J. F. Bone, page 4
In the early days before the uprising and the punitive expedition, explorers and traders were grudgingly and sometimes enthusiastically welcomed by the natives and mingled freely with the unattached women who were numerous and willing since intertribal feuds and excessive male infant deaths left a shortage of men. In time the natives got worried about the increasing numbers of off-worlders and halfbreeds in the tribes, but they didn’t do anything about it except talk.
Artheans didn’t want civilization. Their nomadic life carried them all over the planet and a high level of heritable disease combined with propensities for feuding and fighting kept the population stable at eight million people. In this ideal male chauvinist environment it is no wonder that the native men did their best to put obstacles in the way of immigration. But the tools and trade goods were too much to resist.
Traders put the first domes and halfcastes on Arthe, but the big change came when the rare earth metals were discovered. The Companies descended on Arthe like vultures on a succulent piece of carrion, and the fragile relationship between prospectors, explorers and natives blew apart. The domes rose all over the planet and finally the natives rose, too. In the great uprising of 4002, the natives managed to slaughter most of their own miscegenates and a goodly number of the johnny-come-lately colonists. They were broadminded about who they massacred. They just killed everyone who had Confed blood in them. Most of the traders and a fair percentage of the ‘breeds reached the domes, and easily repulsed the native attacks. It was a standoff until some native sympathizer figured out how to turn the colony ship’s drives into breeder reactors and make nuclear explosives. The natives destroyed four domes and the Companies screamed to high heaven. The Confederation listened and the service answered. Since what little technology the natives had was pre-Interregnum and we had sub-atomics, the issue was never in doubt once the service moved into action. A division was sent to restore order. The punitive expedition was a short, bloody episode. There weren’t too many casualties considering the weaponry the CAF brought with them; nothing at all like the blasted wreckage on Gakan. That was because the natives quit while they were still alive. The result was that the peace treaty gave them the arable land and the canal bottoms. The Companies got mineral rights, but agreed not to encroach on the canals. In return, the natives agreed never again to use nuclear explosives. And they never have.
After awhile, things went back almost to the way they were. The native population rose to the prewar level. Trade was resumed, and the natives lived where and as they had lived before. But the power moved from the Outlands into the domes. The natives were no longer of any importance. The natives are a human variant, descended from a minimal gene pool which has never been augmented by new infusions. As a result they are surprisingly uniform in size and appearance. Taller than the human average, bigger chested, darker skinned, with long dark eyes and straight black hair, the men are handsome and most of the women are beautiful if you care for the type. Fortunately, their basic stock had been good and when the bad genes and lethal recessives began to appear in about the F7 generation the colony numbers were large enough to select the survival types and allow the non-survivors to die out.
The halfbreeds are descendents of natives and the latecomers. They are a major headache. They are no different than the rest of mankind and are probably more closely related to the general run of human than are the natives, but in thoughts and customs they’re more native than Confed. Hated by the natives and despised by Confeds, the ‘breeds form the labor pool in every dome on Arthe.
The men can’t get jobs as easily as the women, as there is little use for them except as unskilled labor. The result is that many men have become drones and live on the earnings of one or more women. Many deny family responsibility and if their woman becomes pregnant, they disappear. In a high proportion of the families there is no man, and in many, the three children allowed under local population statutes all have different surnames. Since the woman has to work, the children are left to fend for themselves and the word “family” is a joke.
The principal feature of life in the Authority can be summed up in one word—insecurity. It shows its ugly face everywhere, in the anxious eyes of girls hurrying to work, in the shifty sullen faces of a group of boys lounging on a street corner. It screams at you from the obscene graffiti on the walls, the littered pavements, the battered plastic of the sills and doorframes, the poorly dressed children, the heavy gut-wrenching odor of too many bodies too long unwashed.
The domes were neither beautiful nor pleasant, but then neither are the older worlds near the hub of Civilization. There simply were too many people, too many machines, and too much leisure. Most people don’t know how to use free time. Man needs work—in fact, he has to have it if he wants to remain sane. And when all fields of rewarding labor are preempted by a dominant class, the recessives get what is left.
It isn’t enough.
