by Sky Corbelli
Chapter 30
Always Look On the Bright Side
Ezra sat in bed staring out the window. It was sunny out. Of course it was sunny out, now that he was stuck in bed. And sick. Who got sick anymore? People with partially decompressed bodies who ended up outside of Sanctuary running around in the rain, that's who. He sighed. Well, on the plus side, at least he wasn't hauling around lumber.
His eyes wandered around the landscape until they came to rest on the blight line. Tiny rivulets glistened in the sunlight as water ran off the slick black surface, pooling here and there, throwing back the day's brilliance in odd colors. It stretched off to the horizon, just endless, lifeless, blasted land as far as the eye could see. “How did you get there?” he whispered to himself.
“You don't know?”
Ezra started and turned to see Kelly standing in the doorway with a bowl of broth for him. She looked concerned. “Everyone knows about the blight. It's in the Will,” she explained as she handed Ezra the bowl, “and the Son of Lightning who comes every few months, he always likes to remind us of it.”
“I must have missed that lesson.” He gave her a hopeful smile.
The little girl nodded and closed her eyes, reciting, “And in those days, Fire did stir the hearts of men to wickedness. And then did Lightning descend to deliver them from their sinful ways. 'Out,' he commanded in a voice that shook the heavens and made the earth cringe, 'you shall not corrupt my people!' And Fire did come forth against him. But mighty Lightning cast her away, driving her across the land. And the line of blight was carved across the face of the world, that all may look on it and know the truth.” She smiled up at Ezra. “I can remember the Will real good.”
“That is very impressive, Kelly. Do you think you could tell me more about the Will later?” Maybe this mystery religion was the key to whatever Gaav had been talking about the day before. He had to find out more.
“Well, you're sick, so I'm not supposed to bother you,” she dragged the tip of her foot across the floor, the very picture of a bored kid. “Plus I have chores to do, and papa says we need to make sure Daniel's eating lots 'cuz he's real skinny.”
“That's all right,” Ezra smiled, taking a sip from the steaming bowl, “maybe next time.” He blew on the broth to cool it down.
Kelly nodded, eyes fixed on the wall distractedly, then she skipped to the door. She paused there, half out of view, and said, tentatively, “Ezra?” she waited until he looked over at her. “Thank you.” She quickly vanished through the doorway, her footsteps retreating down the hall to the stairs beyond.
Ezra smiled to himself. Maybe he really didn't need to find out anymore right now. Maybe he knew just enough.
==
“I wish I knew how to do something useful,” Ezra grumbled as Mat and Sarah joined him with their lunch.
“What do you mean?” Mat asked between bites of what looked like a real pork sandwich. Ezra had never even heard of anyone eating real pork anymore, just the recycled and synthesized stuff he'd known all his life. He scowled at his teammates. They were getting all the good food, too.
“You know, like all that medical stuff you can do. Where did you learn that?” He turned to Sarah as she idly picked apart a baked potato. “And where did you learn to make glass? Does the Guild have some kind of special training program that I don't know about?”
Mat laughed. “The Matananes have always been in medicine, man. I'm the black sheep of the family with my electrical engineering obsession.” He took a long drink of water. “But I know just enough to get by. You should see what my sisters can do with a needle and some string. It's practically art compared to my bone sawing.”
“It's a family tradition that we learn to work with our hands and make things the old fashioned way,” Sarah shrugged indifferently. “Back when Finley Hughes founded the family, he told his son, 'If I can't trust you to make something mankind has been making for thousands of years correctly, how can I trust you with the secrets that make our family great?'” She snorted out a laugh. “Of course, we didn't have many secrets back then, but the tradition stuck.”
Ezra shook his head. “I don't know how to do anything useful or special like that.”
Sarah gave him a quizzical look. “You're joking, right?”
“No, I really wish I had spent some time working with my hands or picking up a trade. Maybe when we get back to Sanctuary you guys can show me a thing or two–”
Mat grabbed Ezra by both shoulders, interrupting him. “Ezra, I'm going to say this slowly so you get it: you are the only person alive who knows how to make wormholes. You regularly bend what the rest of us see as the absolute laws of physics, and play with space and time like they were made just for you.”
“Well, yeah,” Ezra squirmed uncomfortably, “but you know, that's just math, a little science, really. Anyone could do that.”
Mat and Sarah looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing. Ezra couldn't help but join in after a few seconds. “I'm sure you'll find some way to help,” Mat said breathlessly.
Sarah wiped tears from her eyes as she stood up. “Come on Mat, some of us have 'special' things to do, things that mere wormhole craftsmen couldn't possibly understand.” She patted Ezra's leg and hiccuped a little as they walked from the room. “Can't do anything useful.” Ezra heard her choke out in the hallway, followed by a fresh round of howling laughter from Mat.
Ezra rubbed his eyes and stared out the window again, following the streams and pools of water coming off the blight line for the thousandth time. He reached the edge and frowned as he caught a glimpse of water running past the rocks and toward town. On closer inspection, he saw that hundreds of tiny streams were flowing across the already soaked earth. In fact, there were men down at the town's edge piling up sandbags to hold back a small but incessant flood. Ezra suddenly had an idea.
==
Mat and Sarah returned with dinner to find Ezra on the floor, industriously working to fill it with painstakingly exact equations and diagrams. Mat followed the trail of Ezra's work across the floor and up the wall next to the window, letting out a low, impressed whistle. “That sure is a lot of... well, a lot of something. Where did you even get chalk?”
Ezra finished his line, swiveled his head to glance at his friends in the doorway and blinked at the food. “Oh, thanks.” He grabbed the plate from Mat's hand and began tearing into a slice of bread as he consulted the display on the wormhole controller, which he had appropriated for some of the more demanding calculations. “Now I think...” He glanced out the window and made a deft adjustment. “Yes, this should just about do it.” Keying in the final variable brought up a holographic display of a grid, various sectors highlighted and numbered across its surface. “That'll be enough.” He nodded to himself in satisfaction, meal already forgotten.
“Ezra,” Sarah said slowly, “what are you doing here?”
“Oh, hi!” he said brightly to Mat and Sarah, as if seeing them for the first time. “Well, I was thinking, and like you said all I really know is the physics behind wormholes, so I thought to myself, why not try to map out the area of the town? Given the semi-random division of buildings as a sector map, it was fairly trivial using Higgs boson resonance. Since my wormhole generator already searches out the most likely quantum tunneling route, it was practically a joke to use it for something as mundane as mass estimation. But you see, it all comes down what we know about earth-crowned; Gaav in particular, along with the fundamental composition of the earth under the town. From there, it was just math. And I can do math!” He grinned proudly up at them from his place on the floor.
Mat reached forward and placed a hand on Ezra's forehead, frowning. “He doesn't feel much warmer than this morning,” he muttered quietly to Sarah, “but maybe his brain cooks at a lower temperature than a normal person's.”
Sarah sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I get that you're very proud of... something here, Ezra. But some of us have been working hard all
day and would have appreciated a place to sit that isn't covered in chalk.” She held out the cup she had brought along and dropped it, splashing Ezra with cider as it hit the floor, then turned and left.
“Don't you see?” He turned to Mat, confusion and excitement flashing over his features. “I mean, I know I can't do the kind of things you guys can do, but I solved the problem! It really wasn't that hard, once I looked at it from the right–”
“That's nice Ezra,” Mat patted Ezra on the head and chuckled a little. “See you in the morning.” He closed the door on his way out.
“Well then...” Ezra looked over his calculations again, absently toying with the cup of cider. A grin slowly spread across his face. “Stand back everyone,” he whispered to himself, “I'm going to try science.”