TRANSFUSION
By
Kristina Dijan
Timeline: Trying to cure Devon
Author's E-Mail: kadijan@watarts.uwaterloo.ca
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
Note: This story takes place after (and tries to solve) "All About Eve", and what happens here will serve as an "arc" for my next few stories. Enjoy and by all means let me know what you think: kadijan@watarts.uwaterloo.ca
The Transfusion, Part 1
by Kristina DijanFilled with indecision and a mourning that nobody could admit, the days after Devon "got sick", as everyone preferred to call it, passed more slowly than any the colonists had ever known, but eventually a direction formed from various suggestions and reminders. Spurred by a frightening intrusion by some Grendlers who had gotten too close to the airship that had become Devon's temporary crypt--too close for anyone's comfort, because it only reminded them how easily they had entered and violated the crypts inside and how easily someone else could do the same, and damage its contents before they could return. They hadn't even been able to bring themselves to lock up the ship for good, and it became an unspoken understanding that the sealing of the ship would be their last act before leaving. In the meantime, everyone had voted to sacrifice the perimeter monitor, leave it behind to guard the airship, and today Baines had the task of setting it up. He had added extra stabilizer rods onto the unit to secure its checkpoints, which he hoped to drive deep into the ground where nothing could wrench the monitor free--or so they all hoped. He was having a hard time drilling through the ground in that area, and spent much of the morning grumbling as the drill seemed to go nowhere, and cursing with surprise as the drill occasionally sank and he fell down heavily on top of it.
It surprised nobody that Uly was having the hardest time dealing with their inevitable departure. They had given up trying to cheer him up with games or trying to keep him busy with chores, and decided it was best to just leave him as much to his own thoughts as possible, at least until he was ready to be a part of the group. In the last few days he had started a habit of doing a constant inventory of his mother's possessions, checking to see if they were in working order, shining and keeping them clean--he knew she would need them soon, after all. As he laid out her equipment with care to look at it all yet one more time, he looked at her gear again, but seemed to truly notice it for the first time. Suddenly he remembered how Morgan said he had talked to Dr. Bennett in VR, and it occurred to him how at the time the Doctor was in a cold sleep crypt, just like his mother was now. For the first time in days, Uly was alive with a hope and excitement. If it worked then, what would stop him from contacting his mother in VR now? He snatched the gear and looked for his eyebar, then stopped before finding it. Maybe he should use hers, he thought--which one would give him a better chance for contact? The question puzzled him for only a second, but the answer mattered little, since he could not find his mother's eyebar, and returned to the search for his own, wondering all the while how he could have missed that one piece of her equipment in his inventory and, more importantly, where it had gone since her sickness. As he pieced together everything he needed, he decided the best place for his experiment was down in the caves he discovered recently--there nobody would find and bother him. He sneaked out of his tent and past all the busy grown-ups.
Uly's hope and excitement turned to an even deeper despair after over an hour of trying everything in VR with no success whatsoever. He finally tore off his gear and for the first time in days, allowed himself to cry. He started thumping the ground around him with growing force. For the first time he knew he hated this planet. He hated it, no matter how it had helped and healed him, he would give it all up just to have his mother back, and he hated the planet for making her sick and then not helping her. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than the ground began to rumble and a Terrian appeared--but he hadn't burst up and out of the ground but wandered around from another part of the cave. The Terrian cocked his head as if to show that he had heard what Uly had only thought. He looked hurt, thought Uly--good. I want you to know how I feel. "I hate you!" He screamed at the Terrian in English--trilling was too gentle to convey his meaning. "I hate this planet!" Then, with less ferocity and more sorrow, "I want my mom." The Terrian stiffened from his curious posture and backed away in the direction from which he had come, staring at Uly. The boy knew that gesture was not an invitation, so he allowed the Terrian a little lead time before he followed. Before long, the tunnels lit up with an orange light emanating from spots in the walls and from rounded rocks scattered along the ground, sources which Uly immediately recognized as the rocks which had no name to him except Morganite.
When Uly looked up from the orange pile he was pondering, his guide was far gone, and besides, Uly felt he had found what he needed anyway. He remembered the story of how Morgan had communicated with a machine--the geo-lock--using both VR and a piece of Morganite. He burned his hands, but it would be worth it, thought Uly, if he could make contact with his mother. Maybe that was it--I could hook into the ship with the VR gear, and hold onto a piece of Morganite, and the rock would help me. It was worth a try. Now all he had to do was get back to camp and find something to carry the rock in.
"Alonzo!" Danziger kicked the pilot's leg, hoping to wake him up from his nap under the tree. "Hey! we could use a little help."
Alonzo opened his eyes, more thankful than annoyed. "Terrians just talked to me in a dream."
"Now what?" Danziger was in no mood for bad news. "I dunno, it was weird, like they were mad at something. Or hurt. but I don't know what. More like a feeling."
Baines' cursing drew their attention, and when he noticed they were looking, he threw up his arms in resignation. "I give up. I finally got the rods and the checkpoints down but now the thing keeps shorting out. It won't turn on long enough for a test." They all huddled around the main unit and debated over causes and solutions. Their backs were turned so that they did not see Uly creep into the airship carrying, among other things, a piece of Morganite wrapped in special material he had stolen from the TransRover.
