“Mierda!” exclaimed Rodriguez. “You think I should just turn my back on all I did in my life, never take any pride in what I’ve done? You think I should just forget all the people I saved from those cucarachas on this planet? Let me tell you something, I’m damn proud of the man I am and I ain’t giving up my name for anyone!”
“Perhaps,” Trevor said, “you are not as proud of yourself as you claim. The life of a mankiller is a tremendous strain on any man who takes up those duties. Can you truly say there was nothing you regret from your time as a mankiller?”
“I don’t need this shit!” said Rodriguez. “You people don’t want me around, I’m leaving now! This was a stupid idea!”
“Wait!” Guzman called as Rodriguez headed for the door. “They just want you to be honest with them! How can you expect them to accept you if you don’t tell them about yourself?”
But Rodriguez said nothing. He didn’t even bother looking back over his shoulder at Guzman or Trevor as he charged out of the barn. He swung the weathered old door open and stormed out into the midnight darkness without a second thought. Guzman turned to follow him, but Trevor told him, “He must find his own way. Let him go.”
“I can get him to come back,” Guzman said. “I don’t think he’s safe out there.”
“Our faith is based on trust,” Trevor replied. “I cannot trust a man who walks amongst us against his own will. Rodriguez is still too troubled—by his own uncertainty or by the sins of his past, I don’t know—to truly want to join us. As for you, are you willing to commit to our creed of sacrifice and trust, even without your friend, or do you also have misgivings?”
“Yes, I‘m willing” said Guzman. “I’m dead the moment I go back to Site 89, and I want a new and better life, one without the violence that got me here. I don’t know how I feel about losing my name, and acting like my past doesn’t matter, but maybe I’ll be able to understand what it all means better if you explain it to me. Patiently.”
“We Dissenters have a saying,” said Trevor. “Even the most fulfilling journeys begin with a single painful step.”
“Well, this had better be a fulfilling journey,” said Guzman. “Because I’ve had nothing but pain since Hyperion dumped me here on Domremy.”
“Then let’s think of a good name. What did you do back on Earth?”
“A lot of things. I drove a taxi for a while in Monterey. I worked with iron in a colonia. I even learned to shoe horses for a while I stayed in my uncle’s village. Then I started to do bad things for money.”
“Well, that reminds me of a fellow a long time ago named Lo. Let’s see, Lo, Loo, Lew, how about Luis?”
“Fine. From now on, call me Luis.”
There wasn’t much work on Domremy for a mankiller who couldn’t pass a psych evaluation. Rodriguez had roamed from town to town, trying to find a marshall desperate enough to hire him as mankiller, but the positions were often filled already, and no marshall was desperate enough to hire him once they saw the giant red “U” stamped on his psych papers. Damn the Corporation and that stamp! It had condemned him to a life of drifting between Domremy’s towns taking what miserable menial jobs he could find, until either his employer or the townspeople themselves tired of his attitude and forced him out.
Rodriguez’ current duties as a janitor in Site 89’s bar had been a miserable, low-paying endeavor, but had at least brought a certain amount of stability back to his life. The bartender, Erskine, seemed to care little about what his janitor thought or said as long as the day’s work got done, allowing Rodriguez to keep his bad attitude and vent with impunity as long as he stayed out of the way of the customers and never mentioned a word of his problems to any of Alek’s cronies. The relative solitude and lack of human interaction in his employment gave Rodriguez plenty of time to ponder the misery of his situation, his mind waffling between crawling back to the Dissenters to beg for a new life among them and trying to tough it out and see if he could find a good life on his own in Domremy.
