by J. P. Larson
“Where’s Pamela? I want you to meet my wife.”
“We’ve met, Alex. She’s a lovely girl.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. It was a little sudden.”
She smiled. “That’s okay, Alex. When you’re all better, we’re going to throw a big party back home.”
“How long have I been here?”
“About three weeks.”
“Three weeks? I remember waking up a few times. Were you there?”
“I’ve been here a lot.”
“Where’s Pamela?”
“We finally convinced her to go home. She needed some sleep. She’ll be back in a few hours.”
“We’re on Dawson’s Star.”
“Yes.”
“I’m in the hospital.”
“You’re such a bright boy. What else can you tell me?”
“I married a witch.”
“Alex!”
“That’s okay, Julie,” came Pamela’s voice from the doorway. “He’s pushing my buttons is all.” She walked over and stood next to Alex’s mother. “Feeling better?”
“Mom, do you think you could scare up some chicken soup? I’m a bit hungry.”
Julie laughed. “I bet you are. Let me talk to the nurse and make sure it’s okay.” Alex’s mother leaned over and kissed his forehead, then went in search of the nurse.
When the door closed, Alex turned to Pamela. “I’m going to ask you a direct question. If you lie to me, I’ll find out eventually. And I will divorce you on the spot and terminate any and all agreements I’ve signed. With cause.”
“You don’t trust me? Alex, after what we went through? I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“I lost my leg, didn’t I? I remember getting shot, Pamela. I’ve seen guys get shot that way. It destroys the entire leg. They’ve got me in this weird machine so I can’t see it. Isn’t that right?”
“Alex, this is a very good hospital,” Pamela began.
“I’m wide awake, Pamela,” interjected Alex. “Starting a long story in hopes I’ll fall asleep isn’t going to work.”
“Alex, your leg was bad. Very bad. But this is a very good hospital. And that machine is a very unique machine.” She paused. “Alex, you will walk again. It’s going to take a few months.”
“Prosthetic.”
“No. A real, live, fully functional leg. Just like your old one, only a bit newer.” Pamela was still explaining by the time Julie returned with some warm soup.
“Was I gone long enough?” she asked as she opened the door.
“Pamela says I’ll walk again, but it’s going to take months of therapy.”
“They have some amazing biotechnology here. I never knew.” Julie stood over Alex and offered to feed him the soup.
“I can feed myself, Mother,” he said testily. His mother silently handed him the spoon. He held it out and watched it shake badly. He dropped his hand to his lap in disgust.
“Don’t be so impatient, son. It’s your first meal in three weeks. It’s not like I haven’t fed you before.”
Between spoonfuls, he asked about his father.
“He and the Captain are checking out the Pride,” Pamela told him. “Sarah Danforth finished the overhaul, and they’re doing diagnostics. They’re going to take it for a spin tomorrow, then the Captain and Kari are going to finish that run to Green Skies for us. Your mother says they could really use the technology we bought for them, and I understand it’s all still in the computers.”
Alex looked at her. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve been hiding.” He shook his head. “Something about the navigation computers. But I can’t remember what it is.”
“We already know, Alex. You programmed the computers to bring the Pride here. That’s how Mother was able to tell the Admiral where we were. You already told me all about it.”
“That’s not all, Pamela. There’s something else.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. Ms. Danforth is very thorough.”
“I wish I could remember.”
Intervention
Alex sat bolt upright in bed. It was dark, but light filtered through the doorway. He looked around the room, but he was alone.
There was no response.
“Pamela! I remembered about the drive! Don’t use the hyper engines! Pamela!”
“Mr. Grey,” said the nurse from the doorway. “Please settle down. Even if you are the Prime Minister’s son-in-law, you still have to be quiet for the other patients.”
“Please, nurse, where’s my wife?”
“I believe she is home, sleeping. As you should be. Now go to sleep or I’ll give you something that will make you.”
“No. You have to get my wife! It’s a matter of life and death!”
The nurse stepped out, returning in just a moment.
“Mr. Grey. You will rest and heal. Your body needs sleep, and you will get it. Do I make myself clear?”
“Not until I’ve talked to Pamela! Now you go get her!”
The nurse crossed to his bed. “You’re delirious. This will help you sleep.” She pressed a hypo to his neck and pulled the trigger.
“No! They can’t use the hyper drive! No…”
* * *
Pamela and Julie stood over Alex, watching him sleep for a few minutes.
“Should we wake him?” Pamela asked her mother-in-law.
“I think maybe we could let him sleep for a while. Maybe we should go have some breakfast, then come back. Surely he’ll be awake by then.”
* * *
“He’s still asleep, Julie,” said Pamela. “I think maybe we should wake him.”
“Alex? It’s your mother. Wake up,”
There was no response.
“They’ve backed off on the drugs, the doctor said. He shouldn’t be sleeping this hard.” Pamela paused. “My turn. Give me a moment.”
