The Empty Warrior

by J. D. McCartney

  The captain nodded slightly. “We will see how things progress. It was a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. O’Keefe,” she said perfunctorily. “We will speak again. But now, I’m afraid, I must take my leave. We are preparing to commence our homeward journey, and I should be on the bridge. Please do not be alarmed if you feel a few jerks or lurches as we gain way. The inertial dampeners are not in the best of shape, but my crew is exceptionally proficient, and the ship is repaired to the extent that she is perfectly capable of getting us home safely.”

  With that the captain rose with feline grace and turned to the guards, at last allowing her arms to fall to her sides. “Contact Nurse Pellotte if you please, sergeant,” she said to one of the men. “I feel certain that our guest is quite ready for his dinner.” With that she crossed to the door and was gone.

  O’Keefe was still convinced that the woman wanted something from him that she could obtain nowhere else. But, beside the fact that it seemed to have something to do with his wartime experiences and his higher education, he was forced to admit that he had been unable to learn anything of substance from her.

  A few minutes before, that failure would have vexed him considerably, but no longer. Now his thoughts were fixated on the possibility of time alone with Kira Pellotte. So for the time being at least, he would swallow his indignation at the strictures the Akadeans had imposed upon him and do his best to be a good boy, in the hope that his confinement would continue to become less restrictive and that his fortunes might take a turn for the better.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

  A Pawn in Born

  “The captain has ordered that the ambulatory portion of your exercise regimen is to take place outside of your quarters today. Were you aware of that?” Pellotte asked from across the dining table.

  O’Keefe looked up from his rather tasty breakfast of cold cereal and a fruit-filled muffin as if aghast. “What! I don’t get to use the treadmill?” Pellotte appeared confused and he dropped the pretext. “I’m kidding, all right? Your wonderful captain,” he said sarcastically, “did mention something about me being allowed to leave my cell today while she was here last night, but I didn’t know whether to believe her.”

  Pellotte looked slightly stricken. “Why would you disbelieve the captain?” she asked, as if it were inconceivable that Nelkris could be less than honest.

  O’Keefe chuckled. “Jailers aren’t exactly famous for dealing openly and honestly with the inmates. Information is power, power is control, and control is what prisons are all about.” He looked squarely at his nurse, daring her to refute his logic.

  “You’re not exactly a prisoner here,” she said, pouting a bit. “These rooms are a far cry from the accommodations you would find in rehab.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not exactly an honored guest either, now am I?” O’Keefe had spoken sourly, and popped the last chunk of muffin into his mouth as he had finished. He washed it down with several gulps of milk before continuing. “Certainly you will admit that you’ve been instructed to refrain from discussing certain topics with me. Every time I so much as mention anything meatier than shipboard gossip you suddenly have to leave.”

  “Not telling someone everything you know is hardly the same thing as lying,” Pellotte said. “And besides, all that has changed now.”

  “Oh, yeah? Changed how?” O’Keefe asked.

  “I am now free to speak to you about anything I wish. I think the higher-ups have decided that since I am only a nurse and not privy to any big police secrets, there is very little damage that I can do.” She smiled brightly at O’Keefe, seemingly pleased at the turn of events.

  O’Keefe was pleased as well, and returned her grin to show it. “Well I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “And I’m glad to be getting out of these two rooms as well. I’ve been getting a bit stir crazy in here. Any chance that I will get to see the stars while we’re out?”

  “You can’t see the stars now, silly,” she said, leaning forward toward him on her elbows and giggling. “We’re going too fast. The only starlight you would be able to see would be directly before the bow. That would be very boring.”

  “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you about how you guys get around,” O’Keefe said. “I’d always been led to believe that at great speed time is not a constant. If we’re going as fast as you say we are, isn’t it supposed to be thousands and thousands of years later when we arrive anywhere? From the point of view of the people who live wherever we are going, I mean?”

  “Well it would be, if not for drive envelope.”

