Earth Thirst (3 page)

Someone could be watching us right now.

“Nigel.” Phoebe leans through the hatch and hisses at Nigel.

He is standing beside a hatch with a security panel, and his hand is poised over the keypad. His expression is both annoyed and startled.

“It's all wrong,” Phoebe whispers.

“Don't touch anything,” I add.

His eyes flicker toward his hand and the keypad.

Too late.

In the wall, there is a sudden hiss of escaping air, and the hydraulics controlling the hatch start to swing it closed. Phoebe grabs at the hatch, slowing its motion as I turn and race back to the previous hatch. The hydraulics are retrofits, exposed machinery welded to the inside of the hatch. From this side, I can break things. I go to work, and dark oil squirts over my hands as I tear apart critical pieces of the hydraulic system.

A mist starts to descend from the ceiling, a pale yellow mist, and it burns where it touches my exposed skin. I inhale reflexively and try to stop myself from filling my lungs with the aerosol. What gets in though feels like I've just inhaled fire. An old memory stirs. Naphtha—oh, how it used to burn the wood decks and hulls of the old triremes. I fight my flight impulse, and throw my weight against the hatch, fighting the sluggish hydraulics.

Nigel is screaming behind me, a sound no one should make, much less hear.

Phoebe slams into the hatch beside me, combining my weight with hers, and we force the hatch back until it is wide enough for her to slip through. She moves like a shadow, and the metal hatch groans as she levers it from the other side. As soon as it is wide enough for me, I go through and then take over for her.

Nigel staggers through. His face is a wreck. The poison has melted his skin down to the bone in several places and his eyes are gone, weeping holes in his face.

The remaining hatch isn't as hermetically sealed as the others, and I hear it crash open as Phoebe clears our path. As I try to help Nigel without actually touching him, I hear shouts from the deck, followed by the faint rattle of Phoebe's silenced pistols. Clearing a path for us.

Nigel can't see, and he bangs his skull against the frame before I can shove his head down enough for him to clear the last portal. My skin crawls at the touch, even though I'm wearing gloves. Tendrils of acrid smoke are spiraling off Nigel's melted skin.

Phoebe is waiting for us by the railing, covering our retreat. There are six bodies on the deck, and the reek of their blood makes my throat constrict. The hoses have been unrolled from the mounted tanks, and they lie on the deck like dead serpents. The nozzle of one is open, and it is spewing a frothing fluid on the deck. My skin crawls at the sight of the pale, bubbling liquid and my eyes water as we skirt the flood that is threatening to cover the deck.

Our rope is still in place. Nigel is coherent enough to know what to do when I shove the rope into his hands. I mean to go first, but he leaps off, nearly in free-fall in his frantic need to get off the boat. I go after him, the water-slick rope twisting in my hands as I slide down the side of the boat. The fabric of my gloves burns away as I squeeze the rope and slow myself down. Nigel hadn't even bothered trying to stop. He is lying in the briny bilge in the bottom of the boat, whimpering and moaning. Phoebe lands lightly, the rope cascading down beside her.

Phoebe shoves us away from the hull of the processing ship as I start the engine of the Zodiac. I don't worry about making a silent retreat; I open the throttle all the way, and we flee as fast as the tiny rotor will go.

Nigel lies in the bottom of the Zodiac the whole way back, half-covered in a netting of loosely coiled rope. He makes a whistling noise through the ruin of his mouth. Phoebe and I don't talk, not for a lack of things to say, but because we are both gripped by the same fear.

They were waiting for us.

FOUR

I
know the cream is working, because my skin is twitching and the urge to scratch is unbearable. I sit on my hands to keep from tearing at my flesh. Phoebe must be feeling the same thing, though I can only tell by the way her eyes are moving—back and forth, like she is watching a tennis match. My lungs still hurt, and when I take a deep breath, the webbing of new tissue threatens to tear. My throat is raw, and I sound like a three-pack-a-day cigarette junkie when I speak.

