Lost Past (31 page)

             
Hernandez was placed next to a goat, with the statement from Wilson, “Perhaps you would like to get to know what real animals are like.”

             
Just before they left,
Saxant
spoke to Hernandez, “You are to give complete cooperation to the human authorities on Earth. You must admit all that you’ve done and tell the complete truth, reserving nothing. You will never kill another human.”

             
He spoke to the group, “I wish I could say you will be safe, but I don’t even know if you won’t be followed. I doubt it will be soon, but in five or ten years, someone will decide humans are dangerous and attack. We have so much chaos here to deal with, I doubt there will be a coordinated attack for some time.”
             

             
“Five years would be a problem for us, but if you can delay it until ten or fifteen years, there’s little to worry about. The wormhole is closing,” said her father. “In three
years, it will take twenty-five percent more fuel to get through. They’ll see confirmation if they wait that long. We won’t be a threat to you.”

             
“The calculations. . .”
Saxant
said. “Where are they?”

             
“On my computer in the caves in the bird sanctuary. I also put a handwritten summary with the food.”

             
Saxant
then turned to Linda and said, “Goodbye, Linda Saunders. I wish I had the opportunity to know you better.”

             
It was Hernandez who asked the general group, “What did
Saxant
mean about the chaos?”

             
Linda replied, “The
Plict
were used to trusting their computers for everything. With them down, and hints of conspiracies, they started actually looking at what was going on. They’ve found all sorts of conspiracies. The most startling is that some Buds managed to do some interesting genetic engineering and gave birth to a baby Bud. It took a lot of technology, but they aren’t dependent on the mouthed
Plict
anymore.”

             
The ship took off with
Saxant
Bud as pilot and Linda looked
at
what she expected to be her last view of this planet. As the ship ascended toward the wormhole, Linda was almost certain she imagined the feelings of wistfulness coming from
Saxant
.

EPILOGUE
Five years later

             
John was with his last patient of the day when Eric interrupted him. Eric apologized to the patient, saying, “Sorry, there is an emergency.” Before they were out the door, Eric said, “Grab your coat.”

             
Instead of leading him down to his car, Eric led him up to the helicopter-landing site. It was the first time John visited it since he was abducted five years earlier. It brought back reminders of that time, although John’s memory dwelt more on how decisively Eric acted in his absence than of his abduction. Eric warned Jun and Pedro, allowing them to escape Hernandez’ attack, and went into hiding himself.

             
“
Saxant
Bud is dying and wants to see you,” Eric explained as they watched the military helicopter land.

             
John knew that
Saxant
Bud’s room would be as monitored as the rooms in
Vigint
City, but he was prepared to ignore that. He found the Bud propped up in bed, with a keyboard in his lap. His color was bad, but he had no problems typing.
Saxant
knew English, and his Bud took a surprisingly short period of time to learn keyboarding, developing his own system for his three fingered hands. The text-to-speech program was how he communicated with all the government scientists who wanted whatever information he could give.

             
“Thank you for coming,”
Saxant
Bud said. “They promised me they would get you here while I could still type.”

             
“Do you have any regrets?” John couldn’t resist asking.
Saxant
ordered his Bud to come, but John couldn’t help but wonder if the Bud resented his progenitor after his loyalty waned.

             
“No. You don’t understand.
Saxant
wanted to come and live here, at least for a while. He wanted to see things for himself, not just through reports. He knew it wasn’t possible, not without a continuous supply of food. Supplies for a Bud could be duplicated. The mirror-image sugar would keep me alive, along with other things they could synthesize. But food would have to be imported.”

             
“Or grown,” John said.

             
“Like Natalie’s farm.” This gave John a vision of purple plants surrounded by green ones.
It would probably be surrounded by protesters
as well.
Saxant
Bud lived on a military base because there was constant turmoil wherever he went. If it weren’t religious nuts protesting, it was sci-fi nuts wanting to meet an alien.

             
“I guess I have one regret.
Saxant
will never know what I felt here.”

             
“I didn’t think Buds felt that way about their progenitors,” John said.
Saxant
Bud told many stories about his society, which the military eventually published. The stories about how Buds resented their progenitors were part of the picture John gained from reading them.

             
“That’s because of the motivation of the progenitors.
Saxant
didn’t bud to exploit me, he budded to give me, or, in a way, himself, an opportunity to live on Earth. I am not saying it’s all been wonderful, but I’ve lived in a new world, a world which he’s only seen from the outside.”

             
When John left, a man he didn’t know was sent in. If John could give a
one word
description of the man’s mood, he would have said grief.
Saxant
Bud made friends on Earth.

