Grown Men (5 page)

HardCell engineered these conger hybrids to be more ranch-friendly, but couldn’t de-venom their blood. It caused anaphylaxis, shutting down respiration completely. Cooking and digestion broke the neurotoxins down, but when the nearest clinic was on a coral island a thousand kilometers away, it paid to be careful.

Soldering quickly, oxygen hissing in his mask, Runt wondered how many adult eels had slipped through in the past month. Each fugitive put his breakeven farther off. Somewhere out in the manmade ocean, the escapees would probably grow up to five meters if they didn’t starve.
Maybe they’ll get hungry and come home.
He laughed and the sound echoed in his bubble of oxygen. Then again, every ocean needed a couple monsters.

What a waste of protein.

When Runt swam back from the eelbeds that afternoon, Ox sat waiting for him on the beach, stripped to the waist, studying the caterpillar trays in his lap. Of all things, Ox wanted to take over the bee-moths?

Runt jogged closer, expecting a mess. “What did you do?”

Everything, apparently.

Ox jerked his chin toward the slope leading up to their fields and the sheds.

They walked upslope where a new hive waited.

Ox had welded the plastic-alloy panels from his container onto the shattered hive. The new enclosure was three times larger and already stocked with chopped bamboo leaves from the orchard. Plus, he’d rewired the nectar feed and divided the nest into small hutches around the digital queen for easier caterpillar count. How had he done that with those clumsy paws?

There is Luck’s fuckery for you: nothing is fair.

Runt goggled at work he knew he couldn’t have done as beautifully. A soft
twep-tep
made him turn toward the outside again.

The silhouette filled the entire doorway. Ox stood tapping the trays with a thick digit and raised hopeful eyebrows.

Oh.

Cocoons. Runt realized the caterpillars’s morning had been busy as well; they’d spun ivory sacks around themselves. Warmth had speeded their cycle.

Runt just nodded back, almost irritated that the bigger man
hadn’t
botched it or killed something or set his carcass on fire just so Runt could boss him around.

Just an experiment
.

Runt stood at the hive entrance watching Ox’s bare back. His torso shone with sweat; it soaked the knotted sleeves at his waist that held his worksuit up.

With deft fingers, Ox slid each cocoon into the new enclosure. In two days they’d hatch and get to work tending the fields.

“This is a good bit of work y’done.” Runt gave Ox a thumbs-up and a thump on the shoulder by way of grudging appreciation. His hand barely reached.

Ox winced, and they both looked down. A few raw streaks on the large man’s skin showed where the hammergun had scorched him.

“Oi. See? Those burns’ll scar if you don’t watch. We’ll have to amputate something.”

Ox chuckled and shook his head, examining a livid stripe on his forearm with disinterest.

“Hang on a tick.” Runt jogged back to the habitat and returned with a tube of ointment. “Gotta be mindful about these.” Squeezing a blob onto his finger, he smeared at a rosy scorch on the oversized ribs.

Ox shivered at the touch and nodded once, watching Runt’s blunt fingers as they traced the burns with antibacterial goo. The slicked skin felt very hot, either from the sun or his freakish metabolism.

Runt pursed his lips as he worked, chewing on his mustache. “We got limited medical out here.” Kneeling, he squeezed the tube and daubed at a nasty burn on one meaty shoulder blade.

Ox winced and hissed
and twisted around to face the racks. His nipple tightened on the furry pec in front of Runt’s face.

“Yeah. Tough shit.” Runt wiped the extra ointment on the front of his worksuit. “Now on, just be careful with the tools. Something serious and I have to put you in stasis and ship your fat ass back to HardCell for employee surgery.”

His large partner nodded once.

As he watched the biotic goo seal the welts on Ox’s tan skin, Runt’s pelvis tightened and invisible feathery strokes ghosted over his nerve endings . . . a tickling madness that made his arm hair bristle.

Pheromones.

