by Sam Smith
With horror upon horror I imagined those terrified people crowded into that room, the partitions sliding out between them; then the two men, or more, in spacesuits methodically proceeding through the people, pressing the mask over their faces, letting them lie where they had fallen; and proceeding to the next partition...
By this time the first of the slaves had reached the bottom of the ramp. The two crewmen with white sticks stood before the crew and prodded the slaves in the direction of the mine entrance. The slaves recoiled from the sticks. (I later learnt that the sticks, like the masks, were from a planet, and used there by the barbaric inhabitants to guide their cattle to slaughter.)
Then came the worst, the most shameful moment of all. One slave stood slightly taller than his companions, held himself more erect. With his shaved head and face I failed at first to recognise him, puzzled over his familiarity. Then came a picture into my mind of two lines drawn in the desert sand, and Dag and Ronan amused by Malamud's flirting with Yolande.
Oh luckless people of Balant, I thought. First the Nautili, and now these monsters, these representatives of the civilisation of which Dag and I had so freely boasted.
I wish upon no person the absolute shame I felt at that moment — to be standing there in the ranks of their persecutors. And now my mind knew Ronan’s fear of the sky, how the cities had been destroyed by monsters such as I was numbered among. And now my mind had explained to it why the ship had bothered lying in wait for us: its concern with us had been by the way — while Dag, Malamud and I had been cowering in our sanctuary, the ship had descended on Ronan’s new settlement and had taken them all captive.
I looked for Yolande; and there she was shuffling wearily along beside Ronan, her shaved head hung in worry and blank despair. And now my mind knew the brutal form the crew's pleasure had taken. And there too was the musician glancing quick-eyed at his captors.
Again I looked to Ronan, head erect and defiant still. Witnessing his pride exacerbated my own impotence. For, much as I felt that I should immediately halt this atrocity, my native caution would not allow me to undertake an act of such suicidal folly. I did feel, however, that I ought at least to give Ronan some hope, to fortify his proud spirit. So, before he came abreast of me, I loudly coughed; and, having put my hand to my mouth, I surreptitiously lowered it onto the knuckles of my other band in Balant's gesture of greeting.
Ronan saw me, saw my hands recognised the scar on my forehead, saw that I had no belt nor gun, saw Zapper's hand upon my shoulder; and his eyes knew that I too was a captive, as much a slave as him.
Then he had passed me, leaving me only with my despair. So this, his eyes had ironically enquired, is the beauty of space?
The rear of the shuffling column was brought up by two more of the crewmen with white sticks. When those two crewmen reached the bottom of the ramp, two other of the crew rushed up it, returned sliding two large tubes of provisions down the ramp. Those four guards were to remain on the planet. That, my mind told me, accounted for the large number of crew on board.
Over the ship's loudhailer came Boss’s voice recalling the crew. Zapper gave me a light push and we followed the rest of the crew up the ramp. As soon as we were through the airlock's two doors the ramp closed and the ship began lifting off. Zapper and I returned to where I had been working. Zapper resumed his leaning against the wall, I told the minder to proceed; and I watched it continue with the task I had set it. I felt the slight lurch as the ship switched to its own gravity, then Zapper said,
"So you're now one of us."
"Sorry?" I said. I could not erase from my mind the image of those shuffling slaves. The minder was awaiting further instructions.
"You've now been implicated, incriminated," Zapper said.
My legs would no longer support me. I sank slowly to the floor, sat leaning against the minder.
"I don't know what you mean,” I said.
"You have become an accessory to a crime." Zapper was as ever studying me, "You're now no better nor worse than the rest of us." Zapper's words brought me sharply to the present,
“Was that why we all had to attend?"
"You didn't protest, you didn't try to stop it. You're now, in the eyes of civilisation, one and the same as the rest of us."
"And what if I had protested? What if I had tried to stop it?”
"You'd have been shot."
"Then I was acting under duress. No civilised court of law would convict me.”
"Oh yes they would," Zapper slid to the floor, sat opposite me. “Don’t kid yourself you can ever escape from here. Our only contact with civilisation is one freighter or another in deep space. Those timid souls won't take you on board, compromise themselves. Therefore, if you should happen to fall into the hands of the police, it's a safe bet that so too will the rest of the crew. They'll convict you."
“But I've done nothing."
"That's not what they'll say. Each one of them, thinking it'll get them a lighter sentence, will inform on the others. And, because they think that the worse they say about the others will make their own crimes pale into insignificance, they will embellish and exaggerate your part in it. They will invent crimes for you.”
"Did they abuse the women?"
"And the children. Knowing some of them bastards."
"Are there cameras in here?"
“No.”
I understood now his apparent candour. The lack of surveillance and his believing that I could no longer take a high moral tone with him, had made us equals of a sort. I was as culpable as he. With my mind being seared with obscene images, I yet had to tell myself to take advantage of this new openness of his.
"Zapper," I concentrated on my words, “you are not of the same calibre as the others. How did you come to be here?"
"Much like you. No," he corrected himself, "Mine was my own doing. One mistake compounded by another. But trapped much like you. Compromised like you.”
