Devon stepped curiously forward a few steps for a better look at the suspended Terrian's fresh robotic augmentations. "We're missing something vital here. Let's not jump to hasty conclusions, Yale. Maybe Eve learned what you are only after you were in her link trying to restore her default settings to save the rest of us."
The tutor shook his head, grunting. "She knew. We Yales have been around just as long as she has. Time enough for her to learn even our flaws." he whispered, too low for any of the others to overhear.
She saw that Yale had gone suddenly distant like he usually did in the past whenever one of his shooting attack dreams began to haunt him. He said nothing in reply. "Yale?" she prompted.
He ignored her, his staring eyes clouding over with an unidentified emotion. She touched him on the arm and was relieved when his unencumbered hand reached up to clasp her own in unspoken, warm reassurance in spite of the new, tortured look on his face. "I'm just thinking. There's a lot of data I accessed then that I should have attended to after Eve was restored."
"Whose records?" Adair asked.
"The ones I talked about before. The time stamped recorded killings that occurred among Bennet's Eden Project colonists." Yale offered.
John was thoughtful, leaning on the butt of his Mag-pro. "What are you seeing now, Yale?"
"Grendlers. Looking like she does now." he sighed sharply, in distress, pointing at Mother-By-Choice.
Morgan quailed. "Oh, that's just great. Really great." he spat sarcastically."Are you're suggesting that Eve built an army of Grendlers with Yale program enhancements just so she could kill off Bennet's party one by one fifty years ago? That doesn't make any sense. Franklin told me, I mean the VR program 'Franklin' that Eve used on me, told me that the sleepers on the ship could help us figure out why we were dying. Why would Eve lead us to this ship and risk us learning about her self destructing duplicity in the first place, when she could have just as easily used those Grendler soldiers to do her dirty work of eliminating us, with her still safely hidden?"
Alonzo stated the obvious. "She was dying. Name one robot or machine that's not programmed with a self preservation law."
Julia added more. "Grendlers don't live very long, Morgan. The one we encountered who reacted to Whalen and Dell's holo battle was at the very end of his biological life. I remember scanning his chromosomal telomere lengths and they were no longer dividing. That was his death sentence. On that very day, when he walked away from us, he ended. Twenty years was pushing his maximum life span, even for him. Only his empathy for an alien mother trying to reach her son kept him alive for so long."
Danziger shifted on his feet, uncomfortable with developments.
"Yale, those records of yours are a mute point regardless of what happened then and why. It's been fifty years of cryosleep time since Bennet and the others." John reasoned. "All those mechanized Grendlers, even if they were real and not some sort of software induced generated nightmare, are dead now. It's a mystery I know we can live with, without worrying."
The tutor conceded. "I supposed you're right. But that does not answer why this is happening, now, to her." he said, gesturing to Mother-By-Choice.
John just hung his head in exasperation, angry at being stymied by the new mystery.
Uly's eyes were filled with tears, feeling Mary's emotional pain as clearly as he would his own. "Is she going to be okay, Julia?" he asked. "These are wrong." he said, fingering the temple plate that was still bleeding morganite orange around its edges on Mother-By-Choice's face and gripping one of her massive fingers encased inside the newly constructed hologrip. The boy dragged over a metal stool and stood on it so he was high enough to reach the Terrian's face, so he could clean her wound with the dead eye stalk stems he had retrieved from the floor. It immediately began to show signs of rapid healing the second he made contact with her reptilian skin.
Heller was still intently fixed on her new patient, scanning every inch of her with the diaglove. "Uly, she's reading as still safely suspended. Her vital signs aren't showing up any differently from the ones I saw on other Terrians who underwent surgery today. She's just in a cryo-sleep from what I can tell. It's stopping the ZED's bullet from moving inside of her."
"The human makings do not belong." echoed Mary in distress, crouched and clinging to her adoptive mother's frozen legs. "Take it out! And take this off my heart!" she yelled, rising and reaching for the implant in her mother's temple in a quick grab.
Startled, Danziger and Baines blocked her attempt to rip it free. They each carefully grabbed one of her burn suit wrapped wrists and gently pulled Mary out of reach.
Mary wilted in their arms, giving up, much like the eye stalk did when it froze to death. "She is deattached from the All. I can't feel her...in my mind." she sobbed.
