Trickster (30 page)

 
Feder, a dark-haired man with a long nose and thin lips, put his hand around Keith's shoulder as they walked. Keith tried to shrug him off, but Feder only tightened his grip. The smile that crossed his face made Martina feel cold and scared inside. She wondered how Keith felt.

 
"What's the matter, kid?" Feder asked. "You don't like friendly people?"

 
Before Keith could respond, Dad's hand shot out and grabbed Feder's wrist. "Don't touch my son," he said in a low, deadly voice.

 
Feder's free hand darted to his waist. Dad collapsed the floor, screaming in pain. His bands glowed blue. Mom dropped beside him, wanting to help but not knowing what to do. Martina stared with wide eyes, scared and uncertain. She had never heard her father scream like that. Evan began to cry, and Keith looked dazed. Dad's screaming continued for a long time, then abruptly stopped. The blue glow on his bands faded.

 
"Touch me again, you bastard," Feder told Dad in a voice that carried up and down the passenger bay, "and I won't shock just you, hey? I'll shock your wife--or your kids. Now get up. No talking."

 
Mom and Dad slowly got to their feet. Martina's throat was thick and she stifled sobs. Around them, other slavers herded the other members of the Real People toward the large double doors at the other end of the passenger bay. Evan and his family were at the very end of the line. Bare feet shuffled and padded on the cool metal deck. Feder walked in front of Martina and her family with his arm draped around Keith's shoulders, as if the two were old friends. The look of helpless outrage on Dad's face mirrored the way Martina felt. Evan was obviously trying not to cry again, and Rebecca took his hand.

 
"I read some of your files before we woke you up," Feder said to Keith in a bright, friendly tone. "The whole ship is from Australia back on Earth, but you bunch call yourselves the Real People, hey?"

 
Keith didn't respond. The muscles on Feder's arm tightened. "Hey?" he repeated.

 
"Yeah," Keith said, barely audible.

 
"A great idea," Feder said. "Starting fresh on another planet, re-establishing tribal ways. Too bad it's not going to work out."

 
Silence. The arm tightened again. "I guess," Keith mumbled.

 
"What's your name, kid?"

 
Pause. "Utang," Keith said, giving the Real People name he had chosen for himself only a few months before the People boarded the colony ship. Martina rarely thought of Keith as Utang, even though Keith--Utang--used it regularly.

 
"Your ship's behind the times, kid," Feder said. "Now that we got slipships, these old slower-than-light heaps are just about junk. Barely worth salvaging. But people--now that's different. People never devalue, hey?"

 
"I guess."

 
"You wouldn't have wanted Pelagosa anyway," Feder continued. "It was colonized by the KLO Syndicate and the Freebanders four, five hundred years ago. They're not taking immigrants. But don't you worry--we'll find a good home for you. Might even buy you myself, hey? Boss gives us our pick at cost-and-a-quarter. Been saving up for a new cabin boy. What do you think?"

 
"I--I--" Keith stammered.

 
Martina's stomach churned. There had to be some way to help her brother, but she couldn't think of anything.

 
"You don't have to answer, kid," Feder said kindly. "Know why?" He clamped his arm around Keith's neck. Martina heard him gasp and choke. Dad looked ready to leap, bands or no bands, but Rebecca put a hand on his arm and gestured sharply at Martina. Martina felt a stab of guilt. Dad wasn't going to help Keith because he was afraid Feder would shock her. It was her fault Dad couldn't do anything.

 
"You don't have to answer because you don't have a choice," Feder said. He abruptly spun Keith around to face his family and grabbed Keith's cheeks from behind with one big hand. With a nasty grin, he gave Keith's ear a long, wet lick. Martina wondered why he would do such a thing. Then Feder gave Keith a shove that sent him sprawling.

 
"Now move your lazy ass!" Feder barked.

