by Jean Kilczer
“I didn't know there was a peak higher than our altitude.”
“You can't see it from here. It's hidden by forest and hills.”
“OK. It's worth a try. Tomorrow then.” We smiled, touched glasses and drank.
* * *
We left before daybreak on Copper and Stormy, to travel in the cool predawn climate. The air was still crisp with night as we climbed a dirt path through woods and finally into a clearing. Before us the snow laden shoulder of a peak jutted above rolling hills.
“Now that's got to be White Peak,” I said.
“That's it.”
We rested the horses, then went on. I tried the comlink a few times as we climbed, but it was still just static.
I sat back against a tree and watched the first rays of light warm White Peak while Sophia walked to the clearing and tried the link.
“Something's coming through!” she called.
“Oh yeah?” I got up and went to her.
The voices were still partly gibberish, with static in between, as we locked on to a conversation somewhere below.
“Oh, look, Jules,” Sophia said. The message light came on. You have three messages. Maybe they're from Joe. Should I play them?"
“Sure. Go ahead.”
She turned on the link. “Oh, they're from…” She shut off the unit and snapped down the cover. “Wrong number.” But the frightened expression on her face said differently.
“Who is it, Sophia?”
“Nothing. Suppose I warm up a fresh brew? I brought along heat packets of coffee. It wouldn't take me a minute.” She turned quickly toward Stormy, who was tied to a tree with Copper.
I grabbed her arm and gently took the comlink from her hand.
“Jules. Don't!” she said as I flipped open the cover and turned on the unit. Three messages lit up below the blinking red light. All from Boss Slade. I felt as though cold water had been thrown in my face.
“Please,” Sophia whispered, “don't listen to them.”
I took a breath and clicked on the first one.
Slade's raspy Altairian voice came through. “Nice escape, tel. Well planned. Too bad that others are paying for your transgressions.”
I looked at Sophia. She put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes glistened with tears.
“But you understand, human,” Slade continued, “that I cannot afford to let an escape go unpunished. Consider the devious thoughts it will stir in the minds of the other residents. Rebellion. Open revolution. The end of Lithium Love Mine. Can't have that, now can we?”
“Shut it off, Jules!” Sophia made a grab for the unit.
I held it away from her. The message ended.
I clicked on the next one. Slade's harsh voice was like a slap in the face.
“So, every morning, at sunrise,” he said, “a resident of the mine is brought to the whipping post in your stead and takes the punishment meant for you.”
I drew in a hard breath.
“Unfortunately,” Slade continued, “two of our residents have died at the post. You may know one.” I almost shut off the unit. “A young Terran male named Jason.”
I dropped the unit as though it were on fire. “No,” I squeezed out and shook my head. “No.”
“And an old Kubraen male,” Slade went on and each word cut into my soul.
“He was not much good anyway,” Slade said amid static. “Old beyond production.”
I staggered back from the unit. “I'll kill him,” I whispered. “If it's the last thing I do, I'll kill him.”
Sophia clasped my trembling hand. “Jules! None of this is your fault.”
I stared at her, but was seeing Jason's young features. “He was just a kid,” I whispered. “What kind of animals…”
“The worst kind, Jules. Please. I know what you're thinking. You want to go back.”
“Want to? It's the last thing I want to do.” I picked up the unit as though it were a viper.
“Then, for God's sake…and for mine, don't go back. He'll kill you!”
“How many more have to die, Sophia, before I go back?”
I took a breath and played the last message.
“Of course,” Slade went on, “if you have any honor at all, you will return and allow me to stop this torture and death.”
Sophia threw her arms around my neck. “Please, Jules, don't do it! I just found you.”
I closed my eyes and hugged her. “If I had known that Joe and the Alliance troops weren't coming, I would never have escaped.”
“You would've stayed and tried to start a revolution, wouldn't you?” she said angrily, then began to cry.
I hugged her close.
“And we would've never had this time together.” She held me tighter.
“At what cost, Sophia? How many more will he kill?”"
“Then I'm coming with you.”
“That's crazy. What will it prove?”
She let go of me and wiped her eyes. “With a resident of Wydemont there at the mine.” She paused and sobbed. “Slade wouldn't dare mistreat the slaves.” She ran a hand across my cheek and I saw the deep sadness in her eyes. “Or you.”
“You underestimate him. He's terrified of open rebellion. He'd lose his position at the mine, and the creds that go with it. That's why he wanted a tel working for him in the first place.”
“To spy on the slaves?”
I nodded. “I knew life was getting too good. Why should it last?”
She fondled my hair. “For me too.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “When will you leave?” she asked dully.
Slade said he whipped the slaves at sunrise." I bit my lip as I unstrapped my stingler and handed it to her. “Take this.” I handed her the holster. “It's a good weapon.”
She tried to answer, but got choked up and just took it and nodded.
A bird called out the morning and the first light rimmed tall trees as I went to Copper and mounted. Sophia stood silently, her tears unwiped.
I walked Copper close to her, bent down in the saddle and we kissed, gently, without desperation. I wiped her tears with my thumb, turned Copper down the twisted trail, off the mountain and toward the mine.
