The Superiors Read online

  Draven finished the sap in one long draught and put the glass on the desk. “I don’t have to think about it, sir. I accept the assignment. When do we leave?”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Ander sat on the hood of his car and wiped the bloody dagger on his pants. Wasn’t the first time he’d killed for food, wouldn’t be the last. Once a friend had said killing for food was primitive, that Superiors had evolved beyond such things and that’s why something called murder rate didn’t exist anymore. Ander didn’t know about all that. Killing for food seemed as good a reason as any. He’d killed hundreds of men in the War, and for no good reason at all. Just because someone pointed him in that direction and said, “Shoot.”

  Ander had shot.

  He figured killing wasn’t a big deal so people just didn’t think of it. Besides, it took a lot of finesse to kill a Superior, even for another Superior. Killing a Superior was a complicated operation requiring proper materials, specific procedures, and deadly accurate aim. Har-har, deadly. Ander smiled and pushed the dagger back into his boot. He had a better one. The longer one, a short-sword really, he used when he had time to plan. He hadn’t counted on the sap farmer coming out and checking out the source of the commotion, not during the day. But there he’d come, and Ander hadn’t had much choice. He had to kill or get arrested.

  He knew well enough where people like him ended up—on trial. That was all moonbeams and roses for those lucky enough to have been born with good looks or good manners. Neither of which Ander had in the least. He didn’t much care for those qualities—useless in the run of things. Still, looking and speaking and coming across a certain way, that’s all that really mattered in a trial. Oh, yes, Master Superior, I’m so innocent and contrite. Bullshit, all of it. If you’re so contrite, then why’d you do it? That’s what Ander had wanted to know when he’d sat in on a case once. He hadn’t been asked to judge again.

  Ander had no illusions about his demeanor. It came in handy in his line of work. But at a government trial—not likely. He looked scary, just like the sort of man that he was. He looked like a tough guy, a guy who might run a restaurant that let sickos and creeps indulge their perversions for a fee. He looked smart and cunning and all the other things that didn’t help out in a court of law. No, in court it behooved one to look uncertain and attractive and effeminate, to be small and soft spoken and of course to look very, very contrite. Always the damn contrition.

  Ander didn’t give two shits about contrition, his or anyone else’s. Why should he be sorry? He only met demand with supply. That’s what a good businessman did. The government ought to just line up all the perps and put them in front of a firing squad, the way they had during the War with captured enemy troops. After all, if every man who got off on molesting bloodbags was off the streets, Ander wouldn’t need to run that business out the back of his restaurants.

  With all the human-rights activists crying equality, you’d think they’d take his side. But he just couldn’t win. The activists wanted humans to have rights like Superiors, but they sure didn’t want them to have to work like Superiors. Seemed like half the Third Order women were prostitutes, so why shouldn’t sap women have the same job? That would be true equality. But saps weren’t equal, never would be.

  Saps were great for food, though, and maybe an easy fuck. They made great whores. They were expendable. And renewable, for that matter. They had babies faster than you could think up a name for the last one.

  Ander got in the stolen car and checked on Nina. She didn’t look so hot anymore. In fact, he was pretty sure she was dying. Might as well have one last go-round before she hit the switch. He circled around Houston and drove out on the lumpy track that had been a road during the War. Ander had been up there a bit, seen some action in the area. Texas lay just north of there, where he’d been captured once and almost put to the firing squad. Good thing he’d been as unscrupulous then as he was now.

  He’d gotten away with his life that time, although he couldn’t say the same for his captors. He’d killed a handful of them, plus a few of his own comrades too. Each man for himself, Ander thought. Superiors could talk all night long about community and togetherness and cohesiveness and all that shit. Didn’t make one bit of difference in the end. They just didn’t want to admit they still had the same petty jealousies and animal natures as sapiens. Each and every Superior, just like every human, only wanted one thing—to come first, to eat first, to win, to live. That’s all it came down to.

  Ander drove out into the desert and had his entertainment from Nina, who didn’t look as entertained as usual. Ander had forgotten her medications, and she hadn’t been the same without them. Plus, she was just a sap, so of course she’d gotten attached to her drugs like any weak and mutable thing would. Now she depended on them, and without them she just sweated and stank and moaned a whole lot, and puked in his car and out the window and anywhere else she could find to puke.

  He’d gotten pretty sick of her anyway, and he wasn’t about to carry her around with him in the desert. She put up a good fight, let out some good banshee shrieks while he drained the life out of her. But he didn’t figure he’d eat much for a while, so why not get what he could? She’d die out there in a few days and all that sap would go to waste. So he drained her dry as a snakeskin and left her in the car. Let those damn lawmen deal with the remains.

