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Subject: {ASSM} MB53 Shoulders of Orion by Rachael Ross (Romance, Science Fiction)
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Note: Mixed Bag is a compilation of stories by Rachael Ross and
contains a Foreword and 65 chapters. It is being posted to ASSM
largely in sequence. See MB00 for a table of contents. All stories
copyrighted 2008 Rachael Ross all rights reserved. rache696@yahoo.com
visit my website at http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/rache/www/index.htm and see my
blog http://anarchyforbeginners.blogspot.com/ for additional
information. Thanks. -rr


Adults Only

Mixed Bag - Chapter Fifty Three



The Shoulders of Orion
(Twenty Five Pairs - Book Two Teaser)

by rache

Note: "The Shoulders of Orion" is the working title for the
continuation of my novel "25 Pairs" and does contain spoilers. So if
you haven't read the story, I'd suggest you take a look. It's good, I
promise. See my Blog for additional information. -rr

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Story Codes: Romance, Science Fiction

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=



Prologue

Harden, Utah - Branford, Texas
2033



    I only saw my father cry once, but I know he did it more than
that. I was seven years old and he would watch the sky at night,
sitting on the front porch. Sometimes my mom would sit with him,
sometimes not. He liked to look up and once in awhile he would tell me
stories about a girl who went to Mars. But mostly Daddy was quiet and
a little sad, it seemed to me, but he promised me that he wasn't.

    "I'm just waitin', that's all," he said and I was on his lap, warm
and safe in Daddy's strong arms.

    "Waitin' for what, Daddy?" I wondered, blinking my blue eyes at
him and he just shrugged, stroking a bit of long blonde hair out of my
face as the breeze came up like it does sometimes in Harden.

    "You think there's trees on Mars?" he wondered and I giggled
because sometimes he would ask me silly things like that.

    "There ain't no trees on Mars," I shook my head, cause everybody
knows that.

    "Hmph," Daddy grunted cause he was a lumberjack, except he really
wasn't. But Daddy liked to say he was. "Somebody oughta go up there
and plant some."

    "All right, Natalie," Mom stuck her head out the screen door.
"Let's go brush our teeth."

    "But the moon ain't even up yet," I frowned and I wanted to sit
awhile more, but Daddy was already putting me down, sliding me off his
lap gently.

    "It's up somewheres, Nat," he grinned and pulled me close for a
goodnight kiss. "I love you."

    "Goodnight, Daddy." I kissed his lips and he gave my butt a little
push.

    Mom held the door for me and while my dad was big and strong and
the most handsome man alive, with short brown hair and the softest
brown eyes you ever saw, she was different. Mom was small and pretty,
with black hair to her shoulders, pulled back most often, and dark
eyes to go with her caramel skin. Her name was Rio cause she was from
Puerto Rico and I looked like her a bit, with my own brown skin and
the same pert little nose, but the rest of me was different. I didn't
know where I got my blonde hair or my blue eyes from, and Mom and Dad
just shrugged if I happened to ask about it.

    They thought I was too smart sometimes and maybe I was. I'd
started kindergarten when I was four and then skipped a few grades. By
the time I was seven, I'd skipped a bunch of grades and it wasn't very
much fun being the only seven year old in eighth grade, I'll tell you
that much. I coulda skipped a couple more, probably, but I made sure I
got some answers wrong on my math tests and stuff like that. I think
my Daddy suspected though because he'd tease me about pretending I
wasn't as smart as I was.

    It wasn't my fault school was too easy. They shoulda made it
harder if they wanted somebody to learn something. Mostly I just
taught myself stuff and that was fun, but kinda boring too.

    "Did you do your homework, Natalie?" Mom asked me like she did
most nights and sometimes I saved a little, just cause I knew she
liked to help me with it.

    "I did it on the bus," I said, climbing the stairs.

    "Oh," she nodded. "Okay."

    "Mom, what's Daddy waiting for?" I asked her.

    "Well, he's waiting for a friend to come home," Mom said slowly.
"Why?"

    "Just wondered," I shrugged, going towards the bathroom. "Where's
his friend at?"

    "She went on a trip," Mom said, leaning against the open door,
watching me.

    "Did she go to Mars?" I asked.

