Captain Cosette

by R. Bruce Sundrud

  I’m in no hurry to get to the training station or whatever it is, and Rasora is in no condition to do anything. I might as well make the most of it.

  She used rope from the van to turn a blanket into a hammock in the shade. From her bag she pulled out one of her books, and settled down to read. A breeze picked up, tempering the mid-day sun. Harvest of the ambrosia fruit marked the end of summer, but autumn was still gentle, especially close to the ocean.

  The thought of harvest reminded her of the fruit — her fruit — that she had picked off of the vine and slipped into her bag. She dug it out and asked Rasora if she could borrow his knife. He grunted and tossed it to the ground in her direction. The sun was now high in the sky, but he continued to stare over Toulouse towards the horizon.

  Maybe he’s blind. Maybe he’s insane. Maybe…

  She took the knife and carefully sliced the fruit in two. “Would you like half? These are very good.”

  He shook his head.

  Yep, he’s insane. No one would turn down an ambrosia fruit.

  She sipped the juice as she read, making it last as long as possible. Her book, BLAZING HEARTS ON FIRE by Renée Chevalier, borrowed from the library shelf at the local grocer, was a romance novel set on a jungle planet and was a real tear jerker. She stopped halfway through and wiped her eyes, looking at Rasora to be sure he wasn’t watching. He hadn’t moved. She was glad; she felt like an idiot crying over a novel, but there was something satisfying about the loves and heartbreaks of someone else.

  Gregory isn’t the only faithless rat in the universe.

  Not that Gregory had promised her anything, though. They hadn’t even…

  Nope, no reason to be sensible. Gregory was a faithless rat, and a wretch besides.

  She started the fire as the sun began to set. Rasora finished his water bottle, stepped into the woods for a few minutes, and then returned and sat on the ground near the fire.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. First, there’s, ah, I’m not really, sort of….” He wiped his face with his hands. “I’m sorry. What I meant was, I’m having trouble dealing with the fact that I’m only half here. It’s like I can’t complete a thought.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. “We take you from your home to deliver you to the military, and you’re sorry for me?”

  She nodded.

  He frowned. “You’re a better person than I am. Something’s not right. I mean, besides Imsami’s being dead. We were wrong about so many things.”

  She offered him the remains of the bread, but he refused it. “You should eat, you know,” she said. “You haven’t eaten all day.”

  “No. No, I’ve got to figure this out. We were doing everything we intended to do, but we were wrong somehow. Imsami’s dead, and he’s dead because of these,” he touched the gold rings in his ears, “but we could have stopped working yesterday, driven to Rabelais village, bought some land and retired. We could have stopped months ago, years ago. When were we going to stop?” He looked at her as though she could answer, but she widened her eyes and half-shrugged. “That’s just it,” he said. “We were gathering wealth, and gathering wealth, but it didn’t do any good, it just got Imsami killed.” His eyes drifted to the fire, and she could see its light reflected in his eyes. “Poor Imsami, overpowered, fighting for his life, and I wasn’t there. Nobody got killed but him, and he was a master of the knife. And they took his gold. If he hadn’t had gold on him, they might have just thrown him out, or fleeced him at cards, or bought him a beer.”

  He picked up the knife Cosette had used to slice the fruit. “Would you help me get the gold out of my ears?”

  She looked aghast. “I’m not cutting your ears!”

  “No, no, you don’t need to do that. These earrings are soft, almost pure gold; you just put the blade here on the ring and pound the back of the knife with a stone. In fact, I’ll thank you not to hit my head or cut me.”

  He walked to a large boulder and rested his head against it, his earring lying on the top. She set the knife carefully, and tapped hesitatingly with a small stone, got a larger one, tapped harder, and soon had the earring separated.

  She repeated the procedure with his other earring, and now both ears were bare.

