A Lunatic Fear

by B. A. Chepaitis

  Larry licked his lips. “I don’t – I don’t have any idea.”

  “Yeah,” Pasquale said, “You do. You just don’t like to think about it. Lemme help you with that unconscious thing.”

  Pasquale aimed his weapon at Larry’s chest, grinned broadly, and fired.

  Larry continued to stare at Pasquale as he fell. There was hardly any blood, Alex noticed from where he stood. But he fell anyway.

  Pasquale lowered his arm and walked over to Larry’s body.

  Jaguar turned to face Alex.

  She was not pushing or pulling. She was not probing or reaching. She was just open, taking in all she saw in his eyes.

  “You’re alive,” she said quietly.

  “Ditto, Dr. Addams,” he said, and drew her close, wrapping her in his arms.

  They didn’t stay that way long. From where he stood, Alex could see Pasquale, who was bending over Larry’s body and retrieving an envelope from his suit jacket.

  “Jaguar,” he asked, “are you at all concerned about the bodies piled up around us?”

  She pulled back, shrugged lightly, then turned to Pasquale.

  “All there?” she called to him as he riffled a wad of cash he’d removed from the envelope.

  “Looks like it,” he said.

  “What’d you hit ‘em with?” she asked.

  “Rezonine.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “I hope you got the dosage right. You could’ve killed them.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” he replied.

  Alex felt as if he was beginning to wake from one dream, into another. He squeezed Jaguar’s shoulder, released her and went to Miriam. He squatted down, checked her pulse. Slow but steady, and no wound in her belly where she should have a bloody hole. Son of a bitch, he thought. Pasquale used a tranquilizer gun.

  Jaguar walked over to Pasquale, who was tucking the bank notes away in his pocket.

  “One thing, they won’t be up for a while,” he said. “You got plenty of time to get your people here.”

  Alex straightened and approached Pasquale and Jaguar. Pasquale smiled and stuck out his hand, which Alex took. “I’m Pasquale. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Alex,” he said. “Equally pleased.”

  “Yeah,” Pasquale said. “We been looking for you.”

  “You found me. You wouldn’t happen to have a cellcom, would you? I need to call this in.”

  “Oh sure,” Pasquale said, and reached into his pocket, pulled one out and handed it to Alex.

  “Great,” Alex said. “If you’ll excuse me, then.” He walked a few yards away, leaving Jaguar and Pasquale alone. Pasquale jerked a thumb toward Alex.

  “He’s a good guy,” he said.

  “He is,” she agreed.

  “Don’t make him too crazy, okay?”

  She rolled her eyes. Pasquale laughed. “You took your time getting on board, didn’t you? I thought you had it figured out before we left the house. Or did you think I was doing a double-cross?”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t sure of the script. But I’d have bet anything you asked against a double-cross.”

  “Yeah? How come?”

  “I know who your grandmother was. Anna Burhasa.”

  Pasquale looked her up and down with admiration. “How’d you get that one?”

  She tapped his hand. “Pinkie ring. Family crest.”

  He looked down at his hand, the little ring with the leopard face and engraved grape vines. “Not too many people know about that.”

  “I do,” Jaguar said. “She was a great woman.”

  “Maybe,” Pasquale said, “she’d say the same about you.”

  Jaguar grinned. “I’m guessing she was a better cook.”

  “Her pasta was the best,” Pasquale said. He stretched his hand out and mused on the ring. “She would’ve hated what Barone was doing.”

  “So why didn’t you kill him?” Jaguar asked.

  He dropped his hand to his side. “I don’t do take out. Grandma told me not to. Besides, I figure he’ll end up on the Planetoid. There’s this Teacher there who owes me. She’ll make sure he gets the right treatment.”

  Jaguar put her hand out and he took it, shook it and held on. “My pleasure Pasquale.”

  He let her hand go. “Well, I better head out before the party starts. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention me.”

  “We won’t,” she said. “Where are you heading?”

  “Back to the Home Planet,” he said. “I wanna find this woman I know who’d make a good tracker. See if she’s interested.”

  Jaguar nodded. “Say hello for me.”

  Pasquale gave her a bow, turned and walked away. Alex came over to where she stood and watched his receding back. “Backup’s on the way,” he said.

  Epilogue

  “Hi there,” Jaguar said, as she took a seat across from Alex at the small table where he sat nursing a tall beer.

  She looked around. The Silver Bay bar was still sparsely populated at this hour. Gerry’s band didn’t start for another three hours, but he’d be here any minute with Rachel and Pinkie, all of them cleared by the review committee they’d just met with. They’d gone to Marie’s to drag her along with them to celebrate.

  Alex and Jaguar’s review meetings had happened last week, in the presence of representatives from the Hague. They were sequestered away from each other for the duration, and had dutifully refrained from empathic contact to avoid tainting the hearing. Their testimony corroborated not only with each other, but also with the findings of a certain scientist from New Jersey who confirmed that the small stone was Artemis compounds, whose properties were volatile and dangerous.

  Alex and Jaguar were cleared in the same procedure that determined to continue the moratorium on Lunar mining indefinitely. Miriam Whitehall was headed for Planetoid Two, but Larry Barone was being tested for an appropriate program on Planetoid Three, where Brendan would also complete his program.

