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Chapter Fourteen

RJ grabbed Topaz by the collar and pulled him off the ramp of the skiff. "What in hell's name do you think you're doing?"

He jerked away from her with an effort that cost him the collar of his jumpsuit. "I'm bringing the people of this world together."

"I ordered you to leave the people of this world alone," RJ said angrily. "We have done enough."

"Yeah, well you aren't the boss of me," Topaz said, sticking out his tongue.

RJ grabbed his arm and pulled him further away from the group of Abornie, who were walking out of the skiff looking wide-eyed and frightened. "Listen to me, you crazy old shit, you pull another stunt like this, and . . ."

"And you'll what?" Topaz demanded. "Rip my arms off and beat me to death with them? If we're going to keep the Abornie from making the same mistakes as they did before, we need to bring them all together, form a government, and make a civilization."

"Leave them alone. This isn't some game in which the Abornie are chess pieces and you get to play God."

"I'm not playing with them . . . That's always your answer, isn't it, RJ? You think you prefer anarchy, complete self-rule, but you saw for yourself back in New Freedom what happens without rules. Anarchy never works because eventually someone figures out that no one's in control, and he gathers similar people to him and you wind up with a world being governed by bullies . . ."

"As opposed to being ruled by you," RJ interrupted.

"Well . . . I think I'd do as good a job as any."

"Let me tell you what I think. I think you have good intentions, but that you're crazier than a latrine rat. I think that if we let you carry out your plans you'll set yourself up as a godking, not unlike the crazy, handless, black Frenchman of Beta 4 fame. Except of course you're never going to die, so they're going to be stuck worshipping you and following your rules forever. And as crazy as we all know that you are, how can you be so damn sure you know what's best for them?"

"Listen, RJ. There are only pitiful handfuls of the Abornie across this planet. You heard Poley; he calculated a little more than fifteen thousand at best. Scattered across the planet they'll never thrive, but bring them together, and . . ."

"You can have wonderful overpopulation, disease, and pollution right at our doorstep. Overnight, no waiting. What a great idea, why wait for the pestilence, why not get right to it?" RJ yelled. "I don't want that. I want to be left alone to try to find a power supply which will be compatible with my ship so that someday we can get off this planet, hopefully without inflicting our will on these people any more than we already have. Leave them where they are, scattered across the surface of the planet, and it could take them decades, maybe even millennia to destroy their world. Move them together in one place and you tax the food supply and speed up the process of destruction."

"And I say it's our duty to make sure these people don't fall into the same traps their ancestors fell into. That they don't make the same mistakes that humans made when they let the Reliance break their will. In order to do that we have to have them all in the same place. We could shape a new world, make it our own. Create a Walden, a perfect world."

"See? You're already talking crazy. Nothing can ever be perfect when sentient beings are involved. They are inherently flawed. They desire, and desire causes jealousy, and jealousy causes hate, and hate causes fear, and fear leads to war. No matter what you try to do, you will not stop them from making mistakes. Give them better dwellings, modern medicine, in short make their lives easier, and they will multiply, and when they multiply they will need more, and the more they need the less there will be to share, and the less each person has the more they will envy what everyone else has . . ."

"So your answer is not to try. To just sit back and let them do whatever they're going to do on their own. Knowing everything we know about what goes wrong in a society and why? You, in your rational, logical—God, you sound more like Poley every day—opinion, think we should just go about our business and let them fend for themselves."

RJ looked around her. In the six months since they had utterly vanquished the squadrons of Ocupods that had attacked them no more had appeared, not by sight and not by the scanners. If they still had the capability to come on land, at least for the time being they weren't making any attempt to do so. The Abornie, with their help, had constructed furnaces to melt down the metal from the Ocupod suits and had forged new tools, even built a bulldozer of sorts with Poley's help. They were clearing the overgrown streets of the ruined city and rebuilding the structures. They were killing plants to make room—not for people, but for the things the people wanted.

"We have already pushed them ahead by thousands of years," she said in an almost inaudible whisper, then continuing in a normal voice said, "Look how far they have come in a few short months. What they have accomplished. None of this would have been possible if we hadn't landed on their planet. We have already changed the entire future of this world. I think we've done enough damage."

"Damage!" Topaz screamed. "I think you're the one who's crazy. These people were living like animals, afraid to even try to build a forge for fear of incurring the wrath of the Ocupods. Now they're rebuilding their world, their culture."

"When the first man on Earth who decided there was something beyond himself and the world around him called that thing God and started to pray to it, I wonder if he knew how much trouble he was causing? Do you think he knew that people would fight and die because they couldn't agree on how to worship God or even what God was? I wonder if he knew that someday what he started would be used as a tool to enslave the entire human race. After all, it must have seemed like a fairly harmless thing, to believe in a god and to pray to it. Yet Earth's history is a bloody tapestry of religious persecution of one group towards another, often leading to full-out war, death and utter destruction. Look what one crazy man with a plan did to Beta 4. And now you expect me to stand by and let you do basically the same thing here. These people don't need our involvement, they need our neglect. They don't need a God, and they sure as hell don't need you as that God."