Yale suddenly lifted his head at the sound of an activation warble on the panel above Mother-Of-Choice's chamber. A yellow light began flashing steadily. It matched the one that usually flashed on his hologrip arm whenever he used its functions. "Oh, my. This is quite the change. I believe I can, Mary. We've just been linked."
John startled, whirling to the silent suspended viewer monitor that Eve had been using before they shut off her satellite to ground connection. "Is it Eve?"
"No, just Mary's mother." Yale said, surprised. "She is very worried about her child."
Alonzo blinked at the tutor, in shock. "You can see her? Like I did in the dream plain?"
"Yes." sighed Yale. "She is so very beautiful." he cried, a tear running down his dark face. "But she says it is the others now, who are dying." he sobbed in shock, covering his temple implant as it pained him with its new Terrian telepathic function.
"Who?! The Terrians?" Devon asked, stunned. She whirled to her son, but he still seemed perfectly normal, still in his healthy Terrian fixed state.
The Jamaican tutor did not answer, he was lost in a fresh alien caused grief.
Julia Heller frowned and switched her medical scan to the tutor. "Yale? Are you okay?"
"I am fine." he replied, blinking slowly as he got a hold of his emotions with small shakes of his balding head.
Suddenly, a very strong scent filled the air, making everybody close by the cryo chamber cough and back away.
John covered his mouth with a sleeve protectively. "Matches. I'm definitely smelling matches." he said, picking up True to move her safely away. "Is there going to be a fire?" he wondered.
Julia waved her glove in the air. "Sulfur." she read from it. "It's not enough to be harmful."
Yale spoke softly, his voice pitched several octaves higher than usual. "It is the scent my other heart and I are exuding."
"What?" Devon breathed at his answer, catching the change in perspective. He was talking as the female Terrian.
"Oh, now it smells like burned gun powder!" Morgan complained, gagging.
"Gun powder? That's a man made substance." Adair said, glancing at John in discovery. "A lure scent like the eye stalks fresh water bait?"
"So that's how the ZED are finding the Terrians." Danziger nodded, connecting the dots. "They go after machines and machine traces. There's nothing more machine associated than the scent of explosives. Very clever. So they weren't additionally programmed. I was wrong. They're still acting under their old parameters, hunting those associated with technology."
"So it's sick Terrians? Huh. Are they being infected by something that's trailing off this gas?" Julia wondered, using her glove free hand to rub some dust off of her tired face.
"But sulfur's an Earth gas,.." Bess said, narrowing the topic. She was remembering the mines of ancient South Carolina. "..isn't it?" she asked the group.
"Yes." Heller supplied. "Whereever it came from, Mary and Mother-By-Choice seem to be original source points for it. The traces are strongest, on them."
Yale blinked and his mind became his own again. "How about bacteria? From the skin of the ship?" he said, leaning back on the cryo chambers wall.
"From ours?" Cameron asked, focusing in on the tutor's clue. "Ours burned up. Have you forgotten that already, you stupid old man?" he snapped.
"Hush.." Devon barked at the restless watchman. "Can't you see he's hurting?"
"Oh, boy. Cameron, he meant this ship." John guessed in a revelation. "It's the only one that's been on the surface of the planet, completely intact, for so long."
Morgan grumbled. "And this flyer's the only one that didn't get sterilized while burning in the atmosphere on re-entry, like ours, Gaal's, and the penal colonists' did." He busied himself by turning on the lights one by one so they were no longer straining to see in the darkness of the ship.
Devon hung onto Yale's arm while the others homed in on critical theories. "Glad you're back." she whispered.
Yale glanced over and smiled at her reassuringly. "Mother-By-Choice is just a new communications channel. I'll teach myself how to manage her like I do Eve."
Heller surmised more on their speculations. "Fifty years is an eon for bacterial mutation rates. The Council's unthinkable case scenario's finally happened. Earth's biome is beginning to overwhelm Earth 2's."
"Has this been their absolute ulterior motive all along?" Alonzo asked, collapsing into a computer chair. "To supplant G889's biology with Earth's?"
"It definitely could be another way to control the planet if our Terrian to Human links fail." Heller surmised.
Yale sighed, finger bracing his forehead against the new headache that was already beginning to fade away. "I should have known."
"What a short cut." John laughed. "And so like us. Using bacteria as an army. No wonder Elizbeth and Franklin spent eight years here. They were figuring out how to tweak Earth bacteria to be able to survive on G889. But then whatever they did backfired."
