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Chapter 12

"No, it's okay. You deserve to go, Joe."

"I didn't ask for them to do this."

"Are you deaf, Joe? I said it's okay."

To someone who hadn't known him for years, A.J. sounded like he was one hundred percent recovered. Joe, though, could hear both the overemphasized casual tone and the very slight roughness, the latter indicating the cause of their current discussion.

A.J. put his VRD glasses back on, pointedly trying to act as though it was a normal day at work. "I knew something like this would happen once the doc had his little talk with me."

Joe put a hand on his shoulder. "Cut the crap, A.J."

The blond imaging whiz sat still for a moment, trying to maintain a casual pose. But it collapsed and A.J. tore the glasses from his face, flinging them down violently.

"God damn it. Damn it!" His voice broke, bringing a sympathetic sting to Joe's eyes as he saw actual tears break through A.J.'s reserve and spill down his face before he savagely scrubbed them away with his sleeve.

"I shouldn't be crying about this. I shouldn't even be angry about this. I did it to myself, didn't I?"

He tried to stop the rant, choked off a sob, and dissolved into a racking cough. Joe waited until his friend had recovered breath and some self-control.

"Yeah, you did do it to yourself. Saving my own engineering staff. The whole project, really. Look, A.J., the Faeries are on their way to Mars right now. You watched the launch yesterday. You'll be exploring Phobos soon, on schedule, and if you hadn't pushed yourself past the limit, we'd have missed that deadline. I can't override the docs, A.J., but no one can take away what you've achieved, or what you're going to achieve."

A.J. glowered down at the table, obviously trying to keep from crying, shouting, or both again.

"And you weren't the only one who paid that price. There were two, three other people ahead of me, and the accident took them out one way or another. That's why I'm at the top of the list now."

The blue eyes closed again. A.J. took a deep, carefully controlled breath that still held a faint wheezing note, a sign of the damage to his lungs. When his eyes opened again, the fury was fading from them.

"I know. It's just . . . going to take me a little time to accept it, okay? I was so close to that part of the dream. I knew they hadn't actually decided the crew, but I sort of assumed I'd be on it."

"And so did everyone else."

"I'm not entirely off the list," A.J. said after a pause. "The doc said I was down to eighty-two percent of my normal—former—capacity, and there were things that could trigger other problems, but that it wasn't absolutely out of the question, depending. The rest of me is healthy."

"Well, that's good. Maybe then on the next trip . . .?"

A.J. nodded, a bit too lightly. "Maybe so. But I should get to work. Have a lot of things to do before I move out to JPL and handle the Faeries for NASA."

He picked the glasses back up and put them on. A moment later, he took them off, stared at them, and then suddenly burst out laughing, a laugh which also turned into a short coughing fit.

"Just perfect. I've killed my VRD."

He stood up. Then, so suddenly it startled Joe, turned and hugged his friend. "Thanks."

Joe recovered and returned the embrace. A.J. wasn't affectionate with too many people, but with those few he tended toward unabashed displays of joy and sorrow. Joe appreciated the fact that

A.J. considered him one of those few. "Thanks for what?"

"For making me explode, letting it all out. It'd be a poison if I kept it in. I know myself that way."

A.J. wasn't really all right yet, Joe knew, but at least he'd acknowledged the anger and started to face it. They needed that anger worked out as fast as possible, because the Project still needed A.J. badly, and Joe very much did not want to lose one of his best friends over something like this.

"I guess I'd better go pick myself out another VRD. Congratulations on making the crew, Joe."

"Thanks, A.J."

The imaging specialist walked out, just a bit more slowly than he might have a few months before, shoulders slumped the least little bit. Joe heard himself sigh. What a goddamned shame.

Helen rubbed her eyes and pushed back from the desk. Opening her eyes, she found that the tests had, alas, not magically finished grading themselves as she had hoped.

"What I wouldn't give for a distraction," she muttered. Being a professor had its advantages, but this wasn't one of them. Especially with the quality of students these days.

She suddenly chuckled, remembering that her father—a professor of long standing himself—had made the same complaint, and mentioned that his favorite professors had done the same. If all of them had been right, by now she should be teaching a class of mostly australopithecines.

Opening up the next test file, she winced. Perhaps she was. Was it really so very difficult for a student to master basic language skills before entering college? Yet Jerry was always attentive in class, and he didn't do badly on the lab practicals. He just could not seem to put into written words anything he knew. Maybe he needed a verbal examination.

Her phone dinged, then gave voice to a four-note chime that she hadn't heard in months. "A.J.!"

"What's up, Doc?"

"To my neck in tests, is what's up," she answered. The tanned face displayed before her had the subliminally odd cast that came from generating the face image based on the actual face, but using sensors set at a much different location than the apparent camera viewpoint. Still, there was something about the expression that seemed additionally wrong.

"What about you, A.J.?"

"Oh, I just . . . thought I'd give you a call. It's been a while."

"Uh-huh. I'm actually a little pissed at you. I also got a call from Jackie Secord. About five hours ago."

"Oh."

"What the hell is wrong with you, A.J.? She calls to give you some good news and you practically freeze her from long distance. Then won't answer her calls? I know the two of you argue about a lot of stuff, but that's just plain rude."

A.J. was silent, but his expression was failing to maintain the usual open and carefree look. The imaging expert looked . . . miserable.

Helen couldn't recall ever seeing him even look momentarily glum. She was silent, waiting. He obviously had some kind of trouble, but she wasn't going to let him completely off the hook.

"Yeah. I had better send her an apology. She . . . it was just a really, really bad time to call."

"A bad time to call? Come on, A.J."

"You know what she called about?"

"Well, of course. She's made the cut to be on Nike's crew. It's not guaranteed yet, but things are looking much better than she ever—"

"I've been grounded."

