Peace Warrior (5 page)

“Noooo!” The human screamed in agony as his wife’s blood poured out of her torn body. He fell to his knees and lowered his head to the ground in anguish. Zal was unaffected by the woman’s death or her mate’s reaction.

“Point the weapon at me, human!” Brun’s voice offered no compromise and the man looked up, dazed. He closed his tear-washed eyes and lifted the weapon toward the Minith obediently. A sound of grief and anguish began deep in the man’s chest, but not so deep that it went unheard by either Brun or Zal. It quickly spewed forth as a strangled cry of pained torment.

Without waiting for any further action by the human, Brun lifted his weapon and took aim at the two young females who had turned toward the lumps of blood and rags that had been their mother. One of the girls screamed and the workers in the field turned in time to witness her death. The piercing dagger of her scream echoed through Zal’s head as the second daughter ran to her sister. When the heat of Brun’s weapon burned off the top of the second girl’s head, the echo was replaced by the sound of blood and brains sizzling.

Zal was both amazed and excited. The man’s family lay dead but the human had made no move to stop the attack. The gun lay lifeless and dead in his pale hand.

It would have been comical to the Minith except that the sound that had begun as a whimper deep in the human male’s chest was now a screeching cry that brought pain to the Minith successor’s sensitive hears. Having held back as long as his excitement would allow, Zal walked over to the kneeling human, grabbed his smallish head and lifted him from the ground. With a sudden twisting movement, he snapped the man’s neck and dropped him indifferently to the ground.

Zal pulled the weapon from the human’s grip and tucked it into his belt. He then looked out upon the other humans in the field. The smell of fear was still strong in them, but they appeared once again to be hard at work. Not one of them looked in his direction. Zal felt disgust at their weakness but also found delight in what that weakness meant.

“You are correct, Brun,” he remarked to his predecessor. “They are not capable of fighting.”

Ruling such animals for the next four cycles would be a boring exercise. He would have to use his imagination.

CHAPTER THREE

Amazing. That was what Tane Rolan thought as their experiment opened his eyes and looked around at the nature-cage. No one knew what to expect. There had been dozens of conversations about what the man would do when he awoke – if he awoke. Everything from idiotic slobbering to manic rage had been predicted, and the assembled group held their collective breath while the object of their attention decided how he was going to react to his new surroundings.

* * *

He opened his eyes and found himself in a garden of waist-high grass and green foliage. This was a new place, one he had never visited before. There were no trees but the point was a small one, meaningless in the importance of the moment.

He could see! And smell! The scent of wildflowers hit his nose and he felt as if his head would explode with sensory overload.

His eyes, nose and mind drank in the virgin scenery like a drowning man gasping for air. The bright green leaves and brown shoots were cool air blowing across the baked soil of his weary mind. Until that moment, he had not realized how starved for new input he had become.

He stared ahead, not wanting to miss a single detail. He milked the scene for all of its heavenly freshness – its newness. He committed the scene to memory as quickly as possible, fearful that he might be yanked suddenly back into the incessant replay of the memories that he had become. The fear threatened to consume him as it coursed savagely through his body. Was the garden a mirage or, worse, just another long-buried memory suddenly flung to the surface of his being?

* * *

Cryogenics had evolved significantly since its inception in the twentieth century and, together with Senior Scientist Tane Rolan’s recent work on cell regeneration, everyone in the room felt this was their best, if not their only, chance. So far, all was going well, but that could change in an instant. Tane had learned that very hard lesson from previous experiments. Still, he was cautiously optimistic.

Unlike their previous attempts, the man before them now was different. His body, or what was left of it when they found him, had frozen upon his death and had somehow managed to remain frozen for several hundred years. The minimal degree of cell degeneration had given them hope and he, like the others around him, clung to that hope now. They were captured by the sight of their work and they watched, alert for any sign of life or movement.

But he did nothing. Other than open his eyes, the man in the nature-cage did not move.

The man’s body, or what was left of it, had been found still frozen by a group of Urop’n geologists studying the possibility of mining the bottom of remote northern lakes. Fortunately, one of the geologists knew of Tane’s experiments with cryogenics and human tissue research, and he had the man’s remains packed in ice and transferred to the senior scientist’s custody.

Tane’s initial reaction upon receiving the man’s frozen cadaver was so matter of fact that it startled him to think of the incident in retrospect. He had submitted the remains to his lab for study, certain that the remnants of the body were not what they were looking for. Fortunately, he had a good team behind him. One of his more alert subordinates ran tests that indicated that the man had not been dead prior to his being frozen and suggested that the broken body might not be a waste of their efforts.

