Death Cultivator Read online

  “Please, honored guest, quench your thirst and be welcomed into our humble home.”

  Usually when people call their house humble, they’re trying to pretend like three bathrooms, an upstairs, and a finished basement is nothing to brag about. They’re not asking you to drink water out of an open barrel that looked like it’d been sitting for a while.

  But I liked these guys. Plus, they kept saving my life. Pretending like I wasn’t going to get dysentery from their welcome ceremony was the least I could do.

  “Thanks, uh, honored host.” I took the cup, scooped some water out of the barrel, and drank it.

  It was hot and tasted kind of like the air smells after a summertime sprinkle on a gravel road. Up against something like fresh, cold shut-in water, rain-barrel brew definitely wasn’t going to win any competitions. I nodded and tried to smile like it was great.

  “He drank it!” Rali crowed, clapping his hands.

  Kest giggled. “That’s so gross.”

  “You jerks.” I frowned down at the barrel as it dawned on me. “Is this, like, the toilet barrel or something?”

  “It’s for washing,” Rali said, wiping his eyes. “And Kest uses it to quench metal.”

  I threw what was left in the bottom of the cup at him, but that only made him laugh harder, so I got him in a headlock. We wrestled around for a minute, laughing like dorks. Rali was a lot stronger than he acted. There had to be some serious muscle under that fat. But I gave him a good run for his money, and we both ended up on the ground.

  “I’m nonviolent,” he yelled between snorts. “You’re beating a nonviolent man!”

  “Tell him to stop pulling my hair!” I yelled.

  By then, Kest was doubled over holding her stomach. “Honored guest!”

  “You guys are the worst,” I yelled.

  I stumbled a little as Rali threw me off. We stood there panting for a second, both of us waiting to see if the other one would start things back up. When neither one of us did, I dusted off my jeans and looked at the shipping container.

  “So, is this even your house or are you lying about that, too?” I asked.

  “That used to be our house,” Rali said. “But Kest’s shop took it over.” He pointed to the lean-to. “That’s our house now.”

  Kest scraped a boot in the dirt. “The new room’s nicer anyway. You can sleep in it without suffocating. Breezes never make it inside the shop, even when you leave the door open and the vent fan on.”

  “I believe that,” I said, eyeing the metal sides.

  “In all seriousness, we need a real supper,” Rali said. “No freeze-dried Meal Bagz. Tonight, we party. I’m making soba.”

  He ducked into the lean-to.

  Metal clinked as Kest picked up her bag of scavenged materials and headed into her shop. A generator cranked to life, and light flickered on in the shipping container and the lean-to.

  I hadn’t realized how much my eyes had adjusted to the darkness until I was squinting at the light coming from Kest’s shop. The wood lean-to was lined with a string of white Christmas lights—or probably some other kind of holiday in this universe—but what was flooding out of the shipping container was like the brights on a new car. I wandered over to the doorway, followed by some big moths.

  A high-quality work lamp hung from a hook on the ceiling. It looked like the only new piece of equipment in the shop.

  Back home, Gramps and I had had a little shed behind the trailer house, where we kept the mower and a bunch of junk he bought at yard sales and flea markets. Literal junk. Old boxes of bolts, rusty tools, implements he was going to fix someday. Tons of it, all piled up in a shed the size of a bathroom. And more always seemed to appear over the winter. Every spring, I had to drag half the shed out just to get to the mower.

  Kest’s shop was like that, except three times as big. A couple workbenches had been built along one wall of the shipping container, one slightly higher than the other, but both piled high with tools and parts and grease rags. Shelves stacked high with scrap lined the back wall, while the wall opposite the workbenches had hooks and pegs on top, hung with engine belts, and the bottom half was a pigeonhole shelf on steroids, one hundred percent full.

  I let out a low whistle.

  Kest was bent over by the pigeonhole shelf, offloading stuff from her bag. When I whistled, she straightened up suddenly and glared at me.

