Jargos

by Resha Caner

Chapter 2, part 1
appears in this issue.

Chapter 2: I Look to the Future

part 2 of 2

The loneliness was terrible, beyond anything Jargos had ever anticipated. Living within the Maartos his entire life, he had not given it any more consideration than the air he breathed or the water he drank. It was simply there. Now it was gone.

What would become of his men? The silence cried out in agony. He yearned to know their fate. It did not matter what they planned to do to him. He was ready. The worst torture was not knowing what had become of his men.

Out of the darkness a voice spoke into his loneliness. “I think about what the future may become.”

It was a human voice, which did nothing to sate his thirst. The Maartos was gone. The humans had transported him an awful, mind-wrenching distance. It made him sick several times when the flying machines ripped him from the surface of Calmeron and carried him beyond the clouds. To where? Even Calmeron was a strange concept to Jargos. It was a human word; something they used to distinguish where he lived below the clouds from where they lived above the clouds. In Graseq he would have called these Venqorum and Vengrasum, but he had a sense these words were the same as the stories — fictional, inaccurate. He felt like a cold, tired, frightened child.

When he stepped off the machine on what the humans called their planet, what they called Oced, the darkness was terrifying. Darkness was everywhere, and they called it night. Then, as they drove him to his prison, the darkness gave way to a blinding light they called day.

Jargos simply could not process what was happening to him. He had lived his life under the ebb and flow of the light given from the red clouds. He had lived his life surrounded by the Maartos. The extremes in which humans lived were a terror he could not put into words. It was terror without description.

He thought of the first time the Thane had taken him hunting. It was soon after he had felled the worm from the sky, and the Thane told Jargos he would make him a knight. He had taken Jargos hunting as if to test his own sanity at sponsoring the illiterate son of a potter — these troublesome people of the Gos clan with their religious fervor.

Jargos was determined not to disappoint the Thane, and he felled the deer as quickly as he had felled the worm — without hesitation or fear. But then he had made the mistake of looking into the eyes. The deer’s eyes held such bewilderment — not pain, but something worse — an incapacity to grasp what had occurred — a fear of losing more than the body — a fear of losing the soul.

The Thane watched him to see what he would do. Jargos told himself the deer had no soul, and on the outside he calmly set about dressing the animal. But now, here he was. It was his turn to be the animal.

“I look to what will be,” the voice refused to be ignored. “That is how I survive.”

“I look to the wisdom of the past to explain what the future should be,” Jargos replied.

“Ah!” the voice jumped with delight. “A grosset! I’ve always wanted to meet a grosset!”

Jargos heard a frantic scuffling of skin against stone coming toward him, and a ragged form emerged from the darkness. He tried to back up, but a wall pressed against his shoulder blades. The cold mustiness seeped through the coarse shirt they had given him after stripping his armor.

The frantic man stopped at the bars delineating his cell, and extended his hand between them. Jargos judged the distance separating their cells to be too much. He couldn’t reach to shake the hand, and didn’t want to.

“My name is Michael.”

Jargos remained silent. It did nothing to deter his fellow prisoner.

“Come, brother. I may be a human, but I’m also Wandi.” Michael waited, but Jargos still refused a response. “My skin is black,” Michael tried to add to the explanation. “The whites, they did to my people what they’re doing to your people. They destroyed our lives, and then they put me in jail for stealing some bread to eat. It looks as if we’ll be traveling to Nemesis together.”

“You talk too much.”

“I do,” Michael nodded. “My mother always told me I should have been a preacher. Somehow I think my latest venture may have permanently ruined my chances.”

“A preacher?” The comment caught Jargos’ attention. It had never occurred to him a human might be pious.

“Yes, yes,” Michael chattered. “A gift for speech is the first requirement for a preacher, and that I have. The second requirement is to place some sense behind the words, and there I am lacking. But I don’t suppose God cares much when it’s just He and I.

“So, you know nothing of the Wandi I take it? I can fill the gaps in your knowledge. It will help me to fill the time. I guess the best place to start is the beginning.”

“No,” Jargos interrupted. He cleared his throat and made his first attempt at cordiality. “I appreciate your attempt to be friendly, but I’d rather be alone.”

“Really?” Michael took a step back from the bars of his cell, and his form melted from grayish uncertainty to dark nothingness. “I wouldn’t have thought it of a grosset.”

“Graseq,” Jargos hissed.

“Pardon my pronunciation. I do admire your command of my language, and regret I can’t offer you the same. School was never a strength of mine.”

“It seems few things are,” Jargos jabbed back.

Michael’s laughter resonated back and forth between their cells. “A quick wit, you are.”

“I don’t understand how you find any reason for happiness.”

