Hamish X Goes to Providence Rhode Island

by Sean Cullen

  “Let’s hope we catch them by surprise,” Hamish X said aloud. He almost jumped out of his skin when a voice close to his ear answered him.

  “I believe you will, Hamish X.”

  Hamish X spun and found a George raccoon sitting in the sand beside him. The raccoon was a little the worse for wear. Its fur was falling out, leaving large bald patches on its pelt. One of its ears was gone, and a hole in its shoulder showed the glint of its inner mechanical workings. The raccoon sat on its haunches and stared at Hamish X with glossy black eyes.

  “George?” Hamish X was astonished. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  “I am searching for you,” George replied. “There is much for me to tell you, Hamish X. You have led me a merry chase.”

  “I don’t get it. Why are you looking for me? I thought the King wanted me to find the Professor.”

  “He did, of course, and I’m sure he would still wish that to be the case.” The raccoon hung its ragged head. “Alas, the King of Switzerland is dead.”

  The news struck Hamish X like a blow. He was speechless for a full minute. “Dead? How can that be? Was there an accident?”

  “No accident,” George said. “There was an attack. Somehow, the ODA discovered the location of the Hollow Mountain. They attacked in overwhelming numbers. Many were taken prisoner, including Lieutenant Aidan and Parveen. Mimi, Mr. Kipling, and Mrs. Francis among others escaped in the emergency pods. But the King . . . He fell while covering their retreat. I was there when he died . . . At least one of me was there. Now I am the only one of my kind left.”

  Hamish X didn’t know what to say. Parveen and Aidan captured? King Liam dead? It was too much to absorb all at once. Not knowing what else to do, he reached out and wrapped his arms around the George raccoon, buried his head in the ragged fur of its coat, and cried.

  The George raccoon didn’t know what to make of such emotional behaviour. The creature stood patiently still until Hamish X’s sobs finally subsided. At last, Hamish X sat back and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Ah,” the George raccoon sighed. “The King removed the ODA’s tracking device, but he added one of his own. I hope you aren’t offended, but he wanted to make sure he could find you in an emergency . . . like the one that exists now.”

  “I see,” Hamish X said. “What should I do?”

  “I cannot say. You are a free person. You can do as you wish. The King sent me to tell you what has happened. What you do now is your decision.”

  Hamish X stared through the night at El Arak looming in the darkness. His answers lay there, but his friends needed him. What to do?

  What decided it was a flash of light near the front gates of the fortress. Harik had sent his signal. The tribesmen were waiting for him to get the gates open. Without him, they were trapped and vulnerable.

  Hamish X stood. “I must get into El Arak. I need to find the Professor. Without knowing who and what I truly am, I can’t hope to successfully challenge the Grey Agents and end the ODA once and for all.”

  “Sound logic, Hamish X,” George said. “Shall I wait for you here?”

  “Uh-uh.” Hamish X shook his head. “You’re coming with me.”

  “Oh my,” was all the George raccoon could say in response.

  “SARGE?”

  “What now, Ulrich?”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “What’s what?”

  “It’s a light or something. About a kilometre due east.” Sergeant Titus, the mercenary in charge of the night watch, raised his field glasses and trained them on the blue flare that was quickly approaching the gate from the west. It moved with incredible speed. A trail of disturbed dust rose behind it.

  “Are we expecting a convoy?” the Sergeant asked. “Nope.”

  “That’s nope, SIR!”

  “Nope, SIR!”

  “Hmm.” Sergeant Titus adjusted the dial on his field glasses, and finally the image came into focus. A boy with wild hair and a ferocious grin was running impossibly fast. His large boots flared like blue stars trailing fire and under his arm he carried a ragged-looking raccoon. The boy was on a direct route for the gate.

  “Oh no,” Sergeant Titus groaned. “It’s him! It’s Hamish X! Sound the alarm!”

