Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree)

by Marshall S. Thomas

  Yeah, well, it’s victory or death for us too, I thought. We can't let these foul creatures establish a foothold in our galaxy, no matter where it is.

  Δ

  It was such an emotional experience to be back in Providence I had to continually force myself to calm down. Peace, I told my fluttering heartstrings as the aircar taxi dropped me off right next to the downtown pedestrian-only public park area. I thought I'd stroll through there and enjoy it on my way to Honeyhair's place, but the park was mostly gone. A gigantic bunker squatted there with numerous gaping entrances on all sides. AIR RAID SHELTER, a large sign proclaimed. Another huge sign showed a line of Legion troopers in full battle armor, advancing under a smoking sky. The sign read:

  A LEGION SOLDIER

  DIED FOR YOU TODAY.

  SUPPORT THE WAR EFFORT.

  Depressing! I was nervous about seeing Honeyhair. I was in my blacks with the combat cross on my chest, wearing a black field hat and boots. I guess I looked all right.

  I paused before her door. All right, press the doorbell. Do it! I did it. I was so excited. Then I could hear someone approaching the door. It opened. A tall, muscular young male stood there, shirtless, in shorts. He had close-cropped blond hair and he was sweating – as if he had just been engaged in…something physical.

  "Yeah? Whattaya want?" he asked impatiently. It was clear I was interrupting him. He was still breathing hard. This was exactly the dream I had dreamt, twice.

  "I – I'm looking for Sheila Dantos," I said. I was stunned. What the hell was this? Who was this goon?

  "Sheila!" he called out. "You've got a visitor."

  She appeared from out of a doorway, clad in a grey uniform. My angel! My heart leaped when I saw her. She was just like an angel! When she saw me she stopped abruptly. Her face went pale and her eyes widened as if she had seen a ghost. Then her hands went up, fluttering in the air, she uttered a strangled gasp, then shrieked and threw herself at me, screaming something unintelligible. She landed in my arms, throwing her arms around me, seizing me like a tigress about to devour her prey, wailing and crying, her feet not even touching the floor, wrapping herself around me like a python. She was hysterical, spraying tears around like one of those rotary garden hoses, twitching and trembling and gasping and crying and – well, it appeared she was happy to see me.

  I held her tightly, her heart thumping against my chest like a high-pressure pump. The young atlas stood there silently, faintly smiling.

  'Prophet," she finally gasped. "I'm so – so – so – happy to see you! Oh my God, I can’t believe it. Thank you, God! Oh thank you! Oh thank you! Oh my God, I am so happy!" Then we kissed, and it was just like going to Heaven. My lovely angel was in my arms. All was right with the world, with the galaxy, with the universe.

  "Honeyhair. I am ecstatic to be here, to see you," I said. "How about introducing me to your friend?" The bodybuilder was still standing there in his shorts.

  "Oh. Oh Prophet, it's so wonderful to see you again! This is Edward, my brother. He's just enlisted in the Legion. Edward, go shower. I told you to shower after exercise. Don't be a slob."

  "All right, Sis. I'm glad your lover has returned. Nice to meet you in person, sir. She's been talking about you day and night."

  "Nice meeting you as well, Edward."

  "I think I'm going to faint," Honeyhair said, trembling. "We'd better sit down."

  "You didn't tell me you had a brother," I said as we settled into an airsofa.

  "You didn’t ask – and we didn't have much time," she said.

  Δ

  I took her to the Top of the Town that evening for dinner. I insisted that it be just the two of us and promised that we'd get together with Blondie the following day. We had a wonderful dinner, looking out over the sunset and watching the stars come out, the great vista of Providence Town winking at us far below as the lights came on. She wore her grey Civilian Support Corps uniform, to show her support for the troops. The tailoring on that uniform was pretty spectacular.

  She was the most lovely creature in the galaxy, I thought. Long silky honey hair, a perfect, flawless face, bewitching pale green eyes, slender limbs and a dazzling smile. How could this happen to me? I must be the luckiest soldier in creation.

  Dinner over, we moved to the lounge. There were not too many people there. We settled into the same love chair we had sat in the last time – it seemed so long ago. It was dark and quiet. Candle light touched her lightly, and she looked just like some angelic vision.

