Terra Nullius

by Claire G. Coleman

  Here the human children were quiet and passive, perfect little angels, far more disciplined than the children of his own people. He had received no answer to his questions: Why were the children so quiet, when human children are so hard to control? Why was obedience and religion given more time in class than all other subjects when the school was instituted to prepare the Natives for life in the Empire?

  Most importantly, what were those small buildings for, the ones that looked like lockable kennels for animals? The buildings the children were so scared of, so scared they wouldn’t even look at them. They looked for all the world like punishment cells. There was no doubt in his mind, none at all, that punishment cells is exactly what they were, yet he could find no member of the mission staff, even the Native tracker, who would confirm this. He could not even find the missionary who had sent the letter to his superiors that led him to this baking hot place.

  He could not find the evidence he wanted in the security cameras. He had clearance to access them, should have been able to find all he needed, yet a reported computer failure had destroyed random chunks of data. What was left was full of holes – either the computer was intermittently failing or it was being systematically hacked. Either someone was more skilled than he would expect or they were getting help; the hacking was so good he couldn’t even prove it was happening.

  Trying to put an end to it, he called for help from the Mission Authority technical division. Unfortunately, they were too far out and the staff too busy – it would be months before anyone could be spared to send out to the mission. If anyone was going to arrive at all . . . He hadn’t been on the planet more than a few weeks, but he thought it unlikely technical would come.

  Waking early, he again walked over to the dormitory hoping to see the children waking, hoping he would catch someone at some sort of abuse before they were alert enough to hide it, before they could guess he was watching. Again he was foiled. The children were already up and eating a nutritious breakfast. They did not seem to skimp on food here, yet there was another mystery. Even with little experience of the species he could see that every child showed evidence of longstanding malnutrition.

  Soon the sun rose high enough to notice the heat; it was as hot as hell again. Returning to his room Grark slipped into his wet-suit – the waterproof fabric keeping in a thin coating of water, kept cool by a tiny battery power cooler unit. He had no idea how it worked, had no interest in finding out – that was a job for engineers, technicians. It was heavier than he would have liked it to be, adding what felt like thirty kilograms to the weight being carried by aching knees. At least his skin was cool and wet again and he was thankful for the suit more than he was horrified at its unnecessary weight. Surely some sort of antigrav would be possible, they had been talking about it for years.

  The nuns, obedient to their tradition of simplicity and poverty, were pointedly wearing their heavy, plain habits; shunning, scorning climate control. They must have adapted to the climate a little but he wondered how they survived living like that; it would kill him in a heartbeat. It was obvious they did not approve of his wet-suit, the looks they gave him made that abundantly clear.

  Wandering the mission he tried to discover anything he could, anything at all.

  Another day went past, the yellow-blue sky cloudless, the too-yellow sun too bright, the heat and the dry air oppressive, without him discovering any more. He could not wait for a crisis, for something to go wrong, for someone to make a mistake. Either something had to happen soon or he would have to admit defeat and go back to the city. If he hung around it would be too obvious that he was waiting for something to happen.

  There was never enough water in the mission, yet there was always cool water to bathe. Likely it was not considered an ­indulgence by the Order because cleanliness was one of the virtues they espoused. Bathing was essential for his species – without it they died after first going mad from the pain. However there was bathing and there was bathing – surely twice, three times a day, as he had seen from some of the nuns, was more bathing than one needed for simple cleanliness, or for health.

  There would be more water for drinking, more for growing crops if there was a little less bathing. Not that he would consider complaining to home about it. Bathing was an inalienable right for his people and he could not complain when he was as guilty as anyone.

  Bathing went some of the way towards returning his sense of goodwill towards men, and women come to think of it, even towards humans. The tub was small but he’d got the water temperature perfect before climbing in. If he had been anywhere else, he might have burst into song but here, among the austere nuns, it was ill-advised. Actually, a hymn might be acceptable, a hymn was almost always acceptable. He had not much of a singing voice but nevertheless he croaked out one of the more popular but now less acceptable hymns as he climbed out of the tub.

  ‘Father.’ The voice at the bathing-room window stopped him dead in the middle of a rousing line with plenty of oompah and pomp. Still singing, to reduce suspicion from anyone who was watching him, he paced over to the window. When the song naturally ended he spoke quietly.

  ‘Who is that?’ He had his hopes but was careful not to let any emotion other than bland curiosity into his voice.

  ‘Father, I cannot speak long, she is always watching.’ He tried to identify the voice of whoever was talking but had not heard any of the sisters talk enough.

  ‘Who is watching?’ He thought he knew, though there was no harm in seeking confirmation.

  ‘Sister Bagra, the Mother Superior,’ the voice hissed, ‘she thinks whoever wrote the letter was a traitor, she is seeking them, she is always watching.’ The voice went silent for twenty of Grark’s excited, ragged breaths. ‘This place is not normally like this. The children are just children but she has threatened to kill them all if they do not behave while you are here. Those little sheds, they are punishment cells . . . the children call them the “boob”.’

