The east rim of the upland is higher and steeper than the west. None of the convicts dropped into the jungle ever reached the highlands until rescue teams from the top found and cleared the trail. The ride down took us three long days.
Finn and I sat together every day on the pitching seat. We shared meals when we squatted around the cook fires, shared space in his little tent when we camped. He knew who I was. He must have wondered about Terra and my life there, wondered how I became a spy, but he never inquired.
Listening for Laurel’s name, I never spoke of her.
The first day we wound through sunless gorges that old glaciers had cut, and came out into blinding sun on ledges so narrow I hardly dared look down at the endless ocean of glaring monsoon clouds, a mile and more beneath us. The second day we were still in them, in a fog so dense I could hardly see the beast ahead. The third day we came out of the clouds, down into ceaseless rain and suffocating heat. Still far below, the jungle was a featureless dark-green sea. The fourth day we were in its dismal twilight, breathing the reeks of wet decay and the rank musks of strange life.
Still the road ran on. Sometimes it was made of logs, laid side by side. Sometimes it was flat rocks, laid to crown a thin clay dike. More often it was only a ditch of thick red mud, splashed and churned by the camel’s wide- splayed feet. Undergrowth walled it and arched overhead, most of it a tangle of thick-leafed fungoid stuff the driver had no name for when I asked. The rain never stopped.
The days were endless nightmares. Stinging insects hummed around us. My face and arms itched and burned. My bones ached. My appetite was gone. My strength drained away till I had to tie myself into the bucking seat. I tried to chew the angel bark Finn shared when he saw I had the fever, but the bitter stuff burned my mouth and knotted my stomach and seemed to do no good.
Sweating and gasping for breath though the endless nights, I dreamed and dreamed again that I had found Laurel. Sometimes we had been swimming together in that little lake at the desert oasis, sometimes we were skiing on the old volcano, sometimes we had been back in bed together. She was always beautiful. Longing for her to love me, I tried to tell her how sorry I was. The words always stuck in my burning throat and she coldly turned away.
I lost the count of days. I don’t know when we reached the lumber mills or how I got to Hell. That was the name of a settlement on the swampy shore of the Styx. Dimly, I remember the patter of the endless rain on the tent, the coughs and stinks of the men on the cots around me, the days when all I wanted was death. I remember dreams of Laurel, bathing my body in angel seed tea when my swollen throat wouldn’t swallow.
A morning came when my head seemed clear. The tent was silent, except for the murmur of the rain. The other cots were empty. The epidemic was over. Feeling well again, I lay waiting until Laurel came in. She was real, alive and smiling, lovely in a white uniform somehow spotless in spite of the mud. She helped me sit up and gave me a mug of the angel seed tea. Magically, its burning bitterness was gone. It had almost the taste of a good dry wine.
She laughed when I tried to say how sorry I was.
“You’ve already told me, at least a thousand times.” She asked if I felt hungry and brought a tray of food. Suddenly ravenous, I gorged on river fish and hellcakes and roasted silvernuts and camel cheese. I was able to limp with her out into the clearing. Huge crimson blooms blazed from the vines that twined the trees around it. The air was sweet with their scent, and the jungle’s dark power seemed almost kind. We went down to the dock to watch the little steamer come in with a load of cured rubber from a plantation down the river. The name painted on the bow was
Next day she was even happier.
“Bart was on the radio,” she told me. “He’s back from Terra with great good news. Your stories about Gilliyar’s bombardment set off new Free Space riots on a hundred planets. Revolution came so close that Cleon III had to abdicate. His son is promising to negotiate the independence of a new Free Space Federation.
“The new government has recognized our own freedom and ordered Gilliyar’s forces out. They wanted to rename the planet Avalon. Bart told them no. He says Lucifer fits us better. They wanted him to stay as our ambassador. He said no to that. Ambassadors are government.
“But he did get them to guarantee free trade and free travel. They want angel wood and silvernut for medical research. We’re free to visit Terra if we like.” Soberly, she shook her head and caught my hand. “Not soon, I think. Our lives are here.”
She found a place for us on a camel train when I felt strong enough. We rode together back up the hell road, back out of the rain and the bugs and the stink of the swamps, back through the fog into bright sunlight, back through narrow passes into the Vale of Avalon. I was still half-drunk on the angel tea and my dreams of our future together. She was more realistic.
“Freedom won’t come free,” she told me. “It never does.”
RENEGADE
by Mark Tier
On the giant screen in Union Square a marine running full tilt toward the camera suddenly spurted blood where his head had been. I was glad there was no sound—I felt sick enough already.
Before I could wonder what had happened to the cameraman the screen blanked for a fraction of a second, and the scene shifted to a bird’s-eye view of the jungle battle. And then cut to an ad.
On the old-fashioned ticker underneath—a copy of the relic in Times Square—the headline marines retreat appeared, one letter at a time.
A screech of brakes and the sound of scrunching steel jerked my attention back to the street. Most everyone on the sidewalk had come to a dead halt. Including me—and I hadn’t even noticed. I suddenly became aware of the unnatural silence: after all, it’s not every day you see someone’s head blown off live on a five-hundred-foot three- dimensional screen. Drivers were mesmerized too. One of them must have hit the brakes and taken his car out of automatic. The roadnet braked the cars behind, but not fast enough to prevent a spectacular pile-up.
A lady nearby was throwing up in the gutter. My stomach started to churn so I took a few steps back. I felt a bit sick too, but I couldn’t feel sorry for the guy. He’d volunteered knowing full well what the risks were. And was— had been—highly paid to take them. After all, every man and woman in both the Eighth Army and the Marines get a share of the holo and web rights. With the ratings on this melee his family, if he had one, will be well taken care of.
How much time had passed? More than I thought. Now I had to hurry to be at the hearing on time. As I and hundreds of others started moving again the normal Union Square bustle returned. Though it would be a while before the traffic followed suit.
8th army odds on; marines 27-1 was now scrolling across the ticker. I’m not a gambling man but I can’t resist an all-but-sure-thing. 27 to 1! That was like taking candy from the mouths of babes.
A few taps on my phone and I learned that the US Marines were retreating all across the front. But the retreat was slow and it didn’t seem like they were about to fold. Sure wouldn’t do their marketing image any good if they gave up so easily.
If they only held out for just a few days I’d clean up. A good friend of mine, an executive of the Eighth Army Inc. had told me that their client—don’t ask me whether it was the government of Colombia or the government of Venezuela; I haven’t really been following this fracas too closely—had run out of money. That’s real money I mean: they had plenty of that stuff they printed down there, whatever they called it, and a wheelbarrow full of it and a silver dime might get you a cup of coffee in San Francisco if the vendor was short of toilet paper.
Whichever gang of thugs it was, if they didn’t pay up by Monday the Eighth Army Inc. was flying straight back home. Today was Friday. Planes and choppers were on standby over in Florida to pull them out at a moment’s notice. Then all that would stand between the US Marines and the thugs running Venezuela (or Colombia) was the ragtag gaggle of bandits they called their army.
Those marines would walk it in the rest of the way. And the bookies would have to pay up.
