Ohnee was watching her, and Fox dropped her gaze to the table. Ohnee made an mm-hmm noise. “What’s wrong?”
Fox pulled out the amoeba rock, set it on the table between her hands, and told them about the last night and day. When she got to the part where she got hurt, they insisted on inspecting her bandaging job. Then they made her eat. At the mention of the rock’s reaction to the drop of Ryuu’s liquor, though she elided somewhat over getting drunk, Fox felt them exchange a glance past her. When she got to the end, they sat, mulling it all over.
“Well,” Ohnee said eventually, “I think we can expect these flaks will be referred to Jope and Jope will be up here wanting your rock in the morning. Pretty sure whoever’s on security won’t let the flaks in during the night, though.”
“It’s Ayo,” Fox said. “But the one flak, Blanchard, she has that wheezer.”
“She uses that on Ayo and whoever’s got angel duty will take her down,” Ohnee said, referring to the second, up-above guard always posted. “We’ve got the night, and you need to sleep, child.”
Fox’s fingers rested on the amoeba rock’s rough curve. “I should trade it to the combine, shouldn’t I? In exchange for whatever we can get out of them.” She closed her eyes, listening to the winds. “Where will we go if we leave Sloe? Or—what should I ask for—should I leave it to—to Jope?” Jope, fuck.
Taf made a thoughtful noise. He put out a hand, fine-boned and elegant despite the mining scars, and set it gently on the rock between Fox’s hands. An expression that Fox couldn’t read shivered over his features.
“Taf?” Ohnee frowned, glancing at the rock.
“‘Life exists in more forms than we can predict or comprehend,’” he said, voice soft as the silk of his robe.
Ohnee was still frowning. “What’s that from? And why are you quoting it?”
“A monograph on biodiversity by a long-dead speciationist.” He drew his hand back. “What do we think the combine will do with Fox’s rock?”
Ohnee pursed her lips. “Are you saying we should care?”
Taf looked at Fox.
“I care,” Fox said, as much to the rock as to her moms. “But—I want to, I need to do the right thing. For you guys and the co-op and—everyone.” The right thing at the right time. Please Pisque, let me not be graceless in this.
* * *
Unwilling to let the rock go, Fox slept with it tucked between one arm and her body. Curled up on her old cot, she was secure in the knowledge that she’d hear any approaching problem well before it arrived.
The defining feature of the small space that Ohnee and Taf made home was a panel of flexi—one of Fox’s earliest finds—set into the outside wall. It gave them a window overlooking the ice and breccia sea that edged part of Drumtown.
When she woke, Fox stared out over the sea’s frozen waves, low fog snugged into its jagged undulations, shadows sharp and long over the deeper troughs. The ice and breccia shifted, minutely, slowly, over time; some wit had dubbed it the Sloe Sea and it had stuck. Fox could just see the edge of the co-op–run ice-dredging works, which fed Drumtown’s supplemental water supply. The window shuddered and flexed in the wind off the sea; the whole silo shook with it sometimes, a music of her childhood.
It was shortly after the window’s installation that Fox had moved out of the co-op, after her disagreement with Jope. Moved out before she could be kicked out.
Hearing the sounds of Taf and Ohnee up and about, she rolled over.
“You guys owe me.”
Taf set a bulb of tea beside her and kissed her forehead, stood back up in a rustle of silk. “We gave you life, darling.”
“Yeah, but I gave you the best view in Drumtown.” She sat up cross-legged, the rock in her lap. “Any word?” she asked Ohnee, who sat at the table with her own bulb of tea.
“Nothing. Your flaks probably had to check with whoever sent them. Like I said, combine is leery of messing with us since the last dustup.”
“Been thinking about it,” Taf said from behind the bedroom screen. “I think it was probably Tilson who sent them. Some on the council think Tilson knows the real reason the combine kept us on Sloe.” Tilson was the highest combine exec on Sloe. Taf, who cultivated connections wherever he could, had some on the council. He emerged clothed in loose thermals that he managed to make look elegant.
