Chapter 32

When you see how the people live, and still more easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings… They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years, and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone.

- George Orwell

00000

"The sack full of thrones Jack had stolen from the giant Ubers was almost gone and pretty soon he and his mom wouldn't have anything to buy food with. Jack knew he'd have to climb the beanstalk again and find something else, something better. His mother begged him not to go; she knew what would happen if the Ubers caught him, but Jack knew he had no choice. His mom handed him a perfectly smooth, round pebble that she'd had since she was a girl and told him to keep it in his pocket. It was been her good-luck charm; as long as he had it, she hoped he'd be safe. Then she tried to kiss him, but he wormed his way out of her hold muttering 'Stop it, Ma!' and started up the beanstalk for the second time."

00000

Days got hotter as summer reached its peak. The air stagnated. The mines, deep underground, remained cold as tombs but the camp turned into a sweltering inferno. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, and the slaves prayed for the pitiful relief of even a wisp of a breeze. Weekly thunderstorms lit the sky and rattled the camp but instead of bringing the coolness of rain they only intensified the heat and torture. The stench rose to unimaginable heights and unwashed bodies dripped with sweat. At night the earth barely cooled and the barracks were like ovens, trapping the heat of the day. People dropped like flies, and the Ubers disposed of them as such. The mass graves just outside the camp grew steadily.

00000

It was a "bread day" and Harper carefully hid his roll in his clothes, saving it to nibble on in the night hours when hunger twisted his insides unmercifully.

Two slaves were shot at evening roll call that night for falling asleep on the job. For minor infractions, five others were publicly flogged, twenty lashes each, including one of the little water-carriers who'd tripped and spilled his bucket. Dylan bit his lip until it bled to keep from protesting and Harper hung his head and listened to the whip crack through the stifling air, tattooing out the centuries old song of slavery.

00000

"Harper, why didn't you ever tell me that you'd been a slave? While we were on the Andromeda?"

It was night again and it was too hot to sleep. They both lay listlessly on their blankets trying not to move. Moving produced more heat.

Harper considered his friend's question for a moment. The extreme temperature made his brain a bit sluggish and he felt wrung out as his body sweated away more liquid than he was allowed to take in. The sweat and heat also made the heavy chains more galling, rubbing at his wrists, ankles, waist and neck until the skin peeled away and the salty liquid leaked into the wounds, stinging horribly. Another excellent reason to move as little as possible.

He realized Dylan was still waiting for an answer.

"Well, it's not exactly something I'm proud of, or enjoyed," he stated.

"But we're your friends. Friends tell each other the bad stuff along with the good."

"They also keep things hidden that they know would be too painful or hard for their friends to hear. And for the record, you didn't exactly make it easy for people to wander in and spill their guts to you when you rushed around with that 'I'm saving the universe everything else can wait' attitude."

Dylan flinched a little, stung by the honest answer. Harper was right. He'd been a jerk; a self-centered, self-righteous jerk. Funny how this little field triphad opened his eyes so completely. Cruel how it had also closed Harper's so totally.

"Well, I'm here now and I'd like to know more about you. Not as your captain, but as your friend. What happened to you as a slave? I really wanna know."

Harper absently swatted at the rat that was trying to steal his morsel of bread. He closed his eyes and prepared to dredge up the darkest corners of his memory.

"The slave trade on Earth is brutal. It's a planet where the Nietzscheans have had to resort to terror, deprivation, and death just to control the 'free' human population, so the slave trade there brings sadistic and cruel to new levels. Once it scars your life you're never the same.

"They take everything from you, Dylan, everything! Not only do they rip you away from whatever family and friends you might have left, but they steal your freedom, your identity, your soul. Within three hours of being grabbed by the slavers I'd been beaten, tagged, branded, stripped of any remaining shred of dignity and thrown in a black pit of a hole to contemplate my status."

The young man gave a hollow, dead sort of laugh. "Guess it's not really that different from this time around when you look at it."

"Then what happened?" Dylan urged, needing to know.

