by P H Campbell
"It's not something most people experience, I imagine," Seren agreed to drop the subject openly. But she sensed prevarication in Dr. Treah's mind, which suggested that her "obsession" was more than just a profound curiosity. She wondered why.
"In any event, with the loss of magic, our society needed to become more reliant on other technologies and social structures to function. The Electrians provided the technology. But we took our social methods of dealing with criminal matters from the Borderlandians," Walentia concluded.
"I was told that there is a strong racial bias between the Magentians and the Electrians, and the Borderlandians," Dr. Treah brought up.
"Less now than there was when we was tryin' ta kill each other," Gliff admitted. "But it's still there. It ain't as overt as it was, but you ain't gonna see no Magentian in Electria 'less them's a diplomat. And vice versa."
"Hey, they weren't that rude ta me!" Koreen objected.
"Like I said, you ain't gonna see no Electrian in Magentus 'less them's a diplomat," Gliff repeated.
Seren could see where that was going before Koreen's temper blew up.
"Koreen isn't, technically, a diplomat," Seren said. "She's a very close, personal friend who I invited to come to Magentus at one time, and she decided to stay for a while."
"I will be honest and say that her initial arrival was not welcome by us," Morlendrus confirmed. "However, we are learning to take people as they are, rather than as we see them to be."
"One doesn't get over a thousand years of warfare overnight," Seren sighed.
"Nor a hundred," Dr. Treah agreed, thinking of the social upheavals caused by the end of the Fornyth war, not the least of which was the establishment of the Shade Alliance.
"It seems like we've all got a lot of growing up to do," Seren observed, "but our world, and system, also have something you folks want. We've been told to pick a side. So we'll decide which side to pick based on what we see from each side. We're not judging which side is 'best' on a relative scale. We want what we need in fair exchange for what we offer. So we'll be deciding which side can help us as much as we help them. Howsoever that falls out, that's what we will base our decision on."
"I don't have any problem with that," Cinder agreed, feeling like her side scored a few points.
"That is to be expected," Dr. Treah conceded.
Approach and clearance to land on UGC 1182-F was straightforward. If there was any kind of bureaucratic nonsense, the Shade Alliance had handled it before their arrival.
Seren asked Cinder what to get them down on the planet.
"You don't miss much, do you?" Cinder remarked.
"My world has a lot of mines," Seren shrugged. "We Borderlandians use ours for our penal system, for much of the labor. I know that the mines are monitored so that no one digs their way out, and that guards will inspect everything going in, and out, to ensure that weapons or cohorts can't get in to stir up things.
"Your penal system is basically the same as a mine, with the mine being the whole planet instead of a hole in the ground. I figured you had some set-up like we have to make sure your criminals didn't escape."
"Going in is easier than getting away," Cinder told her. "And we have something set up for getting away, if there's a problem. How we're treating this trip will have shortcuts that wouldn't be used for the usual supply ships."
"I'd've preferred it if we saw things as they normally are, but I understand why you folks would want to put your best foot forward," Seren remarked, and continued to watch the view port, seeing a new planet for the first time in her life.
It was mostly white. Seren thought it looked rather pretty. She wasn't personally familiar with snow, but had seen it at a long distance on the taller peeks of her world. She also knew things could get very nasty cold-wise in the northern reaches of Electria. But the Borderlands were in a temperate climate and Magentus was temperate to subtropical. So she would have to dress appropriately and not take the local conditions as part of trying to decide if these folks were suitable as life-time partners.
Her criteria for an up-check was a 'Yes' to the question of would she have tossed the Borderlandians who almost killed her into a place like this and considered it just.
Seren always tried to keep her yardsticks a lot less nuanced than some folks.
Once landed, the ship synthesized appropriate attire for the group and the airlocks opened to reveal a surprisingly frigid, and for being the only one on the planet, an exceptionally tiny spaceport. Fortunately, Ash and Looie's ship didn't need fuel or supplies, and the tourism market was non-existent, so the lack of facilities and stores for all of those things meant they wouldn't be distracting them with trivial details.
