The Other by Marilyn Peake Read online

  I wondered if we’d ever return Earth to this degree of richness and splendor. I could smell the dirt beneath our feet, the flowers that bloomed throughout the forest and on the plantation, pine trees somewhere nearby. Frogs and toads filled the night with their odd songs.

  The world outside of enclaves like the TTA was brutal. Winds howled and blew parched dirt and sand into the air, turning it dark and gritty. The land that had been the United States—the land mass where the TTA is located—had shrunk in size centuries earlier when areas along the coasts were drowned by rising seas. Enclaves all over the globe had it good. But the human population was increasing so rapidly, we’d soon outgrow that space. We had to become more aggressive, and without the use of AgStim.

  I felt a mild tremor in my hands and a quick run of heartbeats from the injection I’d given myself earlier. It wasn’t much, just enough to allow me to risk possible violation of the Law of Noninterference, my own and Waylon’s lives, and the lives of the people we were trying to help in another space-time location.

  Our people were going to have to get a whole lot more aggressive, though, to push beyond the comfort of our peaceful enclaves. We were going to have to experiment with terraforming Earth’s dead regions, hoping it doesn’t backfire somehow and wipe us all out. And there are plans to try once again to establish a Mars colony. The thinking is that eventually Earth will die and the best chance for human survival is to inhabit more than one planet.

  Mary needed help walking on the dead tree crossing the stream, so I supported her by placing my hands under her arms from behind and guiding her across. She winced when my fingers accidentally touched her back.

  The moonlight lit tiny waves rippling over stones and branches. Fireflies blinked on and off throughout the forest and all along the stream.

  It was a beautiful night, yet we found ourselves in the midst of human-created ugliness.

  When we got to the place where we had landed our ship, Mary stood still. She put her hands to her mouth, as though trying to stifle her words or the amount of shock she was experiencing. She said, “You came down from da heavens in dis?”

  I knew of the religion from her space-time. I said, “This is how we came here. We don’t have wings.”

  Mary said, “You told me dat you’re an angel helper. Do da angels have wings?”

  I said, “Yes. Yes, they do.” I had no idea about that, but better not to interfere with her belief system.

  Waylon separated the panels that allowed entry into the pod.

  I told Mary to follow him.

  Extraordinarily trusting of us, she followed.

  When we got inside, she marveled at everything. She had never seen furniture or utensils or tools like ours. She’d never seen holographic artwork. She’d never seen light that didn’t come from a natural source, never seen lamps that didn’t have flames flickering inside them. She accepted it all by believing that we were supernatural beings and these were simply manifestations of our extraordinary powers.

  I led her to the medical bay. I asked her to remove her dress and any undergarment covering her back.

  She cried as her dress and an underdress ripped more skin from her back.

  When she’d completely exposed her back, I asked her to lie on her stomach on the treatment table. I explained the procedure she was about to go through. Heat and light would wash over her back. It would hurt, but it would sterilize and knit her skin together. It would be almost healed when we were done. Ointment would do the rest, and that would be soothing. I told her to keep her eyes closed.

  Mary said, “I am ready.”

  I moved to the edge of the room. I blinked to make my contact lenses shield my eyes and to turn down the amount of empathy I would feel, so that I could run the procedure through to the end.

  I said, “I’m going to begin now.”

  Mary shrieked as the light and heat covered her back and intensified streams of it moved up and down each and every laceration. She screamed for the entire duration of the treatment. At the end, when I could see on my contact lenses that the lacerations had knitted almost entirely together and the pus and infection were gone, I initiated the soothing part of the treatment. Ointment was sprayed along every gash where she had been whipped.

  Mary cried, I’m sure at that point from relief.

  I asked how she felt.

  Her body was trembling, but she said, “Good. Most o’ da pain in mah back is gone.”

  I pushed a button. Table-length mirrors rose on either side of her. I said, “Look at your back.”

