Anton's Odyssey (32 page)

“Careful,” I barked. “You cut through an artery and he’ll bleed to death before we can get him home.”

The cut wasn’t deep, but Mike still groaned.

“You hear that?” said the green-coated goon.

“Kid’s just moaning again.” Duffy said. “He does it a lot. I think you too worked him over just a bit too hard when you took him in.”

“Had no choice,” the green-coated goon explained. “He had a lot of fight in him. His friend didn’t resist though, just curled up in a ball and started crying. I’m surprised they paid the ransom so quick. Seemed pretty useless to me.”

“Hey what’s she doing in there?” the hairy goon asked. My jaw dropped. In our hurry to free Mike from his bonds, we had forgotten to look back at the curtain. The goons never draped it back shut.

“I think she’s servicing him,” the green-coated goon said with a laugh. The ho-bots head was practically in Mike’s lap.

“What’s she got in her hand?” Duffy said, suspiciously.

“I doubt it’s up to the task,” the green-coated goon joked.

“Hurry Cotton!”
Ellen implored.

Cotton mashed the game controller’s buttons, frantically trying to get the blade through the remaining uncut girth of the cable. Using too much force, the cable gave way and the ho-bot’s hand swung out wide.

“You idiots!” Duffy barked. “She’s got a knife. She’s not damaged. She’s some kind of spy! Stop her!”

Ellen wheeled the ho-bot around just as the green-coated goon charged past the curtain. Cotton swung the ho-bot’s arm wildly, opening up a huge gash across the man’s forehead. The wound bled profusely, flowing into the man’s eyes. “I’m blind
! I’m blind!” the goon screamed. He collapsed to his knees.

“Grab Mike, quick!” I barked.

“Stay by my side!” Ellen commanded. Mike scrambled to his feet.

Into the next room, Duffy lurched forward. Cotton swung the bayonet, but Duffy dived out of the way, crashing into his sofa headfirst. The hairy goon stood with his eyes wide and his jaw open, his feeble mind trying to get a grip on the events that had just unfolded in front of him. He still had his drink in his hand. Mike and the ho-bot rushed by him. We heard a shot, but Duffy had been hasty
and hadn’t really aimed his pistol. Bone, brains, and hairy flesh splattered the wall. Ellen shrieked.

“Stay focused!” I barked. “It’s not our fault.”

Behind us, we could hear Duffy getting back on his feet.

“Run!” Cotton cried to Ellen.

“Run!” Ellen relayed the order to Mike.

Cotton read directions off of Allen’s mapping program to g
uide us through the maze of corridors. We were relieved to discover that no one had replaced the disposal canister we had move previously. Ellen directed the ho-bot to tiptoe through the barrier gracefully, but blind to his left side, Mike couldn’t see where he was going and crashed into the largest canister with a loud clang.

Cotton dropped the bayonet and extended the ho-bot’s arm downward. As Mike pulled himself up, pistol shots rang out behind us. The image on the big vid jerked violently. We had been hit, but somehow Ellen had managed to keep the ho-bot on its feet.

“Have you been shot?” Ellen yelled out to Mike.

“No, I’m okay.” Mike said.

The ruckus aroused the curiosity of the grubby people who lingered in the large atrium. Several moved in from the walls.

“Get down!” Ellen shouted through the
microphone, and just in time too. Unafraid of inflicting collateral damage, Duffy started shooting again. People dived to the floor.

We heard a click and Duffy cussed. His gun empty, he had to stop to reload. We gained some ground on our pursuer. Around a corner, and the door to the stairway lay right ahead of us.

“What are you doing?” Cotton cried. “Don’t slow down.”

“I’m not,” Ellen cried. “Something’s wrong!”

“I think you’re bleeding.” Mike croaked.

“Look!” Ellen said, pointing to a flashing line on the small vid. “We’re leaking coolant. The servo motors that move the lower extremities are overheating.”

“What do we do? What do we do?” Cotton cried.