Erskine also kept Rodriguez around because he had developed quite the drinking habit, choosing to spend large portions of his meager wages on whatever beer Erskine had on daily special. After a hard day of cleaning up, he had been guzzling down “Erskine’s Special Sauce,” a truly putrid excuse for brown ale that a local brewer had come up with as a promotional tool for Erskine’s bar. While Rodriguez pondered how such a vile draught had been created and whether the Dissenters had better brewers among them than the citizens of Site 89, he heard loud yelling and cheering coming from a corner of the bar. A raucous cry of “Renaming Day’s comin’ up!” resounded clearly amidst the din that the group in the corner was raising. Rodriguez gave a questioning look at Erskine, and Erskine shrugged, having no idea what the men were talking about. Still curious about what “Renaming Day” meant and why the men were so excited, Rodriguez decided to walk over and investigate. Erskine gave no objection, spinning a coin around apathetically while the yelling continued.
As Rodriguez slowly lurched over to the corner in his inebriated state, he could discern other sentences amidst the clamor. “The Corporation has given us the go ahead to make Site 89 a real town!” said a small, shifty-eyed man with a loud, booming voice. “And, here’s the man who made it all possible, Aleksandrov!”
Aleksandrov stood up. Rodriguez had never seen the man in person before, but Rodriguez could tell from the way men in the bar talked about him that he had become very powerful in Site 89, had an extremely short temper, and was not a man to be crossed. Alek began to speak.
“I am proud to be here with you, my partners in my campaign for Marshall. You have all given me financial aid in my campaign, and with the new businesses I will open soon, you will all be rewarded as my partners. As for Renaming Day, the Corporation has sent me a letter saying that citizens will be allowed to vote on a new name for Site 89. What name will you recommend?”
“Xanderburg!” the men seated around Alek yelled.
“Excellent. Renaming Day will be three weeks from now. There will be a great celebration then, like the day I became Marshall…”
“What’s that fuckin’ beaner doin’ over there, slouching around? Is he a goddamn spy for someone?” the shifty-eyed man asked. “Get outta here, goddamn it!”
“Shut up, Darryl,” Alek said harshly. “You’re drunk, do not fight this man….”
But Darryl paid no attention to Alek. He advanced towards Rodriguez in an ungainly, stumbling gait, yelling insults as he walked. “Fuckin’ beaner, fuckin’ spy…fight, you son of a bitch!”
Rodriguez’ punch came more out of reflex than rage, as if he was trying to crush an annoying insect flying in front of him. It was an awkward, wild swing, a punch that had no chance of hitting a man who was remotely close to being sober. But as ugly as it was, the punch was undeniably powerful, and it sent Darryl crashing into a table. The momentum of the swing caused Rodriguez to stumble and fall after the punch. He could hear Darryl spewing profanities as he flailed on the ground.
“That…that…son of a bitch…he hit me! You see that?! He hit me! He had no right…I’ll shoot that son of a bitch! Where’s my damn gun, get me my damn gun!”
“No,” Alek said. “You will do nothing. I will resolve this. Ben, Terrence, seize that man.”
Two of the men seated near Alek got up and grabbed Rodriguez, roughly dragging him to his feet. Rodriguez could feel something hard and metallic being pressed into the back of his skull, and even in his inebriated state of mind, he could tell it was a pistol. He thrashed around, yelling out to Erskine, “Save me!” But Erskine made no move to intervene, and was still playing with his antique coin. “Salvame!” he yelled out to Erskine again, but there was no change on his employer’s face, no movement to come to his aid. Rodriguez’ mind entered a state of panic, frantically trying to burn out the alcohol as the men dragged him outside. Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit, his primordial flight reflex screamed.
The men dumped Rodriguez outside the barn, a
nd he sprawled in the dirt, stumbling about as he tried to get back to his feet. He could see men watching him from the balcony of the bar, and Alek was standing in the doorway. “You have attacked my friend, criminal. We will duel now. As they count down from ten, we will draw and shoot. If you draw early or run, these friends of mine will shoot you.” One of the men standing next to Alek nodded.
As Rodriguez finally managed to stand up, Alek walked over to him and threw a rusty old pistol down into the dirt in front of him. Once Rodriguez had seized the pistol, one of Alek’s followers yelled, “Turn around and start walking! Ten!”