He had not been allowed inside since they put his mother in cold sleep but nothing had changed as far as he could tell. The crypt glowed blue and he pressed his hand to the glass, hoping that it might be enough--maybe he wouldn't need his experiment--but nothing happened. It would only be a matter of time before they'd miss him, and if they found him they'd never let him try the experiment, so he got to work. He decided to start by just being in normal VR, like Morgan was, when he talked to Dr. Bennett. Nothing happened, so he set his gear to the channel which would allow him to visualize the frequency of the ship and the crypt maintenance programs, but this time he got undecipherable codes and tangles of circuitry. Uly opened the material and pressed his hand to the Morganite, and the sear of pain in his hands combined with a brief spasm in the visual feed, then the virtual voyage through the circuitry became lightning fast, but no less impersonal. Uly stopped in frustration. I don't want to talk to a machine, he thought, I want to talk to a person. How did they talk to a person in here? He looked around the ship and remembered his mother and the others saying how they talked to Mr. Reilly. He spotted the thing that looked like a black podium and thought that must be the communication console his mother used to call Mr. Reilly. He went up to it, stared absently at the controls, pressed some spots with no success, and started to feel the anger of frustration as he felt his idea going nowhere and his hopes falling away. His eyes filled with tears as he picked up the Morganite, ignoring the burn on his hands, stomped back to the console, and smashed the rock deep into the console. The circuitry sizzled and popped and shot off sparks, and Uly was gripped with a moment of fear and regret as he worried that his action might cause the crypt to break down. He looked--it seemed safe and quiet, not like this area, where in the center of the room, strange apparitions kept appearing, or trying to appear, but were snuffed out before they could take any form. Maybe now my experiment might work, he thought, flipping on his gear, and he was rewarded with similarly spasms of image and sound. Almost without thinking, he pressed both hands to the Morganite, and his body stiffened with the reaction. The tangled two dimensional maze became living, tactile structures that were at once technological and natural, both wires and wind. He felt as if he were off his feet, hurtling through the scenery, unable to stop, as if he were being sucked to an unknown destination, but a welcome one, if his experiment worked. Suddenly, faint and distant echoes of voices passed him like speeding vehicles, or he passed them, at speeds that robbed the utterances of all meaning. They seemed endless, sometimes artificial, and increasingly they were accompanied by distorted images of faces, people and landscapes, and so there seemed to be something wrong with every picture. Each voice was unfamiliar--until he heard the one voice whose deep familiarity was clear in just one word: "ULY!" It was her--his experiment worked! He heard her calling him, "Come here! Keep going, Uly" but as he listened again, her message was different, more of a warning-- she said, "NO! Get out! Stop!" Her two voices alternated and confused him.
Anyone standing in the airship watching Uly from outside VR would see him sway, jerk and speak in reaction to what seemed invisible forces. From that viewpoint someone would also see the flickering energy in the center of the room grow in power and clarity until it assumed the spinning tile-like shape of almost transparent substance--the viewscreen--almost transparent except for the static that gained grainy color and gathered into the form of a man.
Uly was still torn between the two voices that sounded like his mother, and looked for either one, but his search was cut short as the man appeared in his path as suddenly as a Terrian burst from the ground. He did not recognize the man but assumed the only man who lived here must be the one they called Reilly, and as Uly thought that, the man spoke with a frenzied grin. "NOW I've got you..."
Uly was more annoyed with Reilly than he was scared of him, since the man stood in the way of finding his mother. He wished the man would move, but he did no such thing, opting to speak again instead.
"I can feel where you are, and I'm coming." Devon's voice followed sharply: "Uly! Stop! Get out!" This time, Uly's instinct of reacting instantly to his mother's commands took over, and he tore off his gear. He was left sitting in the center of the ship, all alone and in silence. His ears and his nerves still rang from the experience, but he got what he wanted--contact with his mother.
The Transfusion, Part 2
by Kristina DijanSince the moment Uly had crept into the ship, Danziger, Baines, and Alonzo moved from one perimeter checkpoint to another, hovering over them with no luck at any one, and managed to collect observers and useless suggestions along the way. They were all too busy and too used to Uly playing by himself to notice what had now become his long absence. The fact that the unit did not work had allowed Baines to abandon his usual caution in handling the controls and the beam projectors. He boldly grasped the tiny projector nodes with the force of frustration, and in turn got proof of the effectiveness of his stabilization rods and deep drilling when his violent shaking was unable to move the unit. "Well, at least it's safe--nobody can remove that baby."
His hand was still resting on the node when it made a buzzing sound and he jerked his hand back with lightning speed. "It might be starting up!"
They all stared as the buzzing sound stopped and started like an irregular heartbeat, indicating the presence of power that just couldn't remain constant. Then the sound changed. It was--not louder but--multi-dimensional. Alonzo and Danziger looked up and around the camp with the realization that the noise was like a chorus. All the other electronically powered devices in the camp were producing the same type of warm-up sounds, and their sudden ability to hum in unison was unnerving the colonists, to say the least. Their surprise at the sounds was completely forgotten when the ground began to rumble, off in a direction to the west of the camp. Once the rumbling stopped, a Terrian burst up, and knowing it had Alonzo's full attention, started a low, harsh trilling that both startled and puzzled Alonzo.
