by B. V. Larson
Her face was blank. “I don’t remember it.”
Stattor shifted in his chair. His stomach burned on one side and his hands were beginning to ache.... He released his grip on the edge of his desk.
“You must wonder,” he said, forcing his voice to be even, “why I sent you to prison. You hadn’t done anything disloyal.”
She nodded a little. “I wondered,” she said slowly, the one side of her mouth unmoving, “but I always understood.”
“You understood?” It was rare that Stattor was surprised. “How could you understand your punishment when you were innocent?”
“There are times when things have to be done that seem unfair—maybe they are unfair. But the individual must be willing to sacrifice for the benefit of others.”
“You aren’t bitter? You never cursed me for your years in the tunnels?”
She glanced down at her hands and moved in her chair with a tired nervousness. “It’s because of you that our colony has survived so long. You led us in the continued search for a home. If my imprisonment helped the colony—and it must have or you wouldn’t have put me there—then I have lived my life just as I have always desired to live it.”
With one fatted finger, Stattor wiped the sweat from a fold of skin on his neck. “Your devotion is impressive. Tell me what life is like in the mines.”
“In camp, we got news every week,” she said. She seemed to brighten. “So I know what you’ve accomplished through the years.”
“Tell me what you do at White Flowers.”
“We mine, of course, but recently the weaker inmates have been deemed useless for that work. I now make soles for shoes. Since we got better heaters installed six months ago, a good worker can cut two hundred ninety soles a day. Camp White Flowers is a cold place. Before we got the heaters...” She held out her left hand for him to see the missing fingertips, lost to frostbite.
“Having heat made a great difference. We also make clothes for the prisoners working in the cobalt mines—shirts or pants or whatever they need.” She refolded her hands and paused. “I have good friends there.”
“Friends?”
“Yes. We looked forward to getting out of the tunnels when new materials shipments come in.” She perked up a little. “One of the labs gave us some birds we keep near the drill-holes.” She shook her head as though chastising herself. “They’re insects really, but they’re so big we think of them as birds. We even name them. Some seem to have personalities. It gives us something to talk about.”
Usko looked haggard, weakened, and damaged, but she did not look unhappy. “I know that in ways of which I am ignorant, my imprisonment served the higher destiny of the colony. So what more could I want?”
“You suffered,” Stattor said.
“Everyone suffers.”
He was beginning to remember why he’d put her away. “Everyone? Usko, I won’t live long enough to name the wonders I’ve seized or the pleasures I’ve fed on.” He spread his short arms toward the stars around him. “If I ask for anything, it’s mine. If I wanted an animal slaughtered and fed to me by a fat-breasted whore, it would be done. Is that suffering?”
“Only you know the answer to that. But you have guided us. Look where Tarassis is now.” Her voice became more assured. “Without you, we might have landed on that horror of a planet. We’d might have all died in a meteor shower, or succumbed to a tidal wave.”
Yes, Stattor could remember his reasoning now. Her personal clarity and righteousness had been inspiring during their struggle, but later, she had just become annoying.
Stattor leaned forward. The desk creaked. He smiled. “Usko, as of today, you’re being given an unconditional pardon. You’re free. I’ve set up a physical rehabilitation program for you. When you’ve recovered, you’ll be given living quarters on the deck of your choice. You’ll have transportation privileges for wherever you want to go, and an open credit allotment. For life.”
She stared at him in silence. Her lips moved against each other.
“How much did they pay you at White Flowers?”
She swallowed heavily, her chin dipping as she did so. “They put two hundred a year into an account for us. For our work.”
“How much have you earned so far?”
Usko shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know. I can’t do numbers in my head anymore. I gave most of it to other inmates.”
“You may not know,” Stattor said, “that there’s a severance tax of ten credits per month of sentence for prisoners who are released. It’s to pay for the food they eat.” He smiled. “They never have enough to leave—and so the sentence is always extended. That was my idea.”
“If it hadn’t been necessary for our cause,” she murmured, “you wouldn’t have done it.”
Stattor shook his head. This indeed was the Usko Imani of his memories. In the old days, when he himself had had doubts, he needed only to speak to her. Her vision was intensely single-minded, sincere, tenacious, and above all idealistic. She eventually became intolerable.
“Would you like a drink?” Stattor asked suddenly. “I recall that you liked something called a ‘gin fizz.’”
“It’s been so long... I haven’t had a drink—”
Stattor pressed the call button on the intercom and spoke to First Officer Chisolm. “Bring our guest a ‘gin fizz.’ It’s an alcoholic drink.” He turned back to her. “Perhaps you’ll still have a taste for it. Now you can have them every day if you want.” Stattor leaned far back in his chair. “No one was ever more dedicated to the cause of unification than you. I envied you for that. I remember a councilman named Kudensa? A skinny, reactionary low-grade? Do you remember him?”
She shook her head.
“You volunteered to bed him to get information, although we all knew he had brutal tastes.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“It took you six weeks to recover.”
She looked blank. Then she nodded. “Did I get the information?”
