Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (7 page)

She picked up an oddly shaped lump of ship-silver metal with buttons on it. “That’s what I wanted. This thing sends out a range of sounds that we can’t hear. When I played with it, some of the settings made almost everything, even the birds, get quiet. And some made them attack each other, and all the time I was just pushing a button. I’ve
been trying to find information about them on the data buttons, but no luck.” She shrugged. “If we see those dogs again, I want to try this. It might affect a whole pack.”

Liam had that “she’s crazy” look again. “Well, will it make them run away, or attack us, or lie down and lick our feet? I’ll bet it’s not the last one.” He stood up. “Let’s open the door. I want to see what we can salvage.” He held up his right hand with the little laser gun in it. “Thanks for this.”

She nodded, and Liam reached for the symbols by the door. I don’t know whether his hand or her mind actually started it, but the ramp began to fold out. Chill air and the slightly acrid smell of the volcanic landscape spilled into the hold. Clouds now hid all the stars and moons, so the only light we had was the large rectangle pouring from the door.

Near the top of the rectangle, the bloody carcass of one of the big demons attested to the strength of the crazy-ball. Even dead, torn up by the shrapnel released in the explosion, the dog made me shiver: muscular, with long claws and longer teeth, short dark fur and a long nearly hairless tail. It was at least three times as big as the demon dogs back home. The ramp clicked down, fully extended. I swallowed and tore my eyes away from the dead dog.

A light wind blew across the land below us, rustling the grasses and something from camp, maybe our blankets. I listened more closely, making the sounds loud in my mind, focusing down. Finally, I heard what I was listening for: the sound of little feet as the small night mammals I’d heard at the beginning of my watch moved restlessly over the rough ground, scurrying for a last meal before morning.

I breathed out, whispering, “It’s okay, they’re gone.”

As we walked down the ramp, shining our flashlights around, I still felt jumpy. Kayleen followed halfway, then stopped, a dark silhouette casting a long shadow in the light from the ship.

I knelt and traced a paw print the size of my hand in a patch of loose dirt. Standing up again, I looked around. The rustling turned out to be the remains of our tent. Whether by the dogs or the crazy-ball, the near walls had been rent into shreds which flapped softly against each other, eerie in the dusk-before-dawn.

Our cots lay in a jumble, overturned. Liam pointed out tooth marks
on the metal, which had come from Artistos. I didn’t see any marks on the altered metal, although some of it had been thrown around by the dogs.

We counted five more carcasses. All of the dead dogs had spilled blood from more than one wound. The blood smelled strong and rank, and buzzing insects gathered around. I remembered Akashi’s description from the first time I’d seen a crazy-ball. “
If you throw that ball into a group of people, it will kill everyone close to it
.” I hadn’t been able to count the dogs, but there had been more than five. The bells had pealed exit and I’d heard them running away. Still, we wouldn’t have been able to kill five with hand weapons and live.

One of the blankets had become a last resting place for the biggest of the dead demon dogs, a bitch with half of one leg ripped completely off. Gruesome. The blanket was covered in blood, a total loss. Liam wrinkled his nose. “We’ll have to burn everything.” He paused, staring at the dead dog. “How does she expect us to live here?”

“How did we learn to live on Jini? Paw cats are as bad.” I glanced back at the skewed skimmer. “Maybe we should capture as much of this information as we can.”

He laughed wryly. “That’s what dad would do.” He, too, looked over at the skimmer, shaking his head. “Maybe I’ll draw one in the morning before we burn them. It would be good to learn about their habits so we can avoid them.”

That sounded more like the Liam I knew, the roaming scientist. “Okay. I’ll help.” I had a good hand for recording details about animals and plants. “But I don’t want to dissect one.”

“Me either. Let’s gather up what we can. I don’t want to spend another night here.”

T
wo hours later, the three of us stood almost a hundred meters from the skimmer, watching flames lick up a pile of mutilated bodies ringed with deadwood. Sweat coated my scalp and back from piling up the carcasses and gathering fuel for the fire, and I shivered in the slightly cool breeze.

