Screwtop Read online

  "I don't know," Miria said softly without looking up. "We need the power generators. Someone has to drill the steam wells. Some of us will die in the work. But you're right about the young people. I've been thinking about... other things. I had not noticed." She said that as if she had committed a crime, or more

  exactly a sin, by not noticing.

  "And the child..." Her voice trailed off and she smiled sadly at Kylis. "How old are you?"

  "I don't know. Maybe twenty."

  Miria raised one eyebrow. "Twenty? Older in experience, but not that old in time. You should not be here."

  "But I am. I'll survive it."

  "I think you will. And what then?"

  "Gryf and Jason and I have plans."

  "On Redsun?"

  "Gods, no."

  "Kylis," Miria said carefully, "you do not know much about tetraparentals, do you?"

  "How much do I need to know?"

  "I was born here. I used to... to work for them. Their whole purpose is their intelligence. Normal people like you and me bore them. They cannot tolerate us for long."

  "Miria, stop it!"

  "Your friend will only cause you pain. Give him up. Put him away from you. Urge him to go home."

  "No! He knows I'm an ordinary person. We know what we're going to do."

  "It makes no difference," Miria said with abrupt coldness. "He will not be allowed to leave Redsun."

  Kylis felt the blood drain from her face. No one had ever said that so directly and brutally before. "They can't keep him. How long will they make him stay here before they realize they can't break him?"

  "He is important. He owes Redsun his existence."

  "But he's a person with his own dreams. They can't make him a slave!"

  "His research team is worthless without him."

  "I don't care," Kylis said.

  "You-- " Miria cut herself off. Her voice became much gentler. "They will try to persuade him to follow their plans. He may decide to do as they ask."

  "I wouldn't feel any obligation to the people who run things on Redsun even if I lived here. Why should he be loyal to them? Why should you? What did they ever do but send you here? What will they let you do when you get out? Anything decent or just more dirty, murderous jobs like this one?" She realized she was shouting, and Miria looked stunned.

  "I don't know," Miria said. "I don't know, Kylis. Please stop saying such dangerous things." She was terrified and shaken, much more upset than when she had been crying.

  Kylis moved nearer and took her hand. "I'm sorry, Miria, I didn't mean to hurt you or say anything that could get you in trouble." She paused, wondering how far Miria's fear of Redsun's government might take her from her loyalty.

  "Miria, " she said on impulse, "have you ever thought of partnering with anybody?"

  Miria hesitated so long that Kylis thought she would not answer. Kylis wondered if she had intruded on Miria's past again.

  "No," Miria finally said. "Never."

  "Would you?"

  "Think about it? Or do it?"

  "Both. Partner with me and Gryf and Jason. Not just here, but when we get out."

  "No," Miria said. "No, I couldn't." She sounded frightened again.

  "Because we want to leave Redsun?"

  "Other reasons."

  "Would you just think about it?"

  Miria shook her head.

  "I know you don't usually live in groups on Redsun," Kylis said. "But where I was born, a lot of people did, even though my parents were alone. I remember, before I ran away, my friends were never afraid to go home like I was. Jason spent all his life in a group family, and he says it's a lot easier to get along." She was skipping over her own occasional doubts that any world could be as pleasant as the one Jason

  described. Whatever it was like, it had to be better than her own former existence of constant hiding and constant uncertainty; it had to be better than what Gryf told her of Redsun, with its emphasis on loyalty to the government at the expense of any family structure too big to move instantly at the whim or order of the rulers.

  Miria did not respond.

  "Anyway, three people aren't enough-- we thought we'd find others after we got out. But I think-- "

  "Gryf doesn't-- " Miria interrupted Kylis, then stopped herself and started over. "They don't know you were going to ask me?"

  "Not exactly, but they both know you," Kylis said defensively. She thought Miria might be afraid Kylis' partners would refuse her. Kylis knew they would not but could not put how she knew into proper words.

