Fugitive From Asteron (25 page)

“Steve, do you want lunch?”

“I am not hungry, Kate.” Steve was
looking at me and seemed to be echoing my words and inflection.

“But it’s two o’clock, dear. You
should eat now.”

“All right.”

“This morning I prepared something
you love, poached salmon with fresh dill! And I made your favorite pâté.”

“That’s nice,” said Steve in a tone
that made me think he could just as easily have eaten the dried nutrient cakes
from my previous diet.

“I like to cook,” Kate explained to
me. “And Steve was always an appreciative subject to cook for because he has
such a discriminating taste for fine food and wine.”

“I see.”

“You might change your mind about
lunch when you see my food, Alexander. Why don’t I set places for all of us on
the patio while you and Steve talk about MAS?”

When Kate left, I leaned forward in
my chair toward Steve, my eyes staring into his, trying to reach him. “Steve,
what happened to you the night of the accident?”

“I don’t really know.”

“There was an unusual rock, a new
material from another planet in the galaxy?”

“That’s right.”

“And you were experimenting on it?”

“I did some routine analyses that I
was instructed to do.”

“And then what?”

“Then I knew I had something
there.”

“What did you have?”

“Something I’d never seen before.
Something no one had ever seen before.”

“What was it?”

“A new kind of matter.”

“What kind of matter?”

“Something we don’t have anywhere
on Earth. Something that reacted in a new way.”

“What way?”

“I never really found out. I only
had a hunch.”

“What did you do about your hunch?”

“I got excited about it.”

“What do you mean you got excited,
Steve?”

“I used to want to know about
everything. I was curious.”

“So what did you do?”

“More tests.”

“What kind of tests?”

“Tests I did on my own.”

“Did a supervisor have to authorize
a technician’s tests on an unknown material?”

“Oh, yeah. There were strict rules.
But my boss worked days, so he had gone home for the night, and I felt too
excited to wait until the next day to talk to him. I used to be that way,
inquisitive about everything.”

“Did you try to call your boss by
phone?”

“No. I think I just forgot about
him, about everything except the new matter. I did more tests, wondering what I
had.”

“And what did you have?”

“Matter that behaved in a new kind
of way.”

“What way?”

“When I accelerated a small amount
of it, a new kind of energetic particle appeared, one I had never seen before.”

“So what did you do, Steve?”

“I introduced matter from Earth.
When I collided the new alien particles with Earth’s matter, there was a
further interaction. Then, a most amazing thing happened.”

“What happened?”

“The particles annihilated each
other completely. Not even a trace of ash remained, and no gas or liquid was
formed, either. Nothing on Earth behaves like that.”

“Then what happened?”

“I couldn’t believe what I saw. So
I took a larger microscopic sample of the alien matter and began to repeat the
experiments.”

“And?”

“That’s all I remember.”

“Did you black out?”

Steve nodded. “The other
technicians found me on the floor. I woke up, feeling sleepy for a few days.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing.”

“Then you became the way you are
now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like the way you are now?”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you miss the way you used to
be?”

“No. It seems strange to be the way
I used to be.”

“What is strange about it, Steve?”

“I don’t know.”

“You used to care about many
things, no?”

“It all seems odd now, to care so
much.”

“What do you do here all day?”

“Sometimes nothing.”

“And do you like that?”

“It’s okay.”

“Has Dr. Merrett found a cure, an
antidote, for you?”

“He’s tried, but no. He doesn’t
like us to talk about the accident.”

“Does he pay for your house?”

“Yes. He gave us a lot of money.”

“Why?”

“Just to be quiet while he tried to
find a cure. Kate didn’t want publicity anyway, so she didn’t even need the
money to be quiet.”

“And you, what do you want?”

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Why did Dr. Merrett want you to be
quiet?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want a cure? What do
you
want, Steve?”

“Whatever they want, Kate and Dr.
Merrett.”

Steve’s eyes stared at me like two
fading stars that had lost their energy, then he turned to Kate with the same
stare as she called us to the patio.

