Fugitive From Asteron (16 page)

After ending the dive, I overtook
her plane, flying inverted a scant few feet above her, so we were canopy to canopy.
She was so close that I could feel her presence change the air currents around
me. Then we maneuvered so that I flew upright, my plane remaining just above
hers. Without being able to see her plane from my canopy, I rolled on her
command and could only trust that she would roll with me. We ended our program
by tumbling effortlessly through the sky together, our two planes so close they
cast one whirling shadow on the ground.

After we landed on the runway,
Kristin barely had time to lift her canopy and remove her helmet before I grabbed
her by the waist and pulled her out of the cockpit, her hair bouncing in
disorderly waves with the snap of my wrists.

“I thought that if
you
gave the commands, you would have more control to execute the maneuvers with a
margin of safety, Kristin. You did
not
have my consent to fly crazy
the way you did!” My hands remained tight around her waist, pulling her toward
me. Her arms fell against my chest and she leaned back to look up at my face.
“You were waiting too long to take us out of danger.”

“But Alex, you fly like that all
the time.”

“But not when I fly with you. From
now on
I
will give the commands, and
you
will follow them.
And we will fly safely.”

“Why are you so cautious when you
fly with me? Don’t you think I’m a good enough pilot—”

“You are a superb pilot. But I do
not want to see you in danger. I want to keep you safe.”
Perhaps you are
the only thing in my life that I can keep safe,
I thought.

“But Alex, it
was . . . exciting . . . to fly the way
we did. If you didn’t like it too, then why didn’t you stop me? You had a
radio.”

She was right! I could have
objected while we were flying, but I did not. Kristin had an odd power of knowing
what I felt before I did. Despite my worries about her safety, I was indeed
strangely excited by flying to the limit with her.

“What is it called, Kristin, when
your eyes are filled with the presence of another and your thoughts are filled
with how supremely well the other moves like one with you?”

“Closeness. It’s called closeness,”
she whispered, her mouth just inches from mine.

I still pulled at her waist. She
still arched back. Her words somehow struck me like another command, this one
of warning. I released her abruptly and stepped back.

She smiled softly in acceptance.
She seemed to sense my limits and did not push beyond them. “I’ll see you
tomorrow,” she said, turning to go.

“Wait.” I reached into my pocket
and pulled out a paper. “Mykroni printed out this admission for two to an event
of some kind. He said he had to work late tonight and was too busy to attend,
so he gave the tickets to me.”

Kristin looked at the paper, which
contained a scanning code and the words
admit two
written beneath it.
“Wow, these are tickets to the Lions’ championship game!”

“Are they the large Earth cats
shown in the billboard for the zoo?”

“These lions are much more
predatory. People would
kill
to get these tickets!”

“Do you want to go?”

“Do I? Yes!”

“Then it is settled. We will go togeth—”

Suddenly a vision flashed before my
mind like a warning signal I could not ignore. I was leaning into a window,
helping a slim figure with golden hair to slip out. I heard a rustling sound. I
grabbed a rock, ready to smash the source of the sound with all my might. Then
I realized it was only a ground animal, and the terror drained for the moment,
until the next panic.

“It is allowed, Kristin, for you
and me to attend this function together? Are you absolutely sure it is
allowed?”

“It’s for
us
to decide,
not for anyone else to decide for us. Don’t you understand that yet, Alex?” she
asked softly.

“There are still areas of Earthling
life that I have little knowledge of and . . . and that I
must not be mistaken about! I must be careful!”

“Alex,” she said, lifting my cold hands
in her warm ones, “what’s wrong? Do you realize you’re clenching your fists and
crumpling the tickets?” She tried to loosen my grip on the paper. “It’s just a
game, Alex. Everyone goes. Do you know what a game is? We’re going to have so
much fun! You can’t imagine! Didn’t we go shopping together? And to Big Eats?
And it was okay, wasn’t it?”

