The Star Mother

by J D Huffman

  “I do wish you’d share your thoughts. I cannot pluck them from your mind the way Arkady can. Shall I bring him to join us?”

  Sasha’s eyes widened. Is he joking? Does he really have Arkady here?

  “I’m not lying, Sasha. He’s in the next cell. I would happily add him to our discussion. It will no doubt be very stimulating,” he said in that slimy way he said everything.

  He raised his hand slightly. The snap of his thumb and middle finger summoned two guards and Arkady, who was being carried almost as much as he was doing any walking on his own. Cylence moved aside to make room for the bigger man. If the cell felt uncomfortably small with Sasha and Cylence in it, the addition of Arkady and a couple of guards made it positively cramped. The first thing Sasha noticed was that he was clad in slavewear like her. His lugubrious demeanor spoke of a man defeated, a man who’d known freedom for a long time and had it suddenly snatched away, and still found himself stunned by the experience. Sasha imagined it was much worse for him than for her, to have enjoyed living his own life for so long, only to have it taken with no warning. She wasn’t sure she’d yet gotten used to the idea of being free, of having moments to herself, of being able to make her own choices. She certainly valued the idea of it, as frightening as it sometimes was have to make her own decisions, but where she previously insisted to herself that she would rather die than be under the power of the Totality again, she now felt as though slipping back into that life wouldn’t be so bad.

  She immediately became disgusted with herself for even entertaining the thought. People didn’t fight and die so I could just give up now. As long as I’m alive, I can always fight.

  “Thank you for joining us,” Cylence beamed, giving Arkady a firm slap on the upper back. “Sasha and I were just having a discussion about the future of the Totality. I explained the fascinating new device we’ve developed, one which will do away with all of our shortcomings and allow us to overtake all humans, everywhere, in time. It’s a glorious moment in our history, and I’d like you both to witness it.”

  “I wish you’d just kill me,” Arkady said, slightly above a whisper.

  “That’s no way to talk,” Cylence scolded him, wearing a frown. “I wanted to take a moment to appreciate the symmetry here.” He gestured to Arkady. “I am here with my old nemesis on one side.” Then, to Sasha: “And my new nemesis on the other. And I stand victorious over both. This is the kind of balance I always like to have.”

  “The balance where you get what you want?” Arkady snarled. “How many more people are you going to kill? Have you already slaughtered my family?”

  Cylence made a point of rolling his eyes. “Oh, Arkady, you’re so dramatic and sentimental. No, I didn’t kill them. But they aren’t your ‘family.’ Totality don’t have family, do we? Family is the sort of thing I regard as a weakness. Attachment to other people is an unpleasant burden, I’ve always thought.” He looked at Sasha. “Did you participate in any gift-giving rituals as a child? Aren’t those the most absurd things you’ve ever seen? Someone gives you a trinket, you’re expected to give one to them at the same time, or a later date, depending on the customs of the particular occasion.” He threw up his hands. “What’s the point? You could have each obtained something you wanted yourselves, and spared each other the risk of a gift that the recipient didn’t like or want. It’s so inefficient,” he finished, shaking his head.

  “Cy, I think you talk more than I do,” Arkady commented, his eyes still on the floor.

  Cylence’s displeased expression intensified. “I still hate it when you call me that. Shall I start calling you ‘Ark’?”

  “You could, but it doesn’t irritate me the way ‘Cy’ does you.”

  Cylence turned his attention to Sasha again, gesturing to Arkady. “Do you see why I can’t stand to have him around? He lives to goad me. He was so proud of himself when he nearly split my empire in half over his ridiculous pacifist movement. I should have had him killed back then, but I thought, ‘no, it’s good to be merciful, to show that I can be kind and use equitable judgment instead of ruthless vengeance.’ This is the thanks I get. I come across him actively collaborating with murderous upstarts, of all things. Can you imagine the hypocrisy? The self-styled peacemaker, the man who places nonviolence above all else, consorting with the likes of you. Is it comedy, tragedy, or farce? I suppose you received no training in classical drama before you were taken, did you? It’s a shame. There’s little reason to educate you slaves, of course. It would be a waste of resources unless you’re already well-educated. We have a hard enough time cultivating the brilliance of our own kind to bother with mere humans.”

