9

While sentience takes many forms, love has but one.

Holmar Zylo-Nom

Dromo mystic

Standard year 1945

The Planet New Hope

Dorn rolled right, rolled left, and felt the whip bite his flesh. The guard had years of experience and landed the blows so they crisscrossed each other. The punishment lasted two or three minutes and the pain was nearly intolerable. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the beating was over. Hands grabbed Dorn's arms, pulled the teenager to his feet, and shoved him toward the beach. Branches slapped the boy's face and tore at what remained of his clothes. The guards, a man and a woman, were rather cheerful, as if the whole procedure was routine.

Dorn, who had assumed his escape was nothing short of remarkable, was taken aback. He looked from the man to the woman as they propelled him out of the jungle and onto the sand. Her head had been shaved and painted with intricate designs. "How did you find me?"

The woman chuckled and glanced at the man. "Shall we tell him?"

"Sure," the man chuckled. "Why not? The more that knows, the less runnin' we'll have to do."

"Good point," the woman said sagely. "We found you with this." The guard held a black box in her hand. It featured buttons and a small screen.

Dorn frowned. "You found me with that? What is it?"

"Nothing fancy," the man replied easily. "The mush you've been eatin' contains a small amount of radioactive material. The box tracks the emissions, plots them on a grid, and shows us where to look. The rest is easy."

"Pretty neat, huh?" the woman said brightly.

"Yeah," Dorn agreed sourly. "My compliments to the chef." The guards laughed as if genuinely amused.

Breakfast was over by the time the threesome made their way back to the encampment, and, in spite of the fact that Dorn knew the food contained potentially harmful chemicals, he would have given practically anything for a bowl of mush.

It wasn't to be, since the other prisoners had eaten and were ready to leave. They watched the teenager arrive with a mixture of sympathy and satisfaction.

As before, the first part of the day was relatively easy, and would have been enjoyable had the circumstances been different. The air was cool, birds chattered, and the road was flat.

The major problem was the trucks. They were invariably huge, had protective mesh over their intake ports, and highly individualized paint jobs that ran to red, orange, and blue. They carried steel reinforcing rods, sheet metal, and in one case, huge ingots of aluminum. Because the trucks and their cargoes were so valuable, the haulers mounted weapons blisters, each of which could fire a thousand rounds a minute, leaving all but the wealthiest hijackers to focus on lesser prey.

However, what amounted to little more than a bouncy ride for the truckers was a source of constant misery for the prisoners. They were peppered with gravel each time a truck passed, forced into the ditch when drivers hugged the edge of the road, and forced to eat dust long after a vehicle had passed.

The midmorning rest break was little more than a pause next to the road while people squatted over the ditch and children brought them water. Medics treated blisters for a while, quit the moment the whistle blew, and returned to their air-conditioned van.

As the sun rose in the sky and the air grew warmer, the prisoners crossed a long series of wooden bridges. Dorn realized they were following a chain of islands out into the southern ocean. Blue sky arched overhead, the chain rattled monotonously, and the jungle came and went as if unsure of its purchase. Water glittered through the green, teased Dorn with its cool promise, and vanished as the land pushed it away.

The sun eventually reached its zenith and hung like a fireball in the sky. Dorn began to sweat, children complained, and the line slowed. Whips cracked and the guards shouted. "Come on, people, pick up the pace, the next rest stop is only two miles away."

It might have been a lie, but the promise was sufficient to quicken the pace, and no more than an hour had passed before the foot-weary travelers were herded off the road and into a clearing. The camp was similar to the one they had occupied the night before and showed signs of constant use.

Once freed, most of the prisoners, Dorn included, headed for the water barrels. He drank as much of the brackish liquid as he could hold, used a double handful to wash his face, and joined one of the steadily growing chow lines.

The mush smelled wonderful, and much as the teenager wanted to go without, his body wouldn't allow it. The gruel, chemicals and all, disappeared quickly and left him hungry when it was gone. Others felt the same way, and scuffles broke out here and there. The whips cracked and order was restored.

Dorn had returned his bowl, and was headed for some shade, when a hand touched his arm. He turned to find the girl from the water line standing before him. She cupped a bowl of mush and held it up. "Here, it will protect your strength."

Dorn shook his head. "No, I had mine. You must have yours as well. If not for yourself, then for your brother."