Lunch was as artful as the images
from the Caldwells’ travel book: fresh foods served on colorful plates against
a starched tablecloth, with a bouquet of flowers in the center of the table.
The aromas of food and garden blended sweetly with the fresh air as we sat on a
shaded patio that overlooked a green hillside. I picked up a delicate fork for
an item Kate served, remembering to use my new Earthling table manners for
lunch—and trying to forget that another creature stalked me for his dinner.

After the meal, Kate brought out a
tray of home-baked cookies, along with a silver coffee pitcher and white
porcelain cups.

“Steve, would you pour the coffee,
please?” asked my hostess.

Steve lifted the pitcher. Just as
he poured the hot liquid into the cup Kate held, the lid fell off, and the
coffee scalded her hand.

“Ow!” Kate shrieked, but Steve kept
pouring with a steady hand.

In an instant, she yanked her hand
away, screaming for him to stop, which he did just a moment before I grabbed
the pitcher from him. I poured ice water onto my napkin and placed it on Kate’s
reddened hand while Steve looked on passively.

“Steve, get something for the burn,
quickly.”

At her direction, Steve acted
without hesitation. From a medical kit he brought in, he applied ointments and
a bandage with the assurance of a doctor. Because of the remarkable Earthling
medicines, Kate soon sighed in relief as the pain subsided.

“Steve,” I said, trying to suppress
my alarm and ask as calmly as I could, “did you not know that you were hurting
Kate?”

“I was pouring coffee.”

Kate smiled in understanding, but
not before I saw the pain that shut her eyes and made her moan for an instant.

After the spills were cleaned up
and we had taken a few sips of coffee, I thanked Kate for the outstanding lunch
and expressed my need to depart, as well as my reluctance to leave them for
fear they might need assistance.

“We’re fine, Alexander. I have
doctors I can call in a minute. And I have attendants who stay with us, or with
Steve, when I need to . . . get away for a while. So don’t
be concerned, but do come back for another visit.”

When I mentioned that I was going
to catch the Cheetah, Kate insisted on their accompanying me to the station.
“It’s just a walk away. I know a shortcut through the back roads, and Steve
needs the exercise. Sometimes he sits for hours doing nothing, and that’s not
good.”

The afternoon sun in the desert was
strong when we left the house. We strolled along a dirt road, with newly built
houses placed on either side and more under construction ahead of us.

“The station’s directly ahead, just
past the construction. You can see this little town is adding some new homes,”
Kate said.

Steve walked silently with a
neutral expression. “Steve, we’re going to walk Alexander straight to the
Cheetah station the short way, and then we’ll walk back the long way, through
town, so we can stop for ice cream. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Along our path, we saw a neighbor
collecting her mail. Kate greeted her, pausing to compliment her garden. While
I waited for Kate, I noticed the meticulous care that the people of Clear Creek
took with their landscapes. As the neighbor returned to her house and we were
about to continue, suddenly Kate and I gasped. Twenty feet before us, Steve was
heading straight past a warning sign and into a ditch in the road at the
construction site.

I leaped toward him, yelling,
“Stop! Steve, stop!”

He halted when he heard me, so
curling my arm about his waist an instant later and pulling him back from the
ten-foot drop was unnecessary.

“Steve, darling, what on Earth were
you doing?” Kate’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Walking straight to the Cheetah
station the short way.”

I turned away to spare Kate from
seeing the wave of pity that washed across my face. I heard her sigh wearily.
When I looked at her again, she was reaching into her purse for an object.

“Now I didn’t want to do this, but
I think it’s best if I do, Steve. No one will notice it if we walk close
together and you stay by my side. Okay, dear?”

“Okay.”

Kate placed a harness over Steve’s
head, pulled his arms through it, and tightened it around his chest.

“And we’ll take the back roads home
again. We don’t need ice cream today.”

She clipped a strap to the back of
the harness, holding the other end in her hand.

“Okay, Stevie?”

“Okay.”

I was stunned into silence.

Chapter 20

While I waited for the Cheetah, I gazed at the town of Clear
Creek lying beyond the station platform. Deep in thought, I barely noticed the
sights of Earthling life that usually fascinated me: the attractive houses, the
well-dressed people, the lively children, the green-velvet lawns, the abundant
harvest of beauty and pleasure that could sprout only in the serenity of an
untrampled field. Instead, I saw a destroyer.

