Terraform (an Ell Donsaii story #15)

by Laurence Dahners

  “About me?” Zage asked, worried that she was going to run interference for him.

  “No. Not everything’s about you. You do remember D5R’s got a project going with her, right?”

  “Oh, okay.”

  ~~~

  Zage learned his parents were planning to “sell” the Kinrais house to Steve and his new wife. That’d save them having to seal the basement off before selling the house to someone else. It’d also give Steve easy access to the tunnel system.

  The Kinrais family would live their public life out of the Donsaii farmhouse, both parents going to and coming from work at that building.

  They’d live their private life out of the house in Pittsboro.

  They were going to take their vacation in Greece…

  Epilogue

  Walking up the stairs to the lab, Carley felt depressed. The day after the shooting, Zage had called to say he couldn’t come to the lab for a while. He’d asked her to collect results from some of his Alzheimer’s work.

  She’d been happy to do it.

  Then he’d vanished…

  It’d been a couple of weeks since he’d been in the lab. Getting worried, she’d driven past his house. It looked like a ghost house. There was a for sale sign out front and absolutely no evidence anyone lived there anymore.

  She tried to call him several times. After the third try, she’d gotten a text-only message that said, “I’m fine. Laying low. Don’t worry.” It seemed unnecessarily brief and she pondered the possibility that a kidnapper or some other nefarious person might be responding in Zage’s place.

  It’s been too long. I should contact the police, she thought as she stepped into the lab.

  Zage’s head popped up from behind his bench. “Hi Carley,” he said.

  Carley’s heart did a flip-flop, “Zage!” She tossed down her bag and tried to keep from running as she went around the end of his lab bench. She was just about to drop to a knee and give him a hug when she remembered she shouldn’t.

  She stopped unhappily, really wanting to throw her arms around him. Maybe I’ve got a crush on him? she thought. “Hi back at you,” she said, feeling inane. “We’ve really missed you.”

  “Thanks,” he said, then grinned. “My parents decided it’d be a good time to go on vacation, though dad taught his classes remotely since you’re not supposed to leave in the middle of a semester.” He paused a moment, then in a heartfelt tone said, “I really appreciate your collecting the data for my study.”

  “No problem. But what about your mom? Doesn’t she have a lot of stuff she has to do out at D5R?”

  He gave a dismissive wave and made a raspberry, “She claims she’s superfluous. Says they get along just fine without her. Points out they’ve had a lot of practice doing business without any help from her back when she was hiding from President Stockton.” He grinned up at her from beneath a lowered brow, “I think she might be a little bit more important than that, but that’s what she says.”

  Carley laughed. After talking a few more minutes, she headed back over to her lab bench.

  ~~~

  Carley’s AI said, “You’ve got a call from your brother.”

  “I’ll take it,” she said, dreading the possibility he was in trouble or might ask her for money. “Eli?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he answered.

  He sounds sober! she thought excitedly. He rarely needed help when he called sober. “Is everything okay?”

  “Uh-huh, but I’m about to run out of your magic juice.”

  “The FGF-21?”

  “If you say so. The shots that keep me from wanting to drink… I’m not so good at remembering strings of letters and numbers.”

  “So, it’s been working?”

  “I guess. I still can’t tell it’s doing anything, but I haven’t had a drink since the last time I saw you. It’s not like I don’t think a beer’d be nice, it’s just that I don’t think about beer very often.” Carley was just about to speak, when he said, “In fact, I had an argument with myself this morning. One side saying the shots didn’t do anything—I’d actually quit on my own. The other side was saying that, now I’ve got this job, I can’t risk losing it by seeing what happens if I go off your juice.”

  Carley felt like she was floating. “Thank God! Yes, yes, I’ll bring you some more. I forgot today was the day you’d need more—shoulda told my AI to remind me.” She realized she was blathering and paused a moment. Then she said, “It’ll take me a couple of hours, can you hold out that long?”

