War World X: Takeover (58 page)

The stench of steam and overheated metal rose about the port. Clutching a bag that felt heavier than any suitcase she had ever packed in her life, Wyn tottered toward the port. A blackened metal ladder led down from it to boats that bobbed in the black water far too much below. Even as the ship floated, she could feel Haven’s gravity, heavier than the ship’s. It felt heavier than that of lost Earth, though she knew otherwise.

Her feet trembled on the rungs of the ladder; the boats crew steadied her as if they hated touching anyone as filthy as she was.
Could they smell it through the steam and the traces of this new world?

It took forever for the launch to fill. The thin crying of hungry children rose in the alien air.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

To her surprise, she was answered. “Splash Island,” replied a man with a twisted arm. He grinned and pointed across the dark, dark water. Lights gleamed from translucent sheds on that Island.

“There’s Splash Island. Pro-ces-sing…” he sounded the long word out. “Over there”—a sweep of his arm—”you got Docktown. And beyond it, The City. Castell City.”

A combustion engine roared into fetid life, then backfired so loudly that at least two people screamed and the launch jolted dangerously. The ferryman laughed, exposing broken teeth.

“You don’ wanna fall in.
Believe
me. We can’t fight what’s in there, and I ain’t goin’ back for ya. Keep your arms inside the launch.”

I haven’t a coin for the ferryman
, Wyn thought. In the next instant, she realized she was wrong. The coin shone in the night sky, dominating it, more crimson than copper, baleful as the eye of a cat. Another shone upward, reflected in the opaque water.

Ship’s rumor called Haven’s bloated primary the Cat’s Eye. Funny: on Earth, it had always been the dog who had been sacred to Ares. Cat’s Eye and its reflection glared at each other. It was a world of War, Wyn realized at that moment; and this Charon, this convict who’d served out his life here, ferried her across the water to start a new life.

Haven’s gravity took her as she climbed out of the launch, and she stumbled to her knees. Her hands scrabbled, then filled with mud.
Dear Earth, I do salute thee with my hands
, the mournful pentameter from Richard II rang in her thoughts. Wrong again. Haven’s ground was dirt, soil: it never would be
earth
.

“Why are we so heavy?” wailed a child. Its cries were quickly hushed as if it knew Haven were no planet for weeping.

And yet, with the Eye above and the reflection below and the lights of Docktown and Castell City shimmering over the water, it was beautiful.

Moving like invalids their first day out of bed, the convicts shuffled toward the Processing Center.

“God, I am too damn old, for this,” Ellie moaned. “Feel like I got lead boots on. All over me. Or maybe that’s just crud.”

“Men on one side…women on the other…all right, move!” came the order. “Kids with the women.”

Men and women clutched each other, dismayed. They had all been together for so long that separation came as a threat. Down long, shabby corridors they were herded. Wyn noticed that the women guards hustling her and her friends along were unarmed. The corridors opened into a room that smelled, blessedly, of clean steam and water, dripping from nozzles set into the ceiling.

“All right, everyone strip. And scrub good!”

The soap they found in squeeze bottles nearly took off their outer layer of skin, and Wyn had never felt anything as good. Steam billowed about them, mercifully hiding their bodies. But at that moment, she wouldn’t have minded if they hadn’t separated the men and the women.

Tugging a fresh coverall (for which she’d no doubt be billed, too) over damp skin, Wyn caught sight of herself in one of the cracked, water-beaded mirrors still clinging to the walls.

“Look like a New England schoolmarm,” she muttered to herself. In fact, she reminded herself of the frayed sepia photos of her Great Phoebe, who helped found a girl’s school in India, then went on to China to fight against footbinding.

She wasn’t as much slim as lean now, starved down into endurance. And at some point during the journey into exile, her eyes had traded a scholar’s abstraction for a veteran’s wariness.

“Not bad,” Ellie shook her head. “Don’t know why you act like you’re ready for an old-age home.”

“You’re not recruiting me for your line of work, are you?”

Both women laughed, a little raggedly. After decontamination would come Processing, and then Assignment. But what contamination had her brother put in her file? They wouldn’t let her anywhere near students, would they? She might be lucky to find herself hauling scrap in a mine until she collapsed.

