Mindguard (13 page)

The color in
Marcus Miller’s face indicated that he had held his breath throughout his
brother’s entire speech. Horatio would not have been surprised to find out
Martin Anderson had done the same. Even he himself was amazed by his own
passionate and spontaneous rebuttal. Only Thomas Anderson seemed unshaken.

“All right, I
understand you will pursue your intention of transporting the information
package. There is no need for this conversation to continue. I will leave you
to your work as I am sure the next forty-eight hours will be very challenging.”

Something about
the way in which the commander spoke made Horatio feel like he missed a vital
element of this conversation. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he had
the gut feeling that he was overlooking something important. He felt like it
was right in front of him, but for some reason he couldn’t see it. So far, he
had approached this conversation from the point of view of a businessman. He
knew he was facing a risky venture, so he thought like an entrepreneur, trying
to use diplomacy and tact. Now he was trying to think like a scientist, to
search for that elusive answer in a whirlwind of information. The answer was
there. It was hiding, constantly moving along a labyrinth of hints and clues.

Horatio
remembered the days he had spent with his best friend, Nikolaos, slowly and
painstakingly working their way through tons of data, rearranging and
reconstructing it, using it to make sense of the world around them. There had
always been answers woven in the fabric of reality. Horatio looked for them
like a detective for clues. He could not afford to overlook anything. In
forty-eight hours, he will be going to war with the most powerful force in the
universe.

For the first
time in his life, Horatio felt like an underdog. So much was at stake for him.
Though he had always come out on top before, this was a situation he had never
faced. Just forty-eight hours before his life would change. ‘Forty-eight
hours’, the commander had said.

All of a sudden
it came to him, not with the brutal force of colliding planets, but with the
delicate brush of a feather touching the ground. It came to him just like all
his brilliant ideas had come, back when science was still the ruling aspect of
his life. He spoke to the commander, looking at Marcus all the time.

“I agree,
commander,” Horatio said, holding his confused brother’s gaze. “This meeting
has served its purpose. I am, indeed, very busy. I need to start preparing a
completely new game plan, one my brother will not have the opportunity to
communicate to you.”

Marcus Miller reacted
as if he had been slapped in the face. He put on the most hurt and offended
look he could muster up. Given that he had never been a great actor - his lies
were usually more dependent on withholding the truth rather than giving out
false information - he looked positively comical. 

“Horatio,” he
puffed, “I have no idea what has gotten into you, but I am shocked and offended
-”

“Save it,” the
younger brother said. “We’ll discuss this in privacy.”

“By all means,”
Commander Anderson said, in a tone that was exaggeratedly polite, “We don’t
want our presence to inconvenience you. Good day, Educator.” The holographic
link disconnected.

Horatio felt
numb. It was true that he had always looked down on his brother as a lesser
intellect, but he loved him nonetheless, and he cared about his family
heritage. His brother’s betrayal felt like a powerful blow. As Marcus paced
through the room, arms flailing, talking about how this was madness, how he was
hurt that his own brother would think he would ever stab him in the back,
Horatio had already moved on.

His mind was now
preoccupied with trying to regroup and produce a new plan of action. Marcus
didn’t even notice that his brother was not paying attention; he was still
desperately begging him to think clearly, to come to his senses. Horatio was
even more disappointed in him. The man just never knew when to give up and move
on. He realized with bitterness that he should also feel disappointed with
himself, for not having seen this sooner. Tired of his brother’s voice
polluting his thoughts, Horatio put an abrupt end to the man’s ramblings.

“Leave, Marcus,
you are no longer welcome in my home.”

Marcus looked
like he was about to start crying. “You have nobody, Horatio, if you turn your
back on family -”

“Don’t talk to
me about family, Marcus. You just sold out your only family.”

“I… you’re
wrong… this is crazy, this, what you’re doing… I was trying to protect you…
from yourself. I thought if the enforcers knew, they could step in before the
situation got out of hand, stop you before you were… unredeemable… to them.”

