Faulty Prophet

by Karl Beecher

  The Doctor proceeded to wave the device around Colin's head before peering anxiously at its tiny readout screen.

  "Everything tickety-boo?" asked Colin.

  "Hmm? Oh…yes, all fine."

  If that's true, thought Colin, then why does he look like a non-swimmer standing on the highest diving board?

  "Are you sure?" urged Colin. "Is there something wrong? Did the operation fail? Did—"

  "Please be calm," said Gunga. "I simply noticed that certain cognitive activity is still a little low. But that's perfectly normal, nothing to worry about."

  Colin let out a sigh of relief. "Phew, okay fine. Will you answer my questions now, Doctor?"

  Gunga put the device back into his pocket. "I'm not the one to answer your questions."

  "Then who is?"

  "I am," came a voice from the doorway.

  Colin recognised that distinctive drawl instantly. It certainly wasn't the large man who had spoken.

  He turned towards the doorway and saw a shadow creeping along the wall, footsteps clopping on the hard floor as it came nearer. The huge, bald man held up his chin and stood rigidly as the speaker came into view.

  Brock T. Hanson strode into the room, slowly and purposefully, probably trying to wring all he could from his dramatic entrance. His thumbs were hooked into the waistline of his fine tweed trousers, and his smile was as broad and cocky as ever. The evangelist looked as pompous and self-satisfied as the day Colin first met him. Like Gunga, Hanson had kept a low profile after the hospital protests. He had noisily associated himself with the foreigner, and so the soiling of Colin's reputation had rubbed off on Hanson. Tyresa had suspected him of some kind of foul play, but there was never any evidence for it.

  Judging from the present situation, ‘foul play' might turn out to be a mild description.

  As Hanson approached, Colin instinctively leaned back.

  "Why so suspicious, Mister Douglass?" asked Hanson. "There's no need for alarm. You're my guest."

  "Guest?" Colin shifted uncomfortably. "I don't remember being invited here…wherever here is."

  "Then let me tell you," said Hanson jovially. "You're on my private starship. Welcome to the SS Rabbit."

  He stepped over to a wall and pushed a barely visible button. One of the panels shifted smoothly aside to reveal a window. Through it, Colin viewed the familiar, ghostly sight of space whooshing by at warp speed.

  "A ship? Why, where are you taking me?"

  "That'll take some explaining. All in good time, after you're acclimatised. First, I must apologise for the manner in which you were brought here. I told everyone involved to be as gentle as possible…" Hanson eyed Colin's swollen lip. "Although I see you've been treated a little roughly. Arfang really doesn't know his own strength. You've met Arfang already I understand?"

  He looked at the family-sized refrigerator of a man in the doorway. In the momentary silence, Colin didn't quite know how to react, so he gave Arfang a little wave. "Hello, Arfang," Colin said, as though he'd just been introduced to his wife's second cousin.

  Arfang said nothing.

  Hanson turned to Gunga. "Aside from that, I trust he's in good health?"

  "Good as can be expected," Gunga replied coldly.

  "Very good," said Hanson. "Then would you be so kind as to leave us alone?"

  Gunga sighed. "Very well."

  He strode sullenly from the room, and the door closed behind him. The red light beside it illuminated once more, leaving Colin alone with Hanson.

  "So," ventured Colin. "Is this a kidnapping?"

  "Kidnapping?"

  Hanson seated himself on the bed beside Colin.

  "That's such an ugly word. I'd prefer to say I'm guiding you towards your destiny, protecting you until the time is right. You'll thank me once you undergo your revelation, as will the Creator (Grant Unto Him Glory)," he said, adding the customary suffix demonstrating respect to his deity.

  "You believe I'm a prophet, too?"

  Hanson shook his head. "I know you are. I've brought you along to participate in the most momentous event since Creation."

  "Brought me against my will."

  "Well, you would have said no otherwise. Besides, you were under the ungodly influence of that atheist Alliance woman. We had to get you away from her, she threatened to ruin everything."

