Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Ann stood before the sink in the small cheerful kitchen. The dishes were slippery in the hot soapy water, and as she carefully washed each dish clean, she thought about how fortunate they were to have found a world as nice as Paradise. Paradise was such a wonderful place that it didn't even matter that she had to wash dishes by hand.

The colony was still young and growing. Some day there would be traders from the far corners of the Federation stopping at Paradise to buy and sell, but for now there were greater needs than an autokitchen. Pausing to gaze out the window above the sink, she took in the glorious sunshine, the blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds, the lush green of the lawn, the fields of crops that stretched to the horizon and swayed gently in the soft breezes like a vast ocean of grain - and most of all, little David playing with his dog in the yard.

As she watched David throw the ball and Castor race off to fetch it, Ann felt a glow of love and affection welling up inside. She could feel warm tears beginning to form as she took in the tousled light brown hair, the grubby cheeks, the dirt encrusted clothes. No, this will not do, she told herself. It was one thing to enjoy their good fortune, but her husband Jason would be concerned if he came in and saw her crying again. She could never get him to understand that tears aren't always due to sorrow.

She thought about Jason. There was no doubt that she loved him, and she was sure that he returned the sentiment. They'd been luckier than most of the couples on the voyage. Their relationship grew closer with the stress and close quarters of the ship. Many of the marriages formed back on Earth weren't strong enough to withstand the long journey. The yellow flowers that lined the yard reminded her of all the things Jason did just for her. He knew she liked flowers, and so he planted them all around the yard. He knew just how to hold her and just how to love her.

But she was getting distracted and tears were threatening to form again. She finished up the dishes, placing them carefully in the drying rack because even dishes were precious in a new colony. Opening the refrigerator, she took out the left over roast beef. She removed two packages of vegetables from the freezer. Placing the roast in the cooker, she closed the door and pushed the start button. After the buzzer sounded, she removed the piping hot roast and replaced it with the packages of vegetables. When the buzzer sounded a second time, she stepped over to the intercom, pressed the yard button and said, "David! Dinner's ready! Go tell your father - he's in the greenhouse - and then come in and wash up."

Ann stepped over to the window to see if her message had been received. David stopped chasing Caster and dutifully headed for the greenhouse. Such a good boy, thought Ann. Always doing what he's told, never misbehaving - well, almost never. She took a great deal of pride in her son, and she knew he would grow up one day to be the kind of strong solid citizen a young colony needed so badly.

Ann was stirred out of her musing by the sound of the greenhouse door. Into the kitchen marched first Castor, then David, followed at last by Jason - who carried a bouquet of red, yellow, and blue flowers. Ann directed David to the washroom as he passed, and then met her husband with a kiss.

Offering her the flowers, Jason said, "Here, I cut these for you. I thought the bubble might need a little brightening. What's for dinner?"

"Left over roast beef, peas and cauliflower," replied Ann. "How was your day in the greenhouse?"

"Sounds delicious," said Jason. "I'm so hungry tancern root would sound good. Got three flats full of seedlings, and two left to go. Should finish tomorrow afternoon. How was your day?"

"Oh, the usual," replied Ann. "Cooking, cleaning, mending David's clothes. I admit I spent some time watching David and Castor playing in the yard - and thinking about how wonderful it is living here in Paradise." She reached out and took Jason's hand as she said this, and noticed a slight tremor in his grip.

"Anywhere would be paradise if you were there," replied Jason quietly, giving her a kiss and a hug.

Ann smiled and pushed Jason away as David returned to the room. "Go on now, you're making me blush. Better sit down and eat while it's still hot."

Over dinner, Jason said, "There's a valve going bad in the greenhouse plumbing - you know the one, over by the hydroponic beds. Looks like I'll have to take it to the village tomorrow. Shouldn't take too long - be back before lunch."

"I don't have time to go myself, but I suppose David should go with you," suggested Ann, a little hesitantly. "He hasn't been to the village for a long time, and he should meet other people more often." Ann didn't like to be left alone on the farm, but she tried to put the welfare of her son before her own.

