Ages in Oblivion Thrown: Book One of the Sleep Trilogy (3 page)

Yet, he found himself reluctant to compose
that message. The need to do so was an undeniable eventuality, if
only to keep ahead of rumor-mongering. He did feel that it would be
wise to proceed carefully when informing others of this find. In
order to protect these unknown persons lying in deathlike repose,
if nothing else. They were now on gurneys, perhaps to be
ponderously making their way back to life.

If there was any way for Tark to make a
promise to protect them, and still fulfill the oath of his office,
he’d do it. He glanced back at the first of the “patients”, the
dark-haired woman. No clues as to her origin stood out on closer
inspection. She was pushed out the hatch and down toward the naval
clinic. He watched as the remaining five moved past him to join the
strange caravan, while medical staff worked over them on the
fly.

Three men, three women, in all. The men were
of a common height. One was white-blond with chiseled features,
very deliberate. The second had the look of a man who had learnt
all the secrets of the universe, so peaceful and wise was his
sleeping demeanor. The last male was more broadly built; a scar ran
from an eyebrow into his dark red hair. One of the nurses commented
that the last one would seem more natural with a long beard, animal
skins, and a battle-ax. Tark felt the truth of that, purely from a
visual standpoint.

The women were more diverse. Besides the one
who had been pulled out first, there was a woman whose hair was
braided in tiny plaits. It was gathered into a large knot at the
back of her neck, where it continued down her back. She was dark,
beautiful, frozen into perfect form. She was not as tall as the
first woman was, not nearly so. Nor was the last one, who was fair,
dusky blond, and curvy. She was pretty and compact; an embodiment
of captured energy, like an insect trapped in amber.

۞

A swirling black hole
looms in the distance, sucking everything in, wrestling
consciousness away from helpless bodies.
Later, she
would say that was her last waking memory. Now, something tugged at
her, splintering the darkness into needles of crystallized vision.
She sucked air in, out, in, out; she was swimming in warm
waters.

Yes, she was swimming, on vacation
with her parents. Six years old, ducking under the sunny waves like
a mermaid, until a voice called.
Little
fish, come out of the water, time to leave
. Back to a
landlocked existence. She ignored the calls a while longer,
exchanging grins with chirping dolphins, tickling painted fish that
were almost tame. Even so, air runs out. Her head bobbed above the
surface, and that dream of childhood faded. Something unknown
tugged on her again from above, then yanked...hard.

The young woman lay on an examination bed.
She started to move slightly, and startled everyone with a sudden
cry. Tark questioned Doctor Hawke with a gesture; she shook her
head in response. They waited, anticipating the woman's next
motion, sound, or response. It seemed to span an eternity before
finally her eyes flew open to blink away tears from the assault of
light.

Their patient gasped, feeling her
heart protest after the flood of chemicals and electric stimuli had
caused it to resume its normal function.
Oh, it...hurt?
Yes,
hurt
. Things inside her began to move, and she knew
somehow that they hadn’t moved in a very long while. Her lungs
filled with air again, carrying a familiar scent. Sanity and
civilization. She couldn’t think whether she belonged to either of
those or not.

The fabric of her memory was ragged and
moth-eaten. Squeezing eyes shut, she concentrated so painfully she
thought her ears might start oozing blood. Her brain struggled to
respond to these internal pleadings. Thoughts jostled into place;
years, months, days, until she began to slide down an unmarked
crevasse. There was something missing in her mind, hidden just out
of reach. Every time she thought she had a glimpse, it would dart
away into the shadows.

Tark watched her face change expressions,
wishing he knew what was going on inside her head. It was almost
excruciating to witness this silence. She opened her eyes again
after about ten minutes, and the look she gave him crushed him like
the gravity of dying stars. She was living across time and space,
not yet aware of the darkness of the vacuum just outside, trying to
find familiar territory. It was time to ask questions, to sort out
this tangled mess.

