Outcasts Read Free Page A

so the slopes
sometimes collapsed in mudslides.
    At the end of the day of Jason’s arrival, the siren
went off and Kylis drove the ’dozer to the old end of the Pit and into
the recharging stall. Gryf was waiting for her, and a big fair man was with
him, sitting slumped on the ground with his head between his knees and his
hands limp on the ground. Kylis hardly noticed him. She took Gryf’s hand,
to walk with him back to the shelters, but he quietly stopped her and helped
the other man to his feet. The new prisoner’s expression was blank with
exhaustion; in the dawn light he looked deathly pale. Hardly anyone on Redsun
was as fair as he, even in the north. Kylis supposed he was from off-world, but
he did not have the shoulder tattoo that would have made her trust him
instantly. But Gryf was half-carrying the big clumsy man, so she supported him
on the other side. Together she and Gryf got him to their shelter. He neither
ate nor drank nor even spoke, but collapsed on the hard lumpy platform and fell
asleep. Gryf watched him with a troubled expression.
    “Who is that?” Kylis did not bother to hide the
note of contempt in her voice.
    Gryf told her the man’s name, which was long and
complicated and contained a lot of double vowels. She never remembered it all,
even now. “He says to call him Jason.”
    “Did you know him before?” She was willing to
help Gryf save an old friend, though she did not quite see how they would do
it. In one day he had spent himself completely.
    “No,” Gryf said. “But I read his work. I
never thought I’d get to meet him.”
    The undisguised awe in Gryf’s voice hurt Kylis, not so
much because she was jealous as because it reminded her how limited her own
skills were. The admiration in the faces of drunks and children in spaceport
bazaars, which Kylis had experienced, was nothing compared to Gryf’s
feeling for the accomplishments of this man.
    “Is he in here for writing a book?”
    “No, thank gods — they don’t know who he
is. They think he’s a transient. He travels under his personal name
instead of his family name. They are making him work for his passage home.”
    “How long?”
    “Six sets.”
    “Oh, Gryf.”
    “He must live and be released.”
    “If he’s important, why hasn’t anybody
ransomed him?”
    “His family doesn’t know where he is. They would
have to be contacted in secret. If the government finds out who he is, they
will never let him go. His books are smuggled in.”
    Kylis shook her head.
    “He affected my life, Kylis. He helped me understand
the idea of freedom. And personal responsibility. The things you have known all
your life from your own experience.”
    “You mean you wouldn’t be here except for him.”
    “I never thought of it that way, but you are right.”
    “Look at him, Gryf. This place will grind him up.”
    Gryf stared somberly at Jason, who slept so heavily he
hardly seemed to breathe. “He should not be here. He’s a person who
should not be hurt.”
    “We should?”
    “He’s different.”
    Kylis did not say Jason would be hurt at Screwtop. Gryf knew
that well enough.
    Jason had been hurt, and he had changed. What Gryf had
responded to in his work was a pure idealism and innocence that could not exist
in captivity. Kylis had been afraid Jason would fight the prison by arming
himself with its qualities; she was afraid of what that would do to Gryf. But
Jason had survived by growing more mature, by retaining his humor, not by
becoming brutal. Kylis had never read a word he had written, but the longer she
knew him, the more she liked and admired him.
    Now she left him sleeping among the ferns. She had slept as
much as she wanted to for the moment. She knew from experience that she had to
time her sleeping carefully on the day off. In the timeless environment of
space, where she had spent most of her life, Kylis’ natural circadian
rhythm was about twenty-three hours. A standard day of twenty-four did not
bother her, but