Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series Page 8

  Harvey didn’t waste a single moment in getting to the food court, where he found Lea, lying on the floor on her side, food scattered, serving tray tossed asunder, plates and silverware and empty cups wading in a puddle of orange juice and milk.

  “Lea, Lea,” he scrambled to the floor and knelt to her side. She looked weary, and was clutching her chest, which heaved rapidly, as if she was short of breath. But he knew she couldn’t have been out of breath. She didn’t breathe. Holograms didn’t need air. Still, there she was, fighting for it as if she was a real person. He cradled her head in his lap and asked her what had happened, but only got a vague murmur in response as she gestured meekly at the tray. She’d dropped it for some reason. And he intended on finding out why.

  He carried her, with great care, to the small medical unit in the visitor center complex. He wanted to make sure she was comfortable, and propped her in the hospital bed, placing her head on the pillow and even covering her with the blankets.

  Listless and wistful, she rolled her head side to side as if she was in pain. He knew it had to be a malfunction in her holomemorial’s processor. Or possibly its Intuitive Intelligence programming. Maybe Harvey’s recreation, however faithful and meticulous, had a fatal flaw, one with terrible consequences for the woman he loved. She was ill, terribly ill, and Harvey was the reason.

  He left her in the infirmary and hurried to mausoleum level three, section C-6, row 15, grave number 930. Lea’s grave. There he ripped into the holomemorial and searched for any signs of anomaly. He figured something went wrong with her ultrasound actuators, the system of sonic waves, imperceptible to the human ear, which allowed Lea’s hologram to manipulate physical objects. His guilty conscience couldn’t have been battering him harder when he considered the possibility that interacting with him had something to do with this, and that incited an even greater desire to fix whatever was broken.

  A thorough and exhaustive diagnostic survey resulted in nothing. Not a damn clue as to why Lea was sick. All he could do was return to her side, hoping for the miracle that didn’t happen. She was still writhing and moaning, incarcerated by an agony she had no power to describe. Harvey hated his ineptitude. He couldn’t fix this, and it tore his heart from his chest.

  “Just try to hang in there,” was all he had for her. “I’ll find a way to help you. I promise.”

  She closed and opened her eyes with no energy whatsoever. No color in her face. No life in her gaze. She appeared, for all intents and purposes, like a woman—a real and living woman—on her deathbed. No nurses or doctors or round-the-clock medical care. It was just Harvey, and he did the only thing he knew how to do. He went back to her holomemorial, where he spent the next several hours searching, contemplating, imagining the solution to Lea’s sickness.

  The hours stretched into days, and Harvey was a man obsessed. Every waking moment devoted to repairing Lea’s holomemorial. When he wasn’t in the mausoleum, he was in the infirmary, by her side, holding her hand or reading to her.

  She responded quite favorably to his attempts at raising her spirits. She’d stopped thrashing in pain, and her agonized groans were becoming nonexistent. Then, one day when he was telling her about his failed attempts at programming the food printer to replicate the bacon she’d made for him, she even smiled. It gave him hope, and even more desire to bring her all the way back. He doubled his time at her grave, working nonstop, without sleep, going over every optic cable, every protoplug, every nano-synapse one by one. Painstakingly. Relentlessly. He would find the answer.

  The answer refused to be found.

  Harvey realized it when he’d finished combing over every millimeter of Lea’s holomemorial, inside and out, and uncovered absolutely no good reason for her lapse into the painful paralysis. He was beginning to believe she’d never recover, and that despairing thought had him sitting on the floor, head drooping, leaning against her grave’s cold granite facing. With his fingers he touched the inscribed letters of her name as he swallowed back a tear.

  “Harvey?”

  Hearing his name sent a glorious wave of euphoria rushing through his every extremity. And when he saw Lea standing there, her smile as big and as welcoming as ever, his troubles dissipated to stardust.

  “Lea!” he snatched her in his arms and felt her weight, smelled her blossomy scent, heard her breathless declarations in his ear.

  “Oh, Harvey…I love you I love you I love you!” she kept kissing his cheek over and over. “I love you!”

  “I love you too,” he accepted her adoration willingly, kissing her in return. “We’ll never be apart. They won’t do it to us...they keep trying, but they won’t do it, they can’t do it!”

  “What do you mean?” she looked at him curiously. “Who’s trying to keep us apart?”

  “I don’t know…I just,” he struggled. “I just couldn’t find a reason why you went down like that. The only explanation I can think of is someone, or something else had a hand in it.”

  She shivered, crossing her arms and receding into the folds of her long, white gown.

  “I don’t want to think about it, Harvey. And I don’t want you consumed by it any more, either.”

  “Don’t you see? I couldn’t find the reason for your ‘illness.’ And I sure don’t understand why you recovered from it, either. This whole thing’s a mystery. And I have to fix it…I have to fix your holomemorial.”

  “You need to have a life. Working all the time like that isn’t living…it’s like you’re a slave.”

  “But it’s my job. That’s what I do, I’m the caretaker.”

