Star Crossed

by C. Gockel

  “Fourteen?!”

  “But it was perfect. I was precocious. She was a small woman, but I was just the right size for her then, because I wasn’t grown. We had pastry in cafes, made love in a park at night. She taught me. I loved her. Blue time is—” For once in his life, thought came no faster than words. “When what you do breaks the rules, but it makes a wonderful new pattern, even if only for an hour or a year. That’s blue.”

  “This feels that way to me too,” she whispered, and held her hands toward him.

  Like a little kid, her active playful phase was followed by falling sound asleep. She only partly came awake when he started putting her clothes back on, then murmured an objection when he picked her up and started carrying her uphill. It took fifteen minutes of blue winter air to wake her up completely.

  “This is silly,” Becca objected.

  “You’re lighter here than on Earth.”

  “What’ll you say if somebody sees us coming back in like this?”

  “I’ll say you sprained your ankle, which is why we’re a bit late. That should cover the forty-five minutes or so we’ll have to explain away, eh?”

  “Why don’t we say you sprained your ankle?”

  “Sure, if you carry me home.”

  She laughed, but stayed in his arms. Joe felt pleased. She wasn’t the carry-me type of girl; she felt truly at ease, trusting him. She swung her feet and burrowed her cold chin into the warmth of his neck.

  Joe did not feel cold at all. The exercise was enough to warm him on the outside. Afterglow warmed him inside.

  Medical was reliably the least populated entrance into the Base. Joe entered quietly, operating the door one-handed with his arms full of Becca.

  Catharin, standing not far from the door, dropped a clipboard she’d been holding. “Where have you been all evening?”

  Behind Catharin, Eddy stood with his mouth agape.

  The conspicuous clock on the Medical wall said 1800 p.m. Becca yelped with dismay. They’d been in the dell for more than four hours. Joe’s mind slipped out of gear while Becca clung to his neck, speechless. Vivid green smears showed up all over her clothes, with a matching streak across her nose. The sweet-smelling ground moss had left abundant stains.

  Catharin saw the green too. She stepped in front of Joe. “What did you do to her?” The fiction of a sprained ankle fled from Joe’s mind, because Catharin was clearly furious.

  Becca blurted, “It wasn’t his fault!”

  Catharin arched an eyebrow.

  Overcome by consternation, Joe shoved Becca into Catharin’s arms. Catharin took a step back under the weight of the smaller woman, but did not drop her.

  Joe fled from Medical. Catharin screamed after him, “Take a bath immediately!”

  20 Meltwaters

  Becca emerged from the Medical shower wrapped in a large towel, pink with hot water and embarrassment, as Catharin returned with clean clothes from Becca’s bunk room. “Aaron called in the search party, and everybody’s glad that you and Joe are accounted for,” Catharin reported. “Unfortunately, the base is buzzing about it.”

  Sitting down on the edge of a cot, Becca put her head in her hands. “Do people know we spent four hours fooling around with each other?”

  “Yes, because Alvin guessed as much, and is busy spreading the news.”

  “Oh, damn. What am I going to tell Domino?” Becca whispered.

  “I can’t imagine. Are you sure Joe didn’t coerce you?”

  Becca shook her head energetically. “It was just as much my idea as his.”

  “In that case, do you mind if I ask how it came about?”

  “I don’t know!” Becca’s voice shot up to an incredulous squeak. “I do not understand why I let this happen. Joe’s too tall for my tastes, I have never in my life fallen for a guy who made me look like a midget standing next to him in public, and he’s way too moody!” She looked at Catharin with wide blue eyes.

  Catharin seated herself on the cot next to Becca. “You were out in the moonlight, and that’s been known to cause perceptual problems, illusions, and even mood changes.”

  “Other people lost their minds, but the moonlight made me lose my morals!?” Becca threw up her hands. “It felt right at the time!”

  “Sex usually does,” Catharin pointed out.

  “I forgot that Domino would mind!” Consternation was written across Becca’s face. “Or that you would,” she said in a small voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to poach.”