  My face got hot. “I was whistling at your shop. It’s impressive.”

  “Oh.” The black lace spread out from her eyes and patterned her cheeks.

  “Whoa,” I blurted out.

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—it’s just, where I’m from, no one’s eyes can—” I made myself shut up for a second and think about what I was trying to say. “The black stuff in your eyes was all over your face, too. At first, I assumed it was some kind of special pupil, but if that was the case, it couldn’t spread to your skin, could it? Is it some kind of camouflage response?”

  Kest frowned for a second like she had no idea what I was talking about, then she caught on.

  “You mean the capillaries?” she said, pointing to her eyes. “Yeah, the network in our eyes is always visible, but the network across the rest of our skin comes and goes.” She held out her arms. After a second, black lace flowed down them in a wave, appearing, then fading. “It gets easier to control as Selkens get older. My mom used to be able to wear hers like clothes and change the patterns every day.”

  That made a picture pop into my head of Kest with nothing but that lacy pattern on, so I hurried up and changed the subject.

  “Doesn’t seem like it would blend in really well around here,” I said. “With all the reds and browns of the sand and stuff.”

  “Yeah, but if you ever see a picture of Selk, it’s spot-on.” She went back to her bag and pulled out the improvised machete, setting it on the workbench.

  “Selk?” I messed with a grime-encrusted spring and got stuff all over my hands. “Is that your home planet?”

  “Technically, Van Diemann is our home planet. My mom and Rali and I were all born here. Mom’s parents were political prisoners—part of a failed coup or something—our nona didn’t like to talk about it—and the sentence for that on most Confederated planets is transportation until the third generation.”

  “Which is you and Rali.”

  “Which is why we avoid criminals.” The stinky flesh-boots came out of her bag next and overpowered the scent of grease and rust. “Third genners can buy their way off Van Diemann. If I can just make enough money for a ticket, we’ll have a clean record and we can live anywhere.”

  Kest found a metal bucket full of bolts, dumped its contents into one of the pigeonholes, then put the boots in and filled it with a mixture of oils and liquids from cans on the shelves under her workbench. The result smelled like antifreeze and old lady potpourri and those Black Ice car air fresheners all rolled into one. It was enough to make my eyes water.

  I switched to breathing through my mouth. “What’s that stuff supposed to do?”

  “It should kill the microorganisms making that smell.” She covered the bucket with a wide piece of tin, then climbed up onto the bottom shelf of her workbench, reached up, and switched on a fan cut into the ceiling for ventilation. “A lot of them, anyway. That’ll help the price. Somewhat.”

  We stood there staring at the bucket and listening to the vent fan for maybe a whole minute.

  Then I asked her, “How much does it cost? A ticket out of here?”

  “Off world? It depends on who you can get to take you.” She adjusted the tin on top of the bucket. “But I’d say I’m about halfway there.”

  Rali came into the shop bearing bowls of what looked like green ramen with vegetable chunks. In spite of the lingering heat from the day, the steam curling up from the bowls was pretty enticing. My stomach growled.

  “Supper is served,” Rali said.

  Then he caught a whiff of the boots and deodorizing soluti
on. The lace in his eyes thinned out until it almost disappeared.

  He turned around and headed back outside. “But if you want it, you have to eat in the new room.”

  Prison Planet Sunup

  YOU KNOW HOW SOMETIMES you wake up and you have no idea where you are? It’d only happened to me once in my old life. I’d been really little, maybe three or four. We were supposed to be at my dad’s friend’s house for a few minutes, but that turned into hours and hours of me trying to find something to do while the adults partied. Eventually, I got tired, so I found some towels and curled up in their shower. I don’t know why the shower. Weird stuff seems like a good idea when you’re little. Anyway, when I woke up, I was all alone and had no idea where I was, so I started crying and hollering for Dad. He didn’t come, so I got myself under control, then went and found him passed out on the couch with his buddies.

