Fugitive From Asteron

by Gen LaGreca

  The door opened, and Kristin entered. She picked up a vase sitting on her father’s desk, then proceeded down the hallway to a kitchen to prepare her arrangement.

  With Margaret resuming work at her desk and Kristin occupied with the flowers, I had an opportunity to observe the inner office of my employer from a spot in the outer reception area. Located in a corner of the third and top floor of the building, Dr. Merrett’s office contained a pleasing arrangement of bookcases, leather chairs, and large-leafed plants, with a desk and table for his work area. Included in the office arrangement was a small adjoining conference room, which could be entered either from his workspace or from the hallway. His desk area contained two large windows, one facing the side of the building and another facing the front. The window on the side looked out onto the parking lot and the five-story building of the Space Travel Division across the way, which housed many of our group’s facilities, along with the offices of other departments in the company that rented space from our division. The window in the front faced the building entrance and gardens, as well as the mountains in the distance. Typical of Earthlings, Dr. Merrett had his desk arranged so that it faced the entrance and the mountains rather than the parking lot. To Earthlings life meant pleasure, as I was learning, so I was not surprised that Dr. Merrett preferred looking out at the more scenic sight. The table on which he kept his computer screen, at a right angle to his desk, was set so that his back would be toward the parking lot. This meant that his monitor was visible from the window facing the Space Travel Division.

  Apparently liking the natural light, Dr. Merrett kept his desk and worktable close to the windows. It seemed that from a window directly across on the third floor, Dr. Merrett’s head would block the screen. However, a window one flight of stairs up, on the fourth floor of our building, seemed to be positioned at a good angle for looking down on Dr. Merrett’s screen. Could a telescopic camera positioned there pick up and record the contents of Dr. Merrett’s monitor?

  Afterward, I learned who occupied the fourth-floor office in our building that seemed to be at a perfect vantage point. To my surprise, it was someone I had met from another department who was interested in transferring to our division. He liked the Gold Streaks and had come to watch us practice for the air show. I had an idea. With Mykroni’s permission, I invited him for a ride with me in one of our aerobatic planes. We arranged to meet at dawn the following morning, Tuesday, before our shifts began. I suggested meeting him in his workplace so that I could see how Dr. Merrett’s office looked from that location.

  A break from my worries came later that afternoon when two gold-striped planes left the runway, their graceful lift forming a sharp contrast to the roar of their engines. Kristin and I rose high in the sky to practice our two-plane demonstration for the air show. Climbing steeply, our sleek crafts pierced the blue sky like two gray-black rockets. From her plane, Kristin called commands to me on the radio, which I had to execute with flawless precision because of our high speed and close proximity. Although our planes were equipped with automatic flight systems, the pilots in the show flew them manually, which gave us the greatest maneuverability and a thrill beyond imagining.

  Kristin and I began miles apart, flying upright directly toward each other at a combined speed of over one thousand miles an hour. Within moments her plane grew from a speck to a ball to a large presence in my windshield. I held my path head-on toward her as the distance between us rapidly closed, because I would not change direction without her command. Finally it came: “Break now,” said the soft voice through the receiver in my ear. On the n in now, as we had planned previously, I tugged at the stick, rolling exactly ninety degrees right, with my wing tip up before Kristin could pronounce the rest of the word. Kristin, I knew, had made the same rotation in her plane. I felt the thump of the sudden change in air flow and the blast of her engines as our planes passed belly to belly within a couple of feet of each other.

  We flew out, turned, and then headed straight toward each other again. At scant seconds before impact, I again had not received Kristin’s command. She seemed to be waiting as long as she dared, testing me to see if I would flinch first. I held my speed on a blinding course toward her, the distance between us shrinking rapidly, until there were no more miles—only yards—separating us. “Pull now,” her voice finally whispered in my ear. Before she completed the second word, I pulled the nose of my craft directly vertical. She did the same with hers. Our planes rose together, their bodies almost touching, like a couple joined for a dance. With our planes forming mirror images, we looped away from each other and nose-dived in spirals toward the ground.

  After ending the dive, I overtook her plane, flying inverted a scant few feet above her, so we were canopy to canopy. She was so close that I could feel her presence change the air currents around me. Then we maneuvered so that I flew upright, my plane remaining just above hers. Without being able to see her plane from my canopy, I rolled on her command and could only trust that she would roll with me. We ended our program by tumbling effortlessly through the sky together, our two planes so close they cast one whirling shadow on the ground.

  After we landed on the runway, Kristin barely had time to lift her canopy and remove her helmet before I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her out of the cockpit, her hair bouncing in disorderly waves with the snap of my wrists.

  “I thought that if you gave the commands, you would have more control to execute the maneuvers with a margin of safety, Kristin. You did not have my consent to fly crazy the way you did!” My hands remained tight around her waist, pulling her toward me. Her arms fell against my chest and she leaned back to look up at my face. “You were waiting too long to take us out of danger.”

  “But Alex, you fly like that all the time.”

