Blindfold, page 31
III
With Marriatha Bowditch strapped into her broad piloting seat, the rover vehicle ground across the terrain. Its huge treads and resilient struts were sufficient to engulf the rugged path, rolling over outcroppings and straddling ravines. Aboard, the entire group seemed relaxed but competent, busy with their varied duties. They worked well together as a team, the young men and women, the elders, even the children.
Troy and Kalliana took turns washing themselves in the cramped lavatory, sponging off the built-up grime and dust from the fields. Kalliana felt refreshed and presentable again. Though her dripping hair remained spiky and auburn, much of her makeup had come off. Her pale skin prickled with the angry pink of a stinging sunburn.
Kalliana watched as the two older men unrolled sheets of high-resolution satellite photos overprinted with a precise grid and kept track of the zigzagging course their rover had taken. Kalliana saw other charts pinned to the walls completely marked off with red grease pencils, a large X across every grid; she wondered how many years this rover had been cruising the landscape.
One of the coffee-colored young women sauntered up with a readout in her hand. “The outcroppings to our left have a high potash content, a solid enough concentration that someone might be interested in mining it.”
“All right,” Marriatha said, looking through the fingerprint-smeared front viewports. A rounded line of knobby white deposits looked as if they had been freshly exposed through harsh weathering. “Make a note of it. Anything to pump up our account when we get into the village.”
The satellite photos had been taken centuries ago, upon the arrival of the first colony ship. While the images broadly quantified the general resources of the continent, the resolution was insufficient to pinpoint specific veins of ore or to determine the local exploitability of metals and rocks. In addition, the surface changed as geological processes worked the landscape, exposing new raw materials.
Resource rovers had crisscrossed the landscape for centuries, studying, mapping, and marking the locations of natural treasure troves. They reported their findings, exchanging information for the supplies they needed, but for the most part, these large gypsy-style families valued their freedom above all, with no other desire than to roam and look at the sights.
“So you don't work for any particular landholder?” Troy asked.
“We work on the fringes of the lands, Mr. Troy,” she said. “Not much of anything worth having out here, and it's not like the landholders put up fences, you know. We go where we want, and we do what we want. Right?”
It seemed to be their family motto. Everyone within earshot shouted “Right!” in unison.
Kalliana looked at how Marriatha Bowditch commanded all of her ‘associates.’ “So are you their ... their matriarch?”
Marriatha boomed with laughter, a deep belly laugh that was infectious. Kalliana found herself chuckling, though she didn't know why. The giggling kids scrambled up metal rung ladders to ride on the roof again.
“No,” Marriatha said. “I'm just the driver.”
IV
The resource rover stopped at twilight after Marriatha found an appropriately level campsite. With the engine shut down and all the hatches opened, the associates boiled out, scrambling to finish their nightly round of duties in as little time as possible.
Within twenty minutes the rover vehicle had been transformed into a sprawling encampment. The men worked to erect a colorfully striped awning that rested on scratched aluminum poles with spike ends. The young women went outside to build a fire out of stunted mesquite and sage they had taken from the wastelands around the cultivated areas, where hardy desert scrub had been scatter-planted as a first step toward taming the land. Kalliana found the campfire a treat, since electrical heaters and environment-control systems were so easily had in First Landing. The children set to work preparing rations in the galley.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Kalliana suggested.
Marriatha Bowditch shook her head. “Just stay here and keep me company. Sometimes it's enough of an effort just to watch the others goof around, and I've been driving all day.”
The fourteen-year-old boy ran to fetch water from a nearby stream; they would pump it through filtration systems and then use it for tea later in the evening. One of the women set up a grill and placed heavily seasoned meat on the rack. The meat sizzled and smoked and smelled absolutely delicious.
“We caught a bunch of jackrabbits yesterday,” Marriatha said. “It's a delicacy.”
“A jackrabbit?” Kalliana said. “Where do we have rabbits running free?”
