by Mark Zubro
“Well, fuck him. They’ll never go along with whatever he wants. They’ve heard him talk. They shouted the stupid shit down at our last meeting.”
“He’s not worried about a majority this time. He’s smart enough to figure out he’s never going to have that.”
“Then what’s he up to?”
“Some of the men told me this at work today. They’re reliable men. I believe them. They said Cak and his group were organizing a walkout.”
“Walk where?”
“Good question. Their answer is they want to live where they want. They’ve had enough of obeying straight people. They feel by staying here they continue to obey.”
“But there are no guards here.”
“They don’t care about that. In fact they’re glad. They say that’ll make it easier. They’re mad, and they want to rebel.”
“I can understand their anger. We all can, but don’t the stupid motherfuckers realize we have to stick together now, of all times. If we’re going to survive, we’ve all got to contribute. We’ve already got people drifting off onto the plain. We send out search parties and rescue them, but we keep using valuable man-hours on it. Now this whole crowd wants to go. Shit! How many of them are there?”
“My sources said it was probably a little over ten guys.”
“One tenth of the original colony. We’ve probably doubled in numbers with the newcomers in the supply ships. Any of them thinking of leaving?”
“Not that I can tell.”
Despite all attempts since the last surprise inspection a month ago, they had been unable to find out precisely how many or when more colonists would arrive.
Joe said, “These Leavers say they’ve been fucked by the galaxy for the last time. They aren’t going to take it anymore, and nothing you can do can stop them.”
“I wonder if the committee visit triggered this?”
“Maybe. I think they’ve been planning this for a while, maybe even while they were on the ship here, but that visit might have added some impetus.” Joe shook his head. “It’s you they’re worried about mostly.”
“What do they think I’m going to do? Decree from on high? Besides having no inclination to do so, I have no way of enforcing it.”
“I’ve heard Karsh is especially concerned about your reaction, but the others are too, with Cak leading the chorus. They know you control the vast majority of votes. They know the other men listen to you and respect you. They think you’ll deny them supplies. There’s talk of stealing away at night, grabbing everything they can lay their hands on.”
“Will they kill the rest of us in our sleep?”
“That wasn’t mentioned.”
“I’ve got to talk to them.”
“I doubt if it’ll do any good.”
“I’ve got to try. That asshole is going to wreck everything.”
Joe agreed.
Mike checked his computer for Karsh’s work assignment. Karsh worked in one of the lower levels. When Mike found him, Karsh was finishing the digging on a series of deep latrines. Since the colony didn’t have enough of the automatic Port-a-Potties, they needed to install this backup system. The waste would be added to that of the diggers out on the plain. Joe had said that waste and rock and chemicals would make even stronger dams and dikes.
Mike said, “Karsh, we need to talk.”
Karsh glared at him. “I’d prefer to have a witness present.”
“A witness?” Mike asked.
Karsh looked smug. “That’s right. I don’t trust you in the least.”
Mike glanced at the men working nearby. “I don’t care if there’s an audience.” While Karsh got on his communicator and called for Cak, Mike motioned the men over. Curious and grateful for an early end to the day even if it was just a few minutes, they came over and encircled the two of them.
When Cak hustled in, Mike turned to Karsh. He said, “I’ve heard rumors you’re planning to lead a group out of the colony.”
“That’s right,” Karsh said. “We were going to announce it at the meeting tonight. We’re going. You can’t stop us. Our preparations will be done soon.”
“You don’t want to discuss it?”
“Discuss what? You’ll never agree to it. The men vote whatever you want like little sheep. They treat you like a little emperor, and you assume it’s your just due. It’s disgusting. We need to be left to do what we want. The schedule is too rigid. We want to be free. The workload is unfair. We miners do more work. The farmers on the surface don’t have it half as bad.”
Mike said, “I work as much as anyone. I’m down here digging, but I’ve been to the surface. They work as hard as we do. Why would you say a thing that is demonstrably untrue?”
“It’s not fair,” Karsh said.
“What part of this do you think is fair? We’re all stuck.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“You’re a bought and paid stooge of the galaxy.”
A few of the men grumbled. Karsh was right. They were loyal to Mike. Put in charge by an horrific fate, he tried his best to be fair. They knew he was and understood it. Mike liked it when Karsh went kind of nuts with his statements. It made him look even better.
Mike asked, “Why do you need a meeting?”
Karsh looked confused.
“You could just go without all the drama.”
“Well, you’re the one who wanted meetings.”
“But as you’ve said numerous times, I’m not emperor.”
Karsh responded with an inarticulate snarl. The men clustered around the two combatants. Cak looked like a second at a duel, waiting out of the line of fire.
“How are you going to survive?” Mike asked. “How will you decide where to go? You can’t live on the plain here. The records and data we have show it will all be underwater in the rainy seasons.”
“We’ve looked at the old records too. There’s a spot in the mountains that the last colony developed. They had high hopes of finding minerals.”