  My first morning on the prison planet was similarly confusing, but I didn’t start screaming. The first thing I saw was a ring of stones around a smoldering fire pit. I was lying on a thin blanket on a hardpacked red dirt floor. I rolled onto my back. The walls were boards and planking and the ceiling was rusty corrugated tin, spot-welded to mismatched metal poles and beams.

  The welds jogged my memory—Kest and Rali. We were in their new room, so named because they’d built it two years before, when Kest’s collection finally pushed them out of the shipping container.

  The wind had picked up the night before, blowing weirdly cold air through the cracks between the boards while we ate, but with the fire going and the three of us crammed inside, it’d been warm enough. Being such a big guy, Rali had actually gotten hot and went to sit at the entrance for a while to cool off, but I’d thought it was comfortable.

  I craned my neck up so I could see what was behind the top of my head. The twins’ empty hammocks hung by the wall at the end of the room. They were already up and gone.

  The crackling, buzzing sound of a welder came from the shipping container, so I knew where to find Kest.

  Down past my sneakers, I could see Rali sitting in the lotus position out in the flat, red dust, with his face turned up to the pale blue sun high in the sky. He had a long, straight wooden pole laid across his legs. He must’ve gone looking for a new walking stick while I was sleeping in. Over on the eastern horizon, the white sun was starting to come up.

  I spent a couple minutes stretching, then got up and wandered outside. I’d asked about bathrooms the night before, and after a bunch of sarcastic answers about toilet barrels, the twins had finally pointed me toward an outhouse a ways off. That was my first stop.

  Once that was taken care of, I headed back to the rain barrel and splashed water on my face and hair. I was usually pretty good about getting up in the morning, but I liked to get a shower and a cup of coffee to wake all the way up.

  I swiped the excess water off my face and looked up at the blue sky. Was Gramps sitting at the coffee maker like he was every morning when I came out, waiting for it to finish gurgling? I didn’t like to think he might be planning my funeral. He’d had way more trouble in his life than any old guy should because of my dad; I didn’t want to cause him pain, too. Whatever was going on, I hoped to God he was okay.

  Had everybody at school already found out I was dead? Probably none of them even cared. Or they would pretend to care so they could all cry together and feel important. Somebody would probably call my dad, too. What would he do? Wish he’d been a better dad while I was still alive?

  It was dumb, but I kind of hoped so.

  “Hey, Hake, do you want this old Winchester?” Kest asked, coming out of her shop. But what she had in her hands wasn’t a rifle. It was one of those giant watches everybody wore. “It’s basically archaic compared to the SignalSongs, but that’s probably to your advantage since you don’t have an implant. These models scan the user every six hours to update the Spirit data instead of syncing with an implant. I made some modifications so it would run a little faster, but don’t expect light speed.”

  She said it all in one big lump like that, so I didn’t have a chance to respond until she got to the end.

  “Winchester?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.

  Kest nodded. “Named after the inventor of the first Spirit-tech machines, Calvert Winchester. He was actually a human, like you, but he was from a free planet. He still did pretty well for himself, though.”

  I looked down at the screen. It was about the size of a playing card, set into a band of dark leather, a little scratched up from use.

  “I don’t have any way to pay you for it.”

  “It’s just old junk.” She shrugged. “Nobody would pay for a Winchester, especially not in this condition. That’s why I haven’t sold it. You’re going to need a HUD anyway—a Handworn Utility Device—for communication and credits and basically everything. You might as well take one that’ll function without an implant.”

  She held it out, waiting for me to take it, but I didn’t move. Ever since I’d realized I was poorer than other kids in school, I’d had this thing about being given stuff. It wasn’t a pride thing; I wasn’t against charity, but it made me feel guilty. Like I should’ve been good enough or smart enough to get whatever it was myself. It’s about a thousand times worse when it’s your friend trying to give it to you.

  “Maybe I could find some work in town today.” If I was stuck in this universe, I was going to have to find a way to support myself. “Then I’ll take it when I can pay you.”

