The Skies Discrowned (3 page)

The cart rattled south on the Cromlech Road, making good time since Cromlech was one of the few highways on the planet that were subject to maintenance. Within two hours they had arrived at the Barclay Transport Depot southwest of Munson, by the banks of the Malachi River. The cart, along with fifteen others like it, was taken through a gate in the chain-link fence that enclosed the Depot, across the wide concrete deck, and finally drew to a halt in front of a bleak, gray four-storey edifice. The bedraggled occupants of the carts were pulled and prodded out, lined up according to sex and height, and then divided into groups and escorted into the building. Just before he passed through the doorway, Frank caught
sight of the sign above the door: DETENTION AND BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION CENTER.

After many centuries, encompassing dozens of local golden ages, Dominion began to weaken. The fuels—fossil oils from jungle planets, and radium—became perceptibly less abundant. Transportation became increasingly expensive, and many things were no longer worth shipping. The smooth pulse of the import/export network had taken on a lurching, strained pace.

“Name.” The officers voice had no intonation. “Francisco de Goya Rovzar.”

“Age.”

“Twenty.”

“Occupation.”

“Uh … apprentice painter.”

“Okay, Rovzar, step over there with the others.” Frank walked away from the desk and joined a crowd of other prisoners. The room they were in seemed calculated to induce depression. The floor was of damp cement, drains set in at regular intervals; the pale green walls were chipping; the ceiling was corrugated aluminum, and naked light bulbs were hung from it on long cords.

The perfunctory interrogation continued until all the prisoners taken that morning had been questioned and stood in a milling, spiritless crowd. The officer who had been asking the questions now stood up and faced the prisoners. He was short, with close-cropped sandy hair and a bristly moustache; his uniform was faultlessly neat.

“Give me your attention for a moment,” he said, unnecessarily. “You are here as prisoners of the Transport Authority, and of Costa, the Duke of this planet, Octavio. Ordinarily you would be allowed a court hearing to contest the charge of treason laid against you, but the planet of Octavio has, as of this morning, been declared under martial law. When this condition is lifted you will be free to appeal your sentence. The sentence is the same for each of you: you are to be lifted tomorrow on a Transport freighter and ferried to the Orestes system to atone for your offenses in the uranium industry. Are there any questions?”

There were none. The situation was deadly clear—the Orestes Mines were a legendary hell feared throughout the Dominion. Frank, his mind only now beginning to recover from the shock of his father’s murder, heard his sentence but filed it away without thinking about it.

The situation did not improve. Transportation became more and more sporadic and unreliable. Industrial planets were often left for weeks without
food shipments, and agricultural planets were unable to replace broken machinery or obtain fuel for what worked. The Transport Company was losing its grip on the wide-flung empire; the outer sections were dying Transport rates climbed astronomically, and the poorer planets were unable to maintain contact with the Dominion empire. They were forced to drop out and try to survive alone. In time even the richest planets began working to be self-sufficient, in case the overworked Transport Company should, one day, collapse entirely

Late that night Frank sat awake in the darkness of one of the Depot detention pens. His cot and thin mattress were not notably uncomfortable, but his thoughts were too vivid and desperate for him to sleep. The six other men in the pen with him apparently didn’t care to think, and slept deeply.

My father is dead, Frank told himself; but he couldn’t really believe it yet, emotionally. Impressions of his father alive were too strong—he could still see the old man laughing over a mug of beer in a tavern, or sketching strangers’ faces in a pocket notebook, or swearing as he drank his black coffee in the bleak, hungover dawns. Suddenly Frank saw how his life would be without old Rovzar to take care of, and he fearfully shied away from the lonely vision.

His destination was the Orestes Mines. That was bad, about as bad as it could be. The mines riddled all four planets of the Orestes system, and working conditions ranged from desiccating desert heat to cold that could kill an exposed man in a matter of seconds; and over everything reigned the sovereign danger of radiation poisoning. Panic grew as it became clear to him that he was about to be devastatingly punished by men who had never seen him before and were totally indifferent to him.

