The Preacher's Daughter

Basel felt Eliana shiver in his arms for a while, and then the shivering stopped. She sighed heavily several times and finally seemed to relax. "Basel," she whispered softly, "would it be okay if we slept together?"

He leaned over and kissed her temple. He then rested the side of his face against hers. "I'd love to. You mean for tonight?"

"Tonight, and maybe for a while. I don't mean to press you, and I certainly don't want to frustrate you..."

"You won't. And I promise, I won't get frisky with you unless you want me too. Did you have trouble getting to sleep?"

"Yes. You too?"

"Yeah. I think I just dropped off an hour ago." He looked up and glanced at the time. "Wow, it's almost 6:30. I guess I've been dozing for about two hours.

Eliana nodded and held him tightly. "It was the same for me. I thought I might not sleep at all tonight, and then I finally drifted off. And then the nightmares began..."

"Ah..." A long silence followed. After a while Basel started to caress her, very lightly, stroking the underside of her ribs and paying close attention to whether she wanted to be petted. She did. She wiggled her body in appreciation and pressed herself against him. Basel kissed her and muttered, "Remember much about the dream?"

"Too much. There were two awful, scream-in-the-dark nightmares. In the first, I was alone here in the station. I didn't know where you were. I started to search the rooms. I was disturbed to find the specimen chamber empty, but other than that everything seemed in order. Then I started feeling a presence. Someone was watching me, I was sure of it, someone or something. I started to panic, running from room to room. The feeling of being coldly stared at was overpowering. I was crying in fear in my dream. I finally ran to take shelter in my bedroom..."

"Ah. And the hippo was there?"

"No, even worse. You were there. Your neck had been cut open, but there was no blood, and you were standing and calmly giving me a smile. But the smile never touched your eyes. The gleam in your eyes looked evil and inhuman. All of your goodness was gone."

"And then you woke up?"

"Yes. The fear and shock pushed me awake. I was gasping and clutching my blanket like a child."

"Ah..."

"I tried to be brave, be an adult and go back to sleep. Unfortunately I succeeded. I was right back in the same dream, standing in the archway of my bedroom, staring at you staring at me. You held out your arms to hug me, and in spite of your cut neck I started to come to you to be hugged. At the last moment, I saw that your arms were covered with hooks, nasty looking thorns with needlelike points. You reached for me, and my legs would not move. I screamed again and woke up crying. I came to your door..."

Basel turned and lay on his side, facing Eliana. She did the same and they held each other tightly. Eventually Basel rolled on his back, carrying Eliana on top of him. She kissed his naked chest and then nestled her head upon it, wiggling her body until he hugged her firmly around her back and butt.

"Eli?"

"Uh huh?"

"How about we incinerate the specimen?"

She twitched. "Can we?"

"Sure. The autopsy is complete. There's no particular reason to hang onto it. We either have to refreeze it or burn it. Normal procedure would be to burn it and record the spectrums."

"All right. Thank you. Right now be okay?"

"Sure." Basel turned on a light and they got up. He was completely at ease with his nakedness in front of her, and Eliana was struck with the thought that he was treating her with the complete familiarity and intimacy of a husband being with my wife. She ran back to her bedroom for a moment to grab a robe.

Both dressed, they ascended to Level-3 and then crossed the tunnel to the garage complex, climbing the ladder down to Level-B. Basel heard Eliana give a soft cry of relief when she saw the hippo specimen still enclosed in its container.

Boosting their incineration module with the full power of the CAT above them, Basel started the process of converting the corpse to simple gases. A half-hour later, he turned to Eliana and commented, "We're well over 3000C. All the spectral sampling is complete. You want to go to ionization, or should I just vent the gas?"

Eliana heard his unvoiced opinion in his tone and sighed. "I agree, there's no point to go further. There are no molecules left, just simple atoms. Let's vent."

By the time they finished and left the lab, it was almost 8 PM. Basel was delighted to have Eliana follow him into his bedroom, and as she began to undress he followed her to stripping himself naked. They were both soon under his covers again.

"This feels nice," he muttered. "I had almost forgotten how silky you feel when you're not wearing anything."

She raised her head and gave him a kiss. "You're very sweet to put up with me."

"Hmm? How so?"

"Oh, all sorts of things... How about we take a half-day vacation? Go back to sleep now and not worry about when we wake up?"

