He was finishing up and taking care of last minute details when the shuttle touched down in the late afternoon the following day. Al made his way to the shuttle pad and watched as Doc Cody, followed closely by Edward Florida, stepped quickly over to where Al was standing.
Doc Cody wasted no time with small talk and told him straight away, “You need to come back to the ship. We need to run some tests, but it appears that you need surgery. Dr. Florida has detected some swelling of your brain, which is more than likely causing your headaches. We need to remove the meteoroid fragment as soon as possible!”
“I need brain surgery?” Al had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. He thought of brain surgery as dangerous, painful, and the odds weren’t in his favor.
Doctor Florida thought it was important they get to somewhere more private, so he asked Al to come to the clinic. Once inside, with the doors locked and the curtains drawn, his friends made an attempt to console him.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” said Edward. “We simply have to make an incision around the head and get access to the brain pan cover. Lift the lid, and we can then remove the meteoroid and prevent further damage.”
Al did not like the sound of any of this.
He tried some humor, “I feel much better now, maybe it will go away on its own.”
Cody told him, “This will only get worse my friend,”
Doc Cody was concerned and believed Al was running out of time. He agreed with Edward and wanted to perform the operation without delay.
“Okay.” Al gave in and asked, “How will this work?”
Cody and Edward glanced at one another, each in silent agreement, and Cody explained, “We will have to perform the surgery on the ship in doctor Florida’s diagnostic room. I will make the incision to open the cover, and Ed will remove the fragment. Then we just close the cover and stitch the incision. You will be right as rain in no time.”
“I’m not going to walk around like Frankenstein and make grunting noises am I?”
“Now Al, you should take this seriously,” pleaded Cody.
“No electricity to the temples or anything like that?”
“Al…please,” begged Cody.
Al gave in to the necessity and finally said, “All right already, when do we leave?”
“Pack yourself a bag and be prepared to be gone for a week or so. We have emergency use of a shuttle, and we leave in thirty minutes.”
Cody turned and started filling a suitcase with what he thought he might need from the clinic. Doctor Florida studied Al’s scan while Al went to pack a bag and let his men know he was leaving. He made a quick trip to his tiny sleeping quarters, and the security shack, and ten minutes later they were on the shuttle and headed to the Excalibur.
The captain met them on the hangar floor of the ship and escorted them directly to the robotics shop. “Good luck Al, just listen to the doctors and everything will be all right. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything.”
He then turned to Edward and asked to be kept informed, posted a guard on the outside door, and left to go and wait on the bridge.
Inside the room, they ran some tests, and when they were ready, they had him step into a tube recessed into the floor that placed his head at shoulder height. They then filled it with a special foam that immobilized him.
Edward; the roboticist, would have put it like this, “We locked him up, opened his lid, removed a grain of metal, and closed him back up.”
Not that it was quite that simple, but the operation did go pretty much according to plan. Two hours later Al was sleeping comfortably in a recovery bed. The doctors were standing to the side discussing their friend and the operation.
“Do you think he will be okay Edward?” asked Cody.
“We never know with brain injuries. The connection to the body is complex and delicate. We can only hope he does not become worse. I don’t think we did more damage, though, because the foreign matter came out so easily. I am very optimistic.”
“Edward, you are a robotic specialist and have had some time to go over Mister Clark’s operational manual. Can you tell me what Al’s capabilities will be when he recovers fully?”
With a seriousness that surprised Cody, Edward said, “Without restrictions, he could be very powerful. He could be the most important man on the planet if allowed. On the other hand, our friend Al could also be the most dangerous.”
Doctor Edward Florida had read the manual, and he had a pretty good idea what Al could do when unrestricted. What he knew of Al as a person—made him feel better about it.
****
Al Clark woke up three days later; if you could call it waking up. He tried to open his eyes and couldn’t. Awake, but yet, not awake, he could neither see nor hear anything except an annoying ringing in his head. There was no input from the outside world. He was trapped inside his own head. All his memories came sifting back until he remembered the surgery. Had something gone wrong?
Al’s old friend Mister Fear knocked loudly at his door. Was this the way it was going to be for the rest of his life—had he lost the use of his body forever?
Dr. Edward Florida walked into the room, looked at a monitor for a moment, flicked a couple of switches on the machine hooked to the half human, half robot, and brought Al back to the rest of the world. His machine body reconnected to his human brain and Al was free.
He opened his eyes to the whisper of machines and fans flooding his ears. Standing next to him was a smiling Doctor Florida, and at the foot of his bed, was the captain and Doc Cody; also smiling.
“Welcome back Mister Clark,” the captain said. “You had us worried.”
Al tried moving his legs to sit up and couldn’t. He attempted raising his arm and had the same lack of response. “I can’t move.”
“Don’t worry Al, I have the rest of your body shut down. I wanted your brain to get a chance to rest without the added stimulus. How do you feel?” the roboticist asked.
