Circumstances be damned—I was in a great mood. After all, what could be better than returning to my home planet, fifteen years after my exile? Not a damn thing. In fact, I was so thrilled, I barely noticed how the added gravity was crushing my legs into my braces as I walked, or the blistering heat cooked my brain. No, if I were in any better mood, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

The road into Paradise was pocked with dry holes and ruts in the dirt. It meandered alongside a cornfield and a split rail fence, on which a series of children’s finger paintings had been hung by rusted nails. And all of it—the road, field, and the paintings—baked beneath the sun at twenty degrees above absolute misery.

A hundred yards down the dirt road, the welcoming committee came for me. A fat man in formal black robe waddled in my direction like a behemoth.

“Hello there,” he called and waved his hand in a wide arc.

I halted in the shade of a dogwood, barely tall enough to cast a shadow over the road. I didn’t wave back.

“Sorry. Sorry, I’m late,” the Reverend said, closing the gap between us. “I was… was just…”

His energy must have given out, forcing him to buckle at the waste and suck air. He appeared as if ready to keel over and die. Removing his hat, he mopped his sleeve over his bald head.

Just looking at him twisted my guts into knots. Fifteen years ago, the Reverend had been pivotal in my exile. The village elders had been indecisive. But the Reverend’s advice tipped the balance. I’d not seen him or this backwoods village since.

“Take your time, Reverend. I ain’t in no hurry,” I said and waited for him to catch his breath.

The Reverend looked up at me, squinting at the light flickering through the dogwood behind me. Slowly, his expression changed, fading from a cheery smile to confusion, and finally to something darker.

Yep, you recognize me, alright.

“You ain’t supposed to be here, Jonas,” he said, all his jovial courtesy having evaporated in the heat.

I found a surprising amount of satisfaction in his discomfort. And could have basked in it all day, had circumstances not been such a bitch.

“Hello to you too,” I said and hobbled down the road past him.

“Now you stop right there, boy. You ain’t got no business—”

“No, Reverend, that’s where you’re wrong,” I said, spinning back towards him quick enough to jostle him—not to mention twist my knee. “I actually do have business here.”

Fishing a paper from my pocket, I thrust it into his hands. The Reverend looked at it with wide uncertain eyes, as if the paper might be poisoned or hold the soul of the devil in it.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t have to,” I said as he read the notice.

Overhead, the sun blistered down and the clouds licked at the upper atmosphere like great galactic cows. It must have been a hundred and nine degrees. And the humidity was thick enough to drink straight from the air.

“Ain’t nobody going to like this,” he said. And by that, he meant the Elders. They presided over everything in Paradise—the farming efforts, education, exports, trade, and the likes.

“Y’all don’t have to like it. Just let me do my job and I’ll leave.”

A rogue breeze danced across the corn. It rattled the yellowed tassels and whisked passed me.

“How long?”

How long? Everybody asks the same question and my answer was always the same. ‘It depends on the investigation.’ If I can get to the root of the problem in a few hours and the problem is manageable, then I’d be gone in a day. But, if the investigation is complex, then I might request a team be placed here. Or, I might stay and see the investigation to its end myself. It all depended on the issue.

“In as little time as I see fit,” I said.

The Reverend appeared at a loss for words, his eyes wandering down to my leg braces—an archaic combination of leather and steel running from my calf to my shoes.

“Polio,” I said. “It’s the name of the infection I caught before y’all gave me the boot. Ain’t but a few people in the galaxy has it. Mostly because everywhere else vaccinate their children.”

I put as much bite as I could muster in those words, but it wasn’t any good. The Reverend wouldn’t have the slightest idea what a vaccination was. Neither would anyone else in Paradise, for that matter—just a bunch of dumb backwoods farmers too stupid to realize how much they don’t know.

“It’s going to take me at least a half an hour to walk into town, thanks to your piss-poor road. And as much as I’d enjoy your company, I think it best you go on ahead and let everyone know it me they’re waiting on. It might save us time on the introductions.”

