by Bowring, S D
The doctor then moved some equipment on trolleys towards Keller and Ash. The equipment had screens with similar graphs to those he saw back on Earth during his preparation for the trip. This was part of the charade they were playing. Keller was grateful that he was getting help in this strange world but he had no idea who these men were. However, they soon explained the situation.
It seemed that Ash was the senior person out of the pair. As the doctor monitored the door Ash explained: “We’ve got a few minutes and we are going to try to move you out of this prison complex as it isn’t safe. We just have to wait here with you under the pretext of an urgent medical examination. Help should be here soon.”
“Who are these people, this Kurk person?” asked Keller.
“The Governor, your mother, has been aware that we had some renegades operating out of Macau B with some support in other areas. Kurk seems to have influence in this area but we aren’t sure if he is the ultimate power behind this. It wasn’t until recently that we realised how serious the situation was. These men are likely to cause chaos if they aren’t stopped and that will cost lives. We knew something was underway, some sort of operation, but not exactly what it was. We, amongst others, have been awaiting a move to be made and monitoring the whereabouts of suspected renegades to try and build a picture of how serious this was”.
Ash seemed to study his reaction, then continued.
“We were more than stunned at your arrival. It wasn’t picked up until we established that we had an unknown passenger on the transfer flight – we then got access to your records. On routinely verifying some details, your DNA was checked purely to ascertain your health after you landed and we then checked this against other samples. We have been extremely busy trying to establish who got you here. Until two days ago we hadn’t realised that our perma-link had been infiltrated by a renegade engineer. It seems he has been working with Kurk and his colleagues.”
“We have a pilot coming here in a prisoner transfer heli. This is going to be our route out. Governor Whelehan is aware you are here and that we are attempting a rescue. En route to Plymouth Rock we can contact your mother. Once we are out, the green guards will be on their way here to take back control. These are the civilian reserve police.”
Ash suddenly stood still. He seemed to be listening. “Is that them?” Doctor Clark asked. Keller realised that Ash must also have a speaker in his ear.
Ash nodded. “Lie down on the trolley,” he gestured to Keller. “As soon as they approach for landing we are going to move out through these doors down the corridor and through a set of doors to the courtyard. Then we will take you towards the heli. By the time we are in the courtyard, it will be too late for the alarm. At the same time, we have arranged a diversion at the front gates.”
They waited a few minutes. Then all hell let loose. Firstly there was a boom. “The diversion, Keller, don’t worry,” said Ash as Keller sat up. “Lie down. Doctor, let’s go,” he continued.
They moved calmly but swiftly through several sets of double doors. There was clearly some urgency in the air as other staff seemed to be moving back towards the cell area where he had come from, presumably towards the diversion.
They wheeled Keller down through a wider corridor and out through a final pair of doors into the courtyard. A heli was landing about thirty yards away. The sight of the machine landing still left Keller in awe. He was ushered towards the heli with Ash and the doctor on either side of him, both of whom were looking very tense, but determined.
The courtyard was a large area surrounded by grey walls. Keller guessed it was about an acre in size. Three of the walls had buildings alongside and some of those had direct access to the courtyard. The medical facility was one of these. The wall opposite the facility had a view of the mountains in the distance over which lay the Plymouth Rock settlement.
The door of the heli was open and its three wheels were off the ground, it was more or less floating steadily. The blades were still spinning at half speed. This was a larger heli than the ones he had seen earlier. It looked like it could hold more than half a dozen people including a central raised storage area that also held a stretcher. There was only one person in the front. Keller was suddenly ushered forward with some urgency towards the heli. He could hear shouting and saw smoke coming over the buildings on the side that he presumed the entrance was situated.
Ash urged Keller to climb into the heli. There was a woman in a nurse’s attire in the back - possibly part of the charade he thought. She helped Keller into a seat immediately and pulled a strap over him. Keller was about to thank her when he turned to hear more shouting and saw that three men in grey uniforms were running towards them. There was a bang and he saw the doctor fall back onto the floor awkwardly. “Lift! Lift!” shouted Ash, who simultaneously leapt in beside the pilot. The craft leant to the side slightly and then rose quickly, the doors sliding shut at the same time.
“The doctor, you’ve just left him,” shouted Keller who was in a state of fright. The heli was already 100 metres up and the speed of movement had shocked his stomach.
The heli buzzed away more quietly after the initial lift. Ash turned to Keller, “Calm down, Keller. The doctor has been stunned. He will be incapacitated for several hours now, judging by the charge used. We will return for him one way or another - but not now. There was no way we could stop to lift him in.”
Ash turned to the front as the viewer in front of him came on showing the mountains ahead. He waved his hand across part of the screen and the scene changed. Keller watched as a face came into view. “Hello, Governor Whelehan. We have your son, he is unharmed. Doctor Clark was incapacitated on exit. They are aware we have left with Keller. There is no pursuit as yet.”
