Curse of the Legion (9 page)

"That is most unusual…" the transgen began.

"It's not unusual at all! It's standard practice! You put the entry stamp in the passport and give it back to the traveller! That's the procedure!"

"Not at all, sir. I have been instructed…"

"Don't give me that! I know exactly what your instructions are! The ConFree Embassy has received details from your Ministry of Customs. Here they are! Would you like to see them? Perhaps you're not familiar with the customs procedures?" He pulled some papers from his jacket.

"I have no need to see correspondence to your Embassy. I know my instructions, sir!"

"I demand to see your supervisor!"

"I am the supervisor here."

"No you're not! You're a clerk! Shall I call my Embassy? My Ambassador knows your Minister of Customs personally." Davilla whipped out a comset.

"It's highly irregular. If you want me to do something irregular, you should at least make a contribution to the Newhumans Benevolent Fund."

Davilla punched a few keys on the comset, ignoring the official.

"Have a pleasant day, sir," the transgen said, handing me back my passport.

"Thank you, sir," Davilla said to the transgen.

"They love it when you call them 'sir,'" Davilla said as we walked to his aircar through scruffy gangs of tattooed young transgens who appeared to be targeting us for attack. "It's just like working in an insane asylum."

###

"You need not be concerned about the Outworlder people," the Minister of Equality assured me. "They have exactly the same rights and privileges as do the Newhuman population. We are all equal here on Santos." The Minister was a huge, fat transgen with darkish skin, bristly hairs sprouting from scalp and ears, gross rolls of fat hanging from his cheeks and neck, animal eyes that reflected no apparent intelligence, and a wide, wet snout. He was not an attractive customer but I tried to remain unbiased about what he was saying.

"Your tea, sir." A young and quite beautiful Outworlder girl entered the spacious office with a tray heavily laden with a silvery tea set. She gently set it on the Minister's desk and poured out tea for us both. She looked like a midschool girl. Her little skirt didn't quite hide her panties.

"Thank you, Suzie," the Minister smiled at her as she departed. He was dressed quite conservatively except for the fluorescent violet tie. His silky suit must have been very expensive and he wore a delicate golden chron and several golden ear-rings.

"Mist Mountain Tea," the Minister gestured with his cup. "Try it, please. It's our export quality." I sipped at the tea—it was indeed quite good—light and crisp. The Minister's office was luxurious, a peaceful oasis of dark polished wood, blank d-screens and decorative maps up on the walls. A wall chron ticked soothingly somewhere behind me.

"Under the System, the Outworlders regarded themselves as our superiors," the Minister continued. "Although they were also slaves to the System, they took advantage of the situation and treated us as their inferiors, while they were the overseers on the agricultural plantations. Their behavior was contemptible. Now that we have overthrown the corrupt System, they are the first to cry and complain about their rights. We have no sympathy, I repeat, no sympathy with these hypocritical opportunists. However, they lie to you if they say they are ill-treated by us. We are all equal here in the Santos Socialrevolutionary Diversegalitarian Democooperative. Equality is the hallmark of the SSDD. Your Outworlders are not used to being treated as equals. They believe they are superior to us, and they wish to separate themselves from our egalitarian ideals, indeed from our society. How can we permit that? We are all citizens of the SSDD, equal in the eyes of the law."

A young Outworlder male in civvies entered the room quietly from an adjoining office and unobtrusively approached the Minister. "Sir? Excuse me. The Roseland Directive." He placed a few sheets of paper on the desk and the Minister signed the documents without a word. The Outworlder recovered the papers and withdrew.

"Another Outworlder plantation returns to the people, with a minimum of bloodshed I may add," he said. "A social revolution must transfer ownership from exploiters to exploited, and this is why your Outworlders are upset. Hypocrites! They always complained about the System, but they participated in the system, while the Newhumans sweated in the fields. Well, that's over now—and it's a good thing. You come right back here to me if they tell you any lies! Their problem is they can't stand equality. It's unthinkable to them!"

