Invasive Species 02: Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace

Author:Joseph Wallace [Wallace, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780698179455
Publisher: Ace
Published: 2015-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

SHE COULDN’T BE sure, but Aisha Rose thought she might be dying.

Mama had told her that on the dreamed earth, people used that word all the time. “People would say it,” she said, “even if they didn’t mean it. Didn’t come close to meaning it. ‘I’m dying here,’ they’d say, and no one would give it even a second thought.”

Aisha Rose, days out of Nairobi, heading east across the savanna, realized that was another difference between the dreamed earth and the one she lived on and would die on. Back then, before the dream ended, you could say almost anything and mean something else, and everyone would understand anyway.

You could say you were starving, or chilled to the bone, or terrified, or dying, and mean that you hadn’t eaten in a few hours, or you needed to put on a sweater, or that you were nervous about something, or that you were merely very bored. And no one would take you seriously. They’d know you were exaggerating, and that you likely had never been any of those things, not really. Nor had they.

But back then, it was to your advantage to say things you didn’t really mean. On a huge and crowded earth, filled with floods of people like the ones in the pictures she and Mama looked at, you’d be invisible if you weren’t noisy. No one would listen. You’d be drowned out.

But life was different now. If words themselves mattered at all—and Aisha Rose had begun to wonder if they did, even as she continued her nightly recitations—then they only mattered if they meant something. They only mattered if they were true.

* * *

THE TRUTH: AISHA Rose was chilled to the bone.

Huddled beneath a thorn tree that she was too weak to climb, she watched the sun descend toward the western horizon. Even the last trailing outskirts of Nairobi had dwindled and finally disappeared. Now all that was left was endless bush stretching in both directions. She was already starting to shiver.

These were the patterns of her days on the savanna. Midday here in the bush was so hot that the sweat slid off her body in sheets—except when she couldn’t find enough to drink. Then her sweat would dry up, her tongue would swell in her mouth, the sun would twist her thoughts into disorganized fragments, and she would find herself losing minutes, even hours, as she staggered forward, one step at a time. Or, finally, retreated to the shade to rest and wait.

At first, when the heat began to ebb, when the sun began to lose its blistering strength, relief would almost overwhelm her. But it wouldn’t last long, because she knew what the night would bring. In just a few hours, as soon as the chill began to seep—and then flood—into her, she would crawl under a blanket of leaves, a leafy fallen branch, or some vines.

It didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing. Sometimes she had nothing.

Inevitably, the shivers would begin. Her

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