Anthony, Piers - Tyrant 1 - Refugee

by Anthony, Piers

  "I will hold the lever for you," the captain said.

  Spirit laughed so hard she seemed almost to lose control of the handle. Even I, who knew her propensity for such seeming mischief, was alarmed. "Oh, no, you don't, sir! The moment I quit this handle, you'll shoot me and plant my sister in that bed!"

  Captain Brinker smiled, and the pirates smiled with her. This was rough humor they understood. The captain, too, was playing to an audience. Obviously I ran the danger of the bed. "Then it seems you must remain here, guarding your handle, while your sister departs. Is that good enough?"

  "But I can't stay here forever," Spirit said, playing it out with uncomfortably accurate intuition. "Once my sister's gone, the moment I quit, my life'll be out the air lock!" She shook her head. "I guess I just better blow it up now, and be done with it."

  Again the pirates froze nervously. No one liked being subject to the whim of this vacillating child. Again the captain interceded with a skillful compromise. "I could use a nervy lad like you for my cabin boy. Spare the ship, and I'll see that you're protected."

  Spirit considered with childlike solemnity. "Will you make a Pirate's Oath on that?"

  "Pirate's Oath," the Captain agreed. "Now just let me have that lever—"

  "Oh, no, you don't, sir!" Spirit repeated, grasping the lever more tightly and lifting it part of the way back. "Not till my sister's safe! You're probably lying, but at least I can save her!"

  "Accuse me of lying again and I will burn you where you stand," the captain said evenly.

  "The captain's right, kid," a pirate called. "He never breaks a real promise."

  So now the pirate crew knew that the Captain had to keep her word, or stand diminished. Cleverly played, indeed! There would be no backtalk or grumbling when Spirit was spared. And of course it was true: Spirit was a nervy kid, and would make a good cabin boy.

  The pirate returned with the ephemeris. I took it. "Thanks, brother," I said to Spirit. "Don't blow up the ship until I get clear." I reveled in the expression of the nearest pirate. We had them scared, all right.

  I took one last look at Spirit. She met my gaze squarely, and somehow it reminded me of the time I had tried to question her about the events of the night. It wrenched my heart to part from her.

  Then I turned and moved toward the passage to the lifeboat.

  Chapter 20 — SALVATION

  After that it was routine. I found myself in the lifeboat, and the instructions were there, and the controls were simple. Those instructions made all the difference; had we had them for the last lifeboat, we could have mastered it as readily. The captain had kept her word.

  I activated the drive and jetted off. "Farewell, Spirit!" I cried as I saw the pirate ship and attached bubble receding behind me. I did not yet know how to work the radio, so could not broadcast any message, but it wasn't necessary. Anyway, such a broadcast might have alerted other pirates to my presence, and I didn't want that.

  I watched the pirate ship for some time, making sure it didn't explode, as if my concentration could affect it. As time passed, I was reassured that the rest of the bargain had been honored. Spirit was now becoming the captain's cabin boy.

  Now I let the tears flow. It hardly mattered; I was dressed for it. It was all right for a girl to cry.

  I have no heart to detail my journey to Leda alone. The mechanics of it were absolutely boring, and the mental and emotional aspect was horrendous. Now I had time to realize that I had in fact sold my little sister into more than a masquerade. Captain Brinker evidently had no use for men in the emotional sense—which meant she might have use for women. Cabin boys, historically, had been notoriously employed as homosexual objects. Now the captain had a cabin girl. Why hadn't I thought of that before?

  Because I could not afford to jeopardize my escape? Had I forced my sister into that bed after all, to benefit myself? I could not be sure, but there was no joy in the contemplation.

  I was the sole survivor of the original bubble-trek to the better life. All the others had sacrificed themselves, many of them directly for me. At this stage I hardly seemed worth it. Over and over I rehearsed this in my mind, trying to come to terms with my fundamental unworthiness. On Io I had known that no merit of mine justified my survival; now, as I neared Leda, I had no better assurance.

  Slowly I concluded that though I was unworthy, I might be able to redeem myself in part. I resolved to dedicate my life to the justification of the sacrifices that had been made for me. I did not know exactly how I would do it, but somehow I would. I would make the universe know that the lives of all the gallant refugees had not been in vain.

  With the powerful jet of the lifeboat, I made it much faster than would have been possible in the bubble. I radioed ahead, having mastered the radio by this time, and they gave me landing instructions and took me into custody when I turned off the jet and emerged. They took me in at the station, listened to part of my statement, and told me there was no proof for it, because I was a minor and there were no corroborative witnesses. What irony! There were no witnesses because they all had been captured or killed! No wonder the pirates had free rein in space!

  They shipped me to a refugee-detention-camp bubble orbiting Jupiter not far above the roiling atmosphere, and dumped me in with a thousand other refugees gleaned from all around the Jupiter system. I had had no idea there were so many! We had never seen another bubble during our odyssey, but they must have been there. If each of these people represented the lone survivor of an expedition like mine, bounced back from Jupiter on the pretext of a changed policy when in fact they had merely come to the wrong station for admission—it was appalling. What monsters ran the government of mighty Jupiter?

