The Last Hour of Gann (39 page)

“What?”

“You and Scott have been throwing punches from Day One. Time to hit the mat, little girl. Let the man win.”

“Is this a sports metaphor?” she asked, baffled. “Do I look like I know the first fucking thing about sports?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, whatever. When you go out there today, don’t do anything stupid. Stay where you can see the smoke from our fire, give it five or ten minutes, and then come back and apolo—”

“
The hell I will!”

“
Oh come on, Bierce,” he said, actually rolling his eyes, actually
laughing
a little. “My feet are getting wet. Unbunch your panties and be a good girl for one day. I promise, it won’t kill you.”

Amber started walking again. This time, when he caught at her arm, she shook him off. “You’re still not getting that blowjob out of me,” she spat. “
But you seem to prefer kissing Scott’s ass anyway.”

He
quit laughing. When his smile came back, it was thin and hard and ugly. “Have fun getting killed out there, bitch,” he said and went back to camp without her.

* * *

The problem was, Amber had always been too practical. And looking at it from a practical point of view, Amber knew that she couldn’t stay mad all day. It was exhausting and it upset her stomach, but more to the point, it didn’t accomplish anything. Scott was an idiot, but just saying so wasn’t changing anyone’s high opinion of him. The way she saw it, she had only two choices: Unbunch her panties and let Scott be in charge, or find some way to convince people that the armed alien lizard in their midst was a better candidate for the job. It was obvious to her (although she didn’t know how happy Meoraq would be when he found out he’d been nominated); she just had to figure out how to prove it.

The answer, she
was certain, was food. Scott had successfully taken command with nothing but a duffel bag filled with Fleet-issue rations. Meoraq hadn’t been able to shake anyone’s confidence yet, even with a freshly-delivered dead animal every morning, but he had the significant handicap of being an alien, and the only one of them with weapons, which he did not share and which he did frequently point at people if they got too close. What Amber needed to make them understand was that in addition to taking care of them, he could also teach them to take care of themselves.

She’d already stormed out of camp in a huff, pretty much exactly the way that
Scott had wanted her to do, and she couldn’t help that now, but maybe she could salvage something if she came home with her own dead deer. She had her spear and enough regular meals to make her feel more confident about running down the next saoq that put her in that position. She’d go hunting. She’d catch something. And she’d show everyone what Scott and his everything-will-be-all-right bullshit was really worth. For that matter, she’d show Meoraq that they weren’t all just a bunch of starving alley cats waiting for someone else’s handouts. And maybe the next time she picked up this spear and walked out of Scott’s camp, she wouldn’t go alone.

It wasn’t the noblest motive, but it was an invigorating one. With renewed purpose, Amber set off again.
An exhausting march over the thorn-covered hills and marshy ravines didn’t bring her to any saoqs, but after God knew how many hours stubbornly struggling along, she found something. A whole herd of somethings, in fact.

Like the saoqs that she kept trying to see as
deer, when Amber first realized she was looking at animals and not boulders, her brain tried to force them into a shape it already knew. So they were armadillos at first glance. Armadillos the same size and general shape as those bubble-top cars that Volkswagen tried to bring back for their centennial anniversary. Armadillos with massive cloven hooves and shovel-shaped tusks. Armadillos that periodically sidled up and bashed at one another with the huge, bone-studded clubs of their tails. Armadillos that did not appear to be terrifically light on their feet, but that surely wouldn’t hesitate to trample her fat ass to death if they could catch it. And they probably could.

Watching them, Amber slowly realized that n
o one knew where she was.

No one would be able to hear her when she screamed.

No one would ever find her body.

And while Amber huddled in the grass, trying to decide the best way to get the hell out of there without being seen, Meoraq’s scaly hand slipped over her mouth.

She screamed into his palm, even knowing it was him. He yanked her back against his chest long enough to hiss something in her ear—blah blah blah something about God blah blah you idiot—and then he was dragging her rapidly and none too gently backwards through the grass.

After he had put a little distance and the slope of a hill between them and the giant armadillos, Meoraq stopped. He stood her up, swung her around, and snapped back the hand that had been over her mouth
for one mother of a roundhouse slap.

She flinched
, but only because she was stupid that way. Standing here with her heart still pounding from the adrenaline of knowing she was about to be tail-whipped and trampled to death by a herd of for-God’s-sake armadillos, she knew she deserved a lot worse than a smack in the face. She kept her arms at her sides, her spear low in her hand. She didn’t try to defend herself, even with words. She just wished he’d get it over with.

His arm hovered. His fingers flexed and curled in the air. His chest heaved
in silence. The black scales of his throat were striped with yellow as bright as a school bus. Then he just turned around and started walking, moving fast and with unnatural silence through the grass. She trudged after him, her spear trailing in the grass behind her, but not for long. He came back, seizing her by the front of her shirt like a man grabbing the collar of an errant dog, and pulled her along with him at his swift, angry stride.

I
n spite of that, it seemed like a long walk back, made even longer with nothing but the wind to listen to. Meoraq seethed beside her, his hand still knotted in her shirt. If she stumbled over a hidden stone, he kept going, dragging her until she found her feet. He didn’t need to stop and check his bearings, never lost his breath or caught his boots in the thorns, but still the morning was over and the afternoon getting long when they got back to camp.

“Welcome back, Miss Bierce,”
Scott called when they finally arrived, making sure everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her. “We were all starting to get worried. What were you trying to prove, wandering off like that?”

