Homesick

Sally clutched her athame as she and Daaarrm walked down the narrow corridor. She intentionally kept Daaarrm in front of her at all times and was prepared to bolt back to the mess hall at the slightest provocation.

“These are your quarters?” Daaarrm asked, stopping in front of her door.

Sally gasped in surprise and irritation at his knowledge of the ship. “Yes, of course,” she snapped as if it were common knowledge. “The Pilot’s Cone’s up ahead.”

“Why don’t we stop here for a moment?” He struck the button on the doorframe and the door slid open. Sally mentally cursed herself for not locking it. The issue of security rarely came up on such a mission as this, but after what Vlad had done Sally had planned to be more careful. Even so, a door lock would be only a minor inconvenience to someone like Vlad, and she didn’t consider her quarters to be a particularly secure area. Right now, however, a locked door would have prevented an unacceptable violation of privacy. Seeing even this weakness, her enemy seized on it quickly. Sally could only rush in behind him.

“No!” she shouted. “Get out!”

“Captain?” Ian called. “You okay?”

“For now, Ian. Darm just wants a tour of the ship, that’s all. But he doesn’t know what ‘off limits’ means.” She turned back to Daaarrm. “I’m not going to ask you again, Darm. Get out!”

Daaarrm’s grin suddenly became more playful. His eyes grew distant, as if he were remembering something. “There’s fire in your heart. Your temper brings out your beauty.” He sniffed the air. “With my friend not so near, I can smell you! You have a wild scent! It suits you!”

Sally could see lust appearing in his eyes, coupled with his usual overconfidence. She studied his body, trying to determine his plans. Briefly, she thought of leaving the room, but decided to stand her ground instead.

“I’m not interested in this, Darm. Walk to the door and leave this room immediately!”

“Of course, this is your territory, isn’t it? I’ve entered the den of the wild wolf, as you knew them on Earth. We don’t have such creatures here, and we have very few women with your fire. I knew that as soon as I saw you on the planet and heard your voice in the ship! When you shout at me I feel your spirit! It’s you I came for! You are my beast!”

Then, with a sudden swift motion, Daaarrm snatched at Sally’s headset, knocking it off her ear and sending it drifting. Then he maneuvered himself close to her and reached into her open jacket, running his hands along her breasts and licking his lips loudly. “I smell your fear,” he said, sniffing so madly that his nose began to dribble.

Sally responded swiftly. She brought her own hands up between his and landed a sharp blow to his chin, causing him to bite his own tongue. He floated backwards, wiggling pathetically. Then she swung her body in a tight spiral and extended her leg, kicking him hard on the side of the head and sending him cartwheeling towards the table. She watched as he struggled to regain a standing position, clearly unused to the low gravity. She extended her arms in a fighting stance, waiting for his next assault. To her surprise, he merely smiled.

“A little pleasure mixed with business!” he hissed. “I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see if you were as interesting as we thought you were. You are!”

“You’re disgusting!” she growled. “And if you try anything like that again, you’re dead!”

He looked at her, his face screwed in mock confusion. Sally kept him in sight and maintained her stance as she groped for her headset. She could hear Ian’s voice hissing frantically from the earpiece. She watched Daaarrm closely as she maneuvered the wire contraption back into place and bent the microphone to hover near her lips. “Ian, check in!”

“Oh . . . All okay here, Captain, I heard __”

“Yeah, I know! It’s okay for now.”

“You people have no sense of pleasure,” Daaarrm said, massaging his temple. “Many women on our world would have been flattered.”

Sally threw him a mocking grin of her own. “I get the impression your women have lower standards. But, believe me, you’re not my type!” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “Now get out of my room!”

“Captain, I think we’ve both misjudged each other,” he said, looking at her as if with new respect. “You’re a stronger person than even I suspected. Perhaps you would like to hear my offer before throwing us overboard in such haste.”

“You have nothing to offer me, Darm, and you’ve already pushed me way too far! I don’t need to hear any more from you!”

“You would make a fine Master, Captain. I can see it in you. You handle leadership well, and I suspect you know what you want.”

His statement actually caught Sally off guard. She squinted at him. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t think we came all this way just to collect 4702, do you? And surely you don’t think it would be worth such a journey merely to recruit you for the Brethren! Only three more for such work and risk? Never!”

“And you didn’t come all this way to rape me either, did you?” she continued his reasoning.

“No, not even that.” He then stared at her with serpent’s eyes. “No, Captain, our plans are much broader, and I think they’ll be particularly interesting to you.”

“I doubt it, but go on,” she said, maintaining her stance.

“Join us!” he said, extending his arms.

“Go to Hell!”

“Think of it, Captain! You could be a Master! Anything you want would be yours!” He paused for emphasis and began to pace the room. She followed him with her body. “I don’t mean a Master on our world! I’m talking about yours!”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

“On the contrary! You know your own world. You know its resources, and you must have authority there. You would have all the necessary elements to implement our plan and build your kingdom!”

Sally coughed, her face contorted in amazement.

“You could rule . . . Ontario, I believe you call it. You could be the first of a new order of Masters there! And you could recruit whomever you wanted to join you!”

Sally shook her head, open-mouthed.

“Captain!” He put on his serpent face again. “Have you ever wanted something? I mean really wanted something? Well, what if you could have it, no matter what it was? And not just things! Nothing need ever be out of your reach! Have you ever seen a man you wanted, for example, for your own pleasures?”

“No, but go on.”

“Or another woman perhaps? It doesn’t matter! You can have them! And you can have them as you want them! They’ll service you in any manner you could imagine!”

“I take it that’s one of your vices,” she said in mild amusement.

“On my planet there are no vices! We pursue pleasure in any form we most desire it! It doesn’t matter what that form is.”

