The Superiors Read online

  “Good. Then get me a basin to spit into.”

  The doctor came back ten minutes later with three basins, and three other doctors. Two doctors-in-training trailed behind them. “We’ve never seen this before,” Cali’s doctor explained. “Everyone is curious to see if it will work. And to see your reaction, honestly.”

  “Fine. Give me a basin and let’s get started.”

  Draven took Cali’s arm and took one last breath. He knew he wouldn’t be able to breathe so close to her wound while he drew on it. In the light of the hospital room it looked much worse. The whole arm had swollen and discolored, and despite the heat, the blood behind it sounded slower than it should. He bent to his work, prepared for the taste, and bit into the center.

  He thought he’d readied himself, but there was no way to prepare for what came into his mouth. The fluid tasted worse than bitter, sickening and salty and thick, and he pulled back, gagging into the bowl a string of red and yellow and dark colored slime. No one spoke while he gagged for a few minutes. Fluid coursed from the marks he’d made in her skin. He squeezed her arm gently, not sure he could stand to put it back to his mouth. The brackish liquid flowed out for a few minutes and then slowed and stopped.

  Draven looked at the group of doctors and then back at the arm. He didn’t want to give up yet, in front of all those people, so he brought Cali’s arm back to his mouth and put his teeth into her again. This time she woke, and screamed, and her whole body convulsed in pain. He clamped his teeth down on her arm for purchase, and she shrieked and pounded his face with her other fist. Two of the doctors held her writhing body down while Draven drew as hard as he could. When his mouth filled with the stuff he spit and gagged for minutes, steeled himself, and repeated the process. After the second mouthful, Cali stopped shrieking abruptly, and he could only hope she’d lost consciousness and was lost to the pain.

  He wished he could be lost to the horror of what he was doing. If it didn’t work, it would be the worst thing he’d ever done. After every pull on the infected area, his body heaved with retching, and instead of getting used to it, he seemed to grow more sensitive to it. Finally he couldn’t bring himself to do it even one more time. Her sap looked more like it should, although it still tasted off. He spit the last mouthful into the basin of slime. It came out the usual color.

  He wiped his mouth on a towel one of the practicing doctors had given him, and then slumped back in the chair, drawing breath after ragged breath and looking at the group of solemn doctors who stood watching him.

  “What was it like?” one of the trainees asked.

  “Like it looked,” Draven said, wiping his face and his mouth again. “Can I have a glass of water, please?” He couldn’t move. He didn’t think morning had come while he worked, but the horrifying task had exhausted him.

  The trainee brought him water and he rinsed his mouth over and over and then got himself another glass and drank this one. Then he sat shuddering at the taste he couldn’t seem to get out of his mouth or his mind. The doctors drifted away, except Cali’s doctor, who went to get an antibiotic and leeches to remove what remained in her arm, leaving Draven alone with the human girl.

  He scooted to the edge of her bed and put his forehead down on her arm. “I’m sorry, my jaani. I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’m so sorry, Aspen, my jaan. I’m so sorry,” he repeated. Then he grew quiet and rested his cool forehead on the inflamed and offensive arm.

  Chapter Forty

  When morning approached, the doctor came in to check on Cali. He took the leeches away and returned to check her vital signs. Draven watched with the fascination of someone who has forgotten such things after so long without them.

  “Will she live?” he asked the doctor.

  “I think so. Can’t say for sure, but I think she’s better than last night. Could be all that draining helped her out. No way to know for sure.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “Maybe I should be the one thanking you. You want to see what happened?”

  Draven approached and the doctor held Cali’s arm and pointed to the raised welts. “You see these here? These are the result of unclosed draw-points. Someone who owned her must not’ve liked her much.”

  “She worked in the restaurants.”

