“No way. Please take me in an inconspicuous way to the Orchards and help me find an out-of-the-way place to rest.”
Forgetting for a moment her infatuation with the stranger, Canthli did as directed and found a quiet grove with cover. She helped Klein from the transport, saw to his wounds as best she could with her first aid kit, covering him with kisses and caresses and insisting on comforting all parts of his body in such a way that Klein found it amazingly enjoyable. After he had fallen asleep, she drove off, but parked at the entrance of the Orchards to watch over her new friend and protect him from any threatening types that might arrive. What am I going to do? Maybe I can set fire to the transport to cause a distraction? She didn’t have to entertain these noble but frivolous thoughts forever, because she, too, soon fell asleep.
Klein was eventually awakened by a young voice chirping out, “Teacher! Teacher!” When he replied in sotto voce, he found it was a schoolgirl. She gave a whistle and others appeared, with Ayan’we at their head. She took one look at him and frowned. “Meh’tra, are you a mess!”
“Thanks. Why are you here Ayan’we?”
“Who were you expecting, Joan of Arc?” This caused an explosion of giggling among the girls, an inside joke for their Earth history class. “Mom’s officially confined to the hospital, when she’s not with the Council of Nine. It’s actually a good thing, since I’ll have another sib within forty-eight hours. My sisters are visiting with Aunt Babatra, and you’ve managed to kill everybody else that was home. Too bad you didn’t get my rotten stepmother, too, but she has run off with all the jewelry. Ragatti’s watching over Mom and all the oh-so-responsible adults are confined to the mahäme, pending investigation, so we decided to have a little class trip. How can we help?”
“My arm is just about paralyzed from some poison you father was kind enough to stick me with, so an antidote would be good.”
The girls huddled, whispering, and one ran off. “We think we know what it might be and my friend’s bringing back something to help. What else?”
“I’ll need some clothes that are not covered in blood, something that will disguise me, if possible.”
“No problem. Anything more?”
“How about some food?”
“Duh, you’re right in the middle of an orchard! Well, I suppose in your shape, you have a good excuse. We’ll gather some for you. Wait here.”
The schoolgirls fanned out and were soon bringing him handfuls of fruit so juicy that it slaked his thirst as well. While they were waiting, he asked Ayan’we if she could find him a way off-planet, for, as she reminded him, it was not just the Security forces he needed to worry about, but the Brotherhood, which was hopping mad and had mobilized their usually lazy ranks down to the last man to cover Plambo’ and the rest of the planet, with orders to kill Klein on sight. The girls were soon tapping and commanding away at a variety of handheld computer pads and links, scouring the digisphere for a way for Klein to leave. In a while one returned with a vial of stuff that was supposed to counteract many poisons, a bottle of Forlani antibiotics, and numerous salves that the girls fought over as to who would get to apply them to the patient. Most of them paid absolutely no attention to Ayan’we’s claim that “He’s mine.” Finally the clothes arrived and Klein was horrified when they were unfolded to see it was a kind of black bourka that an old woman might wear in the bazaar in Kabul if she were extremely devout.
“What the hell I am supposed to do with this?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Ayan’we pouted. “It’s a robe for engineering graduates and this is the right time of year, so no one should notice you as a human. Besides it’s all we can find that’s big enough. What, do you object to the color or something? Frankly, I don’t think you should be so vain in your predicament.”
“Fine, fine. So I’ll be an engineer,” Klein conceded, slipping the thing over him. He had to admit; it offered virtually complete concealment.
“People will offer you congratulations wherever you go, ‘cause engineers are big shots, so just answer Plakka, plakka.
“Now what about a ticket home?”
One girl who had been organizing the digital search stepped forward and announced, “Bad news, teacher. There is only one ship docked and planning departure very soon, and no new arrivals are expected for about seven weeks. More bad news. It’s a military ship. Even more bad news, it’s Song Pai, and they’re headed to the home planet. The only good news is that they have an ad out for indentures to do grunge jobs on the ship for almost no pay. Are you interested?” Her finger hovered above the response key.
