Season of Passage, The (5 page)

Jennifer began to rub the sticks together, humming a melody she often repeated when she was alone. She did not know where she had learned the

song, although she might have heard it on the radio. Quickly the sticks began to heat. In a few seconds she had smoke, and then a tiny orange

flame, which she fed with scraps of bark from the sides of the logs. The bark was dry; the logs caught fast. The chil melted off her skin like mud

disappeared from her feet in a running stream. Jennifer smiled.

She real y loved fires.

Jennifer moved close to the logs and stared at the flames. The warmth that came from them always had a soothing effect on her. She blinked in the

warm light and her mind began to drift. There was another funny thing about fire. The longer she stared into it, the more colors she saw. There were

greens and blues and purples, pulsating on and off, deep within the yel ow flames. Once Jennifer had asked Lauren about them and Lauren said

she must be seeing the burn-off of residual chemicals on the logs. Jennifer wasn't sure Lauren was right. Sometimes the pulsating colors took on

the faint shapes of faces. They were never people she knew, but they looked like people she thought she should know.

Jennifer shifted stil closer to the fire, wanting to touch it. Of course, she knew, the idea was childish and dangerous. Yet she occasional y wondered

what it would be like to be immersed in flames, and not burn. She was not certain, even after al this time of growing up, whether fire had to burn

every time, or everybody.

Quickly, Jennifer waved her hand through the fire. If you were fast, it missed you. She slashed her hand above the logs again, and then again and

again, slowing down a fraction of a second with each try. It was a game she often played. It was fun. The flames never hurt her. Nevertheless,

Jennifer suspected there was a limit beyond which she shouldn't slew down. And it wasn't just because she might get burned. Something else might

happen. She could feel the something else in the same way she could see the colored sparks and the faint faces - just between what she believed

was real, and what might be imagination, in a slippery part of the mind she could never quite grasp. But this something else - she didn't know if it

was a good thing or a bad thing.

Jennifer sat back and looked at the red book waiting on the couch. That was exactly how she felt - it was waiting for her, like a story that had been

written for her eyes alone.

Some love story, she thought sarcastical y. But she'd had to lie to Lauren. Had she told Lauren the truth, her sister might have told her not to read it.

Lauren worried about what Jennifer put in her head because of her nightmares. But the book had to be read, Jennifer felt certain of that. There were

things that had to be known, terrible things.

But why? Jennifer thought. She did not know. The colored faces in the fire did not know either, or if they did, they were not tel ing her. The whole

thing had her confused. She knew things she didn't real y know; she sensed the knowledge. She felt things no one else seemed to feel.

The colors in the fire began to fade. Jennifer sat back from the logs and tried to think happy thoughts. While Lauren was gone, Terry's new book

would come out. A mil ion people would read it, and he would become rich and famous. Jennifer wanted Terry to be successful. She thought it

would make him happy. She wondered: if she wrote a book, would it make her happy? Sometimes she felt as if she knew a story, a very old story,

that no one else knew. But when she concentrated on the people in the story, they blurred, just like the faces in the fire did when she leaned too

close to the flames. One thing for certain, though. The people in her story knew about the power of fire.

Like the people in the book on the couch.

Jennifer looked over at it again. She knew - it was another one of those things she sensed was true - that the people in the book should have used

fire against the enemy, and nothing else. They shouldn't have used the terrible things, those things that made such a mess. Those things didn't work

very wel . The enemy just kept coming.

Jennifer suddenly noticed the logs were almost al gone. Burned to ash by the fire.

Have hours gone by? That's impossible. I was just sitting here and thinking.

Yet it was true. The flames were dying. The room was cold. It didn't seem fair. Every time she looked at the colored faces and tried to remember the

story in her head, she would lose a slice of her life. It seemed doubly unfair to her at the moment because she didn't want to go out in the dark and

cold for more logs. She was afraid something would get her. She was in high school, but she stil believed in monsters. She often dreamed about

them. They always took the forms of snakes and lizards. Except they walked and talked like people.