    "Mars?" Mom laughed and shook her head. "No, she didn't go there."

    "It's a secret, huh?" I looked at my mom and she narrowed her
eyes.

    "What do you mean?" she asked.

    "I mean, how come you don't wanna tell me about her?" I put some
toothpaste on my toothbrush.

    "It's not a secret, it's just...complicated," Mom sighed and I could
tell she wanted to tell me.

    "You're waiting for her too, huh?" I asked.

    "Hurry up and brush your teeth, you have school tomorrow," Mom
said and I knew I was right, but Mom was wrong. There wasn't any
school the next day, we just didn't know it yet. Nobody did.


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    I sorta figured asking about Daddy's friend would get them talking
and it did. My mom and dad were totally predictable, if you paid
attention to them and thought about it some.

    Sometimes I thought everything everywhere ought to be predictable.
I mean, if a person just had enough facts it should be pretty easy and
I thought about that a lot, it was one of my favorite daydreams in
school. How you could look at the whole world and what it was doing
right then, think about it hard, and know what was gonna happen in a
year or two. Not the next day, that was impossible, but after enough
time had gone by...Yeah, you could do it. Probably you could do it with
the whole universe, but that seems pretty big when you're just seven
years old. I figured I'd better just start with the earth until I was
a little older.

    "She was asking again," my mom said, joining my dad on the front
porch. I was in their bed, since it was right there above the porch,
and with the windows open I could hear them just fine.

    "About Jen?" Daddy sighed. "Yeah."

    "We have to tell her, Josh." Mom was sitting on the swing bench
and it creaked softly. "Maybe we should have told her from the start."

    "Maybe," Daddy agreed. "I just couldn't ever think of a way."

    "Me neither," Mom laughed lightly. "Come here, sit with me now
before the baby wakes up again."

    "Nah, he's a good boy," Daddy was moving, sitting down with Mom
and putting his arm around her. "She should have been back already.
It's been too long."

    "She'll be back," Mom decided, but there was something in her
voice, like she wasn't sure. "You need a haircut."

    "Hmmm," Daddy chuckled and they were quiet for a little bit and I
almost fell asleep.

    "I got another call from the school," Mom said.

    "Yeah? What do they want now?"

    "They want to let Natalie try tenth grade," Mom told him. "I said
no."

    "She doesn't have any friends as it is." Daddy cleared his
throat.

    "I told them no," Mom repeated. "She's only been in eighth grade
for a month."

    "She got Jen's brains," Daddy laughed softly. "We have to do
something, she needs a real school."

    "I know," Mom said.

    "We should have been smarter than this," Daddy sighed and thought
for a minute. "We'll tell her. Jen's coming home soon, any day now,
right? Natalie has to know."

    "Yeah," Mommy said. "She does."


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    "...Challenger returned early this morning, around three forty
Eastern Standard Time. Initial reports indicate that all eight
astronauts are safe and in good health and NASA has scheduled a press
conference for one o'clock this afternoon..."

    The television was on when I came downstairs for breakfast and Mom
and Dad were in the front parlor, smiling like it was Christmas. They
sat close together on the sofa, on the edge of it, leaning forward and
Daddy was holding my mom's hands in his. They just looked at each
other mostly and then at me and I could see Mom was crying, but she
wasn't sad, not at all. She was as happy as I've ever seen her in my
life.

    "What?" I gave them a funny look.

    "Nat, come here!" Daddy smiled at me, holding his left arm out for
me and I was a little confused, since it was a Thursday. I was
supposed to be eating some breakfast, getting ready for school. Daddy
was supposed to be going to the lumber mill.

    "What is it?" I asked.

    "...Shuttle Icarus will dock with the Challenger in about an hour
and transfer the eight astronauts to the International Space Station
for three days of observation before returning them to earth. These
are live pictures of the Challenger, which once again, has returned
after nearly eight years..."

    "It's back, huh?" I let Daddy hug me, pulling me close to him and
Mom was reaching for me too.

    Her cheeks were wet and she just stroked my chest and tummy
through my nightgown, looking at me and blinking hard. I wasn't really
sure why they were acting this way. Everyone knew about the Challenger
and how it went to another planet and everything. I couldn't tell you
who was on it or anything, since it had left before I was even born
and so it kinda didn't really exist for me, you know? I never really
cared very much about that stuff, but I did now, because I could see
it and that was sorta neat.

