Solbidyum Wars 3: Pirates of Goo'waddle Canals (26 page)

After humming a few bars, Kala began singing very softly in one language and then another, “Come out, come out, my little one, we are your friends and no one will hurt you.”  She sang this song perhaps a dozen times in different languages until, at last, we heard a rusting in the leaves; slowly a small head peered up over the porch to see Kala and I sitting there cross-legged in front of him. 

At first he ducked back down, but Kala kept singing in the same language, “Do not be afraid, my little one, we will not hurt you, we will protect you, we will feed you.” Slowly, the head reappeared and looked at us a few minutes, glancing back and forth along the porch and behind him as though he feared someone was sneaking up on him. 

At last, Kala stopped singing and very quietly said, “I am Kalana and this is Tibby.  What is your name?”

The boy looked at us shyly for a few moments before saying, “You won’t send me back, will you? They will kill me if you do.”

“Who will kill you?
And why would they want to kill you?” Kala asked.

“My masters,” the young boy said.  “My arm is broken and they do not want a cripple to feed and care for.  They would only throw me back into the canal to drown again if you return me.”

Kala turned to me with one of those,
Do something
looks.

“No one is going to throw you into a canal to drown,” I said.  “We will protect you.”

“But you’re slaves, too,” he said.  Obviously, he had noted our slave collars, Kala’s nudity and my loincloth.  “How can you protect or save me?”

“Not all things are as they seem, my young friend.  Come, let’s go inside.  Tomorrow we will see to getting you some food; but for now, come inside where it is safer.”

When we entered the house, Kala turned on the lights so we might have a better look at our young friend.  As he glanced around the room and saw Kerabac and Endina, he started to bolt and run for the door.  It was only my blocking the door that stopped him.  “It’s alright,” I said.  “You’re safe here.  They are friends, too, and they won’t hurt you.”

“They’re Ruwallie Rasson,” he blurted out.  “They’ll turn me in for a reward, or take me for a slave as well.”

“No they won’t,” I exclaimed.  By this time, the noise we were making was waking up the others in the room.

“What’s going on, Tibby?” Kerabac asked, as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and tried to focus.  “Who is that you have with you?”

“I’m not sure who he is just yet,” I replied.  “He’s not told us his name, but he appears to have a broken arm; and from the looks of him, he’s had it pretty rough.”  In the light, it was possible to see the rags he was wearing on his gaunt frame.  His ribs seemed to protrude through his skin.  He was near starvation and body was covered in bruises and scars.

“By the stars,” Endina exclaimed when she looked at him.  “He looks like he’s had the worst of it.  I have a med kit in the transport outside.  Let me get it and see to his arm and wounds.”

The young boy looked at us all with a stunned look on his face.  “They are Ruwallie Rasson – and you can talk to them like that and they don’t shock or beat you?”

I smiled at him.  “No, they do not.  As I said, things are not as they may appear here.  You are safe with these people; none of them will hurt you.”

Just then, Endina returned.  “I’m afraid we have only minimal supplies, but I should be able to make a cast for that arm and treat some of the other wounds.  If we were back on the ship, we could use the med unit, but for now, this will have to do.  I wish now we had arrived in time to buy some food.  As soon as I get him treated, I’ll place a vid order with a local food supplier and have them make the delivery first thing in the morning.  I’ll have to order some cooking utensils and dishes, as well, since we have nothing to cook with.”

“Doesn’t your food replicator work?” the young boy asked.

“We don’t have a food replicator in the house yet; we just moved in,” Endina explained as she applied a sleeve-like object on the boy’s arm.  Once it was in place and she went through the painful process of aligning the bone properly, she took a small UV light from the med kit and aimed it at the sleeve.  Wherever the beam lit up the sleeve, it hardened instantly to form a rigid cast. 

“There,” she said with some satisfaction.  “That should do until we can get you proper medical attention.” 

The relief showed on the boy’s face, but the pain of hunger still filled his eyes.  “There is a food replicator in the old slave house,” the young boy said.  “Now that you have the power on, it should work.”

“How do you know there is a replicator out there?” I asked.

“Before the Brotherhood stopped using this part of the estate, they used to keep us in the slave house out there.”

“Brotherhood?  The Brotherhood owns this estate?”

“Yes, don’t you know?  The Brotherhood bought this
calgana
last year to grow the plants to make their drugs.  They own all the land around here; these fields are where they grow the plants.  They use us slaves to harvest the crops.”

I turned to Marranalis.  “Go check the slave quarters.  If there is a food replicator there, see if you can get it working and bring something back for the boy to eat.”
Marranalis nodded and left the house quietly.

“What is a
calgana
?” I asked. 

The boy gave me a crazy look and answered, “You don’t know what a
calgana
is?  Where are you from, outer space?  Everyone knows a
calgana
is a section of land surrounded by canals!”

I glanced at Kalana and saw she was holding back a laugh.  “Ahh…
actually, we are from outer space,” I said.

The boy’s eyes widened.  “So you really don’t know?  Is that why you don’t act like the other people here?”

“That’s not a good thing to hear,” Kala chimed in.  “If we don’t appear normal to this boy, we sure won’t fool others very long.”

“I don’t think the situation is quite the same.  We weren’t trying to fool him; we were trying to help him.”  I turned to the boy and asked again, “What’s your name?”

“Tanden,” he answered. 

“Tell me what happened to you
, Tanden.  How did you come to be a slave?”

“It was a long time ago,” he began. “One day, some men came to our home and they were angry with my father about something.  There was lots of shouting and they hit my father.  One man, who was a government official, told my dad he had to pay the men what he owed or he and all of us would become slaves to pay the debt.  My dad begged the men for more time, but they refused.  They told him they would allow him to remain free, but the rest of us would become slaves until he paid his debt.