Would Feran be interested in Steve
Caldwell’s injury? Would a mosquito be interested in a ready supply of its
favorite beverage—human blood? Steve Caldwell’s fate was exactly what Feran had
planned for
me
when he sentenced me to undergo the calming probe, the
vile brain surgery to sever the fibers of my sovereign will. Would Feran be
interested in the ultimate calming probe, whose blade conveniently misses the
brain’s areas controlling knowledge and skills while it cuts away only the
areas controlling self-direction? He surely would have a use for an injury that
leaves a person unable to choose between lunch and no lunch, between a lifetime
of practicing medicine and a lifetime of doing laundry, between harming human
skin or protecting it, between reviving a heart or letting it die—until someone
directs him. Such an injury would leave people unable to focus on work,
romance, music, or travel—unable to act, even to protect their own
lives—without direction from someone else.

On Asteron, injured Steve Caldwell
would be seen as the ideal person. Feran taught that obedience was good. Who
could be more obedient than a man who had no ideas or passions of his own? A
man who took no action of his own? A man who moved by the direction of others
and was paralyzed without it? I thought of Steve standing at the edge of the
ditch and heard a senator at an airfield tell why the old ways were banished:
People
were no longer captains of their own lives.
Would Feran, the supreme
meddler, be interested in a person ready and waiting to wear a leash?

I needed to know more about what
happened to Steve, so I turned on my mobile device as I boarded the cub that
took me to the Cheetah. Soon I was on the main train, feeling the smooth hum of
an engine under my seat. I raised the device close to my face, gave it a few
oral commands, and soon found local news stories that had occurred almost three
years ago in the month of January. I located an article about Mrs. Merrett’s
death, but it contained fewer details than I had learned from Kristin.

The article described the theft of
documents, with no mention of a specific report or a prior laboratory accident.
The story quoted the police as saying the matter was under investigation, but
no details were given. A few briefer mentions appeared in the following days,
but officials named no suspects and gave no further information. Typical of the
private manner that seemed characteristic of him, Dr. Merrett was reported as
in seclusion, unavailable for interviews, and having no comment. His wife’s
funeral was a family affair with no media permitted and no photographs
released. The only picture that appeared was one taken at the crime scene, with
Mrs. Merrett’s body covered by a sheet as it lay by the fireplace of her
husband’s home office. I searched further back in time but uncovered no stories
of the laboratory accident or the injury to Steve Caldwell.

I kept returning to the picture
taken at the crime scene. A few gold embers still burned in the fireplace amid
a mass of black charred paper that looked as if it would crumble at the
slightest touch. Among the residue were a few white spots that looked like
small patches of paper that had escaped the flames. I saved a copy of the photo
on my device. Then it was time to enter the cub that would take me to my
destination—the one place where I could collide head-on with Feran’s spies.

It was four o’clock in the
afternoon when I arrived at MAS. I noticed several vehicles in the parking
lots, a sign that some staff members were working on Reckoning Day. But surely
Feran’s spies would not choose a holiday, when the MAS plant was only sparsely
populated, to interview employees in search of their prey. They would delay
their arrival until the next workday, Monday—I hoped. Nevertheless, I must get
in and out of here as quickly as possible.

I entered the building that to me
was grander than any palace from the Caldwells’ travel book. I walked across
the lobby, past the relics of Earth’s early rockets and the block of metallic
letters that boldly announced the building’s name and my own lifelong yearning:
SPACE TRAVEL
. As I bypassed the
elevators for the stairway and climbed the steps three at a time, I hoped that
the building where I had restarted my life would not be the place where I lost
it.

I reached the second floor and
headed toward a lab equipped with the software to magnify my crime-scene
photograph to its best resolution. When the lab door automatically slid open to
admit me, it grated against its track just as the dangers of going in grated
against my nerves. Several computer workstations were laid out on a long
counter, and I seated myself at the one closest to the window. I opened the
window, then oriented my stool toward it for a quick jump out into the
shrubbery below if necessary.

