Icarus Rising

by Bernadette Gardner

  Though he still feared Zara would turn him over to

  Danson, he was grateful that she didn't follow him

  immediately into his bungalow. The hyper-aroused symbion

  seemed to be pumping an endless stream of sex hormones

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  into his body, and urging him to mate with the nearest

  female.

  Not that Caleb hadn't thought about that very thing

  numerous times himself since the day he'd met his sexy

  socio-therapist, but what the symbion wanted wasn't a

  candlelit dinner and a romantic stroll on a secluded beach.

  The animal on his back wanted to claim a female, to take

  ownership of a lifelong mate and impregnate her.

  He wasn't sure how long he could fight the overwhelming

  urge, especially if they'd continued to stand facing each other

  in the cool night air. With her chest heaving from fear after

  their short flight and her nipples straining against her tight

  shirt, she looked, at least to his symbion's feral perception,

  both ready and willing to be taken.

  "Wrong. That's wrong thinking," he told his new and

  constant companion as he rummaged through his small

  storage area for a pair of pants. "We ... I cannot just jump on

  her and have sex. It's not right."

  "The female is aroused. Mating is necessary for survival."

  "I know that. I know that's the whole freaking point of his

  experiment, but Zara is not Icarian, and she's my therapist,

  and a colleague, and she'll kick me in the nuts if I go after her

  waving my dick like a crazed madman. So back off."

  Caleb sat on his bed and jammed his legs into a pair of

  shorts. Covering up at least part of his body gave him a little

  peace of mind, though it did nothing to calm the anxious

  symbion.

  "The female is aroused. Mating is necessary."

  "I said, shut up already!"

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  "Caleb? Who are you talking to?"

  Zara stood in the doorway of the tiny alcove that served as

  his bedroom. In the soft, yellow glow of the bungalow's

  automatic lighting, she looked amazing. Her hair was

  windblown and partially damp. It hung in ringlets around her

  face. Barefoot, in shorts, she was all legs. Her pink lips parted

  in a question, and her eyes held boundless concern, made

  more urgent by his insane outburst.

  Of course, what was normal about talking to a voice in

  your head?

  "Nothing. I mean, no one. I'm fine. I feel better." Being

  partially dressed definitely helped. For the first time since the

  joining, he felt human.

  "Good. Do you want to tell me about it? What happened to

  you this morning? Where have you been all day?"

  "I'm thirsty." That had come from the symbion, always

  concerned with bodily needs. "Yeah. I guess I am thirsty."

  She gave him a suspicious look, as if caught off guard by

  his half internal conversation. "I'll get you some water."

  Clearly reluctant to leave him alone, Zara backed out of

  the sleeping alcove and headed toward his food storage unit.

  She never took her eyes off him, moving mechanically to find

  and fill an empty water pod from the purifier. "Here, it's cold."

  She handed him the plastic bulb, and he drank gratefully,

  gulping the liquid as though he'd spent the day in the desert.

  "You must be hungry too," she said.

  "Not really. I should probably eat something, but not right

  now. I need to think."

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  "You need to talk, Caleb. We need to understand what

  happened today. Obviously the joining was agonizing for you,

  and it shouldn't have been. That means something isn't right.

  You need to see Dr. Danson and have your biochemistry

  analyzed. We have no idea what's happening inside you, but

  it could be very dangerous."

  Caleb finished the water and sighed. He turned the empty

  bottle over in his hands and tried to concentrate on the few

  clear drops still rolling around inside the container rather than

  the allure of Zara's slender ankles, her shapely calves, her

  perfect thighs...

  "Caleb?"

  "I can't go to the lab, Zara."

  "Why not?" She dropped to her knees in front of him, a

  submissive posture that had his symbion practically slavering.

  "Female! Take her!"

  Caleb bit the inside of his cheek to distract himself from

  the tantrum taking place in his brain. "Danson will want to

  remove the symbion."

  "No he won't." She offered him a faint, reassuring smile.

  "You're alive. You're walking around. Sure something isn't

  quite right, but once he understands where the problem is, he

  can fix it."

  "The problem is in me. I'm the reason the joining didn't go

  right."

  Zara put her hands on Caleb's bare knees. The contact

  sent a stab of awareness through his body. His cock pulsed,

  his balls tightened, and his symbion stirred, causing his wings

  to ruffle. He shivered and pushed her hands away.

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  "You're in danger here with me."

