It was cold in the cafeteria. Idly, I wondered why. The military had plenty of money, if one went by the allocation reports. Might be that this base was just on the edge of nowhere, understaffed and underfunded. Taking another sip of the hot chicken broth, I stood up and wandered over to the nearest window. The sun wasn’t up yet, so there was nothing to see but my reflection. The borrowed military jacket made me look lumpier than usual, and I wondered vaguely if lipstick would help or hurt my presently washed-out complexion. Not that I had any…
My laryngitis was almost gone, but just the same, I was glad for some time to myself. Since the Captain had shown up on my doorstep two days ago, the only privacy I’d found was in the bathroom – after the Captain checked for windows.
“General said to keep an eye on you,” he’d told me with a straight face.
The “General” had been a Colonel when we met four years ago. A lot must have happened since then. I’d known they ‘d come for me someday, but I never imagined that they would bring me to a secluded place like this. Laboratories and psychologists, that’s what had periodically jarred me out sleep in a cold sweat. I bit my lip and tried the equation with the new variables.
Unless he had changed from Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde, having General Clark involved was a good sign. Restraining straps and sodium pentothal weren’t his style. That only left one thing – another crash site. It was the only way the scenario made any sense. This desert area would have avoided by the indigenous tribes, and just didn’t exist as far as land developers were concerned. Which left the modern military, always hunting for some new challenge to throw at its people, as I knew from personal experience. My window reflection laughed a little. Maybe I was glad the cafeteria was cool. Tin boxes have a way of becoming ovens with a little added sunshine.
I heard a click and stopped laughing. There was nothing funny about being locked in. Frankly, I’d had about enough of it. Without turning, I watched the General’s reflection enter the room. He stopped a few feet away from me and waited.
“What did you tell that Captain of yours?” I asked, skipping the pleasantries. He looked calm on the outside, but I could feel the tension on the inside. I’d always been able to sense his emotions better than anybody else’s. “Always” being since the day I started being able to sense anything.
“I told him you were special, and not to let anything happen to you.” From someone else, that would’ve sounded false, but I knew he meant it.
“So,” I turned to face him. “Who told the guards not to let me happen to anybody else?”
He ignored the question. His hat was in his hands, and he looked more like a middle-aged suitor than a tough, demanding General. “I’m glad you’re here,” was all he said. He radiated things he couldn’t seem to find words for. It made me feel shy, having someone feel that way about me. After a few moments of non-verbal communication, he dropped his hat on the table with one hand, and set his briefcase beside it with the other.
“It’s another site, isn’t it?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.
“Yes,” he answered, popping the briefcase open.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” I asked, as he reached in for a manila folder. “Let’s go.” With the last site, I’d sensed something every time my squad jogged past it. Nothing concrete or familiar, like smelling a hint of cigarette smoke and knowing someone was nearby…it had been more like a whisper of thought that had gradually intensified. If I could change one thing in my life, it would be the day I decided to run PT through there alone.
“You’re sure?” He asked, frowning a little. At my nod, he dropped the folder and snapped the briefcase shut again. “Follow me.”
There was a jeep waiting outside. It must’ve brought him, because it hadn’t been there before. I waited while he handed his briefcase off to an aid and checked the water reservoirs. That was like him, too, checking everything himself. It had nothing to do with distrust and everything to do with a healthy respect for the environment around us. A court-martial might rule that it was the Motor Pool’s job to make sure everything was in working order, but that wouldn’t make any difference to a couple of corpses.
The ride was short and painful, for we bounced over some pretty rough terrain. He was projecting urgency now, and I was hung onto that to avoid the bad feelings that were coming from…somewhere. Whoever this race was, whichever planet they came from, there were some significant differences between us and them. We use diamonds for decoration or industrial drilling. They use diamonds as external hard drives. I’d made the mistake of picking up a handful of them at the last crash site, and had spent weeks in the ICU recovering from having an encyclopedia set downloaded into my brain. I’d been lucky. Of the three idiots who’d gone into an alien ship armed with nothing but curiosity, I’d been the only survivor.
“Stop.” I had to shout it, but he heard me. The seatbelt dug into my torso as we jerked to a halt.
