Cluster (9 page)

The best host-body on the planet: a chained Slave!

A foreman approached. Flint/Øro recognized him:
Q
iw of V°ps, a Slave of status, harsh but fair.

“Last day, Øro,”
Q
iw said, raising the punishment-box. “Think you'll make it?” He spoke the native language, of course, but Øro's brain rendered the meaning as though it were Flint's own.

Silence would mean a stiff jolt of pain; a plea of contrition would reduce it. Øro had maintained stony silence through the first two days of the three-day ordeal. But Flint, knowing Øro's cause was just if stubborn, ignored these alternatives. “Go soak your beak in acid, /
Q
iw.”

It was a triple insult, culled from the depths of Øro's admirably rebellious nature. Only the birdlike carrion-eaters had beaks; acid was the slang term for liquid offal brewed to high potency; and the intonation of the double bar //, or baton sinister, meant “Slave of a slave.” In human heraldry it could suggest illegitimacy, but since Slaves had no legitimacy and no marriage, that was irrelevant here.

“Unrepentant,”
Q
iw remarked blandly. “That elevates the scale.” He turned the dial on the punishment-box, moving the indicator up a notch. “And foul-mouthed.” He turned the dial again.

And paused. The dial stuck; it would not complete the second notch.
Q
iw looked at it, startled, then turned the dial all the way down to neutral, counting clicks. “Great One!” he swore, taking the title of a Master in vain, the strongest possible expletive. “The dial's out of adjustment! It was set on eleven!”

Flint's new memory made this clear after a moment of effort. Actually, this seemed to be the best mode of operation: to allow events to call forth the necessary background in their own fashion. As long as he did not try to grasp too much at once, he suffered no further nausea. The punishment-box had twelve settings, with one being minimal and twelve maximal. Øro was supposed to get a jolt of six each hour of the day and night until his scheduled ordeal was over. Contrition would reduce it to five; his insult should have raised it two notches to eight. But Øro had actually been receiving, by accident, near-fatal jolts of eleven. No wonder his soul had succumbed.

Q
iw spoke into his Master-band. “Problem in the field, sir. Defective punishment-box.”

A melodious voice responded immediately, sounding bored. “Noted. Exchange for another.”

“Complication, sir. Convict Øro jolted eleven, not six.”

“Convict damaged?”

Q
iw looked at Flint. “No apparent damage, sir.”

“Administer scheduled punishment. Check other boxes. Report.”

“With dispatch, sir.”
Q
iw lowered the box, studying Flint. “Slave, you know the difference between six and eleven. Why didn't you speak?”

But Flint, wiser now, did not answer.

Q
iw went to the control center and exchanged boxes, giving the convict temporary respite. Why, Flint wondered,
hadn't
Øro spoken? Why had he tolerated an appalling intensity of pain for so long, when it could have been reduced at any time? And why hadn't Øro made the properly subservient petition for redress at the outset?

It was because he was unrealistically stubborn, and not very bright. Øro would die before allowing himself to appear craven, to beg for mercy. In fact, he
had
died, for the pain had killed his essence. The death of a valuable, powerful Slave—for Øro was physically strong as if in compensation for his intellectual weakness—would have gotten Foreman
Q
iw in trouble. Except that no one outside of Øro's body knew of it. Now Flint was here, taking the place of the Slave.

All he had to do, he realized suddenly, was
tell
them, and he would be on his way.

Q
iw returned with the new punishment box. “Shall we try it again?” he inquired as he carefully calibrated it to Øro's frequency.

“I'm not Øro,” Flint said. “Øro died this morning. I am an alien from Sphere Sol.”

“Unrepentant, one notch,”
Q
iw said. “Sarcastic, another notch. Right back on eight.”

“Wait!” Flint cried. “I'm telling you–”

Terrible pain overwhelmed him. His body strained against the chains as the soul-shattering agony tore through every cell of his being. He tried to scream, but the muscles of his lungs were knotted, unable to respond.

