Cabin Fever I - Julia: Valentine's Day by Jayel

[Reviews - 0]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer

- Text Size +

Cabin Fever I
Julia: Valentine's Day, Part 4
by Jayel

Alonzo helped me to my feet and kissed my cheek before leading me over to the Terrians. "Touch one," he urged with a mischievous grin.

"Excuse me?" I just looked at him for a moment, trying to read that twinkle in his eyes. "Oh . . . no, 'Lonzo . . . Devon told me about . . . " I could feel myself blushing crimson. "You know how I am about VR, much less this dream thing . . . ."

"Dream thing?" he teased. "Devon?" He looked puzzled. "Why would Devon . . . oh." He shook his head. "She told you about her excursions with Shepherd," he elaborated, hugging me affectionately.

"Exactly," I grumbled, feeling his grin even though I couldn't see it. "She talked about it like it was this great thing, this . . . sexual epiphany, but to me it just sounded . . . I don't know . . . " I pulled back and looked at him. "Icky," I finished. "Like one of those VR programs they send out to the non-breathable atmosphere mining camps, only without the furniture."

"That does sound gross," he admitted. "Sexual epiphany?" He raised an eyebrow. "She actually had sex with that guy? With poor Danz lying in the next room dying of the flu?"

"Not actual sex," I demurred. "Dream . . . whatever. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what they did exactly. She wasn't terribly clinical in her descriptions, and I was just as happy to let her keep it vague. But whatever it was, there's a big difference, I think--"

"Oh yeah, absolutely," he agreed, pulling a solemn face. "Has anybody told Tara about this?"

"Alonzo," I warned, taking him hard by the chin. "Okay, okay," he laughed, taking my hand and kissing the wrist. "You're right, doc, it is a very different thing--not as different as a connection in VR would be, but . . . ." He gave me a sidelong glance through those incredible eyelashes. "Icky, huh?"

"Alonzo . .. "
"Trust me, doc," he interrupted, still holding my hand and meeting my warning look with his sweetest smile. "The first sign of ickiness, and we are out of there."

I gave him a long, sharp look. "By *my* icky-meter?" I asked, trying not to smile back.

"Absolutely," he promised.
I looked doubtfully at the Terrian directly in front of me, still standing like a weirdly upright gargoyle with no consciousness whatsoever. "Okay," I sighed, stripping off my glove and lifting my hand to its shoulder. "Here goes . . . ."

. . . . . For a moment I couldn't figure out what had changed. I still seemed to be inside the same cave, with Terrians all around--even the one I had touched was still there, absolutely unchanged. But I felt . . . great. My back didn't hurt; my legs didn't ache; I wasn't the least bit nauseous. Even the paper cut I'd given myself that morning rolling up an EKG on the baby had stopped its mild but persistent stinging. The baby . . . I looked down, and the baby was just gone.

"Alonzo!" I said, about to take my hand from the Terrian's shoulder--I could, I realized. In this world, I wasn't touching anything, yet I was still aware of touching the Terrian. I suddenly thought of Tara, simultaneously lying on a nineteenth-century beach and making conversation with Uly in the shelter . . .

"It's okay, doc," Alonzo promised, suddenly with me, though I had no perception of his entrance. My senses didn't even register a "one second he wasn't here, the next second he was" impression. He was standing beside me, and it was as if he'd always been standing beside me--that he had been as long as there had been a me. "Valentine is still here; she's just too . . . unformed I guess is the word . . . to be seen the way we see each other. But we can both feel her."

My eyes narrowed as I tried to focus . . . I could feel *something*, a third presence, but . . . I was completely accustomed to feeling my daughter as a physical part of me, and this presence . . . it didn't seem to have anything to do with me at all. "That's Valentine?" I asked Alonzo doubtfully.

He smiled. "Yeah," he answered. "Isn't she beautiful?" Suddenly it made sense, and I realized how he must have felt, both now and for the past few months.

Outside this dream plane, I was the one who was pregnant; the baby was physically,
actually inside of me. So while I could describe the sensation of her life to Alonzo and show him ultrasound video and even put his hand to my stomach and let him feel her movements, he was still outside the loop on a very basic level. In the physical world, his feelings of love and possession of this child were at bottom an expression of faith. I knew she was mine because I could feel her; she was a part of me, and I loved her the way I loved my own heart. He knew she was his daughter because I told him so, because he loved me and trusted me, and he loved her as an extension of that.

