Kamikaze by Jayel

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Kamikaze, Part 3
by Jayel

"O---kay. . . I think this one should be all right, Val said, tossing True another VR program tube. "Nothing dangerous, nothing obscene."

"Which one is it?" Tara asked from the hearth. She was cooking something that smelled heavenly while Val helped the kids find something new to play with.

"Ice planet, I think," he told her. "Lots of penguins."

"Sounds great," True enthused, snatching up her gear. "Come on, Uly, it'll be fun."

"I don't . . . you go ahead," Uly answered. He was sitting on the sill of one of the windows, watching the sun disappear into the lake, and I resisted the urge to scoop him up in my arms. All the excitement he had shown at finding this oasis had drained away with the daylight, and now he just looked lost and miserable again. I shouldn't have been surprised--he held up beautifully during the day, but every night we could see him grieving more and more for his mother.

True went over and put her hand on his shoulder. "Are you sure? New VR doesn't come along every day," she urged gently.

"Who cares about VR?" he exploded, leaping to his feet. "Who cares about any of this?" Snatching free of her, he ran out the door, past Danziger who was just coming in.

"Uly, what's the matter?" he yelled after the boy. "True, did you say something to him?"

"No, she didn't," I assured him, patting True on the shoulder. "I'll go find him."

I found Uly by the lake, hunched in a miserable ball under one of the tall, rough-barked pines that edged the shoreline. "Go away," he ordered, obviously struggling manfully to hide his tears. "I'm all right--"

"You are not," I shot back, kneeling beside him. "And neither am I. And neither are any of the rest of us." Putting my hand under his trembling chin, I turned his face up to mine. "None of us will be all right until we can bring your mother back."

"That's not true," he protested angrily. "We left her, and now we've found these other people, and we'll just keep going, and maybe we won't even go to New Pacifica now, because they think it's dangerous, and Mom will just stay there in that box--" He broke off with a sob, and I gathered him into my arms.

"That isn't true, Ulysses, and you know it," I soothed, mystified at his words. Where was he getting this stuff? "Finding Val and Tara has nothing to do with helping Devon, and they certainly aren't going to stop us from going to New Pacifica--"

"Oh yes, they will," he warned. "The man is already trying to convince Alonzo that you and he should stay here, and Mr. Danziger thinks--" He stopped, shaking his head. "You're going to ask me how I know what he thinks, and I can't tell you, because I don't know how I know." He looked up at me, his sweet little boy's face a mask of too-adult grief. "I just know, Julia, I just know."

"All right, Uly, all right," I crooned, comforting him like the child he appeared to be because I hadn't a clue what else to do. "I believe you, I promise. But I still think you might be wrong. And I know that neither Alonzo nor John would just abandon your mother or her dream, no matter what Val said."

Suddenly his entire body, tense as taut wire a moment before, relaxed, and he slumped against me with a dreamy sigh.

"I know," he murmured.

"Ulysses, are you all right?" I demanded, automatically reaching for the pulse at his throat.

"Yes," he assured me with an angelic smile. "You won't let them leave her, I know."

"You're right; I won't," I replied, resisting the urge to ask "but how do you know?" I was glad to see him calm down, but I didn't kid myself that I was the one who had comforted him. At least not by myself.

Later I tried repeatedly to get Alonzo alone to ask him what he knew about Uly's fears and these people, but every time we would grab a moment of privacy, someone would invade it, either looking for me to bandage a bruised digit or looking for him to ask questions of their own. Only after the campfire had burned down to embers and nearly everyone had retired to their tents did I get a private word in edgewise.

"It's been quite a day," I remarked casually, but I had an iron grip on his arm and was leading him purposefully away from camp.

"Yeah, it has," he agreed, putting his hand over mine and squeezing. "Lots of excitement."

We reached the shadows of the treeline, and I let him go, turning to open my line of inquiry.

"Alonzo, what exactly--"

Actually, I barely got that much out before he was kissing me, slamming me with flattering urgency against a tree trunk. By all rights, I should have been at least annoyed, but he felt so warm and tasted so nice I let myself by pleased instead, momentarily forgetting my purpose.

"Um, I missed you, too," he teased, drawing back to flash me his best cocky fly-boy grin.

