Cottonwood (35 page)

Smiling, she went into the kitchen. She put her bags down on the counter, called Fagin, opened up the fridge, and something black came down over her head and cinched tight.

Her hoarse yelp of alarm ended in an explosion of white dots as she was slammed three times into the freezer door, then thrown to the ground. She kicked—not so blindly; the sack on her head was tight-weave, but enough to breathe through and enough to see, very fuzzily, the black shape of her attacker against the light from the open refrigerator—and he grabbed her foot and drove his fist against the long muscle of her thigh.

The pain was exquisite, an instant charley horse. She yelled again and scrambled back, straight into the wall, hard enough to knock her jaws together. Taste of blood in her mouth; she’d bitten her tongue.

The black shape came swooping down, grabbing her, throwing her. She landed, rolled flat on her back and kicked again as he came at her, the kind of lucky shot that only happens in the movies. Both feet hit square in his stomach—hard stomach, no give at all; this was a flak vest—and sent him flying into the dining room table. She rolled onto her hands and knees, launched herself into a run, and banged into the arm of the sofa.

She went down and he came after, kicking and stomping on her. His boots were huge, hard…combat boots. She rolled, screaming and thrashing, but his boots kept coming, like she was a cockroach he was trying to kill. She felt her ribs crack, screamed and curled, and caught the boot in her belly over and over until something like fire exploded in her guts and she couldn’t scream anymore.

It got quiet. She thrashed on the floor, both hands slapping and knotting at her stomach where lava churned, hardly able to breathe for the agony of trying, but unable to lie still. She knew he was still there, just standing and watching, but if she’d had a gun in her hands, she couldn’t have found the willpower to aim and fire it. All that mattered was her stomach and the venomous nightmare
thing
eating its way out of her.

Then he had her by the ankles, dragging her out into the center of the room. He dropped her, walked two steps in his heavy boots, and dropped suddenly atop her, his knees on either side of her chest. She shrieked, knowing only that he was on her, his weight like an acid spear in her broken guts. She scarcely heard the low purr of his zipper.

Light, splashing in the living room window. His hand slapped down over her mouth and pressed, muffling the worst of her hoarse, spastic cries. A car outside, in her driveway, idling. Someone got out.

He said one word then, his first word, his only word: “Fuck.”

It was enough.

Someone knocked three times, light and cheerful, on her front door.

He got up, letting her snap onto her side in a convulsive curl, and ran out the back.

Outside in her driveway, a woman’s voice: “Joe? This is the wrong house. See, 3182? Gavi’s in 3128.” Embarrassed laughter. Car door. The headlights, rolling away.

Sarah pulled at her head, fingers plucking as she writhed until she managed to loosen the cord and pull the sack away. She shoved it aside, climbed to her knees, and threw up half a sandwich and kind of a lot of blood. She couldn’t look at that. She tried to call Fagin, could only manage a groan. Her stomach, her stomach, what did he
do
to her?

She couldn’t stand up. She crawled to the back door on her hands and knees, pushed it shut, locked it. Pointless, she knew, but—

The backyard light was on, catching the reflective tape on Fagin’s collar. He was hanging up by it, hanging on a fencepost, and he was…he was…

Sarah screamed again, the sound no more than a caw of disbelief and anguish. She shouldn’t have done it; agony popped in her like a bubble. She fell on her face, hands digging at the floor, sobbing.

‘Get out,’ some cold, rational part of her thought. ‘Get out right now, while you still can. You know damn well who that was. You know he’s coming back.’

Sarah crawled. Out through puddles of milk and melting ice cream. Out onto the cool concrete garage floor. Into the van, a climb that brought her twice right to the metallic edge of unconsciousness. Her keys were still in her pocket; taking them out took a lifetime. She opened up the garage door and drove.

The outer gate of IBI’s community village wasn’t manned, just an electronic barrier with a card-reader, but she had to crank down her window by hand and then stretch out over her broken ribs to do this. The card fell from her fingers when she was done. She stared at it, sobbing, then left it in the street and fled.