Meoraq snarled something before Amber had a chance to reply, but she couldn’t make it out. He dragged her over to the fire, where the saoq he had brought back had already been eaten down
to the bones. He made her sit down, smacked her in the back of the head when she tried to get up, then stalked off to his tent, muttering.

“You seem upset,”
Scott remarked with a smile.

“Should I take another walk, asshole?”

His jaw tightened. “Watch the profanity, Miss Bierce, or you will.”

Meoraq swept out of his tent and stalked back to the fire. He crouched down at Amb
er’s side, took her wrist again and slapped a square of his jerky-stuff into her palm hard enough to sting.

“I don’t want it,” she said, pushing it back at him.

He looked up at the sky, rubbing the jerky between his fingers while the scales at his throat faded between yellow and black, yellow and black. He began to talk then, but not to her. He started out calmly enough, but in less than a minute, he was on his feet, his voice steadily rising as he paced back and forth, pointing at Amber and bellowing into the clouds.

Several people eased quietly away.

“What’s he saying?” Eric asked finally.

“He’s praying,” said Amber.

“That’s a prayer?”

Meoraq swung around and shouted directly at her for a while, then threw himself down very suddenly in his thinking position—crouched low and bent forward, one hand open on the ground and the other resting on one knee, head bent, eyes shut. He breathed, silent.

“Now what is he doing?” Eric asked.

“Praying harder.”

Meoraq muttered under his breath, rubbed at his brow-ridges, inhaled, exhaled, and was still.

Everyone watched except Amber, who poked at the saoq bones in the fire and wished she had something to eat, and
Scott, who was watching her.

“I would like to ask a question,” said
Scott presently. “Could you, Miss Bierce, translate one so-called word of that
prayer
? Because I’m very curious about this lizard-god. What’s he called? O Great and Scaly One?”

Meoraq’s eyes open
ed.

“Do you know what I think
?” Scott pressed, oblivious to the narrow, red stare now boring into him. “I think you’re making it up. I don’t think you have the first clue what that thing is saying. I think you’re just too stubborn to admit it’s not saying anything at all.”

“Dude,” murmured Dag, watching Meoraq’s head slowly tip to one side.
“You might want to drop this.”

“
No, I think it’s long past time we had this out.” Scott came briskly back to the fireside and stood over Meoraq with his arms folded in his most commanding posture. “Say something,” he ordered. “Say anything. Talk. Pray. Heck, sing some dirty limericks. Come on, Meoraq. Let’s hear it.”

Heads turned all around the camp as people waited for Meoraq to speak.

Meoraq kept his narrow stare on Scott and did not say one word.

People began to whisper.

Scott threw up both hands in a gesture that was at once victory and surrender. “Miss Bierce, you justified the tremendous danger of bringing that thing into my camp by insisting that it could act as our guide once we had achieved some form of communication. Now I think I’ve been more than patient with you—”

“Bullshit you have!” Amber sputtered.

“—but all I’ve gotten out of the endeavor so far is a lot of argument and profanity,” Scott concluded. He didn’t shout. It was actually worse that way. If he’d shouted, she could have jumped up and shouted back, but as it was, he just talked, sounding disappointed but so damned reasonable. “All you had to do was teach that thing enough English to tell us, oh, anything! What his people are called! What planet this is! Yes, no,
anything
!”

“I tried!”

“She tried!” Nicci came out of the crowd of Manifestors, past a suddenly-flustered Scott, to stand at Amber’s side. “She tried every single day. For hours. No one can
make
someone else speak English.”

“Yeah, come on.” And that was Maria, miraculously enough. Lawsuit Lady herself, ignoring
Eric’s whispers to stand up and take a challenging step forward. “What was she supposed to do? Hold hot irons to his feet?”

Meoraq’s head tipped
back. He looked at Amber.

“He can talk,” Maria declared. “Even I can understand him a little
, and so could you if you weren’t too busy campaigning to listen.”

Scott
gazed at her for a moment or two while Eric raked his hands through his hair. “And what was he saying, Miss Alverez?”

Maria hesitated, looking at Meoraq, who kept his e
yes on Amber. “I couldn’t quite…He was talking pretty fast.”

“In other words, you don’t know.”

“I—”

“
And yet you’re convinced it was a prayer. How do his prayers usually go?”

Maria sat down again and put her hand on
Eric’s knee almost defensively. Eric wouldn’t look at her.

“So, in
point of fact,” Scott continued, “you didn’t understand any of it.”

Maria opened her mouth.
Eric murmured something. She glared at him, but pressed her lips together, silent.

“I can appreciate that you’re trying to help, Miss Alverez,” said
Scott, dismissing her with a wave, “but Miss Bierce needs to answer for her own failures.”

“
My failures?” Amber echoed. “It’s complicated, goddammit!”

“And i
f you have something to say, Miss Bierce, find a way to say it without turning it into a personal attack.”

Meoraq glanced at him and snorted. It was nice to know that someone else saw the irony in that, since it seemed that most of the people watching them did not.

“It’s complicated,” Amber said again, struggling to keep her voice down and sound as reasonable as he did. To her own ears, she sounded weak and sullen—a child making excuses for skipped homework. “Everything he says can change just by how he says it! Like…gann.”

“
Guns?” All of a sudden, Scott was interested again. “Those things have guns?”

“
If you’re going to interrupt, pay attention,” she snapped. “
Gann
. One sound, but I’ve heard him say it different ways to mean different things. Like, um, gann—”

Meoraq glanced over at
her.