Working outside on the farm, out past the fence, felt like a tonic. The heat from Capella’s rays was in the process of baking Dek Taglioni’s hide. He’d peeled off his thin jacket and was down to an undershirt. Not only that, but he’d drunk four liters of water from the jar Reuben Miranda had provided.
Nor was the heat his only problem. Every muscle in his body was aching and his joints were creaking. The gravity was sapping every bit of reserve, but he was feeling better. Toughening up by the day.
Nevertheless, he kept shooting glances at the bush, that aqua-and-green-colored band of scrubby trees and low vegetation beyond the edge of the fields. The sensation was eerie, the kind a person got when hidden eyes were watching him. Judging his every action and thought.
Get over it. It’s just trees and wilderness. There’s no sentience behind it. Donovan’s only a planet. Not a consciousness.
“Yeah, right,” he whispered under his breath and forced himself back to the task of picking peppers.
The quetzal-hide boots Reuben had loaned him shot rainbows of color along their length with each step he took. He looked like a vagabond, wearing the light claw-shrub-textile pants of local manufacture. A wide-brimmed fiber hat topped his head. And on his hip now rode his Smith & Wesson 3-41 electro-rail pistol. An expensive, engraved, and elegant weapon made with sculpted grips carved from finely figured black walnut. Gold inlay gleamed along the three rails and in the scroll work on the receiver.
So now, not only did he look like a pirate, he felt like one, too.
Pirate he might be. Nevertheless, he’d picked five whole baskets of peppers and was almost finished with a sixth. Something about that filled him with an incredible sense of purpose.
This wasn’t just work, it was food. Until Ashanti had found itself in trouble, he’d never given a second thought to what he ate. Food was just there, ready, whatever he wanted to order, prepared in any way he desired, and provided for his gustatory pleasure. No limits. Not on variety. Not on quantity. Nor had he ever so much as wondered where it came from. How it was produced.
That had all changed when Galluzzi ordered rations cut. When Derek Taglioni had gone to bed hungry. When he’d laid, night after night, tortured by the craving in his belly. Knowing it wouldn’t be filled. Not tomorrow. Not the next day, or the day after. He had lived with the knowledge that hydroponics couldn’t continue to feed the number of people they had on board. That when the tanks finally broke down far enough, he and everyone around him would starve to death. Didn’t matter that he was Derek Taglioni. He was just as condemned as the lowliest ship’s tech.
His relationship with food had been forever altered.
Panting in the heat, he blinked sweat from his eyes and reached down to pluck another couple of jalapeño peppers from the bush. These he dropped into the basket Reuben had provided. Feeling crafty, he slipped over to the poblano plant and used his little knife to cut the stems on two large green peppers. They brought his basket up to the brim.
All it would take was another . . .
“Dek?” An irritated call carried over the chime.
He straightened from the row of green plants, seeing Talina Perez as she came striding across the field at a no-nonsense pace. The woman was dressed in a black chamois-hide one-piece that was most likely supposed to be utilitarian but conformed her curves in a most enticing way. Still, there was nothing feminine about the utility belt with its pistol and knife, or the service rifle hung from her shoulder.
He pulled the wide-brimmed straw hat from his head and wiped sweat from his face with a sleeve. Reuben looked up from where he was plucking beans. “Hey, Tal!” He threw the woman a lazy wave. “You didn’t need to come out. I’d ’ave had one of the kids drop off the latest at your dome.”
“I’m not here for beans, Reuben.” She stopped before Dek, gave him a distasteful appraisal, and then shot Reuben a sidelong squint. “Dek here isn’t supposed to leave the compound. You know better than to bring soft meat out past the fence.”
Reuben’s expression bent into an amused quirk. “Since when are you getting between me and my hired labor? The man asked me for a job.”
“And what are you paying him?”
“A tenth part of whatever he picks.”
“He’s soft meat. And not the kind we can let get eaten by a slug. The guy doesn’t know a bem from a toilet plunger.”
Dek crossed his arms, feeling that old irritation raising its ugly head. “Hey, I’m right here. That’s right. Look me in the eyes. Now, what’s the trouble?”
“Do you know the repercussions if something happened to you?”
“I’m not an ornament.”
“You’re a Taglioni.”
