Mindguard

by Andrei Cherascu

  No longer was the man content with taking possession of her body, he decided he also wanted possession of her mind. Thoughtenhancing drugs that granted telepathic abilities were illegal, but they could still be found in certain places. Nevertheless, they could not be found on Aanadya. Instead, people produced their own versions. They were nowhere near as powerful as the market-grade merchandise but these dangerous moonshine drugs, which had the side effect of madness, could still offer limited telepathic ability. It was erratic, a mere spark compared to the flame of the originals, but to some, it was still better than nothing.

  As he ripped off her underwear and started unbuttoning his pants, his thoughts started to invade her. They wrapped themselves around her own. In a way, the weight of his thoughts felt more physical than the weight of his body or the stench of his breath. She could hear what he heard and think what he thought. Worst of all, she could feel what he felt. She had never before experienced anything so brutal and invasive. She was horrified by one thing above all else: what if his thoughts could somehow leak into her mind and stick to hers like some sort of disgusting secretion? What is she could never get rid of him again? Could the man’s mind remain inside hers for the rest of her life, to haunt her forever?

  Horrified, she struggled. Using all her remaining force, she managed to free her right arm. She grabbed a large stone and slammed it against the side of his head with such force she had reason to believe her attacker died on impact, sparing him the additional pain of the next five minutes, in which she rammed the stone repeatedly into his face until it turned into unrecognizable anatomy.

  It was horrible, but Tamisa was possessed. She kept striking the man’s head so hard it constantly changed shape. Then, after a while, it seemed to start changing chemical state: from solid to liquid and - had she not grown tired after a few minutes - probably ultimately to gas. When she could barely feel her arms, she dropped the stone and fell on her knees next to her victim, desperate and defiled, crying like the small child she knew she would never again be.

  That night changed Tamisa. It left her questioning her own soul and even her sanity. She could have just hit the man in the head and made a run for it. She could have started crying and remained frozen in shock. She felt that either of the two options would have been the normal reaction of a frightened and wounded girl. Instead, she hit him in the skull over and over again until his face became a testament to the fact that incredible violence can be contained even in the most innocent heart. That made her wonder if perhaps some of his mind, with the evil it harbored inside, had not, after all, somehow dripped into her own, contaminating it and changing it forever.

  She felt physically dirty, covered in mud and tears and blood - both his and hers - but most of all she felt spiritually dirty, like her mind and her soul had been befouled. She left the body behind, never once even thinking about burying it, for she was not a killer, though she was most certainly a murderer.

  She spent the remainder of the night in absolute dread. She was certain that the next morning, when the body will be discovered, they’ll somehow figure out who did it and come after her. But Aanadya was the sort of place where an occasional violent death was shrugged off as a natural occurrence. The so-called authorities - meaning the men sanctioned by Kaye Wright to generally do whatever they wanted - couldn’t be bothered with the death of a dirty, mentally handicapped factory worker. They just assumed he pissed off the wrong guy and that they settled the score among themselves, which on Aanadya was considered quite honorable.

  Nobody ever wondered why his pants were found around his ankles, and if they did, they really didn’t care. Certainly, no one expected a thirteen-year-old girl to have mauled him like that. She evaded capture but did not escape punishment, for she was forced to keep on living with the memory of that night.

  But when her best friend picked her up and kissed her, she felt no repulsion, no lingering disgust from that horrible experience. When she made love to Villo that first time, she felt nothing but passion and pure happiness. She abandoned herself to his love. Every kiss and every touch felt right, as if he could read her mind, and when she climaxed she felt such a rush of emotion she didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, moan, scream out with joy or do all of those things at once. She clutched him tightly, as if she wanted to absorb him entirely, and he gently kissed her forehead, looked into her eyes and smiled.

  In her short life, most of it spent on a brutal planet and the rest in brutal training, Tamisa had grown to consider happiness the mere absence of suffering. On that afternoon, lying next to Villo, having made love for the first time and to her best friend, she realized that she had had no idea about the value or the importance of happiness. She had always thought that you cannot miss what you’ve never had, and she once again discovered how wrong she had been. The thought of all the happiness she had never felt until then, all the joy she had missed out on in her ugly childhood and her hard youth, made her suddenly feel very sad. She broke down and started weeping, overwhelmed by the reality of an existence she only then realized had been entirely miserable.

  In his characteristic way, Villo did not ask her about her feelings nor did he try to comfort her. He just absently looked at her for a few seconds, waiting for the tears to stop.

  “That bad? You know, you’re the first woman I ever made love to who started crying afterwards,” he had said then. “Usually they just sigh, roll their eyes and ask me to leave.”

  His comment made her laugh. In an instant, ‘Villo Magic’ had done the trick. She was again in a good mood. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her laughing and he never once asked why she had been crying in the first place. But of course he had known, or at least guessed. He was Villo.

