Escape from Altera Ch. 07

Escape from Altera

[Note: This is not a "sexy story". It is a mix of WW II "The Great Escape" and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Achipelago"... set in outer space)

Chapter 7: Something Odd

Our time at Labor Camp 94 wasn't all about starving and dying. We tried to have what little fun where we could. We played cards, indoors, and when the weather permitted, we played bocce outside.

I'll never understand the Slurian fascination with bocce, the game where you roll little balls so that they hit one another, but every Slurian I met seemed fixated by it. Naturally, since there were no bocce balls here, they played with snowballs. They could seem to do this in all kinds of weather, even a raging snowstorm, and so fascinated were they with the sport that just ignore the temperature around them.

And then there was my kind of fun, getting back at the Redcaps. I quickly found an ally in this with a prisoner named Korolev.

Korolev was a practical joker who, predictably, had been sent to Altera for making a string of impolitic jokes about the Slurian system. But that didn't get him down. Nothing seemed to depress Korolev. Whenever the guards were harsh with us, Korolev would say, "Hey, don't get angry. Just get even."

He would do provocative stunts that were enough to get him in serious trouble if he were ever discovered. His signature prank was to hit guards on the back of the head with snowballs. Such was his skill that he could curve-throw a snowball so that it would appear to come from a completely different direction. Many of us would just watch with fascination whenever we saw Korolev standing around in the prison yard. We knew he had a snowball in his hand, looking for a guard to turn his head away, just waiting for the opportunity.

Korolev was long suspected by the guards, but whenever they did a snap search, they never found any snowballs on him. I asked him once about it. "Where do you keep the snowball when you're searched?"

"In one place they never look," said Korolev, gesturing to his underwear. I doubt he was serious, but with Korolev, one never knew.

Another favorite tactic of Korolev was the avalanche trap. When no one was looking, Korolev would scamper onto the roof of an administrative building and pack up the snow over the door in such a way that it would come tumbling down on anyone who opened it. One time we got really lucky and the Commandant, Major Colonel Tromov himself, came out the door and was suddenly clobbered by several cubic feet of snow.

He made us stand at attention in the freezing outdoors for an entire day, but no one revealed the perpetrator. It was worth it just to see the expression of rage on his face as he marched back and forth in front of us and screamed.

Korolev always tried to test the limits, trying to hit officers with his snowballs even when they weren't looking directly away from him. But somehow he never got caught.

His special targets were our VIP's. Every so often senior Slurian officers would visit the camp, to inspect or do whatever it was that Slurians came to do. Korolev would consider it his special mission to "get" them.

The guards, wise to past snowball "assassination" attempts, started a new routine of forming a ring around a visitor as soon as he emerged from his groundcar. That way they would surely see anyone throwing a snowball at the visitor, in one case a full Redcap Colonel.

Korolev stood leaning against the barracks, clearly watching the visitor arriving, his hands in his pockets, whistling softly.

"How are you going to get that one, Kory?" a prisoner asked.

The circle of guards opened up so that the visiting colonel could make his way from the groundcar to the administrative building. The Colonel walked up the snow covered path and-

Suddenly he slipped as the ground collapsed underneath him and the Colonel sank into two feet of snow. The Colonel yelled in rage and actually hit one of his assistants who tried to get him out of the shallow pit.

Korolev gave a small smile.

"How did you manage that one?" I asked.

Korolev said nothing, but continued to smile.

Not all our visitors were Redcaps. Once in a very long while we were visited from officials from the Interstellar Human Rights Coalition. The IHRC inspected and visited the Slurian camps, just as they inspected League camps where Slurians were held prisoners. I was altogether surprised to see the IHRC; after all, this was not, as I kept being reminded, a prisoner of war camp, but a labor reform camp, largely for Slurian civilians.

The Slurians were probably allowing it for public relations. During the visit, brand new clothing was taken out of storage, blankets were issued, and we were given full meals of carrots and potatoes--real carrots and potatoes! After they left, of course, the clothes and blankets were confiscated, and we weren't fed for a full day afterwards because, after all, we had already "over eaten". Each prisoner had to sign for each article of clothing and blanket, and if that prisoner didn't return what was given, he was sent to a cold cell, which tended to encourage prompt returns.

