Stray (5 page)

She led me down to the lakeshore and stopped at a rock and pointed to me and then to the rock, and when I sat down she walked off.  But that was okay because I was busy looking at the ship on the lake.

Not a boat.  A narrow metal arrowhead shaped thing, creamy-grey with dark blue side sections.  It's big enough to be carrying dozens of people, and is definitely not primitive.  Whoever these people are, they're more advanced than Earth.

The two in black weren't overwhelmingly surprised to see me here, or very interested.  They acted as if they hadn't expected to see me, and put me aside while they went on with whatever it is they're really here for. 

I saw another pair of them, also black-clad, standing up at the central bluff, but then something came out of the ship.  A flat platform which floated above the water, and stopped right next to the bank where I was sitting, delivering two women, older than the pair from Fort Cass, and wearing a mix of dark green and darker green, not quite so tight-fitting as the black outfit.  Again they were all business, pointing at me and then one particular corner of their platform and very stern about it.

It's not like I was going to say 'no', hopping on very meek, and standing exactly where I was put.  The platform began moving straight away, though I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were doing to control it.  Maybe someone back at the ship was steering.

They talked to each other as they went back, and watched me as if they thought I was going to take a knife to them.  I saw no more than a corridor of the ship before they ushered into this little box of a room, and shut the door on me.  So small it's practically a cupboard, but every few minutes it grows warmer or colder or hums.  Maybe they're irradiating me for bugs.

I've been here over half an hour.  I wish I'd had a chance to pee before being rescued. 

Monday, December 17

The excitement of butterfly grapes

It seems an age since I could write in this book, though my watch says it's only been a day or so.  Where to start?

On the ship I was finally let out of my cupboard by a woman in yet another uniform – grey and darker grey with a long pale grey shirt over the top.  Just like a doctor's coat, so no surprise that she was some kind of doctor and gave me a medical exam and a bunch of injections.  Most of the injections didn't involve needles, but something like a compressed air cylinder.  The worst was directly to my left temple, which ached, and then ached worse, and now is a dull persistent pain.

She talked a lot while she peered and prodded, and we did a little pantomime of her pointing to herself and saying "Ista Tremmar" and me going "Cassandra".  Then the best part of the day beyond being rescued: a shower and a toilet (hilarious pantomime explanations).  The toilet was weird – it was a form-fitted bench with a hole, which doesn't flush or have any water in it – you close the lid after you use it and if you open it again it doesn't smell like it's been used.  I couldn't properly see the bottom, but it looked like an empty box.  The toilet paper is thickish, pre-moistened squares like baby wipes.  And the shower – warm water and soap!

I wanted to stay in there forever, but after Ista had gone through this pantomime of pointing to it and making totally incomprehensible gestures, I'd decided I was supposed to be quick.  No towel: the ceiling blew a gale of hot air at me when I turned the water off.

There was a white shift to wear, and I had to put all my clothes in a plastic bag.  I couldn't find a comb or toothbrush, so finger-combed my hair into some sort of order before Ista led me off to a room full of chairs.  In the medical room, everything was designed to be tucked away neatly and take up no more space than it had to, so I was almost expecting some kind of cattle class cramped airplane seating, but instead there were these long, padded and reclined chairs, like a cross between a dentist's chair and a bed.  There were three rows of four, each set up on its own platform.  When I lay down the cushions squished themselves in around me like they were trying to hold on – the weirdest sensation ever – but it was absolutely comfortable.

Once I was settled in, Ista gave me another injection, a sedative this time.  I was awake long enough to see a plastic/glass bubble thing come up around my seat, and then I was out until waking up where I am now, not on the ship, but on a bed-shelf made of whitestone with a mattress on top, in a small but not cramped room.  There's a window, plastic, unopenable and very thick, which looks out over the roof of what seems to be one huge mound of connected building: blockish and white and eerily reminiscent of the town I was in but all joined together and with only occasional windows and doors.  The only other thing to be seen is clouds and a black and choppy ocean.

The door is locked, but I found a cupboard which had clean clothes in it (underpants, grey tights/pants and a loose white smock).  Other than that, there was only a whitestone shelf before the window and a chair before it which makes me think it's meant to be a narrow table.  I tried knocking on the door, but not in a frantic I'm-panicky-and-bothersome way, and searched about, but there was nothing to do except stare out the window.  At least my eyes have decided to stop being blurry.

No greenery visible.  I can't guess why these people all live mounded up here when there's acre upon acre of lake and forest left to some cats.  I keep trying to spot anything which will show me that it's definitely the same planet.  But there's nothing but whitestone buildings and water, and it's too cloudy to see sun or moon.  Quite a lot of futuristic air traffic.  I bounced up and down for a while, thinking that maybe the gravity was a fraction less, but if there's a difference it's subtle enough to be dismissed as imagination.

None of my belongings were with me, not even my watch, so I don't know how long I sat around, but finally a man showed up with a tray of food.  He was wearing the same sort of uniform as the rest, but in shades of purple and violet, and was the first person who acted like I was interesting rather than a little problem which had to be tidied away.  He gawked at me, in other words, and asked a bunch of questions I had no way of understanding or answering, all in the time it took him to cross and put the tray on the table.  One of the greensuits was waiting outside, or I expect he would have stayed and gawked some more.  I felt like I was one of those kids found raised by wolves or something.

I dove on the food as soon as the door closed.  There were two slices of warm yellow cakey stuff.  Not sweet.  Some kind of heavy bread?  Fruit in jelly where all of the fruit pieces were like butterfly-shaped grapes.  A stack of vegetables in sticks – green and white and yellow sticks, all apparently growing naturally to the thickness and length of my little finger.  The yellow ones tasted like carrot trying to be celery, the white was zingy and the green very salty.  I spent ages on the last of the grapes, trying to work out if grapes would really naturally grow to look so much like butterflies.  They tasted like vanilla apples with grape texture.