"Yeah. Sounds like a plan." They petted each other affectionately for a long while. Then Eliana caresses started to slow down, and Basel realized she was drifting off to sleep. "Eli?" he whispered.

"Hmm? Yeah?"

"The monster, it was always completely real to you, wasn't it?"

"Uh huh," she yawned, "ever since I saw it."

"And I was teasing you about it. I am ashamed of myself."

"Oh, you were just being playful, my sweet husband-to-be. I didn't mind." She yawned again. "In fact, I enjoyed it. Your joking around helped ease my tension."

"I don't feel like joking about it now." His hand lovingly stroked down the side of her relaxed body. "And you don't feel tense now."

"No... I don't think it's possible for me to be tense when you're holding me like this. Your love washes away my fears..." And as if to prove her point, Eliana fell asleep minutes later.

Basel cradled his wife-to-be in his arms, loving the intimacy and the feel of her breathing. He held her near her armpit, his hand lightly holding the side of her breast. He closed his eyes and smiled, and entered a deep and restful sleep.

Chapter 16. New Echoes

Time: February 12, 9570 3:00:00 AM UCT

"And go," said Eliana. They were at a precise coordinate 10 km south and 10 km west of their station, at an elevation 1940 meters above sea-level and 1120 meters above the local terrain. They were entering their first run of the day, traveling due west at 72 kph. The sun was just breaking on the surface below, though at their height they had been enjoying the golden light for several minutes.

Eliana idly recorded the sun's azimuth at 135 degrees into her log and then turned to her companion. "This is perfect Basel. The auto-pilot will keep us at a constant height of 1120 meters above the local terrain, and even with the highest peaks in the area, we still have nice buffer of several hundred meters below our 3000 meter ceiling from the governors. Your latest improvements are letting us use our full capability."

Basel nodded his head at the compliment as he studied his display. "Data collection seems to be running fine. All we have to do is sit back and enjoy the scenery." Below them the PATH scanner was mapping the terrain with snow-penetrating photonics in a 300-meter wide sweep. Their planned mission for the day was to make twenty-two 20-km east-west passes and scan the southern third of a 400 sq km grid centered at their station.

Each pass would take 1024 seconds, 1000 seconds for the 20 km run at 20 m/s, and 24 seconds to complete a half-circle turn of radius 150 meters and position themselves on the next return track. Estimated time for today's scanning was six hours and fifteen minutes. With sunset at 9:23 AM, they were using all their available daylight.

A half-day later...

Time: February 12, 9570 3:45 PM UCT

"Eliana," Basel called out. "You might want to come up here and see this."

It was shortly before bedtime, and Eliana was curled up in a lounge chair and engrossed in some recreational reading. She glanced at the time and realized Basel must have finished the image processing. "Coming!" she called in reply, and joined Basel in the Level-2 control center a moment later. "Tell me you found the impact location."

He shook his head no. "Something just as interesting though. Take a look at this. These are from our fifth and sixth tracks this morning. We were so lucky! We just barely managed to catch this. Look! This is time-index 987 seconds into the fifth track. See the anomaly right here, at 4:24:43 AM?"

Eliana stared for a moment. "Well, the squiggles certainly look different. What does it mean?"

"These are those weird extra echoes I've recorded before."

"Ah. What will you bet if we go back again, they won't be there?"

"Yeah. We probably should retest, but no bet. And it gets even better. We completed track-5 and then scanned during our 24-second half circle. Nothing interesting there. But then we started the next track. Look at the track-6 data, at time-index 21 seconds."

"Hell Basel, we flew right over it!"

"Uh huh. I did a contour analysis between the two observation points. The shortest distance along the surface is just over 400 meters, with a time interval of 58 seconds."

Eliana paused for a moment. "Seven meters per second?"

"Yeah, just about 25 kph."

"Hmm. A little slower than our last observation." She looked at him closely and smiled. "I must say, I'm very pleased how completely you've come over to my position that this creature exists."

Basel smiled back. "I haven't shown you the last data point." He typed on the controls and zoomed out of the view. The display drew a line across the map, showing the extension of the two data points pointing to a third point in the center of the map.

Eliana sucked in a sharp intake of breath. "The Holy! It was heading right for our station!"

"Yeah. It seems the creature is interested in us just as much as we are interested in it. If it kept its course and speed, it got here around 5 AM this morning."