David stopped eating long enough to say, "Naw, I don't wanna' go. I wanna' stay here." He surreptitiously slipped a piece of cauliflower to Castor, sitting attentively by his side.

To Ann's relief, Jason responded, "If he doesn't want to go, he doesn't have to. I want to make it a fast trip anyway."

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After dinner, Ann quickly washed the few dishes and joined the rest of the family in the small living room. As she entered the room, she saw that David, with Castor laying by his side, was deeply engrossed in an adventure show on the library screen. Jason had a novel in the reader on his lap. With a sigh of contentment, she joined her happy little family, sitting down in her easy chair and picking up the warm scarf she was knitting. It was so nice that they spent their evenings together like this - not at all like back on the overcrowded Earth where she'd wanted more than anything else to get away and be by herself.

Ann lost herself in her thoughts so completely that it came as a surprise when she looked up at the clock and saw that it was 10 o'clock already. "David, bed time," she announced.

"All right, just a minute more. The show's almost over."

After two more warnings, David reluctantly shut off the library screen and went to his room, followed by his constant companion Castor.

"I think I'm going to bed too," she said to Jason. "Will you be long?"

"No, I'll be there in a couple minutes," Jason replied. "I'll tuck David in before I join you."

As she walked the few steps to the bedroom, Ann passed through the kitchen and paused to look out the window. Paradise's two moons were both in the sky tonight, and it was nearly as bright as daylight. She never tired of the view from her kitchen - the green growing things, the constant good weather, their hopes for the future blossoming with the crops. With a sigh, she continued on to the bedroom and prepared for bed.

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Jason watched his wife pause in the kitchen to look out the window. He wondered what she really saw out there. After she went into the bedroom, he stepped in front of the window himself. The bright flowers in the vase formed a grating contrast with the drab gray utility bubble that formed their home.

Outside the window, Jason saw the same scene he always saw: the heat and cold blasted rock, the constant howling wind of poisonous gasses that scoured the rocks and kept the dust in constant motion, the icy fog that swirled by - vapors loosed by the furnace like day time temperatures condensing in the shattering cold of the night. Paradise she called it. The other survivors of the wreck had more descriptive names for the planet - usually strings of four letter words.

Images of the crash and the weeks that preceded it flowed unbidden into Jason's mind. He remembered the first tremors in the hull of the ship, and the vibration that grew and grew. And then the explosion. The port side drive tube went critical, and when it blew, the force of the explosion tore through the ship spreading death and destruction.

Jason, Ann and David were lucky - they were on the right side of a pressure bulkhead when the automatic doors slammed shut. He could still hear the frantic hammering on other side of the door, rapidly diminishing as the air rushed out the gaping holes in the hull. Within minutes, everyone in two thirds of the ship was dead, the ship was crippled, and the survivors faced a slow death if they didn't make planet fall soon.

With most of the crew dead, they were lucky to make it out of hyperspace in one piece, let alone find a planet within range. They were already committed to a landing when they came in sensor range and found out what sort of world they were heading for. No one would have landed here by choice, but they didn't have any choices left.

The ship was designed to make a water landing on a habitable planet. There wasn't any water on the planet, and the howling wind and the damage to the ship complicated matters further. They rigged the ship for a crash as best as they could, but no preparations would have been sufficient for what happened. Memories returned of the long series of jarring impacts that tore loose their shock harnesses and threw them around the compartment.

Jason could still hear the terrible sound of rending steel as the fabric of the ship was crushed and battered, and the even more terrible screams of the injured. And then the flames came, and the screams got worse. In a daze he pulled loose the shreds of his shock harness and dug in the debris until he found Ann and David. Ann was battered and bruised but alive. David was not. A large metal fixture had torn loose from the wall and struck him on the side of the head. A thin trickle of drying blood trailed from his crushed skull.

