Planet X - Michael Jan Friedman [11]
“I cannot sit there,” said Erid.
The administrator’s eyes narrowed. “Why not?”
The youth indicated the window with a tilt of his head. “The light. It activates the energy in me.”
Understanding dawned on Osan’s face. Understanding … and something else as well. Something like concern, only stronger.
Erid was almost tempted to call it fear.
“I see,” Osan said. “In that case, you may move the chair away from the light. Or stand, if you prefer.”
Erid chose to stand, though it made his legs feel even heavier. “I want to speak with my family,” he declared. “When can I do that?”
The administrator looked sympathetic. “That’s difficult to say. Right now, all our resources are concentrated on the rescue operation. New transformations are taking place every day, you understand.”
The youth shook his head. “I don’t understand. What have your resources got to do with my speaking with my parents?”
Osan leaned back in his chair and frowned. “We have to regulate the flow of information. If people find out what we’re doing here, they may misinterpret our actions. The situation could instantly spiral out of control, to the detriment of all concerned.”
“In other words,” Erid said, “you have no intention of letting me speak with my family.”
The administrator’s frown deepened. “As I said, we’re regulating the flow of information. But that’s just a temporary condition.”
“How temporary?”
Something stiffened in Osan. “I believe I answered that.”
But he hadn’t. Not really.
“Do my parents know what’s become of me?” Erid asked. “Do they know where I am? How I’ve changed?”
The administrator sighed. “That, too, would constitute potentially incendiary information. It’s in everyone’s best interests that they don’t know. At least, not yet.”
Erid glanced at the window. Somewhere beyond its glare was the yard, where the transformed were allowed to congregate twice a day.
He recalled how it had been for him there a couple of days earlier. Frightened by his transformation and his subsequent imprisonment, still uncertain of how his powers worked, Erid had made the mistake of wandering into the center of the yard.
In moments, beams of brilliant laserlight had sprung from his fingers, just as they had that first time at Otros Paar. And the guards who lined the battlements had fired their weapons at him, making him shiver and convulse and finally lose consciousness.
Perhaps Osan was right. Perhaps it was better his parents didn’t know. It would be easier for them to think their son had perished than to picture him as a monster in a stone cage.
But that wasn’t the point, was it? It wasn’t a matter of who would suffer if word of his transformation got out. It was a matter of his right to make that decision for himself.
“You had no right to take me,” Erid told the administrator. “And you have no right to keep me here.”
Osan regarded him. “You may be right about that. We may have no right at all. But we have a responsibility to the people of Xhaldia, and we must carry it out as best we can.”
Erid saw he would get nowhere with this man. Still, it irked him that it should be so.
A part of him even considered stepping into the light and becoming what Osan feared—a dynamo of deadly and unpredictable energy. But that would only earn Erid a barrage of stun fire from the guards outside, and he dearly wished to avoid another experience like the one in the yard.
“Some day,” he told his captor, “you’ll regret what you’ve done here.” It was less than a threat, but more than a prediction.
Osan smiled a grim smile. “This may surprise you,” he said, “but I regret it already.”
Erid was still pondering the meaning of the man’s words as he left the room and returned to his barracks.
Captain Picard got up from his center seat and eyed the bridge’s forward viewscreen, where he could make out a speck of gray against the sea of stars. “Maximum magnification,” he said.
“Aye, Captain,” replied Data, who was sitting at Ops.
A moment later, the speck became a full-blown Federation starbase—in this case, Starbase 88. Picard considered it for a moment, then cast