  “That explains the sheer volume of the bites. Anyhow, you see, a sapien body is a tricky thing. We forget what it was like. It’s fragile in a way you and I aren’t ever going to be again, but at the same time it’s resilient and adaptable. It protects itself when it can. And here we’ve got a miniscule drop of poison goes in, and when you close properly your saliva it draws it right out and closes up the wound. But when you don’t finish, that little drop of poison stays right there.”

  The doctor poked one of the bumps and Cali twitched. “Hurts them a little, I imagine. Not so bad, though. They don’t hurt as much as we do.”

  Draven remembered the pebble-like scars, and he knew it wasn’t any little pain, but he kept it to himself. His hand unconsciously drifted to his back. He scratched, then let his hand fall away.

  “Anyhow, these little bumps are where the human body has developed a way to make some sort of protective shell around the poison, like a clam makes a pearl out of a grain of sand. Except these are softer, but not much. You see, what happened here to this sap is that someone nicked one of those little pearls and the poison got out into her bloodstream or the tissue around the area anyway. So her body attacked it, like it attacks any foreign substance. No way of knowing if that caused the infection or if something just got in one of her open marks. The way I figure it, she’s pretty lucky you sucked all that gunk out.”

  “If she lives I guess so. I’m going home to sleep.”

  “You coming back to buy her?”

  “I have to get paid.”

  “You wanting us to hold onto her for you?”

  “She’ll have to go back when she gets better. I won’t get paid for a while.”

  “That’s a shame, then. I hope she’s a clean sapien. Some of them get infections from all that filth and never cleaning themselves right. Might get another one if she doesn’t change her hygiene habits.”

  Draven frowned down at her. He hated to leave without knowing if she’d live, and he hated his inability to do anything about the man who left the bites. But the only thing he could do for her now was to go on the assignment, and if he made it back, buy her so she wouldn’t have to worry about the other man anymore. He would have liked to say goodbye to her, but he couldn’t do anything about that now, either. He had already signed all the paperwork and he had to go, whether or not Cali lived long enough for him to buy her when he came back.

  He hadn’t eaten all night, so he stopped at the compound and went back to Cali’s house. None of the sisters smelled as good as Cali, but one of them smelled appealing. He went inside after tapping on the door. The one he wanted still slept, as well as one of the others. The one with the child sat suckling her young.

  “Cali is at the clinic,” he said, shifting to sit in the cramped space. He’d never liked going in the houses at the Confinement, and he guessed other Superiors didn’t either. The homes appealed to homo-sapiens for that reason. Cali’s house smelled of mold and mud and her lingering scent and that of the infection. He had to pull the sister halfway onto his lap so he could sit cross-legged on the pallet they called a bed. She shifted and opened her eyes and jerked a bit when she saw him, but she lay still and quiet while he fed.

  “Cali is a sister to each of you?” he asked when he finished.

  “Yeah. We all got the same mama.”

  “The doctor believes she will live, but she may need some time to recover her strength. She will be weak from the infection, and a good amount of fluid including blood had to be taken from the infected area. I’ll be going away for some time, but the clinic will bring her back here. I hope for her sake that the man who bites her will stay away while she is still weak.
Perhaps he won’t like the infected smell. Please let her know…no. If I live, I’ll tell her when I return.”

  The three sapiens stared at him with identical suspicious eyes. He realized he had said too much, talked to them as if they were like him. As if they were like Cali, perhaps. “I like animals,” Draven said, shrugging. “I don’t like to see them die.”

  The girls absorbed this information, and the one with the baby nodded. “Thanks for letting us know, Master. We were real worried about her.”

  “And thank you for taking her to the clinic,” the one he’d drawn from said. The other sister had awakened and lay there watching, her hand resting on her swollen stomach.

  “That your shirt?” the one with the baby said, nodding towards the back corner. Draven followed her eyes and saw his shirt hanging in the corner over the bed.

  “Yes.”

  The girls all looked at each other, a meaningful sort of look, but one whose meaning Draven didn’t know. “You want it back?”

