Fugitive From Asteron

by Gen LaGreca

  Chuck wavered, moving the gun barrel back and forth from Feran to me. Finally, the weapon fixed on one target: me.

  “Wait, Chuck!” screamed Kristin. “What’ll be left of you after you destroy MAS and the people who keep it going?”

  “The zapping won’t affect me—just them. I’ll take their place and be what they were before.”

  Kristin tried to reason with him. “But don’t you realize that if you tear down the people who give you work and loan you money, then you’re going down too?”

  Feran tried to entice him. “Would you like to rule all of Rising Tide? All of California? That can be arranged.”

  Though Chuck aimed the gun at me, he hesitated to pull the trigger. Unlike Asteronians, who saw executions as routinely as day turned to night, Earthlings were unaccustomed to acts of open violence. Would Chuck shoot? The fate of the entire human race now rested on a man who could not pay his rent. I was through with the matter! I would have my own say on that fate. I prepared to lunge at Chuck and take my chances seizing his weapon—

  Just then Chuck’s gun fired, but not at me. He fired at a target by the dugout behind me. Then I heard another shot and saw Chuck fall, blood oozing from his chest, his gun dropping to the ground. I turned to see a man gripping a gun, blood dripping from the side of his head. He was leaning over the roof of the dugout from the first row of seats. It was Mykroni.

  I reached for Chuck’s gun. When the weapon had fallen to the ground, a small object rolled out of an electronic panel on the handle, startling me. It was a black metal cone. Suddenly I remembered Feran’s remark that Earth has things not seen on Asteron. I had never seen the black cone before. Or had I? Quickly, I put the object back into its groove in the gun and reassembled the weapon. Then I aimed it at Feran and Chuck. I knew that the protective presence by the dugout was also holding my enemies at bay.

  Kristin ran to assist Mykroni. She grabbed a handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it against his head wound to stop the bleeding. “Mykroni, this man is not my—” she began, but Mykroni motioned for her to be quiet.

  Feran switched to his Earthling voice. “Mykroni! I’m so glad you’re here, my good friend. But you shot the wrong man! Your son tried to save my life just now. You see, the new guy you hired is the spy ES is looking for. He’s from Asteron.”

  “Of course Alex is from Asteron. I knew that when I hired him. I saw the scars on his neck. I recognized the accent in his speech. I could tell he was a military pilot, a skill he couldn’t have learned on Cosmona because it doesn’t have an air force.”

  “Then I should be angry at you for breaching our company rules. Regardless, I’m still relieved you’re here. Now, if you’ll make the spy drop his weapon”—Feran gestured to the sunbeam—“I’ll retrieve the property he stole.”

  “Not so fast,” said Mykroni, pointing his gun at Feran. “Since you got back from your trip, I’ve been trying to tell you why I broke the rules for Alex, but you’ve been too busy to see me. When I found out ES was looking for Alex, I told you I had to discuss an urgent matter that could involve someone’s life, but you were still too busy to see me. Now, that didn’t compute. Charles Merrett would have made time for a matter that involved a person’s life. A minute ago you were speaking with a different voice, one I remember from a time long past. It was the voice of a ruler’s son and second-in-command, a young man of great cruelty, a man I fled from.”

  Chuck was lying on the ground. His drooping eyelids sprung open as he realized the score had changed. “Hey, Dad, I thought this was Uncle Charles. You mean—”

  “I overheard enough, so save your lies. When you grudgingly came to my office today after I once again demanded a payment schedule for my loan, then you suddenly got a phone call and left, I began to feel as if I’d been had again. I saw you get in your plane with the suits from Charles’s secret project and a weapon sticking out of your pocket. I wondered what you were up to, so I followed you here. I brought this weapon that I keep in my plane. It’s one I’ve never used. You know, I bought it when you were a kid, when there’d been a rash of kidnappings in Rising Tide. I bought it to . . . protect you. . . .”

  Mykroni’s head fell onto the dugout. Kristin pressed her handkerchief, now blood-soaked, against the wound more tightly. He struggled to raise his head, intent on having his say.

