From: aa811@cleveland.freenet.edu (Terri M. Librande)
Newsgroups: alt.ql.creative
Subject: That Terrible Price Part 1
Date: 14 May 1993 15:32:21 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
Lines: 66
Message-Id: <1t0e25$6c7@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Nntp-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


That Terrible Price--

(I wrote this about a year ago, with a little help from Jackie Wagner.
She got me through the sticky parts.  As always, appreciate comments
and critiques.)

Terri Librande

I was late, damn it.  Not for the first time, and probably not the last.
I barely had time to grab the handlink and enter the Imaging Chamber.  The
holography was in place the moment I connected, a peaceful, almost pastoral
scene, I thought.  Rushing stream below the bridge I 'stood' on, trees,
hell, I could almost smell the water.  That's when I heard the low moan,
almost like a child crying out in pain, or someone needing help.  And,
damn it, I knew almost immediately it was Sam.

"Center me, Ziggy!"  I snapped, almost afraid of what I'd see.  In a second,
I was standing over him.  The green ferns he lay on were dark with blood,
his face so white...down to the lips.  Numb fingers almost dropped my link,
as I knelt down next to him.  I was seeing Sam, not this Marty somebody
he'd leaped into.  I thought for one wild moment that he was dead already,
and I'd lost him.  Relief flooded me as his eyes opened, that smile curving
across his face as he saw me.

"Al."  His fingers reached up to me, passing through my knee.  The greenish
eyes darkened with sorrow for a moment, tears spilling down his face.  "You
came."

"Just in the nick of time, it seems," I managed, trying to keep the jibe
in my voice.  Damn the kid, he could see right through it.  "What the
hell happened, Sam?"

"You...don't...know."  His eyes pleaded with mine for a moment.  "Doesn't
Ziggy--wasn't I supposed to..."

I glanced at the link for a moment, frowning at the information, unable
to swallow the lump that formed in my throat as I read the words.  It 
_was_ my fault, damn it!  If I'd been here just a moment, a minute earlier...

Perceptive to a fault, his lifeblood draining from him, Sam smiled knowingly
at me.  "Don't do that," he chided gently.  "Don't, Al; I didn't even see it
coming.  It doesn't hurt.  I'm so cold, but numb, there's no pain."  he
reached out and placed his hand on my image, his fingers touching my face
for a moment.  His arm fell to the ground a moment later, eyes misting over,
the faintest trace of ice there, as death took him away.

Then, he wasn't Sam anymore.  Just another anonymous person, lying in a
pool of blood.  Sirens, in the distance, coming up on that idyllic road,
to this perfect place where he had died.  Straightening, I glanced down at
where I'd been kneeling, the ground soaked with red stuff and nary a drop
on my white slacks.  It didn't seem right, that he'd died and I hadn't
been able to hold him, or say all the things I'd been too damned bullheaded
to say before.  Every nerve in my body screamed for release, and I was unablee
to indulge it, not now.  I backed away from the body in front of me, not
liking dead things, human or otherwise, and this wasn't Sam anymore, not
my kid, and not the brilliant life I'd known.  It was a stranger, and
I wanted out of this place, now.

More to come...

Terri in Cleveland
-- 
"Girls who have glasses have lots & lots of energy!" Al--Single Drop of Rain
Terri Librande aa811@cleveland.Freenet.edu--Assistant Sysop
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Sig--Go SCIFI