I was a shitload more interested in what these folks did with themselves in those bunkers, but I’d settle for those details on my next visit. My plan required a touch of old-fashioned nuance.

  When we passed by Esai and Emilio’s entrance, Ship called them “friends,” although he clarified the remark soon thereafter.

  “Most town folk ignah me, suh. They don’t cum out and say they wish I was somewell else. But I see it in thah eyes. Those two – they speak to muh like I’m a man.”

  The kid broke cover with that insight, so I intended to take advantage. Not prey, mind you. Ingratiate.

  “You’re the odd man out, Ship. I saw that much in about ten minutes. How do you keep it together after all these years?”

  “It’s muh job, suh. What else have uh got?”

  I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. He bristled, but I reckon he didn’t know what sympathy felt like since it was a rare commodity.

  “What you got, my friend, is the proverbial rock and a hard place. If Lumen throws you out, where the hell you headed? Machado? Another city? A Carib with a claw hand ain’t about to find sustainable work on this planet.”

  “How did you know I was …?”

  “Eh. One of the assholes at my table confirmed it, but I knew right away. I’ve done my share of traveling.”

  The kid stopped in his tracks. We were headed down the avenue he tried to avoid the first time I asked him about his claw. Not this time.

  “Suh, the Senora says I must not talk about it.”

  “I’m sure she does. The big question is why. If she thought you were a liability, I damn sure doubt she’d set you loose among her esteemed patrons.”

  “Esteemed? What does that mean?”

  “Nothing, Ship. Just me tossing a little snark. How long ago did Lumen acquire you?”

  “Five yeahs ago, suh. She did not buy muh.”

  “Oh, no doubt. I’m sure they gave you away to the first taker. Still, she’d have to pay substantial travel tariffs and customs taxes. Damn strange she’d look off-world when she could’ve grabbed a profligate juvenile off the streets of Machado.”

  Ship chuckled for the first time. I heard a little awe in there.

  “You like to use special wuhds, suh.”

  “What can I say? My dictionary is as big as the nine universes. Literally. Extra syllables are fun, my friend. Talk like a simple-minded fool, and that’s how you’ll be treated. You’d do well to remember. Now, has Lumen ever explained why she brought you to Azteca?”

  “Not as such, suh. She always tells muh to follow awduhs and do a good job. Says she keeps muh safe.”

  “Pardon my nosiness, but how much does she pay?”

  The kid shrugged. “Dunno. The Senora gave me a room. If I want something, she buys it. She plans to give muh the credits when I come o’ age.”

  “Huh. How old are you, Ship?”

  “Sixteen standard yeahs, suh.”

  “That would make you an adult on eighteen of the forty worlds.”

  By this point, I took lead on the so-called tour. My arm still firmly planted around the boy, I directed him to the eastern edge of town. There was nothing between us and the horizon but sagebrush and burnt red sand. It was more or less the same in every direction.

  “Ship, you got any idea just how damn big the Collectorate is?”

  “No, suh. I mean to say, they tell me it’s a thousand light-yeahs from end to end, but I don’t know what that means.”

  “Not your fault, my friend. You have no sense of scale.” I pointed beyond the sagebrush. “If you walked in that direction and never changed course, where would you end up?”

  The kid should’ve answered at once, but he scratched his chin. I saw the gears whirring. How did he not know the geography surrounding Desperido?

  “Maybe the desuht, suh?”

  “I should’ve said ‘Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.’ OK, my friend. We need to have a confab. Sit.”

  “Suh?”

  “Sit your ass on the ground. Afraid of sand on your pants?”

  I joined him in a nice little god-to-human face to face. He resembled a lost puppy under that floppy hat. Yep. I’d wager Ship couldn’t remember the last time he thought for himself.

  “Watch close, my friend.”

  I poked a finger into the sand.

  “You’re here. Now, let’s say you walk in that direction for fifty kilometers.” I drew an inch-long line in the sand. “If you made that journey during summer without water, you’d be a dead man. They wouldn’t bother searching east because only a dumbass would walk into the desert alone without water. After a while, you’d be nothing but bones and a rusted claw. Follow me?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “Now, this one inch equals your journey to death. Understand?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “You’d need to make that same journey another nine hundred times to walk around Azteca and end up right back here. Add four million more journeys, and you’d reach the sun. And even then, you’ve only crossed a tiny piece of this star system. You haven’t even nibbled at a light-year. What’s my point, Ship?”

  The finger didn’t linger on his chin so long this time.

  “The Collectorate is bigguh than I can imagine, suh.”

  “Wrong. It means you’re invisible. You wouldn’t show up under a microscope. Your own people sent you off, and this lot here? My friend, you are the worst kind of invisible. You service their needs at her discretion. You are easily replaced and instantly forgotten. You won’t need to walk out into the desert to kill yourself. This town will swallow you whole. When Lumen’s gone – and news alert, they all grow old – you’ll disappear beneath the red dust, too.”

  He took offense, of course, and tried to stand.

  “Nothing more damned inconvenient than the truth, kid. Especially the sort you don’t have the spine to change.”