And then there was the IHRC itself. Officially neutral, it was perceived to be pro-Slurian, always eager to point out "human rights abuses" on League worlds but largely silent about those in the Slurian sphere.

Still, this was a chance to get a message out about the conditions here.

"How?" Kerensky asked when I told him my intention. "Interviews are conducted with handpicked prisoners in front of all the guards. If you try to say something negative, you will be taken away to a cold cell."

A cold cell. I shivered merely at the thought. I didn't want to go back there.

"But we have to get the word out about conditions here."

"What will that accomplish?" said Kerensky cynically.

"It will embarrass the Slurians, and put pressure on them to improve conditions for us."

"Richman, you do not understand anything," said Kerensky cynically. "All you will do is get yourself sent to a cold cell, or worse."

"What about it?" I said, raising my voice to the others listening in the barracks. "Is everyone happy here with the way things are going? Are you all so beaten that you don't want to even try to protest?"

"We protested once," said a voice from one of the shelf beds. "Many of us were shot."

"All I'm talking about is getting the word out," I said.

"How?" Someone asked.

"We'll pass one of the visiting officials a note," I said.

"Who will do that?" Sasha asked.

I looked around. The barracks were silent. Then someone stepped out of the gloom. It was Korolev.

"Normally, I would just snowball them," said Korolev.

The officials from the IHRC nodded approvingly as they listened to a prisoner speak about the conditions at Camp 94. They had already seen the full meals we had, the good bedding and clothes, and the easy working conditions (obviously, they weren't shown the mines), and the fully stocked prison hospital.

A prisoner stood in a circle with several IHRC officials, surrounded by guards and other prisoners who knew well enough to keep silent.

"Yes, we are treated quite well here," said the prisoner dully.

There would be no retribution; this was no snitch or camp stooly, simply a prisoner who had been promised an extra bowl of kem for cooperating. Most of us would have done it.

The IHRC officials were all smiles. "And the guards, what do you think of them?"

The prisoner cast a worried glance at the armed guards around him. "Uh, they're very nice, we play cards together."

"Very good," said an IHRC official, rapidly scribbling notes into his datapad. This would be great material for the documentary he was putting together for transmission on the League network.

"And the food?"

"Very nice, the food is very nice," said the prisoner, also with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

"Good, good," said the IHRC official, not paying the slightest attention to the prisoner's highly suspect affect.

Suddenly a snowball came whizzing over the heads of the ring of prisoners around the interview circle and smacked a guard in the face. And then a second one came in, smacking another guard.

The guards yelled, brandishing their weapons, and moved to break out of the circle, to find the perpetrator. They pushed prisoners out of the way and they plowed their way out. In the confusion, I brushed by one of the IHRC officials and put something in his hand.

When order was restored (the guards, of course, didn't find the mystery attacker, but reinforced the "chat session" with another dozen guards outside the circle of prisoners), everyone could see an IHRC official reading a piece of wrinkled paper.

"What is this?" said the IHRC official.

I looked at the IHRC official in dismay. What was he doing?

"What?" said Sergeant Maxim "Iron Club" Korky, the torturer in chief of the guards.

"I have just received a piece of paper with the most astounding content," said the IHRC official. "It said that the prisoners are regularly worked to death. It says that the prisoners are tortured and killed, and malnourished-"

"Let me see that!" Iron Club growled.

The IHRC official actually handed over the paper!

Sergeant Iron Club scanned the paper, and rapidly turned red.

"Who gave you this propaganda?" Korky asked.

The IHRC official said, "Well, let me see, I think it was a fellow of medium height-"

I couldn't believe my ears. The IHRC official was actually cooperating with the Slurians! This was totally unexpected.

"-and kind of thin-"

"We need a more specific description!" Korky roared.

I slowly melted away into the crowd.

Retribution began immediately, even before the IHRC officials had left the prison gate. All the goodies that had been handed out were taken back. We were held in formation for hours, as they demanded answers, and a number of prisoners were beaten. But to their credit, none of the people in my barracks betrayed me.