Liam picked up a stray piece of wood and tossed it on the fire, stepping backward quickly as smoke wafted toward him. Kayleen, too, stepped back. The pyre stank of burning flesh. Liam’s voice carried a sharp undertone as he said, “So in less than one full day, we’ve gotten the skimmer stuck, nearly died in a beast attack, lost some of our stuff, and gathered up all the easily available fuel around us. What do you think we might do with the rest of our afternoon?”

The edge in his voice made me fidget. It wouldn’t do to see it in that light. “We landed safely, survived a nasty surprise attack, and we have almost enough wood to help us stay safe tonight.”

He laughed. “Always, always, you see the best thing possible.”

I smiled back at him. “Well, now we have a drawing of a fantastic animal never before seen on Fremont. Think of the tall tales you can tell some Story Night back in Artistos.”

“Great. A picture’s sure to save our lives.” He cocked his head at the skimmer. “I haven’t come up with a good idea for levering it out of that hole.”

Kayleen glanced at the skimmer, where poor Windy stood cross-tied inside again for safety. “When Windy gets bigger she can help pull it.”

He glanced from the slender young hebra to the heavy skimmer. “If we can keep her alive long enough to get ten times her size.”

Which she never would. I stifled a laugh.

He turned to Kayleen. “What’s in the hold? Is there anything heavy and flat and at least three meters long?”

Kayleen screwed her face up. “The greenhouse pieces are long enough, but I don’t think they’re very strong.”

I stared at the skimmer, thinking. “Kayleen, the ramp? Will it come off?”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t know.”

Liam started for the skimmer. I glanced at Kayleen. “Look, I’ll watch the fire for a few minutes. You go see if you can help him figure that out.”

She stared at me for a second, as if she didn’t quite understand my words. “We have to know where to fly it before it will do us any good. We should figure out where we are going to live before we fix the skimmer. What if we get the ramp off and we can’t get it back on? The hold will be open to everything. The demon dogs might get all of our food. Or anything else out here. Maybe the paw-cats are bigger here, too.” She frowned. “But we could see if it looks possible. I mean, the ramp’s heavy enough. We’d have to dig out the crevice the wheel’s in—”

“Go,” I interrupted her. She sounded almost like her old self, babbling through a problem out loud. Maybe she had needed to get out of Artistos.

She took my hand, squeezing it, looking more—sane—than she had in days. “I’m sorry Chelo. I’m sorry I got us stuck here. But I had to do it. I had to.” Her eyes pleaded with me, and for a moment I felt my old friend by my side, saw her peering out of the crazy woman who had brought us here. “Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t.” I softened my voice. “Taking away our happiness won’t make you happy.”

She turned her gaze away, dropping my hand. I watched my friend—my kidnapper—as she walked away. Her shoulders slumped. Did she regret this? Right then, bathed in the stink of burning blood, I couldn’t quite forgive her. I turned my attention back to the rank-smelling fire and picked up a long stick to poke at it with.

They came back half an hour later. “I think we can do it.” Liam leaned in and grazed my temple with a soft kiss. “There’s a bolting mechanism—it’s pretty well hidden. We couldn’t free it, but I’m sure we’ll figure out a way.” He stared down at Kayleen. “Surely you see that we can’t live here. We can fly back tonight if we can get the skimmer out.”

I glanced over at the machine. I didn’t think it would be as easy to free it as he implied, but I held my tongue. The midmorning sun had pulled the chill out of the day, but interrupted sleep and hard work had left my back and arm muscles tight and twisted, and dried sweat clung to my skin.

The demon’s pyre burned to embers, to the bones of dogs and the bones of the bigger wood, while Liam struggled to get the ramp off. Kayleen wandered between the two of us, silent, stopping to whisper in Windy’s ear from time to time. When she stopped close to me, I looked for the Kayleen I knew to appear in her eyes again, but her gaze switched from unfocused to intent, never stopping on normal.

Free of fire tending in the now-punishing heat, I walked back to the skimmer to find Liam had given up on the ramp. He stood staring at a pile of altered metal he’d scavenged from boxes and the ruins of our camp last night. He shook his head at me. “Nothing looks big enough.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get it out.”

By late afternoon, we hadn’t figured out either what to put under the wheel to give the skimmer purchase, or how to pull it free. Liam stood staring at the sunken nose, sweat pouring down his arms. He kicked at a rock. “We’re going to need her to agree to fly it anyway.”

