Free Alien 3 by Alan Dean Foster

brought you something.’
    ‘I got bored.’
    Frustrated, he put down his fork and glanced up at her. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. There’s worse things than bein’ bored. I don’t know why you’re talking to me. You don’t wanna know me, Lieutenant. I am a murderer and a rapist. Of women.’
    ‘Really.’ Her eyebrows, which she had thinned but not shaved completely, rose. ‘I guess I must make you nervous.’
    Boggs’s fork halted halfway to his mouth. Rains frowned, and Golic just kept eating, ignoring the byplay completely.
    Dillon hesitated a moment, then a slow smile spread across his hardened face. He nodded and Ripley took the remaining empty chair.
    ‘Do you have any faith, sister?’
    ‘In what?’ She gnawed on the cornbread.
    ‘In anything.’
    She didn’t have to pause to consider. ‘Not much.’
    He raised a hand and waved, the expansive gesture encompassing the mess hall and its inhabitants. ‘We got lots of faith here. Not much else, it’s true, but that we got. It doesn’t take up much space, the Company and the government can’t take it away from us, and every man watches over his own personal store of the stuff. It’s not only useful in a place like this, it’s damn necessary. Otherwise you despair and in despairing you lose your soul. The government can take away your freedom but not your soul.
    ‘On Earth, in a place like this, it would be different. But this ain’t Earth. It ain’t even the Sol system. Out here people react differently. Free people and prisoners alike. We’re less than free but more than dead. One of the things that keeps us that way is our faith. We have lots, Lieutenant. Enough even for you.?’
    ‘I got the feeling that women weren’t allowed in your faith.’
    ‘Why? Because we’re all men here? That’s a consequence of our population, not our philosophy. If women were sent they’d be invited in. Incarceration doesn’t discriminate as to gender.
    Reason there ain’t no women in the faith is that we never had any sent here. But we tolerate anyone. Not much reason to exclude somebody when they’re already excluded from everything else by the simple fact of being sent here. We even tolerate the intolerable.’ His smile widened.
    ‘Thank you,’ she replied dryly.
    He noted her tone. ‘Hey, that’s just a statement of principle.
    Nothing personal. We got a good place here to wait. Up to now, no temptation.’
    She leaned back in the chair. ‘I guess if you can take this place for longer than a year without going crazy, you can take anybody.’
    Dillon was eating again, enjoying the meal. ‘Fiorina’s as good a place to wait as any other. No surprises. More freedom of movement than you’d have on an inhabited world. Andrews doesn’t worry about us going too far from the installation because there’s no place to go. It’s hard out there. Not much to eat, rotten weather. No company. We’re all long-termers here, though not everyone’s a lifer. Everyone knows everyone else, what they’re like, who can be depended on and who needs a little extra help to make it.’ He chewed and swallowed.
    ‘There’s worse places to serve out your time. I ain’t been there, but I’ve heard of ‘em. All things considered, Fiorina suits me just fine. No temptation here.’

    Ripley gave him a sideways look. ‘What exactly are you waiting for?’
    The big man didn’t miss a beat. Or a forkful. ‘We are waiting,’ he told her in all seriousness, ‘for God to return and raise his servants to redemption.’
    She frowned. ‘I think you’re in for a long wait.’

V

    Later Clemens showed her the assembly hall, pointing out inconsequential he thought she might find of interest.
    Eventually they sat, alone in the spacious room. Prisoner Martin quietly swept up nearby.
    ‘How much of the story of this place do you know?’
    ‘What you’ve told me. What Andrews said. A little that I heard from some of the prisoners.’
    ‘Yeah, I saw you