  “Absolutely,” Eli said with a confidence in his voice she hadn’t heard before. He’d sounded confident—but actually more arrogant—back when he’d claimed over and over that he could quit drinking on his own. This was a quiet confidence. Something she thought she could believe in. He said, “I’ll be at work by then. Maybe you could drop it by my job?”

  “Of course,” she said, heart skipping a beat, “where’re you working?!”

  She thought she heard a grin in his voice, “McDonald’s. Flipping burgers.” Then, with quiet confidence, “I won’t be there long. I just need to build up a work history.”

  ~~~

  When Carley broke the connection, she saw Zage standing at the end of his lab bench. He took a few steps toward her, “Did that conversation mean Eli’s got a job?” he asked hopefully.

  She nodded, wiping at suddenly overflowing eyes. “Just at McDonald’s for now, but he’s been sober for two weeks!” She walked over to Zage, bending down to give the boy a hug. At the last moment, she realized what she was about to do and pulled back. Voice breaking, she said, “Sorry.”

  Zage’s eyes were bright as well. He said, “I think news as good as that occasions a hug.” He blinked, “I’ll just have to control myself.”

  Dropping to one knee, Carley squeezed him hard, “Thank you,” she whispered hoarsely into his ear. “Thank you so much… And it’s so good to have you back!”

  He reached his small arms around her and hugged her back, but pulled his head back minutely, “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Right,” she said, letting go and leaning back to look him in the eye. “You only suggested DNA testing, then proposed that his β-Klotho-c anomaly would respond to higher levels of FGF-21. Oh, and got me the FGF-21 from some mysterious benefactor. Only those three things.”

  “But you would’ve figured all that stuff out yourself,” Zage said with a dismissive wave.

  “You really think so?” Carley asked, doubting it, but feeling an unreasonable flush of pride that Zage thought she could’ve done it.

  “Absolutely.”

  Another flush of pride washed over her to hear him say it.

  Then she thought, But he’s just a boy!

  ***

  United Nations, New York, New York— In a nonbinding resolution, the UN today affirmed that “The terraforming of Mars would be of benefit to all mankind…” This is apparently in response to a query from D5R regarding the desirability of what would be a phenomenally expensive undertaking requiring decades if not centuries. Though protests were staged earlier this year against the presence of just a few human beings on the planet, it’s becoming evident from a number of polls that the vast majority of people believe Mars holds little value in its present state. In fact, a website set up to promote the terraforming of Mars already has hundreds of thousands of volunteer settlers and millions of dollars in donations.

  Although this follows on the heels of a similar resolution by the United States Congress, it must be noted that neither of the bodies have set aside money to accomplish such terraforming. It seems likely that the initial wave of enthusiasm will diminish significantly once supporters comprehend the full cost of the endeavor…

  Lindy drifted up into consciousness feeling heavy. I’m back on Earth, came a distant thought.

  A nurse smiled down at her. “Welcome home,” he said. “You’re doing fine. Feel up to seeing your mom?”

  She nodded.

  He gave her a
sip of water, then stepped out of the little room she was in. I guess this interplanetary porting’s on its way to being routine, she thought, remembering the big team of anesthesiologists and other specialists that had welcomed Phil Zabrisk back to Earth during the first human porting. They’d also kept him under anesthesia in the ICU afterward. Now she just had a single nurse, though Lindy’d still been ported to a hospital in case something went wrong.

  Lindy’s mom came in and gave her a hug. She leaned back and said, “Not that I’m complaining about having my daughter home already, but I thought your doctor friend Mark was desperate to be first.”

  Lindy gave a little laugh. “He was. However, since they’re actually inducing a brief anesthetic for the porting, they pointed out that they needed someone medical on Mars to do the inducing. Now that I’m back on Earth, they’ll send another NASA trained doc to Mars. She’ll put Mark to sleep for his trip back.”

  Her mother lifted an eyebrow, “And how’re you and Mark getting along?”

  Lindy widened her eyes to give her mother an appalled look, “What’re you trying to ask?!”

  Her mother snorted, “It’s just that every conversation I have with you seems to reference Mark…”

  “Well,” Lindy couldn’t keep herself from grinning, “we do get along awfully well,” then, seeing the expression on her mother’s face, she lowered an eyebrow, “but you need to get your mind out of the gutter.”

  Her mother grinned, “I guess I’d better move on to another topic then. Are you going back to Mars? Or are you back here for good?”

  “I’m not going back for a couple of months. They want me to re-acclimate to Earth’s gravity. Also, I can’t go until I’ve had the new treatment and they’ve tested me out the wazoo to be sure I’m okay.”

  “‘You’re okay’? What’s that mean? What kind of treatment?”

  Lindy rolled her eyes, “Forget I said anything. It’s supposed to be a secret. I should never have said anything thing to you…” Darkly, she muttered, “Damned drugs!”

  Her mother gave her a hard look, then said, “Tell me. I assume you’d like to do it before I raise a ruckus?”

  Producing a long-suffering sigh, Lindy said, “It’s a new treatment for radiation damage. You should be glad—considering all the worrying you do about my cumulative radiation dose.”

  Closing her eyes, Lindy’s mother said in a resigned tone, “An experimental treatment?”

