The Journey of Rick Heiden
All Rights Reserved © 2021, Rick Haydn Horst
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
My head rested on my folded arms, and I stared upward as though lying in a hayfield, counting clouds, wiling away the hours. However, when I glanced at the clock; it was a few minutes past two in the morning. The temperature in the penthouse felt conducive to sleeping, as did the soft sheets and supple mattress beneath whose padding cradled me in comfort. I felt secure, having bolted the doors before tipping a chair beneath the knobs on the entryway from the balcony, but sleep eluded me.
The next day was Saturday; one day away from discovering that David either faked his own disappearance for reasons unknown, or unknown people had him --if they hadn't killed him outright.
I recalled the last time I saw David as he climbed the portal to leave for Earth. I played it many times from my enhanced memory, viewing it as if it were happening before my eyes. His strong legs propelled him up the stairs, the look on his face as he turned to me and smiled. David was so handsome. He spoke to me just before he vanished into the portal.
"You're not sleeping either, are you?" Cadmar's voice, a mere whisper, yelled to me in the dead silence of the penthouse, disrupting my remembrances.
"Some of its portal lag, no doubt." I rose to the side of the bed with a deep breath, both exhausted and resigned.
An insistent rapping sounded. Cadmar rushed to answer the door. "It's Sal!" He said aloud, and I heard unlatching sounds.
I grabbed my pants and slipped them on.
"Where's Rick?" I heard Sal ask in urgency.
"What's wrong?" asked Cadmar.
"Quick, turn on BBC News. They're about to play the rebroadcast. It's on channel 503."
I hurried into the sitting room, still fiddling with my pants. "Our apologies, Sal, people raised on Jiyū have no sense of modesty."
He glanced at Cadmar, who unabashedly hadn't bothered to dress. "I noticed."
As Cadmar took the hint to don his pants, I rummaged for the remote to the flat-panel television, which hung unused upon the wall. Pushing a few buttons had us viewing the channel in question.
"...growing concern for some time," said the American president to a special joint session of the United States Congress. "They have infected the population with their technology. They have caused a severe blow to the economy. They have shown us how easily they could invade this world at the portal near London. And when we sent our five emissaries on a peaceful mission through the portal in Japan, they eventually returned, three of them dead, killed in the most horrific ways.
"Of the two that survived the encounter on the alien planet, only the recently recommissioned Captain Hector Lopez came back in his right mind."
The screen split to include a shot of our erstwhile Mr. Lopez, whom they apparently reinstated into the Army and had given the rank of captain. He sat in the gallery in full army service uniform.
"His name's Hector," I said, "that suits him."
"The other survivor," the president continued, "Salvatore Greco has gone missing, but we hope to find him so that we can help him. Captain Lopez tells us that they broke Mr. Greco, and he told them everything they wanted to know. Having been broken, whatever Mr. Greco says now, he should not be trusted.
"We intend to stop Earth's creeping Jiyūvian takeover, or else we'll find ourselves with a world we don't recognize, full of people ripe for their conquest," he said, to which both houses of Congress gave considerable applause. "I have a message for all Jiyūvians on this planet.
You and your people will pay for what you did to Mark Wallen, Jacob Tourney, and Thaddeus Coulter; those are names we will not forget.
"On my orders, American forces will begin targeting Jiyūvians, and their aircraft, providing an unequivocal message to these people. '
Go home and do not return, or you will face the deadliest of consequences.
'"
The rest of the speech consisted of little more than an indulgent mix of ego-stroking and a sermon on how their god had blessed them and would continue to bless them as Americans. It ended with profuse applause from both sides of the aisle, with a lot of back-patting, as they stood in a rare moment of solidarity over the extreme measures they would employ, protecting their power and financial interests.
"The rest is only interviews and speculations," said Sal.
"They're attempting to discredit us," said Cadmar.
"For the gullible people of the world, they did a good job of it," I said.
"How will the British respond to this?" asked Cadmar.
"They won't rush into anything," I said, "and I wouldn't expect any extradition treaties to apply in this case. The British Government will know they're lying rather blatantly about some of it, so they have no reason to believe them about the deaths of those three men."
"What will we do?" asked Sal.
