Far Side Two
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 14
I
Max Wellington had his feet up on a footlocker, drinking a cold beer, when Andie Schultz pushed aside the flap of his tent and entered. “I’m sorry for my intrusion, Colonel,” she said before he could speak.
“Not a problem, Director. We’ve had a minor reorganization, but we have successfully integrated the air assets Uncle Jon provided. We had to turn volunteers down, boss.”
“I understand the problem of transiting the Far Side doors was solved.”
The colonel laughed. “Assistant Director Walsh took one look and solved what we thought might have been a deal breaker in about two seconds. We use tractors to tow them through. Those tractor jocks are simply amazing. One showed that he could do it driving backwards. Assistant Director Walsh handles opening the doors.”
“I’m teaching several others how to focus well enough to do it. It turns out that telepathy is a sovereign remedy for quickly learning the skill. I think we should wait until local daylight before we put things in high gear.”
“I talked to Charles Evans and Chaba, the former slave. They both tell me that the Tengri aren’t to be trusted and that slaves would be more than willing to lose a little sleep in exchange for their freedom.”
“So far they are behaving,” Colonel Wellington said.
Andie Schultz laughed nastily. “I have really good control of where doors form now. I opened one in his bedroom, handed him a pair of hand grenades and told him he needs to be very sure his will will be obeyed. He certainly seemed willing enough, given the circumstances. I popped into a dralha rookery and brought out the slave girl who was the key for Mirableu’s learning about the dralha. A race who have had less than two hundred years of progress behind them ... and 80 million years of cultural senescence. It’s hard to overthrow the weight of millions of years of unchanging history.”
Colonel Wellington nodded. “I can’t imagine that long in stasis.”
“The Tulia scared the pee out of them. Fire is the subject of their worst nightmares. Do you know how hard it is to fight a fire without hands? Without being able to lift much in their talons? I asked and learned that the Builder survivors were enthralled when a dralha ‘mother’ saw them carrying buckets of water. The clincher was seeing someone pour a bucket of water on a fire. A casual thing you or I might do; but it was like a bolt of lightning hit her. Made her forget the reason why they didn’t take slaves anymore. The problem about going that long without a reminder of the downsides of misbehavior is even the most intelligent forget themselves after so long.
“Bad mistake.”
Andie waved at the colonel. “Get off your ass and break some chains! Now!”
II
Andie Schultz hopped out of the Uber that had delivered her on the last leg of her trip to Norwich. General Briggs and Kris were there to greet her. She politely shook hands with them, then followed them to the main conference room on the top floor of Norwich’s offices.
She smiled at General Briggs. “I told you I would brief you more fully about events on Arvala. General, I’m going to do that, then beg your indulgence when I talk privately to Kris.”
“No problem, Director Schultz,” the general said.
Andie smiled inwardly and filled him in on the events since Erica Mirableu had been injured, with no mention of telepathy.
Andie summed it up speaking very firmly. “Cadet Mirableu has been an invaluable resource, as I told you earlier. She ably assisted with the negotiations with the many, and dare I understate it, the highly varied sapient species on a planet that is more than twice as old as Earth.
“I’ve been talking to the President and Jon Bullman about what we can do for individuals who have demonstrated unusual abilities in dealing with extra-solar intelligences. The president is going to allow me to grant doctorates in “Extra-Solar Diplomacy” and I’ve named Erica one of the recipients. And Charles Evans as well.” Andie smiled benignly at General Briggs.
“It comes as no surprise that pirates are pikers at kidnapping your students. They kidnapped one of your students and put him into servitude; I’ve kidnapped two and made them rather rich. A ton of gold each as a signing bonus.”
The general laughed. “I assume my part of the briefing is over, and I should get my ass out of my chair.”
“Sir, Kris is a lady and has taught me how to be more like her. I’m afraid that it is probably a hopeless task in the long run, but please don’t let the door hit you on the bottom as you leave.”
The general stood and gave Kris a rather informal salute. He braced and saluted Andie very formally.
Kris watched him go before turning to Andie. “I thought you and Linda were Siamese twins these days.”
“Linda has a visit to the Sunland IVF clinic at 1 p.m. LA time scheduled. We’re going to be parents as soon as the egg catches.”
“And the father?” Kris asked.
“Well, Linda has access to people’s deepest, darkest secrets. Ezra. He is only responsible for a microgram of genetic material; trust me, I will always provide for Linda.
“Which brings me to why I’m here.”
Kris smiled. “And what brings you here?”
“I filed a report about Lucian, the eldest of the elder races on Arvala. Did you read it?”
“Andie, I devoured it. I wish I’d been there.”
“Lord, you have no idea how much I wished you could have been there! There were some things left out of the report, President’s Eyes Only. Now, I’m briefing you.”
“Andie, I’ve never wanted to rise above my place.”
“You rose above it when you shot Harta Nomer dead. At the fight on the formerly nameless hill where we beat back the Tengri. When you killed a general in front of his king and the king’s army.”
