Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [74]
“No harm.” The metal man’s eyes darted back and forth between Hella and Stampede. Even though his face didn’t move, his body language, the upraised hands and the pensive glancing, spoke of desperation.
“No harm.” Hella nodded. “We get it. No harm.” She glanced at Stampede. “Do you think maybe it would help if you lowered the rifle?”
Hesitantly Stampede dropped the rifle barrel but held the weapon in the crook of his arm. “Sure. I can do that. Mainly because hitting him doesn’t hurt him, and I’m not convinced that shooting him would either.”
Without another word, the metal man walked over to a corner of the room. He flew into a million pieces again for an instant, and when he re-formed, he was sitting in the corner.
Stampede scratched his chin and twitched his ears in irritation. “You know, if he decides to leave, we can’t stop him.”
“I’m more interested in why he’s deciding to stay.” Hella crossed the room and sat cross-legged in front of the metal man.
He watched her, but he rested his hands on his thighs and didn’t move. “No harm. No harm.”
“He could be some new kind of ’Chine.” Martin Wroth, the eldest of the family, stared at the metal man with black-eyed suspicion. “Just because he doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before doesn’t mean he isn’t one.”
“Doesn’t mean he is either.” Even though the family had suffered terrible losses during the night, Hella was quickly tiring of the hard way they treated the metal man.
He sat there, as quiet and brightly alert as a small bird, with a calm face and watchful eyes. His metallic skin borrowed some of the brightness from the flames in the fireplace, and occasionally ripples ran through his body, as though his metallic flesh shifted into more comfortable space.
“I say he’s trouble.”
Hella shot Martin a warning glance.
Martin Wroth was in his late forties, only a few years younger than his deceased brother. He was thin faced and balding and had tan skin from constant exposure to the elements.
Hella knew the man was in shock and probably in touch with his own mortality. It could have just as easily been he who died earlier as it was his brother, niece, and nephew.
“He’s not a ’Chine.” Twyla Wroth sounded satisfied about that.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because for one thing you keep referring to him as ‘he.’ You, and everybody I’ve ever talked to about those hellish things, refer to the ’Chine as ‘it.’ ” She nodded at the metal man. “This is a man.”
Martin sat forward like a hound on point. “I’d feel better if I knew who he was, where he came from.”
Hella stared into the silver depths of the metal man’s eyes. Every time she’d touched him, there had been some kind of connection. He had known it too. That was why he’d gone for her, used her to learn the words he’d needed to stop Stampede.
“Hey.” She spoke softly then lifted a hand with her palm facing the metal man, and she leaned forward. “Can you talk to me?”
The metal man turned his head quizzically then lifted his hand as well. “No harm.”
“No harm.” Hella sighed and hoped she didn’t regret what she planned to do. “Learn.” She pushed her hand forward.
He pulled his hand back tentatively. “No harm.”
“No harm.” Gently Hella caught his hand and held on despite the electricity that shivered through her.
The metal man seemed to grow a little more shiny. “No harm.” His fingers curled around hers. They felt warm and supple, no longer as hard and unrelenting.
Hella touched her free hand to her chest and thought of herself. “Hella.”
Tilting his head, the metal man watched her.
“Hella.”
The metal man’s voice sounded scratchy again then leveled out in a more human monotone. “Hel. La.”
In spite of the electricity that raced through her at just within tolerable levels, Hella grinned. She pointed at Stampede and said his name. “Stampede.”
“Stam. Pede.”
Some of the Wroth children clapped at the success. The death of their family members had stunned them, but that had happened before and would again. Everyone knew that. Death was accepted, but a metal man in their big room was something they didn’t see