"Bad news, Simy. I'm deaf. All's I can hear is... one big long note that goes on f'r effur. But I also figgured I'm nearly inviz-dible. M'masters go away a lot an' expec' me t' stay where I was. Wriggled outta them pretty-clothes an' got m'self gone. Ohyeah. I'm a pet now. They prettied me up 'n' all."
There was more light, here. Leaking in from the grilles and guards that let the air pass, but kept the fluff where it was.
"C'n ya help? I wanna get a prop'r work sheath an' then go tell Mama I'm okay an' I need you t' tell me when the shift whistle blows so's I c'n be back 'fore th' masters notice."
Eon stuck himself to her dominant arm. There were chemicals on her hide. Henna. Someone had made his Sahra into a fake, fashionable redhead pet.
All the past arguments he knew flooded back to haunt him.
Pets had better care than in the slave quarters. They had more room than in the hovels that the slaves put together out of any old trash they were allowed to keep. There was less disease. Better food. The Tu'atta could look after a human child better than its human mother. This way, they could get an education. This way, they could be bought up properly.
But it still didn't change the fact that someone had essentially used Sahra as an accessory.
A status symbol.
And he was powerless to stop them.
But he could help Sahra do the things she wanted to do - contact her family, find a useful occupation and do something constructive - without landing her a punishment from her new owners.
*
Mama did a lot of her work in a sewing factory. Sahra could see her from the vent across the room. Her job was to sew an arm-cover cloth onto one side of a short sheath, and pass it on to the next female, who did the other side.
Over and over again.
There was another vent on the wall near Mama's machine. If she could just get there...
But she couldn't whisper to Mama. Sahra couldn't hear it, but she imagined those machines made a lot of noise. She couldn't shout or a master would come over and shoot them both. And maybe Simy, too.
Sahra couldn't pass her a note. She didn't know how to make letters into words.
The vent was right near where one of Mama's hands slid along, guiding the cloth.
Sahra had an idea.
*
Ma Johnston was one of the few people alive who still knew her name was Mari. It didn't really matter, much. It didn't change the little MJ she put on her baby-time pictures. She was so used to answering to 'Ma' or words to that effect that Ma might as well be her name.
But there were too many 'Ma's here, where all the pregnant and nursing women worked. And if they weren't a 'Ma', yet, that was going to change inside a year.
Thousands of women were here, or in rooms just like it. Making shirt after shirt or pair of pants, likewise, or skirts or fancy coats for those who wanted to pretend they were higher up than they were. Or were higher up and on a limited budget.
It didn't matter.
She was useful, and it gave her a lot of time for prayer.
Prayers like, Please let me see all my living children safe again...
And then Sahra's hand, painted with a pattern of dark brown spots, reached out of nowhere and touched hers.
She gasped and stopped the machine, quickly snapping the thread and setting it loose so she could explain the stop if the Taan in charge should wander by. Bent to peek through the hole to the vent where Sahra's pale face smiled at her in a mask of brown spots and a baffling cloud of orange curls.
The grin turned into a 'shush' motion. She mouthed, "I can't hear, but I can read your mouth."
Ma whispered as she pretended to fool with the machine, "Sahra Johnston, bless you for thinking of your Mama. And bless the angels for guiding you here."
One less child to weep over. One less child to worry about. She was a pet, but that had not stopped her finding her family. Letting her Mama know that she was all right.
"Ain't found Duvi yet. Or nobody else. I'm'a look tomorrow."
"Thankyou," breathed Ma. She would share any good news she got with her mother's network. People she knew would not betray her news or her source to the kinds of people who reported things to the masters. "Go on back, now. Stay safe."
Sahra gave her a little salute and closed the vent.
Ma Johnston re-threaded her machine with a lighter heart. She never expected her God to answer her prayers so... literally. But that didn't stop her gratitude.
*
Sahra had not found Darvan, or anyone else she knew, this time through the tunnels. She felt bad about it, but it was time to get back to being a doll.
Simy was glad to eat all the dirt off her, but not the spots. If he ate the spots, her owners might guess something was wrong - or get rid of her.
