Chains of Freedom

by Selina Rosen

  She gave him a look.

  "Sorry, is it supposed to be a secret? It's obvious to anyone with half a brain, but hey, my lips are sealed. You know, taking on the Reliance isn't like beating up a bunch of drunks in a bar. No one can beat the Reliance." A statement of fact with undertones of bitterness.

  "You've done a very good job removing the mark," RJ said.

  "Don't get any ideas, lady. I wasn't a political prisoner," Whitey informed her.

  "And I'm no lady," RJ said.

  "Then why are we faking it?" Whitey asked with a broad smile.

  Why indeed, RJ asked herself, but she knew why. Want, need and desire, were old enemies of hers, and the hardest to fight. Still, she managed an answer.

  "You don't have to be political to hate the Reliance. You don't need to be political to fight them." As she finished she let out another long moan.

  "Say yes," Whitey prompted.

  "What?" she asked in disbelief.

  "Say 'yes.' Scream it ecstatically," he begged.

  "For the life of me, I don't know why I'm doing this," she said, and then said "yes" just in the way he had requested.

  "Beautiful," Whitey said with a sly smile. "Before you try to win me over to your cause, I think you ought to know that I was sent to prison for killing my wife."

  RJ looked at the way he jumped up and down on the bed. "No doubt you fucked her to death," she guessed.

  Whitey laughed. "No, I just hated her guts. The damned Reliance demanded I marry her. I hated that cunt. So, one day she burned dinner, or some damned thing, and I planted a hatchet in her brain." He had hoped to shock her.

  "Hey, a man can only be expected to take just so much," she said. "Well, that's the last moan you're going to get out of me."

  "Too bad, I was just starting to enjoy this." He quit bouncing, and put on his boots. He picked up the laser and stood up."Keep this hidden?" he questioned.

  "That would be best, yes," she said.

  He walked over to her and messed up her hair. When she started to protest, Whitey commented, "You have to look authentic." He looked at the chain. On impulse he grabbed one of the loops and dragged her against him. He kissed her on the mouth quickly, then released her. "Now you look like you've just been kissed."

  Her protest died unspoken. She groaned. "I like you. You're incorrigible."

  Whitey nodded and reluctantly opened the door. He held it for her as she walked out, then he followed. When he caught up to her, he put an arm over her shoulders. She put her arm around his waist, and he walked with her out of the bar.

  She stopped just in front of the door. "Whitey," she protested, "how far does this charade have to go?"

  "I was hoping it could go back to my place," he said with a roguish grin.

  "I think we've gone far enough," she said.

  "Not for me."

  "You're pushing it," she hissed.

  "Well, at least kiss me goodnight. For them, not for me."

  "For them, not for me," she said.

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. He didn't find her all that unwilling. It was a good three minutes before she even attempted to push him away.

  "Whitey," she protested. "Whitey!" she said more urgently.

  "What, what?" he asked angrily. "You like it, I like it. Let's go back to my place . . ."

  "I hardly know you," she said quickly.

  "So that never stopped anyone," he said."At least not here in Alsterase."

  "I kicked you in the balls," she reminded him.

  "I forgive you," he said with a shrug.

  "Then I'll do it again," she said with a sly smile.

  He took a step away from her.

  "OK. All right."

  She started to walk away.

  "Wait a minute." He caught up to her.

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  "I just want to know your name, then I'll leave you alone."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Because I'm a sensitive guy. I like to know the names of women I'm going to have explicit sexual fantasies about."

  "RJ. My name is RJ." She left.

  As promised, Whitey didn't follow. He watched her till he could see her no more, and it was only then that he realized what she had said. RJ! She said she was RJ. He decided right then that if she was that RJ, he would follow her. Of course, at that point if she had been Dogaretha, the Death Whore of Valgares, he would have followed her.

  RJ sat down in the restaurant, ordering for herself and something for David. She smiled when she thought about Whitey Baldor. He'd be a good ally if he could ever get his head out of his pants long enough. The food was good, and after her own cooking, she ate it with pure delight.

  She saw the man walk in, and watched the waitress walk over to him. The waitress made the mistake of looking up at RJ, giving them away.

  No doubt, the man had been looking for her.

  She remembered seeing the waitress leave earlier. It had only been for a few seconds, so RJ hadn't though too much of it. Apparently she'd been gone long enough to contact this man. As RJ watched she saw the man give the girl money. A lot more than he'd have to pay for the cup of coffee he bought. She ate her dinner as if she didn't know she was being watched. When she finished, she paid, picked up the sack for David, and left. As expected, the man followed. No doubt hoping she would lead him to her friend. She turned a sharp corner, her shadow following quickly.

  He saw nothing. The alley was a dead end. Then he heard something behind him.

