“What’s wrong?” she asked, those blasted tears gathering. Cupcake had probably always been emotionally fragile. The original transition to thrall, forced on her by Warhammer to create a servant she could use, had weakened her, and my forced transition—to save her life—only made that instability worse. I was careful around her, not wanting to wound her more.
“I’m good.” Thinking back over her last words, I asked softly, “Watermelon?”
“I love me some watermelon,” she said brightly, and launched into a monologue about the various kinds. I lowered the damp, stinking bubble wrap below the table edge and peeled back the tape holding it together. It released and opened like a crinkly noxious flower.
Inside was a finger. A human finger.
Electric shock cascaded through me, igniting every nerve ending. I slid the napkin off my lap to the bench seat and placed the bubble wrap and finger on it. Studied it. Couldn’t take my eyes off it.
It had a rounded nail, painted with the remnants of purple polish. It was slightly stubby, hairless, and had been clipped off with something like gardener’s snips if the end was any indication. She had been alive when it was cut. There had been a lot of blood, and it hadn’t been washed off.
“You need to eat. That eggy stuff isn’t good when it gets cold.”
I looked at Cupcake, seeing her as I seldom bothered to. She was forty-two, blond, curvy, and prematurely wrinkled and deeply tanned as most Old Ladies are, from riding bitch seat behind their biker made-men. When she came to me, injured and near death, she had been hard-bitten and angry, but the transition had softened everything, including her mental acuity and her ability to handle stress. It made sense. She had been infected with bio-nanobots from her own queen. Then with my even weirder ones. My nanos were probably still doing battle inside her, still changing her immune system, brain, and body, down to the genetics.
Her tears spilled over. I had upset her. Again. I didn’t know what to do with Cupcake. She didn’t know what to do with herself. I had no idea how to keep her happy because all she wanted to do was work and serve me, her queen, like a worker ant in a hive-nest.
I wiped my fingers and lifted the fork. Carried some mushy eggy stuff to my mouth. It didn’t need to be chewed, was barely palatable, and only then because it was full of hot peppers and salt, but the yellow slop was protein, and no one wasted protein. I swallowed, despite the rotten stench rising from the seat beside me. Still beneath the tabletop, one-handed, I rolled the finger into the bubble wrap and my napkin. I needed to run diagnostics on it for identification, but not while Cupcake was in here. I quickly finished the peppery goo.
“I love broccoli,” I said, shoveling beets into my mouth. “I had broccoli pesto once. It’s good.”
“Oh mygod, yes. Anything with garlic and pine nuts is good. You ever tried Brussels sprouts pesto?So good!The greenhouse is just blooming up a storm,” she nattered on now that I had contributed to the conversation, once again cheery, her blue eyes sparkling. I ate and heard her say, “That new hemp mesh Mateo and I strung up? The stuff that was left over from shading the greenhouse compound? We put it up on aisle Tango three.”
“Mmm,” I said, now scooping in the pancakes. Trying not to puke at the growing rotten-finger stench.
“This place needs a good cleaning,” she said. “It’s getting kinda rank in here.”
“Right. Soon. New hemp mesh?” I reminded her.
“It’s absorbing and capturing moisture out of the night air like a dream. Come winter, we might bring in enough to actually get a shower once a week.”
That caught my attention. I swigged my coffee so I could talk. She poured me more. “Fresh water?” I asked.
“Nearly a week’s supply for drinking and watering the greenhouse, in a little over ten days,” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “We think we can do twice that in winter.”
My hand, holding the fancy fork, halted halfway to my mouth. “That’s . . . That’s really good.”
“It’s not a full replacement, yet,” she prattled, “but not bad for summer, and if Mateo and I can get that water tower off the office roof and patch it up, we’ll have a good place to store water.”
Something like pleasure, maybe mixed with joy, flowed through me—a rare and unexpected sensation. “I’m . . . I’m proud of you, Cupcake.”
Cupcake’s blue eyes widened. Her color went high as she blossomed at the praise. “Eat,” she ordered, pointing at my meal, shaking with elation.
I didn’t praise her enough. I had to remember to do that. I ate. The buckwheat and millet pancakes were tasty enough. The roasted beets were surprisingly sweet and tender.
“It’s good.”
She hid her smile in her coffee cup. That was the thing about thralls. They were eager to please,neededto please, quite literally might die if they couldn’t find a way to serve and didn’t get attention from their nanobot-donor queen. She set down her cup, whipped a nail file out of her pocket, and reached for my left hand. “Not this morning,” I said softly. To keep her from freezing in uncertainty, I continued, “Tell me more about the netting and the free water.” Then, because it made her glow, I added, “This is exciting.”
I spent nearly half of Smith’s Junk and Scrap’s profits on drinking water, and adding Cupcake to my expenses had already ruined this quarter’s budget. Since the Russians exploded WIMP bombs over Germany that punched a short-term hole in the magnetosphere, tore away the ozone layer, and wrecked the atmosphere, rain was a rarity everywhere, especially in the West Virginia desert. I usually got a shower only when I went into Naoma for supplies.
Cupcake talked nonstop through the rest of my breakfast about the water collection device and the long list of plant varieties she was planning. Finally, Cupcake wound down and said brightly, “I’ll feed the cats and get Mateo to bring the skids with our trade goods up to the entrance so we can pack the truck. I’m excited about our trip. It’ll be fun!”
Fun. Not the word I’d choose for a dangerous mission to gather the weapon we needed to kill Warhammer. “Good,” I lied.
She swept her blonde hair to the side, like a teenager. “Can I help you pack?”
“I’m packed.” She looked skeptical, so I added, “I packed the dress you insisted on.” I kept several duffels ready to go. All I had to dump in were the IDs and the toiletries for each trip’s purpose.
