Greener Green I: Where Does the Circle Begin

by Peter Sowatskey

  I went to Junior’s shower room, needler in hand. After hosing him off with warm water I unlocked his hobbles by remote control. Then I guided him to the Habitat room and inside. Locking the door I went to the observation room. He evidently wanted the waist belt off because he was pulling at it, but soon lost interest in it as he examined the room. It held a water bucket with a dipper by the fire pit. In one corner there was a hole in the floor with another water bucket alongside it. I put two days Brenesi rations on a sealed slide tray and pushed it though the wall. He noticed the food. I figured I had done as much as I could. After putting advanced language lessons on the viewer I left. Time for some rest myself. I decided to hole up in the stateroom closest to the control room. I was out before I tossed twice.

  Upon awakening I saw that ten hours had passed. I felt refreshed, a shower and food left me with some flicker of hope. Going to the control room I listened to all of the available radio frequencies. When the Space Station came around the horizon I tuned to its onboard Public Radio broadcast. There was the usual mix of music and current affairs. I could barely pull in the signal despite the high quality of my receiving equipment and the boosted antenna system. I heard an odd sideband and tuned it in. I had never been aware of an all news commentary. When I heard my name mentioned I was especially alert. I was MIA. Details of the expedition followed. Rescue attempts were blocked by treaty. Special accommodations were being sorted out. Maybe four weeks at best. Some mention of a Ranger being called for, but none were on the way yet. Just great.

  As the signal faded, I realized it had contained too many little details for a newscast. Someone had made a mock newscast and straddled it on the station frequency. Not too difficult, but who among my friends would care and take the risks? There were a few, maybe a half dozen. Maybe it was simply misinformation. Who knew which? I set up the broadcast of the sideband for automatic recording and leaned back in the Captains chair to reflect. A footrest swiveled out on my command and I tilted far back, something to be expected on this ship.

  Reflecting on Rangers brought me no amusement at all. They were from a planet at the far reaches of the galaxy. Why they did business with other species was unknown. They signed no treaty and their planet had never been visited. Their technology was a mystery, as no ship of theirs had ever docked for repairs anywhere, as far as I knew. Their only interaction was to hunt people who didn’t want to be found. There never had been any mention of unhappy employers so I suspected that they rarely failed. For that reason, I didn’t want them after me. What could I do about it? Not a damn thing.

  Casting the problem aside, I called up the ships schematics again and tried to find the viewer controls which would let me see in the various storage rooms. I easily dialed up Junior’s room. He was asleep in a bedroll, one question answered anyway.

  Frustrated after two hours of no success at the viewer’s controls, I printed out a schematic of each deck’s floor plan, and left to explore. Three hours later I was back in my captain's chair with nothing to show for my efforts. I could not get into any of the ‘storage’ rooms, no way in Hell.

  Something was tickling my brain so I went into the chart room off of the bridge, and called up the ship in 3-D. Sure enough the rooms were placed above each other on all four decks, well not exactly, but close. On the 3-D view I drew a line down through the decks. The lines would intersect at some distance below the ship. I looked for some room, on the first deck which contained mostly machinery. There was only a maintenance room. I proceeded downwards to check it out. The room wasn’t anything special but I turned it inside out. About three hours later I found what I was looking for behind a locker, which wasn’t bolted down as securely as its comrades. A thorough inspection of the wall found a panel that swung outward when pressed. Two buttons were in the recessed hole in the wall. Both had plates underneath, one read,” water.” It was pushed in. The other plate, read, “Space.” It wasn’t pushed in.

  I don’t know how long I stood there staring at the two buttons with ever more frenetic thoughts racing through my mind. When I came to my senses, I slowly shut the inspection panel door, replaced the locker, and in a daze walked to the galley. I was on an Intelligence Forces vessel. I’d only heard rumors about them, but one was that they were set up to go anywhere, yeah, for real. But how had the Cousin got his hands on it.