  HAMISH X LAUGHED as the power surged through him. The sand sped by and he increased his speed. A loud, roaring boom rumbled across the desert as he broke the sound barrier. The gates swelled in his vision. The George raccoon covered its eyes with its tiny paws as Hamish X launched himself over the final ten metres. He struck the gates like a missile. Oak, laboriously barged down the Nile and dragged across the sands of the Sahara, carefully shaped and hung as a gate, was shattered now into a cloud of splinters by the pent-up fury of Hamish X’s boots.

  Harik and his fellow tribesmen leapt to their feet, shaking off the sand that they had scooped over themselves as camouflage. They had crept on their bellies until they were right against the wall of the fortress and waited for Hamish X to knock down the gate. Now they brandished their rifles and flooded into the fortress. The mercenaries inside were quickly overwhelmed. They threw down their weapons and put their hands in the air when faced with the sudden fury of the attack. Harik looked around, but Hamish X was nowhere to be found. In his wake was a trail of destruction. Mercenaries lay groaning behind shattered barricades and under the wreckage of their own vehicles. The Bedouins moved through the open square subduing and binding their one-time foes. Harik and a select group of men headed off to find Hamish X.

  Hamish X had left the front gate far behind. He was moving upward, climbing a zigzagging staircase that was cut into the interior of the cliff. His goal was the tower above. He hadn’t stopped moving since he had burst through the front gate. Hamish X’s momentum carried him forward through the gate and sent him careening down the central street of El Arak. He flew by the darkened windows and abandoned houses of the main street and sailed on into a gaping stone opening. Two guards tried to intercept but he barrelled through them, sending them flying into the stone walls on either side. Entering the opening, he discovered the stairs that Harik had assured him would lead into the tower. There, Harik believed, he would find the Professor.

  Hamish X ran up the steps past doors where confused faces peered out at him. An occasional mercenary, roused from his sleep by the attack, staggered out into Hamish X’s path only to be kicked aside or rolled over by his headlong dash. The George raccoon never removed its paws from its eyes, content to let Hamish X negotiate his own path without comment.

  “I didn’t think computers could be scared, George,” Hamish X teased, kicking a mercenary aside as he ran.

  “I am not afraid,” George answered mildly. “I am merely covering my visual sensors to avoid an overload of stimuli. And … I am an artificial intelligence, not a computer.”

  Hamish X laughed and began to take the steps two at a time.

  He reached the top of the stairs and emerged onto a platform about three metres wide that ran along the top of the wall. He skidded to a halt. The tower rose ahead of him, a little ways along the wall, but unfortunately a line of mercenaries and their Sergeant were lined up in his path, rifles trained on him.

  “Halt!” the Sergeant bellowed. “Halt or we will open fire!”

  Hamish X paused. He looked up at the tower and then to the line of soldiers. Their faces were damp with sweat. There was fear in their eyes.

  “Are you really willing to fight and die for this?” Hamish X asked. “Does this fortress mean anything to any of you?”

  “We’ve been paid to do a job and paid well,” the Sergeant said evenly. “We will do that job. Men, prepare to fire.”

  “You can’t win. The gate is broken. The lower levels are taken. You are all that remain. Surrender now and you will be allowed to leave.”

  The Sergeant looked Hamish X in the eyes. “We were paid to do a job. If we surrender, we lose face. We will be dishonoured.�
��

  “There is no honour in dying for a dishonourable cause,” Hamish X said, stepping closer. The rifle barrels were wavering.

  “He does have a point, Sarge,” one of the soldiers opined.

  “Quiet, Ulrich.”

  “Just sayin’.”

  Hamish X pressed his advantage. “The people who hired you are evil and know no honour. You don’t owe them any loyalty. If you lay down your arms, I promise you will not be harmed.”

  Hamish X stopped and fell silent. The Sergeant was thinking. After what seemed like an eternity, he spoke. “Men, lower your weapons. Stand down.”

  The mercenaries relaxed. They lowered their weapons and placed them on the stone in front of them. At that instant, Harik and his Bedouins burst through the door behind Hamish X. Hamish X held up a hand.