I loaded the crime-scene picture on
my terminal and brought Dr. Merrett’s home office into view on my screen. In
the fireplace, I counted four white spots of uncharred paper, which appeared to
be remnants of the laboratory report. I zoomed in on the first one. The resolution
of the picture was not fine enough for me to decipher the words, even with the
automatic adjustments that the software provided, so I tried to improve the
image quality manually. I strained to identify letters that stubbornly remained
hazy. Just then the lab door slid open, causing me to leap off my stool and
almost out the window.

A lab technician from Space Travel
entered and sat at another workstation. “Hi, Alex.”

“Hi,” I replied, pretending to
adjust my stool, as if it were the reason for my sudden move.

After several more unsuccessful
attempts to focus the text, I was forced to accept the limitations of the
picture. However, I noticed letters in the white patch above the paragraph of
text I was trying to read. It looked like the title of a section in the report,
which might be decipherable because it had letters that were in bold and larger
than the other text. I zoomed in on the heading and did find more clarity in
those letters. But the part I could read was incomplete: “Symptoms of Exposure
to Z—.” The rest of the heading was charred, leaving me no clue as to what “Z”
was. I searched for other titles, subtitles, or areas with readable print on
the page fragment, but there were no more in the first patch of paper. I moved
on to the second of the four white patches in the fireplace. It contained
nothing I could read. Just then the sliding door jangled my nerves again. I
leaned toward the window, my legs tensed to jump, when a second technician
entered.

She sat at another workstation.

I moved to the third white patch.

“Did you read the memo that’s going
around?” the first technician asked the second.

“The one about Earth Security?” she
replied.

“Yeah. They’re looking for someone
from Asteron. That means a spy, of course.”

“I heard.”

The third patch had a heading:
“Composition of Za—.” I saw nothing but black soot after the
Za
. I
searched the entire third patch, but there was no other readable text. I examined
the heading again, but all of my wishing would not clarify even one more missing
letter.

“Have you spoken to the ES agents
yet?” continued the first technician.

“Nope,” replied the second.

I focused on the fourth and final
page fragment. Scanning its area, I found one heading.

“Hey, Alex, have you spoken to the
guys from ES?” asked the first technician.

“No. Are they coming today?”

“Don’t know.”

I zoomed in on the final heading.
It read: “Energy Needed to Produce Zam—.”

Now I had obtained one more letter
from the unidentified word that began with
Z
, but the name of the
substance was still incomplete. I had exhausted the patches of uncharred paper.
I could conclude only that the substance Steve found, the thing being studied
in the report, had a name that began with
Z-a-m
.

“I heard the ES agents were
supposed to be around today,” commented the second technician, “but it’s after
four now, and I haven’t seen them.”

I felt as if my clothes were
stifling me. I pushed back wet strands of hair that were falling into my eyes.
I changed the field to focus on the whole of the fireplace contents once again.
I examined the image closely. Was there anything I could have missed? One of
the embers looked peculiar. I magnified it. I found near the ember a sliver of
paper I had missed, a yellowish strip that I had not noticed, similar in color
to the gold ember. I zoomed in closer. The small strip of colored paper
resembled a tab from a folder. Had Dr. Merrett placed the report in a folder?
Had he labeled it?

The door slid open once more. I
tensed like a cat ready to leap.

“Say, is that report ready yet?”
someone called to one of the technicians.

“Not yet. Give me another half
hour.”

The door closed again. I returned
to my image, adjusted more controls, then saw the strip of yellowish paper
magnified on my screen. It indeed did look like an index tab to a file folder.
I zoomed in further. Handwritten on it in ink was a complete word that I could
read clearly. The word was
sunbeam
.

I stared at it. That meant
something to me. . . . 
Sunbeam
 . . . meant
something. But what? Had I heard that word used recently? Was it here on Earth?
Or maybe— My thoughts wandered across the galaxy to another place and time. I
used to think of someone’s hair as the color of a sunbeam. Was I thinking of a
young woman with golden hair and a sweet voice singing to me in a place where
no one . . . 
sings
?

Suddenly I knew! I recalled the
last time I had loaded cargo onto a spacecraft on my final day in an
intolerable place. After the cargo had been secured and all of the preparations
for a long journey had been made, I remembered a malicious laugh and a voice
saying:

“When the sunbeam stings, Asteron
sings.”