Chains of Freedom (7 page)

RJ was momentarily taken aback; then she was mad."I can stop the humming, but I can't stop the arm jerking. I wish I could. It's a side effect of battle fatigue. Unless I concentrate on it, it jerks. Not enough to be debilitating, just enough to be annoying."

Now David felt like a real ass. "I . . . I'm sorry," he stammered. "It's just that . . . well, do you have to be so damned . . . happy?"

"I'm sorry, David; in future, I will try to be more morose." With that said, she started right back humming again.

It wouldn't have been so bad if she could carry a tune, but she couldn't have carried a tune in a bucket.

"Hum hum hum hum huuum huum hum hummm."

He couldn't take it any longer. Two hours of RJ's offensive humming was enough to drive a man to suicide.

"Shut up!" David screamed at the top of his lungs.

RJ clicked her tongue. "My, my. Are we feeling a bit testy today? Humm?" She smiled pleasantly. She was infuriating.

"You are without a doubt the worst hummer I've ever heard in my life. In fact, I've blown farts that were better," David said truthfully. To his surprise, RJ seemed upset by his criticism.

"Yes, well, there's not much chance to hear music standing in mud up to your neck or crawling through a jungle on your belly on some plague-infested outer world," she hissed.

David was intrigued. It suddenly dawned on him just how much RJ must know. She had the answer to every question he had ever asked about the Reliance. She had told him that she had fought on the outer worlds, but he had never realized just what the meant till now. RJ had traveled through space in a spaceship. She'd walked on other worlds, come face-to-face with aliens.

"Tell me about the outer worlds." His voice was as eager as a child's.

RJ hesitated only for a moment. No one had ever really been interested in where she'd been or all that she had seen, and she found herself willingly spouting all she remembered of the outer worlds. She told him of Trinidad, the planet with five inhabitable moons. Of Ufora, the jungle world where the rivers could change daily, and where new plants could spring up in a single day, making it impossible to follow the same trail twice or to locate a missing man. She told him of Urta, Deaka and Sheows and the ultra-modern cities Earth-descended humans had built there. She did her best to explain about their seasons and their different plant and animal life. She even explained the customs and fashions of the native intelligent life forms which had been encountered on two of Trinidad's moons.

"They believe that these moons were once one planet, and that it was split in two. That's how they explain that the same primitive being wound up on two different worlds. Their cultures are identical. Their language is even almost the same. From what the archaeologists can dig up, both cultures are the same age. So, it's a sure bet that no one transplanted them from one moon to the other. The experts maintain that the two moons were once one planet that split somehow. I find that difficult to believe, however. The likelihood of anyone's surviving such a cataclysmic event is pretty slim."

"So, how do you explain it?" David asked curiously.

"I don't," RJ said with a broad smile. "What's the point? They exist as they are. The Ingits don't ask why, so why should we?"

She spoke on, telling him about Deakard, the planet of their alien enemies. The Aliens called themselves Argys, meaning "Peoples of the Red Star." They held four planets called Arg, Varg, Garg, and Farg. She explained to him that the Reliance didn't want Deakard, and that the Argys didn't want Earth.

"See, they're in the same spot we're in. They've used up all their home planet's resources. Deakard isn't even fit to farm. We don't have any metal ore left, no petroleum products, nothing of real value as far the Reliance is concerned, but we still have soil and air. Deakard doesn't even have that. They manufacture their own air, and grow all their produce on another planet, importing all their food. On Earth, we may import metals and plastics, but we
ex
port wool, cotton and wood products. Not to mention the occasional shipment of meats and vegetables that can't be grown on the outer worlds. Deakard sucks its worlds dry."

"So why do they stay there, why don't they move to their other worlds?" David asked.

"For the same reason a good share of the Reliance bigshots stay on Earth. They're safe on Deakard, just like we're safe on Earth. Because they've got nothing there that we want, and we've got nothing here that they want, the home worlds are safe worlds. The fight is over the colony planets that are still rich in mineral content. Mostly, they fight over a planet called Stashes, because both planets claim it."

"What's so special about Sta . . . ashes?" David asked, stumbling over the name.

"It's got the highest mineral content of any of the planets, and that's about it." RJ sounded far away. "It's a big, hot rock of a planet. Very little water, and half of that's poison. The animal life is aggressive—so is most of the plant life. The air is barely breathable. Breathing it for a period of three months cuts your life expectancy by ten years. Some can't breathe it at all. I saw one man die after being exposed to the atmosphere for less than ten minutes. On Stashes they say that if the enemy doesn't get you, it's a sure bet that the planet will."

She saw she wasn't boring David, so she kept talking.

Stories unwound of battles fought on worlds so distant it was hard for David to fathom. She told him of technology he had no idea existed. She opened his mind to a new and wondrous universe filled with fantastic machines, horrid alien beasts, and beautiful and dangerous places. Battlefield after battlefield was spread before him. Battle after battle. RJ had seen it all, up close and personal, and he began to understand why human life was so cheap to her. Sometimes he could see a picture of it so vividly in his mind that he was almost sick. Other times he seemed to be drawn into the fever of the battle, to feel the adrenaline of those who fought.

She had been so many places and done so many things that he found himself wondering just how she had squeezed all of it into her short life. Even if he stretched his imagination to its fullest he couldn't believe that RJ was any more than twenty-five.

RJ was a good and articulate storyteller. There was, however, one thing she hadn't talked about that David was intensely curious about.

