Chapter Three
"What the hell is this?" Danziger asked gruffly as the two men approached with the solar conversion panel between them.
Baines and Walman placed the bulky panel on the ground in front of Danziger, then began to point out all the areas of damage. "Okay, I get it, the panel's got problems," Danziger sighed. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Word on the street is that you've got a plan to straighten the frame," Walman began. "We just want you to be aware that even with a straightened frame, this panel is past fixing. The rail is not going anywhere."
"What do you mean, 'past fixing'?" Danziger practically roared. "Every single component you pointed out has at least three alternate replacements. Hell, I can take the panel assembly off the main dish secondary solar array and fix three-quarters of this without even having to adjust the charge modulation frequency."
"In that case," Baines replied in frustration, "how about I climb up on the roof and bring you the secondary solar array from the main dish and a large assortment of tools and let you get to work, Danziger?"
"You do that, Baines," Danziger responded hotly. "Walman, you get out to the main shop building and find some heavy duty structure bar. We're going to build a jig and man-handle that frame back into shape. Mazatyl ought to be of help too—he's had some experience with high strength building materials."
"What are you trying to fix?" Zeke asked from the side.
Morgan pointed across the compound at the crumpled form of the dunerail. "That," he stated flatly. "It got blown around in that storm that came through here a few days ago." To Morgan's surprise, the ZED walked over to the rail and ran his hands across the frame with practiced ease.
"They are correct about the conversion panel," Zeke began. "I do not believe it can be repaired by the means Mr. Danziger is suggesting. However, I believe we can straighten the frame." He looked up at Morgan, his eyes hopeful. "I have done similar work on mining vehicles. With a sufficiently robust jig frame to push against, we might be able to do it."
Morgan followed Zeke back over to the clearing where Danziger was doing inventory of the range of tools Baines had already provided him for work on the conversion panel. "Mr. Danziger, I believe I can be of help with the frame of the four-seater," he began. Danziger looked at him in quiet expectation, so he continued. "I've done work on mining vehicles before," he added. "The framing looks quite similar to some of the smaller recon vehicles we used."
"Mining vehicles, huh? You ever work on a rover?" Danziger asked expectantly.
"You have a Hummer Transrover?" Zeke asked in disbelief. At Danziger's nod, Zeke continued, "They're solid. I'll give them that. But the gearbox is a complete piece of--" Zeke broke off as he saw Uly approaching the group.
"I agree with you completely, Zeke," Danziger said with a smile. "I wouldn't give you two credits for every transrover gearbox on this planet. And to the best of my knowledge, there's only one, and it has made my life hell for months now."
"You know that it is possible to regear those things for high speed running," Zeke began in a conspiratorial tone. "We used to race them on Callisto."
To Morgan, Danziger looked for all the world as if he'd won the trans-station lottery. He and Zeke launched into a deep discussion of all things transmission oriented, a discussion which went over his head within the first two sentences. He also noticed that Zeke looked more relaxed, more human, than he had yet.
On the other hand, Alonzo looked completely bored. In fact his eyes were beginning to drift shut. Heck, after the night they'd all had, Morgan thought, he deserved a little sleep. Leaving the ZED in Danziger's care, he went back to the complex in search of conversation that didn't revolve around machinery.
Uly, meanwhile, took a seat next to the pilot, prodding him in the arm. "What are they talking about, Alonzo?" he asked curiously. He got no answer from the sleeping pilot and turned to Danziger.
"Mr. Danziger?" he called. Danziger had told Uly to call him by his first name, but to the boy it still felt funny to call him John.
Danziger immediately turned to Uly. "What's up? Have you heard from the Terrians?" he asked.
"No, sir," Uly replied sadly. "I'm sorry. I've just come to keep you company. I asked Alonzo what you guys are doing, but he didn't answer me."
Danziger looked over at Alonzo, who leaned back against against a storage container, eyes closed. "Hey, Lonz, you all right?" he asked. When he got no answer, he walked over to shake him. Alonzo didn't respond and panic began to descend on Danziger.
