Kudisha Departure Episode 1 Journey to Rehnor series (7 page)

On the other hand, he was away so often, and
on secret missions where he would have no contact for days, or even
weeks. During those times, he was glad Beryl had her mother to
worry about. If Turak never came home, the transition back to her
mother’s world would happen almost seamlessly. Knowing this made
him feel a little better.

When Turak did come home, usually for only a
few days each month, it was almost like thirty years ago when he
and Beryl were still kids, and just getting to know each other.
They were happy to see each other, anxious to hear each other’s
news, thrilled by the other’s presence, and charmed by the sound of
the other’s voice.

A few days later, that voice began to grate on
the other’s nerves. Instead of welcome, the break in their usual
routines became annoying and intrusive. They both knew that Turak
didn’t care about Beryl’s co-workers, or her patients.

In fact, whenever she brought up a procedure
or some odd condition, which she had encountered, Turak would
purposely tune it out. Images of blood or cystic growths would turn
his stomach, something Beryl conveniently, or purposely, never
remembered. Turak also found the discussion of his mother-in-law’s
broken dishwasher less stimulating than staring out the window at
the empty suburban street. Bonita’s issues with her neighbor’s dogs
put Turak to sleep.

Beryl felt the same about Turak’s
conversation, which was cryptic, revealing only tiny bits about his
job. She understood that he was doing something the government
considered classified, on some top-secret mission which he referred
to as ‘
Being in the
Dark’
.

Frankly, Beryl would have preferred to know
nothing at all. Instead of discussing the technicalities of what he
was doing, while still feeling a need to contribute information
about his life, Turak talked endlessly about his co-workers,
especially this woman he called Captain Hannah.

The first time he brought up Hannah, Beryl was
interested. She liked to hear about other strong, successful women
besides herself. Hannah was a pilot, one of the few women qualified
in fighter aircraft. Hannah was as tough as any of the men, even
though she was half their size. Hannah was also on this mission.
Hannah’s team beat Turak’s in the target competition, but only by a
fraction. He’d get her next time.

The more she heard about Hannah, and the more
this unknown woman became the sole focus of Turak’s conversation,
the more it irritated Beryl.

“Are you having an affair with her?” Beryl
demanded, one morning over breakfast. Turak had been home for only
ten hours, but Beryl could swear she had heard Hannah’s name
mentioned at least one hundred times. “Is that where you are when
you say you’re away in the Dark?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Turak had scoffed.
“She’s just a co-worker.”

Did she detect a hint of regret in his voice?
Was there a tiny bit of longing that made Beryl think Turak wished
it was something more?

“Is she pretty?”

Beryl wanted to slap herself for asking such a
foolish question, for sounding so vulnerable, for comparing herself
to this unknown woman based solely upon their looks. Still, she
wanted to know. Beryl was fifty, and she wasn’t getting any
younger. Her body was growing soft, and starting to sag. Her face
had a few lines. Her hair had started to gray.

Turak paused for a long time before answering.
Yes, would get him in trouble, but No was definitely a lie. Someday
Beryl might meet Hannah, and then, he’d be in even more
trouble.

“Well???”

“She’s…” Turak began carefully. “She’s
striking, but she’s also…hard. Hannah is very hard. There’s
something about her which is incredibly attractive, but at the same
time, there’s a coldness that pushes you away.”

“She’s an Ice Queen,” Beryl pronounced,
returning to her coffee and soft boiled egg.

“She’s a highly competent spaceship captain,
like I am,” Turak stated, his voice growing quiet. The phone was
ringing anyway with Bonita’s first morning call, and both of them
had meetings at their offices.

That night, Turak asked Beryl to come with
him.

“We need a doctor aboard,” he explained. “The
King’s personal physician is old. He couldn’t withstand our initial
test flight.”

“And, you think I can?” Beryl had her back to
her husband. It was his second night home in a month, and they had
made love, but it had satisfied only him.

“You’re a lot younger, and you’re in great
condition.” He squeezed her buttocks, and then, reached around and
patted her tummy.

“I’m soft.”
Unlike Captain Hannah who is hard
,
she didn’t add.

“You’re tough. I suggested you. They like
that. We’re a married couple. That makes you more emotionally
stable than a single woman amongst all the single men.”

“You are going to leave me forever if I don’t
come,” Beryl realized. “You knew that when you started training for
this mission.”

Turak shifted to his back, and lit a
cigarette. He stared at the ceiling, at the wisps of gray smoke
spiraling upward in tiny clouds.

“I want you to come, Beryl. I still love you,
and you’ll have nothing here. Frankly, if we leave that means
everyone, including you will be dead.”

“My mother. You’re asking me to make a choice
between you and my mother.”

“I’m telling you, there is no choice. You have
the chance to live. You’ll be one of only a handful of people when
this is done.”

Beryl closed her eyes and tried to sleep,
pretending she needed time to make the decision, even though she
knew in heart, she wouldn’t go. She didn’t want a life being one in
a handful. She didn’t want a life without her mother. She didn’t
want a life dependent on Turak for survival, or this Captain
Hannah.

“I’m staying,” she told Bonita the next
day.

“No, you’re not. You’re going with
him.”

Beryl was standing on Bonita’s kitchen table
changing a lightbulb overhead. She handed the burnt one down to her
mother, who didn’t quite grasp it. With a crash, it tumbled to the
floor, shattering into tiny fragments of filament and
glass.

“Don’t move,” Bonita said, heading to the
closet for her broom. “You stay there until I clean this
up.”

“I won’t leave without you,” Beryl declared,
while Bonita swept around her.