“We have a saying, beggars can’t be choosers.”
“We have that, too,” she chirped and she punched the key. “You have two hours to get to the Spaceport.”
With that, the gaggle of girls began to break up, except for Ayan’we and two friends with late curfews. They accompanied Klein to a tram and went with him to the Spaceport. Anyone they crossed gave a respectful gesture to the engineering gown and offered congratulations, to which Klein responded with garbled plakka, plakkas. The only tense moment came at the entrance to the Spaceport, where a couple of security guards eyed the unlikely group curiously and some males stirred menacingly in the background.
Ayan’we disarmed the situation right away by prancing up to the guards and announcing, “Cousin Pinni’s just got her degree and she’s taking us on a vacation to the waterfalls on Flunie and we’re going to make the reservations right now.”
“Gosh, I wish I could go there, too,” remarked the guard. “I’ve never been off-planet. Have you, Pu’una?” Congratulations and plakka-plakka’s were exchanged and once in the port, the girls were in a hurry to head for their homes.
“I can never thank you enough for helping me, Ayan’we. I wish I could give you a message for your mother, but I don’t think I’d ever have enough time. “
“Don’t worry. You’re stamped in Mother’s memories forever as it is. As for me, I just might visit you again someday, maybe in a long time, but don’t be surprised if I do.”
“Nothing you do would surprise me. Goodbye.”
When he had tossed his bourka and gone to the area where the indentures were being processed, he was relieved to see his disheveled underclothes were not much worse than the majority of bums that were signing up for this terrible job, mostly in hopes of scoring another hit of drugs in some off-world dive. He hardly noticed the documents he signed but as soon as he headed up the ramp to the lighter, he caught the overwhelming stench of Song Pai and knew that he would never get used to it.
Chapter Seven
Peebo sat alone in a booth in the flight lounge of the Hyperion Duchess, occasionally sipping a glass of cider without enjoying it and staring down at a thick envelope in front of him that was stuffed with company credits – his payoff from grateful executives for ratting out Entara and her children. Even though that was all a ruse devised by him and Klein to put them in safety, he still considered it blood money. People had been killed in exchange. It’s true the pilots of the craft dispatched from the Duchess had planned to murder friends of the Circle, but they were still living beings. Though the company had already written them off as expendables, announcing in a bulletin that a “utility craft” from the liner had been unfortunately lost while attempting to retrieve space debris, Peebo felt compassion for them. It would just add to all the heavy burdens he would bring back to Domremy.
Ironically, the heaviest burden was something he wasn’t bringing back, for he had no idea what had become of Klein. He obviously had not been apprehended, because the Brotherhood was fuming mad and doing everything to track him down. They had even contacted Peebo via deep space link and peppered him with questions on where he thought his former partner might be hiding. Peebo had given them the story that he believed Klein to be dead somewhere on Forlan, since he had expressed suicidal thoughts at being separated from Entara. He had accepted still more credits from them as a way of further deflecting any susp
icions they might have. But deep down inside, Peebo felt Klein was alive somewhere, unlikely as it might be.
Of course, extracts from Entara’s testimony before the Council of Nine had been big news while the Duchess was still picking up the transmissions in Forlan space. Her self-assurance was nothing if not inspirational, and it was clear the Council was treating her more as an equal than as a wrongdoer. She had skewered FastTrack so completely that no such scheme would ever be possible in the future. There were even a few views of her in the hospital nursing a new-born infant.