Medical processing rid her of fears she’d contracted some disease from the man who raped her. Her arms were sore from immunizations when she was Processed—identification, classification interview, and a battery of tests. She identified them as out-of-date aptitude and personality evaluations, plus an ancient IQ test. Practically meaningless; and yet whatever future she might have could ride on them. Her palms began to sweat, and she pondered each answer as carefully as the girl next to her.

For deportees to survive on Haven, matters were simple. Someone had to buy their contracts for work in town, in the mines, on farms, or wherever: almost anything was better than going it alone. The only other options were farming—usually with inadequate supplies and equipment and in Haven’s outback—or to become one of the walking dead who loitered around Docktown seeking casual work or a quick deal.

Further down the hall, Ellie squirmed in her chair. Wyn knew the woman was thinking, I’m too old to go back to school.

As the tests ended and they were returned to holding pens, Nina turned to her. “Boston, what are we going to do?”

“We have to wait to be assigned,” Wyn said. She just wanted to sit down and rub her temples. How many years had it been since a test had psyched her out?

Nina came close to her, dark eyes wide with terror. “I heard…there’s mines here. A place called Hell’s-A-Comin’ and I’m afraid, Boston. Where there’s mines, they need girls, and…” The big eyes overflowed.

Wyn put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. She glanced about helplessly. Ellie was nowhere in sight. What would Ellie say to this girl? She could practically hear her, “
Boston, no way I could make a working girl out of this one.
”

So many lives had been broken. Against that, what did the life of one girl matter? Plenty: Nina had been Wyn’s shipmate and she looked to Wyn for help. Wisdom from the Welfare Projects blurted from her mouth.

“We’re probably being watched,” she whispered. “Mess your hair. Slouch. Act anti-social.”

“Anti-social?” Oh God, now she had to give examples.

“Drool or pick your nose or do something that’s a real turnoff. Damn-it, don’t
laugh
! And, Nina, you want to do me a real big favor? When you start this little act, turn your back on me, okay? I don’t want to watch.”

Wyn sat alone in the detention pen, wondering who would emerge from an inner office to claim her. Everyone knew, when applying to graduate school, on about what day the letters of acceptance or rejection would be delivered. And everyone waited for mail that day for the precious thick or damning thin packets delivered the old-fashioned way. She had sat on admissions committees since then and knew how candidates were discussed. How were her new…her new masters discussing her?

The door slid open slowly and a guard entered. Wyn rose, quickly enough for deference, slow enough to preserve her own illusions. “This way,” the guard said.

No statement that Mr. so-and-so had bought her contract? She started to raise her eyebrows, then thought better of it.

She was brought to a tiny room. In it sat a man dressed in rugged, all-weather clothes conspicuous only by the shimmer of the gemstones he wore on one hand and on the slide about his neck. She had seen such a stone only once, when her niece Caroline had wed that improbable Texan and Shreve’s had had to set the veritable boulder he gave her in platinum. It had been vulgarly large, but the stones this man wore as baubles made it resemble a seed pearl. The man rose as she entered. Her eyebrows did flick upward at that.

“Ms. Baker?”

She inclined her head.

“I’ve been studying your file. Oh. I’m Dan Carmichael, private contractor, at the Kennicott Mines over Hell’s-A-Comin’ way.”

She froze. She had always been able to identify euphemisms. And from her days working in the Projects, she recognized this man.
I know a pimp when I see one
.

“I said I’d get ya. Never thought I’d find you alone, though, and on your knees. Good place for you.”

Her callused hand went out to brush the back of an empty chair, and she shut her eyes against the pain, the violation and thereafter, the feel of her hand driving steel into flesh and hot blood spurting over her wrist.

He was aiding her to sit; in an instant, he would shout for help, she knew it. She summoned strength from the core of rage she had learned to nurture—”spit on the bastards’ graves”—and shook her head.

“I am too old to…I believe you call it, ‘turn tricks.’ Not to mention my lack of other attractions.”

He stared at her.
I’m
not
going to faint.
When he seemed to be sure of that, his laughter rattled the flimsy partitions of the room.