Andie steepled her fingers and looked at them without talking for several seconds. “Lucian told me that humanity was a rare race where some of its members understood right from wrong ... without being telepaths.”
“Telepaths? I remember that was one of the banned subjects from the Sedgewyck Conference. You said Erica was telepathic as well.”
“She is,” Andie agreed. “So is one of the German submariners. Lucian said that it is very rare for someone to be appointed a planetary guardian who wasn’t a telepath. It’s happened before and turned out well. Don’t mess it up for those who come after.”
“You’re going to do fine, Andie. No one better to standin loco parentis.”
“Lucian said that Dale was wrong; telepaths were always possible for us, and in fact, he made Linda and me telepaths. Like Erica and Gregor already were. He showed me how to flip the genetic switch to ‘on’ for any human. Kris, I flipped your Bic.”
Kris turned pale after a moment and stared at Andie. “I looked, and yes indeed, you’ve done that.”
“Lucian says the largest downside to being a telepath in a race without a heritage of telepathy is just how many of our fellows lie and lie and lie.”
Kris laughed harshly. “And you think when I was suffering from horrible PMS that I told you how I felt? PMS is bad enough; it’s not right to inflict the merest shadow on those around you.”
Andie shrugged. “And you think I didn’t know anyway? That I was terrified that you would realize I’ve never had a period? Linda figured it out before Kit fucked us all.”
“Lucian told me ‘To forgive is divine.’ I doubt if he’s part of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
“The only way telepathy works is if you have the ability to forgive. Because some of the people around us are more in need of it than others. Then there are those who should never be forgiven.”
“Kris, I ordered Colonel Wellington into action against the Tengri even before I met Lucian. A short while ago, I told him to get his ass in gear. The Tengri emperor has surrendered and emancipated all of the Tengri slaves; we need to get as many of them out as we can. I’m not entirely certain that even the exalted Tengri Emperor can overthrow nearly two thousand years of slave holding in the blink of an eye. I don’t want to kill Tengri, but I want to free slaves a couple hundred times more.”
“Can I help?” Kris asked.
“Funny that you should ask...”
III
Selma was curled up in a tight ball, off to one corner of the unmarried female slave quarters. The only advantage to the location was that no one stumbled over her on the way to the jakes. It had been a long day, and even kitchen slaves worked very hard. Finally, her body relaxed into sleep, perpetually alert for an overseer; most of whom were very notional. They were Tengri, and Tengri were not permitted to father children on slaves. Of course, they could take you anyway, and the baby was the one who paid for their indiscretion.
As usual, her sleep was without any dreams; she thought she dreamed anyway, but waking wiped them from her brain. Tonight it was not to be, though. Sometime while the sun was still resting, there were a half dozen overseers waking them. Surprisingly, there were no blows but shrill screams demanding obedience.
Outside, they were mustered; all of the estate’s slaves, and the head overseer did the headcount twice. Usually, this meant that someone had run, but it hadn’t happened for a long time because the punishment was terrible beyond words. Finally, the head overseer spoke to all of them. “The Emperor, in his wisdom and compassion, has freed you. You will be escorted a few miles, where you will be turned over to the representatives of the Starmen, soldiers of their Starmen’s War Leader.
“This is not a trick. It is not that far, less than two miles. You will stay together; none of you will stray. Face to the left and start moving.”
No one was stupid enough to ask questions; curious slaves had short life spans. You kept your head down, your mouth closed, and did whatever you were told to do. Still, Selma had learned as a toddler to march in line, looking down, and never, ever, looking around.
Selma was aware she was living on borrowed time. She was a half-inch shorter than the tallest the Tengri permitted a slave to grow. If she grew much more, she’d be knocked on the head and dumped in a ditch. Slaves were all smaller than the shortest adult Tengri. It gave her no consolation that short Tengri were killed as well; that was just the way of things, and the way a slave survived was not to question anything. Things were the way they were, and that was the way they were. If you forgot and asked for a reason for a command, you died. The sun rose in the east, the Big Moon rose in the west; it was the way of things. The sun rose every day, the Big Moon every eleven days.
It wasn’t before they’d walked a fair distance when she realized there was no coffle, the harness that they usually wore when they moved very far. She ran the words of the overseer through her head and realized that she had made a mistake in not thinking about what he’d said. Starmen? Who were they? They had a War Leader who had made demands of the Emperor? And the Emperor hadn’t killed this War Leader?
Selma was fourteen summers, thirteen winters. She was still growing, and one day she was undoubtedly going to be too tall. She’d shed tears when she realized her fate, but then the dour acceptance of a slave had taken over, and she’d not done anything about it. Not that there was anything a slave like Selma could do. One of the older women, maybe thirty summers, had whispered to her that she could delay the onset of her bleeding by staying skinny. If you bled, you were mated to someone. The old woman had told her to skip baths, and her job in the kitchen exposed Selma to a lot of wood ash, and if she didn’t wash, she would be unappetizing to a Tengri.
It had worked so far, anyway. She hadn’t bled, and some of the Tengri masters would take any comely slave if they appealed to them, no matter their age. Pity about the babes born to unmated women.