Resurrection (12 page)

The biofluid poured out of the pod, carrying her with it. She felt another impact as her body hit the ground outside. Pain rushed over her again, hot and electric. Her lungs gasped for air. It seemed as though she had no control of them. The biofluid poured onto her as it drained from the ship, and she inhaled it along with the air. She crawled forward, out of the deluge, gasping and coughing.

“I’m alive,” she breathed. Her hands gripped the grass and soil below her. Then her vision clouded and blackness swept over her.

She had arrived on Earth.

The boy was tall, with broad shoulders and dark-brown skin. His face might have been beautiful if it hadn’t been warped into affectation by his current profession. He wore loose pants that reached down to mid-calf and a tank top that showed off his admirable shoulders and arms. A small gold cross hung around his neck. He shaved his head regularly, and there was now black, quarter-inch stubble sticking up from his scalp. His features were classic African, beautiful and a little bit wild. But he had not been born in Africa. He had grown up in poverty in Paris and had come to Cairo three years before, when he was fifteen.

The Mechanic noticed none of these things as he followed the boy up the narrow, curving staircase that led into the depths of a tenement building in a decaying slum section of Cairo. He did not care where the boy was from nor how he had come here. He had chosen him for his strong, young build and nothing more.

“This way,” the boy said as they reached a tiny landing. He led the Mechanic into a low hallway that smelled of urine and had garbage strewn about in the corners. It was nighttime, and there were no lights in the hall, but a streetlamp outside partially illuminated the space through an open window frame. The building was like every other on its street, a five- or six-story pile of brick and mortar and cracking plaster that had never been fully finished, for the government taxed real estate owners only when their buildings were complete. From its upper story raw steel bars poked upward between a forest of makeshift television antennas.

The Mechanic felt nauseated as the smells from inside and outside washed over him. “It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “This won’t take long.”

“What did you say?” the boy asked, turning his head and looking at the Mechanic flirtatiously.

The translation of the boy’s words was not immediate, but the Mechanic did not care what he had said. He nodded brusquely that they should keep moving.

The boy made his way to the final door in the hallway, which he carefully unlocked and pushed open. The Mechanic followed him inside.

The boy busied himself lighting several hurricane lanterns. As they began to fill the room with soft orange light, the Mechanic saw that this was an apartment of several small rooms, each separated from the others by hanging curtains. The space was clean, or at least cleaner than the rest of the building. There were large, soft pillows lying around the floor, and blankets and shawls folded near them. An ornate hookah stood in one corner, and there were several gummy cubes of hashish laid out neatly on a small side table. The Mechanic’s eyes flicked over these without registering.

“Please sit,” the boy said, gesturing to the pillows.

The Mechanic paused for a moment as the translator decoded these words and conveyed them to his ear. He had roamed the streets for three days listening to conversations, giving the translator enough exposure to learn the local languages. There were several tongues being spoken in this city, but Arabic and English were the primary two, and the translator could now handle both of these with little hesitation. This boy, however, was speaking an English heavily influenced by some other language, and the translation came on a slight delay.

When the Mechanic understood the boy’s words, he took a seat, letting his backpack drop to the floor. He wore a gallibiya, the loose white cotton robe of the natives, with an over-robe of thicker wool that hung on him like a cape. His gray skin made him look sickly. He seated himself so his stunner knife, strapped to his ankle, was easily accessible. He had adjusted its dial and set it to human tolerances.

The boy gestured to the hookah and the cubes of hashish. “May I offer you the pipe?” he asked.

The Mechanic shook his head dismissively. The boy was used to his clients experiencing some embarrassment. To save the Mechanic the trouble of making the first move, he smiled and pulled off his tank top, then knelt in front of him. He brushed a hand across one of the Mechanic’s shoulders and whispered, “What would you like, then?”

The Mechanic was disgusted by the boy’s proximity. He smelled of some kind of oil, too perfumed and mingled with the smell of sweat.

The boy gently took the Mechanic’s left hand and kissed the palm. The Mechanic forced his lips into a smile and ran his hand behind the boy’s neck. The boy looked pleased. Then the Mechanic shifted his weight. In one motion, he unseated the boy and sent him falling backward onto the floor. With his right hand, he grabbed the stunner knife from its ankle sheath and flicked it on.

