Independent Means by Simon Kattenhorn

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Independent Means, Part 3
by Simon Kattenhorn

Chapter Five

It was dusk when Devon and Yale walked back into camp. True darted over to meet them with a worried expression and Devon gave her a quick hug.

"Magus disappeared down a spider tunnel!" True blurted out. "Cameron saw."

"I know True," Devon attempted a reassuring smile. "Don't worry. I'm sure we'll be seeing her again real soon. Julia too." Looking at True's wry face, Devon wished she herself felt the optimism she was trying to muster unsuccessfully in True.

Bess walked over from Julia's tent to join the three of them where they had stopped at the campfire that Cameron and Denner had gotten going for the evening. Bess looked at Devon and Yale wordlessly, waiting to hear what they had found, if anything.

"We brought back some of the soil," Devon said as she pulled her haversack from her back and slumped it to the ground. "No sign of Julia." Her slightly bowed head demonstrated Devon's resignation. "I'm beginning to think she may have..."

"...disappeared down a spider tunnel too," Bess cut in. Devon didn't conceal her surprise at Bess' conclusion, which mirrored her own. "It's the only explanation."

Cameron and Denner had stopped what they were doing to listen to the conversation. Cameron's dispirited expression told of his anguish at having lost Magus during the search for Julia. He couldn't think of a single appropriate thing to say to validate the consequences of the day's actions, and so stood there in dejected silence.

"Are we going to go look for them through the tunnels?" asked True. She didn't appear enthralled at the thought.

Devon looked from Yale to Bess and back to True, searching for something to say- if only she could think of a good plan of action herself. It had been a long day of walking with the sun beating down on them and Devon was feeling exhausted. Still, she knew she had to focus. "There must be some way out of this mess," she thought.

Yale cleared his throat and spoke up. "Devon, you're the only one here who's been through the tunnels." The implication hung in the air around them.

"I know Yale. If anyone goes, it should be me. Magus may be hurt and can't get back alone. Maybe that's why she hasn't come back through the tunnel yet."

Bess had become increasingly agitated as the conversation progressed, and was standing defiantly with her arms crossed, looking off into the distance as if examining a distant cloud that had required her undivided attention. Unable to contain herself further, she began pacing and blurting out what was going through her mind. "I can't believe you are even *considering* going into the tunnels! We have no idea how those things work. We all know you were lucky that the last one brought you back. We have *no* idea if they all work that way! For all we know, those tunnels could lead you endlessly from one part of the planet to another without ever bringing you back to the place you started at. I just don't think we can risk losing any more people. Before we know it, we could all be spread out in different parts of the planet- alone- and then what help would we be to ourselves or anyone else?"

Devon had rarely seen Bess so fervently expressive during a crisis. Cameron was standing in open-mouthed shock, and True had backed away a step or two, not quite knowing what to think about this suddenly assertive version of Bess. Yale remained impassive, as if quietly weighing the logic of her every word.

"Well then what would you suggest, Bess? That we sit and wait, and just hope they come walking back into camp all smiles?" Devon wasn't exactly sure why she was feeling defensive against Bess' criticism of the suggestion. She wasn't entirely convinced that it was a good idea herself, but she was having a hard time thinking of an alternative course of action.

Bess walked over to Devon's haversack and removed the canister of dirt they had brought back from the plains. "No, of course not. We need to rely on *ourselves*. We have no idea that we'll even find Julia or Magus if we go shooting off down those tunnels. Meanwhile, people here are getting sicker." The truth of this statement cut through Devon as she thought of Uly, and felt an immediate need to go across to his tent and hug him to her. Bess continued. "I've been going through Julia's log and I think she was onto something, but she may have been looking in the wrong place. This dirt," Bess held up the canister as if it were a trophy, "may be the answer we're looking for. We need to try to find the answer to this ourselves. We can't keep going on with the assumption that one person will always be around to answer certain kinds of questions. Julia's not here now. If we don't try to do this ourselves, we could start losing people...forever." Bess' expression became indignant. "Well I, for one, will try every last avenue of research *myself* before I give up on Morgan. I *will* not give up hope of finding a cure because Julia isn't here." She looked from one person to the next imploringly. "We *have* to at least try. We have to."

Devon stared ahead in silence, weighing Bess' words, while everyone waited and watched.

"Well I'll help you Bess," True said forcefully, springing up and moving to Bess' side. She looked up at Bess. "For dad."

