by Anthology
He intended this as a kindness, she was sure, but it meant that she had to make her way to the tables pushing along a wildly sloshing bowl of oily turtle meat. The whole crew watched, apparently entertained, while she left a splash trail. Margo stopped at the benches. “You’re gonna want to help me up,” she said.
“Sure a’ that, are you?” said Kell.
“Pretty sure,” she said, evenly.
No one moved, so Margo proceeded to get up onto the bench herself. She couldn’t put weight onto her legs, but if she lunged forward violently enough, the one-footed bench rocked, no matter who was sitting on it. If she did that enough times, eventually the drunkest lost his balance; the man who’d sewed his own arm back on fell straight backwards, which made everyone laugh too hard. “All right, all right…” He picked her up under the armpits and stuck her in his own seat. “Christ, you’re a shit.”
Diallo cut Margo a thick slice of very brown bread for her soup. Rumer Pilgrim poured her a cup from the carafe, and raised his own, almost imperceptibly. Margo flattened the smile on her lips.
Before long, Chin-Hae brought out a very motor-oil looking whiskey, and some apples and pears in tin cups, roasted without cinnamon or sugar. “Enjoy these, gentlemen,” said Pilgrim, frowning at the fruit, and Chin-Hae. “They’re the only ones you’re like to get out of the bunch.”
“We’re damn well going to have some,” said Kell, “they cost us enough.”
“Why?” asked Margo.
“‘Scuse me?”
“Why would you pay for apples? What kind are they?”
No one answered her. “Are they rare, or something? They look like lab apples.” The fruit was just exactly like the smallish, slightly underripe specimens that came out of every food lab in every corner of every galaxy in UN space.
The captain paused, then said, eyes on Kell, “That could be considered rare enough for some folks.”
Margo knew a little history. “Sure, but…not anymore, though. People don’t pay for stuff like that anymore.”
“Stuff like what, do you suppose?”
“Like, fruit, or grains, or simple proteins. That’s the whole point of food labs. You’re always replicating, so there’s no food shortages, and nobody has to pay.”
Pilgrim nodded. “Well, that’s a cracker-jack idea if I ever heard one.”
“It’s part of the rules of compliance for a colony’s admission to the UN.” That terrible, smug, teachery voice, again. Margo couldn’t seem to help herself.
The captain took a swig of his whiskey. “But it only works long as everybody plays by the rules, long as nobody takes more’n they need.”
Margo nodded, conceding.
“So, to your knowledge, who runs these food labs? Who maintains them? Who stops people takin’ more than they need?”
“There’s…private companies,” said Margo, “they’re vetted by the UN.”
“Family companies?”
“Sometimes.”
“And so what stops a real powerful company, a real powerful family from…gettin’ creative? Say they start to decide for themselves who needs what. Say they start thinking they’d like to bring a little money back into it, or they’d like to put a limit on, I don’t know, milk, for certain families with too many kids? You could keep a whole solar-system full of folks currying your sweet favor, if you went about it the right way.”
“That would never be allowed to happen,” said Margo.
“Why not?”
“Because it wouldn’t! Because there’s audits of compliance. There’s officers who come and make sure you’re following all the rules.”
“And how well do those work out here, do you think?”
“How well do they work?”
“You think they work well here in our dark neck of the woods? I’m just asking.”
“I don’t know.” Margo’s voice was way too tight in her throat. “I don’t know where we are.”
Rumer Pilgrim nodded. “Alright. Do you think every man always does exactly the job he’s supposed to, even when there’s no one to watch him do it, even when he’s far from home, in place he can’t stand?”
“Are you talking about Peacekeeping Officers?”
“I’m just talking about men. There’s a lot of men sent to do their jobs in the very deep dark of space where nothing thrives and no sound travels. How easy you think it would be for our family—this very powerful hypothetical family we’re talking of—to have a few such men in their pocket?”
“Somebody would say something,” asserted Margo, more loudly than she meant to. “Somebody would alert Sky headquarters.”