“Congratulations. You’ve read the passenger manifest on Ashanti.” He raised a hand, cutting off the response that was bubbling up on her lips. “Stop it! That’s an order.” Turned out he could still summon that old brook-no-nonsense tone of voice.
To Reuben he said, “Thanks for the chance to get outside. If you don’t mind, the security officer and I have to clear some things up.”
“Yeah, Dek. Take that last basket. We’re square.” To Talina, Reuben said, “Cut the man a little slack, Tal. He’s got grit.”
Dek picked up his basket, adding, “I’ll get the boots back to you.”
“No, you keep them. You’re gonna need ’em, and they’re too small for my feet as it is.”
Tucking his basket of peppers under his arm, Dek started through the rows of crops, Talina matching stride.
“Look at this,” he told her, patting the basket. “Aboard Ashanti I could trade this to someone for a whole month’s work scrubbing hydroponics.”
She ignored him, snapping, “Do you have a death wish?”
“Not on me right at this moment, but if you’re in desperate need of one, you might try the Unreconciled.”
“Hey, don’t fuck with me!”
“That makes two of us.” He shot her a look of warning. “Yes. I got the message the first time Supervisor Aguila gave it to me: Donovan is dangerous. It’ll kill me, and I don’t have the first clue about what to look out for. So I asked around. With the exception of the Wild Ones and some of the security folks, the farmers know best how to stay alive. They live on this side of the fence. And among the farmers, the best are Miranda and Sczui. Some folks said Terry and Sasha Miska, too. I ran into Reuben first. Good man. Said he’d trade a part of the harvest for the labor.”
“Yeah, they’re good and solid. All of the farmers are.” He could hear a little give in her voice. “Well, at least you’re armed. You know how to use that thing?”
“I have an implant. Spent a lot of time at the range. Same with the rifle.”
“An implant and range time. I am so reassured.” The sarcasm in her voice was heavy enough to sink a ship.
“Talina, here are the facts: Transluna and Solar System are thirty light-years away. As incomprehensible as it might be for anyone back home to even conceive, on Donovan being a Taglioni—along with a one siddar coin—will get me a beer at Inga’s.” He lifted his basket of peppers. “This might get me supper and breakfast along with a beer. For the time being, it’s all I’ve got.”
She was watching him sidelong through her alien-dark eyes. Walked quietly for a time. Then asked, “What do you want, Dek?”
He stopped, turned, and pointed to the bush where it lay beyond the verdant fields. The aquajade and thornbush were shimmering in the mirage. “I want to learn the things I need to know in order to go out there.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to. You see, when I ordered my name added to Ashanti’s manifest, I was coming here to show Miko and the rest of the family that I was a man to be reckoned with. When things got bad on Ashanti, when I realized I was going to die, I wanted to die with the knowledge that I’d done everything I could to keep the ship and crew alive. Now that we’re here, I want to know and savor Donovan.”
“I’m not sure that anyone can ‘savor’ Donovan. It has its own agenda.” A pause. “You know why Aguila has all those scars?”
“Said it was mobbers.”
“But for a handy crate, they’d have stripped her down to a skeleton before anyone could have saved her. And that was inside her compound, surrounded by her people, behind her fence. The point I’m trying to make is that Donovan kills nine out of ten people who come here. You ready to accept those kinds of odds?”
Dek shifted his basket. “I am.”
“You might talk to Mark Talbot, ask him about the way people die on Donovan. What it’s like to be eaten alive from the inside or digested over a couple of months as a nightmare’s tentacles wiggle their way through your guts. Nothing about death on Donovan is glorious or noble.”
“Who’s Briggs?”
That got a start out of her. “Well, that might be Chaco or Madison, or their boy, Flip. He’s eighteen, just finishing his studies in minerology and chemistry here in town. Wants to go to work for Kalico down at Corporate Mine. Where did you hear of them?”
“Over a beer. Heard about a lot of people, Wild Ones, who live in the bush. Makes me think they know something the rest of us don’t. Like maybe I could go and learn what they know.”
“And what would you do with this stuff you’d learn?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He glanced back at the distant bush. “But here’s the thing: Do you think I’m bonked out if I tell you that I can feel it? Like some sort of summons.” He gestured off toward the west. “It’s out there, like a siren’s call. I really need to go find it.”
She took a deep breath, slowly shook her head. “What is it about me and men who hear Donovan calling?”
“So, there have been others?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I talk to them?”
“They’re all dead.”