    "She's back," Daddy agreed and he was kissing me.

    "That's where your friend went?" I giggled as Daddy pulled me onto
his lap and that was always nice. My favorite place.

    "Your Daddy's friend, our friend..." Mom looked at me "...is one of
the astronauts."

    "Her name is Jennifer Pinchbeck," Daddy was looking at me and I
kind of blinked at him.

    "That's my name!" I laughed, because my full name is Natalie
Pinchbeck Sinclair. "Pinchbeck, like me?"

    "Natalie, Jennifer is..." Dad paused and glanced at my mom.

    "She's your father, Nat," Mom smiled.

    "Um..." I laughed, since there were so many things wrong with that
sentence I didn't really know where to start.

    "It's kind of complicated," Dad smiled. "Jen isn't like...other
people."

    "But you're my dad," I grinned at him. "Right?"

    "I'm your dad, yeah," he nodded. "But Jen...Jennifer, is your
biological father. I mean, she's..."

    "I know about where babies come from, Dad," I giggled and he
looked surprised.

    "But you're only seven," he looked at Mommy and she shrugged.

    "It was in a library book," I grinned at him. "The physiology one.
It was kinda weird."

    "Uh...right. Physiology." Daddy was frowning. "I'm forty-one and I
don't even know what that word means."

    "Never mind," Mom giggled. "Jen made a baby inside me because we
love her. Your daddy and I both do and we wanted to keep some of her
with us."

    "You mean me?" I listened carefully, thinking about it hard.

    "Yeah, you!" Mommy laughed. "That's why you have that beautiful
blonde hair and those big blue eyes..."

    "And all those questions all the time," Daddy chuckled, giving me
a little tickle so I'd laugh too.

    "We have a lot of stuff," Mom was thinking hard too. "Oh, Nat!
There's so much I want to show you."

    "We should have told you before," Dad said. "Jen's going to love
you so much."

    "Let me get some pictures out, God!" Mom was giggling and leaving
us and I watched her go.

    "If she's a girl though, how did she make me inside Mom?" I turned
back to look at my dad. "I think only a man can do that, right?"

    "Ahhh..." Dad nodded. "That's a good question and, hmmm...I think when
Jen gets here, she can explain, okay? She's the doctor."

    "She's coming here?" I smiled at him. "You think she got some
space rocks for me?"

    "I don't know, Nat," Daddy hugged me again.

    "You're still my dad, right?" I looked at him closely. "I mean,
even if you didn't put me in Mommy...I don't want another dad."

    "I'll always be your dad," he kissed my hair. "You're stuck with
me now. But you're gonna have two moms, Nat. Think you can handle
that?"

    "She's really smart, isn't she?" I asked, not ignoring my dad's
question, but answering a different way.

    "Why are you askin' me that?" Daddy grinned at me.

    "I heard you talking," I shrugged. "Last night. Do I have to go to
tenth grade?"

    "I don't think so," Dad laughed. "Jen will probably have some
ideas about your schooling. She skipped a bunch of grades herself, and
then she used to be a teacher for awhile, up at Harvard."

    "Really?" I widened my eyes a little. "She must be really smart
then."

    "Smartest girl in the world, Nat," Daddy sighed happily.

    "Prettiest one too!" Mom was back, carrying a cardboard box and
she put it on the floor in front of us.

    "It feels like Christmas!" I giggled, watching Mommy open it.

    "Yeah, it does, baby," Daddy laughed, kissing me again.

    "Here's your mom...er, dad...um..." Mom giggled. "This is Jen."

    Mom was handing me an old Time magazine with a picture of a woman
on the cover. She was blonde, like me, and her eyes were intensely
blue. Not bright, or even friendly really, but intense and she was
staring right at me. She was beautiful too, like a movie star or
something, but she had little wrinkles around her eyes. I looked at
that magazine closely and she was Dr. Jennifer Herleen Pinchbeck.

    "For Rio, My Best Friend and Guardian Angel, Love always, Jennifer
Pinchbeck," I read the autograph and grinned at my mom. "That's you!"

