Liberty's Heirs

Chapter 8

"When was the last time you spoke to an Apprentice Advocate?"  The old man addressed Blion in the language of the Ancients, English.

"Nee ver." Blion responded in halting English without slowing down the exercise.  Left foot forward, jab, guard.  Right foot forward, jab, guard.  His eyes had adjusted to the pre-dawn moonlight and being summer, it wasn't cold.

"Exactly.  They are not allowed to speak about what they are doing.  Your persistence is usually a great virtue but not on this subject.  You may disclose that you are doing choreography but you are not to tell them anything else about your time with me.  Do not talk to your friends.  Do not talk to your family.  No one.  Or the punishment will be more severe than you imagine, not just for you, for them as well.  Do you understand?"

"Yes, Advocate."  Blion wanted to roll his eyes but restrained himself from the expression remembering how he had been punished before for similar disrespectful gestures.  Swat!  His effort had been insufficient.  Mac Spencer's rod whacked his arm down, doling out a bruise, punishment for some involuntary facial movement that would have been invisible to anyone but the infinitely perceptive old man.

"You restrained the eye roll well enough but you missed a drum beat.  Now get back your rhythm.  For each beat you miss, you will receive another."  Mac Spencer was as impassive as his robotic assistant.  Once his arm returned to its position folded at his chest, he stood completely still.  Only his long white beard moved slightly as it was tugged by the otherwise imperceptible breeze.  The same small Attendant that had threatened him with execution three months ago stood expressionlessly watching as it slowly beat the ancient drum hanging around its neck.  The old man seemed an eccentric troglodyte in a myriad of ways, the drum was a minor one.  The drum beats were intended to mark time between each movement of Blion's long wooden staff.

The traditional exercises continued for another half hour until the old man decreed that it was time for breakfast.  Two hours before, Mac Spencer had snuck right into the room where Blion had been sleeping and played a loud blast on a  bugle.  He had remarkable lung capacity for being so aged.  Normally, a person could adapt to being awakened each morning at the same time.  It seemed to Blion that Mac Spencer always managed to wake him up while he was getting the best sleep of the night.  Unbeknownst to the teenager, Mac Spencer had used the headband the youth wore to monitor his sleep.  He intentionally timed his visit to coincide with his delta wave activity, interrupting REM sleep and causing Blion to be in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation.  "It's time to get up now, lazy bones," he would announce. The words came out of a smiling face, "You've got a busy day ahead of you."

Finally now the light of dawn was filling the sky with orange.  Wednesdays always did feel a bit orange to Blion, he knew intellectually it was just a bit of synesthesia but it always felt so objective, as if the effect was real and everyone else would certainly percieve it the same way.  As usual, hours of staff exercises, followed by breakfast, then a long run through the canyon.  Mac Spencer would watch him from out the door of his vacikarce flying low and slow overhead, yelling "Faster! Run faster!"  After that he was forced to do disgusting and demeaning house keeping tasks that should have been the work of robots.  Cleaning a toilet that flushed with water.  Imagine the the horror!  The day would only end late at night after many more hours of tedious mathematical calculations and lessons about history and the English language.

Blion looked down at his bowl full of the green chunks swimming in mucilaginous slime.  "Cactus paddles again?!" He said bitterly as he sat down on a wooden chair at a wooden table.  He was in the little house in the canyon that had been his home for the last couple of months.  Not a single normal meal in all that time.  Yesterday, breakfast had been porridge made of sour tasting teff grain.  The previous day had been kelp.  He didn't know how he could possibly choke down a bite of it, let alone how he could endure another day of the crazy old tyrant.