‘Just come home,’ Kate had said. ‘Don’t call me, don’t fight, don’t storm out on anyone, just leave.’ And she wanted to now, she did, but she hadn’t gone a mile before she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. Her guts were burning and getting worse. She could feel her stomach swelling. She thought she might have peed herself, but was afraid to look down and see bloodstains on her jeans. She thought she might really be hurt.

Hospital. Not IBI’s medical wing, but the real hospital in Wheaton. She drove down streets she barely saw, ran two stop signs and a red light, and had a cop on her tail she didn’t even see when she finally careened in through the emergency entry and banged up onto the curb to a stop. She waited there, curled around the steering wheel and drifting out of consciousness, to be found. ‘Just come home,’ Kate said.

But now it was too late.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She didn’t come back. Not the next day and not the day after. When the third day came and went without Sarah, Sanford threw down the human computer he’d been restoring and went outside.

T’aki sat in the dirt with his toy ship, not playing, not even watching the road anymore, but just sitting. Sanford sat beside him. They watched the early afternoon wind blow clouds over Cottonwood. It had stormed fairly impressively this morning. He thought it might storm again later tonight, but for now, the skies behind the drifting clouds were blue.

“Did they make her stop coming?” T’aki asked finally.

“I don’t know.”

“Did they see us in the van?”

“I don’t think so.” Or they would have come for us as well, he thought, but did not say.

T’aki crawled into his lap. He rubbed the boy’s head and watched clouds move. The sky was infinite today, blue and clear and inviting.

Footsteps on the causeway. He glanced over and saw Sam coming toward him with three cans of beer dangling from plastic rings. A peace offering. He wanted to spit, but he had his son on his lap. He ignored Sam instead, ignored him while he was walking and ignored him when he stood at Sanford’s feet. The clouds crawled, rolling into shapes and out of them again.

“What am I supposed to do?” Sam said at last, crossly. “Paint my shell with ashes and beg for forgiveness?”

Sanford said nothing, but T’aki ground his tiny palps twice and blew air rudely through them.

Sam switched his glare to the boy. “You know, if she liked you, she wouldn’t give a damn what I said. She’d be here right now, if she
really
liked you. You’re nothing but a job to her and as soon as she walks out that gate, she forgets you were ever born.”

T’aki stared, trembled, then jumped up with a shrill skree and ran inside, his toy ship clutched to his shell. Sanford let him go, listened to the muffled squalling from the rear room, and then looked up at Sam and spread his arms. “What else is left?” he asked. “Just kick him next time. Tell him, oh, tell him his father never wanted an egg and that Ko’vi hates him.”

Sam snapped away a beer and threw it at him. It bounced hard off his chest and rolled away. “I’m supposed to feel bad because your boy is making friends with the enemy? Fuck you!”

“Sarah Fowler is not the enemy.”

“She’s in it for herself, like all of them. She’s just too stupid to join their soldiers, so she prances around with paper instead, but she’s still one of them. She’s human and she’s IBI.”

“She’s a good person.”

“Sure she is. And when it all went bad at that stupid party she threw together, your good person took off and saved her own soft hide. Did you explain that to your boy when you were running from the fire bombs?”

“Would it have made you feel better to see her killed by them?”

Sam opened another beer and poured half into his throat. He sat down in the road facing him, out of kicking range, and glared. Inside, T’aki’s squalls had tapered off, but his heartsick cries still tugged at the air. Sam drank after each, palps snapping, and when the beer was gone, he bounced the empty can off Sanford’s chest and said, “Do you know the one thing that made you worth knowing?”

“I can fix your guns.”

Sam snorted through his palps. “You’re not the only mechanic in this piss-ditch and you’re sure not the best of them. No, what makes your so-called company just tolerable is that you’re still yang’ti after all this time. You never settled in. You still see this place for what it is and you still remember who you are. You know better than to trust a human.”

“Because they’re all evil, is that it? And we’re all good?”

