The Second Wave (4 page)

* * * *

While Sally Sheldon pondered alternative
Earths, Eleven led Mandy and Sophie to a strip of barren land by a
dried-up lake.

Mandy shielded her eyes from the sun and
looked around. “This looks odd.”

“It’s the crop fields,” explained Eleven. She
crouched down to let dry earth run through her fingers. Sophie made
a confused sound.

“This whole area should be cultivated,”
Eleven told them. “Corn, rye, buckwheat, you name it.”

“So either someone did a really lousy job—”
But Sophie never got to finish her sentence.

Eleven’s radio sprang to life, and Timothy’s
voice cut through the silence of the midday sun.
“Captain, this
is Niman. You’re gonna wanna see this.”

Eleven was on her feet in an instant. “Did
you find someone?”

“
Positive.”

He gave them his coordinates.

* * * *

When Sally caught up with Timothy, she almost
let out an unprofessional shriek. It took a moment for her brain to
register that they were not facing a monster, but something that
almost resembled a human being. Timothy stood opposite a naked
woman with mud-streaked skin, hair that might be auburn under a
crust of dirt, and wide, curious eyes.

Sally tentatively made contact, “Hello.”

“We’re not here to harm you,” Timothy added,
but didn’t lower his gun.

“Are you from the settlement?”

But the woman never heard Sally’s question.
Her eyes rolled back and she fainted. Neither Timothy nor Sally
were quick enough to catch her, even though Timothy later insisted
on telling the others that she sank into his strong arms with a
smitten sigh. Nobody believed him anyway.

After a short discussion about quarantine
protocols and international safety, Eleven and her team decided to
put up a medical emergency tent and call Dr. Paige, instead of
bringing the woman back to Earth. She looked healthy enough, but
Eleven and Mandy had a point when they argued that she could be a
carrier for something. Perhaps the rest of the settlers was out
there as well, suffering from a new form of disease. Because people
who were healthy and sane, Timothy couldn’t stress that enough even
though they all agreed, did not run naked through forests on alien
planets.

So Eleven sent out a transmission through the
wormhole, and two hours later, Summer Paige stepped into the
medical tent Timothy and Mandy had erected in the middle of the
meadow, close to the wormhole.

The woman was still unconscious. They had
lifted her onto a gurney and covered her up. Sophie carefully
cleaned the woman’s face with a cloth and some water.

“Where did you find her?” Dr. Paige wanted to
know. She immediately began working, scanning the patient, taking
blood samples, feeling her skin for abnormalities.

“Two of my team walked into her at the edge
of the forest,” explained Eleven. “She never said anything, she
just lost consciousness.”

“Of course she did. She is badly dehydrated.
Hand me the IV bag with the clear liquid, Emily, would you.”

Together, Dr Paige and Captain Eleven hooked
the woman to the IV. All the while, Sophie took photos of the
patient’s face and scanned her fingerprints. Since the stranger
wasn’t going to talk anytime soon, this way they could at least
find out who she was.

When Dr Paige was finished with her initial
examination, she drew blood from everyone else, then set up her own
mobile office, to run the samples for contamination.

“All clear,” she announced as the sun was
beginning to set. “No contamination whatsoever. We are all clear to
go back to Earth. However,” she looked at Eleven seriously, “I want
my patient to stay here. There is something in her bloodstream I
can’t quite put my finger on. Her PCV, for instance, is almost
eighty percent.”

When Eleven merely cocked an eyebrow,
indicating how little medical abbreviations meant to her, Paige
explained, “The percentage of red blood cells is very high,
especially for an adult. Newborns have a PVC of about sixty
percent, but it decreases as they develop. The normal PCV for an
adult human female ranges from forty-one to forty-three. It may be
elevated when a person is dehydrated but not to this extent. I want
to come back and run more tests.”

Eleven nodded. “Then I’ll come back with you.
So will three of my team.”

