I spent the next few days in the hab. Watson tended to cleaning the diner. I saw no purpose to it—there was no food left, and I would not serve these people even if there was. My mind could not accommodate what they had done. How could we have been living among them so long and not known the hatred they bore us? How could they have come in every day and looked me in the eye, laughed at my father’s dumb jokes, and smiled at me when I brought them their food, knowing the whole time that they would strip us down to the bloody bone at the first opportunity?
Now Sheriff Bakersfield and Deputy Ackerman just fretted like neutered dogs, too docile to deliver even a hint of justice.
And I was stuck in the middle of it, a child among adults caught in a derangement I could not understand. Only Watson provided any sense of stability, devoted as he was to fulfilling the functions of his role, however hollow they were.
On the afternoon of the third day of my isolation, he returned from his labors in the diner and declared the place fit to open again.
“Is that a joke?” I said. I was sitting on a chair by the small, curved window, watching the sky. Although it was light, Phobos was visible, like a pale ghost. Once it had seemed friendly to me; I’d called it my little potato moon, which always made my parents laugh. Now its irregular shape seemed sinister, its presence a threat and a warning.
Phobos means fear. I learned that in school.
While Watson reassured me that he was not joking, I watched my neighbors moving through the street outside. Though they were more shadow than people in this light, I recognized most of them by their shapes, by their mannerisms. Widow Kessler’s careful shuffle; Jeremiah Shank’s straight-backed stride, as though he were a lord among serfs; Preacher Spivey’s big, round potbelly seeming to lead the rest of him about, like a dog pulling its master. Not one of these people had come to my door in the three days since the diner had been looted and my dad locked up. Though I would have turned them away with prejudice, their distance hurt me regardless.
“We’re not opening that diner ever again,” I said. “These people can starve for all I care.”
“They won’t starve,” Watson said. “The greenhouses are adequate for the needs of the population.”
“Now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings, Watson.”
“No, Miss Cr—”
“Shut up.”
He did. I wanted to feel bad about it, but I couldn’t. I was too hurt myself to spare any feelings on an Engine. The truth was that I didn’t want to talk to a dishwasher. I wanted to talk to Mother. I needed her to be there, and I couldn’t even use the cylinder she’d left me. I’d never thought it a substitute worth a damn until now, when I needed her voice and her canned counsel more than I needed the air that surrounded me. Instead I had this stupid kitchen appliance that couldn’t stop talking about feeding our attackers, like nothing at all had happened. Engines weren’t people. Especially Watson, I thought. I imagined him stepping over my bloody corpse as he hurried to serve hot eggs to Silas Mundt and Joe Reilly and those grotesque green-eyed miners who crawled out of the Martian ground like devils from a dream.
This wretched town, full of wretched people. Cowards and thieves, every last one of them.
I would not abide it any longer. I started packing. When I was finished, I said, “Watson. Come with me.”
SUNLIGHT GLARED OFF the Eurydice’s metal hull, so that it looked like a fallen star wedged along New Galveston’s flank. The ship cast its long shadow over Joe Reilly’s shack. I approached it cautiously. Though I knew him to be a coward, I remembered my father’s warning: cowards were the ones who would hurt you. This man had had some time to stew over the threat I’d given him, and I could not predict his reaction when he saw me again.
I knocked on his door. It was early afternoon; surely by now he’d have roused himself from his stupor.
He did not answer. I knocked again, shouting his name, and waited there for several minutes. Finally it became clear that either he wasn’t in or he wouldn’t answer the door to me. I hadn’t accounted for such an obvious possibility. I turned to leave, embarrassed and exasperated. The clattering sound of the ramp descending from the saucer’s belly stopped me.
I waited to see who would emerge. Was he alone, or was he with the cultists? Was Sally Milkwood with him? Everything I knew of the cultists was what I read in my books and heard from kids at school. I imagined them pouring out in an evil tide, their knives gleaming, ready to flense the meat from my bones to cook over their cannibal fires.
But it was only Joe himself, stepping cautiously down the ramp until he stood at its base, where he remained with a look I could not read. His face was pasty and slack. I realized I couldn’t read his look because there was nothing there to read: he was a man defined by his passivity, and now he stood awaiting the next gust of wind to blow him along.
