Beyond the Rim

The senator came in what seemed like hours later. He stood looking at me thoughtfully, like a wise man who knew much more than I did. In fact, he reminded me of one of my old professors.

He sat down on the mat beside me. I fought the urge to slide away from him. “The good thing about slake is you don’t normally remember what you did while under its spell,” he said. “Well, that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. We’ve given you something to accelerate your recovery, if you haven’t noticed already.” He looked at me, a concerned look in his gray eyes. “Stace probably shouldn’t have brought you to town in the first place. I should have been more firm with her in that regard; she didn’t give slake to you, but her friends did. You could have said you were a slave under its influence, which no one outside the villa can know.

“It’s not your fault, or you would be punished. Suffice it to say that you won’t be seeing Stace for a little while.”

“What do you mean?”

“As Anastasia’s punishment, I won’t be letting her see you. Probably just for a few days, but if she doesn’t learn her lesson….”

He turned to the door. “Oh, and Devlin, I’d like to see you later, in my office.” He left.

Later that day, about noon, he summoned me to his office. I entered the foyer, light filtering in from the high ceiling. A blonde young woman, his attendant or slave I didn’t know, ushered me inside.

He stood beside the window, looking out onto the grounds. A wallaroo was grazing just outside of it, oblivious to him. Beside it, two smaller wallaroos hopped.

“See,” he said, pointing at them. “The joeys are just starting to emerge from the pouch.”

They had bright large eyes and flat noses and made little hops as they nibbled grass beside their mother. “They’re mostly kangaroo and wallaby, but they’ve also got dingo for speed, platypus for eggs and venom, and koala, for the fur. Very good hunting. They are a specialty of mine.”

He gestured to a lounge chair beside his wide mahogany desk. “Sit, sit.” He sat in his chair, while I sat opposite him.

“So,” he said, “how do you like it here so far? I hope my daughter is treating you well.”

“She is. Except—”

“Last night? You did get a little wild, didn’t you?”

“Well, sir, I didn’t really ask to get slaked or laserfoamed.”

He gave an easy, rasping laugh. “True. I should have been clearer to her about what her limits were—although I do believe I was clear enough. Oh, well. Nothing came of it that we know of.”

“What would have happened?”

He sat back in his chair. “Well, as you know, few people know we have slaves. The townspeople, though they are under a nondisclosure agreement for the period of the zodium trial, are part of the general population and will eventually go back to it. We can’t have them knowing that there are slaves. If they did, well, we might have to quarantine them indefinitely. The trials would be ruined, for they would never be able to be made public.

“We are now accelerating our experiments. The next phase will occur in about a month. I have high hopes for it. So far, the townspeople have benefited immensely.”

“Like the little girl—Sari?”

“Ah, so you met her. It has helped others too. But if I’m right, and I usually am--” he smiled--“that will be nothing in comparison with what the mineral will accomplish in the future.”

His eyes sparked, as if he just got an idea. “Would you like to volunteer for the clinical trials?”

“I…um, what would be involved?”

“There’s not much of a risk. But if zodium reveals new capabilities, as I suspect it will, you will have the honor of having participated in a worthwhile cause.”

“I—I’ll have to think about it,” I said, knowing full well he could force me if he wanted to.

He asked me about my past. I told him that I’d been a pre-law student, and about some of what I’d studied. I carefully avoided anything that concerned Rock, however. I didn’t want the image to flash in my head of him, helpless, hanging over the guard’s shoulder….

When I told him I’d wanted to study art, but Vega had wanted me to study something more practical, he told me of his private art collection. “Art is disparaged nowadays, but it wasn’t always the case. Beauty is, if not necessary, then enhancing. It is just that it doesn’t pay well, since most people aren’t into anything beyond mass-produced entertainment. But there are still a few of us elite who preserve true art, and those such as you, who appreciate it.”

He then offered to let me have a studio of my own where I could paint and sculpt. The old longing sprang up in me, the one I’d thought I’d trampled in the dust long ago. Well, long as in five years, when Vega had finally persuaded me art wasn’t practical as a way of living. I’d realized it hadn’t been easy for Vega all those years, sacrificing to give me the best life possible, and so I’d given up on my dream. But now all those old feelings flooded back. Could it be possible I could continue my art career here? As a slave…it was hardly ideal. But perhaps, if I was better than I thought I was, I could eventually buy my own freedom.

And—Rock’s freedom as well.

The next few days, I lost myself in my new studio. A small sunny room that looked out past the hills, it was set up with an easel and a kiln for baking clay, furnished with every material I could possibly need.

I sketched out a hundred projects, then settled on a painting of the swirling winds of the planet. I pretty much lived in that room, and slept in it several nights. I realized I’d been starved for beauty; at least, the freedom to enjoy it. During those few days, I nearly forgot I was a slave. I forgot for hours as I worked, but as the night closed in on me, without any distractions, images poured through my mind of the planet with three moons and the ordeal we’d gone through. And of what Rock could still be going through—I felt immense guilt. Here I was, free to do what I loved, when he could be undergoing horrific torture of a kind I dared not imagine—

I punished myself by stopping the painting, and even considered destroying it. But I didn’t. For one thing, I couldn’t make myself do it. For another thing, painting kept me from going crazy. Besides, I knew Rock wouldn’t want me to suffer for his sake. Though he had suffered for mine.

