They moved fast – Jacky, Johnny and his gang – though not without care, care verging on paranoia, driven by fear stronger than their urgency. Nobody had any idea where Jerramungup was, nobody had even heard of the place, except for Jacky who had no more information than just the name, a name that to him had reached mythical proportions.
‘I wish you would shut the bloody hell up about bloody Jerramungup,’ laughed Johnny Star after another tedious monologue from Jacky. This was not sufficient to shut him up.
‘My parents will be there, that is why I want to go. I have not seen them for so long, I can’t even remember them, not really but I am sure they remember me.’ Jacky sighed to the heartfelt moans of everybody else. ‘I was taken from there and they would be waiting there for me to come back.’
‘It is nothing but a name,’ inserted a frustrated Johnny Star. ‘If it ever existed it might not anymore. It is like El Dorado, the golden city from human myth, or Shangri-la,’ he paused, ‘or whatever it was called.’
‘It must be there, I came from there, I had to come from somewhere, it must be there . . .’ There was an almost magical, solemn tone to Jacky’s voice, as if he was reciting a religious litany, as if the existence of Jerramungup was the thread by which his sanity was hanging.
‘I am Johnny, who came from the stars, who wants to return there,’ Johnny mused, appearing momentarily even more thoughtful than normal, ‘who can never return. They call me Star, because that is where I belong.’
He laughed then. ‘You must be Jacky Jerramungup.’
The whole group laughed. Jacky was surprised but he was not offended. After a moment of red-faced silence his laugh rang out with the others.
‘If we cannot get me home, and I assure you we cannot, maybe we can get you home.’
‘How? Nobody seems to know where Jerramungup is.’
‘Simple,’ Johnny said, in a tone that said things would be anything but simple, ‘we need a map.’
The news arrived when they were just leaving a small shabby inn in the tiny town – barely a dot on a map – of Bloodwood. Jacky had been seen raiding a homestead with Johnny Star’s gang – news that could almost have been calculated to annoy the hell out of Sergeant Rohan. However, the Native who had brought the information, who was still breathless from the run, was still surprised when Rohan pulled a gun on her. Backing away carefully, as one does from a dangerous snake, she got far enough away to feel safe enough to turn and flee.
It would have given Rohan some small satisfaction to pull the trigger, and there was no clue on his face why he did not. He simply shrugged and slipped his gun away. Jumping onto his mount he didn’t even bother to look if his deputies had joined him. They followed him as he rode off too fast in the direction the Native messenger had come from.
That damned Native was becoming a thorn in Rohan’s side, was already a thorn in his side, a thorn being pushed deeper. He could only imagine what the Settler Administration thought of it, thought of him because of it. It had become a matter of pride, his pride and that of his race. Native servants cannot be allowed to run away. Any who succeeded would tell others it was possible. He had to catch that annoying little turd before more damage was done both to the Settlers’ peace and Rohan’s career.
Johnny Star, what a bastard. Adding him to the equation had just made Rohan’s job a hell of a lot harder, while also making it more urgent. That traitor was even worse than a Native; he had Settler skills, Settler knowledge, Settler intelligence and a deplorable tendency to teach those skills to the Natives in his gang. Jacky was already cunning and hard to find. Now with the addition of Star he would be hard to find and also hard to catch. Rohan would now have to be extra cautious. He was in no position, with only four useless deputies, to take on the Star gang.
His mount looked so much like a long-legged crocodile, a Native animal, that many less educated Settlers saw the Native reptiles as proof Settlers had been to this stupid planet before, that they somehow belonged here. If they had visited here before, there was no other evidence of it. Crocodiles were fast, but the Settler mount was faster – its long legs giving it a half-sinuous, half-loping run. It also had better stamina than a crocodile, able to move at speed for hours.
Unlike a crocodile it was a herbivore, luckily, for finding meat for such a large animal would be crippling – pretty much impossible – on a mission like this. He had seen horses on this planet, even ridden one just to prove he could. His mount was faster and stronger, yet a horse felt like riding a table, it was so easy to ride.
There was no reason to look behind, so he didn’t. Either his deputies were following or they were not, he had long ago ceased to care about that. Then again, there was little chance they would not follow – they needed direction or they would be lost, literally, since he had the only map. It had been hard enough to replace the stolen one. They had better follow. Even with them he was now outnumbered by the Star gang.
The trail wound wildly, ripping a jagged path through the trees. Nobody could really steer at speed through that place. If not for the intelligence of his mount he would have fallen, would have crashed off the path; he let his mount find its own path. That was why the animals were used rather than a mechanical conveyance.
Mounts were also better on dry land than anything other than a flier. Being a species that had evolved in a swamp from a swamp creature, there had been no need to develop the wheel. All their transportation at home had been aquatic before the invention of the flier. They were an intelligent race, so they had quickly absorbed the human technology of wheels and wheeled vehicles, improving on them soon after the Invasion. However, they were still not of any use on bad or non-existent roads. The mounts were perfect for this sort of terrain.
