He exhaled, fought off the desire to scream and tried to step around her. She quickly cut off his path.
“Why did you talk to the boy without a suit?” She put her hand on his shoulder, tenderly. Every time she touched him lately, it pained him.
He took her hand in his, held it comfortably for a moment. “Lotte, we are no longer what we could have been. It would be better if you did not touch me.”
It was clear they would have been more than colleagues and almost were recently, immediately preceding her betrayal with Doctor Hossler and then her forced isolation.
“He could be put into an air tight chamber on one of the ships. Tuna’s ship like Doc Hossler suggested.”
“This is really just becoming sad.” He eyed her with a complete lack of trust and respect. “It was not enough you sent out a human boomerang into that world to bring back potential annihilation onto us all, but now you want to take the advice of one of the infected.”
“Remember what Doctor Wescott observed? It can make you smarter too in certain stages of it.” She was grabbing at straws, which never worked really, especially with a man like Doctor Quarna.
How had a voice he once found seductive become the last voice in the world he wanted to hear? “Lotte, we are not in the people saving business. We are in the species saving business. We can talk about the boy only after the 117 have safely left our atmosphere.”
Doctor Becker let him escape past her. She stood there without direction, doubting her own judgment, trusting his, and devastated for the small boy they called Trumpet.
* * *
THE CHATTER AND BUZZ that usually accompanied morning in the dome had been reduced to a tomblike attention to pre-launch work tasks. The traffic up and down the starship ramps was heavier than it had ever been.
The youngest kids were still naïve enough to be cheerful, but they always mimicked their elders which today meant to stay busy and keep chit chat to a minimum.
Adam climbed down the ladder from the lookout post. When he got to the ground, he found Ozzie waiting for him. Adam had heard from Tuna about the fight the girls had the night before, the fight about his inappropriate relationship with Gen. He had no interest in discussing it.
“We need to talk,” Ozzie started.
“No. Not about what the girls talked about. It’s pointless.” Adam walked down the wall of the dome to avoid a few passing kids. Ozzie joined him much to Adam’s dismay. “Listen, Oz, we might be launched in eight days. That will put an end to all of this.”
“Don’t you think it should be resolved before then?”
“Nothing to resolve. It happened. It wasn’t planned. She goes on one ship. I go on the other. All four ships target different corners of the galaxy for colonial exploration.” Adam made no effort to hide his displeasure at the topic. “It’s a classic non-issue.”
“Sylvia was Gen’s best friend. Is this how you want them to say goodbye? They will be forever hurt by this. And Zeke? You didn’t always see eye to eye but you’re like brothers. You know you are.”
Adam let go, craning his neck to consider the face of the ES3, his massive ship. It towered over everything. They did not always look up. It became easy to forget the size of their ships, the vastness of the universe and the permanence of forever.
Ozzie had tried, but Adam was ignoring him and admiring his ship. “If not for you, brother, do it for the girls. Make this right.” Ozzie punched his friend’s shoulder softly like boys often did in the Eden Project and left Adam alone with his thoughts.
* * *
TUNA HAD BEEN UP through the night. Translating one hundred year old computer language would have been a breeze, but there were a few functions that had become obsolete in the century of tech evolution that had separated him from that language.
Three major workarounds turned night into day, but finally he had it nailed down. He began mapping the area between himself and the huge ship that was out there some ninety miles away.
He hit the speak button on his scrollpad, “Got it. We should be good to go. It’s mapping.”
“Nice work, Tuna!” Claudia said on his scrollpad.
“I started the grid a mile out. Might take hours to map all the way to the mystery ship.”
“Well done. I have the ship at 84 miles and closing. This makes all the difference. Copy.”
“Copy,” Tuna said.
“Go get some sleep, Tuna. We need your mind fresh the coming days.”
“Copy.” He liked saying the word copy. Claudia was the only Project staff member who said that. It felt like one of those old war movies he loved. Sleep? Sure, why not? Later. Now that the SAR mapping tool had been Tuna-fied and linked to Claudia, he could flip back to his satellite.
