The Second Wave Page 4

  One of the geologists was Peter Wagner, a well-liked professor of geo-science, since thirteen months previous a widower. He was studying the effects the storms had on the planet, and the question whether new life was possible, given that at this time it looked more like no life was ever going to be possible at all anymore. But Peter had his own speculations on what was causing the atmospheric storms. Speculations that were sound but far out, and had to do with developing a whole new lifestyle that was more in tune with the planet they were living on. His theories were widely known, but less liked by his colleagues than Peter as a person was.

  His office and sleeping quarters, he didn’t make a difference, not anymore, were in bungalow number three. All the buildings were connected with one another, to allow the scientists to move freely without having to go outside. He was evaluating his latest readings, waiting for his assistant Luke to come back and bring lunch. Or perhaps tea—he forgot the time occasionally, a quirk less laughable when taking into consideration that it was always gray and dusty outside, and Peter didn’t possess a wristwatch. He didn’t care what time it was. He only cared about his work; it was all he had left these days.

  So absorbed in his work was he, hunched over the desk like an ancient man, writing down the notes by hand rather than using a computer, that the bleeping of the telephone startled him. A permanent smear in his notebook would forever vouch for that. He let it ring for a little while, waiting for Luke to get it. The memory of his assistant leaving the lab to get food surfaced in the end, though, and Peter picked up the receiver after all.

  “Hello, darling,” said Sally Sheldon’s pleasant voice. Peter carefully put the pen down to avoid another blotch. A warm smile appeared on his face, although he was almost sure Sally couldn’t see it.

  “Sally? How did you know it was me?” he asked. She couldn’t see him, could she? He rarely answered the phone himself, his sister knew that. Perhaps the affectionate address had been meant for Luke.

  “I called your main office first and got Luke. He redirected me. He also told me you’ve been working weird hours lately.”

  “Young Luke doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Luke was not two years Peter’s junior, but Peter calling Luke his young assistant and Luke calling Peter an old professor was a private joke the two of them shared.

  “So did you see it?” Sally prompted, after she shared with her brother the latest office gossip she had fresh from Luke, knowing full well that Peter wasn’t the least bit interested.

  “Yes. Magnificent, wasn’t it? Quite, quite extraordinary. The readings were off all charts!”

  “Peter, not the storm. The ticket got activated. You know—second wave and everything. Are you already packing?”

  Evaporating as quickly as it had overtaken him, Peter’s enthusiasm imploded. Yes, he owned a ticket to the second wave program; not because his sister was working at the HQ in Rome, but because he was the best geologist in this world who used to be married to the best botanist in this world. They both got tickets, and the idea of living in a whole new world had thrilled them to no end. But that was before.

  He told Sally that he wasn’t going anywhere. When she was finished calling him names, words he didn’t even know the definition of, probably protector slang, she forced herself to calm down. “Peter, listen to me. Please come! I know you’re still hurting, but a change of scenery will do you worlds of good. You were so much looking forward to it! And I’ll be there, too. It’ll be nice.”

  “I don’t have his ticket anymore.”

  This time, Sally was too surprised to verbally abuse her brother any more. Initially, in a moment of desperation right after the funeral, Peter had been toying with the thought of giving both tickets away. The man he ended up giving it to was a colleague who said he desperately needed it for its parts. Tickets for the new colonization program were a hot commodity; even though selling and owning them was a dangerous task, seeing that they were individualized and would have to be reprogrammed by someone with amazing skills. Peter knew that; he wouldn’t endanger the program by giving the electronic pass away so someone could hack into it. But the professor told Peter he didn’t want it for anything illegal, he only needed some minuscule gadget from the inside to serve as ersatz, so he could save his computer from dying on him with all the accumulated data. Since Peter knew how that felt, and since he wouldn’t be needing the second ticket anyway, he gave it to him. Ailing computers were what made Peter strictly use paper for all his research these days.

