The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (24 page)

Whatever about Rockface, the rest
of the men had seen her hunt a dozen times now—enough to have
forgotten she was a woman. They obeyed her without question. Mind
you, when he thought about it, just as many women in the Roof seemed
to command as men.

"Sodasi!" he called
down to her from the one remaining roof of HeadQuarters. "Where's
Vishwakarma? Wasn't he supposed to be leading a patrol with you
today?"

"Yes!" she said. "I've
got to run now!"

"What was that about?"
asked Indrani, putting an arm around him, while her other cradled
Flamehair.

"I don't know. Maybe she
didn't hear me properly. Or maybe the Talker is having problems."
He squinted at the little sphere, looking for tell tale droplets of
slime on its skin. He had been very careful on his return to keep it
away from the technology of the Warship. So far, the device had
survived, but he dreaded the day when it died or became lost.

"We are much too dependent
on this," he said. "We need a... a language for all of us.
Just the one. And a way of communicating with the Fourleggers too. We
should start working it out before it's too late."

"Hmm..." said Indrani.

"You disagree?"

"I don't disagree at all,
love. We'll need to teach everybody to write as well, before the
skill is lost. But forget that for now. What I think, is that Sodasi
is avoiding you."

"Avoiding me?"

"She didn't answer your
question and it has nothing to do with the Talker."

"Oh... But I just asked her
where Vishwakarma was."

"Exactly, love. And where is
he?"

The Chief looked around. From
here he had a great view over the new fields and the collapsed
buildings that had seemed so strong before the great Digger attack.
Now, the rubble stretched most of the way towards the hills that
protected the tribe, with the odd house, here and there, miraculously
untouched. A single large structure—what Indrani called a
warehouse
—had
survived too, and this was where the Fourleggers had made their new
home.

Immediately below him, shelters
made from salvaged materials from the Roof or the Warship, huddled
inside new walls of rubble. This was where most of the people lived
now, not trusting the stability of the houses. A hunter like
Vishwakarma could hide in a thousand different places here. But why
would he want to? Was he concealing an injury?

But no, there had never been any
forced Volunteering in this tribe. People would have different
reasons for hiding here, but for the life of him, Stopmouth could not
think what they might be.

"I should find him..."
He kissed Indrani good-bye. "But listen, love. I have a new job
for you."

She bristled. Indrani did not
take orders from anybody. Not even her husband. A lot of Roof women
were strange like that. "I mean, I was hoping you would take
care of the language thing. The
reading
.
Before the Talker dies."

She relaxed and smiled. "I'll
talk to Rockface about it."

"Rockface? Oh, of course,
you think we can use the sign language of the children?"

"Exactly," she said.
"I'll take it up with the big lunkhead." And she meant that
term affectionately. He hoped. "Now, love, you go find
Vishwakarma."

He meant to do just that, but
when he had passed down the stairs and travelled no more than twenty
paces farther on, he heard shouting from behind one of the makeshift
shelters.

Four women were rolling in the
dirt, while a fifth hovered nearby with a rock as though she meant to
strike one or more of the fighters. She dropped it and ran as soon as
she saw the Chief.

He pulled three of the women away
to find a smaller one at the bottom of the pile, scratched and
bloodied.

"Tarini?" Most of the
passengers from the Warship had one thing in common: beauty. Women
and men alike had arrived on the surface with clear skin, straight
teeth and perfectly even features. Roof magic had made them this
way—particularly those born before the so-called Crisis. The
same magic had not been available to the younger ones.

However, although Tarini was
thinner and shorter than the other women, it seemed that she had
taken four of them on by herself and marred their perfection somewhat
with a few bruises and one broken tooth.

"What's going on here?"
he asked.

Nobody said anything, not even
Tarini herself. Stopmouth had a horrible intuition that they had
intended to kill her—his only friend from the Roof. He'd been
foolish to leave her with them, to use her as a spy against them. He
saw that now.

Growing up in a Tribe where
people who fought amongst themselves were Volunteered, where justice
was meted out by the Chief, and where the highest law was the
survival of humanity, none of this would ever have happened. So, he
had made no real effort to hide his friendship with her and now, with
the food stash of the Newcomers betrayed, they wanted her dead.

"Go to the fields and do
your work," he told them.

"Do it yourself, savage,"
said one of the women, tall and wide-eyed like a Goddess from one of
the Roof's religions. "I hefted carrion for you yesterday. Over
the hills. No more. I've had enough." The others nodded, but
timidly. "I'm an
engineer
,
not one of your
brood
mares
or your
peasants
.
We could have gone to Earth if it weren't for you.
Cannibal
."

They left, of their own accord,
perhaps heading for the fields as he had ordered, perhaps not.

He helped Tarini up from the
ground. The girl had saved his life in the Roof, aiding his escape
from a prison of his own fear. She looked even thinner now than she
had up there.

"Haven't you been eating?"
he asked her.

She shrugged. "I'm used to
it. That lot didn't like sharing much, but we have their food now,
right?"

"Right." He smiled, but
she failed to respond and that worried him. In the Roof, with the
whole world collapsing around her, Tarini's funny little grin had
never faltered. Now, as the sun passed right overhead, she screwed up
her eyes against it.

He couldn't help asking, "Do
you think it's growing?"

"The sun? Of course not."

"No, I mean—"

She grabbed his arm. "Listen,
Stopmouth, listen. There are two thousand of them and only maybe,
what? A hundred and fifty of the rest of us?"

"What are you talking
about?"

"The Ship People, of course.
They hate it that they're here. They hate you. Us."