They hadn't been able to identify the person who had passed on the note, but the investigation didn't stop there. Although the camp didn't have advanced forensic equipment, they had one big lead--the note was written in my handwriting!

The very next day every prisoner was given a datapad and a stylus and made to write the words "executed by guards" in their own handwriting four times over. Those were three of the words that I had written in the note, but I don't think the guards chose that phrase purely at random. The IHRC were already gone, and the guards could do as they liked.

The stylus was handed to me. Sergeant Iron Club himself stood over me, wielding his famous weapon.

"Write, Richman," he said.

Trying not to tremble, I wrote the words once, then twice, then three times, and then four times. The theory was that falsifying one's own handwriting was nearly impossible to do consistently if you had to write the same thing over and over. Iron Club immediately grabbed the datapad and compared the handwriting to the note.

I stood there, stoically looking forward.

Iron Club leaned forward and glared at me.

I took a deep breath-

And Iron Club moved on to the next victim.

Faking a different handwriting style is difficult. More difficult is writing in the same style consistently. However, I had some skill as a painter and a sketch artist, and standing in line for an hour, I actually had time to think about how I would write each letter. After I had written the first set of "executed by guards" I simply looked to my first example to replicate my second, third, and fourth example. Probably only a skilled artist could have done it, so I guess I was one.

Over time, I gradually got to know more of the people in my barracks, and could recognize them on sight. But one person I had trouble finding was a man named Lettle.

That was his whole name, just Lettle. I first inquired about him when I noticed the empty bunk/shelf in one corner of the barracks.

"Oh, that's Lettle's bed," one of the prisoners told me.

But I never saw anyone sleep there. I asked other prisoners, but they assured me that Lettle slept there. How could this be, if I had never seen this Lettle before?

Curious, I asked what this Lettle looked like.

"Short, brown hair," said Kerensky.

"Big, blonde, guy," said Sasha.

"He is a thin guy with a scar down his face," said Korolev. "Very noticeable, you can't miss it."

No one else had mentioned such a prominent scar. At first I thought Korolev was joking, but when I realized that everyone else was giving such disparate descriptions, I knew that something odd was going on here. How could one person look so different to different people?

I began to find out the answer that night as I lay down on my shelf and prepared to go to sleep. A man appeared in front of my shelf and said, "Hi! I hear you've been asking about me!"

It was a thin man with brown hair. I had never seen him before. He was smiling broadly. That in itself was odd. "Are you-"

"Call me Lettle!" said the man. "You're Idaaho Tuch, aren't you?"

"That's right," I said.

"I hear you're from the League. That sounds exciting! Can you tell me a little about it?" Lettle seemed so cheerful.

"What would you like to know?" I asked guardedly.

"Oh, almost anything," said Lettle. "Population, geography, culture, technology, history--where would you like to start?"

It was almost as if he were a researcher writing a book. Lettle didn't ask me any questions that Slurian intelligence wouldn't already know--for example, when I talked about August, he asked me how many continents it had, and what the population was. These were all publicly available facts.

The questions he asked me also seemed odd in another way too. They were all very broad. Unlike the other prisoners, he seemed less interested in individual stories about life on August. He seemed interested in a larger perspective, and seemed disappointed that I didn't have aggregate statistics available on industrial production and population growth.

I managed to break in at one point and ask him a question or two. Who was he? What was he doing here?

"I'm a prisoner, just like you!" Lettle grinned.

"I don't think so," I said. "I'm a League prisoner of war."

"Well, then I'm just like the others," Lettle grinned.

"You're not very forthcoming," I said.

I heard a noise behind him.

"Wow, got to go, talk later!" said Lettle. He stood up and disappeared in the gloom of the barracks.

I started to sit up to see where he had gone, but the poorly lit barracks didn't let me see very far.

Korolev came up to me. "I heard you talking. Who were you talking to?"

"Lettle," I said, looking around. I got up and went to Lettle's bunk. It was empty.

"Yes, he's quite a chatterbox," said Korolev. "He talked my ear off at dinner yesterday."

"Did he?" I asked. "That scar on his face--how ugly is it?"

"Oh, I was joking about the scar," said Korolev.

"You were?" I asked.

"Sure," he said.

"So he's just a thin guy with brown hair?" I asked.