 
Keith waved off Dad's help and got up on his own, ankle and wristbands shining in the ship's harsh lighting. His face was hard, but Martina caught tears at the corners of his eyes. Feder herded them through the double doors into the corridor and from there into a tiny cell with two other families. The cell contained nothing but a few sleeping pallets on the floor and a single sink and toilet in the corner. It all stank of urine and fearful sweat. The coverings on the pallets had clearly not been washed in years. Two round portholes looked out into black, star-strewn space. Feder slammed the door shut, and it locked.

 
Martina looked out one of the portholes and by craning her neck was barely able to make out the colony ship. A stiff umbilical cord chained it to the slaver ship. The colony ship was a giant cylinder, gray and impact-pocked, and looked slow and clunky compared to what Martina could see of the slaver vessel, which was sleek and flat. The colony ship was spinning to provide gravity, and the slaver vessel had matched the spin, though from Martin's perspective, the stars were rotating around the two ships instead of the other way around.

 
"Do you realize," said Dad behind her, "that the mutants have enslaved us again? As they did our ancestors?"

 
Gary, the father of one of the other two families in the cell, shrugged. "They enslaved the other groups, too. And the crew."

 
"How can they get away with this?" his wife Anna cried. She held twin boys not even a year old on her lap. "We're not slaves. We never were. What about our records? Citizenship and all that?"

 
Mom shook her head. "We left Earth over nine hundred years ago. Even if any of those records survived, how would we access them? Telephone? Fax? I overheard some of the slavers talking, and it sounds like they do this all the time. The slavers find a colony vessel like this one, hit the crew with a surprise attack and enslave the whole lot. Who's to prove we aren't slaves?"

 
"We need to pool our knowledge," Dad said. "Compare notes about what we've all seen or overheard so we can form a plan of escape or rebellion or--" His bands glowed blue and he cried out in pain. Startled, Martina spun from the window in time to see her father writhing on the floor. Mom crouched near him, looking as helpless as Martina felt. After a long moment, Dad stopped squirming. His bands were no longer glowing. Martina bit her lip.

 
Once they had determined that Dad had suffered no permanent damage, Gary gestured at the walls.
Listening devices?
he mouthed.

 
"Probably," grunted Liza, the mother of the third family. She was a large woman, with heavy breasts and thighs. "Either they're eavesdropping or the computer is programmed to listen for certain words. They shock us if we talk about . . . anything important."

 
"We should still pool information," Dad said stubbornly. "Just don't use those words."

 
The adults did so, gesturing for Martina and the others to remain silent. Two shocks later, they knew that sometime in the nine hundred years since the Real People had left Earth, someone had invented slipships, which allowed for faster-than-light travel. The slower ships and their claims on habitable planets had either been forgotten or purposely ignored. These slavers were from a government called the Five Green Worlds, though the colony ship had been found in unclaimed space.

 
The cell grew close and stuffy. Martina did a quick count. Six adults, three teenagers, four pre-teens (counting herself and Evan), and two babies for one sink and toilet and maybe eight sleeping pallets. How would they--

 
The porthole exploded into multicolored light. The quiet talk instantly died. Martina stared. The stars and darkness had vanished, replaced by psychedelic swirls of color. Martina's eyes felt as if something were twisting them, and nausea turned her stomach. She looked away from the porthole and felt a little better.

 
"I think we've entered slipspace," Gary said. He scrambled to the toilet and threw up.

 
They spent several days in slipspace, though the only way to mark passing time was by how often the slavers came by. Three times a "day" the door opened and someone handed in diapers for the babies and bowls of food, usually some kind of mush. No silverware--they had to eat with their fingers or slurp directly from the bowl.

 
There was nothing to do but talk, and even that was limited. Anyone who said a wrong words received a shock. They learned not to say "revolt," "escape," "run," "kill," "attack," "hurt," "organize," and a good dozen other words. The families also learned to sit with their backs to the portholes, since a single glance at the colors outside brought on violent headaches or nausea. Most of the time, everyone sat and stared at the walls, sunk into a dull apathy. Martina's skin itched and she wanted a shower. The cell smelled of unwashed people and babies that needed changing.

