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Chapter Sixteen

RJ weeded her garden, pulling out the plants she didn't want and putting them in a bucket to be cleaned and eaten. It was hard to keep the plants in any sort of check. She had built a gazebo and a large fishpond that was fed by a small stream she had made by digging out and diverting a spring. Raised beds and pathways made from debris from the old city stretched out in every direction.

The huge garden was her little hobby. The one she'd taken up after deciding to let Topaz and Levits handle the running of the Abornie's lives, and after she'd grown tired of working on the ship. Topaz and Levits had collected all the Abornie into three ruined city areas spaced far enough apart to make sure there was enough food, but close enough together that they could all be governed easily. For the most part RJ ignored them all and let them do as they pleased. She only stuck her two cents worth in when it was absolutely necessary.

She had thought she would find peace and tranquility immensely boring, but you could fill your time just as easily with projects as you could with warfare. She found that she liked building things and encouraging things to grow—although mostly she seemed to spend her time trying to keep them from growing where she didn't want them—almost as much as she liked blowing things up. It wasn't as challenging as warfare, but it was rewarding in a different way.

She was about to deadhead a bunch of flowers when Topaz stomped into her garden, shattering her peace.

"What the hell are you playing at?" he yelled.

"Huh?" she asked as she pulled a wilted flower from its stalk.

"It took me months to figure it out, but I just realized why you lost interest in working on the ship and became so damned interested in gardening, and it isn't because you couldn't find a suitable power source."

RJ grabbed him, quickly dragged him to her and clamped a hand over his mouth. "Keep your voice down, old man." He nodded and she let him go.

"Uvar just told me that you and Poley found a more than suitable energy source in the core of an old power plant. That you installed it in the ship instead of handing it over to be used by the Abornie . . ."

"I told you that's a rumor."

"Can the crap, RJ, I've been down to the reactor room and I've seen it, whatever the hell it is."

"The energy source is very unstable. I'd never willingly put it in their hands . . . If it's so important to them, let them make their own expedition and find another one. They have access to the same books that I read, and they could find another power plant easily enough. You could lead them if it's that important to you, but they'll get the one we installed in the ship over my dead body."

"That isn't the point, RJ. The point is that the ship is fully operational and fully fueled. In fact, the way I understand it, that power source in tandem with the ship's scoops should be almost infinitely renewable. We could lift off today . . ."

"And go where, old man? We don't even know where we are in relationship to our space."

"And now you're lying again," Topaz said in a hissed whisper. "Poley is a lot of things, but a good liar isn't one of them. I know that you and he have known where we were all along. More because of what he wouldn't say than because of what he would. Now what the hell is going on? What are you playing at, RJ? For years you've done nothing but complain about getting off this planet and back to our own. Now I'm sure you have the means, and you're just staying here playing with plants."

"I like it here. You said it yourself, why should we leave?"

"I said it, but you never agreed. In fact, you gave dozens of reasons why we shouldn't be here at all, so why are we still here?"

RJ sighed. "Levits is seventy-seven years old, Topaz, and at least sixty-five of those years he's actually used. He's a sixty-five year old man who I ripped away from peace and prosperity on his own planet. He wanted to stay, I didn't, and he came with me because he loves me.

"Just like you, he's happy here, Topaz. He goes fishing and plays with the Abornie children; hell, half of them call him uncle. He was a man who should have had his own children and grandchildren, and he couldn't have any of that, again because of me. Unlike you and me he is living on borrowed time. Yeah, I could shove him into cryogenic sleep again, and we could spend years in space and get back to . . . What? We don't know what has happened, much less what will have happened by the time we get back. I could fly him back into hell again. I could jerk him away from a life he loves, to take him—a sixty-five year old man—back into a war zone to start all over again. And he'd go with me, Topaz. He'd leave everything he cares about and go with me because even after all these years he still loves me. So we're staying here, right here, until he's had a chance to live out his life. Then we'll go. Time doesn't matter to us. He'd do anything for me, and this is the least I can do for him."

"Why don't you tell him? It might be nice for him to realize just how much you care for him," Topaz said quietly.

"Because if he knew I could leave and wouldn't because of him, he wouldn't be able to enjoy staying. If he thinks we can't leave, then he can be happy."

"What about you, RJ, are you happy?" Topaz asked.

RJ shrugged. "As much as I can be. The indigenous people suck, but I like the plants."

 

Two short weeks later she was working in her garden again when she smelled something familiar on the wind and stiffened.

"What is it?" Poley asked from where he'd been helping her in the garden. But she was gone, running in the direction of the smell, and he ran after her without waiting for her to answer just in case she might need him.

She looked at the Ocupod roasting over the fire. Judging by the size, it was obviously a youngster. She glared at the Abornie stuffing their faces with its cooked flesh.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She rubbed her hands down her face. Then she ran and grabbed the spit off the fire and slung it in all their faces. "This was a sentient being. The equivalent of a child. It thinks, just like you and I. You don't eat an intelligent being. Gods, just when I think we've taught you idiots something about civilization, some touch of ethics, you do something like this."

"He killed it," half of them said, pointing to one man in the group. As usual, quick to point the blame away from themselves.

"We eat fish," he said with a shrug.

"Fish can't repair machines or build things. They don't make decisions or fight wars. They don't think. Just because you can kill something doesn't mean you should. Why don't you eat each other?"

"And she doesn't mean in a pleasant sexual way," Topaz added helpfully, as he walked up to see what was causing all the commotion.

RJ glared at all of them. "You will not hunt these creatures or kill them. In all these long years since the battle they have showed no aggression towards you. How dare you hunt them for food?" She stomped off, back in the direction of her garden, and Poley followed. She started to work again and tried to forget the image in her head.

"That was a very bad thing," Poley said, kneeling down to work beside her.

