“Me? Life's tough when you can't rely on other men to kill for you. I just get on with it. One day you'll understand.”
Guy wandered across the street to one of the food stalls, pointed to some of the items on display, and handed over a shiny. The man behind it wrapped two pies in large leaves, and gave them to him.
A high-pitched voice yelped. Daniel spun around. Metal clattered against metal as a man wearing a rough chainmail suit with a sword on his belt strode along the boardwalk. He led a girl behind him, by a leash around her neck.
Daniel's heart jumped.
Long, dark, brown hair. Perky breasts beneath the thin cloth that hung over her body. Could that be? He stared into her sad brown eyes for a second, before she pouted and looked away.
No, it wasn't Erica.
He had to stop looking for her. She wasn't on Hades. She couldn't be Condemned. Her comrades would make sure of that. She was back home, safe in her barracks.
He would never see her again.
Ever.
Guy strolled back, dodging passers-by and carts entering the gates, and held a pie out to Daniel.
“Don’t worry, there aren’t any animals in it this time.”
“What about people?”
“Kid, I don’t want you to starve, but I’m not wasting my shinies buying you the good stuff. It’s all plant shit. Just eat.”
Daniel took it and sniffed. It smelled sweet, more like fruit than vegetables, and was wrapped in some kind of leathery pastry. It certainly didn't look, or smell, like the rabbit from the night before.
“It’s good,” Guy said, and bit into his. He stared at the slave-girl's wiggling ass as the man led her away along the street.
Daniel bit into a corner, and chewed. Sweet and crunchy, and... oh. His mouth began to burn as the heat spread across his tongue, and around his lips. He gulped it down, and coughed as the fire seared his throat. He opened his mouth wide, and sucked cool air over his tongue, until it carried some of the heat away. If that failed, he was going to have to stick his face in the river to cool it down.
“Oh, yeah,” Guy said. “It’s pretty spicy, too. Helps hide the taste of the crap they put in it.”
Daniel wafted air over his face. It was slick with sweat, and glowing. He wasn’t going to risk another bite until he’d cooled from the last one.
Men yelled.
“What’s that?”
“Slave Square, and the King’s slave market is open. Come on, let’s take a look.”
“I don’t need to see that.” The experience on the boat had been enough for one day. More would only trigger him worse.
“Yes, you do.”
Daniel followed Guy along the street, chewing as he went. He’d eaten spicy food before, and it never agreed with him. Most times, it had gone straight through him, and came out the other end a few hours later. He didn’t see any bathrooms around, though he’d seen a couple of men crouching and straining in the alleys. Which could explain why the place smelled so bad.
The yells grew louder as they walked. Then the street opened into a wide square. A raised wooden stage stood in the centre, and a banner hung from the front.
CLEARANCE SALE.
A crowd of men, and a few women, milled in front of it. Carts were parked behind, where naked men and women stared silently from the cages in the back. A girl grabbed the bars of her cage and tried to rattle the door, but a whip cracking between them pushed her away.
“Are those...?” Daniel said.
“Mostly newbies who landed yesterday, yes. This is where you’d have ended up, if I hadn’t rescued you. Remember that, next time you want to complain about me.”
Garry strode out onto the stage, and cracked a whip toward a naked girl as two Guards pushed her out beside him, her arms and legs tied, and mouth gagged.
“Turn around,” he said. She glared at him. He raised the whip. She stared at it, then turned.
“What will you bid for this lovely prize?”
A man in the front row raised his hand. “Ten shinies.”
Garry pointed his whip at the man. Then he grabbed the girl’s ass, and wiggled it until her body shook. “She’s worth at least a hundred. You can make that back in a week.”
“She’s got no tits,” another man yelled.
Garry grabbed her small breasts, and wobbled them. For a second, her eyes met Daniel's, then she closed them. “What do you call these, then? She’s got everything a man could want.’
“And a face like a mule.”
“You don’t have to look at it.”
