Flight of the Outcast

by Brad Strickland

  As though in answer, she heard a far-off growl. Dome 1, the only one with a ripe crop, had been blasted open. A ship climbed away from it on a pillar of fire.

  Asteria stood in shock. The Raider ship became a speck in the sky.

  "Father," she said softly. And then she cried aloud, "Father!"

  Yet even as she cried out, she knew he was no longer there to answer her.

  two

  Asteria was desperately clearing rubble from the smoking

  pile that had been the south defensive tower—searching for any sign of her family—when the battered hovercart roared up the steep road from Sanctal. Two men emerged. They wore the drab, dark gray coveralls of the lower-caste Bourse. She stood holding a stone as they walked toward her, their faces grim.

  "What happened?" one asked. "There was a distress call."

  "And you came," she said bitterly. "The two of you."

  The second man pointed at the shattered dome. "Raiders."

  "May Shayman, the god of protection, favor us," the first one said.

  Asteria felt like hitting him with the stone. "My father and my cousin—"

  "Please." The second man took the stone from her hand and said, "The Cybots will search for them better than we can. Come. We will take you to safety."

  Asteria shook her head. "I want to stay here."

  "Child," the first man said, "Gaiam, the god of family, tells us we must take in the young of—" His voice seemed to falter. "Of those who have met with accidents."

  "I don't believe in your gods," she snapped, and the two men exchanged a shocked look.

  "If your people are alive, the Cybots will find them," the second man told her.

  "They're not alive," Asteria said bleakly.

  The first man said, "If they are not, we will take care of you."

  She hated them. Hated them. But at last, with nowhere to go, she let them take her to Sanctal. They sped back down toward the seacoast town, the smoldering farm vanishing over the rim of the plateau. The air grew warmer and smelled of the sea. They slowed as they entered the town, and people stared at her. The outsider. The orphan. The outcast. Asteria stared back defiantly, holding back her tears. She went where the men took her, answered the questions the Bourse magistrate put to her, and did not object when he turned her over to a woman who said she would take Asteria to a place where she could live until a decision might be reached concerning her future.

  Asteria did not object to any of this. But already she was thinking of her future. Of revenge.

  * * *

  For many days, Asteria felt like a prisoner, even though she had all the freedom that an Unbeliever girl was allowed in Sanctal. She could walk around the narrow streets of the settlement—if she had a male escort. She could speak to anyone—if the other person spoke first. They dressed her in the drab clothing of a Sanctal subclass girl: gray cap and tunic, dark gray stockings, black shoes. They complained about the belt: "Ornaments are signs of pride. That is not acceptable to Drakkah, the god of humility. Remove it."

  "I can't!" she'd snapped repeatedly. And she couldn't. The flexible belt had almost molded itself to her waist. It was loose enough for her to remove her clothes, but when she put on the Sanctal garb, she had to put it on over the belt, which now lay snugly against her skin. It didn't seem to have any kind of release. Asteria had never seen anything like it. She couldn't imagine what it was supposed to be—or do.

  After two days, the Cybots sent by the Bourse returned with the meager items they had found: the ID and communicator elements from both Carlson and Andre Locke's wrist transceivers. They had discovered these in the ruins of the defensive towers—along with enough bone fragments to identify the bodies of both Asteria's father and her cousin.

  Asteria told the sour-faced Bourse officials that the killers had been Raiders, renegades. That they should be pursued, caught, and punished. The Bourse never made a decision without debate; it was the core of their religious law, though they allowed no debate when it came to their beliefs. Hour after hour, they sat arguing about what they should do. In the end, they decided to apply for help to the planetary governor, whose offices were a thousand miles to the south, in the large settlement of Central. That took a day. And then Baron Kamedes, the ultimate authority on Theron, sent back word that the death of the Lockes was a local issue. The Bourse should handle everything.

  All that debate for nothing, Asteria thought bitterly as she sat in the solitary cell they had prepared for her in their holding center for orphans and strays.

  And so the Bourse did handle everything. Slowly. The day following the governor's decision was the Holy Day of Repentance, when Bourse settlers remained shut in rooms thinking of their sins. Nothing could be done. Then came the Day of Appeal, on which Bourse men and women flocked to the various temples of the gods and prayed for whatever they needed. Old men went to the Temple of Prosperity. Young men went to the Temple of Love. Women went to the Temple of Patience or the Temple of Endurance. Asteria sat alone in the little room they had provided and grew more and more frustrated.

  At last, long after the raid, the local council sat in conference to decide Asteria's fate. She was not allowed to speak, though the Bourse granted her an advocate—a lean, grim-faced man of thirty named Nels. Six elders, clad in black and looking as solemn as attendees at a funeral, sat on a high platform behind an imposing wooden table carved in figures of dour saints, and listened as the case director, a grizzled old man named Marren, laid out the facts.

