Chains of Redemption

by Selina Rosen

  She slammed her fist through the monitor.

  "Monitor six has been damaged; droid twelve, please move to room three, assess damage and report," Marge droned.

  "What's wrong?" Dax asked as she got up and started to pace.

  "It's not here. The bastard didn't make a single entry concerning the actual serum, what it contained, how it was made. There's nothing. I've checked this whole damn fort. I've turned it upside down and inside out. I've read every freaking file. Nothing. Not a fucking word!" She hit the old block wall with her fist, and it cracked.

  "Structural damage to East wall in room three. Droid fifteen, please assess damage and repair. RJ, please stop striking things," the computer droned.

  "It doesn't matter, RJ," Dax said.

  "I let you down," Jessica said. "How can you say it doesn't matter?"

  "You didn't let me down," Dax said with a comforting smile. "I was only helping you so that I could spend time with you. I never believed that anyone could take a potion and become immortal. I don't want to live forever."

  "So you were patronizing me? Like I'm some crazy person? I'm not crazy!" Jessica stormed from the room, stomped across the prison and out onto the wall. Dax started to follow her, but Gerald put out a hand and stopped him at the door.

  "She didn't find it, did she?" he asked the boy.

  Dax shook his head. "No, and she's very upset. She yelled at me." The boy was near tears, no doubt because she'd never even so much as raised her voice to him before. "I didn't mean to make her mad."

  "You didn't make her mad, Dax. She isn't mad at you."

  "But she yelled at me," he sniffled, and now a tear ran down his cheek.

  "But she isn't mad at you. She's mad because she wanted something and she can't have it, and that's the way RJ is."

  "Should I say I'm sorry?" Dax asked.

  "No, you didn't do anything wrong. I'll go see if I can talk to her. You go on and play."

  The boy nodded and left reluctantly.

  Gerald took a deep cleansing breath, then opened the door and walked out onto the wall.

  She was standing with one foot on the wall looking out at the mainland. He walked right up to her back, and she said, just loud enough that he could hear it, "If you don't blow the old city up, there's no place to put the new one."

  He put his arms around her stomach and lay his head on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said.

  "I'm the one who's sorry. It's normal. The old die and make room for the young. People die and it makes room for new people. I'm what's wrong, only me. Even a normal GSH has an expiration date, a day when they're going to die, but not me. Unless something amazingly cataclysmic happens, I'm going to live forever, and now I care. More than care, I love people." She leaned her head back so that her cheek rested against his. "How do I show that love? . . . By trying to make you as abnormal as me. Trying to find a potion that never should have been. Then Dax told me what I should have known all along—he doesn't want to live forever. No one does. Maybe that's why he destroyed the formula, maybe he wasn't as crazy as everyone thought. Maybe he knew that people shouldn't live forever. That it's not a blessing but a curse. To live when everyone around you is dying. And most people . . . most people aren't worth the skin they're wearing, they are callous, uncaring, lazy, and hateful. If given power they use it to enslave those they put beneath them. They blow up cities and kill lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers and friends. Why would you want to give something like that eternal life? Why, Stewart?" She jerked her head upright and pulled away from Gerald suddenly. "Why did you make us like this, Stewart? Why!" She jumped off the wall onto the rubble below, and then she ran and jumped into the ocean. She started swimming away from the island, away from Alsterase out to sea.

  A complete one-eighty. One minute she was making perfect sense, seeming to accept things the way they were, the next she was doing some crazy shit. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her mood change so completely, so quickly. Gerald sighed, turned and ran across the wall and through the door.

  "What's wrong?" Mickey asked.

  "It's nothing. I've got it." Gerald ran out of the prison and straight for the dock. He wasn't about to tell Mickey—whose wife had just a few short months ago died while swimming—that his best friend was now trying to drown herself by swimming out so far that she couldn't get back, and Gerald was sure that was just what she was doing.

  He jumped in a boat and took off for where he figured he'd find RJ. For one awful minute he was sure that he wasn't going to find her, and then he saw her swimming hard against the current. It took the boat awhile to catch up with her even with the motor on high.

  "RJ, get in the boat!" Gerald ordered, yelling over the roar of the motor.

  "Leave me alone. I'm old. I've lived a full life, and I want to die. I deserve to die. You don't know the horrible things I've done, and I can't forget. I've tried and I can't." She swam faster, and he had to speed up to catch her.

  "Get in the boat!"

  "No!"

  This went on for over three hours before she finally started to give out. She slowed to a crawl, then finally faltered and went under. He stopped the boat quickly, reached over the side and grabbed her arm just before it went out of sight. Then he dragged her back into the boat, and she lay in a wet pile on the deck, shivering. "Why wouldn't you let me die?" she sobbed angrily.

