Offspring (24 page)

“Now!” Kendi said. He and Martina leaped off the sled straight onto the dinosaurs’ back. Keith hesitated. “Hurry, Keith! I’m not going to tow you.”

Keith jumped. He hit the irvinosaur’s back and lost his footing. His feet went out from under him and he fell, rolling, toward the animal’s flank. Martina grabbed him. He got to his feet, shaken and staring.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” he wheezed. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

Kendi hauled on the tow rope and the gravity sled slid into a position behind them so they could get off later. “It’s fun, Keith. You have to let yourself go sometimes. Figuratively, I mean.”

Keith didn’t answer. Kendi drove a small stake into the dinosaur’s thick, pebbled hide and tied the tow rope to it. The gravity sled obediently followed. Kendi raised his hands and stretched. The dinosaur’s back was so broad it had only a slight slope to it. Talltree trunks moved past at a slow, steady pace. He could feel the creature’s huge muscles moving under his feet like boulders sliding around far below the earth. Behind came the rest of the herd, plodding steadily forward. Every so often, one of them gave a low, moaning call that the others answers. The sound vibrated Kendi’s bones and he felt a rush of exhilaration.

“Are you sure it won’t hurt us?” Martina whispered.

“Positive,” Kendi said. “It barely knows we’re here. Hey, if a fly lands on your back, do you even notice?”

“It’s just so...big. I can’t imagine how much it weighs.” She spread her arms wide and spun in place. “This is
marvelous
, Kendi. Breathtaking! A little slow, though.”

Keith squatted down and ran his hands over the heavy skin at his feet. “Wow.”

“Dinosaur riding is a big sport here,” Kendi said. “We’re trying the easy version.”

“What’s the hard version?” Martina asked.

“Smaller dinos who are more likely to notice you. And for the
real
danger-mice—carnosaurs. People
have
died trying that one.”

“Oh, god,” Keith said.

Another round of moaning cycled through the heard. The sound traveled up Kendi’s body in a low, almost delicious vibration. A flock of glider lizards slid overhead, squeaking like excited children. The herd plodding on as if the Weavers didn’t exist.

“You mean people actually climb on a wild meat-eater?” Martina said. “All life!”

“Yeah. And people call
me
insane,” Kendi said. “You’d never catch
me
trying to—”

“How can you do it?” Martina asked. “Is there a club or something?”

Kendi realized her eyes were sparkling. It made her look bewitchingly beautiful. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “You want to try—”

“I never imagined such things were possible before,” Martina said. “Not even in the Dream. I want to try them, Kendi. I want to try
everything
. Riding a meat-eater—that would be a real slice of life!”

“Long as you don’t let the life slice
you
,” Kendi said.

“I’m serious, big brother,” she said. “Look at me! “ll life, a month ago I was a slave and now I’m riding a dinosaur! I’ll have to work hard to top this!”

And she ran toward the dinosaur’s neck.

“Martina!” Keith shouted. “What are you—”

“I want a better view, guys. Come on!” She reached the base of the creature’s neck. It was as big around as a good-sized tree trunk, but Martina wrapped her arms and legs around it. With a wide grin, she shimmied upward, using her arms and thighs for purchase.

“Martina!” Kendi yelled.

The dinosaur didn’t react at first. Then it brought its head around, trying to see what was going on. Martina laughed and clung tightly as the animal’s neck swung and twisted beneath her. Kendi’s heart leaped into his throat.

“Martina!” he yelled again. “Get down from there!”

The irvinosaur made a low, rumbling sound Kendi didn’t like. Martina whooped one more time, then slid back down to the creature’s back. She trotted back to her brothers, breathless and laughing.

“That was the greatest!” she said. “All life, you have to—”

“Martina,” Kendi said with absolute calm, “move slowly toward the gravity sled. Now. Right now.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Do it!” Keith hissed. He grabbed her arm. “Come on!”

“Why?” she repeated. “I don’t see—oh.”

