Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11)

by Laurence Dahners

  The girl was a genius! Even if she didn’t seem to appreciate it herself. Humble as she was about both her accomplishments and her looks, everybody seemed to love her. Gary still looked back in horror on the way he had destroyed his chances for real love on the one date he had had with her. It seemed like disappointment was the recurring fate of his love life. First he’d met Ell, by his recollection developing an almost instantaneous infatuation. Though he hadn’t exactly “blown” his chances with her, any romance they’d had had been lukewarm at best. With the marvelous Viveka, he’d felt like he might have had a real chance. That chance he had blown.

  There came a knock on his doorframe, but he’d worked himself up into such a state that he certainly didn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment. “Busy,” he croaked out without turning to see who it was. He had an open door policy, but surely people knew he couldn’t talk every time they came by.

  Like a voice directly from the tumultuous nightmare he’d been going through while awake, Gary heard Ell’s Raquel voice, “No problem, give me a call when you’ve got time to talk.”

  Starting in his chair, Gary said, “Wait!” he rubbed at his eyes, then turned around.

  “Whoa, you look like crap.” Ell said matter of factly while walking into his office and over towards his desk, “Did someone die?” She asked sympathetically.

  “No,” he shrugged, “just having a hard time dealing with some personal issues that have got me all wound up. I shouldn’t be worrying about them here at work. How can I help you?”

  “Heck,” she said, sitting down, “I don’t need help. I just thought I’d drop by and see what was going on at Allosci. The question is what can I do to help you?”

  Gary laughed bitterly, “You can tell me to grow up and stop my silly little pity party over lost loves. Feed me some sappy lines like, ‘If you can’t be you with the one you love, love the one you’re with,’ etcetera.”

  “Who broke your heart?”

  “I broke my own damned heart.” He shook his head, “I only seem to fall in love with women who turn out to be ‘impossible dreams,’ first you, now another. I thought I might have a chance, but I ruined it.”

  ___

  Ell gripped her lower lip in her teeth for a moment to keep from smiling, then said, “Who, did you ‘break your own damned heart’ over?”

  Gary dropped his gaze to his own right shoe which he was scrubbing back and forth on the floor in a kind of a fidget. “Viveka,” he muttered in a barely audible and self-pitying tone.

  Ell felt glad that Gary wasn’t looking at her because she was sure she wasn’t adequately suppressing her grin. “So what happened?”

  Gary looked up at her, so Ell was glad she had control of her expression by then. He shrugged, “I took her out on one date. Things seemed to go well so at the end of it, like a fool, I tried to kiss her. I should have known, with all the cultural differences, that that was a stupid thing to do. She pulled away in a panic and that was the end of our friendship. I can hardly carry on a conversation with her now. Well, except about work. We can talk about work just fine. She is absolutely amazing. She has insights, she develops new tools, she works out new methods, she comes up with new products—I swear she makes creative innovations on an almost daily basis! If anyone else at Allosci came up with an idea to match one of hers on a quarterly, or even a yearly basis, I’d think they were great employees!”

  “So you’re glad I hired her and then dumped her on Allosci?”

  “Oh yeah! She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to this company.” He turned and stared out the window, “For a while I thought she was gonna be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  Ell said, trying to sound morose, “You’re the second person I’ve talked to today whose heart is breaking.”

  “Sorry, we shouldn’t be loading you down with our personal problems. It’s not like there’s anything you can do to help.”

  “Yeah,” she said musingly, “this one also had to do with a kiss denied. Seems like it’s a problem that’s going around. Though this time, it was a girl who didn’t let a guy kiss her. She’s regretted it ever since. Quite a coincidence.”

  ___

  Gary’s eyes had been tracking around to focus on Ell. They narrowed, then he noticed she was grinning. His eyes widened, “Who?” he breathed.

  Ell only nodded at him.

  “Viveka?”

