‘Nonsense,’ the General barks. ‘Landgrubber, air-starved nonsense.’ She shifts, making herself comfortable. ‘Wake me when the storm is over.’
I let her sleep, fearing in my bones that the storm is only the beginning.
* * *
The General is ill. Almost as soon as she wakes, she spews her guts.
‘It’s that damn snake stew.’ She spits, wiping her mouth.
‘I ate it.’
‘You’re used to muck.’
I check the scalp wound. It doesn’t look infected.
‘How do you feel?’
‘Head pain. Double vision.’
‘Some of it will be the air. Your haemoglobin levels will adjust, with time.’ I try to feel her pulse, but she snatches her wrist away.
‘I don’t want nursing. Give me a shot and let’s get going.’
Whether through stoicism or pride, she doesn’t complain again, just sits on the back and keeps watch as we ride. The sun is burning high when she spots the shape on the horizon.
I squint through the binoculars, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s a wagon, makeshift, with a solar rig and shuttered sides that tell me it’s someone’s home. It’s brightly painted in reds and yellows, adorned with a grey worm shape that coils around the sides.
‘Looks like a grubhawker.’
The General grunts. ‘A what?’
‘Grubhawker. They sell insects, for entertainment, food, pupae for people to breed. Easier to keep alive than animals.’
The General makes a noise of disgust. ‘What’s it doing out here?’
‘Don’t know. But something’s wrong, if there was anyone home, they would have seen us by now and signalled.’ I swing the binoculars around but the wasteland of grey-red dust and boulders is devoid of life. ‘If it has been abandoned, it won’t stay that way for long. The Seekers will find it and we do not want to be here when they do.’
The wagon is pulled up beside a bluff, two hundred feet from the edge of the trail. From the front, everything looks orderly, but when the rear side comes into view…
It’s carnage. The vehicle has been gutted, metal and wires spilling out. It was a grubhawker’s wagon, true enough, but now the plastic cases that usually hold maggots and ants and beetles are strewn and smashed on the ground, the insects curled and dead. Anything of conceivable use has been hacked away, down to door handles and seat cushions. As we draw closer, the smell hits me: burned plastic, cold ash, blood-soaked dirt.
The General jabs my shoulder. ‘There,’ she says, pointing.
A figure lies among the debris. I stop the mule.
‘What are you doing?’ she snaps. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t safe.’
‘I have to make sure.’ I reach into the back for my medical kit.
‘Damn fool, that’s a corpse, listen to the flies.’
She’s right; a distinct buzzing can be heard over the creak and shift of the ruined wagon. The grubhawker’s wares, feeding on their master in the end.
‘I have to see.’
Slowly, I walk towards the figure. Splinters and shards crack beneath my boots. Perhaps it’s the smell of the blood, the way the man lies curled on his side, but a flash of memory returns and for a moment the ground is not wilderness dust but a ruined street, a battleground, and the body is not one but twenty, thirty, all in the cobbled together uniforms of the Limits, their limbs torn, viscera spilling from wounds that will never be healed, some blinded by the strikes, and all of them screaming for me, yelling over and over the word that as good as became my name. Medic.
Anything but this, I had thought. Any time but this. Any world.
Here is my wish.
Like the wagon, the grubhawker has been looted. Their eyes and teeth are gone, the torso left open to reveal plundered insides. I don’t need to look closely to know what has been taken. Liver, kidneys, heart and lungs. Pancreas, if the particular band of Seekers had the time and skill to take it. They left the guts, tended to. Too messy and not enough call for them, out here.
‘Was it them?’ the General asks. ‘The Seekers?’
She stares down at the corpse, her face blank.
‘Must have been.’
‘I thought you said they left nothing behind.’ She squints at the wagon. ‘There is salvage here yet.’
‘Organs need to be transported quickly. Can’t risk them spoiling.’ I glance at the sky. ‘They’ll be back for the rest.’
The General frowns at the corpse. I wonder if she is thinking of LaSalle, whether he was similarly plundered. ‘What do they want it all for?’
‘Black-market organ trade.’
‘We have synthesised flesh for that.’
‘Not out here we don’t. Which means there are always a few people desperate or stupid enough to make a deal with them. Anyway, some say they don’t even sell the organs, they take them as tribute, to Hel.’
The General looks at me sharply. ‘Who?’
‘Hel. The Converter. Leader of Seekers. They say Hel was among the first settlers on this moon, the first to go into the Edge.’
‘And the Accord let this person live?’
I laugh humourlessly. ‘The Accord claim to have captured and executed Hel. Twice.’
‘Moon full of lunatics,’ the General mutters.
I leave her poking through debris while I kneel beside the body. I can at least find out the man’s name. Most people carry their name out here, usually on something that can be easily dropped, a coin or a necklace or a bracelet. Sure enough, around the grubhawker’s neck, I find a chain.
It’s a dog tag, prison issued, stamped with a name and number. I scrape the dried blood from it with my nail.
FOUR BRINKMANN, it reads on one side. #4570263, AFP NORDSTROM.
On the other side, words have been scratched into the metal.
Should I be taken, this is where I stood. May those who loved me remember Jeddes Brinkmann.
My lips form the name. Nothing more I can do for him now. I dig a hole with my hands in the blood-soaked dust, so that I can bury the tag, so there is at least one thing the Seekers can’t take.
Dirt catches beneath my nails,
