by C M Weller
Sahra shrugged, "Guess. You new?" They had to be new. They were too clean and too fat to be from anywhere Sahra knew. They were almost as fat as the pets. And they had cloth over their arms. Nobody, not even the pets she'd seen, had cloth over their arms. Only the masters had that.
Sahra made up her mind then and there to stay out of their reach. They had to be dangerous.
The woman with the man-short hair and the too-smart almond eyes spoke like she was playing hop-hop with her words. "Yes - we are. We need to find - a certain place. Thirty-seven Jay. Do you know where it is?"
"Three Seven Juliet?" asked Sahra. She'd never heard of 'jay', but she knew 'juliet'. It was a girl's name from way-way before everything.
"This is pointless," the man was darker in the shadows than the woman, but not as brown as Dotti and her friends were before the masters put patterns on their skin. "She doesn't know what you're talking about, and if we let her go, she'll talk."
Like anyone'd sit still enough to listen if'n I did, thought Sahra.
"Julian, hush."
The last laugh at his name and the new one ganged up on Sahra and busted out of her from her tummy up-ways.
"What the hell is so goddamn funny, kid?" snapped the man.
"Y'r name Juliet," Sahra fought to get the words out between laughs. "'Assa girl name."
The woman fought to keep her own laughs down, but her dark eyes glittered with them.
"There is a difference," said the man through his teeth, "between Julian and Juliet."
The woman cleared her throat and wiped the smiles out of her face. "If you show us how to get there, I can give you some candy..."
Sahra bit her lip. Treats were well and good, but she needed something better. "Y'got pow'r cells?"
"...pa-ur?" copied the man.
"Sshh," hissed the woman. "My name is Eva. What's yours?"
Sahra thought about lying. Liars went to hell when they died. And they got hurt when they were found out, alive. Some of them got a trip to hell real quick, too. "Sahra."
"We don't have power cells on us, but we do have some other things."
"Y'got tools in 'at box?" Sahra asked. "Kinda want s'm tools."
The man smiled like he wished he had master's teeth. Brand-new and razor sharp in the bargain. "Sure..." he dug one out. "This one's called a 'hammer'. Want to see what it can do to your mercenary little bones?"
The woman clapped her hand over the man's mouth and ripped the tool out of his hands, slamming it into the small box between them. "If you scare her off, it could be days before we see any other help. Every minute wasted is another minute when the Tu'atta could find us."
They were dangerous! They just named the masters. Not even at breath-level loud.
That sort of thing got you burned up alive.
"Just shut up and let me handle this, and maybe we'll live," the woman turned her kind face back on as she turned back to face Sahra. "We can give you some of our spares. Not too many, though. We need them for... something else."
Sahra did her best to give them the stink-eye. "You ain't any of them rebels, is you?"
"No, of course not."
"Good," said Sahra. "They nearly kill't us jus' last week. I been meanin' t' give 'em all a kickin'." She carefully juggled herself and her cart down to their level. "You foller. No talkin'. These tubes make the sound go on f'r effur."
Eva made a face at Juliet. He made a face back, but they followed like good, quiet little mice. All the way to Three Seven Juliet. This was a tube near another piece of the station's reason for being. Sorting ore. She could even see Darvan through the little holes in the metal.
A different thing came out of the box. It looked... evil.
"What'cha doin'?" said Sahra. She knew it in her heart, but she wanted so hard for it to not be true that she had to ask.
"Striking a blow for freedom, kid," said Juliet. He put a thin, shiny rod into the middle of it and it lit up. There were numbers in those lights. They started, very slowly, going backwards.
Sahra thought of the meanest words she had. "Y'all're goin' straight t' hell ya damn crosswired spongebrains."
She smacked the closest one with all the muscle she had and crawled away as fast as she could. Think. There was no way she had any power to stop them doing what they were doing. Especially now. And she couldn't turn up to Darvan with Simy and tools in her cart. And she didn't have time to go all the way down to the old ore processing. But there were ways she could get Simy, and maybe her tools, most of the way down to old ore processing.
