Harbinger

by Jack Skillingstead

  “My wife is dying,” I said. “I need to get down there.”

  “Dying, Mr. Herrick? That’s what biologicals do. All except you. Aren’t you used to it yet? We are.”

  She strode away.

  Okay.

  I retrieved my laser-cutter and a fresh battery and went to work. I’d only had time to slice a single glowing arc in one of the titanium plates sealing the hatch, when I heard them coming. Their heavy footfalls, dozens of them. I swung the cutter in their direction.

  “Stop,” I said.

  They didn’t.

  I triggered the laser and burned a hole in BURT 2’s right thigh. A whiff of gray smoke puffed out. He acquired a limp but kept coming. So did the others.

  “Don’t you understand?” I shouted. “I have to get down there. I have to!”

  I resumed cutting the plate, and then they overwhelmed me, took the cutter away, and carried me off.

  *

  They isolated me on a quarter deck of my own. I had adequate supplies, a view port, San Francisco (a faux chunk of it, anyway, where I could lounge on a bench by myself in the Presidio without even mad Laird Ulin to play chess with), and a stasis module. The stasis module looked like a black lacquer coffin with a window in the lid and a Medusa’s tangle of pipes and tubes springing from it. My option, should I grow bored.

  So this is how I learned that something human did indeed survive the uploading process. How else could the biomechs exercise such cruelty?

  I had all I needed but communication. Sometime during my initial days in this new captivity, Delilah must have died. I remember sitting in the afternoon sun of the Presidio and feeling an emptiness open within me. The white swans floated by, and I didn’t bother to wipe my tears. I was alone.

  Fuck San Francisco. I got up and walked through the Scrim.

  My view port was small. I pressed my nose to it, making fog ghosts. All the stars in the universe seemed to be gathered in a ball.

  I disrobed entirely, except for the white gold ring and chain around my neck, and climbed into the stasis module. Infinity had a number of these things, but probably mine was the only one about to be put into use. Revival odds were in the low percentile. Stasis tubes were a last resort option.

  I began to control my breathing. Gradually the world misted over, and my consciousness sought the peace of oblivion. On the way there I experienced a vision.

  A ring of trees in a moonlit meadow. Two of them stepped aside and allowed me to enter the ring. There were some dead people in there. My mother, my father, my brother. Nichole, too. She turned and looked at me. The others were pale, painted in moonlight, ghostly. But Nichole was vibrantly alive. Energy burst from her in a nimbus of colors. There was no sound in this vision, but Nichole clearly mouthed the words “Welcome home, Ellis.”

  I shook my head. This wasn’t any home I knew.

  She smiled and took my hand. The others all touched me and tried to draw me in with them, into their embrace. But I was afraid and resisted. Then it all became vague and I went to sleep for a long, long time.

  part three:

  evolution

  “Thou art God.”

  —Michael Valentine Smith

  chapter fifteen

  Mr. Herrick?”

  I heard him but preferred not to.

  “Mr. Herrick, can you hear me?”

  Yes. Now go away.

  A thumb pushed up my left eyelid. Bright light, stabbing. I tried to bat it away, but my arm wouldn’t obey me. It lay inert, a dead thing at my side.

  So thumb the other lid up.

  “Dilation is reactive and even.”

  Another voice, female: “He’s looking very good, considering.”

  I blinked.

  “There you are,” the female voice said.

  “Yep, here I am,” I said. Only it came out sounding like I had a gym sock crammed in my mouth.

  “Welcome back,” the first voice said, the male voice. “You’re a very lucky man.”

  Funny, I didn’t feel lucky. All I could see was the ceiling, which was white. I closed my eyes again and went back to sleep.

  *

  I woke up in some kind of hospital room. There was a chair, a door opening onto a bathroom, and two beds, one of which I occupied. A heavily bandaged woman lay in the other. Her breathing was noisy and ragged. Most of her face was wrapped in bandages that appeared damp. Her arms lay on top of the covers. A needle was inserted into a vein on the back of her left hand and an IV bottle dripped something down a tube and into her. I could see part of her neck, and it looked burned and shiny wet. There was something about her. I almost felt as though I should know her.

  I was thirsty and weak. A door stood open to the corridor, and I thought I heard distant voices. I looked around but there was no call button.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice too weak to be heard outside the room.

  I tried to sit up and couldn’t manage it. My arms were like meatless bones sticking out of the short sleeves of the gown thing they had me in. Slipping my hand under the shirt, I could feel my ribs. The skin sagged between them. No wonder I felt so weak. My body was starved down to the point of emaciation. Strangely, though, I didn’t feel hungry.

  The woman in the next bed made sounds of distress. I looked over. She thrashed weakly. The IV needle pulled out of her vein and started dripping on the floor. The woman’s eyes were bright with fear. She was looking at the door.

  So I did, too.

  A figure with a red devil’s face loomed in the doorway, so tall it had begun to duck in order to enter the room. It’s chin was about a foot long. Its eyes were round and black with yellow pinpoint pupils.

