Slavemakers

by Joseph Wallace

  But Kait gave no sign of hearing him. She was focused on one thing only: Aisha Rose.

  And Aisha Rose was gazing back at her with such an expression of joy that Jason wondered if somehow this could be her sister.

  “Oh!” Aisha Rose said, a gasp as much as a word. “I was waiting for you!”

  Yet Jason, struggling to his feet, felt no joy. He knew what this woman—this thing—was. After twenty years, he knew what he was looking at.

  He just couldn’t understand why it was being allowed to walk free.

  * * *

  BESIDE HIM, AISHA Rose let go of Jason’s hand and also made to rise.

  But she never had the chance. Kait’s eyes had been as dull as her expression, but now they seemed to come into focus. Her gaze sharpened, and in an instant her face contorted. Baring her teeth, a guttural snarl coming from her throat, she leaped past Shapiro, sending the scientist tumbling to the floor, and threw herself across the table.

  Even as Jason reached his feet, he knew exactly what was about to happen. He’d seen it so often before, and he knew that he would once again be too slow, too weak, to prevent it.

  * * *

  AS THE SLAVE’S hands went for her throat, Aisha Rose simply said, “No.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  WHEN JASON WAS a child, one of his closest friends died in an airplane crash. Something went wrong with the rudder system, and when the jet hit the ground nose first it was traveling at more than six hundred miles per hour. The impact left only two things intact in a field full of scraps and fragments: the black boxes, with their recordings of the conversation between the captain and the other flight officers.

  During the final moments, the crew knew that they were helpless to delay the end. Yet in the last half second before the plane shattered against the earth, one of the flight officers said a single word: “No.”

  No.

  No, this isn’t happening. I still have control of my fate. I’m not about to die.

  But then he did.

  * * *

  TWICE IN THE slave camp, Jason had heard the word used in the same way. Once when the thieves were gathering to take revenge on the wife of a man who had run away, and once when three of the ridden ones were unleashed on a young woman for some reason that Jason had never been able to figure out.

  No, the victims protested. And then they’d died anyway.

  * * *

  BUT AISHA ROSE wasn’t any of those people. Jason had no idea who she was, or even precisely what she was, but he knew that she was no helpless victim trying to deny the inevitable.

  “No,” she said, as Kait’s hands went around her throat. At the same instant that Jason, half-standing, realized that she’d let go of his hand, Aisha Rose put her palm against his chest and shoved him so hard he fell backward. His head banged against the wall, and, for a moment, his vision dimmed.

  He heard the snarling cry cut off, then the thud of a body hitting a hard surface. When he refocused, he saw that it was Kait who was sprawled in graceless unconsciousness across the table, her hands still outstretched. Even as he took in the sight, she groaned and began to move.

  He stepped closer to Aisha Rose, ready this time to help defend her in case of a renewed attack. Staring down at her semiconscious attacker, though, she seemed calm, unafraid, merely interested in what had just happened.

  No: more than interested. She put her hands together and said, in a tone mixing excitement and affection, “We’ll have so much to talk about afterward!”

  Finally, far too late, both Shapiro and the doctor were reaching for the awakening Kait. Aisha Rose said, “You don’t—” but still the doctor took hold of Kait’s arms and, twisting them behind her, pulled her to her feet. Behind them, Brett Callahan had his handgun at the ready though Jason had no idea whom he might be thinking of shooting.

  Kait herself still seemed only half-awake. Her head hung down, hair obscuring her face. If Jason himself had possessed a gun, he would not have hesitated to use it on her. Now that he was away from the camp, he knew only one thing for sure: When you saw someone in Kait’s condition, you killed them. You killed them, or they killed you.

  Yet Aisha Rose clearly didn’t agree. He saw that she had a long scratch on her neck, a thread of blood tracing down her collarbone and beneath her dress, which she didn’t seem to notice.