Rodriguez began to walk. Terrified thoughts began to flood through his brain. Damn, damn, damn…can I run for it? He briefly glanced at Alek’s followers, and could see one with an M221 trained at his head. He’s got the local mankiller ready to snipe me! As the man continued to count down from to nine, then eight, Rodriguez finally began to think his actions through. Can’t run, can’t shoot him early…only chance I’ve got is to outdraw him, he thought as his finger pulsed on the trigger. Sweat trickled down his face as the man yelled out “Two!” He could feel his heart beating like an engine’s piston as his muscles tensed…
The man’s shout of “DRAW!” came out far too quickly for Rodriguez. It seemed to him like he turned in slow motion, and he could see Alek pulling the trigger already as he came around. Rodriguez could feel himself dying rapidly, his limbs going dead, a terrible pain in his chest. He could hear Darryl yelling out joyfully, “You killed that son of a bitch!” as time seemed to slow down. The dizzy, indistinct pleasure of his earlier drunkenness was replaced by a state of horrifying clarity in his agonizing final moments. One final thought flicked through his mind as the blood flowed from his veins.
Dios mio! A final thought of shock, a clarity he had never known of the pervasiveness of the dangers of Domremy.
In space, the tiniest second in the lifespan of a star can be a huge chunk of the life of a man, a family, a lineage, a civilization, a race. The routine swing of a planet around a burning main sequence sun ticks off a precious finite increment from the expectations of an individual. Yet during that time, the progress of a person’s existence may seem as predictable and inalterable as the invisible arc that celestial mathematics has charted for a whole world moving through the near-void. From the surface of a planet, the stars at night appear to assume their customary places after sundown, but educated beings know that this is all an illusion: their twinkling, their brightness, their relative position in the cosmos, their stability, their reliability, are all subject to an immense game of chance that only God understands and where, as in any casino, the house always wins in the end.
Entara knew this as each month she went back to the Gardens of Fulfillment to gaze at the stars with her firstborn daughter and wonder what had happened to Klein. Later, in the solitude of her room, she would often begin to sing snatches of melody that would weave themselves together into a song, but she tried to keep these to herself. In the garden, Ayan’we, now past the equivalent of her teenage years, often left Entara to her thoughts, but never for too long, trying to form from time to time questions that were not just obvious distractions or maudlin prompts for trying to push back doubt and melancholy. The garden evenings were times when they could share as equals. And why not? Ayan’we had by now completed most of her training, along with her next two sisters, and the three of them had assisted at several births of their siblings, who now numbered precisely forty-one, since Entara usually birthed triplets. Not that much was required of them, for Entara’s birthings were as easy as rain falling on the ground, even with the three male children who had, after weaning, been duly turned over to the hooded emissaries of the Brotherhood to begin their male conditioning.
“How was Tays’she this evening, mom?”
“Not good, dear. The nurses had to clear his lungs twice today and the upper heart is showing signs of weakening. Ragatti brought a cardio-pulmonary doctor who said another stent was impossible at this point.”
“Have you thought about afterward? They‘ll probably propose you as a candidate for the Eyes of Alertness Council again.” Entara had already refused this honor twice, giving rather skimpy excuses. Everyone knew she was competent. Her real reason was that if she rose to the Council, she refused to appear on the podium without her husband in attendance, as was customary, though to bring the wretch to such an event would have been like dropping a turd on the dinner table. Entara had not been able to prevent her elevation from para to para-para, meaning that she was considered an exemplary leader not just for her home mahäme, but for all those of the matriline, on-planet or off. There had also been rumors lately that she would be named Entara-ji, meaning that her status would be similar in all Forlan’s matrilines. Ayan’we knew that her mother had had well-concealed visits from members of the present Eyes Council, sounding her out about nomination to the Council of Nine itself, the very one where she had once confessed her actions and invited a punishment that never came.
“I’ve been too busy for any extra cares right now,” Entara answered, stroking one of the three infants at her breasts. “What about you? You’re far past the need for protecting me from anything. I could drop the Clause of the Firstborn in a heartbeat and you would be free to marry if you want to.”
“You overestimate my interest in males.”
