Refugee

by Piers Anthony

  Except Spirit. She caught me alone in the course of the day, and had to needle me. “How was it, brother?” she asked snidely.

  A host of flip answers escaped before I could formulate any of them verbally. “I love her,” I said simply.

  She glanced at me a long moment, having the grace to be embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”

  I put my arm about her shoulders, forgiving her. “I know how it is,” I said, remembering how snappish I had been before, when my internal problem radiated sparks at other people. I had no need of that anymore. “You’re still my sister. You’re the only one who shares that secret.”

  “Still, I’m jealous,” she admitted.

  “You have no need to be. You aren’t competing with her.”

  “Yes, I am! If you had to throw one of us into space, which one would it be?”

  The way to counter a question like that is to reverse it. “If you had to throw Faith or me into space, which would it be?”

  “That depends who I’m mad at at the moment.” But Spirit turned sober, considering the implication.

  “When you grow up and love a man, I’ll try not to be too jealous,” I said.

  “Oh, go ahead and be jealous!” she muttered. But she smiled. Then, in the treacherous way she had, she returned to her opening question. “Tell me what it’s like,” she begged. “Please, Hope—I really want to know.”

  Spirit was twelve. Did I have the right to tell her about sex? I had just learned about it myself. Of course we both knew the sterile mechanics as taught in school, and the applicable terms; we also both knew that such things had almost nothing to do with real sex or love.

  I remembered the way older children, both male and female, had teased me in past years about my curiosity and ignorance. It seemed to be a conspiracy of silence, and I had never believed it was justified. I resolved not to do that to my sister. “I was inside her,” I said carefully. “And heaven was inside me. I wish it could have lasted forever.”

  “What about all the pain and blood?” she asked, and I saw that she was really worried. She, too, had seen the rape of Faith. I should have been aware of her natural reaction before. I had to reassure her about the other side of sex, as Helse had reassured me, so she would not fear it.

  “There was no pain or blood. Nothing but joy.”

  “But—”

  “Give me your hand.” I took her small hand in mine and squeezed it cruelly.

  “Ouch!” she shrieked.

  “That’s rape,” I said. Then I took her hand again, smoothed it out caressingly, and kissed it. “That’s love.”

  She looked at her extremity. “But that’s only my hand!”

  “Just one part of you—and me,” I agreed. “Another part was used to hurt Faith terribly, but last night I used it to love Helse. The difference is in how you use it. That’s what she taught me.”

  Spirit smiled quirkily. “I thought you used it to pee.” She was being humorous, resisting the notion, as I had resisted it during the night. Too simple a telling does not necessarily get the point across, because the listener isn’t ready to believe. So I took stock again, pretty much as Helse had.

  “That too,” I agreed. “But not last night. Just about every part of the body has more than one use, like the mouth that is used to eat and to talk or the nose used to breathe and smell. You just have to keep in mind which use you want.”

  “Yes, it’s hard to talk with your mouth full,” she agreed. She still didn’t accept it.

  I caught her shoulder, making her face me, suddenly finding it vitally important to spread the new message. “When you grow older, Spirit, and you love a boy, and he loves you, don’t be afraid of his body. What he has for you is not cruel and not dirty; it’s a form of love. The great crime of the pirates is that they take something perfect and abuse it, making it terrible. Don’t judge all men by them.”

  “Oh, I don’t judge our father by—”

  “And how do you think you and I came to exist?”

  “There is that,” she agreed, with a wan smile. But her brow furrowed again. “Still, I don’t know.”

  “Ask Helse,” I said. “She will tell you.”

  “I will.” Spirit left me. I hoped I had not wished something on Helse she would have preferred to avoid.

  I talked with Señora Ortega, to learn how we were doing on our voyage. She squinted at me. “You’re the lad who appointed me captain,” she said with the trace of a grim smile. “Yesterday you looked ready to die; today you are alive.”

