 "White Ribbons, Red Roses"
(Excerpt)
by David M. Fitzpatrick
He saw them again, their eyes wide in
terror—understanding, in those final moments, what he had done. He reached
for them as they blew out the open airlock and into the black void of
space. He could hear their screams cut off as the atmosphere vanished, see
the alert lights flashing, feel the rumble of the emergency door as it
kicked in. His own body violently jerked against the restraining harness,
the only thing that saved him. The only thing that condemned him.
He watched yet again as they flew away
from him, beautiful red roses in their hair, green stems entwined there.
The door slid closed between he and them as they moved away, helpless and
terrified, their faces frozen forever in terrible accusation.
Then the door thundered shut, the
gravity kicked on, and he hit the floor in his harness as the interior of
the ship repressurized. He undid the harness, tried to get to the
controls, but he knew it was too late. They were gone, and there was
nothing he could do to get them back alive.
But they were dying, out there in
space, a woman and a girl with roses in their hair. They would suffer for
a few seconds and die painfully and horribly, and the last neural activity
in their brains would tell their fading consciousnesses that he had killed
them.
* * *
Will Duncan woke then, as he usually did,
sweating, crying, shaking. His subconscious tortured him every time he
slept, but was at least merciful enough to wake him before he had to
relive bringing the ship around to see their bodies tumbling away.
But that was imprinted on his brain like
the rest of it. He didn’t need to relive any of it through his
subconscious—he was perfectly conscious of it, every waking moment of
every single day.
He collapsed back on the bed and bawled
like a child.
* * *
The antigrav lift rocketed him up beyond
the three hundredth floor. He could feel the inertia dampeners humming as
they kept him from being flattened to the floor. For a moment, he hoped
the dampeners would fail and it would all be over… but just for a moment.
He needed answers first. He couldn’t die without them.
The trip took just a few seconds and he
was there. He took a deep breath and tried his best to look awake,
coherent, alive. Jim Harlow met him outside his office door with a broad
smile.
“Will, good to see you,” Harlow said, pumping his hand, and Duncan knew he
meant it.
“Thanks,” Duncan said, taking a seat.
Harlow took his behind an obsidian desk and leaned back in his chair.
Behind him, the sky was almost entirely green; only a few golden clouds
dotted the scene. A half-mile long transport vessel slowly navigated
between a skyline thick with megatowers. Smaller craft flitted about.
Harlow studied him for an hour-long few moments.
“How’ve you been?” he finally said.
“Not well,” Duncan said. “Still can’t
sleep. Still having nightmares.”
“It’s too early for you to be back to
work, just like I told you. Listen, take another month. You’ve got plenty
of leave time coming to you—”
“I’m quitting, Jim.”
“Quitting?” Harlow shook his head,
leaning over the black, glassy desk. “Back up, Will. I mean it, you have months of time. Take a vacation, get away from Tarquin. Go
somewhere the sky’s blue and the air doesn’t smell like seaweed—go back to
Earth, even. You need this.”
“It’s more than that. I have to leave—forever.”
Harlow sighed and leaned back again.
“We’ve known each other thirty years. I gave you a job when you were young
and without direction, and I’ve watched you build a career—you’re the best
chief I have. You can’t let your life crumble into jagged little pieces
over this.”
“It was my wife and my little girl, Jim,”
Duncan said, and he felt himself aching to cry again. “Can you understand
what that means?”
“I can understand,” Harlow said, and his
face was grim as if chiseled from stone. “I lost my first wife, if you’ll
recall. She died in a shuttle accident.”
“I know.”
“And my son, too, remember? He died in
combat, defending Earth against the Malkarian Empire.” His eyes blazed,
blue flame, across the polished stone. “They died horribly, and I hurt
like hell… but I survived, Will, and you’re going to do the same.”
“They were terrible tragedies,” Duncan
said, picking his words carefully. “But you weren’t piloting the shuttle
that went down with your wife on it. You weren’t the Malkarian who killed
your son. They didn’t die because of you.”
