by J. Naomi Ay
“Why do you think that?” I asked.
“This one has welts and scars across his back and chest.”
“What sort of scars?” Kenak sat up and stared at Donak.
“Gunshot wounds, laser burns, welts from lashings, it appears. Whoever owned him punished him severely.”
“Poor guy,” I mumbled and imagined the last Karupta on Rozari trying desperately to escape his evil master only to become a stoner bum hanging around the Fashion Mall in Takira-hahr.
“But there is more,” Donak teased. “This you will not believe my friends. The Karupta’s eyes are not normal. His eyes are indeed the strangest ocular specimens I have ever seen in all my years of treating the people of this galaxy.”
“What's wrong with them?” I whispered, almost afraid to find out.
“They are silver but beyond silver colored. Indeed they emit specks of shining silver light. When he gazes upon you it is like looking at the sun. You will feel a thickness in your skull, a fog or heaviness, until he closes his eyes or turns away from you.”
“Blessed Saint,” Kenak gasped again, his hands back in his hair. “You have found a mutant Karupta. Does he speak Donak? Does he say who he is or who he belongs to?”
“Unfortunately he does not speak.” Donak shook his head. “This is why I have come to you. He has been with us for nearly a week. He is now free from the drugs so we must release him from the hospital. There is no medical reason to retain him.”
“No!” Kenak begged. “Not yet! I must see him first. I must see the marking. If there is a Karupta colony anywhere on this planet be it underground or under the sea, I must know. I've spent my whole life studying the Wars of the Saint.”
“I know, dear friend,” Donak replied sympathetically. “I have managed to hold off his release until this evening. Perhaps you could come to the hospital and see if you can communicate with him. Maybe you can even help him. If he is an escaped slave and has nowhere to go or to live, you could find him some sort of temporary accommodations.”
“I will, I will.” Kenak leapt to his feet.
“I will too, I will too.” I jumped up as well.
“Now?” Kenak cried.
“Now,” Donak agreed. “Come on.” He led the way.
On the way over to the Rozari Science Institute Medical Centre, from our building which housed the Social Sciences Departments, we crossed half the campus. It was extremely hot, and the ground as always was covered with thick, red dirt that kicked up lots of dust. Since I had not planned to transverse the campus this day, thinking only that I would go from the parking garage to my building in an enclosed overhead walkway, I had worn an expensive and cute pair of strappy sandals.
Now as I chased after the two men, I noted that my expensive sandals were basically toast. Stained with the red post nuclear dirt of Rozari, which all had assured me was no longer radioactive, my darling white heels would be thrown in the trash bin tonight. Tim would chastise me for wearing them to work today but I suppose it gave me an excuse to go shop for new ones.
By the time we reached the entrance to the RSI Medical Centre, I was dripping wet from running in 120 degree heat. There were sweat stains down the length of my blouse and I was ready to turn around and go back to my speeder and go home.
“What's the matter, Shelly?” Dr. Kenak said, frowning at me. “Why do you look so sad? Do you not wish to meet this Karupta fellow?”
“Oh, I do,” I said and waved. “I just need a shower first.”
The two Rozarian men stared at me as if I were crazy.
“Why?” Kenak asked, clearly not bothered by his own sweat stains or the dust.
“Forget it,” I said. “Lead on.”
Donak took us to a secured patient room in a corner of the hospital.
“Why is he locked in?” I asked as Donak entered a code into the door console.
“While undergoing drug withdrawal, we feared he would try to escape.” Donak stepped back as the door swung open. We entered a typical sterile, white hospital room with white walls, a white bed, a bathroom and a window.
“Where is he?” I whispered.
Donak tiptoed around the side of the bed and waved to us.
“Good day,” he called loudly as Kenak and I tiptoed around as well.
Hunched against the wall in the corner, as if he was trying to make himself as small as possible, there was a man. Maybe, he was even a boy. He was much younger than I had anticipated. He was wearing a Rozari Science Institute t-shirt and a matching pair of sweat pants that someone must have dug up from the lost and found, as they were obviously well worn and far too short, barely hanging past his knees. He had bare feet and the first thing that I noticed was that something was wrong with his toenails. They were dark and claw-like.
