Lost Worlds by Douglas Neman

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Lost Worlds (2/3)
by Douglas Neman

Devon had only met Julia once. The new intern had just joined Dr. Vasquez's staff over the weekend. She found the tiny office Vasquez had given her. It consisted of one bare desk, a chair in front of it, and a chair in back of it. Crates were stacked in one corner. Apparently, she was just moving in that morning and hadn't even had a chance to unpack yet.

Julia was awkwardly digging through the second crate, saying, "I'm so sorry for the delay, Ms. Williams, it's here somewhere."

"That's quite all right, I understand," a woman replied. "And please call me Angela." She was sitting in one of the chairs, and she'd obviously been crying. She looked up at Devon in the doorway.

"You must be Alex's mother," Devon smiled, extending a hand, specifically using the word "mother" instead of her name. Julia turned from her searching just long enough to give a quick smile in greeting.

"Yes." She shook her hand.
"I'm Devon Adair, co-founder of Eden Project." "Yes, I know. I've heard so much about you!" "Most of it good, I hope." They laughed, and Devon leaned back on the desk. "I just wanted to tell you how excited I was when I heard the news," she said. "We have so many Syndrome children who were left by their parents. We track them down sometimes, but you're the first one who's ever showed back up on her own, and I think it's a really beautiful and courageous thing you've done."

"Oh, thank you." She started to cry again, just a little bit. "I just felt so guilty. It's been tearing away at me for years, and I finally couldn't stand it any more."

"Were you afraid that money would be an issue four years ago?" She shook her head. "No, but that was still part of the problem. My husband and I were very well off, and in the social circles we lived in, we were too ashamed to have a child with the Syndrome. We were afraid of what people would say, of what they'd think of us."

"I do understand, even if I can't condone the fact that you left him," Devon said. "When Ulysses was diagnosed with the Syndrome, I found out who my real friends were, and I found they weren't many. It was a huge awakening. But I have to say, I'm not sorry they're gone."

Angela smiled. "No. I expect I won't be either." Julia found the datapad she'd been looking for and blew dust off of it, sitting down in the other chair.

"Tell me, what do you do for a living, Angela?" Devon asked. "Nothing. Donald was a structural engineer, and we were married for quite a while. When he died, he left me everything."

"Well, do you have any hobbies? Interests?" "Not really," she said, slightly embarrassed. "I now know that my life has been very empty and meaningless of late. I always loved getting together with friends to go to the art gallery, or fashion shows, or to the hollies, or shop. I love to shop." She smiled weakly. "But that's all we did. Every day. We'd gossip and have fun, like a bunch of schoolchildren. But I've never really had any hobbies, no."

"Has Dr. Vasquez explained to you about the Eden Project, and the colony we're going to start in the G8 system?"

"Yes, he has," Angela replied. "It sounds so...*drastic.* Are you sure you need to go?"

"We're 90 per cent sure," Devon said. "We have every reason to believe that once the children come into contact with a natural environment instead of an artificial one, the Syndrome will vanish. What I'd like to know is, could you donate your time and effort here at the hospital on a regular basis? We really need all the help we can get."

"Sure, sure," Angela said. "Although I don't know what I could do." "*Anything* will help, whether it's reading to the children, helping us build the colony ship, or trying to drum up public support and make people listen. Every warm body who helps us out is invaluable."

Angela sighed, almost relieved. "I will do anything you ask me to do." "Great, great," Devon said.
"Angela, do you have any other children?" Julia asked. "Even step-children?" Devon noticed that she'd turned the recorder on, and realized the reason they were in Julia's office in the first place was to collect the medical and family history for Alex.

"No," she shook her head. "I've only had the one marriage, and Alex was the only child for both of us. We -- we were afraid to have another."

Devon quickly glanced at Julia and realized she needed to let this interview be private. "Well -- I'll let you visit with Doc-- um, Julia -- for a while." Damn! She couldn't remember the new intern's last name. "I've, uh, got a few things to attend to. Can you come meet me in the cafeteria for lunch? Say at 12:00?"

"Sure. Sure, I'll be there."
"All right. See you there. Bye," she said to Julia, and left them to their interview.

Later that afternoon, Sarah thoughtfully made her way back to the ward. Devon had used their private meeting at lunch to ask for money. It wasn't that she really needed it -- the Adair family was one of the wealthiest in human history. Devon Adair could have funded every penny of Eden Project from beginning to end, if she had to. But building a colony ship and an advance ship for around 400+ people, plus paying the complete medical costs of any child in the ward whose family couldn't afford it or couldn't be found (which was almost all of them), meant that it was going to be a close thing. And it was her philosophy that others who would be going on the trip should try to pay for some of it, too, if they could possibly spare any. It wasn't a demand, just a request.