    "Yeah," Mom was crying again. "Look...Your daddy's in there too."

    Mom had removed it from the plastic and now she was flipping
through the magazine carefully, like it was precious to her, and I
suppose it was.

    "See? There they are together."

    Mom was showing me a big photo and there was my dad in a tuxedo
and the woman in a really small red dress, a tight one too, and they
looked so good together. I wondered if it made my mom jealous, but I
didn't think so. She seemed pretty proud of it.

    "Who's that guy?" I wondered, pointing at the man they were
talking to.

    "That's the President," Daddy chuckled. "The old one. I thought
you knew everything?"

    "Dad!" I laughed. "It says Dr. Pinchbeck and her...feeancy?"

    "Fianc�," Mom smiled.

    "Oh," I shrugged. "...her fianc�, Joshua Sinclair at the White House
Farewell Dinner." I looked at my dad. "That means getting married,
right?"

    "You know what fianc� means?" he looked surprised.

    "Yeah," I laughed. "I just didn't know how to spell it. I heard of
it."

    "Your dad is going to marry Jenny when she gets here," Mom said
and she didn't sound anything but happy about it.

    "But I thought you guys were married," I frowned, looking between
the only two parents I'd ever had.

    "Uh, no..." Daddy cleared his throat. "We're not married, Nat. We
love each other..."

    "We love each other as much as anyone can," Mom agreed, putting a
hand on my dad's leg and stroking him, and he was smiling at her. "We
love Jen too though and I'm going to be just as happy for her as I
would be if it was me, I promise."

    "Your mom isn't going anywhere anyway," Daddy said. "It's like...
we're all married, kinda."

    "Kinda," Mommy laughed. "Here, look...This is Jen's Nobel Prize."

    She was opening a polished wooden box, a nice one and large too,
and inside there was a big golden medal. It was beautiful and amazing,
and I swallowed hard because I knew what a Nobel Prize was and if my...
whatever she was...if the woman had one of those...

    "I told you Jen's smart," Daddy grinned and I just nodded. "Rich
too, they gave her almost two million dollars to go with it."

    "Josh!" Mom rolled her eyes.

    "What?" he chuckled. "They did. It's just been sitting in the
bank. Plus eight years of paychecks from NASA and the patents for her
medical work..."

    "She signed the patents out to public domain, dear," Rio giggled.
"Sorry, we're not that rich."

    "She did?" Daddy sighed. "I guess I won't close the mill after
all."

    "Oh stop!" Mommy giggled. "Here...This is Jen with, um, oh...The
Secretary General of the United Nations. And here she is in Africa, it
says, and..."

    "Who's that guy?" I wondered, pointing at a man Jen was standing
next to. He had long blonde hair, sorta tangled and he was smiling,
looking pretty, I thought, like an angel except he was wearing jeans
and a t-shirt.

    "Oh, uh..." Mom took the photo and turned it over. "Cory Schiller in
2023 looks like? Doctor handwriting," she rolled her eyes.

    "Who's he?" I asked, taking the photo back and looking at it. They
looked really happy in it.

    "I'm not sure," Mom shrugged. "Your dad...other mom..." she giggled "...
Jen has a lot of friends."

    "Everybody loves Jen," Daddy agreed with a happy sigh.


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    "NASA should be calling soon," Mom was frowning, looking at the
phone and speaking softly to my dad while I looked through the box.

    "You think?" Dad wondered and they were standing apart from me
while the television droned, showing the same things over and over.

    "Yeah," Mom told him. "Jen made a list of who she wanted there
when she got back, me and you are on it. Jeffrey Palmer. Dana, Jen's
sister, and her family..."

    "Well, NASA is probably a little busy," Daddy said. "They're just
getting to the space station now. They still have three days."

    "They're never too busy for public relations, dear," Mom laughed,
but it was a nervous one. "It's in a binder someplace."

    "Well..."

    "Maybe I should call them." Mom looked at the phone again and then
she glanced at me, catching me watching them and I looked down
quickly. I was looking through a bunch of framed photos and diplomas,
stuff like that.

    "Rio, it's okay," Daddy hugged her. "They're back, just let NASA
do their job and it'll be fine."

