Pet Trade

by Carol Van Natta

  “Why do you need to?”

  “Because ten months ago, I stole this freighter and escaped. The CPS wants me back, and not to return me to my squad.” He held up his cybernetic hand and made a fist. “I’m still tuned up to enhanced Jumper speed and strength, which is illegal outside the Corps. I really am a cyborg. Point is, my cybernetics have enough experimental nanotech to buy Del’Arche’s entire settlement debt. I’m the only survivor of ten other ‘volunteers.’” He rocked on his heels. “When my signal pings any official comm system, the system records my unique comm signature. If that got back to the main Concordance net, it would likely trigger a galaxy-wide detain-and-restrain order on me that says I’m dangerously delusional, and offers a juicy reward to keep me iced until the fastest CPS cruiser can get here.”

  “I’m sorry, Axur. That farkin’ flatlines.” She didn’t know what else to say. No minder talent in the universe could change the past, and she didn’t know any minder forecasters who could advise him on how to improve his future. She limped to her vet bag on the table to check that it was sealed tight.

  Axur grabbed his coat and step into his combat-style boots. “I’ll clear the path again and warm up the flitter.”

  She eyed his everyday work pants. “Do your legs feel cold?”

  “No, they’re internally heated to normal body temperature. My processor interface tells me what the external temperature is.” He smiled ruefully. “My ass and dangly bits get cold, though.”

  She laughed at his phrasing. He had the oddest euphemisms for genitalia.

  He bunched his hair on top of his head so he could slip on his fancy transparent snow hood. “Some Jumpers choose to have the full input-to-nerve mapping done, to make the synthskin and cybernetics feel as real as possible, but I know the endocrine system isn’t there, and I didn’t want to be distracted by phantom sensations.” He flexed his cybernetic hand. “The researchers did it for my arm without asking what I wanted. After I landed, I had to hack into my own processor to make it quit telling me about the burns. Even though I have the key, it took me days because of the evolving cryptogon.”

  He lifted his heavy cloak and pushed his head through the round opening, then sealed it. “I’ll be on earwire.”

  He slid open the door to reveal a snow-covered wolf, who danced back in excitement when she realized Axur was coming outside.

  His tone signaled in her earwire. “Feel free to raid the cabinets or cold box if you’re still hungry. You had a stressful night.” Heavy breaths of exertion punctuated his words.

  “I’m good. I’ve been looking at your decor. Very mad techno. Did they teach you that in Jumper school?”

  “Some. I learn languages more quickly when I busy my hands. The CPS researchers gave me comm specialist courses, and started training me to use the new tech I’m carrying. Even trained me how to repair my cybernetics. When they gave me control during testing and forgot to turn it off over lunch, I cracked their internal security and read everything, not just the sanitized version they gave me, which is how I found out about the nine other test-subject fatalities. I sure as hell didn’t want to be number ten.”

  “I’m glad you escaped.” As she said the words, she realized her life would be immeasurably less interesting without Axur in it. Because he wasn’t there in front of her, it was easier to ask the question that had been bothering her. “Are you staying away from Tanimai because you’re afraid someone in town would betray you to the CPS?” Someone like Nuñez, or her.

  “No. If and when the CPS captures me, they wouldn’t care who they else hurt, including anyone they thought I’d shared secrets with. Out here, they only catch me, and leave the town alone.”

  The implications of his story sank in. “You’re just like Kivo. You’re a failed experiment they want to dissect.” She took his silence to mean he’d already thought of that. “Why did you tell me all this now?”

  The answer was a long time in coming.

  “Because if you come up here someday and I’m gone, I wanted you to know that it wasn’t my choice.”

  The thought of losing him to that fate terrified her worse than the fear response when the man got too close. And if that wasn’t a complete contradiction, she didn’t know what was. She felt like she ought to say something. “I would take care of your animals.”

  “Thank you. They’re my family.”

  “Don’t you have any of your own?” Not that he could go home while he was still a fugitive, but maybe he could see them again someday. People lived to a hundred and seventy and more with modern medicine.