  The shape that separated itself from the shadows was obviously female. She held a weapon.

  He moved to draw his own.

  "Oh, I wouldn't," she said coolly. She walked over and took his weapon from inside his jacket. "So, why follow me?"

  "I don't know what you mean." No doubt he thought that he could bluff his way out.

  "Then I'll tell you." She pulled up his sleeve and ripped the communicator off his arm. This time she checked to be sure it was off.

  "It's just a watch," the man said.

  RJ crushed the communicator in her fist and let the pieces fall to the ground. "And I'm just a girl. Come on, man. You can't kid a kidder." She smiled at him, her white teeth shining in the darkness of the alley.

  "What are you going to do to me?" The man had gone from cocky to terrified in a few short seconds.

  "That depends on what you tell me." She rubbed his chin with her laser. "Why were you looking for me?"

  "You and your friend killed a GSH. The Reliance wants to know how," he answered.

  "Nothing about the Elite and the secondary on the pier?" she asked curiously. The man's eyes got big. "Oh, so you didn't know who did that. People in Alsterase are pretty tight lipped. Still, I guess blowing a GSH through a wall and making it go splat all over the ground is the sort of thing people tend to talk about." She paused to laugh at him. "So, did you find out what you needed to know?" She laughed again.

  "A bitch freak," the man mumbled it, but RJ still heard him.

  He shouldn't have said that. He shouldn't have said that at all. She grabbed the man by his collar and lifted him off the ground. "I can't help what I am," she hissed. "You chose to be a Reliance spy." She holstered her weapon and dug the wallet out of her pocket. She carefully replaced the wallet after extracting one small pill. She held her palm flat and showed the pill to the man.

  He pulled his head back.

  "Do you know what this is?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Do you?" She hissed the words with venom, and shook him till his teeth rattled.

  "It's Pronuses," the man answered with a gulp.

  "Do you know what happens to a normal human when he takes Pronuses?"

  He knew. He tried to squirm free, kicking her in the process. It was a futile attempt, it didn't even phase her.

  "Interesting statistic on Pronuses. Did you know that the suicide rate is incredibly high among Reliance spies? Guess the job gets them down. You'll never guess what they use almost exclu
sively." She held out the pill. "Pronuses."

  "They'll never believe I committed suicide," the frantic man whined."I've got no reason to kill myself."

  "Oh, that's lame, desperate and lame. The Reliance doesn't give a damn about you or anyone else. Do you really believe that they know whether you're a candidate for suicide or not? Do you really believe that they care?" She shoved the pill in his mouth, past his closed teeth, and down in his throat. By the time she let him go he was dead.

  She picked up David's dinner from where she had set it on the ground and marched back to the restaurant. The waitress was obviously surprised to see her back so soon, or at all for that matter. Reliance spies usually killed the people they were spying on as soon as they found out what they needed to know. It was just tidier that way. RJ ordered a cup of coffee. When the waitress brought it, RJ grabbed her arm in a vice-like grip.

  "A Reliance man followed me when I left here," RJ said accusingly.

  "You're hurting my arm," the girl protested in a whisper.

  "Good, good," RJ grinned wickedly. She forced the girl's hand to lie flat on the table, then dumped cup of hot coffee on it. The girl let out a scream.

  The guy behind the counter started to come to her aid. RJ pulled her blaster with her free hand and aimed it at him; he stopped in his tracks.

  "A small accident," RJ explained making it sound like a threat.

  She didn't let the girl's arm go. She gave the girl a menacing look.

  "That's a bad burn. Could have been worse; could have been your face."

  The girl started to whimper.

  "I don't want anyone to know you talked to that man. I don't want anyone to know he was looking for me. I don't ever want to turn around and see that anyone's following me, ever again. If I do . . . do I have to get vulgar, or do you get the idea?"

  The girl nodded her understanding.

  "Good, good," RJ said with a happy smile."I hate to waste good coffee." She finally let go of the girl. She stood up, and picked up David's dinner."Notice that I am not leaving a tip." She laughed wickedly as she left the restaurant.

  RJ woke him up to eat. Having eaten, David now found he couldn't go back to sleep. He looked at RJ where she lay. Even in her sleep the arm jerked. That must be irritating as hell. He imagined she was probably used to it.

  For some reason, David couldn't quit thinking about his family. When he had been ten, his younger sister died of a disease which RJ had recently told him was easily cured. Two years later, his mother died in childbirth. He now knew that this, too, was uncalled for. The Reliance had the medicine and the technology, but why waste it on work units? In the Reliance, people were an expendable commodity.

