Rhys made as if to jump off his platform, then halted. Rebecca was on her feet as well. Martina started to cry. Evan’s stomach clenched and he balled up his fists. The helpless feeling dropped over him. Keith needed his help, needed his family’s help, but they couldn’t do anything. Keith shot one last blue-eyed look over his shoulder as the slaver took him away. Platforms sank to the floor all around the room. More shouts and cries started up as other families realized they were being split up.
'We’ll find you, Utang!' Rhys shouted over the din. 'We’ll find you!'
'Come on, you,' said the frog woman, her face impatient. 'I don’t have the entire day.'
Evan’s platform sank, as did his mother’s. So much was happening so fast, he couldn’t keep track of everything. He wanted to run after Keith, but didn’t know what he’d do if he caught up to him.
'Well?' the woman demanded. 'I dislike using pain to motivate my slaves, but if you two won’t move, I’ll have no choice.'
Evan snapped his attention around to her. 'Are you my-did you-' Evan found he couldn’t say the words
'I am Giselle Blanc,' she said, talking both to him and his mother. 'I own you both. You will address me as
'Did you-what about my husband?' Rebecca said softly. 'And my daughter? Please, Mistress-did you …buy them as well?'
Evan wanted to cry. He had never seen his mother act like this. Her proud face was abject and full of pleading.
Blanc shrugged. 'I bid on both of them, but lost. Come along, now. Control of your bands has been passed over to me. If you stray more than four meters from me, it will be unpleasant, and if you approach closer than one meter, it will be unpleasant.' She turned and began to walk away.
Horror crashed over Evan and he froze where he was. His family was being split up even further and he felt helpless to stop it. A warning tingle passed through him, and he leaped forward to stay within range of Giselle Blanc. His mother walked ahead of him, white tunic fluttering like a ghost. Rhys and Martina were standing at the edge of their red platforms, tears running down both their faces. Evan realized his own face was wet, his throat thick. Blanc continued to walk ahead of them.
Rhys reached down and snatched Rebecca’s hand as she passed. His face contorted with pain as his shackles glowed and delivered a punishing shock. 'Find us!' he gasped. 'If we all keep looking, we’ll find each other. Don’t give up!'
Evan reached up to touch his father’s hand. Rebecca had time to kiss Rhys’s fingers above the glowing blue band before he fell backward with a moan. His hand slid away. 'Find us!' he cried again. 'I love you both.'
Another warning tingle forced Evan to move forward. He caught a glimpse of Martina, tears flowing down her face. 'Don’t worry, Martina,' he said to her, forcing a brave note into his cracking voice. 'We’ll find you. Don’t worry. Be brave, okay?'
But Martina continued to cry silent tears.
Another warning tingle forced Evan to turn around and pay attention to where he was walking. Blanc wove her way up and down the yellow pathways between red platforms and green squares. She picked up half a dozen other humans-none of them were Real People-and finally headed for the double doors that lead out of the bidding room. Evan looked over his shoulder one more time but didn’t see Martina or Rhys.
The little group of humans walked quietly down the wide white corridor of the station. Large windows showed a spectacular view of an unfamiliar planet as it turned slowly toward darkness, and the stars behind it gleamed like grains of purest white desert sand scattered over a black mirror. Aliens in surprising shapes and colors walked, slithered, or scuttled past. Evan barely noticed any of it. Crushing sorrow rode his shoulders. He found he was holding his mother’s hand, though he didn’t remember taking it. Blanc walked ahead of them. Somewhere along the line, she had been joined by a man with whom she conversed in a low voice. Her husband? Another slave? Evan didn’t know, just as he didn’t know who had bought Keith and who had bought his father and sister-or if they had been bought at all. What happened to slaves who weren’t bid on? Were they killed? Imprisoned? Sold later? He had no idea. Not knowing, he thought, was the worst feeling of all.
The other slaves in the group, all dressed in white tunics and silvery wrist- and anklebands, walked obediently behind Blanc. Some of them wept silently, others remained stoic.