Bess smiled down at her and gave her a caring pat on the head. "Thank you True."

"Me too," piped in Denner, as Cameron nodded in agreement.

Devon looked across at Yale, looking for that final source of input that she had come to depend on for so many years.

"What Bess says about the tunnels is true," he began. "We have no idea that we would even be transported to the same place as Magus or Julia. If there's even a remote possibility that we can find a cure in this soil, it would be wise to explore it. Having people on the road to recovery will put our minds more at rest in the search for Julia and Magus, and the time factor will obviously be less crucial." Yale turned to address Bess, who had been standing silently, taking in everyone's reactions to her outburst. "Bess, can you show us why you think this soil may provide us with a solution?"

"Uh-huh. And we need to look at Julia's experiments too," Bess motioned over to Julia's tent.

"Okay Bess," Devon finally spoke. "Let's go with your plan." She sounded more relieved than resigned, and managed to slip back into the authoritative tone that the others had come to expect of her, their leader. "Cameron, you and Denner can keep watch at the tunnel in case either of them appear and need help. We'll stay here and go through Julia's research."

Bess and Yale began walking towards Julia's tent, with True right behind, wondering exactly what it was that she could possibly do to help. Devon took a step forward to follow them, then halted.

"I'll be right with you," she directed at their backs. Detouring, she walked across to the tent where Uly and Danziger lay sleeping, and disappeared inside.

***

"Julia!"

"Magus!"

They stood staring at each other for a few seconds in open-mouthed shock, then wrapped their arms around each other and began dancing around in a howl of laughter and hooting.

"Where have you *been*?!" Magus fairly squealed. She was grinning broadly, overjoyed to find someone familiar to her despite having just been whisked half-way across the planet. The fact that it was Julia was even better still.

"Where have *I* been?" Julia squeezed out in between much laughter. "Where have *you* been? I was beginning to think you had all left me behind again, and I can tell you, it wasn't any nicer this time either!" Julia began searching in the direction from which Magus had come, craning her neck to seek out anyone with Magus. "So where *is* everyone? Is the camp around the corner there?" Julia was motioning to the end of the cliff-face that descended like a promontory to the level of the clearing.

Magus turned to look where Julia was pointing, then gave Julia a quizzical look. "Around the corner?" she responded. "Julia, don't you know where you *are*?"

Julia gave Magus a sheepish look and began looking around her again as if it should miraculously have meaning all of a sudden. She desperately grasped for a twinge of familiarity.

Nothing.

She gave Magus a wan grimace. "I have no idea where I am. I, er, seem to be suffering from a slight case of short-term amnesia." She shot at Magus a look of resignation. "I think it was when I hit my head."

Magus was incredulous. "You mean to tell me you have no idea how you got here?"

"None. I thought maybe I came in the dunerail or something." Julia looked out into the distance, across the plains. "This certainly doesn't look like the last place I remember. We were in the mountains..."

"We still *are* in the mountains!" Magus exclaimed. "At least, everyone else is. Meanwhile, we're thousands of miles away."

Julia's head snapped round as she gaped at Magus. "What?! What do you mean we're thousands of miles away?"

"The tunnels," Magus explained. "We both came through the spider tunnels. You must have fallen into the same tunnel that I did after you disappeared from the camp. Or rather, I fell into the same one you did."

Julia shook her head, as if trying to shake the memory out of a corner of her brain that was refusing to let go. "I don't remember. I was in my tent...I had spoken to Devon." She looked up at Magus. "What is it with me getting sucked into these tunnels every time I'm unconscious?" Magus wondered if she was trying to find some humor in the situation, but Julia's face was deadly serious. "Magus! The sickness?" Julia stared at Magus with worried eyes, not knowing what to expect.

"Don't worry. Everyone's about the same. But we really need to get you back there. We still need a cure for this thing. Do you..." Magus let the question trail off.

Julia wasn't quite sure what to say. "Did I find a cure?" She stared in front of her sightlessly. "I don't know. Maybe that's why I left the camp. Maybe I was looking for something that I thought would provide an antidote. It's all so foggy. I think I'm beginning to vaguely remember leaving camp..." Julia desperately struggled to recall more but the memories wouldn't come. "We need to get back right away. Where's the tunnel?"

Magus' face took on a demeanor of anguish. "There is no tunnel. At least none that I could see."

"What?!"