The Reverend grumbled under his breath before storming off. What he didn’t realize was, however much he and the Elders didn’t want me here, I wanted to leave even more. Heck, I wouldn’t have come at all if I could have gotten out of it. But that would have involved divulging to the GA that I’d been exiled on charges of murder. That, of course, was a career limiting move.

*****

The end of the cornfield I came to the institution responsible for finger paintings. The school was an unremarkable single-room structure clad in rough-sawn planks and painted white.  At its front, a giant pine shed orange needles like the mange, killing the grass.

Brushing the needles from schoolhouse’s front steps, I sat and rubbed my legs. I’d been on planets with a heavier gravity than Bovis. But they didn’t have the heat and humidity like here. Ten minutes after landing my skiff, I’d saturated myself in my own sweat. This wasn’t a big deal until my braces leather straps started chaffing. Now, I could already see the beginnings of blisters.

I adjusted the braces slightly so they’d rub slightly lower. At least now I’d have two small blisters rather than one giant one on each leg. I reckoned success was going to be entirely subjective for the remainder of my stay.

I rose to leave but paused when I heard kids’ voices coming from behind the schoolhouse. Normally, I’d have carried on. I didn’t have kids or any inclination to chit-chat with them. But they were at the center of my investigation.

Checking my watch, I had fifteen minutes until I was due at the town hall. I shrugged.

I circled the schoolhouse in relative silence, the normal clanking sound of my braces were absorbed by the thick bed of pine needles. But when I rounded the rear of the school, I immediately ducked back so quickly my hat dropping onto the ground.

Just around the corner, two teens were buck-ass naked and going for gold. They were screwing standing-up. Neither of them had seen me—which was understandable, given their collective attention was so focused on pounding their bodies against one another.

I turned to leave but realized my hat was still on the ground, just around the corner.

Shit. This was going to get really awkward really fast if they saw me. But I couldn’t just leave my hat either. And by the sounds of them, they were on the sprint to the finish line. If I were going to get my hat, it had to be now.

After a moment’s debate as to the stupidity of what I was about to do, I knelt so that my knees were touching the ground. To say this hurt like a motherfucker was an understatement. My braces pulled at my calves hard enough to peel the flesh away like a banana skin, while the rods shoved the whole alignment in an angle knees aren’t supposed to bend. Swallowing down, what would have been an impressive string of slanderous vulgarities, I crawled forward.

Each shuffle forward brought new jolts of pain. And when I’d crawled the requisite three feet I, as silently as possible, crawled back again.

I looked up as I backed away, more to ensure the lovers hadn’t seen me than to indulge any voyeuristic desire. And what I saw was, primarily, the untanned backside of the boy standing with his back toward me. He was, perhaps, in his late teens or early twenties. He had a wicked tower of black curls spilling over his head and but-cheeks that puckered with each thrust. All I could see of the girl was her leg resting in the crook of the boy’s arm. By the girth of her leg, I reckoned she was much older than the boy.

Once I’d backed from their field of view, I used the side of the schoolhouse to lever myself back up. It took me a couple minutes before I trusted my legs to work again.

I brushed the pine needles from my clothes once I was back on the road, and headed for the town hall. And of all things, I found myself thinking of my ex-girlfriend, Mary. We’d had our own soiree, behind that same school, albeit fifteen years ago. Except we had the good sense to be quiet. She’d had a fascination with doing it standing up too. Call me old fashion, but I always preferred to lay down and do it the easy way. But they never stopped me from indulged Mary.

As I passed beneath the giant pine and left the schoolhouse, it was Mary I thought about. Would she still live in Paradise? Would I see her? Will she be married and have kids?

The answer to all of these, was almost certainly, yes.

I’d left before I was able to say goodbye to Mary. So I had no idea what she thought about the whole situation. I’d like to believe she would have defended me against the accusations. But at the same time, I knew she wouldn’t have. After all, Anne, the girl I’d been accused of murdering, had been her best friend.

I might have returned to Paradise to conduct an investigation. But I’d be naive to believe my past wasn’t going to prove a serious hindrance—not to mention strain my own reserves.   

Next Chapter: Elders and the RFA