###

"Mr. Wester? I'm Len Kaspar. It's wonderful to meet you!" He greeted me in my hotel lobby with a firm handshake. He was an Outwolder and obviously a mortal—it always shocked me to see Outworlder mortals, because in ConFree aging and death was regarded as a horror from the Age of Chaos, something that didn't happen to Outworlders. But there were billions of Outworlders still in the Inners, in the Gulf and the Gassies, people without representation, people who had no choice. He must have been what mortals call "middle-aged" as he had some grey showing in his hair and a few fine wrinkles around his eyes. He was tall and well built and looked strong and healthy despite his mortality.

"Dr. Kaspar, thanks for coming," I said. "I'm looking forward to our discussion."

"My aircar's right outside, please follow me." We stepped out the hotel's main entrance past the transgen security guards to a line of parked aircars. It was early evening. Kaspar passed some money to a couple of lurking transgen thugs and triggered his aircar doors open. I hopped into the passenger side.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"Protection," he replied. "They 'guard' your car. If you don't pay, they trash it. It's not easy to make a living here."

"You don't mind paying them?"

"It's not much—we're used to it." We slipped into a traffic lane and floated away from the hotel. Several rocks smashed violently against our windows and I caught a glimpse of a couple of transgen kids screaming something and hurling more rocks. Kaspar ignored them, punching the car into the sky.

"What the hell was that?" I asked.

"Hate rocks. They hate us. They attack us every chance they get. That's why the car is armored. It's not just rocks."

"Does everyone have armored aircars?"

"All the Outworlders do—or at least all who have aircars. Crime is through the roof. We do what we can to survive."

###

We entered a heavily wooded residential compound through a formidable aircar barricade manned by two alert-looking young Outworlders armed with vac guns. Tall deflection towers loomed above blinking dull red lightning probes to ward off unwanted aircar overflights. We cruised above quiet streets to a low-slung stone house set under some huge shade trees.

"Welcome to my home, Mr. Wester." He showed me into a very large entry hall built around a huge stone fireplace and full of comfortable furniture. The walls were covered with family holos and pix. We found seats by a low table made from a slab of tree trunk. A blonde lady appeared with two steaming cups of dox.

"My wife Isella," Kaspar explained. "We used to have Newhuman servants but—not any more. This is Roseland Snow dox, our premium local dox." His wife smiled and withdrew, leaving us alone. It was quiet and peaceful.

"Roseland—a local plantation?" I asked. The Roseland Directive, I thought.

"Yes, that's right. How's the dox?"

"It's perfect. Very good."

"I understand you want to know about our situation—the situation faced by the Outworlder race on Santos."

"That's right."

"Well, that's fine, Mr. Wester. We are in an extremely precarious position here. I'm going to tell you everything, and I can assure you there's no need for me to exaggerate our plight. The facts are grim enough."

"I appreciate that. All I want are the facts."

"Well, first, thanks for coming. The ConFree Embassy has displayed no special interest in the local Outworlder community. You'd think they would, as there are millions of us, but…well, I'm glad someone is interested." He seemed sincere.

"We are certainly concerned about the Outworlder diaspora." I didn't want to give him false hopes, but it was only the truth.

"I'm pleased to hear that. You saw the heavily guarded entrance to our community here. There are many communities just like this one all over Santos, and we now guard them ourselves. We cannot depend on the transgens—or Newhumans, the approved term. Since the revolution, control of the police and military has been turned over almost entirely to the transgens—and they have no interest in protecting our communities, only in exploiting them. These creatures are incredibly violent and they're now completely out of control. The System created them, to work the plantations, and the System genetically programmed them and controlled their behavior by carefully regulating the dopamine supply to their brains. Well, come the revolution, all that stopped, and the transgens simply stopped working."

