Chapter 10

I had apparently blacked out. I was still in Wizen's room. He was absent, but across the room, facing away from me, was someone else. From the long blonde hair pulled back and twisted into a plait, I guessed it was a woman. Her silver-grey robe was similar to the one Wizen always wore.

I cleared my throat and she turned to face me. She was pretty, perhaps my age or even younger. But the expression on her face was one of sadness. Her mouth was so tight and her eyes so dull that I couldn't think of her as attractive.

"Are you hurt?" she asked. She had a lovely alto voice at least.

"From the fall?" I asked. "Just my pride. Who are you?"

"My name is Francesca," she said. "I am Wizen's daughter."

"Is he okay? The last thing I remember is him looking a little faint."

She sighed.

"He was badly shaken."

"Because he had no idea he had picked a cripple," I said.

The look she gave me might have been one of sympathy on a more expressive woman.

"My father can be a very difficult man," she said. "The idea that one of his plans did not work perfectly, um, unsettles him."

"I'll bet. You'll forgive me if I don't feel sorry for him. So what's he doing? Drowning his sorrows before he sends me home one last time?"

That earned me the tiniest of smiles. Perhaps she could be attractive under other circumstances.

"I asked a neighbor to accompany him to Council. Otherwise, he might well be doing as you suggest."

"Well, I can't believe they'll keep him long," I said. "'Yes, let's take the crippled guy.'"

She shrugged.

"I know little of Council, although perhaps more than most. They keep much to themselves. What knowledge I have comes from my taking charge of my father's house after my mother's death. And that includes his work. He works so hard that sometimes he would forget to eat unless I threaten to unplug one of his machines. Until he comes back, may I offer you a drink?"

"That would be nice," I said, more than a little surprised. "Thank you."

She walked over to a console and pressed some buttons. In a few seconds it produced a wonderfully tart lemonade.

"Shall we sit in the park?" she asked.

"Thanks, but maybe you noticed the legs."

"Yes, when Father and I returned you to bed. But that is no problem."

She waved her hand and I was lying on a bed of leaves in a bower underneath a beautiful spring sky. Francesca was sitting cross-legged next to me. She had on a completely different outfit, a loose Indian-pattern top and a pair of jeans. Apparently the Levi Strauss people were still in business four hundred years into the future.

"If you can move us around like this," I suggested, "maybe you should fight the Morling."

That got an even bigger smile.

"It is an illusion, Mr. Handley. We haven't moved from my father's laboratory. I doubt it would fool a Morling for long."

"It's certainly working on me," I said. "I can smell those flowers."

"It would not be a complete illusion otherwise, Mr. Handley."

I took a sip of the drink that I found I still had in my hand.

"How 'bout if you call me Rick 'til I have to leave?"

"Rick," she repeated, as if the name were an unfamiliar one. Maybe there had been some Hitler equivalent after my time whose first name was Rick. Just like there weren't a lot of kids named Adolph after World War II.

"So. It's a little hard to believe that your father didn't know about my legs. I mean, he said he was making holotapes, whatever the hell they are, through my mind. He was the one who put the training there in the first place. You'd think with just a little digging around in there, he'd figure out, 'oh, look, this poor schlub can't move his legs.' It's not like I ever forget it."

Francesca was gazing at me with infinite patience.

"Sorry," I said. "Sometimes it still gets to me."

"I can see that," she said. "But as for why he did not see it, I'm sure that it simply never crossed his mind. We have no one like you in this time."

"You have no paraplegics?" I asked.

"I have never seen any, at least. Perhaps my father knows more. Although even his knowledge is limited. Council allowed him to see enough to understand your gaming culture, and the Morlings, but little more. I do know that there is a drug administered to people in accidents to regenerate nerves."

I felt my heart pounding.

"I, um, don't suppose you have any of that around, do you?"

"I'm quite sure that it is all within the control of the Council. My father will know."

"But you could give me a shot and send me back to my time," I suggested.

Her smile was genuine this time.

"To thank you for the training you have undertaken on our behalf. I will ask him."

"Thank you. So tell me about yourself. Married? Children?"

She shook her head.

"I was to be wed on my eighteenth birthday to a beautiful young man. We would have been licensed for two children. But my mother died and it was at that point that I learned the nature of my father's project."

"You never heard of the Morlings before that?" I asked. It had been almost thirty years since the Morlings had first arrived.

She shook her head.

"That too is a closely guarded government secret. It is thought best not to concern the populace with matters likely to cause panic."

"Yeah, governments always say that," I said.

"But after learning of it, I found it hard to commit to a marriage and raising children. The chance of them living more than ten years seemed far too remote."

"You didn't believe your father's plan would work?"

"He is a dreamer," she said. "A brilliant man, but a dreamer. Ah, I believe that is him now."

She waved her hand again and we were back in the room. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she simply removed the illusion of the bower.

Wizen had a big smile on his face as he came through the door. Francesca was clearly as surprised to see it as I was.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He is the first alternate," Wizen said with an expansive wave of his hand. It looked like he might have actually had a few on the way home. "You are the first alternate, my friend, behind the Green Beret."

"You mean like the Miss America pageant, where if the winner is unable to fulfill his duties I get to be killed by the Morling instead?"

"Exactly!"

"Pardon my ignorance, but what the fuck kind of job is it when the top two candidates are a Green Beret and a guy who can't use his legs?"

"Ah," he said as he took his usual seat at the foot of the bed, "there was a substantial bloc of the Council that favored you, Richard. I admit I was surprised. But one of the Council members insisted that he can modify a chair that will take the place of your legs and make you far more maneuverable than even the other contender."

"And that wouldn't be a problem with the Morlings?"

"That is the beauty of it." He slapped his hand on the bed. "If they do not agree to your use of the chair, the Morling Code requires that your adversary give up the right to move as well. In which you have had much more practice."

"Great. So you want me to fight with swords from a seated position?"

"Oh! No, no. The weapons will not be swords."

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What Feats He Did That Day

Marsh Alien

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