4 Women/4 Stories

By Sandy Raschke

What do a young farmer turned rebel, an elderly widow under constant surveillance, a woman in an isolated cabin on a mountain top, and a telepathic private investigator from Europa (one of Jupiter's inner moons), have in common? In Sandy Raschke's 4 Women/4 Stories, featuring three short stories and a novella, they all face adversity and/or intense pressure to follow the dictates of societal norms. Are they heroines or heretics for challenging the status quo and the social order? Or are they simply caught up in events beyond their control?

 

Sandy Raschke has been writing mostly speculative fiction and poetry for over thirty years. Her work has been described as "character-driven," skillfully crafted," and "humorous, engaging, and thought-provoking." Her stories often focus on the human condition, its achievements and its shortcomings, societal problems, and the challenges technology and artificial intelligence pose to humankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandy Raschke
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201706616

Book preview

The Sisters

AS DUSK SETTLED TOWARD darkness, the vague outline of a rest stop came into view. Don’t stop: keep going, foot to the floor toward The Neutral Zone, she told herself. But the call of Nature was overpowering. It had been ten hours since she had last emptied her bladder, and the pain was distracting enough to make her stop. If only she had learned to pee like a man. She swerved into the right lane and took the looping off-ramp toward a group of privies surrounded by overgrown weeds. Up close, it was even worse than she imagined.

Astara Hollings rolled to a stop away from the flickering lights of the parking area. She had a vision of what might be waiting for her there in the bushes: the armor-clad goons of The Guardians’ Security Force. A nervous laugh escaped as she conjured up another possibility—the screaming headline: Harbinger Nabbed Sitting on Throne!! They'd probably post the old Wanted poster, too. Just like the faded ones nailed to the doors of the composting toilets.

She rubbed her eyes, bleary from too much driving, then shook off her paranoia and cracked open the car door. She was assaulted by the rankest of odors—as if something had died and was in the final stages of decomposition. Compost, huh? Not sweet and earthy like the kind she made as a small farmer. She held her breath and crawled crab-like out of the transport. It was a struggle to stand up straight and she massaged her lower back and legs while furtively scanning the shadows. Then sighing with relief, she took a deep breath and sprinted to the toilet shack.

MINUTES LATER SHE WAS back in the transport. No time for rest. She started the engine and nimbly shot into the fast lane, the drone-like buzz of the borrowed mini-transport rapidly accelerating her already drifting concentration. By her calculation, it was six hours to the next re-fueling station, assuming the overhead patrol drones and Road Security didn’t pick up the vehicle’s GPS coordinates first and manage to stop her cold. A worrisome thought intruded: Where are the police? After all, she was one of the rare escapees from a notorious prison.

Are they incompetent, or do they have other reasons for letting her get this far? 

Six hours—what if I don’t make it? No... No. This is not the time for negative thinking.

After fiddling with the console, looking for news, music—anything with noise—and getting nothing but no signal, she reached for the food pack, the last of three a kind nurse had smuggled from the prison camp’s canteen. Empty. No food or amusement.

The gods must be angry.

With nothing else to do but watch the highway, she created her own music, singing in a lusty voice which belied her fatigue—songs of freedom, folk songs, and making up new ones as she cruised along, every one rebellious and defiant.

Soon the road lines blurred again. Keep your foot to the floor...only eight hundred miles to The Neutral Zone...foot to the floor. Safety...food...music... Foot to the floor... the speech, remember the speech...and dear, sweet Arcos...

THE FIRST TASTE OF lip-puckering blood jerked her into consciousness. What the hell have I done? A long moan gave way as she ratcheted her neck toward the shattered windshield. 

The sky was marbled and pinkish. Dawn? Sunset? How long had she been trapped inside the transport? No matter, she croaked. What difference would it make anyway? A curse gurgled up from her dry throat as she turned her attention to another problem—her right arm.

Twice its normal size, the dangling, deadened limb felt as heavy as a tree stump. When all attempts to wake it up resulted in failure, she focused on the other, twisted into a pretzel behind her back. It was dangerous to even move. She was sure at least one rib was cracked and her spine battered and bruised.

The little transport groaned. Below, she heard the unmistakable sound of rushing water. She had to get out... She thrashed in earnest. The transport shifted in retort.

Stop. Think.

Anyone out there? Help! Astara called out through parched lips. Silence. Help! But of course, with her luck, no one replied. After moistening her lips with the little saliva she had left, she screamed again, only to cough up a rather large, blackish glob. More blood. A wicked spasm. And stars before her eyes.

Breathe in slowly, diffuse the pain.

Please, someone help me! 

Something clicked as she tried to turn.

Shit. Her cheeks warmed from the spontaneous burst of profanity. "Now the friggin’ safety harness is jammed. What next?"

She pulled at it with her teeth. Suddenly, the transport shuddered, with such violence several shards of broken plexi-glass dislodged from the windshield. One zinged across her field of vision, slicing into her cheek, the other hit her forehead, sending a dark ribbon of blood flowing across her left eye. Warm and thick like molasses, it angled downward toward her chin. She shook her head, the whipsaw motion popping open another gash. Two rivulets of crimson swirled across her nose and, as she yelled in pain, slid down her throat into a stomach deprived of a good meal for months. With nothing to throw up, she retched until her throat and lungs were on fire.