“But they didn’t. And that was hundreds of years ago. The land could have changed. It could be dangerous.”
“They ran out of money before they developed it fully. We can give it a chance. We’re not going to run out of money. And we’re in danger here.”
“You could die out there.”
“We’re as likely to die here. We’ll make it. Don’t try to keep us from our fair share of materials.”
“Look, Karsh, be reasonable, even if we all wanted to go, there’s no way to transport all the materials. There’s a zillion tons of supplies. It would take all of us working months to even bring it to the surface. How are you going to carry all you need to start a new place?”
“You won’t stop us. We know what we need. Only the basics. The rest of this stuff is here to pacify you, to keep you from realizing your real condition.”
“I think we all realize our condition, Karsh. Why lead a rebellion? It’s only us here.”
“Obviously I can’t talk to you. You have no sympathy or understanding for our position” He turned his back on Mike and moved to turn his digger on.
Mike planted himself between Karsh and the digger. He said, “It’s not sympathy or understanding I lack. You don’t like it because I disagree. You want a colony of your own that you can be in charge of.”
“Liar,” Karsh snapped.
Mike ignored the accusation. “You’ll be leading innocent men to harm, maybe death, and we might not be able to come to your aid or get there in time.”
“Maybe we’ll let you know when we’re leaving and you can have a party for us.”
“Is there anything I can say or do to get you to stay?”
“You and Joe could leave.”
Mike smiled. “That’s your list of demands?”
“Yes.”
“I like it,” Mike said. “Simple and direct.” He thought for a few minutes. “No.” He turned and left.
Mike and Joe met
at the food distribution point, gulped their ration down, and headed for that night’s scheduled colony meeting. Mike told Joe what had happened during the meeting with Karsh.
“We can’t stop them,” Joe said.
“I don’t think I want to.”
Joe said, “Not having to listen to their shit would be kind of pleasant.”
They hugged each other outside the doorway to the meeting room. They were covered in dirt and sweat from the day’s work. Mike loved the smell of Joe in general, but found that when his husband was all sweaty, he enjoyed the exquisite aroma even more. He breathed deeply. They went into the meeting.
Mike half-expected some kind of announcement of them leaving. What he got first was a demand for an election.
Karsh made a speech that began with, “You were put in charge by the enemy. We want to elect who we want.”
Mike thought, this guy sounds depressingly like Earth politicians. He’d had the fleeting notion that think things might change across light years, but greed, shame, and power seemed to work the same. More all-galactic memes.
When Karsh finished a mind numbing forty-two minutes later, Brux spoke up first. He let exasperation snap into his tone. “You’ve said most of that to us before. You bring most of what you just talked about up at every meeting. Although I admit the call for an election is new. We waste time on the rest of it at every meeting. Don’t you ever give in to logic?”
“I am logical.”
Mike forestalled any further debate by saying, “I rule Karsh’s motion is out of order.”
Mike was used to Robert’s Rules of Order and had given them all a crash course.
Karsh was smart enough to call for an appeal of the chair’s ruling. Karsh insisted on a silent ballot, which Mike granted.
With most of the new and old colonists present, Mike won the vote 173 to 12.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Kill him!” One of the men shouted.
Mike found the daily routine of the actual colony life mind numbing. Even after all the work was done, the men had time for themselves with little to do. They had not been provided with any liquor. There was nothing to drink but the water. Neither he nor Joe had been party guys.
A few of the men had brought along small things in their personal packs. Joe showed them chess and checkers. They showed him Hrrrm games that seemed to Mike like complicated games of chess and checkers. He didn’t get the rules and had no time to learn them.
Some of the men got together at night under the stars to sing. They found a natural amphitheater about half a mile into the plain. The sound echoed just right. Mike didn’t recognize the words. It sounded mostly like sad opera to him. Lots of screeching in minor keys. A few of them had simple instruments. One was kind of a banjo mixed with a bass fiddle, which when played softly and slowly, made a sound Mike liked. Most of the time, the music just seemed to go faster and faster. Mike figured it was all in what you were used to.
After the people he loved, music was the thing he missed most about Earth.
A few of the men had taken to playing a sort of dangerous tag with the smaller laser diggers. Mike would see them sometimes at night out on the plain. The tips of the lasers looking like sparklers in the distance. If you touched someone with the tip and didn’t make them bleed, they were it. Seemed kind of pointless to Mike, but it kept some of the men entertained.
This night, Mike had strolled up to go on the surface to look for Joe. He found him just outside the communication room which was now just inside the entrance. Besides the shouts of, “Kill him!” Mike heard loud groans and a few cheers from inside the room.
He saw Joe and asked, “What’s up?” Mike craned his neck to see what was going on.
Brux was in his large chair. He was surrounded by as many men who could fit into the room as possible.
Joe said, “Death Ball.”
Mike looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
Joe explained. “You know how you guys on Earth go crazy for soccer and football and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Death Ball is the intergalactic sport here. Everybody plays, or follows it, or cares about it.”
