This world was found by humans nearly seventy-five years ago; the Ealan had a colony there but the Colonial Defense Forces corrected that. Then the Ealan, shall we say, checked the math on that equation and it was another couple of years before it was all sorted out. When it was, the Colonial Union opened the world to colonists from Earth, mostly from India. They arrived in waves; the first one after the planet was secured from the Ealan, and the second shortly after the Subcontinental War on Earth, when the Occupation-backed probationary government offered the most notable supporters of the Chowdhury regime the choice of colonization or imprisonment. Most went into exile, taking their families with them. These people didn’t so much dream of the stars as had them forced upon them.
Given the people who live on the planet, you would think it would have a name that reflects their heritage. You would be wrong. The planet is called Huckleberry, named no doubt by some Twain-loving apparatchik of the Colonial Union. Huckleberry’s large moon is Sawyer; the small one is Becky. Its three major continents are Samuel, Langhorne and Clemens; from Clemens there is a long, curling string of volcanic islands known as the Livy Archipelago, set in the Calaveras Ocean. Most of the prominent features were dubbed in various aspects Twainania before the first settlers arrived; they seem to have accepted this with good grace.
Stand on this planet with me now. Look up in the sky, in the direction of the constellation Lotus. In it there is a star, yellow like the one this planet circles, around which I was born, two other lives ago. From here it is so far away as to be invisible to the eye, which is often how I feel about the life I lived there.
My name is John Perry. I am eighty-eight years old. I have lived on this planet for nearly eight years now. It is my home, which I share with my wife and my adopted daughter. Welcome to Huckleberry. In this story, it’s the next world I leave behind. But not the final one.
The story of how I left Huckleberry begins—as do all worthy stories—with a goat.
Savitri Guntupalli, my assistant, didn’t even look up from her book as I came back from lunch. “There’s a goat in your office,” she said.
“Hmmmm,” I said. “I thought we’d sprayed for those.”
This got an upward glance, which counted as a victory as these things go. “It brought the Chengelpet brothers with it,” she said.
“Crap,” I said. The last pair of brothers who fought as much as the Chengelpet brothers were named Cain and Abel, and at least one of them finally took some direct action. “I thought I told you not to let those two in my office when I wasn’t around.”
“You said no such thing,” Savitri said.
“Let’s make it a standing order,” I said.
“And even if you had,” Savitri continued, setting down her book, “this assumes that either Chengelpet would listen to me, which neither would. Aftab stomped through first with the goat and Nissim followed right after. Neither of them so much as looked in my direction.”
“I don’t want to have to deal with the Chengelpets,” I said. “I just ate.”
Savitri reached over to the side of the desk, grabbed her wastebasket and placed it on top of her desk. “By all means, vomit first,” she said.
I had met Savitri several years before while I was touring the colonies as a representative of the Colonial Defense Forces, talking it up to the various colonies I was sent to. At the stop in the village of New Goa in the Huckleberry colony, Savitri stood up and called me a tool of the imperial and totalitarian regime of the Colonial Union. I liked her immediately. When I mustered out of the CDF, I decided to settle in New Goa. I was offered the position of village ombudsman, which I took, and was surprised on the first day of work to find Savitri there, telling me that she was going to be my assistant whether I liked it or not.
“Remind me again why you took this job,” I said to Savitri, over the wastebasket.
“Sheer perversity,” Savitri said. “Are you going to vomit or not?”
“I think I’ll keep it in,” I said. She grabbed the wastebasket and set it in its former position, and then picked up her book to resume reading.
I had an idea. “Hey, Savitri,” I said. “Want my job?”
“Sure,” she said, opening her book. “I’ll start right after you finish with the Chengelpets.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Savitri grunted. She had returned to her literary adventures. I steeled myself and walked through the door of my office.
The goat in the middle of the floor was cute. The Chengelpets, sitting in the chairs in front of my desk, were less so.
“Aftab,” I said, nodding to the older brother. “Nissim,” I said, nodding to the younger. “And friend,” I said, nodding to the goat. I took a seat. “What can I do for you this afternoon?”
“You can give me permission to shoot my brother, Ombudsman Perry,” Nissim said.
“I’m not sure that’s in my job description,” I said. “And anyway, it seems a little drastic. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”
Nissim pointed to his brother. “This bastard has stolen my seed,” he said.
“Pardon?” I said.
“My seed,” Nissim said. “Ask him. He cannot deny it.”
I blinked and turned toward Aftab. “Stealing your brother’s seed, then, is it, Aftab?”