The Second Wave Read online

  She quickly bit her tongue. Eugenia was her patient, not a child. Emily was right, she was beginning to treat her like her sister. Still Eugenia all but looked through her. When she was dry and dressed in a fresh gown, Eugenia wordlessly walked to the window, which overlooked the entrance to the hospital and the agora. Paige joined her in another attempt to strike up a conversation about what they saw, but it was just the settlers, going to the canteen for the orientation meeting. Some workmen were among them. They had been asked to help with the repairs from last night’s storm and did what they could. The protectors were there, too.

  Eugenia had no eyes for whom Paige pointed out to her, though. She was scanning the crowd, as if searching for something. Suddenly she hammered against the glass. Fixing on someone down below, she rapped against the window in a frenzy, prompting Paige to take hold of her arm before she smashed the glass. The people on the ground couldn’t possibly hear it, but when Paige looked she saw a tall, blond man staring at them. He waved once, a gesture Eugenia mirrored. Then he turned around and resumed his walking. The moment lasted mere seconds. But however often Paige asked Eugenia who the man was, her patient remained as silent as ever.

  * * * *

  The canteen was a kidney-shaped bungalow on the other side of the agora, opposite the hospital. It was more or less in the centre of the colony and although it was not quite finished yet, it looked welcoming and comfortable on the inside. A hand painted banner gave its name as Fortress of Latitude, something Tyson, the wunderkind chef, had made up in honor of his favorite comic book hero.

  To hold the orientation meeting and accommodate all settlers, the chairs and tables in the main hall had been pushed aside to make room to stand. The counter took up one full side of the hall, ready to serve breakfast after the welcome speech: sandwiches and scrambled eggs.

  John followed Peter, who was supposed to meet Luke. Peter, John noted, was friendly and open to everyone they encountered. He said please and sorry when they had to push through the crowd, he smiled and exchanged pleasantries with strangers. John mimicked his behavior to a certain degree, but got fed up with it soon. Other people weren’t of much interest to him unless he had to gain something from their acquaintance.

  Peter presented him to his assistant Dr. Luke Reyes, a handsome man in his thirties with honest eyes and a nervous smile. But John never got to hear the mayor’s welcome speech, let alone get his hands on a much needed sandwich, because a woman who introduced herself as Dr. Paige asked to speak to him and he had no choice but to follow her outside again.

  “I’m sorry to hijack you from the meeting like that,” she apologized when they were in the empty foyer. “But I saw you waving to my patient, and I was curious to know what that was about.”

  It took a moment for John to realize what and whom she meant. “She’s your patient, then?” It explained the hospital gown and the mental state the girl had seemed in last night.

  “Do you know her?” the doctor inquired. She seemed more anxious to him than accusing; a round, healthy looking woman of maybe forty-two.

  He decided to go with the truth. “I only met her last night.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside. She was looking for shelter.”

  “How do you know what she was looking for?”

  “She told me.”

  The woman’s face fell. “Eugenia spoke to you?”

  John shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “What exactly did she say?” she asked, excited now.

  But John cocked his head. “If she hasn’t told you herself, then I guess that is between her and me.”

  Paige held up her hands by way of an apology for her questions. “Of course. I understand. Come with me, please.”

  He only followed her, because he was curious to see the girl from last night again. Even in his line of business, he rarely met people who threatened to drown a whole village.

  And so John met the auburn-haired girl in the hospital gown a second time. Of all the buildings he had seen so far in the colony, the hospital actually looked like it was finished. A friendly, three-storey structure with light, airy rooms, and clean stairways. There were no patients around.

  While she led him upstairs, Dr. Paige told him almost nothing about Eugenia. Just that she didn’t speak to anyone else.

  The room was on the second floor, a chamber rather, barely big enough for a bed and a small table. There were two windows: one looking outside, one that allowed people on the corridor to look inside the room. John knew how it felt to be exposed like this; he reckoned even a crazy person must be uncomfortable in there. It was more like a fish tank than a hospital room. Eugenia stood by the window, staring outside.

  The doctor opened the door and beckoned him inside. Being someone who had talked to the patient, she probably wanted to make sure he spoke the truth, John assumed.

  As soon as he was inside, the doctor withdrew and closed the door, so the two of them were alone. The sunlight that fell in through the glass made the woman’s skin look exceptionally pale; translucent even. The nightgown was crisp and white, a harsh contrast to the dark curls cascading down her back, framing a set of big eyes that suddenly rested on him intensely. A gaze that made him uncomfortable.

  He looked everywhere but into her eyes. “When I saw you at the window, I thought they had found you out. But the doctor told me you came back by yourself.”

  Eugenia looked desperate. “You stayed.” She said it as if it was an explanation, or possibly an accusation.

  “Well, in any case, a barn is not a particularly good place to hide out during a thunderstorm.”

  “I didn’t go to the barn to hide out,” she stated, almost too softly for him to understand clearly. “I went there to meet you. I wanted to run away with you. But then you decided to stay.”