  There, the proof he needed – if only this nun, this terrified nun, would testify.

  The voice when it went on was almost unintelligible, overcome with an emotion he could not identify. ‘There was an epidemic reported here – children died, were reported dead. The doctor in town who looks after the children here, he writes whatever Mother wants on the reports. He hates the Natives. It was not an epidemic, there was no disease. Those children died from lack of water. She locked them up in the “boob”, the punishment cells, and left them there. She said their screaming was a lesson to the other children, she forbade us to help them. She told the other children they would be next.’

  ‘You have to testify,’ Grark hissed out the window, realising too late that he was talking to nobody – the voice outside had disappeared. He had to find her, this mystery informant, right now.

  Not yet dressed, he pulled his blackest robes over his nakedness. They would cover him enough and in the night he would be hard to see. Running from the bathing room he saw the nun sprinting off into the darkness.

  His bulk belied his speed, he had trained to be fast, kept the bulk as camouflage. Catching up with her just before she reached the door of the convent proper, he lay his hand gently on her arm. It was the youngest nun, he realised, the one called Mel. Soft-hearted, she seemed to be the one most convinced that humans were sentient, yet she was as soft and wet as a used tissue. Surely she could not have had the gumption to have sent that letter home.

  ‘Was it you who sent the letter and informed us of the abuse here?’

  She shook her head, even in the twilight he could tell she was perplexed. ‘I know of the letter,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t send it.

  ‘I would be too scared, I wished I had said something but I was too scared.’

  Camp was at the edge of a small, forgotten waterhole. Grandfather had told Esperance that it must have been a farm dam once, a dam built by humans when they ruled, when they owned this place,
when they lived free. Now it was not much more than a muddy puddle. All the water that was left after the low mud and clay wall had collapsed; a victim of time and lack of maintenance. The tiny water supply was welcome, an oasis in the desert, one that hopefully the Toads would never find.

  Birds lived there, the remnants of Earth species. Out in the desert the Settler animals had not yet displaced them, or hunted them extinct. Waterbirds, living closer to the waterways that the Settlers frequented, had suffered the worst. The animals brought in by the Settlers, farm animals and pets that went feral, had taken care of the few waterbirds that the Settlers hadn’t eaten. It was nice to see waterbirds, to see wading birds, even ducks. She had seen ducks in books, in a bombed but not burned library, yet before they had arrived in that camp she had thought them a myth, or extinct at least. She never grew tired of looking at the ducks.

  The refugees were well fed – the hunting and scavenging had been good so nobody had killed any of the birds. It felt wrong, killing them, when they were clearly almost extinct. By unspoken agreement they were being left alone. How could anyone contemplate eating a rare bird that had been so common before the Invasion, that was such a strong thread through human history, culture and myth?

  Esperance was alone, as she so often was these days. The despair in the camp had been too deep, she could no longer swim it. The trees there were thick, good cover for the camp, she hoped it would be enough, though she thought nothing would be enough ever again. The new arrivals were settling in well, even though she had not expected them to. Again she was pleasantly surprised by her people.

  Not that it was easy having new people there, people who had been through the fire, who were still being hunted. Hiding was even more important than it had ever been before – there were more fliers, no doubt looking for the new ones, the fugitives. Despite the risk, despite the fact that they were new, despite even the fact that one of the new arrivals was a Toad, nobody considered turning them out. There were almost silent mumbles but none were prepared to go out on a limb to reject them.

  Again there was surprise – Johnny Star had become an important part of the camp, of the community, the family. His knowledge of the Troopers from his time with them, although none wanted to think of how he had learnt it, was invaluable in planning their defence. His charm and easy, though dark and sardonic, humour lit up the camp wherever he went.

  Grandfather, although normally slow to warm to anyone, got on with the Toad easier than anyone. Esperance supposed it had to be because both were once soldiers, albeit on opposite sides. Maybe there was more similarity between soldiers on different sides than between soldiers and civilians. Soldiers are soldiers no matter who they fight for. It was strange to see Grandfather and Johnny deep in conversation, heads close together as if keeping secrets, laughing in unison, their very different laughs clashing.

  She was glad, though, that her poor lonely grandfather had a friend to talk to.

  An early riser she went bush earlier than everyone else, almost every morning. She liked the peace, she liked to hunt before the sun hit the sky – it was cooler and more comfortable on her skin that humans had called ‘white’ before the Toads came, before skin colour became irrelevant. The lizards she hunted most for food out there; they were cold-blooded, they would still be asleep in their holes if she was early enough.

  In the near silence of the forest there was a strangled cry, a magpie singing a half note, a timid sound, a frightened sound. Magpies are like that; they sing to warn off intruders, they sing to warn each other. Esperance had been even more careful than normal so it was unlikely to have been her who alerted the birds. Besides it was somewhere away to her right, the wrong direction. Presumably it was only birds in her path who would cry out. Neither could it have been someone from the camp, carelessly scaring the neighbours; camp was far away and nobody else had left when she walked away.

