The First One's Free

by TS Hottle

  Tishla wondered if the story lost something in translation. It sounded ridiculous and just a bit horrifying. “Who are you people? Do you solve all your wars with cannibalism?”

  “It’s just a primitive myth.”

  “That you named an entire planet after.”

  “Baah-Zun. Isn’t that from your creation myth?”

  That was all the quarrel she would have with him. When Kai ordered Tishla to accompany Marq to his homeworld, she knew not to argue. Though he would not explain why, she did not argue. Most of the time, she could push him as though she were the master and he the indentured. Still, if Kai asserted himself, Tishla submitted. That was the deal.

  The trip started normally enough. She and Marq took one of Kai’s personal transports to Ramcat, a Laputan world. As the Realm and the Compact remained largely oblivious to one another’s existence, only on Ramcat could they move from one culture to the other without having to go through first contact protocols.

  At least, that was the plan.

  As the Laputan transport entered the wormhole that would carry them to Compact space, Tishla watched with pleasure as Marq became mildly ill from the distortion effects of the hypergate. She herself found the experience unpleasant, but she did not suffer the same problems dealing with the gates’ interdimensional oddities as others did, be they Gelt or alien.

  Exiting the wormhole, she heard the captain announce in several languages that they were now in Compact space. The ship would free fall to parking orbit over Metis within the next hour or so.

  As soon as the announcement ended, Marq reached into his pocket and produced a small blue crystal. Tishla recognized it immediately.

  “That belongs to Kai,” she said. “That’s the…”

  “Deed to your person? Well, now it belongs…”

  An alarm sounded as a large ship appeared outside, stopping his response. Another voice cut in over the intercom and chattered something in Marq’s native tongue, a language Tishla had not quite extrapolated yet. The captain came back on and, in several languages, apologized for the inconvenience. The Compact Navy needed to do a routine inspection of the ship.

  Minutes later, four primates clad in polymer suits with their faces obscured approached from the docking module and surrounded her and Marq. One of them raised a device and pointed it at her. Pain coursed through her body for a moment as the world turned bright blue.

  Then black.

  *****

  They had Tishla naked and stretched out on a table. She could not understand the gargling noise that passed for these creatures’ language. Sedated as she was, she could not listen closely enough to extrapolate what they were saying. The room was cold. She wanted to shiver, but she could not move at all except to breathe.

  The beings hovering over her wore blue robes and covered their faces. What little she could see of their skin looked as pale as Marq’s, though one of the beings had much darker skin. It still had that brownish tinge Tishla had not really noticed before in the little alien. They ran their hands over her, poked her skin, and drew blood. One of the beings ran its finger down her belly and pressed it into her navel. It seemed surprised when its finger went inside.

  Do they know they’re raping me? Did they? She sensed no malice from these creatures, but they had laid her out like an animal. She felt little different from a horniq she once watched her father butcher or the urdongs she dissected as a medical student. As they sliced tiny pieces of skin from her and drew blood and other fluids, she began to wonder if they would simply cut her to pieces and put her in jars of preservative solution.

  Unable to move or speak, she resigned herself to her fate. She was a lab specimen. It made it no less horrifying as one of the beings plunged a cold metal probe deep into her navel. The feeling of something invading her body in such a manner made her want to scream, and she couldn’t.

  Episode 4: Metis

  12

  The sudden flare of bright light woke Best from his drug-induced sleep. He looked up to see two figures standing in the doorway of his recovery cubicle. His arm blocked them from view as he shielded his eyes from the glare. “What is it? I paid for six hours. I’m still groggy.”

  “Mr. Best?” said a man’s voice. It had a lilt not unlike Luxhomme’s, but he spoke in more of a monotone. It was an odd combination. “Metisian Homeworld Security. We need to speak with you.”

  Best reached up and fumbled for the cubicle’s dimmer inside light. Sitting up, he realized his visitors would see him clad only in a T shirt and boxers. “You couldn’t have just waited until I checked into my hotel?”

  “We’re not even sure we can allow you to leave the spaceport,” said the other visitor, a similarly accented woman in a jacket and skirt cut so severe it looked like the creases could sever limbs.

  The light revealed the first agent to be a man who fairly bulged from his suit. Best suspected he spent most of his off-hours in a gym. “Minister, why did you not send the government advanced notice of your arrival?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a minister in the government of a core world,” said the woman. “You must present your credentials to the Executive or one of her representatives.”

  Best rubbed his eyes and tried to make sense of what they were saying to him. “I’m here on personal business.”

  “Uh huh,” said the man. “And would this ‘personal business’ have to do with one of our Citizens? An Etruscan resident named ‘Luxhomme’?”

  “So he is Metisian,” said Best. “Yes, but I’m here of my own accord.”

  “And apparently charged with planetary and Compact-level crimes,” said the woman. “Technically under arrest on Jefivah.”

  “Your sheet reached us before you left The Caliphate.”

  Best stretched. He would not get anymore rest here. “I’ll check in with the Compact Home Office on my way to the hotel.”

