Earthseed

Ho fired from his perch. A few stray beams struck panicky young people. The alarm sirens wailed, masking screams.
    Ho dropped to the ground; Zoheret followed. The wail of the sirens grew louder as they approached the fence. Three older people had made it to the storehouse and now stood on the porch. “Stop!” one man cried. “I warn you, stop.” Owen and Daniella halted near the steps. Ho, a short distance behind them, aimed and brought the man down. A cheer went up from those behind the barbed wire. Aleksandr was already leading his group from the woods.
    “Don’t move,” a voice shouted from inside the storehouse. “I have a lethal weapon, and I’ll use it.” Zoheret approached the porch slowly. “I said don’t move. I can kill a lot of people before you stop me.”
    Zoheret’s hands dropped to her sides. “Don’t come nearer,” Daniella screamed at Aleksandr. “They’ll kill us.”
    A woman emerged from the doorway, holding a long gun. She had shoulder-length hair, pulled back, and olive skin. Zoheret had seen her face often. Her mouth grew dry. The woman lifted the gun to her shoulder. “Don’t move, or you’ll be the first to go.”
    “Geula,” Zoheret whispered. “Geula Aaron.” She walked toward the porch steps. Owen was waving her back. “Geula.”
    “Get back, girl,” the woman said. “I mean what I say.”
    “Geula,” Zoheret said; her voice was a wail. “Mother!”
    The woman’s eyes widened. Zoheret stood on the bottom step and looked up. “Mother.” Her voice cracked. “I know you, I saw you on the holo. Mother.”
    Geula hesitated, then aimed. Zoheret tried to duck. The heat seared her left arm; she screamed. She saw a beam strike the woman as the pain flared up and pushed darkness into her eyes.

20
    “Feeling better now?” Maire was standing over her cot. “We were worried about you.”
    Blurred images surfaced; faces peered at her, arms reached out. She focused on Maire, and the memories vanished. “What happened?”
    “They’re all under guard now. We’re lucky—some of the kids here rose up and fought with us. We’re treating injuries now, but there’s nothing we can do for the two dead men. That boy used that weapon on them, didn’t he.”
    “I did.”
    “Well.” Maire looked away. “We’ve told everyone here who we are, and that we came to help. You’ve been out for a long time.”
    “How long?”
    “All day and all last night.”
    Zoheret pushed at the blanket covering her. “It was my mother who shot me—I know her face. I called out to her, but she shot anyway. My left arm—it hurts a lot.”
    Maire drew her eyebrows together. “Zoheret—it isn’t easy to tell you this. You lost your left arm. We couldn’t save it. It was almost burned away—there wasn’t much left.”
    Zoheret was unable to speak. She shook her head, rolling it from side to side on her pillow. Maire was wrong. Her arm was there; she could feel it. She struggled up, pulling the blanket from her. Someone had taken off her shirt; she saw only a scarred stump where her arm should have been.
    Turning away from Maire, she covered herself again. A lump rose in her throat. She wanted to cry out, but emitted only a sigh.
    “Some friends are waiting to see you,” Maire murmured.
    “I don’t want to see them.”
    “They’re very anxious—”
    “I don’t want them here.” She felt Maire’s hand on her shoulder and waited, unmoving, until the woman went away.

    The door opened with a squeak. Halting footsteps approached Zoheret’s bedroom door and shuffled toward her. She turned over and saw Anoki standing near the doorway with a tray. “I brought your lunch.”
    “I don’t want anything.”
    “You have to eat.”
    “Go away.”
    Anoki came in, put the tray down on the floor near her, and sat down on the other bed. “I’m not going until you eat.”
    She pulled up the blanket, not wanting him to see her deformity. “I don’t want any food, and I want to be left alone.”
    “Well, you can’t. This is Lillka’s room, too, and she wants to sleep in it tonight. She can’t stay in the storehouse forever.”
    “I don’t care about Lillka.”
    “You should. She wound up fighting on our side. So it took her a while to get wise. At least she did the right thing in the end.”
    “I don’t want to see anyone.”
    “You fool.” Anoki’s voice was stony, his eyes expressionless. Only his low, trembling voice revealed his anger. “At least you’re alive.