The small slight man sitting opposite Sam turned slowly on his
stool. His mouth twitched, his eyes went blank and unfocused,
then quickly chaotic and mad, then dead, then ... The cycle repeated
itself endlessly. His eyes with their madness and death seemed
unconnected to the rest of the man’s face or being. Judging
from the eyes, the man was truly mad. His left hand that had been
replaced by a metal claw indicated a past that contained genuine
horrors.
Sam took all of this in at a glance, the sight was familiar. He
had been closeted with this deranged little man ever since the
fellow’s space shuttle landed on the fringes of Akabah’s
spaceport. Had he gone too far? Inwardly, Sam felt pity and sorrow
mixed with a bit of admiration for the human wreckage before him.
Andersonville used to be the Federation's maximum security prison
planet; it was now run by the Gorgons. They were certainly benevolent
despots, except for the activities rumored to take place on Andersonville.
After conquering this quadrant of the galaxy over a century ago,
they soon left the daily governance of most hominid planets intact,
tax collection and the legal system excepted.
What could they
want with the galaxy’s most violent, incorrigible criminals
who were beyond any possibility of rehabilitation? Rumors abounded
about torture, bionic engineering and hideous experiments that
were performed upon the living and the dead. Andersonville had
acquired a reputation as a chamber of horrors designed to test
the limits not only of human psychic endurance, but human genetic
material as well. However, rumor was rumor and nothing more. The
fact was no-one knew precisely what the Gorgons did on their prison
planet because no humans had ever been permitted to either enter or
leave Andersonville. Besides, such gossip
had all the ear marks of space opera cliché. Certainly,
it only reflected racist human attitudes towards their reptilian
overlords. Vicious, sadistic criminals were themselves hardly
human; the Federation was best rid of them.
All of this flashed through Sam’s mind as he confronted
the small, mad man with the metal hand before him. Was he truly
the first escapee from Andersonville? His shuttle craft’s
black box named Andersonville as the place of embarkation.
No coordinates were given, the location of the prison planet remained
unknown. Had the compu-log been altered? Was better evidence of
the reality of Andersonville the man's madness? Or, his metal
claw?
“I
won’t talk to her. I ... can’t... I’m mad, you
know.”
“So
is she.”
The man lifted his face to the Tygor giant.
“Next,
you’ll tell me she also escaped from Andersonville.”
“No,
I won’t. This girl is not human. She is the only Soul Healer
known in our entire universe and she herself claims to be unique. She might, possibly, be able to help you, to calm the
whirlwind in your head. She might give you hope for the possibility
of life after so much pain. Possibly. Possibly ...”
To Sam's surprise, he heard himself muttering.
“Such
noble motives, tall green one.” The man’s metallic
voice should have been dripping with contempt but was completely
lifeless, without any inflection. “What you want is information,
all I can give you about the Gorgon’s dark side.”
“True.”
Odd, thought Sam. The eyes are mad, but the words are not.
“Those
other possibilities are real.”
“False
hope, I neither need nor want. I simply wish to die.”
The man’s voice was now monotonic and flat; no inflection
or emotion infused his words. He might have been - perhaps was?
- a robot so deficient in programming that it could not even imitate
human feelings. Now, there is a thought, mused Sam. I’m
dealing with a defective android, possibly one of those trained
killers - a replicant.
“I’ve
told you repeatedly, I can’t give you any information. I
don’t remember Andersonville. I’m speaking the truth.”
“And
your metal claw?”
“That
is also a mystery to me.”
“Sometime
events too horrible to encompass are blocked out from the brain’s
recall process but remain deep within it's memory banks. This selective,
unconscious amnesia is a common process. Many people do it with
childhood trauma. The Soul Healer can help you penetrate that
fear and remember.”
“I
don’t wish to remember. I don’t wish anything except
to be left alone."
“Now
considering where you’ve been, the Federation can hardly
do that.”
Sam chuckled audibly, but was again the reply was stony silence.
He sighed. Very well then, he thought, without your permission.
Sam opened a side door to the windowless, grey, metallic cubicle
in which the interrogation had been taking place.
“Come
in, please.”
The Soul Healer entered. She walked slowly, glancing neither to
the right or left but straight ahead into the future of her dreams.
Tiny, petite, and voluptuous, the girl exuded surprisingly little
sexuality considering her appearance. Rather, she gave off an
aura of great sadness mixed with hints of awesome power. Magic
truly transcended sex. Her curly brown hair glistened, ringlets
cascaded to her shoulders. A pugnacious, upturned nose was singularly
out of place. Her mouth was fine, hard and tight lipped.