The way I shovelled all this down my throat, you'd never guess I once wouldn't eat anything other than chips and gravy for dinner.  I didn't grow out of that till I was in high school and still occasionally annoy Mum with things I'd refuse to even try.  But when you've spent a good half hour pondering whether to eat the wormy bits of your red pears for the protein – and even tried a bite – then no-one gets to call you fussy any more.

After an age the pinksuited person came back and took the tray, and the greensuit gave me my backpack, so now I have this diary again and my watch and everything.  Even my clothes, clean but very battered.  And next? 

Unobservant

After hours stuck in this room I finally realised that the cupboard wasn't the only internal door.  I probably wouldn't have even worked out the cupboard if it hadn't been left slightly open.  When it's shut, there's just a bit of a dint and if you push the dint the door moves in then slides into the wall.  So eventually I spotted another dint, over near the more obvious door to the hall.  And it was a door and I have my own bathroom.

Then, after the world's longest shower, I was sorting through my things and I found they'd somehow recharged my mobile.  Even though I'd kept it off almost all the time, the battery had run down after a couple of weeks.  I immediately played all my song ring tones, over and over.  Five whole songs, and a few partial songs.  That made me cry.

And now I have games! No mobile signal whatsoever, which isn't a surprise, but trivial entertainment for the win!

You too can have an exciting career in medicine!  Join our Test Subject Program today. 

Two greensuits came and escorted me to two greysuits: the same woman and a younger man.  I think I'm in some sort of security wing of a military hospital.  Everyone's in uniform.

The headache from that injection is worse, and wasn't helped by more poking and prodding and taking blood samples and putting me in odd machines.  It was very tedious, interesting only because I couldn't see any way they were controlling all but a few obvious devices.

I tried pantomiming that my head hurt and that I would like some Aspro thank you very much, but though they seemed to understand, they just looked sorry and shook their heads.  I'm guessing shaking your head means no here.  It's hard to describe how my head feels – like a blocked sinus, but above my left eye.  It's started to make my sight go all grey with wormy wiggles.  I  may be having a bad reaction to whatever they were immunising me against, but they didn't seem at all surprised or worried during my exam.

I'm going to have to lie down. 

Tuesday, December 18

Skullburster? 

I spent the day curled in the bed, being a complete sook about this headache, and not at all friendly when the greysuits came to check on me.  I totally feel like a lab rat.  I'm sure they've got cameras in here.  I can't even turn out the lights.  No switches.

It feels like the front-left of my head is pushing out from the inside.  Having showers helps a little, or maybe I'm just feeling the need to make up for lost time.  The soap is liquid and very spicy-scented.  When I'm not showering I'm peering in the mirror in the bathroom.  My left eye looks really bloodshot, but not swollen.  And I look horrible.  I always thought it would be nice to be really thin, but I'm haggard.  I had no idea I looked this bad.  It's only been a month.

Outside is all storms, the lightning strange and unreal because the thunder is blocked out.  The water looks very black and mountainous and I'm glad I'm not in it, but I'm starting to wish I wasn't here.  I just can't figure these people out.  They weren't at all surprised to find me in that town, though it's obvious none of them recognised my English.  One of the shots they gave me seems to have helped bunches in clearing the last of that super-cold away, and they've fed and clothed me and put me in a room.  And injected me with something which I can't believe was just an immunisation.  Do they find so many random people from other planets that it's normal to use them as test subjects?  They're not even trying to figure out a way to communicate with me.

If my head hurt less I'd have the energy to be scared. 

Wednesday, December 19

A Vision of Walls

My eyes are going strange again.  Not blurriness on random objects this time, but lines.  Symbols.  It's like I'm seeing an outline of this room overlaid over the room itself, with squiggles in odd spots.  I don't know whether to be worried about seeing things, or if there might be some kind of hologram being projected into the room.

My head no longer feels like it's going to explode, though it still aches a fair bit. 

Dotty

My headache is more or less gone, but now I have a dot.  A green dot.

As hallucinations go, this is an unwavering one.  It looks like a piece from a game of checkers, floating at eye height.  I can't touch it, and it doesn't seem to cast a shadow.  It's been there at least ten minutes.

I've heard of people who see sounds as colours.  And of brain tumours pressing in places they shouldn't be and causing problems.  The question of what that injection did to me has gone beyond scary now.

The other thing I've noticed is that it's still night-time.  It was day before the storm, but I haven't seen the sun since.  Possibly I'm on a different world again, maybe.  Is the gravity less, or do I just feel more energetic than before?  Has it been night for a day straight, or did I just sleep when it was light?

Thursday, December 20

A shot of words

Escorted again to the greysuits, and OW!  They had me lie down on another dentist-style chair, this one with its own little helmet.  I can't say I was keen, but the greensuits were waiting just outside.  Is it better to be a dignified test subject, or a defiant but battered one?

I was just noticing that there was a green dot in the centre of that room too when they turned their evil torture machine on and all these words began to squiggle across the back of my eyes.  If I'd thought my head was going to explode before, that was nothing to having a dictionary injected into my skull.

Someone really has to explain the concept of painkillers to these people.

I think I had convulsions.  It was a bit hard to tell, but I remember them holding my arms.  There was some blacking out going on as well, and a long hazy time after where they were talking about my heart rate and stuff.  After a while I must have passed out properly, and now I'm back in my box.