. Especially if you had to make a days-long stop on Madagascar. Not if you had a temper—and a tongue—like Malcolm's.

Fucking Madagascar. Pretty much the only country Malcolm
hadn't
visited during his old life, and thus a place he didn't give two . . . figs . . . about.

But there'd been no choice. Even if it had been feasible to sail directly from Refugia to Lamu, even if the
Trey Gilliard
's crew wouldn't have put him on a waterlogged raft and sent him floating away, even if he wouldn't have deserved being treated like Captain Bligh . . . the ship, this expedition, had a goal. A purpose.

And the purpose wasn't to find Chloe. Not
just
to find Chloe.

They'd made three previous stops on the four-month journey. The one in Kissama, another in what had once been Namibia, and the third in eastern South Africa. Finding, in each case, abundant wildlife ranging from plains game to predators, big (lions) to small (mongooses).

Though virtually no primates anywhere. And
no
humans, or sign that any humans had been living there since the Fall.

Very few thieves, either—though there were always some, or at least the whiff of them—which had touched off a vociferous debate about how drastic the species' apparent population crash had been. It was the kind of argument that, having no possible resolution, could keep otherwise bored, shipbound scientists occupied for weeks, on and off.

Only count Malcolm out. He couldn't have cared less. He just wanted to
get on with it
.

Especially once they made it halfway up the east coast of Africa, making it feel like they were just a stone's throw from his destination. Madagascar? He could have flown from Antananarivo to Lamu in, what, six hours? He could have been there by tonight, if he still had his old Piper. If he still lived in a world with airplanes.

Fuck.

But here they were instead, at anchor, not going anywhere, trekking instead around a godforsaken blasted patch of some island he'd never had the slightest desire to visit. A place so famous for its wildlife, its lemurs, that every square inch of it had been so exhaustively studied and analyzed and, in the way of the Last World, fought over, that even Trey Gilliard himself had had no use for it. One of the most famous wild places on earth, Madagascar, but to Trey—and therefore to Malcolm—it had been more like a zoo.

But not now. Not here. Not in this world. So here they were, and for at least two days.

Fuck.

*   *   *

WHILE MALCOLM FELT
like a grumpy little kid, wanting to do nothing but kick rocks across the dusty ground (and there were plenty of rocks to choose from, and plenty of dust, too), the rest of the crew seemed to be fascinated by the bizarre environment of this dry and spiky corner of the island.

Everyone, but especially Ross McKay, who'd been anticipating this shore leave since the journey began. In truth, they'd stopped here for him because back in the Last World, Ross's specialty had been lemurs.

Those primitive primates, whose strange shapes, faces, and habits had made them familiar worldwide, had been found in only one place—Madagascar—so Ross had spent about half his adult life on the island. Including this part, Kirindy Mitea, a national park he'd helped establish.

It looked like Mars to Malcolm. Mars's rubbish tip. Plains of red and white sand, held together with the slightest fringe of coarse grass and bordered by the occasional bottle-shaped baobab tree and a forest of bare-branched, scrubby trees so spiky with thorns that it was a miracle anything would choose to live on them.

And, in truth, nothing much did seem to thrive there. Some little birds hopping among the thorns, a couple of dark hawks circling in the hot blue sky, a flock of flamingos they'd startled on the hike up from the beach. And one mammal flashing by: something with stripes and a bushy tail that was either a large squirrel or a small mongoose.

During the first few minutes of their exploration, Kait came walking up. Quiet and pale as ever, and wearing that big floppy shirt she always sported these days, but this time with a hunched, slow-moving lizard with googly eyes perched on her right shoulder.

Ross's smile looked like it might split his face. “Labord's chameleon!” he said in a tone of requited love. “Isn't it beautiful?”

Malcolm looked at the scaly, brownish green beast with the stubby horn that looked like a thumb protruding from its nose, and—for about the first time in forever—kept his mouth shut.

*   *   *

BUT AS ROSS
wandered around the plains and forests, his beatific smile began to fade.

“They're gone,” he said. Then again, “They're gone.”

Malcolm, walking beside him, felt annoyance as a
tingling sensation in his fingers. He was ready to head to a more fertile part of the island, a place with more accessible supplies of freshwater and even some fruit and huntable game. Ready to head on, then move out entirely.

But Ross seemed so sad, so lost, that Malcolm kept his voice patient as he said, “What're gone?”

“The sifakas,” Ross said.

Malcolm just looked at him. After a moment, Ross frowned, and said, in a tone of uncharacteristic impatience, “
Lemurs
, Malcolm.”

His eyes shifted to the spiny forests beyond. “This place was full of them the last time I was here. Eight different species, including sifakas, red-tailed sportive lemurs, pale fork-marked lemurs, fat-tailed dwarf lemurs—”

Malcolm was quiet. Scientists had never thought of a stupid name they wouldn't give to some poor beast.

Ross's face was a mask of sorrow. “Them, too?”

*   *   *

A FEW MINUTES
later, Darby Callahan came up to them. “Need to show you something.”

Her face held little expression. But there was something about the movement of her eyes, a quick flicker from Malcolm's face to Ross's, then back again, that made Malcolm feel cold.

“Oh, no,” Ross said, his voice little more than a breath.

*   *   *

A THIEF COLONY.
The largest thief colony any of them had ever seen.

No. The largest
former
thief colony any of them had ever seen. Because it was empty, abandoned, and looked like it had been for months, if not years.

A ghost town. A ghost
city
, comprised of hundreds—maybe thousands—of windblown mounds and half-filled-in burrows spreading across the Mars-surface plain to the scraggly, unwelcoming forest beyond.

Lying amid the spiky grasses that outlined the mounds were bones. The weathered, bleached bones of uncountable mammals. Ribs and pelvises and femurs and tibias proportionately much longer than a monkey's or human's. Long finger and toe bones. And, scattered everywhere, strange sloping skulls with oddly foreshortened snouts and giant eyeholes.

So many different sizes. So many different species.

Even though he'd never seen a lemur skeleton before, Malcolm didn't have to ask to know what he was looking at.

He looked around and saw that everyone else knew as well. Everyone understood.

*   *   *

ROSS CRIED. HE
cried silently, tears dripping down his round cheeks while everyone else looked away awkwardly. Humans being no better in the Next World at dealing with unexpected emotion than they had been in the Last.

Everyone looking away except, surprisingly, for Kait, who'd returned her chameleon to wherever she'd found it and put her arm around Ross's shoulders and led him away. Back toward the beach, the dinghies, and the
waiting ship, with the others gradually following in their path.

Shapiro came up to stand beside Malcolm. Together, they watched the small, disconsolate group, so few and small against the tainted landscape, the sea, the sky.

“No human bones,” Shapiro said.

Malcolm had noticed this, too. “It was a national park,” he said. “Not many people around to start with.”

“True.” Shapiro turned to face him. “What's your theory? The thieves used up all the hosts, then died out themselves?”

Malcolm shook his head. “Nah, I think they're too fucking smart and well adapted for that.”

“But they're all gone.”

“Yeah. Long gone.”

“So,” she said, “where'd they go?”