Tanith was hot, steaming jungle under a perpetual orange and gray cloud cover. The gravity was too high and the humidity was almost unbearable. Mark had no chance to see the planet. The ship landed at night, and the convicts were marched between tall fences into a concrete building with no outside windows. It was sparsely furnished and clearly intended only for short-term occupancy.
The exercise yard was a square in the center of the massive building. It was a relief to have space to move around in after the crowded ship, but shortly after they were allowed in the yard a violent rainstorm drove them inside the prison building. Even with the storm the place was sweltering. Tanith's gravity seemed ready to crush him.
The next day he was herded through medical processing, immunization, identification, a meaningless classification interview, and both psychological and aptitude tests. They ran from one task to the next, then stood in long lines or simply waited around. On the fourth day he was taken from the detention pen to an empty adobe-walled room with rough wooden furniture. The guards left him there. The sensation of being alone was exhilarating.
He looked up warily when the door opened. "Biff!"
"Hi, kid. Got something for you." Dugan was dressed in the blue dungarees of the CD Navy. He glanced around guiltily. "You left this with me and I run it up a bit." He held out a fistful of CoDominium scrip. "Go on, take it, I can get more and you can't. Look we're pullin' out pretty soon, and . . ."
"It's all right," Mark said. But it wasn't all right. He hadn't known how much friendship meant to him until he'd been separated from Dugan; now, seeing him in the Navy uniform and knowing that Dugan was headed away from this horrible place, Mark hated his former friend. "I'll get along."
"Damned right you will! Stop sniffing about how unfair everything is and wait your chance. You'll get one. Look, you're a young kid and everything seems like it's forever, but—" Dugan fell silent and shook his head ruefully. "Not that you need fatherly advice from me. Or that it'd do any good. But things end, Mark. The day ends. So do weeks and months."
"Yeah. Sure." They said more meaningless things, and Dugan left. Now I'm completely alone, Mark thought. It was a crushing thought. Some of the speeches he'd heard in his few days in college kept rising up to haunt him. "Die Gedanken, Sie sind frei." Yeah. Sure. A man's thoughts were always free, and no one could enslave a free man, and the heaviest chains and darkest dungeons could never cage the spirit. Bullshit. I'm a slave. If I don't do what they tell me, they'll hurt me until I do. And I'm too damned scared of them. But something else he'd heard was more comforting. "Slaves have no rights, and thus have no obligations."
That, by God, fits. I don't owe anybody a thing. Nobody here, and none of those bastards on Earth. I do what I have to do and I look out for number-one and rape the rest of 'em.
There was no prison, or rather the entire planet was a prison. As he'd suspected, the main CD penal building was intended only for classification and assignment, a holding pen to keep prisoners until they were sold off to wealthy planters. There were a lot of rumors about the different places you might be sent to: big company farms run like factories, where it was said that few convicts ever lived to finish out their terms; industrial plants near cities, which was supposed to be soft duty because as soon as you got trusty status, you could get passes into town; town work, the best assignment of all; and the biggest category, lonely plantations out in the sticks where owners could do anything they wanted and generally did.
The pen began to empty as the men were shipped out. Then came Mark's turn. He was escorted into an interview room and given a seat. It was the second time in months that he'd been alone and he enjoyed the solitude. There were voices from the next room.
"Why do you not keep him, hein?"
"Immature. No reason to be loyal to the CD."
"Or to me."
"Or to you. And too smart to be a dumb cop. You might make a foreman out of him. The governor's interested in this one, Ludwig. He keeps track of all the high-IQ types. Look, you take this one, I owe you. I'll see you get good hands."
"Okay. Ja. Just remember that when you get in some with muscles and no brains, hein? Okay, we look at your genius."
Who the hell were they talking about? Mark wondered. Me? Compared to most of the others in the ship, I guess you could call me a genius, but—
The door opened. Mark stood quickly. The guards liked you to do that.
"Fuller," the captain said. "This is Herr Ewigfeuer. You'll work for him. His place is a country club."
The planter was heavy-set, with thick jowls. He needed a shave, and his shorts and khaki shirt were stained with sweat. "So you are the new convict I take to my nice farm." He eyed Mark coldly. "He will do, he will do. Okay, we go now, ja?"
"Now?" Mark said.
"Now, ja, you think all day I have? I can stay in Whiskeytown while my foreman lets the hands eat everything and lay around not working? Give me the papers, Captain."
The captain took a sheaf of papers from a folder. He scrawled across the bottom, then handed Mark a pen. "Sign here."
Mark started to read the documents. The captain laughed. "Sign it, goddamit. We don't have all day."
Mark shrugged and scribbled his name. The captain handed Ewigfeuer two copies and indicated a door. They went through the adobe corridors to a guardroom at the end. The planter handed the guards a copy of the document and the door was opened.
