Drifter

by William C. Dietz

  Lando took note of his sudden elevation from "Citizen Lando" to "son," and wondered if it signaled acceptance or something a little less obvious.

  But if the other man's motives were less than pure, there was no sign of it in his handshake or friendly smile. "I hope you like stew… minus the meat of course."

  Lando said that he did, and sat next to the kitchen counter, as Wendeen cooked, and told some well-rehearsed stories.

  But if Wendeen was an amiable host, he was a father as well, which Lando learned as the two of them sampled some stew. Wendeen took a bite and looked up from the steaming spoon.

  "So, did Wendy take you to the top of Elder's Rock?"

  Lando nodded. "Sort of. She ran to the top and waited for me to arrive."

  Wendeen laughed and scattered some seasonings over the stew. "That's Wendy, all right. She wanted to climb that spire from the time she could walk. Never would've allowed it myself, but her mother had a different turn of mind, and you can see who won."

  Lando had wondered about Wendy's mother, but never worked up the nerve to ask. Wendeen seemed to read his mind.

  "My wife took a bad fall when Wendy was twelve. We did the best we could, and they might've saved her on one of the inner planets, but she passed away. We didn't have a real doctor back in those days."

  Lando nodded soberly. It all made sense. Wendy's interest in medicine, her father's influence, and her strong personality. "I'm sorry."

  Wendeen shrugged as he ladled generous helpings of stew into mismatched earthenware bowls. "God gives, and God takes away. That's how it is."

  Wendeen glanced towards Wendy, assured himself that she was out of earshot, and smiled.

  "Just a word to the wise, son. Wendy likes you. The trip to Elder's Rock proved that. And if you like her too, then well and good. But cause her pain… and you'll answer to me."

  Lando nodded dutifully, but wasn't impressed. What sort of punishment could a pacifist mete out? And besides, where the hell was Blopar Wendeen when Lorenzo Pal was molesting his daughter?

  The meal went well. Wendeen steered the conversation away from The Church of Free Choice and towards other matters. He had some fascinating stories to tell, and Lando enjoyed hearing them.

  Wendy was uncharacteristically silent during most of dinner, glancing from one man to the other, apparently content to listen rather than speak. This seemed strange and caused Lando to wonder where things were headed.

  So, while he enjoyed himself, the smuggler was careful to consume only one glass of the wine which was served with dinner.

  "Always check the menu to see if you're on it," his father liked to say. And sure enough, more visitors started to arrive the moment they cleared the table.

  They came in singly and in two's and three's. Older men and women mostly, but with a scattering of the middle-aged, and one or two younger people. Most wore the triangle-and-circle pendants favored by Wendy and her father. Wendy introduced them as "Elder" this and that, so Lando knew that his suspicions had been correct. Blopar Wendeen was up to something. But what? There was no way to tell.

  It took a while for the elders to arrive. But finally, when the living area was full of people, and the air was thick with tobacco smoke, Wendeen stood and held his hand up for silence. The low murmur that filled the room died away.

  "Welcome. And thank you for leaving the comfort of your homes to join me in mine."

  There was a chorus of "glad to be here's" followed by curious stares as the visitors switched their attention to Lando.

  The smuggler looked at Wendy, but she refused to meet his eyes. There was something afoot and she knew what it was.

  Wendeen relit his pipe and spoke between puffs of blue smoke. "By now you've noticed that there's a stranger among us. Some of you have met him and some haven't.

  "His name is Pik Lando. Thanks to him, and my daughter Wendy, we'll soon have the fertilizer we need. Fertilizer that is only part of a rather ambitious plan."

  Lando saw heads nod in agreement and wondered what was going on. Plan? What plan?

  Wendeen nodded as if acknowledging Lando's question. "I'll return to that in a moment. First we must vote.

  "As all of you know, our plan depends on obtaining some rather critical items, and given the current state of tension between ourselves and the corpos, that becomes more difficult with each passing hour. Lorenzo Pal will be up and around pretty soon. The corpos will clamp down the moment that occurs."