If he could figure out how to point the thing and then find the ship before nightfall, he would show Claudia. If not, why tell them? He would only get in trouble again for unauthorized activities.
* * *
TRUMPET PACED AROUND his chamber barefoot wearing gray pants and a faded brown tee shirt. The clothes were oversized on him. His hands were empty. He kept squeezing his grip. He felt vulnerable without a weapon. The trumpet was nowhere in sight.
Doctor Becker showed up at the viewing window. She tried to hide her despair from him. Not only did he notice her sadness, but he could feel it. She lifted her right hand to show him what she held. The trumpet. His smile appeared and vanished in an instant. It was a definite improvement over his last attempt on Doctor Hossler’s boat.
She buzzed herself into his chamber. He did not run to her. He did not snatch the trumpet. He did not bludgeon her with it. He backed away shyly from the slight woman.
“It’s okay. Take it. It’s yours.”
She stretched her arm out to him, offering up the trumpet. He did not move. He studied her and the trumpet a long time without taking it. When she nodded again, he snatched it violently out of her hand, startling her at first, but ultimately making her laugh.
“Any friend of Doctor Hossler’s is a friend of mine.”
When he realized the mouthpiece was missing he was let down. His disappointment meant one thing. He could play. Her little test had worked. She quickly produced the mouthpiece and held it out in the palm of her hand. He warmed to her, moved his hand slowly to hers, felt her hand and lifted the mouthpiece out of her palm.
She walked away giving him some space. He watched suspiciously until she stopped moving. He nodded for some reason like they were in agreement, but about what she did not know. He put the mouthpiece back where it belonged and his trumpet was complete.
“Can you play it?”
He considered the question and considered her. Somewhere along the line he had learned even questions could be tricks. He decided to trust her. He nodded. He could play the trumpet.
“That’s good,” she said, encouraging him. “I think I have an idea.
* * *
SYLVIA TURNED THE OTHER WAY when Gen approached hoping she would pass. No such luck. She had come to talk to her.
“Hey, Gen,” Maya said kindly before tapping Cassie’s shoulder.
Maya and Cassie walked away to allow Sylvia and Gen to talk. They were standing just down the corridor from the commissary.
“Adam and I have always been like oil and water,” Gen began, “I don’t know what it means but I went to find Tuna under the trees and Adam was there. We kissed. It didn’t make any sense.”
Sylvia listened, still hurt but weighing Gen’s words.
“You’re my best friend, Sylvia. I feel horrible and I’m sorry.”
“I thought Cassie was your best friend?” Sylvia said, softly.
“Yeah, well, she’s everybody’s best friend. That doesn’t count.”
Sylvia smiled slightly, happy to have Gen back in her life.
“I don’t want to lie to you, Syl. It’s fun to kiss a boy, but Adam’s not my boy and it won’t happen again.”
Sylvia spotted him first and then Gen. Adam. He was standing ten
feet away, in the door frame to the boy’s restroom. They could tell by his face he had heard them. At least the last bit. The bit about it won’t happen again.
“Good,” he said. “You’re friends.” He turned left instead of right and walked away from the commissary.
* * *
THE ORIGINAL EIGHT had dinner as six that night. Tuna and Adam never showed up. They had pizza and asparagus. They had limited, but pleasant conversation considering the stress they were all under and no one ever mentioned Adam. Cassie reminded them Tuna was working with Claudia on tech stuff.
Having Gen back in the fold helped to keep things cheery. At one point Zeke and Gen exchanged a few words. This pleased the others greatly.
The other tables were less cheery. Exhaustion and uncertainty had fatigued the younger kids so when the first kids started to stand up, the commissary quickly began to clear.
It was at exactly that moment something unforgettable happened. It started with a whisper, a woman’s encouraging voice, followed by silence and then, finally, a slow haunting note rose up and filled the entirety of the dome with music.
