The Galactic Circle Veterinary Service

by Stephen Benjamin

  “But you’ve said yourself that the SOD does not have the strength to take on the Test-Lits. What have you accomplished? Tell me.”

  Fur chewed at his lower lip as he combed his fingers through his whiskers. “Cy, you know that my hyperwave messages to and from colleagues at home are censored just like yours. I can’t get good information on what is happening there. But I have been able to get some messages through secondary sources. The latest, on Cennesari, said the SOD is close to taking action. The people of Dovid’s World have reached their limit. We know the Sammarans will come in and fight with us because many Sammarans either are refugees from Dovid’s World, or have first-hand reason to hate the Test-Lits for their invasion. The other worlds that rescued Sammara are sympathetic. They appreciated my information about Levi, but they won’t commit troops in a civil war on Dovid’s World unless they are convinced that we will win. On the other hand, we know that Reb Levi has gotten precious little out of this trip. If anything, he’s pissed off just about everyone he has met.”

  “Great. We can go home and tell everyone that Levi is a schlemiel. That helps us a lot.”

  Fur’s face colored. “You could help. Maybe if you were to—”

  “Maybe? If? Maybe if we had salmon, we could make lox. Give me a break. To foment rebellion without offworld support besides Sammara is sure defeat. That does me or my parents no good.”

  His face got even darker, his voice tight. “Is that all that matters? You and your parents? How many millions on Dovid’s World live under repression unknown to Jews for over a thousand years? I feel responsibility to do something about that. Every day, the Test-Lits torture reasonable people who resist them. Every day, people disappear without a trace. How long does this go on before we rise up and stop it?”

  A vein in the side of his temple pulsed as he screwed his thick eyebrows together. He stood, stalked out of the room, and slammed the hatch behind him. That was more raw emotion than I had ever seen from the big guy.

  I sat for a long while and thought over what he said. Was I really selfish? Was I not supposed to care about my family? I wondered if more lay behind his feelings than the idealistic objections to the Test-Lits that Fur and the SOD professed. I knew there was more I could do. Senator Schwab had as much as said that Cennesari might help to fight the Test-Lits, but most of her world hated me now, so what good was that? Fur was right, though. We had reached a point where backing down was no longer an option. But what could I really do, I wailed silently? I was scared shitless.

  I returned to my cabin and picked a vid to watch, appropriately enough something called Exodus about the formation of the independent state of Israel after one of earth’s world wars, after a Holocaust had nearly wiped out the Jews on the continent of Europe. About midway through, I heard a knock on my cabin door.

  “Come,” I called.

  Fur’s bulk filled the opened door. “You busy?”

  “No. Take a load off your feet.” I motioned to my one chair, an archaic wooden construction I brought as a little piece of home. It creaked ominously as he sat. I sat up on my bunk and put my vid pad aside.

  Fur said, “I want to apologize. I was out of line to get angry at you.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m the one who’s out of line. You were right. I have been self-absorbed. There are a lot of people at home who are in dire straits besides my folks.”

  “I’m glad that you acknowledge that, but there’s more.” He looked away from me, then back. “You’ve been open with me. It’s only fair to respond in kind.”

  I sat on the edge of my bed. He had my attention.

  Fur glanced at the floor, then at me. He took a deep breath and let it out as he fingered his beard.

  “This goes back much farther than your problems, to when the Test-Lits first took power. My grandparents were prominent political figures and opposed the archconservative wing of the ruling party. Years of drought had devastated our agricultural society and the economy was in shambles. We imported food from other planets at a high cost and our debt was astronomical.

  “This was fertile soil for those who invoked the images of biblical plagues and retribution against a society that had moved away from the teachings of Yahweh. History has taught us that fundamentalism is popular when people face circumstances beyond their control. The Test-Lits rose to political power, but didn’t have the kind of domination they have now. That evolved over time as they passed law after law that infringed on the rights of the people.