“
Hello there. Good to see you awake.
I’m Colonel Jorge Tarkington. Can you tell me your name?” His voice
echoed back to him, while he realized that he’d addressed her as
one would a child. Hawke was in the background, after he’d firmly
told her to stand aside. This was not something he trusted her to
handle.

“
What is this? Am I in a hospital?”
Faces gazed at her, unreadable, refusing to offer even a crumb of
comfort.
Someone say something.
Please
. The colonel person continued to watch her
expectantly. “Maeve.” She finally offered this while stubbornly
withholding a surname. He smiled.

“
What’s the last date you remember?"
He continued to watch her carefully. 0
What
kind of a question was that? Come to it, what kind of a hospital
was this supposed to be
? She put a trembly hand to her
forehead, hoping that she was having some sort of
hallucination.

“
I don’t know. A lot of guys want to
buy me dinner. You might have to be more specific.” Was she playing
around with him? Or was she really that out of sorts? Tark wasn’t
looking to force her cooperation. It was up to him to set a tone,
clearly. Tark tried to squelch his impatience. All the excitement
of what was going on had gotten to him more than he’d realized, but
that wasn’t going to bring answers. Serenity, on the other hand,
might. He drew in a deep breath and plunged in, trying to imagine
how he might react what she was about to hear.

“
There’s no way to sugar-coat this,
but there is something you should know about where you are.” Not to
mention
when
. “As far as we
can tell, you have been in some sort of stasis for an indeterminate
period of time." It had to be a joke, but the face of the colonel
belied only seriousness. She struggled with emotion. Even worse,
her brain still felt like it was running on quarter
speed.

It was an effort to follow what this person
was saying to her. There was a little too much to take in all at
once. It was ridiculous though, because she couldn't immediately
recall how she would have ended up in a cryogenic (was that the
right term? she couldn’t think straight) facility. She wasn’t even
sure she had ever given the technology any kind of credence,
either. Why couldn’t she think clearly? A doctor-looking lady spoke
up, anticipatory in her tone.

“
I think we should begin to revive the
others. It's evident that...” She seemed ready to give a
dissertation. Maeve cut off the woman.

“
Others? What others? Why didn't you
mention
that
yet?” She was
getting agitated. They had to get her to lie back. She acquiesced,
knowing that she was at the mercies of these people. She was
powerless.

“
I'm sorry.” Tark said simply, and
sent Hawke off to finish reviving the rest of the occupants of the
container. Once she’d gone, he clearly felt freer to speak. He
looked the young woman over, still feeling a protective urge that
he couldn’t explain. Blood flow had resumed its normal rate; she
was not so pale as she had been. Death had removed its hand from
her brow, and he was glad of it. The rest would take time to be
regained. She looked exhausted and frail to the point of
hollowness. A week or two in the long-term care facility ought to
help.

“
Do you feel alright?” She nodded,
mouth set grimly against spoken word. He tried again. “Would you
like to know what year this is? It might be a shock to you though,
I suppose, if our people have dated your ship accurately.” To that,
her lips parted, and hovered, half open for a long pause before she
said anything.

“
Tell me. Let me in on the big
secret.” She might have been sarcastic, but the malice was absent.
Her voice was barely above a whisper, conspiratorial.

“
Twenty-two seventy-six.” He pulled
back, inches really, wouldn’t have done much good if she’d wanted
to grab at him, but his point was made. She stared at him, as
though she could will his words to unhappen. Maybe it was a
practical joke. That was a moderately comforting thought. Ah, or
even more sensibly, a training exercise. Wait, training for what?
The big blank spot in her brain mocked her.

“
Well. What do you know. I can’t think
of a single thing to say that would make sense of any of this. And
I’d usually have some clever remark, I think.” She sighed, and
looked down at the floor. It was just a matter of being utterly
confused. Not that big a deal. Maybe a bolt of lightning would come
through the roof of this place and remove her from the land of
giving a crap.

