Limping Step

by Elaine Graham-Leigh

conclusion

She looked up at him and her gaze sharpened with amused malice. ‘So what about you? What are you being resocialised for?’

Every time he left her unit, he swore he wouldn’t speak to her again, but every time he came back, he did. The truth was, there wasn’t anyone else. He couldn’t talk to the other guards, and she was the only one of the inmates who didn’t cower away from him, with whom his blaster and his uniform didn’t loom so large between them that there was room for nothing else. It meant he gave her chances to mock him, but he suspected she would have made those whether he spoke or not. The only other way of dealing with it would have been to shoot her, and he didn’t have the privileges for that.

He asked her one day if she had ever thought her protest would have worked. It was late in the afternoon, when the unchanging light in the units seemed dimmer, the shadows deeper. Above the hum of the air conditioning, the rain pattered steadily on the roof.

Annata had just been brought back from a treatment session. She lay curled on the bunk, her head propped on her folded jacket, the lone blanket pulled over her shoulders. Beris sat on the bunk end. He suspected this was too close for regulations, which said he had to keep far enough away from the inmates to have time to get his blaster out if they went for him, but after a day on his feet it was good to sit down.

Annata echoed his question. ‘Did I think it would work? What, did I think the Council would see me and say, ‘Oh, sorry, we didn’t realise we’re helping the Terrans kill each other, we’ll make sure we stop it?’ Her voice, muffled by the blanket, was quieter than usual. ‘What do you think?’

‘All right, so if that’s such a blind question, what did you do it for? You want to end up here?’

‘Oh, of course. That was my aim all along, didn’t you know? No, Beris, I didn’t think the Council would listen to me. I knew they wouldn’t.’

‘So why do it then?’ It was annoying, she was so stupid, getting herself sent to Herantive for nothing.

She sighed. ‘I suppose I thought that some of the passers-by might listen. Lots of people go by there, outside the Council. I suppose I thought that if just one of them saw what I was saying, if I could get the message out to them, then it would be worthwhile. I don’t know if I did. That’s the trouble with trying to reach one person among hundreds, you never know if you have.’

She sounded sadder than he had ever heard her. “Provoking,” he said, ‘Don’t sound like it was worth it, then.’

‘It’s not about whether it was worth it!’ She pulled herself up on one arm, cradling the other against her chest. ‘Don’t you understand that? Even if no one listened, even if it made no difference, I still had to do it.’ Her strange, damaged eye met his. ‘I just couldn’t be part of the guilt. The civil war, the massacre, it’s the Council that did it, but if we all go along with them, keep unanimity like we’re taught to, then that makes us just as guilty as they. The only thing we can do is stand up and say ‘no’, even if no one does hear us. Even if all they say we’re doing is damaging society, sticking out. Even if it does bring us here.’

She held her hand out, palm down. ‘Don’t you understand? All those Terrans that died, their blood is on our hands, on all our hands.’ The back was scored across with welts from the treatment session; a bead of blood hung, purple, from her thumb. ‘I didn’t want their blood on mine.’

He remembered the final fight with Piri, how once he had no choice, all the days of planning how to deal with him, how not to be punished, how to get the others to support him had fallen away, leaving only a clean clarity like the day after the rains. He rummaged in his pocket for the rag he used to wipe spills from the food cart. ‘Here’ he said, awkwardly. ‘Bind up your hand.’

Qaid Sa’Jurn was in the guard room when he got back from his round, leaning against one of the desks and leafing with ostentatious boredom through a pile of printed reports.

‘You’re late’ he said. ‘Food round shouldn’t take more than an hour and you’ve been nearer two.’

Beris decided brevity was the best option. ‘Yes, Qaid. Sorry, Qaid.’

‘Hmm.’ Sa’Jurn put the reports down. ‘You’ve been here, what, nearly seventy days now, haven’t you, Beris?’

‘Yes, Qaid.’

‘And do you feel you’re fitting in?’

Beris kept his expression neutral. ‘I think so, Qaid.’

‘Do you? Do you? Well, that’s very interesting, Beris, because I’ve been watching you, and I don’t think you’re fitting in at all. I think you’re as much of a misfit as when they sent you here. You spend more time with the inmates than you do with the men. Do you think you should be one of them? Well, do you?’

‘No, Qaid.’

‘No, Qaid. Well, at least there’s some hope for you.’ He walked up to Beris, brought his face close to his. ‘I will not have misfits in my guard, Ty’Beris. Join in or you’re out. Do you understand me? Out of the guard, out of the service, back home in disgrace so fast you’ll think you left your arse behind. Join in. I’ll be watching you.’

He could have said how hard he had been trying, but his pride wouldn’t let him plead. He pulled himself up into a formal salute, ‘Yes, Qaid’, and held it until Sa’Jurn turned on his heel and left.

He didn’t go to the bar with the others that evening. He didn’t enjoy standing around for hours with no one talking to him. He’d thought it was important anyway, but if it wasn’t going to make any difference with that bastard Sa’Jurn...

Instead, he slouched round the compound. Past the dark, circular bulks of the resocialisation centres, lights shone from the temple columns, green and blue, the colours of land and sea. At the nearest temple, four priests were just beginning the evening dance. They bowed to each other once then started stepping the circle, slowly at first, thumping down with each foot to mark the beat, then faster. Their mud-coloured cloaks flew out behind them as they spun, accelerating, making an earthy ring around them. The beat went on. Beris pulled the hood of his uniform waterproof further down over his face. He was sick of Herantive.

