Grendel Unit

by Bernard Schaffer

  Frank felt cool droplets trickling on his mouth and he opened his mouth to drink, tasting fresh water. He smiled as he swallowed.

  The woman smiled back at him, then took the silver goblet back and said, "Can you believe it? We finally did it."

  Frank looked at her in stunned silence. He knew her, but was not sure how. A beautiful woman, certainly, with dark eyes, liquid and languid, fixed on him. She was waiting for him to respond. "Did what?" he finally said.

  "That's clean water from the Andoho-Sky site. Your initiatives worked, Frank. That area is finally completely free of all the kerogel contaminants left behind from the explosion. We're all so proud of you. I'm so proud of you."

  She wrapped her arms around him and Frank held her, feeling her breasts crush against his chest and her narrow waist under his fingers. He closed his eyes and smelled her skin and hair and wondered if she might try and kiss him. Instead, she leaned back and said, "Vic wanted to tell you himself, of course, but I insisted."

  "He did?" Frank said, trying to mask the sour tone in his voice at hearing this beautiful woman say another man's name.

  "He'll never admit it, but you mean the world to him, Frank."

  Frank could not tear his eyes away from her. "Where is Vic, anyway?" Frank said.

  She rolled her eyes and said, "At the Round Table, as usual. Delegates from three systems arrived this morning, demanding reparations from Unification's colonization."

  "The Round Table?" Frank said, surprised.

  "Don't say it so sarcastically. You were the one who insisted on calling it that."

  Frank smiled nervously and said, "Of course. I was just kidding. How is Vic, anyway?"

  "I swear, that man of mine never sleeps. No wonder we don't have any children," she laughed. "Monster and Bob arrived yesterday. They brought their families with them, can you believe Bob is a grandfather now?"

  She turned away and headed up a series of marble steps, and Frank looked past her at the enormous building above them. He recognized the Presidential Palace from its large golden doors, the same ones he'd seen General Milner tossed through by a host of invisible guards. The building had changed. Gone were the security towers and flashing lights designed to baffle incoming vessels. Lethal countermeasures were no longer planted on either side of the door. In their place, now, were statues honoring the many races and species spread across the galaxy.

  Frank stopped and looked up, whispering, "What are we doing here?"

  She turned and looked back at him, smiling curiously when she said, "Frank, are you feeling all right?"

  "I'm fine," he said quickly.

  She looked worried. "Has your illness returned?"

  Frank held out his hands to show her that they were rock steady. "Not even a shiver. Look."

  She folded her arms across her chest and said, "I saw you meeting with the trade unions last week and you were hiding your hands in your pockets. You only do that when you're having an episode."

  He smiled at her, warmed by the idea of her watching him, and said, "I could never put anything past you, now could I? The truth is, I only get symptoms when I'm under stress. It's under control."

  She looked at him directly, "Are you telling me the truth?"

  "If they were this steady, Vic would never have removed me from Grendel Unit."

  Her face stiffened slightly, and Frank realized his voice had been more barbed than he'd intended. He smiled quickly and said, "Instead, he demoted me to the Vice Presidency."

  She laughed, glad to have the tension broken, and looped her arm through his. "You know, Vic says that appointing you Vice President was both the worst punishment and best reward he could have given you for all those years of making each other crazy. Poor him, having to stay here with me and run things while you're out cruising the galaxy, spreading democracy."

  Her words were a blur to him, coming at him like unusual geometric shapes that he could not define or fit into his mind. A name popped into his head above everything else and he snapped his fingers and blurted out, "Jessica!"

  She laughed slightly and said, "Yes, Frank?"

  He remembered the first time he'd seen her, staring at him and Vic on the computer screen aboard the Samsara. Jessica King, a soldier from a different time and place, peering through a wormhole at them. Vic was instantly smitten, and tried to convince her to come to him. Frank, if he'd been honest, had been smitten as well. "I'm just tired," he said. "I apologize, they recently changed my medication and it hasn't been letting me sleep much."