“You haven’t mentioned it before. Although, wait a second, Lon, the visitor with the inspection team mentioned a scene from Death Ball was part of the mural Grith is drawing.”
“That makes sense. You know that stuff you saw around the Senate chamber, that big mural with all that historical pageantry? Scenes from that and scenes from Death Ball are obsessions with artists. Death Ball is sort of a combination soccer game and gladiatorial fight to the death. Think of it as a cross between soccer and a mugging, played nearly naked. Eyes get gouged out, ears ripped off, dicks destroyed, balls gone, tits nearly wrung off.”
“You’re kidding?”
Joe smiled. “You could probably find the history of the games on some memory bank in the communication room. You could watch old games.”
“No thanks.” Watching most sports bored Mike to tears.
Joe said, “Some of the men were thinking of starting teams here. They asked me because they figured you’d decree no deaths.”
“Don’t we already have enough of a sense of danger?”
“This would be danger they have control of in ways they’re used to.”
“It’s nuts.”
“It’s us. And remember our healing is better than your healing. So lasting scars are a choice.”
“Our medical equipment isn’t as good as it should be.”
Joe smiled. “They’re willing to risk it.”
“Fine,” Mike said. “If they want to kill each other.”
Joe said, “They’ll have a good time. I’ll make them add a few rules so it’s less lethal. Maybe if we’re any good some year, we’ll have a gay galactic championship team.”
“They let prisoners play?”
“They let anybody play. Winning is everything. A few days ago the yearly seasonal playoffs started. It’s not like Earth where top teams compete in final rounds. This starts with a round with every team in it. So theoretically every team has a chance to win. Takes months and months to whittle the field down.”
Mike said, “Death from a game?”
Joe smiled. “I remember watching football on television with Jack a couple times. I was so bored. No deaths. What kind of sissy, pantywaist game is that?”
“They tried to stop at concussions.”
“They don’t know how to fix brain damage. It’s kind of like a cut lip here.”
Mike shook his head.
Joe said, “What kind of game do you think a culture would have that wants to execute or exile all gay people? Your football is based on a culture of violence. This is the ultimate extension of organized violence.”
“Why is it called Death Ball?”
“You know how on Earth you’re supposed to tackle the guy with the ball? And the guy with the ball is supposed to throw it or run with it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well here, the goal is to kill the guy with the ball.”
“People don’t really die?”
“Well, you don’t actually get points for killing the guy with the ball, but if he dies while you tackle him, you don’t get penalized either. And if he does die, your teammates love you.”
There was a loud groan from inside the room. “What happened?” Mike asked.
Joe stood on tiptoe to look over the men’s heads. “Someone just got carried off the field.” He paused a few seconds. “They think he’s going to live.”
“You know,” Mike said. “I sure got the impression you guys were all supposed to be this advanced civilized crowd.”
“Well, we are and we aren’t. Depends on who’s defining civilized. There are as many men as women players. It’s an equal opportunity death brawl.”
“Do people actually die?”
“Not that many really. Out of millions of matches, in a good year, none. In a bad year, ten. Remember people die playing football or
soccer on Earth. I heard though that the record number one year for Death Ball was fifty-one, but that was a thousand years ago, and they changed the rules. The final playoff game is watched by billions and billions of people. There’s a special stadium on a planet built just for it. Over three million people see it live.”
Mike said, “Traffic must be hell.”
Joe smiled, “That’s long been figured out. You know the roads you took to the Senate hearing?”
“Yeah.”
“Like that only bigger.”
“They die? Really? You’re not putting me on. The players aren’t frightened out of their minds?”
Joe said, “The perks of being a star, being the most lethal player, or escaping the most dangerous situations are immense. If you’re the star of the championship game, you win almost enough to buy a small planet of your own, and staff it for a year. Before I left there was this beautiful what you’d call a ‘quarterback’ on one of the best teams. He was gorgeous. Is gorgeous. His name is Sku. Half the gay guys are in love with him or in lust with him. Brux had pictures of Sku before the game. He’s still a star. The other teams have been trying to kill him for six years. The guy must be in his early twenties.”
“They start playing that young?”
“If you’re any good they can start them as young as they wish. They use up a lot of players.”
“Concussions in the NFL pale in comparison.”
More groans and cheers from the men.
Joe said, “It’ll keep them entertained for hours.”
“Well, it’s something, I guess,” Mike said. “Why don’t they watch it on their own communicators?”
“Brux has the largest screen on the planet.”
Mike thought, another universal concept.
So the men had organized teams and played a so far non-lethal version of the game. Mike figured that it was a least a diversion for a few hours.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Bir, Krim’s friend, one of the younger colonists, rushed up to where Mike had just shut off his machine. Bir blurted out, “There’s perfillian wood growing in the garbage.”
Mike was tired. He asked, “Why would I care?” Another week and the Leavers were still hanging around. Mike saw them whispering together in out of the way corners at odd moments. He wondered what the big secret was.
