Refugee (24 page)

Too real? That isn't what I meant to convey. This was ultimately real. This was the most solemn commitment of our lives. Maybe what I meant was that I did not want it to become too much of a show, as if it were not genuine. But weddings, as I learned, are not just for the nuptial couple; the crowd must have its satisfaction too.

It took several days to put it all together, and several major rehearsals. Spirit insisted that every single detail be right . We worked up to full dress rehearsals, orchestrating it right through to the kiss. That kiss had to be right, too; the imps made us do it over and over, just so, not too long or too brief, too intimate or too distant. They even practiced their applause. Kids, I learned the hard way (though I really didn't mind this particular exercise, despite Helse's tendency to break up with mirth in the middle of it), are the worst sticklers in the universe for specific detail.

I wondered just what the difference was between a full dress rehearsal, with all the participants, and the official ceremony, but knew better than to raise that question. I suppose it was merely a matter of designation: This one is a rehearsal, that one is the production. Besides, this was an excellent distraction from the tedium and grief we all would otherwise have had time to dwell on. This was more than a wedding or a rehearsal for same; it was group therapy. So we didn't push the date; we let the kids extend the rehearsals as long as they had a mind to.

Helse looked wonderful in her home-fashioned patchwork wedding dress. She would have looked good to me in rags, though. I was in my space suit. You see, no one knew how to make a man's formal wedding outfit, so Spirit, in her authoritative office of manager, decreed that one suit was as good as another and insisted that I be garbed as a space captain on duty. I even had to have the helmet on; then, ceremoniously, I would tilt it back for the nuptial osculation. I felt like an ancient knight in armor, especially since the suit was decorated for camouflage. Embracing her was awkward, not nearly as pleasant as it had been in nondress rehearsal, where her body was all soft and feminine against mine. And the inordinate laughter, when one brat advised me to remove the suit on the wedding night because it didn't have the necessary attachment—that actually made me blush, which set the little fiends off anew.

But anything to make the kids happy! And though I protested the unnecessary elaboration, it was therapy for me too. It made me really believe that Helse would be mine forever.

We were amidst the umpteenth such rehearsal, and I had just noticed that some mischief-maker had pinned a label saying HELSE HUBRIS to the gown so she would be able to remember her new name when the time came, when our lookout sounded the alarm. “Ship ahoy!”

I felt dread. “Suit up!” I told Spirit, and she scurried off to do it. I was already suited, coincidentally; that was the lone silver lining in this cloud. The other kids milled about, uncertain what frame of mind to be in: festive or frightened. But soon they decided on both: Each fetched his or her weapon, concealed it in the costume, then returned to the wedding rehearsal. This was stage one , innocent children playing.

Fine for them, but I wasn't satisfied. “Get suited!” I called to Helse.

But someone needed to keep the children organized while Spirit and I were busy with the air lock, so Helse elected to remain in her wedding dress. If a pirate attacked her, Spirit would blow the whistle. I didn't like this, as Helse in that gown was entirely too attractive, but understood the need. Even so, I would have argued, but there simply wasn't time. I was the nominal leader of the bubble, but already I had learned that leadership exists largely with the consent of the followers, and that compromise is essential, and that the true will of the majority must always be taken seriously. So I sealed up my suit, and made sure Spirit was ready to seal hers after blowing her whistle, if it came to that. We were ready for whatever might come.

The ship closed on us, matched velocities, and connected to our front portal. As I watched, it occurred to me that the mechanism of a ship and a bubble was very like that of a man and a woman. The ship was long and slender, resembling a phallus, while the bubble was round in the manner of aspects of a woman.

And all too often the roles became ferociously literal.

The ship took hold and made an entry, I thought as I heard the clang of merging locks. The bubble had to receive. Sometimes this connection was pleasant for both parties, but sometimes disaster for the bubble. Perhaps there is a fundamental parallelism in all things, if we could but perceive it.

The air lock opened and the men came in—and they did look like pirates. I stood behind the baffle, watching, my hands sweating inside the gauntlets of the suit. Spirit had her hand on the whistle. How well we knew how serious this could be!

“What have we here?” the lead intruder demanded. He could have passed for Redbeard.

“We are children, seeking sanctuary,” Helse informed him prettily. “Our parents were killed by horrible pirates. We are orphans in the void.” I hoped she wasn't overdoing it, though her words were literally true for everyone except herself. I had my helmet on, but in the ambience of air could hear reasonably well. I could also see them, by peering though the partially filled netting of the doughnut hole that was between us.