"You know what?" Topaz said, shaking his finger in her face, which seemed to only slightly annoy her. "You have become completely cynical and bitter."

"Oh? Ya don't say," RJ said with a crooked smile.

"We could build Utopia here, RJ. Why even try to get the ship running? Why even try to get back to Earth? We could make this world a perfect place. We could stay here."

"We don't belong here. Every day we stay here, everything we do, interferes with this planet's natural course."

"Then where do we belong, RJ?" Topaz took a deep breath. "Back on Earth? You're not even a full human. You're an Argy hybrid, a GSH. I'm a close to six hundred year old man. Poley's a robot with AI capabilities that not even you and I can fully fathom. The only one who belongs on Earth is Levits, and you and I both know that realistically he won't live long enough to make it back there, unless we find this mythical all-purpose power supply of yours tomorrow. If we could ever even find Reliance space, find Earth, by the time we get there everything will be different and everyone we know will be dead. So why even try?"

It was a good question, which was probably why she got so mad. "Because it's home."

"A home you couldn't wait to get away from. Need I remind you that we wouldn't be here at all if you hadn't decided that you just had to go to Deakard?"

She wanted to rip his head off and sling it into the brush, so instead she just yelled in his face. "Don't bring any more of them here! Leave things alone!" She stomped off into the jungle.

Topaz smiled smugly and started over to talk to his new friends, not that he actually spoke their language enough to carry on a full-fledged conversation, but he at least spoke it well enough that he'd talked them into coming back here with him.

He found himself intercepted by Poley before he could reach his destination. "You haven't won the argument, Topaz. These people . . ."

"Just stop! Both of you, passing judgment and preaching. Pretending like you know everything. Of course I won the argument, because she is utterly wrong, and I am completely right, and she knows it." Behind Poley Topaz saw the old group of Abornie attack the new group. "What the hell?"

"As I was about to say before you so rudely interrupted me, these people don't like each other. When you left and RJ figured out what you were doing, she talked to the Abornie elders and found out that the Abornie are tribal."

"Well . . . I suppose it would have killed her to just tell me that."

"Actually, I rather think she decided you'd find out for yourself," Poley said.

Topaz waded into the fray, trying to stop the fighting, shouting words he wasn't quite sure of the meaning of, and seemed to do nothing but intensify the fighting. He found himself thrown at the robot's feet for his troubles. He looked up at Poley. "Aren't you going to help me?"

"You aren't the boss of me," Poley said haughtily and stomped off in the direction his sister had gone.

"Are you mocking me, you tight-assed walking tin can?" Topaz trailed off, realizing there were more important things at hand, and ran back into the boiling mass of Abornie, but nothing he said or did seemed to be doing more than getting his own ass kicked.

 

Poley caught up with her in the jungle. "RJ, they've started fighting," he reported calmly.

She nodded. "I know, I heard them."

"What are you going to do about it?" Poley asked.

RJ shrugged. "The more I try to do nothing, the more I interfere," she mumbled.

"What are you going to do?" Poley asked again.

"What should I do?" RJ asked.

Poley was more than a little taken aback, and it took his circuits awhile to comprehend what she had asked. "You're asking me?" he asked, still not sure.

RJ laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Yes, Tin Pants, I'm asking you. Do the math. If we continue to interfere, what do you calculate will happen?"

"I've told you before. There's no way of knowing, too many as yet undefined variables. There's no way to make a calculated determination."

"Exactly," RJ said. "And without knowing what chain reaction our interference might cause, isn't it better if we do as little as possible?"

"Probably, but RJ . . . We've already interfered on a grand scale. By destroying the native's common enemy it's only a matter of time till they hunt each other down and kill each other if that's what they've got in their mind to do, and apparently it is. The ones currently here with us now have better weapons and machines. They're redeveloping technology and reclaiming their heritage. Maybe Topaz is right, and at this point all we can do is continue to interfere."

"That isn't exactly what I wanted to hear."

"I'm sorry," Poley shrugged.

RJ sighed. "I'm tired of being responsible for everything, you know. What if everything I do, everything I have ever done here, and on Earth, everywhere is just ultimately going to make everything everywhere worse?"

"What if everything you do will make it better?" Poley asked back.

"But you can never know, can you? Every step I take, every breath, has the chance to change everything. Pull here, and something gets pushed there, and everything is different, and how do you know whether it's better or not?"

"Maybe you just have to do what you think is right in the moment."

"Don't you see? That's how all the mistakes happen, by people living in the moment without thinking things out, by not asking themselves, what is this going to do in twenty years, in fifty, in a hundred?" RJ reached down and picked up an uprooted plant and stared at it. "I'm tired of being responsible."

"But someone has to do it," Poley said with a shrug.

She nodded silently, walked over and planted the plant just off the walking trail. Then she turned and started back for the ship. The forty natives Topaz had brought with him were being beaten to death by the Abornie colony they had originally found.

