enjoys it. To tell the truth, I was more concerned about whether one or both of the wounded people would come to. I positioned myself so that I would not have to look at them. They were in no shape to attack us, of course, but they would drag me into their pain if they were conscious.
Keeping my back to Michael and his patients, I awoke the sleeping child. She wasn't quite as filthy as the little girl we'd found outside, but she did need a bath.
She squinted up at me, groggy, uncomprehending. Then she gave a little squeal and tried to dart past me, and out the door.
I caught her and held her while she struggled and screamed. I spoke to her, whispered to her, tried to reassure her, did all I could to bring her out of her hysteria. "It's all right, honey, it's all right. Don't cry. You'll be all right. We'll take care of you, don't worry. We'll take care of you...." I rocked her and crooned to her as though to a much younger child.
The dead and wounded were no doubt her family. She and the other child had been alone here with them for. . . how long? They would need all the care we could give them. After much more screaming and struggling, she began to take refuge in my arms, holding on to me instead of trying to escape. From my arms, she stared, huge-eyed, at the others.
Jorge stood watch at the monitors once his stomach set-tled.
Natividad had calmed the other little girl and found a clean cloth and some water. These she used to wash the child's face, hands, and arms. Michael had left the wounded woman and boy to examine the truck's controls. Of the four of us, he was the only one who knew how to drive.
"Any trouble?" I asked him.
He shook his head. "Not even any sign of boobytraps. I guess they would have worried about the kids springing them."
"Can you drive it?"
"No problem."
"Drive it, then. It's ours. Let's go home."
************************************
The truck was all right. There was plenty of power in its bat-teries, and Michael had no trouble finding and using its night-vision equipment. It carried infrared, ambient light, and radar devices. All of these were of good quality, and all worked. The little girls must not have understood how to use them—as they had not known how to drive. Or perhaps they had known how to operate everything, but had not known where to go with it. Who could little children go to for help, after all? If they had no adult relatives, even the police would either sell them ille-gally or indenture them legally. Indenturing indigents, young and old, is much in fashion now. The Thirteenth and Four-teenth Amendments—the ones abolishing slavery and guaran-teeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they've been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legis-latures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don't much matter. Indenturing indigents is supposed to keep them employed, teach them a trade, feed them, house them, and keep them out of trouble. In fact, it's just one more way of getting people to work for nothing or almost nothing. Little girls are valued because they can be used in so many ways, and they can be coerced into being quick, docile, disposable labor.
No doubt these two girls have been taught to be terrified of strangers. Then, with their parents and brother out of ac-tion, they had been left on their own to defend their family and their home. In their blind fear, they had, they must have, shot at us and shot and hit three men who gave no sign of being anything worse than wanderers, perhaps salvagers. Michael and Natividad did go out to check on these men be-fore we left while Jorge and I loaded our handcart and its contents onto the truck.
The three men were dead. They had hard currency and holstered guns—which Michael and Natividad collected. We covered them with rocks and left them. But they had been even less of a danger to the housetruck than we were. If they had walked right up to the truck, a locked door would have kept them
Roger Stone, Robert Morrow