Si Vis Pacem (Heinlein's Finches) Page 3
This is what I know. This is all I know. This is home.
By the time we reach what I don’t know, what is as unfamiliar to me as the Outsiders who are taking us away, it’s gone so dark that I can barely see it. Not that there’s much to see: a wall is a wall, no matter how big it is. This one is massive, big enough to completely block out the horizon. I’ve never seen it before, but I’d heard about it. We all know it’s here, even though only those unlucky enough to live within sight of it ever get to see it. It’s not the kind of place anyone would take a trip to, even if they had enough spare time for that kind of messing around.
I am absolutely not scared of it. It’s nothing but a symbol, a monumental gesture defining where our civilization starts and ends. There’s a gap in the middle of it wider than a barn door; you could stroll right through it if you wanted to. Nobody does, ever, but that doesn’t matter: we all know what lies behind it.
The damn thing seems to come at us a lot faster than it should, though, much faster than I’d like, and something inside me doesn’t like that at all. I feel as if I’m walking into a trap, as if once we go through that gap the wall is going to come crashing down on us and squash us flat. As the wall approaches I find myself holding my breath without meaning to, even though I know that’s only going to increase my panic. I don’t manage to get any air in until we’re well past it and it becomes obvious that I was full of nonsense, yet again. We’re perfectly fine. Of course we are.
So we’re at the port: big whoop. I knew this was coming. The only way out of here is by ship, after all. The port is where the ships are. The wall surrounds the port. There is nothing here to be scared of. I keep saying that to myself, but my body refuses to listen. My hands are clutching the seat so hard they hurt, I can’t get enough air in to stop myself getting dizzy, and my heart is trying to beat its way right out of my chest. Maybe this is a nightmare and I’ll wake up sweating and panting in my bed to a chorus of complaints from my roommates because I woke everyone up.
When the transport stops, my brain goes blank. I can’t think, I can’t talk, I can’t breathe. The Outsiders have opened our door and are waiting outside for us, but I can’t move. The guys aren’t going anywhere either: they’re looking out, but they’re not budging. Jake is the first one to shake himself off, get up, and get out. Noah is next. Seeing them disappear towards the building finally makes me move; I don’t want to end up out here on my own.
There is nothing sinister or exotic about the building we’re walking into apart from the fact that it’s on the wrong side of the wall. The wall still looms over us, way too close for my taste, but everything else looks familiar. I want to race inside just so I don’t have to see that damn wall anymore, but I don’t want to look spooked, so I make myself walk slowly.
As soon they shut the door behind us the Outsiders seem to relax. I still can’t see their faces, but their bodies loosen up. Nothing shocking there: they’re back to their home camp. The port may be physically on Pax, but from all other points of view we stepped on foreign ground the moment we crossed the wall. When they start to take off their helmets, that’s when things start to get really weird. It makes no sense at all. If they can breathe our air, why are they in a suit? And if they can’t, what’s going to happen to us? Are we getting gassed without noticing? When their heads emerge, it becomes obvious that these guys – they’re all guys, from what I can tell – are just like us. They’re not just vaguely humanoid: they could literally go walking through any of our homesteads without anyone batting an eye. What they were doing dragging a suit around when they are just fine without one is beyond me.
When my brain switches on again, I realize that most of what I thought I knew about Outsiders was guesswork. We are not taught much about them beyond the fact that they are a backwards, barbaric culture that, unlike ours, has yet to find peace. I assumed that they would be markedly different from us. If they are not, then why don’t they live as we do? Why don’t they just take their suits off and beg to join us?
They sound like us, too. They speak boring old English, though their voices are way too loud and their accents are atrocious. One of them knocks on a door and bellows without opening it.
“Captain? They’re here.”
