Betrayed (Cry of the Guilty – Silence of the Innocent Book 2)

by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

  They walked into the village. The snow had settled on the tops of the building walls and on the streets. There were mounds where it covered anything on the ground. Wild animals had come in and dug through the snow to find the bodies. Some they’d eaten on the spot leaving the bones, some they’d dragged into the bush.

  There were humps of snow throughout the dormitories, on the beds and stretched on the ground. Georg kicked the snow off one and it was someone they didn’t know. He pushed the snow aside where one fire had been. Beside it were severed limbs now just bones. Skin hanging to them looked like it had been roasted.

  “They were eating each other,” Sari said repelled by the sight.

  “Trying anything to survive,” Gwin said. “But it looks as if they didn’t have enough wood for fires and they succumbed to the cold.”

  “Let’s get my box and get out of here.”

  As they neared the police barracks, they heard a growling noise and a banging. They stopped and looked at each other.

  “Must be some animal,” Gwin said. “Let’s hide until it’s gone.”

  They stepped into the building that had been the courthouse. All was silent for a few minutes then the snarling and banging began again. It seemed to be coming closer.

  “What are we going to do if it finds us?” Sari asked, fearfully.

  “Hopefully it’s small enough to kill with these.” Georg held up the axe.

  The noise grew louder and they could feel something hitting the outside of the courthouse. They flattened against the inside wall and waited. Gwin tightened her grip on the axe handle. Suddenly, a shape appeared in the doorway. They held their breaths. It turned its head and looked at them through squinted, grey-white eyes.

  “It’s one of us,” Sari gasped.

  “It’s Royd.” Gwin stated.

  Royd was dressed in layers of clothes. He’d wrapped strips of cloth around his head, hands, and feet. In one hand was a frozen arm with bites taken out of it. But it was as if he didn’t see or recognize them because his gaze continued around the building and then he left, growling and banging the arm against the wall.

  “What are we going to do now?” Sari asked.

  “We’re getting your tapes and leaving.” Georg stated.

  “What about Royd?” Gwin asked. He was the only hope she had to prove her innocence.

  “There is nothing we can do for him,” Georg said. “It looks like he’s almost blind and he’s definitely gone crazy.”

  “But it doesn’t seem right.”

  “Where would we take him?” Georg reasoned. “What would we do with him? I doubt that the people would allow us to bring him into the cave and we don’t want to cause any problems with them. Our lives depend on them.”

  Gwin knew Georg was right. There was no way for them to get back home now anyway and even if they could, Royd would not admit anything.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mikk sat stunned. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Beti said. “We had to leave them. There was no way we could bring any of them back.”

  Beti and Tyl had returned on the Federer and had spent one day in the celerate chamber and three days sequestered from the public in the debriefing section of the Space Organization. When that was over they’d gone to their apartments to drop off their clothes and then hurried over to tell Mikk’s office to tell him about the failure of the colony. The Leaders had spoken on the television news about the sudden appearance of the spaceship but had given no word on the prisoner’s status. Rumours had quickly surfaced about riots and killings and now Mikk knew they were true.

  “Why didn’t the ship refuel, get provisions, and go back?”

  “The governor thought it would be a waste of time,” Tyl said. “The prisoners were out of control. There was no way we could land and get the food out without being attacked.”

  “Did you see Gwin? Did you let her know that I was trying to help her from here?”

  Beti shook her head regretfully. “We watched for her but we were busy getting the land worked and seeds planted. Just when it looked like we had time, the weather changed.”

  Mikk put his head in his hands. “Do you know if she received my metal note?”

  “Yes, they were given out.”

  “From what I’ve heard, the Leaders are discussing the benefits of sending a ship to the planet to investigate,” Mikk said. “Do you know when are they doing that?”

  Beti shrugged. “They don’t think there is any reason to hurry.”

  “What do you think Gwin’s chances of survival are?”

  Beti and Tyl glanced at each other. “Not good,” Tyl said. “There wasn’t much food left and the weather had turned cold. White flakes like the snow our planet used to get were falling.”

  Mikk rubbed his hands over his face. He and Britt hadn’t quit trying to find out exactly what had happened on the night Gwin had been arrested. But there was nothing for them to go on. And now it seemed as if they were too late to do anything.

  “I’ve got to go there,” he said quietly. “I have to see for sure that she is dead.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Beti asked.

  “I’m going to be on that ship when it leaves.”

  Silence followed his statement. Neither Beti nor Tyl tried to talk him out of going. They seemed to know that it was something he had to do.

  “Have you made any progress with your freezing experiment?” Tyl asked changing the subject.

  “Some,” Mikk grimaced. “I can thaw out the bodies but the mind is lost.”

  “What do you mean lost?”

  “It’s gone. The body is alive but there is no mind to operate it.”

  “So you can’t freeze a scientist and send him to explore another planet,” Beti said.