With the flames licking through holes in the torn bulkhead at one end of the chamber, Jason gathered up Ann and headed out the hatch at the other end. The trip through and out of the ship was a nightmare of thick smoke, screaming people, explosions that knocked them off their feet, and flames that erupted suddenly through holes in the buckled floor gratings. Out of the thousand colonists on the ship when it set off on its fateful voyage, only 50 survived the crash, found exposures suits, and got out of the ship before the flames found them.

Images of groping in the murk to help others find the exit flowed before Jason's mind's eye. He could see the long corridor filled with people struggling to get their exposure suits on and get out of the ship, and then the flames rushed in. He stayed as long as he could, but the heat built up rapidly and he had to abandon his post. Then there hadn't been anything else to do but sit and wait for the fires to die down.

When they could reenter the burnt out hulk, they salvaged what they could, and buried the remains they could identify as human. The fires had swept through only part of the cargo hold, so they would survive. But life would be hard. And since the drive tube explosion threw them so far off course and destroyed the communication gear, there would be no rescue ship.

Although as dazed as the rest of the survivors, Ann seemed no worse for the experience than the rest of them. Jason remembered how she worked right along with him as they set up the living and greenhouse bubbles. Then, when the essentials were complete, her delusions began. She started calling the planet "Paradise", and talking about how wonderful their life was.

At first Jason laughed it off as sarcastic humor. But as time went on, she seemed more and more serious about it. After several months, he became alarmed about her insistence that her delusions were real. There was a long argument, and he was quite insistent she return to reality - repeating over and over that David was dead, describing in detail the real condition on the planet. Her response was to cry for days and slowly withdraw completely.

In his desperation, Jason consulted the other colonists and the medical computer, but nothing worked. Ann continued to grow more and more distant as the days went by. One day he arrived home unexpectedly and found Ann talking animated to the household robot, calling it David and asking if it wanted to go outside and play. When she saw Jason, she abruptly stopped talking and returned to her sullen withdrawal. It was at that moment that Jason saw what he was going to have to do for his wife.

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Walking into the robot storage closet - David's bedroom - he reached in and plugged the recharging cord into the man sized cylinder on tracks that was David. Then he plugged in the ground hugging box on tracks that bristled with the tools of a general purpose repair robot - Castor. As he emptied the storage bins where the robots put the algae cakes and processed soybeans they appeared to be eating at dinner, he remembered the long hours of reprogramming that went into making David talk and act like a young boy. Now, instead of doing the cooking, cleaning and mending that Ann had taken on herself, the robot spent its days playing ball and tag with Castor. Jason missed having Castor, the repair robot, to help out in running the farm - but with only the greenhouse to care for, he managed without. The improvement in Ann was worth giving up the robots.

Closing the door to the robot closet, Jason paused again at the flowers, thinking about the time and effort he put into growing them. With only the two of them the greenhouse had plenty of extra space, only flowers didn't grow easily here. But they cheered Ann up so much, all his efforts were worth it - the flowers, the robots, pretending algae cakes were roast beef.

He knew that in the ragged cluster of bubbles that passed for the village, there were women who'd lost their husbands in the crash and would be happy to take Ann's place. And in the hard life of the colony, hard decisions were made all the time. No one would hold it against him - in fact some of the others even suggested it when he came to the village. The village hospital could take care of Ann for as long as she lived. There were still three or four others whose minds had not survived the crash living there.

But even so, he couldn't bring himself to even think about it. At the beginning, he clung to the hope that she would recover quickly, or a ship would come that could cure her. As the years dragged on his hopes faded, but he still clung to the belief that some day she would be better. Maybe another child would come along, or reality would slowly seep into her delusions. Until then, his love for her was too strong to let her go.

As he gazed at the waiting bedroom door, a warm rush of emotion washed through him, and he had a nearly overwhelming desire to rush in and hold her tightly in his arms. But as his eyes began to mist over with the thought of her and the corners of his mouth trembled slightly, he shook himself free of the feeling. It wouldn't do to let her see me like this, he told himself. She'll ask what's bothering me, and I'll have to dream up some excuse.

Painting a happy smile on his face, he started for the bedroom door. As he turned the knob, he wondered who was really better off. After all, there wasn't any cause for tears in Paradise.