Terra Two

by Francis Rosenfeld

  Sarah couldn't find it in her heart to declare her haven off limits and was trying her best to perform both duty and hobby amidst a chaotic crowd that reached under the countertops and stretched to the rafters, oblivious to simmering pots of oil and chemical processes in progress. In this bedlam the poor cats, frazzled by the excessive attention, were jumping dangerously close to open flames and glassware filled with hot liquids, trying to find shelter in the open roof structure, practically the only place that was safely out of reach.

  "I'm sorry, I was going to get to it later", Sarah apologized, understanding from Seth's tone that the readings had already been compared and found lacking. "What's wrong?"

  "See for yourself", Seth boomed, throwing a few thunderbolts from her eyes, evidently annoyed by the ceaselessly moving mob.

  Sarah looked: between yesterday afternoon and the present morning humidity had dropped from 87 to 52%, with the temperature staying a steady 82 degrees.

  "There must be something wrong with the readings", Sarah started, but was harshly interrupted.

  "There isn't. I triple checked them and asked Sister Jove to check them too." Sarah felt strangely guilty, as if the density of water vapor in the air was her direct responsibility.

  "We watered this blessed dirt for six years straight", Seth blasted, "if the vapors vanish into nothingness I'll... " She paused, recomposed herself and continued. "Could you please put together a team and go on a field trip to see what the problem is?"

  Sarah honestly didn't think that a field trip was going to provide the miraculous solution to their now front and center problem, but was grateful to get out of the chaos for a few days and see more of the planet. For all their dare devil adventure after landing on Terra Two they became more tied to the land than any Earth farmer would be, since the crops and the animals required their constant attention and leaving even for a day would have imposed undue burdens on the remaining sisters.

  The farthest Sarah had ventured was the sharp mountain rim on the horizon, probably five miles away if even that. She knew that by now several islands had been settled, and they were in constant communication with their neighbors, but none of them had time to visit. Terra Two had come to life with a vigor surpassing all expectations and every seed that was carried by the wind or the insides of a bird fell on the ground and multiplied, covering the undeveloped areas with a weird farm-like vegetation, all mixed together and growing wild for the benefit of the little birds and animals that called the islands home.

  "I'll take sister Mary-Francis and sister deAngelis", started Sarah.

  "Sister Mary-Francis it is. Can't spare two."

  Sarah didn't say anything, but thought it kind of dangerous to venture off into the wilderness in such a small group.

  "Don't worry, you'll be fine", Seth answered her thoughts. They wore the neural interlink bracelet all the time now, and since no one ever bothered to politely reframe their thoughts it didn't make any difference whether they were talking or thinking. "Two days, go north."

  "Which way is north?" Sarah asked herself, for the first thing they found out after they landed was the magnetic field of Terra Two shifted constantly in response to the movement of the two suns and one couldn't use a compass to save one's life.

  "That way", Seth picked a random direction and pointed towards it decisively.

  "How are we going to find our way back?" asked Sarah, in a quietly alarmed tone.

  "Trail some breadcrumbs", said Seth and left. Sarah didn't know sometimes if Seth had a high level of trust in her abilities or was trying to get her killed. She shrugged, though, and looked for a suitable material for the bread crumbs. Everything mineral in nature on the planet looked exactly the same: a brick colored, even textured aggregate with no distinguishing features.

  ***

  The next day Sarah and sister Mary Francis left the camp carrying two very heavy backpacks filled with colorful glass beads that dropped behind them to form a winding path as they passed. Sweating buckets in the 82 degree heat they both offered a few unguarded opinions about the unfortunate choice of material and the weight thereof.

  Sister Roberta wanted to be 100% sure that they had enough breadcrumbs for two days, so she built a margin of safety in the quantity of beads by almost doubling it.

  They walked quietly among the wild tomato chords and the trailing grape vines, gently pushing clumps of wheat out of the way, scattering the over ripe kernels on the ground. Every now and then a little field mouse or a garden snake scurried out of the way, unaccustomed to visitors.

  They reached the sharp mountain range and stopped for a new reading: the humidity had come back to 87 and a few rain fascicles turned on suddenly like faucets, drenching them in less than five minutes, after which they disappeared into thin air as if they have never been.

  Sarah had thoughts about some people's jumping to conclusions and making unnecessary work for other people who had better things to do than to carry thirty pounds of ballast on their back up the mountain.

  "I know", Seth's thoughts resonated through the neural interlink, "I saw the reading, keep on going and let me know what you find."

  The view from the mountain top was a pastoral dream, fields of green undulated gently softening the sharp contours of the valleys and loosing themselves into the distance, almost blending with the metallic blue of the sea. There was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that looked alarming and as she sat on a rock admiring the view without the backpack pushing her into the ground, Sarah was pleased to have taken this brief vacation. Far towards the horizon she could distinguish the contours of neighboring islands, lost in a chocolate haze that thickened with the distance, looking like enormous grazing animals peacefully at rest.

