Satan's Forge (Star Sojourner Book 5) (4 page)

I had to escape, I knew, while I waited for Joe Hatch and the World Alliance troops to arrive. I wiped sweat from my forehead as I lay on my cot in the cell and breathed the smell of moldy cement. They had shut off the air conditioning and meals now consisted of fried dough balls with shreds of meat. Punishment fare, Azut called it. I think I missed the coffee most.

I was becoming friends with Azut, who brought my meals. It turned out he was a young tag, brash and lacking compassion, like the young of many races, including Terrans. Compassion doesn't easily take root without older members to open young minds to the oneness of their race. Empathy comes later, and is an even rarer bird.

I hated to use Azut in my escape plan, but Boss Slade had kept me in this cell for two days, and I had no idea what plans he was devising for my fate. He might have me whipped, or executed, or both. I'd tried a mind probe, but he was a sensitive, and very aware that I was probing. His thought had come back to me:
Keep it up, Terran, and I'll hang you by your thumbs.
Not conducive to a quiet state of mind. It was time to get out.

I showered, shaved, and vibed my clothes in preparation for days and nights I might spend in some hideout while I waited for Joe. Things were not going smoothly for him, or he would have been here by now.

I heard Azut's claws click along the stone hallway. “Slop's on!” he called.

I swung off the cot. Here we go. “Thanks, croc face. What is it this time, baked salt crust?”

He chuckled and watched as I uncovered the tray and picked up yet another fried dough ball with shreds of dangling meat, and nibbled on it. “Oh, yum,” I said. “Food for the gods. So when's your tour of duty up?”

“In an Altairian month. We can't wait to leave this pritcull rock!”

“We?”

“My blood brother is a tower guard. We took the jobs so we could be together. Something a subspecies wouldn't understand.”

I knew he was goading me, so I just shrugged. “Whatever you say, overseer of the benign slave trade. Heading back to Altair?”

“The ship has to make an official stop on Alpha first.” He watched me eat the ball. “Then it's off to Altair. How does that thing taste to a subspecies?”

“Like shit.”

I'd just bet they had to make an official stop, to consult with their company's bosses about Lithium Love Mine's profit margins.

Azut loved to talk about his friends in Altair's ponds and their night dives for flappas and timgratts that burrowed beneath the bottom mud. He reveled in describing the campfires on the beach after the hunt and the fresh meat of their catch as they laughed and related their experiences. Later, they would bring some reserved meat to the females in exchange for sexual favors. I chuckled. Life must be good in the swamp ponds of Altair.

I nibbled on a dough ball. “Then it's back to the ponds?”

He sat down and grinned. “We can't wait.”

With his mind now in a relaxed state, I began to spin a red coil of tel power. I extended the half-eaten dough through the bars. “Want to try some?”

He leaned back and shook his head.

I forced the red coil to grow and spin faster. This would not be a mere mindlink. It would be a deep penetration, an overpowering of his will with mine. And it would leave me with a headache. It always did.

I imaged a picture of ponds under his planet's night sky, from a holo cube of Altair I'd once seen. Ragged black clouds raced along the tumultuous gray sky. Sparse, ruddy-leafed vegetation flattened in a wind that keened though raw pinnacles, tortured down from plateaus by the violent microclimate. Sudden fierce storms scoured the land's skin and sent it rushing into surrounding ponds.

I spun the coil faster, hotter, forced it to grow while brain cells burned out, until it spun like a small tornado, there behind my eyes.

“Are you going to eat –” Azut started as I focused on his forehead and threw the coil.

His head snapped back as though he'd been shot. His wide mouth opened.

I sent the coil spinning deep into his brain, twisting his thoughts into my design.
You slip into the satin of inviting water,
I sent.

His tail began to sway. His eyes dulled.

There in green gloom you sink to glossy mud and move, weightless, searching, brushing aside empty shells, lifting mud into little clouds that hang above the mounds. Grasp your weapon, Azut! There are flappa beneath you.

He unholstered his stingler and moved his head in a rhythmic motion, as though swimming.

That big mound there!
I sent.
A flappa hides from predators. Swim to it, Azut. It is a fat one!

He stood up.

This way.
I motioned to the cell door.
Here he is!

He walked there.

I pointed to the lock.
Aim your weapon and fire before the flappa darts away."

He aimed his stingler.

Now shoot him, Azut. Here is much fresh meat. Shoot!