The entire herd had come to a stop. Half a dozen dinosaurs, including the one the Weavers were riding, had bent their heads around the siblings like strangely animated trees. One or two were chewing cud. They blinked and stared, clearly uncertain about these strange creatures riding their lead male. Kendi swallowed. Irvinosaurs were stupid and slow to react, but if they decided the humans were a threat ...

One of the herd let out a bellow that nearly blasted Kendi off his feet. The alpha female raised her head high in an aggressive posture. Her roar was echoed by the others.

“Run!” Kendi shouted.

Keith and Martina dove for the sled. The alpha brought her head down toward Kendi and he leaped aside just before it crashed into the spot where had been standing. The male they were riding roared in pain, anger, or both. Kendi scrambled aboard the sled and kicked the tow rope loose. Another dinosaur raised its head.

“Hang on,” he snapped, and punched one of the controls on the pedestal. The sled shot straight up. Kendi’s stomach fell into his shoes and the dinosaurs smeared into green-brown blurs.

“Watch it!” Martina yelped.

Kendi flicked another control and the sled stopped. For a split-second he was weightless and his feet left the surface of the sled. His head brushed something, then he came back down on the sled again. Keith looked queasy. A talltree branch stretched into the forest only a few centimeters above their heads. Another split-second and the sled would have crashed into it. Kendi’s knees felt weak, and he sank slowly to a sitting position. The irvinosaurs continued to bellow below.

“All life,” Kendi whispered.

Martina raised her arms and whooped. “That was great!” she yelled. “We are
gods!
Do you hear that, world? You can’t touch me!”

“Martina?” Keith said. “You’re scaring me.”

“You’ve been acting like an old woman ever since Kendi freed us, Keith,” she said. “Me, I want to live it up.”

Kendi peered over the side of the gravity sled. The irvinosaur herd had moved on, leaving a trail of trampled undergrowth. “Let’s go home and live it up there for a while,” he said. “There’s a staircase topside just over there.”

Keith said he wanted to lie down, so they dropped the gravity sled off at the rental agency—Kendi caught Martina checking the place’s message board for notices about dinosaur riding clubs—and trouped back to the house Keith and Martina shared. It was a small house, and high up in its tree, where the branches were barely thick enough to support the platform. The house rocked perceptibly during strong winds. It had originally belonged to Ben, then to Ben and Kendi, then just to Ben again. Kendi had once observed that friends could update themselves on the status of his and Ben’s relationship by checking local housing records. With Ben and Kendi now living in the house Ben had inherited from his mother, the little house had stood vacant until Keith and Martina’s rescue from slavery. Kendi had offered to let them live with him and Ben, but both of them had refused.

“We can take care of ourselves,” Martina had said. “Besides, I like the idea of living in my own, separate house.”

Martina, still glowing from the ride, entered first, followed by her brothers. Keith went immediately into his room and shut the door. Martina checked the kitchen.

“I’m starved,” she said. “Want some lunch? I make a mean macaroni and cheese.”

“Sure,” Kendi said. He sat down at the tiny kitchen table. The place was scrupulously clean. A window looked out over a long talltree branch. Gloomy sky sulked in the spaces between green leaves. “Will Keith want anything?”

“He hasn’t been eating well lately,” Martina admitted. She set a pot of water on the stove and took an onion from the refrigerator. “He’s had a few good days since we got here, but they’re getting few and far between.”

“I know. I’ve been watching him.” Kendi ran a fingertip over the tabletop. “I could pull some strings, get him into a counselor.”

“He won’t do it.” Martina skinned the onion with deft movements and set to chopping. The sharp, sweet smell mingled with steam from the pot. “You can’t make someone see a therapist if they don’t want to. And anyway, getting him in would displace someone else, someone who was Silenced and who really
needs
a counselor.”

“You don’t think Keith should see someone?”

“No. I just think that other people—Silenced people—need it more.”

