Outcasts (3 page)

Avoiding one deep spot, Kylis reached the far bank and
stepped out onto a slick outcropping of rock where her footprints would not
show. Where the stone ended and she reentered the frond forest, the ground was
higher and less sodden, although the misty rain still fell continuously.

The ferns thinned, the ground rose steeply, and Kylis began
to climb. At the top of the hill the air stirred, and the vegetation was not
so thick. Kylis found some edible shoots, picked them, and peeled them
carefully. The pulp was spicy and crunchy. The juice, pungent and sour,
trickled down her throat. She picked a few more stalks and tied the small
bundle to her belt. Those that were sporing she was careful not to disturb.
Edible plants no longer grew near camp; in fact, nothing edible grew close
enough to Screwtop to reach on any but the free day.

Redsun traveled upright in its circular orbit; it had no
seasons. The plants had no sun-determined clock by which to synchronize their
reproduction, so a few branches of any one plant or a few plants of any one
species would spore while the rest remained asexual. A few days later a
different random set would begin. It was not a very efficient method of
spreading traits through the gene pool, but it had sufficed until people came
along and destroyed fertile plants as well as spored-out ones. Kylis, who had noticed
in her wanderings that evolution ceased at the point when human beings arrived
and began to make their changes, tried not to cause that kind of damage.

A flash of white, a movement, caught the edge of her vision.
She froze, wishing the hallucinations away but certain they had come back.
White was not a natural color in the frond forest, not even the muddy pink that
passed for white under Redsun’s enormous star. But no strange fantasy
creatures paraded around her; she heard no furious imaginary sounds. Her feet
remained firmly on the ground, the warm fine rain hung around her, the ferns
drooped with their burden of droplets. Slowly Kylis turned until she faced the
direction of the motion. She was not alone.

She moved quietly forward until she could look through the
black foliage. What she had seen was the uniform of Screwtop, white boots,
white shorts, white shirt for anyone with a reason to wear it. One of the other
prisoners sat on a rock, looking out across the forest, toward the swamp. Tears
rolled slowly down her face, though she made no sound. Miria.

Feeling only a little guilty about invading her privacy,
Kylis watched her, as she had been watching her for some time. Kylis thought
Miria was a survivor, someone who would leave Screwtop without being broken.
She kept to herself; she had no partners. Kylis had admired her tremendous
capacity for work. She was taller than Kylis, bigger, potentially stronger, but
clearly unaccustomed to great physical labor. For a while she had worn her
shirt tied up under her breasts, but like most others she had discarded it
because of the heat.

Miria survived in the camp without using other people or
allowing herself to be used. Except when given a direct order, she acted as if
the guards simply did not exist, in effect defying them without giving them a
reasonable excuse to punish her. They did not always wait for reasonable
excuses. Miria received somewhat more than her share of pain, but her dignity
remained intact.

Kylis retreated a couple of steps, then came noisily out of
the forest, giving Miria a few seconds to wipe away her tears if she wanted to.
But when Kylis stopped, pretending to be surprised at finding another person so
near, Miria simply turned toward her.

“Hello, Kylis.”

Kylis went closer. “Is anything wrong?” That was
such a silly question that she added, “I mean, is there anything I can
do?”

Miria’s smile erased the lines of tension in her
forehead and revealed laugh lines Kylis had never noticed before. “No,”
Miria said. “Nothing anyone can do. But thank you.”

“I guess I’d better go.”

“Please don’t,” Miria said quickly. “I’m
so tired of being alone — “ She cut herself off and turned away, as
if she were sorry to have revealed so much of herself. Kylis knew how she felt.
She sat down nearby.

Miria looked out again over the forest. The fronds were a
soft reddish black. The marsh trees were harsher, darker, interspersed with
gray patches of water. Beyond the marsh, over the horizon, lay an ocean that
covered all of Redsun except the large inhabited North Continent and the tiny
South Continent where the prison camp lay.

Kylis could see the ugly scar of the pits where the crews
were still drilling, but Miria had her back half turned and she gazed only at
unspoiled forest.