“We were over in the northern portion of Dokken Holding, the part that used to belong to Van Petersden.” Marriatha nodded in the general direction.
“A long time ago Van Petersden had a bright idea without thinking it through. Turned loose a bunch of jackrabbits in his scrubland, then he had to bring down some hawk embryos and coyote embryos from the Platform. Then he made some pigeons, but Van Petersden didn't understand the predator/prey pyramid — just how many rabbits and pigeons it takes to provide sufficient food for the community of predators he had unleashed. So the hawks and the coyotes died out shortly after they ate all the pigeons. But a few jackrabbits survived — and now they've realized that the real crops taste better than the scrub grass ... and so we hunt the rabbits.”
The group ate a marvelous meal of the savory meat, though Kalliana's stomach was cramped from the gluttonous amount of strawberries they had eaten earlier.
“Tastes a little gamy,” Marriatha said, licking her fingers, “but you get used to it. You just have to learn to expect different tastes.”
Troy helped himself to another piece while Kalliana drank more filtered water. “It's delicious,” she said. “Thank you for sharing it with us.”
Troy raised his eyes to look at the large woman. “And thank you for not reporting us.”
“I don't care diddly about your secrets,” Marriatha told them. “There's nothing I want so badly I'm willing to do crazy things to get it. I have no idea what you did or what your motivations are or where you think you're going. That's up to you.”
Kalliana looked at her somewhat warily. “But I thought resource rover crews were supposed to report all the information they find.”
They spoke in low voices as the children began to play a game of tossing small pebbles into a circular target they had drawn in the dirt. The others moved about to clean up after the meal, adding more wood to the fire, making the tea and preparing to settle in for the night. Marriatha sat back in her canvas chair like a queen at court.
“Let me tell you something,” she said. “I used to believe in the free exchange of information, share and share alike. I figured the resources here were for everybody. We're all colonists. We're all in this together. We've got to make a go at this planet — right? But I was pretty naive.”
“No,” Kalliana said. “I don't think so at all. The truth is the truth. If everyone knows it, how could it be to anyone's advantage?”
“I'll tell you how,” Marriatha said. “Abraham Van Petersden was a good, honest landholder and satisfied with what he had. His holding was fairly small but it had a decent share of resources. He didn't play power games like the other landholders did. He just wanted to keep his own house and his own lands and trade what he had for what he didn't have.”
She leaned forward. The canvas chair groaned under her weight. Kalliana could see that the seat had been handmade, specially constructed to accommodate her wide hips. “This was, oh, fifteen or twenty years ago, I can't remember. On one of our runs in the rover, we discovered a pure vein of silica sand, fine and white and clean and just perfect for glassmaking. It was close to the surface on stable rock, would have been a breeze to mine it. Right nearby we also found some rocks rich with deposits of essential additives. A whole rainbow of metal oxides.”
“Additives for what?” Kalliana asked.
The woman driver raised her helpless gaze up to the darkening sky. “Thunder in heaven, for making stained glass!” she said. “That's how you get all those pretty colors. Iron oxide for red, cobalt oxide for blue, antimony oxide for a bright buttery yellow, manganese oxide for purple.”
Kalliana nodded wisely, thinking of the shards inlaid in the windows of Guild Headquarters. “But Van Petersden never had much of a glass industry,” she said. “Dokken Holding produces most of the glass we use—”
“Exactly!” Marriatha Bowditch said, holding up a ham-sized hand as if to scold her two listeners. “My rover discovered the resources for Van Petersden, and we were very excited when we made our report. Van Petersden was a little slow to exploit it. No hurry, he thought.
“But Franz Dokken was not quite as patient, and so he staged a bloody takeover. Abraham didn't know what hit him. So now Dokken Holding has a flourishing glass business ... and Van Petersden Holding no longer exists.”
Marriatha's humor-filled face now seemed weary and saddened. “Glass!” she said. “Can you believe all those lives lost, all that blood spilled — because we found some sand?”
