by Mel Odom
She concentrated on the scar then traced the raised flesh with her forefinger and re-created the rhythm Scatter had pointed out to her. When her finger passed over her arm, only smooth skin remained. The scar was gone as if it had never been.
Glancing up, she saw Stampede watching her.
A hint of unease flashed in his dark eyes, but it quickly disappeared. "Neat trick, Red."
"Yeah." But she was uncomfortable with the newfound ability as well.
A dragonfly flitted in front of Scatter. His right hand moved so fast that Hella couldn't see it. When she could see it again, his hand was in front of him and he had the dragonfly trapped between his fingers.
Stampede shifted. "Fast. I've never seen anyone that fast."
Turning his hand over, Scatter inspected the insect. A moment later, he opened his fingers, and the dragonfly flew away unharmed.
"And I've never seen anything with that kind of control."
Scatter reflowed and stood facing them. He smiled. "I also have exceptionally good hearing. Thank you."
"Sure."
"Your world is not perfect, but it is fascinating."
"Don't let something fascinating kill you."
Hella grinned at Stampede's comment. "Didn't you have insects on your world?"
"Of course. But not in a long time. And not these insects."
"What happened to the insects?"
"They died. Everything organic on our world died." Scatter looked around. "There are no animals. No trees. No plants. Not even the oceans remain. The whole world is... fractal, to use Stampede's word. Of course, we can make landscapes the way we want them."
He held up a hand, and it flowed, quickly becoming a cattail similar to one in the nearby pond. Except that the cattail he made was silver, just like his skin. He frowned.
"Color is more difficult, and not everyone can agree on what color to make things." In the next instant, the silver cattail had perfect color and looked natural. "We can also shape the buildings we choose to have."
When the cattail became a hand again, tiny buildings rose up from his palm. One was an office building. Another was a pyramid. And a third was a log cabin.
Hella raised her hand and looked at it. She tried to morph it into a building, but it just became a weapon. "Will I be able to do that?"
"No." Scatter's hand flowed back into a hand, and he dropped it at his side.
"Why?"
"You were not made to do something like this." Scatter smiled. "But do not worry about that, Hella. You are perfect just as you are."
"Thanks." Hella morphed her hand back to normal.
"You are welcome."
Stampede snorted impatiently. "If you two are through playing games, we've got a lot of ground to cover."
Hella shouldered her kit and took the lead again, but she couldn't help watching Scatter take in the world around him and feeling sorry for him. She couldn't imagine a world like the one he described.
Of course, the good thing was that nothing on his world ever tried to kill him. And that got her to thinking, wondering what Pardot and Trammell intended to do with Scatter.
CHAPTER 21
Only a couple of hours later, Hella reached the spot where she and Stampede had left their discarded gear submerged in the small pond. Daisy's leash still hung from the tree, but the mountain boomer was gone. When she saw the rope pooled at the bottom of the tree, Hella grew instantly anxious.
Stampede put a hand on Hella's shoulder. "She won't have gone far, Red. Relax."
"I know." Hella reached into her pocket and took out the specially carved whistle she'd made. When she blew on it, the whistle produced a trill that sounded a lot like Daisy. Pausing, Hella looked around while Stampede hauled their gear out of the pond.
"You are looking for someone." Scatter stood beside Hella.
"Daisy."
"Vegetation?"
"No. A lizard." Hella examined the ground, reading the tracks Daisy had left. Judging from the way they crisscrossed, she'd spent considerable time in the area. Hella was going to have to venture wider to figure out what direction she'd gone in. She didn't plan on leaving the area till she had Daisy back.
A shrill bleat sounded to the west.
Hella had just enough time to glance up before Daisy crashed through the brush. She carried a freshly killed deer in her crimson-stained jaws. When she reached Hella, the mountain boomer laid her prey at Hella's feet and honked happily.
Scatter stared at the lizard. "Fascinating. It is yours?"
"Daisy doesn't belong to me. She's my friend. And she's a girl"
"I apologize."
Hella reached up and hugged Daisy around the neck. The lizard butted her head against Hella so hard, she almost knocked her over. "She missed me." She scratched the lizard under the chin, and Daisy licked her face with her rough tongue.
"Is she a dragon?"
"No, she's a lizard."
Stampede carried over gear from the pond. "She's just the biggest lizard you'll ever see."
Daisy swung her head over to bump up against Stampede.
Frowning, Stampede stood there and put up with the unwanted adoration. "Daisy's also one of the most obnoxious things you'll ever cross paths with." He glanced at the deer. "I guess we're having venison tonight?"
"We are." Hella took her saddle from hiding and threw it across Daisy's shoulders. She secured the straps then secured the deer as well, tying it behind the saddle with leather straps.
"We'll be having it in a few more hours, then." Stampede pushed Daisy's head away and squinted at the sun. "We still have some traveling time left. If we don't reach the expedition by tomorrow at noon, Riley may form up a unit to come after us. I don't want him getting anyone lost."
