by E. R. Mason
“I don’t get you,” she said softly.
“Why’s that?”
“There’s a line from a classic movie that I love dearly. The man says to the woman, 'You’re still here. Why are you still here?'”
“It has been said that I attract trouble and seem to emerge relatively unscathed from it.”
“Well, that would explain me. I am trouble.”
“My favorite movie line: 'Have fun stormin’ the castle.'”
“But why hasn’t a healthy sap like you been harnessed and tamed by some attention-seeking woman in search of wealth and fame?”
“Who’s a sap?”
“It happens all the time to both sexes. I watched my father’s best-friend driver being drained by one of those when I was growing up. One day at breakfast she finally decided she had squeezed everything out of the poor guy she could and she boldly announced to him, 'Why am I hangin’ out with you when I’m sittin’ on a gold mine?'”
“I may have known her.”
“So you got the scars then?”
“You sure don’t sound like a doctor.”
“Really? I’ll ask it again, why haven’t you been roped and tied?”
“Watch yourself, that’s bordering on a compliment.”
“Really, I’d like to know.”
“If you must know, there was recently a kind of exchange of ideas with someone.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s personal.”
“Certainly you can tell your doctor.” She rose up on one elbow, her chin resting in the palm of her hand.
I became distracted by the irresistible glow of one ample breast, but managed to hide it. I resorted to talk to help mask the impulse. “She was a science officer on one of my missions. We were on an EVA. There was an accident. Her suit got a bad tear. I had to plug her into my air. It was dicey for a while but we made it back to the ship. Later, she showed up in my stateroom insisting she had unfinished business. It went on from there. It seemed like neither of us were looking for a serious hookup, but it just kept happening. Then I got pulled into a twelve-month mission that I couldn’t refuse. She was tied up here on Earth as head of a project. When I dropped her at the airport that last day, we both seemed to know the bonding had happened and there was no escaping it. That’s what we thought. Months later, when I got back, I should have known something was up. She wasn’t there to meet me. It’s a long time to be away for the significant other not to meet you. She came down a few days later with the story. Her ex-husband, a diplomat, contracted some sort of exotic illness during a conference. His chances of survival were minimal. He needed twenty-four-hour care to have any chance at all. He did not have any family. She felt she had no choice but to help him. She had to move in with him to maintain the care. By the time I got back, the situation was so involved there was no way she could be with both of us. I had to gracefully bow out. I hate to admit it, but that little war we had on the race track yesterday really seemed to help. It got something out of my system somehow. God, I hope that doesn’t go to your head.”
“My head? I’m surprised yours fits in the helmet!”
“Oh no, I’ve set you off now.”
She looked around the room. “I could sure use a cigarette.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“Just one occasionally doesn’t really hurt. You breathe more than that in a month, especially at the race track.”
“Are you really a doctor, or are you putting me on?”
“Got a proposition for you.”
“You are going to proposition me?”
“You’ve made it through the gates of Gibraltar. It annoys the hell out of me, but there it is. I need a couple weeks with you.”
“What?”
“Yeah, when somebody makes it as far as you have, there’s a chance, be it a slim one, that I might actually have a thing for them. If I don’t do something about it, it can nag forever. But there’s an easy way to get rid of it. We spend two weeks together alone, and then go our separate ways. After a month or so of reflection, we both decide it was nice, but no thanks, don’t want no more of that. Nobody’s feelings get hurt. Nobody gets dumped. It’s a wonderful way of getting each other out of something that would have been a terrible mistake. What are you doing for the next two weeks?”
“You’re something else. You know that?”
“But what are you doing for the next two weeks?”
“I’ve got a four-week mission to Enuro coming up next month. Otherwise, I’m pretty much open. But you think I’m going to spend two weeks alone with you? I might not survive it!”
“My father has a cabin in the mountains in Tennessee. It’s right on a lake. Got a houseboat in the boathouse there. Sometimes I spend a few nights exploring the lake. Got the fiber composite scuba backpacks. Four dirt bikes. A bunch of other items that would amuse someone like you.”
“Just how many men do you lure away to your hidden lair?”
“How many do you think survive what you have?”
“You got fishing poles?”
“Duh? Are you kidding? “
“Two weeks, you say?”
“I sense I’m winning my case.”
And she did. It was an offer I just could not bring myself to refuse. We agreed to meet there in 48 hours. She gave me a hand-drawn map which required a certain amount of decoding. The place was deep in the woods, accessible only by a rutted rock-filled road bearing evidence of recent washouts in more than one spot. It was rough enough that it made me glad I had taken the insurance on the rental. She was not there when I finally pulled in. A PAV, personal air vehicle, was parked next to the cabin, making me wonder how she had possibly lowered it down through the forest canopy.
