Chains of Redemption (6 page)

The foreman laughed. "Your husband has the worms."

"Yes."

He looked at her lustfully then. "Tell you what, sugar, next time you need it you come on over to ole Shlerb's house and I'll give it to you. Give it to you real good. Unless you're just into the feel of all those little worms wiggling in his skin, up against yours. Who knows? Come to think of it that might be fun." He walked away laughing.

Laugh while you still can, fatso
, Jessica thought.

That was their real job. To make sure no happiness could flourish here. He had felt her happiness and had immediately tried to crush it. They always did that. She'd watched them do it to dozens of other people and it really hadn't dawned on her just what they were doing until they were doing it to her just now. She realized that she'd learned a lot of things this way.

As long as the bad stuff isn't happening to you, you really don't have any compassion for the people it is happening to. As long as life was giving her everything that she could realistically get from it, it never dawned on her to consider what might be happening to others, what she might be doing to them.

That was the big difference between her and RJ. RJ hadn't needed to be the one living in filth without hope to feel others' pain. She had willingly left comfort and security to fight a battle that wasn't even hers. Because RJ was capable of feeling other people's pain, not because she was an empath, but because she was a human being and their suffering was her suffering. She understood their complaints without even hearing them. She took on the Reliance because she knew what they were doing to the people was wrong. No other reason.

Not for glory, not for wealth, not for power, just because she didn't like how they treated people.

Jessica hadn't seen that evil until they had turned it on her. It wasn't important till the problem became her problem. Until the Reliance's completely corrupt and unjust system had decided to come after her because she had done the best she could do to please them and had failed due to circumstances beyond her control. The same reason she had personally signed the orders to have entire villages eradicated, because they had failed to earn their keep due to circumstances beyond their control.

She thought she'd found enlightenment, but what had she really learned? Nothing. Because she hadn't realized till that sleaze-bag had stolen her own happiness what they were doing to everybody else.

They wanted to totally obliterate any joy, any hope these people might find. Because as long as you lived your life in total despair you began to believe that you didn't deserve and certainly shouldn't expect anything better. You did your day's work, spent all your money at the government store, went home with your meager supplies and didn't make waves because while you were sure that nothing could get any better, you knew for a fact that it could get a hell of a lot worse.

She still had so much to learn about everything.

"Hey, One-eye, is that as fast as you can work?" the foreman chided.

Like he's picking on me because I'm the only one who looks any different to him. RJ always beat me because she was better than me; she was better than me because she noticed everything, and she noticed everything because she actually cared. She actually wanted to fix things. Not just for herself, but for everybody. She was driven to take down the Reliance. She knew it wasn't going to be easy, so she made plans. And how did she come to make those plans? How did she launch one successful campaign after another? Because she looked at everything from every different angle. Not just what was obviously important, but all the little things, the details. She analyzed everything.

Jessica looked at the foreman with a slitted eye, watching him without him noticing. What did she really know about him? He had helped to make her life a living tormentuous hell for three years and what did she really know about him? She'd never even thought about him before. He was like the bugs, the heat, the humidity and the stench. He was here, she was here, and she had to be here, so she had to tolerate him.

Now she studied him, going over all those past conversations, which her totally retentive memory could call up at will, and started to put together a picture of who this guy really was.

First, he was the enemy. Second, he was a bully who enjoyed the power he wielded in his position as foreman. Third, he had been stationed on Pete, so he had either done something unforgivably wrong in the eyes of his superiors, or he wasn't
smart
enough to be
important
enough to move up in the ranks
high
enough so that he couldn't be given a shit assignment. Putting together every conversation she had with him, Jessica was thinking it was probably the latter. If that was the case, what did that say? That four, he was slow-witted and probably not very ambitious.

Five, he was lusty, and because of his looks and foul odor probably only got sex when he took it—which she imagined he did every chance he got, without giving his victims a second thought. So six, he wasn't deserving of any compassion or consideration, since he had hurt others just because he could.

Seven, he would be easy to use to get what she needed when the time came. Because an enemy as stupid, unambitious, and instinct-motivated as Shlerb could easily be turned into an unwitting ally, and then disposed of when he was no longer necessary.

Mickey walked the wall of the old prison and looked out at the mainland, which was no longer barren and empty. There were now thousands of people mixed with the goats there.

Just a few short months ago they had discussed what should be done concerning the ever-growing goat population grazing, actually overgrazing, what had once been Alsterase. Now that was no problem. The Beta 4 humanoids were eating the goats as fast as they could hunt them down.

Trucks arrived daily with food and building supplies. From the island he could see the new construction now dotting the mainland. He swore that if he concentrated when the wind blew just right he could hear the hammers and saws as the city took shape.

The Beta 4 humanoids were hardworking and strong. What was more, they seemed to absorb information like a sponge. They only had to be shown something once to be able to copy the action.

They seemed to be truly happy with their new home. He never heard one of them say they wished to return to their homeworld. When Mickey had expressed that he found this curious, Gerald had explained to him that their home world was barely habitable.

After the initial panic of setting the process in motion, the relocation of the aliens and the rebuilding of Alsterase was more or less running itself. Which was a good thing because Mickey just couldn't deal with any of it right now.

