After several moments during which Ross seemed oblivious to Duncan’s words, he took a long, deep breath, sighed and clearly stated, his voice weary beyond belief, “Some people, it seems, have no respect for the ‘damned near dead’.” He slowly opened his right eye and managed to focus it on the nervous young officer. “Maybe if I try real hard I can get you arrested for annoying a corpse. What do you think?”
“I don’t think you’re dead yet, Mr. Ross,” Duncan carefully stated, “and I’ll say again: You’ve got visitors.” He quickly licked his lips, then added, “Part of the deal I made with the lady doctor in charge of this zoo is that, no matter what happens, you have to stay calm. Think you can handle that, Mr. Ross? If not, I’m told the doc will pull the plug on your visitors, and I think that’d upset your H’kaah lady friend pretty badly.”
Ross peered stoically at him for a long ten seconds, then said, his voice stronger but still terribly weak, “I’ll be good, son, but if you’re lying to me so help me God I’ll find a way to get out of this bed and shove one of these IV poles so far up your ass that you’ll sprout chrome-plated horns.”
Duncan was astounded by Ross’ intensity. “Y’know, I really think you’d do that,” the young cop said, “so to keep us both out of trouble I guess I’d better deliver the goods.”
He stepped through the open doorway and S’leen quickly took his place. Dr. Fernandez had tried to prepare her for the shock of seeing the post-surgical Ross, but all the talk in the world can’t substitute for the visual impact of seeing a heavily-bandaged loved one hooked up to life support and monitoring equipment.
Ross looked like death warmed over. The left side of his head was one solid bandage that reached from the bridge of his nose all the way around to the back of his skull. His trim, muscular body seemed almost inconsequential under the sheet that covered his torso and legs. Both arms carried metered IV drips, but only the right one was strapped down; paralysis was enough to keep the left one immobilized. His once-tanned skin had a sallow, pasty look, and his close-cropped hair looked almost as starkly white as the pillow that supported his head.
Jack Ross didn’t look old, he looked ancient.
The H’kaah emitted a terrified squeak before she could catch herself, and despite her non-human features, the horrified expression on her face was unmistakable. “Sorry, Dear,” Ross said, “I…I guess I’m not the man I used to be—and never will be again.”
“Jack, I…I want to touch you, hold you, but—”
“Don’t worry, Dear,” he softly said, “I’m already about as ‘broken’ as I can be and still live. The touch of your soft, smooth hands will only help.”
She reached out a trembling hand and gently stroked his exposed right cheek, and she was startled to find the skin wet. “Jack! Are…are you in pain? I can call—”
“Hush, Dear,” he gently said. “I was in pain—terrible, guilt-ridden, agonizing pain—when I thought that, because of me, because of my t-terrible arrogance, y-you had f-fallen into the f-filthy hands of…of—” His voice cracked, failing him completely.
Several of the monitors started beeping plaintively, warning of dire physiological consequences. Dr. Felicia Fernandez’s face quickly peered around the edge of the cubicle’s open doorway, but after she observed Ross conscientiously breathing deeply, his eye closed, she withdrew. One of the reasons she and Green had remained friends after an often-stormy relationship a decade earlier was that she was pragmatic to a fault. From snippets of conversation, along with her observations of the H’kaah, she concluded that Ross and the alien had far more than a platonic relationship. Fernandez decided that with the traumatic changes in both their lives, the last thing Ross needed at this moment was to have his emotional catharsis interrupted by a busybody doctor.
In time the alarms ceased their mindless complaints as Ross reigned in his emotional storm. Eventually he opened his eye and carefully said, “You have no idea how much you mean to me, S’leen. No, let me finish. I’m the one dying here, so I’m allowed to speak my piece.” He grinned, but with his face partially covered with bandages it looked more like an agonized grimace.
“The thought of you suffering a terrible fate due to your association with me haunted my dreams. That is, until the young JSO cop told me that you had not only survived the attack but…but had actually killed the assailants.” She hung her head, obviously distressed by his words. Yet while the concept of killing people upset her, she found that Ross’ subsequent words awakened feelings in her that she had never dreamed possible of having.
