Chains of Freedom

by Selina Rosen

David took a good look at RJ. She looked to be in the peak of health, not a scratch, not a bruise, not so much as a skinned elbow. Even the sparkle in her eyes seemed genuine. She wasn't hurt, not even a little. That just wasn't possible. Was it?

  "You'd think you'd never seen a woman before," RJ mumbled.

  "I've never seen anyone heal so quickly," David said defensively.

  "Oh. Well, now don't you feel like an ass?" she mumbled to herself.

  David smiled. It wasn't very often that he got the better of RJ. He enjoyed it when he did.

  "Part of my training included learning how to take a hit, to roll with a blow, how to pull out of a punch so that it does the least damage." She watched David from the corner of her eye. Was he going to buy that?

  At first he frowned. Clearly, he was finding that hard to swallow.

  "There was a lot of blood coming from my nose and inside my mouth where he loosened a couple of teeth. But besides being a little sore"—which was a lie; her only symptom this morning was a dryness in her eyes which was caused by the drug—"I feel fine. I have taken worse beatings." That was a lie, too.

  This time David smiled; he believed her.

  RJ sighed with relief. She dressed quickly, topping her ensemble off—as usual—with the chain, oblivious to the dried blood which now covered it, and was coming off in flakes as she wrapped it in her usual fashion. She took the bag off the back of the bike and went through it, checking the armaments inside. Satisfied, she added the pistol gleaned from the dead secondary to the assortment of weapons and explosives.

  David helped her, and they dug through the wreckage till they found both blasters. RJ put hers in her holster, then helped David to customize the shoulder harness he'd used for the gun he'd lost in the bar, making it fit the blaster. They grabbed their jackets and bag and left. They were halfway down the stairs when David realized they had forgotten something.

  "What about the bike?" David said, stopping in his tracks.

  "What about it?"

  "You don't plan to walk, do you?"

  "I've got a truck." RJ started walking again, and David followed.

  "Where did you get that?" David asked.

  "We'll find one," RJ said with a shrug.

  "You mean STEAL one!" David shrieked.

  "Shush," RJ hissed. "Only Reliance bigshots get to own cars. The rest are used by the military or in farm work. Not even an Elite can buy a car or truck. They're too rare, and too expensive. There are several vehicles in Alsterase. Now, use your head, where did they come from in the first place?"

  "They must be stolen," David answered.

  RJ clapped.

  "Well, it's different stealing from the Reliance," David said in a harsh whisper. "You're going to steal from someone who stole from the Reliance, and that is altogether different."

  "Then consider it borrowing," RJ said in disbelief.

  "It's only borrowing if you ask," David pronounced self-righteously.

  RJ decided to ignore him.

  But David didn't want to be ignored."It's wrong. That's all. Anyone who steals from the Reliance is on our side, and we shouldn't take from them . . ."

  "If this is too big a moral dilemma for you, perhaps you would prefer to walk!" RJ screamed, fed up.

  "Shush, shh!" David slapped a hand over her mouth. He nodded his head. "All right, we'll do it your way, but I don't like it."

  "No one says you have to," she said with a shrug.

  They walked up and down the streets for what seemed like hours to David. By the time RJ found what she was looking for, the streets were already filled with people. She walked around the red Reliance farm-issue truck, kicking the tires and checking out the paint job, then she popped the hood and checked the engine.

  "Damn it, RJ! You're stealing the damned thing, not buying it," David whispered nervously.

  RJ slammed the hood. She gave David a wicked grin. "I like to know what I'm stealing." She took hold of the driver's door handle and gave it a heave. The door opened. She jumped in and opened the passenger door, setting the bag and rocket launcher on the seat as David crawled in. He closed the door and looked around in awe. He had never seen such a machine from the inside.

  RJ was under the dash, taking her time hotwiring the vehicle.

  "Could you please hurry up and do whatever it is you're doing?" David said anxiously. "We're going to get caught."

  "So?" RJ sneered. She had never hotwired a vehicle before, and while she understood the principle, she was having a little trouble putting it into practice. It was made more difficult by the fact that the new "owner" had attached several safeguards to stop people from doing just what she was trying to do. "If someone comes, I'll just kill them." She might have been ordering lunch by the tone of her voice.

  "I'd rather not have to kill someone over a car, if you don't mind, RJ. Did anyone ever tell you that you can't just kill every one that pisses you off?"

  "Yes." She had finally succeeded. She touched the two wires together and the engine roared. "I killed them." She laughed at her own joke.

  "Very funny, RJ. Now, could we just go?"

  "OK, OK, don't get your shorts in a knot." She got into the seat, closed the door, and they were on their way. As they pulled out, RJ saw the owner come running out of one of the buildings. She waved wildly at him and roared off.

  Whitey Baldor chased after them, screaming till he ran out of breath. He finally gave up. Hands on knees, he watched till they were out of sight. He recognized that pair. Two nights ago that woman had kneed him in the balls so hard that he still hurt. Then she'd knocked him cold. He'd been out for something close to three hours. Whitey laughed, shaking his head he turned back toward his apartment. He laughed again and looked back in the direction she had gone. "God-damned gutsy bitch."