    It wasn't fine though and we found out why the phone wasn't
ringing a little after seven o'clock that night when the President got
on television.

    "...we have learned so often before, our triumphs often demand a
terrible price. This evening it is my sad duty to inform you that once
again that price has been paid with American blood upon a distant
shore. Doctor Jennifer Pinchbeck took upon herself the noble burden of
self-sacrifice, making for us all a gift of her courage and strength.
In the brilliant glow of mankind's greatest scientific achievement, we
must never forget that technology does not suffice nor comfort nor
extend our reach, so far as the human the spirit."

    There was more, but that was enough and that's the only time I saw
my father cry.


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    Westin closed the folder he'd been looking though, the Nielson
file, and this wasn't a small risk by any means. He and Nielson had
once been nearly the same age, but relativity had distanced the two
men by nearly eight years. Lost time that had drawn the enemy that
much closer and the unexpected loss of Dr. Pinchbeck...Fifteen years of
planning had come unraveled and Westin could not discern the reasons,
and that frightened him.

    "Doctor Nielson, thank you so much for coming," Tom Westin said.
His smile was congenial but his eyes were not. They were cold and dark
and Arthur Nielson didn't care for them very much.

    "Did I have a choice?" Nielson asked rhetorically, giving the room
a wary look. It was the commissioned officers mess at Branford Airbase
in central Texas, where the shuttle Icarus had landed just two days
before with its payload of seven astronauts.

    "You look tired, sit down," Westin gestured and the cafeteria was
large and silent and empty of people.

    "I'm still getting used to the gravity," Nielson said, frowning as
he didn't wish to make excuses.

    "Of course you are, Doctor," Westin said and then he looked at the
two large men who had escorted Nielson from his room at the VIP
quarters. "Give us a few minutes."

    "Yes sir," one of them said as Nielson did take a seat, sitting
across from the older man.

    They'd met once, briefly at the White House some four months
previously by Nielson's clock. He had to remind himself that it had
been eight years for Westin and now the man was in his mid-fifties.
Still fit, though, still full of confident arrogance, and Westin was
still the President's National Security Advisor. Nielson had been
warned about him, but he hadn't taken such things seriously...until now.

    "How did Dr. Pinchbeck die..." Westin's dark eyes stared into
Nielson's "...exactly?"

    "It's in the report," Nielson said, clearing his throat. "The
debriefing."

    When the other man didn't respond, Nielson sighed. "We had a
malfunction; one of the radar transceivers was bad. She was working on
it and her tether became entangled. It snapped and...Jen couldn't make
it back."

    "I wasn't aware that it was her job to fix the radar, Doctor,"
Westin said.

    "We were working in shifts," Nielson cleared his throat. "The
radiation, you see. We had to limit our exposure and..."

    "And the breakpoint of an EVA tether is twelve hundred foot
pounds, did you know that?" Westin tilted his head. "I didn't. I had
to look it up."

    "Her tether snapped," Nielson repeated, feeling his face growing
warm and he dared not look away from the man.

    "That's your story," Westin sighed, "and of course, we don't have
what's left of the tether to examine, do we? What happened to that, I
wonder?"

    "It was jettisoned," Nielson said softly.

    "Jettisoned," Westin nodded and narrowed his eyes, "along with the
PK virus?"

    "That's what this is about?" Nielson sat back in his chair. "You
don't care what happened to Jen, you just want the virus."

    "Oh, quite the contrary, Doctor," Westin said slowly. "I care a
great deal about what happened to her. That's why I want the truth.
Losing her, someone like Doctor Pinchbeck, it raises a lot of
questions."

    "I don't understand."

    "Questions that only you can answer, Doctor Nielson," Westin was
no longer smiling.

    "I've told you all I know."

    "Have you?" Westin leaned forward as if confiding a secret. "You
haven't told me why, Doctor."

    "Why?" Nielson blinked.

    "Why she was murdered," Westin said. "Dr. Pinchbeck was murdered,
wasn't she? Someone killed her and the rest of you are covering it up,
now why is that? Who are you working for?"

    "That's...preposterous!" Nielson stared at the man, his face
reddening noticeably.

