Kamikaze by Jayel

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Kamikaze, Part 2
by Jayel

Tara and Val repeated what they had already told us for the benefit of the rest of the group while we set up camp in the grove next to the lake. Then most of the adults settled in a circle on the sandy strip of beach to hear the rest of the story while the kids played at the edge of the water. "So what exactly is Renaldi's rocket?" I asked Val.

"Renaldi?" Alonzo interrupted. "You guys actually went to Renaldi?"

"We didn't have a whole lot of choice," Val admitted. "We had to get out of there."

"Renaldi is--or was, I guess, now, an aerospace engineer," Tara explained to me.

"An insane aerospace engineer," Alonzo elaborated. "The Council fired him and revoked his license about twenty years before we left on this trip. He was the kind of guy who back in the twentieth century would have tried to power a rocket to the moon with a really big rubber band."

"Aw, now you've spoiled it," Val said. "And we were just about to show you how our propulsion system worked . . . "

"Very funny," Tara interrupted. "Alonzo's right; his methods were a bit unorthodox, even crazy, and his failed experiments tended to make a big mess . . . "

"Yeah, a big mess with a busted-up pilot smeared across the middle of it," Alonzo said.

"But he was the only one we could think of who might be able to get us here to G889 before you guys," Tara finished. "We took off from the stations in that rocket about a month and a half after you did."

"And we arrived here safe and sound on the planet's surface almost five years ago," Val added.

"I still say that's impossible," Wolman repeated belligerently.

"Not necessarily," Danziger interrupted. He had been uncharacteristically quiet during Val and Tara's explanation, although I had seen him giving their transport the once over while we were setting up the tents. "That craft is a lot smaller than the one we were using, and the fuel is a lot hotter, a lot more powerful." He shot Val a piercing look. "As a matter of fact, it looks like no more than a double-wide cold sleep capsule strapped on a great big gas tank."

"You got it," Val agreed, throwing an arm around his wife's shoulders and planting a kiss on the top of her head. "Needless to say, it was a no smoking flight."

"So why the urgency?" Alonzo asked. "Why did you have to get here first--or get here at all, for that matter? Don't get me wrong; I'm flattered you were so concerned about me . . . "

"Come on, Solace, you know us better than that," Tara chided playfully, but her eyes looked scared, haunted.

"They were coming after us," Val explained, squeezing her again. "The Council, or whoever. They knew Tara would know something was up because of her security call the night you left."

"We started--I started to have a lot of accidents," she went on. "Little stuff, really--fuel tanks left open, tie-down straps that didn't hold. Once when I was doing a short station-to-station run, dragging some garbage out with one of those open tugships, my oxygen mask mysteriously went dead for about a minute. If Val hadn't already gotten suspicious and made me carry an auxiliary tank, I would have ended up brain-fried."

"That's when I decided we had to find this planet, find you, and find out what the heck was going on," Val said. "We figured you knew you guys were in danger; otherwise you never would have risked taking a ship that size out through an unauthorized hole."

"We found a bomb," Danziger said. "One of our guys, Baines there, picked up a feed of that newscast you were talking about, and we searched the ship until we found it. Apparently that news wasn't supposed to be fake, just premature."

Alonzo and I exchanged a look--we couldn't believe John was giving up this much information to a pair of total strangers, particularly now when we had so much more reason to be suspicious. Or at least that's what I was thinking.

"Do you know who did it?" Tara asked him. "Was it the Council?"

"Certain members of the Council, yes," I told her. "At least, that's our theory. There have been other incidents since--"

"The point is, somebody didn't want us to make it," Baines said. "And they still don't."

"You mean you're still having trouble?" Val said.

"Haven't you had trouble?" Wolman asked. "I mean, if you've been here almost five years, you're bound to have run up on a glitch or two."

"Nothing a sewing kit or a dozen roses wouldn't cure," Val said easily, but I could see in his eyes that he was not liking Wolman much at all.