“Of course you will.” Bonita bent to collect
the shards into her dustpan. When she rose again, there were tears
rolling down her withered cheeks. “I am your mother. I want nothing
more than for you to live. You go with your husband, and do your
duty to our good king.”

In the end, Beryl left, but only after Bonita
refused to take her calls, or answer the door when her daughter
stood outside knocking, even if she was standing in pouring
rain.

For the next few months, Beryl trained with
Turak’s crew, and she met the other captains, including Hannah,
who, incidentally, she agreed was hard.

Beryl packed the medicine and equipment on the
recommended lists, and discussed strategies with the other doctor,
and two nurses who were all traveling on separate ships. She
studied the medical history of her new patients and fellow
travelers, which included only the Royal Family, Lord Wooter, and
Turak’s men. When the day came to set sail, at the moment they
blasted off en route to the nearest star, despite all her
preparations, Beryl wasn’t ready.

Beryl was glad they didn’t have to wear
spacesuits, although it complicated her task of keeping everyone on
board healthy. Staving off the space sickness, a catchall term for
just about anything that could happen to a body suspended without
natural gravity while hurling through outer space, required a
specific regime. It wasn’t all that difficult or complex to consume
the right amount of water and nutrients, or exercise and rest at
moderate levels.

However, twice during their test flights,
Beryl had witnessed crewmen succumb. One lost the ability to
control his muscles after only one day in space. The other bled
out, hemorrhaging from what had begun as a common nose
bleed.

Beryl was left with both a sense of
uselessness and hopelessness. She couldn’t stop the sickness once
it started, and she couldn’t anticipate when or if it would attack.
The normal protocols apparently didn’t apply, which meant the
normal treatments wouldn’t work either.

Initially, Beryl’s largest concern had been
the Queen, as the woman was quite large and inactive. Her daily
caloric consumption had been immense, primarily consisting fo
carbohydrates. Had she been any other person, she would have been
ruled out as a candidate for this trip.

Both the princes should have been fine. They
were young, strong, and seemingly well adjusted. Their activity
levels were high, but their muscles and bones were still growing,
another point of apprehension for Beryl.

“We haven’t tested children,” she had
protested during an early meeting with the crew.

“You can’t tell the King to leave his children
home,” Turak had scoffed. “Figure out what you’ll need to
do.”

Beryl hadn’t figured out anything. Instead, as
the ship took off, she watched the boys crowding against the
window, shoving each other aside to gain the better view. Their
voices rose excitedly in the otherwise silent room.

“Kari-fa! Did you see that,
Behrat?”

“Where? What? I was looking at that
one!”

“Over there. That looks like a direct hit on
Kudisha. Kari-fa! We barely made it out alive.”

Silently, Beryl prayed that they would
complete this voyage as energetically as they departed
now.

The King, Lord Wooter and his new wife were
also not a concern to Dr. Beryl. Although Wooter was overweight,
his skin was healthy, and his color robust. While the explosions
sent streaks of white and yellow light soaring across their cabin,
Wooter briefly exchanged glances with Beryl, nodding to her
slightly, the first greeting between them, between any of them and
her.

“We are no longer princes and potentates,” he
announced softly. “We are all now merely mortals, men amongst
men.”

The King, well, who could judge his mental
state? Decimating one’s entire kingdom and home planet ought to
leave anyone with a large degree of angst. Beryl observed him as
they breached the thermosphere, noting the slight release of
tension in his face as the small ship burst free of the planet’s
gravity and reached for the distant star.

His eyes were closed, his lips moving
slightly, silently, she assumed in prayer. Or, was he speaking to
someone, a ghost, a spectral, an angel perhaps? His medical records
stated all this and more. Whomever he conversed with, the King
believed strongly in his existence. From his youth to now, well
into middle age, Karukan could not be persuaded his figment
manifested only in his mind.

Otherwise, he was perfectly normal, healthy,
strong and fit, a man in his prime. He should survive this voyage
well, arriving on the new planet in a physical condition ready to
take command. If only his mind arrived as intact as his
muscles.

The King lifted his eyes just then, meeting
Beryl’s with his own darkly, piercing gaze. He was a handsome man,
a beautiful man, much more so in person than he had ever appeared
upon the TV. Beryl’s first instinct was to reach for her phone, to
call Bonita, to report exactly this.

“Mom, I’ve got so much to tell you about this
voyage, about the King.”

Bonita was gone. Her phone was gone. Her
broken dishwasher, her kitchen table, her neighbor’s annoying
barking dog, everything and everyone had been reduced to
dust.

Beryl’s throat caught. She gasped a little, as
if trying to catch her breath. A tiny tear left a trail upon her
cheek.

The King held out his hand, offering Beryl a
handkerchief. It was starkly white, perfectly pressed and folded
exactly so. In one corner, in gold thread, a tiny crown was
stitched, his initials, KdK in black below.

“Thank you, Sir,” Beryl whispered, lifting her
eyes to his face, once again.

His eyes were so dark they were nearly black,
as if the iris consisted of nothing more than a giant pupil. They
seemed unreadable, but penetrating, as if he could see directly
into her mind, as if he knew her every thought.

“Keep it,” he replied, breaking the
spell.

Chapter 9

Karukan sat at his desk, or rather what
sufficed for a desk in the small closet allocated for his office.
It was in a corner adjacent to the family room, the somewhat large
area below the main cabin used by his family, whilst the crew
shared all the quarters upstairs.

At the time the ships were commissioned, he
knew he would be desperate for a private space. As king, he
certainly was entitled to configure the ship solely for his
pleasure. However, that wouldn’t be fair. Not to his family, and
certainly, not to the hardworking crew.