The heat outside struck Mark like a physical blow. It had been hot enough inside, but the thick earthen walls had protected him from the worst; now it was almost unbearable. There was no sun, but the clouds were bright enough to hurt his eyes. Ewigfeuer put on dark glasses. He led the way to a shop across from the prison and bought Mark a pair of dark glasses and a cap with a visor. "Put these on," he commanded. "You are no use if you are blind. Now come."
They walked through busy streets. The sky hung dull orange, an eternal sunset. Sweat sprang from Mark's brow and trickled down inside his coveralls. He wished he had shorts. Nearly everyone in town wore them.
They passed grimy shops and open stalls. There were sidewalk displays of goods for sale, nearly all crudely made or Navy surplus or black-marketed goods stolen from CD storerooms. Strange animals pulled carts through the streets and there were no automobiles at all.
A team of horses splashed mud on Ewigfeuer's legs. The fat planter shook his fist at the driver. The teamster ignored him.
"Have you owned horses?" Ewigfeuer demanded.
"No," Mark said. "I hadn't expected to see any here."
"Horses make more horses. Tractors do not," the planter said. "Also, with horses and jackasses you get mules. Better than tractors. Better than the damned stormand beasts. Stormands do not like men." He pointed to one of the unlikely animals. It looked like a cross between a mule and a moose, with wide, splayed feet and a sad look that turned vicious whenever anyone got near it. It was tied to a rail outside one of the shops.
There were more people than Mark had expected. They seemed to divide into three classes. There were those who tended the shops and stalls and who smiled unctuously when the planter passed. Most of those wore white canvass jackets. Then there were others, some with white canvass jackets and some without, who strode purposefully through the muddy streets and finally there were those who wandered aimlessly or sat on the street corners staring vacantly.
"What are they waiting for?" Mark said. He hadn't meant to say it aloud, but Ewigfeuer heard him.
"They wait to die," the planter said. "Ja, they think something else will come to save them. They will find something to steal, maybe, so they live another week, another month, a year even; but they are waiting to die. And they are white men!" This seemed their ultimate crime to Ewigfeuer.
"You might expect this of the blacks," the planter said. "But no, the blacks work, or they go to the bush and live there—not like civilized men, perhaps, but they live. Not these. They wait to die. It was a cruel day when their sentences ended."
"Yeah, sure," Mark said, but he made sure the planter didn't hear him. There was another group sitting on benches near a small open square. They looked as if they had not moved since morning, since the day before, or ever; that when the orange sky fell dark, they would be there yet. Mark mopped his brow with his sleeve. Heat lay across Whiskeytown so that it was an effort to move, but the planter hustled him along the street, his short legs moving rapidly through the mud patches.
"And what happens if I just run?" Mark asked.
Ewigfeuer laughed. "Go ahead. You think they will not catch you? Where will you go? You have no papers. Perhaps you buy some if you have money. Perhaps what you buy is not good enough. And when they catch you, it is not to my nice farm they send you. It will be to some awful place. Run, I will not chase you. I am too old and too fat."
Mark shrugged and walked along with Ewigfeuer. He noticed that for all his careless manner, the fat man did not let Mark get behind him.
They rounded a corner and came to a large empty space. A helicopter stood at the near edge. There were others in the lot. A white jacketed man with a rifle sat under an umbrella watching them. Ewigfeuer threw the man some money and climbed into the nearest chopper.
He strapped himself in and waited for Mark to do the same. Then he used the radio.
"Weather service, Ewigfeuer 351." Ewigfeuer listened, nodded in satisfaction, and gunned the engines. The helicopter lifted them high above the city.
Whiskeytown was an ugly sprawl across a plateau. The broad streets of Tanith's capital lay on another low hill beyond it. Both hills rose directly out of the jungle. When they were higher, Mark could see that the plateau was part of a ridge on a peninsula; the sea around it was green with yellow streaks. The buildings on the other hill looked cleaner and better made than those in Whiskeytown. In the distance was a large square surrounded by buildings taller than the others.
"Government House," Ewigfeuer shouted above the engine roar. "Where the governor dreams up new ways to make it impossible for honest planters to make a profit."
Beyond the town were brown hills rising above ugly green jungles. Hours later there was no change—jungle to the right and the green and yellow sea to the left. Mark had seen no roads and only a few houses; all of those were in clusters, low adobe buildings atop low brown hills. "Is the whole planet jungle?" he asked.
"Ja, jungles, marshes, bad stuff. People can live in the hills. Below is green hell. Weem's beast, killer things like tortoises, crocodiles so big you don't believe them and they run faster than you. Nobody runs far in that."
A perfect prison, Mark thought. He stared out at the sea. There were boats out there. Ewigfeuer followed his gaze and laughed.
"Some damn fools try to make a few credits fishing. Maybe smart at that, they get killed fast, they don't wait for tax farmers to take everything they make. You heard of Loch Ness monster? On Tanith we got something makes Earth nessies look like an earthworm."
