Tethers

by Sara Reinke

  She put it down and sighed.

  “Mommy…?” Jerica whispered from beside her. She was half-asleep, bewildered and scared.

  “It’s okay, pup.” Kat rolled over and stroked Jerica’s satiny curls until the little girl slept again.

  Kat closed her eyes and imagined Leia, laying sprawled and twisted at the back end of the shuttle, the rain running into her open eyes, filling and overflowing like tears. Just a dream, she thought, even though Leia’s voice replayed in her mind again, a hitching, hiccupping plea that dissolved, ripping upward into a terrified scream.

  She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Just a dream, she told herself. Leia wasn’t alive after the shuttle hit. She couldn’t have been. Who would she have been pleading with? Who would have made her scream?

  ***

  Kat dreamed again, this time about Alex.

  In the dream, they weren’t doing anything exciting or extravagant. They were sitting together on the sofa in his quarters aboard the Daedalus.

  He was holding her hand. His palm was warm against her knuckles, and his fingers were wrapped around hers, comfortable, familiar.

  She could smell his cologne faintly. He never bought expensive cologne. It was just some anonymous kind he’d buy for himself, a fragrance that she associated with no one else but him.

  He looked so handsome.

  They were watching TV, hand in hand. One of Alex’s favorites: Jimmy Stewart, It’s A Wonderful Life.

  Kat looked at Alex instead of the movie. She watched the way the warm lights from the TV screen lit across his face and shined in his soft grey eyes.

  People often thought he was Jerica’s father. His hair was a darker shade of gold, and his eyes were not quite as blue, but there was still a remarkable resemblance.

  In the dream, Alex glanced at her. He cocked one eyebrow, smiling at her. She watched the dimple in his left cheek crimp.

  “What?” he said, his fingers tightening slightly against hers.

  “Nothing,” she said, savoring the deep, resonant tenor of his voice. “I just…I had this really awful nightmare where the Daedalus crashed and you were dead.”

  Alex laughed. “That was sweet of you.”

  She leaned over and rested the side of her face against his arm. She felt the hard curve of his biceps through the material. “It was the worst dream I’ve ever had.”

  Alex slipped his arm around her, hugging her. “Do I look dead to you?”

  ***

  “No,” Kat said, and when she spoke the word aloud, she woke herself up.

  The room was still dark. Kat blinked up at the ceiling.

  A dream. It was just another goddamn dream.

  She began to weep silently, with almost no tears.

  Chapter Seven

  Jerica was already awake and gone by the time Kat woke the next morning. Sunlight was streaming in through a small window cut into the cinder block wall. It was warm and gloriously bright.

  Kat stretched her arms and legs out until her feet hung over the end of the bed. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and sat up.

  She found Jerica in the kitchen. She was, much to Kat’s surprise, fixing breakfast with Frank.

  “Good morning,” Frank said to her.

  “Good morning.” Kat tucked her unruly hair back behind her ears. “Any word yet from the platform?”

  Frank shook his head, his bright expression faltering slightly.

  They had issued their distress signal, but as of bedtime the night before, there had been no response from the stellar platform. Though this seemed odd and worrisome to all of them, none had yet been willing to admit that something might be wrong.

  “There must be something off with the receiver here,” he said. “They have to have heard us by now. I’ll check it this morning. Maybe it’s not set up right.” He nodded, as if to convince himself that this was the most likely scenario, and then quickly changed the subject, lest he persuade himself otherwise. “How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine.” Coffee was brewing, and it smelled positively wonderful. Kat looked around stupidly for a mug.

  “Second cabinet on your left.” Frank pointed helpfully. “No, the other left.”

  Kat laughed, and found a cup. “I am desperate for caffeine. I feel like I just crawled out of cryostasis or something.” She took a sip of coffee and burned her lip. “Is Eric up yet?”

  “He’s been up for awhile…if he got any sleep at all,” Frank said. “I think there’s something wrong, maybe with his leg. Something he’s not telling us.”