  The rain had blurred away the marks of tears on Miria's cheeks, and now she smiled and squeezed Kylis' hand. "Thank you, Kylis," she said. "I wish I could accept. I can't, but not for the reasons you think. You'll find someone better." She started up, but Kylis stopped her.

  "No, you stay here. This is your place." Kylis stood. "If you change your mind, just say. All right?"

  "I won't change my mind."

  "I wish you wouldn't be so sure." Reluctantly, she started away.

  "Kylis?"

  "Yes?"

  "Please don't tell anyone you asked me this."

  "Not even Gryf and Jason?"

  "No one. Please."

  "All right," Kylis said unwillingly.

  Kylis left Miria on the stony hillside. She glanced back once before entering the forest. Miria was sitting on the stone again, hunched forward, her forearms on her knees. Now she was looking down at the huge slash of clay and trash heaps, the complicated delicate cooling towers that condensed the generators' steam, the high impervious antenna beaming power north toward the cities.

  When Kylis reached the sleeping place, the sun was high. Beneath the dead fern trees it was still almost cool. She crept in quietly and sat down near Jason without waking him. He lay sprawled in dry moss, breathing deeply, solid and real. As if he could feel her watching him, he half opened his eyes.

  Kylis lay down and drew her hand up his side, feeling bones that had become more prominent, dry and flaking sunburned skin, and the scabs of cuts and scratches. He was bruised as though the guards had beaten him, perhaps because of his occasional amusement at things so odd that his reaction seemed insolence. But for now, she would not notice his new scars, and he would not notice hers.

  "Are you awake?"

  He laughed softly. "I think so."

  "Do you want to go back to sleep?"

  He reached out and touched her face. "I'm not that tired."

  Kylis smiled and leaned over to kiss him. The hairs of his short beard were soft and stiff against her lips and tongue. For a while she and Jason could ignore the heat.

  Lying beside Jason, not quite touching because the afternoon was growing hot, Kylis only dozed while Jason again slept soundly. She sat up and pulled on her shorts and boots, brushed a lock of Jason's sun-streaked hair from his damp forehead, and slipped outside. A couple of hours of Gryfs work shift remained, so Kylis headed toward the guards' enclosure and the hovercraft dock.

  Beyond the drill-pit clearing, the forest extended for a short distance westward. The ground continued to fall, growing wetter and wetter, changing perceptibly into marsh. The enclosure, a hemispherical electrified fence completely covering the guards' residence domes, was built at the juncture of relatively solid land and shallow, standing water. It protected the hovercraft ramp, and it was invulnerable. She had tried to get through it. She had even tried to dig beneath it. Digging under a fence or cutting through one was something no spaceport rat would do, short of desperation. After her first few days at Screwtop, Kylis had been desperate. She had not believed she could survive her sentence in the prison. So, late that

  night, she crept over to the electrified fence and began to dig. At dawn she had not reached the bottom of the fence supports, and the ground was wet enough to start carrying electricity to her in small warning tingles.

  Her shift would begin soon; guards would be coming in and going out, and she would be caught if she did not stop. She planne
d to cover over the hole she had dug and hope it was not discovered.

  She was lying flat on the ground, digging a narrow deep hole with a flat rock and both hands, smeared all over with the red clay, her fingernails ripped past the quick. She reached down for one last handful of dirt, and grabbed a trap wire.

  he current swept through her, contracting every muscle in her body. It lasted only an instant. She lay quivering, almost insensible, conscious enough to be glad the wire had been set to stun, not kill. She tried to get up and run, but she could not move properly. She began to shudder again. Her muscles were overstimulated, incapable of distinguishing a real signal. She ached all over, so badly that she could not even guess if the sudden clench of muscles had broken any bones.

  A light shone toward her. She heard footsteps as the guard approached to investigate the alarm the trap wire had set off. The sound thundered through her ears, as though the electric current had heightened all her senses, toward pain. The footsteps stopped; the light beam blinded her, then left her face. Her dazzled vision blurred the figure standing over her, but she knew it was the Lizard. It occurred to her, in a vague, slow-motion thought, that she did not know his real name. (She learned later that no one else did either.) He dragged Kylis to her feet and held her upright, glaring at her, his face taut with anger and his eyes narrow.

