The Empty Warrior

by J. D. McCartney

  “Not so fast,” the woman admonished him. Reaching somewhere beneath the bed, she produced a soothing wipe and used it to clean his face. “Here,” she said, offering the bottle once more. “Try again, but go slowly. Take a little bit at a time. It will be a while before your body readjusts to taking sustenance orally.”

  The import of her statement was not lost on O’Keefe, who was beginning to get an inkling of how long he had been comatose, but for the moment the immediacy of his thirst made slaking it his first priority. He followed his nurse’s instructions, pulling minute amounts of the fluid through the straw and carefully swallowing each one before returning it to his lips for more. Questions mounded over mysteries piled atop conundrums crowded his awareness, none with rational answers or explanations, but all of that could wait. The fluid his body lusted for was still the only pertinent aspect of his existence for the moment. He brought his lips to the straw over and over until his mouth and throat lost that feeling of being friable wastelands before finally laying his head back against his pillow and ignoring the offered straw.

  “Where am I?” he tried to ask, but the words again felt alien to his tongue, and he could not form the sounds his mind told him to produce. The nurse shushed him, laying two fingers across his lips.

  “I know this must be very disconcerting to you, but everything is going to be fine, so please don’t worry. We are going to take extremely good care of you, that I promise.” She gently brushed back a lock of hair that lay across his forehead with a smooth, repetitive stroking motion of her fingers.

  “I must go find Dr. Beccassit,” she said, “but I will be right back. Try and relax, and know that you are safe here.” As she backed out of the room she was still smiling from ear to ear.

  True to her word, she returned to the room shortly thereafter trailing a squat, bespectacled, balding little man with a white beard. He was perhaps two inches taller than the nurse and was also all smiles and seemed very excited, repeatedly rubbing his palms together nervously as he spoke.

  “My goodness,” he said happily, “you’re finally awake. And looking quite healthy, I must say. Please pardon my exuberance, but I’ve been waiting a long time to make your acquaintance. I’ve gotten to know your physical configuration quite well, but I’ve been longing to meet the man. I trust you can understand me. Is the language making sense to you?” The doctor paused, looking expectantly at O’Keefe, whose only response was a nod. Apparently that sign was enough.

  “Good, good, good,” the doctor continued. “You must forgive my impertinence in this regard, but my superior felt it to be of the utmost importance that we be able to communicate with you as quickly as possible. So I was obliged to equip you with a language translation chip. It is a brain implant; an utterly benign one I assure you. It enables you to understand and speak our language. You’ll soon be able to utilize the tongue better than we do, as you will have the unabridged version, so to speak. I do so hope that it is not too much of an imposition?”

  “It’s…okay,” O’Keefe said slowly, carefully mimicking the sounds he found in his brain, still utterly bewildered despite the doctor’s explanations.

  “Excellent. Very good. Oh my, where are my manners? I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Merco, Merco Beccassit, your doctor. And you would be Ah-chill-ess A-ee-nease O’Keefie, would you not?”

  “Achilles Aeneas O’Keefe,” he said, correcting the doctor.

  “Please pardon my mispronunciation, Achilles Aeneas. We had only an identification card to read from, and your pronunciations are as strange to us as ours are undoubtedly strange to you. That aside, it’s absolutely wonderful to meet you.”

  “Hill,” O’Keefe said hoarsely. “My name is Hill. No one calls me by my given names.” The stilted words left his vocal cords with painful slowness, the doctor listening patiently until they were all finally spoken and looking somewhat bewildered when he had heard them through. But the confusion did not seem to faze him at all.

  “All right,” he drawled. “Hill it is then.” The nurse, standing close by Beccassit, elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “Oh, my goodness, I’m remiss yet again. It’s all this excitement, no doubt. I’m normally not so graceless.”

  “Yes you are, doctor,” the nurse chided, casting a bemused smile his way.