"Look, we can spend the rest of our lives comparing notes on all the interesting things that can go wrong around here," Tara interrupted. "Yes, Mr. Wolman, we have had trouble. Those toad-looking things have stolen everything we didn't nail down or stand guard over, and every time one of those earth-people coems blossoming up out of the ground I pee my pants. But compared to what seemed to be happening back home, this place is paradise."

"Then you've been lucky," Danziger said to her with the grin I had almost forgotten he had. "Wait till you hear the scary stories we're going to tell you around the fire tonight." He stood up and stretched, pointedly calling a halt to further discussion for the moment. "In the meantime, let's do something radical and start putting together some dinner *before* those kids and Morgan start whining about being hungry."

"Hey, where is Morgan?" Alonzo asked.

"I saw him with his wife, headed for the other side of the lake," Tara said. "I don't think he likes us very much."

"Maybe they found the hot tub," Val said with a mischievous grin, helping her to her feet.

"Oh lord, we may never see them again," Magus groaned. "It is safe, isn't it?"

"So long as you keep your head above the water," Val replied. "Come on, I'll show you and Alonzo where it is. Honey, why don't you take Julia up and show her around the old homestead?"

"Yes, dear," Tara said, wrinkling her nose at him. "You guys be nice--that guy Morgan looked kind of skittish. If you just jump out of the trees at them, he's likely to keel over."

Danziger laughed. "This I gotta see."

"Well, you heard what the man said," Tara said to me as Alonzo, Danziger and Magus disappeared into the trees. "You want to see the house?"

"I think I may just tag along with you," Wolman said, scrambling to his feet.

Tara fixed him with a gentle smile I couldn't quite interpret--it wasn't malevolent by any means, but it didn't seem quite friendly, either. "I think that would be a stupendously bad idea," she told him, turning away. "Come on, Doc. I've got lots of dirt to dish on Alonzo, if you're interested."

I laughed. "Lead the way."

From the outside, the shelter was very similar to the one we'd found when we found Waylon, although newer and in better repair. But inside, it looked like a well-appointed station unit. Both walls and floor were covered wtih soft, synthetic cotton matting, a rich brown on the walls and a muted gray on the floor. The furnishings were sparse, mostly just brightly colored cushions on the floor, but three of the four walls were lined with shelves which held a myriad of personal items, all displayed with equal abandon--foodstuffs, utensils, tools, clothing, VR gear and program tubes. One long shelf was entirely covered in medical supplies, most of which seemed to consist of various kinds of conception supressors. An old-fashioned fireplace dominated the wall opposite the door, and a pile of smoldering ashes sent a pleasant aroma of woodsmoke through the room. "This is nice," I ventured, meaning it. Add an adequate research set-up and I could have lived there with Alonzo forever.

"Things are kind of a mess," Tara apologized, opening a food locker and tossing me a miraculously cold beverage container. "We weren't really expecting you guys."

"Why not?" I asked, joining her on a patch of cushions near the fireplace. "I mean, didn't you come here to find us?"

"Yes, but we couldn't," she explained. "Or rather, we didn't know . . . we went to where Alonzo had told us you were landing, but--" She broke off and crawled towards the woodpile. "Weird weather, isn't it? Hot as hell all day, but as soon as the sun starts going down--"

"But what?" I persisted. "You went to New Pacifica?"

She sat back on her heels and looked back at me. "Yeah, we did," she said at last. "We found a com dish, and we didn't like what it had to say."

"That dish is ours," I said. "It shouldn't be saying anything."

"Yours?" She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes searching my face. "Yours, meaning the Eden Project's?"

"Yes--Tara, what did you hear coming from that dish?"

She shivered, then shook her head as if to clear it. "Nothing much," she replied slowly. "To tell you the truth, all I heard was an initial warning to stay back. Val's the one who insisted on approaching it. When he came back, he insisted we get the hell out of there, that no way were you guys going to be showing up there." She spread the ashes across the floor of the fireplace and added a layer of kindling to make a blaze. "Whatever that thing told him, it made him think you weren't going to make it, and if you did, we didn't want to see you after all."

