Terra Two

by Francis Rosenfeld

  Every one of the sisters had the task (in addition to their never ending list of daily chores) to bring the cats outside and try to make them adjust to the brick colored rubble, and that was not easy to accomplish. The cats were frazzled and bolting for the door as soon as set free, stepping tentatively on somewhat unstable grounds, evidently uncomfortable.

  Sarah made Solomon a little basket filled with pillows and managed to convince him to accompany her while she attended to her chores. Since none of the sisters were fond of conversations and Sarah's chatty nature suffered profoundly she found Solomon to be a very good listener and started telling him about the farm in North Dakota, her former pets, and how to grow bacterial cultures. Solomon, a blue eyed Birman, had a gentle nature and was purring and slanting his eyes in approval at times, as if he understood. In fact he found the sound of Sarah's voice soothing and preferred it to the constant racket the pumps and ATVs made, and the weird atmospheric sounds.

  Solomon didn't understand why the sky changed color in his world but accepted the fact that the change was permanent, so, wise cat that he was he tried to make the best of his life. The pillows were comfortable, the food was acceptable (Sarah thought at times that switching her food rations with the cat's might actually be an improvement for her, given that they were eerily similar). After a while Solomon ventured out of his basket, not very far at first, stepping gingerly among the bean poles, finding shelter from the suns under a broad squash leaf, and negotiating territory with other brave felines.

  Time passed over humans and cats and the group got used to sister Joseph's constant complains, even though everybody knew she was secretly spoiling her pets rotten when she thought no one was looking.

  Chapter Sixteen

  "We molded our planet as much as our planet molded us. How many people get the chance to design their entire world, to pick their plants and their animals and the location of the bodies of water? How many people get to add stars to their sky, even artificial ones, like those we had? We did the best we could to take care of the life brought here to breathe spirit into our new home."

  "Almost over night our barren world was not barren anymore, it felt like we went to sleep in an unyielding desert and woke up in paradise. Six years had passed us by, six years of hard work and relentless endurance, six years of wishing and envisioning the landscape now surrounding us. It seemed to have sprouted suddenly out of nothing, but nothing comes of nothing, we fed and watered the sterile dirt, we poured our effort and our love into it, we blended our own essence with the reddish crumbles and willed them to spring forth abundance. We let Terra Two borrow life from our lives and now every time I look at the endless soybean fields I feel the pulse of my own blood run through them."

  Living with cats in this strange landscape with a chocolate sky studded with rhinestones was a wholesome and rewarding experience for all the sisters but mostly for Sarah who really loved cats and was overjoyed to have them around. The furry companions took to gardening very fast by feline standards and followed her around while she was mixing mud (yes, this enjoyable activity remained very much a constant of Sarah's life on Terra Two, so much so that after a while she stopped thinking about it and it became a habit like brushing her teeth or brewing morning coffee: she woke up, she got ready for the day, she mixed smelly mud in a bucket, she studied the microbial cultures) or puttering around in the unfortunate brick colored crumbles.

  Having to move a cat to dig a hole for soybean planting was not an uncommon occurrence and these instances drove sister Joseph to distraction and a vocabulary totally uncalled for in company. The cats didn't mind, though, they were friendly and calm and resumed their activities upon reaching a new location. Their activities were of course grooming, sleeping and purring. Every now and then one of them would tentatively chew on a bean shoot and unleash a symphony of negative commentary from the grouchy sister who reviled working in vain and thought the fur balls unworthy of consuming resources. Sarah secretly enjoyed these emotional outbursts because they broke the monotony of her strange days - all the same but riddled with surprises at the same time. She said nothing but was bursting with laughter on the inside just watching this strange theater - a ranting and raving sister yelling at multiple cats who stared back at her out of large, peaceful eyes completely bereft of understanding, as they would watch a moving blade of grass, or a passing ant, not aware that the scuffle had anything to do with them and cleaning a paw every now and then to pass the time.

  Seth noticed Sarah's little personal entertainment and disapproved, she frowned and threw an icy stare that could cut glass towards the undisciplined disciple but said nothing, probably acknowledging the fact that being in charge of mixing mud as a permanent occupation was punishment enough.

  Sarah found the cats to be wonderful conversation partners and non-judgmental listeners. If cats could talk they could recount volumes of Sarah's stories from childhood, her blended upbringing that mixed technology with religion and working the land in a way that was so unique to her, her fishing trips with her brothers, the winter afternoons staring out the window at the fluffiest, plushest snowflakes ever to materialize, her visits to her grandparents' house, the miraculous transparent rose, macro genetic plant engineering.

  Sarah ran the equations for recessive gene modification by the cats to double check herself and actually answered their perceived commentary, which made the other sisters cross themselves and wish someone thought to bring along a psychiatrist, but since the results were usually positive and ended in boosting production they let it pass and allowed Sarah and the cats to live in happy harmony.