  But Sally didn’t want to hear any of it. “You could have just given it back and have a substitute ticket made out for Luke at least!”

  “Luke has his own ticket.” They were allowed to take staff with them. Whoever and whatever they needed to man and run a geo station and a bio lab. So they signed Luke up, who was now, Peter mused, probably the best botanist in this world.

  “Good. It means I at least have an ally. You will come to Alternearth, Peter, if I have to drag you there myself. You need to get away from Ryde, from all the memories and the horror. You had better start packing, big brother, because I’m coming to get you.”

  The telephone line clicked to indicate that Sally had hung up, which was just as well, because Peter was not going anywhere and he didn’t want to discuss it with his hot-headed, stubborn, persuasive sister.

  So when Luke came back a few minutes later, offered him tea and casually asked how Peter was coming along with the readings, he replied, “No can do, my boy, I have a bit of packing to do.”

  “Oh? Where are you going, then? Out to take new rock samples?”

  “I’ve decided, purely on my own accord, mind you, not that it’s any of your business anyway, to go to Alternearth after all.”

  “Nice. So we’ll go together! What changed your mind?”

  “Nothing in particular. Certainly not a telephone conversation with my sister, who threatened to come and drag me there herself, no doubt enjoying the prospect of physically forcing me to do as she pleases.”

  Luke laughed, “Just for that I love her. She is right, though. I mean,” he held up his hands in the universal gesture of innocence, “if she had called, and if that had changed your decision, I’d be happy for you.”

  “I know. In my heart I know. A change will do me good.”

  “Oh yes. You’ve been becoming weirder every day, Peter. Don’t get me wrong, I always thought you’d end up a nutty, old professor one day. But not at thirty-two.”

  It was Peter’s turn to laugh now, “Thirty-two, yes? I forget that. Sometimes I feel like I’m a hundred years old.”

  Luke told him it was probably normal, he felt like that too sometimes. And while Peter Wagner packed his suitcase and made calls to arrange for a boat to France, the ticket that originally belonged to Duncan Wagner, the ticket that was assumed lost, the ticket that had never been used to fix a broken computer, almost burned a hole in another man’s pocket.

  * * * *

  Chapter 10: Bazaar

  She woke with a start, once more surrounded by the strange people she had encountered before. They were talking at her; to no avail, because try as she might, she couldn’t understand them. Their language was utterly foreign to her. And everything was moving wrongly, giving her a headache that made it hard to stir, or even see properly. Mostly everything was a blur, a foggy haze at best. It was painful, and it got worse with every moment.

  Until she all but resigned. She fell back into the softness she now seemed tied to, and merely observed the images that were unfolding around her. She didn’t even try to give it meaning, she simply waited for it all to go away.

  It was yet another perfect day on Alternearth; with a beautiful sun that was warming the earth below, bathing every lifeless and living thing in wonderful light. Even the dirt streaked emergency medical tent looked chipper and cheerful in the sunlight.

  Inside was just enough room for a gurney and a table with a couple of instruments. Dr. Paige had hopelessly stressed the tiny space by
putting up two IVs and a chair for herself. It was all make do, but it had to suffice until either the colony’s hospital wing was finished, or the woman was fit for a transport to Earth. It didn’t look like it for now, though. Dr. Paige had cleaned her up, and beneath the mud and dirt was a woman perhaps in her twenties; that was all she could say about the patient for now. Because she didn’t speak. Not a word, not even a sound had left her throat so far. When she awoke shortly after the first blood tests were done, a few hours after she had lost consciousness, she looked at Dr. Paige in horror. She tried to get up, and when she found she was tied to the gurney, which was for everyone’s protection, a measurement Captain Eleven had insisted on, the expression in her eyes shifted from horror to confusion, then to pain, and after that her eyes glazed over and her body went limp. But never did she utter a syllable.

  Dr. Paige tried talking to her, so did Eleven, but after the woman had given up, or so it appeared, she didn’t come back. She just stayed apathetic, seeing everything and nothing, as if she resigned herself to whatever would happen next.

