Desert World Allegiances

by Lyn Gala

  “I think you want to scream and rant and accuse George Young of stealing your water and setting you up and ruining your farm. Hell, you can throw in something truly outlandish, like a suggestion that he killed your mother. What am I going to do?”

  Temar’s gaze darted to the table where the clump of damp cloth lay. “You’ll gag me.”

  “That I will. After all, as your owner, it is my job to teach you control, and I would never allow you to publicly slander George. That would give George the right to demand days of labor from you, and everyone knows that I’m too good of a man to want George near you or your sister. That man values land and money and wringing fourteen hours of labor out of a twelve hour day. I wouldn’t give him the right to overwork my young Temar. So, what will the others think of me for gagging you?”

  “That you’re protecting me.” Temar choked on the words, but he could see the twisted logic of them.

  “And what will they think of you?”

  Temar closed his eyes and took a deep breath as his guts knotted at the idea of all those men staring at him, judging him. “They’ll think I’m mad. The council will strip me of adult rights.” His chest ached with fear.

  “I doubt they’d go that far.” Ben patted both his cheeks and laughed. “No, I’ll be sure to protect you. I’ll explain how your father’s words have poisoned you. I will take care of you, Temar. You only have to obey. You can do that, right?”

  Ben took his hands away, and Temar’s warm cheeks suddenly felt cold. He looked up as Ben took a step back. “Will you follow orders?” Ben asked.

  Temar’s mind darted through his options, a rat caught in a pipe trap, running and running, but always running in circles and feeling the poison sinking in through his skin. He had no evidence. He might get the men to take him to the council, but he couldn’t get anyone to act before Ben would make a call to whoever had purchased his sister. People were all too ready to believe that a Gazer was mad with paranoia, and his word against Ben Gratu would lead to only one outcome. No matter how he turned, he couldn’t find an escape. Exile or death waited at every turn—every turn but one.

  “Yes, sir,” Temar whispered.

  Ben beamed at him. Reaching over, he slipped his hand behind Temar’s neck and pulled him in for a hug. “Such a good boy you are. Let’s get you some water and some food before the others come.” Ben slapped him on the back and then turned to the refrigerator, one arm still draped over Temar’s shoulders. “I fear I don’t trust you enough to untie you yet, but you point out which foods you like, and I’ll feed you.”

  Chapter 6

  “YOU’RE up late.” Div settled himself down on the pew next to Shan.

  “Thinking.”

  “Didn’t think you were praying,” Div said. From the senior priest, those words could have been sharp with rebuke, but instead Div sounded almost amused. Shan took a moment to glare at the old man.

  “I often pray; however, God helps those who help themselves.”

  “The Gospel according to Ben Franklin.” Div nodded slowly, his skepticism showing in the twist of his mouth. “Is that not the man who whored his way through Europe after escaping an apprenticeship with his brother? I’m not sure I would trust him for spiritual advice. I would rather turn to Proverbs. Whoever trusts his own wit is a fool; anyone whose ways are wise will be safe.”

  “I’ve been called worse than a fool,” Shan admitted. He stared up at the stylized cross, metal strips and windwood branches artistically woven together to create something stark and beautiful and mesmerizing.

  Div settled next to him, pulling his glasses off and perching them on his head before he leaned back in the pew and crossed his arms over his chest. For long minutes, they sat in the dark of the church, the wind scraping over the sloping sides of the building.

  “Are you going to sit here all night?” Shan finally asked.

  “That would depend,” Div answered without opening his eyes.

  “On what?”

  “On how stubborn you are being tonight.” Cracking one eye open, Div silently challenged him. Shan sighed. He knew full well that if the obstreperous old man insisted on hearing his thoughts, he would not be placated until Shan had finally talked. As a teenager, he’d tried testing Div’s patience and stubbornness, and he’d lost every time.

  “I’m bothered by the things I see around us.”

  “Oh, just wait until you’re my age,” Div promised. “You’ll be absolutely terrified by them. I think God measures our lifespan in how much change we can take before our heads explode.”

