Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels

by W. Clark Boutwell

  “That’s how we get milk and cheese, Lucy, but from cattle, of course,” added Alexandra. “The Unity has big flocks of cattle. You harvest the milk every so often and make it into food. I’ve seen reports.”

  Tiffany lowered a forkful of alfredo and pushed the plate to the side.

  “But it can’t be good for … them,” continued Luscena, fluttering her hands in front of her chest, her face, even with her crimson lips, paled. No one responded.

  In the silence, Alexandra said, “Captivity sounds entirely gruesome, Mally, but I am not surprised you’re so melled out. Captives always start to identify with their captors. Well-known fact, everybody knows.”

  “Oh yes,” said Tiffany. “And whatever you do, give yourself a rest, and you will be back to normal … soon, I’m sure. Be careful who you talk to, Mally.” She would not meet her eyes.

  Tiffany, Luscena, and Alexandra ate no more. Hecate winked at Malila as they both poached a little salmon from Alexandra’s neglected plate.

  Luscena left shortly thereafter, gasping before she stood and only then remembering to look at her watch. She rushed out with her usual welter of promises and idle threats. Her personal skimmer had yet to be announced. Tiffany and Alexandra started a murmuring conversation and left together with barely a wave between them.

  CHAPTER 53

  ADVICE AND DISSENT

  “I understand. Or rather, I don’t understand, but I know I should,” Hecate said, looking across the cluttered and soiled white linen at Malila.

  “Understand what?” Malila said.

  “I should understand how seductive babies should be to us, to women. They are to men too, of course, but I don’t think I will understand that.”

  Malila look puzzled until Hecate added, “I’ve been reading.”

  Malila moved around the table to sit next to her. “You are still going to the warehouse? What is it like?”

  “Like a morgue, but the corpses look back at you. The books are only alive when people can read them. They aren’t really alive with just me.”

  “So you’ve found some good stories for Victor?”

  “Dozens, but … he was denounced. He killed himself last autumn. It was just after you were gone.”

  Malila watched her friend openmouthed, expecting her to dissolve into tears. Hecate shrugged and gave a wan parody of a smile.

  “Oh … Heccy!”

  Malila sought her friend’s hands. They were cool, her warmth slipping away.

  “It would have been only another eighteen months. He would have retired,” Hecate added, almost as an apology.

  “Yes, he could … retire,” murmured Malila, drifting off into something Xavier had said.

  Hecate shifted; a cloud passed over the skylights, darkening her face. “Retire? Yeah … retire. I wonder if that is like your hunt. Do you still think there are whales?”

  Hecate continued rapidly, before Malila said anything. “I saw it after you disappeared. They didn’t think to fake the cosmetic production records. I looked. There was no rise in cetyl ester production or a drop in jojoba oil use … No whale-oil derivatives became available after you were supposed to have harvested two big males, and the substitute didn’t decline in use either. It’s all deception.”

  “I don’t know what you are trying to tell me, Heccy. I just wanted to get home. There were so many old people there. They acted crazy, and everyone let them.”

  “How many old people are we talking about?” Hecate asked.

  “One … only one. He was the man who captured me.” Malila, suddenly embarrassed, looked down at her hands.

  “What sort of crazy are we talking about?” Hecate’s voice changed, becoming sterner somehow, Malila thought.

  “Well, I know he has killed at least seven people, for sure. He used to beat me if I said things … whip me if I made a mistake or walked too slow,” she said, wondering why the statement felt like a betrayal.

  “The outlands are a barbaric place,” Hecate agreed. “Still, you haven’t told me crazy yet. Cruel … but not crazy. He was your jailor, right? Did he fuck you?”

  The grotesque word seemed to echo off the walls to her.

  “No. It was strange. I thought we would. I couldn’t get away from him. He watched me when I was naked. I guess that was just to be sure I wouldn’t escape.”

  “So he wasn’t attracted to you … That is crazy enough.” A thin smile chased across Hecate’s lips as Malila looked up, feeling she had to defend Jesse.

  “No … I think he would have liked to … have pleasure-sex … with me, but it was like he was keeping a promise. That is like him. It took us six weeks to walk to the … where we were going. He got sick near the end. He went sort of crazy then, but he got better. He was a little boy before the Rampart was built, he said. He must be in his seventies.”

  “But …” Hecate prodded.

  “He could outwalk me carrying a forty-kilo pack. Everyone called him the ‘old man.’ They meant it as a term of respect, can you believe? I even tried to kill him once. He went against orders to keep me alive. But we became friends, I mean real friends, without the pleasure-sex. I just never really got him, I think. He used to recite poetry, old poetry, for me. I liked him. It got all mixed up. He told me he loved me.”

  “Maybe he thought you could love him. That makes a lot of people crazy,” murmured Hecate, looking away as her voice went flat.

  Malila felt strange hearing Hecate’s words. “I think I did love him. But he wouldn’t even discuss being a patron. He said he would not shame me by doing that.”

  “You offered to be a Sisi’s protégé?”

  “It did not seem so bad at the time; Jesse is different—too different. Does that make sense?”

