Beyond the Rim

I tested the doors as soon as I got in, just to make sure. Of course they were locked. Then I tried reaching forward. A force field snapped my hand, and I whipped it back, my skin stinging.

He glanced back at me. “It’s pretty secure in here.”

Dagan sped out onto a runway, increasing speed, until the car lifted into the air. We flew over the city, Dagan switching on the autopilot. Then he climbed over the seat into the back.

“Hi,” he said, sitting beside me. “I’m Rav Dagan. What’s your name?”

“Devlin.”

“Devlin, would you like to be free?”

“I am already free.”

“I don’t see how you could say that in your position.”

“You can own my body, but not my soul.” I clung to this truth, as if I were trying to convince myself of it.

“Maybe, maybe not. But for now, I do own your body, and I can do with it whatever I want.” He touched my cheek. “I’ve never owned a slave before….” His green eyes locked on mine, and he slid his finger down my jaw. I jerked away. I would not let anyone take advantage of me again if I could help it. When he moved closer, I kicked at his midsection.

But he grabbed my foot in midair and in a flash he was kneeling over me, my hair yanked back over the seat.

“Listen,” he said. “I could do whatever I wanted with you. But I’m not going to. I’m only going to do what is required of me, and then, if you are still alive, I will let you go.

“Meanwhile,” he released my hair, and sat back beside me, “we might as well enjoy the ride.” He looked out the window, the skyscrapers skimming past.

Maybe I could still take him off guard. If he went to sleep, I might have a chance. It depended on how long it would take to get where we were headed.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To my house.”

“Where’s that?”

He smiled. “Somewhere we can work in complete solitude.”

My heart jumped. “What do you mean, work?”

“Why don’t you relax, Devlin. We have a long way to go.”

That answered that question, sort of. I sat back, closed my eyes, pretending to go to sleep. I listened for deep breaths, and then opened my eyes. He was sleeping, head leaning against the window.

I slid across the seat toward him, and smacked into a force field. “Ow!” I yelled, my hand stinging again.

Dagan stirred, and chuckled. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have slept so easily if I didn’t have protection. You’ve got persistence, I’ll give you that. Not much skill, but then, you’re only a natural.”

Offended, I said, “I’m genhanced.”

“But just the basics, I’ll bet. I’d bet you were from a Rimworld too.”

“No, I’m from a CentralWorld. My friend Rock was—is—a Rimmer.”

“Rock?”

“My roommate. Well, he used to be my roommate….” The image flashed through my mind of being in that room in the Blue M, the last time we were together before we tried to escape.

He shifted. “So were you in college?”

“Only two months ago.” It seemed like half a lifetime.

“That explains a lot. You were educated, and you have not been a slave long. If you were treated badly, it might have been a different story.”

“I wasn’t treated badly, not as bad as I expected anyway.” I didn’t really want to talk about my time as a slave, no matter how “well” I’d been treated.

“And Navarre? How did she treat you?”

I shook my head. “Not badly either. I mean, I did not like being auctioned off, but…”

“So, when she said you were ‘satisfactory’, she was just speaking hypothetically?”

“I—I wouldn’t know.”

“No, you wouldn’t. She always test-drives new acquisitions, but to make them more compliant, she uses Stim. It gives enhanced pleasure on both sides, but her victims don’t remember much of it. Did she do this to you?”

“Well…” Heat rose to my face. “Yes.”

“I thought so. Sorry to have to ask you this, but it does tend to mess up the psyche. ‘It’ meaning rape, not necessarily Stim itself.”

“It wasn’t rape,” I whispered, trying to push it out of my mind.

“Would you have slept with her without the drug?”

“No….”

“Well then. Sorry, but it’s better to pull the bandage off quickly, to use an outdated metaphor.”

“I’m not going to talk about it if that’s what you want. To you of all people. I have no idea who you are, what you want to do to me.”

“What I want and what I need are two different things. There’s also morality to consider, but in this business, it’s best to stick with what is practical.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Good. It’s you who’s going to provide me with information, not the other way around.”

“Information?”

“Information—the currency that shadows deal in.” He smiled.

The car landed on a windswept island, inhabited by nothing but seagulls. In the middle of the island stood a small cabin that looked like it would blow away with the next storm. After Dagan scanned his hand across the doorpost, we stepped through a pristine kitchen, a small living room, and then into the back to his office.

A chair sat in the middle with straps on it. I didn’t like where this was going.

“If you would, please sit in the chair.”

I backed away. “I’d rather not.”

He pressed his gun to my ribs. “It won’t hurt, Devlin. Not unless you resist.”

He nudged me with the gun again. I walked forward and sat down. Then he strapped my arms and legs snugly and tilted the chair back.

“Relax.” He stuck a cold round device on my head, and put one on his own head as well.

“What is it?” I said.

“It’s a dreamcatcher. Poetic name for a device that is immeasurably better than a truthteller. This will highlight details you never even noticed before.”

I felt no shiver of drugs or gentle hum, but I began to feel soothed, drowsy, and sank into the chair, melted into its depths as if slipping under warm water.

I breathed deeply and from far away, a calm, even-toned voice said, “What happened when you first landed on Zodiak Prime?”

A memory, like a vague picture. Then it became more vivid than it had been the first time. The guards moved around me, laughed, as the pod made its way toward the large red planet. One of them punched some buttons and—

I zeroed in on the gridcode for entering Zodiak Prime.