  Shan smiled. As a boy, Div had always been his safe haven, a man who would speak his mind without the need to belittle others. He’d changed little in the years, except that his chin seemed to be drooping lower, his nose was bulbing and his thinning hair had turned white. He was still the blunt man whom Shan could count on for some honesty.

  “So, what is threatening to make your head explode like an over-watered pipe trap?” Div pressed back in the pew, and the wood groaned under the force. Shan mentally added the pew to his list of repairs around the church.

  “Meid is pregnant again.”

  “Which is not a reason to sit in the dark and brood.”

  “I’m not brooding.”

  “Of course not. You only sit in the dark and stare at the cross and blame yourself for the flaws of the universe. I stand corrected.” Div paused. “Actually, I sit corrected, and I would like to be lying in my bed, asleep and corrected.”

  Shan frowned, bothered that he was keeping Div awake. The man was getting old, and the doctor didn’t hold out much hope for his heart. He needed rest. “And I’ve made you brood more.” Div reached over and rested a hand against Shan’s leg. “Your heart will overfill and explode long before your head, son. What’s truly bothering you?”

  “I wasn’t lying. It bothers me that Meid is pregnant again. We nearly lost her to her last pregnancy. The doctors can’t do much without medicine and equipment.”

  “Both of which are in short supply,” Div agreed, his voice growing solemn. “People have lived without technology before. We will survive this. The spirit of those who fear the Lord can survive.”

  “Jeremiah?” Shan asked, curious as to where Div had pulled that quote.

  “Book of Ecclesiasticus.”

  Shan nodded. Div carried entire libraries in his head, so he trusted the man’s memory, even if the doctors doubted the reliability of his heart. “But that was on Earth. Are we as sure of Livre? This place was not built for humans. The pipe traps and sandcats and sandrats are designed for this world, but we aren’t.”

  Div didn’t answer immediately. He turned his gaze to the cross. Even in the dim light that filtered in through thick glass, the metal gleamed. “Sometimes we don’t know where faith and foolishness meet. Do you think our great-grandparents were fools for coming here?”

  “In my case, it was my great, great, great grandparents,” Shan corrected the man. Div reached over and softly backhanded him across the arm. “And I don’t know. They believed that the inner worlds would support them until the world was terraformed.”

  “And now the universe has changed.” Div continued to look up at the cross. “Had they remained on the inner worlds, the odds are that you would now be on a ship, ordered into battle.”

  “A priest is not much good in battle,” Shan quickly disagreed, but Div only turned his head and gave him a long, searching look. “And I know that playing a game of what-if helps no one. I’m just not sure that the changes we’re making to this world are the right ones. We sent Cyla as a slave to another settlement. How can we move people around—take their rights—as if they’re pieces on a chess board?” Shan’s voice had slowly risen to a near shout, and he snapped his mouth shut. Div didn’t deserve his anger.

  Div patted his leg. “Love uprightness you who are rulers on earth, be properly disposed towards the Lord and seek him in simplicity of heart.”

  “I’d rather have guidance than platitu
des.” Shan turned to Div, begging his mentor to lay out some choices as simply as he had when Shan had been sixteen. His brother had recently been sentenced to slavery, and his father’s temper had turned from Naite to Shan. After the first beating, he had come to Div and cried in the priest’s arms. Now it was others who came to Shan and begged for guidance, but he never felt like his words reached people like Div’s had.

  “The Bible is full of guidance, and if they sound like platitudes, it’s because we don’t want to listen,” Div corrected him, the censure clear even if his voice remained mild. Shan grimaced as he realized his slip. “I can’t tell you anything that you don’t already know. You aren’t a child whose feet I can put on the path. You’re a little heavy for me to lift, these days.” Div patted him on the leg again and then crossed his arms over his chest once more.

  “You should return to the council,” Shan said softly. The church members would vote Div back on the council in one second if he showed any willingness to serve.

  Div laughed. “Lilian would gut you for even suggesting that. As much as I adore that woman, we risked homicide more than once, being in the same room. So, what are you going to do? I assume that you already know that sitting in the dark will not solve any of your problems.”

