The Cocoon Trilogy

by David Saperstein

  After studying the plan for a moment more, Joe Finley concurred. “This way we are sure to bring the Watership down totally undetected. Doctor Khawaja will have to deal with the atmospheres.”

  Mary Green had ended her family visit in Scarsdale and returned to Florida. Shortly thereafter she and her husband Ben flew to Houston where they met with Dr. Khawaja to help prepare the hospital facility.

  Amos Bright, Jack Fischer, Phil Doyle and their chopper pilot buddy, Madman Mazuski, worked out of Boca Raton aboard the Manta III, preparing the cocoons in their chambers for transport to the Watership after it had been safely landed and hidden beneath the South Florida seas.

  “It will mean bringing in more new people,” Alicia said. “For the atmospheres.”

  “That’s possible,” Phillip answered. “But this can bring everyone in undetected in one shot.”

  Joe left the room to have privacy while he contacted Amos Bright, Alma and the Green’s. Margolin watched the old man carefully. After Finley was out of sight he looked at Alicia, who was standing beside him now.

  “They do it telepathically, you know.”

  “I know,” she answered.

  “All across the galaxy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d love to know how to do it. How about you?”

  “Are you kidding? I’d give my right arm to know.” Their eyes met and Margolin, a tough, dynamic scientist, who had been all business since they’d arrived at this mountain retreat, smiled warmly at his attractive Latina partner.

  “Keep the arm. It suits you,” he said softly as he touched her right arm.

  “Huh?” She blushed. Did he know she’d been attracted to him the moment they’d met in Washington?

  “Your arm.” He squeezed it gently.

  “Not that arm,” she said causally. “I meant the other one.” She smiled at him. Her eyes went to the screen. “We still won’t have a final deployment configuration for the first screen until we fix a firm point of entry.” He released her arm but continued to hold his gaze.

  “That won’t be determined until the last minute, for both screens I imagine.”

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Wrong? What could be wrong? The fishing is great and we’ve licked the problem. Quite the opposite.”

  “You’re staring at me.”

  “You’re beautiful, so I’m staring at you.”

  She blushed. “We’ve been together for eight days. How come I suddenly got beautiful?”

  “The work’s almost done here.”

  “So that’s how it is? Business before…” She didn’t finish the sentence because he immediately stood and moved very close to her.

  “Pleasure?” He smiled. She eased back.

  “You make me uncomfortable, Phillip. We’re working here... Mr. Finley is. . .”

  Margolin’s demeanor changed abruptly. He was all business again. “Of course. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  He sat down and began to work. She sat next to him and watched as he refined the model and began making printouts of the proposed trajectory for the Watership’s trip from the moon to rendezvous with the space shuttle Remembrance.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “For what?”

  “For saying I was beautiful.”

  “You are. It’s a fact.” He kept a matter-of-fact edge to his voice. She leaned over and gently kissed him on his cheek.

  “So are you, hotshot,” she whispered. A flush of red appeared on the nape of his exposed neck, but he said nothing.

  A few moments later Joe Finley returned to say that the atmospheric tanks could be secured on the moon’s far side and that the burgeoning group now firmly ensconced in the new wing of the Space Medicine Center would add physicists with expertese in the physiological and thermodynamic properties of exotic gasses.

  He had also received sad news about one of the passengers aboard the Watership, but he kept that to himself.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN – NEW LIFE IN SPACE

  It was Commander Ruth Charnofsky who gave Joe Finlay the bad news. The first woman to become pregnant had miscarried. The fetus was badly deformed. The parents were Commanders Bess and Arthur Perlman.

  The Perlman’s had requested that the other commanders not be told of the tragic event. Bess blocked her emotions and withdrew into her own private world. The six other commanders aboard, including her husband, could not enter her mind to comfort her. She was distraught, ay times weeping uncontrollably. Nevertheless, rumors of what had happened spread through the Watership to the other expectant parents. A wave of fear permeated the journey. All of the pregnant women began to wonder if their babies would be carried to term.

