As G-889 Turns
Episode #4: The Sleep of the Just
"Help me get her into the med tent," Julia said to Morgan.
It was an empty request. She knew she didn't have the equipment that she really needed in the med tent. She really just wanted to get Bess out of sight of the children, and for a moment at least it would give Morgan something to do.
Morgan gingerly lifted Bess off of the ground. He didn't even object when Alonzo stepped forward to help him. As Bess was carried away, Julia cast a glance back at the others. They all looked numb with shock. Julia didn't know what she herself looked like, but she knew she felt the same. "Cameron, I could use your help."
***
"What the hell are you doing?!" Morgan screamed as Julia removed her diaglove. "Help her!!!"
Sinking to her knees on the canvas that covered the dirt beneath Bess's cot, Julia answered quietly, "There's nothing more I can do."
"Do something!"
"I don't know what to do, Morgan. I still don't know what's causing it, let alone how to reverse it. It's a total system failure." The words echoed through their hearts with a nasty sense of deja vu, making Julia's next words unnecessary. "Bess is going to die."
"We'll just have to take her back to the ship where we left Devon ... ."
"It would take a month or more to backtrack that far. Morgan, Bess is going to die in a few hours."
Alonzo attempted to place a comforting hand on Morgan's shoulder, but at the touch, Morgan rounded on his father and grabbed Alonzo's head firmly between both hands and held him with a strength that seemed beyond him. Pulling Alonzo toward him, he stared down into his face and growled, "Do something."
Out of the corner of his eye, Alonzo could see Cameron searching for a sedaderm.
"Morgan, there's nothing more we can do."
"Make the Terrians do something."
"Morgan, the Terrians can't just magically heal people. They could cure Uly because he was simply wasting from a lack of natural elements -- but they can't just cure every disease that comes along any more than they could heal my broken leg."
"Bring the Terrians here. I want them to tell me that."
"Morgan, I can't just ... ."
"You owe me, flyboy."
"No." Cameron was about to apply the sedaderm to the back of Morgan's neck when Alonzo stopped him. "No, give it to me instead."
Cameron looked bewildered but shrugged and handed the sedaderm to Alonzo as Morgan released him.
Alonzo took the device and lay down on the ground before applying the sedative.
Morgan watched him expectantly as he drifted away. When after a few moments nothing had happened Morgan returned to Bess's side. He murmured to her softly, "It's okay, Bess. Alonzo's gone for help. You're gonna be okay. I won't let anything happen to you."
Across the tent, Alonzo spoke, "Morgan." The word was clear and strong, but Alonzo continued to sleep. Hugging himself tightly, Morgan left his wife and approached the dreamer. And the instant he stepped off the canvas and onto the bare dirt floor, Morgan sunk into the ground and disappeared.
Julia gasped. Cameron gingerly stepped back onto the canvas.
***
"How's Bess?" John entered the med tent, nearly tripping over Alonzo in the process.
"She's worse," Julia said matter-of-factly. She was again at Bess's side with the diaglove.
"What's ... ?" John began, pointing at Alonzo.
"He's sedated. He'll be fine."
"Why ... ?" he began, and then interrupted himself, "Where's Morgan?"
"The Terrians took him."
"What?"
"He wanted Alonzo to contact the Terrians to see if they could help Bess and a few minutes later the Terrians took Morgan."
"They were here?"
"Well, a few meters beneath here at least. Morgan just went into the ground without warning."
Cameron offered a little pantomime and pointed to the pile of dirt at John's feet. John stepped back a good pace.
Terrians? John wondered. God, could it really be that simple? Did we leave Devon behind just because it never occurred to us to ask the Terrians to help her?
And then, as suddenly as he had gone, Morgan was back, covered in dirt and looking a bit disoriented. As soon as he regained his bearings, he headed straight for Bess and began to lift her out of her cot.
"Can the Terrians make Bess better?" Uly asked, from the tentflap. John groaned to himself. He thought he'd finally gotten the kids in bed for the night.
"No," Morgan told Uly. Carrying his wife to the center of the tent, he added, "But they can't make her any worse." Shifting Bess to something approximating a standing position, he clutched his wife tightly to him and then, in another instant, they were both gone.
***
Alonzo's eyes flickered open as the sedative wore off. He did not seem surprised to awaken in the cot so abruptly vacated by the last patient.
"Lonz?" John prompted. "What happened?"
Alonzo slowly sat up. "Where's Morgan?"
"He left last night, Lonzo," Julia said. "Just after you knocked yourself out."
"But he should be back by now," Alonzo insisted.
"Back from where?" John prompted again.