This was a moment that Keller had thought about a lot since he was picked up in England. He had assumed that, when he met his birth mother, they would be in the same vicinity. He also assumed they would be able to sit together and talk and he was sure they would both have questions. He had pictured in his mind that it would be similar to meeting a long lost older sister, as he still found it hard to imagine a second mother.
He was, however, in a heli trying to evade a renegade who had threatened him and his birth mother. It was ironic that his mother, who didn’t even know much about him until a short while ago, was now going to provide safe refuge for him. Her two acts in his life would both be taking great personal risks for him. He was overwhelmed with emotions and in many ways felt sorry for her, but he already knew in his heart that she wouldn’t want this. He had thought about this and dismissed any doubts that she was uncaring. He knew that it was highly likely that their separation after his birth had probably been like a darkness on her heart for the remainder of her life. The Suffolk Road people called this sadness of loss a ‘heart shadow’.
“Thank you, Captain. We will do what we can for Doctor Clark,” she paused and tilted her head slightly. “Keller, is that you?”
“Yes, it is.” Keller looked at her and saw a fine woman. Though she had lines around her eyes, he could see that her life was not one in the fields, but he decided that she had the look of a good person. He also wasn’t quite ready to address her as mother. “It’s me, Keller.”
The Governor observed him briefly, with a sad smile, nodded slightly and said “Good, we will have time later,” she paused and added, “soon.”
There was a silence in the heli briefly, as though all present realised this was a significant moment in the lives of two people. Keller noticed they barely moved a muscle. “Yes, soon,” he said. He saw his birth mother break her gaze and she looked down momentarily with a look of relief.
“Captain, come to Government house, we will prepare for you.” Governor Whelehan’s face then faded and another view took its place with numbers and characters displayed. The pilot and Ash looked intently at them and then seemed to relax.
“Nurse? Keller might benefit from a drink.”
The nurse introduced herself as Tane. She pass
ed him a small container from a pocket in the large bag at her feet. “Nutrient drink,” she stated, as he removed the lid and examined the grey liquid. She passed one forward to the Captain and Ash.
“The heli should take about four and a half hours, Keller. Settle down and rest,” said Ash.
Tane offered him a small snack. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’m apparently light years from where I was until recently. I’ve no idea what is going on, except that someone is trying to use me as fishing bait for my birth mother and I’m holding on for fear of falling out of this machine. One of the people helping me, who I had only just met, has been hurt and we left him behind. I’m tired. That’s how I’m feeling.” He didn’t smile when he spoke. He didn’t seem angry either, just resigned to what was happening, but Tane could see he was emotionally struggling, now that they were away from immediate danger. She glanced at Ash who seemed to be listening too, although he was pretending to monitor the viewers.
“Oh, but you just need to hang on for a bit longer. Those renegades are a serious threat. We still aren’t sure of their network, how far it reaches and how many of our apparent ‘friends’ are working with them. That they were able to conceal your travel and arrival is very worrying. However, they have no overall control anywhere, except possibly Macau B and the green guards are on their way there. Why not push your seat back and have a rest, Keller. You will want to be rested by the time we arrive at Plymouth Rock.”
It was starting to get dark outside. Ash told him a two hour ‘night’ was due. This was known as a shortnight, as the two suns aligned themselves inconveniently for a period before the true night, known as the longnight.
Keller did eventually settle down. However, he did have time to see some even larger helis pass them by before darkness fell. They communicated with both Ash and the pilot. Ash told him they were the green guards - the civilian reserve. These were made up of young men and women who took a year of part-time training as part of their education. After this they took one week a year of refresher training and then remained on call until they were 35 years old. They were led by experienced commanders who also formed part of the Governor’s personal guard and they had responsibility for her protection and that of her elected officials.
Rayleigh wasn’t self-sufficient and in this way was the same as the other worlds; their need for mutual cooperation wasn’t the only reason for avoiding war and conflict. The disaster that almost ended the human race was their inspiration for never making the same mistake again. History was full of conflicts, some of which seemed disastrous - however, none had touched the scale of the last war.
Whilst there were various pacifist movements, there were no wholly pacifist nations or worlds. All worlds had some form of security and would use force if necessary to protect their communities and resources.
Keller had asked Cormic many years ago about pacifism, after hearing his Aunty Nerys talking passionately on the subject. He remembered her quietly walking out of the tent one day during a family meal. “Look at where we are and why we got here - yet some of you men still seem to be bent on total destruction. Haven’t you done enough?” She had said before leaving. This was in response to a discussion that had taken place after Keller asked about the Tehanos. These were an ancient Polynesian people from New Berwick. He had been taught about the Tehanos by his Aunty Ida from her set of books. The Tehanos seemed to Keller to have had lives similar to the Outsiders. They had led simple lives devoid of the technology of others in their world, although both Tehanos and Outsiders would have benefitted from technology provided by their neighbours, such as medicine and tools. Keller had mentioned that two stories had stuck in his mind, if these historical stories were true then both seemed ironic.