  “His body will make it but his mind won’t.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’ve been moved over to work on the experiment to remove the mind from the body.” Mikk looked at his watch, then stood. “I’ve been off for the past two weeks so I’m going to observe the procedure in ten minutes. Do you want to come?”

  Beti and Tyl shook their heads as they rose. “We have to go to Reassignment today and find out what our new project is.”

  “How did our tools work out?” Mikk asked as they left his office and walked down the hall.

  Beti and Tyl looked at each other and grinned sheepishly. “We really should have learned how to use them before we went,” Tyl said. “It was tough trying to show the prisoners how they worked when we only had written instructions to go by.”

  They parted and Mikk headed to the Separation Room. He walked in and shook hands with Pau and Sher, the two scientists working on the procedure.

  A prisoner with a shaved head was brought in, escorted by two guards. He stood silently as Sher ran though the warning.

  “You have volunteered for an experiment that has had some favourable results and some that are not so favourable. If it works, you will be given your freedom and a pension for the rest of your life. This is your last opportunity to change your mind.” She looked at him expectantly.

  “I’ll go for it,” the prisoner said. “Either way it gives me a chance to get out prison.”

  “Then if you would lie on this table, we will get started,” Pau said.

  The guards remained until the prisoner’s body, arms, legs and head were strapped securely to the table. “Where are you sending me?” He could only stare at the ceiling.

  “To a planet called Zedor,” Pau said as he rolled the prisoner’s sleeves up and attached wires.

  “Where is that?”

  “It’s in our solar system.”

  “What am I going to do there?”

  “You’ll be transplanted into the head of an occupant of the planet and will see and hear what it sees and hears.”

  “And then what?”

  “After a week you’ll be brought ba
ck to your body and you’ll be able to tell us what is on that planet.”

  “Don’t you already know what’s there?”

  “Yes, but we want you to tell us so we know the experiment worked.”

  “Are you sure I’ll come back?” There was a note of fear in his voice.

  “That risk was explained to you.” Pau taped more wires to his shaved skull.

  “Will I know what is happening?”

  “That’s for you to tell us when you come back.”

  The wires were hooked to a machine beside the table. Sher was watching the displays on the monitors.

  Mikk had only heard about this separation experiment. He hadn’t had time to watch it before. Now, because of his failure and new assignment he was going to be part of it.

  “Could you explain what you are doing?” he asked.

  “Our mind is divided into several faculties such as will, reason, and memory and is a mass of thoughts, memories, feelings, and emotions, everything that we have gone through in our lives. It is the collection of our conscious state. Hundreds of years ago scientists discovered that our brains continually give off small waves of electricity. We took that one step further. We attached wires to the scalp and by stimulating parts of the brain we learned that the waves are sent out by our minds.

  “To remove the mind, we passed stronger electric waves through the brain and the mind waves attached themselves. The two were then sent to that transmitter,” he pointed to a machine in the corner. “It produces carrier waves and combines them and the electric waves into a radio signal that is sent to an FM antennae on the roof of the top level of the megalopolis. The antennae sends them out as sky waves that pass through the atmosphere and into space.”

  “And you’ve been able to bring the mind back?”

  “Yes, when we first began the experiment we sent the waves out and, using a radio telescope, were able to bring them back to the body. The person’s mind was normal afterwards and he had all his memory of his life. But the only memory they have of where they’ve been is seeing our sun as a bright light as they head towards our planet.”

  Suddenly there was a dreadful scream from the prisoner. Mikk jumped and looked over at him in time to see his eyes close and his body go limp. Neither Pau nor Sher seemed concerned.

  “Why did he scream like that?” Mikk asked with a shudder.

  Pau shrugged. “They all do at the moment of separation.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “I don’t know. They have no memory of it.”

  “What has been the problem so far?”

  “We believe our minds aren’t strong enough to take over the mind already in the body of the recipient and are killed.”

  “So why do you keep sending them?”

  “We keep changing the strength of the transmitter hoping that will give our minds greater strength.”

  “What do you do with the bodies?”

  “We feed them for a month then dispose of them in the normal way.”

  Sher took the wires off and undid the straps. She went to the door and signalled two attendants. They guided a bed to the side of the table and moved the body onto it. They then pushed it out of the room.

  “How will his mind locate a body on the planet?” This was what Mikk wanted to find out.

  “Up to now, all we’ve been able to do is make it search for a host and try to enter it,” Pau answered.

  “So it doesn’t necessarily find an intelligent being.”

  “No. We think they have all been animalistic on the other planets. But we’ve been studying the inhabitants of Zedor. They only have intelligent life forms on the planet.”

  “What makes you think that it will be able to enter easier?”

  “Animal minds are fierce and merciless. They have developed their competitive skills in order to beat other animals to prey. They are totally focused on hunting and on raising their young and their instinct is to fight savagely to maintain their lives. We are hoping that our minds and those of the people of Zedor are similar and that the Zedor mind won’t be as brutal in protecting itself.”

