Chains of Destruction

by Selina Rosen

"So all the priests are basically schizophrenic," Topaz was saying excitedly.

  "I don't know what that is," Jessit answered.

  "They all suffer from this disorder where they hear voices in their heads," Topaz said.

  "Yes," Jessit said shaking his head. "I have it, too, but I know it isn't gods that are talking to me . . ." He looked then at the young prince and fell silent.

  "Speak freely. I have long believed that the priests spoke falsely, and everything I have seen on my adventure since I left the palace has only strengthened my belief. If you have any insight, please share it with us," Taleed said.

  "Only that . . .."

  Haldeed put the snails over the fire.

  "My goodness! What a fine feast we will have," Jessit said smacking his lips.

  "Jessit, please," Topaz begged with a sigh. "Try to stay on task. What were you going to say?"

  Haldeed smiled. He thought it was funny that the old alien should be telling anyone to "stay on task," when Taleed's hands lay in the dirt at his feet untouched and unfinished.

  "Well, it became obvious to me early on that the voices in my head couldn't be the gods. Why would the gods want me to have sex with my neighbor's farm animals? Or slit the throat of a merchant who over charged the man in line ahead of me? I spoke to the head priest Ziphed about it. He said the gods spoke in mysterious ways, and that I must learn to interpret what they were saying to me. I knew then that everything that he said was only lies. Lies that he told when he interpreted things like Have sex with the neighbor' farm animals, and turned it into The gods want us to fight with each other. I mean how can you credibly translate having sex with your neighbor's animals into anything godly? Perhaps you could make an argument that it means the animals should be bred, or perhaps that the community as a whole should condemn or perhaps engage in acts of bestiality. But it hardly seems to me that the gods would waste their time talking about such trivial matters."

  Haldeed couldn't make much sense of what the priest was saying and from the looks on the faces of the three alien strangers, neither did they. They seemed more like the Reliance people he had seen all his life. The ones that had come to the Capitol to trade hides and carvings, beads, art and sometimes meat for cotton cloth and metal implements. Cold and detached, like priests. Not like RJ and her people, who were more like the palace guard. Very serious at their posts, but cutting up, laughing, and offering mute palace servants a sip of wine they weren't supposed to have when they were off duty.

  Haldeed understood what they had said about why they were here, but he wasn't sure that he trusted them. Their expressions were devoid of emotion. Their movements were stiff, their body speech unreadable. He wondered if this was part of some training they had undergone, or whether their world just repressed them so much that their souls had retreated from their faces.

  The priest was still talking." . . . I wasn't happy to just believe what they told me to believe. I wasn't happy to tell the people that they should believe what I didn't. In a glass case deep within the Temple is the Holy of Holies, a huge vault in which are machine printed journals said to have been written by The Ancestor himself. No one save the High Priest is ever supposed to read them. So of course I read them right away. It wasn't very hard to gain access. I gave the guards a couple of bottles of wine once a week, and in return they opened the vaults and let me read the books."

  "What was in the books?" Taleed asked forgetting at least for the moment about his hands.

  Jessit laughed, then fixed the boy with a stare. "Ah, my Prince, it would be easier to tell you what was not in the books. They were the ledger of the man who would be king, the man who believed he was a god and easily convinced the people who already lived on our world that this was so. He wrote . . ." Jessit's eyes appeared to lose focus. Or perhaps to focus on something only he could see. His voice dropped into the sing-song cadence of rote recitation, and he began.

  My name is Paul Arquette. I have dictated this to the computer and had it printed out because it is important that my story be told. Also who knows what will become of the technology that accompanied me to this world? Who can trust that equipment when the very government that we have put our trust in has purposefully sabotaged it?

  The Reliance . . . May their name forever be cursed! . . .sent us on a mission to colonize this planet. Now looking out at this vast waste land, I know that we were never meant to survive. Of the eight hundred and seventy-two men and women who accompanied me on this pilgrimage, only I have survived, and I don't know how much longer I shall live. Both of my hands were severed in the crash, and in an attempt to keep from bleeding to death I cauterized them against the red-hot hull of the ship. It's funny how quickly mind and body will react. I wasn't even aware of doing it till it was done.

  My shipmates litter the interior of the ship and the ground outside, and I am crippled and too weak to do anything but watch them rot. I feel ill. Perhaps I will go to sleep and never wake up. I think that is what I would like.

  Day two – I woke up this morning feeling better but hungry. I found no viable food in any part of the ship. The mess halls and kitchen were on the starboard side of the ship, which was almost completely destroyed on impact. I wonder how it is that I am alive when everyone else has died, and when the very ship that has brought us here has been so damaged. The surgical unit was intact, and I found some ointment. I spent several minutes wondering how I would get it from the dispenser, and then I pushed the button with my knee. The ointment immediately started to heal my flesh, and the pain went away. I begin to think I may yet survive if I can only find something to eat.

