by P. N. Elrod
He has my pity, but I can think of none better suited. I’ve learned to my grief what a terrible burden it is to be king. The state lives on, hopefully in good health, but in the effort to preserve that health for others my own life has been ripped to shreds and patches. May it please God to spare me from further miseries.
Here Gertrude comes, and there is a look on her weeping face that augurs more sorrows for us. In my heart I fear some evil has befallen Ophelia and her sins have found her out. . .
* * *
Last night I dreamed of my dead brother walking the upper platform of Elsinore as was his habit in life, but clothed in warlike raiment. This bodes ill for my beloved Denmark.
Dear God, whatever transpires in the days ahead, I pray You send me wisdom enough to do right for all.
Now and in those times to come, angels and ministers of grace defend us.
-- Claudius Rex --
* * * * * * *
__________
FUGITIVE
Author’s Note: I became a gushing fan of Lois McMaster Bujold in the 90s, reading and re-reading her Miles Vorkosigan series not only to gleefully relish in the characters and their stories, but to improve my own writing from her example. I had to be peeled off the ceiling when she invited me to contribute to her science fiction collection with Roland Green, WOMEN AT WAR. The following story in my files was tweaked to fit the theme. Changing the original protagonist from male to female brought a new level to things, and made the main character even more paranoid and ruthless.
Have I mentioned that writers never stop tinkering? Some 16 years after publication, the length of this story doubled as I gave it a tune up for this collection and its “voice” took on a decidedly British accent!
Cold wind cut Kella’s eyes as she crept to the crest of the hillock to look for hunting parties in her wake. Nothing on two legs was in sight, just dusty gray and brown vegetation covering thousands of identical hillocks in every direction. The western horizon was still blurred by smoke, which surprised her. Things must be bad if they’d not gotten the fires under control by now. Maybe the prison authorities decided to let the place burn.
The sky was empty of movement. The attack that had enabled her escape would have knocked out any fliers or, at minimum, their control systems. One good pulse would fry anything left unshielded. Of course, if the orbiting scanners were working then this was for nothing and she and her companion would soon be picked up and—
She cut that thought off and scrambled down to where Farron lay curled on the lee side in an attempt to escape the wind. His head rested on one crooked arm, and he was sound asleep. Kella envied his easy surrender to the physical. Her own body craved rest, but her mind wouldn’t settle enough to allow it; she had to focus to keep it from racing in useless speculation about the future. Useless, since it was unlikely she had one. Options for escapees from Riganth were limited to a return to their cells or death. Freedom was a fool’s hope.
Kella gave an inward shrug. Fool or not, she would die before going back to her cage.
She was tempted to leave Farron where he lay, but the man’s skills were her only insurance against an unknown future. He was not wanted, but necessary. If they were lucky they had a few hours left to reach their goal—her goal; Farron was too doped to think straight. If they hurried, a few hours might be enough. After that, what was left of the authorities at the prison would have reorganized and begun tracking down strays.
Farron protested the hard shake and subsequent pull to his feet, but followed as she threaded between the higher bits of drab landscape. Except for the cough he’d picked up in prison, the only sounds in this primal world were their footsteps and the endless susurrating wind bearing them away to infinity. It stank of burning plastic, chemicals, and organics.
She took Farron’s hand when he stumbled, leading him around the less obvious obstacles. Touching another human felt strange to her after so many days of isolation. In those stretches when she’d been aware enough to mark the time, she kept count of at least three hundred of them, though that had to be an underestimation.
Farron paused, his grip tightened, stopping her. He blinked, puzzled. “Are we outside?”
“Yes, we’re outside.”
“It’s cold.”
“Yes, it is.”
Was he waking up or had he gone simple like so many others? The drugs given to the general population induced docility and suppressed the libido, but a percentage of prisoners reacted badly, their brains shutting down by degrees. The worst were taken away. She heard what happened to them. If Farron was too far gone it would be a mercy if she broke his neck now than—
He struggled to get out words. “But. . .we shouldn’t be here. Should we?”
She felt a wash of relief. Cognition was intact somewhere inside his skull if he could form that complex a question. “It’ll be all right. Come with me.”
“My feet hurt.”
He wore prison scuffs, which were not intended for walks in the wilderness. Her feet were encased in regulation boots, taken from a guard she’d particularly enjoyed killing. The boots were too large, but she preferred their chafing over bruises and cuts. “So do mine.”
“I’m tired.”
“We’ll rest soon.”
He accepted her word and came along. They put a few more klicks between themselves and hell.
The wind rose, roaring, thick with the smell of destruction. She checked the sky, cursed, and quickly dragged Farron to the steep base of a hillock, pulling him down next to her. Not the best shelter, but it would have to serve. The wind moaned like a living thing, whipping the low growing plants.
The orbit of Riganth’s moon was such that it eclipsed the sun once a day. Its apparent disc was much larger, blocking light and warmth for a long, cold hour, sometimes more, depending on the planet’s own orbit. It made the planet’s weather system. . .interesting.
