Chapter 15 Ricardo
Ricardo lets the people moving around him get on with the jobs they have to do. He feels him being quickly sponged down. There is at least one nurse if not two, adjusting the bedding around him, taking his temperature and generally seeing to his needs. He feels them take his blood pressure too and at one point he hears one talk to the other giving figures, he presumes to be written down on his chart.
Once the initial routine of the morning has been dealt with, he feels a different hand touch him. He is still going with the plan of pretending he is still asleep and/or out of it. He can feel the covers being removed and then the bandages. He feels the change of air around him. Whoever it is seems to be happy with what they are looking at, as the comment to someone with them bears out.
‘Seems remarkable the rate of recovery so far. It is close to incredible. Look how far on the healing process is. Considering that, I am surprised that he hasn’t come round yet. He is obviously concentrating all his bodily efforts on the healing process. Keep an eye on him to make sure there are no surprises.’ He then turns away before starting to speak to someone else in the room. ‘When are you thinking of removing him into your custody?’
‘The very minute you say that we can. We don’t want him getting too well before we move him.’ This voice is in a soft Scottish burr.
‘Well, if he keeps improving at this rate, I think you will be looking at tomorrow, certainly no later than the day after.’
The voices and men leave, probably all except the one. Ricardo is definitely not going to take the risk of opening his eyes at this time. The words he has just heard though, have struck home in a way he doesn’t like. He knows he is in a hospital and he knows he has a guard in his room. But as soon as they are allowed to, they are going to move him to a much more secure place. A place, he suspects, where there will be very little chance of escape. If the voices in his head are to be believed he has more work to do, if he can find a way to get out of here.
He runs the situation through his head. Obviously he will be much stronger if he can leave it a day longer, but there is the chance then that the doctor will give the all clear and he will be taken away tomorrow. He wiggles his fingers carefully. Even he is surprised at the difference even now, compared to when he had done it in the night. He wants to try his toes too, but he daren’t with the man in the room still. The last thing he needs is to be spotted moving and they might even move him today then.
A mobile phone rings, not loudly but loud enough. The sound hasn’t come from the direction he expected it. The man must have been standing by the window.
‘Hello.’ he then is listening for a few seconds ‘No, hang on a minute and I’ll step out of the room.’ another small gap follows by ‘No, of course not. I am just going to stand the other side of the door. There is no other way in or out.’
Ricardo hears the door go, so risks a squinty glance through barely open eyes. The blind on the door is now up but the man is facing away from him, well more sideways really. But he definitely isn’t facing him. He wiggles his toes and both sets of fingers. They are 100% better than they were in the night. He risks lifting his arms a little and they feel a bit heavy but OK. His legs are another matter. When he moves them there is quite a lot of pain, not only in the legs but in his side where one of the bullets had gone through him. He doesn’t know, of course, how they are compared to the night before but probably better by the same proportion.
He decides to stop testing before he gets caught in the act. A minute later the man comes back through the door. He comes right over to him and he can feel his breath on him as he leans over.
‘Well laddie, it won’t be long until we have you banged up properly.’ He doesn’t expand on that, but walks back over and sits on his chair by the door.
Ricardo tries to rest as much as he can during the rest of the day. A couple of times the nurses come in to do this and that. They try to shake him gently awake on a couple of occasions too, but Ricardo isn’t letting them know he has been conscious all day. He knows though, that he is going to have to change this tack soon as they are starting to say something might be wrong. He knows he won’t probably stand up to too close an examination, as to his being not awake.
They have changed over shifts after lunch. The man on in the afternoon has had a couple of phone calls. He has tried, not too gently, to stir him. Ricardo knows he has to visibly surface soon. He will just overplay how sore he is when he moves anything.
He leaves it until late in the afternoon before he starts to stir, moaning as he does so. He hears the door go, but waits until he knows the nurse is beside him before he blinks his eyes open. He quite enjoys giving his performance of being confused about where he is and all the aches and pains he is feeling. The one time his eyes fall on his guard, he wishes he hasn’t. There is so much hate in his eyes looking at Ricardo.
Chapter 16 The Watcher
The Watcher and The Wise Soul stay in the control room. The others go back to the travel pods for the rest of the journey home. As soon as they are safely down, The Watcher and The Wise Soul get down to business.
‘They are not aware that you are an Android like me.’ The Watcher says as a statement.
‘No, they are not.’
‘So about your tracking device; were you aware that it was capable of the distances it worked?’
‘No. It really shouldn’t have been able to do that. Although I am what I am, I don’t think I am given anything to work with that a human isn’t. Well, obviously that is not the case now, as the device was enhanced somehow.’
‘Also you were directed towards Bluechen weren’t you?’
‘Apparently so!’
