Slavemakers (8 page)

Having overtaken him, Ross's black moods could persist for days. Back in Refugia, he'd leave his beloved research hanging midproject and fail to join the evening conversations around the fire pit that he normally loved so much.

Sheila would visit him, bring him food, stay for conversation, or whatever passed for conversation when Ross was in this state. But she would never share much, if anything, of what they talked about.

Eventually, he would reappear at the dining hall, skinny, harrowed, pale, but seeming to have conquered his latest bout of whatever afflicted him. Ross didn't have an exact name for what it was—he'd never cared enough to learn whatever the latest jargon was for a black mood—but he was sure they'd used to have medications to speed up the process. Just not on this world.

Malcolm watched Ross's mood shift with sad familiarity but no ability to counteract it, wondering what, if anything, had spurred it. Then Ross spoke, and he understood.

“Notice what's missing here?” the mammalogist said.

Malcolm sighed.

Ross gazed across the savanna, watched by antelopes and gazelles newly wary of the men who made loud banging noises and brought the smell of blood to the grassland. “Primates,” he said. “No baboons. No patas monkeys. No
Chlorocebus
.”

Yes, Malcolm had noticed. Noticed, and expected to see what he'd in fact seen. Of course there were few—or no—monkeys, just as there were no humans here. This was the thieves' world now, primates were their preferred host, and the primates here hadn't had access to a vaccine.

“It's tainted,” Ross said. “It's all tainted.”

Malcolm gestured at the jackal-dog the scientist was carrying. “Well, doesn't that just leave room for all those evolving species you were going on about?”

But Ross wasn't listening. When he was in this mood, he never heard a word outside the confines of his own brain.

*   *   *

SOMEONE HAD DISCOVERED
a thief colony a kilometer or so down the beach from the bay where the ship was moored. A far bigger colony than any they'd seen in at least fifteen years around Refugia, a spread of sandy mounds covering at least thirty square meters that must have contained hundreds of wasps.

Malcolm didn't have to be there to know what had happened when the vaccinated crew approached the colony. The wasps had risen in the twisting cloud, the whirlwind, that demonstrated their alarm, then fled down their burrows. By the time he reached the site, there were none to be seen.

But their bitter, acidic smell lingered, of course. Even now, even after so much time, it still had the power to turn Malcolm's stomach.

The thieves were nowhere in sight, but their hosts were, more than a dozen of them sleeping away the “dreaming days” phase of their inevitable doom. No primates—Malcolm guessed the last baboon or patas monkey had vanished from Kissama within a year or two of the wasps' arrival—but of course primates weren't the only mammals acceptable as hosts.

The ones here, assembled in a flat grassy area encircled by the thieves' mounds and surrounded by the bleached bones of earlier hosts, included a couple of hares and other small animals. But the group was mostly
made up of a kind of large, ugly rat Malcolm had never seen before, bigger and bulkier than the brown rats that still plagued Refugia and successfully survived on the
Trey Gilliard
, despite all efforts to eradicate them.

Malcolm, Shapiro, and the twins, coming to stand beside him, took in the scene. There wasn't anything to say, so for once no one—not even Shapiro—said anything. Ross had been right: However beautiful Kissama was, however heartening the returning of its plains game, its predators, it was tainted. The earth was tainted, and would be as long as the thieves dominated it.

After a few moments, Malcolm broke the silence. “Let's load up,” he said, “and get out of here.”

But then he turned, saw what Ross was doing, and knew that departing wasn't on the agenda. Not yet, at least.

*   *   *

ROSS HAD LEFT
the antelope and his scientific specimen somewhere. Now he was walking up toward them—and the thief colony—carrying an armload of grass. Incongruously, he'd switched the rifle slung over his back for a roll of fine-meshed mist netting, and in his arms he held a bundle of savanna grass, still half-green. His expression was at its blackest, a mixture of anger and determination.

Malcolm knew better than to try to get in the mammalogist's way. Not in this mood. He'd be wasting his breath.

Shapiro, eternally hopeful or just plain cussed, tried anyway. She never minded wasting her breath.

“Ross, it's useless,” she said as he approached. “They'll just come back—”

But he just walked past her as if she hadn't said a word. As they watched, he went to the first mound, squatted beside it, and plugged the mouth of the hole with a twist of grass. Straightening, he went to the next one and began to repeat the process.

It was Brett and Darby Callahan who, after exchanging glances, stepped forward to help him. Ross didn't acknowledge their presence, but he let them take some of the grass. Soon all three of them were methodically plugging the openings into each mound.

