SHATTERED DREAMS, SHATTERED LIVES (1/4)
by Rhonda Hallstrom
The auburn-haired woman waited in front of the transport pod as best she could. She had always known the Adairs to be insane, but now they had put her family's life in danger! She was NOT pleased, to say the very least! She swore a few oaths as she caught herself from falling when the deck threatened to come up around her.
*I knew it!* she thought. "I knew I should have found her myself!* She suppressed an urge to bellow at her husband, knowing such a distraction would only slow him down.
Suddenly, something loomed up from around the corridor and crashed right into her, propelling her into the cargo pod. She looked up from the floor to see Morgan Martin, the insufferable bureaucrat, and his attractive wife in tow. She tried to summon a breath for some of her best oaths, but the wind was knocked out of her. At least she seemed relatively uninjured from the collision.
Martin's next action was completely incomprehensible, even for an insufferable, cowardly bureaucrat. He was releasing the pod from its moorings!!
Down the hall, her husband, with their daughter in his arms, ran toward the pod opening, yelling, "NO! WAIT!!"
Martin's wife was whimpering something about dying and her inability to fasten her seat straps.
The woman summoned all of her strength to dive for Martin to wrestle him away from the controls or to jam the controls temporarily or maybe just to kill Martin. But it was too late. The door slid shut between her and her family.
Her husband's look of horror was the last thing that Elle Danziger saw as the pod resolutely disconnected and began its' plummet to the surface. Elle frantically dived for a seat and strapped herself in. Underneath Bess Martin's terrified scream, she muttered to Morgan Martin, "You're a dead man."
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Bess Martin's eyes were closed on the impact with the ground. For a moment, everyone was so jarred, they just sat there, unable to believe their good fortune that they were alive. Silence permeated the pod and everyone seemed reluctant to break it.
Bess wiggled her fingers experimentally and flexed a few muscles. She seemed to be in one piece. "Morgan?" she asked into the darkness. For some reason, she was afraid to open her eyes.
Out of the quiet, she heard a metal scraping and a loud thud. She opened her eyes quickly to see the strange woman standing over Morgan, who was cowering with a hand over one eye.
"Hey!" Bess yelled at her in protest as she struggled to undo her straps.
Morgan was trying to use his long arms to keep the woman away but she was too fast. She kept hitting him around the head, shoulders, and arms, then began kicking him with her feet. "You left my family, you &^%$!!!!" the woman was screaming.
Bess, finally untangling herself, sprung at the woman and tried to drag her away from Morgan.
"She's crazy!" Morgan screamed back at the woman, who was doing a fairly good job of squirming out of Bess's grip. "The pod broke away!!"
"LIAR! LIAR!" the woman screamed at him.
"STOP IT!!! STOP IT, BOTH OF YOU!!!" Bess screamed at them and placing herself between them. "STOP IT!!" Both Morgan and the woman paused to catch their breath. Bess took advantage of the momentary silence. "Our first order is survival!" She turned to the woman. "Your family probably took another pod; it WAS an accident! And there's nothing that can be done about it now!" The last sentence was completely irrefutable. The woman dropped her fists. Bess smiled comfortingly. "I'm sure your family is all right. Now, we have to work together. I'm Bess Martin and this is my husband Morgan." Bess waited expectantly for the woman's name.
She looked at Bess, nearly smiled, then looked over at Morgan. Her features grew hard once again. "I'm getting out of here," and neatly sidestepped Bess to open the hatch.
Bess sighed. At least she wasn't hitting Morgan anymore. She sat down next to Morgan, who was rummaging in a pack for something. "Morgan, honey," she crooned, "are you okay? Morgan?"
"...once I find out her name," Morgan was uttering, "I am going to press charges...assault on an deputy secretary...." He found his recorder, then realized he needed a name to do anything. He dropped the recorder back in and rummaged for something else as he asked, "Am I bleeding, Bess?"
"No, sweetie," Bess assured him. She winced as the bright light from the open door flooded the small pod.
Morgan brought out a pocket mirror and began an intense examination of his face. "I think a tooth is loose," Morgan complained.
