Charon (9 page)

 
"It doesn't rain like this
all
the time, does it?" I asked the native.

 
He laughed.
"No, not like this.
Usually it's no more than an hour or two, but in early spring and late fall the rain sometimes lasts two, three days at a clip, dumping up to three centimeters per hour." He paused a moment for that to sink in, then added, "We do have a
good
drainage system."

 
They'd better, I thought, more amazed than anything else. Three days of such a downpour at that rate would come to almost
two meters
of water.

 
"What season is it now?" someone asked sourly.

 
The middle of spring," our guide responded. "It's gonna be getting hot soon." Unfortunately he didn't say it like he was joking.

 
The group was led into the nearest building, which proved to be—well, rustic. It was composed of logs of some kind, including log bracing for the log ceiling, which was very high. There were wickerlike chairs around, some tables, and very little else. The building was also lit by those basic lamps, and they did a very good job I had to admit, despite the slight flickering that took some getting used to. The floor was carpeted with a rubbery-feeling tilelike substance with an elaborate grooved design—to allow water run-off, I supposed. Still, if this place didn't flood it must be well designed indeed.

 
Groaning, we sank into the chairs, feeling as if we'd put in a full day already despite the fact that we had actually done very little. The tension was beginning to wear off, producing a general lethargy.

 
"This is normally the lobby of the town's hotel," the woman told us. "We requisitioned it for a few days so that you could get acclimated. We reserved the top floor rooms for you—although I'm afraid you'll have to share two to a room for the most part. We need the lower floor for regular guests, and they're cramped as it is. The guests and townspeople will not come
in
here while we are using it, and for the first stages of orientation we'll take all our meals here as well. I would recommend that, pending our series of talks, you avoid any of the townspeople you might meet in the lavatory or on the stairs. Don't be mean, just don't strike up any conversations or get into any arguments. Most of them are natives here and won't understand your lack of familiarity with Charon and it's no use getting into trouble before you know what you're getting into."

 
Several of us nodded in agreement on that. "What about getting out of these wet clothes?" I asked.

 
"We
all
have wet clothes," she replied. "Well try and get some dry ones for you as soon as we have your sizes down, but for now you'll have to make do with the ones you have."

 
A pretty young woman in our party shivered slightly and looked around. "Is it my imagination or is cold air blowing in here?"

 
"It's not really all that cold," the man told her. "But, yes, cooler air is circulated through a system of pipes that blows cool air from below ground, where there are natural underground river caverns, and some man-made ones as well. The blower system is powered by windmills located on top of the buildings, and it keeps us from frying or strangling in stagnant air."

 
Pretty ingenious, I had to admit, although I couldn't help wondering why the ban on machinery. The spaceport terminal was tiny, it was true, but it was quite modern, electrically powered and air-conditioned, all the rest. Technology then wasn't so much impossible on Charon as it was
banned.
By whom?
Matuze?
No, she hadn't been in power long enough to produce this sort of thing. This town and the culture reflected by the male native
was
long-term. By the Lord of Cerberus, that" was for sure—perhaps long, long ago. That made some sense if the ruling could be enforced on a planetary scale. If only the Lord of Cerberus and those he or she designated had access to technology and the training to use it, they would be assured of absolute control.

 
"We'll let you go to your rooms first for a while," the woman was saving. "There are towels and such there, and you can get fairly dried out. We also have robes there, so if you want to change into those you'll probably be more comfortable. Top floor, pick your own rooms and roommates, and meet us back down here in—say, an hour for food. I know you don't have watches, but we'll make sure you get called."

 
We made our way to the rear of the lobby area and discovered an alcove in the back with a spiral wooden staircase. From the other side of the alcove, beyond two closed wooden doors, came the smells of food cooking and people talking loudly.
The bar?
The restaurant?
Well, it didn't matter—yet.

 
I hung back. I had decided the easiest way to guarantee either that I'd be alone in a room or at least get a random shot at it was to be last, there being an odd number of us.

 
No such luck on the single, though. The big, gruff man who had made all the sour comments along the way staked out a single and nobody seemed inclined to argue with him. Everybody else, including two of the women, paired off; and by the time I reached the top of the stairs only one person remained—the pretty young woman who had asked about the air system downstairs. I saw her down at the end of the hall looking slightly worried and more than a little confused. She cautiously opened the last door on the right and looked inside then turned back to see me approaching. I could tell by her expression that she wasn't thrilled by the situation.

 
"Looks like we're stuck together," I noted.

 
She thought a moment,
then
sighed. "What the hell— what does it matter, anyway?"

 
"Thanks a lot," I responded sourly and walked into the room. It was surprisingly spacious and contained two large comfortable beds, mattresses and all, some closet space and a sink with a cold water tap. I was surprised at that, having expected to have to go down to a well someplace. The beds were not made, but clean linen was folded at the foot of each along with washcloths and towels and, as promised, a robe each.

 
I saw her hesitating, a little nervous, and I sympathized. "Look, if I'm offending your morals I'll step into the closet. Somebody my size could practically live in there."

 
"No, no, that's not necessary. After all, we were all naked on the shuttle coming in."