  As if feeling his gaze, she looked over at him. “I’m sorry that I hit you,” she said in her formal way. Jason wondered if those had been her mother’s inflections as well. And maybe a trace of her accent: German, perhaps, or South African.

  “You’re forgiven,” he said to her. “I mean, that’s twice today you’ve rescued me, and the day isn’t over yet.”

  She smiled at him, using her mouth a little as well as her eyes. She was definitely learning. “Rescued you?” she said, turning back to peer at Kait. “No. You saw. I was the one she wanted.”

  He nodded. That was true, but it was also true that last-stage hosts were rarely picky in choosing their targets.

  Aisha Rose started to go on, but before she could speak, Shapiro jumped in.

  “I don’t understand,” she said, raising her hands. “Tell us what just happened.”

  Aisha Rose looked confused. Jason, the only one who understood where the miscommunication lay, touched her arm.

  “Aisha Rose, love,” he said. “They don’t have any idea.”

  She stared at him and made a little sound like a gasp. “What?”

  “Nothing else explains it.”

  “Explains what?” Shapiro said.

  Aisha Rose, ignoring her, looked at Jason with wide eyes.

  “You see, they have this vaccine,” Jason said.

  “Yes. Dr. Konte wanted me to take it.” She rolled her eyes. “Silly.”

  “But that’s the point,” he told her. “It’s been so long since they’ve seen it, they don’t even recognize the signs anymore.”

  Finally, Shapiro got a word in. “What the hell,” she said, “are you two talking about?”

  Without replying, Aisha Rose came out from behind the table and walked up to Kait. With her injured hand, she lifted the hem of the semiconscious woman’s shirt up above her waist, revealing exactly what he knew it would: the huge, bulbous swelling overlying Kait’s belly, and the black airhole that punctured it like a gunshot wound.

  “This,” Aisha Rose said.

  * * *

  “IT’S ALMOST READY to hatch,” Aisha Rose observed, letting go so the shirt could drape back down, “but it is very small and weak. Does your vaccine do that, too?”

  Shapiro wasn’t listening. For a long moment she just stared at Kait, first at her now-covered belly, then up at her face. Then her own face flushed, the red even reaching down her throat and upper chest above her shirt.

  She took a step closer, and only then did Jason realize that Aisha Rose’s attacker was fully awake now as well. He felt a sudden surge of panic, of renewed vulnerability. Yet Shapiro did not seem afraid, only furious. Enraged.

  “You did this to yourself,” she said to Kait, in a voice so venomous that it prickled the hair on Jason’s scalp. “You fucking did it on purpose.”

  And Kait nodded.

  “So did you get your wish?” Shapiro leaned forward so their faces were just inches apart. “Do you see what Trey did?”

  And then she slapped her across the face.

  But wonders never ceased. The blow did not seem to anger Kait, provoke her. Instead, she lifted her head, and, through tear-filled eyes, looked at Aisha Rose, and said, “I can see you.”

  Aisha Rose smiled. “Yes. I know. And I can see you. A new light.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “A clear new light. It’s been so long.”

  Kait said, “Can you help me?”

  “Of course.”

  “How?” Shapiro, round
ing on her, spat out the word. “By taking it out and watching her die?”

  Aisha Rose gave a little frown. “Die?”

  “You saw it,” Shapiro said. “Hell, you showed it to us. You must know it’s been days—days—since we could remove it without killing the host. Without killing Kait.”

  “Killing?” Aisha Rose said. “Kait? No.”

  No. That word again. The same word, but this time possessing a completely new meaning.

  You have no idea what you’re talking about.

  Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.

  THIRTY-TWO

  “BUT CAN WE do it now?” Aisha Rose said. “I’m quite tired.”

  Then she looked past Kait at the doctor. “Dr. Konte,” she said, “please let go of her arms.” She smiled. “I’m perfectly safe.”