"He says, 'stop...give it back...we warned you once before...the power is not yours to use this way.' What does that mean?" Alonzo stepped forward and the Terrian disappeared into the ground.
Nobody dared to move or speak until there was complete silence. "What the hell just happened here?" Danziger directed his question at Alonzo.
"I just told you what he said." "What does it mean?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." "What does he mean, give it back?" Morgan's voice quivered. "What have we got that he thinks is his?""Wait a minut." Danziger pushed Walman aside to get a better view of the camp. "Where's Uly?"
Constant calling and a quick walk of the camp did not produce the boy, and only when True mentioned that Uly had found some caves over to the west, did the scattered search effort find its first focus. On the way to the caves, Danziger's silence masked an active internal discussion--more like an argument that he was having with himself, and losing. How could you screw this up? The most important thing she asks you to do for her and you can't do it. If anything happens to the boy--how will she forgive me? How can I forgive myself? As they entered the cave, all the meaning and content of that silent argument came out in his first word: "ULY!" Walman, Baines and Alonzo chimed in, and even Morgan managed to stop thinking about his own fear of the caves to accompany them, but none was as desperate as Danziger. They weaved through the tunnels, and eventually came to the bright orange chamber.
"Morganite." Morgan said with wonder and not a little pride, glad that he had come down here after all.
"This must be what the Terrians're talking about." Alonzo reached toward the rocks, stopping just short of touching them.
"This would explain the earthquake too." Danziger said, more indifferently than he would under any other circumstances. But still no Uly, he thought.
Walman furrowed his brow. "But we didn't even know it was here, how could he accuse us of taking some?"
"These tunnels over here are filled with the stuff," Baines' voice was muted, because he spoke from a long corridor that split off into many others, all of which wound endlessly back toward the camp. "Our camp--the ship--is right on top of all these tunnels." He turned back to the others as they entered his part of the tunnel. "I'm surprised we haven't collapsed into the ground by now. Another quake like that and we probably will."
Danziger's heart sank and fell through past what he thought was bottom. What else could happen? How could this possibly get worse? "What if your drilling hit some Morganite?" He got no answer. "Maybe that's what they're mad about. They must think we want to use it as a power source. Not only that but...if there's another quake, how do we stop the ship from collapsing into the ground?"
Walman sighed with much gravity, knowing, as they all did, the answer to that question, but unable to conceive any intelligent response. Their moments of silence confirmed that there seemed to be no solution to this new problem.
Uly did not move for what seemed to be hours. His mind reeled with choices and options, but like a traveler lost in a forest, he constantly circled the tree and there was only one option to which his thoughts returned. He heard her voice, and that was too much promise to ignore. She was there, and he had to go back and talk to her. There must be a way around Reilly and I'll find it, he thought. Maybe the Terrians will help me somehow. His decision made, he put on his VR gear again, pressed his hands to the Morganite, which by now had started to melt the control panel of the comm console, and as he was drawn into the whirlwind of images and sounds in VR, he was oblivious to the world outside his gear.
As darkness descended, Julia scanned the perimeter monitor with her diagnostic equipment, hoping to find some sort of reading that would yield an answer to any of the many questions they now faced. She turned away when she heard Danziger and the others returning, hoping their search was more successful, and realizing it was not, when she saw their stern faces. She sighed, knowing as well as anyone that night was coming, and still no Uly. She wondered for a moment how much worse things could get, and what Devon would say about all their mistakes, when the indicators on her unit made a digital tingling series of beeps.
"I'm getting some kind of electrical activity here." She waved the unit over the perimeter checkpoint, paused, and to everyone's surprise, whirled and pointed it toward the airship. Looking up at it, she said, "It's coming from the ship."
They all realized their oversight at the same moment, but Danziger was the first to voice it. "Uly!" He started to move toward the ship, the others clearly intending to stay close behind, but he had gained no more than a foot when the perimeter monitor fired up, forcing them all to step back defensively.
"Great. NOW it works." Baines' couldn't help but feel guilty for everything that was happening.
"It's orange." Walman told them. "Why is it orange." Baines replied, his voice dripping with self-blame. "I did it then, I hit some Morganite down there, I must have." He sat down sharply on the ground, putting his hands across his forehead.
"Morganite?" Bess grabbed Morgan's hand. "Yeah, there's tons of it down there," said Danziger. "and the way the tunnels snake around directly below us, make this area completely unstable." He did not take his eyes off the ship. "We have to get Uly out of there."
Walman and Julia were already hovering over the main console of the perimeter monitor, where she scanned and told everyone, "The activity here is definitely consistent with the Morganite we tested at the winter camp, but before this happened, the activity I picked up was consistent with some kind of comm device."
"Gear?" Alonzo asked.