So how does a recessive spend his time? Let me list the ways. I’ll do it alphabetically for better remembrance: Alcohol, Arson, Bigamy, Boredom, Brawling, Burglary, Cynicism, Cults, Demonstrations, Envy, Gangs, Graffiti, Hatred, Ideologies, Masochism, Mugging, Murder, Narcotics, Paranoia, Pot, Psychosis, Rape, Riot, Rumbles, Sabotage, Sex, Unrest, Vandalism, Voyeurism, Withdrawal—it takes most of the alphabet, doesn’t it?
The wonder is that it’s not worse.
In their periodic riots, the ‘breeds work off their accumulated bitterness and frustration. Oddly enough, not very many get killed. The day to day problems usually revolve around women. The men resent them because a woman finds it much easier to get a job and because there are a much greater variety of jobs available. The top ones usually wind up in “Administrative” houses, or as mistresses of Company officials. It’s a better life than raising unwanted kids in an overcrowded barrack, but it doesn’t produce much happiness.
As for the domes, they’re necessary if people like me are to live on Arthe. Outside air isn’t good for type A’s. It’s too thin—about the equivalent of 12 or 13 thousand feet elevation on Earth with a trace of chlorine to give it flavor. With laboring lungs the chlorine tends to cause irritation, hemorrhage and pneumonia. If you’re not a native, or a Type C adaptive, you have no business being outside a dome. Mid-level people like me should never stick our noses outside unless we wear respirators. It’s an invitation to suicide.
I sat in the prowler immersed in my thoughts, looking up through the transparent canopy. Dawson was sunk in some reverie of his own, cigar glowing and fading with his machinelike puffs. The black outside night pressed down upon the faintly gleaming dome far overhead with almost palpable weight.
I relaxed, letting the peace and quiet of the night soak into me. An occasional pedestrian strolled by, silent and unhurried on the still walkways. Halfway down the block a repair crew was working under portable glows, doing something to an exposed section of walkway, working quietly and rapidly to beat the morning deadline when the walks would start rolling again. A couple of civilian cars purred past with a muted hum of turbines, heading out towards the Rim. An echo of drunken laughter hung in the heavy air after they had passed.
Dawson came out of his trance. “Damfool Hubbers,” he snorted, then grunted viciously. “Sure as you’re born we’ll have to risk our necks bailing the tramps out of trouble.”
“You know that crowd better than I do,” I said, without lowering my gaze from the dome overhead.
Silence fell again and the night was peaceful. The warm air carrying the faint odors of oil and ozone moved sluggishly along the street as concealed blowers kept it circulating. The deep musical hum of the Station filled the air with its all-pervading vibration. It was a comforting sound.
A red light blossomed on the dashboard, and the peace was broken. The dispatcher’s metallic voice crackled in the cab. “Car two, Car two… Section J6 Sandy’s Place, Code forty—Acknowledge.”
I acknowledged.
“Forty,” Dawson murmured, as he fed gas to the turbine and the little three-wheeler leaped into speed. “Violence—violent assault—murder maybe.” He licked his lips and looked happy as the uncompensated acceleration crushed me back into the seat. I snapped the siren on, and the wailing moan cut knifelike across the turbine’s snarl of power. Dawson turned the wheel sharply. Tires screamed as we swung left onto 6th and headed out towards the Rim.
We braked to a fast smooth stop. Dawson picked up the mike. “Car two, at the scene and going in.”
We came out of the prowler fast. My hands were clammy with sweat and I felt just like I did when the firing started. I guess my anticipation must have shown because Dawson looked at me with a queer glitter in his eyes.
“Ain’t going yella, are ya?”
“Just get going,” I said. “Don’t worry about me.” There were a few ‘breeds standing outside. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t do anything. Just looked at us and hated. You could feel the hate spreading out of them like a wave, it was that strong.
Dawson strode straight for the door, his bulky body cleaving through the ‘breeds. They shrank back to let him pass. I followed at his heels feeling like a poodle on a leash. Someone gasped. Even with repair work I still wasn’t lovely to look upon. My eyes raked the group, and a couple of them made horns at me to ward off the evil eye. I laughed as I followed Dawson inside. My face was good for something.