After some muffled bellowing the door opens and a guy emerges. He isn’t anywhere near as tall as the other Outsiders, but he still manages to look intimidating. He could be one of us, although he looks angrier than anyone I’ve ever met. No: he’s angrier than all the angry people I’ve ever met put together, and he’s making no effort to hide it. To make matters worse, the Outsiders who brought us there walk out and leave us with him. He waves us through the door, still scowling. I follow the guys in. When he slams the door behind us, we all jump.
The Captain wanders off to an appliance in the corner.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Jake manages to get himself together enough to answer. “Coffee?”
The Captain stares at us, slowly shaking his head. “Why me? Yes, coffee. Hot beverage. This is not the real stuff, but it’s passable. I’m not technical, but I believe the real stuff is made from a roasted bean, or a seed.”
“What?” squeals Jake. “Beanwater? It’s a psychoactive drug! And it’s addictive!”
The Captain turns around clutching a cup to his chest. I swear he’s sniffing the stuff. “Yes. Yes, it is.” He sits down behind a small desk and puts his cup down with a thump. “So, you are the new batch of nincompoops who are temperamentally unsuited to doing the bare minimum to ensure a quiet life, eh?”
He looks at us as if we were bugs – particularly unsatisfactory bugs, in fact – and I’ve had about enough of this. It’s been a long day coming on the back of a very long week. My mouth starts moving before my brain has had a chance to think about what’s going to come out of it.
“Actually, I am someone who is temperamentally unsuited to getting raped in a barn. If you think that makes me a nincompoop, then I’m not sure what that makes you.”
Noah and Jake gawk at me, but the light returns to their eyes.
Jake sticks his thumb towards Noah. “He’s a nincompoop who saved a bunch of kids from being mauled to death by an animal.”
Noah grins at Jake. “He is… Well, no, he really is a nincompoop, but his heart is in the right place.”
The Captain seems unimpressed by our wit. He glares at us through narrowed eyes. “You really think you know better than anyone else, don’t you?” He hisses. “Years of training and schooling, and when it came to the crunch you still managed to completely ignore what your entire civilization is based on. You just do your own thing, and believe that your own on-the-spot judgment is more valid than other people’s carefully derived notions, eh?”
Noah swells up. The result is impressive. “Yes. Now that you mention it, I do. I believe that extreme circumstances sometimes require extreme measures. I believe that if there’s a mismatch between doing the right thing in theory or in practice, then something’s wrong somewhere. And I believe that if I’m responsible for my own actions, then I should also be responsible for the thinking that goes behind them.”
I’ve never thought about the issue that deeply, but I feel that I have to say my piece. “I just believe in not letting people hurt people. Hurt me. I mean, if they start something bad, I don’t believe in letting them finish it. It doesn’t seem fair.” Even as I say that, I know it’s not the truth, or at least it’s not the whole truth. My problem is not philosophical. “I didn’t have a choice. My body wouldn’t let itself get hurt.”
I think Noah has noticed that I’m starting to babble because he squeezes my shoulder. I don’t know if he’s trying to shut me up or make me feel better, but he achieves both things.
“Does it matter why we’re here, anyway?” asks Jake. “I mean, they’ve made it very clear that they won’t take us back.”
“Yes, it matters!” barks the Captain. “It matters because you’ve been dumped on me, and I now I hav
e to deal with you! It matters because I need to know whether you’re unable to lie convincingly, or actually so self-righteous that you’d rather have your whole world turn against you than back the hell down!”
I’ve had about enough of this. “Put me down as self-righteous, then.”
He snaps his head around to growl at me. “Do you realize what you’re getting yourself into? How old are you, ten?”
“Fourteen!”
“Really? Didn’t they feed you at home?”
“Very funny.”
“And at the ripe age of fourteen you think you’re old enough to know better than anyone else?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily wrong, either.”
“And you two studs? How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” says Noah. “We both are.”
“Do you realize how comprehensively screwed you are?”
Noah shrugs. “It makes no odds. We can’t undo what we have done.”
