When Mouth got to George’s roofing plant, Alyssa was waiting out front. “Don’t go inside,” she said. “Just walk away right now, before anyone sees you.”
Mouth turned and walked in the opposite direction, and Alyssa walked alongside her.
“They’ve all gotten wind of some of your political activities,” she whis pered. “Omar is pissed. He’s pretty close to putting together a deal to carry some Xiosphanti leather to Argelo. But they’re going to hit you with an ultimatum: you quit with the politics, or the Couriers leave you behind when we go.”
Alyssa’s hand was on the back of Mouth’s neck, which was the first clue that Mouth was bent double and heaving, with a stream of vomit pooling on the slate pavement below. Mouth had gotten into a crash position without even realizing—she just kept breathing harder, tasting more puke.
“I can’t,” Mouth said. “I can’t. Please, I can’t.”
“Oh fuck,” Alyssa said. “I’ve never … I thought nothing ever got to you. What the hell. This is a whole new side of you, and I don’t…”
“I’m sorry.” Mouth was face-to-knees panicking. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it together. I will, in a moment. I just, this is all too … I mean, they have the last surviving piece of my childhood, my heritage, in that stupid Palace. It’s the only thing that can save what’s left of me. I can’t just walk away from it. But I can’t be trapped here, either. This town. I just hate it. I hate it so much. I think this town thrives on hate.”
“Well.” This was the problem-solving, reasonable tone, which usually meant Alyssa was about to cut through some logistical issue on the road. “The thing you’re trying to get, the Invention, isn’t going anywhere. Right? I mean, they’ve had it for a while. They’ll still have it for ages more. We can grab it the next time we come back to this dump.”
“Can’t risk it.” Mouth straightened up. “Anything could happen. I could die. They could burn that ugly mausoleum down in one of their stupid political actions. They could decide to clean house and throw away a bunch of stuff. I have a duty. I can’t explain this right. I owe everything to the Citizens, the nomads who raised me. And this is all I can do. I just have to string those revolutionaries along a little longer.”
“Well,” Alyssa said. “If you want to leave town with us, you better move fast.”
“Please, just stall them,” Mouth said. “Tell them I got too drunk to walk. They’ll believe that.”
“As long as you never hear Omar’s ultimatum, you might not get in trouble for disobeying it.” Alyssa smiled. “That’s why I grabbed you before you could go in there.”
Everything still tasted awful. Alyssa looked down and gave Mouth a radiant smile, in spite of how gross she must look hunched over, with bile on her chin.
“I don’t deserve a friend like you,” Mouth said.
She laughed. “Nah. It’s more like, I’d be a shitty friend if I gave you what you deserved.” Alyssa punched Mouth’s arm. “And you’ve gone all the way to the edge of the night for me, more times than I can count.” Mouth couldn’t actually think of a single time, but let it go.
“Well, thank you,” Mouth said. “I … I really care about you a lot, and I can’t imagine what I would do if I had to break in a new sleepmate.”
“Ugh. I’m the only one who can put up with your kicking. Anyway, get out of here. I need to get back before they start to wonder why I’m taking so long in the bathroom.”
Alyssa hugged Mouth, who clutched her tight for a moment. She was gone a moment later, and Mouth was left almost choking on puke and carbon dioxide again.
“Please,” Mouth whispered again, to the sunburnt air. “Please, please, don’t fuck me over this time. I know that a good traveler is supposed to leave everything in their dust. I know that impermanence and loss are just the distance markers on the road. I know that. Just please, this one time. I can’t get fucked this time, or I don’t know what will happen. Please.”
Then Mouth stood up straight and pulled herself into fighting shape. She was running out of time—and depending on other people was worse than tasting your own digestive fluids.
SOPHIE
I grapple with the last handholds before the ridge of the Old Mother, like a clumsy old bear. Once on top, I stumble and teeter toward the other side, then I sit and stare at the textureless dark, trying to imagine the city out there, all the great machines, the webs full of sick children. I think about that smuggler—Mouth—telling her friend, I just have to string these revolutionaries along a little more. This was after she told me not to follow her, but I just followed her anyway. In my mind, the cops are already on their way to arrest Bianca, and I don’t know what to do.
Nothing moves in front of me. No shapes grow, or change their position. I’m wasting my time looking for help here, when Bianca needs me. I slap my legs to get blood back into them, and try to stand.
Rose raises her head up over the cliff, tentacles and front legs straining. She finally gets her whole body up in front of me, and I see the soft, tawny hide around her front legs. I hand her the pitiful amount of copper and tin I’ve scrounged this time, and she studies it with the cilia on the end of one tentacle, then puts it away on her back.
“I’m sorry, I need your help again. I don’t know what to do. My friend is in trouble. I know your people have amazing technology. You showed it to me. But do you have any weapons? Weapons? Something to protect a person from getting hurt.”
Rose bows her head, big indentations on top narrowing, like she’s frowning or sad. She raises a tentacle to touch me, and I let her brush against my face and feel my pulse through my neck. She wants to understand, and not just because I brought her copper.
I push my face toward her tendrils. “I’m scared. Please understand that I’m scared. I’m still scared from the way I almost died, back when you saved me, and now I’m scared that something will happen to Bianca. She’s everything to me. Can you feel my fear? Can you at least understand the feeling, even if you get nothing else?”
Rose seems to nod, or maybe it’s just my imagination. She reaches into her own wool-covered carapace, searches, and pulls something out, holding it in a knot of her tentacles. The size and shape of a starfruit, the object has five spines, going off in different directions. I almost try to bite into it, but I look closer and realize it’s made of some metallic alloy, with flecks of a crystal or mineral, like quartz. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen, but I can tell that somebody designed these diamond shapes and the complex way they intersect.
Still, this device is just as confusing to me as my clock was to Rose, and I hold it up to the twilight, squinting.
Rose lets me fumble for a moment, then finds another, identical metal-and-crystal starfruit. She twists one of the diamond-shaped segments around, so it’s at a strange angle to the others, and the one in my hand vibrates, giving off a faint rumbling sound.
“Wow. What did you—” I grapple with my own device for a few moments before I manage to turn one of the slices, and a similar growl comes out of Rose’s device. So it’s like an old-style phone, or the telex machines in Xiosphant. And maybe you can use one of these to find the other? Rose helps me to rearrange the diamond slices until the device forms a circle. I snap it around my right wrist: a spiky bangle.
I stare at this device, snug against the base of my thumb. These creatures must have invented it over a long time, as they found materials under the ice, dug up metal and rocks and studied what they did and how they worked, and put them together. It’s not like almost all our technology in Xiosphant, which people invented millions of kilometers away on Earth, dozens of generations ago, and we’re just trying to keep it all working.
Rose comes closer, slow and careful, and puts her claw around my face and neck again. I always have to make a conscious effort not to pull away as these tongues affix themselves to my skin, but it gets easier each time—