Gerald sighed and rubbed his temples, and for perhaps the first time since he was a little child, Alistair marveled at his brother. It was an impromptu acting job he was sure he could not have pulled off half so well. “I swear to God… Look, just add them to the other form.”
“Other form’s already been signed.”
“And I signed it. So add them to the form. Let’s try and cut through some of the crap for once.”
The jailor hesitated, so Gerald continued in a louder voice, “Add them to the damn form. I’m not going back to the other side of town to get a new form when we can add them right here. I’m the one who signed the damn thing so stop worrying about it.”
“Fine, I’ll add ‘em,” the jailor finally agreed, his irritation finding an outlet when he slammed shut the door to Alistair’s former cell. “You need us to transport ‘em?”
“You’ll have to. I don’t have an armed escort to spare right now.”
“Fine.”
The two brothers shared a furtive glance, and then Gerald was walking back down the walkway. The jailor made a startled sound as he glanced over Alistair’s file on his clipboard screen. He turned to Gerald’s retreating form.
“This one was due for execution.”
“A mistake. Hence my visit,” said Gerald without turning or stopping.
“So are the other two.”
“Just take care of it, OK?”
Yet another disapproving frown colored the man’s face, but he prodded Alistair with the clipboard and they started forward again.
The sensation Alistair felt was indescribable. His face flushed and he felt dizzy. He wanted to shout out to his brother, to thank him, to apologize, to cry that he loved him, to tell him their parents had been murdered… so many things did he want to say and none of them would be uttered. He swallowed a painful lump in his throat and, though it felt unbearable, plodded along.
“What are you moping about?” asked the man as he led Alistair in the opposite direction from his sibling. “You’re on your way off this damn rock.”
Alistair nearly missed a step. “Off the island?”
“Off. Off the planet.” At Alistair’s disbelieving look, he went on, “Incarcerator’s in town. You’ll be taking up residence on Srillium.”
He almost staggered when the jailor gave him the news, but it immediately made sense. He can’t leave me on the planet. I have to be gone when the transfer is discovered. It was a stroke of fantastic luck that The Incarcerator was in the area and Gerald made the most of the situation. He would spend the remainder of his days on a prison planet, living like a Stone Age hunter/gatherer, but he would be alive. And he wouldn’t be tortured.
The agony of all the things he would never say to his brother tore at his heart. He already missed him, his sister, even Oliver. He missed his homeland. He thought of what his spying must have done to Gerald, of his callous disregard for his sibling, his easy willingness to use him. He thought of what Gerald had just risked for him. He’ll spend the rest of his life in hiding. They might execute him for this.
He realized Gerald had upheld his father’s principle: family first. He brushed the politics aside and protected his family, just as Nigel Ashley would have wanted. Though the kind Ashley patriarch was forever gone, his influence reached out through Gerald to protect his youngest son. It was more than Alistair could bear. Despite his humiliation, the massive ex-marine broke into tears.
***
He was moved to a detention center at the spaceport. It was a simple affair, consisting of a desk and computer station in one corner and a tiled floor taking up the vast majority of the room. He was taken inside, his hands loosely cuffed in front, mercifully relieving his beleaguered shoulders. A few words were exchanged between transporters and security, and then he was led to a spot on the open floor. A guard, one of two, ordered him to stand still and proceeded to type on a keypad sewn into his left sleeve. A few dozen bars of red light appeared and his cell was created. The guard, after taking off the cuffs, walked away and Alistair, stuck in his six by six cell, sat down to await his fate.
He was reclining as best he could when the door to the detention center opened and Henry walked in. With a nervous glance towards Alistair, he spoke to the guards who gestured towards the ex marine, inviting him to do as he pleased. He managed a weak smile and waved as he approached. Alistair sat with his arms resting on his knees and did not respond.
“I found out you were here,” he said by way of hello. Alistair still did not respond, but neither did he look away. “Alistair, I wasn’t the reason they caught you. I don’t know how they found you, but it wasn’t me.”
“Who are you working for?” Alistair asked in a voice that for Henry was uncomfortably loud.
Sitting on the floor next to Alistair’s cell, Henry lowered his voice as if to give him a hint. “It wasn’t me. I tried to get Oliver to rescue you. He won’t.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I just… There’s nothing I can do.” He hung his head. “This isn’t what I wanted.”
“This isn’t what anyone wanted. The Realists want to impose what they want, the rest of us resist. No one gets what they want.”
“I’m on your side, Alistair,” he said, leaning in close to the bars and whispering. “I just came to say goodbye. I’m glad they’re—”
“I need you to do something for me,” Alistair interrupted, showing his first spark of life since Henry had come. “Can you get me a small stasis capsule?”
“A stasis capsule? Alistair, it’s hard enough getting my next meal.”
“Do it. You owe me. Get a stasis capsule, no larger than a pill, and put… cotton seeds in it.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I mean it, damn it. Oliver can get one. Don’t tell him it’s for me. Find a stasis capsule and cotton seeds. Before it’s too late. Hurry!”
