Shadowkill

2

When the Irrkuy woman had her quota, a set of guards herded the chosen women from the holding-room into a dusty mudbrick courtyard with a scant layer of gravel over brittle hardpan. White dust stirred and fell back with each twist of the sluggish breeze and filmed every surface in the place. Near the massive gate there were three vehicles parked in echelon-two landrovers and a huge boxtruck. The rovers were heavily armored and one was top-heavy with what amounted to a gun-station on its roof. All three had pneumatic tires made from some polymer that had come out a mottled purple fortunately grayed down by the omnipresent dust.

Kizra stared at them in surprise, she hadn’t expected to see wheeled vehicles-and gulped as the thought finished forming itself. And seized hold of it eagerly and nearly cried out when it slipped away from, her. It was a fragment from the past which had been scraped out of her, but only a fragment, a dislocated bit with no connections she could trace. Her eyes stung, but with fierce determination she refused to cry.

The guards herded them to the back of the boxtruck and sent them up two cleated planks into the dust-filled cavity.

There were cartons and bales packed around the sides with a thick layer of straw laid down in the middle, a strip of canvas laid over the straw. Up near the front a pallid light struggled through the grayish-white crud that covered two small windows. They were double-paned with wire mesh embedded in the thick glass, one window starred about a small hole.

Tinoopa stood with her hands on her hips, the rest of the women eddying around her as they hunted out places to sit. She ignored them and continued her leisurely inspection. She saw the hole in the glass and snorted. “Looka that, Kiz.” She snapped thumb against finger, pointed at the window. “Pellet. This thing been through the wars for sure and that’s where we going, right back into it. Huh.” She looked over her shoulder. The guards were standing around the back of the truck, talking in low tones. “A weel a weel, they don’t look much worried.” She shrugged, strode to a section of canvas next to a bulging cloth-wrapped bale, dropped easily down. “Come on, Kiz, no use gawking about, pick you a place.” She got her back comfortable and settled herself to sleep.

Kizra heard her breathing slow and deepen and she envied her. She crossed her arms on her knees, leaned on them, and stared past the other women at the pallid scene out the back end of the truck.

A thin, small woman went poking about the edge of the straw. “Blankets. Whatcha know, could be this’s better’n we think.” Her voice came out a basso bellow. “Eeda, have one.” She tossed a folded blanket to another woman who might have been her twin but probably wasn’t, then she started tossing blankets to anyone agile enough to catch one.

Kizra snagged one of them, shook it out and tossed it over Tinoopa, plucked another out of the air and wrapped it around her own shoulders; she drew her legs up, pulled the blanket over them.

The guards stopped talking.

The pregnant woman walked past, moving with an angry impatience despite the fatigue and pain in her face. She made a quick gesture and passed out of sight.

The guards closed the back flaps and chunked in the lock-pins. The box was suddenly stuffy and full of smells from the women and the goods sealed in with them.

Tinoopa snored.

Kizra gritted her teeth. Her coverall was too short in the body and cut into her whenever she moved and the armholes were in the wrong place and chafed at her skin. Helpful as Tinoopa had been, her easy acceptance of this situation was almost as irritating as the miserable coverall.

There was a muted roar, rough as an old wino clearing his throat The box began to shudder. The roar smoothed out a little, there was a grinding sound and the truck lurched forward. Wherever they were going, they were on their way.

Kizra slipped into a panic. The uncertainty of her future and the unknowability of her past merged into a black hole that dropped over her, choking her. She started breathing faster; her body shook.

The woman next to her patted her hand. “No so bad,” she said in interlingue spiced with a small lilt and a slurring of the sibilants. “Hard work and bad food…” she shrugged. “So so, you healt’y, you live okay.” She squealed as the truck jounced over a deep pothole and threw her hard against Kizra. When the vehicle returned to its usual sway and lurch, she resettled herself and went on talking as if nothing had happened. “Me, Bertem, these…” she waved her hand at the two women huddling close to her, “my cusinas, Luacha ’n Sabato.” The three of them were very much alike, with light brown hair cut short and waxed into spikes, cheerful monkey faces, tiny agile three-fingered hands. “Don’ worry, chickee, we been at this awhile, we know. What we call you?”

The skinny woman was sitting across from them, her legs drawn up, her arms draped loosely over bony knees. She leaned forward and grinned at Kizra. “That’s right, Kiz,” she said. “Me, I’m Jassy, that’s m’ sister Eeda. Our ma and gramma was Contract, too. We been ’cross the Known and back, an’t lost nothin but time. Your first?”

“She don’t know,” Tinoopa said. “Some gleek mind-wiped her and dumped her.”

Kizra started, then clamped her mouth shut, annoyed at Tinoopa for going off on her that way and the minute she woke up, broadcasting Kizra’s business to everyone.

“Mindwipe, yeeh-hah!” Jassy’s eyes opened wide and she stared at Kizra with increased respect, though she asked no more questions. “Bert’s got it,” she said, “you don’t wanna worry, kid. I don’t say it’s somethin you’d choose had you your druthers, but you gen’ly get clothes and mostly enough food.”

Beside her, Eeda nodded vigorously. Already it was obvious she did everything vigorously except talk; could be all those years with Jassy had suppressed the urge to words.

Kizra found her silence more comforting than her sister’s vehemence.

Eeda grinned at her, then pulled the blanket up round her shoulders and settled herself to sleep.

When Kizra looked around, Tinoopa was gone again and the rest of the women were either talking quietly and privately or dozing.

She was still angry, but the panic was gone. She wriggled around, tugged at the coverall until she was as comfortable as she could get, then she settled into a simmering resentment, its targets Tinoopa and the pregnant woman who’d more or less bought them, but most of all the person who’d stolen her life from her. All right, she’d survive. She’d not only survive, but she’d find the bastard and wring the reasons out of him-or her, and with them her history. Panic fluttered again as she realized the difficulties ahead of her, but she let anger burn it out, anger and determination. She closed her eyes and slept.