There was a strangled yelp behind him, a rustling, a thud, as one of his deputies, less experienced a rider, fell or was thrown from his mount. Rohan was too enraged, too engaged in his own world to care, to even notice. The young men were fending for themselves, helping each other. He was entranced, unaware of how long the ride was when he reached the farmhouse, when he was greeted by the farmer’s wife.
She was tall, even for a Settler; her waxy grey-green skin stretched over a frail, probably malnourished, frame. Her clothes were even wetter than normal – she was sweating mucus as their kind did when distressed. Rohan had no time for that, no time for compassion.
‘I am Sergeant Rohan,’ he spat in her direction, ‘what happened here?’
She started crying. This was not the sympathetic help she had been hoping for. ‘One of them,’ she cried, almost screamed, ‘was one of us.’
‘Yes,’ Rohan’s tone warned against wasting his time, ‘that would be Johnny Star, the criminal, the traitor. I was told he was here so I presume you or someone else here identified him. We will apprehend the entire gang, but only if you help. What happened?’
‘They came in the night, we were asleep, my husband and I, then they came. The traitor, the one you call Star, had a plasma rifle.’ The Settler’s voice was breathless with fear. ‘We don’t have guns here, except what we need for farming. They didn’t even bother to tie us up. They knew we couldn’t stop them taking what they wanted. One of the Natives had a plasma rifle too, a plasma rifle. I was so scared.’
‘What did you do, what did your husband do about it?’ Rohan fought hard, but failed to keep the contempt from his voice. He knew there was probably something they could have done to stop Star; they could have tried.
‘We did nothing, we are just farmers,’ the snap of her teeth audible as she bit off the words, ‘he had a plasma rifle.’ Anger had made her stupid, or she had found a clearing full of courage in the middle of her fear. ‘I already told you that, can’t you pay attention?’
Rohan was an overheating boiler, close to explosion, or at least that is what he sounded like, even to himself. ‘And where is your husband?’
‘He has gone to r
aise a posse. We cannot let the filthy Natives, or that outlaw you call Star, get away with it. They were armed!’ She sounded smug, where before she had sounded scared. ‘The posse will come back with guns, and they will do the job you should have been doing. They will kill every Native they see until they find the right ones.’
Rohan agreed it was a good plan but he would get in significant trouble if he allowed vigilante action to go unchecked and unreported. ‘You are aware that I would have to report any illegal posse to the authorities? As far as I am concerned any posse is illegal. Your husband could be up on charges. I will report him myself if you continue to annoy me.
‘So could you, you could be charged, actually, as accessory to his crime.
‘You could, of course, request permission for a posse to cut down Native numbers on your property, but you cannot and will not get permission to hunt down Johnny Star. If you hunt Natives without a permit – a permit I cannot tender, I might add – you will be breaking the law.’
He wanted to tell her that the important thing was not to refrain from hunting the Natives, the important thing was to not get caught hunting the Natives, but he couldn’t tell her that in case it got back to the department. Not for the first time he wished that he had no notion of what was going on. Now he had to report it, and he didn’t want to.
Grark was not even remotely happy to be in the colonies, not anymore. At first it had been an adventure, an experience, but that soon paled as he discovered more and more abuse and immorality he would have to report. There was cruelty and slavery everywhere, in every corner of the colony; almost every Settler was involved from the lowest worker who had a slave he called an apprentice right up to the highest level of government where they turned a blind eye to these abuses.
The entire system would collapse, the colony would cease to operate, they would all have to go home if slavery ceased tomorrow. Not if it was outlawed – it was already illegal. The disaster would occur if somebody enforced the law. Not only were his people, on the planet the Natives called ‘Earth’, becoming increasingly arrogant, decadent and lazy, but were, from the moment they landed there, biologically unsuited to the planet. There was not a task they could perform without slaves. Actually, that was untrue – they could do anything but it would require more work, technology and money than simply using the Natives.
They tortured and enslaved, they seemed to have no limit to the cruelty they would use to keep their slaves under control. They stole children – that to him was the worst crime. Everybody was guilty, even those not directly involved, for they allowed it to happen, they absorbed the wealth that the system brought. The entire colony was culpable.
He had written report after report to send home, and sent none of them. He doubted now anything would be done about the criminal abuse and slavery of the Natives. The Church was powerful but he doubted they were powerful enough to make the necessary changes, such as enforcing the ban on slavery, that would destroy a colony completely. For all his reputation for temper he was a kind man, so he would rather give them the benefit of his doubts.
What he discovered, what was in his latest report was so inflammatory, so condemning, he was sending it that very day. His tolerance for the people of this planet had finally expired. The people in the colony seemed to believe the Natives to be completely unintelligent, nothing more than animals. Therefore, they were proud when they took Grark on a tour of a certain facility.
It took him some time to understand it. It looked from the outside like a factory, an industrial meat farm maybe, but there was nothing particularly impressive about the place. It was when he got inside that he had difficulty controlling his disgust and subsequent anger. Only years of experience enabled him to keep his face, his voice, expressionless.
