Blowback (13 page)

“Hey, you listening?” he asked. She turned to him with an
expression he couldn’t even pretend to understand. “You can’t go having one of
your spells driving this. You’ve got to focus. No wandering off and being a pea
brain.”

Her eyes narrowed and she moved closer, her body predatory
as she reeled the leash in and Tom was left suddenly remembering why Da’shay
scared him in the first place. There weren’t many people in the universe who
could put fear into Tom Frieden, but Da’shay skipped right to the top of the
list as she wrapped her fist around the leash and held it just under his
collar. She pressed him back into the tire, pinning his cuffed hands. If push
came to fighting for his life, he still had his feet free, but she’d put him in
stupid little sandals that were no good for kicking and she wasn’t exactly the
easy sort to kill.

“Drive off the road and vultures wait to pick your bones.
They can’t have you. You can’t let them eat you one gulp at a time.” She said
the words with a fierceness that made Tom think carefully before answering.

“If you drive off the road or if I do?” he asked.

She sighed and rested her forehead against his, her hair
tickling his skin. But she still had a death grip on his leash. Tom felt a
familiar sort of desperation to fix whatever he’d done wrong. It wasn’t a good
feeling knowing that this woman who was so powerfully annoyed with him had all
the power.

She sighed. “Vultures picked my bones, whole thoughts gone.”
She looked up at him. “Panic.”

Tom didn’t answer. He figured it wasn’t all that hard to
tell he was starting to feel that. Hell, anyone would panic being one day into
slavery, so he wasn’t even going to feel like less of a man for wanting to run
around breaking random shit.

She looked off into the distance, her eyes focusing on
nothing. “Vultures will pick at you if they know. Lead them from the wounded
nest. But the bird that flies sends the vulture back to the eggs.”

Tom cocked his head, wondering if she was starting to make
sense or if he was just losing his mind. “Vultures don’t hunt like that,” he
pointed out.

She looked up at him and made a grim face. “Nibbling at
panic. If you panic, they’ll nibble at you.”

He sighed and looked around. “Ain’t like I can get far
anyway. I’m willing to put off this fight for now, so you show me where we’re
going and I’ll keep you from driving this beast over some crowd of
church-goers. Deal?” he asked.

She studied him, her arm pulling the leash tight so that his
collar dug into the back of his neck. “Not fight for now,” she whispered. She
pulled the leash down and Tom sighed. Fuck. She wanted some proof he wasn’t
going to fight now. Well he’d already lost most of his dignity, so he lowered
himself to his knees and clenched his teeth to keep himself from calling
Da’shay all sorts of names.

She moved around toward his side and knelt on the floor
beside him. When she uncuffed his hands, Tom brought his hands around to the
front and rubbed the reddened wrists. They were sore from fighting the cuffs
and he watched Da’shay carefully. They’d seemed to have reached some sort of
truce and he didn’t want to change that.

“Out where waters aren’t full of diamonds we can fight,” she
promised him before she stood up. She still had his leash in her hand and he
watched as she unwound it from her fist and then laid it down his back so that
it followed the curve of his spine. Then she stepped back and watched him. Tom
got to his feet and went to the ladder on the driver’s side and started
climbing up to the door. He pulled, but it was locked.

“I need the card,” he said. She held her hand up with the
card and Tom took it and unlocked the doors. He went to hand the card back to
her, but she was gone. He blinked, wondering what happened, but the passenger
side door opened before he could climb back down the ladder and go looking.

Da’shay leaped into the passenger side and looked at him.
“Hurry,” she said impatiently. “Supplies are at dock 15-2. Have to get away
from the diamonds.”

They may have reached a truce, but she was still crazier
than a
genta
. Tom climbed the rest of the way up into the cab and cursed
when his leash got caught in the hydraulic valves near the door. Untangling the
metal links, he settled himself into the driver’s side. If it weren’t for the
collar around his neck and the lasered brand on his chest, this would almost
feel normal. And that scared Tom more than just about anything else in the
world.