When he is finished with Nigel, Talus strips off the rubber gloves, turning them inside out, and discards them in the nearby waste bin. His skin is shiny with sweat, and when he raises his hand to wipe his forehead, he pauses. Even though he has been wearing the heavy rubber gloves, he's still not sure he wants to touch his face with his hand. He realizes I'm watching him and he finishes the motion, though he uses his sleeve to wipe his forehead. I don't blame him; Phoebe and I both know the same apprehension. We've just had more time with it, more time to bury the fear deep in our hearts.

“They were waiting for us,” Phoebe says.

“Give me your report,” Talus says. He hunches forward slightly, turning his back to the bed where Nigel is lying. It forces us to cluster around him, as if we are sharing a secret, and I dislike the subtle inference in his motion, but I let it go, focusing instead on telling him what happened. Our intel had been bad. Whoever was funding Kyodo Kujira had wanted Arcadia to send a team. Would we be so curious that we'd leave solid ground, that we'd expose ourselves, just to find out what they were doing? Out on the open water, we couldn't hide as readily—we couldn't run away. “They're conducting tests, all right,” I say, “but it's got nothing to do with cetacean research. That boat hasn't processed a whale in over a year. They just wanted to test a new chemical agent, one that”—I wave a hand to indicate the three of us—“reacts strongly to our physiology.”

“Aerosol dispersal,” he mutters when I finish. He looks over his shoulder at Nigel's quivering form. “Idiot.”

Nigel hadn't been wearing Gore-Tex on his head. The stocking cap soaked up the poisonous mist, and the cotton fabric turned into a concentrated glob of corrosive acid. Whatever that mist was—whatever was pumping out of that hose on the deck—reacted strongly to flesh.
Our flesh.
It had no effect on the slick surface of our dry suits, or any other surface.

Phoebe and I had gotten a light dose, and our burns would heal in time, but Nigel was much worse. Most of the flesh on his head was gone. His eyes were ruined, and his throat was badly burned. His lungs were in bad shape; each shallow breath caused his body to quake with pain. He had forgotten what it was like to die, and so he kept on breathing, kept on trying to heal. The process would take a long time and it would be filled with pain.

Sometimes it is only Mother who can stop the pain, but she is so far away. Solid ground is so very far away.

“He needs blood.” Talus says out loud what we've been thinking.

“It won't be enough,” Phoebe says.

Talus lifts his shoulders. “He's family.” As if that is all the justification we need.

Phoebe looks at me since Talus won't meet her gaze. “It won't be enough,” she repeats.

“I know,” I reply. “But if we can get him stabilized, he might manage to hold the thirst off until we can get back to land.”

My words are meaningless, and I can tell Phoebe is disappointed in my response. But to say anything else would be to contradict Talus, who has invoked the most primal justification.

Family.

We know what this means: everyone else dies, because that is the only way to ensure our survival.

* * *

“Silas.”

I should ignore her. I should pretend I didn't hear her over the omni-present growl of the boat and the ocean. I should just keep walking. But I don't. “Mere.”

The hallway is dim and the hood of my coat is up so she can't see my face, but she gets real close. Her hand falls on my arm. “What's going on?”

“Nothing,” I say, though the ragged sound of my voice reveals the word as the lie that it is.

“I saw you leave. You and your friends. You took a boat and went out there.”

I look down at her hand, and think how easily it would be to take her for Nigel. A simple rotation of my arm to break her grip; my other hand around her throat. The panic light in her eyes as I carry her back to the room. The smell of her fear. The hammering sound of her heart. The smell of all that blood.

It would be so easy.

“You didn't see anything,” I say as I carefully remove her hand from my arm.

In the corridor behind her, Talus is watching. I lift my head fractionally and she looks—a quick glance over her shoulder—and it is enough of a distraction for me to walk away from her. This time I don't stop or turn around when she calls my name.

The hallway is too narrow. The ceiling is too low. My breath hurts my throat, and through a film of tears, I mistake the deck door for an airtight hatch, and I'm transported back to the factory ship again. My face, beneath all the topical cream, itches and burns. I start to run. All I want to do is get away; all I want is to get out of this metal prison. Away from all the toxins spewed by these mouth-breathers. Away from all the sterile death of this construct. Back to Mother's embrace. Back to the earth.

I hit the door at a run, and the metal bends beneath my hands. The wind strikes my face with a stinging slap, and I suck in a huge lungful of cold air, ignoring the fiery tearing in my chest. The railing is cold under my hands, slick with water, and I grip it tightly. The ocean isn't the ground, but it still teems with life, and I can feel it. I can feel all that vibrant energy.