“They might,” said the captain levelly, “if they had any idea how to go about it. And if they didn’t mind a slow kind ‘a death. Starving’s slower than just about anything, you know. Your body holds on like a muther, eating away at all your fat, and then all your muscle…”
Margo stared at him, her stomach pitching with understanding she didn’t want. “What are you hiding in the cargo bay?” she blurted. “Who’s looking for it?”
Pilgrim paused, opened his mouth. Margo didn’t want to give him the chance to lie. “My name is Margo Glass. I’m Helena Glass’s daughter. I’m the daughter of a UN Security Council member, you stupid motherfuckers! If somebody’s breaking the law, if they’re starving people, you have to tell me. Understand? You have to tell me!”
“Young lady,” said the captain, but didn’t say anything more.
“Say it!” Margo was suddenly snarling. “Say what you’ve got in the cargo bay!”
But of course, Margo could never really cow anyone, no matter how loud she shouted. It was easy, infuriatingly easy, for Pilgrim to pick her up, throw her into her cupboard, shut the door, and walk away.
***
Rumer let the air out of his chest, and felt himself sag. Kell looked at his captain with a cloud in his glass eye. “You still think we can carry this girl all the way to Black Oven? Look, I can’t speak for you, but I’m not prepared to die spoon-feeding a bunch of sad, sorry motherfuckers we’ve never even met, and I’m certainly not prepared to go to some new kind a’ interstellar prison because some UN Security cunt decides we kidnapped her whelp.”
Rumer couldn’t find anything to say, so he said nothing.
“We need to let her float, now, Rumer. We need to stick her inside the shuttle, give her some oatmeal and quick-bread, and let her float. And then we need to drop what we’re carrying quick as we can, and go back to doing somethin’ we know how to do.” Kell rubbed, and rubbed and rubbed the glass. “C’mon, man…I…we just can’t do what you’re tryin’ to do. We’re not built for it. Men like us don’t fix the shit-holes of this world, Rumer. We’re just…we’re a load a’ pirates.”
Rumer nodded heavily. “You are right about that,” he said. “I can’t think of what you’d call us but a load of damn, dirty pirates.”
There was a silence, during which Rumer wondered whether it would be possible to pre-program a route for the shuttle so that it would take her straight to Black Oven. That way, if her food and oxygen held out…and if nobody too bad picked her up when she got there…
That was when Diallo came in, not grinning. “We have company, Captain,” he said. “They appear to have finally made a decision about us. They want to board.”
It was a long, slow nightmare run to the bridge. And then Rumer looked on one of the biggest U.N. squadron ships he had ever seen. Still a ways off, it swallowed up the whole screen like a big, blue open-mouthed whale. “How do they keep finding us? What are they locking onto?”
“I do not know,” said Diallo, “I have picked off every signal I could find.”
“I think…I know.”
Rumer turned. The girl sat in the doorway of the bridge. She was out of breath. Her knees were bloodied. She must have dragged herself from the stern-end utility closet to the bridge, all the way across that steel floor. “Are these them?” she asked, “are these the kind of officers you’re talk
ing about, who are working for…for somebody?”
Rumer jerked his head. “Any particular reason why you’re in here, Miss Glass?”
“I know what’s going on.”
“I’ll bet you do. You’re very clever at that. But if you wouldn’t mind headin’ back to your little room just now…”
“I know why the squad ship’s here. I know why they found us.”
Rumer stiffened, blinked. “Say what you mean, girl.”
The girl swallowed. “I have…a chip.”
“A chip?”
“I’m chipped. In case anything bad ever happens to me when I’m…it emits this low-level signal all the time, so people can find where I am.”
Rumer glared at her, this pretty, pale girl he once thought too fragile to live, his eyeballs hot. “And this was something you chose not to share with us?”
“‘Course not. She’s got friends who’d pat her head like a good little bitch-hound if she helps land people like us in prison,” said Kell. The way he looked at her even alarmed Rumer, angry as he was.
