Chains of Freedom

by Selina Rosen

  For one delicious moment, Jessica thought about being honest: a fat pompous idiot. Fortunately, self-preservation pressed the answer to the back of her throat. "I'm sorry, Your Excellency, but this problem with the rebels weighs heavily on my mind."

  "The death of your lover weighs heavily on your . . . mind . . . Kirk," Jago hissed, then sat down with a plop.

  Jessica thought that his legs probably wouldn't hold him up any longer. She inwardly steamed. This fat bastard had a hell of a lot of nerve.

  "I understand how you must feel, but it is time you picked up the pieces and got on with your life. You are obsessed with this RJ person, Senator. That is why you are so ineffective against her. You have made her out to be more than she truly is." He laughed. "Really, Kirk. 'Topple the Reliance!' Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?"

  She left before she could do anything violent. Depriving herself of this pleasure was regrettable, but necessary for the sake of her career. As she left, she could hear Jago saying to Right, who had sulked silently in a corner through the entire meeting, "I thought you weren't going to bother me about this RJ person anymore, Right." He added with near-operatic melodrama, "You are ruining my day. You know how much this nonsense distresses me."

  She heard Right mumbling feebly about needing him to get GSHs. He should have saved his breath. They weren't going to get any help. At least not from Jago.

  He was a stupid pig. He wouldn't believe RJ was a real threat till she knocked down his door, stuck an apple in his mouth, and roasted the fat bastard.

  Jessica put her head down on the desk. She was afraid. Afraid that she was going to lose the battle with RJ. Afraid of being found wanting. She needed Jack. She needed to feel loved and accepted. But Jack was gone. Nothing could bring him back, and she was alone.

  She had never felt so inept or so vulnerable. It was RJ's fault. Everything was RJ's fault. Hate moved in rapidly to fill the space that had once held her love for Jack.

  All that was important was to kill RJ.

  Stewart had killed himself to protect RJ. Jessica still couldn't quite fathom that. Had she been somehow more that an experiment to him? Why should he care more for RJ than he did for her? There was only one logical answer. Stewart must have believed in RJ's cause. He, too, must have hated the Reliance.

  Jessica realized, not without shame, that part of her growing hatred for RJ stemmed from the fact that RJ had somehow won Stewart's favor. Perhaps Stewart had loved RJ. But, what did it matter now? Stewart was dead. RJ had killed Jack, and Poley was off to join the Rebellion. Her family, such as it was, had given her nothing but trouble and grief.

  She sat up straight, and dried her eyes. She couldn't afford the luxury of being depressed. If she was going to catch RJ, she was going to have to use all her skills and resources.

  If she could just clear her mind of random thought, the answer would come to her. Unfortunately some of those random thoughts were of Jack, and she couldn't let him go. Not yet.

  David couldn't be sure whether or not Whitey and RJ were actually lovers, but it was obvious that Whitey meant for them to be. If RJ slept on the floor, Whitey curled up beside her. If she slept on the bed, he crawled in beside her, even if it meant pushing David aside to do so. David no longer had trouble with that particular union. In fact, since RJ had all but attacked him in the middle of the floor, David thought it was a very good idea for her to have sex with someone—anyone but him.

  As for RJ's brother . . . That guy was a real weirdo. He hardly showed any sign of emotion, and when he did, it only seemed skin-deep. He had no body language, and David found that unnerving. But David couldn't say that Poley was hard to get along with. In order to be hard to get along with you had to have a personality. If Poley had one, it was well hidden.

  David's own relationship with RJ was changing. Times alone were scarce, and it almost seemed to David that RJ avoided situations where they would be alone together. When they were, there was an obvious tension that hadn't been there before.

  One day they went for a rare walk alone on the beach. David reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, and he felt her flesh tighten.

  "What's wrong with you?" David asked hotly.

  "Nothing," she said with a shrug. She walked over and sat down on a rock, looking out at the ocean. "Nothing at all."

  David walked up behind her and started rubbing her back. "You're so tense."

  "I don't have a right to be?" She laughed. "We are preparing to wage war with the Reliance. I think we should all be a little tense."

  "You and Whitey . . . is that the problem?" he asked, sitting beside her.

  RJ sighed. "He loves me."

  "So?" David didn't see that as any sort of problem.

  "I don't love him. I'm not even sure I know him. If I did, I might not want to." RJ kicked at the sand with her boots. "I like Whitey."

  "So, what's the problem, RJ?"

  "I can't sleep with him." She almost mumbled the words, but David still understood her.

  "Because you don't love him?" If David was shocked that they weren't already lovers, he was even more shocked that RJ might actually have such antiquated morals.

  "You know I'm a hybrid?"

  David nodded.

  "Well, during love-making we . . . Well, we lose it. During orgasm Argy women have no idea what they're doing. I have inherited this gene."

  "I don't understand the problem.

  "The problem, stupid, is that I am also incredibly strong. Stronger even than Whitey."

  David didn't understand that for a minute, but he was damned if he was going to argue with her. He shrugged, signifying that he didn't understand.

  "There is a good chance that I could do him physical damage."

  "Oh!" David winced at the implications.

  RJ stood up and started to walk away.

  David followed her. He put everything she had just told him through his brain one more time, and came up with a startling deduction. "RJ, don't tell me you've never . . ."

  "No, I haven't, and if you ever tell another living soul, I'll rip your lungs out."

  "How do you know you'll hurt someone if you've never . . ." He finished with a graphic hand gesture that made RJ blush.

  "Would you want to be the one I find out on? I broke a bed once having a wet dream."

  David thought about it only a second. "Damn! No wonder you're so tense."

  They called it "the Pier." Actually, it was all that was left of some huge old cable bridge. Flecks of orange paint could still be seen clinging to it. It now lay in the bay and was used to dock boats. The local fishing population ran across it as if it were a smooth and well-kept surface. It wasn't. It was a jungle of fallen rubble, broken cable and snapped steel. Only the very nimble dared come down here.

  "You mind my asking what we're doing down here?" Alexi asked testily as he tripped for the third time.

  "You always complain," Mickey said accusingly. From his perch on RJ's shoulder, he feared nothing, least of all Alexi.

  "Shut up, you little freak," Alexi said with venom. Whitey did little more than give him a dirty look, but RJ had a special aversion to the term freak.

  "You shut up, dickhead," RJ spat back at Alexi.

  The Pier was alive with activity. People ran this way and that, carrying fish, nets, or the like. No one stopped in their labors to give the strange group more than a glance, but they all knew they were there.

  David moved up even with RJ. "You know he purposely eggs Alexi on." David gave Mickey an accusing look. RJ just shrugged."He knows he is the son you and Whitey never had, and he knows one of you will come to his rescue, no matter what he does." It was obvious that RJ was paying him little if any attention. "RJ, are you listening to me?"

  "No," she said flatly.

  "Poley." The metal man was at her side almost before she finished speaking his name. "Poley, will that boat over there haul all of us?"

  Poley looked at the boat thoughtfully for a few moments. "Weight
and mass. Weather conditions, condition of the boat . . ."

  "Yes or no, Poley," RJ sighed.

  "Yes." The boat in question currently held a crew of three men.

  "You there!" RJ hollered. "Get outta that boat."

  "For God's sake, RJ. A little diplomacy," David said.

  The three men just stared at them, not knowing whether it was a joke or not.

  David laughed nervously, and pulled a fistful of units out of his pocket. "We'd like to rent your boat." It was more money than the boat was worth, so the men quickly got out. The leader took the units from David, looked at him as if he had lost all his marbles, and then he and the two others ran down the pier laughing.

  "Great, now they think we're cracked," RJ said with obvious disapproval.

  "I suppose you would rather have them think we're a bunch of thugs."

  RJ just shrugged. She wasn't in the mood to talk about the etiquette of boat appropriation. They had the boat, that was all that was important. They all boarded, and Levits took the controls as RJ ordered.

  "I don't see why I had to come along," Levits complained. "Any one of you could have driven this boat. Going to a haunted island in the middle of the night. Excuse me for my lack of enthusiasm, but I had really hoped for more from life."

  "Not afraid of ghosts, are we, Levits?" RJ said teasingly.

  "No. That's the least of my worries. There are lights out there, and lights mean there has to be someone out there. Since there isn't a huge, flashing sign saying 'Revolutionaries welcome,' I'm just naturally assuming that they want to be left alone."

  "Start the boat, Levits," RJ ordered. She set Mickey down on the deck and took a seat.

  "There are no such things as ghosts," Poley said with assurance. "To believe that the dead could be animated is absurd."

  "We're not talking walking cadavers here, Mr. Take-Everything-Literally," Alexi spat, "we're talking the unquiet spirits of . . ."

  "Bullshit!" Levits sang out. He had some trouble getting the motor to turn over, but it seemed to run fine after that.

  David didn't like all this talk of ghosts. He did believe in them. He couldn't help it. Having grown up in a farming community, he had heard stories about ghosts all his life, and they had always been told as if they were fact.

  "I believe in ghosts," Alexi defended.

  "Hear that, Poley? Alexi believes in ghosts. Better revise your thinking," RJ said with a smile.

  "Look, look everyone. Did you see that? Poley almost smiled!" David said sarcastically.

  "Poley is not the most expressive person you'll ever meet. You might even go so far as to say he's just like Dad."

  Poley's eyes almost shone with mechanical joy. He liked the idea that he was like Stewart.

  They sped towards the island, and the closer they got the quieter they got. It was obvious that there were many lights, and there was a sinister feel to the buildings that RJ hadn't felt till they got closer. Suddenly, there was a horrible shrieking noise, and before them loomed a giant, twisted figure.

  "Holy shit!" Levits screamed, swerving to miss it. Whitey, who had been standing, fell back onto the deck of the boat. David and Alexi shrank in terror, and Mickey climbed up RJ like a monkey and clung to her chest.

  RJ looked calmly at Poley. "Poley?"

  "Holographic image projection. The scream is the amplified sound of a blue whale fart."

  "Well, they obviously don't want company, but at least we know they have a sense of humor," RJ said with a laugh.

  David, Mickey, and Alexi were not put at ease.

  "I thought you didn't believe in ghosts," RJ said to Mickey, who was still clinging with his head buried between her boobs.

  He peeked up at her. "Did not, but cannot deny truth of own eyes." He returned his head to its place of safety.

  Whitey hauled himself up off the deck of the ship. "It's a picture, Mickey." Mickey's head stayed where it was. "Like on a viewing screen, except without the screen."

  Mickey still didn't move.

  David and Alexi weren't convinced either. After all, they only had Poley's word that it wasn't some misguided soul from the netherworld come to devour them.

  "Drive through it," RJ ordered.

  "I don't know, RJ," Levits said, shaking his head.

  "Go on, man. You know what a hologram is," RJ said impatiently.

  "I know it's a little high-tech for a bunch of fisher-folk. I know that the same people who have that kind of technology probably have lasers and rocket launchers, and all kinds of big ugly weapons just waiting to blow our asses up."

  "Go through it, Levits," RJ hissed. Levits still looked reluctant. "Go through, or I'll rip your arm off and shove it up your ass!"

  "When you put it in such a charming manner, how could I refuse?" Levits drove on. In a matter of moments, they were through the hologram, and it disappeared into the night.

  "OK, Mickey. We're through. It's gone," Whitey told him.

  Mickey stayed where he was.

  "It was just a picture."

  Mickey looked up, smiling stupidly. "I think I'll stay here."

  "Why you little lecher!" Whitey grabbed the midget and jerked him off RJ. He made as if to toss him into the ocean, Mickey screamed, and the whole boat rocked.

  "Do you have to make so much racket?" Alexi asked angrily. "Why don't you send up flares so they'll know we're here?"

  "They already know we're here," RJ said, matter-of-factly.

  "That thing?" David asked, nodding back to where the hologram had been.

  RJ nodded. "When we activated that, we alerted whoever put it there."

  "We'll dock in less than two minutes," Poley informed them.

  "Levits, kill the engine," RJ ordered.

  "Why bother, if they know that we're here?" he asked in a doomed voice.

  "Kill the engine."

  "Maybe we should throw down anchor here and swim it," Whitey suggested. "We could wrap the weapons in . . ."

  "No!" Poley said emphatically.

  RJ moved up beside him, and patted him on the back. "It's OK, Poley, we'll pull in to shore."

  They got as close to shore as they could.

  "My feet are wet," Poley said in a nervous tone. "My feet are wet."

  "We'll dock in a minute," RJ told him.

  "My feet are wet," Poley said again.

  "You'll be OK," RJ said. "What do you want me to do, carry you?"

  "Yes," Poley said, nodding his head.

  "Well, forget it."

  "The dock has been very well maintained," Levits announced. "OK. I've seen enough. Let's go home."

  "Just dock the boat," RJ ordered.

  They docked without a hitch.

  RJ helped Poley out of the boat. "Do you detect any life forms?" RJ asked him in a whisper.

  The robot stared at his wet feet and appeared to be pouting.

  "You're OK, Poley." She sighed. Why couldn't things be simple? "Do you detect any life forms?"

  "Shielding makes it impossible to tell."

  "Oh, great." RJ stared up the hill towards the building. The lights were on. It looked so inviting, but something told her she was not going to be invited in.

  "We are being monitored," Poley informed her.

  "Shit! Now?"

  "No, but it suffices to say that they know we're here. We'll be scanned again shortly."

  "Let's move." They followed her a little further inland. "Poley, can you stop them monitoring us?" she asked again in a whisper.

  "I could emit a silent wavelength which should distort any picture they may be getting."

  Behind them, where they had been standing only a few moments before, the night erupted in a shower of sparks.

  "Do it, Poley," RJ said. "Let's move!" They walked rapidly up the old road that led towards the building. It was well maintained but steep.

  Panting for breath, David moved up to walk beside RJ. "What the hell are you doing? Let's go back. Re-think this thing. Come back better armed . . ."

&n
bsp; "How could we be better armed?" RJ asked. "Besides, they know we're here. I doubt they'll let us leave. We're going to have to fight them, or at the very least outwit them." She looked curiously at the building. "I don't think we're dealing with Reliance."

  "Well, they're certainly not friendly," David said.