"Simy, come out," she whispered, stopping at the join where a small tunnel - too small for any kind of rat - went nearly straight down to their secret place. She dropped the tools, first. Knowing what they paid for, she almost didn't care what happened to them. She hugged him, kissed him goodbye, and helped him into the chute. "Go on home. Hurry. I gotta run."
She didn't look back. There was no time. She was already heading the wrong way from running away from the spongehead rebels. She wasn't going to think about going back. Which meant she had to take three different turns to come out of a wall near the real door to ore sorting. Masters stared at her, but as long as she didn't look at their faces, she was fine. Many chose to ignore rats of all kinds.
Her heels kicked the cart as she ran for the door. Not ten paces away, but it felt like way too far.
"Duvi," she started screaming as soon as she was inside. "Duvi! Duvi! Y'awnouttahere! I seed a bomb! There's a bomb inna walls! Eff'ryone gotta RUN!"
"Hold up, hold up. What?"
Sahra stared at him for five breaths of forever. She had to talk slow so he could understand? Argh! "Bomb. In. The. WAALLLLSS! RUUUUNNNNNN!"
The Taan master guarding them all was out the door first, setting off alarms as the humans poured out into the hall-paths meant only for the masters.
Sahra's hand gripped Darvan's way too hard , and he gripped her just as fast. Her heels kicked up the cart and scattered her findings behind her. Her legs burned. Her lungs burned. Her heart felt like it was stabbing her with each beat. They got around a corner. Raced for the next one.
There was no planet-shattering kaboom. Sahra heard the start of a bang, but after that, it was a big, loud whine. There was a wall of air that pushed them down and burned their backs and made her ears pop all at once.
The last thing she knew before the dark swallowed her up was the hard grip of Darvan's hand slipping away.
*
Eon cringed when the bomb went off. Old memories merged with his imagination and supplied too many details. Sahra, trying to make her brother understand and falling into babble, incinerated in an instant.
Sahra, just barely able to drag her brother to the door, roasted alive before she could die from the concussive blast.
Sahra, pierced by shrapnel and bleeding out in the dark.
And him, unable to help at all.
Eon took up the tools into a pseudopod. Contemplated their feel. They were simple things. No need for power greater than the twisting force of a human arm.
She could do things with the recharger, with this.
He could still 'lose' them.
But that would betray her. Even if he was betraying her memory.
It took him hours, but he managed to crawl to her high shelf. After that, it was simple to place her new tools up there. Next to her other ones.
Even if she never came back, it felt better to know they were waiting there.
He hoped she would come back.
He was starting to like her hugs.
*
A constant note. Loud and everywhere. Inside and outside of her head. The feel of her harness was gone. So was the feel of Darvan's hand. Panic bought her all the way back to real life.
Staring right into the face of a master medic.
Sahra squeaked, or thought she did, and scrunched her eyes shut.
A talon tapped her forehead. Very gently. Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap. Taptap.
Light shone in h
er eyes when she opened them. Sahra blinked and squinted against it. She tried to say, "Where Duvi?", but the sound she heard came as a low womp-wompwomp behind the everywhere-note.
She carefully sat up, finding Darvan on another bed near her. He was moving his mouth, but Sahra couldn't hear anything but the note. Sahra waved until she got Darvan looking at her and tried a, "Can you hear me?" even though all she heard was womping.
Darvan moved his mouth and shook his head, pointing to his ear.
Sahra stuck her finger in one of hers and jiggled it. Wax, and no blood. That had to mean her hearing would come back soon enough.
Wouldn't it?
She didn't know who to ask. Or how to understand when her ears wouldn't work.
Would the masters kill her? Eat her? Or just leave her to rot somewhere because it was too expensive to waste food, water or air on a deaf slave.
Darvan must have been thinking the same things, because he put his forefinger and thumb in a circle over his heart. Have faith, it's going to be okay.