"Yes, like that but much, much stronger. But now, this is even more powerful. I've never thought our equipment was able to generate anything like this, it has to be picking up power from the Morganite. Aside from that I can't explain it."Walman said frankly, "I can't override this...Baines! Get over here, man." Baines looked up, hesitating, and Walman reassured him. "Quit being nuts. Nobody blames you." As Baines got up, Walman added, under his breath, "blame you for what? Nobody ever knows what's going on here."
A slight rumbling in the earth made Walman regret his remark, and he began to wonder if he had insulted some greater power. The rumbling grew, clearly coming from the west, where the cave opening was, but then it spread toward and around the camp, creating a quake like thousands of tons of water rushing through canals--directly beneath them and past them to the East, under the airship and beyond. It came in waves, one after the other, shaking most of the colonists to their knees or on all fours.
Morgan was scanning the sky, waiting for lightning, but instead he pointed up and cried, "Look!"
They did, and saw a small pinpoint of light approaching with the speed of a comet, but leaving no trail of stardust behind it, and its sense of purpose was even more unnerving than any of the shock waves beneath them. It did not seem to descend, staying at a consistent altitude, but there was no mistaking its destination--it was directly toward their camp.
The Transfusion, Part 3
by Kristina DijanUly was now scared. He hadn't heard his mother's voice since he had entered for the second time, and the intensity of the sounds and images that assaulted him this time made his first trip seem like a walk in the park. "Mom!" He called, over and over. The man called Reilly suddenly materialized, and Uly moved right through him, momentarily dispersing Reilly's image into pixels, but the man regrouped behind him, and a powerful sort of gravity pulled Uly back and spun him around to face the source of that frighteningly smug voice.
"Thank you for trying so hard to contact me--to attract me." What did that mean, thought Uly, determined to remain silent and not speak to this man. He could not move.
"I don't know how you're doing it, but whatever you're doing is generating such a strong electromagnetic force, a surge of energy unlike any other on this planet." Reilly's voice quavered at times and suffered small interruptions, but was bright and imposing and getting more frightening to Uly with each passing second. Reilly mused to himself: "You must be using something from the planet itself, because I've been unable to recognize the precise nature of this energy." He stopped, looking back at Uly with a glint in his eye. "No matter. You're easy to find...and get...now. I can't believe you'd make it this easy! coming to me yourself! and not only that, but--and I don't know how you did this either, but you've almost managed to convert yourself to a form that I can easily..." Reilly paused, leaned right into the boy's face and spat out his next words with a vicious joy: "...suck you right up!"
Uly's fear was real now, and made him even more desperate for the sound of his mother's voice, and heard it, but it's tone only managed to scare him more: "ULY! Stop! Get out!"
He tried, he hoped she knew that, he tried to pull his hands away from the Morganite so he could take off his gear but he was frozen. Or more correctly, he felt disconnected from his physical self, and his mental commands seemed to have nothing to control. He looked down at himself in VR, and noticed that his hands were unrecognizable, a blinding orange center of energy that became a cluster and looked like it was spreading down his arms and were going to infect his whole body. Reilly droned on like a man thrilled with the sound of his voice.
"You see, you've practically entered the system, or...how can I explain this to you so you understand? I have direct access to you--the way you think, the way you are. I could do no better if I were physically standing right before you. Keep it up and I'll be able to...heh...upload you."
The rumbling had not stopped, but everyone held fast to the ground, unable to stand. Their gazes were fixed on the light in the sky which kept approaching, then...stopped, directly overhead, to no-one's surprise but everyone's wonder. Then the earthquake stopped, but still it seemed nobody dared to move. Julia shifted he eyes fearfully from the "star" to Danziger and Alonzo, and said, quietly, as if the light could hear, "What is it?"
Alonzo whispered back, "It doesn't look like any ship I know. But it can't a star either, the way it moved."
Danziger's word was equal parts suggestion and question: "Satellite?" "Could be."
Julia looked back up with a new contempt. "Eve?" There was no reply, at least no human reply, as a Terrian burst up in their midst, and began trilling more harshly than ever.Alonzo translated: "They're giving us a final chance to make things right. We can't get into the ship! This," he pointed at the Perimeter monitor, "is stopping us."
The Terrian trilled again, and Alonzo said, "He says, 'you are giving our best part to the sky. We will not have it.' Before he had a chance to ask what it meant, the Terrian was gone.
How many more questions could be raised today, how much more wondering could be done? That's what they were all thinking. The events had left them shellshocked, more than they thought was possible. And it was far from over. The earth moved again, but this time it did not merely rumble--it literally moved with such force that they were all thrown to the ground, even from their kneeling or crawling positions. A screeching, moaning sound of scraping metal under the onslaught of a rockslide boomed and cut its way into everyone's mind, and then there was silence--silence, which was hardly welcome because it was bound to raise more questions.
Julia, still holding her hands over her ears, looked up again, just in time to see the perimeter monitor sputter and power down to a dead stop. In fact, the whole camp seemed to be at a peace unknown to the camp since this tiresome day had begun. She saw the airship had sunk, and was deeper in the ground and to its side, like it had been frozen in the middle of sinking into a stormy sea. Nothing she could say would contribute any knowledge or certainty, so she just got up, and walked toward the door of the airship, closely followed by an equally silent Danziger, Alonzo and Morgan.