"And he never told you what he learned from it?" I found myself liking this woman in spite of myself--if her features and grammar had been a little more regular, I would have thought she had been genetically skewed toward winning trust. But what she was saying was scaring the daylights out of me.

"No," she answered rather curtly. "He said I was better off not knowing, and I believed him. Val's never lied to me before; I hardly think he'd pick a godforsaken place like this to start."

"Don't you mean a paradise?" I prodded gently.

She turned away from the fire she'd started and smiled at me. "Touche'," she said. "It is like Eden here, particularly when there's only two of you." She climbed back onto the cushions. "Which brings me to you and Alonzo. What's the story with you two?"

"What do you mean?" I said evasively. I still wanted to know what she was keeping from me, but I was pretty sure pushing her wouldn't help at this point.

"He's obviously got it bad, and every time his name comes up your face turns red," she teased. "So something must be going on."

"We're friends," I admitted slowly. No one, not even Devon, had ever asked me so pointblank to explain our relationship, and I found I still couldn't find the right words. "Hey, you said you had dirt to dish."

"Oh, I do," she said with a laugh. "I'm just not sure you want to hear it. And I must admit it's all hearsay--I never get to actually meet 'Zo's girlfriends. I just hear about them later. That's one reason I know he's serious about you, the way he piped up and introduced you right off. He's proud of you, Doc."

"I'm proud of him," I said. "Not as a possession--"

"I know, I know," she said, waving me off. "Your relationship is non-possessive, with each party being fully autonomous within the contextual paradigm of your togetherness- -am I getting all of this right?"

"Yes, perfectly," I said, stunned and a little embarrassed. "Although I must admit you sound more like a psycho-socio-therapist than a sleep jumper."

She shrugged. "It takes all kinds. Nobody's born a sleep jumper." She settled back against the cushions with a luxurious sigh. "Seriously, Doc, take it from someone who's been married probably about forty years longer than you've been alive. As my dearly beloved would say, that dog won't hunt--any relationship worth keeping is a wee bit possessive, and anyone who wants to share someone else has to be willing to give up a little bit of herself."

"You've really been married that long?" I asked, ready to change the subject. "Do you have an open-ended contract?"

"We don't have a contract at all," she answered with a grin. "We got married in a Catholic ceremony, in a church, thank you very much. If he cheats on me, I don't sue him--he's going to hell."

"You don't really believe that," I scoffed.

She shrugged. "Maybe when I know you better I'll tell you whether I do or not," she conceded, getting up from the floor to look out the window at the lake. "So who do the kids belong to? The big guy, Danziger?"

"The girl is his daughter," I explained, joining her. True and Uly were standing knee-deep in the lake, vigorously splashing each other and shrieking with laughter. "The boy is Ulysses Adair." As calmly and in as few words as possible, I tried to explain what had happened to Devon, but I still found myself crying at the end. "I have absolutely no clue what's wrong with her," I finished, wiping impatiently at my eyes with my sleeve. "Maybe it was EVE, maybe the planet, maybe a head cold. I just don't know."

"Hey, how could you?" Tara soothed, drawing me to her and holding me tight. My first reaction was to recoil in horror, but she seemed so genuinely sympathetic I didn't want to hurt her feelings. And then suddenly I was comfortable, and it was good to cry it out to someone who wouldn't blame me or feel responsible for me. I had talked to Alonzo about it, and he had been so sweet, but I knew my being unhappy hurt him, and I couldn't bear that. So I had been holding it in.

"It sounds like you guys have had a hard time, just like your friend said," Tara said at last, giving me a final squeeze before reaching for some warmer clothes. "And I suspect that when we tell Val about this EVE, he's going to recognize her voice."

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