Several corridors later, they came to a series of airlocks. Blanc’s male companion chose one and cycled it open. The entry bay of a ship lay on the other side. All of a sudden it hit Evan hard. He had been sold, and his father, sister, and brother were gone. Once he left this station, he would never see them again. Panic suffused his chest and limbs. He turned and ran back up the corridor.
'Dad!' he shouted. 'Martina!'
He got only a few meters before the pain knocked him flat. Evan struggled to his feet, ignoring the hands that grabbed at him. His bands glowed electric blue, but Evan’s feet carried him further along. The pain got worse. He was running over hot coals, through molten lava.
'Dad!'
The hands were on him again, and his bands glowed so brightly, they hurt his eyes. Raw, undiluted agony ripped his body to pieces. Evan fell, and blackness came before his body touched the floor.
The sun burned low in the cloudless sky, and the sandy soil was hot beneath Evan’s bare feet. His soles hurt, pierced countless times by spiny spinniflex and slashed by sharp rocks. His skin was dry, and it felt stretched over his body like a heated drum skin. Rhys and another man had started a fire of wood and dried animal dung. Keith- Utang-was skinning a big snake, clumsily but effectively, and Rebecca worked with another woman piling white grubs into big green leaves. They would roast in the fire, Evan knew, and his stomach twisted at the idea of eating them. Still, he knew he would. The grubs would contain moisture even after cooking, and they were worth eating for the water content alone. Rebecca rolled the first leaf shut, pushed it into the fire, and reached for another. The smell of roasting grubs wafted over the dry air, and the rocky Outback stretched empty in all directions.
Evan hated these trips. The hot sun, the constant thirst, eating things he would have only stepped on back home, stupid meditative exercises that were supposed to get them in tune with each other enough to use 'head talk' instead of words to communicate, evenings spent listening to boring stories around a smelly fire, all in an attempt to rediscover 'tribal ways.' It was all stupid and pointless. The vast majority of Real People culture had long disappeared with the People themselves, either dead or swallowed up by mutant-white-society.
A curl of manure-scented smoke drifted into Evan’s eyes and he shifted position, trying to get out of the way without standing on his aching feet.
'Your feet will harden in time,' said Neluukatelardin. 'In the meantime, pay the pain no attention.'
Evan glared at him. Neluukatelardin was a sort-of leader to the Real People Reconstructions movement, and he was currently lobbying for a tribal place on a colony ship that would soon leave for a planet named Pelagosa. The plan was to re-establish the Real People’s way of life in a place untouched by mutant society. Evan was far from thrilled with the idea, but his parents were seriously considering it.
Rebecca pulled the leaf from the fire with a pair of sticks and opened it. The grubs inside had turned into a sort of mush that looked almost like oatmeal. Keith, meanwhile, sliced the snake meat into chunks and skewered them on sticks which he passed around to the dozen-odd people surrounding the fire. Martina poked a hesitant finger into the grub mush, then scooped some up and ate it. Evan grimaced, but thirst forced him to reach for it.
Cold droplets landed on his head. Startled, Evan looked up. The Outback hadn’t seen rain in months, and the sky was cloudless. More droplets spattered him and dripped icily down the sides of his head. The sun set, and suddenly everything was dark. Even the campfire had vanished. After a moment, Evan realized his eyes were shut. Puzzled, he opened them.
The room was dim and gloomy. Evan lay on a pallet on the floor with a scratchy blanket drawn over him. A ceiling slanted high overhead, with dark beams rising into the shadows. The inside of Evan’s head felt fuzzy, and his mouth was dry. The Outback had been a dream? It had felt so real. Maybe this was the dream.
He put a hand to his forehead and found a dripping wet cloth. The cold felt good and helped clear his head. An odd sound came to his ears. He couldn’t place it. It reminded him of a lot of birds twittering, but that wasn’t quite it.
'How do you feel?'
