Cottonwood (18 page)

“I think I understand,” he said slowly. “You aren’t giving us chits. You’re giving us food.” He leaned back onto his work table, rubbing at the soft part of his throat with a dark and brooding expression.

“Also, for everything I don’t actually have to buy, I can use that money for more food too. Like the tubs for carrying stuff—I have six of those already. I can just bring mine and there’s another thirty bucks for food. If they pull double-duty as coolers for the drinks—” She shrugged. “—another twenty bucks.”

“You say this isn’t stealing?”

“It isn’t. Technically. But it’s definitely sneaky and dishonest, and yes, they will be upset if they catch me, and there’s a very good chance they will, but hopefully not until after it’s all over.”

She waited. He said nothing.

“So that’s my plan,” she said finally. “What do you think?”

His glance spoke volumes, but he said merely, “Are you asking for my help?”

“I’d like to,” she said. “For the tables. I figure we’re going to need at least five or maybe even ten, and I know you don’t have a lot of spare tables lying around, but if you can come up with them, then I don’t have to buy them, and that’s a lot more money for food.”

He clicked, softly at first, and then loudly, until T’aki rattled out an answer from outside. He shuffled through the papers one last time and passed them back to her. “How much time will I have?”

“At least a week. Maybe two. And as soon as I get the money, we’re doing it. There’ll be no hiding it once we start cooking, but by then it’ll be too late to stop us.”

He gave her a look, one that was weirdly familiar—Kate’s faintly pitying stare—and then looked out the window again. “How many will you feed with this…”

“Block party. I can only ask for enough to take care of my own clients, but I think if I’m sneaky enough, I can do more. Maybe even double.”

“How many?” he asked, still speaking in that same serious, low voice, as if they were planning to blow up IBI Headquarters. His gaze remained steady; his eyes, troubled.

“Three hundred, easily,” she said. “Four, with effort. But I’m hoping for five.”

He looked away, out the narrow window, and took a few deep breaths. He said nothing.

Her confidence, none too strong to begin with, began to splinter. She shored it up as best she could with a little laugh, saying, “Of course, if I’m wrong about the sleeping dogs in the accounting department, none of this will happen at all.”

Sanford did not react.

“So…So my plan comes to just over two thousand dollars, which sounds like a lot of money, but they’re throwing a lot of parties out there right now, so it shouldn’t set off any alarms. In fact, asking for less than that might. Do you…” Her nerve, such as it was, failed completely at last. “What do you think?” she asked again.

Sanford glanced at her and looked away again. He reached down, picked up one of the discarded PlantGirlz from the floor—Marigold—looked at her, and put her back in the box. “I think you don’t have much experience with planning things.”

“Well, no, but—”

“I believe that you want to help,” he interrupted quietly. “But you don’t need to kill yourself proving it.”

“They’re not going to kill me. After all, I’m not stealing anything. I’m going to go through all the proper channels. If they figure out what I’m planning, they’ll reject my application and they’ll probably chew me out a bit, but Sanford, what’s the good of my position if I don’t use it to help people? You deserve someone who can actually make things right, but…but you’ve got me. And this is all I can think of to do.”

He clicked, rubbed at the plates between his eyes, and finally said, “Have you spoken of this plan to anyone else? Your kind or mine?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t. I’ll manage the arrangements inside Cottonwood.” And he blew air quietly through his palps and rubbed even harder between his eyes, muttering, “This is a terrible,
terrible
idea.”

Sarah tucked her papers back in her case, found her paz on the table where T’aki had left it, and stood up. “I should go,” she said, frowning at the clock app. “Before someone else notices how much time I spend here.”

His gaze sharpened. “Someone else?”

“Oh.” She shrugged, moving to open the door. “Mr. Samaritan made some smartass comments.”

His antennae lowered. “Yes. He does that.”

She hesitated again and looked back at him. “Does it bother you that I come so often?”

It disturbed her that he had to think about it.

“No,” he said slowly. And after another pause, “My son seems to like you.”

“Well, I like him too.” She smiled. “And you.”

He looked at her.

Okay, that was awkward.