Getting dressed again was not as easy as getting undressed. Sure, she could hide Simy and the work shift in the vent, but the doll-clothes were hard. Much as she hated the thin baby pants and the tight, short sheath, she had to get them on anyway. And getting into the sparkly sheath with the arm covers was a struggle.
She had it halfway sorted out when she noticed she was being watched.
The young-master's body servant was staring at her.
Sahra tried to swallow her fear and struggle into the hated cloth at the same time.
Then the body servant came over and pulled something that made the whole lot a bit easier to get into.
Sahra signed, Thank you.
The body servant signed, I am Teo. What you do today?
Find Mama, Sahra signed. Tell her I live. The rest, including Simy hiding in the air vent with Sahra's stolen sheath could stay her secret. I am Sahra, she signed it with the sounds, not the letters, since she didn't know how the letters went. The others call me, and she did the flapping hand on the forehead sign.
Teo frowned as she helped Sahra with the pretty-useless sheath. Tugging and guiding and tying things. That is bad word, she signed. Someone who not know hand-speak called that. They not say that for long.
Teo, after fixing Sahra's clothes, helped her with the signs. Puppeting Sahra's hands while Teo spoke the words as their heads touched.
"And this one," she said, guiding her into the hand-flapping-on-forehead motion, "is 'yaya'. Very bad word. This," a waving motion with a tricky bit thrown in, "is how to say Sahra."
They only had ten minutes before Barba-father -signed as a salute- and the young master -a C, even though there was no C in her name- came back expecting them to behave as useful furniture.
Of course, the first thing C did with Sahra's morning outfit was change it.
Sahra was learning a lot of words. Sleeve. Skirt. Dress. Socks. Underpants. Undershirt. Ruffles or frills for the wobbly bits. And there were two kinds of cloth with holes in; lace was the sort with patterns of holes and tulle was the stuff that was made out of six-sided holes. Ribbons were the strips of shiny cloth and laces were the strings that tied some things together. And names for colours she never knew existed. Like shades of red and shades of pink. And other words like Mauve and Fuchsia.
They were a lot like the dresses C had bought for Sahra to look pretty in. Mostly useless, and prone to snag on things.
Sir was fussing about the house. Taking all the valuable shiny things and making sure they were safe and out of reach of anyone likely to pick them up. The house slaves knew better than to touch anything they weren't told to. Almost like he was getting a visitor he did not trust.
Sahra had to hold on to C's hand and stay out of Sir's way.
Things in the main room were made to look nice, but were not expensive, like it was the rest of the time. C's room and Sir's room were locked shut. The rest of the slaves were dressed up in their most useless clothes.
Sahra couldn't make sense of it until she saw who the visitors were. A brown male and an almond-eyed female. Humans. They had sleeves. And shoes. Working shoes, Sahra could see by the wear and the stains on them. Working pants, too. Kept clean for this meeting. Both
male and female carried a box between them.
Sahra dared look up at their faces. The female was Eva! She'd know that funny-spot tattoo on her cheeks anywhere! It was all Sahra could do to pretend that she was a stranger and nothing was going wrong.
Sir bought deaf slaves so they wouldn't repeat what they heard to anyone. And no-one human dared look a master in the face so the humans could not read the master's mouths.
Sahra had been trying things, during her training in this house. She found out that she could watch the master's mouths if she didn't go as far as looking at their eyes. If she looked at their eyes, they noticed in a second, but their mouths were safe.
Also, it helped to look as if she were doing something different. Like playing with the lace on this shift's dress.
"Of course you have the money," said the big brown man. Sahra found it strange that he did not have any bleach marks on him. He looked right at Sir or C as if they were equals. He looked like he really hated the masters, but he also knew he had to deal with them to get what he wanted. "The question is if you have enough."
Sahra kept the frown off her face as she watched Sir's mouth, just under her eyelashes.
"Business has been soaring. Of course I have enough. More than enough, given your amusing price hikes." Sir was talking in human! Not in master. Not many masters learned more of the human language than to make sure no slave was insulting them. He made a gesture and his personal slave went off to a hidden place. They came back with a box in both arms.