"They don't work? They seem to be everywhere. Everywhere I look I see transgens—Customs, government, the hotel, transportation…"

"Yes sir, they're there, and drawing salaries, but they don't work. The revolution was not made by the transgens, but by the Orman governing class that has always controlled Santos, even under the System. When the Ormans saw the situation was changing for the System and the small Mocain military garrison was preparing to leave, they took charge of the transgens and whipped up the mobs to seize power. They used class hatred and envy to oust the Outworlders from all positions of importance and they installed their puppet transgens in their place while they manipulated events from behind the scenes, cementing a close relationship with the trangens. They've always hated and distrusted Outworlders. They ran into one big problem, however. These Newhumans—they are of very limited intelligence. Their IQ is only about half that of a normal human, although it's forbidden to mention that or even measure Newhuman IQ's. Yes, they can talk charmingly and seemingly function normally but put them in charge of anything more complex than fire or the wheel and that's it—it goes belly up and they're off to the girlie bars."

"Looks to me like they staff the Government."

"They do. And all major business, industrial and agricultural positions, now. But behind every fat transgen in his luxurious office and shiny chauffeured aircar is an Outworlder doing the transgen's job, which used to be his job, for maybe half his former salary. They tried to get along without us, and couldn't, you see. They need us. Outworlders do all the real work on this planet—anything that requires technical expertise or education or experience in real-world situations. The transgens can't even do routine maintenance, now that they're no longer programmed. We don't make the political decisions, of course. The Ormans do that." I thought back to that Outworlder subordinate, in the Minister of Equality's office—and that Outworlder girl, presumably providing services of another sort.

"You used to be slaves under the System too. What's changed? What did the Outworlders do during the revolution?" I couldn't figure this out. These Outwolders seemed curiously passive in view of what they were facing.

"We were kept out of it. The mobs attacked any Outworlders that appeared. I'll tell you what's changed. We were tax slaves before, but at least we could make a living in a society that functioned. Right now this society is failing, quickly. I think the Ormans are losing control. All Outworlder farmers are being harassed, killed or chased off the farms and food production is failing, all over the planet. We're on half wages now, most of us are still doing what we were doing before, but reporting to a Newhuman who has no idea what he's doing, and our taxes have gone up to pay the salaries for this huge new non-productive social welfare class that is just taking up space. Meanwhile, all Outworlders are under threat of attack from the Newhumans, all day and all night. Many have been killed already. And guess what? The gangs can't tell the difference between Outworlders and Ormans. That has the Ormans worried."

"Dad? We're off for the gym." Two tall, strong youths stood in a doorway, dressed in gym shorts and sleeveless tops, hauling gym bags.

"Who's guarding?" Kaspar asked.

"Timmy Ka. He's got the autovac."

"All right. Make sure he pays attention."

"There's never any piggies at the gym."

"Just pay attention!"

"Yes sir!" They waved, and faded away.

"Gymnastics," Kaspar explained. "They're tremendous athletes. And scholars too. But the gym isn't in the compound. Nobody goes anywhere without protection any more."

"That's a shame," I said.

"You're right there. You know, worst of all are the schools. We had secret schools for our children under the System. The kids would go to the state schools during the day and listen to Systie hateprop and at night we'd tell them about the history of our people, the Outworlder people, and how we expanded into the cosmos seeking liberty, and founded new worlds. My own ancestors came to Santos over two hundred years ago and this home is our inheritance, a direct link to the past." Kaspar's eyes were gleaming, and he had raised his chin, He was obviously proud of his heritage. "We'd tell the kids about the past and how an Outworlder nation was founded in the Crista Cluster, and how ConFree fought off the System and chased them out of the Outvac. That's what we teach our children, about their heritage.

"Come the revolution, the Ormans brought transgen children into the schools. This had never been done before, because the Green Corps were seen as ag workers and not even fully human. The schools quickly became nightmares for our kids. Nothing was taught there except hatred for Outworlders. Discipline was nonexistent, the gangs ruled the halls and attacked all Outworlder kids. Our sons were beaten bloody by the gangs, and sometimes killed. Our daughters were assaulted, kidnapped and raped. Raping Outworlder girls is the new national sport, and there's not a damned thing we can do about it. Rape is not considered a crime by the revolution, because the Newhumans don't consider it a crime, just an amusing misdemeanor." Kaspar's face twisted and I could see the hate and contempt mirrored in his eyes.