How long had he been out? Damn it, he should have kept a closer eye on him. Julia was going to be furious. He pulled up his gear to call her, simultaneously checking to be sure Alonzo was still breathing. Fortunately, he was.
"Julia, Alonzo's out cold," he stated.
"I'm on my way," she replied.
"Did anybody notice when Lonz drifted off on us?" Danziger asked the group gathered around. Walman shrugged along with Uly, Baines was just coming up with his arm full of rectangular solar array, and Morgan had disappeared.
Zeke, however, half closed his eyes and accessed his visual recordings. "Alonzo was awake two minutes and 35 seconds ago," he stated evenly, then added, "approximately."
Julia strode quickly up to the group, diaglove ready. "When did he go under?" she asked.
"About two minutes ago, according to Zeke," Danziger replied.
"Why didn't you call me then?" she asked, running her glove over the unconscious pilot.
"We just noticed," Danziger answered sheepishly. "I should have kept a closer eye on him."
"He's all right," Julia sighed, "just deeply asleep. I need to get him to the med lab so I can keep a check on him. Fortunately, slowing him down does seem to have slowed down the particle activity as well. It's buying us a little more time."
"Walman, Baines, you guys go get a stretcher and let's get Alonzo back inside, okay?" Danziger asked.
The two headed out immediately, leaving Danziger with Julia and Zeke. "They brought me things to do," Danziger said dryly. "That your idea?"
"I might have dropped a hint on my way out here earlier," she answered. "You needed something to work on."
"Thanks," Danziger replied. "I didn't think it was that obvious."
"You're too much like Devon," Julia responded with a little grin, looking over to where Uly had wandered off to check out the dunerail's remains. "Any time he was sick, I practically had to sedate her as well. She just never could manage much patience. Dr. Vasquez warned me, but I didn't believe half of what he told me until I saw first hand."
Danziger looked out over the planet's vista. "No, she tends to take action, patience be damned," he sighed. Julia wondered at the hard tone of his voice.
"Don't forget, John," she added. "Devon was also doing this for the 248 kids headed this way. She hoped that there would be a chance here for all of them."
"Yeah," he agreed, "but she'd have done the exact same thing if it had only been Uly. She'd have gone just as far and risked just as much if he'd been the only Syndrome kid ever born."
Julia thought for a moment. She had to agree with him. About that time Baines and Walman returned with the stretcher, and Danziger and Zeke between them easily loaded Alonzo's sleeping form onto it. Then Baines and Walman carried him on to the med lab.
"Keep me informed as to how he's doing," Danziger requested quietly as Julia rose to follow them. "Maybe you can learn something from True when she comes back. There might be something new or different about her that will help."
Julia nodded her agreement and turned to walk away, then she stopped and turned back to him. "Thank you, John," she said.
"For what?" he asked, mystified.
"For being willing—and patient," she answered with a smile. "Not to mention optimistic. I have trouble keeping hope alive by myself. Thank you for believing in me."
Danziger looked down at the doctor. She was tired, tired and frustrated. He placed his hands on her shoulders. "I do believe in you, Julia. Alonzo believes in you. Devon believes in you. We all do. You will figure this thing out," he offered. "Let me know what I can do to help."
Julia nodded, then turned to walk toward the complex. She knew that at least part of his good attitude lay in the mood enhancer she'd added to the stimulant she'd given him to help him cope. Maybe she shouldn't have played God in that sense. Maybe she was being selfish.
But she just couldn't watch John slip off into despondency—he was the glue that held them together. He didn't realize it, maybe nobody realized it, but without Devon, everyone looked to John to guide them, to let them know everything was under control. As long as he was confident in their course of action, everyone else was confident as well.
She couldn't let that confidence waver, not now. She was the only one who understood just how close to the edge Alonzo was, how much closer they all were. She needed John's confidence too, more than anybody.
Back in the med lab, she took a deep breath and ran her diaglove over Alonzo's sleeping form once again to reassure herself that he was really okay. Baines and Walman stood there expectantly. She asked Walman to go help Danziger, but asked Baines to hang around long enough to help her start another round of tests on yet another potential theory.
