by Steve Perry
"No, Baba. I went straight to the post and came straight home."
"Why did you not return to the post and call me?"
Mwili sighed. It was nearly twenty klicks from the rocks to the supply post. He would have saved all of an hour on the call, and still had to walk home—the supply warden didn't give anything away for free, and Mafuta Kalamu would never have agreed to pay for his son to ride home, not in ten times ten thousand years. That would have been sixty-five kilometers he would have had to walk, and that made no sense at all. But he wouldn't say that to his father. Instead, he said, "I thought it would be better to come home. The distance is nearly the same, and I could get started quicker on the repairs."
"You brought the coil?"
Mwili reached into his gi and pulled the coil out. It was the size of a drink can, wrapped in a greasy rag.
"Yes, sir."
Grudgingly, Mafuta said, "That was good." But the faint praise vanished as he suddenly came to the point that Mwili had feared the most: "But—what of the supplies? You just left them there?"
Mwili took a deep breath and allowed it to escape quietly. Why, no, father, he thought, I packed all three hundred kilos of food, seedlings, chemicals and electronics into my back pocket and carried them home!
Of course I left them there!
Aloud, the boy said, "I hid them."
"You hid them? Where?"
"Behind the center of the Three Rocks. Under a tarp, covered with dirt. They won't be visible unless you are looking for them—"
"And you think anybody who sees an abandoned flitter won't look around, fool?"
"Baba, what else was I to do?" Careful! That was dangerously close to the sin of Impertinence.
But the smaller sin was lost in the larger for his father. "Three months' worth of supplies! The seedlings will likely freeze! And there are dust dogs who prowl the rocks!"
There was nothing more Mwili could say. The last dust dog seen within a hundred klicks had been spotted more than five years past, and moving away, at that. The tarp and dirt would probably protect the seedlings. And the chances of anybody passing along that stretch of road for the next week were slimmer than Mwili’s pet ferret.
The hard-faced man raised the strap. "You should have stayed with the supplies, to protect them against thieves or animals! I would have come looking for you, in a day or two. But no, you wanted the comfort of a soft bed, the warmth of a fire, over our precious supplies! Kneel!"
Mwili dropped to his knees, landing harder for his exhaustion. He leaned forward, bending at the waist, hunching his back. He heard the whistle of the thick leather just before he felt the slap and burn below his shoulders. He did not cry out, for he had long since learned that only made his father more angry at him for being weak.
"Pray!" His father's voice was a roar. Pray for your sins, boy!"
Mwili prayed, but could his father hear his thoughts, he would have swung the strap harder. He prayed for a lightning bolt to strike his father. For the earth to open and swallow him, for—
The second stroke landed, overlapping the first only slightly. His father was an expert with the strap, God knew he had enough practice! The burn spread.
How can you allow this, God? How can the God of the Biblioscript, who is supposedly just and merciful, allow me to be whipped for something that wasn't my fault? Where is the Justice in that? The Mercy of Heavenly Love?
The third lash smacked into him, farther down his back. That one hurt more, there was a bruise there from the flitter's rough landing. The whippings themselves left no permanent marks—his father had made the strap wide enough to spread the pain without cutting the skin—but they did hurt. Although lately, it was not so much the pain as the unfairness of it. He would have replaced the damned coil, had it been up to him! But no—!
"Beg the Lord's forgiveness, son! Change your sinning ways!"
Crouched under the flailing strap in the cold light of the exterior lamps, Mwili prayed. Take him now, God. Take him and take this whole fucking planet!
His only answer was the whistling of the strap, and the dust it raised from his jacket when it landed.
His mother sat on the worn form-chair, pretending to read from the Holy Script when Mwili walked past her toward his room. The worn and old electronic reader on her lap hummed constantly, and squeaked each time she pushed the cheap mechanical button to advance the text on the small screen. She spared him a quick glance when he passed, then stared back down at the dim and flickery gray screen of the reader, lest her husband see her offering any kind of sympathy to her son. As an adult, she was not subject to the strap, but an hour's lecture on one Rule or another was not uncommon. Himself, Mwili preferred the strap to the preaching.
