busied himself in the kitchen and brought out two cups of water. He gave one to her, and also sat.
He took a long sip, and Lexi did the same. The water felt cool in her mouth and stung her dried lips.
“Old Tom spotted your sail while working on the transport outside. Now tell him where you came from?”
She had to concentrate to understand him, he spoke her language but he pronounced things oddly and sometimes used words she didn’t know. Transport?
“My clan- habitat, number 47.”
“Is it close by, can you get back?”
“No, it’s not close and they won’t take me back.”
Tom frowned. “So, they tossed you out, huh? Why did they do that?”
An order, she had to answer though she didn’t want to. What if he tosses me out too? “I’m a third-born daughter and my father didn’t pay my keep-price.” She didn’t mention being a product of adultery–the answer was still true.
“Old Tom comes from far away and doesn’t know about your people’s customs. You’re going to have to explain better than that.”
Now Lexi burned with curiosity–where did this strange man come from—but she didn’t dare ask him. She tried her best to explain. “I’m the third daughter born to my mother, and only two are allowed by clan law. If the keep price isn’t paid, then the unlawful girl must be turned out when she comes of age unless an older sister is barren or died before having daughters. Daughters make more babies and there is only so much food.”
Tom laughed a great rumbling laugh that echoed off the smooth walls like thunder. When he stopped, he had to wipe away tears. Lexi didn’t understand what could be so funny about her fate.
Finally, he regained his composure. “I’ve read about your people. A very long time ago a bunch of folks thought they would go live in the desert. Back then, the machines that built these habitats were still working, you see; so when the population got too big they would just have the machines build a new one. Each habitat would be a collective where they shared everything.” He rolled his eyes. “No money they thought, only kindness and sharing. Worked great when they could mooch off the labor of the machines, but the machines stopped working like they did everywhere else. Now they’re turning out children to the desert to die.”
I’m a woman now, not a child. At home, her father would be picking out a husband for her among the men willing to pay him a marriage gift.
“Look at this place, they must’ve run out of power-cores and had to leave. Old Tom can see they tried to dig new wells, but the water’s too deep and without power they couldn’t get to it. Probably all left and died from a solar storm like the one hitting us now.”
Lexi barely understood anything he said, her mind felt lost in the open desert.
“I used the transport’s power-core to fire up the old pumps, so Old Tom has water to spare, but my provisions won’t last forever. You can stay if you can manage to get something to eat out of those plants out there.”
He paused and regarded her. “You got a name?”
“Lexi. And I can make food from the scrub-tree leaves and spike-bush stems, Old Tom… Sir.”
A smile formed under the bristles of his beard. “Welcome to your new home, Lexi.”
She kept his dwelling clean, and made what meals she could from the sparse desert plants. Despite his words, Old Tom did share some of his provisions, the food bland but quite edible. Eventually, Tom had her scouring the habitat along with him to find old wires and little boxes filled with strange innards. Almost all he discarded, but a few he kept for working on the metal monster he called a transport. He wasn’t nice exactly–he’d get cross with her, growl, and tell her to go away sometimes–but he didn’t get angry like her father did, just grumpy. All in all, she decided she liked Old Tom.
One time they spotted the freshly eaten carcass of a sand-lizard, and Tom taught Lexi how to use the metal stick he called a rifle. From that time after, she carried it with her when she went outside to harvest food. She found herself having to stray further and further to find good plants. They may have water enough, but food would eventually be a problem. Lexi didn’t have seeds to start a new garden in the habitat.
On one of her forays, she spotted a wall of muddy red far away on the horizon. Another sandstorm, a big one. That’s when the sound hit her, like someone smashing the sky with a hammer: thump, thump, thump.
She spied the source in the sky–the metal monster had taken flight. The thing that Old Tom called the transport hovered over their home. Huge wings had extended from its sides, but they didn’t flap at all. She saw the four hoops making little motions like some creature adjusting its limbs, the blades inside the rings spun so fast they had become blurs.