"No, he's a hefty guy with blonde hair," said Korolev, looking puzzled.

"Are you being serious now?" I asked, scanning his face intently.

"Yes. Why?"

"Because either there's more than one Lettle, or something very strange is going on."

I considered the possibilities that night in bed. Maybe Lettle was a master of disguise. But why would he keep changing his appearance? It made no sense.

I interviewed some more of the prisoners over the next few days and I found out several puzzling facts. Lettle did indeed have a number of different appearances. People claimed to have seen him in the barracks, in the camp yard, at work, at meals, and other locations like on a march. But the one fact I found most interesting was that in no situation could I uncover had Lettle been seen by more than one person at one time.

"You've been asking a lot about me," said Lettle, grinning again as he popped out of the gloom by my bedside.

"Yes," I said. "I'm curious about you." I tensed up. Was Lettle going to try and kill me?

"You've shown more curiosity than the Slurian prisoners. Is curiosity more of a League trait?"

I relaxed. He was clearly still in research mode.

"Perhaps," I said. "For example, I find it curious that you always smile."

"Why shouldn't I smile? It's a friendly thing to do, and I find it puts people at ease," said Lettle.

"Yes, but someone constantly smiling in a labor camp looks odd. This isn't a happy place."

"Hm, I didn't think of that," said Lettle. And then, all of a sudden, he stopped smiling. "You're pretty sharp, Idaaho. Are most people in the League as smart as you?"

"Mostly not," I confessed. But I refused to be distracted. "Another interesting thing about you is that only one person has seen you at any given time."

"What does that mean?"

"It puzzled me at first," I said. "After all, in a crowded camp such as this, how could you only be seen by one person at a time? And then I realized there was a way you could do it."

"Yes?"

"If you weren't really there," I said. "If you were a telepathic projection in my mind."

"Gee, what an interesting idea," said Lettle, and he appeared to be rapidly taking notes. "Do Slurians commonly have the telepathic ability?"

"No," I said, "but perhaps some aliens do."

"Aliens? What do you know of aliens?"

"Not much," I said. "But I know of an alien who looks like a large rat and has special powers. If he exists, there might be others."

"What is this large rat called? Where can I find him?"

"I'll answer your questions if you answer mine," I said.

Lettle cocked his head, as if he were listening for something. "Ooops, talk later, gotta go!" And he was gone.

I didn't bother getting up to follow him in the gloom. I had a fair idea what was going on now.

"An alien, here?" said Kerensky. "Why?"

"To find out more about us," I said.

"Why would it come to a labor camp?" Kerensky asked.

"Maybe it just happened to stop here first. Or maybe it's sampling all aspects of Slurian society," I said.

"There's no such thing as aliens," Valonikov snorted.

"Wrong. We have one in the League. He's called a Capybara."

"A Capy- a what?"

"Think about it. Doesn't it seem odd to you that you all think that Lettle looks different?"

"We don't think that," said Mr. Chekov.

I had each of them give a description of Lettle. Each one of them said something different. They all looked surprised.

"How come we never noticed this before?" said Korolev.

I kept quiet, trying not to insult my bunkmates' intelligence.

"Maybe he's not an alien, maybe he's one of us with special powers," said Kerensky. "After all, Mr. Chekov can do unusual things. Perhaps another prisoner can too."

I shook my head. "You can tell by the questions this guy is asking. He's totally clueless about human society. He smiles all the time."

"Now that you mention it, I did think that was odd," said Kerensky, as if noticing that for the first time.

"So what do we do?" said Korolev.

"I don't think he means us any harm," I said. "But we should try to pump him for information."

"Why?"

"Maybe he can help us escape," I said.

Escape!

"How?"

"If he's an alien, maybe he has a ship," I said. "The two often come together."

"How could he land a ship here, undetected?"

"He's an alien," I sighed. "It's possible that his technology might be even more advanced than the Slurian Union's."

The others chewed on this for a while. Could that really be possible?

Lettle appeared again several times over the next few days, but not to me, not until several days had passed.

"Well, you've really ruined it for me," said Lettle, appearing next to me as I leaned outside the barracks. Other prisoners walked by without noticing him.