  “I don’t know.” Shan wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone but Div, but the fact was that he wanted to do a lot of things. He wanted to dismantle the slave system before another Blue Hope. He wanted to throw every resource behind the doctors so they could do their jobs. He wanted to send a message up to space to tell the inner worlds to stop their stupidity before everyone on Livre slowly died. He wanted to rip the whole world apart out of sheer frustration. But in the end, he didn’t know what to actually do.

  A Bible verse floated to the top of Shan’s memory. “For trampling on the poor man and for extorting levies on his wheat: although you have built houses of dressed stone, you will not live in them; although you have planted pleasant vineyards, you will not drink wine from them.”

  “You think someone lives in a house of stone?” Div asked.

  “The lords of the inner worlds,” Shan immediately answered.

  Div chuckled. “I have great faith in your ability to change the world, but that is a little far for even you and your passion to reach. Is there anyone closer… someone who you might actually reach?”

  Shan thought about that. Temar came first to mind. The boy used to slip into the back of church during service, and every slave had the right to come to church, but he hadn’t shown up since Ben Gratu had driven off with him a month ago. Likely the boy was using Sundays to sleep, and in reality, he was far more concerned about Cyla. However, Temar was the easiest to reach.

  Div used the back of the pew to push himself up. “I can already see you have a mission in mind. So, go. Do something useful that does not include staring at the cross and waiting for God to act.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in God helping those who helped themselves.”

  “I don’t. But I do believe that the Book of Ecclesiasticus also says, ‘The sinner will not escape with his ill-gotten gains nor the patience of the devout go for nothing. He takes note of every charitable action, and everyone is treated as he deserves’.”

  Div rested a hand on Shan’s shoulder, and for a second, he leaned heavily into Shan and wobbled slightly on his legs. When he stood up too fast, sometimes he would have to grab at something to avoid falling. Right now, Div’s fingers pressed into Shan’s shoulder, and he could feel the warmth between them. Everything his father had denied him, Div had offered, and seeing Div struggle this way worried him. However, that was one more battle Shan didn’t know how to fight.

  Div cleared his throat and caught his balance again before patting Shan on the cheek. “You need to fix fewer pews and read more Bible verses. So, go… take some charitable action.”

  Shan smiled up at his mentor and rested his own palm against Div’s, so that Div’s hand was, for a moment, trapped between Shan’s face and palm. “Thank you.”

  “It’s in the job description,” Div said, with a touch of mockery in his voice. “I have to pretend to be wise and have something useful to offer.” After dismissing his own words, Div turned and walked toward the back where a narrow passage connected the church proper to the parish house next door.

  Shan waited as he heard the door close. Div would move slowly through the narrow passage and up the stairs to his room. If Shan timed it right, he would give Div enough time to get to his own room before he followed. That way Div wouldn’t hurry to try and get out of Shan’s way, and Shan could make sure that Div got safely into bed before he went to his own room. And when tomorrow came, he’d check on Temar and visit Cyla in Red Plain. Maybe he’d feel better if he faced a few of his fears and proved to himself that he was only seeing boogeymen in the dark.

  Chapter 7

  THE sand cycle, with its oversized tires, lost traction again, and Shan found himself sliding down the dune face fast and faster. Wind tore at his sleeves, and dust clouded his vision, but his muscles knew this game. He closed his eyes and felt the bike between his legs, the warm metal and plastic veering first right and then left as the engine powered down during the long fall, and all Shan concentrated on was holding his own weight directly above the machine. The sand cycle would go where it would go, and riding down a dune was an exercise in trusting the Lord to keep you from breaking your neck.

  The angle of the fall changed, and Shan opened his eyes enough to see the bottom of the dune rise up in front of him. The cycle bucked and wobbled from side to side as it slowed, and the engine finally sputtered to life again. For a half second, the fat wheels spun and threw the sand. Then Shan settled his weight back, and the extra traction allowed the back tire to finally push against the sand and send the cycle darting forward toward the giant gates to Spence Valley.

