by Selina Rosen
"I was beginning to think you guys had been attacked by rebels or something," the guy said in a joking tone.
"No, everything's fine here. We're prepared for un-tether."
"Roger. Un-tether in five. . . four. . . three. . . two. . . one. . ."
They felt the ship jerk as the tube that tethered the ship to moon base and allowed the ship to be loaded and unloaded was detached.
"Commence undocking," the space trafficker said.
"Powering up front thrusters and undocking . . . now," Levits began backing the ship out of the dock. It wasn't easy; it wasn't a procedure the computer could do. You had a read-out with a picture of your ship between two lines, and you had to stay in just the right spot. Jerk even one centimeter one way or the other, and you could strike the docking bay tearing a hole in your ship and ripping the bay apart. Not exactly the stealth approach one wanted to take when you were stealing a Reliance ship. When they had backed out of the dock without incident he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Moving toward the jump gates now."
"You're all clear. Take off when ready. Safe flight," the tower informed them.
"Thanks," Levits answered.
Levits powered the ship up and started to move slowly away from moon station and toward the jump gate. When he got a good look at the gate Levits relaxed a little. The jump gate was big enough to hold three battle ships at once. If he couldn't hit that hole then they all deserved to die in the cold vacuum of space.
RJ sat next to him accessing the ship's database. "Twenty-five men to man a freighter; that makes no freaking sense at all," she said.
"This isn't a freighter. It's a military troop carrier," Poley and Levits said in unison.
"Then why the hell are they using it to haul cotton fabrics to a third class planet like Beta 4? Hell, Beta 4 is a planet that both the Reliance and the Argy's consider to be too useless to conquer. What are they getting from the planet that they find it necessary to use a military ship with full armaments and manned by twenty-five armed soldiers?" RJ asked absently of no one in particular as she continued trying to find the part of the manifest which would tell what the ship was picking up on Beta 4.
"Maybe the Argy have been trying to cut off supply routes," David suggested.
RJ nodded. "Yeah, that's a good answer. But it's too easy, and for some strange reason the older I get the more I distrust easy answers." She scrolled back a page. "'Live stock.' The manifest says that they just delivered a shipment of 'livestock.' We're supposed to pick up another shipment of 'livestock' this time round."
"Well that explains the extra manpower anyway," Topaz said thoughtfully.
"But it doesn't explain why they're using a military transport," RJ said. "And it doesn't say what sort of 'livestock' they are taking from Beta 4. Besides, we were in the ship's hold; it didn't smell like shit to me."
Levits didn't want to deal with something as trivial as missing shit. He had enough to worry about hitting the gate and slinging this thing into hyperspace in less than five minutes. "They sterilize every ship that comes in as soon as it's unloaded. When a cleanup crew gets done on a ship like this . . ."
"There would still be some trace of shit," RJ said getting out of her seat. "Then there's the problem of the livestock itself."
"What do you mean?" Topaz asked.
"Well, the way I understand it, the only animals that populate Beta 4 are lizards and a few small mammals. Nothing worth transporting across the vastness of space," RJ said thoughtfully. "Poley and I are going to go down to the hold and see what we can find."
"RJ, I'm getting ready to make the jump to hyperspace in less than five minutes, and just between you and me, I'm not at all sure that I remember how to do this," Levits said. "I thought I would be piloting a freighter. I had Marge give me a crash course on freighters, and now I'm flying a freaking troop carrier. They aren't the same."
"I have faith in you," RJ said turning to smile at him. "If you can't hit a jump gate that big, we deserve to die in the cold vacuum of space."
Levits mumbled obscenities under his breath as RJ and Poley left the flight deck.
David and Topaz stood at a view port looking out at the planet Earth. Both men were transfixed, momentarily forgetting everything except the fact that they had traveled through space and were now looking down at the planet of their birth. It seemed surreal.
Topaz who had spent hundreds of years on the surface of the planet looked at Earth set in space and thought about the beauty of it. To think that when he was a child few men had ever seen this view first hand, and interstellar travel was only a dream. As a child he had dreamt of going to the stars and conquering new worlds, but by the time interstellar travel had become a fact he was already in hiding from the Reliance. Now he was finally going on a real adventure. He was finally in the heavens, leaving the Earth behind, seeing truly different things, and having completely different experiences. He couldn't wait till the Earth disappeared from view.
David on the other hand looked at the Earth with longing. Something told him he had better take a good long look because he was never going to see Earth again. In a few minutes the ship would take off, and the Earth would vanish from view. He was never going home. He really didn't know where they were going or why. He was leaving behind everything that was familiar, including the free country he had dreamed of and fought for. He was going off into space on a mission that he didn't understand and that was probably impossible to execute. There was nothing under his feet but several metal floors and empty endless space. It felt to him like he was standing on a string over a bottomless pit. Thinking about it left a weird over-empty feeling in his stomach. Of course that just might be the residual effects of the terror the trans-mat had thrown him into.