My mind raced. I could hear footsteps behind us. Overcome with panic, I couldn’t think straight. I had choked, and as a consequence of my failure, Mike and the ho-bot were finished.

“Where are you guys?” I heard a voice. “Maybe I can get to you?”

Of course,
I thought. Once the shooting started, I had completely forgotten that Hammond was part of the operation.

“We’re just down the steps.” I cried.

“Hurry!” Ellen screamed.

Cotton flailed with the game controller and somehow managed to get the door open. Hammond and Duffy arrived at the ho-bot at almost exactly the same time. Had the corridor not been pitch black, Duffy would have certainly shot us from afar.

As Hammond dragged Mike into the stairway, Cotton flung the ho-bot’s arm wildly. Duffy dived out of the way, not knowing we had lost the bayonet. As the goon chief regained his footing, Ellen rushed him with the ho-bot. A bright muzzle flash and the large vid went blank.

We could hear the audio feed from Hammond’s microphone. His breathing was fast, deep, and labored as he dragged Mike up the stairs. From below we could make out faint footsteps, Duffy in hot pursuit. Whereas Hammond spent much of his free time getting buff in the gym, I guessed that Duffy spent most of his hours sitting on his sofa, drinking bourbon and intimidating his under-goons with
his large pistol. Duffy’s footsteps grew fainter as Hammond gained more distance in the foot race. As Hammond shoved open the door at the top of the stairs, a burst of gun fire rang out as Duffy shot wildly from below. Hammond screamed, and he slumped through the doorway. We heard the unmistakable sound of a large body going down hard.

Mike tried to pull Hammond up off the ground. “You’re hit,” Mike cried.
“Your foot? Can you walk?”

Hammond moaned. “Shut the door! Shut the door!”

“No, don’t pass out! Don’t pass out!” Mike screamed. “Help! Help us! Somebody help us!”

Mike never closed the door. We heard Duffy’s footsteps grow fainter as he retreated into the asteroid’s fetid underbelly. We had completed our mission but were uncertain of the cost.

We didn’t get a chance to see Hammond before Mary and Dr. Zanders rolled him away for surgery. Mike sat with us in the waiting room of the medical center, the fight between us long forgotten.

“You guys friends of Hammond?” Mike asked.

“Yes,” Ellen sniffled.

“He’s a good guy.” Mike said. “He just saved my life.”

“What happened?” Cotton asked, playing dumb.

Mike recounted the rescue from his point of view. He seemed to think that the mission was a one-man, one-robot operation orchestrated solely by Hammond. He dismissed the female voice of the ho-bot as belonging to the ho-bot itself and not from a third party.

“I hope he’s all right. They were going to kill me for certain. They were asking for way more than I was worth,” Mike said humbly. “There’s no way my momma could have raised that kind of money.”

At some point Mary must have contacted Hammond’s father. He arrived at the medical center pale and sweating, clearly worried. I felt stupid and un-thoughtful for not having bothered to find the man myself.

The hours passed by. We sat in silence. No one could think of anything to say to Hammond’s father, except Mike who said, “Your son saved my life.” Hammond’s father simply nodded. His son’s heroism didn’t appear to make the situation any more bearable.

Dr. Zanders walked out of surgery and told us Hammond was going to be okay and that his life was no longer in any danger. Hammond’s father hoisted Dr. Zanders up off the floor like a rag doll and ensnared him in a bear hug.

“Thank you,” he uttered, squeezing Dr. Zanders so hard his face turned bright purple. “Thank you! I’m going to kill him, but thank you!”

They wouldn’t let us see Hammond until the next day, the same day our ship finally left Libra Space Station. Hammond unrolled his bandage, revealing where Dr. Zanders had amputated his foot.

“Dr. Zanders gave me this loaner foot,” Hammond explained, wiggling his new toes. “It’s not quite like my old one, but it’s much better than no foot at all. I’ll get a better one once we arrive back home.”

Being “not quite like his old one” was a bit of an understatement. The foot’s skin was pigmented about ten shades too dark, greatly contrasting with Hammond’s normal pasty pallor.

