Chains of Redemption

by Selina Rosen

  They were the proof that breeding would tell, that environment could only effectively combat breeding if you changed someone's environment completely. Their ancestors had been a bunch of egg-headed scientists who had probably never shed a drop of sweat in their lives. To add insult to injury, these were people so selfish that they valued their own lives above that of their fellow beings.

  To find out exactly what caliber of people had gone into the bunkers you only had to ask yourself a few simple questions. Would you want to live on a dead world? Do you think you deserve to live more than your family, your friends, your neighbors, or even the guy who runs the corner market? Could you really stand being alive knowing that by taking a place in the bunker you had ensured someone else's demise? How vain do you have to be to think you deserve to be the future of a race's gene pool?

  RJ had read everything she could find on the planet to read in the years she had been here, and the utter and complete selfishness of the Abornie's ancestors was abhorrent. It seemed that there had actually been room for hundreds of thousands more people in the bunkers, and enough supplies to sustain them. But the scientists, doctors and politicians had decided that they had no idea how long the "winter" would last, and that they were better off keeping their numbers to a bare minimum to ensure their own personal survival. Some of the occupants of the bunkers had actually decided to go to the bunkers while leaving their entire family on the surface to die. They had written what she was sure they thought were heart-rending accounts of how they'd been forced to go below and leave their loved ones to die. How hard the decision had been for them. RJ wasn't buying any of it. Their family, friends, homes, pets, everything would be destroyed, they knew it, and they chose to save their own asses.

  The Abornie were the descendants of people who thought it showed great courage that they were willing to go below and leave everyone else to die to save their race. They'd had ice water for blood.

  Even their on-going feud with the Ocupods had been their own damn fault. They had realized early on—because though they were selfish and self-centered, they were also incredibly intelligent—that the Ocupods attacked them only when they tried to use any kind of machinery, electricity, or basically any form of technology. But they just kept trying anyway, until the Ocupods eventually ran them out of the ruins where they had been living and into the jungles. Even then they kept trying, even though it had caused the death of many of their people, because they just wanted to have it all. They knew that technology existed, and they were willing to sacrifice lives—as long as it wasn't theirs, and no one ever thinks it's going to be them—just to have simpler lives.

  Because they were just that incredibly lazy.

  How much easier did they actually need it? The planet was always a balmy sixty to eighty degrees, they had lots of clean water, and food was everywhere. They could have just hung out and survived, but that wasn't good enough.

  Assholes! The Abornie were, plain and simple, the largest group of assholes she'd ever encountered. She could find absolutely nothing redeemable about them as a whole.

  Topaz and Levits kept treating them like hapless natives who had been forced into a horrible existence by cowardly, genetically engineered freaks. They guided them and were patient with their squabbling and bickering to an almost disgusting degree.

  All RJ saw when she looked at them at all were worthless hunks of humanoids walking around hell-bent on having whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it, with no thought at all to the future, or each other, or the planet.

  She didn't mince words when she bothered to talk to them at all. She told them just how she felt about them. Whenever she saw or heard them doing something she considered to be the next step to riding a rail into hell, she spared no feelings and no words telling them how stupid and short-sighted they were.

  So, for the most part, the Abornie avoided her like a plague.

  Except for Alan. From the time he'd been a tiny toddler, Alan had done everything in his power to be close to her and Poley. It was as if he'd figured out, almost fresh from the womb, that the Abornie were all assholes, and wanted to be as far away from them as possible. That place just turned out to be anyplace that Poley and RJ were. The fact that the child had hung around them all day, every day, from early in the morning till late in the evening, sometimes even spending the night on the ship from the time he was about three, and they didn't even know who his parents were, more or less told the whole story about Abornie parenting skills.

  As a race they were lousy parents, no doubt because they lacked the capacity to care for anything as much as they cared for themselves. Of course, these lousy parenting skills had kept their numbers low and might just ensure the future of the planet.

  Alan was highly intelligent and very good humored. He liked to play practical jokes on them, though most of them failed from the beginning because he couldn't quit smiling. She'd even caught him trying to mask his emotions from her, and doing it quite successfully, but he was still smiling, so his tricks just didn't quite work. Sometimes she pretended to fall for one of his gags just to humor him, but he always knew that she was.

  By the time Alan was fourteen he had all but quit returning home. He had now been living with them almost constantly for ten years, and she still didn't know who his parents were. It was only at this point that RJ realized that one of the reasons he was so different from the others was that he had basically been raised by them, and not the Abornie. He had developed all the same facial expressions and speech patterns that they had. He even used their slang, and was practically bilingual, knowing at least as much Reliance as Levits had forgotten.

