The Empty Warrior (30 page)
Authors: J. D. McCartney
Hurriedly, and with considerable awkwardness, O’Keefe drew the walker toward him, positioned it, and pulled himself erect. As quickly as his still feeble legs would propel him he made his way into the bedroom, seeking a mirror. He found one that stretched from floor to ceiling in what appeared to be a dressing area. Leaning over the front of the walker, he thrust his face up close to it. There were no bags under his eyes and no crow’s feet at their sides. The stubble on his chin was jet black, not the salt and pepper mixture he had seen the last time he had studied his appearance. His hair had changed in the same fashion; there was not a fleck of gray anywhere within the multitudinous strands. He put a hand to the crown of his head, expecting to rub a nearly bare patch of scalp with his fingers. But instead of the thin layer of fine hair he was accustomed to encountering, his fingers sank through a thick thatch of tousled mane. He grabbed a fistful and pulled on it, laughing.
I don’t believe it
, he thought.
It’s like I’m twenty years old again.
In the weeks following his awakening, despite his Akadean benefactors obviously feeling threatened simply by his mere existence, O’Keefe rapidly acclimated to his new situation and surroundings. His hosts, as they euphemistically referred to themselves, expressed astonishment at his quick and, in their view, miraculous adaptation to his new environment. He in turn thought them to be inordinately overawed and was vaguely insulted by the implication that he had been expected to have a much more difficult time adjusting. It was as if the Akadeans had imagined he would be a primitive, wild-eyed aborigine, a being who would either drop to his knees in awe or cringe in sheer panic over the technology they possessed.
And notwithstanding the extraordinary neural restoration the doctor had effected below his waist and the more or less complete, whole body rejuvenation he had undergone while under Beccassit’s care, a miracle for which O’Keefe would be eternally grateful, he repeatedly experienced a shadowy feeling of unease regarding his new circumstances. It was a feeling that had initially been brought to the fore by the ill tempered and overbearing woman he had seen that one time in Beccassit’s sick bay, and it had systematically become more pronounced ever since. It was a feeling that breathed the disquieting thought into the back of his brain that the Akadeans looked upon him as someone who was not only atavistic and dangerous, but as a being who was altogether less than human as well. It was a sobering thought for a man far from home who was completely under their power.
It was not difficult to see that he inspired fear in them. And they were not simply afraid of him because he was an unknown quantity; it was more than that. The evidence of it went far beyond his confinement and the Akadeans’ use of their neural inhibitor. It was the apprehension that shone through their eyes when they looked at him. It reminded him of a cousin whom he and other children of the extended family had accompanied on a childhood trip to the zoo, courtesy of one set of parents. The child had loved the big cats, especially the lions, and was well aware of their reputation for ferocity. He had gone on and on about them to anyone who would listen until they reached the cats’ habitat. But he had been unprepared for the utterly feral quality of a big male’s roar when witnessed from only a few feet away. The respect that had been etched into his cousin’s face at the sound, that look of anxious, fearful astonishment that spread across his countenance at the sudden primal realization that he could quite literally be eaten alive if not for the bars separating him from the beast; that was what he saw in the eyes of his captors. It was as if they expected O’Keefe to at any moment display the mindless, instinctual proclivity to violence of a wild animal cornered or ensnared. It had been exceedingly clear in the first officer’s face and in the eyes of the guards, and even Beccassit’s demeanor at rare times hinted at similar feelings hidden behind his professional bedside manner.
O’Keefe had done everything that he could conjure to reassure the doctor, and Pellotte for that matter, of his normality. He always made sure to be cooperative and friendly when in their presence. On several occasions he had alluded to his nimble adjustment to shipboard life, maintaining that it was nothing to be excited about, that anyone else would have reacted in the same way under similar circumstances. O’Keefe had hoped these assertions would impress upon his doctor and nurse that he was as human as the next man. He had further hoped that they would pass on that information to those in charge, and that it would have the effect of easing some of the Akadeans’ mistrust of him. But he could see no discernible signs that it had had that effect, as he remained confined to his rooms at all times. In the end O’Keefe had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Akadeans were simply not a very trusting bunch. They were obviously products of a xenophobic society. But as long as they continued to take good care of him, O’Keefe reasoned that he could put up with their suspicions.
And they were taking very good care of him, very good care indeed. They were, in fact, doing a masterful job of rehabilitating him. His legs, he had been told, had been exercised daily during the latter part of his comatose ordeal of healing. Electrical impulses, impulses that mimicked commands from his brain, had been sent down his nerves to the muscles he would need for walking. The tiny organic charges had repeatedly ordered the shriveled remains of his musculature to push against ever increasing levels of resistance until his legs could push no more. It was only that exertion that had enabled him to walk immediately after waking. Now Kira Pellotte—who had been placed, much to O’Keefe’s delight, in charge of his physical therapy regimen—was insisting on the same effort from him in daily sessions on the strength training equipment in his quarters. Each day she goaded him to do slightly more than he had done the day before, and most days he was able to comply, driving the gauges that measured the force his muscles exerted to higher and higher levels. As a result his legs were swiftly gaining strength. They were not yet nearly in proportion to the sculpted flesh of his upper body, but they were far from the useless appendages of skin and bone they had been only a few months before.
His balance had returned at a much faster rate. In only a few days he had set aside the walker. He now paced his quarters restlessly between therapy sessions. Sometimes he jogged on the treadmill when alone just to relieve the boredom and tire himself enough for a nap. At other times he stood in the center of his quarters, relentlessly jumping up and down until his legs burned, attempting in vain to touch the top of his head to the ceiling. He was ready to try anything to reduce the ennui of his daily routine.