  “But not when I fly with you. From now on I will give the commands, and you will follow them. And we will fly safely.”

  “Why are you so cautious when you fly with me? Don’t you think I’m a good enough pilot—”

  “You are a superb pilot. But I do not want to see you in danger. I want to keep you safe.” Perhaps you are the only thing in my life that I can keep safe, I thought.

  “But Alex, it was . . . exciting . . . to fly the way we did. If you didn’t like it too, then why didn’t you stop me? You had a radio.”

  She was right! I could have objected while we were flying, but I did not. Kristin had an odd power of knowing what I felt before I did. Despite my worries about her safety, I was indeed strangely excited by flying to the limit with her.

  “What is it called, Kristin, when your eyes are filled with the presence of another and your thoughts are filled with how supremely well the other moves like one with you?”

  “Closeness. It’s called closeness,” she whispered, her mouth just inches from mine.

  I still pulled at her waist. She still arched back. Her words somehow struck me like another command, this one of warning. I released her abruptly and stepped back.

  She smiled softly in acceptance. She seemed to sense my limits and did not push beyond them. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, turning to go.

  “Wait.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a paper. “Mykroni printed out this admission for two to an event of some kind. He said he had to work late tonight and was too busy to attend, so he gave the tickets to me.”

  Kristin looked at the paper, which contained a scanning code and the words admit two written beneath it. “Wow, these are tickets to the Lions’ championship game!”

  “Are they the large Earth cats shown in the billboard for the zoo?”

  “These lions are much more predatory. People would kill to get these tickets!”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Do I? Yes!”

  “Then it is settled. We will go togeth—”

  Suddenly a vision flashed before my mind like a warning signal I could not ignore. I was leaning into a window, helping a slim figure with golden hair to slip out. I hear
d a rustling sound. I grabbed a rock, ready to smash the source of the sound with all my might. Then I realized it was only a ground animal, and the terror drained for the moment, until the next panic.

  “It is allowed, Kristin, for you and me to attend this function together? Are you absolutely sure it is allowed?”

  “It’s for us to decide, not for anyone else to decide for us. Don’t you understand that yet, Alex?” she asked softly.

  “There are still areas of Earthling life that I have little knowledge of and . . . and that I must not be mistaken about! I must be careful!”

  “Alex,” she said, lifting my cold hands in her warm ones, “what’s wrong? Do you realize you’re clenching your fists and crumpling the tickets?” She tried to loosen my grip on the paper. “It’s just a game, Alex. Everyone goes. Do you know what a game is? We’re going to have so much fun! You can’t imagine! Didn’t we go shopping together? And to Big Eats? And it was okay, wasn’t it?”

  With Kristin’s reassurances, the terror inside me quieted. I did not know what this lions’ game was, because only children had leisure time for games in Asteron. But Kristin’s excitement aroused my curiosity. We decided to work as late as possible to make up the time we had missed for our rehearsal, and then we would attend what I expected to be some kind of feline demonstration.

  “Alex, are you okay? Did you eat too many cheese dogs?” As I sat dazed in my seat, Kristin was reaching over to me, fanning me with the evening’s program. “Your eyes are scary when they bulge out like that! Do you realize you stopped blinking?”

  That night I was indeed stunned to find myself in a great arena, watching men in white uniforms playing what Kristin described as the centuries-old Earthling game of baseball. Sitting behind first base, I scanned the sharp lines of the reddish-brown field and on to an expansive carpet of grass and then to stands packed with tens of thousands of screaming spectators. The tiny video I had seen in Feran’s spacecraft had come to life, with sights and sounds that overwhelmed me.

  “Kristin, if this event you call baseball has nothing to do with state functions, then why else would such a large crowd gather?”

  “For fun.”

  After Kristin explained the procedures of the game, I began to understand the power it held for the crowd. “Kristin, the athletes on the field are good, no?”

  “You bet. They’re the best of the best.”

  “You mean the best—the most skillful—are permitted to play?”

  “They’re the only ones who make it in this game. They’re hotly pursued by all the teams.”

  “You mean they are not . . . punished?”

  “For what? For being the best?” She stared at me incredulously. “They get a pile of money for being the best, and the fans worship them.”

  “Kristin, is this game played often? Can we come back again soon?”

  “This is the last game of the season. After tonight this place will be deserted until next spring.”

  A sudden roar swelled from the crowd, pulling Kristin’s eyes back to the action. “Hey, Alex, if you want to see the best player our home team has, there he is coming up to bat!”

  Walking to the home sack, brandishing a fearsome bat and provoking the fans to thunderous cheers, was the player with bold, black letters across his back: ALEXANDER.

  “Kristin!” I did not recognize the incredulous cry as my own voice. “In a place far away, on another planet, a . . . a very bleak planet, I saw this man from your world! I saw a video scene of him engaged in this game, but I did not know what it was.”

  I grabbed her arms urgently. Seeing my agitation, she stared at me solemnly.

  “The things I saw, the prodigious swing of Alexander’s bat, the maneuver he performed called a home run, the cheering of the crowd, the whole scene was . . . it was so . . . so . . . incredibly . . .”