Chapter Ten
I glanced up as a hovair with Lithium Love Mine written across the hull swung low and cruised by. They were tracking me as I approached the compound, making sure I didn't change my mind.
Copper's shoulders were already lathered as I led him down a rocky trail. The long shadows of dawn striped the narrow path. The sun pressed my back like a hot iron. I wiped my forehead and felt sweat trickle down my sides.
I reined in on a promontory, dismounted, and surveyed the mining site below. The mounted lookouts hadn't spotted me yet and I could have still turned away from that death camp and lost the hovair in the wilds. I thought of a poem I'd once recited to Althea while we were still married. “I could not love thee dear so much, loved I not honor more.” Appropriate. The tag in the poem was going off to war, and I had my own war to fight. I mounted and continued down the road.
When I reached the broad, electrified gate of the mine, a guard shouted something in alienese to another Altairian and the gate swung open. I bit my lip as I entered. The audience was in place. Work had stopped and the slaves were gathered in rows. Armed guards patrolled on horseback. I squinted up at Slade's office window and saw him there, behind the black bars of window blinds.
The stage is set, I thought. It needs only the martyr to complete the play. That would be me. I was flanked by mounted guards who crowded Copper and turned him toward the whipping post.
I froze. Copper felt my fear. He threw up his head and pranced sideways. A guard reached out and grabbed his reins. “Get down,” he ordered me.
I dismounted and walked toward the post, hoping my knees wouldn't buckle. Did they intend to lash me until dead? I scanned the empty sky. All that this scenario lacked was a cross for me to drag along.
The slaves watched silently as I pulled my shirt over my head and threw i
t at an approaching guard. He caught it and looked at the other guard. If this were to be my last act in this lifebind, I would leave the slaves with a belief in their capacity to defy the brutal, mindless power that knows nothing beyond greed.
My shoulders trembled as I walked to the flogging post. “What are you waiting for?” I threw at the guards. “You're not afraid of me, are you?”
I heard a murmur and the shuffling of feet among the crowd. The guards came forward quickly then, embarrassed, I think, at their own hesitation.
Christ and Buddha! I was putting on a good act, but my stomach was clenched into a fist. My throat was so tight my breath shuddered through my lungs.
I shivered with cold sweat as my arms were stretched, my wrists lifted high and tied to the post, a makeshift affair of two wooden boards nailed at right angles to each other. The horizontal board bore dark-stained scratches where victims had dug in their fingernails until they bled. Would mine add to them? I'd try not to. If I had tight back muscles, this position would loosen them.
Spirit, I sent. Are you out there? Spirit!
I am here.
I closed my eyes. I'm so scared!
With good reason.
Stay with me, OK?
I am here.
I kept my eyes on small shreds of clouds that drifted overhead as Azut approached and uncoiled his whip.
“Did you volunteer for this job?” I asked him hoarsely.
He glanced at the high window. “I was ordered to be the one.”
Of course. Boss Slade intended to show the slaves that there could be no friendship between them and the guards. No quarter given.
“Why did ye come back?” Azut asked.
“If you don't know, I can't explain it.”
A hushed silence.
I tensed my muscles into ropes. My chest was pressed against the wood and my heart drummed in my ears. I wanted to wipe the sweat that ran down my forehead and ribs. “Get it over with!” I told Azut.
“One!” I heard a guard shout.
The lash across my back was like a burning poker raked through skin. I clamped my teeth against a need to scream.
“Two!”
The second lash was worse. I felt it rip through torn skin over the first.
Spirit! I screamed in my mind.
I am here, Jules.
“Three!”
“Stop!” I gasped as the lash tore through flesh and down to bone. “Stop! Please!” Bile rose in my throat. I choked it back down.
“I'm sorry,” Azut said.
“Four!”
“No, don't,” I cried. But the whip came down like the slash of a hot knife. I felt my wrists stretch and realized my knees had sagged. Blood seeped from my mouth as I bit through my lip. People in the crowd moaned.
They'll kill me! I cried to Spirit.
No. Not yet.
“Five!”
This time I screamed as the whip slashed my back like serrated metal. I smelled blood and felt it run down my back. The clouds seemed to be turning in a slow circle. My stomach heaved, but only bile rose.
“Six!”
The lash came down but I felt only a thud of pain as Spirit probed my mind, searching. My thoughts scattered. The clouds took on grotesque shapes. I fought Spirit as he reached deeper than even Star Speaker had gone during our tel lessons on Halcyon. He touched places I'd never wanted revealed. Get out! I sent and pushed back.
Stop it, Jules.
“Seven!” I heard dully but felt nothing as Spirit found the main switch and threw it.
Daylight shattered and I collapsed gratefully into a starless night.
* * *
My back burned as though a torch had been flamed across it. I smelled blood and felt it seep down my sides. I tried to walk, but couldn't as Azut and Kluth dragged me to my cell. I retched but there was nothing in my stomach.
“Jules?” I heard Dannie cry and saw her behind the bars.
“Dannie,” I rasped. “What're you doing here?”
“I hated the family they sold me to.” She clutched the bars. “They were mean to me. I ran away and came back here to be with you! Oh, baby. Look what they did to you!”