  She ran her fingernails through his short-cropped hair.

  “Harvey,” she whispered against his neck. Warm breath tingled his skin. “You’re a man. And I’m a woman. Not just a machine. Not just a holomemorial for you to work on night and day. Do you realize how much time you’ve been away from me, obsessing over this thing? I’m not a thing, Harvey. I’m me.”

  She looked into his eyes and he could tell she was hurting. Not some sort of 1s and 0s hurt or flaw in her programming, but a real, emotional hurt.

  “You know what? You’re right. I’m sorry. I do get a little driven.”

  “Yes,” she put her finger to his lips to get him to shut up. “You do.”

  8.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  She asked the question he’d been dreading for hours now. After becoming dreadfully bored with beating him at chess, Lea had decided she was completely dissatisfied with Harvey’s living quarters and how he had the place decorated. Or not decorated.

  “It needs a woman’s touch,” she’d kept repeating, as she went around the walls with a handheld computer and several color swatches on the screen. She’d touch the screen until her desired hue came around on a huge color wheel, then she’d touch the device to the wall and presto! the wall turned that color. She must have done this a dozen different times, and a dozen different times she asked him what he thought. He’d look at it for a second, smile, and say, “Looks great,” but she saw right through him every time.

  After a dull harvest wheat, a bright and popping cherry, a whimsical lime and a deep Earth sky azure, she’d settled on a royal purple, and Harvey, quite honestly, didn’t know what to say.

  “Well?” she repeated herself, never once looking away from the lavender wall. “I asked you what you thought.”

  “Looks great,” he said, and she sighed.

  “I give up. We’ll try again later,” she searched behind the furniture. “Where’s that cleaner bot? Cleaner bot! Come here!”

  At her command, a small droid rolled out on wheels. It had a rounded shape with several appendages that protruded from a central core. Flashing lights and soothing sounds. It came up to her and emanated a soft tone.

  “How may I be of service?”

  “You can help me move the bed,” she told it. “Pick up that end and—”

  Harvey heard her fall, and rushed to her side. All she could do was whimper. He m
anaged to lift her onto the bed, where she looked and acted as she did before, when she was afflicted by the mysterious illness. His worst fear had come to pass. She’d had a relapse.

  “Lea?” panic took over again. “Lea, can you hear me? I’m going to find out why this is happening. I swear to you I’m going to find out!”

  He marched out of his living quarters, with the sole intent on going back to the mausoleum, back to Lea’s grave, where he was determined to solve this puzzle.

  “H-Harvey!” she stammered weakly, yet at the same time with firmness in her tone. “No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me, Harvey!”

  He ran to her bedside.

  “I have to fix this, Lea. Please, please understand I need to fix this.”

  “And I need you with me, Harvey,” she wouldn’t budge. “Don’t you get it? That’s the only thing that’ll make me feel better—you next to me, talking to me, staying with me. Please.”

  He agreed, reluctantly, and to his delight she seemed to snap out of the malaise rather quickly this time. Soon she was back on her feet, though not willing to do much besides stand at the view portal and gaze upon a rather distinct vista. The planet’s highest peak, Mount Mausolus, overlooked the valley with a somber magnificence, its irregular peak catching the last of the primary starset’s rays before casting a velvet blanket over the endless sea of headstones. The mountain was the only place on the whole planet not spoiled by gravesites, and having a clear view of its pristine stone flanks gave Harvey the feeling he wasn’t on such a disturbing and secluded world.

  “It’s beautiful,” she watched the purples and blues and reds mix as the final vestiges of light faded. Harvey had no words to describe what he was seeing at that moment. Beauty beyond definition. Lea, in a halo of waning starlight, framed by the magnificent and towering mountain in the distance.

  Then she stumbled, doubled over, and clutched her midsection. Harvey couldn’t get to her in time. She fell onto her back, once again reeling in pain. Before he had the chance to say or do anything, Lea fought out of it, sitting up, chest heaving, face wrought with desperation.

  “What’s happening to me?”

  “That’s what I want to find out. If you’d let me.”

  “No!” she grabbed his wrist. “No don’t go.”

  He helped her up. It appeared she’d recovered fully from the strange episode, but only for a few, fleeting moments. Then she clutched her chest yet again, slumping to the couch.

  She saw the look in his eyes. He wanted to dash to her holomemorial and give it a complete overhaul. Replace every part. If she would let him.

  “No,” was her answer. “Don’t go, Harvey,” then her eyes, formerly narrow and listless, shot open, wide and alert. She seemed to be staring at something outside the porthole, something Harvey couldn’t see.

  “No!” she screamed suddenly, standing and backing away from some unseen threat. “No! Don’t! Don’t come near me! NO!”

  She flung herself out of the living quarters, moving faster than any human. Harvey tried to keep up, but she flickered from one projector to the other, down the corridor toward the visitor center. Her frenzied screams rattled him to the core, and made it easy for him to find the energy to run. Still, he lagged behind, and as he got to the central concourse, the place with the giant observation portholes, he got a glimpse of her, barely a streak of light, heading straight for the mausoleum.