  “I have decided no such thing, yet.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  She sat on the bed and drew up her knees to her chin. A position too familiar to John; it reminded him of a child locked in a cupboard. It made him listen to what she told him next. “I wanted to run away with you. You know how to run away. But now I have nowhere to go anymore. I don’t know what to do. My head hurts so much that I can’t listen anymore. Please help me.”

  “People usually pay me to help them.”

  She didn’t grace that with a response and he felt foolish for having said it out loud. If she knew about him, and the fact that she’d known where to find him last night suggested it, then she probably also knew about his terms and conditions. Perhaps she had sources of information.

  There was a chair on the other side of the room; he grabbed it and dragged it next to the bed. He sat down cautiously. And because he had learned only a few months ago that those who have no money sometimes have the best payment, he asked, “What is it that you want me to do for you?”

  She looked at him and then through him. “I don’t know. Everything is happening at once and I can’t make it stop.”

  “And you think I can make it stop?”

  “I think you were brought here for a reason.”

  “It is funny that you should be the second person today who speaks of that.”

  Her eyes focused again. A small smile appeared in the corner of her mouth. As smiles went, hers was a bit off, as if she were mimicking something she had seen but hadn’t done in a while. It was still beautiful, he thought, but couldn’t even chastise himself for thinking it, because the door swung open the next instant and a protector stood in it; a captain by the rank insignias on the sleeve. Arms crossed, face like stone. Average height, keen eyes, wiry physique—he could take her out with a bit of a struggle, if it came to that.

  She ignored Eugenia completely and focussed her attention strictly on John. “You. Out.”

  The next thing John knew, his simple plan of staying with Peter until the coast on Earth was clear for him to return got a lot more complicated than he could have imagined.

  * * * *

  In the meantime
Peter was able to enjoy both the orientation speech as well as breakfast, where he learned the valuable lesson that if one commented on chef Tyler’s princess outfit, one got an extra spoon of scrambled eggs. He sat down on a table with Luke and four people he didn’t know but quickly got acquainted with; mostly because Luke was good at small talk and striking up friendships. Peter sometimes got lost in conversations; he forgot that other people didn’t know what he thought and so couldn’t follow his theories oftentimes. Well, Luke could, but then again, he was his assistant and spent quite some time inside Peter’s head, to speak metaphorically.

  After breakfast, he was approached by Sally, his sister, who tried to gently break to him the news that an impostor had used Duncan’s ticket to gain access to the colony; they were looking for him now, but as much as it pained her to say it, it all could have been avoided had Peter simply returned the electronic pass instead of giving it to someone he hardly knew and who had probably sold it. Luke was shocked. So was Sally, when Peter told them about John.

  After this illuminating conversation, Sally saw no choice but to report what she’d found out to both her captain and Mayor Rochester. Eleven, of course, was all for tossing the fraud into prison, a plan that would have miserably failed anyway, seeing that a prison was not in the original blueprints for the colony and had therefore not been built. It was at this point in the crisis meeting in Rochester’s house, when Dr. Paige joined the team with her own news—news of a stranger whom Eugenia talked to.

  It was quickly gathered that the impostor and the stranger Dr. Paige talked about were identical, which was exactly the time when Mayor Rochester decided, against Captain Eleven’s advice, that he wanted this man to stay. Finding out what had happened to the first wave settlers was still the highest priority to him; they needed every lead in this case they could get, even if the only lead they actually did have was a man who had arrived under the protection of a legal gray area.

  “Gray area?” Eleven exclaimed. “Identity theft is illegal! We should throw them both in the brig and send them straight home as soon as the wormhole opens again.”

  “No, not Peter!” Sally begged. “He would never do anything illegal, not knowingly! It’s not his fault that he has an exceptionally bad taste in men!”

  “He was a party to it, Sally.”

  “Not wittingly, I’m sure. Please, Emily. You don’t know my brother, but you’ve known me long enough. I vouch for him. Whatever happened, it’s not his fault! I promise.”

  “Silence, both of you,” Mayor Rochester interrupted them. “As mayor of this village it is my decision, and I have made it. They both stay for now. I don’t care who did or didn’t do what. And be it as it may, nobody can go anywhere for now anyway, so we might as well see where this leads us. Captain, please bring me this John character here. Protector Sheldon, I’d like to speak to your brother as well. The rest of you may go, except Summer. You, my dear doctor, I want around for this.”

  * * * *

  Eugenia was wrong. John had not decided to stay, at least not permanently. But she didn’t know the difference between forever and for now. He didn’t know where else to go: there was no way back to Earth until the wormhole was set up again, and even then he’d inevitably arrive in a government building, surrounded by protectors and probably police as well. His cover would blow and he’d most likely end up in prison. And if he did manage to escape, there was still the relentless Dragon Clan, wanting retribution because roughly ten years ago he had stolen a lot of bling from them and killed the daughter of their head of tribe.

  This change of plans led to another complication, though. Not only did he not have enough time to construct a sound fake background for himself, he was also heavily restricted in thinking up something. Because Peter knew his real name. Because in a moment of weakness, which was what he called it now, he had wanted to make a connection with the one person who didn’t seem to judge him. It wasn’t as stupid as hoarding food to run away and then telling a notorious blabbermouth about it, but it hadn’t been his brightest moment, either. The only thing John could do now was go with parts of the truth and spin some plausible yarn around them. He could do it, but half-baked lies never lasted long enough; he’d have to be extraordinarily careful.