“Gad!” Cotton cried, “It looks sick, like it’s gunna fall off.”

“Cotton, you’re being very rude!” Ellen scolded.

Hammond giggled. “This is the only foot the doctor had that matched my tissue type. He said it had belonged to someone from the West Indies who got knocked on the head. West Indies? Not sure where that is.” Hammond scratched his head. “Near Chicago, I guess.”

“You’re thinking of Indiana.” Allen
said. “The West Indies are a group of islands in the Caribbean. Many Black people live there — not that there’s anything wrong with black people — explains the pigmentation particular to the foot at hand though.” Allen smiled, clearly pleased with himself.

Ellen rolled her eyes. The rest of us were so stupid we had missed the
pun completely.

“Yeah, makes sense.” Hammond said, curling the toes on his new foot. “They must be really short there too.” Hammond’s new foot seemed only half as long as his old one.

Allen looked pensive. “I’m not sure why they would be. You probably just got unlucky.”

Hammond shrugged. His coping skills were remarkable.

“You’re going to need a different size shoe for each foot.” Cotton laughed.

“Cotton!”
Ellen scolded.

“Naw, it’s all right.” Hammond said. “It does look kind of funny having this tiny foot grafted on the bottom of my leg. Doc says he placed it so both my legs are the same length, which is good. Looks a lot better now than when I got shot.”

“Yeah what did it look like?” Cotton asked, morbid curiosity getting the better of him.

“Man, it was gory!” Hammond’s grin seemed inappropriate as he recounted his dismemberment in graphic detail. If Dr. Zanders didn’t have a suitable donor foot, perhaps Hammond’s demeanor would have been completely different. But with a relatively good clinical outcome, Hammond didn’t have to pretend he was terribly traumatized.

“Must have been a million to one shot! To reach me, the round would have had to go through the gaps between at least four or five different steps of at least three different flights of stairs, hitting nothing else along the way. Doc says it was one of those non-penetrating rounds, like the ones in Joinksmokker’s gun in that video you showed us.” Hammond said to Allen.

“Round hit right as I opened the door. Hit just past my heel and came out the top of my foot, shredding everything in its path. All my toes came off, except the big one. It just hung off the side by a small shred of meat.”

Ellen gasped in horror. Allen looked uncomfortable. Too polite to dismiss himself, he continued to pretend to listen intently.

“I still had my heel, though, so I could still sort of walk.” Hammond said. “I was able to push Mike out the door, but blood was gushing everywhere. When I tried to stand up again, I passed out. Doc says it was because the bullet ripped open several arteries and I lost a lot of blood.”

“Why didn’t they just replace the part of your foot that was blown off?” Cotton asked.

“Wouldn’t fit for starters.
Doc said putting on a whole new foot was less complicated and more likely to be successful.”

“Yeah, but now you’re going to walk in circles. I mean look at that puny thing!” Cotton joked.

“Cotton! Stop!” Ellen shrieked. “Hammond, don’t listen to him. Your new foot looks just fine.”

“Naw, it’s okay. I know it looks funny. I’m just glad the doc had a human foot to spare and didn’t have to graft on a hairy monkey fist or a goat hoof or something.”

Hammond’s mirth added just enough levity to cut through the overwhelming tension we felt from see our friend hurt so badly. Even Allen smiled.

Classes resumed as we cruised the last few fractions of a light year toward Gliese 581e at a meandering pace. Allen locked himself in his living unit, saying he was too busy with homework to hang out with us. With Hammond recovering in the medical center, I spent most of my time with Cotton. Fortunately, our acceleration was so slow that Cotton didn’t experience motion sickness.

My brother tried to teach me how to play video games, but I was hopeless, my fingers much too slow and uncoordinated to operate the game controller effectively.

“Come on it’s not that hard!” Cotton said, trying to restrain the frustration in his voice. “Just hit the ‘B’ button to block.”

I thought I hit the “B” button, but instead of blocking, my swashbuckler did what looked like a dance step, which was ineffective at deflecting the rapier Cotton’s pirate had thrust toward my face.