  From a shielded chest I selected a bottle of Irish whiskey and sat down at a table. I imagined the ghosts of what had been on all those missions. They were sitting around the table with me. Taking the cap off the whiskey bottle I threw it across the room. No glass suited my mood. I drank from the bottle until I could taste the whiskey in the back of my throat coming back up. It jolted me and assured me I wasn’t dreaming.

  No wonder this ship fit together so precisely. Remote control robots hadn’t put it together on Bren. It had been put together in a military shipyard by highly skilled technicians. I might have pulled guard duty at the same ship yard where it had been built, two years ago. I'd never been inside the buildings there, only the guardhouse.

  Feeling done in, and alone, I took the bottle along and went to look in on Junior. He was still, or again asleep, and tossing from side to side. Evidently he had his troubles too. On a whim I put the remainder of the whiskey in a plastic container and pushed it through the serving window. I recalled from the tapes that Brenesi drank a mixture of almost pure grain alcohol.

  Taking a moment to reflect, I wondered which geneticist had been guilty of altering their basic genetic structure and putting the results on this planet. A planet, which we, the “Norms” wanted back.

  I slept, eventually, and I woke feeling like shit, but hell no use to moan. Another shower and food and I again looked in on Junior. He was still, or again asleep, as the language lesson loop played on. His vital functions which were read by various diagnostic beams were on display and all in the green range. So I felt free to go to the laboratory and review the experimentation files and learn more of this long separated ‘Brethren’.

  Much later, I had learned most of their social customs. Evidently in killing the senior Brenesi, I had inherited a lot of kinfolk, because whoever killed a Brenesi assumed responsibility for all his family. That made Junior in essence my slave. The worldly belongings of the vanquished were also awarded to the victor. I suspected that the custom played a roll in the general peacefulness between Brenesi clan members. After all, who wanted twenty or thirty more dependants to care for, regardless of their personal possessions? So Junior had reported to his clan, now my clan, of events, and returned to take his proper place at my side. Oh great. This just got increasingly delightful.

  Speaking of delight, I was going to have precious little of it in the near future. I was used to sex three or four times a week with partners of incredible stamina. I was already noticing my moodiness. There must be some medicine for my particular ailment in the well-stocked medicine cabinet.

  I pulled myself out of my personal woe to consider something. How much was Cousin risking, or his backers risking, by running this invasion of Bren. I just couldn’t imagine anyone so perverse as to do what they’d done for sexual fantasies. I just couldn’t and I’d met my share of perverts. But my perverts had some small consideration for self preservation. These hadn’t. So what was I missing?

  Back on the bridge, I used a key word review program to separate out of the recorded material the nonsense, leaving what was relevant to me. The latest one had mentions of personnel being caught having sex in the hydroponics farms. Then I knew Talar Harkness was responsible for the radio messages because he and I had almost been caught there. The text said that a Ranger had been contracted to track me down, arriving in two weeks. What the hell to do? If I believed my button theory I could push the “Space” button and be out into space before long, but I knew it held no safety. Or I could trust the Cousin’s information about Brenesi customs and go out into the farther reaches of the land mass. But it would be easier to find me there.

  Figurin
g I was a goner no matter what, I thought of junior and of the responsibility I had under his customs.

  Junior progressed with the language lessons when he was awake. Maybe I was imagining things but I thought I heard marked improvement in his speech pattern after sleeping.

  Taking a chance, I stepped into his Habitat, needler in hand, “Can we speak to each other? Do you understand?”

  “Speak, I hear.” He said in a gruff bass voice, biting, almost spitting out his words as he spoke them.

  “Am I your master?”

  “Yes, master. Why cage me?”

  “To keep you safe. You know you’re on water?”

  “Know. Water not kill me, so water not enemy.”

  “Do you know where our clan is?”

  “Have to see sky, then know where.”

  “Do you know maps?”

  “Know, Brenesi not use. Have inner guide.”

