47
The Wadi held on to her pair-bond’s neck as she ran through a strange canyon. Strange, but familiar. She tasted the air with her scent tongue and realized they had come this route before, but somehow the canyon had been brighter back then, and they had stopped at a watering shaft and refreshed themselves.
There was no stopping this time. Her pair-bond ran right past the watering shaft and kept up her frantic pace. The Wadi held on with the smallest amount of claw possible, enough to not skitter off her pair-bond’s back, but not enough to cause the pain-smoke. She hated causing the pain-smoke.
What her pair-bond leaked now was urgency. And fear, though not for herself.
This latter wisp of emotion nearly drifted by unnoticed, even though the column was strong and bright to the Wadi’s senses. The problem was: it had become ever-present. Like the twin monsters of light that dominated her old home, that column of fear for others seemed to hang everywhere they went, solid and ferocious. For the Wadi, it was like a giant fang you soon curl your tail around and ignore because it has hung idle in your den for so long.
The Wadi tensed up as her pair-bond turned down another canyon. Odd, these canyons. All at sharp angles and pocked with square holes, all disgorging more large beasts like her pair-bond. Like her in size, anyway, but different in the tendrils of smoke that trailed out from their bodies—exuded from their very thoughts and feelings.
Her pair-bond ran as hard and fast as a Wadi now, her breathing raspy and labored. The Wadi exuded as much calming scent as she could, urging the pounding pulse she felt with her tail to relax itself. She also put out courage smoke. She curled her head around her pair-bond’s neck and released as much of both as she could, forgetting her need to conserve her energy.
She waited to see if her pair-bond would respond.
It was so frustrating, trying to communicate. But she had only herself to blame. With the hell being wrought in her stomach—the ever-present urge to eat and drink and nourish her eggs—it left little energy for anything else. So very little energy. And even less time.
????
Molly weaved her way through a dense crowd, gasping for breath as she slowed. Ahead of her, the street pinched tight with rubble, leaving just enough room for pedestrians to squeeze through one at a time. Lokians pushed their way single-file, hands urging those ahead while buggies blasted their horns in futile frustration.
Molly veered out of the crush of people and scampered up the edge of the rubble, passing the roadblock. Two younger kids were up even higher, sifting through the rocks and laughing. Beyond them loomed the tail of a Navy bomber, its gleaming hull miraculously intact and leaning out over the street like a sundial. As she scampered down the mound of shattered building, Molly checked the street numbers to the side, looking for the address of the Navy office. Four twenty six. She had missed it.
She turned, looking back over the rubble and down the street where the crowds flowed dense into a tight stream. She felt certain the building number on the other side of the rubble had been—
It hit her. As solidly as the bomber had hit the building she was looking for. Molly looked down at her feet. Her destination was right below her, caked up in the treads of her flightboots.
“No flanking way,” she muttered. She scanned the crowd for anyone in Navy black as the Wadi nudged her chin with its head. “It’s okay,” she told her. Molly held her hand up and rubbed the Wadi’s neck with her finger. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” she lied.
That’s what she loved about having a pet. You could lie to them and they didn’t know any different. Somehow, saying what she knew to not be true made her feel better. It dissipated the bad sensations inside, just as the wind had removed from the morning sky all signs of the downed shuttle. Its great column of white liftoff smoke had hung over the city during her run into town, but now it was gone, scattered across the winds like so many forgotten Callites.
Molly saw no sign of Navy officials, but that was hardly surprising. She wouldn’t be shocked to discover they had made scarce before the fa?ade of their building had done the same. Her last remaining option for help felt like a poor choice; the town’s sheriff had seemed a tad incompetent the last time she’d turned to him in need, or at least not very eager to help her out. But Molly couldn’t think of any alternatives.
She looked around, trying to get her bearings straight. The small town of Bekkie felt huge all of a sudden—there was just so much going on. People running to and fro, clutching precious items against their chests; fires being fought; lights flashing; flames flickering. Behind it all were her friends in danger, the love of her life and her father gone from the universe, her mom telling her to get ready to be alone again, Saunders and his crew and all they’d been through, and so many Callites sent off to their death.