  "The same reason you wanted to keep me alive. I'm selfish, and I don't want to live without you. The big difference being that there is no reason that I should have to. You're not going to die, deal with it." He sat down on the deck next to her and wrapped one of her wet hands in his. "Besides, we're almost out of gas, I have no idea where we are, and without you I'll never find the shore."

  Jessica laughed in spite of herself, then she hugged him tightly. "I'm crazy, you know that."

  "Yes, but I still love you. I'm good for forty more years or a hundred-thousand miles, whichever comes first," he said, mimicking something he'd heard on one of the old videos the computer played for their enjoyment.

  She laughed again. "How am I ever going to live without you?"

  "Why don't you try living with me, and worry about that when I'm gone? Worry about the things you can do something about, like kicking the Reliance's ass, and don't worry about the things you can't do anything about. Maybe that's why you're here, and why you're the way you are, RJ. It's going to take more than one lifetime to take the Reliance down and secure us against the Argy. Who else could do that? No one but you."

  She nodded. That was it; she was paying for her crimes by taking out the entity that had given her the power to commit them. Perhaps therein lay her redemption.

  Chapter Fourteen

  RJ grabbed Topaz by the collar and pulled him off the ramp of the skiff. "What in hell's name do you think you're doing?"

  He jerked away from her with an effort that cost him the collar of his jumpsuit. "I'm bringing the people of this world together."

  "I ordered you to leave the people of this world alone," RJ said angrily. "We have done enough."

  "Yeah, well you aren't the boss of me," Topaz said, sticking out his tongue.

  RJ grabbed his arm and pulled him further away from the group of Abornie, who were walking out of the skiff looking wide-eyed and frightened. "Listen to me, you crazy old shit, you pull another stunt like this, and . . ."

  "And you'll what?" Topaz demanded. "Rip my arms off and beat me to death with them? If we're going to keep the Abornie from making the same mistakes as they did before, we need to bring them all together, form a government, and make a civilization."

  "Leave them alone. This isn't some game in which the Abornie are chess pieces and you get to play God."

  "I'm not playing with them . . . That's always your answer, isn't it, RJ? You think you prefer anarchy, complete self-rule, but you saw for yourself back in New Freedom what happens without rules. Anarchy never works because eventually someone figures out that no one's in control, and he gathers similar people t
o him and you wind up with a world being governed by bullies . . ."

  "As opposed to being ruled by you," RJ interrupted.

  "Well . . . I think I'd do as good a job as any."

  "Let me tell you what I think. I think you have good intentions, but that you're crazier than a latrine rat. I think that if we let you carry out your plans you'll set yourself up as a godking, not unlike the crazy, handless, black Frenchman of Beta 4 fame. Except of course you're never going to die, so they're going to be stuck worshipping you and following your rules forever. And as crazy as we all know that you are, how can you be so damn sure you know what's best for them?"

  "Listen, RJ. There are only pitiful handfuls of the Abornie across this planet. You heard Poley; he calculated a little more than fifteen thousand at best. Scattered across the planet they'll never thrive, but bring them together, and . . ."

  "You can have wonderful overpopulation, disease, and pollution right at our doorstep. Overnight, no waiting. What a great idea, why wait for the pestilence, why not get right to it?" RJ yelled. "I don't want that. I want to be left alone to try to find a power supply which will be compatible with my ship so that someday we can get off this planet, hopefully without inflicting our will on these people any more than we already have. Leave them where they are, scattered across the surface of the planet, and it could take them decades, maybe even millennia to destroy their world. Move them together in one place and you tax the food supply and speed up the process of destruction."

  "And I say it's our duty to make sure these people don't fall into the same traps their ancestors fell into. That they don't make the same mistakes that humans made when they let the Reliance break their will. In order to do that we have to have them all in the same place. We could shape a new world, make it our own. Create a Walden, a perfect world."

  "See? You're already talking crazy. Nothing can ever be perfect when sentient beings are involved. They are inherently flawed. They desire, and desire causes jealousy, and jealousy causes hate, and hate causes fear, and fear leads to war. No matter what you try to do, you will not stop them from making mistakes. Give them better dwellings, modern medicine, in short make their lives easier, and they will multiply, and when they multiply they will need more, and the more they need the less there will be to share, and the less each person has the more they will envy what everyone else has . . ."

  "So your answer is not to try. To just sit back and let them do whatever they're going to do on their own. Knowing everything we know about what goes wrong in a society and why? You, in your rational, logical—God, you sound more like Poley every day—opinion, think we should just go about our business and let them fend for themselves."

  RJ looked around her. In the six months since they had utterly vanquished the squadrons of Ocupods that had attacked them no more had appeared, not by sight and not by the scanners. If they still had the capability to come on land, at least for the time being they weren't making any attempt to do so. The Abornie, with their help, had constructed furnaces to melt down the metal from the Ocupod suits and had forged new tools, even built a bulldozer of sorts with Poley's help. They were clearing the overgrown streets of the ruined city and rebuilding the structures. They were killing plants to make room—not for people, but for the things the people wanted.

