The Vigilantes (The Superiors) (23 page)

“You’re telling me there’s no connection between these two escaped saps of yours. And I’m just supposed to believe it’s a coincidence?”

“I don’t like giving advice, Byron. So I can’t tell you what you’re supposed to believe. I can only tell you the truth of the situation.”

“We think you may be hoarding illegally owned human livestock.”

Meyer laughed and leaned back from the screen, enjoying his humorous moment. “Ah, Enforcer. You are too funny. But please. I have the money to buy as many sapiens as I wish to own. Why would I need to steal them?”

“Or at the very least, you are collecting insurance money for sapiens who are still in your possession.”

“I can tell you with absolute sincerity that I hope you find your missing persons, Enforcer. I have in my possession only the saps who are my property, very much legally.”

“And if we were to check on your properties…”

“You would find only the sapiens that I own legally. There is nothing illegal in my homes. Come and look if you don’t believe me. I have nothing to hide. But I can see where a man such as yourself would be jealous of someone so much younger earning a higher salary. It’s easy for people to hate me out of jealousy. Sure, they pretend it’s suspicion or accuse me of this or that offense. I’ve come out clean every time, Enforcer, and I can assure you that you won’t be the one who brings me down. Send in your best men. I’ll be ready.”

“And if we send them to your other homes, as well? The one in Moines.”

“I will have someone let your men into the grounds.”

“And your place here?”

“Well, I only rent that one, of course,” the boy said, a little too quickly.

“Just for the sake of thoroughness.”

“Very well. Check that one too, then. But it’s not mine. I can’t be responsible for anything you find in a rented apartment.”

“Then we’ll be sure to check there first.”

“You do that. I’ll be waiting to hear what you find. And by the way, Enforcer, it’s not illegal to treat your sapiens with dignity and a little respect. In over two hundred years, I’ve had four sapiens escape. Check those records you like so much. The other two are in there as well. Maybe I’m too kind to my sapiens, but at the end of the night, I know I’m a good master. I’m only sorry if the escapees have met a cruel end. At least I know they had a kind start in my possession.”

“Goodbye, Kidd.”

“I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again before too long.”

“You will. Oh, and Kidd? Don’t forget I’ve also been alive for over two hundred years, and I’ve never had a sap escape, not even one who was later recovered.”

Byron broke the connection and sat at his desk, frustrated. He knew there had to be a connection. The boy was just too smug. He was like a criminal who wanted to be caught. He enjoyed the chase, outsmarting the law for only so long. He wanted to play cat and mouse.

Byron searched through Meyer’s public records, then into his private records that only Enforcement could access. He knew what he needed to find. He needed to find a house or property that Meyer Kidd owned that wasn’t on public record, or a purchase or expense that wasn’t explained. But he couldn’t find it.

He stood and paced the room. Maybe he had brought out the accusations too soon. Sometimes Meyer was just a kid, and sometimes he was too clever for his own good. But if he wanted to play, Byron would play. He only wanted to make sure he was the cat and Kidd was the mouse. He had to make sure he didn’t end up the mouse. He knew what happened to the mouse.

Chapter 36

Cali
was sleeping when the breeder came. One minute she was lost in a strange dream where she was in the apartment of the Man with Soft Hair, a room with no doors, and he was telling her to go up through the ceiling. The next minute the light went on, and Master and a man she’d never seen stood looking at her and Shelly. She was still in a half dream state when Shelly gripped her arm like he wanted to break it.

Master and the enormous man spoke in a language
Cali
didn’t know, one that sounded guttural and more like grunts and clacks of the tongue than actual words. But she knew who the man was immediately. He looked like what he was. He was naked and the color of rust all over. When he smiled at her, she saw that two of his teeth were missing. She pulled the blanket around her and shrank back against Shelly. He was shaking, which did not give
Cali
courage.

After speaking for a few minutes, Master left. The man came towards the bed. He said something to Shelly and waved towards the bathroom. Shelly got up and gave
Cali
a pitying smile and left her. Great. Just when she needed him, he went in the bathroom to hide. At least her humiliation would be the private kind.

The breeder said things to
Cali
, but she couldn’t understand, so she said nothing. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap. Although he was not a tall man, he had bulging muscles all over him. He looked maybe forty or a bit older. He started stroking
Cali
’s hair and shoulders, and she struggled away, but he pulled her back and said more to her.

“I don’t know your language,” she said. “I can’t understand you.”

He grinned. “I talk North American small. I nice man. Not hurt you.”

“Let me go,”
Cali
said, struggling until she slipped out of the man’s arms and onto the floor. She kept one arm clamped around the blanket on her.

“Come and not be scared,” the breeder said, pulling her into his lap again. He held her while she struggled. He was too strong for her, and soon he had her arms pinned in his. “You to be good and I to be nice,” he said.

“No. I don’t want to,” she said, and kicked her heel into his leg.

“You be not nice, I be not nice,” he said, squeezing until her arms crushed into her sides. She let out a grunt of pain and hit his chin with her forehead.

“No to be scared,” the man said. “You have nice baby.” He resumed petting her. Shelly came out of the bathroom and went onto the patio garden. “You young, pretty. I like,” the breeder said.

“I don’t like,” Cali said, trying to hit his face with her forehead but not connecting this time.

“We kiss now, then we mate,” he said. He started kissing Cali’s ear, the only part he could reach when she turned her face as far as she could. Panic rose in her throat and she thought she might get sick. She struggled against him but without result. He started tugging at the blanket around her, and she screamed and bit at him, but he ignored her cries.

