The Second Wave (29 page)

* * * *

John watched Eugenia sleep. She was tangled
around his body, her skin hot, her lips slightly parted, her
breathing deep and even.

Yesterday sprang back into his memory. Her
declaration that the planet was her mother. The tomb she viewed as
her temple. What if she wasn’t crazy, he pondered. It would mean
she indeed shared a bond with this planet; or had shared until that
day she came back from the dead again. It would mean she indeed was
the closest thing to a Goddess there could be. At one with a whole
world. Able to hear people’s dreams, wishes, thoughts, fears. Maybe
even able to change them.

He wondered how long she had been like this.
The engravings on her tomb were precise—the girl named Eugenia Gust
had died at the age of three. But there was no telling how long she
had been living in what she referred to as the darkness, raised by
something unnameable. Perhaps twenty years. Perhaps a hundred. The
planet may have slowed her aging process, as it had done when she
was back in its clutches during the last five years. In those five
years she hadn’t changed at all; but when asked about it, she told
him that an eternity had passed for her. Maybe she was confused or
counted time differently. Maybe she was right. Whatever the time
differences, there was no doubt in his mind now that she was part
of the planet and it of her. Now that they were separated, there
was no telling what the consequences would be. What if, he thought
with a shiver, it was impossible for either of them to exist
without the other? Then what was there he could do to save her?

As if to confirm his thoughts, Eugenia
coughed in her sleep.

* * * *

“Earth as well?” Heath Rochester exclaimed,
not believing his ears.

The mayor and the general sat in the
Headquarters’ conference room. They talked until their tea grew
cold and the icing on their cake began to melt. What had started
out as a quick exchange of information—Rochester wanted to tell
Fatique about Dr. Wagner-Reyes’ findings, Fatique wanted to fill
him in on what Doctors deLuca had come up with—became a long, deep
discussion about the future of both planets and the fates of the
settlers’, and potential new settlers’, lives.

Phil deLuca joined them unexpectedly at one
point. Pushing open the door, he didn’t even stop to address the
two men, he just said, “Dig this, dudes: they both do it.”

He wanted to leave them with this more than
cryptic piece of information, completely oblivious to the fact that
everyone who wasn’t him or his twin brother wouldn’t even know what
he was talking about. Fatique made him sit down properly. He asked
for the paper the young doctor was holding in his hand, but was
told it was just stats and vitals for his forest elf lord; both men
were wise enough not to inquire about it further.

“They both
move
of course.” Phil
shrugged when pressed to explain his previous exclamation. “Like
when we told you that Alternearth does these weird, tiny movements
off its orbit—Earth does them, too.”

That was when Rochester butted in. “Earth as
well?” although he didn’t know what was going on. Movements of any
sorts, however tiny, when done by two planets that were connected
by a more than fragile bridge sounded unbelievably dangerous to
him.

“It’s not that dangerous,” Phil amended.
“Only a bleeding nuisance to calculate, but I think we can
compensate for it, or at least reconnect more quickly if it happens
again.”

“Oh, dear Gods,” muttered Fatique. He
sometimes fancied, in his more fatalistic moments, that fate was
all but against mankind’s move to another planet.

“Should planets behave like this?” Rochester
asked. He didn’t mean it rhetorically. For all he knew it could be
common behavior for planets, he wasn’t at all versed in that area
of expertise.

Phil shook his head. “Never. Planets are dead
matter. They should just quietly circle their sun and maybe explode
one day.”

“Thank you, young man,” Rochester remarked.
“This is incredibly appeasing.”

“You asked, man. I mean, sir.”

Heath Rochester, as opposed to Fatique who
was the rational and sometimes fatalistic kind, was deeply
spiritual. He believed there was more to life than living and more
to living than existing. He believed faith covered more than just
remembering the names of the many Gods, he believed the divine
lived in the soul rather than in a temple. So when Doctor deLuca
explained to him what planets were made of, and how they existed
lifelessly in space, he immediately thought further than that.