Sir opened it.
Sahra had never really seen money before. Sure, she found the odd coin - dutifully turned in at the check-in point at the end of the days' scrounge. She had to wonder how brightly-coloured flat sheets of plastic could be worth anything. Plastic was not a good scrounge. It took up too much space and wasn't worth a lot.
C let Sahra off her lap and Sahra used it to get a closer look. So this was master money. Faces of masters and complicated patterns and funny ink that changed colour in the light. There were lots of colours, too. Master-word colours. Mauve, taupe, chartreuse, fuschia, carmine, salmon and aquamarine. Sahra couldn't read the writing on them.
Eva opened up the box she'd helped carry in. It was full of rectangular lumps. A plain, dark brown inside plastic and held tight with silver tape. It smelled weird. Sort of... rotten.
Eva picked her up and sat down with Sahra on her lap. She used Sahra's cloud of curls to hide a desperate whisper of, "What are you doing here?"
Sahra pretended to hug her. Got in real close to the woman's ear. Whispered, "I'm deaf 'cause of you. You an' your boss say stuff 'bout strikin' a blow for freedom, but the only freedom you got is death. Y'ain't gonna get nowhere killin' humans. Y'ain't gonna win, neither. And I owe ya sumpin'." Quick as a cat, Sahra chomped down hard on Eva's tattooed ear.
Eva had to play nice and put Sahra down and shoo her off, back to C.
Sahra could tell she'd drawn blood. This one time, it tasted good.
Sir and the male swapped the brown lumps for the money, though the male insisted on counting it all. Putting colours together in same-size heaps. It took him a while, but so did Sir. Carefully taking out each lump and weighing it in his claws. Sniffing carefully at the plastic wrapping each time. Counting.
Eva was glaring at Sahra. Sahra glared right back. Both kept all their hate only in their eyes. Eva broke first, looking at the henna dots all over Sahra's skin. At the way C held Sahra like a doll. At some of the other slaves, some of them were doing a bad job at hiding their hate for Eva and the male with her.
Nothing was said. Nothing could be said. But Eva still made some signs with her fingers. Four. Five. Papa. Sierra.
That was a repair node near docks and locks. Sahra nodded carefully.
More secret signs. Three. Day. Second. Shift.
Sahra nodded.
Eva mouthed, "I'm sorry."
Sahra mouthed, "Pass it on."
All while the male and Sir were busy counting and C was busy fussing with Sahra's hair.
The business got done, sealed with a handshake, and both men went away with their prizes. Eva went, too. The night got back to normal, with Sir and C having their dinner and the humans getting whatever the masters decided to let them have.
Sahra was growing to hate evening meal. C sat Sahra up on a tall chair with belts to hold her in and put on a special cap to keep her hair neat and a bib and spoon-fed Sahra like a baby.
Luke-warm, mashed-up pet chow for humans. Sahra had seen the masters buy it. They had a huge section in the store, between the cat kibble and the dog food. It had been five days for her as a pet, and she was already itching for something to chew that wasn't someone's ear.
Not that it didn't taste good. That was the icky part. It was all delicious. The part Sahra hated was that C had to feed her like a baby.
Sahra knew what spoons were for! She was six! Anyone who thought that a human couldn't feed themselves after they got potty-trained had to be some kind of dumb. But the masters thought it was cute, or something. And Sahra had to let them.
Better to be a doll than dead.
If she was alive, she could do something.
*
The recharger was working. Hooked up to one of the working wires in the abandoned ore processing place. Sahra put the power units in, certain they were facing the right way, and watched the little lights blink.
Sahra was getting used to light naps in the night. She got her sleep in during the early morning, when C was busy with getting ready for her day.
Recharging empty cells would take time. Lots of time. She should have gone back to her pet-bed and the soft and comfortable sleeping-sheath. Night-dress. She wanted to see some progress before she did.
Her eyes closed on her despite her excitement.
She woke to a sickly, greasy, foul smell and Simy poking her.
