Chapter 8
When Johar finally gets in touch on the fourth day, I am so relieved that I want to fall on my knees and give thanks to fate.
I receive his message directly through the transmitter that was implanted in me. This is the first time I have ever received information in this manner, and it is an extremely strange experience. At some point, in the middle of the night, I hear a voice in my head. It is possible that I even let out a small scream and flinch. I can literally see him in front of me, brushing a strand of hair from his face and looking into the distance with a concentrated expression. I have the impression that they are not in the tunnels anymore, but above Earth, instead. I can feel that he isn’t alone and wonder how much information the transmitter relays – especially, what it relays to Johar about me.
“You have almost made it,” his voice says. His voice sounds tender, but also fairly worried. “We will arrive at the space glider in one hour.”
“Then you won’t be able to get to the Solarian today,” I say silently, but with all of my strength. I can feel Johar flinch.
“You can think completely normally,” he says. “You don’t need to scream in your thoughts. That was pretty loud, Mara. The transmitter is very powerful.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” I say, or rather, think, now markedly more subdued.
“We need that time, anyway, so Hazathel can recover. It was very strenuous for him.” He is silent for a moment. “Have you found Cassie?” he asks at the same moment I inquire about Khazaar. “You first,” he says, and waits.
“I found her, but she is not doing well. Birth is imminent. It could start at any moment,” I explain. “To make matters worse, she has fallen into some sort of trance.” I search for the right words to describe Cassie’s strange, absent condition. “It is like a catatonic state. She just isn’t there. I have no idea what is wrong with her. I think everything is fine, physically. Maybe it’s due to the shock of being kidnapped. Things like this usually happen for mental reasons,” I babble, and stop the flow of my words abruptly when I realize something. I remember what it felt like to be in Cassie’s head. I had the distinct impression that she was somewhere else. My breath catches, when I understand the extent of her abilities. She can make contact with others – even over a distance of thousands of miles. Johar is only able to follow some of my thoughts, since I was not consciously thinking them. He sends me an impatient sigh. “I think,” I say slowly, “that there is much more to Cassie Burnett than we thought. I have the impression that she can travel in thought, if you want to put it that way.”
Johar goes silent. The silence that fills my head gives me chills everywhere. “Then it is even more important that she doesn’t fall in to Ruthiel’s hands.”
“She already has, a long time ago,” I fire back, suddenly irritated. “And anyway, she is close to giving birth. What will happen if she delivers the children on the space glider or down on Earth, where she doesn’t have any medical attention? Shouldn’t we wait until the two little ones have been born?”
This time, the silence drones more insistently in my head. “Johar,” I say, and try to convey all of my love through my thoughts. “I have a bad feeling about this. Can you please tell me more about this mysterious organization you are a member of? It would make me feel better.”
“Where are these qualms coming from, all of a sudden?” he asks with a hint of mistrust that hurts me. No, more than that. This damned cyborg turned me off, and I let it happen, because I trusted him. And now he suddenly thinks that I will run back to Ruthiel?
I try to control myself, but my hurt feelings obviously reach the other end of the line. “Fine. I will send you bundled information about us in a second, after we finish our conversation.”
“You don’t need to get all huffy, just because I want what is best for Cassie,” I snip a little.
“I am not huffy,” his voices drones in my head. “I am NOT huffy,” he repeats a little quieter. I have to laugh. It is like someone screaming at someone else that he is NOT ANGRY. When I hear my cyborg join me in laughing, I am relieved.
“How can I open the information?” I ask. It’s fascinating, but also creepy, that the transmitter can relay voices, and also data, from me to him and vice versa.
“Your system will open it automatically,” he tells me. “However, I will add a password, so you aren’t drowned in compressed data. This way, you will get information one step at a time, almost by osmosis. After an hour, you will feel like you have always known everything I am sending you.”
“Brain osmosis,” I think and just want to laugh. What else is there that I don’t know about myself? “That is the password.”
“Good,” he says. “I will be back in touch in two hours. By then you will know if we should leave Cassie and her children with Ruthiel, or if we should come pick you up as soon as possible.” He makes a sound that is part laugh, part snort.