I glanced at the automated glass switch with the camera behind it. Was anybody watching?

He extended the gun and blasted the lock with a hot beam.

You got him! A big one,
I sent as I went through the broken door, grabbed the gun from his limp hand and stuffed it behind my waistband as I ran down the hallway.

Sirens wailed.

“Help me put him in the bug bag,” Azut called. “He's too big!”

“Right. In a minute.”

I dragged the door open, and sprinted toward the stables, hoping they were expecting me to try for a vehicle. But a horse can go forever on grass. A vehicle needs recharging. Not always easy when you're hiding out under something.

I grabbed a saddlebag and a rolled blanket from the tack room and threw a saddle over Toby's back, cinched it and slipped a halter over his head. Lights swung across the grounds and voices called to each other as I threw the saddlebags over my shoulder, held onto the blanket and mounted in the barn.

“Stop right there!” an Altairian guard said from the door, his weapon drawn.

“OK. Don't shoot!” I raised my left arm.

“The other one too,” he ordered.

“OK!” I hated to do it, but I slipped the beam gun out from my waistband under the rolled blanket and fired through the blanket.

The guard screamed. Flames rose from the burn hole in his chest. He held onto the door, slid down, then rolled to the floor and was still. Wisps of smoke rose from his torn chest. “Go with Great Mind,” I said as I rode past his body and threw the flaming blanket into the trough. No time to drag the body inside the barn. The guards would be heading here anyway to check for missing horses.

“Stay in your hovel!” a mounted guard shouted to a Cleocean who had come out. I heard him snap his whip.

Mounted, and foot guards, scoured the lit grounds as I turned my frightened horse into a dark passageway between piled boxes and rode low in the saddle.

As I'd hoped, the guards were looking for me in the vehicle yard. I cantered Toby into the dark recesses of the camp and to the edge of the fence, where I reined in. Chances were good that the fence was electrified. I needed something… There! A great-boled tree in the woods just beyond the fence that leaned inward. I held the stingler high over the fence and sliced the trunk as low as I could. I backed Toby quickly as the tree creaked and crashed down across the sparking fence.

Behind me, shouts, and the whine of engines, grew louder as guards searched.

“I hope you're a jumper,” I told Toby and put him into a canter away from the fence. At about twenty yards I turned him, leaned forward in the saddle and tapped his sides with my boots. He sprang ahead and galloped toward the fence. Too fast! I pulled him back to a canter and lifted in the saddle as he leaped into the air. He easily cleared the downed fence and we cantered into a dark woods of thick-trunked trees and twists of braided vegetation.

I heard vehicles idling behind me, then a crash as one broke through the fence. This was too close!

“C'mon, Toby.” I put him into a gallop between the trees. Horses have good night vision, but I guess he was going too fast. Suddenly I was torn from the saddle and found myself rolling over plants. “What the hell!” I got quickly to my feet. Toby grunted. I heard his hoofs kick plants out by the roots.

"Oh, no!'

I ran to him where he lay beside a tree, his muzzle torn, one eye gone. “Toby! No.” I fell to my knees by his side. His grunts were horrible to hear. His sides heaved in agony. “Toby.” I stroked his neck.

He lifted his head.

I stood up and took out my stingler. Headlights bounced through the woods as vehicles approached, blinking between trees.

I wiped tears and aimed carefully between Toby's good eye and the bloody hollow of the ripped one. “I'm sorry,” I said and fired.

His body jerked and he lay still.

“Go with Great Mind.”

I felt his kwaii struggle out of his body, but I had no time to stay and help him into geth state. “Take care of him, Great Mind,” I prayed and sprinted deeper into the woods.

The vehicles and mounted guards were closing.

I climbed a tree with heavy branches and up into its leafy crown where trees formed a canopy above the forest floor.

I crawled onto a twist of branches that would support me and wiped tears and sweat as I sat down. Below me, shouts, and headlights that jumped from trunk to trunk. They continued on, as I hoped they would. I lowered my head and sobbed. Toby had given me everything he had to give. He had relied on me to guide him. And I had gotten him killed.

My dead sister Ginny's face suddenly took form behind my closed eyes, her mouth open, calling to me, her hand outstretched as she clung to a boulder after I flipped the helicub and crashed on a Rocky Mountain peak where I had no right to go with the small craft. But I was young and reckless, and Ginny paid with her life. I should have died instead of her. I felt the handle of the stingler, behind my waistband. We all have the means of freeing ourselves from emotional prisons. I'd been told by Star Speaker and Spirit that life and death were in the hands of Great Mind and He did not take kindly to suicide.