“Shit,” Malcolm said, and went to join them. Soon a dozen crew members were engaged in the same behavior, even Shapiro, muttering about what a useless waste of energy it all was.

Eventually, all of the openings were plugged. All but one, the colony's emergency escape hatch, which was set far from the rest, at the base of a tree fifty meters from the main colony. This was the thieves' last resort in case of attack, a huge expenditure of energy to excavate but part of every large colony.

Ross didn't plug this escape hole. Instead, he positioned the netting over it, hooking it over the tree's branches so it formed a kind of cage around the opening. Then he weighted the edges down with stones, checked the mesh for tears and weak spots, then turned away, his expression now expectant.

By now, everyone knew what his intentions were. So it was with a gesture of respect—and an understanding of his mental state—that Darby handed him a lit torch and let him do what came next.

Head down, but walking with a steady stride, Ross
moved among the thieves' mounds, lighting the plugs of grass in each hole. Because the grasses were still partly green, they didn't flare up and burn out, but smoldered and smoked. Exactly as Ross wanted.

He did not ignite every plug. There was no need to. All the burrows were connected underground. Fill one with enough smoke, and you filled them all.

When he was done, he walked back to the escape hole and checked the net one more time. Silently the rest of them gathered around him, and watched, and waited.

Waited ten minutes, maybe fifteen, before wisps of smoke began to come out of the hole, flickering gray tongues passing through the mesh and dispersing in the breeze. No one said a word, but Malcolm could sense a sharpening of attention run through the group. He felt it himself.

The first thief emerged—a frantic blur of crimson wings—about five minutes later, zooming up through the smoke to the apex of the net, where it clung to the mesh. This first one, then two more, then three, and, finally, a deluge.

Dozens, hundreds, until the inside of the net was a crawling, shifting mass of black bodies and green eyes and flickering wings. The deluge slackening, then ending with a few last wasps, nearly overcome, unable to do more than crawl from the mouth of the hole and collapse on the ground.

When it was certain that no thief could have survived in the burrows, Ross gathered an armload of dry grasses. Pulling up one corner of the net, he shoved it underneath. Malcolm thought it was a measure of the thieves'
fear of vaccinated humans—or of their inability to change their behavior even in the face of disaster—that even now they gave Ross a wide berth.

Malcolm knew that he should step in. But mist nets, perfect for catching bugs or bats but too fragile for fishing, were something they had an abundant supply of and little use for. So he let the inevitable unfold, even if it meant sacrificing something they should probably have kept.

Plus, by now he wanted the same thing that Ross did. Dead thieves. It had been a long time.

Ross lit the grass pile. This one flared up right away, yellow-orange flames licking upward to where the thieves were massed. And now the process was reversed: First one, then a few, then more and more, let go of the netting and fell into the flames. As their exoskeletons burned, they emitted a crackling sound, but soon every part of them had been turned to ash. The fire even consumed their smell.

By the time the flames shriveled the net, every last thief in the colony was dead.

*   *   *

BUT ROSS WASN'T
done. From the start, Malcolm had known how this would end. So this time it was he who made the offering, holding out the knife he carried in his waistband.

Ross looked down at its three-inch blade, then raised his eyes and met Malcolm's gaze. He gave a little nod, his mood already seeming lighter.

Still without speaking, he turned and walked over to
the breeding area where the hares and other animals slumbered on. They provided no resistance at all as Ross knelt among them, slicing open first one's belly, then the next.

Kneeling amid their bleeding bodies as he carefully cut out one wriggling white thief larva after another, holding each up to the light and watching as it died.

This time no one helped. He wouldn't have wanted help.

Only when every host animal and every larva was dead did he stand again and face his silent audience, the knife dangling loosely from his hand. His pants and arms were soaked in blood, and he'd left smears across his right cheek.

He was smiling, himself again, as his eyes sought out Malcolm. “Permission to bathe before boarding, Captain,” he said.

Malcolm looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Er . . . granted.”

Hell's Gate

ALL OF LIFE
was a journey. A hejira.

That was one of the first things Aisha Rose learned from Mama: You were always on a journey.

Maybe that was why nothing in her life ever felt permanent to her. Never felt entirely
real
.

Especially for the past decade, when they'd followed the annual migration of the herds of game from their little house in the compound in Naro Moru—set in the foothills of Mount Kenya—to their canyon here in Hell's Gate. A round-trip that made everything else seem transient as well to Aisha Rose.

