Chapter 32
“You’re an agony aunt, JI.” Sawyer shook his head. He’d been spilling his guts to a mech.
A small plant had budded tiny red flowers, and he was idly twisting them into a braid.
“I am not sure what that is, Sawyer, but I do like hearing of all your human troubles.”
They were sitting below the warbug, with the machinery making cooling-down noises above them – ominous groans, creaks and even whistles. Beyond, the jaggs chased each other in circles. They’d run off to catch food, drag it back, and eat it then go back to chasing each other again.
Sock monsters with legs and fangs. Big sock monsters – these two seemed to grow daily.
“And...” Sawyer pointed out, from where he sprawled in the lemony grass. “You love offering solutions. Even though you know damn close to nothing about psychology. This also makes you an agony aunt, I believe.”
“I will wear that badge with pride, sir. Now. Tell me more.”
“What about?” he mused gently. “Love?”
“If you wish to. Excuse me.” His head twitched repeatedly for a minute before it calmed. “My extended brainware has flaws.”
“Nothing serious?”
“Prediction currently...five months before I expire.”
That wasn’t something any person could say without emotional turmoil. “Are you okay?”
“I cope because I have to. Is that not what most of you do? Ari copes with this situation, torn between freedom, you, or Osta, because she has to. I wonder who she will choose.”
“Freedom isn’t an option. It’s me or Osta.”
“And since Osta has not revealed his bad side to her, perhaps –”
“I can’t get anyone to spill the beans. They lie to me or dodge, I think. I’m sure he killed her, and that makes it likely he’s done it before. I mean, it was the first night I met him.”
He barely registered as Martha shredded some poor squirrel thing then gulped it down in one somewhat tattered piece.
“Then let me add this. I have heard things. I find the others don’t count me as a listener. Perhaps they see me as a thing rather than a person?”
“What?” Sawyer sat up. “You’ve heard what?”
“They say he’s killed...” This time JI’s head wobble was deliberate. “Four or five of his female slaves. He likes to strangle them as he fucks them.” JI fell silent for a moment. “People are fascinating.”
A black mood rolled in. Was no one normal here? He knew he wasn’t, but then, what was normal?
“Fascinating... Not when we kill each other. Can you do me a favor and leak this information to Ari?”
“I can. In return, let us speak of love.”
JI wanted payment? How very human. “What do you want to know?”
“What is it?”
Hard fucking question. “It’s when two people like each other so much they’d do almost anything for the other person. They care for each other a lot. And...” He waggled a finger. “It’s not always sexual. Parents and children. People and their pets –”
“Like these?” JI waved a hand at the two gallivanting sock monsters.
“Hmmm.” He coughed out a laugh. The jaggs were covered in gore.
Who needed a long gun for protection when you had these two?
“I’m...not sure.” At that, as if she’d cottoned onto being the subject of the conversation, Arthur galloped over, flattened him to the ground by thudding several paws onto his body, and licked his face, then she ran off again.
Spluttering, Sawyer sat up, wiping clean his face of stickiness.
“That has to be love.” Somehow JI was beaming.
“It’s...something.”
“And you and Ari are falling in love?”
“Hell, no. Not sure I can love. Not here. Not now.” Aerthe squashed any tendencies to love. He hurt people too much on this world. Ari in particular. Though he was correcting that. A little.
“You’re a smart mech,” he muttered. “Who are you in love with, JI?”
“Ahhh.” JI plucked a handful of red blossoms and held them to his head sensors, as if sniffing them. “Myself? You? Ari? I think I was almost in love with Emery, but I moved on. Emery used to tell me Shakespeare.”
How many times had JI told him that fact? He was repeating himself.
“You gotta decide, man. Can’t love that many.”
“Oh I don’t want to fuck you all, Sawyer, so I think I could.”
Snorting, Sawyer flopped onto the grass on his back again. He studied the riveted belly of the warbug. The things this mech came out with.
“Another question. Why do people fuck?”
“It feels good. It makes children. Though not with humans plus anyone here. We can’t breed.”
He sort of wished that were untrue. The Mekkers had done their studies though and those guys tended to be thorough. No kiddies for him. Babies were fascinating, squishy, chortling things that smelled of the future. A good future.
“That’s it?”
JI made it sound disappointing. Were there other reasons? “I can’t think of any? To impress the neighbors? If we were on my world, you could do it to get government welfare payments?”
“They pay you to fuck?”
“Nooo. If you have kids you can get extra money to help raise the family, in some countries.”
