Brute Orbits

by George Zebrowski

  But the greatest missing pleasure, one that had disappeared in the first year of exile, was death. Too many were dying at the outset, and it became clear that the Rock could not afford many more deaths. So while the new order guaranteed a chance for everyone to fulfill their needs, it frustrated their most intense realization.

  Most everyone lived with the feeling, especially those who had known the ecstasy of sexual slaughter but were now denied it, of a vast emptiness at the center of their lives; and many of them suspected that this had also been the intended punishment of exile in the spinning, fleeing Rock: The rise of necessary order, alien to individuals of this other humanity, would trivialize and domesticate their predator’s needs, giving with one hand a chance for community survival beyond the present population, while taking away with the other the right to sexual release through killing.

  There arose an order, alien by Earth’s standards, that saw quickly that it did not wish to abolish itself through anarchy, even if that meant building a wall between two parts of its own nature.

  A far-seer sitting on that wall would have said that there was nothing new or alien about the arrangement. The contortions of the soul-body that lived on Earth were not different. The cruelties and humiliations of economics and business conduct; the accepted inhumanities that called upon a hidden and necessary hand in human history; the silent cruelty of the powerful to the lesser and powerless; the personal vendettas of commission and omission; the hatreds of race, class, and personal antipathies—all sang the song of the predators who dreamed of slaughtering their neighbor’s children, enslaving their women, and swarming the future with only their own whelpings. If they had been souls in stone, they would have roughed and polished each other until only the largest were left, and these would have crushed each other into dust.

  Humankind had only hurled its most denied self out into the dark, but the angels still battled with devils back home. Bellamy was sure of that.

  Would it have helped Bellamy to understand what he was, to step back into endless perspectives on what he took for granted? Would it have helped him to stare reality in the face? He lacked this insight of step-back that had led some individuals into discontented greatness, whose endless method of examination tortured all givens, and yet whose beatific light had somehow sprung from the same cauldron as the unthinking predator.

  ■

  When Bellamy wore out the mercy-VRs, he had no choice but to work with the details of his own memory. Miraculously, they returned to him, as if the VR had retrained his memory, and he treasured each rescued moment. It was his way of avoiding the rituals—by going out into the tall grass at duskdown and lying there invisible to everyone.

  There, slowly, he discovered that he could have what he wanted from his past, drifting in a sea-silence until the blessed moments came to him again out of the black grave of fragmented memories—

  They were like little chocolates in their supra-suburban villages, far from the paid-poverty of the suburbs into which he had been born, each female body yielding up a different inner core of delight. He watched and logged their comings and goings as if they were butterflies, and bought their house-entry codes from the sellers who knew their captive market well. For him it was always a simple matter to steal enough to pay for the magic keys…

  It was always the same with the women. Some were cruel to their males; a few didn’t need males at all; and others were natural victims: their innermost doors were always open, waiting for him to find them…

  He entered her bedroom and put the mini-dart gun to her temple.

  She opened her eyes.

  “You have decisions to make,” he said, dropping his small equipment bag. “Understand?”

  Slowly, she nodded, unable to speak. After a moment he saw that she was not breathing. Then her mouth opened and she gasped, staring at him wide-eyed, just the way he liked it.

  “Make you a deal,” he said. “Let me watch you…and I won’t touch you at all.”

  She took a deep breath, as if surprised at her good fortune, then nodded, and he knew that he had hooked her.

  She slipped her arms under the covers and closed her eyes. He watched her play with herself for a minute, then reached down and whipped back the covers.

  “Don’t stop,” he said, backing away.

  As she closed her eyes and continued, he got down on his knees and took out the four metal eyelets that he had brought. Taking his dart gun, he placed the eyelets, one by one into the business end, then drove them into the hardwood floor. Finally, he took out four sets of cuffs and attached one to each eyelet.

  “What…are you doing?” she asked, opening her eyes.

  He got up, dragged her from the bed onto the floor, and secured her hands in front of her, one to each cuff so that her palms were flat on the hardwood. Then he spread her from behind, attached each ankle to a cuff, then ripped off her top and panties.

  He sat down in a nearby chair and watched her. She turned her head to look back at him, but this position was difficult. He waited a moment longer, then lay down on the floor and reached under her from behind. She twisted as he touched her, opening her gently.

  “Don’t,” she whispered perfectly, then began to twist her hands in the manacles.

  “You’ll only bloody your wrists,” he said, standing up.

  He came around in front of her and unzipped his pants.

  “Fellate me,” he said, “and I won’t do anything else.”

  “What?” she asked, but understood as he presented himself.

  She took him into her mouth, and made a feeble effort, glancing up at him with a mixture of fear and revulsion.

  After a while, he withdrew, went around behind her, knelt and pushed her slightly forward.

  “But you said…” She whimpered as he prepared to enter her from behind.

  She twisted her head back to look at him, and he noticed her blue eyes and short blond hair. “If you don’t move with me, I’ll go up your ass.”

  “No, no,” she said at once, facing forward.

  He pushed in, bringing himself forward until he could whisper in her ear. “Make another deal. Bring yourself off and I won’t let loose inside you. Good deal. Best you can get right now.”

