The Second Wave Read online

  “Ah, a woman of good taste. You try kuih—very sweet, very tasty. Also, I sell candy—many shapes, many flavors.”

  Elizabeth bought some of everything he offered her, quickly becoming Wang’s new favorite customer.

  When she was down to her last rice pastry, most of the old customers had left without being replaced by new ones. Wang inquired about what had brought about her change of heart. He buffed the counter with a dirty cloth while he listened to her story. Maybe because he was almost a perfect stranger and didn’t know a lot about the old Elizabeth Burke, she trusted him; and thus told him about her five years on another planet.

  “I am trapped,” she admitted finally. Her tea was cold and her plate as empty as the restaurant. “I was given a second chance, but now I must choose between this world and that. Between the life I lived before and the life I was forced to start from scratch.” The spoon she was toying with suddenly demanded all of her attention. “So now I’ve been to the other side, and do you know what? The grass really is greener there. What do I do?” she asked the crumbs on her plate. “Face the person I used to be, or go back and be the person I became?”

  Meister Wang nodded in sympathy. He was an understanding man, that was why he chose to open up a takeaway rather than work in an anonymous kitchen in some fancy restaurant. A takeaway cook was like a hairdresser and a bartender combined as far as the level of trust was concerned. His customers told him stories and he kept them to himself, or retold them to other customers in some form or another. People always liked a good story. But he knew there was a time for a good story and there was a time for a good fortune cookie wisdom. That’s why he told her, earnest and solemn, “The time comes, when one must kindle the near fire with a flame from afar.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed with a pensive heart, although she had no idea what he meant by that.

  * * * *

  On Alternearth the harbingers passed, and in their wake they revived the spirits of the villagers. Especially those of the children, who, confronted with the realisation that winter was ending, suddenly found new games to play in the snow as long as it was still there. The village quickly awoke from its comatose sleep. While the younger children went sleigh riding from dawn till dusk, the rest of the settlers began preparations for the next season: among individual tasks, the animal pens had to be cleaned, the canteen made ready for reopening, and the fence around the village checked for any damage by frost or storms. It was work the settlers were used to by now and, reopened wormhole or not, they went about their daily routines as they had done the last five years.

  But Spring didn’t come.

  * * * *

  Chapter 42: Winter

  Back in the flat, Elizabeth, invigorated by her meal, picked up the phone and dialled the law firm. The secretary promised Apple would call back once she was out of the meeting. Elizabeth waited next to the apparatus, which rang precisely twenty-eight minutes later.

  “I thought we agreed never to call each other at work.” Apple’s voice sounded hurried. She was probably somewhere between her lunch break and the next client. Elizabeth didn’t know what to say, or even why she had felt she needed to call. In the end she settled for, “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  Apple gave a short, almost humourless laugh. “Well, there you go, then. Is there something the matter? You didn’t quite seem yourself this morning. Did something happen at work? You’ve never pulled an all-nighter before.”

  “Indeed it did. It’s no good speaking over the phone about it. Would you come away with me, if I asked you?”

  A sigh. Her wife mumbled something about appointments and reschedules, then asked Elizabeth to wait while she checked her calendar. Finally she said, “I’ll see what I can do. But definitely not this weekend; I have four hearings next week.”

  A weekend getaway was not what Elizabeth had in mind, but her explaining got cut short because Apple’s lunch break was over and the doorbell rang. They had to postpone their talk.

  When she opened the door, she was more than a little surprised to see General Fatique standing there, looking slightly relieved that she was at home, and also a bit lost. He had never been to her flat, and had almost got lost in Rome’s labyrinthine pedestrian precinct.

  “You immediately left the Headquarters after your return,” he explained his house-call. He gratefully accepted her offer to make tea. They went into the kitchen where she put the kettle on while they talked.

  “I didn’t even get to talk to you about what happened.”

  She shrugged. “Everything is in the reports I gave you.”

  Elizabeth had kept track of everything during the five years. Even when she had given up hope of ever returning to Earth, she thought she owed it to the future to chronicle their beginnings.

  “Yes,” admitted Fatique. “But I wanted to bleak to you personally. How are you feeling?”

  “How do you think I’m feeling?” she asked back to gain time.

  He smiled warmly, the smile an old father would bestow upon his young daughter. “You haven’t corrected me once since I got here. So either my conditioner has mysteriously changed overnight, or something has happened to you over there.”

  When she didn’t answer but busied herself with preparing two cups of tea, he chuckled good-naturedly. “But I’m prying. You don’t have to tell me anything about your personal life, of course. What I would like to know is what happened on Alternearth. And how is it even possible that five years could have passed in the course of a few hours?”

  “You didn’t read my reports?”

  “I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “Where do I start?” She sighed. She handed him a steaming cup, then guided the two of them into the living room, where they sat down on a couch that looked like it belonged in the showcase of a luxurious furniture shop. Usually very cautious not to get any creases or smudges on it, Elizabeth now flopped unceremoniously onto it.