“I’ll still know it’s there.”
“Then put a bag on her head.”
The crowd laughed.
“I can see you're all experienced lovers,” Garry said.
They laughed again. A woman near the back, with long ears and a striped, furry face, raised her hand. “Twenty.”
“Come on now, comrades. Today’s lots are the last of the new batch. When they're gone, they're gone. Who knows when the King will have more for sale?”
Daniel lowered his pie. He didn’t much feel like eating any more. “How can you do this?” he yelled.
Garry raised a hand to shade his eyes from the sun, and stared at him. “Was that a bid, young man?”
“How can you stand there, buying and selling people like that? They’re human, not animals.”
Guy’s elbow nudged Daniel. The crowd glared at him, and their hands fidgeted with knives and swords on their belts. But he wasn’t going to stop. The others might accept this, but he never would.
“Comrades, the World State brought slavery to an end many centuries ago. How can you start it again? Would you want that to happen to you?”
“I'm sorry,” Garry said, “I thought you were a young man. I didn't realize you were a little girl. Perhaps you should take your bleeding heart back home, and have a good cry with your dolls,” He turned away. “Twenty shinies was the last bid.”
The first man raised his hand again. “Thirty.”
“I'm not a girl,” Daniel yelled. “I just have a heart. Not like the rest of you.”
The girl on the stage stared at him.
Garry held out his whip. “Perhaps you would like to come up here and run the auction for me?” The crowd laughed, and Garry turned back to them. “I heard thirty. Any more bids?”
Daniel grabbed the edge of the stage. He’d show the man. Guy pulled on Daniel's shoulder, dragged him away, then leaned closer, so he could whisper. “The King says slavery is OK. No-one’s going to stop them.”
“But how can they treat people like that?”
“A big bag of shinies soothes a lot of guilty consciences. If they have a conscience to start with.”
“No more bids?” Garry said. He shaded the suns from his eyes with one hand as he scanned the crowd, then cracked his whip. Then he smacked it against the girl's ass. “Then thirty it is. Your cock has found a bargain today, comrade.”
That was it. Daniel twisted from Guy’s grip. Guy grabbed for him as he climbed up onto the stage. His fingers slapped against Daniel’s ankle, but Daniel pulled his foot away.
If he did one thing with his time on Hades, he was going to show this man how wrong he was. This patriarchal, oppressive garbage had gone on for far too long.
“Let her go. “ Garry just stared at him. Daniel turned toward the man who had bought her. “She’s your comrade. She has her human rights. You can’t do this.”
Garry cracked the whip at Daniel’s feet. He squealed as he jumped back in surprise. The crowd laughed. Garry cracked it again. Daniel dodged, and lunged toward Garry, but the Guards stepped in the way and grabbed Daniel’s arms. He struggled, but they just gripped him harder, squeezing his arms until pain shot up to his elbows. Then tighter still, until they cut the circulation, and he could barely feel them.
“Get off me,” he yelled. “I have rights, too.”
The Guard to his left swung his free hand. The world froze for a split second as his clenched f
ist punched Daniel’s face. Then a wave of pain filled his head, like nothing he’d ever felt before. Daniel panted with shock. His heart thumped, and he suddenly wanted to pee. He’d never been in a fight in his life, and he’d already lost this one.
Garry looked around the crowd. “Whose boy is this?” He glanced toward Guy, and looked at his guns. Then pointed the whip his way. “Is he with you, comrade?”
Guy shrugged. “He’s kind of been following me around.”
The thump of drums, and a metallic whistle, floated into the square. Metal clunked, and something hissed.
Garry pushed Daniel from the stage. “Then keep him under control in future, if you want to keep him.”
Guy grabbed Daniel as he fell. The crowd backed toward the buildings, making space. A group of Kings’ Guards strode through the square, with shiny scales on their leather armour, and guns, bows and swords at the ready. Two drummers lead the pack, two more followed behind. A boy blew a whistle at the front. The drummers thumped on their drums with shiny gold sticks and stared resolutely ahead, as though the rest of the world was beneath their notice. Drones buzzed around them, recording the show.
