The 97th Step (2 page)

At sixteen terran-standard years, Mwili Kalamu was work-strong and sturdy, if not tall, and within two centimeters and four kilos of his father's height and weight. He could fight back and maybe even win, but that would be a mistake—Mafuta had both God and the Law on his side, as he pointed out endlessly, and on Cibule, one was the same as the other. Mwili's bare hands were cold, and the warmth of his body leaked out through half a dozen worn spots on his heavy work gi and baggy cotton twill pants.

Fortunately, his boots were of cast dotic plastic, and proof against the low temperatures. He had collected and sold tourist rock, saving every demistad for seven months to buy those boots, and had been whipped for the sins of Desire and Pride when he'd brought them home. Since they were custom-made, his mother had finally prevailed upon his father to allow him to wear them. They couldn't be returned, after all, and waste-not-want-not might not be a Holy Rule, but it was a farmer's creed, right enough.

Despite the evening's hard chill, Mwili wiped muddy sweat from his forehead with the back of one deeply tanned hand. Work-sweat, some, but mostly from fear. Unlike most of the settlers on this moon, his ancestors had been of terran Germanic/Nordic stock, and his natural skin color was pale, his eyes green, like his mother's. Eyes that now fed a message to his brain it plainly did not wish to accept, given the fight-or-flight reactions that brain was producing.

There, his father, dangling the strap.

When he was within two meters of the man, he stopped, and waited for Mafuta to speak. He was the elder, and such was his right.

"You are late," his father said. He twitched the broad leather strap. The end raised a small dust cloud where it touched the ground. The dust seemed to sparkle in the house's big exterior HT lamps. Mwili saw the curtain move at the kitchen window. That would be his mother, watching, even though she would have been ordered not to.

Mwili had a valid reason, for once, but he held his tongue. Valid or not, his father was just looking for a reason to swing the strap, and speaking before being given leave was as good an excuse as any. He merely nodded. True. He
was
late. He could not argue that.

His father said, "You were due back from the supply station four hours ago."

Again, Mwili nodded. His father would always state the obvious, as if he were certain God Himself hung on every word, checking it for accuracy.

"Jesu knows how much I have tried to do his work with you, boy." The man shook his head. "And no matter how much I pray, you are always found wanting. I cannot understand why He trials me this way. I have been a faithful servant, I observe the Holy Rules, and yet you task me at every turn."

Mafuta spared the heavens a glance, as if expecting a direct reproach from God for his complaints. He was quick to qualify them. "But it is not for man to understand the ways of God. A man must accept his lot and strive for perfection in spite of it. Such is the Rule."

Mwili nodded tiredly. "Such is the Rule," he echoed softly. Failure to speak that would gain him a glare and a fast slash from the whistling strap. It seemed like everything brought the strap. It was one of his earliest memories, and a constant part of his daily life. His mates all suffered under the heavy hands and belts of their parents, but that made bearing it no easier. None of them seemed to get it as often as he did.

"Why, son, are you tardy this night?"

Finally. "The flitter broke down, Baba. The coil burned out again."

His father stared at him, not speaking.

It was all Mwili could do to stand there at attention, waiting for his father to make his decision. The Jesu-damned flitter, old when Mwili was born, was a bucket of junk. He had rewound the burned coil twice already, the last time only a week past. It had taken half a day on the shop lathe, and his father had begrudged him both the time and the copper for the wire. The flitter needed a new coil, it needed a new inducer, and it needed at least four new repellor grids. If prayer had any validity, then that must be what was holding the flitter together, because Mwili prayed every time he cranked the rattletrap up. Taking the ancient craft on the fly was an invitation to accident, and a broken head or worse. This time, fortunately, he'd only been half a meter up and cruising slowly when the engine shut off. He'd raised dust and a few bruises, but both he and the flitter had survived fairly undamaged otherwise.

"Where did this happen?" his father finally said.

"At Three Rocks."

Mafuta looked in that general direction, but Mwili knew that even if his father wore spookeyes and scopes, he'd never be able to see the flitter. It was twenty-six kilometers to the rocks. Twenty-six dusty kilometers and four weary hours on foot, by way of the only road leading to their farm. A more boring stretch of land could hardly be devised; God must have put his mind to it, and only He knew why.

