Star Crossed

by C. Gockel

  He couldn’t make it with a side stroke. So he took his bearings on Tezi, plunged his face in the water, and closed the remaining distance with a crawl. Swiping river water off his face, he looked up to see her floating past almost beyond his reach.

  He lunged toward her. His fingers curled around a strap on her life jacket, and he jerked her to him. Tezi cried out in pain: she was hurt but alive.

  Joe found a better hold on her life jacket and aimed for shore. One of Tezi’s hands clutched his upper arm. “Help kick,” he gasped.

  “Arm hurts.” Pain edged her voice. Her left arm trailed crookedly in the water.

  Current bore them both downstream. Joe angled for shore. With each thrust of Joe’s feet and free arm, Tezi gasped. “Hang on!” Joe panted. “Catharin’s here. She’ll fix you up.”

  The grip on his upper arm tightened, and Tezi kicked harder.

  Once out of the main current, he could make straight for the shore, and swim slower and smoother, easier on Tezi. Joe felt for the bottom under his feet. The bank sloped into the water at a steep angle. Green worms that had emerged from their hiding places glistened on the upper bank and waved below the water line.

  The steep shore was too slick to stand on. It offered Joe nothing to seize with his hand, either. Fragments of grass-green worm came away in his fingers. His struggles to find a foot- or handhold jarred Tezi. She cried out.

  Joe stopped thrashing. With Tezi in tow, he let himself drift beside the bank. His hand explored for a hold, slid over gelatinous worms as the margins of the current eased them both downstream. Finally his hand brushed a rougher patch of bank. He closed his fingers around a handful of wiry roots—too fragile to climb on, but strong enough to anchor Tezi and himself. Joe craned his neck to look upward. Scrubby bushes stood on top of the bank, probably sturdy enough to anchor a rope, if somebody had thought to bring one.

  Aaron and Domino appeared among the bushes. “Got a rope?” Joe yelled at them.

  “Here!” Domino flung a rope’s end toward Joe.

  Joe tied the rope under Tezi’s armpits. “She’s got a broken arm. Pull up slow.”

  Tezi whimpered with pain, but used her good hand to guide herself as they hauled her to the top of the bank. The rope snaked down again. Joe grabbed it with both hands and half climbed, half let himself be dragged up by Domino as Aaron tended Tezi. When Joe had crawled over the lip of the bank, Domino and Aaron formed a cradle of their arms. Joe placed Tezi in it. The other two men rushed her toward the helicopter and Catharin.

  The greenish ground cover consisted of an abrasive, scratchy, almost glassy moss, hostile to bare feet. Shivering, Joe waited for it to occur to somebody to bring him his shoes.

  He surveyed his skin and found himself fairly clean. Maybe they would let him ride in the same helicopter trip as Catharin’s patients.

  Becca came running between the low hills, her hands full of Joe’s shoes and clothes. She stood for him to brace himself on her shoulder as he pulled on clothes and shoes. “Joe, you were great!”

  Joe noted the absurd intimacy of the situation. He felt his mouth crook in an ironic smile. “You too.”

  She looked up at him, suddenly grave, her brow furrowed. “Are you still mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “Can we be friends?”

  “Friends,” Joe said. Her forehead smoothed. But she looked pale, freckles showing up more than usual. “Feel okay?” he asked with concern.

  “It’s okay,” she answered, and set out with him for the helicopter.

  When they got into the copter, Wing lay there strapped on the stretcher, wide-eyed and solemn. Joe paused to grasp Wing’s hand. “Your turn to convalesce, eh?”

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Wing, faintly.

  Tezi sat beside Catharin, belted in, eyes glazed, Catharin’s painkiller already at work. “Let’s get these people home,” said Catharin.

  The rotor noise burgeoned, and the copter surged toward Unity Base. This time Joe and Catharin sat on opposite sides of the cockpit door. Catharin leaned past the door toward Joe, removing her headset. She snatched off Joe’s. Into his ear and audible only to him she said, “I didn’t think even you were damned fool enough to jump into a strange river!”

  “I know how to read water!” he retorted.