  “He can do this for hours,” Arkady nodded.

  “He really is trying to drive me crazy with it, isn’t he?” Sasha asked, talking right past Cylence.

  The Totality leader snapped scathing glances at both of them. “I’ll have you both know I am renowned for my conversational skills. Every time Implacable Khazour pays a visit, we entertain one another for days with stories and rhetoric. He’s smart, for a mere human.”

  “You always did overestimate your own intelligence,” Arkady taunted.

  “I don’t believe I should take seriously the accusations of someone so easily apprehended,” Cylence fired back. “That goes for both of you. I control everything within the Fortress. I command all the Totality. What do either of you have to put up against that? Disorganized bands of ruffians?”

  “At least my people listen to me without the threat of violence,” Arkady said.

  “Oh, yes. Arkady, the great consensus-builder,” Cylence sneered. “It’s easy to pretend you know anything about leadership when you’re only responsible for a few hundred people who’ve been subsumed into your cult of personality, isn’t it? Try managing hundreds of millions spread across dozens of parsecs. And then we have Sasha here, who must have never given any thought to what would happen if and when she was victorious. What do you think would happen after you deposed me?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, since we’d be free of you and your kind. We’d figure it out.”

  “People always think they can improvise solutions to the most complex, difficult problems. It’s nonsense, of course. Do you know what leadership is, Sasha? It’s not standing at the front of a crowd and declaring yourself its master. It’s not giving flowery speeches and signing laws and treaties. It’s vision. If you cannot see into next month, near year, next millennium, then you have no business leading anyone. You need not be able to predict all contingencies, but you do need to acknowledge the complexity of the universe around you, and plan your course through it to the best of your ability. People’s lives depend on it. And you must be prepared to decide, swiftly, confidently, irrevocably.”

  Sasha’s attention wandered, and Cylence must have noticed, given where he took his discourse next. “You know, Sasha, word of your rebellion on Actis traveled quickly. I understand two ships left the planet, and you parted ways. The other ship made planetfall on another world in a nearby star system. One of our breadbasket planets, as I like to say. It fed a lot of people. Their abrupt arrival caused unfathomable chaos. The Totality staff assumed it was an unscheduled supply delivery. They never saw the assault coming. Fools. Half their number were annihilated before they could mount a counteroffensive. The slaves, of course, immediately took note. Unlike on Actis, they work outside, in the open, so they thought they could organize and join in the attack. They took up their farming implements and used them as weapons. By the time our reinforcements arrived, the agricultural operations in that area could only be described as a disaster. Slaves from the planet and from the ship had escaped and scattered. I had no doubt they were attempting to spread their discontent to the rest of the planet, and then beyond. I could not allow this. I gave the order personally: no one would be permitted to leave the surface of that planet alive. I stationed vessels in orbit with eno
ugh coverage to prevent anything from leaving, then began the orbital bombardment. I’m afraid I don’t have exact figures, but the most recent population counts put the slave numbers at somewhere around a quarter million. I ordered the bombardment and blockade to continue until we were certain no one was left alive on the surface. A harsh measure—excessive, even—but effective.”

  Internally, Sasha was aghast at the casual way Cylence related a tale of mass murder. She thought of how even Arkady took the time to intellectualize it, to find a justification for Totality actions that made them seem not irredeemably heinous. Cylence offered no such excuses or compunction. He put it simply: “Your cause is like a disease, and like any disease, you don’t cure it in half-measures. You take the full course.”

  It wasn’t lost on Sasha how he used a metaphor there, the way Arkady did back on his planet. Is this how all Totality speak, using one thing in place of another, as if it makes a stone into a mud puddle or a human being into an insect?