  Ell grinned even wider, then frowned, “Here I thought I was running a company. Instead I feel like a grade school girl who’s running back and forth between two of her classmates saying, ‘she likes you,’ and ‘he likes you too.’ I guess now I’ll have to make the return trip with that second message.”

  “Really?”

  Ell winked at him, “For a couple of really smart people, the two of you have pretty dysfunctional communication skills! Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, “I should lock the two of you in a room until you actually talk to each other.”

  Gary snorted, “Maybe you should. I think she has cultural misconceptions, and I’m… just an idiot.”

  “Yeah,” Ell grinned, “that’s about how I size it up too.”

  Gary grinned back, “Well, if you’re just going to be rude to me, I think I’m going to go visit my new girlfriend.” He stood up.

  Ell blinked, “You don’t wanna stay and tell me what’s been going on at Allosci first?”

  “Uh…” Gary hesitated, looking like he didn’t know what to say.

  Ell grinned and stood up as well. Giving him a little shove, she said, “Go, talk to your girlfriend! If I tried to talk to you right now you’d be about as useful as a dolphin in the desert.”

  ___

  Viveka stared at one of her screens, trying to get some work done, but her mind kept replaying the conversation she’d had when Dr. Donsaii had dropped by her office a little while ago. Dr. Donsaii had asked how she was doing, decided Viveka was depressed, and somehow had extracted from her the entire story of her abortive date with Dr. Pace. Then she had sympathized with Viveka and tried to cheer her up with an unfamiliar analogy about “fish in the sea” that had left Viveka feeling cross-eyed.

  Intellectually, Viveka could understand that there probably were more fish somewhere, but pondering that fact hadn’t helped Viveka’s bleak mood.

  She heard someone enter the lab. Not wanting to talk to anyone right then, she huddled down over one of her small screens as if concentrating intensely. Whoever it was walked into the lab and she could hear their footsteps approaching her. To her irritation, the footsteps came up and then just stopped somewhere close behind her. Apparently, whoever it was didn’t want to interrupt her concentration, however, it seemed they did intend to simply stand back there and wait until she wasn’t concentrating any more.

  Frustrated, Viveka considered continuing to pretend she was intensely focused until they went away. Then she realized with mounting embarrassment that the screen she was pretending to focus on only had up an e-mail about the next Allosci social function. If whoever was back there could see over her shoulder and saw what she was pretending to be focused on, they would know she was simply being rude.

  She quickly flicked the screen off and turned.

  Dr. Pace stood there smiling down at her. Rather than the uneasily worried expression he had worn around her of late, he looked positively beatific. “Yes Dr. Pace?” she said with a puzzled tone.

  For a moment he said nothing, then, “I thought you were going to call me Gary?”

  “It feels rude to me,” Viveka nearly whispered.

  Gary tilted his head, “To me it feels distant and formal when my friends call me ‘doctor,’ so I’m truly hoping that my friend Viveka Janu will call me Gary.”

  “Friend?”

  Gary nodded, then said obtusely, “Do you know our expression, ‘a little bird told me’?”

  Viveka shook her head.

  “It’s a way to say you heard a bit of gossip, but pretend that it came from a bird instead of an
other person.” He shrugged, “Usually you’re trying to protect your source, but I think in this case you’ll know who told me anyway.”

  Viveka stared at him in confused puzzlement.

  “Viveka, I admire your creativity, your brilliant mind, your beauty, and your sense of adventure. In short, using one of our colloquialisms, ‘I’m crazy about you.’ I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about you and I’ve been hating myself for getting off on the wrong foot with you on our date. Since the aforementioned little birdie told me that you don’t actually hate me like I thought you did, I have developed a theory. A theory that not only on that date, but on several other occasions, cultural differences between us and general clumsiness on my part have resulted in misunderstandings that have damaged our friendship.