“My sister was taken to work in one of the pleasure houses; I don’t know where they took my mother.  I was taken to another pleasure house for men who want young boys,” he said, hanging his head.  “It was next to where they had my sister and, at times, I could see her from the window of my room.  When she was not with a man, sometimes they would let her walk outside in the enclosed courtyard.  I never was able to talk to her, but we would wave at each other.  I was there until a few months ago when they said I was too old and the clients no longer desired me.  They sold me to the Brotherhood as a harvester.

“I am not as strong or fast as many of the older boys, so I was beaten for not producing enough.  Yesterday, I was carrying a load of plants when I fell.  One of the guards hit me hard with a baton.  As I brought my arm up to protect myself, his next strike broke my arm.  The overseer said I wasn’t worth the time and food it would take to heal me, and I was tossed into the canal to drown.  I cannot swim; I struggled to breathe until I grabbed hold of a piece of floating trash and worked my way back to shore.  By then, the overseers were looking the other way and I crawled to a culvert that empties into the canal from this house.  I managed to work my way through the culvert to where it opens into the garden outside.”

I was sickened by what I was hearing.  I had heard of such things before – back on Earth in certain countries where young boys were prostituted to men, but I believed such practices to be rare.  I hadn’t heard of any such activities in the Federation, but we were outside the Federation now and in a sector where it seemed nothing was illegal, other than being poor.  I was equally as disgusted at what was happening to his sister. 

“How old is your sister?” I asked.

“When this began she was the same age that I am now,” he answered.

I looked at Kala.  “My God!  What kind of sick, hellish place is this where they prostitute and enslave children?  We should just call this entire search for Logden off and just blow up this whole damned planet.  Rid the galaxy of these scum!”

“Tib, it’s not that simple, and you know it.  There are millions of innocent people here that suffer at the hands of wicked cartels and the Brotherhood, but you don’t destroy them just to put an end to the Brotherhood and the cartels.”

I sighed and shook my head as I paced the room.  I was angry and I wanted to do something right then.  The frustration of being helpless to act immediately to erase the abominations on this planet gnawed at me.  “It seems to me there is a lot of slavery in the galaxy – first on Alle Bamma, then at Ryken, and now here at Goo’Waddle.  Is it like this everywhere outside the Federation?”

“No, many worlds outside the Federation outlaw slavery, though slavery may exist in pockets depending on the local laws of some of the non-aligned worlds that have not yet unified their governments.”

“How many planets throughout the galaxy are like this?”

“I have no idea, Tibby.  I would guess there are thousands like this, maybe millions.  We don’t even know how many inhabited planets there are in the galaxy, but there are certainly also thousands, if not millions, that are not.  Each planet evolves with different moral values and beliefs.  Most throw off things like slavery as they mature; but some don’t… and they take it to unbelievable levels.”

I had to confess that Earth was no different in that regard.  Although slavery had been outlawed almost everywhere on the planet, it still existed and went on in many countries.  Young children were forced into working in sweatshops in third world countries to produce goods that were shipped to and sold internationally to buyers in nations that didn’t believe in or practice slavery, but who turned a blind eye as to what was going on outside their borders.  Even in the
civilized
countries, slavery took place behind closed doors, where many of the slaves were illegal aliens fearing deportation if they didn’t submit to the demands of their masters.  While I was digesting all this, Marranalis returned with a bowl of steaming food.  He handed it to the boy, who snatched it and began eating ravenously.  I sat down next to him, overcome by the storm of fury and compassion that seethed through my chest.

“I found the replicator,” Marranalis said.  “It only has a few selections on it – none of them very good – but it’s still food.  I don’t understand, though; it doesn’t cost any more to replicate tasty food than it does to produce gruel, so why not at least provide the slaves with something tasty?”

“Probably for the sake of humiliation,” Kala said.  “Those who enslave others do not want their slaves to experience any level of comfort or have any sense of self-worth.  The more they are able to beat them down physically and mentally, the more compliant and subservient they will be, in the minds of their masters.  This doesn’t always work, but it doesn’t stop slave owners from believing it will.  Plus, I think it gives the slave masters a sense of power and a belief that they are superior, that they somehow have a right to subjugate those weaker than themselves.”

I was about to ask another question when I felt Tanden’s head on my arm.  I looked down to see he had emptied his bowl and apparently fallen asleep.  I gently laid him down on the floor and, as I did, Kerabac removed the long purple cape he wore as part of his Ruwallie Rasson trader disguise and covered the boy with it.

“Where is Padaran?” I asked as I looked about the room.

“He’s outside, taking his turn at watch,” Kerabac replied.  “I think it would be a good idea if we all get whatever sleep we can before dawn.”

Kerabac’s advice was sound, but I found I was not able to sleep the rest of the night as I pondered the situation on Goo’Waddle.  Several times during the night, Tanden cried out in his sleep — the result of tormenting nightmares.  I could only imagine the twisted hell in his life that must lie behind him.

A thought suddenly struck me and I turned to Kala, who, I noticed, was also still awake and watching me.  “How is it with all the people we have working at the estate, none of them have any children?”

Kala looked at me with one of those
You don’t know?
looks and said, “Tibby, many of your employees have children, and many of them are on the estate, but generally they are kept out of sight and not allowed in the main part of the house.”

“What?
How come I’ve never seen one — not even outside?”

“For one thing, most of the estate grounds are off-limits to them.  There are a few small areas set up as playgrounds that are not visible from any of the areas where you or your guests might be.”

“Playgrounds!  That’s it?  What about all the land around the estate — the forests and the streams?  Why aren’t they out there playing, building forts and fishing and doing what kids should be doing?”