  “Dead. Con-Kella Pandemic of 3215. I was raised in group homes. The Jumper Corps became my family after that. What about you?”

  “Only child, or at least I was. My parents worked long hours and left me home a lot. I made friends with every stray animal in the neighborhood, and figured I’d work at a rescue shelter.” She gave a self-deprecatory laugh. “And look at me now, on top of the world.”

  “I’m at the barn. I’ll send Serena to walk you down to the flitter.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath and spoke before she lost her nerve. “You could come with me.”

  “Why, are you feeling sick?”

  “No, it’s just… I don’t… You should...” The unexpected rise of emotion tangled her tongue. “My place is hard to find and well protected. If I show you where it is, and you need somewhere to hide, you could go there.”

  The silence stretched. She wished she could see his face, because maybe he wasn’t interested, or thought the idea was lame.

  “Okay.”

  An hour later, she landed the flitter on the snow-dusted gravel of her homestead’s landing pad. Nuñez had told her to keep the flitter until the next day. The storm had finally stopped, but left deep snow behind.

  Bethnee checked her security system’s activity monitor, then opened the flitter doors. She collected her kit, locked the doors, and caught Axur’s eye. “Stay on my trail so you don’t get lost.”

  She led the way up the path to her home. Under the obscuring snow, it looked like ramshackle stacks of logs between a cluster of tall boulders. Kivo whined excitedly as she opened her front door and led him and Axur-the-yak inside. He was only her second human visitor. She’d have never believed she’d ever allow a man into her house if she hadn’t been living it at that moment.

  She turned on the lights, then pointed to the hooks by the door. “Hang your stuff there.”

  She’d already sent her talent out to her animals to tell them she was coming, and warn them about the stranger. Axur’s tribe comprised extraordinary, valuable pets. Hers were civilization’s discards, like her.

  After Axur wrestled off his coat while leaving his shielding cloak in place, he stepped into the cabin’s common area to look around. She’d purposefully left this part of her home looking primitive and half-dilapidated to fool any would-be intruders. She saw on his face the moment he started noticing the little features that would make an uninvited guest’s life miserable.

  “Impressive.” He gave her a sly smile. “I’m glad I’m not your enemy.”

  “There’s more outside. I’ll show you before dark. I add to them when I get a new idea. I need a place to feel safe.”

  “Copy that.” He tilted his head toward the back, hidden in shadows. “That where you really live?”

  “Yeah, come on back.”

  7

  * GDAT 3241.255 *

  Axur decided that calling Bethnee’s place a cave was like calling Kivo a pet—true as far as it went, but a wholly inadequate description. The log cabin front concealed the sealed entrance to an extensive cave system. Its main feature was a subterranean hot spring that she’d taken full advantage of to create habitats for herself and her animals. He especially envied the temperature-regulated pool she’d built by shaping a natural depression in the cave and installing a series of pumps and pipes.

  Until he saw her relaxed in her own environment, he never realized how effectively she hid
her vibrancy and unconventional beauty. She’d even come within centimeters of him a couple of times without flinching. A strong desire to touch her and be touched back arced through him. He locked his knees and shoved his fists in his pockets under his poncho. It wasn’t just general lust, because he didn’t want physical affection from the other women he’d interacted with in town, and males didn’t flux his drive. He shouldn’t have agreed to come, but loneliness and longing overrode his reservations.

  He shoved his conflict into the frustratingly large box of things he couldn’t control and focused on something he could. “So, I’ve met everyone except Jynx.”

  Bethnee grinned. “I saved her for last, because you’ll like her best.”

  “It’ll be hard to top a white weasel trained to steal.” He pointed toward her indoor garden, which she’d created by widening a natural cave cathedral and piping in circulating hot water and air. “Not to mention, an indoor bamboo forest to keep a half-blind red panda happy.”

  “Come see.”