  I wish the dead people would stop looking at me. Every time I see one of them, they seem to be looking at me, accusing me of some crime, because I have lived and they have died. But it is only the Reliance who has betrayed us. First they took away my right to breed, and then they sent me here sent – all of us here – to die. It seems that they cannot be rid of our color soon enough. We have already served our purpose in their breeding program, and now we are just flies in their genetic ointment. Still, I never thought they would go this far to get rid of us.

  Day Three – My hunger overwhelms me, and every day I realize more and more that a man cannot exist on a strange planet with no hands and no provisions. Today it rained, and I was able to stand at the edge of the ship and catch the water as it ran off. I kicked a big pot from the galley over and put it under the drip, so now I have drinking water. I found some edible food cubes deep within the rubble of the ship, and there are a few more that weren't destroyed in either the crash or the fire. Even the simple act of eating is almost impossible. I have to get down on my knees, lean over – careful not to put any weight on my stumps, which are still healing – and lift a food pack with my teeth. Then there is the task of opening the foil pouch. After several attempts I simply stuck it in my mouth whole, chewed it up, and spit the foil pieces out.

  There is still foil in my teeth.

  I kicked with my feet till I found the food cubes. I kicked till my feet hurt. I would like to take off my boots, but I cannot. Maybe if my arms were completely healed. . . But they aren't, and if I don't get some real food soon they probably won't heal at all. I will die here. Without help I will die, and there is no one here to help me.

  Day four – They keep looking at me. Some of them are starting to bloat and to smell, but others deep within the ship – especially down where the ship has been buried in the earth – are so cold that they still seem alive. But I know that they aren't. I know that they are just bodies. Some of them have the faces of my friends, but they aren't there anymore, and they won't know. No one will ever know. I worked socks onto my arms, and it cushions them enough that I can use them as long as I don't push too hard. It doesn't take much pressure to push a button on a laser knife. I cut slabs of meat from the thigh of a young corporal today; he didn't seem to mind. I found that there was a working microwave in one of the break rooms, and I cooked the meat. I looked at it for a long mo
ment then I lifted the plate to my face and ate.

  It didn't taste like chicken.

  Day five – My stumps seem to have healed over night, and the growling in my stomach has stopped. There is a voice in my head – several voices actually. They are telling me that it is good to eat the dead. Maybe it is the spirits of my dead friends who want me to live. I found Jim today down on the lower deck. I thought that deck would have been utterly destroyed, but it was surprisingly void of any real damage. Apparently it was only the starboard side of the ship – the side that impacted the ground first – that has been damaged beyond repair. When we hit this strange valley, crushing the rock formations – which can only be described as looking like huge African termite mounds – before us, the ship was totally out of control, and it took the brunt of the impact. The rock formations are now piled like a child's broken toys in front of and in some cases on top of the ship. Surprisingly, the observation window on the bridge, though badly cracked, is not broken. The voices tell me that others will come. The Reliance won't be happy to get rid of just a few of the blacks on the planet. They will only be happy when they have destroyed us all. They want to breed a race of one color, to bring about a feeling of unity and do away with racism by an act of genetic genocide. But there are too many of us, and it will take too long to breed us out. So they take away our breeding privileges. But some of us noticed that more people of color lost their breeding privileges than whites and we started trouble. So they round up all the troublemakers and tell us we can breed all we want if we will colonize this planet. They send us in a rickety ship that is sabotaged, hoping to exterminate us all and get away with murder. But I am still alive. Do you hear me, you stupid Reliance shit heads? I AM STILL ALIVE!

  Day 27 – I am a god. There is no other explanation for what has happened to me. Why else has everyone else died while I have lived? Why can I now hear the voices of the dead who live inside of me? I got five of the service droids running and programmed them to take vocal commands from me. It wasn't easy; I had to use my teeth and stumps to hold the tools to fix the first one. We cleaned the decaying bodies away, and using one of the land rovers that wasn't damaged in the crash, we carried them to a canyon several miles away and dumped them. We were able to get the freezer on line, and We have butchered all those bodies that had kept so well in the buried part of the ship. We have installed one of the dozens of thermo generators the Reliance sent for the, proposed colony. I half expected them to be fake, but they seem real enough. If I ration, I should have enough meat to last me for years, and the freezer should last as long as there is steam in the core of this planet.

  I am using the droids to find and test edible plants. After all, I may be a god, but I am still a human god, and humans are omnivores. So far the droids have found twenty varieties that are safe for human consumption and packed full of vitamins, unfortunately only one of these appeals to my French pallet.

  I grow to like this planet more with each passing day. The Reliance sent us here with a sabotaged ship in the hopes that even if some of us did survive the crash we could not live on this desolate planet, but this planet is not as desolate as they think. They will send more people here, and if even one woman survives that crash we will make a race here. We will breed, and breed, and become as numerous as the sands of the sea and then we shall track you across space and across time and we will make you pay! I will make you pay!

  * * *

  John Henry stood in the shadows, his prostheses in the hands of another man. His skin was painted brown, and he wore his silver space suit; he felt like a grade-A moron.

  "I feel like a grade-A moron," he said.

  "Just don't get it wrong, John, you know RJ would never ask us to do anything without damn good reason," his partner said. "We can't afford to screw it up now."

