He became physically and emotionally attached to her during their one-way voyage to the stars. The scientists, light years away on Earth, warned him that this might happen. Subconsciously, as they lay facing each other in their hibernated state, and at their re-awakening. But he never expected to fall in love with her.
His eyes still sealed; he ran his closed hand along their umbilicus. He felt the coarse hair that sprouted along his length of the cord. How the skin of their umbilicus felt: soft and smooth, as he lightly massaged the thick tube of flesh as far as her belly. Beyond their midway point. The point at which he would have to make the final cut. Wrought with emotion, just loving her proximity, relishing the intimacy that pulsed in thrilling heartbeats along the entire length of her umbilicus, he rubbed his heavy eyelids open, admired her sleeping face, then started to cry.
She was pretty, rather than attractive. Her dark brown hair, lightly streaked with grey, a minor defect, a side-effect of their long haul through space. Otherwise, she was delightful, just as he remembered her when they were put to sleep, bushy eyebrows, cute snub nose, thin pink lips, a dimpled chin, and skin as pale as strawberry cream. She was still wearing her satin negligee.
Her mouth was full of purple corrugated tubing: the feeding tube which stretched and flexed down her throat, ending inside her stomach. Her secondary tubes connected to suction pumps, vacuum-flasks containing biodegradable waste digestion enzymes removing their body waste.
His heart ached for her. To think, she had kept him alive for thirty years, steadily feeding him through the cord that bound them close together with her own body nutrients, extracting, then excreting, his waste. He wondered how long he could survive without her before the loneliness drove him insane. She opened her eyes and stared wide-eyed, wildly at him, imploring him to help her:
Please, help me pull this tube out of me.
Weeks of careful rehearsal in their co-habitual, germ-free laboratory back home: a rehearsal of the mind, could never prepare him for this indiscretion, the blatant intrusion he was about to make. He hated the thought of hurting her, killing her. He hoped she wouldn’t feel any pain. His pain. Desperately, she grasped the flexi-tube with both hands. He wrapped his fingers around her wrists. Very slowly, they inched the degradable plastic drip up her gullet, through her throat, into her mouth. They breathed a collective sigh of relief as she flicked the blunt end of the feed out of her lips and smiled.
He shut his moist eyes for a moment, stemming his tears. She hadn’t hurt, thank heaven. He hadn’t hurt her. His mind churned with guilt as he pictured her sad death, their wretched disconnection. He wanted to turn away, to be alone with his thoughts awhile, but couldn’t. The umbilicus forced them to think as one:
Would that we could stay entwined like this forever in our galactic paradise of love.
‘How does that feel, Sandie? Better?’
‘Mm, much,’ she murmured, appreciatively, ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
He started to cry again, couldn’t help himself, he’d grown fond of her, loved her until her death. She pretended not to notice, instead she pleaded with him, ‘Look away while I remove my waste tubes.’
Being a gentleman and an astronaut, he diverted his attention from her while she fiddled under her negligee, extricating her drains, and duly flicked them aside. Relieved at last, she pushed a slim hand through his wavy auburn hair, gently caressing his earlobe with her thumb, stroking his cheek. The man had grown a faint beard of facial swarth, she felt, as well as his bushy hair.
‘You can kiss me now, if you like?’
She drew his face close to hers, and they kissed, a deep, wet, longing kiss which seemed to take an eternity. He slid his hand over the silkiness covering her back, gently lifting up her negligee, and squeezed her soft, fleshy buttocks. She felt sorry for him. He loved her with a desperation that only thirty years of being co-joined in mutual hibernation could bring. She removed his hand, gazing into his deep sapphire eyes. He was crying for her, crying for her life.
She cried, ‘Please don’t cry. I hate it when you cry. I have to go now. My time with you is over. I think you should cut our umbilicus now, don’t you?’
‘I can’t!’ he wailed, ‘I love you!’
‘Furl! You must kill me! Only by killing me can you be certain of your own survival. You know Control decreed that only one of us would survive awakening to accomplish the Mission.’
He reached for the razor-sharp filleting knife behind his back, ‘Sandie, she’ll never know! We’ve achieved total radio silence. Even if she manages to re-establish contact with us, it will take thirty years for her to get through. By then we will have started a family. A colony, here on our own private world. We’ll live to a ripe old age, become grandparents, even great grandparents, we…’
‘Furl, we only have sufficient nutrient for one of us. Can’t you see that? Kill me!’
‘I can’t! I love you. I can’t kill you.’
She braced herself, braced herself for his final cut, ‘You must! Now, do it! Please! Kill me!’
He took the razor-sharp filleting knife, grasped the soft, smooth, hairless end of her umbilicus, then sliced through her, cutting through her cord as if he were slicing meat off her chorizo, her saveloy, her thick sausage. To his astonishment, she smiled back at him, defiantly: a thin, cruel smile. He stared at her uncomprehendingly. The knife slipped from his hand. Furl clutched his writhing, wriggling, squirming length of umbilicus as blood gushed out of him, like red-rusty fluid from a burst water main.
Her nightie was saturated with his blood. She left him to die in agony. She stood up and peeled off her blood-soaked nightie. She took one last look at the man, twitching, dying in their womb.
Sandie climbed out of the capsule and surveyed the barren rocky terrain. Proxima B was no place to bring up human children.
They waited for her beside the green algal sea, the mouths in their distended stomachs stretched wide in eager anticipation of her arrival. She greeted them with her arms outstretched, strutting confidently towards them. Her umbilicus extended. She felt their love on her, in her, crawling all over her, penetrating her, swelling inside of her.
Together they created new life…
