#31 – Kol Visits
Even Theta was misty now. A voice Lindar could not hear pulled her attention away from his vital signs. “Yes, ready the special cryo-chamber,” she answered. Mounted on its wheeled gurney, the mechanism glided in, casting a miasma of cold. For the first time, Lindar realized that this particular corpse container was transparent. He wondered why. Kol’s voice startled him.
“Oh, no! Has it happened?”
“Not yet, but soon,” said Theta “If you have come to say goodbye…”
The fog seemed to part, just a little. Kol stood next to Theta. “I can’t stand it! Everybody’s crying, but they’re only thinking of themselves, and what it means to the ship.”
“It is natural,” she answered, remotely, almost by rote. “The death of the prince will affect the status of this ship.”
“I came to see you,” said Kol “because it must be worse for you.”
“Nothing changes for me.”
“He made you laugh. I never saw you laugh but he had something to do with it.”
Theta’s mouth quirked. “True.”
“It seems to me that you’ll miss him.”
“I will miss him,” Theta echoed.
“You must have loved him. Even to know him a little was to fall in love with him. I once thought I hated him because I was so twisted up emotionally. But I just couldn’t see that I loved him. But you see things clearly so you had to love him more than the rest of us.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes the light bent around Lindar in such a way I could not see him at all. But he rapidly became my dear friend, growing dearer every day.”
“It would have been more than that in time,” said Kol “But he’s out of time. That’s what’s so sad.”
“That is—true. I only recently realized that he was serious. That he loved me as the future mother of his children and not for some heroic vision of the past.”
Kol said brokenly, “It’s not fair, that you should lose him now. Theta, I wish I could say or do something to make you feel better.”
Kol pressed a couple of small objects into Theta’s hand.
“What are these?”
“A lock of hair from when he got a haircut. And the souvenir button from when he held court. I thought you might like to have them.” Kol was clearly struggling. “To keep. To remember him by.”
Her face softened, Theta watched him weep. With her empty hand, she stroked Kol’s cheek. “Dearest child, you are so kind to think of me.” She took his hand and placed the envelope and the button in it. Gently, she closed his fingers. “Keep your treasures and in future days, we will be glad to look at them together, and remember.”
“Are you sure?” Kol clung to the objects with obvious relief, and obvious shame at the feeling.
“That which makes us happy, makes us sad when we lose it. But I can tell you from experience there is consolation in remembering. Someday in the future, we will be glad to remember Lonnie.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Kol, “I have to go back. Admiral Ta only gave me a few minutes leave.”
Kol left. Lindar heard Theta dismissing the rest of his unseen attendants. Finally, they were alone, and Theta stared at the empty husk of Lindar’s body as if seeing it for the first time. “My dear love, forgive me. It’s as hard for me to let go of you as it is for Kol to give away his precious keepsakes. All we have done merely prolongs your suffering.” She took his hand and removed the I.V. needle, anointing the little wound with an antiseptic salve that numbed pain, topping it with a small bandage.
As if it were going to heal, thought Lindar. She disconnected the remainder of the life support equipment with the same off-kilter concentration, spreading salve on the burns left by the electroshock unit and strapping protective webbing over his cracked ribs. There was no one to see her weeping as she dressed his body in a clean healer’s tunic and trousers. This is a dream, thought Lindar. She left the breathing mask in place while she opened the cryo-chamber. Chill air wafted from it, and the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees.
With the same abstract tenderness that Lindar so admired, she unclamped the breathing apparatus that forced air in and out of his lungs. Like weary balloons, Lindar’s lungs deflated. His chest sank and did not rise again. Theta blinked water away from her eyes and checked the monitors. “Still this little ghost in the cerebral cortex,” she mused “You promised to love me to your last breath. Is that what you are still here for?”
She stroked his cheek, as if trying to awaken a sleeper. “Well, then, love, let me give you this, free of any binding or bargain.”
She bent over him, and kissed him. And such a kiss! Lindar watched, shaken to the core of his soul. First, she nibbled on his upper lip, then on his lower – no one had ever kissed him like that in his life, and it seemed dreadfully unfair that he was not in his body to enjoy it. The thought dragged him back. Suddenly, he was lying on the surgical gurney, his ribs aching, the burns searing his sides and Theta’s warm glorious mouth pressed over his, her tongue feathering the sensitive membranes on the roof of his mouth while it seemed as if his lungs would implode for lack of air. She felt him move and would have drawn back, but he held her, his mouth reaching for hers until her racking sobs forced them to quit.
Shaking, she leaned on the gurney. Lindar sat up and swung his legs down, and panted for air. The Crown tightened around his throat and his mind reached automatically for the matrix. And found the shape of it changed by a small but significant hole. “Cilron!”