"Very funny," I retorted, swatting at him. "Alonzo, I wanted--"

"Yeah, me too," he interrupted, kissing me again.

"Alonzo, wait!" I put my hands on either side of his face and pushed him gently away. "Will you listen to me, please? There's something I need to talk to you about." His brown eyes clouded for a moment in confusion.

"Talk?" he repeated. "But I thought . . . " He broke off with a rueful grin. "You're right," he sighed. "What was I thinking?" He lifted my hand to his lips, then motioned for me to join him on a log.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, but . . .

"'Lonzo, Uly said Val was trying to convince you not to go to New Pacifica," I began.

"Wait a minute, how did he--I mean, he was down at the lake--" He saw my questioning frown and nodded. "You're right; don't ask. Yes, Val is a little iffy on the New Pacifica thing."

"The New Pacifica thing?" I demanded. "When did New Pacifica become a 'thing'? It's what we came here for--"

"Hey, hey, settle down," he soothed. "I know that, and that's what I told him." He paused, running his fingers through his hair while he put his feelings into words. "Look, he and Tara were there not three months ago," he explained. "They found our com dish--"

"I know," I interrupted. "Tara told me."

"Well, Tara didn't exactly see it," Alonzo said. "And from what Val told me, it's probably a good thing."

"Why?" I asked. "What's so scary?"

"Apparently EVE has control of the dish," he answered slowly, picking his words with care. "And 'she' recognized him--and she would have recognized Tara, too." He looked up at me and grinned. "What did you think of her, by the way? Tara, I mean."

"She seems nice," I answered. "Kind of not what I would have expected--"

"Kind of intellectual for a sleep jumper?" he pressed.

"Maybe," I conceded. "What does that have to do with our com dish?"

"You two have a lot in common," he explained. "Tara's Mom and Dad were on the Council, too."

"But I don't--"

"About sixty years before you were born," he finished.

Suddenly what he was saying began to make a weird kind of sense. "So they would have been on the Council when EVE was created," I said.

"Exactly," he replied. "And they were pretty unthrilled about their only daughter eloping with a crazy sleep jumper. They put out an all-space-points alert with her bio-stats, saying Val had actually kidnapped her and offering a pretty good-sized reward for her return." His eyes met mine. "Dead or alive."

I shivered from something deeper and more pervasive than the chilly night air. "Why would her own parents want her dead?" I breathed.

Alonzo shrugged. "I don't know," he admitted. "Val never would explaint that part, and Tara won't tell anyone that much. That got to be the standard condition for being their friend. If you wanted to stay pals, you didn't ask too many questions. Apparently they did a series of long sleep jumps to the outer colonies in succession to outrun the ASPA, with him teaching her how to fly in the meantime. When I met them, she had just gotten her license on the Plutonian outpost, the furthest point from the stations that can actually issue one." He rubbed the back of his neck, a sure indication that he was tired--tired of worrying, anyway. "All I know is he's the best pilot I've ever seen, and she writes killer VR programs. She's a whiz on the computer, almost as good as you are. Maybe her parents thought she knew something they didn't want to get out."

Even for me, someone who had been genetically engineered to serve the "higher good" of the Council, the idea of someone's parents wanting them dead because they knew too much was sickening. Still, I had to admit it was a possibility.

"But still, like you said, that was almost a century ago," I persisted. "Even if they were fugitives, and even if EVE does recognize them, what can she possibly do to them?"

He took my hand in both of his and pressed it warmly. "I'm not sure," he said at last. "Maybe the same thing she can do to us."

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I had thought there was no way I would be able to sleep that night--my brain was spinning. But surprisingly, as soon as my head hit the pillow--or Alonzo's anything-but-pillow-like chest, actually--I was, as they say, dead to the world. My eyes didn't open again until I felt sunlight on my face.

Alonzo and I had accepted the Donahoe's invitation to sleep inside the shelter, along with True and Uly, who were curled up cozily before the now-smoldering fire. Being careful not to disturb Alonzo, I rolled over toward the other side of the room. The Donahoe's were still sleeping, too. I had been concerned the night before when they had insisted that Alonzo and I take temporary possession of their air mattress, an imperial luxury after so many months on a narrow cot or the hard ground. But I needn't have worried, at least not on Tara's account. She was sleeping directly on top of her husband with her head on his chest and her arms laid along his to clasp each of his hands with her own. "Eighty-five years," I thought to myself, not knowing whether I was awestruck or merely envious. Still, most of that time had been spent in cold sleep--I found myself wondering if they slept that way in the capsule. And I also wondered if Alonzo and I would still be so eager to touch after so long, or if we would even be together.