  The cry of that magpie, her favourite song cut short, was like ice-water pouring into her veins. Frozen for a moment by that influx of ice she stood, as the trees, as the rocks. There was no thought, no volition, nothing but that fear that reinforces, from the deep unconscious, the need for utter silence.

  When she could breathe again she stood, loose, relaxed, and listened, trying to turn her whole body, her entire being into a device for hearing. There, off to the right, the sound of people, several of them trying to move silently, people not familiar with these woods, people from the city perhaps. It was unlikely they would be human.

  Sliding the walkie-talkie from her pocket, praying she had set the controls for silence, she pressed three times on the ‘press to talk’ button. She could not risk a word, but if someone at camp was listening they would hear the three bursts of static, the new camp code for ‘beware, someone is coming’. Hoping that someone had heard the signal, hoping someone was getting ready to defend the camp, having no choice but to act on the assumption the others were doing what they should, she moved towards the noise with the silent grace of someone for whom silence has long been a matter of survival.

  Chapter 19

  There have been calls by some citizens, some subjects of the Empire to allow full freedom of movement within the Empire, to allow subjects from one planet to move to another freely regardless of species. We should think carefully before allowing such a privilege to anyone who is not of our race, the race that created this Empire. Think on this: would you tolerate humans from Earth migrating to Shalis or Shalisians migrating to Earth? Shalis and Earth are our Colonies, and only we should be allowed to move between them.

  Even less tolerable would be allowing citizens of our allies to move to planets in our Empire. Only our people deserve the right to free movement in our Empire. That is the way it has always been, that is the way it will always be.

  – Tisshak Galiss, Head Department of Immigration, Colonial Administration

  The surveillance satellite over this part of Earth was shiny and new, recently launched and barely operational. There was no astronautics factory on this ridiculous, primitive planet so it had been sent all the way from home. They couldn’t even co-opt the Native technicians to unpack, assemble and launch the satellite; they did not understand the technology and besides, they could not be trusted.

  That was not why it was barely operational, it was barely operational because Colonial Administration back home had for some reason not sent the right technical staff, again. Techs in other fields had been co-opted and told to do their best using the manual.

  Home had not sent the right instruction manual either.

  It was a hard thing to admit but there was essentially nobody in the colony who knew how to repair the satellites, or even unpack and launch them properly.

  Sergeant Rohan had been firm. Then he had been aggressive. Finally, he had been vicious, almost screaming over the communicator. None of that had freed up the satellite to search where he thought Jacky had gone. Much to his despair and disgust he eventually had to call his superior officer, who tried a different tack, calling in favours. All attempts were unsuccessful. Even the notorious Devil, who wanted to find Jacky as much as Rohan did, could not mobilise the satellites to the effort. It was when Rohan resorted to threats, threats he was notorious for carrying out, that with a startling suddenness the satellite was both in operation and not tied up in routine searches for water.

  Therefore, finally, Rohan had somewhere to go – a target less nebulous than tracking some footprints across the desert. In the fugitives’ last known direction of travel there was a ragged feral Native camp, a number of tin and canvas roofs scattered among the trees where nobody should have been living. If they had not arrived at that camp yet, surely they would soon; there was nowhere else to go.

  He smiled as he handed the coordinates to the flier pilot.

  Johnny Star and Jacky were drinking tea, something neither was particularly familiar with but a tradition that was rapidly growing on both of them. Not t
hat there was any actual tea in their tea; instead they were drinking what the refugees had been calling tea, a constantly varying mix of herbs and leaves that is sometimes, but not always, quite pleasant. Tea was not a drink, not in that camp. Tea was really just a chance to socialise, a reason to sit down.

  They both heard the three staccato, almost percussive, blasts of static on the radio in the communications tent.

  Both men leapt up reflexively, though their reactions immediately after standing could not have been more different. Johnny drew his handgun from the pocket in his belt in a single fluid movement. Reaching out, almost without looking, he placed his hand on Jacky’s shoulder, arresting him in the process of fleeing.

  ‘Stay, kid,’ Johnny said, his voice filled with barely controlled tension. ‘If someone has come for us the least we can do is help these poor people fight the enemy we brought down on them. I understand the desire to flee, I feel it too but we cannot give in to that desire, not this time.’ Jacky relaxed; Johnny could feel the muscle tension leaving the young man as he was enveloped by inevitability. He was not relaxed, not really, but he was doing a damned fine impersonation. ‘I’ve run, and run, and run, how can I stop running?’

  ‘There are too many people here, too many children, too many old, sick, injured. They cannot all run. We have to at least give them a chance. Besides, we don’t even know for sure who is coming, it might be refugees.’

  Around them the camp was exploding into activity. Anyone who could fight, men and women, older children, all who carried arms, scrambled to prepare to defend the camp. All those who were unable to fight grabbed their most precious belongings and as much food as they could carry and scattered into the trees in small groups.