JI nodded. “Then they pay you to fuck.”
Sawyer cocked an eye at JI. No use arguing. He’d figure it out logically or not. “They pay you to fuck, sort of. Indirect logic chain.”
“Best sort of logic. Is this the day you feed your Arthur some of your blood? I have a knife.” From somewhere, JI produced a knife and offered it to Sawyer, point first.
“Thanks...” Gingerly, he took it.
“Alas.” JI sighed pitifully. “I still have not figured out how to kill. Killing and fucking are my goals for this year.”
“Always more to get done, hey? Never-ending work.”
“I can tell when you use sarcasm now, Sawyer. I am a military bot. I should be able to kill.”
“It’s easy after the first one,” he said absentmindedly as he poised the knife over the back of his arm. This only required a small cut and a few drops of blood, or so Ari had said.
“Can I assist...Sawyer?” JI had leaned in and was staring – looming really.
Morbid damn mech.
“No.”
“Love and blood. These are a few of my favorite things.”
He should probably take JI off his Christmas card list.
His one regret so far on this journey was that Ari was avoiding him. Difficult to drag her into his bunk and screw her silly when she did that. Difficult to put stripes on her ass and make her his. Life was being difficult.
His goals for the year, no, the week – Ari with a red ass.
At least they weren’t killing each other.
The trees were getting lusher, thicker, the animals hairier and scarier and better at screaming. Where the swathe had been brought down forever was less than a few days away, according to the navigator.
He had the knife tip poised when the sound of someone descending and jumping off a ladder behind him made him check. It was Ari.
“I have to do that too.” She sauntered up, black pants swaying side to side in that gorgeous hip-rolling way a voyeur like him could indulge in for eternity.
Tight pants and snug, body-fitting shirt – was she trying to tease him? He’d seen her talking to a few men and had been hard pressed not to go over and lightly punch them in the face. Luckily, none of the men had seemed terribly interested in her.
She stopped, legs apart, hands on those hips. “Want me to do the cutting for you?”
“Sure. We can trade. I get to cut you after.”
Eyelids lazy and low, she snorted. “I think I will pass on that. I don’t quite trust you.”
Funny that.
“I think you trust me more than you think you do.” The rise of her eyebrow amused him. “JI has some information for you.” He carved a scratch on his arm and whistled Arthur to him.
JI relayed what he’d found out about Osta. She sneaked a look at him afterward – as if to say, so you’re the best chance I have?
Yes, he totally was.
“Let me cut you, and I’ll give you the knife and sheath.”
She drew back, angling her head.
Osta could argue against her carrying a weapon. He held out his hands, palm up. “I gave you a bullet.”
Exchange of trust, and she gained a knife.
Though it took a more few seconds of her examining him with a steady gaze, no fuss, she finally said, “Okay.”
Ari sat on the grass next to him, offered him her arm, and he cut the scratch, watched the jagg come over and lap.
Not a nothing moment. She’d trusted him.
He handed over the knife, the sheath. “I’d hide that. Osta might object.”
“Thanks.” Then she looked down at herself. “I’d have to find a bigger shirt to hide this on my belt.”
That would be a pity.
“I’ll ask around. Maybe one of the women has a light coat they can loan you.”
“Okay. That would help. Tell me why. Why did you give me a knife?”
A good question.
“If it comes to it, don’t be afraid to use it.” He couldn’t be more direct. If she ever did use it, he’d have to be ready to run with her.
She looked at him as if he’d said the world was flat. Of course, maybe Aerthe was flat. He hadn’t gone looking. The braid of flowers drew his attention, and he picked it up and joined the ends, making a rough bracelet.
With no more preamble than a smile to her, he took her hand and threaded the bracelet past her fingers to her wrist. It dangled there, a pretty reminder of the bondage she’d often suffered for him. She seemed fascinated by it, which boded well, he thought.
Sawyer pushed himself to his feet.
“My advice for the day, Ari.” She looked up at him, met his eyes, her hands crossed in her lap and ever so casually her fingers lay over the bracelet. “People can either go through life together or apart. We choose whether to be together or apart, no matter if we’re two feet from the others or two miles. We choose how alone we want to be.”
If his ways appealed to her, she’d come to him.
When next he saw her, she wore a lightweight mulberry coat that came down to mid-thigh and had a new belt with a huge gold-toned buckle. The knife sheath would be on that. Be still his beating heart. She looked like the heroine out of one of his old steampunk books. Or a girl pirate. Either of those would do him.
And the flower bracelet...showed at the edge of the sleeve.