  “I will bring you a picture of the sky and a map. You are to place us on the map and tell me if we can go over land to our clan.”

  “Can do. Have more stinging water?”

  I didn’t laugh out load. I just said, ” Yes, maybe later.”

  He motioned to the needler, ”No hurt you. Much to learn. We sleep together?”

  “Maybe.” I said, on my way out the door. Damn, males of any kind weren’t much different anywhere. Give them something to drink and some sex and they’re satisfied.

  Chapter 25

  Jill

  I dragged a deck chair out onto the foredeck of the ship, sat down, and sipped at my second bottle. Damn, I was regressing into infancy; should have a nipple on it. I pulled myself away from that line of thought, which contained nipples mine suddenly going hard, and concentrated on the pool of light around the ship. I had turned on the ships docking lights and the outboard cabins. The draw wasn’t measurable against the cold fusion power plants capacity, darkness, and light. There must be some basic significance in the two. I sipped and considered. One was a part of light, or darkness. Some people were in gray, but the ones I’d met who stayed in gray, had gray in their souls.

  Well, a Ranger was coming. He, or she, had most probably been told I was some poor lost Marine who couldn’t find her way home. As if a Sergeant in his Lordship’s Marines couldn’t find their way across the galaxy. I thought again about pushing the ‘Space’ button and taking my chances; too many unknowns. It was unlikely that even the Intelligence Force had automated a thousand foot vessel to be ran by one person only. Even then I needed to sleep sometime.

  No, I had more of a chance of survival here. I’d simply kill the Ranger and buy some more time. If I didn’t succeed in the killing, I’d not care. But Junior would care, if his kind cared about life as something to be held onto. From the recordings I’d reviewed, the Brenesi did care. But I’d noticed once they knew they were to die they ceased their struggle and seemingly turned inward. Who knew? Too many goddamn ‘who knows’,

  I set my bottle on the deck and sprang out of my chair. Making a mental note that my springiness lacked something, I went to the Bridge and dispatched a ‘Viewer’ downstream to anchor, power down, and then make a twenty two hour loop of the sky and return. As far as I knew the Space Station left no observation satellites behind when they went around the horizon.

  Then I went to the machine shop and had a closer look at some boxes marked ‘Industrial Lasers’. I opened the two-meter cubed boxes and inside was indeed an industrial laser. But it had way too many degrees of rotation on its mountings. I concluded it was probably meant as a replacement part for some weapon systems.

  I knocked one crate apart and finally got an anti grav movers tray under it. I navigated it through several freight elevators and out onto the front deck. When there, I turned off the anti grav and seated myself again in my deck chair and resumed sipping on my bottle. Looking at the darkness, I wondered which way to point it. Soon I lost interest in the whole idea and drifted off to sleep.

  I awoke with a terrible taste in my mouth, which I tried to wash out with some of that which caused it to begin with. Only a few drops remained. I tossed the bottle over the railing.

  Fortunately, my uniform’s heatable fibers fed from the belt power pack had kept me warm. The power pack indicator read black. Probably why I’d awoke, the coldness. I recalled dreams of truce and trust and cooperation. Odd bloody thing to dream about, being Marines were expected to kill the enemy, not kiss them.

  Pushing it all away, I routed through the shower, and mess, to the Bridge. I began a mass and density analysis of the dome over the lake. The scan showed three hundred plus meters of volcanic based rock over the entire lake except for an inlet in the easterly wall. A narrower focus on the inlet led me to believe a second stream had entered the lake at that point sometime in the past. That inlet’s entrance was about twenty meters up from the water level. That would be our escape route, if deemed desirable.

  I moved the ship into the lake as close to shore as safe, according to the sonar, and let anchors down, they held. Then I hooked up power lines to the laser and aimed it at the dry stream inlet. Calculating an angle of ten percent rise from horizontal, I turned it onto maximum power, it’s aperture adjusted for a two meter diameter hole. It would adjust its focus as it ate the material in its path. I was satisfied that the adjustments were operating properly. Eventually, we were going to have an escape route. Odd that I would think of Junior and me as we and feel good about it.

