Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Ten

David had been asleep for days, so he guessed there was no mystery as to why he woke up before the others. He nodded to Poley as he walked past him at the door, and Poley nodded back.

Once outside the shuttle David made his way towards a clump of bushes that looked like they needed watering. It wasn't cold, just that nice cool he associated with an early spring morning. He sighed with instant gratification as he relieved himself. A disgruntled and now wet lizard about the size of a small cat climbed out of the bush, and David jumped. It glared at David then moved slowly away.

"Sorry, Dude," David said to the offended lizard and finished pissing. He had just fixed himself into his pants when he noticed that the sun was starting to come up. It wasn't all red and gold and orange like the sun of Earth. More purple and blue and grayish. It was only then that it finally dawned on him; he had flown across the vastness of space and was now standing on another world with a different sun, a different sky, different plants and different wild life. He walked a few feet away from where he had wet this strange new world and bent down and grabbed a hand full of dirt. It felt exactly the same as Earth dirt. He was a little shocked to realize he didn't feel more excited than he did. In a way it was a little disappointing. He wanted to be full of awe and wonder, like a child who had found something new, like Topaz. Instead he found that he was like Levits and RJ – basically oblivious to the wonder all around him.

Just another planet. No big deal.

They at least had an excuse; both of them had been on countless space runs and had been on countless planets. For them doing a mission on a strange planet was old hat, but it was a completely new experience for him, and yet try as he might he didn't feel any joy, no awe, no sense of wonder.

It was different. So what?

He was clear across space, and yet he couldn't get the vision of Alsterace burning out of his mind, nor could he remove the stench of death from his nostrils. He supposed things could happen to you that were so horrible that they leached any ability for happiness from your soul. How could you ever be happy when you had endured so much pain? How could you trust anyone or anything when your own heart had lied to you? When the one person you had loved and trusted above all others had betrayed you and left you to bear the shame for their actions, it was hard to get worked up about something as mundane as a different sunrise. When you had taken a weapon and killed the only woman you had ever loved because she was a treacherous bitch, it was hard to enjoy anything at all.

He turned and started towards the fire pit. He'd put some wood on the fire if there were still live coals. Fire was the same here, too. Fire he decided must be the same everywhere. He stirred the ashes and found some live coals deep down. He stacked some of the smaller pieces on the fire and decided to go look for some more deadfall. As he turned to walk into the brush he saw RJ and Levits curled up in each other's arms asleep under the skiff. That was something he was sure he was never going to get used to. He stopped and watched them.

They looked content peaceful. He hadn't seen either of them look like that even in sleep since before Alsterace was attacked. They had each lost the loves of their lives that night, and the damage to their psyches had been complete. Kirsty had deserved to die, and that didn't stop him from missing her, wanting her. Neither Whitey nor Sandra had deserved their fates; he could only imagine the hell that Levits and RJ had lived in over the last two years. Now they had found each other and this union was helping both of them to heal.

I have to be happy for her. She and I were never meant to be; if we had been it would have happened for us a long time ago. I don't love her. I never have. While she once loved me, there is no way she would ever love me again, not now. Not after what I did.

He walked quickly away into the brush. The place was filthy with lizards, but deadfall was a little harder to find. The largest trees in this so called "forest," weren't even at tall as he was, and they were sparse. Mostly the land was covered in small bushes and cane type plants.

Seemingly from out of nowhere Janad appeared. She smiled when he jumped out of his skin after being startled by her.

"Looking for wood?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"On the ground?" she asked giving him a curious look.

"Yes," he said.

She shrugged in a way that said she was never going to understand these humans. She went over to one of the bushes which still looked very much alive and had limbs of about three inches in diameter. She broke it off at ground level and started to break it into pieces. He remembered that she was stronger than him, but tried it anyway and found that it broke very easily. It was fibrous inside.

"The buche'feu plant breaks up easily but burns very long. Longer than most wood. Wood is hard to come by, but the forest is filthy with this stuff," she explained.

David nodded and broke off another limb. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that," he said. For answer she just laughed at him. He shook his head and continued to work. After awhile they had a pile that she informed him would be more than enough for the day, and they headed back to camp.

As they walked up RJ was walking into camp with a huge reptile on a stick.

"Janad, is this one eatable?" she yelled.

Janad nodded her head excitedly. "Yes! Very good."

"Great, more lizard," David muttered. He dropped his bundle of wood and found a rock to sit on.

Janad took the lizard from RJ and ran off. He guessed to clean and dress it.

