by M. D. Cooper
So before I left, I asked Murry to find someone for you too. He told me he’s sending along a young man named Malcolm Spearpoint. He’s done all his training, but he doesn’t have any practical experience yet. He’s very keen to learn, though. Should be a big help to you. You’ll certainly need him when those blue whales are ready to be born. What beauties! I admit I was jealous, but I’ll look forward to seeing them heading up my way one day.
Have fun with your new assistant. No need to thank me.
Cameron’
Martin cursed.
said Martin.
Martin barely heard Eamon’s attempts to put his situation in a good light. He was struggling to grasp the idea of another person working with him on his project. What could he trust this Malcolm with? Nothing. He couldn't think of a single task that he would feel happy about handing over to someone else.
Cameron was an idiot. He might be okay with sharing his workload, but Martin most certainly was not.
But what could he do? This Malcolm—or ‘Sand Man’, as Martin was beginning to think of him—had arrived expecting to have an apprenticeship awaiting him. Could Martin turn him away? What would he tell Murry, after the AI had gone to the trouble of finding him? And, after all, almost everything Martin knew, he’d learned by working with experts. It would be churlish of him to deny someone else the same opportunity.
Yet every fiber of his being rebelled against the idea of another person taking over some of his responsibilities. No one else would do as good a job as he would. It wasn’t possible.
Martin cursed again. He couldn’t think of a way out of the situation.
Grimacing as he resigned himself to his fate, he set his shoulders and entered his home once more. While he’d been gone, Malcolm had left his seat and was now standing in Martin’s kitchen. The sand trail told the tale, even if the young man hadn’t been right in front of him, cooking.
Cooking. In Martin’s own kitchen. With Martin’s food.
Malcolm asked brightly. “Did you get it done?”
“Did I get what done?”
“The thing you forgot to do.”
“Oh. Uh, yes.”
“Great. So you’re back.”
It was all Martin could do to prevent himself from replying, ‘Well spotted’.
“Yes,” he said instead. “Uh, there’s no need for you to do that.”
“Oh, I’m happy to,” said Malcolm. “I love cooking. It’s one of my favorite hobbies, you know. And I want to pull my weight while I’m here—I don’t want to be a drain on your time. I’m here to help, and to learn.”
He gave Martin a grin and then returned his attention to lunch.
“Great,” Martin said. “That’s just great.”
HEAT
STELLAR DATE: 03.17.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Crystal Cave, Mount Ida Caverns
REGION: Tyre, New Canaan System
Isa was hot. Unbearably hot. Her clothes clung to her, soaked in sweat, and her hair was plastered to her head. She pushed away the strands sticking to her face. Where was she? All she could see were white geometrically shaped blocks. Was she dreaming? She struggled to sit up. Something sharp had dug a painful ridge in her back. As she pushed her upper half to a sitting position, more of the white blocks came into view.
Where the hell am I?
The events of the previous few hours began to flash into Isa’s mind. She’d taken the chute through Mount Athos. Then she’d flown the pinnace to…. She remembered the gold in the cave’s walls. And a lake. And crystals.
She was in the crystal cave. What had happened to her? She’d been taking in the wonder of the place, then she seemed to remember becoming confused.
Did I pass out due to the heat? Or maybe I tripped and hit my head?
Still groggy, she managed to orientate herself and remember the return route to the tunnel. She turned on her knees, rose and crawled, then rose and staggered, weaving, to the cave’s exit. Once she was through it, the moving air in the tunnel hit her like a wave of fresh, cool water. Isa dropped to the floor, unable to move any farther. She lay on her stomach, resting the side of her face on the chilly stone. Her head hurt so much, she could hardly focus her vision or her mind.
Isa silently thanked herself for dropping the Link relays. Though she’d finally come around, she didn’t think she could make it all the way out of the cave without help, and so few people visited the place, she might not have been found until it was too late.
Isa’s heart rate was slowing, and the ache on the right side of her head had eased a notch. She tried to recall her last memory before she heard Onyx speaking to her. She’d gone into the cave of crystals and had been amazed by the sight of them.
Then…
Isa closed her eyes as she tried to concentrate. She recalled feeling panicky and trapped.
No. Not trapped. Abandoned. She’d been terrified that she was being left behind.
