Lost Past (19 page)

             
John had a vision of Arthur carefully keeping track of the time and switching away from one task to meet his self-imposed quota. The thought amused him, but he realized that was what Arthur actually did.

             
“I went down into that basement, bumped my head a few times,” Arthur continued, “then I went out into the water with my life jacket on and started swimming. I expected to reach land in a few hours, but I was picked up by the rebels who run this island.”

             
“Rebels?”

             
“Yes, the
mouthless
Plict
are rebelling against the
Plict
with mouths. Only the other
Plict
don’t know it yet.”

             
“How do you fit in?” John asked Arthur after a pause.

             
“Damned if I know. I don’t think anyone knows. They picked me up, but don’t want
to release me because they weren’t supposed to be out in a boat. The
Vigintees
don’t want me to go back to Earth because they know I’ll tell them everything I know about them, the
mouthless
Plict
rebellion doesn’t want me to tell the
Plict
that they have a secret base and own a few boats. Next thing you know, I’ll find out the regular
Plict
have some reason for keeping me.”

             
John was briefly surprised that Arthur was so calm and even a bit flippant about his situation. He started remembering what he had heard about him and realized the explanation. Arthur was a realist and was not about to bemoan his fate, quickly accepting the situation and moving on.

             
“Arthur, there is something I must tell you . . . Mary is dead.”

             
“I know,” said Arthur. “I saw her die. Not in real time, but the
Plict
have cameras everywhere
.
Recently, they put t
hem on Hernandez and his clones.
They showed
me.
. .”

             
After John expressed his condolences and a few conventional words were said, he asked, “Do I have a camera on me?”

             
“No. One of the clones was arrested on Earth and they decided to put cameras on all of them. This happened just a few months before the bombing.
Also, there are cameras everywhere on
Vigintees
. That’s the main reason for all those mirrors. They don’t have to have as many cameras if everything is reflected. Watching the humans is a common occupation among the
Plict
. They place bets on everything too. Your trial was a top-rated show, and the odds were that you would be executed.”

             
John was startled. “Did the
Vigintees
see it?”

             
“Of course not,” Arthur replied. “They didn’t even record it because it proved you really had amnesia.”

             
“What proved it?”

             
“You did not use the obvious defense. You were only giving Earth information you personally developed. Not the stuff on schizophrenia, which is pretty common among the
Vigintees
.” 

             
John stared in confusion at Arthur. He wanted to sputter,
what? what? what? I’m a resident, not a researcher,
but after a long pause, he was able to ask more rationally, “I think that requires a bit of explanation.”

             
At that point,
Ghorxal
Bud
came up behind Arthur and tapped him on the shoulder. When Arthur turned to face him, John saw a translation disk in his skull.
Ghorxal
Bud
gestured and Arthur translated.

             
“They want you to have a translation disk which will translate their sign language. It is a lot better than waiting for them to write everything out.”

             
John consented and the process was much like the one that gave the disk to Cara, Wilson, and Linda. When it was attached,
Ghorxal
Bud
signed, “You were twenty-two when you went to the United States as an anthropologist. Within a year, you wanted to do more than study, you wanted to help people. It started with an autistic child. By trial and error, you managed to improve his life some, but you realized that he needed more. You requested help from the
Plict
and they were willing to experiment. You drugged the child and brought him to the
Plict
lab in
Vigint
City and
Bixtant
Bud
XI worked on the biology and chemistry, and cured him completely. But he needed both what we did and what you did.”

             
“There’s a
Plict
Lab in
Vigint
City?” Arthur exclaimed. “If I’d known that, I’d have saved myself a swim.” He looked over at John, who forbore from saying that Arthur might not be a prisoner in that case.

             
“One thing led to another,”
Ghorxal
Bud
continued. “You had a secret clinic in Mexico for fourteen years where the local poor people came
and well-
informed rich people
from all over
. The clinic in Canada only lasted three years until the authorities got wind of it. You were practicing medicine without a license, and they disapproved, even if you were curing people. There were several clinics in the United States and two more in Mexico. Every time, you used a new name and had to start from scratch. But you kept learning.
Bixtant’s
lab did the biology and the chemistry, but that was only a piece of it. You invented all the clinical support that went with it. Although your support staff on Earth helped, the
Plict
didn’t let you teach others most of your techniques.”

             
“Why not?” John asked.

             
“Because they weren’t sure how they were going to deal with humans,” the Bud said.

