Chapter 7 – Emergency
"What happened?" Doctor Fields yelled as the crew rushed him to the infirmary.
"We don't know," Alex said rapidly as they ran down the hall. "He seems to have multiple personalities… We're not sure of the cause."
"All right. Get him hooked up to the scanners. Maybe a full-body scan will help us determine what the problem is."
Dr. Field's orders were carried out, though nothing was found.
"I don't know what is causing this," Katherine said to the rest of the crew in their debriefing room. "As a doctor, I can find nothing wrong with him except that his brain activity is way above normal. It does seem like he has more than one personality…maybe over five—just as you said, Alexandra. I think we need to talk to them in order to find out what was wrong and why he's like that."
"I'll do it," John said, his face full of grim determination. "If he starts to get violent, I'll be able to manhandle him."
"No," Katherine said quickly. "After Dude got back, the General declared him unauthorized to be in contact with anyone except me and the guards on duty. I'll need to go in there and question him myself."
"But Kate, you—"
"I have access," she said quietly, but firmly, effectively cutting off the Colonel's argument. "You all will be able to watch the progress of Rick, and me when I go in there, by a Transsteel mirror in the observation room. I'd better go give him some more morphine. When you all went unconscious, he hit his head and cracked it. He's in a lot of pain now."
"As you say, doctor," Hoffman said. "Dismissed."
Everyone, without another word, walked along the hall to a room that looked down into the isolated unit and stood watching as Dr. Fields entered.
"I should think that princes on your planet get better treatment than I," Dude said, his personality clearly that of Gerrati; his voice held the authority and pompousness of a ruler.
"They do," Kate said slowly; "but you're not a prince on Tierra. You're not even in your own body, for crying out loud!"
He turned to the mirror that was opposite him quickly—the one-way Transsteel mirror the others were behind, the one that would only let people on the other side look in. Looking at Dude's body, he flexed his muscles and bared his teeth. "What kind of treachery is this?" he demanded.
"Nothing of our doing," the doctor said with an edge in her voice.
"Well, I demand that you find my body at once!"
Dude was furious and yelling now, and Kate couldn't think of a time when she had actually heard the real Dude yell.
"We don't know where it is," Dr. Katherine said, no emotions in her voice as she tried to hold her temper.
"Well then find it!"
"We will not!"
Dude closed his eyes for a second, blinked, and then looked around as if he was lost and scared. "Where am I?" The anger in his voice was gone and was now, replaced by uncertainty and slight terror.
"Hello," Kate said, exasperated that she needed to ask the entire thing again. "I'm Dr. Fields. What's your name?"
Dude looked at her with troubled eyes. "I'm Mariner, a pilot of the eighth rank. Where am I?"
Kate felt that this man wasn't the scum Gerrati she had been before…and she knew that she needed to get some information about what was going on from this personality.
"You're on a ship above the planet Tierra. We have you in our infirmary. Can you tell me anything about how you got to that planet and why you're in the body you are?"
Rick, or rather, Mariner, looked down in his body and gasped in shock. "This is not my body," he said.
"No," Kate said gently. She took a deep breath. "That is the body of our teammate and friend. His name is Rick Ellerton. You are one of many personalities in his body. Can you feel the others?"
Mariner closed his eyes, making Kate wait. "Yes," he finally said, his voice kind and gentle, yet frank. "I can. There are so many!"
Katherine sighed. "Okay. What can you tell me about your ship?"
"We were hired by Prince Gerrati to take him and the survivors of our world to a new planet called Fetrot; we were in the capital city, Sinnart, at the time—it is why we are called Sinnartians instead of Dulanters…Gerrati never much liked Dulanter as our planet's name. Fetrot was abandoned and habitable, so we thought that we could take that planet for ourselves. But we didn't have any other mode of transportation other than ships and, well, Fetrot was many light-centuries away. So we all went into cryogenic freezing and—"
"And what?" Kate gently demanded, wanting to know more.
"And what, what?" the familiar cruel voice said. Gerrati was back and Katherine didn't have all the information she wanted yet…
Rick didn't know what had happened. He was with the people he knew, he could see and hear them, but his body just wouldn't respond!
It had all started when they had been on The Wasteland. He had suddenly seen a flash of white light and then woke up to find Alex, John and Daniel standing over him, asking if he was okay. He tried to respond; oh, how he wanted to, but he found that he couldn't. It was like a nightmare that he couldn't wake up from.
Then there was the voice.
He began to talk to his crewmembers, against his will, like he never knew them. And that tone he had used! He sounded like the haughty, rich, and snobbish personality he so hated in others back on Old Earth. He wanted to say to his teammates that he was all right except for the places his head was bleeding, but his mouth wouldn't move to form the words he wanted to get out.
As another kind of voice emitted from his mouth, Rick realized what was going on. Vaguely remembering what he seemed to dream as he was unconscious, he saw in his mind an image of four ghost-like beings drifting toward him and pointing at him. They then disappeared as they seemed to pass quickly through him, and that was where the vision had ended.
Whoa. I've been taken over by other people's minds, he realized as he tried to fight for control of his body. They're so strong, though.
Giving up fighting for now, he started to probe his mind, looking for any other personalities lying in wait. He found four of them altogether—the four ghosts who seemed to enter his body. There were Gerrati and Mariner, he recognized, as the people who spoke through him, but there were also two more: a small boy named Freh and a woman called Sartra.
These two haven't surfaced yet, Dude thought as he began to struggle against the mental bonds the others kept him in. Maybe if I just struggle against Gerrati, they'd let me through. He began fighting harder.
"As you can see, sir, Dude has multiple personalities. He changes at random between two of them: Gerrati, the all-powerful, all commanding, 100 bad guy; and Mariner the low-class, sweet, helpful pilot. It's amazing what power can do to you…" Katherine said.
"Doctor, please continue," Hoffman prompted, looking across the briefing table at her with a quizzical gaze.
"Oh! Sorry, sir! Anyway, Alex and I think that Dude may have two more personalities that haven't emerged yet. We ran an EKG scan on him, and his brain activity is out the roof. There is enough activity to say that there might be more than three, not including Dude.
"His brain, sir, has the most peculiar characteristic to it. It has both the signs of being active, but also the signs of a coma. I believe that Rick is still in there, but he has put his mind into a coma-like state to protect itself."
The General nodded. "Keep a good watch on him in case another one comes out. John, I need you, Daniel, and Alex to go back to the planet and see what else you can find out there that will help with Rick's condition. You leave as fast as you can get down to the 'Gate Room. Dismissed!"
Doctor Katherine left the room at once, going directly to Dude's room to see if anything had developed. John looked at the remaining people in the room once Hoffman had left to order the dialing to The Wasteland with a grim face.
"Everyone up to going back?"
Daniel and Alex nodded slowly, knowing that if they didn't want to go, they couldn't defy a direct order, either.
"Then let's go."
With a reluctant pace, they all filed into the 'Gate Room and walked through the open portal.