But here . . . . Here, the outsider was me. "This is amazing," I said, moving closer to him, feeling a slow but utterly goofy grin break across my face. "Alonzo, you said they were calling me a 'double-think', but it isn't me." I looked up at him, deep into those soft brown eyes. "It's you . . . " I tried to think where to touch him . . . it seemed to make sense that it wouldn't matter where to the dream plane as an organizational system of perception, just to me, that it had to be somewhere that seemed symbolically, archetypally appropriate to my own consciousness . . . I leaned close and laid my cheek against his heart . . .

And suddenly I could feel a tiny mind, a tiny awareness that seemed to whisper in pure feeling all around me. Safe, she was impressing . . . . warm . . . . dark . . . safe here, both of them *here* . . . . perfect bliss from every side, from inside . . . safe safe safe safe safe . . .

"Oh my God," I whispered, my fist closing convulsively around a fold of his shirt. "Yes . . . she is so very beautiful . . . " Did he feel this all the time, with the same persistent intensity with which I felt the baby's solid weight beneath my heart? No wonder the petty bickering going on in that shelter seemed to roll off of him with an ease I had found unfathomable. Just a minute of this kind of touch, this knowing from a secondary, slightly distanced position, and I felt as if my heart and mind would break from the sweetness of it, the depth of the emotion. "Is this constant?" I
asked, lifting my head to break the connection. "Are you always aware of her this way?"

"To greater and lesser degrees," he said, all shining eyes and dimples, almost but not quite too perfect to touch. "Here it's much more intense and clearer--it's like the difference between dreaming and reality--I can put the images into focus, the feelings into words." His grin broadened. "It isn't all such sweetness and light, though," he added. "I'm afraid we're in for an interesting couple of decades--our little treasure has one hell of a temper."

"Really?" I breathed, laughing. "That's terrific--scary, but terrific." I hugged him tight, and it was like hugging two people I adored at once, one nested securely within the other. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to," he admitted, squeezing me back. "I just . . . I didn't know how." He pressed his lips to my temple, a gentle touch that raced through me like fire. Devon's description of the dream plane was beginning to make sense--every sensation seemed to be multiplied a thousand times or more. The blows from that ancient Terrian Alonzo fought must have been agony, I found myself thinking, then put the thought out of my mind. "Like I said, outside the actual dream plane, the impressions I'm picking up from her are really diffuse, like a dream. And I'm not like you, doc." He passed a hand down my hair. "I don't analyze things as well; I don't think about them or organize them into words as easily as you do--it's hard for me to describe my
feelings . . . "

"Oh, you seem to do okay," I teased gently, looking up at him. "You've managed to get quite a few powerful feelings across to me over the past year or so."

He smiled, then the smile faded into something equally pleasant but much more serious, the kind of look that could make my knees go weak no matter where we are or who was watching. And the best part was, for the first time in what seemed an eternity, we were completely, utterly, blissfully alone . . . . "I love you, doc," he whispered as he bent to kiss me, and I melted into his arms . . .

But we weren't alone--as soon as he touched me, I could feel our Valentine, dreaming her unborn dreams in the space that used to be an abstraction, the place where our hearts felt intertwined. "Alonzo, wait," I said, pulling away, not only from him but, to my surprise, from the dream plane itself--my recoil was powerful enough for my physical self to echo it and pull away from the Terrian.

"Wow . . . ," I managed, looking up at the sleeping Terrian like he might hear me. How to describe the sensation of coming back . . . ? When I was a child, I learned to ice skate--one of the privileges of having well-connected parents. For the first week or so, I wouldn't let go of the handrail--I skated around and around the rink at least a hundred times, holding on to that support, absolutely certain that was the only way I would ever keep my balance. Then one day, another little girl fell down about two yards away from me, toward the center of the ice, and without thinking I skated out to her--no doubt my genetic skewing kicking in even then. I helped her up, dusted her off, stood there with her for a good five minutes, until suddenly I realized I wasn't holding the handrail any more, that I was balancing on my skates alone. And I crashed to the ice, sprawling, completely panic-stricken and completely triumphant.