They couldn't get in quickly enough, yet at the same time they had no desire to find worse news. With exhausted, dread anticipation they entered, and had a strange time climbing down the ladder since the ship was severely tilted to one side, making the ladder almost horizontal.
Danziger called out: "Uly!" There was no answer. Their hesitation was clearly a desire to avoid the first priority: to check the cold sleep crypts. They approached the chamber cautiously, not only because of the awkward tilt of the floor. They were slightly assured by the light blue glow that shone from behind the corner--at least the crypts hadn't broken down completely. When the crypt in question was in clear view, it wasn't their worst fear that faced them, but something far more senseless and frightening--the crypt was open--and Devon was nowhere in sight. The floor of the ship was torn open like a can whose lid had exploded, and beneath it the ground was intact and hardly seemed suspicious. Morgan had turned back from the confusing sight, and looked around the other room, where he saw the viewscreen console with the Morganite jammed into it. It was humming, and glowing--something was clearly still active there, and he wasn't about to touch it. On the floor lay someone's gear, Uly's, he assumed, and it was prevented from sliding any further by getting one of its controls stuck in the grated floor. He picked it up and disappointedly shook it at the others, who were still transfixed by the sight of the empty crypt. "Well, at least we know Uly was here."
Danziger turned abruptly, nearly losing his balance, and in the dim light Morgan could have sworn he saw a tear in John's eye. Danziger grabbed the gear and put it on, adjusting the controls in hopes of finding some clue to the boy's whereabouts. His efforts soon stopped and he took the gear off, letting his shoulders collapse in a hunch that looked like surrender.
"They don't work."
Morgan noticed that Yale had descended into the ship, was there long enough to have heard and seen everything, and suddenly backed into a dark corner where his face remained hidden. His silence and retreat said more to Morgan than any words--he couldn't bear to think what Yale was thinking. Morgan turned back toward the others. The sight of Danziger, brokenhearted, seeming to give up, made Morgan feel more futile and hopeless than he ever thought possible. Looking to Julia and Alonzo was no help either, for they only stood stunned--not even astonished, but numb, and Julia put her hand to her forehead as if to prove to herself she were still alive by successfully completing a coherent action. These intelligent, active, normally fearless people had been reduced before Morgan's eyes to sheer despair. His lip quivered and his voice cracked with an impending weep."No wonder this planet is rejecting us...we act like fools, we can't even take care of ourselves!" He was actually surprised that the others didn't bite back at him as usual--that meant their silence was agreement. Now he DID cry. At least with Devon in the crypt there was hope--promise of her presence, and as annoying as he always thought it was, now its reassuring quality was gone altogether. "What do we do now? How are we going to tell the others?"
That prospect seemed to prod Julia into sharing what she was thinking. "This must be the work of Terrians. They must have come up and taken Uly and Devon. Either that or they collapsed into the tunnels and the Terrians took them as punishment, for that piece of Morganite. Obviously Uly took it and they blamed us."
If the Terrians are that angry that they would take Uly, Danziger thought, then we've lost them both, and we won't last too much longer.
Julia was determined to regain some of her usual composure by continuing with the rationalization which was familiar and comforting to her. "OK. Let's remember how things went when Uly disappeared that first time. Danziger, you went down into the tunnels and looked for him--Devon and Alonzo made some contact on the dream plane, and..."
"And in the end it was up to the Terrians to give him back." Alonzo's optimism was not so easily revived.
"I meant maybe Uly managed to talk the Terrians into healing Devon." That would be the miracle they could all only hope for.
Magus' voice echoed from the open hatch: "You guys better get up here and see something."
Danziger had a hard time leaving--he felt compelled to stay behind and guard the empty crypt, as if there were something left, or something that would return. But he reluctantly went back out nonetheless, and followed everyone's gaze into the sky--to the "star", which was now sputtering, blinking, shorting out then coming back, each time stronger than the last.
"If that IS Eve," Julia said, "I wish I could see the connection here." So did they all.
The Transfusion, Part 4
by Kristina DijanSoon after his terrifying encounter with Reilly, Uly noticed that the ground shook, whether in VR or in reality, he wasn't sure, but now VR was his reality and he couldn't tell the difference anymore. Whatever happened, he was almost thankful, because it made Reilly disappear and threw Uly into the dreamscape. Well, at least it was like the dreamscape, but there were still strange remnants of cybercircuits and interference from other VR scenes he had experienced in history lessons and games with True. For a strange moment he inappropriately thought how mad Mr. Danziger would be if he broke the gear, which it probably was, since it was acting this way.
That thought was soon broken by the sound of his mother's voice, clearly calling, then warning, always near yet she was nowhere to be found. Once, when she was telling him to stay, to come closer, her voice changed right in the middle of her sentence, and sounded just like Reilly's. At other times, when she told him to leave, it was clearly and only hers. It was making him tired, and he really wanted out now, but couldn't do what she told him. Reilly appeared again, past where the dreamscape and the circuit-world merged and formed a hazy border. Behind Uly, Terrians also appeared and were trilling at him. He turned back and forth between them and Reilly and told him, "They want it back, the Morganite...no, wait, there's more...they said we're doing something bad to them and the planet, and it has to stop."
