Fugitive From Asteron Read online

  “Hello, Kristin,” I called to her through the radio transmitter at my mouth.

  A flat voice I hardly recognized came over the receiver. “Hi.”

  “You are angry with me.”

  “I’m not angry. I just don’t want to see you any more outside of work. I want you to stay away from me.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I indeed do not want to see you,” she replied, imitating my speech.

  “Kristin, I will not fly with you while you are in such a state.”

  “If I couldn’t fly perfectly well in what you call my state, I wouldn’t be in this plane.”

  “I still will not fly with you until you give me what is called forgiveness.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I apologize. You were right when you said I was rude, but I did not mean to be. And you were right when you said I was mixing up my words—”

  “You were?” A note of hope lifted her voice.

  “Yes. But you are wrong when you say you want me to stay away.”

  “Am I?”

  “You do not want me to stay away, Kristin.”

  “Did you say you were mixing up your words?”

  “Yes, and I apologize profusely.”

  “You mean you don’t really think I’m ugly?”

  I looked across the field at a dainty figure with a helmet inside a large, powerful plane. “I think you are beautiful, Kristin. Amazingly beautiful.” I paused but heard no response, leaving my words to linger in the space between us. “Now let us fly together, so we can feel the thing you call closeness.”

  From my distance I could not perceive any expression beneath Kristin’s helmet. Then I heard her engines start.

  “I forgive you,” a soft voice whispered in my ear.

  Chapter 14

  I walked quickly through the corridors of Space Travel, holding the new item that was now always with me, a well-worn paper that went back and forth between my pocket and my hand numerous times a day: Mykroni’s checklist. I had to rush to complete the week’s tasks that he had assigned. With Friday being a day off for the Earth holiday of Reckoning Day, I had only two days left to finish my work. As I was about to enter one of the simulators, a hand from behind me squeezed my shoulder. From long-standing habit, my body froze in dread.

  “Hey, Alex, I want to tell you something.”

  I turned, relieved to see Mykroni, his warm smile instantly melting my fear.

  “Since you and Kristin seem to be friends, I thought you’d want to know that today’s her birthday.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Here we celebrate a person’s birthday,” he explained.

  On Asteron we celebrated only events important to the rulers, like military victories. “You mean Earthlings celebrate their birth anniversaries as if they were state holidays?”

  “No. As if they were more important than state holidays.”

  “Really?”

  “You see, if a person is special, then the day the person was born is important. We acknowledge it.”

  “How?”

  “By buying the person something, a present.”

  “What kind of present?”

  “Something we think the person will like.”

  Following this advice, I gave Kristin a present. But the results were not as Mykroni had led me to believe, which I told him later that day. Forgetting my new manners, I anxiously entered his office and sat down before being invited. “I gave Kristin a birthday present as you recommended, and it has gotten me into trouble.”

  “Oh? What did you get her?”

  “You said to get her something I thought she would like. Not only did I think she would like the thing I got her, but I knew for sure that she would like it tremendously.”

  “And?”

  “And she did not like it at all.”

  Mykroni smiled. “What’s ‘it’? What did you get Kristin for her birthday?”

  “An Ultimate Sub from Big Eats.”

  “You didn’t?” Mykroni’s smile widened.

  “My affairs seem to amuse you.”

  The smile turned to laughter. I waited patiently.

  Finally, he spoke. “I’m sorry for laughing, Alex. I guess I forgot to mention one key thing about a birthday present.” He leaned forward across his desk, as if trying to touch me with his words. “A present has to have value, which doesn’t mean it has to cost a lot, but it has to be something prized, something more interesting than a common sandwich you can get anytime. Do you know why, son?”

  I thought of the other differences I already had discovered—between bread and cheesecake, between rags and a wardrobe, between weeds and a garden, between life as cheap and life as . . . prized. “Kristin is special, so her present should be too.”

  Mykroni nodded the way he did when I completed an item on his checklist. “You got it, pal.”

  I arranged to take Kristin to what was called a good restaurant, and I got her a better present, perfume—a luxury item that women with only the highest connections could obtain on Asteron. Tonight we would celebrate an event more special than a home run by Alexander: Kristin’s twenty-first birthday.

  That evening Kristin let me fly her plane on our outing. As we headed for the restaurant I had chosen, a site I recognized caught my attention. It was the baseball stadium. It looked calm and peaceful now, a massive, hollow oblong with many rows of seats encircling the dormant field and with vacant parking lots stretching outside of it. The empty arena was a stark contrast to the packed, noisy scene the other night when we were there.

  “The stadium is deserted now,” I commented.

  “With the season over, there won’t be any sign of life down there till next spring.”

  “Even though we are close to the ground, I see no guards. Is the stadium not protected by guards or security systems in the off-season?”

  “The stadium is an old landmark building—baseball’s been around for quite some time—so it wouldn’t surprise me if it was never updated with modern security systems, at least not in the open field. There’s really nothing down there to steal.” She stretched her slender neck to observe the arena below. “The seats are bolted down, and the concessions look like they’re boarded up.”

