Each time he awoke, David felt stronger and looked healthier. His periods of sleep became shorter and shorter, until his body began to rebel against the idea of further rest. His eyes stung. Acute pain flared at his temples as he sat himself up on the sofa.

  'Welcome back,' said the tuneful voice of an angel somewhere out of his line of sight.

  Mumbling faint thanks, he propped himself into a comfortable position, and located the source of the voice.

  Rochelle looked different than the image of the sodden angel impressed on his mind. Loose-fitting, dusky-green cargo pants hid her strong limbs and the curves of her hips. A black tank top embraced her muscular stomach and firm breasts. Her soft auburn hair fell beside her taut jawline in mellow waves, the occasional loose hair crawling away in all directions, as though attracted by static.

  'How long have I been gone?' he asked.

  'Oh I don't know, a thousand years?' She replied with a giggle.

  'And yet you haven't aged a bit.'

  Rochelle smiled her angel smile.

  'I'm kidding, you've been sleeping on and off for about three days now. How are you feeling?'

  David considered the question carefully, and took inventory of his various aches and pains.

  'Actually not too bad. I assume I have you to thank?'

  'Oh, not at all,' she replied. 'It's what I do.'

  'That's twice you've said that now, what do you actually do?'

  'I'm a doctor,' The perkiness in her voice gave way to a mournful sigh. 'I mean to say, I was a doctor.'

  'Was?'

  'Yes. I was a doctor. Doctor Rochelle Asa. Now I’m just, well, now I’m just Rochelle, the crazy lady hiding out in the woods.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘This place happened, David. Asylonia happened.’

  David looked at her, his questioning eyes urging her to go on, not that she needed much encouragement. At once, Rochelle felt her thoughts steamrolling from her lips.

  'It could have been all so different, David. Oh it really could have. “Such a bright young thing,” they called me. Especially my parents, but then they would say that, wouldn’t they? You see, I had quite a bit of, let’s call it academic success, at quite a young age, but of course, that was only thanks to mum and dad’s uncanny ability to both neglect me, and pressurise me, all at the same time,’ her voice trailed off into a sigh. ‘I suppose they love me and all the rest of it, but I tell you, I can’t help but think they only did it so that they'd have something to boast about at those swank society functions they were always gallivanting off to.

  'You see, I wasn't that bright, David. Not really. It was just that I had little else to do besides study. Friends were certainly few and far between. If I’m honest with you, even now I couldn’t tell you why that was, but well, regardless of the reasons, I spent an awful lot of time by myself.’

  Biting at her bottom lip, Rochelle settled herself in an old, timeworn arm chair, resting in the corner of the dusky room.

  ‘So I suppose I sought solace in study, in the idea that if I did well, somebody might finally pay me a bit of attention, no not attention, affection,’ she continued. ‘I must tell you, I did find some comfort in my books. They gave me all this stupid knowledge, and with it the even stupider belief that if I could just work really, really hard and do really, really well, there would be a different kind of life, a better kind of life, David, waiting for me.'

  Her mind raced still, her story unravelling, gushing freely from her slender lips, the way a prisoner might rush into the arms of a loved one on the day of release from a thirty year stretch. Isolation deserted her at long last, leaving in its wake a pain that was both cathartic and raw. She rose from her perch and made towards a large tin jug, sitting beside a log fire. Wrapping a thin cloth around the jug, she poured its contents - a thin, pale liquid - into two mugs, and handed one to David.

  'Oh and it was different, David, it really was,' she enthused, easing herself back into the armchair. 'I raced through my education at far greater speeds than my peers. The classes for my age group were apparently not advanced enough for me, and so they pushed me, on and on, higher and higher, level after level. None of it helped me to win any friends of course.'

  She fell silent. David sipped from his cup and learned towards her.

  'Go on,' he urged. He sensed within him that Rochelle had wanted to get all of this off her chest for quite some time. Her lip curled into the slightest of smiles.