Reilly snorted. "I don't care! I am this close to you and your secret. Get them out of here!" He waved derisively at the Terrians, and instantly came to regret his goading as they stepped forward boldly.
They'll protect me, Uly thought. Maybe even--it occurred to him--he turned to the Terrians and trilled, "you have to protect my mother--heal her if you want it back, if you want it to stop.
"You stupid boy! You mother is in HERE with ME! Those things can't help her! I can kill her like this!" He snapped his fingers and the sound rang through the Universe. "Now I am getting tired of these games! Get over here!"
At the sound of Reilly's evil, the Terrians powered up their staffs--they were about to wait no longer, and Uly felt suddenly alone and in danger from both sides.
"Uly!" She appeared right in front of him, in an evasive image slightly distorted by static and jolts of energy. Even so, she was a more welcome sight than any he had ever known, and all his doubt and fear evaporated. He instinctively opened his arms, finally able to truly control his motion, and leaned into her, wrapping his arms around her and for a moment he was certain she changed from illusion to reality, and embraced him too. At the same instant, the Terrians clutched at him, trying to hold him back, and on the other side, Reilly lunged forward, frenzied at the thought of losing his specimen, and where they all met a blinding burst, an explosion of energy flooded out in all directions and seemed to leave nothing behind it.
Outside, the earthquakes began once more, prompting Morgan to say "Oh, no, not again," and he grabbed Bess pulled them both to the ground and wished whatever was doing this to him would just go ahead and put them all out their misery.
The others could still stand, but soon decided against it, not so much because of the quake but because of the sudden orange glow and the fiery heat that began to emanate from the airship. They all backed up and ducked, keeping their eyes on the ship throughout. Crackling tendrils of energy slithered out, wrapped around the ship like runaway mutant ivy, and then, having its fill of the metal, spread out over the ground menacingly in all directions, including toward the colonists, who were on their feet again, defying the quake in order to back up further. The energy reached the perimeter monitor and rerouted to the checkpoints, powering up the monitor and causing it to blaze uncontrollably. The ground shook again, violently so, and Danziger wondered how fear could be so powerful as to keep him on his feet against such force from below. The perimeter and the ship now began to erupt, if electric energy could be said to boil up, but there was no better way to describe the sight. it sizzled and flooded and the energy gathered into the topmost point of the airship, where it seemed to build and spin for a moment before deciding on its next action. With a gunshotlike detonation that threatened to buckle everyone's knees, a lightning bolt shot up to the sky and reached the fixed "star" above in less time than seemed probable. Upon contact, the "star" seemed to explode, a work of fire that turned the night into day. Bess couldn't avoid a deja vu of the fireworks celebrations she had seen on earth on the annual celebration of the first station launch. It was almost beautiful, if not for the uncertainty and the terror it inspired. To Morgan, it seemed apocalyptic. Julia felt a twinge in her head, much like she had when Eve restored the biochips, only much less painful. Yale, Danziger and the others felt it too, and it was followed by a blinding light that had less to do with the explosion but seemed to come from within them, from behind their eyes.
They regained their vision in time to see that the lightning bolt was now taking a more familiar direction, that is, returning, coming back down toward the earth--toward the ship. True panic was present for the first time today. Morgan yelled, "climb the tree!!"
"No!" cried Danziger, "It'll fry us all!" He continued as he ran, hoping they would all hear. "spread open a tent and stand on it--it's rubber!" and he said it, he did it, throwing himself on a tent, collapsing it and waving the others to him as he looked up to measure the lightning's distance. Morgan and Bess did the same with another tent, and within close seconds, they were evenly divided on two tents, and held on to each other tightly, as the lightning bolt hit the ship with a hot frying noise and the orange tendrils shot out beyond the perimeter monitor towards, and then past them at light speed like a geolock conversion gone terribly haywire.
As if things could get more surreal, all traces of the light fizzled out and died, leaving no trace of their existence. They all scanned the ground, reluctant to relax their hold on each other. One by one they looked up at the "star." It was still there, now pulsing with rhythmic regularity. Then it surprised them all with a jerk, a brief movement that foreshadowed its new direction, and it moved away, off into the sky, higher and away, until it faded and disappeared altogether. They stepped on the ground gingerly, and deciding it was safe, walked, then broke into a run toward the ship, each one knowing nobody could have survived such a blast, a surge or whatever it was. Yet they had all seen too much on this planet to lose hope altogether. If today had taught them anything, it was just that: anything was possible. Julia seemed to chant that thought in her mind as she grabbed her diaglove off the ground on the way to the ship.
The Transfusion, Part 5
by Kristina DijanNobody could beat Danziger for speed and agility as he swung his way down the tilted ladder and hobbled and slid down the uneven floor into the cold sleep chamber. Julia was still maneuvering those obstacles when she heard a booming yowl from him that was equal parts relief and laughter, and when she entered the chamber, she saw him on his knees before the lifeless bodies of Devon and Uly. Her arms were wrapped around her son and Danziger reached out and pulled back indecisively, wanting to touch them but afraid to do any more damage.
