Fugitive From Asteron Page 4

  I had to avoid the guards on the sides, so I furiously pushed forward from the center of the standing throng of thousands, struggling to reach the stage before the officials could seize me. All the time my mind frantically searched for the answer to a question that had none: How could I rescue Reevah?

  The commissioner spoke next: “First, citizen, you behaved irresponsibly, which led to an unlicensed pregnancy. You acted with no regard for the community that has to feed and rear the product of your indiscretion. Nonetheless, we showed leniency in your case by giving you a job in the fields. With the planting season approaching, and you so young and strong, you still had a chance to start over and learn better ways.”

  The counselor added: “The people asked only that you undergo a minor medical procedure to aid with your rehabilitation. And what did you do? Not only did you defy the order for your abortion and sterilization but you showed yourself quite capable of committing violence to thwart these measures.”

  “I want to have my child!” Reevah shouted.

  “Why? To bring another miscreant like yourself into society? You need a license to have a child,” said the commissioner.

  “Then give me the license I need, and let me have it.”

  “And how would you feed it? We cannot give ration cards for unauthorized children. What if everyone acted like you, and people bore children whenever they wished? How would we ever feed them?” added the counselor.

  “I will feed my baby from my own rations.”

  “As you well know, that would not be enough. You would have to bring your child to Children’s World, and they could not accept it without the proper registration,” said the commissioner. “So you were ready to bear a child that would have starved. That is the kind of mother you want to be!”

  “I will see that it lives! I want to have it.”

  “Then you should not have stabbed a guard,” the counselor admonished.

  “In view of the circumstances,” said the commissioner, “any plea for leniency is out of the question.”

  There was a rumble in the audience as I shoved my way to the front. People turned to see what was happening.

  “You have sealed your fate,” said the counselor. “Now name the accomplice in the deed.”

  Reevah said nothing.

  The counselor prodded. “Well, citizen? . . . Well?”

  “The Devil!” Reevah shouted, as I reached the seating area and raced down the center aisle. “My mate is Satan! Yes, the monster from the elders’ old fables. I met Satan, and I wanted him!”

  The crowd whispered. They sensed the presence of a great evil in their lives, and the name Reevah uttered struck fear in them.

  “If anyone touches me or my baby, Satan himself will put a curse on all of you! He will extinguish the light of the sun, and you will all rot in darkness, as you deserve!”

  Reevah’s threat agitated the crowd. Some people screamed. Others shouted, “Witch! Kill her! Kill the witch!”

  “Let her go!” I demanded as I tore away from the guards trying to grab me. “She is innocent,” I cried, jumping onto the stage. “Release her at once! I am the one you want.”

  The guards were about to follow me onto the stage and seize me, but Feran intervened, signaling them to wait. Then he gestured to the commissioner to proceed.

  “Are you responsible for her condition?” asked the commissioner.

  “I never saw him before! You must not let him speak!” Reevah screamed.

  “Quiet!” the commissioner ordered.

  “I am the one who violated the law,” I cried. “I entrapped her. I committed this vile deed because I have no noble desires to serve any of you, but only wicked desires to serve myself. I am responsible. Let her go.”

  “I never saw him before! You must believe me!” cried Reevah.

  The commissioner and the counselor looked confused. They left us for a moment to confer with Feran.

  “So you did not take the tablet,” I said to Reevah.

  “No.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, Reevah? Why?”

  “Because once, just once, I wanted something that was mine. And Honey, you were mine. The little thing I feel living inside me is mine.” She moved her bound hands over her stomach, tightening her clothing so that I could see an impression of the growing object. “Do not be angry with me. Now we must not involve you. I beg you, Honey!”

  “Reevah,” I whispered as I scanned the guards, my voice shaking with terror, “I do not know how to save you.”

  “I cannot be saved. But you can. Listen to me. You must stay out of this!”

