by F P Adriani
Suddenly, she leaned forward in her chair, as if we were having a private urgent conversation we both had to have and wanted to have. “Just think about it, Senda. Diamond is a resource-wealthy planet. Lots of groups want a cut of it. Gangsters from Hera for one. And what better way for the ultimate gangsters, the UPG, to take over a planet’s resources than to stage attacks there and make it look like Sanders can’t handle harvesting their own resources.
“I’m not saying I’m a hundred-percent innocent. I’m also not admitting any guilt. But destroy this place is the last thing I want to do. And, anyway, people get hurt in the mines no matter what—the conditions are horrible. Sanders losing limbs, like Chuck there and his forearm. Is that right?” She tilted her head toward the man with the braid and unhappy face, and he glanced back at her. For the first time I noticed he was indeed missing a forearm under his sleeve.
“The mines are dangerous,” I said now, my eyes back on Hu. “But there are safeguards.”
“Where you are—maybe. Not so in other mines. Thousands here, and new ones made all the time. They aren’t all run the same. And the resource depletion going on to sell to the highest bidder offplanet—how is this fair to here? The resources are OURS.
“Diamond was supposed to be a new start for humanity. We had our own agency here and then it was snatched away to line someone else’s pockets.”
“You talk like you weren’t part of all that snatching.”
“Maybe I finally saw the error of my ways.”
“Or maybe you hadn’t been who you said you were all along.”
“And, anyway,” Hu continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “at the Pine Mine—it used to be worse. But it’s gotten better in recent years, after the attacks there. The UPG contractors learned a lesson, and the attacks helped more than they hurt.”
“Of course you’d say that,” I spat out.
And then Hu sighed and sat up straighter. “No more talking today.” She stood up and I noticed the nasty guy walking over with another glass full of water.
He held it in front of my face, stared down at me with forceful eyes. “Drink it.”
“Very civil of you—drugging me like this!” I snapped at Hu through shaking lips before I grabbed the glass and took a big gulp.
*
Hu didn’t show up again till what seemed like the next night. I’d been allowed to use the bathroom again for washing shortly before she appeared, and now as soon as she came over to me, I said, “If you’re not a thug, why don’t you let me go back to where I belong?”
I’d been sitting up against the wall beside my bed, and she stood over me now. Her eyes fell on my wet head and my clean robe as she said, “You don’t look like you’re doing too badly. And, anyway, I can’t let you go. You’ll take me in then.” She smiled big now, her even white teeth looking more dangerous to me than humorous. A few of the others were sitting at their table playing cards again, another few stood behind Hu. The guy with only one full arm, Chuck, had been sitting against the opposite cave wall, silently staring our way. But at Hu’s last sentence, he began laughing.
“You should feel honored,” Hu said. “I don’t talk with people from out there. But I find you amusing.”
She was still smiling, but I didn’t trust her one bit. “So this is what you’ve been doing since you left The Council—kidnapping people and then using them for entertainment?”
“Yep. I need something to help pass the time. I move around a lot. I like a change of scenery.” Chuck was softly laughing again behind her.
And I said to her in an angry rush, “You’ll be found here. You can’t run forever.”
“Who says I’ll always be on Diamond? Even if I am here still, you’ll always be out of luck finding me. It’s always you clueless crowd after me. Sanders’ll never help you.”
I sat up straighter and yelled, “I’m a Sander!” then rabidly panted in her direction.
Her head shot back a bit at my outburst. Then it went back to its normal steady position and her mouth twisted. “Well, well, well—look what we have here? A traitor.”
The seated others suddenly stood up; a lot of angry eyes were fixed on me now. But Hu added, “That’s if you’re telling the truth.”
“And I’d lie why?”
“How about proving it.” She reached into her long robe, pulled out a big dollar coin, and threw it at me, hitting me in the gut. “Put a hole right in the center there.”
Looking at her, I picked up the coin, and with my forefinger at the center, I pressed and pressed and pressed. The structure finally gave way; then I threw the metal donut back at her gut.
It fell down to the floor and she stared down at it. Then her eyes shot back up—at me. “Who the hell are you?”
“Just nobody but somebody dangerous all the same. I was gone for long, but now I’m back. You crowd fucking killed my parents! During the first rebellion—Sanders like them,” I looked at the others, my words and breaths coming hard in a big rush. “Idiots with nothing better to do but make other people’s lives miserable in their own spaces. How dare you call ME a TRAITOR.”
Hu’s nostrils flared. “You make an accusation, you better prove it. I admit to nothing, no violence. I don’t know who your parents were.”
“Engineers at Royal South Mine, when that bomb destroyed the place twenty years ago.”
Now, her eyes narrowed. “And you think I did that?”
“I don’t know if it was you, but, hell yeah, it was people like you. And for all I know—you! I think you were a fake from the beginning—you always had problems at The Council. And I think the real you finally came out after the UPG takeover. You saw an opportunity there. Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“You’re a fool, Senda,” Hu said now. “Sanders didn’t kill your parents, and neither did I. You’ve been working for their murderers.”