Julia ran her diaglove over her patients, just enough to assure everyone that it was safe to pry them apart and get them out. Yale picked up Uly and Danziger picked up Devon, minding Julia's warning that she had better keep the diaglove on her since her life signs seemed weaker than Uly's. As they passed through and out past the comm console, Julia loudly said, "Stop! Stop, her lifesigns are getting worse."
Danziger wheeled around, already looking for a place he could put Devon down if needed, and almost instantly Julia said, "Wait...now they're better again..." She paused, glancing to the ladder. "Go back over there again." Danziger did, and Devon worsened again, prompting Julia to lead Danziger backwards again, and as she had predicted, Devon stabilized.
"She's reacting to something in here." She looked around, noticing that Yale was still holding Uly, as anxious as Danziger to get out of the ship. Uly was stirring, and uttered a faint moan as he opened his eyes, eagerly searching for his mother, and regaining lucidity in no time. "Don't take her out yet," he told them.
"Why?" Julia asked, surprised that he might know the answer to this puzzle.
"She needs the Morganite. The Terrians fixed her with it." Alonzo and Walman, who had managed to crowd into the ship as well, immediately surveyed the comm console, daunted by the mound of Morganite that seemed fused into the panel. "Short of taking this whole thing out, there's no way to get the rock out." Alonzo edgily touched his finger to the rock, expecting it to burn, but nearly did a double take when he felt no heat.
"She only needs a little bit," Uly said with certainty. "We can get some from the caves, " Danziger growled, impatient and worried.
"No, it's not the same," the boy said. "This one's different--the Terrians don't want this one anymore."
"Fine," said Walman, grabbing a shard of metal off the floor and chipping off a small section of the rock and holding it up to Uly. "Is this big enough?"
"Yup." Walman tossed it to Julia who didn't seem to know what to do with it except put it right on Devon's stomach. She scanned her once again, and said in disbelief, "It's working. She's stable."
That was all Danziger needed to hear. He shifted her weight to one of his arms and climbed up the ladder and out, never once passing her to the others' outstretched arms.
Yale put Uly down, confident that he was nearly back to normal, and asked him, "Don't you need some of that too?"
Uly simply shook his head, and made a step, but quickly demonstrated a total lack of balance--he staggered and Yale caught him as he was about to tumble to one side. As Yale carried him out, Uly said, "I can't really feel my hands or legs. Like they're asleep."
In the med tent, Julia continued her tests on Devon and Uly, who insisted on sitting on his mother's cot.
Danziger sat, watching them both, occasionally rubbing Uly's leg and asking him to make a fist, and each time Uly told him he was getting more feeling back--his arms and legs were "waking up", is how he put it.
Julia turned around with a sigh: "Devon has no Terrian DNA in her. In fact, she still has the same problems she had before we put her in cold sleep, but now, they seem...dormant. in remission, almost, but still there. It's like the Morganite has recharged her somehow, down to the very molecules, but it's done only that--it's not a cure, but a power source. I don't know how long it can sustain her...How did the Terrians fix her, Uly?"
Devon cut off that train of conversation by starting to move. Before long she was fully conscious and the subject of outpourings of affection by all three who had kept the bedside vigil. She said she felt fine, even good, but when she tried to move, she said her arms were heavy and tingled, and her legs were paralyzed altogether.
"...But I know this," she reached down for the Morganite Uly held over her heart in his heavily bandaged hands, "...is helping me somehow. I can feel it working."
On Julia's request, Alonzo brought in a length of chain and leaned over Devon's cot, drilling a hole through the rock, fitting it to the chain and fashioning it into a necklace.
He placed it around her neck and said with a smile, "There you go. Consider it a welcome back present."
Julia returned to her last question, and Uly began his explanation, somewhat impressed that the grown-ups were listening to him so closely for once. He recounted his entire adventure, getting to the part where his VR universe came apart at the seams.
"...when the Terrians went to shoot the bad man, Mr. Reilly, we were all touching, and I think the Terrians added him to the planet."
Puzzled looks went around his small audience, and Julia asked, "Added him? What do you mean?"
"Added him. To their..uh..nervous..." "Central nervous system?"
"Yeah, that. In VR I saw energy like the kind that makes Morganite. It went through cyberspace, right to where the bad man lives." Uly was gesturing with the glee of describing his victory in a VR game. "It hit him, this big ZAP! Only He didn't hurt, he laughed this crazy laugh! He was happy, but weird, crazy happy. I dunno why, cause he didn't get me like wanted to. Then he disappeared. The Terrians think they changed him, made him like a piece of Morganite." He looked at Devon, who smiled back at him and tried to give him a hug despite the strange numbness in her arms.Danziger, Julia and Alonzo exchanged dreaded, knowing looks. "If that was Eve, and she's 'like Morganite', that means she's part of the planet's central nervous system."
"That's crazy." Alonzo sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "That couldn't happen could it?"
"Haven't you learned anything today?" Danziger stared him cold. "I'd be hard pressed to think of something that 'couldn't happen' on this planet anymore."
