Smoke, Mirrors and Deep Space Page 6

  Gena found, after the third or so glass of wine, that she didn’t mind so much him wanting her, that it made life kind of interesting, gave her something to think about. She might have laughed at his jokes a little too heartily, but oh well. Waiter, mas vino, por favor?

  Andy had begun to fidget as soon as he’d polished off the last of his home fries. Dessert only quieted him for a few more minutes, and then came the drone.

  “Mom, when are we gonna go home?”

  “Mom! We’ve been here forever!”

  And finally the kill stroke. “Mom, I’ve got school tomorrow!”

  “Oh Gosh, that’s right! So do I! Sorry, Ray, we’d better be going.”

  When she stood up, she suddenly was made aware of just how much alcohol she’d consumed, and had to sit back down quickly. Ray put his arm around her to steady her as he led her out to the parking lot.

  “Listen, darlin’,” he said when they got to their cars, parked next to one another in the dimly lit lot, “no way I can let you drive home like this.” He quickly put a big gentle finger to her lips to stay her protest. “No, I insist. I’m the one who kept refillin’ your glass, so let me drive you home, and I’ll have one of my aides bring your car around first thing in the morning so you can get to work, okay?”

  She smiled up at him from her tipsy daze. So sweet, so thoughtful and gentlemanly. Andy scowled sullenly, but didn’t protest as he climbed into the big man’s Lexus.

  When they arrived home—finally a modest little two bedroom off-base home in suburban Houston—Ray walked her to the door. Andy grabbed the house key from her fumbling hand and opened the door himself, pushing past them without a word. Gena looked embarrassed, and began to apologize for the boy’s rudeness, but Ray stopped her.

  “Don’t worry about it, Gena; someday he’ll know how lucky he is to have a beautiful woman like you for a mom.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “Alex’s a lucky man too—I just hope he appreciates it.”

  She stared deep into his eyes, and what she saw there took her breath away. She felt a sudden hot flush that warmed the place between her legs and brought hot pink color to her cheeks and neck.

  “Oh,” she said. “I…good night. Good night, Ray.” She fled inside before her lips could reach out and find his, and it would all be over.

  He stood, staring at the closed door, his erection hard as rock inside his pants. Then he turned and went back to his car. A small voice deep inside of him said, Nineteen more months, but it was too deep for him to hear. Nevertheless, an inexplicable little smile formed on his lips at the secret thought.

  Gena watched him drive away, then went to find Andy and chew him out for his behavior. He was in his room, lying on his bed watching TV.

  “What were you thinking?” she railed.

  “He’s a slimeball,” Andy retorted. “I saw the way he was looking at you, his stupid double entendres that he thought I was too lame to get.”

  “Andy, your dad and I are over.”

  “Yeah, but ‘Uncle Ray’ doesn’t know that, does he?”

  “Well, no, not really. I mean, we haven’t announced it or anything.”

  “So then, that don’t make him any less of a slimeball.”

  “That doesn’t make him less…” she corrected.

  “Right!” Andy grinned. “We agree!”

  Gena had to laugh, and then hit him with a pillow.

  * * *

  Ray stood in the shower, eyes closed, pretending the drumming water that massaged his naked skin was her fingertips, imagining her lips on his, her sighing breath a moan as he took her and fed her and helped her to give in to her reluctant desires. His hand found flesh, still hard after the evening’s anticipation and unfulfilled. He manipulated it gently, rocking back and forth, imagining still. She was so beautiful, Gena, a sexual enigma: cold and hot at the same moment, in equal parts intelligent and naive, with porcelain fragility painted over tempered steel. She was an epiphyte, an orchid: delicate, elegant, clinging to the strength of the tree, rooted in a chink in its armored skin, but creating her own life out of the air. A wonder, a wonder….

  He stroked harder, yet found his erection softening the more clear her image became to him, too precious to serve as pure carnal bait. After a while he gave up, purged his mind of her altogether, and thought instead about the family dog he’d experimented on a number of guilty times between the ages of 12 and 13.

  That worked.

  Afterward he soaped thoroughly, rinsed, and realized he was falling in love.

  * * *

  16. More Space Dreams

  BACK IN THE sterile white room on Europa, Alex still lay on the bed beneath the neatly tucked sheet, looking peaceful in repose. The only movement was the REM action of his eyes behind their closed lids.

  * * *

  Deep space, endless night.

  Alex awoke slowly, still groggy from the sedative, momentarily disoriented and not particularly minding that he had no idea who he was or where. Beyond his tiny voyager the vast emptiness was ablaze with lights tiny and near, moving and still, which filled his three monitors, filled his senses even without the monitors. He was alone, so incredibly alone out here. And yet, instead of the endless void that surrounded him making him feel small and insignificant, he somehow felt enlarged by the scope of this universe, empowered by the fact that his eyes and his mind could encompass the entire enormity of it and hold it inside himself.