“
I have a feeling that things will
sort themselves out. In the meantime, let me be the first to
welcome you on board the Nimitz.” He swept an arm outward,
presumably to indicate the entirety of the place. She
frowned.

“
As in the admiral? Like we’re on a
ship?” She still didn’t quite get it. Wrong kind of
ocean.

“
Well, more like the vacuum of space
than water, and more like a big giant military base than a ship.”
He wasn’t sure what she was making of all this.

“
Don’t I feel smart. Could someone
just hit me in the head with a blunt object and make the bad man go
away?” She was holding her head again. Tark wasn’t sure who the
“bad man” was, but he suspected that it was a turn of phrase, and
not directed at him. He didn’t have a chance to try and figure it
out though; Hawke was back to making pronouncements.

The naval clinic had turned into a center of
activity with the other five bodies on the tables. The doctor moved
from station to station, waving her hands and giving loud
instructions to her nurses and interns. Maeve struggled to her
elbow, straining to see faces, desperate for a flicker of memory.
Anything that might seem familiar in this strange, cold place would
be a balm to her battered sensibilities. She shivered with tension
and fear, and suddenly wondered why three people were missing.

“
Doc?” Maeve raised her voice as
loudly as she could muster. Hawke couldn't hear her. Everything
came to a dead halt when a piercing whistle screamed above the rest
of the noise. “Sorry. Where are the other three? I thought there
were nine of us.” Maeve felt the startlement of realization that
they had said six, but that she had somehow felt a different number
surface in her mind. The doctor looked momentarily sheepish, then
stiffened.

“
There
were
nine; one compartment was breached, its
occupant, expired. Two other bod…persons were missing.” One dead,
two vanished. She felt that there was a specific someone she should
be looking for, someone very important to her, context or
significance was out of place. Or time. She had a sudden urge to
jump up and scream, though it would be less than helpful. Hell, it
might even make everyone in charge here think she was in need of
psychiatric help. The overhead lights flickered in front of her
eyes, and she saw a movie-like scene playing out behind her
eyes.

…
Water casually washed the
shoreline of the Gulf coast, eerily placid after the late summer
tropical storm that had sulked a mile offshore, never touching
land. It was still rising swells the size of baby elephants in some
places. Here, on this night, it was calm and smiled the thumbnail
moon back at Maeve and....

“
Are you alright?” Tark grasped her
shoulder lightly and looked at her with furrowed brow.

“
This is just a huge shock to the
system.” That was it, beginning, middle…end. She wasn’t giving him
anything else, if she remembered anything else at all. She was
still a little groggy. Her speech slurred now and again, giving
away as they talked how far she had yet to go.

۞

Hawke looked around her hospital with
an emotion she rarely felt. Satisfaction. Now, five other cryogenic
patients stared suspiciously at their new surroundings, while
personnel took their names, dates of birth. But no matter how you
looked at it, this could be
hers
alone.

This significant little piece of scientific
accomplishment belonged to her. In spite of the reprimands she’d
gotten, she knew she had to do this. There was no way she was going
to keep it a secret like the Colonel thought they should. He'd see,
when she got a nice citation. Maybe the wheels would get greased a
little and some of her other requests would get paid attention to
finally. Smiling most peculiarly (at least that's what her nurses
whispered to each other), she made her way into her office and
composed a message to send back to Earth. Things would begin to
change here and now.

۞

"Dammit!" Rikert Shirk, second
lieutenant, (young and pretty much freshly pressed) whacked a panel
inside the cryogenics container. He cursed a few more times for
good measure. His Chief Warrant Officer,
2
^nd
grade, popped his head
around a corner, and grinned when he saw the look of consternation
on his lieutenant's face. The warrant officer was called Patrick,
but he preferred Paddy when he was three pints down. He’d been
working on the lad, but those shiny butter bars had given the kid a
touch of gold fever. It was a common affliction; it was a warrant
officer’s purview to cure him of it.