Chameleon in Chrome Ch. 10

*****

Since we last saw our intrepid bunch, they'd gotten off Earth fairly clean with no one chasing them. D'Jymm just thinks that they must have blown through and were gone while any authorities were at lunch.

Now he's being very careful, sneaking out the back door, laying low and leaving his navigation lights as well as the IFF transponder switched off so that his vessel won't just tell everybody around who they are.

The young people who came aboard with Lucas in the last episode figure prominently in this as they all try to figure out their place as the vessel forges on, heading to the outer rim of our system.

I hope you like it.

0_o

*****

D'Jymm had been very careful in how he'd been negotiating his way to the outlying parts of the solar system. Several times, Lucas had found him looking at navigational plots overlaid onto maps.

"I wish to leave the system," D'Jymm said, "but I want to do it in a concealed way, though without it seeming obvious."

"I know what you're trying to do, "the old man smiled, "I also know how it feels to be doing it. I don't know if there's any equivalency to my example here, but it's like a teenage driver needing to get home after a party where he or she has had just enough alcohol to need to worry over being illegal, and is in possession of Daddy's commuting floater without permission.

"Double jeopardy.

"You don't dare to just go straight home because you know that there'll be cops someplace along the way and it's late at night so your chances of being pulled over are greater. At the same time, you've somehow gotta get the chariot back into the driveway before Pops wakes up to take the vehicle to work.

"So there you are, sweating the miles as you drive the backroads home."

D'Jymm thought that he understood it and he nodded, "I think that there might have been some personal basis in fact to your example, yes?"

Lucas nodded, "Yeah, at least a time or um ... eighteen. It was a long time ago now, but I still remember the feeling of driving those nights. It felt like tiptoeing through the lion's exhibit at the zoo at 3:00am."

D'Jymm, who had been to several zoos and even seen lions, nodded.

-------------------

The two young people who'd come with Lucas had spent a little time wandering the vessel and had found a large shower area not far from the cargo hold. It was filthy. They took this news to D'Jymm.

He nodded, "It is there if the crew has - or has had to handle dirty cargo so that there is less chance that whatever they are wearing is tracked everywhere afterwards. The water supply is separate from the rest of the ship so that there is no danger of cross-contamination."

He was a little astounded when they volunteered to clean it.

"We want to be useful," Ric said, "and it will take some time."

D'Jymm nodded, "I have no doubt, given what I know of the ones who were on this vessel before. Go ahead then."

-----------------

The pair walked off to get what was needed for the job and they had no illusions about the time required, but then they were looking at a lot of time anyway.

It took them a week of hosing the walls down, scrubbing, more hosing, more scrubbing, etc, until it began to resemble the way that it had looked when the ship was manufactured.

Daniella and Maria came by with sandwiches to look in a few times. A small bit of curiosity came into it and they wondered whether this was being done by the pair to hide themselves away for a time. Just asking the question was difficult.

Carlita nodded somewhat reluctantly, "I guess that there's some of that. We know that we're different and no matter where we've been, we've gotten questions.

"And please, both of you, I haven't felt like I was a really young girl for a while now. Could we please upgrade me to just Carla now?"

Daniella and her cousin nodded with smiles.

Maria said, "We're only being a little nosy, Carli -- uh, Carla. And we don't need life stories or anything, though we'd offer our own in exchange for getting to listen to yours sometime because from what we were told, it could be a while before we get to where D'Jymm wants to go.

"Come on," she grinned as she indicated herself and her cousin, "It's not like we're not odd ourselves, is it? We'd rather be friendly than silent and for that, we'd need to get to know you at least a little. Don't worry, we won't judge you. We're the probably best ones to be able to understand, I think."

"And if you need some help with this, we'd like it if you asked us," Daniella smiled, "it looks to me like those toilet bowls over there are going to be a fight to get properly clean."

Ric and Carla looked at each other and shrugged, "If you want to help, then please ..."