Sahra huddled up in place and hugged her knees, each hand holding the other shoulder. She felt cold and afraid and lost and alone, no matter how many other slaves were in the same, big, too-clean room.
The only sound she could hear was the one note.
A master was walking between the rows and rows of beds. Counting. Jotting down things in a portable data tablet.
More slaves were coming in, forcing the masters to move the beds around and this one Taan to start over. Lots of tunnel rats. Sahra could see their mouths flapping as if they were trying to shout, 'ullyully uxinfree' but weren't hearing themselves or anyone else.
Sahra wanted to know if they all heard the same one note.
Sahra wanted to know if there were too many slaves to just get rid of. She didn't see any guns, but there were lots of masters fighting with each other. Staring each other down and baring their teeth, and making short, mean moves with their claws.
First, the beds were moved two-together. Darvan nudged up close to her and put his arm around her. Then the beds were moved four-together. Then they were all shoved in as close and as tight as they could get and still more people were coming in.
Some were bleeding. Some were so still that Sahra had to stare to make sure they were still alive.
She started counting, but ran out of real numbers she knew very fast.
"...twenny-twenny-twenny one, twenny-twenny-twenny two..." she was trying to say behind the one note.
Darvan, snugged up against her all kind, said, "I can hear you. What--" and then his voice was gone. Lost on the one note.
Sahra kept counting, and Darvan put his head back against hers. "Hey squirt. Can you hear this?"
"Yeah," she said. "I can't hear me, but I c'n hear you. Howzat even work?"
"Dunno. Lookit the masters. They're fighting over us."
"Can you tell what they sayin'?"
"No. I was never good at lip-reading."
"At what the whut?"
"Lip. Reading. You watch the mouths and guess what's getting said by the shapes."
Sahra felt like a light had come on inside her. Of course it'd be hard to read master mouths. For one, they didn't like being looked at. And if you did look, then their mouths weren't as wriggly as a humans. They sort of moved like they were saying ba-ba-ba all the time. And humans couldn't see all the colours they used to make their feelings clear.
But if she watched their crests and talons and tails, and the way they moved... Especially when they weren't looking at her...
She could start to guess.
Sahra pointed, for a very short time, at the masters who were still arguing by the doorway. "The one on this side wants us all kill't. The one on that side doesn't, I reckon. Sayin' sumpin 'bout it bein' a waste o' ree-zor-sez."
"Resources," said Darvi. "I get it. Even if they did a breeding program, they'd have to wait for 'em all to get growed up."
Sahra watched the fighting masters, and the scared humans coming together in clumps. Some held each other. Some held on to themselves. Lots were crying. The air was starting to smell all sweaty and smoky.
"Who was th' girl?"
"Girl?"
"Th' one you was makin' goo-goo eyes at when I runned in."
"Kera Matherson."
So that's the one who was helping Darvan catch trouble by not working so much. Pretty enough, Sahra guessed. Too brown-haired to be red enough to be a pet, but not brown-haired enough to make people think she wasn't a snob.
"She purty," said Sahra.
"Yeah."
"D'ya see 'er here?"
"Not yet," he said.
Sahra started looking for her, too. It gave her something better to do than trying to count without enough numbers.
*
More sabotage. Either some of them were getting better at their bombs, or there was a Tu'att with their eyes wrongly on the throne of the Majestrix - long may she reign.
Graak thought it odd that the warning came from a mentally damaged rat. He'd thought that they couldn't go as far as Ore Sorting. But then, rats inevitably turned up in unexpected places. He remembered getting up in the early morning to calm his nerves with some illicit reading material. He'd hidden it away, like many of his compatriots, in a recess inside the wall.
To this day, he did not know who was more shocked. The three-year-old human he found there, or him for finding it.
He'd bought a lock-box the next day. Graak could not bear to think of those vermin touching his belongings.
He had something of a chain of events, given the accounts of the officers present. The Rebels crept in and planted a bomb at a power line. It didn't have to be advanced to cause damage. The rat, seeking credits, found more than she bargained for and reasoned correctly that family members were in peril.