  "Tyresa?" Thinking of her lifted Colin's spirits a little. What might she be doing right now? Riding to his rescue with any luck. "Whatever you're up to, you won't get away with it. Tyresa will come and rescue me. You won't get rid of her that easily."

  He felt surprisingly sure about that.

  "Ah, yes, about her," said Hanson. "I'm afraid she's dead."

  The words didn't initially register. Hanson had muttered them so casually. He could easily have just said she's in bed.

  "She's…what?"

  Hanson nodded. "Shot resisting arrest apparently. Got herself into trouble somehow. Police had to put her down. Same goes for that man with her."

  Tyresa and Ade, dead? No. It was incomprehensible. The sheer weight of the idea was too much to fit into Colin's mind.

  "N-no," stuttered Colin. "Dead, as in not alive? They can't be. How do you know?"

  "'Fraid so. Heard about it just as we were leaving the Procya system. Very regrettable," remarked Hanson with all the sorrow of someone lamenting the loss of a plastic biro.

  Colin's stare drifted to the floor. The ambient hum of the ship seemed to fade away. He felt like he was slowly sinking into the mattress, as though the bed was swallowing him up. His little room suddenly felt very small, indeed.

  Dead?

  No, surely there'd been a mix-up. But then, how could you mistake Tyresa and Ade? On Procya, they stuck out like a pair of sore, weirdly-dressed thumbs. They were unmistakeable.

  Colin's stomach began to feel heavy, his lips tight.

  Perhaps Hanson was lying. If he was comfortable with kidnapping, then lying wasn't going to give him sleepless nights. Equally, he might have been telling the truth, and Colin was just in denial, casting around for reasons to disbelieve.

  His brain reeled under the possibilities. Colin fought back the tears that were beginning to sting his eyes.

  Hanson looked at him curiously. "Oh, I didn't mean to upset you. I had no idea she meant anything to you. I thought she was just some bureaucrat escorting you around."

  He sounded genuinely surprised at Colin's reaction. Colin, too, was taken unawares by his own response. Technically, Hanson was right. Tyresa was just a guide, but she was also the only human being he knew and trusted in the galaxy. Without Colin really noticing, she'd become more than just a guide. Yes, she could be brusque, uncouth, sarcastic and all the rest, but he actually kind of liked that about her.

  Hanson patted him on the shoulder. "Maybe we should talk later. I'll leave you in peace now."

  He stood and moved to the door.

  "I guess your friend's death puts things into perspective. I'm all you have now." Hanson let that thought hang in the air for a moment. "But know this, Colin Douglass, I'll be praying for you. And I'll be praying for your revelation. The Creator (Grant Unto Him Glory) will contact you soon. I can feel it. I know it. Not only will he assuage your grief, but he will grant you divine enlightenment and instruct you in what you must do on our mission. He will be with you soon, I promise that."

  Through watery eyes, Colin watched him leave then flopped backwards onto the bed and wiped his eyes dry.

  With Hanson gone, he found himself suddenly less inclined to believe the news. It was as though the man had some kind of persuasive aura around him, and now that he and his aura were gone all that remained was Colin's deep distrust. It certainly wouldn't hurt Hanson if Colin became resigned to the idea that help wasn't on its way. Yet, he still couldn't force from his mind the possibility that he was in shock and simply refusing to accept it. There must be some way of finding out whether it was really true…

  Wait a second.

  Hanson ha
d described Ade as a ‘man.' That didn't seem right. Surely, they'd have discovered that Ade was actually an android after they'd killed him. He would have bled oil—or whatever was inside him—instead of blood. It was a welcome thought, one that brought him back from the edge of despair, but it still didn't fill Colin with hope. Even if his friends were alive, it didn't follow that they had any idea where he was.

  He could hope, but all he knew for sure was that he had only himself to count on right now. His own ingenuity was all he had to navigate himself safely through this situation.

  Yes, things really were that bad.

  Despite that, the thin slither of hope was undeniable. He sat up, wiped his eyes again, and cleared his mind. What to do?