  Her eyes flicked to Wing, assuring herself that he was not overly distressed by the helicopter’s steep climb. Then she glared at Joe. “One day one of your stunts is going to give me a heart attack!”

  “Do you care about me, Doctor?!”

  She crossed her arms. “We need you. Personally, if you jump into the river—or the planet Blue—I don’t care!”

  Becca looked on, leaning closer to overhear—from the copilot’s seat, where Catharin could not see her. Becca quickly shook her head, grinning. Don’t believe it.

  During the helicopter flight back to Unity Base disaster struck again on the river. With Beagle dead in the shallow backwater, its engine fouled with weeds, an eddy of the tide seized the stranded boat. The bottom of the backwater was seemingly bottomless, slick sediment. It provided nothing to tie a line to, no friction to keep the boat in place, and the weeds that clogged the engines broke off from the bottom so easily that they offered no resistance to the tug of the tide. Beagle slid back into the river and floated toward the sea.

  Sam called Domino, frantic. But before the time they got the hoist on the helicopter and flew it back to the boat, Sam and her crew had to abandon ship and swim for the shore. Sam stayed aboard as long as she dared, but the engine refused to turn over and the boat was carried like a leaf toward the open sea. Sam finally jumped off and swam to a tiny islet. Domino and Becca picked her up with the Starhawk’s sling. So the day ended without loss of life. But the one and only riverboat was lost at sea—complete with its scientific equipment.

  In Green’s midafternoon—late evening by the twenty-six-hour clock—Joe visited Wing in the infirmary. Wing told what he had experienced in quiet, precise tones. But he shuddered now and again. He had ingested native organic matter along with the river water, material incomprehensible to the human metabolism. His body had begun getting rid of the foreign matter at once. So ill had he been on the riverbank that he had felt he surely must die; he had forgotten that those alive enough to feel deathly ill are seldom at death’s door, where feeling wanes. Only when Wing had seen the helicopter landing had he realized that he would not die alone on a desolate river shore.

  After the visit, Joe went to the Penthouse to turn in for the “night,” the sleep period in the middle of the long Green-day. He still hated how much the apparently necessary sleep time in the daylight seemed like an unwelcome afternoon nap.

  Dozing off amid the uncomfortable onset of muscular ache and strain, he had another of his recurring dreams about the blue moon. This time his subconscious had new material to work with. He dreamed about Wing’s bore, the mountain of water crowned with wildfire foam, the great wave looming over him as he struggled to swim a cold, wide, nameless river. He woke from the nightmare chilled with sweat and trembling.

  When he was fully awake, he had one of the moments of lucid inspiration that can come in the middle of the night. There had been talk of naming the blue moon something other than Blue. Hurakan and Aeolus had been suggested. Earth gods. Pointless, Joe thought, and beside the point.

  Call the thing Nightmare.

  Catharin rose before anyone else in Unity Base the next morning, a new day that began with the slow setting of the sun. She checked on Wing, who was soundly asleep, and Tezi, who was resting, though not comfortably—no one is comfortable with a freshly fractured bone.

  Catharin was glad to be here and not on the Ship today. There would be unpleasant questions about how the entire cadre of mission controllers, planners, and planetary scientists had failed to anticipate a tidal bore in the river. That sort of inquiry had been no fun on Earth, where stasis-damaged brains were not a possible explanation. She did not envy Joel’s responsibility to fig
ure this one out and assign the blame.

  Full of restless energy, Catharin left the dome to walk outdoors. She felt sorry that the boat had been lost. But everyone was alive and her patients would mend. So much worse could have happened that the outcome of yesterday came as a relief to her, as well as something of a revelation: as tension-racked as the day had turned out to be, she had enjoyed the unscheduled trip into the wilderness. She needed to get out more.

  Catharin walked toward the edge of the clearing farthest from the dome. Long clouds lay in the western sky—gray forms, gilded and colored by the setting sun. Underfoot, the dirt crunched. Crunched? She stooped to inspect it. A thin, thready lichen had established itself in the dirt, gluing it down and muting the red color.