Her
eyes, however, transfixed all who could look at her for they did
not exist. No iris or pupil greeted the onlooker. Where human
eyes reside, featureless ellipses of grayish almond looked out upon the world and the gods know what else. Soul Healers were more than blind. Although they could
not see visible light, they were mutants who could see through
the window of the soul.
The small man with the metal claw and dead voice looked up.
“It
won’t do any good, you know. No good, at all.”
Sam started and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Was
that sadness in the man's voice?
The Soul Healer unerringly took the seat Sam held for her and
faced the prisoner. She could easily sense objects with precision.
“I'll
be back in an hour.” Sam coughed and left the room by the
side door. If the Soul Healer could not probe the man’s
mind, his secrets would likely lie buried forever.
The prisoner and the Soul Healer stared wordlessly at one another.
But not for long.
“If
you don’t cooperate with me, they’ll turn you over
to Father Adler." The Soul Healer’s voice was sweet and warm,
although deep and husky.
“Who
is he?” The man with the dead voice sat motionless on his
metal stool staring at the Soul Healer.
“Father
Adler is the Federation’s Chief Assassin and he is also
a Master Interrogator. When he gets through with people, they
are never the same.”
Silence.
“I've
been told,” said the Soul Healer, “that you do not
refuse food and drink. If you want to die, why don’t you
starve yourself to death?”
“I
don't know.”
“You
seem surprisingly ignorant of yourself.”
“Yes.”
Although he had been staring at her for several minutes, the man
finally consciously noticed the physical presence of the Soul
Healer. Her beauty and sex made a powerful impact, although his
face remained impassive. The tight fitting blue trousers and white
jersey accentuated the obvious. Her seamless gold belt, black
boots and rhubidium ringlet earrings emphasized her aura of power
and rarity. The rhubidium stones in her right nostril glistened
with iridescent, multifaceted hues that changed and transformed
moment by moment. All of this the prisoner noticed but what quickly
overpowered him were her not-eyes.
“Well,
not quite dead are we? Sex, pity and remorse. Not bad, not bad.”
The Soul Healer’s tone contained just a trace of sarcasm.
“I'm
sorry,” said the prisoner.
“Don’t
be,” said the Soul Healer. “May I touch you, hold
your hands in mine? That is how I do my work.”
“No,
you may not! No one touches me! No one! I’ll kill you if
you try.” The man’s tone reflected terrible, invisible
demons.
“I
won't hurt you,” said the Soul Healer.
“Yes,
you will,” said the prisoner softly. “You wont mean
to but you will.”
“What
is your name?”
“I
don't know.”
“May
I call you Anderson, then?”
“If
you wish.”
Silence.
“If
I touch you, why will it hurt?”
“I
don't know, but it will, unbearably.”
Silence.
“I
can’t help you, if I cannot hold your hands.”
“It
doesn’t matter, nothing can help me.”
Silence.
In
a movement so quick and assured that it caught the prisoner completely
off guard, the Soul Healer grabbed and briefly held both his hands,
the one made of flesh and the metal claw.
But only for a second.
The man screamed and ripped his hands away from the Soul Healer.
A gaping wound opened up in her left palm. He then stood up and
threw the metal stool at her head, striking a glancing blow. The
Soul Healer slumped to the floor.
Sam burst in through the side door to find the prisoner holding
his head and screaming and the Soul Healer on the floor, her left
hand bleeding profusely.
“You
animal!” bellowed Sam. “The Soul Healer is the gentlest
creature in the entire galaxy. They do Dream Repair, you idiot!
Sam picked up the prisoner and flung him against the opposite
wall of the room. He crumpled up and lay silent.
Sam bent over to look at the injured Soul Healer. He watched in
amazement as the deep gash in her palm healed itself. Coagulated
blood was absorbed, new tissue flowed into the wound and not the
tiniest scar remained. There was also no visible mark on her head
where the stool had struck her.
In less than two minutes, the Soul Healer opened her sightless, almond non-eyes, shook herself
and with grace and lightness stood up.
“I
have your answer, Sam, at least as complete an answer as I can
provide.”
The Tygor giant nodded.
“The
Gorgons have gone into his brain and altered it in an extraordinary
manner. The center where dreams originate, the locus coerulus
in the brain stem, has been surgically removed or destroyed,
and replaced with a bio-copy. This new locus coerulus is composed
of cells cloned from non-nervous system tissue. They have been
grown so as to mimic neurons. These fake nerve cells are called phenocopies and
have been used to construct copies of synaptic connections
and neural circuitry that do not function, have no function. This new locus coerulus is active biochemically
but is not nervous tissue. In plain language, this
man cannot dream and has no fantasies!”