  It was clear that Hanson was a believer in Colin, as well as the instigator of the kidnapping. He expected Colin to undergo some kind of revelation, presumably as though God had spoken to him. But eventually, it would become obvious no revelation was forthcoming, and the evangelist would realise he had made a mistake. What would happen then? At best, Hanson might apologise for the inconvenience and offer to drop Colin at the nearest interstellar bus station. On the other hand, they were alone in deep space and in all likelihood nobody else knew. The galaxy was a big place, it would be easy enough to dump something undetected out here. Colin already knew first-hand about spaceships and airlocks. He had to do something before that possibility arose.

  As he tried to think, tiredness crept over him again despite having only just woken up. A headache was coming on too. Those damned after-effects. When would they finally clear up?

  5

  Tyresa felt rotten. It wouldn't have surprised her if someone had told her she was dead.

  She sensed she was coming out of some kind of deep sleep. There was a quiet rumbling in the background, and she felt a gentle jostling. The inside of her skull throbbed viciously, and her mouth felt like she'd been drinking sand. Surely being dead didn't hurt as much as this.

  Her eyes opened slowly. She was sitting upright, her head flopped forward on her chest. Her eyes opened slowly and several fuzzy blobs sharpened into the image of handcuffed hands laying in her lap. She lifted her head, neck cracking painfully, and looked around. Either she was alive after all, or she was being ferried to the afterlife in the back of a van.

  But it was no ordinary van. Along the opposite wall hung an array of heavy-duty equipment: rifles, handguns, buzz-truncheons, all lined up behind protective mesh doors. Assuming it didn't belong to a heavily-armed courier service, this must have been the back of a police van.

  Sure enough, in front of all the hardware sat a young cop in full gear with a rifle resting on his lap. He smirked silently at Tyresa. Her last memories flooded back; this was one of the assholes who'd shot her.

  She shifted in her seat, ribs aching as she moved. She groaned.

  "Easy, girl," the cop sneered. "It always hurts after a stunning. Just relax. Don't wanna have to do it again."

  A stunning? He had a rifle perched on his knees. The little readout displayed ‘STUN' in bright blue letters. Finally, it all made sense: the headache, the dry mouth, the aching ribs where the bolt had hit her. It wasn't the first time she'd been at the receiving end of a gun set to stun mode. The brain always took a few minutes to make sense of things afterwards.

  She looked further around the little compartment, its air funky and tinged with the smell of sweat. At the other end stood the van's rear doors. Between the doors and her, a second cop sat at her side.

  At least there was a bright side: she wasn't dead, and these douches probably didn't want her dead. If they had, the rifle would have been set to kill.

  She looked at the cop opposite. "Where are we heading, officer?"

  He just smirked. Presumably, that was part of his professional duty.

  Never mind. It was time to plot a swift and dramatic exit. With Ade's help, getting out of here wouldn't pose much of a problem.

  Casually, she reached one hand over to her other wrist. Tricky in these cuffs. Then she gently stretched out a finger, reaching for the distress button on her wrist computer to signal Ade, but her fingertip met only her own flesh. She looked down. The computer was missing.

  "Looking for this?" The cop reached into a chest pocket and pulled something out.

  Tyresa's stomach turned as she eyed the little computer, dangling by its straps from the man's fist. Dammit.

  What now? With luck, the computer might still be transmitting its heartbeat signal, assuming the cops had deactivated it completely. Hopefully, these Procyan hicks hadn't worked out how to do that. Even if it was still broadcasting, it wasn't much good if nobody was looking for it. Unless Ade knew she was in trouble—and there was no reason to believe he did—Tyresa couldn't count on a rescue.

  She tried not to consider the other possibility: that they'd already gotten to Ade too.

  The cop put the computer back into his pocket and then rapped against the wall. A moment later, a small screen mounted in the corner of the compartment flickered on. It displayed an image feed of Deputy Gilper, seated in the cab beside another cop who was at the wheel.

  Gilper smiled at the camera. "Wakey, wakey, Miss Jak!"

  "Gilper!" cried Tyresa. "What the hell do you think you're doing? Where are you taking me?"

  "Calm now," said Gilper. "Stay calm, and you won't get hurt."

  "Won't get hurt? You shot me already without provocation!"