  Forgetting modesty, she lifted herself up on her elbows, exposing her breasts. She gazed in the mirrors, a look of astonishment crossing her face. She said, “I’m healed.”

  I said, “Just about. In the next couple of hours, everything will heal completely.”

  She dressed. I gave her potion to drink that would speed the healing process. I wanted to give her stronger medicine, but this was the only one deemed safe for pregnant women. She said that it didn’t taste like anything she’d ever eaten or drank before, which had to be true. It came from a pungent plant developed and grown in the healers’ enclave.

  After crossing the stream on our way back, gingerly balancing herself on the tree trunk, not needing any help this time, Mary turned to me and said, “May I pray tuh you fuh another favuh?”

  I said, “You can.” We’d see afterward if I could answer it.

  She said, “I have two babies dat was taken from me. Aftuh we escape, when I am truly free, I want tuh find dem. Will you watch ovah me and mah babies from heaven and help me find dem?”

  I said, “Sure.” People from many eras prayed all the time. Hundreds, thousands of prayers went unanswered. No one really expected to have all their prayers answered. All those unanswered prayers just got tucked away in the back of people’s minds. They kept praying until the day they died, thinking God hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I knew I could promise Mary I’d help her and at the very end of her life, if she hadn’t been reunited with her children, she’d just tell herself I must have a long list of prayers to answer before getting to hers. On the other hand, if we found that the Law of Noninterference wasn’t necessary, I’d look for Mary’s children and bring her to them if she wanted. I liked this woman. She’d suffered enough.

  By the time we stepped out of the forest, the moon was directly overhead. We walked to the barn and were coming around it when we heard loud voices.

  Mary grabbed me by the arm. She said, “Oh, no, massuh’s back! He wasn’t supposed tuh be back tuhnight!”

  We hid behind the barn.

  Mary said, “Hear dat yellin? Dat massuh’s voice. He down by da men’s slave cabin—where Jessey and Henry sleep.”

  We listened to the voices, and Mary told us who they belonged to.

  Master: Where is Mary? You tell me right now! I ain’t gonna have any nigger o’ mine walkin’ off. I heard the rumors about you all plannin’ ta go get your freedom. Where is Mary?

  His words were slurred, his voice growling.

  Jessey: I don’t know wha Mary is. I don’t know. She wasn’t feelin’ good tuhday and went tuh huh cabin soon’s as huh work was done.

  Master: You son of a bitch! You know where she is. You tell me right now!

  Then, quiet. We watched as the plantation owner came up a hill and crossed the lawn into the main house.

  Mary led the way down to the men’s quarters, which turned out to be a log cabin, but larger than the one Mary stayed in.

  She ran up to one of two men standing outside the building. They embraced. I couldn’t hear what she was saying from where Waylon and I were hiding in the shadows.

  Mary brought the two men over to us. The one she had hugged, obviously Jessey, had tears in his eyes. He said, “You are da sign we need. You ansuhed mah prayer fuh God and our guardian angels tuh watch ovah us. We leavin’ here tunight. We have people gonna get us all da way up north. It gettin’ dangerou
s here, since the massuh heard ’bout bunch o’ slaves leavin’ da plantation couple miles down da road.”

  Dogs started barking. Torches moved in the night, burning through the darkness like fiery ghosts. Men shouted.

  The plantation owner had gathered a bunch of men. I had no idea who they were. Neighbors? Paid workers?

  He pointed at our group. I doubt he saw Waylon and me for what we were. We would have appeared only as humanoid shapes in the darkness. We moved behind two trees that were close to each other. He said, “Those two! You get those two!”

  I thought for a moment he meant Waylon and me. It turned out he meant Jessey and Henry.

  A group of men grabbed them and wrestled each of them over to a separate tree. Slamming their stomachs against the bark, they pulled their arms around the trunk and tied their hands together on the other side. They ripped their shirts off their backs.

  Then, Whack!