The place was breathtaking. The greenery threatened to hide the weathered cabin and porch completely. The ground was a bed of brown leaves. There was the smell of forest and kerosene. Except for the distant murmur of a mourning dove, the woodland was still, as the wary residents appraised the new arrival. The cabin was built on a steep hillside, wooden stanchions supporting the weathered porch. Firewood was stacked high beneath it. Makeshift stone and wooden steps wound down through the trees to the lake, a very large body of water that disappeared into the distance between cliff sides of forested mountains. A long dock and boathouse met the shore. The lake was glassy and inviting. I grabbed my things from the car, climbed the porch, and peered past the open planked door. No one was home. There was electricity here. The lights were on. It was a comfortable living room, a huge stone fireplace commanding. Colorful braided rugs on the wooden floor. A fat brown couch, bordered by recliners. One bedroom. As I entered and dropped my pack, she appeared in the doorway in tan shorts, a beige wraparound blouse, with an alien-looking camera hanging from her neck. She had on high, brown lace-up boots. One knee was dirty. We eyed each other with veiled distrust.
There remained a touch of awkwardness that first day, remedied by very little sleep that night. It may have been the only time in my life I did not contemplate boredom. Not with her around. She remained an unpredictable foe, capable of striking at any time for no apparent reason. I was never able to drop my guard. We took a day to settle in, but then the serenity of the lake was just too compelling. I was ordered to prep the houseboat and back it out of storage. She acted as though I should already know how to do that, so I pretended I did and faked it well enough. Beneath the silent distrust, an electric attraction began to replace the uneasiness. It was always there, underlining everything we did. We found reasons to get in each other's face, reasons for excused physical contact. Finally, at the apex of it, while handing off stores to each other aboard the boat, we suddenly ended up naked and spent within the scatter of our clothing.
But she never let me drop my guard. On the second day of our lake exploration, we dove sixty feet to the wreck of a large island ferry. I was hovering over an open hatch trying to see down into the engine compartment when she came up behind me and shut off my
pack air, emergency feed and all. With the first suck on a dead mouthpiece, I knew exactly what had happened. You can make a free ascent from sixty feet, but it’s not as easy as you might think. You hold in too much breath on the way up and you feel your chest begin to expand from the pressure change. It scares the hell out of you at the thought that the agony of the bends might be waiting on the surface. But, if you blow out too much on the way up, you can find yourself out of air too soon with too much water still overhead. I turned with a concerned, angry stare through the glass of my mask only to find her holding out her mouthpiece and coughing bubbles as she tried to contain her laughter. We did a slow buddy-breathe to the surface, where I tore off my mask to yell at her but was cut off by her mouth clamped over mine. From there it became an erotic water ballet. Later, I realized I had completely forgotten to scold her at all.
Her second outburst did more than startle me. It actually frightened me. Racing dirt bikes through the trails quickly became a competition. In several spots there were naturally formed jumps that put you a good ten feet in the air depending on how much speed you could muster setting up for them. She was a bike length behind. We cornered into a jump and she cranked that wick wide open and came alongside as we went airborne. At the peak of the jump, something I would never have expected, the bitch stuck out one boot and kicked the side of my bike. It was a foolhardy thing to do. I missed the landing point off to the left. She tipped herself sideways and dove out of sight down a hill through the trees on the other side. I got scratched up landing in a large pile of cut brush. I stood, tore off my helmet, and yelled an appropriate curse. There was no reply. I scrambled up the hill and looked over the other side. Her bike was against a tree, rear wheel up, motor dead. She was on her back in a burrow of leaves, helmet still on, eyes closed. There was a pang of fear as I fell, crawled, and tromped my way down to her. There did not seem to be any blood anywhere. No arms or legs were bent in unnatural positions. I carefully lifted her head and said her name. Her eyes fluttered open. She looked around, wondering where she was. She stared up at me and blurted out a laugh. I opened my mouth to yell at her and she pulled me down on top of her, and it began again. Afterward, it occurred to me my life was completely out of control.
The very last day became ceremonial. It was as though some right of passage had been achieved. That evening we set up a candlelight dinner outside the cabin. We sat at either end of a long folding table. A large barbecue grill was set up close enough to be within reach. She had an expensive wine carefully chilled, served in crystal wine glasses. A spoiled squirrel darted across the table. We devoured the food in silence. There just was nothing to say. She was scheduled as lead physician for the American Motorcycle Association racing circuit for the next month. I would be seven hundred trillion miles away on the planet Enuro.
I awoke the next morning alone. There was a vague, dreamlike memory of the sound of PAV thrusters gently disrupting the air. Where her PAV had been, there was a bare crop circle of scattered leaves. There was a short, disconcerting note on the kitchen table.
Darling,
How’s the PTSD tremor in the right hand?
Love, Christine.
I held up my right hand. It was steady as a rock. There was a flush of anger, the realization that she had known all along, even though I had been so careful to conceal it. Next I tried to remember exactly when it had left me. Was it after the race, or after this place? No way to know. I packed up, locked up, and spent the trip home wondering what had just transpired. I had to mentally test my hopes and desires to see how much life had changed. To my dismay, it seemed as though something had.
