They entered an elevator, rode up several floors and exited. They were expected. A very youthful looking officer saluted Radin and the other officer, and motioned them down the hall. As they walked behind their youthful escort, he turned nervously, unsure of whether or not he should convey the news he had, “Ah… he regained consciousness for a few minutes a while back.”
Radin nodded his thanks and asked, “How long ago?”
“About half an hour.”
They arrived at a door posted with two guards. One of the guards saluted and opened the door. They walked in.
Adamarus lay on a hospital bed covered by a sheet – not much could be seen, though something green seemed to cover half of his head. They could see tubes going into his nose and into both arms. The wall behind was filled with monitors. Like a cliché, the only sound was a beeping that kept rhythm to his heart. A nurse stood to the left of the bed with a clipboard, checking the monitors. She turned when they entered and nodded to them.
Grace and Radin approached the bed. Tanya lingered near the door, staying behind with Nero. Grace’s hand went to her mouth as more became visible. What looked like a semi-transparent green gel sack came up the left side of Adamarus’ neck and continued up, covering the left side of his face and head. The right side of his face was mostly visible except for a small bandage on his cheek. Most of what was visible was swollen and bruised – discolored in dark purple with yellow around the edges, but this was on his forehead and along his jaw line. The one eye they could see was closed, but there was no bruising around it. His mouth was slightly open. His lips looked dry and cracked and there were several small cuts.
Grace took all this in as she approached wide-eyed. A tear trickled down her cheek. Radin stayed behind her. She approached until her face was six inches from Adamarus’ and she stayed there for what seemed like a long time. Suddenly she backed away shaking her head. She bumped into Radin who put his hands on her shoulders and backed away with her. When she spoke, it was a strained whisper, “No… this is wrong. Very wrong.” She started to shake.
Leaving Nero standing near the door, Tanya came forward. Radin, a concerned look on his face, handed a badly shaking Grace off to her, then turned and took a closer look at Adamarus’ face. Yes, he thought, something’s not right, but at first, he could not figure it out. He could hear Grace’s shaking voice behind him, “He’s not right… not right…” Then Radin saw it. Adamarus’ hair had no gray. But there was more. It had been reddish brown before age had dulled the color. Now the color was back and had a healthy sheen to it. Then he noticed the skin, although bruised and battered, there were no wrinkles, no sagging. Adamarus looked 20 years younger.
Radin continued to stare in amazement as he straightened up. He was about to turn when Adamarus’ visible eye fluttered open. He looked up at Radin and smiled slightly, then said, “Radin.” It was a hoarse croak. He cleared his throat and continued in a clearer voice, “You look like shit.”
Radin just stared down in shock. Behind him Grace cried out “Adamarus!” and rushed forward moving Radin out of the way, but then she stopped, the wrongness she had yet to identify holding her back.
Adamarus’ eye shined ever so slightly, “Grace, my love. I’m so sorry.” His face went sad for a second, then he smiled again, “I guess…” he made that familiar “innocent” expression of his, “I zigged when I should have zagged.”
Whatever had seemed wrong to Grace dissolved and all previous doubts and barriers went down. She threw herself on him, tears running down her cheeks. Then, overcome with emotion, she started softly hitting his chest. “You!” she cried, “You said… you promised…”
“Hey, hey,” Adamarus whispered, “take it easy.”
“Promised!” she continued, then seemed to run out of steam, “promised…you’d be careful,” she ended with a whimper, her voice cracking.
Adamarus was drifting off again. He replied in a slurred voice, “I tried to be, my love… I’m sorry.”
Grace, realizing he was tiring, lifted away and composed herself. She ran her fingers lightly across his eyebrow, trying to avoid the bruised areas. “I know honey. I know.”
Adamarus’ visible eye opened larger for a second, “You forgive me?”
“Yes.” Grace gave up on avoiding the discolored areas and her hand brushed his cheek.