  “So,” he sighed, “I want to apologize. Apologize for trying to kiss you on our first date without considering that that might not be appropriate for you. I want to tell you just how sorry I am that I didn’t immediately ask for forgiveness.” He sighed, “It is my intention to do my utmost in the future to fully grasp your thoughts and desires despite the differences in our cultures. I fervently hope to prevent any future misunderstandings like the ones we’ve just lived through.”

  Viveka felt her eyes welling with tears. She stood. “I… I…” after a pause, she tilted her head, and as a tear ran down her cheek, she said, “Ell told you… how much I admire you?” she whispered.

  Gary nodded solemnly then grinned, “She refused to carry my message of admiration back to you.” He winked, “She seemed to think I was old enough that I should be carrying that message back myself.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. Without taking her eyes from Gary’s, Viveka reached back onto her desk, found a box of Kleenex and pulled one out. She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes.

  Viveka said nothing more.

  After a bit, Gary said, “I asked you once before how you were getting along with Matt. I’m hoping to clarify what I thought I was doing that time so that there won’t be another misunderstanding. I had been thinking that you two were becoming a couple, and that if you were getting along well, that I should step aside and suppress all my romantic thoughts. When you looked at me with concern, I thought that you were angry that I was butting into your personal life.”

  “Romantic?”

  Again Gary nodded solemnly, “I love you Viveka Janu. But if you are actually already in love with Matt, I will step aside. I love you enough that I want you to be happy, with or without me.”

  Viveka stepped closer to him and slowly reached out, gently circling her arms around Gary’s neck. In this loose embrace, her lips close to his ear, she whispered, her voice breaking, “I love you too Doct…” she took a deep breath and more firmly said, “I love you too Gary.” She stepped back and dropped her hands. Disconsolately, she dropped her eyes to the floor and said in a barely audible tone, “But it will never work.”

  Gary let out a long breath. After a moment he said, “The old Gary would have said, ‘OK,’ and walked away with a broken heart. The new Gary is going to do his best to understand why. Can you tell me why it wouldn’t work?”

  Viveka’s eyes glanced up at him then dropped back down, “I… my family is very poor.”

  Gary nodded, his concerned eyes focused intently on her. When she said nothing more, he said, “I know. I don’t think that’s a problem, but perhaps I don’t understand?”

  She whispered, “We can’t, can’t afford… a dowry. Well, a small one, but it would be as nothing to someone like you.”

  “Viveka,” he said, taking her hand, “in America neither brides, nor their families provide dowries.” He shrugged, “Perhaps a remnant of the dowry is that the bride’s family typically pays for the wedding, I’m not sure. But, even there, many families share the cost of the wedding, and weddings can range from very cheap to extremely expensive. In any case, I’d be happy to pay for any wedding myself, be it large or small.”

  He reached out with his other hand and tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. “However, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He grinned at her, “In America, we think a couple should go out on more than one date before they plan their wedding.” He snorted, “Especially when the one date they did have ended in disaster.” Softly he said, “Might I take you out to dinner again this Saturday?”

  Viveka nodded, afraid to say anything because she knew her voice would break.

  A look of concern on his face, Gary said, “I would very much like to give you a little hug now, but I don’t want to offend you like I did trying to kiss you before. Would that be OK?”

  Rather than nodding, or saying anything, Viveka stepped forward into his embrace. He held her lightly and timidly, but she put her arms around his back and hugged fiercely.

  ***

  Carter, his wife Abby, and his daughter Jenny, now 11, walked into the local California Pizza Kitchen. They had just watched the afternoon matinee of Disney’s newest movie “Tyrant,” about an evil king on a distant planet. Carter still felt great joy at having enough money to take his wife and daughter out for a movie and a meal at a restaurant. The movie had been enjoyable and they liked the food at CPK.

  When they had ordered their food, Jenny looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Dad?” she said. When he’d looked at her, she continued, “Are you still going to send people to Mars?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet,” he said, “but already we’re starting to build a ‘space ship’ to fly them out there. You remember that we dug some small tunnels and started trying to grow plants in them?”