Jennifer stood and went into Lauren's bedroom, where she put on a warm sweater. Then she returned to the front room and sat on the couch. The

last of the flames flickered out. At last she was alone with her book. She picked it up reluctantly. She wondered where the author had gotten his

story. That's what she had been trying to ask Terry. Was it from outside? The real outside?

Jennifer flipped open the book and began to read. She wasn't at the spot where she had left off, but the rest did not matter. The doctor was

discussing how to destroy the enemy. But did he real y know what he was talking about when he lectured the other people on the enemy's

weakness? Jennifer had her doubts. He was a good man, but even good men could be tricked by lies, and be lul ed into a false sense of security.

Jennifer knew what liars the enemy were.

Jennifer finished the page and began to read the next. Then she began to feel sick. She was having trouble breathing. The ful implications of what

they were planning hit her with striking clarity. No! She could never do that! She would die first. She would just as soon burn.

Please, God, no.

Jennifer Wagner began to scream. She screamed, knowing no one could hear her, until she fainted.

FOUR

The meal had been tasty. Lasagna for him. Swordfish for Lauren. They shared a lemon mist cake for dessert. They were both stuffed. The candles

on their corner table burned low. Except for the two of them, the restaurant was empty. Soon it would be time to go. But Terry had yet to unwind. He

continued to feel uptight, and he wondered if it was from the day's travels or from the caffeine in the coffee he was drinking. He was on his fourth

cup. He couldn't believe this was the last civilized meal they were going to have together for two years. The food had been great, but the dinner had

depressed him. He wished Jennifer had come.

A long silence had settled between them.

'What are you thinking, Terry?' Lauren asked final y, playing with the two-carat diamond engagement ring he had given her six months after they had

met. The light of the candles quivered in her brown eyes. Terry lifted his coffee cup and took a disinterested sip.

'The usual,' he said.

'It's a long time,' she said. 'For you.'

'Yeah,' Terry agreed. Lauren would be fast asleep during almost the entire voyage to and from Mars. She would only be awake for forty days al told.

Terry wished he could find a hibernator somewhere. He had already

checked in the yel ow pages for one.

'I won't tel you to write,' Lauren said, letting go of the ring. 'Not letters. But I do want to read another one of your books when I get home. Have you

decided what you're going to do next?'

He shrugged. 'Something with a happy ending.'

'Ricky had a happy ending. He didn't get stepped on.'

'Yeah. But he was a cockroach. They don't live long. He probably died right after my last page.'

'We're cheery tonight,' Lauren said.

'I'm sorry.'

'I read your article this evening. I liked it.'

'Real y? Tom told me to write it.' Tom Brenner was his partner at the paper. They had a good relationship: they both hated their jobs. Tom wanted to

be president of a Fortune Five Hundred company. He didn't care what the product was, as long as he got to order people around and had

secretaries that longed to sharpen his pencil while sitting on his lap. Terry went on, 'I don't know why. It should have just been a fil er. I didn't say

anything that hasn't been said a mil ion times before. Except for maybe my slant on insanity. What did you think of that?'

Lauren hesitated. 'I got interrupted at that part. How did you develop it?'

'I said the Russians lost their marbles because they were cooped up for too long without women.'

Lauren laughed. She laughed at al his jokes, even the ones that weren't funny. He liked that quality in a woman. 'You're kidding?'

'Wel , actual y I combined the points of infection and insanity. I said Dmitri and his men got sick and murdered each other.'

'What about Carl Bensk in orbit?'

Terry drank more coffee. 'That guy's always a problem. I said that the infection might have been potent enough to cross the hundred miles of space.'

Lauren frowned. 'You could have done better than that.'

Terry waved his hand. 'I know al the arguments against it. But I don't think you scientists have any imagination. In my book, if you have an alien

infection, anything goes.'