His language skills more than kept pace with his physical revitalization. In little over a week he could converse in Akadean almost as easily as in his native tongue. He could in fact be far more precise in his newly acquired language, as he found his Akadean vocabulary to be virtually unlimited, just as the doctor had forewarned. The most difficult problem that remained was keeping the jumble of English and Akadean in his brain separate from one another, as English words tended to leak into his discourse. In addition, he had been surprised and pleased to learn that he could not only speak Akadean, he could read it. Instructions embossed on the appliances in his kitchen, which should have been nothing more than a jumble of symbols the likes of which he had never seen, were easily decipherable.
Each evening Pellotte would bring his dinner and grace him with a visit both social and therapeutic in nature. The first order of business was healing for his aching legs. She used several powered instruments that produced no physical sensation, but seemed to pull the pain from his overworked muscles like a vacuum. Then while he ate and sometimes for as long as an hour afterward, she would sit with him and converse, exercising his articulation and pronunciation. But although he related to her much about himself and some of what it was like to live on Earth, their conversations were inevitably little more than idle chit-chat on her part, consisting mostly of gossip about her coworkers and their personal lives. Each time O’Keefe would attempt to extract any meaningful information, she would become evasive and, if he pressed the issue, excuse herself and depart. And since he rued her leaving, he generally shied away from those subjects she obviously had been told not to discuss. So far he had learned only that
Vigilant
was a police vessel; that the ship was currently making repairs in preparation for going “home,” to a place called the Union, in general, and Sefforia, in particular. He learned that its mission was to act against a group of criminals called the Vazileks, and that those same Vazileks were the perpetrators of the explosion that had ultimately brought him into her care.
He also knew that a man, a pilot named Willet Lindy, was responsible for his rescue. Other than those few minor intelligence breakthroughs and a general impression, which lingered despite his paranoia and their fear of him, that the Akadeans were on the level in their insistence that they meant him no harm; he knew next to nothing about the larger universe and his newfound place in it.
And granting his belief that the Akadeans were indeed benefactors, he nevertheless suspected that his interchanges with Pellotte were more than a simple and pleasurable way of making him more comfortable with the language. It seemed as if they might also be a very subtle means of interrogation. Thus he baited her repeatedly, deliberately being ambiguous and oblique when answering one of even her simplest questions, merely to see if she would press him hard for answers. But he could never be certain if she was up to something or not. Sometimes she would ask him to clarify an answer; other times she would simply shrug and go on to something else. On the surface it seemed like merely polite conversation and nothing more. But his suspicions remained, and he was careful never to discuss any episode with her that might reflect badly on his character or his past.
His inability to discover or discern a great deal about the Akadeans, what they thought of him, or what they had planned for his future was disturbing to O’Keefe, particularly as one aspect of his plight was certain. There was no need for him to debate himself as to whether it was reality or a symptom of his cynical perceptions. Despite the near constant assurances that he was a guest aboard the
Vigilant
, he was in fact a prisoner. Two guards were always on duty outside his door. Whenever either Beccassit or Pellotte, his only visitors, came into his quarters; two more guards, always the same two, arrived with them and stood impassively against the wall on either side of the exit for the length of their stay. O’Keefe had repeatedly tried to speak to them only to be met with blank faces and stony silence. He had asked both doctor and nurse for an explanation of their rigid muteness but received only shrugs and excuses in return, responses that were not particularly comforting.
And although he had been provided with a kitchen, it was devoid of food, drink, or utensils of any sort. All he could get out of it were thick, unbreakable glasses and water. He could not deny that he was being confined in opulent surroundings, but his luxurious rooms were still no more than a cell.
Furthermore, O’Keefe was certain that the quarters were outfitted with cameras or at least bugged, although whether it was his paranoia asserting itself or a real possibility he was, in this case, unable to reliably ascertain. In near daily searches that had covered every inch of his new abode, he was consistently unable to find any concrete evidence to indicate that he was being watched or monitored in any way, but on the other hand he felt sure the Akadeans were advanced enough to keep him under surveillance without his discovering their hardware. Thus his certainty was undiminished.
The only time he was allowed to leave his quarters was every fifth or sixth day when Beccassit would show up with a gurney and the ubiquitous guards. O’Keefe would climb aboard and ride the gurney, its neural inhibitor activated, to sick bay, where the doctor would replace one of his organs.
The process amazed O’Keefe, but it seemed simple enough to perform. Once in sick bay, O’Keefe would move to a special platform and lie motionless atop it, while the Doctor pulled a hinged half tube down over his body and positioned it above the area where the work was to be done. Beccassit called the device a molecular delineator. In about twenty minutes the machine would painstakingly map his internal structure, down to the molecular level, in and around the organ to be replaced. Then O’Keefe would move back to his gurney and the neural inhibitor would be reengaged. From there the gurney and O’Keefe were slipped wholly inside a chromium plated, claustrophobic, cylindrical chamber called a matter conveyer.
The detailed, three-dimensional plot of his interior arrangements would be downloaded into the machine from the delineator and the transplant would commence. In a matter of only a few minutes the matter conveyor would exchange, by the teleportation of his atoms and those of the new body part, one of his organs with a replacement that the doctor had “pressure grown.” Pressure growing was another process that astounded O’Keefe, but it was also a process about which he could fathom very little. His implant provided him an understanding like that of a dictionary, that the organs were cloned and then forced to age at a much faster than normal rate, but that was the limit of his comprehension. Beccassit’s explanations of the technical aspects involved only left O’Keefe’s head spinning.
Afterward, it was back to his quarters where Pellotte would check in on him every few hours for the next day or so, scanning the organ with a hand-held device that could somehow determine the condition of his new body part. Then there were a few days of observation and recuperation before the process was repeated with another piece of his internal structure. It all worked exceedingly well. O’Keefe had received a new heart one morning before doing leg curls to exhaustion that same afternoon.