Fugitive From Asteron (24 page)

“Then why would your father say, in
his memo to the staff, that he could not release Project Z to the world because
it had ‘far-reaching and irrevocable consequences’?”

“I don’t know, Alex. But how could
this possibly concern you?”

I grabbed her arms and turned her
toward me. I said gravely, “If I tell you why, your life will be in danger. It
already is. You must promise you will tell no one that you are my girlfriend.
No one!”

She sighed in the same way she had on
other days when I had thought she was in danger and I tried to attack the
gardener, her instructor, and then Officer Hodges. She shook her head, her half
smile of frustration softened by affection. “Alexander, this is ridiculous!”

“Kristin, please!”

“All right. I have no reason to
tell anyone our personal business. No one at work knows I see you, and I like
it that way. So okay, I promise. Now do you feel . . . calmer?”

“I have one more question.”

“Oh?”

“Why do you hate Asteron?”

She stared into space in the icy
way that she always did at the mention of my vile homeland. She stood up and
walked a few steps from me, as if she were crossing back into the past.

“When we found my mother, she was
clutching a piece of the robber’s shirt pocket that had ripped off in the
struggle. She was also holding a gold coin from the thief’s pocket, an unusual
coin I had never seen before. Now, other planets’ coins, if they’re hard
currency like gold, are accepted in trade and circulated on Earth, just as ours
are used elsewhere. So nothing could ever be proven, we were told, about the
thief’s origin just from the coin he had in his pocket.” Bitterness sliced
through her voice. “But I know what I think.”

I rose from the bench to stand next
to her. “What kind of coin was your mother holding?”

“One side of the coin had a picture
of a farmer working in a field behind a mule, with a farm tool hitched between
them that I’ve seen only in museums . . . a hand plow.” Her
voice rose in disbelief. “Can you imagine a place that keeps people sweating
like slaves in a field, a place that’s oblivious to the farming inventions and
progress of centuries, and proud of it, boasting of this kind of life by
honoring it on a coin? I think the thief came from a place that can’t afford to
buy a tractor, much less a robot, to make life easier, but spends its money
sending someone on a spacecraft to
our
world to do us harm.”

Her liquid eyes with their light,
swirling hues seemed to become darker, almost black.

“On the other side of the coin was
an imprint of a planet that looked like Earth, but it was no coin from here.
There were words printed around the
sphere, words that have haunted me ever since, along with the place they
represent. You see, the coin said:
One People, One Will. Asteron
.”

Chapter 19

The sprawling carpet of lawn swept up to the flat-topped
hedges and rounded shrubs in front of Steve Caldwell’s home. I walked toward
the attractive wood-and-stone house. It was tucked on a hillside in a small
community that contained the only expanse of vegetation in the parched
landscape around it. Built at the base of a mountain, the small town of Clear
Creek was an oasis in the desert, just as Planet Earth was an oasis in the
lifeless void of space surrounding it.

The Earth was my oasis, my refuge,
my home. What business did Feran have on a planet that had already banished his
blight a century before? Was control over all of Asteron not enough to satisfy
Feran? Why did he prey on a people whose way of life he denounced? The
Earthlings considered Feran’s ways evil, so they sought nothing from him. Feran
considered the Earthlings’ ways evil, yet he and his spies were here. Was it
possible that Feran could not survive without the things he denounced as evil?

Kristin had seen something
unavailable to Feran’s people: an Asteronian gold coin. Such coins were
forbidden in my homeland because our leaders warned against what they called
the idolatry of money. According to our rulers, money was evil. It drove us to
accumulate more and more of it, and this led to wealth, which made some of us
better off than others, which led to inequality, which everyone thought was
immoral. Then why did Feran mint coins? And why did the things he considered
good bring only starvation? I could clearly imagine his repulsive hand
squeezing the life from Kristin’s mother, for surely that monstrous deed was
the work of his spies. I swung my hand at a fly with the force of Alexander the
ballplayer swinging his bat to make a home run. Feran was not going to get
Kristin! And was Dr. Merrett in danger too?

I now knew that Feran was linked
not only to Project Z through the flexite suit in his spaceship but also to the
death of Mrs. Merrett through the Asteronian coin in her hand. Was Project Z
linked to the laboratory accident whose report Mrs. Merrett had died trying to
rescue? That was the question I hoped Steve Caldwell could help me answer.

I now also knew that, incredibly,
Asteron’s ancestors were Earthlings. Did this mean that I was of their species?
Did I possess the full range of their capacities? Was the Earthlings’ bright laughter
cocooned somewhere inside me, waiting for its wings to form?