The girl had brown eyes. They were large and brimmed with tears. Her voice was quiet and matter of fact. "My brother died last night. They buried him with the others outside the camp. Here ... eat... I had kitchen duty. This was left over."

Dorn accepted the food. He noticed her fingers were long and slender. They felt cool where they touched his skin. "I'm sorry."

The girl shrugged. "So am I. But it was inevitable. If not last night, then tonight, or tomorrow. He was too young to work, medicine costs money, so the medics refused to treat him. Quick, you must eat, or the break will end."

So Dorn ate, asked the girl questions between gobs of mush, and heard her story. Her name was Myra, and she, along with her brother, had been orphaned when the barge her parents had built capsized in the floods.

Myra, still holding her baby brother, had survived more by luck than skill and fought her way free of the current. She rested within a gently swirling eddy, placed the infant on a piece of driftwood, and paddled for shore. Dorn, who remembered his own experience in the river, was impressed by her bravery and presence of mind.

Once ashore Myra had searched for her parents, wandering the riverbank for two days before locating the wreckage of their boat, and her father's body. In spite of the fact that the rain-soaked soil was relatively soft, it took all of Myra's strength and the better part of a day to dig a shallow grave and drag the corpse out of the water.

Dorn imagined how frightened she must have been, and how determined, as the girl buried her father and did what she could for the baby boy. There was still no sign of her mother, she said, so it seemed safe to assume that she was dead.

Unable to salvage more than a few odds and ends from the wreckage, Myra made her way to the nearest road and followed it toward the city. Once there, she hoped to locate her mother's sister in hopes that her mother would be there, or, failing that, her aunt would take them in.

Such was not to be, however, since the bounty hunters caught them well short of the city and, when Myra was unable to prove her solvency, took both children into custody. From there it was a short, uncomfortable journey to the holding pens where she had first encountered Dorn.

Dorn, who like most of the boys from the academy had scant opportunity to meet girls, was drawn to her unaffected beauty, but more than that to the tranquility in her eyes, and the dignity of her actions. There were all sorts of things he wanted to say, but inexperience left him tongue-tied, and a guard preempted his words. "Hit the road, slimeballs. The last one in shackles gets a taste of the whip."

Pandemonium broke out. Dorn yelled, "I'll see you at dinner!" and caught her nod.

People ran back and forth. Men swore at each other, mothers called their children, and whips cracked as the guards herded the prisoners toward the road. For reasons not entirely clear, they had been ordered to maintain their positions in line. Dora watched for the man in front of him, slipped into the slot behind, and wrapped the scarf around his ankle. Now that he knew Myra, the scrap of cloth had taken on more value and he didn't want to lose it. The shackle, which was oiled each night, closed with a click. Two or three minutes passed before the line jerked into motion. Dorn spent them peering ahead trying to spot Myra. He thought he succeeded but couldn't be sure.

The afternoon was long and hot with little more than occasional water breaks and glimpses of ocean to break the dusty monotony. That, plus the news about his parents, should have left Dorn tired and depressed. Why did he feel so energized, then? So excited? Verging on happy? He decided it was because of Myra. Which he felt didn't say much for his character, or his qualities as a son.

Here he was, a virtual slave, marching toward god only knew what kind of man-made hell, his parents recently dead, and he was all aflutter over a girl he barely knew. It was stupid, uncaring, and morally reprehensible. Unfortunately, however, Dorn discovered that knowing his thoughts were wrong, and changing them, were two different things. The sorry fact was that no amount of self-admonition was sufficient to change the way he felt. Dinner, and the opportunity to see Myra again, had become his central goal in life. Nothing else mattered.

Dorn plodded on, thinking of little except Myra. The day wore on, and it was mid-afternoon, halfway between lunch and dinner, when a long black hover limo overtook the prisoners and started to pass. Empty trucks passed all the time, blowing their air horns and spraying the prisoners with gravel. But this was different. Partly because it was a car, and a rather expensive one at that, and partly because it eased by, as if the passengers cared about the prisoners, or wanted to look at them.

Dorn turned just in time to see that a middle-aged man with black hair and a slightly hooked nose occupied the front passenger seat, while a girl, perhaps Dorn's age or a little younger, sat just behind.

The man had no interest in the prisoners, to judge by his expression, but the girl did, and for the second time that day Dorn found himself staring into a pair of brown eyes, eyes that seemed to see and acknowledge him. Then she was gone, leaving the young man to wonder who she was, and why it mattered.