  The cats thrived and the sisters didn't have to eat their food after all, since the soybean crops finally took off, just in time for the arrival of the cows. Transport after transport arrived, countless Noah's arks filled with critters, chicken, dogs, pigs, turkeys, rabbits, goats, guinea pigs, field mice, but the cats reigned the land supreme, as first comers and superior companions; they learned the territory better than anyone else and made themselves at home under the bean teepees or broad cabbage leaves.

  The farm finally managed to draw the attention of the logistics team who started to see some method in the madness even though they didn't approve of the rudimentary methods the sisters used and thought them stuck in the stone age. Why would one choose to make mud stink so bad on purpose when there was an entire chemistry lab available for the most precisely balanced artificial fertilizers one could dream of?

  The farm was expanding though, first a little patch of veggies, then a vineyard, then a clump of trees with blades of grass stabilizing the soil, next a ground cover extending its roots farther and farther away, turning their little island into a strange chocolate paradise, dazzling in the double light of the suns, sparkling like a diamond in the reflection of the studded night sky, the promised land of unlimited abundance, their legacy to humankind, the unique and lovely Terra Two.

  Accompanying the humming sounds just before dawn the critters clucked, squeaked and bellowed, better adjusted to the rhythms of the suns than the humans, sticking to their instinctive schedule and waiting for the morning feeding.

  As soon as the suns came up the strange sight of Sarah's hair lit up the still dark profiles of the orchard, her flaming locks guiding the clowder of cats who wove themselves around her ankles. One could almost trace the tracks of her luminous hair as she passed, a halo of sorts, reflecting even the faintest gleam of light like a Fresnel lens. Some of the team members even started joking that they knew it was morning when Sarah's hair started shining. At times, bent over a fledgling seedling with her candle flame colored locks that dressed her shoulders like a mantle she looked so much like an angel that people took pause for a second to remember who she was and settle their fluttering hearts.

  When Sarah didn't speak her presence was iconic, there was something about her appearance that didn't look earthly, even on Terra II: she was walking tall, almost floating over the brick dirt surrounded by light and h
er flaming locks were blinding in the sunshine. Of course one minute later she would start talking to the cats about the double bound modifications to the axillary buds of Agastache anisata and the timed germination rates for Levisticum officinale, technical details strangely mixed with cute pet names for the felines and description of traditions and superstitions from her childhood.

  For instance she had filled the already occupied sills of the tuna cans with bowls of wheatgrass for the feast of St. Andrew to the distress of the displaced felines and the mumbling protests of the sisters whose crowded quarters were grating their nerves already and who saw enough agriculture during the day not to need a reminder indoors for their few hours of rest. The stubborn novice was adamant about this superstition and wouldn't let go of it out of fear that the crops won't thrive otherwise. One doesn't know if the crops took off because of or despite this pointless waste of time and seed, as sister Joseph called it, but the cats benefited greatly from a vegetarian delicacy in their diets: they gained exceptional intestinal health and produced significantly fewer hairballs.

  ***

  It was early in the morning when sister Roberta uttered a shocking gasp and rushed all the sisters to their feet fearing the worst. They fumbled out the doors of the tuna cans, half dressed, hair in disarray, to find the source of the trouble.

  In the middle of the courtyard, two steps above the grass, sister Roberta was floating in thin air grace to the magnetic gravitational device she had been working on for the last two weeks, stuck in animated suspension and unable to come down.

  "Can somebody turn this off, please?" she asked sheepishly, not looking Seth in the eye. Seth had rationed the energy supply and running the antigravity machine was in flagrant violation of her rule.

  "Sister Mary-Francis, can you please help our delinquent down?" the leader said in an even tone of voice. The machine kept humming along diligently and picked up one of the corners of Seth's tin can lifting it in the air like a nut shell. "Hurry, please, before sister Roberta launches us all into space, I kind of like breathing if nobody minds." The tuna can kept elevating while the sweating and stressed out sister was fumbling with the controls, trying to figure out which one of the switches would turn the machine off.

  "It's the second one on the left, dear", sister Roberta said, calm and composed despite raising slowly but steadily into the atmosphere. "Don't just turn it off, I'll break a leg, turn it down gently as you would a dimmer switch." Sister Mary-Francis complied and Roberta descended upon the land like a futuristic Mary Poppins without an umbrella.

  "What is the exact capacity of this device, sister?" Seth asked unperturbed.

  "30,000 tons", the former answered.

  "So what you are telling me is that we had a great chance of being thrust outside the atmosphere, tin cans, cats and all", said Seth.

  "'Fraid so", mumbled sister Roberta, soft as a whisper.

  "If I didn't know any better I'd think this was your second attempt to eliminate us all", Seth said calmly. Sister Roberta said nothing.

  "30,000 tons, you said. Any use we can think of for this contraption?"

  "I'll ask the engineers, they'll find something to do with it."

  "Any chance it could be used for propulsion?"

  "Probably, if we try spinning the magnets maybe we can..."