The man eyed her appraisingly. This was the first time Helse had stood before a stranger to the bubble in her female guise. Oh, I worried! “No women except you?”

“None,” she assured him innocently.

The man consulted the one beside him, who could have passed for Bluebeard. "Slim pickings here.

What's the current market for children?"

“There's connections for small ones,” Bluebeard said. “And girls of any age are in demand. I'd say, take all the girls and dump the boys.”

“Good enough.” Redbeard strode toward Helse. “But this one we'll use ourselves, here and now.”

They were pirates, all right. I had a momentary vision of my sister Faith, spread out by the Horse. Spirit blew the whistle; she had probably seen the same vision. We would not let Helse suffer that fate!

Pandemonium erupted. The children drew their weapons and swarmed over the pirates. Their reactions were amazingly swift and sure. Maybe the smaller bodies of children permit faster interplay of the nervous systems. Never, in all the entertainment projections I have viewed in Maraud, including historical recreations of ancient wars, have I seen such a savage turn of events. Those children were absolutely vicious. It was as if all the pain and horror of the past month was being released in fifteen seconds.

They scored. Oh, they scored! In a moment the men were screaming, and blood was flowing. Blinded, some men staggered around, hands at their faces, the blood leaking through their fingers. Others dropped to the deck, clasping their crotches. Redbeard reeled back, blood cascading from the side of his head where his ear had been; he had suffered a near miss. Three children stalked him like rabid puppies, their knives raised, their teeth gleaming. It was nightmare, but it seemed that we had won. I had underestimated the effectiveness of our ploy.

But we had reckoned without the resources of the pirate ship. A new man appeared in the lock, carrying a solid, squat device. “Take him out!” Spirit screamed. “Now!”

Half a dozen children turned, well understanding the threat of an unknown weapon. We needed ho pacifier here! They charged the new pirate like little kamikazes.

But he was ready. He pulled the trigger, and the thing burped.

Something splatted against the body of the nearest charging child. It looked like brown taffy, but it spread out tentacles as it struck, wrapping around the body, pinning the limbs. The child fell, bound by strong elastic bands.

Three other children were close. The taffy gun burped again, catching each, and the elastic enfolded each. One child tried to cut the strands that enclosed him, but there were too many; though he severed two, his arm remained bound by those he couldn't reach. In time he might have worked his way loose, but everything was happening in seconds. This was a personnel control device, incapacitating without hurting, and it was effective.

The pirate swung the taffy gun around, and the children everywhere paused, realizing that they were overmatched.

More men appeared from the pirate ship. “Take your pick,” the one with the gun said to them. “No sense wasting taffy on brats we're going to kill anyway.”

The other men drew knives and advanced on the children. None of them seemed to care about the wounded pirates of the first wave, who were moaning and, in some cases, dying. Helse turned to face me. “Do it, Hope!” she cried, and bolted for our cell, where her suit was.

The pirate at the air lock aimed his gun and fired. Helse fell, wrapped in taffy. Naturally they intended to salvage her!

I started back from the rear lock, appalled. But Helse screamed from the floor: “Do it! Don't wait for me! Do it, or we'll all die!”

I knew she was right. The other children were scurrying for their suits, and the new pirates were starting after them, wary about ambush-traps. I had to do my part, and do it immediately, or everything would be lost. I could not fight off the pirates here, or even rescue Helse. I didn't even have my laser pistol, with which I might have taken out the pirate with the taffy gun; then we could have turned it against the other pirates and—but this was foolish dreaming. Already the brutes were methodically stabbing the children they had caught. We were at war.

I entered the lock, glancing at Spirit. Grimly she nodded, standing beside the old drive unit, her hand near the switch for the new one. She was ready.

Practice had made perfect. Quickly I worked the lock and moved out onto the hull, anchored by my safety line. I was afraid of the void, but I had rehearsed this and knew exactly what I was doing. I braced myself and the drive cut off on schedule, and I dived across and anchored my rope on the nearest eyelet.

The drive came on again, a wall of flame as seen from this vantage; Spirit's timing was perfect. Now no one could follow me or stop me. The tricky part was past.

