The nightmare that woke her up wasn’t exactly unexpected.  She sat up in bed and breathed deeply.  Not long ago John had told her about the Venus mission he had been part of as an astronaut cadet and the mysterious plague that had cost him two good friends.  And now he had been exposed to some kind of plague on this new world he was checking out.  The system held a binary planetary system, a planet and slightly smaller moon both capable of supporting life.  John had left the plague world behind and headed to its moon before returning to Alpha.  She knew they were going to have an argument about keeping him in quarantine when he returned, but it was an argument she intended to win.  The nightmare had been a confused image of plague and people she knew and loved dying while she was unable to help, or do anything to prevent it.  She had experienced similar nightmares before.

She glanced at the pillow next to her and realized she was sleeping on her side of the bed.  After Lee died, she’d moved to the middle of the bed, but she had happily and easily fallen back into the habit of sharing a bed after she met John.  She lay back and scooted to the center of the bed, pulling his pillow to her.  It still held his scent.  She knew he was okay and knew he would be headed home again by the time her next duty shift started.  She buried her nose in his pillow and breathed deeply.  Relaxing completely, she drifted back into sleep.

It seemed like only a few minutes later that her compost chimed.  Someone was at the door.  She pulled blonde hair from her eyes and looked at the clock.  Her alarm would be ringing anyway in just a few minutes, but who would be wanting a pre-breakfast meeting?  She rose and touched the stud on the panel so she could see who was at the door. 

The tiny screen showed Tony and Alan standing in the corridor.  She knew why they were there without opening the door; without them saying a word.  She touched the panel to allow them entrance.  She felt as if some kind of extremely cold liquid had just been poured inside her.  She knew how to play the part; she had played it before.

“Tony, Alan, come in.  What is it?”  They wouldn’t be here, in person, together, and at this time of day, for any reason she could think of, but one.

They entered the room together and the door slid shut behind them.  Both stood just inside the room hesitant.  She looked from one to the other.  Knowing what they would say.  Waiting for them to say it and get it over with. 

They glanced at each other and Alan stepped forward.  He took her hands in his and led her to the sofa. 

“Helena, a few hours ago, John’s Eagle crashed on the second planet.  Fraser and Alibe took an Eagle out after them almost immediately.  They made contact with the inhabitants of the moon, and landed.  John and Blake survived the crash, but this place was some kind of penal colony and they had force field fences.”  He paused.  Helena hadn’t moved, and he couldn’t meet her eyes.  “They walked into one of these fences.  Neither of them survived.”

Her hands were cold and sweating, but she couldn’t find any words.  She didn’t know what to do.  To be here without John… It was something she just couldn’t fathom.

Tony cleared his throat.  “Helena, we’re—“

She held up a hand.  She didn’t want to hear it.  She wasn’t ready for condolences, didn’t feel up to being brave.  “Thank you,” she managed.  “I need to be alone for a while.”

Tony nodded.  Alan looked worried. 

“I’ll be okay,” she heard her voice say from a long distance away.  “I just really need to be alone right now.”

“Helena, if you need anything…” Tony started again.

She shook her head, hoping they would just go.  They shifted awkwardly, hesitated for a moment or two, but finally stood and left the room. 

She sat still, Alan’s words echoing around in her head.   She couldn’t believe how much this hurt.  There was no comparison to the way it hurt when they told her about Lee.  That had been long and slow and drawn out.  No news… no news…days and days of no news.  This had been sudden, the swiftness of a scalpel cut and she felt as if her life could drain out through the wound it left behind.  She stood and returned to the bed.  She sat and stared at the pillow, John’s pillow.  Slowly, very slowly, as if ever movement caused pain, she picked up the pillow and breathed deeply of its scent.  She closed her eyes and lay back on her side. 

Why couldn’t she cry?  Why wasn’t she crying?  She didn’t know.  Tears wouldn’t come.  A word floated in her mind.  Bereft.  She felt bereft.  Adrift, alone, forsaken, isolated, none of those words fit like bereft.  She slid into a gray form of consciousness, neither asleep nor awake, simply bereft.

When the door opened, she knew it had happened, but she didn’t care enough to look up.  Sandra Benes sat on the bed next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I cannot believe those two just told you and left like that.”

“I told them to.”

“When Paul died, did you leave me?” Sandra asked.  Her voice, still soft, was husky.  Helena knew she had been crying.

“No,” Helena said. 

“And I will not let you be alone either.”

Helena reached out and took Sandra’s hand.  She held it like a lifeline.  There were still no tears, and Sandra offered no words of comfort.  Those could be saved for later.  Right now, there was only the pain.

Helena didn’t know how much time had passed; hours at least.  Maya arrived, bringing hot tea and some kind of broth.  She didn’t stay, and Helena knew she was uncomfortable with her small knowledge of human pain and grief.  She was probably also helping Tony and Alan hold the rest of Alpha together, but Helena cared little about that at the moment.  She knew that eventually she would, but right now, she only wanted the numbness of shock she felt. 