  Alan moved forward to hold the piece of metal she was trying to weld into place, as always seeming to know what needed to be done without being told . . . Thus proving that he was nothing like the rest of his race. They would happily stand and watch you struggle with something and never offer to lift a finger to help. If you gave up and finally asked for their help, they would immediately start to argue over who was closer.

  Again, like hateful children.

  While Levits and Topaz had encouraged her in her gardening hobby, neither of them seemed to approve of her newest hobby, the reconstruction of two of the Ocupod "vehicles" so that she and Poley could get inside and operate them. It was a major undertaking, and they had to cannibalize one of the skiffs to accomplish the desired outcome. It would be well worth the effort and the lost skiff when they were through, though, and they were having a good time doing it. Six months ago when Levits had first seen what they were building in the hold area of the ship they all still lived in, he had been more than shocked. He'd been pissed off.

  "Do you really hate them so much that you would bring their worst nightmare back to life?" he had said in outrage.

  RJ hadn't missed a beat. "Oh, I hate them a lot, but this has nothing to do with them. I need something to do, and I've found something to keep me busy for awhile." She'd shrugged. "Scaring all hell out of your pets is only a happy little extra."

  "They aren't animals, RJ . . ."

  "We've had this argument before, and I have already said, way too many times to be happy to repeat it, that animals are more deserving of our nurturing and respect." She hadn't even bothered to look up at him from where she was working on the machine in question. She hadn't been able to really look at him lately. He was like some joke gone horribly wrong, a withered, bent caricature of the man who had been her friend, and whom she had once loved.

  She had realized when she couldn't quite forgive him for the incident with the slaughtered Ocupod that she didn't feel the same way about him that she had Whitey, that it wasn't the same kind of love. When the years started to slam into him hard and heavy, when his body became a graph of the ravages of time and his constant complaining was no longer cute, she realized the honeymoon was over. Her desire for him had ended way before his had for her, and she had been greatly relieved on the day that he was no longer able to perform.

  He had com
pletely aligned himself to people who hated her, constantly choosing them over her until it had eroded most of what she had felt for him. However, there was still enough there to keep her on this world.

  It wasn't a real problem. Time was as always on her side, he had meant so much to her once, and he did still love her. For his sake she had promised to keep her project confined to the ship, and he had seemed to be appeased.

  "How long till you leave now?" Alan asked her. She didn't know why Poley had told the boy that the ship was fully operational, fueled, and ready to launch, and that they knew the way home, but he had. Alan hadn't told anyone else, which really showed how much he had aligned himself with them.

  She thought of Levit's condition. "Not long now," she said.

  The boy nodded sadly, no doubt because he'd be left in the land of the flaming assholes. She was very tempted to take him with them, but what sort of life would that be for him? He was better off with the idiots than being slung across the universe with the GSH, the robot, and the crazy old man. He had someplace where he belonged, even if his people were all morons. If he went with them, he'd be as out of place as they were here, and everywhere else.

  "Don't worry, Alan, you will find new friends," Poley said, reading the boy's body language—a feat which never ceased to amaze RJ, given what Poley was.

  "No I won't." The boy let go of the piece he'd been holding and stomped off, which wasn't really very helpful at all.

  "You upset him," Poley said accusingly.

  "Me? I didn't do anything." RJ said.

  "I'm going to go check on him," Poley said, and left her there to work on her project alone.

  "Great." RJ sighed as she tried to do what she'd been doing with his help by herself. It wasn't really working. "I really do think I preferred Poley when I gave orders and he followed them, no questions asked," she mumbled. She gave up trying to do the work herself, and walked over to get a cup of water off the workbench where she'd left it. She took a long swallow, then crawled up on the workbench to await Poley's return.

  Her mind unwittingly turned to Levits and his condition. He was now eighty-seven years old and sick, sick with something very human. Cancer, Topaz said, and something far beyond their ability to cure. He was wasting away slowly. His friends from the village came in a steady stream, bringing him different foods they said were cures, not knowing they didn't work with his physiology. They visited with him and took turns bathing and dressing him. These people who had so much trouble doing anything for anyone but themselves were bending over backwards for him, which showed how much they actually cared for him.

  And what had he actually done for them? He'd played with their children. Told them stories about Earth. Fished with them. Taught them how to build vehicles and helped govern them.

  She'd been the one who won the war for them, thereby making all these things possible. Her they hated. They hated her because she was different, because she was stronger than they were, and because she expected them to act responsibly.

  Levits was no threat, his rotting carcass proved that. She might at any minute rise up in her anger and smite them. She didn't age, and they all knew what she was capable of. If they had been smart, they would have been kissing her ass. After all, Levits was dying, and then the only one they'd have to protect them from her wrath would be Topaz. They didn't know she was leaving as soon as Levits died, and she preferred it that way. Let them all squirm.

