DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 39

She staggered as she got to her feet. No hand steadied her, so she stumbled along in front of him as he strode out into the Zona. Esperanza had vanished.

The cargo hover was tilted sideways, nose up, stern rammed into the ground so hard that it had carved a gash in the dirt. Bugs swarmed in the upturned soil.

The technician still clutched the remote, but he was quite still. A youth wearing trousers, sneakers, and no s.h.i.+rt stood splay-legged over the dead man. The boy's mouth and nose were concealed by a bandanna, black hair mostly caught under a knit cap pushed crookedly up on his head. He had the skinny frame of a teenager who hasn't eaten enough, each rib showing, but his stance was c.o.c.ky, even arrogant. He stared at Rose as she approached. Her sim-screen had gone down, and his gaze on her was so like the pinp.r.i.c.k of a laser sight, targeting its next victim, that she was afraid to blink. He said something to the man, who replied, but she couldn't understand them.

The Sunseekers lay flat on their stomachs on the ground a short ways away, hands behind their heads. Three more bandanna-wearing men waited with their ancient rifles and one shotgun held ready as six newcomers jogged toward them across the clearing, but the newcomers paid no attention to the prisoners. Likethe bugs in moist dirt, they swarmed the hover.

"March," said the commander, gesturing with his scatter gun.

No one complained as their captors prodded the Sunseekers upright and started them walking, but not back the way they had come.

Akvir sidled up beside Rose. "Where'd you go? What's going on?"

The boy slammed him upside the head with the b.u.t.t of the rifle. Akvir screamed, stumbled, and Rose grabbed his arm before he could fall.

"Keep going," she whispered harshly. "They killed some of those people."

The youth stepped up, ready to hit her as well, but when she turned to stare at him defiantly, he seemed for the first time really to see the blemish that stained her face. She actually saw him take it in, the widening of the eyes, and heard him murmur a curse, or blessing. She had seen so many people react to her face that she could read their expressions instantly now. He stepped back, let her help up Akvir, and moved on. "No talking," said the commander. "No talking." No one talked. Soon enough they pa.s.sed into such shelter as the jungle afforded, but shade gave little respite. They walked on and on, mostly downhill or into, out of, and along the little ravines, sweating, crying silently, holding hands, those who dared, staggering as the heat drained them dry. After forever, they were shepherded brusquely into a straggle of small houses with sawed plank walls and thatched roofs strung alongside a tributary river brown with silt, banks densely grown with vegetation. An ancient paved road that was losing the battle to cracks and weeds linked the buildings. Someone still drove on it: at least four frogs caught while crossing the road had been flattened by tires and their carca.s.ses desiccated by the blast of the sun into cartoon shapes.

Half covered by vines, an antique, rusting alcoline pickup truck listed awkwardly, two tires missing. Three of the houses had sprouted incongruous satellite dishes on their roofs, curved shadows looming over scratching chickens and the ever present dogs. A few little children stared at them from open doorways, but otherwise the hamlet seemed empty.

A single, squat building constructed of cement rebar anch.o.r.ed the line of habitation. It had a single door, through which they were herded to find themselves in a dimly lit and radically old-fas.h.i.+oned Kristie-Anne church.

A row of warped folding chairs faced the altar and a large cross on which hung a statue of a twisted and agonized man, crowned with a twisting halo of plastic thorns. None of the chairs sat true with all four legs equally on the floor, but she couldn't tell if the chairs were warped or if the concrete floor was uneven. It was certainly cracked with age, stained with moisture, but swept scrupulously clean. A bent, elderly woman wearing a black dress and black shawl stood by the cross, dusting the statue's feet, which were, gruesomely, pierced by nails and weeping painted blood.

The old woman hobbled over to them, calling out a hosanna of praise when the commander deposited Doctor Baby Jesus into her arms. As the Sunseekers sank down onto the chairs, dejected, frightened, and exhausted, the caretakercheerfully placed the baby doll up on the altar and fussed over it, straightening its lacy skirts, positioning the plump arms, dusting each sausagelike finger.

"What kind of place is this?" whispered Yah-noo. "I didn't know anyone lived like this anymore. Why don't they go to the cities and get a job?"

"Maybe it's not that easy," muttered Rose, but no one was listening to her.

