Mosaic - Jeri Taylor [98]
Eyes squeezed shut, reeling in the cold sunlight, stomach raw and nauseated, Kathryn reached out and clutched Phoebe's hand, holding as tightly as she could to safe anchor.
Four nights later, a fierce winter storm came sweeping across the plains. The sky had turned leaden in midafternoon, and the temperature dropped precipitously. Snow began falling as Kathryn, her mother, and her sister were eating dinner, and they gazed through the broad windows of the dining room onto a blizzard of white.
Kathryn had stayed out of bed during the daylight hours all four days, going to the bedroom only to sleep. Except that now, irony of ironies, she couldn't sleep, but lay awake in silent agony, trying not to think of Justin and her father lying in the dark frigid waters, flesh now devoured by water creatures, white bones settled in the silty residue of the alien sea.
But of course she couldn't not think about them. She found it was easier to envision them dead than to raise the specter of their manner of death. Had they died immediately upon impact? Or were they conscious, sucked under with the fuselage of the ship to drown in icy, brackish water? Or did they lie, injured and in pain, in an air pocket of the ship, dying slowly of shock and hypothermia?
Better to think of glistening skeletons, quiescent and inert. Daytime brought a hollow-eyed fatigue, which Phoebe steadfastly ignored. They ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner, exercised, and visited The Meadows, their old school. Kathryn dutifully fulfilled each of these requirements, growing more ragged and exhausted with each hour, dreading impending nightfall and her futile battle with memories. She didn't want to tell Phoebe that her plan wasn't working, because she could tell it meant a lot to her mother that she was making this effort. Her mother had never shown her anything except love and generosity, and she wasn't going to be a cause of concern for her. In a few weeks she'd report for duty at Starfleet Headquarters, and she would request a science post on a faraway station; once there, she could sleep when she liked. At dinner, her mother and Phoebe made delicate small talk, and Kathryn forced herself to join in; the relief in her mother's eyes was reward enough for the effort. But then she felt herself staring out at the blizzard and thinking that she could go out and start walking... just as she had walked home from the tennis match so long ago... and be swallowed up. A serenity descended on her as she pondered this, and her mother's voice became mellifluous, a soothing euphony which lulled and pacified. She smiled at Phoebe, and tried not to notice the responsive joy in her sister's eyes.
"Maybe I'll take a walk," she offered when dinner was over. Her mother turned to her, startled, protesting, "It's a blizzard out there-"but Phoebe interjected quickly. "It's a great idea. Nothing so bracing as a walk in the snow. I'll come with you."
Kathryn smiled at her again. "We've hardly been apart for the last few days. Isn't it time I ventured out on my own?" Phoebe shrugged. "If you say so. But I wouldn't stay out too long. And take one of the palm beacons."
And in another five minutes, Kathryn was out of the house, bundled like a polar bear, head down against the driving wind. It was a mean storm, the snow icy and granular, assaulting her face like sand. She plowed forward, wanting to find her willow tree, but already losing bearings in what was a virtual whiteout.
She walked for some time like that, soon giving up thoughts of finding the tree, content to march forward in whatever direction her feet took her. The swirling snow obscured everything, and soon she felt she was walking on a vast, dead planet.
Dead planet. Planet of the dead. Snow planet. The unbidden visions leapt to her mind with a quickness and ferocity that took her breath away. She felt an unreasonable anger