  "We have already pushed them ahead by thousands of years," she said in an almost inaudible whisper, then continuing in a normal voice said, "Look how far they have come in a few short months. What they have accomplished. None of this would have been possible if we hadn't landed on their planet. We have already changed the entire future of this world. I think we've done enough damage."

  "Damage!" Topaz screamed. "I think you're the one who's crazy. These people were living like animals, afraid to even try to build a forge for fear of incurring the wrath of the Ocupods. Now they're rebuilding their world, their culture."

  "When the first man on Earth who decided there was something beyond himself and the world around him called that thing God and started to pray to it, I wonder if he knew how much trouble he was causing? Do you think he knew that people would fight and die because they couldn't agree on how to worship God or even what God was? I wonder if he knew that someday what he started would be used as a tool to enslave the entire human race. After all, it must have seemed like a fairly harmless thing, to believe in a god and to pray to it. Yet Earth's history is a bloody tapestry of religious persecution of one group towards another, often leading to full-out war, death and utter destruction. Look what one crazy man with a plan did to Beta 4. And now you expect me to stand by and let you do basically the same thing here. These people don't need our involvement, they need our neglect. They don't need a God, and they sure as hell don't need you as that God."

  "You know what?" Topaz said, shaking his finger in her face, which seemed to only slightly annoy her. "You have become completely cynical and bitter."

  "Oh? Ya don't say," RJ said with a crooked smile.

  "We could build Utopia here, RJ. Why even try to get the ship running? Why even try to get back to Earth? We could make this world a perfect place. We could stay here."

  "We don't belong here. Every day we stay here, everything we do, interferes with this planet's natural course."

  "Then where do we belong, RJ?" Topaz took a deep breath. "Back on Earth? You're not even a full human. You're an Argy hybrid, a GSH. I'm a close to six hundred year old man. Poley's a robot with AI capabilities that not even you and I can fully fathom. The only one who belongs on Earth is Levits, and you and I both know that realistically he won't live long enough to make it back there, unless we find this mythical all-purpose power supply of yours tomorrow. If we could ever even find Reliance space, find Earth, by the time we get there everything will be different and everyone we know will be dead. So why even try?"

  It was a good question, which was probably why she got so mad. "Because it's home."

  "A home you couldn't wait to get away from. Need I remind you that we wouldn't be here at all if you hadn't decided that you just had to go to Deakard?"

  She wanted to rip his head off and sling it into the brush, so instead she just yelled in his face. "Don't bring any more of them here! Leave things alone!" She stomped off into the jungle.

  Topaz smiled smugly and started over to talk to his new friends, not that he actually spoke their language enough to carry on a full-fledged conversation, but he at least spoke it well enough that he'd talked them into coming back here with him.

  He found himself intercepted by Poley before he could reach his destination. "You haven't won the argument, Topaz. These people . . ."

  "Just stop! Both of you, passing judgment and preaching. Pretending like you know everything. Of course I won the argument, because she is utterly wrong, and I am completely right, and she knows it." Behind Poley Topaz saw the old group of Abornie attack the new group. "What the hell?"

  "As I was about to say before you so rudely interrupted me, these people don't like each other. When you left and RJ figured out what you were doing, she talked to the Abornie elders and found out that the Abornie are tribal."

  "Well . . . I suppose it would have killed her to just tell me that."

  "Actually, I rather think she decided you'd find out for yourself," Poley said.

  Topaz waded into the fray, trying to stop the fighting, shouting words he wasn't quite sure of the meaning of, and seemed to do nothing but intensify the fighting. He found himself thrown at the robot's feet for his troubles. He looked up at Poley. "Aren't you going to help me?"

  "You aren't the boss of me," Poley said haughtily and stomped off in the direction his sister had gone.

  "Are you mocking me, you tight-assed walking tin can?" Topaz trailed off, realizing there were more important things at hand, and ran back into the boiling mass of Abornie, but nothing he said or did seemed to be doing more than getting his own ass kicked.

  Poley caught up with her in the jungle. "RJ, they've started fighting," he reported c
almly.

  She nodded. "I know, I heard them."

  "What are you going to do about it?" Poley asked.

  RJ shrugged. "The more I try to do nothing, the more I interfere," she mumbled.

  "What are you going to do?" Poley asked again.

  "What should I do?" RJ asked.

  Poley was more than a little taken aback, and it took his circuits awhile to comprehend what she had asked. "You're asking me?" he asked, still not sure.

  RJ laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Yes, Tin Pants, I'm asking you. Do the math. If we continue to interfere, what do you calculate will happen?"

  "I've told you before. There's no way of knowing, too many as yet undefined variables. There's no way to make a calculated determination."

  "Exactly," RJ said. "And without knowing what chain reaction our interference might cause, isn't it better if we do as little as possible?"