The boy did not speak. Later, when Mafuta was asleep, she might visit the fresher, and risk a side trip to his room, for a quick word or affectionate touch with her son. Only then.
In his room, Mwili knew he was too tired to wait for his mother's possible visit. The trip to town, loading the supplies, then unloading and walking from Three Rocks had been enough to exhaust him. Fifteen from the strap had finished the job completely. He was bone-weary, and in his misery, could only think of one thing: he had to get out. Somehow, he had to get away from his father, from Cibule, from the Svare System altogether. There were twenty-two other explored star systems out there, somewhere, fifty-odd inhabited worlds, and scores of wheel worlds. The Confed took a heavy tax from every planet to push Bender ships out to explore yet more systems and worlds. Among all that, there had to be places better than here. There had to be.
It had been on his mind for months now, hazy and ill-defined. His studies on the holoproj net had shown him that life was different elsewhere. He was a good student, he enjoyed the learning time, time he did not have to face his father and the ever-present farm work. There were other ways to live, and his resolve to find them crystalized as he lay on the narrow cot, face down to avoid pressure on his sore back.
That it was impossible meant little to him. He was too young to ship with the Confed military yet, though they would draft him in a few years; nobody would hire a boy his age for any kind of legitimate work offworld; and he had all of nineteen stads to his name. That was less than half as much needed just to buy an application for a ticket to anywhere offplanet. Yet, there had to be a way. He had to find it.
Otherwise, his future was grim. Another four years of beatings, then he would be a "man." Until then, he'd still be in thrall to his father, and he'd continue to work the dusty shamba fields, trying to keep the stubby wembe plants alive through the quakes, dry spells and the cold. Then, he could look forward to his impress into the military.
Four years. Until then, his only other choice was to run off. Onplanet, he might lie about his age, and maybe get a job as a contract laborer on somebody else's farm. Or as a flunky to some merchant in Choo Mji—the worn, plastic-prefab Toilet Town. Until Mafuta came to fetch him back, which would happen in short order. And every minute of every day, God would ride on his shoulder, unseen but weighing upon him like an overcoat of lead. How much interest God took in Cibule might be open to argument on another world, but not here; the inhabitants were certain of their place in God's hierarchy—at the top.
Mwili managed to drag himself up from the canvas cot. He took the two steps necessary to cross the width of his room to where his ferret prowled the inside of his own cage. The boy slid the mesh door up and put his hand inside. Nyota scurried up the boy's wrist and arm, to perch on his shoulder. He chittered excitedly, knowing the night's hunt was about to begin.
Mwili managed a small smile. He scratched the spot at the base of the creature's shoulders near the recall caster. The smell of the animal's musk was high. The boy caught the thin creature gently in his hand and brought him around so that he could stare into Nyota's face.
"I think I understand how you must feel," Mwili said.
With his other hand, the boy pinched the pressure release on the recall caster. The button
-sized unit popped away from the ferret's back. Were he to release the little hunter now, there would be no way to make him return after his night of mousing. Mwili stared at the little electronic caller for a moment, before walking to the window. He touched a control, and the triple-paned thermoplast grated as it slid over its warped track. Cold air rushed into the small room and enveloped both boy and ferret in its frigid arms.
"Go," he said gently. "Go and make a meal of some fat shamba rodent stealing the grain. Do it whenever you wish from now on. Be free." He put the ferret upon the sill, and it. was but a heartbeat before the creature scurried down the outer wall and ran into the darkness. It did not look back.
Before he closed the window, Mwili held the caster like a marble and thumbed it into the darkness after the ferret. There would be no call to return at the next dawn, nor any dawn thereafter. Mwili had always treated the ferret well, loving it as much as he knew how to love anything. Or anybody. But he had proscribed its life by keeping it caged, just as his own life was limited. It would not do to leave his friend imprisoned while he escaped. Not after he'd finally realized the kinship.
