by Herb Hughes
Jack’s arms fell limply to his sides, and Sheffie slipped down so that her feet once again touched the floor. She looked into his eyes and said, “Jack? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I… I…”
“Mr. Wheat,” the voice in his ear persisted, “Please find a place where you can communicate. Immediately. We need to arrange the harvest. That tissue is desperately needed.”
What was he going to do? The people in the space station would know exactly where he was when the match was found. He had to get away. He could not let them know who he was with. Thank God he had not been in the library. They would have known it was Sheffie. He had to do something quick. He couldn’t let Sheffie be slaughtered. “Ah, I’m sorry, Sheffie. I remembered there’s something I’ve got to do.” He turned to go.
“You just got here,” she said, puzzled.
“I’m sorry. This is important. It can’t wait.”
He ran through the front door without looking back, ran down the street to the library, and jumped onto Killer, leaving Borderton at a full run. This time, he did not stop to talk to the people who tried to flag him down. He didn’t wave or acknowledge them. Time was critical.
The voice in his ear was insistent, but then it stopped for several minutes. After the hesitation, Ethan’s voice rang in his ear, “Mr. Wheat, Stephan has informed me that you have found a match. We need that tissue immediately. Please report your situation.”
Jack said nothing. Instead, he pushed Killer harder. They moved southwest, toward the desert, away from town and from everyone who lived there. The geneered people, the posthumans, would come after him, so he had to get as far away from Borderton as possible. He did not want to endanger anyone.
If he were lucky, he would save the people of Borderton, but there was no place he and Killer could hide. With their machines, the posthumans could see anything on the planet. They would be able to track him no matter where he was. He was powerless to keep the truth from them, not with the magic devices they possessed. He knew they could divine the truth right out of his brain no matter how hard he tried to hide it, so he could not let them have access to his living brain. That left him only one choice. They would not take him alive.
As horse and rider drove hard toward the desert, he did not let up. Killer was tiring, but Jack had to hurry. Ethan may already be on the way. The great horse responded, running the race of its life.
Killer was panting hard as they rounded a curve in the road, far enough from town so there were no houses nearby. Jack pulled his horse up for a short rest, so both rider and horse could catch their breath. While the desert was still many klicks away, it would take more than an hour to get there. Jack did not have an hour, only minutes at best. Still, there were no more trees where he was, only knurled and twisted scrub pines that would get shorter and more twisted the further they went. Perhaps this was far enough from Borderton and the farms around Borderton so that the townspeople would be safe from the posthumans. He let Killer amble forward, but at a leisurely pace as he tried to gather his thoughts.
He went over everything again, once, twice, even three times. Minutes passed. He finally realized there was no other choice. He was wasting time, and time was the one thing he could not afford to waste. He stopped Killer near a group of scrub pines and jumped to the ground.
Leaning his head against Killer’s sweaty neck, he patted the great horse one last time. “Didn’t want it to end like this, but there’s nothing I can do now, boy. You go back to town. Somebody will take care of you. Good-bye.”
Killer reared his head and snorted. Jack pulled his rifle from its holster and walked away a few steps. He turned and sat on the hard ground. Killer looked away as though he knew what was coming, but did not want to leave until it was done.
Jack looked at the repeating rifle. Lobie did beautiful work. It was not fancy. There was no embossing on the metal, no leaves or fruit or curlicues of any type. They were in a hurry and fancy was not the order of the day. The workmanship, however, was superb.
The repeating rifle was shorter than a homebuilt. He held it to the side, the end of the barrel against his temple, and reached for the trigger. Holding the barrel about midway on the rifle with his left hand, he stretched out his right hand. The right index finger touched the trigger. He knew he would be able to extend his shoulder enough so that the finger would push the trigger and fire. With the longer homebuilt, he would have had to use his toes.
There was no need to wait any longer. Ethan would arrive at any moment. Still, he hesitated. This was not something he wanted to do. But it was the only way he could save Sheffie. He took a deep breath. It was time. Jack Wheat would be no more. He gathered his determination then pushed quick and hard against the well-forged metal of the trigger. It moved as it should have, but nothing happened.