"Did you leave the road? Strain the engine?"

"No, Baba. I went straight to the post and came straight home."

"Why did you not return to the post and call me?"

Mwili sighed. It was nearly twenty klicks from the rocks to the supply post. He would have saved all of an hour on the call, and
still
had to walk home—the supply warden didn't give anything away for free, and Mafuta Kalamu would never have agreed to pay for his son to
ride
home, not in ten times ten thousand years. That would have been sixty-five kilometers he would have had to walk, and that made no sense at all. But he wouldn't say that to his father. Instead, he said, "I thought it would be better to come home. The distance is nearly the same, and I could get started quicker on the repairs."

"You brought the coil?"

Mwili reached into his gi and pulled the coil out. It was the size of a drink can, wrapped in a greasy rag.

"Yes, sir."

Grudgingly, Mafuta said, "That was good." But the faint praise vanished as he suddenly came to the point that Mwili had feared the most: "But—what of the supplies? You just
left
them there?"

Mwili took a deep breath and allowed it to escape quietly. Why, no, father, he thought, I packed all three hundred kilos of food, seedlings, chemicals and electronics into my back pocket and carried them home!

Of course I left them there!

Aloud, the boy said, "I hid them."

"You hid them? Where?"

"Behind the center of the Three Rocks. Under a tarp, covered with dirt. They won't be visible unless you are looking for them—"

"And you think anybody who sees an abandoned flitter won't look around, fool?"

"Baba, what else was I to do?" Careful! That was dangerously close to the sin of Impertinence.

But the smaller sin was lost in the larger for his father. "Three months' worth of supplies! The seedlings will likely freeze! And there are dust dogs who prowl the rocks!"

There was nothing more Mwili could say. The last dust dog seen within a hundred klicks had been spotted more than five years past, and moving away, at that. The tarp and dirt would probably protect the seedlings. And the chances of anybody passing along that stretch of road for the next week were slimmer than Mwili’s pet ferret.

The hard-faced man raised the strap. "You should have stayed with the supplies, to protect them against thieves or animals! I would have come looking for you, in a day or two. But no, you wanted the comfort of a soft bed, the warmth of a fire, over our precious supplies! Kneel!"

Mwili dropped to his knees, landing harder for his exhaustion. He leaned forward, bending at the waist, hunching his back. He heard the whistle of the thick leather just before he felt the slap and burn below his shoulders. He did not cry out, for he had long since learned that only made his father more angry at him for being weak.

"Pray!" His father's voice was a roar. Pray for your sins, boy!"

Mwili prayed, but could his father hear his thoughts, he would have swung the strap harder. He prayed for a lightning bolt to strike his father. For the earth to open and swallow him, for—

The second stroke landed, overlapping the first only slightly. His father was an expert with the strap, God knew he had enough practice! The burn spread.

How can you allow this, God? How can the God of the Biblioscript, who is supposedly just and merciful, allow me to be whipped for something that wasn't my fault? Where is the Justice in that? The Mercy of Heavenly Love?

The third lash smacked into him, farther down his back. That one hurt more, there was a bruise there from the flitter's rough landing. The whippings themselves left no permanent marks—his father had made the strap wide enough to spread the pain without cutting the skin—but they did hurt. Although lately, it was not so much the pain as the unfairness of it. He would have replaced the damned coil, had it been up to him! But no—!

"Beg the Lord's forgiveness, son! Change your sinning ways!"

Crouched under the flailing strap in the cold light of the exterior lamps, Mwili prayed. Take him now, God. Take him and take this whole fucking planet!

His only answer was the whistling of the strap, and the dust it raised from his jacket when it landed.

His mother sat on the worn form-chair, pretending to read from the Holy Script when Mwili walked past her toward his room. The worn and old electronic reader on her lap hummed constantly, and squeaked each time she pushed the cheap mechanical button to advance the text on the small screen. She spared him a quick glance when he passed, then stared back down at the dim and flickery gray screen of the reader, lest her husband see her offering any kind of sympathy to her son. As an adult, she was not subject to the strap, but an hour's lecture on one Rule or another was not uncommon. Himself, Mwili preferred the strap to the preaching.