Shortly before they chose a campsite, Hella dismounted Daisy, strung the deer up from a tree branch, and field dressed the kill. The lizard gobbled the intestines eagerly then—after Hella had cut steaks for Stampede and herself—quickly disposed of the rest of the deer as well with smacking crunches.
Later, over a small campfire, Hella roasted the steaks on sticks and added spices from their kit. When the meat was cooked, she and Stampede ate and spread out their bedrolls close to the coals. Scatter simply watched them and talked.
Hella was fatigued from everything she'd been through in the past couple of days and the lack of easy sleep the previous night. Passing out didn't count as natural sleep. She struggled to stay awake.
Scatter sat by the fire and fed small sticks to the coals, watching with interest as the twigs caught fire and briefly blazed. From the way he was sitting and the way he stared into the fire, Hella knew his thoughts were somewhere else.
"You soak up solar power; I know that. Don't you sleep?"
Looking up, Scatter shook his head and smiled. "No. I am not fatigued."
"It's going to be a long night for you."
"The quiet will be good. I can think about all that I have experienced. I can review what I have learned. I can remember the books I read last night and reread them in my mind. There is much I can do. You should not worry. I will see you in the morning."
Hella thought she might talk to him a little longer, but she closed her eyes just to rest them, and the bottom of the world fell out from under her.
The next morning, before the sun was up, Hella packed the leftover venison strips into pieces of bread and passed half of them off to Stampede. They ate while traveling.
Scatter rode behind Hella on Daisy. He'd asked and Daisy hadn't minded. It wasn't that Scatter was tired. From the relentless way he walked, Hella felt certain the fractoid could have walked them all into the ground. He liked being up high so he could see more and so he could ask her questions about things he didn't know.
The conversation seemed never ending because explaining one thing would lead to several other things. As she doled out the information, Hella felt even more guilty for not telling Scatter that he'd never be able to go home again.
An hour before
the sun hit its apex for the day, they reached the trade road. That started a whole new wave of questions from Scatter. Hella lunched in the saddle while Stampede kept pace behind them.
Less than two hours later, they reached the expedition.
The campsite was a half mile off the trade road, nestled under a copse of pecan trees around a small pond. Security guards in hardshells ringed the site, and a handful of travelers—most of them looking like peddlers—were held up at Riley's checkpoints. The security bots were active too.
Before Hella reached the campsite, word had reached Riley that they'd returned. He came out to meet them and ended up getting caught up in the small group of peddlers who smelled someone in charge of the campsite they could get to.
"Trade, sir. Neither malice nor murder. I've got trade goods. Maybe you need something?"
Ignoring the question, Riley brushed through the men and focused on Hella and Stampede.
"Trade, sir." One of the men remained adamant. "I've got goods. Carried them a long way. The least you could do is take time to take a look."
Riley turned to the man, and the face shield snapped closed. "Stand back or I will stand you back."
Hella recognized the man as Benjamin Thor, one of the more legitimate peddlers who traveled the trade roads. He could repair electronic things as well, and he was a fair gunsmith. He was a good cook and an even better storyteller.
Reluctantly Benjamin turned and headed away from the campsite. He glanced at Stampede as he passed him. "Not a friendly face in the bunch."
"I know." Stampede spoke in a low voice.
Riley's face shield popped open again, and he smiled at Hella. "It's good to see you. We were beginning to get worried."
Hella threw her leg over Daisy's head and slid off the lizard to the ground. "We had some trouble finding your meteorite."
Peering past her, Riley looked briefly then turned his attention back to her. "Where?"
Hella pointed at Scatter. "There."
Still sitting on Daisy, Scatter waved and smiled. "Greetings."
Hella watched Riley's face as he took that in. "Okay. Follow me to Dr. Pardot." He turned and walked back into the campsite.
Stampede twitched his ears and shook his head. "Don't know about you, Red, but I don't think he was expecting the cargo to be Scatter."
"Me neither."
"You've got to wonder if Pardot is expecting Scatter."
"We'll find out soon enough."
Pardot stared at Scatter as the fractoid stood in the center of the camp. "Extraordinary."
"Thank you." Scatter smiled. "You are extraordinary as well." He looked at everyone around him. "We are all extraordinary."
Surprise drove Pardot back a step and his eyebrows raised. "You can talk?"
"Yes."
Pardot turned his gaze on Stampede. "You taught it to speak?"
Stampede shook his head. "No. He could already speak."
"Not our language."
Hella wondered how Pardot knew that.
Masking his perturbation, although his ears flicked, Stampede kept his voice level. "He taught himself."
"How?"
"I don't know."
Hella was glad Stampede didn't give away her part in Scatter's education. The last thing she needed was the man wanting to poke and prod her or yell at her because of her unwilling complicity.
Colleen Trammell stood beside Pardot, a genuine smile on her tired face. She didn't look any better rested than when Hella had last seen her. "It's more adaptive than we thought."
A stray thought from the woman bumped into Hella's mind: Alice is going to be all right. Hella felt the relief as well. She drew her thoughts back and tried to shield herself. "He's not an 'it.' He's a he. He has a name."
Scatter opened his mouth and that high-pitched screeching squawk that Hella remembered filled her ears.
