Valeddom
7: eeyoo

I must have made some noise when awakening from my coma; it was this which had alerted the nurse. But the one great thought, I’m back on Earth, smothered my outcry. While the nurse ran to fetch the doctor, I sank back on the pillow, knowing all I needed to know.
    Nevertheless when the doctor appeared, my lips formed the question:
    “Where am I?”
    “Lancaster Royal Infirmary,” said the doctor. “And how are we feeling today?”
    “I’m fine,” I croaked, and began a weak laugh which turned into a ragged cough. I could hardly move a muscle. On the other hand, I wasn’t at all groggy. My mind at that moment was on fire with a terrible awareness, and my thoughts were utterly crisp and clear. My eyes pinpointed the doctor, registered his young face, his white coat, his smoothed-over excitement. My verdict: I had better be careful.
    Evidently I rated more than one doctor, for now an older, stouter man came into view. This one said, “Good, good,” frowning in amazement, and then he and his colleague stepped back and muttered to each other.
    Meanwhile in a delayed response my mind lost some of its clarity, overcast by a fog of emotional reaction to my smallness and weakness. I was back in Hugh Dent’s body, and gone was my Mercurian strength and physique. The change hit me two ways, knocking me into a see-saw of depression and elation. Oh no, I would never see Valeddom again! Hooray, I was back home and my former self!
    The older doctor listened to my heart with his stethoscope and frowned some more. “Steady, steady. Can you understand me all right?” he asked, speaking English in a precise, clipped way. (I nodded.) “Good, good. I will ask you some questions now. Simple general-knowledge questions.” And he began firing them at me. What is the capital of England? What is the name of the Queen? Of the Prime Minister? How many players are there in a football team? And so on. After two or three minutes he turned to asking me questions about myself: my name, address, parents, school. I answered all of those too, and he was finally satisfied. “No amnesia, it is clear. You,” he remarked, “are a very lucky young man. In fact I am amazed at the excellent condition you are in, both mental and physical, in spite of the fact that you have been unconscious for.... a great length of time.”
    Eighty-eight days, to be precise, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it out loud; I preferred not to shock him any further with what I knew. That keen edge of caution still guarded my tongue. My experience on Valeddom had taught me something about adjustment to alien worlds.... and from the point of view of my Valeddomian self I was now on an alien world, Urom....
That afternoon, my parents came hurrying to my bedside. Hugs and tears, rather than words, took up most of that first visit. That was just as well, because my deep joy at seeing Mum and Dad again, confusingly combined with my sorrow at losing my Valeddomian parents and friends, and at losing Valeddom itself, produced a churning mess inside me; but the handy thing was, my scatty efforts at conversation, and the twitches of contrary mood which crossed my face, did not surprise them; for what else can you expect from a boy who has been in a coma for eighty-eight days? Everyone made allowances. And so the blaze and crackle in my mind burned lower, and I could start to relax.
    Still, the happiness of the reunion was itself a strain, clashing with all that had been given to me by a different world, each treasure trove of memory trying to shoulder the other one aside. To picture how awkward this was, imagine waking from a dream and the dream refusing to go away, so that dream and wake keep overlapping!
    Luckily for me, I was given time to adjust. There was no question of going home immediately. The medical team which had been looking after me during the eighty-eight days had massaged my muscles and done their best to keep me from wasting away, but some of the necessary fitness treatment could only be undertaken after I had regained consciousness; so I had many more days in hospital, and I used the time to din it into myself that once I got moving again I would have to remember that I was no longer Ren Nydr, and I must not ask too much, or expect too much, of my reduced stamina and musculature. As for the moral side – my recent, Mercurian habit of being brave – I wasn’t sure whether I could keep that up, or whether it, too, had been left behind.
    The everyday world asserted itself pretty quick. My imagination became accustomed to a reduced diet of humdrum events: meals; graded physical exercise; visits during which I was reminded of pleasant, ordinary things. A card arrived, signed by all my schoolmates and teachers. I savoured the wholemeal-bread plainness of Earthly existence, and told myself not to grumble at the loss of high adventure. “Remember,” I thought, “how it almost ended, in the clutches of the hourless tapede.” And besides, I kept being quietly thrilled by the sheer beauty of Earth: the simple sight of blue sky and distant roofs, and leafy branches waving beyond the hospital car-park.