  “They drummed up nonexistent threats to make their point. First, at home, they outlawed groups and parties that disagreed with their tactics. That gave them a ‘criminal’ element that they fought in the name of safety of the realm. Of course, this created the very groups that opposed the repression of the Test-Lits.”

  I nodded. “A self-fulfilling prophecy. The Sons-of-David was one, I presume?” His history differed from what we got in our textbooks.

  Fur nodded. “An early one and still the most effective. Then the Test-Lits trumped up supposed threats from offworld, specifically from Sammara. You know that many Dovid’s Worlders emigrated there to escape the oppression. The Test-Lits wanted them back under their collective thumbs. They claimed that expatriate Dovid’s Worlders planned to invade their home world. In truth, the evangelical wing of the party pushed the need to export their brand of belief to other, ‘heathen’ worlds.”

  “The invasion of Sammara,” I said. “Makes sense.”

  “Yes. Of course, that went awry for Dovid’s World. We became pariahs throughout our sector of the galaxy. Anyway, getting back to my grandparents, they lost their parliamentary seats due to a smear campaign against them. Accused of treason, they became outspoken opponents of the government. Of course, that seemed to confirm their seditious activities. They were arrested and imprisoned.”

  “Wait. I didn’t think that the Inquisition formed until much later.”

  “True, but there was a judiciary that had been put into place by the Test-Lits. Trials were a sham. My father was five-years-old when his parents were incarcerated. Released when he was twenty-five, they were broken and old beyond their years. They died a few years after their release. An uncle and aunt raised my dad, but they all lived in constant fear of the increasingly repressive government.”

  “I’m sorry, Fur.” That sounded lame even to me, so I continued. “I understand better why you feel as you do. My family’s problems seem minor in comparison.”

  Fur shook his head, a sharp movement as if to throw off my sympathy. “No, you don’t understand yet. My father’s hatred of the Test-Lits was intense, though he never let me see that as a child. I learned the story later, from my mother. Father became a prominent activist in an underground organization, the FRF, Fighters for Religious Freedom.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t...now. The FRF was a terrorist organization, for all intents and purposes. They were overcome by the Test-Lits’ military in a major campaign. You won’t find that in your schoolbooks. I was eleven when my dad died. Mother told me there had been an industrial accident. He worked in a farm machinery manufacturing plant.” Fur halted here and stood up. He rolled his shoulders as if to shrug off a great weight.

  I suppressed the urge to say, “I’m Sorry,” again.

  After a few moments, Fur sat and faced me. “I didn’t learn the truth until I graduated from high school. Before I went off to the university, my mother sat me down and told me the story. I had been raised a devout Jew. Although my parents didn’t hold to the kind of strict interpretation of the Torah that the Test-Lits demanded, outwardly we toed the line. My parents never criticized the government in public, but we did discuss alternative beliefs and interpretations of scriptures in our own home. I was cautioned to keep such discussions private.” He paused and I detected a slight smile. “I learned that lesson.”

  I felt my face heat, but he forged on.

  “Because my father’s participation in the
FRF was covert, he was not known to the Test-Lits by name. The accident at his plant was an explosion attributed to the FRF, and many mangled bodies were never identified, my dad among them.”

  “But would the FRF have done that? I thought they were the good guys.”

  Fur shook his head. “They didn’t. This was a real accident, not a terrorist attack, but the Test-Lits executed some of our friends and neighbors anyway...as a warning. When I went off to school, I had a spotless record insofar as the government was concerned, but Mother died a year after I entered veterinary college. After my dad’s death, she faded. I know physiologically you’re not supposed to die of a broken heart, but she did.” He whispered the next words. “I think having me at home kept her together. When I left for school, she...”

  Fur was silent for long moments. His fingers smoothed his mustache over and over. He stared at the wall as he spoke. “I vowed to do everything in my power to help bring down the regime that had devastated my family. I quit veterinary school and went to work as a farmhand. Somehow, the physical labor helped to assuage the fury that simmered inside me. With the help of a classmate who finished vet school, I became a vet tech. Later, I sought out the SOD and I became a member of that organization.” He looked at me. “You know the rest. You were an opportunity too good to pass up.”