* * *
CHAPTER V
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Sandy’s place was a little better than the average run of periphery dive. It had a touch of decayed elegance in its battered double doors and the pillar lights on each side of the door frame. The interior, however, was no better than the rest of the Rim joints. It smelled of cheap Kala beer, stale tobacco, deodorant spray, and sweat. There was another smell, too—fear!
We pushed our way through and came into a sleazy combination of bar and dance floor that might have been elegant a quarter of a century ago, but which was now merely dirty. A thin sprinkling of tables stood near the drab walls, surrounding a metal-tone floor painted to look like wood. Across the room, a long, scarred Calpawood bar stretched its red length from wall to wall, jutting out from its mirrored background fronted by rows of glasses and bottles.
But it wasn’t the bar nor the ‘breed who stood before it who first caught my eye. It was the pair on the dance floor. The woman might have been beautiful once, maybe not too long ago. She wasn’t now. Half her head was burned away by a blaster bolt. The man was an Outlander from the looks of him, a big-chested thin-bodied Type C adaptive. He lay in a crumpled heap on the floor beside the dead woman and made wheezing bubbling noises from a ripped throat. Probably he’d already inhaled enough of his own blood to kill him, but he was still alive. A widening pool of blood spread from beneath his head and sent out a thin red pseudopod that crawled slowly across the floor, pointing like an accusing finger at the ‘breed leaning against the bar. As far as I could see, it was the usual story—‘breed girl, jealous boyfriend or husband, and the well-heeled competitor for the girl’s favors.
I looked at the ‘breed. He didn’t look like a husband. He was a big man dressed in the short jacket, tight breeches, and colorful stockings they affected. A thick rope of paste jewelry encircled his neck and the ruffled flowered shirt cascaded out of the short sleeves of his jacket and over his hands. The heavy muscles of his neck and shoulders stiffened as he caught sight of us. He half raised the Kelly dangling from his right hand, while his left fumbled with the neck of a broken bottle lying on the bar.
I stared at the man, and a chill ran down my spine. Something about his face was frighteningly familiar—especially his eyes. They stared from twitching features, bulbous, injected, with inky pinpoint pupils. Faint muscular tremors rippled the cheap synthetic fabric of his shirt. I could see his calf muscles twitch beneath the skin-tight stockings that encased them. Memory made my muscles tighten—tonocaine!
“Dawson,” I said quietly, “watch it! He’s high!” Dawson gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes never left the ‘breed’s face as he walked slowly toward the man, his long riot stick swinging in his right hand, his hard heels making tiny clicking sounds on the plastic floor. Watching him, I felt a cold chill creep up the back of my legs and spread icy ringers across my stomach. I was glad that I wasn’t in the ‘breed’s place, for at that moment Dawson was the most frightening thing I had ever seen in my life.
He came to a stop about three feet from the ‘breed.
“Drop that gun,” he said flatly. “You’re under arrest.”
The man answered with an insane snarl of hate and a blur of drug speeded motion. The Kelly in his hand jerked up and levelled.
And as he moved, so did Dawson. Fast! I never saw anything so fast in my life! The riot stick blurred in the air, terminating in a meaty crack and a thin, sharp snap of brittle bone. The blaster, driven from the ‘breed’s grasp, clattered to the floor! For a split second the man stood, staring at his broken wrist, a stupefied expression on his muddy face. Then, pivoting like a dancer, graceful, swift, he grasped the neck of the broken bottle and lunged left-handed straight at Dawson’s face. Dawson stepped back, bending at the waist, the stick coming around in a whistling backhand. His heel struck the slow-moving rivulet of blood. He staggered, slipped, and the bottle plowed a shallow furrow across his cheek as he fell to the floor. The ‘breed came down, bottle outthrust, aimed at Dawson’s neck!
From somewhere came the cough of a blaster. A searing bolt of blue-white energy struck the bottle, melting it instantly. A burst of oily smoke puffed from the man’s extended hand. He fell, stunned by the shock, gasping, staring with horrified eyes at the charred stumps of his fingers. I watched the ‘breed with fascinated surprise as I felt the weight of my Kelly nestling comfortably in my palm.
