Entangled (7 page)

“I'm done here,” Lee said, as she tied up her pack. “But on the next planet. Start thinking how you can be a help to me. And don't keep me waiting. And don't make me late, ever, and don't make me sorry that I bent the biggest rule for you. Right?”

Lee smiled, big and toothy-white.

Cade decided it wasn't the best time to mention that her brother wasn't actually her brother, and that the creatures she was going to save him from were after her, too. That she was a danger, a drag, the worst kind of liability for a ship that needed to travel without attracting trouble. Cade wasn't used to being smiled at in a way that she liked. She didn't want to do anything to collapse that small, bright star.

“Right.”

 

The nearest spaceport was in Dana City, a half day out. Cade and Lee stood on the Voidvil line, looking at the desert. It blared sun back at them. Midafternoon, and if they walked without stopping, they would get there in the dead center of the night. Not that spaceports slept. Just that the desert got meaner as it got cold. And now, without the Noise in her head, Cade could hear how empty this part of the world was.

“You sure you don't want to take a skimmer?” Cade asked.

She had handed all of her coin over to Lee for her fare to Hades, so she couldn't make the call on a skimmer herself. Taking one to Dana City would cost, especially because they were human. But when it came down to it, most palms on Andana were greaseable.

Lee shook her head and slung her pack over a shoulder. “I spend ninety percent of my time in a metal canister,” she said. “We're walking.” She turned and looked at Cade, sun caught in her sand-colored hair. “Besides. It can't be so bad with somebody to talk to.”

It had honestly never occurred to Cade to talk to Lee the whole way to Dana. Or any of the way to Dana. Her mouth was still a swollen pit. Besides, Cade didn't tend to use her voice for much besides growling out songs. But this turned out to not be as difficult as she thought.

Lee would talk for a mile about the things she'd picked up on Andana.

Cade would nod.

Lee would talk for another three miles about where they were headed, and the people they might meet, and how Cade should talk to certain types of customers (overexcited, waterworking), and what to do if their ship got boarded.

Cade would say, “Mmm-hmm.”

At some point, night came on strong and the sun packed it in. Lee's words dribbled into quiet. Cade was left alone with her own head and the desert—sighs of sand on sand, a groan of wind every once in a while to liven things up. She wasn't sure how she'd lived in this place for so long without noticing it was unlivable. The Unmakers hadn't exactly done her a favor by torching her bunker, but she was glad to not be going back.

Hours slunk by, measured in the number of new sand-welts on Cade's ankles. She reached out for Xan, but instead of transmitting, she tuned in to the soft, patient beat of his waiting. A thrum that started in her mind, but reached out to find echoes in the line of her neck, her fingers. It felt good. Not that Cade had a real frame of reference. She had gotten so used to the club—hands grabbing at her, eyes unpeeling her clothes. But this was different. Good-different. Knowing that Xan waited for her made it easier for Cade to keep walking, over and over the dunes.

“Hey,” Cade said. She was the first to see it.

The spaceport rose from the sand like a radioactive wart. It was the only lit-up building for miles. The rest of Dana City was just a winking suggestion in the background. The spaceport was the thing.

She sent a beaming flash of it to Xan.

“How do we get in?” Cade asked.

“You think I don't have a plan for this?” Lee said, dropping to a knee in the sweat-cold sand. She seemed to take most things as challenges. And so far, she'd risen to them all. But Cade still doubted that she could get them both off Andana without trouble.

“It's against the law to be human and in the spaceport at the same time,” Cade said. “Unless you're getting dumped here.”

“I know.” Lee rummaged in her pack. “I'm Human Express. Twelfth generation.”

With a winning smile and a flourish of the wrist, she shook out a uniform—the blue and white of a spaceport worker. It unwrinkled and Cade saw that it had a thin plastic film attached that would turn human skin a pale blue. There was also an extra rolling eye that could be fitted with a bit of adhesive to the back of the neck. It was an outfit designed to make a human look like a Saea, one of the closest known species. The stitching across the breast pocket read
SAEANNA
.

“This uniform is cargo class,” Lee said. “Makes it easier to lump around a bunch of stuff and pretend I'm delivering it to someone else.”