  She meandered among the pines with their familiar strange smell—anything and everything but pine. Stroking a bole sheathed in plush fuzz, she appreciated why they had been nicknamed “furry.”

  After sunset, no one was supposed to be out alone. For once, Catharin resented that rule as she turned back toward the base. The dome’s lights had come on. Lit from within, it glowed golden in the early dusk, like a chrysalis.

  So it was. Nestled in Green’s mild spring, Unity Base held the promise of a colony on Green. For the first time in a long time, Catharin reflected on her original purpose in coming to the stars. Crises had kept her mind off that for a long time. And other voyagers who shared her vision were up on the Ship, most of them still in stasis.

  The personnel in Unity Base were explorers and scientists, not humanists—and, considering their flaws and foibles, unlikely seed material for a better society than any before. And yet, seeing the chrysalis-look of the dome, Catharin could believe in her dream again.

  The clouds in the sky had changed. In abrupt pattern recognition, Catharin saw a definite shape: a long, tangled gray cloud was a human form, reclining. The cloud bank looked remarkably solid, its illuminated contours as smooth and rounded as musculature, like a gilded Greek cloud-frieze of vast proportions.

  No, not a figure reclining, one swimming. Catharin studied the cloud with fascination. Against a pale blue-green sky, the gray cloud was a tall man swimming over the sunset, one arm flung over his head, legs long and dynamic, a torso with rippled muscles highlighted by the sun.

  She hadn’t admitted it until now. He’s magnificent. I’m fascinated by him. I’ve never wanted anybody like this. Catharin felt traces of tears start in her eyes—warm tears for the sheer intensity of feeling. She could no more change the feeling than speed up the sun or tell Blue to stand still in the sky.

  Dream and desire were both alive. Alive. An old dream and a new desire, both compelling enough to change her life to the core: she wondered if fate would allow the fulfillment of only one or the other. Or neither.

  After breakfast, a small group gathered on the patio to debrief. Arriving with Samantha and Aaron, Catharin found Joe already there, slouching in a light folding chair. It was twilight, not quite night: they left the patio lights off and pulled chairs into a small enough circle to see each other’s faces.

  Sam Houston slumped in her chair. “Bores happen on Earth. Average a few inches high. This one was average for this world! Why didn’t I anticipate that?”

  “It wasn’t your job or your fault, Sam,” said Catharin.

  “That and worse. My responsibility. And it took a couple of whitecoats to save the day. Thanks, whitecoats.”

  Wimm Tucker—cook, quartermaster, and sometime distiller—had provided Bloody Marys. Considering Sam’s haggard face, Catharin poured drink into a glass for her.

  Sam said, “Thanks, honey, I need it.” She took a swig.

  Catharin sipped hers cautiously. The drink was laced with hot sauce, donated from Domino Cady’s personal supply of Cajun seasonings. “The Ship should have foreseen what happened. They’ll set up a review board on how so many people could review the data we’ve got for this planet so thoroughly—and miss the probability of a tidal bore.”

  “Hell, I saw it with my own eyes weeks ago,” said Joe. “If I’d had my mind in gear, I would have added it up sooner. Should have.” Catharin had not known that Joe could even go that far in admitting he had made a mistake.

  Sam said morosely, “I must be going senile. Freezer burn on the old meat.”

  “Don’t say that,” Catharin said quickly.

  Sam shook her head. “We’ve all had lapses.”

  Catharin nodded sharply, silent, thinking of a purple pond, and of Hoffmann and a door not locked. Aaron stirred—not disagreeing, Catharin guessed, just anxious.

  Someone appeared at the edge of the patio and stopped short, surprised to stumble into a party at this hour. Catharin called, “Carlton, what are you doing here?”

  “I do not mean to interrupt,” Wing’s voice floated back across the gloom of twilight.

  “No, come here. You shouldn’t be out of bed.” She touched his forehead. “You still have a fever.”

  “I woke up with a terrible taste in my mouth,” he said meekly.

  Joe took the pitcher of Bloody Mary. “Have some of this. It’ll cauterize your taste buds.”

  Catharin wondered about the advisability of that. But Joe poured only a small amount of the dark red drink into the glass he handed to Wing.