“No not the ‘Z’ button, the ‘B’ button, bonehead!”

His
eyeball skewered out, my swashbuckler collapsed and died. Cotton’s pirate performed a victory dance, waving his bloody rapier around for all to see.

“That reminds me,” Cotton said, “I wonder if Allen ever figured out whose eye I poked out with his
bayonet?”

With Hammond getting hurt, the operation to retrieve the jano-bot seemed a far distant memory. “His program must have broken the security code at the medical center by now,” I said. “He either forgot, or he’s deliberately been putting off hacking the medical center’s computers.”

“Why would he do that?” Cotton asked.

I thought for a while, trying to figure out the best way to explain things not only to Cotton but to myself.
Over the last few months, while lying in bed at night and before drifting off the sleep, I had performed some serious self-reflection. I had reached some rather unflattering conclusions about my brother and myself.

“I think Allen feels a bit disturbed with everything that’s happened the last few months: You putting some guy’s eye out; Meddlenat
es getting ripped to shreds in the energy reservoir; Joinksmokker torn in half with the rail gun; Boldergat and Jackass Bob getting vented out into space with the rest of the armed response team; Hammond getting his foot blown off. That’s a lot of hurt and death even for our old neighborhood.” I explained.

“Yeah, but I thought he’d be into that sort of thing. The way he researches all those weapons and collects all that space marine gear.” Cotton replied.

“True,” I said, “but I think it was always just some sort of fantasy to him. He’s kind of a wimpy kid. I’m pretty sure he got picked on a lot by the bigger kids before he made friends with us. Learning about weapons and owning Space Marine gear probably gave him a sense of empowerment.”

“Empower-what?”

“You know, made him feel less wimpy,” I clarified. “Before this voyage, I don’t think he’d ever seen anything rougher than punk kids scuffling when teachers weren’t around. And that’s nothing compared to seeing somebody getting knifed. Now he’s realizing that it’s not just his wimpy body that’s preventing him from being a tough guy. He cannot be a tough guy. His brain is simply not wired that way. He’s going to have to be someone else entirely, someone who’s not a tough guy. In a way, he’s going to have to re-invent himself, and that’s a lot to bear.”

“For
him to lock himself in his room and not hangout with his friends though,” Cotton said, “that can’t be normal.”

“Actually Allen is normal. We are the ones who aren’t normal.”

“What do you mean?” Cotton asked.

“How many nightmares have you had since you poked that guy’s eye out?”

Cotton thought for a while. “A couple.”

“How many nightmares that weren’t about the galley running out of food?”

“None.”

“You don’t have any flashbacks about the guy strangling you?”

“No, I fought him off, so why should I?”

“How many nightmares about Joinksmokker getting cut in half?”

“None.”

“Me neither! And hanging around Allen, Hammond, and Ellen these last few months, I realize now that
the type of mayhem we’ve witnessed affects most people pretty deeply. The fact that it doesn’t freak us out at all goes to show that we’re the ones who are abnormal.”

“Okay then,” Cotton said defensively, “let’s just
pretend you are right and that somehow you and I aren’t quite normal —”

“We’re not.” I interjected.

“Then why are we abnormal?” Cotton asked.

“Remember the first scuffle you got into?”

“Actually I don’t. I’ve been in so many. Must have been sometime during kindergarten.”

“I don’t remember my first scuffle either. Remember how Mr. Yongscolder practically had a heart attack when he reviewed your disciplinary file?”

“Yeah, he acted like I was some sort of criminal, which I’m not.”

“I don’t think you are either.
Back home kids getting into scuffles is so common nobody really cares.”

“Why should they? Nobody ever gets hurt too badly, unless one of them is a goon or a gangster.”

“It’s a big deal up here because people just aren’t used to it. Now, here’s another question for you: When was the first time you saw adults fighting?”

“First grade.
Some drunk who hung out by the schoolyard cracked another drunk over the head with an empty bottle of Thurgood MacDougal’s Southern Style Bourbon. The bottle shattered and there was blood everywhere.”

