Context (20/20)
by Deb Walsh
Shortly after they had begun, the tremors eased, dissipating into occasional shudders. The adults of the camp met quickly in the mess tent, then broke up into parties to set the camp right. Morgan, still pale from facing another series of earth tremors, swallowed hard repeatedly, and quickly explained to Yale where Danziger had gone. The tutor immediately went off to take charge of the children. With a reassuring whisper to Morgan, Bess took over putting the mess tent back in order, while Morgan steeled himself and returned to the communications tent to look after the equipment there.
Yale found the children in Danziger's tent, hidden under the pile of blankets and pillows, holding on to one another. As soon as they spied Yale, True immediately shoved Uly away, fought her way out of the cocoon of blankets, and declared that she was going to check on her dad. Yale patiently explained that Danziger, Julia, Alonzo and Mary had headed off in the Rail to check on the status of the ship containing Uly's mother. True took this as carte blanche to take command of the remaining vehicles, while Uly looked small and frightened. As True shrugged into her rain poncho, Yale spoke quietly to the boy, reassuring him and encouraging him to activity.
"If Julia's gone to the ship, there's no one to make sure the med-tent's all right," True shot over her shoulder. "You can help me clean up in there, Uly."
Uly started to protest, but Yale shook his head. "True is right, Uly. Julia's been doing some very important experiments, and we wouldn't want them to be ruined, would we?" The boy shook his head sullenly. "Besides, wouldn't it be nice for her to come back and find everything in order?" Uly nodded doubtfully.
"Look, I'm going to check on the ATV and TransRover you meet me in the med-tent, okay?" True announced.
Okay, Uly?" Yale asked, earning another nod from the boy. "Put on your poncho it's still raining."
True glowered at Uly for a moment longer, then ducked out the tent flap into the storm. Yale helped Uly pull on his poncho, and knelt in front of him, securing the snaps in front. "The earthquake is over, Uly there's nothing to worry about."
"Not even my mom, Yale? Why did so many people go back to the ship, Yale?"
The tutor shook his head. "I'm not sure Danziger was the first to decide to go, and Alonzo wanted to go with him. He knows how the ship works better than anyone. Julia went in case there was a medical need. And Mary? Well, Alonzo did say that Terrians have been guarding the ship. Perhaps she simply wants to go home, Uly."
Uly considered this a moment, frowning with concentration. "Okay. That makes sense. Mary's lonely for the Terrians," he answered soberly. Then a grin blossomed on his young face. "Race you to the med-tent, Yale!"
***
Chuckling to himself, Yale followed his young taskmistress, guiding Uly along beside him. Activity would help to keep the children's minds off the fear the earthquake or whatever it had been had caused. And it would be nice for Julia to come back to a clean med-tent after whatever it was she faced at the ship. At that, it would keep Yale's mind off the contents of the ship, as well.
The med-tent was a disaster. Equipment had overturned, slides and specimens had spilled all over the tent floor. True stood in the doorway, small fists planted on her hips, and surveyed the damage with a critical eye. A moment later, she started giving orders, directing Yale and Uly this way and that while she concentrated on cleaning up Julia's various experiments in progress. While she was tidying up, she found the specimens Julia had collected at the caves the day before.
"Where'd these come from?" True asked, holding up one of the tubular growths Julia had harvested.
Yale looked up from sweeping the floor. "Julia collected those up in a cave, near the sunstones yesterday. Apparently, Mary used to eat them when she lived with the Terrians."
"I remember those," Uly put in, glancing up from where he was putting glassware back in their holders. "The Terrians gave me those to eat when they cured me."
"They eat 'em at the Elder's place, too. They're pretty good. Like fruit, only more filling," True commented offhandedly, and set the fruit aside to start a pile.
Yale stood there a moment longer, then walked over and picked up one of the cave fruits. Uly came around and tried to snatch one, but Yale swatted the boy's hand away. "Not until Julia's finished testing them, Uly."
"But, Yale I've already had some. True, too. They taste a lot better than porridge."
"That may be, but I'd feel more comfortable if Julia says they're all right." Then Yale asked True, "You say the Elder's people eat these, True? Are you certain?"
"Sure. Like I said, they're pretty good. I didn't know where they came from, but Boy said they eat them all the time." True looked up curiously at Yale, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Why, Yale?"
"Oh, I'm not sure. Julia's got some idea about them make sure you tell her about the Elder's people when she gets back, True. I'm sure she'll be interested."
True shrugged and went back to cleaning up. When Yale's back was turned, both she and Uly pocketed a cave fruit, grinning conspiratorily at one another.
