Psion Delta (8 page)

Nothing
happened. With the help of his com light, he found a light switch.

“Victor,”
Byron muttered as he gazed at his surroundings, “what on earth . . . ?” The
room was about half the size of the study above it. The walls were made of more
wooden beams covering the dirt, jammed into placed and covered with some kind of
plaster. Over the plaster walls, Victor had hung at least sixty or seventy
pictures of Claire. They were all different poses. Some were of Victor and
Claire together, but most were only of her. On the far side of the room from
the ladder was a computer unit. The screen was intact but the towers looked as
though Victor had tried to destroy them as quickly as he could, but had done a
rushed, sloppy job. He imagined how quickly the former commander must have
acted in order to flee Alpha headquarters while still covering as much of his
tracks as possible.

In
less than five minutes, four Elite officers appeared with three civilian
computer techs and began the task of removing everything from the premises.
Byron took one of the Elite officers aside and said, “I want to know who was
assigned to search this place. Slothful work. It took me less than thirty
minutes to find this from the time I walked in the house. There is no excuse
for missing something like this.”

The
officer gave Byron an angry, “Yes sir,” and went back inside. Byron watched him
go, praying that today wouldn’t reveal yet another traitor in their midst.

Victor
Wrobel. Junko Sokama. Two Elite stationed at the prison facility. Who else?

4.
Tested

Tuesday May 7, 2086

The
first thing
Sammy saw as the medusa helmet lifted from his
head was Dr. Rosmir. Sammy’s entire body shook violently, and sweat soaked
through his gown. The scream he had let out upon seeing Stripe’s mutated face
still burned his throat, which stung as though he’d gargled acid.

“Sammy,
calm down. It’s ok.” Dr. Rosmir repeated these words several times as he
gripped Sammy by the shoulders, trying to keep him on the exam table. They were
the only two people in the examination room, but Sammy noted the mirror and
cameras for the first time and realized there had, indeed, been an audience all
along.

He
reached up and yanked the suction cups from his forehead. “You abandoned me!”

Dr.
Rosmir tried to renew his hold on Sammy, but Sammy pushed the doctor’s hands
away. “Sammy, I—hey, wait a second.”

“Don’t
touch me!”

“It
wasn’t real.”

“I
know it wasn’t real,” Sammy shouted, “but I’m still angry!” He rubbed his
forehead to get rid of the itchy, sucking sensation on his skin.
So what if
it wasn’t real?
It had felt, smelt, and sounded as real as anything else,
far more real than any of his dreams. “How do you know what Stripe and Katie
look like?”

“I
only know because you know.”

“You—I—you
took the sensors off me! I remember you taking the sensors off me after I saw
that white flash.”

Dr.
Rosmir shook his head with an expression of a caught puppy. “That was one part
of the test, Sammy—to make you think we had. They never came off.”

The
door opened and seven new people came into the room like a battalion of
marching white coats. “That’s a solid baseline,” the first doctor announced
behind Rosmir.

“Good
work, Maad,” said another one of them.

Sammy
closed his eyes and wished they would all go away. His face was hot and sticky,
partly from the exertion of the simulation, but mostly from embarrassment at
his reaction. Half of the people who came didn’t stay long. They simply flicked
their reports from their own holo-tablets to Rosmir’s and left the room without
a word to Sammy. The ones who did stay, however, were introduced to Sammy one by
one. All of them had
Doctor
in front of their name, but Sammy had no
desire to remember who they were or what they would be doing to help him.

Unfortunately,
he had no choice but to get to know them. Using his baseline test as their
starting point, the doctors spent the next few days running him through a
barrage of tests. Rorschach tests, questionnaires, one-on-one conversations
that lasted hours, group discussions, panel examinations, reaction tests,
psycho-sexual response exams—they seemed to go on and on. Near Sammy at all
times was Dr. Rosmir, who kept a watchful eye on his patient’s physical
recovery and often gave feedback or interpretation regarding what the other
doctors had to say about him.

