He managed to set up a pain block and began concentrating on slowing down his juggernauting heart and stabilizing his system. He realized someone thought he was dead or dying and had tried jump-starting his heart with electric shock and a needle full of adrenaline. They may have meant well, but if he didn’t get his heart slowed down fast, he was afraid it was going to explode through his chest.
So intense was his concentration that he didn’t even register the first tentative, feather-light touch of soft hands lifting him out of the muck of the sea bottom. Only when he was floating free and began to feel the pressure change as he was carried toward the surface, did he attempt to open his eyes. Miraculously, they had survived plasma burn, protected by the heavy diamond glass, night vision goggles that ripped off his head only after their plastic straps melted into his burning hair as he hit the water.
He rolled his eyes and squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the figures he could feel swimming around him. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a large shadowy figure, momentarily silhouetted against flashes of broken light, sheeting across the surface above. A large dolphin, maybe? Seconds later, large round, faintly luminous eyes swam into view, peering down at him. He could just make out a seal sleek, round head.
It reminded him of the creature he glimpsed when he popped the roof of the picket-runner. What was it? Something like a cross between a seal or a dolphin and a man? Once again, he remembered the childhood horror movies of genetic experiments gone wrong and terrible mutant monsters prowling the Sinks, but strangely these creatures hardly raised a ripple of concern.
In fact, nothing really bothered him. He was feeling pretty good. In fact, he was feeling better than good. In fact…he was drugged to the eyeballs! he realized. Then he remembered the “pincushion” still strapped to his arm. “Ah ha!” he thought. “Elementary, my dear Watson.” He lifted his arm in a slow motion, underwater, way until he could see the red glow of the diagnostic readouts on the face of the little, emergency, field medivac unit strapped to his underarm.
All those little pincushion needles had been sampling his blood for the medivac to analyze. Then its little computer-chipped brain began filling him full of feel-good drugs and whatever else it thought he needed. Yeah, like a hypodermic full of adrenaline to the heart, he thought.
“Just take it easy partner,” a voice whispered, and someone took his arm with the medivac strapped to it and gently lowered it to his side.
Harry thought that if he took it any easier he’d be too whacked out to even see straight. He started to giggle and choked again on the plastic tube down his throat.
“Better cut back ten cc’s,” another voice said, and Harry could feel someone tapping instructions into the medivac. As his mind began to clear, he realized that he hadn’t really been hearing voices. Instead, words had been forming inside his head like someone was thinking them for him.
Gentle laughter. “That’s right my friend. You catch on fast. I’m thinking it for you, like telepathy, nothing to it, and nothing to be afraid of. Just relax and enjoy the ride. You’re with friends now.” And a mental image of Chueh’s old Chinese coin medallion formed in his mind just before they broke the surface.
Firm hands held him upright with his head just above the surface. A cold, wind-lashed rain stung his burnt face where new skin tissue was beginning to form. Despite the drugs and his own pain block, he still felt it.
On the other hand, he should be glad to feel anything at all, he told himself. All this emergency first aid had nearly killed him. In fact, it did kill him, he realized and remembered again his umbilical snapping and falling free into the white light of death. So how come he was still alive here, in his old body? For an instant, he caught a glimpse of an answer so horrendous that his mind sheared away and hit the “delete” button before it could register.
But something registered, and it started him retching. Then, he coughed up and spit out the tube in his mouth and gulped cool night air. His lung tissue was still regenerating, and it felt like breathing nails. He dove back inside himself, trying to recapture what he had registered, but it was like chasing a mirage and at last he gave up and instead did a quick reconnaissance of his physical status.
The medivac seemed to be getting it right for a change and things were stabilizing faster than he would have thought possible. On the other hand, despite this mysterious healing rush, the physical damage to his meat locker body was so extensive that he was going to need a lot more time powered down in his ka to complete the healing process and take care of the trauma of being so ham-handedly resuscitated by these clowns. Whoever they were, they probably meant well, but he would have been better off if they had just left him on the seabed for another day or two.
