The Season of Passage

by Unknown

  'No,' she moaned. 'No.'

  Dmitri's family photo slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. The glass of blood landed on it a moment later, shattering the photo's plate glass and splashing Dmitri's children a gruesome red. Clasping the diary to her bosom, Lauren turned and fled. She had to get outside and into the light. She had to get to Jim and warn him he was right about the planet being haunted.

  Lauren raced back to the Hawk with her radio off, afraid Bill might be listening. She waved to Gary in the control

  room as she approached the ship. A few minutes later she stood gasping in the airlock while the pressure equalized around her. Finally the green light above the entrance door flashed on. She stumbled into the basement and ripped off her helmet. Gary helped her from behind with her suit; she didn't see his face at first. But when she did see it, she knew she was too late. A horrible weakness sagged her knees and she thought she would fall. But she spoke anyway, as if there was hope left.

  'Gary, I found something in the Karamazov. It was horrible. We've got to get to Jim. What he suspects is true. It's worse than true. We've got to tell him...' She stopped. Gary's expression was blank. She shook her head. 'No, Gary?'

  He leaned against the wall, the last bit of color drained from his face. 'I've got bad news, Lori.'

  'Jim?' she whispered. Tears fell from her cheeks, and she fell with them, although she never hit the floor.

  'Jessie called a few minutes ago,' Garry said. 'They're bringing him back now.'

  'Bringing him back? What does that mean?'

  What could it mean?

  Gary rested his head on the airlock door. "They're bringing back his body,' he said.

  Terry Hayes awoke with the alarm screaming in his ear. He had hated alarms ever since he was a child, when they jarred him back to a reality where he would have to get up and go to school where nothing of any interest ever happened. He groped for the clock, wanting to break it with his fist. But even when he whacked it onto the floor, it continued to yell. He sat up and opened his eyes. It was dark. He checked his clock - four in the morning. Then he realized it was the phone that had awakened him. Terry didn't like four-in-the-morning calls. They were never happy ones. He picked it up reluctantly.

  'Hello?'

  'Is this Terry Hayes?'

  His heart was thumping. 'Yeah.'

  'Terry? This is Stephen Floyd.'

  That was Daniel Floyd's older brother.

  'Is it Jenny?' Terry asked. 'Has something happened to Jenny?'

  A forever pause. 'Yes,' Stephen Floyd said.

  'Has she been in an accident? Is she at the hospital?'

  'Terry, I don't know how to say this.'

  'She's dead,' Terry said, knowing he spoke the truth.

  'I'm sorry,' Stephen Floyd said. 'I'm very sorry.'

  Terry closed his eyes. He thought of the phrase: the light of my life. It was such a fucking stupid line. Yet, as far as he was concerned, it had been true about Jennifer. Because now it was so dark inside his head he could have been the one who was dead.

  'How did it happen?' Terry asked.

  'There was a fire at your cabin. No, it was in the shed in back of your cabin. Danny said she often stayed there when you were visiting with your fiancée.'

  'Yeah,' Terry said.

  'The police - they're a bunch of fools - think it was deliberate. They say she started the fire on purpose and killed herself.'

  T see.' She had told him she was finished with her story. Goodbye, Terry. I will remember you. He wished he had known what she had been talking about. But at least he knew now.

  Stephen Floyd's voice was full of pain. 'Danny kind of agrees with them. He says Jenny's been blaming herself for what's been happening to her sister. You know, the trouble Dr Wagner's been having on Mars, the lost contact and all that. Are you still there, Terry?'

  'Yes. I'm here.'

  'That's just what Danny says. What does he know, huh? This must come as a terrible shock to you.'

  'No. Wait. Yes, it is. Is Danny there? I'd like to talk to him.'

  'He's at the morgue.'

  'The morgue? Oh, yeah.'

  Stephen Floyd spoke reluctantly. 'There isn't much left, but the police require a positive identification. I understand she has no family other than Dr Wagner?'

  'That's true.' Terry swallowed and tasted his tongue as if it were something foul in his mouth. It was slipping down the back of his throat, but that was OK. Maybe it would kill him. 'I understand. I'll come. There's a six o'clock flight we used to catch. I'll come then, on that one.' .