In closed spaces, Ox‘s starchy scent destroyed his concentration, and he couldn’t exactly ask his cofarmer to go rinse off his sexiness so Runt could trot outdoors to blow his jam again.

Or can I?

Ox twisted to inspect the burns and nodded thanks, but didn’t step back.

Runt did, feeling his double-crossing cock plump in his drawers.

 
“See here.” Runt cracked his knuckles and addressed Ox like a professor at the employee crèche. “I know they did a hormone splice on you. You’re gonna be getting an eyeful of my peg if you don’t rinse off regular. Yeah?” Runt squeezed his erection through his suit.

He has to know
.

Ox nodded, grimacing.

“No. We can’t neither of us help it, and there’s work to do. So you needta be having a proper wank now and then in the sea. That should help lower your levels.”

Ox backed up further.

“Nah. We’re both grown-ups. We’ll live. You go have a rinse. And then let’s have some grub.”

Ox bobbed his head and jogged down to the water.

Runt squatted inside the new hive, checking Ox’s work. He had tipped the panels from his shipping container inward, rounding the structure against the elements. HardCell’s digital queen chirped and purred in the center. Ox had remounted the device so it sat about a meter higher in the dead center of the expanded building, calming the drones and issuing instructions.

The adult bee-moths hung quiet along the dim walls, glowing softly, resting for tonight’s duties.
The best of two species
. Rather than pollen, they harvested pests and samples which they fed to their computerized “queen” to analyze so she could assign tasks. Runt inspected the long pupal trays where a few new caterpillars munched on their bamboo salad; most already lay cocooned in silky pods. They’d hatch in the next day or so.

The only thing: Runt couldn’t decide if his experiment had succeeded or failed.

At the very least, he owed Ox a great supper for the miracle he’d worked in here. Corporate citizenship and comfort had never seemed closer.

If he doesn’t get tired of outfarming his partner and murder me in my sleep.

Back in the cook-space, Runt outdid himself, stir frying pilaf mealpaks. Ox hovered for a while, curious, until Runt tossed him a mango and a knife and pointed at the bench by way of an order.

Runt watched Ox’s rough paws vivisect the mango swiftly. The giant returned with a bright pile of shreds, and at a nod from Runt, plunked them in the hissing digi-wok. The fruit seared quickly; the juice would disguise the multivitamin tang of the mealpak paste.

Teamwork
.

After supper, Ox fell asleep on the bench again while Runt sat through a fantasy holo-vid plugging HardCell cosmetics while elves cast spells and raped each other. A few times, the dozing giant’s pheromones spiked, which meant Runt’s boner came and went without harm.

He was grateful to have the sleep-space to himself again.

Enjoy it while you can
.

Runt lay awake in his big bed. Even alone there, he felt keenly aware of the gigantic predator breathing deeply and near-silently a few meters away . . . death in his hands and his head full of secrets.

What did Ox expect? Why had he come to this place? What did he have planned?

In the clock-lit darkness, sleep came slow. Runt curled toward the wall, as if his back could do a better job of watching Ox, as if his eyes could see a way forward.

The next day, Ox ducked outside at the first sunrise, making almost no sound.

The moment he was gone, Runt rolled to his feet and cracked his neck. He’d slept wrong and his muscles felt like wet sand. He washed, wanked, and waited to eat breakfast with his cofarmer before getting to work.

As soon as Ox returned from the sea, he dressed quickly. His boots were twenty-threes, as it happened.

Runt had been wrong about that too.

Let’s just see . . .

As Ox wolfed down the steamy protein scramble, Runt leaned forward on his elbows as though an idea had sprouted just then: a test. “Are you mechanical then? I mean, you like to twiddle with machines and that?”

Ox shrugged and smiled, showing his white choppers. He flexed his big fingers like a magician and waggled his eyebrows.

“Can you have a look at the soybeaner today?” The gabbled question sounded planned and anxious even to Runt’s ears.

Ox nodded firmly and rapped the table with his knuckles in agreement.