  Summer Paige didn’t stop talking to her, though. She had treated comatose patients before, and this woman reminded her of them, with the only difference that her eyes were open. But they might as well be closed, she pondered, it was unlikely she even saw what was going on, much less understood it.

  Yet Dr. Paige was relentless. She held up another photo, in case the woman would choose to look at it, and continued, “This is the village we built in the meadow. The meadow that is now a forest, actually. I’m not sure what really happened there. I wonder if you know. I wonder what you saw with those beautiful doe eyes of yours.” She softly stroke back a curl from the woman’s face. It was a lovely face, pale from want of sunlight though it was.

  “You know what? I’m hungry. I bet you are, too. Let me see what I can find in my endless supply of candy and nutrition bars.”

  She put away the photos and fished her personal bag from under her chair.

  “I have a couple of cereal bars, if you like. Not the healthiest of food, but good for the soul.” She got her supply of chocolate from Tom deLuca, who had excellent sources that provided a variety of snacks for relatively small prices.

  “Or vanilla perhaps? I know I have a vanilla wafer here somewhere. They are definitely the best. You’ll love it.”

  Captain Eleven’s voice interrupted her cheerful monologue. “She eats now?”

  “No,” the doctor admitted. “But I’m hoping to spike her interest. So far she’s just lethargic and, well, silent. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t understand a word we’re saying, so I’m trying to keep my voice light and unthreatening, to signal that we don’t intend to harm her.”

  Eleven had a thin file under her arm, which she now offered her colleague.

  “This is the DNA result?” Paige asked, before she opened it to look at the single piece of paper it contained. “Emily, is this a joke?” She looked from the file to the woman and back to Eleven again.

  “I don’t know, I didn’t look. General Fatique told me to give it to you. Why? What does it say?”

  “Well,” Paige began, not sure if reality made sense anymore. “It says here that this young woman is one of the first wave settlers.”

  “That should be good news.”

  “I’m not exactly sure what kind of news it is.”

  Because according to this, the woman’s name was Eugenia Gust, and when she left for Alternearth not eleven months ago, she had been three years old.

  * * * *

  It took John more than two nights to reach the island of Cyprus, and from there nearly another week to cross Turkey, where the largest black market of the Orient, perhaps of the whole planet, was at: the Byzantium Bazaar.

  Byzantium was a protected city, one of the largest and the most crowded, which meant police was abundant all around. Contrary to Alexandria, Byzantium was a place full of life, bursting at the seams with people, animals, noises, smells and colors it could hardly hold in anymore.

  The first thing a weary traveller noticed about Byzantium was its silhouette against the sky under the invisible force shield. The mud brick buildings were merely two storeys, sometimes three, high, but there were innumerable houses, squeezed in every corner, lining the streets and alleys, standing in bizarre angles to one another. Most of them had flat roofs upon which yurts stood to house more families, or where resourceful citizens grew their own spices. The temples had round, shapely, imperial roofs, painted in all colors, ornamented with tiny glass mosaics so they glistened in the daylight.

  The noise could be heard far outside the city walls—the sea gulls’ cawing the wind carried in from the coast, the annoyed neighing of a donkey who wouldn’t move, and the yells of its owner, urging it ever onwards. Live stock, herded through the streets, their hoofs clicking on the cobbled ground. Chicken, running around freely, constantly cackling, like bickering, old women. Then, nearer to the bazaar, a never ending verbal cascade of haggling, arguing and advertising.

  Yet the noise was nothing compared to the smell. Byzantium smelled of everything at once—of thyme and honey, of garlic and cinnamon, of mustard and cardamom. Every few steps there were marketers selling pistachio bread, fruitcakes, dried vegetables, raw meat and, of course, always candy in all sizes and flavors. Old men sat on doorsteps, smoking hookahs, passing goat cheese around. The heat preserved every nuance of the smells, never allowing it to leave, because it was a part of the city. Those who were permanently living here, didn’t notice the smell anymore; they didn’t notice the reeking of the animal excrements, which mixed with the sweet fragrance of carefully perfumed oil that could be bought at every corner. Their noses were accustomed to the unbearable stench of sweat and stuffy caftans that intermingled with the scent of sheep wool and the always present smell of the sea.