  Lindy gave a minute one-shoulder shrug, “It worked awesome in mice.”

  “Why do you have to be the test subject?”

  “Somebody’s got to. Who better than me? I’m someone who wants to live in Mars’ high radiation environment.”

  ***

  Eli arrived at Carley’s apartment, feeling as nervous as if it were a date. Asking the house AI to announce him, he swept his fingers through his hair.

  Carley opened the door, studied him for a moment then smiled. “You’re still sober, right?”

  “I am. I really am,” he said, feeling amazed himself.

  She pulled the door open wide. “Come on in.”

  They moved inside and sat down at her little dinette. She leaned back and gave him a hard look, “Have you had anything to drink since you’ve been taking the shots?”

  He shrugged, “I’m not going to lie about something this important. I have had a beer.” Seeing the distressed look on her face, he held up his palms, “Calm down. One beer. I don’t have a hunger to drink like I used to, but I thought I should find out what’d happen if I had a drink. So, I bought one beer and took it home on a Friday night. If something bad happened, I wanted the whole weekend to try to straighten myself out.”

  “And you drank it?” Carley asked still looking unhappy.

  Eli gave a slow nod.

  “And what happened?”

  Eli shrugged, “Not much. I watched TV.”

  Relief blossomed on Carley’s face, “You didn’t go out and drink any more?”

  Eli shook his head, “Nope. I think I could’ve had another one, say if I’d been out with some friends or something. But I didn’t constantly think about another beer like I used to. Believe it or not, I actually didn’t want to go to the trouble of going out to get another one.”

  Carley stepped forward and gave him a big excited hug. When she let go, she said, “This stuff could save your life, you know?”

  Eli gave a solemn nod.

  “But you’ve got to have it every day. I think it’s as important to you as insulin is to a diabetic.”

  “Yeah, I find myself worrying about missing a dose. All it’d take to put my life back in the shitter would be for me to go on another bender.”

  “My friend Zage…”

  Eli blinked, “The little boy?”

  Carley nodded and smiled, “Yeah, that one. He’s the one who says he can get you an injection port. It’s one that D5R makes for veterinary studies,” she gave him a glance, “but it should work in you since you’re part monkey. With it, you could be getting your FGF-21 steadily instead of a big once-a-day dose. You could even ask your AI for a little bigger dose if you did have a beer and wanted to make sure you weren’t going to crave another one.”

  “And,” he said slowly, “how does the AI get the FGF?”

  “I’ll give you a bunch of vials with the protein already in them as a dry powder. You’ll have to squirt a little saline into a vial to reconstitute the protein before you use it. Then you’d put it in a pump your AI’d control. You’ll need to let me know whenever you’re running low.”

  “I hate to ask this, but what if something happens to you?”

  “Ask Zage, he’d get you some more.”

  “The little boy would get me more of this fancy protein?” Eli asked dubiously.

  Carley pursed her lips, “He got me the stuff you’ve been taking. He says he got it from a friend, but… I think he probably made it himself.”

  “Okaaay…” Eli said, deciding that if something happened to Carley he’d pretty much be screwed.

  Carley cocked her head at him. “You look like you’ve lost some weight.”

  Eli nodded. “I used to really like sweets. Not as much as alcohol, but still, I tended to eat them if I had a choice. Not so much anymore.”

  Carley nodded, “FGF-21’s supposed to suppress the desire for sugar too.” She shrugged, “Though alcohol has its own calories so giving up drinking might have helped with the weight loss too. But, I think you look healthier in more ways than one.”

  Eli nodded, “I feel healthier.

  “You’re still living in the shelter?” Carley asked.

  “Yeah. I’ve been looking around, but, even after the promotion, my salary doesn’t go far. I’ve either got to find a roommate or get another promotion, ‘cause I don’t think I’d better job-jump yet.”

  “Um, Diane finally moved out. I need a roommate.”

  Prickles ran over his scalp. “You mean…?”

  She nodded.

  “We’d be a family again,” he slowly said, feeling a sense of awe.

  “Yeah. Don’t get too excited. You’d need to do your share of the cooking, cleaning, laundry…”

  Eli couldn’t remember being so happy in years.

  ***

  The family was getting together for Thanksgiving at the undercover houses Ell owned at Lake Royale. Ell, Shan, and Zage walked through one of the underground tunnels Ell had cut, crossing undetected from their house to Kristen’s. When they came up the stairs, the first person they ran into was Ell’s grandmother. On seeing Ell, she squeaked with joy and gathered her into a big hug.

  Shan and Zage carried the side dishes into the kitchen while Gram and Ell chattered excitedly. Ell thought, It’s a sign we’re not seeing enough of each other that it’s such a big deal when it happens.

  A few minutes later, Zage came in and sat down beside Ell. Gram smiled and said, “And who’s this handsome young man?”

  Zage got up, stepped around Ell and gave her a hug,
“I’m your great-grandson Zage, Gram. I just turned six a couple of months ago.”

  For a moment, Ell felt embarrassed that, rather than recognizing it as a figure of speech, her son had taken Gram’s question so literally. But then Ell saw a flash of puzzlement flit over Gram’s face as she hugged Zage.

  It felt like her heart stopped.

  However, as they kept talking and laughing about old times, Ell convinced herself that she’d been imagining things. Gram seemed to remember every detail of their lives and nodded joyfully at their recent exploits.