Isn’t there anyone who can get me out of this? he wondered. What about Tom Strand, my best friend? It was in the fencing school of Tom’s father, an interplanetary champion, that Frank had picked up what he knew of swordsmanship. Could Tom or his father do anything? Of course not, rasped the logical part of his mind. What could they do to reverse the decisions of the Transport and the planet government? The idea, he was forced to admit, was ridiculous.

Panic eventually gave way to a decision. I am
not
going to Orestes, he thought. I simply am not going. Even though he had no plan to base this thought on, it comforted him. I am not going there, he told himself again. I
will
escape.

He got up from his cot and felt his way through the inky blackness to one of the sleeping men and shook him by the shoulder. The man started violently.

“Who is it?” he whispered in terror.

“I’m a fellow prisoner,” Frank hissed. “Listen, we’ve got to escape. Are you with me?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, kid,” the man almost sobbed, “go back to sleep and leave me alone.”

“You
want
to go to Orestes?” Frank asked wonderingly.

“Kid—you can’t escape. Forget it. Your life won’t be real great now, but make an escape attempt and you’ll be surprised how sorry you’ll be, and for how long.”

Frank left the man to his sleep and returned to his cot, his confident mood deflated.

After another half hour of sitting on his ratty mattress, Frank was again convinced of the necessity of escape. Wasn’t there a wide ventilation grille set in the center of the ceiling? He tried to remember. Let’s see, he thought, they marched us in here, showed us each a cot, and then turned off the lights. But it seems to me I did notice a slotted plate
set
in the ceiling. I could escape through the ventilation system!

He stood up again. It seemed to be in the
center
of the ceiling, he recalled. He made his way to a wall and counted the number of steps it took to walk its length; then did the same with the other wall. Twelve by eight, he thought. He then went back to the midpoint of the twelve-pace wall and took four paces out into the room, thanking Chance that no sleeping prisoners lay in his path.

By my calculations, he mused, I should now be directly beneath that ventilation grille. He crouched; when he leaped upward with a strong kick, his fingers crooked to catch the vent. Instead, they cracked against unyielding concrete.

He fell back to the floor, strangling a curse. His hands stung, and he could feel blood trickling down one finger. Bit of a miscalculation, Rovzar, he told himself.

He pulled himself to his feet and got ready to jump again, this time only intending to brush the ceiling with his fingers, to feel for the vent. This is what I should have done to begin with, he thought.

After four jumps, muffled by his rubber-soled shoes, he found the vent. His next leap gained him two fingerholds and in a moment he had got a firm grip with both hands. Now what?

Why, he thought, I’ll bring my legs up and kick the plate until it comes loose, and then I’ll pull myself up into the hole and be off. Right-ho. He drew his legs up, and with a sort of half flip he kicked the plate with one toe. It made hardly any noise, but he was disappointed at how weak the blow was. This time he got swinging first, and then used the momentum
of his pendulum motion to emphasize the kick as he flipped again and drove his heel at the grille.

With an echoing clang of broken metal his foot punched completely through the grille. The recoil of the kick wrenched his hands free, but he didn’t fall back to the floor; instead he hung upside down, his foot caught in the twisted wreck of the vent.

Shouts echoed eerily through the corridors, and the prisoners below Frank whimpered in uncomprehending fear. An alarm added its flat howl to the confusion. Frank, dangling from the ceiling, pulled at his trapped foot, hoping to be able to return to his cot before the guards arrived. Footsteps thudded in the corridor, and immediately the lights in Frank’s cell flashed on, blinding him. The will to move left his body and he relaxed, swinging limp from the mooring of his foot. He heard the door rattle and squeak open, and then something hard was driven with savage force into his stomach and consciousness left him.

Frank came back to wakefulness by degrees, like a length of seaweed being gradually nudged to shore by succeeding waves. First he was aware of a hum of voices and a sense of being carried about. None of it seemed to demand a response.

Then he dimly knew he was sleeping, but it was a deep, heavy sleep, and he did not want to wake up yet even though it sounded as if some people were up already.

Abruptly, a cold finger and thumb pried his right eyelid open. Frank saw an unfocused sea of bright gray.

“This kid’s okay,” came a loud, gravelly voice. “Throw him over there with that clown who set his bed on fire.”