  He followed her up the steps, trying to unravel his tangled memories. How had she come through the wormhole? When did Vic become President of Unification? Why did he feel as if he was a stranger in his own body?

  "Frank, can I ask you something?" Jessica said.

  "Anything."

  "Do you remember when Vic proposed to me?"

  He looked at her sideways, unsure of how to respond. "Mostly," he said. "I was drinking heavily that day."

  "I told you I wasn't sure if he was the kind who could be happily married. That he'd spent too many years in the service and floating around space to ever settle down. I asked you, as his best friend, if I should marry him. For a moment, I thought you might try and convince me to run off you with you instead. Can you believe that?"

  Frank swallowed hard, trying to keep himself steady. He forced a smile and said, "That would have been something, right?"

  She rolled her eyes and said, "I don't know what I was thinking. But then you looked at me and you said the strangest thing."

  "I did?" he said.

  "How drunk were you?" she laughed. "You said that Vic had been looking for me for years, and that there was no way he would ever lose me again." She looked down at him from the steps, eyes searching his own, seeking their own answers. "I never asked you what you meant, but it's stayed with me all these years. What did you mean by that, Frank?"

  Frank blinked several times, trying to formulate some kind of answer. "I meant," he said slowly, cursing the fog covering his mind, "That…Vic had been trying to find someone worth settling down for. That's all."

  "But you said lose me again. I remember very specifically. How did he lose me the first time?"

  "Like I said, I was pretty drunk," he offered.

  Before Jessica could respond, the doors to the Presidential Palace burst open to the uproar of a dozen children racing through, shouting out, "Uncle Frank!" He was attacked by small humans and mantipors alike, their tiny hands grabbing for Frank, their tiny faces smiling brightly. Frank looked down at these children whose names he did not know, and whose faces he could not recall, but found himself reaching to pick them up and embrace them anyway. They kissed his face with soft lips and nuzzled against his neck with their fur, and he laughed when they said his name over and over.

  Jessica was staring at him from the top of the stairs, shaking her head. "Why didn't you ever find someone to settle down with Frank? I always thought you'd be an excellent father."

  He picked up the tiniest one, a female mantipor with her fur done up in a small ponytail, and he squeezed her against his chest. She giggled and nuzzled him as he stroked her velvety ears. Jessica watched him, her large, dark eyes pouring into him like some kind of liquid, filling him in wherever pieces were missing. He looked back at her and said, "I guess the right person just never came along for me."

  Frank gazed into the flickering fire long after the image of Jessica King staring at him had dissolved from sight. He shivered in the desert wind. It was cold beneath the open sky, and the wall of screaming devils had fled, leaving just him and the old mantipor sitting together in the dirt. Frank breathed slowly, trying to collect his thoughts while Bismaht poked the fire with a long stick, knocking lengths of ash away and pushing aside dead branches.

  "Which of them is most likely to come true?" Frank said. "Can you at least tell me that?"

  "All of them. None of them. Who can say?" Bismaht muttered. "Not important. Our will, our efforts, or hope
s and fears, these are just castles built of sand along the water of time, young healer. Even the greatest will be washed away and laid flat by the tides." He looked at Frank and smiled briefly, "But that doesn't stop anyone from trying."

  The fire was dying in the wind, its bright flames withering away like the faces and things Frank had seen in his visions. Everything had been so vivid and true, but as the images evaporated, he felt as if he'd been cored out from within. He turned to the old, wizened being, and said, "So what do I need to do now?"

  "Now?"

  "Yes, now," Frank said. "With everything that you've shown me."

  Bismaht smiled at him again, long strands of his fur blowing softly in the breeze, and he said, "That's simple. You need to wake up."

  Frank gasped and bolted upright, sweat streaming down his face and stinging his eyes as he gaped at the sleeping mantipor warriors that surrounded him. His shirt was soaked through, so cold in the morning air that it stung his skin. He collapsed back into the dirt and stared up at the pale blue sky, gasping for air. "What the…hell did I drink last night?" he groaned, pressing his hands to his temples. "That stuff in the horn is definitely not safe for humans."

