Shunned

by David Pilling

part 3 of 4

Hasan left the city where he had been raised and did not look back. He had no plans to seek out other communities of Shunned that might take him in. In his bitterness he considered them all to be the same, isolated groups of cowards and traitors who would happily sell out one of their own in exchange for a quiet life. Deep down he knew he could not blame them, for to live in peace and raise a family was no more than most men wanted.

Hasan was different. As the Archpriest recognised, his actions were dictated by his caste. All his life Hasan had been trained to respond to aggression with aggression, and it was a minor miracle he had survived to adulthood. His caste also forbade him to have a wife and children, for it held that a Warrior who might be killed at any time should be free of such responsibilities.

Full of rage and sick at heart, Hasan decided to travel to the far north, where there was nothing but mountains and endless skies. There he would live alone, free from distractions and able to commune in peace with the stern gods that ruled his caste. One day, when he was sure that they would welcome him into the afterlife, he would come back south and slake his anger in Southern blood until he was killed.

The journey north took months, months in which he wandered ceaselessly, never staying two nights in the same place. His money soon ran out and he turned to begging or stealing food as necessary. Many times he was almost caught, and he lost count of the number of times he was obliged to hide or flee from the angry mobs of farmers and watchmen who came running or riding in hot pursuit of the elusive Shunned thief.

At last, weary, footsore, gaunt and scarred, Hasan came to the end of civilisation and reached the lonely wilderness that he craved. The flat plains of the West had steadily given way to rolling hill country with a jagged line of purple mountains in the far distance. Weeks of painful footslogging brought the mountains ever closer, and then one day he found himself wandering through rocky terrain with high peaks all around him and knew he had reached his goal.

How he was going to live in such a barren place was not something Hasan had devoted much thought to, nor did he care. Either his gods would provide or they would let him die.

It was a simple philosophy and led to an obvious result. Within a few days of entering the mountains his food ran out and he began to starve. There was nothing to hunt, save a few hawks circling high above, and Hasan lacked the means or the energy to hunt them. The likelihood was that the birds would feast on him instead.

In the end it was no god that saved Hasan but a slender black dart that suddenly imbedded in his thigh as he trudged, exhausted, through a narrow gully.

Hasan knew he was done for as he felt the bitter throb of what he assumed to be poison in his veins. He pulled out the dart but then his strength left him and he sagged to his knees.

The last thing he saw before toppling into darkness was a man emerging from cover at the far end of the gully. He appeared to be some kind of soldier, though an unusual one. The man was tall and wore a white bowl-shaped helmet with no visor and a neat green uniform of a cut and cloth Hasan didn’t recognise. Nor did he recognise his weapon, which looked like a long crossbow without the cross-piece and was made of some oily black metal.

It didn’t matter who or what the man was. Hasan’s vision blurred and faded and he swirled down, down into nothing.

* * *

He woke up to searing white light that threatened to burn his retinas. Screaming, he shut his eyes against the awful radiance but could not shut out the two calm voices with strange clipped accents that echoed around him.

“My God, he stinks.”

“Of course he stinks. They all stink. What do you expect from a bunch of quasi-medieval savages?”

“The professor won’t like you talking like that.”

“To hell with the professor: this whole project is crazy. It should have been abandoned decades ago.”

“I guess as long as the politicos are willing to fund it... look at the state of him. He must have severe malnutrition. Where was he found?”

“He was wandering in the Dead Zone. One of our scouts shot him with a tranquilizer and brought him in... Hang on, look, he’s woken up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, but he’s trying to hide it. It’s no use, buddy, you can’t fool us. Give him another shot.”

“Okay, coming up...”

Hasan was aware of a brief stabbing pain in his right arm. He tried to struggle but found that he couldn’t move. The anxiety receded as his veins began to throb again and he drifted back into peaceful darkness.

He woke up, again to a painful white light but not quite as unbearable as before. There were no voices this time. Slowly, he opened his eyes, waiting until they adjusted to the light.

Squinting painfully, Hasan looked about him. He was in a square room, somewhat like a cell but with spotless white walls, floor and ceiling. The only furniture was the hard metal chair he was sitting on, a white desk and two more identical chairs positioned behind the opposite side of the desk. The room was lit by thin glowing strips screwed into the ceiling and the harsh light they emitted made his head ache.

