The Second Wave

by Leska Beikircher

  Phil deLuca joined them unexpectedly at one point. Pushing open the door, he didn’t even stop to address the two men, he just said, “Dig this, dudes: they both do it.”

  He wanted to leave them with this more than cryptic piece of information, completely oblivious to the fact that everyone who wasn’t him or his twin brother wouldn’t even know what he was talking about. Fatique made him sit down properly. He asked for the paper the young doctor was holding in his hand, but was told it was just stats and vitals for his forest elf lord; both men were wise enough not to inquire about it further.

  “They both move of course.” Phil shrugged when pressed to explain his previous exclamation. “Like when we told you that Alternearth does these weird, tiny movements off its orbit—Earth does them, too.”

  That was when Rochester butted in. “Earth as well?” although he didn’t know what was going on. Movements of any sorts, however tiny, when done by two planets that were connected by a more than fragile bridge sounded unbelievably dangerous to him.

  “It’s not that dangerous,” Phil amended. “Only a bleeding nuisance to calculate, but I think we can compensate for it, or at least reconnect more quickly if it happens again.”

  “Oh, dear Gods,” muttered Fatique. He sometimes fancied, in his more fatalistic moments, that fate was all but against mankind’s move to another planet.

  “Should planets behave like this?” Rochester asked. He didn’t mean it rhetorically. For all he knew it could be common behavior for planets, he wasn’t at all versed in that area of expertise.

  Phil shook his head. “Never. Planets are dead matter. They should just quietly circle their sun and maybe explode one day.”

  “Thank you, young man,” Rochester remarked. “This is incredibly appeasing.”

  “You asked, man. I mean, sir.”

  Heath Rochester, as opposed to Fatique who was the rational and sometimes fatalistic kind, was deeply spiritual. He believed there was more to life than living and more to living than existing. He believed faith covered more than just remembering the names of the many Gods, he believed the divine lived in the soul rather than in a temple. So when Doctor deLuca explained to him what planets were made of, and how they existed lifelessly in space, he immediately thought further than that.

  “What you mean to tell us,” he clarified, “is that planets should not be able to change their course by themselves.”

  By way of a reply Phil simply gave a nod, as he noticed the cake on the table and was busy wolfing down a thick slice. Explaining things to people who needed explanations always made him hungry.

  “But these two do, and so, I think, the only logical explanation is that they’re not planets at all,” Rochester concluded.

  Both the young engineer and the elderly general looked at him with visible questions in their eyes.

  Fatique spoke first. “And, pray, what do you think they are then, Heath?”

  “Doctor deLuca already implied it. They behave like living creatures.”

  “Living features?” Fatique repeated.

  “Earth?” Phil asked as soon as his mouth was cleared of chocolate icing. “You mean to say we live on the skin of some super large animal?”

  Rochester nodded slowly. Spoken out loud the thought sounded even more plausible than it had in his head.

  “Brilliant!” remarked Phil. He warmed up to the idea quickly, mainly because it seemed so far out it actually made sense.

  “But an animal?” Fatique asked. “Earth’s crust is made up of stones and earth! What kind of animal has creatures like this?”

  “Who are we to say what can be defined as a sentient being and what can not?” Rochester asked back. “Besides, we don’t know if the entire planet is one big creature, or if the creature hides within, like a snail or a hermit crab.”

  “And the atmospheric storms?” Fatique was not yet convinced.

  It was Phil who answered in Rochester’s place. He simply suggested, “Maybe it’s sick.”

  He didn’t know how close he was to the truth.

  * * * *

  The sun burned down relentlessly on the settlement in the afternoon. Most daily labor had ceased as everyone was too tired and too hot to resume working. The people’s bodies protested against this sudden change of climate; it made the villagers confused and cranky. Sensing more than their human keepers, and awaiting the thunderstorm that would doubtlessly follow the humid hotness, the animals were nervous. The cattle were calling out to be released from their stables. The horses moved to and fro in their boxes, and the hounds gave delirious howls. Not even John could calm them down; they stayed alert and wary.

