After the almost pathetically grateful females had left, he looked up and noticed Julian watching him from the doorway. The alcove to one side of the entrance was technically a guard room, but since there were nothing but guards in the building, it had been converted to storage.
"Do you have a problem with my charity, Sergeant?" Matsugae picked up one of the sacks and headed for the doorway; it was time to start work on dinner.
"No." The Marine plucked the twenty-kilo sack easily from the slight valet's grip and tossed it over his own shoulder. "Charity seems to be in short supply in this town. Nothing wrong with changing that."
"This is the most detestable town it has ever been my displeasure to visit," Matsugae said. He shook his head and grimaced. "It defies belief."
"Well," the sergeant said with a grim smile, "it's bad—I'll grant that. But it's not the worst in the galaxy. You ever read anything about Saint 'recovery worlds'?"
"Not much," the valet admitted. "Rather, I've heard of them, but I don't really 'know' about them. On the other hand, I believe the overall concept that the Saints espouse has some justice. Many planets have been damaged beyond recovery by overzealous terraforming and unchecked mining. That doesn't make me a SaintSymp," he added hastily.
"Didn't think you were. You couldn't have made it past the loyalty tests if you were. Or, at least, I hope you couldn't have. But have you ever read any reports about 'recovery worlds'? Unbiased ones?"
"No," Matsugae replied as they reached the kitchen area. A blaze had already been started in the large fireplace at one end of the guard room, and a pot hung from a swing arm, ready to be put into the fire. The room was amazingly hot, like an entrance to Hell, and Matsugae started gathering the ingredients of the evening meal. "Should I have?"
"Maybe." The sergeant set the bag of grain on the floor. "You know the theory?"
"They're former colonized planets that the Saints are trying to return to 'pristine' condition," the valet said as he began measuring ingredients into the pot. "They're trying to erase any evidence of terrestrial life on them." He smiled and gestured at the pot. "It's stew and barleyrice tonight, for a change."
Julian snorted, but didn't smile.
"That's the theory, all right," he agreed. "But how are they actually doing it? How are they 'unterraforming' those worlds? And what worlds are they? And where are the colonists who lived on them?"
"Why the questions, Sergeant?" Matsugae asked. "Should I assume that you know the answers, whereas I don't?"
"Yeah." Julian gave a mildly angry nod. "I know the answers. Okay. How are they 'unterraforming' the planets? They started with the colonists. Dirt poor farmers, mostly—none of these are worlds that produce anything the Saints give a damn about. That's why they're willing to drop them. So they have these people rounded up and put to work undoing the 'damage' that a couple of generations have done to the planets. Since they were farmers and terraformers—or the descendants of farmers and terraformers, anyway—before they were picked up, they were, de facto, guilty of 'ecological mismanagement.' "
"But... ?" the valet began in a puzzled tone.
"Hang on." The sergeant held up a hand. "I think I'll answer your question in a bit. Anyway, they put them to work 'reversing' the process. Mostly with hand tools, 'to minimize the impact.' And since humans, just by their excretions, if nothing else, tend to change the environment around them, the 'Saints' have to make sure that any fresh damage is minimized. Which they do by reducing the food supplies of the workers to under one thousand calories per day."
"But that's—"
"About half the minimum necessary to sustain life?" the sergeant said with a vicious smile. "Really? Gee."
"Are you saying that they're starving their own colonists to death?" Matsugae asked in a disbelieving tone. "That's hard to believe. Where's the Human Rights Commission report?"
"These are planets near the center of the Saints own empire," Julian pointed out. "HRC teams aren't let anywhere near the recovery planets. According to the Saints, they're completely abandoned and quarantined, so what interest could the HRC possibly have in them? Besides," he added bitterly, "they worked their way through the colonists years ago."
"My God, you're serious," the valet said quietly. He accepted the help of the obviously angry NCO to fill the pot with water and swung it over the fire. "That's insane!"
" 'Insane' describes the Saints to a 'T,' " Julian snarled. "Of course, the job is never really 'complete,' " he added with a ghastly smile.
"Oh?" Matsugae said warily.
"Sure. I mean, there's always some damned humanocentric weed cropping up somewhere on these pristine beauties," the sergeant said lightly. "That's why they still have to send humans down there to root them out."
"And where do they get those humans?"
"Well, first there's political prisoners," Julian said, ticking off the groups on his fingers. "Then there are other 'environmental enemies,' such as smokers. And there are general prisoners that are just going to be a bother to keep around. Last, but most certainly not least, there are nationals from other political systems that have, in the opinion of the Saint higher-ups, no utility," he finished with a snarl.
"Like?" Matsugae asked even more warily.
"Raider insertion teams, for starters," the Marine said bitterly. "We've lost three in the last year, and all we get out of the Saints is 'we have no knowledge of them.' "
"Oh."
"The hell of it is, that there are all these rumors that NavInt knows where they are." The NCO sat down on one of the tri-legged tables and hung his head. "If they'd just tell us, we'd go in in an instant. Shit, we've put Raider teams on the planets and documented what's going on—that's how we lost our people in the first frigging place! I know we could get at least some of them out!"
"So these are rumors? That makes sense. I can't believe that sort of thing is going on in this day and age."
"Oh, get a fucking grip, Kostas!" Julian snapped. "I've seen the damned pictures from Calypso, and they look like one of the internment camps from the Dagger Years! A bunch of skeletons wandering around with wooden tools and digging at dandelions, for God's sake!"
The valet regarded him calmly.
"I believe that you believe this to be true. Would you mind if I tried to corroborate it?"
"Not at all," the NCO sighed. "Ask any of the senior Marines. Hell, ask O'Casey when we get her back. I'm sure she's up to speed on it. But the point is that, bad as this place is, humans do ten times worse to each other every day."
Poertena watched the Mardukans carefully. He'd long since stopped regretting his "cheating" demonstration. There wasn't much point in regret, since he couldn't put the genie back into the bottle whatever he did, but it turned out that four arms made for hellacious cardsharps.
He'd first noticed the problem shortly after his brief demonstration to his cronies on the march from Voitan. Suddenly, where he'd been winning fairly consistently at poker, he started losing. Since his play hadn't changed, it meant that his companions' play must have gotten better, but it wasn't until Cranla fumbled a transfer that he twigged to what was going on.
Even though the Mardukans' "false-hands" were relatively clumsy, it was easy enough for them to palm one or two critical cards, and then it was a simple matter of switching them off. He caught them once on the basis of an ace that was covered in slime; Denat, the tricky bastard, had figured out that he could embed a card in the mucous on his arm and even show that his "hands were empty."
So now, they played spades. There were still ways to cheat, but with all fifty-two cards in play, it was trickier. Which wasn't much consolation at the moment, he thought, as Tratan dropped an ace onto the current trick and cut the Pinopan's king.