Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

The guard finished his rounds in the room and left, leaving a group of dazed prisoners to lie on the floor in their filth until they could rouse themselves. Outside the chamber he could hear at least two others talking to each other.

  Ultimately it was the smell that got him up. He braced his shaky arms against the cold floor and got into a sitting position, leaning back against his pod door until the dizziness passed. He rubbed his eyes, scraping away the sleep from his lashes but not yet daring to test his sight. When he finally did, the light seared him and his vision was blurred. It took several minutes before he could see with any clarity and comfort.

  A sprinkler system in the ceiling bathed the filthy prisoners in cold water. A collective groan of distress went up and several prone figures squirmed into a sitting position. Surveying the circular room, Alistair noticed one of the pods was not open, and no prisoner lay on the floor in front of its door. Some, those in ill health, did not withstand long hibernation. It was rare, but possible that he or she died because of this. Despite the safeguards, a blood clot could have formed. It was also possible something was done to him during the trip, either because he angered a guard or because an aggrieved victim bribed one to settle accounts for him.

  The thought triggered a memory, and Alistair immediately sought out the attractive woman he saw just before hibernating. He found her lying on the floor in front of her pod, unmoving save for her chest expanding and contracting. There were bruises on her arms not present at the outset of the trip, and there was even a small trail of dried blood on the inside of one of her thighs. Gritting his teeth, he looked away, angry and embarrassed to have seen her in such a state.

  The sprinklers switched off and left the prisoners to shiver and drip dry. A few came to their feet, often leaning on the walls for support. Alistair kept his seat, feeling a bit stronger and steadier but seeing little reason to stand. Wellesley was now on his feet but Gregory was still lying on the floor doing naught but breathing. One of the two guards outside, equipped with cannons and faceplate, came in and viewed the convicts.

  “Get your buddies on their feet and start filing out.”

  Alistair caught Wellesley’s eye and they both assisted Gregory, who was almost unresponsive. By his arms and shoulders they lifted and supported him as they followed the others back into the hallway they had been in who knew how long ago. When all the inmates who were able left the cell, one of the guards went back in and callously administered a kick to the ribs of any who lingered. He kicked until the pain outweighed the grogginess.

  When they trudged down the corridor to what Alistair assumed would be a train station, they merged with other groups and passed by other cells in various states of evacuation. Upon their arrival they were herded with men and women from all over Aldra, all Caucasian, all English speakers. Now they roamed among far greater diversity. Few spoke, but on display were all the pigments of the human race, from tall, blonde and pale Nordics to Africans of darkest ebony. Many displayed no resemblance to any single race, and many possessed a mix of traits. The sharp features of the Mediterranean were softened by the flatter features of the East Asian, or the thick body of the East European was attenuated by the graceful form of the East African. It was a mixing that in truth had been going on since the human race had existed, but whatever divergences had arisen from relative isolation, they were, absent deliberate genetic manipulation, being smoothed over at a faster pace. Wellesley, who had never seen such people as these, stared in wonder.

  The bleary detainees stumbled their way down the corridor until they came to another station and the process of shipping them back to a docking bay began. The station was full to bursting, and when the prisoners did not compact their numbers to the guards’ satisfaction, they were beaten at the edges until they crammed together in a tighter pack of naked bodies. There was a large window giving a view outside, but it faced away from Srillium and its star and only the speckled void of space could be seen. Alistair stared at it, wondering if any of those speckles were Aldra.

  “Are they going to give us clothes?” Wellesley grumbled, his first words.

  Alistair shrugged.

  “It costs them less not to,” said Gregory. “Don’t count on much.”

  “Why the hell did they take our clothes from us?”

  “The inside of the pod is designed to prevent bed sores; clothes aren’t ,” the doctor explained through a yawn.

  “Can we at least get clothes on the planet?”

  Gregory eyed Alistair, hoping for an answer, but Alistair wasn’t speaking. “I don’t know what to expect,” he finally replied.

  As the continuous stream of trains carried away detainees, while others filed in, the three moved inexorably closer to the front. A spark of chatter caught and spread through the crowd until the melodies and lyrics of a hundred languages echoed through the station hall. The babble was doused by the amplified voice of an unseen speaker ordering them to silence.

  Their turn finally came. A train sped into the station, abruptly braked and opened its doors. Alistair and his companions hustled in and stood among the crowd. With prisoners from dozens of systems filling the vessel, there was no time to allow sitting room on the carriages. They were tightly packed in and stood chest to back and temple to temple. So teeming with bodies were the carriages that when the train took off, its rapid acceleration hardly moved them and a few poor souls at the back were nearly knocked unconscious from the weight of the rest.

  They endured another rapid transit in darkness, blown by the wind in the tunnels, and finally emerged into what Alistair guessed was the same docking bay at which they had arrived. Conical transport ships were landing and taking off a dozen at a time. The train stopped only just long enough for every prisoner to exit and then raced back into the tunnel system, whipping them one last time with a breeze. Then the guards shouted and herded them towards the transports.