  "Miss me?" I asked.

  In reply, she reached out and embraced me. We kissed for awhile. I had to pull away because I did not want to start crying. I looked at her fiercely. Incredible. She's a gift from God. And I'm nobody, a brute, a shuffling ape. But I'm going to treat her right.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "Nothing. Nothing's wrong. You know, I've got to leave in a couple of days."

  "Like the last time."

  "Yes, like the last time. Will you wait for me?"

  "I'll wait for you forever," she choked. She was crying again.

  "Here. I've got something for you." She opened the little package. It was a golden bracelet. The inscription read: Property of Prophet. ConFree Legion.

  "It’s a Legion eternity bracelet," I said. "Once you put it on, it fuses and you cannot take it off. It symbolizes eternal faithfulness."

  "Put it on me," she said, thrusting out one slender arm. I removed the plastic tab, slipped it onto her arm and pressed the ends together. It sealed instantly.

  She looked it over, tears trickling down her cheeks. I took out another little package and opened it to reveal a diamond ring. I got down on one knee and asked, "Will you marry me?"

  That's when the waterworks turned on again. She reached out for me and pulled me to her bosom. "Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God. Yes. Yes yes yes yes! Oh my God."

  Applause. The other people in the lounge were all standing, clapping. My finest moment, I guess. Do the right thing, I thought. That's all I can do. I knew she couldn’t come with me, I didn't know what the future held but I did know she would be a part of it. Prophet and Honeyhair, forever.

  Δ

  We were officially married the next day in a simple civil ceremony at Providence City Hall. I couldn't care less whether some crap government viewed our marriage as legal or not. To me it was holy and eternal. The only reason I did the civil ceremony was that it would simplify things if anything evil ever happened to me – which, considering my profession, was pretty likely. We had a little gathering after the event in an adjacent room. Edward was there, and Blondie, and Honeyhair's parents, and Blondie's mother. I promised Honeyhair's parents that I would stand by her forever and would send for her the first chance I had for an accompanied tour. I didn’t tell them that it was not terribly likely to happen in the immediate future. Especially considering the war. But I think they knew that.

  Honeyhair and I met privately with Blondie downtown in the Taste Test, a dox shop that the girls frequented. Blondie was just dynamite in her grey Civilian Support Corps uniform. Like Honeyhair, she knew how to tailor the uniform for maximum knockout power. She was certainly perfect for Arie.

  Honeyhair showed off her new ring to Blondie as we sipped dox in a private booth. "Wow," Blondie said. "Where did you get that, Prophet?"

  "In the ship's store of the Star Turtle," I replied. "Same place I got the bracelet. Which reminds me. Do you still think about Nitro?"

  "Nitro is all I think about," she said, suddenly serious.

  "It’s true, Prophet," Honeyhair said. "She is obsessed. I guess that's the word."

  "Well, I'm glad to hear that because I can assure you that Nitro is still obsessed by you, Blondie."

  She nodded silently.

  "When I left Arie I didn't know I was coming here," I said. "But I communicated with him in the meantime and he had me get something for you." I handed her a package and she opened it to reveal another golden bracelet, just like Honeyhair's. The ins
cription read: Property of Nitro. ConFree Legion. I explained to her what it was and she held out her arm and I slipped it on and activated it.

  "If Arie was here he'd have a ring for you," I said. "But he's not here. He just wanted me to tell you that he will love you forever and wants you to be faithful to him until he can rejoin you."

  Blondie did not reply, but broke out the tissues and applied them to her eyes. I hadn't really communicated with Arie – we were still on comdown. But the girls didn't know that. And I knew he'd approve of my actions.

  "Where did you come from, Prophet?" Honeyhair asked. "Are you still in the Gulf on the Wasp?"

  "I may as well tell you. We’re on Galinta. We're fighting the D's every day. It's very dangerous. You should know that. I'll not lie to you any more about that. Two of our squadies were wounded badly and almost killed. That's the only reason I was able to get here. I was sent to Quaba to visit them in the Recovery Hospital."

  "Oh my God! Galinta! Oh no!" Honeyhair said.