Tom fought the wheel and engaged the rear hydraulics as the
sand from the dune started sliding under them, dragging them back down the hill
Tom was trying to drive them up. The car whined as Tom put it into a new gear.
They were nearly to the top. Tom could see the crest of the sand dune, and behind
it, more sand. If Da’shay didn’t tell him where they were going soon, Tom was
about to call off their truce. The on-board scanner said there was nothing out
here.

The car hit the top of the dune and Tom shifted to keep them
from flying down the other side.

Da’shay had been in back and now crawled between the seats.
“You gonna know when we get where we’re going?” he asked.

“Yep,” she agreed, settling into the passenger seat. “Can
only hear the distant screeches of diamonds across the glass.”

“Uh huh.”

She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “Do you want to
fight here?” she asked.

“What?” He put the car into a lower gear as they started to
slide on the sand. “Look, I’m not looking to get my ass kicked.” Tom would love
to fight, but he really didn’t have any illusions about fighting a
genta
in hand to hand combat.

“Oh.” She almost sounded disappointed and Tom could feel a
soft sort of panic, the kind that sneaks in a back door and settles down before
you have a chance to prepare.

“I ain’t got illusions here, so if you’re in the mood to
beat the shit out of me, I can’t stop it, but you don’t go pretending that it’s
a fair fight, got that?” He tightened his hands on the wheel until his knuckles
turned white.

“Get so angry,” Da’shay said in a distant voice.

Tom gripped the wheel as hard as he could. “Fine. Law says
you can take that out on me, and until I can find a way to put a bullet in the
back of your head, I can’t disagree, but you don’t play mind games and call it
anything other than what it is. You’re a sick fuck who enjoys hitting.”

Da’shay tilted her head and stared at him until Tom thought
he’d talked himself into a good beating. He’d done that plenty, only it’d been
a long time since he’d done it by accident.

“You get so angry,” she said in that same distant voice,
emphasizing that “you” to make it clear she’d been taking about him and not
herself.

Tom frowned. “Oh.”

“That’s why I liked your present.”

Tom sighed. She’d been sounding almost normal and now she
was all off on how he’d given her a present. One of these days she was going to
figure out he’d been trying to help her enemies spy on her. And considering
that she owned him, he just had no idea how that conversation was going to go.
She slipped out of her seat again. Moving to the back, she opened the trap door
that led into the cramped cargo compartment below and disappeared down it.

Tom checked their direction against the coordinates she’d
given him and kept on driving. His shoulders ached, either from being cuffed
too long or from fighting the sand, and that was enough to keep his mind
focused on the task at hand. The sun was setting when a hand landed on his
shoulder and Tom couldn’t control his startled jerk of the wheel. “Damn it.”

“There,” she said, pointing at a flat spot between two dunes.
Tom looked at her. There wasn’t anything important near the spot she picked,
but if she wanted to be here, he couldn’t come up with a good reason to not
stop. The winds seemed to be coming from the east, so he parked as close as he
could to the western dune and set the sand alarm. Dunes like this moved, and if
they started moving fast enough to bury the car, the computer would wake them.

Once that was done, Tom took a second to look around. “Right
then, no diamonds in your water around here?”

“Just one,” she said before she slid between the seats and
then hopped out the passenger side door. Tom gathered up his leash so he
wouldn’t trip on it and climbed down the ladder on his side. He’d slept on the
floor last night, and between that and the driving, his back was stiff enough
to damn near cripple him. He walked around the car, always keeping an eye on
Da’shay who was kneeling in the sand.

“Got water?” he asked her. She continued rocking slowly back
and forth as she stared at nothing. Climbing back up into the car, he went
through the trap door to check on the supplies for himself. She’d bought huge
jugs of water, backup power batteries, lights, thermal blankets, windbreaks,
food, piles of clothing. About the only thing he couldn’t find was a
communication device. No handheld, no audiotap, no scanner. She was smart to
not trust him with anything he could use to contact Captain Ramsay. She seemed
to think the captain was fine, but then she seemed to think she was swimming in
water with diamonds, so he wasn’t really feeling like taking her word for
things.