The priests gave a shrieking cry and started circling the other way. Beris shifted position and winced as a trickle of rain ran into his boot. It was time he headed back in any case; he didn’t have a late pass and more trouble was all he needed. He walked away down the path, keeping the beat in march time. It was what you did on Herantive, what you always did, but without thinking he found himself fighting it, scuffing one foot then the other in counterpoint, a half-step off the beat, all the way back to his bed.

The odd beat stayed with him the next day, tapping inside his head like the beginning of pain. He had the morning shift in the guardroom, then he was down for the inmates’ afternoon exercise. Sa’Jurn put him on the gate. Beris could feel him scowling at him as he took up position.

The escort guards got the inmates from all four centres lined up inside the gate, ready to file through. Annata was second in the line from No. 4 centre. She glanced up at Beris as she passed him, meeting for a second before they both dragged their gaze away.

Anti Edi was last out, dawdling so far behind the others that the guard behind him had to push him in the back with his blaster butt to make him move. He stared round wildly, his eyes black pools in his thin face.

Sa’Jurn barked. ‘Beris! Get him walking, now! You, Edi! I will not have this today, do you understand?’

It was unlikely that Edi did understand, but a cuff from Beris was enough to start him shambling round after the others. Beris went back to his station at the gate. He noticed that the rear escort guard was looking at him and grimaced in exasperated comment at Edi and Sa’Jurn both. He wasn’t expecting a reaction, but to his surprise, the other guard grimaced back, and smiled.

Most of the inmates had completed one circuit now. To Beris their pace seemed faster than usual, their shoulders hunched against trouble. In contrast, Edi was hardly moving, a stooped, ragged figure alone at the far end of the area. As Beris watched he seemed to realise that there was no one around him. He stopped, the gleeful expression on his face visible even from the gate. Then he threw back his head and began to scream.

The sound was so loud it was difficult to believe that one old man could make it.

‘Oh, stars above!’ Sa’Jurn shouted. ‘Beris, get over there and shut him up! Now!’

Beris started off across the exercise area. Edi, seeing him coming, began to run, elbows flapping, his feet on the sodden ground dancing through a fountain of raindrops. He was still screaming.

‘Beris, get him!’

Beris was fast but Edi, with the guile of the demented, kept dodging, shrieking with glee amongst the screams.

‘Beris, if you don’t get him, I swear...’

Shouts from the other guards drowned Sa’Jurn out. The other inmates huddled together in front of the gate. Beris, turning, caught a flash of Annata’s face before someone moved and hid her from view.

‘Beris!’

Edi pulled off his uniform jacket and waved it round his head like a trophy. Beris ducked as it swung past his face. Edi screamed again, laughing. He brought the jacket round again. Beris shut his eyes, put out his hand and grabbed it.

The force of it pulled Edi over. He landed on his knees, still clutching the jacket, then as Beris tugged it again, fell forward into the mud. The guards cheered, derisive. Sa’Jurn ran up.

‘That is it! I’ve had enough of this, more than enough.’ He raised his voice. ‘He was trying to escape. You all saw him. He was trying to escape, and we had to stop him. We had no choice. It was a regrettable incident, but unavoidable, and no one can say any different. Beris, shoot him.’

Edi sat up. The rain tracked muddy channels down his face, hung in drops from the edge of his chin. The guards stopped cheering. Annata pushed her way to the front of the silent inmates. The rain fell, and from outside came the drum of the dance in one of the temples. Beris reached for his blaster. The grip was cool in his hand, spotted with water. If he shot him, it would be his way in. The other guards would like him, Sa’Jurn would give him a good report; he could even get out of here, get back to a military ship and some real action. He only had to obey, do what he was told... He let his hand fall.

‘No’ said Beris.

‘What did you say?’ Sa’Jurn’s tone was dangerous. ‘I gave you an order, Beris. Shoot him. Shoot him now, or you’re out!’

Beris looked at him. He was sick of the service, sick of all of it. He’d joined because it was that or prison, after they’d rounded up the gang. It was the choice it always came down to, back home in his neighbourhood. Choosing, it had never occurred to any of them to question just why that should be their only choice. Always the same: don’t raise your voice, don’t stand out. He was sick of that too.

‘I said no.’

As he turned away, Sa’Jurn threw his blaster at him. It caught him at the top of his thigh, painful, but not bad enough to stop him going. He limped through the rain and the silence to the gate.

Later, whenever he told the story of how he became a rebel, he usually ended it there. The image of Sa’Jurn defeated was always popular with his younger comrades. He didn’t say, perhaps because it would have lost its power in saying, anything else about As’Annata. When he’d reached the gate she’d still been standing there, in front of the other inmates. He had never been able to find out what had happened to her, though he had tried. Just another of the resocialised; an old, shunned woman with a broken face and a uniform that didn’t fit her. She hadn’t said anything as he passed her, it would hardly have been safe. But through his discharge and all the cycles thereafter, the memory of her expression stayed with him: her half-smile and the look of approval in her parti-coloured eye.