The Pinnacle

by Gary Moreau

  Casey touched him on the shoulder. “Please don’t do that. Although I do have to admit I prefer it to being crushed.”

  “You are the One.”

  “Enough of this ‘one’ bullshit. I’m just an old, lonely man who is tired. Let’s get going.”

  By the time they arrived back at camp, the mountains were casting purple shadows across the plain. Casey wanted nothing more than to return to his pallet on Deck Two and collapse onto it but, midway up the ramp to the storage bay, he changed his mind.

  He stopped and turned to Yamaguchi. “I need to talk with Slater. Will you help me?”

  Yamaguchi nodded and led the way into the ship. When they exited on Deck One, Casey’s attention was immediately drawn to Jack Sabine, who was lounging in the control chair. Sabine leisurely arose to his feet with a big grin on his face.

  “What a pleasant diversion, I do declare,” Sabine said. “What brings you boys up to the higher levels? You need me to work on your ribs a little, Casey?” He cracked his knuckles as he spoke.

  Casey tried to ignore the man’s jibes, but seeing Sabine made his courage falter. He could not help but recall the pain in his ribs and back after the beating. He still felt stabbing pain if he moved too quickly. Casey began to edge his way toward Slater’s cubicle, but kept his eyes on Sabine.

  Suddenly, Sabine jumped forward and interposed his body between Casey and Slater’s portal. He shot out a stiff finger and jabbed Casey in the chest.

  It felt like a stick had been poked into his ribs, but Casey managed to keep the pain from his face.

  “You’re really pushing me, man,” Sabine said with a sneer.

  “I have business with Slater,” Casey said.

  “You mean Commander Slater, don’t you?”

  “All right, I have business with Commander Slater. Get out of the way...please.”

  “Please?” Sabine chuckled. “Sorry, old man, there is no way you’re going to get in to see him. He told me he wasn’t to be disturbed.”

  “I have to see him.”

  “Gee, things are really tough, aren’t they, old man?”

  “You stupid” Casey caught himself, but too late. He reflexively closed his eyes as Sabine’s fist flew toward his face, but felt only a whisk of air. He opened his eyes in time to see Sabine sliding across the deck on his back, to lay motionless near the console screens. Yamaguchi withdrew his hand from where Sabine had been standing a second before. Casey studied the prostrate body of Jack Sabine to confirm that he was still breathing. Then he looked up at the face of the big man who stood at his side, but could perceive no meaning; it was as empty as ever.

  “Can I take a look at the control chair before we see Slater?” Casey asked.

  Yamaguchi looked toward the chair but said nothing.

  Casey was beginning to interpret his non-responses as “yes”, so he walked over to the chair. There were some scratches on the upper surface of the left armrest. Grace had been left-handed. The armrest was made out of a titanium alloy. It would have taken something powerful to even scratch it, such as a laser-scalpel. He looked at it and then changed his position and finally sat in the chair. It wasn’t words or even a single word. It was a picture…of something. It kind of looked like a bird’s eye view of a canoe with lines across it that could be the ribs of the canoe. There were scratches that led away from the canoe that could be stems topped by flowers. Overall, the lines of picture were not smoothly drawn but jerky and jagged. Grace was the most skilled surgeon Casey had ever known. She’d been masterful with a scalpel. If she was the one who had scratched this image into the armrest, she must have been stressed or somehow handicapped.

  Casey looked up at Yamaguchi who had walked over to join him.

  “What do you think this means? What is it?” Casey asked.

  “You asked the question. It is for you to answer.”

  “Thank you so much. Such insightful comments are so helpful.”

  Casey glanced again toward Sabine, who still hadn’t moved, and then pushed himself to his feet to walk across the bridge. The door to Slater’s office swished open to admit Yamaguchi and him.

  Slater looked up with surprise at the unexpected intrusion but, in the brief time it took for recognition, he leaned back in his chair and smiled.

  “Doctor Conklin, I suppose you’ve come to share more predictions of doom. I left orders I wasn’t to be interrupted. Where’s Sabine?”