  “He can’t do anything about it if there is,” Jerica said. “There aren’t any small-point cybermechanical tools here. He can’t even get inside it.”

  Kat tried to imagine Eric somehow unscrewing part of his seemingly normal-looking leg, and removing it like you might a hat or pair of gloves. She tried to imagine what it would look like inside: complex circuitry and stainless steel mechanisms moving in graceful tandem with long muscles and synthesized ligaments, tendons and joint hinges. She thought about all of that mixed in with blood and greasy mechanical lubricants and it made her feel a little green.

  Eric walked in. His motions were slow and stiff, and he looked tired, older than his rightful years. There were heavy shadows under his eyes.

  “Eric!” Jerica hopped down from the cabinet and ran toward him.

  “You got breakfast done yet?” He placed his hand on top of her head, tousling her hair.

  “Almost,” she replied, shrugging out from under him and then slipping her hand through his.

  “How are you feeling?” Kat asked.

  “I hurt in places I didn’t even know I had.” He laughed. “Have we heard back from the platform?”

  “Not yet.” Kat shook her head. “Frank’s going to check the receiver this morning to make sure it’s running okay. Did you get much sleep?”

  “Enough.” Eric reached down and gently squeezed the tip of Jerica’s nose between his forefinger and thumb, making her squeal with laughter as she ducked away from him. “Frank, you got any more of that aspirin in the infirmary?”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “If you’re real sore, there’s some narcotics. They’ll work a lot more—”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need anything like that,” Eric interrupted. “Just some aspirin, please.”

  “I can show you where it is.” Jerica’s hair was resting over her shoulder in a golden sheaf, and she flipped it back with a quick toss of her head. It was a frightfully coy gesture; Kat could imagine a sixteen-year-old Jerica doing the same thing, batting her long eyelashes flirtatiously, and having anything she ever wanted handed to her.

  Eric was a good sport and let Jerica drag him out of the commissary and down the hall. Kat heard a soft, unfamiliar hissing sound when Eric walked away. She realized it was the sound of the hydraulic lifts in his knee and heel. She didn’t recall ever having heard it before.

  “Did I just say something wrong?” Frank asked, his brow arched slightly.

  “No.” Kat considered leaving it at this, but Frank continued looking at her, obviously expecting something more. “It’s just…well, you couldn’t have known. Eric used to…use morphine. After his accident. He was in so much pain, and there wasn’t a lot…”

  “Jesus, here goes my foot in my mouth,” Frank said.

  “He’s been clean for awhile now. It’s been so hard for him…I can’t imagine. First his leg, and then he loses his career with the Corps, and then the drugs…”

  “Even with the cyborg leg, they wouldn’t let him pilot Sovereigns again,” Frank remarked. “I remember reading about it when it happened. Maneuvers training out around Saturn. Wasn’t there something wrong with his navigational system?”

  “Something.” Kat shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk too much about it.”

  Except to Jerica.

  “Do you think he should stay behind today? Keep tabs on Jerica?”

  Kat shook her head. “No, Eric says he
’s okay. He wouldn’t lie to me. And we’ll need his help. Jerica’s, too. She’ll have to stay in the HUM-V and use the com links and scanners to tell us how to get to the box.”

  “She can do that?” Frank looked surprised. It was a common enough reaction. Jerica tested on the genius level as far as I.Q. While most kids her age struggled through simple multiplication and division tables, Jerica solved quantum physics equations for fun.

  Kat smiled. “Sure. She can do all sorts of stuff. She’s a smart kid. Gets it from her mom.”

  ***

  “Do you think this place will ever be like Earth?” Jerica asked as they bounced along in the HUM-V. “Full of people and cities and stuff?”

  “Eventually,” Eric said. “You’ll probably be around to see it.”

  As a future terra-farming colony, X-1226 had an artificial atmosphere designed to make its surface optimal for harboring life. The little moon, once a desolate chunk of rock hovering between the outermost edge of an asteroid belt in Jupiter’s massive gravitational field, was now a sub-tropical paradise, replete with weather patterns, precipitation and lush, dense vegetation. This was the result of more than ten years of deliberate, concentrated cultivation. Like a cake baking in a temperamental oven, X-1226 had been monitored day in and day out, by numerous computers both at the nearby stellar platform and on earth, and scientists had insured that the right amount of elements and gases were maintained. There was more science to it than Kat had ever understood. Playing God is what Alex had always called it.