  So he met with Peter and the colony’s mayor, who promised not to send him back to Earth to go to jail, if he agreed to continue talking to the crazy girl, since she may hold valuable information about something he didn’t want to discuss further at that time. When John asked, the mayor simply pressed his lips together and evaded further questions.

  Playing interrogator for a girl who was clearly not all there, to get some information out of her about something he knew nothing about didn’t sound like a job John wanted to take on. He didn’t like not knowing which side he was on, and sitting in the mayor’s living room he didn’t even know which side he was supposed to be on.

  “With all due respect, mayor,” said John therefore. “I’d rather take my chances in jail.”

  Peter gasped softly next to him, but John knew his cards. The mayor looked like a man too desperate to let the one chance to make sense of the girl slip through his fingers. He played for a better offer, for more information, but Rochester disappointed him:

  “With all due respect, John, it’s not your choice to make. From this moment on you will be Miss Gust’s liaison, or guardian, if you prefer. You will at all times answer to Dr. Paige and Captain Eleven. All information about what you speak about gets back to me at all times.”

  Dr. Paige gave him a reassuring smile from across the room. Captain Eleven glared at him from the wall she was leaning against. John just nodded. Guardian for a crazy girl it was, then. At least it was something he had never done before.

  On their way to the canteen, so John could finally grab a bite to eat, he turned to Peter, “I am in your debt for getting my back. However, there was no need to put yourself on the line as well. Should we act a couple now?”

  Much to his surprise, Peter grinned good-naturedly. He made a dismissive gesture. “That’s okay. Telling them we planned this together made me sound much less like an idiot than the truth.”

  “And what is the truth?”

  “That a colleague conned Duncan’s ticket from me, and I was fool enough to believe him. Besides, what I said isn’t far from reality—had we met prior to our departure, and had you asked me for help, I’d have done exactly what I told them I did.”

  “What about tabula rasa and no more lies?”

  Peter’s grin gave way to a more serious look. “Let’s just not lie to each other, John. Friends shouldn’t do that.”

  “Friends?” John raised an eyebrow to cover how much that statement unsettled him. It was one of those things he knew fairly little about. In his experience, friend was a synonym for weakness.

  “Yes,” Peter said simply. He patted John lightly on the back, then held open the canteen door for them.

  John didn’t know how he was supposed to respond to this, so he opted for, “Why is the chef wearing a pink dress?”

  “Because he’s a princess boy. Try the bacon sandwich, it’s quite, quite delicious.”

  Peter didn’t stay, he had to go to the geo lab to see if everything was in order. So John sat down at one of the tables by himself. The bacon sandwich was indeed delicious. He concentrated on it, so he didn’t have to acknowledge the fact that he didn’t know how to be a friend, but that he’d like to be one to Peter. He wasn’t sure which part perturbed him more.

  * * * *

  Chapter 21: Here Today

  Time elapsed. A week went by, then two, then three. The events of the first night soon drifted into the realm of forgotten incidents. There were new things to discover on this planet, in this reality. There was a lot of work to do.

  Prior to the first week, most of the building elements and food came from Earth, but the goal was to make the village self-sufficient as quickly as possible. Soon the timber needed to finish some of the buildings had
to come from the forest; since the plant-life had drastically altered from a year ago, the new teams of scientists had to find out which plants were harmless, which were poisonous, and which were edible.

  Ground samples were collected to find out more about their host world. The surroundings were explored to draw accurate maps of the area and also to seek out a good location for the next colony. The hydro power station at the river needed to be manned and kept running so electricity was available at all times, albeit with limitations. Most of all, the newly cultivated crop fields had to be farmed. There was cattle to look after, children to be taken care of, a school to be run, and daily life, without the previously known and enjoyed comforts, to be mastered.

  All of the settlers had been chosen because their profession or experience contributed to the project: farmers, fishermen, scientists, teachers, doctors, cartographers. A cook, a blacksmith, a tailor, a watchmaker, a vet, even a librarian. Many more still, and of course the workmen, who were there temporarily. People and professions needed to keep a civilization running. And everyone was busy in the first week. Especially the children.

  When the kids weren’t at school or kindergarten, they flipped around the village to find new, exciting things to play with, watch the grown-ups work, or simply chase the animals around. It wasn’t before long that they began to expand their area of exploration to the immediate surroundings of the village; then the farther surroundings of the village; and lastly the river. They were allowed to roam; it was confirmed that no harmful fauna was about. As long as the kids didn’t approach the vegetation that was deemed dangerous, they were fine.

  The river was to the east of the colony, behind grassland. A smooth, steady stream between two and three hundred yards wide that quietly flew southwards. Simon Jones built the hydro power station he had designed exclusively for this spot and purpose at the access point of the river nearest to the village. The children, who wanted to enjoy sand, mud, and water, were the first ones to follow the stream northward. Here they found the waterfalls where the mountains began.