After that, according to Kadyn Dreel, the rat found her way in and "hollered a mess of gibberish" before humans and Tu'att alike went scrambling for safety.
Leaving only a few fatalities.
Humans too old or too stupid to get out of the way quickly enough.
No real loss.
*
Sahra had no idea how much time had passed, but being scared slowly drained away and now everyone was bored and tired and almost everybody had to pee.
Other slaves were trying. Some carried a bucket for the men to pee into. Others had a funny cross between a seat with a hole in it and a bowl for the women. They had a hard time because there were so many people and so much pee.
There was even a big cart that was all a big bag held up with struts. The slaves with buckets and seat-bowls kept tipping pee in there and running back to the next person.
Sahra had already tied her legs into a tight knot and was trying to make her bottom into a sealed area by muscle power alone. She, like all the others struck deaf by the blast, was too scared to leave the bed for fear of what the masters would do. She kept a worried eye on the ones with the seat-bowls and tried not to wet herself.
It was getting painful.
At last, the buckets and seat-bowls got to the bed she now shared with Darvan and three strangers. She called down blessings from heaven on all the people fetching pee and wished them fast feet and no spills.
She couldn't hear if they said anything. She couldn't see their faces for the masks they wore.
Sahra did understand why they wore them when the big bag-cart passed by. If there was ever a smell worse than the pee of hundreds of people, Sahra hadn't found it yet.
She huddled up in a corner of the bed, sort-of leaning against Darvan, who had the nearest corner to hers. What shift was it? When could they go home?
When in the name of all the angels was the one note going to go away?
Sahra yawned, now that she didn't have the pain to keep her awake. Even though she was hungry, it was hard to keep her eyes open.
Darvan's voice came through the forever note. "Stay awake, shrimp."
"'M tired..."
"Ya know what a co
ncussion is?"
"No...?
"You get 'em from a big whack t' the head. An' if ya fall asleep? You die."
Sahra was not tired at all any more. "I don' wanna die."
Darvan kissed her forehead, then leaned back so their heads were touching again. "So why'd you come fetch me?"
"You m' brofar," Sahra shrugged. "I don' like what'cha do, but... I be sad if'n you died."
Darvan let her go and hunched in on himself. Watching people, watching masters. Listening to the one note go on, because it was all he could hear. And looking like he was chewing on a very tough, very sour bit of gristle.
*
Rats - real rodent rats, not the human-child tunnel rats - flooded Eon's chamber. He was glad of them, and flipped a few switches that closed off their egress.
He was not fast, but he did know that rats found his smell to be tempting. All he had to do was sit there and let them approach. And then bite back.
He would have fresh meat for quite a while.
*
Sahra watched the masters come and go. The Taan went around one last time, counting and making notes. Then she reported to a Vasht who was boss of the room. The Vasht left and came back with a Barba. No. Three Barbas, and they all spent some time arguing before they all left and bought back a Kuin. All medal-ribbons and shiny rank-marks. When she bared her teeth, Sahra could see they were all metal. Her hide had gone white in patches, but she kept her talons sharp and a gun at her hip.
Sahra quickly pretended she was watching a human family near the door and had always been watching them. But she kept secretly watching the Kuin.
The Kuin was not impressed. And unhappy. And getting pretty mad.
That Kuin left and came back with three more, who were also not happy and old and all girl masters. They had another argument and went away again.
Everyone - well, all of the humans - looked at each other like they wished they could hear what anyone was saying so they could figure out what was going on.
Time passed super slow. Sahra's tummy tickled, then pinched, and wobbled inside her as her hunger grew.
She'd missed lunch, and maybe it was heading to dinnertime, but nobody had fed anyone. She felt thirsty and her head was starting to hurt.
Just as she was starting to ask herself if it was okay to eat her own fingernails, the slaves who had taken away all the pee came back. This time, they were taking beds away and lining people up from oldest to youngest.