Harlow’s face softened like butter in the
sun. “All right… I can’t imagine how you feel. But you have to accept that
it wasn’t your fault.”
“But it was,” Duncan said, his eyes
burning. “I knew the airlock was failing. The computer told me the breach
was in progress—that it would have to eject the airlock in order to seal
the emergency door. I had time to harness them in. I didn’t. I saved
myself.”
“You did what you should have done,”
Harlow said, punctuating his words with a pointing finger. “You put on
your harness before helping anyone else. You had a hold on Kathleen and
Katy. You did it all right. It just went all wrong.”
“If I’d harnessed them first, they’d be
alive.”
“You don’t know that—maybe you’d have
all been killed. You can debate this forever and never find the
answers you want, but the fact is you did exactly what you should have
done. The force of the depressurization was too much, that’s all, and you
lost your grip on them—”
Duncan felt the tears fighting to break
free. “I had them in my hands, Jim. I thought I could hold on long
enough for the airlock to blow and the emergency door to close, but I
wasn’t holding them tightly enough, I didn’t have as good a grip as I
thought… I let them go, Jim… I let them go…”
He broke down, dropping his head into his
hands and crying like a child, his entire body racking with wailing sobs.
Jim sat silently, respectfully letting him work through it. He finally
quieted down, wiped the tears away, and regained his composure. He sniffed
and wiped his eyes again, and Harlow looked up.
“So, I’m quitting,” Duncan repeated
quietly.
“What’s that going to do for you?” Harlow
said, his eyes pleading. “You’ll throw away a career and a paycheck.”
“Like you said, I have plenty of time
coming to me.”
“But where will you go? What will you
do?”
This was going to be the hardest part,
and Duncan knew it. He locked eyes with his mentor and friend. “I’m going
to Vazhgar—in the Zalthari System.”
Harlow’s face contorted as he thought
hard, searching, and then his brow raised as he put it together. “That’s
in the Malkarian Empire.”
Duncan nodded slightly, and Harlow came
to his feet, pounding the desk with his hand.
“You’re out of your mind! That’s not only
illegal but it’s insane, too! Especially considering who you are and what
you do for a living! And of all people to tell... you tell me?”
“You’re the only one I can trust.”
Harlow sunk, exasperated, in his chair.
“Even if you and I didn’t do what we do with Utopian Solutions Industries,
even if it weren’t illegal at all, it’s insane. The Malkarians aren’t fond
of anyone on our side of the galaxy.”
“Vazhgar is just one world,” Duncan said.
“I’ve read about the Vazhgarians… they’re magical—wizards of sorts. They
have powers—some sort of control over… spiritual things.”
Harlow was looking at him with bulging
eyes. “You’re talking magic and wizards. Do you even hear yourself? You’re
running away from your life with a faith that some alien mystics in enemy
territory can solve all your problems. Are you hoping to find some kind of
god, Will?”
“It isn’t like that,” Duncan said through
clenched teeth, leaning over the desk on his elbows. “I heard the stories,
so I researched the Vazhgarians. It seems like a fairy tale, but… they
deal in some kind of force, or power, or magic—I don’t know what to call
it, and neither do the experts. But aliens from all types of worlds,
cultures, and religions pilgrimage there from all over the Malkarian
Empire to find inner peace.” He was excited now as he talked. “They say
it’s different for everyone, but whatever magic they work on you works
for you. All manner of unexplainable effects have been reported—people
able to fly or healed of terrible maladies; teleportation across the
galaxy; even mental projection back in time. Usually the effects are less
extraordinary, like being imbued with knowledge or finding truths within
one’s self. But it’s always been what the individual needed. I
need that self-discovery—I need a chance for that kind of
solution.”
Harlow shook his head with a deep,
heaving sigh. “Will, I’ve been your friend for a lot of years, so let me
give it to you straight: this won’t work. It’s a feel-good answer
that won’t answer anything—it’s delusional spiritual therapy and a bad
substitute for dealing with your problems.”