  "Now you know we're not as easy to cheat as starship owners," he said. His voice was low and raspy, softly hoarse. He let her go and she collapsed again. "You're on probation. Don't make any more mistakes. And don't be late for duty."

  The other guards followed him away. They did not even bother to fill in the hole she had dug.

  Kylis had staggered through that workday; she survived it, and the next, and the next, until she knew that the work itself would not kill her. She did not try to dig beneath the fence again, but she still watched the hovercraft when it arrived.

  By the time she reached her place of concealment on the bank above the fence, the hovercraft had already climbed the ramp and settled. The gate was locked behind it. Kylis watched the new prisoners being unloaded. The cargo bay door swung Open. The people staggered out on deck and down the gangway, disoriented by the long journey in heat and darkness. One of the prisoners stumbled and fell to his knees, retching.

  Kylis remembered how she had felt after so many hours in the pitch-dark hold. Even talking was impossible, for the engines were on the other side of the hold's interior bulkhead and the fans were immediately below. She was too keyed up to go into a trance, and a trance would be dangerous while she was crowded in with so many people.

  The noise was what Kylis remembered most about coming to Screwtop-- incessant, penetrating noise, the high whine of the engines and the roar of the fans. She had been half deaf for days afterward. The compartment was small. Despite the heat the prisoners could not avoid sitting and leaning against each other, and as soon as the engines started the temperature began to rise. By the time the hovercraft reached the prison, the hold was thick with the stench of human misery. Kylis hardly noticed when the craft's sickening swaying ceased. When the hatch opened and red light spilled in, faintly dissipating the blackness, Kylis looked up with all the others, and, like all the others, blinked like a frightened animal.

  The guards had no sympathy for cramped muscles or nausea. Their shouted commands faded like faraway echoes through Kylis' abused hearing. She pushed herself up, using the wall as support. Her legs and feet were asleep. They began regaining sensation, and she felt as if she were walking on tiny knives. She hobbled out, but at the bottom of the gangway she, too, had stumbled. A guard's curse and the prod of his club brought her to her feet in a fury, fists clenched, but she quelled her violent temper instantly.

  The guard watched with a smile, waiting. But Kylis had been to Earth, where one of the few animals left outside the game preserves and zoos was the possum. She had learned its lesson well.

  Now she crouched on the bank and watched the new prisoners realize, as she had, that the end of the

  trip did not end the terrible heat. Screwtop was almost on the equator of Redsun, and the heat and humidity never lessened. Even the rain was lukewarm.

  The guards prodded the captives into a compact group and turned hoses on them, spraying off filth and sweat. Afterward the new people plodded through the mud to the processing dome. Kylis watched each one pass through the doorway. She had never defined what she looked for when she watched the new arrivals, but whatever it was, she did not find it today. Even more of them were terribly young, and they all had the look of hopelessness that would make them nothing more than fresh meat, new bodies for the work to use up. Screwtop would grind them down and throw them away. They would die of disease or exhaustion or carelessness. Kylis did not see in one of them the spark of defiance that might get them through their sentences intact in body or spirit. But sometimes the spark only came out later, exposed by the real adversity of the work.

  The hatch swung shut and the hovercraft's engines roared to full power. No one at all had been taken on board for release on North Continent.

  The boat quivered on its skirts and floated back down the ramp, through the entrance, Onto the glassy gray surface of the water. The gate sparked shut. Kylis was vaguely disappointed, for the landing was no different from any she had seen since she was brought to Screwtop herself. There was no way to get on board the boat. The familiar admission still annoyed her. For a spaceport rat, admitting defeat to the safeguards of an earthbound vehicle was humiliating. She could not even think of a way to get herself out of Screwtop, much less herself and Gryf and Jason. She was afraid that if she did not find some chance of escape, Jason might really try to flee through the swamp.