The whole assignment was ridiculously easy. Injecting the hormones and neurochemicals into herself to induce depression, so that she could cry at the drop of a hat, was an old trick, as was the fake DNA sample. If it weren't for the fact that she was there to rate Heller, as well, she'd have been disgusted at having her talent so wasted with this entire trivial assignment.

She had briefly toyed with the idea of dropping a bomb on Devon by saying that she didn't believe in Eden Project, and probably wouldn't let Alex go. But Blalock's orders had specifically been, "Earn her trust." So for now, she pretended to enthusiastically support everything about Eden Project.

And to earn that trust, she'd made a pretty hefty money transfer, right there in the cafeteria. It was ironic that the Council was now actually funding Eden Project, but certain sacrifices were necessary, as everyone in her trade knew quite well.

Then Devon, quite to her surprise, had started giving her advice on how to be a mother! She'd been very casual and subtle about it, but she'd stressed to her that she needed to tell Alex she loved him, and she needed to tell it to him every day. She said it was so important for people to hear it, whether one assumed they knew it or not, and Alex hadn't heard it from her in a long time. She had nodded in agreement, saying again how much time she wanted to spend with him, but wondered really what Devon had been talking about. She'd spent time with Alex that morning already, and would spend more time with him before the day was out. What more could the woman want?

She'd visited some more with Alex, playing with him, doting on him, and had met a few of the parents of some of the other children. Word got around fast, and some of them had treated her pretty coldly, which was to be expected.

Spending time with the kid was the part of her assignment she hated most, especially since he seemed so withdrawn and unresponsive. Dr. Vasquez had pulled her away for a bit -- "to let him rest," he'd said -- and given her a tour of his lab.

And it was there in Dr. Vasquez's lab that the first bomb was dropped -- on her. Vasquez had explained to her the history of the Syndrome, and their efforts to understand it. He'd shown her the resutls of his studies, and thousands upon thousands of hours of research. She observed DNA, and scanned through reports of autopsies, and blood samples, and white cell counts -- and was shocked.

He was right. *They* were right. *Eden Project* was right. The evidence Dr. Vasquez had in his lab was damned hard to ignore. She memorized it all, knowing Blalock would need to take it into consideration.

Now, walking back to the ward, she thought and thought about all she'd just seen in the lab. It didn't change anything, of course. Not for her personally. She wondered if she should tell Blalock anything, yet, or sit back and let Julia do her stuff. After all, how else was she going to rate her?

She pushed her way through the double doors and found Alex. A second later she smiled at him, and noticed how he seemed to freeze up, and shrink back underneath his covers some. A couple of the other children were looking at her. Their faces were blank.

She sat down next to Alex. "Hi!" she said. "How's my little boy?" He gave the tiniest shrug. He did not look at her. She swallowed hard. She hadn't imagined when she started her job that morning that not only would she have to earn the trust of Devon and Dr. Vasquez, but an eight-year-old boy, too. And she became acutely aware that no on-the-spot money transfer would help her here.

She'd never exactly been trained for this. But then again, she thought, no one ever really was. Not knowing what else to do, she decided to try the simple approach. "Alex," she said softly, and got down on her knees, resting her chin on her hands, palms down on the bedside. "What will it take for you to trust me, hmm? I want to earn your trust. I want it more than anything else in the whole world."

Alex looked her in the eyes for the very first time. His eyes seemed so deep, so calm.

So unshakable.
"Why did you leave me?" he asked.
Sarah wet her lips nervously. This was not the happy-that-you're-finally-here welcome she'd expected.

"Well," she said, "I, um, I don't know. I was stupid, I guess. Stupid and scared."

Was she crying?
The depressants she'd taken earlier were short-lived so they wouldn't impede her ability to function -- in fact, she'd already felt them wear off earlier. So why was she crying?

"I was ashamed. Ashamed of you, because you were sick, and I couldn't bear that. I thought you would be a burden to me. I thought you would, um," she licked her lips again, "I just didn't think that I could take care of you, and," she swallowed hard, and wiped her tears away. "And it was wrong, and I'm -- I'm sorry," she said. "So sorry. It was my fault, and I realize I should never have been ashamed of you. I-In fact...I'm quite proud of you. So proud of you. And I'm ashamed of myself."

Alex just stared at her, his face unreadable. It was maddening. Sarah wished he would *do* something, *say* something!

"Do you love me?" he finally asked.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, absolutely." Alex's eyes were wet, and he blinked. "I don't believe you," he said. Sarah was stunned. "Why not?"
"I don't know," he said, and wiped away a tear. "It's like a dream." He cried softly, openly. "I used to wonder why some of the other kids had moms and dads to come see them and play with them, but not me. I thought that's how things were. I thought that sometimes people don't have parents, that only some kids do.