  She took him through a narrow, curving corridor that led to a noticeably cooler part of the cave. The near-frosty air was a shock after the heat of the garden. Kivo’s attention was riveted on the tall rows of stacked crates along the wall.

  From between an opening in the stacks, a fully-grown snow leopard padded in. She glanced once at him and Kivo in seeming boredom as she gracefully jumped up onto the battered table. She sat and curled her long tail around her, watching Bethnee.

  He started to speak, but froze when he was interrupted by a low, rusty-sounding half-growl from Jynx. “Uhm, is she torqued?”

  Bethnee laughed as she stretched a hand out and moved closer to sink her fingers into the thick fur on the cat’s neck. “No, that’s just her ‘hello.’ It’s called chuffing. You can come closer. It’s a dirty little secret in the planet terraform industry that the last of the snow leopards died in a zoo long before First Flight, and that all the ‘naturals’ are actually recreations. She’s designer, not feral. I’ve let her know that you and Kivo are my friends.”

  He edged closer, trying not to stress Bethnee but wanting a better look at the big cat’s left front leg. “I’ve never seen an animal with cybernetics.” The cat’s distinctive spotted fur ended with a ragged transition to the raw, articulated biometal model of a cat’s leg. The toes on the wide paw had lethal biometal claws. If she’d ever had synthskin—synthfur?—it was gone now.

  “And you probably won’t see another. Animal brains usually reject the motile processor input, even with complete nerve mapping and fluid sync. She’s unique, and worth a fortune.” Jynx chuffed again, showing her sharp carnivore’s teeth. “Nuñez found her at the spaceport, wrapped like a mummy, half-dead, in a secret compartment of a large-animal container.” Bethnee chuckled. “The yaks get nervous just smelling her, so Nuñez gave her to me. Besides, her visible biometal makes her a theft magnet. I can’t let her go out very often.”

  Following instinct, Axur held out both his human and cybernetic hands for Jynx to smell. He smiled when she rubbed her head on both, marking him with her scent. “Cats are cats.”

  “Yep.” She leaned her hip against the table. “I had a devious reason for inviting you here.”

  He grinned at her. “You’re the least devious person I know.”

  She snorted. “I’m the least tactful person you know. There’s a difference.” She pushed a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. His fingers tingled with the desire to find out if it felt as silky as it looked. “I was hoping you’d look at Jynx’s cybernetic biometal-to-bone interface and tell me what needs fixing. When she jumps down from more than a few meters, her shoulder collapses, and now she’s afraid of going up high.” She pointed to mountain of crates. “I had to move her den down to floor level, and that makes her nervous.”

  “I’m willing,” he said dubiously, “but I know absolute zero about leopard anatomy. We’d have to take her back to my place for the tools and computers. And even then, her cybernetics might be a whole different design.”

  “If we pool our skills and talents, I’d sure like to try.” She rubbed Jynx’s ear. “Humans have treated her so badly. She deserves the best life I can give her.”

  He’d have given anything to take Bethnee’s sadness away, but he’d used up his lifetime quota of miracles when he’d escaped the CPS researchers. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Four days later, Axur quickly carried forty kilos of chemmed snow leopard to the temporary exam table he’d rigged in his workroom. Jynx had made a bad jump the day before and was in constant pain.

  Bethnee looked everywhere but him. “Did this room used to be the nav pod?” Her hands trembled when she wasn’t focused on the leopard.

  “Yes.” He hunched over to lay Jynx on her side on the folded blankets. He maneuvered around to the other side of the table. “The landing drilled the freighter halfway into the mountain, so I took advantage of it and dug in more.” He smiled. “I didn’t win the hot-spring lottery like you did.”

  He pulled the big tech scanner down close to the leopard’s leg. “We’re in luck. She’s got a hidden jackwire port at the shoulder interface.” He pulled one of his longwires from the tray and held it out to Bethnee. “I’ll show you where, if you’ll insert it. When I run a diagnostic, tell me if it hurts her.”

  She bent close and inserted the wire with a steady hand. “Go.”