  “Are there any property break-ins in Rising Tide?”

  “Rarely. We don’t worry much about that, unless it’s a company like MAS, which of course has lots of security.”

  “Did your father worry about break-ins?”

  I detected an edge to her voice. “Not in recent years, and I certainly don’t worry about them on my birthday. Alex, you ask the strangest questions!”

  Although her tone told me that our discussion of the topic I obsessed about was finished, my thoughts lingered on it as we flew to a secluded restaurant a distance away, where I hoped no one was likely to look for me.

  Having left my evening’s attire to my selection, Kristin was pleased with the outfit I had picked: dark silk slacks, a jacket, and a bright-colored shirt. These were clothes from the wardrobe she had helped me to choose—soft, well-fitting fabrics that moved and breathed with me in the utmost comfort.

  “Because you’re tall and slim, those clothes fall just right on you,” she said flatly, like a tailor assessing her work. “And with your looks, you could model clothes, Alex.” Upon seeing the question on my face, she elaborated. “A model is someone a seller hires to wear clothes so that potential buyers can see how they look. But on second thought, you wouldn’t make a good model at all. Your eyes are too . . . penetrating. No one would notice the clothes.”

  From the sky, the restaurant looked as if it were carved from the Earth itself, a piece of jagged stone hanging over a mountain cliff east of Rising Tide, with sharp, angular lines defining the walls and roof. I carefully adjusted the controls to lower the plane gently, so that it sank vertically to the ground like a red blossom falling from a tree on a windless evening. In the twilight we walked toward the expansive quadrangle
s of glass that were the windows. I peered inside to see a large fireplace cast flickering gold lights against the walls and ceiling.

  “Kristin, is there a word for the pleasing way the restaurant looks, the way it seems to invite us to come in?” I looked into eyes that danced with the same fiery sparks as the hearth.

  “Enchanting. It’s called enchanting.”

  When I opened the wooden entrance door, the shocking sights beyond it carried me to a distant clearing by a lake where a sweet voice was humming music. Removing Kristin’s coat, I saw clothing of a thousand shimmering circles that seemed to have been poured over her body. The dress was a thin sheet of white metal that ended well above her knees, covering the pleasing landscape of her body with sparkles, which she called sequins, from her neck to her wrists. The back of the dress was another matter, because there was none, only a spread of suntanned skin from shoulders to waist, smooth, supple skin that felt warm against the cool, hard strip of dress that framed it.

  As we were seated at a table by the fireplace, I saw the rest of the scene described to me in another age: the crisp, white linen, called a tablecloth; the glasses with the long handles, called crystal; the flowers, special ones called orchids, prized for their beauty; the shiny wooden floor where couples danced together to music—the whole of the scene painted for me in a time that seemed so long ago!

  I stared incredulously at Kristin in the golden glow of the room. “Is there a man named Honey on this planet?”

  “What?”

  I knew the answer already, as well as the dark conclusion it implied: The images Reevah had seen in the spies’ quarters meant that Feran’s agents were studying the Earth! Why?

  “Kristin, somewhere far away, someone described a place just like this to me, where a woman wore a garment that sparkled just like yours, a dress that was enchanting, and—”

  “You think my dress is enchanting?”

  “Indeed. And the woman with the sparkling dress danced very close to a man, so their bodies touched and swayed to the rhythm of music in a way that was . . . it was . . . is there a word . . .”

  “Romantic. It was romantic. Through the dancing they showed how they cared for each other.”

  “Yes, yes! And the man’s name was Honey.”

  She smiled. “Lots of people are called honey by folks who care about them. It’s a term of fondness and affection, even love.”

  “But, Kristin, how can a sticky substance oozing from an insect be used to express love?”

  “Have you ever tasted honey?”

  “No.”

  On Asteron, there were bees in the rulers’ fields, but the people were not given honey in their rations. It was one of the many foods cultivated for our leaders, with their protruding bellies, who kept their eating habits a secret from the citizens, with their protruding ribs.

  Kristin ordered honey, and I was surprised to see it served by a human, not a robot. “Being served by a live person is a more pampering experience; that’s why you pay more,” Kristin explained. Pampering. The word intrigued me because that night I felt as if I was indulging my every whim more than any ruler on Asteron. But what I would have considered a disgusting display by them had the most sublime meaning to me. Was it paying for my pampering with my own money and leashing no one’s neck to provide it that made all the difference?

  I learned so many new things that night, such as the remarkable taste of different foods, including honey. I learned about the savoring of a prized wine, and the clinking of the glasses in a kiss that Kristin called a toast.

  “Because a toast, you say, is to honor someone, and today is your birthday, should I give a toast to you?” Her face was radiant in the flickering light of the fireplace, somehow reflecting my own excitement toward the whole of my new universe. I held up my glass: “To the most beautiful pilot in the galaxy.”

  Our glasses touched in a chime of resonating crystal, which seemed to be the most civilized sound in the universe. Then I blinked at her with one eye, and she laughed like the woman in the story from another age.

