“OH LORD we BOW to thee in thankfulness and gratitude that our passage across this desert of space was achieved with only a slight incidence. We lift our voices in our praise that our humble efforts are successful in cleansing our solar system of these loathsome—”
“Pa, we’re too close.”
“Hush, boy. We’re almost done…oh yes. These loathsome aliens who would dilute the purity of our congregants—”
“Pa, I can’t breathe!”
“All right, go to the couch, son, I’ll be right there. Brothers, break the circle to let Nick out. Okay, link up so we can close…BLESS our holy errands as we press forward. Look unto us with favor, and uhh, bless Nick with the peace and tranquility he so desperately needs. Amen, oh Lord, AMEN!”
“Amen,” the half dozen men in the prayer group bobbed their heads in unison and broke from the tight circle. “A masterful prayer,” Pastor Ludden said, patting Beinbouw’s right shoulder. “How is Nick? Is there anything we can do for him?”
“He’s fine,” Bienbouw lied genially. In truth the boy scared him with those wild eyes and sudden fits of temper. He sat quietly on the aquamarine lounge alone, tucking into his food tray. The living area would be a wide-open space, nonthreatening to his erratic moods. The voyage to this remote ice ball had been uneventful indeed, for most of them. Nick had programmed their sleep pods righteously and rigorously. He’d been a quiet, studious boy, well versed in scripture as well as practical engineering. The pods’ onboard sensors regulated their autonomic functions, maintaining their intravenous fluids over the 18-month voyage by data control. No one was quite certain what had gone wrong with Nick’s pod. Maybe he’d been so focused on the safety of his fellow pilgrims, he simply neglected to apply the same care for himself.
Three weeks before planetfall, an error in programming revived Nick from cryosleep. Yet the pod registered that the party had not arrived, so for his safety, in its rigid computer mind it would not break the seal on his pod. When they all awoke three weeks later Nick was screaming, fingernails torn away, bloody scratches like spiderwebs lining the inside of his coffin. The station’s android medic had to administer sedatives for seven days before they could even begin to elicit a coherent word from the poor boy, his only son. The brethren tried to console him, but they weren’t trained psychologists and he seemed to throw a fit in any tightly enclosed space, real or perceived.
Everyone was still scratching their heads over that peculiar fainting incident outside that kaffir woman’s suite. Most of the brethren awoke with puzzlement over how they had ended up slumped together in the beds and on the sofas in their small guest suite. Nick slept the longest, and apparently the most peacefully since he woke trapped in his space pod. At first when he bounded up he seemed normal, almost recovered.
Bienbouw eased onto the cushion opposite Nick, allowing some breathing space between them. Hopefully, enough. “How are you doing, boy?”
“I’m fine, Pa, really. You don’t have to keep asking.” He paused, wetting his lips, gaze turned down to his dinner plate. “Pa?”
“Yes, boy?”
“It stank. In that airlock, it was like burnt steak, a sweet juicy reek, you know?”
“Yes, I smelled it, too,” Bienbouw admitted. “Don’t worry, nobody’s ever died on this space station. It’s just high energy ions that bonded to our sleep garments during the trip here. It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“Okay. That makes sense. Thanks, Pa.”
“Sure. You take care.” He pat Nick’s leg and left him to finish eating. A hand on his shoulder startled him, but it was only Ludden, his copilot as it were on this grand crusade, the moderating force who kept his baser instincts leashed.
“You’re still thinking about that woman, aren’t you?” Ludden inquired.
“I KNOW her,” Bienbouw persisted. “I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before. Some distant memory, a reel—” he scoffed. “It’ll come back to me. I just need to stop thinking about it.” A vibration on his wrist distracted him. One glance at his universal wrist strip displayed a tiny flashing orange light. “Excuse me, brother, I’m expecting a message from home.” They exchanged hand clasps around their elbows. Then Bienbouw ambled to the alcove where their receivers were stabled. The door irised shut behind him.
For a ‘communications hub’ it was roomy enough. Three meters deep and carpeted, with a pair of stools and a blocky communication box with bulbs arranged along its upper panel strip. The middle light stabbed at him, awaiting a response. “A.C.C. post, this is Oren Bienbouw. Ready to receive transmission.”
“Understood,” a stiffly formal metallic voice responded. “Please give your personal passcode to begin receipt.”
“Certainly,” he grunted. Like all codes, his was longer than a comet’s tail. But endless usage had pretty well drilled it into his skull. Without comment the A.C.C. comm ‘bot sent a green light, confirming receipt of his code. The communications stream would take seven minutes to fully connect and secure for maximum privacy. Time enough to reflect.
That had always been the problem with Terra; too many tribes, too much diversity. There was never an opportunity to maintain the purity of the species. Mars would be different; the overlords promised that. Start with a small population, say, a bare million. A work force kept in its place and no intermingling with the lesser races. Shouldn’t have been that hard to keep it so in his absence.
His ancestors had been driven into exile in the aftermath of the Holy Wars. The people had been inexplicably opposed, no, disgusted by the evangelical warriors who’d longed for those wars, knowing it would force Heaven to launch the End Times as promised. That their crusade failed to move Heaven meant little; their FAITH had not been sufficient. The overlords with their billions assured them of a better life, first on Terra’s Moon, and from there to Mars. They never suspected their fate was in the labor class, without recourse to regulations or the protection of socialist organizations.
