Psion Alpha (26 page)

Those
words proved to be prophetic. Rosmir had to make sure Li was fit to go on and
that meant time spent not traveling. Sammy and others looked on as the doctor
examined Li.

“You’ve
got burns on your fingertips from that eel,” Rosmir said.

Li,
pale and still unnerved, shook his head angrily. “I should have known that’s
what it was. Stupid. I’ve never felt anything like that. My whole body—pain—and
then I blacked out.”

“You’re
lucky Sammy came along. He’s a hero.”

“Thanks,
Sammy,” Li said. “I owe you one.”

“Whatever,”
Sammy said. “Just stay away from eels.”

“Technically
those aren’t even eels,” Gibbons stated. “You know that? They’re knifefish.
Usually come out only at night.”

Dr.
Rosmir placed his stethoscope on Li’s chest, listened, then removed it. “I need
to do an airway wash to get any residual muck out of you.”

“Is
that going to hurt?”

Rosmir
nodded. “I’ve never had one done on me, but I’ve been told they’re terrible.
Sammy recently had one, right? When was that? Five or six months ago?”

“Yeah,”
Sammy answered. “My lungs burned for a few hours.”

Li
groaned. Dr. Rosmir held up a tube and a sack of fluid.

“I
have to feed this down your throat and squeeze the fluid into your airway. Your
body will fight me, so I’m going to knock you out.” As he said this, he put his
hands on Li’s neck and shoulder.

“How
are you going to—?” Li’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped over
onto the cot.

“Hurry,
Sammy,” Dr. Rosmir said. “Connect the tube to the sack. He’ll only be out a
couple minutes.”

Sammy
did as he was told. “How did you do that?”

“Manipulated
his pressure centers and a nerve cluster.” Rosmir snaked the tube down Li’s
airway. “Squeeze that tube with steady pressure on my mark.”

They
worked together to clean Li’s airway. The rest of the team prepped the camp.
Traveling only four kilometers today irritated Sammy. Rosmir seemed to sense
this.

“Don’t
sweat the delays, Sammy. You saved someone’s life. That’s far more important.”

“I
know. I just—I feel like things are falling apart. I’m not even doing a good
job leading this mission. So what if I’m smart? That doesn’t mean I can
communicate or direct. Al or one of the other Alphas should have done this. No
one wants to listen to a sixteen-year-old kid with Anomaly Thirteen.”

Rosmir
stuck a giant suction tube down Li and squeezed the rubber ball at the end. A
sucking, gurgling sound followed.

“Sammy,
I am more miserable than I have ever been in my life. But thing is, I knew I
was going to be this miserable before I even left. Maybe you were expecting
some glamorous jungle adventure, but I read up on the wildlife of this region.
I would never—
never
—have signed on for this if anyone besides you led it.”

“Why?”

The
doctor looked Sammy in the eyes with an expression of embarrassment. “Because I
look up to you.”

Li
woke up a moment later, hacking and coughing and sputtering the way Sammy had
done when his lungs had been flushed by the Elite on his mission to Akureyri.

“There
you go, Li. Cough it out. You’re going to be fine.”

“What—”
Sammy was about to ask Li a question when his field of vision abruptly changed.
He no longer saw the jungle, nor an ailing Li. Instead, he was covered in
sweat, puffing for air, and running sprints in a basketball gymnasium by
himself. An older man approached him, calling him by a different name.

“Sammy?”
Rosmir called.

Blinking
several times, Sammy lost the vision and the real world gradually came into
focus. In a corner of his mind, he could still see the alternate reality
playing out as if he were watching a movie. The experience unnerved him.

“Sammy,
are you all right?” Rosmir asked.

Despite
his racing heartbeat and sudden profuse sweating, Sammy answered that he was
fine. Dr. Rosmir eyed him suspiciously. Sammy shrugged it off.

“Seriously.
I’m fine. I was just thinking about what might have happened if I hadn’t caught
Li in the river.”

“Don’t
even want to think about that,” Li answered hoarsely. “But thanks again.”

