Outcasts (2 page)

“When are you going to give that up?”

Jason nibbled a corner of his second ration bar. “I’m
not.” His grin made the statement almost a joke. He saved part of his
food against what Kylis thought ludicrous plans of escape. When he had saved
enough supplies, he was going to hike out through the marsh.

“You don’t have to save anything today.”
She slipped her tag back into the slot and kept reinserting it until the extra
points were used and a small pile of ration bars lay in the hopper.

“They forgot to void my card for the time I was in the
deprivation box,” Kylis said. In sensory deprivation, one of the prison’s
punishments for mistakes, she had been fed intravenously. She gave Jason the
extra food. He thanked her and put it in his belt pouch. Together they crossed
the bare clay and entered the forest.

Jason had been at Screwtop only three sets. He was losing
weight quickly here, for he was a big-boned man with little fat to burn. Kylis
hoped his family would discover where he was and ransom him soon. And she hoped
they would find him before he tried to run away, though she had stopped trying
to argue him out of the dream. The marsh was impassable except by hovercraft.
There were no solid paths through it, and people claimed it held undiscovered
animals that would crush a boat or raft. Kylis neither believed nor disbelieved
in the animals; she was certain only that a few prisoners had tried to escape
during her time at Screwtop, and the guards had not even bothered to look for
them. Redsun was not a place where the authorities allowed escape toward
freedom, only toward death. The naked volcanoes cut off escape to the north and
east with their barren lava escarpments and billowing clouds of poison gas; the
marsh barred west and south. Screwtop was an economical prison, requiring
fences only to protect the guards’ quarters and the power domes, not to
enclose the captives. And even if Jason could escape alive, he could never get
off Redsun. He did not have Kylis’ experience at traveling undetected.

The fern forest’s shadows closed in around them, and
they walked between the towering blackish-red stalks and lacy fronds. The
foliage was heavy with huge droplets formed slowly by the misty rain. Kylis
brushed past a leaf and the water cascaded down her side, making a faint track
in the ashes and mud on her skin. She had washed herself when she got off duty,
but staying clean was impossible at Screwtop.

They reached the sleeping place she had discovered. Several
clumps of ferns had grown together and died, the stems falling over to make a
conical shelter. Kylis pulled aside a handful of withered fronds and showed
Jason in. Outside it looked like nothing but a pile of dead plants.

“It isn’t even damp,” he said, surprised. “And
it’s almost cool in here.” He sat down on the carpet of dead moss
and ferns and leaned back smiling. “I don’t see how you found it. I
never would have looked in here.”

Kylis sat beside him. A few hours ago she had slept the
soundest sleep she had had in Screwtop. The shade alleviated the heat, and the
fronds kept the misty rain from drifting inside and collecting. Best of all, it
was quiet.

“I thought you and Gryf would like it.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Only across the compound. He looked all right.”

Jason said aloud what Kylis feared. “The Lizard must
have had a reason for letting him take my shift. To make it harder on him.”
He too was worried, and Kylis could see he felt guilty. “I shouldn’t
have let him do it,” he said.

“Have you ever tried to stop him from doing something
he thinks he should?”

Jason smiled. “No. I don’t think I want to.”
He let himself sink further down in the moss. “Gods,” he said,
drawing out the word. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s been lonely,” Kylis said, with the
quiet sort of wonder she felt every time she realized that she did care enough
to miss someone. Loneliness was more painful now, but she was not lonely all
the time. She did not know how to feel about her newly discovered pleasure in
the company of Gryf and Jason. Sometimes it frightened her. They had broached
her defenses of solitude and suspicion, and at times she felt exposed and
vulnerable. She trusted them, but there were even more betrayers at Screwtop
than there were outside.

“I didn’t give you those extra rations so you
could save them all,” she said. “I gave them to you so you’d
stop starving yourself for one day at least.”

“We could all get out of here,” he said, “if
we saved just a little more food.” Even at midmorning, beneath the ferns,
it was almost too dark to make out his features, but Kylis knew he was not
joking. She said nothing. Jason thought the prisoners who fled into the marsh
were still alive there; he thought he could join them and be helped. Kylis
thought they were all dead. Jason believed escape on foot possible, and Kylis
believed it death. Jason was an optimist, and Kylis was experienced.