  “We had a few weddings,” she began, getting as comfortable as the almost sterile living room allowed. “A couple of births and two funerals. We expanded the village, because buildings were added, so the fence had to be moved. We now mostly use hounds on the fields and the horses only for riding. But you probably want to know primarily about Eugenia Gust, the mysterious stranger from the woods.”

  Fatique nodded. He sat in the recliner that matched the sofa, sipped his tea and listened intently.

  “I don’t think she really is who Summer claims her to be. Fact is, shortly after I came to Alternearth, the girl disappeared in an explosion that caused the mountains to crumble, which in turn led to a small but tempestuous tidal wave that flooded the whole village. It’s a miracle that nobody died back then. The following years I tried to find out more, but there really wasn’t much to find out about. She seemed to have some sort of relationship with one of the settlers, John, I never got his last name; but he refused to talk to me about it.

  “Summer gave me all of her reports to read. Nothing new in them, too. Except that this woman must be highly empathic, for on more than one occasion she knew facts about people she hadn’t even been introduced to before.

  “The last thing I know is that apparently she didn’t die in the explosion after all. Five whole years she must have lived in the mountains or the forest. She only returned to the settlement shortly before the wormhole reopened, but I didn’t get to see her again. Her…partner, this John character, he’s incredibly protective of her. And this, General, is all I know.”

  “More questions than answers, really,” Fatique commented, somewhat disappointed. Elizabeth nodded.

  “Did Doctors deLuca find out why the accelerated time on Alternearth is back to normal now?”

  Fatique shook his head. “I had a rather brilliant theory, namely that we accidentally reconnected with the other planet in the future instead of the present, but considering they did their best not to snicker about it right in front of me, I fear I was quite wrong, and we’re back to the snowing board a
gain.”

  “But we’re going ahead with the Alpha Site preparations?”

  “We can’t afford not to.”

  No, they couldn’t. Earth was withering away as they spoke. After a moment of silence, Fatique quietly replied to the unspoken question that hung in the air, as of yet untouched. “The answer, my dear Elizabeth, is yes. Although I would miss your expertise tremendously.”

  Elizabeth smiled at him. She hadn’t yet made up her mind whether she wanted to stay here or go back to Alternearth. It was nice to know she had an option.

  "I’ve made an appointment for you with Annabella tomorrow morning," Fatique told her before he left. "I thought it might be nice for you to talk with someone other than me."

  Elizabeth was sure she did not want to talk to Annabella Guarini, the operation’s psychologist, as the two of them had never got along well in the past. She nodded nonetheless; she even managed a small smile.

  * * * *

  The reopening of the wormhole had little effect on the daily life of the villagers, although it did mean that the workers had to begin the erection of a second settlement— what they had been initially hired to do in the first place, before they were forced to settle down. Some of them went back to Earth, but a few asked permission to bring their families to Alternearth, a request General Fatique granted happily.

  Next to the workmen’s barracks was the greenery, of which Dr. Luke Wagner-Reyes was supervisor. A long, one storied glass building that was greenhouse and research lab complex at the same time, labs that belonged to the botany as well as the geology department.

  "Just put it down over there," Luke instructed one of the assistants who came in carrying a small but apparently heavy case. "I’ll have a look at it immediately." He added, more to himself than to anyone in particular, "Finally."

  As sole head of the botany, Luke had his own lab and his own set of assistants, or co-workers, as he liked to call them. In reality, he still did a lot of work for Peter, including the analysis of what was in the steel carrying case Adina had just now brought in from Earth. It was a small container, the size of a lunchbox, and in it rested half a dozen soil samples from Alternearth — all taken before the first wave settlers had gone through. Luke and Peter had a couple of ideas concerning the development of the planet, but to verify or dismiss them they needed core samples from as many different times as possible; including the core samples that had been kept in the Headquarters on Earth, which had been inaccessible for the last years.

  Carefully pushing a set of new tomato seedlings aside that covered every horizontal surface of the room at the moment, Luke picked up the case. They were trying to get a new breed of tomatoes to grow: small, wooden boxes filled with soil, hummus, and a new fertilizer Luke had put together cluttered the workspace for now. Some boxes already sprouted the smallest green leaves. If only two thirds of the plants grew to full size, they’d have a decent amount of delicious tomatoes this summer.

  Luke checked on a set of pots out of habit before he left the room, case in hand, through the sliding door leading to the greenery. Three of his co-workers were at work here, fertilizing, replanting and hanging up herbs to dry. No matter how harsh the winter, there was always enough to do in here. With quick steps he crossed the greenhouse and reached the geo labs at the other end of the building, where he hoped Peter was at work right now. When Peter wasn’t at work or with his husband, he had the unsettling habit of seeking out John’s company, something Luke wasn’t happy about. Peter had accepted Luke’s marriage proposal two years ago, but the botanist still felt that Peter wasn’t entirely his, that some parts of his husband still belonged to John. He knew it was ludicrous, he knew he had no reason to be jealous. Yet he was; and in those rare moments of gloom he couldn’t help thinking that Peter had settled on Luke, like he had settled on Duncan, because ultimately he couldn’t have John.