  They all met at number twenty-three. John needed to talk to Peter, and Peter could hardly wait to tell him about what he and Luke had found out. Eugenia tagged along, chipper and cheerful like in the early days of their acquaintance in spite of the cough. It seemed to get worse despite her assurances that she was feeling fine.

  She stayed for Peter’s retelling of his and Luke’s examination of the stones, but lost interest when the two friends began to discuss Alternearth in general, so she left the kitchen where they sat at the table, and wandered into the living room. Luke, whom she liked, was at the greenery. With the weather changing so rapidly, there was a lot to do at the greenhouse and out on the fields. Among other things they had to bring in those plants that strived in the cold but withered in the warmth.

  Alone in the room, with Peter’s and John’s voices a low background noise, she stepped to the window to look outside. Her people—no, she corrected herself, they were not her people, even if they had been for a while; she had lost them, traded them in for John’s company—the people sat or stood in the shade. Talking, occasionally wiping sweat off their brows. They might not be her people anymore, but she did still love them. She missed their thoughts and their voices. Being alone was utterly strange. It didn’t feel right. She wondered, not for the first time since she had come back, if she hadn’t made a mistake. It was like being ripped in two—one half of her wanted to stay with John, no matter the consequences; the other half wanted so desperately to go back and be whole again. To stop thinking about this, to stop the hurt, she concentrated on the voices coming from the kitchen. They were talking about her people.

  “We will probably never know what happened to them,” Peter sighed. “Four-hundred thousand years is so long a time.”

  For the first time she made the connection between the people that had come here with John and the people that had been here before. She tried to remember them. It had been a long time ago, but she still knew everything—every hope and dream they had shared with her. Every prayer they had said to her. The sons and the fathers, the daughters and the grand-daughters. Even when they forgot about her their voices never faded. It was only when they left for good that she lost them.

  Eugenia walked back into the kitchen. Standing in the doorframe she watched them for a while, for how long she couldn’t tell. Then she quietly explained, “They never stopped thinking about leaving.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 47: The Genie in the Bottle

  It was John, whose mind was clear and sharp according to Eugenia, who made the connection in the end. He and Peter talked to the mayor the next day, and Rochester in turn confided in them what he thought about Earth and Alternearth being sentient creatures rather than planets.

  “Let us go with that for now,” John synopsised. “And assume everything we have heard so far is true. Then all we need to do is make a connection between everything.”

  Captain Eleven, also present, as well as Summer Paige and Luke, counted off her fingers. “The planets’ movements, the wormhole disconnections, the elapsed time, the weird weather, and Eugenia’s alleged connection to Alternearth.”

  “I think we can discard the elapsed time,” Luke said. “The R.U.T.E.s probably have nothing to do with this, they’re a quite natural phenomenon.”

  “Luke, my love, I agree,” Peter nodded. “But the atmo
spheric storms must also be considered. It is my personal theory, one that has been ridiculed by colleagues in the past, that the storms serve the purpose of turning the planet’s surface into the equivalent of a freshly erased drawing board. Thus, once the atmospheric turbulence is over, life can begin anew. This should be taken into consideration in my opinion.”

  It was as hot as the previous day. The group sat in Mayor Rochester’s living room, a fan switched on, a mug of cold melapple juice and glasses between them on a low couch table.

  “And then of course,” John remarked, “there is mankind’s perpetual wish to travel.”

  “You’ve lost me,” said Summer. She refilled her glass with fresh juice, then sank back into the cushions on the couch she shared with Emily and Peter. The mayor and Luke occupied wooden chairs. John was squatting on the floor.