The commanding tone of his voice had Henry back on his feet. He nodded in wonderment and left the detention center, looking back over his shoulder a couple times as if to reassure himself Alistair was serious. When Henry left, Alistair lay down in his cell, his head in one corner and his feet in the opposite. The hard floor was uncomfortable, but he had been in worse places recently. It was as good a place as any to brood.
***
By the time Henry was meandering down Tanard’s Mountain, he had almost decided the request was too difficult to bother about. He wanted to do something for his friend, but a little voice in his head presented the option of forgetting about it without having to face Alistair afterwards. Hands in his pockets, he sulked as he took the winding road downward. The wind was strong enough to tell a snowstorm was gathering. Far off to the west he could see the clouds, and the handful of snowflakes from the day before had turned into a steady stream, no longer lightly dancing but hurled with some vigor.
The city lay open to his view. He could see the manifold naval vessels out at sea, their lights flashing and whirling as aircraft buzzed around. A few smaller transports were in transit between the harbor and the larger vessels, and he spied what he believed to be a large crowd around the harbor.
“Not taking passengers, eh?” said a voice, and Henry came out of his reverie to notice a family of five loading an auto with baggage. He vaguely knew them from having spent time in the neighborhood.
“Who’s not taking passengers?”
“No, I’m asking you,” the man said as he lifted a heavy suitcase into the trunk of his auto.
“I don’t… Oh! No I wasn’t trying to leave.”
“Well, I didn’t figure you’d be able,” said the mother. “Everyone’s down at the harbor waiting to get out, but they’re not letting hardly anyone. We’re going to try.”
Henry stared in the direction of the harbor, nodded thoughtfully and turned back to the family.
“Where could I get a stasis capsule?”
They stared at him in surprise. The father shrugged and the mother said, “I’d worry more abo
ut your next meal.”
“Definitely,” he softly said and turned to continue down the street.
“Try the university,” said the eldest daughter, a girl of perhaps seventeen cycles.
Henry paused. “We don’t have a university.”
“University of Avon. They’ve got a research branch here in town.”
Henry‘s lips parted in a silent, “Ah!” He nodded and waved his thanks, but as he turned for a second time to the downhill road before him, he realized how long the walk would be. Alistair might be gone before he even got there. With trepidation he turned back to the family. It was only a four-door auto, and there were already five of them. The implications of being a sixth passenger nearly sickened him. Damn you, Alistair, Henry cursed. You couldn’t ask for… He couldn’t think of an easier request.
Sighing in resignation, he managed to ask, “Might I catch a ride with you?”
***
“He’s been moved.”
Oliver was at the point of slamming a magazine into place in his rifle. At the pronouncement from the rebel who had just entered, he let his hand fall to his side.
“What do you mean he’s been moved?”
“He was scheduled for execution, now he’s not. Being transferred off.”
“Off? You mean…?” Oliver nodded in understanding. “How good is this information?”
“I trust it.”
“Is he at the spaceport?”
“Yes, sir.”
Oliver nodded and waved for the man to leave. Turning to face the other score of men with him in the murky filth of the warehouse, he said, “This could be a trick, put us off his trail until they have time to question him.” He punctuated the point by slamming his magazine in place.
Rod Haverly shrugged. “He said he trusted the source.”
“Get ready to climb,” Oliver gruffly replied and he hoisted a belt of grenades over his shoulder. “We’re moving out in five.”
Ritchie fell in beside him as he marched for the door. “We get stuck up there and we’ve got no place to retreat to.”
“No one is forced to come. I’ll go alone.”
Ritchie stopped at the door but Oliver kept going, letting a gust of cold air into the relative warmth inside. Rod Haverly and two others brushed by a moment later. Hands on his hips, Ritchie shook his head, leery, but put up no further protest. Grabbing his own supply of weapons, he was soon out the door in Oliver’s wake.
***
The research branch of The University of Avon was a single, three-story building in the shape of a U surrounding a courtyard. Sidewalks crisscrossed it and a few trees grew, each with a well-weathered bench underneath. The building itself, Henry was disheartened to discover, was not vacant. He expected no one to return so soon. However, this did afford him the opportunity to follow someone into the building and bypass the locked doors. The professor who unwittingly opened the door for him turned for a second to gaze at him, but Henry nonchalantly nodded and the man did not seem alarmed.
Unfamiliar with the layout, he spent some time wandering on the first floor. Passing several different departments, most of them some form of math or science, he saw only wet trails of footprints and nothing suggesting stasis capsules and cotton seeds. This is ridiculous, he thought. Pausing to turn in circles, he tried to figure out what to do as the frustration of the task fought with the nervousness of his urgency.
He heard footsteps echoing in the hallway behind him and sprang back into action, feeling he should avoid whomever it was. Now at the base of the U, he hurried forward and rounded the next corner. It was then that he ran into the Agricultural Sciences Department.