The ‘breed lay where he fell. Finally he screamed and kept on screaming as Dawson got to his feet. The raw inhuman note grated on the eardrums like the screeching rasp of a file drawn edgewise across thin metal.
“Emergency—Sandy’s J6,” I said rapidly into my throat mike. “Ambulance and medics on the double.”
“Acknowledged,” came a tinny voice in my ear.
I turned my attention back to the ‘breed. Dawson was standing over him, swinging his riot stick easily, savoring the agony, enjoying himself! Suddenly I knew the reason Dawson hung around this Class II dome! He was a sadist! He’d be kicked off the force in a decent town.
“Shut up,” said Dawson. He turned the man over on his back with a booted foot, spat in the bloody face, and drove his toe into the heaving chest. Air left the lungs in a thin whistling gasp that choked the forming scream off in mid-cry. Dawson poked him viciously in the solar plexus with the end of his stick. The man vomited. Dawson smiled and swung his stick. The red wood blurred as it came down. The sound of the blow was thick and meaty in the heavy air. “Cut-me-will-ya,—ya-punk!” Dawson panted. “Resist-arrest-will-ya—I’ll show-ya-ya-dirty—” The stick lifted for another blow.
Somewhere a woman screamed. “Stop him! Stop him! He’ll kill the guy!”
I found myself hanging onto Dawson’s arm. The power of the man nearly lifted me from my feet. He wrenched free, snarling. A thin drool of saliva hung from the corner of his twisted mouth. Red flickerings danced in his jet eyes, and as he swung the club back I had the queasy sensation that the next blow would be aimed at my head. “Don’t try it, John,” I said. His arm dropped as the muzzle of my Kelly dug into the swell of flesh above his belt. His eyes filmed, then turned chill and remote as he growled something under his breath, shrugged and walked away. He vanished through the crowd in the doorway that opened swiftly and silently to let him pass. And the tension left with him.
I wasted no time on the ‘breed. If Dawson hadn’t shocked him over the hump, he’d soon be dead from tonocaine deprivation. And right now he was out cold, which was all the good I could have done him. The Outlander still breathed shallowly. I tore my aid kit out and knelt beside him. The ‘breeds crowded around watching curiously as, in the next few minutes, I remembered and applied a lot of battlefield surgery, and by the time the ambulance came I had the man fairly comfortable, breathing easily through an improvised tracheal tube made from a flare casing. He was still unconscious from shock and blood loss, but with proper medical treatment he would survive.
“Good work, officer,” the police surgeon said approvingly as he inspected my handiwork. “That’s a neat job. You must have had medical training.”
“I graduated from John Hopkins Earth in ‘97,” I said.
“An Inner Worlds medico out here!” the surgeon murmured in disbelief. “Why aren’t you practicing? We need doctors badly.”
“Take a good look,” I said turning my face up to his. I have to admit he took it well enough.
“I see,” he said. “But—”
“Skip it.” I said. I got off the floor and watched the orderlies load the two living men onto litters and carry them out of the room. I didn’t wait for them to remove the woman. I went out to find Dawson. He was sitting in the prowler, a flesh-colored cellutape bandage stuck over the shallow gash in his cheek. His eyes were murderous.
“Let’s go,” he growled. “I’ll see that you’ll get yours tomorrow. You’ll pound a beat till your arches crack.”
The rest of the night was relatively peaceful. It was a good thing, as I was in no mood to sit in on another brawl like the last one. Toward morning I was doing the driving, with Dawson asleep in the back. I tooled the prowler along the regular beat at about fifteen per when I saw a flurry of motion down the street. I eased up behind it, slowed gently to a stop and got out.
The guy didn’t notice me. He was a well dressed Hubber from the look of him. He had a girl by the wrist and was roughing her up. It would have been no contest if the guy had been sober, because he was fully as big as I am, but since he was about two-thirds stoned, the girl was giving a good account of herself. They struggled silently, so absorbed in each other that they never noticed my arrival. The girl was getting the worst of the exchange which was reasonable enough since she was outweighed and out-muscled. Her thin blouse was half torn off, and the guy was trying to work her over with his free fist. The girl was writhing and tugging at the hand that held her wrist and was throwing his timing off. Three lines of blood across one cheek showed where she had gotten him with her nails.