A horrible familiarity swept over her. The memory of her strange mental attack had returned. Before she’d lost awareness of where she was, Isa had been experiencing one of her habitual nightmares. It was one of a few that still visited her with depressing regularity. One of the nightmares entailed reliving a moment when she’d nearly died, after a Lumin supervisor had refused to supply new respirators to the Noctus mining teams. That was the most common one. The nightmare she’d just experienced was another. It wasn’t based in reality, only fear. In the dream, she’d missed her group’s desperate escape attempt, to remain stuck
in slavery to the Lumins for the rest of her life.
But up until then, the nightmare had only visited her while she was sleeping. This time she’d been fully awake. What had triggered it? Had it been the enclosed conditions or the heat? It was odd. Right when the delusion had struck, she’d been elated at the breathtaking sight of the crystal cave. Had her heightened emotion sparked some kind of psychological crash, taking her to the opposite extreme? Perhaps that had been it.
With an effort, Isa turned onto her back and lay gazing up at the crystal-striped ceiling. Perhaps somewhere deep inside, she’d decided she was too happy. Ever since she’d come out of stasis and learned of the fate of the people she’d left behind, she’d struggled to come to grips with what had happened at Kapteyn’s Star after the colonists left.
Underlying every moment of pleasure and joy was a sense of guilt. She had been so lucky in her life. Too lucky. All the Noctus that had been left behind at Sirius had remained in slavery. Everyone who had remained behind at the Kap had died. She was a survivor of survivors. What had she done to deserve her happy, easy life? Nothing. Or at least, she’d done no more than others who had died—in many ways she’d done a lot less. What right did she have to see places like the golden cavern or the crystal cave? Why should she be in a loving relationship with two wonderful people when so many thousands had never had that chance?
The sound of running footsteps came echoing down the tunnel, distracting Isa from her melancholy thoughts.
Isa lifted her head to peer up at the approaching sound. Two figures were speeding toward her, carrying equipment slung over their shoulders. In a few moments, the man and woman were at her side.
“Isa, I’m just going to check you over,” the woman said. They quickly assessed her, and then the woman pressed the cold, metal end of a transfuser to her neck, passing fluids directly into her bloodstream. A few moments later, Isa felt her heart slow to its normal rhythm, and her uncomfortable, overheated feeling dissipate.
“Do you feel any pain anywhere?” the man asked.
“No, I don’t,” Isa replied. “I feel fine. Much better since you gave me that.” She moved to sit up.
The woman stopped her, saying, “Please stay still for now. I have to say, you’re the shortest Noctus I’ve ever seen.”
When Isa rolled her eyes, the medic continued, “Sorry, I guess people must say that to you all the time.”
The man’s eyes were kind as he said, “We’ve given you something to return your temperature to normal, but we don’t want to take any chances until we’re sure you’re okay.”
“Did you come all the way from the capital?” Isa asked.
“Yes, we did. There aren’t enough people out here to justify staffing a medical base in the area. Otherwise we would have gotten here sooner. Of course, you being a few kilometers underground didn’t help.” He swiftly grinned. “I think you must be our deepest rescue. What do you think, Stefana?”
“I’d say so,” said the woman.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked.
“I feel much better,” Isa said. “I think I could even stand.”
“Wait a moment,” the medic said. He scanned her again. “You do seem to be over whatever was ailing you, but we’ve brought an a-grav gurney to bring you out. It’s going to be safer to do it that way. Then the doctor at the hospital can give you the all-clear before you try anything as ambitious as standing.”
Isa protested that she felt fine and wanted to leave the cave system the same way she came in: on her own two feet. But the medics wouldn’t hear of it, telling her that it was still quite the hike out of the cave, and they’d be chewed out by their superiors if they allowed a patient to walk out after a collapse.
They set up the gurney, and Isa relented, climbing onto it even though she felt embarrassed and dumb. Straps slid out from the gurney’s sides and snaked over her body, securing her firmly as the medics set her discarded gear—barring the a-grav harness, which the man slung over his back—by her feet. With the medics stationed at her head and toes, the procession set off.
Though Isa understood the need for the medics’ approach, frustration ate at her throughout the journey they undertook to leave the cave system. Her feelings were in marked contrast to what they had been on the way in. The golden cavern didn’t hold the same charms when she returned through it flat on her back, either, and the swallows at the entrance were no longer so enchanting.
As the journey up through the caverns and tunnels carried on, Isa found herself glad for the a-grav stretcher, though she still felt embarrassed at being taken out like an invalid.