“It could all be so beautiful,” Miria said.

“Do you really think so?” Kylis thought it ugly
— the black foliage, the dim light, the day too long, the heat, no
animals except insects that did not swim or crawl. Redsun was the most nearly
intolerable planet she had ever been on.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t see any way I ever could.”

“It’s sometimes hard, I know,” Miria said.
“Sometimes, when I’m tiredest, I even feel the same. But the world’s
so rich and so strange — don’t you see the challenge?”

“I only want to leave it,” Kylis said.

Miria looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “You’re
not from Redsun, are you?”

Kylis shook her head.

“No, there’s no reason for you to have the same
feelings as someone born here.”

This was a side of Miria that Kylis had never seen, one of
quiet but intense dedication to a world whose rulers had imprisoned her.
Despite her liking for Miria, Kylis was confused.

“How can you feel that way when they’ve sent you
here? I hate them, I hate this place — “

“Were you wrongly arrested?” Miria asked with
sympathy.

“They could have just deported me. That’s what
usually happens.”

“Sometimes injustice is done,” Miria said sadly.
“I know that. I wish it wouldn’t happen. But I deserve to be here,
and I know that too. When my sentence is completed, I’ll be forgiven.”

More than once Kylis had thought of staying on some world
and trying to live the way other people did, even of accepting punishment, if
necessary, but what had always stopped her was the doubt that forgiveness was
often, or ever, fully given. Redsun seemed an unlikely place to find amnesty.

“What did you do?”

Kylis felt Miria tense and wished she had not asked. Not
asking questions about the past was one of the few tacit rules among the
prisoners.

“I’m sorry... it’s not that I wouldn’t
tell you, but I just cannot talk about it.”

Kylis sat in silence for a few minutes, scuffing the toe of
her boot along the rock like an anxious child and rubbing the silver tattoo on
the point of her left shoulder. The pigment caused irritation and slight
scarring. The intricate design had not hurt for a long time, nor even itched,
but she could feel the delicate lines. Rubbing them was a habit. Even though
the tattoo represented a life to which she would probably never return, it was
soothing.

“What’s that?” Miria asked. Abruptly she
grimaced. “I’m sorry, I’m doing just what I asked you not to
do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kylis said. “I
don’t mind. It’s a spaceport rat tattoo. You get it when the other
rats accept you.” Despite everything, she was proud of the mark.

“What’s a spaceport rat?”

That Miria was unfamiliar with the rats did not surprise
Kylis. Few Redsun people had heard of them. On almost every other world Kylis
ever visited, the rats were, if not exactly esteemed, at least admired. Some
places she had been actively worshipped. Even where she was officially
unwelcome, the popular regard was high enough to prevent the kind of entrapment
Redsun had started.

“I used to be one. It’s what everybody calls
people who sneak on board starships and live in them and in space-ports. We
travel all over.”

“That sounds... interesting,” Miria said. “But
didn’t it bother you to steal like that?”

A year before, Kylis would have laughed at the question,
even knowing, as she did, that Miria was quite sincere. But recently Kylis had
begun to wonder: Might something be more important than outwitting spaceport
security guards? While she was wondering she came to Redsun, so she never had a
chance to find out.

“I started when I was ten,” Kylis said to Miria.
“So I didn’t think of it like that.”

“You sneaked onto a starship when you were only ten?”

“Yes.”

“All by yourself?”

“Until the others start to recognize you, no one will
help you much. It’s possible. And I thought it was my only chance to get
away from where I was.”

“You must have been in a terrible place.”

“It’s hard to remember if it was really as bad
as I think. I can remember my parents, but never smiling, only yelling at each
other and hitting me.”

Miria shook her head. “That’s terrible, to be
driven away by your own people — to have nowhere to grow up... Did you
ever go back?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“I can’t remember much
about where I was born. I always thought I’d recognize the spaceport, but
there might have been more than one, so maybe I have been back and maybe I
haven’t. The thing is, I can’t remember what they called the
planet. Maybe I never knew.”