  An invisible force field prevented the air from rushing out of the docking bay’s aperture. The transport vessels were all equipped with a field of their own, the peaks and valleys of whose waves were precisely opposite those of the greater field, so that the two fields cancelled each other out wherever they met, allowing the transports to pass through without allowing air to escape. Through this vast opening the great giant gas planet of Srillium reflected its star’s light into the docking bay, rendering it a red hue and casting long shadows. The view was what is properly described as breathtaking, and not a prisoner among them, no matter his worries, entered without gazing out on the stripes and swirls of the planet entirely filling the opening, jaw dropping as far as the tendons would allow.

  When Gregory recovered from his awe, his brow furrowed for a moment as a thought occurred to him. “Is that… it’s a gas giant. Is Srillium…?”

  “Srillium’s a moon,” was Alistair’s reply as he gazed at the planet. Even he was impressed by the majesty of it.

  “Where is it?” asked Wellesley.

  “Must be on the other side of the ship,” said Gregory. “How big is it?”

  “Big as Aldra. Almost.”

  Shuffling ever forward, pressed this way and that by other bodies, Alistair Ashley, Gregory Lushington and Ryan Wellesley approached one of the transport vessels. The guards were going through the crowd, grabbing women and putting them in a different line. A medical team waited at the front of the line, the only staff on the ship whose faces the prisoners could see. They were ringed by a dozen imposing guards, and one by one the women were brought to them. Trembling, each was made to stand with her legs apart whereupon a device was inserted into her vagina. There was a soft buzzing and every one cried out before the doctor extracted the device and a guard sent her stumbling back towards a transport vessel.

  “They’re sterilizing them!” Gregory hissed, clenching his fists together. “Why the hell are they sterilizing them?”

  “They don’t want them reproducing,” Alistair quietly said, sympathetic, too disturbed by the fact to maintain his terse coldness. “No s
table, productive societies can be permitted.”

  “What the hell do children have to do with a stable society?” said Wellesley, although his normal irritability was tempered by an empathetic somberness.

  The women, almost without exception, were inconsolable. The men were silent and stared at the floor, feeling the discomfort of him who wishes to soothe but knows his well-intentioned effort will be rebuffed. Stuffed into their chambers, a few women held each other, strangers suddenly become fast friends, while the men just stood still, too drained to express anything.

  Back on a transport, Alistair found his way to the window again, using his bulk to put himself before it and not caring what reaction he received. When the transport fell and left the docking bay, he caught sight of the world that was to be his home and, some day, his sepulcher. It was a blue and green world like all other inhabited planets, more blue than green. Most of what he saw was lit by the sun and the slender crescent of darkness was still faintly aglow with the light reflected from the gas giant. He could see a continent whose center in the northern hemisphere was at about noon. Islands dotted the seas, including an extensive archipelago in the wide-open southern ocean. Any other significant landmasses were on the far side.

  The transport took them towards the southwestern section of the continent where it was morning. From the coloration it looked like a land of hills with mountains to the east and west and forests to the north. Farther to the southwest, a peninsula jutted out in the sea, sporting more mountainous terrain as well as a river that ran its length before emptying into the ocean. Some miles south of the peninsula there was an island a small fraction of the size of Arcarius Island.

  The transport rotated so that the surface went from being above to being below them and the breaks were applied while flames from the compressed air licked at the window. Since the room was now more crowded than when they first boarded, the landing was even more uncomfortable and there were cries and groans as a pile of bodies formed on the floor. Someone even wailed in genuine pain. Then they felt the soft thud of the landing.

  When the door opened, the deep, low hum of a large horn greeted their ears, a hum which would be heard for miles and which they could feel resonate in their chests. Guards awaited them and ushered them down the corridor where they mixed with other prisoners. From there they spiraled downward to the base of the transport at whose center a platform inclined to the ground. Alistair finally set foot on Srillium IIa, in the weeds and mud, as the horn continued to blow.

  When all the prisoners were disgorged, the platform was raised. Walking out from underneath the ship with Gregory and Wellesley in tow, Alistair took stock of the surroundings. There was a tower about two rugby fields to the north. Made of stone, it stood fifty feet high and was comprised of two levels. The first was a relatively thick base with no visible point of accession, and the second was a narrower part with stairs encircling its perimeter and reaching the top. There was a wooden ladder on the upper section which presumably was lowered to allow admittance to the upper portion. Two men were lounging on top of the base while two others were at the top of the narrower section, one of them blowing into an enormous horn. While Alistair watched, the blower finally paused for breath before blowing again.

  The landscape around them was featureless. In the sky far to the east, he could see another transport vessel plummeting to earth, preceded by fire and leaving smoke in its trail. Just to their west there was another group of prisoners who arrived before them. Their transport had left but they were still milling around, though a few started walking towards Alistair’s group. To the north a group of riders on horseback headed their way and another cavalry was coming from the east. Turning around and peering beneath their transport, he saw a third group coming from the southwest, from the direction of the mountainous peninsula.

  “The welcome party,” said a man sardonically, his accent one Alistair could not place though he sounded like a native speaker of English. He was Caucasian like they were, probably purely so or close to it. He nodded when he caught Alistair’s eye but Alistair ignored him.