“Everyone finds happiness eventually. The path for the bitter ones is to go insane. I can’t seem to recall whether my path was direct or not. No matter.”

“This is pointless.” Jargos stepped away from the wall at the back of his cell and began to pace. He reached out and pushed against one wall, then turned, dropped into a deep knee bend, and finally rose into a stretch that put his fingertips on the ceiling.

“Exercise is good. Don’t let your body atrophy in a place like this. Mine,” Jargos heard a hand slapping on soft flesh, “well, I’ve seen too many scorched summers to bother with fine tuning my muscle. That isn’t what I was going to say. I had a point. Silly me, I seem to have lost it. Oh, yes, my point was, you are wrong. This isn’t pointless.” Michael’s speech broke for a moment. “My, that was a bit confused, wasn’t it?

Jargos heard the sound of shuffling feet, and leaned forward to make out what Michael was doing. The meager light concentrated on a small object flying between their cells. Jargos started, and drew back as it clattered against the bars and dropped to the floor.

“Pick it up,” Michael said. “Take a look at it. What I meant to say is that, addled as I am, I have learned a few things in life, and one of them applies to the Wandi. You see, my dear mother, a child of God though she may have been, was a bit confused in places. Maybe that’s where I get it from. Anyway, she seemed to think God cared about Wandi. He cares about the people who live there, to be sure, but I really doubt he cares about Wandi. It’s just a place. Why we have let a place define who we are is beyond me.”

“You are right,” Jargos stated.

“Really?”

“Yes, it was good you didn’t become a preacher.” Michael started laughing, and he didn’t stop. The percussion of his breathy exuberance beat upon the walls of their prison until Jargos wondered if they would miraculously fall. For the first time he stepped forward to grasp the bars of his own cell. Looking down at the floor, he saw that Michael had thrown some sort of necklace toward him. “Tell me about Nemesis.”

* * *

Scorching, burning, searing heat. No matter what synonym Jargos’ mind produced, it could not express the agony his body experienced. With one brief glimpse he saw the entirety of Nemesis: sand and rocks. Sand stretched away to the horizon. Pinnacles of rock broke the surface at random points, looking like daggers which had been thrust in to kill the moon. The land sloped downward from the guard station where he stood, dropping into a distant crater. Several kilometers in the distance the crater floor leveled off and met an abrupt face of rock, which slanted sharply inwards to make an overhang. An army could have hidden in the shadows of the cliff undetected.

“God help me,” he muttered.

Next to him stood a line of Wandi criminals who would be released with him into the wastes of the prison moon. There, they would mine the moon’s precious ore to buy their survival.

On the other side of the fence, waiting at the gate, stood a ragged collection of the desert’s current inhabitants. They paced quietly, waiting for the new occupants to cross into their territory. The guards carefully manipulated a series of gates to move the new prisoners through without allowing old prisoners back inside the compound.

After the guards had left, one of the Wandi disengaged from the group. He was humorously short, yet incredibly wide, giving him the appearance of a block of onyx. The new prisoners nervously lined up, and the wedge of a man slowly sauntered down the row, scrutinizing them. On his second trip back, he tapped each one, stating a single word, “Miner. Cook. Hunter.”

Jargos stood apart, watching the display. He had scanned the defenses of the guard station and the wastes of the desert. He had made up his mind to strike off alone; to find his fate on the other side of the moon. He debated whether he should barter some labor for supplies, or place himself in the hands of God.

The Wandi leader finished, and started walking toward the cliff. Then he paused, and without turning, gestured over his shoulder. “Kill the grosset.”

“No!” Michael screamed. With amazing speed he launched himself toward Jargos.

Jargos dove to his left as one of the Wandi launched a spear. Michael continued to race across the sand, using his body as a shield. The spear struck him in the back, penetrating his body, and pinning him to the ground as he pitched forward.

Jargos rolled back to his feet, then hesitated as he watched blood soak into the sand, turning black as the heat scorched it. Aurelon, he thought. He shook himself to dismiss such a ludicrous thought. The whole Wandi tribe seemed frozen by the miscalculated strike of the spear.

The Graseq slowly moved forward, and knelt to touch Michael’s shoulder. The leader howled. Racing to one of his men, he seized a second spear, then churned the sand beneath his feet, propelling his body toward Jargos with the spear brandished in front. The Graseq dropped back to a defensive stance, still crouching.

“No.” Michael lifted his head from the sand. The leader froze. Michael slowly elevated a hand, and pointed to Jargos’ chest. “Look.”

Jargos himself looked down and slowly raised the medallion hanging about his neck. He didn’t remember ever lifting it from the floor of the prison cell.

“Kwashake,” the whole group muttered in unison.

Michael labored heavily to speak. “Jargos, do not think your journey is over.” And then his life passed from the world.

To be continued...