“All right,” Jason said. “I’ll eat
one more. In a while.” He lay down flat and put his hands behind his
head.

“How was your shift?” Kylis asked.

“Too much fresh meat.”

Kylis grinned. Jason was talking like a veteran, hardened
and disdainful of new prisoners, the fresh meat, who had not yet learned the
ways of Screwtop.

“We only got a couple new people,” she said. “You
must have had almost the whole bunch.”

“It would have been tolerable if three of them hadn’t
been assigned to the drilling rig.”

“Did you lose any?”

“No. By some miracle.”

“We were fresh once too. Gryf’s the only one I
ever saw who didn’t start out doing really stupid things.”

“Was I really that fresh?”

She did not want to hurt his feelings or even tease him.

“I was, wasn’t I?”

“Jason... I’m sorry, but you were the freshest I
ever saw. I didn’t think you had any chance at all. Only Gryf did.”

“I hardly remember anything about the first set,
except how much time he spent helping me.”

“I know,” Kylis said. Jason had needed a great
deal of help. Kylis had forgiven him for being the cause of her first real
taste of loneliness, but she could not quite forget it.

“Gods — this last set,” Jason said. “I
didn’t know how bad it was alone.” Then he smiled. “I used to
think I was a solitary person.” Where Kylis was contemptuous of her
discovered weaknesses, Jason was amused at and interested in his. “What
did you do before Gryf came?”

“Before Gryf came, I didn’t know how bad it was
alone, either,” she said rather roughly. “You’d better get
some sleep.”

He smiled. “You’re right. Good morning.”
He fell asleep instantly.

Relaxed, he looked tireder. His hair had grown long enough
to tie back, but it had escaped from its knot and curled in tangled, dirty
tendrils around his face. Jason hated being dirty, but working with the drill
left little energy for extras, like bathing. He would never really adjust to
Screwtop as Gryf and Kylis had. His first day here, Gryf had kept him from
being killed or crippled at least twice. Kylis had been working on the same shift
but a different crew, driving one of the bulldozers and clearing another
section of forest. The drill could not be set up among the giant ferns, because
the ground itself would not stand much stress. Beneath a layer of humus was
clay, so wet that in response to pressure it turned semi-liquid, almost like
quicksand. The crews had to strip off the vegetation and the layers of clay and
volcanic ash until bedrock lay exposed. Kylis drove the ’dozer back and
forth, cutting through ferns in a much wider path than the power plants
themselves would have required. She had to make room for the excavated earth,
which was piled well back from the Pit’s edges. Even so the slopes
sometimes collapsed in mudslides.

At the end of the day of Jason’s arrival, the siren
went off and Kylis drove the ’dozer to the old end of the Pit and into
the recharging stall. Gryf was waiting for her, and a big fair man was with
him, sitting slumped on the ground with his head between his knees and his
hands limp on the ground. Kylis hardly noticed him. She took Gryf’s hand,
to walk with him back to the shelters, but he quietly stopped her and helped
the other man to his feet. The new prisoner’s expression was blank with
exhaustion; in the dawn light he looked deathly pale. Hardly anyone on Redsun
was as fair as he, even in the north. Kylis supposed he was from off-world, but
he did not have the shoulder tattoo that would have made her trust him
instantly. But Gryf was half-carrying the big clumsy man, so she supported him
on the other side. Together she and Gryf got him to their shelter. He neither
ate nor drank nor even spoke, but collapsed on the hard lumpy platform and fell
asleep. Gryf watched him with a troubled expression.

“Who is that?” Kylis did not bother to hide the
note of contempt in her voice.

Gryf told her the man’s name, which was long and
complicated and contained a lot of double vowels. She never remembered it all,
even now. “He says to call him Jason.”

“Did you know him before?” She was willing to
help Gryf save an old friend, though she did not quite see how they would do
it. In one day he had spent himself completely.

“No,” Gryf said. “But I read his work. I
never thought I’d get to meet him.”

