“No, I don’t suppose it does,” Farr allowed uncomfortably and then quickly changed the subject. “But tell us of your world Foreman. Tell us how this place came to be as it is.”
“Of course, my son, I will tell you the histories of my people and you will know how our world came to be as you’ve found it. As you know, we are the Workers and the Suits are our misguided brothers. I’m not just the Foreman of my people, but the keeper of our traditions and histories. I will convey them to you as best I can, but they’ve been handed down from generation to generation and the earlier generations were not as meticulous in their renditions.”
“Long ago the Workers and the Suits lived together in two verdant and beautiful gardens. We’d come here from a beautiful world filled with water and growing things called Earth. The work we did for the Suits made them wealthy beyond our power to imagine, so we weren’t treated badly, at least at first. The Suits, who controlled the gardens, lived in the place they called Six while the Workers lived in the place called Five. They had little to do with each other even then, at least on a day to day basis. Everyone had access to the gardens, the gardens of their place that is. The Workers were not allowed into the garden of Six and the Suits did not care to come into the Garden of the Workers. But everyone was well cared for and had plenty to eat. The Workers and the Suits could stroll in the gardens of their place and bask in the life giving sun which shone brightly in the heavens for fourteen Earth cycles before disappearing for another fourteen cycles.”
“Our world was not a paradise you understand,” the old man broke off from his narrative to address his guests. “But it was not unpleasant and when things did go wrong, the Foreman would go to the Suits and the problem would be worked out to everyone’s agreement, if not everyone’s satisfaction. Occasionally, the problem went on for a longer period and the Foreman would call a “strike” and the Workers would all sit down and refuse to work, which upset the Suits and made them more malleable to our problems. It was not perfect, but it was not too oppressive either.”
“Then there came a time of vast upheaval when the world Earth was hammered by the hand of the Creator and we, her children in exile, were not spared from the Creator’s wrath. You see, we had disappointed our Creator and had sinned in their eyes. Why else would they have scattered the children of Earth and reined death down upon us? The hand of the Creator separated us from the men of Earth and punished the Children of this dark world with exile.”
A profound feeling of peace descended onto Farr as the old man narrated the life of the Workers before the Calamity, his voice rising and falling like the gentle tides of Earth’s seas. Farr found himself sinking into the story until he could actually feel the contentment, frustration, joy and sorrow of the people as the words poured forth from the Foreman.
“It was during the destruction of Earth that an important Chief of the Suits arrived with a contingent of his followers. He told us that the Earth was beyond help and that we must survive on our own and that he would lead us. The Workers were suspicious of him, but his followers had weapons, so we held our peace to discover his intentions. It was soon after his arrival that the Creator crushed the garden of Six, leaving only the garden of the Workers to feed and supply the colony. The Chief of the Suits came among us and expelled us from our living places around the garden of Five. Some fought against this and attempted to strike but he had these killed. There was a fell madness in the eyes of the Chief and wherever he walked death walked with him and danced around those in his presence. Our quotas were significantly increased and our food was greatly reduced. Our days were misery and death came often among us so the Foreman who spoke for the Workers went to the Chief in anger on behalf of the Workers, but the Chief had him slain, and decreed from then on there would be no Foreman. But we Workers elected one in secrecy and always the Foreman would look after the needs of the Workers. Many Foremen were slain and many more of us were slain for refusing to divulge who the Foreman among us was, but the Workers remained loyal.”
“This was our lot for several periods. Hundreds of us were killed but the Workers persevered and the Chief could not entirely crush our spirit.”
“Now, among the Suits were many men of learning from old Earth. Mostly they did as they were bid by the Chief, even to the altering of our physical beings, and the murder and experimentation on our people. But there was one among them, Stephen of the family of Anderson, whom the Creators had touched. And he repudiated the deeds of the Chief, and, all alone, for he could not trust the other learned men, he took control of the Garden. In the hidden places of the Garden the Creator led him to the machines of destruction that the Suits had hidden away there and forgotten. And he breathed life into them and they walked again and they guarded the Garden at his command so that the Chief and his people were denied access and the Chief came at the machines of war in anger with all of his men and there was death in the tunnels but the Suits could not enter the Garden and their Chief was slain and they were scattered.”
“And laws came from the Garden, from Stephen, whom the Creators guided. We were allotted a fair amount of work to be done by every Worker and Suit and the food was distributed based on this and while our lives were hard, they were fair and bearable. And Stephen set machine guards between the living places of the Suits and the Workers and we lived at peace for many periods, although the Suits, time and again every few periods, would attack the war machines, only to suffer staggering loses and retreat. Stephen was never heard from again, although the Creator let him send one final prophecy to us that the Foreman holds to himself and passes down only to the next Foreman.”
“Many periods we lived in peace, unmolested by the Suits, but twenty periods after my birth, by the reckoning of the Workers, the machine that kept the peoples separated did not come to the tunnels. The Suits, whom we’d not seen since the Act of Stephen, began to cautiously appear in the tunnels, and they had not been idle over the many periods. They carried weapons and the Workers had none and many of us were slain and many were taken captive. We had no machines to fashion weapons but we tried as you can see from the knives my people carry. But they had more powerful weapons and so our people continued to be taken and killed. And the Creator had forbidden war on our part because war would’ve doomed us all.”