The absence of a magnetic field to repel cosmic radiation was one complication they hadn’t planned for. How many overlords had perished leading the way from the ruins of Terra—five, twenty? Generating a field powerful enough to protect future colonists seemed impractical at first. There was simply no way to restart the planet’s core. Drilling would take months to reach the core. Explosives were ruled out as insufficient for the job. Luckily there was a viable alternative, via local field generators projecting a magnetic barrier around each outpost. Constant maintenance was essential to keep out the constant barrage of radiation crashing into the planet, but that was a beginning.
Taming the soil was a necessary first step in colonization. The planet was stubborn in that regard. Perchlorates permeated every millimeter of the native soil. There were no Earth-type organic compounds for fertilization, either. It took generations to filter and alter the chemistry of the soil, just within their small agricultural domes, to make agriculture viable, a situation that defied the hubristic dreams of the overlords. At first they were reliant on biodomes supplied with Terran based soils and fertilizers, plus insects suitable for pollination. That was one of the challenges the first stellar pioneers confronted. And then a concession of processed soil bound for Mars was delayed by several weeks, due to the arrival of an alien delegation to Terra. Which meant that their rocket missed its window for launch. Those months meant struggle and deprivation for laborers like Bienbouw’s grandparents. In some cases, it led to suicide. All to accommodate aliens from the stars.
The interminable wait ended. Bienbouw stood taller as the signal booted in, with only a slight buzz of static. A young visage smiled back at him from beneath a yellow safety cap. An oily grime stained his pale cheeks and coveralls, while stubble dabbled his lip and chin. “Oren, brother! How goes the mission?”
“Hello, Gridly, my young lad. We’ve made remarkable progress. And you?”
“It’s going well. Going well,” Gridly nodded, and nodded, whistling. “The overlords are open to a freer labor agreement.” He chuckled. “I guess they realized since we know how to maintain the toilet facilities—and how to shut them down—and they don’t—” He paused as another worker—a black! —handed him a slate, undoubtedly a labor report. Gridly signed it and shook the man’s hand, as if they were—equals? “Abijah, this is Oren. You remember him.”
“Uh-huh. Hi, Oren,” he said and moved on.
“Grid, what’s going on? What are you doing?”
For a moment Gridly’s smiling face seemed to glow with an inner light. Maybe that was the overhead strips lining the below-levels. “I’ve had a chance to mend my ways for the better. Isn’t that the essence of Christian enlightenment?”
“Thank the Maker you’ve kept the women in line—” a slender arm reached across Gridly’s chest to flick a lever. She smiled at Bienbouw, flame haired and freckled, then flounced off. “Oh no.”
“Miss Beth Schreiber! Our oxygen regeneration pump was operating improperly. She reached in and set it right in two seconds flat. The scales have fallen from our eyes, Oren. These women are stronger than I realized before you gave me this assignment. They’re a true asset to the guild.”
A great temptation to rap his head on the wall burned under Bienbouw’s tunic. For a few seconds his vision actually burned red. Huffing seemed to help somewhat. “Grid, I think you’ve forgotten the principals we started on with this revolution.”
“Oren, I’ve read the Book. I think I’m following a path to a just disposition, without the killing we saw on Luna Colony.”
“Wait, is that a robot I see waiting on you?”
“No one’s waiting on me. We’re not overlords down here, Oren. Roger, his name by the way, offers us perspective understanding how to circumvent the overlords, peacefully.”
“You’re working WITH the robots on—wh-what are you working with them on?”
“I’m taking your advice to heart, brother, and you’re right. We’re not free until we’re ALL free. The autonomous people were the first laborers on this colony. They do a majority of its dangerous labor. It’s tedious work and should be rewarded with equal privileges.”
“But they don’t feel pain, they don’t need air. They have no souls.”
“Oren,” Grid shook his head, as though Bienbouw was the wayward child here, “they’re sentient beings, and as such are entitled to the same liberties as our human brethren.”
“Women, ni—blacks! —robots! Oh my–! What’s happened to—AHH!”
Bienbouw jumped as a bell rang shrilly. “Oh, gotta get back to work! We’re all looking forward to a big pay raise this week! I love you, brother! Bye for now!” the screen went blank, leaving Bienbouw shaking, backing away from the comm unit before he shoved it off its little table.
“Oren…”
“WHAT?” For a moment the red overshadowed his vision again, until he realized it was his loyal compatriot Ludden. “Forgive me,” he sighed. “I’m trying to absorb some disturbing reports from home.”
“Never mind that for now. I’ve been reflecting on that woman in 1263.”
“You’re still thinking about HER? Remember, Ludden, even such thoughts are sinful.”
“it’s not in that nature. Listen. As long as that woman is sheltering Dr. Jensen, she has a powerful ally.”
Bienbouw nodded, huffing to calm his thundering heart. “How do you propose we ameliorate this problem?”
“I don’t know. But this may require extreme measures.”
His gaze shifted to Nick, sitting on the edge of his couch cushion, twitching as soon as anyone as much as brushed past him. “He can’t make another passage. I can’t abandon him.”
“Then focus, man. Our stand must be made here.”
Bienbouw nodded, meeting Ludden’s stare firmly. “We started something good on the fourth planet, my friend. Something pure. We won’t allow it to be diluted by any alien inbreeding. Our race will seed the stars, in all its white purity.”
Papablues Scrapbook 