'Life can't exist in a vacuum,' Lauren said.

'Life as we know it.'

'Ah - I love that phrase. It doesn't say anything. But forget space. Mars itself is hostile enough. The air pressure there is ten mil ibars. Earth's is a

thousand mil ibars. In such a rarefied atmosphere, water cannot exist. It vaporizes or freezes. No water, no life.'

Terry regarded his half-empty cup of coffee and wondered how much of it was water. Mr Russo could cook, but he had trouble boiling water. 'Your

remark doesn't alter my opinion in the slightest,' he said.

'Why not?'

'Because I don't know what a mil ibar is.'

Lauren laughed.

He went on, 'I thought you said you liked my article?'

'I liked the way it was written. But I've read too much stuff lately that tries to dramatize the situation. Think of al the people who are going to be

disappointed when nothing far out happens.'

Terry was not surprised with her remark. Lauren always denied the enigma surrounding the disappearance of the Russians. To her the Russians

were simply lousy engineers. t 'I, for one, believe in Martians,' he said. 'You can only find what you're looking for. If you don't know what the aliens

look like, they could be standing right in front of you and you wouldn't see them.'

Lauren chuckled. 'Jim said something like that the other day.'

Jim was Professor James Ranoth, world-famous geologist and archaeologist. He was second in command of Lauren's mission. The guy was

always nice, which would have annoyed Terry if Jim hadn't been so easygoing at the same time. But Terry thought Jim, at fifty-two, was kind of old

to be going to Mars.

'What did he say?' Terry asked.

'He wondered if our guardian angels would become visible to us once we were on Mars.'

'Does he believe in angels?'

'I'm sure he was just joking,' Lauren said.

Lauren was an atheist. Terry had tried to convert her to one of the popular religions - he didn't real y care which one - but being a lapsed Catholic

himself, he had failed miserably. But even though he joked about the subject with Lauren, her total lack of belief in a higher power disturbed him. He

didn't know about Jesus and rising on the third day and that routine, but he liked to think that in the end everything was going to work out for the

best. It gave him a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Besides, Lauren was such a mysterious creature, he didn't see how she could deny a

grand mystery for the universe and be true to herself.

'I believe in angels,' Terry said. 'I believe in you.'

She smiled at the remark, but then turned thoughtful. 'You know, I'm as anxious as anyone to learn what became of the Russians. Maybe Carl Bensk

is stil alive. It's possible. Remotely possible.'

'What about those on the planet?'

Lauren shook her head. 'No way.' She paused. 'Did I tel you I met Commander Dmitri once?'

He was surprised. 'No.'

'He was in Florida a year before I met you. He reminded me of Jim - intel igent, warm. It's sad.'

'Does the Nova have room to take Carl home?'

'No, of course not. We only have six hibernaculums. But we can be flexible.'

The talk of death did not sit wel with Terry. 'Yeah,' he said with a trace of bitterness. 'Knowing NASA, you'l draw straws.'

'There's no wood aboard the Nova,' Lauren said flatly. She turned away and stared across the empty restaurant, frowning. Terry sensed the source

of her trouble before she spoke. 'Sometimes I ask myself how I can just go off and leave her for so long.'

Terry sighed to himself. It was a good question. But he had a good answer. Lauren was driven to go Mars. It was her destiny to go - so the atheist

believed - and she didn't care what it cost to fulfil it. No, that was not fair. She did care, yet she was wil ing to pay the price anyway. But Terry kept

his thoughts to himself. Making her feel more guilty than she already did would solve nothing.

Terry knew Lauren often wondered why she had been picked in front of so many other qualified doctors. In fact, of the five finalists for the job, she

had been the least qualified. Although a board-certified surgeon - a remarkable feat for a thirty-two-year-old female who had been raising a baby

sister - she had few years of clinical experience; she had begun chasing her dream of being an astronaut at the very beginning of her residency. But