Cottonwood (51 page)

She offered her breath to him, imploring. His heart throbbing, he took it, gave back his own, and wished she would go back to sleep. He could taste the exhaustion in her now, taste it even through her pleasures when he mated with her. But she was adamant, he saw, and with the sister out of her reach, he could understand why. He released her to dig T’aki out of the sheets. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Get your toy.”

“What about the dog-moose?”

“He won’t bother us from the backyard,” Sarah said, stepping into her shoes. “We’re going straight out to the van, okay? When I wave, you just do your thing, jellybean, and come bouncing out.”

T’aki bounced on the bed to practice, clutching at Sanford’s arm. Sarah rubbed his head, stroked Sanford’s shoulder-joint, and went into the bathroom.

T’aki continued to bounce once or twice more, then stopped. He watched the bathroom door, antennae twitching, then whispered, “Will Kate come too?”

“Kate is Sarah,” said Sanford. “Sarah is Kate.”

“What if she doesn’t like us?”

“Sarah is certain she will, so I think so too. We will be a family.” He gave his son a pat. “She can be on my
ti’yan’
team.”

One bounce. Two.

“Will Sarah have the egg soon?”

Sanford glanced down at him, clicking amusement. “No. Sarah is not making an egg.”

T’aki stared at him, openly baffled. “But I thought that’s where eggs came from. You said—”

“It’s complicated.”

The bathroom door opened.

“We’ll discuss this another day,” Sanford concluded. “It is a long way back to yang’Tak. We will have a great deal of time to talk.”

“But—”

“Go on then.” Sanford plucked him off the bed and set him down. “We’re leaving soon. Go.”

“I hate the toilet!” T’aki grumped, stomping across the bedroom.

“Then use the bathtub, but rinse, don’t leave a mess.”

“Ew,” said Sarah, and when he glanced at her, she added, “Um, that looked like a serious talk.”

“Everything is serious to a second-molt. Come here, please.”

She came, her head at curiosity’s angle. “Why?”

“Because it will be a long drive and I want to touch you.” He did, and felt her fingers on his receptors in return, but her mind was elsewhere. “You are so nervous,” he observed. “Don’t I make you feel safe?”

“Yes, you do, but I can’t afford to trust that feeling until you’re safe on the ship.” She laughed shortly. “I really am a rotten soldier.”

“You don’t have to be a better one. Once this is over, you will never need to be a soldier again.” He clicked for humor. “I may give it up myself.”

“Oh? And what will you be?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead, but I find myself inspired by caseworking.”

“I think you could make more money as a TV repairman.”

“A point.”

“I thought you said we were leaving,” T’aki inserted, not without a heavy sigh. He had his clothes on now and his ship in hand, the very picture of a patient boy.

“We are, honey,” said Sarah, disengaging his embrace. “Right now, even. And we don’t stop again until Brookings.”

“And Kate!” cried T’aki, and ran out with her.

‘A family,’ thought Sanford, and followed after.

* * *

But they did, in fact, make several stops between the sleeping place and Sarah’s sister—once for food (good salty meat in bread with something she called cheese. He thought it very like ‘burgers’, but she called it something else, a ‘micmuffin’. Hers had an egg in it; he refrained from comment, but T’aki squealed out a “Gross!” before he could stop him), and three times for fuel. All in all, it was coming on dark when she began to sing and he knew they must nearly be there.

Darkness was a much better time to come up on the house, he thought, eyeing all the others that stood nearby. She’d been eager enough to keep traveling this morning, but had they arrived in full daylight, he was certain they would have been seen. She would have been certain of it as well, had she not been so tired. And she was still so tired. His brave, determined Sarah.

As it was, the yard was barren of covering trees or fences, the streets were wide and clear, and there were signs of life at every window on the street. Humans everywhere, humans surrounding them, but in the home of Kate, only a single light burning. It was the darkest in all the street, made dark deliberately, perhaps, in welcome.

“Ah crap, she’s loaded up the car,” Sarah said, parking. “Okay, um…I want you two to stay here while I go in and get her. Then we’ll move stuff into the trunk and get some blankets for you two—”

“I have to pee,” T’aki said.

“What, again?”

Stung, the boy retorted, “I only went this morning! You get to go all day!”