With Kristin’s reassurances, the
terror inside me quieted. I did not know what this lions’ game was, because
only children had leisure time for games in Asteron. But Kristin’s excitement
aroused my curiosity. We decided to work as late as possible to make up the
time we had missed for our rehearsal, and then we would attend what I expected
to be some kind of feline demonstration.

“Alex, are you okay? Did you eat
too many cheese dogs?” As I sat dazed in my seat, Kristin was reaching over to
me, fanning me with the evening’s program. “Your eyes are scary when they bulge
out like that! Do you realize you stopped blinking?”

That night I was indeed stunned to
find myself in a great arena, watching men in white uniforms playing what
Kristin described as the centuries-old Earthling game of baseball. Sitting
behind first base, I scanned the sharp lines of the reddish-brown field and on to
an expansive carpet of grass and then to stands packed with tens of thousands
of screaming spectators. The tiny video I had seen in Feran’s spacecraft had
come to life, with sights and sounds that overwhelmed me.

“Kristin, if this event you call
baseball has nothing to do with state functions, then why else would such a
large crowd gather?”

“For fun.”

After Kristin explained the
procedures of the game, I began to understand the power it held for the crowd.
“Kristin, the athletes on the field are good, no?”

“You bet. They’re the best of the
best.”

“You mean the best—the most
skillful—are permitted to play?”

“They’re the only ones who make it
in this game. They’re hotly pursued by all the teams.”

“You mean they are
not . . . punished?”

“For what? For being the best?” She
stared at me incredulously. “They get a pile of money for being the best, and
the fans worship them.”

“Kristin, is this game played often?
Can we come back again soon?”

“This is the last game of the
season. After tonight this place will be deserted until next spring.”

A sudden roar swelled from the
crowd, pulling Kristin’s eyes back to the action. “Hey, Alex, if you want to
see the best player our home team has, there he is coming up to bat!”

Walking to the home sack, brandishing
a fearsome bat and provoking the fans to thunderous cheers, was the player with
bold, black letters across his back: ALEXANDER.

“Kristin!” I did not recognize the
incredulous cry as my own voice. “In a place far away, on another planet,
a . . . a very bleak planet, I saw this man from your
world! I saw a video scene of him engaged in this game, but I did not know what
it was.”

I grabbed her arms urgently. Seeing
my agitation, she stared at me solemnly.

“The things I saw, the prodigious
swing of Alexander’s bat, the maneuver he performed called a home run, the
cheering of the crowd, the whole scene was . . . it was
so . . . so . . . incredibly . . .”

“Joyful. It was
joyful
.”

“Yes, yes! And then Alexander
jumped in the air and laughed, and fireworks showered the sky, and his joyful
teammates ran to embrace him. It seemed that Alexander must have done something
extraordinary, and so I figured he was . . . he was
a . . . a . . .”

“A hero. Was Alexander your
hero
?”

“Yes, yes! And the way his face
glowed when he threw his fists up to the crowd, not in a gesture of violence
but in what was . . . it
was . . . unmistakably
a . . . a . . .”

“A triumph. Alexander was
triumphant
.”
Her eyes rolled thoughtfully over my face the way they did when she interpreted
her world for me. “Do you mean, Alex, that in a place where you were sad, our
Alexander brought you the promise of a new world . . . a
place where you could be happy?”

Just then I heard the thump of a
ball making contact with Alexander’s bat. I watched the spinning white sphere
soar out of the park and perhaps out of the galaxy itself. The crowd shot to
its feet in a burst of excitement. I saw vividly before me the spectacle from
the small screen that had held a promise for me. As Kristin and I rose to our
feet to clap and cheer with the bellowing crowd, a shower of fireworks burst
across the sky and stirring music filled the arena. I watched Alexander’s face
fill with pride in his victory. I embraced the wildly cheering figure beside me
who had named Alexander’s promise of joy and triumph. I lifted her light form
off the ground and buried my face in the soft tangles of her hair. Afterward,
Kristin informed me that I was smiling.

The fragrance of her newly planted
garden sweetened the night air when I accompanied Kristin to her home after the
game. Walking toward her house, I wondered about something. “Your plane is the
only one here. Does your father not have one too?”