"But then they told me one day that everyone had a mom and dad, that it had to be that way. I said, 'No, I don't,' and Dr. Vasquez told me that my mom and dad had left me. He said they'd left me and would never come back, but that he was my father, and he would take care of me. And it hurt so much."

His face twisted in pain, and he sobbed as he lay with his head on the pillow, his left arm covering his face and his tears, covering his shame. "They left me," he said again, and buried his face in his pillow and bawled. Sarah wasn't even aware of the other children in the ward witnessing this. Her entire attention was on Alex, and nothing could have taken it away. Nothing.

"I always dreamed," he said, his voice muffled by the pillow, "I always dreamed they'd come back. I always dreamed they'd come back for me and pick me up, and tell me it was all a mistake and that they really loved me."

Sarah just sat there. She truly did not know what to do. She wanted to reach out a hand and touch him, and say, "Honey, I'm finally here," but her arm wouldn't move. Her tongue wouldn't move. And she couldn't have made them move for either duty or money. She wasn't the boy's real mother. She was a sham. And when she was finished with this assignment, she would disappear out of his life forever to go back to her own, until the next assignment came along.

Her mouth moved, trembling. "Sweetheart," she breathed. "I -- I don't know what to say. I don't know...what I can do, to make it all right." She felt so desperate, so mixed-up inside, so lost. Suddenly, everything seemed so out of perspective and distorted.

He cried on, all his grief and shame washing out of him onto the pillow, clutched tightly in his tiny arms. After several minutes, during which Sarah could only stare in helpless horror, he looked up.

"I wish you'd never come back," he said. She jolted back as if she'd been slapped, biting back more tears of her own. She fumbled for her purse, gathered it into her arms, and ran from the ward.

The other Syndrome children silently watched her leave, and were left with the task of consoling their friend.

All day long, Sarah had been intending to report back to Blalock that night. She didn't have to, but she'd been anticipating it, fantasizing about telling him with cool competence how far she'd gotten in just the first day.

But when she let herself into her flat that evening, she wanted to do no such thing. She was shaken and hurt, and for the life of her, she couldn't understand why.

She poured herself a drink. She took comfort in the solitude of her apartment, how fancy and upscale it was. How neat it was. How beautiful it was. Here, she could forget about hospitals, full of sick people and smells of medicine.

Or at least, she tried to comfort herself. She tried to relax after a hard day's work, just like it was any other. Just so long as she could ignore the feelings and confusion the boy had stirred up. Just so long as she could leave them behind at the hospital, where they belonged.

She plopped herself on the couch, turned off the phone, and engaged the holovid.

A ring about five feet across descended out of the ceiling directly above her. Images streamed down from the ring all around her, like a smooth waterfall, and she was carried away into another world, surrounded on all sides by the moving holograms, the laugh-bang-shout visual extravaganza of glitter and effects.

She didn't pay attention to any of it. She just curled up on the couch, and watched without watching whatever the stations wanted to show her.

She stayed there the whole night.

The next morning, she steeled herself as she returned to the hospital. But what she was steeling herself for, she didn't know.

Even as she walked through the front door, she really didn't know what she was going to do. In order to carry out her assignment, all she needed to do today was make a few cursory attempts to make peace with Alex while simultaneously probing Devon for information on anything she might have up her sleeve.

Yes, she thought. That's all I need to do. She bought a little board game in the gift shop, something the two of them could play. Her hands trembled as she ran her card through the scanner to pay for it. Then she headed for the ward.

She paused before the double doors, took a deep breath, and entered. Alex's bed was empty.
She stared at it for a second, uncomprehending. She nervously eyed the other children. She looked down at the one nearest her. It was a little girl.

"Where's -- um -- where's Alex?" she asked her. "He's sick," she whispered. She was obviously too weak to even sit up, much less talk very much.

Sarah quickly licked her lips, her heart racing. "Yes, I know he's sick. But, where exactly is he?"

"He's sick*er,"* she breathed. "Dr. Vasquez took him away." She closed her eyes and breathed shallowly.

"He started coughing real bad about 5:00 this morning," the boy next to her said. Sarah recognized him as Ulysses Adair. "They took him away to be operated on. He probably won't make it."

He said it so matter-of-factly.
Sarah stared at him for a moment in horror, then turned and raced down the hall. A second later she slammed into a full stop at the nurses' station.

"Where are the operating rooms? Where's Dr. Vasquez?" Two nurses were sitting there. One blinked at her. "Dr. Vasquez is in surgery."

"Yes I know he's in surgery! Where the hell is that? And why didn't anyone call me?"

"Ma'am, we realize you're upset-"
"Too right, I'm upset! My son is being operated on, *and I want to see him!"*

One of the nurses activated a gear channel. The other said, "I take it you are the mother of Alex Williams?"