  Going to the Habitat, I observed through the one-way glass that he was awake and eating. Speaking through the P/A system, I said, “Soon we’ll have sky pictures.”

  “Will make mark.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “Waterfall.”

  I couldn’t imagine at first what he was talking about, but running my mind over the recordings, I realized he wanted a shower. That from the pictures of Brenesi standing under small water falls. He was in luck.

  “Stand over the hole in the floor.”

  He did as told, and I touched a square on the control pad. It rained on him and down the hole. He did a springing dance to express his pleasure.

  “The water will continue for some time. I’ll be back.”

  He didn’t say anything, simply waved his arms to show he’d heard. Oddly, he could touch his palms behind his back. I watched the muscles flow back and forth in his shoulders and arms. I’d seen the complexity of the Brenesi physiology in the recordings but not in person before. It was astounding.

  I was on the Bridge, going over the control systems, trying to surmise what information they would convey in the ‘Space’ mode when the ‘Viewer’ signaled it’s return. I downloaded its twenty-two hour loop and made hard copies of the sky at hourly intervals.

  Taking a folding table, a map, and the copies to the Habitat I told Junior to stand back from the door when I entered. I arranged everything on the table. Leaving a stylus I backed toward the door. “See what you can tell from the sky pictures.”

  He and sorted through the material pausing now and then. Fifteen minutes later, he picked up the stylus and made a mark on his palm and then two marks on the map.

  “We are X, and circle is clan.”

  I motioned him back into the corner and picked up the map. He’d made the X along a northerly coast and a circle some twenty degrees latitude southeast.

  “Can we travel overland to our people?”

  “Can travel overland but not cross river, cold, fast water.”

  “If we can get across the river, how long before we come to our people?”

  “Thirty, forty days.”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  Taking the map he’d marked, I left him to his own devices. Once topside, I checked the Laser. It was working fine. Seating myself some distance from it, I thought how unlikely it would be that we could travel for forty days undiscovered. Amidst the clan, I would be some safer, but for how long? The Cousin could never take the chance I wouldn't show up to give evidence against him and his b
and’s plans to wipe out the Brenesi. I wasn’t going to be safe without protection of the Combined Worlds. Probably not even then. Maybe I could reach the ‘Fringes’ and find a hide-hole, but I was damned if I was going to run leaving Junior and the Brenesi to their extinction. The only thing to do was to kill the Ranger, and whomever else they sent, until the attention of somebody important was turned to me. Then I could tell my story. There were twelve more days to wait.

  On the tenth day the laser shut itself off. I sent an anti grav ‘Viewer’ through the tunnel and got back a picture, a land of eternal ice. Evidently, Junior had neglected to mention the ice, and I’d assumed the map showed seasonal frostings.

  I’d been talking to him about supplies and getting together what we’d need. He’d not be able to grow long hair on demand so he needed special cold weather items if he was going to make it back to our clan.

  Meanwhile, in my dreams, I’d experienced never ending scenes of truces, trust, and cooperation. Junior had even said to me ‘listen to sleep talk’, so he must have been on a similar wavelength.

  Chapter 26

  Jill

  Another two weeks passed. I brought more lasers onto the deck and arranged them every one hundred meters around the ship so I had a circle of firepower around me.

  On the sixteenth day, a small powered buoy came into the cavern announcing, in a tinny voice ‘we must talk', ‘we must talk’ over and over again. In a surge of frustration, I shot the damn thing out of the water with a laser. Just because. I sent my own buoy downstream with the message, ’advance, and be recognized, safe passage guaranteed’.

  A while later, a skiff came into the cavern, with my now silenced buoy in tow. I picked it up on infrared, and a moment later it entered my pool of light. A female figure balanced amidships waving a white flag. For a moment, I thought I was in the ship’s theater watching an adventure story playing out.