“What you mean to tell us,” he clarified, “is
that planets should not be able to change their course by
themselves.”

By way of a reply Phil simply gave a nod, as
he noticed the cake on the table and was busy wolfing down a thick
slice. Explaining things to people who needed explanations always
made him hungry.

“But these two do, and so, I think, the only
logical explanation is that they’re not planets at all,” Rochester
concluded.

Both the young engineer and the elderly
general looked at him with visible questions in their eyes.

Fatique spoke first. “And, pray, what do you
think they are then, Heath?”

“Doctor deLuca already implied it. They
behave like living creatures.”

“Living features?” Fatique repeated.

“Earth?” Phil asked as soon as his mouth was
cleared of chocolate icing. “You mean to say we live on the skin of
some super large animal?”

Rochester nodded slowly. Spoken out loud the
thought sounded even more plausible than it had in his head.

“Brilliant!” remarked Phil. He warmed up to
the idea quickly, mainly because it seemed so far out it actually
made sense.

“But an animal?” Fatique asked. “Earth’s
crust is made up of stones and earth! What kind of animal has
creatures like this?”

“Who are we to say what can be defined as a
sentient being and what can not?” Rochester asked back. “Besides,
we don’t know if the entire planet is one big creature, or if the
creature hides within, like a snail or a hermit crab.”

“And the atmospheric storms?” Fatique was not
yet convinced.

It was Phil who answered in Rochester’s
place. He simply suggested, “Maybe it’s sick.”

He didn’t know how close he was to the
truth.

* * * *

The sun burned down relentlessly on the
settlement in the afternoon. Most daily labor had ceased as
everyone was too tired and too hot to resume working. The people’s
bodies protested against this sudden change of climate; it made the
villagers confused and cranky. Sensing more than their human
keepers, and awaiting the thunderstorm that would doubtlessly
follow the humid hotness, the animals were nervous. The cattle were
calling out to be released from their stables. The horses moved to
and fro in their boxes, and the hounds gave delirious howls. Not
even John could calm them down; they stayed alert and wary.

They all met at number twenty-three. John
needed to talk to Peter, and Peter could hardly wait to tell him
about what he and Luke had found out. Eugenia tagged along, chipper
and cheerful like in the early days of their acquaintance in spite
of the cough. It seemed to get worse despite her assurances that
she was feeling fine.

She stayed for Peter’s retelling of his and
Luke’s examination of the stones, but lost interest when the two
friends began to discuss Alternearth in general, so she left the
kitchen where they sat at the table, and wandered into the living
room. Luke, whom she liked, was at the greenery. With the weather
changing so rapidly, there was a lot to do at the greenhouse and
out on the fields. Among other things they had to bring in those
plants that strived in the cold but withered in the warmth.

Alone in the room, with Peter’s and John’s
voices a low background noise, she stepped to the window to look
outside. Her people—no, she corrected herself, they were not her
people, even if they had been for a while; she had lost them,
traded them in for John’s company—the people sat or stood in the
shade. Talking, occasionally wiping sweat off their brows. They
might not be her people anymore, but she did still love them. She
missed their thoughts and their voices. Being alone was utterly
strange. It didn’t feel right. She wondered, not for the first time
since she had come back, if she hadn’t made a mistake. It was like
being ripped in two—one half of her wanted to stay with John, no
matter the consequences; the other half wanted so desperately to go
back and be whole again. To stop thinking about this, to stop the
hurt, she concentrated on the voices coming from the kitchen. They
were talking about her people.

“We will probably never know what happened to
them,” Peter sighed. “Four-hundred thousand years is so long a
time.”

For the first time she made the connection
between the people that had come here with John and the people that
had been here before. She tried to remember them. It had been a
long time ago, but she still knew everything—every hope and dream
they had shared with her. Every prayer they had said to her. The
sons and the fathers, the daughters and the grand-daughters. Even
when they forgot about her their voices never faded. It was only
when they left for good that she lost them.

