Aftermath

Page 19

Not in the service of the legendary bounty hunter, Trapper, for all he was a fair man. Without his offices, I would not have survived. That one discovered me quicker than anyone since. He had a knowing to him that I miss to this day. He could look at a thing and tell you its nature. I have never experienced the like.
He alone knew that my name, to my people, means “white wave.” And so, I stayed with him because it was the closest I had to home, though I had left mine of my own free will. An artist may starve in uncertain times, so I laid aside those dreams as the price of freedom. Thus, I learned to stalk and track my prey. I learned to be ruthless. I learned never to back away from a deal once I gave my word. All that and more I learned from Trapper.
Over the turns, I became a legend. I do not say this lightly, but doubtless you have heard the stories. In colonies all over the galaxy, mothers tell their children: “You had better be good, or the Sliders will get you.”
That is not strictly accurate. Since the Axis Wars, I am the only one to break the isolation. I alone turn our native camouflage into something else, passing among humans undetected. Thus, the stories they tell?
They are all of me.
The time I spent with Trapper did not seem long, but he aged like a husk before my eyes. It almost seemed a flicker; humanity flares so bright that it cannot sustain the flame. I find the process fascinating but alarming. So I stayed with him until the end. I was there when he passed. Only I appreciated the irony of being named his heir. He called me son toward the end, and that, too, was a bitter irony.
But I did learn then that credits were power, and that within the guild, wealth might be all that kept me safe if my secret became known.
But that—that is another story.
Without Trapper, I was rudderless, a bounty hunter stripped of any real desire to hunt. I had spent too many turns taking orders from that old man to know what to do with myself once he was gone. And so, as is my custom, I ran.
In time, I found myself on Gehenna, with no quarry in sight. I had wanted a place where one could get lost, outside laws and boundaries. I think I also wanted to be something other than what I was, a pretender in human skin, so I went away from the guild and everything I knew. There, I made myself over.
I do not know if there has ever been such a lost creature as I, standing in that bustling market. Nobody thought to offer a wa, and they seemed blind to body language. To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed a vast carnival of a world, with titian skies that never shift outside the dome and life at all hours. The cacophony rendered me quite mad, even through the false skin that dulled my senses. Roasting meat and spilled blood, molten ore and silicon dust, incense and scented candles, herbal remedies and rare poisons—these scents combined to overwhelm me.
To this day, I think she took me for one who had lost his wits. But there was sweetness in her dark eyes as she touched my arm. Everyone else had passed me by, jostling in their haste. I saw everything and nothing, but the world skimmed down to her face when she touched me. I could not feel it, truly, but I understood what it meant. It was compassion.
“Have you lost your way?” she asked kindly.
I had long ago received an implant, making it possible for me to communicate. Otherwise, I would have been a mute as well an exile. She waited for a response. I am certain if I had not been so shocked, I would have offered something less candid.
“I have nowhere to go.”
“Come.” She smiled up at me, laugh lines crinkling the corners of her eyes.
It should not have been that easy. With the added benefit of turns and experience, I am angry with her now. Her faith in the decency of other sentient beings stood in the face of everything I have come to learn about the universe.
I can still see her in my mind’s eyes as she was then. She came to my shoulder, and she had a softness to her, though her hands were firm.
In the shape I had taken to best cover my true form, I was tall and thin, shaping the camouflage to what was already there. I did not like it when I had to pretend to be more compact. At length it would become painful—and since I had chosen this physical representation to suit myself, it was as close to nature as I could permit. My hair was brown, I think, and my eyes, likewise.
To my surprise, she took me to her dwelling. Only a crazy woman would do that, so I readied myself for some outburst or incipient threat. Instead, she made a drink of boiling leaves, which I was afraid to touch. I had learned there were certain human foods and beverages that I must avoid on pain of death.
“I’m Adele,” she said. “And in Mary’s name, you’ll be in need of work. What can you do?”
It was a fair question. But instead of answering it, I repaid her kindness with scorn. “Is this Mary the god of fools?”
Her wit was quick. “Rather the goddess of rude and rootless men, I think.”
“It was unwise of you to take me up,” I said. “Put me back where you found me.”
“I will not. If kindness is unwise, then perhaps I do worship the goddess of fools. Answer the question.” In her smile lay pure gentleness. At that time, I had not much skill in interpreting human faces, but I did not read her wrong.
So I told her I had some ability to draw and paint, and that I could repair certain machines. Of my darker skills, I did not speak, as that was the least of my secrets.
Later, when she returned to the room from which she’d brought the drinks, I quickly analyzed the contents of the cup and found it was safe. In fact, by some odd coincidence, she’d chosen beneficial herbs. I should have realized then that something guided Adele’s steps. My people would call her Beloved of Iglogth; however great their pragmatism, Ithtorians lack nothing in the way of mysteries.
