Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  The look on Layla’s face indicated this was so new as to be indecipherable to her, at least when relayed as rapidly and in such a big dose as Alistair delivered it.

  “How do you illegalize prostitution, then?”

  “Rape is Illegal, with a capital I. Prostitution is not rape.”

  “But how—”

  “You don’t. If a man wants to pay a woman for sex, and a woman wants to screw a man for money, that’s nobody else’s goddamn business.”

  Layla gritted her teeth at Alistair’s rough treatment of her idea, but she calmed herself with an effort and when she spoke, her tone was calm. “Alistair, this is something that maybe you don’t empathize with, and that’s understandable. You’re not a woman, and you haven’t been here very long. Women are slaves here. Look around you: there’s hardly any of us, and when a woman is sent here she is taken possession of by some chief. Used as a concubine, or a whore. In Issicroy I was a concubine to Lord Issicroy because I was given no other option. It was Giselle who saved me from being a common prostitute, which she spent several years as herself. The other women have had similar experiences, or even worse. This is a new start for us. We don’t want prostitution on the island.” Her next sentence she pronounced with a solemnity she clearly expected to be convincing. “This is very important to us.”

  By this time they had descended to the shores of the lake and stood at the mouth of the brook. The sky was darkening and the wind picked up, hurling the waves towards shore with a good deal more force. Every so often a bit of spray from the broken waves was tossed in their faces. Alistair faced Layla Dubai, looked into her alluring face framed by strands of hair bouncing in the currents of air.

  “Layla, I have had this same argument with a thousand people in my life. I have convinced maybe five of them, and never on the first go. I don’t know why people can’t see what I see so clearly. I’ll explain it to you as lucidly as I did to them: no one here who purchases my service is going to be coerced into prostitution. If all of you are dead set against being prostitutes, then there is no need for a law to prevent it. But it may be that some women here might wish to choose that profession, or some who are against it now will change their minds later. Their becoming prostitutes does no harm to you, and if they purchase my services they will be protected in their professions as long as they don’t cheat their clients.”

  “We don’t want it anywhere on the island.”

  “But you don’t own the island. You may forbid it on any parcel of land you own, no more.”

  The lower lip of the striking young woman quivered, but the tears welling in her eyes were angry ones, not sorrowful.

  “Alistair, I am no longer interested in hiring you for your services,” she informed him with a tone that dropped the temperature around them.

  If her frigid voice provoked in Alistair any feeling to color his response, it was a slight weariness. “That’s your choice. Tell me something, though: how are you going to enforce your law?”

  Layla did nothing more than glare at him. Sighing, and having reached the mouth of the stream, Alistair crouched down and skimmed the bucket along the surface of the brook.

  “Every law has to be enforced, or what’s the point? Say we pass this law of yours and then a man and woman are caught in the act of prostitution. What should we do with them?” He took a long draught from the bucket. Some of the water sloshed out onto his chest. What went in his mouth was not clear, clean water; it had the taste of nature in it, but he was thirsty enough that he didn’t care.

  “They should get the same penalty,” she said with heat. “I’m not trying to blame this all on men. They should both get the same—”

  “I’m not saying you’re trying to blame it on men,” he replied with a serenity that was a foil to her anger. “I’m asking how you plan to enforce your law. What will be the penalty for committing prostitution?”

  “That can be decided by a vote. That’s not the point—”

  “What would your suggestion be? You want to make prostitution illegal, so tell me how this is to be enforced?” He refilled the bucket while she answered.

  “It doesn’t matter. We can make a jail. We can fine them. We can… I don’t know, give them hard labor.”

  “Let me see if I understand. When a man willingly gives over money for sex, and a woman willingly gives him sex for money – in other words neither party involved disagrees with what happened – you want to kidnap them, which is sometimes referred to as throwing them in jail, or steal their property and call it a fine, or enslave them by giving them hard labor?”

  Layla struggled with a response and came up with nothing.

  “Would you allow a man and a woman to have sex?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “So you would?”

  “Of course!”

  “But not if he pays for it? It has to be an act of generosity on her part or they both go to jail?”

  Layla balled her hands into fists. “I don’t know anything about your home world, but every community I have ever seen has set standards. It’s called civilization.”

  “Pointing out that something occurs does not justify its occurrence. In every community I have ever seen there were murders, too. So you want to throw people in a jail if they have sex under terms you disagree with.”

  “No, not just because I disagree. Just prostitution.”

  “But you want to throw them in jail.”

  “I think I already answered that. You said yourself that laws have to be enforced.”

  “Fine. By what right do you do it?”

  “I’m not going to do it.”

  “But someone has to, and you are going to support them when they do it. By what right does anyone throw someone in jail for what they do with their own body?”

  “I said I didn’t expect you to understand. You’ll never know what it’s like to be in that position. We want to prevent this from ever happening here. The idea is that no one has to go to jail because the law is obeyed. And if someone refuses to obey the law, then yes, they might have to go to jail. But that’s better for them then prostitution.”