  “Ah,” he said, shaking his head experimentally. “More of me is gone.” He tugged off his bracelets, and tossed them beside the earrings. “There’s wisdom in that. I need to think. Thank you, by the way, for not cutting my throat when you had the chance.” He went back to the edge of the clearing overlooking Toulouse and sat. Below him, lights began to wink on across the city, along with a resurgence of explosions, gun shots, and sirens.

  She looked at the stack of precious gold and could not let it lie there. She scooped up the earrings and bracelets and put them under the foot carpet in the van.

  She adjusted the lazy fire – she had discovered its convenience – and climbed back into her hammock. The evening was warm, and clouds had come in to hide the stars and trap the warmth. She would not need a blanket.

  She was not free, but she was not terrified at the moment. She slept fitfully, but she did sleep.

  *

  Morning came, and she eased out of the hammock. She had gotten up in the middle of the night and overbalanced, falling on the ground rather than rising gracefully.

  The clouds looked thicker, promising rain, but she was used to cloud banks that broke their promise. She took a bite of the remains of the coarse bread, took a swallow of water, and choked.

  Rasora still sat on the edge of the clearing overlooking Toulouse, but beside him was a loose stack of clothes.

  He was naked.

  “Um. Rasora? Are you okay?”

  Now I’m certain he’s quite mad.

  Fortunately, the key was in his discarded pants pocket, so if he did begin to gibber and run away, she wouldn’t have to follow. He began to speak, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I’m quite fine, thank you.”

  “Can I bring you a blanket?”

  He remained sitting, for which she was grateful. He replied in a calm, reasonable voice, “No, thank you. I’m comfortable.”

  “Can I bring you some clothes?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Some underclothes?”

  At least?

  “No.”

  She folded her arms. He was being pigheaded just like her step-brothers. “May I ask why you aren’t wearing your clothes?”

  “I don’t have any clothes.”

  “Then what’s that pile sitting beside you?”

  “Those aren’t my clothes. I don’t own anything.”

  “What do you mean, those aren’t your clothes? They most certainly are.”

  “Look.” He started to turn his head, and she turned her back on him. “Imsami is dead. I will miss him forever. But he’s dead because we thought possessions were everything. Even bounty hunting, turning in unfortunate souls for the money, we thought that was fine because it made us wealthier. But all it got us was Imsami dead, and we would have never been wealthy enough to satisfy us.”

  She heard his voice diminish, and she assumed he had turned back to looking over the city. “The philosopher was right,” he continued. “To not desire anything is to possess everything. I have discarded everything I own, and I’m sitting here content. There is nothing more I need to do. If only we had known.”

  Then there would have been two naked men wandering around the countryside.

  She ventured a glance back at him. He was indeed looking back over the city. “Could you at least put on your underclothes?”

  “I don’t have any underclothes.”

  She lost her temper. This goat-headed off-worlder was deliberately being difficult. She stomped up to the pile and grabbed the gray underclothes lying on top. “Fine! I claim these as my own, then.” Eww! “Any problem with that?”

  He shrugged. “They’re not mine.
Doesn’t matter to me.”

  She threw them at him. “Then will you please at least put on my underclothes?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She tapped her foot, determined to outwait him.

  Another rakina swooped through the clearing, yammering at them. Down in Toulouse, a shot rang out. Over the distant ocean, a brief flash of lightning flickered in a cloud bank but no sound reached them.

  “Very well. If you wish.” He started to rise, and she turned her back again.

  As she heard cloth rustling, she asked, “What took you so long to decide?”

  “I was just thinking,” he said. “There are more possessions than just things. Insisting on my own way, my own will, my own desires, that’s a form of possessiveness. It’s not enough to give up gold; I have to give up wanting gold. That was a new thought for me. Remember, Imsami always complained that I thought too much. It’s a flaw of mine. Did you want me to do anything else?”

  “Could you put on the rest of, um, my clothes? Please?”

  “If you wish.”