They stood at the tray return, between tables; they turned back from the door. They even listened from the corridor. Isaac heard it from the restroom. Doctor Quarna listened from his lab. Adam heard it from the dark space underneath his ship where he sat hidden from everyone.
It played on every speaker. It played loud, ringing sweetly in their ears, rising and falling with the boy’s fingers. He made his trumpet speak to the hearts and souls of the scant few survivors of the species.
A holiday song from a lost time played loudly, sorrowfully, to a world without holidays. The power of the music overwhelmed them. The trumpet reached inside them, massaging their fears and calming their savage souls.
Inside ES2 Tuna slept soundly until Claudia buzzed in on his scrollpad. “Tuna, listen. It’s Trumpet,” she said, then piped the song into his flight deck. He woke to the pleasant sound of the trumpet song.
Doctor Pappas and Doctor Naseer found Doctor Becker at the console in the lab next to the boy’s chamber. They stopped cold when they saw the boy playing his trumpet through the viewing window.
Doctor Pappas shook his head with a sly smile and approached the console. He reached around her to punch a few buttons.
“If you are going to do it,” he said, “you have to do it right.”
On the floor of the commissary, the little ones had started to gather around Cassie and Gen when they all suddenly gasped. They pointed up at the big screen. The small boy was now on every screen in the dome, playing his trumpet with his eyes closed.
An explosion of smiles swept through the crowd.
“He’s so small,” Cassie said.
“Like us,” a little boy said.
Ada pulled on Gen’s shirt sleeve from behind.
Gen turned back to angelic Ada, who like the boy’s song was a stunning reminder of the unmatchable beauty of the human species.
“What is it?” Ada asked with her little voice.
The other little kids turned to Gen to hear her answer.
Cassie saw the kids gathering around and smiled to Gen, forgiving her and loving her all at once. They had watched the old holiday movies together and knew what the song must represent. Gen squatted to be on the little ones’ level. She smiled into Ada’s glistening blue eyes.
“It’s Christmas,” Gen said softly just for Ada.
“Christmas,” Ada repeated happily for everyone to hear. The little ones lifted their eyes again to the boy on the screen and listened to his beautiful, mysterious song called Christmas.
-24-
The song ended. Tuna rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He was shocked to see the skies already darkening outside the dome.
“You have to be kidding me. The satellite won’t be any good at night.” He punched down hard on his keypad.
“Hey, Claudia, anything happening with the SAR? Did it finish mapping?”
“Not sure it’s working,” she responded. “The DJ’s boat is thirty-five miles out and the SAR mapping has made it to forty miles but it never actually mapped his boat.”
“Strange. And the big one?”
“It’s closing, but still sixty-eight miles out. It’s moving slow. We think it may be out of fuel.”
“Copy,” Tuna said, frustrated. “Let me rework the SAR setup, make sure it’s right.”
“Copy,” Claudia signed off.
“Ugh,” Tuna grunted to himself. “Of course I slept all afternoon, I was up all night. Nothing’s working!”
* * *
THEY MET IN THE doctor’s lounge for Doctor Quarna’s comfort. This was a meeting unlike any before. If the ship approaching proved to be more than a derelict military or cruise ship floating the high seas, then the island could be empty of kids and purpose within a week.
“It’s not a derelict ship,” Claudia announced. “I hadn’t considered the current. It’s moving toward us and it’s counter current.”
“Why is it moving so slowly?” Doctor Naseer wondered aloud.
“Maybe they are playing dead,” Doctor Pappas suggested. “But for what purpose?”
“Are they baiting us to investigate them?” Doctor Becker asked.
Doctor Quarna listened to his colleagues’ ideas. He weighed those and more in his head. “We can’t be spooked by the ship. It is still more than fifty miles away.”
“True,” Claudia said. “But it could be here in an hour any time it wants. It has fuel. That’s how it fights the current.”
“An hour?” Doctor Becker said. “I had no idea it’s that close.”
“The dome is built to withstand any handheld weaponry. Guns, knives, even grenades.”