A
few days later, Sammy had the same experience again while rafting. Thankfully,
no one noticed him blanking for a few moments. In this flashback, he saw
himself crashing in the frozen tundra, walking until he nearly died of hypothermia.
Again, the older man appeared, but this time Sammy recognized him as a younger
General Wu. He delved into these two memories of Byron’s early life more than
once, reliving them with an astonishing clarity. He found them to be
fascinating and enjoyable, an escape from life in the jungle.

Meanwhile,
things grew worse for his team. Li’s brush with the electric eel was only the
beginning of a series of accidents. A snake bit Levu; a speckled, pale, green
thing she accidentally snuck up on. Aaron Lewis caught and killed it, which was
lucky for Levu. Rosmir, with the Hudecs’ help, extracted the venom from its
glands and used it to make an antidote. Levu was back on her feet the next day
with only mild soreness. The following week, Kawai slipped and cut her calf
open on a jagged, submerged rock. The doctor cleaned the wound, put orange goo
on it, and wrapped it. This mishap only stopped them for a few minutes, but it
slowed them down because Kawai couldn’t move as quickly.

As
the days rolled on, the food slowly dwindled. Finally Sammy convinced the group
to reduce their meal sizes and start looking for edible plants and animals to
supplement their diets, but the damage had already been done. After almost four
weeks of traveling, they’d covered one hundred eighty nine kilometers, little
more than half the distance to the facility. Instead of being a week away, they
were probably three more weeks away with enough food to last about ten days. The
possibility of running out of food reminded Sammy too much of his trek with
Toad to Wichita. The thought of reliving such hunger made him nervous.

On
top of all this, the news coming in from Sherwood’s never-silent radio only
depressed the team’s spirits more. According to the radio, a great battle was
brewing near Sydney, and, under the leadership of Commander Havelbert and Ivan
Drovovic, the NWG was scrambling to pull its forces together. Outmanned,
outgunned, and outmaneuvered, it looked more and more like the NWG’s only hope
was swift action by the resistance. Sammy noted the effect the radio had on his
team and resolved to do something about it.

That
night, he convened a team meeting after dinner. He hoped that by speaking to
everyone while they had full stomachs, there would be less chance of
ill-tempers or bickering. They gathered around and waited for the Hudecs to
return from scouting the surrounding area. It was long after dinner when the
twins returned. One of them, Duncan, carried a carcass. It was too dark for
Sammy to tell what kind of animal they’d found. Duncan threw the thing into the
middle of the group. Levu and Sherwood both jumped out of their skins from the
splashing sound it made in the muck.

“Sloth,”
Dave said. “Found it out there dead. Somethin’ strange about it.”

“Very
odd,” Duncan agreed as he pulled a flaming log out of the fire and held it over
the animal corpse. “See them burn marks? What might’a caused somethin’ like
that?”

Sammy
peered at the dead sloth. He recoiled at the scent accompanying it.

“Looks
like it’s been eaten, too,” Li said, pointing to several spots near or in the
middle of the burns where flesh had been torn away.

“See
anything else strange where you found the animal?” Aaron asked.

“Nothin’.”

“Probably
human,” Gibbons said dismissively. “Indigenous populations still live in these
parts. Flaming arrows or torches.”

“Maybe,
but—” Duncan began to argue.

“Sammy
wants to start a meeting,” Gibbons announced. “If anyone wants to eat some
sloth later, this one isn’t going anywhere.” He nudged the beast with the toe
of his boot and stepped over it.

The
meeting was nothing formal like at resistance headquarters. The thirteen
members of the team sat on cots or equipment packs. Some covered themselves in
nets. Others preferred to swat at the critters landing on them. Everyone waited
for Sammy to start.

“Uh,”
he began ignominiously, “I guess the reason I wanted to meet is because, well,
we’re almost halfway to our goal—though very behind schedule—and I have some
problems to discuss. First of all is the food.”

“Why
are we always discussing food?” Levu asked. “What is it with men and food?”

