Thanks, VS, ED, A5and Tikatu for the reviews. Replies and editsare forthcoming, honest.
37: Friends and Relations
Endurance, the cargo bay-
It all felt correct, just… troubling and contradictory. Too violently sick to make any judgment calls, John chose to ignore the extra memories, most of which involved familiar people and situations. That someone named 'Matt' had existed… had lived and died and handed on his store of experiences… seemed clear. But how and why someone else's life had ended up in his head, John was too busy deteriorating to find out.
All that he really wanted at that point was a little peace and quiet to do his dying in. Oblivion was a longed-for goal, because he felt utterly wretched when conscious. Cho wouldn't leave him alone, though. Irritating as hell, she kept coming at him with tamoxifen, iodine tablets, saline solution and vitamins. Waste of time. He'd have told her so, too, if he'd been able to summon the strength.
Still, she kept at it, sometimes with help from Thorpe (traitor), making him drink or open his eyes, or take a deep breath from the mask. Eventually, she woke him entirely for anoral and intravenous dose ofsomething that tasted like soot and burned through his limbs like a ground-glass muck fire. More wasted effort, he'd have called it, except that her slow-motion, off-pitch voice got through with,
"…this Dr. Hackenbacker, whose acquaintance I really must…"
'Ike…?' He said to himself, each thought as separate and distinct as a pebble dropped into a deep well, 'Damn. He's pulling ahead, again.'
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The rear cockpit-
Cho exited the cargo bay, careful to strip down, change and have a long detox scrub before approaching Roger and Linda. They were waiting for her just outside the rear cockpit, nervous and quiet and crackling with stress.
Thorpe put a hand forth to help guide his exhausted fiancé. She rested against him for a moment, absorbing body heat and strength.
"Well…?" Linda finally prodded. It galled her, being forced to sit back during a medical crisis, but every time she'd gathered herself to enter the garage, fear for their baby stopped her short. How many physical insults could one tiny blob of tissue endure? She gave Cho an aspirin tablet and a water bottle, forcing herself to wait patiently for the exobiologist's report.
"I cannot yet say," Cho answered at last, having swallowed her pill. "The idea of carbon nano-tube 'cages' for toxic particles is certainly intriguing, and I was able to manufacture them according to Tracy Aerospace guidelines… but there is much cellular damage, and the cure may not have… Linda, forgive my rambling, please. I am terribly sorry."
This last, as Dr. Bennett covered her eyes with a shaking hand. Brushing off her crewmates' sympathy, Linda took a last, quick look at the two figures floating pale and still within the cargo bay, and then left.
Scooting along with kicks and rapid handholds, she reached the crew living quarters, and made her way to John's berth. The sleeping compartments were small, something of a cross between a bunk bed and one of those Japanese 'coffin hotels'. They were well padded, though, with nylon straps and a bag-like sleep restraint to prevent the astronaut occupant from drifting. A bit of homey shelving and a small corkboard occupied the forward wall. John's compartment was fairly stark, but it smelled of him faintly, and she could float there in curtained privacy beneath his reading lamp, wishing for sleep or tears. Neither would come.
Terrible thoughts, dry and clinical, filled her aching head. She knew precisely what the levels of radiation he'd absorbed were doing to his body, and to Pete's. And she couldn't shut the damn text book.
For distraction, stillclutching John's sleep restraint, she had another look around. The corkboard featured a family picture and an odd, framed check for $2.56. Also, a snap shot of some kind of big, black muscle car, and a laminated rosary card. He was an unusual man, her John Tracy.
His laptop (also black) was Velcroed to the book shelf, beside what appeared to be a leather-bound journal. Curious, she picked up the tethered diary and began flipping through it.
Inside… there were circuit diagrams, equations, long strings of rubbed-out and carefully corrected code, and many short paragraphs in varying languages. The days' events, maybe? No way to tell, really, as the only language she knew besides English was a little medical Latin.
But there were pictures, too; hand-drawn in precise, unsparing detail. One in particular caught her eye, for the mood and subject matter. Back on Mars, she'd once helped him to install and calibrate the observatory's big reflecting telescope. A difficult and tedious job, and she'd thought (because of his silence) that John was upset with their glacial progress. The picture argued otherwise.