  “They have surrendered. The fight is over.”

  The Bedouins cheered. Harik directed a number of them to gather up the mercenaries’ weapons and herd the captives away.

  “Well done, Hamish X.” Harik clasped the boy’s shoulder and grinned. Then a puzzled expression came over his sharp features. “What in the name of Allah is that?”

  “Oh, it’s a raccoon.” Hamish X laughed, holding George up before him. “Harik, meet George.”

  “Hello,” said George politely.

  “By the Prophet! It talks!”

  “I’m not an it,” George said. “I’m an artificial intelligence. And the name is George.”

  “Quite so.” Harik laughed. “Quite so!” The face of the Bedouin grew serious. He pointed at the Sergeant. “You! Where are our families? Speak!”

  “They’re all in the tower,” the mercenary said. Hamish X set George down on the ground and turned to the tower. At the base of the high finger of stone, where it joined the wall, there was a simple door. Hamish X walked over to it and lifted the latch. The door was locked.

  “The key, please.”

  The Sergeant fished a ring of keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Hamish X, who caught them easily. He tried two keys before finding the right one. The heavy steel key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Inside, he found a simple room. Bunk beds lined the walls. The room was full of fearful women and children. They had heard the commotion outside and assumed the worst. Harik stepped into the room behind Hamish X and one woman cried out, running into the man’s arms. She hugged him fiercely and tears ran down her cheeks. Harik held her close and spoke to her in a soothing voice. He turned and looked at Hamish X with tears in his own eyes. “My wife, Jali.”

  Hamish X cast his eyes about the room, but all the occupants were Bedouin. There was no sign of the Professor.

  “Harik,” Hamish X said, pulling out the photograph of the Professor. “Ask if anyone has seen this man.”

  Harik took the photo and held it out to his wife. Wiping her eyes, she looked at the image and nodded. She spoke in Arabic and pointed at the stairs that ran up to the next level.

  “He is above,” Harik interpreted. “She says he is not well. He contracted some kind of illness and was set apart from the others.”

  Hamish X had no sooner heard this than he dashed up the stairs. He came up into another, smaller room. In this room there were only a few beds, all of them empty save one.

  In the corner, by an open window, the Professor lay on a cot. Sweat glistened on his forehead and soaked the thin sheet covering him. A Bedouin woman sat beside the bed, staring in apprehension at Hamish X. Only her eyes were visible above her veil, and they were full of fear.

  Hamish X held out his hands, palms upward, and bowed. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He gestured for the woman to go down the stairs. She seemed to understand, getting off her stool and hurrying past him with a soft swish of her robes. Hamish X waited until she was gone before moving to the bedside and looking down at the man who had been the object of his long search. He had found the Professor. His quest was at an end. At last, he would know who and what he was.

  Chapter 22

  Professor Magnus Ballantyne-Stewart was a shadow of the man Hamish X recalled from his recovered memories. He had been thin, but now he was practically emaciated. The sickness that gripped him had melted away his flesh. His skin was waxy and grey beneath a shine of sweat, and his eyes were sunken. His chest rose and fell beneath the sheet, the rattle of his breath loud in the empty room. His skinny arms lay atop the sheet at his sides.

  A pitcher of water sat on a table beside the bed. In a basin lay a damp cloth. Hamish X poured some water into the basin and dipped the cloth into it. Wringing it out, he laid the cloth on the man’s head. The Professor moaned and stirred, mumbling unintelligibly. Looking down on the frail, sickly man, Hamish X didn’t know what he felt. When he first recalled the ordeal he had undergone in the laboratories of the ODA and the Professor’s part in them, he had been enraged. He had wanted to take revenge on the man who facilitated his torture and mutilation. Ballantyne-Stewart should have done something to stop the Grey Agents! Instead, he stood by, let his fear rule his decisions, and allowed the ODA to use his genius for their evil ends.