"That's his name. We call him Scatter."
Servos on his exo suit whining, Pardot walked around Scatter. "Why would you call him such a thing?"
In order to follow the man, Scatter reflowed to continue facing Pardot. Stepping back quickly in surprise, Pardot's servos whined in protest at the sudden movement.
With effort, Hella kept from laughing. "That's why."
Pardot halted in his tracks. "Extraordinary."
Scatter nodded. "Thank you. It is nothing."
Ignoring the fractoid, Pardot looked back at Colleen. "Did you know it—he—could do this?"
"You know as much about the last one we saw as I do, Dr. Pardot."
The last one? Hella watched both of them carefully.
Pardot scowled. "I meant while you were in your precog state."
"No. I only saw it—him—falling to earth where we found him."
"Excuse me." Scatter folded his arms across his shiny chest. "You found another being such as me? Where did you find this being? Can you take me to this being?"
Pardot shot Colleen a withering glare.
Stampede cleared his throat and, to anyone who knew him, sounded testy. "If you knew we were looking for a metal man, you might have told us that. It would have made searching easier."
Impatiently, the first time Hella had seen that emotion in the fractoid, Scatter stepped in front of Pardot. "I want to know about the other being. I want to know—" He didn't get any farther.
Pardot raised a hand and placed it in the center of Scatter's chest. An azure energy blast arced from Pardot's hand and blew the fractoid back a dozen feet, taking two security guards down with him.
"What are you doing?" Hella's hands already formed weapons, and she took a step forward.
Shifting to her, Pardot lifted his hand, and his second blast slammed into her and lifted her off her feet. She never felt herself hit the ground.
Pain, way too familiar, jolted Hella back to wakefulness. She sat up in darkness, then realized she was under a tent. Her hands morphed into weapons before she drew her next breath.
"Easy, Red."
Focusing on Stampede's voice, Hella blinked and gave her vision a moment to adjust to the gloom. He sat cross-legged in the tent with his rifle across his knees.
"What happened?"
"Pardot shot you."
"I remember that." Hella morphed her hand and ran it across her chest, but all she felt was the familiar hardness of the chain-mail shirt. "With some kind of energy weapon."
"He calls it a disruptor. It's supposed to temporarily fry your synapses. Render you unconscious. He said it was nonlethal."
"I'm surprised you didn't kill him." Hella sat up. The disruptor had been nonlethal, but the experience felt only just.
"I might have but I knew you were still alive, and if I opened up on Pardot, Riley and his people would have killed us both."
Hella looked around the tent, but they were alone. "Where's Scatter?"
"They have him."
"What are they doing to him?"
"I don't know."
"Is he still alive?"
"I'm pretty sure that he is."
"Why?"
"They wouldn't have gone all this way to just kill him."
"What are we going to do?"
Stampede's ears twitched. "We haven't been fired. They still need us. At least that's what I was told. And Pardot is willing to overlook your bad behavior."
"What bad behavior?"
"Pulling weapons on him."
"Awfully generous, isn't he?"
"Not a bit. He's desperate. He still needs a guide, and we've got him this far."
Hella held her aching head. "Why did Pardot shoot Scatter?"
"Because he felt threatened."
"Scatter wasn't threatening Pardot. We saw Scatter catch a dragonfly on the wing. If he'd wanted to hurt Pardot, it would have been done before anyone could stop it."
Stampede sighed. "Pardot hasn't seen Scatter catch dragonflies. He said he felt threatened, and I've given that some thought while I've sat here and listened to you sleep."
"Thanks."
"If I'd been Pardot, out in the middle of unfamiliar territory the way he is, confronted with something he didn't know enough about that was suddenly up in his face, I'd have felt threatened too." Stampede fixed her with his gaze. "You would have too, and you'd probably have responded in the same fashion."
"Pardot shot me."
"You moved on him too quick, Red. He told me he just reacted and wasn't thinking clearly at the time."
Hella knew the explanation was logical, but she felt protective of Scatter. She also knew that her feelings compromised her. "You heard what Pardot said about having seen another metal man?"
Stampede nodded. "I did."
"I don't suppose he said anything more about that?"
"No, and I get the feeling that he's not going to be very forthcoming with any more information."
Taking another breath, Hella decided to try what she'd learned from Scatter. She put her hands on her head and rubbed her temples, trying to create the healing rhythm. After a moment the buzzing sensation kicked in, and her headache went away. She smiled.
"Better?" Stampede eyed her speculatively.
"Yeah." Hella peered through the open tent flap. "I know you're probably ready to leave Pardot and the rest, but I want to stay long enough to figure out what they're going to do with Scatter."
"I know, Red. So do I. But hanging around these people is going to be dangerous in a lot of ways."
"Scatter has taught me things about the nanobots. I'd like to see what else he knows. Maybe he can help me learn something about where I came from."
Stampede shifted his grip on his rifle. "I know, and I feel responsible for Scatter too. He's really..."
"Innocent."
Stampede nodded. "Yeah. That. You don't see that out here a lot. In fact, the last time I saw it was the day I found you."
CHAPTER 22