“Well, then.” The Captain picks up his beanwater and sighs. “It’s probably a ridiculous question, but I have to ask it: is there any adult outside of this shithole who would be able and willing to take you in as their charge?”
I shake my head. I don’t even have an adult here who’d do that. Noah and Jake both say no.
“If that’s your last answer, then you leave me no choice. You leave yourselves no choice. As of now, you’re minors under Fed care. You will remain so until you reach your majority at eighteen. You will be removed from Pax on the next transfer out.”
“Fed care?” I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Yes, Fed care. Fed as in Foundation for Exploration and Development. The Fed this dump is a part of.” He must read the bafflement in our faces, because he starts to guffaw. “You country bumpkins are adorable. You don’t have a damn clue, do you?”
“Pax is an independent community…”
He cuts me off. “Independent my ass. Did you seriously think that your poxy little attempt at a commie commune could survive in isolation? You must know that you’re not self-sufficient. It’s obvious if you just look around you. You are third-rate agriculturalists, and that’s being generous. You have no mining, no industries, nothing but your cute little fields with your cute little crops and your cute little animals. Where did you think the rest of your resources came from? Have you ever milked polymer out of a cow, or watched a chicken lay a circuit?”
“Trade,” croaks Noah. “What we can’t produce we buy.”
“You’re joking, right? Who’s going to trade with peaceniks? Why should people buy things from you when they can just take them? There is no such thing as peaceful trade. All trading agreements are underpinned by the threat of retaliation. Without the Fed, you couldn’t survive. Do you think that the rest of humanity would have allowed this place to continue dreaming its pipe-dream of peace, love, and understanding? You can grow all the peace you want, but if you’re unwilling to defend it, someone must do that for you. The Fed are that someone. This bucolic fantasy of yours is so small, so fragile, so self-absorbed… Heh. It doesn’t matter. You’ll find out exactly what I’m talking about, if you last long enough. And unless you learn to mind your place, I wouldn’t bet on your chances.”
The Captain bellows and moments later another Outsider comes to usher us out. We follow her down a maze of corridors and eventually reach a small room at the back of the building. The room is so packed with furniture we can hardly move: in addition to a table and chairs in the middle of it, there are low beds all around the walls. Just seeing them makes me sag. My head is running around in circles, but all my body wants to do is curl up in a ball and switch off. It’s hungry, too. The damn thing has its own agenda and lives by its own schedule.
I spend a few minutes trying to blink my eyes open and not doing terribly well, until I open them to see Noah standing right in front of me, holding out his coat.
“Here you go. Wrap yourself up. I’ll keep an eye out. I can’t sleep anyway. If anyone comes in to check on us, I’ll ask for blankets.”
It doesn’t seem fair to take his coat off him; it’s chilly in here. He looks like he means it, though, and the mere thought of being able to switch off wrapped in something that smells like him while he’s keeping watch for me adds a couple of kilos to each of my eyelids. I take his coat, wrap it around my shoulders, lie down, and switch off.
When Noah shakes me awake, for a long moment I can’t remember where I am or why. When it all hits me I have to stifle a squeak. I don’t feel rested, my head is fuzzy, and I have no idea what the time is. He is smiling, though, so things couldn’t have gotten any worse for us while I was out.
“Wake up, sleepyhead. They brought food.”
“What time is it?”
“Not sure. Late, though. Apparently this is their dinnertime.”
Jake is already sitting at the table, sniffing the air. I can’t blame him: whatever they brought us smells unlike anything I’ve ever eaten, and the smell is doing weird things to my stomach. I don’t know if I like it or hate it, but I can’t ignore it.
Noah sits across the table from me.
“The man who dropped it said to watch out for bones.”
“Bones?”
“Inside it. In the middle. I thought he was joking. Now I’m not so sure.”
He picks up a long, thin brown thing off his plate and taps it on the table. It makes a knocking sound.
I pick up one of those things off my plate. The middle is hard as wood.
“Are you supposed to crunch it?”