Next, I walked past the Senator’s office, and I about to ask him about some more black paint. Muriel’s blonde hair streamed out behind her and I ran to her as she screamed— her eyes, so lost, so beautiful—Muriel! I can’t get her back—Zodiak’s hands on her, hurting her, then discarding her back into space—

“No,” said Dagan’s voice, far away. “Come back, this way. Let’s find another memory, another place. Zodium. Move toward that.”

I sat in the chair in the white airy building; a needle pricked my arm. Around us were many people, and I looked closer at the attendants, burning their faces into my memory. Medics who would be good sources for detailed accounts of what they had worked on.

The little girl. Sari. Her father, who had tried to stop the experiment—we were in his house. Look at her symptoms: fever, barely conscious. How long had it been like this? Progression had only been five days since her father first noticed it. Others had experienced similar symptoms, and her father had spoken out about it. Then he’d been suppressed, quarantined.

I rose out of the sea of gently lapping memories to a checkered ceiling and Dagan’s face. “Good,” he said. “Thank you. That’ll be all for now; if we stay under together too much longer, we’d risk merging.”

“Merging?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

“In the dreamcatcher, memories exist in a sort of sympathy. I was the guide, so I experienced your memories as mine. The only real danger is that I’d lose control, and you would start experiencing my memories—something I’m not real keen on.”

“So this is all you wanted me for?” I tried to sit up; he smiled and took off the dreamcatcher, then undid the straps.

“Even if I could use it on Navarre or her people, I couldn’t risk her knowing what I know. What I am.”

“What are you?”

“I can’t tell you. If you ever escaped, which is unlikely, I can’t risk Navarre ever knowing.” He slid the chair back up again.

“Aren’t I going back to her?”

“Do you want to?”

I shook my head.

“You are now a valuable witness against Navarre and Zodiak. You will never have to be their slave again.”

“Will you let me go?”

“You will go to a safe house, a hole in the grid. There, we will craft you a new identity. You will have two choices: get dramatic genhancments, or leave to a Rimworld or beyond the Rim.”

I sat up. “Those are the only choices?”

He nodded. “As a slave, you have been declared legally dead; you aren’t really supposed to exist. Zodiak would have you killed as soon as he discovered you escaped. He has led crusades against slavery, and if people found out he had owned slaves, his seat in the Senate, not to mention his planned ascendancy, would collapse. And of course there is zodium. He’s going to reveal it to the Senate today, but if the people don’t have faith in it, it might be harder for them to accept it as blindly as they normally accept things.”

I thought for a moment; it was a lot to take in. “I think that I would rather go to a Rimworld.”

“We have several settlements where the presence of the Center is minimal. It’s pretty rough, though; on the furthest frontier, there’s not much in the way of amenities.”

“That’s okay. I think I could live like that. Only—”

“What?”

“What about my sister? Can she know?”

“Only if she comes with you. Would she do that?”

“I wouldn’t want to do that to her. She has her job…” My heart sank. Would I ever be able to see Vega again? Would she always have to think that I had died?

“There’s another thing. Rock. I need to rescue him.”

“Rescue him?”

“He was captured with me. I have no idea what happened to him.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“Isn’t there a way you can find out? Some sort of unofficial channel?”

“I could do some checking….But then, what would you do if you found out where he was?”

“I’d go get him out of there. I don’t care how dangerous it is. I’m not going to leave him in slavery if I can help it.”

Dagan regarded me for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

He ushered me out into the living room, and told me to get some refreshments if I wanted. I got a bottle of water and some ice cream and sat down on the couch, looking out the broad window that showed the sea. Seagulls whirled into the air; wind blew against the salt grass. Then the sun broke through the clouds, shedding rays onto the seething gray ocean.

I fell asleep, and I must’ve slept for hours, because when I woke up it was dark again. Rain pelted the windows, and the wind roared against the small cabin.

I stretched and got up. I hadn’t felt so rested in a long time. I wandered around the house, and then knocked on the door to the office.

The door slid open a crack. “Yes?” said Dagan from somewhere inside.

“Do you have any results?”

“I will; be patient. Why don’t you get some clothes from the stash?”

I walked to the stash beside the bathroom and opened the door. Dagan had a lot of clothes, many of them top quality, some of them even restricted. On the screen, I selected simple black pants and a black shirt, and punched the button that would send them out. I peeled them off of the hangar and then pulled them on. I felt more like a human being with some real clothes on for a change.

I tried to open the door to go onto the porch, but it didn’t open for me. I was still, essentially, a prisoner, and would be until I got to that safe world. But I wasn’t going without Rock.

I sat down on the couch and drank some coffee. Maybe I would ask about Muriel too. And then there was Grimm, who was still, as far as I knew, imprisoned on Zodiak Prime, cut off from his family.

There was a finality to hiding on a Rimworld. Would I feel free there? They’d forced me to be a slave, and now they were forcing me to go into hiding for the rest of my life. It might be fun to live on the Rim. But even then, would I feel safe from them? Would I ever be free of the Blue M and those who had owned me?

Stace hadn’t been bad, all things considered. I even kind of missed her. But I would also be okay with never seeing her again, if it meant staying free.

Something touched my shoulder. I leaped up, whirled around. It was Dagan. “I’ve found out where he is, after going a lot of obscure places and digging up old contacts. He’s still in the Blue M, at their base.”

My heart flipped. “He is?”

“Yes. But he is no longer a slave. He is working for them.”