I finished the painting and began a clay sculpture. In some ways, I liked sculpting better than painting. The feel of the clay, the smell of earth…

I let the clay tell my hands where to go, and it morphed into a tall, heroic figure, a towering monolith of a man with hope in his face, yet shoulders bowed a little by suffering…It bore some resemblance to Rock, yet I was reluctant to admit that it was him per se. But the spirit of him was in it. And, strange to say, there was something of me in it too….

I fired it, glazed it, and then began a second painting, abstract, a frenzy of anger and pain and darkness, a scream made out of paint. I finished it in several hours, then lay back on the couch by the window, exhausted. I was just falling asleep when the door opened without warning.

Stace walked in. She wore black, as if she’d been in mourning. Even her hair was black now, instead of red. Her face looked rather dejected, but it lit up when she saw me. “Hi Dev! I missed you.” She looked at both of my paintings. “Did you make these?” She reached out to touch my just-finished painting, and her fingers came away with some black paint. “Oops. Sorry.

“I like this too,” she said of Red Winds, as I’d called it. “It looks like this planet.”

“You can have it,” I said. I didn’t feel particularly attached to it, even though it was the first I’d painted in a long while. It wasn’t part of my heart like the other one.

“Really Dev? Thank you!” She touched my arm. “I should’ve stayed with you, instead of letting them get carried away. Felin’s like that, and she’s Reck’s girl, so… ”

“Yeah. Just don’t take me back there any time soon.”

“Deal.”

She picked up her picture, then flopped down on the couch with it. She patted the seat next to her, and I sat down, though something in me rebelled. I’d felt less like a slave the past couple days, and I wasn’t ready to follow her around like a dog on an invisible leash anymore. If we could be equals, real friends, I’d be okay with that. But I didn’t know if I could ever forget that she could do anything she wanted with me. She could punish me with the transponder. And if I attacked her (which I was far from doing) or even defended myself, the security system would knock me out. And then there was her father’s threat of punishment.

Perhaps, if she liked me enough, she’d free me eventually….

“What’s that?” said Stace. She pointed at the sculpture sitting on the table, the rugged, black thing that tugged at my heart in a strange way every time I looked at it. She abandoned the picture on the couch and rose to touch it. “Is it somebody you know?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, it could be.”

She tipped her head, a puzzled look on her face. Then she said, “Hey, do you want to make a sculpture of me? Like, life sized, and really awesome. You think you can do that?” She bounced over to me, and sat on the arm of the couch, and twirled her finger in my hair.

I slid ever so slightly away, and told her I would.

The next week, I worked on the statue almost day and night. Stace was with me during most of that time, telling me how to make the statue, pelting me with pieces of clay and splattering me with paint. I managed to keep my art safe, but the studio turned into a disaster.

Ever since our separation, our relationship had cooled. I had come back alive to some degree with my art, the gift from the senator, and resented her intrusion on my freedom. When she got too crazy with things, I even threatened to stop making the statue, and for the first time, she threatened to use the transponder. I didn’t want to get zapped over something so trivial, so I continued the sculpture till it was finished. I wasn’t exactly satisfied with it, but Stace was, and I wanted to get started with a new project, if she’d let me.

It was night, and she stood in front of the sculpture, looking herself in the face. It was a good face, and captured the wackiness and mischievousness of her. Its hair stood out in all directions, and it wore a tank top, pants and high boots. It was white, since Stace wanted to paint it herself.

“I love it!” she said. She kissed the tip of its nose, and smiled at me. “Could you be any more perfect?” She sidled up to me, and traced the bridge of my nose. “You have a very nice nose too,” she said. She kicked her boots and rose to my level, looking me in the eye.

She kissed my lips, then bit my upper lip and stuck her tongue into my mouth, touching mine.

I felt a twinge of desire, but I knew I did not really feel that way about her. To give in would be to take advantage of her, or, really, letting her take advantage of me. I would use what little freedom I had.

I grabbed her waist and lifted her away from me. Anger flashed in her eyes. She kissed me again.

Couldn’t she see I didn’t want this? I pushed her away again, perhaps more forcefully than I should have, and she staggered to the ground, landing on her wrist.

For a moment, she lay there, next to the couch. Then, she rose, hands clenched, lips compressed, eyes narrowed with fury.

She lifted the hand with the transponder device.

Shocks ripped through me, and I collapsed. Shocks stabbed one part of me after the other, my hand, my leg, my chest, wrenching each with pain.

It stopped and she looked down at me, pride and hurt gleaming in her eyes. Then she knelt beside me. “Devlin, I’m so sorry.” She kissed my cheek. “I thought…over the past few days…that we had something. That maybe, I don’t know, you were starting to like me?”

I tried to shake the shocks away from me; my limbs still trembled. “I do like you. When you aren’t being…like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t like being shocked. And…I don’t think that I can like you like that. Can’t we just stay friends?”

Anger flashed in her eyes again. She rose, and raised the hand with the transponder. I braced for another shock.

Instead, she reached over and swept the statue of the man off of the table. It smashed onto the floor into a million pieces.