“A little groggy, but other than that…okay. There is a buzzing in my head.”
“That is probably the feedback from your body being disabled. It will go away when I restart the rest of you. Try and take it easy Al, everything is going to be fine,” Edward informed him.
“How long have I been out?”
Cody spoke up, “We have been giving your brain a chemical to induce sleep, so you have been asleep for three days, but everything we have seen so far points to a full recovery.” With a big grin on his face, he added, “You are going to be good as gold my friend.”
During his recovery, his closest friends came to see him. One or two at a time. They were told he had a small brain tumor that had been successfully removed.
It was good to see Liz and Chris, who were happily preparing to move down to Avalon. They were excited because living on a spaceship was no comparison to living on a living, breathing planet.
Kayla and Ana came by and brought books and flowers. They too would be going down to Avalon but were not excited. They were scared.
Kayla was explaining their apprehension, “You’ve had to kill four of those creatures. That sounds like a dangerous place to me.”
“Someone told me they dragged a lady out of her tent. Is that right?” asked Ana.
“Yes that’s true, but she was only scratched. We do have some things to work out, but as we improve the fence and overall security procedure, the settlement will become safer. With the help of the natives, we might be able to solve the Riktor problem altogether. It could be that after losing so many of their own, the beasts will decide we’re not worth the trouble and just leave us alone.”
“Do you think so?” asked Ana.
“No…but it’s a nice thought. Don’t worry you two, we will keep perfecting our defenses and find a way to keep everyone safe. Trust me.”
A week went by uneventfully. His closest friends on-board were his only visitors, and that was rarely, most of the time, he was bored to tears. His surgery was still on a need to know
basis, so most people had no idea what happened to Al. The people on the planet were made to believe he was assigned to the ship temporarily, and the people on the spaceship were made to believe he was still on the planet. He just disappeared into the robot shop.
He spent most of his time on paperwork pertaining to his profession, listening to some of Edward Florida’s music, and reading books from the ship's database.
On the eighth day, he was smuggled out and returned to Camelot. In an empty hangar bay, he was ushered out directly onto a shuttle that took him home and landed just before sunrise. From there it was a short walk to the security office.
The camp had changed a lot. It was more than a camp now, growing to become a village. Dozens of habitat buildings placed beside wide sawdust sidewalks, with larger buildings being constructed for the village use, were being prepared for habitation. Some settlers had already started to adapt their homes to their personal preferences. There were houses with sapling trees planted in the small front yards. To Al, it seemed an excellent beginning for the time they’d been there.
Liz suggested he wear a hat to hide his bandaged head until it healed. He had no preference, and it sounded like a nice change, so he had a cowboy hat made. He was wearing that hat when he walked into the office and surprised his comrades.
“Well howdy, Sheriff. What’s with the hat?” one said with a grin.
“It’s my new look, what do ya think?”
“I think it looks good on you. It makes you look more Sheriffy,” he said.
There were two men just finishing their overnight shift of monitoring the Watchers, two more were getting dressed, and two were preparing to go out on patrol. Robot Nine was already out checking the fence. All six men were dying to know what had happened to Al.
“I had to have a little surgery,” he told them. “Everything is fine, and I’ll be back to normal in a week or two.” Al didn’t want to get into too many details, so he told them the brain tumor story and brushed off the rest of their questions.
He sat down at the table and asked, “So…what did I miss while I was gone?”
The man he left in charge in his absence filled him in. “Luckily, we’ve had no Riktor sightings since the last attack. It seems we might have scared them off for the time being.” He paused to organize his thoughts. “The twelve-year-old girl that was murdered by the saboteur was buried three days ago next to Rudy in our new cemetery. Her parents are taking it pretty hard and are demanding justice. They want to see someone hanged or electrocuted or something.
“It seems a lot of people want to know if our prisoner is responsible for our waking up ten years late. Oh,…and we have a visitor from the natives. She showed up not long after you left. Nice kid, maybe fifteen, calls herself Kira and is staying with Cindy and Rahul. She’s been walking around with them and soaking up everything. I hope what she is learning does not come back to haunt us.”
The Chief of Security was well aware that having her in the camp was a risk, but a risk he thought worth taking. Addressing the issue of prejudice needed to start now.
“Try not to think of it that way. We are building a new society here, and we’re going to need the natives help. They know more about this planet than we will ever know, and in return, we can help them. We will need to remember this has been their home for a long time, and we need mutual trust between us if we are going to share it with them.”
Al smiled and felt he should get off the soapbox, “How’s Robot Nine. Is he working out okay?”
“He comes in here every morning asking about you. I think he missed you Chief,” one man said as he walked out the door.
“Well, I think I might just look him up so he can stop worrying. And maybe see a few other people while I’m at it. You guys okay here?”
“We’re fine,” they told him.
It started raining as he left the office, but he didn’t care. He was happy to be alive, and he had his hat to keep his head dry. Things were starting to look up again.