“I cannot imagine it — not to know who you are
or where you come from or even who your parents were.”

“I know
that
,” Kylis said.

“You could find out about the world. Fingerprints or
ship records or regression — “

“I guess I could. If I ever wanted to. Sometime I
might even do it, if I ever get out of here.”

“I’m sorry we stopped you. Really. It’s
just that we feel that everyone who can should contribute a fair share.”

Kylis still found it hard to believe that after being sent
to Screwtop Miria would include herself in Redsun’s collective
conscience, but she had said “we.” Kylis only thought of
authorities as “they.”

She shrugged. “Spaceport rats know they can get
caught. It doesn’t happen too often and usually you hear that you should
avoid the place.”

“I wish you had.”

“We take the chance.” She touched the silver
tattoo again. “You don’t get one of these until you’ve proved
you can be trusted. So when places use informers against us, we usually know
who they are.”

“But on Redsun you were betrayed?”

“I never expected them to use a child,” Kylis
said bitterly.

“A child!”

“This little kid sneaked on my ship. He did a decent
job of it, and he reminded me of me. He was only ten or eleven, and he was all
beat up. I guess we aren’t so suspicious of kids because most of us
started at the same age.” Kylis glanced at Miria and saw that she was
staring at her, horrified.

“They used a child? And injured him, just to catch
you?”

“Does that really surprise you?”

“Yes,” Miria said.

“Miria, half the people who were killed during the
last set weren’t more than five or six years older than the boy who
turned me in. Most of the people being sent here now are that age. What could
they possibly have done terrible enough to get them sent here?”

“I don’t know,” Miria said softly without
looking up. “We need the power generators. Someone has to drill the steam
wells. Some of us will die in the work. But you’re right about the young
people. I’ve been thinking about... other things. I had not noticed.”
She said that as if she had committed a crime, or more exactly a sin, by not
noticing.

“And the child...” Her voice trailed off and she
smiled sadly at Kylis. “How old are you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe twenty.”

Miria raised one eyebrow. “Twenty? Older in
experience, but not that old in time. You should not be here.”

“But I am. I’ll survive it.”

“I think you will. And what then?”

“Gryf and Jason and I have plans.”

“On Redsun?”

“Gods, no.”

“Kylis,” Miria said carefully, “you do not
know much about tetraparentals, do you?”

“How much do I need to know?”

“I was born here. I used to... to work for them. Their
whole purpose is their intelligence. Normal people like you and me bore them.
They cannot tolerate us for long.”

“Miria, stop it!”

“Your friend will only cause you pain. Give him up.
Put him away from you. Urge him to go home.”

“No! He knows I’m an ordinary person. We know
what we’re going to do.”

“It makes no difference,” Miria said with abrupt
coldness. “He will not be allowed to leave Redsun.”

Kylis felt the blood drain from her face. No one had ever
said that so directly and brutally before. “They can’t keep him.
How long will they make him stay here before they realize they can’t
break him?”

“He is important. He owes Redsun his existence.”

“But he’s a person with his own dreams. They can’t
make him a slave!”

“His research team is worthless without him.”

“I don’t care,” Kylis said.

“You — “ Miria cut herself off. Her voice
became much gentler. “They will try to persuade him to follow their
plans. He may decide to do as they ask.”

“I wouldn’t feel any obligation to the people
who run things on Redsun even if I lived here. Why should he be loyal to them?
Why should you? What did they ever do but send you here? What will they let you
do when you get out? Anything decent or just more dirty, murderous jobs like
this one?” She realized she was shouting, and Miria looked stunned.

“I don’t know,” Miria said. “I don’t
know, Kylis. Please stop saying such dangerous things.” She was terrified
and shaken, much more upset than when she had been crying.

Kylis moved nearer and took her hand. “I’m
sorry, Miria, I didn’t mean to hurt you or say anything that could get
you in trouble.” She paused, wondering how far Miria’s fear of
Redsun’s government might take her from her loyalty.