  "Please, sister, I don't want a 30,000 ton propeller under my backside, hold your enthusiasm and pass it along to motor design, although I'm not really sure what kind of building wouldn't go up with it. How do you come up with these things? I don't know if you are making great advances in propulsion or creating a doomsday device. This stuff can easily be the end of this colony. Is there any way to control the level of energy that comes out of your contraptions?"

  "In time", sister Roberta said, looking down half embarrassed, half prideful.

  All the logistics team saw from a distance was one of the sisters raising slowly from the ground and floating above the top of the vineyard. They commented in a somewhat fearful voice about the possibility of witchcraft and the weird practices that were going on in the mud mixing camp. They thought now very differently about Sarah and her strange old world superstitions, her flaming Irish hair and the apparent lack of technological prowess of the stone age group and thought for sure there was a lot more to their odd rituals than met the eye. After all, maybe they really did talk to cats, who knows what else they were capable of?

  Even after Roberta came over with the spectacularly small magnetic anti-gravity device they still had their doubts, because it seemed impossible for one of the sisters to conceive of it, let alone build one from construction scraps and repurposed shuttle engines.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "There comes a time in everyone's life when all the certainties one relies on to feel safe are shattered. We find ourselves naked and alone with only our faith to sustain us. God remains the only shelter that keeps us from despair. Never lose faith. Never lose hope. Never lose faith. Never lose hope. Never lose faith. Never lose hope."

  "We are all born with talents we don't know exist because the life we live has no use for them. These talents manifest themselves when we are faced with impossible odds and they become the key to our survival. It is this grueling feat of raising above one's condition that moves civilization forward."

  Everything that morning had been completely uneventful. A new Noah's ark arrived bringing fluffy bunny rabbits, certainly more numerous than they were when they embarked. The mud mixes were prepared, the bacterial cultures were tested, the morning check of the crops was run of the mill and the sisters were preparing for lunch.

  "What happened to the com link?" Seth asked, with an even tone of voice that didn't betray irritation or anxiety.

  "Nothing, why are you asking?" said sister deAngelis, who was on com duty at the time.

  "Have you tried to use it during the last half hour?"

  "Of course, I'm monitoring it as we speak."

  "Have you ACTUALLY tried using the communication devices? With a response from a real person, not computer feedback?"

  Sister deAngelis complied, sending messages into the ether to the ever so solicitous team in charge of their mission back home, but no answer returned. She didn't say much, but Seth could read the fear in the sister's eyes so she tried not to press the issue to the point of full panic.

  "I assume that we are not sure how long we've been in complete communication silence?" she asked.

  "No, Seth, I don't know. The last real message we received was yesterday at 8:00, they are sending earthworms and insects, I don't even want to know what kind."

  Seth frowned at the unrelated details.

  "So we could have possibly been out of range for maybe 12 to 14 hours?"

  "It's possible."

  "How come nobody on the other teams noticed, surely they talk to Christchurch just as often as we do?"

  "I didn't ask, they must be relying on auto-feedback to monitor the connection, like we do."

  "Announce this to everybody and tell sister Roberta she's got to shift her work schedule. How are we doing on supplies?"

  "Six months plus what we grow and the animals. Eggs and milk if nothing else."

  "I assume that the wise and stress-free planning managers who put this mission together accounted for a situation like this?"

  "Yes, there are several contingency plans available for various stages in the project development."

  "For how long?"

  "The longest is six months."

  Seth stared through the com station so intently one could almost hear the metal hiss and melt.

  "How long can we survive on local production alone?"

  "I don't know, Seth, technically there is no limit, if we run out of crops we can always grow more."

  "Start now. Call sisters Novis, Jove and Mary-Francis and ask them to put a plan together to double the plantings. Sarah will be in charge, she's got the gift. We're going to be fine."

  The new responsibility was ap
pointed to Sarah without much fanfare or extraneous words. She didn't say anything and attended devotedly to her duties, but spent the following months in breathless full blown panic.

  In light of the new challenge she looked around, didn't recognize any of the sights that were supposed to look familiar by now, didn't recognize the person whose confidence and sense of control gave her a reason to believe that things will turn out as planned and feared not only for her life, but for her afterlife as well.

  Growing up with nuns she never questioned the existence of the immortal soul and the final judgment, she only thought that if she lived her life well and attended to good deeds she would make it upstairs, after all God was all merciful and loving and wouldn't begrudge her the occasional misstep as long as she meant well.

  Now she started wondering if what she considered to be a good life wasn't good at all, it didn't seem to be very clear what good really was, and she was assaulted by remorse and doubt, and most of all by the feeling that the artificial environment they were creating was some sort of Icarus flight and there was just a matter of time until they will all be punished for their audacity.

  ***

  Sister Roberta worked on the com link that day, and the day after, and the following week. The engineering team inspected the satellites, which was not an easy task with all the methane containers floating around and bumping into them. There was nothing wrong with the satellites, though, everything worked perfectly. For an entire month they tried and failed to establish communication with the home team. Two months later the new shipment arrived with the news that a cloud of dust and ice was crossing the transmission path and there was nothing they could do about it. All debris was expected to clear in about three months, after which normal communications would resume.