    You and I (I speak of our Earth selves only) were born with three parents. Your third parent is your planet. Your culture, your civilization, your world. Everyone takes this third parent for granted. Mine now hugged me in its bosom: good old normal Earth. I made a decision: I would encourage this hold. This was my great precaution. Since I was on Earth, I would be an Earthman; I wanted three parents, not six. Six was too many.
    I viewed this as a matter of survival, and after putting some effort into it I found, as time went on, that I could go for hours without thinking about Valeddom. It turned out to be a question of discipline: I could get on top of those alien memories, limit them and control them, and for a while I even thought I might be able, eventually, to disbelieve in them, though I wasn’t sure whether I should go quite that far. Only in my dreams were the gates of awareness re-opened beyond my control, and Dad once mentioned to me (during one of his hospital visits) that I had babbled in my sleep. The nurse had mentioned it to him; so had one of the doctors; apparently, they weren’t worried as far as I was concerned, but they thought my parents had better be prepared to expect that sort of night-time disturbance….
    “What did I say?” I demanded, anxiously.
    “Snatches of way-out stuff.... You ought to be a writer.”
    That helped me to laugh it off, for I had always been keen on science fiction.
    While I was still in hospital the local Gazette sent a reporter to interview me and take a photo for a feature about the Survivor of the M6 Coach Crash. The lady asked me how I felt after coming back “from death’s door”. It was then that I almost did blab too much. After making some commonplace remark about being glad to be alive, I added:
    “Anyhow, there’s no such thing as death.”
    “What do you mean?” she asked. “Ten people died in the smash!”
    Whoops. “I know,” I said, thinking of those who had not come back from Valeddom – of Justine, Jacko and Mr Bryce. “But if only people knew....” There I went again! I must shut up! Yet it seemed a pity to keep quiet, to withhold the comfort my knowledge might have given to the relatives of the other crash victims. Nevertheless I must shut up. Otherwise, bit by bit the whole story would get drawn out of me, and I’d end up certified.
    Fortunately, the reporter lady seemed used to the general idea of “near-death experiences” and their tendency to induce the belief that death is not the end. Her article, when it appeared, was harmlessly vague. Anyone who read it must have thought I was being mystical, and not too much notice was taken.
    But the day before I left the hospital, the hour came, when visiting time was over and I lay alone, that I came face to face with a practical problem that would not go away.
    Curiosity – an urgent curiosity that saw no means of being satisfied. For there was one big question that nagged at me despite all my efforts at “moving on”.
    How could I concentrate properly on my Earth life while I kept wondering what had happened in that room in the depths of the Archives of Ixli, after that final terrible moment of my existence as Ren Nydr?
    Could I, perhaps, make a sensible guess?
    Fred Jackson, who somehow must have talked his way into the Archives, had manhandled Bryce and me, wrenching us free of the Noleddern trance. That much I knew. I didn’t know whether Jacko had acted alone, or whether Fnekt had a hand in it too. Anyhow, the violence of the rescue had probably killed or seriously injured Bryce, and had surely got Jacko himself (and his accomplices, if any) into a lot of trouble.
    On the other hand, Bryce might be better off dead (supposing he was dead) than as whatever he might have become in the clutches of the tapede. Jacko’s ignorant action at least saved him from that, and saved me, too – gave me a chance to escape completely: for unlike Bryce, I had not been killed in the bus smash; I had a comatose body waiting on Earth, to which my soul was able to bounce back, in its recoil from unendurable pressure.
Which brought me to wonder: what had happened to Ren Nydr’s body? Was the other me lying lifeless? Or had it reverted to the Dluku state it was in when I first entered it?
    How could I possibly ever know? At first I told myself to abandon all such questions. To chew on them seemed pointless, since it seemed vastly unlikely that I’d get any answers this side of the grave. The only way I would ever obtain news from Ixli was by the fantastically remote chance of meeting another person whose mind had made the trip to Valeddom, and, what’s more, to that particular part of Valeddom, and returned to tell the tale. Or by taking part, myself, in another accident, going into another coma.... as if lightning were to strike twice in exactly the same place. But then a plan occurred to me. If Dad’s joking remark became true and I did become a writer, and disguised my experiences as fiction, the published story could become a secret signal to anyone who was in the know. It would convey the message: “Here I am. Please get in touch.”
    It was something to think about in the years ahead.

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