“And we have mounted automatics on top of the dome among other things,” Claudia said shocking all but Doctor Quarna.
“We do?” Doctor Pappas said. “How could they have withstood sixteen years of weather up there?”
“I go up there every Tuesday to clean and reload them,” Claudia said proudly. The others, even Doctor Quarna, were impressed by this fact.
“I had no idea,” Doctor Becker repeated.
“So why are we worried? Why did we go into pre-launch?” Doctor Naseer asked.
“Because of the unknown,” Doctor Quarna said. “And because if they see us, they will tell others and they will keep coming like locusts.”
“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t they just give up?” Doctor Pappas did not understand.
“The blood,” Doctor Quarna said. “The concentration of uninfected blood in this dome will drive them to madness. There will be no end to their coming.”
His words silenced the room. They worried for the Project and they worried for the kids, but they also worried for themselves if they ever ventured to leave that island.
Claudia was less occupied with fear and more concerned with logistics. “Not that it would ever come to this, but remember we have handheld weapons stored away. High-tech stuff. If Doctor Hoss’s limpers ever get inside here or if we ever leave the island after the kids are gone, we got good guns.” She smiled but no one else did. Claudia came from a military family going back 240 years.
“Everyone, please relax, get some sleep,” Doctor Quarna said rising with the help of a half crutch. “If all else fails we could always send your boy Trumpet out there to deal with any hostiles.”
His attempt at levity worked and they all followed Doctor Quarna slowly out the door on their way to get a few hours sleep.
* * *
THE YOUNG ONES SLEPT better that night. The Christmas song Trumpet played had managed to calm them. Anyone over ten years old slept lightly at best.
Gen lay in her bed wondering how many more nights she would stare up at that familiar ceiling. A dialogue-heavy movie played on her scrollpad that lay next to her head on the wide pillow.
She liked the comfort of the breezy banter, but was not paying attention to the movie. Doctor Quarna wanted her to be breezy with
everyone. Did he have any idea how hard that could be for a girl who loves a boy she can never have? If this pre-launch is not aborted, they will be flying to different parts of the galaxy in one week. Take that Romeo and Juliet.
* * *
ADAM WAS KISSING GEN in a forest. Not the synthetic kind protected by a foot of impenetrable glass, but the wilderness kind with exotic insects and poisonous flowers and misty mornings. He turned his head at the sound of a wispy-voiced fairy singing. Her voice echoed through the trees. When he turned back, Gen was gone. The forest was empty and alien.
The singing again, but now Adam was awake beneath the ES3 with his arm for a pillow. He sat up quickly in the near dark, disoriented.
The girl’s voice had become more human, but she was still singing an old time morning song about sunshine. He knew it well. All the kids had learned it from Doctor Becker.
He could see the little girl’s legs walking next to a small robot. They were out for a morning walk, Ada and her little robot Mrs. Wiggles. Up to greet the morning sun.
* * *
ANOTHER ALL-NIGHTER on the flight deck was all it took.
“I sent it, Claudia,” Tuna said into his scrollpad.
“Good work, Tuna,” Claudia replied. “Get some sleep.”
A normal person would do that, Tuna thought, and then he flipped up his satellite project onto the screen. He cracked his knuckles. “But it’s almost morning and I have a satellite to tame.”
* * *
CLAUDIA PUT TUNA’S SAR MAPPING tool up on the main screen. She rubbed her eyes and made sure the tool was online and working.
“And we’re up,” she said rising from her seat cheerfully to walk to the door. “Time for some strong coffee.”
By the time she entered the hallway, her good cheer had broken out into a full smile. She was not sure if her euphoric feeling was from the back-to-back all-nighters or from the fact that Tuna’s new tool would allow them to see everything coming their way no matter how big or small.
“Damn, forgot my mug,” she said spinning back to the control center.
She walked back to the huge control switchboard still smiling and eyeing her mug. When she reached down to pick it up, her eyes lifted to the big screen.
The Eden Project (Books One & Two) Page 13