  What could I say? I saw Furoletto Cohen in a new light, one that did not reflect favorably on me.

  Fur hadn’t finished. “There is one more thing you might like to know. It’s about our rebbe.”

  I perked up at that.

  “You say that I keep my temper and don’t react to his behavior. True, but he directs most of his antagonism at you. I’ve given him no reason to suspect me. For good reason.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Reb Levi Schvartz is the grandson of the rebbe who oversaw the torture of my grandparents while they were imprisoned.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. I’ve made it my business to learn about this family. Levi’s grandfather was a brutal man. Not just to opponents of the Test-Lit regime, but to anyone who questioned his extreme religious views. He inflicted his brutality on his own family, Levi’s father included. In turn, no doubt to get his own father’s approbation, Levi’s father became a bully. He was instrumental in the formation of the Inquisition.”

  I got the picture. “And I suppose that Levi got the same treatment? Like father, like son?”

  Fur nodded. “Levi was abused just as his father had been and followed the same path. That’s not an apology for him. We all make our own decisions as to what to do with our lives.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Nothing is ever as simple as it looks, is it?”

  “No. You might find the story of Levi’s scar of interest. As a child, if Levi didn’t toe the line with respect to following strict, ultraorthodox Test-Lit Judaic doctrine, his father beat it into him with a belt. The story goes that Levi once rebelled and tried to fight back. His father caught him across the face with the belt buckle, and he almost lost his eye.”

  I sighed. “I suppose that ought to make me feel sorry for him and to help me excuse his behavior, but it doesn’t. As you said, ‘We all make our own decisions.’ I appreciate the information. Maybe it will help me understand the bastard a bit better.”

  It did explain the vision I had gotten from Levi when he was enraged: the buckle flying at my head. But again, understanding did not necessarily lead to forgiving.

  ***

  I mulled over Fur’s revelations. I recalled Rabbi Pearlman’s statement about the evolution of religious belief on Cennesari, the reevaluation of tradition to fit modern circumstances. Evolution was an integral part of life. Tradition was a wonderful thing, but I knew religion had evolved on earth over several thousand years as societies changed. Even to the formation of new religions, Christianity and Islam, for example, that worshipped the same God but in different ways. The concept of God had changed. Many Jews had discarded as impossible the idea of God as a just or benevolent being after the European Holocaust. Yet, the Test-Lits took that to the opposite extreme, not accepting any change from the rules laid out thousands of years before. They were strangling Judaism on Dovid’s World. Levi’s family was a microcosm of that process. Generation after generation remained rooted in a single behavior, unwilling or unable to change.

  I thought hard about my return to Dovid’s World, how I might play a role in the overthrow of the Test-Lits. I never gave Fur a chance to say it, but I knew where his thoughts went. I now had four worlds indebted to me for the services we had rendered them: Pronac, Dragonworld, Certis Prime, and, at least in part, Cennesari. Four possible allies against the theocracy that throttled my world and threatened my family. How to use this was a conundrum I had yet to solve.

  CHAPTER 16

  The antiquated yellow whirlydrone dipped and rose like some giant moth evading a fly swatter. Our pilot, Grof, yelled, “We get lots of up and downdrafts out here. Don’t worry.”

  Easier said than done. The condition of the machine did not add to my confidence. I leaned toward Petor Steckel, the head of Ulm’s Agricultural Bureau, and asked, “Is this thing safe?”

  “Um, certainly,” he replied. “We are not a rich planet. We may not have all the modern equipment that we would like, but what we have we keep in good operating condition. We, um, must.”

  The next sudden descent left my stomach fifty meters higher than the drone and dropped my confidence an equal distance. We passed over cultivated fields and pastures dotted with Terran cattle before copses of red, blue, green, and purple alien vegetation appeared. These grew denser, and Grof brought down the whirlydrone in a clear area near the edge of the jungle.

  As I jumped out, I knocked large flakes of paint off the fuselage. I cringed at the thought of the flight back. Fur ducked under the rotors, his face pale. True to form, Levi had stayed behind to gather information as he called it.