I had obtained Steve’s phone number
and spoken to his wife, Kate, who was taking his calls. I explained that I was
employed by MAS and asked if I could visit, because I wanted to ask Steve a few
questions about his laboratory work. She eagerly invited me to their home,
expressing her desire for Steve to have company. With a call to one of the
pilots, who was heading east after the air show, I got a ride on his small
plane, which dropped me off in Clear Creek early that Friday afternoon. My
teammate also showed me where I could catch a branch of the Cheetah for my trip
back.

A cheerful, young, blond-haired
woman answered the door. She introduced herself as Kate Caldwell and promptly
asked to see my MAS identification.

“We don’t talk to the media, only
to relatives, friends, and co-workers, so I was just checking,” she explained,
as she escorted me into a spacious living room with sun-dappled furniture and
thriving plants the size of small trees. A leather couch and chairs along with
a piano and a few tables were arranged on a shiny wooden floor, with a colorful
rug defining the seating area. A normal, healthy-looking man about thirty years
old smiled at me from the couch. Despite his handsome features, something about
his smile seemed unusual.

“We have a visitor from MAS today,
Steve. His name is Alexander,” said Kate.

“Hello, Steve,” I said.

“Hello, Alexander.”

I extended my hand, and Steve shook
it. I realized that his grin was odd because the skin around his eyes did not
crinkle. I was used to Earthlings putting the whole of their faces into their
smiles, but Steve’s smile did not reach his eyes.

“It is kind of you to see me,
Steve.”

“Oh, Steve sees everybody,” Kate
said, gesturing for me to sit on a chair while she sat on the couch next to her
husband. “You’re not from around here, are you, Alexander? You speak
differently.”

“That is true, Kate.”

“And you have only one name?”

“That is also true.”

“So you work at MAS?”

“Yes.”

“I’m always glad when someone from
the company comes over. I know Steve’s going to get better by seeing people he
knew and talking about the work he did. Won’t you, honey?” She tapped his hand,
and he looked at her obligingly. “In fact, the other day Dr. John Gordon came over.
How’d you like seeing John again, dear?”

“It was nice,” said Steve
indifferently.

“John was Steve’s best friend in
medical school. Now John’s on the staff at the hospital near us.”

“Did Steve study to be a doctor?”

“Oh, yes,” said Kate.

I kept looking at Steve for a
response, because it felt peculiar to discuss him in the third person with
Kate, as if he were not there. But he seemed content to gaze at us blankly
without volunteering to join our conversation.

“Steve was working his way through
medical school. He used to work the night shift at MAS so that he could attend
classes during the day.”

“I see.” I turned to Steve to
engage him. “And do you work at the hospital too, like your friend John?”

“Yes,” said Steve.

“So you have finished your
training?”

“Yes.”

“And you are a doctor?”

“I work in the laundry.”

I tried to hide my surprise.

“Steve isn’t ready to be a doctor,
but he will be when he gets better,” said Kate, with a strained cheerfulness.
“Since he had spent years studying for his exams when the accident happened, we
decided he should take them. He scored very high on the knowledge section—that
part tests how much you know about medicine. You see, my husband knows medicine
inside out. And he also passed the skills and techniques section. That’s where
the teachers direct you to perform certain tests and procedures on dummy
patients that have elaborate computer mechanisms, so they react as if they’re
real people.”

“So then Steve has passed his
exams, no?”

“The section Steve failed was
clinical judgment. There you get a set of conditions about a patient, and you
have to decide how you’ll treat.”

“And could Steve not make the right
decisions, based on his knowledge and skills?”

“No,” Kate said, her voice now
tinged with sadness. “You see, Steve couldn’t decide.”

“Why not, Steve?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replied, his
eyes vacant, his tone colorless.

“You have the knowledge?” I
continued.

“Yes,” he said.

“And you have the skills and
techniques, as you showed with the dummies?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then you can treat, right?”

“No.”

“Right now Steve needs guidance,”
Kate explained. “If only he could have a kind of cookbook that told him which
procedures to use and when, then he would be okay. He flounders when he has to
decide for himself. But the skills are there. Just the other day he got to
practice them, and he remembered everything. When Steve reported to the
hospital for his part-time job, someone was needed to wheel a patient into a
room, and Steve was told to do it. While he was wheeling her stretcher, her heart
stopped beating. And what do you think Steve did?”

“Did you restart her heart, Steve?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Then you
can
treat,” I
concluded.

“No,” said Kate.

“How can that be?”

“It’s hard to explain, Alexander,
but when her heart stopped and no one else was around at that moment, Steve at
first just continued to wheel her into the room, until one of the orderlies who
knew him before the accident screamed at him to save her. Then Steve did save
her. But he himself couldn’t decide which was more important—to wheel her into
the room or to save her life—until someone made the choice for him and ordered
him to carry it out.”

