Slavemakers (24 page)

Aisha Rose was silent. She wasn't sure how to answer that question.

“Born like you, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“Can he help us?”

That wasn't the right question, and after a moment Shapiro seemed to realize it.

“Will he help us?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Aisha Rose said.

THE GREEN LANDS.
The small streams that trickled up from underground springs, flashed and shone during the spring melt, turned to muddy trickles by midsummer, and trickled under the silvery ice in winter.

The patches of forest, such rich hunting grounds in the spring and fall, and so dense with underbrush in the summer that hunting grew lean . . . but not as lean as during the hungry winter months.

The ponds and lakes. Some gradually filling in as the years passed, until they were little more than round patches of lighter grass that oozed under his feet. Others calm, covered in tiny bright green weed in early summer, smelling of rot and life later, always filled with turtles and frogs and fish. And one so big that its waves turned white when winter storms swept across its surface.

The hills and gullies and tumbledown buildings scattered through the forests and fields. And the life there,
the squirrels and scrawny cats and deer and otters and muskrats, and the lions that had chosen the boulders beneath the boy's ruined castle as their den.

The places he'd spent nearly his entire existence, whose every square inch he knew as well as his own hands, his scars, the sound of his voice as it echoed inside his head. The green lands.

His home. His only home.

The boy walked away from it for the last time without looking back.

*   *   *

HE HEADED SOUTH.
He'd been this way before. He'd been everywhere on the island before. During the sojourns he'd taken early on, when he still dreamed that there were others out there, others like him. Others who'd been lost, abandoned.

But he'd never found anyone. Anyone alive, at least. So, long ago, he'd decided that he was, in fact, entirely alone, and he'd learned to be content with this fact.

Until
she'd
appeared, the other one, and changed everything.

*   *   *

HIS DESTINATION WAS
a building, the tallest in sight. Amid the countless ruins, this building still stood, comparatively undamaged, like a gigantic silver finger pointing at the sky.

The boy had never gone near it. He'd known that a piece falling from its heights would end him, and
something about the building's completeness had also kept him away. He hadn't wanted to see what was inside.

He still didn't, but now he had no choice.

*   *   *

HE PICKED HIS
way over the rubble that filled the plaza surrounding the tower. The sun dipped behind some clouds, and the whipping wind was cold.

He'd wondered as he approached how he'd find a way in, if that would even be possible. But the building's wide front doors lay shattered on the ground, and all he had to do was keep walking.

Taking care with the glass and sharp metal, though not as much care as he once would have.

The floor inside was of the slippery polished stone that he'd seen in the ruins of other buildings. Big slabs that must have been brought in from elsewhere though the boy couldn't imagine how or why.

Slippery stone floors and pieces of furniture lying here and there. Some bones as well. All in better condition than he'd expected because the building itself was so unbroken and had protected its contents.

He found rows of rectangular metal doors on the bottom floor, some closed, others split in two to reveal small chambers inside. Some of these had bones in them, too.

He'd seen them often enough in other buildings, though not in such numbers, to guess what they'd been designed for: carrying people up and down. But now they were useless, even dangerous. What he was looking
for were stairs, steps, and eventually he found them, hidden away in the center of the building.

They were crowded with bones, whiter, cleaner bones than he'd seen in years. Disordered piles of the stronger, bigger ones, the jaws and hips and long arms and legs. But even the fragile, tiny ones, fingers, toes, that usually returned to the earth most quickly.

The boy had to clamber over a huge pile of bones near the door at the bottom of the stairs, but he found many fewer as he ascended.

*   *   *

IT TOOK HIM
a long while, this climb. Much longer than it would have taken him just months earlier. He felt weak, weary, breathless. The way he'd let his body waste away was obvious with every step.

But that was okay. He knew he'd be strong enough to accomplish what he needed to do.

*   *   *

AT FIRST HE'D
planned to climb to the very top, a flat expanse that had once held a tall, metal spike, slender as a pine needle from a distance. The boy had seen it, still upright, on his earlier journeys, but at some point the wind or rain or simply time had brought it down.

