Dave Duncan - West of January

“Exactly! Environments on Vernier were selected for the same adaptations as similar environments had on First World. Of course! Hook noses in dry climates, for example. Persistence of the lactase enzyme into adulthood among cattle-herding peoples. That sort of thing. But we have a question, class! Are the wetlanders descended from original blonds—by chance—or have they been selected for blondness by their environment, or did blond humans deliberately choose a climate that suited their blond coloring? Hmm?”

After a long pause I said, “Tell us the answer then.”

“I have absolutely no idea,” Kettle boomed triumphantly, “and I can think of no way to find out! That’s why people are so interesting.”

That was also why, Ginger muttered darkly, the most ancient texts told of saints being martyred.

But ants had been mentioned, and ants were always of interest to me, who still nursed secret dreams of vengeance. I had never mentioned these dreams to anyone, but everyone in Heaven must have known of my obsession with ants. Where did ants get their sadism? I asked. Which of the three causes produced that?

Natural selection, Kettle thought. “Survival of the ruthless? A squeamish ant would leave, probably, or be driven out.”

“Or founder effect?” I suggested. “Someone must have invented slave owning.”

He agreed, rather grudgingly. The conversation began to drift elsewhere, but Kettle suddenly dragged it back with his remark about ants not understanding pain.

I replied that they used pain so effectively that they must obviously understand it. Knowing how I had come by the disability that led them to call me Roo, the others fell silent, but Kettle argued. He eventually convinced me that the ants would be able to use their slaves more efficiently if they terrorized them less. Or he almost convinced me, for I knew that I would never have worked so hard for so long under a kinder rule.

“But talk to Blue-red,” he added. “Get him to tell you about the ant with half a foot!”

Blue-red was not then in Heaven, so of course we all demanded that Kettle himself tell us about the ant with half a foot, and after another long draft of beer, he did so.

Blue-red-brown had once met an ant. The encounter had been quite amicable, for although the ant had been part of an army on the move, Blue-red had been unable to prove anything against that particular ant or his companions. This ant, Blue-red said, had been missing half of his right foot. When younger, he had gone to sleep before a roaring fire. A burning log had rolled and charred his toes before he awoke.

“Are you saying that ants don’t feel pain?” I demanded, astonished and suddenly enraged. I could remember Hrarrh having his blisters licked. That had been a true ordeal for him, and the other ants have been impressed by his stoicism.

“They may feel some,” Kettle said sympathetically, “but not as much as we…others—not like we others do. I’ve seen an ant stick a knife through his hand on a bet! It may be a founder effect. It may be an adaptation—a banged elbow in a mine is painful, but not an indication of great danger. I don’t know, cherub, but I am sure that ants do not feel pain as much as you do.”

As I had…

“Tell me, holiness,” inquired the Fox, who was a trader-slasher cross, a studious and smart little fellow, a born saint but never angel timber. “Can founder effects explain some of the sexual differentiation characteristics?”

Kettle’s teacher eyes flickered over the blank expression on the faces of Beef and Ham. “You mean like herdmen being so much larger than herdwomen? Or like trader males being smarter than their females?”

That raised a small chuckle. Before the Fox could work out a believable retaliation, I unthinkingly said, “I’m sure that’s not true, Kettle. I think trader women are a lot smarter than they like to make out. I knew one who certainly was.”

Across the table from me, Beef smirked. “Hot stuff, was she, Old Man?”

My tankard and its contents hit him in the face just as the room made one of its frequent lurches. That lurch distracted the others, and even a cripple can be effective at close quarters. I had overturned the table and Beef also before they could block me, and then Beef and I were both on the floor, with me on top and my thumbs on his carotid arteries. Fortunately even that grip takes a moment to kill a man, and I had not thought to try anything more sudden, like crushing his larynx. Ginger and Dusty methodically broke my hold and lifted me off my victim. They pushed me back in my chair and held me there until my fit passed and I stopped screaming. The furniture was righted, the beer replaced, and the rest of Cloud Nine’s clientele persuaded to overlook the incident.

Beef was a big kid, but he knew that he had just missed something nasty, and he did not know how to fight a cripple twice his age and half his size. He allowed himself to be restrained. He even apologized, still not understanding his offense. The others were looking to Kettle, wondering why I was not being immediately hurled from Heaven for such a display of violence. Of course, my status in Heaven was not orthodox, and Kettle certainly was aware of that. Even more certainly, he was not going to discuss it in Cloud Nine.

With difficulty, I mumbled an apology, still quivering with the urge to maim Beef.

Kettle growled. “That’s not enough, Roo! You owe him an explanation. There were special circumstances. Tell them.”

I muttered mutinously, but eventually I explained how I had journeyed with the traders and found love.

Of course the traders were incensed. Mol Jar, the one who had bought me, insisted that the goods had been damaged after purchase. By then he had discovered my lacerations as well as my smashed knees, but my lacerations had been done beforehand, so he had no hope of recourse for those. Hobbling meant shackling, he insisted.

Hobbling meant breaking a leg, Minemaster Krarurh replied, and any time he had sold a wetlander to a trader, that was how he had delivered it. It was mere inexperience that had led Hrarrh to smash both my knees instead—a trifling excess of juvenile zeal. The esteemed trader had been offered free hobbling, not shackling, and he had accepted that offer. Had he wanted chains applied, then he should have said so and supplied them, because Krarurh did not include chains when he sold slaves.

The traders demanded their bale of silk back, offering to return the cat food. They threatened to blacklist the mine.

The ants leaned toward ripping the traders to shreds and feeding them to their panthers, while retaining the horses, wagons, and goods. Violence began to seem likely.

Meanwhile I was dangling head-down and feet-down across the back of a horse nearby. Even when the darkness lifted briefly from my mind, the thunder of my pain drowned out the talk. I learned about it later, at third or fourth hand.

Hrarrh eventually became fearful that I would not be accepted as valid merchandise, and he persuaded his father-in-law to settle the matter by throwing in another ten sacks of ore to compensate for the second knee. He also promised to work his gang overtime to replace it. Grumpily the traders departed with their loads, which included one crippled wetlander, who was unlikely ever to come out of his coma.

The relative value of ten sacks of phosphate ore and one bale of silk is debatable. It is possible to argue that the traders were being paid to haul me away like trash. And there, I think, is the most despicable of all Hrarrh’s villainies—that he was willing to torment his wretched slaves even harder, solely to provide himself with the personal satisfaction of sending me off to the worst fate he could imagine.