“So, thank you. About the tables. And I’ll let you know what happens, but for right now, just kind of plan for five hundred people in about fourteen days, okay?”

“Yes.”

She let herself out, said goodbye to T’aki, who was flying circles around the house with his ship over his head, and climbed up into the van. Not a bad day. Two more reports taken, toys delivered, and block party planned. Despite Sanford’s obvious doubts, she was beginning to feel encouraged again.

* * *

Sanford began with the ones he knew in the market, the ones he knew could spare the materials and could keep the reason secret, but he expected no promises from any of them and received none. None of them knew Sarah; their experiences with their own caseworkers clearly left them skeptical of her motives. He had more success once he’d returned to Section Seventeen, where Sarah was a familiar sight (and sound), and even better among his more trustworthy neighbors on the causeway. It was a lot to ask for in so short a length of time, particularly for something that might not happen, but, as he pointed out, if it all turned to smoke, they’d still have a table they could sell.

“She can use this one for the day,” Byrnes said, running a dubious eye over the plastic monolith in his living space. “As long as I get it back.”

“I think it very likely IBI will come and destroy everything. She seems to think she can stand them off—”

“Yes, I’ve met her. Idiot.” Byrnes rubbed at his throat and hissed to himself, thinking. “Go ahead, then. Mark me down for a table. I’ve got two or three people I can talk to deeper in the rows if you need more, but they’re going to want a place at the feast. How many people does she think she’s going to feed?”

“She plans for three hundred, hopes for five.”

“Ko’vi protect us, that many.” Another hiss, longer this time. Byrnes stood up and paced his small house. “We’ll need sentries posted. IBI will be the least of our worries when word of this gets out.”

“I know. Keep it quiet while you can.” Sanford stood to go. “It might not happen.”

“Oh, I think it will,” Byrnes said distractedly, still pacing. “She’s got that look. But she’s still an idiot and those other humans are going to eat her alive when they find out. Us too, maybe.”

“I could dissuade her, I think. She’ll listen to me.” And it was true, which was a puzzling thing in itself. She had walked up to him for the first time on the first day preparing to trust him. It alarmed him, but made him feel oddly protective of her as well.

“No. That much meat, when half of us are hunting Heap-rats and the other half too slow to catch them, that’s worth a little risk. Besides, they’re killing us anyway. At least it’s a chance we won’t die hungry.” Byrnes flicked his antennae in a show of humor, and immediately belied the sentiment with, “Tell her not to fight, if it comes to that. Don’t give them a reason to come after her.”

Good advice. It was what every yang’ti lived by, and see how well they were doing.

Sanford returned home to his son (little ear and big mouth, like all small boys, and this was talk that needed to be secret), opened his door, and found Sam perched on the green chair, picking through the box of children’s toys.

His first reaction was not a charitable one. He clicked hard; T’aki answered from the corner behind him. The boy sat quiet, apprehensive, clutching his new ship as though he feared it would be taken away, which, given the company, was not an unwarranted thought.

“My feelings are hurt,” said Sam. “You’ve been out in the rows for hours and never came to see me. And what’s this I hear about a feast?”

“Go outside,” Sanford snapped, and T’aki went out at a run. As soon as he was gone, Sanford gave his foot a very visible flex and stamp on his worn carpet and quietly said, “Miserable as it is, this is still my house. I don’t appreciate being invaded.”

“The door was unlocked.” Unperturbed, Sam picked up one of the human dolls—the one with yellow hair and mostly naked limbs—and chirred at it suggestively. “You don’t mind when it’s the caseworker stopping by.”

“She knocks.”

Sam reached out and tapped the doll’s head on the table.

Sanford snatched it away and threw it back in the box. “What do you want?”

“I think a better question is, what does she want? And even better, why do you believe her? You honestly can’t imagine why the humans might want us all swarming in one place? Master military strategist like you?”

“This is why I didn’t ask you for help.”

“Oh, I never said I wouldn’t help,” Sam said airily. “I love to help. Particularly our yellow-haired hummer. Tell the truth. It’s not really just the kid who likes to see her, is it?” And he chirred again, his claspers extending to taste the air.

