Page 114 of Homebound
“Help me lay him down.”
“It won’t work. I’m afraid his condition is permanent.”
Gemma slowly raised her eyes to his. “He’s the landlord, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His fine eyebrows did their twitchy thing. “He snored.”
“How can you joke about killing a… Tana-Tana person! And I thought you only hated humans,” she wailed.
“I don’t hateallhumans. And it wasn’t a matter of hate, Gemma. You,humans, attach emotions to everything. I killed him because I needed to take over this place.”
“This is so cruel.”
He looked at her, impassive.
“Can we at least bury him?
It was the first time Gemma observed Simon wince.
“Not yet.” Seeing her expression, he hastened to add, “He’s sitting here for a reason. He needs to be seen from the street as if he still lives.”
“What? Why?” She sounded shrill to her own ears, but the idea of going about her daily business with a dead body behind the curtain was nothing short of aberrant.
“This place belonged to him,” Simon was saying. “It’s an illegal pawnshop and black market trade post. You can get anything here, for a price. I killed him to get his business, to obtain some items that are hard to come by. But the customers are skittish. Some will watch the place for days before approaching. I can’t risk them disappearing just because the old owner is suddenly nowhere to be found. There are things I can’t find on my own. At least not fast.”
Gemma’s heart was still beating erratically. The body was making her twitchy. “What things?”
“Come with me. I’ll show you.”
Turning her back to the Tana-Tana but painfully aware of his silent presence behind her, Gemma gingerly picked what clothes she needed out of a dusty pile on the floor. Reminding herself that beggars weren’t choosers, she tried not to think of who the garments may have belonged to, and what happened to the previous owners.
Quietly, they went out into the gathering dusk, and she followed Simon as they made their way deeper into the junkyard. Gemma stayed close to him, his big body and a big gun tucked into his waistband giving her a measure of confidence. The place had always given her heebie-jeebies. She had never imagined breaching the perimeter and walking among the carcasses of old machinery. It was eerie. Dead.
Simon expertly navigated around obstructions until they reached a circular area within which once-powerful shuttles lay in eternal repose, cockpits stripped bare of all instruments, and doorless hatches gaping like empty eye sockets of skulls.
Simon stopped, and Gemma stopped with him.
Turning to face her, he said quietly, “You know I want to leave Earth and go home.”
Gemma sucked in a breath. She’d always known it, but hearing him say it packed quite a blow.
Had she been so naive as to secretly hope that he’d stay with her in the City and make his life here? Without a place to live, without any means of support, constantly looking over his shoulder for Dr. Delano?
Her shoulders slumped. “Of course you want to go home.”
“You’re coming with me.”
She blinked. “To Enzomora?”
“Yes.”