RJ sat down beside him on the rock. "Feeling better?" she asked looking up at the sun that was rising quickly into the sky.

"Yeah, still feel like I've put on fifty pounds. I suppose that's why they're so much stronger than we are," David said.

RJ nodded silently.

"So . . . when were you going to tell me about you and Levits?"

"What's to tell?" RJ asked. "I don't feel like I have to make an announcement to anyone about who I am or am not sleeping with. Do you truly believe I have been celibate these last two plus years? I don't care who you're bedding, why should you care who I'm sleeping with?"

"Do you love him?" David asked.

"He loves me, and it has been my experience that when someone loves me I will love them eventually," RJ said. "I care very deeply for him; he saved my life. We share a common past."

"You don't always act like you like him a lot, and he certainly doesn't act like he loves you," David said matter-of-factly.

"Just because he doesn't kiss my ass – or me his –doesn't mean that we don't care for one another," RJ said simply.

"RJ, love isn't supposed to be work, it's supposed to just happen," David insisted.

"Love is always work, and nothing worth having ever just happens. I can't believe that after all you have been through you still don't get it." RJ got up and threw some more wood on the fire. "Nothing is ever as easy or as difficult as you make it out to be, David Grant. People have chemistry. If people have chemistry and they also care for one another, then it becomes love. You demand something that comes from nowhere and knocks you on your ass, but nothing is that easy. You demand that someone love you unconditionally; that they be always filled with passion and desire for you. Nothing is that difficult."

"Why is that difficult?" David asked.

"Because, in order to have that kind of love you would have to give that kind of love, and that's a hell of a lot of work." She sighed deeply as if finding his lack of comprehension tiring in the extreme. "I just want to enjoy him. Why does our relationship have to grow into anything more than it is now if we are both happy with the way things are? I refuse to plan out where our relationship will go. To dictate to myself how I should or should not feel. Can't you see that by doing that you are just sitting yourself up to be disappointed? This isn't some battle that needs careful analysis and planning. Even if it was, it would be my battle and not yours. Worry about your own empty, haunted life, and leave mine alone." RJ left then walking into the brush leaving David with his thoughts.

He carefully went over everything that RJ had just said twice and still had to admit that he didn't really know what she meant.

* * *

Topaz was gushing about the sunrise, the plants, the bugs, the lizards and some small fur-bearing creature he had caught a glimpse of running through the brush.

"Don't you have any birds?" Topaz asked the three natives.

"Birds," Taleed said the strange word and shook his head. "I don't know that word."

The other two shrugged.

"Animals covered in feathers that fly in the air like a . . . a space ship," Topaz explained.

"We have lizards that have feathers," Janad said and rubbed her stomach. "Very good to eat."

"You have flying animals on your world?" Taleed asked in excitement.

"Yes, many. And there used to be many more," Topaz said. "Over hunting, pollution and pesticides . . ."

"OK. I hate to interrupt Grandpa's story hour," Levits started, "but what's next? Are we just going to sit here camping until the Reliance finds us, or do you actually have a plan, RJ?"

"Sitting here till the Reliance finds us was my plan," RJ said leaning forward from where she was sitting on a rock and tearing off a hunk of the not-quite-done lizard. She sat back down munching on the piece of meat. "I figure they have to come looking for us sooner or later. To do that, they are going to have to come down here. To get down here, they are going to have to bring a ship. They come after us, we kill them and take their ship."

"Good plan," Levits said approvingly.

"Unless they kill us," Taleed said, not understanding their cavalier attitude. They were not simple minded like his people. They knew that the Reliance had weapons that were every bit as powerful as their own. They knew they weren't gods and therefore could be killed. "Surely you don't expect the seven of us to stand up to the might of the Reliance."

To his surprise the four aliens just laughed at him. The older one looked at him, and said as way of explanation said, "Fighting windmills is what we do best."

"What is a windmill?" Taleed asked him.

"A huge monster with four rotating arms, beady eyes and sharp pointy teeth," Topaz said.

"You have those on your planet?" Taleed asked, his eyes wide.

"Oh, yes, thousands of them," Topaz assured him.

RJ rose to her feet and stretched. "Consider us giant killers. We have fought the Reliance before many times, and we have only really lost once. The Reliance isn't likely to throw anything at us that we can't handle. Their downfall is their size; the Reliance is too big and too well organized to think on their feet. Besides, I said I wasn't a god. I never said I was human." She turned and walked off into the brush without another word, as if some destiny awaited her just beyond the line of their sight.