It lasted an eternity, a few seconds stretched out interminably by the sheer volume of pain. For it was not mere surface sensation, such as that produced by the quick slash of a knife; it was complete tissue involvement, as of fire projected inside to cook the muscle and bone simultaneously. When it finally stopped, he collapsed, supported by the chains.

By the time his head cleared,
Q
iw was gone.

 

*
 
*
 
*

 

At dusk a young female Slave brought him his rations: died burl and water.

Flint accepted the offering eagerly, for he was famished. The effort of pain dissipated much bodily energy, and part of Øro's punishment was to endure half-rations these three days. This was rough on an able-bodied giant. Fortunately the ordeal would be over in the morning.

As his chains prevented him from feeding himself, she had to put it in his mouth, as though he were an infant or an idiot. That, too, was part of it. Pain, hunger, and shame. The three day sentence was a thorough humiliation and discomfort, guaranteeing that 90 percent of offenders would not soon repeat the offense.

Flint searched Øro's memory, but could not identify this girl Slave. She was extraordinarily pretty, and evidently new to this plantation. “Who are you?” he asked in the direct Slave way.

She flushed in humanoid fashion—for they were humanoid—and he realized that he had spoken too soon. His memory informed him that one did not inquire the identity of a female except as a prelude to more serious business. If she were not interested, she would decline to answer.

“I am
C
le of A[
^th
],” she replied.

His Øro memory clicked over. Flint didn't want to make any more mistakes. A[
^th
] was a distant Slave planet, small but well regarded among Slaves. There had been three major rebellions there in the past century. Now the Masters were spreading A[
^th
] all across Sphere Canopus, preventing that nest of ire from achieving critical mass.

The Masters and Slaves, his memory instructed him, had evolved on neighboring planets within the Canopus system. Both had achieved sapience at about the same time, but the presence of readily refinable metals on the crust of the Master's planet had given them an impetus toward technology that the Slaves lacked. Thus the Masters achieved space travel first, and came to their neighbors as conquerors. They had a tremendous need for cheap manual labor, and were quick to exploit what they found. They took care to see that the Slaves never had opportunity to learn even the most rudimentary technology, and so never gained the semblance of equality. Thus it had been for a thousand years. Those years were longer than the years of Earth, though considerably short of the years of Flint's home planet, Outworld. As the Masters, buoyed by this cheap labor, expanded to full Sphere status, their Slaves expanded with them, while doing all the uglier chores. Most accepted this without question. But some resisted.

“You A[
^th
]s have real spirit, Flint said.

“So do you N*krs,” she said, pleased.

Flint realized that there were possibilities here. He was not about to identify himself to the foreman again, but perhaps some of the lower slaves would believe him. If he were circumspect. This was as good a place to start as any.

“I am released tomorrow,” he said. “Will you work beside me?”

“I would,” she said dubiously.

More memories of Slave protocol. There were no permanent liaisons, by order of the Masters, for the family structure provoked loyalties to other than the Masters. But there were many temporary connections. A girl as lovely as this would always have a man. Flint's interest was in making connections with independent-minded Slaves, so that he could explain his situation and use their belief as a lever to compel the attention of the Masters. His heart was loyal to Honeybloom, back on Outworld, of course. But how could
C
le know that?

In fact it would look suspicious if he failed to take note of her attractiveness. Better to play the game, until his mission was achieved.

That meant he would have to deal with her boyfriend. “Who?” The very intonation of his query implied contempt, for that about-to-be-divulged name.

“
S
mg of Yæjr.”

Once again, Øro's memory obligingly culled the essence: Yæjr was a rough tribe. To a man, those natives were warriors. And Øro's body had been decimated by the torture. Well, it had to be done. “I will meet him.”

C
le put the last morsel in his mouth with a flourish, obviously pleased. It must have been a chore to get such a commitment, and that explained her readiness to approach a convict. How else could she rid herself of an unwanted boyfriend—one who could probably pulverize anyone else she might fancy?