*
My mouth suddenly fell open; then I just as suddenly snapped it shut and silently stared at her.
“You seem so surprised,” she said.
“Why should I believe anything you say?”
“Well you just think about it then. I’ve got no reason to lie to you about that. I know I’ll never convince you to see me as anything other than what you already think of me. But maybe you should take a hard look at yourself. You can’t do what you do without being fake and deceiving people. So what separates one side, my side, from the other, your side?”
She stood up and walked away before I even had a chance to respond to her ridiculous statements. At least I thought they were ridiculous at first.
But then I sat there on the bed wondering if she could be telling truths and THE truth. About my parents. Something there had never smelled right to me, and I had never looked into their deaths. I was only a kid so just assumed what people told me had happened had actually happened in the way they said. And by the time I’d become an adult on Earth, there seemed no point in remembering Diamond, in remembering any of my childhood here. The old me had pretty much died with my parents.
For all my adult life, I’d thought being the new me was the best thing for me. But now, since coming to Diamond, I wasn’t so sure about all that.
Still, it couldn’t be…. It couldn’t be that I was in the same business as my parents’ killers?
*
On what seemed to be two days later, Hu showed up again and right away said to me, staring down at me, “Chuck there thinks I should kill you. After all, you’re a threat to me, aren’t you?”
This time, there were no laughs from her or anyone else. She sounded serious.
I looked over at Chuck, but his unhappy face just stared back at me, his eyes narrower than usual. I licked my lips, sat up straighter on the bed, feeling even more lightheaded than normal here; they’d kept me drugged for what seemed like almost the whole day and night the day before.
Would this be it now—the end for me? If ever I had to try something, now was the time. Unfortunately, there were several big guns in t
he room, and I possessed none of them.
So I said to Hu, “You yourself pointed out I can’t do anything to you here.”
“But what about when you’re out there? Will I run into you again if you’re still alive?” She suddenly smiled now, showing those evil white teeth. “Relax, sit back. This is just part of the amusement again.”
“You’re sick,” I said, breathing hard. “And I don’t believe you. If I were in your place, I’d think about killing me too.”
“But you see, a public-relations opportunity has fallen into my lap, and let’s just say I always take advantage of opportunities. You’re worth more alive than dead.”
“You’ve said something like that already. I hope it’s true.”
“One thing about me: I don’t lie.”
In my mind, I snorted, but on my body, I didn’t do anything. I just waited.
Someone new walked up to us then: an older man. He wore a red cap on his head, and he held a small gray case in his right hand.
“While you were asleep last night,” Hu said, “the doctor here examined you and said you’re healing well. But we shouldn’t keep using the drugs on you.” As she spoke, the doctor removed a medicine bottle and a big syringe from his bag.
“Then what the hell is that?” I squeaked.
“As much as I’ve enjoyed this amusing diversion, you don’t belong here. You need to go,” Hu said. “We’ll let you out in the woods, not near here. Not that we’ll be staying here necessarily, or not that we won’t. Or maybe we’ll leave the planet. You just won’t know. No one will. I’ll leave you with a little something though. An insurance policy, a little favor from me to you, so maybe you’ll think twice about me. You’ll see. When you wake up.”
She motioned to the doctor, and he held up the syringe, flicked at it with a fingernail, pushing out an air bubble.
I’d already figured out where we probably were, but of course I wasn’t going to tell Hu that. Instead, I said, to my ears at least sounding very worried and upset, “And how the hell am I supposed to get back to the world if I don’t know where I am?”
“That’s your problem,” Hu said.
And then I saw the doctor bend forward to inject me, and then a moment later, I saw nothing.
*
Next thing I knew, I was lying in the woods as Hu had promised.
I was in my uniform again, and my head pounded as I straightened up; I had trouble walking at first, I had trouble moving my feet. They were stiff and my balance was off. The Sun seemed new now to my acclimated-to-cave-low-light eyes; the Sun also seemed to shine so brightly, and the palella trees above me didn’t provide much shade.
I felt happy that I’d made it through the confinement with all my parts intact, though quite bruised. But until this very moment, I’d never realized how perpetually lonely I felt. I had always kept busy on this job or that; I had not stopped to analyze whether I should stop and analyze.
Now, as I walked alone, I suddenly saw I’d not had enough people in my life in many years; I had been missing that. But who could I have? And how could I ever make anything like that work? As an adult especially, I hadn’t had much practice at relationships.
Where would I go now? I’d failed at my original mission here, but I did have new information. I also held a new file, or what I assumed was a new file. I’d found it in my wallet, which had been returned to my jacket—returned intact. Nothing missing, at least nothing I could remember. But a new electronic drive lay inside there. That insurance policy from Hu apparently….
I kept walking and walking, must have been doing so for hours. My lips felt desert-dry, and though I was no longer in shoulder agony, I still wasn’t in good enough shape for so much walking.
I stared through the palella trunks, saw denser oaks on one side, denser pines on another. I felt a bit trapped. Where the hell was I? I’d never seen a forest like this, where trees grew in such regimented monolithic ways.