  “Obviously they don’t think so or they wouldn’t engage in it. What gives you the right to make that decision for them?”

  “A community has a right to set its own standards. No one person’s desires trump the entire community.”

  “So it’s not you who has the right to throw the prostitute and her client in jail?”

  “Right.”

  “No one person has this right?”

  “The community does.”

  “But if no one has this right, then how could the community have it? Where would it come from?”

  Layla furrowed her brow and shook her head as if helpless. “The same way anyone gets their rights. The community does too.”

  “A community is just a group of people. There is nothing about it that exists apart from the individuals. An individual has rights because he can conceive of them and respect them in other people. Perhaps you might argue there is no such thing as a Natural Right, but if you do harm to someone, then it follows quite logically that you cannot argue that they cannot do that same harm to you by simply using the code of ethics you chose when you harmed them. The result is most people agree to treat each other decently, and the ones who don’t are punished. Even if you don’t believe in rights, the final result is the same. This means if you choose to impose yourself on someone else, they can do it back to you. Rights or not, why would you want to behave like that?”

  “I told you once,” she said with the forcible tone of a final pronouncement. “You’ll never understand how terrible prostitution is, and we don’t want it here. If that means throwing a couple people in jail as an example, or taking their property as a fine, then so be it. If we take bad choices away, people will only have better choices available to them. We’re going to vote it illegal, and you and I will do no further business.”

  After the argument, Layla turned w
ith a whip of her hair and stormed back up the side of the hill, her movements sharp and angry. Alistair followed behind with casual, lengthy steps and soon caught up to her. The former Issicrojan, still fuming, declined to walk next to him yet lacked the wherewithal to pull ahead. With a groan of frustration, she veered off to the right and took an indirect route back to the top of the hill, leaving Alistair to arrive at the summit first. No sooner had he returned than a small group of men, led by Taribo, rushed to meet him.

  “They found something you should see,” Taribo informed him, his normally relaxed expression replaced by excitement.

  “One moment,” said Alistair, and he carried his bucket to the tub and poured its contents in. Thereafter he turned to one of the men flocking around him, a dark skinned man of mixed heritage and hardened features, and asked, “Did you drink any water today?”

  The man blinked but nodded yes.

  “Then replace it,” commanded Alistair, shoving the bucket into his hands. “Make at least one trip and get someone else to do it after you.” Alistair ignored the dark look he received as he followed Taribo and the others to the spot of interest. The man waited for a moment, then dropped the bucket by the side of the tub and hurried to rejoin his fellows.

  The item of interest turned out to be a hole in the ground, until recently covered by a large rock. It was perfectly circular and in the deepening shadows they saw no bottom. What could be seen of the interior was a smooth, metal wall without seams sporting a row of metal rungs spaced at even intervals of maybe a foot and a half and leading into the impenetrable darkness. The men stood around it with a quiet awe, eyes now on the dark hole, now on Alistair’s reaction.

  “How deep?” asked Alistair.

  “We dunno,” answered a man with a musical accent. “Was already dark when we found it.”

  Alistair got down on his knees and peered into the hole. The faintest trace of a draft of air emanated from it.

  “HELLO!” he called down into the shaft. There were the familiar jumbled echoes which faded away by degrees.

  “That sounds deep,” said Taribo with appropriate respect in his voice.

  “Is this the Gaians?” asked one.

  “Somebody make a torch,” said Alistair, and three men ran off to comply.

  A short time later they came back with a tree branch with some grasses tightly woven around the flaming end, lit by the small fire kept alive and burning in the camp. Already the grasses were falling loose as the fire degraded them, but the end of the stick caught flame and continued to burn. The man with the torch passed it to Alistair, reverently, and all three took up positions once again around the shaft. Without preamble he held the torch suspended over the hole for one brief moment before releasing it into the void. The men watched it plunge, its light diminishing to a point a great distance beneath their feet. Once or twice it bounced off a rung or the sides of the shaft and the sounds of the impacts reached their ears ever more weakly the farther it traveled. Finally, the light blinked out, either extinguished by wind or floor, or it was too far away to see. The sense of awe and nervous reverence increased and when at last someone dared to speak, it was in a whisper.

  “Who put it there?”

  “And where does it go?”

  “And why put it there?”

  “It’s got to be the Gaians.”

  The contrast of Alistair’s response, in a calm voice and a factual tone, startled them. “This is not something I can imagine Gaians building.” His voice silenced the whispered discussions and for a time the men did nothing more than stare into the darkness of the shaft. Finally, he ventured another thought. “Before it was a dumping ground for criminals, this moon was a power colony. Work crews came here and built huge Mantle Stations… this was before they had Solar Nets. Once Mantle Stations gave way to Solar Nets, the company here sold the rights to The Incarcerator. All trace of the Mantle Stations was supposed to be eradicated. I’ll bet they just missed this.”

