Roger Taylor - Prisoner Of History.pdf - Roger Taylor - margozap

ROBERT C. TAYLOR

A PRISONER OF HISTORY

The Emperor Chankrondor IV, when released from imprisonment, had bowed to his

jailer, thanked him most politely for the hospitality displayed, and then, to

show his own nobility and forgiveness, had the fellow elevated to the rank of

Prison Master in the Royal Court. Trobar p'Arvellhion knew that he had no such

royal perquisites to bestow upon his own jailers, but he had made up his mind

that he would try to be at least as polite as the Emperor had been.

He was finding that hard to do. The outprocessing interview was dragging on, and

the clerk who was conducting it seemed to have no intention of finishing it

before the day was over. Outside the window of the cubicle, Trobar could see the

shadows shift as the Star rose higher into the sky and then began its slow

descent. The ships that rested on the landing field just beyond the prison

fences now reflected the full glare of day off their silvery sides. The

mountains on the other side of the red plain had been filled with deep shadows

when the interview started. Now the shadows were filled with light, and the

mountains themselves stretched out flat against the pale sky. The clerk went

slowly over the papers while the present Emperor looked down upon him from the

wall. He filled in blanks, checked boxes, occasionally asked a question. His pen

scratched against the paper. Most of the time the only sound in the room was the

quiet breathing of the two men, the shy hiss of the ventilation, and the

scratching of the pen.

"We need to be thorough," the clerk had said at the start of the interview. "The

Emperor Himself sometimes reviews these forms. We want to make sure that

everything is correct."

He was very thorough, digging into all the facts of Trobar's life, his arrest,

and his imprisonment. The detail of his investigation, as well as his patience,

was astounding.

During the interview, Trobar learned two new things about himself, but after

that he saw, with growing resignation, that the rumors were true and there was

no hope that he would ever see Home again.

The first new thing he learned was that he had been convicted of belonging to a

group that advocated the overthrow of the Emperor.

Trobar smiled feebly when he heard that. "It was just a lecture," he said. "I

only knew one other person there, Chenkor p'Torlik. He invited me. I was an

Historian, at the Imperial University in the Capitol. I had just received

tenure. I specialized in the reign of Chankrondor IV. It was a lecture on the

Republic, which preceded the reign of Chankrondor I. I didn't even hear the end.

The police broke it up."

He sighed. It seemed so long ago now.

The clerk smiled at him again. "Surely, you should have appealed your

conviction, that being the case. His Majesty's courts may make mistakes at

times, but His Majesty Himself would have soon put things right."

"But I never even knew that a trial had taken place until I came here. I didn't

even know what kind of meeting it was. Did I tell you that Chenkor p'Torlik

invited me?"

The clerk looked down at the paper again. "Chenkor p'Torlik was the police spy

who informed on all the members of the gang."

The clerk shrugged. There was, after all, not much to be done about it now.

The second new thing that Trobar learned was that he had been sentenced to fifty

years of exile in the Penal Colony on T'arnp'ur, but that the sentence had been

commuted to five years, with the right to become a citizen colonist at the end

of that time.

"You will, of course," said the clerk, "receive the standard colonist bonus, if

you should choose that honor." He looked down and continued filling out the form

as he spoke.

"You may also," the clerk added, "elect to return Home on one of His Majesty's

ships, provided you pay for the passage. The rate for that is--" He consulted a

sheet of paper. "Oh, yes, here it is -- five thousand Units."

Trobar looked at the clerk. "The only money I have is back Home. It was being

held for me in the University Treasury."

The clerk shook his head. "Oh, no. You have nothing there. It was all

confiscated by the Emperor. To pay for your trial, and your transportation

here."

All the rumors, then, were true. No matter what sentence had brought you here,

it was a life sentence. None, or few, were those who could afford to pay their

way back Home -- only those who had wealthy friends still in favor with the

Emperor. Those were not likely to be here in the first place.

Trobar spread his empty hands before him. "Then I have no choice but to become a

colonist," he said.