Smug bugger
.

“I’ve been able to do fuck-all by way of repairs.” A bald lie. Runt had given the appliance a wide berth since it fucked itself up somehow
nine weeks ago. He could pick any lock in the galaxy if need be, but tech scared him shitless. He hadn’t wanted to notify HardCell or spend the money for a replacement.

After breakfast, Runt walked the big bastard up the rise to the stepped crop terraces, giving the tour he hadn’t offered the day before: fields, mango orchard, silos, greenhouse. On the sandy footpath, his trail of size eight-wide bootprints trotted beside those twenty-threes. What of it? Whether Ox was a spy or an ally, he should know just how much Runt had managed even
with
his shortcomings.

Ox scrutinized the layout.

Runt paused on a rise to point down to the eelbeds in the cove. The soft glare of both suns bounced off the waves and made them both squint the rest of the way up. Ox fidgeted as they reached the lush green rows.

The automated soy-mill sat notched into the hill about fifteen meters from the fields where the beans grew. Drones fed the harvest straight into the silo beside the processors which broke the raw produce into nutrient liquids and solids.

Runt kicked the power and tapped the panel to bring it online. A low drone rose in pitch until he had to raise his voice to be heard. The soybeaner began to hiccup, its hum dipping and straining.

“It’s run hot for four months. Piece of junk. No idea what in hell’s wrong.”

Runt tapped the controls again. The pitch climbed again and the thumping and squelching sped up—
flap-thwlap-flap
—as something caught in the machine’s innards struggled to break loose or die trying.

Ox winced as if watching a mangled dog. He shook his head once, sharply.

“Agh!” Runt killed the power and stood a little apart. The thumping and groaning wheezed into silence. Even the bugs in the brush had no comment. The sun had crept higher and Runt could smell Ox again.

Ox ran his wide hands over the appliance as if stroking a lion, feeling for a wound. He looked for something with his eyes and his fingertips.

“How do you know so much about equipment and that? You raised by mechanics? Engineers?”

Ox snorted silently and shook his head. He squinted and turned his head, reaching for something further under the soybeaner’s belly.

“So . . . what? Your ma was a welder and your father humped pipe?”

Ox tugged his arm out and wrote in demi-Arabic on the dusty ground: “MINERS.”

“Oh.” Runt pursed his lips to keep his opinions trapped.

Mining killed employees young in shitty backbreaking contracts. The real money came from sub-terrain work, and some of those kids grew up and
died
without ever seeing even one sun. No wonder Ox loved their beach.

Tink
.

Runt turned.

Again, Ox tapped the machine’s case with his fingers as he squatted and felt underneath with one arm, straining for purchase.

“Find something?” Runt came a little closer.

Ox nodded once and slid his torso underneath the tofu unit. His massive ribcage pressed against the frame and his arms had to wriggle in by centimeters.

Runt stood shifting his weight for five minutes while Ox’s colossal legs twitched and bent as he squirmed under the equipment. Runt felt strange watching his oversized lower half, the knotted muscle, the packed groin pushing at the suit’s closure, as if Ox’s whole body lived under a magnifying glass.

So easy to kill him under there. Right now.

Staring down, Runt felt huge for a moment, or Ox seemed small.

Maybe he’s small for a miner.
Yeah.
Maybe he picked this shithole for the weather
.

The rattles and clinks from the underside stopped, and the husky oaf wriggled back out covered in soy mash and holding a length of hose. He presented the tubing for Runt’s inspection.
Chance’s pants
. A blockage had been wasting raw soybeans as they were processed.

Runt snapped his fingers and took off, calling over his shoulder. “Hang on, hang on! I have more of those!”

He trotted back with the replacement and watched Ox dismantling the mill, shaking his head at such obvious technical aptitude.

At least I can heat mealpaks and pick locks.

Runt stood shifting his weight a moment, but the big freak waved him away, as if to say, “Go do your own work, midget.”