Sand Red

29

We reached the Red camp the next morning and my wound was cauterized. I had regained some of my wits and it occurred with my consent. I could not move for two days after. The bullet was sold to the Reds. With all of mankind's advancements in medicine and engineering, here we were, selling a bullet out of my body and cauterizing wounds with my sleeve in my mouth so I would not crack a tooth from the pain. It was laughable.

Yul approached me from the doorway and I turned my head a little so I could watch him come, taking pleasure in this little freedom of movement.

'How do you feel?'

It had been an hour since cauterization and I did not feel great. 'Great,' I answered.

He sat down at the foot of my bed. It was our own blankets, from the camp, of the ones we had left with the Reds for want of space. I felt homesick in the familiar smell of it. Homesick for the camp we had abandoned. When Jordan was alive.

'Duke said they know nothing about glass or the Internet. I'm convinced they're lying about the Internet. No way they could've done all of this by themselves.'

I couldn't think clearly because I was in so much pain. I grunted noncommittally.

Yul continued,'We have to find out what they're hiding. To be real honest, I don't think we can survive out there again. The plain hunger kills you.'

It's hard to eat in the desert. The Reds had not taken kindly to our unwelcome intrusion again and Kolya had ordered the guards to kill us when they had reported our arrival to him. He seemed to be in charge of security and that was quite unfortunate because it seemed he didn't like us.

Humorously enough, we were only alive because of our blankets. We had come to take it back, Yul had said. The Reds were no raider camp. They had let us in. Duke allowed us to stay when we confided in him our idea of terrarium farming. I thought it was a dangerous idea to spread the word of closed farming among our competitors for resources, but my companions seemed not to understand this. Only Syenin had voiced agreement with me. But we really had no choice with the Reds.

'What poison was it?' I asked him suddenly.

He looked surprised. '024.'

I drank this in. So he had been given ethanol. He was lucky to be alive. I really could not think straight just now. My pain was too intense. I wished futilely that I had fought better on the day I'd been shot.

Yul flicked an inquisitive ant off his arm absentmindedly. 'What do we do without the Reds' help?'

I was tired of his obsession with the Reds. 'There's more people in the Arctic Circle than just the Reds.'

He looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. 'I've never met any people like them. Have you ever seen bloody farms?' he asked excitedly.

I breathed shallowly, resting my chest and my arms and my mind. 'I haven't slept since the day before,' I said abruptly. I knew it would be close to impossible to sleep through the pain, which still burned as though the iron had been embedded within me, but I wanted Yul gone. His voice hurt my head and the light streaming in from the window hurt and I wanted them gone.

He surveyed me quietly before getting up. 'Sleep well,' he said softly, remembering I was hurt. I moved my face away from the window as he tread noiselessly out, and lay drunk with pain, lulled to an uneasy sleep by the gentle throb of the borewell outside.

When I awoke, it was dark. I looked around to find the figures of my friends on the blankets around me and I tried to sit up and was met by excruciating pain before I remembered the events of the previous day.

I groaned as I rolled back.

I lay back and stared at the blackness of the ceiling until a small voice said,'How is it today?' I looked around to see Syenin with his eyes glittering in the dark.He really did have big eyes. I wondered where he was from.

'Horrible.' I gave a little laugh.

'I've been cauterized, too. Sorry about the pain.'

I looked back at him. He was a child. 'How old are you?'

'Fourteen?' It sounded like a question.

Far too young to suffer like this. 'Where are your parents?'

'Dead, like I said,' he said flatly.

Most everybody was dead. I laughed to think what the average life expectancy would be if we calculated it today.

'So the Reds won't help at all?' I had not been to a single one of their meetings and I felt like a child and I didn't like it.

'I know they're keeping a secret. But you'd do it too if some strangers showed up to ask for coveted technology.'

'If we figure it out, they'll all benefit. We're the ones taking the risk!' I argued, knowing I was wrong in the way people think.After all, we are only on Earth because of the cruelty of the astronauts.

'I still don't think I'd do it. So, what will we do if the Reds don't help?'

'I don't know. It's them that take all the decisions.

'You can be a part of them, too,' he said softly. 'You've just got to speak up. Can't expect them to invite you in like you're special. And it doesn't help how jealous you are of Aida being friends with Yul.'

'I'm not jealous!' I said indignantly.

'You want him to yourself. Anyone can see you care about him.'

'I don't. He's just my best friend. I'm not jealous,' I insisted.

There was a rustle as Syenin shifted. 'Anyway, the New World is no place for drama. Survival takes effort enough.'

It wasn't. It wasn't a place for love, either. It's irrelevant if you die the next day. Living is all that matters because the most intelligent species on the planet is just surviving now.

'They were wrong,' I said suddenly. 'The astronauts were wrong. They should have taken as many of us as they could and killed the rest so we'd never have been born.'

'You're here now,' he said listlessly. 'What are you going to do? Die?'