When Adam and Jon returned, she found herself wanting to keep the discovery secret. The microbiologists inquired about the organisms but she reported that they had disappeared. She’d certainly provide the scientists with more samples if she found them. It was clearly a lie, but who was to question her? She found herself spending more time than necessary in this particular chamber. Strange things were happening. Lichens began glowing dimly. Algae were growing where no light penetrated, a feat impossible for photosynthetic creatures. An unprecedented merger was occurring between organisms from two planets. And then, there were the dreams.
Pinchot was a napper. She never slept a full night. Rather, she stretched out in a still spot either in her offices topside or on a clump of moss or grass in an underground lab and tumble into slumber. Her dreams were always vivid, occupied by all the smells, colors, and sounds of the world she wanted to make.
When she slept in this unique chamber though, her dreams diverted toward a darker but compelling place. Images and voices clung to a greenish mist. Some she recognized as friends and family long gone. Others were anonymous faces peering at her with serene countenance. Most troubling were the children, especially the grinning young boy who she recognized as a victim of the breach event. She’d known his mother, a talented chemistry teacher. The grief hung on that woman for years. The woman and her family eventually wandered back to earth, leaving a hole in their chemistry faculty and a twist in Pinchot's gut.
When the figures began appearing during her waking moments, Pinchot suspected something was very wrong biologically or that she was losing her mind. She sampled the air and the water. The usual mixture of gasses and molecules were there, so she was not being poisoned by a chemical exhalation of one of the new life forms taking hold. Her mind seemed sound. No magical mystery tour for Ferris. The images, breathless words, and cold touches of the ghosts never appeared in her other experimental chambers or aboveground. She was convinced that whatever she was encountering was real and that it was related to the life evolving in the cavern.
Adam was seven when she made contact with one of the others. She was taking oxygen readings near a small pool of martian water. A hand, nearly solid, reached out of the liquid and touched her wrist. She dropped her computer and then saw or felt - it was difficult to process the sensation- a day on earth. Smoke snaking its way between ruined, cragged trees. Clouds, acrid and dull, wisped in fetid wind. The soil was cracked. No life. It was whispering. No life. She realized she was not experiencing the past but seeing a future. A future for earth.
She slipped from reality and floated in a world without substance. Light, sound, taste, touch - they all were mixed. Memories and premonitions were as substantive as the sun or the stars or the martian dust. At this moment, she knew that she was chosen. She needed to act. But not now. She would know when.
The next day she returned home to colony 1. Jon could sense a change in her. Not physical. She seemed her cheerful, somewhat spacy self. But he felt as if something had changed in her spiritually. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn that she was glowing ever so slightly. Of course that was a trick of the light, how the sunshine and lamps reflected on her skin.
When Adam was ten, she awoke to an anxious voice on a transmitter. A technician in the southern region reported a catastrophic failure of the regional power grid. An unanticipated meteor impact had incapacitated several colonies. They were evacuating. Unknown to the technician, the cavern of ghosts, of solace, of depths beyond understanding was in danger as well. Its energy source was linked to the grid and would have grown dark and cold. She quickly rushed to a shuttle, spending the tense minutes at the helm nursing the sinking feeling one must have when their child is drowning and help is too far away. When she arrived, light and heat were gone, except at the location of the pool in which the two springs fed. By headbeam, she stumbled to the site and tucked a little of the water into a stasis container. It glowed for a few hours but then dimmed and died out.
It took three months to restore power to the grid. When the plasma panels hummed and artificial sun rose again in her cavern, she was amazed at the grief she felt as she scanned the brown, shriveled world before her. In the years to come, she tried to restore life to that place. Vegetation returned. But the ghosts did not.
Chapter 9 - Death
Adam and Maggie stood in the airlock where William Holst had taken his last breath of dry, artificial colony air. Adam fondled Heldren’s data puck in his hand. "Here we go," he said as he placed his finger on the activation key. The puck became transparent. A small screen appeared on its surface indicating that the recording device was located and being accessed. Within a few moments, the accumulated images of thousands of lockages over decades were in his grasp. Somewhere within those digitized files were the final moments of Holst's life.
They decompressed the files in Sarah’s lab. "I think I found it," Sarah announced. "You all ready?"
Adam and Maggie nodded. And the imagery unfolded.
The camera faced the heavy airlock door. The panel that activated the lock was out of sight. Holst appeared in the video stepping backward - he was talking to someone, pleading. A small data pad sat loosely in his hand. He waved it, as if in offering to the unknown person.
"Maggie, was a data tablet found with Holst's body or in the airlock?" Adam queried.
"No. But that doesn't mean that it wasn’t overlooked out there. They were assuming a suicide, so no formal investigation occurred. They collected the stiff, dragged him inside, and that was the end of it. The death was caused by asphyxiation and decompression."
In the shimmering scene, Holst's shoulders slumped. He was resigned to his fate. He turned toward the airlock. Warning lights blinked, the doors opened, and the frail man walked into oblivion.
"Hm, wait a minute." Sarah was pointing at a shadow on the wall to Holst's left. "There’s a shadow when the light blinks. See?" She pointed at the screen’s grainy image.