Alonzo stirred behind me, and I turned as gently as possible to look back over my shoulder. He was still sleeping, but his dark brown eyebrows were knit together in a frown, and I couldn't help but wonder if somehow he was sensing my thoughts. Planting a tender kiss on his nose, I reached for my boots and slipped outside.

Baines and Danziger were the only ones up, standing in a conspiratorial huddle by the "rocket." When I shut the door, they both looked up like kids caught with their naughty hands in a cookie jar, but when they saw it was me, they relaxed, and Danziger motioned for me to join them, quietly.

"What's up?" I asked softly. "Thinking of boosting that thing for a spin around the block?"

"As a matter of fact . . . ," Baines said with a slight grin.

"Has Alonzo said anything to you about this thing?" Danziger interrupted, shooting him a warning look.

"Yes, some," I answered. "Didn't he tell you?"

"We haven't really asked," Baines admitted. "I mean, obviously they're friends of his--"

"Yes, but so are you," I assured him. "I don't think he's going to keep anything from the group that we need to know." To prove my point, I told them everything Alonzo had told me the night before. "Why all the mystery, John?" I finished. "I thought you trusted them."

"I do," Danziger said. "At least, I did." He closed the hatch of the transport with a soft thud. "I don't know, Doc. Uly seems awfully spooked, and if what you say is true--"

"I'm thinking maybe we've got enough problems already without taking on somebody else's," Baines finished.

"I'm not ready to go that far," John objected. "Although Baines isn't the only one who feels that way. Morgan and Bess are already worried, and this isn't going to put their minds at ease."

"Since when do we live by Morgan Martin's paranoia?" I asked, trying to keep my tone light. I wasn't sure I wanted the Donahoe's as a permanent addition to the group, either, but this was starting to sound bad.

"Since he's been right nearly every time," Baines asserted.

"Yeah, right," I shot back. "Like when he insisted we open up those cold sleep chambers back on that other ship--"

"All right, you two, settle down," John said, putting a quieting hand on each of us. "The last thing we need is a big fight waking everybody up and getting them crazy." He gave Baines a sidelong glance. "I promise if things get too bad, you'll have my full permission to hide out in the transrover until it all blows over."

"Very damned funny," Baines muttered, and I couldn't help but smile. If Alonzo had said that, there would have been a fight. But when the one teasing happened to be as big as John Danziger, discretion became the better part of valor.

"I'm going to go start breakfast," he continued, stalking off toward the tents. "You guys are so smart; you figure out what to do."

"You have to admit, he does have a point about one thing," Danziger said when he was gone. He turned back to the rocket. "We do have enought problems of our own."

Suddenly he looked wrung out and worn down to the bone.

"You talked to Uly?" I asked.

"Yeah." He rubbed his forehead as if trying to make the perfect solution float to the top of his mind. "He's right, you know. The further we get from that other ship, the easier it is for some of us to accept that she's never coming back."

"Not for me," I said, laying a hand on his back. "And not for you, either."

He looked back at me and almost smiled. "You know what I keep thinking about?" he said. "I keep thinking about when we voted to leave you behind. Everybody was for it; nobody voted against it--hell, under the circumstances, it was the only thing to do." He looked past me, his eyes focussed on something I couldn't have seen even if I'd turned around, something I suspected looked a lot like the fragile shell of a woman completely enclosed in life support. Or the seemingly perfect frame of a lifeless woman enclosed in a cold sleep capsule. "But Alonzo couldn't stand it," he continued. "He loved you, no matter what, and no matter what we said or did or how much it might endanger the group, he would not leave you alone."

"And he was right," I added softly. "Because I loved him as much as he loved me, he was right." I looked down at the carpet of pine needles at my feet, trying to blink my eyes clear again. "We should go back," I said, looking back up at him.

His eyes seemed to see me for the first time. "You're right," he said. "We have got to go back."

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