  “See that you do,” said the woman. “And please bear in mind that Mr. Luxhomme is a Citizen here. You are a guest.”

  Gee, thought Best, no kidding.

  *****

  Tishla awoke intact for the most part. They had placed some sort of quantum tag several places on her body. She still had no clothes, but they had put her into a thin garment that opened in the back. A couple of tubes stuck into her arm, and a plastic clip hung from her forefinger.

  It was as though the Grays had abducted her and dumped her in an alien hospital, perhaps a Laputan facility. And yet she could not understand a word of what was said around her. That bothered her. Normally, denizens of the Realm could extrapolate a language within minutes of listening to a speaker.

  One of the Orag-looking beings entered. Similar to Marq, it had pale skin with a brownish tinge to it. Or maybe beige. Tishla wasn’t sure. It appeared to be female, its ample breasts curving the front of its light blue garments. As it… She… worked the tubes and examined the instruments, she started chattering in that same gargling language as the beings who probed Tishla. This one, however, spoke in an almost musical tone, not quite like Marq’s manner of speaking. Tishla gleaned that this tone was emotional whereas Marq’s tones were a function of his native accent.

  That was enough to enable Tishla’s mind to start calculating the language. She couldn’t pick up words yet, but the combination of how Marq spoke the Mother Tongue and the attendant’s chatter formed the building blocks she would need to learn their language.

  The creature continued to prattle, went over to the wall, and pressed her fingers against it. She drew her fingers apart diagonally and said something in a tone Tishla recognized as a question. Since Tishla did not know the aliens’ gestures, she tried nodding as she had seen Marq do. The female stepped away from it to reveal a data feed or video broadcast of some sort.

  Again, Tishla nodded. The creature smiled, like Marq did, only without the oily overtones. Marq’s smile reminded Tishla of the reptilian predators that prowled her homeworld in the warmer months. This person reminded her more of a mot
her. Tishla found herself left alone for a while with the gurgling wall display. Soon, occasional words began to make sense. It made her feel more comfortable with her surroundings, as comfortable as one could be in a hospital.

  With the display constantly on, Tishla was quickly able to calculate the aliens’ language. She learned that another world called Etrusca, which she’d heard of, hosted something called the “Interstellar Games” and that another world, Tian, currently led in medals. That made Tishla laugh. The Realm did not give athletes medals. They gave them food, homes, and concubines, but medals went only to Warriors and those who served the Realm in a high capacity.

  The beings narrating the news feeds talked of a world called Jefivah, where food riots raged after factional clashes had flared and wrecked food production. Jefivah looked a lot like Essenar, only better developed and not as rainy. One shot of a city there included a garish statue of a scantily-clad Tianese woman in a white dress that stood some three floors high. According to the narrator, this was the goddess of a local cult that, surprisingly, had some power on Jefivah. From the narrator’s tone, she guessed that most Tianese found it as ridiculous as she did.

  Another world, whose name did not really translate, announced some significant technological breakthrough. Tishla didn’t understand enough Tianese to make out what they said, but she did glean that the world called itself Thukalifate, had its own religion-based power group, but existed largely in this “Compact’s” mainstream.

  The attendant reappeared about an hour after she set up the video feed and began looking over Tishla’s tubes and instruments.

  “Hello,” said Tishla in their language. She knew it sounded almost machine-like, but she was unpracticed. For all she knew, she may just have proposed marriage. “My name is Tishla. Where am I?”

  The attendant looked at her, wide-eyed, then turned and ran out into the hall. “Hey, that alien woman’s talking. Get the spuks from Compact Security up here.”

  *****

  “Do you have a name?”

  The Tianese male in the dark suit spoke in such a mechanical manner, Tishla wondered if he was an android. The Realm had banned such devices centuries ago, mainly to keep idle serfs from revolting. This Compact may not have.

  “My name is Tishla,” she said.

  “Is that a family name or a personal one?”

  “Just Tishla.” She decided to withhold revealing her status as a concubine. For starters, primates tended to act strangely about other primate species’ sexual mores. Besides, one race’s concubine might be another’s whore.

  “And how do you understand and speak our language? Were you educated by one of our people?”

  “The only person of your species I know at all is the one called ‘Marq’, though something tells me that’s not his actual name. As for your language, my people can listen to and extrapolate most languages we are exposed to in a very short time. It’s a survival mechanism that evolved during our stone ages.” Let’s see if that makes any sense to him.

  “Interesting.” The man traced his finger across his palm. “Just Marq? Did he not mention his surname, Katergarus?”

  So they have nano-tattoos as well, she thought. “Katergarus. That’s not a Humanic word, is it?”

  The man nodded and traced his palm again. “You came to us from Laputan space, but clearly you are not Laputan. What are you?”

  “I come from a region of space known as the Realm.” The Tianese word for the Realm felt strange coming from her mouth. Despite awareness of aliens, she had only known the Realm since birth. To refer to her home using a strange word from another language unsettled her more than this alien’s presence in the room.