  Yes, Hamish X had felt rage. Now, looking down at the pathetic creature in the bed, that rage was gone. He felt nothing but pity for the sick man, another person broken by the evil Grey Agents. He just wanted answers.

  “Professor Ballantyne-Stewart,” Hamish X said clearly, gently shaking the man’s shoulder. The skin was hot to the touch, feverish. “Professor, can you hear me?”

  The dark eyelids fluttered and opened. Pale blue eyes blinked and tried to focus. “Who?” he said, his voice a papery whisper. “Who are you?”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  “Can’t see,” the Professor croaked. “Glasses.”

  Hamish X looked on the table and saw a pair of thick spectacles behind the basin. He opened them and placed them on the bridge of the man’s nose. The Professor blinked owlishly, his eyes magnified by the thick lenses. He stared at Hamish X and his mouth trembled. “It’s you!” he said softly.

  “Yes.” Hamish X nodded and sat down in the stool by the Professor’s bed. “I’ve come a long way to talk to you.”

  The Professor lay very still looking at Hamish X for a long time. Then, at last, he said, “You have questions.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I will try to answer …” The Professor began to cough violently. Hamish X found a glass and filled it with water. Putting his arm around the man’s shoulders, Hamish X raised him up so that he could drink. The coughing subsided. Hamish X laid the sick man back down.

  “Thank you,” the Professor said. “I’ve contracted some kind of fever. I don’t think I have long, actually. You’ve arrived just in time, I think.”

  “We’ll get you out of here, get you care.”

  The Professor waved a feeble hand. “I won’t be leaving here, but thank you for your concern. Heaven knows I deserve no mercy, especially from you.”

  “Everyone deserves a little mercy, Professor.”

  The Professor shook his head. “I’ve done very bad things. I thought I didn’t have a choice but … I’ve done very bad things to you. I am sorry for that. Can you forgive me?”

  Hamish X was quiet for a moment. “Yes. I forgive you. But I have questions …”

  “I will try to answer them.”

  Now, faced with the possibility of knowing who and what he was, Hamish X found he couldn’t decide what he wanted to ask first.

  “Why me?”

  “You were deemed a good candidate. The ODA had certain criteria: intelligence, physical ability, et cetera. They watched you and they waited for their opportunity.”

  “They stole me from my parents?”

  “No, not exactly. They waited until you were … There’s no way to say this delicately. They orchestrated your death.”

  Hamish X was shocked. “I died.”

  “After years of searching, poring over medical records, seeking the perfect genetic specimen, they chose you.”

  Ham
ish X was silent, watching the man’s face. This was the story he’d been waiting to hear. Now, he found he was afraid of what he might learn. Of all the battles and all the adventures he had lived through, nothing had prepared him for the truth.

  The Professor continued. “They arranged for you to have an accident. I don’t know what it was … I hadn’t started working for them yet and they wouldn’t tell me later.”

  “I drowned,” Hamish X whispered. He remembered the waves crashing over him, the grip of the undertow. “I drowned in the sea.”

  “That is consistent with my own observations.” The Professor coughed, a racking, shuddering spasm gripping his whole body. Hamish X held the old man’s hand as the attack subsided. When he had sufficiently recovered, the old man continued. “They arranged your death. Your body was never recovered. That’s because they took it for themselves.

  “So, you suffered physical death and they revived you using their scientific skills. They have methods far in advance of our own. It’s what drew me into their web in the first place.

  “Perhaps I should tell you a little about my story. It will answer many of your questions and help you frame the important ones, hmm?”

  Hamish X nodded.

  “Fine. I was a genetic researcher. Specifically, I was trying to develop methods of cloning that would produce offspring that were identical to the parent organisms in every way. There had been one insurmountable problem up to this point: the offspring tended to age and die at an accelerated rate. I wanted to change that. You see, I had a personal interest in the problem. I had a daughter. Sylvie was her name. My daughter was dying.

  “She was diagnosed with a blood disorder. Nothing could be done. No cure could be found. I was one of the leading genetic biologists in the world, but I couldn’t help her …”