  At that moment, their transport fell upward. Alistair was surprised to discover his chest was heaving as he watched the cruel ferry take off, abandoning them to their new life.

  Chapter 45

  While the three cavalry companies made for them, the two groups of naked arrivals merged together, speakers of like languages mingling. With a last powerful bellow, the man with the horn finally desisted, revealing the rumble of galloping horses. The men from the east reached them first, a mixed lot of about fifty of all races and dressed in primitive animal skins and sporting spears and other weapons of wood and stone. Most were scarred. Not one had a full set of teeth and all had beards in two braids. The naked newcomers regarded them in silent apprehension, each individual standing still so as not to call attention to himself.

  A few of the horsemen dismounted to round up the women, unmoved by their cries of protest. One man elected to be gallant and put a hand on one of the horsemen to stop him as he roughly dragged an older woman along the ground. The warrior spun about, sized up the slighter man for a moment, and asked him, “Are you a doctor?”

  The question caught the man off guard. “I’m a banker,” he replied, whereupon the horseman drew a dagger and plunged it into the banker’s lower abdomen. The crowd gasped in unison but the horseman, nonchalant, wiped his obsidian dagger on the earth and resheathed it. Mouth wide open, the banker slumped to the ground while the horseman finished dragging the old woman to dump her among the others. Gregory rushed to the side of the writhing banker.

  As the group from the north arrived, a rider from the first group guided his mount towards Alistair and tossed him a bundle of clothes.

  “You’re welcome to come with us,” he said, his voice almost friendly, his accent unfamiliar to Alistair. He was a large man just shy of middle age, with brown skin and principally African features. “I like your tattoo.”

  Alistair reflexively touched his chest and Ryan, his curiosity piqued, scrutinized the design.

  After a moment of consideration, the man reached back and tossed some clothes at Wellesley. “You can come too.”

  Alistair realized there was little he could do and so began to dress himself in the rough leathers.

  “You’ll look better in these,” said a voice with a thick, Germanic accent and another bundle of clothes fell at Alistair’s feet.

  Looking up, Alistair saw another horseman, this one sporting green tattoos about every inch of exposed white skin.

  “He already agreed to come with us. He won’t look good in green.”

  “He’ll look fine,” retorted the second. Turning to Alistair, he said, “We’ve got a larger tribe. With that tattoo you’ll be the chief’s private bodyguard. Make a good decision.”

  “He already accepted my invitation.”

  “You can’t invite until we’re all here.”

  “We don’t follow those rules no more!”

  “Gentlemen,” said Alistair quietly, “I’ll hold out for the highest offer.”

  With that, he removed the moccasins he had donned and left both bundles of clothes on the ground. The horseman divided their rueful glances between Alistair and each other. Wellesley, surprised, hesitated only a moment and dropped his clothes as well.

  Gregory, as he knelt next to the stabbed banker, was shaking his head and using his hands to staunch the blood flow. The man was moaning, his hands on top of Gregory’s. When Alistair was at his side, he looked up at him with an expression part anger and part helpless frustration.

  “Lower bowel wound,” he muttered. Alistair knew enough about injuries, as well as Gregory’s tone, to know there was no hope.

  The women had all been rounded up and men from both companies stood guard around them.

  “How many females?” asked one of the company from the north, tattooed green like his fellows.

  “Forty eight. Times twenty men. Two shipments.”

&nbs
p; “Any more shipments coming?”

  “How would I know? Look up.”

  The men were being divided into two groups. One had more members but was comprised of smaller men while the other had more athletic, younger and stronger men. Both groups stood still, compliant. A group of horsemen, having dismounted, headed in Alistair’s direction. One of the green tattoos grabbed by the shoulder the man with the strange accent who spoke to Alistair right after exiting the transport vessel, and propelled him towards the more numerous group.

  “Make your way over there,” he gruffly ordered.

  “I’m with them,” protested the man as he pointed at Alistair with a pleading look.

  “Not any more,” replied the horseman and as he stood in front of Alistair he put his arms across his chest. “I hear you don’t want to get dressed.”

  “I’ll dress when I’m ready.”

  “Maybe he wants to come with us,” challenged another horseman with a braided beard.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Ryan put an arm on Alistair’s forearm. “Alistair, I wanna get some clothes on.”

  Alistair considered him a moment and finally shrugged again. “Clothes for the three of us.”

  “This guy a doctor?” asked one.

  “Yes I am,” Gregory fairly hissed.

  “Well, leave that one. He won’t make it more than a few hours.”

  Gregory stood up and went nose to nose with the man. “I realize that. He won’t make it because someone stabbed him for no reason.”

  The green tattooed man turned away from Gregory. “Three suits,” he said, jacking a finger over his shoulder at them. Two warriors brought forth the suits, which were no finer than what a Neanderthal might have worn.

  “Make it four,” said the other man with the accent, and his look was like a desperate beggar’s.

  “He’s with us,” said Gregory with a look at Alistair.

  The tattooed horseman impatiently sighed. Turning to Alistair, he put his hands on his hips with a bored expression. “Is this a package deal?”