He'd sketched her wrestling a heavy bolt into its threaded aperture, looking…
Did she really bite her lower lip like that, when totally focused?
There was a tumbled lock of hair falling into one eye, and her carefully rendered expression was pure drive and determination. Linda touched the picture, taking care not to smudge it. She hadn't known he could draw, or that he'd be motivated to represent his companions and experiences so accurately.
Flipping further, she found other pictures, as well: Endurance on the landing pad… Pete banging on a recalcitrant heating unit with a socket-wrench, tendons and blood vessels standing out all over his neck and forehead… Roger in the galley, preparing one of his ketchup-intensive, Marine Corps specials… Kim Cho's downcast eyes and private smile… and Linda herself, in many brief, telling scenes. (Didn't she ever smile?)
They were all there, interspersed with star maps and mathematical notation, bordered round with multi-lingual comments in two different hands. Looking at it all, Linda wondered if one of those statements contained news of their strange marriage. All at once, she wanted to add something; to speak with this very hidden side of her endangered husband. Hitching herself forward again, Linda pulled his pencil from its shelf loops and turned to the first free page. There, using half-recalled calligraphy, she wrote:
John Tracy and Linda Bennett were married on Thursday, October 30th, 2066 by CDR David 'Pete' McCord. This union took place at 1700 hours, in the Argyre Basin of Mars, and was witnessed by Capt. Roger Thorpe and Doctor Kim Cho.
She signed her name below this terribly dry statement, then drew signature lines for John, Cho, Pete and Roger. Someday soon, perhaps she'd be able to add a birth announcement.
When Linda finally went to sleep, it was with the journal tucked inside her tee-shirt, as well defended as Junior.
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The cargo bay-
Time passed, and Hackenbacker's nano-trap 'medication' began to take effect. A mixed blessing, this, as it put the engineer one-up in their friendly competition. And they did compete. Whether in scientific papers, 3-D sudoku puzzles, computer programming or artificial intelligence, John Tracy and 'Hiram Hackenbacker' crossed swords (and kept score) continuously.
The coveted home-run was a rescue, though, and John had been several points ahead until his disastrous illness. No longer.
On the bright side, Pete was recovering, and it seemed likely that Brains would screw something up in the near future and require a timely assist… he nearly always did. Not that Ike was sloppy, exactly; just impatient. He tended to rush his ideas right off the drawing board and into the field, proof-of-concept be damned. Something would come up, guaranteed.
On the first day that he felt well enough to move around a little, John untethered himself and paid a 'bed-side' visit to the ailing mission commander. It was good to see him, again; pale, sunken and weak, but still alive.
"Tracy… Got any water?" Pete asked him, in a voice that evoked sandpaper, soda crackers and kindling.
"Yeah. Two seconds."
He could have used a drink himself, although just then John was inclined more toward Coors than flat, iodine-laced water. Oh well… later, maybe.
Cho had left a row of plastic bottles Velcro-ed to the inner bulkhead. John pushed off of Pete's restraint straps and fetched back the nearest recycled beverage. As the mission commander downed a few painful swallows, a sudden thought occurred.
"Pete," the pilot asked, "when did you become a man of the cloth?"
And, more importantly, why? The foul-mouthed, hard-drinking and fast living veteran astronaut hardly seemed like A-list priestly material, even for the… um… 'Church of Universal Light'.
McCord gave him a quick, rather lop-sided grin.
"In my Navy test pilot days," he responded, closing his eyes but still smiling. "Filled out an internet form… for tax reasons."
His eyes (less bloodied, now) flew open again as the commander added,
"Plus, it impresses the hell out of the ladies. For awhile, there, I could have used one of those damn 'please take a number' dispensers: 'Now serving 5, 253…' Nothing like pilot's wings, astronaut training and a calling to the priesthood to guarantee hot-and-cold-running females. I'll give you the website…."
And then he was asleep, again. John used a napkin to catch the swarm of water blobs that had escaped confinement tohover besidePete's head. He stayed quietly by until Cho arrived, over an hour later. The news was not good