He stared into the darkness, and for the first time in years, he felt tears form and begin to stream down his face. He closed the window before they could freeze on his cheeks. Farewell, little brother. Farewell.
It was midmorning before he had the coil rewound yet again. He trudged to the south field, where his father worked the dying soil with the old tractor. The vehicle was even older than the flitter, hardly more than a repellor plate with antique ultrasonic diggers and cutters. Amidst the cloud of dust, his father looked like a statue riding the tractor, both man and machine covered with the powdery earth, a red-brown hue, a single biomechanical unit.
He waited while his father finished the row, then brought the tractor to idle near where Mwili stood.
"Yes?"
"I have finished the coil, Baba."
"Took you long enough."
"I'll go to repair the flitter now."
"Be quick about it."
Mwili hesitated. There was no chance, but he might as well ask. "Could I take the tractor? It would save three hours—"
"No. I will not slack my work so that you may ride in comfort! Meditate upon your sins as you walk.
Gain humility from prayer. Such is the Rule."
The strap was inside, out of his father's reach, and even if it had not been, Mwili could not have brought himself to echo the religious refrain. He was leaving, forever, and whatever he said now would be his last words to his father, whether the man knew it or not. Instead, he said, "Good-bye, Baba." With that, he turned and started walking away. He would miss his mother, but it would not come as a surprise to her.
She knew. She had known for some time, he was sure of that. At night, or when his father was away, he heard it in her voice. He might have offered to take her with him but it was her choice to remain. She could have left years ago, and had not. She had her own destiny, and she had made her decision, based on things she would not explain to her son. Of his leaving, she knew, and he knew that she knew. There was no need to speak of it. Faced with her tears, he was not certain of his resolve, so he thought to avoid them altogether.
Behind him, his father might have considered calling him back, might have thought to chastise him, but he did not. Instead, the only sound was the whine as the tractor's old repellors cycled back online, and blew clouds of dust into the cold morning sky. Mwili marched away, passing the house where he'd lived his entire life. His eyes were dry, and he felt less regret leaving his home than he had for the loss of his ferret.
He did not look back, and thus did not see the tiny form of that ferret, scratching at the window of Mwili's room, patiently waiting to be admitted back into his cage.
Three
"AUTHORIZATION CODE."
The Confed operator's voice was cold, and it was not a question but an order. Give the improper response, and you'd be in shit to the eyebrows, and fast. Do something really stupid, like try to manually bail out, and the wheelworld's antiship guns would fry you faster than you could blink. Coming and going was at the Confed's order, period.
Ferret punched a button, and his com computer fed a binary number series into the outgoing data. The numbers were legit, but the ship had no right to them. Such counterfeits were expensive, but part of the biz, figured in on every trip. High Confederation officials couldn't be bought easily, but the lower echelons supplemented their pay with graft; one of the many side benefits of being one of the Chosen.
There came a wait as the controller's computer digested and checked out Ferret's code.
" Don't Look, you are cleared for sling out."
"Copy, Chüsai Control," Ferret said into the com. "I am locked into sling."
"Stand by," the tech said. "Six seconds to commence. Five… four…"
Ferret glanced at Stoll, who looked to be asleep in his form chair. This was all automatic; Control would put them into an orbit that would avoid the lumbering boxcars dropping into the planet's gravity well; after that, he would fire up the ship and take over until they reached Bender distance.
—two… one… and… launch," the tech said.
Ferret felt the soft hand of sling acceleration press him against the form chair as Chüsai Tomadachi spat the Don't Look Back into the vacuum outside its metal walls.