His wrists and ankles were securely tied to the chair with slender lengths of iron chain. Bound tight and unable to move, Hasan could do nothing except sit and wait. The poison in the dart, whatever it was, had made his brain sluggish and he found it difficult to order his thoughts.

Clarity was just returning when the room’s only door opened and three people entered. Two males and one female dressed identically in long white coats, square-cut grey hose and grey jackets. The obvious leader was a tall elderly fellow with a neat moustache, a curved beak of a nose and keen blue eyes. His companions were much younger, the man lean and darkly handsome and the woman a striking green-eyed blonde with her hair scraped back.

“How is our guest feeling?” enquired the older man, halting in front of the table and rubbing his hands as he gazed benevolently at Hasan. He spoke with the same oddly clipped accent that Hasan had heard previously and found difficult to understand.

“Well, thank you,” replied Hasan, speaking slowly and carefully “but I am a prisoner, not a guest. Guests do not wear chains.”

The old man chuckled. “A mere precaution, please don’t take offence. We happen to know that you are a very highly trained killer, and quite naturally you think we are your enemies. Until you accept otherwise, it is best you stay restrained.”

Hasan didn’t like the man’s jovial manner. “Am I to believe that you are my friends?”

“In time you will. Let me introduce us. I am Professor Kendrick. My colleagues here are Doctor Joyce Stevens and Doctor Charles Rae.”

“Hasan al-Asim.” replied Hasan, bowing his head in greeting.

“Love his manners,” said Rae, chewing gum as he spoke. “Damned if I would be so polite in his position.”

“Don’t mock, Rae,” frowned Kendrick. “This is not the time for your sarcasm. Come, let’s not be so formal.”

The Professor and his colleagues drew back the metal chairs and sat down. They stared intently at Hasan as though he was some kind of interesting specimen.

“Now then, Hasan,” Kendrick said briskly “the first thing you should know is that we are scientists. It is not a profession you will be aware of. Think of us as people devoted to logic, learning and wisdom.”

“I will do my best.” replied Hasan, glancing sideways at Rae.

“The second, and this will be difficult for you to comprehend, is that your world is not what it seems. It is the result of a scientific experiment begun four centuries ago.”

“He’s not getting a word of this,” grinned Rae. “He thinks we’re a bunch of lunatics, don’t you, buddy?”

“Rae, please...” began Kendrick, but he was interrupted by Hasan.

“As a matter of fact, the Rae creature is wrong,” Hasan said. “I believe that you are all quite sane. You look like Southerners, though I don’t know what you are doing so far north, but you evidently wish to torture me to death with nonsense. I will not be a party to it. Kill me and have done with your mockery.”

Rae laughed, Kendrick threw up his hands, and Joyce Stevens smiled and smoothed her coat.

“This is an educated man,” she said quietly. “He will not believe a word we say without proof.”

Kendrick nodded. “Then he shall have it. Excuse me for a moment”

The Professor got up and strode out of the room, leaving Hasan with the two young scientists and an awkward silence. For the next couple of minutes Hasan and Rae glared at each other with undisguised hostility.

Kendrick returned, followed by half a dozen soldiers wearing the same white helmets and green uniforms as the one who had shot Hasan.

“Pick him up, chair and all,” Kendrick ordered them, pointing at Hasan. “And be careful. He is a dangerous killer.”

Hasan had never felt less like a dangerous killer as the soldiers picked him up and lugged him out of the room like a piece of furniture. The room opened onto a long white corridor, again lit by metal strips embedded in the ceiling. The wall to the right was fitted with one continuous pane of glass.

“Set him down for a moment. Let him see.” said Kendrick. The soldiers carefully lowered the chair.

The things Hasan saw through the glass threatened to challenge his sanity. On the other side was a huge chamber, larger than the interior of any hall he had ever seen, and completely open to the night sky. Soldiers, scientists and engineers hurried back and forth like worker ants on the vast floor. The chamber was full of machinery, constructs of shining metals that Hasan could not begin to identify. They varied in size and shape and no doubt in purpose, but most of his attention was caught by the object occupying the centre.