“It isn’t like that.”
“It is like that. But if you must go
through with this, you don’t have to risk everything by going to
Vazhgar—any member planet in the United Worlds has shamans, witch doctors,
psychics, and magicians. So if you’re going to do this to yourself,
vacation back on Earth. Find a fortune teller, get drunk, and park
yourself at a resort where they give you full-body massages and anything
else you want to pay for that will help you work through this and make you
feel like a whole man again.”
Duncan shook his head in defeat, looking
at the carpet. “You just don’t understand.”
“Oh, I have a fairly good idea. You can’t
move forward without doing something, but you don’t know what that
something is. Maybe it’s a vacation, spiritual self-discovery, a mug of
stout, a beautiful woman, or just someone to listen to your crying and
tell you it’s going to be all right. Whatever it is, I can tell you what
it’s not: it isn’t magic, and it isn’t senseless and illogical, and it
isn’t on Vazhgar. I’m not about to let you throw away your career and your
life in favor of this outlandish excuse for a solution. Kathleen and Katy
are gone, and that’s a terrible tragedy; but you have the rest of your
life ahead of you and you can’t throw that away.”
“You found strength after Melanie died,”
Duncan said, “and you remarried. I don’t have that strength. You had other
children to help you through Gerald’s death—I don’t. I know they say this
is how everyone feels, and that it goes away with time—but it isn’t!” He
threw his hands up in frustration. “It’s just getting worse. I can’t go on
like this. I can’t replace Kathleen because you can’t replace that one
perfect someone. I can’t even try to feel better in the arms of another
woman, not even for a night. And every time I see a laughing child, I know
Katy’s gone forever. I could marry a wonderful woman and have lots of
great children, and die an old man… but I don’t want to. I don’t want to
endure a long, painful life reliving those deaths through nightmares every
time I close my eyes. I’m going because there is simply nothing in all the
galaxy like the stories I’ve read about Vazhgar. It’s my last chance—my
only chance.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” Harlow said.
“Let’s say you throw away everything to go there and you don’t have some
spiritual epiphany… you don’t come back a cured, new man. What then?”
“Then I won’t be coming back,” Duncan
said. “I’ll find peace on Vazhgar, one way or another.”
Harlow slumped back in his seat,
defeated. “This isn’t the man I’ve known for thirty years.”
“I’m not the man I was before Kathleen came into my life. I’m not the man
I was before Katy was born. And I’m certainly not the man I was before I
killed them. You don’t have to see it my way, Jim, just support me. I need
to quit because I need all that vacation time and severance pay to get to
Vazhgar. It’s going to be expensive to get anyone to take me that deep
into Malkarian space. So, please… as my friend, help me.”
“Help you place your life in the hands of
alien wizards deep inside the Malkarian Empire?”
Harlow said with a rueful smile. “Help
you commit suicide? Destroy a career? Maybe land you on a prison planet
for treason? What kind of friend would I be if I did that?”
“A loyal friend,” Duncan said softly.
“Nice try.” Harlow stood up, facing a
surprised Duncan, hands on his hips. “I won’t accept your resignation. I
won’t pay off your vacation time. And I won’t approve any severance
package.”
Duncan came to his feet, desperation
blowing over his face like a sudden storm. “Damn you, Jim, I need—”
Harlow held up his hand. “Wait. Now, I
think this is ridiculous, but I’ll see it your way—to a point. I’ll
authorize an extended leave of absence and I’ll personally front you all
the money you need. But there’s a catch: if you don’t find whatever it is
you’re looking for, you come back here and you stand in this office and
tell me you want to die. Chase across the galaxy for alien wizards but, by
the gods, you’ll look me in the eye when you decide you’re ready to run
out of this life with your tail between your legs. Deal?”
Duncan regarded him with a tired smile.
“The least I can do is stick around long enough to pay you back.”
* * *
“I like all the colors,” Kathleen
said. “I just like red best.”