They flew over another cluster of adobe buildings. Ewigfeuer used the radio to talk to the people below. They spoke a language Mark didn't know. It didn't seem like German, but he wasn't sure. Then they crossed another seemingly endless stretch of jungle. Finally a new group of buildings was in sight ahead.
The plantation was no different from the others they had seen. There was a cluster of brown adobe buildings around one larger whitewashed wooden house at the very top of the hill. Cultivated fields lay around that on smaller hills. The fields blended into jungle at the edges. Men were working in the fields.
It would be easy to run away, Mark thought. Too easy. It must be stupid to try, or there would be fences. Wait, he thought. Wait and learn. I owe nothing. To anyone. Wait for a chance—
—a chance for what? He pushed the thought away.
The foreman was tall and crudely handsome. He wore dirty white shorts and a sun helmet, and there was a pistol buckled on his belt.
"You look after this one, ja," Ewigfeuer said. "One of the governor's pets. They say he has brains enough to make supervisor. We will see. Mark Fuller, three years."
"Yes, sir. Come on, Mark Fuller, three years." The foreman turned and walked away. After a moment Mark followed. They went past rammed earth buildings and across a sea of mud. The buildings had been sprayed with some kind of plastic and shone dully. "You'll need boots," the foreman said. "And a new outfit. I'm Curt Morgan. Get along with me and you'll be happy. Cross me and you're in trouble. Got that?"
"Yes, sir."
"You don't call me sir unless I tell you to. Right now you call me Curt. If you need help, ask me. Maybe I can give you good advice. If it don't cost me much, I will." They reached a rectangular one-story building like the others. "This'll be your bunkie."
The inside was a long room with places for thirty men. Each place had a bunk, a locker and an area two meters by three of clear space. After the ship, it seemed palatial. The inside walls were sprayed with the same plastic material as the outside; it kept insects from living in the dirt walls. Some of the men had cheap pictures hung above their bunks: pinups, mostly, but one had the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in one corner area there were charcoal sketches of men and women working, and an unfinished oil painting.
There were a dozen men in the room. Some were sprawled on their bunks. One was knitting something elaborate, and a small group at the end were playing cards. One of the card players, a small ferret-faced man, left the game.
"Your new man," Curt said. "Mark Fuller, three years. Fuller, this is your bunkie leader. His name is Lewis. Lew, get the kid bunked and out of those prison slops."
"Sure, Curt." Lewis eyed Mark carefully. "About the right size for Jose's old outfit. The gear's all clean."
"Want to do that?" Curt asked. "Save you some money."
Mark stared helplessly.
The two men laughed. "You better give him the word, Lew," Curt Morgan said. "Fuller, I'd take him up on the gear. Let me know what he charges you, right? He won't squeeze you too bad." There was laughter from the other men in the bunkie as the foreman left.
Lewis pointed out a bunk in the center. "Jose was there, kid. Left his whole outfit when he took the green way out. Give you the whole lot for, uh, fifty credits."
And now what? Mark wondered. Best not to show him I've got any money. "I don't have that much—"
"Hell, you sign a chit fur it," Lewis said. "The old man pays a credit a day and found."
"Who do I get a chit from?"
"You get it from me." Lewis narrowed watery eyes. They looked enormous through his thick glasses. "You thinking about something, kid? You don't want to try it."
"I'm not trying anything. I just don't understand—"
"Sure. You just remember I'm in charge. Anybody skips out, I get their gear. Me. Nobody else. Jose had a good outfit, worth fifty credits easy—
"Bullshit," one of the cardplayers said. "Not worth more'n thirty and you know it."
"Shut up. Sure, you could do better in Whiskeytown, but not here. Look, Morgan said take care of you. I'll sell you the gear for forty. Deal?"
"Sure."
Lewis gave him a broad smile. "You'll get by, kid. Here's your key." He handed Mark a magnokey and went back to the card game.
Mark wondered who had copies. It wasn't something you could duplicate without special equipment; the magnetic spots had to be in just the right places. Ewigfeuer would have one, of course. Who else? No use worrying about it.
He inspected his new possessions. Two pairs of shorts. Tee shirts, underwear, socks, all made of some synthetic. Comb, razor and blades. Soap. Used toothbrush. Mark scowled at it, then laughed to himself. No point in being squeamish.
Some of the clothes were dirty. Others seemed clean, but Mark decided he would have to wash them all. Not now, though. He tucked his money into the toe of a sock and threw the rest of his clothes on top of it, then locked the whole works into the locker. He wondered what he should do with the money; he had nearly three hundred credits, ten month's wages at a credit a day—enough to be killed for.
It bothered him all the way to the shower, but after that, the unlimited water, new bar of soap, and a good razor were such pleasures that he didn't think about anything else.