  Wendeen looked around as if making sure that the elders understood the seriousness of what he'd said. Satisfied that they did he continued.

  "In order to obtain the items we need, and bring them to Angel, we'll need some transportation. Not just any transportation, but the kind that Citizen Lando supplies, the kind that goes around the corpos.

  "We had originally planned to wait a little longer, to finish the laboratory first, but time is of the essence. Each passing day brings with it the threat that the corpos will discover our plan, that one of our own will betray us, that everything we've worked for will be destroyed."

  Lando paid close attention, not just to the part that referred to him, but to the rest as well. The fact that some members of the Church might betray the rest was especially interesting. It made the entire organization seem more human.

  Blopar Wendeen cleared his throat. His voice cracked. "I allowed Wendy to undertake this last mission based on the belief that the corpos trusted her and would pay less attention to her activities than they would to mine. I thought they were human beings, who, having benefited from my daughter's services as a doctor, would allow her to come and go unmolested. I was wrong."

  There was a long moment of silence. Heads nodded in agreement. This was a small community. Everyone knew what had happened. Lando looked at Wendy. She met his eyes and smiled rigidly.

  Blopar Wendeen looked around the room. "I am not a violent man."

  Lando heard a scattering of "amens." The feeling was different now. It was as if a hard and determined spirit had entered the room. A spirit that had been born on a hundred rim worlds, nurtured deep within a thousand hearts, and brought here to flower.

  Wendeen's eyes flashed and his body seemed to swell with power. "The Church Of Free Choice will run no further. This is our planet, our heritage, our home. We will not stoop to violence, but we will keep that which is ours, even if that means war!"

  Lando was truly confused now. A nonviolent war? How could that be? But a loud chorus of "hear! hear's!" and "so be it's," drowned the thought out.

  "So," Wendeen continued, "the choice is this. Shall we take Citizen Lando into our confidence? Shall we secure his services? Or wait until later, in the hope that conditions will improve?"

  A tough-looking middle-aged man with wind-roughened skin and a deeply lined face jumped to his feet. "I say we should act now! Blood has already been spilled over this matter. Let's move now before things get even worse!"

  "Maybe, and maybe not," an elderly woman said, her voice hard and unyielding. "Patience is a virtue. Besides, how do we know we can trust this man?"

  Now Wendy got to her feet. "I am not an elder, but request permission to speak."

  Five or six voices said, "Granted," and Wendy nodded her thanks.

  "I, better than any of you, can answer the question posed by Elder Nakasoni. Pik Lando saved my life. First on Weller's World and then on Angel. On both occasions he acted without expectation of a reward. My mission would've ended in failure without his help. I didn't know Jonathan Troon was a member of our Church, but I liked him, and he liked Pik Lando. Troon called Pik a man of honor, and I agree."

  Wendy took her seat to mild applause, and the debate raged on for another fifteen or twenty minutes.

  Lando was annoyed at first, but by the time a vote was taken, he was angry.

  The meeting, and the vote which followed, assumed his cooperation. With the exception of Wendy, everyone else had discussed him as though he were little more than a robot who would automatically do
whatever they ordered.

  Lando came close to walking out. Only Wendy's anxious expression kept him from doing so.

  The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of action, and Blopar Wendeen nodded his head in satisfaction. His eyes swept the room and came to rest on Lando.

  "Thank you. The next order of business involves an apology to Citizen Lando. Pik, I apologize for the way we treated you just now. We must seem extremely arrogant. Can you possibly forgive us?"

  Faced with such a sincere and straightforward apology, Lando felt his anger dissipate like the air from a punctured balloon. He still felt resentful, but could hardly admit it.

  "Apology accepted."

  The elders murmured their approval, and Wendy smiled encouragingly.

  Blopar Wendeen beamed his approval. "Good. I can see why my daughter likes you."

  Most of the elders laughed, and Wendy blushed. Lando felt himself smile, realized that the older man had played him like a well-tuned violin, and felt helpless to stop it.

