“It still aches, but less,” Rafe said. “I’m sorry I’ve been so much trouble.”
“We’ve done nothing yet we wouldn’t do for anyone,” she said. “There’s breakfast in the kitchen, or I could bring you a tray—but I don’t know what’s best for you to eat.”
“Little,” Rafe said. “Some bread, maybe? Toast? And I should get all the way up.”
She offered a hand, and he took it, unfolding painfully in sections.
“What kind of livestock ran over me?”
“Cattlelope, properly,” she said, letting go his hand as he steadied. She moved out into the passage; he followed. “We mostly call them cattle. Pretty standard large herbivore for meat and milk production issued to colonies. Slotter Key has old cattle now—bovines, not the hybrids—but we’ve stuck to the cattlelopes because they do well here.”
He’d eaten cattlelope steaks and roasts all his life but had no idea what a cattlelope looked like. He followed her down the hall to the kitchen. In daylight, the same gray daylight, he could see details that had escaped him the night before. The stone floor had a border, a ring of darker stones, about half a meter from the walls. Around the big table were children smaller than the boy the night before: five of them. Luisa had no implant, and neither had the men, he remembered. Nor the boy, nor any of the children. Were these Miznarii? His own implant was obvious…
Luisa smiled at him. “You’re right, we don’t have implants. But we’re not anti-humods. I got a prosthetic eye when I lost one to a stone chip.”
The food on the table smelled wonderful. Luisa set a plate in front of him and put a piece of toast on it. “Try this first. If it doesn’t make you queasy there’s eggs and sausage.”
It didn’t make him queasy. Neither did the eggs and sausage. The thunderous knocks on the door did.
“Go back to bed,” Luisa said. “You’re my cousin Jules. You’re sleeping off a drunk. And you children, go to the schoolroom and get to work on your books.”
Rafe couldn’t really hurry to the room, but he made it there before Luisa opened the outside door, fell into the bed, pulled the covers over, and was asleep again before he knew it. When he woke, hours later, sun had broken through the clouds. He stayed under the covers until he heard Luisa call the children.
“Yes, come on,” she said, looking down the hall. More quietly, as he came closer. “Some fellow in a military-looking uniform, said he was looking for dangerous fugitives. Described a couple of bald men. I said my cousin had a full head of black hair, a lot of bruises from stumbling and falling in the pasture in the dark, and wasn’t at all dangerous when sleeping off too much liquor. He looked into the room, and there was the back of your head with black hair, and you were snoring like anything, then he left. You know any bald men?”
“Bald men and bald women,” Rafe said. “They kept the survivors from Miksland shaved bald and drugged, so they’d look sick and damaged. We were getting them out.” He hoped by now they were all safe in Port Major. The last interception should have been the night before. He needed to get in touch with them.
Luisa showed him the rest of the rambling, one-story house, gave him a heavy jacket, and took him outside to see what had run over him. A line of them were watching over a stone wall, ears wide, noses sniffing. They had long pointed horns curving up from their heads, and a ruff of longer hair down the neck, broad bodies covered with a thick hair coat, white lower legs and bellies, tails with a tuft of longer hair on the end. And the attitude of animals that expected feed to appear shortly. Behind them, up the slope of the hill, stones broke through the meager grass. A few of their kind grazed higher up, but turned as Luisa shut the house door and started downhill.
“Those are cattlelope. Daresay you’ve eaten some in your life.”
“They’re… pretty,” Rafe said. Their coats were splotched and striped with dark brown and white; no two looked quite alike.
“They’re extremely useful animals,” she said. Then grinned. “And pretty, yes. Ours are considered one of the best herds in this area.”
Dogs barked in the distance; the cattlelope all lifted their heads to stare toward the barking.
“Back inside,” Luisa said. “That’s Tag and Porro; they’ve found a stranger.”
Inside felt much warmer. Luisa motioned Rafe back toward the room he now knew as his. The bed was a tumble of sheets and blanket; he straightened it out, went to the desk in the corner, and sat in front of it, head in his hands. It did still hurt some, though not too badly.
The stranger turned out to have been from the town, hoping to pick up news. Luisa sent him away, after questioning him. “I didn’t entirely trust him,” she said. “He’s local enough, knew the right names, but I heard that family’s had some bad eggs in their basket.” She stuck her hands in her pockets and looked out the window for a moment. “He did have news you’d better know. They found your ID and money in a jacket on the rail-yard fence.”
“I thought that might be trouble. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to change pockets until I was partway up the hill,” he said.
“Did you kill those men in the truck?” Her gaze pinned him in place.
“One of them, yes.”
She nodded. “Higgens said there was a news message about it, and about the survivors being mistreated, and some men stopped it, smashed the transmitter station. But enough got out people are riled up.”
If they’d released the news about the rescue, then everyone must be back in Port Major. “Anything about Ky—Admiral Vatta?”
Her expression softened. “No, not that Higgens heard. And we’ll get you to where you can call, but we’d best think how to do it, now they’re looking for you in particular.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ky made it back to Port Major and the Joint Services base shortly before dawn, exhausted from two nights with hardly any sleep and a lot of hard work. She would rather have been home in bed, but General Molosay insisted that all involved in the rescue of survivors stay on base for the time being. Ky wasn’t happy about being held at the base—for security reasons, they said, because of undefined unrest in the city itself. The Vatta residence had been attacked, she heard; Stella had had only minor injuries, but serious damage had been done to the house. She wasn’t happy about the condition of two of the survivors. Both Hazarika and Ennisay had been overmedicated, she was told, and might have residual damage when and if they woke up. Yamini appeared to be doing well now, but was still confined to bed. All had signs of abusive treatment, and all were now in the hospital. Some already had visitors; the families were streaming in, alerted by General Molosay that their lost had been found. She’d seen Betange’s siblings, escorted by a shy much older uncle, fall on him hugging and crying.
But Rafe had not reappeared, and her attempts to call his skullphone or the cranial ansible had no response. She wanted a shower, a change of clothes, a quiet meal sitting down somewhere, but most of all she wanted to know what had happened to Rafe. Teague had arrived in Port Major shortly after midnight with the next-to-last group, driving a vehicle some relative of Rodney’s had lent him, with the three survivors crammed into too small a backseat for hours, but aside from that both the survivors and he were fine. He knew no more about Rafe than she did.
“Uh—Admiral—?” A very young officer, looking embarrassed, tapped the doorframe.
“Yes, Lieutenant.” Ky had explained that she wasn’t an admiral anymore, but military courtesy prevailed.