***
Rain slashed down around the Rail as Danziger fought to maintain control. Visibility was poor, landmarks grayed out behind a curtain of water. The track was worse than it had been on the walk out from the ship; more than 24 hours of heavy rain had washed away parts of the slope and downed trees along the way. Danziger was forced to swerve out of his way more than once as he retraced the ten kilometers back to the ship, but after much cursing, he finally caught sight of metal glinting dully in the rain.
"There it is!" he cried out, swinging the steering wheel around to bring the Rail to a stop in a relatively level area not far from the ship. Alonzo was already vaulting out of his seat, extending a hand to Julia to help her down from the back of the vehicle. Mary dropped to the ground and ran ahead, the others bringing up the rear.
"Oh, my God," breathed Julia, halting only a few yards away from the Rail, oblivious to the rain that pounded at her slender form.
"What the hell ...?" Alonzo chimed in, coming up behind her.
Danziger was the last to reach the spot, and he swore loud and long.
Mary looked over her shoulder toward them, her head tilted curiously, but said nothing.
A jagged crack had opened earlier in the earth, the rain smoothing the edges rapidly as mud ran down the sides of the crevice. It widened as it stretched away from them, crawling up the rise toward the ship. The Venus-class spaceship itself had tumbled downward, wedging itself into the hole, and a part of the cliff wall above it had sheared off, cascading down on the half-buried ship. Little was visible of the ship containing the frozen body of Devon Adair, and the hatch hung ajar over the open space of the fissure.
***
"Say again, Danziger I'm not reading you," Morgan cried anxiously into the gear.
"I said we need Zero. Now. Get Yale and have him bring Zero out to the ship in the ATV. I'll explain when they get here," Danziger answered shortly.
"Okay, okay. Uh, John "
"Just get 'em here, Martin. Danziger out."
The gear connection went dead, leaving Morgan staring into the blank image of an closed gear channel. He pulled the gear off with an expression of disgust, muttering to himself as he stood, picked up his rain poncho, and put it back on again with a weary sigh. "I was almost dry again," he said to himself wistfully. Flicking the hood back over his head, Morgan ran back out into the rain, heading toward the med-tent.
***
Mary walked around the spaceship curiously, choosing her steps with care. She had never seen the surface so churned up as it was here, the rain turning soil into muddy rivers racing down the hill into the fractured earth below. It did not surprise her that the Terrians guarding the ship had gone into the earth; had she been able, she would have joined them.
Something was strange about this area, something she hadn't noticed before, and it distracted her until she finally identified what it was. She could hear the earth below her feet. She could hear the Terrians deep beneath her. It had been months since she'd been able to hear this, the long months of her exile. She'd become so accustomed to the loss, she hadn't recognized it when the Terrian world had begun to open up to her again. Heart pounding suddenly, Mary dropped to a Terrian crouch and pressed her fingers against the muddy earth. A milky glow formed around her fingers, and they passed into the ground with an electric sensation. With a growing excitement, she opened herself up to the dreaming, oblivious to the steady rain.
***
Danziger had tried to open the hatch and climb down the ladder into the ship, but the ship's precarious balance had shifted, threatening to pitch him into the rift. He'd scrambled back quickly, missing a long fall into the black abyss only because Julia and Alonzo had leapt forward to haul him back. Alonzo suggested tethering Danziger to the Rail for another try, and Julia had quickly agreed. She pointed out to Danziger that they'd used the same tactic with Morgan and Bess, when the couple had dived into a fissure under the influence of a parasitic pollen a few weeks earlier. The action had proved successful, as they'd been able to pull the Martins back to the surface, saving their lives.
Danziger considered the idea, then shook his head. "It's too unstable. We'll have to wait until Zero gets here to help hold the ship steady. We might be able to rig the Rail and ATV to bring it up." He pushed back rain-sodden hair from his forehead, grimacing at the ship. "Where the hell are the Terrians who were guarding her?"
"Shank, I'd forgotten about them. They must have taken shelter from the rain," Alonzo replied.
"Considering that the Terrians' plant-like biology absorbs nutrients from the soil, it's possible that this amount of rain might be dangerous to them," Julia guessed. "Wait a minute, John didn't you say that thing Morgan rigged was linked to Devon's cryochamber ?"
"Yeah, what kind of readings are you getting on your gadget, John?" Alonzo asked.
Danziger pulled out the tracking device and switched over to the channel monitoring Devon's lifesigns. He shielded the device from the rain with his hand, and frowned deeply at the readout. "I'm not getting anything. It could be the link got damaged when the ship shifted "
"No," came Mary's voice, forceful and confident.
The trio turned toward the sound of her voice, all three registering shock at the mud-covered figure that rose up out of the earth a few feet away from them.
"Mary! I thought you couldn't go into the earth " Alonzo cried.
