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

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Cabin Fever I
Julia: Valentine's Day, Part 5
by Jayel

I was a little surprised to discover the pilot . . .what was his name? Something ironic, I had thought the first time I heard it, the absolute wrong name for a too-good-looking-to-be-true sleep jumper who probably had a girl in every port. Solace. That was it. (Alonzo, my brain whispered with a happy sigh.)

Which was really, really, *really* weird. If I had one predominant social/interactional strength, it was an extremely high resistance to the charms of this kind of Romeo. I mean, what had been up with that look he had given me back in station dock? Everything about him--the gleam in his eye, the dimple in his cheek, that damned fly-boy grin--had made me furious. I could all but hear what he was thinking, and I didn't like it. My professionalism was *not* a pose, and I was not a bundle of flighty feminine repressed desires just waiting for some big, strong, testosterone-poisoned space jockey to cut me loose with the intensity of his temporary ardor. No thank you very much, Solace.

And now I had to face more of the same, only this time I was all alone, in my pajamas, for heaven's sake. Why me? And why . . . ? Why did part of me seem to think this was all just great? Walking closer to him, my heart was actually skipping beats in anticipation--No! I had not worked so hard and so long and given up *everything* just to crumble at the first leer from this--

"Isn't it standard operation to have me verify position?" he said suddenly, making me jump. His back was turned, but I could hear that grin in his voice. "So you and I can hop back in the big sack if we're a couple of hundred million miles off course."

Come on, Heller, if he rattles you, he's right, right? If you're this antsy, he's already won. Just do what you have to do and get on with your life as planned. "That's right," I said, neutrally pleasant. I touched his shoulder with my gloved hand, checking his vitals, and he turned to me, and I could feel the ripple of muscle through the glove, and my knees actually, literally, felt weak. (Look at his hair--I had forgotten how spiffy he used to look, my brain laughed. Was I completely insane?)

"Well, you'll be happy to know that my record's intact," he was saying, his eyes completely focused on my face as I struggled to concentrate on strictly medical impressions. "Haven't missed yet."

I ventured a glance up at his eyes. "Okay . . . " Something in those deep brown eyes, intelligence behind the bravado, and a question, a searching, as if he expected something from me, something a lot more profound than a simple medical exam. Or a quick roll in the hay . . .

"I could postpone everyone's defrost, and we could celebrate life a little bit," he offered with a grin, completely destroying the illusion, no doubt created in my own mind, that we might somehow actually be connecting. Heller, you're a moron, genetic engineering be damned . . . . Yes, you may need at some point to reproduce on the surface, but couldn't they have left the practical equipment and taken out all these confusing secondary stimulators? "What do you say?"

"Is that the only come-on you sleep jumpers can come up with these days?" I said briskly, nipping this foolishness in the bud as I finished my exam with all possible speed.

"You've worked on sleep runs?" he asked, obviously surprised and interested--maybe he thought we could swap hibernation stories between swapping bodily fluids and wouldn't that be fun? Or maybe he was hoping I was as jaded about this kind of thing as he was.

"Well, let's just say your reputation precedes you--," I began--suddenly I knew I had to tell this blowhard just exactly what I thought of him and his cutie-pie crudeness, doctor or not.

"I don't have one," he interrupted, knocking the wind out of my sails again with those eyes. "I'm not around long enough to make one." True enough--I wanted him to stop looking at me; I wanted to crawl back in my sleep capsule; I wanted . . . I started to retreat, discretion being the better part of valor. My heart was doing flip-flops, and my whole body was aching to touch him, and that was crazy and wrong and not not not *not* me-- "But you," he continued, stopping me in my tracks. "You have some sleep in your eye."

"What?" I faltered as he leaned closer, one fingertip touching my face, brushing the sleep from the corner of my eyelid with indescribable tenderness . . . how could he touch me that way, like he knew me? Yes--that was it exactly. Everything about him seemed to know me so intimately that the illusion was contagious. Gazing up at his perfect mouth, I seemed to know exactly how it would feel to kiss him, exactly the way he would taste, the way his arms would fold around me and make me feel safe. "This is insane," I whispered, longing to run but powerless to move a muscle.