Tane validated the worker’s results and, reaching the same conclusion, felt a rush of excitement. He cursed himself (mildly of course) for almost allowing the find to casually slip through his fingers. He applauded the alertness of the junior scientist and totally immersed himself in his new project.

A detailed analysis of the mutilated figure’s body, teeth, eyes and clothes revealed the most amazing characteristic of the discovery. The man appeared to have been a warrior. That long-dead breed of human who fought and killed for Culture, money or sometimes – Peace forbid – because they enjoyed it. He desperately hoped that the man was not of the latter variety. He dreaded the thought of raising the broken man back into life just to have to destroy him later should he turn uncontrollably violent or aggressive.

The scientist spent every waking hour with the man as the experiment progressed. He oversaw all aspects of the project and conducted all of the more complicated procedures personally, often to the chagrin of his co-workers and subordinates. He was a man obsessed with his work and, in a world grown fat with underachievers, he found success. The control of the subject’s body temperature was finely regulated and closely supervised as frozen cells tissues were sampled, replicated and grown. Growth led to new skin and bone, which were manipulated into the growth of new limbs.

These new appendages were similar to the old. They were cloned from the originals and constructed by the scientist and his team to be as good as, or better, than the originals. Three vertebrae, eight ribs and the right clavicle, all broken for centuries, were repaired. Most of the man’s internal organs were re-grown and replaced. Numerous cuts and abrasions to the face and torso were easily repaired.

The man’s skull was unmarred and, for that miracle, the scientist was downright jubilant. The knowledge, training and experiences contained in the man’s brain were priceless, the Holy Grail for which they searched.

The rebuilding process had taken the team more than two years to complete and, when finished, Tane held his handiwork in awe. From a battered shell of a six hundred year old frozen soldier they had shaped a human, whole in structure and better than a real man in many respects. In effect, they had a human head on a man made body. And the body had several refinements over one provided by nature. The man now possessed enhanced arms and legs, a surgically implanted endoskeleton, and an ability to selectively shut down his body’s pain receptors. In other words, he would be stronger and feel less pain than any natural-born human.

The only regret that Senior Scientist Tane Rolan held for his experiment was not being able to provide the man with the secondary lids with which humans were now born. When the man met his icy fate, that particular human evolutionary trait was still more than a hundred years from occurring in the first child born with the lids. As a result, the man’s eyes, which were not replaced by newer versions, did not possess the necessary muscles to control the secondary lids. Therefore, he had to do without.

Upon completion of the soldier’s new body, Tane and the other scientists were forced to await the Council’s decision on whether to attempt the next phase of the experiment. Six more months passed before the approval was finally received.

Now, it was time to see if all of the efforts had been in vain and the scientists watched eagerly as the man was brought back to life.

It was Tane who suggested using one of the few nature-cages that still operated. He believed the sight of plants and flowers might relieve some of the confusion for the man. In what little amount of free time he had available, Tane studied up on the period from which the soldier lived and knew there were still numerous wild fields that had not been turned into cultivation sub-farms. His studies revealed that, centuries ago, many men and women felt more at Peace when surrounded by vegetation, running water and furry animals. It was a foreign idea to Tane but he felt the man would feel more at ease in a nature-cage, and if he were prone to violence, the cage would help to contain him. It was just another of many details that Tane had attended to during the course of his obsession.

They chose to re-awaken the subject in a standing position so they could better judge his initial motor abilities. But so far, other than the eyes, he had not moved a single muscle. The man's new body was seeded from his own cells and DNA but that, although a credit to their scientific expertise, meant little to the ultimate success or failure of the experiment. This was new ground for all of them. All they could do was wait and hope.

The time dragged as seconds passed into minutes. The minutes turned into two hours. Still the subject showed no change. No movement.

Several of the scientists left, upset that they had failed. Others, including Tane, held out more hope and stubbornly refused to give in to any thought of failure. The man in the nature-cage was their only chance at freedom from the Minith. If they failed, then all of humankind failed with them.

* * *

It’s so beautiful here, he thought. The grass… the plants. What kind of place is this? How did I get here?

He memorized the view in front of him to the finest detail before chancing to find out more about his surroundings. Slowly, amazed that he could move at all, he turned his head to the left just a fraction. He saw more of the same – weeds and flowers. But there, just beyond the flowers, he saw a wall and realized for the first time that he was inside a small garden-filled room.

One by one, he tested his body parts, the ones he knew he still possessed. He knew without thinking that his eyes and nose worked as well as ever. His view of the garden was clear and the smells of the garden were heaven.

