Free Weird Space 2: Satan's Reach by Eric Brown Page B

know much more. They’re a liability, and rather than just capture them, have them retrained or jailed... it’s quicker just to summarily execute the rogues. I knew this when I got out, and it didn’t give me a second’s hesitation.”
    Zeela opened her mouth with sudden understanding. “Ah... now I get it. The Expansion sent a killer. He found you, right – and you killed him?”
    He gripped the wheel. “ Her ,” he said.
    “Oh.”
    The silence stretched. “Like I said,” he went on, “it was a case of kill or be killed. Me or her. I didn’t like what I did back then. I’m not proud of it... But there was no other way. She came after me, made a mistake, and I took advantage of her slip and...” He shrugged. “It’s strange, but for months, maybe even years afterwards, a part of me even wished she’d succeeded and killed me. I know, I don’t even understand it myself.”
    “Life is mysterious,” Zeela said. “I’m sorry. That’s a platitude, but it’s something that my parents said all the time. They were pacifists, and they brought me up to be the same.”
    He stared at her. He considered her questions about his past, the killing; it didn’t seem mere prurient curiosity on her part now, but genuinely interested enquiry from someone to whom killing was anathema.
    “That’s something I’ve never really understood,” he said. “Pacifism. It seems to me the idealism of people who have never faced the dilemma of having to fight for their lives.”
    She regarded him and smiled, it seemed, sadly. “But that’s just it, Den. My parents did face that dilemma, and they held by their creed. It happened long after they left Kallasta and settled on Ajanta. They had very little money and certainly not the means to leave the planet, once they found out how things worked with the Ajantans.”
    “What happened?”
    “They became addicted to dhoor. Every human does, given time. The Ajantans supply the drug, and it has a magical effect on humans, gives us a euphoric, perpetual high for many years. My father worked as a carpenter, and a third of his earnings went to paying for his and my mother’s, and then my own, addiction.”
    He said, “You? But...”
    “I took my last dose of dhoor five days ago. I should be suffering the effects of withdrawal pretty soon, now. It can kill people, if they’re not strong.” She stared at him. “But I am strong, Den. I’ll survive.”
    He nodded, but said nothing.
    Zeela went on, “Anyway, my parents... When I became addicted – I was only around ten standard years old at the time – my father decided that we had to leave Ajanta, irrespective of how dangerous that might be for him and my mother. They were not healthy people, and further weakened by their addiction. They had no way of affording passage from the planet, so they approached someone, I don’t know who exactly, a criminal... someone who might help them. This crook made my father an offer; he would finance their passage off-planet if my father would do something for him.”
    “Ah,” Harper said.
    “The crook wanted a business associate killed, without being incriminated himself. The man he wanted dead was a notorious criminal, a despicable human being the world would be well rid of... But my father refused. He clung to his pacifist ideals, even if by doing so he was consigning himself, his wife and his daughter, to eventual death.”
    Harper nodded. “That must have taken a lot of... courage,” he said at last.
    Zeela sighed. “I’m just glad that I never had to face that dilemma. You know, in the Ajantan lair... if I had not been with you, then I doubt whether I could have overturned a lifetime’s indoctrination and fought for my life.” She laughed. “‘Life is mysterious’,” she said. “Anyway, that’s one reason I want to go back to Kallasta. My parents never told me why they left the planet. I recall it as a paradise. I was very young at the time, and no doubt my parents shielded me