  Assuming people could live on a creature that was connected to them by a medium of sorts, and assuming further said people were oblivious to the nature of their home world and kept plotting their departure, John explained to them, then the question was how the creature reacted to such thoughts. Perhaps it became depressed and consequently ill, thinking it was somehow at fault for its inhabitants’ desire to leave. Perhaps, for some reason, this depression raged quite literally in the form of constant atmospheric storms. It was the beginning of a lemniscate: the more the people thought of leaving, the sicker the creature became, and the sicker the creature became, the quicker the people wanted to leave.

  “And you think this is what’s happening on Earth?” Rochester asked when John had finished his speech.

  John nodded.

  “I think it is entirely possible,” agreed Peter.

  “And what does that have to do with Alternearth?” Emily wanted to know. So far she was following, but she couldn’t see what it had to do with the planet they were on now. For a fleeting moment she thought that Gavin Watts should be the one sitting here—he’d have no difficulty keeping up with all the smart people in this room.

  It was Luke who answered her question. “The situation on Alternearth is not so different. What is happening on Earth now has already happened on this planet while it was caught in an accelerated time pocket.”

  Now she really wished Gavin was here, just to put whatever Doctor Wagner-Reyes had said into words she understood.

  The second wave settlers, it was explained, were the second group of people on this planet; although they weren’t going to leave anytime soon, something was happening right now that none of them truly understood. The creature’s medium had broken free of its constraints, it was completely severed from the planet. There was no telling what would happen next.

  “But it is quite clear what we must do to save not only Earth but also our people on it,” added Peter.

  “And what would that be?” Rochester wanted to know. He, too, felt he was too slow to keep up with what was being said around him.

  Before Peter could reply Luke said, “We need to find its medium.”

  “And we need to tell people about it,” Summer continued. “If they knew about this, they could be able to stop Earth from declining further.”

  Eleven, glad she could contribute something practical, stood. “I’ll get my team together.”

  She was aware of the fact that she would have to search an entire planet for one human being; but it was better than sitting in the mayor’s house the whole day, trying to come up with a perfect plan. She was a protector after all, and she did have the best team she could imagine. The last sentence she heard as she walked out of the door was Summer’s philosophical question whether human life on Earth had started out the way life on Alternearth had. Emily supposed that all the brilliant heads in the universe couldn’t figure that one out.

  * * * *

  “The pyramids,” Gavin Watts immediately suggested after the team had assembled at Emily’s place. The captain had relayed to them every bit of information she possessed.

  Sally cocked her head. “Egypt? Really?”

  “Why not?” said Gavin. “If we’re looking for something that could be a temple as well as a grave.”

  If Eugenia had become Alternearth’s medium because she had been the first human to die on its soil, then Earth’s medium should have a similar story. They needed to find the one place where the earliest humans had lived.

  “Do we even know where the first humans originated?” asked Mandy Rhett.

  Carl made a tutting noise. “Africa of course. Look it up in any old book.”

  “Are you saying Chinese people originated in Africa?” Timothy challenged him.

  “Well,” Carl scratched his head. “Maybe they didn’t.”

  “My brother’s late husband once told me there were theories about the Atlantians being the first people.” Sally Sheldon brought to the table, but this rather far-fetched theory was almost instantly dismissed. Sophie Bahr suggested Australia as possible cradle of life, which prompted Timothy to once again bring up Asians. The discussion that followed, about who were the true forefathers of humankind, almost got out of hand, when Gavin suddenly silenced them by raising his hand.

  “I have a radical idea!” he said. “Let’s go to the library, and check some books.”

  In the end, gathered around the only table in the village’s library, the team settled on six possible locations. Two of them were completely destroyed, one was underwater and therefore nigh inaccessible, one was on a mountain in Tibet, one inside the great pyramid of Gizeh and one was in a town in Copán.

  “Bad news on Tibet,” Carl told them, clapping shut a book. “Or maybe good news, at this point I’m not sure. In any case the mountain peak was destroyed when they tried to build a tunnel through it a couple of years ago.”