“If memory serves me right, you were spending some time with one young male a few months ago. Aren’t you interested in him?”
Ayan’we sighed and admitted, “He was not like any of the others I’ve met here. In fact, that’s why we got along together as well as we did. We were both freaks. In fact, we became a little bit affectionate, in the new way, but not too far. I really didn’t want him to get any expectations, but he put out some feelers in the Brotherhood, anyway.”
“I didn’t know that. No one contacted me. What happened?”
“Well, you know, he’s the son of a Third Wife and pretty low in the hierarchy. They told him somebody like me was out of the question and that they had other plans for him. He came to me and began to talk about eloping off-planet, so I put a quick end to it. You know, as much as I love the sisters, I’m definitely not eager for mating, myself, even to someone more or less compatible.”
Ayan’we was silent for a time, as she gazed at a constellation in the sky named for a lovely avian creature that had become extinct during Forlan’s great ecological disasters of the previous ages. It existed now only as a legendary memory. She broke the silence to ask, “Mom, please be frank with me. I’ve heard about it from everybody but you yourself. It’s in the songs and the stories that circulate through the matrilines. What was it like to be with Klein? How did you feel then?”
“I’m surprised you never asked me earlier. I’m not ashamed to talk about it, especially with you, my daughter, my own flesh. It’s true I don’t like to brag about it in public, because they always want to idolize me and make me into something I’m not. But with you I can be honest, since you know my soul and will not twist things. I was no great expert on emotions. Just the opposite. When I took a notion to become Klein’s consort, it was mostly out of curiosity about his loneliness, his deeply concealed sense of need, his volatility that was so different from the crude aggressiveness of many of the humans who came to the house. I was trained to give him pleasure, of course, as we all are. Yet right away, I discovered that he responded with a gentle compassion that he tried to hide from me. He genuinely expected so little of me that I was free to be myself. So when I kissed him and caressed him and took him inside of me, it was a sort of rebirth. I understood how innocent I was myself and to be truthful, I loved that as much as any power I had over him. I didn’t need to worry about controlling him at all and that’s where the fun began. Human organs are much more sensitive than ours and their pleasure lasts so little that what mattered most was creating a joy that was not strictly physical. He stimulated me to laughter and to delight in my own insignificance.”
&nb
sp; “Then why didn’t you hold onto him, mother? We could have found a way. Why tie yourself to that cadaver that we still call Tays’she? To a decaying body without a consciousness. All for a person we can only loathe.”
“I can’t loathe your father, no matter what he did to my body in mating, nor what he planned to do to us later. If I could hate him, it could only be for wanting to deprive you of your future, but to be honest, I can’t even bring myself to despise him for that, since it was driven by stupidity and greed and impulses unworthy of us. As for Klein, you know I was tempted. And you were correct to think that the need to separate from him might easily have made me kill myself. I was terribly tempted. I suppose it was partly because of the ecstasy of birth. It sweeps through you in a way that is both wonderful and terrible because you can never think the same afterwards. However, I can’t blame it all on my body, even taking into account the changes that mating brings about.”
“What was it then?”
“The night before you came to slide a blade between his ribs, when we were trying to make love again, it was already obvious. Klein realized that the young body that had brought him physical pleasure so easily was gone. I sensed it in every move he made, in every crease on his face, in his breath, in his heartbeat -- so easy to follow when they have only one. Naturally, he did his best to appear spontaneous and passionate. He was trying so hard to compensate. The humans call that “faking it.” Perhaps it’s unfair to use that term, because Klein was not fully aware he was faking. He wouldn’t have let himself do it. And he would have insisted on holding me and adoring me as best he could every night until the end of time if I permitted it. I might have even come to enjoy that kind of devotion, or torture, or whatever you chose to call it. But it would never have been right. It would have been the worst kind of unfaithfulness I could ever imagine, both to him, and to me, and to the joy we had shared. The only way to honor that uncorrupted feeling was to give up trying to recreate it when neither of us was capable of being the same as we were.”
Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1) Page 27