him to the ground, where he lay moaning in pain.
Even as he fell, however, Vonnie was tackled from behind by Voorhes’s last remaining
accomplice. The impact of his body against hers knocked her down into the snow. He
landed on top of her, jarring her slightly-but coming as she did from a three-gee world,
the fall seemed both slow and trivial. She had time to twist around slightly and get into a
better position for landing-and a better position to defend herself.
Finding himself momentarily in a superior position, the man raised his knife to bring it
stabbing down at the woman’s throat. Vonnie quickly reached up and blocked the motion
with her forearm, simultaneously squirming to roll over and try to get on top. With a
sudden convulsion she arched her body upward, catching her assailant by surprise and
tossing him off. Yvonne rolled on top of him and, with one quick stroke, brought her knife
down hard at the base of his throat, just above the collar bone. The man made a soft
gurgling sound as his body jerked spasmodically for a few seconds, then lay still. Yvonne
had not a trace of sympathy for him. He would gladly have done the same to her-and he
was already a convicted traitor, anyway. She merely supplied the death sentence.
Even before the dead man’s body had stopped moving, she had rolled off it again and
was getting to her feet to deal with Voorhes himself. But the leader of the pack was not
waiting around to be beaten or killed. Having seen Yvonne dispose of his five comrades,
and having himself been the victim of her abilities once before, the cowardly traitor
decided that discretion, at this point, would be the better part of his valor. Turning tail, he
ran off down the street, totally abandoning both his friends and the girl who had been the
original object of his attentions.
Vonnie got to her feet and started after him, but one boot hit a patch of icy snow and she
slipped to her knees. By the time she stood up again, Voorhes had better than a
twenty-five meter lead. With her superior speed she could probably have caught him had
she really tried, but she could see no point in it now. The village was small enough that
she would certainly run into Voorhes again sometime, and any unfinished business could
be dealt with then. In the meantime, she turned back to look at the girl who’d been the
cause of the fracas.
The girl lay in the snowbank where she’d fallen after Voorhes slapped her, cowering
away from Yvonne and whimpering with pain and fear. Yvonne tossed her knife aside
and approached the girl slowly with open hands. “Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “I won’t
hurt you. I only want to help.”
The fugitive’s face was unfamiliar, and as Vonnie studied it more closely she realized with
a start that the girl was no more than thirteen years old-far too young to have been sent
to Gastonia as a traitor. She started to wonder how the girl had gotten here, and then
realized how simple the answer must be. The girl would have gotten here the same way
almost any thirteen-year-old got anywhere-by being born there.
Gastonia had first been settled by exiles a hundred and fifty years ago. Many of the
people sent here were still comparatively young and of child-bearing age. It was only
natural, once she thought about it, that the exiles would begin building up a “native
population” of their own, children born here who had never lived anywhere else. If she
and Jules had indeed been doomed to spend the rest of their lives on this planet, they
would undoubtedly have had a number of children here. The idea only seemed strange
because the rest of the Empire thought of Gastonia purely as a prison, not as a
colonized world in its own right.
Vonnie realized, too, that she had not seen any children in the village since her arrival.
Where are they? she wondered. After a century and a half, there must be
great-great-grandchildren of the original exiles living somewhere on this enormous
snowball. But they’re certainly not in the village; I’d stake my life that all the people here
are traitors sent to this prison. Where do the natives live?
She put her questions aside for a moment to examine the girl more closely. The fugitive’s
face was covered with welts and bruises, and she held her left arm cradled delicately in
her right. Vonnie reached inside the girl’s furs to probe with her delicate fingers, and
confirmed her suspicions that the girl had suffered a shoulder separation. That, plus the
bruises, meant the girl would need medical attention.
“How are you feeling?” Vonnie asked. “Would you be able to walk for a while?”
“My shoulder hurts,” the girl said in a pitiful little voice. She tried to stand, but was too
dazed. She’d been able to flee from her captors because adrenaline was being pumped
through her body, pushing away the shock of the pain. Now that the crisis was over, she
was far too stunned to be much help to herself.
“Don’t worry,” Vonnie said as the girl continued her struggle to get up. “I can carry you.
You don’t look all that heavy.” Bending down, she picked up the girl and cradled her in
her arms. The girl only weighed forty kilos, so the two of them together on Gastonia
weighed only half of what Vonnie alone weighed on DesPlaines. The SOTE agent had
little trouble carrying her timid passenger.
There were no doctors in the village itself. Vonnie had learned that the little bit of medical
services provided were dispensed from a special gate back at the walled garrison. It
would he a walk of about five kilometers; Jules and Yvonne had been unwilling to risk it
when they first arrived. being unaccustomed to the harsh climate, but now she thought
nothing of such a jaunt, even carrying the wounded girl: Walking would be preferable to
hiring that old pirate Zolotin’s carriage mind, as Vonnie remembered its speed, probably
faster, too.
“What’s your name?” she asked the girl as she started carrying her along the road out of
the village to the hills where the garrison was located.
“Katanya.” The girl’s voice was faint, and sounded very far away.
“You’re not from the village, are you?”
The girl’s eyes widened like a frightened fawn. She twisted in Vonnie’s arms, trying
suddenly to escape, but the DesPlainian held her firmly. “Relax, I’m just taking you to a
doctor to help you get better. I’m your friend-or at least, I’d like to be if you’ll let me. My
name is Florence Brecht.”
Slowly, over the course of the long walk, Vonnie dragged the girl out of herself,
prompted her to explain the true situation on Gastonia. It was a portrait that was not only
fascinating, but also a little frightening in its implications. and gave the SOTE woman a
great deal to think about.
Gastonian society was divided into two cultures that had very little to do with one
another. There were the people in the village, the criminal element, the exiles who came
to Gastonia from all over the Galaxy. As hardened and tough as they were, they were
still too soft to face life on their own in the Gastonian wilderness, so they banded
together among their own kind not far from the outpost that kept watch over them. The
garrison gave them medical attention and a modicum of supplies-at least enough to keep
them going. These were people used to the comforts of civilization, and under these
harsh conditions they feared to wander too far away.
The first native Gastonians had been born over a century ago. They’d never known ease,
or warmth, or a life based on mechanized labor. For them, the bleak and barren forests
and plains, covered with snow the year around, ravaged by bitter storms and chilled by
freezing winds-for them, all these things were the norm. They could not understand their
parents’ complaints about the life they had lost, and they frankly disbelieved some of the
stories of the marvels on other worlds. Gastonia was the only world they knew, and they
adjusted to it readily.
Between parents and children, exiles and natives, there grew a gap that could never be
bridged. Even though they knew they were here for the rest of their lives, the exiles from
the Empire could not forget their past. In their own small ways they clung to the pattern
of Imperial civilization, borrowing-and sometimes perverting-the social institutions that
existed on the other worlds. The children could not understand the need for
anachronisms that flew in the very face of survival on this forbidding world. To them,
there were simpler ways of existing without these elaborate and pointless rituals. There
were constant disputes between the generations over how things should be done.