“Jesus.” Rumer pressed his palms into his eyes. “Well, you’ve certainly fucked us, kid, if that’s what you meant to do. I’d throw you straight out the air-lock if I thought it would do us any good, you hear me?”
Her green eyes looked frantic for the first time since he’d known her. “No!…I mean, I’m sorry, it’s just, it’s not something I really think about.”
“Not something you really think about? Is there anything you really think about?”
The girl got angry at that. “My parents made me get it when I was eight, okay? I didn’t even know what it was supposed to do. It was just something that happened to me, like everything else in my fucking life. For God’s sake, if I really wanted all of you to go down on all kinds of charges…but I don’t!” She took a long overdue breath. “I don’t.”
“That’s comforting,” said Rumer. “You can tell them what perfect gentlemen we’ve been while they’re thundering all over our cargo bay gathering up our stolen goods to return them to people we won’t be able to get police protection from.”
“It wasn’t meant to be comforting, asshole.”
Rumer let out air. “What would you have me do, girl? What is it you’d like to do?”
“I want to help,” said Margo. The eyes blazed bright, now, not brittle at all. “Let me help.”
***
It wasn't a very good plan, Margo knew. It would have been a better one if they’d roughed her up a bit first, or cut off her pinky toe like she’d suggested (“It grows all wrong, anyway. And it’s not like I’m using it.”) But even Kell had been too pussy to do it. She hoped the dustpan looked like a horrible enough place that it would still be believable. It was too late to reconsider.
The com-link connected on the third try, and the other ship picked up.
“You are speaking to a representative of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. Please identify yourself.”
Rumer was ready with the apple sack over his head. “I am what you might call an independent profiteer looking to do some business. If you would, please inform Secretary Glass that we have her precious little daughter, and are interested in discussing the terms under which she may be returned in one piece.”
The man on the other end paused, and went pale. “One moment. Don’t do anything. One moment.”
“Don’t take too long, now.”
The man disappeared for what seemed like a very long time. Margo wiggled against her ropes so that at the very least her wrists would have rope marks on them.
The man reappeared. “We need to see her before anything can be discussed.”
“You know we have her,” said Rumer. “She’s got a chip. We found it. Would you like to learn how?”
The man set his mouth, calmly obstinate. “If you want to move forward, put her on the com, and let me speak to her.”
“Assholes,” Margo muttered. “I could be dying right now.” But she whipped up some shuddering breaths and let Rumer throw her against the terminal.
“Please!” she screamed. “Please it’s me! Tell my mother it’s me!” She didn’t know the man on the com, and she hoped he knew her only by sight.
“Calm down. Calm down, now. You’re going to be all right. Who are these men? What are they doing to you?”
Rumer piped in loudly. “Wrong question, G-man.” Margo winced as though he’d tightened the ropes.
“I don’t know who they are, they never take off the sacks,” said Margo, feeling the blood pound in her ears. “They boarded our ship, and they…everyone…so they took a bunch of stuff, and they took me. They want money. That’s all they want, and then they’ll let me go. Tell my mom…seventy-five thousand. In credits. Tell her.”
“Alright,” said the man. “Alright, we’ll tell her, Miss, stay calm. We’re doing everything we can.” The man shifted to try to get another look at Rumer, just out of frame, and then disappeared.
“We should’ve asked for more,” muttered Kell.
“You should’ve roughed me up,” said Margo.
“Shut up, children,” said Rumer.
The com crackled in the silence, picking up no conversation on the other end.
“He’s not goin’ for it.” Kell rubbed his eye. “We should’ve asked for a lot more. No one lets a piece like her go for under ninety thousand.”
“Oh, they’ll round it up to a nice even hundred for us when they put it to the secretary.” Rumer didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “They wouldn’t go for this if they couldn’t take something off the top.”
“And this way, they’ll think it was their idea,” said Margo proudly.
Kell scowled at her.
The man on the com returned. “We’ve spoken to Secretary Glass. She’ll pay. Clear your bridge. We’ll send someone over shortly to make the trade.”