“What’s wrong with his feet?” I asked Donak.
“I don’t know,” Donak murmured while I looked over the rest of the boy. The rest of him was not weird at all. He had long black, wavy hair, pale skin, a very noble, proud face with long black eyelashes that were closed as if he was asleep. He was beautiful in a strange, almost ethereal, yet very male way.
“Kenak cleared his throat. “I do indeed see the marking,” he whispered. “It does look authentic.” He pointed at the young man’s left arm where a large black tattoo-like picture of what could be an eagle was made by cutting and burning scars into the skin tissue.
I supposed the Karupta’s might have considered it art, but personally, I thought it was gross.
“It is just the same as that borne by the Infidel,” Kenak added.
“Is he asleep?” I whispered to Donak.
Donak shrugged.
Since both he and Kenak appeared to be rooted to where they stood, I stepped forward a few paces and squatted down in my destroyed, now-red heels so that I was eye level with the young man.
“Hello?” I called softly. “My name is Shelly Mattson.”
The Karupta opened his eyes and looked at me and for a moment my vision clouded with silver light. I was lost. My brain fogged and I fell back on the ground, slipping off my heels and landing on my butt. The boy closed his eyes.
“Are you alright, Shelly?” Kenak gasped and grabbed my arm. He yanked me upright whereupon I teetered for a moment.
“Fine,” I replied, dusting myself off and then removing my heels. I squatted down again. “Let's start over. I am Shelly Mattson and you are?”
No response. I was not deterred though. I chatted away because Kenak appeared to be dumbfounded and this might have turned out to be our only chance to speak with a real Karupta before he was released and disappeared tonight.
“What is your name?” I spoke slowly and clearly. “Do you have a name? What are you called?”
“I don't think he speaks Rozarian,” Donak interrupted me. “He hasn't spoken to anyone the entire time he has been here.”
“Perhaps he speaks Ancient Rozarian?” Kenak suggested. “If the Karuptas were hiding in an underground bunker or isolated mountain cave for the last thousand years, their language would not have evolved as ours has done. I shall try a few Ancient Rozarian words.” Kenak proceeded to randomly toss out words like table, chair, apple, and bread in Ancient Rozarian. Too bad he didn’t know any verbs. It did illicit a bit of response from the young man. For a moment, he opened his eyes again and Kenak was momentarily blinded by the silver light. Kenak stopped talking.
“Do you think he understood me?” Kenak whispered when he had recovered sufficiently from the accompanying brain fog.
Before we could answer, the door swung open and a nurse came in with a tray.
“Dude,” she said. “Here's your dinner. You gonna eat something today?” She had an accent that sounded like New Jersey to me. Setting the tray down on the swinging table, she went out to fetch a fresh pitcher of water.
“Janet,” Dr. Donak said when she had returned. “Has our friend spoken to anyone yet?”
“Nope,” Janet replied, straightening the already straight bed sheets. “Hasn't eat
en anything either. You gonna want to start an IV before he dehydrates himself?”
“Yes.” Donak nodded thoughtfully. “If we have him hooked up, I can extend his stay a bit more.”
“Very good,” Kenak said excitedly. “That shall give us more time to work.”
I stood up and went to pour a glass of water from the pitcher. I then took it back over to the young man. If this poor guy had already been enslaved, I was sure he didn’t want to be trapped here in the hospital as Kenak's lab rat.
“Drink this, sweetie, and maybe you can get out of here,” I said, putting it on the floor in front of him.
“I think he blew his brains out on drugs,” Nurse Janet remarked. “Damn, he's hot though.”
“He is gorgeous,” I agreed.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Look at the biceps. It’s like he's been lifting boulders or something.”
“Perhaps he has been living in a mountain cave,” Kenak mused.