"Once they pull you out of the pit, usually after three or four days, long enough for you to be weak from hunger and thirst and thoroughly terrified, then the real fun begins. They call it training or conditioning." Harper's voice was distant as he relived those days in his head, the experiences burned into his mind as strong as the moment they happened. "You learn that the slave tags deliver a nasty shock if you don't do what you're told. The first two or three times they just shock you right into oblivion for no reason at all. After that, the remembered pain is usually enough to keep you from lashing out.

"Your new home is a nice, freezing-cold cage and every day the slavers come round to 'beat the spirit' out of you. They teach you that you're less than scum and if you wanna live you gotta ask your master for it. They take your clothes and leave you chained by your ankle and shivering in your cage until you're willing to beg the Ubers just to get a pair of socks or a shirt. They withhold food and water, but make sure there's some sitting just beyond your reach until you're half mad and you'd offer anything just to have a bite or a sip of something wet. They whip you, beat you, spit on you, demean you… And the worst part is they enjoy every minute of it." There was a lot more to it than that, but some things Harper would never tell, not to anyone, ever.

He went on instead.

"If you're a good little slave, you learn quickly. You swallow your pride or you break under torture and you beg your tormentors for that food, that ratty blanket to keep out the cold. You grovel and plead and sell your life and soul away, and then you get to move on to stage two. But, if you're not a good little slave, if you don't learn quickly, you do not pass go and you don't get to collect $200. You get to repeat the process. Over and over again until it sinks in or you're dead."

Dylan listened in silence, appalled and outraged at the same time. He didn't have to ask to know which group Harper had belonged too. It sickened him to wonder how many times the boy had 'gone through the process' before he finally broke.

"I think I lasted about three months. I tried to hold out, Dylan, I really did," Harper read the man's mind. He couldn't explain why he felt the need to justify something to his captain that had happened long before he'd even met him, but he did just the same. Dylan's opinion of him mattered and he was afraid the man would look on him with disgust after this. "But I wanted to live. I needed to live. Not for me, for someone else. So I gave in, Boss. I gave in and groveled at their feet and begged my masters for food and clothes and the pain to stop, just like a well-trained dog." His voice trembled with emotion and he clenched his good hand tightly, glad he couldn't see Dylan's face as he learned just how weak and pathetic his engineer really was.

Dylan levered himself up onto one elbow so he had a better view of his friend. Harper's eyes were still closed and his face was twisted as if he was in pain. The captain started to reach out and put a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder, aware of the boy's distress, but remembered the firm 'no touching rule' and stopped. "Then what?" he asked instead, after a moment of heavy silence. Harper was surprised to hear that his captain's voice was thick with suppressed emotion as well.

"Then you get to go shopping." Harper's laugh was eerie and rather frightening. "Only you're not buying, you're the one for sale. Once you're thoroughly broken in and trained, they haul you off to the auction block. When your turn comes, they drag you up onto this big platform, totally naked. There's a metal frame waiting for you and they chain your wrists to the top and your ankles to the bottom leaving you completely helpless, stretched out, and exposed; merchandise on display for the crowds of Ubers to haggle over.

"And haggle they do. They touch you, prod you, examine your teeth and your eyes and your arms and legs like an animal on sale. They hit you to see if you talk back or are suitably submissive." Dylan noticed the boy instinctively curled up as he spoke as if trying to hide or protect himself. "If you're big and strong they argue over prices until someone wins and leads you away. But if you're small and pale and pathetic, like me, you stand there for hours until some Uber finally decides you might be worth six months or so of hard labor. Or some sick pervert with eyes for the small and helpless strolls by and decides he likes you."

Dylan gasped. "Harper, were you –"

"No," Harper interrupted flatly, "I wasn't bought for what you're thinking, although that doesn't mean it couldn't…" He changed directions purposefully. Another of those memories that should never see the light of day… "Or you could just stand there for hours until someone remembers you might be slightly intelligent and good at mechanics."

"Felix?" Dylan guessed, still reeling.

"Yeah," Harper mumbled. The rat was back and he gave in and let it take his bread. Maybe he could get it to trust him and then catch it and eat it instead. He continued his story. "I found out later it was all a set-up anyway. Felix had been after me since…well…he'd been after me for a long time, and fixing things and selling them in the camps hadn't helped me a bit. My parents saved me once and then, three years later, how do I repay them? One moment of stupidity and carelessness and I end up on the auction block anyway."