The boy did not speak. Later, when Mafuta was asleep, she might visit the fresher, and risk a side trip to his room, for a quick word or affectionate touch with her son. Only then.

In his room, Mwili knew he was too tired to wait for his mother's possible visit. The trip to town, loading the supplies, then unloading and walking from Three Rocks had been enough to exhaust him. Fifteen from the strap had finished the job completely. He was bone-weary, and in his misery, could only think of one thing: he had to get out. Somehow, he had to get away from his father, from Cibule, from the Svare System altogether. There were twenty-two other explored star systems out there, somewhere, fifty-odd inhabited worlds, and scores of wheel worlds. The Confed took a heavy tax from every planet to push Bender ships out to explore yet more systems and worlds. Among all that, there had to be places better than here. There had to be.

It had been on his mind for months now, hazy and ill-defined. His studies on the holoproj net had shown him that life was different elsewhere. He was a good student, he enjoyed the learning time, time he did not have to face his father and the ever-present farm work. There were other ways to live, and his resolve to find them crystalized as he lay on the narrow cot, face down to avoid pressure on his sore back.

That it was impossible meant little to him. He was too young to ship with the Confed military yet, though they would draft him in a few years; nobody would hire a boy his age for any kind of legitimate work offworld; and he had all of nineteen stads to his name. That was less than half as much needed just to buy an
application
for a ticket to anywhere offplanet. Yet, there had to be a way. He
had
to find it.

Otherwise, his future was grim. Another four years of beatings, then he would be a "man." Until then, he'd still be in thrall to his father, and he'd continue to work the dusty shamba fields, trying to keep the stubby
wembe
plants alive through the quakes, dry spells and the cold. Then, he could look forward to his impress into the military.

Four years. Until then, his only other choice was to run off. Onplanet, he might lie about his age, and maybe get a job as a contract laborer on somebody else's farm. Or as a flunky to some merchant in Choo Mji—the worn, plastic-prefab Toilet Town. Until Mafuta came to fetch him back, which would happen in short order. And every minute of every day, God would ride on his shoulder, unseen but weighing upon him like an overcoat of lead. How much interest God took in Cibule might be open to argument on another world, but not here; the inhabitants were certain of their place in God's hierarchy—at the top.

Mwili managed to drag himself up from the canvas cot. He took the two steps necessary to cross the width of his room to where his ferret prowled the inside of his own cage. The boy slid the mesh door up and put his hand inside. Nyota scurried up the boy's wrist and arm, to perch on his shoulder. He chittered excitedly, knowing the night's hunt was about to begin.

Mwili managed a small smile. He scratched the spot at the base of the creature's shoulders near the recall caster. The smell of the animal's musk was high. The boy caught the thin creature gently in his hand and brought him around so that he could stare into Nyota's face.

"I think I understand how you must feel," Mwili said.

With his other hand, the boy pinched the pressure release on the recall caster. The button-sized unit popped away from the ferret's back. Were he to release the little hunter now, there would be no way to make him return after his night of mousing. Mwili stared at the little electronic caller for a moment, before walking to the window. He touched a control, and the triple-paned thermoplast grated as it slid over its warped track. Cold air rushed into the small room and enveloped both boy and ferret in its frigid arms.

"Go," he said gently. "Go and make a meal of some fat shamba rodent stealing the grain. Do it whenever you wish from now on. Be free." He put the ferret upon the sill, and it. was but a heartbeat before the creature scurried down the outer wall and ran into the darkness. It did not look back.

Before he closed the window, Mwili held the caster like a marble and thumbed it into the darkness after the ferret. There would be no call to return at the next dawn, nor any dawn thereafter. Mwili had always treated the ferret well, loving it as much as he knew how to love anything. Or anybody. But he had proscribed its life by keeping it caged, just as his own life was limited. It would not do to leave his friend imprisoned while he escaped. Not after he'd finally realized the kinship.