"Hemorrhaging ulcer, I think," Staffa grunted, staggering into the shade. Kaylla helped ease the fragile man onto the sand.
Anglo walked over to stare with bland heavily-Iidded eyes. "Looks like he's
gone. Drink up, Tuff. You've wasted most of your break on him." Anglo tarried long enough to run his fingers down Kaylla's back in a caress before stepping away.
"Ought to break his neck," Staffa growled.
"It's not worth your life. His pollution washes off or drains out. It's a temporary humiliation of the body." Then, as if to reassure herself: "He can't get at my mind."
"Why?" Peebal whispered weakly as Staffa stooped to put a grimy cup to his lips. "Why waste your time on a… a dead man?"
His smile stung his cracked lips. "Because you brought beauty to the world — if only for a while."
Peebal nodded and vomited again.
"Tuff, drink!" Kaylla hissed. "Get some water in you or you'll be next!"
"Go," Peebal gasped.
Staffa stood and made his way to the water. He got three long swallows before Anglo called, "Back to work! Tuff, you an Kaylla stay a second."
Staffa took the time to chug water into his desiccated tissues while Anglo walked over. The officer looked down at Peebal and frowned deeply, pig-eyes gleaming with anticipation..
Staffa choked at the sight of Peebal's body going limp, his eyes blinking in the sand, filling with stinging grit as the collar did its work. It didn't take long, no more than a minute; Peebal's frightened face stilled and the sandencrusted pupils stared sightlessly.
"There," Anglo added reasonably. "No sense in making him suffer." He turned to Kaylla, heedless of Staffa, and thrust his hands under her loose garment to grope her. Then he kissed her long and hard before adding a cloying, "Until tonight, sweet meat."
Unable to stand the shame in her face, Staffa lowered his gaze to the corpse. Peebal's gnomelike features had twisted into an eternal agony of final terror. The bladder and recturn relaxed in death.
Anglo took a laser from his belt. With practiced ease, he cut Peebal's head from his body and picked up the collar. To Staffa, Anglo added, "You brought him here — you can
carry him back. Stick him in that wide spot in the trench. The machines will bury him deep enough. If not, the siff ackals wil eat well." Anglo turned and walked back to his air-conditioned hut.
"I'll kill him," Staffa promised, as he threw Peebal over his shoulder and wound his fingers into the thin hair to carry the head. "I'll gouge his eyes from his living body and rip his manhood from his fat crotch and feed it to him. Choke him with it."
"No, you won't." Her tan stare bored into him as they stumbled out into the blasting sun. "He dies — and we all go. Not just you."
He forced whistling air through gritted teeth, calming himself. "Skyla, By the Blessed Gods, I wish I knew how you do it?"
"Another one of those days Tuff? You seeing your Skyla again?"
He laughed sourly as Peebal's limp body swung. "Yeah, she keeps me going. Gives me a reason to survive." As do you.
She nodded, hair blowing in the slight breeze. "That why you've never made advances?"
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "What?"
"I've seen the want in your eyes. Is it for me… or your Skyla? Doesn't matter which, I keep expecting you to take me."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "This is an age of abomination. Because of the violence, men die. But women? Women become property — possessions without souls or feelings. Objects to be raped, beaten, and degraded. Didn't used to be that way. or females, it's always worse."
She shook her head. "I'm the only woman tough enough to make it out here. The others collapse and let the collars kill them rather than suffer the sand or the heat — let alone the constant rape." She worked her mouth as if from some foul taste. "So the men want me. Even you. But you don't act. Why?"
He barked an angry laugh. "Maybe it's my honor."
"Yeah, well, don't change your mind. I'm not big on men right now."
Staffa filled his lungs against the resurgent anger. His
throat had already gone dry. "Why keep fighting? Why not give in and die?"
"Revenge, Tuff." She waved a hand at the blinding white around them. "God allowed us, humanity, to make all this a living perdition. Suffering? We create that. I never. Ah, hell, it doesn't matter if you know, I guess.
I never made it as far as I wanted in my studies. I don't know whether we send our souls to God straight after death or what, but I want that bastard to get a good dose of what suffering and humiliation and pain are all about when I die."
"What are you talking about? Revenge on who?"
"God," she whispered, head down, attention on where her callused feet sank in to the baking sand with each step.
"You were Etarian? A Priestess?"
"Seddi," she said evenly. "That's between you and me."
He gave her a slow nod of agreement. Who am I to revile her for accursed practices of superstition? Who am I to despise her after all I've done? Perhaps we each pay for our crimes in our own ways.
They settled the last remains of Peebal at the bottom of the trench. Staffa stood and hesitated for a second before he bent down and settled the tiny jeweler on his back, crossing his arms peacefully over his chest. Then he placed his head in its place, brushed th'e sand from the staring eyes, and pulled the lids shut. Together they collapsed sand over Peebal's body.
Kaylla studied him intently. "Why do that for him?"
"Dignity. Respect."
"You're not just any slave, Tuff." She turned to walk down the trench. "Who are you?"
"No one." To forestall further questions he handed her the locket. "Here, Peebal wanted you to have this."
She glanced down and knotted the bright gold in her fist. A single tear etched the dusty corner of her face. He watched her throat move as she lowered her head.
"Come on, we're late," he urged. "I'll miss him, too. He taught me. Rotted Gods, nothing." He took her arm and pushed her on, seeing the crew placing the yokes under a long section of pipe,
She looked at him, mouth hard. "You're not cut from a
normal mold. You're someone different, powerful, haunted by more than this pus-sucking desert."
He glared at her.
She caught him by surprise when she handed him the locket. "Tuff," her voice broke, "keep it for me."
He started to shake his head.
"Just do it! Anglo will find it otherwise. I don't have anywhere. Peebal, he smuggled it out of Maika in his anus. Anglo will. well, you understand."
"I'll guard it with my life. And give it back someday. when we're free."
"Thanks, Tuff… my friend."
Staffa stepped over to the yoke and put his bruised shoulder under it. "Ho!" Kaylla called, grabbing up the tug strap. Staffa grunted under the weight, feeling the burden strain his muscles.
The day wore on. He blinked against the sun that seared his back and tried to fry his brain. Sweat ran down from under his armpits, evaporating before it could even trickle to his elbows — the memory no more than white lines of salt.
Kaylla? Skyla? They mixed in his imagination, each with that same knowing expression of suffering and endurance.
"I never understood, Skyla," he croaked through his dry throat.
"My poor Staffa." Skyla's voice twined out of the gusting wind. "You wanted to know what it is to be human? You'll know my scars next time."
"I'll know everyone's."
His thoughts centered on the time he'd removed his glove to hold her hand. At the time, the fluttering anxiety of his heart had unnerved him. She'd been perilously close to death, and it had frightened him. Why had he never reached for her again?
"Because I couldn't see past a ghost. and everything came to me so easily." What have I made that's beautiful? Who's a better man, Peebal? You who leave such a precious piece of gold? Or Staffa, who was never defeated in war— and destroyed everything he ever loved?