But his physical weakness—and his realization that it didn't matter—made him change his mind. Not that far from the top, he reached an open door that revealed an uncluttered floor and, beyond it, glassless windows. He'd climbed high enough.

Not even noticing the familiar detritus, half-rotted by
the weather that had swept through, he made his way to the edge and looked out. Then, suddenly dizzy, grabbed hold of the edge of one of the windows and looked again.

Far below, the rivers on either side glittered silver-blue in the sunlight. The harbor, with its rusted hulks of wrecked boats and that strange green figure, and beyond the harbor more ruined land.

Above him, the sky was of such an infinite, depthless blue that he could barely breathe when he looked at it.

So he looked straight across into the distance instead, into the great world beyond. The
curved
world.

He'd never known till he stood up here that the world was curved.

*   *   *

HE WAS ALMOST
done. He'd found his place, he'd climbed to his last aerie, and now he was ready.

Just one thing left to do.

Usually when he played the game, he closed his eyes. But he didn't want to stop looking at the sky, the glittering water, the curved earth. So he kept his eyes open this time, unblinking. The steady cold wind bit at them, dried them, but he didn't care. It didn't matter.

He reached out.

*   *   *

THEY WERE FAR
away this time. Hiding from him.

That didn't matter, either.

Just as there was nowhere on the curved world where he would not be aware of
her
, there was nowhere they could hide.

He reached out farther until he found one. Just one at first, but that was all he needed.

And then he did two more things: He drew it toward him, and he reached out through it.

Just as he'd always done. How he'd always played his game.

But with a different goal this time.

*   *   *

LYING IN HER
uncomfortable bed, Aisha Rose could sense it, feel it, the unease, the alarm, spreading from every direction. A new kind of spreading stain.

She thought she knew what the boy was doing, but not why. Not his goal.

And unless she did know that for sure, she would have to continue with her plan.

All the way to the end.

*   *   *

SHAPIRO WAS NOT
the only one to visit her in her cabin during the endless hours. At some point later on, the boat rocking gently in the tidal pull, the gleam of the moonlit ocean coming through the cabin's porthole, she heard someone else at her door.

Without even realizing, she'd managed to fall asleep, and she heard the tapping from the midst of a gentle dream that disappeared as soon as she came awake. As always, she was instantly, fully alert. It was how you had to live on the earth, the real one, if you expected to survive the night.

Even this night.

She sat up. “You may come in,” she called out, as quietly as she could.

She knew who'd knocked. She'd known from the instant she awoke.

The door swung partway open, and a dark, slender form slipped in. When the door closed again, it left the room in near darkness.

But Aisha Rose wasn't afraid. The darkness was unimportant. She was accustomed to seeing by moonlight and starshine, and in any case, Aisha Rose would have been able to see Kait no matter how dark the room was. In all the ways that meant anything.

Kait sat on the edge of her bed. Tentative, like a little bird.

“I attacked you,” she said. “I—scratched you.”

Aisha Rose didn't bother to reply. Instead, without thinking—and not knowing she was going to do it—she leaned forward and took Kait into her arms.

Kait, thin, as thin as Aisha Rose, and taut as a string, stiffened. Stiffened into wire . . . and then relaxed. After a moment, her arms came up and went around Aisha Rose's shoulders.

Kait smelled of medicine and soap and her own odors, and of the familiar bitter smell of the
majizi
. The smell that she would never lose, that no one who'd had a thief inside ever lost.

But that was unimportant as well. Aisha Rose held on to her. “You are like me,” she said, whispering so only Kait could hear it. “Like Mama.”

Kait's arms tightened around her. Then, after a few more moments, she pulled back a little and looked into Aisha Rose's face.

“Am I?” she said. “Am I like you?”

Aisha Rose was quiet for a few seconds. Then she said, “Kait, tell me what you see.”