“I don’t think so.” He taps some more. “You’d probably break a tooth. Maybe you suck it and it gets soft. Maybe it’s because they’ve not invented cutlery yet. All we have is napkins.”
Jake picks up something else, paler and teardrop-shaped. “This one is not as hard.”
“What about the middle, though?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.” He takes a careful bite and cringes.
“How is it?”
“I couldn’t tell you. Weird, for sure. I’m starving, though, and if this is what there’s to eat then I’m going to eat it.”
When Jake has taken a few bites with no adverse effect, Noah tucks in, too. I’m not hungry enough for this food to be tempting, but I know that I will regret it if I don’t eat. I pick up the least unappealing shape and get into it. It takes a bit of convincing to make my mouth chew and swallow it, but it’s not unpleasant. It’s seriously weird, though.
One of the Outsiders comes in with a couple of pitchers when we’re about halfway through the pile of food. He scowls as he walks in but brightens up when he sees us eating.
“First time for you, hey? How do you like it?”
We all make vaguely positive noises and he smiles.
“I do my best. Don’t get used to it, though. There won’t be any of that where you’re going. Just a treat to see you off nicely.”
Noah smiles back at him. “What is it?”
The guy points at the long, hard bits. “That one is pork.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that word.”
“Pork. As in pig, innit?”
“Pig as in the animal?”
“Yeah. And that,” he points to the teardrop shapes, “is chicken.”
“Like the animal?”
“Yes, like the animal. Exactly like the animal.”
Everything I’ve eaten starts to congeal in my stomach. I have a really bad feeling about this and I wish Noah would just drop the subject, but he doesn’t.
“I don’t understand. This is made to taste like animals?”
The Outsider frowns. “They didn’t tell you?”
“Tell us what?”
“That’s not vat-grown. That is real meat, made out of real animals.”
Noah’s face blanches. “Animals? We’re eating dead animals?”
“Better than eating live ones, don’t you think?”
“And the hard bits are…”
He barely gets to the end of the sentence when Jake springs up from the table and starts throwing up in a corner. Noah doesn’t make it as far: he just turns his head sideways and upchucks all over the chair next to his. I’m too horrified to even do that. I just sit frozen, while my brain chants to itself that I just ate a corpse.
When the guys have finished being ill, the man looks furious. I don’t think it’s at us, though, because his voice is gentle.
“They should have told you. Probably their idea of a joke. I’m sorry about that. But I’m also not cleaning up after you. You need to get used to how things are. The sooner you get your head around it all, the better.”
He pats me on the shoulder before going off. When he comes back he’s brought cleaning supplies. He stands over the guys while they clean up. I can tell from their faces that even handling that stuff is making them feel sick, but they get it all cleared up without retching again. I’ve not managed to move yet. I don’t know what will happen when I do.
When the room is back to normal the man smiles at us, though he doesn’t look happy at all. “Good job. Now try and get some rest. You’ll be up for processing first thing tomorrow. The transfer leaves before lunch.”
I manage to get my mouth to work. “Can we have blankets?”
He shakes his head. “No, lass. Hanging hazard.”
“I don’t want to hang them. I want to go to sleep.”
“I didn’t mean you’d hang the…” He takes a deep breath. “Don’t worry about it, lass. But you’ll have to make do with what you’ve got.”
We take a bed each and lie down. Noah and Jake talk to each other for a bit, but I can’t follow what they’re saying. When the light goes off the room becomes pitch black and they fall silent. I wrap myself in Noah’s coat, close my eyes against the darkness, and listen to their breathing.
When I wake up the guys are still asleep. It’s definitely morning, or at least morning in my old world: my body wants to get up and move and my brain is fretting at undone chores. At home I’d be getting up for the first rush of mucking out, feeding, and watering. I wouldn’t really be awake – my head is never fully there until after breakfast – but I wouldn’t have to be. I can do my chores on autopilot.