Sarah Zettel - Reclamation

Aria realized her knees were trembling. She turned away from the window and strode across the room.

Counters. Floors. The terminal. I’m not sure how much longer I can deal with these Skymen. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got before whatever plans they have for the Realm come true. I’ve got to find out what they want and get back home. She saw all her children lined up before her mind’s eye and swallowed hard against the pang of homesickness.

She slid the door for the sanitation cupboard and dug out the sponges and canisters of solvent. Can’t go yet. Too much I don’t understand. Her own words came back to her. A wave of exhaustion washed over her. Just too much. How has Teacher…Eric Born…managed to live out here for ten years without losing his mind?

Thinking of him was a mistake. His name brought the image of him to her mind, along with an absurd longing she’d managed to avoid finding words for.

Scowling at her hands, she bent to her work.

“G’wan! Get outta here! Move it!” Iyal swatted the backsides of the sandy brown cows indiscriminately with her prod. The beasts bellowed and jostled each other but they moved steadily toward the narrow gate where Jexid, the new intern from the Nuot Division, gave any of the balky ones an extra prod to funnel them up the ramp of the transport. Old Keyenar ki Oruat tapped each of the fat, stupid, carefully engineered beasts between the ears with the signature wand and checked its number to make sure only the cattle that had already passed inspection made it into the shipment.

Loading and herding the big animals was one of the things people still did better than the automatics. Nobody’d yet been able to program a cheap automatic with enough self-preservation instinct to get out of the way if there was a stampede.

A sharp whistle jerked Iyal’s head around. One of the cows bawled and stamped its foot down. Iyal felt the shock up to her ankle, despite her steel-toed boots. She whacked the cow and cursed and at the same time she tried to see who the idiot was who didn’t know they still hadn’t managed to breed all the nerves out of the mountain-specific cattle.

Outside the fence Zur-Allenden waved at her frantically and beckoned, while pointing at her sedan chair unit with his other hand.

Ground beneath my feet, what does he want now and why can’t he call me over the crashing terminal? She gave the cows in front of her an extra shove and hit the TRANSMIT key on her torque.

“Get an appointment, Allenden,” she muttered through clenched teeth as she leaned sideways to try to keep a nervous yearling from squashing her side. It stamped edgily, missing her toes, thankfully, and moved forward.

Got to calm these critters down. Well, with the new configuration in the next batch…

“Iyal, I need to talk to you about your new…acquisition,” came Allenden’s voice through her translator disk.

“What acquisition?” Keyenar was cutting one of the cows out of the herd and prodding it toward the side holding pen. Iyal hooked her prod onto her belt and waved both fists in the inquiry sign and he held up three fingers. Wrong number. Nothing major.

Iyal brought her hands down. Understood. She snatched up the prod again to urge the cows forward. The press was easing as most of the cattle lumbered onto the truck. There was always a mild relief in being able to breathe freely again. Allenden was not allowing her to enjoy it, however.

“You know,” said Allenden. “The woman.”

“It shouldn’t be that tough for someone named Zur-Allen-den ki Uvarimayartus to pronounce Aria Stone.” The torque picked up her subvocalized words and relayed them to Allenden’s translation disk. She hoped it also managed to accurately transmit her tone.

“Zur-Iyal, I can’t talk about this over the air. Give me ten minutes. Please.”

For a moment, Iyal considered telling him to go bury himself in manure, but Allenden was capable of making himself extremely unpleasant if he felt ignored, and she didn’t feel up to being called into Director ki Sholmat’s office and read the employee relations section out of her supervisor’s contract.

She waved to Jexid to come take her place at the back. The intern, to her credit, unhooked her own prod from her belt and waded into the thick of the herd, slapping and cursing like an old pro.

Iyal squelched through mud and debris to the side gate and palmed the latch. It registered her sweaty, muck-stained hand and let the gate swing open for her. Iyal stomped up the path, showering the concrete with dirt at each step until she reached her sedan chair. She plunked herself down in the seat and immediately switched on the monitor boards to check the input from Keyenar’s wand against the manifest. This was a big order and an important one. Since the Vitae had taken over Kethran’s gene-tailoring industry, there had been far too few of those. The last thing she needed was Allenden bothering her about his pet trivialities.

But then, he probably knew that. He never picked his fights randomly.

The summer heat and pent-up annoyance broke a fresh sweat on her forehead and cheeks, despite her broad-brimmed hat and screening lotion.

“I’m serious, Iyal.” Allenden squatted down beside the front legs of the sedan. “I think we’ve got a problem.”

“You mean a new problem.” Iyal watched three new registration numbers appear on the list. “So let’s have it.”

Allenden glanced this way and that. Iyal sighed. Allenden’s penchant for dramatics never failed to get under her skin and stick. “Get it out, Allenden, I don’t have all year. We’ve got 260 head to get inspected, loaded, and delivered.” She squinted at Allenden out of the corner of her eye. The sun was behind him and it took a minute for her new lenses to adjust so she saw something other than a black blob where his face should be.

“Iyal. Your…Aria, she’s a Vitae spy.”

Iyal felt her eyes swivel all the way toward Allenden. Her gaze followed a second later. “What?” Almost no one on Kethran, from First Family members on down to Fourth Wavers, liked having the Vitae around. Most recognized them as an unpleasant necessity. Some were waiting for a chance to kick them offworld. A few, like Allenden, were actively looking for ways to force them off.

“Somebody’s been using my access codes to get into the datastores after hours.”

Iyal finally took her attention off the herd and the boards and turned all the way toward Allenden. The man was built like a sun-bleached beanpole on stilts. Even on his knees in the grass, the top of his head was level with hers.

Iyal snorted. “Aria can barely type her name or understand…”

“She’s got a Vitae gene sequence, Iyal. For all we know they created her as a way to get in here.”

“Don’t be stupid, Allenden. Should that sequence turn out to be exclusive to the Vitae, which I doubt, even the Vitae aren’t that good at genetic engineering.”

“We don’t know exactly how good the Vitae are,” he said levelly.

Who’s paying Perivar’s bills these days? The thought slid into her mind. No. Not Perivar. Bones and breath, he works with a Shessel. He…

Who is paying his bills these days?

“You want to talk about this inside?” Allenden glanced across toward Keyenar, Jexid, and the herd.

“No, I do not want to talk about this inside.” Iyal heaved her shoulders back. “If you want to insult my judgment, Assistant Researcher, you can do it in writing to Director ki Sholmat.”

Allenden leaned close enough for her to smell his fruity breath over the scent of the cows and the summer grass. “I saw her, Iyal. Security’s got her recorded. Reading the lab notes. Senior research level lab notes.”