Chapter 4
Space flight will never be routine. It is said that the ocean, if it can, will embrace you, then try to bring you down and keep you forever. Deep space has a completely different take on things. When you place your hand on a spacecraft bulkhead, you can feel the nothingness just a few inches beyond it. It is everywhere, and it goes on in every direction as far as your mind can imagine. To it, your spacecraft is an aberration that needs to be filled with vacuum, and unless you resist it every second, it will do so at its earliest convenience. Space then vacuums up the remaining debris field using its nearest gravity well, no haste required.
The unavoidable, ever-surprising laws of physics are perhaps not the most dangerous aspect of space flight. That peculiarity goes to the myriad of arcane life forms heavily populating each galaxy. Some are friendly. Some are not. Some do not even know what friendly is. When the long-held secret that our galaxy was busy with life finally became known, the unimaginably complex universe suddenly became infinitely more profound. That disclosure had been a consequence of the first scheduled manned test flights beyond the boundaries of our solar system. No longer could secret government contacts with aliens among us be kept hidden. Our ability to travel outside our solar system suddenly made us a liability to the galaxy and to ourselves, and it brought us an unexpected delegation from the planet Nasebia, unearthly individuals requesting a conference with World Space Systems representatives.
While most Earth governments had already quietly made contact with several off-world species, the Nasebians had not been among them. This new close encounter was with a species so advanced their superiority was instantly apparent. The Nasebian delegation set the tone by making it clear the time for disclosure of the truth was at hand. Although six delegates had been provided, only one was actually a Nasebian. The others were Enuro representatives trained to negotiate. The lone Nasebian visitor remained out of sight on-orbit, in a spacecraft that looked like it was constructed of light. It did not take long to realize Earth was dealing with a species so advanced, and so evolved, understanding them was simply an unattainable goal.
The very first statement translated to Earth representatives by the Nasebian delegation was, “There are things you need to know.” As the talks proceeded, Earth representatives found themselves listening carefully and rarely speaking. Questions were answered before they could be asked. New questions that Earth representatives had not even thought of were brought up by the Nasebian delegates and then answered immediately thereafter. By the time the meeting broke up, the message was clear. If Earth governments planned to begin travel beyond their solar system at their current level of knowledge, they should expect most of their missions to never return. The message had been delivered not as a threat or ultimatum. It had been offered in the spirit of caring, and along with it came a remedial suggestion. The Nasebians would provide an emissary to accompany each extra-system mission to provide the knowledge necessary to avoid interstellar threats or violations of territorial boundaries claimed by other species. Given the alternatives, the suggestion was heartily accepted, and a plan was quickly developed for each Earth ship to secretly have special accommodations for a Nasebian emissary. The knowledge that a Nasebian emissary was on board would be known only to the Captain and first officer, after they had undergone special training to learn how to communicate with their celestial guest.
As for me, I would have been considered the last person on Earth fit to interact with a Nasebian Ambassador. Adrian Tarn, breaker of rules, town crier of the obvious even when inappropriate, a discomfort to the aristocracy at gala events, frequent participant in two-day poker binges unbefitting an officer, women seen leaving his stateroom when they should not be, 84.6 percent more trouble reports than the average officer, known to sometimes smuggle bourbon aboard ship, listens carefully to orders then often disregards them.
Every "needs improvement" item ever listed on my annual appraisals has always been true, and it sometimes amazes me the things they deliberately leave out. The irony of it all is that when trouble crops up they come running like a Cavalry patrol being chased by bandits. And, when crew selection time comes around, if my name is on the list, I’m one of the first to go. It will always amaze me how quickly fear pushes aside all forms of prejudice.
I have always believed that the chemistry of fate includes a strong measure of ir
ony. I once took on a routine star charting mission just to revive my dwindling credit account. It was supposed to be a dull and boring affair, a three-hour tour, you might say. By the time that hellacious trip was over, I had learned of the emissary and interacted with her on a level no human had ever before realized. As a token of the unlikely friendship, she had left me a walnut-sized crystal, an item as far beyond comprehension as my benefactor. Not long after, I was unexpectedly recruited by her to retrieve something from a distant solar system, and in return for having somehow achieved that Herculean quest, the Nasebians had bequeathed me the starship Griffin, along with a good deal of influence with Earth’s Space Central. All that remained to consummate that arrangement was an easy trip to Enuro to have artificial gravity installed in the ship. Because this flight was along charted space, no emissary was necessary. It would be a simple, private flight to a planet few, if any, humans had ever visited. It was a trip I was looking forward to.
I filed our flight plan for 10:00, Tuesday morning. Orbital Traffic Control will accept flight plans 24 hours a day, but if your departure falls around shift change they can get grumpy. Late morning on Monday, R.J and I headed to the Space Center for the day-minus-1 spacecraft inspection. The ship had already been fueled and loaded with stores. As we passed though the main gate, R.J. switched into copilot mode.
“Have you been through the SIDs stuff yet?”
“SIDs?”
“Social Intercourse Directives, and believe me, that title is more appropriate than you might think.”