Everything except Mama. As long as the two of them were together, it didn't matter where they lived, or for how long.

Or at least that's what Aisha Rose had always believed. So, the night after the hyenas visited, when Mama said, “I want to go home,” she was surprised by her reaction.
A piercing sense of loss not quite like anything she'd felt before. Loss and understanding, twinned.

“But, Mama—” she said.

But, Mama, it's the wrong season.

She bit back the words. A full moon had risen above the canyon, so she could see the smile on Mama's gaunt, ravaged face. But she would have seen it, seen it inside Mama, even if the night had been a moonless, velvety black.

“Darling,” Mama said, something she called Aisha Rose only rarely, “it's time. You know it is.”

Aisha Rose was silent, but she did know.

Time. Maybe past time.

*   *   *

AISHA ROSE HAD
been expecting this, had known it was coming. So why did it still fill her eyes with tears?

She didn't know why, but it did. Yet she didn't make a sound, or move to brush the tears away. She just turned her head a little so the moonlight wouldn't make them glitter.

After a few moments, she heard the sound of a sigh. “Aisha Rose?”

“What, Mama?”

“I'd like to tell you about your father and me and the dreamed earth.”

A story she'd heard a hundred times. A thousand.

“Yes, Mama,” she said.

*   *   *

BEFORE THEY'D HAD
Aisha Rose, Mama told her, she and Papa had traveled around the world. Every step a journey, and every journey an escape.

“We hated the dreamed earth,” Mama told Aisha Rose. “All the noise, all the smoke, all the people looking into your eyes, your head, your life. All the
watching
.”

Aisha Rose stayed silent.

“Everywhere we went, we were searching for something else. Some other alternative. Something . . . pure. That was
our
dream. To find a place where we could live away from all the crowds, all the noise.” She paused. “The violence.”

“Naro Moru?”

“Yes. Our little compound in Naro Moru.” Mama laughed. “Well, not that it was
perfectly
pure. But we had our house, our patch of forest, the walls around it to keep people from watching, and your father's work nearby. It was as close to what we were searching for as the dreamed earth could offer.”

Growing up, Aisha Rose had known every inch of those walls, that forest.

“So we stopped wandering, and stayed,” Mama went on. “And then, about a year later, I learned I was going to have you. I was so excited!”

This was where Mama always skipped ahead. Skipped part of the story, in some ways the most important part. The part about Papa, and how Aisha Rose became what she was. The part that showed why she and Mama would be together forever.

The part that Mama didn't
want
to share with her but did anyway. Memories like broken glass, shards and fragments, sharp enough that they hurt Aisha Rose when she looked at them.

But she had no choice. She had to look. Look inside Mama and see what she'd seen.

*   *   *

MAMA AND PAPA
had discovered that Aisha Rose was growing inside her just as the earth was about to awaken from the dream. Yet they didn't know the end was coming. Living behind the compound's walls, with no one watching them, they had forgotten how to be aware, alert. If they'd ever known.

They had no idea what the
majizi
, the thieves, were planning. And by the time they understood, the end was very near.

One day, Papa went out to work and didn't return.

Two days later, when Mama was almost frantic with worry, he came back. He wouldn't talk about what he'd seen, but his eyes were wild, and right away he went to the little room where he kept his guns.

You needed guns to keep yourself pure on the dreamed earth. That's what Papa and Mama had always believed. You needed guns, and you needed to know how to use them.

Papa took his guns and began to leave again. Mama tried to stop him, but he wouldn't let her.

I'll be back soon, he said. And then we'll be safe here. Then we'll wait it out, and afterward, we'll have everything to ourselves. The whole world.

Mama said, just us?

Just the two of us. A nation of two.

A nation of three, Mama said.

But Papa hadn't replied to that. He'd just taken his guns and left again.

And Mama, young and naïve, had believed him, and waited for him to return.

Things happened, that night and the next day. Things that Mama, alone, with no radio, no telephone, no computer, no Papa, could only guess at. She heard screams and explosions and other sounds she couldn't identify. She smelled smoke and saw the sky alight with flames.

It was all nearby, but still outside the walls of the compound. Outside the nation of Mama and Aisha Rose inside her.

Mama kept a gun close at hand, for four days and nights. But no one came, not the one or two friends they'd made in the area, or any strangers.

Until Papa came back on the fifth day.

Or . . . the thing that had once been Papa.

*   *   *

HERE'S WHAT AISHA
Rose saw in Mama's memories.

Mama was outside, standing at the back of the house. The sun was low in the sky and hazy with smoke.