He shrugged. "Where else can
they go? They have to live here now and only I can show them how. Or
Rockface."

Tarini shook her head. "They
don't believe that, you see? Not like the Religious who came before
them. They don't believe it. Because they don't want it to be true,
any of this. They've started paying attention to Dharam again. Have
you noticed?" She stopped talking for a moment, cocking her head
to one side. She checked the nearest shelter, making sure it was
empty. Then, she whispered, "Some of them are planning a
takeover. They want a new Chief, one of their own. They're still
scared of you, but sooner or later they'll get you by yourself just
like they got me." He followed her gaze as it swept around the
walls. Everybody was gone: working in the fields or on patrol or
watching for attack.

If he were rushed now, if those
women had enough friends... none of his allies would get to him in
time. He shivered once, but then he got control of himself again.

"These people are weak as
pups," he said.

"Two or three of them were
Wardens."

"Maybe they were. But I
can't believe it, anyway. Humans will not fight humans with so many
enemies around us."

Tarini kept looking at him, her
face a mass of bruises—from human fists. And he knew better
anyway. He had been to the Roof, after all. People had been fighting
each other up there for a long time, even as their world died around
them.

"You're right," he
admitted. "They're capable of anything." It was a whole new
way of thinking for him and he wasn't sure he wanted to get used to
it. "Have you actually heard them plotting?"

She shrugged. "A lot of them
don't speak my language or anything similar to it. But I know. Trust
me. I should be on their side, after all. Except they're all filthy
deserters."

"Like me?"

"Not like you, Chief."
She grinned, finally coming around after her fright. They really
would have killed her!

"You still don't like the
Religious much, though, do you, Tarini?"

"Nope. But I guess I'll be
living with them now, right?"

It was his turn to smile.
"Rockface says you'd make a good hunter. You're fast enough."

"I am. Does that mean I
don't have to go the fields today?"

"No, you can start your
training by keeping me safe instead. Just look fierce. The bruises
are helping a lot! Come on. I need to find somebody." But
already his mood was beginning to darken. He thought of the woman
with the rock. And of the glares he received every day from the
Seculars.

"I'm looking for a hunter
called Vishwakarma," he said. "Do you know him?"

"He's the one who talks too
much."

"That's him. And a bit
clumsy, but he's turning into a good hunter. Even back home, his
spear would have drunk often, I think. If he could only learn to sit
still!"

"What about Yama? He's a
sort of leader too, isn't he? I've heard him say so."

"Hmm..." Stopmouth
wasn't sure he wanted to talk about Yama. There was something about
that boy...

Nearby, a man groaned, a sound of
despair. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

It came again, uttering, this
time, a single word: "Mother..." it said. "Oh,
mother..." Stopmouth froze, his heart beating fast. He grabbed
Tarini's arm as she tried to pass him.

"No," he said. "Let
me go first."

He had no spear with him, so he
held out a knife in front of him and stepped carefully towards the
entrance of a shelter that looked as though a sneeze would tumble it.

"Ohhh... motherrrr...."

Diggers. It had to be Diggers.
But how? How?

A figure emerged and Stopmouth
almost gutted it with his knife. He caught himself just in time.
"Vishwakarma? Are... are you all right?"

"I'm all right." Very
few words indeed for a man who normally unleashed an excited stream
of babble.

"Motherrr..." the sound
came from inside.

"You didn't... you didn't
kill Sanjay, did you?"

Vishwakarma hung his head and
tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. "I had to do it. You
rescued Indrani, didn't you? I heard that story. I heard Rockface
tell it more than once how you took her back from them."

"They'd had her less than a
day," said Stopmouth. "Her feet were still intact."

"You said she had a belly
full of grubs, didn't you? And that she threw them up later on? I
thought... I thought Sanjay would do the same. But they won't come
up." He squeezed more tears from his eyes. "He won't stop
calling, he won't stop... He's... he's more than a friend to me. Do
you understand?"

"You are brothers?"

"Motherrrr..."

Vishwakarma groaned too, as
though he felt the pain caused by the grubs himself; as though their
cry for help were his own. "I know he has to be killed. I know
it, I know it. But I can't. It should be me, his... his friend. But I
can't. That face of his. I can't do it."

"It's all right," said
Stopmouth. "I would be proud to end his suffering for you."

Sanjay's cries grew louder, so
loud in fact, that it was almost enough to smother the clumsy
footsteps of a great crowd approaching. Stopmouth looked up to see at
least twenty Ship People emerging from between the gaps in the
dwellings. The cruel women from before were there, but so too was
Ekta, the Warden with powerful muscles under her dark skin. Nobody
said anything. Vishwakarma continued to weep and even Sanjay
quietened. Stopmouth could feel Tarini grow tense at his side.

Finally, the crowd split apart to
allow two large men to come forward, carrying Dharam between them. At
his back stood Dr. Narindi, nervous, but curious. Dharam gave that
famous grin, the one that lifted only one side of his mouth, while
his left arm hung before him on a sling.

"I thought you would be more
of a challenge, savage," he said. "Less than a month, it
took to bring you down. Did you really think you could turn us into
labourers? Really? We who gave everything, who risked everything, to
reach the stars?"

Stopmouth should have been
afraid—fear kept a hunter alive, after all. But instead, the
sight of Dharam brought only anger. "What choice do you have
anyway?" he said. "Your Warship can never leave this world
again. You will have to fight the Diggers. You will have to eat too,
and all of that means you'll either be hunting or working no matter
what you may think."