  He touched a control and watched the readout. “Standard processor, zero security. They must not have expected to lose her.” He frowned. “Battery is old-old style, and running low.” He looked at Bethnee. “I don’t know how your talent works, but can you check the interface area for temperature? Her processor is conserving battery power by reducing the leg’s internal heat generation. Probably feels like she’s constantly cold.” He put his human hand on Jynx’s shoulder at the interface to see if he could feel the difference.

  Bethnee’s eyes lost focus, a sign she was using her talent. “It feels numb to her, but it always has. I thought that was normal.” She frowned. “Damn, I think I missed a passive tracer, right at the interface. The cybernetics must have masked it.”

  He moved his hand aside so she could lean over and probe with delicate fingers.

  “It’s faint…” Her voice trailed off, and she straightened abruptly. “It’s in your hand.”

  “What?” He held up his hand and flexed his fingers. “Frelling hell. I removed the standard Jumper tracers and the extras in my cybernetics. I never thought to look elsewhere.”

  “You might have missed them, anyway. It’s pet grade. Tiny.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why, but ever since I healed Kivo, you’ve felt real to me, not like a ghost. I think I could tell you where the tracers are, if I get close enough.” She blew out a loud breath and looked at her shaking hands. “And if I don’t flatline.” She crossed her arms and shoved her hands under her armpits.

  Just great. The woman he most wanted to get close to was terrified at the thought of even touching him. “Let’s deal with Jynx first.”

  The fix was easy to describe—replace Jynx’s failing battery with one of his spares—and hard to achieve. What would have been a ten-minute procedure in a Jumper med center turned into three hours of guesswork and improvisation using repurposed equipment in his temporary lab. The trickiest part had been helping Jynx interpret and accept the full input from her cybernetic processor.

  Axur triggered two mealpacks as Bethnee encouraged the leopard to walk in circles around the couch.

  He eyed the weather through his only window. “We could take Jynx outside after lunch.”

  “Good.” Bethnee smiled. “She’s just humoring me, walking around in here. Thanks for giving up one of your batteries. At full strength, she’s amazing.”

  “It’s a good cause.” He wanted to tell Bethnee she was amazing, with her courage to fight through debilitating post-trauma stress to help her pets and his, but didn’t think she’d like the reminde
r. He pushed the heated tray across the counter toward her. “I’m glad the freighter had enough mealpacks for a decade, but I’m looking forward to growing season again. I was lucky the freighter was shipping seed starts and had a superb library in the shipcomp.”

  “I want to create a hydroponic garden.” She crossed to the counter and pulled out the mealpack’s utensils. “If it works for starships, it should work for the cave.”

  “I can print small flexible parts for you, like nozzles and connectors, if you can trade for lexo substrate.”

  She nearly choked. “You have a working printer?” She set her fork down and stared at him. “The only other printer within a hundred kilometers is owned by the settlement company, and they only take hard credit. You could trade for anything you wanted. Anything.”

  “I had no idea.” Once again, he was surprised at all the things he’d taken for granted in his former life.

  She frowned. “Actually, you might want to keep quiet until you read the settlement contract’s sections on salvage rights. Nuñez sent you a copy, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. “Yes.” He’d only read the part about homesteading, which said if he could improve a perimeter-marked plot of land for two years, it became his, and conferred legal resident status with it. If the company caught him before that, they’d haul him into the Concordance and charge him with trespass. And that was only if the relentless CPS didn’t find him first.

  Axur would bet hard credit that he and Bethnee were the only two people in the galaxy who had ever seen a cybernetic snow leopard and a formidable dire wolf play tag in the deep snow.

  Bethnee laughed when Jynx made an astonishing six-meter leap onto a boulder to avoid Serena’s lunge. He snuck a glance at Bethnee, enjoying her happiness. “Are you helping them get along?” He tapped his temple, to indicate her enviable minder talent.

  “A little. Mostly Jynx, because this isn’t her territory.”