Pride of survival.
“Don’t you see?” he said, his trauma-weakened voice taking on a tone of urgency. “This proves everything! This proves that your people are capable of defending themselves against the hordes of…of monsters like…like us humans!”
“Jack, stop it!” she barked. “Humans are not monsters; you’re…you’re just people who are different from my people.” She couldn’t believe the words she heard herself saying, but when she paused for a moment she realized that she meant every word.
Ross, too, was shocked to hear the difference in the alien’s attitude. Shocked, and also so pleased, so proud, his chest ached with emotion—and something else. The monitors began a series of warning beeps stating that too much emotion was hazardous to Ross’ health. He took several deep breaths, and as Dr. Fernandez’s head again peered questioningly around the edge of the cubicle’s doorway the monitors began ending their cautionary commotion.
A few moments later Ross, now better in control, said, “Oh dear God, I feared I’d never live to hear words like that coming from an H’kaah.” He blinked his remaining eye as tears dribbled down his cheek. He breathed deeply for a moment to silence a lone, insistent monitor alarm, then softly added, “I…I guess I can let go now. With help from Nolan and Teddy you can be the model for not only your people, but for all the other sentient ‘prey’ species. You proved it, S’leen, and…and now it’s time—for us to say goodbye.”
At first his words confused her, but after a few seconds her mouth fell open to match her shock-widened eyes, and she none-too-gently said, “Jack Ross, you are NOT getting rid of me that easily, not after what you have forced me to become. If not for the sake of your…your egotistical ‘grand project’, I would still be back on my homeworld.” She leaned in close to his face, and despite his critically weakened condition she didn’t mute her snarling outrage, nor did she disguise the presence of her large front teeth only inches from his throat. “And were I back home I would not have the blood of three people on my hands!”
If she expected Ross to recoil in fear she was disappointed. He had faced death in virtually all its forms, faced it and survived and from time to time even managed to spit in its proverbial eye. Facing an enraged lapin alien who could kill him in an instant only made him smile. Ross knew he was a dead man; his body simply hadn’t gotten the message.
“Y’know,” he drawled around a crippled grin, “it’s corny as hell to say it, but I love you all the more when you’re angry. The ability to express anger helps make a person emotionally complete, and you, my Dear, are so completely delightful.”
Ross closed his eye, frowned and sighed, adding yet another element to an already confusing situation. “Reality, though, often picks the damnedest times to remind us that we’re not the masters of our destiny.” He paused for several moments, breathing deeply, his eye still closed.
Finally, “I don’t have much longer, S’leen; a week, a day, an hour or two—whatever. I’m well aware of the extent of my injuries, and I can only guess what all these fancy machines are doing to postpone the inevitable.” Around her feeble protests he said, “Dear, you must understand that I really don’t want to leave you, but at this point in the game I no longer have a say in the matter. The universe eventually demands retribution for our sins, and I made choices before you were born that I’m now having to account for. Along with all the terrible things I told you I’ve done there are…are other ‘
things’ I’ve done that are far worse than you could imagine—far, far worse.”
“Nolan told me about…about the village where you k-killed all the people.”
Ross closed his eye and seemed to sink slightly into the bed, a dejected sigh deflating him like a worn-out football. S’leen watched both him and the various monitors for signs of danger, but time passed and nothing seemed to happen. Finally Ross wearily opened his eye.
“Please take my right hand, S’leen. No, you’ll have to pick it up; it’s all I can do to wiggle my fingers. The left arm’s totally dead, pretty much like most of the rest of my body. At least my right hand has a little bit of feeling in it; otherwise I’d just be a lump of flesh.”
She was careful of the multiple IV lines that plugged into the arm, and upon closer inspection she found both IV lines and “other” tubes and hoses festooning his body like parasitic worms. “God, you don’t know how I miss being able to hold you,” he said, his voice low and wavering. “Your touch is an island of beauty in this whole obscene mess.” When she grasped his hand she found it to be dead feeling, then with apparently great effort Ross managed to gently squeeze her fingers before letting the hand go limp. “That’s the extent of it,” he said. “Nothing else works very good, either. That’s why the electro-pulmonary stimulator has to make me breathe when my body simply forgets. But I can still love you, S’leen—and I do.”