"The tunnels deposited me in a cave. But there was no tunnel in it. I'm not really sure how it got me there."

Julia thought back to her previous experience with the tunnels. "Devon said that when she traveled through with Danziger and Alonzo, they were all spat out in different locations. She ended up right on the beach!" She began pacing, thinking out loud in the process. "You must have been planted in the cave, and I must have ended up in mid-air or something because I woke up at the bottom of a cliff with my head throbbing like hell."

Magus was nodding her head as Julia hypothesized, although she was still left wondering what the implication was for finding the tunnel to get them out of there. Julia was starting to scout around where they were standing, looking for a sign that what she was suddenly thinking may be true.

"I've got a feeling the tunnel must be around here somewhere," Julia said. "These tunnels seem to be less precise at the exiting end than the receiving end, from what I can tell. Which means that there's a single location where we can hitch a ride back out of here."

Magus walked back a number of steps in the direction from which she had come, following Julia's lead in looking for evidence of the tunnel, "probably in another cave," she thought. Suddenly, Julia dashed off a few tens of meters away and appeared to make some sort of discovery.

"Find something?" Magus shouted at her across the clearing.

Julia came trotting back with a diaglove clutched in one hand. "Yeah. Not a cave though."

The two of them slowly began working their way along the rocky base of the slopes surrounding the clearing, suffering a few disappointments when small caves they discovered turned out to contain nothing but emptiness. Finally they came across a cave entrance that was slightly wider than the others. They looked at each other, as if both deciding that *this* was the cave they had been looking for, no doubt about it. Hesitating briefly, they walked through the mawing hole in the rock face and disappeared into the blackness.

Standing still in the darkness, the two of them waited for their eyes to adjust. Fortunately, enough light was filtering through the cave entrance to allow a limited perusal of the inside of the cave. The walls were smooth, dusty and featureless. Dismayed at yet another disappointment, they were about to leave when a slight motion registered on the periphery of Julia's vision.

"Magus! Look!" Julia was pointing at the far wall of the cave.

"What? Do you...oh! A spider!" They both rush forward, happier than two humans would ordinarily expect to be at the sight of a particularly oversized arachnid. They watched in silence as the spider worked its way along the wall a short distance and then seemed to disappear before their very eyes. They looked at each other incredulously.

"What the...?" gasped Julia. She put her hand out to touch the cave wall where the spider had just been crawling. Her hand appeared to disappear straight through the wall.

"Julia!" Magus exclaimed in amazement, not quite believing what she was seeing.

Turning slightly, Julia smiled at Magus and then leapt forward, disappearing entirely.

"JULIA!"

Magus was astounded to receive a reply to her cry. "Come on! There's another cavern back here. Just step through."

Not particularly certain of what was going on, Magus decided to follow suit and step into the wall. Rather that than get left alone again. She stepped forward, half expecting to feel some sensation of passing through the rock. It was only then that she realized that there was no rock. It was an opening in the wall that was completely imperceptible to the naked eye. Inside the second cavern, it was blacker than before.

"Julia?" Magus stammered.

"You're standing right next to me," came the reply, causing Magus to jump in surprise. They grasped each other's hands and stood silently, trying to decide how to proceed.

"Your turn," said Julia.

"Gee, thanks." Extending her free arm straight out in front of her, Magus advanced slowly, with Julia following closely behind. "We should try to work our way towards the back wall," she said.

"Why?" asked Julia. "Can you see something?"

Magus stopped. "What do you think I am? A ZED? It beats standing doing nothing, that's all."

Julia chuckled under her breath, which was suddenly forced out of her as Magus stumbled and both of them tumbled forward in a heap of arm and legs and....cobwebs.

"Ugh!" Magus spat in disgust, rubbing her head vigorously to get the cobwebs out of her hair. Unfortunately, she managed to elbow Julia in the face in the process.

"Hey! Watch it!" Julia shot back.

"Well if I could even *see* it," countered Magus.

A few seconds of silence. Then Julia said slowly "I think *I* can see it. Look!"

Magus searched in all directions, wondering what the hell it was she was supposed to be able to see in complete blackness. Then she saw it- a faint glow that looked as if it were miles away in the darkness. As if she were looking at a nebula in the night sky. Except that this nebula was rapidly becoming a supernova that suddenly darted forward to envelop them and explode in a conflagration of blinding light.