  “You can’t get work in town unless you’re in with the OSS. That’s Of Smoke and Silk, the gang that controls Ghost Town. Small-time and unaffiliated, but still a bunch of criminals.”

  I frowned. “I could scavenge, like you. Maybe in couple days I could buy it from you.”

  “Or you could work it off in trade.” Kest leaned back into the shipping container and dragged her bag out into the blue-white sunlight. The thing looked jam-packed to capacity. “Lug this junk around for me today, and you’ll have worked off twice what the components of a Winchester are worth.” When I looked skeptical, she raised her HUD—a SignalSong 6.0 according to the faded logo under the screen—and swiped around it while she said, “It’s basically all obsolete. See?”

  She held her wrist out to me. Parts names and prices scrolled down the screen.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said, promising in my head to find out how much a working Winchester was and get her the money somehow.

  Kest helped me strap the HUD to my arm. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. The leather was stiff but sturdy, like a new ball glove before you wear it in. If you ignored the screen, it looked like an old-fashioned wrist protector for bow hunting.

  “Thanks,” I said, adjusting it. “How do I charge it?”

  “It should stay charged via the radiation in your system.” She pointed to some faded tooling on the band that looked like kanji. “The script pulls rads out of your tissues and uses them up, sort of like the terminals of a wet cell battery.”

  “Is there a button—” Before I could get the whole question out, the HUD made a crunchy clicking sound and a loading screen started up.

  Scanning... Please do not take off your Winchester Arms Handworn Utility Device...

  Kest sighed like this was taking forever, even though it was done in a couple seconds.

  The loading screen disappeared, and a new screen popped up.

  Name: Grady Andrew Hake

  Race: Human

  Height: 5'7"

  Weight: 139 lbs

  Age: 16 Van Diemann years (Current Location), 14.4 Universal years

  Blood Type: O

  Spirit Type: Please enter Spirit Type

  Spirit Reserve: 9

  Available Credits: No account information entered

  “Yikes,” Kest said.

  I’d been busy scowling at having my Universal age knocked back down two years, so I didn’t realize until then that she’d been reading over my shoulder.

  “What?”<
br />
  “You’ve got almost as much Spirit as a rock.”

  “Is that bad?” I looked at the reserve stat. “Do I need more?”

  Her HUD started beeping. She tapped it, lace eyes scanning the message.

  “Probably not today,” she said. “I’ve got to meet my smuggler in town, and we should get you a Universal bank account. We can work on cultivating when we get back. I don’t have a diviner, so we’ll have to figure out which Spirit type you are by experimentation since you didn’t get an implant when you were born. But that’s no big deal. People used to do it all the time.”

  “Sounds good.” I hefted her overflowing bag onto my shoulder. It felt as if it weighed about ten billion pounds, but I pretended like it was nothing. Something sharp poked me in the back. I squirmed the load around, trying to find a comfortable position, but something new was always poking me, so I gave up. “Lead the way.”

  Kest turned to where Rali was meditating.

  “We’re going to meet Naph and get Hake a bank account,” she said to get his attention. “Are you coming?”

  “Yes.” Rali picked up his walking stick and stretched it up and behind his head, groaning as he did. “We ate the last of that broth mix with our soba last night.”

  “Think the general store will have it?” Kest said, giving her brother a hand up. “They didn’t get a supply run last month.”

  Rali dusted off the seat of his raggedy shorts, then leaned on his walking stick and grinned at me. “If they don’t have it, I’ll get Hake to go swimming and catch us a creek carp so I can make some from scratch.”

  Coffee Drank

  GHOST TOWN WASN’T A big place. Just like on Gunsmoke and basically every other Western ever, there was one dusty main street lined with false-fronted businesses and boardwalks. Everything else seemed to have grown outward from that. We came in on a narrow footpath from the east, passing shacks made of salvaged material like the twins’ at first, then real houses made of wood and glass. The farther into town we got, the wider the path became, until you could drive a car down it.