Adair's strength reappeared in her eyes. "That's what Elizabeth meant when she said no one can survive here. She didn't mean just us. She meant everybody, the Terrians, the Grendlers, the Koba.. She knew their engineered bacteria would eventually win out against any native strains." Devon said, wide eyed. "Our Earth has always been too aggressive in all aspects of its biology."
Morgan was still shivering. "So, we're not going to die like she said despite our biostat implants being fixed?" he asked meekly.
"No." said Julia. "If we were going to, it would have happened already. The strain that was killing the colonists she spoke of was fifty years ago. It's had more than enough time to mutate since then. It's now probably the bug that's making the Terrians visible to the ZED because of its sulfur waste in infected individuals."
Cameron pulled out his Mag-pro and shot the Koba sedated ZED truly dead. "We don't need him anymore. We've finally found our answer."
"What answer?" the African American man asked angrily. "Eve made Grendlers act like Yales who had the ability to shoot humans."
Baines was thoughtful as he pulled out a packet of eye fern stalks he had harvested as an emergency snack. He passed them out to the group for fast food. "You figure it out. I did."
The tutor turned to face Cameron, reaccessing the record he had first discovered when interfacing with Eve to kill Bennet's computer virus.
"Bennet's science crew's petris dish results were a wildcard outcome, and one the Council had previously decided needed eradicating if it were to ever occur in reality. Eve was performing excisement treatments, Cameron, with those murders." Yale said, with a haunted look. "She was setting up an absolute human species quarantine using Council program directives even Bennet didn't know about, so the super bug would not be able to backtrack contaminate back to our places of origin to kill us all. Eve must have used the Yale/Grendlers she made to sniff out the sulfur in infected colonists so they could be culled. The healthy crew, she consigned to cryo-chambers to protect them from getting infected by the bodies of the first group. She then launched those in the ship to return them to the Stations, but a human made error caused a problem she couldn't remedy. Bennet's kill computer program ironically interrupted her rescue launch for them before they reached the safety of the vacuum of space. The ship must have fallen back to the surface, still contaminated on the outside."
Bess surmised. "..until the day we were contacted by Eve using her Bennet holovid lure through Morgan's VR gear." She watched her husband squirm at the memory of his role in those events.
"So she's innocent." Devon realized about Eve. "And she's trying to find a cure again, by using Mother-Of-Choice as a ...medical tool, like she did with the Grendlers for Bennet's crew. Wow, after all these years, Eve still wants to find and fix anybody who's been infected."
"You're talking gibberish, Devon. Is your brain still cryo-scrambled?" Cameron scoffed. "You know what? Maybe we should just kill both these stinking creatures and be done with it like the Other clan Terrians want." he said, raising his Mag-pro at both Mary and Mother-By-Choice.
"No, wait!" Julia said, holding up a hand as John and Alonzo disarmed Cameron deftly, with force.
"Just simmer down!" Danziger growled at the watchman. "This is no time to enrage the Terrians by killing one and another they value. Do you remember what happened last time a Terrian died because of us?!"
The man paled, thinking deeper this time.
"I'm...sorry.. I... just got mad." Cameron stammered.
John glared. "You do that a little too much, I'll have you realize. That little stunt could have gotten us all killed. We're still outnumbered a billion to thirteen here." he hissed. "Go get camp ready for bed. Bring Zero with you and set all our perimeter ticklers on ZED scan."
Cameron hastily complied, fleeing the ship. He was so shaken by what he had almost caused, that the eye stalks from the yellow ferns in the meadow, turning to watch him, didn't even sink into his awareness.
It was only then John turned back to the doctor and Eden Project's old leader.
Heller was concentrating while she spoke."Devon, you're right. That's exactly what Eve's doing. 'I have been reading a delay in the return of completely healthy vital functions in all members of Eden Project Group Two. I wish to expedite original state parameters.' "she quoted.
Danziger eyed up Eve's blank monitor thoughtfully. Then he reached over and turned it on before anybody else could stop him. "Eve, are you listening?"
##Yes.## came a male voice reply. Then an image formed of E.V.E. transformed into Franklin Bennet's likeness. ##Have you located the contaminant in the Terrian/human bioforms?##
Heller replied. "We have. What is your solution for dealing with the germ?"