    "Is it any more preposterous than this story about her tether
breaking?" Westin clucked his tongue. "Don't worry, Doctor Nielson,
we'll have plenty of time to get to the truth of it while you
recover."

    "Recover?"

    "From your stroke," Westin said. "The excitement and strain of
returning to earth's gravity can be hard on a man your age, or so I
understand."

    "What are you talking about?" Nielson began to rise and just then
one of Westin's men pressed an electric stun gun against the back of
the doctor's neck. Nielson jerked upright in his seat for a moment and
then pitched forward onto the table in front of Westin.

    "The ambulance is waiting, sir," the other man said.

    "Get him out of here," Westin nodded, sitting back as his two men
manhandled Nielson's limp form out of the deserted cafeteria.


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    "What is it, Daddy?" I asked, because I'd been wondering since
getting home from school.

    "Not sure," he turned the envelope over in his hands. It was big
and thick and postmarked some four days ago. Mail was kinda slow, even
though Utah wasn't all that far from Texas, and that was where it had
come from.

    "Natalie?" Mom called me. "Wash up for supper now."

    "Kay, Mom!" I answered automatically. "Open it, Dad."

    "Okay," he shrugged and he wasn't in much of a mood after the news
about his friend Jennifer. I didn't blame him, or Mom either, because
she was very sad too. They spent a lot of time together, not saying
anything, just...together and I didn't know how to act around them
really.

    Inside the envelope was a packet of typed pages, like a manuscript
for a book or something. There were a lot of pages and Daddy flipped
through them quickly with his thumb. There was a little note as well,
taped to the first page.

    "Josh, Jen wanted me to deliver this to you," Daddy read it
slowly. "Sorry I can't bring it in person, I'm not sure it's safe..."

    "What's that mean?" I wondered, leaning over and trying to read
the note for myself.

    "...This will explain much. My sincere condolences. Arthur Nielson,"
Daddy finished reading and he didn't have an answer to my question.

    "He's one of the astronauts," I said. "Right? He's the one who got
sick."

    It had been on the news, how one of the astronauts had a stroke
and was in the hospital after coming back from space. They said he was
in a coma and might not ever wake up, so some people were saying the
Challenger was cursed and stuff like that. I didn't know, but it
seemed pretty obvious that Dr. Nielson must have been in a real hurry
to get that package to my dad.

    "Yeah, I think so, um..." Dad nodded and then he started reading.
"Moving to Harden Utah was just about the weirdest thing that ever
happened to me. The whole thing, I mean. We moved a lot anyway, since
my dad worked for the government, so I was kinda used to..."

    Daddy stopped reading and then he was flipping through the pages,
reading a paragraph here and another there. I didn't say anything, I
just watched him. I'd never seen my dad look at anything so seriously
before.

    "Nat? Where are you? Natalie...oh..." Mom blinked at Daddy for a
second. "What is it, Josh?"

    "It's a..." he looked up at her "...letter."

    "A letter?" Mom wondered.

    "From Jen," Dad nodded. "Natalie, go get ready for supper."

    "What's it say, Dad?" I asked, but he wanted to talk to Mom alone.

    "Go on now," he said. "I'll tell you about it later."

    "Alright" I made a face and Mom held the door open for me,
watching to make sure I went towards the bathroom and didn't just hide
around the corner and try to listen.


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    "What are you doing?" My mom looked at me, or rather she looked at
the mess around me. "What is all that?"

    "Jen's notes," I said, looking up from my computer where I was
taking notes of my own. I'd read my Daddy's letter and I knew who I
was now. The time for pretending was over. "I've decided what I'm
going to do."

    "Natalie, I had these put away!" Mom frowned at me.

    "I'm going to be a doctor," I told her. "A geneticist, I think."

    "You're only seven," Mom bent down, gathering up some papers.
"These are...Where did these come from?"

    "Or maybe a virologist," I shrugged. "I haven't decided. You
should see the stuff Jen was doing. I mean, just her ideas..."

    "This is Top Secret!" Mom was looking at the big red
classification stamps on some of the papers.

    "Yeah," I giggled. "Pretty cool, huh? She made copies of all her
files, all the stuff she had, and gave them to you. Didn't you know
that?"