The woman was already doing a casual reconnaissance when Bess could finally coax Morgan to leave the pod. Bess drew in her breath sharply as she surveyed the new surroundings. It was beautiful! It was even more than she had imagined. It was different to be born and raised on Earth. Bess and her friends had made a game of imagining the earth as it was--seeing who could paint the most vivid picture of a growing, thriving planet full of life instead of the death they faced daily. The game they played was partly why Bess felt she was still a happy person, full of hope. She felt that if she could imagine such a world, it must exist. And now, she was face-to-face with her dream.
"Oh, Morgan, honey," Bess breathed. "LOOK at it! It's so beautiful."
Morgan, to make his wife happy and to take his mind off of the brutal attack, looked around obligingly. Actually, he didn't really understand what made Bess so happy. It WAS pretty, with the scenic mountains that resembled the holos he had seen in history, the leaves were really green, and the sky a peaceful powder-blue. The sun warmed his face and, for a flicker of a moment, smiled with full understanding. Then reality rushed in like a wave. They were abandoned, with hardly any food, water, supplies and worse, a crazy woman was with them and no one to call for help.
"Bess," Morgan said, "what are we going to do?"
Bess favored her husband with a withering glare for destroying her vision with reality as the mysterious woman walked up, sensors in hand.
"Anything here?" Bess asked her.
"Why are you talking to her?" Morgan hissed. "She assaulted me!"
"Nothing yet." the woman said.
*Apparently, the woman is a tech or some such, with the way she handles that machinery,* Bess thought.
The woman strode back to the pod. As she approached, Morgan unconsciously stepped on the other side of Bess. The woman completely ignored him as she spoke to Bess.
"I'm getting a homing signal to the east," she said. "Probably another life pod or cargo pod. This thing has terrible range, though. The way to go is probably west."
"Why!?" demanded Morgan. "A signal probably means people!"
As if speaking to a small child, she still did not speak directly to Morgan as she said, "New Pacifica is on the west coast. That's where everyone will be going. That is where people will be, for certain. If we go east, we may waste a lot of valuable time, discovering dead people or no people at all. We're going west."
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Finishing the packing, Morgan whispered to Bess, "We don't have to do what she wants! She is not in charge! She won't even tell us her name!"
"Morgan," Bess mused, ignoring the ranting as she packed, "do you know who her family is? Wasn't she calling to someone as we disconnected?"
Morgan didn't really want to think about when the pod disconnected, but found himself thinking about it, since it might be a clue to the woman's identity. Finally, he had to shake his head at his wife. "She was standing in the way of the window," he confessed. "I couldn't see who she was talking to."
"I was too scared to notice," Bess said.
When the woman came back, Morgan rose to his feet.
"Morgan!" Bess cautioned with a hand on his arm.
He shrugged her hand away. "Look, Miss-High-and-Mighty!" Bess sighed and shook her head. "You may like your own way, but you've got two other opinions here that don't agree you're the Boss! I looked; that eastbound signal isn't that far away. We should go there first!"
The woman looked at him and turned around without a word to go back inside the pod for more supplies.
"Hey!" Morgan said. "She just ignored me!"
"Let it go, Morgan," Bess said.
A half an hour later, the woman walked out. She had fashioned some kind of backpack and was carrying two small-to-medium size boxes under her arms. She stopped to look at Bess. "Good luck," she said. She looked witheringly at Morgan once more, then began walking to the west.
Both Bess and Morgan were too shocked to comment.
Finally, Morgan said, "We're going east."
Bess sighed. "Yes, Morgan," she said, wondering if they would ever see the mysterious woman again.
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As the Martins trekked on, the louder Morgan's complaints got. To stave off his complaints, Bess carried more and more of the boxes. She was relieved beyond belief when they happened to stumble into Devon Adair's camp.
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John Danziger looked all over for his daughter and finally found her in the last place he thought to look for her: their tent. She was sitting on the edge of her cot, staring down at the floor. John frowned as he knelt beside her.
"True?" he asked. He felt her forehead; she didn't seem to have a fever. She shrugged away from his touch. Now getting alarmed, he said, "What is it, baby?"
"Mommy," she said in a quiet voice.
"Oh, sweetheart," John said. He sat next to her and, in one smooth motion, lifted her onto his lap and held her. "I'm sorry, baby," he said. *This is bad,* John thought. *True calls Elle "Mommy" less than she calls me "Daddy."*
True laid her head on her father's broad chest. "I thought...when I saw....the other people...that Mommy would be with them."
"I know, baby," John said. "Me, too."