Now it was Kait's turn to be still. The silence stretched on, but Aisha Rose didn't care. She'd waited a long time to ask this question, and she could wait a little longer for the answer.

Finally, Kait said, “I wanted to see . . . what Trey saw. What my father saw.”

Aisha Rose nodded. “Do you?”

Again a pause. Then, “I don't know. I think he saw . . . real things. I think he saw through their eyes, at least sometimes. I don't.”

“Not yet,” Aisha Rose said.

“But I'm aware of . . . movement,” Kait went on. “Movement everywhere.”

The tone of her voice changed, from wonder to something that sounded like fear. “Are they, Aisha Rose? Are they everywhere?”

Aisha Rose debated how to answer. “No,” she said at last. “Not everywhere. But the mind is.”

She took a breath. “As long as it can reach between them, one to the next, yes, it is everywhere.”

“On our voyage, we were blown far south by a storm,” Kait said. “Shapiro believed that the thieves . . . were disconnected then. Until we came closer again to the land.”

“Closer to other
majizi
,” Aisha Rose said. “Yes.”

“But if they
are
everywhere—or as good as—that means we can't possibly reach them all, defeat them all.”

Aisha Rose didn't speak.

Kait was silent for a long time after that. Finally, she seemed to relax a little. Maybe it was acceptance.

She said, “And you?”

Aisha Rose said, “Me?”

“What do you see?”

“Lights.” She answered at once, without hesitation. “So many lights. It is like—” She paused to search for the right words. She had never been asked to describe it before, not in any detail.

Even Mama had never asked. She hadn't known to ask because Aisha Rose hadn't told her. It had been Aisha Rose's one big secret, the secret of who she was. What she was.

“Now it is like the stars,” she said, “but always changing, always shifting.”

“And each is someone like you. Someone who's been . . . touched . . . by the hive mind.”

“Yes.” She reached out and touched Kait's cheek. “Like you.”

Kait was quiet for a while. Then she said, “Are they beautiful, the stars?”

“Yes.” Aisha Rose paused. “And ugly. A stain. Uglier and more beautiful than anything.”

Unexpectedly, Kait leaned forward and hugged her again. Equally unexpectedly, Aisha Rose found that her eyes were filled with tears.

“I wish you could meet my father,” Kait said. “Trey would have loved you, Aisha Rose.”

Aisha Rose held on to her.

“He would have loved the
mystery
of you,” Kait said.

*   *   *

A LITTLE LATER,
Kait said, “They told me what you did yesterday, at the fort. And also that you're coming with us in the morning.”

Aisha Rose nodded.

Kait was holding her injured hand gently in both of her own. “But you're—”

“It doesn't matter.”

“No,” Kait said.
“It does.”

Aisha Rose just shook her head.

*   *   *

“IT'S ONLY A
few more hours,” Kait said a little later. “Can I stay here the rest of the night?”

“Of course.”

Aisha Rose lay down on the mattress, stretched out, her back against the wooden wall. Finally, she was comfortable. This was a little more like her perch in the big tree in Hell's Gate.

Kait lay down next to her, on her back. Aisha Rose could see her eyes reflecting the light coming through the porthole. Then Kait closed her eyes, and all that was left for Aisha Rose to look at was her profile, so much like Mama's, so much like her own.

They were quiet for a long while. Aisha Rose was awake—she knew she would not sleep again—but she thought that Kait must be dozing.

So Kait surprised her by saying, “It's all going wrong, isn't it?”

Aisha Rose didn't reply.

“I don't mean here.” Kait's voice bore no trace of panic, of fear. “I know it's hopeless, our fight. Trying to reach Malcolm. I know we're going to die there. All of us who go ashore.”

Still Aisha Rose was silent.

“I mean . . . back home. Back in Refugia. It's hopeless there as well, isn't it?”

Aisha Rose thought of the lights, the stars. The new stain that had begun to appear in just the past day. But again she didn't answer.

“It's all going wrong,” Kait said, and this time it wasn't a question.