"So you were forced to work as Felix's mechanic," Dylan supplied.

"Not right away. I had no idea what he really wanted me for. After almost a full day of hanging in that frame on the platform and being poked and examined and humiliated and then walked away from I figured the slavers must have paid him to take me off their hands. You don't expect to live long when you've been sold as last pickings. Felix knew that, used it to further wear me down.

"Felix wanted to make sure I was completely broken and docile before he put me into his factories. For probably six months I shoveled dirt and grunge, one of dozens of other disposable grunt slaves. And the beatings, whippings, starvation, and degradation just continued. When we were allowed to rest we simply collapsed where we were in the filth. When the whip cracked again we dragged ourselves back to work. Some slaves got back up, some never did.

"It was horrible! I can't even describe it. I wanted out! I wanted gone from there more than anything I'd ever wanted before, and every day the desperation grew. Every day I was there was one more I was failing to protect…" Harper stopped abruptly and changed subjects again. "But there was absolutely no way to escape, nothing I could do. I was convinced I would shovel dirt until one day I just dug my own grave."

He paused to collect his thoughts and ragged emotions. He'd never talked about these things before, not even to Beka. Especially not to Beka. It was draining, more even than the smothering heat. He used his chained hands to wipe the sweat that kept dripping into his blind eyes away, and then turned to where he knew Dylan was lying.

"You have to understand something, Dylan. Slaves on Earth are not people. They aren't even animals. They are things, commodities, totally disposable. The planet is crawling with Kludges there for the grabbing. One dies, you just get another. Having skills doesn't afford you any level of protection, either. If one beast has skills, chances are there's another out there that does, too. This means that as a slave you are totally dependent on the whims of your master. If he doesn't want to feed you, he freakin' doesn't have to. He can give you clothes or not as he likes. He doesn't like you…you're locked away and forgotten about. You make him mad, he can beat you, cut off your foot or your hand, gouge out your eyes, slit your throat…and it's not any different than kicking a couch or disposing of a faulty generator."

The young man sighed bitterly then gave a weary smile. "Of course, I guess you probably do understand that now, at least that last part." He paused again and his face softened with sadness. "I'm so sorry you got dragged into this rotten system, Dylan. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemies…well okay, maybe a few, but never, ever my friends."

Harper's voice sounded tiny and lost as he revealed his memories and Dylan didn't quite know what to say. He also finally understood why Harper had never confided in him before. If he hadn't been sitting in chains next to the boy in a living nightmare he wouldn't have been able to even half-way fathom what his friend had been through. And even now it was still staggering to think about.

"Don't apologize, Harper," he said firmly. "You're not the one who created this tyranny. You're just a victim of it, like the rest of us."

"It's not like this everywhere, you know," Harper whispered after a moment. "I mean Nietzscheans exploit and use and enslave Kludges all over the universe, but not all systems are as savage as Earth's and her sister planets are under the Dragans. I've heard some Niets even treat their slaves well, learn to trust them and value them, even look on them as family after a time."

"That doesn't make slavery right, Harper," Dylan countered.

"I know, but I can't help it if I sometimes wish I'd been born on one of those planets instead of Earth. It would have been nice to be healthy and cared for instead of beaten and starved, even if I was still a slave."

The sadness of stolen dreams was palpable. Dylan had to shatter it before it swallowed them both.

"Eventually Felix must have taken you out of the pits, right?"

Harper composed himself and continued. "Yeah. After six months of digging he had his goons pull me into one of his factories. I got to manufacture arms and missiles for the next nine months. He might have broken my spirit, but I had something pulling me home stronger than anything he could do to me. I never gave up wanting to be free. And then he gave me tools and electronics and machines to play with… That was his big mistake. He knew I was smart, good at what I did, but he totally underestimated me. It took me nine months but I finally figured out a way to turn his factory into chaos and I escaped."

For the first time in the conversation, Harper felt a measure of pride as he spoke. This was the one part, the only part, of his slave experience he wasn't ashamed to share with people.

