Slave Planet, Laurence M. Janifer [i love reading books .TXT] 📗

Everything not compulsory is forbidden

The Alberts had to be trained. The Alberts had to be disciplined. The men had to work with them. The men were forbidden to leave the planet.

And who were the slaves?

That, Dodd told himself cloudily, was far from an easy decision.

Everything not compulsory was forbidden. Even the parties were forbidden ... though it was always possible to find one. Dodd had avoided them completely, afraid now of another breakdown, this time in public. He had not seen Greta or called her (though he had her number now): he had stayed alone as much as possible.

He had no idea what had happened to him: and that added to his fright and to his fear of a recurrence.

But Albin, he knew, was having his fun, and so were others. The older men, it seemed, devoted themselves to running the place, to raising their families and giving good advice, to keeping production up and costs down.

The younger men had fun.

Dodd had thought of marriage. (Now, it was no more than a memory, a hope he might once have had. Now, the end had come: there was no marriage. There was no life. Only the idea of hope remained.) He had never had the vestige of a real female image in his mind. Sometimes he had told himself to be more out-going, to meet more women—but, then, how did a man meet women?

He had fun.

And Dodd had never enjoyed that particular brand of fun—Albin's brand.

There was a Social, an acceptable party that would get him into no trouble, in Building One. Dodd felt like lying down and letting the day drain out of him into the comforting mattress there in his room. He felt like relaxing in his own company—and that, he saw suddenly, was going to mean drinking.

He could see the future unroll before him. He could see the first drink, and the tenth. Because drink was an escape, and he needed some escape from the world he was pledged to uphold, the world of slavery.

He could not afford to drink again.

So, naturally, he was getting ready to go to the Social. Albin would be there, undoubtedly, some of the older men would be there—and a scattering of women would be there, too. (He remembered himself thinking, long ago before such a party: Tonight might be the night.) He shaved very carefully, faithful to memory, dressed in the best he could find in his closet, and went out, heading for the elevator.

Tonight might be the night—but it made no difference, not any longer.

The trip to Sub-basement took a few whooshing seconds. He stepped out into a lighted, oil-smelling underground corridor, took a deep breath and headed off through gleaming passages toward another elevator at the far end. Before he reached it he took a turning, and then another: after a magnificently confusing trip through an unmarked labyrinth, he found the elevator that led him up into the right section of Building One. That was no special feat, of course: people had been doing the like ever since the first housing-project days, on pre-Confederation Earth. Dodd never gave it a second thought: his mind was busy.

The phrase had floated to the forefront of his brain again, right behind his eyes, lighting up with a regularity that was almost soothing, almost reassuring.

This is the end.

This is the end.

This is the end.

When the elevator door slid open he was grim-faced, withdrawn, and he stepped out like a threat into a cheerful, brightly dressed crowd of people.

"Here he is!" someone shouted. "I told you he'd be here ... I told you...." Dodd turned but the words weren't meant for him. Down the corridor a knot of men and women was surrounding a new arrival from somewhere else, laughing and talking. As he stepped forward, his eyes still on that celebration, a pathway opened up for him; he was in sober black and he went through the corridor like a pencil-mark down paper, leaving an open trail as he passed.

A girl stopped him before he reached the door of the party room. She stepped directly into his path and he saw her, and his expression began to change, a little at a time, so that his eyes were, for long seconds, happier than his face, and he looked like a young bull-terrier having a birthday party.

"Am I in your way?" the girl said, without budging an inch. She was dressed in a bright green material that seemed to fade so near the glowing happiness of her face. Her hair was brown, a quite ordinary brown, and even in that first second Dodd noticed her hands. They were long and slim, the thumbs pointed outward, and they were clasped at her breast in a pose that should have been mocking, but was only pleasant.

He couldn't think of anything to say. Finally he settled on: "My name's Dodd," as the simplest and quickest way of breaking the ice that surrounded him.

"Very well, then, Mr. Dodd," the girl said—she wouldn't go along with polite forms—"am I in your way? Because if I am, I'm terribly sorry."

"You're not in my way at all," Dodd said heavily. "I just—didn't notice you." And that was a lie, but there was nothing else to say. The thousands of words that arranged themselves so neatly into patterns when he was alone had sunk to the very bottom of his suddenly leaden mind, almost burying the flashing sign. He felt as if he were growing extra fingers and ears.

"I noticed you," the girl said. "And I said to myself, I said: 'What can a person as grim as all that be doing at a Social as gay as all this?' So I stopped you to see if I could find out."

Dodd licked his lips. "I don't know," he said. "I thought maybe I'd meet somebody. I just thought I'd like to come."

"Well," the girl said, "you've met somebody. And now what?"

Dodd found some words, not many but enough. "I haven't met you yet," he said in what he hoped was a bright tone. "What's your name?"

The girl smiled, and Dodd saw for the first time that she hadn't been smiling before. Her face, in repose, was light enough and to spare; when she smiled, he wanted smoked glasses. "Very well," she said. "My name is Fredericks. Norma Fredericks. And yours is—"

"Dodd," he said. "John Dodd. They call me Johnny."