  Then the urges and needs of his body suddenly awakened, bringing him back to the reality of his thirteen cubic feet of muscle and bone, of intestines and bladder that needed eliminating, of body and blood cells that needed food and water. Smallness, heaviness, separateness engulfed him. This is who I am, this is what I am, all I am, this tiny meat body riding in a tin can through space.

  Loneliness arrived with that reality; loneliness riding in on thoughts of Gena. For him there had never been anyone else, never been time for anyone else. But that didn’t seem to matter to her…and he really didn’t know what did. He wanted to understand, but it was too much work, and he didn’t have the time to figure it all out.

  Quickly he took care of his bodily functions, checked all the readouts on his vessel, and then waited for the sedatives to be re-administered, to drop back into the hiber-sleep where this would all disappear for a while.

  * * *

  In the hospital bed, the REM movement of Alex’s eyes suddenly increased, growing agitated. A moan escaped his lips, and his muscles began to twitch. In another room, the man called “Uriel” watched his charge carefully on a little monitor.

  * * *

  Alex fired the back thrusters on the spacecraft. The vehicle shook, and there was a muffled roar as the rockets ignited. In the overhead monitor, tongues of orange and blue flame shot by the right and left side of the screen in two swirling streams. All seemed well for a moment, and then the flame from the left reverse thruster began to sputter alarmingly and the vehicle responded with a hard torque to the left. Alex reacted to the readings on the spaceship control panels, as well as to the sudden violent skewing of his trajectory angle, evidenced by the disappearance of Europa from his viewing screen.

  “Houston, we have a problem,” he reported, the calm in his voice a stark contrast to the frantic activity he employed to resolve it.

  Alex quickly scanned the monitors, flipping levers, adjusting controls, all the time communicating constantly with Houston his every move. Meanwhile on his central viewing monitor Jupiter spun crazily in circles across the screen, appearing and disappearing as the vehicle tumbled wildly end over end.

  “Left thruster has shutdown completely. Trying to control the spin. Pitch and Yaw are… I can’t read the numbers…changing too fast. Damn! Trying to restart left thruster…no go…”

  * * *

  The controlled voice of the flight director cut across Alex’s frantic transmission; cut through his fear like a knife. “Alex, you’ve got to shut down your right thruster and try to control that spin.�
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  Alex took a deep breath. “Roger that. Powering down right back thruster.” There was a moment, then: “Right back thruster is down.”

  The spacecraft still tumbled end over end; the moon Europa—appearing in and out of the vehicle’s view screen—loomed ever closer, its white icy surfaces cut by shadowy lines and ridges that grew larger and more pronounced by the second, its smooth planes aglow in the soft orange light from Jupiter on one side, from the slightly brighter and whiter light of the distant sun on the other.

  Alex’s voice now took on an eerie calm. “Air speed 6 KPS. Distance to lunar surface 500K.”

  “Fire your left forward rocket!” Ray ordered forcefully. “You’ve got to control that spin!”

  “I’m already ten times the velocity for final approach, sir,” Alex objected dispassionately.

  “I don’t give a fuck, you got to stabilize first! Just do it!”

  Alex shrugged. Now I’m taking orders from a psychotic computer? One that says “I don’t give a fuck”? Hell, why not?

  “Copy. Firing left forward thruster.”

  As the left thruster powered up, flames shooting out from its rear were seen in the right monitor. In the central monitor, the crazy spiraling motion of the spacecraft seemed to slow for a moment, as if the vehicle was going to come out of its spin after all. Yet the moon Europa, the reference point for that spin, loomed ever larger in the screen, closer and closer, more and more detailed. “It’s working, Ray!” Alex cried, his eyes alight with momentary hope. “I think… I think I got it….”

  A HUGE EXPLOSION REVERBERATED THROUGH THE SPACECRAFT, AS IT FILLED WITH A GREAT RED FIREBALL.

  * * *

  17. And Awakens Again

  ALEX SAT STRAIGHT up in the hospital bed, shaking and drenched in sweat, gasping for breath. A scream of horror was lodged in his throat, unable to escape, and he gagged on it, retching loudly over the side. After a moment he willed himself to get up, dragged himself from the bed and staggered over to the hidden door from which Uriel had come and gone earlier.

  Trying to quell the uncontrolled shaking that racked him, Alex pushed against the wall with both hands, then began to systematically explore the area where he thought the doorway should be, prodding the smooth wall for any niche. Finding none, he finally kicked at it in growing agitation, but all to no avail. The secret orifice simply would not reveal itself. He began to pound his fists against the seamless surface in frustration.

  “Let me out!” he yelled. “I want out of here!”

  The door opened soundlessly, and Uriel was suddenly there, right in front of him. Alex stared at the odd-looking man, his expression a mix of awe, terror, confusion and hope.

  “I didn’t blow up on the launch pad,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “No,” Uriel replied.

  “It was on Europa, wasn’t it? I crashed on the surface of Europa?”

  “Yes,” Uriel agreed.

  Alex grabbed the cloth of the man’s robe near the neck, ferocious in his fear. “Then how in hell did I get here?” he demanded. “Mission Control couldn’t—they couldn’t have rescued me, not at that distance. It would have taken more than two years just to get here, provided they even had a ship ready. I didn’t have enough food and water to last that long….”

