Today's Reading
After that we moved from theology to safer subjects. And as we talked and ate, I became worryingly aware that Sister Jermyn was the only other woman present, which led to the troubling thought that she'd be the one I was sleeping with. And despite my continued belief that hate sex is the best sex, I really didn't want to share a room with a member of a phenotypically obsessed apocalypse cult if I could possibly avoid it. As subtly as I was able, I beckoned over the landlord. "She isn't the harpooner, is she?" I asked him.
He chuckled. "Lord, no, the harpooner is"—here he grinned wide—"quite a queer sort, if you catch my meaning."
His meaning could have been one of a thousand things. "Maybe throw it harder?"
Crouching down, he brought his lips to my ears and whispered two words: "Old Earth."
It wasn't what I'd expected. Though I'd traveled widely and met or fought or fucked people from all over the system—Proteans, Cereans, even Erisians—I'd never even seen a Terran. The Great Churches bicker constantly, but they all agree that after the Exodus there was nothing left on Earth but cannibals and criminals.
"Where is she now?" I asked.
The landlord shrugged. "Out."
I fixate sometimes. On ideas. On unknowns. On hopes or goals. And whether he knew it or not, the landlord had given me something sharp to fixate on. Who was this Earther I'd agreed to spend the night with? What business was she out on? How much of what the preachers had taught me about Terran ways was true, and how much did it matter?
As the hours slipped by, as the other guests came and went and I saw all the things my new bunkmate wasn't—the honest local fisherfolk with their eyelashes still frosted, the tourists from the inner worlds who wouldn't last the week—the more pressing those questions became.
I fought my fatigue as long as I could, but by midnight I was done. I'd crossed half the body that day and my mind was beginning to skip like interwell streaming. So I told the landlord that I was chucking it in.
The room in the Coffin was slightly better than its name suggested, a whole ten feet by five feet with a ceiling high enough that I could just about stand. Between the travel and the time, I was too exhausted to worry about an angry Earther coming back and slitting my throat in the night. I took the opportunity to strip off the environment suit I'd been wearing since Harmonia and then I collapsed into sheets that were cold, grimy, and still more comfortable than anything I'd felt in days.
I don't know how long I slept, or how well. I only know I woke up with a knife at my throat.
CHAPTER THREE
The Harpooner
The carbide sting of the blade woke me first. Then the weight of the other woman kneeling astride me. Then the light that shone from every inch of her skin, intricate skeins like maps or blueprints that glowed pale blue and irregular.
"Quis," she demanded. "Quis es."
I didn't know her language, but I knew context. Context, unfortunately, wasn't telling me how to keep the blood in my veins. "Friend," I tried. "Friend."
The electric glow from her markings faded slightly, and she drew her knife just a half inch away from my neck. "Cuius friend es?"
Carefully, I raised my hands. "I won't hurt you."
She didn't look like she believed me, but she looked like she understood me, which was all I could really hope for. Keeping her weight mostly on my ribs, she took the weapon far enough away that she could only kill me with it on purpose. Which was about as comforting as a stranger with a knife gets.
"If you let me call the landlord," I offered, "I am sure he can explain."
Landlord she got. Although from the expression on her face I didn't think she liked the man much.
Gingerly, I reached for the intercom and pressed to open the channel.
"What can I do you for?" asked the landlord from the other end with uncalled-for cheeriness.
"The Terran is here," I said quietly, "and she wants to kill me."
"I'm sure she doesn't."
It's probably a legacy of my upbringing that I hadn't expected an Earther to know how a communicator worked, but she spoke into the device as naturally as she spoke to me. "You," she said to the landlord, "explicare mihi."
The line went dead a moment. Then the landlord's voice returned. "The thing is..."
I severely doubted this would end well. In fact, I was beginning to worry that I was fucked, and not in the fun way.
"No," the harpooner snapped into the communicator.
"I said it was a double room. I'll give you a discount."
Her markings were glowing again, paler this time. "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo."
"No need to be like that. Calm down. Think of it as extra warmth for the night. Gets mighty chilly here on 'Ropa."
This excerpt ends on page 14 of the hardcover edition.
Monday, June 8th, we begin the book Blindside by Michael Mammay.
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