STORIES
SIXTEEN
Despite her best intentions and the ever-present fear of a concussion, Wil realized she must've dropped off to sleep again.
She woke with a start at the opening of the door.
There were heavy footsteps and the hood was cruelly ripped off her head. Some of her hair went with it and she yelped involuntarily.
Ganelial towered above her threateningly. She blinked up at him, her eyes slowly and painfully adjusting to the harsh light. Her brain came to life even more lethargically.
If there were others behind him, she could not hear or see them. Ganelial was taking up most of her field of vision. And although she was indeed able to see a little of her surroundings, she didn't think her chances of escaping had much improved. She was still basically hogtied to her seat, a garrote around her neck.
She did not beg, she did not plead. It took everything she had but she unwaveringly looked Ganelial in the eyes and waited. Unlike Jezry he didn't flinch nor did he look away from her gaze. He met her eyes fully and held them. There was viciousness in his eyes, she thought. And worse… there was an intense desperation aflame in them.
"I heard you talking on that ship of yours," he said after a time. His voice was painfully loud as he leaned down low, his face close to hers. She could smell his breath; it wasn't pleasant.
"I heard you talking to that friend of yours, that Captain Hart."
Wil's breath caught in her throat. John…
"I heard him ask you why you couldn't do something to help us. Why you couldn't help our people, our planet. Even after we left, after we knew our world to be destroyed, he asked why you couldn't do something." He leaned in even closer. His breath was putrid, hot, dank.
"You didn't give him a good answer. I don't think he believed you and I didn't believe you either, human. I think that you can help us. I think that powerful ship of yours is just the beginning of what you have to offer us." His eyes were glowing as hot as his breath. "I think you can bring our families back, our world back, and I intend to make you do it." He brought his hand to the side of her head and grabbed a fistful of her hair. "Or I'll kill you and you'll never see that friend of yours again. And he will never know what happened to you."
She mustered courage she did not feel. And yet, her response came effortlessly; without any thought whatsoever. "I cannot make that cat walk backward," she said through parched and swollen lips, her voice barely a whisper.
The hand savagely pushed her head to the side, the garrote cutting cruelly into her neck. The hand's owner sneered, "What's that?"
She took a ragged breath.
How could she ever make a person like this understand when she barely understood it herself? There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes – that cosmos is but a single story, a single narrative, a thread winding through an existence shared by many other narratives besides ours. Each narrative looks like a cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. And as the Time Lords knew so well, just as Wil was just finally beginning to realize, that one universe which is so much more than a universe had a way of protecting itself, a way of preventing violations of causality…
"You're right, John, his name is John, by the way, did ask me if I could do something. But you're also wrong, he did believe me. He always believes me because he knows I always tell him the truth. And in this case I'm sorry but the truth is not pleasant. I'm sorry but the truth is not deniable. I will tell you what I told him. I cannot undo what happened. There are some things I can fix, but others I can't. The problem is not epistemological – about what I know – rather it is ontological – about what is.
"Eh?" The sneer had transformed into a look of pure unadulterated, murderous hatred.
Wil had an acute feeling she'd just signed her own death warrant. Oddly, she suddenly felt strangely removed from the whole situation. Like she was free of her body, floating. Like she was looking down and watching herself. She was observing events from a remote, glacial place. Is this what it feels like when you're going to die, she wondered. She shivered and realized that same detached body was freezing cold; probably due to extensive blood loss. It would be very good to not have to feel such an all-encompassing chill much longer. She was looking forward to not feeling it.
"Don't you understand? It isn't that I don't know the facts; it's that there simply aren't any such facts." She tried to jerk her head away from Ganelial's hand, but it only clamped down tighter on her hair. "To ask me to do something to try to somehow fix what has happened is as meaningless as asking me the gender of the number five."
He was hurting her. The garrote was strangling her. She felt giddy, almost like laughing. "You're not going to understand are you?" She tried to smile, wasn't sure if she was successful. "Why should I expect you to understand? I hardly understand it myself. There's only one person I've ever met who really understands it. One person I know of in this entire universe, which is so much more than a universe, who might be able to properly, beautifully, epically, even poetically explain this to you. His name is The Doctor and he's… well, I guess you could say he's not from around these parts." She almost chuckled but instead it came out as a cough.