  Wendeen made a gesture with his pipe. "So, let's get down to business."

  The words were addressed to the entire group, but his eyes were on Lando.

  "I'm going to entrust you with a secret. The same secret that cost Jonathan Troon his life. We are about to declare war on the corpos. No, not the kind of war that most of us are used to, but an open conflict nonetheless. A conflict that we didn't start."

  Wendeen made an expansive gesture. "We wanted to buy this entire world, settle here, and live out our lives in peace and harmony.

  "Then Mega-Metals came along with their hired help, robotic equipment, and limitless greed. The law requires that they remain on their half of the world, but many are the times that we've found their robo-prospectors searching our land for mineral deposits. It would be naive to think that such occurrences are 'system malfunctions' as they claim. And it would be equally naive to think that they are satisfied with only half the planet.

  "But that's not all. Bit by bit, hour by hour, and day by day the corpos are killing this world. Their drills reach deep into the ground, pump out the water, and replace it with liquid waste. Their airborne emissions pour into the atmosphere, are caught by the winds, and carried to our lungs.

  "Their machines strip away the surface of the planet, destroy what little topsoil there is, and breed new wastelands."

  Wendeen paused dramatically, his eyes flashing, and pointed out towards the world beyond. "What the corpos have launched is nothing less than ecological war! They know of our agrarian ways, of our distaste for violence, and are determined to use that knowledge against us!

  "By exploiting their half of the world, and poisoning the rest, they hope to drive us away as others have done in the past. They think we'll pack our bags and run! But we're through running! It's they who shall run, and damned fast too!"

  There was a chorus of "hear! hear's!" Lando cleared his throat.

  "You mentioned a secret."

  Wendeen nodded. "In order to understand the secret you must first understand our history. The secret is this: There are a number of highly trained scientists sitting in this room. Men and women with advanced degrees from all over the empire. Working together, they've designed a new ecosystem for Angel. An entire scheme of plant and animal life custom-designed to meet the conditions found on this planet."

  Lando nodded his understanding. Many colonies tinkered with their new homes, and in some extreme cases, entire planets had been terraformed. But such efforts were extremely expensive, and therefore rare.

  Wendeen held up a hand. "I know what you're thinking, and that's not what I mean. What I'm talking about is an ecosystem that's compatible with our philosophy. Think of it! An ecosystem that devours most forms of metal! An ecosystem that consumes robo-crawlers, tractors and weapons, and returns them to the soil. In short, an ecosystem that will drive Mega-Metals off our planet!"

  Lando started to say something but Wendeen interrupted.

  "Yes, we'll be forced to give up some of the technology we presently use, and we'll have to find a way to seal off some of our laboratory facilities, but the results will be worth it."

  Lando gave it some thought. It was a radical idea. To shape a world for an agrarian society rather than a technological one. If the idea worked, the value of Mega-Metals' investment would plummet, and the settlers would be able to buy the other half of the planet for a song and live happily ever after.

  Suddenly Lando realized that everyone was waiting for him to speak. "It's a brilliant concept but where do I come in? Where is this ecosystem now? And how does one transport an entire ecosystem? If memory serves me correctly, a man named Noah was the last one to try it."

  It was Wendy who replied. "The ecosystem was designed here, but manufactured on Techno. And you won't have to move the mature ecosystem. Just the microorganisms that pave the way for the rest. The higher life forms will come later. The Tink could handle the whole thing in one trip."

  Lando had heard of Techno but had never actually been there. Techno had started life hundreds of years before as a small research lab orbiting Terra.

  But a dispute with the planetary government had caused the scientists and technicians who ran the habitat to declare their independence and remove the lab from Earth's gravity well.

  Techno had its own orbit now, conveniently located between Earth and Mars, but much, much larger than its original size. Over the years it had grown, one module at a time, until it was a third the size of Terra's moon.

  As such, it was a small, independent, and self-sufficient universe, inhabited by some of the best scientists in known space, all working for the highest bidder. If anyone could manufacture a custom designed ecosystem, they could.