Sally let her face darken with disgust and she regarded him with an accusative scowl. “When I was down on your world, I saw a little girl ripped to shreds in that labor camp of yours. It appeared to me like she’d been attacked by someone just like you. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “But, no, I guess you’re right. I don’t know if even that could lower my opinion of you further than it already is.”

“We are many, Captain, and we seek sport in a variety of ways.”

“Sport?”

“Not all Brethren work in the pits. Some are set aside for more pleasant tasks inside our palaces. Believe me, they’re good at what they do! If one or two of us venture out into the pits, it’s probably because of some whim. A more earthy experience, if you will. They can even struggle if we ask them to.”

“Do you kill them inside the palaces, too? On a whim? Or is that your idea of a quiet evening at home?”

“Even if we did, they wouldn’t complain. You must understand, they serve us! They enjoy their role in our society! If their deaths would have some meaning for us, they’d gladly die.”

“Yeah, well that doesn’t make it any less murder!” she retorted, venting an ounce of her rage.

“There’s no murder on my planet! There are no laws! We are the law! But your people repress themselves with laws, don’t they?” He began to pace again. “You live out mundane lives, scratching and struggling for every little morsel of prosperity, only to find at the end of your life that you’ve accomplished very little. Many of you build up a lifetime of frustration within yourselves, finally to the point of self-destruction. And when you release it one day, as is only natural, suddenly you’re a criminal! Come on, Captain, don’t you see it’s better our way?” He danced with enthusiasm. “I have no repressed feelings! I’m fulfilled!” He pointed down at the planet. “And the masses on my continent are fulfilled as well! They serve us! That fulfills them! That’s the meaning of their lives! I don’t have to do anything! And I can do whatever I want!”

“At their expense, of course.”

“No!” he shouted. “That’s the point you keep missing! The Brethren are happy!” He stopped pacing and faced her. “Think of your own world as it is now. Is there anyone there who is truly happy, including yourself?”

“Of course!”

“But how many people are unhappy? Millions! How happy can a homeless person be?”

“There aren’t as many homeless __”

“Of course there are!” He laughed. “And how happy can a prisoner be in one of your jails? How happy are your working poor?” He put on a pained expression. “Now ask yourself this: If you added up all those miserable people and then compared them to those of you who have the means to achieve even marginal happiness, how many people would be happy compared to those who are not?”

“We’re not perfect, no,” Sally admitted. “But I’d rather be a homeless whore sleeping in an alley than a slave working happily in one of your labor camps! At least I’d be me!”

“But the Brethren don’t feel that way! What if all your homeless whores and unemployed masses were happy? Wouldn’t your world be a better place? And we give the Brethren something else you don’t have! We give them purpose! How many people are on your world? Billions! And, even if you truly wanted to, you could never make all of them comfortable. Only a small number of you can have the best of life! Most of the others will spend their lives miserable and doing virtually nothing! Can’t you see this? They go to school for a third of their lifespan and rarely apply anything they learn. Instead, they work jobs that utilize only a fraction of their energy and abilities! And, through all this, they waste the majority of their free time desperately trying to entertain themselves and struggling to acquire luxuries that are forever beyond their reach!” His eyes lit up with excitement. “Now think of what you could do with those masses if they were all unified! Think of all that energy currently lying dormant or squandered on useless diversions! It could be turned to your advantage! Think of it! They could all be happy and fulfilled and so could you be! Think of the resources that would be unleashed! The faceless masses would no longer need the mountains of consumer products you produce! Now all those industries could be turned to satisfy you! And they also wouldn’t require the vast amounts of social energy you routinely squander on them. They wouldn’t need medical care, they wouldn’t need welfare, and they wouldn’t even need the privacy of their own homes and vehicles. All they would desire is your pleasure!”

Sally put on a half-smile and shook her head. “And how do you propose I sell this to my people? Shall I go out on the streets and invite them to become zombies? Shall I set up lemonade stands selling lobotomies?”

“You could introduce it first as a means of pacifying the people in your jails,” he suggested, clearly having anticipated this question. “Who would care? Your masses see these people as a threat! Later, you could make it a preferred treatment for the mentally ill. Then you could suggest it as a means of making the homeless more comfortable. And perhaps you could simultaneously introduce it as a form of religious ecstasy! Many of your religious cults already dominate their devotees! Then, with that many Brethren in place, you could begin absorbing your lower classes! You could use their work enthusiasm to out-produce all the industries on your planet! Soon the middle class would topple and they, too, would be prime targets for conversion!”

Sally’s eyebrows knitted together as she lost her wall of skepticism. She suddenly became disturbed by the workability of Daaarrm’s plan. He’d finally managed to truly frighten her. “Thank you, Darm,” she said with a deep sigh. “You’ve just helped me understand a friend of mine. You’ve confirmed everything she said. Now I see what she was afraid of.”

Daaarrm studied her, trying to make sense of her reference.

“But I am curious about one thing. Where do you fit in? Why would you care if I were a Master on Earth?”

“Because we’d make great allies!” he said, extending his hand. “We could help each other! We’ve got the technology to make this work for you. In return, you could help us.”

“That’s what I mean. How? I thought you were doing fine without us.”

“Yes, but the resources on your Earth are far greater!” He raised his arms in both directions. “You have billions of potential Brethren and great industries still in place that can be exploited for decades!”

“And you want us to take you there.” She nodded with understanding.

“It would be a small price!” he said like a salesperson belittling an objection. “There aren’t many of us on this continent. We number barely over two thousand. We could share in your wealth and you’d never even notice us!”

Sally studied his enthusiasm with greater concern. It was as if she had just discovered a new disease and was making plans to contain it.