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"No, but that’d be so nice for us to hook up"
"Yeah, let’s make that a priority I’ll lock the cockpit fros"
"That’s all I can do," her ed the Wadi to its favorite spot behind her neck and keyed opened the door She snuck out, locked the door with her captain’s codes, and then hurried toward the cargo ramp
The"Hey," he said, proving to be not quite asto think of so rah the stables, around and under the parked ships, and headed toward Pete Hopefully he could help
Before she got close enough to ask, however, he called out across the dusty lot, his hands cupped around his mouth: "Scottie and his boys find you okay?"
"What?" Molly asked "It’s not okay they found ht after you checked in The for your father for some time"
"He’s not with me!" The Wadi sca its head in one of the baggy pockets on Molly’s cargo shorts
"That’s right! You told me that didn’t you?" Pete smiled at her and pulled his hand out of his coveralls He had a toothpick sticking out of his fist, the exposed half dark purple He put it in his ue to slide it to the other side
"I want them off my ship," Molly told him
"Well, now, you’ll have to talk to them about that" Pete leaned to the side and so trail of the stuff hung from his lower lip, thick as molasses He reached up and swiped it aith his palm, then rubbed it on his coveralls
Molly looked at the stains covering hirease If any
"I tried to tell theo," she complained "But they wouldn’t listen"
"Could be they think it’s their ship," Pete said flatly
"What? Their ship? That was my father’s ship and now it’s mine!" Molly looked down at the Wadi as it tried to curl itself into her pocket Its tail swished in the air, then disappeared
"Well, now" Pete spit again, dribbling it right down the front of his coveralls The maneuver seemed to save him a step or two "What I heard was your daddy owes Scottie soht have a claim on her" He nodded toward Parsona "Besides, why’d your daddy give such a fine ship away? How old are you?"
"Where’s the sheriff’s office?" Molly asked, ignoring the questions and cursing herself for allowing a tangle of lies to develop
"Directly on Main," Pete drawled
Molly turned and headed off in the direction of town
"But he’s gonna tell you just what I said," Pete hollered after her
ѻѻѻѻ
Molly followed the busiest road into town She preferred the thick plumes of dust from the traffic and the catcalls from the vehicles’ occupants to the unknown of quiet streets Especially with soin the air
Most of the cars on Lok were large-tired buggies suitable for travelling between toith no interconnecting roads They passed by in one of two speeds: slow--the people trying to sneak away from the trouble they’d just caused; and fast--the ones about to effect their own
Ignoring offers for rides and things less-pleasant, Molly kicked at rocks along the shoulder and fu on her ship and likely going through her things The Wadi rode along across the back of her neck, its tiny claws gripping her shirt and a little flesh, its head lolling with her gait Gru to herself, Molly walked past rows and rows of politicians s down fro her so for just a few drops of blood
She stopped at the outdoor counter of the first cantina she caht water for herself and the Wadi She chose her left pinky for the vote, even though it ollen to the point of uselessness Her new strategy was to sacrifice one digit co, her Wadi curled across her forearainst her chest Molly dripped water into itslike that caused her to flash back to planet Drenard and that hot, arid, and dusty hike they’d taken together The comparison of that horror-filled day to her current annoyance lifted her spirits so as she didn’t look up at the fleet in orbit, she could pretend things weren’t quite as bad as they could be
Another buggy roared past, kicking a plume of chalk into the air Molly could hear the powdery dirt crunching between her teeth, could feel it turning into a filulp of water and tried to fight off the panicked sensation she sometimes felt in crowds--the need to run and escape fro the vacuum of space
As she made her way into the center of town, her complete dearth of vivid memories of the place struck her for the first ti Bekkie with her father several times, but they were just er lifetinized was the tall church, its several spires sticking out over town And even its familiarity was likely no raph, or a postcard that she’d seen round down to an even noisier standstill around the central square Buggies with trailers unloaded goods, while Sisyphean storekeepers swept dirt back into the streets, and pedestrianshorns The town had a familiar odor and sound, a boisterousness that touched her nostalgia, but it also seeer and more crowded than it had before
Perhaps it was the political rallies, which Molly could hear in several directions Theynames or terse phrases that somehow captured an entire (and er crowds had so to do with the Bern fleet Perhaps rural Lokians had come to Bekkie in hopes of an affordable ticket off-planet, only to find the strange ships overhead weren’t allowing anything of the sort
Then again, not thatup, at least not beyond the posters of s While Molly stressed about her faalactic proportions, everyone else orried about whether or not their candidate would be in pohen it all ca down What little politics she’d followed on Earth--a planet that never felt enough like holier on Lok In yet one more way, the planet she had been born on felt incredibly foreign to her
One thing she could reed, was the paucity of non-Hu on Earth with all its diversity for sospent the last teeks in the poorer countryside--Molly felt abnorh, it made her feel more conspicuous She felt like the only alien in town, surrounded by nothing but Terrans, and therefore unable to blend in