The Iron Maiden

by Piers Anthony

  He revived. They talked to him. It took some time for them to get his story. It turned out that he had had a vision. He had talked to their father, who had told him there was food available, and extended his hand, saying “Here.” But the hand was empty.

  The women considered that. They sent Hope to their chamber along with Spirit and Helse, and consulted among themselves. Hope fell asleep, and they watched over him. “What do you think happened?” Spirit asked.

  “He had a vision of some sort,” Helse said. “It must have gotten really bad. He saw an empty hand, and started screaming.”

  After a time their mother came to check on them. Hope was still asleep. “Helse, change clothing,” the woman said. “There is no need for further concealment.”

  Helse stared at her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Hope’s vision. His father told him that he was to have food for us and for that lovely girl of his. I believe that is you.”

  “Oh my God,” Helse breathed. “The vision told!”

  “It’s a true vision,” Spirit’s mother said.

  Helse looked helplessly at Spirit. Then she got up and climbed out of the cell. Soon she was back, wearing a dark blouse and skirt that had once been Faith’s, and her hair hung loose about her shoulders. Indeed, she looked almost as pretty as Faith.

  Spirit stared at her. “You’re beautiful!”

  “I am what I am. I must admit it’s a relief to be unbound.” She cupped her breasts through the blouse for a moment, but she meant more than the physical aspect. “Your father called me lovely, so I must be so. For the sake of the vision.”

  “The vision,” Spirit said. “I don’t understand where there could be food. All he showed was an empty hand.”

  Helse gazed at her. “I’m not sure I should say what I think.”

  “Say it!” Spirit said. “I want to know.”

  Helse took a breath. “He meant—to eat the hand itself.”

  “The hand it–” Then Spirit got it. “Oh, no!”

  “Now don’t start screaming, or you’ll get me going too. Try to think of it objectively. We will all die if we don’t get more food—and there is—is plenty of—of meat frozen out there. It makes sense to—to use it.”

  “Cannibalism!”

  “You could call it that. But use it or not, your father will not live again. None of the men will. Wouldn’t they prefer to see that at least their wives and children live?”

  “Yes, they would,” Spirit said. “Oh, God, I’m going to throw up!”

  “Try to stifle it,” Helse said. “You can’t afford to lose it.”

  There could be two meanings there, too. Spirit managed to keep her gorge down. “But if we do that—what does that make us?”

  “Survivors,” Helse said succinctly.

  Spirit looked at Hope. “That’s why he screamed! He knew—on some level.”

  “He knew,” Helse agreed. “But not consciously. Only the women understood the message, at first. Hope was merely the messenger.”

  “Not the originator,” Spirit agreed.

  “I think Hope will not like this, when he wakes.”

  “Microscopic wonder! I can’t stand it.”

  “I think we will have to help him. I’m less emotionally involved, because I have no relatives on the bubble, but I’m appalled. It is worse for you—and I think will be worse yet for him. He—feels so strongly.”

  Spirit knew what she meant. Everyone had feelings, but Hope was in a class by himself. “Yes.” Then she sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

  “Fresh meat,” Helse said. “We shall have to eat it.”

  “But there’s no–”

  “The women have been out to fetch it. They are preparing it. They are sparing us that.”

  This time Spirit’s gorge filled her mouth. She clapped both hands over it and forced herself to control her heaves and swallow it back down. This was like rape, only at the other end. Necessary.

  Hope woke, perhaps stirred by the sounds of her struggle. Fortunately he was distracted by the sight of Helse in feminine apparel. His gaze fixed on her, while Spirit got herself back in order. “You’re beautiful,” he murmured.

  Helse smiled, being beautiful. “Thank you.”

  Then he looked at Spirit. “You look serious.”

  Spirit forced herself to speak. “We have food now. You—you can smell it.”

  “That’s great! But why aren’t you eating it instead of sitting here with me?”

  How should this be broached? They couldn’t express phony delight; he would see through it immediately. But Helse was right: they would have to eat it. So she started cautiously. “We’re—we’re not sure we should use it.”

  He frowned. “Where is it from?”

  Helse forced a laugh. “From your vision, Hope.”

  “You think I made that up?”

  “No,” Spirit said. “I saw our father sit up and talk to you.” That was an exaggeration. For one thing, she wasn’t even sure it was their father’s body he had gotten entangled with.

  “I hauled him up. He couldn’t have–”

  “But I do believe you,” Spirit said. Because she knew that Hope would never make something like that up. He was honest to a fault. He had surely had a vision. “Father gave you a message, and Mother understood it.”

  He didn’t want to get it. “He showed me an empty hand.”

  “He showed you his hand,” she agreed. Then, carefully, the two of them herded him into the unkind realization. He had no choice but to accept it.