  “Yes,” she said with resignation, and made a show of gyrating against him.

  “I’m coming,” he whispered in her ear after a minute.

  “What!” she shouted.

  “You were faking,” he said, grabbing her short hair and fixing her with his eyes as he forced her to look back at him.

  He let go and she turned her head forward once more.

  “Try again?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “The real thing now,” he said. “I’ll know.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  As she moved against him, he leaned across her back again and said with his cheek against hers, “When I know it’s real, I’ll pull out and leave nothing in you.”

  “I’ll live to kill you,” she said suddenly.

  He laughed. “What makes you think you’ll live?”

  She clenched, then gasped with pleasure, betraying the perversity of the human orgasm, which belonged to both predator and prey.

  “Yes!” she rasped in his ear, and he knew it was real.

  He pulled out and lay at her side. She was breathing hard, but watching him carefully. He brought the small gun up in his right hand so she could see it.

  He stood up in front of her. “Here, maybe you can get back at me a little,” he said, offering his limp organ.

  She hesitated, then received him, and bit slowly, carefully, knowing the power of death that waited in his right hand. He felt a vague sense of the mystery that exists between men and women, in the million-year old dance that bestows pleasure to the individual while securing the survival of the species, driving the individual forward to do what he might otherwise fail to do. Yeah, he’d heard about that, but he cared nothing for children. He might have made some without knowing
it, but it didn’t matter.

  He pulled back, saving himself, and went around behind her again. Kneeling, he prepared to penetrate her anally.

  “You said you wouldn’t,” she said bitterly.

  He was silent as he pushed in and spent himself and sprawled across her back. She was unable to fall on her stomach, so she held him up…

  The details! How he treasured the details of the women’s bodies! But more than that he loved their fear of him, their inward resistance, which he crushed repeatedly, until they cried out their acceptance.

  How he had wished that their boyfriends or husbands might be manacled and gagged nearby, so he might enjoy the horror in their eyes when he would say, “As soon as I’m done, you will die, and she can watch. Hope I’m slow!” But it had never been his luck to have such a moment.

  But wait…yes, there had been one…or had he dreamed it? Yes, it had been…

  “Ah!” he cried out with eyes closed and his back pressed to the spinning ground.

  “Well, well, what have we here?” a voice said.

  He opened his eyes and saw a dozen men standing around him.

  “He’s been dreaming,” Rebello said. “I’ve seen him come up here more than once. He knows how to, real well.”

  “Maybe he should tell us his dreams,” said a voice behind him.

  “Yeah, he should share!” another added.

  Rebello leaned down, grinned at him, and asked, “Didn’t yo’ mama teach you to share?”

  “You…you want to hear?”

  Rebello stood up to his full height and said, “Do we have anything better to do?”

  Bellamy heard a fist slap into a palm. “Yeah, let’s kick the shit out of him and make him eat it,” said a voice behind him.

  “I’ll tell you everything, fellas!” he shouted. “But leave me alone.”

  They sat down in a circle around him. “This better be good,” Rebello said.

  Bellamy told them. A few of them masturbated. Two went off together into the grass, just out of sight but within earshot.

  “So what did you do to her?” Rebello asked, swallowing hard.

  “I cut her throat.”

  “Nah, you didn’t,” Rebello said. “Not you!”

  “I sure did.”

  “Was it good?” Rebello asked, sounding more convinced.

  Bellamy shrugged. “She didn’t shake enough before she bled to death. It was too quick. I cut too hard. She had more fierce in her than she gave me.”

  “So you had better?”

  “Not like her. She never gave in, really. Got her in me still.” So much so, he thought, that he was constantly adding to the scenario, and no longer knew what had happened and what he had made up. Too bad he had no VR of it, or any way to make one.

  Rebello stared at him blankly, and Bellamy knew that showing any feelings at all to the likes of Rebello might one day get him killed.

  He had been living for some time on the edges of acceptable humanity, but only deep within himself, and went in fear of falling into the abyss of emotion that would rob him of the calm, anxiety-free state that Rebello accepted as normal. There were long minutes when compassion and remorse welled up from him, and he feared that the others would see it in him. He wondered how many suffered and wept in private. Back home, such behavior would have been labeled a ploy to gain release. Here, this fall-back was held in contempt and punished with beatings.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Rebello asked. “You want your fantasies more than the real thing, don’t you!”

  Almost.

  Bellamy tensed. Sometimes he was glad he no longer had to go out and do anything with anyone, because fantasy was enough. Almost. More didn’t matter. A flood of fear and horror swept into him. He was naked before his enemies, his control gone. They could see right into him.

  Rebello stood up and kicked him. “You’re the tenth this week. Some of them are hiding out—but we’ll find them all.”

  He moaned and held his side from the pain, and knew that they were about to use him—and he would enjoy some of it and then suffer, suffer and enjoy, and finally suffer completely before he died. He knew that they would lose it and kill him, and he longed for the state of uncaring and self-control that had been his, thinking that if he could regain it, he might be able to stay the hands that would torment him into darkness. If they could see into him, they would know when he was like them again.