‘Let’s go to see what we have to work with. If there is a way that I can keep you with me rather than send you back to earth, I will. Although it is important to try to get the weapons out of the wrong hands, it is more important to get The Keeper back. There is another problem on Earth too. I have just had 2 more dangers flagged up to me. There are now 3 of them down there.’
They move to the spares area of the craft. It is not big, as there is little to go wrong, particularly with the Air Micro Compounder Engines. More of the parts are for damage to the craft while away on a mission and a few spares for Androids, but really only a few.
It doesn’t take the two of them long to see the extent of their supplies to do something with. There isn’t enough to make anything big at all.
‘Any ideas on what we can do?’ The Watcher asks him.
‘The parts are only spares. There is no way to make anything complete. These are just the emergency necessities to try to make short term repairs.’
‘Is there anywhere on Earth where you could get the materials you need?’
‘We used the boosters to make sure that your craft was put out of action forever. I am sure even if you could get inside that craft, everything that might have been useful will have been destroyed.’
‘What about the trailer? Do you think that was landed after I left it?’
‘I think that is the only way that could have allowed him to activate them. I wonder how many more there are.’
‘It would have been impossible to stow more than three or four on the trailer without chancing I might have found them. But then saying that, they managed to do it without discovery. I wonder how that was achieved.’
‘Assuming it was by stowing them on the trailer and assuming they landed it somewhere way beyond where you could pick it up at the time. Then there is a trailer out there somewhere which might have some useful stuff on it I could use.’
‘The trailers weren’t equipped. They were just basic shells, except for the motorized one. Even that one has little you could make use of. Anyway if there was, surely they would have utilised the contents. He came with nothing and it was only when the crewman took the bag of arms that he had anything to fight with. That makes me think there is nothing on the trailer, even if we could find it.’
‘What
we need is something to happen to enhance what we have. If we can build something basic, like I did the tracking device, and then magically it could be enhanced like they were.’
‘They! You said they. That would indicate you have more than one device?’
‘I have, I made two of them. I put one tracker on Algreb’s craft and there is another on this one. Then I have the other part which I need to track the device. I only got as far as being able to use them individually.’
‘Do you have the other tracker with you too?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Well go and get both sets. Where did you attach the device in this craft?’
‘I put it in the travel pod area. It had to be somewhere where people spend a lot of time but not for looking, if you know what I mean.’
The Wise Soul goes to retrieve all four sections of his tracking devices. When he returns, the two of them gather all the spares they have as well. They spend the next twenty four hours carefully working out what they can do. From the parts available it is obvious that it can’t be anything big, but what they realise fairly early on in their work is that they can make two small, very small, accomplices. Neither is aware where the idea came from, but they work well as a team and everything flows well, in that they always seem to know what to do and in the right order. There are no written plans for what they are building and it seems natural, even though what they are building is small, that the two do not look the same. It is a subconscious decision which they are unable to explain to each other.
When all is finished they looked at their masterpieces. They take one each and although they have tested each one on completion, they are still unsure of whether they will be good enough to be effective at any level.
The Watcher then holds one in each hand, trying to will them to be something far better than they could possibly be. He then places them on the work bench they have been using and lets them go.
One of them is about 10” tall and the second one only 5”, but it is about the right proportions for a woman and her dog.
‘All we need is them to be enhanced like your tracker.’
The first minute they are fully activated tells The Wise Soul and The Watcher that they have indeed been enhanced.
Chapter 17 MARIO & TZ
Mario flops down on the couch. TZ sits down on the chair opposite him. The light is too bright coming in the windows, so she closes the drapes and sits down again.
‘When did yours come on?’ Mario asks his sister.
‘I was fine until about half an hour before you came back.’
‘That would make it about the same time then.’
‘I guess so.’
‘Have you taken anything for it?’
‘Yeh but it has no effect so far.’
‘I think I will take something. It is really piercing. I’ll make us some coffee.’
‘Thanks’ TZ replies.
Mario goes into the kitchen but he is soon back?
‘What’s this?’ he asks holding a small something about the size of a cell phone.
‘I don’t know. Where was it?’
‘It was lying on the table. Listen to it, it is buzzing. That is what made me pick it up. You can feel it buzzing too.’
Mario turns it over and over in his hand but there is no screen. In fact there is nothing he can see on it. There are no buttons or anything like that to push. There is nowhere for it to open that he can see either. Eventually after he has inspected all that he can without success, he holds it up to his ear. He thinks he can hear something else other than the buzzing, so holds it right against his ear. As soon as it makes contact with his ear, something shoots out from the object into his ear. It happens before he can do anything about it. He feels a very short sharp pain, as whatever it is buries itself in his ear. TZ hasn’t noticed this as she still has her head in her hands, trying to stop the piercing headache she has.
Mario moves the object away from his ear and inspects it again. There is a faint smell coming from it now. It is not a smell he recognises, so he lifts the object close to his nose. The smell is really faint now. In fact he can’t smell it as much as he could when it was further away. He brings it right up to his nostrils, trying to smell it. Once again something darts out from the object and flies up his nostril. Again he has a short sharp pain, but like the one in his ear it soon goes.
