Although the office was having a party in her honor, Erica wasn’t feeling very festive. She wandered over to a table filled with appetizers and munched on a tiny triangular sandwich. She saw Robert Salerno, one of the remaining workers assigned to her project who had not yet been reassigned, taking a generous helping of punch. “Why so glum?” he asked her, noticing the melancholy expression on her face. “It’s your party.”
“It’s just…Bobby, don’t you feel like this company’s lost something? I can remember going to the party celebrating Bill’s twenty years with Hyperion. Back then, they treated us like we were really valuable to the company—they even let Bill be the first one to operate the controls of the new aquadrone in that party! He was so happy to be the first one to steer an aquadrone through the ruins of New Orleans beneath the Gulf of Mexico. This party feels like it’s fit for a bunch of stooges in data entry, not high-level executives.”
“What can you do?” Bobby said. “You know they’re not giving the Domremy project the funding they used to. At least they medevacked us out of that pesthole in the East before we were contaminated. Were you really expecting to get what Bill got?”
“No. Not given the budget cuts we’ve been getting lately. I was hoping for some reassurance that we still mattered to the company in the grand scheme of things, though.”
“Of course we do. We’re here at this party, aren’t we?” Bobby shrugged and got himself another glass of punch. Tired of discussing company matters with him, Erica wandered around the office, engaging in small talk with her coworkers about the weather and what their children were doing in school, but remained pensive and preoccupied with the Domremy program throughout the party. Stories about birthdays and report cards couldn’t get the sense of anxiety out of her mind, and she found it difficult to follow the conversations she was engaged in. As she was looking at a clock on the wall, hoping the party would come to a merciful end, she saw an older man motioning for her to come over and talk with him.
“Erica, could you come into my office for a bit? We need to chat,” he asked.
Erica nodded and followed him away from the party into his spacious work area. As she looked around the office, a real office with walls and a door, unlike her cubicle, she noticed his computer was still running. She wondered why, if he had been planning the conversation for some time, he had left his work computer on. Had he been checking over the details of the Domremy program before inviting her in?
“Hello, I’m Ernest Samuels,” the man said, extending his hand to Erica. She shook it and sat down in a chair by his desk. “You may call me Mr. Samuels. Hyperion’s board of directors and I have been looking over the reports and statistics from the Domremy colony’s last few years of operation. We realize that Mr. Hollingsworth, your predecessor, made it difficult for you to achieve profitability on Domremy given the state our operations were in before he left. However, it appears that conditions on the planet have not progressed, and have in some aspects deteriorated, since Hollingsworth was removed from his position.”
“I’m aware of the problems on Domremy,” Erica said. “It’s very difficult to motivate many of those people—they’re convicted criminals for the most part, not voluntary colonists, and they don’t have much of a work ethic. Also, there’s been a problem with drug consumption and distribution that developed in the last two years, at about the point Site 89 developed into Xanderburg. Some close-knit groups of colonists are more resistant to these negative developments than others, but we know relatively little about them.”
“The Dissenters? They’re one of the few truly productive elements of the colony. But they’re not productive enough to make it profitable and worth the expense of maintaining our current scale of operations on Domremy. We’re going to accelerate scaling back operations over the next few months, leaving just the Archive in operation so we can maintain on-planet records in case we decide to reverse course and increase our Domremy presence again. This present health emergency can’t last forever, can it?”
“I would hope our Headquarters staffing of the Domremy operation would at least remain stable for the short term,” Erica tentatively said, her anxiety finally getting the better of her. Damn! I should’ve never said that. If they weren’t making plans to fire me before, they certainly will be now. It’s only a matter of time before my career is as ruined as Bill’s was, she thought.
“Oh, we’ll be making some staff reductions soon enough. But if you’re feeling apprehensive, you shouldn’t be. We have something special planned for you.” Mr. Samuels reached into his desk and brought out a large brown folder with a memory stick attached. “This is a synopsis of our post-Domremy plans for interstellar operations. There’s an offer for a division transfer to our new off-world combined center on Tomakio, if you’re interested. I suggest you look it over. If you want in, bring it back to me with the forms filled out two weeks from now. And one more thing… all the information in here is strictly confidential, not to be disclosed to anyone other than you.”
“I doubt Bill would have been able to keep that request,” Erica said with a gentle chuckle. “He was always the type to crow in triumph over the smallest hint of a prestigious achievement or promotion.”
“That’s why we’re not offering it to anyone like him. In your current position, you have proven to us that you have all of the personality characteristics that are valuable to us in this new venture – characteristics that Mr. Hollingsworth lacked. Don’t disappoint us for placing our trust in you. We’ll be waiting for your response in two weeks.”
Erica glanced at the nondescript brown folder. It was so prosaic in appearance that it would barely attract attention, yet packed with infinite possibilities for advancement. She guessed that all the papers were copy-secure and that the memory drive had a self-destruct, as well. Erica could feel a slight tremble of anticipation in her hands as she reached out to grasp the folder. She felt the beginning of a smile forming at the corners of her mouth as she felt the thick paper in her hands.