Nine
times in ten, Rosmir’s feedback, to Sammy’s chagrin, could have been recited
verbatim: “They were very impressed with you. Keep up the good work.”

Day
in and day out, in his ridiculous gown, Sammy ate his meals alone in the
hospital cafeteria. Once, Rosmir took Sammy to see Al, but the visit was short
and Al was too heavily medicated to say much. At night, Sammy tossed and turned
fitfully through bad dreams. Dark thoughts came when he couldn’t sleep. During
the days, with no friends to keep him company, he forced himself to tolerate
the endless tests and sessions. It was difficult knowing that his real home was
close and his friends waited there for him. He wanted to go to sims and
instructions; he wanted to hang out with Brickert and Jeffie late into the
nights.

On
Sunday, first thing in the morning, Dr. Rosmir went through the familiar
routine of inspecting Sammy’s wounds. “Your leg appears to be fine. You should
start walking on it from now on, but don’t run for about three days. All of
your major cuts from the glass are healed. Any soreness?”

“Nope.
Everything’s good.”

“Let
me see those thumbs. Burns gone yet?”

Sammy
offered the doctor a look at his hands.

“No
sign of scarring. Both have healed very nicely. What did you do to get those?
Try to grab the blitzer disks?”

Sammy
stared blankly at his thumbs and realized he had never said anything about it.
He had completely forgotten.

“I—uh—I
shot a blast out of them and—and it must have been super-concentrated or
something because it burned through the locks on the cuffs. It melted through
them.”

Dr.
Rosmir chuckled politely. “Seriously, Sammy, what happened?”

“No,
I—I’m being serious.”

Still
holding onto Sammy’s thumbs, Dr. Rosmir’s face changed. “That’s impossible.”

“I
shoot energy from my hands and feet. So do you. Most people think that’s
impossible.”

Sammy
saw on Dr. Rosmir’s face that he’d made his point. “Did—did it hurt?”

“Yeah.
It felt like my thumbs were on fire.”

“This
is incredible. There’s nothing in the scientific literature—that doesn’t
mean—so—so you’re saying you shot a superheated blast of energy that actually
melted metal?”

“I
think so.”

Rosmir
looked at his watch and ran his fingers through his hair. “We’re going to need
to run some tests. Byron wants you back at headquarters by Monday so you don’t
start back mid-week. If we’re going to make his wish come true, we’ve got to
get busy pronto. I have to make calls. I’ll—I’ll be right back. You stay here!”

Sammy
dropped back onto the exam table. “Where else am I going to go?”

“Look
on the bright side,” Rosmir said, returning to peer around the doorframe, “you
get to wear normal clothes now!” And then he hustled away.

In
less than an hour, Sammy was taken to a different building on the NWGMC campus.
More tests, more scans, more people wanting to hear descriptions of what Sammy
had purportedly done at Baikonur. Three of the Psion commanders arrived along
with some of the higher-ups in the Tensai and Ultra corps. When Commander Byron
appeared, he checked on Sammy and asked about his recovery before speaking at
length with Dr. Rosmir and the other commanders about how they could have Sammy
demonstrate the unique blasting method without reinjuring himself. They decided
to bring in a team of medical engineers who debated the problem for over two
hours while Sammy played basketball by himself in a gym and tried to get his
leg to loosen up. Finally they brought him into a room marked
LABORATORY
that
looked more like a giant, messy shed with expensive, advanced equipment. The
engineers had set up two liquid nitrogen canisters that would spray
ultra-cooled air on his thumbs as he blasted.

“Any
burning sensation at all, Samuel, and I want you to stop,” Byron said.

“Or
biting cold, for that matter,” one of the engineers said.

“Right,”
Commander Byron agreed. “No need to injure yourself again.”

Sammy
nodded and let the engineers position his hands as they wanted. The other
commanders, doctors, and unnamed people stood back and watched as laser sensors
were set up to measure the temperature around Sammy’s hands. Sammy looked to
Byron for reassurance. The commander gave him a nod.

“Okay,”
one of the engineers announced, “we’re ready!”