I sighed and held a branch as I stood up to get a better view of my surroundings. It was all a great blackness of forest, with the stars and moons hidden beyond the canopy.

When the guards were gone into the woods ahead, I slid carefully down the trunk and walked north, I think it was, away from the mining camp. If I could reach a clearing on high ground, perhaps I could see the lights of Wydemont Creek.

I began to walk uphill. Surrounded by the indifference of dark woods, I listened to the snuffling and growls of animals concerned with their own lives. The death of Toby hung like a stone on my spirit. The cosmic void, as someone had called this feeling that expressed itself as an ache in my stomach, opened like a fresh wound. I had myself now, and only myself. “Joe! Where the hell are you?”

From a cliff in a high clearing, with a scroll of stars overhead, I watched a diamond pool of lights to the northeast. Wydemont Creek, I hoped, and walked in that direction, or some other small town. But Dannie had been taken to Wydemont.

New Lithnia had been discovered and colonized a mere hundred years ago, according to Alpha's holo cubes. No time yet for big cities. And no competing alien races with cultures to worry about. With only two species, a reptilian form and a mammalian, that had opposed thumbs and a genius for using tools and weapons made from branches with ends chewed to a point, the world belonged to Homo Sapiens and other aliens. It was rich in precious lithium, and that brought the colonists like the proverbial bees to honey.

I walked for the better part of the night, using the cover of darkness as Love Mine hovairs cruised the skies in search of me. Their infras would pick up nocturnal animals on the hunt, so I wasn't too worried about being singled out.

I had my stingler for protection against any large predators, and before morning I found a stream where I could drink. The water was liquid ice and I had to drink slowly.

I huddled under a ledge as a soft patter of rain polished leaves to a blue shine. Moisture heightened the smells of low twists of vegetation and the horny trunks of great-boled trees. A sweet perfume of nature. Bird-like creatures chirped from trees, awaiting, I think, the end of rain before setting out to forage.

The red New Lithnia sun raised its head from a pillow of ivory hills to the east and crowned the somber clouds with rims of fire.

I had always had a longing, somewhere in the back of my mind, to live alone in a forgotten land that supplied me with basic creature needs. But it was more a fantasy, a desire to live without stress. I would have to give up too much to make it reality, especially my little girl, Lisa.

I laid down and closed my eyes. The world was too much with me. “And I have promises to keep,” I mumbled and fell asleep.

I awoke to a reverberating whine that is rarely, if ever, found in nature. A silver hovair with open pipes, as they used to say, hung in the air like a great wasp, false wings flapping. Metal eyes blinking. A metallic stinger protruded from its tail. Its deafening whine was calculated to attract attention and stir the dead into thinking Judgment Day had arrived.

I unholstered my stingler as the craft dropped to eye level. A teenaged Terran boy with braided hair that stuck out like spikes from around his face popped his head out of the upper hatch. “Hey, tag, you need a lift?”

I stood up and brushed myself off. “Where you heading?”

“Wydemont Creek. Where else? School day. Fool day.”

“OK.” I smiled. One of those ironies in life that he had spotted me instead of a Love Mine hovair. I wasn't arguing with whatever gods may be.

I walked toward the craft as he bounced it to the ground. A cacophonous blast of music sprang from the cabin.

I climbed inside. There were three more Terran teenagers, a girl and two boys, I think. The closest one was dressed like Red Death, hooded in crimson, with fake pustules plastered to his face. Next to him, a black-cowled figure sported a mirror carved into a face. When you looked at him, you saw your own features, distorted and white as death. Next to him was a silver ballerina that I could hardly see and wasn't interested in examining much closer.

I nodded to the trio and they squeezed over to give me room.

“Can you lower the tunes?” I shouted as the driver tore the craft skyward at a ninety-degree angle.

"What? he yelled.

“You're going to flip it!” I shouted and hung on.

“What?” he called again.

Suffice it to say that the ride to Wydemont Creek was not just white-knuckled, it was forgot-to-blink-or-breathe.

We bounced down in a field west of town. Other vehicles were gathering around a high, white building that was a replica of the Taj Mahal, complete with reflecting pool. I felt dizzy as I got out and had to hold onto a strut to steady myself.

The kids bounced out of the craft, laughing.

