Smith's Monthly #11

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  The second reason was that the person had the Seeder gene. That tended to sometimes block such things as mind erase. Not all the time, but sometimes, if the person had a very, very strong Seeder gene.

  She hadn’t known until that moment that there was anything like a Seeder gene. But it seemed there was, and it was a prerequisite to joining the Seeders. It allowed Seeders to comprehend vast amounts of information and not forget any of it over hundreds or even thousands of years of life.

  And with the right treatment, it allowed the person to live basically forever, barring accidents. Having that gene allowed the health treatments that stopped all aging and sickness in all Seeders.

  So Benny Slade had the Seeder gene.

  The idea of that stunned her even more than she wanted to think about.

  After her hour with the transportation department, she sent a message to the Chairman that she needed to talk with him.

  She wanted to know what was allowed with survivors who remembered the rescue and what wasn’t. Not a question ever covered in the training up to this mission, because no one had been expected to remember.

  “My office now,” was all he responded.

  She jumped to his office. It was large, with a number of chairs and a large couch. The walls were a light tan and covered with photos from different planets. There was a large wooden desk with hidden screens that she knew floated over the desk when in use.

  She had only been in his office once before and felt she liked Chairman Carson more because of the informal nature of the room.

  She was stunned that he had a visitor.

  The man with the chairman stood about six feet tall and had long gray hair flowing down his back that he had pulled into a ponytail. He was imposing and striking at the same time. He flat radiated power from his dark eyes.

  Chairman Carson was standing in front of his desk talking with the man as she arrived. Carson turned to her. “Gina Helm, I would like you to meet Chairman Wade Ray.”

  She managed to say, “Nice meeting you.”

  And then she shook his hand before her tired mind realized that the man she was meeting was one of the most powerful and oldest of all Seeders. No one really knew how old he was. Or even what galaxy he was born in.

  What was he doing here?

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she managed to choke out.

  Chairman Ray just smiled. “We were actually talking about you and the great job you did. And about one of the survivors in your area.”

  Gina managed to get her thoughts back together and said simply, “Benny Slade?”

  “You met him I understand,” Chairman Ray said, his eyes intense.

  “I met him and talked with him a number of times,” Gina said, “and found him really amazing and very smart. And I discovered that he did not have his memory wiped by the transport.”

  “He wouldn’t be wiped,” Chairman Ray said, and Chairman Carson nodded. “How did you discover this?”

  “I checked in on him about an hour ago,” she said, “and he must have sensed me watching him and wrote me a note, asked me to pick up another survivor when I arrived in the morning.”

  “Wow,” Chairman Carson said. “And you came here to tell me that?”

  Gina shook her head. “Actually, I came here to ask if I could recruit him as a Seeder in this mission. He would be valuable help if I didn’t have to hide from him.”

  Chairman Ray smiled and nodded. “See if you can convince him to join you.”

  Then Ray turned to Chairman Carson. “Let me know if he does join us.”

  Chairman Ray then turned to face Gina with those intense eyes of his. “Great job with all this and for discovering Benny Slade’s presence in your group. Good luck on the coming mission. I am sure I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  With a slight smile, he vanished.

  She stood shocked for a moment, then turned to Chairman Carson. “Can you explain to me what that was all about?”

  Carson shrugged and pulled up the image on a screen on his wall of her talking with Benny Slade in the big room. “Somehow he knew about this Benny person and asked about him and your reaction with Benny Slade. So we watched your interaction with Benny and then you asked to see me.”

  “So why does a survivor on a very damaged planet interest Chairman Ray?” Gina asked, her tired mind swimming in confusion.

  Chairman Carson went around the desk and dropped into his big chair and let out a long sigh. “When you figure that out, please let me know as well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THAT EVENING AFTER dinner, Benny and the professor and the two boys sat up Gina Helm’s apartment on the opposite side of the same floor that Benny was on. There were two office doors and a foyer between the two apartments.

  Benny didn’t tell them who was coming because he was starting to think he imagined it all. But even so, he wanted the apartment to be clean and comfortable.

  They moved in a large flat screen and tan living room furniture and a library of old movies. They set up a large bed and turned a small office into a closet with a bench next to where the bed was.

  They also managed to move up a fridge and set it up near a sink in a small glassed-in break room, leaving the table and chairs and the dishes in the cabinets. The room already had a small microwave and hot plate, so it would work pretty well, as far as Benny was concerned. Not as nice as his kitchen on the other side of the floor, but good enough.

  Then they set up a generator to run on the balcony outside of the apartment, so both of the apartments on the floor could have their own power and air-conditioning.

  They got it running to cool down the apartment.

  Every so often he got the sense that Gina was watching him and he would glance up and give her the thumbs-up signal. He hoped she would like the place.

  And he really hoped she saw his note about picking up Candice on the way here.