Over the next few days there were usually three out of the four of them working at cleaning the place up at any time since Daniella and Maria had agreed that someone had to be watching their children, so they alternated. It gave them all chances to get to know each other. There was an age difference between the pairs, but it was only a few years and they liked each other anyway.

"I still can't believe that you volunteered us to clean toilets," Maria grumbled good-naturedly one evening.

"Yeah," her cousin nodded, "but we're getting to know them and hopefully make friends out of it. Plus, I want to be able to have a shower in a place where I won't keep banging my elbows against the wall while I'm trying to wash my hair. I won't just watch them cleaning up that shitpile and then waltz in like I've got a right to it.

"Besides, there is one of that rarest of washroom treasures in here. That stall over there all by itself."

Maria looked and nodded, "Yeah? What is that?"

Daniella grinned, "A female urinal. It's got a big lower part to it and you drop your underwear, sit in it and pee. We'll have to really scrub that one out. Whoever was here before, some guy just used it like one of the others and nobody ever cleaned that one since it's in a stall. You don't see the problem; you don't need to do anything, right?

"Think like a pig."

"Eww," Maria groaned.

"Have you noticed anything about Ric?" Daniella asked to change the topic.

Maria shook her head, "Other than he looks so shy and cute and uh, delicious? No, why?"

Daniella shrugged, "I can't say how I know, but from the way he looks and a little of the way that he acts, I think he might not be a he at all."

Maria shrugged, "I haven't noticed, but I'll be paying more attention now, I guess."

Daniella said, "There's something else. Something about them only I don't know what. I can feel that they're the same as we are so we're all Nahuals. I just can't feel ... "

She shook her head, "It changes sometimes -- what I feel from them, like they're something else then, still Nahual, but like another kind in the same body. Next time that you're talking to either one, try to feel at the same time."

-----------------

When it was over and the entire area gleamed, Maria and Daniella sat in surprise in the galley after dinner once Lucas and D'Jymm had gone to plan out the next leg of their tortured route out of the system and taken the little ones with them. The women were looking at cups of wine. The cups were the reusable ones that the galley machine spit out the drinks in, but that didn't take away from it.

Maria was astounded, "Where did you find -- "

"If you look hard enough and go right into all the submenus," Ric smiled, "it's there. Not a lot of choices and none of it is within a dozen light-years of connoisseur grade, but it's wine and it's there."

"We don't have much to our names -- just like you from what you've said of yourselves, but we really wanted something to thank you for all the help," Carla smiled. "And it was really good to have somebody else to talk to. We're like you in that, only really having each other, though now you've got D'Jymm to be with as well."

She turned her head to look at Ric, "Well? Do you still want to do this?"

He took a deep breath and nodded, "As long as they agree."

"Agree about what?" Maria asked.

"They'll need more wine," Carla smiled.

"Coming right up," Ric nodded and a moment later, there were another four glasses on the table.

"Ok," Carla began, "We weren't really sure if we should tell you originally, but we knew who you both were from the first day that we came here after we heard your names. We've never been as far east as your village, but we heard about your family from our father -- um, not Lucas, I mean our real father. We come from west of you, about sixty-five miles.

"What we heard was that the ... uh, troubles because of the refinery were a lot worse where you lived because the village is fairly close to the facility. Maybe it kept the issue top of mind in the ... well, more aggressive people.

"Because there wasn't much of a town structure there for a long time and because of that there wasn't any police presence, we heard that the people who were -- I dunno how to categorise them -- long term residents there had been slowly killed off and any Nahuals or even regular people who were related to known or suspected Nahuals were actively being hunted."

Maria and Daniella both nodded.

"That's how it went. We're the last that we know of," Daniella said, "just us and our two kids. That's it. Everybody else who didn't manage to get away is dead. Since we're no longer there, and assuming none of the 'arrested development gang' saw us as we left, it will probably take a little time for them to realize that we're not there anymore."

"Then they'll get the big disappointment when the legendary 'Oil People' don't come stampeding back. That myth is what the biggest idiots -- the leaders - have been trading on, that we were keeping that from happening. Me? I hope they all enjoy starvation."

"Anyway," Maria nodded, "you were saying?"