  The head of the panel of elders summed up: "So this infidel girl is left without a family? And she is heir to the estate?"

  "That is the case, my masters," said old Marren.

  Asteria could see greed flickering in the elderly eyes. Sanctal was a place where people who believed in simplicity and devotion could live and pursue their vision of the holy life. But forty thousand hectares of land, with seven intact and functioning biodomes producing a rich crop of coffera…well, that was a solemn thought indeed. If the farm could continue, even with only seven domes working, it could produce enough income to appeal to a family.

  "She must be given to a husband," the elder at the far end of the table said, looking down at Asteria. "She looks to be sturdy enough. She must learn our ways and our beliefs and become one of us. She must learn to serve the Six Great Gods of the Bourse."

  "All glory to the gods," the others murmured ritualistically.

  "I don't want—" began Asteria hotly, but Nels shushed her.

  "My masters," he said, rising, "the girl is not yet sixteen Standard. In three years' time, she may be of age to be married, but now our laws forbid that."

  Marren shrugged. "Then she must be fostered into a family of believers," he said simply. "There she may be disciplined and schooled and brought to a knowledge of her place in serving the gods."

  Asteria again saw those flickers of interest. A foster family might have the inside track. And the income from the farm would be put in trust for the lucky husband, but some of it would go to the foster family. It would be profitable to be the guardian of a girl who would inherit a freehold of land.

  "That is a good point," the chairman of the council said. "It would be well for her to learn proper manners and behavior. She must learn that she cannot speak out of turn, for one thing. She seems a headstrong, willful girl, and we could not accept her into our fold unless she learned to curb that haughty spirit."

  "My master," said the elder to the chairman's left, a thin-faced old man with a fringe of white beard. "If you will permit, I think my eldest son, Kern, might take her in. He farms too, but not in the Uplands. He has a boy about her age—"

  A man on the other side of the chairman cut in, "With submission, my master, I believe that our family could provide the girl with a better grounding in our beliefs. We live in the town, sir, and not out in the country. 'Many eyes make good behavior,' so say the gods."

  "So say the gods," the group chanted, without missing a beat.

  T
he man continued. "In our family, we could always keep a close watch—"

  "Sirs," said Nels, standing beside Asteria. "Masters, please. This is a matter for a full council meeting. May we not defer this until the next session? Is it not enough today to decide that Asteria Locke is to become a ward of the Bourse, to be molded into a suitable wife and companion for a Bourse son, and to allot her a portion of the income from her father's farm for her temporary support?"

  "The young man has a good point," said the chairman. "'Haste spills the water,' as it is written."

  "As it is written," the group chanted.

  "Are all in agreement?" the chairman asked. "Then it is thus decreed: the girl will continue to live in the Hospitality Hall, and her food, clothing, and other necessities are to be paid for from the proceeds of the farm."

  Asteria leaped to her feet. "What about the Raiders?" she yelled.

  It was as if she were a ghost. No one even reacted to her. Nels pulled her back down into her chair, not harshly but firmly. He said, "My masters, the girl would like to know if any steps are being taken to punish the Raiders."

  "Tell her," said the chairman gravely, "that such events are manifestations of Balzius, the god of fate."

  Asteria said fiercely, "Then are my father's murderers to escape without punishment?"

  Finally, the chairman took notice of her. He sternly said, "Punishment and reward are not for human wills or hands to disperse. The Empyrion maintains protection over our world; it is up to the Empyrion to pursue those who have killed her family. They mind the worldly business, and the Bourse mind the more important business of the soul. Is there anything else?"

  Fiercely, Asteria whispered into Nels's ear. He straightened and said, "My masters, the girl would like the personal possessions and the legal documents taken by the Cybots from the ruins of her home. Is that permitted?"

  More murmuring consultation among the men on the bench. Then the chairman said firmly, "She must learn that mere material things of this world are no longer of any importance. However, for the time being, recognizing the tragedy of her experience, we will permit her to select six items to retain. The rest will be kept safely for the man who will eventually marry her." He stood. "It is so decided. May our decision please the Six Great Gods."

  The others droned, "All glory to the gods—"

  But Asteria was no longer even listening.

  * * *

  Six things to represent her whole life. Because the Bourse believed that the gods ordained six as the perfect number, she could choose only six.

  A picture of her father and her cousin, Andre—dark-haired like her, blue-eyed like her, laughing in the image. She cried a little. She and Andre had been such a handful, always practicing martial arts when they should have been working. Andre, always boasting of his appointment to the Royal Military Academy in Corona, the capital of the Empyrion. She, always envious that he was to be released from the dull world of Theron, from the boring farm.

  She would give anything to be back on that farm now.