“I asked you to
leave, Marcus. Right now. Pack your bags and go!”

Marcus seemed
completely defeated, perhaps realizing that he had never before had to live without
his younger brother’s protection. Teary-eyed, he mumbled something Horatio
couldn’t understand and slowly headed for the door. 

“If you want to
leave the planet altogether, you may use the departure area in the front yard.”

Those would be
Horatio’s final words to his brother. He hated Marcus for betraying him. More
than that, he pitied the man. Perhaps all those years spent in Horatio’s shadow
had turned Marcus Miller into just that - a mere shadow of a human being. But
he also pitied himself for not recognizing his brother for the Judas he really
was. Forty-eight hours until the world was going to change. What else would
happen in this time? In just a half hour, he found out that he could not trust
his brother, that he could not trust his own instinct and he started
questioning his decision to trust Sheldon Ayers and Maclaine Ross. But he still
trusted his daughter. And the fact that he was doing the right thing.

I must bring to
the attention of the Council of Presidents the issue concerning the growing
political influence of the Enforcement Unit. From the beginning, the purpose of
this army has been to ensure the protection of the IFCO against telepathic
threat, such as that which has lead to the Great Mindwar, as historians have chosen
to call it. The Enforcers are to serve and protect the Federation and any
democratically elected government whilst maintaining a politically neutral
position. And yet, in recent decades, under the command of Thomas Liam
Anderson, the Enforcement Unit has started becoming its own political entity,
acting undemocratically in the process. It is my belief that, left to its own
devices and under the command of Thomas Liam Anderson, the Enforcement Unit
will become a political force that will prove a threat to the safety and
freedom of the citizens of the IFCO.

Vice President Micah
Soraman at the 214
^th
Summit of the
Interstellar Federation of
Common Origin
, one day before his unexpected death of what were, upon
investigation, found to be natural causes.

As the pall
bearers lowered Brother Elias into his grave, they themselves looking like
awakened corpses, Brother Torje was surprised to find himself crying. In a
place like Kalhydon, where reminders of one’s mortality were found at every
turn, he had expected to become desensitized to death. But that is not the way
of the human mind.

When he didn’t
return from Kastain after twelve days, the other brothers and sisters
rightfully assumed that he had left this world. Brother Torje was sent to
retrieve the body, for that had been the dying man’s wish. Brother Elias had
chosen him because he considered him a friend and Brother Torje was honored,
though he knew he was undeserving. These people respected him so much they
called him ‘brother’ even though he was not one of them. They looked to him for
advice and guidance, as though he was a spiritual leader, when in fact he was
nothing but a fraud.

They were forced
to live with the discernable presence of death every second of every day. They
faced it with dignity while he hid from it like a coward. And yet, didn’t
everyone live each day with the discernable presence of death? Was it not
inevitable for all? Why, then, was he running from it? He had always thought of
himself as a man of sound objectivity. How objective, then, had it been to run
from a frightening death at the hands of a ruthless enemy, only to hide in the
one place where death was ever present? Wasn’t he just deluding himself?

He had always
thought that he was above self-delusion. Then why couldn’t he just face his
death? And why was Anita, Brother Torje’s widow, crying hysterically? Why had
she thrown herself in the grave after her husband, having to be forcefully
removed from atop the coffin? Was she not aware that she was also going to die
soon, and be reunited with her beloved husband?

As the grave
diggers shoveled dirt over the coffin, making it forever lost to the earth,
Brother Torje admired the wondrous splendor of the surrounding nature. They
were on top of a hill that overlooked a great part of the island. The diversity
of its flora and fauna was absolutely breathtaking, a last gift to the island’s
tortured inhabitants. Beauty with which to surround themselves as distraction
from the horror of their health’s decay.

Brother Torje
was sad at the thought of the little time man was generally given to
contemplate the beauty of the universe. So little time. And still, there were
men who disregarded it in favor of a constant pursuit of acclaim. He was
thinking of one man in particular, a man he had once loved like a brother and
whom he now feared like the devil.

