Harbinger (26 page)

Sometime later, the cold wet sheets woke me. I’d pissed myself. I felt ashamed. Then I looked over at Mrs. James’s bed.

She was gone.

No one came to help me. I waited a long time. I had no way of telling how long because there were no time pieces in the room and no window to gaze out of and figure the hour.

So I peeled the sheet back and got out of bed on my bandy legs and hobbled over to the bathroom. I cleaned myself up, and also discovered fresh bedding in a cabinet, as well as a clean hospital gown. I put the gown on and went out into the hallway. It was empty and long. Much longer than I would have been able to traverse in my current condition.

I returned to the room and rested in the chair for a few minutes, gathering my strength. All this felt wrong, somehow. Where was the medical staff? Why didn’t I have, at least, a call button with which to summon help? If Mrs. James was in such serious condition, why wasn’t she being closely monitored? For that matter, why was I in the same room with her at all?

When I felt strong enough I stripped the soiled sheets and blanket off the bed, wiped down the mattress, and remade the bed with clean things. Then, exhausted again, I climbed back in and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

“What happened to Mrs. James,” I said as soon as Dr. Tamara walked though the door.

“Why she’s much better.”

“How could she be much better? You told me yesterday her injuries were severe.”

She looked at me curiously. “It wasn’t yesterday I said that.”

“Of course it was.”

“That was six weeks ago, Ellis.”

I stared at her. “Come on.”

“But I’m telling you the truth, because that was the first and last time I talked directly to you. I’ve been called away to work with other patients.”

I did some more staring.

“Are you all right, Ellis?”

“You can’t seriously mean to say that I’ve been in this room six weeks.”

“Ellis, you have been in this facility for a total of six terran weeks, ever since you were brought down from the starship
Infinity
. You have been undergoing a strict regimen of exercise and diet to counter the effects of long years in stasis. And I might add you’re doing very well. Just look at yourself.”

I held my arms up, astonished to see they were no longer bones with skin. I had even acquired some muscle definition. Beyond that, now that I was paying attention, I noticed that I felt good. Healthy, reasonably strong. Mentally acute—except for the unfortunate cognitive lapse of six weeks.

“I don’t understand any of this,” I said.

“Actually we speculated about the possibility of memory breaks. It’s a fairly common phenomenon experienced by survivors of stasis modules. With your unique regenerative body, it seemed likely you would avoid such side-effects. Evidently we were mistaken about that.”

“Last night—I thought it was last night—I woke up and saw that devil thing, the Trau’dorian,
doing
something to Mrs. James. I tried to stop it but I couldn’t. I was too weak. I was helpless, and she was so scared.
Damn
it.”

I blinked away tears, angry at myself.

“Ellis, six weeks ago you
were
too weak. You had no more strength than a child Of course you couldn’t have intervened. Children are powerless. But you mustn’t be upset. I know all about the incident. The Trau’dorian was helping Mrs. James.”

“Helping her how? By scaring her out of her wits?”

“He was healing her mind. She was severely traumatized by the accident. The Trau’dorian felt responsible. They have that healing capability, and perhaps many others. We have barely begun to know their race. Mrs. James wasn’t frightened by the Trau’dorian. She was frightened by the terrors emerging from her own mind. That’s what you saw. Trust me, Ellis. Mrs. James feels much better now.”

“Before she fell asleep,” I said, “she told me what happened out on the road. She said the Trau’dorians deliberately crashed her vehicle and then came and dragged her son away.”

“But that’s nonsense. Mrs. James was thrown clear of the vehicle. A fire consumed her son and left almost nothing of him beyond charred bones. You must understand, Ellis. Mrs. James hasn’t been in her right mind. That is why the Trau’dorian came here. He wanted to help her, relieve her pain.”

“Where is she now?”

“Mrs. James has left the clinic.”

“And when do I leave?”

“As soon as you feel ready.”

“Okay. I’m ready now.”

“That’s wonderful,” Dr. Tamara said.