  “This is your first trial with the strengthened transmitter?”

  “Yes,” Pau replied.

  “How long does it take to reach the planet?”

  “Those waves travel at the speed of light so it is there already.”

  “How does it enter?”

  “We calculated the distance between the two planets and set the speed so that it will have slowed by the time it reaches there. The electric waves of the mind will separate from the other waves when it comes to a host brain.”

  “When will you know if his mind has entered someone?”

  “The radio telescope will track the wave and let us know when the signal has changed.”

  “What is this radio telescope?”

  “Many things in space give off radio waves. A radio telescope is an instrument that detects and collects those radio waves just as an optical telescope collects light. Radio waves and light waves are actually forms of the same type of radiation called electromagnetic waves. A radio telescope can detect weaker electromagnetic waves, though, and as a result a radio telescope can explore as far as 15 billion light years.”

  He walked over to where Sher was seated in front of the computer. She punched a few keys then shook her head.

  “And what happens on contact?”

  “We hope that his mind is stronger than the inhabitant’s mind so he can overpower it.”

  “What will he do then?”

  “He’ll be able to use the body to explore the planet and will come back here with vital information about it.”

  “Too bad about your experiment with freezing not working,” Sher said.

  Mikk nodded. “I just wasn’t able to figure a way of protecting the mind.”

  “So, if we separated the mind first, you could send both it and the body to a planet,” Pau said speculatively. “There they would reattach and then explore.”

  Mikk thought about it. “But how would you get them both back?” he asked.

  “That’s where the radio telescope comes in. We would send out the radio waves to extract the mind’s electrical waves and return them.”

  “How would we freeze the body to bring it back?”

  Pau inclined his head. “Sometimes the knowledge is worth more than a few lives.”

  * * *

  Over the winter the four newcomers were taught more of the people’s language. The dwellers also learned some of the newcomers’ words so that communication was a mixture of both. Evenings were spent storytelling. They listened to the cave people’s stories of the long, cold winters when food had been scarce and many had died, of the meeting they attended every summer, and of their hunts. They, in turn, tried to tell them about the planet they came from. When they mentioned the spaceships the dwellers nodded and said they had seen the big birds. They could not grasp, though, that they had flown from another planet far in the sky.

  Three babies were born during the winter. Gwin and Sari watched in fascination as the first woman, Bula, went through her labour. Finally, as the birth became imminent, Bula was helped up from her bed by the attending women and held in the squatting position over a hide. She grunted as she strained to push out the head and then the body of her newborn. The quiet baby was caught by one of the attending women. Another grunt brought out the afterbirth.

  While Bula returned to her bed, the woman cleared the mouth of mucus and made sure it was breathing before wrapping it in a hide. The father, Lorth, immediately took the infant and paraded around the cave, showing the newborn to everyone. At last, the baby was placed with Bula who held it until it began to fuss then brought it to her breast so it could suck.

  Gwin and Sari became good friends with Mela and Bula. They were allowed to take part in the other two births.

  Jawn and Georg went out on every hunt but never did master the throwing of the spear. They were better when it came using a sling and pebble t
o kill rabbits and grouse. These, they hit one out of three times.

  At last the weather began to warm and everyone spent more of the day outside. The snow eventually melted leaving the trail to the forest soggy, and mud everywhere. This didn’t stop the children and adults from playing in the warm sunshine. They took off their hide foot coverings and stamped their way through the mud puddles spattering themselves and anyone nearby.

  The newcomers changed back into the clothes they’d been given at the colony. They were cooler than the hides. The inhabitants just removed the layers of hides until they were comfortable. Everyone went barefoot.

  One particularly warm day, Sari announced she was going back to the village. “There isn’t anyone there to harm us now.”

  Neither Georg nor Jawn was interested but Gwin agreed to go. They took the axes with them.

  “I’ve noticed you watching the sky when you’re outside,” Sari said as they crossed a meadow. “Do you think a spaceship will come?”

  “I’m sure the Leaders will send out one to investigate. Plus, there are a lot more prisoners to relocate. They’ll probably try again, maybe somewhere else on the planet.”

  They walked in silence through the trees. Suddenly, Gwin wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell?”

  “Rotting meat,” Sari said stopping. “I left a package out one time and that is what it smelled like.”

  “What do you think is causing it?”

  “We’re close to the village. My guess is that the warm weather has thawed the bodies and they’re rotting.”

  “I don’t think I can go any closer,” Gwin said.

  “Me neither,” Sari said, disappointed.

  * * *

  “We must leave,” Lorth said to the men.

  “It is too soon,” Thor said. “We could get another storm.”

  “It is an early year. The birds have already started returning and there are buds on the trees. And besides, Gar, Bane and Lyla must come with us.”