part0040

Craze’s tab kept pinging. With blankets and pillows thrown over his head and the sound turned off, he could still hear the incessant tone. No, that was his door. “No disturb!” he barked at his quarter’s automation program. It must have busted, because the damn door kept chiming.

“Whoever it is can wait until there’s oceans on Pardeep.” Maybe it wasn’t a Verkinn, but Craze would bet his newly acquired chips it was.

He went to the privy and oiled down his skin. The cleanser smelled like ferns after a hardy rain, like flora and weather Pardeep would never know. It calmed him some, and he picked up the scraper, running it over his skin, flicking off the dust and oil. Then he put a few drops on a rag-wrapped brush and swept it through his hair. The strands curled and bounced, joyful for the attention. Soon after, they unfurled and reached for the sky.

He let his hair be while he dressed in fresh under linens and a shirt the color of ganya tree leaves. The reminder of earlier years made him sigh and grumble. What were the Verkinns doing here? He pulled on his well-worn coveralls and perched on the end of his new bed, fingering the red suspenders and his boots. The two things he’d taken from his pa on that fateful day, the one where Bast told his only son he no longer had a home.

It took some doing, but Craze had one now. Not quite the destination he’d envisioned, but the possibility existed. Mere potential wouldn’t catch the interests of his pa or the elders. So what the frick were they doing here? Something was up, and Craze felt pretty certain he didn’t want to know what.

No matter the reason for their visit, the Verkinns couldn’t stay. They’d suck every scrap of fortune from Craze and his friends, degrading them to second-class citizens, dooming Pardeep as a haven for shysters, then the Verkinns would give Craze and his friends the boot. He couldn’t let that happen. Not again.

Carefully he placed the platinum chains on his wrists and the firestone ring on his finger. He negotiated with his hair for seven braids. The tresses wound loosely to keep some wave and spilled down his back.

Finally he went to see who wailed at his door. “What the in all the shitholes do you...” He found himself staring into Moxy’s face. His cheeks heated up, and he muttered an apology. “Sorry. I though you was—”

“Pa?” Moxy arched her brows and pushed past Craze into his quarters. “He did try yesterday then thought the best way to get to you was through business. Now he’s up in your tavern scamming your staff out of malts, telling them he makes a finer one, that they and the customers be wasting their chips and time with you.”

Just as Craze feared and worse. “Dammitall to the Fo’wo’s ‘n back!” Craze shook his fist, storming toward the door. He’d show Bast what scamming would get him on Pardeep.

Moxy stepped in front of him, squaring her shoulders and bracing for a tussle. “Talk to me. Please, you’ve got to listen to somebody at some point.” Her nose twitched and she peered deep into his gaze, not flinching, only pleading. She smelled like a newly sprouted ganya tree and her skin glowed like sunlight filtered through a thick canopy of leaves. Her dress in mustards and greens resembled the forest; her shoes the puddles that formed every evening at sunset on Siegna.

At this moment, Craze wanted nothing more than to see the forest again and his childhood home, to chase his sisters through the chambers in the family’s ganya tree, to clamber over limbs and branches, dancing on the treetops, feeling as if the universe fell at his feet. “I’ll talk to you, nobody else.”

“Good. Then I don’t have to slap you until you rational.” She beamed at him, gesturing toward the brilliant orange sofa. “Can we sit?”

It wouldn’t take much to get around her and go clock Bast a few good ones, but he wanted his mother and sisters back in his life. The Edge spread so barren and lonely.

After a loud sigh, he led the way to the sectional, plopping down on the sensitive cushions. They wrapped around him like a hug. “Let me guess, the elders is goin’ to grant me status.”

“Yes!” She clapped her hands and laughed. Her eyes sparkled with so much innocence. No way could she fit in with the rest of the Verkinns. “It’s a celebration ‘n an honor. How can you be so stubborn? You is killing Ma.”

Absently, he punched a pillow as soft as genuine cream, the same color as it, too. “I don’t need the council sayin’ I’m better than anybody else. What they think changes nothin’. Don’t you see that?”

“I do, ‘n I often find the squabbles over who has grown the best tree ridiculous. But it’s our way of life. Tradition. Since the war with the Fo’wo’s it’s in danger of being wiped out.”

“I think it should go by the way of nonenhanced humans from Earth. Extinct.”

Her hand flew over her mouth and she gasped. “You can’t mean it?”

“Maybe I do.” He shrugged. “I need to think about it. That’s what I been tryin’ to do. Think. It’s hard to do so clearly with folks poundin’ the door down.”

“Well, what if I was to tell you, the elders was talkin’ on the transport about raising you higher in status than Pa?”

He could lord over Bast? That alone would make it worth tangling up his life with the Verkinns again. Maybe. “You serious?”

She pulled out her tab and played a recording. Craze heard a bunch of grizzled voices discussing him, even suggesting he be put on the council of elders. No one as young as him had ever been invited to the council. “Wow.” What did they want? He’d bet something that would cost him dearly.