“I thought that Holder was supposed to wake up first, then me second. Did anything go wrong? Is he all right?”
“No, actually things are turning out better than originally planned.”
“My family, how are they?”
“Your husband Frank, children Frank junior, Harold, Debora and Susan are all still under cryogenics but they’re doing just fine.”
She raised her head then dropped it again. “Have to sit up. My mouth’s as dry as the Sacramento valley. Where’s my water cap’?”
Jim looked up at Chin.
“Help her up. She’ll be all right. She’s asking for the gelatin coated water capsule they used to slightly moisten the mouth just after wake up.”
Jim looked around the interior of the chamber.
“We took them out,” the Doctor said, reaching for a small beaker on a table next to him. “This’ll be better. It contains a medication that promotes salivation.”
Jim pushed a hand under her back. Mort stepped forward and gently grasped her upper arm. They raised her to a sitting position and Jim grabbed the sheet that had started to slide from her chest.
The woman raised a hand under the sheet and pushed it forward exposing her naked, upper body. “I don’t give a shit who sees my tits. I just want a drink.”
“Why doesn't she have cloths on?” Earl said.
“I did not want to flex her joints until her brain was fully active and in control,” Dr. Chin said. “It may have caused damage.” He leaned forward and put the beaker to her lips.
She slowly sipped as the two men supported her back. “Oh boy that tastes good,” she said between sips.
Drops of water ran down her chin. She leaned her head back indicating that she had had enough. Carol moved around behind and raised a maroon turtle necked shirt putting it over her head. The doctor shook her short blond hair and reached inside the shirt with one hand searching for a sleeve.
“Better get this on,” the Doctor said. “Don’t want to catch a cold after all the work we’ve gone to.”
“A cold what?” Chin asked with concern.
“Very funny,” she said with a half paralyzed smile. She slowly reached for the second sleeve. “A cold tushie I guess.”
“Ah..” Chin said. “What’s a tushie?”
“Backside,” Jim said.
Carol walked around to her feet, flipped the sheets back slightly and proceeded to push her feet through the legs of an exercise style pair of pants. She looked up as she reached the knees and smiled. “I think this’ll take care of your tushie just fine.”
Doctor Ellison reached down and pulled the pants the rest of the way up under the sheets. “I feel a hell of a lot better than I thought I would. We estimated it would take at least a day before I could get to a sitting position.”
Tone was slowly returning to her face. She frowned and assumed several more facial expressions as an exercise.
Dr. Chin smiled. “We kept you under anesthetic for two days after thawing you out. Administered medication to quickly clear your brain of the preservatives and gave you a little exercise with electro nerve stimulation for muscle tone.”
“What the hell are you fucking well raving about,” she said with a slight smile then reached up to brush the hair from her face. The smile faded as she moved her hand forward and lifted it slightly.
“Gravity?” she said, looking up at Jim in shock. “Are we still on Earth? What the hell went wrong, please tell me?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Jim said, doing his best at a reassuring smile. “You’re in orbit around a planet in the K239774 system. It’s absolutely perfect for colonization.”
“The gravity you feel is artificial.” Carol added from the foot of the chamber.
Ellison looked up and tried to focus her eyes on Carol. “Artificial what?”
Jim turned to the side and pointed at an armchair. “Would you like to take a seat? We could demonstrate.”
She lifted a leg and placed her heel on the rim of the chamber “Now this I’d like to see.”
Jim straightened. “Computer, this room only, reduce gravity to ten percent.”
The woman’s arms shot up as their weight suddenly reduced but her compensating muscle tone didn’t. “Holy hell!”
Jim slid his hands under her legs and back and easily lifted her out of the chamber setting her feet on the carpeted floor. “Makes it easier to lift things this way.”
Carol took her arm and they both escorted her to the chair.
“Computer, one hundred percent gravity,” Jim said as she sat.
Ellison looked from face to face. “Who are you anyway?” she said as she tried to focus. “I don’t recognize any one of you. Are you more of Stutchman’s crowd? They were supposed to wake up first.”
“What, the international playboy?” Jim asked, chuckling. “I saw a Ben Stutchman on the passenger list.”
“International dick head more likely,” Ellison said, looking down at her legs. “No, that’s the idiot son.” She leaned back looking around again. “Who are you?”
“Well,” Jim said as he glanced up at Carol. “Doc. Redmond put it to me bluntly when I first arrived. I guess I should do the same.” He looked the doctor straight in the eyes. “It took longer than expected for your ship to find a potentially habitable planet, about seventeen hundred years longer. You were asleep for almost two thousand years. During that time, about two hundred planets have been populated. Empires have risen and fallen. Wars have been fought and new technology has cut interstellar space travel to less than a week.”
She smiled and reached up patting Jim lightly on the cheek. “You seem like a really nice guy, but you’re full of shit.”
“No, no,” Chin said, trotting around the chamber. “I can assure you it’s quite true. My name is Dr. Chin, I’m a professor at the University of Batalavia. It’s on a planet in the Pollux system. The simple facts of your easy wake up should tell you that technology has advanced considerably since your time. It has been almost two thousand years.”