  Feeling suddenly vindicated, somehow, Catharin murmured, “I haven’t laid claim to him.”

  “You could be mad at me anyway and I wouldn’t blame you,” Becca murmured.

  “I’m not mad at you. I was terrified for you because you had disappeared in the moonlight. I am vastly relieved that you aren’t hurt.” She thought, but didn’t add, And not changed. Becca seemed completely herself, albeit badly rattled.

  “Cat, moonlight wasn’t all. There was this warm little place on the mountainside, a dell, and it was really pretty and cozy, and I think the place suggested what we did.”

  Catharin gave her an incredulous look.

  “I think—no, it’s not a thinking thing. It’s pure intuition, if not an overactive imagination. But it felt to me like the place had the idea. It really did. Nothing and no one made me do it, not Joe. He was a gentleman. Um, there’s something you ought to know, Cat. He’s quite a lover.”

  “A Don Juan?” Catharin heard the edge of disapproval in her own voice.

  Becca shook her head. She turned pink again but, candid as ever, went ahead with an explanation. “Those hands of his that you admire so much—he’s really good with them.”

  Sometime in the middle of the long, cold, unstructured darkness that the clock called day, Joe went to look for Becca. He found her in the hangar, following flute melody into the back corner where the pilots kept a kind of office. It was tolerably warm in the office because she had a small heating unit going.

  She put her flute aside, looking small, unhappy, and not surprised to see him. “Damn it, Joe, every busybody in this base if not up on the Ship is talking about us.”

  “I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t think we spent that long. When I climbed up the mountain the first time, two hours seemed like all night. I don’t know why four felt like forty minutes.”

  She nodded. “It was unreal there. Everything else felt like a dream. Now that does.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a dream,” Joe suggested.

  “I think it does.”

  Her words hit him like cold water in the face. “Why?”

  She abruptly left the office. Joe trailed after her into the hangar. She turned on the overhead lights, pulled on gloves that had been lying with an open toolbox on a small table in the hangar, picked up a tool, and turned toward her plane, her back to Joe. Kite’s engine cowling was open. Becca reached in and started adjusting something.

  “God damn it, is she right?” Joe demanded.

  “Who?”

  “Catharin. Did I hurt you?”

  Becca looked over her shoulder. “No. Not at all, Joe. As for all this gossip, well, I’ll live.” She shrugged.

  Breath came out with white vapor in the chilly hangar, and words sounded hollow, like so much cold smoke. Joe wanted to touch Becca, persuade her with physical gestures. But her plane loomed over her like a stern guardian spirit. Seething in frustration, he kept his hands in his pockets. “Don’t you think we ought to close ranks?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look smug about what happened. For the sake of the busybodies.”

  “I don’t think that’ll work for me.”

  “Why not, Becca?”

  “One problem is, I’ve got a boyfriend. Or had one.”

  The copter hulked in its own corner of the hangar. Joe could guess the identity of the boyfriend. And he wanted Becca to be his, not Domino’s. “So, you’ve got choices, eh?”

  “Not really. I’ve decided to mend
things with him.”

  Decided without asking Joe. He let out a short, sharp breath between his teeth. Becca flinched and hovered closer to the plane. Joe wanted to snap, So, do you usually two-time?

  But Joe remembered his younger dad, gentle Jean-Claude, telling him, using his family nickname, Jato, you must learn to hold your tongue. Don’t be so sarcastic. It can hurt people terribly. Joe said, “He’s a better lover than me, eh?”

  “Oh, Joe.” Her low voice sent a chill of desire through Joe. “The thing is, I knew Domino on Earth. He was one reason I could bear to leave, knowing he’d be here as a friend, at least. We’ve been making up our minds to be more than friends.”

  Joe’s sex drive was ready to put words into his mouth. Not sarcasm: sweet persuasion. Then he remembered his dad Mike—a pragmatic man doing his best to be a good father for an oversexed teenage boy—saying dryly, Next time, don’t let the little head think for the big one, son. Joe just hunched his shoulders in the hangar’s cold.

  “You’ll settle down with someone else, someone I care a lot about too.”