  The colors outshone everything, though, not just because the eyes are the most observant and most relied upon sense in human beings. Not even the constantly gray skies could dampen the beauty of Turkey’s colors; and they were all here, in Byzantium. Whether it was a curtain on a door, a horse’s saddle, a painting one of the street artists drew with chalk on a house wall, a set of bracelets, or a softly tinted, almost sheer veil on a woman’s face; every single thing caused a small explosion in the beholder’s eyes. Not in any other place on Earth could there be found a blue so deep, a yellow so saturated, or a red so rich. It wasn’t just people and buildings, the food was colorful, too. From the whitest cheese to dried, red saffron threads, every dish seen seemed to proudly announce itself by its colors. Even the earthen tones of the buildings were thick with hue. Everything competed with one another in every shade possible.

  And it all came together in one gigantic, mind swamping, cacophonous opera called ‘Byzantium Bazaar’. It was here John were headed to see just how priceless this ticket really was. But getting to the bazaar was one thing, quite easy, as the market was open for anyone; finding the right buyer was more difficult a task, which required knowledge of the scene and knowing who to trust. Many of the shady figures that lingered around less frequented back streets were stool pigeons, or worse, con men like himself.

  Next to Byzantium, Alternearth paled in the comparison. Everything on the alien planet was light, natural, and understated. The flowers emitted just the barest hint of fragrance; the grass and trees seemed almost bashful to show the green of their leaves; and the only sounds that could be heard were those of the people who walked its earth, or sometimes a gust of wind that brushed across a bundle of dry leaves.

  In the medical emergency tent, far away from any thought regarding Alternearth’s smell, color or sound, Captain Eleven shook her head decisively.

  “It’s not going to happen,” she told Dr. Paige, who was currently with her back to Eugenia.

  “She’s one of the original settlers, her blood tests came back clean—as her doctor I declare her fit to return to Earth.” Where Summer Paige had a whole hospital and instruments and better treatment fo
r her patient.

  “No. We don’t know what happened to her. And as the one responsible for the safety of two planets right now, I say she’s still a threat.”

  The doctor gave a frustrated sigh, but there was nothing she could do. The protector was in charge, her word went.

  “Look at her, Emily.” She softly pointed at Eugenia. “She is not a danger to anybody.”

  “She remains here in your care, Summer.”

  “At least let me untie her. Even if she wanted to be a threat, she isn’t in the condition to even get up at the moment.”

  Eleven shook her head once more. No untying, at least not until the colony’s hospital wing was ready, and the patient was behind locked doors. With those last words she left patient and doctor to themselves.

  Paige sat down on her chair again. “Look at you, Eugenia.” She patted the woman’s hand reassuringly. “You’re no threat at all. Emily’s a bit tense today, she’ll come around. You’ll be allowed up and about in no time, don’t worry.”

  In the meantime, she would stay with her, mainly because she was the only doctor on this planet, and Eugenia was her only patient.

  “You and protector Niman,” she corrected herself. “He fell into a river and sprained his ankle, you know. Very low pain threshold for a protector.”

  By way of a reaction, Eugenia gave a low moan and threw up. Summer considered that progress.

  * * * *

  Chapter 11: All the Spices of the Orient

  The atmospheric shield around Byzantium glistened dimly in the scarce sunlight that fell through the clouds on this gray morning. The area around the city was uninhabited, but as John walked through vacant villages, he noticed a distinct difference to the deserted villages of northern Egypt. The houses there were forsaken, the buildings here were simply unoccupied, as if their owners were just out on business, due to return anytime.