After a momentary pause Dr. Ellison leaned her head back and burst out laughing. “So, it is true. How many of us have you woken up so far?”
“Just you,” Chin said. “We need manpower to help wake up the rest. You were listed as a cryogenics expert.”
“Expert? Bullshit. I’m a plain general practice army M.D. that got a three month shake and bake course. No one on the ship is an expert. Who’re you going to wake up next?”
Jim picked up the data pad on the side of the armchair and read. “We have fifteen people in the ship’s recreation room. By the way, you aren’t on your ship. We transferred you to the space yacht Lydia. Dr. Chin wanted a more controllable environment for the first group.”
“Space yacht? Who’s the billionaire?”
“It’s multi billionaire and it’s me.”
“Is that the list?” she said, reaching for the pad in Jim’s hand.
Jim handed it over. “Yes.”
The Doctor turned the pad over a couple of times before reading the screen. “What the hell is this thing?”
“It’s a computer pad.”
“I know what it is but it’s so damn thin.”
Jim extended a finger to point at the base. “You scroll the text by...”
“I can see the little arrows,” the doctor snapped as she lightly slapped Jim’s hand away then touched the screen. “Wow, this thing’s fast,” she said as the text scrolled. “Anyone in that room by the name of Stutchman?”
“No.”
“How about Falvy?”
“Ah.. no.”
“Good,” she said, returning the pad. “These people are all right. Confer with me before selecting any more. There are some stakes I have to drive through a few hearts.”
Jim glanced at the pad. “Ah... is this a security matter? We do have a government agent on board. Should he be notified?”
“Definitely, where is he?”
“Peter?” Jim said, looking up. “
Have you been following this?”
“Yes I have,” came Peters voice through the system. “Looks like we’ll be having a long talk doctor. I am special agent Harvey of the Commonwealth Secret Service. Just let me know the problem and we’ll see what we can do.”
Dr. Ellison looked up at Jim. “Is that guy gay?”
“Queer as a three dollar bill.”
The Doctor leaned back again and burst into a throaty laugh. “An old colleague of mine used to say they would all be cured within a hundred years. Told him that he was full shit and should just leave them the hell alone. Wish I could meet him again so I could tell him to stick it up his kazoo.”
“Are you... ah..?”
“Hell no, I have a husband and four kids remember. Now can I have that talk with your security man?”
“If you feel up to it,” Chin said.
“Up to it? I feel like dancing.”
“It’s the medications we gave you,” Chin said. “You’ll feel quite exhilarated for a few hours then uncontrollably fall asleep for sixteen.”
“I just slept for two thousand years, do I really need more?”
“Within a few days you’ll assume a normal sleep pattern.”
“Ok, can you bring in that agent now? A few dirt bags are going to get one hell of a surprise when they wake up.”
A door opened and Peter walked into the room. “I am perfectly capable of bringing myself in thank you.”
* * *
“We have a bunk made up for you doctor,” Carol said as she saw Ellison’s head nodding again.
“No, sweetie. Have to get this out before you do any more. So where were we?”
All, with the exception of Dr. Chin and his assistant had assembled on the observation deck to hear what Ellison and a second person, newly awakened, had to say. The second was a male in his late twenties. Ellison had pointed him out as an engineer who specialized in cryogenics hardware. The main topic of discussion had centered on a situational briefing. Their position with regards to current law and recent events affecting them were quickly explained in as much detail as time would permit.
Levin sat, obviously disinterested in the conversation in progress. He interjected occasionally in an attempt to draw Harry, the new arrival, into a technical discussion.
“So, this man Stutchman took over the shuttle,” Jim said. “What was his hold on that crew of thugs he has?”
“A promise of getting on board a ship. He chose men and women that had little hope of being picked to go. No skills, low intelligence, they must have jumped at the chance. That, plus the promise of being his enforcers when he set up his little feudal state on arriving at a planet.”
“That did happen on two occasions,” Chris said. “Their little kingdoms lasted a generation or two but were both overthrown. It took a strong personality to organize something like that but it usually fell apart under their descendants.”
“It would’ve probably done the same with this one too,” Ellison smiled. “That Ben Stutchman, his son, is about as useful as a used prophylactic. He is... He is...” Her head nodded forward. Within seconds she was asleep.
Carol jumped to her feet and switched off the electromagnetic anchor on the doctor’s seat. “Off to bed. I doubt if she’ll wake up again.”
They all watched as Carol glided the chair in the direction of the lift tube.
“So, that’s how I’ll be in about an hour,” Harry said with a broad grin.
“Yep,” Jim replied, “but before you go, tell us something about their methods. Just intimidation or do they go further?”
“Go further? How do you think they got the cryo chambers they now occupy? The original occupants were shoved out an airlock while we were still in orbit. We lost over three hundred good people to make room for that family, their women and their private army.”
“I’d like to know more about the father,” Karla said, leaning forward.
“Thinks himself some sort of special person appointed by God to rule over everyone. I believe he had a desire to rule the universe once his new order was established. Definite delusions of grandeur. His son was slightly different. He had delusions of adequacy.”