Drifting off again, Adamarus said, “Good… good… don’t want you mad…”
Grace continued to brush his cheek as Adamarus looked at her with his one good eye half closed. At that moment she saw it and confusion clouded her face. Adamarus noticed her puzzlement and with a slight tilt of his head asked, “What?”
She replied with wonder in her voice, “You look like a young man again.”
Thinking it was some kind of joke, a very tired laugh burst from Adamarus. “Well,” he whispered, “I sure don’t feel like it,” and his eye closed.
The group left Adamarus sleeping in his room and emerged into the hallway with questions, questions that suddenly seemed anticipated as a doctor approached them. “Mrs. Maximus?” She nodded. “I’m Doctor Kallen, your husband’s primary physician.” Grace held out her hand and he took it and shook it once. “May I… ah… verify something with you?” Grace released his hand and stared at him. “How old is your husband?”
---
The door was closed, blinds were shut and they sat around a large mahogany table. It was just Dr. Kallen, Leewood and Harrington. All of them were looking down at various test results spread out on the table.
Dr. Kallen was saying, “… so after you classified the test results, I had Adamarus’ name removed and replaced by a number,” he pointed this out on several of the forms, “so the people conducting the tests would not know who was being tested.”
“Excellent,” Leewood said. “What have you found?”
“Most results were normal or expected given the patient’s condition. But what is extraordinary is, by our best estimate, the patient is twenty-two years younger than he was just a week ago.” Both Leewood and Harrington looked up at Kallen, speechless. Kallen ruffled through the stack of reports and pulled out several. “However,” Dr. Kallen shook his head as he shuffled through the sheets reviewing the data again, “what’s even more astounding is this.” He laid the test results on the table before Leewood and Harrington. Both glanced at them, but since neither could understand what they were looking at, they looked back at Kallen.
“First, Adamarus’ immune system has been boosted – actually supercharged is a better description. I doubt he’ll ever get sick again. I wish we knew how to do this.” He let that settle in then continued, “However, the most astounding part was the report from the Molecular Biology Clinic…” he looked up at them, “it seems that Adamarus is no longer aging.”
---
As the sun set on the third day since the alien ship had landed, Adamarus woke up starving. The alien green gel-pack covering half his head had turned gray around the edges. Seeing this, the nurse called Dr. Kallen immediately.
“How are you feeling?”
“Very hungry. Other than that, I actually feel great.”
“Well,” Dr. Kallen said, “For a fifty-two-year-old man who’s been through what you have, you’re looking pretty good.”
Adamarus detected something in the doctor’s tone but ignored it as his wife came in behind the doctor and smiled at him. But he saw something in her eyes he could not ignore. He looked back at the doctor, “Okay, what’s going on that I don’t know?”
In reply, the doctor went to the metal end table beside the bed, opened a drawer, took out a large round mirror and handed it to Adamarus. Adamarus took this the wrong way and didn’t immediately look in it. First he looked at his wife—she looked nervous—then back at the doctor, “So that bit about me looking good was… what? A joke?” The doctor just gestured toward the mirror. Adamarus steeled himself and looked. He had expected anything but what he saw. He actually jumped and fumbled the mirror. In it, it s
eemed to Adamarus that a teenager looked back at him. “What the hell? What have you done to me?”
“Not us, the aliens. Frankly, we don’t know how you can be alive, let alone…” he motioned towards Adamarus’ face. “Actually we were hoping you might know something. Do you remember anything?”
Adamarus had a blurred memory of hills… one seemed to be moving towards him and then there was a terrible noise, so loud, impossibly loud. He looked up at the doctor, “I had a strange dream, but no, it’s all a blank. Is this…” Adamarus pointed at his face, “permanent?”
“Do you mean are you going to look your age again? Adamarus, we don’t know anything for sure. Hopefully, we can ask them and get some answers. However, from everything we can see, it looks like the answer is that it’s permanent. In every way we can tell, except for your memories, you’re a young man of about thirty again.”