David hadn't understood the way the trans-mat worked. He assumed that the box simply moved through space somehow. He certainly hadn't been prepared at all to have his body completely disassembled and its particles flung through space to be reassembled. It was over in a matter of seconds, but he didn't think he was ever going to get over the filthy feeling it left him with. It was as close to being dead as he could imagine being. Levits and RJ seemed to take it in stride, and he hadn't expected the robot to react. Topaz' reaction was one of pure adulation. In fact upon completion of the reconstruction of his body's atoms, he had yelled Cool! so loud that RJ had immediately clamped a hand over his mouth, and they had all prayed that they hadn't been detected.
David didn't want to leave Earth. He knew he wasn't important to this mission that he didn't understand, and he would have preferred staying on Earth. But he was damned if he was going to be left behind, and he didn't want to stay in Alsterase alone. Couldn't, in fact, have stayed there without the others if he had wanted to because someone would have killed him.
RJ was leaving, and he was sure RJ had no intention of returning to Earth. David could barely remember his life before RJ, and although the closeness they had once shared had been shattered, he still couldn't imagine being separated from her now.
The ship jumped into hyperspace with a jerk that almost knocked David down, and the Earth was gone from view. He took a deep breath and quickly wiped the tears from his eyes. It was way too late to change his mind now even if he had wanted to.
David wondered if he would ever get over this horrible feeling that there was nothing substantial under him. He wondered if he was ever going to get used to the fact that he was basically nowhere. Wondered what he was expected to use as a point of reference for his existence. Was he here? No, he had moved and now he was here. No, moved again! The whole thing was weirding him out.
* * *
RJ fingered one of four sets of manacles affixed to the walls of the hold. "Now what do you suppose these are for? I can't think of any 'livestock' that has hands."
Poley shrugged his shoulders. "Nor can I. Perhaps it is used as punishment for unruly soldiers."
"Every ship has a brig for that," RJ said moving away from them. "Of course
they might have changed policy. Those are a lot cheaper than a cell, and a lot more irritating."
RJ took a pocketknife and scraped the crevices in the hold's floor. She handed what she found to Poley who quickly examined the findings.
"No animal waste," Poley informed her.
"Don't tell me what there isn't, Tin pants," RJ said in an exasperated tone. "Tell me what there is."
"A few cotton and wool fibers. Dirt, I'm assuming from both planets, human skin fragments, DNA, and what I have to assume are the skin fragments of a Beta 4 humanoid. More of the later in fact than the former."
"Now . . . I wonder why that is?" RJ asked rubbing her chin.
"Maybe it fell off the crates that were loaded in here from the planet, and maybe . . ."
"Maybe we have no idea. I don't like it, Poley. I don't like it at all."
* * *
"Avonlea, Avonlea! You're off course. Repeat you're off course." The moon base operator was screaming at him over the communications port.
Levits decided to have a little fun. He linked in. "Yeah, well, how's this? I'm stealing your freaking ship, so I don't give a shit!"
RJ skidded to a stop beside him. "Change course for Beta 4."
"What?" Levits screamed at her.
"Change course; we're going to Beta 4," RJ said.
"For shits sake, RJ, I just told moon base . . ."
"What the hell did you say?" the moon base operator asked.
Levits cleared his throat. "Ah, we ah. . . Just a little ship humor, sir." He shrugged silently in answer to the look that Topaz gave him. "I'm making that course correction now. Thanks I sure wouldn't want to get lost out here in hyperspace."
"You OK, Thomas?" The operator asked.
"Yeah, just a little constipation. Happens every time I spend any time in a space station. Over." Levits cut the transmission and turned to face RJ.
"You want to tell me what the hell's going on?" he asked.
RJ smiled at him and bent down to kiss his check. "Now if I knew that we wouldn't have to go to Beta 4, would we?" She straightened, turned on her heel and started out of the room.
"Damn it, RJ, would you give me a straight answer? What happened to your big win the Argys over plan, and why in hell's name are we going to a hole like Beta 4?"
She was gone and obviously wasn't going to answer him.
Levits turned to Topaz. "OK then, answer this one for me. Why does she keep kissing me when I'm screaming at her?" Levits asked.
Topaz and David both laughed.
"She does it because you find it unsettling," Topaz said.
"I think she does it because she likes him," Poley tossed out and then left obviously to go look for his sister.
They all laughed now. "Better take your vitamins, Levits," David teased. "Think you're up for it?"
"I'd certainly find that unsettling," Levits laughed.
Chapter Four
Taheed looked out the huge window at the bright red and gold striped sunset and smiled. "Exquisite!" he exclaimed, waving his handless arms around in circles. "Don't you think so, son?"
"Oh, yeah, great," Taleed said with no enthusiasm. He sat staring not at the sunset, but at a spot on the floor.
"Can't you enjoy anything?" Taheed turned an annoyed face to his son. "Must you continue to walk around the palace with your chin dragging on the ground? Haven't you punished me enough?"
