“What’s the name of the kid in jail in Forton?”
“They told us about it in Midland,” Horst said. “I don’t remember the name.”
“Think!” I said.
“It’s coming to me. Hold on.”
I waited. Then suddenly my arm was hit a numbing blow from behind and the gun went flying. Jack pounced after it, and Horst said, “Good enough,” to the others behind me.
I felt like a fool.
Horst stalked over, reached in my pocket and brought out my signal, my only contact with the Ship and my only hope for pickup. He dropped it on the ground and said in a voice more cold than mine could ever be because it was natural and mine wasn’t, “The pieces be yours to keep.”
He stamped down hard and it didn’t break. It didn’t even crack. Frustrated, he stamped again, even harder, and then again and again until it finally came to pieces. My pieces.
Then he said, “Pull a gun on me twice. Twice! He slapped me so hard that my ears rang. “You stupid little punk.”
I looked up at him and said in a clear, penetrating voice, “And you big bastard.”
It was a time I would have done better to keep my mouth shut. All I can remember is a hash of pain as his fist crunched against the side of my face and then nothing more than that.
Brains are no good if you don’t use them.
16
I remember pain and sickness and motion dimly, but Hell-on-Wheels’ next clear memory came when I woke in a bed in a strange house. I had a vague feeling that time had passed, but how much I didn’t know. I had a sharp headache and a face that made me wince when I put a tentative finger to my cheek. I didn’t know where I was, why I was there, or why I ached so.
Then, as though a bubble had popped, the moment of disassociation was gone and it all came back to me. Horst and being knocked around. I was trying to push my way out of bed when the old man who had told the story came in the room.
“How be you feeling this morning, young lady?” he asked. His face was red, his hair white, and his deepset eyes a bright blue. It was a good strong face.
“Not very well,” I said. “How long has it been?”
“Two days,” he said. “The doctor says you’ll be well soon enough. I be Daniel Kutsov. And you?”
“I’m Mia Havero,” I said.
“I found you dumped by the camp where Horst Fanger left you.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him. Everyone knows of him. A very unpleasant man — as I suppose he be bound to be, herding Losels.”
“Those green things were Losels? Why are they afraid of them?”
“The ones you saw been drugged. They wouldn’t obey otherwise. Once in awhile a few be stronger than the drug and they escape to the woods. The drug cannot be so strong that they cannot work. So the strongest escape. They be some danger to most people, and a great danger to men like Horst Fanger who buy them from the ships who bring them to the coast. Every so often hunters go to kill as many as they can find.”
I was tired and my mind was foggy. My head still hurt, and when I yawned involuntarily it was painful.
Sleepily, I said, “It seems like slavery, drugging them and all.”
Mr. Kutsov said gently, “Only God can decide a question like that. Be it slavery to use my horses to work for me? I don’t know anyone who would say so. A man be a different matter, though. The question be whether a Losel be like a horse, or like a man, and in all truth I can’t answer. Now go to sleep again and in awhile I will bring you some food.”
He left then, but in spite of my aching tiredness I didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t like it, being here. The old man was a Mudeater and that made me nervous. He was nice, being kind, and how could I stand for that? I tried to see my way around the problem and I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t rest enough to see things clearly. At last I drifted off into a restless sleep.
Mr. Kutsov brought me some food later in the day, and helped me eat when my hands were too unsteady. His hands were wrinkled and bent.
Between mouthfuls, I said, “Why are you doing this for me?”
He said, “Have you ever heard the Parable of the Good Samaritan?”
“Yes,” I said. I’ve always read a lot.
“The point of the story be that at times good will come even from low and evil men. But there be books that say the story been changed. In the true version, the man by the road been the Samaritan, as bad a man as ever been, and the man that rescued him did good even to such a one. You may be of the Ships, but I don’t like to see children hurt. So I treat you as the Samaritan been treated.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. I’m not a bad person. I thought he ought to be able to see that. I didn’t understand how he could think so badly of us.
He added then, perhaps seeing my shock, “I be sorry. I don’t think as harshly of the Ships as most. Without the Ships we wouldn’t be here at all. That be something to remember in these bad times. So be sure that I won’t tell that you be a girl or from the Ships, and rest easy. My house be yours.”
The next day he suggested that for my own good I learn to speak so that I would not be noticed. That was sensible. My mind wasn’t as foggy now and I was starting to worry about things like finding a way to contact the Ship. To do it, I might very well have to pass as a native. And if I didn’t do it, I’d definitely have to pass as a native, damn it.
I didn’t fully understand Mr. Kutsov. I had the feeling that there was more in his mind than he was saying. Could he just be doing good to a despised Samaritan? No, there was more. For some reason he was interested in me.
We worked on my speech for a couple of hours that day. Some of the changes were fairly regular — like shifted vowel sounds and a sort of “b” sound for “p,” and saying “be” for “is” — but some of the others seemed without pattern or sense, though a linguist might disagree with me. Mr. Kutsov could only say, “I don’t know why. We just don’t say it that way, be all.”
After he said that once, I just gave up, but he coaxed me into trying again. He coaxed me, and that was the sort of thing that made me wonder what he had in mind. Why did he care?
After awhile, I began to catch on. I couldn’t tell you offhand what all the changes were — I think rhythm was a large part of it — but I did have a good ear. I suppose that there was a pattern after all, but it was one I only absorbed subconsciously. I got better after we’d worked for several days.
Mr. Kutsov said once, “Not like that. You sound as though you be talking around a mouthful of gruel.” Not surprising, since that was what he was feeding me, but in any case I was only repeating what I heard.
During those hours we talked. You have to have something to correct and with no textbooks at hand it had to be normal speech. As we talked, I made mistakes and he corrected them.
In the course of our talks, I got a fuller picture of the dislike of these colonists — for some reason, Mudeaters wasn’t the word that came into my mind anymore, at least, not most of the time — for Ship people.
“It been’t a simple thing,” he said. “These be bad times. Now and again, when you decide to stop, we see you people from the Ships. You be not poor or backward like us. When we be dropped here, there been no scientists or technicians amongst us. I can understand. Why should they leave the last places where they had a chance to use and develop their knowledge for a place like this where there be no equipment, no opportunity? But what be felt here be that all the men who survived the end of Earth be the equal heirs of man’s knowledge and accomplishment. But things be not that way. So when times be good, the Ships be hated and ignored. When times be bad, people from the Ships when known be treated as you have been or worse.”