"The Terrians have forgiven me," she told him solemnly, a childish smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "The earth accepts me once more." The smile broke wide, and Alonzo grinned in return. "I can go home, Alonzo!"
"Mary, that's great!" Alonzo beamed back at her.
"I'm happy for you, Mary. But when you said, 'No,' what did you mean?" Julia asked, watching the mud sluice off the girl in the continuing downpour.
Mary turned toward Julia, the smile falling away. "I meant that your equipment is not damaged. She is not there."
"What?" Danziger demanded. "Where the hell is she?"
"They have taken her below. She is with the Terrians now."
***
The human dreamers had taught them how to touch the symbol-covered pads to open their strange obstacles through the dreams. They had learned much through the dreams, and yet there were many more questions than answers. There were as many obstacles in the dreamers' minds as there were in the ship containing the sleeping woman. The Woman Who Promised.
In the communal mind that was the Terrian dreamplane, this tribe had learned of what had gone before. The tribe had learned of the arrival of these humans, the boy who held the future in his sickness. The boy who now carried a piece of the planet, the mother, in his very genetic structure. They, more than any other tribe, knew of what had happened here, in this place, many cycles earlier. They, more than any other tribe, had suffered at the hands of the humans who had arrived in the first ship, the ship where the woman had been preserved. They remembered, as the planet remembered. There was a certain symmetry in the fact that it was they who would determine the future of humans on this world.
The differences in humans confused them. Deep in their ancient history, Terrians had held such differences, but they had been purged long ago, locked in the ice with the Evil One. But these humans had driven the Evil One from the ice, from the earth, from the dreamplane itself. The planet was cleaner, healthier as a result. These humans had freed another of their tribes from the hand of the Gaal, he who wore a necklace of Terrian bones around his neck. He who stopped the dreaming, and who hurt their brothers for no other reason than to hurt. These humans had frozen the earth and cut off the sunstone network, the mind of the planet, yet had used the sunstones to restore it. These humans had finally stopped the unsettling images bleeding into the dreamplane from the woman, Dell Curry, silencing the pain and the fear that had troubled them for so many cycles.
And they knew, through the sunstones, that these humans sought to destroy the evil in the sky, the malevolence that had haunted them for many cycles. The Eve, that which had killed so many of their tribe in the days of the first humans. Which yearned to kill them still.
And in the dreams, they had learned that other humans would be as different from these as they were from the Eve. That although they could not think with one mind, they could act with one purpose. And the Woman Who Promised was part of the purpose.
They still did not understand fully why she was so important to the humans, or to the Uly, the boy who cried out in his dreams for his mother, a mother unlike the one they knew. But they understood through the dreaming that she was important to them all, to the future of the Terrians, the humans, and the planet, if they were to hold to their ways and do no harm to the humans who would come.
That was why they had finally entered the ship, opened the strange cylinder, and coated her in the life-giving soil of the planet. Thus protected, they had lifted her out of the ship and carried her down into the planet. Her breaths had been shallow, her hold on life fragile, but they knew this was the only way to save her. As it had been the only way to save her son.
Although it was not yet Moon Cross, they had taken her In, and now the planet, the mother, embraced her. Learned her, as it had learned no other of her kind, not even the boy. With something like shock, the Terrians had come to understand that it was the planet itself that weakened her. So now the planet studied her, identified what was lacking, and began to manufacture the missing element.
The Terrians remained crouched at the edge of the mistshrouded pool, silent observers to the rebirth of humankind.
***
Danziger had stared at Mary in shock, not because of how she looked, but because of what she said. There was no challenge in her voice, no portentous thunderclap to highlight the words, merely a simple certainty. He didn't ask how she knew; if nothing else, the past months and especially the last week had taught him to open his mind to the impossible. "What are they doing with her?" he finally asked after a long moment of stunned silence.
Mary cocked her head, listening to something the rest of them could not hear. Rain continued to fall around them, washing away the mud encrusted on Mary's face. She wiped at it impatiently with her hand, then at last, she shook her head. "I do not know. It is in the hands of the mother. It studies her."
"Studies?" Julia inquired, pushing past Danziger to peer more closely at Mary. "How can the planet study her?"
Frowning, Mary shook her head again. "I don't ... I don't understand your question. The planet is mother to us, it creates and nurtures us. We return to it when it is our time. It knows us as we know it."
Julia turned toward Danziger and said, "I thought so. A symbiotic relationship between the Terrians and the planet and the planet itself is sentient."
"C'mon, Julia how can a planet be sentient?" Danziger scoffed.
"How can a planet cure a little boy with the Syndrome?" she challenged. "There's so much we don't understand about this planet apparently, there's a great deal the planet doesn't understand about us, too. Devon's allowing us to open the dialogue."