"The caves," Alonzo said. "The Terrian caves."
" ... and Bess?" Julia asked. Her eyes were red in the morning light and Alonzo realized that she hadn't slept all night.
"The Terrians put Bess into some kind of hibernation. Morgan convinced them that it was the only way to keep her alive. They're allowing her to stay with them, immersed in a Terrian bed. ... It's weird, but the Terrians seem to understand Bess and Morgan better than the rest of us. We confuse them because they don't understand how we can live as separate individuals -- but they see Bess and Morgan as a whole ... and they don't want to force Morgan to have to live like the rest of us."
John nearly let a sarcastic, poor Morgan, slip out, but bit his tongue. Turning to Julia, he asked, "Will it work?"
Julia shook her head. "I don't know. The human body was not designed to hibernate. I'm not sure how long she can survive in a Terrian-induced hibernation even without factoring in her illness. I just don't know."
***
Morgan sat in the darkness, lit only by the glow from a few sun stones like the ones that he had once tried to claim as his own. He fought against the urge to take Bess's pulse again. He had checked it moments ago for the eleventh or twelfth time. He had no idea what a normal pulse was supposed to feel like, but just the fact that he could feel anything reassured him that Bess was still alive. In the dim light, he couldn't judge her color -- and she didn't seem to be breathing scarcely at all -- but she did have a pulse, however faint.
There was, at least Morgan liked to believe that there was, a pleasant expression on her face. She looked peaceful and, despite her vertical position, she looked at rest. The question remained -- would she survive? By Julia's prediction, she should have died by now. The Terrians had at least helped her that much.
Morgan's stomach growled, reminding him of the passage of time. There would be little point in saving Bess's life if he didn't survive to come back for her. Eternity in a Terrian cave hardly counted as living.
Morgan stood and approached his wife. He tenderly kissed her good-bye, checking for her reassuring heartbeat as he did so.
***
Morgan was greeted by an awkward silence as he entered camp on foot late that morning. At first he had been angry at the Terrians for leaving him to find his own way back to camp. Then he realized that this way he would be able to find his way back to Bess by himself when they had found a cure for her.
Yale was the first to break the eerie quiet. "Well," he said, looking from Morgan in his dirt encrusted-clothes to Julia and her bloodshot eyes. "It's been a rough night for everyone. I think we should just rest here for a day or two."
"No." Morgan said flatly. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can come back."
John nodded. It was one of the few times he agreed with Morgan about something. "Julia?"
"I agree. Let's move."
"All right, everybody!" John yelled to the group at large. "Pack it up!"
Morgan headed straight for his tent, bumping Alonzo roughly as he did so. The two men seemed to make a point of not noticing each other despite the contact.
Morgan then began to strike his tent. It was the first time he had ever done so without Bess's assistance, and it was clear that he had developed no skill for the task during his time on the planet. But no one offered to help, and for once, Morgan didn't suggest that they should.
***
Alonzo had been sent ahead on the ATV as a scout. Morgan and John walked in the lead ahead of the remaining vehicles. It seemed almost a race as the two tall men strove to outpace each other.
Julia had ridden most of the way in the transrover, fussing over her equipment and analyzing her data. However, she now found an opportunity and hopped off of the moving vehicle. "Cameron!" she called, waving the redhead back to join her.
Cameron altered his step to fall back in line with Julia.
"I'm going to need your help. We need to go over all the data I have on Devon and Bess and find some correlation. There's a very good chance that their illnesses are related. If we compare the data, we may find a clue ... what they had in common that caused them to both get sick ... what was different about them that caused them to get sick so far apart ... . I could really use an extra set of eyes." As she spoke, Julia walked slower and slower and so she and Cameron fell farther and farther behind the others. Lowering her voice she continued. "Cameron, I don't know what I'm up against. Devon and Bess both became ill suddenly with very little warning and so far I can't see a predicting factor. We need to watch the others closely. We should have realized that Bess was ill sooner. So much time had gone by since Devon's collapse that I allowed myself to become complacent. I should have recognized Bess's symptoms but I was distracted by ... everything."
Cameron nodded understandingly.
Lowering her voice even more, she confessed, "There's something else that no one knows about. I really need your help, Cameron." There was a desperation in her voice that Cameron had never heard before. "But before I tell you, you have to promise me that you won't talk to anyone else about it. Can you do that?"
Cameron just sighed and patted Julia on the shoulder.
CONTINUED IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT
Author's Chapter Notes:
WARNING: This is a continuing soap opera. If you haven't read the prior installments of the As G-889 Turns saga yet, this will make no sense whatsoever.