 
I nodded, relaxed a little, and peeled off the wet clothes and stuck them on the towel rack to dry. I then took the towel and dried myself as best I could, particularly my hair, which was a tangled mess, then tried the robe. As I suspected, it was quite a bit large for me.
So much for standardization.
Still, I decided I could manage in it without breaking my neck.

 
During this time she just stood there, watching me. I began to wonder if she knew who her roommate was.
"Something wrong?"
I asked her.

 
For a moment she said nothing, not even acknowledging my comment or existence. I was beginning to suspect I had somebody really ill but she finally snapped out of it and looked at me.

 
"I—I'm sorry, but it's been hard for me. I feel like this is all an ugly
dream, that
I'll wake up from it sometime."

 
I nodded sympathetically. "I know what you mean. But you can't let it get to you. You have to figure that you're alive, and you're still you and not some psych's dream, and that you've got a whole new start in a whole new life. It isn't as bad as all that." But, of course, it was. She was from the civilized worlds and probably had never even seen a frontier settlement. Her world, a world she not only had loved but had taken entirely for granted, was now totally and irrevocably gone.

 
Come to think of it, so was mine.

 
She walked over and sat on the edge of her bed. "Oh, what's the use? It seems to me that being dead would be better than
this."

 
"No, death is never better than life. Besides, you have to consider that you're really pretty special to the Confederacy.
There's
only eleven of us out of the—what? Hundreds?—convicted at the same time. They saw something in us that they didn't want to lose. In a sense, they're saying we're better than almost all the people in the Confederacy."

 
"Different, anyway," she responded. "I don't know. I just don't.
Spending the rest of my life in this rotten place."
She looked me straight in the eye. "What makes you so special? What did
you
do to get here?"

 
Well, here it was—acid test early on. I decided to take a very mild gamble, but first
a proper
priming. "You know you aren't supposed to ask that."

 
She was beginning to relax a little now, and moved to get rid of her own wet clothes. "Something you're ashamed of?" she asked. "Funny. I never thought it mattered."

 
"It doesn't matter to you?"

 
She thought a moment as she dried her hair.
"No, not really.
I'm Zala Embuay, by the way."

 
"Park Lacoch," I responded, tensing a bit to see if it got any reaction. He—I—was pretty damned notorious.

 
She let it pass without a glimmer of recognition. Well, that was something, anyway.

 
"Well, Park Lacoch, weren't you some sort of criminal?"

 
"Weren't we all?" -

 
She shook her head.
"No, not me.
Fm different.
I may be the only person ever sent to the Warden Diamond because I was an innocent victim."

 
I was finding it hard to take her seriously.
"How's that?"

 
She nodded seriously. "You've never heard of the Triana family?"

 
It was my turn to betray ignorance.
"Nope."

 
"Well, the Trianas are the ranking political family on Takanna. Ever been there?"

 
"No, can't say I have," I admitted.

 
"Well, you know at least what it's like to be a ranking political family, don't you?"

 
You bet I did—but Lacoch would have been a little more removed. "I understand it, although I'm a frontier man myself. I've been to many of the civilized worlds but I've never actually lived on one."

 
"That's what I mean. You're much better equipped for someplace like this."

 
"The frontier's not as wild and primitive as you think," I told her. "In comparison to the civilized worlds, yes, but it's nothing at all like this. Believe me, our backgrounds may be very different but they're much more alike than either of us is to the people who were born here."

 
I'm not sure she accepted that truism, but she let it pass. "Well, anyway, I was raised in a government house, had a happy childhood and was being prepared for an administrative slot. Everything was gping right when all of a
sudden,
the Security Service came in one day and arrested my designated mother and me."

 
I understood what she meant by that. All people of the civilized world were born
in vitro,
perfect products of genetic engineering, predesigned and predestined for their lives and careers. Each career on a civilized world was a Family, and when children were five they were given to a designated member of that Family unit to be raised and educated. "What was the charge?" I asked her, really interested now. I wondered whose territory Takanna was in.

 
"Well, they charged
her
with unauthorized genetic manipulation," she told me. "They claimed I was a special product—
product!—
illegally created and born."

 
I sat up, all ears.
This
was interesting. "You look perfectly normal to me," I assured her. "Just what were you supposed to be that you weren't supposed to be?"

 
"That's just it! They wouldn't tell me! They said it would be better that I didn't know, and maybe if I didn't the truth wouldn't make any difference. That's what's so frustrating about it all. How would you like to be told one day that you're a freak, but not told how or in what way?"

 
"And you haven't a clue? Your mother never indicated anything?"

 
"Nothing.
I've searched and searched my whole childhood, and I haven't come up with anything that anyone found odd or unusual. I
do
admit I found the whole business of administration pretty boring, but a lot of it
is
boring. And I never saw her after the arrest, so I never got a chance to talk to anybody else
who
might know and would tell me." "And for that they shipped you here?"

 
She nodded. "They told me it was for my own good; that I'd do all right here, that I could never fit into the civilized worlds. Just like that, I'm a convicted criminal—and here I am."