Mere grabs my shoulder. I react, spinning out from beneath her grip, and my hands bury themselves in the fabric of her coat. She shrieks as I lift her over the railing, and her feet drum against the side of the boat.

The wind blows my hood back, and seeing my face frightens her even more. I tighten my grip. “Stop struggling,” I say. “I might let go.”

Her hands are on my arms, and even though the panic light is bright in her eyes, she stops thrashing.

“We survive,” I tell her, “because we know who to trust. Everything else—
every other person on this planet
—does not matter. That is the first law of Arcadia. Do you understand?”

I wait, my arms strong and unburdened by her weight, until she nods. A tiny sob escapes from her as I bring her back to the deck. She backs away from me when I let go, though she runs into the railing before she can take more than a single step. Her hands clutch the front of her coat, and she won't look at me. “I'm sorry,” she says, her voice so soft against the noise of the sea.

“For what?” I say, even though I know I shouldn't reply—that I shouldn't be drawn into this conversation.

The corner of her mouth moves, and I realize I've just given myself away. She raises her head and looks at me. She doesn't flinch at the sight of my face, and the weak light from the yellow line on the horizon highlights the scar on her throat. “It must be very lonely,” she says and there is a different light in her eyes now.

She isn't afraid.

* * *

“You should have brought the reporter.” Talus is standing too close to me. I can smell the stale stink of his breath. We've been away from land too long; our bodies are retaining too many toxins. “She's too curious.”

I swallow my rage. “What did you expect?” I snap.

Phoebe gives me her enigmatic glare, saying nothing. Talus doesn't notice her—he's unaware of the tension in her frame. How close she is to doing violence. The wet sounds coming from Nigel and the young Prime Earth volunteer aren't helping. We're all feeling the thirst. The boy's eyes are open; there's still life in that flesh, and though he can't speak, he's trying to get our attention. Trying to beg for his life.

His name is Francis, and his tragic flaw is his nicotine addiction. If he hadn't been heading out to the deck for a cigarette, I wouldn't have met him in the corridor. If he had stayed in his tiny bunk, he might have had a chance to become a helpful statistic in the media war against the tobacco companies. Forty-three percent chance of contracting lung cancer by his fortieth birthday. As it stands, he won't turn twenty-six.

His blood is polluted, of course, awash with a cocktail of carcinogens and nicotine, but there are still raw nutrients that Nigel can extract. It won't be enough, like Phoebe warned us, but Nigel will be able to repair some of the caustic damage from the aerosol spray.
The blood will help.

“We have to be strategic,” I say to Talus. “There might be a few assets we can leverage here. We need to be careful with our resources.”

We're in the middle of the fucking ocean,
I don't say,
we can't afford to let our fear rule us. That's what they want us to do.

“They don't know how well it worked,” Phoebe says.

“That's right,” I echo. “We got off the boat. All they'll have is video footage, but it won't tell them much. They don't know how well it works. Until they can be sure, they'll be cautious. They'll want more data.”

Talus chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, his attention straying toward the dying boy. “Nigel will need more blood,” he says.

“No.” I shut that conversation down.

He whirls on me, a blur of motion, and his hand moves even faster. I feel it coming, but I don't move out of the way. My head snaps to the side, and my mouth fills with the warm taste of blood. “Know your place,
liar
,” he hisses.

I don't cringe, nor do I reply right away. I take a moment or two to watch his eyes. “I
do
know my place,” I respond. “And that is to respect and serve. But if you fail to uphold the first, then I am not bound to the second.”

He starts to sneer at me, and then his gaze flickers to Phoebe behind me, and the expression vanishes like a shadow fleeing the rising moon. “The reporter is dangerous,” he says, recovering and retreating to a safer position.

“Agreed,” I reply, meeting him halfway. “But to whom?”

He growls in his throat, and I hear the accusation caught there.
Liar.

Suddenly weary of this conversation, I turn away from Talus. “I will find out what she knows—because she will tell me—and then we will decide if she can still be useful to us,” I say. “We will decide together. It will be a group decision.”