             
While John was wondering how he would get back, a young man in a uniform approached him, saying, “Are you going to wait for the end? The doctors think it will come tomorrow or the next day. Something about the level of something in his blood being too high.
Saxant
Bud told us what a lethal level was, and that it would kill him in a couple of days.”

             
“I don’t think so. How can I get back?”

             
“You got the helicopter because it was so close to rush hour. We can give you a car and driver to get back. It’s been arranged. Oh, Special Agent Wilson and Dr. Saunders are in the lobby. She asked if you were here. Perhaps you’d like to see them before you go.”

             
John identified “Dr. Saunders” as Linda not Arthur or Tom. She published a paper on
Plict
computing, which many considered should be her doctoral thesis. Others complained it wasn’t original research, and she should hardly get a PhD because she was kidnapped. However, she never submitted it for a PhD, and completed the other requirements, then wrote a brilliant thesis on computer security.
             

             
They offered to drive him home, and John took them up on their offer so he could talk to them, since he hadn’t seen them since their marriage a month ago. They said little until they got into the car. Then Wilson said, “We waited for you. Linda said you were coming in too fast for it to be by car.”

             
“I trust you didn’t explain to them why you waited,” John said.

             
Wilson snorted and looked at his wife with a fond smile. Turning back to John, he said, “Have you heard that Hernandez’ lawyers are trying another appeal? It was on the radio when we drove in.”

             
John grimaced. “I hope no one wants my testimony again. It’s embarrassing to get up there and say that Hernandez
’
attitude toward everyone on Earth was normal for his society, but no, I don’t remember living there.”

             
“You know what you know,” said Wilson.

             
“Which is probably the only thing that saved me from a perjury charge.”

             
“That, and having cut the costs of psychiatric illness to U. S. society by fifty percent,” said Linda. “I thought your legal problems were over.”

             
“I suspect if Hernandez
has his way, they’ll never be over. Hernandez believes you caused all his actions and are guilty of everything imaginable because you killed
Jorxt
,” said Wilson. “But I’m certainly not complaining.”

             
Linda wanted John’s thoughts on how Patience was adjusting to Linda’s marriage, since Patience and Linda were so close. John said she was fine, as were Arthur and Natalie. He had dinner with the three of them just two days ago in their home in the country, which was bought so Patience could keep her goat. 

             
John thought Wilson and Linda’s marriage would be happy. In their five years of off-again, on-again, relationship, they appeared to have worked things out. They were both so career driven, John wondered if they would ever give Arthur grandchildren. Arthur appeared to be satisfied with Tom’s child.

             
Cara and John decided to stop at two, which was hardly obeying
Saxant’s
directive. She also wanted them close together, to minimize the time she was off work. John felt Cara should go back to work, because she was a good psychiatrist. Well, he was prejudiced, but she helped him get over the guilt he carried for killing
Jorxt
. She also helped him with the guilt he didn’t remember of keeping Natalie’s kidnapping from Arthur. Arthur had long forgiven him and they exercised together two or three times a week.

             
Meanwhile he would go home to his toddler son and pregnant wife and pretend he was just an ordinary individual, not someone with a memory of only five years. His past was lost, but he had his present and future.

-The End-

I wrote this story about 15 years ago and pulled out the
Plict
for my current project. Obviously I’ve made changes in the universe.
 

COOPERATION

A bonus short story

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
             
The mission was a total washout. The crashed spaceship was decades old with nothing worth salvaging and to add insult to injury,
Gjeye
damaged his own ship on landing.

             
He surveyed the unpromising looking landing site, analyzing what he needed to do to get off the moon.
 
There were two problems: the lack of a runway and the lack of one wheel needed to take off. He might be able to modify one of the wheels of the wrecked spaceship to fit his ship, although he wasn’t sure. The runway was a more urgent problem, because it had to be done in the light. In addition, if the ground froze, it would become an impossible task. It would be faster with a Bud.
 
The sun was high above a hill, and a month long night would fall in about two weeks.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
He went inside and set up a distress signal, not expecting any help.
 
He was on an Earth-type moon of a gas giant.
 
The sun, gas giant, and a settled planet formed an equilateral triangle.
 
The planet's settlement, called New California, knew about his problem.
 
Although they didn’t have space travel, they would notify any traders of his problem.
 
They recommended he get off the moon by himself, because it might be months before a trader came along who could help him.
 
Gjeye's
supplies would run out before then, even with careful recycling.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A slingshot effect around the gas giant was a favorite means of getting cheap acceleration.
 
Knowledgeable ships passed by when stopping in this system.
 
New California was too small a settlement to warrant anything but an occasional trader.