Read Online Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 by John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly - Free Book Online

it in. It did help, some.
     
    “Thanks,” I said. “What the hell—”
     
    The two men in facemasks looked at each other. “Acid burn,” the taller man said. “You’re not too bad. A minute or two of exposure won’t leave scars.”
     
    “What?”
     
    “Acid. You were exposed to the clouds.”
     
    “Right.”
     
    Now that I wasn’t quite so distracted, I looked around. I was in the cargo hold of some sort of aircraft. There were two small round portholes on either side. Although nothing was visible through them but a blank white, I could feel that the vehicle was in motion. I looked at the two men. They were both rough characters. Unlike the brightly colored spider’s-silk gowns of the citizens of Hypatia, they were dressed in clothes that were functional but not fancy, jumpsuits of a dark gray color with no visible insignia. Both of them were fit and well muscled. I couldn’t see their faces, since they were wearing breathing masks and lightweight helmets, but under their masks I could see that they both wore short beards, another fashion that had been missing among the citizens of Hypatia. Their eyes were covered with amber-tinted goggles, made in a crazy style that cupped each eye with a piece that was rounded like half an eggshell, apparently stuck to their faces by some invisible glue. It gave them a strange, bug-eyed look. They stared at me, but behind their facemasks and goggle-eyes I was completely unable to read their expressions.
     
    “Thanks,” I said. “So, who are you? Some sort of emergency rescue force?”
     
    “I think you know who we are,” the taller one said. “The question is who the hell are you?”
     
    I stood up and reached out a hand, thinking to introduce myself, but both of the men took a step back. Without seeming to move his hand, the taller one now had a gun, a tiny omniblaster of some kind. Suddenly a lot of things were clear.
     
    “You’re pirates,” I said.
     
    “We’re the Venus underground,” he said. “We don’t like the word pirates very much. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a question, and I really would like an answer. Who the hell are you?”
     
    So I told him.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    The first man started to take off his helmet, but the taller pirate stopped him. “We’ll keep the masks on for now. Until we decide he’s safe.” The taller pirate said he was named Esteban Jaramillo, the shorter one Esteban Francisco. That was too many Estebans, I thought, and decided to tag the one Jaramillo and the other Francisco.
     
    I discovered from them that not everybody in the floating cities thought of Venus as a paradise. Some of the independent cities considered the clan of Nordwald-Gruenbaum to be well on its way to becoming a dictatorship. “They own half of Venus outright, but that’s not good enough for them, no, oh no,” Jaramillo told me. “They’re stinking rich, but not stinking rich enough, and the very idea that there are free cities floating in the sky, cities that don’t swear fealty to them and pay their goddamned taxes, that pisses them off. They’ll do anything that they can to crush us. Us? We’re just fighting back.”
     
    I would have been more inclined to see his point if I didn’t have the uncomfortable feeling that I’d just been abducted. It had been a tremendous stroke of luck for me that their ship had been there to catch me when my kayak broke apart and fell. I didn’t much believe in luck. And they didn’t bother to answer when I asked about being returned to Hypatia. It was pretty clear that the direction we were headed was not back toward the city.
     
    I had given them my word that I wouldn’t fight or try to escape—where would I escape to?—and they’d accepted it. Once they realized that I wasn’t whom they had expected to capture, they’d pressed me for news of the outside.
     
    There were three of them in the small craft: the two Estebans and the pilot, who was never introduced. He did not bother to turn