  Cylence still wasn’t finished. “I want you to take a moment to contemplate the effects of what I had to do there, to contain your plague of disobedience. As I said, that world provided food for many other planets. Much of that food became the protein meal you and your fellow slaves subsist upon. What do you think becomes of them, now? They still must eat, and yet I do not have enough food for them, because of the course of action you thrust upon me. Likewise, culling such a large number of slaves compelled me to reach out to Implacable Khazour and increase the inbound slave quota. It’s in transactions like these that I become most acutely aware of the benefits of autocracy, and the drawbacks of other political forms. When I wish to extract a punishment, I can do so without veto, without reprimand, without satisfying a fickle constituency. Those who object do so at their own peril. Khazour, on the other hand, must placate his bickering nobles as they work to raise a levy of human flesh that doesn’t noticeably reduce their own luxury. I’ve learned that, most of the time, this means the peasants who work the land must produce greater yields while receiving a smaller cut of the harvest. Do they like it? Surely not. But they comply, because the local Lord of the land has the same power over his domain that I have over mine: to raise your voice in complaint is to beg the whip, and to raise your hand in revolt is to court death.”

  Chapter 32

  Follow the Leader

  William spent most of his life wishing he was in charge, that he had control over his life, over the world around him. As a child, he felt that powerlessness acutely when his father abruptly disappeared, then again when his mother did the same, and once more when his sister took a stray bullet as she slept. He’d joined the Militiamen precisely because he despised that lack of control, only to find his life was not his own there, either. He still had to do as he was told, to carry out orders he didn’t agree with, to act against his principles in the name of law and order. He told himself it was because his lot was to obey. He didn’t have the information his superiors did. He didn’t know the big picture, the overall strategy. This, he used to rationalize actions that he knew were wrong.

  At times, he tried to make amends. He saved lives when he could. Those whose injuries and deaths he saw as most acutely unjust, he worked to correct. But Erzan was not a city of justice, no matter how much one man wished it were so. Once he was sent to Trepsis, he thought it represented an opportunity to do things his way, to take a lawless place and make it a haven. Instead, he was blackmailed for a past mistake—the accidental death of a man who William believed deserved something far worse. More than that, Trepsis was already a hopeless mess, riddled with corruption and criminality, and terrorist behavior that, if he didn’t agree with in terms of methodology, he certainly understood in terms of motivating principles. Of course, the Totality took them—all the people on Trepsis—and so his opportunity for leadership was unceremoniously thwarted.

  Aboard Transcendence of Light, with Zotz and Linda and Kinda and Andrew, he once again thought he might have the chance to prove his mettle, but Zotz insisted on consensus, on democracy. Those times when William did make decisions on his own, like Golden, they turned out terribly and others paid the price. It was, after all, his insistence on pursuing the Totality into the Fortress that led to betrayal, the loss of the ship, and William’s exile into loneliness. Only some helpful information left in the ferry ship’s computer by Zotz led William to Actis, and he saw yet another chance for himself to take control and do something meaningful. But the slaves there were hardly prepared to accept an outsider as their leader, and he knew better than to ask. It was Sasha’s organization—he was only there to support it. He didn’t mind that so much, at first. He needed allies. If he was ever going to find the Trepsis colonists, he had to have help. He was content to wait until Sasha was ready, since he certainly had no idea where the Totality had dumped his charges.

  Soon, though, things spun out of control. Capturing the cargo train was only a victory in the sense that they survived it and got off the planet. The losses taken in the process made it look more like a disaster. The same held for the raid on the Totality weapons depot. And now, at the moment when William found himself thrust into the leadership role rather than clamoring for it, he was left in charge of hundreds of Totality refugees aboard a battered cargo ship with dwindling food and water. These were not the circumstances under which he expected to be in command, but with Sasha’s apparent capture or death at the hands of the Totality, none were better suited to lead. William thought Fred was the natural choice, but the troll disagreed. “These people may not be strictly human, but they are more human than I, and would likely respond best to another human telling them what to do.” In truth, it wasn’t quite so simple. Elena immediately declared herself as the responsible party for Arkady’s refugees, which William found fair enough, but he didn’t know what it would mean for their future direction. The only full humans left on the ship—those who survived the Totality “outbreak” on Arkady’s planet—were Janus, Duna, Katerine, and William himself. He remembered when their uprising had numbered in the hundreds, and now it had come to this.