"No," he promised, smiling, framing my face with his hands. "Trust me, doc, this is perfect."

"Trust you?" I mumbled as his lips touched mine . . . I'd never felt anything remotely like this. I had been kissed before--not lots, granted, but some--but this . . . Melting into his kiss was like finally, finally coming home--the word sanctuary kept echoing through my head, entwined with the tender promise of his voice saying "Trust me, doc . . . trust me. . . "

His hands slid down my back, pressing me closer as he deepened the kiss, and I felt my own arms come up around his neck apparently of their own volition. (a reflex, my brain whispered . . . ) "Wait," I protested, turning my face away like a swimmer gasping for air. "How can it be a reflex?"

He looked down at me, confused. "What?" "How can I be reflexively reaching for you?" I demanded, my palms pressed to his chest, holding him at bay, my glove beeping companionably with the beating of his heart. "You are a stranger--I don't love you--I don't even *like* you, for heaven's sake." I looked up into his eyes, twinkling with amusement that made me furious again and something else that made everything I was saying feel like a perversely childish lie. "I don't love anyone," I insisted. "Especially not you." I tried to pull free of his embrace, but he wouldn't let me go. "Solace, stop--"

"Why especially not me?" he demanded, the circle of his arms too strong to break but his eyes still tenderly amused. "What's so particularly unlovable about me?"

"You're arrogant and shallow--what you're trying to sell as love or at least romance is nothing more than a biological function, no more meaningful than a sneeze," I retorted, folding my arms against my body, closing myself off, closing him out in spite of the fact that I could feel his breath on my face. "And even if by some miracle you did turn out to be sincere, you'd still leave, and I'd have to stay--"

"I won't leave you alone, Julia," he said, suddenly serious, intense, his palms sliding up to grip my shoulders.

"You will--actually, you don't even have to," I insisted, hunched tensely in his grasp, his touch like fire even through the thick fabric of my robe. So easy it would be to give myself up to that warmth, to give up everything that was supposed to be so important--to sink into him and forget everything else. "I'm already alone, Solace--I always have been--"

"But you don't have to be," he protested, all traces of fly-boy swagger gone. What difference could it make to him? Why should he care so much? "You're part of a larger group now--you're going to a whole new world--"

"Yes, and I have a very specific job to do on that whole new world, which, incidentally, you'll be leaving as soon as we unload," I shot back, breaking free of him at last. "You don't know anything about me; nothing about what I am or what my goals are or my loyalties or how important this project is for me. You look at me and all you see is another opportunity to play at having a real life for a day or two before you drift back off to sleep."

Something about this last had apparently made an impression, and not a favorable one--he looked as if I had hit him in the stomach, hard, with something big and heavy. "That's what you think?" he asked, his dark eyes shockingly bright against the sudden pale of anger. "That I just play at life, that my life isn't real?"

"How could it be?" I demanded, ignoring the tiny voice in my head that was begging me to stop before I hurt him. He was hurting me; why shouldn't I hurt him? "You're never awake long enough to accomplish anything real--chronologically, you're probably more than a hundred years old, but in real life? You haven't even gotten started yet--you're a perpetual adolescent, all of you are, trying on one life after another without ever making any kind of commitment beyond your decision to be a pilot. Your only function, the only contribution you've ever made or ever will make to society is to make it possible for real people to move from place to place--you're a necessary evil created by the limitations of space travel. You have no political leanings, no loyalties, no family, no philosophy, no religion--no depth whatsoever, because if you did, you wouldn't be able to stand leaving it all behind. And the saddest part of it all is that transport engineers are working day and night to find a way to make you obsolete--someday what little you can do will be done by a machine, and then--" I stopped, the pain in his eyes finally breaking through my own rage and petty anxieties. "Solace," I began again, inwardly kicking myself. Great bedside manner, doc . . . . "I'm sorry; I had no right--"

"Hey, what difference does it make?" he said with a bitter laugh. "If I'm a non-person, why should you care about hurting my feelings? Oh, that's right--I am a necessary evil, and you're a doctor--it's your job to keep me up and running, just like it's Danziger's job to make sure the ship's circuits stay on-line."