  He looked at the shirt and remembered the peace of the morning he’d put it on Cali, before the chaos started. “No. If she lives, she might need it at night sometime, if she gets cold. If she dies…use it for your baby.”

  He pushed the girl off his lap and pulled the tattered blanket back over her before standing. “Please take care of Cali.” He wanted to say more but didn’t dare, so he ducked out of the tin shack, leaving the three girls staring after him. He heard their whispers start as soon as he replaced the door. He could have stayed to hear what they said, but he didn’t imagine he wanted to. Instead, he went home to rest.

  But when he came up the stairs of his apartment, a surprise waited at his door. Two Enforcers he didn’t know stood leaning on the wall next to his apartment, both smoking cigarettes. He stopped short and glanced around. “Can I help you, sirs?” he asked, bowing his head as the law dictated.

  “We got a report you might be harboring a runaway sapien.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You happen to know anything about that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then you don’t mind if we come in and take a look around, do you?”

  “No, sir.”

  Draven put his hand on the panel to unlock the door. He knew the matter hadn’t gotten serious—if the Enforcers had believed what they’d heard, they would have gone into his apartment with or without his permission or presence. Since they had waited, they probably didn’t believe the report. But he still didn’t want government agents in his home, even if he hadn’t anything illegal in it.

  At first his mind went to Byron, but Byron wouldn’t call in a report. He’d come over to Draven’s and check for himself, probably as a friend rather than an Enforcer. Which left Lira as the most likely culprit.

  Not that he had anything to hide. Still, no one wanted Enforcers sniffing around, looking at his personal property and tromping through his pathetic, non-decorous life. Enforcers had high salaries and lived in fancy houses like Byron’s. A bare apartment with one tiny window that offered a view of the bare wall of the next apartment building must seem a measly existence indeed.

  One of the Enforcers stopped and looked at Draven’s small bookcase, the only thing outside his bedroom that belonged to him and hadn’t come with the apartment. “You got a lot of old books,” the Enforcer said.

  Draven stood against the wall, fuming at Lira. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “That’s pretty unusual.”

  “Yes, sir. I don’t have any illegal titles. You’re welcome to put them in the system and check, if you like.” Most Superiors didn’t care about things like books written by humans. But a few titles, mostly religious works, had been burned after the Time of the Takeover, and owning them brought severe punishment.

  “Oh, that’s alright,” the Superior said. “I just thought it was unusual. You actually read these old things?” He flicked the spine of a book called Crime and Punishment.

  “Yes, sir. At times.”

  “Huh. I’d think it was too inconvenient to have to haul out a paper book and look all through it for your place every time you want to read. How do you know where you left off?”

  “They have ribbons and things for markers, sir.” He thought of the marker in his favorite book, the antique picture of him with Anton. He should contact his friend, see when he planned to return. Soon, Draven thought.

  The Enforcer laughed. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. Seems like a million years ago I read a paper book. You don’t mind if I look at them, right?”

  “No, sir.” Of course he minded. But he couldn’t refuse a Second’s request.

  The Enforcer took out The Road and leafed through the pages while Draven watched. Something about the man looking in his things bothered him, even if he acted friendly. Was he looking for some kind of secret hidden between two pages—the way people had supposedly passed messages during the War?

  The other Enforcer returned from his inspection of the bedroom. He shrugged. “Nothing amiss as far as I can see.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Look at this, he collects old paper books,” the other Enforcer said. He seemed fascinated by the books. He even smelled it before he handed it to the other Enforcer. The other Enforcer handed it back, not sharing in his interest. “Oh, well,” the one with the book said. “It was worth it for a false alarm call just to see these old relics. You know, I bet you could sell some of these for good money. Antiques like these bring in a lot if you find the right buyer. People collect all sorts of odd things to remind them of the old days.”