  Art Perlman knew he had to somehow break down the barrier that Bess had created. Physically she recuperated from her ordeal. Her body mended quickly. But after four days her mind still remained shielded, keeping out the others - keeping the pain of her loss to herself. Ben wondered if that might be nature’s way to work out the loss. He rejected the idea and doubled his efforts to console his wife.

  They had conceived the baby on Prima Maugur, a giant moon in the Pasadian System near the blue dwarf star known to us as Mira in the constellation Canis Major. This is a system where everything was huge - moons, planets, comets and asteroid materials were all of a grand scale. Gravity, even on Prima Maugur, colonized by Antareans, was enormous compared to Earth. Perhaps that had caused the fetus to be aborted. But the child was deformed, and that raised questions in everyone’s mind about the viability of pregnancies in Earth-human women of their age, even with processing. It was true that their reproductive systems had been rejuvenated, but were they functioning normally?

  Art Perlman was suspicious that the miscarriage had something to do with their being commanders. Somehow the genetic change, or perhaps the cerebral implant, or both, made normal reproduction impossible for them. Beam, the Antarean medical officer who had been on the last mission to Earth and who was now aboard the Watership, assured Art that was not the case. If anything, she maintained that the changes they experienced as commanders probably made them fertile before the other men and women in the Geriatric Brigade. It was true that Bess was the first to become pregnant. Ruth Charnofsky was second, and she too was a commander. But all signs showed that Ruth’s pregnancy was proceeding normally even though her mate, Panatoy, was not Earth-human.

  After spending time alone with Bess, holding her hand and speaking softly to her in their dimly illuminated cabin, Art Perlman finally grasped the deeper reason for Bess’s behavior. During their marriage on Earth they had no children. That had been a deliberate decision that Bess made after she discovered her husband’s involvement with organized crime. He had been a high-level, but outside, accountant and lawyer for the mob. He was never indicted, arrested or prosecuted. But his name was always in the newspapers and on radio and television. He had been called to testify at every congressional crime hearing, beginning with the Kefauver Committee in the early 1950s. Bess, whose father had been a renowned judge in Brooklyn, refused to have children, as she put it, “To give her husband and his kind an heir to train to continue in their dirty work.” She never knew that her father, the Judge, was also on the mob payroll, and Arthur never told her.

  With an inheritance of her own, and a full-time job as a saleswoman in a high-priced dress shop in downtown Brooklyn, she never accepted what she called “blood money” from her husband. Even when her widowed sister, Betty Franklin, was confined to a nursing home after having a stroke, Bess paid for her care, never bending to accept her husband’s money even though they had retired to Florida years before. Betty was now also a commander. She knew her brother-in-law’s past. She also knew about her father’s involvement. Once she had been taken from the nursing home and processed by the Antareans, Arthur Perlman asked her to keep the secret from Bess. She agreed.

  After the Perlman’s spent that bitter childless life togethe
r and were confronted with the opportunity to leave the Earth with the Antareans, Bess chose to believe that they were embarking on a new life; a new beginning. She convinced herself that her God, the One the Antareans called Master, had given Art and her a second chance. The pregnancy was confirmation of that belief. She was convinced it was a sign that Arthur had finally been forgiven for his earthly sins and life of evil. But after the miscarriage, when she withdrew into a shell, she felt this loss was a punishment for her husband’s crimes - retribution from an angry God.

  Bess was sleeping when after knocking, Beam walked quietly into the cabin. It was a spacious room decorated with a mixture of artifacts collected from Parma Quad 2, Antares, Prima Maugur, Hillet - planet in the Alphard system, and a few keepsakes the Perlman’s took with them when they left Earth five years ago. Bess lay on the bed, her back toward her husband and the Antarean visitor. Beam wore her human skin covering - that of an attractive thirty-year-old blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian. Now that they were approaching Earth, where she would have to wear it almost constantly among the staff being assembled in Houston, she wore it often aboard the Watership so as to stretch out any creases and make sure it molded to her body perfectly.