Good to her word, Sandra didn’t leave her side.  After insisting Helena eat the soup and drink the tea, she again sat on the side of the bed in silence.  At some point Helena drifted off to an uneasy sleep. 

She awoke when Sandra shook her shoulder.  “Helena, Helena.  We’ve gotten another signal from the planet.  We think it may be John.”

Helena sat up groggily, pulling her blonde hair away from her face?  “What?” she asked, confused.

“Bill and Alibe have turned around.  They are headed back to the other planet—the one with the plague.  One of our emergency homing devices has been turned on there.  They think John may be alive!”

“How can that be?”

“I do not know,” she shook her head. “But I am needed in Command Center.  Come, get dressed.  We need to know.”

She gripped Sandra’s hand.  “If it’s not him…”

Sandra gripped her shoulders and looked her in the eye.  “I believe it is him.  Come.”  The few words, earnestly spoken were enough to convince Helena.  She did her best to keep hope at bay.  If it were Blake… well, it would be good if he were alive, but if it wasn’t John, she couldn’t go through some sort of emotional roller coaster like she had with Lee.  She didn’t think she was that strong.

She pulled on her uniform and with it wrapped an emotional shield around herself.  She didn’t want to talk to anyone, and was likely to stare people down if they approached her, but Sandra was right, she needed to be in Command Center.  Sandra waited patiently for her and took her hand briefly, squeezing it hard before they opened the door and left the safety of her quarters.

They got to Command Center just in time to see the report from the Eagle.  Bill was transmitting a picture from just above the ground.  Someone in a gray jumpsuit was walking steadily toward the Eagle as it landed.  Helena had no doubt that it was John, just by the way he moved.  She gripped the back of his chair which was currently occupied by Tony, a wave of relief passing through her like nothing she had ever felt before.  He was alive, and would be coming home to her.

Ed Spencer turned and gave her a quick grin, and she smiled in return.  He turned serious immediately.  “We still don’t know what caused everyone to die down there.”

Helena nodded.  “Quarantine procedures,” she insisted quietly.  “Inform Bill and Alibe.  I don’t want them exposed to it.  And when John comes aboard, we need to ask him to get samples for us to determine the cause.”

Ed nodded and Alan, at the pilot’s station, turned to follow her orders as well.  The mood was jubilant, but they were a good team and knew the dangers still inherent in the conditions that currently existed.  Tony stood and offered her the Command chair.  She hesitated, but he nodded, and she sat to welcome John back to life.

Two weeks of quarantine were planned for John.  She kept him as busy as possible.  Any computer or paperwork that he would normally handle from his office or his desk in Command Center could be done in the quarantine lab.  Her people worked on the samples he brought back around the clock; trying to find out just why he and Blake had not succumbed to the plague, or apparently passed it along to those on the moon Elna. 

They had dinner together each evening, from opposites sides of the window in the lab.  She made sure they had privacy for that time, to share a meal, and simply sit and talk. He was impatient, as usual, but understood the need for the procedure and did his best to cooperate. 

Halfway through the second week, she went on duty to find Ben Vincent and Ed Spencer waiting for her.  They handed over their results and went over them with her. 

It was a plague.  It was spread by airborne bacteria, and worked by blocking neurotransmitters in the Entran’s nervous system.  The bacteria was inhaled by the victim, and immediately taken into the bloodstream.  The bacteria excreted an enzyme that immediately ionized the neurotransmitters on contact, rendering them ineffective.  The chemical effect was simply to completely stop all neural transmission on contact.  Since it was airborne, it affected the lungs first. Breathing stopped.  The neurons around the heart were affected next, as the bacteria were taken directly from lungs to heart through the main artery.  Once the heart stopped beating it didn’t matter that the neurotransmitters in your brain might not have been affected yet, you were already dead. 

Fortunately, Entrans and Humans used different enzymes as neurotransmitters.  It could not have the same effect on Humans.  Psychons were also immune to the effects, using another completely different enzyme for the same purpose.  The Eagle’s life support system had efficiently filtered the bacteria out of the air as John and Blake had flown from the planet to the moon.  The same antibacterial filters and scrubs that were used to filter out Earth’s microbes had worked efficiently—and perhaps more so, since none of these microbes had any innate resistance to the antibacterial washes used in the life support system.  The Entrans left alive on the penal colony had not been exposed to the bacteria. 

Helena thanked her staff and headed for the isolation lab to set John free.  It was the beginning of his normal duty shift and after a quick, and public, hug and kiss for Helena, he set off for his regular duties and she for hers. 

Despite plenty to do for the day, she managed to plan a homecoming for him that evening, dinner together alone in her quarters.  She did everything she could to plan a relaxing romantic evening for them, given Alpha’s limited resources.  She also let him know what she was doing, since long experience had taught her that he could become so involved in work that he wouldn’t remember to eat or sleep.  She didn’t begrudge that.  It was his intensity that had kept them all alive so far, and undoubtedly brought him back to her this time as well.