  Hearing a disconsolate note in her voice, Joe seized on it. “Don’t think I was just making do with you until something better came along. You’re beautiful.”

  She flared, “Don’t you dare say that to me and not mean it.”

  “But I do.” Joe wanted to touch her, to persuade her how much he meant what he had said. He slid his fingers over the plane’s cold wing instead. “You’re quite a woman.”

  “You think so?” He read vulnerability on her face, legible even in the harsh lighting.

  “I know so.”

  “Just between us, I . . . did enjoy it.” She turned her face half away from him, eyes closed, profile against the plane, a glint of a tear under her eyelashes.

  Joe understood why she had left the warm office for the cold hangar. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. Therefore she had fled to where it was too cold to do anything about want like that. Joe could not stand the painful clarity of the moment anymore. He shrugged. “All right. We’ll leave it at once and only once. Do you want me to say I pressured you?”

  “Oh, no, Joe. You’re right. It was as much my idea as yours. I’ll tell Domino that. He can react however he sees fit. I think he’ll get over it.”

  Joe felt hollow, as though he had just lost something important and irreplaceable. “You’re sure there’s nothing I can do for you to love me?”

  “My mind’s made up. But I do love you.” Placing her hands on his chest to distance him, she kissed the edge of his lips. Then she turned her head aside and sighed, her regret a moment of faint smoke that vanished into the air. “I don’t think we’ll be the headline news around here too long. Sam’s riverboat test flight is coming up.”

  To be so close yet light-years away from her made Joe ache. But he forced a grin. “Test float, you mean.”

  Becca laughed. “Yes, I do mean that.”

  Becca was in the crowd that had come to watch the Beagle launched. But she avoided Joe and let Domino stick possessively by her side. At least she wasn’t being a passive doll. She made some remark to Domino and jabbed his rib cage with her elbow, a joke with a bony point. Their laughter jolted him.

  Only a dusting of snow lingered on the mountain, whiteness around the feet of the trees. The slopes were lively with waters, melted snow. Wind flowed warm from the sea. Warm air met cold water, and cool fog filled the backwater like a gray blanket. The riverboat team unmoored Beagle and let it bob in the backwater for a checkup. By the time the checkout was done, the sun showed through the fog, pale orange like a piece of candy.

  Joe remembered the candy-sweet, hours-long moment that he had spent playing with Becca. Lovely and lively really were close, just a vowel apart. Joe wanted Becca so much that it hurt just as much as his cracked shoulder bone had pained him, and deeper.

  Domino noticed Joe watching Becca. Radiating hostility, Domino managed to block Joe’s view of her. The Beagle’s crew was now running interminable calibrations of their scientific equipment. Eddy Pazmino drifted over to Joe’s side. “I suppose they can’t just hop in and roar away. But it’s not terribly exciting.”

  Joe agreed.

  “The people-watching is a bit more diverting. Isn’t he pretty?” said Eddy. He cocked his head toward Domino.

  “Pretty hostile too,” said Joe.

  “He’s not the only one. I don’t suppose you’ve heard Maya London’s reaction?”

  “Do I want to?”

  “Oh, you’ll appreciate this. Maya said, ‘I can’t believe that urchin beat me to him!’“

  That made Joe grin. “The urchin’s a sweetheart.”

  Eddy nodded wisely. “I know what you mean. It’s why I stay with Wimm.”

  Beagle finally pulled out of its dock, engine churning the gray water. Cheers sounded all around. When the boat disappeared around the tributary’s curve, the onlookers sorted themselves out to ride in the jeeps or hike back up the mountain. Eddy plucked Wimm out of the crowd and pulled him in Joe’s direction. Holding hands with Wimm, Eddy asked, “Catharin said that Becca mentioned something about a pretty dell, one that had aphrodisiac effects.”

  “Hadn’t thought about it that way,” said Joe. “And I’d be happier if you didn’t spread it around.” If he couldn’t have Becca again, he felt jealously possessive of the memory of making love in the gold and green and blue place.

  “Of course. But could you give us directions?”