I decided to take a chance.
“We could escape together," I said. "You could plead — what is it? — mitigating circumstances. Throw yourself on their mercy.”
"No boy. No civilised court would ever pardon the crimes I've committed. And I don't want to live out my days banished to some penal planet. Or be rehabilitated in a hospital, come out drug dead. Not a very inspiring choice."
I suddenly remembered that I had seen this man kill, that this man was so inured to killing that he had continued to eat his meal in sight of the man he had a moment before murdered.
"Would you have killed me?" I asked him.
"Yes.”
“Aren't you ashamed of any of your killings?"
"No.”
"But I had done nothing to you."
"You were a possible danger. I've survived only so long because I do not hesitate to kill. That's a lesson you're going to have to learn boy."
“Never."
With such finality did I state that word that Zapper could only smile down on his slippers with sad indulgence. Then he quietly proceeded to tell me that, unlike the rest of the crew, he took no pleasure in killing. It was simply something that he did well, like my repairing machines. And I realised that he regarded me as the one aboard the ship most closely approximating his equal, in that I too would take no pleasure in killing. I realised too that Zapper had, in his own peculiar way, my welfare at heart. That, though, was of small solace the moment I recalled those slaves shuffling down into the mine.
"Why slaves?" I asked Zapper.
"Illicit mining.”
"Surely, though, machines would be more effective?”
"Machines can be detected from space. People can't. And slaves are cheaper. Don't need no technicians for them."
“What will happen to them when the mining's finished?"
"If they live that long, if there's enough of them, if they're fit enough, they'll be shipped to another mine."
“If not?"
"They'll be killed."
All seemed so hopeless.
I asked him how the slaves could be expected to work in a barely breathable atmosphere. He told me that the actual workings were sealed off, had oxygen fed into them.
"We could still escape Zapper. You and I. I'd speak up for you."
“It's too late boy."
"Don' t you feel any remorse at killing that technician?"
"Disinfectant kills germs boy. That's all I am. That’s all they are."
"There,” I said, "tell that to the police. They'll understand."
"Forget it boy. There is no escape. Or only on a planet. And you know well enough what life on a planet is like."
"It's better by far than this.”
But, even as I said it, I knew that such an escape was futile. As Zapper told me — men like Boss don't leave anything to chance. So had Boss destroyed our shuttle; and so another, like Boss, had pursued and destroyed that fleeing spaceman’s ship. Because I now saw what that spaceman had done — he had escaped with a minder and a valet, and had ended up cursing the planet on which he had sought refuge.
So did mine and Zapper’s bizarre conversation in that lavatory twist and turn, until it was time to eat. And, thereafter, whenever we were similarly free of surveillance, our conversation continued.
"We could take over the ship from Boss," I suggested one day.
“Don't underestimate him boy,” Zapper said, "We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
I now had the trust from Zapper that I had striven to create; but it was a trust based on our mutual culpability, on the hopelessness of our plight, and it availed me nothing.
Soon, however, Zapper began to leave me to work alone while he ran other errands for Boss. Then, one day he said that as I was to be working on my own all day I ought to be armed, despite my protests he strapped a gun on me, showed me how it worked.
The very next day I was tracing a minor fault in the life-support, had to go from room to room the length of the ship. I was in one of the ship's holds when another of the crewmen found me.
This man had orange faces painted on his tunic.
"Zapper's little consort," he leered at me. "All on his own."
Carefully closing the door he began to sidle around the walls in my general direction. I removed the gun from my holster and, arming it, pointed it at him.
"Go away,” I told him.
He must have sensed the certainty in my tone, have noted the assuredness with which I aimed the gun at him, for he did not quibble; but, turning smartly about, opened the door and left immediately.
That crewman had known, as I knew, know still, that I would have shot him with no more compunction than I would have slapped at an insect on Balant. If such things can be measured, then my annoyance with that sly slippery man had been equal to that of my irritation with a pestering insect. I would have given as little consideration to the swatting of one as to the shooting of the other. To Zapper these men were germs, to me insects.
Returning the gun to its holster I knew that I was now indeed no better nor worse than any of them. I had descended into the madness of their universe.
Chapter Twenty-Two
On the noble work of Emissaries, compared to the sinister machinations of others such as Boss.
During the three weeks following the disembarkation of the slaves I learnt, from conversations with Boss and Zapper, much about the planet whence we were bound.
Now that I had established my counterfeit trust, Zapper, although no longer my appointed guard, often sought my company. Indeed, having heard from the crewman of my threat on his life, Zapper became adamant that I should not kill.
“It's too easy a habit to get into," he told me. "Kill once and it's no hardship to kill again. So you mustn't kill boy. Not you. It's too easy. Kill once and all life will come to mean nothing to you. Even your own.”
It may seem odd to you, ensconced somewhere deep within the safety of civilisation, that a criminal should so earnestly attempt to dissuade me from committing crimes. Yet, in that environment, it did not appear at all strange. Indeed Zapper's previous emphasis on killing seemed now to have been only an expression of his impatience with my lack of understanding for his environment. And now that I had heeded the lesson, he seemed determined that I should not have to put it into practise.