  “What does the blink with one eye mean, Kristin?”

  “It’s a wink. It’s a way for two people to give a secret signal to each other. Were you giving me a secret signal, Alex?”

  When we rose to dance, we stared at each other for a long moment, then our bodies touched with a sudden urgency that also seemed to be a secret signal.

  From the grassy spot on a mountainside where we later sat, the distant towns below were reduced to dots of light shimmering in the night like the sequins on Kristin’s dress. After we had left the restaurant, I brought the plane down on this secluded spot to catch its remarkable view. We sat on a blanket, gazing at the countryside, which was in sharp focus on that cloudless night. Could the fog obscuring my own existence be lifted too? I wondered. We sat awhile in silent contentment, and then Kristin turned to me. The white sparkle of her dress formed a stunning contrast to the red-brown hair that shone like the polished wood the Earthlings called mahogany.

  “Alex, thank you for making my birthday . . . enchanting.”

  She drew near me, her hand curving my face. I felt her mouth on mine in a touch too soft to be a kiss, a touch that was merely the promise of one. As she withdrew, my mouth followed hers, deciding without me to fulfill the promise right away. Within moments she was in my arms, the intoxicating scent of the perfume soaking into my lungs, my hands memorizing the rhythm of hills and valleys in the soft skin of her back, my mouth locked on hers. I was calm, I was safe, I was on Earth, I told myself. I pulled her down on the blanket, my hands stroking her breasts, my head buried in her hair, my body pressing against hers. I felt her body answer me, her arms embracing me, her head arching back.

  Suddenly, I sat up, my resolute face meeting her astonished one. “Kristin, I know this is rude, but we need to go.” I began to rise, but her arm on mine stopped me.

  “Alex,” she said softly, “aren’t you going to ask me what it’s called when one part of you wants something, but another part says no, and you go back and forth with these two parts tugging at you?”

  I waited quietly for the answer.

  “It’s called a problem. What do you do if you have a problem on a spacecraft, when one computer tells you to go one way and the other tells you to do the opposite?”

  I stretched across the blanket, listening, staring at the sky, weary from the thing Kristin called my problem.

  “The things you like, Alex, things that are enchanting and romantic . . . and closeness. . . . Well, to have those things, you have to talk to the other person.”

  I rolled on my stomach, searching for a way to explain something I could not talk about.

  “Tell me what’s wrong. Will you, Alex?” she asked softly.

  I sighed. She waited. I propped myself up on my elbows. “Kristin, where I come from, women are punished—punished severely—for choosing their own men.”

  “Was there a woman? Did you have someone you were close to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you go out with her?”

  “We were not permitted to go out as you do here, but I saw her secretly.”

  “Did you like her?”

  “Yes. She was the one who told me of the scene between the Earthling woman in the sparkling dress and the man she danced with.”

  “So you had a girlfriend and you saw her secretly. Then what happened?”

  “She . . . became . . . pregnant.”

  Grimly, I met her puzzled glance. “Was that why she was punished?”

  “Yes.”

  “How was she punished? Did her employer fire her?”

  “We had no employers.”

  “Did her friends shun her?”

  “We had no friends.”

  “Did her family abandon her?”

  “We had no families.”

  “Then how was she punished?”

  My hands covered my face. I grimaced against the lash of a whip burning on my back.

&nbs
p; “How was she punished, Alex?”

  The voice I hated screamed inside me until I could feel my fingernails digging into my hair: It is your fault— It is your fault that she—

  I felt Kristin’s arms around me, her sweet breath blowing against my hair. “You’re shaking, Alex. Tell me . . . how was she punished?”

  “She . . . was . . . hanged.”

  Somewhere on the edge of my mind, I heard Kristin gasp. I saw her translucent eyes blacken in horror. At first she was speechless. Then a look of clarity formed on her face, as if she was understanding a matter that had puzzled her. “The rope . . . Jeff, with the rope. . . . You thought . . . and I laughed at you!”

  Kristin’s presence was fading. I could smell the rotting wood of a platform I leaped onto. I could feel the vicious eyes of the guards around me. “I knew our acts were a crime against the people, but she told me she had taken a tablet and she was safe. I believed her. I was too quick to believe her. I wanted too much to believe her.”

  My fists clenched against an enemy I could not hit. “I tried to save her, but I could not. My hands were tied; my mouth was gagged. I was being beaten.” I slammed my fist on the blanket with a thump, but what I heard was the thump of a trapdoor giving way. “I could do nothing . . . but . . . watch . . .”

  My mind could no longer contain the private torment of a coarse rope encircling a fragile neck with golden hair flowing along it. The anguished cry that I had heard only in the secret vault of my mind now exploded into the air. I bellowed it into the soft folds of Kristin’s hair. “I caused her to die! I caused her to die! I caused her to—” Suddenly I choked and my throat burned.

  “Go ahead and cry, Alex.” I felt the whisper of Kristin’s mouth just above my head as she held me.

  “I never cry.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I am not like the Earthlings. I cannot laugh or cr—”