Chapter 23
I Am Given New Life
My original plan had consisted solely of infiltrating the Nuum station, stealing the information I needed via the Library, and getting out again. It was to have been quick and relatively quiet, my reappearance and subsequent re-disappearance an object of curiosity to the aloof Nuum, but not, I believed, a long-term consideration. In that I had been mistaken. I had not counted on the excitement accompanying my return, or the notoriety it would afford me. My re-disappearance would have the station’s entire complement out looking for me—in force.
That original idea, however, had already been abandoned before I met the conservationists, as I came to consider the difference between the Nuum and the German hordes of my own time—which is to say, almost none. Each occupied a land in defiance of the people who owned it. Each used his power to enslave, and to kill when it suited his purposes. The only true difference lay in the fact that the Nuum had already accomplished what the Germans still sought: domination. The Earth of this day and age was a conquered nation, and every free American fiber of my being rose up in indignation and outrage at the thought.
And so I had come to be here, lying on an examining table, contemplating how best to kill the man who had just doubled my lifespan.
I thought of the hundreds of Bantos Han’s neighbors turned to grey dust on the streets of Vardan. I thought of French and Belgian villagers crushed by the Hun. Were he to realize that I was not Nuum, this doctor would turn me over to my enemies. If this were still 1915 and I were dressed in a stolen German uniform, would I hesitate?
No, I would not. But neither could I kill him in cold blood. Regardless of his uniform, he was a man of medicine, and a non-combatant. Unless he took up arms against me, killing him would be murder, no less a crime than the Thorans or the Belgians had suffered.
“Excuse me while I fetch another analyzer,” he muttered suddenly. I tensed once more, but this time he disappeared into a small supply closet. Without thinking, I slipped from the diagnostic bed, slammed the door on him, and blocked it with a chair. He began to pound his fists against the other side, shouting for me to let him out. I risked someone hearing him, but that was the price I paid for my humanity.
The treatments he had administered left me feeling unsteady, compounding my confusion at being faced with the host of blinking lights and gaping data sockets. I pulled out the Library and placed it in the nearest socket, as the Librarian had told me to do. “All of the systems are so interdependent it won’t matter where you plug me in,” he had said. “The kind of computing power I need to accomplish our goal isn’t even supposed to exist on this continent, let alone in the hands of the Thorans, so the security interdicts will be elementary.”
Nothing seemed to happen for several minutes: the lights blinked on and off as before and no smoke came pouring through the consoles, so I was forced to presume that the Librarian was right, and three centuries of peaceful tyranny had left the Nuum complacent. The doctor’s pounding had calmed somewhat, as he realized that I was not going to let him out, nor was anyone apparently coming to rescue him. This left me profoundly relieved, as I had dreaded the necessity of asking him to prescribe a headache remedy if he didn’t stop.
Where the doctor’s shouting had left off, the sudden sirens more than made up for him.
The plan had called for the Library to tap the central computer system, bypass the security blockades, and simulate a fusion core-breach alarm. The Nuum, fearing a malfunction, would flee the station—only to find the conservationists and Timash’s people waiting for them. It would only be payment-in-kind—but it would still be a massacre. Meanwhile, I huddled in the infirmary, wondering how to explain my decision to spare the doctor. Perhaps the Library had failed, I thought with gallows cheer, and the core breach was real. That would solve all of my problems in one quick flash of light.
My problems were only beginning. The infirmary door flew open and a Nuum dashed in.
“Quick! We’re evacuating! Where’s the doctor?”
That question was answered without any help from me—the doctor began shouting and pounding the door once again. The safety officer saw the chair propped up and leaped to the correct conclusion in an instant, his sidearm erupting from its place at his side and holding me fast in its sights. He waved it toward the closet.
“Let him out.” I started to obey, but suddenly he seemed to realize that I was going to have to move the chair, placing a potential weapon in my hands.
“Hold on—”
There was a noise at the doorway, and a familiar voice said: “Keryl?”
We both turned to look, but since the guard was between me and the door, that meant he was looking away from me—a costlier error than giving me a flimsy piece of furniture. I was on him in an instant, and swiftly rendered him unconscious.
“Harros!”
My former bunkmate shook his head in concern. “I heard you were back. What’s going on in here?” He cast a glance toward the noisy closet.
My mind was spinning. I had saved the doctor for my own reasons, but now: The doctor, the unconscious guard, Harros—how was I going to protect all these Nuum from my allies…or explain it to them when I was done? Could Harros be trusted? Not that it mattered, I reflected bitterly, since I could not send him to his death outside when I had another choice.
“Come on,” he urged suddenly. “I’ll tell you about it later. The core is going to breach any second!”
“Relax,” I said, sitting on the examining table. “The alert is a fake.” I had to tell him; he would find out soon enough, unless he went outside, which I could not now in all good conscience let him do. It was no accident, however, that I was sitting where my body blocked his view of the console into which I had plugged the Library.
He took it better than I had thought, a sly smile stretching his lips most unattractively.