  “You don’t know me, suh. You don’t …”

  “You might’ve perfected that accent, but I’d wager it’s a relief to speak in your natural voice when you’re alone. Please. Kid. I’ve been around the universe and back. Ship Foster? Really? You arrived here by starship, fostered by Lumen. What was her first commandment? Forget your birth name. Second commandment? Change your accent. She didn’t care for the one you brought from Everdeen.” I gave him a chance to object. “If I’m wrong, walk away. If not, you’d do well to hear me out.”

  It's amazing how humans react when someone knocks them upside the head with some verbal karate. Ship repositioned his backside on the sand and gave me his full attention.

  “Suh, we only just met. Why do you say these things to muh?”

  “First, drop the fucking accent, kid. You’re pissing me off. Second, my name is Raul. I’m not a patron or your damn master.”

  Ship closed his eyes and let loose a long, steady breath.

  “Yes, Raul. Speak in my real voice.”

  Ah, yeah. There it was. The crackling accent of a Carib born to the islands where The Trade used to flourish.

  Progress.

  “Good man. Now, to your prosthetic. How did you come about it? And why’s it not synthetic?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Raul. It happened a long time ago. Lumen tells me not to dwell on the past. It don’t do any good.”

  “So says the woman living in a linear timeline. Has she ever discussed upgrading your prosthetic?”

  He glanced down at his claw.

  “I asked her a few months after I arrived. She said it was too expensive. Maybe in a few years, she said.”

  “With the monthly tariffs she collects from these vagabonds, Lumen could’ve had you fitted for a minimal synthetic arm five years ago. Would’ve been a day trip to Machado.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t she?”

  “This is where you face another inconvenient truth. Ship, you’re as black as midnight. That terrifies the ordinary Aztecan, though some aren’t many shades lighter. Yet your claw evokes sympathy. Humans are like that where external disabilities are concerned. Add in that fake accent, and you, my friend, are an object of tolerable curiosity. You’re an exhibit.

  “But if you possess a normal arm and speak naturally, you’re two steps closer to ordinary. Nobody buys a ticket to see ordinary, Ship. What they will do is show you the door. They might even direct you due east toward the desert. Now, I’m sure Lumen says she’s protecting you, and at some level, she might believe it. Ten years from now, she might still. But you, Ship, will remain an exhibit. By then, you’ll have forgotten your true voice.”

  I grabbed a fistful of sand. “If you disappeared beneath the red dust, they’d care for a minute. Then someone else would come along to serve their beer and lentil stew. It’s a hard one to digest, my friend, but now’s the time.”

  I liked to tear down before I built up. During my first human life, I was handed the opportunity to lead a small band of mercenaries. They’d been working under the thumb of a man I’d come to admire, but he had a different vision for military strategy. They lacked the stone cold mentality to kill without remorse. I needed to cleanse them of their well-honed principles and mold them into my illuminated image.

  One fella wore a wolf tattoo on his scalp. He thought too much of himself and not enough of me. I challenged him during a simple card game and smashed him against the wall until his skull was a shattered melon. I then revealed myself as their new general. Soon thereafter, I covered my entire scalp in a gorgeous tattoo of a red wolf. Those men fell in line with my specific worldview.

  I never settled for sloppy seconds.

  “You make me feel like a piece of garbage,” Ship said.

  “And a fool, I trust?”

  “That too.”

  “Here’s the good news, my friend: You ain’t either one. You’re simply being underutilized. I reckon you play along because she has all the control, and you’re still dealing with the shame that brought you here in the first place.”

  “I … I don’t know what you mean, Raul.”

  I stared at the claw, hoping he’d stop fighting the past. Yeah, no. That didn’t work. At the very least, I expected his eyes to well up.

  “A little story for you, my friend. Long time ago, before you were born, I met a fella during war. We became best friends and fought side by side. More than friends, for a while. He lived a shit life. Fighting and nearabout dying every day on the battlefield was an upgrade. He fell in love with me and told me about his upbringing.

  “He was a part of a program where little kids like him were farmed out across the Collectorate. I’m talking about the original empire, not the current one where they celebrate this loopy idea called representative democracy. See, he was a bioengineered immortal. You heard stories about them, I’m sure.”

  His eyes lit up.

  “He was an Aeternan?”

  “Still is. The assholes who created him in a lab sent him off to Everdeen when he was five. He was taken in by a family on Henniford Island. Recognize the name?”

  The kid shook his head, but the pit in his throat said otherwise.

  “Over the next five years or so, that boy was shipped around the island chain to all those secret little plantation houses where the rich clients arrived from far away to use children as their sexual toys. My friend the Aeternan said he was probably raped a thousand times. He didn’t keep count. One day blended into the next. Eventually, a woman intervened and rescued him from The Trade.

  “Talk about a shame he’ll never escape. But here’s some good news, Ship. He confronted his past. Found his life’s calling. That man today is one of the top admirals in the UNF. Billions of people know his name. A man is not beholden to his shame.

  “Which brings me back to you and your prosthetic. You see, my friend told me stories about the traditions they held on those islands. Certain households, in particular. The families who participated in The Trade expected everyone to have a role. On occasion, a child would buck that tradition. Even fight the very premise of The Trade. The punishment for this treachery, he said, was brutal.”