“He does. He uses a new electric
one. Have you seen them?”

“I have. Before coming here I had not
heard of planes powered with electricity.”

“They’re powered with new,
supercharged batteries that can store more energy than a fuel tank. Electric
planes are pretty new. They were invented here, so they’re probably not
available yet on the other planets.”

“And where is your father’s
electric plane?”

“Looks like he’s not home,” she
said sadly. “Maybe he’s out on business this evening, or still at the office. I
think he’s working extra hard to find new contracts to reverse the loss caused
by Project Z.”

With a click on the mobile device
she carried, the door to her house opened. “He’s not here. The house alarm is
set just as I left it.”

Inside I saw an entryway with
paintings hanging on the walls.

She paused at the door, looking
disappointed. “I’m worried about him. He seems
so . . . preoccupied lately.”

“Kristin, you have said that Earthlings
feel pretty safe from dangers. So why do you have an alarm on your house?”

Her smile vanished and her eyes took
on a distant look.
“Something . . . bad . . . happened
here once. After that, my dad had a security system installed.”

“What happened, Kristin, to cause
you such sadness?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”
She shook her head, dismissing the matter. “Not on the night when our team
won
!”
Her childlike, freckled face regained its smile. “Say, Alex, when you came to
Earth, you named yourself after Alexander the ballplayer, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your real name?”

“It is not important.”

“Is there a reason you want to hide
it?”

“I would rather not talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to keep you safe. I
want to keep us both safe if I can.”

“Why wouldn’t we be safe? What
danger are we in? What danger are
you
in? You know, you frighten me,
Alex!”

Against my will, I reached out to
hold her supremely innocent face. “I do not think I frighten you, Kristin.”

“Alex, I don’t think
I . . . understand . . . you.”

As we stood at the door, I raised
her face to mine. Her lips glistened in the evening light. My eyes danced over
the short-sleeved red sweater that stressed the slenderness of her arms and the
inviting fullness of her breasts, and then over the remarkable item of clothing
called a short skirt, a black one that curved around her slim hips and yet
would fall so readily to the ground with one small tug on its little zipper.
Kristin was so ugly that to kiss her was to want her, and to want her was to
unleash a dreaded voice inside my head, chiding me, warning me.
It is your
fault— It is your fault that she—
The urgent voice blared until I dropped
my hands from Kristin’s face and stepped away.

“Alexander,” she whispered, “are
you imagining danger again? Is that what stops you when you want
to . . . kiss me? . . . Like now?”

“I cannot kiss you, Kristin.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are exceedingly ugly.”

She laughed, astonished. “You must
be mistaken, Alex. I sometimes forget you’ve been here less than three weeks.
You’re mixing up your words.”

How could I be mistaken? To be ugly
was to stand out, to stand above, and Kristin stood out to me above all
Earthlings. Were her eyes not bigger, her hair not shinier, her smile not
brighter? And was she not ugly inside too? Was her laughter not joyful like the
Earth itself? Was her mind not quicker to know my feelings and reactions better
than I knew them myself?

“Kristin, I am not mistaken about
this.”

“Are you saying you can’t kiss me
because I’m too
ugly
?”

“Well, yes.”

“Well, I can’t kiss you because you
have no manners! You’re rude, exceedingly rude, and I don’t have to take your
rudeness!”

“Kristin, wait!” I said to the door
that shut in my face. Kristin was gone before I could better understand what
she meant by
manners
, which I did not have, and
rudeness
,
which I had too much of.

After leaving Kristin’s house, I
walked to the field across the road, then pushed through the tall bushes that
hid Feran’s spacecraft. That Monday night marked three days since Feran had
demanded his cargo for my life. Of course, I had not delivered into Feran’s
bloody hands an object whose nature I did not understand. I knew Feran’s nature
too well. What was his business on a planet where people hit home runs? Why had
Feran kept a video of something as clean as baseball? I slammed my fist against
the wall as I entered the flight deck, vowing not to let Feran touch Alexander,
my hero, or the promise he held for me.