Mirage (10 page)

“You’ll show me the falcons, then,” Aluna said. “When this is all over, you can introduce me to every last one of them.”

A drum sounded. The crowd fell silent immediately.

“It begins,” Dash whispered. “Tayan and Dantai will speak first, and then our khan. The heads of each family will call the hidden moon. Some will offer gifts to coax him back into the sky. But then is the real wonder.” His eyes glowed. His face lit with obvious joy. “Then the word-weavers will take over. You will hear stories that no Kampii has ever heard. There will be solos and duets, and if we are very, very lucky, even a quartet. Weaver Sokhor is a difficult man to like, but he trains his weavers well. Our herd is one of the only ones that still remembers the old ways.”

He turned to her and took both her hands in his. She almost jerked them away in surprise but managed to stop herself.

“I want you to hear everything, Aluna. I want you to understand what is good about our people. No matter what happens to me, I want you to understand why I am proud to be an Equian. I want you to know that even if I die, I will die as one.”

She nodded once and swallowed. Her voice had fled. Dash smiled briefly at her acknowledgment and turned back to the spectacle beginning in front of them. Eventually his hands slid from hers, although the memory of them lingered.

Together, they listened to the speeches, the songs, the stories, the pounding of hoofbeats on the sandy earth. One after another, each voice stronger or more practiced than the last.

Until finally, just before dawn, her eyes wet with tears, she understood.

H
OKU DRAGGED HIMSELF
back to the tent just before dawn. He should have gone to bed hours ago, but he couldn’t bear to miss any of the Equian songs. The rhythm created by hooves striking the ground made his heart beat faster and his ears strain to hear every syllable. He had no idea how to capture that power and energy in the song he was writing himself.

He wanted sleep, but he’d made a promise to Rollin. And to himself, too. Instead of curling up on the rug on his side of the tent, he quietly gathered his satchel and headed for Rollin’s workshop.

The sun squinted over the top of the eastern mountains, layering the peaks in deep oranges and reds. It made him think of the solarphiles, the Kampii who swam to the surface every dawn and dusk to watch the sun. His mother had been one once, before she’d married his father. Hoku had gone with her a few times, when she’d had a craving for sunlight unfiltered by water. He’d complained every time . . . until they broke surface. Then all he could do was stare at the colors and grasp his mother’s hand tighter and tighter. She’d be jealous now, if she knew how many sunrises and sunsets he’d seen. He made a note of this one, memorizing the particular colors and angles of the light. Maybe someday he’d get to describe it to her.

When he arrived at Rollin’s tent, he announced himself outside the door. He heard a grunt from inside, which, he realized after another minute of standing there, must have been a command to enter. He pulled aside the flap and gasped.

Workbenches ringed the circular tent, every surface covered in bits of metal, jars of artifacts, pieces of plastic, saws, hammers, screwdrivers, and so many things he couldn’t identify that he quickly lost count. Bigger artifacts and devices lay scattered on the ground and piled on carpets. He saw things that beeped. Things that whirred. Things that tried to limp across the ground of their own volition. Scraps of metal and spools of wire hung from hooks in the ceiling. Two huge devices, each big as a shark, chattered and hummed in the center of the tent. Rollin stood at one of them and dragged a rusty piece of metal through a beam of red light. Wherever the light touched the metal, it sizzled and broke in two.

Air inside the tent hung like a blanket of dank heat. And the smell — pungent metals and oil. Old food. Sweat.

Paradise
.

“Close the flap. We already have enough bugs,” Rollin said. She pushed more metal through her light cutter.

Hoku stepped inside and let the tent flap drop. The air grew even more dense and suffocating. Sweat pasted his hair to his head, his clothes to his back. He reached over and touched a thick iron tool, wondering at the notch on one end. A twister, but not like the smaller ones he’d had back home.

“Fingers off!” Rollin yelled. “No touching until you’re trained on whatever it is you’re touching. Rule number one.” She held up her arm with the interchangeable tip. Today a claw was screwed on. “Too easy to lose a hand, even if you know what you’re doing. Got me?”

Hoku gulped and pulled his hand back reluctantly. “I understand. But you can’t show a Kampii the ocean and expect him not to swim.”

“That so?” She chuckled. “You young ones are always so eager on the first day. The second day? Less eager. Day ten? Pretend to be sick. Oh, those four-feets are good at fake fevers! ‘My skin is hot. I can’t work. Poor me.’” She snorted so violently that the metal she was cutting jerked underneath the light cutter. Hoku was glad he didn’t understand most of the words she uttered after that.

“I’m not like that,” Hoku said. “I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll be here when I’m sick. I’ll bring you food whenever you want.”

She stopped her work and looked at him. He could hear the tiny buzzing of her mechanical eye as it focused. He sincerely hoped it couldn’t shoot teeny-tiny harpoons or poisonous needles.

“Day one. Design a new attachment for this.” She waved her clawed arm in the air. “Go.”

Hoku’s mouth went dry. Design a whole new artifact as his first assignment? Could this really be happening? He expected to be hauling metal scraps or washing Rollin’s feet for the first few days, not actually building something. He reached for the notched tool on the nearby workbench.

“Stop!” Rollin said. “No touching. Did you forget rule one already?”

“But you said —”

Rollin shook her head. “The first step of designing, you use this.” She touched her clawed hand to her head. “Not this.” She wagged her hands at him. “Design starts in the brain.”