The bouquet was three dozen full, and
the colors were spectacular: blues, yellows, and greens; pinks and
purples; burgundy, white, and red. She had picked out the two best-looking
red roses, and they were unearthly crimson with leaves and stems of deep
green. Katy was chasing a squirrel on the edge of the woods near their
picnic spot. The sky was brilliantly blue, the grass perfectly green.
“Katy!” she called, and the child
paused in her squirrel hunt to look to her mother. “Come here, honey…
Mommy wants to put a rose in your hair.”
Katy rushed toward them, squealing
with excitement. “It’s pretty, Mommy!”
Duncan watched it all happen, watched
the scene replay as a nightmare, and it was as if his body was under
someone else’s control: he participated in the scene against his will, as
if his body were possessed by some demonic thespian bent on acting out the
horror. In his mind, he screamed and beat mental fists furiously against
the inside of his skull, desperate to get out and stop it all from
happening again.
Katy clambered up and Kathleen went to
work feeding the stem into her blond hair. “I like red, Mommy,” Katy said.
“Red roses mean love,” Kathleen said.
“That’s why it’s my favorite.”
He watched, helpless, as she finished
and began tucking the second rose into her own hair. He’d had this dream
before, and he knew what came next.
“Daddy bought us red roses because he
loves us,” Katy said with the blind sureness that little girls have about
their daddies.
“He certainly does,” Kathleen says.
“Don’t you, Daddy?”
Their beautiful faces looked at him,
all smiles, waiting for his confirmation, but when he opened his mouth to
tell them so the scene changed in a flash, and their faces were sheer
horror as their bodies blew out of the hole in the ship as if fired from a
cannon. In his nightmare, he screamed and cried, and he woke doing the
same.
* * *
He’d rarely taken the bike out since the
accident, because every time he did, his overpowering enjoyment led to
even greater guilt. But it was great. He felt a brief, weak surge
of being alive welling up inside him as he streaked across the sky,
winding through the colossal megatowers like a winged insect amongst
pillars on Olympus. He’d spent a thousand days with a magnified version of
that feeling, usually with Kathleen or Katy on the back, arms wrapped
around him as they went supersonic.
He knew it would take more than the bike,
though. There was no Kathleen holding on to him, no Katy giggling and
screaming with delight as he barrel-rolled amid dancing clouds. All
meaning to the event was lost now. Then, it had been an emotional
experience; now, it was just a bike flight.
It was a stereotypically seedy bar at the
outskirts of the city, on the ground level where all the riffraff were to
be found. Tarquin didn’t enforce practically any laws below the fog level,
which usually cloaked the planet’s surface a hundred feet thick. From down
here, only the monstrous foundations of the megatowers could be clearly
seen; above, the green sky was visible only as a mint glow through the
thick haze, and the golden-red sun was an ethereal, yellow-pink ball
fighting to be seen.
She was sitting in a corner, back to the
wall—but then, everyone in the place has his back against the wall. There
weren’t even seats out in the open. Paranoia was certainly rampant, but it
wasn’t without reason. The place was populated by all the galaxy’s bad guy
archetypes. She was dressed just as she’d promised: dark purple bodysuit;
maroon boots and matching gloves; black waistpack; a wild, white hairdo.
She sported a gun on each hip and a nasty-looking pulse rifle slung over
her back. He didn’t look anyone in the eye, just headed straight for her.
He made it to the table and they regarded each other.
“You must be Will Duncan,” she finally
said.
“Which would make you Tass Keaverly,” he
said. “Aren’t pulse rifles illegal?”
“They don’t pay attention to us down here
in the fog.” She looked him up and down, and she wasn’t subtle about it.
Her eyes had tiny pupils but were otherwise all silver. Clearly, she
wasn’t human. “You’d better sit down before someone takes notice of your
exposed back.”
He slid in beside her, but she kept her
distance. “Thanks for meeting me.”
“It isn’t a favor. You’re paying me a lot
of money.”