Sammy
focused on his thumbs, concentrating on putting a blast solely through them. He
felt the energy shooting from them, but it wasn’t hot. He screwed his face in
concentration until his head and neck muscles, taut and aching, trembled like
he was having a seizure.

“Nothing
so far . . . ” an engineer said with a tone in his voice that betrayed heavy
skepticism.

This
made Sammy angry and he bent his mind even more on the energy moving to his thumbs.
His body stiffened as he focused every particle of his mind to the task. The
liquid nitrogen sprays turned on as heat shot from his thumbs, not burning him
at first, but growing steadily hotter as if he held them over a candle.

“That’s
it!” the same engineer cried. “That’s it!”

Sammy
stopped as soon as the pain became too much to bear. Commander Zahn, who’d been
watching computer displays over the engineers’ shoulders, let out of a cry of
shock. “Did you see that?” he asked Iakoka.

“Of
course we saw it,” Commander Iakoka responded tersely.

Sammy
looked at his thumbs as Dr. Rosmir approached. They were red and throbbing and
his left had a small blister on it.

“Second-degree
burns,” Rosmir muttered with a tsk.

“Fifteen
hundred degrees Standard!” the engineer announced. “Easily hot enough to melt
through steel.”

Byron
came over and looked at Sammy’s hands with the doctor. “Why are his thumbs
barely burned?” he asked.

Dr.
Rosmir shook his head as he continued to look over Sammy’s skin. “Did the
liquid nitrogen help?”

“Yeah,”
Sammy answered, “for a bit. It kept getting hotter until—”

“Let
me try it,” Byron said.

“Commander
. . . ” Dr. Rosmir began.

“I
only want a shot at it to see if it can be duplicated. You have any tips you
want to offer me, Samuel?”

Sammy
explained to his commander what he tried to do to make it work. The engineers
set the test back up and Sammy stood back to watch as Dr. Rosmir treated his
thumbs with cooling injections. After fifteen minutes had gone by with no
success for Byron, Commander Zahn asked to give it a go. He had the same result
as Byron, despite his face turning red and muttering several Arabic swear
words. Iakoka attempted it next. Sammy had to turn away as she tried in order
to not laugh at the constipated expression on her face. When Iakoka failed,
Havelbert declined an invitation.

The
engineers wanted Sammy to perform a “heat blast” again, but Dr. Rosmir advised
against it, pointing to Sammy’s new burns and the fact that he’d already
confirmed that it could be done.

“Maybe
we could try a thermal imaging system,” another engineer suggested. “That would
give us a better idea of how to prevent burns in the future once we know how
everything works.”

Dr.
Rosmir again interceded, this time with more force. “Unless any of you are
willing to submit your own digits to second and third degree burns, I suggest
we let Sammy recuperate and decide on his own if he wants to try again later.
He has more important things to do than char himself.”

The
engineers said that they would work on some prototypes for channeling Sammy’s
ability, and Dr. Rosmir promised to coordinate their efforts with Psion Command
so Sammy could be brought in for more testing at a future date. After a few
more minutes of chatting, most of the observers departed until Sammy was left
with Commander Byron and Dr. Rosmir, who spoke with each other at length while
Sammy sat by himself, waiting. When they were finished, Byron gave his
attention to Sammy.

“Doctor
Rosmir wants one last word with you, and then I will take you home.” Then Byron
added with a pat on the back, “To Beta, of course.”

Feeling
instantly more cheerful at the news, Sammy got up and went with Dr. Rosmir into
a small office in the back of the engineering lab.

“Have
a seat, Sammy,” the doctor said. Once they’d both sat, Dr. Rosmir put his hands
together and watched Sammy happily. “So you’re going home. Excited?”

“Yeah,
of course.”

“Good.
Listen, about your baseline exam, I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really
sorry we had to trick you. We had to see how you would react—”

“Without
knowing I was being tested,” Sammy finished for him. “I know. I get it.”

“Anyway,
the only reason we can let you go so soon is because your baseline went so
well. The results were very positive—”