"It's almost like going to Mars was," Sasha shivered despite herself. "The spaceport I took from Earth was in Siberia. It gets cold there."
"The temperature's a mild minus thirty Celsius," Cinder grinned. "There's not a lot of axial tilt here, so this is pretty much what it's like year round, at least at this time of day right here."
"That scale is when water freezes to when water boils, right?" Seren had to ask, recalling the context from Sasha's memories. In a cave, the temperature rarely changes, so temperatures only became a thing to her when she wasn't in the Borderland's caverns anymore.
"Right," Cinder nodded. "And minus thirty is, well, very cold for most species."
"Was there life on this planet before you made it into a prison?" Seren wondered.
"Just lower life forms like bacteria, viruses and algae," Cinder shrugged. "And yes, I had to look that up in case you asked. No one really thinks about it on the inner planets since no intelligent life evolved here. There are three races of intelligent life, each indigenous to their own planet, and not sharing planets with the others. They've only been part of a technologically advanced group for about a hundred and twenty standard years, and a lot of their lands are still undeveloped, with others being overcrowded. Trying to fix the latter by improving and developing the former takes time."
"I can relate to that," Seren agreed, thinking about the efforts spent by her planet for just a few hundred colonists. Of course, they, too, had ulterior motives for doing that, most of which the colonists themselves shared.
On this planet, though, that kind of altruistic approach probably wasn't the norm.
The group reached a thermalock – a device much like an airlock, used to separate different temperatures rather than different air pressures – and stepped in. The outer doors closed, the interior heated to be equal to the interior of the structure, and the inner doors opened.
A short, thin Human met them on the other side. His age could have been anywhere from thirty to seventy. He was darkish-skinned, but that probably wasn't the skin tone he had been born with. If one were to take a normal sized human being, sand them down into something smaller using rock dust and time, one might get someone who looked much like he did. He was bald, scarred and appeared to be relatively fragile. His attire was the same as any prisoner; a loose smock, pants made of the same material and what appeared to be flip-flops on his feet.
"I'm your guide and you're the delegation everyone's talking about," he said as an introduction. "So, what do ya want to know?"
"What's your story?" Seren asked him, with the others who weren't as fluent in English reading along on their pads.
"My story?" the Guide seemed rather surprised by the question. "You came all the way from your planet to this shit-hole to hear my story?"
"Something like that," Seren amusingly agreed.
"Okay, well, this guy took up with my woman, and cut me out of our contract, and the council fined him, but he still got my woman since the council voided the contract," the man said. "She turned out to be a really greedy bitch and figured she'd be better off with him than me. Council figured she'd suffered enough with the other guy and I didn't get my side of the contract paid by her. So I hunted them both down and killed them. You don't go back on a contract. The council didn't buy that,
so I'm here for life. Don't regret any of it."
"How long have you been here?" Seren asked, knowing that he had lied about something, but not about everything.
"I don't fucking know," the man shrugged. "I don't keep track of time here. It's not like I'm going to be late to dinner or anything like that."
Cinder consulted her own pad, and said, "His name is Renlin G'tham. He's incarcerated for the double murder of his wife and her lover. He offered no defense. He plead guilty, which made him ineligible for the death penalty. He didn't contest the sentence."
Something didn't add up. He seemed angry and resentful. But in her experience on The World, those sent to the mines who admitted to their crimes usually weren't angry, and they had accepted their fate. With her experience in how people often were when they had nothing to lose, Seren had an idea about what wasn't adding up: He was still breathing, and didn't expect to have lived as long as he had.
"Lived longer than you expected, huh?" Seren asked G'tham.
G'tham gave Seren a look that spoke volumes to her. She didn't doubt that the facts of the case he presented were true. He didn't lie about anything specific so far. But there was still a truth or two hidden in his back-story that didn't tell the whole story without them.