He swirled his tongue inside his mouth – it was dry and he realized that he was thirsty, terribly thirsty. It was both the greatest feeling and the worst agony. His body needed liquids badly and rededicated his attentions to surveying the rest of his body so that he could turn his focus to finding water.

He clenched his teeth and was delighted at the sense of freedom that simple movement brought! Excited beyond measure, he quickly verified the existence of four of the five senses – only sound was still untested. Bracing himself mentally, he tried to speak.

“Unnh.” The word ‘hello’ came out as a grunt, but it validated his ability to both make and hear sounds and he was thrilled. He had all five senses…

He was alive!

* * *

The movement was so slow Tane did not notice. Or his eyes refused to acknowledge what they were seeing. However, all of the scientists heard the sudden grunt that came from the nature cage, and Tane watched in stunned silence as the man’s head tilted slowly, undeniably forward.

* * *

Grant blinked and looked again to be sure he had not imagined the arms and legs attached to his body. He quickly verified the truth of his initial inspection.

What’s happened to me?

The sense of completeness, after being held in a shapeless void for so long, made him feel like running around in circles and laughing. Except that he could barely move. It was like waking up in a thick soup of heavy molasses. The desire to move quickly was there, but not the ability.

Still, he tried.

* * *

The scientists cried out as a group as the man toppled headfirst onto the packed soil of the nature-cage. The sound of his face striking the unplowed ground ripped through the crowd like a slap of thunder.

Without pausing to consider his actions, Tane Rolan rushed to the door of the cage, deactivated the locking mechanism and rushed to the fallen man.

CHAPTER FOUR

Someone gripped his arm and rolled him onto his back. Grant found himself looking into a bright light. A face swam into the light and Grant blinked it into focus. A young man, with brown hair and bluish gray eyes looked down. Suddenly, the gray eyes were shrouded by a cloudy shutter of skin as the man blinked. Startled by the apparition, Grant tried to pull away.

“What the fuck?” his tortured throat rasped. The bizarre eyes above him widened. The face and the hand holding his arm retreated.

“Quick, bring the sedative,” the soldier heard the man with the eyes calmly state. So, there was more than one, he thought. He commanded his muscles to move and they obeyed, but with agonizing slowness. He fought his way to a sitting position before being pushed back to the ground by the man with the strange eyes. Grant felt like a baby. His uncooperative body was unable to resist being forced back down and that pissed him off.

“What the hell is your problem, asshole?” His voice was returning and the words held some of the force and authority he had always commanded.

“Be quiet,” the man shoving him down whispered. His calm voice carried a bit more urgency and Grant thought he heard a hint of fear as well. “They will hear your violence!”

“Violence?” Grant considered the idea. A little violence sounded like just the right thing until he could sort out his surroundings, but his body was in no condition to cooperate. He allowed himself to be pushed back to the prone position. “I don’t get you, buddy. Who are you? And where the hell am I?”

“I am Senior Scientist Tane Rolan,” the man whispered. “And your other questions will be answered soon. But for now, you must lie still and say nothing.”

The language was English, but old English, like how the uppity ups in Britain spoke – usually over tea and crumpets.
What the hell is a crumpet, anyway?
Grant wondered.

Grant watched the man steal a quick glance over his shoulder and saw worry in the clouded eyes of the senior scientist.

“Do you understand?”

“Yeah, sure… whatever you say, buddy,” Grant nodded. Unable to do otherwise, Grant lay back without further resistance. He closed his eyes and reveled at the coolness of the ground as it seeped through the clothes someone had placed on his body. With as little movement as possible, he began a slow, deliberate check of his body. He started with his toes and worked up. His muscles slowly came alive. He flexed them to help quicken the process.

As he waited for his body to catch up to his brain, Grant opened his eyes to study the man sitting next to him. He seemed smallish, with close-cropped brown hair and a clean, well-proportioned face and body. Grant estimated his height at 5 feet, 2 inches and felt confident his guess of 130 pounds was within 5 pounds of the man’s true weight. The most startling aspects of the young man, though, were his strange, cloud-colored eyes. They immediately became even stranger, though, when the clouds lifted and dropped in a sudden blink of motion. The man had secondary lids that covered his eyes!

“Good. They are coming inside the nature-cage. Try not to move as you will frighten them.” The man – Tane -- blinked again and Grant gawked at his eyes for a few seconds before hearing the words.

“Frighten easily? Frightened of what?”

“Frightened of you, my friend. Of you.”

“Me?” Grant asked. He saw other figures approaching from the periphery of his vision. “I can barely move. How can they be scared of me?”