  Konte looked skeptical, but after a few seconds, he released his hold. Kait, standing in place, didn’t even seem to notice. She looked merely exhausted and ill, not aggressive, not anything like a last-stage host. Even so, Jason still felt alarmed, alert, ready for another transformation and attack.

  Not that there was much he’d be able to do about it, with his hands still bound. Maybe at least he’d get his body in between Kait and Aisha Rose next time.

  As if reading his thoughts, Aisha Rose looked back at him, down at his wrists, which were streaked with blood from where the rope had bitten in. Her mouth turned down. “Do you think that’s necessary?” she asked Shapiro.

  Without waiting for a reply, she dipped down, a fluid, unexpected move, and reached with her right hand beneath the hem of her long dress. When she straightened again, she was holding a bone-handled knife with a curved, honed blade. An instant later, the rope was lying on the floor, and Jason’s hands were free.

  He rubbed his wrists, and said, “Thank you.” But she’d already switched her attention again, this time to the doctor. Jason found himself marveling at the way, seemingly without effort, this young woman had assumed her place as the group’s alpha, even over the domineering Shapiro.

  “Excuse me, please,” she was saying. “Dr. Konte. Do you have a—”

  She struggled to find the word, her face betraying exasperation. Mama would not have approved of such a struggle, Jason thought, and Aisha Rose knew it.

  Finally, she gave up. “A place where you cut people open?”

  He nodded. “It’s the same place where I took you, but, yes, we have the facilities.”

  “Good.” Again the trace of exasperation. “So can we go there already?”

  * * *

  THEY WALKED SINGLE file down the slick, salt-stained passageway toward the ship’s stern. It was deserted though Jason could hear voices from abovedeck and from behind one or two of the closed doors they passed. Subdued sounds, reminding him of the losses these explorers—these brave explorers—had experienced and were still absorbing.

  The room they entered at the end of the passageway was a combined laboratory, examining room, and surgery. A single porthole of rippled glass provided a glimpse of blue sky and green water.

  Jason took in the counters and shelves, the array of instruments and devices he never thought he’d see again in this world, including a beautiful, nineteenth-century microscope. And, on the top shelf of the interior wall to the right, three tightly sealed old gallon jars, each containing at least one thief. The wasps were standing just inside the glass, perfectly still except for the flicker of their wings, staring down.

  Seeing them there, so unexpectedly, made Jason’s stomach twist and his throat constrict. Somehow, and just barely, he kept himself from reaching up, pulling the containers down, and crushing the inhabitants.

  He wondered if he’d ever again be able to look at a thief without feeling this sudden burst of rage. But he controlled it, turning to Shapiro as she entered the room.

  He noticed the way her body relaxed. This was her real home, he thought. Even with its pet thieves.

  He’d known plenty of people like Shapiro back in what she called the Last World, and now that his recall of that time was flooding back, he felt like part of him was reawakening.

  He’d never much thought about the concept of repressed memories, but now he was realizing how much he’d forgotten about the world that had been taken from him. All those sights and tastes and smells. The sound of quiet conversation.

  In this little room, with its shining steel examining table, its microscope, its forceps and scalpels, its glass beakers and stoppered jars and pristine slides, its smell of medicinal alcohol and machine oil—the odors of science and technology, of civilization—Jason felt suddenly overwhelmed. Nearly undone by a combination of joy and grief, freedom and vulnerability.

  Human emotions.

  He was human again.

  He missed Chloe with a fierceness that he thought might stop his heart.

  * * *

  AISHA ROSE CAME and stood beside him. This time he was the one who reached for her, and after a moment he felt her strong, slender fingers intertwine with his once more.

  She radiated warmth. Jason could see that her cheeks had a pink tinge, and among the room’s other odors he could detect the sweet, musky one coming from her pores: the smell of sickness that he remembered so clearly from his own daughters when they’d been ill.

  Across the room, Kait was on her back on the examining table, and the doctor was sterilizing both the surgical site and his scalpel and forceps with alcohol. She lay there, head turned, her eyes on Aisha Rose.