  Fear injected me with a kick-ass dose of adrenaline, and I sat up. The thing immediately hunched away. My heart thudded. I took advantage of the adrenaline rush and threw the covers back and swung my matchstick legs off the mattress. I looked down at my Dachau body and wanted to weep.

  The woman was watching me.

  “It’s all right,” I said, “I’ll get help.”

  She nodded, her eyes grateful.

  I placed my bare feet on the cold floor and tried to stand. It worked, sort of. Using the bed frame to assist me, I shuffled around toward the door. I would have to let go to make any further progress. I did—and fell. From my new vantage point, the corridor appeared empty. The IV tube dangled between the beds, dripping, dripping, making a clear puddle on the floor.

  “Help,” I said, but the word emerged as little more than a dry rasp.

  Okay. I started dragging myself forward. Eventually I got my head and shoulders past the doorway. At the end of the corridor—oh, twenty kilometers away—two women were talking animatedly. I said “Help” again, to no effect. So I waited for them to notice me. After a while, they did.

  They were young. The first girl who knelt beside me solicitously could have been no more than twenty years old. She had the loveliest eyes. Her friend got on the other side of me. They hooked their arms under mine and hauled me up to my knees and then my feet and walked me back to bed.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the girl with the eyes.

  “Tamara,” she said, and smiled.

  The other girl reattached my roommate’s IV. Amazingly, the burned woman appeared to be sound asleep. I assumed the nurse had given her something.

  “There was a monster,” I said. “It scared her badly.”

  The two nurses, or whatever they were, looked at each other.

  “Well,” Tamara said. “Can I get you anything for now?”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “Of course you are. I’ll bring you a cold drink.”

  “Thank you.”

  They went away, and Tamara returned shortly with a glass of something carbonated and lemony with a straw sticking out of it. I sipped at it gratefully, and she watched me.

  “You really are Herrick, aren’t you,” she said.

  “Yes, I really am.”

  “Then why did you ever climb into
that stasis module? You would have survived the remainder of the trip easily without it.”

  “I know that.”

  “But the module might have killed even you.”

  “That was sort of my half-assed idea.”

  “Then it was a dumb idea.”

  “Agreed,” I said, though I didn’t. Then I yawned deeply, which was a more sincere expression; I felt exhausted.

  “Sleep now,” Tamara said. “I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions when you wake up.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  She adjusted my blanket and started to leave. I stopped her at the door.

  “Hey,” I said. “What about the Devil?”

  “The—”

  “The monster that scared my roommate.” I nodded at the other bed.

  “Mrs. James was in an accident,” Tamara said. “A very serious one, as you can see. She and her son were operating a high-speed overland vehicle and collided with a vehicle occupied by members of the indigenous population. What you saw wasn’t a monster or a devil. It was a Trau’dorian. And it was here to apologize to Mrs. James. Her son was killed, you see.”

  “Indigenous population?” I said. “Where am I, exactly? There was never any indication of an indigenous species on Ulin’s World.”

  “This isn’t Ulin’s World. Very far from it. You’re on a planet orbiting a star in the Vega system.”

  “Excuse me. But that doesn’t make sense.”

  “You mean, it makes no sense according to your preconceived ideas of what is possible and what isn’t. Don’t forget: You’ve been away from Earth a very long time.”

  “Nurse—”

  “I’m not a nurse. I’m . . . kind of a doctor, I suppose you would call me.”

  “Kind of a doctor?”

  She smiled. “I’m here to see to your psyche and help you through a difficult transition, I hope.”

  “What kind of transition?”

  “As I said: a difficult one.”

  “That’s fairly vague.”

  “Fairly. Rest now, Mr. Herrick. You need it.”

  “Ellis,” I said. “Call me Ellis.”

  She smiled again, lighting up. “All right, Ellis, I’d be delighted to.”

  There was something damned familiar about Dr. Tamara. After she left I tried to figure out what it could be. The odd thing about it—the exceedingly odd thing—was that the moment she walked out the door I was unable to call up in my mind exactly what she looked like.

  “That woman lied,” Mrs. James said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were sleeping. You looked like you were sleeping.”

  “I don’t talk to them,” she said. “There’s no point. They don’t believe me. They treat me like a crazy person, but I’m not a crazy person. I know what I saw. Those Trau’dorians took my son away, and now they want to come here and take me away, too.”

  I experienced an immediate empathy for Mrs. James. She didn’t sound crazy to me.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “There was an accident, if you want to call it that. My son and I were traveling one of the new roads outside the Dome. An excursion, that’s all. Perhaps we were foolish. Then we were struck, our vehicle disabled. We were both hurt. Our oxygen was venting. I couldn’t move, but Jeremy managed to reach our emergency masks and helped me into mine.

  “Then they came.

  “The Trau’dorians. They don’t want us on their planet, transforming it. So what if they live underground and have long abandoned the surface of their world? They regard us as trespassers, no matter what they say openly. I believe they deliberately crashed us. And when we were disabled and helpless, they came and dragged Jeremy away. They left me but they took him, God only knows why. They have no human feelings. No morality as we understand it.”

  “Mrs. James, maybe you better try to rest now.”

  “What’s your name again, young man?”