I clambered around the hull, carrying my massive wrench. Then I was at the key tank, exactly as rehearsed. I lifted the wrench, ready to bash off the one nut holding it.

I froze. The realization hit me now with full force: Helse was not in her suit. Caught by the taffy, she could not get to it. If I let the air out of the bubble, she would die.

But if I didn't do this, we would be subject to the will of the pirates. Last time they had raped and killed.

I visualized a pirate raping Helse, as the Horse had raped my sister Faith. Then my mind's eye saw Bluebeard slitting Helse's throat. I knew this was not only possible, but likely.

“Helse, forgive me!” I cried in my helmet. Then I swung with all my clumsy force, half hoping it wouldn't work.

The wrench caught the nut squarely and bashed it off. The tank, released without first having its pressure abated, crashed out of its slot like a missile being fired. I was thrown back and flew out into space myself. This I hadn't rehearsed, of course; I had always stopped short of the final bash.

The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was the plume of freezing vapor and debris from the bubble. I fancied some of it was red. Red from the blood of my beloved, whom I had sworn never to hurt.

3-22-'15, Space—Spirit was tending me when I woke. I clutched at her arm. “Was it all a dream?” I demanded desperately.

“I wish I could lie to you, to give you ease, my brother,” Spirit said. I saw the marks of tears on her face, and on her soul. “It was no dream.”

“Helse—”

“Dead.”

The confirmation was no longer a shock; I had known my love was dead. I had killed her.

“Hope, you must seal it off, the way you did for the others. We need you to pull us through. Otherwise Helse's sacrifice is for nothing. Remember, she told you to do it. She knew.”

There was only one thing worse than losing Helse, and that was losing what she had fought for. She had died as bravely as any of the other women had. She had indeed known, and had not faltered.

I cast about for something to lean on that would support my failing equilibrium, and found it in an oath:

“I shall extirpate piracy from humanity,” I swore.

I had not honored my oath never to hurt Helse, but if I lived, I would somehow honor this one. I had no notion how or when, but I would do it.

From that point I strengthened. Helse had been my support before; now it was Spirit. Spirit was stronger than I. I do not pretend this was steady or sensible; I gyrated wildly. But when I screamed with grief, Spirit understood, and when I was lucid she talked with me, and when I could function, she encouraged me. My oath and Spirit; these were the pillars of stability during my nightmare sequence. The wildest tempests of my confusion and grief beat about these pillars and did not topple them, and in time I was able to function again.

I may be presenting this as more coherent than it was. I am human; I seek to flatter myself and tend to avoid what damages my self-image, however much I try to be objective. So if this narrative is a construct of favorable distortions, it is as it must be in order to exist at all. This narrative is itself therapy, clarifying the elements of my existence and thereby enabling me to accept them with lesser abrasion than otherwise.

My talent is judgment of others; to this degree I try to judge myself, however suspect my result may be.

So I may record a somewhat enhanced version of my nadir, and wish it had been so. Without a certain amount of beneficial illusion, very few people would survive.

I put away my grief for necessary periods and did what had to be done, and gradually these portions of equilibrium lengthened. I helped the survivors bury the dead on the hull, all except Helse; others did that, for I could not look upon her ravaged face. They buried her in her wedding gown, saving only the little cloth tag with the name HELSE HUBRIS; that they gave to me as the final physical memento. Helse had loved me at the last; this tag was the evidence of that, and its value magnified accordingly. O my Love, my Love! It was not to save yourself you died, it was to save me, for you were not afraid of rape but of my wild reaction to it. And so I killed you, indirectly as well as directly, because you knew me too well, too well. I thought I loved you with the ultimate devotion possible, but your capacity was greater than mine, and your love was better than mine.

We cleaned up the blood and excrements of explosive decompression. Very little of it had escaped the bubble, for the aperture of loss had been narrow, not permitting the egress of substantial solid bodies.

Little items like pencils and combs were lost; bodies and food packs remained. This was messy but just as well, for we needed our supplies.

Spirit, of course, had unjammed the valve in the head, and allowed the air tanks to repressure the bubble before she went out to haul me in on my line from where I dangled in space. She had cut the drive for that duration, so that she could work alone. I marvel still at her courage and competence in that adversity; I owe my life as well as my equilibrium to her. She was, in this instance, a twelve-year-old adult.

Only eight of us survived: Spirit and me and those six children who had reached their suits in time. I remember their names but prefer to leave them anonymous; I do not care to put a name to each individual aspect of my pain.