“Faced with this unwinnable situation and no further protection from the machines, we learned to hide, for we had not been idle over the periods either. We’ve always worked diligently and we discovered new places in our diggings. When in my thirty fifth period I became Foreman, I led my people out of the living places of Six, where the Chief had cast us, during a night cycle and into the caves. We are stealthy and ever vigilant, but still some of us are killed and some of us are enslaved. My people want to fight but the rations have declined over the years and we are weak. The young have turned their heads away from the histories for they see no hope. As for myself, I’ve always believed the people of Earth would return, because it was promised, but I am old and the young no longer listen to the old.”
Farr, Ming and Takashi exchanged glances thinking over the story they had just heard. They had keenly felt the loss and misery of the Workers in the Foreman’s words and the feelings weighed on them still, almost palpable. Takashi was the first to speak.
“The genetic scientists, they altered you?”
“Not all of us. The ones you’ve seen thus far are from lines that were altered to be better Workers for the Suits. Many of our people are not. The Suits only enslave the ones who’ve been altered. The others they kill as inferior. So to protect them they do not go to the offerings.”
“Alain´,” Farr said, “your rations are diminishing because the system is failing. We’ve seen signs of this.”
“I had feared that was the reason. If the war machines ever fail the Suits will enter the Garden and take it for their own. What their hands touch, they defile. It will be the end of my people.”
The old man had reached out and softly touched Farr’s
arm as he had spoken and suddenly Farr became aware of the forces he had set in motion by saving the two Workers. The Suits would know that something was amiss and, learning that there were strangers among them, and because of their past crimes, they would attempt to silence the evidence. Farr had seen it before, on the islands of old New Zealand, in the jungle reaches of what once was Cambodia and finally, in the vicious cruelty of Nguyen. They would kill all to save themselves, including all of Farr’s crew now on the lunar surface. The quiet rage that Farr had fought to control his entire life began to bubble to the surface. He could stop it this time, he told himself. He could put a halt to it before the atrocities occurred, and, he swore quietly to himself, that this time would be different.
“No, it won’t,” Commander Farr said his voice solemn and filled with resolve. For some reason he felt he needed to assure the saintly old man. “We are going into the Garden, as you call it, and put an end to this. Ming, Takashi, work something out to bring down those warbots.” Ming and Takashi looked dubiously at each other, but both nodded.
“Foreman, may we meet the rest of your people,” he asked, turning to the old man.
“Of course, my son, I’ll lead you to our gathering chamber myself if you’ll lend me your arm again.” Farr complied as the old man raised himself up.
Alain´ led the way out of his sleeping area and down the dark corridors, following many twists and turns. The dark, which had been oppressive to Farr only moments before, now seemed comforting and familiar as he escorted the Foreman through the tunnels.
Further ahead the party could see a dim light which grew as they approached it. Before they’d realized it, they’d stepped directly into a high ceilinged cave that was perhaps four hundred meters long and two hundred wide. The cave ceiling and all of its walls were covered in the bioluminescent bacteria in large patches, here and there, and the men of Earth could see without need of their opticals for the first time since they had landed, although the far end of the cavern was in shadows and faces could not be made out from much further than thirty meters.
The eyes of the visitors swept around the huge chamber, taking in the plight of the Workers as well as the cavern itself. There were hundreds here in little knots in shelves along the walls. Farr could not adequately assess their numbers but it easily could’ve exceeded a couple of thousand.
“We spend our waking hours here,” the Foreman explained. “Although my people are bitter and without hope they still find solace in each other’s presence.” One of the occupants called over to the Foreman and he excused himself and left Farr, Ming and Takashi to themselves.
“There aren’t very many like Eric and the Workers we saw,” Ming whispered to Farr, who nodded agreement. As his eyes became better adjusted Farr perceived the truth in that statement. Maybe sixty percent of them were barely two meters tall and the overwhelming majority of the Workers were Farr’s height or a few centimeters shorter. He noted that not all had the barrel chested features of Eric and the Foreman. Their chests were considerably less pronounced although still adapted to the lower atmosphere. But all were emaciated, lank, listless skeletons, suffering from a variety of ailments. Some had trouble breathing while others had malformed limbs.
“This is worse than Nguyen,” Farr said under his breath, turning away from his observations.
“Yes,” Ming said harshly under his breath and then moved off along the near wall, stopping at various points, and reaching into the kit he carried. Farr’s eyes followed him as he twisted his way through the people in the cavern. It was the first time Ming had betrayed himself with regards to his service record. Farr had told him that he knew that he’d been in the service but nothing else. It was well known that Farr had been at Nguyen; after all, he’d almost been court martialed for his actions there.
Nguyen had been an island off the coast of what had once been Vietnam. An Earth Service ship with a mostly Chinese crew had discovered the nest of slavers there first, but their captain had made a mistake. Farr was loathe to second guess the man because of what had happened to him, but the safety of your crew is paramount, he told himself. You can’t administer humanitarian aid if you’re dead. That was the first rule of Earth Services.