"What, you're saying it's a good thing Devon got sick?"
"When she did, maybe. The planet is taking the opportunity to learn about her biology, our biology before it's too late for us."
"Julia could be right, John," Alonzo pointed out reasonably.
Danziger's response was cut off by the sound of the approaching ATV. Yale called out as he rolled the vehicle to a stop, and moments later, he and the Zero unit joined them near the ship.
"My God," Yale breathed, looking toward the rain and mud running down the sides of the ship into the hole beneath it. "How's Devon "
"The Terrians have her," Julia interrupted. "But we need to stabilize the ship there's too much valuable data in its memory for us to lose it."
"Yes," Yale agreed, nodding absently. His expression grew distant a moment before he shook himself back to the scene at hand. "Yes," he added, more decisively. "What do you want us to do, John?"
***
It took them several hours, but eventually they were able to stabilize the position of the ship. A number of trees had been cut down to provide timber to create a platform on which the ship rested, and the ATV and Rail had both been pressed into service to haul the ship back from the brink. Once the ship was back on more stable ground, Zero set about removing some of the mud that had collected on the hull, despite Alonzo's assurances that the mess would have little impact on a ship designed to travel through space.
Soaked through, mud-spattered and incredibly weary, the group surveyed the righted ship with deadened eyes. Julia didn't even bother to try to stifle the yawn that overtook her. "What now?" she asked around the yawn.
"I think we should return to camp," Yale suggested. "If the Terrians have Devon, no doubt we'll need to communicate with them on the dreamplane. I for one could use some dry clothes and a hot meal, and a warm bed. And you," he added, gesturing to the others, "need it even more."
"What if " Danziger started to protest, but Alonzo cut him off.
"The Terrians will contact us when they're ready, John. Yale's right there's no reason for us to stay here. And I'm starving."
Danziger shook his head to himself, but acquiesced. They started toward the vehicles, and were climbing in when he noticed that Mary hadn't joined them.
"Mary! C'mon we're heading back to camp," he urged toward the strange human-Terrian woman.
Mary crouched on the hillside, palms flat against the soggy earth. She looked up at Danziger's call, but shook her head. "I will stay. I will rejoin the tribe and wait with them."
"Wait?"
"For the decision." She stood up abruptly, and just as suddenly, dropped back into the earth.
"Damn! I'll never get used to that," Danziger complained. Shrugging, he turned toward the Rail, balking only momentarily at Julia's insistence that she drive. Danziger was nearly asleep on his feet, and it was only a few minutes before he was out cold as the Rail and the ATV were on their way back to camp.
***
"Well?" Morgan prompted as the quartet came into the mess tent.
"Where's Mary?" chimed in Bess, looking up from the pots of savory-smelling food. She'd managed to make good use of the rainy day, concocting something that actually smelled inviting to the weary travellers.
"She's gone back to the Terrians," Alonzo answered, shuffling over to the pots. "That smells great, Bess. I could eat a ton of spirulina right now, but boy ..." he grinned, spooning out bowls of stew for himself, Julia, Yale and Danziger.
"Gone back to the Terrians?" Bess repeated, her voice sounding hurt. "But I thought she'd finally decided to join us "
"The earth took her back," Alonzo explained as he passed the fourth bowl out and took up his own. He took a bite of the stew and smiled beatifically. "Good," he declared.
Julia swallowed and took up the narrative, explaining what had happened to the ship, to Devon, and Mary's decision to remain behind with the tribe while the planet did whatever it was doing with Devon. When she took a pause to shovel food into her mouth, one of the others would take up the thread, and before long, the entire story had been told, and four bowls had been scraped clean. All of the adults were gathered around them at the tables, listening intently. When the story was done, Morgan asked, "So what do we do now?"
"We wait," Alonzo replied. "Until the Terrians contact us."
Morgan glanced around, his face indecisive. "Are we sure they will?"
"I'm sure," Alonzo answered confidently.
-The End-
Author's Chapter Notes:
And before you ask, yes there will be a sequel that continues this story. At least one. I fear that Devon and Co. may be expecting a trilogy. I apologize for not posting this sooner - it's been written since February, but I thought I still had a lot more to write for "Context." I just finished re-reading it, and realized that this section actually completes this story. I haven't begun work on the next story, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to - things are pretty unsettling in my life right now (yes, worse than they had been! ;< ), but I find writing cathartic, so who knows. I already have a lot of ideas for the next story, a lot of pieces have fallen into place in my head recently, so maybe that's a good sign.
Please enjoy. Comments are muchly welcome, especially critical ones.
Deb Walsh
Please enjoy. Comments are muchly welcome, especially critical ones.
Deb Walsh