  'Well, I stormed through school, and I stormed through university, and before I knew it, there I was at twenty one years old, Doctor Rochelle Asa, with a PHD and a host of other ghastly and meaningless initials after my name. Don’t you just hate that? Those awful people who have to put half the alphabet after their name just to make themselves feel important?’

  David shrugged. Rochelle ignored him.

  'You know, David, they told me I could have been anything with my qualifications. Anything from a general practitioner to a surgeon to...’ she paused, trying to think of a third option, and finding that the carefully orchestrated path others had laid out before her had led her to a point where no other profession could have ever been considered. ‘...Well, anything really,’ she quipped, shooing away this new revelation.

  ‘Though you know, all I really wanted to do was to help the people who needed help the most. It probably sounds very silly to you of course, but to me, back then - even still if I'm being entirely truthful with you - that would make everything worth it. All the loneliness, and all that pressure from mummy and daddy dearest, it would all be worth it, David, because I could channel it into something good, something right, something that actually mattered. If I could somehow sacrifice my childhood, and my own happiness, to really do something that made a difference to the lives of others, it would be the right and worthwhile thing to do. And it was too, David.'

  The spirit of her song returned now as she clutched her mug and spoke enthusiastically.

  'They offered me a job you see. They offered me the perfect job, working with the Humanitarian division of the United Earth Force, and Oh! What a job it was! “Go to Asylonia” they said, “Heal the sick, and the dying, and the wounded of all nations, all planets, all races” they said! “Oh, and whilst you're at it” they said, “see if you can't learn something from the other species on The New World. Something that you can bring back with you, you know, for our benefit.” Oh what a wonderful opportunity it was, David!

  'I arrived here on this island - we’re on an island you see, just off the coast of the mainland - and when I got here, I set to work immediately. I didn't want to waste a single second of my chance to really make a difference. You understand?’

  David nodded but said nothing. Rochelle went on.

  ‘It all went terribly well in the beginning. I mended broken limbs. I cured the kind of diseases that were fatal to the non-humans, yet which barely affected us at all. I saved lives and I helped bring new life into the world, and when the final days came for those who could no longer fight back against the inevitability of old age, I helped them too. I helped them to pass on in peace, free from pain.

  'I was the only doctor on this whole island, you see, and slowly, the island folk began to regard me fondly as one of their own. I was their chemist and their surgeon, their physiotherapist and their counsellor, and you know what else? I was their friend too. Their friend, David! For the first time in twenty plus years, I was somebody's friend. It was just magical.'

  Her voice fell back into a hush..

  'And then of course, it all went horribly wrong, but I don't really wish to talk about that.'

  The sorrow in her eyes betrayed the resolve in her voice. The way she masked her face with splayed hands and sank into herself made David suspect that she had never been able to talk to anybody at all about whatever terrible thing haunted her heart.

  'No, do go on. Please?' He whispered.

  Encouraged by the sensitivity within his voice, and the genuine concern beaming through the greyish-blue pools of his eyes, Rochelle Asa broke down before David Attreus. Tears stained her quivering cheeks. Her voice became muffled through the palms of her hands.

  'Oh it was just horrible. I should have done more!'

  'What was horrible? I'm sure you did everything you could, whatever it was,' David insisted, sitting up taller and reaching across the room as though to touch her, to comfort her.

  'No! I didn't! I could have done more! Could have done it differently!' she wailed, her tears unstoppable, and the pale complexion of her skin blushing red.

  'Done what differently?'

  'Saved them, David. Saved them! All those deaths! God, they were just so sick! You should have seen them: the sores, the rotting flesh hanging from their bones, the greys of the eyes, all their teeth and all their hair falling away from them. Oh, God! They were infected David, infected badly, and everybody was begging me to help them, me. I hear them even now in my nightmares. I hear their screams, their cries for help. “Save them, Doctor, please save our families”

  'I tried! Oh, David, I really really tried! They were infected with what I suppose best resembled a strain of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, but somehow worse.'