As Molly turned in place, trying to locate the steeple of the great church in the center of town, she felt like her surroundings turned at a different rate than herself, as if the world spun on her while she stood still—and likewise stood still while she spun. Through a haze of smoke, she finally located that central spire of the great church and used it to locate herself. To center herself. She scampered down from the rubble and set off at a jog through the twists and turns of unplanned alleys.
The Sheriff would be able to help her, she told herself. She put one hand on the Wadi’s back so it wouldn’t use its claws, and hoped he didn’t feel the same way about Callites as he had about pets.
????
Molly approached the town square one street over from Main. She slowed to catch her breath and cut through a narrow alley that should dump her out right by the sheriff’s office. Her skin crawled as she plunged into the crack between the two buildings. The shade trapped between them was cool—the lingering nighttime darkness not yet chased off by the rising sun.
Molly berated herself for her childish terror, but picked up the pace again. The tickling sensation of having something awful right at her back resurrected a nostalgic fear she once harbored for Parsona’s cargo bay. When she was young, she used to run from her bedroom to the cockpit, sprinting ahead of the monsters to the safety of her father’s lap. The sudden recollection clawed at her breath in a way the running couldn’t. Molly burst out of the alley, gasping, tears in her eyes as she remembered the many hours she’d spent curled up against his belly while he spoke softly to himself, his voice muffled by his sealed helmet, his hand always moving up and down her back or smoothing her hair.
“That’s her right there!”
The outburst startled that skittish memory back into the folds of Molly’s brain. The accusatory words had arrived as well-aimed as any bullet, the way utterances can often cut through the din of so much background noise. Molly turned, her ears attuned to the fact that the speaker had been looking right at her as he yelled it.
There, behind the bars on the sheriff’s window, she found two eyes peering right back at her. A hand stuck out between the bars and pointed, the finger trembling with excitement. “That’s the one!”
Molly turned to look behind herself, to see if there was someone else the finger could be indicating. When she turned back, the sheriff loomed before her, seizing her with strong hands and removing any doubt.
“Hey, wait a sec—!”
The sheriff pulled her arm up tight behind her and force-marched her the last few steps she had intended to take anyway. Molly automatically resisted, pushing back against him as he manhandled her forward and through the door.
“Fine piece of detective work there, Sheriff Browne.”
“That’s enough out of you,” the sheriff said to a prisoner in the far cell.
“What’s going on?” Molly asked. She felt cuffs snap down around her wrists before she was handed off to a deputy, who nodded politely and tipped his hat before escorting her toward one of the empty cells. “Am I being arrested?”
“Assault and battery, ma’am.”
The deputy smiled, winked, and dipped his chin. His accusation and flirtations didn’t mix well.
“Do what?” Molly looked down at her manacled hands, as if to con-firm the bizarre turn of events.
The deputy pushed her into the cell and slid the door shut with a bang. He then reached inside and unlocked the cuffs before pulling them out through the bars. Molly watched the bizarre charade of bureaucratic inefficiency and felt herself becoming detached from the entire scene. It had to be happening to someone else. She peered past the deputy to the sheriff, who was looking her up and down.
“You sure this is the woman that licked you?”
“Positive,” a man said. He moved closer, out of the shaft of dust sus-pended around the window. The light kept him in silhouette, but Molly could recognize him by his massive frame, if not the accusation. Once she knew where to look, she could clearly see the bandage around his neck as well.
The sheriff laughed. “Paulie, are you sure you wanna go on record and say this girl whooped your ass?”
He laughed louder, and the deputy joined in, along with the prisoner to Molly’s side. Thighs were slapped, sending up clouds of dust to gather by the windows.
“There were three of them, like I told you.” Paulie said it defensively. He stepped closer to the cells and glared at Molly.
“This man tried to kill me!” Molly yelled. She reached through the bars and jabbed a finger in his direction. “He tied me up—they tied lots of people up and stole their votes! Our votes!”
“That’s the dumbest thing—”
“Look!” Molly yelled. She became frantic, grabbing her sleeve and fighting to roll it up. This made no sense, her being behind bars. It made her brain boil, made it hard to think. She felt the Wadi scamper down and bury itself in a pocket as she finally got the sleeve past her elbow.
“Look! Look at what they did to me.” She held out her arm and pointed at the red circle around the needle mark.