  We were strangers to each other, yet not strangers in experience. The others had indeed suffered grievously, and learned in the harshest possible way the realities of space. They were not necessarily nice people, these survivors. Like me, they had learned to steal and lie and kill, just to get by. They had eaten human flesh. They understood full well the horror of our situation. I did not like being among them; I would have felt more comfortable in the company of the nicer people who had made the sacrifices, such as my own parents and sisters and fiancée. Part of the horror of my situation was the knowledge that if I had been a better person, I would long since have died.

  The commandant of the detention center summoned us all to an assembly to announce that current United States of Jupiter policy, which was relevant for us, would admit only those refugees who possessed viable commercial or artistic skills, and therefore would not be a burden on society. The rest would be returned to their planets of origin.

  Returned to Callisto! Or, for the others, to Ganymede or Europa or some lesser moon. Horror overwhelmed us, and the assembly became a riot. They had to flood the bubble with sleep gas to break it up. We well knew the fate most of us would face on our home moons. Few of us would be kindly treated—and those who were would still be locked into the very situation they had risked everything to escape. I, personally, would face a charge of attempted murder, because of the scion. The verdict was sure.

  Callisto meant death for me. I was not concerned so much for myself, as death had brushed past me too many times to be any specter of the unknown. I was concerned for my mission: to vindicate the effort of the refugees who had already died. I was the only one of our original party who remained to make that attempt.

  Yet I seemed to possess no skills or arts the authorities considered worthwhile. They weren't interested in information about Halfcal history or culture. They had passed out assorted tests in Spanish, and many forms, and I had duly filled them all out—but they were coded by numbers, not names, and the authorities weren't paying much attention. I wasn't sure they were even reading the completed forms, or whether the number designated for me actually matched the one on the forms I had been given. Probably my answers had been credited to somebody else, and vice versa. This sort of thing happens when men are treated like cattle.

 
My name was duly posted on the list of scheduled returnees. I would have perhaps a month longer here, while the remaining refugees were processed and the bureaucracy ground its inefficient wheels to produce the necessary transportation. Then a Jupiter ship, in the name of the Home of the Brave and the World of the Free, would deliver me to my doom.

  So I am whiling away my time by writing this private history, as it may become the only record of the travails of my family. I have all day, every day, to rehearse my memories and piece it out to the best of my ability. Probably these poor sheets, written in English to prevent comprehension by other refugees—somehow I value this immediate aspect of my privacy, for all that I do want my story to be known after I am gone—will be destroyed with the other refuse of our camp, once we are excised from the detention globe. That will be a secret tragedy. But even so, this writing is a necessary therapy, a coming to terms with my situation. I am about to be eliminated, and my dreams and vows with me. I must tell someone of my pain, even if only a sheaf of papers. At least, for a little while, this enables my family and friends to live again, if only in my appreciation.

  Perhaps I can arrange to mail this manuscript anonymously to the scientist of Io who helped us, Mason. Anonymously, because I do not want him to be implicated in my crimes. There must be no direct connection between him and me. I believe he would understand. Maybe he would show the manuscript to his pretty niece, Megan.

  I am dreaming foolishly. But I will try to send the manuscript. In a situation as fouled up as this one, my package might get through, especially since they will not suspect a document written in English of originating in a Hispanic refugee camp. Major and Charity Hubris, my honored parents—I love you and grieve for you! Faith, my lovely older sister whom I was unable to protect—how I wish I could have served you better than I did! Helse, my love—O Helse, Helse! I dream of you yet, my woman, my bride, my all! I clip your name tag, HELSE HUBRIS, to this manuscript, hoping you would have approved. And Spirit—

  Editorial Epilog

  Here the manuscript ends. The final page is discolored, surely by tears, and a full paragraph of text has been obliterated. It is a point of curiosity what the washed-out text contained, but the words are largely beyond restoration. Only a few are decipherable; among them, twice, "Spirit." The HELSE HUBRIS name tag is absent, long since lost.

  Hope Hubris, at the age of fifteen, had seen all his family lost or dead, and he believed he was also slated for death. It is not surprising that he was depressed, and that the poignancy of his accumulated memories overcame him.

  The official records for this period in the life of the Tyrant are scant, as the affairs of refugees were not at that time deemed important. There is no listing of his presence in the detention bubble. Yet other details of his narrative have been corroborated, such as the appearance of two Hispanic refugees at a scientific observatory on the hellface of Io and the four-year residence of a pretty child in the mansion of a prominent politician of Callisto, so there seems to be little reason to question the general authenticity of the document.

  We take editorial license to recreate the following sequence, as the narrative seems incomplete without it.

  An official discovered Hope Hubris at his cramped table formed from a surplus crate, his head on the last sheet of his holographic manuscript. (Clarification: Holographic is used in its sense of "wholly hand written" rather than in the more common contemporary sense of three-dimensional projection of images, though perhaps that also in a sense applies.) "Hey, kid, are you sick?" he asked in clumsy Spanish.