He turned around
to see that most of the brothers and sisters had scattered. Somebody had taken
away the grieving widow. There was nothing to mark the place where Brother
Elias was buried, only the telltale sign of freshly dug earth, which would
disappear in a few days. The Brothers did not mark their graves. So many of
them died each month that their gravestones would quickly end up dominating the
landscape. They did not want to disturb the beauty of nature. Brother Torje
hoped he will be able to remember his friend’s gravesite. As a devout
Christian, he wanted to return from time to time, to light a candle and say a
prayer. His eyes filled with tears, this time at the realization that nobody would
ever be lighting candles or saying prayers for him.

When another being
offers you its entire trust, whether it is an animal, a child or an adult, the
care with which you handle that trust and the way in which you repay it, define
your value as a human being.

Isabel Mensah

Villo Kantil was
still struggling to put on his pants when Tamisa’s retinal insertions announced
her that she was being summoned by the commander. Instinctively, she looked at
Villo. He was comically hopping on his right leg, trying to get his left one
in. She knew that he was doing it just for her entertainment, but this time she
didn’t feel amused.

She was
terrified of what the commander was going to say to her. Ever since she started
sleeping with Villo, she kept waiting for the commander’s punishment, but that
punishment never came. With every passing day she grew more tense, more
paranoid, like a death row inmate constantly tortured by the uncertainty of the
next morning. She ended up looking forward to finally facing the commander’s
wrath, just to be set free of this anxiety. Now that the moment was at hand,
however, she was afraid.  

She realized how
crazy this was: two members of the Enforcement Unit making out like a couple of
high school kids, but she didn’t care. She loved him. Feelings she thought were
just platonic revealed their true nature the moment he kissed her. Perhaps she
had loved him from the start and just  hadn’t been able to recognize it -
or admit it to herself. Tamisa had little experience with love. Aanadya was not
the soil on which love could grow. That time, when Villo had swept her off her
feet, had been the first time she ever made love to a man. Unfortunately, it
had not been her first sexual experience.

When she was
thirteen, one of the workers on the hell that had been Aanadya had tried to
rape her. It was a memory she kept reliving in her nightmares.

A storm had left
behind phosphorescent puddles on that awful night. If you managed to ignore the
skin-crawling reason for that phenomenon, it was actually sort of pretty.
Tamisa decided to go watch the lightshow. Her stepmother would have never let
her leave the house but, as it happened, she was stone cold drunk at that
moment. She had been very unhappy since the death of Tamisa’s father, three
years earlier, and she had developed the habit of drinking before bedtime. It
was a journey from which she could never be turned back; she just had to be
abandoned to the finality of unconsciousness.

Tamisa walked
the muddy streets of the dirty slum, passing inhabited houses that looked
abandoned, hearing sounds of fornication through the opened windows, like bad
omens. The men sounded like wild hogs and the women’s screams were the wails of
demented banshees. Tamisa was old enough to know what was going on, but still
young enough to hope she would never grow up.

She made her way
up the hill. The darkness of the night was illuminated only by the fluorescent
puddles. There was a spot right at the top, where a large hole had formed in
the ground and it always collected a lot of water. The giant puddle was
surrounded by trees. Illuminated by the faint light, they created an eerie but
beautiful spectacle. 

The man appeared
out of nowhere. He grabbed her by her left arm and swung her to the ground with
such force that she almost lost consciousness. She recovered just in time to
receive a punch to the face which almost broke her jaw. The man groped her with
savage lust, as though she were a sensual seductress, not a frightened, skinny
and helpless child. He turned her on her belly and mounted her, ripping off her
shirt, then turned her on her back again and violently pulled her pants down to
her ankles. She was still groggy from the punch, so she put up no fight but the
man still slapped her hard from time to time, for good measure.

She was slipping
in and out of consciousness. The whole incident had the consistency of a dream.
She felt like she was somewhere outside her body, watching from the distance,
impervious to the pain. In a way, she was happy about that, her body was the
last place she wanted to be in at that moment. She had always prided herself on
being mature for her age. It was because of her intelligence but also because
of a life that had pulled no punches. Though she had not felt like a child
since her father’s death, she knew that this was going to be the distinct
moment her childhood would come to an abrupt and violent end. She was about to
start crying when something changed the course of things.

