Alien Caller (34 page)

Unlike any
Earthly defendant, Doctor Roze didn’t try to deny the charges, but
then he couldn’t really. The evidence had been collected and placed
before everyone aboard the entire ship. There was no possible
doubt. He had after all recorded everything. In retrospect that
could have been a bad idea but then the recording was an integral
part of what he’d been trying to do. The doctor had been studying
him like a lab rat.

It seemed the
not so good doctor had an interest in alien physiology as well as
biological engineering, and an agenda. Doctor Roze believed that
humans were almost perfect imitations of Leinians, the result of
parallel evolution on nearly identical worlds. He believed that
every feature of Leinian physiology, had an equivalent feature in
humans. He wanted to map that similarity and so prove that
evolutionary forces dictated genetics more directly than ever
believed possible. And that they did it identically. Therefore on
any world with the same characteristics as another, the inhabitants
would be the same.

Thus far all
the medical tests had borne out his theories, as had David and
Cyrea’s union which spoke of physical compatibility as well as
emotional. But there were some things he couldn’t test in the labs,
and some things he couldn’t test with other people knowing. Top of
the list was the human fight or flight reactions, key to
understanding survival mechanisms, emotional intelligence and
hormones like adrenaline. The same chemical cocktail Leinians had
in their blood stream. He’d long since needed a fit human subject.
David fitted his purpose beautifully. He was young, combat ready,
and most important of all, available.

Instead of
denying his guilt, the doctor spoke at length about how he hadn’t
intended to harm David at all. How he’d simply wanted to test him,
to find out his limits. The limits of his body, of his heart and
the strength of his will. Given his emotional involvement with Ayn
Cyrea, his knowledge of unarmed combat, and the relatively simple
nature of the human psyche, the mechanics of the arrangement were
obvious. David found himself wanting to strangle the pompous little
bastard as he heard himself described as a science experiment, but
Cyrea beside him understood his anger and held him with a touch. He
would have his say. Yet even as she held him back he noticed that
she looked even more angry than him. She was just more
controlled.

Dr Roze had
driven him into a fighting state and deliberately unleashed his
full potential, believing that only when he was at his most
terrified and desperate would he have a chance to find out David’s
limits. The synthetics were as always nasty, but they would always
stop short of a lethal blow. He’d never harmed Cyrea at all, never
even had her, just her voice as Cyrea had told him that morning.
But Cyrea too was angry, furious at the thought he could use her
voice like that, and that he could so casually risk her
happiness.

The Doctor had
had an arsenal of technological tricks up his sleeve, all to drive
David insane. Biochemical agents in the air to make him more angry
and frightened, low frequency sound waves to make him more edgy,
frightened and paranoid, and a synthetic voice designed by
psychologists simply to invoke fear in the listeners. He had used
every single technological trick he could find to push David to the
edge and beyond.

But as he
himself admitted, he had made an error. Though even then he
believed his mistake was only in not understanding how dangerous
David was. It never entered his testimony or probably his mind,
that what he had done was cruel and inhumane. In his world it was
simply science, and he was a scientist. David was nothing more than
a guinea pig.

He had started
him off in the fights with a level six synthetic, having known that
Cyrea regularly trained against synthetic opponents of level five.
Since David had beaten her he had thought that a good starting
point, even though six was considered the level of a master.
Unfortunately synthetic number one had been destroyed in under a
minute, and the doctor had realized he had underestimated the
human, badly.

Number two he’d
immediately sent in was a level eight, which he was sure would push
him to his limits. Instead, he had watched in horror as David had
turned it into confetti even more quickly than the first. And as
Cyrea whispered to him, level eight was the highest fighting level
used by any agent in the service. Top level martial artists and
athletes might use it for training, but only if they really wanted
to suffer, and only with every safety in place.

But that was
just the beginning of the nightmare for the doctor. Believing David
couldn’t possibly be that good, he’d thrown a level nine at him,
and watched it get turned into trash, while at the same time the
room was being destroyed around him, and Leinians from all over the
ship were trying to find out what was happening. For all his
precautions against being heard, the sound of the massive impacts
of the synthetics on the floor was being transmitted directly
through the entire ship. The doctor had known then that he was
going to get caught, and he still had no true idea of the human’s
limits. So he locked and barricaded the doors and carried on.

The last two
synthetics he’d sent against David were both level ten’s, the
highest possible rated synthetic. Nothing more powerful could be
allowed. Tens were so close to deadly that just the slightest slip
up could spell disaster. No-one had ever officially beaten a level
ten, though some claimed they had, and a few could hold them for a
while. More than a few had been badly injured and even killed by
them. And David had destroyed two in a night. But at least the
doctor had thought he was getting his data.

The analyses
he’d been carrying out on David’s body showed he was at absolute
maximum. His every muscle movement was as powerful as it could be,
while his reaction speed had levelled out at something well beyond
the Leinian capability. Far beyond what was believed to be humanly
possible. Until then they’d believed that Leinians were faster than
humans. But David, a mere human, was faster still, a state surely
only possible when he was simply reacting like a wild animal.

But then, at
the end, the doctor discovered he still hadn’t pushed David all the
way. What was shocking to the doctor was that even as he was
fighting to what he believed was the death, driven out of his mind
with worry and crippling psychological attacks, David was also
planning his escape. Against all the odds, he still had some
reasoning capacity left over, though the doctor hadn’t realized
that till long after.

When David had
escaped the doctor had nearly had a heart attack. He’d had visions
of the human running amok among the ship, killing all who got in
his way, and he’d known it would be his fault. High on chemical
agents, believing his love was being tortured to death,
psychologically stressed by the other stimuli, and beaten half
senseless, the chances that David could be reasoned with seemed
remote. The likelihood was that he would kill everyone he saw.