  John Henry nodded. He looked at the message scrawled across his left stump. "My children! The time has come to fight! You must cleanse this planet with the blood of the Reliance. Rise up and smite your oppressors."

  "You don't sound very god-like," his partner said pulling a face.

  "Just what the hell does a god sound like, Jack?" John asked in an angry whisper.

  "Not like that!" Jack laughed. "Sound more forceful, more booming. Try it like . . . My children . . ."

  "Hey!" a guard yelled rounding the corner of the building. "What the hell are you two up to?"

  "Nothing," Jack said shrugging.

  The guard must have seen Jack's weapon then, because he raised his own to a firing position. "Better drop that gun, alien."

  "What gun?" Jack asked with a shrug.

  The guard moved closer. He looked John and Jack up and down. "What the hell are you two dressed up for?" His finger was way too close to the trigger.

  John looked at Jack, and Jack looked at John. Then John slung his arm out and forced the barrel of the guard's rifle up making the bullet fire wild. "Go!" Jack ordered, shoving John foreword.

  "Shee. . .it!" John said running into the middle of the compound where the Beta 4 humanoids were just being led back to their barracks from a day of training. Seeing them John flung his stumps wide. "My children . . ." A bullet kicked up dirt a few feet in front of him, and he realized he had barely missed being shot. "Don't just stand there; kill these bastards!" John screamed running into the sea of Beta 4 humanoids who grabbed the Reliance soldier as he ran after John. They beat the guard to the ground and took his weapon. John stopped moving again. He looked at the people all bowing before him. "Don't start that bowing crap! Kick these guys asses, and let's get the hell out of here."

  They seemed to smile as a whole, then they let out a loud battle cry and started taking the camp apart.

  John found a fairly safe place and squeezed in to watch the battle in relative safety. The Beta 4 humanoids were kicking some Reliance ass. Apparently they had been waiting for just any sign to attack them.

  John Henry settled in and got comfortable. "Ah . . . It's good to be god."

  Chapter Fifteen

  "Then one day, I don't remember which one it was," Jessit continued. "But it was like years after the crash. These white-haired people with bronze skin and blue eyes found him. They thought he was a god. And of course so did he. He basically did to them what the Reliance had done to his people. He made all of their males stop breeding their females in their cycles, and he bred with all the females when they were fertile, making children that were all as brown as we are. He formed the Religion, and put a breeding program in place that would insure that his race would survive but wouldn't become so inbred that they started to have genetic mutations. It's very complex, and one has to wonder if the high priests have always understood the program themselves."

  "So in fact he was like a god because he did create you," Topaz said thoughtfully.

  "Yes," Jessit said. "He and the priests."

  "So here's something I don't understand," Stratton said. "From what you have said, and what little I have observed in your culture, women are more or less completely equal. Children are raised by both parents, men and woman hold the same jobs, wear basically the same clothing, and train and fight together. Yet woman aren't allowed to be priests. They aren't even allowed in the palace or the temples, why is that?"

  Jessit laughed. "Ah! That's easy. Women distract men, and men distract women. A choice was made. Men would serve, and women wouldn't. Therefore we can't have them around to distract the King and the priests."

  "It's probably simpler than that," Topaz said. "The Ancestor thought he was god and therefore perfect. That's why he put the breeding programs in place – to make everyone look like him. He was black, so he wanted them to be black. He was male, so therefore those who were male were more perfect, so he set them up as the priests."

  "Yeah, well, here's what I don't get," Bradley started. He, too, had been listening to the native's story. "If Paul Arquette hated the Reliance so intensely, why did this people ever deem to trade with them? To even try to have friendly Relations with the
m?"

  Jessit smiled. "Ah . . . because the King/God's spirit is said to move to the body of the Chosen. The King/God's have all taken council from the priests. At some point the Reliance sent ambassadors to trade with our people. The high priest's voices told him it was a good thing. The other priests agreed, and when they told the King what the gods had told them, the King gracefully agreed. Of course the King/God never reads from the book of The Ancestor, so he wouldn't have known about the real history. And you and I both know he really did not possess the spirit of Paul Arquette. So he had no real problem with the Reliance, and we needed replacement parts for the generators, light bulbs, metal implements and things the Reliance had in abundance and that we could not make."

  "So . . . the priests are all schizophrenic?" Topaz said again.

  "No," RJ said. They had walked up unseen on the group huddled around the fire, and they all jumped. "Sorry," she said with a wicked grin, then continued with her train of thought. "The priests are all telepaths, although I'm sure that being untrained as to how to handle the power they do go quite mad. Basically these people are the descendants of a deranged, armless black French human and criminal Argy telepaths who had been sent to this planet as part of their sentence. By the time the deranged, armless black Frenchman got here, the telepathic gene had been mostly bred out. Then by the time he bred in his own genes for several generations, the common Argy empathic trait all but disappeared. However the priests have a separate breeding program. One that ensured that the telepathic gene remained active. Although without knowing what it is, they believe that they are talking to the gods."