There, where he expected to find a factory farm, or something similar, he saw lines and lines of beds with pregnant humans strapped to them. ‘We breed them here,’ the proud Director said, ‘using the latest animal husbandry, the latest genetic engineering techniques.’
‘Interesting,’ Grark replied, just enough to let the woman know he was listening.
‘Unlike us, who sensibly deposit eggs in pools to grow, these Natives grow their eggs on the inside. Therefore we must remove them surgically.
‘You can see there,’ she pointed, ‘the zippered aperture . . . well, it’s not really a zipper, it’s more complicated than that. It took a lot of research to create a suture we can easily open and close, but we all call them “zippers”. We have added the zippers through which we remove the eggs from the ovaries. This is a new feature; we perfected it only a couple of months ago. Before that we had to remove the ovaries completely and keep them in culture.
‘It is surprising to the uninitiated when they learn how hard it is to keep organs alive in culture; it is easier to keep the ovaries in and let the Native grow the eggs for us.’
Grark nodded, hoping this would be enough to satisfy her. He could not speak. If he opened his mouth he might say what he really thought. If he opened his mouth he might vomit.
Meanwhile he walked around the Native on the bed, one of hundreds in that room alone, strapped down, connected to wires and tubes. Feigning interest in the medical modifications that had been done he instead took the chance of looking the human in the eye. There it was – almost hidden behind the haze of tranquillizers – the same spark of intelligence he had found in the eyes of every human he had seen.
There, also, was madness. Her mind had been broken by the immobility, the being treated as an object. If she had not been dazed by drugs she would be screaming. This confirmed his suspicion: the Natives have minds, intelligence, you can’t break a mind that isn’t there. He had to somehow end this breeding program even if he could not end slavery here altogether.
‘You might have noticed the Natives are immobile. We had a couple of escapes in the recent past,’ the Director continued, ‘so we have increased the tranquillizers and developed a paralytic. They can no longer move while we feed them the drugs through the veins. There have been no escapes since the new drug regime.’
Grark nodded again, feigning agreement in action because he still could not trust his mouth. He composed himself. He was an Investigator of the First Church, he should have more control than this. He had seen horrors before, he had felt sick from them before. Steeling himself he managed to speak.
‘This one,’ he pointed to the human woman tied down before him, ‘is it . . . pregnant? Is that the right word?’
‘No, this one gave birth only four local months ago. We have had less than satisfactory results when they are not allowed to rest for at least six local months. In the wild they go longer – they do after all suckle their babies from glands that produce a substance they call “milk”.
‘We, of course, modify the fertilised egg,’ the Director continued, ‘taking out a code here and there, adding a couple we devised, all very technical. We have almost completely domesticated the species. When we breed them and then train them right they are obedient enough. We try to keep most of the characteristics we find useful – the ability to survive with less water than us, and the animal intelligence that makes them such useful servants. That has been the hardest work – removing the tendency to rebellion while leaving enough intelligence to make them useful.’
The Director led Grark through the rooms where the embryos were implanted, which looked like a cross between a hospital and a computer factory. The storage bank where the modified embryos were stored was nothing more than a long line of freezers.
‘Do you fertilise, is that the right word, and modify the eggs here?’ Grark was curious how large this operation was, how many people were involved.
‘No, sadly, the equipment needed for that is too expensive for every farm to have so it has been centralised. It adds the inconvenience of transporting the live eggs to the technicians, and transporting the completed embryos back, but unless more
money is found we cannot change the way things are.’
Grark knew the Director was continuing but he was too deep in thought for the words to penetrate. Training and experience kept his mouth flapping and his head nodding just enough to make the woman think he was still listening. Instead his mind was racing: this was larger, more immoral, more pervasive, than he could have imagined.
How many of these places must there be to require a centralised genetic modification facility? He could no longer delay reporting to the Church, to Colonial Administration. This was worse than any of them could imagine.
It was only when he prepared to send his report, and with it a request for more orders, that he was reminded of the worst inconvenience of working in the colonies. Electronic communication works perfectly well within the colony – at least in the cities it does. However, nobody had yet devised a way to send messages faster than light, so all mail between planets was carried on ships.
Out here, the furthest colony from home, mail took many weeks to arrive. He would send his report and it would be weeks before anyone at home saw it, if it arrived at all – ships sometimes got lost on the way home. Once it arrived it would be more weeks while the contents were debated, then weeks again until he received further orders also by mail.
He would be lucky to hear a response, receive extra orders in less than six local months.
There was nothing for it, he had to send it anyway. Printing out several copies of his report and carefully signing each one, he sealed them in Church business diplomatic envelopes that explode – destroying the contents and normally the hand holding them – if they are not opened by the correctly authorised hands. Three were addressed to his superiors in the Church, the other three to his contact in Colonial Administration.
Following standard procedure for one in his position they were dispatched on three different ships home: one from where he was, the other two went by speedy courier to other star ports to be sent. It seemed unlikely they would lose three ships at once when all three were on different routes.
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