When Eleven, Dr. Paige, Mandy, Gavin and
Sophie came back to Earth, though, they were greeted by an array of
workmen, who were shouldering building materials, looking set to go
through the wormhole. Eleven sent the remains of her team with Dr.
Paige and to Doctors deLuca respectively. She herself paid General
Fatique a visit.

The General sat in the conference room with
Elizabeth Burke and Annabella Guarini, crouched over something that
looked like the food plan for the cafeteria. Without so much as
greeting anyone, Eleven burst into the room, and demanded to know
what was going on down there.

Fatique looked at her, but Burke spoke first,
“We’re going ahead with the plan.”

“The second wave is scheduled to leave in two
months,” Fatique elaborated.

“Don’t you think this is premature?” Eleven
asked.

Again it was Burke who answered first. “On
the contrary. We’re already behind schedule.”

Eleven drew a deep breath, “This is not what
I meant, Elizabeth. We haven’t found the first settlers. There is
no colony. The planet looks altogether different, and I’m not
talking four months later different. Something happened on
Alternearth that we have to figure out first. Sending more settlers
now is too risky, General.”

“No, Emily,” interrupted Dr Guarini. “Too
risky would be us not acting now. The atmospheric storms are
getting worse every time. We don’t have the energy anymore to set
up shields for all the cities. Last week we lost Port Said—the
energy simply didn’t suffice. We need more resources.”

“People’s lives are at stake!” Eleven tried
to point out.

But Fatique, sensing the impending rise in
excitement, calmly stepped in, “People’s lives are already at
stake. We need the other Earth as Alpha Site. If the storms worsen
and the energy runs out, we have to evacuate.”

“Sir, it’s not safe—” but Eleven was
interrupted by his raised hand. He hadn’t finished speaking,
yet.

“We’re aware of the risks, Captain. But we’re
going through with this. The second wave tickets have already been
activated. The new settlers should be preparing to leave right now.
What am I supposed to do, Emily, hm?” He looked at her with serious
eyes. “The budget commission is breathing fire down my neck, so is
the Energy Crisis Circle, and, frankly, I can’t blame them. We need
to do something, and we need to do it now. I know you understand
that.”

Eleven did understand. The reasons were good,
it was just not the right time, yet. But she also understood there
was no more discussion. Everything was set now; she couldn’t stop
or slow them down anymore. So she gave a small, defeated sigh and
made up her mind. “Permission to accompany the new settlers with my
team. Just to be on the safe side.”

Fatique smiled at her, “I was going to ask
you to, anyway.”

She gave him credit for acknowledging the
danger of the mission at least. Now all she had to do was pack, get
her team, set up camp on an alien planet and protect the workmen
and the settlers from any possible threat. Including, she added, a
strange, naked woman who was lying unconscious in a medical
emergency tent for now.

* * * *

It was a blood bath. John had anticipated
that, but in between the fighting and the running, his brain used
every second it could to reprimand him on how much the magnitude of
this massacre had not been properly taken into consideration
beforehand.

He managed to free the businesswoman’s son.
He almost lost an eye, two legs, and six fingers, but in the end,
when he exchanged the mangled bundle that had once been a son for
the priceless colony ticket, John decided it had been worth it.
That the man was not much more than a cripple wasn’t John's fault,
he’d found him that way. As far as John was concerned, the woman
should be glad she got anything back at all, even if it was hardly
recognizable as a human being anymore.

After the exchange and his payment, John
withdrew into the library to tend to his wounds. He had all but
forgotten about the old bootmaker and his offer until he checked
the pigeonhole in the crypt the next day. A pair of sturdy and
comfortable boots was stashed inside. The cobbler had kept to his
word. So John would keep to his.

He got out his horse the next day and called
on Abdul-Wahid. Then, stocked with two goats, three chicken, a bag
full of dried fruits and nuts, as well as one loaf of bread, John
went to see the old man and his pregnant wife.