  “You know,” she said, pretending to be serious, “I’m just happy that you don’t let your general views on the wonders of speed dictate your love life.”

  In training, Villo always stressed the development of speed - both physical and mental - which he liked to call ‘speed of action’ and ‘speed of thought’. He always told his students: “Strength is a burden, stamina is insignificant, speed is key. If you sufficiently develop your speed - the speed of your body and that of your mind - it will be the only weapon you will ever need. It will replace strength; your foe will be overpowered by the sheer number of your attacks, his determination will be weakened when he will see that he cannot touch you, while you are raining blow after blow on his body. Also, stamina becomes insignificant, because your foe will be defeated long before you will even break a sweat. Speed! Remember this!”

  He would follow this up with a demonstration. Villo always carried on him six spike-shaped darts in a small, customized pouch attached to his belt. They were his favorite weapons, ‘for special occasions’ as he would jokingly state. Upon close inspection, one could see that each of the darts was covered in mysterious symbols, sculpted on the metal. None of the cadets had ever managed to find out their meaning. When Tamisa had asked him about them, he told her that the darts had been a gift from a very special friend and that he didn’t know the meaning of the symbols.

  In his demonstrations, he would pull out three of the darts and show them to his cadets. Like a skilled magician, he always made sure that everyone got a good look at them. Then he would throw them at a designated target with such speed that the objects seemed to disappear from his hand and simply rematerialize wherever he had chosen to plant them. Even his arm seemed to stay in place. Tamisa was bent on one day matching his incredible speed.

  In spite of her joke, Villo liked to take his time between the sheets. In bed, he never had anything on his mind but her pleasure. Her relationship with Villo had quickly become the most important thing in her life. Now it was time to stand up and fight for it. She was about to leave the room, determined to confidently face the commander, when she realized that she had never actually told Villo about the message or why she suddenly got up and headed for the door. At the last moment, she stopped and turned to her lover who, i
gnored, was just staring at her in what seemed part amusement and part disbelief.

  “Good, the invisibility cloak is working. Money well spent,” he said, with a confused smile.

  “Oh… sorry… I was, I was just lost in thought. Uhm… I… I just received a message from Commander Anderson. I’m being called to the briefing room.”

  Villo’s face became serious. “Tammy, he doesn’t care that we’re sleeping together.” It was the first time they were actually talking about their relationship.

  “I’m not sure… how he’ll react.”

  “He won’t.”

  “He won’t? How could he possibly not?”

  “Why would he?” he shrugged. “There’s no rule in the academy preventing soldiers from sleeping together. In fact, there’s not even a rule about instructors and students not sleeping together, and I’m not your instructor anymore.”

  “There’s not?”

  “Well, none was ever really needed since there are basically no women in the Enforcement Unit… except you. And, to my knowledge, for as long as I’ve been with the enforcers, no male colleagues have ever been together either.”

  “I don’t know, it just seems -”

  “Wrong?”

  “No… no, not wrong,” she quickly assured him. “It just seems… I figure it’s something that would bother the commander, that’s all.”

  “The commander doesn’t give a damn. That I can promise you.”

  “Well, why else would he be calling me to the briefing room?”

  “He probably talked to Miller.”

  “I’m an idiot,” she suddenly realized. Of course, the two weeks were almost up and the commander was probably back from his meeting with Horatio Miller. He was calling her to inform her how to proceed with the mission. She had completely forgotten about that and she felt embarrassed. Villo jumped at the opportunity to tease her.

  “You’re not an idiot, you’re a girl in love. Your judgment is clouded by my irresistible charm.” He winked. “Now don’t keep the commander waiting or he’ll send his hologram in here again and that always creeps me out.”

  ●

  “I just finished talking to Miller. He will go ahead with the transport, so you have a green light on the mission.”

  Commander Anderson was not the man to waste time with decorum like saying hello or asking about your day. He had the habit of starting a conversation in a way that sounded like he was just picking up where he had previously left off. This particularity of his speech had the effect of making his soldiers and cadets instantly think about all the conversations they had ever had with him, which created the illusion that he was always near and that he knew everything. Tamisa often wondered if he did that on purpose.

  “Talk to Irvin Kernis and consult the timetable for this mission, then prepare your men!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Dismissed!”

  A surge of adrenaline rushed through her body as she left the briefing room. The chance of a lifetime lay ahead. Tamisa knew what an immense opportunity this was. In her heart, she never expected this mission to actually happen. She was surprised that Horatio Miller would go ahead with the transport after a personal warning from the High Commander of the Enforcement Unit. Miller’s audacity was unbelievable. Tamisa wouldn’t have imagined that there was even a single person in the world who would not back down when confronted by the commander. And yet, it seemed that Horatio Miller had issued a challenge. Tamisa was anxious to get to work.