Time seemed to drag after that, but eventually passed, as did the heat of the day. Dorn had played horsey to a three-year-old for about two hours by the time the column veered off the road and entered a rest area. The prisoners knew the routine by now. Shackles were released, lines were formed, and food was served with minimum fuss.

Dorn spotted Myra almost immediately, resisted the temptation to rush over, and came to regret it as another youth sidled up and started a conversation. Dorn closed the distance as subtly as possible, entered the line behind them, and waited for Myra to look his way. His reward came a few moments later when she saw him, smiled, and turned her back on a clearly disappointed admirer. "Dorn! It's good to see you. Shall we eat together?"

It was like a dream come true, marred only by dirty looks from the would-be suitor, the always lumpy gruel, and the less than ideal circumstances. Dorn had never been part of a romantic dinner, but had seen plenty of them on vids, and knew the setting was way wrong.

Still, Myra was easy to talk to, and it wasn't long before Dorn heard himself blurting out nearly every secret he had, including his expulsion from school, the death of his parents, and his feelings of guilt. It turned out that Myra had similar feelings about her brother's death, and the commonality drew them together in a way that no amount of small talk ever could.

Finally, after what seemed like minutes but was actually hours, they looked around and realized that with very few exceptions, the rest of the prisoners were asleep. It seemed natural to lie side by side, and later, when a cloudburst drenched everyone to the skin, to wrap arms around each other so that bodies touched, and lips nearly met. It was then that Dorn felt himself harden, cursed his untrustworthy body, and recited math formulas in his head. The strategy worked. Myra fell asleep, and so, eventually, did he.

Morning dawned bright and clear. Dorn, who found his legs wonderfully tangled with Myra's, felt embarrassed, saw that she did too, and hurried to extricate himself. They headed for separate privies but met in the chow line.

Rumors, many of which were wrong, had been flying up and down the column every day. This morning's buzz, supposedly based on comments made by a guard, suggested that their final destination lay less than a half day away.

Dorn suspected the rumor was part of an elaborate trick, designed to make the prisoners more malleable, but Myra thought it might be true, and hoped that it was. And, despite his doubts, Dora had to admit that the guards seemed more cheerful than usual, as if they had something to look forward to. Or maybe it was his imagination.

In any case, the breakfast chores were completed in record time and the column was underway shortly thereafter. Time passed quickly, and the terrain gradually changed. The wooden bridges that marked the more recent portion of their journey were all behind them, and ahead was a climb up through gently rolling hills.

Hand-fitted rock walls appeared to either side of the road, holed here and there by careless drivers. The vegetation, lush till now, grew steadily more sparse, until it virtually disappeared, leaving little more than wind-tortured shrubs to hold the nutrient-poor soil. The grade, and the consequent switchbacks, were both a help and a hindrance.

The good part was the fact that south-bound trucks were forced to slow down—their engines roaring as they climbed upward. The hindrance came as the result of the climb itself, which was hard for Dorn and represented a real trial for those less able.

Still, each footstep brought the summit a little bit closer, and with it, the promise of a downhill grade. Dorn looked up, hoped to see the top, and saw three wooden crosses. They were positioned like the letter X and bore the remains of three bird-pecked corpses. Mouths hung open as empty eye sockets stared into the sun. A breeze stirred their rags, raised dust from the ground, and touched Dorn's face. The odor of rotting flesh filled his nostrils and made him gag. Others had similar reactions and looked away. No one said anything. It could happen to them, any one of them. That was what they were supposed to think.

Finally, sluggishly, the column lurched over the hill's crest and wound down the other side. The view was both horrifying and magnificent. The hills dropped sharply in front of them and terminated on a flat, triangle-shaped point of land. Azure water sparkled for as far as the eye could see and foamed as it surged past partially scrapped spaceships, up the slightly rising beach, and onto dry sand. Some of the vessels were nearly intact, while others were so diminished they amounted to little more than piles of junk.

Dora, who had grown up on and around spaceships, recognized the remains of Matsuzaki Data Liners, Sook Intersystem Freighters, Traa Drone Ships, Kilworthy Unihulls, Morgan High Haulers, and many, many more. It was an amazing and, for anyone who loved ships, depressing sight.