“That explains the guns and the doctor locked in the closet. I always knew there was something odd about you. You don’t agree with the occupation either, do you?”
It was my turn to control my surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
He looked up and down the corridor before he responded, then stepped inside and closed the door.
“We do have to get out of here, you know. They’ll be back.”
I shook my head slowly. “No, they won’t.” As a precaution, the Library had sealed all of the doors. Possibly some would escape into the jungle, but no one would be coming back.
“You’re amazing.” He seemed genuinely impressed. “How did you do it?”
“I have friends,” I said curtly. Not only did I not want to disclose the existence of the Library, but I didn’t want him to think that the gun gave him any advantage. “They’ll be here soon. You didn’t answer my question: Why did you help me?”
“They threw me into confinement after you disappeared. I was feeling out others to see how they felt about the occupation and what we were doing here, and I must have asked the wrong man.”
I sat silently for a time, waiting for developments and cultivating an attitude that would dissuade questions. It appeared successful, as Harros looked several times on the verge of speaking, but then the urge subsided and the silence stretched on.
I stood. “You’d better get behind me. When my friends arrive, you don’t want them to draw the wrong conclusions.”
“What if it’s not them? What if someone else shows up?” he asked, hesitating.
“Then you still don’t want to be between me and the door.” I gestured with the pistol to illustrate my point.
Moments later the door slid open again. Although they had professed to loathe them, the conservationists handled Nuum armaments with great confidence.
I had a much less difficult time explaining the doctor’s survival to my allies than I had in convincing the doctor himself that my allies were not bent on curtailing his good fortune. I had expected, perhaps naively, that my having spared his life, and the explanation of why we
were eager to enlist his cooperation, would pique his interest sufficiently to overcome his anxiety. Unfortunately, he denounced my story about a telepathic virus as outlandish, and insisted that it was simply a cover for our real goal, although he could not perceive what that might be.
This presented a serious problem; Dr. Chala had performed all of the preliminary work on my case, but we had agreed that the gorillas’ involvement in this must remain privileged information. (Originally, of course, that would not have been a consideration. Dead men tell no tales.) In the end, however, two circumstances combined to satisfy all concerns: First, a simple examination confirmed my viral infection; and second, the Librarian recommended a forgotten interrogation technique which, while harmless, would have such a pronounced effect on his short-term memory that nothing he learned about us would survive. It was agreed that once my cure was effected, all the prisoners would be drugged and delivered safely to a town whence they could make their way homeward. In the meantime, Harros and the guard who had so fortuitously discovered me were interned in the brig.
Together with the Librarian, the two physicians buried themselves in the Nuum database. It was not long before they developed such an attitude of mutual respect that I suspect they both regretted that their collaboration was to be so short-lived, nor was it much later that they announced the results of their work.
“It’s not finished, Keryl,” Dr. Chala confided to me. “But we’re being told that we have to evacuate. Even though we’ve cracked their communications codes, the Nuum will be sending in fresh personnel soon. I can finish the serum back in Tahana City.”
“That’s good. Timash told me this morning they’ve been ferrying computer equipment, supplies, weapons, and bio-sensors out of here for days. We’ve got to smash anything that can’t be moved, then we’ll leave the doors open and the jungle can take care of the rest.”
She sighed. “I wish we could take Dr. Sinh back to the city with us. He’s a zoological research scientist as well as a physician.” She looked at me hopefully, even though she knew it wasn’t my decision to make, and I told her so. But she had reminded me of an errand I needed to undertake, so I begged her pardon and sought out the doctor myself.
I found him in his quarters; since he was confined there when not working with Dr. Chala in the lab, not finding him would have been cause for great alarm. He looked up as though he had been expecting me, which I suppose he had.
He wore the face of a condemned man. “Is it time?”
I had to smile. “It’s not that bad. Dr. Chala and the Librarian have assured me that you won’t suffer any ill effects. And you’ll hardly be conscious until you reach the village. Considering the roads around here, that’s all to the good.”
With a sigh he arose and extended a hand. “I guess I didn’t believe it was really true until just now.”
“I meant what I said. But I need to ask you a question,” I confided as I accepted his grip. “Why was Harros in the brig?”
For a moment his eyes dropped away from mine, and he licked his lip as he formed his answer.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything, but the truth is, I don’t know. All I know is that you should watch him. We tend to give our soldiers a lot of rope. Whatever landed him in prison, it must have been serious.”
“Thank you,” I said, turning to leave.
“No,” he replied. “Thank you. I owe you a debt. You saved my life.”
“It’s no more than you did for me.”
“You’re wrong. I did what I did because I’m a doctor. I had to do it. You didn’t.”
But he was in the wrong. War is about more than deciding who dies. It is also about deciding who lives.
Chapter 24
I Take Companions
Once the groundwork had been laid, the finishing of the serum to cure my telepathic illness was quickly accomplished. Dr. Chala administered it, sent me to bed, and watched me for twenty-four hours. Before the end of that time, the fuzziness that had filled my brain for so long it seemed natural began to ebb, and the whispers of other minds floated around the fringes of my consciousness. It was as though cotton had been removed from my ears.