No longer was
the man content with taking possession of her body, he decided he also wanted
possession of her mind. Thoughtenhancing drugs that granted telepathic
abilities were illegal, but they could still be found in certain places.
Nevertheless, they could not be found on Aanadya. Instead, people produced
their own versions. They were nowhere near as powerful as the market-grade
merchandise but these dangerous moonshine drugs, which had the side effect of
madness, could still offer limited telepathic ability. It was erratic, a mere
spark compared to the flame of the originals, but to some, it was still better
than nothing.

As he ripped off
her underwear and started unbuttoning his pants, his thoughts started to invade
her. They wrapped themselves around her own. In a way, the weight of his
thoughts felt more physical than the weight of his body or the stench of his
breath.  She could hear what he heard and think what he thought. Worst of
all, she could feel what he felt. She had never before experienced anything so
brutal and invasive. She was horrified by one thing above all else: what if his
thoughts could somehow leak into her mind and stick to hers like some sort of
disgusting secretion? What is she could never get rid of him again? Could the
man’s mind remain inside hers for the rest of her life, to haunt her forever?

Horrified, she
struggled. Using all her remaining force, she managed to free her right arm.
She grabbed a large stone and slammed it against the side of his head with such
force she had reason to believe her attacker died on impact, sparing him the
additional pain of the next five minutes, in which she rammed the stone
repeatedly into his face until it turned into unrecognizable anatomy.

It was horrible,
but Tamisa was possessed. She kept striking the man’s head so hard it
constantly changed shape. Then, after a while, it seemed to start changing
chemical state: from solid to liquid and - had she not grown tired after a few
minutes - probably ultimately to gas. When she could barely feel her arms, she
dropped the stone and fell on her knees next to her victim, desperate and
defiled, crying like the small child she knew she would never again be.

That night
changed Tamisa. It left her questioning her own soul and even her sanity. She
could have just hit the man in the head and made a run for it. She could have
started crying and remained frozen in shock. She felt that either of the two
options would have been the normal reaction of a frightened and wounded girl.
Instead, she hit him in the skull over and over again until his face became a
testament to the fact that incredible violence can be contained even in the
most innocent heart. That made her wonder if perhaps some of his mind, with the
evil it harbored inside, had not, after all, somehow dripped into her own,
contaminating it and changing it forever.

She felt
physically dirty, covered in mud and tears and blood - both his and hers - but
most of all she felt spiritually dirty, like her mind and her soul had been
befouled. She left the body behind, never once even thinking about burying it,
for she was not a killer, though she was most certainly a murderer.

She spent the
remainder of the night in absolute dread. She was certain that the next
morning, when the body will be discovered, they’ll somehow figure out who did
it and come after her. But Aanadya was the sort of place where an occasional
violent death was shrugged off as a natural occurrence. The so-called
authorities - meaning the men sanctioned by Kaye Wright to generally do
whatever they wanted - couldn’t be bothered with the death of a dirty, mentally
handicapped factory worker. They just assumed he pissed off the wrong guy and
that they settled the score among themselves, which on Aanadya was considered
quite honorable.

Nobody ever
wondered why his pants were found around his ankles, and if they did, they
really didn’t care. Certainly, no one expected a thirteen-year-old girl to have
mauled him like that. She evaded capture but did not escape punishment, for she
was forced to keep on living with the memory of that night.

But when her
best friend picked her up and kissed her, she felt no repulsion, no lingering
disgust from that horrible experience. When she made love to Villo that first
time, she felt nothing but passion and pure happiness. She abandoned herself to
his love. Every kiss and every touch felt right, as if he could read her mind,
and when she climaxed she felt such a rush of emotion she didn’t know whether
to laugh, cry, moan, scream out with joy or do all of those things at once. She
clutched him tightly, as if she wanted to absorb him entirely, and he gently
kissed her forehead, looked into her eyes and smiled.