However, Peebo felt genuine grief and guilt when they broadcast reports of what had happened to Tays’she. He would never be interrogated about his role in FastTrack because he had been reduced to a mindless, drooling zombie. It was clear that Klein had violated his oath and used more than one dose of venom, for which Peebo would rightly be considered equally responsible. Tays’she’s cerebral cortex had been irreparably destroyed, leaving only a few of the lower brain functions in operation. He could breathe and be fed through a tube and led around by a handler, but he had no idea where he was, who he was, or even that he existed on more than a minute-by-minute basis. In many ways, it was worse than ordinary murder. It astonished him that, despite all that had happened, Entara refused to abandon him, as his official First Wife had abruptly done. Entara told the Council that she considered it her duty, as mother of Tays’she’s offspring, to care for him and honor him as long as he may live. It seemed to Peebo to be a ghastly idea for a household, but if anyone could bring it off, it would be her.
Peebo also worried about details, like what had happened to the injector. Another missing piece of the puzzle he would have to explain back home. He hoped that Klein had had the presence of mind to destroy it. What Peebo didn’t know was that between the confrontation and his hurried departure from Forlan, Klein had quite simply forgotten about the injector and the remaining shots of venom. They had actually been taken by the transport driver Canthli. Before making love to Klein in the Orchard of Fataarey, she had removed it from his hand. Afterwards, when he was asleep, she took it away along with his blood-stained coverall and left him to sleep in the clothes he was wearing underneath. They weren’t exactly pristine, but she felt she would help by getting rid of as much evidence as she could, including this strange glove-like thing that might be a weapon. When she found that Klein had apparently left the Orchard, she brought the packet of incriminating stuff back to the transport barn and dissolved it all in battery acid. Had Peebo known that her kindness had taken this precaution, he would have had one less lapse to grieve over.
News on the telescreens still carried some reports of the ongoing investigation. The Brotherhood had immediately issued an official demand that Klein be prosecuted for murder, injury, and assault against several of their order. They had gotten their buddies in Hyperion to turn the Duchess upside-down in case he had stowed away, even though the time sequence for such an escape was illogical. The official statements of Forlani Planetary Security were much more cautious and discreet. They simply said Klein had been summoned to ask questions about possible immigration violations and violent incidents. They said that, as for Tays’she’s horrible injuries, the cause had not been positively determined by the police examiner, and that the two dobutu had been “injured” by an unauthorized weapon that had been traced to Tays’she himself. While they acknowledged that Klein’s blood had been found with all the others at the scene, it was unclear to them exactly who had been fighting whom, and that the guards might have been attacking both Klein and Tays’she with poison whips when the homeowner himself neutralized them. Interestingly, the little story of the bombing of a vacation unit at Sweet Plum Resort had been buried in small print as a gas explosion suspected of happening in the heating system. The Forlani patrol force and the Song Pai, who knew perfectly well about the Hyperion incursion, were obviously saying nothing.
Peebo was growing completely tired and irritated by the news when the screen thankfully changed to a sports event. He left the rest of his cider, took up the cursed envelope, and went to his cabin to sleep. Three more weeks of long sleeps before he could wake up to Felicia.
When he finally strode up to his old farm, Peebo felt a temporary flood of relief come over him. The whole brood was out in front of the house waiting for him, along with Cousin Al and a cheery Asian neighbor named Park who had overseen help for the family while Peebo was away. Children raced up to him and grabbed him by the legs and the waist, Park trotted up bowing to shake his hand, and Felicia just waited, beaming, as he approached to kiss her. It was a long kiss, and Peebo noticed that the usually stoical Al, who always reminded him a bit of the fellow in the painting American Gothic, was chuckling away in amusement at his relative’s homecoming and couldn’t wait to tell long stories about it to the others in the Circle. After a meal that could only be likened to a banquet with all the favorites he had missed so much during his months away, Peebo retired to his bedroom to change, but Felicia had other ideas and followed him, closing and latching the door behind them. Peebo was overjoyed to find that her hunger for his body after this long separation equaled or exceeded his own.
They didn’t emerge from the room until nearly noon the next day. The children, accustomed to adopting adult responsibilities during their years in Central Africa, had cleaned up after the previous evening’s meal, finished the farm chores, bedded down without making a sound, risen the next morning, and prepared not only their own breakfast, but an exemplary lunch for their parents, complete with a bouquet of Domremy wildflowers in the center of the table.