“Go on, honey, drink the water,” I spoke louder to the Karupta. “You don't want Dr. Donak to have to poke you in the arm.”
He opened his eyes again, just slightly, so a thin stream of silver light came out but didn’t blind any of us.
“Water,” Kenak pronounced in Ancient Rozarian.
The young man reached over and picked up the glass of water from the floor where I had set it. He drank it.
We all sighed and smiled at each other as if this was a great accomplishment.
“I'll get you some more,” I said and went to retrieve the pitcher. Just as I was about to pick it up, it lifted itself up in the air and flew across the room. I screamed. The others backed out of the way as if the pitcher was some kind of a bullet. It soared straight into the young man's hand, whereupon he poured himself another glass of water.
“My goodness!” Donak exclaimed.
“Blessed Saint!” Kenak cried.
“Dude!” Janet gasped.
“Do you want something to eat too?” I squeaked.
“Could the Karuptas do that, Kenak?” Donak asked.
“I don't know,” Kenak stuttered. “I don't know. I don't recall reading anywhere that they could and surely if they could they would have written it down so we would know, wouldn't they?”
“What?”
The dinner plate was now flying across the room and landed next to the Karupta. He had a piece of fried chicken, a few red potatoes, a roll, butter and an apple. Selecting the apple, he pushed the rest away. Then, he casually ate the apple, his silver eyes flickering at us. I picked up the plate and put it back on the tray table.
“Can you tell us your name now?” I asked, turning back to him.
“Senya,” he said between bites.
Kenak gasped again.
“Your name is Senya?” I repeated.
He nodded.
“Where are you from, Senya?” Kenak asked tentatively.
Senya finished his apple. I looked at the tray. He tossed the apple core and it landed in the middle of the tray. We all stared at it as if this too was a great and astonishing feat.
“Are you from Karupatani?” Kenak hesitantly spoke again.
“Ay yah,” Senya said.
“What does that mean?” Janet asked.
“I don't know,” Kenak replied. “Perhaps yes?”
“Or perhaps no,” Donak said. “Why were you marked, Senya?” He pointed at the man's arm.
Senya said something totally unintelligible. We all looked at each other.
“Does anyone have a Universal Translator?” I asked.
“I have an app on my iPhone,” Janet replied and held it out. “Dude, say that again.”
Senya cocked his head like he was listening to something. Janet swayed on her feet and almost dropped the iPhone.
“I think he wants us all to go away,” she said and picked up the food tray. She hastily beat it out of the room. Suddenly, I had an urge to follow and raced after her. Once out in the hallway, I thought about why I had left and then realized I hadn’t a clue. Donak and Kenak immediately joined me and the door slammed shut behind them. We heard the lock click.
“Why did we leave so quickly?” Kenak asked no one in particular.
“Because he wanted us to?” Donak suggested.
“Well, that's a good reason,” I replied.
The next morning, Donak rang us to say that Senya had left the hospital during the night and no one saw him leave or knew where he had gone.
About three weeks later, I was leaving the office to go home. I needed to stop by the Administration building to deliver some documents for my class, so instead of going through the elevated walkways, I was again walking across the dry dusty planet. At least this time, I was wearing running shoes.
It was winter, which meant the sun had set early and the planet had cooled off to a reasonable balmy temperature. It was very pleasant out and I was strolling along minding my own business when I spied Senya sitting on the stoop of a building. I recognized him immediately because of all that long, black, wavy hair. He was wearing the same worn, ill-fitting t-shirt and sweat pants and was smoking a cigarette. As I came upon the entrance way to the building, the silver light from his eyes shone in my direction.
“Hello Senya,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
He cocked his head and I felt again that fogginess in my brain for just a few moments.
“Shelly,” he pronounced.
“Very good,” I said and sat down on the step next to him. “You remembered. How are you doing?”
“Very good,” he replied but I think he was just echoing me because his inflection was wrong.
“Do you go to school here?” I asked. “At the Institute?”
He took a long drag on his cigarette and seemed to study me. I scooted away a little bit.
