The guard pointed to the clothes on the floor. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing? Looking for something in your size?"
"No, sir," Xris said politely. Reaching down, he picked up one of the bags, held it out for inspection. "This one"s defective, sir. So are the other two." He indicated a large rip in the netting, a rip he"d made himself, just in case.
The guard peered at it, peered at the other bags. He had the brains the size of a piece of s.p.a.ce dust, for he didn"t bother to check the cell numbers on the bags, or he might have thought it odd that three defective bags came from one cell.
"You"ll find replacements in that bin over there. Transfer the name, number, and cell block. Indelible ink pens are on that table."
He walked off.
Xris replaced the bags, carefully printed the names and numbers on each one.
MACDONALD, BECKING, MAIR.
Xris went back to work.
CHAPTER 23.
Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves, howe"er contented, never know.
William Cowper, "Table Talk"
"Oh, ick!" cried Raoul, on entering the terminal building on Del Sol. Shuddering, he drew back. "What are those creatures?"
"Keep your voice down! Those creatures," Jamil said, "are the people we"ve come to save."
"Save from what?" Raoul wondered. "If it"s ugliness, there"s not a thing to be done."
"Tycho and I will see to the luggage," Quong offered. "Everyone, give me your baggage tags."
They had cleared customs and immigration on the cruise ship itself. Their luggage, including Raoul"s twenty-six suitcases, two trunks, and seventeen hat boxes, had been searched and had pa.s.sed inspection, though there was some question by the officials as to the quant.i.ty and type of "medications" brought along by the Adonian. Raoul couldn"t understand the problem and it appeared for a few tense moments that he would be barred from entering the world.
Jamil had spent three days with Raoul aboard the cruise ship, endeavoring to keep him from insulting most of the other pa.s.sengers by offering to give them advice on their makeup or making disparaging remarks about their attire. Last night Jamil had been forced to haul Raoul off the stage when he felt like he needed to "join the dancers!" Jamil had been quite willing to toss Raoul to the drug-sniffing "bots.
Wondering how and why Xris put up with the Loti, Jamil had spent four hours explaining matters to the Del Solian officials. He a.s.sured them that Raoul was a danger only to himself. Considering Raoul"s true occupation, this was not precisely true, but the officials, after spending an hour talking with Raoul, were ready to believe anything. Eventually Raoul and his "medicine" were allowed to enter the planet. The weapons, which would be used by the dremeck revolutionaries, had been previously smuggled into the world disa.s.sembled, the cartons labeled TOYS.
"If our friend Jamil ever had any ambitions for taking over Xris"s leadership role, I will wager that he has since abandoned them," Quong said in a low voice to Tycho, who nodded and smiled.
Tycho"s older brother Tycho had given the younger Tycho one piece of advice: The only way to live among humans and retain your sanity was to keep your translator turned off as much as possible, nod and smile if anyone said anything to you, and don"t drink the water anywhere, ever. Consequently Tycho had no idea what the doctor had said, but he nodded and smiled. He understood from Quong"s gesture that he was supposed to accompany the doctor and so he went, a bundle of plastic chits in his thin-fingered hand.
Jamil, in the meantime, was arguing with Raoul. Or rather, arguing at Raoul, since Raoul never permitted himself to become involved in an argument. Arguing, he said, caused wrinkles.
"I briefed everyone on the situation on this world on board the cruise ship," Jamil was saying, his voice rising with increasing anger. "Weren"t you listening?"
"No," Raoul replied complacently.
Removing the mirror from his handbag, he looked anxiously at himself to make certain the rigors of travel had not ruined him utterly. Tenderly patting down a few wisps of misplaced hair, he a.s.sured himself that he was still beautiful, then he closed the compact and returned it to his purse.
"But please do not take offense, Jamil," Raoul added, on seeing that Jamil resembled one of the more picturesque thunderclouds that were occasionally allowed in the skies above Adonia. "I rarely listen to Xris Cyborg, either. My friend"a"he tapped the Little One on top of the fedoraa" "keeps me apprised of developments. Just now he tells me that we are here to save these people from being ma.s.sacred and also to free them from tyranny and oppression."
At that moment, a group of the "creatures" was being marched past. They were manacled hand and foot, chained together with old-fashioned leg irons around their ankles. There were about twenty of them and they were being escorted by two humans carrying stun-sticks.
"Adonians have heard of slavery, I presume," Jamil said, his voice cold and harsh.
"Oh, yes!" Raoul was enthusiastic. "At the age of eighteen, all Adonians enter a period of enslavement. It lasts about a yeara""
"What?" Jamil demanded, incensed.