One of the young women brought them each a cup of spicy tea brewed from a fresh pot. Marriatha sipped but said nothing for a long moment. “Now you see why I let you keep certain information to yourselves? It's just not worth the price.”
The large family gathered in the darkness and began to sing around the fire. Kalliana knew none of the words, and she wondered if Marriatha and her associates had made up the music, or if these were old songs from Earth. Troy tried to stumble along with the words, mimicking the chorus whenever he could decipher it.
They finally left the campfire burning low and returned to the resource rover. One of the young boys showed Kalliana and Troy to empty bunks. All the family members slept out in the open, snoring and stirring and paying no heed to the lack of privacy. Kalliana didn't notice either, and fell into a deep, oblivious sleep, oddly comfortable — as if she had found a new home.
CHAPTER 38
I
The cell on OrbLab 2 seemed cold and empty and hollow ... just the way Eli Strone preferred it. His former cellmate Troy Boren had seemed fuzzy and insubstantial somehow. And now the young man was gone, making Strone wonder if it had all been some kind of illusion.
Much of Strone's existence seemed like a dream, especially since the Truthsayer had tricked the world into thinking of him as a criminal who had dispensed justice to those who had not deserved it ... but Strone knew the truth. Truthsayers lied. They betrayed their own. They had poisoned their Guild Master Klaryus, then covered it up.
Eli Strone knew how to punish those who were dishonest ... those who had wronged him. What the Truthsayer had done didn't make sense, especially after knowing his reasons — but he was certain that one day the Guild would find its honor again and rectify everything. One day.
The universe was becoming a more and more incomprehensible place. His carefully ordered existence seemed to be eroding, dissolved away by ill-thinking human beings who put their own needs and wishes ahead of the purity of justice. Guilty. Innocent. Right. Wrong. There was a difference.
Strone had carefully cleaned Troy's side of the cell, not hesitating for a moment to use solvent and a damp rag to obliterate the lush painted landscape, the imaginary future Troy had drawn on the white wall. He had made his cellmate's bunk more neatly than Troy had left it when he had ... vanished. Escaped?
The opposite side of the room now sparkled, fresh and untouched, and Strone could disregard it. That wasn't his portion of the cell. It didn't belong to him. He had left it clean and new; the prospect of another cellmate didn't trouble him. Strone would simply disregard any newcomer and hope the other person would vanish, as Troy Boren had.
Strone had been able to see Troy's guilty conscience, the aftershadow of his sins — but the surprise of his escape attempt amazed Strone. He couldn't believe he had misjudged his cellmate so badly. The possibility of voluntarily leaving OrbLab 2 had never occurred to Strone until Troy's action had proved it to be possible. Almost possible.
The concept appalled Strone's sense of justice. Troy Boren had been found guilty by a Truthsayer and sentenced to his punishment. Escaping from a justly pronounced punishment was ... wrong. Others might have found the thought ludicrous that, after slaughtering twenty-three victims, Eli Strone might refuse to do something because it was “wrong.” But Strone had had plenty of reasons for his killings, and he had no legitimate reason for escaping from his legal — if unjust — punishment ... until recently.
Dieter Pan had meant to kill him by blowing out the airlock in the bacterial separation lab. Strone knew without a doubt that they had faked the loss of an entire shipment of Veritas, and he had been an expendable bystander in their scheme.
Who watches the watchmen?
Dieter had come to his cell, raging, hovering in the air like an angry wasp. “I know you've been receiving secret messages from someone, Strone! Messages, my boy! How can a convicted criminal on an isolated laboratory be receiving messages without me knowing about it? You're a smart one, you bastard, but I know something's up. You tell me who it is!”
Strone merely sat and blinked at him, not answering, letting the station exec feel like an idiot as time passed.
“Don't think I'm not watching you!” Dieter had said, finally giving up, and flitted out of Strone's cell.