Chapter Sixteen
The young native girl left early to visit the gods on the day of her appointed journey. She dressed in her finest furs and carried with her more of the colorful chains made from the hair of the Minitat to take along as gifts. The tribe noticed how excited the gods were when presented with the first necklace. With her long auburn hair, dark brown eyes and a dozen of them wrapped around her neck, she was a beautiful tribute.
Everyone was there to wish her good fortune. She said goodbye to them and started down the path to the Kuthra’s kingdom. She did not hurry. If the gods were to sacrifice her, she wanted to treasure the experiences she had until then.
The girl, not quite considered an adult, was still dazed from being picked to be the one to visit the Kuthra. The elders wanted a young person with a sharp mind who questioned everything, and everybody knew she always asked a lot of questions.
Along the way she bent a tiny branch every so often so that her people could track her if they needed to; more out of habit than conscious thought.
She arrived at the gate to the Kuthra kingdom as the sun became full on the horizon, adding a bright and colorful tint to everything she saw. Waiting for her were the two Kuthra she had met at the Sansi caves, and they were excited to see her. Rahul and Cindy turned off the section of fence the colony used as a gate and rushed up to her. As they hurried over, she took a step backward and dropped to the ground, not wishing to offend them.
It did not take long for the specialist’s to reign in their enthusiasm, convince the frightened Avalonian to stand, and introduce themselves.
One of the gods said, “Rahul,” as he pointed to himself. He did this several times, and then he indicated the God that accompanied him and said, “Cindy.”
A smart girl, Kira quickly realized what he was trying to say, He is telling me what they call themselves!
The young native, with the long dark hair, indicated herself and said, “Kira,” and the gods were pleased. The next few hours were like an incredible dream. She soaked up the sights and sounds, and they filled her with wonder.
The gods have homes outside the mountain, sitting open in a field. They must be very powerful not to be afraid. Boxes with legs walk around and do their work for them.
It was confusing and wonderful, and a little frightening.
That was how her stay with the gods began, and she learned at an astounding rate. Kira was inquisitive and questioned almost everything. She was also very determined to learn to speak with the gods. She wanted to know if they were the kind and powerful gods of their teachings, or something else. Her people needed them to be kind and powerful.
The gods do not need flames for cooking. They sit around in the open air and just admire the fires they build. Inside their houses, they would take something from a silver box, remove a thin colorful wrapper, put it back in a different box, and out would come a delicious meal. There was magic in the white sticks surrounding their kingdom that put bad things to sleep. One miracle after another.
She watched as one God spoke into a little box he held in his hand and, Tiny beings inside the box answered back! They must be tiny, with strong voices.
The local girl from Avalon was in heaven. Living and learning among the Gods.
****
It was raining when Al returned to see the prisoner on-board Excalibur. For that reason, he was wearing his hat. The bandages were gone, but the rain wasn’t. It had been raining since he walked out of the security shack a week ago, and had not stopped. They were experiencing the spring rainy season that Kira informed them happened every year. It was a warm light shower that resolutely refused to stop.
Two weeks after the surgery, he still could not remember anything more about his past than he did before, but he had expected that. He was resolved to make the best of what he did know. He believed the tiny meteoroid had more than likely been the cause of his amnesia and his headaches. On the other hand, he no longer had the pain in his head or confused thinking. He decided h
e could live with that.
Stepping into the shuttle, he was thinking. Maybe the meteoroid was responsible for waking me up, allowing me to wake all the rest. It is possible that tiny chunk of metal allowed him to save the ship, and, therefore, everyone on it. There was a silver lining inside the meteor cloud.
Tammy Shoemaker stayed locked in her cell for a more than a month. Al had meant to visit her sooner, but life had gotten in the way. No one came to visit her but the officers stuck guarding her, and they were not happy about it. It was reported she mostly read and meditated, honestly believing she was not long for this world; or any other.
Accompanied by two of his officers from the planet, they were there to escort her down to Avalon. The Excalibur was being prepared for extended orbit, and most of the people were already down on the planet. Soon, the ship would have only a skeleton crew.
She was to have a trial, with a jury of her peers. Even on a colony ship, there is a need for lawyers and one of them was assigned to represent her. The security team was there to move her to the temporary jail at Camelot, to prepare for the trial.
Al moved a chair over to the cell and asked, “How are you, Tammy?”
“I’m all right…for a dead person,” she replied without the hint of a smile.
“Now why do you say that?”
“I know what happens to people that don’t conform to your principles.” She looked at him with conviction; sure of her fate.
“It hasn’t been decided what will happen to you. You will have to go through a trial.”
“There is not a person on this ship that will allow me to live. It is not your way.”
He needed her to answer a disturbing question. “Did you have anything to do with the tampering of the sleep circuits, that caused us to orbit this planet for ten years?”
Tammy looked surprised, and then bowed her head, “Does it matter? I will take the blame for all the wrong on this expedition.”
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