Something else lumbered along between them. Something tall and metallic, surrounded by a thick grey cloud. The Guards on the stage stood at attention as it approached.
The metal thing towered above the accompanying Guards. It looked like a man, but a metre taller, and made from metal, with hinges at the elbows and knees, and blades on the hands and feet. Shining chimneys rose above the shoulders, and smoke and steam poured out of them. The joints crunched and ground as it moved. A giant robot?
No. Red eyes moved behind dark, triangular holes in the thick, iron head. Lips showed in the rectangular hole beneath. There was a man inside all that metal. One who didn’t look like he needed all those guards.
The Guard at the front of the procession held a revolver high, and smacked Daniel on the chest, pushing him away.
“Clear the street for the King.”
Guy pulled Daniel aside, into the shadow of a nearby inn, and handed him his pie. “I did tell you not to be stupid. You’re lucky the King came by when he did, and gave them something more important to worry about. Otherwise you’d be the next one up for sale.”
“You could have done something.”
“Kid, I like you, but I'm not gonna die to save you.” Guy tapped the butt of his revolver. “Lucky he didn’t know that.”
Daniel leaned against the wall as he watched the metal man and his guards approach. The crowd by the stage pressed against the walls, and faces appeared at the windows of the buildings around the square, watching the procession.
“That's the King?” Daniel said.
“What did you think he'd look like? He had an integrated exoskeleton back home, for working in the docks. PubSafe took out the nuclear power pack before they sent him here, but the Brain managed to build a steam engine to replace it, with some gear from the pods, and what he could make.”
Daniel had read about kings, in EdCamp. Monsters from the Capitalist era on Earth, before his ancestors fled to the stars. Evil men who murdered their way to power, then used it ruthlessly to keep their place, and ensure their children would rule after them. Everyone did what they said, or else. Everything in the world belonged to them, and they’d cut your head off if you tried to use their stuff. Even Capitalists were scared of Kings. They made the most corrupt commissar look about as scary as a hamster asleep in its nest.
Mud splashed across the square as the King’s metal feet stomped past, his steam engine belching smoke and steam with every step. The mud splattered the Guards’ uniforms, and dripped in brown trails down the dark leather. The glowing eyes in the King’s eye slits turned toward Daniel as the metal man passed, leaving a trail of steam and the smell of burning wood behind.
Daniel backed toward the wall.
And his pie vanished from his hand.
CHAPTER 18
Daniel stared at his empty hand. Had some kind of animal grabbed his pie? As they walked to the square, he'd seen some rats scuttling beneath the boardwalk, fighting over scraps of garbage, and some creatures that looked like baby versions of the hounds the hunters had chased him with. But would they really risk being killed for a pie?
Something moved in the darkness beneath the building alongside. Daniel crouched and peered under the boardwalk. Sunlight reflected from two eyes staring back at him, some sharp teeth, and two hands holding the pie as the teeth tore pieces away, chewed briefly, and gulped it down.
Black and white striped fur covered the face, between two tall, mouse-like ears. One dark eye bulged out on the left side of its face, while the other looked almost human. It lowered the pie, and hissed at him as he stared at it.
The arms and hands could look human too, but the fingers and nails were far too long, and the furry arms far too short, as though it had traded one for the other. The rest was wrapped in the thin, mud-stained remains of a torn white dress. Something disturbingly reminiscent of a girl's body covered in fur showed through when it moved, and when the cloth swung aside.
“What are you doing?” Guy said.
“There’s something down here. And it stole my pie.”
Guy peered under the boardwalk, then swung his arm.
“Get away.”
The creature hissed at him, and backed under the building. He reached beneath the boards, trying to pull the pie away from the creature, but her hand grabbed his wrist instead. He twisted his arm from side to side until she let go, then she backed away under the wood, chewing on the pie. He stood, and brushed the dirt from his leg.