She went back to chopping. Kendi watched her for a while. “ll life, she had grown. She had been barely ten years old at the slave auction that had broken their family into bits. Now she was a fully-grown woman, able to cook and enter the Dream and ride a dinosaur.

“How was it for you?” he asked suddenly.

Chop, chop, chop. “How was what?”

“Slavery.”

“I’ve told you that.”

“No.” Kendi crossed his ankle over his knee. “Not slavery to the S” Station cult. I mean before that. When you were a...a
regular
slave.”

Martina smiled at him. She had a beautiful smile, Kendi decided, and a wave of affection flowed over him.

“Regular slave,” she said. “I like that. I was only a regular slave for a little while, though. A history professor bought me to work in his house. He wasn’t a bad guy, in his way. He didn’t molest me or beat me or anything like that, and he let me read in his library when my work was done for the day. But when my Silence surfaced—I think I was twelve or thirteen—he sold me for the profit to a company that trains Silent slaves and resells them. I stayed with them for...six years? Seven? Anyway, they sold me to a law firm, and
they
eventually sold me to DrimCom. I worked for them until that weirdo cult kidnapped me a few months after the Despair. Overall, I had it pretty good. You hear stories about slaves being tortured or beaten or”—she lowered her voice and glanced toward Keith’s bedroom door—”raped. But none of that happened to me. It took me a long time to get over being sold away from you guys and from Mom and Dad, but I eventually coped. No other choice, you know?”

She got chunks of cheddar and mozzarella cheese out of the refrigerator and started grating them. The cheeses made fluffy, pungent mounds next to the pale pile of onion.

“So how was slavery for you?” she continued. “You said you worked on a frog farm.”

“I hated it,” Kendi said. His stomach growled and he wondered if he could swipe a piece of cheese. “No surprise, eh? I was a mucker, the lowest of the low. We worked right in the ponds, catching frogs, reconfiguring the shorelines, digging new water holes. It was hard, filthy work, and the managers were always looking for an excuse to crack their whips.”

“But Mom was there.” Martina poured flour, salt, oil, and other ingredients into a small machine. It whirred busily, and a small heap of elbow macaroni tumbled out the bottom like soft, misshapen snowflakes.

“Yeah. They put her in the kitchen. She snuck me and Pup extra food when she could.”

“Pup?”

“Another boy my age. We became best friends after a while. Then a woman visited the farm. She was Silent, and she touched me. Pow! I thought she had socked me with a cattle prod. Mom turned out to be Silent, too, and Mistress Blanc—my owner—sold us for the profit. We were split up. I was lucky that the Children of Irfan bought me, but I never heard from Mom again.” Kendi’s throat grew thick and he cleared it hard. “Sorry. I’ve been looking for her and Dad ever since, but I’ve never gotten a lead.”

“I’ll help you look,” Martina said. “If Mom and Dad are out there, we’ll find them one day.”

“I hope so.”

“Hey, you found me and Keith.” Martina dumped the macaroni into the water and counted to twenty. She drained it, mixed it with the cheese and onions, poured in a little milk, and popped the dish into the oven.

“Bake medium, ten minutes,” she said to the computer, then sat next to Kendi at the table. “So was Pup just a friend or something more?”

“Just a friend,” Kendi laughed. “I think I wanted something more from him, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Too young yet. I don’t think Pup was interested anyway. What about you? Did you ever pair up with anyone?”

Martina’s eyes went flat. “Only once. He was sold away. I haven’t really been looking since then. Some slaves grab whatever love or sex they can, but me—I didn’t want to.”

“Too much to lose,” Kendi said quietly.

“Something like that.”

They sat in silence until the computer chimed, announcing that the macaroni and cheese was done.

“Father Weaver, I’d like to ask a candid question, if I could,” said Tel Brace.

“Shoot,” Kendi said, leaning back in his office chair. The holograms of Ben, Gretchen, and himself were lined up on his desk. Kendi had deliberately set them so that they seemed to staring up at Tel Brace.