"To do what?"

"No idea."

Eliana frowned. "Didn't the station sensors pick up anything?"

"I've checked. No."

She sighed. "Basel, can we turn your scanner into a creature detector?"

"I've been thinking about that. PATH is not well suited to the task of giving a quick alert. The scanner has to transmit the raw data into the station library, and there's a two-minute processing delay once the data is in the library." He paused for a moment. "And it takes at least that long for the pre-processing and to transmit the data here from a remote location. In the field, we'll get a warning five minutes late." He shrugged. "All this is assuming the scanner can always detect the creature."

Eliana nodded. "That's true. And it's an important thing to remember. We don't understand how the detection process works. We thus have no idea of its limitations."

"Eli, I have one last thought about this. I don't know if the creature can sense our scanner. Maybe it can. But I don't think it realizes our scanner can sense it. The creature made no effort to avoid being directly under the scanner on our second observation, nor did it make any attempt to change course and hide the fact it was coming here."

Eliana nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, very good reasoning. Basel?"

"Yeah?"

"You've done fabulous work. I couldn't be more proud of you."

"Ah, some days you get lucky."

Eliana grinned. "Some nights too. Ready for bed?"

Basel returned her playful smile. "I do believe I am."

He was soon lying down in his bedroom getting another wonderful backrub. Since his first night with sleeping with Eliana, he had followed her lead and dressed in pajamas before lying with her. They both felt intensely attracted to each other, but were still exercising some discipline and patience and had not yet become sexually active.

Eliana's massage lasted more than an hour, neck, shoulders, arms, back, butt, legs... Basel felt like a pile of melted butter after a while, and the pleasure of Eliana's loving hands was so deep, it kept him from falling asleep. He just lay there and sighed in contentment.

As 5:30 PM approached, Eliana dimmed the lights even further and cuddled next to him. Her arm lay on top of him, and her hand caressed his lower back and butt. Eventually her hand settled on his rump, and her finger wiggled in and began caressing his anus through his pajamas. Basel wiggled in appreciation and sighed again.

"Basel?" Eliana whispered.

"Hmm?"

"I'm almost there. I almost have exactly your opinion of what our marriage should be like. Would you like to start having sex with me? I'm perfectly willing to commit to a monogamous marriage."

Basel turned his head to look at her, opening his eyes. "Almost?"

"Well... A small voice inside me is still wondering what I'll miss by never having a sister-wife. But the voice grows quieter each day. I'm feeling more and more possessive each day, not wanting to share you with anyone, not for sex, and definitely not with our marriage intimacy."

His arm came up and caressed her cheek. "Sweet Eli, you still want to wait, don't you?"

She paused for a long moment and then nodded. "You read me so well, better than I read myself. It won't be long. I soon won't be able to bear the thought of sharing you sexually with anyone."

Further words seemed completely unnecessary. They kissed sleepily for a while, and then both drifted off.

Two days later...

Time: February 14, 9570 2:45 AM UCT

It was five minutes before local sunrise and the start of their third and final day of the first phase of their scanning. The CAT was hovering at 1970 meters just south of sizable lake. They were 10 km west and 10 km north of home, setting up for their first of twenty-three tracks for the day. They were not having an easy time of it.

Another blast of wind shook the CAT violently. Eliana struggled to hold their precise position, but it was a losing battle.

"Sorry Basel," she muttered. "My only defense is that the auto-pilot would be doing an even worse job. I just can't anticipate fast enough."

Basel nodded and looked to the southeast. The horizon was an angry blur of swirling grayness. There would be no golden sunlight today. He agreed with Eliana's assessment. "This turbulence is way more than the scanner can handle. Why don't we call it a day and try again tomorrow?"

"You sure? In between the wind gusts we do get some stable moments."

Basel shook his head no. "We'll get little bits and pieces and have to rescan everything anyway." As if to confirm his decision, a particularly nasty blast of air started to spin the CAT clockwise.

"Yeah. It's too bad, but the CAT just doesn't fight this kind of turbulence well." Eliana began to accelerate and head for home. At 14 km distant, they'd be there in three minutes. But then Eliana had an idea. She began to increase their altitude rather then descend.

Basel looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She replied, "I want us to do a PATH sweep of our station site, park ourselves 1120 meters above the garage and then do a slow pivot, a half-turn every 24 seconds. The two edges of our scan line will be moving at 20 m/s."