  “Yes, sir.” Draven wanted nothing more than to get the law out of his apartment before one of them smelled a whiff of Cali’s lingering scent. But since he didn’t have her, he didn’t imagine they could do much even if they caught her scent. Still, he had to be careful, and polite, and show the proper respect to Seconds, and not offend anyone or speak too familiarly with Enforcers. So he waited for them to leave on their own accord.

  “Seems you’re just fine,” the Enforcer said, putting the book back into its place on the shelf. “You have a nice day.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Draven bowed to the Enforcers on their way out. He followed them to the door and stood inside, watching until their shiny solid-black car pulled away. Then he went down the stairs to pay a visit to his neighbor.

  He pounded on her door harder than necessary. She had either been waiting for him or on her way out—unlikely, given the late hour of the morning. She opened the door seconds after he knocked. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She turned away as if to go back inside.

  Draven blocked the door with his forearm and pushed it open. He followed Lira inside, invitation be damned. “You called the Enforcers on me?” he asked. “For what reason?”

  She shrugged. “I thought I’d do my civic duty and make sure you didn’t have any other poor saps up there starving while you pretended to help them.”

  “You know that’s not the case. That was a special exception. And if I remember correctly, you partook as illegally as I did.”

  She smiled. “But it wasn’t at my apartment, was it? I didn’t sap-nap it and keep it up there for days. I was only a bystander.”

  “I told you it only happened once, not that it’s your concern.” He turned to the door. “Now I’m going, and please don’t interfere in my life further. Do we understand each other?”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’d like that, wouldn’t you? You think you can just come by and fuck me at your convenience, any old time you want? And what, I’m so desperate that I’ll just agree, even if you treat me like shit afterwards?”

  He shrugged. “Won’t you?”

  Lira let out a shriek and started pounding at his defensive arm with her little fists. She packed quite a punch for a small woman. Draven wondered how old she’d been when she evolved. Like all Thirds, she would fit into the fifteen-to-twenty-five category. He tried not to mess with the ones who had been closer to fifteen, but Lira had the temper of a teenage Third. He’d
never thought to ask her age. He’d never even thought to ask what job she had or where she came from or her last name. She had only one purpose in his life, and it wasn’t worth nearly that much trouble. He’d rather sleep alone.

  “You’re not all you think you are,” Lira said, swatting at him.

  “I imagine I’m most of it.”

  “I can find a bigger man than you any day,” she said. “And one who isn’t some kind of sex pervert with a sap hidden in his bedroom.”

  “Then why don’t you?” Draven said, backing to the door. “I won’t stop you.”

  She shoved him hard. “Oh, you’re just infuriating,” she said, shoving him against the door. “Why do I bother?”

  “I can’t imagine.” He found the panel beside the door and hit it. He wished he’d never come down. All his anger had gone and he just wanted to get away from her. He’d never been good at fighting.

  “Don’t come back, you lousy piece of shit,” she yelled after him. “And you better be on your toes, because I’m gonna keep calling the Enforcers until one day they find something up there. Don’t you get too comfortable. They’ll be stopping by your place again, and you’ll never know when it’s gonna happen.”

  Draven climbed the stairs to his apartment. How was it that Lira could bore him and exhaust him at once? He saw his neighbor in the hallway and tried to hurry past, but the man stopped him.

  “Did you just have Enforcers raiding your apartment?”

  Draven sighed. “No.”

  “What happened? I saw them outside your door when I got home.”

  “They just made a mistake. Wrong man.”

  “Oh. That’s good, I guess.” The neighbor looked like he might ask more questions, so Draven cut him off.

  “It was good talking to you. Good day, then.” Draven hurried to his apartment and went inside, and straight into his light-and-sound proof bedroom and let the relief of darkness wash over him until he grew calm enough for sleep. He slept the whole day and woke on the evening of his trip. After checking the sky, he put on his darkest shades and a hat, and went out to his car. He might have just enough time if he hurried. A store caught his eye and he made a brief stop on his way.