Chains of Freedom (36 page)

"Marge?"

"Yes, RJ?"

"Patch me through to Senator Kirk's private terminal at Capitol. Make sure that no one else can intercept it."

"As you wish, RJ. Do you wish to have visual?"

RJ thought only for a moment. "Yes."

Jessica paced her room. She did that a lot these nights. It beat lying in bed staring at the ceiling.

"Pick up on line one," the computer announced.

Jessica almost jumped out of her skin. "Who is it?" she asked hotly.

"It's RJ."

Jessica heard her own voice call back and she froze in horror. Then she moved slowly to her terminal. She knew what she would find there, but she still sat down in her chair with a thud when she saw the screen. RJ smiled back broadly.

"So, Poley was right. You
are
smaller than I am," RJ said smugly.

"You . . ." Jessica spat, and started pushing buttons.

"You're wasting time. Do you really think I would be doing this if you could trace this call?"

"Not really, but one must hold onto one's dreams." Jessica took her hands off the terminal. "So, what do you want?"

"Join me, J-6. Together we would be irresistible," RJ pleaded.

Jessica laughed. "Are you mad?"

"I don't know. Are we?" RJ asked with a twisted smile.

"I am not the same as you," Jessica hissed.

RJ leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest, letting her elbows rest on her chain. "Quite right. Poley tells me I am superior in every way. Come join us."

"You killed Jack . . . He was my lover. You blew him into so many tiny pieces that . . . Now you want me to join you!"

"One little mistake . . ."

"You killed my lover!" Jessica stormed.

"He can't disapprove then, can he?" RJ stormed back.

"You've made my life empty and meaningless . . ."

"I killed an unscrupulous man who sent me to slaughter children," RJ defended. "I'm sorry that you loved him. I'm not sorry that I killed him. He deserved the death he received. Many people did not deserve the deaths he dealt them."

"Jack Bristol was a good man. Villages must be cleansed . . ."

"You know that is trash," RJ hissed.

"You can't win, RJ!" Jessica screamed. "You can't wipe out the Reliance. You are nothing but a thorn in our side . . ."

RJ fixed her with a stare that made Jessica's blood run cold.

"I will win, J-6. I know I will. I have calculated that I shall. If you do not join me, then sooner or later, I will have to kill you. That would be sad."

Jessica managed a laugh. "You won't find me so easy to kill." Jessica noticed the jerking of RJ's arm. Something which she was obviously trying to conceal by crossing her arms the way she was. "I am perfect. It would seem that you have a deformity."

RJ just smiled more broadly.

That really made Jessica's blood boil. If someone had said something like that to her, she would have been furious. But RJ just sat there with an impudent grin on her face. "Look at you. Beat the Reliance! I bet it's been weeks since you combed your hair properly, and what is that getup you're wearing? What, for instance, does that stupid chain represent?"

J-6 was almost hysterical. RJ liked that. "Death to my enemies," RJ answered with a smile.

Jessica swallowed hard. She pulled her wits in about her. "I am Senator of Zone 2-A. I can summon . . ."

"America," RJ corrected.

"What?" If RJ was trying to confuse her, she was doing a good job.

"America. Zone 2-A used to be called America. When we take over, we plan to reinstate all the old place names."

This time, Jessica laughed without any effort. "You can't win, RJ. A grubby rebel with a chain and a fistful of dreams cannot topple a galactic empire."

RJ's eyes gleamed fanatically. "Quite right, dear sister. But vengeful gods can, and do at will."

Jessica smiled broadly and shook her head. "You talk of fairy stories. Who is this vengeful god of yours, RJ? How is your god going to save you from the mighty hands of the Reliance?"

The smile left RJ's face. She leaned forward in her chair, resting her weight on the arms of it. "You are looking at a god, J-6. We should not exist, and yet we do. We are capable of great good or great evil. I don't believe that Father created us to be tools for the Reliance's hands. I don't think it was his wish that we should grow up and be good little Reliance lackeys. If it was, he could have easily altered our brains. He didn't. He left us free to choose. He left it up to us." RJ leaned back in her chair, and the feverish intensity left her voice. "Can't you see? The Reliance is wrong. Its practices are evil. It uses people, then tosses them out. There is no joy or purpose to their lives. The Reliance serves itself. Even you must answer to a fat idiot named Jago, and he to the World Commissioner, and he to the Council of Five, and they to the Council of Twelve. Everything that our father gave us, the Reliance reaches to take away."

Jessica didn't care spit about RJ's pretty speech. Only one thing intrigued her. "Why do you call Stewart Father?" Jessica asked curiously.

RJ knew then that J-6 would never join her. "Because he is," she paused. "And because he prefers that I do so."

"A father raises a child; he helps it develop. He doesn't spit it into a petri dish and be done with it," Jessica said.

"I don't know about you, but Stewart
did
raise me. Stewart is my father, in all meanings of the word. I love him, and he loves me."

If Jessica had hated RJ before, she hated her doubly now. She smiled hatefully. "I guess you haven't heard, then."

"Heard what?"

"Your
father
is dead."

"You lie!" RJ screamed hotly.

"He shot himself in the head. I was there; I saw it." Jessica enjoyed seeing the distraught look on RJ's face. "He did it to protect you. It was really quite touching."

RJ looked at her. Her eyes were cold; her mouth curled into a snarl. "Thank you, J-6. Now I shall not only kill you, but I shall enjoy doing it!" She closed the transmission.

"Marge, is there an autopsy report on . . ."