“I don’t have much of a choice. You’re
the only one I’ve found who will even cross the border, much less to the
Zalthari System.”
She laughed lightly, but it wasn’t girly.
“Then you didn’t look too hard. Any merc with a ship would do it, and
probably for less.”
He frowned. “That’s not smart business.”
“I didn’t say you’d get a better
pilot—just that anyone would take you. Some of them would take you agree
just to take your money and dump you out in space.”
Her statement invoked the images as if
she’d thrown a switch. He closed his eyes, but all he saw were their faces
as they died. Over and over, nonstop… he tried to ignore them, but he knew
it wasn’t—
She was poking him in the arm, jumping
him out of his reverie. “Did I lose you? Are you with me?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said quickly. “Is
your ship reliable?”
“Extremely.”
“And what are the chances of us getting
to Vazhgar?”
Tass shrugged. “As close to a hundred
percent as they can get. The Malkarians aren’t as bad as everyone on this
side of the galaxy makes them out to be. They regulate us just as they do
over here, and unless they suspect we’re spying for the United Worlds,
they leave us alone. And my usual run is to Vazhgar anyway.”
He gave a start. “Interesting. Why?”
She chuckled. “Because all my passengers
want what you want. Enlightenment. Personal discovery. Serious cure for
depression.”
He felt his face redden, but it was dark
enough in the bar that she might not have noticed with her pinhole pupils.
“What makes you think that’s why I’m going?”
“Oh, please. Nobody goes to Vazhgar for
any other reason. The jareeshti seers are renowned throughout the
Malkarian Empire. It’s a sort of universal reverence—even the imperial
forces leave them alone. It’s the only planet completely untouched by the
Empire, you know.”
“So this won’t be as bad as I thought,”
Duncan mused thoughtfully.
“That depends on your finances. I’ve told
you what it’ll cost. Can you handle it?”
He produced a credit disc. “It’s all
here.”
“Fine. Now, put it down before someone
decides it’s worth taking and we both get killed.”
He lowered it under the table and passed
it to her. She subtly slid it into the table’s payment slot and danced her
fingers over the flat touchpad. The DNA scan took an instant and then the
banking network reported back. “Okay, all transferred.” She looked
sideways at him with a suddenly raised eyebrow. “So what are you looking
for on Vazhgar?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded sagely. “Yeah, I see a lot of
that, too.”
He was intrigued. “Just how many times
have you made this trip?”
“Dozens. It’s a regular underground
tourist route.” She gestured toward the door. “Let’s leave together. I’m
thinking I shouldn’t leave you in here alone.”
“I can handle myself,” he said.
“You don’t look the type.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I’d have to be,” she said. “Anyway, you
can give me a lift back to the stellar port.”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. I didn’t
come in a flitter.”
“I know you didn’t walk over, and they
don’t run public transportation down here in the fog. And I can’t imagine
a cabbie from up there coming down here.”
“I have a bike,” he said, and somehow
felt foolish about it—as if he were an old man trying to behave young.
Her face brightened and her argentine
eyes widened. “No kidding? You? You have a bike?”
Irritation snarled within him. “Yes, me.”
“What, a basic street hoverbike?”
“Hypersonic,” he said, and her eyes got
bigger.
“No way. You don’t ever take it
hypersonic, do you?”
“I’ve been known to. I usually keep it
just above supersonic, though.”
She grinned broadly. “Sounds like fun.”
* * *
When Tass climbed on the back of the bike
and wrapped her arms around him, he immediately noticed how good she felt,
but he shoved the feeling from his mind. He kicked in the antigravs and
the reaction jets and punched it. The bike shot into the sky above the
fog, staying lower than the busy traffic altitudes, and he opened it up.
She directed him to the other side of the corporate province, a lengthy
ride. The whole way, he kept giving it a little more. She never
complained—considering her outfit and attitude, he didn’t expect her to.
Eventually, they screamed through the cool evening air faster than the
speed of sound, the invisible force field breaking most of the wind around
them. It felt fantastic.