  'I can meet you at the airport. I'd like to help in any way I can. I'd never known a child like Jennifer before.'

  'Thank you, Stephen. You're very kind. I'm sorry, I can't remember when the plane gets in. It seems to have slipped my mind.'

  'Just get on the plane. I'll be there when you arrive.'

  'Thanks. I'd better go. I'd better pack. I have things to do.'

  'Take care of yourself,' Stephen said.

  'Yeah.' Terry hung up the phone and sat in the dark. He thought of calling Dr Palmer and telling him that the crisis hadn't passed, after all. Instead he dialed Mission Control and asked them to page Tom Brenner. A minute later his partner came on the phone.

  'This is Tom Brenner?'

  'Tom. This is Terry. Any word from the Hawk?'

  'Sorry, buddy. But they're all working on it here, as I'm

  sure they're working on it on Mars. Are you having trouble sleeping?'

  'Yeah,' Terry whispered.

  'Are you OK?'

  'I'm fine. I'm always fine. Let me know if you hear anything.'

  'You'll be the first to hear. Catch you later.'

  Terry put the phone down. There was no reason to cry, he told himself. He had been one of the lucky few who had known her. He was a lucky guy. He just needed to remember that, and he wouldn't cry when they took him to the room to identify her remains. He would keep a straight face, because he knew if he broke just a tiny bit, he would break all the way, in half.

  Under the harsh white light of her examination lamp, Dr Lauren Wagner poised a scalpel above the naked body that had once belonged to Professor James Ranoth, world-famous geologist and archaeologist, Nobel Prize winner, the greatest man who had ever lived, and friend. His body rested on a slightly inclined table. A hastily constructed drainage table waited for his blood at the end of the table. She told herself the autopsy was vital. She had to know how he had died, whether from dehydration, infection, violence, or something else.

  She gripped the scalpel tightly and remembered her first semester in medical school - gross anatomy. It was odd how the memory pushed itself in now, after all these years. She had opened how many bodies since then? Five hundred? Maybe more? She was an experienced surgeon. The insides of both the living and the dead held no mystery to her. Yet how many of those hundreds had been friends? Not a one. The memory was not really odd, after all. It was just horrible, as horrible as this fucking planet.

  Gross anatomy was the class all medical students dreaded. The second-year students had given them advice on cadaver selection. Try to get a man, not a woman. Try to get someone thin. Most important, you don't want someone who's been dead too long. They're hard to work with, those people.

  The advice was a waste of time. None of her classmates got to choose. They were split into groups of four, and each group was assigned a table that held a covered body. The teacher told them to begin, but none of them wanted to peel away the mummy-like bandages that wrapped their cadavers. The amphitheater was warm; the cadavers smelled. The teacher told them they were smelling phenol, the preservative used to keep the cadaver from rotting. He didn't tell them, however, that phenol was also an anesthetic. Later, when they were days into the dissection, when their fingers began to tingle and go numb, they all thought they'd caught a dread disease from the corpse. The teacher thought it was funny. He had a unique sense of humor.

  Lauren's group got an old man who looked as if
he had been in a bad car accident back when Nixon was president. Lauren's partners made her cut first. They were all men, and often made fun of her because she said she wanted to be an astronaut some day. They kidded her about how she would feel when it came time to dissect the man's penis.

  The teacher had told them to start on the legs, and she took the scalpel and cut from where the thigh met the body, all the way down to the knee. But she was too timid. She only scratched the old man. Her teacher came by and snapped the word cut in her ear, making her jump. Later they were to learn it was his favorite word. Cut, Dr Wagner. Don't worry, he doesn't feel a thing. They never do.

  Is that true, Jim? I don't want to hurt you.

  Lauren was conducting the autopsy in the basement. She was alone. To the best of her knowledge, Bill was in the control room talking to Friend, Gary was in his bedroom plotting revenge, and Jessica was asleep on the couch in the living area, snoring. Jessica had not taken Jim's death well. She had gotten hysterical. Lauren had given her a shot.