  One day, not long after David's mother died, the Reliance came and took his father away. He had done something, but they never told David what. His father was sent off to a prison camp, and David was moved into the home of another family. A family that couldn't afford him any more than they wanted him. They made sure he knew he was an inconvenience for them and delighted in telling him that his father's selfishness would ruin them all. It was during this time in his life that he first started to harbor the idea of overthrowing the Reliance.

  Somewhere in David's mind, he had long cherished the fantasy that his father was alive. That someday they would be reunited. But after David's first week in prison, he had to admit that his father was dead, that he was an orphan.

  He wondered about RJ. Did RJ have a family somewhere? Did she have parents who loved and worried about her? He couldn't see RJ with a family, couldn't place her as sister or a daughter. If she still had family living, she never talked about them. Perhaps they had had a falling out. David got the impression that if you fell out with RJ, you fell all the way out.

  Suddenly, he was feeling melancholy. He missed his family. He wanted to wake RJ up and ask her about her family, but if he did, she would no doubt rip his arm off and beat him to death with the bloody stump.

  He could vividly remember playing with his sister in the road in front of their cottage. His mother would walk out every few minutes and tell them not to play in the road. Stupid advice; there was no place else to play, and the only traffic was the Reliance evaluation team which drove through once a month.

  There was never much time to play. When their work shift came up, they would go as a family to the fields and work. Even this was a fond memory for David, because at least they had been together. When their last work shift ended, they would go home and eat a quiet meal. Sometimes, after dinner, they would walk down to the village viewscreen and watch the carefully regulated Reliance programs. Most of them he realized now were little more than Reliance propaganda, but at the time it had served as their only form of entertainment, their only link to the world outside their village. Each day was pretty much like the one that had gone before.

  That was not the case in Alsterase, not the case anywhere where people were free.

  Chapter Five

  He really couldn't be bothered. As head of Reliance's Sector 11-N, he had more important things to do than worry about such trifles as this.

  "So, this RJ person has raided another shipment," Jago said blandly. "So what?"

  "She had help this time, Excellency. We found one set of civilian footprints. There may have been more. After all, we know she wears Elite boots herself," General Right explained.

  "So?" Jago sighed out.

  "We lost an entire convoy, Sire. The shipment stolen was of the new Z-27 laser side arms," Right said with urgency.

  "So?" Jago still didn't get it. What did any of this have to do with him? Didn't the military take care of this sort of thing? He stretched out on his giant pillow, looked around the sheik-like elegance of his surroundings and sighed yet again. "Can't you take care of this without bothering me?"

  "We need your guidance, Excellency," the General said. Jago lay there like a great beached whale. Beautiful women hurried around working hard to fulfill his every obese desire. Right hated Jago, but Jago had power, and Right was smart enough to know that he had better not wipe his own ass without written orders from Jago.

  Jago was infamous for blaming anything that went wrong on his underlings. He also had a bad habit of having the people he blamed executed. So Right, who was a perfectly capable individual, never did anything without orders in triplicate from this stupid, obnoxious blob.

  Jago was busy playing with the right tit of one of his lovelies, and was totally ignoring Right."Excellency, I really think you ought to take these rebels more seriously. This is the sixth convoy that has been attacked, and the sixth shipment stolen in the last ten months."

  Jago snorted in disgust, oozed to an upright position and picked up the report. Without so much as glancing at it, he ground out, "OK, we've got six convoys lost to this RJ person. Now you say this rebel has help, but you don't know how much. What the hell do you know?"

  "We know she's female because she saw fit to write that out for us on her first raid. We have deduced that she must have been an Elite at some time. We don't know anything else. We haven't been able to pick up enough DNA to make any sort of test. She's not stupid, that's for damn sure."

  Jago moved his immense bulk to a standing position, and began to pace back and forth. This was very bothersome. Rebels used to be happy to hide during their work shifts, take more than their share of food and cheat on their taxes. Why did they suddenly find it necessary to pick up weapons and blow up convoys? And why did they insist on stealing weapons that Jago was completely unfamiliar with? They were ruining his day. He flopped into his throne with a great dispatch of blubber, and tapped his chins with his finger in a very discontented manner.

  Life could be a real bitch. This whole episode had done nothing for his heartburn. Rebels looting supply trains, as if it were perfectly normal and above-board, troops that couldn't stop an old lady from jaywalking, and a General who wouldn't ball his wife without orders in triplicate. There were days when running all of Sector 11-N could be a real drag.
/>
  "OK Right, I'll bite. What do you want me to do about it?"

  "If we could shift some of the GSHs off their regular assignments and put them with all the important . . ."

  "Get the papers, Right, and I'll sign them. I'm tired of all this." Jago waved his hand dismissively.

  "As you desire, Excellency." Right clicked his heels and went off to do the necessary paper work. Putting GSHs with the supply trains might be a little extravagant, but it would certainly be effective.