The stellar port came into sight along a
flat mesa that rose above the fog, far from the megatowers and heavy
traffic. She pointed to one of the docking bays and he came in for a high
speed landing culminating in an exhilarating, sudden stop.
She climbed off, all smiles. “I didn’t
think you had it in you. I bet it’s the only thing that turns you on
anymore.”
He flushed red again. “I wouldn’t use
that phrase.”
“But this crisis of the spirit you’re
going through… it’s wrecking your life and that’s why you’re going to
Vazhgar,” she diagnosed. “I bet this bike is the only thing that takes
your mind off whatever it is that’s killing you.”
He was far away, suddenly, and he said,
“Nothing takes my mind off it. But flying this bike… it’s the only thing
that reminds me that, somewhere deep inside, I’m still alive.”
She nodded, adjusted the pulse rifle on
her back. “Then I’d live on the thing if I were you. It’s a better
solution than Vazhgar.”
“Do your passengers ever find what
they’re looking for?”
“Most of them. But it’s all in the mind,
Duncan. It’s all what you believe. Those clever magic tricks the jareeshti
pull off aren’t anything but special effects. It’s all about what’s inside
you. But this—” She slapped her hand on the sleek bike. “—this is real.
Cheap thrill, maybe, but if it helps you deal with things, that’s what
matters.”
She regarded him thoughtfully. “You know,
I’ve done this run for six years, and I’ve taken a lot of people there.
They tend to fall into a few categories. You, you’re going because of some
terrible tragedy in your life. You can’t deal with it and somehow it’s
your fault—or you think it is.”
Her frankness annoyed yet intrigued him.
“Do tell.”
“You’re imposing a self-exile. You’re
hoping against hope the jareeshti will help you find your answers, but you
don’t expect them. All you really want to do is punish yourself.”
He snorted. “It’s a good thing I hired
you as a pilot and not a therapist.”
She shrugged. “I’ve seen all types of
people go through this. I know them well. But take it or leave it. I
already have your money, so it makes no difference to me if you want to
waste your time. We take off around midday tomorrow. If you’re not there,
we leave without you—me and the other twelve passengers who’ve shelled out
their life savings.”
He grimaced. “That seems coldly
capitalist.”
“Maybe, but the whole thing is illegal…
so who do you complain to?” She grinned. “Trust me, Duncan, I’m worth the
money.”
With that, she spun on the heel of her
maroon boot and swanked her way to the service bay doors. Duncan caught
himself looking after her—partly in admiration for her direct approach,
partly because she intrigued him, and partly because she looked really
good walking away.
Then she was inside and gone. Duncan
revved up the bike and then he was, too.
* * *
“I’d have gotten all red roses, if I’d
known how much you preferred them,” he said with a smile as they flew.
Through the runner’s window was the fantastic display of the wormhole
through which they traveled. It looked as if they were literally flying
through an iridescent tunnel hollowed out by some monstrous worm.
“I like them all,” Kathleen said. The
rose was still in her hair. Behind them, in the small common area, Katy
was playing with her dolls. “But the colors mean different things, you
know. Burgundy is beauty, blue is mystery. Pink is grace, dark pink
gratitude. White is innocence or secrecy—or friendship, depending on who
you believe. But red is love, pure and simple.”
“How fitting,” he said, “because I
love you.”
She smiled a beautiful white smile.
“And I love you.”
The nav computer beeped an alert.
“We’re about to exit the wormhole. Better go back and buckle yourself and
Katy up.”
She leaned in and kissed him. “See you
in a few minutes.”
She headed back and he prepared to
take the ship off autopilot. The beeping increased in tone and got faster:
the end was near. Straight ahead, the seemingly endless tunnel suddenly
exploded out into open space. Duncan switched the runner over to manual
control and they blasted out into normal space—
—and right into a meteor storm. They
flew across his bow from behind and starboard, and he cursed aloud.
Several pelted the outer skin of the ship. Behind him, Katy wailed in
fright.