<???>
“Julie, I think maybe we need to talk to the nurse. He’s in there, but he’s not coming up. I’ll go get her.”
While Pamela searched for the nurse, Julie continued to try to wake her son. He mumbled once or twice, but that was all. Pamela returned with a plump, middle-aged woman carrying a thick chart.
“He won’t wake up?” she asked brightly. “I’m sure it’s just the drugs. This is a painful process, and he’s been getting a lot of pain killers.”
Pamela looked on sternly while Julie talked to the nurse. “His dosage has been reduced. Someone gave him something last night. Find out what.”
“And you are?” the nurse said.
“His mother.”
“I see. Well, I can certainly ring for the doctor, if you like. She could explain anything you don’t understand.”
Julie Swanson straightened her back. “Nurse… Anders. I am the Prime Minister of Random Walk. That,” she said, pointing to Pamela, “Is the daughter of the Prime Minister of this planet. That,” she said, pointing to Alex, “is my son and her husband.” She paused. “And in your hands is the information you will share with us right here and right now if you do not want an interstellar incident. Someone gave him something last night. I want to know what. I want to know why. And I want to know right now. Do I make myself clear?”
“Of course, Prime Minister. I’m very sorry.” The nurse began paging through the report. “Here it is. 3:15 AM. The night nurse says the patient was delirious and disturbing the other patients while demanding loudly to see his wife. She gave him something to help him sleep.”
“Nurse Anders, I apologize for being rude. Our tensions are a little high, and I overreacted. I’m sorry.” Julie wasn’t, but she knew that her son would suffer poor treatment if she alienated the nurses.
“Wait a minute, Julie,” be
gan Pamela. “I don’t think you were rude enough.” She turned to the nurse. “Do you mean to tell me that my husband begged to see me, and she drugged him instead of talking to me first? Has my husband been an unreasonable guest in your hospital? If so, no one has said anything to me, or I would have handled it.”
“Mr. Grey has been a perfect patient,” the nurse began. “I took care of him yesterday, and he was very polite, although a touch forward.”
“So tell me why I wasn’t summoned when he begged to see me. Did I forget some orders about not disturbing me?”
“Ms. Grey, everyone here knows what happened. And everyone here knows you’ve been at his side day and night. I’m sure the night nurse just wanted you to get some sleep for once. Whatever he wanted could certainly wait. There are no terrorists in this hospital.”
“Nurse Anders,” said Julie. “Would you please see to it that the doctor is in this room sometime within the next ten minutes?”
“I’ll do my best, Prime Minister.”
“I don’t think you understand,” said Pamela. “Your night nurse drugged a visiting foreign dignitary, an important man in his planet’s military, who spent all of yesterday trying to dredge out of his drug-soaked memory a piece of information critical to a military operation that began two hours ago. If, at 3:15 this morning, he remembered the key information, and something goes wrong with the operation because he wasn’t allowed to pass that information on, I really, truly do not want to consider the potential consequences. You now have 9 minutes to get the doctor in here.”
The nurse fled.
“Military operation, Pamela? They’re just testing the Pride.”
“And who is doing the testing? Your navy’s admiral? Alex has done a good job surprising us with his little tricks. What if he knows about one more?”
Doctor Tate arrived in seven and a half minutes. Pamela checked her watch then nodded. The nurse immediately fled.
“Wake him,” was all Pamela said.
“The drugs will wear out of his system over the next several hours, Ms. Grey.”
“Can you wake him?” asked Julie.
“Yes, but…”
“Wake him!” said Pamela. “And you better hope we’re overreacting, or two people could be dead. I, for one, do not want to tell him his father is dead. Do you?”
The doctor left the room, returning with an unhappy nurse Anders. She silently crossed to the bed and applied a hypo to Alex’s neck.
“This should only take a moment or two,” explained the doctor. “We’ll see that everything is fine, and we can all calm down.”
Alex started to stir.
“Come on. Tell me what the fuss was all about last night.”
“Come on, Alex. The drugs are having a little battle in your body, and you have to help them. Wake up and tell me about it.”
Alex opened his eyes, then sat straight up. “Pamela! Don’t let them test the Pride. There’s another trap!”
“It’s okay, Alex. Tell me all about it, and it’ll be okay.”
“You have to stop them.”
“Just tell me what’s going to happen if they use the Pride, Alex. I’ll take care of everything.”
“It’ll let them enter hyper drive. Everything will be fine. But this time, it won’t delay six hours before acting up. After fifteen minutes, it’ll make a course change and go to maximum hyper. The engines will last about a day before they totally melt.”
“Any games with life support?”
“Of course. The same as last time.”
“But you warn them, right?”
“Yep. Just in case a friend got caught. Anyone who makes it to the galley will have plenty of food, air and water. Everyone else better have a suit on.”
“What course, Alex?”
He frowned. “I don’t remember. Someplace I knew would stick in my mind.”