  He shook off the dark thoughts. With one foot he opened the door to the geo labs. There was Peter, sitting at a table, sorting stones. His brow furrowed in concentration, his demeanour that of a man who has forgotten there was a world outside his head. The sight conjured up an affectionate smile on Luke’s earnest face.

  “Do you know that this stone comes from the same quarry, and the same stratum in fact, as these two,” Peter told him after they greeted each other, “and yet it shows completely different qualities?! As if it were several hundred years younger than its neighbor!”

  Luke shrugged. “Maybe it is. It wouldn’t be the first chronological anomaly we’ve encountered.”

  “No,” mumbled Peter. “It wouldn’t.”

  Luke found a relatively uncluttered space on the table to put down the case he was still carrying. At the sight of it Peter perked, immediately forgetting about the mystery of the anachronistical rock. He demanded to know what was inside, and Luke tormented him by merely silently opening the case so Peter could see for himself.

  “Soil samples!” he burst out, almost like a six-year-old boy who has found a fantastic snake in the garden. The two men shared a goofy grin.

  “I will get the microscope!” Peter offered, ecstatic.

  “And I the other core samples,” Luke replied, no less enthusiastic than his husband.

  In a matter of minutes, the desktop was freed from what had occupied it before, only to be cluttered once again by soil samples, microscopes and previously printed-out results. Then Peter and Luke immersed themselves in their work, forgetting every worry, care, or jealousy.

  * * * *

  Chapter 43: The Temple in the Snow

  Eugenia got worse and then better. She stayed in bed for the better half of a week before she was finally well enough to get up and walk about again. She’d relapse into mumbling nonsense occasionally, or at least it seemed like nonsense to John, but he accepted it as part of the deal. He got her back, that was what counted. He didn’t care much for the state she was in—damaged goods or not, they were together; everything else would fall into place.

  Eventually she recovered enough to go outside, which was a great relief to John, as it meant he could go to work again—checking the stables and preparing his boat. He had tried to do so before, but found he couldn’t leave her for long. His body would start convulsing, as if deprived of oxygen or some other essential it needed to survive. It was unsettling and yet it came as no surprise to him when he found out she was the cause of this strange suffering. Ever since her return, his life had begun to revolve around the woman, as she seemed to fill a void in him he hadn’t known was there before they had met.

  Today he carefully wrapped her in a thick coat and equipped her with a woollen hat and scarf.

  “Are we leaving?” she asked when she managed to peel layers of scarf off her face again, enough to move her lips. By way of an answer he opened the door for her, and together they stepped outside into the cold. They immediately sank into six inches of freshly fallen snow.

  “We are going to the stables,” he finally said. “I have to tend to the hounds.”

  Compliantly she followed in his footsteps. The snow was unusual. After the harbingers showed up it never snowed anymore. The weather should have already changed abruptly to spring, like every year. The long winter made the animals uneasy. The horses were nervous, impatiently waiting for warmer days, and the hounds were short tempered because of the change of schedule. John didn’t need to check on them to know this. He could feel their confusion.

  The hounds had a pen of their own, an additional stable. When the village expanded and the fence was moved, the stables and pens had stayed inside the perimeter rather than being moved with the fence. They were now immediately behind the hospital.

  Marching through the cold which, because of her attire, was so much less gruesome than before, Eugenia was excited to see the hounds John spoke about so often. She knew which creatures he meant, the ones that lived under and in the forest. They had ferocious souls and beautiful, wild spirits, but she had never seen them.

  Her boots were two siz
es too big. The right foot caught in something and she stumbled. She still wasn’t used to the slowness and the closeness of it all; falling down was something she got better and better at. John’s arm was immediately there to steady her.

  “Perhaps it is too soon for you to go outside after all,” he said. “We should return.”

  She shook her head, a gesture she had seen her people use often. “I want to see your hounds. There is still so much I have yet to see.”

  “Another time.”

  “Today, John. You’re tired of being inside all the time, and so am I. Now that she has left me I must look at everything myself to understand.”

  He knew she was right about the two of them wanting to go outside, so he resumed his way to the stables without further discussion. But he made sure to walk more slowly and keep an eye on her. She was in a good mood today, her mind seemed as clear as ever, which was why he tried to ask her once more about who had left her and why she felt she was alone even in his presence. By way of an answer she stopped. She squatted down and began digging through the snow until she found a patch of frozen grass underneath. She gave it an explanative pat.

  “The planet?” he asked. “The planet has left you?” It made no sense to him, but she nodded nonetheless.

  “You have a name for it,” she recalled. “You call it Alternearth.”

  “That’s right.” He watched her as she stroked the cold earth fondly. “How do you call it?”

  “Mother,” she replied. Then she got up. Recognizing the stables ahead, she marched towards them. This time it was John who followed her lead. There was no one else around, their boots crunching through the snow was the only sound audible on that serene morning.

  “How can the planet leave you?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. She used to be around and inside me. We used to be like one. But I think she left me when I chose you over my people.” She didn’t elaborate, so he demanded more explanations. She had tried to explain it to him many times before, but her words were inadequate, and what she said made no sense to him. Still she tried one more time: