Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  But Counselor told me the sneaky slimy wheeler-dealers on Celestia didn’t care about Mandasars living balanced lives. Did warriors turn into mad dogs when you kept them apart from gentles and workers? Then they’d be perfect for guards at sweatshops and at factories that made illegal nano. Did workers turn into easy-to-control drones? That made them great for sixteen-hour shifts on assembly lines. Did gentles turn into brilliant intellectuals who didn’t fret about the effects of what they did? Then why not use them in disreputable think tanks or research institutes?

  That’s what started the practice of "recruiting" on Celestia. According to Counselor, Mandasars were offered good money and benefits to sign on with various outfits, whereupon they’d be bundled off into single-caste units until their brains turned to one-track minds. The kids caught onto this pretty quick, and stopped signing up voluntarily. That’s when the recruitment process started to work more like old-time press-gangs: if you didn’t say yes to the soft sell, thugs would break into your house, gas the whole hive into unconsciousness, and take everyone away to "reorientation centers."

  A month in isolation, Counselor said, and the poor Mandasars weren’t themselves anymore — the warriors would be spoiling for a fight, the workers would turn into zombies, and the gentles would be reduced to spoiled brats eager to show off how bright they were. Sure, they’d all remember the more balanced people they’d once been… but their pheromone-deprived brains just didn’t care. They were either too riled-up, too sluggish, or too giddy to be interested in changing back. Definitely, they’d never dream of complaining they were kidnapped and forced to become degenerate versions of their former selves.

  In a way, they were like human adults who look back on childhood and say, "Sure, it was nice to be open and imaginative and alive, but we all have to grow up, don’t we?" Soon enough, the Mandasars stopped believing there’d ever been an alternative to their walled-up tunnel-vision lives.

  But Counselor swore there were alternatives. This farming area, for instance, the Hollen Marsh: a big swath of reclaimed swampland, full of Mandasar kids living in small integrated hives. They watched out for each other with volunteer sentry patrols. The second that humans showed up, a militia of warriors would run off the intruders. That’s why Zeeleepull had charged me — he thought I was a recruiter, coming around with a bright smile and a pocketful of promises, but really spying out the territory for midnight press-gangs.

  Counselor said there were other communities like theirs around Celestia: small-scale places where Mandasars could be themselves, farming or fishing or building useful things. But rumor had it that one by one, the communities were being wiped out… blitzed by recruitment gangs, families broken up and carted off to segregated isolation camps in wilderness parts of the planet. The local authorities were no help; a few took bribes from the recruiters, while the rest had been fooled by the stories Mandasars told after they’d been acclimatized: "Oh, it’s all a big fuss over nothing. We were stupid kids who wanted to live lazy unattached lives, but I feel so much better, now that I have a sense of purpose."

  Well… Counselor had a sense of purpose too: to avoid the recruiters and live the way she wanted, with a healthy balanced brain. For a long time, the hive had been praying for someone to come and help them. They’d always pictured their savior as a grand and glorious queen, straight from Troyen… but maybe a blood-consort would do just as well.

  Um.

  12

  TALKING OVER OUR PROBLEMS

  When Counselor finished her story, all five of the kids sat smiling expectantly at me. Not human smiles, of course; Mandasars smile with their ears and whiskers, both sort of relaxing down in calm droops.

  Pity I couldn’t smile too.

  The truth is I’d never been so great as a blood-consort. Queen Verity said she married me mostly because of my delicious smell. Samantha claimed it was also a political thing, sending a message to Verity’s enemies that the queen was backed by my father and the full force of the Outward Fleet.

  But once I became Verity’s husband, it turned out I didn’t have much to do. Smelling delicious doesn’t qualify you for being a general or cabinet minister or important jobs like that. Mostly I just hung around the palace being Verity’s bodyguard. (By then, sister Sam didn’t need me to be her bodyguard anymore. She’d assembled her own security team of warriors, humans, and even some Fasskisters. Anyway, she was getting busier and busier with secret diplomat stuff, "and it’s better, Edward, if you don’t know about that.")

  As for me being Verity’s consort/husband/bodyguard, the queen once said, "You may not be a genius, Edward, but you’re the only honest creature I’ve ever known. I keep you around for inspiration. And curiosity value." It made me feel good when she talked like that… but being an inspiration doesn’t mean you’re good for much else. Definitely I wasn’t cut out for saving people.

  (Memories of corpses flashed through my mind: Verity herself, head laid out on a platter. Samantha in a pool of blood. All the people on Willow, dressed up for their last party.)

  But Counselor and the others still wore those big trusting smiles. Five minutes before, they had been cheering for Zeeleepull to snip me bloody. Now their black eyes gleamed as if I were topped off with a halo.

  Or maybe, as if I were topped off with a crown. I’d been sitting in their midst, giving off the scent of queen’s venom, so why wouldn’t they start responding to me like royalty? If you smell like a queen, all their instincts tell them to treat you like you’re three-quarters divine. (Mandasars are a smart species, they really are, but they’re way too much at the mercy of their noses. Then again, they laugh at us humans and say we’re way too much at the mercy of our gonads… so maybe it balances out.)

  "What do you think I can do?" I asked Counselor.

  She looked at me in surprise, maybe wondering why I didn’t instantly have a plan to save all ten million kids on Celestia. "Do what is required," Counselor told me.

  "Yes, but in the high queen’s court," I said, "Verity never started anything without consulting her privy council. Even a queen knows it’s smart to talk things over with people who’ve studied the situation."

  Everyone smiled and nodded. Counselor went all bashful to be compared to a royal advisor, the workers beamed as if their darling grandchild had won a prize, and even Zeeleepull showed some real approval… like maybe I wasn’t just a stupid thug with queen-spill on my face.

  "Well," said Counselor, "you’re with the navy, are you not? This is not a Technocracy world, but the fleet still wields great influence. If you summoned a dozen cruisers with tractor beams to stop ships from docking at our orbitals, the Celestian authorities would soon do whatever you asked. Even if the navy just took the name of everyone coming and going, there’d be great pressure on our government to remedy the situation immediately. Powerful people often don’t want it known when and why they come to this world. They value secrecy much more than they care about a few Mandasar employees."

  She wiggled her whiskers the way gentles do when they’re pleased with themselves. I guess I was supposed to say, "Tremendous idea, I’ll do it." But the Admiralty wasn’t going to annoy influential people just on the request of a lowly Explorer Second Class — especially not an Explorer Second Class they intended to strand on some lonely outpost as soon as they caught him. Now that I thought about it, maybe it was kind of risky doing anything for these kids: if I attracted attention, people might come to snatch me in the middle of the night, and they wouldn’t just be recruiters for some factory that didn’t pay overtime.

  On the other hand… when I’d married Queen Verity, I’d taken an oath to protect her people forever and ever. Verity’s reign was over, but "forever and ever" wasn’t.

  "Sorry," I told Counselor, "we can’t look for help from the navy. So let’s think what else we can do…"

  We kicked around ideas for an hour. Everyone got in on the act — even Hib Nib Pib. Usually workers just sit back and smile when other people are discussing
plans, as if they already know the right answer and are just waiting for everyone else to reach the same conclusion… but maybe the smell of queen’s venom had stirred them enough that they just couldn’t keep quiet. All three workers actually got involved, tossing in suggestions and comments and nit-picks.

  Too bad we never decided anything.

  The ideas basically fell into two classes: big fancy schemes that would only work if I was a colossally important person (which I wasn’t); and small practical ways to resist the recruiters, which were already being done. For example, Hib suggested I should bring all the Mandasars together in a special shelter where they’d be safe from recruiters. But who would build the shelter? Me? The navy? The League? And who would protect us how, when we didn’t have money to pay for security guards or equipment? On the other hand, if we were talking about making our own special shelters, and protecting ourselves… weren’t the Mandasars doing that right now? There in the Hollen Marsh and elsewhere? They’d banded together all on their own, without needing me as a figurehead. What more could I do? If they were looking for a great military leader to improve their organization or tactics, I was the last person to put in charge.

  Hib and the others didn’t understand that. No matter how much I told them I wasn’t generalissimo material, they thought I was just being modest.

  So the talk went around and around, the kids thrashing through the pros and cons, while I listened… and listened… and kept on listening till it dawned on me I’d stopped taking anything in. I was watching the way their mouths moved as they spoke. The bobbing of their whiskers. The spike at the end of Zeeleepull’s snout as it swished through the air.

  I’m dizzy, I thought. I’ve gone all dizzy. It was the kind of dizziness that seems absolutely fascinating, so you start rotating your neck slowly just to feel the world blur: to see exactly how much you can control the spaciness inside your skull…

  Someone gave me a shake. Counselor was holding onto my shoulders with her upper arms and saying, "Are you all right?" — really loud as if she’d already asked the question a whole bunch of times.

  "I’m sick," I said. "The little eyeballs poisoned me." Which struck me as funny, so I laughed and laughed… way too hard. The dizziness whooshed down over me like ice water, starting cold at the roots of my hair and draining bleak down my face. I remember thinking, This isn’t regal at all. Then, very unregally, I passed out.

  It was hard to tell when I was awake and when I wasn’t. Sometimes I thought I was dreaming about a little Mandasar girl with her arms wrapped around my neck and both of us crying; but sometimes I had the idea maybe Counselor was the one holding me, and she was trying to keep me down on a bed pallet as I thrashed about half-crazy. It all blended together, so confused and light-headed that I couldn’t tell the borderline between dream and delirium.

  Still… Counselor, the real Counselor, was a deep gentle brown. The little girl who came weeping into my hallucinations was a bright queenly yellow. "Oh Father Prince," she whispered, "wake and save us all — Please, please wake."

  Which had to be Counselor talking, or one of her hive-mates. Someone so naive, she thought I was smart enough to save people.

  When I woke for real, the dining room was dark and quiet. I just lay there woozy for a while, trying to collect my thoughts. The Mandasar kids had left me on my own… but probably they were lying close by in the next room. If I made the slightest noise, they’d come running to tend their "prince."

  Not that I’d acted like a prince so far. All I’d done was rough up Zeeleepull, tell the others why I couldn’t help against the recruiters, then pass out on their dining-room floor. Pretty pathetically awful, even by my normal useless-dummy standards.

  But at least the kids hadn’t tossed me out of the house. I was lying almost exactly where I’d fallen — they’d just shifted me onto a dining pallet. When I reached out, I could touch the table… with its big glossy picture of Queen Wisdom…

  That reminded me of the water bowl, the one I’d used for splashing Counselor’s face. My mouth was dust-dry, probably because I’d been sweating buckets while I was unconscious. (You don’t want to know how soaked and sodden my clothes were.) I sat up and edged my way over to the table, hoping maybe the kids had left the bowl full overnight. On Troyen, a lot of families did that in case someone wanted a drink.

  The bowl was still there, but flipped upside down. The glossy table surface had puddles everywhere, as if someone had knocked the bowl over and not bothered to mop up the wet.

  Odd.

  The room was almost coal-mine black, just a tiny bit of starshine coming through the ceiling; the kids had adjusted the environment dome so a wee patch of roof was transparent like a skylight. I could just barely see the outlines of things close up… nothing distinct, nothing that would tell me what was wrong.

  "House-soul, attend," I whispered. "Can you give me some light?"

  Nothing happened: the dome’s computer didn’t want to take commands from me. No big surprise; why would the kids reprogram their house so I could boss it around? But in a lot of homes, the computer lets anyone turn on the lights. Most house-souls have a set of instructions considered safe to obey, even from strangers. Flushing the toilet. Telling what time it is. Letting you wash your hands. But maybe the Mandasars were so worried about recruiters, they’d adjusted their system to "total noncooperation" mode.

  I leaned against the table, wondering what to do. One thing about venom poisoning: both times after the delirium broke, I felt pretty good. Relatively speaking, anyway — I was thirsty and hungry, and not even Queen Verity would think I smelled delicious, but I was strong enough to stand without wobbling too much. After being unconscious so long, I felt wide-awake too. The polite thing might be to go back to bed till the Mandasars got up in the morning, but at the moment I wasn’t sleepy.

  What to do? If I wandered around in the dark, I’d probably break something. On the other hand… I thought about that knocked-over water bowl. There must be plenty of harmless explanations, but it still made me edgy.

  I was standing there, thinking hard and chewing my knuckle in the dark, when my wrist started squealing.

  13

  RUNNING AROUND IN THE DARK

  It had been twenty years since I’d heard that squeal: a personal Mayday from someone close by. A navyish someone. When you joined the fleet, you got a tiny beeper embedded under the skin of your wrist, so if you got caught in some terrible disaster, you could call for help. The beeper sent out a radio beam that activated everyone else’s beeper within a few kilometers — a shrieky shrill signal that said, "Come running, shipmate in trouble."

  The last time my beeper went off was on Troyen: Sam desperately trying to reach me.

  I’d got there too late.

  "Counselor!" I yelled into the darkness. "Sorry to disturb you, but this is important. Can you turn on the lights and open the door? Counselor? Counselor?"

  No answer.

  "Hey!" I shouted louder. "Hey!"

  Nothing.

  "Can anybody hear me? Anybody there?"

  It was only a small dome: two rooms. And Mandasars are light sleepers. In fact, experts get into arguments whether Mandasars ever truly sleep, or just go into a resting doze where they’re always half-conscious. Either way, Counselor and the others would never snooze through me calling, let alone the squealing from my wrist.

  That squeal was making me jumpy. I told the implant, "Shut off," and the beeper stopped its noise, leaving behind a thick stuffy silence. No sound of moving or breathing anywhere close by; I was all alone in the dome.

  Why did that worry me? There’d been two other domes beside this one. The kids probably ate here, and slept next door. Nothing strange about that… but it was surprising they’d left me alone, me being sick and all. Before I’d passed out, they were giving me the royal treatment. Did they change their minds once I went delirious? Or had they been watching over me, till something big and important drew everybody away?

&n
bsp; I could imagine Counselor dozing on a pallet beside me when suddenly some crisis struck. Maybe one of her hive-mates yelled from outside. Counselor ran to help, knocking over the water bowl and not even stopping to clean up.

  But what could cause such a fuss? Recruiters on a raid?

  I thought about my wrist beeper again… and suddenly, it all made sense. Someone had come from the navy. A recovery team had picked up the escape pod’s homing beacon and followed the signal here. Maybe they’d decided to look around a bit, to see if anyone had been inside the pod.

  What would the Mandasars think when they spotted humans wandering about in the dark? Every warrior in the valley would come howling for blood, believing recruiters were on the march.

  No wonder the poor navy people fired off a Mayday.

  I blundered across the room and banged my fist against the wall. The dome field didn’t budge. "House-soul, attend!" I yelled. "Can you open a door? Please."

  The house-soul ignored me. For all it knew, I could be a burglar trying to make a getaway. The computer would keep me locked in here, unable to help the navy folks till some recognized member of the hive came to let me out.

  "House-soul!" I yelled again. "This is an emergency. The warriors might kill someone innocent."

  No response. I took a breath, then drove my heel into the wall with a hard side-kick. The impact knocked me backward, but it didn’t make any impression on the dome. A typical dome field is strong enough to withstand a hurricane or lightning bolt; my strongest kick just wasn’t an irresistible force of nature.

  "House-soul, come on! Listen to me! It’s a matter of life and death. Don’t you have any overrides for when sentient lives are threatened?"