  I gestured to Feran to move away from the sunbeam. As he backed off, I moved toward it and stood like a guard at its side. I held Chuck’s gun on Feran, ready to pull the trigger, waiting only for Mykroni to finish releasing the last of the words that seemed to have been bottled up under pressure for a long time.

  “When you made a mess of your life, I shielded you from the results of your own chosen actions. I gave you a job servicing a spacecraft, which you didn’t deserve, and you almost . . . caused . . . a crisis.”

  Mykroni’s eyelids were shutting.

  “I’ll get an ambulance!” Kristin reached for her pocket phone, but he grabbed the device from her hand. She tried to grab it back, but he would not let go.

  “I need to make a call first,” he said, turning back to Chuck.

  “I bailed you out again with a job in Housekeeping, where I see now that your motives crossed the line from laziness and resentment to something . . . very different. I knew it was wrong to pander to your vices. That was my big mistake. It wasn’t healthy for you to be needy . . . and helpless. It wasn’t right for you to act recklessly and expect me to save you from the consequences. Now, for the first time, you’ll lie in the bed you made, traitor! I will be the one who turns you in. I will be the one who has you arrested for high treason!”

  Mykroni tried to place a call on Kristin’s phone, but his hand fell limply and the device slipped to the ground. His head dropped as Chuck’s eyes again closed. They were both unconscious.

  I released a string of bullets at Feran as he zippered the flexite suit and threw on the hood in one furious motion. I shot him in the head, in the heart, in the chest, in the stomach—but he did not fall. Within one startling second, he walked into the bullets and grabbed the gun from me. He was gloating. Feran knew something I had not: Bullets bounce off flexite.

  Laughing wildly, convulsively, his crazed eyes bulging, Feran slipped his finger into the trigger. I plunged to the ground. His gun blasted, and I felt a burning sensation as blood spurted from my arm. Then he whirled to face Kristin, who was now behind him, shooting at him with Mykroni’s gun. I yelled for Kristin to get down. She dived to the ground, but not before Feran grazed her shoulder. Her blouse reddened with blood.

  Throughout everything, we heard fits of diabolical laughter muffled by the flexite visor. Feran was too excited to shoot more accurately and too absorbed with another task he relished more than dealing with us. Kristin and I remained motionless on the ground, pretending to be more seriously wounded, so he would not shoot again.

  Sealed in the flexite suit, Feran approached the sunbeam. He pulled off the protective plastic covering from the pin. With his flexite-gloved hand curled like a claw, his fingers encircled the ring-shaped pin that activated the device. He yanked the pin out of the machine, throwing it high in the air, crying madly, his voice reverberating through the stands:

  “One people, one will! Planet Earth!”

  Chapter 27

  The sunbeam hummed. The aperture on top opened. An electronic display panel slid out from the slot where the pin had been removed, flashing in red lights: STARTING.

  The pleasant electronic voice of a female informed us: “Ten seconds to emission.”

  The sunbeam stood in front of Feran, while I lay a few feet to his side and Kristin lay behind him. Her face lit up with an idea. She crawled on her stomach, inching closer to him.

  “Six seconds to emission.”

  Gesturing, Kristin described her plan to me. I nodded my agreement. As she crawled closer to the purple-suited legs, I readied my body for what was to come.

  “Two seconds to emission.”

  Feran
laughed wildly, waving his arms high in the air in victory.

  From behind him, in one swift move, Kristin wrapped her arms around his feet and pulled them off the ground. Feran fell over the sunbeam just as I flew on top of him. I pulled up his flexite visor and pressed his face into the hole in the machine. The hood around his face had a rim that adhered to the visor with a sticky strip of purple metal. I now used that flexite rim to make a tight seal between the visor and the zametron, with Feran’s unprotected face in the hole. I pressed down with the full force of my strength to keep him in this position.

  “Emission of Zamean beam will begin,” said the electronic voice. The word EMISSION now flashed in red on the screen.

