Mindguard (7 page)

“A big deal,” he
said, nodding. “Yup, you’re the first soldier-girl we’ve had in twenty-four
years and you’re put in command on your first ever mission, right after
returning from a six-months punishment for pissing off the commander.” He
laughed. “Yeah, I’d say that’s a big deal. We should do more than celebrate we
should… we should…” he looked around the room searching for ideas, “I don’t
know… have a pillow fight or something. Just something to reflect the grandeur
of the whole thing.”

Tamisa started
laughing with more joy than she had felt in years. Villo smiled for a moment,
then became very serious. His voice softened as he looked into her eyes.
“Tammy, I know your story. I know about your life on Aanadya, how much you’ve
struggled to get to where you are now. You should be very proud. I know
I
am.”

They both grew
silent. Tamisa kept waiting for him to say something and was very surprised
when he didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her, pulling her body
tightly against his. For a second, surprise and panic almost made her fight
back, but that second quickly passed and she threw herself into his passionate
kiss with all the force of a swimmer abandoning her body to the water.

No way
,
she thought, as Villo gently picked her up and laid her on his bed.
How can
this be happening
? For an instant, she wondered just how wrong this was,
what the consequences would be. She dismissed those thoughts for a later date.
For the first time in her life, she decided not to fight. She abandoned herself
in the embrace and the love of her best friend.

Villo smiled and
his smile was different. She remembered the commander’s words: ‘You are under
the false impression that Instructor Kantil is your friend. I assure you, he is
not’. Villo took off her clothes and threw them on the ground. As she came to
the realization that this had probably never happened before in the history of
the Enforcement Unit, the commander’s voice lingered on:

‘Mr Kantil is
now your colleague. He is no longer your instructor, and least of all your
friend.’

Mission objective:
Prevent delivery of information package – completed.

Mission objective:
Retrieve information package – failed.

Location: Carthan
(Djago Desert)

Notes: Carrier Sophie
Gaumont eliminated before information could be retrieved. Elimination carried
out by Field Unit Commander Tamisa Faber, self-defense against physical
aggression.

Other casualties: Sheldon
Ayers, Mindguard (elimination carried out by Field Unit Commander Tamisa Faber,
self-defense against mental aggression), Maclaine Ross, Bodyguard (elimination
carried out by Field Unit Commander Tamisa Faber, self-defense against physical
aggression)

Final Mission
Report – Mission QWAY:17496 – Field Unit Commander Tamisa Faber

Returning from
his usual evening walk, the doctor found Brother Elias waiting for him in front
of his home. The house was painted entirely white, made from volcanic rock and
partially carved into the mountain, to help protect against the blistering
heat. It was of a simple beauty that the doctor greatly appreciated, for it was
one of the things that made life easier on this godforsaken island, where he
chose to serve his self-imposed life sentence.

Brother Elias
did not share the simple beauty of the house. The left half of his face
appeared to be melting off - a suitable illusion given the heat - while the
other side was covered in horrible boils, common to victims of Soixtet’s
disease. His left hand had withered into an unusable lump and his right one
looked like it probably wished it too had withered. Instead, part of its skin
had died and fallen off - a spectacle of pain and decay.

The doctor
remembered how bad Brother Elias had smelled when they had first met.
Afterwards, he met some of the others and realized that all of them smelled
equally bad. Now the stench no longer bothered him. It was part of the
environment, completely undetectable by the brain.

The entire colony
looked like it was home to corpses that had tragically come back to life. He
wondered if Lazarus had appeared similar, when the Lord Savior woke him from
death. He ultimately decided that he probably hadn’t, otherwise the
compassionate Christ would have taken pity on him and left him to slumber with
the eternally breathless. 

Unlike the
biblical Lazarus, these men were dead only in appearance. Their bodies were
still very much alive and very much suffering. Soixtet’s disease was so
incredibly violent, that the fact that the doctor hadn’t contacted it in the
two years he had lived on the island was an occurrence he attributed to divine
intervention. He felt nothing but love for these people, especially for Brother
Elias. Love and pity, profound pity.

“Brother Torje,”
the suffering man called out. The doctor greeted him from afar with a gesture
of the hand. The islanders called each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. It was not
because they were siblings, or belonged to any religious order, but because
they had all been sent to this place to die their horrible deaths. This common
fate created a closeness that could be rivaled only by the bond of sharing a
mother’s womb.