  She ran her fingers through her short black hair and shook her head, flinging out the misty rain that gathered in huge drops and slipped down her face and neck and back. The heat and the rain-- she hated both.

  In an hour or two the evening rain would fall in solid sheets, washing the mist away. But an hour after that the faint infuriating droplets would begin again. They seemed never to fall, but to hang in the air and collect on skin, on hair, beneath trees, inside shelters.

  Kylis grabbed an overhanging plant and stripped off a few of its red-black fronds, flinging them to the ground in anger.

  She stood up, but suddenly crouched down in hiding again. Below, Miria walked up to the fence, placed her hand against the palm lock, and waited, glancing over her shoulder as if making certain she was alone. As the gate swung open and Miria, a prisoner, walked alone and free into the guards' enclosure, Kylis felt her knees grow weak. Miria stopped at a dome, and the door opened for her. Kylis thought she could see the Lizard in the dimness beyond.

  Almost the only thing this could mean was that Miria was a spy. Kylis began to tremble in fear and anger, fear of what Miria could tell the Lizard that would help him increase the pressure on Gryf, anger at herself for trusting Miria. She had made another mistake in judgment like the one that had imprisoned her, and this time the consequences could be much worse.

  She sat in the mud and the rain trying to think, until she realized that Gryf would be off work in only a few minutes. She did not even have time to wake Jason.

  When Kylis turned her back on the guards' domes, Miria had not yet come out.

  Kylis was a few minutes late reaching the drill pit. The third shift had already ended; all the prisoners were out and drifting away. Gryf was nowhere around, and he was nothing if not conspicuous. She began to worry, because Gryf was frequently first out, never last-- he did not seem to tire. Certainly he would wait for her.

  She stood indecisively, worried. Maybe he wanted something in the shelter, she thought.

  She did not believe that for a moment. She glanced back toward the bottom of the Pit. Everything happened at once. She forgot about Miria, Lizard, the prison. She cried out for Jason, knowing her voice would not carry that far. She ran downhill, fighting the clay that sucked at her feet. Two people she knew slightly trud
ged up the hill-- Troi, skeletal, sharp-featured, sardonic, and Chuzo, squarely built and withdrawn. Both were very young; both were aging quickly here.

  They supported Gryf between them.

  Ash and grease disguised the pattern of his paisley skin. Kylis knew he was alive only because no one at Screwtop would spend any energy on someone who was dead. When she was closer, she could see the ends of deep slashes made by the whip where it had curled around his body. Blood had dried in narrow streaks on his sides. His wrists were abraded where he had been tied for the punishment.

  "Oh, Gryf-- "

  Hearing her, Gryf raised his head. She felt great relief.

  Troi and Chuzo stopped when Kylis reached them.

  "The Lizard ordered it himself," Troi said bitterly. Screwtop held few amenities, but people were seldom flogged on the last day of the shift.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. I was too far away. Anything. Nothing. What reason do they ever have?"

  Kylis quieted her anger for the moment. She took over for Chuzo. "Thank you," she said, quite formally.

  Troi stayed where he was. "Get him to the top, anyway," he said in his gruff manner.

  "Gryf? Can you make it?"

  He tightened his hand on her shoulder. They started up the steep path. When they finally reached the top, the immense sun had set. The sky was pink and scarlet in the west, and the volcanoes eastward glowed blood red.

  "Thanks," Kylis said again. Chuzo hesitated, but Troi nodded and left. After a moment Chuzo followed him.

  Gryf leaned heavily on her, but she could support him. She tried to turn toward the shelters and their meager stock of medical supplies, but he resisted weakly and guided her toward the waterfall. If he wanted to go there first, he must think his wounds had been contaminated.

  "Gods," Kylis whispered. Clumsily, they hurried. She wished Jason had heard her, for with him they could have gone faster. It was her fault he was not there. She could not hold