  The commissioner returned to address me. “Your name is Arial, and you have been in trouble with the law before. You have been discharged from the military for crimes against the people. Now you continue your unlawful ways. As your punishment . . .”

  The Arm removed a second coffin from the stack.

  “. . . for the deed you have just confessed to—”

  “You will be treated with the calming probe in the morning,” Feran said, interrupting from the gallery.

  The crowd gasped. The Arm put my coffin back in the stack.

  “Very well.” The commissioner nodded at Feran, then turned to me. “Tomorrow you will receive the calming probe, and now you will be whipped until you recant your evil ways.”

  “No!” Reevah shouted. “You will set him free. He is innocent!”

  “Quiet!” ordered the commissioner.

  Reevah closed her eyes and bent her head. The tears that dropped made dark streaks down her shirt.

  “You, Arial, will be dismissed from the space workers’ quarters and transferred to the Mental Health Caring Center, where you will receive your therapeutic treatment,” instructed the commissioner. “When you recover from the procedure, you will be moved to the farms, where you will labor in the fields for the planting season, and then we will decide from there what is to become of you.”

  The counselor added, “Dear citizen, Feran is giving you another chance. Once cured of your disruptive tendencies, you will be able to serve your community with a willing heart and a tranquil spirit.”

  I shut my eyes in horror at the thought of my future, and then I turned to Feran. “I accept my punishment. Now let the female go free.”

  Feran did not deign to answer but pointed his finger at the commissioner to proceed.

  “I think not, citizen,” said the commissioner.

  With a nod of Feran’s head, three guards leaped onto the stage and encircled me.

  “Justice will be dispatched.” The commissioner nodded to the Arm.

  “No!” I screamed. I grabbed Reevah and pulled her toward me. The Arm also grabbed her and pulled her toward him. With her hands tied, Reevah stood helplessly between us. The guards seized me. “No!” I screamed, my arms in an iron grip around her waist, my head pressed against her abdomen, my body raised like a rope tugged by the guards. I thought I heard the thing growing inside her crying out too. My grip was so tight that the guards could not pry me loose.

  Then there was a terrible blow to my head, fists in my eyes, and kicks in my stomach. The guards pulled off my shirt, spread my arms between the whipping posts, and chained my wrists. I twisted savagely to break the chains, but they held firm.

  “You cannot do this!” I screamed so loud that my voice reverberated through the crowd, echoing to sound my alarm again and again. “This is murder! Murder! You vile murderers—”

  The Arm threw a gag over my mouth, tying it tightly around my head. He then picked up his whip and repeatedly lashed my back until my feet gave way and I hung limply by my arms. Then the Arm took care of his other chore. He brought Reevah to the scaffold, tied her legs, and placed the rope around her neck.

  Her much smaller female form beside the monstrous Arm and her long, fragile neck inside the coarse noose moved the crowd to silence.

  “I have a request,” Reevah said. I turned my head to the side to
see her.

  The Arm stopped.

  “I would like the kerchief removed from my head.”

  The Arm looked at the commissioner. The commissioner looked at the counselor. The counselor looked at Feran. No one had ever made such a request. Feran looked out at the spectators, studying their mood. Our leader dispensed his medicine carefully, never exceeding the dosage he thought the people could take. The sudden somber turn of the crowd seemed to weigh on him, because he nodded to the officials on stage.

  The counselor stepped forward. “Of course,” she said, removing Reevah’s kerchief.

  “And I would like my hair unfastened.”

  “As you wish.” The counselor unfastened the clasps.

  The wind, stirring with the threat of a storm, blew Reevah’s golden hair in wisps, like hot flames dancing in the cool gray sky. She turned to the side so that she could see me. With the cloth gagging my mouth, I could not say the things I had never said but urgently wished to say at that moment. I could not tell Reevah how the sweet drink of her laughter poured life into me.

  “Honey, when I lied to you, I never intended you to be punished. Never! Only me.”