  Actually, he hoped more than anything that she was real.

  After they were done, the professor and the boys went back downstairs to watch a movie. Once again Benny stretched out in his living room, his lights low so he could see out over the darkening city.

  There were a few lights scattered over the dark city, but not many.

  And he knew people out there could see his lights here as well.

  If he hadn’t just imagined everything about Gina, very soon they would be recruiting more and more people to join them and help with survival.

  And if Gina was real, he had about a thousand questions to ask her, not only about her job and people and space, but about herself.

  He really, really wanted to get to know her better.

  A lot better.

  And never once in his life had he felt that way about a figment of his imagination.

  He managed to doze off in his chair after an hour or so and crawl into bed by ten with the alarm set for five a.m. He wanted to be downstairs to greet Gina and Candice.

  He had a hunch she would start early, in the coolness of the morning.

  That’s what he would do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BENNY WAS JUST crawling out of bed when Gina took one last look at her screens, made sure she had what she needed in her light pack, including water, and informed transport she would be leaving the ship shortly.

  She wore jeans and a light white blouse with a sports bra under it. She had on tennis shoes and had three changes of clothes and a pair of running shoes protected from the smell in a sealed bag.

  She wore nose filters against the smell for herself and carried a gas mask from the city below for Candice. But she knew that wouldn’t begin to stop the odor of walking past and over thousands of dead bodies decomposing in the heat of the streets.

  It was not going to be a pretty sight, and she hoped Candice had the stomach for it. If the girl fainted, Gina would transport them both closer to the big stone building that was their destination.

  She might have to do that anyway if Candice was passed out. O
r if Candice couldn’t walk, she would just drug her and transport them both.

  Gina did one more double-check of her light provisions. She could transport back to this apartment at any time, but better that she was prepared to stay on the surface as much as possible.

  She took a deep breath and then said to herself, “Here we go.”

  A moment later she found herself in the dim apartment where Candice had been hiding. The decomposing smell of human flesh hit her hard and she forced herself to breathe through her nose to let the filters hold the smell down some.

  She moved down the hallway to where Candice had been staying in her bedroom. The girl was curled up under the blankets.

  “Candice,” Gina said softly. “We need to get out of here and back to the big building with your friends.”

  “Who are you?” Candice asked weakly, looking up at her.

  “I’m just a friend,” Gina said. “Come on, let’s get you back to the professor and your friends.”

  “You can take me there?” Candice asked, but didn’t move.

  “I can,” Gina said. She tried to help Candice up, but the young girl just wasn’t there. Her arms felt like limp sacks of flesh. There was no doubt to Gina that Candice wasn’t going to be able to walk the fifteen blocks to the big stone building.

  Especially through all the death.

  Gina eased a sedative out of her pack and brushed it over Candice’s face as if she was brushing the girl’s filthy hair out of her face.

  Candice slumped out cold almost instantly.

  Gina put the gas mask on Candice’s face, then put one arm under the young girl’s shoulders and the other under her thighs and lifted her. Candice didn’t weigh that much.

  Gina then jumped to a spot she knew was blind to Benny’s cameras about a half block away from the big stone building and around a corner.

  The smell on the street was ten times worse than it had been in the apartment and it made her stagger.

  She had imagined this to be bad, but nothing like this.

  And the bodies around her were bloated and ugly colors and didn’t look anything close to human anymore.

  Her stomach threatened to rebel, but she managed to control that by looking up at a wall and focusing on a fire escape there.

  Then she forced herself to breathe only through her nose, but the smell made her eyes water and she wanted to just stop and throw up.

  She moved around the corner so Benny’s security cameras could see her and then leaned against the side of a building for a moment, still holding Candice in her arms.

  The feel of the solid stone building wall gave her strength.

  This was going to be so much harder than she had ever imagined.

  After a moment she started forward, making sure to walk mostly in the street around the cars because that was far, far easier than walking around the bodies she didn’t want to look at on the sidewalk.

  When she was within a hundred paces of the main door to the big stone building, it flew open and both Benny and the professor came charging out, moving as fast as they could into the street.

  “Got her,” Benny said, smiling at Gina and taking Candice.

  The professor moved around and supported Gina and the four of them headed into the building.

  “I’m fine,” Gina said. “And I think she is as well. She just fainted.”

  “Professor, get the doors locked back up and the alarms reset,” Benny said. “We’ll take her to the floor below yours for cleanup and such.”

  Benny got onto an elevator carrying Candice and Gina followed.

  “Glad I wasn’t dreaming,” Benny said as the door closed and they started up.

  Gina smiled at him. “Glad you weren’t either.”

