TK loosed a choked growl. “That and the toxic waste dump burning and smoldering and seeping scum into the water table. Don’t forget that, Toog. A toxic jury-rigged slurry, a disaster waiting to happen, courtesy of the growing recycle piles!”
“Where did all this junk come from?” I asked.
“Shipped in from innumerable planets. All the worlds far and near used Talyon as their dumping grounds. For generations and generations. That all ended when the wars started.”
I drummed my knuckles on the table. “So how come you guys aren’t all twisted up like our mummy friends out there—no offense to our friend Toog here?”
TK held up a glass bottle of pills, liquid capsules on the table. “Quizanine. Methyl basene—plus a smidge of isopropyl alcohol.”
“Well, aren’t you the clever one,” I marveled.
“I pride myself in knowing things.”
“I can see that.” I frowned and turned to Wren. “What about you?”
“What would you like to know?”
“Why didn’t you turn into one of our mummy friends?”
“Lucky, I guess. Always added a bit of vinegar from fermented cactus to my water.”
TK laughed at the notion. “Some of us are just resistant to the effects.”
Wren shrugged, apparently not in the mood for arguing with the old man.
“Family?” I turned to her. “How have you been surviving?”
“Dodge and blast, nothing else. My crib’s hidden far away. On the other side of the pits. I saw your ship come down. Then I came to look. My rod’s been keeping me alive, no thanks to you, losing it out there somewhere in the sand. Built it myself.”
“Treat that new piece at your waist as your new improved ‘rod’. You still haven’t explained how—”
“Nothing much different from TK’s story,” she said in a harsh voice. “My family was killed, my daughter too.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. You didn’t know her from Eve. Bad shit happens to good people. Happens all the time. I got over it.”
I could see that Wren hadn’t and probably never would. But I was no grief therapist and so I moved on. “If we get my ship running again, I’m inviting you all out for a ride—you too, skinhead.” I shadow-boxed her playfully on the shoulder. Her body remained rigid. My sudden act of charity was not just in good nature. A little bit of self-preservation was mixed in with a whole lot of scheming. “I could use a resourceful bunch of entrepreneurs like you.”
TK swigged down a gulp of water.
“So, you’ve never made it off this rock?”
“Nope.” He shrugged. “I’ve been off and traveled at lot in my younger days before the space docks and starships were wiped out and communication towers destroyed. A few rogue ships have dropped out of the sky over the years, but on seeing nothing here but desert ruin and mummy freaks they speed off in a hell of a hurry.”
“Nobody’s come to this planet since I’ve been a girl,” croaked Wren in a faraway voice. “Even then the memory is dim. I remember a silver, cigar-shaped craft angling down in the plain once, before it became another toxic waste dump. I watched from one of the recycle hills.” Her eyes clouded over. “They landed, let out a bunch of people—prisoners, I reckoned, with their arms bound behind their backs. Three tried to make a run for it, and the captors blasted them in cold blood.” She shivered. “The rest they let live. Then they flew off.”
“What happened to the survivors?” I asked.
“Dunno, I scrambled away, fast as I could, being just a little kid. When I came back, they were gone. Sand dervishes must have got them.”
I stared in grim silence. “And you, Toog?”
“I kill mad boys as easily as TK here. Sometimes they hunt me, but I lure them to my special place—where an army of dervishes nest. They feed nicely that day.” He gave a snorting exclamation. “Was just checking on TK here, seeing that he’s feeding his pets properly.”
“And was I?” TK asked with a crooked grin.
“Seemed so.”
“A good trick,” I said. “Letting the dervishes control your mad boys. Surprises me you’d kill your own kind though.”
Toog grunted, the first real emotion I’d heard from him. “I owe them nothing. They killed my family, ground them up, ate them for stew. Made me one of them. But I escaped. Now I kill them on sight.”
“You’re one against an army,” I pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I admire your spirit, Toog. All of you. Just think you’re on the wrong world.”
“What world isn’t ‘wrong’?” grunted TK.
“I invite you to come with us, Toog.”
He stared at me a long time. “No, this is the only home I’ve known. Call it sentimental, but I’ve a kinship here. There are others like me, like TK and Billy.”
“Knock yourself out.” I shrugged. But in those eyes I saw the sadness of generations, as I had seen so many times on many worlds. Worlds ripped apart by senseless violence, and privation, sunk in the deepest mire of decadence.
While TK and Wren went off with Billy and Toog to fetch water and look out for more mad boys crawling about, I drifted off in the opposite direction to the repair shop, my Uzi slung over a shoulder, thinking it better to be closer to my ship. I followed what I remembered of the route we took, wiping my brow in the baking sun. No number of nervous glances over my shoulder allayed my suspicion that those damn sand crabs weren’t following me.
The ruins came in sight and I heaved myself down on a sand drift at the edge of the pit. The merciless sun beat down on my head and my mind wandered on how