  “Yes, perhaps I am,” he said, returning his attention to O’Keefe. “But what can I do? I am who I am, as they say. At any rate, allow me to introduce your nurse, who has taken splendid care of you during your convalescence. Her name is Kira Pellotte. You’ll be seeing a great deal of her for the foreseeable future. There is still much work to be done before we get you back on your feet and back to normal.”

  Pellotte flashed her irresistible, dimpled smile yet again and inclined her head toward O’Keefe. “I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Hill,” she said with what seemed to be absolute, dignified sincerity.

  O’Keefe was duly impressed, but still too stuck on the doctor’s “back on your feet” remark to reply in kind. “Doctor, whatever you name is…” he began.

  “Beccassit,” the doctor interrupted. “Merco Beccassit. Call me Merco if you will. I’ve never liked uppity titles.”

  “Whatever,” O’Keefe continued, still speaking carefully and very slowly. “I’m sure you are a grand doctor, but I think you’ve missed something. I can’t get ‘back on my feet.’ I am a paralytic. I have been for more than forty years. And right now I can’t feel anything below my neck, which is a really bad sign. And just who the…,” O’Keefe paused, scrounging through his mind for words meaning hell and finding none that he thought his new friends might understand. He finally settled for, “Who are you people?”

  Beccassit pursed his lips and looked at O’Keefe thoughtfully for several seconds before answering. “I believe that since I have already introduced myself and my colleague,” he began, “that you ask who we are in a broader sense. So I will attempt to answer you in that same vein. We are… what you might call…long-lost relatives. Yes, that’s it. We are long-lost relatives not just of yourself, but of all your people. We are all of the same species, all human beings, and were parted from one another long ago by a cosmic catastrophe. Since then, events have conspired to keep us apart, our people and yours, and over the passage of time the rift between us has grown wider. But you must believe that we mean you no harm in any way. We want only the best for you.”

  O’Keefe didn’t like the imprecision of the doctor’s answer. He wanted clarification on several points, but before he could find the words to demand further explanation, the little man was off on another tangent.

  “Now, as to your opinion of the acumen displayed by myself in the performance of my chosen profession, I will in just the next few minutes demonstrate to you exactly how mistaken you are. You are not paralyzed. You are immobilized. This,” Beccassit said as he patted the hood that rose over O’Keefe’s forehead, “is a neural inhibitor. It keeps certain nerve impulses from reaching or leaving your brain, namely those that allow you to feel and move your body. We use it to keep certain patients still, those patients who might otherwise hurt themselves or those around them by thrashing about while unconscious. It is there only for your protection. I will deactivate it as soon as, well, never mind, here she is.”

  Another woman walked briskly into the room as he spoke. She was slightly taller than Pellotte and shared the same skin tone, but that’s where the resemblance ended. She was as flat-chested as the nurse was busty, she wore her hair tightly bound at the back of her neck, and there was not so much as a hint of a smile on the lips beneath her narrow, aquiline nose. After surveying the room like a drill sergeant inspecting a barracks, she turned her glare on Beccassit. “Does the implant work?” she demanded imperiously.

  “It seems to be operating perfectly.” The doctor spoke with good-natured courtesy, ignoring the newcomer’s attitude. “He can’t speak with any great efficiency yet, as is to be expected, but Hill seems to understand everything that he hears. In a few wee
ks he will be more fluent than…”

  “Hill?” the woman asked, interrupting, and arching her brows as she did so.

  “Hill O’Keefe,” the doctor replied, “my patient. That is his name.”

  “So you two are on a first name basis already.” Even to O’Keefe’s as yet unpracticed ear for the language, the haughtiness in the woman’s tone came through clearly enough. “Doctor, let’s try to remember exactly what we are dealing with here. I expect you to maintain a professional distance, a proper perspective, in dealing with this case. Is that clear?”

  “As you wish, Mrs. Nelkris,” Beccassit said wearily. His deference to the woman undeniably marked her as some sort of superior, and O’Keefe had already decided that he disliked the little witch.