  Blopar Wendeen interrupted his thoughts. "So you'll help us? We're a little short of cash at the moment… but we'll make regular payments… and pay reasonable interest."

  Lando looked at Wendy. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

  The smuggler looked around the room. The elders looked back. The whole thing was crazy. A nonviolent war waged against a violent opponent. Lando knew he should say "no," should climb in his ship, lift, and never look back. They couldn't pay him, for Sol's sake. Not right away, and who knew if they ever would?

  Lando's eyes met Wendy's. They were filled with a combination of hope and despair. He tried to open his mouth, tried to say "no," and found he couldn't. Not with Wendy sitting right there.

  "I'll sleep on it."

  There was a collective sigh. Faces dropped. The elders were disappointed.

  Blopar Wendeen was no exception, but he nodded his understanding, and brought the meeting to a close.

  There was a silent prayer, a quick kiss from Wendy, and a promise to see her in the morning.

  A scientist named Nelson Lakowski offered Lando a ride in his truck and he accepted.

  Lakowski's wife was with him, so there was no room in the vehicle's tiny cab, but Lando welcomed the chance to be alone in the back.

  Angel's halo was gorgeous. It arched from horizon to horizon like a bridge of light. But even its glory was put to shame by the steady stream of meteors that flashed across the sky, maybe one a second, falling on the equatorial zone like a fiery rain. Lando leaned back against the bulk of a folded tarp and let the beauty of it carry him away.

  It seemed like only seconds had passed when Lakowski came to a jerky stop off The Tink's starboard wing. The spaceship was a black blot against the stars. A single greenish-blue light hung over the door of the distant hangar.

  Lando jumped down from the truck, thanked Lakowski for the ride, and strolled towards the ship. Somehow, without even trying, his mind was made up. He liked Wendy, but this eco-war thing was half-baked at best, and could go seriously wrong. His answer would have to be "no."

  He passed under a stubby wing, checked to make sure that a tie-down wire was sufficiently taut, and headed for the ship's lock. He was tired and couldn't wait to climb into his bunk. He needed some sleep, a shower, and a bi
g breakfast. Maybe then he'd feel up to seeing Wendy.

  The blow took him completely by surprise. It hit him in the side of the head and hurt like hell. Lando stumbled, reached for his gun, but it was too late. Powerful arms wrapped themselves around his midsection and immobilized his hands.

  He saw a foot and stomped on it. His reward was a blow to the face.

  He heard someone say, "take his gun," and felt it jerked from his holster.

  The arms around his midsection disappeared and were replaced by a half nelson.

  "Hold him up." The voice was familiar but Lando couldn't quite place it. Then he didn't have to, as Lorenzo Pal stepped out of the shadows and stood before him. The corpo wasn't so pretty anymore. He favored his left side, carried his right arm in a sling, and had a bandage wrapped around his head. The corpo's eyes were black with fury.

  "Do you know me?"

  Lando forced a smile. "Of course. I know shit when I see it."

  Lorenzo Pal delivered the first backhanded blow. But there were more, so many more that Lando lost count, and was only half conscious when the combat boot connected with his head. The darkness felt good.

  10

  Lando awoke to complete and utter darkness. He tried to open his eyes but found that he couldn't. It felt as if the darkness would swallow him. He threw an arm out and winced when it hit solid durasteel. That pain summoned more pain, and his entire body began to ache.

  "Pik? Was that you?"

  Lando saw filtered light and struggled to see. There was gooey stuff all around his eyes. His eyelids were cemented shut. The smuggler managed to wipe some of it away. He felt his right eye pop open. Wendy was blurred but recognizable. His left eye opened. She sounded concerned.

  "Pik, stop that. You need rest. Give yourself a chance to heal."

  He grunted something inarticulate and swung his legs off the bunk. The Tink. The beating. It came flooding back.

  The pain swept over him in waves. Lando tried to find some part of his body that felt good, but couldn't. He gathered his strength, gritted his teeth, and stood. He swayed dangerously and Wendy grabbed his arm.