  Then all the way up they just stared at each other, smiling like kids on a first date.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ON THE EXCUSE of looking at their security set-up, Benny had the professor go down to the lower levels with him. Benny had a hunch that if he hadn’t imagined Gina, and she had seen his note, she and Candice would be arriving in the next half hour or so, before the sun really climbed into the sky and started to heat up the mess outside once again.

  The lower levels had a faint smell of rotting death, but the solid building was holding most of it out. But Benny had no doubt it was going to be a long, hot, stinking summer.

  As Benny and the professor reached the security room, an alarm sounded and there, on the screen, Gina staggered around the edge of a building about a block from their main doors and leaned against a wall.

  She was real!

  Spaceships and rescues and millions of survivors were all real.

  Holy shit! How was that possible?

  But it was.

  He just stared at the screen, his mouth open, every muscle in his body frozen.

  Gina Helm, a human from a very great distance away, stood there on the corner with Candice in her arms.

  Gina had the exact same short black hair that he remembered, and the trim body now dressed in jeans and a light blouse. She looked just as she did on the spaceship in orbit.

  She was real!

  It had not been a dream.

  Gina rested for a moment against the building, then went into the street and started toward the main door, seemingly carrying Candice without much of a problem.

  “That’s Candice!” the professor shouted.

  That shocked Benny into movement and the two of them took off running down the two flights of stairs and to the front door. Benny got it open and they both ran out into the intense stink of the street as Gina got close.

  He smiled at Gina, not at all believing his eyes.

  Then he took Candice from Gina’s arms.

  Candice was so light, it shocked him.

  As the professor locked up, he and Gina took Candice up the elevator to the floor under where the professor and the boys lived. It had once been a number of small offices, each with bathrooms. The room had a large main area just off the elevators. They had set up that floor with showers, trash disposal for clothes that could not be salvaged from the smell, and soaking sinks near some wash machines for the clothing that could be saved.

  They had also brought in about forty bathrobes of all sizes and had them hanging around the area. No one was allowed onto the living floors smelling like the death in the streets. That was the rule of the building and an important one.

  He put Candice on a tabletop near the center of the big area and checked her vitals. She seemed to just be sleeping.

  “I had to knock her out with a light sedative,” Gina said. “She should be fine in a few hours and some food.”

  “Good,” Benny said. “Very glad you saw my note.”

  “And that note was very good thinking on your part,” she said. “It forced me to research and learn a lot about why you could remember the ship.”

  “I’m interested in hearing about that,” Benny said, smiling at her.

  As the elevator dinged and the professor came bounding into the room, Gina turned and introduced herself, using the same name she had used on the ship.

  Benny figured that was her real name, but he would ask later to make sure.

  She told the professor she had seen Candice trying to make her way here and just helped her. Benny nodded to her in agreement of her cover story as she turned back.

  “You have showers here?” Gina asked, looking around.

  Benny showed her the set-up of the different offices, all with bathrooms and installed showers that they had put in, while the professor stayed close to Candice.

  “You bring a change of clothes?” Benny asked her.

  “Got some in sealed bags in my pack,” she said. “And my pack can be wiped down and won’t absorb odors. How about I get myself and Candice showered and cleaned up and into fresh clothes? What do I do with her old clothes?

  Benny showed her the black bags to wrap them up in and where to throw them down an elevator shaft they had blocked open.
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  He was stunned at how calm she was acting and sounding. His heart was racing a mile a minute and it was everything he could do to stay calm.

  The attraction he felt for her was more now than it had been on the ship.

  “You should be able to save your clothes,” he said. “Toss them in a sink for them to soak and I’ll show you how to wash them later.”

  “Thank you,” she said, nodding.

  Then she looked into his eyes and both of them sort of froze.

  Finally he managed to say, “We have a lot of talking to do later.”

  “With that I agree,” she said, smiling at him and making the breath in his throat catch. “About more than you can ever imagine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  GINA WAITED WITH Candice while Benny and the professor took showers, changed clothes, and tossed their other clothes into some hot water to soak. Then they headed upstairs, leaving her to help the young girl.

  She was stunned at how handsome Benny was coming out of that room with fresh clothes and wet hair. She just wanted to touch him. And that was so out of character for her.

  “We’ll be at the top of that flight of stairs if you need help with Candice,” Benny said as they left.

  “I’ll manage fine and bring her up with me,” Gina said.

  Then she stripped Candice and tossed her clothes away. Then Gina took off her clothes as well and put them in a sink full of water next to Benny’s clothes to soak.

  Then she picked up Candice and carried her to a shower in a side office.

  Candice didn’t wake up, which was fine. Gina got both of them scrubbed down and both of their hair cleaned. She used some of the special chemicals she had brought from the ship to neutralize the odor. She dried them both off and got Candice in underwear and a bathrobe.

  Then Gina pulled out one of her extra pair of clothes, took her nose plug filters out, and stored them in her pack, and got dressed.