Jack pushed again. Still, nothing happened. He lowered the rifle and looked at it. Yes, it was loaded. The clip was full. What was wrong? He lifted it to try again.
“There is nothing wrong with your weapon,” Ethan said.
Jack whipped his head around. The posthuman from the space station was standing not too far away, pointing the little thing in his hand at Jack.
“It appears I arrived in the nick of time. Your rifle has been disabled for the moment. We need that tissue match, Mr. Wheat. You are trying to protect someone. It is fruitless. You know you cannot hide anything from us. Who is it?”
Jack said nothing.
“Okay. I’m not going to waste my time trying to reason with you. We’ll do it the hard way.”
Ethan pointed the device toward Jack and made some motions with his fingers. The rifle flew from Jack's hands. Killer stood frozen, as though Ethan controlled him as well. Then Jack started floating in the air. He tried to reach down and touch the ground, but he couldn’t. Something lifted him and pulled him toward the shuttle, something that he could feel but could not see or stop. Flailing his arms and legs did nothing at all. He was a slave to this invisible force, so he quit fighting as he drifted aboard the shuttle.
Chapter 65
The trip passed in silence. Once on the station, Ethan treated Jack like an animal to be herded about, something unworthy of even the simplest explanations. Ethan used the small device to sling Jack onto the bodyform in the same room as before then turned his back and walked out without a word. The door whooshed shut behind him.
After several minutes of being alone, the door opened again. Ethan entered, pushing a cart with a posthuman machine on top. A variety of things protruded from the device. There were thin lines that snaked to points and larger cables with little cylindrical pods on the ends. A brightly colored screen was visible in the air above it. Numbers and letters and blobs of color danced across the screen as Ethan tinkered with the lines and tapped on buttons.
“The interrogation procedure will require several minutes to complete,” he said as he continued working. “But it will reveal who you were with when you found the match. Once you fully understand our capabilities, you will be more cooperative in the future.”
All was lost. There was no hope, nothing he could do. Sheffie would be taken by these monsters and killed, murdered.
Instead of continuing to work with the sky people, Jack would kill himself at the first opportunity. He would not cry for himself. Perhaps he deserved death. Sheffie did not. He would cry for her as he had cried for Mac.
I cried for Mac, he remembered. I cried for a worn out old man. Mac had been up against someone he could not possibly defeat, but he didn’t give up. Sure, he had died. But he went down fighting, spitting on Bonner’s name with his last heartbeat. If a decrepit old man could stand up and fight to the last, then Jack Wheat could do the same. I’ve got to fight like Mac would!
There had to be something he could do, symbolically if nothing else. He had to let these bastards know there were people on Agrilot who would not lie down and be herd animals. He might not be able to kill Ethan, and he could possibly lose his life trying, but
maybe, just maybe, if he was smart enough and quick enough, he might be able to hurt the posthuman. That was all he could hope for.
As Ethan worked with the machine on the cart, Jack looked around the sparse room for something he could use, anything that was loose. He saw a small box on a ledge on the opposite wall. He had no idea what it was, but that didn’t matter. It was the only thing loose in the room.
He leaped from the bodyform and grabbed the box then whirled around and threw it at Ethan’s head as hard as he could throw. With amazingly fast reflexes, and a sneer on his face, the posthuman swatted the box out of the air, a mere nuisance. It fell harmlessly to the floor.
“Why must everything with you be the hard way? Are you that stupid?” Ethan shook his head. “Apparently so.” The posthuman pulled the small device from his pocket and pointed it toward Jack. Against his will, the Rhino hunter drifted back to the bodyform. It contoured around him once again.
“Now, Mr. Wheat, no more of your pathetic shenanigans. They accomplish nothing,” Ethan said as he leaned back over the machine on the cart.
The door to the room opened. A stunningly beautiful red-headed woman stepped inside. No doubt, one of Ethan’s assistants. She was holding something in her hand, a strange-looking device with a fat rectangular barrel, like an overgrown gun. Some sort of medical device?
