Free Brute Orbits by George Zebrowski Page B

been that he had been so astonished at being caught selling information, since he believed it to be a statistical impossibility, that he had been driven temporarily insane, and hence was not responsible for the murders. Murder had never been his way. He blamed the police for driving him to it, and had conducted a countersuit even as his trial was beginning.
    The Rock to which he had been committed was some seven kilometers long and four wide, with a sealed engineering level. The radio station incident of the first Rock was not to be repeated. The inmates might dig to find the engineering cavities; but this would be long, fruitless work, since they lacked proper tools. Nine hypothetical tries out ten would get them nowhere, and might even be dangerous.
    John “Jimmy” Barr decided that he would rule the Rock, and women would be the currency with which he would pay his soldiers. The only other source of power might be in controlling access to the mess hall automats.
    He was a tall, dark-haired man with implanted teeth. A loose, lanky physique made it seem he was put together from clothes hangers. He had no inner life, except as a planner of actions that he had never executed. He rarely thought about himself except in practical terms, as if he were someone else; he always looked outward, absorbing what he needed to know, synergizing sequences and tracing out orderly steps to their conclusions. He had been caught only once, and it had been as if he had struck a mirror—glimpsing himself as it shattered.
    As Barr considered the battles that had already occurred, he saw that there was only one way to end the war—by seizing the mess hall automats and starving out the opposition. He had the force to do so—but then what?
    Suddenly he realized how limited the victory would be: access to the most desirable women, and the ability to order the inmates about. But what could they be ordered to do, except to go about their lives of eating and sleeping, maybe running errands, as they all waited for their time to run out?
    But what else was there to do? What could there ever be here? The impoverished landscape had almost nothing to offer except a monastic daily life. The ground itself was the prison wall, and could not be penetrated. All the richness of life on Earth was gone, leaving only a bare stage on which there was only one role—waiting for the play to end.
    He would not long be able to control his subjects if he failed to give them something to do. For the moment they were faced with the group that was not under his command, some two thousand people, gathered at the far end of the habitat. He had cut them off from the mess automats, but that would not last long. They sat on the hillsides below the sunplate, waiting to get hungry. When they attacked again, his force would attempt to kill them all—at least those who failed to come over to him after the defeat. All he had to do was wait until they became hungry, while his force ate in shifts.
    Barr smiled as he stood outside the dome of the first mess hall and considered the difference between his forces and those which had been driven away after the seizing of the women. His people, who included some of the women, were perfectly willing to kill with their hands, or with the makeshift utensils taken from the mess. This fact alone had thrown back the others. The fallen still lay where they had died, and all the dead were on the other side. He estimated a hundred or so.
    But as he gazed down the length of the hollow toward the dimming sunplate, he saw a line of figures moving toward the four mess hall domes and behind the line there was another and another.
    It was completely unexpected, but he knew at once what was about to happen. Coming so quickly after retreat, this sudden forward swarm was meant to catch his forces off guard. He knew that an all or nothing rush might overwhelm his tired men. But the opposing force was also tired, he told himself, and their thrust might easily