“Thanks, Zombie Bones,” one told the driver who, I realized, was dressed in skin tights that depicted the male human skeleton with a large, detailed penis. His chalk-white makeup was rimmed with red circles around his eyes and mouth.

“Yeah…thanks, Zombie Bones,” I said. “Fun ride. Fun group.”

He slapped my back. “What's life without a smidgen of danger, right, troll?”

I just nodded.

The painted silver ballerina, flat-chested and hairy-armed, and with the shadow of a beard, grabbed my chin and shook it. “You're so cute!” he said in falsetto, planted a kiss on my lips and made a grab for my crotch. I intercepted his hand and twisted his wrist. “Try that again, Swan Lake,” I told him, and you'll have a crotch that matches your girlie outfit."

He laughed and skipped away, his tutu bouncing.

When the dizziness passed, I walked toward town through a suburb. The houses were all three-story, built of real stone and logs, with Earth landscaping, flowing fountains, and rows of vehicles in every driveway

Where were they getting the creds for this, I wondered, and didn't like the answer that came up. Revenue from the mines. You let us use slave labor, we pay taxes that will keep you in baubles. What a fucked-up lifestyle, to live on the backs of slaves who were worked to death. Did these people know the conditions at the mines? Did they want to know? They had sold their souls for gewgaws. I wondered if Dannie worked in one of the houses, doing menial jobs that service 'bots couldn't handle?

A couple dressed in the latest Earth fashion of shiny, flared pants and white silk Buccaneer shirts, laughed as they walked an indigenous reptilian pet on a diamond-studded leash with a collar to match.

As the couple strolled by, the woman winked at me. I continued down the street toward town. My stomach was grumbling. So was I.

Wydemont Creek was a replica of old Las Vegas on Earth. Casinos lined both sides of the wide street.
That figures,
I thought.
Fun and games for all.

A night-time town that slept the day away. Street sweepers rolled down the wide boulevard, sucking up the by-products of last night's happy time. A tag strolled to a store with bars across the plate-glass window and a sign above that read: White Peak Hunting Outfitters. Supplies For All Your Hunting Needs. He unlocked the door and went inside.

I wondered what they hunted. They couldn't eat the alien animals of New Lithnia. I sighed. Probably just their heads to take back home and mount proudly on their den walls.

The casinos, too, were replicas of Las Vegas casinos. A crowd of Replicas of replicas. A short Eiffel Tower with dimmed lights elbowed the Greek Parthenon. But don't get too close. These Greek sculptures lacked the detail and soaring beauty of the real thing. And there was the Roman Forum, where dancing girls replaced the inclinations toward democracy. Beside it, the white walls of the domed American Capital Building, a casino where, for a few creds, you could buy the House. Or the Senate, too, for that matter.

I headed for the Egyptian Labyrinth. Flashing overhead lights announced: Twelve Great Courts: Casino Games. Restaurants. Rooms. Shops. Take in a Nudie Show. See the Tombs of the Pharaohs. Ride an Egyptian camel. See the Original Rosetta Stone. Watch Moses Part the Red Sea. Enter The Tombs and Touch a real Mummy. Feed a Nile Crocodile. See Our Snake Charmer Charm a King Cobra.
An Egyptian motif for all tastes
, I thought as I entered the grand structure. An open men's shop had a nice array of summer shirts. I bought a royal blue pullover web shirt that would breathe in this heat. Dannie had been taken away in my stretched-out black turtleneck.
Poor kid,
I thought as I slipped on the shirt and tied my jacket around my waist. “Where was she now?”

The Court of Restaurants offered an extensive Terran menu, but at outrageous prices. Well, I had a packed cred count from services performed for Alpha. I ordered my favorite: mock steak, potatoes swimming in butter, salad, and mud pie. I'd have to rent a motel room and wait for Joe and the Alliance forces to arrive.

Spirit?

Silence.

Yo, Spirit? Are you out there? Spirit!

Yes. Of course. Where else would I be but at your beck and call? I'm always out here. Do you think I don't have a life, as you Terrans are so fond of saying? I'm still evolving my world, human.

Just want to ask you a question.

There are entire niches yet to be occupied by daughter species, and the air-breathing ocean fishes are too far from lakes to seed them with life. My forests are not yet ecologically balanced. Yet you call on me as though I were your personal servant! Look at that. A crustacean species that thinks it can climb trees and breathe air.

Uh. Just wanted to know. Did you get the message to Lisa about the slave mine? That's all.