  Bill was probably still the monster Jim had spoken of. Lauren couldn't look at his face without wanting to turn away in revulsion. It was as if invisible maggots crawled over his skin. Yet he was a puzzling monster. He appeared genuinely upset over what had happened. He said that Jim had died in his arms, and that his death was so senseless, so unnecessary. He seemed to know a thing or two more than he was letting on, but when they asked him exactly how Jim died, he just shook his head and climbed up to the control room and shut the door.

  Lauren had to find her own answers.

  She began to cut with the knife.

  A cold grave. A hole through snow and ice. A gray sky hanging over a black and white world. The scene seemed appropriate to Terry. It was the vivid roses he held that were out of place. There were red ones and yellow ones and white ones - they were all too bright. He had never liked flowers, anyway. You bought them and you gave them to people and they just died. They were a waste of time, in his opinion.

  It was sad how few had come to Jennifer's funeral, Terry thought. There was Stephen Floyd and his wife, Jean. She was crying, clutching a bride's missal in her gloved hands. Her husband was a good man. Stephen had taken him straight from the airport to the morgue, which was what Terry had wanted. Best to get it over with, he thought. The positive identification had been dealt with swiftly. Although she lay mostly in ashes, there was no doubt it was Jennifer. Remarkably, a handful of her long blond hair had survived the flames, along with her right arm, and her right hand. He noticed she was still wearing her magic ring.

  'I'll wear it always, Jim.'

  Her face had been obliterated.

  After the police had left the morgue, Stephen suggested that he make the arrangements for the burial. He asked when would be a good time. Today, Terry said. Soon. Why wait?

  Two other people were also present, Mr Russo, the Italian restaurant owner who had fed Lauren and himself on their last date together, and his son, Michael. The boy huddled in the cold beside his father, wearing the face of someone who would rather be watching football.

  There was no priest or minister. Terry knew nothing about the local religious community, but he had inquired at a nearby Catholic church. They treated him beautifully. Was she baptized, Mr Hayes? You don't think so? We've heard it was a suicide, Mr Hayes. That's bad. But she was only a child, Father. Can't you come? Well, it's snowing and the Steelers are playing the Forty-Niners. We can pray for her soul if you'd like.

  The priest hadn't said exactly those things, of course, but he had come close enough to make Terry vow to burn down the priest's church before he returned to Houston.

  Terry looked up from his handful of bright flowers. Daniel was approaching from the direction of the trees, plodding through the virgin snow of the cemetery. He wore the scarf Jennifer had knitted him for Christmas. His eyes were red but his face was composed. They hugged beside the black casket.

  'Are you all right?' Terry asked. It was a stupid question.

  'No,' Daniel said.

  'Do you know why she did it?' Terry asked.

  Daniel turned and faced in the direction of the frozen lake, which was barely visible between the intervening trees. 'Because of Lauren,' he said.

  'What about Lauren?' Terry asked.

  Daniel shook his head. 'Jenny kept saying that something bad was going to happen to her sister, and that it was her fault. She said she was the only one who could stop it.'

  'By killing herself?'

  Daniel looked down at the coffin and trembled. 'She never said she was going to kill herself. But she knew something. Lauren is having problems. Jenny knew they were coming. She got strange. She used to frighten me. She used to talk about fire all the time, how important it was. You saw, Terry, how she could wave her hand through the flames and they wouldn't bother her. Maybe she thought this fire wouldn't burn her. Even when she poured gasoline over her head and...'

  Daniel's voice cracked and he began to sob. Terry hugged him again. 'It wasn't your fault,' Terry said.

  'I shouldn't have let her be by herself at the cabin so much,' Daniel wept.

  'She liked to be alone. You couldn't have stopped her.'

  'I'm going to miss her. I don't want to put her in this hole beside all these dead people.'

  'It doesn't seem right,' Terry agreed.

  'We should begin,' Stephen Floyd broke in gently.

  Terry let go of Daniel and nodded. 'Fine. What do we do? I've never buried anyone before. The priest said he couldn't come.'