The transport climbed up high, swooping around the orange spires of the rock formations. Lexi could do nothing but watch, entranced by the monster, the brutal sound at odds with the graceful movements. Eventually, it lowered itself back to its original resting place.
When she returned, Lexi found Old Tom chuckling to himself and loading provisions along with bottles of water into the thing’s belly.
“About time you got back. Old Tom got the transport working again. Nobody thought he could get it working the first time. Now he’s repaired it twice.”
She went about helping him carry his supplies from the habitat to the transport. To her eyes, the inside of the thing–she never had permission to enter it before–appeared as nothing more than a cramped dwelling.
“Old Tom wants to leave before the storm gets here,” he said after the last load. “Blasted things can last a long time and he’s an old man with little patience.”
Lexi stood at the door of the monster’s belly and faced him, eyes lowered. She shouldn’t ask him, she really shouldn’t, but she didn’t want to be left alone. She raised her head to peer at the dark circles he always wore over his eyes when going outside.
“My father turned me out, so I figure there’s no need for a marriage gift for me,” she tried to make it sound like an offhand remark, but she knew Old Tom would be too clever. Girls were married off to men even older than him sometimes, and he was a good man.
He laughed one of his big, deep laughs, though the wind whipped away its power. “Old Tom’s already had two wives and isn’t looking for another. He’s never had a daughter though; he’d be willing to have one of those.”
She smiled back at him, feeling warmer and happier than she had… ever.
“Now let’s get out of here before that blasted storm hits.” Old Tom shut the door behind her. He hurried to the forward cabin and Lexi followed.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said in a stern voice. She folded her hands in her lap.
The whole monster vibrated as Tom pressed some numbers that appeared as lights on a panel. More lights appeared on the windows in front of them, numbers, symbols, and lines that meant nothing to her. The sound of hammering air encompassed them like a noisy blanket. It made her feel foolish, but she couldn’t stop grinning as she watched the ground fall away.
“We have to fly low, the wind currents are too strong up high,” Old Tom told her. They skimmed above the desert much swifter than any skiff, kicking sand off the top of the dunes.
Every so often, they would land so Old Tom could rest. With every stop, the sun sank closer to the horizon. She’d never in her whole life seen the sun move from its spot in the sky, so she risked asking why. Her newly adopted father didn’t seem to mind questions so much.
He pulled out a square of paper and made a drawing of two circles far away from each other: one big, one little. “This isn’t to scale, but it’ll give you the idea. Now, pretend this circle,” he pointed to the little one, “is the sun. The big one is the planet where we live. One side of the planet is always facing the sun and one isn’t. As you move away from the side facing the sun,” he drew lines from points on the big circle to the little circle, “it changes the angle you see i
t at. We’re moving toward the dark side, so it looks like the sun is getting even lower.”
Lexi thought she understood. However, the idea that they would go someplace the sun never appeared sounded in equal measures thrilling and terrifying.
More than the sun changed, they made a long trip over open water where they couldn’t rest. Here, the wind tossed the metal monster about and the water below moved in huge choppy waves.
“The smooth ride is over,” Tom said, “your home is in a calm zone, like a lazy stretch in a fast moving river. This is normal.”
She’d never seen a river, but Lexi got the idea.
When they reached land again, the world under them changed. Black-leafed plants stretched out as far as Lexi could see. These were nothing like scrub-trees and spike-bushes; they stood tall and very thick, bent to face the sun hanging low on the horizon.
“Don’t go outside,” Old Tom said when they landed for a rest. “There are creatures out there far more dangerous than anything from the desert.”
“Is this where your people live?” Lexi asked.
He chuckled. “No. Maybe if we had this kind of technology,” he patted the wall of the machine’s belly, “but rifles aren’t enough to conquer the Twilight Lands. The creatures that live here don’t take to squatters, and that’s what we all are. We came from the sky a very long time ago. But that wasn’t your question, was it? Old Tom and his