The Captive House

By Lee Willard

The first adventurous incident in Desa's life that she could relate in detail took place in March of 2023 on Earth. She was 161 Earth years old at the time, but had still never met a person who had experienced old age. She grew up in a land that was settled by people who never knew age. At this time in her life, she was still considered something of a youngster, and she might have still felt she had something to prove.

She is just returning from her first experience with distant travel and another culture. She had not known how being in a different culture could convert a person to that culture. She had been away for a decade and a half, all the way to the distant Kassikan, researching a text. She was very glad to be back in her own land again, most of all she was glad to return at last to her grand and beloved home.

This novella examines what one must do to overcome a theft when there is no government, no courts, no means to force the thief to give her house back. This is also the first time Desa really experienced a mob and what a mob could do. It was also her first experience with the type of person who would raise and wield a mob, a demagogue. This was written back in the late 90’s - early 00’s, and first published in 2011, all long before the events of Jan 6, 2021, but the dynamic is the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Willard
• Release date: Jul 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005200336

Lee Willard

I am a retired embedded systems engineer and sci-fi hobbyist from Hartford. Most of my stories concern Kassidor, 'The planet the hippies came from' which I have used to examine subjects like: What would it take to make the hippy lifestyle real? How would extended lifespans affect society? What could happen if we outlive our memories? How can murder be committed when violence is impossible?I have recently discovered that someone new to science fiction should start their exploration of Kassidor with the Second Expedition trilogy. To the mainstream fiction reader the alien names of people, places and things can be confusing. This series has a little more explanation of the differences between Kassidor and Earth. In all of the Kassidor stories you will notice the people do not act like ordinary humans but like flower children from the 60's. It is not until Zhlindu that the actual modifications made to human nature to make them act that way are spelled out. To aide that understanding I've made The Second Expedition free.I am not a fan of violence and dystopia. I believe that sci-fi does not just predict the future, but helps create the future because we sci-fi writers show our readers what the future will be and the readers go out and create it. I believe that the current fad of constant dystopia and mega-violence in sci-fi today is helping to create that world, and I mention that often in reviews and comments on the books I read. I also believe that the characters in those stories who are completely free of any affection are at least as unnatural as the modified humans of Kassidor.In my reviews, * = couldn't finish it. ** = Don't bother with it. *** = good story worth reading. **** = great and memorable story. ***** = Worth a Hugo.

Book preview

1. A Sailor Comes Home

The ship was large, broad and deep, showing that it came from the deep water of the Dorcaikin Toz, the great sea of the Highland Elves, three thousand miles upstream and two and a half miles higher in altitude. It had cabins below decks and no nests on the masts. It was decorated in the garish colors and lines of the rollicking sailors of the Daggareth Arm and not the earth tones and subtle curves of the ships of this area. Its twin hulls towered over the low and graceful ships native to these slow river and canal waters and attracted some attention because few ships of the lake make it all the way down to the urban centers of Dos in any one year.

At the rail a girl stood looking at the passing countryside. She was a large and sturdy girl, though her style didn't look it. Her long and thick, wavy, reddish hair and her general size spoke of the Troll in her ancestry. A small straight nose, sharp little chin and ears hidden under her hair hinted of the Elf. She was dressed in the garb of a seafarer from the north, a bright royal-blue shirt without buttons, fastened only by a belt about her firm waist. Her figure was just full enough to stay within while she stood there, but at times when she moved her cute points would be revealed. Below the waist she wore short shorts that were tight on these cute curves. All in all she was an attractive girl but not unusually so.

The country she was passing thru was familiar to her after all these years. Her journey home from Kassidor Yakhan had seemed like a lifetime of sailing. There were two years on the southern half of the Dorcaikin Toz where the water is tall and the ride is rough. There was another year and a half on various canals and rivers. The banks of this one, the Isanjaia, had been a monotony for the past year. It was still lined with the small farms that filled most of the basin, most of the Highlands also where the land permitted. The plots were very small now. Near a small city there are plots this small for a mile or two, then the city, then another mile or two of small plots like this, then what people in this basin call farms.

But now the plots had been this small for a week. Clumps of buildings that would have been called a city farther upstream were within sight of each other. The imposing cluster of much larger towers in the grey distance ahead was Normain Dru, the northwestern most of the twenty four major urban centers that are collectively called Dos. She would finally leave this ship there and journey the remaining distance on smaller vessels.

It was hard leaving the ship. She had tended sail, tugged lockwinches and hefted rollerracks so long she felt like an old-time sailor. She had come to know Fomeer, the captain and owner of this vessel, personally; and had advanced to a position of some responsibility since they left the Yakhan. She had grown strong with the exercise and brown with the sun of open water in the Highlands.

After unloading the cargo there was a long and way-too-tearful good-by in a small yaag den under the Normain Dru waterfront. As Noonsleep approached most of the crew went elsewhere in search of friendly adventure, leaving only Desa and Fomeer.

It's down to just us now, he sighed. I wish I could see you to your door, but I've been in this town before, it is like all the cities around the Yakhan combined, but without the Yakhan itself. Your home could be more than a few steps from here.

It'll take all of tomorrow getting there, she answered. I live deep in the University district near Lake Knoye if that means anything to you.

No doubt I have a chart that shows it, but right now it means nothing. If it's that long maybe you should wait til after Noonsleep. I'd be delighted to take it with you, my treat because of a job well done and a fine woman doing it.