  With quiet efficiency he finished dressing, snapped his boots – her boots – and reached for the knives. He stopped in mid-reach.

  “Yes,” she said. “You may carry my knives.”

  “Thank you.” He picked them up and slipped them into their scabbards on his belt. Her belt.

  “Are you ready to eat something?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I have nothing to…”

  “Here,” she snapped, pushing the last crust of bread at him. “Eat some of my bread, drink some of my water, and then let’s get into my van and go wherever it was you were taking me.”

  He accepted the bread and ate it thoughtfully. “You know,” he said between bites, “I don’t want to turn you in any more. I don’t want the bounty.”

  “Can you remove this bracelet?” She held out her wrist, displaying the electronic device that had shocked her so painfully two evenings ago.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Can you disable the key?”

  He pulled the cylindrical key out of his pocket and examined it. He struck it against the boulder where she had cut off his earrings, and she screamed and fell to the ground.

  “Don’t do that again!” She cradled her numb hand with her good arm, tears of pain in her eyes. “I guess you can’t. Ow. Okay. You need to take me to whatever that place is.”

  “If you wish. It’s a training center. I’m not happy about taking you, though. As I said, I don’t want the bounty anymore.”

  “You can send the money to your parents.”

  “Our parents have passed away, but I’ll hold the money for you.”

  A fat lot of good money would do me as a soldier.

  It was hard to tell, though. She knew nothing about what was going to happen. Maybe a bit of money would be useful to buy her something needful. Earplugs for the battlefield, or something.

  She wasn’t anxious to reach the training center, but she was tired of the uncertainty. She scattered the lazy fire and tossed the ropes and blankets in the back of the van. “Let’s go, then.”

  He held the keys at her. “Do you want to drive your van?”

  She laughed ruefully. “I’ve never driven anything. The only thing mechanical I know how to use is a methane stove and a washing machine. I’m just a country girl.”

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t even know where to go.”

  As they climbed into the van, he pointed at the city. “It’s near the spaceport. The spaceport belongs to the Planetary Union, but Sorine’s government offices are built next to it. That’s where you get turned in.” He frowned. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, well, that makes two of us.”

  The turbine whined and they pulled out of the clearing, traveling down a narrow trail until they got to the mountain road, a series of paved switchbacks that gave access to the highlands where Cosette’s family and others raised fruit.

  They weaved down the road and past the Lucky Lady, which had a sign in the window saying CLOSED. The streets became regular, a mix of apartments, manufacturing blocks, store fronts, and fenced-off empty blocks. Toulouse had its prosperous sections and its poor sections; the spaceport lay in the middle of a depressed industrial area. Wealthy people did not want to live near the thunder of departing ships, but the poor had little choice.

  Rasora pulled over and opened a compartment next to the steering wheel. He pulled out an official-looking rectangular pin which he fastened on his shirt just above the pocket. They drove on, turned a corner, and arrived at a guardhouse where the guard examined the sticker on the windshield of the van, the pin on Rasora’s chest, and then waved them on. Rasora parked the van next to a long, low building painted yellow and gray. “In here,” he said.

  With sinking heart, Cosette grabbed her bag and descended from the van. She walked slowly to the door of the building like a condemned woman walking her last mile before execution.

  Rasora walked beside her, and she felt a hesitant squeeze of her shoulder. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “You’re too little for them to put on the front lines.”

  Small comfort.

  Rasora opened the door for her, and they walked into a small office. Behind the counter sat a hefty man with close-cut hair and a bent nose. He stood when they entered, and said loudly, “Rasora! Back again, eh?” He walked up to the counter and leaned on it, examining Cosette. “What’s this? You’ve finally found a girl that would go with you?”

  Rasora didn’t smile. “This is Cosette, Raimy. She’s a new recruit. You gave us her draft papers last week.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and laid it on the counter, and laid the key to her bracelet on top of the paper.