  So many years had passed since he had seen Beam’s covering Art almost didn’t recognize her when she entered the room.

  “Hello, Commander Arthur. How is Commander Bess?”

  He stood up. “She’s resting. Do I know you?” Then he reached to her mind. “It’s you, Beam! I’d forgotten. Forgive me. I never think of you this way anymore, only as Antarean.”

  “But do I still make an attractive Earth-human?”

  “Of course. Those young doctors in Houston are going to be stunned by you.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that. Anyway, this time my human skin is thicker.”

  Bess, who had awakened when Beam came in, listened to the conversation. She and Beam were old friends…good friends. She had been one of the first to discuss what being an Antarean female was like with the bright medical officer. In a society that cloned their kind, Beam still admitted there was a deep inner force within many female Antareans that harbored an urge to bear young directly - to be a mother.

  Beam walked to the side of the bed and reached out to Bess, gently stroking the older woman’s long hair. Beam recalled when Bess had begun her processing five years ago at the Antares condominium in Coral Gables. Her hair had been white then. As the rejuvenation process progressed, Bess’s hair became darker and darker until it took on a sheen and chestnut color that was now spread out on the pillow. Bess responded to her gentle touch and allowed Beam to feel her pain for an instant.

  “I am so sorry, Bess,” the young Antarean whispered. “I am here to share your grief. To help if you will allow it.” Bess did not respond. Art, sensing that the women wanted privacy, left the room. “Bess? Will you speak to me?” No response. “Then will you at least listen? We cannot find your mind and so we cannot find a way to tell you what has happened. Please. Will you listen?”

  “Yes. For you Beam, dear friend.” Bess whispered.

  “Thank you.” Beam paused, choosing her words carefully. “We are all so sorry for what happened. The baby was not right. At times, that is the Master’s way. Even with our methods…well…there are some who are just not right. But we have so many aboard who are soon to be mothers. They have heard what has happened. They are worried. Deeply concerned. This is not good for them and for the babies that are coming.” Bess turned slowly, her tear-filled eyes swollen from crying, and looked at Beam.

  “I can’t do anything about the babies that are coming.”

  “Yes, my friend, you can. You can help Commander Charnofsky and your own sister Betty. You can help me. We must calm the women and their mates. We must assure them that everything will be good . . . that this event…this journey to Motherplanet is right. That this is the Master’s work.”

  “Losing my baby was the Master’s work.”

  “Perhaps. Who is to say? I believe that these babies coming to us are a new race. An important race. All Antareans believe that their birth was preordained eons ago. It is our mission to do all we can to insure they survive and thrive.”

  “Mine didn’t,” Bess answered bitterly. She sat up, reached for tissue from the nearby night table and blew her nose.

  “I know. I am sorry. It was not right. The next will…”

  “There will be no next!”

  “Perhaps. Who is to say? Would you have believed it possible at all five years ago? Have you not traveled among the stars and looked upon the Master’s great work?” Beam was a religious Antarean, trained that way because as a medical officer she would be close to many Antareans when they died. It was part of her duties to certify an Antarean death so a replacement might be created. And sometimes death, which could be voluntary, had to be administered by a medical officer. It was the sovereign right of an adult Antarean to request his or her own demise. For a race that revered life, and for whom there was no limit to the time they had to live, they also respected the decision to end life as a rational and personal right of every adult Antarean. They did not look upon death as a finality, but rather moving on to another level of existence. Their bodies, their flesh, was renewable. The proof was that the clone that replaced the dead Antarean looked exactly like the one that preceded it, but the life force within, the spark that they said came from the Master, that which Earth-humans call soul, was unique unto each individual. That was what moved on to another level of life, or existence within the Master’s grand plan.