It took a moment for Helen to grasp what A.J. meant. "Grounded? I didn't . . . Oh, God. You found out today?"

The answer was almost a whisper. "Yeah. Joe managed to talk me out of a major tantrum, so I went out to get myself new shades, and while I'm doing that Jackie calls me out of the blue."

"Oh, A.J." She didn't honestly know what to say. What could she say?

"I figured you might understand better than anyone."

"Huh? I'm not one of you space cases."

"No," A.J. conceded. "But you've had your career take a down turn because you did something you knew was dangerous to it, even though you really didn't have a choice."

"I thought . . . Joe called me last week. He told me your recovery was going very well, according to the doctors."

"Yeah, I guess. The way the doctors look at it, which isn't the way I do. I'm not blaming them, you understand. They did what they could. Twenty years ago I'd have lost a lot more function, and fifty years ago they'd have written me off, even if I'd lived to get out of the fire. I'm a little better than eighty percent; but in space, they're looking for a hundred and ten percent, you know?"

"Even so, I can't believe they've taken you off the list entirely!"

"Well . . . no. But I'm down around where Joe was. Oh, and just by the way, Joe's now on the list for Ares."

No wonder he hadn't been able to handle Jackie's call! His two best friends got the nod just as he got the boot, and then. . .

"I'll have to congratulate him. But. . . that must hurt."

"A lot." The roughness in his voice became apparent as he tried to control it. "More than I told Joe, though I know he knows me enough to know . . . does that make sense? And I feel like such a complete and utter dickhead, Doc. I shouldn't be mad at Joe, it's not his fault, and it's not Jackie's. There's no one to blame except a faulty valve that happened to blow a few months back. But I'm still mad at him. I'm so fu—frigging mad that I could punch him out, and all the damn doctors, and I'd take a swing at Jackie if she wasn't a girl. Because, dammit, it's my dream. Mine."

"I know," she said softly.

"And here I am, crying to you. I sorta cried in front of Joe before, but I can't really do that. And my folks, well . . ."

He didn't finish, but she already knew that A.J.'s parents had been killed in an auto accident several years earlier. "So I guess you get the really short end of the stick. First Jackie gets to tell you what a jerk I am, and then I get to tell you in person."

"Why me?"

A.J. wiped his eyes—his image had blurred for a moment and then suddenly refocused, this time clearly coming from a camera that was actually transmitting his real picture—and sagged back into a couch visible behind him.

"Why? I guess. . . Because you're outside of it all, Doc. I know you, and you know all of us, but you're not in the space race any more than I was in the game with you bonediggers. You're not competing with us."

"I see. Well, I'm honored, I guess."

A.J. managed a weak chuckle. "I also knew I would get straight talk from you. But you wouldn't make fun of me, either, because you know what this means."

"People don't make fun of you, A.J."

"How very little you know. Maybe not now, but if you have it happen enough when you're younger . . . "

"True, true," she admitted. "I managed to avoid most of that, but I can't deny I've seen enough of it."

She studied A.J. for a while in silence. "So what are you going to do?"

"Well, my job. What else? I'm still going to be running the Faeries for NASA, and I've got buttloads of other sensor work to do. But if I'm not going, I suppose I'll have more free time. . . "

"Maybe you can finally finish up that dissertation and be Dr. Baker."

There it was again, that tiny little twitch. "Nah, I don't think so. I don't really need it, with my rep. I've got other things to do."

"Okay, A.J., give. What's with you and the title 'Doctor'?"

To her surprise, A.J. blushed. "That's my deepest and darkest secret. Joe knows it, but he was sworn to solemn secrecy."

"So . . . ?"

The imaging genius rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. Have you ever heard of an old TV show called Doctor Who?"

Helen nodded. "Sure. I was a sci-fi fan when I was younger, myself. I've even seen a few episodes when they reran them for a while."

"Well, both of my parents were Whovians. Fanatic Whovians, though at least—thank the gods—Who fans tend to be more civilized. But still . . . my dad's first name was Thomas."

"Tom Baker." She was still puzzled.

"He was probably the most popular and well-known Doctor in the series."

Now she remembered. "Oh, yes. He was the tall one with the scarf."

"Yes. Well, like I said, they were real fans. So the word Doctor has some very strong associations for me. Especially with my name."

"A.J.?"

"A.J. is short for my real name. Adric Jamie, for their two favorite male companions. I suppose I should be grateful that I wasn't born a girl, or I would have been Romanadvoratralundar Leela."

"Jesus. You're kidding."

"I'm not. I loved my folks, but I swear, there were times I thought that killing them would have been justifiable homicide."

"Do you have a . . ."

"Sister? Yes, actually. And yes, she does have that name. Well, Leela Romana—mom had gotten to choose first when I was born, so dad chose the first name when Lee was born."

"Your parents were definitely in actionable territory there."

A.J. laughed, the first relaxed sound she'd heard from him. "It could've been worse, I guess. I'm named after a supergenius who adapts to any situation and an honest, courageous, and really tough Highlander warrior. And other than their little obsession they were really great folks." He looked sad, but no longer on the edge of tears. "Thanks, Doc."

"You're welcome. At least now I know why you go by your initials. And to be honest, I was hoping for a distraction."

"Let me guess. Test time."

"Right in one."

"Well, much as I know you won't thank me, I'd better send you back to the test papers. And then go bite the bullet and see if Jackie will accept a groveling apology."

"If you can get past the first few moments and she finds out why you went off on her, I suspect it won't be a problem. But you'd still better do some groveling. It will do you good, anyway."

"Okay, on that note, good night, Doc."

"Good night, A.J. And, hey—keep in touch."

"I will. Bye." His image vanished.

Helen shook her head. What a mess. Glancing at the screen, she sighed again and began the long task of grading.

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Framed