Wonder Maul Doll

By Kameron Hurley

We'd set down in Pekoi as part of the organics inquisition team, still stinking of the last city. We're all muscle. Not brains. The brains are out eating at the foreigners' push downtown, and they don't care if we whore around the tourist dregs half the night so long as somebody's sober enough to haul them out come morning. When the brains aren't eating, they're pretending to give us directions in the field, telling us where to sniff out organics. They're writing reports about how dangerous Pekoi is to the civilized world.

We're swapping off some boy in a backwater push the locals cleared out for us. We're sitting around a low table. I pass off another card to Kep. Luce swaps out a suit. She has to sit on one leg to lean over the table. It's hot in the low room, so humid that moths clutter around our feet, too heavy to fly.

The boy's making little mewling sounds again. Somebody should shut him up, but not me. This is my hand. I'm ahead.

Ro's got her feet up on the chair next to me, head lolled back, eyes closed. She's sweating like a cold glass.

Telle finishes up behind the curtain. She took her time with the boy, the kid. Not a kid, I guess. Looks young, too skinny. They're all pale as maggots, here, built like stick figures. She pushes into a seat next to Kep, flicks on the radio tube. It flickers blue-green, vomits up a misty shot of President Nabirye talking trash.

"Turn that up," Ro says. She passes me some sen. Her teeth are stained red.

The boy stumbles past the curtain. He's a little roughed up. Ro throws some money at him.

Kep crowns my king. I steal an ace.

The boy clutches at the money in the mud; moths' wings come away on his hands. There must be something Ro doesn't like, cause she stands and roughs him up some. He starts squealing.

Elections back home are in a month. President Nabirye's nattering about foreign policy in Pekoi. President says we'll be home in six weeks. Three of our squads just got hashed by a handful of local boys and teenage girls.

"They don't pull us out soon, and they'll ship be shipping us home in bags," Telle says. "Nabirye won't be in that seat in six weeks."

"Nabirye can eat shit," Kep says.

Ro cuffs her. "Watch the yapping." She sits down and starts polishing her boots.

The boy on the floor isn't moving.

We've been here nine months looking for treaty violations, organic dumps. Bags of human sludge.

We haven't found a fucking thing.

There's nothing dangerous in Pekoi.

#

Ro has me and Kep on point. Kep's all right, a talker, doesn't keep the tube on all the damn time like Telle. We're checking out another field the brains sent us out to sniff. Running fire drills, Ro calls it. We're mucking through half-filled ditches, cutting open suspect corpses, raiding contagion shelters.

"So," Kep says, "sister says, I want to marry her like in the books. Like, for love. A pauper. Mother Mai says –"

"Fuck you?" I suggest.

"Yea, yea. Mother Mai says, you marry for business. It's in the Bible."

"Is that truth?"

"Yea. Book of Theclai. Page eighteen. Line ninety-five."

"Thou shalt eat fish?" I say, wondering if we're talking about the same book.

"Hold!" Ro yells from behind us.