“I guess you’re just meant to make history, Keryl,” she told me the next day. “Your screens are almost normal. Congratulations. You are the first person in recorded history to survive an attack of a telepathic virus.”
“I can’t believe it’s gone. It was almost as though I were growing used to it.”
“Best you not think that way. According to your scans, it isn’t gone; there’s still a residue, but it’s so weak I don’t think it will ever pose a threat. Your shields are strong enough to resist; it’s almost as if you’ve built up an immunity.”
It was the difference between a reprieve and a pardon. I would take it. I squeezed her as hard as I could, exchanging hearty grins with Timash and Balu, who stood nearby waiting for the results. I told Dr. Chala that she was to be congratulated as well.
“Hmm, well, me and the Librarian and Dr. Sinh. But since I’m the only one around, I guess I’ll just take their bows too.”
“So what are you going to do now, Keryl?” Balu asked. He said it quietly, as if reluctant to hear my answer.
“You’ve all been more than kind…” I began, but I needn’t have tried to soften the blow. They knew my choice even as I did. “…but my heart is in Dure.”
Timash began to shift his weight back and forth, eyes downcast. I smiled gently, thinking that he was trying to think of a way to say goodbye—which only showed that even after all this time, I knew next to nothing about him.
Balu cuffed his nephew gently. “You’d better get to it, boy. It’s now or never.”
“What?” Chala asked sharply—with a mother’s instinct, I fear.
Timash stopped rocking and looked me straight in the eye. “Keryl,” he said, not betraying his soul-shaking nervousness (as he confided later), “I’d like to go with you.”
My first thought was that he would make quite a sight strolling through the West End. His mother was more to the point.
“It was bad enough that we had to put up with your uncle parading all over the world, son. I am not going to go through that again.”
Naturally, those travels by his esteemed ancestor were exactly the spark that had lit Timash’s fuse of adventure, so this argument fell short. But Dr. Chala experienced no shortage of impassioned arguments where her only offspring was concerned. She railed. She cried. She gave ultimatums. And she peeled Balu’s skin off in strips, up one side and down the other, for giving her baby boy the idea that trekking across unexplored wastes chased by the Nuum and the breen and Lord-knows-what could take the place of a good education and a long life visiting his mother for supper every Sunday. Frankly, by the time she was finished cataloging the probable dangers found just between Tehana City and Dure, I was more than a bit willing to reconsider the entire venture myself.
“He’s only known Keryl a few weeks, and they’ve already fought off the Nuum and almost been eaten by tiger spiders!” (She had a point.) “What’s going to happen to them if they go off alone?”
In the end, though, she had no defense against the same age-old argument that Balu’s father had probably used against his own mate, many years ago:
“Chala, he’s grown. You can’t stop him.”
Which may have won the argument, but I doubt to this day that she has ever forgiven him for saying it. Unfortunately, Balu had not the answers to all of my problems.
The conservationists had accepted the two Nuum as their temporary responsibility with poor grace, but they were in my debt and I was forced to hold them to it. I could not and would not bring them to Tehana City; I myself had only been accepted there under extraordinary circumstances, and to attempt to secure similar courtesies for Harros would have been an abuse of hospitality.
But they had been no happier with the arrangement than their keepers; Harros, especially, as he had already been imprisoned once, albeit by the N
uum. They were cared for by the conservationists, and if the conservationists treated them with less than the greatest respect, they could ask for no more.
Days later, they were a little the worse for wear, but they did not seem to have suffered any permanent damage. I forbore to make an issue of it.
“Get up,” I said. “We’re going.” Neither needed a second invitation.
The Nuum guard, whose name I had never inquired after nor cared to know, accepted our plan to return him to civilization with all the grace that was to be expected, once Dr. Sinh had assured him we were telling the truth about the drugs to be administered. Harros did not.
“I need to speak to you privately,” he said in an urgent undertone, and more out of curiosity than necessity I acquiesced.
“I don’t want to go back with them.”
Inwardly I groaned. Little enough of this episode had pleased me, albeit I had emerged much the richer for it, but now that it was almost over I had begun to breathe a sigh of relief. Almost over, I reminded myself now, but not quite.
“You have no choice. You can’t stay here.”
“Why can’t I go with you?”
Were I a more nimble-witted man, I would simply have averred that I was going nowhere, that I was remaining with the conservationists, and thus put an immediate end to his request and this ridiculous conversation. But then, a thoughtful man would not have ended up in my place at all.
“Because I’m not going back to Vardan. I have other business.”
Harros looked off into the distance for a moment. “All right,” he said. “You should take me with you because we have something in common.” I arched my eyebrows at him, expecting him to launch into a tirade against the Nuum and their oppression of the Thorans, but he surprised me. “I’m a ghost, too.”
I blinked, but before I could deny knowledge of this topic, he went on. “You can ask the doctor to check the ‘sphere. He’ll tell you I’m not lying. But if I go back with the others, the first thing the authorities will do is check my records—and I don’t have any.”
The Stolen Future Box Set Page 17