  Now Ship’s eyes watered. Hated to do it to him. Step two.

  “They started with the limbs. One usually did the trick. A nice, clean cut. The offender would be forced to spend months without a replacement. Then, after proper contrition was made, the family would fit the offender with a metal prosthetic. They didn’t want to remove the visible shame entirely.

  “Now, your case is particularly of interest to me. The Trade was banned by the People’s Collectorate before you were born. Nasty sentences for anyone caught up in that shit. But I reckon some families didn’t want to give it up. More to the point, I reckon you spoke up against your family, and they responded with some good old fashioned slicing and dicing. Tell me I’m wrong, Ship.”

  The five years he’d been bottling up that crap ended right there. His tears fell too fast for his hands to wipe them away. They landed on the red sand like the first raindrops of monsoon season.

  “Please, Raul. P-please don’t tell anybody.”

  “Hell, no. If any of these folks are like Vincente and Mando, they already believe you’re somehow connected to The Trade. They won’t appreciate the guts you showed to stand up to your own blood. Trust me, kid. I do. But this ain’t the day to talk about my family. I got two questions, then we’ll move on. Still with me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Doing great, my friend. How long did you wait for the claw?”

  He coughed through his sobs.

  “A month.”

  “How long after that before they sold you to the night market?”

  “Two days.”

  “Huh. That’s what I figured. Word got out to the wrong people. They entered coverup mode. They couldn’t bring themselves to kill you, so they dumped you off-world first chance. I’m sure Lumen has a fascinating story to tell about why she plucked you out from among the cargo. Maybe I’ll ask her one day.

  “Right now, I’m focused on you, Ship. I think we can course-correct your eastern road to the desert. I’ll even go this far: I believe the universe is about to refund your suffering with a life of excitement, thrills, and unprecedented achievement.”

  Suddenly, drying his eyes wasn’t difficult.

  “Excitement, Raul? Tell me what you mean.”

  “What would you give if I could promise you the best synthetic arm in the forty worlds?”

  “I … I don’t … you can’t make that promise.”

  “Sure about that?”

  I visualized the syneth matrix inside my right arm and began the creation process. As I expected, this drew Theo’s attention.

  “What are you up to, dumbass?”

  “I’m closing a sale, Theo.”

  “You do this, and he’ll know you’re not human.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “Then what’s all your big talk about maintaining appearances? If he tells anybody, word will spread, old man.”

  “He won’t. He’ll have nothing to gain.”

  “If he does talk?”

  “Then I’ll kill him. It won’t come to that.”

  “Oh, I get it now, Royal. This is part of your big new scheme.”

  “Wouldn’t you love to know, Theo.”

  Ship’s tone sharpened.

  “Prove you’re not a liar, Raul.”

  “I will, my friend. Answer the question first: What would you give for the best prosthetic arm in the galaxy?”

  “That depends. How much will it cost?”

  “For you, not a credit.”

  “You’re saying it’s free? If something like that happened, I’d give anything you wanted. Nothing’s for free.”

  That’s what I needed to hear. The kid understood.

  “This is the day your life changes, Ship.”

  I held up my hand as it contorted into the organic silver compound that made up most of my body. Ship dropped his jaw as my silver fingers transformed into a new object. Small, sleek, and lightweight. Perfect for the discriminating assassin.

  After the pistol molded into form, the syneth tendrils reorganized into Raul Torreta’s human hand.

  “W-what are you?”

  “Your hope for a better life, Ship Foster.” I handed him the Skyrex. “Try it on for fit, my friend. It’s not loaded.”

  His fingers trembled as he reached, but they wrapped tightly around the handle.

  “How? Raul, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

  “Nothing, Ship. Just take it in. Human minds are limited until they see the impossible for themselves. Adjustment time varies. Imagine yourself returning to Everdeen. You land on Henniford Island. That pistol is loaded. Think maybe there’s someone you’d like to visit? Someone who’s begging for a little retribution?”

  His eyes squinted. A drop of rage went a long way.

  “My price is two-fold, Ship. Your silence. Your loyalty.”

  Like most boys, he couldn’t take his eyes off the pretty gun.

  “For how long?”

  “The rest of your natural life.”

  “You’ll take me away from here?”

  “In time.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Damn near everywhere.”

  “Why choose me?”

  “Right place, right time. Life’s funny like that.”

  He handed me the gun, but I knew he didn’t want to part with it.

  “It sure is, Raul. If that’s your real name.”

  I had to chuckle.

  “Backstory. We’ll save it for another day. Partner.”

  12

  A N HOUR LATER, MOON AND I HOPPED off our rusty, stolen rifters inside the Fort of Inarra. I reinstated the defense shield and threw off my duster.

  “Now this, my friend, qualifies as a productive day. I might even upgrade it to historic. And all it took was for us to be robbed.”

  Moon nodded, but he didn’t beam with the appropriate level of satisfaction. He’d been quiet since we left Desperido. We met outside the cantina not long after I finished my business with Ship. At the time, Moon displayed a sheepish grin, like a boy who got laid for the first time. He promised to relate the details later.