***

"Look at this," motioned Bess, indicating one of Julia's test tubes. Devon and Yale leaned in to examine the phial in Bess' hand, and True poked her head through between the two of them, lest they had forgotten her presence. "It's a portion of the root- the dry outer skin. There are a number of test tubes with similar samples," she said, motioning at Julia's workbench.

"Julia thought the antidote was in this skin" said Devon. She scrutinized the brown, flaky substance, wondering how the answers to all their problems could possibly be hidden within something so hideous-looking.

Yale took the vial and held it closer to his face. He seemed to turn his focus inwards, as if reciting some silent mantra to himself, but the others recognized the characteristic look that demonstrated Yale's searching through rarely-accessed data files.

"It *is* possible," concluded Yale to the three. "This skin represents a minor part of a whole- that being the entire plant. It is conceivable that skin chemistry acts as a biochemical antithesis to the rest of the plant, somehow maintaining an overall chemical balance in the process. Many plants are known to store certain unwanted absorbed substances in specific areas, such as seeds, woody parts, or in cutaneous cells. It protects the plant from harm. Maybe the skin of the roots contains a substance we need to counteract something in the fleshy portion that was beneficial to the plant itself but unfortunately harmful to us."

Devon was nodding in agreement. At least, it certainly sounded plausible. True mimicked Devon's reaction, although Yale may as well have been talking Greek for all the sense it made to her. Bess began shaking her head to disagree.

"I don't think so, Yale. It seems to me that Julia had the same idea as you, but she essentially disproved the hypothesis with these experiments," again, she gestured to the many vials spread across the workbench. "She made a number of attempts to use the root's skin to produce a neutralizing chemical reaction but had no luck at all. She mentions in one part of her log that the substance in the skin may be present in such minute proportions that a great deal of it may be required to produce the desired effect."

"So do you think Julia went looking for additional plant material?" Devon wondered.

"That I'm not sure about. The log ends without her mentioning her exact intentions, although she did say she needed more plant specimens. She sounds positively exhausted towards the end of the log- almost incomprehensible in fact," replied Bess.

"But you say you disagree with the overall supposition that the skin is our answer," prompted Yale.

Bess nodded. "Yes, I do."

"So you think this dirt is the medicine," True piped in, trying desperately to sound useful.

"I think the antidote we need is in here somewhere, True," Bess responded with a slight smile.

Devon still had serious doubts. "Do you have any particular reason for thinking this, Bess?"

"Absolutely!" Bess put the test tube containing the root skin back on Julia's workbench and began her reasoning. "I was thinking about the plant- with the fleshy portion containing the toxic chemical and all. Well anyway, I suddenly remembered something from when I was a little girl on Earth. There was an area near the mines where decades of toxic pollution had virtually obliterated all life. Plants, animals...all gone." It was a typical story heard of Earth, but Bess was nonetheless distraught at the mere recollection. "I remember daddy telling me that it was the water in the rocks and soil. He said that because you couldn't see water didn't mean there wasn't any. If you dug even a few feet into that land, you would start seeing it fill up with water. I tried it once even though I was told to never go near that place. But sure enough, my li'l hole filled up with water. It was like magic."

"It must have been a very shallow water table," concluded Yale.

"Just like the plains where we found the root," added Devon.

"Exactly!" responded Bess. "There was plenty of water under that surface back on Earth, but it didn't matter. Nothing would grow. It was all too full of poison. Toxic effluent from the mines."

Reaching across the workbench, Bess picked up the plant that Yale had brought back from the plains earlier. "What I remembered," she continued, "is how they tried to fix the problems with all the chemicals. They had tried all kinds of chemical treatments but it didn't make any difference. That's when the scientists came across this type of plant from Asia that was a natural hazardous chemical absorber. They created some kind of hybrid and used it to just suck the toxic chemicals right out of the water. They would just keep replacing the plants over and over, extracting more and more of it. The land never completely recovered, but it was enough to allow some hardy plants to colonize it again."

Devon was starting to feel a little more optimistic that Bess was onto something here. The excitement showed in her voice.

"So you think our plants somehow absorbed toxins out of the water table beneath the plains," she said. "But why would the water out on the plains here contain toxic chemicals?" Devon asked.

"They don't," Bess replied.

Now Devon was confused. Yale was having a hard time following, himself.

"Don't you see?" Bess said excitedly. "The *soil*! It must be the soil."