“Nice,” Cade said. “But not really enough. I've never heard of a two-headed Saea, and the fit for both of us looks . . . snug.” She dropped down and sifted her fingers through the pack. “Have another one of those lurking around in here?”

“I used to.” Lee's voice fell out of its usual rapid firing and dropped to a rare, slower pace Cade had heard only once before. “Had to stop carrying it around. I've covered this route alone for three years now.”

“Yeah, well, that's how I usually work, too,” Cade said. “Alone.”

She snatched up Lee's pack and started to walk toward the spaceport. The weight of it meant almost nothing to her arm muscles.

“What are you doing?” Lee asked, running after her and launching herself on Cade's back. “You rot-faced, sour-livered spacecadet, give it back!”

Cade shook Lee off with a twitch of the shoulder and turned to face her. She dropped the pack in the sand and backed off. Lee's storminess had returned full force. But this time Cade laughed.

“I'm just testing it,” she said.

“For what?” Lee mumbled as she rubbed the sand off her pants and the side of her face.

“How much it carries.”

Cade looked Lee over. Three full heads taller. But skinnier than she was, in every instance. A papery slip of a girl.

“Yeah,” Cade said. “This should do.”

 

Cade—dressed in a light blue skin and stuck with a bonus eye—entered the spaceport by the maintenance door. She marveled at the number of nonhumans streaming up the glass concourses, down the glass stairs. She couldn't have imagined the number of ships they packed into one dome.

Another Saea stopped her halfway up the stairs. Rolled both eyes at her—the two front ones, at least. It was a greeting. Cade rolled her eyes back.

“Do you know where you're going?” the Saea asked.

Cade didn't nod. She didn't shake her head. She just looked up at him with her best, wide, I'm-a-lost-little-girl eyes. She'd seen those work on almost every male in creation, regardless of species.

“What dock, sweet-arms?”

Cade flashed a four with her fingers, then a two. She could understand Saea well enough, but when it came to speaking it, she sounded like an ancient woman with a stutter and a head cold.

“Forty-two is up the main concourse, then down the left-hand side, all the way to the back.”

She nodded and smiled her thanks at the Saea man, picked up her pack and her guitar case, and hurried onto the concourse. There were more Saea in that crowd, and lots of native Andanans whose slithering arms reminded her of Mr. Smithjoneswhite. She had hundreds of fingers to avoid. The concourse rose and Cade looked down to the crowds on the lower floor—the scuttling crablike Mems and the faintly colored clouds called Remembrists.

Cade couldn't help but wonder at the fantastic spread of nonhumans. She hoped she wouldn't run into a Lilin, who could taste other people's emotions. It would be able to tell how scared Cade was of going into space. A dark and bitter taste, no doubt, that lingered on the tongue.

Dock forty-two was one of the smallest in the spaceport, tucked away behind two workships, great and hulking, bottle-shaped and silver. The ship behind them was nothing so brass. It was a perfect sphere, but its beauty ended there. Fine, downy fur covered it—half gray, half brown.

“Great,” Cade muttered. “A hairball that travels to space.”

Standing on the scratchy pink walkway, a Hatchum stared out at the middle distance of the spaceport, eyes calm but quick. Cade couldn't help but snatch in a breath. She'd never seen a Hatchum before. They were rare on Andana. This one looked young—older than Lee and Cade, but still young—and almost human, but taller and thinner, with every angle a bit sharper, every curve more intense.

He looked up, and his gray-brown eyes skittered over Cade. He was waiting for something.

She went straight up to him and slung the pack forward so it dangled between them. The Hatchum looked down at her with a mild questioning in his mild-colored eyes. Cade wondered what he saw.

Lee must have thrown a wild kick, because the imprint of a shoe came through the canvas.

“I. Um. Have something for you,” Cade said.

The Hatchum arched his eyebrows at her. That was it. No
hello
or
what-the-snug-are-you-talking-about.
Cade found herself reaching for more of a reaction.

“You'll want to see this.”

She beckoned the Hatchum over to a spot behind the curve of the ship. He moved light on his feet, and kept a careful distance. Cade held the sack with one hand and tugged at the string with the other.