“Wait,” I cry quickly, before he says good-bye. “What about Cassie’s husband?” At the other end of the line, all I hear is an uneasy silence. My heart starts to race. Cassie won’t survive the death of her husband, this I know for sure.
“We had to break off the search for him,” Johar admits.
“Why?” This word contains so many accusations. I want to hold my tongue, but it is too late.
My cyborg makes a quiet, impatient sound. “Hazathel couldn’t stay down there any longer. And I definitely couldn’t leave him alone down there, or send him back to the surface without an escort. He almost went crazy down there.”
I am quiet. What is there to say? Contrary to me, Johar has not met Cassie. The pain will kill her.
“He really wasn’t doing well,” Johar interrupts my thoughts. I can tell, by the way he says this, that he has also started to question Hazathel’s murky role in all of this. “We will look for Cassie’s husband once we have reached Earth with her children. I promise.” I have the distinct feeling that, in this case, later will mean too late.
“Wouldn’t it be better for Cassie to have her children here on the Solarian? Surely you could ask one of your fellow fighters to accompany you into the tunnel system. I bet you can find someone who doesn’t suffer from claustrophobia!” My voice is rising, and I realize that I am starting to sound hysterical. Why in the world do I have the feeling that if we don’t find Khazaar, there is much more at stake than just his life? But Johar’s answer is drowned out in static, and I only understand incoherent words.
“Talk to you later,” I think, just as the connection suddenly goes dead.
Seventy minutes later, I say the password “brain osmosis,” and sparks start to fly in my head. If this is the slow method of transferring information, then I don’t want to know what would have happened without the password. Now I also understand why Johar wanted to give my memories back to me in stages. I am glad that I am lying on my bed, because my body is shaking as if I had a fever. After half an hour, my pulse has slowed enough for me to be able to think clearly. I hold my breath as I consciously think about the organization. Everything Johar sent me lies like an open book before me.
Fifteen years ago, my cyborg met the man who was to become his contact person for the first time. He called himself “Charles,” and made their first encounter seem like an accident. He was one of the officers, who were assigned to Johar’s less dangerous missions. He probably saw something in Johar that completely escaped my father over the years. What he saw was the tiny seed of doubt. At some point, they were chasing a man who had managed to hide from Ruthiel for months. When they finally found him, and put the shackles on him, the man pleaded with Johar to just kill him. He would rather die than have to go back to the lab.
Johar refused to kill him. “I am no murderer,” he told him, over and over. But then, one day, my father called him in and gave him the assignment to liquidate the same prisoner that he had caught back then. My father did this to test Johar. He wanted to know if he was still loyal, or if he needed to be reprogrammed. There wasn’t much left of the man, who had still been able to walk upright back then. Only his eyes still begged silently for release.
Johar killed him with a shot to the head.
With that, he proved to Ruthiel that he could still be trusted. He had also fulfilled the prisoner’s most profound wish. That evening, he got drunk, something that required a lot of alcohol, considering his robust physique. “Charles” kept him company, and when they were both at the point when they could barely stand up straight, he asked him if he could imagine another way of life – one that had more freedom.
The foundation was laid. Charles vouched for him in the organization, and they gave Johar small, meaningless assignments, which often led to nothing, or only served to confirm previous information. He saw how hard he and his fellow members fought for every victory they gained for maltreated creatures. At first, the organization’s goal wasn’t quite clear to him. But after a few years, he realized that they were fighting against the despotism of the World Federation – often just like Don Quixote, who fought in vain against the windmills he could never defeat. “Justice for all,” was the motto under which even the most diverse races found each other. Together, they stood up for a world, a universe, in which there were no rulers and no slaves, but only people with equal rights. He met Sethari, who wanted nothing to do with exploiting the human race, and he met humans who disagreed with the use of cyborgs as pure machines only.
He began to think independently. Whereas I had only had a few days to come to terms with thing – the upset of a firmly held worldview, reorientation, and the ability to not take things at face value – he had had years. He and Charles have worked together for a long time. Their successes became legendary; for instance, the liberation of twenty-six Haruans who were held prisoner in a secret experimental lab.
This continued until the day Charles was discovered. They took him to my father, who had him tortured for three days. For three days, Johar wondered if he would be next. But Charles never gave in. He died without betraying Johar.