  "I've always wondered how they could see out of these things," David ran his hand over the glass. "I still don't have any idea."

  "Keep your hands off it; you're smearing it up. It's one-way glass. Because of the way it's made, the driver can see out, but from outside you can't see in."

  "When I was a kid I used to think they drove through some form of magic. Later, when I stopped believing in magic, I thought they used something like a view screen," David said. "It's kind of a letdown to see it's something so simple."

  RJ nodded. It was funny what people would make up to explain things they didn't understand. The Reliance didn't tell them anything, so they had to make up their own answers. In a way it was ingenious, even if they were mostly wrong.

  "I still don't understand why they do it this way," David said. "I mean . . . what's the purpose?"

  "Ah, my friend, that is because you have yet to understand the Reliance. The glass in Reliance vehicles is one-way for the same reason that Reliance police wear masks over their faces. Intimidation. People fear the unknown, the unseen. From outside how do you know whether there is one man in this vehicle or five? You don't. When a man covers his face with a mask, how do you know whether he is in a good mood or a murderous one? You don't. How do you even know he's human? You don't. The point is that people expect the worst. Therefore, there are always five men in the truck, the men is always in a murderous mood, and you're never sure that they're quite human. They scare us, so we imprison ourselves."

  "Slaves to our fear." David's voice sounded far away. He himself was scared. He crossed his arms and put his fists in his armpits to hide his nervousness. He didn't know exactly what RJ had planned, and as she said, you tended to fear the unknown. Slaves to our fear, he reminded himself. I won't be afraid. It wasn't as easy as it sounded.

  He imagined a whole patrol could swarm down on them at any moment. His palms were sweaty, and his mouth was dry. RJ sat there as they traveled along through the maze of David's imaginary policemen and hummed a tone-deaf tune which seemed to be in time with the jerking of her right arm. Humming and jerking, jerking and humming. After an hour, David could stand it no more.

  "Would you please stop it!" he screamed.


  "What?" she asked, obviously not understanding what he meant.

  "All that humming and arm-jerking," he said.

  RJ was momentarily taken aback; then she was mad."I can stop the humming, but I can't stop the arm jerking. I wish I could. It's a side effect of battle fatigue. Unless I concentrate on it, it jerks. Not enough to be debilitating, just enough to be annoying."

  Now David felt like a real ass. "I . . . I'm sorry," he stammered. "It's just that . . . well, do you have to be so damned . . . happy?"

  "I'm sorry, David; in future, I will try to be more morose." With that said, she started right back humming again.

  It wouldn't have been so bad if she could carry a tune, but she couldn't have carried a tune in a bucket.

  "Hum hum hum hum huuum huum hum hummm."

  He couldn't take it any longer. Two hours of RJ's offensive humming was enough to drive a man to suicide.

  "Shut up!" David screamed at the top of his lungs.

  RJ clicked her tongue. "My, my. Are we feeling a bit testy today? Humm?" She smiled pleasantly. She was infuriating.

  "You are without a doubt the worst hummer I've ever heard in my life. In fact, I've blown farts that were better," David said truthfully. To his surprise, RJ seemed upset by his criticism.

  "Yes, well, there's not much chance to hear music standing in mud up to your neck or crawling through a jungle on your belly on some plague-infested outer world," she hissed.

  David was intrigued. It suddenly dawned on him just how much RJ must know. She had the answer to every question he had ever asked about the Reliance. She had told him that she had fought on the outer worlds, but he had never realized just what the meant till now. RJ had traveled through space in a spaceship. She'd walked on other worlds, come face-to-face with aliens.

  "Tell me about the outer worlds." His voice was as eager as a child's.

  RJ hesitated only for a moment. No one had ever really been interested in where she'd been or all that she had seen, and she found herself willingly spouting all she remembered of the outer worlds. She told him of Trinidad, the planet with five inhabitable moons. Of Ufora, the jungle world where the rivers could change daily, and where new plants could spring up in a single day, making it impossible to follow the same trail twice or to locate a missing man. She told him of Urta, Deaka and Sheows and the ultra-modern cities Earth-descended humans had built there. She did her best to explain about their seasons and their different plant and animal life. She even explained the customs and fashions of the native intelligent life forms which had been encountered on two of Trinidad's moons.

  "They believe that these moons were once one planet, and that it was split in two. That's how they explain that the same primitive being wound up on two different worlds. Their cultures are identical. Their language is even almost the same. From what the archaeologists can dig up, both cultures are the same age. So, it's a sure bet that no one transplanted them from one moon to the other. The experts maintain that the two moons were once one planet that split somehow. I find that difficult to believe, however. The likelihood of anyone's surviving such a cataclysmic event is pretty slim."

  "So, how do you explain it?" David asked curiously.

  "I don't," RJ said with a broad smile. "What's the point? They exist as they are. The Ingits don't ask why, so why should we?"