He grabbed a jug of water and some supplies before heading
back out into the fading light of day. He could use the tires as anchors for
the windbreaks and they could bed down under the car itself. That would give
them more protection from blowing sands and he could change the alarm to warn
them to check for anything moving in their area. Tom didn’t like the idea of
not setting a guard, but Da’shay couldn’t be trusted to focus long enough to
stand watch and Tom was too damn worn out.

The sun was fading into a few last streaks in the sky when
Tom finished. Wind breaks on three sides would keep the prevailing winds off
them and a light dangling from one of the axles glowed just bright enough to
keep them from banging their heads into the car’s undercarriage. Chores done,
Tom wandered off a bit to add his own water to the ecosystem.

“What’s that?” Tom asked as he walked up behind Da’shay,
tucking himself back in after taking his piss.

She’d drawn circles in circles, lines and swirls connecting
plain brown rocks that she’d laid out in some pattern that didn’t make any
sense. His leash hit his knee as he crouched down to look closer and Tom
flinched at the reminder of his slavery. Even if she was right that they would have
killed him, it was still hard to stomach knowing that she could grab that leash
any time she wanted.

“Was a
genta
girl here.” Da’shay carefully put a rock
down where two squiggles met. Tom studied the drawing again. It sure didn’t
look like any star chart he knew. Some rocks were far apart and others were so
close together that if they’d been planets, her drawing would have put them in
the same orbit. Command said she was a pilot, but for a pilot, she didn’t have
any concept of scale. Then again, Command never said she was a good pilot. He
shifted around and tried squinting at it from a new angle, but it still looked
mostly like gobbledygook.

“There was, huh?”

“Born knowing too much, but not understanding anything.”

“The not understanding anything part I get,” Tom said.

Da’shay actually grinned at him. “Lack of socialization with
cultural norms commonly affects those with inadequate parenting.”

Tom sat on his ass and stretched a leg out to the side of
her drawing. “Ain’t a bit of that makes any sense, you know.”

She shrugged. “I know.” She pointed at her rock. “
Genta
girl wanted to understand her…” She stopped, her face twisting with
frustration.

“Total fucking craziness?” Tom guessed.

She blew out a large breath. “Yes.
Genta
girl wanted
to understand her total fucking craziness.”

Tom raised an eyebrow and wondered just how insane Da’shay
could get because right now she was talking almost normal and still managing to
herself sound like a complete loon. Da’shay picked up another rock. “She went
to…” she stopped again. At his rate they were going to be up half the night.

“A new place,” Tom offered.

“She went to a new place and met…” She fisted her dress and
made a distressed little noise.

“New totally fucking crazy people?” Tom guessed.

She nodded, blowing out another breath like she’d been
holding it forever. “She went to a new place and met totally and completely
fucking crazy people,” she agreed. “And she was craziest still.”

Tom snorted. “Not surprising.”

She reached out toward her drawing and traced one of the
longer squiggles. “So she wanted to see a new place and meet—”

“New totally fucking crazy people,” Tom interrupted. She
reached over and punched him in the arm just hard enough to sting a little.

“
Genta
humans!” she said. “She looked toward a new
place with
genta
humans and humans, but she was still crazy.”

Tom rubbed his arm and glared at her. “Going new places
doesn’t exactly make you uncrazy,” he pointed out.

“It makes you unignorant.”

“I ain’t even sure that’s a word,” Tom said, but he leaned
in and waited for the rest of her story.

“She’s unignorant now, but totally and completely fucking
crazy people,” she pointed at rock number two, “worried that her crazy was too
crazy. If she was ignorant and crazy they wouldn’t have to care. But they
feared secrets spilling from a cup.”

Tom frowned. That was making a strange sort of sense, and
when Da’shay started making sense to him, he really did have to worry about his
mental health. “You mean the
genta
girl learned something that people
didn’t want her to know?” he asked.

Da’shay chewed on her lower lip and thought about that for a
long time considering it was a pretty simple question. Her face twisted into
something ugly.

“She did something they didn’t want her to do?” Tom tried
again. Da’shay kept making the same constipated face. He sighed, not sure what
else to try. He rubbed the still sore skin over his slave mark and thought
about it. “They just didn’t like her or trust her for some reason?”