  “Drive envelope?”

  “Yes. Without the drive envelope interstellar travel would be quite impossible, unless of course you didn’t care that everyone you were going to see would be dead long before you got there, which would make traveling anywhere a fairly inane exercise.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got a point there,” O’Keefe said. “So what is the drive envelope?”

  “Hmmm. It is really not within the area of my expertise, and I can’t say that I have a thorough understanding of it,” Pellotte said cautiously. “But I will try to explain. As the ship begins to move, we have generators aboard that produce something of a bubble around us, confining the space around Vigilant within that bubble. That space is carried along with the ship as it moves. So even though we accelerate to great speeds, relatively speaking we are not moving at all. Therefore there is no time distortion as we approach the speed of light. And then once we get close enough to the light barrier the deep drive kicks in and off we go, traveling many times faster than light without moving through space at all.” She looked at him cheerfully as if what she had said explained everything.

  O’Keefe just shook his head. “I see, I think,” he said slowly, furrowing his brow as he did so. “But how can the drives work if the space around the ship doesn’t… No. No, I’m not even going to go there.”

  “Yes, I know,” Pellotte said, commiserating. “It’s all very esoteric. And I probably didn’t explain it very well either. I simply content myself with the fact that it obviously works and don’t worry too much about understanding it.”

  “I don’t blame you. So back to the subject at hand, just where are you taking me this morning?”

  Pellotte giggled again. “We are going to the arboretum,” she said. “I think you will enjoy it.” She leaned in toward him over the table, her chin on her fists, smiling hugely, her dimples deepening on either cheek. If O’Keefe hadn’t known better, he would have sworn she was flirting with him.

  “So what do I wear,” he asked. “All I have are pajamas and work-out shorts.”

  “Just pull on a robe and wear your slippers. We will have the place all to ourselves, so it hardly matters.”

  “Yes, so the captain informed me,” O’Keefe said as he stood and started to make his way back to his bedroom to find his robe. “No fraternization allowed. What is she so afraid of, anyway?” He had posed the question rhetorically, so it stopped him in his tracks when Pellotte actually answered.

  “Contagion,” she said mildly.

  “Contagion?” he echoed, turning back to face her. “What? Am I a carrier of some dreaded disease?”

  “Psychological contagion,” she clarified. “The people who originally populated your world were just like any other random set of humans descended from the original Akadeans. No one really understands exactly how your culture…turned out the way it did. The captain merely wants to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t spread.”

  “That’s absurd. Are you people so fragile that I could brainwash the lot of you?” O’Keefe was angry now, and loud.

  “Be nice, Hill,” Pellotte said sweetly. “Contact between you and our people is forbidden. It may very well be absurd, as you say, but whatever else it is, it is also the law. And we are the police. Because of your presence, the captain and Willet Lindy may very well be in serious jeopardy upon our return. I think it is plain that Captain Nelkris has gone out of her way to accommodate your presence here with a
s little discomfort as possible to everyone involved. Now be good and go get your robe and your slippers, and let’s be off for the arboretum.”

  O’Keefe was still hopping mad. He wanted to further dispute the point and he did not wish to be told what to do, but at that moment he could think of no piquant riposte to counter Pellotte’s reasoning. Besides, he told himself as he turned and sullenly shuffled off toward the bedroom, arguing with a woman in deep space was probably just as futile as arguing with one on Earth.

  A few minutes later he and Pellotte, accompanied by the guards, were out the door and on their way. The lifts, as usual, were off limits. Pellotte insisted that it was only because a long walk would be good for his legs, but O’Keefe didn’t believe it for an instant. They just didn’t want his presence clogging up the system and inconveniencing the crew.