“I don’t go
all
day, I just—” She stopped there, wise woman, and sighed. She looked at the house. “Okay, um…gosh, that’s a long run. Okay, let me move the van…she’s going to love me parking on the lawn…and you make it quick, T’aki! Lord, she’s going to have a shock.”

“You haven’t told her about us, have you?” Sanford asked, amused.

“No.” She navigated onto the soft soil of the yard and eased forward until her wheels bogged. It brought them much closer to the door and yes, made a ruin of the yard. “It didn’t feel right saying it over the phone. I’m just not sure that springing it on her like this is the right thing to do. You know…‘Surprise, aliens!’ You don’t do that in someone’s house, Sanford.”

“Only in their car.”

She looked at the smaller vehicle in a startled way, then laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh well, at least she can’t crash the house if she freaks out. Let me go first, T’aki. The door might be locked.”

She went, turning in a full circle as she climbed the few stairs to the dwelling’s door. She knocked, then opened it, and Sanford heard her call the sister’s name. Then she stuck her head back out and waved to them.

“All right, quickly now, and remember this is not our home. Be polite.” Sanford checked the street, found it empty, and followed his son inside at a run. He left his only weapon behind him in the van. He did this not thoughtlessly, by accident, but with the deliberate thought that this may well be Sarah’s sister and someone to trust, but she would begin as a stranger to them and it would be best not to invade her home as an armed and deadly bug.

He had the best intentions.

“—so about that surprise I mentioned,” Sarah was saying, apparently to an empty room. “I need you to keep an extremely open mind here and—the bathroom’s straight at the end of the hall, T’aki, use the toilet if you love me—and just don’t get crazy until you hear us out.”

“Just a sec!” a woman’s voice called.

“Okay, whatever.” Sarah pulled a chair around and sat. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything.”

“Father?” T’aki stopped short in the hallway, his small claspers fluttering. He backed up. “Father, something smells bad.”

Tactless boy…but when T’aki turned and ran back to him, Sanford flashed his own claspers, sniffing as he stepped protectively forward.

Blood.

So much blood.

“Sarah, back!” he shouted, snatching up his son, but he tore open the door on three soldiers, their guns already aimed. Two more raised themselves up from behind the kitchen counters. The last came from a room at the end of the hall, and this one, Sanford recognized.

“You stood me up, you bitch,” said Piotr Lantz. And smiled.

Sarah bolted up from her chair, but Piotr was across the room and right in front of her in the same instant to slap her to the ground before she ever had a chance to run. Grinning, he seized a fisthold in her hair and pulled her to her feet, slapping her playfully until she stopped struggling and only hung in his grip. Then he dipped into his jacket pocket and came out with what the humans called a paz, their all-purpose handheld communications device. He tapped the screen. “Just a sec!” called the woman’s voice. He laughed and tucked it away. “I got that on the first day,” he said, tossing Sarah to one of his men for binding. “Took about an hour before I got the tone I liked. Distracted, you know, but not scared or hurt at all…not like she’s missing any fingers.”

“What have you done?” Sarah whispered. Her face was white and glassy with fear. She resisted nothing, scarcely seemed aware of her body, only of the man before her. “Where is she?”

“But you, now. You really got one over on me.” Piotr approached, looking Sanford up and down through narrow eyes. “The worst I ever thought you took out of Cottonwood was maybe some pictures. The old man’s going to shit a brick when he sees this, and I…I kind of want to see that. Take the kid.”

“You’ll
never
!” Sanford shouted, lashing out a foot at the first man who moved. He struck the armored vest, but sent the human into a wall violently enough to knock a hole half-through it.

“Give him up, Dad, or I’ll shoot him right out of your arms.” Piotr aimed his own weapon coolly—a Flamespitter, with chemical-laced bullets that pierced the chitin and set fires in yang’ti blood. He bared his human teeth in a grin. “Give him up. My orders are to take you alive and I guess that means all of you, but only until you give me shit. Give him up.”

T’aki’s fingers dug in around Sanford’s chest-plate. He could feel the pounding of the little heart against his shell, drumming harmony with his own. “Father, no! Father, please! Make them let me stay with you! Make them!”

“You got to the count of three and then I take him anyway
and
I pop his eyes out. One. Two.”