“Are you ok?” He asked, dropping his goggles so that he could see me better.
“Sure,” I lied. It was growing, the closer we got to it. It was like…walking up to a landfill or a food garbage can that had been left in the sun all day. I felt like throwing up, or skipping that and just curling up in a corner somewhere. “Do you feel it, too?” I was surprised when he reached for my hands, which were clenched in my lap.
“Yes,” he said, “I feel something. And I think it’s bad. That’s…why you’re here.”
I stared at him, amazed as he dropped a mind-wall and let me see what was really going on.
“You’ve gotten better,” I said irrelevantly. “Let’s go.” Better was the understatement of the decade. He’d concealed it all from me, and if he could do that…I’d have to sift through our reunion later, when I had time to be embarrassed by what I hadn’t been suppressing.
The site was just over the next hill. The site he’d found. The site he’d come to repeatedly before telling anybody it was there. The site where he’d learned to shield like that. I carefully built my own wall, the kind with wallpaper on the outside so that it doesn’t look like a defense. What was it I’d thought earlier, about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I hoped it wouldn’t come true. I was somewhat reassured by what he hadn’t been shielding earlier. He might’ve said he was glad, but I had detected a reluctance that puzzled me at the time.
Now that I had all the pieces, though, the puzzle made quite a picture. The military had started out in low gear, thinking it was just anther false alarm. As the reports had trickled in, though, it began picking up speed. By now, against *his advice, they were heading full-tilt for disaster.
He slowed, pulling over just as we reached the peak. Our dust plume might have gone unnoticed, as the site was at the bottom of the gulley, but it was time to go quietly.
“Leave it,” I told him when he reached for the rifle he’d brought. “Leave it all.” Reaching over, I released our seat belt buckles at the same time. He had a clear mental image of the cliff behind the wreck, and I didn’t plan on rappelling down it. Taking his hand, I concentrated. There was a flicker of fear from him as we began to rise, but it was instantly replaced with confidence, in me. “I’m going to have to shut down as much as I can,” I told him as we glided towards the cliff edge. “So if you need to communicate something to me, find the basic emotion and project it, alright?”
“The guards might see us,” he said, still operating under old habits.
I smiled. “They’re not going to see us.” And they didn’t. I kept us a few inches off the ground to avoid leaving footprints, but the guards all had suddenly become very bored. Baseball season had just started, which was much more interesting than their current assignment, and they were happily standing around the water reservoir swapping stats.
The entrance to the site was a hole that a meteor had knocked in the wall of the ship. During its years as a lump on the desert floor, a lot of sand had blown in through that hole, and around inside, and…well, it was a proper mess. I got that from his memories, for our continued contact had stepped up our communication abilities considerably. I almost ducked to avoid hitting my head on a metal beam that was no longer there.
I could barely breathe. Less-sensitive human beings had cleaned up most of the debris, but the negative emotions were incredibly intense now. Gripping his hand like a life-line, I made my way over to a closed storage bin. It was all coming from there… Tentatively, I reached out with my mind and touched the handle. It took some effort, for what hadn’t been damaged in the crash had deteriorated over the centuries, but I forced it open.
Instantly I had a raging headache on top of the nausea I’d already been fighting. I fought back as best as I could. Something else was fighting, too. I fumbled my way over to what was left of a desk. What looked like a perfectly smooth surface parted to reveal a small compartment with a single blue diamond inside. My fingers shook as I reached in after the diamond, but I finally had it clenched in my fist. A tiny piece of the information that came flooding out from it included a solution to the problem.
General Clark helped me as I mentally hunted through the wreckage. There it was – a small switch waiting to be flipped. Even as I gripped it with my mind, General Clark’s arms closed about my waist. My feet left the floor as I began moving the switch and we were safely out the door by the time the compartment of evil diamonds exploded.
Are you alright? the General thought as he held me.
Yes, alright. I looked down at the blue diamond in my hand, its shape temporarily embedded in my palm.
We ignored the soldiers who rushed around us, heading towards what was left of the ship. They didn’t see us for we were safely wrapped in a mental screen.
I glanced back at the ship. All that was left was a pile of smoldering metal, mere debris now.
Let’s go, I thought at the General. That won’t harm anybody else now.
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