  “You’re the right person,” I agreed. “That funeral service really made me feel better. And I had a good night. I’ll be all right now. Are we on course?”

  “A good night,” she repeated. “If I didn’t know better, lad, I’d think you had discovered love.” Maybe she was teasing me; it was impossible to know how much she had guessed.

  She got down to serious business quickly. “No, we’re not on course,” she said frankly. “Our girls aren’t as apt as the men were; we haven’t had the training. The mechanism is simple, but the application takes practice. So we’re handling the vectors clumsily. Oh, we’re getting there, but it won’t be on the original schedule. We’ll have to stay on half rations.”

  Well, it could have been worse. I moved on to talk with children. I did not consider myself a child anymore, and certainly it had been a man’s duty I did with Helse, but my talent related well to the young folk. I tried to cheer them, for they had the least resources to comprehend or deal with the calamity that had befallen us all. We set up games in the Commons, even organizing a soccer match, using a tightly wrapped bundle of paper refuse for the ball. It really wasn’t much, in this confined and curvaceous space and with the trace gravity, but it did bring a few smiles to some faces and kept the kids occupied. I felt this was the most useful thing I could do, for now, spreading some of the balm Helse had provided me, as it were.

  Helse joined me in the afternoon. She still looked just like another boy, but now I fancied I could perceive feminine contours and mannerisms in her, hidden from other eyes. I still had not seen her body clearly in its natural state, and now I wanted to, knowing the rapture it offered me. “I have been talking with your sisters,” she said with a wry smile.

  “I don’t like keeping secrets from Spirit,” I said, knowing my little sister had wasted no time on her fact-finding mission.

  “She said you said you love me, and had great joy last night.”

  “It’s true,” I admitted. “She asked me and I told her. I wouldn’t lie to my little sister. I didn’t think you would mind. Spirit’s curious about everything, but she never betrays a confidence.”

  “Then you don’t mind if I tell her—” She shrugged. “Anything?”

  “No, of course I don’t mind! I sent her to you. I don’t want her to be afraid.”

  She shook her head. “You are remarkably open.”

  I frowned. “No, I’m not open with everyone. Spirit is special. We don’t deceive each other. We fight sometimes, but we always understand. If she had a similar experience, she would tell me. Now that she’s seen her sister raped, she needs to understand that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “Yes, of course. I was surprised, that’s all. Men usually talk about such things to other men, not to their sisters.”

  “Spirit is different,” I repeated firmly.

  “Not Faith?”

  “Faith is more like an ordinary sister.”

  “She braced me,” Helse said. “I had to tell her my secret.”

  “I don’t see why,” I said, annoyed. “I try to protect Faith, but I don’t share secrets with her.”

  “She really cares for you, Hope. She appreciates what you’ve done for her. The siblings are much closer in your family than they were in mine; I envy you that. Faith saw the change in you today, and she worried.”

  “But I didn’t talk with her today.”

  “Still, she noticed. She’s not totally out of it, Hope; she’s recoverin
g. Your support really helped her.”

  “Oh.” I was pleased. “She must have figured it would take more than a talking-to to put me back on track.”

  “Yes. She guessed there was a liaison. And she thought I was male.”

  I felt myself abruptly blushing. “She thought—?”

  “She hoped it wasn’t so. But she feared for your orientation, right now, under this terrible stress. So I had to tell her.”

  “I guess you did,” I agreed, still embarrassed. “I’d better talk to her.”

  “No need. She was relieved. I think she thought she could be responsible for you turning away from the opposite sex, because of the rape.”

  “She was concerned for my reaction to what happened to her?” I asked, amazed. “Rather than for her own horror?”

  “She’s got that basic Hubris spirit of unity. It’s a precious quality. She would do anything to spare the others in her family the humiliation she suffered.”

  “I guess I didn’t give her enough credit,” I said ruefully. “She, worried about me!”

  “I was concerned too, maybe in a slightly different way. That’s why I acted.”