  I nodded, wondering how I could accomplish the only act now left to me, that of wiping the torture from her face.

  “Do not let them hurt you. Find a way to . . . to prevent. . . . You are clever. Surely you can find a way—”

  A fury of tears choked her trembling voice. She looked at me helplessly. I wanted to reach out to her, but I could not. I wanted to cry out to her, but I could not. Then I thought of the only thing I could do: I blinked at her with one eye.

  She emitted a tiny laugh, a mere puff of air expelled from her lips. She lowered her head, seeming to struggle against a great turmoil within her. Then Reevah slowly raised her head for the last time, her eyes choosing me for their final sight. The serene glow I knew so well had returned to her face. She held herself in that familiar way that was Reevah. No word in Asteron’s language could describe the way she lifted her head. I could only say what it was not: It was not repenting or guilty or meek or broken. Indeed, it made a mockery of all those things.

  “Honey, the place where the flowers grow is out there somewhere.”

  Her voice was strong now. The giant blue pools that were her eyes looked across the skyline, and what I saw pouring from them was hope.

  “Go and find it. Find the place with the flowers for both of us!”

  Then the Arm of Justice pulled the bolt from the trapdoor and Reevah’s legs fell through it. Her slim body sagged, while her hair rose defiantly in the wind like a banner of sunshine against the dark sky.

  Chapter 5

  I was grateful that the lashes across my back had resumed quickly, because the sting of them forced my eyes shut. I did not recant, so I was beaten until I lost consciousness. When I awoke in my cell, I knew by the fury pounding in my head that I had not yet undergone any calming treatment. Feran had torn from my life the things that mattered to me—first flying, then Reevah—but I was not going to let him take my will. I would die with it, and in the place of my choosing.

  As I lay in the darkness, the events of the prior afternoon scorched my memory. I wanted to squeeze Feran’s throat and watch him turn blue as I wrung the life out of him. But to attack Feran directly was to risk torture by the only device of advanced technology made on Asteron, an electronic gun that was Feran’s exclusive weapon. Its agonizing rays could be adjusted to inflict any level of pain without quite killing the victim, unless Feran gave the ultimate signal. He called this perverted device Coquet. The only genuine softness I had ever seen him display was when he stroked Coquet at his side. For Feran, Coquet was a living presence—an animal, a female, perhaps even a master.

  I remembered how he had conveyed threats to me from the device while I worked: “Coquet is displeased with you. . . . Coquet will want to know about your blunder. . . . Coquet grows impatient with your slowness.”

  The thought of being tortured by Feran and Coquet made me rule out a direct attack on him. I would have to die knowing that Feran lived. I would die without my theater of justice!

  All of these factors had flashed before me while the Arm was lashing my back. With my body strung between the posts and my arms throbbing each time my legs gave way, I knew I would rather face my end than face the calming probe, and I decided right then how I would do it.

  Feran forbade willful dying, which he interpreted as a person’s lack of appreciation for all the things our leader provided. Many ungrateful citizens, however, did take their own lives. Some jumped off buildings, some plunged in front of moving vehicles, and some just dived into the lake and floated back head-down. But I wanted none of that. I resolved to die in one place only: in Feran’s spacecraft.

  I hoped to resist the guards’ guns long enough to see what I chose for my final scene. I wanted to see the alien Alexander execute his home run and to know that somewhere in the universe human creatures were laughing and, remarkably, unafraid.

  Lying in my cell, I was reviewing my plan when—finally—I heard the thump of the guard’s steps down the corridor. I closed my eyes and feigned unconsciousness. As he walked toward me, the air thickened with the odor of a substance forbidden to citizens but somehow obtainable by guards: whiskey. He stopped at my cell, and the heavy stench from his beverage descended on me. I felt the beam of his flashlight moving over my face. I heard his wheezing. Then he walked on.