“Of course.” He saw her face relax a little. “Councilman Kudensa passed on many years ago. He was stabbed to death in his bed. Stabbed in the crotch, as it turned out, many many times.”
Chisolm entered with his tray. His cap seemed to have shifted slightly to the back, exposing a bit more of his sweating forehead. From the tray he took first a napkin and then the sparkling drink and arranged them on the wide chair arm, beside her right hand.
Without a sound, he left Stattor’s office.
“It was the height of loyalty to sacrifice yourself to Kudensa.”
“I can’t remember it. He couldn’t have hurt me badly. The good of the colony was more important. That’s why I served as crew.”
“You’re the only person who could say that and I would believe you. That’s why I put you in prison.”
Usko had the drink in her gnarled hand and held it halfway to her lips. “What?”
“Your idealism. It was getting in the way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you remember the Setback? When our entire secret council was arrested and shot?”
Her face became more grim. “I do. At White Flowers, we have half a day off work every year to remember and study those we lost. And to tell the story of Kenda Dean, the informer.”
Stattor enjoyed this and didn’t mind showing it. “You knew Kenda well, didn’t you?”
“I did, unfortunately. I never suspected he could do that to us—or that dissidents had been paying him the whole time. I accept it now, but I never understood it. It taught me that the ones we think we know best we often know least.”
“You learned nothing. Your loyalty made you blind.”
She blinked at him, and he continued, leaning forward until his guts hurt with the effort. “Kenda did nothing, Usko. The informer sits right here. I was the informer.”
She lifted her drink and sipped it. Half of her lips almost smiled when she spoke. “Why are you saying things like this?”
He
remembered how she laughed when she came up from the lakeside with the bouquet of weeds. He remembered kissing her lips, and he remembered that they’d awakened in each other’s arms the next day.
She took another sip. “You couldn’t have done that to us.”
“Usko, if you don’t tell me that you believe me, tonight you’ll be back cutting out shoe soles with your breather co-workers, and you’ll do it till you die.” He paused. “Do you know where your ‘leather’ comes from?”
“Animals.”
“As in ‘lower animals’?” He chuckled. “Usko, if you think your captain is incapable of betrayal and cruelty, my honesty would require that I tell you where your shoe leather comes from, what it is that you handle and cut for the hours of your days.”
“Whatever you do, you do it for the advancement and security of the colony.”
“Whatever I do, I do it because I don’t like competition. I had your friends shot because they were in my way.”
She sat up straighter and was firm: “You can’t make me believe that. We sacrificed for other people, not for ourselves. I know that you believed that.”
“You never knew me at all.” He leaned back and laced his fingers over the rolls of his stomach. “You’re over-burdened with misinformation, Usko. Let’s clarify. Here are your choices and their results: You can believe that I informed on our friends, causing them to be shot in the backs of their little short-sighted heads—and then when you leave here, you’ll have a warm bed and everything you want paid for. Or you can believe that this is some kind of test, that Captain Stattor is purposely deceiving you—and that, Usko Imani, is treason. For that crime you will spend the rest of your life decomposing at White Flowers, cutting shoe soles out of... ‘leather.’”
The woman’s age, her fear, and her dread pushed her deeper into her chair. She lowered her head and Stattor gazed at the frizzy hair that grew in irregular patches. She was ugly. He no longer cared what she chose.
“Well?” he said.
When she looked up, above a mouth that was twisted by paralysis, her eyes sparkled as though they were filled with chips of silver.
“You brought me here to offer me the choice between comfort and disgrace or a slow death after a life wasted on lies? Why would you do that?”
“I’m an insecure man, and I sleep better when I know that others around me operate from self-interest. That I understand. Your idealism is a disease, and you’re a carrier. Once you accept my generous offer, you’ll be as corrupt as the rest of us.” He gave her a moment. “There’s no reason for you to go back to prison simply because the ideal you sacrificed your life for was an illusion. Don’t be a fool to the finish.”
“You’re taking the one thing—”
“Yes, I am.” Stattor smiled harder. “May I assume I’ve taken it?” He paused. “Speak, Usko Imani.”
It was an order, and she was crew. She nodded. The gesture wasn’t much more than a quiver.
“Yes?” Stattor demanded.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“When we were young, we used to think human nature was mysterious. We were just inexperienced.”
He pressed the call button again. Chisolm entered immediately, his cap now centered as it should be.
“Get her out of here. See that she has transportation to her rehab clinic. Her welfare is of special importance, et cetera.”
“I understand, Captain,” Chisolm murmured.
“That’s gratifying.” To Usko Imani he said, “We mustn’t let our lives be spoiled by regrets. “If you miss White Flowers, just say the word and Chisolm will put you back in chains and have you home again by bedtime.”
Usko Imani said nothing.
“Out of my sight.” Stattor flipped his hand at them both.
As Chisolm accompanied her through the door, she looked back at him once. It was just a glimpse, and Stattor was reminded of the other reason he had sent her to prison.
So many years ago, when they had awakened in each other’s arms.... She’d been beautiful, sleeping there beside him. Her smooth translucent eyelids rounded over her quiet eyes... and then she’d awakened and looked at him with an expression he hadn’t expected.