"Yes," she breathed.
She keyed something on her computer. "Alex is still in surgery with Dr. Vasquez. He's still in critical condition, life signs fluctuating. We've made several attempts throughout the morning to call you, Ms. Williams, but no one answered your phone. We couldn't even leave a message.

Sarah's mouth just twitched with emotion. Of course -- she'd turned the phone off.

The other nurse finished speaking to someone, and an orderly appeared from down the hall. "Ma'am, if you want, I can take you there," he said.

She nodded quickly, and allowed herself to be led down the hall -- it actually wasn't very far. Her professional training told her that the orderly's presence was more to keep her subdued if she went into more hysterics than to actually lead her somewhere. But she didn't care.

He showed her into a waiting room, where she learned that she could do absolutely nothing but sit there and wait.

So she sat. And waited. And prayed. She'd never been a religious person in her entire life -- not even for a second -- yet she rocked back and forth, clutching the game to her chest, whispering, "Please, God, don't let him die, please, please," over and over. After a while, Devon found her there, and sat with her.

Two excruciating hours later, Dr. Vasquez walked in, his mask dangling from his hand. He wearily plopped into another chair and rubbed his unshaven face. Neither Devon nor Sarah could bring themselves to ask.

"I've managed to stabilize his condition," Dr. Vasquez breathed. "But I don't know for how long." He looked at Devon. "Devon -- we've got to get these kids to G889. We can't have any more delays."

Devon sighed. "Blalock won't give us clearance. He says its not his decision, and that it's for safety's sake, but I-" she just shrugged, frustrated. "I don't know what else I can do. Any outburst on my part will simply be used as an excuse to keep us here, because I'm not behaving."

"When is the departure date currently set?" Sarah asked. "Six weeks from yesterday."
She looked at Dr. Vasquez. "Will my son last that long?" He started to say something, then just shook his head. Sarah nodded, and with both a horror and an eerie calm, she knew her destiny was now carved in stone.

"Can I see him?"
"Only for a little while. Right now he's drifting in and out of conciousness."

They let her into the room he was lying in, and left her alone. Trembling, she approached him.

He was lying so still, his eyes closed. A breath mask was around his mouth and nose, giving him the purest oxygen possible. Several tubes led into his arm. She knew that underneath his shirt, a scar would just be healing from where Dr. Vasquez had opened his chest to remove the fluid filling up his lungs.

She breathed. "Alex? Alex, I wanted to talk to you. I want to talk to you so badly." Her lip trembled. She tentatively reached out a hand, touching him gently. "You were right, not to trust me. I'm not your mother. I never was. And what I realized in the waiting room out there, waiting for you to live, was that even if I was the woman who gave birth to you, I still wouldn't be your mother."

Tears ran down both her cheeks.
"She left you. And you know what? I would have left you, too." She paused to take a deep breath. "I'm not any better than she is. So you see -- it makes sense in a wierd kind of way. She left, and I arrived. If I come to you, and tell you I'm your mother, and tell you I'm sorry, and tell you I love you, and pick you up when you fall, and hold you when you cry -- would you turn me away? Would you deny yourself that?

"Alex, I don't know where the woman who gave birth to you is. But if you were to ask where your mother was, I would give anything to be able to say that she's right here beside you." She leaned over him, close. "Oh, God, please give me a chance," she whispered. "Please. I love you so much."

She kissed him on his forehead, and stood there, her head touching his, eyes closed, silently wishing to anyone who might hear for a chance to set things right.

"I love you so much," she whispered again as the door opened. "And I would die for you."

Dr. Vasquez appeared at her side. "Come on," he said, taking her arm. "We need to leave him be."

She nodded, and gently laid the game she had bought earlier on the table beside him. Then she shuffled out of the room, realizing she might very well end up making her last statement come true.

Out in the hall, she said, "Dr. Vasquez, what if we put Alex in a cold sleep chamber *now?* Why do we have to wait for boarding? We're talking 22 years -- an extra six weeks won't mean anything, will it?"

"Believe me -- we've already thought of that. But the way ships are constructed, cold sleep chambers are one of the last items to be installed -- something to do with the design, they tell me. It has to be that way. It's just a race against the clock."

"Yes, I understand," she said.
"Ms. Williams?" a nurse called to her from the end of the hallway. It was the same nurse she'd yelled at earlier. "There's a digital message for you."

She numbly walked down the hall and took it, wondering what they wanted. Only one entity knew where she was. Her heart beat faster. Could they somehow *already* know of her affection for Alex, of all the confusion going on inside her? No, they couldn't possibly know.

She took the message. It read, "Frank's shuttle has been delayed two hours, so don't uncork that champagne bottle yet!" There was no signature.

It was a code phrase from Blalock. It meant, "Pull out and disappear. Your assignment has been cancelled." Sarah silently crumpled the message and put it in her purse.

She left the hospital without another word, and without looking back.

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