  So it was that they ate the meat. The women cooked it on candle flames and on bits of wood from furniture, and served it in very small portions, so that it was impossible to tell from what part of what animal it might have come. The women ate with the same pretense of unconcern they had affected after submitting to rape, and that told Spirit a lot. She did get sick, and so did Hope, but they both returned gamely to eat again, until they were able to hold it down. After a few days the horror receded somewhat, and became a matter of course.

  But for a long time Spirit dreamed of that empty hand Hope had described. It was in its dread fashion her last memory of their father. She knew she wasn’t alone; some of the other children evinced odd and ugly symptoms of the underlying guilt for the manner of their survival. But there was no alternative.

  Jupiter grew in the vision ports as they slowly approached it. The women were managing to pilot the bubble where it needed to go. The conviction grew that they were going to make it.

  But that allowed Spirit to think about other things. Hope and Helse were now an open couple, and they looked wonderful together. That griped Spirit; she had been closest to her brother before. She tried to control herself, knowing that her attitude was unworthy, but couldn’t.

  One day she burst in on the two of them in their chamber, hoping to catch them in the middle of sex. “There you go again!” she cried. “Father’s gone, Faith’s gone, Mother’s alone—and you’re busy fooling with her!”

  Actually she could see that they weren’t doing it at the moment; they were naked, but they had been sleeping. Still, they were doing it at other times, and certainly Helse was monopolizing Hope’s attention.

  “I do not take your brother from you, Spirit,” Helse said. “I can never do that. You are of his blood and I am not. I do not love him as you do.”

  Spirit faced her defiantly. “That’s space-crock! You love him more than I do!”

  Helse looked as if she had been stabbed. “Oh!” she cried in pain, and fled the chamber, naked.

  Spirit stared after her, astonished. “I vanquished her!”

  “But you misspoke yourself,” Hope protested. “You said she loves me more than you do. You know she doesn’t love me; she can’t love any man.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that! I blabbed her secret!”

  “What secret?”

  “I’d better go try to apologize. I lost my stupid head.” She started to leave.

  He held
her back. “She doesn’t love me, though I love her. I understand her situation. My talent–”

  “Oh, you don’t know half what you think you do!” Spirit snapped. “When your emotion is tied in, your talent cuts out!”

  He looked stricken, and she realized that she shouldn’t have said that either, though it too was true. She was thoughtlessly laying about her with a verbal knife, and cutting up those who meant most to her. “But she said–” he said haltingly.

  Once again she spoke before she thought, and then just had to continue, because half the truth would be worse for him that all of it. “She had to deny it, dummy! She thinks men don’t love women who love them back. She’s always been used by men who only wanted her body, no matter what they said at the time, and when her body changed they didn’t want her anymore. So she knew if she really liked someone, she shouldn’t ever, ever let on, because–” She wrenched, trying to break free of his hold on her. “Let me go, Hope! I could kill myself! Helse’s an awfully nice girl, and I’ve got to tell her—I don’t know what, but I’ve got to!”

  Now she scrambled out of the chamber, and searched for Helse. She wasn’t hard to find; evidently becoming aware of her extreme dishabille, she had ducked into another unoccupied chamber. She was huddled there, alone, sobbing.

  Spirit dropped in beside her. “Helse, I’m sorry! I—I— when Hope gets in trouble, he expands his understanding and somehow makes it come out all right. With me, I just start fighting worse. I–” But what could she possibly say to make it right? Suddenly her tears were flowing, making it worse yet. “Oh, damn, damn, damn!”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Spirit,” Helse said. “I thought it was all right with you.”

  Even through her tears, Spirit managed a form of laugh. “I’m supposed to be apologizing to you! You’re a really nice person. I just got so crazy jealous—damn! I’m a stupid child. I never should have—what can I do to make it right?”

  “You spoke the truth.”

  “Sure! And we’re eating our fathers. Should I speak that truth too?”

  “I think I see it now,” Helse said. “I’ve been taking up so much of Hope’s attention, you’re getting excluded. I shouldn’t have been so selfish. I’ll try to change–”

  “No! That would only hurt him. He loves you.”

  “And it seems that I love him. That means–”

  “No it doesn’t!” Then Spirit caught herself. “I’ve been messing everything up with my big mouth. Maybe it’s time I stifled it.”

  “Your mouth has been speaking truth.”

  “Truth that shouldn’t be spoken! Damn it, Helse, if I could take it all back–”

  “No, maybe it is better to be open. What is your point about me?”

  “It’s about Hope, really. He’s not like other boys.

  Men. Whatever. He truly cares. He doesn’t change. He loves you, and it doesn’t matter what you do or say, or how you feel, he’ll always love you. All this business with other men—it just doesn’t matter. He won’t change.”

