“The fur?” Maggie repeated, her tone maxed out on impatience.
“Works like Velcro.”
Velcro? Fuck me. I felt numb, my whole body ready to melt into the floorboards. Somehow, against all odds, I held shape as I watched the girl drag herself up a short ramp back to her bed.
Maggie was stunned into silence.
Velcro. Fucking fuck.
Nurse Manny pointed at the man with the bug legs. “That’s another model the doc developed.”
Model? The poor sap’s eyes were lost in another world, legs clicking in a feeble attempt to turn himself over.
“The legs are way too weak to carry his torso down here, but get him in zero g and he’ll be scooting up walls, across the ceiling. He’ll be perfect for going EVA, won’t need to fuck around with a jetpack or a tether.”
“He has no hands.”
“True. The doc still has to add those. That, or he might go with a prehensile tail. He’s gotten good at those.”
Deluski spoke up for the first time. “Why all this talk about zero g? The Orbital has artificial gravity.”
“They’re mining asteroids up there. Most are too small to worry about setting up any kind of permanent base. The space stations and space liners have gravity, but most of the mining facilities operate in zero g or whatever little gravity they get from the asteroids themselves.”
“Have you shipped out any of these workers?”
“Not yet. He hasn’t even tried any of his designs on real people yet.”
Maggie raised her brows. “These aren’t real people?”
“Shit no,” he said. “This here is a vegetable garden. Nothing but cripples and retards. That one there was in General Z’s army, but he got lobotomized by a shot in the head, burned a hole straight through. There’s a couple more woundeds over there, the rest were dumped by their families. People around here are crazy superstitious. They think their kids are possessed when they don’t come out right, so they sell their defectives to the doc. He doesn’t buy them all. He’s picky about his specimens.”
Specimens. Cold-ass bastard. Maggie lifted her piece just a smidge, enough to make me call her name as a caution. Nurse Manny wrenched his neck around to see what was going on. Maggie’s piece dropped back to her hip. “Continue.”
“Before he starts doing real people, he wants to test his designs by chartering a shuttle to take the whole bunch out of the atmosphere. He doesn’t quite have the funds yet, though. Soon as he does, he wants to close his plastic surgery biz in Koba. He funds this work here with the money he makes down there.”
“Where does he plan on getting the real people?”
“People will volunteer.”
“You must be joking.”
“Listen, lady, where the fuck do you think you are? This is Yepala. We’ve got an army of kids terrorizing people. Girls around here get gang-raped every day. People will do anything to land an offworld job. And the offworlders will pay for labor. You know how successful the mining operations are. Those people can’t wait to get a bunch of immigrants in to do all the shit work.”
I didn’t know what to say. None of us did. The horror of it all was beyond us.
Silence reigned for the next minute. Until a nervous Nurse Manny asked, “What are you going to do with me?”
The young guard glared at him. Manny said me. Not us.
Nobody responded.
He decided to keep talking, like he figured he was safe as long as he had something to offer. “The one in the tub can breathe underwater. Pivon has a moon that’s all ocean. The waters aren’t as developed as ours when it comes to sea life, but they do have these little shrimplike creatures that are evidently mighty tasty. Doc figures a swimmer would be useful untangling nets and shit.
“And Quentin, the guy fused into the bug shell, is designed for EVA work. You attach a faceplate, and he’s airtight. You know how much time workers waste suiting up to go into vacuum? The doc figures that making people EVA-ready could boost productivity by ten percent. Maybe more. Plus it’ll be safer.”
I stopped listening. I didn’t want to know about the woman with air-tank legs or the young boy with sockets on the end of his wrists, myriads of attachments surely available for the right price. “Does General Z run this place?”
“Not the clinic. But he does run the opium operations. The guards are all his. This one’s job,” he pointed at the young guard, “is protecting the big storeroom downstairs. If the general knows there’s a clinic out here, he’s never shown any interest in it.”
“So you work for the doctor and the doctor alone?”
“Him and the sheriff. This is the sheriff’s land. He bought it real cheap a couple years back and had it cleared of jungle so he could lease it to General Z.”
“Lease it?” asked Deluski. “Can’t the general take whatever land he wants?”
“The money buys more than the land,” I said. “It buys YOP too. Let’s go. We got what we came for.”
Deluski stood. “What do we do with these two? We can’t let them send up the alarm until we’re away.”
Maggie raised her piece, the barrel leveled at Nurse Manny.
“Maggie? What do you think? Should we tie them up?”
Her contorted face was flushed.
“Maggie?”
She lowered the lase-pistol. “Get some rope.”
Deluski rummaged for rubber tubing, made quick work of tying hands and feet and using bandages for gags. I inspected his knots. Looked solid. Didn’t have to last long.
Maggie was already at the door, Deluski on his way. I made like I was following but turned back. I put my lase-blade in the kid guard’s palm. Pressed his fingers around the handle. “If your bosses find out we got past you, you’re as good as dead. Nobody needs to know we were ever here.”
The kid’s eyes scrunched up. He was reasoning it through.
I didn’t want Maggie doing anything stupid. Me, stupid was what I did best. “Best I can tell there’s only one witness in here who can talk.”
I saw understanding in his eyes. I gave Nurse Manny a wink as he struggled against his restraints and screamed into his gag. I turned and hustled to catch up.
Just before I exited the door, the unmistakable sizzle of a waking blade brought a smile to my face.
April 26–27, 2789
We were outside, jogging past snail pens. Forgot to ask about the snails, dammit. Goddamn information overload in there.
We passed behind the last shed and sprinted into the darkness of the poppy field.
Evie met us and wordlessly led us back into the jungle. Flashlights on, we pushed along the trail, chirps and squawks sounding over the jungle’s drone.
Maggie stopped in front of me, almost bumped into her. “We have to go back.”
I took her wrist, dragged her along. “We can’t do anything for them.”
“We can take them with us.”
“How? We can’t parade them through town.”
“We can’t just leave them.”
“We won’t.” I felt more centered than I had in a long time. Nothing like a dose of true evil to remind me I wasn’t so bad. “We’ll stop them. Just not tonight.”
“But-”
“Not tonight.” I pulled her along until she started walking on her own.
Evie stopped us, told us to turn off our lights. She snuck ahead to check the road, came back a minute later. “There’s a patrol down the way.”
Deluski whispered, “They must be looking for us.”
“Agreed.” By now, the arrival of a one-armed man in Yepala had probably spread to the wrong ears. “How many soldiers, Evie?”
“Plenty,” she said. “I hope you have a lot more money.”
I doubted we had enough. If Panama knew we were in Yepala, he could’ve offered a bounty to the general’s soldiers. “Is there another way back to town?”
“There’s another trail we could take to get around that patrol, but when we get to town, you’ll have to pay one way or another.”
We’d take another. “Can you get home on your own, Evie?”