Chains of Freedom (11 page)

"A Reliance man followed me when I left here," RJ said accusingly.

"You're hurting my arm," the girl protested in a whisper.

"Good, good," RJ grinned wickedly. She forced the girl's hand to lie flat on the table, then dumped cup of hot coffee on it. The girl let out a scream.

The guy behind the counter started to come to her aid. RJ pulled her blaster with her free hand and aimed it at him; he stopped in his tracks.

"A small accident," RJ explained making it sound like a threat.

She didn't let the girl's arm go. She gave the girl a menacing look.

"That's a bad burn. Could have been worse; could have been your face."

The girl started to whimper.

"I don't want anyone to know you talked to that man. I don't want anyone to know he was looking for me. I don't ever want to turn around and see that anyone's following me, ever again. If I do . . . do I have to get vulgar, or do you get the idea?"

The girl nodded her understanding.

"Good, good," RJ said with a happy smile."I hate to waste good coffee." She finally let go of the girl. She stood up, and picked up David's dinner."Notice that I am not leaving a tip." She laughed wickedly as she left the restaurant.

RJ woke him up to eat. Having eaten, David now found he couldn't go back to sleep. He looked at RJ where she lay. Even in her sleep the arm jerked. That must be irritating as hell. He imagined she was probably used to it.

For some reason, David couldn't quit thinking about his family. When he had been ten, his younger sister died of a disease which RJ had recently told him was easily cured. Two years later, his mother died in childbirth. He now knew that this, too, was uncalled for. The Reliance had the medicine and the technology, but why waste it on work units? In the Reliance, people were an expendable commodity.

One day, not long after David's mother died, the Reliance came and took his father away. He had done something, but they never told David what. His father was sent off to a prison camp, and David was moved into the home of another family. A family that couldn't afford him any more than they wanted him. They made sure he knew he was an inconvenience for them and delighted in telling him that his father's selfishness would ruin them all. It was during this time in his life that he first started to harbor the idea of overthrowing the Reliance.

Somewhere in David's mind, he had long cherished the fantasy that his father was alive. That someday they would be reunited. But after David's first week in prison, he had to admit that his father was dead, that he was an orphan.

He wondered about RJ. Did RJ have a family somewhere? Did she have parents who loved and worried about her? He couldn't see RJ with a family, couldn't place her as sister or a daughter. If she still had family living, she never talked about them. Perhaps they had had a falling out. David got the impression that if you fell out with RJ, you fell all the way out.

Suddenly, he was feeling melancholy. He missed his family. He wanted to wake RJ up and ask her about her family, but if he did, she would no doubt rip his arm off and beat him to death with the bloody stump.

He could vividly remember playing with his sister in the road in front of their cottage. His mother would walk out every few minutes and tell them not to play in the road. Stupid advice; there was no place else to play, and the only traffic was the Reliance evaluation team which drove through once a month.

There was never much time to play. When their work shift came up, they would go as a family to the fields and work. Even this was a fond memory for David, because at least they had been together. When their last work shift ended, they would go home and eat a quiet meal. Sometimes, after dinner, they would walk down to the village viewscreen and watch the carefully regulated Reliance programs. Most of them he realized now were little more than Reliance propaganda, but at the time it had served as their only form of entertainment, their only link to the world outside their village. Each day was pretty much like the one that had gone before.

That was not the case in Alsterase, not the case anywhere where people were free.

He really couldn't be bothered. As head of Reliance's Sector 11-N, he had more important things to do than worry about such trifles as this.

"So, this RJ person has raided another shipment," Jago said blandly. "So what?"

"She had help this time, Excellency. We found one set of civilian footprints. There may have been more. After all, we know she wears Elite boots herself," General Right explained.

"So?" Jago sighed out.

"We lost an entire convoy, Sire. The shipment stolen was of the new Z-27 laser side arms," Right said with urgency.

"So?" Jago still didn't get it. What did any of this have to do with him? Didn't the military take care of this sort of thing? He stretched out on his giant pillow, looked around the sheik-like elegance of his surroundings and sighed yet again. "Can't you take care of this without bothering me?"

"We need your guidance, Excellency," the General said. Jago lay there like a great beached whale. Beautiful women hurried around working hard to fulfill his every obese desire. Right hated Jago, but Jago had power, and Right was smart enough to know that he had better not wipe his own ass without written orders from Jago.

Jago was infamous for blaming anything that went wrong on his underlings. He also had a bad habit of having the people he blamed executed. So Right, who was a perfectly capable individual, never did anything without orders in triplicate from this stupid, obnoxious blob.

Jago was busy playing with the right tit of one of his lovelies, and was totally ignoring Right."Excellency, I really think you ought to take these rebels more seriously. This is the sixth convoy that has been attacked, and the sixth shipment stolen in the last ten months."

Jago snorted in disgust, oozed to an upright position and picked up the report. Without so much as glancing at it, he ground out, "OK, we've got six convoys lost to this RJ person. Now you say this rebel has help, but you don't know how much. What the hell
do
you know?"

"We know she's female because she saw fit to write that out for us on her first raid. We have deduced that she must have been an Elite at some time. We don't know anything else. We haven't been able to pick up enough DNA to make any sort of test. She's not stupid, that's for damn sure."

