Exiled from Earth

18

The pain woke him up. It would have been pleasant to stay asleep, unconscious, oblivious to everything. But he hurt everywhere, like knives were being twisted under his skin.

His eyes were gummy when he tried to open them. Everything was blurred, out of focus. There was a gray expanse of ceiling over his head. And faces. He tried to raise his head, but somebody’s hand pushed him back onto the pillow.

Turning his head slightly, he could make out a window off to his right. It was bright, bright enough to make him shut his eyes.

What time is it? flashed through his mind. He started to speak, but all he heard was a thick, scratchy-throated groan.

“He’s conscious,” said a voice.

Marcus’ face slid into view. Still calm. But was that perspiration beading his brow?

“That was a foolish bit of nonsense,” Marcus said without rancor “What have you done with the girl? And where’s Dr. Kori?”

Lou found the strength to shake his head.

“It’s a small island, Christopher. We’ll find them sooner or later.”

“Not before…” he croaked.

“Before what?” Marcus asked.

“Nothing.”

Marcus leaned closer. “We can find out. You can’t keep any secrets from us.”

“Go ahead and torture me… it won’t…”

“Don’t be an ass,” Marcus said. “There are drugs that will make you do anything.”

“No…”

Somewhere beyond Lou’s vision a door opened and footsteps clicked quickly toward his bed. A voice muttered something, too low for Lou to hear.

“What?” Marcus snapped. “Why wasn’t I told sooner? When did…”

Marcus’ face slid into view again. It was red now. With anger. Or fear? Lou smiled.

“Where’s Dr. Kori? What’s he doing with a bomb?”

“Planting it in your lunch.”

Lou saw Marcus’ hand blurring toward him but couldn’t move out of the way. It stung and snapped his head to one side. He tasted blood in his mouth.

“Get him talking. And quickly,” Marcus ordered.

Someone grabbed at his arm. It flamed agony. Lou saw it was red and sore with thousands of splinters from the packing case that had exploded in front of him. An expressionless Chinese doctor took his arm from the guard, held it gently, swabbed a relatively undamaged spot on the underside of the arm, and then pressed a pneumatic syringe into the area. He put Lou’s arm back down on the bed carefully, then looked at his wristwatch.

“The reaction should take a few minutes,” the doctor said to Marcus.

Marcus paced the room nervously. The doctor stood by the bed, patiently watching Lou. What time is it? Lou wondered. How much time does Kori need?

Somebody giggled. Lou was startled to realize it was he himself.

The doctor turned toward Marcus. “He should be ready now.”

Marcus came to the bed and leaned over Lou. “All right now, Christopher. Where is Dr. Kori, and what’s he doing with the bomb he stole?”

“Playing in the sand,” Lou said, laughing. It was funny, everything was so funny. Marcus’ face, the thought of Kori digging sand castles with a nuclear bomb tucked under his arm. The whole thing was uproariously funny.

“Listen to me!” Marcus shouted, his face red and sweaty. “Quickly, before…”

The flash of light was bright enough to feel on your skin. For an instant everything stopped, etched in the pitiless white light. No sound, no voices, no movement. Then the bed lifted, the window blew in with a shower of glass, a woman screamed, and a roar of ten thousand demons overpowered every other sensation.

Somebody fell across Lou’s bed. The roar died away, leaving his ears aching. People started to move again through a dusty plaster haze, crunching glass underfoot. Marcus staggered up from the bed.

Lou heard somebody say in an awed voice, “Look at that… a real mushroom cloud, just like in the history books.”

Then Lou heard his own laughter. He couldn’t see Marcus, but he knew he was still there.

“You’ve lost, Marcus. You might as well admit it. There’ll be a government inspection team here in a matter of hours. Followed by troops, if you want to fight. It’s all over. You’ve lost.”

“I can still kill you! And the girl!”

Lou was laughing uncontrollably now. The drug, he knew in the back of his mind. But there was nothing he could do to stop himself. “Sure, kill me. Kill everybody. That’s going to help you a lot. An enormous lot.”

He laughed until he passed out again.

It was pleasant to be unconscious. Or am I dead? But the thought brought no fear. He was floating in darkness, without pain, without anxiety, just floating in soft warm darkness. Then, after a long, long while, the darkness began to turn a little gray. It brightened slowly, like a midnight reluctantly giving way to dawn.