  “Good,” the woman said with finality. “Now let’s get him out of bed.” She stuck her head out into the hallway and motioned to unseen companions. Two helmeted and gray uniformed men entered the room and stood with their backs to the far wall. They were certainly guards and appeared to be armed, but with weapons like nothing O’Keefe had ever seen. They carried what appeared to be solid metal rods, with hand grips protruding from them at ninety degree angles. The rods were attached by thick cables to the backpacks they wore. Standing silently and stolidly, with feet widely spaced, they gave the appearance, despite their small stature, of men that O’Keefe would not want to anger.

  “Mrs. Nelkris,” the doctor said, some indignance beginning to creep into his voice, “I hardly feel that this is necessary. This is still my…”

  “I decide what is necessary on this ship, doctor,” the woman said, interrupting again. “Now let’s get on with this if you please.”

  Ship? What ship, O’Keefe thought. He was coming up with questions a whole lot faster than he was getting answers.

  Beccassit did not respond to the brusqueness of the woman other than to grunt softly to himself. He bent over the hood atop the bed, and as he did so he whispered to O’Keefe. “I know that you have many inquiries, and I will explain as much as I can to you later, but in the meantime there is this.”

  Just as he finished speaking, the shining rectangle over O’Keefe’s forehead lost its glow, fading to a dull green. The doctor unlatched the hood and swiveled it backward, stowing it beneath the bed where O’Keefe could not see.

  Not that he cared where it went. The moment Beccassit had turned off the machine O’Keefe could, for the first time in years, feel his legs. He felt the weight of the blanket across his thighs and knees; he could sense the subtle abrading of the linens over the tips of his toes. He wiggled them back and forth, exhilarating in the sheer wondrous sensation it created.

  The doctor noticed the motion through the blanket and threw off the bedcovers with a flourish, revealing the white pajamas O’Keefe had been dressed in. He struggled to rise and support himself on his elbows, just so he could see himself move with his own eyes. Pellotte hurried around the bed to help Beccassit support him, both of them holding his torso semi-upright with an arm under each of his shoulder blades.

  “Oh, my God!” O’Keefe repeated, in English, over and over again, speaking to no one in particular and everyone in general.

  His gaze met Beccassit’s and the little man grinned and nodded an affirmation. “What did I tell you?” he said. “I had the feeling you might like my work. Let’s try a little step or two, shall we?”

  O’Keefe nodded eagerly, and Pellotte, still all smiles, bounced to the end of the bed to help him lift his legs from the mattress while the doctor helped him turn into a seated position. The bed was low enough that his bare feet could be placed flat on the floor and, with Pellotte and the doctor steadying him from either side, he was able to rise into a standing position with little difficulty. He stood for several long moments, swaying slightly, his arms locked tightly around the low shoulders of his helpers.

  “Go on,” the doctor said, a hint of playful admonishment in his voice. “Take a step.”

  O’Keefe sent dimly remembered messages to the weak and atrophied muscles of his leg and watched as his right foot moved a few inches forward before coming to rest. He repeated the procedure with his left leg. The many questions that had been swirling about in his mind evaporated. He no longer cared about the what, the where, or the who of his present circumstances. His awareness was consumed by sensation, by the awe of simply feeling the cool, hard floor pressing against the soles of his feet.

  He took another, slightly more confident step forward. “My God, I can feel it,” he cried, “I can feel the floor. And I took a step. Did you see that? I moved my legs; I took a step. Did you see that, Doc? I can feel my legs. My God! This is wonderful!”

  He looked down into the beaming yet uncomprehending face of Kira Pellotte before he realized that he had again been speaking in English. He searched for the proper words in Akadean but found he could not speak them in his excitement; all the sounds he attempted to make caught in his throat. He simply stood there gurgling unintelligible blather. At length he gave up the attempt to speak and instead simply bent his head to one side and planted a big kiss atop the bald head of his doctor. It was the only communication he was capable of for the moment.