  Raimy’s smile shrank. “She’s a new recruit? Well, I’ll be.” He turned his attention to Rasora. “Where’s Imsami? He never trusted you to collect the bounty.”

  “Imsami’s dead.”

  Raimy’s smile vanished. “Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Some father gave you trouble?”

  “No,” said Rasora. “A knife fight in a tavern. Someone had a gun. It was only two days ago, so I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Oh, sure, I’m sorry. No problem.” He picked up the paper. “Cosette, eh? The government insists on surnames. Who was your father?”

  “Auguste,” said Cosette. “No. Nicholas. My real father.”

  The clerk took a pen and scratched on the paper. “Cosette…de…Nicholas. Got it.” He slipped the paper in his shirt pocket, dropped the key in a bin, and bent down under the counter. After some tapping and the sounds of a metal door opening and closing, he rose with an envelope in his hand. He tore it open and shook two gold coins into his hand. “Just as before. One recruit, one gold coin for each….” He paused and cleared his throat. “Here you go,” he said, holding out the gold coins to Rasora.

  Rasora looked at the coins with distaste and didn’t move.

  “Take them,” said Cosette.

  He took them from Raimy’s hand and stared at them.

  Cosette pursed her lips. “Put them in your pocket. For me.” He slipped them into his pocket.

  “That’s it, then,” said Raimy. He pulled a small metallic disk from under the counter and turned to Cosette. “Your arm, please?”

  She extended the arm with the bracelet, and Raimy laid the disk on it. The bracelet popped open, and he tossed the bracelet in the same bin as the key. “Come with me, young lady, and we’ll put you into your quarters. We’ll start your training tomorrow morning.” He grabbed a clipboard from the desk, pressed a buzzer, and beckoned her past the counter.

  She walked around the counter, and Rasora followed.

  “Not you,” said Raimy. “Just her.”

  “I’m coming along,” said Rasora in a firm voice. “I promised to keep her safe.”

  Raimy paused at the back door, his face confused. “Really? You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not joking,” said Ra
sora, tapping the pin on his chest. “See this? It opens every door on this base except the commandant’s. We’ve brought in half of the new recruits for the past year, and the commandant’s a friend of ours. Of mine. I go where Cosette goes until I’m satisfied.”

  Raimy shrugged. “I’m not going to argue. Do what you want.”

  As they walked down the gray-painted hallway, Cosette spoke quietly to Rasora. “You promised to keep me safe?”

  Rasora nodded, his face serious. “You were there. I know your father was insincere, but he asked us, if you remember, and I said yes. I didn’t mean it at the time, either, but I did say yes.” They turned a corner, and he continued. “I own nothing, I care for nothing, but life still needs to have a purpose, and fulfilling a promise is a purpose.” He looked down at her with a wry smile. “Besides, annoying Raimy is a guilty pleasure of mine.” The smile faded. “I’ll have to think about that later.”

  “Here you go,” said Raimy, ignoring their conversation. He held open the door to a room as big as Cosette’s entire house. “We don’t have any other female trainees at the moment, so you can pick which bunk you want. Pick a dresser, pick a trunk, pick a closet. Showers through that door, bathrooms through the other.”

  The size of the room impressed her, but not the colors. It was all painted a dull gray and yellow, the same as the exterior. She dropped her bag on a bunk and looked into the shower room. There were six stalls with polymer piping, handles, and showerheads. “Do the showers have hot water?” she asked.

  “Oh, please.” Raimy hung the clipboard on a hook.

  As if connected to the hook, a thin old man in a white shirt and black pants stuck his head in the door. “You buzzed?”

  Raimy pointed to Cosette with his thumb. “New recruit, Harn.”

  “Ah, yes.” Harn extracted a device from a pouch on his hip and extended two plastic arms from it, and then pulled a long string from the bottom. “Hold this,” he said, handing the tip of the string to her. “Hold the end of the string right over your navel, please. Tight against you. Stand up straight and hold still.”