“What’s wrong?” Farron asked.
“Take a nap, we’re fine.”
Farron lay down and kept himself to himself as she spooned her back against his front. She felt awkward, unused to such contact. The need for shared warmth was more important than her need for body space; she stifled the urge to move away. The wind wailed around them; sharp gusts eddied in, plucking at her. Oblivious, Farron coughed twice, fretting in his dreams. She tried not to breathe his breath.
The delay was impossible, but she couldn’t help resenting it. They might stumble forward in this dry storm, but in the twists and turns needed to negotiate the rough terrain, they’d soon lose their way. It was just too dark.
She filled the time scanning the black sky for the telltale lights of a flier among the shredded clouds, unlikely as that might be. No pilot in her right mind would choose to go prowling under these conditions. That left remote scanners, their operators safe indoors, but those would be grounded as well. The little machines were tough, but had their limits.
If any operators were left. Kella became aware of an orange glow against the flying cloud cover.
Riganth still burned?
The moon’s transit crawled to a conclusion; the day’s second dawn asserted itself. Shivering, Kella stood and stretched warmth into her stiffened limbs.
“It’s time, Farron.”
He mumbled, coughed, and tried to roll away into the peace of his folded arms.
“Come on.” She nudged him with her foot.
He shoved it away.
“Get up, unless you want to die.”
He struggled briefly with his eyelids and lost. “There’s no difference between catching it here or anywhere else,” he mumbled. “One way or another we’re dead. Yours is more work. I’d rather save myself the trouble.”
His speech was reassuringly lucid. Some parts of his brain had slept off more of the drugs during the respite; the rest of him just hadn’t realized it yet. All he needed was a little push to get moving. “Would you really? If you’re that tired of living I can fix things for you.”
&nb
sp; “Don’t do me any favors.”
She stooped and closed both hands around Farron’s throat and squeezed. She did it slowly. His petulance changed to panic and he struggled, then actively fought. He broke her hold and twisted away, gasping and coughing. She kept her distance, hiding her own sudden fatigue.
Farron was fully awake, on his feet, and glaring. “You rotten—you were really going to do it!”
She showed her teeth. “Who says I’ve stopped?”
“I do, I was just joking.”
“Your humor could be the death of you.”
“Only with you in the audience. All right, you got me up.” He gestured for her to assume the lead, obviously reluctant to have her or her hands out of his sight.
Kella took a bearing from the sun and struck off.
“Where are we going, anyway?” he asked.
She tried to answer, but the words didn’t so much as form in her mind, much less turn to speech. She had a mental picture of their destination, but her ability to tell him about it was . . .temporarily offline. “You’ll see. We’re close.”
She hoped.
But their pace remained slow over the uneven ground. She was tired to the bone, hollow with hunger, and terribly thirsty. She speculated on the edibility of the plants, but knew better than to risk it.
Farron called for a stop; Kella ignored him and plowed on, right into a low solid object that cracked her shins as she fell onto it.
“Hey, didn’t you see that? I tried to tell you.”
It was a mound of metal and plas-crete, less than a meter across, sprouting from the earth like an exotic strain of edible fungus. It was colored to blend with the surrounding land. Kella stared, trying to recall what it was and why it was important.
“What’s the matter with you?” Farron demanded.
“Nothing,” she snapped. She ran her hands over the smooth metal top.
“Well, are we going in?”
Her memory flickered and she stood back, favoring her bruises. “You first.”
He made a face. “Of course, always me.” He examined a plastic housing. “Locked,” he pronounced, “and probably for a good reason. This is part of the prison, isn’t it?”
“No, of course not.”
She’d fallen over a. . .the correct word escaped her. A door then, she impatiently provided. The one she’d been looking for, though not the one she’d visualized. Her expectations conjured something more vertical. With a building attached.
All right, so the building was underground, shelter was shelter, and this was the way in. “Open it.”
He grimaced. “With what? I need specialized tools.”
“What kind of tools?”
“A cutter and circuit probe would be helpful, and maybe a bypass with a program override.”
“Improvise.”
“With what, leaves and dirt? Without the right tools you’d need a battering ram to open that.”
“I might just try one, providing the impact element is your head.”
The look on her face was evidently inspiring. He found a rock and after several tries, cracked the housing, peering at the exposed works.
“This is more along your line,” he stepped back. “Have a go.”
Her fingers began trembling as she probed the mess. Her heart raced, and sweat suddenly popped out on her forehead. She broke off before Farron noticed.
“Anything wrong?”
“No, and this is hardly my line. You’re the specialist, you do it.”
Farron swallowed his puzzlement and had another turn. “I’m not sure what you mean. I’m expert enough with the right tools, but these multi-binary probability codes are a bit over my head—I could spend the rest of my life doing this.”
“That is entirely possible,” she said, with meaning.
“Still, I could try a more direct approach. This tech is just old enough for us get away with. . .there, press that down and hold it.”