  But there was no time. There couldn’t be any.

  And as Rebello kicked him in the stomach, and the men crowded around him like hyenas, Bellamy cried out the words of a preacher who had once laid hands on him and had been the closest he had ever felt to having a father: “There is time yet to climb the mountain of righteousness, or plunge into the pit of wrong!”

  Rebello laughed as if he could hear the words, half grunting and half gurgling, then said, “Hey, he’s gonna be a good one.”

  Bellamy closed his eyes and saw the burning red of hell.

  13

  Enemies of the State

  JUDGE OVERTON’S PRIVATE CHAMBER

  * * *

  “They get food and shelter, and an island all to themselves. We no longer execute them, or torture or beat them. Our Orbits are much, much better than the Gulags and Supermax prisons of the twentieth century, or the famous prison in Kazakhstan for young boys. You know about that one, don’t you?”

  * * *

  Rock Four was recorded as a twenty-five year orbit, but went twice that. The unknowing inmates, equal numbers of men and women, were so burdened with documents indicating conviction for unquestioned crimes that no defense would ever be able to separate them from genuine lawbreakers. They were mostly from the Asian middle classes, born after the Great Asian Depression of the 2020s, which had ended when the rest of the world had bailed out the financial elites of that region.

  As world population decreased after the depression, these financial elites sought longlife and privilege for themselves and their children, even as political opposition, pressing forward with North American and European democratic ideals, rose in a valiant effort to shame the various governments of China, India, and Southeast Asia.

  While nutrition was more than adequate for most people in the region, political decision making was denied them. Long life was being denied to all except the elites, who feared a large population of vigorous longlifers as a revolutionary threat, and looked forward to the coming die-off. With the expansion into the solar system, longlife threatened to wipe away all hereditary wealth and power and put it in the hands of economic specialists, priests to the coming AIs.

  The elites of Asia focused on the leaders of opposing groups, overlayed their identities with criminal records, and exiled them to the Rocks. The disappearance of people also had the effect of bringing out other rebels and making them available for future disposal.

  Abebe Chou, with a Nigerian mother and a Chinese father, was typical of social resisters who were seen by ruling elites as simply wishing to replace them in power. Her claims of seeking justice by exposing unfair social manipulation were regarded as disingenuous by the elites who finally destroyed her reputation and identity and exiled her to the Rocks.

  Abebe Chou reasoned in this way: The charge of insincerity was unjustified. Many rebels of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century were sincere; but short-lived human beings were incapable, in the vast majority, of wielding power and self-control to accomplish the ends of desired reforms. The longer living power elites were sincere only in their aims of staying in power and passing it on to their friends and relatives; they could only be challenged by elites with comparable economic support, or by military force.

  In this view, all political rebellion seeking justice based on ethics and intellectual merit was naive, since it lacked the strength to do more than speak, at which point it was identified and destroyed.

  As longlifers increasingly set back their bodily clocks, the kinds of discussion-reforms that had sometimes been
possible in the twentieth century remained matters of debate. Long life, power, and wealth became the same thing, and who was to be let into their club became a carefully policed process. The always unequal struggle for the future worsened.

  Yet it was not the old wealthy who survived in the bosom of their wealth. The wealth lived on, but only to be managed by those who knew how to use its power; so they naturally felt that they deserved its rewards. The old owners of wealth had begun to understand this, and had hired experts to care for wealth on their behalf. Dutifully, these experts dispensed the desired ways of life to their bosses; but inevitably these caretakers, who knew too much to be controlled, slowly grew their influence and personal fortunes and became the new wealthy…

  As Abebe sat on the gentle hillside above the barracks town and watched her fellow prisoners, dense with doctorates and special skills, making their sheeplike way to the dining halls, she despaired for the uses of power. Whether it came from below with justice in its heart, or from the top with eyes wide open to self-interest, power could not stand aside from the human creature attempting to wield it.

  She had once been a grade school teacher in Australia, and the lesson should have been clear to her even then. Even with equal numbers of boys and girls, the students always divided into bullies, toadies, and a nameless rabble of victims. It had never been otherwise, since the world’s beginning: The rich were the bullies—except for the guilt-ridden do-gooders among them; the middle class were the toadies, always ready to roll over for a leg up, or even a leg in place; the poor were the victims—except for the criminals who struck back with injustice of their own devising…

  So who are we? she asked herself, as she gazed down at a town of once plush chairs in sociology, political science, ethical philosophies, and environmental sciences. Like herself, they had all wept for humanity, had exerted themselves to change its ways, and had failed. We were all ghosts, she thought, unable to warn the living; and now we are the dead, unable to even be ghosts. Speaking truth to power was only effective when it also helped power and wealth; being right was merely a bonus. Besides, the powerful had long ago learned the trick of revolutionaries, by speaking truth to itself in private, however embarrassing or distasteful; it was all part of a useful and necessary game plan. Most moral superiors could be turned around by a go-along-to-get-along human nature, which sooner or later discarded its ideals and became Zapata’s man with the gun, who would give it up only to those who would take it from him with a bigger gun. And what would the bigger gun say to its owner?