The shadow was slim and unquestionably feminine in form.
"I think Holst had company," Maggie muttered.
Adam knew the shadow belonged to his mother. "I need to go."
Within moments, Adam powered up his shuttle and was en route to his mother's most recent experiment- a patch of mosslands she was tending at the equator of the planet. His vessel settled near a tiny station, a shack really, where Pinchot and her staff were housed. Storage containers, all-terrain vehicles, canisters, and stray equipment littered the area. The air was balmy for mars, hovering just above freezing. Ferris and her crew would not be in the building. This time of day, high noon on mars, they were dispersed throughout the research zone collecting data, setting up experimental plots. Adam inspected his environmental suit. All colonists had a special relationship with their suits. The saying about babies on the planet was suit first, diaper second. The suit was the one assurance against a cold, unpleasant departure from life on the surface of mars.
Suit on, pressurized, and checked, Adam set out to find his mother. He followed a well-worn path between looming boulders and through deep crevasses until he came across a lean, lanky figure kneeling in the dust next to a path of emerald fuzz. The man stood. "Well, well, well. Adam Fuerst. What brings you here?" It was Henry Bodson, a close friend of his father and mother.
"Looking for mom. Is she near?"
"About a kilometer to the west." He pointed down a rock shaded path.
"Thanks." Adam began walking away.
"Congratulations on your promotion to Principal. You’ll be a great leader. I still can’t believe that little boy I used to swing around in the air is now the boss."
"Thanks Henry." Adam wondered whether Henry sensed the remorse and sadness in his voice over the communications line.
Adam marveled at the vast beauty of the terraformed mars landscape even as his life was spinning into confusion and disbelief. Life now adorned the rocks reflecting all colors of the rainbow. Signs of life on mars were far from a single shade of green. Rather
, the lichens and algae were all colors- orange, purple, even maroon, accentuating the planet's natural red dust. Given the time of day, there were few shadows and he was actually beginning to sweat. He adjusted the ventilation in his suit.
He shimmied around a boulder and there she was - Ferris Pinchot in her glory. Her hands rested on her hips as she stood surveying the landscape around her. Adam was dumbstruck. Before her stood a small plot of sturdy woody shrubs. "Vascular plants on mars?" The amazement was evident in his voice.
"Hello my boy." She said without turning to him. "We may get these critters to stick. Did you know that the plants are starting to boost the local oxygen concentrations? We’re finally getting somewhere. Now if I can live another two centuries, I may get some satisfaction." She laughed to herself. "I expect you’re not here to pay your old mother a social visit."
Adam searched for the words. Was there a delicate way he could approach her? The little boy awed by his mother cowered in her shadow. Finally, the tension burst. The shadow fizzled.
"Were you with Holst the night he died?" Adam sat on a slab of basalt. There. It was done.
"Yes, Adam my dear, I was." She walked toward him, brushed off dirt from the rock, and sat down next to her son. "You’re not the only one obsessed with those awful days before you were born. Strange how a horrible event could be filled with such opportunity. I guess that’s how it always goes." She sighed. He did not look at her.
"Were you responsible?"
She seemed genuinely confused. "For the breach? Of course not. Your father and I could have easily died. And it interrupted our coffee break. We began to suspect Will early on though. He was very ambitious and a bit like me. Dreamed of turning this place into a garden. I think he was led astray by the company and was deluded into thinking the event would set us on a new, productive trajectory, which it did, even though there were unfortunate consequences." She closed her eyes, chin lowered to her chest.
"So what happened the night he died?"
"It all started years ago. He confided in me. A deep, ugly secret. He had a weaponized version of the bacterial strain that caused the event. Something infinitely more dangerous to the colonies. In fact, he believed it could hobble entire civilizations. I spent years trying to guess where he kept it hidden. The solution was so obvious. But you know that already." She touched his shoulder with her gloved hand.
Adam stiffened. "So you and Holst?"
"Years ago, Adam. Long ago, when I was young and lonely and so very sad and angry. Confused, really. I love your father, even if he was too willing to indulge me in my incessant tinkering. And in dragging you everywhere with me. I know that you feel so conflicted." She paused, waiting for some response. Adam remained silent, hidden in his suit. "Well, back to your question about the night Will walked out onto the surface. He came to me with news that the vial was gone from his apartment and that we needed to get it back. I informed him that I had taken care of it."
Adam suddenly felt very heavy, his feet unable to shift. "What do you mean by that, mom?"
"Earth, Adam. We are all exiles of our own blind indulgence. When you were a boy I met someone, or perhaps something, that made me realize that there’s no future there. For life. Life is so very rare. And I’m afraid we don't understand even the half of it. There’s much more beneath the surface, below the molecules, the energy. Life is a doorway to something magnificent and exceptional. I simply cannot allow that to dim any further."
Adam shifted slightly. "Mom, what did you do?"
She smiled sadly. Her blue eyes were now grey. "I’m unwinding it all. Earth will be my grandest garden."