"Shit happens," he finally shrugged, hiding whatever it was he didn't want to reveal. "Any other intimate details you'd like to know?"
"Just show us the facility, Renlin," Cinder suggested pointedly.
"Follow me," G'tham gestured, and the group did that.
"No guards here?" Seren asked.
"Not living ones," G'tham told her. "We have droids who do that who don't die in the cold. They should be herding you around, but for some fucked up reason, they picked me to do it."
"We're not from somewhere that has artificial life forms," Seren informed him.
The man stopped and looked at them again.
"That explains a lot," he remarked cryptically, and continued on his way, detailing the life of a prisoner.
"We mostly run the place," G'tham replied. "If we don't do our assigned work ourselves, we don't eat. The droids make sure we do what we're supposed to do. That includes maintenance, food, air, clothing, heating, and whatever else we need or want, we make it. It's a prison planet, yeah, but mostly, we just live and work like we would outside, only we have our own personal monitors all the time."
He gestured toward the ceiling where a small device, unnoticed and silent, hovered above him.
"We ain't got no privacy," he mentioned in a sarcastic, conspiratorial whisper.
"Infractions usually means extra work hours," he went on in a regular tone as the others strolled along with him. "Refusing to work means you don't eat, you don't get light, you don't get heat, take your pick or get the whole meal to go, it all means if you don't work, you die."
"What if you're injured or sick?" Seren asked.
"You're put into a coma 'til you're better, then it's back to work," G'tham told her. "It ain't like there's a long line for the sick, lame and lazy. And you ain't gonna get released any sooner that way, neither.
"You don't leave 'til you've paid your debt. If you take a lifetime doing it, you're here for life."
"So, showing people around is your work?" Seren asked.
The man snorted derisively, "I'm just a trustee. I ain't no good at heavy labor anymore. So they shoved my ass into administration and I shovel paperwork through a terminal. They figured my aptitude and assigned me something I'd be able to do. It's not my first choice, but I stay warm and fed, so there's that."
"Are there women here?" Seren inquired.
"If you're wondering if people fall in love and get bonded here, the answer is yes, it happens," G'tham acknowledged. "But we can't have kids since they process the food with an inhibitor and each species here can only survive on the food that's made for them. It's all very efficient."
"Does that bonding thing happen a lot?" Seren wondered.
"Hardly ever," G'tham replied. "Oh, the usual hook-ups happen. Can't suppress that. But since everyone has to work, and sex ain't one of the vocations on the work list, that's on their own time, and any time taken away from work means staying in this icy shithole that much longer. We don't have much of a service economy here because of that."
"So, no entertainment, or non-essential things to keep someone from going crazy?" Seren asked.
"Oh, we got some things – fast and simple that don't take much time," G'tham admitted. "Mostly betting pools. But there's a limit on the number of hours one can bet and the droids enforce that. So some folks work for others if they lose the bet, but have others working for them if they win. And it's all rigged so the bets can't be fixed or fiddled with by anyone betting. Say, a bet is on how many tons of laundry was gonna be washed in a certain hour, no one from laundry or involved in that can bet on it.
"And if ya make behind the back deals, well, it gets really cold and dark and the gnawing hunger isn't pretty when you're on rations that only cover half your calorie needs."
"How often does that happen?" Seren wondered.
"It don't," G'tham shrugged. "No one's stupid enough to do that again, at least, not anymore."
As the group walked, Seren noticed that things were, generally clean and tidy, even if not new or modern. To her eyes, it looked pretty advanced. But one can tell the effects of age, even on the newest, shiniest piece of gear. The corridor was wide, with exposed piping above, a metal gate floor with more piping below and utilitarian walls that were mostly smooth with an occasional control panel every few dozen steps.
"Where are we now?" Seren asked G'tham.