  Those Enforcers, they all wanted to cry mercy on the saps, but every last one of them had sapiens, and he’d be willing to bet they weren’t all moral and high-handed dealing with their own bloodbags. Probably half—no, pretty near all of them—had dallied in illicit behavior with their own livestock. It wasn’t regulated. No one could prove a crime unless a sap died, and it was easy enough to keep them alive even if mistakes were made and they lost a limb or two in the process. Besides, everyone had to be curious now and then, wondering if it would be different from how they remembered. And an Enforcer could cover anything up. They were the law—how could they do anything against the law? The idea itself was circuitous.

  “Goodbye, teeny Nina,” Ander said, slamming the car door down. It caught on her foot and made a satisfying crunching sound, like a dog chewing up a bone. Ander opened the door and stuffed the mangled, dangling foot back in and closed the door again. Then he set off. His spirits ran high—energy charged through him and he’d stuffed himself to the gills with blood. No better way to start the night. And ahead of him to the north lay Texas, where he’d heard of a funny little man who could supply him with the necessary documents to end his life as Ander and begin his new life as someone else.

  People gravitated towards others of their own kind, and Ander had never had any trouble finding connections he needed in his illegal affairs. He’d heard of this guy who supplied papers to down-and-out Thirds who had lost or sold their papers. What a great way to run black-market ID papers. Put the face of charity on it.

  So the guy ran a charity to cleverly disguise his other operation—the one where for a fee you could become whoever you wanted. A criminal could become one of the obedient masses. A man could become a woman, or a woman a man. A Third could become a Second, for a very large sum. And a Second could stay a Second, for that same very large sum. Ander didn’t know the exact sum, but he didn’t worry. He had a lot. It would be enough. He’d done it before, years ago. Now things were more tightly regulated, papers harder to counterfeit, and more papers required. But he didn’t see a significant obstacle. Ander might not look like the kind of man who could convince a panel of North American judges, but he looked like the kind who could convince another man like himself.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Much planning went into the mission to catch Ander, and several weeks passed while the men completed preparations for the journey. The night before setting out, Draven left work with a promise his job would wait for him if he returned alive. He had the night off, and he did what he could to prepare. He’d worked out for the weeks since his injury, and he had regained his strength a
nd then some.

  He’d grown more agile, too. He did yoga with Hyoki, and she taught him a little Judo. He’d become more flexible and faster, something he would need on his journey. He had always been quick, even for a Superior. It was one of the only natural advantages he had been given.

  The last night in the city, Draven did his exercise routine, and when he had finished with this, he packed a few things—jeans, an extra pair of linen pants, underwear, a few t-shirts, a light canvas jacket. He wanted a light pack. He added a tent and a few dozen packets of dried sap and a thin mat for sleeping. Ander remained in the wilderness, close to the outskirts of Houston, where he visited to feed on the livestock of others.

  When Draven had done all he could to prepare for his journey, he still had hours left before sleep. He tried to read but his mind strayed. He paced in the cramped apartment, then pocketed his cards and an anya and went out into the night.

  He could take the Mert, but he liked the coolness of the night, the gusty wind and the wet air on his face. Rain had fallen during the day, and the night smelled of rain and wet asphalt. The wind had taken the steam off the ground and a chill had crept into the air. Draven wanted to test himself, make sure one more time he was up for the task in front of him, that he could perform the duties required of him when the time came.

  He set off at a sprint towards the edge of the city, the air streaking past him like cool ribbons spooling out in the night behind him. His skin burned with a pleasant chill as he moved through the night, not slowing until he came to the Confinement at the edge of the city. He felt more energetic than before he’d started, and the knowledge of his strength and stamina pleased him.

  He entered, bright eyed and in high spirits from his newfound strength. He punched Cali’s number into the pad the door guard held out to him. He looked at the man sharply. “Where is this sap?”

  The man looked at his pad and scrolled through to the next screen. He studied it and then turned it to Draven. “She’s in one of the houses now. This one right here. Go out through the far doors, take a right, past the shower areas. She’s the eighth house on the left.”

  “Thank you.”

  He followed the guard’s directions and came upon the structure Cali called a house. Like all the houses, it was nothing more than a collection of trash piled into some semblance of a shelter. He didn’t know why anyone would prefer that to the protected bunks in the barracks. He paused in front of the house, taking in the smell. He caught Cali’s scent and a few other smells, one of them sickening and putrid.

  He found himself wondering if she lived there with her new partner or if she’d moved into her family’s dwelling. He hadn’t thought to ask the door guard who else lived in the house. Draven tapped on the door once to alert the sapiens inside, an unnecessary act. None of the other Superiors did this kind of thing, but he had found in his work with homo-sapiens that they appreciated little gestures of kindness.

  He pulled the twisted piece of rusty tin away and entered the dwelling. The fetid smell permeated the place. Draven counted four adult sapiens and a small one. Her family’s house then. He made his way across the flimsy plastic strips that covered the old tires to make up the floor. The place was only about three meters long, and the mat on the floor took up two thirds of the space. The place offered very little other than a sleeping area. The walls, like the rest of the place, looked salvaged from a dump of worn-out materials. The few makeshift shelves held more of what looked to Draven like junk.