“Will, what is it?” Kathleen hollered.
“Meteor storm!” he shouted back. “Get
buckled in—”
The impact was tremendous, like being
inside a barrel when a cannonball slammed into it, and the ship lurched to
port and spun. Duncan slammed up against the wall as Kathleen and Katy
screamed behind him. The alert beacon began to wail, and the computer
called out, “Warning … airlock breach in progress … warning … preparing to
eject airlock…”
“No!” he yelled, and at that moment
the artificial gravity kicked out and he floated out of his seat. Behind
him, his daughter wailed louder.
“Will!” Kathleen screamed.
“I’m coming!” he yelled back, and
found the handgrips, began pulling himself along the ceiling. “Hang on!”
He saw them floating there as the ship
barrel-rolled around them, saw their pretty white dresses and the
beautiful red roses in their hair, saw their terrified faces as they
waited for him to save them…
* * *
Tass Keaverly’s ship was a converted
military transport, salvaged after the United Worlds had abandoned it on a
planet called Jester 4. She told him the unknown tale of how the UWF had
duked it out with Malkarian Empire forces in a territorial dispute only to
discover Jester 4 didn’t have large trilomactin deposits like both sides
had thought. The losses had been great but neither side had interest in
salvage operations; so, mercs from both sides plundered the wreckage for
years afterward.
They left Tarquin at midday. The
transport was replete with rack-style bunkrooms, and, with a holding
capacity of sixty, they all had ample privacy. Once she had plotted and
opened a stable wormhole and sent the ship through it, Tass came below to
see how everyone was doing. Eventually she made it to Duncan, who was
reclined in a bunk, reading a book.
“Nobody reads paper books anymore,” she
said curiously, squinting her silver eyes at him.
“I find it relaxing,” he replied.
She bent sideways to look at the cover. “Hero
with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell,” she read. “Isn’t that a
study of the mythical hero who fights against impossible odds to achieve
his goals?”
“I didn’t think you were the literary
type.”
“I’m full of surprises. Campbell talked
about the journey a hero takes in three parts, didn’t he? Initiation,
departure, and return. And how they received gifts from the gods to help
them in their quests.”
He sighed and flopped the book on his
chest, glaring at her. “Can I help you?”
She shrugged. “Just making an observation about you, that’s all.”
He thought on this. “I missed your point,
then.”
“You’ve made it past the initiation and
departure. You hope to find your metaphorical gifts from the gods on
Vazhgar. Then you’ll return, and be your own hero.”
He laughed aloud. “Hardly.”
“So what’s your story?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t. I’m just nosy.”
She was persistent and amusing, if
nothing else. And maybe Harlow was right: he just needed someone to listen
to him, and tell him everything would be all right. And maybe he needed a
beautiful woman to hold him while she told him that. “I killed my wife and
daughter,” he said abruptly.
She was clearly surprised. “Okay… wow.
But… an unfaithful wife I can at least understand… but your own kid?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, looking
away. “You wanted to know, but all you do is judge me. You think you have
me all figured out, but you don’t. Forget it.”
“No, you’re right, that was uncalled
for,” she said, holding her hands up. Duncan noticed she wasn’t wearing
her maroon gloves anymore, and her hands were light blue in color.
Moreover, she had no fingernails. He thought she was wearing different
gloves at first, but a closer look told him it was skin he was seeing. Her
face wasn’t blue, but who knew what her species was like. “But you did
start off with ‘I killed my wife and daughter,’ you know.”
“Do you want to hear about it or not?”
“Do you need to tell someone?”
“Maybe.”
She nodded and moved to sit on the bunk
beside him. He scooted his reclined body sideways to make room for her,
and he felt somewhat cornered. It wasn’t an entirely bad feeling. “All
right, I’m all ears.”