  The HUM-V grazed a tree and jostled over a fallen log. The equipment in the back hatch slid precariously.

  “What have you got up on screen, Jerica?” Kat asked.

  “We’ve come a little more than ten miles,” Jerica said. “We won’t be able to keep going much further. It gets really rough up ahead.”

  Eric shifted the HUM-V into a lower gear, and it growled as it clambered over more fallen trees and large, rocky knolls.

  “The box should be just up ahead.” Jerica frowned. “There’s something there. Something big, but not part of the terrain.”

  “It’s got to be part of the ship,” Kat said. “Something that didn’t burn in the atmosphere.”

  “Stop, Eric!” Jerica leaned forward excitedly. “Stop here.”

  The little HUM-V rumbled to a halt. Kat swung her door open and hopped out. The grass was tall, almost to her knees. She could hear insects buzzing and chirping, transplanted from Earth. “Where, Jerica?”

  “Over there, past the trees.”

  Eric and Frank climbed out of the vehicle, too.

  “Wait for me!” Jerica opened her door and swung her legs around.

  “No, pup, you stay there.” Kat looked back at her daughter.

  “But, Mommy—”

  “Jerica, I said stay in the HUM-V.”

  Jerica huffed and puffed, but stayed put.

  Kat, Eric and Frank made their way through the grass. It whispered against their pant legs and folded under their boots. They carefully worked through the trees and thick foliage until they reached a spot that had been gouged through the woods.

  The trees lay knocked aside, snapped in two like toothpicks. Some had been burned. The earth was churned up as if cleaved by an enormous plow. There was a pungent, scorched stink in the air.

  A towering metal cone laying on its side in the trench. It had been seared black. It was as wide as at least four HUM-Vs and nearly as tall as the outer wall of the colony compound.

  A cable sprouted from the top. It draped across the ground before coming to a burned stump a few feet away from them.

  “What is it, Mom?” Jerica whispered in Kat’s headset.

  “It’s part of the tether,” Kat replied quietly. “The gravitational tether.”

  “The black box is inside it,” Eric said. “We’ll need the equipment out of the truck to get to it.”

  Kat walked toward the cone. She stared at it, transfixed.

  How many times did I see this swing slowly past the window in my quarters? Watching it after Alex and I made love…we always just took it for granted…

  She remembered her first space mission. Nothing had prepared her for the strange, alien gravity of the oscillating tether. She had been sick from the moment she’d come out of cryostasis. She had eventually gotten used to it, and anymore, Kat would find herself feeling nauseous on Earth, where the gravitational pull was stronger, more insistent.

  “You okay, Kat?” Eric’s voice, low and kind in her earphone.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking…”

  “Well, you know better than that,” he told her, and she laughed.

  “Just hurry up and get the equipment we need,” she said. “I want to get this over with. The sooner the better.”

  ***

  They used industrial cutting lasers to strip the thick metal sheets from the hide of the tether cone. Smoke came rolling out in dense black clouds, forcing them all back, choking and sputtering. Frank sprayed the inside down with a fire extinguisher. The smoke cleared.

  “You think it’s safe to send the probe in?” he asked Kat.

  “Hope so,” she said. “It’s the only one the compound had. Let’s get this metal out of the way.”

  She noticed Eric leaning heavily against a tree after dragging a large piece of metal back. He had his left leg folded slightly, resting most of his weight on his opposite hip.

  “Eric, are you okay?” The metal she was pulling was still warm, and she put it down. She rubbed her hands against her pant legs.

  He looked over. “Yeah. I just…I’m still sore from the crash.”

  “I’m going to deploy the probe.” Frank set the small device in front of the opening they’d cut. “It’s already set to hone in on the black box’s locator signal?”