"This is intake," he replied. "The corridor has weapons and antipersonnel fields that'll stop anyone who's trying to break someone outta here – even if they're a full military unit. The pipes and shit you see up there and down below don't do nothing and don't lead nowhere. They're to make someone think they can be used to get in. Splits 'em up and makes 'em easier to catch, I guess. You're not gonna get through the walls, floor or ceiling before you're incapacitated by the defenses. And this is the only way in, and only way out."
"Couldn't someone land somewhere else and dig in or drill in?" Seren asked.
"If they got past the planetary defenses and didn't land where you did, they'd be nuked from orbit, no questions asked," G'tham chuckled.
"So how many decide to just starve themselves to death?" Seren wondered.
"Most who try to do that end up freezing to death first," G'tham replied with a shrug. "It ain't as many as one might think, though. We ain't the best of breed for our races, but we ain't all hard-core criminal types like me."
"That's the second time you've lied," Seren pointed out.
"You one of those empaths I hear tell a Humonian can be?" G'tham asked her.
"No, I just know when people lie," Seren insisted. "It's a talent."
"Hell of a talent," G'tham remarked, and stopped referring to himself or his place in the universe.
"What did he lie about the first time?" Sasha asked, using Common.
"We all got translators, so you may as well speak English," G'tham reminded her.
"Did you understand her?" Seren asked.
"No," the Guide admitted. "Never heard that language before. But if you use it much, it'll be clear enough fast enough."
'He lied about killing the people he's convicted of killing,' Seren told Sasha using mindspeech.
"Ow," Looie grimaced. Ash wasn't looking any happier about it.
"Sorry," Seren flashed the twins an apologetic smile. "I'll work on keeping it below your volume level."
G'tham did not understand what they were talking about, shrugged and continued on his tour.
"So the intake part of intake starts here," G'tham gestured through the archway at the end of the very long hall. "We're down about a hundred meters from the surface, which you may or may not have noticed that the spaceport's in a crater. Started off as a huge sinkhole billions of years ago, I'm told. Ain't n
o volcanic activity on this ice pile. And the atmosphere's thick enough to keep most space rocks from hitting it, not that any can get close enough to do it these days."
The room at the end of the hall was huge, obviously built to handle large numbers of people at one time. There were corridors that led off to the sides, and dividers that broke up the crowd to make them form lines. The number of weapons emplacements, basically dark, oval devices attached to the wall, gave the room an oddly ornate atmosphere, since they went well with the gray, institutional walls.
"There is no place in this room where you can't be hit by the stunners," G'tham told them. "We process new prisoners through the lines, and everyone gets the same treatment. First a scan, and treatment, for any pre-existing medical condition. Then an aptitude evaluation. Their personal possessions, if any, are taken, and they're issued a prison garment appropriate to their species."
He plucked at his sleeve and mentioned, "This wouldn't stop a weak draft, let alone sub-zero temperatures. It's got absolutely no insulating qualities at all. Air goes right through it. Sorta like walking naked. Can't stock-pile 'em, neither. Even if ya could, they ain't gonna help keep ya warm no matter how many you put on."
"I see," Seren nodded. "What next?"
"Then you're assigned your room, your job and told when you'll work," G'tham explained. "You've got a minimum amount of hours to do each day – usually half the day – and the rest of the time to eat, sleep, fuck, gamble or whatever. You can add work hours there, if ya want, but ya ain't gonna work no longer than your species can handle. So you've got a minimum time for being off work, too. Ya ain't gonna work yourself to death here, even if you love the work."
"Are most people here for life?" Seren inquired.
"Nah, nothing like that," G'tham waved it off. "Lifers like me are pretty rare. Most folks are here for a standard or twenty, and they don't ever come back. But ya got enough people who think they can play a system to keep the population pretty stable month by month."
"So, you're self sustaining?" Seren asked.
"Not hardly," G'tham remarked. "We need certain critical supplies to come in regularly, that we don't have and can't make, to keep us fed and the power going. They all come up that hall, too, which is why blowing up the hallway is a fucking stupid thing to think about doing."