The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“I remember wishing I was you,” Mark said. He laughed. “Not quite what I meant to say. I mean, I watched you at Masses. You looked happy. Like you had something to live for.”

“Well, of course. We all have something to live for. Must have, people sure try hard to stay alive. When I get out of here, I’m going to ask the padre to let me help him. Be a nun, maybe.”

“Don’t you want to marry?”

“Who? A Con? That’s what my mother did, and look. I got ‘apprenticed’ until I was nineteen Earth years old because I was born to convicts. No kids of mine’ll have that happen to ’em!”

“You could marry a free man.”

“They’re all pretty old by the time they finish. And not worth much. To themselves or anybody else. You proposin’ to me?”

He laughed and she laughed with him, and the afternoon was more pleasant than any he could remember since leaving Earth.

“I was lucky,” she told him. “Old man Ewigfeuer traded for me. Place I was born on, the planter’d be selling tickets for me now.” She stared at the dirt. “I’ve seen girls they did that with. They don’t like themselves much after a while.”

They heard the shrill trumpets in other fields. Mark scanned the jungle in front of him. Nothing moved. Juanita continued to talk. She asked him about Earth. “It’s hard to think about that place,” she said. “I hear people live all bunched up.”

He told her about cities. “There are twenty million people in the city I come from.” He told her of the concrete Welfare Islands at the edges of the cities.

She shuddered. “I’d rather live on Tanith than like that. It’s a wonder all the people on Earth don’t burn it down and live in the swamps.”

Evening came sooner than he expected. After supper he fell into an introspective mood. He hadn’t wanted a day to last for a long time. It’s silly to think this way, he told himself.

But he was twenty years old, she was nearly seventeen, and there wasn’t anyone else to think about. That night he dreamed about her.

* * *

He saw her often as the summer wore on. She had no education, and Mark began teaching her to read. He scratched letters in the ground and used some of his money to buy lurid adventure stories. He had no access to veedisk screens, and the only printed works available in the barracks were sex magazines and adventure novels printed on paper so cheap that it soon went limp in the damp Tanith heat.

Juanita learned quickly. She seemed to enjoy Mark’s company and often arranged to be assigned to the same field that he was. They talked about everything: Earth, and how it wasn’t covered with swamps. He told her of personal fliers in blue skies, and sailing on the Pacific, and the island coves he’d explored. She thought he was making most of it up.

Their only quarrels came when he complained of how unfair life was. She laughed at him. “I was born with a sentence,” she told him. “You lived in a fine house and had your own ‘copter and a boat, and you went to school. If I’m not whining, why should you, Mr. Taxpayer?”

He wanted to tell her she was unfair too, but stopped himself. Instead he told her of smog and polluted waters, and sprawling cities. “They’ve got the pollution licked, though,” he said. “And the population’s going down. What with the licensing, and BuRelock—”

She said nothing, and Mark couldn’t finish the sentence. Juanita stared at the empty jungles. “Wish I could see a blue sky some day. I can’t even imagine that, so you must be tellin’ the truth.”

He did not often see her in the evenings. She kept to herself or worked in the big house. Sometimes, though, she would walk with Curt Morgan or sit with him on the porch of the big house, and when she did, Mark would buy a bottle of gin and find Tappinger. It was no good being alone then.

The old man would deliver long lectures in a dry monotone that nearly put Mark to sleep, but then he’d ask questions that upset any view of the universe that Mark had ever had.

“You might make a passable sociologist some day,” Tappinger said. “Ah, well, they say the best university is a log with a student at one end and a professor at the other. I doubt they had me in mind, but we have that, anyway.”

“All I seem to learn is that things are rotten. Everything’s set up wrong,” Mark said.

Tappinger shook his head. “There has never been a society in which someone did not think there had to be a better deal—for himself. The trick is to see that those who want a better way enough to do something about it can either rise within the system or are rendered harmless by it. Which, of course, Earth does—warriors join the Navy. Malcontents are shipped to the colonies. The cycle is closed. Drugs for the Citizens, privileges for the taxpayers, peace for all thanks to the Fleet—and slavery for malcontents. Or death. The colonies use up people.”

“I guess it’s stable, then.”

“Hardly. If Earth does not destroy herself—and from the rumors I hear, the nations are at each other’s throats despite all the Navy can do—why, they have built a pressure cooker out here that will one day destroy the old home world. Look at what we have. Fortune hunters, adventurers, criminals, rebels—and all selected for survival abilities. The lid cannot stay on.”

They saw Juanita and Curt Morgan walking around the big house, and Mark winced. Juanita had grown during the summer. Now, with her hair combed and in clean clothes, she was so lovely that it hurt to look at her. Taps smiled. “I see my star pupil has found another interest. Cheer up, lad, when you finish here, you will find employment. You can have your pick of convict girls. Rent them, or buy one outright.”

“I hate slavery!”

Taps shrugged. “As you should. Although you might be surprised what men who say that will do when given the chance. But calm yourself, I meant buy a wife, not a whore.”

“But damn it, you don’t buy wives! Women aren’t things!”

Tappinger smiled softly. “I tend to forget just what a blow it is to you young people. You expect everything to be as it was on Earth. Yet you are here because you were not satisfied with your world.”

“It was rotten.”

“Possibly. But you had to search for the rot. Here you cannot avoid it.”

On such nights it took Mark a long time to get to sleep.

VII

The harvest season was approaching. The borshite plants stood in full flower, dull-red splashes against brown hills and green jungles, and the field buzzed with insects. Nature had solved the problem of propagation without inbreeding on Tanith and fifty other worlds in the same way as on Earth.

The buzzing insects attracted insectivores, and predators chased those; close to harvest time there was little work, but the fields had to be watched constantly. Once again house and processing-shed workers joined the field hands, and Mark had many days with Juanita.

She was slowly driving him insane. He knew she couldn’t be as naive as she pretended to be. She had to know how he felt and what he wanted to do, but she gave him no opportunities.

Sometimes he was sure she was teasing him. “Why don’t you ever come to see me in the evenings?” she asked one day.

“You know why. Curt is always there.”

“Well, sure, but he don’t—doesn’t own my contract. ‘Course, if you’re scared of him—”

“You’re bloody right I’m scared of him. He could fold me up for glue. Not to mention what happens when the foreman’s mad at a con. Besides, I thought you liked him.”

“Sure. So what?”

“He told me he was going to marry you one day.”

“He tells everybody that. He never told me, though.”

Mark noted glumly that she’d stopped talking about becoming a nun.

“Of course, Curt’s the only man who even says he’s going to—Mark, look out!”

Mark saw a blur at the edge of his vision and whirled with his spear. Something was charging toward him. “Get behind me and run!” he shouted. “Keep me in line with it and get out of here.”

She moved behind him and he heard her trumpet blare, but she wasn’t running. Mark had no more time to think about her. The animal was nearly a meter and a half long, built square on thick legs and splayed feet. The snout resembled an earth wart-hog’s, with four upthrusting tusks, and it had a thin tail that lashed as it ran.

“Porker,” Juanita said softly. She was just behind him. “Sometimes they’ll charge a man. Like this. Don’t get it excited, maybe it’ll go away.”