The idea sobered her a bit “I’d almost forgotten about that Funny, I don’t feel… well… infected.”
“Neither do I, but we are. Bet on it”
Then without warning, she returned to the original conversation. “Ah, Park?”
“Uh-huh?”
“What did you do to get here?”
I sighed. “What I did I won’t do again,” I told her. “It was a terrible sickness, Zala—mental illness that came from a lot of things, including my physical condition. The psychs cured me of that, though, and I’ve never been more sane in my life. That alone is really worth the price. I was in real hell, Zala, back home. I may be a prisoner here, but I’m free for the first time in my life. I was a district administrator, by the way, so we do have a little more in common.”
She wasn’t buying the stall. “Park, why won’t you tell me what you did?”
I sighed. “Because if I did you wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep while we were together, that’s why.”
She thought for a moment. “You… killed somebody, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“A woman?”
Again I just nodded.
She hesitated. “More than one?”
Again I could only nod and wish this conversation hadn’t come up.
“A lot?”
I sighed and sat back up on my bed. “Look, let’s stop playing games. I really don’t want to remember that part of myself. It’s like I was somebody else, Zala. It was a terrible, terrible madness, a sickness. Looking back on it makes me more nauseated than people who remember it or were there. I swear to you, though, that they have to terminate anybody they can’t cure of such madness, and the fact that I’m here proves that I’m cured. They could have sent me back on the streets with perfect confidence and in perfect safety, but my case was so notorious and I’m so physically distinctive that I would have been lynched, or worse. The Diamond was the only way out for me and, believe it or not, I’m grateful For the first time I can be a whole human being—and that means a lot to me, even here on this pesthole.”
She smiled. “Then I’m your acid test, because I don’t want to be here. If you’re lying, and you kill me, well, at least it’ll be over. And if you’re telling the truth, both of us will know it and maybe, together, we can survive this place.”
“Sounds fair to me,” I told her sincerely. A temporary alliance, anyway. I did have a woman left to kill, but it wasn’t Zala Embuay.
They knocked on our doors shortly after that, and we trooped downstairs again like a convention of bathhouse enthusiasts. I had some trouble with the robe on the stairs, but I managed to keep from tripping.
Our hosts, in fresh black clothes of the same kind we’d been issued, but looking dry and prim, were waiting for us. In the center of the lobby area a table had been set with a lot of steaming dishes on it, and eleven place settings.
The food was all natural, which was bizarre enough, but the tastes and textures were also rather odd. I won’t go into a catalogue of the meal, but I had the feeling that, with the stew anyway, we really didn’t want to know what was in it For the six civilized-worlds prisoners, Zala included, it was probably the first non-synthetic, non-computer-balanced and prepared meal they had ever had, and they showed it. The rest of us rude frontiersmen and women ate with gusto. As I said, I really didn’t want to know what the stuff was, but it was good and highly but delicately spiced. At least the food was going to be decent here.
Our native guides obviously had either, already eaten or would eat later. They busied themselves setting up a large chart stand and adjusting lights and the like until we were through.
Eating mostly in silence but feeling for the first time a lot more human, we finally finished and waited anxiously on our hosts.
The man began. “I am Garal,” he introduced himself, “and this is Tiliar. We’ve been assigned this job by the Honuth District Supervisor, acting for and at the command of the planetary government. We are both former prisoners ourselves, so we know what you’re going through. Let’s start out by saying that you must have fears and odd superstitions about the Warden Diamond, and we want to assure you that those fears have no. basis. You’re not going to get sick—in fact, you will most likely not notice any real difference between yourselves before and yourselves here. It is true, though, that your bodies are even now altering in minute and undetectable ways. Within a few days you and the Warden organism will reach a state of what we like to call ‘alliance.’ Let me emphasize that you are not sick. In fact, in the five years I’ve been here I’ve never been sick, not once. The Wardens are far more effective than any body defense in killing off viruses and any other disease organisms you might have brought with you—the ones native here are too alien to do you any harm—as well as infection and a host of other ills. You can appreciate the fact that, in a climate like this, nobody ever gets a cold.”
That brought a small chuckle from us, but it was an important aspect of this world. Back in the civilized worlds people never got sick much either, but that was due to the immediate access to the best medical facilities. Here, if Garal was to be believed, doctors and the like were simply not necessary.
“Some of you may find a little discomfort in one or two areas,” Tiliar put in, “because you aren’t healthy enough. Anyone who has chipped or lost a tooth, for example, may find it growing back, which can be an irritating thing. Anyone who has vision problems might experience some dizziness or slight headaches as whatever problems you had are corrected. The Warden organism doesn’t just keep you from getting worse, it makes you better. And it keeps you that way. Cuts heal quickly and rarely leave a scar; even whole limbs are often regenerated if lost”
“You make it sound like we’re immortal,” the big prisoner with the single room commented.
“No, not immortal,” she replied. “Fatal wounds Outside are fatal wounds here. The Wardens use your own body’s natural abilities to keep you healthy and whole, but if your body can’t fix it, well, neither can they. However, more people on Charon die from external causes than natural causes. With the Warden ability to repair and even replace brain cells, your potential lifespan in a healthy body is longer than in the civilized worlds.”
Most of those at the table, Zala included, heard only the second part of that statement and seemed pleased. I was much more interested in the implication that a lot of people died here from unnatural causes. I couldn’t forget the teeth on those baby blue lizards.
Our guides followed up with a general rundown of the planet, much of which I already knew. It was interesting in the context of the torrential rams to discover that there were a few deserts on the central continent, often the only places where blue sky was seen for more than brief periods. Water, it seemed, was feast or famine on Charon—mostly feast. But in those dry areas it might rain once a century. Additionally, there were violent storms, tabarwinds they were called, that were quick and deadly and could strike out of nowhere with tremendous lightning charges and winds of over 160 kilometers per hour. Much of the weather, including these storms, could not be accurately predicted since a layer in the upper atmosphere had an odd field of electrically charged particles that fouled most conventional radars, infrared cameras, and the like, while artificial electrical fields on the ground attracted the full fury of tabarwinds. I began to see a practical reason why they kept technology at a minimum level. The spaceport was immediately shut down at the first sign of such tabarwinds, and, even so, it had been hit and destroyed twice in the memory of these two people. The shuttle had special protection against many of these electrical fields, but was not totally immune.