Lee was folded as close to in-half as a human can get, her chest doubled to her legs. Cade and Lee had tossed all of the nonessential items out of the pack, and the rest were stuffed into their clothes—so it was just Lee down there, smiling up at the Hatchum. She could have lit all of Dana City in a blackout.

“Rennik!” she cried. “I wasn't expecting you.”

He didn't even double-blink. “And I was expecting you, an hour ago, not stuffed into a bag.”

Lee's laughter shook the pack, and Cade felt it travel up into her shoulders.

“Fair enough.”

Rennik shook his head, like maybe this was something that had happened before. Or happened all the time.

“Is there a place I can put this down?” Cade asked. She was somewhat more than human, but it didn't change certain realities. “My arms do get tired at some point.”

“In the hold,” Rennik said, pointing one of his long, four-knuckled fingers up the walkway. “All cargo in the hold.”

“Who is he calling cargo?” Lee cried, muffled by the canvas.

Cade started walking, but Rennik grabbed her guitar case and set it on the ground. Cade picked it up. Rennik grabbed it again. Set it on the ground.

He was so tall that Cade had to arch to see more than his chin. She stared him full in the face, and there was nothing mild about it.

“I'm sorry,” he said, with all the charm of an instructions manual, “but I can't let you take this onboard.”

“But it's my guitar,” Cade said. “I know there's not a lot of room but . . . it's the only thing I own.”

“It's not an issue of room. It's the nature of the beast.”

Cade clapped Cherry-Red to her stomach, held her close. “Don't call my guitar a—”

“I'm talking about the ship,” he said. “My Renna.” At the mention of its name, the ship gave a little jump. “She's sensitive to electricity. This is electric?” Rennik asked, touching the case with one of those odd, fine-carved fingers.

“Yes. What do you mean, sensitive? And what do you mean,
she?
”

“Renna is a girl-ship.” Rennik's voice had been flat, but it took on peaks and valleys when he talked about Renna. “She's very much alive. And she gets sick. You know, she's, what's the word . . .
allergic
to electricity.”

“She's . . . what?”

Rennik put a hand to the curve of the ship. “Renna is my orbital.”

Every Hatchum had an orbital. They could sail through any atmosphere, cut through space to carry messages and small items for their Hatchum. But Cade had never heard of one growing to a size where it could take passengers or cargo. There was no arguing with it, though—this was a spaceship, and she was alive. Now that Cade really looked, she could see the blink of little black eyes all over the surface. And the scratchy pink walkway had definite tonguelike qualities.

“What if I keep the guitar unplugged?” Cade asked.

“It's much too dangerous.” Rennik ran his hand in a soothing manner over a fine-haired patch of ship. “I would tell you what happened the time we made an exception for a battery-operated flashlight, but you wouldn't sleep soundly for a week.”

There was another kick from inside the canvas pack. Cade knew that Lee was telling her to hurry it up.

Cade looked down at Cherry-Red. “When is blastoff?”

“Renna doesn't blast,” the Hatchum said. “She lifts with delight and ease.”

“All right,” Cade said. “When do things get delightful?”

“Two minutes.”

Rennik's calm inched Cade to anger. “I have
two minutes
to decide what to do with the one thing in the universe I care about?”

Rennik looked her over—and Cade looked him over right back. He should have been easy to interpret. Dramatic, handsome, almost-human. But it all fell apart when she reached his face. It was one thing to take note of his sharp-ridged cheekbones, how they sucked in underneath like craters. But Cade wasn't a dreg-brained club girl. She needed a hint of how this Hatchum felt about taking her onboard.

And she couldn't find one.

“If Lee said you were coming, I'll carry you,” Rennik said. “I owe her several hundred favors. But we're leaving in two minutes, so both of you have to go. Strap in.”

Cade should have been grateful, but the Hatchum wasn't making it easy. Still, this was her ride. She stowed the guitar case behind the walkway to buy some time, and hurried onto the ship.

She found the cargo hold off the central chamber and put the pack down, doing her best not to thump Lee against the floor. With two minutes draining fast, she ran back down the walkway, grabbed her case, and snapped it open.