Fox traced a finger over the spiral amoeba, listening in on bits of other conversations in the huge silo, feeling multiple shifts of air and motion on her skin. Someone on the next floor down was grinding their teeth in sleep, and over on the other side of the silo, old Minch was playing her viola. If Fox focused, she could feel the settling of the morning fog over the Sloe Sea.
Closer, Taf was sprinkling date sugar—another of the co-op’s contributions to the Drumtown economy, made from a date speciation grown in its hydroponics—on warm corn cakes.
“The combine,” Ohnee went on, “gave up its right to any Sloe salvage when it abandoned us. Tilson’s a suit leak for being loyal to them, but that’s his affair.”
Fox frowned. “I’m sorry I brought trouble on you guys. I just…”
“What trouble, a couple of flaks?” Taf waved a hand with a dismissive t-cha. He’d loosened his braids and his hair hung like rippled dark water as he set plates of corn cakes on the table.
Fox took her seat, one hand still on the rock, which she set by her plate. With her other hand she put a finger to the date sugar on the cakes, pressing to collect a finger full of the sticky grains and put the finger in her mouth as she had since she’d been a child.
At the rich burst of sweetness in her mouth, a jolt translated between the rock and her hand, all through her. The spiral amoeba flushed from indigo into spectrum, blue to green, gold, orange, crimson, rose.
In the ensuing silence, Fox heard several pairs of boots on the stairs, accompanied by familiar voices. One was Jope; the other two were Blanchard and peeing man.
“Jope’s coming with the flaks.”
Taf stood and gathered his hair in a twist. “Right. I’ll put on the kettle for more tea.”
* * *
It was all very civil.
“Tilson says we can get replacement of the collectors and a new generator,” Jope said, seated in Taf’s chair, big hand curled like a five-legged rock spider about a bulb of tea. He inclined his head in Fox’s direction. “So, you can see why I had to bring this to you—” He leaned forward then and actually looked at Fox. “You’ve always put the co-op first, Fox-girl, I know you have, and your people.”
“Jope,” Ohnee said, on a note of warning. She sat in her usual spot and Fox took some strength from her Ohnee-ness. Taf leaned against the counter, arms folded.
Blanchard stood behind Jope, menacing in her block-of-bland-protein way, while peeing man—whose name was Voisin—sprawled, gangly and impertinent, on Fox’s cot.
Fox folded her arms, mirroring Taf, feeling the rock inside her suit. “Not good enough. Collectors, generator, a supply of new filaments—and transport off Sloe. Or no deal.”
Voison, nee peeing man, rubbed a finger over one eyebrow and said, “Technically, everything in the mines is combine property.”
“Technically,” Taf echoed him, “the combine was contractually required to have lifted us off Sloe when the mines closed. So—”
“—technically,” Ohnee chimed in, “the combine has forfeited its right to much of anything.”
“Hey now,” Jope said, spreading his hands, “we’re dealing in good faith here, aren’t we?”
Fox grit her teeth, then repeated, “Collectors, generators, filaments, transport—” she paused, thinking of what Ryuu had said about their life on Sloe, about her moms and how they’d worked to make a life here, and then added, “for those who want it—with automated shipments to continue.”
Jope drew a breath and said, “Girl,” but Blanchard leaned forward and dropped a hand on his shoulder, stilling him.
“I believe Tilson can agree to that,” she
said.
“But can the combine be trusted to actually deliver?” Ohnee’s mutter wasn’t quiet.
Jope rubbed a hand over his mouth, clearly somewhat taken aback by Blanchard’s capitulation. He gave Fox a narrow stare. “What is this thing?”
“Yes,” Blanchard said, “time to produce the object, I believe.”