As Ethan glanced up, the woman lifted the thing in her hand and pointed the fat barrel directly at him instead of at Jack.
“Diana! What is the meaning of this? How the stars did you get out of your room?”
What the hell was going on?
“I can access Central whenever I want,” the posthuman woman said. “I saw what you were doing with this man, and I won’t let you do it. Whether you like it or not, he is human, no matter how ugly he is. You have no right to mistreat him like this.”
Jack had never considered himself ugly, but that was the least of his concerns at the moment. Something was happening between these posthumans. The two were at odds with each other, and there was a chance, a slim chance, that he could take advantage of it. Anything to save Sheffie he thought as he watched and listened intently.
“Come, now, Diana. We’ve been through this. You were confined to quarters. How did you get out?”
The tall, curvy red-head smiled and said, “I can do anything I want on this station, and you can’t stop me. You have no clue, Ethan. I can reach the infrastructure down to basic command core. Central belongs to me!”
The woman’s voice was strained and tense, angry. It was not like the placid voices of the other posthumans. It was more like someone, well, without their full capacity, but, crazy or not, Jack was thankful for the interruption.
Ethan backed up a step. “Diana, please be reasonable. You, ah, realize that is a scrambler in your hand, don’t you?”
“I’m not stupid!” she screamed back at him.
They stared at each other a moment then the woman said, “You are to stop all the harvesting immediately.”
“This agent has found a match that is desperately needed. Lives are being lost, Diana. Posthuman lives! Perhaps even some of your friends.”
She pointed at the cart and said, “Why are you going into his brain? He’s not an animal. You have no right to do something like that.”
“He is an animal, and I have every right! He is not a posthuman. He is not one of us. This animal refuses to tell us who the match is, so we have to get the information out of him the only way we can. We need that tissue right away.”
“NO!” she screamed. “NO MORE TISSUE!” She stared at Ethan with deep, dark hate in her eyes.
Ethan stared at Diana for several seconds then said, “Lucy, I need your help.”
“She can’t help you,” Diana said. Her face had instantly changed from anger and hatred to cool, calculating superiority. “I told you. I own Central. You have been cut off. You can’t even use basic communication, the station’s or your implanted comm. It’s just you and I.”
Jack looked at Ethan and, for the first time, he saw fear in a posthuman’s face. Ethan was frightened of this woman, Diana. Or perhaps he was frightened of the device she held in her hands. Whichever it was, there had to be a way he could take advantage of the situation.
Suddenly a calm seemed to come over Diana. She smiled. Her voice lowered as she said, “I have accessed and armed the bomb, the one that was meant for Agrilot the moment it became useless to you and you’re murdering crew.”
“My, God!” Ethan shouted.
“Your God won’t help you. But I will. I’ll help you be a better person by putting an end to the senseless murder of all these humans. You and the rest of the crew will leave, abandon this station and this mission, or I will destroy the space station. The bomb is fully under my control. So is Central. There is nothing you can do.”
“Diana, be reasonable,” Ethan pleaded.
“I am reasonable.” She pulled a small, oval object from her pocket. “All I’ve got to do is punch this button and all of us, everything on this station, will be little bitty pieces floating in orbit around Agrilot. It ought to make a brilliant light show as the pieces burn in the atmosphere.”
Ethan’s eyes flared wide and he lunged toward Diana. Crazy or not, she was an ally. Jack had to help. He had always had exceptionally fast reflexes compared to other people on Agrilot, something that had saved his life on more than one occasion. He jumped from the bodyform and reached out to grab Ethan’s legs, pulling him down toward the floor, slowing him enough so he could not reach Diana before she could fire.
The weapon she held spat out a bright, jagged white beam. It was aimed at Ethan’s legs, but because Jack had caused Ethan to trip forward, the beam hit the posthuman man in the forehead. He slumped to the floor, unmoving.
Diana stood there a moment with shock on her face. Her hands opened, releasing the weapon and the oval box. They clattered onto the floor as she put her empty hands over her mouth.
