Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [48]
She wished she could take these Dissenters to twenty-fourth-century Earth. They could be whatever they wanted there, tell whatever stories they wished. But she still didn’t understand how they conducted their rebellion here on Rampart. How did they defend themselves against an overwhelming police state?
“Do you possess weapons?” she asked. “Do you have anything to fight with?”
“We use our stories for that,” said Gunabibi. “That’s why we name ourselves after myth-characters. We use the power of the stories. We don’t believe in using guns. A gun has never imparted knowledge to anyone.”
“But are you people the only rebels? Is this the whole Dissenter movement right here?”
“No, there are lots of little groups around. We have to stay small to stay unnoticed. There isn’t much structure to it. Odysseus is the leader of this group in matters of tactics and fighting, because he’s good at that, but we’re all equal. And we get new members once in a while. People who are sick of having their minds cleansed every week, sick of not being able to read and think what they want. I don’t know where you lived up there, but you must have seen people going crazy, all those murders and suicides.”
Gunabibi’s description of Rampart life made Troi remember the early experiments on Earth where people were deprived of REM sleep. The mind goes mad when it can’t spontaneously dream. Maybe depriving the mind of stories and imagination had the same result.
“Are you going to join us?” asked Rhiannon, who had sat down next to Troi. “It doesn’t matter what you were up there. Coyote was a plain old postal worker. Caliban was an oxygen salesman.”
Troi wondered how best to respond. As she stared past the fire she saw a small white object fall from the darkness above and land near the embers.
Suddenly Odysseus leapt into their midst out of nowhere, diving at the white object. “Grenade!” he shouted, as he threw it toward the entrance to the cave.
He then pushed Troi to the ground, among the rocks.
“The stones will help shield you,” he said.
She waited for an explosion but heard only a sweet little peeping sound. Instantaneously, she felt the effect of the grenade as an overwhelming wave of mental numbness, as though her brain had been immersed in novocaine. She stared around in a daze.
The effect seemed to wear off quickly, though Troi had no way of knowing how much time had passed. Her lucidity returned like a rush of air into a vacuum. Odysseus helped her stand.
“Thought-grenade,” he said. “The CS are here.”
“Save the books!” she heard someone shout.
Around them, the other Dissenters were getting up, recovering their wits. Odysseus led them toward an annex-cave, from which Troi could hear frantic fumbling movements and anxious whispers.
Odysseus and Coyote came out of the annex first, whispering to each other. They each had cloth bundles bound to their backs with cords. The rest of the Dissenters came out behind them, all bearing similar bundles on their backs.
Odysseus led everyone through the stairwell and into the great statuary cave. Troi followed them through the shadowy stone throng toward the door-boulder, where the strongman, Nikitushka Lomov, stood with a fearless, distant expression. Odysseus positioned the Dissenters along the wall near the door-stone, while Coyote disappeared into the galaxy of statues. Then Odysseus pulled Troi to stand beside him against the wall. They waited.
Troi could hear voices outside Alastor, from the other side of the door-stone. The door-stone began to shift heavily.
Troi quickly tried to run through her options. What if there were a confused skirmish and she had the opportunity of escaping either alone or with the Dissenters? Which would she choose? Wouldn’t being with the Dissenters increase her chances of being arrested, as they were always targets? On the other hand,