  The sapien houses didn’t contain clothing or food. Those things stayed in the communal area in the big building. They would have molded in the damp environment of the shelters anyway. He couldn’t make out the faces as well as he could have outside, but he could smell distinctly where Cali lay. He knelt and shook her leg. One of the other figures sat up.

  “Cali’s sick,” the female said. “Take me instead. Please, Master Superior. She’s real weak.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I don’t know, Master, sir. She was complaining about her arm hurting and we thought she just didn’t want to work. Y’know? But then she stopped getting up at all. Our mama died, and maybe she got the thing from her, I don’t know. You can take me.”

  Draven could tell now that the putrid smell originated from Cali. “Has she married? Why is she in this diseased place if she could have a mate?”

  “Cali don’t want a mate. She just wants to be left alone.”

  “Cali, awaken and talk with me,” he said, shaking her again. She moaned but didn’t move. The sister protested while Draven dug Cali from under the thin blanket. The baby started to wail, a terrible sound. “I will take her to the garden,” Draven said. He gathered up the limp body and stood.

  “Please don’t kill her,” another sister said. “Please, Master. She’s real sick. If you draw from her again she might not make it.”

  “Why have you not taken her to the clinic?”

  “We tried, but she don’t want to go, and they’re too busy to come out and see her. Please take me instead.”

  “Tend to your child,” he said, and left the stinking shanty through the tin door. Outside the smell wasn’t so cloistering, and he breathed in deeply of the clean air when the wind blew. The scent of sickness hugged the air around Cali, and now him. He carried her to the edge of the garden and found the stack of hoses and sat with his bundle.

  “Am I dying?” Cali asked, her voice thin.

  Draven brushed the hair from her face. Her skin scalded him, like it had the night she’d been sunburned. But tonight the heat went all the way through her, a sick kind of clotted heat. He could hardly bear to touch her with such pervasive heat, worse even than her usual animal warmth.

  “It’s possible. Why did you refuse to visit the clinic?”

  “The doctor…I hate him.”

  “Because he hurt you before?”

  “He gives us no privacy. He is…we are…animals to him, with no feelings.”

  “That is not unusual. I didn’t know saps could have these things until I met you.”

  “Are you going to suck my neck again?”

  “No. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I was quite hungry that night.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “May I see your arm, little pet?”

  “I can’t say no to you.”

  “You may. I’ll not force you if you do not wish to show me.”

  She sat quiet for a minute, her breathing quick and shallow. Her head rested against his chest, and he thought she slept. Then she said, “I don’t care. You can look at it. But it’s gross.”

  He slid her around and turned her arm over to look at the wound. The heat radiated from the black center, spreading with the infection from a purple color inside her elbow to red streaks along her arm.

  “Oh, hell. Cali.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I will take you to the clinic. You might have blood poisoning. Your arm is infected, probably from the bites. Merde. Why didn’t you go earlier? You might lose an arm, or worse.”

  “I don’t like you.”

  “I don’t give a damn if you like me. You’re a stupid girl, too willful for your own good. Dammit, Cali. I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have come back to see you.”

  He stood and pressed his lips to her hot forehead. “My dear little pet, my jaani,” he said, carrying her out of the garden and towards the clinic. The doctors worked all night, so they could tend to her. Draven carried her in, and she lay still and silent while he said soothing words to her and waited for a doctor.

  After an hour or so a doctor came to take her into an exam room. He gave Draven a curious look but didn’t comment further. He probably thought Draven worked at the Confinement, and Draven didn’t correct him. He knew most of the workers at the Confinement wouldn’t have come into the hospital room with a sapien, but he wanted to know if she’d live. He sat quietly while the doctor examined her.

  “You get to recognize this smell after a while,
” the doctor said. “She’s got an infection, like you suspected. And her blood is poisoned.”

  “So she’s going to die?”

  “Not yet. The infection isn’t what’s poisoning her. We can put leeches on her to draw out the infection and the poison, but it may be too late. She should have been brought in earlier.” He gave Draven a reproachful look. “The infection may still spread and kill her. It’s hard to know if leeches are strong enough to get it all out. We can make some small incisions in her arm to let more of the infection out, but there’s no way to know if it will all come out in time to save her. This is a waste of a human, Mister…guard.”

  “Castle. Draven Castle. I’m not a guard. I wanted to purchase this human, and when I came to get her, she was in this condition.”

  “I sure hope you have an alternate chosen.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You just may have to find one.”

  “Can I draw out the infection?”

  The doctor gave him a look of pure horror. “Why would you want to? Can’t you smell it?”

  “Yes, I smell it.” The smell sickened him, but the thought of losing her sickened him more. “Is it possible? I know it would be unpleasant, but if it could save her…I have much more strength than your leeches.”

  “That’s true…” The doctor looked at Draven in a calculating way. “I don’t know that it’s ever been done. But she’ll probably die anyway, so I’d be willing to let you try it out.”