FOR A WHILE SHE SAW herself floating above the wreck of the transport toward Arcos as he exhorted the members of Free People toward victory. Then a black wind tunnel appeared, sucking her in, draining her strength as she fought to escape its pull toward the ruthless Tribunal of Guardians who would rather see her dead—a slow, tortuous death, but exterminated just the same.

Her lips curled into a sneer. "Aiya-malor!" she yelled then choked, cursing them for their treachery, for the lies and trickery which ultimately enslaved her people.

As she neared the edge of consciousness, she saw her mug-shot in profile again, then full-faced—sullen, ruddy skin, her shaved skull exposing the scars from the day she was captured, a month before being sentenced to spend ten years at Meralda. She looked haggard and scared, just what they wanted the people to see.

In the enveloping blackness, she hid The Declaration in her memory, hoping no one would find it until her time came to deliver it.

HOW COME YOU’RE UPSIDE down, sister?

What?  Oh... Help me, please. I’m hurt and stuck.

SHE AWOKE, SPRAWLED in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by a spindly circle of undernourished trees, mute sentries bending in the cold breeze. Shape-shifting bands of fog hugged the inside perimeter: one moment a picket fence and, with the blink of an eye, an impenetrable wall. Still groggy, her skin now clammy to the touch, she breathed in then out, expelling shimmering ice crystals that floated in front of her face. Her teeth chattered like the rat-a-tat-tat of a drum.

The blood-encrusted prison jumpsuit she wore was gone, replaced by a long, white gown which swam on her slender frame. Shivering, she pulled the décolleté tight to her chest.

I will probably die here, she lamented, die of exposure in this darkest of places, alone and forgotten, sticky and blue... She coughed. I must be going crazy. I’m in the middle of nowhere, skewing the words from an ancient lyric...

She stuck out her arms and wretched out a laugh. I am sticky and blue. Using the trailing edge of the gown as a towel, she rubbed her face and arms, but the stuff, some kind of paint or salve, wouldn’t come off. Be thankful for small favors, she said aloud. At least the pain, bleeding and tingling are gone.

Alert now, she scanned the clearing again, food gone and the transport nowhere to be seen. Typical of roving bandits, but it didn’t explain the blue stuff or the absurd gown.

With great effort, she pushed forward, stumbling as a chill gust swept through the clearing, blowing the gown upward. Astara gasped. No underwear! While she was unconscious, how many hands had touched her? Or worse? Was she used in some kind of ritual? If so, were they were coming back to...? She stared blankly into space—no, don’t even think about it.

HER MIND FLITTED TO her capture—barely a month after a sparsely attended, non-violent protest where she and a dozen other speakers accused The Guardians of severely rationing food sources to starve the citizens into submission. Instead of arresting them on the spot, the authorities appeared to have ignored them. But Wanted posters went up a few days later, along with news coverage that the protesters were nothing but agitators trying to overthrow a legitimately elected government.

The group scattered, believing they’d be difficult to find if they weren’t together. But one by one, the protestors were hunted down, arrested and hauled off to an internment camp. Either someone in the group was an informant, or a member or two had given up after days of deprivation and round-the-clock interrogations, and most likely spilled the names of their compatriots in order to stay alive.

They found Astara where she always was, tending her little plot of land, with its lush flower garden, fresh vegetables and fruit, most of them sold at local farmers’ markets or given away to organizations feeding the hungry. But instead of an internment camp, the security force, believing they had captured one of the leaders, took her to what was rumored to be the worst prison camp in existence: Meralda.

Even before she was charged with a crime, they cut off her long chestnut-colored braid, shaved the rest, and tossed her into an isolation cell without food or water for two days. Four burly guards delighted in taunting her and her compatriots, forcing them to run a gauntlet through the main prison corridor, while they threw animal entrails, paint and caustic liquids which burned their skin, followed by hosing out their cells with water so everything was always damp and moldering.

They refused to let her rest and overwhelmed her with sound through the speakers in her cell. A few times they threw human waste on her and grinned malevolently at her humiliation.

Was it a mark of strength or stubbornness they could never get her to talk, or confess, no matter what they did?

Early in the protests, the leadership of Free People sought her out and asked her to be their spokesperson. Was it because she looked like every woman, someone composed, young-looking, and of mixed race, who appeared non-threatening and could easily relate to the public? 

Whatever it was, she was flattered by the offer but refused until Arcos, their leader, convinced her otherwise.

The painful memories she had tried so hard to bury were now as vivid as the glaring lights they’d used to keep her in a perpetual state of confusion. How naive she’d been to think the two female guards would have declined to participate in her torment. But they did, almost with a perverse glee. They said her refusal to cooperate would spell doom to those still in detention camps, yet she steeled herself and did not utter a single word in condemnation of the freedom faction.

Had she done the right thing in keeping silent? How many people had they killed in her name?

AND THEN SHE THOUGHT of Joleena, the nurse, who tended to her wounds in what passed for a prison infirmary. She had helped her to escape, providing the start code to her own vehicle and enough food and water to last several days. With Joleena’s consent, Astara had hit her hard enough to bruise her left eye and cheek, to make it look as if she had