“About Mrs. James  . . .”

“Yes?”

“She—” I didn’t want to say it.

“Go on.”

“She reminded me of someone.”

“Who did she remind you of, Ellis?”

“My mother.” Something caught in my throat and I choked on it a little.

Dr. Tamara moved closer to my bedside and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Do you feel like talking about your mother, Ellis?”

“No.”

“Of course you don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

“That’s good. What about these other patients of yours? Do they tell you about their mothers?”

“Some of them do. It all depends.”

“Oh what?” I said.

“On where their pain lies and what they want to do about it.”

“So when do I get out of here?”

“It’s entirely up to you, Ellis. It always is.”

Dr. Tamara blinked, turned her head aside, listening to something I couldn’t hear.

“I have to go,” she said. “You think about what you’d like to do.”

“I already know what I’d like to do,” I said. “Get out of here.”

“That’s fine then,” she said. “I’ll be talking to you soon.”

She turned to leave.

“Hey, wait a minute—”

“Sorry, I have to go. It’s an emergency.”

The room was very quiet in her absence. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be gone. I got out of bed and looked in the bathroom and the closet. There were more hospital gown things, but no real clothes. I poked my head out into the hall, thinking I’d catch Dr. Tamara before she got too far, but the hallway was empty in both directions.

“Doctor!”

My voice echoed flatly.

I felt as lonely as I’d ever felt in my life. There was something comforting about Dr. Tamara (even if she was too young to be a real doctor). She had something I needed badly. But even more than that I needed to get out of this clinic or whatever it was.

I stepped out into the hall and started walking, bare feet slapping on the cold, institutional floor. There were doors on both sides of the hall, but they were shut. I tried a couple of them and found them locked. I kept moving. There had to be a nurse’s station.

Other corridors branched off from the main one. None of them led anywhere. I trotted up and down these hallways to nowhere, my ass hanging out of the gown.

There were no nurse’s stations.

Finally I discovered a door that opened. It was at the end of one of the branching corridors and was bigger than the other doors.

It opened onto a stairwell.

I entered the stairwell but held the door open until I was sure the knob would turn the latch on the stairwell side. It did, and I let the door fall shut. Up or down? Down presumably led out, plus it would be easier than climbing stairs.

I descended a couple of floors then paused to have a look. I opened the landing door and peered out. Hallways. Empty hallways. It figured.

I started down again. The stairwell seemed to go on forever, like the god damn hallways. Every time I peeked out a landing door I saw the same thing.

So I stopped, because there was some kind of disconnect occurring that I didn’t understand. I looked up the dimly lit stairwell. It ascended forever.

I thought:
I’m dreaming
.

I’d been counting flights since I entered the stairwell. It now seemed prudent to return to my room. So I began climbing. By the time I reached the right floor, my legs were trembling and my gown clung to the cold sweat on my body.

I trudged back to my room. It was just as I’d left it, door open, bed unmade. I collapsed onto the mattress and dragged the covers over me. A feeling of peace and security settled upon me. I tried to reject it but couldn’t. It was a familiar feeling of retreat.

Anyway, it didn’t matter, because I was dreaming.

So I went to sleep to wake up—seemed logical. I opened my eyes to a slightly altered version of the room. Now I had a bedside table with a lamp I could turn on and off. There was also a call button on a cord. Moments after I pushed it a nurse type walked into the room, very starched and professional, just like the ones I used to know.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Herrick?”

“I was wondering when breakfast would be served.”

She inclined her head curiously, and said, “The same time as every other morning, of course.”

“And what time is that?”

“Eight-thirty sharp.”

“And what time is it now?”

She glanced at the wall. A clock now hung there and it indicated eight oh seven.

“It’s—” the nurse started to say.

“Eight oh seven,” I said. “Thanks, I didn’t notice the clock.”

“Of course,” she said, and smiled.
Humor him, he’s a bit deranged. All those years in the stasis module, you know.