A week after that far-off interview, Trevor appeared before Klein in his traveling clothes, with a small duffle containing all his personal articles slung over his shoulder.
“You should pack your things to go to Stafford Station,” he announced. “Someone will be coming this evening to pick you up. As for me, I can finally continue my pilgrimage now.”
“What do you mean you’re leaving? This is abrupt!”
“You knew the goats would have to be milked,” Trevor answered in Croptalk.
“Well, I suppose I’ve been waiting to see Peebo and his folks again. But why should you leave? Wouldn’t you be more valuable as leader of the Circle?”
“A circle has no leader, as it has no corners. And if I wanted to become one, it would be an even more powerful motive for me to leave.”
Klein scowled. He had grown accustomed to Trevor’s low-key advice and had been counting on it to try to readjust more fully to life on Domremy. “What good is it for you to be nosing around old temples, anyway? You should share your knowledge with the other Dissenters instead of traipsing around and devoting yourself to tourism.” Klein regretted this outburst almost as soon as it left his lips. He had no right to preach to the man who had saved his life and tended him so faithfully.
Yet Trevor was not angry. He merely gave Klein a look that he might have given to a foolish child. “It’s not just sightseeing. The object of my pilgrimage is to share new knowledge with the Circle about something that’s a bit hard to explain. Actually, we only dimly understand it now, and that’s why I was dispatched to find out more. It has to do with something we call the Spirit Substrate.”
“That sounds very esoteric all right.”
“Some of us have come to believe that there may be a common factor in many, if not most, religions. More than just earth-sprung religions, the concept of religion across the barriers of species, senses, and even ideas. The old Roman Catholics had an inkling of this – something they called the Mystical Bod
y of Christ. Certain doctrines among the Latter Day Saints also pointed in this direction. So do some branches of Buddhism, particularly early Mahayana. It’s even tied in with the twenty-first century economic theory of the value substrate. We’re hoping that knowing more about religions across the two explored spiral arms of the galaxy can add something significant.”
“Well, better you than me,” Klein pouted. “I think I would have to give up quickly in such a vague quest.” He didn’t dare add “hopeless” to the description.
“I’ve found a few clues that may give me a thread to follow. For now, it’s back to the ruins on Song Pa, which I was just beginning to investigate when word came about you.” Trevor paused a while before adding, “Klein, my thoughts and prayers will be with you. Your path may be more vague than mine. There are things close by that may prove extremely difficult to deal with. You will have to trust your strengths and distrust them at the same time. It may call for some delicacy, which, frankly, is not always your strong suit. Please be careful. Don’t make me regret turning the bull loose in the pasture. Farewell now, and hopefully aufwiedersehen!”
Klein watched Trevor head down the road and around the next bend, then set about packing. His articles were scarcely more numerous than Trevor’s. He wondered if Peebo had taken care of the old volume of Faulkner he had left with him. Since several hours still remained before evening, he decided something substantial, like Mahler, was needed to calm his anxieties. He put on his headphones and drifted into a more orderly, more musical universe.
The second sun was headed toward the horizon when he spied a vehicle coming from the direction of Stafford Station. It was definitely home-made Domremy material: two thallops pulling a contraption of various pieces of steel welded together over a pair of wheels salvaged from an old military transport. It probably served mainly to haul grain and hay in from the fields. When it drew closer, he recognized the wizened face of an older Guzman at the reins. He went down into the road to meet him.
“Good to see you again, amigo,” Klein said in greeting.
“Well, look at you. Stay right there and let me appreciate the changes. Yes, the nose, the ears, not quite the same, but not bad at all. They warned me you had a lot of surgery, but I didn’t know what to expect. If I didn’t know you so well before, I might not have recognized you. Hop on.”
“Wait till you get a load of my prosthetic lower leg, Guzman” Klein joked, as he hoisted himself onto the seat.
“Maybe you can kick some ass with it!” chuckled the driver. He turned the wagon around and headed home. “By the way, it’s Luis now. Believe it or not, pardner, I’m in the Circle now.”
“A reprobate like you,” mocked Klein. “They must have lowered their standards.”
“When the cyclone blows, you head to the shelter,” replied Luis, showing off his Croptalk. “There’s more than that, I’m married and I got a family now. Many new responsibilities.”
“How’d that happen?”
Luis flapped the reins a bit to straighten out the thallops, which were not the ideal creature to work in tandem. “Oigame, after I became a speaker in the Circle, there was this widow with two kids. Everybody kept mentioning her to me and suggesting all the time I help out at her place after her husband died of icing cancer. So, I started to go around there just to shut them up. And then… Things just kind of took their course. She’s a little older than me, but still too young to be happy sleeping by herself. She made that very clear. And she’s a very good cook. Knows how to run things in the farm, too.”
“So what’s the catch?” asked Klein, sensing a bit of reluctance in Luis’s tone.
“She’s not the best looking woman I ever screwed,” he sighed.
“I’m impressed you’re so up front about it.”