  “You’re right,” Uriel acknowledged, gently dislodging Alex’s grip.

  “I’m right?”

  “They couldn’t,” Uriel nodded. “And they didn’t.”

  “Then, then where am I? What is this place?”

  “Europa. This is a recovery facility.”

  Alex stared at him a moment before he could find his voice to ask quietly, “You’re not from Earth then, are you? Are you some sort of…extraterrestrial?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “But, this is amazing! Amazing!” He was opened-mouthed, shaking his head. “Incredible.”

  Alex began to pace in a tight little circle, his bare feet padding softly on the white tile floor. “We, we’d always thought that if there was life anywhere else in the solar system, it would most likely be found on Europa. But we had in mind microorganisms: bacteria, one-celled things, you know, not…” he opened his arms wide as if to encompass the hospital room and Uriel, “this, not you. Not some highly evolved race capable of advanced technology.”

  “That assessment is—not entirely correct,” Uriel cautioned.

  “But obviously you saved my life, patched me up without so much as a scar anywhere—surely that demonstrates advanced medical technology.” He was turning his arms over and back as

  he said this, as if to demonstrate the point.

  “That’s not precisely correct either,” Uriel advised.

  “I don’t get it,” Alex said, his smile beginning to fade.

  “I think it’s time we took a little walk, Alex. I have something to show you that may help you understand.”

  “A walk?” He looked down at his own nakedness, then back up at Uriel. “Can I have…?”

  “Oh, sure. Here,” Uriel whipped the sheet off the bed with a graceful flourish and expertly wrapped it around Alex toga style, fastening it with a couple of knots. He indicated a pair of slippers that had suddenly appeared next to the bed, and Alex slipped his feet into them.

  “I feel like I’m going to an Animal House party,” he commented ruefully.

  Uriel smiled, then turned and walked through the wall, which suddenly was a door again, signaling Alex to follow him through the opening.

  * * *

  18. Alex Finds Out What’s Up

  URIEL LED ALEX down a featureless white hallway which seemed to go on for miles, and finally past a small “nurses’ station,” which was little more than a large desk with a single white uniformed nurse seated at it. She glanced up at Alex as they passed, her face pale, and of no discernible age or noteworthy feature, vanishing from his consciousness almost as soon as it was out of his vision. Except for the wink. She’d winked at him just as he went by, and that single eye movement stayed with him even when all the rest had faded into the white oblivion of mind and surroundings. A haunting pale blue eye, winking knowingly.

  They went into another hallway, Uriel leading, Alex silently following. An elevator door at the end of the hall opened at their approach. They entered. Uriel pushed the only button in the elevator. There was no sound, no sense of movement up or down. Yet after a few seconds passed, the door reopened and Uriel exited into another area. Alex dutifully followed, but not unquestioningly. The questions for now remained in his mind, unspoken; but this whole thing seemed just too odd, too contrived.

  Alex now followed Uriel down a hallway that seemed to be identical in every way to the one they’d just left. After walking for what seemed like a city block or more of featureless corridor, they passed another “nurses’ station” exactly like the first. Alex glanced over at the nurse as they walked by, and she looked up at him, returning his stare. To his shock, he felt certain he was seeing the same pale and unremarkable face as before—yet since the first woman’s features had failed to register in his memory, this one might or might not have been the same person. Then, once again, she winked, and he was suddenly sure.

  “Hey!” he blurted, turning to accost Uriel with his suspicions. But Uriel was already twenty feet ahead. Alex hurried to catch up with him, still looking back over his shoulder at the mysterious nurse.

  “Wait,” he called to Uriel, grabbing his arm. “Isn’t this the same hallway we were in before? What’s going on?”

  They had just arrived at a doorway identical to the one that had led out of his own hospital room, and Alex felt certain that he’d been led in a big circle, and was now going back to his old room, where he’d be dumped off like some fool. So when Uriel opened the door to reveal instead a small auditorium within, Alex was dumbfounded.

  “I thought…” He faltered.

  “I know. Come in.” Uriel smiled.

  The little auditorium was much like one of
those movie theaters in a multiscreen cineplex, or maybe a small college lecture hall. Up front there was a full-sized movie screen hanging before a fairly sizable stage. Rows of upholstered theater seats led up from this stage, but all of them were empty at present.

  Near the center of the room, between the rows of chairs, there was a rectangular metal control box, and it was to this that Uriel proceeded. Alex started to follow, but the robed man stopped and turned toward him.

  “Sit where ever you like, Alex,” Uriel advised him. “Make yourself comfortable, please.”

  Alex looked around, wondering if this was a test, if one seating section was better than another. He could go way down by the front, or up near the back. He could sit by the door, ready to bolt. But instead, he chose a seat in close proximity to Uriel at the central control panel. He told himself it was to keep a careful eye on what the other man was doing, but in truth it was more because he felt a little less vulnerable there, though he couldn’t have said so, as that word was not in his vocabulary.