The commander was pacing out the perimeter of the church, but at Rose's words he circled back to stand before them. "You don't talk. You don't fight.

We don't kill you."

Zen.o.bia jumped up from the chair she had commandeered. "Do you know who we are?" Her coiffure had come undone, the careful sculpture of bleached hair all in disarray over her shoulders, strands swinging in front of her pale eyes. "We're important people! They'll be looking for us! You can't just-! You can't just-!"

He hit her across the face, and she shrieked, as much in outrage and fear as in pain, remembered her torn clothing, and sank to the ground moaning and wailing.

"I know who you are. I know what you are. The great lost, who have nothing to want because you have everything. So you circle the world, most brave of you, I think, while the corporation gets free publicity for their new technology.

Very expensive, such technology. Research and development takes years, and years longer to earn back the work put into it. Why would I be here if I didn't know who you are and what you have with you?"

"What do you want from us?" asked Akvir bravely, dark chin quivering, although he glanced anxiously at the young toughs waiting by the door. For all that he was their leader, he was scarcely older than these teens. Behind, the old woman grabbed Doctor Baby Jesus and vanished with the doll into the shadows to the right of the altar.

The commander smiled. "The solar array, of course. That's what that other group wanted as well, but I expect they were only criminals."

"You'll never get away with this!" cried Zen.o.bia as she clutched her ragged s.h.i.+ft against her.

Rose winced.

The commander lifted his chin, indicating Rose. He had seen. "You don't think so either, muchacha?"

"No," she whispered, embarra.s.sed. Afraid. But he hadn't killed her because she was blemished. Maybe that meant she had, in his eyes, a kind of immunity.

"I mean, yes. You probably won't get away with it. I don't know how you can escape surveillance and a corporate investigation. Even if the Constabulary can't find you, Surbrent-Xia's agents will hunt you down in the end, I guess."

She finished pa.s.sionately. "It's just that I hate that line!"

"That line?" He shrugged, not understanding her idiom.

"That line. That phrase. 'You'll never get away with this.' It's such a cliche."

"Oh! Oh! Oh! You-you-you-defect!" Zen.o.bia raked at her with thoselovely, long tricolor fingernails, but Rose twisted away, catching only the tip of one finger along her shoulder before Akvir grabbed Zen.o.bia by the shoulders and dragged her back, but Zen.o.bia was at least his height and certainly as heavy. Chairs tipped over; the Sunseekers screamed and scattered as the toughs took the opening to charge in and beat indiscriminately. Yah-noo ran for the door but was pulled down before he got there. What envy or frustration fueled the anger of their captors? Poverty? Abandonment? Political grievance? She didn't know, but sliding up against one wall she saw her chance: an open path to the altar.

She sprinted, saw a curtained opening, and tumbled through as shouts rang out behind her, but the ground fell out beneath her feet and she tripped down three weathered, cracked wooden steps and fell hard on her knees in the center of a tiny room whose only light came from a flickering fluorescent fixture so old that it looked positively prehistoric, a relic from the Stone Age.

A cot, a bench, a small table with a single burner gas stove.

A discolored chest with a painted lid depicting faded flowers and b.u.t.terflies, once bright. The startled caretaker, who was standing at the table tinkering with Doctor Baby Jesus, turned around, holding a screwdriver in one hand. A chipped porcelain sink was shoved up against the wall opposite the curtain, flanked by a shelf-a wood plank set across concrete blocks-laden with bright red-and-blue plastic dishes: a stack of plates, bowls, and three cups. There was no other door. It was a blind alley.

The light alternately buzzed and whined as it flickered. It might snap off at any moment, leaving them in darkness as, behind, the sound of screams, sobs, and broken pleas carried in past the woven curtain.

What if the light went out? Rose bit a hand, stifling a scream. She hadn't been in darkness for months.

This was how the night-bound lived, shrouded in twilight. Or at least that's what Akvir said. That's what they were escaping.

Saying nothing, the old woman closed up the back of Doctor Baby Jesus and dropped the screwdriver into a pocket in her faded skirt. She examined Rose as might a clinician, scrutinizing her faults and blemishes. Rose stared back as tears welled in her eyes and spilled because of the pain in her knees, but she didn't cry out. She kept biting her hand. Maybe, possibly, they hadn't noticed her run in here. Maybe.