“I gotta be. I’m in the Circle now and we’re pretty honest, as you know. But since I’m in the mood to share, I’ll tell you one thing more, ‘cause you’ll find out anyway. Sometimes I cheat a little bit. Every now and then I really get horny for one of them Forlani girls down at the house. I make up a good excuse and I’m real discreet, understand? But I’m sure Betsy knows anyway, so I told her and expected to get hell in return. Was I surprised! She says it’s OK and sometimes she likes to spend some time with Cousin Al and she hopes I don’t mind.”
“What did you answer to that?”
“I say, make sure you let me know so I can take care of the kids and their supper.”
“Ha! Pal, you’ve received a gift from God and if I had that kind of ability, my life would be a lot easier.”
They chatted all the way back to Stafford Station and it wasn’t until Peebo’s place was in sight that Klein off-handedly asked, “By the way, how’s old Rodriguez.”
Luis’s brow darkened and he bowed his head, muttering, “I’m sorry, now’s not the time for me to talk about that. Maybe later.”
Klein’s uneasiness at this cryptic response was swept away when he was greeted by Peebo and his brood on the steps of the farmstead. They clustered joyously around him, took his bag, and ushered him into the dining room for a feast. Only Felicia remained a little aloof – polite, hospitable, and correct, but holding back something that Klein knew he would eventually have to deal with.
In the fortnight that followed, Klein got reacquainted with Peebo’s children, who had grown so much since he left for Forlan. The “Number One Son” was Mel, short for Melanchthon, that cerebral reformer who had almost managed to avert the Wars of Religion back in the sixteenth century. It was an appropriate name because Mel, now over twenty years old, was a thinker who set his own pace and reached beyond the bounds of habit. He had already learned everything there was to learn on Domremy about farming and talked about going off-world to acquire new skills, prompting verbal skirmishes with his mother. “Number Two Son,” Mohandes, aka Moe, by contrast had no interest in leaving Domremy and was so keen on its ecology that he had taken over Peebo’s work with the Varoneys, with the old man’s blessing. “Number One Daughter” Odile had staked her claim on a young fellow in an adjoining village and was already negotiating various details of her nuptials with her parents. The others who were practically babies when Klein had left were now rushing toward or through their teens and eager to show off their strong points to the distinguished guest. They knew they would in turn become minor celebrities when Klein’s long-rumored return was openly acknowledged. Klein opened up to them as he had rarely done for a long time with fellow humans. Knowingly or not, he was compensating for the lost presence of his surrogate family on Forlan and for his too hasty separation from Amanda. Only Felicia, despite her veneer of welcome, seemed to refuse to accept him as a member of the household.
The time finally came when Luis arrived to bring Klein to the inevitable meeting with the Circle. After they arrived at the chosen farmstead and the ashes had been laid out, a Dissenter named Stewart, who had played a minor role in his last encounter, took the lead in speaking with Klein. Stewart was as close to a dandy as one would find among the Dissenters, wearing a fancy embroidered vest and an immaculate Stetson.
“Again the sun dips down, friend Klein,” he began, “But the evening brings us peace. The foxes no longer roam around the henhouse and the chicken hawks don’t hover in the sky.” True, Hyperion spies seemed to have all but vanished and the observer drones had disappeared with them. “We wonder if the Mankiller can walk in such peaceful lanes. We wonder if he can see into his own mind and keep his word better than he did after last we met.”
“I have been mindful of my promises about the trip to Forlan every day since I confronted the purple one named Tays’she. The fact that he threatened my life more than I did his doesn’t matter much. I was totally prepared to die that day. I had lost something I doubt you could fully appreciate,” he added hesitantly, thinking back to that night when both he and Entara might have died for their love for one another.
Looking more determined, Klein went on. “What I could not abide was that this hateful creat
ure threatened lives that I cherish.”
“You offer that more as an excuse than as a revelation,” Felicia shot back unexpectedly. “Isn’t it true that you could have immobilized your opponent, unmasked his plots, and secured your… friends, without administering a second, excessive dose of the venom? Was it any better than murder to turn that wretch into a living corpse?”
Klein was about to respond when Peebo decisively spoke out, with his eyes on his wife. “Compassion knows many forms but no boundaries. Tays’she had become so warped and sick with greed that he threatened untold numbers of his own species. I have already told you what kind of fears held me back. Thanks to Klein’s mastery of fear, the purple females face a future of freedom from oppression. They irrigate their groves with Klein’s blood.”
“They weren’t too noble to irrigate themselves with other fluids from this man,” Felicia spat back vehemently. “I assert his compassion was no more than an afterthought of lust.”
Cousin Al put a hand on her shoulder. “Felicia, you have proven your own worth time and again, but is it right to let your own turmoil roil the ponds of others? Please remember why we are here.”
“Peebo, Ed, I can speak for myself,” Klein interjected. “I have sensed since I came back that I had wronged Felicia somehow. Maybe that proves I can’t control where my actions lead, but I swear I had no intention to hurt her. And I know you all suffered more than I did in some ways,” he added, looking around the periphery of the circle. “Because it is your nature and your will to feel the pain of sins, to want to rectify what all of us, but I especially, brought out of the Evil Earth. I don’t deny it. And you, Felicia,” he said, turning to face her, “what mistake have I made to anger you?”
Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1) Page 31