  "What do you mean? Caleb, we don't have secrets between

  us. For the past year, you've told me every thought and

  feeling you've had about this experiment. I've been with you

  every step. Whatever you think is wrong, you can tell me."

  Caleb hoisted himself up off the bed and quickly

  maneuvered around Zara, who remained on the floor,

  following him with her curious gaze only.

  It had been a year of lies. More than a year, in fact. He'd

  been fooling everyone, including himself, ever since his

  diagnosis.

  "There is one thing I never told you or Danson. One thing

  that would have made it impossible for me to qualify for the

  joining. I hid it from everyone because I was convinced this

  was the only way for me."

  "For you what? What haven't you told anyone, Caleb?"

  He couldn't look at her. He'd never be able to look at

  himself again either after this confession, but if he didn't let it

  out now, he'd burst.

  Fists clenched at his sides, head bowed, he took a deep

  breath and said the words he hadn't been able to say before,

  even to himself. "I didn't qualify for Danson's experiment

  because I'm dying."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  49

  Icarus Rising

  by Bernadette Gardner

  Chapter Six

  It seemed to Zara that she'd been drowning all day. The

  first cold wave had taken her under on the north beach that

  morning when Caleb had disappeared into the brilliant Icarian

  sky.

  She'd been gulping for air ever since while she waited for

  word from the search parties. Now, after only a brief respite,

  she felt as if the tide of events had dragged her under again.

  In the wake of Caleb's confession, she put a shaking hand to

  the middle
of her chest and willed herself to breathe. "What

  do you mean, dying?"

  He faced her, but he didn't meet her gaze.

  "I have Rennard's Syndrome."

  "No." This statement made no sense. How could Danson

  not have discovered the rare disorder during all his tests?

  Caleb had been a virtual pincushion for the last four months.

  The geneticist had mapped his entire DNA sequence at least

  twice.

  "I'm serious. I was diagnosed three years ago after I left

  the Jovan system. I contracted it as a side effect of my

  exposure to the Haldon Belts on Bradon's World when I

  worked at the transfer station there as an intern."

  A million questions swirled through Zara's mind, but all she

  managed to do was gape.

  "The disease is slow to manifest and difficult to detect.

  That's why Danson never found it. Only people who have

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  worked in the Haldon Belts get it ... and I never included that

  in my work history when I applied for this post."

  "But ... why? Why hide it? You look perfectly—" She

  stopped short of saying "normal". The man had wings, after

  all. He'd never be normal again.

  "Denial. I knew I had five years before the symptoms

  started. A month to live after that, but I figured I'd be done

  with my work here by then and I could go find a hospice

  somewhere."

  Tears stung Zara's eyes, and she swallowed hard at the

  thought of her vibrant, handsome Caleb slinking off to a

  medical facility to die alone. She shook her head. "I don't

  know much about Rennard's. How can you be symptom free

  for five years and then die in a month?"

  "The disease creates a resistance to certain enzymes in the

  blood. At first the body compensates, but over time the

  enzyme deficiency causes a catastrophic breakdown in cell

  cohesion. Death is painful, but relatively fast".

  "Is it ... transmittable?"

  "No, it's not contagious."

  "No. I mean through DNA."

  Caleb stared at her now, seeming horrorstruck by her

  insinuation that he might have planned to pass on the

  disorder to his Icarian offspring. "No! No, it's not. It doesn't

  affect the DNA, which is why I was able to hide it from

  Danson. He knows everything about me, down to every cell in

  my bone marrow, but he doesn't know this because the

  enzyme deficiency doesn't appear significant until the end."

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  Zara allowed her shoulders to slump. How many more

  times would she have to lose him? "Oh, Caleb. I'm sorry."

  His wings shivered. "I should be sorry, not you. I'm a liar.

  I'm a cheat. I was desperate to pretend it would just go

  away. And then when I came to work with the Icarians and I

  learned about the symbions, I started to think maybe I had a

  chance to beat it."

  "The symbions' regenerative abilities."

  "Yes. It was hard to document in a race that's generally so

  healthy, but the few cases we've seen where young Icarians

  were injured or ill prior to joining and their symbions helped

  them heal gave me the idea that maybe joining with a

  symbion could cure the Rennard's." Caleb looked away again.

  "I know I had no right. The symbion knows. He understands

  something is missing from me, and that's why I felt so much

  pain during the joining. I believed he would be able to

  counteract the enzyme resistance."

  "If you'd told Danson, he could have tested the theory. He

  might have been able to tell you beforehand if it would have

  worked or not."