“Varley owes me a favor. He said I ought to meet you, that you were likely to wind up near the top. It stands to reason. The Consul General flags all the politicals; and hell, lady, you’re something special even in the way of politics. Can’t think of a job I could offer you, unless it would be teaching… My gals tend not to have kids. Down the road, though, it’s sure going to cost plenty to send the ones they do have to Company schools.”

“I would hardly think so,” Wyn murmured.

“Some of ’em do, though. And sooner or later, they’ll need schools. Well, that’s down the road.…”

Frontier schoolmarm. Wyn you are going back
all
the way—at least, if you’re lucky.

“You might tell me something, though. That little girl, the one who talked to you, then started…ugh! That’s all an act, isn’t it?”

Nina had cried in her arms. The urge to protect her like a student made Wyn shiver.

He can check to see if you’re lying,
her good sense told her.

“She was raped at Luna Base. When her father tried to help her, they spaced him. She won’t earn back your investment,” she said crisply. Then, inspiration struck.

“Sir…”

“Lord, you speak fine!” He shook his head at her.

“Sir, if you have access to the BuReloc files, you should know that there is one woman…”—How could she phrase this appropriately?—”in your line of work. We called her Ellie.…”

Wyn slid forward on her chair. Sure enough, built into the computer panel on the table was a screen for observing the prisoners awaiting assignment. There sat Ellie. Obviously, she had finished processing later than Wyn. “That one.”

The man’s fingers tapped on the keyboard. A guard emerged and shepherded Ellie out of the holding pen into the cubicle. One quick glance, and she had sized up Carmichael. A grin, a pass of her hand across her hair and coverall, and she looked younger, flushed, even pretty. Wyn blinked. So that was how a real pro did it.

“Damn-it all, Boston,” she blurted. “I thought you said you didn’t want my line of work!”

“Ellie…” It was Wyn’s turn to flush as she realized that she had never known her shipmate’s last name, “I would like you to meet Mr. Daniel Carmichael, who manages.…”

What
was
the proper way to introduce people in their line of work? Apart, of course, from the obvious. Aha! What had Ellie called her business when they’d met back on Luna?

“…an escort service at Hell’s-A-Comin’.”

She glared at Ellie, willing her to hold out her hand first. The lady always indicated whether she wished to shake hands.

Ellie shook her head, then Carmichael’s hand. Only then did she start to grin.

“Thank you, Ms. Baker,” Carmichael intoned, his voice hollow with laughter.

“Boston, you never told me your name was Baker,” Ellie said. “One of
those
Bakers? And you let me. Hoo-eee! I’m surprised you even spoke to me.”

Wyn shrugged. Both Ellie and Carmichael watched her with growing amusement.

“Is that how you learned to keep a straight face? You ought to come to work with us…make you the standup comic.”

Wyn smiled at her. So few words, and it was all arranged.
I ought not to approve, she thought. But there is Hell’s-A-Comin’, and the brothels are real; and no question, the women in them will do better with Ellie to look out for them.

“Or I could play the piano in the parlor,” she said slyly.

“Got a keyboard instead,” Carmichael said. His face reddened as he lost the struggle against a great shout of laughter. “Sure you won’t reconsider?”

Wyn smiled. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Ya know, Boston, you can be a real asshole sometimes,” Ellie said.

“I’ll be fine,” Wyn assured her with more confidence than she felt. “You’ll make so much money up at the mines you probably won’t even recognize me next time you see me. Or want to talk to me.”

“You’ll still be respectable. Still Boston,” Ellie said and hugged her. The next instant, she was all business “Where’s those papers?” she demanded. “Isn’t there someplace I got to sign? You want it in blood or what?”

More keystrokes, and the contract whirred out of a slot in the console. Tongue between her teeth, Ellie signed and handed the papers over to Carmichael.

“Ms. Baker, I thank you,” he said. Then he hesitated. “Here’s for luck. The way you’re thinking, you’ll need all the luck you can get on Haven.” He lifted the slide with its glowing gem, a tiny replica of Haven’s giant moon, from about his neck and threw it over to Wyn. “Will you get a move on it, Ellie? We open for business at 2000, and we need to find you a decent dress.”