“She’s not ready to do that yet.”

“Damn her,” he replied. “We’d best find someplace to camp tomorrow. Close by.”

I moved next to him and held him, looking at the tilted skimmer. “Can we sleep in that thing?”

He shook his head. “It’s too canted. Windy’ll be on top of us. We’ll do what we did last night, but I’ll get Kayleen to set a bigger perimeter, and we’ll gather more wood. If we can’t sleep outside right next to the skimmer, how will we ever sleep in another camp? We can’t make one here; there’s not enough water. We’re going to need to spend the
rest of this afternoon just getting ready for another uneasy night.” He fell silent for a long moment, looking up at the mountains. “But we can’t let this place beat us yet, not if we’re stuck for a while. We’ll just have one hell of a fire and stay alert.”

So he’d given up on the skimmer for now.

He squeezed me close to him, almost too tight. “Three isn’t a big enough band to survive here easily. I just know it in my bones. This place is dangerous, and we don’t have animals or wagons or anything.”

We didn’t. But we had each other. And Kayleen, who remained a wild card.

T
hat night we built our fire even closer to the ramp than we had the night before. The three of us stood wearily around the flames, holding our hands toward the heat. It smelled clean, like burning wood and bits of brush, with no taint of blood. Unable to shower, I had still cleaned up with water from the closest stream, a shallow thing sure to dry up soon. I used my dirty shirt for a washcloth, and put on a clean pair of work pants and a clean dark shirt from the pile Kayleen had brought. But washing the stink of blood and sweat and fear away only made me feel a little better.

I watched Kayleen’s eyes. She had been all business through the afternoon, matter-of-fact and flat, showing no emotion. After dinner, she’d rolled up into a ball next to Windy, one arm over her face, maybe sleeping, maybe hiding. She’d just emerged a few moments ago.

Now, as she stared at the fire, not looking at either of us, her eyes bounced between the same flat deadness and periodic flashes of some emotion I couldn’t quite name. Maybe not remorse, but at least uncertainty. I wasn’t close enough to touch her, but I reached out a hand experimentally. She looked at me, then shook her head.

Liam was on my other side, closer to me than I was to Kayleen. He threw a small stick on the fire, then looked over at her. “Kayleen. If you really spied on us all year, you know that we matter to our families, to our band. They are safer when we’re there.” His hands twisted in his lap. “If we can fix the skimmer, I’m sure Akashi will let us keep you for the summer.”

“And then what?” she asked. Her voice was bitter. “Akashi can’t
stand up to the whole Town Council. He can’t risk the band for that, or at least he wouldn’t.”

I cleared my throat. “We could have died last night. If Windy hadn’t warned me, we would never have made it inside the skimmer in time. If we all die, or if we get stuck here, one or all of us, we can’t be any help to them. Three of us isn’t enough to make a new town. Six wasn’t. You were part of that conversation years ago, and you wanted to stay in Artistos with Paloma.”

“And you were going to stay with me,” she said. She stood, shuffling in place, her head down so it was hard to see her face. “You couldn’t stand Nava either, or being there. And you left. You could leave. I couldn’t.”

I tried not to choke on the truth in her words. I’d gone willingly away to a loving environment, healing, barely thinking about my friend. Counting on Paloma to be enough. As if someone who wasn’t one of us could actually understand. “You could have asked for help.”

Kayleen didn’t answer. Liam stepped forward like he was about to speak, so I put a hand out, signaling him to be still. He hadn’t left her; I had. This was between us.

She stood for a long time, silent, staring out past the fire, into the darkness. Far off, demon dogs bayed, and Kayleen blinked, hard. “I want to be with you”—she looked over at Liam—“with you both.” She swallowed, running her hands through her hair. “This is the only way I can do it. I feel better already. A little.” She finally looked back at me. “Just being away from Artistos helps. I need you to want to be here.”

“It’s too late for that.” I couldn’t want to stay, no matter what guilt gnawed at me for leaving her at all, ever. “I do care about you,” I said. “You aren’t the only person in my life who counts, though.”

She laughed. “But Liam’s here.”

Liam stepped around me to look directly at Kayleen. “I don’t want to be here.”