Well, here I am, I thought.
“They’re coming for you,” I said. Of course it was a lie. They didn’t give a damn.
He absorbed the news physically. He took a step back and tripped on the ramp’s edge, landing on his backside.
Encouraged by the absence of any retaliation, I approached him. Watson kept pace behind me. “They’re most likely going to hang you.”
“Well,” he said. He stared into the open desert. “I guess that ought to satisfy you, at least.”
“If I go up in the Eurydice, will I find my mother’s cylinder?”
He looked at me, plainly confused. It was the first actual expression I’d seen on him that day. “What?”
“You heard what I asked.”
“I did, but I don’t understand it.”
“The Moths stole the cylinder with my mother on it. Is it on your ship?” I felt the swell of a huge sadness, and I struggled to hold my composure.
“I know you hate me, Anabelle. But that’s a low thing to accuse me of.”
“Then what are you doing? What’s your business with those people?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “It don’t matter.”
I didn’t have it in me to argue with him. He wouldn’t tell the truth anyway, and I was afraid that if I heard another lie I might start weeping. I would not give him that satisfaction. “So they have it?”
He sighed and shook his head. He stared at the ground between his stretched-out legs. “Have what,” he said.
“The cylinder,” I said, straining for patience.
“Well, if they took it, then I guess they have it.”
“You’re gonna take me there.”
That got to him. He sat forward, meeting my gaze at last. “The hell I am.”
“You take me or you swing. You might be a coward, but I know you ain’t a fool. It’s an easy choice.”
He cast a glance toward town. Maybe he was wondering when the sheriff’s posse would arrive for him. Maybe he was wondering if they’d even waste time with a trial. Of course, I had no idea what his relationship with the cultists really was; but he took the threat of hanging as credible enough, so I knew it was rotten. I just hoped it was bad enough that he’d go where I pushed.
“I don’t know where they are,” he said. “At least not exactly.” But I could tell by the tone in his voice that he was about to give in. This was nothing but whining, which I heard enough of on the schoolyard.
“That’s all right, because I bet I know who does.”
“And who’s that?”
“Sally Milkwood.”
He gave me a pleading look. “No, Anabelle. Come on.”
“Start packing.”
“Sally isn’t somebody you want to tangle with, kid. Let this go.”
“Watson has a cargo compartment on his backside. Feel free to use it.”
“We’re taking the Engine?”
There it was. He’d given in.
“The crater’s full of sand,” he said, desperate to throw out whatever hindrances he could think of. “He can’t cross it without treads.”
“I know it. They’ll have those at Mr. Wickham’s shop in Dig Town.”
“For Christ’s sake!”
I stopped, stared at him. His face was red; he looked like he was about to pass out.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Anabelle! The crater is full of the Strange! This isn’t something you do just ’cause your ass caught fire. This is life-and-death shit! This is serious!”
“They stole something from me,” I said, calmly and quietly. “They stole something I need and something my father needs. I’ve sat by while everyone around me just shrugged their shoulders and let it happen and made up reasons why we had to allow it. And then, while we was down, they turned on us, and they took even more. You better believe it’s serious. There’s gonna be a reckoning, and I’m gonna deliver it.”
He sighed and paced a tight circle two or three times. When he spoke again, he’d managed to calm himself down, too. “People get lost in the Strange, Anabelle. You haven’t heard the stories I have.”
“I hear all kinds of stories. It’s all fairy tales. It’s all excuses so none of you has to do a damned thing. I don’t believe in fairy tales, Joe Reilly.”
“People come out different. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Watson, go tell Sheriff Bakersfield that Mr. Reilly is here awaiting judgment. Tell him he’s waving a gun.”
“Very good, Miss Crisp.”
“Jesus Christ. Just wait a minute.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fine, I’ll take you. I’ll take you.”
I checked the sun’s position. It was late afternoon. Phobos was a chalky shadow in the sky. “We got a few hours of daylight left,” I said. “Enough to get ready. I want to be moving before dusk.”