  They had turned right when leaving his state-room, then farther along they had taken a left. In short order they arrived at a T-intersection. To the right lay the route back to sick bay, a trek intimately familiar to O’Keefe, but Pellotte led the group off in the other direction. Now they were headed toward the bow, into a part of the ship that O’Keefe had never seen. The long corridor was still sectioned off by airtight doors, and several times they had to wait as a hatch refused to open immediately. O’Keefe suspected that the delays were a result of the presence of crew members in the next compartment that he might “contaminate.” The thought rankled him but he merely scowled and said nothing.

  There was, as always, a marked difference in the outer sections of the ship from the ones closer to the hull’s core, where both sick bay and his berth were located. Out here the scars of battle were nearly as plentiful as they were farther aft. Seemingly every third compartment was disfigured by the shining plates of bare metal that robotic repairmen had fitted smoothly into the corridor’s walls and arched ceiling. Some of the patches were large enough to cover the majority of the affected section. Three times they passed robots still hard at work. O’Keefe was beginning to feel almost thankful for the comatose state that had kept him from witnessing the combat that had caused so much damage.

  But the farther forward they walked, the fewer blemishes there were to be seen, until finally there were none at all. They walked onward for a bit longer before Pellotte stopped before a large hatch on the port side of the corridor, the side away from the ship’s outer skin. She pressed a control on the adjoining panel, and the door moved aside, revealing a sea of verdant green bathed in brilliant light from above. The sweet aroma of flowers in bloom wafted out into the corridor. O’Keefe breathed deeply of the fragrant, oxygenated air, savoring the sudden contrast it presented to the stale, recycled atmosphere that was pumped about the ship by Vigilant’s damaged reprocessors and that he had been breathing for weeks. He stepped gingerly through the opening and stopped just over the threshold, entranced by the beauty that was laid out before him. It hardly seemed possible that such a place could exist aboard a vessel. It was a perfect garden. Plants and shrubs of every description lined white pebbled pathways held in place by finely wrought, decorative stonework. Ornamental trees rose to almost touch the light emitting ceiling that hung some thirty feet from the floor. Brooks gurgled through the cavernous compartment, the pebbled pathways crossing them over arched wooden bridges of white. Near the center of the chamber, a fountain flung a myriad of tiny geysers into the air, their drifting spume refracting light prismatically as the tiny droplets floated downward toward the fountain’s base.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, still gazing about before turning to face Pellotte. “You must have a score of gardeners aboard.”

  “Oh no,” she said, laughter sparkling in her eyes. “Vigilant takes care of this herself.” Almost as she spoke, O’Keefe sensed movement about his feet. He looked down to see a small, camouflaged vehicle with tiny metal arms grabbing up dead and fallen foliage and stuffing the debris into the covered trailer it pulled. It moved slowly away under the bushes, missing nothing as it rolled along. “Well, go on,” Pellotte said, pushing him playfully forward, “take a look around.”

  He did so. He slowly wandered down the length of the path that led away from the entry, relishing his freedom not only from his rooms, but also from the chairs that had for years been both his prison and his conveyance. This was the first time since he had regained the use of his legs that he had been free to simply walk about on his own and explore. Every other step he had taken had either been in his quarters or while he was being led about in sick bay or down a corridor.

  It occurred to him that this was something he had not done since his childhood on the farm. As an older teen he had been too preoccupied with sports and girls to enjoy a simple meander through the woods, while in Southeast Asia the plentiful flora had been a dangerous, fear-inspiring thing; he had thought of it only as a hiding place for the enemy. And later in life he had gone virtually nowhere that was neither paved nor floored.

  He spent over an hour wending slowly and silently through every section of the arboretum, Pellotte and the guards following a respectful distance behind. At last he made his way toward the center of the compartment and took a seat on a bench facing the fountain, leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head and his legs extended luxuriously out across the pathway. He crossed them at the ankles and inhaled the scents of the garden deeply into his lungs while Pellotte took a seat next to him, her hip nearly touching his own. The guards positioned themselves on the opposite side of the fountain, far enough away so the cascading droplets produced enough small, splashing detonations to put them out of earshot.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” O’Keefe said. “It’s truly lovely, nearly as lovely as you.”