He holds the object away from him trying to see where the things could possibly have come out of it from. Then he suddenly realises his headache has gone.
‘Hey sis; my headache has gone.’
TZ looks up at him with her eyes still screwed up.
‘You’re kidding me. How could it go just like that?’
He tells her what has just happened. He hands her the object and she rolls it round in her hand. Mario has noticed that after he removed it from his nose that it had stopped buzzing. Now that he has handed it to TZ, it has started to buzz again. TZ looks at it and then back at her brother.
‘Your headache has gone right?’
Mario nods at her.
‘And you are feeling alright now?’
Mario nods again.
‘So you held it to your ear and something happened?’
Mario nods again.
‘Then you smelt something, so you held it up to your nose, because the smell lessened the closer you brought it to you?’
Mario nods yet again.
TZ looks at the object she is holding in her hand. She then looks at her brother. He looks alright and he definitely isn’t in pain with his headache anymore. She then has to close her eyes, as her headache seems to be getting even worse now. She opens them a few seconds later, as the buzzing coming from the object in her hand seems to have got louder and the vibration a fraction stronger. It is almost as if it is urging her not to ignore it, as she seems to be doing.
TZ looks at the object in her hand with a little apprehension. Where has it come from? Mario certainly hadn’t brought it in with him, as he hasn’t been in the kitchen since he got home. It hadn’t been there earlier when she got herself something to eat. So where has it come from? And more to the point, how did it manage to get on the table in the kitchen?
The buzzing increases its volume even more, bringing her attention back to the here and now. If anything her headache is getting worse every time the sound of the buzzing increases. She brings it a little closer to her ear, all the time with Mario watching her but not saying anything.
TZ then thinks that she can hear something else rather than just the buzzing. It sounds to her like a distant voice. She feels compelled to bring it closer to her ear. When it comes into contact the same thing happens to her that happened to her brother. The short stabbing pain doesn’t last more than a second, but what she can do is smell something. She takes it away from her ear and looks at it quickly before lifting it up to her nose. She sniffs it and then she feels the pain again, but it soon goes.
TZ takes her hand away and as she does so she realises that like Mario, her headache has gone too. She smiles at him.
‘Mines gone too now; isn’t that weird?’
She looks at the object in her hand one last time, before putting it down on the arm of the chair. One second it is there and the next second it has gone.
Mario and TZ look on the floor and down the side of the chair, but it is nowhere to be found. It has literally disappeared into thin air.
Chapter 18 SPIRIT
So having found out what my name is and being associated with The Keeper, I as Spirit am only a little way forward with identifying my own identity. Obviously I have been guided to this control room on purpose. The two people I have met there are obviously very powerful. But in saying that, they were not expecting me. In fact I don’t think they were expecting anyone. Well maybe the one known as O possibly, but certainly not me.
When they make the association that I closely resemble someone that they know, it appears to make them relax. Something is troubling them deeply, but they do not tell
me what that is. I am unable to help them directly, but they know that. I am not here to help them. I know that by their words when the man says ‘It looks as if O has done something after all’.
They don’t expand on that, but I am sure it helps them with their problem. So now we have agreed that I am not a Guiding Master and that I have not arrived here on a spacecraft. I am here in front of the Guiding Masters, as they are going to be instrumental in what I do now.
There is a buzzing sound behind the Guiding Masters. GM7 turns round to see what has happened. A small console opens up to reveal a key. GM7 retrieves the key and looks around for a clue as to its use. Spirit and GM6 stand and watch him. They can see the key he is holding but that is all.
They stand and wait for a few minutes but nothing happens.
‘I guess it must be for me’
‘It is likely that you are correct.’ GM6 says ‘We still need to know what to do with it. There are things happening here that have not occurred before in all time. The problem is we don’t know what to expect. Buzzers, lifts and hatches opening with clues, are all new to us.’
‘May I have a look at the key’ Spirit decides that it is what he should do.
GM7 walks over and places the key in the palm of his hand. The key immediately starts to glow. Spirit continues to hold his hand flat out in front of him. Spirit feels the key in his hand warming up and tells the others this. All eyes are fixed on the key, as it now starts to glow red. Without any warning the key slowly starts to slide across his palm in the direction of his thumb. When it finally is lying flat along the length of his thumb it stops. The end which slides into a lock is at the end of the thumb. The redness disappears and the key starts to cool down again. Spirit then announces that the key has started only what he can describe as a pulse. There comes a point when all three of them can actually see the key pulsing before it then starts to reduce in size. It gets smaller and smaller until it is only the size of a pin head. It stops shrinking then but with a little puff of air it disappears. Spirit says he can now feel the key inside his thumb.
The Grand Master Page 5