  Caleb paced and shook his head. "No. He would have

  simply removed my name from the volunteer roster. I know

  that's no excuse. I'm ashamed of what I did. I'm ashamed

  that I've lied to you all this time."

  Zara sat back and folded her legs in front of her. Resting

  her hands in her lap, she sighed. Caleb's betrayal stung. The

  trust they'd built over the past year had sustained her,

  especially after she began helping him with the psychological

  aspects of his decision to accept a symbion. She'd known

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  there would never be a next step in their relationship, but

  she'd managed all this time to keep her personal feelings out

  of the equation because their professional relationship was so

  perfect. Finding out that all the emotions and dreams he'd

  discussed with her might have been pure fabrication left her

  reeling.

  She fought the instinct to scold him, to berate him for

  trampling her feelings and essentially mocking her purpose in

  his life. There would be time later for recriminations. Right

  now, she needed to do her job. "Caleb, we need to put all

  that aside for a moment. What's important right now is your

  health and your physical link with the symbion. Let me call

  the lab so Ray can start working on this problem."

  Caleb scrubbed a hand over his face. Though worry lines

  creased his brow, he looked remarkably good for someone

  who'd woken up not long ago with a lungful of water and a

  face full of sand. He didn't look terminally ill, not by a long

  shot. Though, if what he'd told her was true, he would

  probably continue to appear perfectly healthy almost until the

  day he died.

  "You're right. I just ... don't want the symbion to die.

  Danson will want to remove it."

  "Jidar won't let him. The Icarian terms of the joining are

  very clear. The symbion would not be removed except in the

  event that maintaining the link was proven a danger to your

  life. It will die without you now."

  "It will die anyway."

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  Suddenly angry, Zara bolted up from the floor. "Are you

  going to let that happen? Or are you going to at least fight for

  it?"

  Shock widened his eyes, and Zara stepped close to him.

  "I'm not sure how well I know you anymore, but the only

  thing I'm still certain of is that you're dedicated to the

  repopulation project. So if there's anything that can be

  learned from this ... you'll do what has to be done to help the

  Icarians, right?"

  His mouth worked for a moment. "Right."

  "Good. I'll call the lab and get someone over here with a

  cart to pick us up."

  Caleb continued to pace the tight confines of his sleeping

  alcove while Zara retrieved the portable radio transmitter

  from his work area. Each moment he waited made him more

  and more agitated. While his confession had relived a great

  weight from his conscience, he still wasn't sure he was ready

  to face Danson and the others.

  He'd already caused so much trouble. They would never

  believe his original intentions had been good. He'd sincerely

  wanted to help the Icarians boost their flagging population.

  After studying their complex culture for years, he fully<
br />
  understood their reluctance to simply accept donated DNA

  from humans.

  The only way they could accept help to rebuild their

  population was to bring in new adults who could not only

  contribute mating material, but remain within the society to

  help raise and nurture their offspring. Danson's solution

  involved a true hybridization of two species. Caleb wasn't sure

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  now that he could live with the shame of having screwed that

  up.

  Jidar and his people would never trust him. Raymond

  Danson would want to dissect him, and worst of all, Zara

  looked at him as though he were lower than the crabs that

  infested the island's south beach.

  She seemed calm and professional right now, but he knew,

  underneath, she was hurt. He could never begin to explain

  which of the things he'd shared with her were real and which

  were embellished to feed his lie.

  The symbion wanted to stretch his wings and propelled

  Caleb involuntarily toward the living area. Zara's urgent

  whisper stopped him though, and despite the guilt it caused

  him, he remained out of sight behind the wall, which divided

  his sleeping quarters from his work area.

  "We need to do this carefully, Ray. It's clear he doesn't

  have the kind of control over the symbion he should have,

  and I'm worried about his emotional stability."

  Caleb almost laughed out loud at her remark. What

  emotional stability? He was carrying around a pair of sentient

  wings on his back, and all they wanted to do was grab the

  nearest female and fuck her senseless. He'd be lucky if he

  saw "stable" again this century.

  "I don't have access to a sedative. I'm sure he's got

  nothing stronger on hand than an analgesic. How fast can you

  get here?"

  Caleb tensed at the word sedative. An emotion surged

  through him he wasn't sure he'd ever felt before, and it made

  his body shake.

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  The symbion remembered being sedated by Danson. The

  pain of an injection followed by lethargy and disorientation

  had left it angry and frightened. Rudimentary communication

  through Jidar's symbion had reassured it no permanent harm

  would come to it, but that hadn't made submitting to the