Feeling optimistic for the first time, he tried the doors but found them locked. He peered through the narrow window of the entrance door but saw only another short hallway on the other side, so he moved to the next door of the department. It too was locked, but on the other side was a laboratory. There were plants of all kinds growing in rows stacked one above the other, stretching the entire length of the 75 foot room. The plants were not placed in soil, but rather in small containers with holes out of which the roots grew. There was a hovering robot inside, a spherical creation no larger than a poodle, passing down the rows and giving nutrients to the roots as it went.
He drew back a few steps and then rushed forward, delivering as powerful a kick as he could muster. There was a thud and poor Henry bounced backwards, tripping over himself and finally landing on his back with his legs thrown up over his head. Unwinding his tangled limbs, he peered at the door and saw it was unaffected by his assault. With a groan he got back up and, this time removing his right boot, attacked the window, battering it with the heavy heel. He winced at his first echoing blow and looked over his shoulder for signs that someone was alerted. When nothing stirred he tried again. This at first proved as successful as, though less humiliating than, his first assault, but eventually a fracture formed. A couple more hits lengthened the fissure, and then the window broke with a cacophony of glass shards.
Sensing the end of his quest, he rushed through the room and the adjacent chambers and offices until he came across a plant he thought might be cotton. A look at the label confirmed it, though it apparently was some experimental mutant form, and then he realized he had no idea what a cotton seed looked like nor where it was to be found on the plant. With a frustrated groan, he snapped off a portion at the stem and stuffed it in his coat pocket.
After this he began his search for a stasis capsule. Happily enough, the search concluded in the next room, where not only did he find stasis capsules but a large number of them tucked away in a system of drawers containing various plant parts. Ditching the plant he had picked, he rifled through the drawers until he came to one with cotton seeds in it. He lifted a stasis capsule from its slot and placed it in his pocket.
A moment later he was back in the laboratory, making his way to the door. An impish impulse seized him and, perhaps to reestablish dignity after the incident with the door, he let fly another charging kick, this time at the drone hovering a few feet away. There was the pop of a spark as the robot hurtled through the air before landing with a crash on the ground. After rolling into the wall, it lay still. Having made his point, Henry flew out the door, intent on finding a quick ride back to the spaceport.
***
The bars keeping Alistair caged gave off a faint hum. It was hardly noticeable and easily covered up by other sounds, but he lay with his head in the corner and both ears near a bar of light. As the stimulation of his bureaucratic rescue ebbed, he felt again the exhaustion of his many sleepless hours. With the bars softly singing to him, he fell into a trance, an image of his parents the last trace of consciousness to fade out before sleep took him.
He had never been a deep sleeper, so it was something of a surprise to him when a cough awoke him and he opened his eyes to see about a dozen other prisoners, each in his own cage of light. The cages were placed in rows to create a prison block. Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, he sat up and yawned. The man in the cell nearest his was hacking up phlegm while he twitched on the floor, his green tinted skin revealing the nature of his crime. A couple other prisoners glanced Alistair’s way as he sat up, and one nodded at him. He nodded back but looked away, preferring to cut off any incipient conversation.
The same two guards lounged in the same corner, occasionally sharing a few quiet words. At times the door to the detention center would slide open and another prisoner, escorted by Civil Guard, would be brought in. In this way new rows were added and the prison block grew larger.
Alistair was at the point of deciding to go back to sleep when the door slid open and Gregory and Ryan were ushered in. As the Guardsmen exchanged the forms for the transfer, Gregory looked about and noticed Alistair, but Alistair signaled him to be quiet. Nodding, Gregory looked away. Only moments later, both he and Ryan were sitting on the floor in their separate cells. Ryan finally noticed Alistair, and Alistair gave him the same sign.
The detention center was nearly full when the communicator on the wall at the guards’ station lit up red and emitted a series of beeps. The Guards were startled out of a quiet conversation and one of them rose to answer. Leaning against the wall, he spoke into the communicator for a moment, though Alistair could not make out what he said. He stiffened at one point, nodded once and ended the call. With an air of anxiousness, he whispered a few words to his fellow Guard and quickly exited.
Alistair exchanged glances with Gregory, who also noted the exchange. Wellesley, lying in his cell concentrating on picking his nose, was oblivious. Keeping a look out for further developments, Alistair saw the Guard enter a few moments later and exchange some hasty words with the one who remained. He took off again while his partner tensed, like he was ready to spring into action.
A few more prisoners took notice of events and the soft buzz of hushed conversations died out. They eyed their captor with inquisitive gazes as he sat at his post, no longer slumped over in boredom. When the door to the block opened again one could feel the shared anticipation. Alistair’s heart leaped as he saw Henry walk in.
Though he had already passed through one checkpoint just to get inside the spaceport, and yet another to enter the detention center, the Guardsman nevertheless searched Henry by passing a wand over his body, a formality forgone during his first visit. When he finished, he waved Henry on, and all eyes in the room followed him as he made his way to Alistair. The muscular young man wanted to sink into the floor when Henry reached him and he was forced to bear so much attention.
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