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“The
Plict
are more advanced than humans and if we fought a war now, we would easily win. We could throw an asteroid at the planet and the war would be over. But if the
Plict
ignore
humans, they will inevitably find the wormhole and find us. We might lose a war then.”

             
“I am glad that you aren’t planning a preemptive strike,” John said dryly.

             
“It’s been considered. No one is happy about the thought of killing seven billion intelligent beings, although the species would not die out, bec
ause we have samples in our…
”
Ghorxal
Bud
didn’t finish the sentence.

             
John wondered what
Ghorxal
Bud
was going to say, but didn’t press him. Looking at Arthur’s lack of curiosity, he realized that Arthur completed the sentence in his own mind.

             
Ghorxal
Bud
continued, “We wanted to know as much about humans as possible. You provided an immense amount of information, but if the knowledge
were
to spread, Earth would become much more powerful. Imagine a world where drug addiction was curable with a few months of work. Put resources into that, instead of detecting smuggling, and the smuggling would dry up very quickly. The resources could be put into space travel and weapons.”

             
“And you couldn’t allow that.” John thought it extremely unlikely that the freed resources would be put into space exploration, since there were too many other things people would want to spend it on, but realized that there would be no point in raising the issue.

             
“No. We wanted Arthur Saunders to show us how to close the wormhole. Once it is closed, it doesn’t matter what they do, because we will never see them again.”

             
“Do you know how to close the wormhole?” John asked Arthur when they were alone.

             
“No. I gave them all my research.”

             
Both true statements, John felt, but Arthur was concealing something. It was possible that he was concealing it from the
Plict
, who easily could be listening, so John didn’t press him.

             
John wasn’t sure if Arthur knew that Linda was on this planet, but found that he did. “They don’t have a direct feed of the
Vigintees
show and don’t want to call attention to themselves by getting one. It’s sort of like cable. You pay to watch. But every few days, someone brings in bits of recordings of Linda. It’s frustratingly limited, but she seems fine. The boat that brought you had something from two days ago, I was told.”

             
While John followed Arthur to his room, Arthur told John that Linda was always in the same apartment in
Vigint
City with two other people who were obviously from Earth. John described Cara and Wilson to Arthur who confirmed them as being with Linda. “Yes, they’ve downloaded it,” Arthur said, when he looked at his computer. Linda was using the exercise equipment, which clearly surprised Arthur. “Well, at least I know she’s physically fine. I would love to get a more direct feed.”

             
Arthur took John to the room next door, telling him that it was his. There was a makeshift bathroom with exposed and jury-rigged pipes. “Remember where it is,” Arthur said. “It’s the only one in the building.”

             
“Don’t the
Plict
need one? The boat had one.” Obviously not designed for humans, but usable.

             
“The
mouthless
Plict
don’t. The mouthed
Plict
do, which means you probably were on a boat designed for them.”

             
“
Ghorxal
Bud
             
talked about the mouthed
Plict
as both ‘us’ and ‘them.’ What’s going on?”

             
“A regular
Plict
can reproduce sexually. They don’t have gender, but two
Plicts
share genetic material and one of them has a baby
Plict
. A mouthed
Plict
can also create a Bud.
A Bud has
all the memories and skills of its progenitor
but
do
es
n’t have a digest
ive tract or sexual organs. It can’t talk and is
legally limited
to communicate in
writing or in a very limited sign language.”

             
“The sign language they’re using her
e is hardly limited,” John said.
Ghorxal
Bud used a full vocabulary describing John’s past.
But John remembered
he understood the sign language of the Bud who showed him where to find food and water, but the Bud had to write, “Shake to recharge.”

             
“It is theorized that Buds were originally useful in combat. At first, they lived only a few days, but they now live for decades,” Arthur said. “But they don’t have the same rights as mouthed
Plict
and they have their own culture. They want equality.”

             
“And I suspect that we will be their prisoners until they get it,” John said. He realized all of the
Plict
must learn the limited sign language and the handwriting so their Buds would know it. It would also allow them to communicate with Buds.  “By the way, what was
Ghorxal
Bud
going to say when he said, ‘the species would not die out, because we have samples in
our.
. .’ How was he going to complete the sentence?”

             
“Zoo.
Vigint
City is a zoo.”

This simultaneously shocked John and made sense.
Katrine
was wrong. She was an animal, not Linda, Cara, and Wilson. “With only one kind of animal?”

             
“Yes. It can’t be called a farm, because the
Plict
don’t benefit from humans, or at least they don’t benefit from most humans.”

             
“The exceptions being?”