Franklin/Eve spoke again. ##Julia Heller, Physician class. I am relieved to know that you are still alive. You are now in charge of this recovery operation. Once the burrowing projectile is removed from the suspended Terrian specimen, an accurate baseline blood sample can be obtained. It will be holding the latest mutation of the Eden Phage. I have bioengineered the onboard biomass hydrolizer to analyze microbile DNA. With this test result you can formulate a cure by exposing the cataloged sample to any emerged sensory flora.##
"The eye stalk ferns?" True asked.
Julia nodded, intrigued.
##Then feed one gene calibrated phyto-organism to each patient who's been infected." Franklin/Eve reported. "My analysis projects that the infection will then terminate in two days.##
Devon was curious. "Eve, why did you modify the female Terrian into a Yale?"
##The planet sentience requested the change to better facilitate communications between humans and Terrians during this crisis.## came the reply. ##The female agreed to the transformation.##
Danziger whistled low under his breath. "G889 figured out how to talk to an Earth computer?"
Morgan was smug. "Eve's not that much different than a human brain when you think about it. One made the other." he grinned. "And Terrians already know the human mind like the back of their scales." he said, pointing to Uly who was happily trilling lines of Terrian songs with Mary. "Eve was probably a cakewalk for them."
"How do we purge the Phage after we've cured all the bipeds?" Julia asked Frankin/Eve. "This whole valley for clicks around is most likely infected."
Uly spoke up, his eyes glowing orange with Moon Pool Terrian energy. "The Mother will bury this part of Herself with Morganite ore. This will kill all infection."
Mary angled her head, reaching up to her adopted mother's hand with a tender fingers. "Soon we will both be cured. My people will continue."
True's eyes filled with tears. "But you'll die, Mary. You aren't Terrian. The sunstones will just burn you up like the lake did."
Mary blinked at the human girl. "I will be safe in the Moon Pool. Mother-By-Choice will encapsulate my energy from the Cleansers'. I...will be fine."
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It was two days later and Eden Camp had retreated half the distance back up Spring Flower Mountain to escape the incredible heat the Terrians were making as they slowly entombed the Sleeper ship in orange, hot Morganite ore stones. The heat was so intense, they didn't need to light a campfire to cook dinner that night.
John Danziger had rigged Eve's remote monitor to hang from the back of the Trans Rover. Eve's image was projecting the Council woman persona once more now that the medical emergency facing Eden Project was over. Danziger was surprised to feel a qualm when her image began to fritz with static. It was a sign that her ship board computer terminal was slowly rising to temperatures above safe operating conditions. He found it hard to smile for the benefit of the others as he tinkered with the food hydrolizers, rigging them to operate using solar energy instead of ship's power.
Resting, Yale and Devon sat nearby in canvas chairs, enjoying the normalcy of Danziger's swearing bouts every time he banged a finger inside his machinery.
##Core temperature. 401 d-grees --elvin. A-d rising.## Eve reported to the trio.
John nodded. He looked up and regarded the computer's visage. "What will you do up there on the satellite all by yourself once your ability to transmit down here's been fried?"
Eve's elegant female image actually smiled. ##I will -ontinue to analyze all -iostat implant functions and make en--ries into the Eden Proje-t Log. Franklin Bennet has s-t no end date f-r this task. But know this. You will no --onger die if I cease to f-nct-on. It was the --hage that made Devon Ad--ir termina-ly infected and end-ngered the rest of y--. ##
"Handy, that." said John. "The Terrians figuring out how to cure our own species' Armageddon bug before we even realized there was a problem."
"Forgiveness is a human trait." said Yale, sipping some cooling eye stalk tea. "Perhaps they learned it from us, even while we were killing them, fifty years ago."
Devon Adair was thoughtful. "Eve, how many G889 lifeform types are dead because of Bennet's Phage?"
##Estim-tes range from 125,000 to one m-llion bioforms.##
Yale's mouth flopped open in shock. "Almost the total extinction of all life on this entire planet?! That's worst than Earth's current counts." he said. "How many are left from the original surveys?" the tutor asked Eve.
##9512 flora, fifty four fauna, and ---- forms of bip-ds.## came her reply.
Adair asked Eve the next question tentatively, feeling sick to her stomach. "Will G889 recover its losses?"
##**static**## whispered burning Eve, her face image beginning to fuzz into chaos.