"Knowing you and how you work, it must have been pretty spectacular. Would have loved to have seen the look on old Gaius' face," Dylan agreed heartily. "So, a year and a half after you were stolen by the slavers, you finally managed to get free…" he tallied up, more to himself than Harper, but the boy still nodded in response. "Harper, how old were you when you were captured?"

Harper snorted harshly. "Sixteen. On the dot. Sixteen and too full of myself to listen to others' advice." His words were bitter and hard, the anger he felt for himself still apparent. "So sure I could take on the world, beat the odds, defy the rules… I spent my birthday night in a slave pit instead of with the people I loved. I guess you could say I learned from my mistake, paid a high price… But someone else paid a higher one."

Dylan's brain had spiraled off before Harper even finished talking. He thought about what he'd been doing when he was sixteen. His biggest concern had been who they'd play in the next basketball match and how to get out of being grounded for crashing his dad's hovercraft. He remembered the huge party his parents had thrown for him on his sixteenth birthday, inviting all his friends. There'd been cake and champagne and hors d'ouvres as they celebrated his life and sixteen years of good memories and happiness.

He was sixteen when he kissed his first 'true love,' sixteen when he was accepted into the High Guard Academy, sixteen when he first flew slipstream…

And at sixteen, Harper had been tortured for months in a cage…had been sold in chains as less than an animal…had been digging his own grave.

It floored him. He couldn't breathe. For the first time he was truly aware of what his friend's life had been, how different they were.

It was a long time before he could speak again.

"One thing I don't understand," he said quietly, sitting up all the way and consciously trying to control his emotions. "I'm sure Felix was ticked you messed his factory up and managed to escape, but if slaves were a dime-a-dozen on Earth, why did he care so much about getting you back? One little slave hardly seems worth his time. Why such a vicious, long-lived grudge?"

"Why the collar? Why the chains? Why the blinding? Why not just crucify me and be done with it like every other runaway slave?" Harper finished what Dylan wouldn't say.

"Yeah," Dylan conceded. "Why?"

"Because I didn't just mess up his factory and escape, I let every other slave in the forty-one story complex go as well. He really should have known better than to let me play with his machines."

For the first time all night, Dylan smiled. "Oh yeah, I can see how that would upset Felix's little world. And get you a spot at the top of his hit list! You don't believe in small do you?"

"The bigger the better," Harper grinned.

"And I dragged you right back to him," Dylan sighed sadly.

"Aw, Dylan, don't beat yourself up about that. He would have found me eventually; I was just kidding myself to think I could hide from him. You don't let thousands of slaves escape and expect to go unpunished, no matter how far away you run."

The conversation sizzled out in the heat, but neither one could sleep now, even if it hadn't been broiling.

"Harper," Dylan asked after a bit, "remember back before this mission spiraled out of control? When we were on the Maru and you delivered that baby? How did you know how to do that? You said you learned how as a slave…"

Harper sucked in his breath and sat up abruptly. He reached out for the barrack wall and moved over to lean shakily against it, drawing up his knees as he fought to control the sudden onslaught of memories.

"Harper?" Dylan called, reaching out in concern.

The young man breathed deeply for several minutes before he attempted to speak.

"I'm okay, Dylan," he tried to cover. "Just needed to move, change positions and get rid of the kinks."

He steadied himself so he could answer. "Working in the factory was totally different from being a grunt worker. I had my own little workbench, set in a line of dozens of other workbenches, and I was chained to it by my ankle night and day. For nine months I never left the six foot radius that chain allowed me to move in. I slept underneath the bench, I used the waste disposal next to it, and I did my work as it came down the assembly line to my station. Everything was totally automated. When you worked hard enough to complete your assigned quota, the slot opened and you got your reward of slop and water. When it was time to rest, the lights dimmed; time to work, they came back on. The chains were sealed with electronic locks, completely un-pickable from the outside so there was no hope of escape. Some slaves had been there for years. Overconfident in their system or maybe just lazy, the Ubers only came around maybe once a day to check on things and beat you for good measure."

He paused but then decided to go on before he could lose his nerve.

"It wasn't as horrible as the pits were, but it was still awful in its own way; the sameness, the boredom, the forced confinement. And there were still plenty of beatings and days without rest or food to make sure you never forgot you were a slave. The chains were long enough and the benches close enough you could reach your neighbor on either side, but that was it.