  “Ellis.”

  “I’m afraid of them, Ellis.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll stay awake while you rest. I promise I will.”

  But I didn’t.

  *

  I woke up feeling terrifically enervated and heavy. Someone was weeping. Mrs. James. With an effort, I turned my head on the pillow.

  The monster—the Trau’dorian—was bent over Mrs. James. Each of its hands possessed three very long, triple-jointed fingers and one opposable digit. The fingertips of its left hand were planted on Mrs. James’s temple and forehead. It didn’t seem to be hurting her physically, but it was obviously causing her a great deal of mental anguish. The Trau’dorian’s face was very close to hers, and the thing was wickedly hideous.

  The light in the room had not altered from the last time I was awake, and I could see all this very plainly. Especially the fear in Mrs. James’s eyes.

  I swallowed a couple of times and said, “Stop that, whatever you’re doing.”

  I was too weak to even sit up.

  The Trau’dorian turned its devil’s face to me. Whatever guts I thought I had turned into hot liquid and spilled into my bed. I’d never been so scared before in the whole of my incredibly long life.

  “Leave her alone,” I said.

  The Trau’dorian reached out toward me with its other hand, the fingers spread. The rice paper skin on the tips of the fingers was pulsing. I couldn’t breath. The creature was so big it was able to easily reach across the gap between the beds. Before it touched me, I blacked out.

  Sometime later, the cold wet sheets woke me. I’d pissed myself. I felt ashamed. Then I looked over at Mrs. James’s bed.

  She was gone.

  *

  No one came to help me. I waited a long time. I had no way of telling how long because there were no time pieces in the room and no window to gaze out of and figure the hour.

  So I peeled the sheet back and got out of bed on my bandy legs and hobbled over to the bathroom. I cleaned myself up, and also discovered fresh bedding in a cabinet, as well as a clean hospital gown. I put the gown on and went out into the hallway. It was empty and long. Much longer than I would have been able to traverse in my current condition.

  I returned to the room and rested in the chair for a few minutes, gathering my strength. All this felt wrong, somehow. Where was the medical staff? Why didn’t I have, at least, a call button with which to summon help? If Mrs. James was in such serious condition, why wasn’t she being closely monitored? For that matter, why was I in the same room with her at all?

  When I felt strong enough I stripped the soiled sheets and blanket off the bed, wiped down the mattress, and remade the bed with clean things. Then, exhausted again, I climbed back in and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  *

  “What happened to Mrs. James,” I said as soon as Dr. Tamara walked though the door.

  “Why she’s much better.”

  “How could she be much better? You told me yesterday her injuries were severe.”

  She looked at me curiously. “It wasn’t yesterday I said that.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “That was six weeks ago, Ellis.”

  I stared at her. “Come on.”

  “But I’m telling you the truth, because that was the first and last time I talked directly to you. I’ve been called away to work with other patients.”

  I did some more staring.

  “Are you all right, Ellis?”

  “You can’t seriously mean to say that I’ve been in this room six weeks.”

  “Ellis, you have been in this facility for a total of six terran weeks, ever since you were brought down from the starship Infinity. You have been undergoing a strict regimen of exercise and diet to counter the effects of long years in stasis. And I might add you’re doing very well. Just look at yourself.”

  I held my arms up, astonished to see they were no longer bones with skin. I had even acquired some muscle definition. Beyond that, now that I was paying attention, I noticed that I felt goo
d. Healthy, reasonably strong. Mentally acute—except for the unfortunate cognitive lapse of six weeks.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” I said.

  “Actually we speculated about the possibility of memory breaks. It’s a fairly common phenomenon experienced by survivors of stasis modules. With your unique regenerative body, it seemed likely you would avoid such side-effects. Evidently we were mistaken about that.”

  “Last night—I thought it was last night—I woke up and saw that devil thing, the Trau’dorian, doing something to Mrs. James. I tried to stop it but I couldn’t. I was too weak. I was helpless, and she was so scared. Damn it.”

  I blinked away tears, angry at myself.

  “Ellis, six weeks ago you were too weak. You had no more strength than a child Of course you couldn’t have intervened. Children are powerless. But you mustn’t be upset. I know all about the incident. The Trau’dorian was helping Mrs. James.”

  “Helping her how? By scaring her out of her wits?”

  “He was healing her mind. She was severely traumatized by the accident. The Trau’dorian felt responsible. They have that healing capability, and perhaps many others. We have barely begun to know their race. Mrs. James wasn’t frightened by the Trau’dorian. She was frightened by the terrors emerging from her own mind. That’s what you saw. Trust me, Ellis. Mrs. James feels much better now.”

  “Before she fell asleep,” I said, “she told me what happened out on the road. She said the Trau’dorians deliberately crashed her vehicle and then came and dragged her son away.”

  “But that’s nonsense. Mrs. James was thrown clear of the vehicle. A fire consumed her son and left almost nothing of him beyond charred bones. You must understand, Ellis. Mrs. James hasn’t been in her right mind. That is why the Trau’dorian came here. He wanted to help her, relieve her pain.”

  “Where is she now?”