Choices by Tara OShea

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First the massive cargo pods had dropped gently to the ground. Devon had watched them descend through the jumpers. They looked like grey shoe boxes, and she could almost forget how massive they were until she swore she could feel the ground jump beneath her feet even though they were over a kilometre away. But Willis was the best money could buy, and Devon wouldn't be surprised if they were within feet of the coordinates she'd given the pilot.

The ship itself seemed to fall from the sky ins slow motion, thrusters fire disappearing in the bright afternoon sun, if it weren't for the deafening noise she'd think it was floating.

As the roar of the engines died, Devon made her way down, the rest of Eden Advance followed, grins splitting their faces.

The airlock opened, and the first thing Sheila Willis saw was Ulysses Adair, tan and grinning and looking like he'd never spent the first eight years of his life encased in an immunosuit. For a second it took her breath away, and she could hear the gasps of the colonists behind her.

Uly was a symbol of hope to the hundreds of people who had Syndrome children and siblings, who had picked up and come here on the strength of that hope. To see it now realized made some shed tears of joy. Only Dr. Vasquez frowned. As the surge of people moved forward he jumped down, the novelty of setting foot on the planet's surface lost, or at least for the moment, forgotten as his eyes fastened on Julia Heller and his stride lengthened.

"Dr. Heller, I need to talk to you. Your data--" "Sir, shouldn't we help the children disembark?" "Michaels and Lavode can handle that." Devon saw the two doctors out of the corner of her eye, heads bent towards each other, disappear back towards the town. She pursed her lips, but then turned towards the shocked and amazed faced of the 1507 people standing before her.

"Welcome." She said, and they started clapping.

Uly fidgeted as Dr. Vasquez took a blood sample. "Be a good boy, Uly."

"I'll try, sir." He glanced at the door, knowing his mother was on the other side. She had insisted on being present, but had finally bowed to Dr. Vasquez's wishes and stayed in the corridor, insisting that Uly was fine. At least Julia was there with him.

"You've certainly grown since I last saw you." "It's been two years," Uly said with that tone that said clearly the child thinks the adult is off his head for not seeing the obvious, and Vasquez smiled thinly.

"And a very interesting two years it's been, Dr. Heller has told me."

"Yes, sir!" Uly smiled. "The Terrians are going to heal the other children just like they healed me."

"Are they?"
"Yep, I spoke to them this morning when Mom told me you were coming."

"Uly, you didn't tell me that." Julia moved to the boy's side, and laid a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her with an earnest expression.

"They said they'd help, Julia. They can make the other kids a part of the planet, just like me."

"Can I speak to you for a moment?" Dr. Vasquez's gaze was stony, and Julia nodded.

"We'll be right back," she smiled brightly, and then followed Vasquez into the inner office. Seeing him in his white labcoat, under the florescents of the hospital, she felt underdressed in her sweater and pants even though she'd wore pretty much the same thing every day for the past three years and no one seemed to question her abilities as a doctor before. She felt like a first year medical student suddenly, and that irked her.

"Dr. Heller, I've gone over the data you've provided me, and I think we need to have a serious talk."

"As you are aware, Dr. Vasquez, I have had three years experience dealing with life on this planet, and I assure you Uly is correct. The Terrians altered his biochemistry and genetic material subtly, he is cured of the Syndrome." She could feel herself adopting the posture she had used when presenting diagnostic analysis to her teachers on the Stations back when she was a resident.

"Do you have any idea of the long term effects?" "They saved the boy's life, it was out of my hands until he was returned to us."

"And now you are determined to let over two hundred children be taken away and altered as well?"

"Sir, with all due respect, it *is* the cure you've been searching for. These children's only hope lies in the bond between this planet and its indigenous life-forms. The data on that is very clear."

Dr. Vasquez shifted his weight as he digested this bit of information, and Julia resisted the urge to chew on her lower lip as she waited for his answer.

"Well, it would seem our positions have reversed, and I find myself the student now, as you seem to be the resident expert."

"Sir, I realize that you have been practising--" "Without the aid of a chromo-tilt, longer than you've been alive, young lady."

"Not quite, sir." Julia couldn't stop a challenging note from entering her voice. "But you are correct, in the two years here I have managed to obtain a large amount of data regarding the Terrians, and this planet, all of which I am placing at your disposal. I realize that my methods have been unorthodox based on Stations practices, but life here... has been different from what any of us expected, as I am sure you will come to understand. Frontier medicine has its place, as does traditional medicine, and I have tried my best to use both when the situation warranted."

"That will be all, Dr. Heller."
Julia's back stiffened at his dismissal, and frowning, she left. Uly looked up at her as she stalked out of the outer office, and frowned as Dr. Vasquez reappeared, a smile plastered on his face that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Well young man, let's see exactly how much you've grown, shall we?"

"Julia?" Devon saw the young doctor burst out of the examination room, and jogged to catch up with her. "Is everything alright? Is Uly--"

"He's fine, just fine," Julia assured her, schooling her features. But Devon saw the flush of anger, and could guess at the cause. "Dr. Vasquez is with him now, completing the examination."

"I'd rather have you present."
"I'm afraid he's made it quite clear that my presence is not required." Julia turned and left before she could speak again, and Devon was left standing in the hall, with only questions.

The main floor of the Common was filled to bursting with some eight hundred parents, doctors, and security personnel, all of them waiting for her to begin. With Danziger at her side, Devon stepped onto the hastily constructed dais and cleared her throat.

"I know some of you are concerned at the state of the settlement, and I can answer all your questions if you're willing to wait and hear what I have to say."

She launched into an explanation of the crash, how the earth had swallowed her son and then returned him, whole and healthy, and changed, and the months of travel and hardships that had followed. First Broderick's death, the Eben's, then her own illness.

John glanced around nervously as the colonists murmured amongst themselves and fidgeted as Devon told them about the Terrians, the penal colonists, the ZEDS, the Council, and Eve.

As silence descended and her last word rang out in the hall, Devon watched, and waited.

Some seemed frightened. Some were outraged. And some were just so happy that an apparent cure for the Syndrome had been found nothing else seemed to matter to them. Finally, Sheila Willis cleared her throat.

"Are you telling me that the *Council* put the bomb on the Advance ship, and tried to kill us?"

"Yes. As far as the Stations are concerned, we died before ever clearing Station Subspace."

"But if the ship goes back, then they'd have to admit we made it."

"If the people back on the Stations knew that this planet existed, there would be a mass exodus ten times the size of the '81 skylift," Devon unconsciously echoed Julia's words of long ago.

"But you said the Council already knew about this world. There could be people already on their way here, colonists. I didn't take this job with the intent of remaining here." Willis felt a flush rise in her cheeks. "You may own that ship out there, but you don't own me. My contract states I stay here ten days, and then turn around and head back."

"But there's nothing to head back to!" Danziger spoke up, and Devon looked at him with gratitude shining in her blue eyes. She turned back towards the pilot.

"I can't stop you if you want to go back. You're right, your contract is perfectly legal. But I would ask you to think hard about what I'm saying. There is a life here for you, if you chose it."

"What about us?" A man stood, his eyes red-rimmed, and his son tugged on his sleeve, trying to get him to sit back down. "We came here for our daughter, and she didn't make it. What's here for us?"

"I'm sorry for your loss." Devon's throat grew raw, as all the fears she'd had for Uly since he was first diagnosed came rushing back, and she could understand his pain with a mother's heart. She hadn't forgotten those three children, she never would as long as she lived. "But you have to understand that there are no guarantees. No guarantees that if you go back, there will be anything there for you. But I can say that there is a place for you here, if you decide to stay. There will always be a place for you here."

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