“What’ll happen to my pinnace?” she asked the medics as the gurney approached their ambulance. “I don’t want to leave it behind.”
“Just tell it to follow us,” Stefana replied. “You can park it in the hospital’s lot. There’s plenty of space. We have hardly any patients. Not that it isn’t a good thing, but you’ll find things are quiet at the hospital; just kids who have fallen out of trees, and women giving birth. The doctors will be pleased to have something different to do.”
Isa noticed a drone hovering overhead. “What’s that doing there?” she asked. “Is that one of yours?”
Stefana squinted up at the drone. “No, it’s a news drone. Word must have gotten out about your rescue.”
“You mean I’m going to be on the news?” Isa asked.
“Unless something more interesting happens on Tyre today, you are. Sorry.”
“Well that’s just great.”
During the entire ride back to Ushu, Isa debated with herself about what she was going to tell the doctors when they asked what had happened. Despite years of nightmares and sudden attacks of anxiety, panic, and overwhelming sadness, Isa had never sought medical help for her problems. She wasn’t sure why. In the odd, rare moments when she really thought about it, she came to believe that her difficulties were her penance for surviving when so many others had died. If she sought medical help and achieved a cure of some kind, might that only increase her guilt?
She guessed that there was one guaranteed solution for her problems: memory erasure. Her most painful memories could be wiped from her mind so effectively that not even her subconscious would bring them up again. She would be entirely cured. Though she knew she was being perverse, that was the last thing she wanted.
At the hospital, a doctor quickly assessed that, physically, she was absolutely fine. Then, as she’d feared, he wanted to talk about other causes for her episode. He mentioned words like “disassociation” and “fugue.” As Stefana had predicted, he seemed a little excited about the different possibilities.
Isa told him she had to visit the bathroom; she needed time to collect her thoughts. Looking at herself in the mirror as she washed her hands, she came to a decision about what she would tell him.
When she returned to the examination room, the doctor said, “So, if we can go back to the beginning again, can you tell me the last thing you remember before you heard Onyx advising you to leave the cave?”
“I think I was just admiring the crystals. And I felt hot, but not so hot that I was uncomfortable. I guess I must have overheated, though.”
“Your body temperature was too high, yes. But not until you’d been inside the cave for a considerable length of time. I think the overheating came after you entered your odd mental state. As far as I can tell, you didn’t faint. Even if I didn’t have the brain wave readings that Onyx made, I would expect to see an injury from falling suddenly unconscious, but you have none. What I do know is that you seemed to be thinking intensely. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I see. Have you ever had anything similar happen to you? Like strong memories resurfacing at odd moments?”
“No.”
“Right. Do you suffer from nightmares?”
“
No.”
“Hmm…” The doctor tapped his chin. “Well, I have to confess I don’t know what to make of what happened to you. The best I can suggest from the evidence is that you were intensely distracted by something, something that caused you to forget where you were and what you were doing. Are you sure you don’t remember anything like that?”
“No, nothing at all.”
“Okay. Well, your scans are entirely normal, so I’m not too worried. Hopefully this will turn out to be a one-off, idiopathic incident. However, if anything like it happens to you again, I would suggest further investigation including a psychological evaluation.”
Psychological evaluation.
The words caused Isa to inwardly shudder. He was right, though. That was what she needed. The ghosts of her past were haunting her, and they were becoming more insistent, intruding into her waking hours.
But she would never avail herself of the treatment.
* * * * *
When Isa walked out of the hospital, it was early evening. She decided to head back to her hotel and eat in her room before going to bed. After a good sleep, she would be able to put the day’s events behind her and return to making her infomentary.
Three people were standing in a group just outside the exit, and, to Isa’s surprise, one of them walked over to her.
“Isa Chen?”
“Yes,” Isa replied, even more surprised.
“I’m Samuel.” He held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Rather confused, Isa shook his hand. Then she wondered, warily, if this was something to do with the news drone recording her rescue. Was this man a reporter who wanted to hear her story?
“I’m sorry about what happened to you. Are you feeling better?” Samuel asked.
“I am, thanks.”
“That’s great. I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself. I’m a friend of Tony’s. I heard about what you’re doing on Tyre, and I’d like to help. Tony suggested that maybe my friends and I could be your informal guides.”
“Tony?” Isa’s mind did a retake. “Oh, Tony. You know him? He didn’t mention any people he knew on Tyre.”