“What have I done?” she said. “Oh, daddy, what have I done? I didn’t mean to shoot him in the head. You taught me to be better than everyone else, daddy. This isn’t better, is it? Daddy, please help me. What have I done?” She went to her knees and knelt over Ethan, brushing his hair with her fingers. “What have I done?”
With Diana’s attention focused on the seemingly lifeless Ethan, Jack grabbed the weapon with one hand and the oval box with the other. He stuffed the oval box in his pocket. “Is he dead?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “But he might as well be.” Tears were streaming down her face. “I was aiming for his legs to temporarily paralyze him. But he fell. His head got in the way.”
There was no need to explain to Diana that Jack was the reason that Ethan had fallen. Ethan had been stopped, and that was all that mattered. “What type of weapon is this? What does it do?” he asked as he inspected the device.
“It’s a scrambler. It is supposed to disrupt the nerve signals wherever it hits, but I had it on high and hit him in the forehead. His memory is destroyed. Gone forever. His body is still alive, but he will be a vegetable as long as he lives. Oh, daddy!” she sobbed. “I’ve been a bad little girl. What was I thinking? Oh, please help me, daddy.”
“So his heart is still beating?” Jack was beginning to see a small glimmer of hope.
“Yes.” She hung over Ethan, continuing to brush his hair with her fingers and not turning to look at Jack as she talked. “But he will never be him again. He’s a vegetable now. My daddy would be so upset with me.”
“The little oval box… How could there be a bomb big enough to blow up a planet in one little box?”
“It’s only a trigger.” She still did not turn around. “The bomb is in the storage bay. I armed it earlier. I had to so they would think I was serious, but it was a hollow threat. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Oh, daddy, how could I have hurt Ethan? He was so stubborn, but I did not want to hurt him. I would never have blown up the station with anyone on it. I wanted them to leave and go ho
me. Then I would have gone down to Agrilot and blown up the station afterward, when there was no one on it. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I need my daddy. You’re not my daddy. Do you know where my daddy is?”
“Ah,” Think quick. “No, well, maybe. Maybe I can try to take you to him.” Jack had to get home. There was only one way, the shuttle. If Ethan was still alive, he had a slim chance. He did not like the plan that was brewing in his head. It was too risky. Still, there was so little to work with. He could think of no alternatives. “Yes, of course. I can take you to your daddy,” he said.
“Oh, yes, please.” The woman turned around and looked at him. Her eyes were wild and strange and filled with tears.
“We’ve got to take Ethan, too. Your daddy will know how to help him.”
“Daddy’s not a doctor. He knows computers. He can’t help Ethan.” Her face wrinkled in confusion.
Think quick. “But he also knows other doctors and scientists, people who can help. He can take us to someone who can help Ethan. Someone advanced. It’s like magic.”
She smiled. “Oh, yes, that’s true. Daddy knows so many people, smart people. Yes, yes. Everybody likes daddy. Let’s go to daddy. He can help.”
“Can you help me get Ethan to the shuttle? Your daddy is not on the station. If we can get to the shuttle, I can fly you to your daddy.”
“Yes, of course. Daddy will help us.” She turned and did something that Jack did not see. A flat silver plate came out from a slot below a cabinet and scooped under Ethan then lifted him off the floor. It floated on nothing. “Let’s go to daddy,” she said.
The expression on her face suddenly changed. She was no longer distraught. In fact, there was a hint of a smile on her lips. “Wait,” she said.
Jack tensed. “What’s wrong?”
“Stephan might see us if he calls up a video of the corridor.” She pulled something from her pocket and rolled it out on a small table beside Ethan’s bodyform then sat down and began tapping her fingers on it.
Jack looked at what Diana was doing with incomprehension. The thing she was poking was like a sheet of watered-down milk. You could see through it, but not clearly. Where she tapped her fingers, there were glowing green squares with a single red letter in each. The letters also had a dull glow. Above this there was another area with bright green letters popping onto it as she tapped, but the letters didn’t spell any words that made sense.