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and near-silently a few meters away . . . death in his hands and his head full of secrets.
    What did Ox expect? Why had he come to this place? What did he have planned?
    In the clock-lit darkness, sleep came slow. Runt curled toward the wall, as if his back could do a better job of watching Ox, as if his eyes could see a way forward.
     

     
    The next day, Ox ducked outside at the first sunrise, making almost no sound.
    The moment he was gone, Runt rolled to his feet and cracked his neck. He’d slept wrong and his muscles felt like wet sand. He washed, wanked, and waited to eat breakfast with his cofarmer before getting to work.
    As soon as Ox returned from the sea, he dressed quickly. His boots were twenty-threes, as it happened.
    Runt had been wrong about that too.
    Let’s just see . . .
    As Ox wolfed down the steamy protein scramble, Runt leaned forward on his elbows as though an idea had sprouted just then: a test. “Are you mechanical then? I mean, you like to twiddle with machines and that?”
    Ox shrugged and smiled, showing his white choppers. He flexed his big fingers like a magician and waggled his eyebrows.
    “Can you have a look at the soybeaner today?” The gabbled question sounded planned and anxious even to Runt’s ears.
    Ox nodded firmly and rapped the table with his knuckles in agreement.
    Smug bugger .
    “I’ve been able to do fuck-all by way of repairs.” A bald lie. Runt had given the appliance a wide berth since it fucked itself up somehownine weeks ago. He could pick any lock in the galaxy if need be, but tech scared him shitless. He hadn’t wanted to notify HardCell or spend the money for a replacement.
    After breakfast, Runt walked the big bastard up the rise to the stepped crop terraces, giving the tour he hadn’t offered the day before: fields, mango orchard, silos, greenhouse. On the sandy footpath, his trail of size eight-wide bootprints trotted beside those twenty-threes. What of it? Whether Ox was a spy or an ally, he should know just how much Runt had managed even with his shortcomings.
    Ox scrutinized the layout.
    Runt paused on a rise to point down to the eelbeds in the cove. The soft glare of both suns bounced off the waves and made them both squint the rest of the way up. Ox fidgeted as they reached the lush green rows.
    The automated soy-mill sat notched into the hill about fifteen meters from the fields where the beans grew. Drones fed the harvest straight into the silo beside the processors which broke the raw produce into nutrient liquids and solids.
    Runt kicked the power and tapped the panel to bring it online. A low drone rose in pitch until he had to raise his voice to be heard. The soybeaner began to hiccup, its hum dipping and straining.
    “It’s run hot for four months. Piece of junk. No idea what in hell’s wrong.”
    Runt tapped the controls again. The pitch climbed again and the thumping and squelching sped up— flap-thwlap-flap —as something caught in the machine’s innards struggled to break loose or die trying.
    Ox winced as if watching a mangled dog. He shook his head once, sharply.
    “Agh!” Runt killed the power and stood a little apart. The thumping and groaning wheezed into silence. Even the bugs in the brush had no comment. The sun had crept higher and Runt could smell Ox again.
    Ox ran his wide hands over the appliance as if stroking a lion, feeling for a wound. He looked for something with his eyes and his fingertips.
    “How do you know so much about equipment and that? You raised by mechanics? Engineers?”
    Ox snorted silently and shook his head. He squinted and turned his head, reaching for something further under the soybeaner’s belly.
    “So . . . what? Your ma was a welder and your father humped pipe?”
    Ox tugged his arm out and wrote in demi-Arabic on the dusty ground: “MINERS.”
    “Oh.” Runt pursed his lips to keep his opinions trapped.
    Mining killed employees young in shitty backbreaking contracts. The real money came from