  "A stun shot," he scoffed. "Nothing serious. Man, how soft are you?"

  Tyresa eyed the Deputy's spare tire of a gut. Between the two of them, who was the soft one? If he'd come back here and let Tyresa out of these cuffs, he'd soon see which one of them was soft.

  "The Alliance will never stand for this," she said. "I'm a citizen of the Alliance of Free Worlds, here under the protection of the Archaeological Treaty. Under section f—"

  "—four," interrupted Gilper, "you have the right to speak to your embassy and get access to a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. I am a policeman, I know the law. That means I also know that our local laws against sedition take precedence."

  "Sedition? What the fu—" Best not to swear in front of the puritans. It only riled them, especially when it came from a woman. "What are talking about? This is bull…shoot."

  "We've got enough probable cause, especially after what you and your friend, Douglass, were caught saying."

  He must have meant that stupid conversation, the one that had been secretly recorded and ripped out of context to make it look like Colin was some revolutionary mastermind. Colin of all people! If he led a workers march along the streets, he'd end up taking a wrong turn down a cul-de-sac.

  "That was nothing," protested Tyresa. "You'll never make that stick."

  "Maybe not, but it's enough to hold you for a week or two."

  "For what? You want to hold me and Colin for a couple of weeks just to make a point?"

  Gilper smiled. "Who said we arrested Colin?"

  That caught her unawares. "Then where is he?"

  "He's safe. You'll get him back in a couple of weeks."

  They wanted Colin, but not to arrest him. They wanted her out of the way so she wouldn't interfere. But who was ‘they?' Who on Procya wanted Colin so bad that…?

  Wait, what was she thinking? Of course, she knew who it was.

  "Hanson!" she snapped. "Brock Hanson is behind this. Where is he?"

  The Deputy said nothing. He just looked away with an enigmatic smile and reached to turn off the camera.

  Tyresa was onto something. She just had to get Gilper to admit it and fast. But how? Provoke him. That wouldn't be hard. Gilper was a macho, bigoted asshole who loved a good gloat over a defeated enemy.

  "Hey," she blurted. "How much is Hanson paying you, you corrupt, fat fuck?"

  That did it. In fact, that might have overdone it. The smile left his face like a mudslide, and his eyes lit up in fiery rage.

  "Buzz her!" he spat.

  The smirking cop opposite Tyresa pulled
his buzz-truncheon from its holster. It was a mean-looking thing, half a metre long and hefty. With the push of a button, the tip crackled with tiny blue sparks. The cop jabbed it into her hip.

  It was like a hundred needles being thrust into her skin.

  With a yelp, she jumped so high from the seat her head almost hit the roof, then landed again with a painful thump. Her eyes clammed up while the fizzing agony subsided. The other cop beside her snickered. As the worst of the pain subsided, she opened her eyes to see the bastard opposite, placing his truncheon back into its holster.

  Gilper continued, his face so close to the screen Tyresa could see the blood vessels in his eyes and the hairs poking from his nostrils. "As a matter of fact," he said icily, "he didn't pay me a thing. Unlike you, it's not all about money. In Abrama, we know something about loyalty. Hanson asked me for a favour, so I helped him out. What he wants with your friend, I don't know."

  That was good enough a confirmation, thought Tyresa, although she'd paid enough to get it.

  "Frankly," Gilper went on, "I don't care. But if you don't keep that mouth of yours shut, I get the feeling we'll be announcing a certain prisoner was shot trying to escape. And it won't be a stun shot, Miss Jak, it'll be a—"

  "Sir!" yelled the driver, nudging Gilper's arm.

  Gilper looked up at something off-camera and presumably ahead of the van. Tyresa couldn't see it, but the expression on the Deputy's face switched instantly. He looked like someone in a paddleboat facing a forty-metre wave.

  "Great Stott!" he shrieked. "What's that fool doing flying so low?"

  A shadow passed over Gilper's face, immediately followed by a deep, bone-rattling whoosh from above. Instinctively, everyone in the compartment flinched.

  She couldn't be certain, but Tyresa thought she recognised that whoosh.