"Is that good?" Devon's voice was not quite back to its usual authoritative self. "If this theory is true, then logically," She seemed amused by the sudden absurdity of that word. "Eve...has learned this planet. Just like the rock helped learn and understand the geolock. Eve could understand this planet in a way they could never hope for with Uly. What if she can feel--sense our presence on the planet from now on?" "It still doesn't make sense," said Danziger. "If Eve was the thing right above us, why didn't it stay and finish us off?"
"She may not need us anymore--She may not care about us or the penal colonists or anyone."
"Maybe it was just a star or comet that was attracted to the energy surge." Alonzo seemed determined to fight the possibility they were discussing.
"Eve is a supercomputer." Julia added, the true possibilities spilling from her mind. "She can become something this planet--this nervous system doesn't really have...a powerful, and evil brain. She may even be able, with time, to manipulate and control the Terrians!"
"How did this happen?" Devon asked. "I assume, "Julia told her, "that Uly created such a center of energy--his link with the Terrians, his connection to Eve, all the Morganite below us--we know what kind of power that can produce. Uly somehow managed top bring everything together in some strange limbo between the dreamplane, and VR and Eve herself. We all know what kind of bizarre things happened today...it makes your experience hardly surprising."
Julia asked that Devon be left alone for some much needed sleep, and after taking Uly and telling Devon one more time how glad he was to have her back, Julia prepared a sedaderm.
"You remember nothing?"
"No."
"Then I wonder if we'll ever put together all the pieces of this mystery.""That's becoming the story of our lives here, isn't it?" That remark earned a grin of agreement from Julia. Before applying the sedaderm, Julia pointed at Devon's new piece of jewelry.
"That Morganite is totally unlike other Morganite. It behaves much the same way, but the way it was wired directly into the comm console--makes me wonder if it isn't a hybrid--a product of both the planet and human technology."
"Kind of like Uly. A hybrid--part Terrian and part human." The concept of Eve as an adoptive mother to Uly seemed profound and chilling, but Devon was struck with the idea that Eve may now have more in common with Uly than his own--his real mother.
"Let's hope she overloaded and we never hear from her again." "I expect we'll find out sooner than we want or need to." "The main part is we got you back. I don't think we should question the source or cause. For whatever reasons, this planet certainly didn't reject you--far from it, somebody helped you somehow."
"But I can't walk."
"Yet. Uly's getting his sensation back slowly, and so will you, I'm sure.""And I'm dependent on this thing," Devon held up the rock on her necklace with both wonder and distrust. "What if it fails?"
"Well, the cold sleep crypts are destroyed. So you have no choice but to come with us."
Danziger had returned from putting Uly to sleep and was obviously listening, because he added, "...to lead us."
"Like this?" Devon asked him, indicating her condition. "Like that. Maybe it's about time someone took care of you for a while."
As the morning started to light the sky, in his tent, Uly was prodded by nightmares, reliving his searing journey through VR. His dream was so vivid, not at all a muted memory of reality, like most dreams. Suddenly, he seemed more lucid than seemed normal, and he wondered if he wasn't still in VR after all--maybe it was all a dream, maybe his mother was still sleeping and never got out after all...the thought of this all being a trick of VR seemed cruel, even deadly to him--he awoke with a start and grasped at his head and face to turn away the eyebar and take off his gear, afraid to see if it was all his imagination.
He only felt his face, and couldn't even feel it, at that--his hands were too thickly bandaged to feel anything, and they even smarted from the sudden action they were given. But he smiled, because he was wearing no gear. He sprang off his cot and ran toward Julia's tent. Flinging the flap open, his smile dropped as he stared at an empty tent. Wheeling around, and scanning the camp, he cried out, "Mom!"
"Over here, Uly!" Her voice came from behind some other tents, and Uly ran toward it, just as he had in VR. "Mom!" He saw as he approached that she was sitting in the little car Mr. Danziger had made for him on their first day here, and Mr. Danziger looked up from some repair work he was doing on the vehicle. Despite, the mechanic's warnings, Uly did not hesitate to throw himself right on top of his mother, and she didn't seem to mind a bit either. Besides, she said, her legs didn't hurt--she couldn't even feel them, and when she hugged him, Uly noticed her grip was weaker than usual, but she said they felt better than last night, so knowing his mother, Uly also knew she'd be back to normal soon, and her new "wheelchair" meant they'd be on their way soon too.
Danziger left for a moment to get a tool he needed, and Devon said quietly into Uly's ear, "I came here to save your life...and you end up saving mine."
Uly shrugged, untouched by conceit and self-satisfaction but his smile revealed his new sense of pride. "I missed you."
"Me too." She watched as he handled her necklace. "You're my hero, you know that?"
"You're MY hero," Uly answered quickly, and was filled with joy, realizing that even though things were hardly back to normal, they had all learned long ago that what passed for normal on this planet was far from ordinary, and seemed to fulfill expectations by going way beyond them.
-The End-
kristina dijan kadijan@watarts.uwaterloo.ca
This text file was ran through PERL script made by Andy. Original text file is available in Andy's Earth 2 Fan Fiction Archive.