Defy the Worlds (Constellation #2)(52)
This extravagance seems likely to set Riko off on another tirade against waste. Abel decides the best means of distracting her would be to obtain more information for his own purposes. “Since you were ten?”
Riko, still gazing at the shimmering tables above, doesn’t quite catch it. “What?”
“You said you’d been fighting since you were ten. I wouldn’t have thought Remedy accepted recruits that young.”
“Oh. They don’t. That was a—turn of phrase, I guess.”
Abel considers what he knows of the human subconscious. “Even turns of phrase mean something.”
Taking another couple of steps, her boots crunching against broken glass from the tables, Riko shakes her head. “I was ten the first time I saw a food riot on Kismet. You wouldn’t think people would be starving a couple miles from a beach party, would you? But we were. You could hear people laughing while you lay in your bed hungry.”
“Kismet hides that fact very well.” Even Abel, who is hardly na?ve about humanity’s unkindness to its own, hadn’t realized hunger would be one of that planet’s problems.
“There’s plenty of fish in the ocean, and humans can eat most of them, but you have to serve the resort guests first.” She stares into an unseen distance, focused only on the past. “Tons of edible fruit grows, both on Kismet-native trees and the ones we imported—the palms with their coconuts, or the bananas, or the pineapples—but the resort guests love those. They eat it all. Every alcohol distiller in the galaxy ships to Kismet, plus we were able to ferment the local bellfruit into a wine so sweet you could hardly believe it. And the guests drank all the wine. Every glass. Nearly every drop. You could spend every day harvesting food, every night serving it to the guests, and then at the end of it go to bed ravenous.”
“That sounds difficult.” Hunger is one human experience Abel can’t share. He doesn’t think he’s missed much.
“We have it pretty good on Kismet, at least better than the Vagabonds or laborers on Stronghold. But compared to the people who visited our world to eat and drink the best we had, and who lay around on our beaches all day while we slaved to make them comfortable? We were desperate, and we knew it.” Riko leans against the wall, and suddenly the blaster rifle looks too large for her slim arms and tiny frame. She could be a little girl playing soldier, if Abel didn’t remember the sight of dead bodies after the Orchid Festival bombings. “Sometimes the anger boiled over. We’d have riots. Strikes. Lootings. Then the mechs would sweep in and arrest or kill however many people it took to restore order. I saw friends of mine die. Can you imagine what that feels like?”
Abel thinks of Noemi lying on her biobed, nearly delirious with fever, Cobweb tracing white lines on her skin. “Yes,” he says to Riko. “I can. Let’s move on.”
She furrows her brow, clearly aware she’s troubled him in some way. However, she says nothing, for which he’s grateful. Maybe tact has more utility than he’d realized.
Once they’ve secured this door, Riko pushes open another in a corner to reveal something far less dramatic: a bathroom, or what was once a bathroom before it turned upside down. As he looks at the ceiling, he says, “Relieving wastes may prove to be… a challenge.”
Coming up behind him to take a peek, Riko groans. “Shit.”
“I wouldn’t.”
A faint creaking farther down the corridor compels Abel to focus his hearing on that area. Two more creaks and he’s certain. He straightens and gestures at Riko, who takes another moment to realize what he’s already determined: Someone is walking toward them.
The other Remedy members are far behind. This person is approaching from ahead.
It could be another Remedy patrol, Abel surmises from Riko’s reaction, which is wary but not panicked. He follows her lead, keeping hold of his weapon but not yet aiming it.
The footsteps enter human aural range, and Riko’s dark eyes widen. However, the proximity of this unknown intruder is less disquieting to Abel than the arrhythmic steps; this person isn’t walking through the corridor as much as stumbling through it. A sound-wave analysis indicates that this individual is barefoot and extremely small, possibly even a child.
Not an attacker, then. More likely a passenger injured and dazed from the crash. But even a small adult, if injured, dazed, and afraid, might fire if startled. Abel remains on alert.
A figure appears in the doorway, silhouetted by the dull orange emergency light. The individual is male-presenting, approximately one hundred fifteen centimeters in height, with childish body proportions, pale skin, and long hair, unclothed. Abel’s analysis stops short when he recognizes the scent in the air. The smell is one he remembers vividly from the first moments of his life—the oddly sweet odor of mech generation fluid.
When the figure takes another step forward, emerging from shadow, Abel sees a small boy holding what appears to be a severed mech hand, as if it were a plaything. Mansfield has indeed begun making child mechs. The boy mech’s features are ill-formed, incomplete. This one wasn’t finished yet. How can he be awake?
“I’m lost,” the mech says. In his voice Abel hears emotions he’s never heard from another mech, even himself—terror, misery, and confusion. “I don’t know where we are.”
“We’re on a ship called the Osiris.” Abel keeps his tone even and calm. He’s aware of Riko gaping at the two of them, but she says nothing. “Can you tell me your model designation?”