  Back in Medical, Joe split the telcon window. Half showed the picture from Beagle. The boat floated on bluegray water as its occupants scanned for organisms under the glass bottom.

  The other half of the window communicated with the gene center lab on the Ship. Mass production of his antibodies was under way. The bacterial clones had been culled, the most productive of them set up to grow en masse. Each bacterium was infected with the virus Joe had designed to introduce the catalytic antibody instructions into its genetic coding, and the viral material was diligent. The bacteria oozed antibody. It would be processed to administer to people with aching, wasted muscles.

  Beagle chugged along with a blunt wake behind it. Great excitement ensued when something that looked like a dessert plate with eight jointed legs started up in a cloud of particles out of the slime on the bottom of the river.

  A dark and slimy impulse lifted up out of the depths of Joe’s mind. He wanted to confront Becca, to argue with her, and turn his sarcasm loose on her after all. Maybe she deserved it. She’d loved him and let him go.

  Over the telcon Srivastava, with a harumph, had to repeat what he had just been saying. “Congratulations, Dr. Toronto. Our project is very successful so far, and the clinical trials commence today.”

  “Fine. Keep me apprised. I’ve got another project on my plate.”

  Joe left Srivastava to tend his bacterial garden. Trying to distract himself from Becca, Joe opened up the virtual notebook to review the molecular details of Patient Doe’s stasis-racked body.

  The man’s blood wasn’t working right. Worse than the existing hemoglobin being damaged, the blood stem cells hadn’t made any good new stuff since the star flight. Too much DNA in the stem cells had been disarrayed—relatively few bases out of place, but in the intricate puzzle palace that was DNA, the few were too many.

  Joe had believed that he could fix the patient’s blood since the night Catharin handed him the summary. But today, pondering the damaged DNA that was causing the problem, Joe suddenly and very clearly knew why he could fix it. Not because he’d invented calico hair and sea dogs. Rather, because of the work he’d been forced into at the end of his life on Earth. Before he ran away from it, he’d learned a very great deal about the human genome and what parts of it were the keys to life and death.

  With startling clarity, Joe recalled the initial excitement of that project. And how he’d eventually realized that he had been maneuvered into a job that would take all of his life and genius. And the final shock that had made him
claw and lie his way out of the trap.

  Joe felt prickly sweat break out on his skin. His eidetic memory was not only clear as glass, it was shot through with the emotional hell he’d gone through just before he left Earth. Patient Doe couldn’t compete with these memories. Nor could the river expedition. Pacing, he stubbed his toe on the leg of Catharin’s chair. Joe cursed. That had been happening to him ever since he came out of stasis, stubbed toes and stumbling into things. Maybe he just hadn’t gotten used to the Ship’s variable artificial gravity, or the slightly-less-than-Earth gravity here. Or maybe stasis had inflicted subclinical nerve damage, he thought grimly, with the molecular wrack of Patient Doe still displayed on the telcon window

  The stubbed toes reminded him of his adolescent growth spurt, and the calamitous agonies and ecstasies of that time. Skinned elbows and barked shins. And his first lover: small, lively, lovely Mira. Joe remembered his anger and his pain when Mira’s Old Catholic parents found out about the two of them, and forced them apart. His heart pounded out the quickened beat of old rage.

  Catharin barged in to use the telcon. “May I?”

  Joe shrugged, camouflaging the fact that he was relieved to have the wild train of his thought derailed by her interruption. Catharin shunted the telcon link from his lab in the research center to hers in the hospital. Joe watched over her shoulder. “Still trying to find the crazy button, eh?”

  “We need to know why he cracked up.” Catharin spoke with a head nurse, who reported that Hoffmann had been incoherent and incomprehensible except to the extent that he clearly believed that the psychiatric nurses were all virusinfested aliens in human shells.

  Catharin set the telcon up to receive pure data from tests on Hoffmann’s brain. She drew up a chair at the telcon, in case anything interesting came across with a flag on it. Relaxing, she stretched out her long legs, her knees only a few inches from Joe—a more companionable distance than usual.