"Just what is a GSH?"

"As you already know, GSH stands for Genetically Superior Humanoid."

Clearly, while David knew what GSH stood for, he had no idea what a Genetically Superior Humanoid was.

RJ sighed. "Well, they take a human embryo . . . Do you know what an embryo is?"

David shook his head no.

RJ sighed again and went on indulgently."It's a baby before it's born—when it's just first made."

David nodded, but made a face that said that this was the most gruesome thing he had ever heard of.

"Anyway, they take this embryo . . . by 'take' do you think I'm saying that they take it out of the mother?"

David nodded his head.

"Well, they don't. God! You're hard to explain anything to! You don't even know a simple word like embryo. What the hell do you call them, little baby seeds?" RJ said, her patience wearing thin.

"We don't talk about making people," David said with equal disgust. Didn't she understand that the populace had been deprived of any but the most basic knowledge for centuries?

"OK. They take the Mommy stuff, and the Daddy stuff and mix them together in a petri dish; embryos result. Then they use a process called gene splicing." She wasn't even going to
try
to explain gene splicing to David. "Through this process they take out qualities they don't want, and put in qualities that they do want. They use chemicals, too. To put it simply, they shape this embryo into the person that they want it to be. In the case of a GSH, they build the perfect soldier. They grow them in a special solution in vats, and when they are old enough they're born. In other words, they take them out of the vats. Then they feed them growth hormones and information till, within a year, they are fully grown and know all that they will ever need to know."

Something still puzzled David.

"How does the Reliance control them? What's to keep them from doing whatever they like?"

"Good question. It would seem that such beings could easily take over and probably would, but they can't. When they are still in an embryonic state, their minds are altered. First, all emotions except loyalty are removed. They are then brainwashed so that their only loyalty is to the Reliance. They aren't capable of anything else. They eat, sleep, live, breathe and kill for the Reliance. Obeying orders, and completing their assigned task gives them a sense of accomplishment which is as close as they get to happiness.

"Then there's the box planted in the base of their skulls. If they show any signs of rebellion at all, this control box can be detonated. It literally blows their brains up inside their skulls. The box blows of its own accord when the GSH reaches the age of fifty. The Reliance is afraid that after that, their conditioning might wear off. They couldn't have that. There is no escape for them. They must serve the Reliance. So you see there is really nothing superior about them at all. They are slaves just like everyone else. Worse, really, because they have no free will."

"You sound like you're sorry for them!" David said in disbelief.

"I . . . just think it's wrong, that's all. Here is this thing that could have everything and the way it is it has nothing. Take for instance the GSH who tried to kill us last night. He went after me exclusively, because logically you posed no major threat. So he ignored you and never realized that
you
were the real threat. If I were the GSH, I would have killed you first, because it would have been easy. Then I could have given all my attention to the Elite without having to worry about where you were. Sometimes the most logical thing to do is something illogical. Emotion causes you to think illogically." RJ finished with a shrug.

David laughed."You're twisted."

She took it as a compliment.

Towards nightfall, the fuel gauge cranked over to empty, and RJ pulled into a Reliance fuel station. David thought he would die, but RJ acted as if she belonged there. The attendant filled the truck while she went inside and got a couple of sandwiches and some bottled soft drinks. David didn't dare breathe till they were three miles down the road.

"Are you crazy?" David breathed at last.

"Where did you think we were going to get the alcohol to run this thing, David? Squeeze it from a tree maybe?" RJ asked sarcastically.

"I thought we'd steal it late at night when no one was around. I had no idea that you would be blatant enough to pull into the damned Reliance fuel station in broad daylight! You even went inside to get sandwiches, for God's sake!" David screamed.

RJ just grinned.

"It's not funny, RJ."

"I guess you'll never understand, will you? Those people who run that station are just class-two work units. Only authorized Reliance personnel drive vehicles. Therefore, if a vehicle pulls in, it must be Reliance. Right?"

"OK. But the way you're dressed . . . ."

"They wouldn't care if I were buck naked and had 'The Reliance Sucks' painted in bright red letters across my butt. Don't you see? They service the vehicle, not who's driving it. All they do is fill the cars and trucks, and give you a sack lunch if you need it. They're not expected to think, so they don't."

"But what if another Reliance truck had pulled in while we were there?" David asked.

RJ started to say something.

"No, wait, don't tell me. Let me guess. We kill them, right?"

"You're getting better," RJ cooed.

"You're sick, you know that, RJ? Real sick."

"Hand me a sandwich," RJ said, pointing at the sack.

He did.

"That's your answer to everything, isn't it? Just kill it!" David said hotly.

"Hand me my drink," she said, through a mouth full of sandwich.

He handed it to her after opening it.

"What happens when you don't kill someone? What happens when they kill you?"

"You quit worrying about it," RJ grinned crookedly.

David shook his head in disbelief. Not a damned bit of sense arguing with her about it, she wasn't about to change her mind.

They drove for another hour then pulled off the road and parked. RJ pushed a button on the dash and almost gave David a heart attack when the seat flipped out of its own accord to make a bed. He and RJ marched in separate directions to relieve themselves, and returned almost simultaneously.

RJ took off her chain and boots and lay them in the floorboards. Then came the blaster.

David just sat there.

"What's with you?" RJ asked, wondering if he was still mad over the fuel station thing.

"I thought I'd take first watch," he said with a smile."After all, you did all the driving."