  “How will we stop this thing, Kristin? It will explode if the beam is trapped!”

  Just then the machine started shaking, and its soft voice said: “Pressure buildup. Aperture blocked.” The display panel changed to flash the word DANGER at us.

  “I put files from Project Z on your plane’s computer.” I told her my password to unscramble the encrypted data and read the documents.

  “I’ll search the files for how to stop this thing!” Kristin cried, as she ran to her plane. “The engine’s jammed, but the computer will work on battery.”

  I gasped at Kristin’s last word, suddenly remembering something of immense importance.

  “Danger. Countdown to explosion. Ten . . . nine . . .” The voice of the zametron continued.

  Still pressing Feran’s face tightly on the machine, I reached one hand under it. The metal feet raised the box just enough for me to grope for something in a slot on the bottom.

  “Eight . . . seven . . .”

  I found it! I curled my fingers around the object.

  “Six . . . five . . .”

  I tugged at it.

  “Four . . . three . . .”

  I yanked it out.

  The sunbeam became still, the humming and shaking stopped, the electronic display went dark, and the voice inside no longer spoke to us. Then the aperture closed shut. Feran’s face receded into the flexite headpiece, whose rim I still pressed tightly on the machine. Then in a flash, I slammed Feran’s face visor down, sealing him in the suit.

  I stood up to shake the tension from my arms, to note that Kristin and I had only surface wounds, to see Mykroni stirring and Chuck breathing. Kristin phoned for an ambulance. Then she and I looked at each other.

  Her shoulder bled, but she smiled. Her face held no awareness of her pain, only eagerness for joy. “Alex, are you okay? I don’t think I’m zapped. Are you?”

  By my sudden need to feel the lushness of her body against me, I knew the answer. “I am not zapped,” I said, smiling.

  “What happened? What did you do?”

  “There are many new things made on Earth that I never saw on Asteron. I noticed an object in the handle of Chuck’s electronic gun, a black metal cone. I thought it looked familiar, but I did not know what it was. Then when you said the word battery, I remembered I had seen a similar cone-shaped object, only larger, underneath the sunbeam.” I held my hand out to show her a three-inch-long shiny black cone. “Is this the new Earthling battery strong enough to run your electric planes—and to trigger the reaction inside this weapon?”

  She threw her head back and laughed. “That definitely is one of our new batteries! You pulled out the battery and stopped the reaction before the beam could get out and hurt any—”

  We both looked at Feran. He was lying on the ground in his flexite suit, sleeping.

  “Feran,” I said, propping him up and shaking his shoulders to arouse him.

  His eyes opened slowly. He looked at us dazedly, a little grin curling his lips.

  “Yes?” he said, his eyes still drowsy.

  “Stand up.”

  With the glazed face and sagging body of a sleepwalker, he slowly rose to his feet.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Sleepy.”

  “Do you remember what you were before you became sleepy?”

  “The supreme ruler of Asteron.”

  “Do you still want to be a supreme ruler?”

  “Does not matter.”

  “Would you like to try a new way of life for the people of Asteron?”

  “If you wish.”

  “I would like you to tear down the Theater of Justice. Will you do it?”

  “Okay.”

  “Were you going to invade Earth, Feran?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still want to conquer Earth?”

  “Does not matter.”

  “Get Chuck’s phone.”

  With the gloves of the flexite suit thin enough for him to grasp it, Feran took the phone in Chuck’s pocket and docilely brought it to me.

  “Can this phone call your planet?” I asked.

  Feran examined it. “Yes.”

  “I want you to phone your generals and call off the invasion of Earth, Feran.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell them you are coming home with your Earthling advisors to bring new ways to Asteron.”

  “Okay.”

  “And keep your visor down and your suit on. Stay sealed inside until we can quarantine you in the flexite area.”

  “Okay.”

  While Feran called his generals, Kristin beamed at me triumphantly. “Alexander, you hit a home run!”