He opened his eyes and looked around. They had surfaced behind a little island of wreckage that was overgrown with pale magnolia blossoms. He could smell their sweet, heavy scent on the night air. He could also hear sounds of battle, but they were muted with distance and sometimes blown away by the wind and rain.
Sleek round heads bobbed around him in the water. Their faces were human and surprisingly childlike except for the round, luminous eyes, glowing like radium watch dials below a huge dolphin-like cranial bulge. But human, definitely human, he thought.
“Well, I’m glad we got that cleared up” the thought popped into his head, riding a caressing wave of friendly laughter as one of the creatures swam up to him. “You can call me, S-s-s-arge.” He grinned, a wide cartoon grin that went from ear to ear and was full of sharp, needle like teeth. “Now, let’s get the medic over here and see what the damage is.”
While the medic took Harry’s arm and began reading the diagnostics on the medivac, S-s-s-arge swam in close. He pushed his face up into Harry’s, tilted his head from side to side, and examined him with his large radium watch dial eyes. Finally, he drew back and shook his head. “You look like you been through a meat grinder,” he said.
“Always nice to get a professional opinion,” Harry said.
S-s-s-arge ignored the sarcasm and bent down to confer with the medic. Then they both looked at Harry’s head, examining the burns and gently prodding the wound in the back. Finally, the medic shook his head, shrugged, and swam away.
S-s-s-arge gave Harry another pointy toothed, jack-o-lantern grin and slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “In our professional opinion, you shouldn’t even be alive, let alone conscious! Since you are, though, I guess we gotta keep you that way and get you out of here in one piece. First, we should take a look at the hornets’ nest you stirred up.”
He gestured at one of the bobbing heads, and the creature swam over to the little island and pulled himself out of the water. His pale arms were well formed and muscular but his hands were disproportionately wide and flat, the fingers spindle thin and spaced far apart with pale webs of membrane between. When he’d pulled himself halfway out of the water, he reached back and one of his companions handed him something that looked very much like Harry’s lost rail-gun.
“You recognize it?” S-s-s-arge asked. “You should, it’s yours. We thank you for your contribution to the war effort.”
“Glad to oblige,” Harry said absently as he watched the scout clamber up the island slope. Stubby, little legs that had the fat, chubby look of a baby’s grew directly out of the side of his hips and ended in fleshy, muscular fins that scrabbled for purchase on the muddy slope. Harry noticed that the pale skin of his upper body gradually turned dark and shiny as it tapered down to a long sleek tail beneath the hips.
Distant lightning sheeted across the sky as the scout crawled beneath the magnolias. His long tail curled up out of the water and its tip fanned open into a broad-ribbed fin almost three feet wide and as gaudily colored as a butterfly’s wing. The tail uncurled, and the fin slapped the water as the scout disappeared into the undergrowth.
“Why, you’re mermaids,” Harry whispered in amazement.
“I think in this case, mermen is more correct,
don’t you?” the laughing voice in his head commented dryly.
“But you’re beautiful,” Harry blurted out.
“You mean we’re not monsters, is that it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you meant it?”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Harry admitted. “In fact, you better believe I did. After all the horror films that have been made about this place and the genetic wars, I guess I expected you guys to look like a remake of ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon’.”
Harry could hear the mermen’s thought-voices whispering back and forth to each other, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was like listening at a closed door. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“The scout reports the coast is clear,” S-s-s-arge said. “The battle is still moving away from us.”
The patrol swam out from behind the island, carrying Harry with them. “You’re safe for the moment,” S-s-s-arge added. “But when they find out you’re not dead, they’ll fight their way back here.”
Harry looked down the long, back-alley waterway to where what was left of the apartment building was burning ferociously a couple of hundred yards away. He wondered momentarily what there was left to burn. Then he noticed that the little picket-runner had somehow survived and was still parked under the stairs. If they could get to it, he might have a chance of getting out of here.