  Simple-minded, selfish, chicken shits, and he prefers them to me. He loves me, even now when he's laying there dying, and knows I can't really stand to be near him. But he thinks they are somehow worthier than me. Whitey understood me, and I thought Levits did, too. He did, till they turned him against me. Till he started to become more like one of them than one of us. They stole him from me, and that's the real reason I hate them so much.

  RJ wasn't at all sure she was happy to have discovered this about herself. It seemed petty, and she didn't consider herself to be petty.

  She had to make herself check on Levits every day, and every day she hoped that it would be the day when he'd have the pride and dignity to ask her to do what needed to be done. But he seemed to be happy to live in any state. Topaz had used a pain blocker so that Levits felt basically nothing. His food had to be puréed and fed to him through a straw. He shit and pissed himself on a regular basis. He could barely breathe, and was only coherent about six hours a day, but even in those rare moments he didn't ask for what she would have demanded in his position.

  She didn't know if this made him incredibly brave or incredibly weak, she only knew that she'd be glad when it was over. When it would finally all be over and she could leave this beautiful, amazing world inhabited by the worst form of parasites.

  RJ finally realized that quite a bit of time had passed and neither Poley nor Alan had returned, so she decided she'd better go check on them. They had gone towards the interior rooms, so she headed that way. She had barely entered the hallway when she heard a horrible screaming coming from Poley's room. The door was closed, so she kicked it open and jumped through, blaster in hand. She stopped, for the moment frozen by shock.

  "Ah . . . I'm, ah . . ." She started laughing nervously, holstered her blaster, picked up the door and backed out, propping it in the doorway as she went. "Sorry, really sorry, boys."

  She kept laughing as she walked away shaking her head. The universe had just become an even stranger place than it had been a few short minutes ago.

  "So," RJ looked up at Poley as he walked into the hold, "where's Alan?"

  Poley looked puzzled. "He said he was embarrassed that you saw what we were doing. He went to the garden to get something for dinner." He shrugged.

  "Poley do you . . . Well, do you enjoy doing that with Alan?"

  "He seems to enjoy it very much, and I find that gives me a certain excitement. He says I'm the best at it, but of course I would be, because I'm perfect."

  "So you keep saying," RJ said and added under her breath, "to think all these years I thought the boy had a crush on me."

  "No, Alan doesn't find females sexually pleasing," Poley said, having of course heard her.

  "Well, obviously not," RJ laughed. "Poley, does Alan understand what you are?"

  "I believe so. He says I'm gentle, handsome, gallant and very wise, and I am all of those things."

  "You're also a robot, Poley."

  "And you're a GSH. You weren't supposed to be able to have sex, but you can. I, on the other hand, was programmed to be fully sexually functional." He had an almost defensive tone in his voice.

  She decided to let it drop. They'd be leaving soon, and then what would it matter if the boy had a warm memory of an encounter with something that wasn't actually flesh and blood?

  She went to Levit's room as she did every day. They hadn't shared a room since he'd become impotent. He had contended that it was just too hard for him. She had thought if it was hard it wouldn't have been a real problem, and had hidden her joy at being able to distance herself from him without it having been her decision.

  Today his breathing seemed even more labored than usual. She ignored the now ever-present smell of shit and disinfectant that seemed to permeate the room.

  He was just lying there, wheezing and gasping and making horrible bowel sounds that he couldn't control. For a second she saw him in her mind's eyes, a happy memory of him young and beautiful and full of life, reminding her of why she had cared for him so much.

  But the present slapped her in the face, even as the tears ran down her checks.

  This was how it was supposed to be. How awful. She could learn from her mistakes and experiences and live to use the knowledge. If she ever died it would be in the middle of some horrible blast, it would be quick and clean. Yet this fragile, almost dead creature had once saved her life. He'd fought at her side, would have given his short life for her. He'd loved her, and he'd loved these stupid-assed Abornies that she had no use for.

  Now his body was eaten up with dise
ase and very little of humanity remained, and yet still he clung to life.

  "RJ?" he croaked out. She moved up where he could see her and forced herself to take his hand.

  "I'm here, Levits."

  He almost laughed, then coughed.

  "Maybe you shouldn't try to talk," she suggested.

  "Why, because I might die?" he smiled. "You don't understand, do you?" he asked.

  "Understand what?"

  "Why I care for them so much."

  "No, I really don't. You were never one to suffer fools until we came here. You were basically selfish and self-centered, yet you opened your heart to them, and they didn't deserve a second thought from you."

  "You never gave them a chance, RJ. They are flawed, just like humans are flawed, but they aren't the hopeless parasites you make them out to be. Quit separating yourself from them, become part of the community. They can be warm, loving, gracious."