“Did that give you nightmares?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It did. You had them for weeks. You also had nightmares whe
n you saw some guy take a knife in the gut outside the grocery store. It wasn’t until after you’ve seen over a dozen real fights, muggings, and knifings that it quit bothering you. It took a lot of mayhem for you and me to alter our mental defenses so that we could see that kind of violence without completely shutting down.”

“What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense at all. If anything, my defenses are better now because they stop me from feeling bad or from having nightmares.”

“No, you don’t get it! The feeling bad, the nightmares, they make you normal. You get that way because it’s normal to empathize with other people and feel distressed when they get hurt. We’re not normal in that way anymore.”

“But we’re not bad people. It’s not like we’re kidnapping folks and holding them for ransom.”

“At some kind of visceral level, we are bad people. Sure we are not rotten to the core, and we don’t deliberately choose to go out and hurt people, but let’s say things played out differently on the asteroid. Let’s say the smelly kid and the goons managed to kidnap us. What do you think would have happened then?”

“Well mom wouldn’t have been able to pay off the ransom.”

“You got that right. She couldn’t even give us three lousy M-notes without taking one back for herself.”

“Allen and the others might have saved us, the way we used the ho-bot to save Mike.”

“True, but let’s say they didn’t.”

“I guess the goons would have killed us.”

“Let’s also pretend they didn’t. Let’s pretend they decided to keep us alive as long as we proved useful.”

“We could always try to escape.”

“You’re kind of missing the point.” I snapped.

“Well it’s a stupid scenario.”

“I suppose it is,” I sighed. I just wasn’t reaching Cotton. “The point I’m trying to make is that we would have ended up like the smelly kid, become lesser goons ourselves. At first we’d do it just to survive, but the problem is that, unlike the smelly kid, we’d be good at it because we don’t feel the horror and revulsion as strongly as others do when we see someone get hurt. We could keep doing lesser goon things over and over again. Soon we’d forget why we started doing it in the first place, and it wouldn’t be about survival anymore. We’d rise up the ranks, and before we knew it, we’d whack Duffy and the leader of the Tunnel Serpents, and we’d be running the entire Libra Space Station underworld.

“Deep down, you and I are abnormal. But, other than getting into a few minor scuffles and breaking some rules here and there, we still act pretty normally because we live in an environment that still sort of rewards us when we act normally. We don’t deliberately go out and hurt people. In the wrong environment, had we stayed in the asteroid or even stayed back home in Yucaipa, there’s no telling what would have become of us.”

Cotton scratched his head and sniffed. To a certain extent he was following me, but I could tell he didn’t like what I had to say. “What about violent TV shows and video games. We always hear how those mess you up pretty bad. Allen loves gory games and shows, and yet you say he’s not abnormal like us.” My brother retorted.

“Video games and TV shows aren’t real. They might help create tough guy fantasies in kids, and that might be why Allen is so fascinated with weapons. But I doubt games and shows affect people the same way watching real violence does. Let’s say I wrote a book about this voyage and some normal person read it. I bet they’d still get sick if they saw someone get ripped in half the next day.”

“You’re going to write a book?” Cotton asked.

“No I’m not.
”

Cotton was deliberately forcing me down a tangent. I could tell he wanted to pretend this conversation was pointless and boring. Honestly, I didn’t feel like fighting him anymore. “I don’t think a book about this ship is going to make you any money. You should write about Hollywood. Books about life in Hollywood sell big time.”

“I can only write about what I know. If I find myself in Hollywood, I should go ahead and wake up, because I’d be dreaming.”

Cotton returned to his video game, defeating his next two opponents without really exerting himself. I was about to leave the room when he said, “We really should find out whose eye I poked out.”

“I’ll talk to Allen about it eventually.” I replied. “Right now, though, I’ll give him some space. Once we land on Gliese 581e, I am sure Allen and I will figure out how to tip off the authorities before they start thawing out the cryogens. That way Fiona Mammalot won’t wake up to the shock of being twenty light years away from home.”