  This was the oldest and most terraformed of all the valleys, so Shan imagined the farmers were more than a little pleased to burn the weeds off Erqu Gazer’s land. Ben might even have Temar doing that, although if he was kind, he wouldn’t ask the boy to burn his father’s home. Then again, Ben might not want to do anything that might help George, considering what a small-minded and arrogant man that one could be. Ben might let the weeds choke the land.

  If someone didn’t clear the weeds out, eventually Chad Dura or Mara Kelligan or Tepah Starcharter or even Tom Sulli would complain. Their farms were farther from the old Gazer place, but seeds traveled, and not even walls and stone could keep the Livre wind out altogether. Ignoring the large vehicle gate that was still blocked with sand, Shan guided the bike through the narrow walkway. It was a tight fit, but the cycle was designed to make the narrow turns as the passage led a winding way through the rock into the valley.

  He finally reached the top of the passage, and the valley opened below. This route took him high into the cliffs behind the Gratu farm, which was why so few people used it, but Shan enjoyed the narrow paths, steep cliffs, and dangerous turns. He turned his cycle toward the valley floor and, for a time, concentrated on not falling to his death. No doubt, Ben would not appreciate a priest and his bike falling though the barn roof.

  The green fields were dotted with unskilled laborers. Naite would be working over at the Kelligan or Sulli farms, not that Shan had any desire to track him down. The cycle bounced over a low ridge and then onto the rock shelf where the Gratu house and barn sat. Sua Smith was sitting in front of a table in the sun, pipe fittings in front of her. No one could miss the wild tattoos scattered across her back.

  “Sua!” Shan called. The woman turned, a pipe torch in hand, and frowned.

  “Shan? Who’s dying, that we need the priest out here?” She pulled her weld mask off and set it and her torch on the table.

  “Hopefully, no one. I’ve just been missing a parishioner, so I thought I would see how Temar is doing.”

  Sua snorted. “That boy has his sister’s temper.”

  Shan blinked in shock. �
�Temar?”

  “Temar,” she said firmly. “Let someone say the wrong word around him, or let him be in the wrong mood, and the anger flies out of that boy.”

  “Temar?” Shan repeated, and even he could hear his voice go high. He felt a little like a man who had stepped off a ship into a new world, where all the rules of the universe changed. To claim that Temar had a temper was a little like expecting water to fall from Livre skies. It did not happen.

  Sua laughed, but it was an unhappy sound. “You wouldn’t think to look at him, but he has a mouth.” Sua straddled the sawhorse she had set up next to the table and pulled up the pipe she had just welded, holding it up against the sun and squinting at the joint. “Ben’s been patient to no end, but if he requests an extension on that boy’s contract, I’ll be testifying for him. Ben has less time to work his own fields, and Temar is not all that useful, even when he is in a mood to work.”

  Shan could only blink as he tried to figure out if this was some odd joke on her part. “Temar?”

  Sua smiled and shook her head. “The boy fooled you with that sweet look of his, didn’t he?”

  “Obviously, he did.” Shan swung his leg off the sand cycle and crossed the dusty yard. “I feared he’d be beaten down by his slavery. It can’t be easy on a man, knowing that his rights are gone.”

  Sua put the pipe down on the table and seemed to think on that for a second. “Sometimes I think that’s true. He’ll walk around, creeping from shadow to shadow, always looking for Ben and staying two steps behind him.”

  Shan flinched at that description. Sometimes even those with short-term services lost their confidence. In Naite’s case, he had come through with plenty of ego, but then he’d had extra to spare before he started his term. But some slaves became shells of themselves. They’d come into confession, practically asking him to tell them what to confess to. That lack of power grated against Shan’s conscience and made slavery feel unnatural to him. He hadn’t wanted that for Temar. But the flares of anger—he wasn’t sure if that was a healthy and normal reaction to having so much taken from him or if Temar was in some sort of trouble. He’d like to think that Temar would know to come to him or Ben if someone on the farm was doing something, but the young man’s habit of shadowing Ben did suggest that he feared something, real or imagined.