Steve’s shorts: Dr. Carlos’s Lost Love…
Dr. Carlos’s Lost Love
Copyright 2019, Steven M. Moore
Carlos Obregon performed a decent dive and surfaced in the turquoise water where bubbly froth from the waterfall floated in clumps.
“Not bad, doc,” Gina Kal said, splashing water toward him. “I’m impressed.”
“My home planet was a bit like this, you know. At least in the summer.”
“I’ve never been to New Haven,” said the exobiologist. “I don’t like crowded planets. That’s one reason I joined SEB.”
Obregon treaded water. “Good E-type planets aren’t that common. That’s one reason the Space Exploration Bureau keeps trying to find them, and that, dear lady, is why you and I have interesting employment.” He ducked his head below the water and smoothed back his hair. “I guess you feel at home here then. No one except our landing party present. Only grass feeders and their predators.”
Kal scrambled onto a rock in the middle of the pool and stretched in the sun, her naked body glistening with the jewel-like beads of water. Obregon felt an ancient urge stirring in his loins and sighed. A few centuries separated their ages. A romance with her wouldn’t normally be a problem, but the only thing they had in common so far had been their mutual desire for a day off from exploring the pristine planet. Kal had suggested the swim.
She had become a good friend during their work days together at camp, her field close enough to his to break the ice between the new crewmember of the starship Brendan and its chief medical officer. He had pegged her for a loner, a curious lady who had trouble adjusting to the rest of the crew. That wasn’t unusual, though. The captain chose professional skills over personalities. Sometimes that led to personality conflicts. But two days on E-4013 had changed things between the two.
***
One day later, Gina Kal was in the camp’s medical tent; she was running a high fever.
“Must be a local bacteria or virus,” said his Tali intern on board Brendan. His face showed no expression. Tali’s faces never showed expressions, but the intern’s ears were twitching, body language for stress and worry.
“I’m working on it,” said Obregon. “Lester doesn’t like it at all, of course.”
The captain had already put the camp in quarantine. No one would be allowed back on the starship until Obregon (1) determined what the contagion was, and (2) came up with a way to combat it. No one else had taken sick, though. That gave Obregon a clue. Another one was that he wasn’t sick either.
He returned to the pool and took samples from the water and the rock where Gina had been perched talking to Obregon. A suspicious sample from the rock was the culprit, just as he expected.
“The contagion is from that gray muck on the rock,” he announced to his intern a day later. “Reilly says it’s everywhere. Those grazers with that listless appearance are full of it. The predators might be too.”
“You work fast, Carlos. What can we use against it?”
“I’ll need your help up there. We need an old-fashioned antibiotic engineered to go after this stuff. That should be doable in a few days. I’ll send you data as I get it. You’ll have to send a probe down with the antidote.”
He went to check on Gina again. She was clear-eyed and smiled at him.
***
“I guess your defenses are good,” Obregon told Gina. “I’d like to take a sample of your blood and see how you managed that.”
“Life is all around me, within me,” she said. “Your friend Gina has a beautiful mind. Our horizons have expanded.”
Still with a fever? He took her temperature. No, she seems fever-free.
He took the blood sample and went to his field lab. The contagion’s cell count dominated over her white blood cell count. If anything, the infection is worse!
“You’re still infected,” he told Gina. “I don’t understand why you don’t have a fever.”
“I-we have a symbiotic relationship now,” Gina said. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I-we can do many things together now. Do you understand, Human doctor?”
Obregon frowned. Has she gone crazy? Is the contagion eating away at her mind?”
***
Days later, the strange symbiotic creature Gina had become spent more and more time away from camp and wasn’t present when Obregon injected the engineered antibiotic in the exploratory party, including himself. They weren’t infected, but caution prevailed. He couldn’t find Gina, though, to inoculate her.
Where the hell is she? He decided to go look for her.
Climbing to the top of a hill near camp, he spotted her on the plain below, riding with the herd, on top of one of the grazers with her hair streaming behind in the breeze. He beckoned to her.
“You’ve become an extraterrestrial Lady Godiva,” he said as she rode up to him.
“You’re always talking about ancient history,” she said. “I-we find it amusing.”
“Stop this I-we business. I need to kill that crap in you.”
She dismounted and poked him in the chest. “I-we will not submit. I-we like not feeling alone.”
“Never alone? That contagion has taken over your mind.”
“Not taken over. Joined. I-we will not return to Brendan.”
“I can’t leave you here alone on this primitive planet.”
“Not primitive, Obregon. Different. I’ve felt alone all our life. Now I’m not. I-we are together now.” She tapped her head.
He reached for her, but she shied away and jumped onto the creature again.
“Tell the captain I quit so that I-we can live.” She rode off.
***
It wasn’t long before the captain lifted the quarantine. The shuttle came for the landing party.
“Coming aboard?” said Reilly, Brendan’s head of security.
Obregon looked at the hill. “Give me twenty minutes.”
“It’s useless,” said Reilly.
“I know. But I have to try.”
He climbed the hill and saw her. She was hugging one of the grazers. It seemed like she was talking to it. He waved at her. She jumped on the animal and climbed the hill toward him.
“I-we know you’re about to leave. You are friends, but my-our place is here. Do you understand that yet?”
“Are you sure you want to do this, Gina? Last chance to change your mind.”
“I-we are happy with our symbiotic relationship. I-we can populate this world together.”
“I’m not going to try to guess how you’ll manage that. I understand the ‘we’ part, but is that part exploiting the ‘Gina’ part?”
“The Gina-part has free will so she can terminate the symbiosis at any time. She doesn’t want to feel alone anymore.”
“We are born alone,” said Obregon, “but we have others around us we can draw closer to. How close is a matter of personal choice…and maybe the environment.”
“When a human being feels lonely, the attainable closeness is often not enough. The Gina-part is happier here, Obregon. She needs the we-part. We need each other.”
He nodded and walked away, wondering what strange future was in store for his friend. Only at the camp did he stop and look back to where Gina was mounted on the ungulate. She waved and rode off down the hill’s far side.
I’ve seen many strange things in my career, he thought, but this might be the strangest experience I’ve had. He sighed. He looked toward the shuttle. Reilly was gesturing toward him. Now I’m the one who feels lonely.
***
Comments are always welcome.
The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. This bundle of three novels covers centuries of future history, from the dystopian Earth with multinational corporations’ mercenaries controlling the planet, to star colonies and first contact, and beyond. It’s my Foundation trilogy, but, unlike Dr. Asimov, there are ETs. Meet ones like the Rangers, Tali, and Swarm, a collective intelligence made up of billions of minds. Many hours of sci-fi reading await you. Available in ebook version only (a print version would be unwieldy) at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lenders (Overdrive, etc.).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
