The next day, we could barely keep up, our bruises and torn muscles were in so much agony we gasped as we worked and said nothing to one another.
“Welcome,” one of the other Venusians had said after he broke my ring finger beneath his blue-veined heel. “To the city of Kish.”
4.
COMMANDER JAMES GOT HIS CHANCE TO TALK TO THE RIGHT Venusian after a long, backbreaking week of labor. Before the sun faded away, the Venusians would let us relax in the purple grasses inside the walls.
I had settled near a reflecting pool, dipping my aching feet in it, when a retinue of colorfully dressed Venusians swept through the courtyard. In the center was the lord of the house, who we had come to learn from overhead chatter was a customs official for the city of Kish.
Heston threw himself into the Venusian’s path. “My lord of the estate!” he shouted as Venusians turned in shock and horror. One of the overseers loitering around the edge of the courtyard raised a rifle, but the lord raised his hand to stop the killing shot.
I realized that Heston had faltered, as he didn’t know the lord’s name. He was only referred to as “the lord.” A pronoun, the pronoun. The only one that mattered within these walls.
Heston stumbled forward. “My lord, I am a rocket man from above the clouds …”
That was as far as he got. The lord shook his head impatiently and gestured, and Commander James was hauled away. He might have been stronger than the slender Venusians, but there were more of them.
“Was he one of the new exotics?” the lord asked, and looked over at where I still sat.
“Yes, my lord,” one of the overseers said, rushing to bow. “They work hard.”
“Good. Worth the metal price. But do cut off their tongues if they ever dare babble at me again.”
And in a flourish of silks and nutmeglike perfume, the retinue left for the sound of music and laughter somewhere deep in Kish.
“He is lucky they didn’t take his tongue out as a first punishment,” said a Venusian nearby. She sported knife scars up and down her arms, and I could tell she came from the northern hills by her cadence and the punctures in the webs of her hands, where she’d once worn gold rings.
“He’s stubborn,” I told her. “I bet he will lose it before we are done here.”
I tended to a dazed Heston after his beating, trying to get him to drink water. I was trying to get him oriented because he was floundering. “You know free economies are rare, Commander. Even on Earth. It’s not surprising, really. If aliens were to land on Earth and look vaguely like us, it might not have been good for them either, being different. Imagine if aliens had landed in the South, before the Civil War that we had to fight so bloodily to get rid of this stain …”
Through bruised lips and swollen eyes, Commander James said, firmly, “The War of Northern Aggression was fought over states’ rights.”
And with a grunt of pain, he picked up his blanket, his dog tags that he’d been allowed to keep, and dragged himself over to the other side of the common house.
—–—
I became an alien on another world, with the only other person I knew refusing to speak to me. I was annoyed at first, working out arguments in my head that I would have with the commander when we next spoke. But the work ate into me.
The moment the sun leaked through the clouds, Venusians beat us awake to head out to the fields where the large, silvered airships came to rest. And all day long we’d unload what the city of Kish needed to consume, and a lot of what its lords desired to spend their vast wealth on.
“Where do these goods come from?” I asked the Venusian with the scarred arms.
The first time I asked, she ignored me. But as we stood and waited for another airship to arrive and drank from waterskins, she spoke to me.
“Other cities, larger cities,” she said, pointing off toward the ocean. “The lords of Kish cannot do without the spices and foods from their mother cities. And Kish is not big enough to grow its own.”
“And Kish trades rifles and machines for minerals, ores, and work,” I said.
“Yes.”
The next airship we loaded with scared Venusian hill-tribe folk, possibly even some of the same ones who’d first captured us, now captured by some other group with laser rifles. We shoved and beat them aboard and tried not to meet their pleading eyes.
One late night, she came to my blanket.
“My name is Maet of Tannish,” she told me.
“I’m Charles Stewart,” I said.
“Where is Stewart?” she asked.
“Nowhere. It doesn’t matter. I’m Charles of Earth. And Earth is beyond the clouds.”
“There is nothing but void beyond the clouds,” Maet told me with a pitying chuckle. “All that is important lies beneath the veil. There must be a reason we can’t see beyond it, and that is most likely because there is nothing worth seeing.”
I opened my mouth to argue with this, then realized that Maet was my only companion, and I was too tired to argue. I’d thought the weeks of training to be a spaceman intense.
I had no idea.
I’d had energy and verve my first few days. But as weeks became months, my back felt like it’d been set on fire by the constant bending. My fire to understand and study the world around me dampened every day. There were no weekends. No labor laws to limit being rushed out in the middle of the night to grab the ropes of an incoming airship, then unload it once it was tethered. No time to recoup. Just a slow, steady erosion.
Maet just lay next to me, and that was enough that first night, to feel someone breathing next to me.
I struggled to glean information about where Kish lay from her and what was out beyond its borders. The free lands of wild peoples. Hill tribes. What trails led where? I wanted to make a map of the world in my head before I made any decisions. I needed to find out how best to make my way in this world, and to understand its rules, no matter how horrific.
And I’d always had to play the game of their rules and my hidden face. I remembered my grandfather telling me once, “Never show anyone what you’re really thinking, because then they might know what you’re going to do.” Even Maet, as we continued to huddle in our corner of the common house, didn’t know what I thought about.
As Maet and I grew together, I saw Heston had started to talk to other Venusians. In the courtyard behind a tree. Near the corner of the common house.
I wasn’t surprised when he crawled over to my blanket as I lay sweating in the tropical heat and humidity while Maet was off talking to someone else.
“Soldier, we may have our differences,” he hissed to me, “but now it’s going to be time to fight together.”
“You’re planning a revolt,” I said, looking over at his crouched form. It was a shadow against a shadow in the city light that came in through the barred windows at the top of the walls.
I couldn’t see surprise on his silhouetted face, but I could hear it in his voice. “Yes. There are others who want their freedom. I’ve been talking to them. Will you join us?”
Ever since I saw him whispering to others, I’d thought about it. And about what I would say. “You ever read much about slave history?” I asked. “Probably not, it’s not a field many people study. But let me tell you something: all of the slave revolts except the one on Haiti were put down. And we’re not on an island that we could defend. Even in South America, where they had great numbers, they still remained under colonial rule for many long ages.”
“None of them had a US Marine in charge,” Heston hissed.
“You think none of them had any war experience?” I asked calmly. He didn’t know their names, or positions, because they’d been wiped out. But many early slaves had been captured in war. My own family held at least two tribal leaders, according to legend. One of them had committed suicide after three years of being forced to work a sugar plantation.