  David squinted his eyes.

  ‘Humode...Himune...”

  'HIV, in other words, David. I tended to the sick in the day, and worked through the night on an antidote. Do you know, looking back, I don’t think I slept for a week straight? I thought I had it too! I really, genuinely thought I'd found an answer, you know, that I had the cure. Finally, The Cure! Especially when the miracle happened, and the very few humans affected by the disease were cured.

  'And yet...Oh, and yet! The Jerichans and the Kamencians, and all the other races, it failed all of them. I failed all of them, and I had to watch them perish.

  'Everybody hated me, and I don't mean that figuratively, they literally hated me, David. They wanted me dead! They yelled and screamed and threw things at me. How could I? How could I save my own kind and yet not theirs? How could I let their sons, and their husbands, and their mothers and their sisters all die like that when I'd just cured my fellow human?

  'But it wasn't like that! it wasn't like that at all! Their DNA was...is...constructed differently than ours. My antidote passed on through their bodies like it was water, just went undetected by their immune systems. The Asylonians, they said they were going to kill me, and you know what? I believed them. I believed them with every fiber of my stupid little being. I could practically smell their bloodlust. Well of course, what could I have done? Nothing, that’s what. So I did the only thing you can do when your only option is to do nothing. I ran. In the first moments of dawn, when the drunks and the thugs were clocking off and civilized society hadn’t yet clocked on, I gathered my things and I ran, out here to the forest where they would never find me.'

  Her voice fell calmer, as though she had been reminded of the relative safety of her cabin. Her eyes squeezed out a final tear. David spotted a box of tissues on the dresser behind him. He reached for them gingerly, unsure whether his body had healed enough to handle the effort involved. He clipped the box with his fingertip. It fell from the dresser and landed in his open palm. Inwardly, the simple action of catching the box made him feel good. There was nothing wrong with his reflexes at least. Rochelle sniffled, wiping at hot eyes with the backs of her hands. He passed her the box of tissues. She took one, blew into it and whimpered.

  'It was only supposed to be for a few days, a week or two at the very most, until I could get in touch with the Earth Force and have them rescue me. I got through to them after just a day or so, and they promised to send somebody out right away to bring me home, but then...nothing. I lost all contact. The satellites were all dead, as dead as those creatures I’d been unable to save. I've been stuck here ever since, stuck on this rotten planet for three fucking years.'

  The viciousness of her cursing surprised both of them. David bit his thumb, Rochelle burst into fresh tears.

  'But you're here at last!' she squealed. 'Where the fuck have you been? Three years David! Where the fuck have you been?'

  Despair turned to anger in her blood as she flung herself at him, beating on his chest with open hands like a kneading kitten. Threatened, David wrapped his arms around her. Her lithe body melted against him.

  'Hey now! What do you mean?' he asked, the compassion he intended lost beneath the need to yell over her anguished cries.

  'What do I mean? I mean you were supposed to come rescue me three fucking years ago David,' she wept, still wrestling against him.

  'I...erm...I got lost,' he lied.

  Caught off guard, by her pain as much as by the question itself, it seemed better than the alternative:

  I’m sorry Rochelle, but hey, we only just met. Besides, I came here for somebody else, you’re not part of the plan.

  But that was not exactly true, he thought. Before the lips of an angel had breathed new life into him, and before the touch of her hand against his chest had done more to relieve him of his pain than any of her medication, then it was true. She had not been part of any plan that he knew of. Now? Now things were different. She had saved his life. She had done more than that, she had done something he was still much too foggy to understand. Though he understood completely now that she was part of the plan, and he felt that in someway she had always been part of the plan, long before he knew there was even a plan.

  'I gotcha now.' he said, speaking softly and holding onto her with greater conviction. Rochelle wilted in his arms and sobbed quietly against the gentle rise and fall of his bare chest.

  'How many were there, Rochelle?' He asked her.

  'How many what?'