“Because she’s IBI, you dumb bug! Every human who walks in through that fucking gate is IBI! She works for them! The only reason she’s here to hum in my ear all damn day, talking about what’s right and wrong, is because they pay her to do it.” Sam twisted around and spat chaw. “She can’t help. The best she could do was that stupid party and look how it ended!”

“No one was killed.”

“That’s the only thing you can say, isn’t it? You know, I’m old enough to remember going to a lot of parties where no one getting killed was not just a
good
outcome, it was more or less the
only
outcome.” He opened his last beer and started drinking, not tasting, but just pouring it in.

“She tried to take a little of the desperation out of our lives for one night,” Sanford said.

“Yeah? And now they only feel more desperate, don’t they?”

“What is
wrong
with you?” Sanford asked disgustedly. “What had to
break
inside you to make any of those arguments sound sensible in what passes for your head? She risked her life for us. Are you so far gone that you can’t even see that? Or are you so far gone that you see it and just don’t care?”

Sam recoiled and then only sat there, even his palps and antennae perfectly still.

A shadow fell over them.

Sanford looked around, one hand tensely drawn up. He hadn’t heard anyone approach, and it took several seconds before recognition set in and he was able to put a name to the yang’ti hesitating towards them.

Baccus. Of all people. Baccus.

He got up, and she stopped walking, her antennae dancing nervously on her head. She had something in her hand and she held it out now. Grey papers, pressed together. A human news-sheet.

“They were reading it at the Heap-station,” she said, as Sanford took it. “I thought…you might like to know.” She looked around, hands wringing, then ran back the way she’d come and was soon gone.

Sanford unfolded the papers, squinting at the narrow crush of human lettering. The news-sheet wasn’t fresh, and the ink had smudged, making a difficult task that much more difficult, but with patience, he could puzzle their words out. War in Syria. Gas tax expected to rise. President Dufries to sign new environment reform bill. He clicked to himself, turned the papers over, and there was Sarah’s picture: a bloody face, unconscious, pressed between two strangers, and the words
IBI Worker Critical After Attack
.

“What is it?” Sam asked, fetching the beer he’d thrown at Sanford.

A woman is in critical condition at Sacred Heart Medical Center following a violent assault in her home Monday night. Sarah Fowler, 24, is one of hundreds of new employees at the International Bureau of Immigration’s Cottonwood, where she works as a social services liaison to the residents. Fowler’s attack is only the latest in a string of bug-related violence worldwide that leaves many residents of the local community concerned for their own safety.

A hospital spokesperson had no comment when asked if Fowler was able to identify her attackers, but did say that the possibility of a bug perpetrator has not been ruled out. Fowler received several serious injuries to the chest and abdomen consistent with powerful kicks or blows, the most critical of which has resulted in a ruptured liver and other internal injuries. Fowler underwent surgery shortly after her arrival at Sacred Heart and is listed in critical condition
.

A spokesperson from IBI has issued a statement expressing concern over the attack and that they remain interested in working with Sacred Heart to see that Fowler receives the best medical care. “The residents of Cottonwood are closely monitored and policed, and how a violent individual could have escaped to attack Miss Fowler in her home is our paramount concern at this time,” said IBI liaison Metcalf Hayes. “We’re hoping [Fowler] will soon be stable enough to answer some questions. In the meantime, stronger measures—

The article was continued elsewhere. Sanford did not chase it down. He stared at the photograph, at Sarah’s slack and whitened face until Sam took the news-sheets away. Then he walked blindly to the corner of his house and leaned on it, staring into the open fields that lay beyond the causeway.

He’d known better. Even if she hadn’t, he’d known better. She thought that she could face down the soldiers of IBI and fight them back with pieces of paper and bold lies, that she could apologize for it later and be forgiven. He’d known better, and he’d let her do it anyway.

‘But she’s human,’ he thought, and covered his eyes. ‘I thought they’d come for us, not her. She’s one of their own. She’s not supposed to be in danger.’

And he’d known better than that the instant she put him in her van and took him to her home. And still he said nothing. He let her play the part of the humble penitent to the dark voice on the telephone and he ate her food and he never even tried to warn her.