He was barely able to carry out the functions necessary for his own survival, much less function as leader of a new nation. Fortunately, his close aides had stepped in to take over during this time. The supercomputer helped to make the temporary transfer of power unnoticeable.

Everyone seemed to be sure that at any minute he would step up and take over again.

Mickey wasn't quite as sure.

He was completely consumed with his grief, and he was really having a hard time remembering what they were all fighting for at all. First Whitey and Sandra and everyone else who had died in the raid on Alsterase, and now RJ, Levits, Poley and Topaz were lost forever to the all-consuming void of space. All dead.

For what? Freedom. It hardly seemed worth it. What good was freedom without the people you loved to enjoy it with you?

He remembered the long endless weeks that RJ herself had walked this very wall, looking at the same strip of land, and he now realized most probably asking herself the same questions he was now asking. What did it—any of it—matter? Life was short, fleeting, and what real difference could anyone, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people make? In the end everyone died, even the best, the strongest, even those specifically built and fashioned not to do so succumbed to the nothingness of death.

Some people believed in an afterlife. A place where people hung out with some sort of god or gods, and relished in the rewards that had eluded them in life. If they were horrible people they went to a place where they were tortured 24/7 and paid for the sins they had committed in life.

Mickey believed in neither place. Neither made sense to him. If they were going to live forever, then they must have always been, and if they had always been, then where had they been before? And why didn't he remember it? Why would a benevolent god waste so much energy punishing people for all eternity? Besides, if you were always being punished, wouldn't it eventually become old hat? On the four hundred and eighty second time they shoved a red hot poker up your ass, didn't you just shrug and say, "You know, it just isn't that bad anymore." Pain was caused from the body's desire not to die. Once you knew you were going to live forever even pain must eventually lose its edge.

The Reliance had—according to Topaz—used and then tried to eradicate such belief systems, but had never truly succeeded, because the more ignorant the people were the easier it was for them to believe in such utter crap. The worse their lot in life was, the more they desperately wanted to believe that there would be something better for them and worse for their oppressors in some afterlife.

People suffered—he guessed they always had—from the delusion that somehow life was fair. Since it obviously wasn't, they had made up something so that they could pretend that it was.
I ain't got shit now, and my life sucks, but by god when I die . . .

It would be nice to be that ignorant. Comforting to think that there was some reward in a world after you died, but Mickey couldn't make himself believe that his friends were anywhere but floating as particles in space.

Mickey wanted desperately for things to be fair, but knew they weren't. He knew now that this was what had been bothering RJ as she walked this wall. She had known that they were all gone. Truly and forever gone. Not someplace waiting for her to get there.

Mickey remembered wishing that RJ would just snap out of it, become herself again. Quit brooding and just come back to the land of the living.

He imagined that was what Diana and the others were wishing he would do now.

He realized only now that it wasn't really something you could control. Grief wasn't just losing the people you cared about. It was having a little piece of yourself ripped away from you. It was waking up in the morning feeling like a piece of you was missing, that was lost forever. Your soul was torn apart. You felt shredded and barely alive, and yet everyone was demanding that you put yourself back together and get back to work.

For your own good.

A lot depended on him. Part of him knew that he owed it to his dead comrades to keep their dream alive, but a larger and louder part screamed,
This is what killed them! Do you really want to keep it alive and watch it kill still more people you love, maybe even Diana? Do you want to die for this cause?

Diana walked out then. She didn't talk to him, just sat on a piece of wall and watched. He wanted to talk to her, to at least acknowledge that he knew that she was there, but found that even trying to find words was impossible. It was then that he realized that he was crying, sobbing in fact. He wondered how long he had been doing so, and tried to stop. He looked up at Diana and saw that there were tears in her eyes, too.

"I . . . I'm sorry," he said.

She got up, walked over to him, knelt down and hugged him. He hugged her back, probably holding her too tightly but if she cared she didn't say so.

"I love you, Mickey."

He cried harder. "I love you, too. I just . . . I can't take this."

"I know . . . It's been hard for everyone, but I know it's much worse for you."

"RJ . . ." His voice broke and he swallowed hard before continuing. "She was the first person who ever gave a damn about me. She risked her life for me, saved me; she made me the man I am today. Hell, I could hardly talk."

"I know."

"They were the only family I've ever known. Now they're all gone."

"I want to say something. Something wonderful and profound that will make all your pain go away, because I can't stand to see you hurting. But what could I . . . what could anyone say? What could we do? Nothing," Diana said in a soft voice. A voice filled with pain and with love.

And suddenly his pain just wasn't as sharp.

She didn't realize that she had just said those very words that she was so sure she didn't have. He couldn't even have repeated what she had said that had started to fill the empty spot in him. Maybe it was just the sudden realization that everyone wasn't gone. He was here and Diana was here, and they had to fight the Reliance. They couldn't give in now, because in the Reliance neither he nor Diana was considered worthy of food, water or even air. He was a midget, not even three feet tall. Diana had a deformed foot, and that was all the reason the Reliance needed to kill them.

That's what they were fighting. That was why you risked your life and the lives of those you cared about, because by giving in to the Reliance you weren't saving yourself or anyone else. You were just condemning them to a different kind of death. One where they didn't die fighting, they died because they didn't fight. They died because they didn't fit the Reliance's needs so they hunted them down, lined them up and shot them.