  “He’s resting.”

  “Resting? I’ll have to have a serious chat with him. Why are you here?”

  “I’ve come to make a deal.”

  “A deal? What could you possibly offer that I might want?” Slater asked.

  “I offer you two things. The first is my word that I won’t oppose your running of this colony.”

  “Worthless, and what is the other?”

  “I will train whoever you choose to be a fully qualified doctor.”

  “You’ll do that anyway, but for the sake of discussion, what do you want in return? For such a grand gesture,” Slater added.

  “I want you to assist me in investigating ship’s failure. I need your authority to get some cooperation from the colonists.”

  Slater ran his tongue across his teeth as he considered. “Well, I don’t know. Ship’s failure is a thing of the past. Why should I allow you to interrupt the important work of the colonists to investigate a problem that is no longer pertinent?”

  Casey was tired and his patience had come to an end. “Not pertinent!” he shouted.

  “I’m glad you were listening. With you it’s a rare event.”

  “The difference between you and me is that you think any decision you make is the right decision. You believe you know everything. You”

  “And you believe no one knows anything. That is one of your many glaring weaknesses. You never did have the guts to come to a decision and stand behind it, always vacillating among the possibilities.” Slater leaned forward in his chair. “Well, I make decisions, damn it, and it’s a damn good thing I do!”

  “The hell you say!” Casey shouted back. “You make decisions so easily because you really don’t give a shit about any of the colonists. You only care about the exercise of power.”

  The silence that followed seemed just as deafening as the shouting. Slater tipped back in his chair. “You judge others pretty harshly, for a murderer. And, as far as ship’s failure goes, there is a widespread belief among the colonists that you are the cause of ship’s failure.”

  “That’s a lie,” Casey said.

  “Far from it. Everyone knows you had plenty of time to study the computer hardware and plenty of time to accomplish a wipe.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I did nothing of the sort. I did my duty.”

  “So you say. You think my associates are spying on you, but what they’re actually doing is protecting you from the colonists. Don’t you think it’s remarkable that all the doctors died, except one? Makes you pretty important, doesn’t it?”

  “Those people were my friends, a concept you’re unfamiliar with.” Casey voice was choked with anger. He stared at Slater as if a blink would be an admission of guilt. “Slater, if you support my efforts, I’ll find the cause of ship’s failure. Are you afraid of what I’ll find?”

  “Casey, as far as you are concerned, I’m afraid of nothing, except that someone will do away with you before I have that information you’re so carefully hoarding. Don’t you have a conscience? Any concern for the welfare of the colony?”

  Casey forced himself to remain silent.

  “You’ve proven yourself impotent as a guardian and have been ineffectual since planet-fall, except for getting in the way.” Slater threw his hands up in careless acceptance. “Sure, why not? I’m feeling generous today. You have my permission. Find out the reason for ship’s failure, if you have enough guts to face your own guilt, but you will produce a permanent record of everything you know about the practice of medicine. I, at least, have the future of the col
ony to consider. Do you ever think about that?”

  Casey’s gaze dropped back to Slater’s desktop. “I will find the answer.”

  “I’m sure you will. The question is, will you find the right answer? You have a real problem dealing with authority. How are you going to control that?”

  “I don’t have the problem, you do. Anyone who would demand a position of power over others has already proven himself unworthy of the trust.”

  “Aren’t you the pure one?” sneered Slater. “Now get out of here before I follow my instincts as far as you’re concerned.”

  Casey just stood there, temporarily at a loss.

  After a moment Slater looked back up. “Are you still here?” He directed his eyes at Yamaguchi. “Take this human trash out of here.”

  Casey lifted his head. “Wait, I have some information for you.”

  Slater motioned for Yamaguchi to wait. “All right, what is it now? But please be succinct, you’ve already cost me much more time than you’re worth.”

  “Before planet-fall, you said that I knew the colonists better than anyone, that you might consult me if you needed information about a colonist.”