  With only her frantic cries to guide him, he took flight after her, up the stairs and forsaking the elevator, following the sound of her voice.

  “No!” she cried again and again. “No! Don’t touch me!”

  When he got to the third floor he rounded the intersection of two corridors and faced the end of the hall toward Lea’s grave. He halted immediately at a sight that made his internal organs sink to his bowels. It was Lea, and that should have given him joy, but it didn’t. Contorting and circling Lea was a mass of dark, billowing gray. A cloud, or a tornado, spinning and twisting with fury.

  Red eyes scowled at him, and he retreated a step, then two. Then Lea called out again. In desperation, he lunged for her. The spectral being was too quick, and sped off with Lea in its grasp. They moved so fast, all Harvey saw of them was a trail of odorless smoke. Lea’s voice, deafening at first, grew softer and softer. Then, before Harvey knew it, she was gone.

  “LEA!” he shouted to an empty passageway, the walls adorned with plaques marking the resting places of the deceased. He felt like one of the dead now.

  Everything inside of him wanted to come out. Physically sick and sweating and shaking, he leaned against the wall. Then a jarring signal from the computer forced him to investigate. Maybe it was word from Lea.

  Instead, he found a holomemorial malfunction alert. A failure that demanded his immediate attention. He reached for the icon that collapsed the screen, intending to ignore the alert, when he caught a glimpse of the graveyard sector section in question. His sweat turned to ice as he stared at the place the computer was once again telling him to go— Zone 6.

  9.

  “Next stop, Zone 6. Doors open on the left. We at Cemetery Planet hope you find your visit pleasant and memorable. Thank you for riding, and have a nice day.”

  The maglev train’s automated message shook Harvey from a disturbing slumber. He couldn’t stop thinking about the stories and legends of Zone 6. He never believed them, and always found himself laughing at the very idea. Now he believed. Now he knew to stay away. Yet here he was, riding in a tube at nearly the speed of sound, directly into the mouth of peril.

  Finding Lea was his only concern. And that one, single-minded goal allowed him to overcome his terrible fear. He knew he’d find her out there. He knew it as true as the nights were long and gloomy on that planet.

  When the train stopped finally and the vacuum tube airlocks hissed opened, he, in his all-too-uncomfortable exposure suit, stepped into a wisp of low fog. He was reminded of the being that kidnapped Lea, and the way it seemed to form from nothing. He refused to back down now, refused to listen to that voice of reason. The trip from here was still extensive, so he rolled out a PMD from the loading area and rode through dozens of swirls of delicate vapor. In the eddies he swore he saw faces, human forms, soaring above the headstones. But he dared not look too long.

  He programmed the PMD’s navigational systems, though his own memory served as the best guide. He’d never forget where the lifepod had crashed.

  Grave upon grave. Tombstone upon tombstone. An endless portrait. The final resting place for countless souls. The headstones melted into the background as he rode the narrow path, keeping his eyes down.

  Then the proximity alarm came. He slowed the PMD to a stop, looked up, and spotted the lifepod, its cylindrical nose concealed by dark brown topsoil, a trail of bent and broken gravestones marking its crash path.

  He studied the ancient and gothic graveyard. Stone slabs of all sizes, from a few centimeters to several meters in height, and of various shapes—curved arches, prismatic steeples, conical stacks. The surface of an asteroid in the far reaches of space would have paled in comparison to this barren sublimity.

  To the left, spires were tossed one on top of another. To the right, archways crumbled and stood half-fallen. Straight ahead, large domed tombs were the dominant feature. And, in the center of it all, stood the grave he came here to find.

  He approached the site from the side, as if he could sneak up on it somehow. As if the spirits couldn’t sense him coming. Then, mustering up his courage, he jumped to a stop directly in front of the grave. Kip Broders. Died in 2031. The holomemorial was an ancient model. He could tell by the trip switch. It was visible in the loose soil, and looked pretty beat up. But it must have worked. He’d triggered it before, and now, heart racing and forehead dripping, he stepped onto the pressure plate and closed his eyes, awaiting the unknown.

  Nothing happened. Only the whistle of the wind, the multitude of stars in the night sky. No Kip Broders.

  He stood on the switc
h again, this time harder. Still no response. He tried again, then again, all with the same result—nothing.

  “Where the hell are you, Broders!” he shouted to the sky, to the headstones, to anyone or anything that would listen. “I’m here! You wanted me here, so I’m here!”

  The dense air whipped up more eddies of haze into strange and ethereal shapes, yet nothing indicated to him that there was an intelligence there. And, worse, no indications of Lea.

  “Come out and show yourselves, cowards!” his frustration and fear boiled over into rage. “Come on! I’m here…I’m right here! Come out and face me, dammit! Come out and—”

  He stopped short at the abrupt sense of something skirting in the darkness, slipping from behind one headstone to the next. His pulse pounded in his ear and he instantly felt like fleeing, then his thoughts returned to Lea. He swallowed the fright and chased the phantom.