  When he left my corridor, I sat up and reached into a crack in the floor, where I located a small piece of metal that I had kept hidden in this room. It was once a paper clip, but I had carefully molded it into something useful to me. With this tool I unlocked the collar around my neck. I could work quickly, because this task was not new to me.

  On previous occasions I had taken great care to arrange the room’s only furnishings, a torn shawl for a blanket and a clump of straw for bedding, so that it looked as if my body were sleeping under the fabric with the chain at the neck. That way I could slip out for a while undetected, and then return before daybreak. This time I performed the task indifferently. I would not be coming back.

  I forced my stiff, aching arms through the sleeves of my worker’s shirt, which had been thrown on the floor next to me. Then I made a shaky attempt to stand, but everything in the room swirled around like water down a funnel, unsettling my stomach. I collapsed against the wall and grabbed the bars of the window until the sickening nausea passed and I could finally steady my legs.

  When everything stopped swirling, my eyes met those staring at me from Feran’s poster. In unrepeatable words, I said my farewell.

  I planned to follow the escape route that had worked for me previously. Because the window in the room for attitude adjustment was barred, I would leave through another one.

  With my small metal tool, I manipulated the door lock. It was a temporary one, which I easily picked. I knew of this lapse in security because I had damaged the other lock some time ago. No parts had yet arrived for making the repairs. Even security, with its priority over all else, now waited while scarce resources were summoned to ward off the famine and, of course, to keep Feran’s favorite place—the space center—running.

  The lights were off in the hallway, which meant it was still the blackout period. This aided me as I made my way out.

  Cool air hit my face as I jumped out a window at the end of the corridor. I felt a brief satisfaction in knowing it was the last time I would have to pass the billboards lining the streets, which I could read in the moonlight: Let us eat two meals a day. Fill your bucket before the water pump shuts at night. Our coats make excellent blankets. If Feran decides, we do.

  Beginning my half-mile walk to the space center, I saw up ahead the imposing glow it made in the night sky. It looked like a mythical kingdom from books long forbidden called fairy tales, which the elders still related. The lights from the space center were the only break in the darkness caused by the scarcity of power that turned our city into a
graveyard every night. The power station, a marvel of advanced foreign technology, had been run by the aliens when they conducted their mining operations. With the mines near depletion and the aliens leaving, the resources to run the power were also vanishing. I walked on, reminding myself that the many questions these facts provoked would never be answered, and it was no longer necessary for me to wonder about them.

  Feran’s spacecraft, scheduled to take off at dawn, would be on the airfield. My goal was to reach the ship before I was killed. Once inside, I was sure the guards would seize me, but I hoped not until after I had started the auxiliary computer and played the video of Alexander.

  I had gone a few blocks when a small vehicle came to a stop alongside me. Expecting this, I forced a calm turn of my head to face a guard getting out of his car and walking toward me. He looked annoyed at my intrusion on his routine. With a small flashlight he read the identification card clipped to my shirt.

  “What are you doing out at this hour?”

  With factories and plants affected by the power shutoffs, there was a shortage of manufactured parts for the communication and transportation systems. So supervisors resorted to sending workers out on foot to deliver messages or perform other errands at all hours. I gave the guard an excuse about being on such an errand.

  He eyed me suspiciously. Then he pulled an electronic device from his pocket and scanned my card to learn more about me. But the device did not pull up any data; its screen remained blank. The official scanned my badge again. Then again. He swore at the object in his hand and almost flung it on the ground. Then he returned to his vehicle and sped off. Like so much on Asteron, his device had stopped sensing anything.

  I continued walking until the dilapidated old buildings of my city were behind me and the modern space center loomed ahead. It felt as if I were on a plank between two opposite worlds: an archaic land of torture and a shining new land of interplanetary travel. The first world was Asteronian-made, but the other was built with foreign technology and money from the mining operations. What was the force driving these two worlds? What would happen if they collided? I wondered, but I reminded myself that it was no longer of any concern to me.