There, wrapped in the sheets, with the morning sun streaming across the room, she had looked at him with the same expression he had just seen as she left him: a kind of horrified surprise, a shock of understanding. She’d hurried away to dress herself. Not long after, because of her revolted glance, he began giving information to the police, and his rivals had begun to vanish.
Stattor remembered that the crucial moment had been on a Sunday morning. There had been a bowl of oranges centered on the table, radiant with simulated skylight, as his world had turned to shit.
But today, that loose end had been tied up.
He swept his hand across the lower part of his stomach. At the moment, neither his arms nor his legs nor his stomach pained him—the result of a good meeting.
He turned in his chair and gazed out of the transparent bubble at the churning hub of the galaxy and the filaments of darkness inside the light. One day, his remains would be spread among these stars.
The intercom chirped. “Captain,” Chisolm’s voice said gently, “there’s still the matter of the dispersal list?”
Stattor grunted and spun his chair to face his desk.
The paper list lay there, face up, awaiting his final decision on exempting any of the condemned. He thought of Arios, waiting in some detention cell, old, ruined, half-dead. He thought of the three of them, there beside the dark lake, so long ago.
Laughing, Usko had brought a bouquet of colored weeds up from the shoreline, and she had given them to Arios... not to him, but to Arios.
His eyes stopped on the intercom.
Stattor again reflected that First Officer Chisolm had overstepped his limits. He could barely see the blossom of his nebula behind the intercom. Its beauty had made him happier, calmer, allowing him to overlook his bodily pains, and he found Chisolm’s change angering.
If he could just come in and move things around on his desk, what else could he do? That flat-eyed Chisolm… he was an emotionless reptile, he never revealed his feelings about anything, so how could he be trusted? He was a sweating unknown with a forever-slipping cap.
Exempting no one else from execution, Stattor took the pencil into his cluster of fat fingers. He pulled the list nearer and added Chisolm’s name at the bottom.
He had never liked him. Or Arios Blodian.
Always, always, people stood in his way. They distracted him with pettiness from the grand and mysterious thing that was about to happen to him.
Finished with the day’s work, his self-satisfaction and his medications made his life serene, for the moment. He leaned back and again turned to face the absorbing blackness beyond the galaxy. He was content to know that soon, so very soon, his flesh would become myth.
Chapter SIXTEEN
Scarn made the most of his early arrival at the party. Captain Stattor hadn’t yet arrived, which let him act with a free hand.
Once the captain had arrived, the event would turn into a formalized suck-up ritual. Along with all the other crew and guest psychonauts, Scarn would be required to shake his repellant hand.
In the meantime, he watched as Neva Savvan moved from guest to guest looking as enchanting as ever. Dressed in electric blue spider-mesh, she never went near Commander Dallen, her spouse. The poor cuckold was back-slapping and laughing with a group of bridge officers.
Scarn was intrigued by the sweeping arcs of Neva’s movements. He observed closely as she stopped in the middle of the crowded room, touched her cheek with her fingers and looked directly at him. She gave him a short, frank stare, which he returned despite knowing better.
Like the times he and Turtle had been out there on the edge, he knew he was in a place where his life could crash in an instant—but he couldn’t help himself. Maybe that was why men like him always ended up cast below-decks, or shot into th
e core.
The next time Neva glanced his way, Scarn’s thinking turned into jittery sharp-edged lust. They had met previously, here and there. They’d exchanged a few words in public, always being sure to appear polite and remote in front of others.
But on one occasion, a few weeks ago they’d been alone in a crowd, behind a ceremonial facade of synthetic flowers. The display had been erected to celebrate one of her husband’s insignificant successes.
Captain Stattor had emerged that day, wheeled out of his baroque cavern to give everyone his blessing—but Scarn and this woman had been concealed in front of them all. Face to face, they looked at each other without words. All at once, they were at each other, mouth to mouth.
She’d pulled her face away just far enough to say the last thing she had said to him: “Now, I’m going to save your life.”
She’d pulled away, turned, and walked off.
When he had seen her a minute later, she was a different person. She stood in front of the ceremonial facade next to Captain Stattor, beaming with pride at the accomplishments of Commander Dallen, her twitchy dark-bearded husband. Her false display looked so real anyone would have been taken in.
In his chest, Scarn felt an ache he’d never felt before, and part of him was repelled by his obsession, his weakness for this woman. Neva Savvan was beyond his social range. She was crew, a navigator who helped create algorithms that would determine where and when Tarassis might land. More critically, she was one important man’s spouse and the captain’s mistress. Eyeing her with lust was like drinking poison.
To make matters worse, Commander Dallen himself stood drinking and laughing with friends. He wasn’t ten meters distant. Scarn could only wonder why he didn’t notice his wife’s frequent glances and appraisals of another man.
But he was too busy lavishing attention on his clique. Maybe that’s why Neva had wandered. He had seen it happen before. Scarn had met a few of her kind wandering the under-decks, and given the weakness of males, trouble usually followed.