"I have a right to disagree with your policies, Father, and I very heartily disagree with this latest trend."
"Oh, yes, how terrible! The kingdom grows richer each day . . ."
"It's the way we grow richer that bothers me. Father, you are selling our people into slavery. I do not trust the motives of this Reliance. I do not think they are dealing with us in good faith," Taleed said. "For generations the priests warned us against trade with the Reliance. Slowly, reluctantly they agreed to trade lizard skins, beads, other handmade items to the Reliance for farm implements, utensils, and light bulbs. Now, however, they push us to trade our people for this gold metal. How does this serve the people? How does it serve us? We are taught that The Ancestor wanted nothing to do with the Reliance. There had to be a reason for it, and a reason for the priests to be reluctant to trade with them."
"And there is a reason for us to trade with them now," Taheed said in an exasperated voice.
"Father . . . They are taking all our best warriors. What's to stop them from waiting till most of our good fighters are gone and descending on us in droves? Conquering and enslaving us all as they have done to countless other worlds," Taleed said.
"Son . . . Someday you will be King. You must learn to make the tough decisions. I think you are losing sight of the big picture. We have an over-population problem. A problem so big that not even constant war can keep the numbers of the peasants down. The Reliance has gold metal. They have fabrics that we need and also metal and electrical utensils that will help our people. Perhaps the priests will have no need to order wars if there are less of us to feed. Surely it is much more profitable to our people to make war on some other planet. The outcome is ultimately the same – a lower population."
"Surely some form of birth control is preferable to enslavement or war!" Taleed argued. "There are several ways to keep from reproducing. If we know when a woman is fertile, we also know when she is not. A man could remove his member before . . ."
"Blasphemy!" Taheed screamed holding his stumps over his ears. "We are here because we were chosen by the gods to be gods. The priests know what is good and what is true. They speak the will of the gods. Birth control is an abomination . . ."
"Do you even listen to yourself, Father? Birth control is an abomination, but making our people fight wars to keep from starving and selling them to the Reliance to die at alien hands, fighting a battle which isn't ours . . . these things are blessed in the eyes of the gods?"
"How dare you question me? I am a god!" his father screamed back.
"You are no more a god than the things that belch smoke in the mountain. There are no gods. There is no magic. These beliefs have stuck us in a rut and kept us from progressing to a position which would allow us to fight the Reliance on their own terms if they decided to try to take us over," he said with passion. "The priests decided it was all right to deal with the Reliance after generations of saying they were evil. They made this decision for one reason and for one reason only – they were afraid not to. Now they trade our people for gold metal, not because of what the gods have told them, but because they like gold metal! They have forgotten the reasons why we did not trade with the Reliance; they have forgotten the reason that The Ancestor hated them. The truth . . . The truth that you all hide is that there are no gods. Just the greed of priests and kings playing on the superstitious nature of a people they have purposefully kept ignorant of technology."
The King still held the ends of his stumps over his ears. "Blasphemy! I will not hear it from one whom the gods themselves have chosen to rule . . ."
"Chosen, Father? Don't you mean maimed? Don't talk to me of being chosen, or tell me how blessed I am to have servants who do everything from feeding me to wiping the dung from my bottom. I grow tired of hearing the lies."
"Enough!" the King screamed finally taking his stumps from his ears. "Why must you grieve me so? Why do you hate your life? You have everything a man could need. Everything a man could ask for . . ."
"I don't have hands!" Taleed screamed then turned on his heel and headed for the door. The mute, illiterate servant standing there opened the door for him, and when he went through closed it behind him. Taleed stomped all the way down the hall to his room. At his door another mute,
illiterate servant opened the door, followed him in, and closed it behind them. The mute stood at the door, silently awaiting his next order – either spoken or implied.
Taleed was in a rage; he kicked a chair across the room then jumped around on one foot. Finally he flopped onto his bed.
"Everything I want! Everything I want
!" Taleed screamed at the ceiling his nostrils flaring. He held up his handless arms and glared at them. Then he turned to talk to the servant. "Chosen! Chosen! What a royal joke! Some sick priest comes on the day of the birth of the King's children. If the sacramental knife feels heavy, then Chop! they cut off the child's hands to show that he is chosen and therefore never has to work. I was chosen to be handless just as you my friend were chosen to be mute. Some sick priest saw a different sparkle in our eyes than he had in the siblings that were born before us, and so whack! They deform you and ruin you for anything but what they wanted you to do. Which, in essence, is to help them make the people into puppets."
"They cut out your tongue before you had a chance to know if you could sing, and they cut off my hands before I knew what it was like to pick fruit from a bush, hold a friend's hand or throw a rock. They say the procedure causes little pain, but what do they know of my pain? The pain I feel when I see lovers holding each other, gladiators in mock warfare, or even the simple act of a child throwing a ball. All of these things were stolen from me as your ability to speak was stolen from you."