The clerk smiled again, and he also spread empty hands. "You are again a free

subject of the Emperor. You may go where you want, if you have the means to get

there. We will not force you to become a colonist."

"Then my only other choice is to become a freebooter."

The clerk slid a sheet of paper across to him. "That choice is yours. Please

indicate what course of action you choose, and sign. After that, you are free to

go. Your debt to the Emperor has been satisfied."

He looked out the window again. A haze of evaporating water that obscured the

base of the mountains and a faint streak of green growth showed where the

efforts of the prison workforce were beginning to bear fruit. That was the

visible result of his own work. He looked down at his hands. They were scarred

and calloused from the labor of the last five years. He could almost tell when

each scar had been made. Previously, the hardest work his hands had known was

the turning of pages of ancient manuscripts. But everything he had done at the

University was meaningless. Now, it was only the labor that these hands had done

that had any reality. Everything else had been obliterated because he had gone

to the wrong meeting.

He ran the pen down the lines on the page. Tears came to his eyes when he

checked the entry that read I accept the kind invitation of His Most August

Majesty Chankrondor XXV to become a Citizen Colonist on the Colony World of

T'arnp'ur. His fingers were shaking so much that his signature wasn't even

legible.

The Emperor Chankrondor IV, when released from imprisonment, had returned to his

summer palace. There it was that the usurper Krandpot phi and his highest

ranking followers were being held in the deepest subdungeon by the commander of

the loyalist troops, who had fought for the freedom of the Emperor. To show the

fate of traitors, the Emperor had the River p'Er diverted so that it ran through

the subdungeon. Then, for his loyalty, the Emperor elevated the commander to the

rank of Viceroy and bestowed the palace upon him and his heirs in perpetuity.

Trobar p'Arvellhion knew that he had no such royal powers, but he indulged

himself for some little time in fantasies of what would happen if such powers

were his.

There were fifty of them being outprocessed today from this particular prison

compound. They walked out through metal fences, between rows of slitwire, past

guards who held their silver slug-guns high. Each of the former prisoners wore a

new suit of black cloth that had been supplied from the personal treasury of the

Emperor. Already the suits were covered with a thin layer of red dust, the

relentless gift of the desert to each of them. Trobar wondered how the Emperor

Chankrondor IV had felt as he left his imprisonment. His eyes were caught by the

eyes of the prisoners still inside, who stood against the metal fence, dressed

in gray fatigues that were streaked with red. With their fingers caught in the

meshes of the fence, they looked hungrily at the fifty men who trooped quietly

to the waiting bus. They had worked hard all day out in the red waste. They

waited for the dinner call, but were riveted now by this sight of former

companions being taken to freedom.

Trobar could not look away from them even when he entered the bus. He found a

window seat, and kept his face pressed against the plastic as they drove away. A

few of the prisoners raised their arms to wave farewell, and Trobar waved back,

though he knew they could not see. He himself had pressed against that fence,

many times, watching the freedmen leaving, hoping that they were going Home as

someday he would go Home, fearing that they were not.

The bus drove out past the landing field where the transport ships waited. They

had come from Home, laden with supplies and new prisoners. Those who were

released were replaced, then forgotten. The ships would leave, carrying produce

and ores that had been transported hundreds and thousands of miles across the

desert. No longer silver, but the same dull pink as the sky, the ships caught

the last light of the Star. Soon, it would be night.

Trobar supposed that he would have to stop calling it the Star, now that he was

a colonist. The prisoners all called it the Star, because the Sun was the fire

that blazed in the skies of Home. But he would never see Home again. The bus was

taking him farther away from Home than he had ever been before, to a colony

settlement to the north. This planet, the Colony World of T'arnp'ur, was now

home, and the Star was now the sun.

The driver of the bus was an old colonist. He told them stories as the night

rose around them. In the darkness, the mountains and the horizon, and even the

prison itself--everything fell away from them, leaving them in infinite space.

The road led from nowhere to nowhere. Only the voice of the driver gave them

something familiar to cling to. He had been transported fifty years ago, as a

young man. Back then, when the colony was new, the prison sentences had been

longer. He had served fifteen years before being allowed to join the colony.