  Hours later Beccassit sat staring at the three-dimensional likeness of the head and shoulders of Valessanna Nelkris that appeared on the virtual monitor above his desk. He breathed a heavy sigh. It was always so tedious to deal with people in authority. They invariably thought they and only they knew what was best for everyone in every situation. “Mrs. Nelkris,” he began again, this time almost pleading. “I really do think you are overreacting to the presence of this man. Initially, I admit, because of the weapon I agreed with your assessment of the danger. But you were in sick bay. You witnessed what happened there. For the love of the Rock, the man was in a position where he could have easily broken my neck, and instead he kissed me. His demeanor is hardly that of a killer. In my conversations with him, he seems to be quite pleasant.”

  The captain’s image stared back at him as if he were undeniably insane. After a short pause the image spoke. “Doctor, the man is an aberrant,” she said flatly, as if that label conveyed enormous significance. “I am sure he is extremely pleasant to you now, considering the fact that you have just given him back the use of his legs. But how pleasant will he be when he is completely rehabilitated physically, and he no longer needs your care? No, it is out of the question. He cannot stay in sick bay. He cannot be kept anywhere where he might interact with the crew. I don’t care where you put him, but put him someplace where he can be sequestered. Find quarters for him, put whatever is necessary in those quarters to facilitate his recovery, and make sure those quarters are locked and guarded around the clock. This is not a topic open to discussion, doctor. These are orders from your Captain.”

  “As you wish, Mrs. Nelkris,” Beccassit said, noticing wryly that he inevitably ended up using that phrase in every conversation he had with the woman. Nonetheless he was secretly pleased that the use of her surname was still able to elicit a tiny moue of vexation from her. “I will see to it that he is moved as soon as possible.”

  “Good. I’ll notify the exec that he is to be moved today.” Apparently the captain was well aware that to a doctor “as soon as possible” might mean weeks. “He will oversee the transfer. But other than Mr. Busht, you, me, your nurse, and the guards, no one else is to get anywhere near your patient. I’ll send Colvan down to sick bay in a few hours.” Her image winked out immediately as the captain signed off.

  Beccassit leaned back in his chair and kneaded his forehead between a thumb and two fingers. That woman is a walking headache inducer, he thought. He yawned, massaged both his temples for several long moments, and then went to work.

  “Vigilant,” he said, “display a map of all undamaged berths, and highlight those that are presently vacant.” The virtual monitor sprang to life once more, displaying a deck by deck schematic of every compartment aboard. Many were outlined in red. “All right,” he said, “let�
�s start with the most spacious quarters.” This was not, he thought, the work that a doctor, particularly a doctor of his status, should be doing, as all but one of the red outlines disappeared from the plans floating before him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN:

  The Eyes of a Savage

  Busht strode deliberately from the lift and turned crisply to his left, headed down the well lit corridor, and was almost immediately confronted with a coterie of loitering crew members meandering slowly toward him. The sluggishness of the laughing spacers’ progression through the passageway made it clear enough that the group had nothing better to do than wander aimlessly about Vigilant chattering amongst themselves, probably about the most recent scandalous hearsay to come slithering down the ship’s grapevine. Busht inwardly groaned, as he had hoped the corridors on his approach to sick bay would be empty.

  When he reached the too loud clutch of crewmen it took him some time to pass, as he generally felt it a sensible practice to get in a word or two with as many members of the crew as possible while he traversed the arteries of the ship. A simple hello from the executive officer might not boost morale to dizzying heights, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. And right now, with Vigilant lying wounded in a lonely orbit over a dead world far from home, anything that might raise the spirits of the crew even fractionally was as indispensable to the ship as the deep drive itself. He also understood that it was unrealistic to expect much in the way of morale building from Valessanna, except under the most extreme circumstances, such as her recent visit to sick bay, a visit that had sparked stories commenting on her apparently genuine concern that heretofore few in the crew had suspected she felt.

  So, with the captain for the most part indifferent, the duty of attempting to keep at bay any disheartenment amongst the crew, which at any time could very well run through them like wildfire considering the ship’s present situation, fell largely on his shoulders. Thus he forced himself to smile, to pat backs, shake hands, and exchange pleasantries, not because he had any real enthusiasm for doing so, but simply because he felt it proper behavior for a ranking officer.