Strone saw that he could never really trust those in control. The people on OrbLab 2 who had been given the task of overseeing punishments were themselves criminals — and that skewed the entire system. Trial and error, he thought. OrbLab 2 was wrong. The Truthsayers were wrong. Everyone was wrong — and it was time to do some housecleaning.
Yes, he had received help from his mysterious guardian angel. He didn't know the identity of the person who had recently sent him secret notes explaining what to do, how Strone could make things right, how he could be free again to distribute his personal justice.
Strone felt warm inside. It was a mission he would be proud to accomplish.
He lay back on his cot and stared at the smashed intercom on the wall, the ruined speaker that would have summoned him to his daily round of work. Strone's hands were bruised and would have been sore if he had allowed himself to feel them. He squeezed his hands, flexing the stiff knuckles.
He should have reported for morning duty several minutes ago, so the next step depended on Dieter Pan's impatience. Since the loss of Troy Boren, Strone judged that the station exec would be all the more anxious to get Veritas production back on track. Dieter Pan would immediately come to check any delays, full of bluster and insults. Small men had big mouths.
Strone let his eyes fall closed. He breathed deeply, humming a long monotonous note that was a close approximation to the tone from his single-stringed instrument. He hummed again....
He didn't have long to wait. The door whisked open, and Dieter Pan floated outside with two guards, drifting gradually to the deck, then hopping back up to maintain his illusion of flying. “Strone, where have you been, naughty boy?”
“Here,” Strone said, sitting up slowly on his bunk. He curled the toes on his bare feet and, moving with methodical precision, swiveled himself off the bed.
“You were supposed to report twenty minutes ago. Didn't you hear the intercom?”
Strone looked meaningfully at the crater hammered into the wall. “No.”
The sol-pols looked at the damage. One whistled. Dieter Pan scowled. “A little bit of a temper tantrum there, eh boy?” he said. “Couldn't you soothe yourself by playing your little instrument?”
“It's broken too,” Strone said. On the floor beside his bunk lay the smashed instrument, its body and neck shattered in a jumbled pile.
Dieter Pan looked at the wreckage and made a low growling sound in his throat. “Well, you're not getting another one,” he snapped. “You'll just have to learn to whistle or something.”
“I'll manage,” Strone said calmly.
“Damned right.” Dieter clapped his hands. “Enough of this. Come on, there's work to do. It's time to go.”
Eli Strone agreed fully. It was indeed time to go.
II
As they led him up to the second level and toward the sterile chambers of the laboratory ring, Strone followed, biding his time, choosing the right moment, mentally replaying the instructions he had been given. He knew exactly the steps to follow, though there seemed to be room to ... improvise and enhance the moment.
Dieter Pan flitted within arm's reach, hopping along and drifting down the corridor. The two sol-pols stomped with each step, their heavy mag-boots anchoring them to the floor for greater stability. That would be their downfall.
As the station exec bounced along like a confident idiot and the sol-pol guards walked behind him, Strone decided not to wait any longer.
While Dieter Pan had his back turned, Strone slipped a hand carefully into the front pocket of his jumpsuit. His bare feet tingled on the cold metal floor. He tensed. The sol-pol guards noticed nothing, nor could they see his hand in his pocket.
He slipped out the long wire he had taken from his wrecked string instrument, wrapping the ends around his hands to form a nearly invisible loop.
As Dieter Pan propelled himself into the air again with another hop, Strone pushed his foot hard against the floor, jumping forward and bringing his arms around. In a single fluid motion he snagged the loop of wire around the station exec's throat and crossed the ends behind his neck.
Before the sol-pols could react, Strone yanked outward with all the strength in his arms and shoulders, drawing the thin garrote straight through Dieter Pan's throat, slicing his skin, crushing his windpipe, and embedding itself deep within the larynx. Blood sprayed in a scarlet fan into the air, where it congealed into droplets that hung like slow-moving rain.