  “No, not really, Mally. But I am getting it secondhand, of course. You were there; I wasn’t.”

  “But we finally connected, no submission, no patronage … It was lovely and warm and tender, and then … he started talking about some other woman. He wanted to include this Mary Eng person. I think I would have gone along with that, but then he started to scare me, curse me, talking about all kinds of stuff.

  Malila felt Hecate press her hands just as despair started to overwhelm her.

  “We were half-dressed, and he was going on about another woman. That was so unlike him. I can’t explain. It was just too weird. It was just being cruel. I didn’t take it well. I told him to father himself and walked off,” Malila said and smiled, before weeping.

  This brought a cluck of disdain from Hecate, but then she stopped. “Wait a moment, Mally. Something I read.”

  Hecate looked distracted, then focused on Malila again. “Did he say Mary, a woman’s name, or marry, a verb? What did he mean really? What did you do after he got weird on you?”

  “I was just too upset, and I left him there. We never had the chance to talk. I never … didn’t see him before I was rescued. What do you mean ‘verb’? What does marry mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean pleasure-sex, or rather it does … It’s complicated. It means he wants you for his wife. Why did he start cursing you?”

  “Wife? Like Sally? I didn’t say anything … I don’t remember exactly what he said other than ‘father something.’”

  Hecate frowned. “Father hasn’t always been a curse word, Mally. I think he may just have wanted to talk to your actual father,” Hecate answered.

  “My father? He’s Sapped and dead. Jesse knew that.”

  “I think he wanted to check that people who love you were okay with him … whether he was good for you. At least, that is what I gleaned from some of the books. It is really old style, though.”

  “Marry-ing?”

  “A pair bond, a contract guaranteed by something like the state. Do they still do that in the outlands?”

  “Yeah, they do,” Malila said, remembering the way Mo
ses’s eyes had followed Sally as she’d disappeared into the forest … just before he’d been shot.

  “Your Sisi wasn’t asking for pleasure-sex; he was asking to be considered a patron for life … and then have sex,” Hecate said with a smirk. She then sobered after looking into Malila’s eyes.

  Hecate took a deep breath. “Mally, I’m glad I could clear this up for you, but you know this is over, right? Nothing good happens with Sisis; it’s just a fact of life. They get quirky as they get older. They start listening to other voices, not the ones the rest of us hear. In the books, the Sisis don’t know what they are saying half the time.”

  “I ran away from him. I said terrible things. He must think I’m crazy.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It never mattered. You have to stay focused and strong now. You are in danger. You know things … We both do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have gotten out of the box. The Unity … it isn’t what we think it is. You have seen the outlands. They’ll notice you’ve changed.”

  “Don’t be silly, Heccy. They went to all this trouble to rescue me.”

  “Okay, I don’t know why they rescued you, but have you ever talked to anyone else who came back from the outlands? Laborers, technicians, engineers, other DUFS? I’ll bet you never met anyone who was actually there.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Old stories … maybe just old stories. They can’t let anyone see the stars,” Hecate said and shook her head before looking down.

  Suddenly the air in the room was too warm for Malila. She watched one of the waiters look up and start toward her. The room itself seemed to shrivel around her, compressing her, the scent of the flowers choking her.

  She rose. “Hecate, I can’t talk now. It’s too much. Jourdaine wanted me back, and he made it happen!”

  She left without looking back, afraid that Hecate would say something more. She did not remember the trip back to her new quarters; Edie just told her where to go, and she went. Later she wept. Malila’s one consolation was knowing that running from Jesse had saved him. The skimmer would have found them together, and Jesse would have died like Xavier … like Moses.

  Hecate rose, watching Malila retreat from the table, and gathered her own things.

  She had done it again. She had tried to be a friend, to give good advice, and to help Malila avoid her own mistakes. Instead, Malila had backed away, fearful and confused, just when they needed each other. She needed Malila’s strength, and Malila needed her insight. Sometimes, people couldn’t hear the truth. The ministry certainly couldn’t.

  Hecate had not known it last fall, but she knew it now.

  It was the plum production. She had gotten that data herself, recording the consumption of “plums, dried” in a target population of new retirees. She had been assured that Sisis needed their dried plums, but there was a problem. If every year new retirees were added to the pool, and if the retirees lived just ten more years, the consumption ought to be at least five times greater than what the enclaves requisitioned.

  Something was wrong.

  In an act of supreme courage, Hecate had submitted a report on the Pamlico River krill effusion harvest. Last year, the effusion had died, a victim to institutional sloth and hierarchical greed. She reported it as unchanged from the previous harvest. She ought to have been fired; instead, Undersecretary Rice had complimented her for an orderly and timely report. The data it contained had been as phony as Hecate’s career.

  Malila was changed. She was more vigorous, more vivid, than she ever had been. The sun must have done something to her. Her hands were rough, the nails not quite perfect, her skin darkened. She acted more competent, less talkative. But she seemed so sad. Her stories of the infant were too poignant and of the old man much too sincere.

  The amount of comm’net resources expended on Malila was immense. The effort expended on her rescue was already huge. Malila would have to pay for that, in some fashion, before the scales balanced. The factions always wanted the scales to balance.