  "Is Nitro all right?" Blondie asked.

  "He's fine. And thinking about you every day."

  "How long will you be there?" Honeyhair asked.

  "We'll be there until we kill every D on the planet."

  "Oh no! Oh my God!"

  "I'll be leaving tomorrow," I said. "Blondie, any message for me to pass on to Nitro?"

  "Yes. Please tell him that I will remain faithful to him and I will wait for him forever. Forever! And I pray he will come to me one day, and knock on my door, and say hello. Like you did with Honeyhair."

  "I'll do that, Blondie."

  Δ

  That evening, Honeyhair and I checked into the Black Mountain Suites, which was a luxury hotel only a few stories under the Top of the Town, on the Black Mountain galactic commo tower. I had rented a honeymoon suite. It was pretty spectacular, with a big round bed surrounded with mirrors and a bubble plex ceiling where you could look up to the stars.

  I won't even attempt to describe our ecstasy and joy, discovering ourselves for the first time, entering into another entire dimension of intimacy and love. It was like a cosmic tsunami of eternal love. In its wake, we lay there gasping under those brilliant stars, and Honeyhair seemed stunned in wet-eyed adoration of me and of our love, speechless, open mouthed, amazed and exhausted, little beads of sweat trickling down her adorable temples.

  "I just realized something," I said, quietly. "This is the fourth day we've been together. I mean, not counting those few moments in that corridor of the Dark Lady. Day One was when Arie and I hit on you and Blondie in Providence and took you both to dinner at the Top of the Town. Day Two was graduation and we left you the next day. Day Three was yesterday, when I knocked on your door and took you again to the Top of the Town, and proposed. And this is Day Four when we were married. Four days! I hardly know you, Honeyhair."

  "It certainly was a whirlwind courtship, sir. But I love the ending!"

  "This isn't the ending, Sweety Pie. It's only the beginning."

  "You'll be leaving me tomorrow – right?"

  "Right, but we're married now. If you want you can rent your own quarters – courtesy of the ConFree Legion."

  "No, I think I'll just stay with Mom and Dad – until you come back permanently, or send for me."

  "That may be best. Well, now that we're married, why don't you tell me something about yourself?"

  "You haven’t done this marriage thing before, have you? I think you're supposed to find out about the girl first, and then marry her. If she's your type."

  "I know. You are my type. But I'm curious about one thing. When we first encountered each other, in the corridors of the Bold Lady, you struck me as – well, spectacularly beautiful. But, other than that, I instantly noted that you appeared to be haughty, arrogant, snarky, sarcastic, disinterested in me or anything else, and tremendously bored by the prospect of further interactions with Arie and I. And that's the last time I saw that girl. After that, you seemed to be an entirely different person. Why's that?"

  "Lots of practice," she smiled. "That was my public face. I was posing as an Innie. I was very good at that."

  "What's an Innie?"

  "Ah. Good question. An Innie is a self-centered, insecure, stupid young girl who exists solely to show herself off to her peers, to seek their approval, and to remain within the Innie community without being cast off for any subversive tendencies."

  "I see."

  "I doubt that. Here's the story. Trina and I were both in Highlands Middle School, located on Guarados. My mom and dad and Trina's mom were officials of the Ministry of Education, and they were being transferred to Veltros. That's why we were on the Dark Lady. Anyway, in Highlands midschool, girl society consisted of two main cults, the Innies and the Dwerbs. The Innies are strikingly attractive girls clad in the latest high-fashion youth attire, focused entirely on their social life and their status as spoiled rotten lazy Innie princesses. Innies spend much of the night cavorting with boys, drinking heavily, copulating like alley cats, and telling their peers about their experiences. The more sex you have, the higher your status. Dwerb girls are everyone else. Especially those who study, have any moral scruples or, horrors, believe in God. The merest hint of religious beliefs will get you expelled from the Innie cult."

  "It sounds pretty horrible. Being an Innie, I mean."