“I
agree,” Gibbons added. “We have plenty. Why discuss it?”

Sammy
put his hands up defensively. “We do not have plenty of food. We have ten days
left if we start the rationing that I’ve suggested all along.”

“Except
that we decided to hunt in order to supplement our quantities, which should
stretch us out for several more days.”

“Wesley.…
” Sammy stopped himself from using the words he wanted to say. Instead he said,
“Are you going to eat that sloth? Because as of right now, it’s the only thing
we’ve ‘hunted.’” He meant it as a joke, and even paused for others to laugh
with him, but his lonely laughter came across as snide and condescending. “You
can’t guarantee we’ll catch anything! And even though we agreed to cut back and
hunt more, we’re not doing it.”

He
looked to Duncan and Dave to back him up, but they looked at the ground. He
turned to Aaron, but Aaron started inspecting the blade of his machete for
dirt.

“I
think Sammy’s right,” Jeffie said.

“Me,
too.” Kawai raised her hand.

These
two voices of affirmation impressed no one.

“We
need to listen to Sammy,” Nikotai said. “He’s the smartest of us. He’s the
leader.”

“I
never elected anyone,” Sherwood announced as he turned the crank of his radio
so leisurely that it didn’t even produce static. “But if I had, it wouldn’t
have been him. He may be smart, but he’s also a Thirteen.”

“Now
wait a minute—” Dr. Rosmir cut in.

“Let
me finish what I have to say!” Sherwood shouted back.

“I
don’t have to listen—”

“He’s
no more a Thirteen than you or anyone else!” Jeffie cried.

Gibbons
straightened his glasses. “Technically that’s untrue. Sammy is more Thirteen
than everyone here.”

“We’re
getting away from the point,” Sammy reminded everyone, “which is rationing.”

“Why
do we keep having this discussion?” Levu asked. “We don’t want to ration things
your way. How many times do we have to vote on this?”

“Snagging
food isn’t going to be hard,” Duncan added. “It’s everywhere. I’ve seen birds,
monkeys, fish.… What are you so worried about?”

“He’s
worried about keeping us alive!” Kawai said. “On top of that, he’s worried
about completing this mission. Why is that so hard for some of you to get?”

“Some
of us don’t like being told what to do by sixteen-year-olds who think they know
everything,” Sherwood muttered.

This
drew responses from all of the Betas, who tried to shout over each other until
Aaron whacked his boot with the flat side of his machete several times to bring
order. Jeffie was the last to fall silent. Her tirade at Sherwood continued
until Sammy put his hand on her shoulder and thanked her for sticking up for
him.

“Let’s
all keep somethin’ in mind here,” Aaron said. “Sammy picked us. We agreed. His
age don’t matter. So when he suggests somethin’ we need to seriously consider
it.” Aaron flecked piece of grime from his blade with his fingernail. “Now,
Sammy, on the flipside, I remember the day you arrived in Wichita half-starved
and near exhausted because you’d walked halfway ‘round the continent. I think
you might be just a hair over-concerned about our food supply because of your
previous experiences. You think?”

Sammy
had no doubt this was true, but if he admitted it his team might not take his
warnings about food seriously. “No. I’m worried about what’s happening right
now.”

“Lorenzo?”
Aaron called to the one person who hadn’t said anything. “You want to say
something about all this?”

Lorenzo
spoke rarely, if ever. At the moment, his hulking frame rested on his cot. He
held a mirror and trimming scissors, carefully snipping at his white beard.
Sammy still didn’t know much about him. He had picked him because Thomas had
suggested it.

“He’s
the man you want if you’re ever in a pinch,” Thomas had explained. “Trust me.”

Lorenzo
stared hard at Aaron, then at Wesley, and finally his eyes rested on Sammy. His
eyes, which Sammy had once thought hazel, were now green as the jungle.

“You
all sound like a bunch of babies.” He nodded at his own comment, then returned
his attention to his mirror and clippers, apparently finished with what he had
to say.