Her recharger was on fire!
Sahra pulled the power out and blew out the flames, coughing at the smoke. The tears in her eyes weren't just from the smoke. She'd been so close to being able to do something real. And now everything was just junk.
Simy cleaned her off all the way back to C's room. And small wonder he had to. Even she could smell the stink.
C giving her a bath was the worst. Sahra had to sit in a cold tub of soapy water and sharp chemicals and sickening flower scents while C, Sir and Teo rubbed and scrubbed at her.
Still, today was the day Sahra was going to tell off those rebels. And give them some sharp ideas instead of the rotten ones they've been trying all this time.
She got out of the tunnel, changed back into the baby pants and night dress, and folded her stolen sheath and hid it away.
C was still fast asleep.
Sahra tucked herself in and got what rest she could.
*
It had been a chaos morning for the masters. C had left Sahra in her night-dress and run out the door in a panic. Sir was not far behind. Something - maybe Sahra's burning recharger - had caused a power failure in the night and none of the alarms had gone off.
It just made it quicker for Sahra to slip away.
She halfway took apart the burned recharger to see if there was anything she could fix. It was good and dead.
Bad and dead.
Just plain dead. And a bad thing in all. She stopped back for lunch, given to her in C's room by Teo. And a side of sign lessons. And then it was off to the repair node to meet with the rebels.
Eva had a bandage on her ear. Juliet had his knife out. Sahra, of course, stayed out of their reach.
"So," said Juliet. He'd been told, because he kept his face facing her. "You think you know way much more about striking at the infrastructure. Look at you! You're six. You're damaged. If someone didn't think you could be pretty enough, you'd be someone's dinner. We have been fighting for our freedom for centuries. What do you think you know that you could teach us?"
"I don' even know what innafstruckshur is," said Sahra. "But if ya wanna hurt th' masters, ya
gotta hit the masters. None o' them was even in ore sortin'. They was out f'r lunch. Ya wanna hurt 'em. Hit 'em whur they is."
"What?" said Juliet.
"All the upper-ranks go to a speshul lunch room 'bout an hour b'fore human lunch. They gots speshul stuff so's they don't got t' see no humans. The masters, they don' care if'n slaves die. They can breed more. They don't care if ore processing gets broke. They gots other ones. Or they go build other ones. But masters? They care 'bout other masters. Ya hit there, they goin' listen to ya."
Juliet started to try to jump up at her, but Eva held him down. "No. She has a point. She had a point when she bit me. Nobody's going to be on our side for killing slaves. In fact, some Tu'atta like us just for that. I've heard them. They say we're our own best argument against us."
"But she sounds--"
"Like a deaf kid who is trying to say something important." And that was that. The argument was won. Eva turned on her fake smile. "Two agents can be here in another three days. Will you show them the special lunch room?"
"Y'r gonna giff me time t' get on outta there, right?" said Sahra. "I been tolt my ears might come back. Don' wanna be no doll for-effur."
Eva nodded. "We can do that."
"An' I wanna rechargur. Nuthin' like that busted one you left inna tunnels. An' some power cells. Good ones."
"--busted--? She did bloody steal it."
"Anyfint I find inna tunnels is mine," said Sahra. "It's the rules."
"Julian, her knowledge is too valuable."
"She's a damn retard..."
"Only if you listen to how she sounds. If you listen to the words..."
Simy tickled her leg. "Shift change. I gotta go." And she just crawled away. She imagined Juliet was spewing some curses after her.
Let him.
She had to keep up her play-act with C and Sir.
*
Eon did hear what the human known as Julian had to say about his Sahra. He had a large vocabulary and a creative way of using every last curse known to humanity. Not just speculations on her heritage and sexual activity, but also aspersions of her character, mental abilities, sexual preferences and eating habits.
Most, if not all of them, were physically impossible.
Eon knew that Sahra couldn't hear him. This was a good thing in his mind. That did not stop him from wanting to wreak a very personal vengeance on the man. Give him a reason to regret saying a single bad thing about his Sahra.
What am I thinking?