Ahhh, finally something glistening in the distance—something metallic and it was moving! So, Hu hadn’t left me for dead or anything. I was pretty close to civilization, somewhere.
*
The moving metal turned out to be mill machinery; I’d been stuck in a tree farm. An old man apparently was the owner. He took only one look at my uniform and at what must have been my dirty ill face—and I saw the shocked fright in his eyes.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said then, “but I need your help.”
*
Hu had somehow gotten a statement to the media that she’d found a wounded guard and was nursing her back to health. “I’m not a butcher,” her statement printed in The Pine Times said. “I’m reasonable. And to prove it, Guard Senda will be released when it’s appropriate. And the UPG should reflect on how the citizens of Diamond have been reduced to communicating via newspaper on important issues of the day rather than via the Diamond government itself….”
“She uses everything as an opportunity to make a political statement,” I said in a dry voice.
“Yeah, and you’re famous now because of all this,” said Nell.
She sat at my bedside. I was in a hospital near The Complex, had been since earlier that day when I’d been flown from the tree farm directly to here. I was a bit dehydrated then and now my shoulder needed surgery to repair the bad tear there. If I didn’t have the surgery, I’d probably lose some use of my arm. My shoulder had already started healing, but incorrectly.
I was not happy about this surgery, not in the least. But it wasn’t the first surgery I’d had, nor would it be the last probably.
“Great. Just what I need—fame. I sooo don’t want that,” I said out loud now. Suddenly I remembered James, wondered if he’d heard about my being captured and now my being found.
I thought of asking Nell if she’d contacted the UPG, but when I looked up at her unhappy face, I got the feeling that was the last thing she’d probably think of doing. “I’m all right, Nell,” I said then, but her face relaxed only a little bit.
“You may be, but we aren’t, from worrying about you! Pia, I thought you were, well, dead.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Well, what could we think? You went missing after the explosion, and then we heard that Hu got you. It didn’t look good. Tan…has he shown up here yet?”
“No,” I said, feeling a sinking disappointment in my gut. I was scheduled for surgery in only a few hours, and I wanted to see Tan before then. But, apparently, that wouldn’t be happening. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I called his office to tell him about you, but there was no answer. Pia…I’ve been hearing things. From Derek. That yesterday Tan somehow got to interrogate the reporter who published Hu’s statement. He got rough like a crazy person; I think he was distraught over you and didn’t know what to do. Oh Pia, what the hell kind of place is this?”
“I don’t know, Nell. You tell me.”
Instead of telling me, she changed the subject. “Did the police question you when they picked you up?”
“Yes, a little,” I said, gritting my teeth now that she’d reminded me of the experience: me with an IV in my arm lying on a transport stretcher while some young cold cop kept asking me for a description of the people who’d held me. I did the best I could in giving one, but inside the cave I didn’t exactly have wonderful overhead lighting to help me out; I was also half-drugged, and their faces were often covered, so my descriptions of then were vague.
“It was a dark cave,” I snapped at the young cop at one point when he asked me yet again for more details that just wouldn’t come out of my head.
“We’re sorry for your experience,” interjected one of the older cops, flashing the younger one an “Enough!” look….
“What did you tell them?” Nell asked me now.
“Not much. There wasn’t much to tell. At least that they needed to know.”
“You’ll have to make out a report,” Nell said, giving me a serious look. So she’d finally r
emembered her other obligation.
I just nodded at her. But I wondered what exactly my report would wind up saying.
*
While asleep post-surgery, I dreamed of stretching my left hand toward Tan’s great smile…but in real life when I woke up, my left arm was in a sling and there was no Tan around. Instead, there was a stranger in my room—no, strangers: a tall thin man, a nurse, and a doctor. And they were all arguing; the male nurse grabbed the thin man by the arm.
“How did you get in here?” the nurse yelled, pulling the guy’s arm.
But the guy noticed I was moving. “Guard Senda,” he said, “you’re awake! You’re a hero! I’m Ron Burgess from The Diamond Digest—the public wants to know what you endured in captivity—”
“It’ll be nothing compared to what you’ll endure if you don’t get out!” yelled the nurse, giving the guy a gentle shove toward the door.
I almost laughed but was afraid to because that would shake me when my shoulder felt sore anew since the surgery…. Wonderful. Would I ever have a normal functioning body again? It seemed like for months now, I’d been going from one form of pain to another.
I needed another line of work.
*
Tan finally showed up the next morning, and my mouth dropped open then: even more pale and thin than normal, he did not look like himself anymore; he looked like a ghost of himself. He was strangely dressed in all white too.
He ghost-like strode right into the room and up to me, saying, “Pia, I thought you were dead!”
“You’re the second person to say that. No one has any faith in me.”
“It’s got nothing to do with faith,” he said, and he paused, hovering over me. “Can I hug you?”
“Yes!”
He grabbed me then, avoiding my arm sling, and he hugged me so hard, he almost yanked me off the bed. I could feel the heat in my face. I could also feel how hard my heart pounded. I thought I’d never get to see him again, but here he was.