“It was an accident,” he said. “We were
shuttling back to Tarquin from Earth when we took a meteorite hit in the
airlock. It kicked out the gravity and jammed the emergency door, which
couldn’t close unless the ‘lock was ejected. I only had a few seconds to
act. They always tell you to get your own harness on first so you can help
others. I didn’t think I had time to harness them up anyway, so I got mine
on and grabbed hold of them as tightly as I could. It should have been
easy—the airlock was jettisoned and the door immediately began to seal
off.”
“But the explosive depressurization was
more powerful than you thought,” Tass said softly. Somehow, her metallic
eyes and pinhole pupils were mournful.
He nodded, fighting back the sting of
tears. He wasn’t going to cry in front of her—not this tough, spacewise
woman. He refused to let himself.
“So you feel unfathomable guilt over
this,” she said. “You blame yourself and you don’t think you can go on
living. But you’re going to Vazhgar just in case there’s some magic that
will make it all better.”
He was losing his battle. He looked at
her through blurred vision. “Kathleen was my life,” he said. “Katy was our
future. Wouldn’t you feel the same way?”
“I don’t know,” she said solemnly,
lowering her eyes.
“Nobody knows,” he said, wiping his
sleeve across his wet face. “You’d have to be in the same kind of
situation to answer that.”
“Probably,” Tass said quietly. “But you
know what I think, Duncan? I think you’re beating yourself up over this.
You feel helpless because you can’t undo it—but deep down, you know it
wasn’t your fault.”
“I know nothing of the sort!” Duncan
hissed, and the tears flowed again, harder now. “You’re a pilot, not a
therapist! Who are you to draw these conclusions about me?”
“I didn’t draw them. You did.”
He blinked through his tears, looking up
at her in surprise. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” she said. “When you
started this story, your first words were ‘It was an accident.’ The
intellectual Will Duncan already knows that. You just have to convince the
emotional Will Duncan of that.”
They stared at each other for many long
moments. She was right, of course, and Duncan knew it.
“You know I’m right,” she said, as if
reading his thoughts. “You want to be able to live and experience life
without guilt. You can’t even think of being with another woman without
dishonoring the memory of your wife and child. You want some magic to take
away your pain, because you can’t imagine anything other than that pulling
it off.”
He just kept staring. He didn’t know what
to say.
She leaned over suddenly, a slight smile
on her face, until her face was just inches above his. “Will Duncan…
there’s no shame in this, and you’re not dishonoring your wife, but… do
you think I’m attractive?”
It caught him completely off guard, and
he felt cornered in this position, with her hovering above him, asking
such pointed questions. “I suppose so,” he managed.
“Suppose so, huh? You’ve been checking me
out since we met in the bar. It’s okay to look at another woman, you know.
It’s part of the healing process. You’ve probably been numb to the thought
of looking at women—probably forced yourself not to. Am I right?”
She was, and all he could do was nod
slightly. Her gleaming gray eyes were really pretty this close.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s all
right. Now you think I’m just a pilot, so you have me all figured out… so
let me ask you something.”
“Okay,” he said.
She managed to lean in closer, until
their lips were almost touching, and said, “Would you like to be with me
tonight, Will Duncan?”
Kathleen flashed in front of his mind,
and he felt guilty, but somehow he couldn’t control the basic desire and
need that overtook him, and he said, “Yes.”
She licked her lips slowly, and the tip
of her tongue almost touched his own lips. Then, abruptly, she leaned
away, stood up, and faced him. “I bet you would,” she said with a broad
smile. “Congratulations… you’re making extraordinary progress.”
And then she was gone, striding
confidently off toward the control bay of the transport, leaving Duncan
surprised and confused. Then he couldn’t help but chuckle...
* *
* * * * * *
*
What does Will Duncan find on Vazhgar?
What role does Tass Keaverly play in his life? And what is the magic?
To read the whole story,
order a copy of Unparalleled Journeys now! |
This was written in two sittings over two
days, an unplanned writing frenzy from an idea sparked from nowhere. I
submitted it to Amazing Journeys but the editor opted to include it
in his forthcoming anthology, Unparalleled Journeys. 