In this drawn-out pause, the shadowy depths of the tiny chamber came slowly clear, walls revealed, holding a few treasures: a photo of Doctor Baby Jesus stuck to one wall next to a larger photo showing a small girl lying in a sick bed clutching the doll itself, or a different doll that looked exactly the same. A cross with a man nailed to it, a far smaller version of the one in the church, was affixed to the wall above the cot. Half the wall between shelf and corner was taken up by a huge, gaudy low-tech publicity poster. Its 3-D and sense-sound properties were obviously long since defunct, but the depth-enhanced color images still dazzled, even in such a dim room.Especially in such a dim room.

Her father's face stared at her, bearing the famous ironic, iconic half smile from the role that had made him famous across ten star systems: the ill-fated romantic lead in Empire of Gra.s.s. He had ripped a hole in the heart of the universe-handsome, commanding, sensitive, strong, driven, pa.s.sionate. Doomed but never defeated. Glorious.

Blazing.

"Daddy," she whimpered, staring up at him. He would save her, if he knew.

She blinked hard. The sim-screen wavered and, after a snowy pause, snapped into clear focus.

The curtain swept aside and the commander clattered down the three wooden steps. One creaked at his weight. He slid the barrel up her spine and allowed it to rest against her right shoulder blade.

"Ya lo veo!" cried the old woman, looking from Rose to the poster and back to Rose. She began to talk rapidly, gesticulating. When the commander said nothing, did not even move his gun from against Rose's back, she clucked like a hen shooing f.e.c.kless chicks out of the way and scurried over to take Rose's hands in hers.

"Su padre? Si, menina?" Your father? Yes?

Then she turned on him again with a flood of scolding. The rapid-fire lecture continued as the commander slowly backed up the stairs like a man retreating from a rabid dog.

"What hind of fool are you, Marcos, not to recognize this girl as the child of El Sol? Have you no hind of intelligence in your grand organization, that it comes to an imprisoned old woman like me-" She spoke so quickly that the translation program had trouble keeping up. ". . . que ve las telenovelas y los ca.n.a.les de chismes . . . who watches the soap operas and the channels of gossip [alternate option] entertainment channels to tell you that you should have known that more people would be on that s.h.i.+p than the children of businessmen?"

The old woman finished with a dignified glare at her compatriot. "This girl will not be harmed."

"That one?" He indicated the actor, then Rose. "This child? With the marked face? How is it possible? She carries this blot." He touched his own cheek, as if in echo of the stain on hers. "The children of the rich do not have these things."

"G.o.d's will is not ours to question," she answered.

He shrugged the strap of his scatter gun to settle it more comfortably on his shoulders. "Look at her. Even to look past the mark, she is not so handsome as El Sol."

"No one is as handsome as my father," retorted Rose fiercely, although it was difficult to focus on the poster since the image blended with the words scrolling across the bottom of her sim-screen.They both looked at her.

"Ah." Senora Maria waved a hand in front of Rose's face. Her seamed and spotted palm cut back and forth through the sim-screen. Swallowing bile, reeling from the disrupted image, Rose blinked off the screen.

"Imbecil! Que estabas pensando? Esta nina, de semejante familial For supuesto que lleva implantada la pantalla de simula-cion. Ahora ya ha entendido cada palabra que has dicho, tu y los ostros brutos!"

Without effort, she turned her anger off, as with a switch, and presented a kindly face to Rose, speaking Standard. "For favor, no use the seem . . . What it is you call this thing?"

"Sim-screen."

"Si. Gracias."

The senora looked up at the commander and let loose such a stream of invective that he shrank back against the curtain momentarily, but only to gather strength before he began arguing with her. Their voices filled the chamber; Rose covered her ears with her hands. Mercifully, the itching had subsided completely. She dared not blink the screen back on, so she cowered between them as they argued fiercely over her head. One of the young toughs stuck his head in but retreated as the senora turned her scolding on him.

Through it all, her father watched, half amused, half ready to take action, but frozen. It was only his image, and his image could not help her.

In the church, the screaming had subsided and now Rose heard whimpering and weeping as orders were given.

"Go! Go!"

"But where-!" The slap of a gun against flesh was followed by a bruised yelp, a gasp, a sob, a curse-four different voices.