 

*
 
*
 
*

 

As the darkness closed in, the stars came out. At last Flint could orient himself. He knew he was in Sphere Canopus, because that was where he had been sent, but as it was similar to Sphere Sol in size, with a diameter of over two hundred light years, he could be anywhere within it. Probably fairly near Canopus itself, within a few parsecs.

The stellar configuration was vastly different from anything he had seen within his own Sphere's skies, of course, but still there were identifiers. There was a bright red star that was surely Betelgeuse, and a bluish one that had to be Rigel, one of the brightest stars anywhere in this segment of the galaxy. That meant that between them should be—yes, there it was, just below Rigel: the triple lights of Orion's Belt. Those three second magnitude blue-white stars in a line, Alnitac, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Each fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred light years from Sol, and about the same from Canopus. His shift in viewpoint had removed them from between Betelgeuse and Rigel, but the constellation was certain. He knew where he was.

He contemplated the new configurations, doing a kind of mental triangulation from the Belt, and gradually the finer details fell into place. He was on a planet circling a star on the far side of Canopus. Canopus itself was extraordinarily bright, triple the apparent magnitude of Sirius from Earth (that was not the proper way to express it, but he hardly cared at this moment)–and Sirius was Earth's brightest star. It demonstrated the need for galactic orientation points, for in any area there would be a number of small stars that were very bright because of their proximity. Bless the galaxy for providing Betelgeuse, Rigel, and Orion's Belt!

Sol itself, of course, could not be seen. Even if he had been able to view that section of the galactic sky, Sol would not be visible without a telescope. Over two hundred light years distant, Sol would be down to ninth magnitude, and bright Sirius down to one-half magnitude: just visible.

For a moment he visualized Canopus as seen from Earth. Canopus was in the constellation Argo, the Boat. In fact it was on the keel of the ship, the ship of the Argonauts. The mythological hero Jason had sailed in this ship with his fifty Argonauts, seeking the famous Golden Fleece and having other glorious adventures. He had vanquished a dragon and sown dragon's teeth that sprouted from the ground and warriors. He married a king's daughter, the enchantress Medea, a woman of splendidly mixed qualities. The keel-star had an adventurous and violent history, in the lore of Earth, and was a fitting Sphere for mortal individual combat.

Flint slept between his periodic doses of punishment pain, accepting them as necessary for now, and allowed his wastes to drop on the turf at his feet as they had to. Soon it would be over. He did not try again to inform
Q
iw of his true status, but neither did he plead contrition. And at dawn he was released—to work all day in the fields.

 

*
 
*
 
*

 

S
mg of Yæjr was every bit as imposing as anticipated. He was gross and ugly, with the scars of many past encounters on his torso, and his eyes were fierce. Flint was glad that Øro had a big, powerful body; he would need it. He had spent the day beside
C
le, wrestling the burls from their tough wines, recovering the strength sapped by punishment. He was still weak, but not critically so.

Memory told him how Øro had handled such occasions in the past. He had bulled ahead with such determination and heedlessness of pain that even stronger opponents had stepped back. Had he been smarter, Øro could have been a good Slave leader, perhaps a foreman. But he had never been able to hold women long, because he lacked the wit to keep them entertained and lacked the will to hold them against their inclinations. Thus he was not regarded as much of a threat; it was easier to let Øro have a woman, as he was sure to lose her soon.

This time, however, he was up against a Yæjr. Pride would compel the other to try to prevail, and the innate sadism of that tribe would cause him to hurt Øro as much as he could get away with.

The meet was supervised by Foreman
Q
iw. This was to ensure that neither worker was damaged unduly. The Masters permitted these encounters, but always acted to preserve their property. Pain was allowed, even encouraged, but not mutilation or dismemberment. The Masters could make the one who cost them a the full services of a worker quite sorry. Didn't Flint know!

On the occasions Flint had fought on Outworld, he had always won. This was due partly to his strength, speed, and extraordinary coordination, and partly to the advice in martial art the Shaman had provided. His fighting was effective mainly because of his brain. He was capable of rapidly analyzing his opponent's pattern and capitalizing on its flaws.