  “You sure did,” I agreed. “In one hour you changed my life forever.”

  “I think Faith and I are going to be friends.”

  “Yes, I think so.” I was both embarrassed and gratified: embarrassed for the way I had evidently seemed to those who were close to me, and gratified for the way they had tried to help.

  After that I talked with Faith myself, explaining what Helse had done for me. “I’m not ashamed to be a man,” I told her. “I don’t for a moment condone what happened to you, but—”

  “It’s all right, Hope,” she said. She looked better now; she had washed herself and brushed out her hair. She was indeed recovering, having more inner strength than I had credited. “We have all had a terrible education in the past few days. I’m glad you found her. I should have known better than to worry.”

  “How is Mother?” I asked cautiously. I was glad to see Faith regaining her equilibrium, but I wasn’t certain how far it went.

  “Hope, we have to take care of her. I thought I was badly off, until—it’s so much worse for her!”

  “What can we do for her?” I asked, surprised by my sister’s animation. Faith had always been relatively sedate and retiring; Spirit was the wild one in our family, and I was in between. Now Faith was turning more decisive. Could her awful experience have changed her outlook?

  “Helse told me a pirate tried to rape Mother, and you fought him off.”

  “More or less,” I agreed. “Spirit smashed the pacifier box, so the rest of us could fight. I wasn’t very effective. Spirit really saved us all.”

  “I don’t want—that—to happen to Charity Hubris,” Faith said firmly. “She’s our mother, Hope! So if the pirates come again, and we can’t stop them” She broke off, evidently not finding it easy to speak her thought.

  “We’ll stop them somehow,” I said with a certain bravado.

  “If they have that awful pacifier box, or something—” She took a breath and swallowed. “If it comes to that, Hope, I want you to send them my way, not Mother’s way.”

  I stared at her, horrified. “Faith! You know what they do!”

  She smiled wanly. “I think I know as well as any woman can. But what have I to lose, now? Hope, we can’t let our mother be defiled.”

  “I hate even to think of this!” I exclaimed. “We should kill every pirate who comes into this bubble!”

  “Yes. We should. But if we can’t—then we must handle them another way. Promise me you will do it, if it needs to be done.”

  I resisted, but she kept at me, somewhat the way Helse had, and in the end I had to yield and give my promise. There is something about the way a woman can importune a man, even if she is his sister. But I felt unclean.

  Perhaps it was prophetic, for within an hour after that the pirates did come again. Not the same ones—but already the term “pirate” was generic.

  We did not know at first that they were pirates. Their ship was in good repair and bore the emblem of the Mars Merchant Marine. That did not signify much, because for reasons of interplanetary commerce many non-Martian vessels elected to register with Mars. Martian taxes were less than those of Jupiter, Uranus, or Earth, and fuel was cheap there, as the so-called Red Planet had much of the fuel of the Solar System. But mainly, as I understood it from my school studies, Mars had extremely lax laws governing the wages and treatment of spacemen. The large trading companies could operate more profitably by economizing on safety measures and payrolls and retirement benefits, so they enlisted with the planet that permitted this. The maritime powers of Jupiter professed to deplore such shoddy mechanisms—yet quite a number of their ships operated under the emblem of Mars. So a Martian trader ship could be anything. Except, we naively supposed, a pirate.

  They locked onto us and opened the air lock. There was a pause before the inner door opened, and we knew they had discovered the dead and spoiling pirates. But soon the inner panel slid aside, and a man in a white uniform stood before us.

  We had an innocent-seeming group of women near the lock to greet the intruders. Hidden around the curve of the Commons we had armed women, ready to fight viciously if that proved to be necessary. Normally women were not warriors, but the brutal experience of rape and murder had forged a new temperament in many. Before we allowed more of the same, we would fight and kill. We all understood that. Twice we had overcome intruders, and twice had our situation reversed—and twice suffered grievously. Experience is a cruel but effective teacher.