"Killing's the language here,” Zapper said. “You’ve learnt it. Don’t speak it.”
So did Zapper seek me out during the days, idled nearby while I worked. If he talked I knew that we were free of surveillance and so I freely responded. And now, in this equality of understanding — now that I realised that he was almost as helpless as I in those circumstances, now that I knew that he was not an architect of evil but an unwilling accessory — I felt free to ask questions. So it was Zapper who first told me that we were bound for the planet of Carthi.
"More slaves?" I dispiritedly asked, knowing that there was nothing that I would be able to do to prevent their capture.
"Not on Carthi. Boss is playing a clever little game there." And Zapper proceeded to tell me of Boss's cynical exploitation of the people of Carthi.
I will not perplex you with the arcane details of Carthi's politics, nor attempt a rational analysis, for in planetary affairs logic holds little sway; I will simply confine myself here to a general description, will say only that Carthi was typical of the planetary divisions beloved by planetary politicians.
In one of Carthi’s small kingdoms some of the military had rebelled. Civil wars had been fought, ending in that one kingdom being divided between the king’s followers and the military's followers. Both sides had then, over the centuries, sought allies in other countries — sometimes through common cause or consent, more often by coercion or outright conquest — culminating in the entire planet being party to one side or the other. That division had become formalised, the western hemisphere being ruled by the monarchy, the eastern by the military. Planetary histories are full of such absurdities.
What Boss was doing, unbeknownst to either side, was selling them both expertise — first one side then the other, so that both sides suspected the other of espionage. By virtue of their own intelligence the Carthians had reached the stage of steam engines; for a price Boss had shown them how to make direct combustion engines, and where to drill for oil and how to refine it; and, from their single shot gunpowder-based weapons, he had taken them to rapid firing guns. To cover his tracks he had given each side different designs.
“He’s been careful so far," Zapper said, “not to give them radar or flying ships If they could see where we go it might spoil his little game."
Nor was Boss any longer reticent with me. Many of my jobs now lay in the command room, repairing faults that had lain hidden below layers and layers of the previous technician's incompetence — the unattended greater faults obscuring the host of lesser faults. In many cases my work was made doubly difficult by my predecessor having cured the symptoms of the fault rather than its cause. Boss expressed his satisfaction in my work.
“Haven't known the ship in such good trim for years." His heavy hand fell on my shoulder, “Glad you decided to be sensible."
Probably because I had to dissimulate, had to be wary of letting slip any prior knowledge of what Boss was about to magnanimously reveal to me, I did not feel easy in his presence. With Zapper I could now give vent to my true feelings and thoughts, whereas I had to conceal them at cost of my life from Boss. And where Zapper had come to crime by accident, this man planned crimes, was unscrupulous in their execution. So, when Boss called me ‘sensible’, I immediately translated it to mean coward; and for his praise I instantly disliked myself, felt that I ought not to be assisting him, but that I should be doing something to stop him and his villainous schemes. Yet I did not know what it was that I should do which would not cause my instant extinction.
He boasted openly to me of the subterfuge he was practising upon the warring hemispheres of Carthi. When, one day I asked him if he did not think it morally questionable that he should assist such primitive pe
ople in their destruction of one another, he laughed and said,
"The very opposite. They are so afraid of the weapons I give them that they're frightened of using them. They experiment with them in disputed corners of their planet, and then they ask me for something better than their enemies. I am nothing less than an Emissary, an enterprising Emissary, bringing them up to standards acceptable to civilisation; and making myself a little richer in the process. Out here we have to make our own laws. We can't go running to the police if something should go wrong. I am a pioneer, a bringer of civilisation. And civilisation has its price. Pay, I tell the King, and the kingdom of space will be yours. Pay, I tell the generals, and victory will be yours."
I did not dispute with him. In fact I had to swallow my outrage. To hear that gross criminal compare himself with those brave and selfless people who become Emissaries was an affront to all that is noble and good in the civilisation that he so lightly scoffed at.
Within civilisation, to avoid humiliating and possibly stigmatising those peoples newly arrived in space, Emissaries are rarely given the accolades they justly deserve. So, if you should not know of the work of our Emissaries, let me here explain.
When a planet has reached the stage of development where they have acquired the capability of space exploration, or they have produced such powerful weaponry that they are in danger of destroying their very planet; then, before they can do any lasting damage, an Emissary is dispatched to the planet to talk to the leaders and to persuade them to a peaceful co-existence.
An Emissary’s task is a difficult and a dangerous one — to dissuade the planetary inhabitants from a habit of mind, of enmity, which may have existed for centuries. Generally the Emissaries achieve their purpose by taking the most powerful of the planetary leaders into space and showing them our civilisation. And, of course, once within Space, witnessing the great distances, the very vastnesses of space making of the idea of ownership nonsense, seeing that there is, literally, space enough for everyone, those leaders soon realise the total futility or fighting over one small planet, have the discovery made for them that understanding is more important than conquest. So they return to their planet to prepare their separate peoples for a life of peace and plenty in Space. And an intelligent populace, once asked, are always prepared to forswear war for a secure peace.