  Aisha Rose smiled at her, still mostly in her eyes, but not all. “Rest now,” she said.

  Kait looked like she wanted to respond, but her eyelids were already fluttering.

  “Just rest,” Aisha Rose said. “We’ll talk after.”

  And Kait closed her eyes.

  * * *

  “WHY DIDN’T THEY kill you?” Jason asked.

  Aisha Rose’s gaze had been fixed on Kait, but she spared an instant for a glance in his direction. She knew what he was talking about.

  “Are they afraid of you?” he said.

  He could see her thinking about it, as if she’d never had to answer that question before. Finally, she said, “No. It’s not that.” She frowned a little. “Not only that.”

  “Then what?”

  Her brow furrowed. “They don’t see me.”

  He made a noise in his throat. Her gaze flickered again to his face, and she frowned at the incomprehension she saw there.

  “No,” she said, trying again. “They don’t see me as different from them. When they see me, they see themselves.”

  She paused, then said, with the first sign of urgency he’d heard in her voice. “Do you understand?”

  “I’m trying to.” He took a moment. “Until you focus on them, they think you’re another part of the hive mind, just like them.”

  She thought about his words, then frowned. “No, you still don’t understand,” she said. “They don’t think I’m part of them. I am part of them.”

  He could see that she was about to go on, but Konte, standing by the table, raised his hand. The scalpel shone.

  “This is a very interesting conversation,” he said, looking at Aisha Rose. “But I’ve administered the anesthetic, it doesn’t last long, and we don’t have much of it. So could I have some silence, please?”

  For a moment, Aisha Rose looked almost chastened. Then she said, “Wait one moment.”

  Letting go of Jason, she stepped over to the table and laid her uninjured hand against Kait’s cheek.

  For some reason, this gesture seemed to disturb rather than reassure the doctor. He looked into Aisha Rose’s face.

  She smiled at him. “It will be fine.”

  “But how can you be sure?” he asked.

  For an instant, the girl’s eyes flashed at his tone, but when she replied she sounded as calm as a
lways. “You were listening,” she said. “I told you—all of you. I’m sure because I’m part of them. I am them. Don’t any of you understand yet?”

  No one said anything.

  “Then can we please stop talking,” she said, “and go ahead?”

  * * *

  THE PROCEDURE TOOK about thirty seconds.

  With careful movements, and under Aisha Rose’s watchful eye, the doctor made a small incision and, using a pair of forceps, removed the worm. Which, as they always did when removed prematurely, died almost at once . . .

  . . . while Kait did not. It was as simple as that.

  And as terrifying while it was happening. Even Jason, who had quickly come to have an almost mystical belief in Aisha Rose, found that he was holding his breath as Konte extracted the worm, which was, in fact, far smaller and thinner than a last-stage larva should have been.

  But though Kait’s face was gray, her sleep more like unconsciousness, Konte said that her vital signs were strong, and he had no doubt she’d awaken soon.

  As he disinfected the wound, Shapiro dropped the worm into a jar and turned to Aisha Rose. “So how did you do that?”

  Aisha Rose shrugged, as if it were something she did every day. “I told it to keep the poison inside itself, so it did,” she said. “Mostly. Enough.”

  Shapiro gave her a look. “As useful to have around as a Swiss Army knife, you are.”

  Aisha Rose, polite as always even in the face of nonsense, said, “Thank you.”

  * * *

  THREE OF THEM went back to the mess: Shapiro, Jason, and Aisha Rose. No guard necessary this time, Jason noticed. They’d passed some kind of a test.

  “The thieves at the fort,” he said to Aisha Rose when they were seated again.

  She tilted her head. “Yes?”

  “You made them . . . spin around.”

  She smiled at the memory.

  “They were in a panic,” he said. “Terrified.”

  “Yes.” The light in her eyes glimmered. “They are made to do that.”

  “To panic?” Jason said, unable to keep the disbelief out of his voice.