Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions

Molly leaned over the dash and looked through the carboglass toward the stable offices. She could see Pete standing by the door. He seemed to be squinting through the dust in their general direction.

“Okay, I’m gonna go for help. Can you lock the doors to the crew quarters?”

“No, but that’d be something nice for us to hook up.”

“Yeah, let’s make that a priority. I’ll lock the cockpit from the outside. Keep an eye on things.”

“That’s all I can do,” her mother said.

Molly nudged the Wadi to its favorite spot behind her neck and keyed opened the door. She snuck out, locked the door with her captain’s codes, and then hurried toward the cargo ramp.

The mute oaf stuck his head out Cole’s door and saw her leaving. “Hey,” he said, proving to be not quite as mute as she had thought. He pointed at her, obviously trying to think of something else to say, while Molly jogged down the boarding ramp. She weaved through the stables, around and under the parked ships, and headed toward Pete. Hopefully he could help.

Before she got close enough to ask, however, he called out across the dusty lot, his hands cupped around his mouth: “Scottie and his boys find you okay?”

“What?” Molly asked. “It’s not okay they found me! Did you tell them where I was?”

“Hell, I called right after you checked in. Them boys been looking for your father for some time.”

“He’s not with me!” The Wadi scampered down the back of her shirt with the outburst, sticking its head in one of the baggy pockets on Molly’s cargo shorts.

“That’s right! You told me that didn’t you?” Pete smiled at her and pulled his hand out of his coveralls. He had a toothpick sticking out of his fist, the exposed half dark purple. He put it in his mouth and used his tongue to slide it to the other side.

“I want them off my ship,” Molly told him.

“Well, now, you’ll have to talk to them about that.” Pete leaned to the side and somehow spit a stream of dark juice past the toothpick. A long trail of the stuff hung from his lower lip, thick as molasses. He reached up and swiped it away with his palm, then rubbed it on his coveralls.

Molly looked at the stains covering him and wondered just how much of Pete’s coloration was actual grease. If any .

“I tried to tell them to go,” she complained. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

“Could be they think it’s their ship,” Pete said flatly.

“What? Their ship? That was my father’s ship and now it’s mine!” Molly looked down at the Wadi as it tried to curl itself into her pocket. Its tail swished in the air, then disappeared.

“Well, now.” Pete spit again, dribbling it right down the front of his coveralls. The maneuver seemed to save him a step or two. “What I heard was your daddy owes Scottie some money. You never know with interest compoundin’—they might have a claim on her.” He nodded toward Parsona . “Besides, why’d your daddy give such a fine ship away? How old are you?”

“Where’s the sheriff’s office?” Molly asked, ignoring the questions and cursing herself for allowing a tangle of lies to develop.

“Directly on Main,” Pete drawled.

Molly turned and headed off in the direction of town.

“But he’s gonna tell you just what I said,” Pete hollered after her.

Molly followed the busiest road into town. She preferred the thick plumes of dust from the traffic and the catcalls from the vehicles’ occupants to the unknown of quiet streets. Especially with so much dangerous politicking in the air.

Most of the cars on Lok were large-tired buggies suitable for travelling between towns with no interconnecting roads. They passed by in one of two speeds: slow—the people trying to sneak away from the trouble they’d just caused; and fast—the ones about to effect their own.

Ignoring offers for rides and things less-pleasant, Molly kicked at rocks along the shoulder and fumed over the idea of those brigands being on her ship and likely going through her things. The Wadi rode along across the back of her neck, its tiny claws gripping her shirt and a little flesh, its head lolling with her gait. Grumbling to herself, Molly walked past rows and rows of politicians smiling down from their posters and banners, all of them promising her something for just a few drops of blood.

She stopped at the outdoor counter of the first cantina she came to and bought water for herself and the Wadi. She chose her left pinky for the vote, even though it was swollen to the point of uselessness. Her new strategy was to sacrifice one digit completely so she could heal up the rest.

After paying, her Wadi curled across her forearm, leaning sideways with its back against her chest. Molly dripped water into its mouth, then took some for herself. Walking like that caused her to flash back to planet Drenard and that hot, arid, and dusty hike they’d taken together. The comparison of that horror-filled day to her current annoyance lifted her spirits somewhat. As long as she didn’t look up at the fleet in orbit, she could pretend things weren’t quite as bad as they could be.

Another buggy roared past, kicking a plume of chalk into the air. Molly could hear the powdery dirt crunching between her teeth, could feel it turning into a film of mud in her mouth. She took another gulp of water and tried to fight off the panicked sensation she sometimes felt in crowds—the need to run and escape from the noise and commotion, seeking the vacuum of space.

As she made her way into the center of town, her complete dearth of vivid memories of the place struck her for the first time. She seemed to remember visiting Bekkie with her father several times, but they were just memories of memories of memories, built up over a longer lifetime of forgetting. The only building she recognized was the tall church, its several spires sticking out over town. And even its familiarity was likely no more than a recollection from an old photograph, or a postcard that she’d seen more recently.

The noisy traffic gradually ground down to an even noisier standstill around the central square. Buggies with trailers unloaded goods, while Sisyphean storekeepers swept dirt back into the streets, and pedestrians milled about through the gridlock amid a chorus of bleating horns. The town had a familiar odor and sound, a boisterousness that touched her nostalgia, but it also seemed bigger and more crowded than it had before.

Perhaps it was the political rallies, which Molly could hear in several directions. They mostly consisted of large groups of people chanting names or terse phrases that somehow captured an entire (and mostly vapid) platform. Or maybe the larger crowds had something to do with the Bern fleet. Perhaps rural Lokians had come to Bekkie in hopes of an affordable ticket off-planet, only to find the strange ships overhead weren’t allowing anything of the sort.

Then again, not that many people in the crowd seemed to be looking up, at least not beyond the posters of smiling faces, all promising something. While Molly stressed about her family and friends and what seemed to be a looming disaster of galactic proportions, everyone else was worried about whether or not their candidate would be in power when it all came crashing down. What little politics she’d followed on Earth—a planet that never felt enough like home to get invested—seemed magnified and uglier on Lok. In yet one more way, the planet she had been born on felt incredibly foreign to her.

One thing she could remember about Bekkie, and something that hadn’t changed, was the paucity of non-Humans in Lok’s capital. After living on Earth with all its diversity for so many years—and having spent the last two weeks in the poorer countryside—Molly felt abnormally surrounded by her own kind. Oddly enough, it made her feel more conspicuous. She felt like the only alien in town, surrounded by nothing but Terrans, and therefore unable to blend in.