Chapter 10 – Separation
Adam felt the ground tilt. He fought back the urge to rip off his helmet and stared blankly at his mother. She walked back to the vegetation and resumed collecting data. He called to her repeatedly. But she was either ignoring him or had shut off her communications link. He left her to her casual tinkering and rushed back to the shuttle.
Tuning in the general communications network, he accessed hundreds of media reports - the chatter on both mars and earth. All was quiet, except for the usual bad news – starvation, skirmishes, droughts, fires, a massive hurricane raging up the Atlantic, and an earthquake in the Antarctic provinces. If a catastrophic event was occurring, it was not yet apparent. And did his mother force Holst onto the surface? Should he call security and have them bring her in? All of his confidence and drive had vanished. For once, he did not know what to do.
Maggie met Adam at the shuttle that evening back at Colony 1. "First, we need to determine whether your mother arranged any shipments to earth recently," Maggie calmly noted. "Did she say that she sent the contents of the vial to earth?" Maggie’s command soothed Adam’s panic.
Adam paced back and forth in the cargo berth. "She never said that exactly. But I know in my heart that’s what she intends to do. She’s had it for a year and nothing has happened. So, I’m assuming that she hasn’t pulled the trigger."
"Then we need to first get her into custody and then we need to find the vial and destroy it. Adam, I know you are beholden to her. But this is your greatest responsibility to all of us. God knows how many lives are at risk here."
"I’ll make the call." Adam was about to put the most popular person on the planet and the love of his life into prison. He was crumpling. The little boy was screaming.
In the very same drab room in which Tash was questioned long ago, Pinchot Ferris sat serenely. Jon stood over Adam in the passageway. "Son, you’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way your mom had anything to do with Holst or the bacteria." His voice betrayed his lack of certainty. All those years she spent in her gardens. The changes he saw gradually occurring in her personality. It was clear that she had changed. She seemed a stranger to him. Yet another soul had faded in his life.
"Listen to her comments dad." And Adam walked into the room to confront his mother once again. Jon followed.
"Mom, it is very important. Where is the vial?"
"Adam, sweetheart, it’s far too late. I’ve set this in motion. Actually, it began long before you were born."
"Mom. You’re a scientist. Rationality, you know? Please quit speaking in riddles."
"I shipped the biomaterial to earth two weeks ago. It was in several time release capsules headed to various regions of the planet. By the time you intercept it, you’ll be unable to stop it from spreading everywhere. Nothing short of a nuclear holocaust across the surface will be able to stop it."
Maggie was listening in the adjacent room and bolted out toward the nearest computer network terminal. She had already prepared a long list of shipping manifests to search.
Adam glanced at the door and saw Maggie rush by. He tasted bile. "Thanks mom. Now, what happened between you and Will Holst the night he died?"
"I killed him. He wanted to stop me. I had no choice. It was his time anyway." Her calm was unnerving. She sipped her steaming cup of tea.
Adam and Jon did not exchange glances. They turned and left the room. Pinchot was escorted back to her cell.
"I need to contact the Prime Minister on earth," Adam stammered.
Maggie walked in, her face contorted. "You’re too late. Earth has lost contact with the colonies and the nauron government. Security forces in the region are claiming that vessels leaving earth are disintegrating before they leave orbit. It’s horrible."
Adam ran from the room and barely reached the toilet before retching uncontrollably.
Chapter 11 - Falling
Excerpt from book entitled "A History of the Terra Institute":
Shortly following his election to Principal of the Institute and leader of the mars colonies, Adam Fuerst became the first president of what is now known as "exiled humanity". Exiled humanity was comprised of the mars colonies, various space stations, and the humans on the three colonized planets and nauron.
Earth was no longer approachable by vessels of any kind. What is known about the events on earth is largely
speculative. Scholars believe a terrorist attack of unknown origin devastated all technological material on the planet within a few weeks. The material that caused this devastating event is unknown. The best guess is that it was a fabricated nano-weapon (i.e., small machines) able to replicate exponentially and designed to destroy artificial materials. Communications was lost instantly. Direct contact with the surface became immediately impossible.
Orbital satellites and low orbit robotic flights continue to monitor earth to this day. The human population of 35 billion on earth before the event has declined to an estimated 15 million. The inhabitants are largely hunter-gatherers with limited agriculture. A small network of villages with pre-industrial technology has arisen in the northwestern North American continent.
According to the Institute, atmospheric concentrations of pollutants have declined to pre-industrial levels. Species of mammals and birds on the surface have rebounded. High performance images suggest that rapid evolution has occurred and many new species of animals and plants appear to inhabit the planet. Most remarkably, carbon dioxide concentrations have declined and the planet has cooled considerably. An ice cap has reappeared at the north magnetic pole.
During Fuerst's time, several attempts were made to contact the humans stranded on the surface. However, every probe or ship attempting to surface on the planet was lost. It was apparent that the nano-weapons were still active. In recent years, forays to the planet's surface have been made by robotic surveyors. The Institute still forbids direct contact by humans or other sentient species. Also, no probe or vessel landing on earth's surface is allowed to return to space, lest the unidentified weapon be unleashed on the remainder of the galaxy.
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