I did. First she thought I was playing some human child's game! She wanted me to guess her age.

Oh. She's six years old.

Good for her. Then she wanted to tell me about her horse Ginger.

Yeah. Well…the message?

Finally she crossed her little heart and said hope to die and she would tell grandpa what you said.

You think she did?

I waited and heard her relay the message to your Joseph Hatch of Earth. Will there be anything else you require before I return to my trifling work of putting the finishing touches on planet Halcyon?

No. No. Spirit?

Yes!

Thank you.

You're welcome!

He broke the link.

The meal was good, though not worth the exorbitant creds. I took a hotel room in the Courts, overlooking the ocean.

From the balcony, I watched white sea birds swoop down on small fish for their dinner. A school of gray-backed sea mammals plowed by, flinging spume as they leaped. My heart leaped up with them. From offshore came the bark of Earth transplanted sea lions as they basked on rocks. I located a gentle tapping as sea otters, another Earth transplant, broke shells on their bellies.

Long waves that had originated from some distant windy clime, rolled in and cracked themselves on offshore boulders, sending their white, broken bodies crashing into the pink sky. I could almost hear the strains of “The Storm at Sea,” from
Scheherazade,
as background to nature's untamed vitality. I breathed the salt-sprinkled air. What a symphony of wilderness lay before my eyes.

And then I saw the two Altairian mine guards strolling on the street below.
Uh oh.
I backed into the room. So they were accepted members of Wydemont? Well, why not? Their bosses paid the bills. I made sure my door was locked. From now on I would only venture out at night.

I lay down on the bed, adjusted the softness, and turned on a wall holo that surrounded me with ocean scenes. Soothed by wild nature, I drifted into a world where I could breathe underwater in green mansions.

* * *

I waited until dark to buy a take-out meal, and ate it on the deserted town pier. I chewed a buttermilk doughnut for dessert and leaned on the guardrail to watch lights from casinos break into colored streamers in the bay.

A thump behind me.

A diver's bug bag full of crustaceans lay on the pier. Water pooled around it.

Where'd that come from?
I thought and looked around the empty pier. I walked over and picked up the bag to examine it. It was heavy with flapping, thick-bodied crustaceans. Their feelers and short claws clung to the net bag.

“Drop the bug bag, troll!” a woman's voice called.

I put it down gently with its living cargo as a diver climbed onto the pier, her fins hooked to her weight belt. She braced her legs and yanked out her dive knife from a sheath. I saw the broad, serrated blade glint in an overhead light.

“I was just curious,” I said. I could hardly make her out in the dark.

“Curiosity about somebody else's crusties can buy you a ride in an ambulance.”

“OK.” I backed up as she scooped up the bag.

“Are you a damn tourist?”

A tourist. That sounded like a good idea. “Yeah. Just arrived from Earth.”

“Tourists don't know nothing about the rules.”

I shrugged. “I can learn.”

“You don't touch a diver's bug bag, troll.” She waved the knife at me. “And you don't pull up somebody else's crusty pots in the bay. Those are the two things that can earn you an early grave. Some of the fishers are sitting up there on the hills with rifles, protecting their pots.”

“OK.” I smirked. “I think I've got it.”

I followed her as she walked under the light and knelt beside the bag.

“I've got some six pounders in here.” She wiped her dripping face and shrugged out of her tank. “On a cloudy night like this, the bugs don't see you coming.” A large crusty tried to scurry out. She shoved him back inside.

I bit my lip. Mock meat is more to my taste than eating living animals. But who was I to judge? “They bring a good price?”

She nodded. “The restaurants.” She picked up a large crusty by his carapace and turned him over. “See? No eggs.” The creature tried to reach her hand with short claws, but couldn't. “I never take any with eggs. That's my code.”

I wondered how she reconciled it with a town code that encouraged slavery.

“It's illegal, anyway.” She sniffed and ran an arm across her nose. “Though I know some trolls who would scrape them off.” She put the crusty back into the bag and snapped it shut. “I might take tomorrow off.” She glanced up at me and smiled, then stood and raked me with a scrutinizing look from dark, narrowed eyes that had an alluring slant.

“Looking for anything special?” I asked her.

“Just checking out the scenery.”

“See something you like?”

She smirked. “Some pretty fine real estate. You dive, tag?”

“I do.”

“Got gear?”

“Back on Earth.”

“I can set you up. I've got extras of everything. You get to keep the crusties you catch.”