Frank had groggily assumed that the voice was speaking figuratively when it said “throw,” but now unseen hands clamped on his ankles and wrists. “Wait, wait—” Frank began mumbling. “Heave
ho!”
called someone cheerily, and Frank found himself lifted from whatever he’d been lying on and tossed sprawling into the air. His eyes sprang open wide and he grabbed convulsively at nothing. He saw the concrete floor rushing up at him and he managed to twist around in midair so that he landed on his hip instead of his head. The sharp, aching pain of the impact was his first
clear
sensation of the morning.

Laughter rang loud in the room, and Frank looked up from where he lay to see what sort of people were amused by this. A Transport captain and four guards returned his gaze with a mixture of humor and scornful contempt in their
eyes
. All of them wore pistols, and two of the guards held coils of rope.

“Take these two jerks first,” said the captain, pointing in Franks direction. “And tie their hands.” The man exited and the four guards walked over to Frank and rolled him over onto his face, then quickly and securely tied his wrists together behind him. They left him lying there and moved on to someone behind him.

“Get up now,” one of the guards said. Frank struggled to his knees and then stood up. His stomach was a collage of pain and numbness, and he sagged when he straightened up; the colors of unconsciousness began to glitter before his eyes. He lowered his head and breathed deeply, and the weakness passed. He heard a sigh behind him and turned to see a tall, thin man with graying hair. It must be the guy who set fire to his bed, Frank realized.

“All right, you two, get moving,” a guard said. “Out that door.” Frank and his sad-eyed companion shambled out of the little room and, escorted by the guards, made their way down a corridor to an open doorway. Morning sunlight glared on wet asphalt outside, and the air was cold.

Somehow Frank was not very depressed. The light of day had dispelled the fears the night had given him, and his system was buoyed up by the adventurous realization that he was embarking on a perilous journey. Anything can happen, he thought.

The guards prodded the two blinking prisoners outside. Five hundred yards away the silver needle of a Transport ship stood up against the sky, gleaming in the sun like a polished sword. Even though it was the vehicle that was to carry him to Orestes, Frank was overcome with the beauty of the thing.

“Are these our two escapees?” asked a Transport officer who had walked up while Frank was staring at the rocket. He carried in his hand an object that looked like a rubber stamp or a wax seal.

“Yes, sir,” answered one of the guards.

“Open their shirts,” the officer said. A guard took hold of Frank’s shirt-collar ends and yanked them apart. Three buttons clicked on the asphalt. I’m glad this is just an old painting shirt, Frank thought automatically. He heard his companion’s shirt being dealt with in the same way.

“Now, boys, this won’t hurt a bit,” said the officer with a cold smile as he pressed the seal onto Frank’s chest and the other man’s. The metal felt warm and itched a little, but was not uncomfortable. “There,” the officer said. “Now everyone will know at a glance who you are.”

Frank looked down past his chin and saw a mark on his chest. It was a circle with a capital E inside it. “Escapee,” the officer explained. He turned to the guards. “Get these monkeys aboard. We lift at nine-seventeen.” He strode off without another word.

“You heard the man, lads,” grinned a guard. “Start walking. Your friends will be coming along as soon as you two maniacs are aboard.” Flanked by the arrogant guards, Frank and the bed-burner set off across the tarmac toward the ship. Franks eyes were becoming accustomed to the daylight and he looked around as he walked. To his right, a hundred yards away, was a chain-link fence topped with strands of barbed wire. Half-a-dozen big tractor motors were stacked against it at one point. Beyond the fence, he knew, was the channel in which the Malachi River surged its way to the distant sea. At his left was visible a cluster of undistinguished gray buildings. Not a really fine view, Frank thought, considering it’s probably the last time I’ll see this planet. The thought raised a clamoring flock of emotions in him, which he determinedly strangled and put away. It simply would not do, he told himself, to burst into tears out here.

The gray-haired prisoner who paced along beside Frank was acting oddly. He was whimpering, and his wide-open eyes flicked around as if he were watching the quick, erratic course of a wasp. “Are you okay?” asked Frank quietly.