After that, a burning hatred of my father filled him, and this made him more ruthless. When he received an assignment from his new contact man, to turn me, he saw an opportunity to finally exact a thorough revenge on Ruthiel. He would get Ruthiel’s beloved daughter to kill her father – this was his goal. Contrary to what I knew, Johar was aware that I was a machine-human, but he also saw the immense pride in my father when he looked at me. There were two things Johar hadn’t counted on. On the one hand, he hadn’t expected the assignment from my father, which called for the apprehension of Cassie Burnett, where he was also ordered to push me to my limits. On the other hand, he also hadn’t expected to develop feelings for me.
For the first time, he asked his contact man to let someone else bring the operation to a close. Hazathel was put at his side, and a seemingly accidental meeting was arranged so I wouldn’t be suspicious. Johar was supposed to stay with him in a supportive role only. However, when his “supervisor” found out that I was marked by a virus and would probably not be returning to my father – meaning I had become useless as a weapon against my father - he received a new assignment. He and I should go underground and use my knowledge gained there to destroy each lab and armed station, one by one.
Johar has started to doubt the “justice for all.” Does it mean that he should end countless lives, and endanger mine, for the sake of the cause? I feel a mix of pride and love. I was the reason Johar started to question things. Time will tell if this was a good thing or not. Again, fate intervened, by allowing Ruthiel to find Cassie and her husband before we could. Hazathel could definitely not sneak onto the Solarian. They needed me.
At this point, the information flow stops. It’s a good thing, too, because I only have half an hour before Johar is going to make contact again. Thirty minutes to make a decision. Can I put Cassie into the hands of people about whom I know barely any more than at the beginning of this odyssey? I still don’t know who ‘they‘ are, but the fanatic way in which they pursue their cause makes my stomach do somersaults. All of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It feels like one of those old movies, in which a faceless Mr. X steers the fortunes of a band of idealistic men, who are running towards an abyss without knowing it.
Something isn’t quite right with the scenario. If only I had more time! I need to think, but I can’t do that, here, in this room. It feels like Ruthiel can look over my shoulder here. I can feel his presence in the room next to me, even though he is sleeping.
Then I have an idea.
Why don’t I ask Cassie what she wants to do? I slip out of my pajamas and into my regular, dark clothes, and make my way to the guest quarters. I think about Shazuul who is still sitting in his cell, and wonder how I am supposed to get him out of there, since his poker buddies are sitting in the cell next to him. I need to think of something! Why didn’t we talk about this part ahead of time, and where are the accomplices from the organization “Justice for All,” when you need them?
Cassie is wide awake when I go into her room. Her eyes tell me that she is no longer making a mind journey, as I have started to call it. She is panting and her arms are around her stomach while she is pacing back and forth. She convulses with pain, looks at me and opens her mouth, but no words come out. This is not a false labor - it shoots through my head. These are contractions! I literally leap to her, and put my arm around her waist. She can’t walk anymore, and her legs fold under her. I wonder how long she has been doing this without letting anyone know. But there is plenty of time for reprimands later. She is already convulsing again. If I am not mistaken, only two minutes have passed since the last contraction, if that.
I can’t do this alone, I think. I definitely can’t hide the birth long enough for Johar and his rescue team to arrive, and I also don’t want to deliver the children without any help. I yell for the guard who is standing outside the door without a clue, and tell him to go notify the sick bay. Then everything happens very quickly. In a matter of minutes, a qualified doctor and team arrive. They transport Cassie to the hospital wing on a stretcher. She holds my hand the whole way so tightly that I can hear my knuckles crack. When the midwife wants to shoo me out, Cassie clings to me tightly and makes it very clear to the poor woman what she will do to her if she is forced to give birth without me at her side.
My father watches the birth through the glass window that surrounds the operating room that has been transformed into a delivery room. I am in the thick of it, between the blood, the laboring woman’s moans, and the doctor’s and nurses’ hectic actions. At some point – that much time couldn’t have passed yet – I hear Johar’s voice. He notices right away that something is wrong and asks if everything is okay.
“The children are coming,” I think, and tell him that Cassie is in the best of hands and that he shouldn’t worry.