Christ and Buddha! “Dannie. You shouldn't have come back.”
They laid me face down on the cot. Azut paused. “I am sorry,” he said. He had blood on his right arm and his side.
“You'd better wash off the blood,” I whispered, “if you can.”
Azut lowered his head. “I'll leave the cell door open. Get breakfast for yeself.”
The two guards left.
“Oh, Jules.” Dannie sat on the floor beside me and took my hand. “I saw them whip you from the cell window.” She brushed tears. “They stopped when you passed out.”
“That was kind of them.”
She wiped blood off my lips with the back of her hand and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “I couldn't watch. I would have taken it in your place.”
“I wouldn't wish it on you, kid. Can you get me some water? There's a lousy taste in my mouth.”
She went into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water. “Here.” She helped me hold up my head and sip the water. “What're we going to do?”
“I'm working on it.”
She glanced at my back with a question in her raised brows. “Jules, when you feel better I think we should talk.”
“I'm listening, Dannie. You've got a captive audience.”
Well." She brushed her hand through my hair. “I think we should have sex.”
Oh, Jesus. “What brought that on?”
“I thought about it when I saw them whip you. If we don't obey them, sooner or later they'll kill you and send me to another Terran man.”
“Suppose we just pretend to have sex?”
She frowned. “How do you do that?”
“I'll figure out something.” I lifted my hand to her wet cheek. “You're too young to become pregnant, kid. Having a baby could kill you, and the baby too. These crotes would let you give birth right here on the cell floor. So forget it, OK?”
She twirled her finger through my hair. “Someday, if I live long enough, I want to marry a man just like you.”
Against the pain, I forced a smile.
She kissed my cheek. “Will you wait for me?”
“No.”
She drew back. “But you said someday I'll become a beautiful woman!”
“You will.” I slid my hand to her neck. “And someday you'll meet a tag who's closer to your age.”
“I don't care about age!”
“You should, Dannie. You and he will have a lot in common. You'll be friends. I'd end up being your father.”
“But I think I'm in love with you, Jules. I want to…to –”
I closed my eyes and moaned. If only this fire would go out in my back.
“I want you to be my first man!” she blurted.
“Puppy love, Dan.” I squeezed in a breath. “Can we talk about this some other time?”
“I wish I could make your back better.”
“Me too. Just stay close and hold my hand. It's comforting, you know?”
“I'm not going anyplace, hon.”
Hon? When did I become hon?
I was so worn down from the pain and the trauma. “I wish I could sleep,” I whispered.
She brushed my hair off my neck. “You need a haircut.”
“You think?” I drew in a breath. “I need more than a haircut. Maybe a couple of aspirin.” I forced another smile.
“Shhh,” she whispered and kissed me lightly on the lips. “Go to sleep.”
“Would that I could.”
“Lullaby, and goodnight,” she sang.
Give me a break.
Dannie fell asleep with her head on the side of my cot. Her hand slid from mine.
My cheek stuck to the sheet. “Huff,” I mumbled. My Vegan friend had always been there for me. “Where are you now?” I whispered. “Back on your homeworld, Kresthaven?”
Dannie stirred.
I rested my hand on her shoulder.
I can't remember a worse night than that one. The hours grew tails that stretched them out like taut violin strings. If Boss Slade thought he'd beaten the defiance out of me, he was mistaken. A seething hatred sprang upon my soul like a vulture that dug in claws. I pictured the Altairian overlord dying in agonizing ways, and conjured ever more brutal methods to shuffle him off this mortal coil. For what he did to me, and worse, to so many others, I knew the red throat of Hell that awaited his kwaii when he died. I knew the Black Pit that Great Mind would hurl him into. I'd seen it happen to the vicious BEM All Mother on Denebria, who ate children alive. I hoped I'd live long enough to see it happen to this greedy Altairian demigod.
With dawn, the pain finally began to subside and I fell into a fitful sleep. Every few minutes I would start and open my eyes, afraid that if I kept them closed I'd be in danger.
I was thirsty again and I had to pee, but getting up was not worth the effort. I wiped my sticky tongue on my shirt collar.
Outside the window, morning stirred. The sound of shuffling feet as slaves went to their work stations. The smell of frying dough as breakfast was prepared. The snort of a horse. An overseer, Fulg, I think, shouting to some slave to get back in line. The clank of metal plates being stacked.
The heat hadn't begun yet. It crouched in the eastern wings, red as the rising sun.
Dannie, lying on the stone floor beside my cot, stirred and rolled over. She mumbled something and woke up. "Oh, Jules. How do you feel?'
“A little better,” I lied. “Dannie? Could you get me some water?”
“Sure, hon.” She scrambled to her feet, went into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water.
I gulped it down too fast and coughed. “Another one?”
“Sure.” She went for it and came back with a fresh glass. “Drink it slow!”
“OK.” I gulped that one, too, and coughed again. I closed my eyes.
“I wish I could make it better for you,” she said.
I nodded.
She twirled a strand of the long hair at my neck. “You know, hon, they're waiting for you.”
“The slaves? It's up to them now. I've got nothing left to give.”