RJ shouted at the crowd in their language. "Enough! Stop this now!" Most of them ceased their fighting immediately, and RJ easily waded into the group and broke the rest of the fights up. "You idiots are the same people. Why are you fighting?" Everyone started screaming at once. "Enough!" There was silence, and RJ walked over and helped Topaz up from where he'd mostly been laying on the ground getting stepped on by the combatants. "You," she pointed at Taral, "and you," she pointed at the female whom she assumed by her demeanor and dress was the leader of the other tribe. "Come with me. The rest of you, if there is any more fighting I will come back and kill you all. Do you understand?" They all held their hands out to her, palms up. "Good."

 

She sat with them at the table in the Captain's quarters, and wished that she could be somewhere, almost anywhere else.

"What's your name?" she asked the female.

"Uvar," she said. "These people, they are our sworn enemies from the beginning of time . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," RJ droned back. "So, let's cut to the chase. Why are you people fighting?" She was sure they didn't fully understand her, even though she was using their language, because of her use of Reliance euphemisms, but she knew they got the gist of what she was saying.

"They stole our children," Uvar said.

"Your children joined our people willingly, and then you attacked our village and . . ."

"Hold." RJ held up her hand, though she knew it probably didn't have the same meaning here. "When did they steal your children? And when did they attack your village?"

"In the time when we came from the caves to once again embrace the land," Uvar said.

"After much fighting our tribes called a truce. They would stay in their place, and we would stay in ours, and today they broke that truce," Taral growled.

"We had no idea where the strange alien would take us," Uvar spat back. "That he would deliver us into the hands of our enemies. All we could make out clearly from his bad speaking was that he and his kind had killed the Ocupods, and that he was going to take us to a place where there was a 'great comfy chair'."

"Why would our savior bring hope to you, the attackers of our people?"

"Why would anyone help you baby stealers?"

"Shut up!" RJ brought her fist down into the table for emphasis. "Gods! Why must all humanoids be so freaking stupid? Listen to me, you crawling bugs beneath my feet." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Centuries ago, your tribe," she pointed at Taral, "was short one sex. In other words you lacked enough breeding pairs to carry on your line, and so they went to her tribe and stole some children of that sex to complete your breeding pairs. Your ancestors," she pointed at Uvar, "were understandably pissed off and attacked their village." She sighed deeply and said in her own language, more to herself than anyone else, "Why can't people ever just talk?" She turned back to the two natives at the table.

"You have to ask why the two groups of your people didn't just merge into one. Why did they separate into two groups in the first place? And the answer is clear. They came from two different bunkers and no doubt fell into the same patterns of class-ism they had fallen into before the Apocalypse." She mocked them, "You came from that bunker, it's not as good as our bunker, we're smarter and therefore we can't let our breeding pairs be contaminated by your breeding pairs." She wasn't a talker, never had been. She was an ass kicker. It would have been so much easier to just kick their asses and tell them how things were going to be, but now she supposed was the time for diplomacy, or at least as close as she could get. "Here's a big freaking clue for ya. I don't give a shit about any of that. Get over it. All of that crap happened hundreds of years ago.

"Let me tell you what I have learned about your people in the relatively short time I have been here. Your ancestors were completely self-centered and selfish. They destroyed this planet. They played god with all the plants and animals here, and created the creatures that became your ultimate enemies, rather than curb their destructive ways. Your ancestors, your direct bloodline, were the worst of the lot, because you are the direct descendants of the people who went underground to save themselves while the rest of their civilization perished on the surface.

"You are the descendants of the people who came out of the bunkers. You know your history through books, and yet you choose to fight with one another over something that happened hundreds of years ago. Something that never should have been fought over in the first place. You have learned nothing from your ancestral past. You would make the same mistakes they made, maybe more quickly." She shook her head and mumbled in her own language, "Most people aren't worth the skin they walk around in."

She ran both her hands down her face, then glared at them, her face a mask of rage, and said in their language, though what she said must have done nothing but confuse them further, "So Topaz is right, and the only hope for this world is if we take control and steer it in a healthy direction."

"You will not take control of my people," Uvar said.

"Or mine," Taral swore.

RJ laughed and stood up. Screw diplomacy; you couldn't reason with fools. "Who do you think your people will follow if I walk from this ship with," she pointed at Uvar, "your head in one hand, and yours," she pointed at Taral, "in the other? If you want to act like animals, I'll treat you like animals. I'll kill you and everyone who opposes me until I've killed every single Abornie on this planet or I'm in power, whichever comes first. I don't want to be the bitch goddess of your world, but I can do it if I have to. And believe me, you don't want to make me do anything I don't want to do."

For a minute it looked like they wanted to argue with her, and then they both lifted their right hands, palm up, a submissive look on their faces. She could feel the fear radiating from them.

Maybe that's all I'm good for, scaring people, RJ thought. Well . . . whatever works. You can't talk sense to people who won't hear it, if I've learned nothing else in my long life I've learned that action speaks louder than words. At least I've found my hobby.

 

 

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