“Why
would the Gorgons want to produce such despair?”
The Soul Healer did not hesitate. “I wonder if they cannot
dream and wished to study the process precisely because it is
alien to them. In effect, this poor man has no soul, for that
is impossible without dreams and fantasies.”
“So
that is our glimpse into Andersonville,” whispered Sam.
“Yes.”
Tears trickled slowly down the face of the Soul Healer from her
almond not-eyes.
“That
is not all. This man is not without feeling, in spite of the bio-engineering
experiment performed upon him. He... He was overcome with sorrow
and compassion at the sight of me. He...even wanted to hold and
kiss me. Almost everyone just stares at me and is afraid, like
you Sam. You all think I’m a deity, supremely gifted, essential to holding the fabric of space time together and repairing cosmic strings but alien, ugly and repulsive as well..”
The seven foot tall Tygor stared down at his feet.
“I
can't help him or us. I deeply wish that I could, but I cannot.
Dream Repair is impossible if someone cannot dream at all.”
With a strangely distracted gesture, the Soul Healer wiped the
tears from her cheeks and disappeared in a misty, iridescent cloud
of purple haze.
Jared
Colfax, who was also known in much of the galaxy’s underworld
as Father Adler, sat opposite the shimmering purple haze that
had just appeared in his study. He had been thinking of Tamar
whom he couldn’t love and who was now dead, perhaps because
of him. Relationships were a mess, he thought and several centuries
of practice didn’t seem to make his own any easier. After
obtaining his promise to help in the forthcoming war, Oriana had
promptly disappeared. She wasn’t on Kushanah with Astreus,
her whereabouts were truly unknown. “This is one woman I
truly love”, he mused. “But what kind of love is it?
I’m lucky to see and touch the immortal Dacian once every
decade. Hardly fulfilling. I’m lonely, he realized. Everybody
is afraid of me once again, and I'm alone.”
The
purple haze in front of Father Adler took form, coalesced and
became, to all appearances, the flesh and blood of the Soul Healer.
By the gods, she is beautiful, he thought. But then all the women
I’ve cared for seem to be, even scarred Oriana. He looked
into the Soul Healer’s almond not-eyes and she felt beautiful.
She loved him for that.
“Feeling
sorry for yourself, Jared?” Her voice was soft and sad.
“Oh
briefly, yes.”
“You
don't known what loneliness is, my friend. I'm the only one of
my kind in this entire universe and I cannot return to mine. The
Penrose Tunnel through which I emerged seems to have disappeared.
I ... I cannot find it.”
To Jared’s amazement, she hung her head.
“Help
us while you’re here, Soul Healer. Evil is about to be set
loose upon this galaxy. Oriana says so and that is enough for
me. My guess is that Evil follows the Gorgons because they have
no souls and cannot dream. They dilute the Good and the True,
weaken the positive fields in the space time matrix, unravel cosmic
strings and Evil flows towards the newly created stress points.
Frankly, I’m rather glad you can’t get home.”
"The Hell with you, whispered the Soul Healer. I want to
go home.” The Soul Healer sounded infinitely sad, almost
like a child. “I've had it with humans in all their endless
variety, but infinite sameness. Such schizophrenic force, such
love, such cruelty.”
“There
are other beings in the universe, Soul Healer.”
“Make
love to me, Dacian Lord.” She faced him directly, her not-eyes
in line with his. “I can hold this form for as long as I
wish. Make love to me, Jared. Part of me will be less lonely for
a little while and I will give you exquisite pleasure. Part of
me is flesh.”
They went to Jared’s stateroom on the flagship and made
love in the opulent bedroom on top of green velvet blankets. Slowly,
gently, longingly they made love. The Soul Healer did give Father
Adler exquisite pleasure and somewhat to her surprise, he did
likewise to her. Most importantly, he held her hands and wrapped
her in gentle hugs.
Much later the same day, they were in love.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- -
Evil appeared on a Monday afternoon in the
outer arm of a rather large spiral galaxy that was the second
largest member of a galactic cluster quixotically named the Local
Group. Evil materialized near an old forgotten, now uninhabited,
almost mythical planet called Earth, the same planet that provided
the soil Father Adler carried in the leather pouch around his
neck. Earth was a particularly appropriate place for such an event,
for it was sterile due to the hominid nuclear wars of ages past.
Had humankind not evolved elsewhere in the galaxy, as well as
on this backwater Terran rock, hominid history as we play it might have ended
then.
BB 02.10.94; Freeport, Bahamas