It was some kind of vessel, big enough to house hundreds of people and mounted on a complex metal runway like a ship in dry dock. There the resemblance ended, for the vessel had no masts or sails or any other regular features of a ship. Instead it was shaped like a giant triangular kite and made of gleaming smooth metal. The words “USS Indiana” were written in black letters ten feet tall on the hull.

“A ship, Hasan.” Kendrick spoke behind him. “But it sails no oceans. Instead it takes us to the stars. It could take you one day.”

“I am dreaming,” Hasan muttered. “Or else I have died and gone to someone else’s afterlife.”

Joyce Stevens laid a hand on his shoulder. “You are not dead, you are not dreaming, and none of us wishes you any harm,” she said quietly.

The gentle tone of her voice, after so many months of hardship and cruelty, would have brought tears to the eyes of most men. Even so, Hasan was forced to bow his head.

“Perhaps we should leave him in your care, Dr Stevens,” mused Kendrick after a moment’s silence. “He seems to react to you. Yes, I think that would be best.”

The timeline floated above the floor, a translucent image covered in dates and references and generated by a projector built into the opposite wall. Joyce had tried explaining to Hasan that the image was a creation of science, not sorcery, but he refused to understand.

“No human alive can create a picture out of thin air,” he insisted “unless he or she is a sorcerer.”

“As I have told you a hundred times, there is no such thing as sorcery,” Joyce retorted, half-amused, half-exasperated. “There is only science. Facts rule the universe, Hasan, not superstition.”

“I agree. And sorcery is a fact. It must be, for I am looking at it.”

Joyce gave up and focused on the content of the timeline. “This shows the history of civilisation on your world,” she explained. “The point marked Year Zero marks the arrival of my predecessors. They were scientists like us.

“Not just scientists, but philosophers and social theorists. Their ambition was to observe the development and growth of human society. It was possible to do this by studying our own history, but they wished to observe the process in action.”

Hasan struggled to concentrate. He did not understand half the words she was using, but he liked listening to her talk and so sat quiet like an obedient schoolboy. They had removed his chains and fitted him with a security device that sent an electric shock through his body the moment he had physical contact with anyone.

“Strong enough to knock you out, buddy,” Dr Bannerman gleefully informed him as the device was fitted. Hasan smiled weakly and made a mental note to keep his hands to himself.

“Their arrival occurred four hundred years ago,” Joyce continued. “They discovered that the people here were primitives, much like us millions of years ago. Your ancestors lived in caves, wore animal skins and hunted with tools made of flint. With a little assistance from those first scientists and successive expeditions, something extraordinary happened.”

Joyce turned to look at Hasan, her face flushed with enthusiasm.

“It took our ancestors thousands of years to develop into a proper society with laws, culture and an organised system of government. Your world, in a mere four centuries, has evolved into a quasi-medieval society. Crude, to be sure, and your Renaissance may be a long time in coming, but that’s still an extraordinary rate of progress!”

“I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” said Hasan, noting the depth of colour in her green eyes.

She frowned and looked away. “Of course there have been difficulties,” she said, biting her lip. “The people of this world suffer from the same flaws as humans anywhere. They can be cruel, bigoted, ignorant... But I don’t have tell you this.”

“I have been treated like an animal all my life,” Hasan replied. “As have the rest of my people. The Shunned, we are called.”

“I know. Your country was invaded and destroyed by an alliance of Southern armies several decades ago. We did our best to prevent it, but our policy has always been to avoid direct intervention. Otherwise the project becomes meaningless.”

Hasan snapped out of his reverie. “Are you telling me,” he said quietly, “that you ‘scientists’ had the power to stop my country being destroyed but chose not to because it would interfere with your experiment?”

Joyce had the decency to look embarrassed. “I am sorry. It must be hard for you to understand, but history must be allowed to take its course. All we can do is provide occasional guidance.”

Hasan leaned forward in his chair, kneading his forehead and trying to ignore the rush of anger and despair inside him. “I don’t know what to think,” he said eventually. “I don’t know why you are telling me this or what you want of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Joyce repeated. “We are not trying to hurt you. The Professor will explain the next part.”

* * *

Proceed to part 4...