“Where are you?” he asks and cuts the connection, for which I am very thankful, because the first twin’s dark head is already showing. I have no time to think about his strange question, because all hell is breaking loose. In no time at all, the midwife is holding him in her arms, and cuts the umbilical cord quickly. It is a boy who looks so much like Khazaar that it is almost absurd. Light, tiny scales cover his body, and when the little one utters his first, angry cry, they raise and rustle softly, despite the sticky fluid covering them. I wonder if he will be as famous as his father someday. Without any further ado, the nurse puts the infant in my arms, and I freeze in awe as I cradle the infant very carefully. He is so tiny, but also perfect. Five fingers, five toes and a tiny manhood. Dark blue eyes and a head of thick, soft hair. I love him unconditionally without even knowing him, and swear to protect him, with my life, if necessary. Soon thereafter, the second child is born. It is a girl. Ruthiel was mistaken when he talked about two boys. She seems incredibly delicate, compared to her brother, and resembles Cassie. Her hair is lighter, and her skin does not have scales. Only her eyes look like her brother’s, but I have heard that all children have blue eyes at birth, and that the color doesn’t change until later.
I wonder if my father was wrong about other things, too. On the surface, it doesn’t look like the two infants took any useful traits from each other. They are very different, and I start to doubt my father’s assumption. Is that good or bad for Cassie? If the children aren’t interesting enough for Ruthiel’s research, then he might let them go.
This is nonsense, and I know the only reason I think like this, is because of my excitement and deeply sentimental mood. If he has no use for the three of them, then they will land in cells as “also-ran” reserve objects.
I cast a glance at Cassie, who is exhausted, but holding both children in her arms. The doctor gives me a look, and something about him makes me sigh with relief. He has gone against Ruthiel’s orders to separate the mother and children from each other, immediately after birth. I nod at him inconspicuously, and he immediately turns his attention to his patient again. I look for my father behind the glass window, but he is gone.
Where is he?
My stomach grumbles a warning. I slip out of the operating room, after confirming one more time that Cassie is in good hands. The last look I give her does not give me good news. She is lying on her pillow, her face pale, and her eyes have that frozen look I have seen in her once before. I have a hard time tearing my eyes away from her. I watch a nurse gently remove the babies from her slack grasp, not because she is going against the doctor and complying with my father’s orders, but because Cassie cannot hold them, anymore. Her eyes roll back in her head until all you can see is white. I am torn. I don’t want to leave her, but Johar will be approaching the Solarian any minute. What should I do? I run my hands through my hair, noticing too late, that I am putting all kinds of bodily fluids into my hair. I look around the room, and my eyes fall on the doctor again, who is examining the babies. As if he can feel my gaze, he raises his head. I can tell that he is trying desperately to tell me something with his eyes, but I can’t understand what he wants from me. I make a decision; I will look in his head, so I can see what he is thinking.
Immediately, I am surrounded by a brain that seems somehow medical and sterile. It really is remarkable, how similar the inside of a head resembles the person himself – no, that is nonsense. Of course, the thoughts mirror the person. I pull myself together, and look for whatever he is thinking about right now. I find his message immediately and exhale in relief. He is going to take care of Cassie and her children. If need be, he is going to protect them with his life, because he is also part of the society that strives for equality among the races.
I don’t need to know anything else. I leave his head. I throw my blood-soaked gown in the hamper, wash my hands and slip out into the hallway. It isn’t like Ruthiel to miss this important event. It is even less like him to not ensure that his orders are being followed. Something must have happened that demanded his attention.
At that moment, Johar’s voice pops up in my head. He only says my name, Mara, and then again, Mara. He sounds so loud and near, and I have to lean on the wall to keep from stumbling. I know right away that something isn’t right. He is already on the Solarian, I just know it. Damn it! “Where are you?” I ask and don’t even try to hide my anxiety and irritation. “How did you get on board?” He doesn’t answer, and immediately my thoughts form a strong suspicion.
“Johar, you need to get out of here. Grab Hazathel and hurry. I will come to Earth with Cassie and the children as soon as I can. We will meet there.”
“I am so glad you agree with me,” my father says at that moment. I let out a small cry, because his voice in my head only confirms my suspicion. Once again, he has played a double, or even triple, game and is emerging as the winner.
“Father,” I say. “Where are you?”
“In the lab, of course. I am waiting for you.” And with that, he cuts off all communication.