  He heard someone yelling and the sound of hydraulic hissing as their ship's door opened. "Hey! Hey!" Bob Buehl was shouting.

  "Oh, shut up, Bob," Frank moaned, clutching his face.

  A dozen mantipors lying in the dirt around him echoed the sentiment.

  "Get up!" Buehl cried. "Where's Vic? He has to see this. Look!"

  Frank rolled over onto one elbow and squinted, shielding his eyes from the sharp sunlight as he made out the small holocube on the ground, and the large display projected above it. The image was bright and crisp, showing the tips and flats of a mountain range in the distance, and the hulking image of Gratersfield Penitentiary.

  28. No Quarter

  Dim light streaked through the cell door's bars, slashing the filthy floor like the claws of some great beast. The prisoner chained to the wall in the cell across the hall was eyeing him hard, saying things like, "Why ain't you chained up like the rest of us? You better 'en us or what?"

  He kept quiet and folded his hands between his knees, leaning forward on the bare mattress of his bunk, staring at the wall in front of him. He had measured every inch of the walls and ceiling during his brief time in captivity. Of all the inmates at Gratersfield, a prison famous for never confining its inmates, he was the only one kept behind a locked door. The other inmates had unlimited access to one another. It was one of the horrors prisoners had to endure. It was a good way of keeping the population down.

  Like any other governmental institution, Gratersfield had a budget. Money allocated for the expenses of feeding so many inmates. And like any other institution, that budgetary number never went down, it only increased. The less inmates to feed, the bigger the take for prison administrators.

  Today was different. Today was special. For the first time in the prison's history, every prisoner had been ordered to their cells and chained to the walls. Every single prisoner, except one.

  "You ain't chained up, but your door's always locked," the prisoner continued. "You some kind of special something, then? They afraid to let us commoners mix with you?"

  He laughed slightly at that but still did not look up.

  "They chained every prisoner up in this place, 'cept you," the prisoner demanded, shaking his arms to rattle the iron lengths. "I want to know why!"

  "Shut up, down there!" another prisoner shouted from a distant cell. "The screw's coming."

  "Screw the effing screw!" the prisoner shouted back. "This bastard sits in there while all of us get chained up, missing meals, missing collections, an' I want an answer." He turned back, eyes glistening angrily. "Look at me when I'm speaking!"

  He did not look.

  "You think I'm joking? You a believer, mate? Ay, you a believer in the Human God? Book says non-believers is fair game. You fair game, then?"

  He did not look.

  The prisoner yanked on his chains and snapped forward like a leashed dog, "I say you got alien blood in you, an' you're a non-human. That some alien scum buggered your poor human mother an' she shat you out, what you think of that?"

  Heavy, armored boots stomped in procession as they entered the level, the sound of their hydraulics and pistons echoing in the corridor.

  "Now we'll see what all this is about, I reckon," the prisoner said, smiling to show a row of stubby brown teeth. "Won't we, son of a sludgesucker? Ain't that right?"

  Lights flared in the darkness, bathing everything in unbearable brightness. He squinted and raised his hands to shield his face, trying to make out the figures coming toward his cell. Their robotic suits slowed to a stop and the first guard said, "General Milner, your President awaits you."

  "Ha!" the prisoner shouted. "An effing General? This Unification trash is the reason we've all been sittin' here, ˗"

  The guard turned toward the prisoner, unleashing a sudden barrage of heavy fire from the cannon mounted on his shoulder. The prisoner's body jolted against the concrete wall, his limbs flopping uncontrollably until the barrage ceased.

  Smoke filled the corridor as the prisoner slumped forward in his chains, dead. The gun on the guard's shoulder whined to a stop and he turned and looked up and down the hall, waiting for someone else to speak. No one did.