"All right, John," she said. "You haven't been to many Socials, have you? Because I'd have seen you—I'm at every one I can find time for. You'd be surprised how many that is. Or maybe you wouldn't."

There was no answer to the last half of that, so Dodd backtracked, feeling a shocking relief that she hadn't been to the party at which he and the other girl (whose name he could very suddenly no longer remember) had made fools of themselves. He gave her an answer to the first half of her question. "I haven't been to many Socials, no," he said. "I—" He shrugged and felt mountainous next to her. "I stay by myself, mostly," he said.

"And now you want to meet people," Norma said. "All right, Johnny Dodd—you're going to meet people!" She took him by the arm and half-led, half-dragged him to the door of the party room. Inside, the noise was like a blast of heat, and Dodd stepped involuntarily back. "Now, that's no way to be," Norma said cheerfully, and piloted him somehow inside, past a screaming crew of men and women with disposable glasses in their hands, past an oblivious couple, two couples, four, seven—past mountains and masses of color and noise and drink and singing horribly off-key, not bothersome at all, loud and raucous and somehow, Dodd thought wildly, entirely fitting. This was Norma's element, he told himself, and allowed her to escort him to a far corner of the room, where she sat him down in a chair, said: "Don't go away, don't move," and disappeared.

Dodd sat stock-still while the noise washed over him. People drifted by but nobody so much as looked in his direction, and he saw neither Albin nor that other forgettable girl, for all of which he was profoundly grateful. He hadn't been to a Social since his last mistake, and before that it had been—almost two years, he realized with wonder. He'd forgotten just how much of everything it could be. He devoted a couple of minutes to catching his breath, and then he just watched people, drifting, standing, forming new combinations every second. He thought (once) he saw Albin in the middle of a crowd near the door, but he told himself he was probably mistaken. There was no one else he recognized. He didn't grow tired, but sitting and watching, he found, was exhilarating enough.

In another minute, he was sure Norma wasn't going to come back. Probably she had found someone else, he told himself in what he thought was a reasonable manner. After all, he wasn't a very exciting person: she had probably started off to get him a drink or something, with the best of intentions, and met someone more interesting on the way.

He had just decided that, after all, he couldn't really blame her, when she appeared at his side.

"The punch," she announced, "is authentic. It is totally authentic. One glass and you forget everything. Two, and you remember. Three—I don't know what happens with the third glass yet. But I'm going to find out."

He looked at her hands. She was holding two disposable glasses, full of purple liquid. He took one from her and got up. "Well," he said, "cheers."

"Also down the hatch," she said. "And any other last year's slang you happen to have around and want to get rid of." She lifted the glass. "Here's to you, John Dodd," she said, and tipped the glass at her lips—just that. He had never before seen anyone drink in just that way, or drink so quickly. In seconds, before he had taken a sip (he was so amazed, watching her), the glass was empty. "Whoosh," she said clearly. "That ought to hold me for at least six minutes."

Then she noticed that he hadn't started his own drink yet, so he took a cautious sip. It tasted like grape juice, like wine, like—he couldn't identify the ingredients, and besides he was watching her face. He took another sip.

"That's the way," Norma approved. "Soon you'll be drinking with the big boys."

And whether she was making fun of him or not hardly mattered. He felt careless: maybe the drink had done it. "Why did you pick me?" he heard himself say. "Why did you stop me, out of all those people?"

She hesitated, and when she spoke it sounded like the truth, perhaps too much like the truth to be true. "You looked like a puppy," she said seriously. "Like a puppy trying to act fierce. Maybe I've always had a weakness for dumb animals: no offense meant, John Dodd."

The idea of being offended hadn't occurred to him, but he tried it out experimentally and discovered he didn't like it. Before he could say anything, though, Norma had become energetic again.

"Enough analysis," she said abruptly, so strongly that he wasn't sure what she meant by the words. "Sit down—sit down." He felt for the chair behind him and sat. Norma cast a keen eye over the nearby crowds, spotted an empty chair and went off for it. "Later," she told him, when she had placed herself next to him, "we can join the crowd. For now, let's get—let's get better acquainted. Johnny."

"That's the first time you've called me Johnny," he said.

"So it is," she said. Her face was a mask: and then it lightened. "What do you work at, Johnny?"

"I'm in Building Three," he said: it was easier to answer her than anatomize the confusions he felt. "I work with smelting and quality control—you know." He took another sip of his drink, and found to his surprise that it was more than half gone.

"With the Alberts," she said. "I know."

He thought he read her look correctly. "I don't like it either," he told her earnestly. "But somebody has to do it. I think—"

"You don't have to get defensive," Norma said. "Relax. Enjoy yourself. Join the party. Did I look at you as if you were a murderer of small children?"

"I just—don't like it," he said carefully. "I—well, there isn't anything I can do about it, is there?"

"I wouldn't know," she said, and then (had she made a decision? He couldn't tell) she went on: "I'm in Psych, myself."

"Psych? You?"

"Psych, me," she said. "So I'm every bit as responsible as you are. And maybe the reason there's nothing to do is—is because it's already been done."

"Already been done?" Dodd swallowed the rest of his