Papa came around the corner of the house, half-naked, blood spilling over his chin from his bitten tongue, dripping from his hands, and pouring from deep open gouges above the huge swelling on his belly. He was making a groaning, tearing sound in his throat.

He no longer had his guns, but that didn't matter. He was going to use his hands on Mama, and even though they were bruised and cut and bleeding, his hands were going to be enough.

Even like this, he seemed to know where he was. But did he know who he was? Who Mama was? Aisha Rose always wondered.

But it didn't really matter, whether he knew her or didn't. Papa went straight at her, taking these fast steps across the clearing to where she stood with her back against the wall of the house.

Mama had her gun, her own shotgun, yet she almost didn't raise it in time. She just stood there as Papa got closer and closer, bigger and bigger, and even when she did remember and raise the shotgun, she was too late. Papa was there, so close, reaching for her with his bloody hands.

And then he stopped. Stopped and stared, as if he'd seen something, sensed something, unexpected in her. He stood very still, staring into her face with his blood-rimmed eyes; and then—amazingly, astoundingly—he started to turn away.

And he would have left her alone. Aisha Rose knew this, because she knew how people like him acted, what rules they followed.

He would have left Mama alone because of what she had growing inside of her. Not Aisha Rose. The other thing.

But that didn't make any difference either, what he
would
have done, because as he turned away, the shotgun went off.

Aisha Rose could never tell, not even from Mama's memories, whether she had meant to fire or whether it had been an accident. But that didn't matter either, because on the real earth the gun did go off, its blast sending Papa backward and spraying his blood into the air.

That was the last Aisha Rose saw of Papa, the last thing that Mama's memories shared of him. Because the shotgun's butt jolted back and hit Mama in the stomach, driving all her breath from her body.

After that, the shards of Mama's memories were all about pain and fear. A different kind of fear. Panic, mind-wrenching terror that the blow from the gun might have hurt Aisha Rose.

When she could get her breath back, Mama ran inside. She left the shotgun on the ground, something she never normally would have done. But she was so afraid.

And more than afraid.
Awake.
Newly awake. As if by being struck, she had been woken from a deep sleep.

Mama never understood why, though Aisha Rose did. She did now, and had for a long time.

As Mama ran inside to the bathroom, she pulled off her blouse. And then she stood there, in front of the mirror, staring at her belly. Her belly, already round from Aisha Rose growing inside it, but with another swelling there too. A large one punctuated by a round black hole.

A swelling like the one that Papa had, only smaller.

As Mama looked, there came movement at the round hole. A flash of white. Mama's swollen belly quivered in a sudden spasm.

Then a tiny tide of grayish matter, thicker than water, with flecks of some darker substance in it, spilled out of the hole and dripped down toward Mama's belly button. It was followed by—

The surge of Mama's disgust threatened to
overwhelm her. The first time she'd shared this memory, Aisha Rose had vomited.

The little flood of liquid from Mama's belly was followed by a white worm. No, not quite a worm: a waxy white creature with big black eyes, curved black mouthparts, and soft, half-developed legs. And it was not entirely white, not where the grayish liquid flowed from a rupture in its soft midsection.

The rupture caused by the impact from Mama's gun.

The creature wriggled through the hole, but even as it emerged, its movements were weakening, slowing. Only half of its three-inch-long body had appeared when its strength seemed to leave it. It drooped forward, hanging down like a scrap of lost flesh, its mouthparts wiggling feebly. After a moment, it stopped moving at all.

Again Mama's memories shattered. This time the shards were so small that Aisha Rose could never see any of what happened right afterward.

And Mama never shared any of it. “The only thing I remember,” she said, and these were words spoken out loud, not memories Aisha Rose had stolen, “was that somehow you were unhurt. My baby girl. Untouched.”

She heard that word many times.
Untouched.
And every time, Aisha Rose wondered if Mama had ever suspected the truth.

But Mama never asked, and she never told.

*   *   *

DID MAMA UNDERSTAND
what the worm growing inside her had done?

That wasn't clear either. But whether she understood the cause or not, Mama knew what was taking place, and so did Aisha Rose.

So when Mama said, “I want to go home,” they both knew what she was saying.

“We'll leave soon,” Aisha Rose said.

She heard Mama give a little sound, a cough or a laugh. “I might need some help along the way,” she said.

Again Aisha Rose's eyes filled with tears. This time she didn't bother to hide them. “I'm here, Mama,” she said.

“I know you are, darling.”