    "No, I never really looked." Mom swallowed hard and the boxes were
marked 'personal' but I'd sorta ignored that. "We...We're not supposed
to have this. Natalie...Don't be looking at it!"

    "She was saving it for me," I said and that was what I'd figured
out so far, it was the only thing that made sense.

    "What do you mean?" Mom was gathering papers.

    "Hey! I got those sorted," I frowned. "Mom!"

    "Natalie, Jen wasn't supposed to keep these." Mom was giving up,
confused and a little scared. She sat down on my bed.

    "She wasn't coming back," I said. "She never was. See? Her diary
is here, she says the secret's in her. She's the secret. The terrible
secret. I mean, she says it over and over, in different ways and in
different places, but she knew."

    "Natalie, you don't know what that means," Mom sighed. "Just,
let's put all this away and..."

    "No, this is all Jen. It's here, who she was. What she was. All
her medical files." I looked around. "I don't know what it all means
and some of it is somebody else's too, that Ronald guy from her
letter, did you know him?"

    "No," Mom shook her head.

    "Well, whoever he was, he had the secret too," I said. "So Jen was
saving this stuff, but not for herself."

    It seemed pretty obvious to me, but I guess Mom was a little too
worried to see it. Jen had left everything behind for a reason. She
hadn't destroyed it and she wasn't coming back. I read everything I
could about her, in the library, on the internet, wherever. I'd
studied Jennifer Pinchbeck and I knew a lot about her. I had her
letter and now I had her personal files, and that was telling me even
more. She'd left clues too, really clever ones that nobody would
figure out unless they were like her. Unless they had the secret too
and I was her daughter. I hadn't worked it all out yet, but now I knew
it was there and that changed everything.

    I had a lot of work to do if I was going to catch up!

    "We need to put this away, alright?" Mom was biting her lip.
"We'll talk to your father about it. This was...I didn't know about
this."

    "I'm going to go to Johns Hopkins," I told mom. "I already wrote
them a letter."

    "You did?" Mom blinked at me.

    "I can't stay here, Mom!" I laughed. "I could graduate high school
tomorrow and you know it. I'll talk to the principal on Monday."

    "I know," she frowned and we looked at each other for a minute
before I got up, stepping carefully over the papers.

    "I'm sorry I'm too smart," I hugged her. "I wish I wasn't, but..."

    "You're just a little girl," Mom held me tight.

    "Only on the outside, Mommy." I kissed her hair and then the baby
was crying.

    "Oh, March..." Mom sighed and I giggled.

    "He's hungry," I said, letting her go.

    "He's a little pig," she laughed and I think Mom wanted to cry
again, probably because Jen was lying all around us like pale autumn
leaves.

    I took the papers Mom was still holding and she had to go feed my
little brother. He was only six months old and that had been another
long cry for my mom. She'd wanted Jen to see the baby so badly, and so
did my dad. March would have been like a little welcome home present,
which seems strange, but after reading Jen's letter, I understood how
happy it would have made her. My biological father was a special woman
in every way you can imagine.

    Johns Hopkins would take me. I'd apply to other places, MIT and
Harvard, schools like that, but Hopkins was the one who would get me.
Especially once they found out I was the daughter of Jennifer
Pinchbeck. That was where Jen had gone to school, getting her medical
degree at seventeen and her PhD in biochemistry at eighteen. If it was
good enough for her, it was good enough for me. I'd graduate medical
school when I was thirteen probably, if it was really hard like I
hoped it was. I'd beat her by four years and that made me giggle.

    The hard part would be talking my dad into letting me go. Ever
since he'd found out Jen hadn't come back, he'd been a little over-
protective. He even called me Jen sometimes, but only in a dim light
when I surprised him. Dad said I looked just like her, except my skin
was brown like I had a year round tan all over my body. He said I was
going to be even more beautiful than Jen was when I grew up, but
probably all dad's say that. You can't be beautiful when you're just
seven though, everybody knows that. I was only pretty.


=-=-=-=-=25=-=-=-=-=


    "Shhhh..."

    "The devil...Who are you now?" Arthur Nielson frowned at the shadow
hovering over his hospital bed and he tried to lift his arms as he
always did when he awoke, but he was still strapped down.