"Eve? Answer the question." Devon repeated, beginning to shake.
##**static**....**static**...## And then the ship's computer fell into into its final silence on the surface. The visual monitor went dead with a soft click.
No one in Eden Project spoke for hours after that, letting the lonely alien wind torture their private thoughts.
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Devon Adair, narrating.. "I don't know what tomorrow will bring. There's a heaviness with each step that wasn't there before. The responsibility we carry with us as humans now looms so large, it threatens to smother our feelings of self worth as surely as the Morganite did the Eden Phage. I wish I was a child again. I wish I didn't know what I've just learned."
Uly Adair, narrating.. "No one will tell me what happened this afternoon after we moved camp away from the ship. Nobody looks happy. And everybody looks worried. All I know is that we figured out how to kill the bug that was hurting my friends. And that's all I need to know for right now."
True Danziger, narrating.. "I had fun spoiling Kitty. Telling him what a good boy he was. But I can't figure it out. He still hasn't found another Koba to play with. And I haven't seen any others since the day I got here. It seems like he gets sadder and quieter with each passing day and I don't know what to do about it to make him feel better. Maybe the eye stalks will spot one for us soon, so I'll keep an eye out right along with them. Love happens, right? It's just a matter of time."
Bess Martin, narrating.. "It's hard to eat and drink these days. Even though our food and water shortages are gone forever. I've always wondered why G889 reminds me so much of Earth. Now I know why. Yale told me this morning. He said it was because we've wounded it in the same way. We took our own selfish nature, and crammed it into this place that was so bright and new, thinking that we could make it our own just by occupying a little bit of its space. And that was so not right. We should have spent another million years living in the trees before we developed thumbs. Maybe if we had done that, our brains would have caught up with the rest of us in sophistication."
John Danziger, narrating.. "I've been up all night, trying to link up Zero to the satellite I know's still orbiting overhead. I have to know the unspoken answer Eve gave to Devon's question, for me, if not for the eventual sanity of the rest of the group. It's been effecting almost everything I do, making me sloppy. I had to see Julia today to get an artery lasered up when I caught my arm on an outcrop of Morganite, when I wasn't watching where I was going on the way to the creek for water. I wish I was Yale. Then I could use a program to erase my memory of the moment with Eve that might have meant the life or death of us."
Julia Heller, narrating.. "Medical log. Day 150. I feel like I've dodged a bullet. Nobody's dying of a mystery germ, worm bullet, or of starvation. That's one in a row. Danziger's recent limb repair doesn't count. He didn't even lose consciousness, despite his massive blood loss. He said, 'That's just every day wear and tear on this planet, only here, the bumps and bruises are a little bit bigger when you run into them.' I think I'll go see Alonzo. I've never seen him so happy. He says Mother-Of-Choice and Mary have been accepted. Peace has been made with the Others clan today. It was easy once they saw that the contamination that those two have been suffering was gone. Isn't that worth some celebrating? It is, in my book."
Alonzo Solace, narrating.. "I had a chance to see Mary. Her skin is whole, and her hair's already beginning to come back in. It's gray, with a few streaks of Morganite orange that glow in the dark. I think I kind of like it. Now when we race, earth walking versus Sand rail, I can keep up because I can see where she's going. Julia's always with me, asking how I am, what I'm feeling. It's like I'm her new anchor within the group. I just may ask Yale to hand tie us officially like he did with the Martins. It's about time I prove that I love her in a way that really matters."
Yale, the cyber tutor, narrating.. "I can still see it. Eve's answer. A part of me wants to share it with the group. But my human side stifles the urge. I know how fragile or powerful the human spirit can be. Maybe holding onto this is my true penance at last. For my past, for my sins, I will keep the secret, until I know one way or the other, how we will fare on this new world of ours. Even Mother-By-Choice is unable to help me out with interpreting what Eve said in her last seconds with us. Should I continue to pore over its true meaning? To do so is what I am, but to let fade this puzzle is the choice I make every morning, when I open my eyes and see how just simple sunlight makes them all smile."
Zero, narrating.. ##Perimeter check report to Eden Project. Range 25 clicks. No bio lifesigns. Extending to 50 clicks. Still no biped indications. 100, 300, 500, 1000... Small fauna presence check. Results? Negative. Extending to maximum range.. Findings? **static** *bleep* **static**##
FIN