It took a while. John didn’t know exactly
where they lived, so he had to ask around. Alexandria’s East was,
if possible, even dirtier and more dangerous than the rest of the
city. Mostly peasants lived here, people who couldn’t pay for the
protection from the gangs that ruled the area, who lived in
constant fear of being hunted by them and forced to pay their share
after all. Yet the shared fear bound these people together. They
helped each other, as if they were a family instead of a bunch of
exiled, penniless paupers. Sometimes ten or more of them had to
live in the ruins of a building, not enough room to house all of
them, not enough food to feed any of them properly, and still they
got by. The crime rate in this part of the city was minimal. In a
way John respected them highly for their way of life; he never
worked for them, though, because either they outright told him they
had no payment, or they lied. But the boots he wore now made him
belatedly rethink his reluctance to work for them. Maybe they could
have paid even better, or at least with more useful goods, than
some of the other criminals who had needed his services in the
past.

However, those thoughts were meaningless now.
He was going to leave. As soon as he had given the cobbler his
goods, he would take his belongings and go. He wasn’t even going to
wait until the snow melted, not after the businesswoman had given
him a piece of free information with his payment, advising him to
be vigilant, because she wasn’t the only one who knew about his
roaming, and those who were on his tracks wanted him dead.

The old cobbler’s home was in a third story
flat of one of the less destroyed buildings. There was no entrance
door; the blizzard had blown a thick carpet of snow inside,
covering the floor and the staircase right up to the first
landing.

John dismounted, but lead his horse upstairs
along with the goats he had brought along as payment so it wouldn’t
have to wait in the snowstorm. When he knocked for the fourth time,
a soft female voice begged him to go away.

“It is Yuhanan, woman. I have come for you
and your husband.” He kept his voice down in case someone was
eavesdropping.

The sound of a heavy bolt being removed
preceded a fractional opening of the door. The frightened face of a
woman was visible through the crack. She looked him up and down.
She looked at the freezing goats noisily expressing their
dissatisfaction with the temperature.

“You came!” Her eyes, already appearing big
in her drawn face, widened in surprise. Hastily she unbolted the
lower part of the door to let him in.

“As-salamu aleikum,” he greeted her, bowing
deep as was the custom, when he was inside and the door was locked
again.

She was too excited to bother with any
ritualistic reception, but took hold of his cold hands and kissed
them. “You have come. Thank you, Sharif. I did not think you
would.”

The apartment they lived in was but two
rooms, separated by a wooden partition panel. John saw a bed made
of straw and a hearth in a corner. Pots and pans sat neatly stacked
on the floor, a wash basin filled with water, and some wet clothing
hung from a washing line in the middle of the room. The woman
appeared to be alone.

“I gave you my word, woman. I always keep to
it.”

“Please, my name is Junah, Sharif. I fear I
have nothing to offer you except weak tea.”

“Weak tea sounds like a dish from the Gods.
Where is your husband?”

Junah busied herself with boiling water over
the fire, but she couldn’t help a defeated sigh escaping her lips.
She was beautiful, John could tell. Not young, and prematurely aged
from hunger and probably fear, but her eyes were bright and
intelligent, and she moved with grace, despite her swollen belly
evident underneath her clothes.

“My husband, it pains me to say out loud, is
dead. He was killed not one week ago in a street fight.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I only just got back
in town. I found the boots this morning and came as quickly as I
could. They are exceptionally well done.”

“My husband was an exceptionally good
bootmaker,” she told him. There was a proud look on her face when
she turned around.

John waited for the tea to be served and
listened as Junah told him what had happened. It wasn’t different a
story from what usually happened—people got in a fight, they shot
at each other, passers-by got killed. John had heard and witnessed
many of those incidents. It was the first time he felt sorry for
anyone, though. At one point, when Junah was drying her tears,
absentmindedly patting the taller goat’s head who walked up towards
her to press its forehead against her thigh, John even wondered if
the incident might have been avoided, had he been back sooner. It
was a ridiculous thought, he knew that; he shook it off almost
instantly, blaming the cold for his sudden melancholic
disposition.

Junah, though saddened to no extent by her
husband’s death, seemed chipper enough. She served him tea, thanked
him in many words for the food he had brought, and was the most
pleasant company John had had the fortune to encounter in a long
time.