In her short
life, most of it spent on a brutal planet and the rest in brutal training,
Tamisa had grown to consider happiness the mere absence of suffering. On that
afternoon, lying next to Villo, having made love for the first time and to her
best friend, she realized that she had had no idea about the value or the
importance of happiness. She had always thought that you cannot miss what you’ve
never had, and she once again discovered how wrong she had been. The thought of
all the happiness she had never felt until then, all the joy she had missed out
on in her ugly childhood and her hard youth, made her suddenly feel very sad.
She broke down and started weeping, overwhelmed by the reality of an existence
she only then realized had been entirely miserable.

In his
characteristic way, Villo did not ask her about her feelings nor did he try to
comfort her. He just absently looked at her for a few seconds, waiting for the
tears to stop.

“That bad? You
know, you’re the first woman I ever made love to who started crying
afterwards,” he had said then. “Usually they just sigh, roll their eyes and ask
me to leave.”

His comment made
her laugh. In an instant, ‘Villo Magic’ had done the trick. She was again in a
good mood. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her laughing and he never once
asked why she had been crying in the first place. But of course he had known,
or at least guessed. He was Villo.

“You know,” she
said, pretending to be serious, “I’m just happy that you don’t let your general
views on the wonders of speed dictate your love life.”

In training,
Villo always stressed the development of speed - both physical and mental -
which he liked to call ‘speed of action’ and ‘speed of thought’. He always told
his students: “Strength is a burden, stamina is insignificant, speed is key. If
you sufficiently develop your speed - the speed of your body
and
that of
your mind - it will be the only weapon you will ever need. It will replace
strength; your foe will be overpowered by the sheer number of your attacks, his
determination will be weakened when he will see that he cannot touch you, while
you are raining blow after blow on his body. Also, stamina becomes
insignificant, because your foe will be defeated long before you will even
break a sweat. Speed! Remember this!”

He would follow
this up with a demonstration. Villo always carried on him six spike-shaped
darts in a small, customized pouch attached to his belt. They were his favorite
weapons, ‘for special occasions’ as he would jokingly state. Upon close
inspection, one could see that each of the darts was covered in mysterious
symbols, sculpted on the metal. None of the cadets had ever managed to find out
their meaning. When Tamisa had asked him about them, he told her that the darts
had been a gift from a very special friend and that he didn’t know the meaning
of the symbols.

In his
demonstrations, he would pull out three of the darts and show them to his
cadets. Like a skilled magician, he always made sure that everyone got a good
look at them. Then he would throw them at a designated target with such speed
that the objects seemed to disappear from his hand and simply rematerialize
wherever he had chosen to plant them. Even his arm seemed to stay in place.
Tamisa was bent on one day matching his incredible speed.
         

In spite of her
joke, Villo liked to take his time between the sheets. In bed, he never had
anything on his mind but her pleasure. Her relationship with Villo had quickly
become the most important thing in her life. Now it was time to stand up and
fight for it. She was about to leave the room, determined to confidently face
the commander, when she realized that she had never actually told Villo about
the message or why she suddenly got up and headed for the door. At the last
moment, she stopped and turned to her lover who, ignored, was just staring at
her in what seemed part amusement and part disbelief.

“Good, the
invisibility cloak is working. Money well spent,” he said, with a confused
smile. 

“Oh… sorry… I
was, I was just lost in thought. Uhm… I… I just received a message from
Commander Anderson. I’m being called to the briefing room.”

Villo’s face
became serious. “Tammy, he doesn’t care that we’re sleeping together.” It was
the first time they were actually talking about their relationship.

“I’m not sure…
 how he’ll react.”

“He won’t.”

“He won’t? How
could he possibly not?”

“Why would he?”
he shrugged. “There’s no rule in the academy preventing soldiers from sleeping
together. In fact, there’s not even a rule about instructors and students not
sleeping together, and I’m not your instructor anymore.”