Carla exhaled, "We know that you had an uncle named Alberto."

Maria and Daniella looked at each other blankly for a moment. Then Daniella nodded, "Yes. He was our mothers' brother. I don't think that we ever met him though."

Ric said, "He left your village the year before you were born and wanted to go where there was a lot less murder happening. But it didn't work out because I guess that he didn't get far enough away."

Carla nodded, "Oh yeah, big shitstorm because of him. He only got as far as where we were born. He met a woman there and married her some years later, but one of her friends liked to look over the fence, you know what I'm saying?

"He got both of them pregnant." She chuckled, indicating herself and Ric with her hand, "I can't think of how his day could have gone any worse later on when the blessed events came along.

"We were both born the same day -- the children of the same man -- to women who knew each other and lived right next door to each other as well! And it was a very small village. Everybody knew what had been going on."

"Wait," Maria interjected, "So what you're saying ... you are brother and sister but by different mothers ... a -- and we -- we're all ... "

They nodded. "Yes," Carla said, "Alberto was our father and we're all cousins. We heard about you, that there were two Nahual widows left in that village and they wouldn't leave and they never gave up and we heard that they even fought back and killed some of the murderers."

"We thought of trying to come to you, but we didn't know how and Lucas was afraid for us. He wouldn't drive us there."

"He probably had the right idea," Daniella said, "Look, we don't know what you heard, but it wasn't a grand resistance or anything. We were living in fear -- every damn day. Yeah, we killed a few here and there in self defense, but they didn't give up. If you'd have come and they figured out that you were looking for us, they'd probably have killed you just because you asked about us."

Maria nodded, "Right at the end, we were goners. I got caught out in the open at night and they blinded me with a flare. It was D'Jymm who tore them all new shitholes while giving me my chance to get away."

She chuckled, "They never saw that one coming; black lightning with an attitude. I heard him coming from behind me. He passed me so fast that I didn't even know what he was. I heard him, then he was by me and gone. I heard the first of the screams just after that. I left as fast as I could run."

"I was caught early next day," Daniella said. "Four assholes who thought kicking the shit out of poor women was a fun thing to do in the morning. D'Jymm thinks that they planned to burn me alive."

"Same deal or close to it," she said, "They ran me down from three directions when I didn't have my rifle. I was stupid, I know. The cabrons didn't even know what was going on after D'Jymm got there. They just kept disappearing one at a time. At first, I'd see a blur come out of the grass and one of them was gone.

"The only one that I did see taken was the last one. D'Jymm pulled him backward and sank to one knee while he was pulling the guy down. He crippled the fool, like ... like it was nothing. Just Bang, and there was no more running.

"What happened to Alberto?" she asked, "Our mothers really didn't want to speak of him to us, at least, that's the way that it felt."

"He's dead," Ric said just before he looked down.

Carla nodded, "Yes, but he died a couple of years after my mother, the husband of my mother, and the guy who passed for the doctor in that place, and the padre of the little church there, the one single policeman in that whole area and a news reporter who'd been passing by."

"What happened?" Maria asked, "A floater wreck?"

Both of the other two shook their heads. "What happened is that we were born."

Maria looked confused, "Huh?"

"Your sweet little patojos, how were they born?" Carla asked, "Were they tiny naked people or was there fur?"

Maria and Daniella were the only people on Earth who could have answered that question. Danielle's boy Paco was born less than a week before Steffi made her emergence into the world. Given the conditions of their mothers' lives at the time, they had each been the only person present during the births of each other's children.

"Fur," Daniella said, "wet fur and lots of it on both babies. And we still don't have any idea why."

Maria said, "From what we knew from hearing about it, they were supposed to be born looking perfectly human -- the same as anybody else, the same as we were ourselves."

Carla shrugged, "We weren't born looking human either and we came out only minutes apart. In each case -- and the houses were right next door -- when we were born, somebody tried to kill us."

Ric nodded, "Maybe that's why we came out as we did. We were babies, but we weren't helpless like regular human babies.