As she returned, she saw me sipping from the cup. There is a trick to it, one it took me turns to perfect, so the fluid finds its way truly through the camouflage and into my own body where it can do some good. She seemed pleased by my trust, though why she should want it I would not understand until much later.
“I have a friend who runs a shop off the market,” she told me. “He takes in broken things and makes them new again.”
As do you, I thought.
“I would like to meet him.”
In that way, I came to be apprenticed to Franco Schmidt, who, shortly after I met him, bade me call him Smitty, then to get to work. Like Trapper, he cared nothing for licenses or work permits. He was akin to the acerbic old man I’d lost, and I found myself at home. Perhaps I could only find myself when I served others.
Smitty offered me a room above his shop. In his early days, he had used it himself, but now he did well enough with the repair of broken things that he could afford a better dwelling. As it offered plenty of privacy, it suited my needs, as I regularly regenerated the camouflage that safeguarded me from those who would call me monster.
In that way, I learned another trade. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months to turns. It was not the place I’d wanted when I set out to start anew, but it was a place nonetheless. I was safe.
When things changed again, it had been three turns since Adele found me in the marketplace. Oh, she had checked on me from time to time, but this visit would alter my circumstances in ways I could never have imagined.
She came into the shop, smelling of hyacinths. I had altered my design slightly, so my olfactory sense was not dulled as it had been. The light perfume could not cover the faint smell of morbidity, but I have learned to overlook that. Your kind cannot help that your cells are constantly dying and flaking away; you leave bits of yourselves everywhere you go. At first I found it grotesque and distracting, but it is no worse than what I must do with the camouflage to walk among you.
Of course, my tactile senses were muted, so I felt nothing but pressure when she shook my hand, but I could do nothing about that. Smitty had gone home early, as he often did by that point, leaving me to tend the latecomers and lock up before I went upstairs.
Her smile still held kindness. “Are you settling in, Vel?”
The familiarity surprised me, though I had told her it was my name, turns past. It was rare enough that anyone spoke it. Half the patrons of the repair bay called me Young Smitty, either in jest or lack of interest. I did not object; it had been so long since I spoke with anyone who cared about the truth of my naming, or who knew how to make a proper wa, that I sometimes felt like a spirit forgotten by the Iglogth. It is a hard thing to cast your shadow on alien earth, far from that which sheltered your ancestors. And yet . . .
And yet, I chose it.
“Yes,” I said. “I am happy here.”
“Are you?” she asked.
Such a question. Even now, I ask myself why she cared. But that was her way, looking after such strays the universe brought to her. Adele thought it Mary’s will.
I regarded her, puzzled.
“You don’t seem happy. Smitty tells me you have made no friends, and you seek no new companions. All you do is work.”
“What more is there?” It was a naïve question, based on inhuman values. Even social intercourse between Ithtorians is fueled by what may be accomplished by it.
I should have said something else; I should have kept silent. But for all my turns among them, I had not lived as a human, merely passed. I had never come to understand you, nor had I tried. Humans seemed soft and fragile, bursting with irrational impulses that drove them to excess. I might as well attempt to comprehend that which spins or creeps or lairs in dark, damp places as to unravel the human condition. I could only mimic it.
“Oh, Vel,” she murmured. “What have they done to you? Were you raised in a labor crèche in the far colonies? I’ve heard they don’t let those children play at all.”
I do not remember what I said—some noncommittal response—for I had only a rudimentary idea what she meant. Human young were noisy and undisciplined, messy and full of mischief. If there was a place raising them to be more sober and industrious, I could only consider that a good thing.
But in that moment, the damage was done. She decided to save me from myself. Despite my lack of hospitality, she stayed until I finished all my work for the day. She stayed until I locked up the store, and I did not know what to do with her. My room upstairs was small and sparse, and I had nothing to offer.
We stood gazing at each other across a counter strewn with electronic components and bits of wire. I raked them into a box, and said uneasily, “I do not know what you want.”
She laughed then. “I know you don’t. Come on.”
I looked at her outstretched hand for a moment. Then I did something for which I have no explanation. I took it.
Adele led me out of the shop, waited while I set the security code, then dragged me toward the marketplace. Despite the late hour, the sky held the same fire. Nothing changed, nothing except the faces. At that hour, a man juggled flaming rods in the center of the plaza. Musicians had come out to beg their livelihood with melodies haunting-sweet. I saw a man bend and dip his credit spike into the small wireless terminal set out for that purpose.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To eat. And talk. You’re alone too much,” she told me. “Smitty was right.”