  “Joyful. It was joyful.”

  “Yes, yes! And then Alexander jumped in the air and laughed, and fireworks showered the sky, and his joyful teammates ran to embrace him. It seemed that Alexander must have done something extraordinary, and so I figured he was . . . he was a . . . a . . .”

  “A hero. Was Alexander your hero?”

  “Yes, yes! And the way his face glowed when he threw his fists up to the crowd, not in a gesture of violence but in what was . . . it was . . . unmistakably a . . . a . . .”

  “A triumph. Alexander was triumphant.” Her eyes rolled thoughtfully over my face the way they did when she interpreted her world for me. “Do you mean, Alex, that in a place where you were sad, our Alexander brought you the promise of a new world . . . a place where you could be happy?”

  Just then I heard the thump of a ball making contact with Alexander’s bat. I watched the spinning white sphere soar out of the park and perhaps out of the galaxy itself. The crowd shot to its feet in a burst of excitement. I saw vividly before me the spectacle from the small screen that had held a promise for me. As Kristin and I rose to our feet to clap and cheer with the bellowing crowd, a shower of fireworks burst across the sky and stirring music filled the arena. I watched Alexander’s face fill with pride in his victory. I embraced the wildly cheering figure beside me who had named Alexander’s promise of joy and triumph. I lifted her light form off the ground and buried my face in the soft tangles of her hair. Afterward, Kristin informed me that I was smiling.

  The fragrance of her newly planted garden sweetened the night air when I accompanied Kristin to her home after the game. Walking toward her house, I wondered about something. “Your plane is the only one here. Does your father not have one too?”

  “He does. He uses a new electric one. Have you seen them?”

  “I have. Before coming here I had not heard of planes powered with electricity.”

  “They’re powered with new, supercharged batteries that can store more energy than a fuel tank. Electric planes are pretty new. They were invented here, so they’re probably not available yet on the other planets.”

  “And where is your father’s electric plane?”

  “Looks like he’s not home,” she said sadly. “Maybe he’s out on business this evening, or still at the office. I think he’s working extra hard to find new contracts to reverse the loss caused by Project Z.”

  With a click on the mobile device she carried, the door to her house opened. “He’s not here. The house alarm is set just as I left it.”

  Inside I saw an entryway with paintings hanging on the walls.

  She paused at the door, looking disappointed. “I’m worried about him. He seems so . . . preoccupied lately.”

  “Kristin, you have said that Earthlings feel pretty safe from dangers. So why do you have an alarm on your house?”

  Her smile vanished and her eyes took on a distant look. “Something . . . bad . . . happened here once. After that, my dad had a security system installed.”

  “What happened, Kristin, to cause you such sadness?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” She shook her head, dismissing the matter. “Not on the night when our team won!” Her childlike, freckled face regained its smile. “Say, Alex, when you came to Earth, you named yourself after Alexander the ballplayer, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “It is not important.”

  “Is there a reason you want to hide it?”

  “I would rather not talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to keep you safe. I want to keep us both safe if I can.”

  “Why wouldn’t we be safe? What danger are we in? What danger are you in? You know, you frighten me, Alex!”

  Against my will, I reached out to hold her supremely innocent face. “I do not think I frighten you, Kristin.”

  “Alex, I don’t think I . . . understand . . . you.”

  As we stood at the door, I raised her face to mine. Her lips glistened in the evening light. My eyes danced over the short-sleeved red sweater that stressed the sl
enderness of her arms and the inviting fullness of her breasts, and then over the remarkable item of clothing called a short skirt, a black one that curved around her slim hips and yet would fall so readily to the ground with one small tug on its little zipper. Kristin was so ugly that to kiss her was to want her, and to want her was to unleash a dreaded voice inside my head, chiding me, warning me. It is your fault— It is your fault that she— The urgent voice blared until I dropped my hands from Kristin’s face and stepped away.

  “Alexander,” she whispered, “are you imagining danger again? Is that what stops you when you want to . . . kiss me? . . . Like now?”

  “I cannot kiss you, Kristin.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you are exceedingly ugly.”

  She laughed, astonished. “You must be mistaken, Alex. I sometimes forget you’ve been here less than three weeks. You’re mixing up your words.”

  How could I be mistaken? To be ugly was to stand out, to stand above, and Kristin stood out to me above all Earthlings. Were her eyes not bigger, her hair not shinier, her smile not brighter? And was she not ugly inside too? Was her laughter not joyful like the Earth itself? Was her mind not quicker to know my feelings and reactions better than I knew them myself?

  “Kristin, I am not mistaken about this.”

  “Are you saying you can’t kiss me because I’m too ugly?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Well, I can’t kiss you because you have no manners! You’re rude, exceedingly rude, and I don’t have to take your rudeness!”

  “Kristin, wait!” I said to the door that shut in my face. Kristin was gone before I could better understand what she meant by manners, which I did not have, and rudeness, which I had too much of.