  The only difficulty they had was explaining the tranquilizer gun, but Jaguar laid claim to it, and Rachel did some quick paperwork shifting to make sure it was registered to her.

  Alex picked up his beer and took a sip. “It’s been awhile, Dr. Addams. How are you?”

  “Not too bad, now that the dust is settling.” she replied. She reached over and wrapped her hand around his beer, pulled it toward her and took a sip. “How about you?”

  He retrieved his beer. “Better now.”

  They were silent. Uncomfortably so. Looking at each other as if they’d suddenly become different people. After all this time, it happened a little too fast and not as either thought it would - with deliberate intent on both their parts instead of this falling off the edge of the moon into each other.

  “Alex -” she started to say.

  “Jaguar -” he said at the same time.

  They both stopped.

  “You go,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “You.”

  He turned his beer glass around in his hand. He was probably screwing himself with his own honesty, but he didn’t know any other way to deal with Jaguar, or himself for that matter.

  “You’re aware that if we didn’t fall into bed together we’d probably both be dead,” he noted.

  “Eros beats Thanatos,” she said. “I know.”

  The passion they’d shared stayed in their skin, greater than the power that asked him to kill her or her to kill him. Without that, they might both be casualties of Larry Barone and Miriam Whitehall.

  “And part of us wonders –“ he started.

  “If that’s why we did it,” she concluded.

  He nodded. That was one of the problems with being an empath. Between her clear seeing and his Adept knowledge, motives were more complex. Their empathic arts might have compelled them to do what they needed to stay alive. If so, they’d made a choice for their own lives, but not necessarily for each other.

  “I’m not in any way sorry,” he said, “but I don’t like to think of
our lovemaking as something we do in service to our jobs. I’m guessing you feel the same.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t that.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “Maybe I just wanted to see if you kept your eyes open,” she said.

  He smiled. “That’s preferable,” he said.

  He leaned back away from her, turned his beer around and around in his hand. She shifted in her seat, gave him her profile.

  “The thing is,” he said carefully, “neither of us knows if we were pushed over the edge instead of jumping. And neither of us are comfortable with choices being made for us. Especially not in this.”

  “In which case,” she added, “we’ll have to wait for discernment.”

  She pulled his beer to her again and took a longer sip. He turned to her.

  Her eyes peered at him over the glass, cat-like, discerning all the unspoken subtleties passing between them. He also read appreciation there. For his honesty. For someone who would bother to have this conversation with her.

  “There’s another reason to do that, too,” she said. She lifted her eyes to meet his, sparking gold inside the green. He stood, moved his chair in front of hers, put a hand to her face.

  It wasn’t that long ago they sat in these same chairs and she allowed him entry into the wilderness of her soul, where he found integrity more certain than any Planetoid code book would ever recognize. Clean as the scent of mint after lightning. Pure Jaguar.

  He sought that space again, moving past the places she showed to the world, going where she lived when she was telling herself the truth. She put a hand on his, kept her eyes open.

  There was motion within her. The movement of fire, quick and hungry. The movement of earth, slow and relentless. He felt her grief at his absence, exigent, bigger than any world you cared to name. He felt her surprise at it, her fierce rejection of his death. He felt the newness of her understanding, cupped in the place where grief and desire met.

  There were no words. What she felt was much bigger than any words could contain.

  He released her, leaned back in his chair, drank his beer. Time passed, moving over them.

  “I couldn’t find you,” she said, her voice soft and low and still surprised. “For the first time, I understood what it would mean to lose you from my life.”

  He nodded. He’d had to grapple with that, too. The risks she took and what it meant to him that she took them. Eros battling Thanatos, the nature of their work and their lives. That truth had assailed him as well. If he lost her, he would die.

  He’d had to accept that, in all its fullness. Now it was her turn, and he could do nothing to help her. She’d have to battle that out on her own, as he did. Only time would make it come clear. Time to know if her willingness to save his life was also a yearning to share it, which meant accepting the risks. They’d both have to wait it out, see what grew in the new space they’d opened up between them.

  “We can’t go back,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “But going forward . . . ”

  Yes, he thought. Exactly. They were both too aware to go forward lightly. When you played with all or nothing, there was no room for dalliance. That sort of thing was reserved for other couplings, meaningless and small.

  “Then we stay where we are,” he said, “until it’s time to move on.”

  To balance precariously within ambivalence was, of course, the most difficult position to hold. He remembered something he’d seen written on a bathroom wall: When in doubt, stay there. Not the easiest state to live in.

  “Dancing on the edge, Supervisor?” she asked, and he heard both uncertainty and mischief in her voice.

  “We seem to like it there, Dr. Addams,” he pointed out.

  He let the words rest between them, waiting for his own discernment. When it came, it told him he knew what he wanted, and he’d let himself be guided toward that shore. Dancing on the edge of disaster all the way, if need be.

  He went subvocal with one more question.

  Trust me, Jaguar?

  She let her eyes rest quiet in his for a moment, touched her hand lightly to her neck.

  With my life.

  Behind her, the door to the bar opened and voices and laughter floated toward them. She turned and waved a hand at Rachel, who had her hand in Pinkie’s, with Gerry and Marie hovering behind.

  “Here’s the others,” she said. “A helluva team.”