  Spirit, garbed as a boy, was one of the display children. They were innocently playing, but she was armed with her finger-whip, and the others had small knives. If the others turned out to be pirates, she and the children were supposed to scream in simulated or genuine panic and flee, clearing the way for our fighting forces. If anything resembling a pacifier box made an appearance, Spirit would go for it. But if the children were caught, they would fight. We had to give the outsiders a chance to prove they were legitimate, just in case they were, for we were in desperate need of food and help. We dared not alienate legitimate visitors.

  “You folk must have had a bad time,” the Martian officer said in Spanish, looking about as his men followed him through the air lock. All were clean-cut and wore sidearms, not swords. “We discovered quite a mess in your air lock. It’s all right now; we dumped the stuff in space and fumigated the lock.”

  My mother was in the “innocent” group of women. She had roused herself from her grief to participate in this, for she knew she was only one of many who had been abruptly widowed, and that someone had to carry on. Even as we children had to protect her, she tried to protect us. That was part of what it meant to be a family; I was coming to appreciate the full significance of it in this adversity. Major Hubris had been lost, but his family carried on, as if his strength had been bequeathed to each of the survivors.

  “We were raided by pirates,” she said. “All our men were killed.”

  “Well, that’s over now,” the officer said. “We shall carry you on in to Jupiter, where you will be granted refugee status. Collect your things; we’re on a schedule and haven’t much time. Don’t bother with extra clothing; we’ll issue you uniforms from our stores.”

  Slowly I relaxed. This was almost too good to be true. If they towed us the rest of the way in to Jupiter, our hunger and fear was over.

  I turned to meet Helse’s eyes. The two of us had been relegated to the center chamber of the bubble, the doughnut hole. We were deemed too old to be innocent children and too young to fight. But we would fight, if it came to that, to protect the precious remaining food stores. As it was, we were out of the action but could see everything plainly.

  Helse did not seem to share my relief. Her eyes were squinting, her mouth grim. That renovated my alarm; did she know something I didn’t?

  Uncertain, the women in the Commons
below looked at each other. “Leave the bubble?” my mother asked, and I realized the officer had not actually spoken of towing, but of carrying.

  “Obviously you can’t remain here,” the officer said reasonably. “Drifting in space, your supplies diminishing, vulnerable to the vagaries of fate. You are fortunate we spotted you. Fetch your valuables; you don’t want to be classed as paupers when you arrive.”

  The women seemed almost reluctant to believe their good fortune. Slowly they dispersed while the merchantmen smiled at the children. One man produced a box of bright candy balls and proffered it. He was promptly the center of juvenile attention, as the youngest flocked to accept the goodies. We had not seen candy since leaving Callisto. Even Spirit, suspicious at first, in due course sidled close to the friendly man and accepted a treat.

  My mouth watered. I was not yet so old that candy didn’t appeal. “Look what we’re missing!” I muttered.

  “Never accept candy from a stranger,” Helse said grimly. I thought at first she was joking, then was doubtful.

  The smallest child abruptly sat down. She had been greedily consuming the candy. She did not seem sick, but she did not get up.

  Another child joined her, then a third. Soon all of them were sprawled on the deck. Spirit was one of the last to go, and I could see she was fighting it, but her knees buckled and betrayed her.

  Señora Ortega marched up. “What is the matter?” She demanded, alarmed.

  The officer faced her. “The candy is drugged. But don’t worry; we have the antidote. The children will not die if it is administered within an hour.”

  “Drugged!” Señora Ortega gazed on him with wild surmise. “Then you are—”

  “Merely men who labor hard on short wages, and who have been too long in space,” the officer said. “You are the leader here? Have your women deposit their valuables with us.” His eyes traveled across the others, who were now frozen in horror. They had actually fetched their most precious things at the behest of this man! “We are not bad fellows, if you treat us right. We are not interested in killing anyone, or even hurting anyone. We believe in honest quid pro quo. Any woman who desires a unit of antidote may purchase it from one of us.”