The doctor was
not ill, but he too was destined to die on this island, so he too was to them a
‘brother’. The difference between him and the others was that they had been
shipped to this place against their will, as part of an IFCO program for
disease control, whereas he had come here by his own volition. In time, though
neither dying nor disfigured, he had become one of them.

That was the
story of why they called him brother. The reason they called him ‘Torje’ was
because he had given them a false name. He had done that for fear of ever being
found out and promptly murdered. Even with the new identity, that fear was ever
present. During his usual evening walk, as he enjoyed the sight of the sun
going down over the two active volcanoes that overlooked the island, he
wondered if it was perhaps the last sunset he would ever see. It was a question
he asked himself every evening.

He was aware
that, at any second, his head could get blown off, leaving him much more
disfigured than his unfortunate brothers. He had no doubt that the man who was
looking for him had the resources and motivation to eventually find him. But
the doctor had been living in the Soixtet’s colony for two years and had not
gotten sick, which was an unbelievable improbability. He figured that meant the
good Lord was watching over him. If the most violent disease that had ever plagued
mankind did not kill him, he doubted that a mere man would succeed, at least in
the near future. Nevertheless, he lived every day as though it were his last.
That was something he truly had in common with the rest of the islanders. 

“It is good to
see you, Brother Elias,” said the doctor. Even after two years of being in
contact only with the diseased brothers, he had not gotten rid of the
instinctive gesture of wanting to shake hands. He always had to remind himself
that touching them in any way would bring them nothing but pain.

“Brother Torje,”
said the decomposing man, “Anita has prepared dinner. We would be delighted if
you would join us.” The doctor just slightly nodded. “It would be my pleasure,
Brother Elias. Any particular occasion?”

“I am leaving
for Kastain tomorrow, so I would like to spend some time with my friends.”

Kastain was not
a place; it was a ritual. For the brothers who inhabited the island of Kalhydon
on the planet Thissaia, Kastain was a twelve day journey with the purpose of
self-reflection and meditation. Faced with disease and death on a daily basis,
the brothers found solace in a deep spirituality. Every six months, they
retreated to a designated spot where they could enjoy solitude, as they
prepared to leave this world. Brother Elias was exhibiting symptoms of the
final stages of Soixtet’s - the skin was rapidly falling off his right arm,
leaving spaces of muscle exposed to fatal infections. The doctor understood
that Brother Elias was convinced he would not be returning from this Kastain,
so he was planning on breaking bread with his friend one last time, before he
left.

“Is your wife
preparing her wonderful bread soup?”

“Indeed she is,
Brother Torje.”

“I figured, I
know it is your favorite.”

“It is, to my
knowledge, your favorite as well, is it not?”

“Yes it is,
Elias,” the doctor said. He was sad because he realized that this was the last
time he was going to see his good friend. In the corner of hell that was
Kalhydon, he had made the most loyal friends. The brothers and sisters of
Kalhydon were the kindest, most wonderful people he had ever known. There was
so much love here in this fetid prison, it made him angry.
Why is it that
such love cannot be not found in the hearts of people with more fortunate
lives?
he thought.
Why is it that only in the face of the most intense
pain, destined to endure the most frightening death, can humanity cultivate
this type of devotion?

It was only in
one other place in the universe that the doctor had witnessed such love and
harmony. It was a place so incredibly different from Kalhydon and yet, in a
way, so similar.
Could it really be that mankind can only nurture the purest
emotions in the harshest conditions?
The doctor had set out on his many
travels to learn the nature of man, but what he had learned had not made him
happy. He looked at the dying, suffering creature walking beside him, and he
decided to be frank, for that was all he felt he could offer the man.

“Brother Elias,
you can rest assured, I will take care of Anita and Midia.”

The dying man
had tears in his eyes. Even those tears seemed diseased, as if they carried
within them part of the ailment that was punishing the rest of his beleaguered
body. “Thank you, Brother Torje,” he said.

“No need to
thank me, brother. It is the least I can do.”

“The least?”
Brother Elias cried. He seemed genuinely hurt by that statement. “Brother, you
have done so much already, for all of us.”

“Brother Elias
-” the doctor protested.