“The father’s a real goose stepping Nazi eh?” Earl said.
“Surprisingly no. He was quite pleasant spoken and highly intelligent. I spoke to him once before I went under. If I didn’t know his ulterior motives, I would say he was quite charismatic, that and his piercing brown eyes that seemed to look into your soul. That’s probably how he got his money and those good looking women he brought along.”
Karla jumped forward. “So you’re saying that it was he, as head of this family that planned the whole thing?”
“Him and one of the women. The technical genius behind it is Jennifer Falvy. She was the one that reprogrammed the computers and was probably the last to go under. I think there was another in the leadership clique, but I never met whoever it was.”
“What was it like on Earth before you left?” Jim asked as he relaxed back in his seat and prepared for the worst.
“A living hell. When I was little the skies were blue and the temperatures comfortable. Slowly the weather changed. Record high temperatures, record lows, record rain, record droughts. Storms became so frequent that they were expected just about every second day. The sky became sort of misty after a few years and the average temperature rose by ten degrees. The humidity was almost unbearable. The polar ice caps slowly melted drowning most of the major cities.”
“I’m interested in the composition of your ship,” Levin said. “It seems to be made from material of a quite unusual nature.”
“We scrapped everything. The cars were one of the first things to go. They disappeared from the streets almost overnight. Finally, the houses were gutted. Gangs of government workers went from block to block tearing out electrical wiring for the copper, digging up the plumbing, smashing windows and taking the plastic frames and generally removing all appliances. Most of the stuff they took had no use to us anyway. Electrical services were discontinued as well as piped water supply. Most of the sports fields were turned into giant scrap yards to sort out the materials.”
“Where did the power to launch all this stuff into space come from?” Jim said. “When I left Earth they were launching no more than a couple of tons at a time. That ship of yours is mostly steel, not light weight aluminum.”
“Necessity,” Harry said. “The scientists and technologists were given all the recourses they needed. The things they came up with were astounding. Electro magnetic catapults, ion drive, fusion drive.”
“Some of the things your scientists did we can not duplicate,” Levin said. “With all the advances in science, we could not do it.”
“It’s happened before,” Jim chuckled.
“Oh yes,” Levin said. “You told me about the pyramids.”
“For details you’ll have to ask someone else, I haven’t got a clue.”
“How did the people take it?” Chris asked as he looked up from the pad on which he was rapidly making entries. “Was the whole thing well organized?”
“Hell no, the government was overthrown so many times you needed an almost daily update to find out who was in charge of what. Then there were the breakaway regions of the country. Minor wars were fought over resources and private armies roamed the country trying to take over the manufacturing centers that were building the colony ships components. The Stutchman family headed one of the more successful gangs. They waited until all the work was done and then took over our ship’s last shuttle just before it left.”
Chris again looked up and paused momentarily as he tried to frame his next question. “Ah... I take it that your ship was the last one to be constructed at that center?”
“No, they had planned fifteen more.”
“If there were that many people waiting I’m surprised that a couple of hundred troops could take one of your shuttles. Didn’t they have a defensive security system?”
“It was
n’t hundreds that attacked, it was thousands. They attacked in human waves and were slaughtered. I was told that when they took over, Falvy chose the ones aboard from the survivors. The rest were either left behind or killed if they protested.”
“Where did they come from?” Karla asked.
“California. When the water supply dried up, the state became one big desert, those who weren’t promised a slot on a ship left in a giant migration attacking other places.”
“Los Angeles?” Karla asked with suppressed excitement.
“That’s a possibility. L.A. was going underwater and the people were forced into the Mojave Desert.”
“So, they’d have come directly from the Mojave?” Karla said. “I lived at a commune in the Mojave Desert for a….”
“Karla,” Halbert said sympathetically, “you know that it’s impossible that you know any of them.”
Karla’s facial expression tightened. She was obviously trying to control an emotional outburst. “There will be someone. I know it.”
Jim gave her a supportive look. “I believe you’re setting yourself up for one big disappointment.”
“That’s what you think,” Karla said in an arrogant tone while suppressing tears.
Chris glanced back at his pad. “What do you think should be done with them now?”
“Shove them out an airlock, same as they did to our people.”
“Ah.., you can not do that,” Halbert said. “That’d be lowering yourself to their level. You now have the opportunity for a more civilized approach. A trial would be appropriate now.”
Harry quietly smiled to himself. “I almost forgot there was such a thing. I’ve lived too long under anarchy and terror. We’re all going to have to adjust our way of thinking. Reestablishing government and process of law should be our first priority.”
Sam chuckled. “Well y’all are welcome to what them legal fellahs set up fer the planet. Everyone back thair on that there planet we jest comes from seemed to be right pleased with it. They says y’all can change anythaing ya wants with them there amendment thaings.”
“Thank you President Carlisle. I know one of the passengers that’ll be quite pleased with living in the Confederate States of America. He’s from Tennessee and still believes that the south will rise again. I don’t think he contemplated it quite this way though.”
To Wake the Living (The Time Stone Trilogy Book 2) Page 16