But as notable as the ships were, the human ants who worked on them were even more remarkable, especially in light of the fact that they were using hand tools to accomplish tasks that would normally fall to androids and cyborgs. Tiny sparks flew as plates were cut away, water splashed as beams hit the oncoming tide, and men rushed to recover the newly harvested wealth. It was difficult to see what happened in the surf, but the cranes were plain enough, as was the massive conveyor belt.

Now the trucks loaded with metal made sense, as did the efforts to find and import cheap labor. Labor that no doubt lived in the warren of huts, hovels, and shanties that stretched from the edge of the mud flats up and around the sturdy-looking one- and two-story buildings that crowded the delta's center. Here were the quarters in which they would live, close by the furnaces and mills necessary to melt, process, and finish the metal recovered from the beached ships.

Beyond it all, a pristine white mansion occupied the farthermost tip of land, shimmered in the afternoon heat, and looked all the more palatial for the squalor that surrounded it.

Here then lay Dorn's young adulthood, assuming he survived long enough to have a future, given the conditions below.

The sight of what awaited them had a sobering effect on the prisoners, reducing them to silence by the time they reached the flats. The sign there was huge and bore the likeness of a broken cogwheel. The name "Sharma Industries" had been spelled out in letters ten feet tall. Dorn figured it was for their benefit, since no one else was likely to see it.

The guards yelled insults at their peers as they herded prisoners through a checkpoint and were greeted in similar fashion. Dorn took note of the nine-foot-high durasteel fence, and the razor wire strung along the top, and knew escape was highly unlikely.

The line slowed, came to an occasional stop, and moved forward in a series of short jerks. One by one the prisoners passed under a strange-looking arch. A camera or something very similar hung over the prisoners' heads and winked as they passed below. Dorn heard cries of pain, the crack of whips, and felt his heart race. What did the thing do? And how did it work?

He soon found out. A guard ordered him forward, the device winked red, and the man in front of him clutched his face. A whip cracked, the line advanced, and the light flashed again. Dorn felt heat sear his forehead and stumbled. He caught himself, heard someone whimper, and looked over his shoulder. The woman behind was crying, and a bright blue bar code had appeared on her forehead. Dorn knew he now wore one as well. The workers had been branded.

Dorn was still feeling the pain when he heard a rumble. He'd been raised with similar sounds and scanned the sky. The ship was a twenty-five-year-old Kawabata Starlight Express. She had a reentry-scarred hull, registration numbers so faded they were nearly impossible to read, and a list to port. She approached from the west, and flew crabwise, as if subject to control problems. The freighter's repellors, the cyclonelike force fields that kept the vessel aloft during takeoffs and landings, were badly out of tune and screamed discordantly as they carved rooster tails through the shallows. Dorn heard six distinct sounds where there should have been one.

The teenager watched with increasing concern as the spaceship jerked, staggered, and resumed its inward drift. Either the pilot was incompetent or, and this seemed more likely, fighting a major malfunction. But the reason for the problem didn't matter much, not if the repellors hit land, not if they touched something structural...

Suddenly all the repellors stopped at once. The ship, which had been no more than a hundred feet off the ground to start with, dropped twenty-five feet, and Dorn's heart skipped a beat. Then, as if from an unwillingness to die, five out of six repellors came on-line, the ship caught herself, and continued her inward drift. Dorn shouted a warning, a siren began to wail, and five man-made tornadoes spiraled up the beach.

Workers were plucked off the ground, steel plates whirled like autumn leaves, and sand spiraled into the air. The prisoners tried to run, tried to get away, but the chain held them in place. It jerked this way and that as people ran in different directions.

A sudden wind tugged at their clothes as chunks of wood, fiberboard, and plastic sheeting flew into the sky, swirled like snowflakes, and fell toward the ground. In the meantime the deadly repellors cut parallel swathes through the shanties, killing countless people where they stood. Others, screaming in terror, were lifted into the air and released seconds later. Some fell on buildings, were impaled on poles, or, in the case of one lucky individual, landed on the sand.

Dorn yelled at the guards, ordered them to release the prisoners, but they were gone. The shadow arrived first, followed by a total eclipse of the sun, and heartrending screams as energy sliced through flesh. The teenager watched helplessly as an entire line of people, still connected by a twenty-foot length of chain, were pulled into the air. He thought of Myra, saw a woman ripped apart, and yelled her name.