She thought for only a few seconds. They hadn't been desperate lovers during the voyage, but they had joined bodies in pleasure occasionally. She had never spent a whole sleep in his cabin but the thought wasn't unpleasant. He was small and wiry, barely her own height and weight but hard as wood. His beard was trimmed to a tiny line and his skin already glistened with the heat of Noon.

They didn't go back to the ship but instead headed away from the waterfront and down the hill she would have to climb to get home. The yaag had given them enough interest in food to have a small feast for supper, then they took some fairly plush accommodations a few blocks out of the cargo area.

They had fun, but not so much fun that she didn't get any rest. When her eyes opened again she saw Fomeer was already awake and just watching her. I wish I'd noticed you more as a woman and less as a deckhand before this.

What's so different about this Noonsleep?

Maybe knowing it's too late to get to know you better. Maybe I always thought there was time to get around to it. Somehow we never seem to say what needs to get said until it's too late.

What needs to be said? she asked.

Thank you for sharing my bed this sleep, I always meant to make time for more of you. I really liked having you aboard. A lot of people come and go on this ship, I never get to know any of them very well. There's a certain kind of closeness that develops among those that stay aboard for awhile, something more than just friendship. I can respect you, you were good crew, but there's more than that. Like it or not we've shared a lot. I know you could be more than just a friend, more than just crew.

Are you saying you could fall in love with me? This was a little late to say that. She was glad she was good crew, she wanted to earn her way and not be ashamed of it, but she was working her way for transportation. At long last the endless voyage was over and she could stop working her way farther.

Hell no, I can fall in love two maybe three times in every port, he answered. I'm talking about what I call a shipmate. You stay on the water a few more years, especially the big water where it's just you, your mates and your boat for weeks in a row and you'll know what shipmate means. That's what you could be. And a sweet lover besides, that's nice too, but we could each have a cabin with a current passion and they could never come between us as shipmates. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

I think so, she said, and did. The comradery of teamwork, it strikes a chord in the human soul.

Does it mean anything to you?

It means a lot to me actually, she said. I feel the same longing and the same melancholy at losing it.

Then why give it up?

She sat up and stretched. She wasn't taking a lot of what he said very deeply. She knew damn well there had been sexier babes on the boat that kept him from noticing her female qualities until it was too late. She didn't fault him, it was not the first or last time that would happen and not the last time she'd hear these same excuses. The same thing can happen to anyone anywhere. It isn't the ship and the river that brings it on, it is the shared experiences. It is the thrill of accomplishing something as a team. However, I was part of this team to accomplish the goal of reaching Dos. I have a home here and for over a decade I've missed it. I needed to go to the Kassikan, but all the time I was there and in the Yakhan around it, I knew I needed to come back here. I have people here who already were to me what you seek. I have a life here that fits me. It's not to say that no other life could fit, but it is what I already am.

You never talked of that.

Honestly, we've had a few quick and polite little boinks before this, during which it was as you said, we didn't get to know all the details of each other's lives. Before I left the Yakhan I bored everyone with tales of the wonders and pleasures of Dos. I didn't want to bore you too.

I've always liked it here, every time I've been. I wouldn't be working this lake lugger around the sandbars of the Isanjaia for the cargo alone. It's very comfortable here.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is to me.

She got up, washed and dressed and got her pack together. They had breakfast together, at a patio buffet fragrant with the bright scent of the trellised bluemoon vines that shaded it, then got misty-eyed again when they parted. He went back up to the Isanjaia waterfront, she climbed down thru the center of Normain Dru toward a back canal that could take her into the interior of the city.

It was still early in Afternoonday when she boarded a canal glider for the sixty five mile ride to lake Knoye and her home. How different Dos is from the Yakhan, she thought, as the gleaming whitestone apartment blocks glided by on the archwood-shaded avenues that lined this canal. Kassidor Yakhan is an immensely crowded city. Most housing is grown, not built, there is little room along the avenues for shade trees, there they are shaded by the fronds of the homes.

There are few parks or open spaces in the Yakhan, in Dos they abound. Dos is a city of many centers, the Yakhan has several centers larger than any of Do but Central, and the main center of the city where the Kassikan is located is larger by far. The dot of high city that is a center in Dos, is any slice of a linear city that stretches for many miles along any main canal in the heart of the Yakhan. Canals that are twice as wide as the one she sailed here and five times as busy.

That city was an urban universe where many live their eternal lives without ever catching sight of natural soil, where you can walk for many hours with only occasional glimpses of natural sky. The Yakhan is a city of hectic pace. Steam driven needleboats dart thru the canals. The average person has a boost habit as well as a recreational habit. Many work two days a week at a permanent career. Metal clinks in every pouch.

Dos is a slow city and a roomy city. It mixes plots and centers all thru the twenty five hundred square mile area that is called Dos. There is room for wide shady streets, about forty lakes, more if you count ponds, and large houses. There is time to work one day a week, money enough to enjoy the other two but not to scatter around in pursuit of luxury. Hardly ever is a steam launch seen, this canal glider hugged the shore and was drawn by a train of three kedas. Abundant water power drove the factories and entertainment facilities so there was less demand for brute muscle jobs than in the Yakhan.

The people were different. One's monetary status was of little concern here, beauty in all things was important. Being harried, pushed or frazzled was unthinkably gauche. The successful Dosian had time for everything and everyone, could laugh at misfortune with a, 'We'll get thru it,' attitude. The Yakhanians were uptight, pushy and abrupt in comparison.

The differences showed in their art. Music in the Yakhan could be