  I smiled until I could feel the crinkle lines radiating from my eyes. Then, for the first time, I felt as if a wave were propagating within me, loosening my face and tightening my stomach.

  “Alex, you’re laughing!”

  I threw my head back and listened to the strange new sound spouting from my throat and rising into the air like Alexander’s baseball. My laughter grew louder, until it hit the stands and echoed back at me. Then it curved around the higher notes of Kristin’s laughter to form a single song. The pain in my bleeding arm seemed too unimportant to concern me. Like the fading remnant of a bad dream, all of the pain I had ever experienced suddenly seemed unreal. I grabbed Kristin in my arms and lifted her high in the air, all the time laughing fiercely until my mouth ached, my eyes teared, and my chest burned. I had found the world of Alexander’s promise. At that moment of my first laughter I knew that every color on the Earthlings’ bright rainbow of expression glowed within me. I knew that I was what Kristin called a Homo sapiens, and that there was nothing more glorious I could ever hope to be.

  Chapter 28

  Moments later, while we were still on the field, Mykroni regained consciousness—and he did get to make the call to the authorities that led to his son’s arrest.

  Earth Security began compiling mounds of evidence for the trial of Chuck Whitman for high treason. With Feran’s sudden cooperation, his remaining spies, including the one who murdered Mrs. Merrett, were also captured. Feran would meet the same end, but only after he completed his new assignment.

  Under the guidance of his Earthling “advisors,” Feran returned to Asteron to save his planet. He parceled land to the people and established private property. He signed a constitution and created a republic. In an address prepared by his new speechwriters, Feran declared that he was abdicating his power and that all people were now masters of their own lives. No longer could any ruler stifle the speech or peaceful actions of citizens. No longer could any ruler force the will of citizens or seize the fruits of their labors.

  Once they were free to operate, farms and businesses of every kind started to sprout up, creating the first buds of opportunity for the people. With its shackles removed, the human spirit began its reawakening. For the first time in the history of Asteron, flowers started to bloom there and the people began to sing.

  Immediately after our showdown with Feran at the stadium, when Mykroni was being treated in the hospital, I explained to him why I had to make an urgent trip to Asteron. He insisted on coming with me. Disregarding his doctor’s orders, he checked himself out of the hospital and embarked on a space mission with his head injury still fresh.


  Before leaving for Asteron, I told Kristin and Mykroni how much I regretted having to lie to them about my homeland.

  “In this case, we’re glad you did!” said Mykroni.

  “You won’t have to lie anymore to stay alive, Alex,” said Kristin, affectionately.

  On my journey with Mykroni, that master astronaut let me fly our ship while giving me a memorable lesson in space travel.

  When we arrived on Asteron, I set about doing the things I had come to accomplish. I brought with me a large display of Earth’s flowers, dozens of loose blossoms tumbling over each other in a violent explosion of color and fragrance. I placed them on the stage of the Theater of Justice. “These are for you, Reevah,” I said to the radiant vision in my memory. “I found the place with the flowers. It is a place where you belonged, and a place that lived within me from the first night I held you.” As I spoke, I saw Feran step onstage with his Earthling advisors. On their suggestion, before a gathering crowd, he raised an ax and split the scaffold in two. As it fell, the people cheered.

  I also walked through the dusty halls of the Center of Records to learn the truth about a matter that had long disturbed me. I wanted to know if I was conceived with Feran’s revolting genes. But when I reached the Department of Birth Documents, I realized that I no longer cared. I had shaped my own self through the thing inside me called my free will. I left the building without ever opening my file.

  The most important reason for our visit involved a precious cargo that Mykroni and I were relieved to find intact in the underground cavern of Feran’s mansion. We brought it to our spacecraft for the journey home.

  When the lush green of Earth with its blue-and-white swirls grew large in the window of our spacecraft, I commented to Mykroni: “You said that Charles Merrett gave you the last name Whitman when you understood the meaning of its last syllable. I think I’m ready for a last name too.” I noted with pride the Earthling contractions that newly sprinkled my words.