  "Get up, General. It's time to go."

  The guards moved into a defensive formation as they prepared to unlock the cell, and General Milner stood up calmly and put his hands behind his back. His days of fighting were over. His thoughts turned to his son, whom he'd conditioned himself never to think of. Whose memory he purposely avoided in an effort to remain strong. To be a good soldier. Now, he gave those memories full reign, wanting to remember every single detail of the boy's life and their time together. It had been, he realized, the best time of his life.

  "Hold your hands out in front of you and don't move," the guard said.

  Milner did as he was told and heard the soft buzz of an electrical device humming to life. He looked down as they lowered a pair of circuited cuffs onto his wrists and clapped them shut. The cuffs vibrated softly against his skin, causing the hair on his arms to tingle.

  The guard showed him the bright yellow bracelet wrapped around his left gauntlet and said, "Any movement you make that I don't want you to make, they're going to shock you. Make me mad, and I'll let it shock you bad enough to wet your pants. I'll make sure the camera gets a real good look at how you pissed yourself in terror at facing justice for your crimes, you understand?"

  The General closed his eyes and thought of his son. He was going to see him again very soon.

  Feral animals howled from deep inside the canyons. Unfettered things that had survived on a planet with such little natural sustenance hid in the mountains beyond the prison. Gratersfield inmates were welcome to leave anytime they desired. The front gate was always open. On a good month, half a dozen defeated souls would wander through the gate and trek into the canyons.

  Eventually, the beasts of the hills would find them, and their screams would echo for miles.

  President Wolmar looked at the stooped man standing next to him and smiled thinly. Warden Drexel was a sniveling, sycophantic worm with darting black eyes. He'd set himself up a right little kingdom on this barren rock, far from the prying eyes of Unification overseers. The little bastard had even hand-picked the choicest female inmates and allowed them to work as his personal secretaries, no doubt threatening to cast them back down into the pits if they did not do every sick little pleasure he demanded of them.

  In other words, Wolmar thought, he is absolutely perfect for what I have in mind.

  Men like Drexel were worth their weight in gold, because they could be controlled. They wanted definitive things. Power. Money. Sex. These were benefits a President could bestow in great multitudes, if he was feeling generous. Even better, they were entitlements he could take away when displeased.

 
Here, you lord over these scum, Wolmar looked at Drexel and thought. But it is I who will throw you to the pits if you disappoint me.

  Drexel nodded at the President's fine white tunic and the numerous awards decorating it and said, "I admire your uniform very much, my lord. I should enjoy hearing how you earned each and every medal."

  Wolmar's eyes narrowed, "Have you never heard of Unification's many engagements securing the safety of her citizenry?"

  "Of-Of course, my lord. I stay very abreast of everything," Drexel said quickly.

  "When any common foot soldier pulls the trigger, he does so in my name, Drexel. When any General issues a command, it is only done as an extension of my authority." He looked past the Warden, looking at the prisoner, and said, "Isn't that right, General?"

  General Milner grunted and cursed through the dirty rags stuffed in his mouth as the guards shoved him forward. The shackles binding his wrists came alive, sending jolts of electricity through his arms until he moved.

  Wolmar nodded at Drexel and said, "Everything done throughout this galaxy bears my mark. They do not make enough medals and ribbons for all that I have done, do you understand?"

  "Perfectly, my lord," Drexel said, lowering his head and backing away like a shamed pet.

  There was a group of dignitaries assembled behind a hovering camera, with the members of a broadcast team checking and rechecking they system. The President nodded toward the crowd and said, "Prepare yourselves, for you are about to witness history." He glanced at the camera and said, "Are you ready?"

  A voice crackled from a small speaker mounted to the camera, "We have all channels cleared and ready to receive your message, Mr. President."

  Wolmar nodded, closed his eyes, and took a deep, preparatory breath. When he opened them again, he said, "Begin filming."

  The voice in the speaker said, "You're live in one-two-three. Action!"