The boy was confused. He could not see the knife yet, and he was unsure whether the attack was foreplay or a serious threat. Then the Mechanic brought the knife up and lightly pierced the skin at the intersection of his jawline and cheek. The boy’s expression changed to fear as he felt pain shoot upward into his head. The fear melted into anger as he realized that he could easily overpower this man. He moved his arms to throw the Mechanic off of him, but his arms would not respond to his command.

The tip of the Mechanic’s knife had found the nerves of the boy’s jaw, and they had begun to overload them with small electrical signals directed at the central nervous system and the brain. The signals told the boy’s body to shut down his motor controls, to render him motionless.

The boy’s shoulders and hips twitched as he tried to move his limbs, but they were increasingly unresponsive. In moments, his body relaxed into limpness on the floor. His eyes stayed open, staring up at the Mechanic, but they were fading out of focus.

The Mechanic pulled his arm from under the boy and got to his feet. His heart was beating quickly, and he felt adrenaline fear in his veins. He had never been good at physical confrontation—how many times had he suffered in silence rather than face up to his tormentors? But the boy was immobilized, and the most dangerous part of this deed was over. He sheathed his knife and straightened his robes.

He looked down at the boy, lying awkwardly with one of his legs twisted and one arm tucked under his body. Seeing him helpless, the Mechanic became annoyed, and he kicked him in the side, just between his hips and ribs. “You won’t touch me like that again,” he said in disgust. He wiped his left hand on his outer robe to remove the boy’s smell from his skin.

Then he settled himself cross-legged on the floor and pulled his ancient first aid kit from the backpack. Inside were several dozen vials of ancient medicinals, and next to these were two new vials containing mixtures the Mechanic had compounded earlier that day. He took one of the new vials and poured it into a hypodermic syringe.

He turned to look at the boy as he screwed a large needle into place atop the syringe. He held the hypodermic up teasingly. “I have your future in here,” he said, squeezing the bubbles from the mixture. The boy’s expression did not change, of course, but the Mechanic imagined that he was silently terrified.

He knelt on the floor and inserted the needle into one of the arteries in the boy’s neck. Slowly, he injected all of the mixture. The boy did not move, could not move; his blank eyes stared up at the ceiling. But the Mechanic knew that the boy’s circulatory system was carrying the injection throughout his body. Through his capillaries it would reach the cells of his muscles and his organs, and when it did, it would create a great want in him, a want that only the Mechanic could fulfill.

The Mechanic removed the syringe and stood back. The stun of the knife would be wearing off soon, and the boy’s reactions would be unpredictable.

After several minutes, there was a twitch in the boy’s hand. Then his dark eyes blinked. Soon his arms and legs began to move. His motions were erratic as his body tried to regain control of itself. Then the boy let out a wail of agony, rolled onto his stomach, and curled himself into a ball.

The Mechanic’s mouth twitched.
First stage of addiction
, he thought.
The body is drained.

The boy began to writhe, clutching at his stomach, his arms, his feet, his head. “Dear god!” he cried out in French, biting his hand to stop himself from screaming. “Dear god!” He turned his head to look at the Mechanic. “What have you done to me?” he cried.

“I have given you a disease, of sorts,” the Mechanic said, standing well away from the boy and holding his stunner knife at ready.

“Why?” the boy cried. “Why…”

“I need your help.”

The boy convulsed in another wave of pain. Then he forced himself up onto hands and knees. He tried to lunge, to rush the Mechanic, but he found that he could not. His muscles did not obey; they were cramped, weak, drained.

“What have you done to me?” he cried again, and his arms went to his abdomen, clutching it tightly. He rolled himself into a ball again and retched violently, but there was nothing in his stomach. A continuous low moan issued from his mouth.

After a few moments, the Mechanic said calmly, “I have the cure to what you’re feeling. I can fix you.” Despite the pain, the boy turned to him and gave him his full attention, and he noticed now that the Mechanic was speaking through a strange device on his jaw. On the street, it had been too dark to see his face clearly. “What do you call yourself?” the Mechanic asked.