“Don’t even think about it,” S-s-s-arge warned.
Harry looked at the merman treading water nearby. “Why not?”
“Why do you think they left it there?” S-s-s-arge asked. “They were feeling generous maybe? Use your head! They booby trapped it. Then they burned overrides through the slaver circuits of your AI. So even if you discovered the bomb and disarmed it, they would still control the car.”
“How do you know all that?”
“We watched them do it.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
“We’re soldiers, not suicides. We were the only patrol in this quadrant when Master Chueh called my people and asked for help. He said he had a tracer on you that we could follow.”
“The medallion, of course,” Harry said, fingering the old coin that had miraculously survived and still hung around his neck.
S-s-sarge nodded. “We were supposed to keep an eye on you until Chueh got here, but all hell broke loose first.”
“Where’s Chueh now?”
S-s-s-arge pointed down the waterway to the distant flashes and occasional explosions where the battle was moving away from them.
“We have to leave now. Our orders are to get you out if we can. The Seraphim must know by now that you’re still alive, and they will be back. For some reason, they want you pretty bad. This was a major operation.”
“I was so careful,” Harry said. “I scanned the whole area before coming in. I had top of the line detector…”
“They were dug in, shielded and waiting for you. Your detectors weren’t going to pick up anything they didn’t want picked up. Now, we don’t have any more time. Let’s get out of here. We’ve rigged a sling to tow you.”
“Where?”
“Some place where you’ll be safe, where master Chueh can find you, and where you can get proper medical attention.”
“Whoa, stop,” Harry said. “No more medical attention, okay?” He reached down and began unstrapping the medivac.
“Hey, what are you doing?” S-s-s-arge swam up and grabbed his arm.
“Listen, you got to trust me on this,” Harry said. “How do you think I survived so long under water before you guys got to me? You said yourself, I shouldn’t be alive, right?”
The merman nodded reluctantly. “You were under water too long, and the extent of your injuries…” he shrugged. “We clipped on the electrodes to shock your heart into starting, but it was just a formality. No one expected anything to happen.”
“Then you shot it up with adrenaline to really get it going and damn near killed me,” Harry said. “You didn’t mean to. You couldn’t know I was still alive. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I can put myself into a state of suspended animation at will. My metabolic rate falls so low that it looks like I’m dead. In fact, my body is healing itself.”
The merman kept a grip on Harry’s arm and regarded him skeptically.
“You don’t believe me?” Harry asked.
“I don’t know what I believe,” S-s-s-arge said. “I was the first one to find you, and I would have sworn that you were as dead as a doornail and had been for quite a while.”
“You gotta trust me on this,” Harry repeated.
“You know, the back of your head is caved in. There are probably bone splinters in your brain, and you still got third degree burns down the front of your body. I meant it when I said you shouldn’t even be alive, let alone talking to me.”
“Right now I’m making a big effort just to stay conscious. Look, in order to stay alive, I have to put myself back into suspended animation and when I do,” he raised his arm with the medivac strapped it, “this will think I’m dying and begin doing all the wrong things.”
Harry felt S-s-s-arge’s grip on his arm loosen, but still the merman hesitated.
“Ask your medic what kind of chance there is of getting me out of here alive,” Harry suggested.
S-s-s-age turned and looked at the medic who just rolled his eyes and shook his head doubtfully. The merman turned back. “How long?” he asked and released Harry’s arm.
“Harry unstrapped the medivac. “I don’t know, a day or two, maybe more.”
“What!”
“I know what I’m doing.” He held up the medivac. “Look, you can put this back on after I’ve gone into suspended animation. Put it on diagnostic only and at its finest setting. It should be able to pick up a vital sign now and again.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I’m probably dead and it wouldn’t have helped me anyway.”
“Wonderful,” S-s-s-arge grunted resignedly. “When do you do it?”
“Now, on the count of three.”
“The count of three,” The merman nodded. “Good luck.”
