‘Laeket pa bashorel toh. Why?’
‘Because you haven’t eaten the dog yet. You’re going to eat the dog.’
Dog had joined mushrooms on the list of food things a long while back. Owl’s idea. Taking them apart was gross, but it wasn’t any grosser than scrubbing old tacky fuel gunk out of an engine or something. Gross was gross, whether it was animal or machine.
Jane rolled her eyes at the Klip correction. ‘That’s a dumb rule.’
Owl laughed. ‘Languages are full of dumb rules. Klip’s one of the easiest ones. Most sapients would say it’s much easier than Sko-Ensk.’
‘Can you say something in Standard Ensk?’ Jane had asked this before, of course, but hearing Owl speak different languages was real fun.
‘A ku spok anat, nor hoo datte spak Ensk.’
Jane laughed. ‘That’s so weird.’ She began to unpack her finds, putting them into boxes with things like them. Owl had suggested that she label the boxes in Klip. Boli. Wires. Goiganund. Circuits. Timdrak. Plating. Her letters weren’t as neat as the ones Owl showed her on screen, but she was getting better. Alain and Manjiri were helping. They had a practice mode where she could work on things she was supposed to be learning in school. It was nice, learning stuff with other kids, even though they were pretend, even though they said the same sorts of sentences over and over after a while. Owl said it was important for Jane to remember how to talk to other people. She said it was maybe the most important thing, after getting the ship fixed.
Jane put the fabric in the delet box. ‘Do any other species speak Sko-Ensk?’
‘I think that’d be very rare. Maybe some people at schools or museums. Spacers living out near the border might speak it. I’m not really sure.’
Jane tossed a bolt onto a pile and watched it tumble down. ‘Will they think I’m weird if I don’t speak Klip right?’
‘No, sweetheart. But you will have an easier time if you know more words when we get out of here. You’ll be able to tell people what you want and what you don’t, and you can answer questions. You’ll make more friends if you can talk to people.’
Jane dragged the wagon over to the utility hose and dumped the dog into the basin below it, holding her face as far away as she could from its stinking fur. She hosed it down, watching dirt and bits of whatever swirl down the drain. A few small bugs tried to get away. Jane smashed them with her thumb. She felt bad about it, but they weren’t big enough to eat, and they’d just make her itch.
She sighed as she turned the dog over. She really didn’t like washing them, or the part that came after. Making dogs into food wasn’t fun. They tasted all right, though, if she cooked the pieces on the stove for a long time. It was a heavy taste, like smoke and rust. They kept her fuller than ration bars, which was the best part, because there were only a couple dozen of those left, and she had to keep them for emergencies. She reminded herself of that as she moved the fur around, getting it clean as she could. Some of the fur was burned where her latest weapon had touched it. This model killed dogs faster, which was good, but it made their fur catch fire real easy. She felt kind of bad about that, too . . . but not really.
‘Do you think the dogs know I’m eating other dogs?’ The packs had been bothering her less these days, and she’d wondered.
‘Possibly, yes.’
‘Because they can smell their blood on me?’
‘That’s quite likely, actually.’
Jane nodded. That was good. She took off all her clothes, folded them, and set them far away. She wrapped a clear tarp around herself, the one she’d cut arm holes in and laced a woven cord through like a belt. She picked up the big kitchen knife from the edge of the basin, where she’d left it a few days before. She sucked air through her teeth as she closed her fingers around the grip.
‘Is your hand still bad?’ Owl asked.
‘It’s okay,’ Jane said, so Owl wouldn’t worry. She still hadn’t found a pair of work gloves that fit her right, which made digging through scrap hard. Bare hands were much easier to work with, but that meant getting cuts, like the bad one she’d got across her palm a week ago. Owl said she needed stitches, but after an explanation of how that was done, Jane knew that was not a thing she could do. So, she’d closed the skin up with some circuit glue, which Owl hadn’t liked, but she didn’t have any better ideas. The cut wasn’t bleeding any more, but stars, it still hurt.
She looked at the soaked dead dog, lying in shrinking puddles of dirt and squished bugs, tongue hanging out like an old wet sock. It was so ugly. It was about to get worse.
She chewed her thumbnail. It tasted of plex and sweat and old metal, and some nasty badness she couldn’t name. Maybe a bit of bug. ‘Do you think other sapients will smell blood on me?’
‘No, sweetie,’ Owl said, her face filling up the closest screen like a sun. ‘You’ll be nice and clean when we meet other people.’
‘And you’ll be with me, right?’