  “But he accepts me as I am. As I said I am. Without love. He understands.”

  “He thinks he understands. But sometimes his own emotion gets in the way of his talent. You can fool him if you want to, because he really can’t read you. And you can love him if you want to, and you might as well, because–” She choked off.

  “My love does not conflict with yours, Spirit. I’m not family.”

  “Yes, damn it.”

  Helse paused, gazing at her. “I haven’t known my siblings since I was six years old. There must be something I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, hell, I’m just a kid. What do I know?”

  “You’re a woman, Spirit. I think that’s the problem.”

  “I’ve got a year to go.”

  “Spirit, I know something about young feeling. It is possible to be a woman long before you stop being a child. You’re a woman.”

  “No, I’ve never done the woman thing.”

  “Sex? It’s not defined by that either. I had more than enough sex as a child. You have the woman instinct. But

  what’s it like to be a sibling?”

  “I wish I could change places with you!”

  Helse paused again, piecing it together. “You would prefer to be a girlfriend rather than a sister?”

  “No, of course not.” She had to deny it, but there was a disconcerting element of truth in it.

  Helse nodded. “I think I should go back to Hope. But any time you wish to be with him, just do it, and I will go elsewhere. I never meant to interfere with your relationship.”

  “You aren’t interfering. I am his sister.”

  “But I don’t have to take all of his time.”

  Spirit didn’t answer. Helse climbed out of the chamber, and Spirit remained alone. She knew she had said too much, yet again, but she couldn’t unsay it. Did Helse really believe that it was just Hope’s time she wanted? But it was certainly all she could have.

  CHAPTER 4

  CHILDREN

  They came close enough to Jupiter, and were intercepted by the Jupiter Patrol—the real one, this time. Salvation was at hand.

  And Jupiter rejected them. The Jupiter crew refused to believe their story, and instead gave them supplies enough to go elsewhere, and towed them back out beyond the orbit of Amalthea, to the outer ring, and let them go with a warning not to return.

  “And we thought we had known rape,” Spirit’s mother said. Hope and Helse just stared out of the port at the receding planet, tears streaming down their faces. Spirit joined them, much the same.

  Where could they go? They could not return to Callisto, and Ganymede and Europa were little better. No major moon would accept these wretched refugees.

  “Hidalgo!” Spirit exclaimed.

  They considered it. Hidalgo was a planetoid no bigger than the moon Amalthea, in a stretched-out orbit between Mars and Saturn. It had been settled by folk from Hawaii back on Earth, and was a major tourist region. Its population was mixed, so the refugees should fit in. But Hidalgo was far distant, and the bubble’s gravity shields would take years to get it there, and its little drive jet was insufficient. The food was not enough, either. They would also need an ephemeris, a detailed listing of the locations of bodies in space and time, because otherwise they would never be able to find Hidalgo, let alone rendezvous with it.

  So they decided to make a raid on an outpost on Io. Io was a hell moon, the most violently volcanic body in the system. Other worlds, such as their own Callisto, might seem almost dead on the surface; Io was the opposite. It had an erratic eccentric orbit, being hauled about by the next moon out, Europa. Tidal action literally squeezed it, blowing out sulfur. It was mostly uninhabitable, except for small observation stations. They hoped to raid one of these for the supplies they required.

  They floated down toward it, looking for a station large enough to have what they needed, and small enough to have a hope of raiding. They were becoming pirates, of necessity.

  They found a suitable prospect near a massive rocky escarpment. They settled onto the sulfur. Then Hope and Helse donned their space suits and went with a raiding party of 25 women. Spirit wanted to go too, but her mother told her why not: after losing her husband, she couldn’t bear to risk both her children at once. That had to be true.

  The party left in the evening. That began the long wait. They knew that it was dangerous outside the bubble. They had to complete their mission before dawn, because Io’s day was much worse than its relatively calm night. Day was when the volcanoes blew.

  There was nothing to do but sleep, so Spirit settled down in a chamber with her mother. “Will they be all right?” she asked.

  “They’ve got to be,” her mother said tightly. That was when Spirit realized that this was no sure thing. The adults had pretended that it wasn’t complicated, but her mother’s tenseness gave that the lie.

  “They’ll be all right,” Spirit said reassuringly. She wasn’t sure she believed
it, but what else was there? She slept, but was aware of her mother’s restlessness.

  When morning came and the party had not returned, the women held a crisis meeting. “They are in trouble; I know it,” Spirit’s mother said. “We must go to help them.”

  They quickly organized a party of twenty five women, led by Spirit’s mother. Ten women remained to care for the children. Spirit hugged her mother, and let her go; it was the only way. She watched as the party departed.