  The first couple of days were tense. Elena represented the other Totality in decisions. “Stubborn” immediately became William’s go-to description of her. When he told her how much everyone’s food ration would be for the day, she insisted it was too small. When William instituted a curfew so people would sleep more and put less strain on the ship’s life support system, Elena accused him of cruelty. William once cracked a joke that they were fortunate Arkady’s people didn’t wear clothing, or they would quickly wear out the ship’s laundry facilities, and Elena called him an insensitive bigot. None of this would have been so bad if not for the abuse he received from the other side, as well.

  Janus made clear his distrust of the Totality now on the ship. “They’ll kill us the first chance they get,” he believed, adding that William would be wise to open the cargo bay and vent every last one of them into space. William never claimed to like these people but, as he put it to Janus, “I draw the line at mass murder.”

  Duna may have been more eager to be rid of the Totality in their midst than Janus. William once caught her tampering with the environmental controls to the main cargo bay. Had she known what she was doing, she would have successfully cut off their flow of oxygen and suffocated them. Fortunately for everyone else, she botched the job and only set off an alarm. When William caught her fleeing the scene, he saw no choice but to confine her to one of the individual quarters on the ship. Fred was put in charge of monitoring her. “I don’t need someone trying to massacre these people every time I turn my back,” William grumbled. “I get that they may hate the Totality, but these Totality never did anything to them, and we’re not killing anybody.”

  William kept waiting for a solution to come along. Their food situation was resolved, if only briefly, by the discovery of an asteroid field in a young star system. Inside the nooks and crevices the ship’s scanners detected
faint sources of heat, which turned out to be an edible, fuzzy substance not unlike a fungus. Ample quantities of it were spread throughout the field, enough that they could fill the ship’s large refrigeration unit and not come close to exhausting it. The extraction process, of course, was wholly manual, with people donning extravehicular suits and scooping the stuff into containers. Teams were sent two at a time, one made up of William and Janus, and the other made up of two or three Totality. Elena went on a couple runs herself, and brought Angel with her each time. William kept meaning to talk to Angel, to find out how she was feeling—or rather, how the entity inside her felt. But he never knew how to approach her, to greet this stranger that he’d gladly cast from her body. So, he simply didn’t, only observing from a distance as she laughed and chatted with Elena and the other Totality, and the reality sank in that this was truly a different person, and the old Angel was unlikely to ever return. He came to a point where he no longer held it against the thing inside her—the entity that had not chosen this, and had no way to make the choice to leave. To him, she became one of them, one of the hundreds of Totality now occupying the ship.

  It took days to completely fill the refrigeration unit with the fungus, which varied in shades of blue and green and felt akin to eating a clump of wet hair when it was in one’s mouth. Rich in both protein and calories, it served as enough of a staple that the ship’s waste reclamation system could be dialed down to focus on recovering vitamins and minerals that the fungus lacked, and re-dispense them into convenient capsules. Fred determined that their full load of fungus, if properly conserved, could last them weeks. “Long enough to determine and carry out our next moves, whatever those may be,” the troll said.

  What those next moves consisted of remained on William’s mind for quite some time. While he had initially resisted the idea, after the fungus extraction operation he finally gave in to occupying Sasha’s office. Fred helped him clean up the debris and made it look livable again, now with a little more room thanks to the center console having been destroyed. William slept on the cot where Sasha had previously laid her head. It felt strange to take her place that way, to simply slot himself into her position and act as though he was her. He wasn’t, not in any way he thought mattered. Whatever complaints he had about his own life, he’d never been enslaved. His own distaste for the lack of control he felt over his life, he knew, paled in comparison to the agency Sasha was denied for so long. They did not always agree, which was to be expected. Still, he had a difficult time imagining someone he respected more. She’d never been trained for this sort of life—in fact, he was sure she’d never even wanted it—but when the need came, she stepped up and took control. She made the decisions and she lived with the consequences.