“You’re not getting that back. Please don't feed the street-rats. At least, not with food I paid for.”
“What is it?”
“Probably a whore-baby dumped on the streets because there’s no better use for it. Don’t often see girls, but a man would have to be pretty far gone to make use of that one.”
So it was human. “Why did she look like that?”
“Everyone's had too much genetic engineering. Even the ones who aren’t hybrids aren’t really human any more. Back home, most babies don’t work right without an automedic to fix them up. Most of them here don’t even get as far as being born. The ones that do, and look like her, no-one wants. They usually don’t live that long.”
“Couldn't the State have done something about it before they sent people here?”
“They did. They turned off the birth control implants before dumping us here. Or maybe it wore out on the trip. You can Mate with anyone you want here, you don’t have to wait for a eugenics committee to pick them. They just don’t want us making too many babies.”
“You seem to spend a lot of time doing just that.”
“No, I mean, they want us making babies, that's half of what the commissars watch us for. They don't want us raising them, building up an army, and maybe becoming a threat.”
“Then maybe we should do just that.”
“Always the optimist.”
“Better than giving up.” Like you.
Guy led Daniel across the square through a crowd standing beneath a faded banner of the King’s red eyes staring from the dark triangles of his helmet. Then into a street on the far side. Something the size of his hand with long wings and a mouth of sharp teeth watched him from a sloping roof. A small hound lounged in an alley, chewing on something bloody, and watched him as he passed.
“What were you saying about brains earlier?” Daniel said.
“Not brains. The Brain. He was Condemned in the First Batch, like the King. He was a librarian, or something, knows everything about everything. He made the steam engine, he made gunpowder, he made the first guns. He’s been figuring out all the stuff none of the rest of us gave a shit about before. If I knew I’d be coming here, I’d have had my nose stuffed in books all my life, memorizing the lot. Then I’d be King.”
“Why would they Condemn a librarian?”
“Fucked if I know. But, if
he could make all those things here, who knows what he was making back home?”
“Where is he? Maybe he can help me escape.”
“The King keeps him locked up. Doesn’t want anyone else getting their hands on him. Wants to be sure he keeps all the secrets for himself.”
“Other people must know them.”
“Maybe. But not many. Most of us relied on skulltops back home, to call up anything we wanted over the Net. Not many can remember all the details themselves.”
“We could try.”
“Besides, you have to remember that everyone on Hades was dumb enough to get caught. Most of us wised up after we got here, but we were never the brightest of the bunch. The smart crooks are still commissars back home.”
“Then how did the Brain get caught?”
“Beats me. But there’s book smarts and street smarts. Guess he has one, and not the other.”
Yells and laughter floated across the street to them from a tall windowless, red-painted building. A waterfall of gold and silver circles surrounded the doors, with more red circles in dark triangles like the King’s eyes painted above. A King’s Guard with a sword on each hip studied those who passed by.
“What’s that?” Daniel said.
“King’s Casino. Want a look? It’s a hoot.”
“What’s a casino?”
“They bet on stuff for shinies.”
“What the heck does that mean?”
“Oh, shit, kid. They banned betting back home long before you were born. Say I toss a shiny, and you say whether it’ll land showing the King’s face or the King’s ass. If you pick right, I give you shinies. If you pick wrong, you give me shinies.”
“That’s stupid.”
Guy shrugged. “Man’s got to find something to fill his time here. Besides, some people get rich if they’re good at picking winners. Easier than robbing for a living.”
A loud yell of far more male voices than Daniel could easily distinguish burst from the doors. He opened his mouth, but Guy was already crossing the street, weaving between the stalls and a passing cart. Daniel followed.
Hooves splashed mud across him, and he ducked back just fast enough to avoid being smashed by a hauler pulling a cart along the street. The driver scowled at him. “Stupid shit.”
Condemned (Death Planet Book 1) Page 9