  ~~~

  Thanksgiving dinner was a huge amount of fun and Ell reflected on how lucky they were that they didn’t have a drunk uncle or other obnoxious relative in the family. Even Lane, Shan’s somewhat immature sister, seemed to have settled down and become easier to get along with.

  ~~~

  At the end of the evening, as they walked through the tunnel back to their own house, Zage gave Ell a look of concern and asked, “Do we know which type of dementia Gram has?”

  Feeling ice water run down her spine, especially in view of her earlier fear, Ell nonetheless exclaimed, “She’s not demented!”

  He blinked up at her, “Well, okay, no. She’s only in the early stages.”

  “What makes you even say that?!” Ell asked, feeling a little desperate… because she thought she knew.

  Zage’s expression turned sad, “Her short-term memory’s fading. She didn’t know who I was when she first—”

  “That was just a figure of speech!” Ell interrupted anxiously. “Older people often say things like that to kids. You… you just haven’t been exposed to it I guess.”

  Zage shrugged, “She couldn’t remember my name later either. I mean, she covered pretty well for it, calling me ‘kid’ and ‘little guy,’ but you could tell she didn’t remember.”

  Ell shook her head, “Your own dad calls you ‘Munchkin” and things like that all the—”

  Shan touched Ell’s arm and gently interrupted, “She had a hard time figuring out who I was too.”