"Go!"

Shuffling, sobs, a crack of laughter from one of the guards; these noises receded until they were lost to her ears. The Sun-seekers had been taken away.

"Are you going to kill them?" she whispered.

They broke off their argument, the commander frowning at her, the senora sighing.

"We no kill-we do not kill." The senora spoke deliberately, careful over her choice of words. "They bring us better money if the parents buy them from us."

"But kidnappers always get caught in the end."

The commander laughed. "Fatalism is the only rational world-view," he agreed.

"In the stories, it may be so, that these ones are always caught," continued the senora. "We take a lesson, a borrowing, from our own history, but this thing called ransom we use for a different purpose than the ones who stole the children in the old days."

"What purpose?" Rose demanded. She had gone beyond worrying about cliches. "I see the poverty you live in. Are you revolting against the inequalityof League economics? Is this a protest? Will you use the array to help poor people?"

The commander's sarcastic laugh humiliated her, but the senora smiled in such a gentle, world-weary way that Rose suddenly felt lower than a worm.

"Hija, I am the inventor of one of the protocols used in this solar array that powers the s.h.i.+p you children voyage on. These protocols were stolen from me and my company by operatives of Surbrent-Xia. In much this same way as we steal it back, but perhaps not with such drama." She gestured toward the poster and the stunningly handsome blond man who stared out at them, promising dreams, justice, excitement, violence, and fulfillment. "No beautiful hero comes to save me. The law listens not to my protests. Surbrent-Xia falsifies their trail.

They lay certain traps for me, and so the corporation and patent laws convict me, and I am dropped into the prison. There I sit many years while they profit from what I helped create. All these years I plot my revenge, just like in this story, The Count of Monte Cristo, no? Was not your father starring in this role a few years ago? So now we have the array in our hands. I leave-have left-markers in my work. Like this stain upon your cheek, those markers identify what is mine. With these markers, no one can mistake it otherwise.

With this proof-"

"And the children to draw attention to us," added Marcos.

"-we will get attention to this matter."

"But you'll be prosecuted for kidnapping!"

"Perhaps. If we get publicity, if a light is s.h.i.+ned onto these criminal actions made by Surbrent-Xia ten years ago, then we are protected by exposing them.

Do you see? Surbrent-Xia 'got away with it'-they say this in the telenovelas and the acties, do they not?-they got away with it last time because it was hushed."

"They kept it quiet," said Marcos. "No one knew what they had done."

"But why did you have everyone beat up? What did Akvir and Zen.o.bia and Yah-noo and the others have to do with anything or what anyone did ten years ago?"

The old woman nodded, taking the question without defensive-ness. She seemed a logical soul, not an emotional revolutionary at all. "We have not harmed them, only bruised them. It is in answer to-it is in-"

"-retaliation-" said Marcos.

"That is right. Excuse my speech. I have been many years in isolation on these false charges. The world, and my enemies, did not play nice with my relatives in the old days. We are not the only ones who play hardball. An eye for an eye."

"But they're innocent!"

"They are all the children of shareholders. That is why they come to ride on the beautiful s.h.i.+p, to be made much of. You do not know this?"

"I just thought-" She faltered, knowing how unbelievably stupid anythingshe said now would sound.

I didn't know.

Hadn't her father talked and talked and talked about the Sun-seekers, how very sunny and fas.h.i.+onable they were? Hadn't she run away to get his attention, so he would be surprised she had gotten into some group so very jet, so very now, even with her disfigurement?

"They are lucky you came to them," continued the senora. "Of what interest are the children of shareholders, except to themselves and their parents and their rivals? But you are the child of El Sol. When you came aboard, everyone is watching."

"Good publicity is good advertising," added Marcos sardonically. "This is what we all want."

Right now, she just wanted her daddy.

"It still doesn't seem right." They hadn't bitten her yet. They hadn't bruised her, not more than incidentally. "To hurt them. They aren't bad, just-" Just pointless. "And what about Eleanor? I mean, the other ones."

"The other ones?" asked Senora Maria.

"The compet.i.tion," said Marcos. "We don't have a positive ID on them yet, but I presume they are working for Horn Enterprises. Horn wants the array, too."

"Horn filed a wrongful use claim against Surbrent-Xia for theft of their cell transduction protocol."