  Hope raised his dark head to stare dully at the man.

  "No, sir."

  "You can go to the dispensary for a pill."

  "No, thank you, sir. I am merely tired."

  "What's that you have there?"

  "Nothing, sir. Just some papers." Hope tried to put them away.

  "Say, that's English! Where did you get that?"

  "Sir, it's unimportant. I was just writing—a letter."

  "In English?"

  "Yes, sir. I studied your language in school."

  "Let me have that." The official moved to pick up the papers, thinking they were stolen.

  "Sir, please—it is mine!"

  The official paused, then tested the bedraggled young refugee. "You are fluent in English?" he asked in that language.

  "Yes, sir," Hope answered in kind.

  "Let me see you write something in English."

  Hope took a separate sheet, and wrote: This is my statement that I am literate in the language of the Colossus Jupiter, from whose fair and promising clouds I am barred.

  "I'll be damned!" the official exclaimed. "Don't you know that English-language literacy is grounds for status as an alien resident in Jupiter?"

  The eyes in the dusky face widened. "No one informed me of that, sir."

  The official shook his head. "Maybe that form got lost in the shuffle. Happens all the time. Anyway, it's true. Come with me; you are about to have your status changed."

  And so this manuscript, Refugee, written in the depth of despair, saved the young life of Hope Hubris, and thereby altered most significantly the history of mankind. It is not possible to say whether it happened precisely this way, but certainly it was the chance discovery of his literacy in English that qualified him for alien residency; a subsequent reference by the Tyrant himself confirmed this aspect. The existence of this particular manuscript was not then known, and it is very tempting now to suppose that this was indeed the document that did it. There would be poetic irony in having the narrative of his failure convert that failure to success.

  This aspect, of course, also resolves the mystery of Helse's use as a courier: She too was literate in English, having had an excellent private education, so she also would have been granted sanctuary if she had survived. Her employer surely knew that.

  We trust this clarifies the early nature of the later Tyrant of Jupiter. He was not at all the monster his political and cultural enemies have claimed. He was very much a victim of violent circumstance. The marvel is not that he emerged emotionally scarred, but that he retained his sanity and power of character.

  Conjecture is precarious, but some further speculation on the concluding, unreadable paragraph of his manuscript may be in order, as this relates to a further mystery of his character. Obviously this paragraph concerned Hope's little sister Spirit, and great emotion attaches thereto. One must wonder why, when one short paragraph is devoted to the memory of parents, older sister, and fiancée, all dead or degraded, there should be a much longer passage devoted to the younger sister, who perhaps survived best. Objectively it would seem that Spirit was the least important figure of this number, and suffered least (though still considerably); why then should she apparently be mourned more than all the rest? It does not seem to make perfect sense.

  The motives of the Tyrant, however, have always made sense, when properly understood. He was a most intelligent, forthright, and practical person, not given to emotional foolishness. He was never known for extreme subtlety or deviousness. He related with rare precision to the needs and feelings of the average man; that is one secret of his inordinate success. What he felt, everyone felt. Few, for example, failed to applaud his savage campaign against the space pirates—and this manuscript makes clear his underlying motivation there. He was fulfilling his vow. One must therefore conclude that if he wrote most feelingly about his little sister, the state of his awareness warranted it.

  It would be easy to take this as proof of the incest with which he has been charged—but again, this may be unwarranted. Direct evidence for such incest has never been presented—and there have been those who certainly would have presented it had they been able. Every investigation has foundered on uncertainty. Yet it does seem likely that Hope's greatest emotional concern was with his sister.

  Probably the truth is this: Though Hope Hubris loved his parents and older sister in a family way, and loved his fiancée Helse romantically, his closest ac
tual companion was Spirit. She understood him, she fought for him (sometimes with devastating effectiveness: he literally owed his life to her), she may have slept with him one time to ease his agony of bereavement, and she deliberately sacrificed herself to free him from the last pirate. She was the embodiment of blood relative, friend, and perhaps lover. She was his strength—and when he lost her, his competence as an individual suffered severely. One can be sure he would not passively have awaited shipment back to Callisto, had Spirit been with him at the end! The two of them would have found a way to compel sanctuary. Note how rapidly the manuscript concludes once Spirit departs from it; it was as though Hope's normally acute interest in detail and personality left him at that point. Helse could have been his support—but he knew her only a month or so, while he had known Spirit all her life. This Spirit was in fact the most significant figure in Hope's life, and it was her loss that affected him most profoundly.

  This insight may be critical to proper comprehension of the subsequent career of the Tyrant, though no other biography has remarked upon it. Others treat her presence as incidental to his career; this was, as the following manuscripts will demonstrate, grossly in error. Hope Hubris loved, honored, and needed his sister Spirit—all of his life.

  This document is presented with compassion and pride by Hopie Megan Hubris, daughter of the Tyrant, June 6, 2670.

  Copyright © 1983 by Piers Anthony

  ISBN: 0-380-84194-0