Shelly slipped back through the door and moved up behind the man quietly. He lifted the heavy plastic gardening trowel and brought it down on the breeder’s head. He used both hands and swung it with all his strength, but it was just a plastic trowel. The bald man reached behind him and pushed Shelly away. Cali twisted out of his arms in the moment he had only one arm on her, but when she fell onto the bed, the breeder dove onto her. They struggled on the mattress while Shelly pounded the man’s back and shoulders and head with the best weapon he’d been able to find.

The breeder finally succeeded in pulling the blanket away. He grinned down at Cali while she covered herself as best she could. Shelly jumped on the man’s back like a kid riding his mommy’s back piggy-style and wrapped his arms around the man’s neck. The breeder was strong, but he was a human, too. He wasn’t strong like a Superior.

He reared back and grabbed at Shelly, but Shelly kept his arms around the man’s neck and clung on while the breeder tried to pry him loose in the awkward position. “Get away,” Shelly said to
Cali
while he kept hold of the man.
Cali
loved Shelly for finally protecting her. He was so thin and neat and girlish that sometimes she forgot he was a man at all. But now she could see the muscles bulging in his neck and shoulders as he held on. She rolled off the bed and jumped to her feet, although she knew as well as he did that she had nowhere to go.

She looked at Shelly and at the breeder reaching behind his head to pound on Shelly’s head, and she thought better of it. The man’s position left some key parts exposed. She stood, and with every bit of force she could muster in her anger and fear and humiliation, she kicked the breeder in the tools of his trade.

The breeder bellowed.
Cali
leapt away as his body crashed onto the mattress with Shelly still attached to his back. The breeder reached out and grabbed
Cali
’s ankle, and she screamed again and fell on all fours. She twisted around and kicked him in the face as hard as she could again and again until he got both her feet and dragged her towards the bed.

Shelly still clung to the man but had lost his advantage, and the man ignored him and dragged
Cali
onto the bed flailing and screaming. He heaved her under him halfway and restrained her with his weight. She clawed at his face as she felt the solid mass of his body pressing down on her. The suffocating force of him crushed out her breath, and she couldn’t scream anymore because she couldn’t pull in enough air.

Shelly’s face appeared briefly behind the man, and then the breeder bellowed again and flailed out at Shelly, who jumped on the man’s back again. Together the two men rolled onto the floor.
Cali
’s lungs expanded, and she lay sucking in air for a minute. When she sat up, the breeder was kneeling over Shelly with his hands around the boy’s neck. Shelly’s face was redder than anyone’s face should ever be.
Cali
cursed her selfishness for that moment she’d given herself to breathe, and then she leapt onto the man’s back and put her arms around his neck like Shelly had.

But
Cali
, who had spent most of the past five years sitting around feeding Superiors, wasn’t nearly as strong as Shelly, who had worked on farms his whole life. The breeder didn’t loosen his grip or even take notice of the girl on his back. Cali could see the tendons in Shelly’s neck standing out, and she thought he might pass out soon. So she did the only thing she could think of. She reached her hands around the breeder’s face and sunk her fingers as far as she could into his eyes. It was the grossest feeling she could imagine—hot and sticky and wet and slimy. He started outright screaming, and grabbed Cali’s hands, but he didn’t pull. Through her rushing fear and pounding heart, she found herself rationally wondering if his eyes would pop out if he pulled her hands away, and if that’s why he didn’t try.

The man howled what sounded like curses in another language while Cali held on. Shelly lay choking and coughing, and then he sat up and brought both his knees up to his chest and let them go. His feet hit the breeder in the groin. The breeder screamed again. The force of the kick knocked him and Cali both to the floor, but she kept one hand in place with her fingers in his eye socket.

“You go out,” she said slowly, so he’d understand. She spoke almost right into his ear so he could hear her, and he stopped yelling. “Tell Master we mate. Yes?”

“Yes,” the man said. Shelly lifted his plastic trowel to the man’s face and poised it above the eye Cali still had her finger around. She could feel the eyeball in the curve of her finger, and she tried not to gag. “Yes!” the breeder said again. Shelly backed away, and Cali slowly let go and scrambled back fast when the man started to get up. She backed into the bed and waited to run if he came after her again. But he just held hands over his eyes and made a sobbing sound.

“Go on,” Shelly said, touching his throat. His voice sounded hoarse and strangely manly. He gestured to the door with his trowel.

The man wiped his eyes, blinked hard and rolled his eyes. Then he went to the door and tapped on the inside. Cali got in the bed and covered herself, but she stayed alert, waiting to make sure the man would really leave.

Master opened the door and spoke with the breeder, who kept wiping his eyes. They both looked at Cali, and she tried to quiet her heart even though she didn’t understand what they said about her.

The breeder went down the hallway, away from them, and
Cali
let herself relax a little. Master looked at her. “You brought a man to tears,” he said with an amused smile. Her heart picked up speed again. She and Shelly may be able to overpower a strong human, but never a
Superior
. He’d probably kill her if he knew what they’d done.

Master just shook his head. “I guess you don’t just taste good to me,” he said. Then he looked at Shelly, who sat on the floor beside the bed with his face down and his hand on top of the blanket on
Cali
’s leg. “And you might want to learn something from this breeder,” Master said. “That’s what kind of things I should hear from the two of you. Not a lot of silence every night. No wonder you couldn’t get things done.”

Then Master was gone, and Shelly dragged himself onto the bed and looked at
Cali
. All the tension went out of her at once, and she started laughing in high-pitched hysteria. Shelly started sobbing and shaking. They held onto each other’s hands and lay facing each other, but they kept their bodies far apart that night.