  'How many people? How many died from the HIV virus?'

  'Oh I don't know, about a hundred or so. Does it matter? One? One hundred? One million? The death of one is a tragedy...'

  'The death of a million is just stats, man. Yeah, yeah. I know,' he interrupted. 'And how many human beings did you manage to cure?'

  'Five, six, maybe.'

  'Five or six. OK, final question. Get this right and you go home with the grand prize,' he joked, amusing only himself.

  'How many human beings all over the galaxy live with the HIV virus inside them?'

  Rochelle thought for a second.

  'About...About thirty five million perhaps. Why? What are you getting at?'

  David trailed his fingers lightly through her hair. Disarmed by his gentle caress, she moved timidly against him, seeking comfort.

  'What I'm getting at, is that you didn't fail at all, Rochelle. A hundred or so Asylonians died yes, and that's a tragedy no matter how you look at it, but I promise you this: One day their families are gonna see that the deaths of their loved ones were not in vain, hell no they weren’t! Those guys died so that Doctor Rochelle Asa could cure thirty five million human beings of a disease which in most cases destroyed their lives. They’ll see that you did the best you could with the knowledge and resources you had at the time, and you did. Hell, ‘Chelle, I wasn’t even there and I know you did. I can just tell.'

  'But the Asylonians...'

  David cut her off.

  'In time, the Asylonians will see that the original cure their loved ones helped create can be developed and expanded upon, that they showed you a way which didn't work so that you could find one that did. They’re gonna see that by finding the one way that did work, you could cure many millions from all nations and all planets, and free them from Humody...Homodine...from HIV.'

  The thought appealed to Rochelle. Her tears faded against her skin and a quiet calm penetrated her breath.

  'When did you get so smart?' she smiled, wiping away a final tear.

  'I think the crash may have knocked some sense into me finally. My mother would be so proud,' he joked, lying again.

  Rochelle bolted in his arms, pressing one hand against his clammy forehead, and cupping his bruised shoulder with the other.

  'Oh yes! The crash! I'm so sorry, I'm supposed to be taking care of you. God, I can't even get that right. How are you feeling?'

  'Pretty much like I just crashed a spaceship,' he grinned. 'But I'll be fine, man, I swear. So as soon as you find me some clothes to wear, we’re gonna get our act together and we’re gonna go home.’

  His words stirred Rochelle.

  'Sounds wonderful,' she smiled, and wrapped her arms around him.

  'Yeah. We just have to pick somebody up on the way through first, if that's alright by you.'

  'Pick somebody up?'

  'Yeah. The General.'

  'The General?'

  Rochelle softened against David. He comforted her in the way he had once longed to be comforted in the wake of his father's death. He told her the story of General Noah Fallon, Defender of Earth, Slayer of Temüjin slimeballs. Rochelle curled up and listened intently like a young child enthralled by a favourite bedtime story.

  'So where do we find him, this General of yours?' she asked when finally he finished.

  David bowed his head and spoke through a sigh.

  'I have no idea.'

  XXIII.

  Few people had any idea of Noah Fallon’s whereabouts, and he intended to keep it that way. He sat hunched over a steel-plated bar, with the faded elbows of his leather jacket resting among the empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays of the bar’s shredded steel surface.

  Fluorescent blue lights buzzed, their rays shooting around The Riptide Rock ‘n’ Roll Bar like erratic lightning, the only source of light in the otherwise blackened bar room.

  Noah liked it this way. In the darkness, he could sit on a high stool and pound shot after shot after whiskey without being troubled by anything other than the endless calamity in own mind. It was from this stool that he could hide the lust in his eyes as they locked on the petite young bar girl, her elegant bush of fiery red hair bobbing against the sleek torpedo of her face, and curling over wide eyes of pure green. He could allow his gaze to trace the sensual contours of her body, taking in her shapely breasts and the ample curve of buttocks, hugged snuggly by a pair of tiny denim shorts.

 

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