  'We don't need a priest,' Stephen said firmly. He took the prayer book from his wife. 'We got married in a Catholic Church. We couldn't find a Bible around our

  house, but Jean has her bride's missal. In it are prayers you can read at a funeral.'

  'She was the sweetest girl,' Jean said nervously.

  'People often do this,' Stephen continued. 'They read prayers and talk about the one who's died. It's fitting and dignified. We don't need strangers here. We're the ones who loved her.'

  Deliver Jennifer, O Lord, from eternal death in that awful day. When the heavens and the Earth shall be shaken. When Thou shalt come to judge the world by fire. Amen.

  The little book went around the small circle. Michael Russo was the only one who chose not to read a prayer, but his father recited from the missal and then added a personal prayer of his own for Lauren's safe return. The ceremony lasted a grand total of twenty minutes. It was long enough for Terry's tastes. He asked Stephen if he could remove the ring from Jennifer's finger. He wanted to save it for Lauren. Stephen had to open the coffin, but he got it quickly. That done, Terry knelt and kissed the coffin and left his roses on top.

  Goodbye. I will remember you.

  Stephen offered to stay and take care of the details. The rest of the group accompanied Terry down the snow-clogged path that led out of the cemetery. They had reached the cars when Mr Russo said to his son, as if by way of apology to the rest of them, 'You didn't know her, Mike. Is that why you didn't say a prayer?'

  The boy was disinterested. 'I don't know. I didn't want to say one 'cause she didn't die naturally. 'Cause she killed herself. That's a stupid thing to do, I know.'

  In a blinding movement Daniel grabbed Michael by the collar and hoisted the plump boy six inches off the ground. 'Don't you ever say anything bad about her,' he hissed. 'Not if you want to live.'

  'Danny!' Terry cried. 'Let him go.' Mr Russo, however, made no move to protect his son.

  'That was a heartless thing to say, Mike,' Mr Russo snapped.

  Michael looked appropriately chastised, and afraid. Daniel still had a good grip on him. All of a sudden, though, he loosened his hold and shook his head.

  'I'm sorry,' Danny said. 'I shouldn't have done that. You didn't know her, but she couldn't bear people hurting each other. It's what made her so great.'

  The incident passed. Minutes later Terry bid the group farewell. He declined Jean's and Mr Russo's offers of a ride to his cabin. He was lost, but he felt
that a long walk in the snow might take him somewhere. He couldn't go to the cabin right away. The thought of going home without either of them was unbearable.

  'What are we supposed to do?' Lauren asked. 'I've never buried anyone before.'

  'We can read parts from the Bible,' Jessica said, her voice as smooth as the ten cc's of Valium in her, bloodstream. 'I've got my Mom's Bible. She used to read it at lots of funerals. We'll pray together. The Lord will hear us.'

  'I hope he does,' Lauren muttered.

  Another beautiful bloody sunset spread around them. Only a day ago, as Mars counted time, they had sat and chatted with Jim. Good conversation on Thursday, dissection on Friday. The autopsy said that he had died of a heart attack. A fine doctor she had turned out to be. But what exactly had brought on the attack? Mitral valve prolapse never led to cardiac arrest, not that she knew of. She was at a complete loss, and Gary and Bill were both asking her for her professional opinion.

  Gary climbed out of the grave he had just finished digging and stood next to the dark green plastic bag that held Jim's body. Gary glanced at Bill, who waited inside his suit, stonefaced, at the top of the hole, his back to the setting sun.

  'Why don't you begin, Jessie,' Bill said.

  His wife opened the book and - her gloved hands turning the pages with great difficulty - settled on a selection. 'This is one of the Psalms,' she said. 'I think Jim would like it.' She cleared her throat. "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...

  "He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil..."'

  She finished the Psalm, and added, 'We'll miss you, Jim.'

  Jessica handed the open book to Lauren. The pages were yellowed with years. It was ironic, Lauren thought. Gary was trying to convince her there was a devil loose on the planet, and maybe he was right. But she didn't believe there was a God here. If he did exist, he couldn't have anything to do with Mars. She knew there was no one to hear their prayers. Shaking her head silently, Lauren gave the book to Gary.