The first story involved the peoples of a group of islands called Larane Islands. These were inhabited by the Wraomi, a Polynesian people. Their environment was harsh. It was believed that they practiced pacifism to avoid the type of waste that resulted from warfare and conflict. They needed to cooperate to survive. They had apparently followed this way of life for three hundred years or so after a particularly devastating conflict amongst various tribes and it was strictly adhered to. This had some parallels to mankind in the 24th Century, Keller had remarked.
However in 1842, so the story goes, when the population was about 1300 Wraomi, some 750 Tehano landed from New Berwick. They arrived with guns and other weapons. Many arrived ill and the Wraomi nursed them back to health. Accounts written at the time suggest that the Tehano started to massacre the Wraomi. A council of Wraomi chiefs gathered urgently. The young men wanted to resist the invaders with weapons. The elders apparently dismissed the idea. The law of pacifism that they followed could not be violated as it was a moral code. The majority were massacred and many of those not immediately killed, were enslaved, and gradually cannibalised by the Tehano. Thirty years later, there were barely 80 Wraomi left. Much of this apparent genocide, slavery and injustice was done under the eyes of the more so-called civilised Europeans who didn’t intervene.
The second story, involving the Tehano from the same region of New Berwick took place a few years later. Ironically, this was almost overlapping the period of terror that other Tehano from the region were supposedly inflicting on the Wraomi on the nearby Larane Islands. This was at a time when Tehano land was being taken by the Europeans. When the Tehano resisted with weapons, they were defeated. This group of Tehano was led by a man who was educated in tribal customs and decided to adopt a passive resistance approach. He and his elders persuaded Tehano warriors to resist the loss of land without weapons. In 1865, he convinced 2,200 Tehano to actually welcome European soldiers into the village by offering food and drink. Many of them were later arrested for opposing land confiscation, albeit peacefully. This passive resistance had prevented massacre at the hands of the European soldiers and helped reduce the land loss that violent resistance would have cost.
Keller had re-told the story at this family dinner. He wondered how the same people could be so apparently violently genocidal in the first example, but on the other hand follow a passive resistance approach when they themselves were threatened.
This had inspired Cormic to ponder aloud. He wondered, in general, whether pacifism was only ever extolled by those people who lived in the comfort of the knowledge that someone else would do their fighting for them when they were threatened. “Maybe we should call it cosy pacifism,” he had said. Whereas, in the case of the Wraomi, this was pacifism in its pure form and in fact it led to almost annihilation. Cormic had then offered his opinion that in its simplest terms pacifism meant that you were as good as dead or someone died for you, neither of which was satisfactory.
Aunty Nerys at that point, had got angry, although normally she rarely added to the conversation. Her view, shared by many, was that nothing could be worse than going back to the old ways of ‘war, hatred, and destruction’, as she put it. The impact of the last war, and the lack of healthy children should be lesson enough for all of mankind. Such talk against pacifism merely brought the day nearer and nearer when mankind would start the next conflict. Keller understood Cormic’s innocent remarks, but he also understood Aunty Nerys. He had watched Merna and Ida leave the tent frowning at Cormic. This was when Keller realised why the Outsiders chose a simple life. The mantra from his family’s elders was that technology should be used sparingly.
The Land
Keller was awakened by Tane and he saw that light had returned outside. “Keller, Keller! Wake up,” she said pushing his shoulder. He was in a deep sleep and didn’t understand where he was until he felt the familiar lift of his stomach. He also noticed a change in the sound of the heli. He could hear Ash and the pilot talking urgently. Then Ash gestured towards the viewing screen.
Tane pushed Keller again, more urgently, “Keller, don’t be alarmed. The heli is cruising to a landing position but we have no drive. A laser has knocked out our battery. The heli can glide to a halt, but we may n
eed to move quickly when we land.”
Keller sat upright quickly “A laser?”
“Renegades, we presume, that’s why we must get moving quickly. We are about two hours flight from Plymouth Rock but that’s about a six day walk in these forests,” said Tane, who herself looked a little panicked.
Ash explained “Keller, I am sorry. They have been monitoring us. Support for the renegades is sparse. However, they clearly have some support out here in the middle of nowhere and they are acting against us. We are on the edge of the forest; however we have room to land this between the forest and the mountains. The heli is designed to glide down in the event of no power.”
Keller looked through the plas glass. The ground was coming up towards them slowly. He could see a dense area of trees ahead. Immediately below them, he could see a valley sitting between the two mountains. There was also, what he assumed to be, a freshwater lake in the valley with a small river snaking its’ way towards the trees. Tane was gripping her seat but maintaining her composure now - perhaps for Keller’s benefit. The pilot sat more upright and Keller could tell he was concentrating hard on the approaching valley.
There was a popping noise above them. Had Keller understood helis, he would have realised what was happening. The blades had disengaged and four parachutes mushroomed out from the centre of the heli darkening the cockpit as they shielded the brighter of the two suns, Mizar. The other sun, Alcor was barely over the horizon.
Initially the heli seemed to be in a stomach-churning pendulum swing as the four parachutes filled unevenly and then finally bloomed. The heli was being caught by an easterly wind and was driving to the side of the large valley.