"I don't believe you, human," her captor hissed.
Some last tenuous link with life snapped. She shook her head and spat, "I don't really care."
Out of the corner of her eye she saw something in his free hand. It rather looked like one of the knives Jack occasionally played with, and by play she really meant… well, enough said. Jack had weird toys. And he did strange and sometimes spooky things with his weird toys. But that was Jack's way: he had unusual hobbies. The fearsome-looking object should've engendered terror in her heart but in truth she felt nothing remotely like terror. Rather she felt a sort of blessed relief. So she wasn't going to get all of those hoped-for 25,000 mornings, all of those longed-for seventy-some-odd years. It seemed a bit soon for things to end, but she had no regrets, not really. She'd done her best and had even left something behind, in a sense. Grasshopper, she thought as she closed her eyes and let her head slump limply forward.
And that's when everything changed.
There was a tremendous percussive explosion and the room instantly filled with acrid smoke and dust. But not only smoke and dust, as she opened her eyes she saw it was also suddenly filled with swarming Orolo. And even though their faces were partially masked by some sort of breathing apparatuses which, she suspected, were helping them cope with the dirty air, she easily recognized one of the black-clad figures as Crade. While other Orolo soldiers – was that what they were? Soldiers? Did the placid Orolo actually have soldiers? – used considerable, possibly lethal force to incapacitate Ganelial, Crade, his large, round eyes luminous with concern, moved to her, quickly severed her bindings in what seemed to be a single motion, picked up her body in his arms and cradled her to his chest. Then he placed something hard and cup-like over her nose and mouth to help her breathe.
As he carried her out of the room and out of the building Crade was speaking to her. Apologizing for what had happened. Asking for her forgiveness. Regretting that it had taken so long to find her. Telling her he was sorry and that she was now okay and she didn't have to worry and that they would take care of her. He kept on talking to her even after placing her into a compartment inside some sort of vehicle, and then he continued talking as that vehicle rose from the ground with a soft shush. He didn't stop talking while an Orolo medic began cautiously examining her injuries and gingerly applying bandages. She continued listening abstractly to Crade's droning voice, hearing it but not really paying much attention to the never-ending stream of words, when after some indefinite amount of time had passed there was another voice suddenly in her head, one that was much more comforting to her.
"Teacher?" the voice said. "Are you all right?"
It turned out she was not all right. According to the doctors, and aside from the multiple lacerations, she had a mild concussion, three cracked ribs, a spiral fracture of one arm bone, two small broken bones in one hand, and trauma to her kidneys and spleen. She was peeing blood and the doctors informed her she probably would continue to do so for several weeks. John's leather wristband was miraculously intact and still affixed to her wrist – on the same arm that had been so seriously broken. The Gnel had apparently tried their best to remove the strap but somehow that had not been permitted; the injuries to the limb had likely resulted from their failed attempts to rid her of it.
It had alarmed her to learn she'd been missing for over three days. Three days! She had been held much longer than she'd imagined. All that precious time – lost. Gone forever. It was almost unfathomable to her. And then there was John… The dreadful knowledge had gripped her heart like an icy fist. She recalled that he'd asked her to hurry back. She had never thought she wouldn't.
When Wil admitted to the attending physician that she did not recollect receiving her injuries, he responded, "You must've put up quite a fight, and it may be a blessing that you don't remember what happened. It is not an uncommon reaction after sustaining such trauma. After a time you may begin to remember, but then again perhaps you never will."
When Crade came to visit he openly cried at the sight of her battered face. Again and again he apologized. "It should've never happened, not here. Not on Orolo."
She shook her head, "Stop, please. It is partly my fault because I brought the Gnel here in the first place." She attempted a weak smile. "Not all people are as kind and generous and loving as the Orolo, Crade."
"How can we make it up to you?" he asked.
"Let me leave," she said.
He'd tried to dissuade her. And then when he saw that was impossible, tried to convince her to bring some of his military personnel – and yes, apparently, the placid Orolo did have soldiers, and damn good ones – back with her to Erasmus.
Wil would have none of it. All she wanted was to take Grasshopper and meet up with her lover and go somewhere quiet so that she could rest and heal. Was that too much to ask?