This was like that falling . . . when I first entered the dream plane, and I could still feel the doubled consciousness, was still aware of my hand touching the Terrian's shoulder, I was holding the handrail--I could feel the way back to safety. But as soon as I became aware of Valentine and started moving toward her, I moved away from that security, from that intimate awareness of the physical world I was leaving behind, and let myself get caught up in the dream world, let it seem real, just like skating away from the rail toward the center of the ice. Coming back was like falling--it was painful to suddenly be back in the physical body that had been giving me such grief
after escaping it for those few minutes, and it scared the hell out of me to think I had forgotten how it felt for even that long. But it was a feeling of tremendous accomplishment, too--I had cleared a major hurdle in my understanding of the planet and in understanding my newfound and deeply beloved family. And while I was still scared and still hurting a little, I knew I could do it again.

"Are you all right?" Alonzo asked, letting go himself. "Fine," I promised, touching his arm. "What happened?" he said, puzzled. "I . . . I felt her, and it was so strange . . . " I lowered my suddenly aching body to the floor with a sigh. "Talk about trying to get it on with your kid sleeping in the room . . . "

"Stop, you're embarrassing me," he laughed, sinking down beside me with an agility that made me want to smack him.

"Very funny," I retorted, leaning back against the wall--actually against a Terrian . . .

. . . . And I was on the dream plane again, standing just as I had been before. "Hey kid, on or off," Alonzo joked, with me again. "Any kind of contact will do it--they're creating the plane, intensifying the natural connection--that's the point of their hibernation."

"Oh," was all I could think of by way of response. "At least my body's sitting down this time . . . But 'Lonzo, I really don't think . . . " I let my voice trail off, blushing a little again.

"Okay, wait a minute," he said, thinking. A particularly evil grin appeared on his perfect face. "Do you trust me?" he asked archly.

"I'm not sure," I said slowly. "What did you have in mind?" He picked up my hand. "You can travel through time as well as space here," he explained. "I haven't tried the future yet--they say it's probably going to be tricky, if not impossible, for us to move forward, because our minds don't have the blueprint--anyway, we can move back into the past pretty easily, or at least I can. That's why I asked if you trust me."

"To take me back into the past?" I asked doubtfully. "You have fantasies about hoop skirts and corsets maybe?"

"Not the VR past, silly, *our* past," he answered, mock-annoyed. "I can take you back to any point in our time together."

"Meaning pre-Valentine," I said, beginning to catch his drift. He grinned. "Exactly," he answered. "As a matter of fact . . . I've had the perfect time picked out for a while now."

"Oh really?" I said, eyebrows raised. "Oh yeah," he retorted. "So what do you say?" "I say I don't know," I answered. "I mean, just because you can do this doesn't mean I--"

"That's exactly what it means," he interrupted. "All you have to do is hold on to me in the physical world. If I'm understanding these guys, that will put you inside my dream--that's probably what Shepherd did with Devon."

"Will I know I'm dreaming?" I asked. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "Probably not, since this is your first time--I'm thinking that if the dream is real enough--or accurate enough, actually--you'll think you're back in that time and place."

"But you'll know we're dreaming," I said, intrigued but anxious. "Yes, I promise," he said. "And you'd be able to tell, too, if I stopped maintaining the surroundings. Don't worry, doc . . . " He touched my cheek. "I'm not about to take you out in the middle of inner space and get you stranded."

I gave him a long look. "Okay," I said at last. "I trust you. Tell me what I have to do."

He grinned. "Let go of the Terrian, then grab on to me," he said.

So I did. I moved away from the Terrian and broke the dream connection, finding Alonzo sitting on the floor beside me with his eyes closed and one hand clasped around the Terrian's leg. "This is too weird," I grumbled, finding a comfortable position on the floor, then reaching out and taking his hand . . . .

. . . . and I was soooo sleepy. Twenty-two years is too damned long to be unconscious, lowered body functions or no lowered body functions. I hit the button to open the door, then watched it close again, too out of it to make myself move through. Come on, Heller, get it together . . . you've got a whole advance team and one very sick little boy to wake up and check out before breakfast, and your boss already thinks you're an incompetent idiot. I pressed the button again and walked through the door as it opened, padding in stocking feet down the corridor toward the cockpit . . .

End of Part 4

You must login (register) to review.