“One…Two…Three…”
46
Dodger Stadium
Harry woke up to the sound of children’s laughter and the feel of warm sunlight. He heard the gentle lapping of water nearby and smelled the scent of flowers and rich plant life. Somewhere in the distance, a goat brayed. He opened his eyes to flickering sunlight. He squinted up at the palm trees, swaying gently overhead. Their feathered leaves cast sun-dappled shadows over him.
He dimly remembered a long trance-like period in his ka and a violent return to his body and then…nothing. He wondered where he was. He turned his head toward the sound of children’s laughter and saw Doc dozing nearby in an antique, pre-Crash, aluminum lawn chair.
He had exchanged his usual undertaker blacks for a military-style, chameleon jumpsuit. Its camouflage graphics were turned off and it had a dull gray, metallic sheen. The sight of the old man touched Harry deeply. He knew he could depend on Jericho. Right from the beginning, through five years of craziness, the old man had always been there for him. Harry thought it was probably Jericho who had dressed him in the loose fitting shirt of unbleached linen and matching pajama-like trousers he now wore.
He looked past Jericho’s sleeping form to an ancient, rusted guardrail set in a low, moss-covered concrete wall. A profusion of weeds, flowers, and bushes grew along the wall and he had to push himself up on his elbow to see over it. When he did, he discovered that he had been sleeping on an ancient nylon weave, aluminum-framed recliner from the same period (late twentieth century) and in the same style as Jericho’s chair. There were collectors who would pay a fortune for such a matched set. Where the hell was he?
He looked over the guardrail to where the waters of a broad lagoon lapped against the concrete wall. Nearby, he could see a group of children playing in the water. Just then, one of them dove under, a
nd Harry glimpsed a brightly colored tailfin flick the surface. Merman, he thought, or maybe, merkid. S-s-s-arge said he was taking him someplace safe. What safer place than the home of the mermen.
Harry looked across the lagoon to the opposite shore. He could see how it curved around and back towards him. He was on some kind of atoll, he thought. An artificial atoll, he amended as his eye followed the steep overgrown sides of the opposite shore up to where they ended in a jagged panorama of rusted girders sticking out of collapsed, sagging roofs. He turned around and looked up the slope behind him. Through the bushes and trees he caught glimpses of other broken-down, overgrown structures. He noticed how the steep sides seemed to go up in even steps. When he looked closely, he could just make out mottled, cracked concrete sticking out of a thick overlay of soil and vegetation.
“It was called Dodger Stadium,” Doc’s voice was full of quiet reverence.
Harry turned in surprise. “Hi, Doc, good to see you awake.”
“It’s good to see you alive, my boy,” Jericho said with affectionate relief.
“What did you call this place?”
“Dodger Stadium,” the old man repeated waving his arm in a slow, all-encompassing gesture. “Built just for the game of baseball back in the twentieth century. Over fifty thousand people gathered here to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the New York Mets in nineteen eighty-eight. Can you imagine how they must have cheered?” he said reminiscently. “What it must have sounded like, fifty thousand baseball fans?” he shook his head sadly. “Gone, all gone and forgotten now.” The old man turned and looked out over the lagoon but before he did, Harry thought he caught a glimpse of tears glistening in his eyes.
“The mermen found it nearly intact and fortified it,” Jericho continued, his voice thick with emotion. “It was the perfect base for them. They tore down and blocked up the outfield pavilions over there.” He pointed to an irregular, ragged stretch of the atoll wall at the far end of the lagoon. “They hauled old wrecks, cars, trucks, buses, whatever they could find, and piled them up.” Doc shook his head. “It took them years. They brought in soil and plants and animals and turned the whole place into a garden. Probably the best fortified garden in the world. The only way in from ground level is through underwater passages. They’ve got missile launchers, laser canons, and rail-guns up there in the bleachers to handle aerial in-coming. Most of the mermen are gone now. Chueh’s got his own soldiers guarding this place.”
Eternal Life Inc. Page 32