“Jean-Claude.” This between clenched teeth.

“Jean-Claude,” the Mechanic repeated, pronouncing the name awkwardly. “You must pay close attention.” He knelt in front of Jean-Claude and then, with the deactivated stunner knife, prodded gently at the bottom of the boy’s chin, forcing him to turn up his face and look at the Mechanic. He held up another vial for him to see.

“In this vial I have the antidote to the craving your body feels. I have what it wants.” He shook it in front of the boy’s eyes. “I have only enough for one dose. When I give it to you, you will feel much better. It is possible you will feel better than you have ever felt. But this will not last. Within the space of one day, the want will be upon you again, just as strong, perhaps stronger. Only I can mix you another dose of antidote. If you harm me in any way, you will never have that dose. Do you understand?”

The boy stared at the Mechanic through eyes that were bright with pain. “What do you want?”

“I want your help. Your service.”

The boy gestured at his body. “You can do whatever you want with me. I would have done it anyway.”

The Mechanic shook the boy’s chin hard. “Not your body, gutter rat! You will protect me. You will make sure that I am always safe. For if something happens to me, you will die a long death that will be unimaginably painful. What you feel now is only a small taste of the pain in store for you. Do you understand?”

The boy did not understand, not really, but he wanted what was in that vial. He wanted it with every fiber of his body.

“Tell me you understand,” the Mechanic said.

“I understand,” the boy answered.

“Good. Then lie back and hold yourself still.”

Jean-Claude did. The Mechanic poured the second vial into the syringe. He injected the antidote into Jean-Claude’s neck, nearly missing the artery in the boy’s jerking body.

As the mixture entered his veins, Jean-Claude felt instant relief. It was as though every cell within him had cried out for water and then a river had drenched him. No, not a river, a mountain stream, running with the purest water of early ice melts. A substance so clear, so perfect, that every cell cried out in relief. And after relief they sang to him in ecstasy. The injection vaulted him from pain to comfort to physical exhilaration within the space of a few moments. He felt his body filling with energy.

He looked up at the Mechanic, who now stood above him holding the stunner knife.

“Very good…” Jean-Claude whispered. And it was.

The Mechanic smiled. He had acquired his first slave. This one was to be his guard, his muscle. He would need one more. Someone skilled in the politics of this planet, someone to guide him through the negotiations ahead.

Three days later, Nate Douglas, a young consular aide at the American Embassy in Cairo, sat in Jean-Claude’s room with his hands tied behind his back, staring at the Mechanic. Jean-Claude stood patiently behind the Mechanic, watching the proceedings with detachment.

“The United States, England, France, Germany, China,” Nate was saying, his hands twisting against the rope, his body jerking in small spasms he could not control. “Any of the major industrial nations—”

“Which are…?” the Mechanic prompted.

“There are quite a few!” He stared at his tormentor. The man was wearing local clothing, but he did not look like a local. His skin had gray tones that Nate had never seen before. The cast of the man’s skin reminded him of an albino, but it was truly gray, not white. The man spoke to Nate through some sort of translation device mounted along his jaw. It was a technology the American had never before encountered.

He was asking questions that had obvious answers, questions that marked him as completely unfamiliar with the political structure of Earth, marked him almost as…a newcomer. This was a train of thought Nate could not follow at the moment. His body was experiencing a gnawing pain that consumed most of his attention.

He had known it was a mistake to follow the boy back to his room. There were easier and safer ways to indulge his urges, but he had been swept up in a momentary sense of adventure when he saw Jean-Claude standing on the corner. The boy was very fine looking, and Nate had given in to temptation. He tried to keep his homosexual encounters few and far between, but he could not always stop himself. Now here he was, a prisoner of a man whose business Nate wanted no part of.

“You will write down the names for me,” the Mechanic said.

“Yes, sure, I’ll write them down…Can I have some water please?”

“Not yet,” the Mechanic said with infinite patience. “What other countries?”

“Japan. Russia, maybe, but they have enough internal problems that I don’t think the government would be overly interested. You could sell whatever this is to them, but they would probably sell it again to someone else.”

“On what would a sale to one of these countries depend?” the Mechanic asked.