"What does she mean?" Taleed asked Topaz.

"Concerning what?" Levits asked almost under his breath. "All the double talk about the Reliance's impotence, or the fact that she isn't human."

Taleed looked from Topaz to Levits and back again indicating that he actually wanted both questions answered.

"Poley, RJ and I are all the result of different scientific experiments," Topaz answered. No doubt feeling that further explanation would be wasted on Taleed. "When you have only a few people to run things, they sit around and talk and get things done easily. The fewer people you have the more quickly decisions can be made. The Reliance, however, has a huge chain of command. RJ obviously believes that this means . . ."

"Why don't you just admit that you have no idea what the hell she was talking about?" Levits said with a laugh. He turned to look at Taleed. "Listen, Kid . . . Do yourself a favor. Just believe what she says, and do what she tells you. She knows exactly what she's doing, and I've rarely known her to be wrong. Those who don't listen to her damage themselves and everyone else." He shot a look full of hate at David, then got up and walked in the same direction the woman had gone.

When he had gone Janad looked at David. "Why does he hate you so much?"

David took in a deep breath and let it roll out slowly before he answered. "Because I betrayed RJ and the New Alliance and caused the death of the woman he loved."

Janad didn't understand. Neither for that matter did Taleed.

"I thought she was the woman he loved," Taleed said in confusion.

"She is now," David said.

"I don't understand," Janad said shaking her head. "If what you say is true, why are you here with them now? Why did they not kill you?"

"Truly . . . I don't know." David stood up and walked away in the opposite direction from the way the others had gone.

"What did he do?" Taleed asked Topaz.

Topaz of course who lived to tell people what he knew told the whole story from the beginning of the New Alliance to their decent to this planet. The three child/adults listened intently, hardly even interrupting him with questions. It was only when the four of them had finished eating the entire lizard and Topaz had finished his story that he realized that it had been at least an hour, and the others hadn't returned.

"Poley, where are RJ, Levits and David?" he asked.

Poley pointed in the direction RJ and Levits had gone. "My sister and Levits are about half a mile away and have been engaging in sexual activities. They are quiet now, so I'm assuming they're done. "David," he pointed in the direction he had gone, "is about a quarter of a mile away, and is apparently chunking rocks into the river."

Taleed got up and walked over to Poley. He walked around him looking at his neck. "I still do not understand . . . How can a man have his head severed from his body and go on living?"

Poley made a face and rubbed at his neck.

"I told you . . . Stewart made Poley . . ."

"And RJ. I think I understand what RJ is, but . . . What is he? I don't understand."

"He's a machine," Topaz said, "an artificial intelligence, a robot."

"He can't be," Taleed said shaking his head. "He is a man. I see no difference between him and you or your friends."

"I didn't say Stewart didn't do a damn good job on the boy," Topaz said.

Taleed looked at Poley's hands. "You mean . . . you made him? Even his hands?"

Topaz had noticed that there was something wrong with the boy's hands. For one thing he didn't take his gloves off even when it was hot. For another the other boy had to feed him, which meant his hands must be extremely crippled.

"I didn't make him, Stewart did," Topaz answered.

"But if you repaired him when he was broken . . . You could build him?" Taleed asked excitedly.

"Well of course," Topaz said egotistically, although in truth he wasn't sure that he could.

"Then you could make hands for me?" Taleed said raising his hands in the air.

"That's bionics son, a whole different science," Topaz said. "One that is tricky at best and not really proven. You'd have to cut off your hands, and the hands you'd replace them with probably wouldn't do as much as the hands you have now."

"He doesn't have hands," RJ said, startling them all both with her sudden presence and her statement.

Taleed turned and glared at her, and Janad, realizing what this meant, suddenly dropped to the ground and prostrated herself before Taleed. RJ walked the rest of the way into camp, reached down and grabbed Janad by the belt of her loin-cloth and hauled her to her feet.

"Get up girl, he's no god. Just some poor boy who's been maimed in the name of tradition," RJ said. "Isn't that true, Your Highness?"

Taleed glared angrily at her and spat out, "If you knew all along, why did you wait till now to expose me?"

"How would that have served me?" she asked.

"How does it serve you now?" Taleed asked hotly.

"Because you have something I want, and now I know I have something you want."

"What?"

RJ walked into the ship and appeared a few minutes later carrying one of the service droids. Its metal hands were dragging in the dirt. She threw it at the young prince's feet.

"I have hands. Topaz has the skill. Want to talk about a deal?"

 

 

Back | Next
Framed