  One of the other men got down on his knees and rapped his callused knuckles on the smooth metal interior. After considering the sound, he said, “Any shaft this narrow what’s gotta survive so deep in this place would be made with Herculerium. Anythin’ made in the last hunnerd years, least ways. That sure ain’t Herculerium. I worked with it for seventeen years an’ I’ll swear as it ain’t. That shaft’s real old or whoever dug it ain’t got the sense he shoulda been born wit’.”

  “Over a hundred years old?” asked Taribo.

  The man nodded. “Probably a lot older.”

  “So… what? This goes all the way to the mantle?” asked a man.

  “Who knows?” said Alistair. “And right now, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got a lot of work to do before we explore under the surface. To be safe, let’s cover the opening and we can worry about this another day.”

  Alistair took a few steps away from the men before someone called out, “Who owns it?”

  “I don’t know. If anyone wants to lay claim to it, they may do so. If there is a dispute, you may purchase my arbitration services if you have not already done so. Or you may settle it among yourselves… it’s your choice.”

  It was at that moment that a change occurred. The sun moved an infinitesimally small amount lower on the horizon; the ambient light at the top of the hill diminished to a minute extent; the increase of intensity of the evening breeze would have required sensitive instruments to detect; the actual physical changes were hardly worth noting, but for a group of men standing around the opening of an unknown shaft, it was as if the ground shifted under them. Realization, to an extent at any rate, came to them. There were no magical high priests to make something theirs or to take it away. There never had been; there had merely been charlatans claiming the power. Right and wrong were not malleable according to their sacerdotal whims. Even if a right had no physical impact in the universe, human action did, and human action could be bent, if the actors so chose, in harmony with human rights or at odds with them. There were systems and institutions which, while ostensibly in place to protect rights, by their nature were at odds with them and therefore intrinsically flawed. Other systems were more in harmony with human nature and human rights. Alistair offered them one, perhaps others could be discovered.

  Only a glimpse of this did they catch, like a single paragraph read from an enormous tome, and not a one of them could properly have described what it was he saw. But the glimpse was enough to leave an impression, a feeling, and to awaken an instinct. They could not describe what they saw, but they could begin to recognize it.

  When Alistair at last returned to the wooden hut, there were men waiting for him in the open first floor. Ryan, Miklos and Santiago were there, along with another whom Alistair did not recognize. He was exceedingly tall, a good deal taller than Alistair himself, with a body that only seemed slender because of his great height. He wore what Alistair took to be an attempt at leather armor, even sporting a wooden helmet with a nose guard, and in his right hand he held a spear that was, for the moment, used as a walking staff. A mallet with an obsidian head was strapped to his back, and a number of small daggers were stowed about his person. He had long black hair pulled into one braid, piercing blue eyes and his skin tone and facial features hinted at a mix of European and Persian heritage. When Alistair ascended the four steps into the hut, he found himself staring into the man’s sternum.

  “My name is Caleb,” he announced, the merest hint of an Eastern European accent in his deep, baritone words.

  “He demands an audience with our leader,” Santiago announced as he leaned against the writing desk, his arms crossed and his expression skeptical. Ryan and Miklos sat on the common table, their feet on the chairs, a rapt audience. Miklos was slowly consuming an apple with his noisy chewing.

  “I am Odin’s champion,” announced the giant.

  “Congratulations,” offered Alistair, “but here we have no leader.”

  “I was told you were.”

  Miklos’ teeth crunched i
nto the apple and tore out a chunk.

  “I am the president of Ashley Security & Arbitration. I am no more a leader than any other businessman. I speak for myself and only myself.”

  There was doubt and incomprehension in Caleb’s eyes, but there was intelligence as well. He paused only a moment before asking, “Who will lead you into battle if Odin decides to attack?”

  “I will lead some,” Alistair admitted.

  “Then I will speak with you. Odin wishes to meet with you. He will meet you tomorrow, halfway between here and our city.”

  “You’re calling it a city?” asked Ryan.

  “What is the meeting about?” asked Alistair before Caleb could turn on Wellesley.

  It was a look of factitious confusion that Caleb gave Alistair. “Odin is going to offer you terms of surrender. It will be easy enough to find him. Just look out over the island tomorrow and you will see his army.”

  Alistair shared a look with Santiago while Miklos attacked the apple again. “Tell Odin I will be more than happy to meet with him, but not if he comes with an army. There is a wide open grassland between these hills and the forest in the north. If he wants to meet, he can come with a handful of men and plant a flag there. I’ll see it and come out to meet him. If he comes with an army, we’re just going to prepare for a battle.”

  “Odin will—” began Caleb with the tone of a protest.

  “Those are my conditions. If he wants to see me he will have to meet them. I’m certainly not going to argue about this with one of his underlings. You’re dismissed.”

  Caleb drew himself up to his full height and stared down at Alistair. It was a stare that had melted the resolve of a thousand men, but Alistair met it coolly, unmoving and unmoved. After this mutual measuring process, the tall man with the Slavic accent glided out of the hut on his stilt-like legs, ducking when he reached the edge of the room, went to the edge of the hill’s summit and descended. The others did not stir until the tip of his wooden helmet sank below the ridgeline.