"Don"t pursue this," Darlene cautioned.
Jamil ignored her. "What do you mean, you Adorians practice slavery? That"s not possible! Adonia is officially a member of the Empire and slavery is illegala""
"The enslavement lasts a year," Raoul continued gravely, "unless both parties mutually consent to continuing the relationship. It"s all part of our education system." A blissful, nostalgic shimmer glistened in his unfocused eyes. "My own master was a remarkable woman. Such a hand with the paddle. I was her favorite. She had a golden collar made for me, with rubies and a golden chain. The gold looked quite stunning against my bare skin. When she took me for walks, everyone we met was quite insanely jealousa""
"That"s enough!" Jamil said hurriedly. "I understand. And I"m sorry I do."
"I warned you," Darlene murmured with a wry smile.
"But not soon enough." Jamil tapped one of the Del Solian s.p.a.celine employees on the shoulder. "Excuse me, but those people who just pa.s.sed usa"are they prisoners?"
"What people?" The Del Solian glanced around.
"Those people." Jamil pointed to the chain gang, which was clanking its way through the s.p.a.ceport.
"Oh, those aren"t people," the woman said with a laugh. "Those are dremecks. Luggage handlers. It must be lunchtime."
"They go to lunch chained like that!" Jamil glowered dangerously.
"Jamil..." Darlene said in a low tone, tugging on his sleeve.
She started to add that they weren"t supposed to draw attention to themselves, but since everyone debarking was looking at Raoul and either glaring or wavinga"the entire troop of showgirls showered him with kissesa"she abandoned that as useless.
"It"s for their own good," the woman explained. "Dremecks are very easily distracted and they don"t have much common sense. If we permit them to roam free, they become a nuisance to the pa.s.sengers. And they"d never return to work. We had a terrible time with them wandering out onto the tarmac to watch the cruise ships take off. A great many of them were killed and that caused flight delays. It annoyed the pilots. We"ve found this solution is best all around."
"Chaining them up like animals!" Jamil said savagely.
"Jamil, please..." Darlene attempted to intervene.
"You off-worlders are always very quick to judge us," the woman said coldly. "Wait until you"ve been here awhile. You"ll see what it"s like."
"Patience, Jamil," Darlene said softly. "Put racial memory on hold, will you? You"re not going to help these people by antagonizing their rulers. Remember this is a police state. Don"t look now, but those two women in dark clothes with the wires running into their ears are taking a great deal of interest in us."
Jamil glanced at them. The women were indeed watching them; one was speaking into a headset. Jamil rearranged his face into a carefree smile and retrieved Raoul, who had been about to depart with the showgirls.
"We"re supposed to meet Doc down in the baggage area."
The team followed a trail of icons symbolizing suitcases, and soon caught up with the dremeck chain gang, shuffling and clanging its way through the s.p.a.ceport. Another chain gang being led in the opposite direction pa.s.sed the first. The dremecks smiled and nodded to one another in pa.s.sing. They looked remarkably cheerful as they marched along, each with one three-fingered hand on the back of the shoulder of the dremeck in front, their manacled feet swinging in time so that they did not trip each other with the chain.
Their human guards, herding them from behind, were grim-faced and serious, obviously taking no chances with their charges.
Jamil gave the dremecks a look of eloquent sympathy as he walked past them. He would have raised his clenched fist in a fierce expression of power and solidarity, but Darlene, guessing his intention, took hold of his arm.
"Now is not the time," she said firmly.
The men and women with the wires running into their heads were everywhere. Highly visible in their dark suits and white shirts, with the emblem of Del Sol emblazoned upon their left coat pocket, they kept watch on everything and everyone in the s.p.a.ceport. Their faces were cold, impa.s.sive, forbidding. Anyone who laughed, sneezed, coughed, or spoke drew their attention; they seemed particularly offended by laughter.
Anyone who deviated from the marked routes was approached and questioned. New arrivals, who had debarked with cheerful faces and eager looks, were already starting to wilt in the dark shadows cast by these denizens of Kirkov"s authority. It was easy to tell the Del Solian population from the tourists. They kept their heads down, glanced up only occasionally to see where they were going, and never, never spoke to or looked directly at any of the people with wires in their heads.
"Two of them are following us," Darlene said softly. "Probably because of Raoul. We should send him to the hotel while we meet with the dremecks."
"I don"t suppose we could send him to the Void while we meet with the dremecks," Jamil said gloomily.
"He does come in useful sometimes," Darlene re-minded him.