Sanford clutched T’aki’s head under his hand, breathed once, despairingly, and held him out.

“Good choice,” Piotr said, as Sanford watched his son be dangled upside-down, his feet bound together and tethered. Struggling, terrified, the boy’s muscles spasmed and vented a spray of fear-bright piss to run down into his own face. He started squalling, as much from shame as anything, and all the soldiers laughed. “All right, all right, take the little shit outside before it ruins the carpet. We’re guests in this house, boys.”

All laughed again. Sarah shook.

“Now you, Dad, and remember: If you fight, we kill the kid. We’ll bring him right back in here and stomp him flat in front of you.”

“You bastard!” Sarah shouted, and was at once restrained by soldiers. She surged against their pull regardless, fighting forward as if there were anything at all she could do if she reached him. “Stomp on a three year-old? You sick son of a bitch!”

Piotr slapped her without looking at her. When he saw Sanford flinch, his head cocked. He grinned, pulled Sarah up by the hair and punched her. This time, Sanford kept still. The human lost interest, dropped his victim and gave a nod to his men.

Sanford was forced to his knees, his ankles bound to a hobbling-stick, and his wrists shackled behind him. He did not resist.

“We’ve got a long ride ahead of us,” Piotr said, strolling over to pick up T’aki’s spaceship where the boy had dropped it. He opened the pilot’s pit, chuckled, and snapped it shut. “Want to say goodbye to your sister before we go?”

The hope in Sarah’s eyes was awful to see—born crippled and quick to die. Blood ran down her cheeks like tears. “You…You’re lying.”

“She’s in back, lying down. Boys, take our pretty Pollyanna back to see her sister.” And he laughed, but as Sarah was dragged into the hallway, his laughter stopped. He came to stand with Sanford, tossing the toy from hand to hand, studying him with a thoughtful expression. “You’re a long, long way from home, bug. And you’re a damned funny thing for her to bring to meet the family.”

The cry that rose from the rear of the house lacked the surprise necessary to be a scream. It swelled and hung, a ghastly sound of grief and horror and awful knowing that had no words, not even the sister’s name. Then weeping, broken weeping.

“Sir?” One of the soldiers came to the door. In one hand, he held Sanford’s Annihilator. In the other, the one thing it had all been for.

“Well, shut my mouth.” Piotr took the gun and dropped the
Fortesque Freeship
. The wing broke off again. He kicked the toy indifferently away, turning the weapon over in his hands. “I think I’m getting the picture. Forget bricks, the old man is going to shit
kittens
. What did she promise you, bug? Better food? Clean water? Were the two of you going to start the revolution that meant freedom for all your bug friends? Huh? And what is this?” He took the code-bank, laughed, and handed both items back. “Make sure that’s everything and load it up. I need to call van Meyer. Somehow I don’t think we’re headed back to Cottonwood just yet.”

He walked away, pausing to pat Sarah’s cheek as she was pulled into the room, and another soldier stepped up. He raised his weapon, brought it down hard on Sanford’s neck, and darkness took him. Darkness and the sound of tears.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was a long drive and a quiet one. The soldiers talked some, laughed some, but even they seemed tired, their adrenaline spent, anxious now to be done with it. They left the rain in the north and drove through the night into the sunrise of a clear day. They stopped only once, to transfer from the van to a helicopter, and their journey continued out over the water. With the sun up, Sanford could see the ocean, Earth’s ocean, just as he remembered it. And he could see Sarah’s face, Sarah’s eyes, staring hollowly into nothing.

From the pilot’s pit, Piotr watched them in smirking silence. At length, he rose and came into the hold. He sat on the bench beside Sanford, close enough to press his thigh to Sanford’s thigh, his arm to Sanford’s arm, but it was Sarah he was grinning at, Sarah he wanted to see.

“They say the best a man can ever get is tight virgin pussy,” he said, as Sarah watched the tide swell and break below her. “But they never had a good gut-stab. Hot, squirming, bucking, writhing…and the sounds they make! Like rabbits in a snare.”

Sarah ignored him, lost in her thoughts.

“Your sister lived four hours after the first cut. I had her five times.” He raised a hand, fingers splayed, waited, and then reached across and grabbed Sarah’s chin. He forced her to look at him, and grinned again. “I’m hoping you and I can break those records.”