Margo swallowed the bile in her throat. “NO!…no, you can’t. If you send someone over here, they’ll kill me! I don’t want to die, please, don’t make me die!” It surprised her how easily the whimpering came from her throat.
“Calm down, Miss. Miss? Please calm down.” The man seemed more rattled by her hysterics than by the situation itself. “What does he want us to do?”
“You have to send the credits directly using the ship’s AT, and then they’ll send me in the shuttle. That’s what he says. Just do what he says. Please!”
Then the com-link cut out, and the screen went blank.
“What happened?” asked Margo.
“Backworld machinery,” said Rumer.
“Did he even hear the last thing I said?”
“Who knows?”
They were all silent, listening for sounds of being boarded, for the click-snap of metal weapons and the thunder of boots.
“I’m gonna throw up,” said Margo airlessly.
“Do me a favor,” said Rumer, “save it ‘til they come for me.”
And then there was a disused buzzer that sounded, somewhere, a quick “ping,” short and loud. Everyone turned.
“Credits,” said Diallo. He aimed his grin at Margo.
Margo laughed a sob.
There were no goodbyes, exactly. Just nervous half-slaps and grumbles. Kell rubbed his eye at her an absurd number of times.
It was the captain who strapped her in.
“Well, that’s just about it,” said Pilgrim Pilgrim. “Gone over all the controls?”
“I’ll figure it out,” she said.
“You got your story straight? What you’re gonna tell them?”
“I have a few stories to tell them.”
“They’re not gonna want to hear ‘em all.”
“That’s my problem, not yours. Go deliver what you have to deliver, let me get off this ugly ass ship, for the love of God.”
She knew she’d made Rumer laugh, though she didn’t stay to listen to it. Instead, Margo darted off into the black, and prepared for what she would do when she landed. She’d have to give up the true ta
le soon enough, tell people there had been no kidnapping, that she was perfectly well.
First, though, she would have a servitor run a bath, and actually get in it.
Follow Me Down(Novelette)
by Nicolette Barischoff
Originally published by Unlikely Story in their issue The Journal of Unlikely Academia
The night that Kora Gillespie, their Incubus Parvulus, was born, it was Bernadette who received the emergency house call to the walk-up in Washington Heights.
Ramona knew that she should never have come with her. They both knew it. But Ramona had been giddy with courage, full of imaginary clinical detachment, and Bernadette had been in too fierce a hurry to object when she tagged along behind.
There had been no discussion of what she would see when she got there.
At nineteen, a second-year student with hands that still shook, and eyes that still glistened when a mother began to crown, Ramona stood in the choking summer darkness and watched the Cambion emerge.
She would never forget how Ms. Gillespie screamed into the silence, screamed and screamed and screamed. Her screams were thin and high, without grunts, without pauses for breath, coming out wild and alien over Bernadette’s impossibly steady voice: “Calm, now. Breathe for me, now, child. You breathe…”
But there was no making her breathe. The woman’s back formed a perfect arch of terror and pain with every contraction, as she pulled away instead of pushed. And every time a contraction left her, she fell back to trying to wriggle out of the bed—as though she could leave behind the thing emerging from her body—making lakes of inky amniotic fluid on the floor as she collapsed, and was dragged back. “We fight the fear, dear, yes that’s what we do.”
As Ms. Gillespie crowned, Ramona clasped the woman’s hands to stop her tearing at her belly. With terror-clouded eyes, the woman begged them to take it from her, now, please, now. NOW. And then she went into an arch that folded her in half, screaming and beating her head against the headboard until she bled. She seemed unconscious when the baby finally spurted from her in a pool of black blood.
But when Bernadette brought it to her, wrapped in a clean pale cotton blanket, she came awake again. Like the middle of a nightmare, she shrieked a suffocated shriek toward the ceiling, arms flying up as though the baby’s father were there on top of her, suckers fast attached (and still, long years later, whenever Ramona had the nightmares, her brain seemed to insert the creature seamlessly, as though she could never quite believe it hadn’t been there, watching).