  Cynical? Yes, Hecate supposed she had become cynical. The death of Victor, the unmasking of the uselessness of her job, and the books … indeed, the books.

  What she had read in the last six months had given her a cynicism, perhaps a realism, about herself and her country. Right now Malila, as much as Hecate loved her, could not see it. Perhaps Malila would never see the reality of the Unity. In a few months, maybe a few years, Malila’s bill would come due, and she would pay for her rescue and her current celebrity. The price would be steep. Hecate could not help her and could not stand to watch her fall.

  More importantly, she could not stay to watch her fall. Hecate was going to be denounced. There were too many things … coincidences: meetings that people talked about to which she had never been invited, small changes in who reported to whom, and, most telling, how the guy from CORE ignored her requests. The CORE guys always seemed to know whom they could ignore without reprisal.

  Even so, it took her a week to gather the courage to call Tiffany.

  Hecate met her in the lobby of the Mid-Manatten Euthanatorium, the all-purpose mortuary, nursing home, clinic, skilled-care facility, and hospital where Tiffany worked.

  The lobby was almost deserted. A few low stone benches crouched on the metal gray floor. Posters in pleasant shades of gold and aqua decorated the walls and proclaimed:

  Shorten the Misery!

  Dignify Your Death!

  Live Proudly … Die Proudly!

  Copies were on sale in the gift shop.

  Tiffany was there waiting for her. She had been the voice of compassion in their group since childhood; it was to her that Hecate had spilled her list of disappointments, disillusions, and fears.

  “Have you ever thought of killing yourself, like Victor?” Tiffany asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Hecate had been reticent to tell her at first, but only at first.

  “Suicide is treason, you know, Hecate.”

  “Are you turning me in, Tiffany?”

  “Of course not. I am your friend, aren’t I? But why are you leaving us? Don’t we mean enough for you to stay?”

  “Please, Tiff, this is going to be hard for me. If you make me answer, I will just start crying. Everything I do here is useless. They are going to denounce me.”

  “You don’t know that. We love you; I love you. You will find someone else. Victor was a good man, but there are other men.”

  “It’s not just Victor … It’s everything. Life shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t be like this. Tiffany, just help me … You’re the only one I can trust.”

  Nodding, Tiffany finally agreed. It took weeks to organize Hecate’s suicide.

  CHAPTER 54

  KLEOPHIRRA BANKS!

  Jourdaine sat in his austere darkened office, the city displaying its garish wares to him from his perch thirty floors above the street. His campaign against Suarez was coming along nicely, but his timing would have to be perfect. Chiu was now an asset and no longer a liability. She might even become the centerpiece.

  The major uncontrolled variables now were the ’net commentators, especially James J. Gordon. The commentators acted as an independent political force outside the factions. Where Gordon led, others followed. At least one Solon-elect had underestimated Gordon and had been denounced, at the very moment of his elevation, by an exposé from the “satirist in chief.”

  While Gordon’s concurrence was critical, timing was of greater concern. If Jourdaine started too soon, Gordon might let him twist in the wind, an early martyr before the main battle was even joined. But if he started his attack after Gordon came out against Suarez, then Jourdaine’s actions would appear subordinate, perhaps even submissive to Gordon’s.

  Chiu could make a difference. Pompous editor
ials, including his own, crowded in one upon the other, escalated her importance. She was plausible. If the truth about her denunciation last October could be quashed, it would justify all the trouble rescuing her. After six months as a captive of the savages, he had expected to find a brutalized cinder of an officer. Instead he had found Malila: young, attractive, and compliant.

  She had possibilities. A coup d’état needed a face. Among the best revolutionaries were those who sealed their fame by dying … just as victory was proclaimed. So the very best coup d’état should be led by a pretty—and pretty expendable—face.

  Malila fit on both counts. She had but two career paths open to her at the moment, he thought: denunciation for cowardice in the face of the enemy or elevation as a plucky young heroine destined for high office. It was indeed fortunate for her that she had an éminence grise already in position to advise her.

  Malila now commanded a platoon of line troopers—a combat platoon and not a support platoon. An experienced un-Sapped platoon sergeant, Natan Grauer, offered the prospect of an effective and well-run platoon command organization. Malila’s new commanding general was Brigadier General Ingamar Magness, a man, she discovered, who had had a dazzlingly unremarkable career. She would not get a free pass up the hierarchy on Magness’s coattails. Nevertheless, promotion led through combat command. It was a step up, any way she looked at it.

  Her new orders had included the phrase “making yourself available to vetted media interviews, as consistent with good military order and discipline.” After her introductory audience with her new commanding general, a bearlike man who seemed to confuse obstinacy for integrity, Malila was made to understand that she had better show up for every interview her CO suggested and no other interviews whatever.

  She received the first request that very day, with a copy of her gracious signed acceptance letter already affixed. Edie tsked.

  At the appointed time, Malila arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse. She entered through a half-opened door. A light at the extreme end of the dark interior flashed above a sign reading, “NO ENTRANCE WHILE LIGHT IS FLASHING.”