“Oh, right,” Hoku said. “Of course. I know that.”

“Good. Now talk. I want to hear your brain,” Rollin said. “Whatever you think, spew it out! Let’s see how those gears are turning.”

Hoku pulled his hand back from the tool he’d almost touched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Well, first I have to figure out what I want the new attachment to do —”

“No!” Rollin yelled, and Hoku suddenly wished he’d stopped to eat breakfast before coming. He had a feeling his first lesson was going to be a long one.

“No?” he said. “But if we don’t know what it’s supposed to do, we can’t begin to think about —”

“You have to find out what
I
want it to do,” Rollin said. “It’s my hand, yeah? My new bit of shiny you’re designing. Who’ll use it? Me! So you ask
me
what I want.”

Hoku wanted to skip ahead to the thinking and building parts of the exercise, but he knew better than to argue. His Kampii teachers back home played the same sorts of games. The sooner he gave them what they wanted, the sooner he got what he needed. “Fine,” he said. “What do you want the new attachment to do?”

Rollin grinned. Her specially modified teeth glinted silver. “I want . . . a weapon!”

He stared at her. “Really?”

“Yes! Something powerful and deadly. Instant death to my enemies, if you can manage it. That’s what I want.”

He could feel his face contorting with disappointment and made no attempt to stop it. “Weapons aren’t exactly my thing,” he said. “Aluna could invent a great weapon. In fact, she’d probably love the chance. But I like . . .
useful
things.” He sighed. “Even your grass-chewing teeth are better than weapons. Can’t I invent something like that? How about teeth good at chewing cactuses? Or a bigger fan for cooling the whole tent?”

Rollin shook her head and lowered her hand. “So weapons aren’t tools? They aren’t useful? That world you’re living in — I want to live there, too. Everything so clean and fluffy and harmless.”

“No, it’s just that —”

“Your friends are your weapons,” Rollin said. “I’ve heard about your friend, and I don’t see any calluses on your hands. So other people will be your muscles and guts. Is that it?”

“No!” Then he thought about Aluna and cringed. “Yes. But they like it! They’re good at it! I have other . . . skills.”

Rollin plucked an apple-shaped artifact off the workbench behind her. She tossed it in the air, caught it, then threw it at Hoku.

Hoku tried to twist out of the way, but she was too close and her aim was too good. The metal device slammed into his shoulder.

“Ow!” He rubbed his wounded arm with his good hand and backed toward the tent flap. “Why did you do that?”

“Where were your friends?” Rollin said. She didn’t look sorry in the slightest. “Not here, that’s where. If I were working for Scorch, I could kill you right now, before you even had time to scream.”

He took another step back.

Rollin sighed and scratched her cheek with her claw. “Oh, settle down,” she said. “I’m trying to make a point.”

“You’ve certainly made a bruise,” he said. He couldn’t move his arm. It felt like a dead fish attached to his shoulder.

“Life isn’t much fun if you don’t survive long enough to live it,” she said. “That’s my point. Play all day with bits of metal, but don’t think for one minute that we’re not all trying to survive. Longer, better, easier. But survival is the key. No one in this world can get by being as helpless as a . . . Well, now, I don’t even know any sort of animal that’s as helpless as you.”

“I hit someone in the head with a lantern once,” Hoku said quietly. The Upgrader had been a little distracted fighting both Aluna and the Aviar Niobe at the time, but Rollin didn’t need to know that.

“Did you? Good. You have a spine,” she said, and nodded once. “That’s not an easy thing to teach.”

“The things I want to make will help people survive,” Hoku said. “I understand that part. I want to make everyone’s life better.”

Rollin shuffled over and poked her claw into the center of his chest. Her spiked hair wobbled on top of her head. “Then start with yourself. There’s not a person in this whole camp — four feet or two — who couldn’t whip you in a fight. And if I’m going to spend my time teaching you what I know, you’d better survive long enough to make it worth my while.”

That did seem like kind of a waste, Hoku thought. And he really wasn’t in any hurry to die. And maybe, just maybe, it would be good to survive a fight. Not only for himself, but for Aluna and Calli, too.

“So, are you going to teach me how to fight?” he asked.

Rollin chuckled. “No. I’m old and you’re scrawny. We need ways to defend ourselves that don’t need brawn and bulk. That’s where tech comes in, yeah? That’s why I want you to build me a weapon.”

Hoku frowned. He still didn’t want to build a weapon. Not even a little one, not even one that was mostly harmless.

“I won’t build a weapon,” he said. He didn’t want to lose his apprenticeship, but he didn’t want to lose himself, either. “But I will build armor. Or a way to deflect other weapons. Or something that helps you escape danger. All of that is survival, too.”

He stared her in the eyes. Both of them, not just the neat one with the tiny display screen built into the iris. He wanted her to look at him. To see that it wasn’t fear that was driving him, but something else. Something bigger.

Rollin held his gaze, then suddenly looked away. She turned her back and hobbled over to her light-cutting machine.

“All right, Basic. Tell me what you’re going to build me that’s going to help me survive a fight with a four-feet. You seen their swords? Nasty. Don’t want to end up sliced up by one of those.” She paused to wipe her nose on the back of her wrist. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let me hear your brain!”

Hoku started talking.

W
HEN TAYAN
came to get them the next morning, Hoku was already gone. Aluna couldn’t believe it. That little squid hadn’t gotten up early one day in his life. Then again, he’d finally found someone willing to teach him about tech.