  "We should keep going, we need to find a suitable camping site before nightfall", said sister Mary Francis almost apologetically. They were cleaning up the remnants of their frugal meal when another set of rain fascicles appeared from blue skies and drenched them to the bone again.

  "What the...", Sarah thought.

  "Language!" a choir of sisters thought in response.

  "You should be talking, especially you, sister Joseph!" retorted the redhead.

  Nobody answered. Sarah and sister Mary Francis continued their descent as dense clouds kept gathering and rain splattered on and off stubbornly.

  The landscape had changed, grass land plants had given room to trees, pear trees to be precise, with vanilla vines clinging fiercely to their trunks and clambering avidly towards the suns. In the shade of the pear tree forest coffee bushes ran wild, growing clusters of red berries in a dense thicket and attracting flocks of very loud yellow and green canaries. Every now and then stately stalks of rhubarb towered over the lower plants, and puddles of water dotted the landscape, with a gentle mist floating above them in the heat of the afternoon. Rain started again, generous and rumbling, creating temporary torrents that ran down the sides of the mountain, washing off the dirt and taking it downstream.

  In the distance, in a clearing, turmeric had spread and it was in bloom, covering an entire hill with lavender flowers, reflecting the violet fruit and flowers of the eggplants on the other side. Large butterflies sprinkled the landscape, gathering nectar from the flowers of star anise that scented the humid overheated air with an intense licorice fragrance.

  "The entire floor is wet, I don't think we can camp here", said sister Mary Francis, trying to extract her feet from the thick muck with the boots still on. "We need to go back", she said, and rain started again as if summoned, drenching them.

  ***

  The next morning the rain was gone and the suns were shining in the coffee sky casting a warm glow over the pear tree rainforest. Sarah took a humidity reading and it was 52% again.

  "That's ok, you can come back now", Sarah could sense Seth laugh, "there is no point in you two getting rained on for two more days, we're good. Get a few vanilla beans so we can assess the quality."

  "Can we dump the remaining twenty poun
ds of glass beads? We can see the camp from here."

  "Bring some pears too", asked Seth, with a completely uncharacteristic but powerful craving for the fruit.

  "Got you, master Yoda, you are human after all", thought Sarah.

  "Did you say something to me?" Seth asked, sharply.

  "We're coming back."

  Chapter Twenty Three

  "We seldom think of how interconnected our lives are. We don't realize, busy as we are with daily chores and little challenges that capture all our attention sometimes, that our relationships are essential ingredients of our lives. They tie events together and make sense of the things we can't understand."

  "We've been together for decades, sharing work, meals, and purpose. There comes a time in your life when you have known a person longer than you haven't. This never happens by accident, you chose to keep this link alive for more than half of your life. In more ways than you know it is very important to you."

  They started back towards the camp with backpacks full of edible samples and giving out the most divine vanilla scent to the confusion and disappointment of several butterflies and a couple of humming birds. Despite having dumped the now pointless glass beads, their backpacks were ten pounds heavier than they were when they started.

  "There is a new transport coming next week", sister Mary-Francis said. "They are bringing more cows."

  She didn't need to give Sarah the update, everybody knew about the transport, she just wanted to break the silence. Contrary to Sarah's initial understanding not all the sisters enjoyed the vow of silence and being in the wilderness together gave the chatty Mary-Francis an opportunity to engage in pleasant conversation.

  Sarah didn't know what to answer, but she didn't want to miss the opportunity to actually communicate with another human being, so she replied.

  "I know, there is going to be quite a lot more work, I wonder why they are not sending more people too, they probably forgot there are only twelve of us."

  "Thirteen", sister Mary-Francis said. Sarah nodded her head in approval, even though Seth was more involved in decision making she was working as hard as the rest of them.

  "Do you remember what this planet looked like when we first came here?" asked Sarah. Sister Mary-Francis remembered. Sarah glanced at her for a second. The sister was a tiny woman, deceptively strong for her constitution, with a good natured round face, dark brown hair, gently waved and sparkling blue eyes. It always seemed that all the sister's being was concentrated in her eyes whose intensity revealed extraordinary spiritual strength. It was hard to tell her age, she could have been anywhere between thirty and forty-five.

  "You know, sister, we've been working together for more than ten years now and I don't know anything about you or any of the others for that matter", said Sarah in a tentative tone, careful not to intrude or offend.

  "Nobody asks", said sister Mary-Francis, as if she had been waiting for this question for a long time. "I was born Kenza Banzi, in Tangiers. My father is a doctor and my mother teaches chemistry. I have two brothers and a sister, all younger than me. When I was six or seven, my mother took me on a field trip to a lavender farm to visit the perfumery lab and I knew then this was what I wanted to do in my life. I went to college and got a doctorate in biochemistry and then I got a scholarship at the farm in Perpignan."

  Sarah was startled at how very similar their life stories were.

  "Do you keep in touch with your siblings?", she asked.

  "All the time, my brothers started an accounting firm and my sister joined my father's medical practice, she is a gerontologist."

  "How long have you been in the convent?" Sarah asked.