  “Get on with it,” Slater said, his lips drawn into a flat line of impatience.

  “I have noticed something about the colonists, but it’s not about any single individual, it’s everyone.”

  “Right, everyone,” Slater repeated sarcastically.

  “No, wait! Listen to me.”

  Slater put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Go on, Casey. This should be good for a laugh.”

  “I’m serious. Our colonists consist of highly trained and motivated people, but if there is one trait that is most characteristic, it’s curiosity. Curiosity about everything, but now this trait seems to be universally missing. No one has gone to the ocean, though it couldn’t be more than ten kilometers away. No one has gone to the mountains. No one has even dug a hole in the ground.”

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so worried,” Slater said dryly. “The fact is my people have been analyzing the data gathered by ship’s sensors since the first day of planet-fall. They’ve been diligently attending to their duties, admirably so, but you, now that’s another story. Talk about missing traits. You have neither insight, nor self-discipline. What would you say if a paranoid schizophrenic told you the people around him were acting strange? Or, are you finally ready to admit it’s all an act?”

  “No, wait,” Casey said earnestly. “I’ve run repeated diagnostics on myself. The therapy disk has returned me to normal.”

  “Normal?” Slater snorted with feigned amusement and then turned his gaze to Yamaguchi. “Get this pest out of here.”

  Before Casey could object further, Yamaguchi all but lifted him off the deck. Casey stumbled backward to keep his balance, nearly falling as he was pushed through portal and onto the bridge.

  As he shook off Yamaguchi’s hands and straightened, he saw Jack Sabine on his knees. Sabine had obviously just vomited and looked up at Casey, the whites of his eyes red with hemorrhage. He said nothing, but the vomit that was clinging to his uniform could just as easily have been venom. Casey trembled as he turned away and dropped into the down-tube.

  Yamaguchi trailed after him down the passageway of Deck Two. Casey stopped to face him.

  “Do you think I’m insane?” Casey asked.

  Yamaguchi said nothing.

  “To hell with you too,” Casey muttered.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  Casey studied the opaque face that stared back at him. He took a deep breath and sighed. It was all too much. He turned away from the giant and his shoulders sagged as he walked the final steps to the medical suite. He didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care if he ate. He didn’t want to think. He looked forward to losing himself in sleep.

  Chapter 17

  The following morning Casey awakened with a renewed sense of mission. He was eager to begin his investigation, but first needed to adjust the regeneration tank. It required an inordinate amount of fine-tuning, as if it were in need of regeneration itself. As a result, it was early afternoon before he had satisfied his obligations to the unconscious Tabor Klampor. When he stepped into the passageway he found Yamaguchi waiting for him.

  “Good afternoon,” Casey said cheerfully, but Yamaguchi merely stood there. “I know,” Casey added, “you’re saving your precious words and you haven’t yet decided if it’s a good afternoon or not, right?” This time Casey could see a faint smile on Yamaguchi’s otherwise blank face. “Come along if you want, we have work to do.”

  Casey walked down the passage to the lab and Yamaguchi followed. When they entered, Casey stopped; the sight of the dismembered corpse, still lying on the floor, gave him reason to pause. The excitement dissipated, leaving only a sense of determination. He walked over to the corpse and knelt.

  “Grace, did you kill yourself? And, if so, what could possibly have driven you to such an act?” He carefully replaced his friend’s well-preserved bones back in the box, except for her skull, which he cradled in his hands while he peered into the empty orbits.

  “Forgive me, Grace,” he mumbled, and took out a standard blade to scrape away the patchy remains of scalp and hair. Then he picked up a laser-scalpel, flicked it on and cut circumferentially through the dry, brittle bone. In a moment he had cut off the top of the calvarium. He held the bowel-shaped piece of skull and looked up at Yamaguchi, somehow feeling guilty, but Yamaguchi was as impassive as ever. He placed the remains of the skull and the other body parts into the box and stiffly arose from his squat.