"We came into this world fighting for our lives from the first second."

"I heard about some massacre years ago to the west -- but I thought it was only a bullshit legend," Maria said quietly. "So that was you?"

Both of them nodded, "I don't remember much of it and neither does Ric," Carla said, "but Lucas knows the whole story. When he found us later on, he also found Alberto's journal.

"As soon as we were mostly out of our mothers, somebody tried to 'do the right thing' and kill the little monster in the room but that little monster was already able to defend himself or herself, depending on which house we're talking about.

"Since this was all happening at the same time, the noise and the screaming brought the padre to Ric's house and also the policeman, who went to the house that I was in. He brought a reporter along, since they were just passing by outside. The guy was the only news reporter for many miles around. I had just gotten out of my mother. Naturally, she was hysterical and she was pushing me away and then she started hitting me with her hands. I was gnawing my own umbilical cord off when Mr. Newsworthy took a picture and the flash startled me.

"Lucas says that I bit off my cord and flew straight at the guy."

She shrugged, "The way that I heard it, nobody wanted to touch me, so with no one trying to pull me off, I hung on to his face and clawed through his neck with my feet as fast as I could go. When I guess that I felt better, I jumped off him, and not understanding any of what was happening, I tried to go to my mother.

"She didn't want me I guess, since for sure I didn't look like anything that she might have expected to come out of her. And by then, I was covered in blood, not my own, but that fact didn't calm her down at all. I must have been upset and I wanted my mother -- who kept pushing me away frantically.

"The cop was an idiot and drew his gun to shoot the blood-covered little thing that was ripping up everything but my mother," Carla said, as she pointed to herself. "He kept pulling the trigger until the gun was empty.

"My mother was the only one there who was not torn to shreds. Her husband ran outside and came back carrying a shovel. That's about the only part that I do remember," she said, "He tried to swing it, but I was on him before that.

"My mother died of multiple gunshot wounds since the idiot cop didn't think of where his bullets would go even if he did hit me.

"Then I went for the cop since he was trying really hard to club me to death with his pistola.

"In the other house, the pretend doctor tried to kill Ric with his scalpel but my brother ripped through the arteries in his neck and he ended up on the floor bleeding out. The priest tried praying first, but gave that up and threw holy water on Ric.

"Of course, the holy water had no effect. Why would it? Ric had just been born. How evil could he possibly have been at that point? "

"He was just trying to stay alive. His mother didn't want him anywhere near her either.

"Anyway, we heard that then the padre decided to smite my brother with his heavy bible. He was a little famous there for having this huge tome of a bible. I guess that it was the industrial size, or a weapons-grade bible or something. He missed when he swung it, but Ric saw it coming apparently, and ran up his arm to chew the padre's throat off."

"Alberto somehow got Ric to calm down enough so that he could carry him. He ran next door and I jumped out through the open window and ran over, probably because I saw somebody a little like me.

"He took us both far away and tried to raise us. But some of the people from the village kept hunting for us because we weren't born looking human. They all thought that we were little demons or something just as stupid. Our father was shot after a couple of years. He came back before then and his wife ran him off with a machete so he gave that up and left.

"We lived in the forest alone for a while, but Lucas found us and took us to live with him. We learned to hide what we are and when he was satisfied, we got to go to school." She shrugged, "Nobody ever thought that we might have been the infant terrors who killed six idiots on the day we were born."

They all looked at each other for a moment and Daniella asked again what they needed to agree to.

Ric let his sister explain.

"We'd like to be friends, since you've been trying to get us there anyway," she said, "We're gonna be here on this thing for a while so we want to finally have our first friends.

"We figure that we're only twenty years or so late. Do you think that we can do that? I think that we'd really like even more than that to be honest, but we'd understand if you don't want to get too close to us. Nobody ever has and we can see why."

Maria shrugged and looked over with a smile, "For that to happen, the not getting close part, you'd have to do something to make us not trust you or want to trust you. That hasn't happened yet so if you don't hurt - or even appear to want to hurt our kids and if there's no fighting over stupid things, I don't see a problem.