It was that way for several weeks, for Felicia told him when they were next to each other in bed that she was not a woman to be satisfied with a simple one-night stand. In the afternoons, she accompanied him to the gardens and fields, boasting about all the improvements they had made during his absence. Once they even clasped each other in the middle of a patch of ripening barley and enjoyed each other al fresco, with the light breeze passing over their sweaty bodies.
Of course, Peebo delighted in his kids, too. They took turns on his lap at home or on the sofa beside him, showing him the books that they had read, their artwork, the new pets they had chosen among the livestock and farm animals, the little gadgets they had cobbled together while they had the run of his tool bench. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was. But finally one day after nearly a month of this idyll, he woke up in the morning, pulled on his clothes, and walked over to Cousin Al’s to request a meeting of the Circle the following night.
Although, soon after his homecoming, Peebo had turned the blood money over to Felicia to present to the Dissenters, as seemed appropriate to him, memories of his thoughts back on the space ship returned as he approached the barn chosen for the encounter. Facing him across the ashes were Trevor, Al, Park, Dr. Patak, and most of the members of the community, as well as a Hispanic-looking fellow who stayed in the background, perhaps a novice. Invited to speak his piece, Peebo laid out the whole lone story of the Forlan adventure, his own experiences and as much of Klein’s as he could accurately recount. When he had finished this oral deposition, members of the group asked a few detailed questions before proceeding to the matter of his personal feelings. He told them he felt entirely guilty for the violence that had spilled over on Forlan. He should have intervened much earlier, he said, to persuade Klein to give up the whole enterprise. He should have stayed in closer contact with Entara and her family. He should have personally assured the destruction of the injector and venom. He should have found a way of staying longer on the planet, instead of letting Klein convince him to book on the Hyperion Duchess. Finally, he should have taken charge himself of Klein’s removal from Domremy and brought him back to the Circle to explain things in person. Peebo also confessed to cowardice, for his haste to get away from Forlan was undoubtedly related to his horror of getting stranded there in a fiasco over which he had lost control, and which risked separating him from his family forever.
When his t
estimony was over, Trevor simply said, “Withdraw.” Peebo knew this meant he should walk back to the far end of the barn and let them discuss his situation. It was quite a long conversation they had, with everyone but the newcomer taking part, and many opinions being brought out, reconsidered, dropped or polished up. Finally, a gesture from Trevor called him back.
“There is something you are leaving out. Perhaps you have not realized this yourself. Remember and reveal.”
“There is more, Trevor. Sometime before we decided to leave Domremy, I had to take a life myself. It was unavoidable. A man named Dorfman came to my farm looking for Klein. He was a mutilator of children on the Evil Earth, someone whose plots Klein had tried to reveal. He came for vengeance and murder, to cover up more of his misdeeds. He defiled my fields. He was stalking a friend of the Circle. Had I allowed him to proceed, he would have brought misery everywhere. I did it quickly and hid the evidence. I have no regrets for killing that man.”
“Are you sure, Peebo? Are you truly sure you have no regrets, or have you been hiding them from yourself? Probe deeply into your own horrors and confront them. Ask if they did not influence you in this cock-up on Forlan.”
Peebo closed his eyes and soon came to grips with that very horror Trevor had just suggested. Peebo himself was responsible for a killing. Perhaps not a murder, but the violent taking of life just the same. He had known it as soon as he jabbed that fork into Dorfman’s body and felt its convulsions through the wooden shaft. He had known he had gone to a dark place. A darkness he had tried to cover, just as the soil had covered Dorfman’s corpse. Darkness he had tried to joke about and to turn to good, turning the rotten flesh into wholesome vegetables. He remembered a saying from his Dissenter studies: Matter changes all too easily, but the changes of the spirit are as slow to happen as the life of stars. Then it all came to him, the reality of Forlan.
Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1) Page 24