 “No,” Elias
insisted. “You have done so much, brother. “You have been our healer. We are
indebted to you.“

The doctor was
sincerely uncomfortable with this declaration of gratitude. He knew that there
was basically nothing of importance he could have ever done for them. Hearing
this poor soul speak of some sort of debt made him feel incredibly frustrated.

“A healer? Who
have I healed, Elias? Tell me, who? Are you not all still sick? Are you not all
still dying from this terrible, unjust disease?”

He felt his eyes
tearing up at the mere thought of the pain these people had to endure every
day. Fate had given them a veritable piece of paradise in which to live out
their own personal hell. The island was incredibly beautiful, the most
beautiful place the doctor had ever seen. He still struggled to understand how
it could be that these people did not feel insulted by all this beauty
surrounding them. In a perverted way, it seemed to mock them. It was a beauty
they should not be able to appreciate or enjoy. And yet, they did. They enjoyed
it in a way of which most people he had known in his life were not even
capable. That made him, at the same time, angry and sad.

As they headed
towards Elias’ home, their path overlooked the sea. It was evening now. The
stars were shining brightly, reflecting in the water. So many stars. Through
their very existence, they provided so many possibilities. Yet, of all possible
destinies this universe - or maybe its Creator - could have offered the
brothers, they had been cursed with the absolute worst. They were the people
who deserved it the least. As a religious man, a man who believed in a just God
who watched over His children and loved them equally, the doctor had a hard
time coming to terms with what was happening on Kalhydon.

He could think
of so many people who should much rather have suffered this destiny. They were,
instead, living lives free from any pain and fear. But if they were to share
the fate of these people, would they, then, not also become ‘brothers’? Would
they not be exactly like the others?   

“You have taken
away the pain, brother Torje.”

Lost in his own
thoughts, the doctor had lost track of the conversation. “What do you mean?” he
asked.

“You are a
healer, and you are a friend. But not even you can fight the course of life.
You have offered us relief from our daily pain. That is the most precious aid.”

The doctor again
felt he was tearing up. He hoped he would not be making this man’s final family
dinner a sad one. He looked away, looked to the stars. Somewhere out there was
a man who had been given the best of what life had to offer and yet he wanted
more. And then, when he had found more,
so much
more, he set out to
destroy what he had found.

In his past
life, before Kalhydon, brother Torje had been a scientist. That was a distant
memory, as if a lifetime had passed and not merely two years. In those two
years he had tried to be of service to the brothers in the best way he could,
by using his knowledge of medicine to ease their daily pain. For that, they
loved and respected him. He offered them a little comfort when their government
and their fellow man offered nothing. It was as if the whole world wanted to
punish them for having contacted this horrible disease.

As they walked
towards Brother Elias’ home, they passed the island’s small theater, where
those who still possessed the health and energy put on performances for their
brothers. The doctor remembered how touched he had been to discover that they
even had a theater. They, who had been sent here to rot away before even having
died, had found pleasure in watching a play or performing in one.

He remembered
how he had left the room crying the first time he had seen one of the sisters
getting ready for her performance. She had placed a blond wig over her own hair,
which had partly fallen off, revealing hideous bald spots covered with boils.
She was looking in the mirror, trying to adjust that wig. She tried to make
herself look beautiful. Her disfigured face was a celebration of homeliness and
yet she tried to make herself as pretty as she possibly could.

The doctor
remembered feeling a lump in the throat, as though he was about to throw up,
not from disgust but from profound sadness. He smiled at her but then quickly
exited the room. He went behind the small building where he crouched, with his
chin resting on his knees, and cried like a small child. Brother Elias had
found him like that and placed a loving and understanding hand on his shoulder,
as though it was not them but
he
who was suffering and in need of
comfort.            

Remembering that
day, he realized how the brothers lived in the company of death every single
moment. They accepted its inevitability. They learned to embrace life. He, on
the other hand, was running from it, hiding in fear like frightened prey. What
was death, actually? Was it not the same for him as it was for them? He
wondered if he might not, after all, be the unfortunate one among them.

They reached
Brother Elias’ simple white house, carved into the rock for protection against
the blistering heat. From far away, he could already smell the delicious scent
of Anita’s bread soup. It was a scent that survived, that rose up above the
horrible stench of the people. That stench had vanished when his brain had
decided to simply make it disappear.