  “What is this?” Wing asked, settling into the chair Joe pulled up for him.

  “Tomato juice, hot sauce, and moonshine.” Joe answered. “Liquor manufactured under makeshift circumstances.”

  “Oh. Moonshine.” It would be hours before the young night became chilly; but Wing shivered, chilled either by the breeze or by the thought of the moon that had casually pulled up a twentyfoot wall of water over his head.

  “Hair of the dog that bit you,” said Joe.

  Midway through the benighted day, Joe was working at the telcon when Catharin formally released Wing from the infirmary. Joe cocked an ear and was relieved to hear Catharin say lightly, “And since you’re so much better, the best prescription I can offer is that you relax for a while. Feel free to borrow my cat. She’s as good as a muscle relaxant.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Wing paused near the telcon to notice the image. “What are you doing, Joe?”

  “Curing stasis.”

  Wing was fascinated by the double helix of DNA in a multiplicity of colors. So Joe explained further. “The problem started with the weird stasis chemicals. Even in the dark at subfreezing temperatures, they reacted with each other and with our chemistry, made products such as hydroxyl radicals, resulting in molecular damage, breaks or changes in long complicated molecules such as proteins.” He pointed to a highlighted spot.

  “Nucleic acids?” Wing asked.

  Joe simply said, “That too.”

  “I wondered,” Wing said quietly. Catharin came to the telcon to stand beside Wing.

  Joe continued, “There’ve been cases of borderline anemia, borderline diabetes, you name it, not lifethreatening as long as there’s medical treatment available. Eventually the body replaces the missing molecules, provided that the genes to do so are intact, more or less. There’s margin and redundancy. Up to now, she’s only had one hopeless case.”

  Catharin winced, then explained to Wing, “One of my patients was, well, borderline everything. He got replacement therapy for a great many of the substances the body needs to function. That technology isn’t perfect, particularly when it is so multifarious. His body never began to produce the damaged proteins on its own.”

  “It won’t ever,” Joe said bluntly. “So it looked like highly multiple replacement therapy for life, with all of the complications. Who’d want to live like that? We’re talking medical invalid even before he got cancer, which is highly probable. Prognosis, in short, was bad.”

  “Why was one person afflicted so severely?”

  “Being over fifty years old and male went against him,” Catharin said tersely.

  Joe said, “He’d worked in space before, more radiation. And one or two more prejudicial facto
rs.” Such as, having been in stasis twice. He traded a somber look with Catharin.

  “You both say ‘was.’ Has he perished?”

  “No. I’ve begun fixing him.” Joe pulled up images on the telcon window, double helixes in technicolor, dense diagrams that Catharin might understand if she studied them. Even Wing might get an impressionistic sense of what Joe could do. “DNA repair,” he said.

  “Post-stasis therapy does that already.” Catharin corrected. “As do our bodies even by themselves.”

  “Careless choice of words. Sorry. I mean reconstruction. Creative rearrangement. To make the DNA work again. You see, even in the shape this one’s in, somewhere in his body there’s good intact genes for everything. Intact hemoglobin genes may be in his liver where they’re suppressed and don’t do him any good now. But we ferret out the good genes and put them in the right places, make sure they’re expressed, and he gets better.”

  Catharin bent over the window, tense and eager. “Joe fixed the hemoglobin.”

  “That was trivial, compared to what still has to be done.”

  “Trivial?!”

  “It was like fixing the hole in an old cathedral’s roof, or maybe shoring up a broken buttress. But DNA that’s damaged like his is starts to show holistic effects. Like a cathedral bombed in a war. Stresses and strains affect the whole structure, and sooner or later it falls down. Unless you get an architect and some contractors in to reconstruct it.”

  Forgetting Wing, she gave him a long look. “Can you really do that?”

  “I’m capable of more than you know,” Joe answered. “I can make the difference between life and death.”

  In his final—unfinished—project on Earth, precisely that had been the issue. Of course, the full meaning of what he’d said escaped Catharin, who looked relieved, and Wing, who said slowly, “What of the future? What of children?”