  “Yeah,” Kat said. “Let it go. It should be okay. Shouldn’t take more than five, ten minutes.”

  The probe scooted forward on its little wheels. It disappeared inside the dark opening.

  The sun glared down on them. It was a hot afternoon, like summertime. Kat noticed, much to her disgust, that her armpits and back felt slippery and damp with sweat. She rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist.

  Eric had sat down in the cool shade beneath a tree and Kat joined him. She smiled at him, but his eyes were closed, so she settled for tilting her head back, feeling her sweat-dampened hair push against the back of her neck.

  “Mommy, it’s hot,” Jerica whined quietly into the headset.

  “I know, pup,” Kat said. “It should only be a few minutes.”

  “Can I come where you are?”

  “No, stay in the HUM-V.”

  “Eric, will you come sit with me?” Jerica pleaded. “I don’t like it here all by myself. I’m scared.”

  “Jerica, stop being silly,” Kat growled, feeling steamy, tired and irritable.

  “I’m not, Mom…”

  “Jerica—” Kat began, snapping now.

  “It’s okay, Kat,” Eric said. “Yeah, Jerica. Hang on a sec. I’ll be right there, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jerica mumbled in a pouty, baby voice.

  “She’s fine, Eric.”

  “I know.” He rose to his feet.

  Kat heard it again this time, distinctly, that quiet, ominous hydraulic whisper from the hinges in his leg. She opened her eyes in time to see Eric supporting himself heavily against the tree trunk, his brows knitted in unmistakable pain.

  “Eric,” she said, concerned. She touched his left leg and felt the smooth curve of muscle just above his knee. It felt so real.

  “It’s okay.” He misunderstood the note of worry in her voice and shook his head. “This is scary for her. I don’t mind.”

  He walked back through the grass, limping.

  Kat looked over at Frank. He was standing under another tree, leaning back against it. He watched Eric walk away, and she wondered if he noticed the limp as well.

  Chapter Eight

  Eric went str
aight to his room after they’d returned from retrieving the Daedalus’ black box. Jerica had wanted him to play with her, to send the little probe roving through the air ducts. She had looked puzzled and hurt when he’d told her no.

  He saw the guarded way Kat watched him as he went.

  She wasn’t a stupid woman, and he figured by now she knew something was wrong. She looked concerned, and he thought she would follow him, corner him, force him to tell her the truth.

  And she could. He would do anything Kat asked him to, anything for her. Anything.

  But she hadn’t asked.

  And he hadn’t volunteered to tell.

  He stretched out on his bed and touched his leg, running his fingers along his outer thigh. It was hurting. Not too badly with no weight on it, but he knew if he started walking around again, it would probably become unbearable.

  He closed his eyes and fell asleep. He hadn’t meant to, but all it had taken were a few brief moments of darkness and quiet for his mind to fade. When he came to, he had no idea how much time had passed. He didn’t know anything at all except he was hot, his body ablaze and aching with fever.

  Eric struggled to his feet and limped over to the sink. His stomach was queasy, doing lazy little somersaults, and his mind felt dazed. He splashed cold water on his face, and then ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back. The nausea struck again, worse than ever. Eric stumbled into the bathroom and knelt in the dark in front of the toilet. He could feel the hard tiles pressing, unyielding, against his knees.

  He vomited. His stomach wrenched tightly, heaving. He spat violently, and fumbled for the button to flush the toilet. He was trembling, shaking. He heaved again, but there was nothing to come up, and his stomach closed into an agonizing knot. He cried out miserably.

  He flushed the toilet and slumped back against the wall.

  What’s happening to me? What’s wrong with my leg?

  But he knew. The only thing that could be wrong, that could make him feel so rotten, hurt so bad.

  He was being poisoned.

  Slowly, but certainly. The impact from the shuttle console falling onto the cyborganic limb had somehow damaged the conduits inside that kept lubrication flowing to the lift hinges and pistons and metal works. He didn’t think he could fix it by himself, even if he could find the tools to get in to see if his hunch was correct.