Dylan tried to imagine how his hyperactive, always-on-the-go engineer had survived nine months tethered to a bench. Once again, it blew his mind.

"On my right was some old geezer, one half crazy and the other half mad. I think he'd been there so long he'd forgotten everything but his job. He'd never answer my questions, just grunt, although some nights I'd wake up to find him sitting right next to me, just staring at me. Creeped me out to no end…" Harper gave a small shudder. "But on my left was a woman who had arrived only a few weeks before me. She was probably about thirty-five or forty and rather pretty in a simple kind of way. She sorta took me under her wing and we would talk sometimes, to kill the time.

"At first I didn't realize it, but it really didn't take too long for me to see that she was pregnant. As the days passed, she got closer and closer to delivery and still the Ubers kept her chained to her bench. As if they could just ignore the problem and it would go away…

"Well, one day, she went into labor of course. The Nietzschean guard had already been around for the day, and I was the only one who could reach her."

Harper lost himself in the memories as he continued to speak. He forgot about Dylan, forgot about the heat and his chains, forgot about the rats that kept running across his toes. His eyes forgot they were blind and he gazed on that scene from his mind again, lived it again. His voice was soft and distant, scared sounding.

"Seventeen year old boys know squat about delivering babies, no matter what planet you come from. I was terrified. Totally petrified, but I was the only one she had. No one else could reach her, the Niets didn't give a darn, and she couldn't do it on her own. I had to try. Thankfully, this wasn't her first baby and so she at least knew what to do. Despite her own terror and obvious pain and discomfort, she took the time to calm me down and then talked me through it all.

"It was so hard for her and it took hours." His voice caught as he remembered. "We were both crying and screaming and begging before it was over. And then it was and she was there." Harper's lips turned up in an unconscious smile. "This tiny, baby girl who was so perfect and so innocent. All around me was horror and pain and death, but she wasn't a part of that, it hadn't touched her. She was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in over a year and she cracked through the wall I hadn't realized I'd built around my heart."

His eyes were glistening with tears and his voice was barely a whisper now.

"I pulled off my shirt and cleaned her up. I played with her long, dark curls and I counted each perfect toe and finger. I watched with fascination as she screwed up her face and howled, letting the world know she was there. I laughed as she wrapped her hand around my finger and felt like somehow, she was mine, too. Then I wrapped her in my shirt and gave her to her mother.

"She just lay there, holding that tiny angel and talking to her, telling her how much she loved her. She cooed to her, rocked her, held her. It was intensely personal and I felt like an intruder so after a bit, I looked away, trying to give them some privacy. I heard her singing a lullaby, a beautiful one with a haunting melody… Then it was just silent. No singing, no fussing baby, just silence…"

Harper's voice broke and he hugged his knees tightly, his eyes closed. "I looked back and she was crying, still rocking that little girl. But the baby was quiet, too quiet. And I realized…I realized she was dead. Her mother had…had…killed her. Smothered her with my shirt. She just looked at me through her tears and said 'She's free, now,' and then started to rock and sing again."

Tears fell from Harper's tightly shut eyes and a sob caught in his throat. "She killed her own baby! That precious, beautiful, innocent little girl! Killed her to keep her from being a slave…"

00000

Slumber my darling, thy mother is near
Guarding thy dreams from all terror and fear.
Sunlight has past and the twilight has gone,
Slumber my darling, the night's coming on.
Sweet visions attend thy sleep
Fondest, dearest to me,
While others their revels keep,
I will watch over thee.
Slumber my darling, the birds are at rest,
Wandering dews by the flowers are caressed,
Slumber my darling, I'll wrap thee up warm,
And pray that the angels will shield thee from harm.

Slumber my darling till morn's blushing ray
Brings to the world the glad tidings of day.
Fill the dark void with thy dreamy delight –
Slumber, thy mother will guard thee tonight.
Thy pillow shall sacred be
From all outward alarms,
Thou, thou art the world to me
In thine innocent charms.
Slumber my darling, the birds are at rest,
Wandering dews by the flowers are caressed,
Slumber my darling, I'll wrap thee up warm,
And pray that the angles will shield thee from harm.

- Stephen Foster