“It is a long story, but one that you will hear soon.”

“I can hardly wait,” Grant choked. His throat felt like fresh sandpaper. “How about a drink in the meantime?”

Grant saw Tane take something from one of the figures just outside his vision and lean over his body. He was in the process of asking what was happening when he felt the pressure to his thigh and a slight prick. He never got the words out.

“Take him to the room that’s been set aside,” Tane said.

* * *

Sergeant First Class Grant Justice awoke to find himself lying in a bed, his eyes opened toward the white ceiling overhead. He was no longer thirsty, but he still could not move his arms or legs.

He let his gaze travel down the wall – also white – and glanced around the room. It looked like a hospital room. The door opened and in walked the man from the garden – Tane something or other.

Grant noticed that the door seemed to lock behind the man, and he studied the smaller man closely as he approached the bed. He again noted the clouded, secondary set of eyelids. Other than the eyes, the man’s face was nice and hinted of intelligence and humor. He liked the man almost immediately but not without chastising himself for the unwarranted reaction. For all he knew, this could be a doctor for the European Front Army with orders to perform a de-nutting.

“So, who the hell are you?” he asked, never one to let unanswered questions remain unanswered. “And how did I get here? The last I remember, I was headed for the bottom of a frozen lake. With no arms or legs.” There were other memories -- memories of death, and memories of endless memories – but Grant didn’t think he wanted to get into
that
with this guy. All he wanted to know was where he was and how he got new parts for what had been a
very
fucked up body.

The small man smiled and nodded.

“My name is Tane Rolan. I am a Senior Scientist of the N’mercan Culture.” The lids covering his eyes rose and fell as he spoke and Grant got a closer look at the deformity. The lids appeared somehow opaque, but it was obvious that the man could see through them without any difficulty. He had seen the same trait in certain reptiles at zoos he had visited. The lids for those animals served to protect their eyes underwater and he wondered if Tane’s lids offered the same benefit for him. The question was pushed out of his mind by more important ones, though.

“Okay. I can buy that. But what the hell does that mean, Doc? Where am I and how the fuck did I get here?”

“Please. Do not use profanity. It represents a verbal form of violence.” He spoke as though reprimanding a child and Grant was slightly amused by the apparent scolding. The small man had balls. “And what do you mean by ‘you can buy that?’”

“Wait a minute, wait just a damn minute, Doc.” Grant was in no mood for answering questions. He wanted answers of his own. “Someone’s got a lot of explaining to do and, seeing as how you’re the only one here, you’re elected!”

Grant tried to sit up and found that he could still not move his arms and legs easily. His body lifted a few inches, but it weighed a ton. Reluctantly, he laid back, took two deep breaths, and tried to relax.

“First question: What the fuck is wrong with my body? Forget that! How do I even have a body at all?”

“Be with Peace!” Tane whispered as he looked over his shoulder to the closed door. “If you cannot be with Peace and refrain from this violent behavior I will be required to inject you with a calming agent. The moment the others realize that you have awakened they will want to see you, and I must speak with you first.”

The scientist’s actions and obvious agitation got Grant’s attention. “Okay, Senior Scientist Tane Rolan, I give up. I’m just going to lie here and shut the fu… I’m not going to say anything. But will you please just tell me what’s going on?”

“Of course,” Tane answered, relieved. “But first could you please tell me your name? I have worked on you for nearly two years now and the matter of what to call you has bothered me for some time.”

“Two years?” Grant asked, then waved it off. “Never mind. This is going to be some story Doc,” he said, shaking his head at the scientist’s words. “But okay, I’ll play it your way. My name is Grant Justice – no comments please, I’ve heard them all before. I will say that it’s not a nice name to have, especially if you’re a professional soldier like me, you dig? Now, you tell me what the heck is going on or I’m gonna show you some real violence.”

“This is not going to be easy for me to explain. Or for you to understand. Accept that before I begin.”

“Agreed,” was all Grant said.

Slowly, almost too slowly at first, Grant listened as the scientist relayed the story of his rebirth. It took Tane over an hour to explain how the damaged body had been found and the steps that had been taken to resurrect him. In detail, answering as many questions as he could, the scientist explained how Grant’s body had been discovered, still frozen, from the lake where he had died. He explained how the body had been re-grown, re-shaped and ultimately revived by Tane’s scientific group, working as a team. He told how Grant’s new legs and arms were grown in the experimental cell tissue incubators and how the damaged appendages had been replaced with newer, stronger versions. He described how broken bones and damaged organs were exchanged with man-made replacements and how the replacements were better than the originals. Item by item, like a child showing off his new toys, Tane Rolan pointed out the differences between Grant’s old battered body and his new, “better” body.