  Pellotte fairly beamed at the compliment, turning slightly to more easily face him. “I thought you might like it. It is the favorite spot on the ship for many of the crew, myself included. But I particularly enjoyed this visit. Thanks to you, this is the first time that I have been here when there were so few people. Usually there is a crowd, and even more so as of late. The tropical arboretum was punctured by Vazilek weapons. The hole has been repaired, of course, but all that remains is an empty compartment, so at present this is the only large area of growing things aboard.”

  O’Keefe grunted noncommittally, abruptly reminded of his quarantined status. The remembrance brought with it the nearly undeniable urge to make a satiric comment, which he somehow managed to stifle at the last moment. “So just how old are you, anyway?” he asked instead. “I know the question is probably in bad form, but I can’t help but wonder as no one here looks their age.”

  “Oh, I’m young,” she said, looking at the ground. O’Keefe thought she might be attempting to hide a blush. “I turned a hundred and fortyseven three months ago.”

  “A hundred and forty-seven!” O’Keefe exclaimed, loudly. Despite his intellectual acceptance of their longevity, he was still emotionally taken aback by the long life spans of which the Akadeans were capable. “You look twenty-five.”

  “Well, this body is about twenty-seven if I remember correctly, so you are very close, in a way. It’s just that this is my third one. I start to get a little achy after about fifty years in an adult body, so I trade before a lot of other people would.” She acted as if she were talking about trading in an automobile, causing O’Keefe to shake his head slightly in disbelief.

  “Did you keep the same one each time, or were you someone else before?”

  “Oh, no,” she laughed, leaning forward and touching him lightly on the forearm. “New bodies are simply cloned shells of flesh and blood, just grown without a brain. I did have some enhancements done both times, but it’s still me. I would never move into a strange body, as it can be a little iffy, to say the least. There are always a few problems getting acclimated to a new one in any case, but those complications are greatly magnified if you trade for a body grown from someone else’s DNA. Brain damage has been known to occur. I don’t mean to say that it has never been done; there are
numerous people who have over the years taken different bodies, but only those who were extremely unhappy in the one they were born with. The medical establishment, that’s me,” she said sprightly, “takes a very dim view of the practice.”

  “How about implants, like this language chip you guys put in my head? Do you have the encyclopedia of medicine stashed away somewhere in your brain?”

  “Oh no, I have no brain implants. We only do languages, except in very rare cases where we are attempting to rehabilitate a damaged mind. And I have never had the need for any language beyond Akadean.”

  “Why do you only do language?” O’Keefe asked. After all, implants seemed like such an easy way to obtain the knowledge of the universe. “You could be an expert on any subject you chose.”

  “Words don’t change,” she said simply.

  “Sure they do,” he asserted forcefully, but was confused about exactly what she meant.

  “Oh, they may attain different meanings over time, and new words will always come into existence, but the knowledge contained on a language chip will never be incorrect. Outdated maybe, but never incorrect. That is not true with other knowledge. Many other types of implants were tried long ago, but they never worked out very well in the long run.

  “Most knowledge is always in a state of flux. What is true today may not be true tomorrow. History is my favorite example. It is the study of what has already transpired, and yet even it changes. As new evidence from the past is uncovered, people’s perceptions of the past change. But if you had an implant containing the historic record of humanity, as it was known at the time the implant was created, part of your perception would not change, it would be hard-wired so to speak, and there would be inherent contradictions that would form in your mind, thereby putting strains on your ability to reason. You would constantly be trying to discern which of your perceptions sprang from truth and which from an artificially created and now false impression. This does not happen with language. Words are expected to evolve, to have different meanings, and knowing the definition of archaic words that are no longer commonly in use or not knowing every new word that makes its way into the language hardly puts undue stress on a person’s psychological makeup.