Our rehearsed plan had gone astray because of the interference of the pirates; I don't know how we could have prevented that, since we had no knowledge of the taffy gun. Perhaps I should have anticipated the unexpected and kept my laser pistol ready. But it had very little charge left, and the crisis occurred so suddenly, interrupting our wedding rehearsal—I don't even know whether such excuses are valid. Certainly I could have done more, had I thought it through better. Still, our final stage had been effective.

That was another part of the guilt I bore: I had killed more children than the pirates had. As nearly as we could figure it, they had slaughtered fifteen; the vacuum had strangled twenty-two.

But we had taken the pirate ship with us. Their air lock had been locked to ours, fixed open; our vacuum had become theirs. All forty-five pirates were dead. Their losses were greater than ours. Oh, yes, we had struck back—but it had been a Pyrrhic victory. We could not afford another such battle.

After we cleaned out our dead and said what perfunctory services for them we could, we did the same for the pirate dead—with less honor. We dumped them in a chamber of their ship. Then we searched that ship throughout.

Much of it was ordinary stuff, clothing, food, knick-knacks. But some of it was booty from other vessels: gold, precious stones, spices, fine watches, and small sealed containers marked with letters of the alphabet: C, H, L, A.

I considered the last, trying to figure out what the letters might stand for. But Spirit solved it. “Drugs!”

she exclaimed. “Of course pirates are into the illegal drug trade! These letters stand for English abbreviations: Cocaine, Heroin, LSD, Angel Dust.”

Now I saw it. “Their real business would be shipping this stuff. They only raid bubbles like ours for entertainment.”

She was uncertain. “Why mess with poor refugees, when they can buy anything they want? They obviously are rich.”

Excellent question! It put me in mind of Helse's QYV mystery.

O, Helse! I reeled.

Spirit steadied me, and I fought back to sanity. Helse had been used to convey a message of some kind, perhaps to a pirate—and here were pirates shipping drugs and seeking children. Was there a connection?

“We can go back to the bubble,” Spirit suggested, mindful of my fadeout.

“No, we'd better finish this job,” I said. Only two of the other children were with us here; the remaining four were sleep-suffering in their cells. All of us understood that need! They had lost siblings and close friends and most of their peer group, and the pseudo-family structure we had so carefully nurtured had been shattered. Helse had become like a mother to them—Helse, Helse!—and so they had been orphaned again, when already vulnerable. Oh yes I knew that feeling! But I had to function, and I had in Spirit a support of amazing strength, a child/woman who perhaps at this stage was more truly our leader than was I. “We need to take what supplies we need and cast loose; we don't know how to operate this ship.”

“Supplies? We don't need mind-zonking drugs!”

“Weapons,” I said. “We are so few, now, we must have good weapons. And replacement oxygen tanks, for ours have been depleted by the decompression.”

“Oh, yes,” she agreed, seeing it.

We located weapons, including another taffy gun—the other had been swept into the head by the decompression and broken—and brought back to the bubble several good laser pistols and a whole pile, of good fighting knives. We found oxygen and nitrogen tanks, and plenty of fresh water. Then we spied food supplies, better and more varied than ours. This derelict ship was a real mine of useful things!

We were now well set—except that at this point we were just a few children, ranged against what seemed like a universe of pirates. The great majority of our refugee companions who had set out for a better world had found death instead. Even if we arrived at Leda and gained sanctuary without further difficulty, it would hardly be worth it for the survivors, let alone the nonsurvivors. True success was now beyond our reach—thanks to the pirates.

I remembered my oath: to extirpate all pirates. They surely deserved obliteration.

We also discovered a holo projector and a small library of cartridges. This was an excellent find; we could have entertainment to distract us from the horrors of our memories. We trundled the projector into the bubble.

Finally we found a lifeboat, fully stocked. We could certainly use this! We lacked the expertise to operate it, but we would have time to study and experiment. We couldn't move it by hand, so we used rope to tie it to the bubble, hoping to haul it clear of the pirate ship when we separated. We had to string our lines so that they did not intercept the blast of the drive unit; we used three, hooked all around our equator, each trailing back a hundred meters to intersect at the lifeboat. If that didn't work, then it didn't work.