Adamarus stared off into the distance. “Thirty,” he whispered.
The nurse wheeled a tray in with Adamarus’ dinner. As she positioned the tray and raised the bed, the doctor said they’d talk later and left Adamarus staring numbly off into the distance. After a minute he looked at Grace and slowly shook his head.
Grace said, “Eat your dinner, honey.”
Adamarus, remembering his hunger, dug into his dinner with a passion. As he stuffed the first large forkful into this mouth, he noticed his son standing beside his wife. “Nero!” he shouted, food almost falling out of his mouth. Nero ran to him and got a messy hug and kiss.
Grace followed behind, “Adamarus! That’s disgusting!” Both father and son looked guilty for a second, then Adamarus shoved more food in his mouth and they all started laughing.
But then Nero said, “Daddy, you look different.”
The laughter died briefly before the parents picked it back up for the child’s benefit. Grace said, “Daddy has gotten a lot of rest in here, that’s all it is.”
“And good food,” said Adamarus raising his fork.
Nero looked back and forth between his dad and his mom then said, “Can Mommy come here and get some rest too?”
---
By the end of the fourth day, the special team had set up a temporary base of operations just outside the force field using three high tech vans that had arrived at the airport earlier that day. These had all the latest gear, computers and communications equipment. This had been De Bella’s doing and it had scored points with everyone. This had been sorely needed for none of the team had been happy with the announcement that they’d be reporting to the congressman. The state of the art vans had served to boost the spirits of the team.
All of their eardrums had been perforated by the blaring message from the ship and all six members still wore white bandages around their heads. They were half-deaf, had to holler at each other to be heard and felt foolish as hell. On top of all this, their two half-hour talks with Captain Maximus had only revealed that he knew next to nothing about the aliens.
The team had split up, Harrington and one of the agents had gone back to the hospital to talk to Adamarus again while Leewood and the other three agents had stayed with the vans to watch the ship and allow Leewood to update De Bella.
They had not told Adamarus that the aliens were insisting on talking only to him as De Bella had decided that this was absolutely unacceptable. He was determined to cut Adamarus out of the picture.
Later the team had regrouped and for several hours inspected the blockades around the city that the police and the national guard had set up to keep out the thousands of people intelligence reported were on the way there “to greet the aliens.” Thereafter, they returned to the ship and, on orders from De Bella, had used a bull horn and tried unsuccessfully for over an hour to start up some kind of dialog with the ship.
Now they sat around drinking coffee and eating donuts under a large canopy that had been erected. They had been going all day and all night and it was cold and threatening to snow.
The police securing the immediate area had settled into patrols and the special team was left by themselves. They all needed showers and sleep but were just too tired to deal with it.
They decided each would keep watch for two-hour shifts while the others got some sleep. The vans had heaters and cots that were actually quite comfortable. Harrington volunteered for the first watch; Leewood took the second.
The five men taking the first four-hour sleep period moved to the vans. Leewood had just lain down when the side door slid open. It was Harrington. “Something’s going on.” All five piled back out of the vans.
“This had better be good,” one of agents said with a yawn.
The ship had landed backed up against a steep hill. In front, there was about 500 feet of flat ground between the ship and the force field. Before this area had been nothing but dirt and weeds. Now a large circle, perhaps 300 feet in diameter, had appeared on the ground. Using binoculars, they determined that the circle was formed by a flat area with no weeds that rose up about four inches from the surrounding area.
---
“Good morning, Adamarus. How are we feeling today?” Dr. Kallen said as he briskly walked into the room. It was the next day. He went to the window and opened the blinds, letting in the bland light of the cold and cloudy day.
Adamarus had a scowl on his face, “‘We’ are feeling great. Like a kid.”