  “The Realm,” he repeated. “What is that?”

  “What is the Compact?” She thought the male would smile for a moment. “Where am I, anyway?”

  “You are on a world known as Metis. More specifically, you are at the Homeworld Security Quarantine Center at Sophiopolis, the capital. What is your business here?”

  She considered what words she had extrapolated of their language and what concepts would match them. “My employer sent me to accompany a Tianese man named Marq, who deals in genetically modified foods.”

  “So you are a geneticist?”

  That was more than she wanted to reveal, but revealed it was. “I am a student of genetics. My employer pays for my education. Where is Marq? Was he also quarantined?”

  “Your friend had to spend some time in quarantine, and asked to answer a few uncomfortable questions about trying to bring an unregistered alien species through passenger channels to a Compact world. He’ll be paying a few fines, maybe end up on a watch list if our section chief is in a bad mood.” The male dropped a pendant on the table between them. She recognized the jewel as her Master’s Key, the device that commanded the nanites in her bloodstream. Essentially, it was a slave collar. It was also dark. “He had this on him. We don’t know what it is.”

  Tishla’s heart sank. Kai sold her to Marq? Or gave her to him? As she struggled to hide the flash of anger that surged through her, she suddenly realized what Kai had done. Under the Realm’s laws of indenture, if a person who was property was given over to a person from a place that banned such practices, the deed to one’s person became null and void upon entry into the new owner’s space of origin.

  And the Compact apparently had no forms of indenture or slavery. If the Master’s Key knew this…

  She tried to find a delicate way to explain. “I am in my employer’s custody for a contracted length of time. That device acts as the physical proof of contract between us. It’s clearly no longer functional.” Because it’s illegal for Marq to own me, isn’t it? The idea that Marq had owned her, that, until they entered Compact space, he literally could have done anything he wanted with her, made Tishla ill.

  “Does it require contact with a central node somewhere to function?” asked the male.

  “No,” she said. “If it’s deactivated, the self-contained unit has become aware of a condition that nullifies the contract.”

  “Such as…?” He clearly knew Tishla’s status as property, however voluntary and temporary that might be.

  “Through our dealings with Marq,” she said, “we have become aware that your Compact has banned certain forms of employment the Realm considers normal. Our laws stipulate that such contracts become void whenever the contracted person enters space where such arrangements are illegal.”

  “And were you to return to your Realm at this moment?”

  These beings did not have a word for Free Woman. “I become what you would call a ‘citizen,’ though the concept is somewhat different in our culture.”

  “I see,” said the male. “And why was Marq on your homeworld?”

  “He brought us a…”

  The male tossed a poe-tay-toe, the odd word Tishla had learned for the tubers Marq had brought to Essenar. “One of these?”

  “Yes. He said it could cure our famine problems.”

  “Marq also visited a colony of this world called Gilead, shortly before we lost contact with it. Do you know why?”

  Tishla shook her head, hoping the gesture meant the same thing to these beings. “I don’t know.”

  “What about Barsoom?”

  Marq had called the first world her people had taken Baah Zun, but that name came from Realm mythology. For now, in the interest of staying out of a Tianese prison or worse, she simply said, “I don’t know what those are.”

  “You paused when I said ‘Barsoom.’ Why?”

  “In our language, that name is part of our creation myth.”

  “I see.” The male stood and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Tishla, I need your help. Would you know anything about a world called ‘Barsoom,’ even in your people’s language?”

  Tishla knew nothing of Gilead. Or did she? Barsoom, or rather Baah Zun, was the name Marq used for the terraforming colony he handed to Laral’s troops. What if Gilead was Hanar? Or worse, Cyal, the
second colony Kai was to secure? Cyal had cities. It had an industrial base. It could not be a renegade world. No primate species she knew of could ever pull off such a feat without the parent race assisting or intervening. Kai, my love, what have we done?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I can’t help you. I have to decide how to find employment now that I no longer have a …” She almost said Master, since that was Kai’s legal status. “…job.” That’s what these beings called it, and they did those jobs in exchange for money. “Is this Barsoom a colony of Metis?”

  “Mars,” said the male, “and they are one of the most powerful members of the Compact. If someone has tried to conquer their colony, they just brought the entire military might of the human race down on their heads.”

  Tishla now understood why Kai had handed her contract over to Marq and sent her to… Was this now to be called hew-maan space? “I need to get back to my people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I believe my former employer is in danger.” And my Master… my husband… Needs me at his side.

  *****

  Her next visitor did not seem so formal. A darker-skinned Tianese than the agent, this one had a more musical tone to her speech. Tishla found it amusing how fast she had learned to distinguish between male and female. This one was constantly grinning at her, an expression completely unlike Marq’s smile. When he first arrived on Essenar, Tishla thought maybe the Tianese man was trying to mimic the Realm’s native gestures and facial ticks. But the longer she watched them, the more she realized how like her own people they were.