"If someone from the British government doesn't contact me, I will contact Mr. Haywood in the morning."
Sal appeared more haggard than he had earlier. He wore the same clothes we had given him before he left Jiyū. He had bathed, however, and the hotel had provided him some personal hygiene items. I noticed his lip had swollen. "What happened to your lip?"
"Becca sleeps with the television on, but she was awake during the Presidential speech. She got angry at me for dragging her and Gertie into all this. Tomorrow, she intends to catch the earliest flight to Houston. She's going home to her mother."
"What about helping Gertrude?" asked Cadmar.
"If she considered letting you help her before, she wouldn't trust you now."
"Is she not your daughter too?" I asked.
"I'm her stepfather, and although I'm the only father Gertie's ever known, Becca insisted when we married that she would retain the sole right to decide Gertie's medical needs."
"What difference does that make?" asked Cadmar. "Rebecca is making a decision based on lies. Gertrude is suffering; give her the nano-suspension anyway. It's the morally right thing to do."
"Yes, Cadmar, it's the morally right thing to do, and Sal might even agree with us, but this is Earth. Morality almost invariably takes a back seat to what those in power want or what is legal, and when they do correlate, too often, it's purely coincidental."
I had never witnessed Cadmar angry before. It didn't last long, but his brows lowered, and lips stretched into a tight line. "I don't like this place," he said.
"That makes two of us." I turned to Sal. "You said you wanted to speak to us last night, what about."
He nodded. "You should know what happened when I came back to Earth." He sat in the chair behind him, so we sat up on the couch. "I've been back for nearly six days. When Lopez and I arrived on Earth, no one greeted us. And although I didn't want to, we moved the body bags with Wallen and Tourney to the side of the clearing, so someone could pick them up later. We walked to the road and hitched a ride in a truck bed to Camp Fuji; that's a nearby marine corps base. You should know that someone created a narrow path from the portal site to the parking lot of the Ice Cave tourist attraction. It looked fresh."
"That sounds important," I said to Cadmar.
"When we got to Camp Fuji, we were brought before the base commander, Colonel Chapman. He ordered that they debrief us separately.
"They didn't question me verbally. They didn't even ask about my personal experience after we got there; they gave me a pen and a piece of paper full of questions to answer. They didn't get the data from the drones they sent with us, but they had us, and in some ways, that was better. They asked about the Jiyūvian military, the technology, the geography of the area, what the food was like, a lot of things, but nothing personal. I tried to tell them what happened, but I sat before them the picture of health, so none of it mattered. They just wanted their questions answered."
"Considering what you went through, that's pretty callous of them," said Cadmar.
"What did you tell them about Jiyū?" I asked.
"I would normally have done my duty as an American," he said, "but I couldn't. As a civilian, they couldn't make me do anything. I wanted to remain in good conscience, so I decided to return the kindness given to me on Jiyū, by not allowing anyone here to benefit from the lies they fed me before I left Earth. I told them nothing.
"When you found us in the meadow," he said, "I had lost my mind from exhaustion, fear, desperation, and hunger. Lopez was dying in front of me, and I couldn't help him. I told no one on Jiyū, but I had planned the morning you found us to put Lopez out of his misery and then shoot myself. You didn't just save our lives by showing up, you saved me from having to do such a terrible thing. So, thank you."
"You're welcome," said Cadmar.
"What did they say about your silence?" I asked.
"After I told them my intentions, they said I would be held in detention. They stripped me and kept me in a kind of solitary confinement for a few days. Then, the night before last, someone let me go. They gave me my clothes, my passport, some yen, and an opportunity to escape. I don't know who let me go, but I suspect it was Lopez."
"You saved his life," said Cadmar.
Sal nodded. "I think he felt he owed it to me. So, I took the opportunity to escape from the cell.
"The Japanese must be genuinely kind people. The first person I came across helped me. He called Becca for me so I could talk to her. I got her to use every dime we had to get her and Gertie to London and buy me a non-stop flight to Heathrow from Tokyo. Mr. Bōsan hid me until the time came for my flight."
"Mr. Bōsan?" I asked. "I think you're a bit confused. I doubt he was Mr. Bōsan. Bōsan means monk; no wonder he helped you."