Devon and Yale both turned to look at the pile of soil that Bess had emptied out onto the workbench. True had been idly playing with it with her hand, which she immediately withdrew and wiped vigorously against her shirt with a look of disgust.

"The water must be fine," Bess reasoned. "We're still using the water from our tanks that we collected down on the plains. It seems to be okay. It definitely hasn't affected Cameron in any way, which we would expect if it were the water that's contaminated. Which means the chemical must have come out of the minerals in the soil itself. For some reason, the soils on the plains must be rich in elements that occur everywhere else in only minuscule concentrations. And these plants, " she held up the plant, "suck up those nasty elements just like the ones back on Earth."

Bess was visibly proud of her accomplishment at having found such a reasonable hypothesis. "And rightly so," thought Devon.

"Well it sounds like a logical conclusion to me."

Everyone spun around at the sound of the voice that had just emanated from the tent entrance. The response was immediate and the same for all of them.

"JULIA!"

In only a few seconds, Julia was assaulted from all sides with open arms. But she didn't fight it at all. It felt good to be back.

***

Devon was sitting next to Uly, stroking her fingers through his hair. He had just drifted off to sleep again after a few minutes of near lucidity. In that time he had managed to open his eyes, and had spent a few seconds trying, albeit not entirely successfully, to bring the inside of the tent into focus. His eyes fell on Devon briefly and he gave her a small smile. Devon was always amazed at how that little smile of his could fill her entire body with a sensation that was not unlike weightlessness. It was pure love, and before Uly was born she would never have believed that anyone could feel that way about another person. The connection between a mother and her child was something that never failed to astound Devon. It was a symbiosis of sorts, and she knew that losing Uly would be the same as ripping away the only part of herself that had any true meaning. Not even years of preparation for that moment, which went part and parcel with raising a syndrome child, could ever truly ready her.

And so she sat now, utterly unprepared.

Devon sighed deeply and stood. It was approaching dawn and she still hadn't slept. She could feel the fatigue wracking at her body, but sleep had nonetheless eluded her. Looking across to where Danziger lay sleeping, she was surprised at how angelic he looked. She almost giggled. It didn't seem right somehow that Danziger would come across as angelic. "I'm sure he'll be most amused when I tell him," she thought, a smile working its way onto her lips as she headed for the tent door and walked out into the brisk morning air.

The morning fire was already crackling away. Devon was fairly surprised. For one, the morning fire was never usually started until after dawn- no one ever got up this early. Secondly, she had been hoping to work on getting it started herself this morning- anything to keep her mind focused on something other than worry. She walked over to the fire just as Magus appeared from behind the transrover with a bundle of firewood in her arms, giving Devon a start.

"Hi Devon!" Magus said cheerfully.

"Couldn't sleep?" Devon wondered of Magus.

"Oh I slept fine. Well rested in fact! Just wanted to get the day started as soon as possible. This is going to be a good one, I know it!" She emptied the sticks and branches onto the ground beside the fire and began rubbed her hands together over the fire.

Devon stared at her, wondering what well of hope she had managed to tap into to be feeling so chipper. Her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Julia and Bess. They too were looking far too happy for two people who had been awake all night working on the antidote problem, and Devon felt a flurry of hope inside.

"Devon! I didn't expect to see you up so early," commented Julia, as if that were the only thing on her mind.

Devon and Magus stared at her in anticipation, knowing that she had something to share from the previous night's efforts.

Julia produced a hypospray from her pocket and held it out for them both to see. The vial contained a colorless fluid. "I think this is it," she said.

Devon stared at the medical instrument as if seeing a hypospray for the first time ever. "You've found an antidote?" she asked, not quite able to absorb the immensity of what Julia was telling her. She looked at Julia anxiously, scared to allow herself the hope that she so desperately craved.

A huge grin had swept across Bess' face. She couldn't contain her own excitement any longer. "We found the antidote!" She grabbed Devon's arms and began dancing round in a small circle. Devon allowed herself to be propelled along while the realization slowly dawned on her, but the expression on her face transformed itself into a wide grin and she began actively participating in the dance of joy that Bess was obviously thoroughly enjoying. Within a few seconds, Magus had joined them and the three of them danced around in a circle, hand in hand, while Julia stared at them in amazement, finally bursting out laughing herself.

The commotion soon brought others stumbling sleepy-eyed out of their tents. One by one, True, Denner, Cameron, and finally, Yale, hurried across to the morning fire and joined in the excitement of the news they had been desperately waiting for.

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