  “I suppose it’s good news for us,” Sally shrugged. “One less location to check out.”

  “So who’s going where?” asked Gavin. “I suppose we split up to cover more ground in less time?”

  “Dibbs on Egypt!” Sophie called out. Then added apologetically, “I always wanted to go there.”

  Gavin and Sally volunteered to accompany her, and it was soon settled that Mandy, Carl and Emily would check out the town in Copán. Timothy would stay on Alternearth to be the liaison between the two teams, Earth and Alternearth, and to keep an eye on things—and by things, Timothy knew, Emily meant Eugenia.

  * * * *

  Chapter 48: Halfway Out of the Dark

  The heat wave continued. Thick thunderclouds on the horizon taunted the villagers by never moving closer. Instead of fresh rain, the bright heat kept scorching the settlement, burning plants and humans alike. Soon the small creeks and brooks dried up. The lakes as well as the rivers carried less and less water. A small grove of ancient trees just outside the corn field burst into flames one afternoon, the heat was too much for the gaunt old bark. If one of the teachers hadn’t taken their class outside to visit the fields, the fire might have gone unnoticed for much longer and would have spread out to the fields.

  For Mandy Rett, Carl Gibson, and Emily Eleven it was almost a relief to travel to Central America, where the temperature, compared to the daily average on Alternearth at the moment, was cool and refreshing. When General Fatique heard where they were headed, he gave them an address and promised that someone would await them at the harbor.

  Once their ship anchored after four long days of journey, though, they were surprised to find it was Elizabeth Burke who stood next to a donkey cart, raising her arm to greet them. In the five years they had spent in each other’s company, Emily’s team and Elizabeth had worked together on some projects. When she left quite suddenly the very day the wormhole reopened, they begun to miss her to some extent. The aloof General’s secretary had morphed into an open, friendly woman, someone people generally liked to be around.

  Emily gave Elizabeth a hug by way of a greeting. Mandy and Carl simply smiled and shook hands. They exchanged personal and official information—Emily told her everything they had found out about Earth’s
possible connection with some kind of medium, and Elizabeth told them about her farm.

  It was a long ride from the harbor to the small town of Lamanai in the heart of Copán, and somewhere along the way Carl decided the climate was not as refreshing as it had first appeared; especially not after they left the protection shield of Porto Cortes and had to walk to the anchorage at the river. There they boarded another ship that safely carried them, in two days time, Southwest, as close to the town of Lamanai as civilization allowed. From there on they had to march through the jungle to reach their destination.

  “The townsfolk are terrified that people from the outside might find them and rob them of their artefacts, like they’ve done to other ancient towns,” explained Elizabeth, when Carl began bemoaning the loss of something like a path. They had to leave the cart behind, and the donkey, a wiry, agile creature, cheerfully brought up the vanguard, leading them, it seemed, deeper and deeper into unknown territory.

  On the third day they finally reached the valley in which Elizabeth’s hometown lay—encompassed on four sides by mountains, whose peaks, at least the two that were visible, glistened white with snow. The three protectors believed themselves back in their settlement on Alternearth as they set eyes on the town: it was nothing more than a village, or rather, not even a village but an accumulation of huts surrounding one larger farm, which was only recognizable as a farm because three goats and an ox stood next to it, grazing peacefully.

  It was there Elizabeth led them; it was her farm now. In the South of the village, half carved into the mountain, towered a tall pyramid, almost a mile high. On second glance it was obvious that the entrance of every hut pointed in the direction of this monument. One sought without success for signs of decay or dilapidation. The pyramid looked just as divine and majestic now as it had the day it was finished several thousand years ago.

  * * * *

  The second team, consisting of Gavin Watts, Sophie Bahr, and Sally Sheldon, reached their destination much earlier than the others. It took them less than two days to travel from Rome to Port Said, and another day’s journey to reach Gizeh and Memphis, which lay deep inside the outlawed zone of Africa.