  "I wasn't really an Innie, but I passed. I guess I could write an interesting sociological study called 'I Passed for Innie'. As a brainless subteen, I was fixated on becoming an Innie. As I grew taller and more – well, Innie-like, I entered the cult. I watched my girl friends puking their guts out into the nearest toilets, and I fought off several clumsy rape attempts by drunken boys. I concluded this was not for me. However, I was too cowardly to flee the cult. I developed my haughty persona to repel any approaches and told everyone that my lover was a Legion trooper who was very secretive and jealous and violent and highly unstable. That explained why I did not join my fellow idiots in their nightly orgies. And they really admired me because my arrogant attitude was so perfectly offensive to everyone.

  "But I started to have some doubts. Once I showed up at school with a self-inflicted bruise on my cheek and I told my Innie peers that my crazy boy friend slapped me because I wouldn't do some unspeakable sexual thing, but I did it after he hit me. They loved that. I was disgusted when the other Innie girls expressed so much admiration for me for submitting to my lunatic boyfriend's sicko demands. Was this really what I wanted to be when I grew up? This is crazy, I thought. Why am I doing this? I was still a virgin."

  "Was," I said, proudly.

  "Right. But truth was, I was not an Innie. I was a Dwerb. It took awhile before I admitted that to myself. I studied hard, but tried not to let it show. My parents were educators, and I knew the value of education. And I had other subversive tendencies as well. One day a Dwerb girl asked me if she could inherit one of my textbooks for a course I had finished but she was just beginning. The book they had given her had a faulty d-screen. I said sure, but I asked her to come over to my residence because the book was there somewhere, I said, although I claimed I had never bothered to read it. Innies didn't read, or study. The reason I asked her to come over was that I was curious about her. She was a little blonde, quite beautiful, devastatingly funny, and fearlessly outspoken in mocking the Innie cult. She had everyone rolling in the aisles once in mimicking one of our leading Innies. So she came by my parents' home. Of course it was Trina.

  "In my bedroom as we talked and while I pretended to hunt for the book, she spotted a little novelette that I had stupidly left in sight. It was one of the Guiding Star series. Those were wonderful stories, very well written, targeted to subteen and teen girl readers. The author was a lady, and I thought of her as a saint. Each story was about a different girl, presented in very realistic and exciting scenarios, and written so you could feel yourself going through the events in the book. And there were always choices, life choices that were entirely up to you. She showed the resu
lt of good choices, and bad choices. I loved the series, I read every book she wrote, and I lost count after awhile. There were forty or fifty of them, and they were all good. She would move me to tears. It was like a guide for the lost. I knew she was a religious person because sometimes the characters would pray to God, asking what they should do. But there was no preaching. It was very low key. She was a genius. The only hint of a religious tie was some tiny print on the rear cover, Christian Faith Ministries."

  "'What’s this?' Trina asked me, holding up the book. I almost fainted. If this got around, my cover would be blown and I would be tossed out of the Innies in a heartbeat.

  "'Oh, some Dwerb girl left that there. I thought I tossed that out,' I said, unconvincingly. Trina told me later that I had turned pale, as if I had seen a ghost. She started looking around the room.

  "'Why is your room so neat?' she asked. 'This doesn't look like an Innie's room. They told me you're an Innie. This looks like a Dwerb's room.'

  "She opened the closet. She looked up to the top interior shelf, which had a whole lot of books on it.

  "'What are you doing?' I asked.

  "She pulled down a few books and uncovered a whole slew of Guiding Star books. She pulled down more cover books and exposed the lot. A subversive library of forbidden books.

  "She turned to me in triumph. 'You're not an Innie. You're a Dwerb!' she exclaimed, happily. I was crushed and speechless.

  "'I love Guiding Star,' she said. 'I've got every book there is. Isn’t she a wonderful writer?'

  "I was so shaken I had to sit down on the bed. I couldn’t say a word.

  "'I knew there was something different about you,' she said. 'I know you don’t go out with the other Innies. And I don't believe that story about your imaginary boyfriend either. You don't have a boyfriend, do you?'

  "'No,' I admitted shakily.

  "'Don’t worry, I won't tell. Why do you pretend to be an Innie? They're sluts! They're morons! And you’re not an Innie. You're a Dwerb. Anyone who reads Guiding Star is a Dwerb. You must like the series, you have them all.'