  "I spent three or four years there before I joined, one year or so before you came in." Again, Sarah was surprised, because she always assumed the sisters had been together forever, she couldn't imagine a time when they weren't functioning as a group.

  She took a long time to ask what she was very curious about. She knew that sister Mary-Francis could hear her through the neural interlink, however for some reason the latter decided to wait for the question to be answered out loud.

  "Why did you join the convent, sister?"

  "I got the calling, dear", sister Mary-Francis answered simply.

  "How about the others?" Sarah asked.

  "Why don't you talk to them and find out for yourself", replied the sister.

  "That would be the day", Sarah thought, laughing heartily on the inside as she imagined sister Joseph's reaction to this interview, scene reinforced by the sharp commentary the said sister offered through the neural interlink.

  Her argument could be politely summed up as an imperative for everyone to mind their own business and remember first all the tasks they had left undone for the other unfortunate team members to pick up in their stead and stop the incessant and irritating chatter that disturbed the peace of decent people. The younger generation was better served by being loving, patient, hard working, respectful, and most importantly, stopping their blabber mouths long enough so that the older and wiser such as sister Joseph could hear themselves think.

  "That went well", sister Mary-Francis barely managed to utter between irrepressible bursts of laughter and the effort of trying to keep up with Sarah's longer stride.

  "Dare I ask about Seth?" Sarah chuckled, knowing the answer already.

  "If you put half of your curiosity to better use we could have been two years ahead by now, but no, you have to waste your energy and our time gossiping like a fishwife. You should have been here already, everybody is barely drawing breath because they have to work two shifts", replied Seth through the neural interlink, irritated as always.

  "Why is she always mad?" Sarah asked herself. "We're all in the same situation and I don't feel like yelling every other word." Seth didn't answer.

  They had started construction on the permanent building that was going to house their activities, a light and airy crystalline structure with views to the fields and the sea. Years later Sarah would spend many hours inside it meditating and resting her eyes on the serene landscape but for now the construction created additional work, cramped their quarters even more and got on everybody's nerves. Bulldozers and cranes moved back and forth, constantly raising clouds of dust and making a terrible racket.

  "Why is everybody so rude?" Sarah let out, simultaneously recognizing that to ask this question was rude too.

  "Not everybody I hope", answered sister Mary-Francis gently, and Sarah realized that other than sister Joseph and lately Seth everybody was quite mild tempered and accommodating.

  "You are right, I'm sorry", Sarah said. The evening was fast approaching and she was hungry but didn't want to stop, they were probably two hours away from the camp.

  "What is it like being immortal?" sister Mary-Francis asked unexpectedly.

  "Who says I am immortal?" answered Sarah, puzzled.

  "Solomon hasn't aged a day", the sister replied. "Have you ever thought about it?"

  The future would reveal that Sarah's aging process was still going on, though greatly slowed, and she was going to become an old woman eventually, but for now nobody knew what was going to happen so she had this special aura of invincibility that both intrigued and annoyed the others. She shrugged her shoulders and didn't know what to say.

  "If that were true then after a while all of you will be gone and I'm going to be all alone", Sarah said.

  "There are always going to be people here, you know", sister Mary-Francis answered kindly.

  "Yes, but not you."

  "I can't believe I have to listen to this self-defeating pity fest!" Seth ranted through the neural interlink. "Move faster, we're not going to wait for you two for another day, the rest of us don't spend our days contemplating eternity and the meaning of life, you have to get here by nightfall!"

  "Maybe you should", Sarah thought, but widened her stride to make up the time.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  "Many people wondered about us,
about how long we've been here, about how old we are. To my knowledge I am about one hundred and sixteen now, but who is to know? After living on Terra Two for so long one is bound to lose track of Earth years. The days are different here, the years too. No two years are the same, the paths of the suns oscillate and their cycles are roughly ten Earth years long, but it's almost impossible to discern repeating patterns."

  "We lost track of our age in this coffee paradise with no seasons, how does one weigh the passing of time when one's body doesn't change? I think I'm around one hundred and sixteen now, give or take a few decades."

  "Have you seen sister Roberta?" Seth asked. She was walking very fast towards the weather station and the sisters to whom she addressed the question started following her around, just to be able to answer. If one watched Seth walk places and didn't know her one would think that the world was in a constant and imminent crisis that she and she alone was capable to address. If one spent some time with Seth as the sisters did, one knew there was no particular urgency to any of her daily tasks, she just walked fast.

  The logistics team had panicked a few times during the early years, seeing her swoosh across the landscape as if the universe was coming to an end and dropped what they were doing to assist in whatever seemed to be the emergency, only to later get used to ignore the commotion and follow up with their tasks.

  Seth didn't close any doors behind her, she just busted carelessly through them like a force of nature, so fast that she created air movements around her passage. Sarah found this somewhat endearing because it brought back fond memories of her grandfather who was exactly the same: he never sat down for more than three minutes, never spent more than fifteen minutes without planning a new activity, and never closed a door, a drawer or a cabinet. If it didn't leak, waste energy or smell, whatever it was, he left it open.