After she left I got out of bed and poked my head out into the hallway. It had altered from my dream version, too. Many of the doors now stood open, and there was some kind of nurse’s station only thirty meters or so to my left. The nurse I’d just talked to was walking toward it. She had a nice swing in her backyard. I called out:

“Nurse!”

She stopped and turned around.

“What is it, Mr. Herrick?”

“I—”

She walked back to me. “Is anything wrong?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know, really. This is going to sound weird, but is there really a Dr. Tamara on staff?”

I was afraid she had been part of my vivid dream or delusion, and I wanted her to be real. I needed her to be.

The nurse looked puzzled. “Dr. Tamara?” Then understanding dawned. “You mean Dr.
Roberts
. Tamara Roberts.”

Roberts. Same as Nichole’s last name. “I guess so. The one who’s been working with me since I got here. Some kind of psychologist?”

“Yes, what about her?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to know whether she’s real.”

“She’s as real as I am,” the nurse said, which failed completely to put my mind at ease.

While I ate my breakfast I thought about Mrs. James and the Trau’dorian. I thought about what Dr. Tamara had said, about how I’d been helpless to interfere because of my weakened condition, and that in a way it had been a good thing, because the alien was really
helping
Mrs. James, not harming her. But the doctor had put it in a strange way, comparing me to a child, a helpless child.

“You’re looking well,” Dr. Tamara said.

“You don’t look half bad yourself,” I said.

She laughed. “And pretty feisty, too, I see.”

“I want to ask you about
Infinity
.”

“Go right ahead.”

“There were a lot of people on board, not just me. Where are the others?

Dr. Tamara looked sober, then said, “You were the only human survivor. The ship had deviated wildly from her intended course. Additional centuries had passed. Massive system failures had occurred. Recycling and reclamation capacities were exhausted.”

This didn’t surprise me, but hearing it stated took the wind out of my sails anyway. Then I said:

“The only human survivor?”

“We also recovered one biomechanical.”

“Just one?”

“As I understand it,” Dr. Tamara said, “the SuperQuantum core had become corrupted. All the biomechanical beings were interfaced with the core and depended upon it for their equilibrium. Evidently the core wound up destroying all their memory matrixes.”

“All but one.”

“Yes. Ident name is RODNEY. He’s here in the Dome, actually.”

“Doctor, there’s something I
really
don’t understand. How could you people have reached
Infinity
at all, let alone brought me and RODNEY to this planet?”

“You recall the Harbinger controversy before you left Earth? Of course you do, you were intimately involved beginning way back in the 1970s. At the time of
Infinity
’s departure from Earth orbit the Harbingers had begun manifesting to receptive portions of human society. To make this short, they eventually emerged fully into human consciousness. We were able to travel to the stars, colonize this planet, and even recover you from
Infinity
by using certain Harbinger methodologies.”

“My God, so they were real.”

“Very real, yes.”

“Well I have a few questions for them. I don’t suppose you have one handy.”

“There is a Harbinger on this planet. He’s sort of a hermit and not easily approached. In fact, humans don’t approach Harbingers as a general rule; Harbingers approach us, when it suits them. They rarely intervene, but sometimes take an interest if a species is both promising and perilously verging on self-destruction at the same time. Then they might appear, literally, as Harbingers of consciousness evolution. This is what happened on Earth.”

“You seem to know a lot about them.”

“Not so very much, really. Just what everyone else knows. And nobody knows ‘a lot’ about the Harbingers.”

“Okay. How are you with dream interpretation?”

“It’s not my specialty, but I can try. Do you have a particularly interesting one?”

I told her about my long walk through the empty clinic, the endless hallways, the bottomless stairwells. I also told her about the oddly un-detailed aspect of my room and the rest of the clinic, even during her previous visits.

“That’s a little disturbing,” Dr. Tamara said. “It indicates an overlapping between your dream logic and the real world we inhabit in common. I blame it on the stasis module. Now you’ve exhibited two classic symptoms of stasis damage. It amounts to a kind of mild psychosis.”