Kella had to struggle to keep from throwing up as he touched a bare wire against a contact. Sparks flew and her hand jerked back.
“Wants to bite,” he remarked, sucking his own stinging fingers. He coughed and looked around. “What the hell is that pong? Something burning?”
She’d been too distracted to notice the worsening smell. The sky held more smoke than clouds. No point climbing a hill to look. She could hear the approaching fire. A vanguard of cinders tumbled toward them on the wind.
“Get it open, Farron. Now.”
He tore a ragged hem from his shirt for insulation. “Use this and hold it down hard.”
There were more fireworks and slow smoke from melted plastic.
“I heard something give.” He grasped a crank set into the door and gave it a turn. Kella had taken it for a decorative sculpture. It was stiff, but worked; deep within, metal grated against metal.
The lid came up with a rush of warm, stale air.
“Smells all right,” he said hopefully.
She peered down a narrow circular shaft. A metal ladder clung to one section of the wall and disappeared into blackness. “Get in.”
He hesitated. “Not sure I like the look of that. Isn’t there an easier way?”
“If you want to go looking for it.”
He glanced once at the landscape: endless hillocks, stinking haze, no food or water. To a man used to the finished walls and readily available comforts of an automated culture, running about unprotected on an open planet was the closest thing to hell.
That and. . .
“Hey. . .that—that’s a fire,” he said.
“They usually come with smoke. Get in.”
“But it’s a fire. Shouldn’t someone put it out?”
She knew he wasn’t stupid. He’d been raised in a superbly controlled environment where flame suppression systems kept people safe. A wildfire stretching from one horizon to the next was simply outside his experience. He couldn’t imagine it. She didn’t have to, feeling the baking heat on her back. She gave him a shove. “In, dammit!”
Objections forgotten, Farron swung his legs down, his slippered feet tapping against and finding the rungs. He shifted his weight and descended. Kella copied him, pausing as her head came level with the ground.
Flying ash, a roaring, the wind spiraled flames into reaching tentacles; the fire would soon roll over and past. They were safe enough, but the angle was wrong for her to pull the cover shut. It was designed as an exit. She couldn’t reach the crank. There had to be a way to close it from inside.
Ducking, she spotted the control and a blinking red telltale. Its message that there was a breach in the base would be echoed somewhere, giving away their position. The control had a simple diagram. Even the most illiterate work drone would be able to figure out that pressing a button would move the cover in some way. Kella understood it, but could not bring herself to act upon it. Even the idea of trying made her hands go slick with sweat. Bad move, when she needed them to grip the ladder.
When her sight blurred, she looked away, and that eased things.
The hell with it. The Riganth authorities would come here first, regardless. Shutting one door wouldn’t make a difference; there wasn’t anything she could do. But that was the fool in her, the bleating, terrified creature that made excuses and distracted her from her goal of survival and escape despite the odds.
It was a stranger in her head. She’d not been born with that miserable whining voice. Sometime during those three hundred days it had moved in and learned how to paralyze her to inaction.
Before the burgeoning fear could take over, she raised a mental image of slamming a lead shield in its face. There. It could claw and bleat all it liked. She would keep it contained, leaving herself free to concentrate on the task at hand: getting down this damned ladder without falling.
Two rungs below the top she found the manual crank that would close the cover.
Her face went hot with embarrassment. I should have known this would be here. She worked it off, awkwardl
y turning the thing until her arm ached. Tech was her bane, but she could still operate mechanical backups. Perhaps they thought that such limits would make her harmless.
Bloody fools.
Slowly the lid lowered into place, taking away the fire and the sky, sealing her into the silent darkness.
Blind, but feeling safer, she felt her way carefully, one rung at a time. No need to hurry. There was enough shielding above to foil the most sophisticated scanners. Any searchers would gather only negative information; they’d eventually come back for a closer look and find the broken lock, but by then it might be too late.
If things worked out. If her fool’s luck held.
Of course, searchers could skip a topside hunt, enter by the main door, and activate the systems. A little work with the internal sensors would—
But they might be delayed by the wildfire. The prison was still burning hours after the initial assault. She didn’t see how that was possible; the place was fire-proofed and shielded as well as any military facility. There were weapons to get around such safety measures, though. She’d even used them once upon a time. They were expensive and hard to acquire. If the attackers had those in their arsenal, then the inmates could not have been of concern to them.
Farron puffed out that he’d touched ground. He was too winded to do more than stagger out of her way.
Coughing.
It was worse, a deeper, uglier sound than before. After water and food, she’d have to find a med-unit for him.
Her boots hit bottom. She kept hold of a rung, breathing hard. Behind the ladder a faint light at eyelevel seemed bright in the blackness. She orientated to a round tunnel with enough clearance to walk upright. They were at a T-shaped intersection; small lights at long intervals emphasized the darkness and distance. More eye level lights indicated other ladders along the flat top of the T, part of an emergency escape system. Farron muttered something not meant to be intelligible but managing to express his unease.