  Bess wiped her eyes and accepted Beam’s words. Her Antarean friend was correct. The time for self-pity and recrimination was over. The births to come were important and had to be nurtured.

  “I’m sorry,” Bess said. “I’ve been selfish.” She opened her mind and heart. Immediately the consciousnesses of the other commanders, some from across the galaxy, rushed into her brain and brought comfort and strength. Strongest of these was her husband, Art. She silently called to him. He entered their room and crossed over to the bed. Beam stood and backed away as Art and Bess embraced. As Beam closed the door behind her, allowing the Perlman’s their privacy, so did the other commanders disengage their minds from Bess, leaving her alone with her husband to mourn their loss together for the first time.

  Later that night two of the women went into premature labor within an hour of each other. They were friends - both originally from St. Louis. They had been recruited by Andrea and Frank Hankinson who were the first people recruited by Ben Green, Joe Finley, Art Perlman and Bernie Lewis in Florida five years ago.

  After Parma Quad 2, Frank Hankinson, who was a commander, led a group of his friends to live and work in the Alphard system which is located in the constellation Hydra. It is a six-planet system with the dwarf Alphard as solar source. Two of the planets, Betch and Hillet, are populated. A humanoid life form evolved on Betch, which is a seasonal water planet about twice the size of Earth. The Antareans established relations with the Betch civilization thousands of years ago and because the Betch were not space travelers, helped them colonize Hillet, a less hospitable planet devoid of humanoid life or civilization. Over the millennia the Antareans changed the atmosphere and weather conditions on Hillet, warming the surface and increasing the rainfall, thus causing agriculture to flourish. With a stable food supply the population increased. Today, although the Betch and Hillet histories record the colonization, the Hilletines consider themselves a race apart from their Motherplanet Betch and have their own language, technology, religions and governmental forms. The relations between the two planets are cordial, but neither are races that chose to travel in deep space. The Antareans provide the only transport between the planets.

  It was on Hillet that Frank Hankinson, his wife and three other couples, all from St. Louis, settled and worked as teachers and ambassadors. And it was there that these two women became pregnant.

  Arthur Perlman watched his wife administer to the two women in labor.
His heart went out to her, but she was strong, using her telepathic abilities to soothe the anxious mothers-to-be. Frank entered the labor room, which had been hastily prepared by Beam’s Antarean medical team, woefully inexperienced in the matter of human birth. Although they were not expecting, the Hankinson’s had come along on the trip because he was a commander. She was not. During the trip they had discussed the idea of trying to have a baby, but after seeing Bess miscarriage, they decided to wait until there was more data regarding birth among the Brigade Earth-human women.

  “I’d hoped we could have made it to Earth before this,” Frank told Art.

  “I guess even at Parman guide speed, nature will have her way,” he answered wryly. “Babies will be born in their own time, no matter how many light years traveled.”

  Bess and her sister Betty were with one of the women, Julia Messina, a stout, dark-eyed woman with short black hair that offset an oval, olive-completioned face that reflected her Sardinian heritage. Julia’s husband, Vincent, a fireplug of a man whose leathery skin bore witness to his years in the construction trades, hovered nearby, his brow furrowed with concern. Both sisters concentrated on the couple, keeping their minds relaxed and positive as Julia’s labor intensified.

  The other couple, Lillian and Abe Erhardt, were calmer and fatalistic about their baby’s birth. Ruth Charnofsky, herself five months pregnant, and Rose Lewis, also a commander, were present to care for Lillian, who as a younger woman forty-five years ago, had given birth to twin boys in the back seat of a taxi. Her husband, then a young Marine corporal fighting against the Japanese in World War II, was ten thousand miles away across the Pacific on a tiny, rock of an island called Iwo Jima. Now, they held hands and offered their appreciation to Ruth and Rose, whose telepathic powers helped to ease Lillian’s labor.

  “Looks like it’s going well,” Art said to Frank. He smiled at Bess. “I think we serve no purpose here.”