She left Medical Center with plenty of time to pick up dinner, arrange it attractively, shower and change into a soft and well-worn cotton nightgown that she knew was his favorite.  He usually simply walked right in to her quarters.  It had been ages since he spent a night in his own quarters.  Tonight he used the doorbell and she quickly touched the key on the com panel to let him in. 

He held a single flower, and stepped inside with a smile.  He glanced down at the white flower and back at her.  “I wanted roses, but there weren’t any right now.  Shermeen insisted you would like this.”

“I love gardenias,” she said with a smile.  She took it gently, breathed in its fragrance and set it on the table.  She moved into his arms and noted that he had shaved.  She kissed him softly, and was pleased when he made sure the kiss became increasingly more ardent.

During all the time he had been in quarantine, neither had spoken of that awful time when she had thought him dead, and neither wanted to put that into words right now.  He held her close and she breathed in his scent, settling into his arms and relaxing finally as she had not done in the past two weeks.

After dinner, he asked her to dance.  They lowered the lights, put on favorite music and savored the chance to hold each other close.  Then he took her to bed and touched her and loved her and they reassured each other that they were together again. 

This nightmare was not expected.  She woke gasping for breath and struggling from John’s protective embrace well after midnight.  The bleak feeling from a week and a half ago returned in dream form. 

John sat up next to her.  “Hey, it’s all right.  I’m here, now.”

Tears streamed down her face and she turned and moved into his arms, crying freely in the darkened room. 

“John, it was so awful.”

He held her and stroked her hair while she cried, uncertain what to say to comfort her.  Both knew this could happen again.  Both knew he couldn’t promise her that he would keep himself out of danger.

“John, there’s something I want to you to do for me,” she said from the safety of his arms.

“Helena-“ 

“No, you can do this.  Please.”

“What?”

“The gene bank.  You haven’t given me a specimen.  I know when you let me start; it was to be voluntary.  I haven’t pressure you.  I haven’t even asked.  Please John, if this really happened… if you didn’t return, I would have been left with nothing.”  She hesitated and then whispered again, “nothing.”  The tears wouldn’t stop coming, even though she wished they would.

He held her, saying nothing.

“Please, John.”

He sighed and lay back on the bed, pulling her gently with him, pillowing her head on his chest.  “Helena, you know how I feel about this.  I don’t want to father a child I can’t raise.”

“John, even if we had a child, the way we live, there’s no guarantee—“ she trailed off, not wanting to say the words.

He stroked her hair.  “Our child, Helena.  That would be different.  If it were possible, if we could have a child, we could at least make plans, leave directions, appoint a guardian.  But Helena, this way, I can’t even guarantee you’d be the mother of my child!”

This wasn’t an easy conversation for either of them.  Their experience on the ship of the Darians had affected both of them deeply, but in different ways.  John felt the Darians’ attitude to survive at any cost through their gene bank was narcissistic and unrealistic.  Although Helena had nearly lost her life to their obsession for survival, she understood that they were trying to accomplish and identified with their struggle to survive.  She knew as well as John did that they could not afford the resources needed to raise children on Alpha at this time.  She didn’t like it, but she understood it.  She feared that they would find a new home, or at least a solution to their scarce resources, only after it was too late to create a new generation and to survive as a people.  The gene bank had been her focus for their survival, reluctantly allowed by John, but voluntary at his insistence. 

“Helena,” he whispered into the silence between them.  “It would make me feel as if I had been violated.”

She placed her hand against his chest.  He had given her all sorts of reasons in past arguments, and lately, it was an argument that both had tried to avoid.  He had never mentioned this to her before, but it had a ring of truth to it that many of his previous arguments did not.

She sat up next to him on the bed.  “I could create an embryo.  My egg.  Your sperm.  Our child.  We could leave instructions that it be destroyed if something happened to both of us.”  Her tears were returning.  He reached up and wiped her cheek gently.  “John, you can’t imagine how alone I felt without you.  To have nothing left…  I’m not sure I can take that.  Please John.”

They stared at each other again and Helena could feel his reluctance.  She still could not stop crying.  She stood and headed for the bathroom to wash her face.  She swallowed a sob which threatened to overcome her, then breathed deeply until she could control herself.  When she returned to bed, John opened his arms and she moved into them willingly.  This was a new twist on an old fight, probably one of their most long-running disagreements.  It didn’t mean she didn’t love him, or need him in her life, and she knew that quite well, and she was well aware that he knew that too. 

She allowed him to caress her and hold her.  She wanted that.  And she hoped she didn’t start crying again. 

“You could do that?  We would be guaranteed that it would be our child?” he asked softly.

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” she whispered back. 

He stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead.  “All right, tell me what you want me to do.” He sighed.

She sighed too, and relaxed at his words.  “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.  She drifted back into dreamless sleep before he could say anything more.

Ellen Lindow

January 20, 2001