Eugenia walked back into the kitchen.
Standing in the doorframe she watched them for a while, for how
long she couldn’t tell. Then she quietly explained, “They never
stopped thinking about leaving.”

* * * *

It was John, whose mind was clear and sharp
according to Eugenia, who made the connection in the end. He and
Peter talked to the mayor the next day, and Rochester in turn
confided in them what he thought about Earth and Alternearth being
sentient creatures rather than planets.

“Let us go with that for now,” John
synopsised. “And assume everything we have heard so far is true.
Then all we need to do is make a connection between
everything.”

Captain Eleven, also present, as well as
Summer Paige and Luke, counted off her fingers. “The planets’
movements, the wormhole disconnections, the elapsed time, the weird
weather, and Eugenia’s alleged connection to Alternearth.”

“I think we can discard the elapsed time,”
Luke said. “The R.U.T.E.s probably have nothing to do with this,
they’re a quite natural phenomenon.”

“Luke, my love, I agree,” Peter nodded. “But
the atmospheric storms must also be considered. It is my personal
theory, one that has been ridiculed by colleagues in the past, that
the storms serve the purpose of turning the planet’s surface into
the equivalent of a freshly erased drawing board. Thus, once the
atmospheric turbulence is over, life can begin anew. This should be
taken into consideration in my opinion.”

It was as hot as the previous day. The group
sat in Mayor Rochester’s living room, a fan switched on, a mug of
cold melapple juice and glasses between them on a low couch
table.

“And then of course,” John remarked, “there
is mankind’s perpetual wish to travel.”

“You’ve lost me,” said Summer. She refilled
her glass with fresh juice, then sank back into the cushions on the
couch she shared with Emily and Peter. The mayor and Luke occupied
wooden chairs. John was squatting on the floor.

Assuming people could live on a creature that
was connected to them by a medium of sorts, and assuming further
said people were oblivious to the nature of their home world and
kept plotting their departure, John explained to them, then the
question was how the creature reacted to such thoughts. Perhaps it
became depressed and consequently ill, thinking it was somehow at
fault for its inhabitants’ desire to leave. Perhaps, for some
reason, this depression raged quite literally in the form of
constant atmospheric storms. It was the beginning of a lemniscate:
the more the people thought of leaving, the sicker the creature
became, and the sicker the creature became, the quicker the people
wanted to leave.

“And you think this is what’s happening on
Earth?” Rochester asked when John had finished his speech.

John nodded.

“I think it is entirely possible,” agreed
Peter.

“And what does that have to do with
Alternearth?” Emily wanted to know. So far she was following, but
she couldn’t see what it had to do with the planet they were on
now. For a fleeting moment she thought that Gavin Watts should be
the one sitting here—he’d have no difficulty keeping up with all
the smart people in this room.

It was Luke who answered her question. “The
situation on Alternearth is not so different. What is happening on
Earth now has already happened on this planet while it was caught
in an accelerated time pocket.”

Now she really wished Gavin was here, just to
put whatever Doctor Wagner-Reyes had said into words she
understood.

The second wave settlers, it was explained,
were the second group of people on this planet; although they
weren’t going to leave anytime soon, something was happening right
now that none of them truly understood. The creature’s medium had
broken free of its constraints, it was completely severed from the
planet. There was no telling what would happen next.

“But it is quite clear what we must do to
save not only Earth but also our people on it,” added Peter.

“And what would that be?” Rochester wanted to
know. He, too, felt he was too slow to keep up with what was being
said around him.

Before Peter could reply Luke said, “We need
to find its medium.”

“And we need to tell people about it,” Summer
continued. “If they knew about this, they could be able to stop
Earth from declining further.”

Eleven, glad she could contribute something
practical, stood. “I’ll get my team together.”