Dr. Kallen sat on the edge of the bed, “But not in a very good mood.” The doctor reached over and inspected Adamarus’ ears—each had a small hearing aid inserted. He removed the right one and inspected the inner ear.
“I’m fifty-two years old, not… not this.”
Kallen paused and sighed, “Most people would be ecstatic over finding themselves twenty years younger.”
“I’ve got a fifty-year-old wife whom I love very much. We’re supposed to be growing old together. Does that make sense?”
Dr. Kallen removed the other hearing aid, inspected that ear, then replaced one of the hearing aids and smiled. “Well, she might like the, ah… extra energy you’ll have now?”
Adamarus forced a smile, “You think?”
“Your ears were badly damaged and I’m afraid they are not healing as well as expected with these hearing aids in them. I want to remove them, at least for a few days, and see if that helps. We’ll pack your ears with a gel and we’ll have to bandage them. You won’t be hearing very well for a few days.”
Adamarus just nodded then said, “I need to talk to my saviors about my age.”
---
By noon, snow had started falling. The special team had all gone to the hotel in shifts to shower and change clothes. Leewood and Harrington had taken the first watch on site. Sitting in patio chairs under the tarp, they sipped coffee and watched as the 300-foot circle continued to rise up from the ground. Infrared images had confirmed that the structure had a higher temperature than the ground around it. Now, it was obvious. The snow was not collecting on the raised area, it was melting and forming puddles. Steam rose up, making the circle easier to see. The growth moved so slowly that you couldn’t really see it rising, but they estimated that it was coming up about two inches an hour. It was just growing out of the ground. It was very spooky. They had concluded that some sort of nanotechnology was being used. Now instead of a completely flat circle, its center had stopped rising and only about two feet on the circumference continued to rise up: walls, someone had guessed correctly. The aliens were definitely building something.
They sat huddled in their wet gear with their thoughts, neither one speaking—both just waiting for the shift to change so they could go to their rooms, call room service, shower, change the bandages on their ears, get some sleep and a change of clothes.
---
It happened at the end of the fourth day. In the middle of the night, a reporter dressed like a doctor managed to slip past security and sneak into Adamarus’ room. Adamarus stared at him as he took out a small video recorder and, pointing it at him asked, “Hey, what can you tell us abou
t the aliens?”
Adamarus couldn’t hear a word but got the gist reading the reporters lips. He pointed at the bandages wrapped around his head and shrugged, “They’re loud.”
Suddenly the door burst open and the reporter was grabbed from behind by several security officers. They grabbed his video recorder and wrestled him out of the room. The security officer who seemed to have the highest rank lingered behind and apologized to Adamarus, but Adamarus just waved it off indicating that it was not a problem.
The next morning the five-inch headlines read, “The Loud Have Landed!”
---
The arrival of the aliens caused a worldwide uproar the likes of which the planet had never seen. There were riots, marches, rallies, demonstrations, strikes and many suicides. Across the planet, crowds filled the streets singing songs, waving banners, making speeches and chanting prayers. It seemed like every point of view was suddenly dialed all the way up on the intensity level. Even those who would normally have stayed home—the silent majority and those who had no point of view one way or the other on the aliens—came out of their homes in a fury to protest the way the rest of the world was reacting.
The news coverage was continual which only fanned the fires. Books were in the making, interviews aired and several movies were in the works. Around the world all manner of hype, craziness and mayhem exploded over the weeks that followed the alien landing and it all surged in one direction: towards the alien ship in the city of Hillcrest.
Law enforcement, civil defense and the government moved just in time. Spearheaded by the team the President had assembled, the town was sealed off within a week of the landing. A trench was actually dug partially around town to help hold off the surge of people wanting to see the ship.
Chapter Five – Best Laid Plans
“If you believe that doing nothing is a valid course of action, then and only then is it possible to say that there is always an answer.”
Dimerities (ancient Amular philosopher 924-1008)
Encounters (The Spiral Slayers Book 1) Page 6