"She wasn't lying, RJ," Topaz said in a gentle voice.

RJ turned to face him. She didn't have it in her to be mad at him. "How long have you been there?"

"I already knew who and what you were." A tear came to his eye. "I knew your father. I was very fond of him."

RJ felt a strange tightness in her chest. When she spoke, her voice sounded funny. "He was a very intelligent man." She stood up. "I need to go home now. He used to say that you could never really trust a human. I would remind him that he was one." She smiled. 'My point exactly,' he'd say. He used to say that a lot." She started out of the room. "My point exactly."

David didn't understand why they were leaving so early, but he could tell there was something bothering RJ. There was silence, and silence bothered David. He waited for her to say what was on her mind. Finally he realized that she wasn't going to volunteer the information. "What's wrong?"

RJ didn't answer. She just stared out at the ocean as if it would disappear if she looked away, stranding the boat on dry land. Her voice didn't want to work.

"What's wrong?" David asked again. There was still no answer. "Damn it, RJ, what the hell's wrong with you?"

"My father is dead!" she screamed back at him. She was mad at him because he had made her say it. The madder she got, the faster she drove the boat.

"I'm very sorry, RJ." David didn't dare get up and move towards her. Not at this speed.

Her eyes hurt, and her chest was tight. "I feel so . . . empty. I . . . I . . . like part of me is missing."

"I know how you feel. I felt that way when my father died." She wasn't listening to him, and he understood that, too.

David, under Topaz' guidance, had studied all the great orators at length. Hitler, the Kennedys, Franklin Roosevelt, Ayatollah Khomeini, Martin Luther King, several popes, and a host of celebrities and politicians from several different ages. In short, anyone who had been capable of moving the masses by the use of the spoken word, and that Topaz had on disk. But even with all that preparation, David looked at the growing crowd and felt unprepared.

The crowd was getting restless. They had been lured here by flyers promising great and wonderful things. So far, they weren't impressed. Where were the booze and the naked dancers?

David looked at RJ and gave her a panicked look.

She smiled reassuringly back. She had no doubt that he could pull this off.

Topaz actually left the island for the event, and he stood at RJ's side. The rest of them were scattered through the crowd. Topaz looked at David and nodded. It was time.

David swallowed hard and jumped onto the hood of a nearby wreck. The crowd was so loud you couldn't hear yourself think.

"Shut the fuck up!" Whitey bellowed from somewhere in the bowels of the crowd.

They grew quiet.

David searched for his voice and found it missing. He searched for RJ and found her looking at him expectantly. He couldn't let her down. "Citizens of Alsterase. Let me start by saying that we have disposed of all the Reliance spies, and that no one need fear reprisals for being here." A mumble moved like a wave through the crowd. They were no doubt debating whether or not they believed him. Several obviously didn't, and they left. But the bulk remained.

"We, the citizens of Alsterase are the spurned and the outcast. We are the prisoners and the deformed of a repressive society. For our beliefs or what the Reliance chooses to call our crimes, we are forced to hide in the ruins of a forgotten city. Like lizards hiding in the rocks to escape the noonday sun, so do we hide here from the tyranny of the Reliance. But why should we hide? Are we not more righteous than our chained brothers? Are we not better than those who would willingly serve an oppressive and cruel system of government? A government that serves only itself!"

The murmur that went through the crowd now was one of agreement.

"When the Reliance took power centuries ago, they promised peace and prosperity, happiness, and good health. As each of us knows, the only peace, prosperity, happiness, and health are hoarded by a few. All at the top of the Reliance ladder. I ask you, is it peace to kill those who have a defect?"

"No!" RJ prompted, and the crowd followed.

"Is it wealth when you know if your crop doesn't come in, you'll starve? Or worse, be exterminated because you aren't earning your quota?"

"No!" This time, they didn't have to be prompted.

"Is it good health when the Reliance saves only those they find deserving? To hide from the masses the technology to save lives?"

"NO!"

"As for happiness. Find it for me. Can it be found in the face of a class-one farm worker who works the fields every day of his life and goes to bed every night hungry? Is it to be found in the life of a class-three cloth worker who sits at a loom all day with holes in his clothes? How about the class-two lumber worker whose roof leaks when it rains and whose walls let the winter winds blow through. Are they happy?"

"NO!"

"What of the Reliance soldier? The one who is expected to go to other worlds and fight for Reliance glory, yet will be imprisoned for any act of decency towards his fellow man—Is he happy?"

"No!"

"But the
Reliance
is happy."

The crowd roared with enthusiasm, and he had to wait for the noise to die down before he could go on. "They sit in their fine homes with their uncalloused hands, eating their fill like fat ticks. All at our expense. As a people, we have become weak and afraid." Before they could turn on him, he added quickly. "But you, my brothers and sisters, are neither weak nor afraid. If you were either weak or afraid, you would not have lived to reach Alsterase. But, if we are not weak and afraid, why do we hide here? Why do we not take up arms and fight the Reliance? I'll tell you why! Until now we have been without leadership, without supplies, and without arms. To take on an empire without these things would be pure lunacy."

From the mumbling which took place, it was obvious that they thought trying to fight
with
these things was none too smart, either. He was losing the crowd.

"No one can defeat the Reliance!" someone yelled.

"No one can do anything if they don't try," David answered. "The Reliance exists because of man's cowardice, and it will continue to thrive as long as we all run in fear. We can win; I have no doubt of that. But we will never win as long as we hide here in our safe little places. You say no one can beat the Reliance. What about RJ?"