  His serious daughter nodded.

  “We had some trouble at first but now those plants are growing pretty well. We’ve started digging much bigger tunnels. We’ve got a little farm going in the big tunnels where we’ve been able to successfully grow quite a few more crops. We’ve also tunneled out a lot of space where people could live, so it should be possible for us to send some people out there and for them to live safely.”

  Jenny stared at him for a moment, then said, “How are you going to get them to Mars without the cosmic radiation making them sick in transit?”

  “Well, you’re right, there is a lot of radiation in interplanetary space, and they’ll be out there for a couple of months during the trip to Mars. We’re building their main ship out of asteroidal metal which will absorb some radiation, but not nearly enough. So, just like for the habitat, we have big Vectran bags around the ship. Once the rockets have the ship up to speed on its way to Mars, we’ll use ports to fill the bags with water. The bags will be three meters thick and that much water provides very good radiation protection.”

  “But doesn’t it take a lot of energy to port water into an object that’s moving fast like a spaceship?”

  Carter’s eyebrows elevated, “Well aren’t you the smart one! You’re absolutely right; we have to feed a lot of power into the port so that it will be able to boost the speed of the molecules it’s transferring up to the speed that the spaceship is traveling.” He raised an eyebrow, “But it will still be more efficient than using a rocket to push that water up to interplanetary speed like we’d have to if we filled the bags here in earth orbit.”

  Jenny looked at him doubtfully, “Really?”

  “Yes, because, we’ll pull the water back out of the bags before we use the rockets to slow down and enter Mars orbit. Believe it or not, when we take that high velocity water back through the port, it generates energy back at our end. It’s kind of like if we pump water up a hill, it takes energy, but then when we let the water run back down the hill we can get energy back out of it.”

  Jenny tilted her head, “That’s pretty cool.”

  Carter felt pretty proud of himself. First, for having a child bright enough to ask the questions she had just posed, and second, for explaining them to his critical child’s satisfaction. Then she looked up at him again, “I still don’t understand…”

  “Yes?” Carter said lo
oking forward to explaining something else to her.

  She wrinkled her nose in puzzlement, “Why would anyone want to go to Mars and live in a tunnel? They could do that here! And, then go out to a movie and a restaurant. They won’t be able to do that there.”

  Carter grinned. Trust his daughter to poke a hole in his balloon. After a moment he said, “You’ve got a good point. Living in the tunnels there won’t be much different than living in a tunnel here on earth except for the low gravity,” he shrugged, “and the danger of being so far from home and help. Nonetheless, we have people lined up and begging to go. They’ll be able to go out and explore Mars for short periods if they want. A lot of people really like to explore.”

  Jenny frowned, “They’ll still be getting a lot of radiation! Mars doesn’t have a magnetosphere, and it doesn’t have enough atmosphere. Even if they only spend a few hours a day outside they’ll still be getting thirty times as much radiation as they would here on earth!”

  “Well, you’re right. They’d be getting quite a bit more radiation than we do here on earth, on average. But some places, and some jobs, right here on earth get a lot more radiation than others.”

  “Not as much as Mars.”

  Carter grinned at Jenny, “No, you’re right, very few result in as much radiation as you’d get on Mars. But, if you only stayed on Mars for a few years, you could still stay at very acceptable lifetime radiation exposures. If you really did want to stay on Mars for the rest of your life, you might have to spend less time on the surface.”

  Jenny sighed theatrically, “I just don’t see why anyone would even want to go if they were going to live in a hole!”

  ***

  Holly Scott watched the four toddlers scrambling around her family room. She and their three mothers had come up with a plan to let their four kids, all about two years old, play at one of their houses in rotation twice a week. This being Thursday of the second week it was Holly’s turn to watch the kids. Watching over four 2-year-olds was a pain in the butt, but getting three days with no kids in return made it worthwhile.