"Yes, and how come we know that, but those morons didn't?" RJ hissed.

"I don't know."

"I heard what happened." RJ looked up and Levits was standing there. "Is it really that big a deal?"

"You tell me," she said angrily. "Would you like to be killed and stuck on a stick over a fire for barbarians to eat? Better than that, would you like an Ocupod to eat one of those little Abornie brats you're so fond of?"

"Not really," Levits said. "It was a mistake, they just weren't thinking."

"What you're calling a mistake, I call murder. Even when I was a Reliance goon I knew the difference between killing a trained and armed soldier and an unarmed civilian. That's why I jumped sides, remember? I never had any doubt in that war. But with these people . . . I often wonder if I didn't destroy the wrong army."

"The Abornie are basically good people, RJ. They just need guidance," Levits said. "You should really get to know them. You've separated yourself from them, haven't tried to make friends with them."

He wasn't wrong; she hadn't even tried to create relationships with them. She couldn't afford to. In order to "guide" them she needed to intimidate them. Someone had to be the heavy, and it certainly wasn't going to be Topaz—who liked to be their benevolent god—or baby-kissing Levits. She ignored what he had said and instead said, "You know if I had admitted defeat and retreated back to my own ground, and then my enemy came into my territory, I'd be pissed. But if they then started murdering my people, I'd attack."

"What do you mean?" Levits asked.

"I have a feeling you're going to find out very soon."

 

The next day five Abornie went out in a boat, and three hours later the boat came back empty. Poley and RJ went down to examine the boat as a bunch of Abornie looked on.

"Well?" RJ asked the robot.

"Ocupod DNA. You're thinking retaliation?" Poley answered.

"Yes." Without another word she walked into the jungle, shoved a small tree over, topped it, then dragged it out into the water till she was waist deep. She speared the pole into the sand under the water and made sure it was secure. She then walked back up on the beach and looked at the crowd.

"For hundreds of years you couldn't even go near the ocean, much less fish in it, but we destroyed the Ocupod's capability of fighting us on land and so we started to venture out to sea to fish. That was fine. There was nothing wrong with that. They let us do it. Don't you understand that? They let us fish their ocean. They didn't have to. They can't come up here, but that," she pointed out at the endless ocean behind her, "is still their domain, and they will always be supreme there. You killed one of them, and now they have retaliated. They will not let us fish the oceans unmolested until the murderer is brought to justice." She waded into the crowd. The Abornie in question saw her coming, realized what she was doing, and took off running. She caught him easily, and in spite of his squirming she easily carried him down to the pole standing in the water. She lashed him to the pole with her chain, and the whole of the Abornie assembled there started to protest.

"RJ . . . what in hell's name are you doing?" Levits asked as he ran up on the scene.

"Justice," RJ said.

"It looks more like a ritual sacrifice to me," Levits said angrily.

"You call it a sacrifice, I call it an execution."

The voices of the Abornie raised in pitch against her, and she just glared at them. "Five people have already died for what one man did, so how can you condemn my actions and not his? Because many of you ate the results of his actions? Why? Because it tasted so good? Nothing that smells so foul could taste anything but horrid. Because there is so little food? This planet is nothing but food."

"In which case, we don't have to fish," Levits said. "Let's just stop fishing."

"Why should all be punished because of the sins of one man? Those creatures have a common intelligence. They share information. They know who the murderer is, and maybe if we give them the murderer they will let the rest of us fish."

"Then you'd better unchain him and put me out there," Levits said, walking right up to her. "Because I didn't kill it, but I'm the one who caught it. I'm thinking those ignorant bastards aren't going to be able to tell the difference."

"You . . . Why?"

"It was an accident," Levits said. "Apparently it and I were after the same fish. I picked it up in my net. Foro," he pointed to the guy tied to the pole, "All he saw was the enemy of his people, no matter how small, and he killed it before I could toss it back in. After it was dead . . . Does it really matter whether they ate it or not? Things just aren't as black and white as you'd like them to be, RJ. If he deserves to die, then so do I, and I don't think his death is going to do us any good."

RJ couldn't remember ever being quite so mad at anyone in her life except maybe Jessica Kirk. She stomped out into the water and unwrapped the chain, freeing the man. Then she stomped back through the surf and for a second actually considered tying Levits to the pole. If it weren't for the fact that he had once saved her life at great risk to his own, not even the fact that she loved him would have stopped her from carting his ass out there and lashing him to the pole to appease the Ocupods.

"I wash my hands of the lot of you. That includes you Levits!" She threw her hands up and walked back towards the ship.

The people cheered Levits.

"Shut up!" Topaz ordered. "There is nothing to celebrate here." He shook his head, in that moment almost feeling his age. "What you did was inexcusable. RJ tried to restore justice to our world, but there is no way to attain justice in this matter. That is never a cause for rejoicing. Go about your business."

They didn't budge, as they were always slow to get moving.

"Go now!" Topaz screamed. The Abornie left quickly, all going in different directions.

Levits slapped Topaz on the shoulder laughing. "Dude, lighten up."

Topaz turned to glare at Levits, a look of black rage on his face. "How dare you humiliate her like that!"

"What?" Levits asked in disbelief.

"You have totally and completely ruined her credibility with those people, and for what? To save a murderer's life?"

"Ah, come on, man! Foro's a good man, he just made a mistake . . ."

"Don't you get it? RJ is right about them. They act without thinking, and so do you." Topaz turned his back on him and walked back towards the ship.

In the weeks that followed, Topaz and Poley created a sonic wave transmitter that produced a sound that kept the Ocupods away without actually hurting them. But the rift between RJ and the Abornie people wasn't so easily fixed. From that moment on they didn't even try to hide their disdain for her, or she her contempt for them.

 

 

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