  Heading for the timekeeper’s laboratory, she sent a message to Villo to meet her there. She thought back to the day when the enforcers landed on Aanadya and rescued her. The second when Kaye Wright hit the ground dead was also the moment when Tamisa started living. She remembered running home as fast as she could, running to tell her stepmom that she had finally found a way to get off that horrible planet.

  It was only late afternoon but Melody was already drunk. It seemed like her periods of sobriety got shorter with each passing day. Tamisa found her lying on the bed, absently staring at the ceiling. She tried to get through to her. She desperately tried to explain that they needed to go, that they needed to leave as fast as possible, and that she was going to become an enforcer. The glazed look in the woman’s eyes predicted nothing good. Tamisa painfully realized that precious time was being wasted.

  She grabbed her face in her hands and roared in frustration, roared like a wounded beast. Melody started laughing like it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. She laughed and laughed, teary-eyed, screeching and hiccupping. Tamisa was all too familiar with her stepmother’s fits of drunken laughter. She knew the spectacle was going to last a lot longer than she had the patience to wait under the circumstances.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she promised and left the house with haste, her mother’s crazy laugh echoing behind. It took her half an hour to get to downtown Tuson. She stopped running only when she got to the administrative building, the former headquarters of the Worker’s Union. Exhausted, she collapsed on the building’s front steps, where she remained for a few minutes, trying to catch her breath.

  “Careful, Curly, someone might trip over you.”

  The cheerful voice came from a few steps above her. She turned around and found herself in front of a man the size of a bear. He was middle-aged and balding, with a bushy beard the color of a Kodiak bear’s fur. Tamisa recognized the color because she had seen a picture of the animal in one of her father’s nature books. She also recognized the man in front of her: Martin Anderson, the commander’s brother and first lieutenant.

  “Oh my god, you need to take me to Commander Anderson!”

  She wished she had said something else, something that didn’t make her sound like a spoiled five-year-old, but you only get to make one first impression. The bear just raised his right eyebrow.

  “Sir, I’ll do anything, I’ll be a maid, I’ll clean your uniforms and stuff, you have to need a maid, a cleaner, right? I want off this planet, sir, I want to become an enforcer!”

  The part about becoming an enforcer had just sort of slipped out with the rest of the tirade. Tamisa instantly regretted it. She was afraid that the man would start laughing at her. Instead, he extended his large paw to help her up. He seemed pleased when she refused and got up on what was left of her own strength. Fifteen minutes later she was standing before Thomas Liam Anderson, who measured her with his gaze.

  “Kid wants to be an enforcer,” Martin said.

  “What’s your name?” the commander asked.

  “Tamisa Faber.”

  “What’s your age, Ms. Faber?”

  “Fifteen, sir.” At first she thought about lying and telling him that she was nineteen, but she ultimately decided against it. Now that she had come to know the commander as well as anyone ever could, she was glad that she had told the truth that day.

  “Fifteen,” the commander echoed. “The legal age on Aanadya is nineteen, but in most of the Federation it’s eighteen so we’ll go with that. You can stay with us until then. We’ll find a way to put you to use and when you turn eighteen, you can enroll in the academy.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “All right, board the ship, one of our men will show you where you can bunk. Good luck and welcome!”

  Martin nodded and told one of the men to take her to the ship. Thomas Anderson turned his attention back to something on his retinal insertions. Everything happened so quickly. Speed! The symbol of the enforcers. No more time was spent on anything than was absolutely necessary. Speed was essential. Speed was key.

  “Sir?”

  The commander blinked as if awoken from a daydream and he looked at her again. He seemed surprised that she was still there.

  “My… mother… she lives with me, I mean I live with her. Can she come… with me? She can cook, she’ll… you won’t even know she’s around.”

  She had to try, even if she instinctively knew what he was going to say.

  “No, only you. And you will n
eed to board the ship now. There will be no time to return for your valuables, if you have any.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tamisa had tears in her eyes as she was being led through the hallways of the dirty administrative building, like a death row inmate to the electric chair. Outside, she boarded a vehicle which took her directly to the spaceport, where the enforcers’ ship awaited. It would take her far away from Aanadya. She cried all the way to the spaceport and the enforcer that drove her never asked her why.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she thought, but she knew it was a lie. She rested her head on the vehicle’s window and took one more long look at the landscape of Aanadya, taking in it for the last time. The sickly-grey ground that appeared brown only because of the compromised sunlight. The lung-disease color of the sky that made the clouds seem solid, impenetrable, suggesting that nothing could escape this wretched world. And yet, in a short while, she would be leaving this planet. Forever.

  “I will send somebody after you!” That’s what she told herself in those moments. She saw the hill where, in one of the houses, Melody probably lay passed out, if she wasn’t still laughing like a madwoman. She couldn’t tell which house was theirs; they all looked the same from a distance. Blisters on diseased skin. Now, ten years after that day, she was facing her first mission as an enforcer and, at the same time, her first command. Her heart was racing, as if to remind her that its nemesis, the mind, was not in complete control after all.