"Not that the work was any easier," he said. "You couldn't tell the difference

between prisoner and colonist by the amount of work done. You still can't. The

work is hard, no matter which you are. For that matter, you might as well be a

prisoner, for prisoners are fed even in the midst of famine, but as a colonist

you've earned the right to starve along with the rest. Of course, you're given a

quadrant of ground, and when you marry your wife's quadrant is joined to that

and a third is thrown in as a bonus, and you get another quadrant bonus for each

child born. There's some consolation in that -- wife and children to come home

to after a hard day in the fields."

At the mention of marriage, the humor of the men began to pick up. They began to

tell stories, make ribald jokes among themselves.

The old man laughed at them. "Hold yourselves together, for there'll be enough

time for that. There's to be a Choosing when you arrive. You've not heard of

that? You hear all the bad rumors, but not the good ones. Well, when new

colonists come into a region, there's a festival. It's partly a leftover

celebration of convicts rejoicing in one another's good fortune. But it's more

than that now. All the Families bring out their sons and daughters, widows and

widowers, and marriages are made. You don't have to, you know. You're free

citizens, under the Emperor's bounty, and you can work your quadrant alone, if

you so wish. But remember, wealth is power, here as it is anywhere, and here on

T'arnp'ur, land is wealth. You're best off adding your quadrant in with a Family

that's accumulated much already. Many quadrants and many hands to work them.

That's the way to increase your wealth."

As the old man drove and talked, his voice slowly seeped into the bones of the

freedmen, and soon they began to talk. In prison, they had always been furtive,

as if they wanted to shield each other from the shame of being there. But now

they began to talk of where they were from and what had brought them there. One

was from Gwar, another from Locus, yet a third from Far Krelling. One had been

sent for murder, another for insurrection, and a third for stealing a loaf of

bread. They spoke of friends and family, wives and lovers, wealth and poverty,

dreams and delusions, all left behind now, for best or worst.

One tall fellow, still just a boy, told how he had splashed paint all over the

Emperor's portrait and been chased by the police for nearly two leagues before

he was caught. "It was just a lark," he said. "I didn't mean nothing by it. My

dad and me, we always stood up for the Emperor on Parade Day. He always said to

me, 'Chengo, always praise the Emperor and give him honor.' It was just for fun.

I didn't mean nothing by it."

The talk came to Trobar. Eyes turned to him, and he said, "I was an Historian at

the Imperial University, in the Capitol. I specialized in the reign of

Chankrondor IV. I had tenure. I could have become a Professor. But I was

arrested for not knowing what kind of meeting I went to. Did I tell you that I

had tenure?"

Everyone laughed at that, and Trobar did not feel particularly foolish, for if

any of them had been wise they would not be here.

The Emperor Chankrondor IV, when released from imprisonment, had set to work

reforming the administration of Law. He had established the Penal Colony system

that had caused his Empire to grow in size and wealth, and had been able to pass

his bounty down through his descendants, so that now the Emperor Chankrondor XXV

ruled not only over Home, but three other planets as well. Trobar p'Arvellhion

once had thought this a great and good thing.

Now he did not know how to feel about it. He laid his head against the window of

the bus, staring out at the night streaming by, trying to imagine how it might

have been, if he had turned down Chenkor's offer, gone back to work on that

article for the Royal Historical Journal instead. He had worked hard to receive

tenure, and with that behind him, the way was open for a professorship. Surely

he would have been married by now. There had been several ladies who had their

eyes on him, waiting for the time when he could relax from his studies long

enough to contemplate the next move in his career. The dean's daughter had been

interested in him. He remembered her as having a bright and pretty face. Perhaps

children would have come by now. He did not know the proper timing of these

things, but he could imagine himself with children now. For some reason, as he

thought about it, he pictured himself with a daughter, with long golden hair,

clutching his hand as they walked across the campus together.

He fell asleep with that image in his mind, and a deep sense of loneliness and

loss within his heart. The bus plunged on, farther and farther into the

wilderness.

Roger Taylor - Prisoner Of History.pdf

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