  He slipped the skullcap into his pouch and walked over to the wall of instruments where he selected a portable surgical kit and then exited the lab. Together, they walked the curve of the passage, past the tube mouths, and entered the Deck Two hall of sleep. Rows of cryo-capsules lined both sides. It looked like a giant crystalline mouth with most of the teeth gone bad. He suppressed a chill as he thought about the hundreds of colonists who had been vaporized to a fine white dust which had fused with the inner surface of the ceramic capsules, to become one with their capsules for eternity. It was a graveyard and had the feel of a graveyard, quiet and still.

  Casey reached into the surgical kit and withdrew a sonic blade as he confronted one of the milky-white, failed capsules. Another one of those odd names that haunted Casey arose. Happy Beaver. He touched the capsule with the tip of his index finger. He not only knew the living, he knew the dead as well. This capsule had contained a marine biologist named Miguel Capucho. He had curly brown hair and had been smiling widely when he had entered cryo-stasis so that the space between his two front teeth had been clearly revealed. Casey had been looking forward to meeting this youth who had displayed such cheerful optimism.

  “Doctor,” Yamaguchi said.

  Casey returned to the present and shook the memory from his mind. The outer release had opened at the time of the Awakening, but the inner lock was still active. He began working the blade along a nearly invisible seam until there was a sucking sound, as if the capsule was sipping air, and then the door popped open. He stepped back for a moment. Despite his sophistication as a scientist and physician, he felt the primitive fear of the unnaturally dead. He suppressed the feeling and set to work on the stasis crystal at the bottom of the empty capsule. He applied the blade at varying angles until, suddenly, the crystal cracked free along a cleavage plane. He briefly inspected the iridescent block, not much larger than his thumb, and then handed it up to Yamaguchi.

  “Aren’t you curious, Yamaguchi?”

  The big man stared back at him.

  “I’ll tell you this,” Casey said with unexpected intensity, surprising even himself, “you’ll get nothing from me until you offer something. I need communication.” Casey eased down onto the deck. When he continued his voice was soft. “I’m lonely. I need a friend, someone to talk to. Have you ever heard that old ditty that goes something like:

  I feel the
need to touch

  With my hand

  With word in hand

  Often without meaning

  The meaning is the touch

  Yamaguchi turned his head once to the left and once to the right, an unequivocal “no”, but then gently placed his hand on Casey’s lowered head. “When I can ask the right question, Doctor, I will ask it.”

  After a short time Casey regained himself, accepting, resigned to his isolation, at least for the time being. He slowly stood and walked without enthusiasm farther down the passage until he found a clear crystal capsule. With sadness, he again recognized that not many had survived on this deck. He suppressed the ache in his heart and bent to work on the capsule. In a short time, he had liberated the stasis crystal and handed it also to Yamaguchi, instructing him to keep the two separate so they could later be identified.

  Casey led the way back to the tubes and entered the down-tube to exit on the storage level. With unquestioned knowledge, he retraced unremembered steps, deep into the chamber and opened a preservation locker, withdrawing a new stasis-crystal. He stripped off the firm-foam with a laser-scalpel and placed this crystal in his own pouch.

  By the time Casey and Yamaguchi entered the yard, it was dusk. Casey led Yamaguchi straight to the Geo-Dome but, once he arrived at the base of the incline that ended in the doorway, he stopped. It took a minute for him to firm up his resolve. He was dreading what he sensed would be yet another hostile confrontation. He walked up the ramp and stepped firmly through the air curtain, into the brightly lit interior of the dome. Yamaguchi remained in the yard.

  He stood there for a moment, searching for the white-haired Jarmo Karna within the instrumentation filled dome. At the same moment he saw the chief geology-tech, who was sitting in front of a computer console, one of the techs saw Casey and nudged Jarmo. The gray eyes of Jarmo turned toward Casey.

  Jarmo swiveled in his chair and stood without haste. He walked toward Casey. “What is your business?”

  Casey smiled ruefully at the deadpan expression on Jarmo's face. “Is that anyway to greet a fellow pioneer?”