He held her for a while, but True didn't cry. She just sat there. Finally, she said, "Mommy's dead, isn't she?"
"I don't know, True," he said. "I saw her in that other pod, remember? I just didn't see who was with her because your mommy was standing in the way. But she was IN a life pod, True. She's GOT to be alive."
"If she made it down to the planet," True said.
"We have to believe that she did," John told her firmly. In his heart, though, he wondered if he was saying the right thing. Should he be preparing True for her mother's death? The trouble was, HE didn't want to believe it.
"Are you sure, Daddy?" True asked.
Dammit. These are the times when he hated to be a parent. And now he had to do it all alone. What should he tell her, what HE wanted to hear or the truth? John closed his eyes, trying to think of something to say.
"Daddy?" True asked again.
He opened his eyes and looked at True's earnest, innocent face. With a pain in his soul that he would never be able to describe, he said quietly, "There doesn't seem to be a very good chance, True-girl. Baby, we may have to be realistic. Hopeful, but realistic. I know it doesn't sound possible to do both, but can you try?"
"I'll try, Daddy," True said.
Father and daughter held each other for a long time, grieving in their own way. Both missed the Martins' tale of how their pod accidentally disconnected.
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Much later that evening, John Danziger shuffled out of his tent, feeling like he wanted to die.
He leaned up against the nearest tree near the perimeter and sat down heavily. He felt...empty. He had just watched his beloved daughter cry herself to sleep and wished he could do the same but he couldn't. He felt...dead. But he knew he had to go on, for True's sake.
*Oh, God...Elle,* he thought in misery, burying his head in his arms. The tears still refused to come, accentuating his pain.
He heard a nearby crunch and looked up into Walman's concerned face. Walman didn't want to butt in, John could tell, but he wanted to help, too. John appreciated the effort.
Walman, unable to find the words, finally sat down next to John. The two friends studied the deep, dark woods, still hoping that somehow Elle would walk out, unharmed. Finally, John couldn't stand the silence. "So, what's with those two?" John asked woodenly, his head inclining towards the new tent set off into the distance.
Walman snorted. "Wouldja believe the government liaison and his wife?"
"Great," John muttered. "Just what we need."
"The wife's a looker," Walman mused, "but the liaison...." Walman just finally shook his head in disgust.
"So there was no one with them, right?"
"There WAS someone with them."
John snapped his head up to look at Walman.
"Forget it, Danziger, it wasn't Elle."
"How do you know?"
"Martin said it was a complete psycho who attacked him and his wife until he finally drove her away when they landed."
"A psycho?"
"Yeah, that woman was totally out of her head. Elle is the most stable person we know."
"Yeah, but...."
"John," Walman said firmly, "it wasn't her. You have GOT to accept it. For True's sake."
"...yeah...."
Silence fell once more.
Story Notes:
Hello, Earth2 friends! Remember me? Sometimes I lurk a little too well...?
Anyway, I got tired of seeing this on my list of 'incomplete stories' so I finished it! I apologize for the delay and the quality - I admit it's not my best. But I tried! At any rate, it is DONE!!!
I would not be at all surprised for anyone to remember so I am reposting the whole thing. To refresh your memories, this is a "what if" - a tale for an alternate dimension or whatever you want to call it. It's "what if Elle had married John instead of taking that doomed space walk?" Hope you like.
BTW, permission is given for any archivists who want to add it to their Earth2 fanfic web pages. And many thanks are given to my beta-readers Inga, Paula Sanders (remember, Paula? ), Susan McNeill, Barbara Eickhoff and Liz Gregg!
Enjoy!
Rhonda, the Lurking Grendler!
Anyway, I got tired of seeing this on my list of 'incomplete stories' so I finished it! I apologize for the delay and the quality - I admit it's not my best. But I tried! At any rate, it is DONE!!!
I would not be at all surprised for anyone to remember so I am reposting the whole thing. To refresh your memories, this is a "what if" - a tale for an alternate dimension or whatever you want to call it. It's "what if Elle had married John instead of taking that doomed space walk?" Hope you like.
BTW, permission is given for any archivists who want to add it to their Earth2 fanfic web pages. And many thanks are given to my beta-readers Inga, Paula Sanders (remember, Paula? ), Susan McNeill, Barbara Eickhoff and Liz Gregg!
Enjoy!
Rhonda, the Lurking Grendler!