  I’ll never forget the sounds of the shrieking, the barking dogs, the Twack! of the whips.

  By the time it was over, the plantation owner’s words had become increasingly slurred. Drinking from a glass bottle and wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he shouted in a primitive, animalistic voice filled with rage, “Hang ’em! They were plannin’ to leave anyway. They’re all free now! All the niggers are free—can you even imagine that? My property, all gone. You make an example outta them right now! Boys, bring the rest of ’em out. Make ’em watch!”

  Mary ran out of the shadows. Waylon tried to grab her. He reached too far as she tore herself from his grasp. He fell—right into the area lit by the moon and the flickering torches where everyone could see him.

  Dogs continued barking. The people went deadly silent.

  Jessey, Henry and Basil stared at him. I’m sure they thought an angel had stepped up to save them, that he would use some kind of supernatural power to smite their enemies and rescue them.

  The other men, the tan ones now restraining barking dogs on leashes to keep them from attacking, also stared. They did not think we were angels.

  Perhaps aided by alcohol, the plantation owner recovered from the shock of encountering a type of humanoid creature he’d never seen before, at least enough to respond. He staggered closer to Waylon. Then, raising his bottle in the air, he shouted, “The niggers have brought a demon into our world! That nigger woman there—Basil—she came to us from Louisiana! Auctioneer told me nothin’ ’bout her except she’s strong and a good worker. Well, that may be, but I always suspected her of practicin’ voodoo. Just look at her eyes, all mysterious and lit with evil. There are times when her eyes are blank and a man can see his reflection in them. Deuteronomy 18:10: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch…’ Men, let the dogs go!”

  In his inebriated state, he seemed to expect the dogs to go after Basil because that’s what he had in mind.

  I watched in horror as the dogs attacked Mary. He didn’t seem to care, as though he intended for her to be next.

  Five large dogs raced toward her. They knocked her to the ground, sank their teeth into her flesh and shredded her alive. She screamed until she went unconscious or death took her.

  I sat down with my back to the closest tree, held my stomach and wept in silence. Tears poured down my face. I was terrified for Waylon. I wanted to help, but I thought the best way to do that was to remain hidden. If Waylon or any of the slaves ran into the forest, I’d run with them to the pod, hide them under its camouflage cover and then move them somewhere else in space-time. If I made myself visible, I’d never win against the plantation owner, his men and the dogs. I realized that I could turn my empathy level way up, so that I’d begin sharing thoughts and feelings with everyone nearby. That would scramble the minds of everyone from the time period we were visiting, as their brains weren’t evolved enough to handle it. However, the degree of hostility and fear in their minds would either drive me insane or kill me and I’d be no help to anyone.

  Holding onto the tree for support, I dragged myself back up to a standing position, so that I could watch everything going on and keep track of where Waylon was. As I peered through an opening in the leaves, I saw more torches floating in the darkness, moving toward the group in the front yard. Word must have gotten out to people in the village about what was happening here.

  Soon, I heard many angry voices filling the air. And then people holding the torches became visible.

  The dogs continued to bite and tear flesh from Mary’s body. Her beautiful face was completely gone. I looked away. Sadness and horror welled up inside me. I fought back intense nausea.

  Finally, the plantation owner shouted, “Enough! Call off the dogs!” Staggering, he walked around Mary’s body. Taking another swig from his bottle, he said, “And here lie the remains of a witch.” He pointed to one of the men holding a snarling dog by its leash and said, “You clean this up later, you hear me?” Pointing at another man, he said, “And, you, get a priest from the village to cast her demons out before her remains are put to rest. I don’t want our plantation haunted by Satan.”

  The crowd roared and shouted.

  The plantation owner said, “Men, we need to teach all our slaves a lesson. These three were planning to escape.” He waved his bottle in the direction of Jessey, Henry and Basil. “Nothing will stop them, now that the government has set them free. If I’m to lose them anyway, something that will seriously harm my profits, I say let me get one more benefit from them. Let them serve as an example to any more that think running away is a good idea. Hang them! And see if you can hang the demon!”