“Alex, I’m going to go poking through your memories. Is that okay?”
“They left already, didn’t they?”
“Two hours ago. But Ms. Danforth is very thorough. I’m sure she would have checked the computers for any additional surprises.”
“Pamela, those are military computers. They have innocent-appearing outer shells in their programming. They disguise all the nasty tricks available in the innards. She would have to replace the entire navigation system to override the programming.”
“Sit back and let me poke around, Alex.”
Alex sat still, then felt his wife’s mind merging with his.
Pamela poked and proded for a moment, then withdrew.
“You didn’t get it, did you?” he asked her.
“No, but I have a really good hunch. You were amused at the irony.”
Alex started to smile. “You know, at maximum hyper, that ship could just about make it all the way there, too.”
“Alex, I’m going to call Mother. Then let’s wait and see. Jane’s Gift was going to ride along with them and make sure everything checked out okay. They should be back in a few hours, and we’ll see what they can tell us.”
Pamela looked around the room. The doctor and nurse had both left.
“Would someone explain to me where my husband is?” Alex’s mother asked. So Alex told her.
* * *
Three hours later, Pamela, Julie, Elizabeth and Kari were clustered around Alex’s bed. There were five very grave faces.
“The first fifteen minutes went perfectly. Then suddenly, the Pride changed courses. I felt Linda’s surprise, but those engines kicked in and they were out of my range almost immediately. We tried to follow, but that ship was fast! So I thought about all those military ships in orbit, and I thought about the little prankster in bed here, and I came back.”
“What now?”
Alex spoke up. “Now the Prime Minister of Random Walk is going to order the leading Random Walk military officer in the area to take my wife off to find the Admiral.”
“Pamela needs to stay here with you,” Julie said. “We’ll send someone else.”
“Someone else with a mind like hers, who would immediately recognize Linda’s mind, and has met Father?”
“Mr. Grey,” began Elizabeth. “I will not have an off worlder man give orders on my planet. You will shut up and heal. Prime Minister, would you be so kind as to have one of your ships give my daughter a lift to go find out what happened to my best captain and your admiral?”
Alex opened and closed his mouth several times, but paid attention to the warning look from Pamela.
The four women agreed to the arrangements, ignoring Alex.
Alex sat still for a minute, watching the discussion.
The conversation started to wind down.
“Alex, you’re just being a man. Shut up and heal.”
“He didn’t say anything,” said his mother.
“Yes, he did. He’s mad because we don’t need him for this, and he’s been arguing with me.”
“I did something else,” Alex said quietly. “I know I did. I did something else. It was a long program. I wrote it years ago. All I had to do was trigger it. I wrote it with tons of nasty little tricks. I just don’t remember which ones I triggered.”
“Alex,” began Elizabeth Grey.
“You can tell me to shut up and heal all you want, Prime Minister, but that doesn’t change the situation.”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” she replied.
“You’re negotiating with us, aren’t you?”
Alex smiled. “I changed the access codes. And I think I booby trapped the airlock, but I’m not sure.”
“So tell us what you changed the access codes to, Alex,” said his mother. “Then you can shut up and heal.”
“I don’t remember.”
“It would have been something I could remember, though. Hmm. Airlock has a small touch screen.” Alex started smiling. “It’ll ask a question. A nice, easy question. You just have to get the answer right.” He thought for a minute. “It has lots of questions available. Things only I could answer.” He paused. “But I thought I was going to be dead.”
He leaned back and adjusted the bed.
“I think I can shut up and heal, now.”
The four women stared at him.
“What? I’m resting. Just what you wanted. Pamela can knock me out, then go rescue my father, and she can wake me up again when my leg is all healed. I won’t be able to annoy anyone.”
“Alex,” asked Pamela. “Who is going to answer the question if you’re not there?”
“You mean, if I’m dead, or as good as? I wonder.”
“The Admiral, of course,” said Pamela’s mother.
Alex just smiled. “Now, could everyone clear out while I say a few words to my wife?” Alex laid back and let his eyes droop.
“Young man, you and I are going to have a nice, long chat while my daughter is away,” said Elizabeth. “We’re going to start with manners and go from there.”
“Ma’am,” he said quietly. “I promise to be as polite as I know how, if you’ll answer one question first.”
“And that would be?”
“What am I supposed to call you? ‘Prime Minister’ seems a bit clumsy. ‘Prime Minister, could you fluff my pillow?’ ‘Prime Minister, could I have some water?’ ‘Prime Minister, I’m going to pass out in another 30 seconds, and I still need to talk to Pamela before she goes.’” Alex closed his eyes entirely.
His mother-in-law leaned in. “Alex, you may call me ‘Elizabeth’. Maybe someday, if you’ve been very polite and good to my daughter, I’ll let you call me ‘Liz’.”
“So until then, you’ll call me ‘Alexander’?”
“Don’t be cheeky. Alexander.”