“No,” Fox said and felt the ripple of reactions through all present, muscles tightening, blood rushing as heartbeats sped up. “We need guarantees.” Her senses soaked in data from everyone in the room and she knew it was all down to the rock. It was waking up, had been for a while now.
“Agreed,” Ohnee said. “The combine hasn’t banked any trust with us.”
“We’re giving you your guarantee,” Blanchard said.
Fox examined the flak’s face, the twitch of a muscle in her cheek, the steadiness of her gaze. She felt a prickling awareness of muscle tension and shift, watched Blanchard’s hand.
Jope looked from the flak to Fox. “Is transport off Sloe really on the table here?”
Both flaks nodded once and Blanchard said, “It is.” They had sub-aural com contact with Tilson, Fox realized.
Jope breathed out, looking like he’d been hit by a pocket of heavy gee.
Fox tried to imagine life elsewhere, off Sloe, in the glamorous wider universe she’d been told about, but remembered only in vague imprints and flash-stills from her four-year-old self’s mosaic bits of memory.
She looked at her moms and realized they’d never really expressed any urgent desire to get back to that universe, to leave Sloe. There were those who did—like the scientist who found the rock, like Jope—but many who didn’t, who had made Sloe home, through bitter hard work, cussedness, and tenacity. They’d made it theirs.
It could all go sideways tomorrow, but it was home.
The right thing. Pisque, what is the right thing? She felt the rock—she wasn’t sure what it did, but a flush went through her, richer and smoother than clean oxygen or Ryuu’s liquor.
“What are you waiting for?” Blanchard said. “Show us the object.”
“From what Fox and that scientist say,” Taf said, “it’s not just an ‘object.’”
Blanchard shifted. “So what?”
Fox’s gaze hadn’t strayed from Blanchard’s hand. Now she watched as that hand—triggered by something in Fox’s expression, she thought—moved to a pocket.
Out came the wheezer.
And Fox knew what the right thing was. She met Blanchard’s pale gaze. “So, you and the combine, you can kiss Pisque’s sweet ass.”
Jope raised his hands as Blanchard took a step toward Fox. “Calm now, just give us some time. No need for that. Fox girl—” He broke off as Ohnee stood.
But Blanchard tapped a brief staccato into the wheezer, aimed at Fox. Fox’s breath caught, lungs going tight.
Pulling a long, wheezing breath, Fox shook her head.
Everything slowed down, the moment tunneling down into the contact between her and the rock. Warmth reached up from it, over her heart into her throat, easing straining lungs; suddenly she could breathe, whatever signal Blanchard’s device sent rendered null.
The rock was suddenly so warm it almost burned and Fox pulled it out of her suit. She ran her fingers over its rough surfaces, the intricate facets of the spiral amoeba, felt the pattern and energy of it pressing into the world, waves that never stopped.
Life, in more forms than they could predict or comprehend.
Fox closed her eyes, lifted the rock to her mouth and whispered on a breath—precious, remarkable breath—“Go.”
Her blood beat hard in the vast splinter of a moment before the rock shivered open in a flash of heat. Fox opened her eyes.
Rock debris fell away, a sift of thick, geologic dust. The air filled with scents, smoky liquor, date sugar, and something sweet as a kiss, endless and deep and wonderful as nothing else, something Fox couldn’t name.
A shout of life and vibrancy spoke in tattoo over her skin. Sharp breaths and curses came from around the room, as that tattoo of life touched each of them.
The vibration of the air escalated into singing, sub-aural, so low and deep it hurt. Blanchard cursed as the wheezer went to pieces in her hand. The flexi window shattered on the thrum and cold wind whipped in.
Fox could still feel it in all her senses, the entity that had been the rock. Then her senses were her own—but for a wisp of promise and the knowledge that it was still there, with them on Sloe, that it wouldn’t abandon them.
Her leg really fucking hurt.
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Jessica Reisman
Art copyright © 2017 by Jon Foster
Bourbon, Sugar, Grace Page 3
