The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

So I am here forever. “So what else is there? What do ex-cons do here?”

Tappinger shrugged. “Sign up as laborers. Start their own plantations. Go into government service. Start a small business. You see Tanith as a slave world, which it is, but it will not always be that. Some of you, people like you, will build it into something else, something better or worse, but certainly different.”

“Yeah. Sure. The Junior Pioneers have arrived.”

“What do you think happens to involuntary colonists?” Tappinger asked. “Or did you never think of them? Most people on Earth don’t look very hard at the price of keeping their wealth and their clean air and clean oceans. But the only difference between you and someone shipped by BuRelock is that you came in a slightly more comfortable ship, and you will put in three years here before they turn you out to fend for yourself. Yes, I definitely suggest the government services for you. You could rise quite high.”

“Work for those slaving bastards? I’d rather starve!”

“No, you wouldn’t. Nor would many others. It is easier to say that than to do it.”

Mark stared into the darkness.

“Why so grim? There are opportunities here. The new governor is trying to reform some of the abuses. Of course he is caught in the system just as we are. He must export his quota of borloi and miracle drugs, and pay the taxes demanded of him. He must keep up production. The Navy demands it.”

“The Navy?”

Tappinger smiled in the dark. “You would be surprised at just how much of the CD Navy’s operations are paid for by the profits from the Tanith drug trade.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all. Thieves. Bastards. But it’s stupid. A treadmill, with prisons to pay for themselves and the damned fleet—”

“Neither stupid nor new. The Soviets have done it for nearly two hundred years, with the proceeds of labor camps paying for the secret police. And our tax farming scheme is even older. It dates back to old Rome. Profits from other planets support BuRelock. Tanith supports the Navy.”

“Damn the Navy.”

“Ah, no, don’t do that. Bless it instead. Without the CD Fleet, the Earth governments would be at each other’s throats in a moment. They very nearly are now. And since they won’t pay for the Navy, and the Navy is very much needed to keep peace on Earth, why, we must continue to work. See what a noble task we perform as we weed the borloi fields?”

* * *

Unbearably hot spring became intolerably hot summer, and the work decreased steadily. The borshite plants were nearly as high as a man’s waist and were able to defend themselves against most weeds and predators. The fields needed watching but little else.

To compensate for the easier work, the weather was sticky hot, with warm fog rolling in from the coast. The skies turned from orange to dull gray. Twice the plantations and fields were lashed by hurricanes. The borshite plants lay flattened, but soon recovered; and after each hurricane came a few brief hours of clear skies when Mark could see the stars.

With summer came easy sex. Men and women could visit in the evenings, and with suitable financial arrangements with bunkie leaders, all night. The pressures of the barracks eased. Mark found the easier work more attractive than the women. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he’d pay for a few minutes of frantic relief, then try not to think about sex for as long as he could.

His duties were simple. Crownears, muskrat-sized animals that resembled large shrews, would eat unprotected borshite plants. They had to be driven away. They were stupid animals, and ravenous, but not very dangerous unless a swarm of them could catch a man mired down in the mud. A man with a spear could keep them out of the crops.

There were other animals to watch for. Weem’s Beast, named for the first man to survive a meeting with one, was the worst. The crownears were its natural prey, but it would attack almost anything that moved. Weem’s Beast looked like a mole but was over a meter long. Instead of a prehensile snout, it had a fully articulated grasping member with talons and pseudo-eyes. Man approached holes very carefully on Tanith; the Beast was fond of lying just below the surface and came out with astonishing speed.

It wouldn’t usually leave the jungle to attack a man on high ground.

Mark patrolled the fields, and Curt Morgan made rounds on horseback. In the afternoons Morgan would sit with Mark and share his beer ration, and the cold beer and lack of work was almost enough to make life worth living again.

Sometimes there was a break in the weather, and a cooler breeze would blow across the fields. Mark sat with his back to a tree, enjoying the comparatively cool day, drinking his beer ration. Morgan sat next to him.

“Curt, what will you do when you finish your sentence?” Mark asked.

“Finished two years ago. Two Tanith, three Earth.”

“Then why are you still here?”

Morgan shrugged. “What else do I know how to do? I’m saving some money; one day I’ll have a place of my own.” He shifted his position and fired his carbine toward the jungle. “I swear them things get more nerve every summer. This is all I know. I can’t save enough to buy into the tax farm syndicate.”

“Could you squeeze people that way?”

“If I had to. Them or me. Tax collectors get rich.”

“Sure. Jesus, there’s no goddamn hope for anything, is there? The whole deck’s stacked.” Mark finished his beer.

“Where isn’t it?” Morgan demanded. “You think it’s tough now, you ought to have been here before the new governor came. Place they stuck me—my sweet lord, they worked us! Charged for everything we ate or wore, and you open your mouth, it’s another month on your sentence. Enough to drive a man into the green.”

“Uh—Curt—are there—”

“Don’t get ideas. I’d hate to take the dogs and come find you. Find your corpse, more likely. Yeah, there’s men out in the green. Live like rats. I’d rather be under sentence again than live like the Free Staters.”

The thought excited Mark. A Free State! It would have to be like the places Shirley and her friends had talked about, with equality, and there’d be no tax farmers in a free society. He thought of the needs of free men. They would live hard and be poor because they were fugitives, but they would be free! He built the Free State in his imagination until it was more real than Ewigfeuer’s plantation.

The next day the crownears were very active, and Curt Morgan brought another worker to Mark’s field. They rode up together on the big Percheron horses brought as frozen embryos from Earth and repeatedly bred for even wider feet to keep them above the eternal mud. The newcomer was a girl. Mark had seen her before, but never met her.

“Brought you a treat,” Curt said. “This is Juanita. Juanny, if this clown gives you trouble, I’ll break him in half. Be back in an hour. Got your trumpet?”

Mark indicated the instrument.

“Keep it handy. Them things are restless out there. I think there’s a croc around. And porkers. Keep your eyes open.” Curt rode off toward the next field.

Mark stood in embarrassed silence. The girl was younger than Mark, and sweaty. Her hair hung down in loose blonde strings. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and her face was dirty. She was built more like a wiry boy than a girl. She was also the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

“Hi,” Mark said. He cursed himself. Shyness went with civilization, not a prison!

“Hi yourself. You’re in Lewis’s bunkie.”

“Yes. I haven’t seen you before. Except at Mass.” Each month a priest of the Ecumenical Church came to the plantation. Mark had never attended services, but he’d watched idly from a distance.

“Usually work in the big house. Sure hot, isn’t it?”

He agreed it was hot and was lost again. What should I say? “You’re lovely” is obvious, even if I do think it’s true. “Let’s go talk to your bunkie leader” isn’t too good an idea even if it’s what I want to say. Besides, if she lives in the big house, she won’t have one. “How long do you have?”

“Another two. Until I’m nineteen. They still run sentences on Earth time. I’m eleven, really.” There was more silence. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay. Most of the men jabber away like porshons. Trying to talk me into something, you know?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. But I never have. I’m a member of the Church. Confirmed and everything.” She looked at him and grinned impishly. “So that makes me a dumb hymn singer, and what’s left to talk about?”