    "You have a secret," a voice said, soft and deep like a young
man's, but vaguely feminine and almost playful, which annoyed Nielson
even more than he already was.

    "I've told you everything," the man replied. "You can't do this to
me! Let me go!"

    "You have to relax," the shadow reached for a light switch on the
wall. "Watch your eyes."

    Nielson blinked as the fluorescent light mounted above his bed
flickered brightly and finally came to life. The shadow was
transformed into a woman...no, a man, Nielson decided as he blinked
rapidly, a beautiful man which made little sense to him. He was young,
barely out of his teens, with long black hair falling loose around his
face. He was pretty, that was the word for it, like a Grecian youth
out of a Renaissance painting, the boy was perfect and somehow
familiar. But it was the eyes that jerked the Doctor's head off his
pillow. They were unmistakable.

    "Who are you?" Nielson breathed, his heart beating suddenly faster
with fear and excitement.

    "What did she tell you?" the boy asked gently, sitting on the bed
and he was wearing green scrubs and a white smock, but the hospital
badge clipped to the breast pocket wasn't his. The picture was of
someone else, a dark haired nurse perhaps, Nielson couldn't tell.

    "Who?" Nielson licked his lips.

    "You know who," the boy smiled. "She wouldn't have left without a
message, Arthur. They always leave a note, where is it?"

    "I don't know what you mean," Nielson shook his head and he'd kept
this secret for nearly three days, despite Westin's cautious efforts
to get it out of him. This was a new ploy, a new trick, and Nielson
glanced at his IV, but it was mere saline and the drip was shut off.
He wasn't drugged, he thought. Maybe.

    "They're going to find out," the boy said sadly and those eyes
wouldn't leave Nielson's, even as a delicate hand reached for his
face, stroking the doctor gently. "We don't want that, do we, Arthur?"

    "Who are you?" Nielson asked again, feeling his body warming
noticeably, his heart palpitating and the air caught in his lungs. He
realized with some embarrassment that he had an erection and the boy
was moving his hand down, across Nielson's chest, reaching for the
obvious rise beneath the bed sheet.

    "I can free you," the boy whispered. "After you tell me. I'll keep
the secret for you, Arthur."

    "You mean...kill me," Nielson swallowed thickly and a moan escaped
his lips as he felt the pressure of a soft hand encircling him through
the thin cotton.

    "They'll never let you go now," the boy said with a sigh. "They'll
hurt you when they run out of patience, and you'll tell them what they
want to know. Everyone does."

    Nielson saw the sadness in the boy's face and the eyes softened
with his beautiful features, his lips turning down, and it was a look
Nielson had seen before. He was drugged, Nielson thought, but not by
any man-made chemical, he'd felt this before and many times. The
almost irresistible urge to love her physically, emotionally, it was
unexplained and unfair and Nielson had missed her presence
immediately. They'd all suffered on the lonely trip home, but perhaps
himself most of all.

    "You have her eyes," Nielson said, feeling his orgasm growing deep
in his gut as the boy squeezed the older man's penis gently, tugging
at it through the sheets.

    "I know," the boy agreed. "I've seen her pictures. What did she
want to tell me, Arthur?"

    "There was a...letter," Nielson said softly, glancing at the closed
door. "For Josh. Her fianc�. She never mentioned you."

    "Joshua Sinclair?" the boy smiled, working Nielson's cock faster,
leaning over the man so that his hair fell around them. "I
understand."

    "If they find out..." Nielson hitched a sharp breath, lifting with
his hips so much as he could. He was going to cum, it was close now
and all he could smell was Jennifer. He could taste her again. He
could feel her touching him. And those blue eyes staring into his...

    "They won't," the boy promised and he slipped the needle into
Nielson's hip at the moment of orgasm, pushing the plunger and pulling
it free as a warm stain grew beneath his other hand.

    "Who are you?" Nielson asked one last time, his body going limp as
he caught a ragged breath.

    "Orion," the boy whispered, kissing Nielson's eyes closed. "Sleep
now. Your secret is safe, Arthur. You did well. She's proud of you."

    "I tried to talk her out of it," Nielson sighed weakly. "We all
did. We loved her."

    "I know," the boy stroked Nielson's head and waited with him for
several minutes until it was finished.





The end

-- 
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reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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