Danziger? I thought, confused. Who . . . ? I turned and stared hard at the portal that led to the outer corridors--where was he? Why hadn't he . . .? The image was gone like the last glimpse of remembering a dream. I turned back to the angry pilot, trying to think how to mend this fence before everyone else woke up--the last thing I needed was for Adair to know I had willfully upset the guy who'd be dropping our supplies. "Yes, I am a doctor, and it was very wrong of me to let my personal feelings--"

"That's right, because you're not allowed to have personal feelings," he interrupted. "That might get in the way of the Council's big plans for you, right?"

I could feel the blood rushing hot to my face, my hands going cold as ice. "I beg your pardon?" I said, struggling to find my voice.

"I'm not the only necessary evil in this cockpit, am I, doc?" he went on angrily. "You say my life isn't real, that I'm not real--what about you, Julia? How long before you're obsolete? You say I'm going to be replaced by a machine, and maybe that's true, but guess what? For me, it hasn't happened yet."

I tried to meet his eyes, to be righteously indignant, but all I could feel was panic and a grief like nothing I'd felt before, as intense and inexplicable as the desire I'd felt for him before. "I don't know what you're talking about," I said weakly, turning away.

"At least I'm trying to have a real life," he went on as if I hadn't spoken. "At least I can still pretend that there are things in the universe more important than the narrow little task prescribed for me by the Council." He paused, the rhythm of his breath deafening in the sealed silence of the sleeping transport. "But maybe that just makes me stupid."

"No," I answered, staring at the portal again, as if there were some deeper meaning I couldn't quite grasp written in code in that image. "You're not stupid, Alonzo . . . I . . . " I felt sick--really sick, like I had eaten green or rotted fruit. He couldn't know; no one could know--it wasn't possible. Suddenly, even though I knew absolutely that it was impossible, I could have sworn I felt the Council's VR tube buried deep inside of me . . . . poison, a silver vial of poison breaking open inside my body, destroying the cells, destroying me . .. . My stomach lurched--no, lower, the pain was lower, and I screamed, completely focused on the spasm of agony ripping through me.

"Julia?" the pilot said, shoving past the instrument console to reach me. He caught me by the shoulders again and pulled me toward the door. "Julia, come on, let go--it's time to stop this now--"

"Stop what?" I asked, looking up as the pain subsided, leaving only the nausea and the feeling that I was dying, that the Council had lied--they aren't using me; they're killing me--I'm the one they want to get rid of, not Devon Adair, not the Eden Project--

"Stop dreaming," he said urgently, his eyes now profoundly frightened. "You're dreaming, Julia--"

Suddenly the glossy floor seemed to turn to water beside our feet, and the strangest, ugliest bipedal creature I had ever seen swam up through the rippling surface. He seemed to know Solace, spoke to him in a series of chirps. Accusing? Advising? Whatever it was, the pilot seemed to understand--he chirruped back to the thing . .. the Terrian!

Alonzo was communicating with a Terrian, and we were on the dream plane, and . . . and I was in labor. I felt my knees turn to ice water beneath me as in the dream ship I fainted, and when I opened my eyes, we were back in the cave.

"Julia?" My love was cradling me in his arms, looking down at my face with a haggard concern. "Doc, I'm so sorry . . . ."

"No," I protested, touching his cheek, my own cheeks burning with shame. "I'm sorry . . . I didn't realize . . . " Another contraction ripped through me, cutting off my apology in mid-syllable. "'Lonzo?" I said weakly when it passed.

"I know," he answered, reaching for his VR gear. "I feel it, too." "Alonzo?" Danziger's voice echoed eerily around the Terrian-covered walls from somewhere well down the circular corridor. "Julia? You guys in here?"

"Julia, answer us, please," Devon's voice added. "If you're all right, please answer."

"We're here," Alonzo called back. He looked down at me with a hopeful grin. "We're fine?"

"Hmmm. . .. ," I said, laughing nervously. "Yeah, I think so. Maybe . . ."

End of Part 5

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