My thoughts suddenly crossed the
universe to an engineer at the locked door of a spacecraft who also could not
decide what to do in an unexpected circumstance but could only follow orders.
Troubled, I stared incredulously at Steve’s blank face.

“I keep hoping that being around
the things he loved and the people he knew will help Steve get better. That’s
why I thought it was a good idea for him to work in the hospital.”

“Do you like working in the
hospital, Steve?” I asked.

“It’s nice.”

“Do you like medicine?”

“I used to.”

“And now?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you still want to be a doctor,
or do you prefer to work in the laundry?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“This isn’t my Steve talking! He
had a passion for medicine, didn’t you, dear? Now, tell Alexander the truth.”

“All those ideas I had. How did I
get them, anyway?” Steve replied tonelessly, looking at neither me nor Kate but
gazing blankly out the window.

“Maybe you’ll feel differently,
honey, when you get better in other areas first. Maybe that’s what needs to
happen!” Kate said wishfully. “We have to work up to medicine with gradual
improvements in other areas. You know, I think we should take that vacation
abroad that we’ve always talked about.”

She picked up a large book from the
coffee table, one filled with colored pictures of distant places. She placed
the book in Steve’s hands, thumbing through the pages.

“Here’s the cathedral you always
wanted to see. And the art museum. And look at the statues in the old town
square. And here’s the ancient palace you mentioned so many times. Remember how
you always wanted to visit it, dear, but we could never afford to go? Well, now
we can. And look at the beaches.” She paused on pages of interest to her,
pointing them out to Steve. “When we get tired of sight-seeing, we can rent a
house by the sea. We’ll travel for my birthday. Remember how you always loved
to take me to romantic places on my birthday? You’ll have your chance again,
honey, and it’ll all come back to you. I know it will!” She turned to me.
“Steve loves history and art. He always wanted to make a trip abroad to visit
historic sites.”

When Kate released the pages of the
book, they fell to one side of the binder. Steve had looked at the pages when
Kate pointed them out but showed no curiosity to explore the book on his own.

“Do you like history and art,
Steve?” I asked.

“It’s good,” he said without
inflection, as the book dropped to the side of the couch.

“And romance?”

“It’s nice.”

I pointed to the long, sleek piano
in the room. “Do you like music?”

“It’s okay.”

“Steve plays the piano. It’s always
been a hobby of his since he was a kid. We have home movies of him playing.”

“May I see one?”

“Why not? What do you say, honey?
Shall we play a home movie for Alexander?”

“Why not?” echoed Steve.

Using a remote control on the
coffee table, Kate drew the curtains, then activated a holographic image in the
air before us. The lively scene she chose suddenly stirred the room with a
whirl of music, voices, and laughter.

“This is from a party we gave just
before Steve’s accident.”

The scene showed a more modest room
with a smaller piano. A group of people flanked the instrument, singing and
swaying to a robust song played by a lively man. His hands raced along the
keyboard in a blur of motion. The tune was a vibrant melody that made me think
of Earthlings I had seen leaping into the ocean and laughing as the waves broke
against them because the people at the piano sang with the same elation. In the
scene, Kate’s bright hair swirled out from behind the piano player, and she
placed a drink on the instrument for him. As she moved toward him, his face
stretched up high to catch her mouth in a kiss as ardent as the music he
played. Then he laughed as the others sang, throwing his head back in total
surrender to the moment.

I gaped at the scene in amazement
because the animated face at the piano belonged to a man with a mind that
encompassed so much, from music to medicine, from art to science, from the
mastery of a skill to the arousing execution of it. I could not believe that
the energetic man in the hologram was the same as the subdued one before me,
but the features were unmistakably Steve’s. Then Kate tapped a button on the
remote control, and the music stopped, the animated scene disappeared, the
curtains reopened, and the room became still again. What force had removed the
music and spirit from Steve Caldwell’s life? I wondered.

“Steve, can you play that same joyful
tune now?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Would you like to play music now,
Steve?” Kate asked.

“Whatever you’d like.”

“But what would
you
like?”
I asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” Steve looked at
Kate for guidance.

“Honey, why don’t you play for
Alexander?”

Steve sat at the piano and played
the same tune from the home movie. That is, the notes were the same, but there
was no variation in volume, no mood created, no vitality in the performance.
What I heard was a normally rousing song played monotonously. Steve’s music had
notes but no spirit. It took me back across the galaxy to a place where people devoid
of their own desires and intentions performed acts they were instructed to do.

After the one song, Kate seemed as
eager to proceed with another activity as I was. She suggested that Steve
return to the couch, which he did dutifully. Then she invited me to stay for
lunch.

“That is kind of you, but I am not
hungry, Kate.”