Part 16 (2/2)

Sidge glanced over her shoulder, then holstered the stunner. She still moved cautiously, with a degree of uncertainty. She started patting Raja-can's body, searching.

Tussig wondered where the third tech was. He had seemed to be the leader. If he came back now and saw this, maybe Sidge would be disciplined. Maybe, with two useless people-one stunned, the other untrustworthy-he would let the buddle go. They might have time then to leave.

But without Raja-can.

Tussig watched Sidge's hands move over the lifeless body of what used to be Tussig's prime par, the head of the buddle, the man who had kept them centered, optimistic, and moving. Maybe, he puzzled, the stunner had numbed more than just his body, because he could not quite connect what he saw with anything he felt. The blow Sidge had struck had startled him, but now he seemed unable to react. There was a slow chill beginning to course through him, but that seemed a poor excuse for actual feeling.

We're nids, he thought, we don't have feelings. It follows ... we don't have anything else, not even ident.i.ties, that's what it means, after all, NID, No ID, no access, no stipend, no path, no facts, no life, just bodies no one knows what to do with, excess bioma.s.s with brains too big to be pets, too small to be dangerous, nuisances...

Tussig had heard all these things said, spoken around pathetic campfires and in disused structures where a few of them gathered from time to time to pa.s.s what they had of goods and aid and news to each other. He was uncertain he knew what the words meant, but suddenly they implied much more than they ever had before.

But why is she searching his pockets? he wondered. Doesn't she know we have nothing?

Where is the third one?

Tussig looked at Bryce. His stunner lay nearby.

We could start freeriding, Tussig thought, and turned to see if any of the port could be seen from here. No, only more walls, broken or useless, supporting nothing. But this would be port one day, according to Bryce, which is why Raja-can lay dead now. The nids had to go. Squatters.

Freeriders... the idea carried a romantic patina... they told stories of the freeriders, nids like themselves who hopped aboard shuttles and caught rides on stars.h.i.+ps. They were more myth than reality, according to Raja-can, but even he had grudgingly admitted that some truth adhered to the stories. All you needed was a kit and a breather and the tech on your back to survive the transfer upwell to the waiting s.h.i.+ps and then the luck to hide out in cargo or some corner of engineering. Tussig had even heard of freeriders who carried along a change of fine clothes and slipped into pa.s.senger sections of luxury liners and rode from star to star in comfort, sleeping on a good bed, and thumbing their noses at the invested, living on the fringe of overlooked credit and- And Raja-can was probably right, they were all myth and madness, exaggerations based on a few reckless coes who might have managed it once or twice, but hardly as a lifestyle.

Raja-can had been right about a great deal. But he had never known he would die so soon. None of them had and now Tussig knew how wrong Raja-can could be.

Sidge s.h.i.+fted her position to more easily dig in Raja-can's pants, turning her back to Tussig.

The idea came as clear and clean as Bryce's water. Tussig got to his feet and stepped silently over Bryce. In a smooth motion, he swept up the stunner, walked up behind Sidge.

She began to stand. Tussig placed the stunner against the back of her head and pulled the trigger.

It was shockingly loud.

Her skull seemed to expand. She lunged forward, over Raja-can, and landed, face down, with an ugly slap.

Tussig squatted before her and gingerly raised her head by the hair. Her eyes bulged hugely and her tongue jutted. Blood ran freely from her nose. He released her and let her head smack the ground.

He tossed the stunner back over by Bryce and sat there, thinking.

He thought: I'm twelve years old and I've just killed someone.

He thought: I have nothing anyone can take from me anymore.

He thought: I'm terrified.

The rest of the buddle came to before Bryce did. As each one woke up and remembered what had happened, they saw Raja-can and the dead tech, and each one reacted differently.

s.h.i.+mmer checked Raja-can's pulse, then looked at Tussig, eyes wide and terrified. The other sibs, all younger than Tussig, started to cry until s.h.i.+mmer hissed at them. Kess gathered them to her, holding them.

”You?” s.h.i.+mmer asked Tussig, tapping the tech on the back.

He nodded, unwilling to speak.

s.h.i.+mmer shook his head. ”Bad.” He looked at the others, all watching, huddled together, waiting for s.h.i.+mmer to tell them what to do. He wiped at his head and scowled at the blood.

”Got to a.s.sume Fera got away,” s.h.i.+mmer said. He sighed. ”We can't have law after us, Tussig. Not this way. They ignore us mostly, but this...” He shook his head again, eyes sad, then turned toward the others. ”Get the tent, gather our possibles. We're moving.”

”s.h.i.+mmer,” Kess said, ”we can't leave Tussig-”

”We can't have law after us!” s.h.i.+mmer hissed. ”We got them to think about. And it seems I'm prime par now.”

”So the first thing you do is abandon someone?”

”A murderer, Kess. Think!”

She shook her head, but lapsed into silence.

”All right then,” s.h.i.+mmer said. ”Move.”

Tussig watched his sibs react. Within a couple of minutes they had found the chamo tent, decloaked it, and broke it down. Packs were gathered, the tent folded into its pouch, and camp, such as it had been, was struck.

”You're young,” s.h.i.+mmer told Tussig. ”That counts for mercy.”

Tussig watched his place in the buddle eliminated and thought: I have even less now.

s.h.i.+mmer organized the buddle quickly, gave Tussig a last, pained look, and then led them out of the factory. Kess did not look back.

It took another ten minutes for Bryce to revive. He sat up, groaning, and held his head in his hands for a time. When he looked up, color leached from his face.

”f.u.c.k,” he breathed, scrambling forward. He checked Sidge quickly, then Raja-can, and sat back. He glanced at Tussig, eyes wide, then searched for his weapon. He crawled to it and grabbed it, then stood. He aimed it first at Tussig, then at Sidge. Finally, he holstered it and looked around.

”Where the h.e.l.l is Ridel?”

Tussig shrugged when Bryce looked at him.

”You stay here,” Bryce said as he walked toward the gangway.

Tussig considered running off while Bryce was gone, but it seemed pointless. His fear had blended with a profound ambivalence, a strange mix of hopeless euphoria and desperate anger that kept him fixed in place.

Bryce was gone for less than five minutes. When he returned, he looked furious. Tussig recognized the tight set of his jaw, the muscle working it between ear and mandible, the coldness in his eyes. He had seen that look in others and it had never meant anything but trouble.

”Come on,” Bryce said, grabbing Tussig's arm and pulling him to his feet.

”The other tech?” Tussig asked.

”Dead. Maybe Sidge, maybe this one. Come on.”

Bryce walked him out of the ruined factory, setting a quick pace. He said nothing till they reached the old road that ran alongside the abandoned compound. A transport waited there. Bryce touched the panel on its side and the hatch unsealed and opened.

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