“That explains her strength,” Paulie said. “And her delusions. She’s obviously an addict.”
“Both of you settle down,” the sheriff said. “This ain’t for me to even hear. A judge’ll decide what went which way for who and when.”
“Whom,” his deputy said.
“Whatever.”
“No, he’s right,” the prisoner in the adjacent cell said, still laughing.
“And I said that’s enough out of you. I swear, you people are driving me insane. All I needed this week was some peace and quiet and I’ve got fleets falling out of the sky, a rash of looting, and now this nonsense.” He turned to Paulie as the big man seemed about to say something. “That means you too, Paulie. Now I’ll ask you to leave so I can do some paperwork in quietude.”
“Wait!” Paulie said, as the sheriff and deputy guided him toward the door. “But I ain’t told you the half of it! I got two dead friends and another two in the hospital because of this bitch—!”
“Watch your language,” the deputy said.
“Save it for the judge,” said the sheriff.
They pushed Paulie out into the street and banged the door shut behind him. His complaints were left to worm their way through the bars, stirring the shafts of dust.
“Now, back to my paperwork,” the sheriff said. He plopped down in his chair and pulled the newspaper up to the brim of his outrageous hat. He shook the fold straight and started reading, tsking at some piece of bad news.
“You’ve gotta be flanking kidding me,” Molly said. She looked around the cell, gripping the bars ahead of her; she rattled them in frustration.
“Retirement does this to a man,” the prisoner beside her whispered.
“Does what?” She turned and faced the man in the neighboring cell, who had lounged back on his cot now that the show was over.
“He ain’t been outside in a month,” the man said softly. “Least not until he arrested you.” He scratched the dark stubble on his chin. “I’m impressed he went that far.”
Molly stepped closer to the bars to hear better; her Wadi scurried out of her pocket and crept up to its perch behind her neck.
“Full retirement next week,” the prisoner said. “Great time to be a crook if it weren’t for that damned deputy.” He nodded to the younger man by the window.
“I don’t care about any of that,” Molly said. “No offense,” she added, as she noted the hurt expression on the man’s face. “I’ve got friends in trouble. I need to get out of here!”
The man shrugged and looked up at the ceiling. “Ain’t we all?”
Molly turned to the sheriff. “Excuse me,” she said. “Look, I know it’s not your job to hear out our sides, but don’t you need something more than a man’s words to hold me here?”
“Sure do,” the sheriff said from the other side of his sports section.
“Can I go, then?”
“Nope.”
“Well what’ve you got besides a man’s words?” Molly asked.
“His wounds,” the sheriff said nonchalantly. “Didn’t look self inflicted to me. And you got a slight limp, consistent with the sort of blow a knee would take to move a man’s nose three inches to the left.”
“Ouch,” the prisoner said.
“What about—?”
“Self defense? Not a mark on you.” The sheriff peeked over his paper. “Unless you wanna count the stain of your habit on that left arm of yours.”
“What? No! I don’t do drugs. Hell, I don’t even drink!”
“Sure do curse a lot, though,” the prisoner pointed out.
The sheriff lowered his paper and glared at the other prisoner. “I swear on the heavens, that’s the last word I want outta you. And you,” he nodded to Molly. “You can save your explanations for—” The sheriff leaned forward and squinted at Molly. He slapped his paper down and bolted out of his chair. “Hey, wait a damn second. Didn’t I tell you pets weren’t allowed in my office?” He strode toward the cells, jabbing the air with his gun-shaped finger. “You were in here the other day, weren’t you? Asking about Cripple?”
Molly nodded. “That’s right, and I think she’s in trouble.”
“Aw, hell, Cripple’s always in trouble,” the deputy said.
“Your pet’s gotta go,” the sheriff told her.
“No, listen, she’s really in trouble. I think they’re loading her into one of the shuttles, those shuttles that keep getting shot down.”
“Ain’t just the shuttles getting shot down,” the deputy pointed out. “Besides, it’s only illegals sent off in them things. Cat was born right here on Lok. Everyone knows she ain’t illegal.”
“It’s not just the illegals,” Molly said. “They’ve got this Ryn guy, and they’ve got Urg’s family—” Molly wracked her brain to think who else, but that was already stretching the population of Callites she personally knew.