In his own
defence as he claimed, he’d immediately alerted the ship to the
situation, confessing all and begging people to stay out of David’s
way. That alert had probably frightened more people than any other
scare in all the years the party had been on Earth. But none had
been more shocked or scared than the doctor when David had suddenly
come ripping through the door. He’d thought David would be running
for his freedom. He should have known better.

The doctor had
reached for the cutter he kept with him for work, and blasted a
warning beam across the far wall. Or at least so he claimed, but
David knew he’d hoped to kill him with it. It just hadn’t worked
out. Immediately he tried it he had regretted his action, or so he
claimed. But not for any decent reason such as not wanting to kill
him. It was just that he had known logically that it was next to
useless against the power of the beast as he referred to David, but
he had been scared. It had been worse than useless as the doctor
swiftly found out, and he’d had his arm smashed for the mistake.
David could hear the anger in his voice at that. The doctor was
trying to hide it but he hated David for hurting him. Maybe that
was why his words were poison. As the not so good doctor said, why
antagonize the beast if it was only going to make him angrier?

Cyrea stood up
about then, snarling under her breath, and David knew she was going
to take a piece out of the doctor before he uttered any more
garbage. He grabbed her, quickly bundled her up in his arms and sat
her down on his lap. People all around them had noticed and the
doctor went a little pale, but at least she hadn’t done anything
for which she might get in trouble. He ignored them.

“It’s okay
Love. He’s just a bigot. A person who has to believe himself
superior to others, or else he would know himself as so much less.
Anyone with any sense would just ignore everything he says knowing
what he is and how contaminated everything he believes must be.” He
stroked her hair, helping her to calm her down, while those looking
on suddenly looked away, confused. They had heard his every word as
he’d intended; so had the doctor, his real target.

“Let him speak.
The more he says the more he condemns himself. In a little while I
get to speak, and you get to speak. We get to tell our side, to
share our pain, and to let others judge him, not him us. He gets to
be punished.” The sound of a throat clearing brought them both back
to the court, and they saw the prosecutor trying to re-establish
order. Behind him the doctor was trying to say something, but his
mouth just opened and closed pointlessly. Probably he’d never heard
someone speak about him that way, least of all to an audience.
Perhaps it was about time.

David stopped
speaking and nodded to Ayn Lar to let him know he was finished.
Cyrea slowly retook her seat. She was still angry, her every muscle
was stiff and unyielding, but she had heard, and for the moment she
would be patient. But not he knew, forever.

***************

Until he sat in
that chair that afternoon David himself had no idea what he would
say. He had expected something more like a human cross examination
where he would be asked questions and expected to reply. Instead he
was simply asked to say what had happened from his perspective. It
was something he was more than happy to do.

“The doctor has
called me a beast. A savage and wild creature better not approached
without protection. In doing so he sought to insult me, because as
everyone here knows, beasts are less than people. He is, though I
doubt he will ever accept it, both right and wrong. His words are a
compliment.”

“I am a beast.
I am a man. And those two parts of my nature are not in conflict.
As such I do not find being called a beast insulting. Under the
circumstances of yesterday, I find it a compliment. A civilized man
could not have beaten those robots. A civilized man could not have
rescued his loved ones. A civilized man would have died. But a
beast would not have cared. A beast could not have thought its way
out of that room, or found the doctor. I am both and I am well
pleased with that.”

“We have a
saying on Earth. That the civilized man is only a few meals away
from the savage beast. While that is perhaps true in a very few
cases, in most it takes a lot more to make us go truly wild. It
takes a serious threat to life, to liberty, or especially to
family. For me to know that Cyrea was being hurt in that way was
beyond my ability to stand. Which was exactly as the doctor had
planned. So why he should seek to insult me for his own
deliberately planned actions, I don’t know.”

“What I do know
is that what he did was torture, pure and simple. I would give my
life to save Cyrea’s, without ever a question. But I could not do
that. I was trapped, unable to reach her, and hating myself with
every tortured cry he made me listen to. I needed to go to her with
every heartbeat, and I couldn’t. You can’t even begin to imagine
how I hated that miserable wretch.” Though actually, he suspected
some of them could. It was in the way they clung together in
couples, curled in among themselves. He was describing their worst
nightmares.

“Instead I had
to survive. I had to destroy those things. I had to escape. I had
to save Cyrea. Nothing else could have been allowed. If I had died
on that floor, it would have been the worst possible death I could
know as I would have failed to save Cyrea. Under those
circumstances only the most extremely violent, the most
unrelenting, determined, and totally savage personality could have
succeeded. And only if it had the most highly trained, quickest
thinking, and again utterly single minded intelligence guiding it.
Nothing less could have succeeded. Nothing less could have been
allowed. So that is who and what I became. Exactly as the doctor
intended.”

“Despite the
doctor’s statements to the contrary, those robots hurt me very
badly. The doctors will tell you the physical score, but the
reality is that the suffering was far worse than mere pain and
physical damage. With every injury I knew my chances of reaching
Cyrea became worse, and I felt her dying before me with every blow.
I knew nothing but that terrible pain, and the failure because it
was my fault. The pain of my flesh was nothing compared to
that.”

“Only terrible
fear and desperation kept me going, far beyond where I would
normally have fallen down. So that is what I became. That I am
alive is a tribute to your doctors’ skill, to the beast in me, and
my love for Cyrea, not the doctor’s claimed good intentions. He had
none.”