Basel nodded thoughtfully and began to prepare his instrument.

They hovered in a cloud directly above their station. Basel couldn't see much of anything, but the altimeter told him Eliana was keeping the CAT 2990 to 3000 meters above sea-level. She watched the atmospheric sensors closely, and when they showed her a brief period of approaching calmness, she executed a new auto-pilot program. The CAT began to descend rapidly.

Their aircraft stabilized at just over 1800 meters above sea level and began its slow rotation. They completely almost three half-turns before a fierce blast of wind bounced them to the south.

"That's it!" cried Eliana. "Let's head for home." They descended through the last of the cloud cover and landed adjacent to the CAT's garage. They were going through their plasma sterilization process within minutes.

A short time later.

"My Holy Basel!" Eliana whispered with a hiss. "We were right on top of it again!"

"Yeah," he whispered back, "and it's moving right along our scan line. We're getting an excellent measurement of its speed."

Eliana nodded. "And we even picked up an echo near the 26-second mark, on the other end of the sweep. This is good..."

After a few more minutes of analysis, Basel summed up their findings. "Well, I'm fairly certain now the creature can detect my scanner. You were hovering for several seconds before I started scanning, and yet when the scan started we still see the creature as motionless and directly in front of the bay doors. At time 1200 milliseconds into the scan, the shape accelerates to the southeast, reaching a velocity of twenty kph in two seconds. The creature then continues to travel at that rate for several seconds before we lose it. Near the 26-second mark, we get a final echo near the edge of the scan, at a distance of 145 meters. All the rest of the data is blank."

"Curious," said Eliana. "Six meters a second, a bit slower than what we saw it do two days ago. I wonder why it slowed down."

Basel shrugged. "Maybe it was more concerned about its camouflage now, and that makes it move more slowly."

"Yes, perhaps... It's remarkable the station sensors registered absolutely nothing."

Basel frowned. "Yeah. It'll take a lot of storage, but maybe we should store the raw sensor data, and not just the processed images. Seeing the creature might be so subtle, the software isn't picking it up." He paused for a moment. "Eli, what do you think the creature had in mind, being at our garage door like that?"

"I don't know. Simple curiosity, maybe something else. It's impossible to say. It does seem as interested in us as we are in it." She shrugged. "I'm less worried now of it leaving the area. Basel, any thoughts on making a better detector?"

"Not a clue. I'll keep trying though."

"Need any help?"

"No, not yet. I'll just in thinking mode for now."

"Okay." Eliana realized with a start that she had nothing in particular scheduled to do. She kissed Basel and took off to work out in the Observation gym.

Chapter 17. Marriage

Two days later...

Time: February 16, 9570 2:40 AM UCT

After a day and a half of cloudy, blustery weather, the skies rapidly cleared but the gusty winds continued, and Basel and Eliana decided to continue their break from completing the grid search to the north. Instead they flew southeast at the break of dawn and were planning to spend their entire seven-hour window of daylight making random magnified visual observations along the length of the great lake-filled valley that used to the ancient border between Sweden and Finland. Their plan was cut short less than a half-hour into the flight.

"I see it too," Eliana called out as she banked the CAT to return to the center of a large frozen lake. "Reducing speed..." They were soon hovering at 2400 meters above sea-level and two kilometers above the center of the lake. "I'm logging our position at 41 km east and 44 km south of the station, time is 3:09 AM." She joined Basel in staring at the visual display from the underside of the fuselage. "Any guesses what that is?"

"Looks like some sort of puddle, maybe about a meter in diameter... Look at the edges. Is that puddle lying in some sort of carved depression?"

Eliana nodded. "Yeah, with all the side lighting, it does look that way, doesn't it?" There was a short pause. "Definitely worth investigating. How about I land two hundred meters to the south and then we'll drive up to it?"

A short time later they were staring the puddle from four meters away. Basel was already activating the remotes. "How big a sample do you want?"

Eliana nodded and considered. The brisk winds had blown the lake surface down to bare ice. There has an almost circular carved depression before them, and about 3 cm down the depression was filled with what looked like fresh frozen blood. On top of the blood were approximately fifty black diamond shaped objects, about 2 cm by 3 cm. By the way they rippled in the wind, Eliana thought of them as small cut-out pieces of black paper with one or two of their four edges frozen into the blood.