“Get out of my house,” Sanford said, disgusted.

Sam laughed at him and shook his head. “Whatever. Is my gun ready?”

“I’ll bring it tonight. Now get out!”

“Fine. I’ll put a sheep-leg on.” Sam stood up and lazily stretched as Sanford waited by the open door. He knew the effect he was having and clearly enjoyed it. “She likes to sit in that chair, doesn’t she?”

“What?”

Sam flicked a hand at the green chair he had just vacated, then flashed his claspers again. “She doesn’t know it, but she’s scent-marking. You hadn’t noticed?” Now he extended his claspers fully, brushing them back and forth over the seat of the chair. He chirred, eyes rolling back and antennae quivering. “God, that’s nice. I don’t mind telling you, I’d love to push her down some night and get inside that.”

Sanford gaped, then banged his fist on the open door and shouted, “Get out!”

But as Sam went smugly by, some unreasoning part of him made him lash out and catch Sam by the throat, under the palps where he could feel each breath pumping below the soft, unprotected skin. Sam was the larger male, and far more aggressive, but Sanford had been a soldier in the time Before and he knew how to make a grip work. In seconds, he’d shoved the other man down on his knees.

“I don’t care what you did in the other camps,” he said. “But on this road, in front of my house, you keep yourself behaved. Do not provoke the IBI. That means you stay away from the caseworker.” He flexed his hand on Sam’s throat and leaned down a little. “And the next time I open my door and see you in my home uninvited, I will take you for a thief and a stranger and break you open, do you hear me?”

“Perfectly.”

Sanford opened his hand. Sam staggered to his feet, stepped outside, and dropped again to spray bile—a delayed reaction to one of those good soldierly grips. Sanford watched coldly from the doorway, ready to fight if it came to that.

It didn’t. Sam got up again, kicked dirt over the damp patch, and walked off. “She’s my caseworker too,” he called. “I’ll do what I damn well please.”

“Father?”

“Come inside now.” Sanford waited, watching until Sam was tucked up in his own house, before backing indoors and shutting the light away. Push her down and get inside that. He felt like spitting.

But the ship in his son’s hands caught his eye. How she’d sat, telling stories and laughing as though she sat with friends. She talked of being a girl…he’d never thought of humans as ever being children, although of course he’d seen pictures, he knew they didn’t drop down whole from the sky. She talked of her father, her family. And when T’aki was gone, then out came her plans, her little courage, her guileless trust in him.

‘She’s dangerous,’ he thought suddenly. ‘She’s dangerous because you don’t see her as human. She could use that against you.’

But she wouldn’t.

‘You can’t afford to believe that.’

She was honest.

‘She’s one of the IBI.’

But she was trying to help.

He listened, but not even the black voice of caution could argue that.

“Father?”

T’aki had climbed up on the chair, on just the arm, as though Sarah were sitting in it even now. Sanford picked him up and held him, him and his ship both, and looked out the window at the empty road.

“Does our ship look like this?” T’aki asked.

“No, of course not. You’ve seen pictures of the ship.” He glanced at the toy. “Perhaps a little.”

“Can I call it anything I want?”

“It belongs to you now.”

The boy thought, his little fingers stroking over the plastic wings. “The
Fortesque Freeship
is a good name.”

“Yes, it is,” said Sanford, unsurprised.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sarah swiped her card at the gate and walked in, wishing she’d brought the van. It was stupid to drive the garbage-choked causeway of Section Seventeen just for a few minutes of air-conditioning in-between clients, but ugh, the heat was just an animal today. Her native co-workers assured her that it would start cooling off in September, but then it would also start to rain every day, and in addition to the new and improved smell that would create, she’d also be walking this road ankle-deep in trash-water. After that, it would be October and icing over. Then November, when the mercury might start dipping into single digits and possibly stay that way until late February. Then it would be storm season, and after the usual batch of tornados, it would be May and back in the nineties. All of which certainly seemed to prove Kate’s theory that they only put the aliens here because it was the worst place they had available to put them.