When she tried to respond he interrupted with, “Nolan may have told you what he knows about…about the ‘village of the damned’, and I’m sure he and Teddy and God knows how many others think I’m nothing more than a blood-thirsty monster.
“But if you were to think that of me you’d be judging me without knowing all the facts.”
S’leen lifted his hand to her face and carefully helped him caress her cheeks, neck and silky ears, which brought forth a sensual sigh from her and put a smile on his face. “Pull up a chair, Dear,” he stated, “so I don’t have to work so hard to talk. What I’m about to say is known by no one else, and maybe it’ll explain a little more about the personal hell I’ve carried inside me all these many years.” She perched on a utility chair next to his bed and stroked his face with one hand while maintaining a solid grip on his hand with the other.
“Of course they think I’m a monster, S’leen,” he began. “Any otherwise-normal human being who would systematically execute everybody in a primitive village would HAVE to be a monster.” He didn’t say anything for some time, then without warning said, “People normally don’t snap without one helluva reason. Seeing what that poor baby’s mother did to her that day brought back memories that I’d been trying to forget, memories of an atrocity so monstrous that the rational mind can’t grasp it.” He was quite for another stretch of time, then continued.
“I had just started in covert operations, and was under heavy disguise in a dirt-poor village in India. There, different religions compete for followers, and most of those followers are NOT friendly toward those who believe in the ‘wrong’ god or gods.
“Just how unfriendly they were I had no idea until one day a squad of one faction came storming into the village where I was living. I’d been carefully ‘planted’ there to await others in my group, other operatives who were to arrive individually over a week’s time so as not to attract attention.
“Anyway, this group of religious zealots descended on the village and killed every non-adult they could find. This was done as a lesson to the unbelievers in the village, telling them that the killers’ god was the Only True God, and that their Only True God wouldn’t tolerate children being raised in ungodliness.
“S’leen, the villagers loved their children; hell, they were CHILDREN, and kids are the same regardless of the god their parents worship. What made it doubly horrible to me was that I had enough firepower hidden in my hut to kill the attackers, but I was forbidden to reveal myself; to do so would have blown the mission and possibly cost the lives of scores of us ‘good guys’. So I sat on my hands and I did nothing— NOTHING! And innocent infants and children of all ages were slaughtered like animals, all in the name of some worthless so-called ‘god’.
“Eventually my teammates showed up and we moved on to complete our mission, but the horrible images of all those dead children haunt me even now. On the day of the…the incident Nolan told you about it all came back to me in one overwhelming flood—and I snapped. I’m not proud of what I did, and I’m sure I’ll burn in some kind of spiritual afterlife hell for my crimes. Still, under the same circumstances, facing the same callous indifference to life as I saw that day, I’d probably do the same terrible thing again. S’leen, I’ve got a major soft spot for kids, regardless of race. And now we have dozens of alien species we call friends—carnivore and herbivore alike—and to me all their children rate the same love and care. Anyone who abuses ANY child, especially in the name of some ‘god’, automatically becomes my mortal enemy.”
Ross closed his remaining eye and sighed with exhaustion. Relating the story had dangerously drained his meager energy reserves, and for the moment he dozed.
The H’kaah sat almost in shock. Once more she was having to radically revise her feelings toward this alien male, this enigma known as Jack Ross. In a corner of her mind a small voice reminded her that she was, in fact, no better than the predatory humans since she now had blood on her hands.
I never claimed to be better than them, she silently countered, just not as violent. She stared at Ross for several moments. Still, she concluded, surprising herself with the thought, there are times when a passive approach does more harm than good, and people become their own worst enemies by not standing up to aggression.