Jamil grunted.
Raoul was giving the luggage handlers a wide berth; they had a most peculiar smell. He held a hankie to his nose and clutched his floral print duster close to his body, fearful that the blue tones of their skin might rub off on the fabric.
The Little One made a sound that might have been a laugh and made a motion with his hand in Raoul"s direction.
"What do you mean, they think I"m ugly?" Raoul cried, staring down at his friend, appalled.
The fedora nodded up and down emphatically.
"Ah, poor things," Raoul said softly, much affected. He favored the dremecks with a pitying glance. "Jamil is right. It is our duty to free them. From those dreadful clothes, if nothing else."
Perhaps due to the deplorable fact that the luggage handlers were forced to work chained to one another, the unloading of luggage from the cruise ship was taking an interminable amount of time.
Aware that allowing oneself to become stressed in a situation over which one has no control is a contributing factor to elevated blood pressure, with the possibility of stroke or seizure, Dr. Quong refused to allow the delay to annoy him. He sat down in a metal chair, which was chained, like the dremecks, to a line of metal chairs.
Two men with wires in their heads strolled past. Quong smiled at them politely, wished them a good day. Not only did they fail to return his pleasantry, they seemed to find it highly suspicious. After a searching perusal, they continued their walk.
Tycho had gone off in pursuit of chocolate, to which, he had admitted, he was particularly addicted. Quong had begun to issue his standard warning on the subject of sugar and caffeine when it occurred to him that he had no knowledge of how these substances might affect chameleons. The other Tycho, the first and original Tycho, had never shown the least proclivity for anything other than spaghetti. Quong allowed the new Tycho to eat his chocolate, though the doctor made a mental note to consult certain scientific journals on the subject.
Sitting in the chained chair, Quong watched the dremecks good-naturedly untangling themselves from their chains. He took this opportunity to study the race, which was a new one in his experience.
The doctor had, of course, done his research and, unlike Raoul, Quong was prepared for the odd sight of the small, stocky humanoid beings with their blue-gray skin. What he had not been able to ascertain from the vids he had watched was the unique texture of the skin, which appeared to be the consistency of bread dough and which flowed in soft folds around their large eyes, their most prominent facial feature.
A dremeck"s mouth was completely enveloped by the folds of skin and was visible only when he or she smiled. The smile completely rearranged the skin folds, making a startling difference in the expression. When a dremeck was not smiling, it appeared to be in the depths of gloom, because the folds of its face all flowed downward. A dremeck smile acted like a mud slide, causing the folds to expand outward in all directions.
The dremecks" teeth were small and very blunt; they were not meat-eaters, but subsisted entirely on a diet of plants and fruits native to their world. Young dremecks did not have teeth at all, but attained them when they reached maturity.
Dremecks burrow. They have always lived underground, not for any special reasona"the air on their world is not poisonous, the sun is not too hot. The dremecks live underground because they like living underground. It makes them feel more* secure. It was therefore theorized that the dremecks had once been the food source for large predators. The dremecks had escaped this enemy by going underground and had apparently out evolved this enemy, for there were no large predators left on Del Sol.
Unfortunately, the dremecks could not escape their current enemya"humansa"so easily. The fact that they were excellent burrowers had proven their downfall.
Early s.p.a.ce explorers had found no signs of life on the surface of Del Sola"no cities or towns or villages, no cultivated fields, no oceanfront resorts, and therefore the dremecks" planet went unnoticed by the rest of the civilized galaxy for any number of centuries. The dremeck world was finally discovered by human scientists searching for the Bulgarvian wormhole. They named it Del Sol, after the noted philanthropist Ferdinand Del Sol of Mengus Seventeen.
It should be noted here that the dremecks had their own name for their planet. The dremecks believed that their world was responsible for giving them life; therefore, the name they called their world had come across to human translators as "uterus." This name was deemed unacceptable by map makers and travel agents. GNN said they could not report on such a planet during the "children"s hour" of vid viewing. The Navy pointed out that, should war prove inevitable, they could not possibly attack with dignity a planet called Uterus. The name was therefore changed officially to Del Sol.
Further investigation by the scientists revealed that Del Sol was a treasure trove of minerals, including precious and semiprecious gems, gold and silver. The amounts discovered appeared so vast, at first, that the discovery was kept secret for fear that gold prices would plummet. Later it was found that the gold was of inferior quality, its molecular structure being just a tiny bit off, making it brittle instead of malleable, and so the currency standard was saved.