“Do you need anything, Senya? Would you like to speak with Dr. Kenak or Dr. Donak again?”
He exhaled smoke.
“Need go school here,” he said very slowly and nearly unintelligibly.
“Do you speak Rozarian, Senya?”
He laughed. “Need go school, speak Rozarian.”
“Yes, you do. You need to learn Rozarian,” I agreed. “What language do you speak?”
“Need learn Rozarian. Need learn English.”
“English?”
“Ay yah,” he nodded.
“Alright,” I said. “We can speak to Dr. Kenak tomorrow about that. Do you need a place to live too? Do you have any money?”
“Ay yah.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Very good.” He nodded, and finished his cigarette. After which, he tossed it in the air. It disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Okay,” I said, wondering where it went. “Can you come to our office tomorrow morning? Do you need anything else?”
“Ay yah. Need...need...”
“Yes?”
He held out his palm and instantly in it there appeared a pair of dark sunglasses. He put them on. Then he took them off again and drew a line with his finger along the top rim. He spoke rapidly in some other language and I didn’t have a clue what he was doing.
“Ok, Shelly,” he said and my brain went foggy again. I saw the black glasses and inside them was a chip which worked like a camera and sent digital signals to the optical nerves. They were sensory glasses for a blind person. My brain cleared and my own eyes grew wide.
“Yes, Shelly?” He nodded and handed me the glasses. I studied them, holding them up to my own eyes. These were normal, ordinary sunglasses.
“You need these made into sensory lenses?” I guessed.
“Ay yah,” he smiled broadly. “Sensory lenses. Very good, Shelly.”
“Ok.” He planted thoughts in your brain. He could move things by thoughts like a water pitcher and probably, he could take thoughts out of your brain too. He really was totally mutated.
I needed to share this with both Kenak and Donak right away. I would give Donak the sunglasses and tell him what to do wit
h them even though he wouldn’t believe that I'd ever heard of sensory lenses.
“Will you come to our office in the morning?” I asked a little anxiously, putting the sunglasses in my bag. “I'll tell Dr. Donak about the lenses and Dr. Kenak about the classes you wish to take. They'll be very happy to see you again and to help you with all this.” I waved nervously. “With all your…everything.”
“Yes, Shelly,” he replied and stood up. I stood up too. He towered over me. Living on Rozari, I had gotten used to small, thin, sickly looking people. Senya was easily over six foot tall, strong and healthy looking.
“Shelly,” he repeated and then said a bunch of stuff I could not understand.
“I'm glad we can help you, Senya.” I smiled and looked down at his weird mutated toenails because it was too hard to look up at his weird mutated eyes.
“Very good, Shelly,” he said and disappeared down the steps and out across the red dirt of the campus.
I rang Kenak who was ecstatic. I was certain he would be at the office from the first crack of daylight to wait for Senya’s arrival. Donak was less excitable but immediately started making calls to his doctor friends about sensory lenses.
“Who is this guy?” Tim grumbled at dinner that night.
“I don't know,” I replied, putting a pot roast on the table in front of him. Tim dug in like he was starving which was why he had quite a belly on him now. Tim told me that was fitting for an Admiral. Admirals were not supposed to look like they spent their days scrambling between the decks of a starship. “Kenak and Donak think he's a Karupta. They think there must be a colony of Karuptas left on the planet somewhere, maybe hidden in some mountain caves.”
“No one could have survived the nuclear onslaught that continent took,” Tim said with his mouth full. “It was not possible.”
“Well maybe they mutated and did survive. This guy has obviously mutated. He's got ESP powers and weird silver eyes. Maybe they are all like that now.”
Tim shook his head and wiped his face with a napkin.
“Not possible, Shelly. Nobody and nothing, not even the cockroaches, survived on the Karupatani continent. I don't care if they were a thousand feet deep, they were all toast. If there is a Karupta colony, it's got to be somewhere on this continent or he came back from the other planet, Rehnor."