“That’s crazy,” the deputy said. “Why would they—?”
The sheriff waved him off. “You say they’re taking legals?” he asked.
Molly nodded. Even if Pete was lying about them rounding up legal Callites, she needed an excuse to have the sheriff look into it.
“You believe her?” the deputy asked. “She’s obviously on drugs.”
Sheriff Browne walked over to his desk and rested his hand on his newspaper. “Old man Robbins delivered the paper two days in a row,” he said.
“Yup,” the prisoner agreed.
“What’s strange about that?” the deputy asked. “Robbins prints the damn thing. Course he’d be the one to fill in on a delivery or two.”
The sheriff turned and aimed his “hand” gun at the deputy. “Robbins ain’t walked a route in twenty years.” He made two popping sounds with his mouth, and his extended fingers rocked back with the recoil. “Dontcha think it’s odd he’d suddenly deliver it twice in two days?”
“It’s odd enough the fool’s printing that rubbish,” the prisoner said.
The deputy looked to the prisoner, but nodded rather than hush him up. “Yeah, hard to believe he’s running a press with ships dropping out of the sky. Maybe his Callite delivery boy got hurt in the—”
“Cor,” Sheriff Browne said. “Boy’s name is Cor, and Firehawks don’t fall on the likes of him. He’s too clever for that and too good to turn tail without slipping word to me.”
The deputy took off his hat and waved it in front of his face, which sent the shaft of dust by the window into a tizzy. “You don’t seriously think—?”
“I think I wanna hear what this girl has to say. After she puts that pet of hers out in the street, of course. Go open her cell up and get it.” The sheriff pointed his “gun” away from the deputy and toward the lock in front of Molly.
“Sir, I—”
“Open that gate, son, and get that varmint out of there.”
The deputy shook his head. “I’m sorry Sheriff, but I can’t do that.”
Sheriff Browne whirled on the younger man. It seemed he was spun around by the shocking display of obstinacy, like a slug to his shoulder. Molly turned to follow the action and saw that the deputy had drawn his gun. A real one.
“Goddamnit, sir. Why couldn’t you take early retirement like I sug-gested?”
Molly watched the scene from between the bars. Beside her, the prisoner stirred, moving to his own cell door like an eager spectator peering over a balcony. The two of them stood, barely a meter apart, and silently followed the action.
Or inaction, rather.
The sheriff stood there, surveying his deputy with an odd air of detached calm. As for the deputy, the only thing that moved was his hand. It shook, which caused the barrel of his gun to tremble slightly. Molly had no idea what was going on, but something began to perturb the hyperspace out of her Wadi. The small creature crawled around to her collarbone and tried to slither out through the bars. Molly held it back, clutching both hands around the small animal lest it run out into trouble.
After what felt like several minutes of a tense staredown, Molly finally saw a flash of movement from the sheriff: a smile. It slid across his lips and seemed to creep up under his gray mustache.
“Don’t do it,” the deputy said. He extended his gun out toward the sheriff, and the trembling in his hand increased. “Don’t analyze it. Don’t even think about it. And most important, don’t say a thing. I can let you live if I think you don’t know.” The deputy waved his gun toward the door. “If you stay mum, you can just ride out to that farm you’ve been dreaming of and never look back.”
The sheriff moved fast. So fast, Molly flinched and nearly lost her grip on the Wadi. His hand shot up. It seemed to travel through hyperspace to get there, as if it didn’t need to move through the intervening space. Molly peered at his hand and saw it had been formed into the shape of a gun—a double-finger barrel leveled at the deputy. It jabbed forward several times, indicating the man.
“You don’t just know . . . you’re involved,” said Sheriff Browne.
“You dumb fool,” the deputy said. “Just shut your trap and retire in peace.” The metal gun came up and was aimed right down the barrel of the sheriff’s fleshy one.
Sheriff Browne looked to the shut door. “That’s why you brought Paulie in, right? That’s why you wrote this up and took it so seriously. And yesterday, you didn’t act surprised when Mrs. Thrimble came in to report her maid went missing. You already knew about the Callites.”
“Sheriff, I’m gonna need you to cuff yourself to yonder cell.” The deputy glanced down at the sheriff’s hand. “And stop pointing that at me.”