At last we cut loose. The pirate ship was now adrift, its life-support facilities repressuring it automatically and warming it when the air lock sealed, but with no living men aboard. There would be a stink in there soon enough! Maybe it would drift forever in space—or maybe some other ship would discover it. Then they might ponder the mystery of an operative ship that had lost its entire crew to suffocation. We knew that such mystery ships had been found before, for we had seen stories about them; now we had an answer. In this one case, the rabbit had killed the wolf.

We moved on through space alone, trailing the lifecraft on its triple tether. I had to do more of the work of maintenance and navigation, for we had lost key personnel. I had a lot of learning to do, but that was good, for it kept me almost too busy to think.

The kids eagerly set up the holo projector and tried a cartridge marked Animal Fun , We thought it might be a juvenile fantasy about animals, or a documentary on the ways of wildlife as it once had been on unspoiled Earth. Either way, excellent distraction for children.

The scene formed, a three-dimensional image in air that could be viewed from any side. It was a comely young woman and a donkey. Good enough; the riding of animals was a popular subject with children; the few equine animals on Callisto were always in great demand for two-minute rides.

But in a moment the kids' delight turned to dismay. I left my position by the lens control to see what was the matter.

The woman in the image had stripped naked, and—well, no need to detail it further. It was a porn show.

I should have realized that pirates would stock that sort. If our bubble had been filled with animals instead of people, the brutes would have been raping and killing the animals, hardly noticing the difference. “Turn it off,” I said, disgusted. “Check all through the cartridges. Maybe there are some regular family shows in the pile.”

But now that the children realized that this was supposed to be forbidden adult material, they got interested. They wanted to know exactly how a woman could do it with a donkey, and why she would bother. I gave up and returned to my station, not caring to admit that I was curious too.

Actually, I needed no hard-core holos for my forbidden entertainment. It came to me unbidden when I slept. Some dreams were inchoate, almost formless fragments of horror that seeped out of the locked chambers of my mind like oozing blood and invaded that lonely illuminated spot of consciousness where I huddled. It had been bad when my father died, and when my mother died, but Helse had braced my equilibrium. Now Helse herself was dead, and all the shock of loss she had shielded me against, by interposing her marvelous love, now swept down on me in an avalanche of sulfur.

I tossed about and scrambled and woke—and found the waking nightmare was as bad as the sleeping one. I had come to depend almost completely on Helse, on the love we shared, and she was there no more. I retreated from that reality into sleep—where the oozing blood and sulfur lava were assuming shapes more awful than the shapelessness had been. I screamed again.

I don't know how many times I cycled through it before Helse came. I must have been in an in-between state of consciousness, for I knew she was dead. But she was welcome any way she chose to appear.

“What brings you back?” I inquired almost socially.

“Hope, I finally realized,” she said.

“Realized what?” I asked, knowing this was crazy, that it was no more than a vision like the one involving my father, but so eager for her presence that I clung to whatever shred of interaction it offered.

“About the tattoo. Why it protected me. It identified me as a courier.”

“A courier?” I didn't follow her line of thought.

"I was conveying something to Kife. Something very valuable and secret. So I had his name and the mark, so no one would interfere with me. It is death to mess with a courier, and every criminal knows it.

Kife must be very high in the hierarchy of thieves. So I was safer than I thought; I probably didn't need to masquerade as a boy."

“I'm glad you did,” I said. “That way, I got to room with you, and to love you.”

“You are the first I loved,” she said. “But about the tattoo—you can protect yourself too, Hope. Draw the letters on your thigh, and when a pirate attacks you—”

“But I'm no courier!” I protested.

“They won't know that. They won't dare take the chance. I think Kife would destroy anyone who bothered even a fake courier, just to make his point. Of course, then the fake would have to settle with Kife. That might not be fun.”

“What were you carrying?” I asked. “The man gave you no message—”

“Now I remember something I heard once,” she said, becoming more real and lovely moment by moment. She wore her patchwork wedding dress, and oh, I loved her with an agony of intensity. “They do not tell the couriers what they carry, so the couriers can't give away the secret. It is carried in little bags that they swallow, which adhere to the lining of the intestine and can only be detached by a certain formula in solution. So when the courier arrives, he or she is given a drink, and the bag is freed and passes on out harmlessly. The bags can hold anything—diamonds, secret code messages, concentrated drugs—but whatever it is, Kife wants it, and only he has the formula to collect it without hurting the courier.”