His viewscreens lit, and the photomutable gel cameras fore and aft showed deep ahead and the wheelworld behind as the ship left the city's embrace. He was glad to be away. There had been violence in his life—a smuggler and thief had to count that as part of the business, like it or not—but the incident in the bar had dismayed him. Not so much for what he had done, but for his loss of control. The slaver was scum, and he would recover from his injuries; likely that his stock-in-trade—people—fared far worse most of the time. No, if there was any kind of karmic justice, the slaver deserved worse than he had been dealt. But to slip the restraints of reason like that had shaken Ferret a great deal. Control of his mind was paramount; elsewise, there was the chance that he might slip into a state of fanaticism. Just like-Just like his father.
Before he did that, he would rather be dead.
"Thinking about the slaver?"
Ferret continued to look at the holoprojic screens.
A Confed cutter hung against the blackness, waiting to strike should the unthinkable happen and somebody who wasn't supposed to leave or arrive tried to do so. The cutter seemed to flash by as the Don't Look flicked past.
"Yes. I was thinking about the slaver."
"I've never seen you like that," Stoll said. "Not in ten years."
Ferret turned his chair slightly, to look at the fat man. "I've never told you about where I came from.
What I was before we met."
Stoll laughed softly. "I remember our first meeting. I had to laugh. You, a skinny kid, trying to steal my flitter. I thought surely you were brain-damaged."
Ferret smiled at the memory. "Yeah. I was pretty cocky by then. I'd been in the lanes for five years, and surviving pretty well. I thought the galaxy was my oyster."
"You were lucky."
"Ferret nodded. "Very. I could have died a hundred ways. There must be—" He stopped.
"—gods that watch out for fools," Stoll finished. "But you don't like to talk about gods."
"We've never discussed religion," Ferret said. His voice was stiff.
"That's the point, lad. We've been running together for ten years, and we never have talked about such things. Even a fairly stupid fat man such as myself notices such omissions."
Ferret sighed. "I tried to put all that behind me. Where I came from, what I was raised. I try not to think about it!"
"Haven't been too successful at it, have you?"
Ferret glanced back at the screens. No help there. "Everything was fine on automatic. "Sometimes," he said finally. "But the slaver and his whip brought back an old memory."
Stoll didn't speak. He was very good
that way, never pressing. He'd never asked once, not in ten years, about Ferret's past. Ferret had been Stoll's apprentice at first, then his partner, and each of them had kept their own secrets without any prying from the other. They were friends, but not snoopy ones.
Ferret let the silence stretch. He took a deep breath. "I was raised on Cibule," he said. "Son of a dirt-poor farm couple steeped in The God of the Holy Script. It wasn't a pleasant childhood."
"He glanced over at Stoll, who looked attentive, but not to the point of pulling more than Ferret was willing to give.
Fifteen years, Ferret thought. I guess it can't hurt me anymore. Not with this man who has saved my ass more than once.
"I took it for as long as I could," he said. "Then one day, I decided to leave…"
Four
THE MOST VALUABLE things he owned were his boots, and those he wore; otherwise, Mwili took nothing but the money he'd saved and the small backpack that contained his lunch and the coil. Once he got the flitter running, he'd borrow it to get to Toilet Town. The supplies would keep in their hiding place; his father could find them easily enough, and he could tow the flitter behind the tractor when he finally got around to locating it. It would make work for him, but Mwili did not worry too much about that. His father seemed to think that work and God were the only two things in the universe, anyway.
The sun warmed the land some, though it was still cold. He had his gloves today, that helped, and he wore the better of his two gi jackets. His mother had packed him a lunch and water bottle, and he would worry about more food when next he was hungry.
As he walked the lonely road, Mwili felt a mixture of emotions. A small, nagging fear rode him, as if he halfway expected God to hurl some kind of fiery lance at him for daring to go against the Holy Rules.
Honor and Obey Thy Father topped the list. There were civil penalties to go with the holier ones.
Runaways were dealt harsh justice if caught, and on Cibule, they almost always were caught. That was why he had to get offworld.
