Read Online Nightmare by Steven Harper - Free Book Online

tone he had used last night. "Just startled me."
      "It’s just—I’d rather have a friend than a slave. But if they want me to have a body slave, you know I’d get you out of the muck." Lizard paused thoughtfully. "Unless you’d miss that frog girlfriend you’ve been seeing."
      Pup snorted. "Well, your ma’s waiting list is too long."
      Lizard aimed a mock punch at Pup’s head. Pup ducked, and everything was back to where it had been before.
      "Speaking of Mom," Lizard said, and knocked on the door connecting their rooms.
      Bell, it turned out, had herself just finished dressing. Her new tunic and trousers were identical to Lizard’s. A moment later, breakfast arrived. They wheeled the cart over to a wide window and drew aside the curtains to let in golden sunlight. They ate and talked. It was a happy meal. Lizard saw the lines on his mother’s face had smoothed a bit, and she appeared much more cheerful. For a moment, it felt like a Sunday morning back in Sydney, in the days when there had been five of them around the breakfast table. The change had come because they were Silent. Lizard looked at his mother and knew the same thing was on her mind.
      "Do you think ...?" Lizard asked.
      Bell sighed and set down her coffee mug. "I don’t know. We can only hope, I suppose."
      "What?" Pup said. "You hope what?"
      "That the rest of our family is Silent, too," Lizard said.
      "Oh."
      "Do you ever think about them, Mom?" Lizard said.
      "Every day," she said quietly. "Every night I talk to your father, even though he can’t hear me. And then I pray that your brother and sister are all right."
      The door opened and Mistress Blanc walked in. All three slaves shot to their feet but kept their eyes on the floor. Lizard caught a glimpse of green robe and thought he recognized it as the one she had been wearing the day she’d bought him and his mother from the slavers.
      "I’ve been thinking about what to do with you," she said. "My interplanetary communication is fairly extensive but it’s not enough to justify the cost of training and maintaining my own Silent, and certainly not two of them. Therefore, I’ve decided to put you both up for sale."
      The words slammed into Lizard like bullets. Every drop of blood drained from his face and the room swayed around him. Mistress Blanc’s voice seemed to come from a long distance. Then he was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees and no idea how he’d gotten there. His hands shook and his face felt numb. The silver-colored band around his wrist gleamed in the golden sunlight. Gradually he became aware of an arm around his shoulder.
      "It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. All life, everything’s okay. It’s okay."
      The voice was his mother’s. There was an edge to it, as if one wrong word might send her falling into hysteria. Lizard forced himself to breathe evenly. The room stopped spinning. Eventually he looked up. Mistress Blanc was gone. Pup and his mother were kneeling beside him. Her arm was around him. Lizard stared at the band on Bell’s wrist. Bell, not Rebecca. Lizard, not Evan.
      "It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay," Bell repeated.
      Lizard slowly got to his feet, assisted by Bell and Pup, who hadn’t spoken. The three of them stood in silence. After a while, Pup cleared his throat.
      "Mistress Blanc said you need to go downstairs soon so you can leave," he said. His eyes, blue as the sky, were bright with unshed tears, and Lizard knew he didn’t want to shed them where people could see.
      "She bought us together," Bell said, edge still in her voice. "She bought us together. Someone will buy us together. They’ll have to. They’ll have to."
      Tira appeared at the door, her steely eyes hard. "Mistress Blanc is waiting downstairs." Her tone, while polite, made it clear that even Silent slaves were still slaves who needed to obey the mistress.
      "We’re going, aren’t we?" Bell said. "All life,