Jago moved his immense bulk to a standing position, and began to pace back and forth. This was very bothersome. Rebels used to be happy to hide during their work shifts, take more than their share of food and cheat on their taxes. Why did they suddenly find it necessary to pick up weapons and blow up convoys? And why did they insist on stealing weapons that Jago was completely unfamiliar with? They were ruining his day. He flopped into his throne with a great dispatch of blubber, and tapped his chins with his finger in a very discontented manner.

Life could be a real bitch. This whole episode had done nothing for his heartburn. Rebels looting supply trains, as if it were perfectly normal and above-board, troops that couldn't stop an old lady from jaywalking, and a General who wouldn't ball his wife without orders in triplicate. There were days when running all of Sector 11-N could be a real drag.

"OK Right, I'll bite. What do you want me to do about it?"

"If we could shift some of the GSHs off their regular assignments and put them with all the important . . ."

"Get the papers, Right, and I'll sign them. I'm tired of all this." Jago waved his hand dismissively.

"As you desire, Excellency." Right clicked his heels and went off to do the necessary paper work. Putting GSHs with the supply trains might be a little extravagant, but it would certainly be effective.

The young man stepped into the laboratory and was silent. He waited patiently at the old man's shoulder.

Finally, the old man sighed and looked up from the sophisticated electron-escalating light-infused microscope he was using. He didn't like to be disturbed."Yes, what is it, Poley? And make it quick. I'm very busy."

"You wanted information on the random unit?" Poley asked.

Suddenly, the old man's eyes sparkled with interest. Professor Stewart clasped his hands together in an excited manner. "So, what has the little devil done this time?" he asked with anticipation.

"She has destroyed another convoy," Poley smiled a small smile. "It was carrying some of the new Z-27 laser pistols. All Reliance Personnel were killed. All Reliance vehicles destroyed."

Stewart broke into a bout of hysterical laughter. He patted Poley on the back. When he finally quit laughing, a fanatical gleam entered his sky-blue eyes."Do you realize what's happened, Poley?" He didn't give Poley a chance to answer. "She has taken it upon herself to fight the Reliance. And, as if that's not good enough, she's winning!" He turned back to his work at the microscope."Despite all her training, all the years she fought for the Reliance, she's rebelled. She's turned her hand against them," Stewart said happily.

"You sound as if you hope she will win," Poley said.

"Who cares one way or the other?" Stewart said with a shrug. He looked up from the microscope. "We're scientists, Poley. We're not political. The important thing is that the experiment is a success."

"Of the twelve units, only this one still lives," Poley reminded him.

"One out of twelve isn't that bad," Stewart said defensively.

"Those are not very good odds. I calculate that if this one does not stop her fight against the Reliance, she will not live beyond six more months," Poley said. "Then the experiment will be a . . ."

Stewart pulled a box from his pocket and pressed a button on it. Poley became totally immobile.

"Damned cocky machine," Stewart humphed. "Give a robot a personality, artificial intelligence, and the best years of your life, and what do you get? Back talk. That's what." He looked at the deactivated Poley for only a moment. "Uppity robot." He reactivated him. "What do you say?"

"I'm sorry, Dad," the robot looked down at his feet."I'm just worried about RJ, that's all."

Stewart just stared at him. He shook his head and laughed."Really, Poley. Sometimes you surprise even me. I'm sure RJ will be just fine. After all, you are only my
second
-greatest creation."

RJ heard someone pounding on the door, so she got up and pulled on her pants. The knock became more urgent, so she picked up her blaster.

"Who the hell is it?" She tried to sound alert, but the truth was that she didn't feel up to a fight just now.

"It's Whitey Baldor."

RJ sighed with relief. "Come in," she lowered the weapon only when she saw that he was alone. "I'd ask you to sit, but . . ." she shrugged around the room.

Whitey was not a man who closed his eyes to the obvious. Yes, he saw the hole in the wall, but that was not what caught his eye. There was only one bed. The man slept on one side, and the covers were pulled back on the other. Obviously, RJ and this man were lovers. He wondered for a moment what someone like RJ was doing with a wimp like that.

"So, Mr. Baldor . . ." she started.

"Whitey," he corrected with a smile.

"So, Whitey, what can I do for you?"

He smiled broadly.

"Let me rephrase that question."

"As long as your friend is asleep . . ." Whitey winked.

"Don't you ever give up?" she asked with a grin.

"Not till I get what I want," he said. "Right now, you're at the top of my list."

It was at this time that David woke up, but he preferred, for the time being, to pretend to be asleep. He wasn't sure that he liked what he was hearing.

"You may have a considerable wait. Care to fight a war while you're waiting?"

"Ah, why the hell not? If you're really RJ," Whitey said.

"Don't I look like an RJ?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes." He looked at David. "You know it's all over town that you and I" he coughed, and RJ smiled. "I, of course, love the publicity, but aren't you going to get in trouble with him?"

By now, David was positive that he didn't like what he was hearing.

"I'm not afraid of David," RJ said, dismissing the whole thing.

"Oh, is that his name?" Whitey smiled. "That's cute. So, tell me, is it love, or just mutual lust?"

"None of your business," RJ replied with a sly smile.

David could pretend no longer. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, he took a double take. "Him!" he screamed angrily. "You slept with him!"

RJ didn't like the tone of his voice. "I'll do as I damn well please." She wrapped the chain around her waist and over her shoulders.