  Steckel continued the orientation he had begun at the spaceport. “The ecosystems of Ulm are quite extraordinary. Jungle covers both the equatorial and temperate regions of the planet. Original exploration scans showed no, um, animal life: mammalian, amphibian, reptilian, avian, piscine, or even insectoid. The basis of existence for all life here is photosynthetic, and that is accomplished by a symbiotic microorganism we call algoids.”

  “So the plants themselves aren’t photosynthetic?” Fur asked.

  “No. The algoids perform their functions in cellular structures analogous to, um, mammalian mitochondria. The microorganisms draw their own sustenance from byproducts of the host’s metabolism.”

  “Interesting biology,” I said. “And no animals at all, huh?”

  “There are mobile creatures, some quite large and, um, predatory. The hydra is one of those. It is a plant that eats other plants.”

  “And this is your problem?” Fur asked.

  Steckel said, “Yes.”

  “That’s fascinating,” I said. “But if you have a problem with plants, why not call in an agronomist. I’m a veterinarian.”

  “Dr. Berger—”

  “Cy, please.”

  “Well, yes. Cy. Call me Petor. Our husbandry people, veterinarians, and agronomists have attempted to figure out the problem, but we work with Terran animals and crops imported by the colonists. The native algoids are toxic to Terran life, so we cannot utilize them. We do not know how to deal with the Ulm flora. The Galactic Circle Veterinary Service has the reputation for solving problems with, um, unusual species.”

  He wasn’t lying, but there was something unvoiced. That came through in his thoughts, his hesitations, and his furrowed brow.

  “Petor, you’re leaving something out. What are we getting into here?”

  He seemed startled by my insight. The corners of his mouth turned down. “Perhaps the best thing to do is to go see the, um, problem. Then my answers will make more sense.”

  Steckel led us down a path into the jungle, an odd mixture of giant fe
rn-like plants and towering broad-leafed trees, with dense undergrowth between them. The multicolored riot of growth was disorienting. Grof brought up the rear and carried a plasma rifle. Fur looked at Grof, then at me with raised eyebrows. I shrugged.

  A plethora of bizarre, psychedelic flowers exuded heady, almost narcotic odors that made my head swim. I noticed a slight buzzing in my ears, and my stomach twinged. I attributed those symptoms to the perfumes. An elongated scarlet bell, shaped like a trumpet, swung slowly in a slight breeze. For the size of the flower and the lightness of the zephyr, I wondered at the movement, and I stepped closer to examine it.

  Petor stopped me with a cry. “I wouldn’t do that. The trumpet plant is a predator.”

  I turned to him. “You’re shitting me.”

  “It is not big enough to seriously, um, harm a human, but its secretions are corrosive and can give you a bad burn if they get on your skin. And it can spit those several meters.”

  I took three steps back. “Hmm. Is poison typical of Ulmian plants, Petor?”

  “Yes...for the predators.”

  “Great,” I muttered.

  Crevasses cut Fur’s broad brow.

  I followed Petor down a path through the thick undergrowth. I took care to stay in the center of the cleared area and cast my eyes from side to side, but saw no trumpet plants close enough to do damage. I wondered about some others, but Petor and Grof did not seem concerned, so I kept my anxieties under control. The buzzing and queasiness stayed with me, but I wrote them off to the pungent flora.

  As Fur followed, he muttered something about unnatural plants in his guttural voice.

  Steckel stopped at the edge of a less densely vegetated area and pointed. “A hydra.”

  I stared at the thing in the clearing in disbelief. It stood twice as tall as Fur, the top half composed of nine stalks that resembled Terran lamprey eels. The stalks terminated in gaping round maws ringed by razor-sharp teeth and corrugated grinders that no doubt made short work of the indigenous vegetation. A mental picture of what those teeth could do to a human did not comfort me. The necks and mouths formed a circle about the circumference of the two-meter wide trunk. With nine of them, the name hydra was appropriate.