Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

“Tell that to those two you said are dead.”

The comment didn’t faze her. “Their systems were quite different from ours. Technology doesn’t even work on Lilith, and it’s easily negated by a strong mind on Charon. They will have to develop systems better suited to their own homes, as we have evolved this one.”

“I’m not very impressed with this one,” I told her. “It’s a dull, stupefying world of sheep you’ve created down there, people without drive, ambition, or guts. And for the elite on top, human slaves kept as status pets—like something out of the Dark Ages of man.”

She didn’t take offense. Her reply, in fact, was indirect and at first I didn’t see where she was going. “Tell me one thing that’s puzzzled me, Tarin Bul or whatever your name is. Just one thing. I know you’ve been conditioned so that we can’t get any information from you by force, but I would like to know the answer to one question.”

“Perhaps. What is it?”

“Why?”

“Why what?” I was very confused.

“Are you really as blindly naive as you say you are, or is there a real reason why you continued doggedly on your mission once you were here?”

“I told you I found your system repugnant.”

“Do you really? And what are the civilized worlds if not an enormous collection of sheep, bred to be happy, bred to do their specific jobs without complaint, and also without ambition or imagination. They look prettier, that’s all—but they don’t have to survive the hard climate of Medusa. What you see down there is simply a local adaptation, a reflection of the civilized worlds themselves. And do you know why? Because most people are sheep and are perfectly content to be led if they are guaranteed security, a home, job, protection, and a full belly. In the whole history of humankind, whenever people demanded democracy and total independence and got it, they were willing and eager to trade their precious freedom for security—every time. Every time. To the strong-willed, the people who knew what to do and had the guts to do it. The people who prize personal power above all else.”

“We don’t have cameras in people’s bathrooms,” I responded lamely.

“Because you don’t need cameras in the bathroom. You’ve had centuries of the best biotechnology around to breed out all thoughts of deviant activity, and a barrier not of energy but of tens of thousands of light-years of space to keep out social contamination. The few who slip by, people like you, are sent here. That’s why so many of them wind up in charge, and why the system here is a reflection of the civilized worlds. We grew up there, too, Bul, so it’s the system we know and understand best. We’re the people most fit to rule, not by our own say-so, but the Confederacy’s. That’s why we got sent here.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

There had to be a flaw in the logic somewhere, but I could find none. However, accepting her thesis didn’t make things any more pleasant. “If I admit the point, then all I can say is that the system itself is corrupt, bankrupt, and wrong, whether it’s here or in the Confederacy.”

“Then you are naive. Both Medusa and the Confederacy have given the masses exactly what all the social reformers have clamored for all these years—peace, plenty, economic and social equality, security. All other alternatives that are not variations of the plan have resulted in mass privation. You saw nothing wrong with the Confederacy while you were there because you were a part of the power structure, not one of the sheep. You chafed-here because we tried to make you a sheep. But if you’d come in as a government official, perhaps a monitor officer, you’d have felt right at home.”

“I doubt that now,” I told her. “I have lost my faith.”

“Then, perhaps, that’s why you really did what you did. Think about it. You could have been home free, yet you persisted. You could have turned back at several points, yet you came on against hopeless odds. That isn’t the act of a trained Confederacy assassin, even a disillusioned one. You came willingly because you know what I say is true. You cannot accept the system in any form, yet you accept the fact that it is the best one. For one like you, living as a savage in a dead-end existence would eventually drive you crazy, yet you could not embrace the system. You didn’t really came after us to rescue anyone, Bul. You came here to surrender, and you did. There is no place in this world for one like you, and you know it.”

I didn’t want to believe that what she said was true, and I would not admit her conclusions no matter what. I had no desire for suicide, no need to purge myself. She had it only partly right, I realized, and I would not give her the satisfaction of admitting even that to her. I could not exist on Medusa; there was no place on it for one like me. I came either to destroy the system or die trying.

Or was I just kidding myself?

“What happens to me now?” I asked her.

“Well, first J think we should give you something of an education, I think, perhaps, we should first take you to your friends. It should be interesting to see your reactions to our rather unique art form.”

We stood on a walk overlooking a vast expanse of plant growth. In many ways it was reminiscent of a resort complex back in the civilized worlds, with white sandy beaches, small pools of clear water fed by artfully constructed artificial waterfalls, and a safe but beautiful flower-filled planned jungle.

“The First Minister’s personal pleasure garden,” Fallen told me. “A place to totally relax and get away from it all.”

I squinted and looked down. “There are people down there.”

She nodded. “The garden is staffed by several dozen Goodtime Girls,” she told me. “They are there to fulfill his every wish, indulge his every whim, as well as keep the place in perfect condition.”

“At least in the Confederacy we don’t turn people into robotized slaves,” I noted acidly. That was one clear difference.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Fallen admitted. “However, you killed four people in cold blood just to get this far, and who knows how many others over your career? The Confederacy takes the so-called criminals people like you catch and either totally wipes their minds and rebuilds childlike, menial personalities, or they totally remake your psyche into their own image if they can. In extremely violent cases, they simply kill the people. They send only the best to the Warden Diamond, but only because they have done something unusual or creative—or are highly connected politically, which is the most important factor in being sent here, since someday those determining the criminal’s fates may be caught doing something naughty and sent down themselves. The difference between the Council and the Congress and the so-called criminals like Talant Ypsir and Aeolia Matuze, two former government members, is only that Ypsir and Matuze made some enemies and so were prosecuted. They’re no different from any other Confederacy rulers. The personality goes with the job.”

“But—slaves out of some thirteen-year-old boy’s wet dreams?”

“They serve a purpose. All are criminals by our standards. Their guilt is not in doubt in the least. The strongest and cleverest we send to the moons of Momrath—our Warden Diamond, you might say. The rest, the ones who cannot be trusted to continue at all, we either kill or change. We change them. We make them useful. In many ways we’re more humane than the Confederacy. Come.”

We walked back into the main station complex and past a door that read psych section, authorized personnel only. I knew what the next stop was. My faithful armed guard, who had not so much uttered a word or changed her dour expression, followed.

“Originally the idea was just to change the mind-set into something useful,” Fallon continued, seemingly enjoying the grand tour she was giving me. “We have, after all, a lot more menial jobs than the civilized worlds. But we discovered that when we did a wipe on a Medusan, a funny thing happened. The body, whether male or female, reverted to a primal female form as welL” We stopped in front of a door, which opened for us. We entered an observation room for a psych machine. “Recognize the subject in the chair?” she asked me.

I looked hard. Connected as she was to all sorts of tubes, sensors, and the like, it was at first difficult to get a good look at the woman “on the couch,” as psychs liked to call it. Still, I recognized the general facial features and. form quite well. “Ching,” I sighed.

She nodded. “We’re almost to the state we call ‘at rest’ in our process here. You can see that the skin is abnormally soft and pliant, there is no hair or any blemish or unusual feature. The basic form is female but not unusually so.”