“Yes!” Da’shay reached out and grabbed Tom’s leg as if it
were some sort of life preserver. “Totally and completely fucking crazy people
just didn’t like or trust
genta
girl, so they,” she flinched, “vultures
to pick. Skin sticking to the scab. Send
genta
girl back to full
genta
where she would wither.”

Tom leaned back, bracing his hands behind him on the warm
sand. “Ain’t following that a bit.”

“Listen, listen, listen.” Da’shay pounded her fists against
her own legs with each word, her face twisting with disappointment, before she
went silent. Then she let herself fall backward so she was lying on the sand
and looking up at the stars. Tom sighed. He could feel her frustration, her
desire to tell him something and a little part of him felt and unwilling sympathy.
She was smart, but she lived in a body that didn’t seem to be able to explain
what she was thinking.

“I am listening. You don’t talk so clear,” he said, trying
to be nice about it even if she was still frustrating him.

“Don’t listen,” Da’shay disagreed, but she sounded too tired
to argue the point much.

Tom shrugged. “Listening’s not one of my big skills. If it
was, I would be able to listen to other men and figure out what they say to
make women smile at ‘em.”

“She likes curves too,” Da’shay said.

“And see. You don’t make any sense. That’s why I don’t
listen,” Tom complained.

Da’shay rolled onto one side, sand sticking to one of her
cheeks as she looked at him. With the dim light coming from the shelter, she
looked even more otherworldly. The blue was almost invisible as only her
silhouette stood out against the white sand, and there was nothing in that
shape that suggested a
genta
. Instead she looked like a sprite that had
crept out of one of the books his ma had read to him when he was very young.

“You want to listen to other men who talk to Becca and make
her smile at them.”

“Well,” Tom shifted uncomfortably, “yeah.”

Da’shay shrugged. “Becca likes curves too. Men have too many
angles. She likes curves.”

“Wait.” Tom sat up. “Becca likes women? She’s been ignoring
all my offers because I’m a man?”

“Yep.”

“Well, fuck. Why the hell couldn’t she say that instead of
leaving me trying to figure out a way to make her see me for two years?” He
looked up at the stars. “Better yet, why am I even listening to you? You’re
probably as wrong with this as with your star chart.” Tom said that, but
something in his gut said that Da’shay was telling the truth. Fuck. Two years
he’d tried to impress Becca and she never would have given him the time of day.
Fuck fuck fuck. Why was he such an idiot?

“She likes curves, but she likes you. You like her curves.”
Da’shay’s voice was soft and Tom glared at her, daring her to pity him. If she
wanted a fight, that would cause one.

She sighed. “Vultures.”

“We going back to that?”

Her mouth twisted up into something that might have been a
grin or a grimace. “Less likelihood of bloodshed discussing vultures.” She sat
up and studied her chart for a long time. Finally she pointed to the second
location. “They sent vultures.”

Tom really hated charades, and that’s what he felt as if he
was doing. He was a fucking slave stuck in the charades game from hell. He
sighed in defeat. “Fine. Vultures are something that can be sent.”

She nodded.

“Wait.” Tom leaned forward. “You said something about vultures
when you were kidnapping me and selling me into slavery.” He was trying to
inspire some sort of guilt, but Da’shay only smiled.

“Not the slave center. In the garage. Drive off the road and
vultures wait to pick your bones.”

“Huh. I thought you meant real vultures and this planet
ain’t got any.” Even in the low light, Tom could see the weariness and
desperation in her face. “Fine. It ain’t like I’m thinking it now. They’re
something that can pick your bones and they,” Tom pointed at the second stone, “sent
them. That ain’t enough for me to go on, pea brain.”

She frowned and lay back down. The night was starting to
cool and a breeze swept down off the sand dune. Tom closed his eyes and let the
sand tickle over his skin. It’d been a long time since he took time off the
ship to do anything other than drinking and chasing doxy. A whole long time.
This planet was reminding him of his youth in all sorts of ways that Tom wasn’t
sure he really wanted to remember.