 
The adults took turns comforting each other and the children. Everyone went through at least one session of weeping despair. One time Martina wondered what had happened to the shell collection she had put into her suitcase, and the realization that it was probably now the property of one of the slavers choked her throat and made tears run down her face.

 
"It's just a stupid shell collection," she sobbed when Rebecca put her arms around her on the pallet. "Just some stupid shells." But she couldn't stop crying for a long time.

 
That night--which was night in name only, since the lights never dimmed--Martina lay on the crowded pallet with Evan squashing her on one side and Keith pressing her on the other and found herself wishing they would get wherever it was they were going, get it over with.

 
The next day was the worst. The door slid open not long after breakfast, and Feder stood framed in the entrance. The Weaver family gasped as one. Feder didn't say a word. Instead he crooked a finger at Keith. Keith flinched and Martina's heart pounded hard. Dad got slowly to his feet and stood between his son and Feder.

 
"No," was all he said.

 
Feder's hand went to his belt and pain tore through Martina's body. She screamed. Mom pulled Martina's writhing body to her, but there was nothing she could do stop the pain. The pain went on and on, ripping at her muscles and tearing at her head like hot knives. Dad flung himself at Feder, but before he could touch the man, his own bands glowed. Dad dropped to floor, face pale with agony. Martina continued to scream. The others stared uncertainly and the twins began to cry. Martina screamed and screamed. She couldn't stop herself, or even think. She wished she was dead.

 
"Stop it!" Mom cried. "Leave her alone!"

 
And then Keith stepped over Dad and stood in front of Feder, eyes downcast. Feder removed his hand from his belt. Dad and Martina's bands faded to silver and their cries stopped. The hot pain ended, but Martina's whole body still hurt. She whimpered in Mom's arms, glad to feel them around her. Feder took Keith by the shoulder and the two of them left. The door slid shut.

 
Martina sat in her mother's embrace, trying to stop crying. She had never felt so helpless. His brother was at this moment being . . . what? Beaten? Killed? Raped? Martina was only ten years old, but she had heard the older kids on the streets of Sydney talk about that kind of thing. Some of them took money for it. Martina didn't know for sure if that was what Feder had in mind for her brother, but she couldn't think of anything else he would want.

 
Everyone in the cell sat and waited like the family of a hospital patient expecting bad news. Mom and Dad looked like statues. Martina's soft cries were the only sounds. She felt bad, guilty. Something awful was happening to Keith, and it was her fault. If she had been able to stop screaming, stand up to the pain, maybe Feder would have left Keith alone.

 
A long time later, the door slid open. Everyone came quietly alert as Keith entered the cell. Martina caught a glimpse of Feder's smirk before the door shut. Keith made his way to a corner of the cell and sat down, his face a blank mask. Mom approached him, but he turned his back on her. He continued to shun all forms of contact for the rest of the day, and in the middle of that night's sleep cycle, Martina awoke to hear him crying softly. She didn't know what to do, so she did nothing. Eventually, the crying stopped and Martina fell back into restless sleep.

 
Martina forced herself to look down at the seam she was stitching so she would avoid looking at Keith. Feder had come for Keith several times before they reached the station where Martina and her family had been auctioned off. She had thought she'd forgotten that, buried safely in the bottom of her mind, but now it felt as if it had happened only a few days ago. Had Feder carried through on his threat to buy Keith as a cabin boy? Martina didn't know, though she also remembered a slaver--not Feder--coming for Keith at the end of the auction and taking him away. It could easily have been for Feder. Fury rose in Martina's chest and the yellow seam blurred before her. How long had Keith been abused by that man? And then, to top everything off, Keith had turned out Silent. Feder, or whoever had initially bought him, had probably sold him off at a healthy profit, just as Martina's first owner had done. He had doubtless been trained by his new master, learned how to enter the Dream--and then been wrenched away from it during the Despair. Martina herself had almost jumped off a building, and she hadn't ever encountered anyone like Feder. No wonder Keith was unbalanced.