The undisguised awe in Gryf’s voice hurt Kylis, not so
much because she was jealous as because it reminded her how limited her own
skills were. The admiration in the faces of drunks and children in spaceport
bazaars, which Kylis had experienced, was nothing compared to Gryf’s
feeling for the accomplishments of this man.

“Is he in here for writing a book?”

“No, thank gods — they don’t know who he
is. They think he’s a transient. He travels under his personal name
instead of his family name. They are making him work for his passage home.”

“How long?”

“Six sets.”

“Oh, Gryf.”

“He must live and be released.”

“If he’s important, why hasn’t anybody
ransomed him?”

“His family doesn’t know where he is. They would
have to be contacted in secret. If the government finds out who he is, they
will never let him go. His books are smuggled in.”

Kylis shook her head.

“He affected my life, Kylis. He helped me understand
the idea of freedom. And personal responsibility. The things you have known all
your life from your own experience.”

“You mean you wouldn’t be here except for him.”

“I never thought of it that way, but you are right.”

“Look at him, Gryf. This place will grind him up.”

Gryf stared somberly at Jason, who slept so heavily he
hardly seemed to breathe. “He should not be here. He’s a person who
should not be hurt.”

“We should?”

“He’s different.”

Kylis did not say Jason would be hurt at Screwtop. Gryf knew
that well enough.

Jason had been hurt, and he had changed. What Gryf had
responded to in his work was a pure idealism and innocence that could not exist
in captivity. Kylis had been afraid Jason would fight the prison by arming
himself with its qualities; she was afraid of what that would do to Gryf. But
Jason had survived by growing more mature, by retaining his humor, not by
becoming brutal. Kylis had never read a word he had written, but the longer she
knew him, the more she liked and admired him.

Now she left him sleeping among the ferns. She had slept as
much as she wanted to for the moment. She knew from experience that she had to
time her sleeping carefully on the day off. In the timeless environment of
space, where she had spent most of her life, Kylis’ natural circadian
rhythm was about twenty-three hours. A standard day of twenty-four did not
bother her, but Redsun’s twenty-seven hour rotation made her
uncomfortable. She could not afford to sleep too much or too little and return
to work exhausted and inattentive. At Screwtop inattention was worth punishment
at best, and at worst, death.

She was no longer tired, but she was hungry for anything
besides the tasteless prison rations. The vegetation on Redsun, afflicted with
a low mutation rate, had not evolved very far. The plants were not yet complex
enough to produce fruiting bodies. Some of the stalks and roots, though, were
edible.

On Redsun, there were no flowers.

Kylis headed deeper into the shadows of the rain forest.
Away from the clearings people had made, the primitive plants reached great
heights. Kylis wandered among them, her feet sinking into the soft moist humus.
Her footprints remained distinct. She turned and looked back. Only a few paces
behind her, seeping water had already formed small pools in the deeper marks of
her bootheels.

She wished she and Gryf and Jason had been on the same
shift. As it was, half of their precious free time would be spent sleeping and
readjusting their time schedules. When Gryf finally got off, they would have
less than one day together, even before he rested. Sometimes Kylis felt that
the single free day in every forty was more a punishment than if the prisoners
had been forced to work their sentences straight through. The brief respite
allowed them to remember just how much they hated Screwtop, and just how
impossible it was to escape.

Since she could not be with both her friends, she preferred
complete solitude. For Kylis it was almost instinctive to make certain no one
could follow her. Unfolding the cuffs of her boots, she protected her legs to
halfway up her thighs. She did not seal the boots to her shorts because of the
heat.

The floor of the forest dipped and rose gently, forming wide
hollows where the rain collected. Kylis stepped into one of the huge shallow
pools and waded across it, walking slowly, feeling ahead with her toe before
she put her foot down firmly. The mist and shadows, the reddish sunlight, and
the glassy surface created illusions that concealed occasional deep pits. Where
the water lay still and calm, microscopic parasites crawled out of the earth
and swarmed. They normally reproduced inside small fishes and primitive
amphibians, but they were not particular about their host. They would invade a
human body through a cut or abrasion, causing agonizing muscle lesions.
Sometimes they traveled slowly to the brain. The forest was no place to fall
into a water hole.