Tane was describing the new body’s ability to tune out pain when Grant finally had enough and begged the doctor to stop.

“Please, Doc. Don’t say anything else. I’m not sure I like being your experiment.”

“I’m sorry, I --”

“No more! Don’t say anything else. I need time to think, that’s all. Just time to think!” Grant’s anger flashed briefly and was gone. He looked toward the ceiling, his thoughts rushing through his mind like a wind storm through a wheat field. He fought to raise his hand to his forehead and massaged his temples. The movement seemed to take hours.

“You sound so proud of the job you did, Doc, but I can barely move. Maybe you’d better send me back to the lab for a few adjustments, huh? I guess they don’t make Frankensteins like they used to!”

“No, no!” Tane was quick to answer and laid his hand on Grant’s arm. “You are fine. It will take a few days to get back to where your body is fully functional. In a couple of months you should be able to do everything you could do before your accident. Even more!”

“Accident!” Grant shouted, his body suddenly a flurry of waving arms and kicking legs. “Hah! It was no fucking accident that put me at the bottom of a lake with no arms and legs, Doc!”

Tane covered the two steps toward the bed quickly and slapped Grant sharply across the face.

“What the–,“ Grant managed to squeak out before he was grabbed by the small scientist and shaken roughly. In his weakened condition he could not resist. All he could do was take the abuse until, finally, the shaking stopped and Tane stepped away from him.

Grant glared at the smaller man and swore to himself that, when his body was able, he’d set things square between himself and the doctor. Tane, to his credit, just returned the stare.

“Listen to me, Grant! You must be with Peace! For your sake, as well as for mine and the entire world’s. You cannot display violence where it could do harm to another human.”

“Oh man, you keep talking about ‘being with peace’ and not being violent. Just what the hell does that mean anyway? I haven’t hit or kicked anyone… yet” He let the last comment linger but Tane ignored it.

“Grant, listen to me,” Tane began slowly. “The world… earth… is different now. You’ve been gone a long time and things have changed. People have changed. How we think, how we look…”

“How you speak also. Does everyone sound like you? All prim and proper?” Grant demanded.

“Well, I… yes, it is Earth Standard language. Everyone is taught to speak it clearly and carefully. It helps instill Peace and avoid misunderstandings.”

“Yeah? Well it makes you sound like a pompous ass. Sorry.”

Tane stared. His mouth hung open but no words came out. Grant thought he might have pushed the little guy into speechlessness, but it was short-lived. The need to educate obviously overcame the initial shock of Grant’s taunt.

“Earth Standard is our formal language. In addition to Standard, each of the six Cultures has its own language, and most have more than one. At last count, the world had more than a hundred functioning languages. Culture languages are less formal and are reserved for conversations among families and friends.” The small scientist ended his tutorial on languages.

“Got it. People talk funny now, unless they are at home. How else have things changed? How are people so different, Tane? What else besides the way you speak? Does everyone have eyes like you?” Grant asked cruelly, taking a childish verbal shot at the small scientist.

Grant felt terrible as soon as the words left his mouth, but he wanted to get back at the doctor for making him an experiment, for answering his questions, for shaking him like a small child. So he had picked out the man’s deformity and used it as a weapon.

Grant was suddenly struck by the humor of the thought, regardless of how cruel it was. He imagined a world full of freaks with extra eyelids and he laughed for the first time since rejoining the living. It felt good to laugh and he never wanted to stop, but he did with Tane’s reply.

“Why… yes. We all have two sets.” Grant was stopped in mid-laugh, the sound choked from his throat. The man was serious. “But that is not the only change, we --”

“Wait!” he held up a hand, it came up easier now. “You mean everyone has eyes like you?”

“Yes. Well, there are a few who are born deformed, with only one set, but most have the protective lids as I do.”

“Deformed with only one set? You’re kidding, right?”

“I am sorry, but no. At first, those who were born with the secondary lids were considered deformed, but over the course of a few generations, the evolutionary change became evident in over ninety-nine percent of all humans. Now, less than one in 100,000 is born with the deformity of a single set.

“Some early scientists theorized that it was a changed precipitated by global warming or by the depletion of the ozone layer, a natural method of protecting our eyes from the sun’s rays. Others thought the change came about as protection against constant exposure to vid-screens, computers and – what was it called? Oh yes, television.

“The human structure is an amazing thing, Grant. It protects us from harm, sometimes in spite of ourselves.”