The captain had hesitated only briefly, a mere fraction of a second, but it had been enough to be his undoing. He had not anticipated the barrage of missiles that had been fired at him from Nguyen. He’d paid for that hesitation and been killed in the initial strike. His ship had then crashed and his crew had been captured or killed. All but one, that is. A crewmember had escaped, unarmed, and had fled into one of the villages occupied by the human skeletons who slaved for the Masters, as the rulers of Nguyen called themselves. For five days he’d survived, dodging from village to village, finding people willing to fight and organizing them into a resistance.
Farr had arrived on the fourth day in the light cruiser St. Louis, wary when he couldn’t raise the Chinese ship, or anyone else for that matter, on communications. He’d withdrawn his ship to a safe distance to study the situation and was preparing to go back in fully armed and ready for combat when a transmission was received on the distress band. It was a member of the resistance organized by the crewmember and he’d given the St. Louis the coordinates of missile batteries along the hostile shore and reported the fate of the Liang. He’d also reported that members of the Liang’s crew were being executed and their bodies hidden.
Callum Farr had been in a quandary for all of thirty seconds after that. He knew that a heavy cruiser and two light cruisers would be on the scene in a couple of days and that he should wait, but when the resistance reported the executions his course had been decided.
Farr had taken his airship in with missiles ready and launched before the masters of Nguyen knew he was coming. All of the weapons emplacements had been destroyed within minutes and Farr was leading a marine contingent down for a rescue and retaliation, as the marines called it, shortly thereafter.
They’d communicated throughout the course of events with members of the resistance and had coordinated a combined assault on the main compound in conjunction with the resistance. Farr had never spoken to the Chinese crewmember leading the resistance until he gave the signal for the final attack. The only words he’d spoken were “Commence Operation Judgment Day”. Farr was familiar with the biblical reference and he was content to allow the resistance to call the shots. It was rare when an Earth ship came upon a populace that was willing, or even able, to fight for their freedom. Most were in such a piteous condition that they didn’t care what was done to them.
When the signal had been given Farr’s marines had disintegrated the gate with heavy weapons fire and hosed down the guard force with small arms. The resistance fighters, starved and gaunt skeletons carrying spears and bows and very few guns, had surged up out of the darkening gloom and poured through the gate like angels of death, grabbing the weapons of the fallen guards as they went. Farr remembered a peculiar sort of madness in the air that day.
Nguyen had been a bloody affair and Farr was not sure if anything could’ve been done to make it less so. The horrors they found at Nguyen had sickened them. There were torture chambers in addition to the starving scarecrows living around the compound. Farr had stumbled onto the torture chambers as he was searching for the Chinese survivors. He’d found them on the lower levels along with the men who’d been sent to execute them. There had been a brief and vicious fight which the executioners hadn’t survived.
The crew he’d found had been traumatized by five days of unspeakable torture. Of the forty two captured from the fallen Liang only nineteen remained. They found the bodies of the others dissolving in the lime pits that dotted the lower levels. The foes they’d faced at Nguyen had known fully well the extent of their barbarity, and had fought ferociously to the end, knowing their likely fate if defeated. Nguyen had been a place of nightmares and Farr had had enough of those over the years.
It had taken Farr the entire night to put a stop to the blood
shed and gather the remaining masters of Nguyen. At the end only thirty two remained of the estimated two hundred and fifty.
Farr had never met the Chinese crewmember who’d led the resistance. He was rumored to be in one of the seven villages surrounding the compound but Farr was much too busy supplying humanitarian aid and keeping the peace to track him down.
Two days later the support ships, the Venice, London and Seattle had arrived and the St. Louis was ordered to make haste back to Honolulu, where Farr had learned he’d undergo a courts martial proceeding.
With the numerous recordings from the Nguyen affair displayed at the hearing and, apparently, the confidential testimony of the kidnapped crew and the crewmember who had led the resistance, and the stalwart defense of Admiral Ngata, the courts martial hearing convened by Council member Trekos had morphed into an awards ceremony at which Farr was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. The population of the planet had been horrified at the information that had trickled out of Nguyen and the fate of the Chinese crew, so it had faded away quickly, something best forgotten, and so he’d never learned the identity of the crewmember who led the resistance.
That is, until Admiral Ngata had given him Ming’s file. Lieutenant Ming was the unknown hero of Nguyen, if there was such a thing as a hero at Nguyen that day. Farr had always believed he deserved nothing from Nguyen, neither courts martial nor medal. It was one of those very unpleasant things that had to sometimes be done and then quickly forgotten. To remember it too much was to court madness and the loss of your humanity.
Back in the present he watched Ming going from group to group along the walls handing out the nutrition bars and supplements with which Dr. Alexeyev had loaded each party member’s satchel. In theory a bar and two supplements was an entire day’s worth of vitamins, minerals and nutrition, so taking the enormous amount the doctor had forced on him had seemed ridiculous at the time. Now it seemed visionary. He called over Takashi who was closest and was doing the same thing as Ming.
Children of the Dark World Page 13