  She spoke on, telling him about Deakard, the planet of their alien enemies. The Aliens called themselves Argys, meaning "Peoples of the Red Star." They held four planets called Arg, Varg, Garg, and Farg. She explained to him that the Reliance didn't want Deakard, and that the Argys didn't want Earth.

  "See, they're in the same spot we're in. They've used up all their home planet's resources. Deakard isn't even fit to farm. We don't have any metal ore left, no petroleum products, nothing of real value as far the Reliance is concerned, but we still have soil and air. Deakard doesn't even have that. They manufacture their own air, and grow all their produce on another planet, importing all their food. On Earth, we may import metals and plastics, but we export wool, cotton and wood products. Not to mention the occasional shipment of meats and vegetables that can't be grown on the outer worlds. Deakard sucks its worlds dry."

  "So why do they stay there, why don't they move to their other worlds?" David asked.

  "For the same reason a good share of the Reliance bigshots stay on Earth. They're safe on Deakard, just like we're safe on Earth. Because they've got nothing there that we want, and we've got nothing here that they want, the home worlds are safe worlds. The fight is over the colony planets that are still rich in mineral content. Mostly, they fight over a planet called Stashes, because both planets claim it."

  "What's so special about Sta . . . ashes?" David asked, stumbling over the name.

  "It's got the highest mineral content of any of the planets, and that's about it." RJ sounded far away. "It's a big, hot rock of a planet. Very little water, and half of that's poison. The animal life is aggressive—so is most of the plant life. The air is barely breathable. Breathing it for a period of three months cuts your life expectancy by ten years. Some can't breathe it at all. I saw one man die after being exposed to the atmosphere for less than ten minutes. On Stashes they say that if the enemy doesn't get you, it's a sure bet that the planet will."

  She saw she wasn't boring David, so she kept talking.

  Stories unwound of battles fought on worlds so distant it was hard for David to fathom. She told him of technology he had no idea existed. She opened his mind to a new and wondrous universe filled with fantastic machines, horrid alien beasts, and beautiful and dangerous places. Battlefield after battlefield was spread before him. Battle after battle. RJ had seen it all, up close and personal, and he began to understand why human life was so cheap to her. Sometimes he could see a picture of it so vividly in his mind that he was almost sick. Other times he seemed to be drawn into the fever of the battle, to feel the adrenaline of those who fought.

  She had been so many places and done so many things that he found himself wondering just how she had squeezed all of it into her short life. Even if he stretched his imagination to its fullest he couldn't believe that RJ was any more than twenty-five.

  RJ was a good and articulate storyteller. There was, however, one thing she hadn't talked about that David was intensely curious about.

  "Just what is a GSH?"

  "As you already know, GSH stands for Genetically Superior Humanoid."

  Clearly, while David knew what GSH stood for, he had no idea what a Genetically Superior Humanoid was.

  RJ sighed. "Well, they take a human embryo . . . Do you know what an embryo is?"

  David shook his head no.

  RJ sighed again and went on indulgently."It's a baby before it's born—when it's just first made."

  David nodded, but made a face that said that this was the most gruesome thing he had ever heard of.

  "Anyway, they take this embryo . . . by 'take' do you think I'm saying that they take it out of the mother?"

  David nodded his head.

  "Well, they don't. God! You're hard to explain anything to! You don't even know a simple word like embryo. What the hell do you call them, little baby seeds?" RJ said, her patience wearing thin.

  "We don't talk about making people," David said with equal disgust. Didn't she understand that the populace had been deprived of any but the most basic knowledge for centuries?

  "OK. They take the Mommy stuff, and the Daddy stuff and mix them together in a petri dish; embryos result. Then they use a process called gene splicing." She wasn't even going to try to explain gene splicing to David. "Through this process they take out qualities they don't want, and put in qualities that they do want. They use chemicals, too. To put it simply, they shape this embryo into the person that they want it to be. In the case of a GSH, they build the perfect soldier. They grow them in a special solution in vats, and when they are old enough they're born. In other words, they take them out of the vats. Then they feed them growth h
ormones and information till, within a year, they are fully grown and know all that they will ever need to know."

  Something still puzzled David.

  "How does the Reliance control them? What's to keep them from doing whatever they like?"

  "Good question. It would seem that such beings could easily take over and probably would, but they can't. When they are still in an embryonic state, their minds are altered. First, all emotions except loyalty are removed. They are then brainwashed so that their only loyalty is to the Reliance. They aren't capable of anything else. They eat, sleep, live, breathe and kill for the Reliance. Obeying orders, and completing their assigned task gives them a sense of accomplishment which is as close as they get to happiness.

  "Then there's the box planted in the base of their skulls. If they show any signs of rebellion at all, this control box can be detonated. It literally blows their brains up inside their skulls. The box blows of its own accord when the GSH reaches the age of fifty. The Reliance is afraid that after that, their conditioning might wear off. They couldn't have that. There is no escape for them. They must serve the Reliance. So you see there is really nothing superior about them at all. They are slaves just like everyone else. Worse, really, because they have no free will."