Several minutes passed with Ross quietly sleeping, S’leen at his bedside. Eventually she stood and quietly made her way out of the sterile-looking cubicle to rejoin her friends. “Well?” Green softly rumbled. “Does he want to see us, or what?”
The H’kaah blinked in confusion for a moment before replying, “He, uh, Jack’s asleep, Nolan.” When the others looked at her in disbelief she said, “He talked for a while, then he…he simply went to sleep.”
Dr. Fernandez glanced at her team of monitor techs; they nodded agreement. “Ross was awake and active,” monitor tech Rachel Collins stated, “but about ten minutes ago he must have reached his limit and quickly dozed off. At this time he’s resting quietly.”
The visitors looked dejected, and Dr. Fernandez eventually said, “One at a time, go over to the doorway and look inside. Do NOT disturb him! Then join S’leen and me in the employee break room behind that door, “and she pointed to a closed door behind the monitoring station. “We need to talk.”
* * *
Once the small group was seated in the break room, some sipping Cokes, others coffee, Dr. Fernandez suddenly said, “Where’s the JSO cop? He’s as much involved in this as I am, and I think he needs to know the big picture.”
Officer Mike Duncan was quickly waved into the room, but before any discussion could begin he stated, “For the time I’m not at my post I’ve left orders for the monitor techs to alert me to ANYBODY going into Ross’ cubicle, so if I jump and run don’t be alarmed. If you hear me yell, THEN be alarmed.” They all laughed.
“This situation isn’t going to get any better,” Dr. Fernandez bluntly stated. “I don’t know of any ‘miracle cures’ that can restore a body injured that severely. Frankly, I don’t know how he’s managing to stay alive at all.” She looked around, making eye contact with the others in the room. “I think it’s safe to say that if any of us had suffered the wounds Jack Ross has, we’d probably be dead several times over.”
“Jack’s just too mean to die,” Green rumbled.
“Well,” the old cop’s former lover countered, “mean or not, unless any of you know something I don’t know, he’ll be on his way to meet his maker soon.”
S’leen surprised them by saying, “Jack’s daughter and son are on their way here to see their father.” When she got questioning lo
oks from the humans present she explained, “Jack’s instructions to me were should anything bad ever happen to him I was to notify them as soon as possible. When I went upstairs to sleep yesterday morning I contacted his daughter, Trudy, by telephone, and she should be arriving in a sub-orbital ship sometime late today. I also left word of Jack’s situation with a military person I’d been told to call. Cory, his son, is a Space Navy officer stationed many light years away, but I was told that he would be home by tomorrow, possibly sooner. I—What’s wrong?”
Both old terrorists had paled, and they quickly glanced at Officer Duncan. “Mike,” Green barked, “the three roaches S’leen squashed probably weren’t alone. Get back out there and—”
The break room door opened and a monitor tech poked her head in, saying, “Sorry to disturb you, but Mr. Ross’ son, Cory, just arrived, and—”
“What color is his hair?” S’leen blurted out, her eyes suddenly wide with fear.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“His hair, woman!” Shapiro suddenly snarled. “What color is it?”
“Why, it’s black, but—”
“No, that’s wrong!” S’leen cried as she scrambled to her feet. “Jack showed me a picture of Cory. His hair is like this fur—” and she reached down and pulled at the fur on her bare midriff, crying, “—blonde!”
The two cops bolted for the door, but the H’kaah jumped through it ahead of them; she caught a glimpse of a dark-haired uniformed man disappearing into Ross’ cubicle. Duncan and Green were only seconds behind her but neither had seen the stranger. “He just went in,” S’leen whispered, her face twisted in fear, “but that’s not Jack’s son!”
Both cops drew their service autopistols, and Green reached inside his shirt and withdrew a compact, suppressed .380 caliber Walther PPK autopistol, then handed it to the alien. “You know how to shoot this?” he whispered, and the H’kaah nodded once, her eyes wide. “Good! For Jack’s sake, if you have to use it don’t hesitate—and don’t miss.” Her eyes grew even wider but she shakily nodded again. “Duncan,” Green whispered, “we can’t wait and we can’t be polite. MOVE!”
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