  No! No! No! No!

  The crowd descended on the three darker skinned humans and on Waylon. Several men carrying ropes placed a loop around each of their necks. They dragged them, writhing and kicking, to the area below a tree. Throwing the free end of their ropes over the bottom branch, the men pulled until the bodies flew upwards, necks snapped and the captives hung like dolls.

  I didn’t realize it; but as I saw Waylon’s body go flying up off the ground, his neck snap and his body go lifeless, I screamed.

  The next thing I knew, I was being pursued by a mob and their dogs. I ran as fast as I could all the way through the forest to the pod. Falling off the downed tree into the stream, I scraped up my knees and lost time. I barely made it to the pod before the dogs caught up with me.

  It must have seemed that I was a supernatural being—another demon exactly as they perceived Waylon to be—to the people pursuing me. When I jumped into the pod, I became invisible under the protection of its camouflage cover. It was like I had popped into another dimension.

  In the next moment, I did exactly that.

  The ship flew up into the air and disappeared with an explosion of light.

  Chapter 13

  When I made it back to the TTA, I felt like a shell of my former self. Reporting Waylon’s death was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do in my entire life up until that point.

  Another team went back to retrieve his body. Had the angry mob and the dogs not been chasing after me, I would have done that myself—both out of respect for Waylon and in order to keep from violating the Law of Noninterference to such an extreme degree. Leaving a green-skinned body behind in times where our kind did not exist would mess with timelines to an extraordinary degree. Even so, we didn’t avoid the problem completely. It fills me with revulsion and horror every time I think about it, but some of the people from the village sliced off parts of Waylon’s skin and used it to make potions.

  Just like the people of East Africa, or the cannibal tribes who ate their enemies for strength, they wanted to absorb supernatural powers they believed he possessed. It made no sense to me. If you thought someone was evil, why would you want to take that into yourself? The analyses I’ve read suggest that it’s an attempt to gain the perceived power of the demon or the en
emy.

  I couldn’t bear thinking about this happening to Waylon.

  I went to his cremation service. It was a beautiful tribute. We saw his life story and his accomplishments play out across our lenses. His body was ignited upon the stone altar in the memorial hall of the TTA. His parents led the procession down to the stream that carried his ashes away on a tiny boat to the wasteland beyond. Our enclave felt that the ashes were going out to wide open spaces where only the dead could thrive, and we hoped the ashes of our bravest heroes might somehow fertilize those lands.

  After the cremation service, I was sent to the hospital to recover from shock syndrome. The doctors turned my empathy completely off. I felt nothing. I floated in a kind of netherworld haze. The doctors monitored my body signs and gave me potions until it looked like I had recovered enough to face the world again.

  After that, I had a month to rest, to wander the hospital gardens and swim in the fountains and under the waterfalls.

  Eventually, when it was determined that I was strong enough to resume my time traveler duties, I was prepared for my next mission: Roswell, New Mexico in the twenty-first century to procure blood and other human substances that would be used for splicing aggression into our DNA. It suddenly dawned on me that this wasn’t completely dissimilar to cannibalism or making potions out of albinos…or out of Waylon. Even with photosynthesis, we seem to have a need to perform some kind of cannibalism in order to insure our own prosperity. I put those thoughts out of my mind. I would get consent from the people from whom I took samples or I would steal samples from a hospital or medical facility. I would never hurt a living human being in order to protect the future of the human race. That made no sense.

  The place in Roswell where I was to conduct this mission was the absolute best and safest place I could possibly be sent. It was a compound built by a cult who had named their organization The Astral Plane. The name referred to their belief that aliens from another planet would visit them and take them out through the astral plane to their home planet. The members of this cult revered these supposed aliens as gods sent to rescue them from Earth’s problems.