  Another picture, her mother, whom she barely remembered. Felice Locke had been a willowy thing, a sixth-generation inhabitant of a low-gravity planet. She had been a supervising technician during her husband's many operations and slow recuperation. She had married Carlson Locke before he had received his pension and land grant, before he had become prosperous. Her mother had known that her health was fragile, that childbirth would weaken her, and yet she had given birth to Asteria. She had been ill in Sanctal the last time Raiders had attacked, and when their bombs collapsed part of the hospital, she had perished.

  Four more. Asteria kept the land-grant deed, her cousin's ID/ communicator processor, a digitized copy of her father's will (leaving everything to her), and an old-fashioned paper document. It was only a few tens of centimeters square, and it did include an embedded chip that validated its information.

  Asteria read the dust-smudged letters:

  KNOW ALL BY THIS CERTIFICATE

  In recognition for the service rendered by Carlson Locke to the Royal Space Fleet, the Empyrion grants to A. F. Locke the privilege of attending the Royal Military Academy when said candidate reaches the age of thirteen Standard years.

  Asteria's middle name was Felice, after her mother. Andre's had been Fredric, after his maternal grandfather.

  They were both A. F. Locke.

  In the privacy of her room at the Hospitality Hall—a bare cubical with only a bed, a chair, a desk, and walls that continually glowed with shifting religious texts—Asteria thought about what she was going to do.

  It was illegal.

  There would be trouble.

  But she would face the trouble when it came, and it would come when she was far away from this place.

  At least the Bourse ignored her for the most part. It would be almost comical, if it weren't so nightmarish. They seemed afraid that her lack of belief in their Six Great Gods might be contagious. Except for mealtimes, she could be on her own for most of every day—as long as she didn't want to do something that girls were not permitted to do, like go outside.

  The Hospitality Hall, Asteria thought, could not be much different from a Bourse prison. It was a long, low building constructed of blocks of gray stone quarried from the fjord cliffs. The rooms were tiny and dark, each with only one small square window. The Bourse had put Asteria in a room far down from the only door. She had no neighbors. Three times a day, a Cybot brought food, and the travelers who stayed at the Hospitality House ate at a table in the center of the building.

  The Cybot seated Asteria all by herself, at a small table in a dark nook. No one particularly noticed her. Once a woman wearing the small, red flame tattoo of the Aristocracy took a meal in the Hospitality Hall. Asteria glimpsed her, surrounded by servants, but Asteria wasn't even allowed to eat in the same room as an Aristo. The Cybot brought her meal to her room.

  It looked like a slender robot, approximately human-shaped, with a tiny head that was mostly binocular eyes (they glowed red, like her father's artificial one had) and a smaller triangular sensor array. The arms were capable of complex bends, not like a man's arm, and the hands were very delicate.

  "Who are you?" Asteria asked it as it served her bread, water, and a thin vegetable soup.

  "Unit 2312 Th-301," the Cybot said in a soft, uninflected voice.

  "Who were you when you were human?"

  "That question has no meaning for me."

  No, of course not. Cybots had portions of functioning human brains at their core—but brains stripped of personality and memory. No Cybot remembered its former identity. None of them had emotions. Most of them had the brains of condemned criminals in their chest cavities. If the Raiders who had killed her family were captured alive, this would be their fate. They would live on in a way—unconsciously, to be sure—for perhaps two hundred Standard years as the central intelligence units of Cybots. Asteria knew all this, but because her father refused to deal with Cybots—he thought that their very creation was cruel—she had never had a chance to speak to one before.

  "Do you have to accept my orders?" asked Asteria.

  "I must perform any lawful activity commanded by a human," responded the Cybot.

  "I want a faulty transceiving unit replaced," she said.

  "I am capable of performing that action."

  "Here, then."

  It took less than a minute. The Cybot unquestioningly removed the central unit from her wrist transceiver and replaced it with the one she supplied. It then asked, "Do you require initialization?"

  "No!" The word came out more quickly and anxiously than she had intended. She strapped the transceiver onto her wrist. "This one has been pre-programmed. Uh, thank you. Don't tell anyone about this."

  "Unless my directives are overridden. Do you require anything more?"

  "That will do," Asteria said. "Thank you."

  The Cybot stared at her. "'Thank you' has no meaning to me."

  * * *

  She was n
ot exactly a prisoner. Yet if she started toward the outer door of the Hall, started to walk forth in the streets of Sanctal, immediately someone would stop her: "Maiden, you cannot walk alone. Back into the Hall, or find an escort."

  And so she became a thief and an impostor. A young man, hardly taller or heavier than she was, unexpectedly spoke to her one lunchtime: "Child, can you name the Six Principles of Good Living?"

  "I'm not a Bourse," she said, but not harshly. She was studying the thin, young fellow's black-and-white tunic and baggy, gray trousers. "Sir, are you a priest?"

  The young fellow actually blushed. "I am an apprentice priest of Hippock, the god of healing," he said. "I have been sent by our settlement to learn medical arts here at the House of Healing."