Diamonds and emeralds, rubies and sapphires, silver and uranium were discovered in abundance, however, and more man made up for the brittle gold. Early entrepreneurs were especially pleased to find that the ignorant dremecks had no idea what these minerals were worth. The dremecks used the gems to make body adornments, worn by both the males and the females for no particular reason sociologists could determine except that the dremecks thought they were pretty. The dremecks willingly traded baskets of precious jewels for their most valued commoditya"vegetables, which the humans were only too happy to provide.
The humans were baffled, however, to discover that the dremecks left all the vegetables they"d been given to rot. The report came back that the dremecks didn"t like the vegetables because they were "dead," which led scientists to discover that the dremecks ate only living vegetation. They grazed.
It was undoubtedly this unfortunate resemblance to cattle that gave the first humans to visit the planet the idea that the dremecks were subhuman, ranking somewhere above rats and rock-and-roll singers in intelligence; equal, perhaps, to those other herd animals, politicians; but below the rest of humanity.
Comforted by the knowledge that they were saving the dremecks from themselves, the humans moved in during the time of the corrupt Democracy. Using the dremecks as miners, they looted the planet of its mineral wealth, becoming very rich themselves in the process. Almost overnight, Del Sol emerged as one of the galaxy"s financial capitals. Not being particularly scrupulous people themselves, the bankers were not much interested in the scruples of others, particularly if such scruples could adversely affect profit. Advertising for Del Solian financial inst.i.tutions read: "The bank where n.o.body knows your name."
As for the dremecks, they were easily subjugated. Enslavement was made all the easier by the fact that the elder dremecks were an extremely gentle people and didn"t believe in resistancea"ever. The younger dremecks were, according to reports, becoming restless.
Dr. Quong mused on all this as he watched the dremeck baggage handlers unload the metal bullet-shaped suitcases of the pa.s.sengers, standing them on end so that the phosphorus lights flashing the baggage numbers were visible.
Quong had mentioned the dremecks" nonaggressive trait to Jamil, suggested that this might be a problem in training them as soldiers. Jamil merely brushed the information aside, thereby offending Dr. Quong. He said no more about it, but was looking forward with perverse pleasure to the first meeting of the gung-ho mercenary and the grazing revolutionaries.
Quong was startled from his reverie by a touch on his foot. Looking down, he saw a dremeck crouched on the floor, polishing the doctor"s boot with a rag. Embarra.s.sed, Quong started to draw his foot away. "No, really that"s not necessary." He fumbled for a coin.
The dremeck lifted his head. His eyes, which were round and black and very liquid, protruded slightly, causing the folds around the eyes to flow backward like a receding tide.
He had a flutelike voice and spoke Standard Militarya" taught to them by the humansa"with a lilting accent that was really quite enchanting.
"Please permit me to continue my work, sir. This is the only way we will have a chance to talk without arousing suspicion." The dremeck paused, then said carefully, "It is a very sunny day outside, with not a cloud in the sky."
That was the code which meant that all was going well, they were not being watched, were not in any danger. If the dremeck had said, "It is a very sunny day outside, but rain is predicted tonight," then Quong would have known that someone was on to them. At the words, "There is a terrible storm raging," the Doc would have made certain his weapon was fully charged and close at hand.
Since the weather was sunny, Quong relaxed.
The dremeck proceeded to shine his boots and talked at the same time. "I recognized you by the description given me. It was said you had shifty eyes."
"Shifty eyes!" Quong repeated heatedly, then suddenly realized what was intended. "Ah, perhaps you mean slanted eyes? Yes, my eyes are slanteda"a natural and, to my mind, quite attractive feature of my race."
The dremeck lifted its own incredibly round eyes. "Have I offended?"
"No," Quong said, smiling. "Well, maybe. Shifty means... But that is not important." He glanced around. No one, including the wire-heads, was paying any attention to them.
Leaning forward as if to study the dremeck"s work, Quong lowered his voice to ask, "What is the plan?"
The folds of the dremeck"s face melted like sand dunes at high tide. "Plan?" he repeated in a tremulous voice.
"Where are your headquarters?" Quong pursued. "And how do we arrive there without arousing suspicion?"
"We don"t really have a "headquarters," if I am understanding the word correctly, but I a.s.sume that you will want to discuss matters with the One who guides us. He awaits you in the Xynx Burrow, which is located about three hour"s foot journey from here. The One says that yourselves, the Army leaders, should travel to the burrow on the Uglies train. You will not be noticed. Many Uglies visit our burrow, which is also what we have been told is the galaxy"s largest diamond mine."