Bonnie’s face appeared in the grayness. There were tears in her eyes, on her cheeks. “Oh, Lou …”

He wanted to say something, to touch her, to make her stop crying. But he couldn’t move. It was as if he had no body. Then her face faded away and the darkness returned.’

He heard other voices in the grayness, and once in a while the black turned gray again and he could see strange faces peering at him. He would try to talk, try to signal to them, but always the darkness closed in again.

Then, abruptly, he opened his eyes and everything was in sharp focus. He was lying in a hospital bed. The walls of his room were a pastel blue, the ceiling clean white. There were viewscreens and camera eyes in the ceiling. Lou found that he could turn his head. It hurt, but he could do it. There was a window at his left. He couldn’t see out of it at this angle, but sunshine was pouring in. A night table was next to his bed, a rolling tray crammed with plastic pill bottles and syringes and other medical whatnots. A door, closed. A single plastic sling chair standing beside it.

He tried sitting up, and the bed followed his motion with an almost inaudible hum from an electric motor. Leaning back in a half-sitting position, he suddenly felt woozy.

At least I’m not dead, Lou told himself.

His body felt stiff. Looking down, he saw that his hands and arms were wrapped in bandages. So was his chest; white plastic spray from windpipe to navel. His face felt raw. as if he’d shaved with an old-fashioned razor.

The door suddenly opened and a nurse appeared. “Good day,” she said with professional cheeriness.

“H … hello.” Lou’s voice was terribly hoarse; his throat felt rough.

She must be pushing forty, Lou thought. She still looks pretty good, though.

“How do you feel?” the nurse asked.

He considered the question for a moment. “Hungry.”

She smiled. “Good! That’s one condition that the automatic monitors can’t record yet.”

She was gone before Lou could say anything or ask any questions.

Within minutes a food tray slid out of the wall and swung over to the bed. It was clumsy, eating with bandaged hands. By the time Lou was finished, there was a knock on the door and it opened wide enough for Kori to stick his head through.

“Hi. They told me you were finally awake.”

Lou’s voice felt and sounded better. “Come on in. How are you? Where are we? What happened? Where’s Bonnie?”

Kori grinned and pulled the chair up next to the bed. As he sat on it, he answered. “Bonnie’s fine. She’s here in the hospital, too, getting treated for radiation dosage. There was a considerable amount of fallout from my little toy, you know I stayed inside a cave until the government troops arrived, but I got a touch of it, too.”

“Marcus and the others?”

“They gave up without much of a fight,” Kori said “A government inspection team ’coptered to the island in four hours and eleven minutes after the blast. Inside of another two hours they had a little army of government troops covering every square centimeter of the island.”

“And what happened to me?” Lou asked “I remember trying to hold them down at the dock. Then somebody shot me and I fell into the water. Then…”

Kori was trying not to laugh, without being very successful at it.

“What’s so funny?”

“Well, forgive me, but you are. Do you know how they found you?”

Lou shook his head.

“You were lying flat on your back in one of the bedrooms of Marcus’ house. Stark naked. Sixty million splinters all over your face and body and arms and legs. And you were laughing. Laughing your head off.”

“Very funny,” Lou said “Marcus had me shot full of happy-juice, so I’d tell him where you were. So he could find you and kill you.”

“I know,” Kori said, still giggling “Forgive me. It just presents an odd picture.”

“Is Bonnie going to be all right?” Lou asked.

“Oh yes, certainly. She’ll be visiting you herself in a day or so.”

“And Marcus and his crew?”

Kori shrugged. “In jail, I suppose. The troops took them away.”

Lou felt himself relax against the supporting bed. “That takes care of everybody, I guess. Oh! What about Big George? Who’s taking care of him?”

Kori’s face suddenly went somber. “That that’s the one bad part of it, Lou. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“Somebody shot him,” Kori said, his voice low. “We don’t know who did it. It might have been Marcus’ guards or the government troops. Bonnie was right there, and she couldn’t tell who fired the shot.”

“Killed him? But why?”

Shaking his head, Kori answered, “We’ll never know. There was a little fighting when the troops landed. Maybe it was just a stray shot. Or perhaps someone got frightened at the sight of the gorilla. At least he didn’t suffer at all. One shot he died instantly.”

“Poor Georgy,” Lou said.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Then Lou asked, “Where are we, anyway?”

Ron’s face didn’t cheer up at all. “Back where we started In Messina It looks to me like we’re going to be shipped up to the satellite as soon as you and Bonnie are well enough to travel. To begin our exile.”