The sheriff raised his arm and sighted past his cocked thumb. “This something you’ve been setting up for a long while? Been waiting for the old dog to crawl down from the porch and go off and die in solitude?”
“Down from the porch? Sheriff, you’ve been cowering under it for damn near a decade. You’ve got no idea what goes on in this town. Hell, while you’re sitting there behind your armored desk reading what’s on page two, I’m out there creating them headlines on the other side.”
“Look at the ruckus you’ve caused,” the prisoner whispered to Molly.
She wished she could, but she had her hands full with the Wadi. The thing had gone bonkers on her, trying everything it could to get away. It practically swam through her hands, pushing forward with uncommon strength. Molly had to keep her arms in motion, reaching forward over and over as if climbing a rope while the Wadi slid ever forward. It was like trying to create an infinitely long tunnel, one section at a time, but the damn thing was running faster than she could keep up.
“Hold still,” she hissed at it, but for once it didn’t seem to heed her voice. A loud bang rang out, breaking her concentration. Molly looked up, expecting the sheriff to be on the floor, but the deputy had just slammed a metal shutter down over one of the windows. He crossed to the other one while both guns maintained their vigilance on one another.
“I always scratched my head over your transfer,” the sheriff said. “Couldn’t reckon why someone’d leave a cushy spot at immigrations for all the political nonsense this job comes with. That shuttle that went up this morning, it’s tied up in this somehow, isn’t it?”
“You’ve got three seconds to put on those handcuffs, old man.”
“You think I’m scared of that gun? That’s my gun. You think I’m scared of death? You think that’s why I sit in here and read the funnies?”
“Three.”
“Son, you don’t know half of what I seen in my day. Or why it depresses me to see what’s come of this place.”
“Two. I mean it, sir. I will shoot you.” The other shutter lowered with a bang, startling Molly even as she watched it happen and had anticipated the noise.
“Ain’t my stomach that’s weak, boy, it’s my heart. It done broke long before you came around. That bullet can’t stop what ain’t there.”
“I’m sorry,” the deputy said. He pulled up his gun as the sheriff lowered his own. “One—” he said, looking away.
“NO!” Molly yelled. She leaned against the bars and pressed both arms through them as far as they would go. A shot rang out, and so did a Wadi. The latter aimed true, even as the former went wide, the deputy startled by Molly’s voice, or perhaps by the flash of movement heading his way, or maybe even some internal weakness.
The next scream came from the deputy as a shimmering blur wrapped itself around his neck. Only . . . the Wadi didn’t seem intent on making herself at home there. Unless, of course, making a home required some grisly form of burrowing.
“Drenards in hyperspace,” the prisoner said. “What the flank is that?”
Molly screamed, yelling for the world to stop, for the Wadi to stop, but both kept crawling forward. The deputy sank to his knees, quiet now, pawing at his neck with one hand. The other one brought the gun up and pressed it to the vibrating shape below his chin. It wavered there, contemplating the ridiculous: an end to them both. Molly clawed the air and continued to scream, drowning out the flow of cursing from the neighboring cell. The sheriff dashed forward, his pretend gun put away, his hand nothing but a hand. It swiped sideways with dizzying speed, and when the gun went off, a puff of smoke leapt out of its barrel, and a matching cloud drifted down from the wounded ceiling.
Molly collapsed from the suddenness and shock of it all. She sank to her knees and leaned against the bars with her arms wrapped around them. Hugging them. The sheriff stood over the gurgling deputy, a smoking gun in his hand. The Wadi jumped off and ran in a brief circle around the sheriff’s feet.
“You go on back,” the sheriff said, waving the Wadi away.
The Wadi dutifully obliged, scurrying toward Molly and leaving behind a trail of tiny red prints.
Sheriff Browne turned to her. He slowly placed the deputy’s gun inside his empty holster, then patted it fondly like a son returned home from war. Molly looked up and saw him tip his hat in her direction. The Wadi climbed her shirt and curled around her neck. She could feel the creature vibrating with energy, or fear—maybe even excitement.
“We got us a no-pets policy for a reason,” Sheriff Brown said. He nodded at her Wadi and tapped his temple. “Wouldn’t be so paranoid about critters reading my mind if I didn’t know what was in here, myself.”