"How are things with the ZED?" she asked as they began to assemble the samples.
"Zeke?" Baines asked. "He seems to be doing fine. I can't believe he's such a nice guy."
Julia nodded, but deep inside, was very concerned by this attitude. Failsafe or no, 'Zeke' was an unknown quantity and a potential danger to them all. Mindwash failure was not something a person recovered from quickly.
Her experience with them was purely from an educational perspective, rather than personal, but historically speaking, a mindwashed individual was most likely to commit suicide as the result of recovery than anything else. Few became violent with others as a result, but that also could not be ruled out. If this ZED managed to reintegrate his personality over the next few weeks, he'd be the rare exception rather than the rule.
In all likelihood, she believed, he'd begin to suffer flashbacks of increasing intensity as the memories of his pre-wash past integrated with his post-wash actions. If he could not reconcile the differences, he would undergo complete personality disintegration. Maybe the contact he'd received with the planet would help him; certainly Yale had handled reintegration well.
Then again, Yale's post-wash actions were in no conflict at all with his pre-wash personality. Zeke, on the other hand, had not been a criminal in the past, but had performed monstrous actions post-wash. Julia truly believed he would not survive the integration process intact. She could only hope that his failsafe program would keep him from hurting anyone else in the process.
Outside, Zeke and Danziger debated the potential regearing of the slow transrover as Danziger worked on retrofitting parts from the dish solar array into the damaged dunerail converter. Uly watched in fascination as the rail's converter came apart into literally hundreds of pieces spread out over a large tarp under Danziger's careful disassembly. Walman spread a second tarp to hold the pieces of the dish's secondary array and began his own deconstruction job.
Just as the process was beginning to get really boring to the antsy young man, he felt a call on the edge of his consciousness. The Terrians were speaking to him again. He dropped on the Dreamplane to listen and was immediately disturbed by the tenor of their communications.
"Mr. Danziger," he called worriedly, "they're bringing True back, but not here—they're going directly into the med lab they say. They've done all they can, but they still can't fix her."
Without a word, Danziger lifted Uly into his arms and headed for the med lab in a dead run. They burst through the door, Danziger instructing Uly to tell Julia all he knew as he grabbed Baines by the arm and dragged him to the floor panel. The two men hauled it out of the way just as a Terrian head broke the surface, True in his arms.
When Danziger moved to take her, the Terrian trilled a warning. "No, Mr. Danziger," Uly called out. "He has to stay in contact with her, to keep the Mother close until Julia can help her."
If the planet needed to stay in contact, Danziger knew exactly how to accomplish that. He threw himself into the Dreamplane recklessly, calling to her, "Mom! Tell me what to do to help True!" He saw his path before him, but knew he'd need Bess to keep him from going too far. So he called her.
She was in the kitchen helping Cameron cut up fruit for lunch when she suddenly felt John's presence with her on the Dreamplane so vividly that she jumped in surprise, cutting her thumb deeply. Without a word, she tossed down the knife and fruit and ran.
In the med lab, Julia faced a quiet Terrian who stood there with True in his arms. Danziger stood next to him, eyes closed, as Bess entered the room.
"What's going on, John?" she asked fearfully.
"Mom needs us to help True," John explained. "Come in with me and help me."
He held out his hand to her and she took it. Julia noticed that blood was dripping from the fingertips of her other hand and onto the floor, but Bess didn't even seem to realize that she was injured. No one was speaking, not even Uly. They just stood there, communing with one another somehow.
At a loss, Julia reached out to seal the deep cut on Bess's hand, but the second she made contact, she found herself pulled into their link.
"Julia," Danziger greeted her. "Good, this is faster. Mom says she needs to pull our strength in for True. The Terrians have done all they can, but there's still something wrong with her they can't understand and can't fix. You have to do it, Julia. You have to find out what's wrong."
Just as suddenly as she was pulled in, she was shoved out again. She noticed that the wound sealer was still completing the seal on Bess's thumb—that meant the entire interchange had taken less than a second. Shaking herself into action, she grabbed her diaglove from the counter next to the shocked Baines and ran a first scan over True's motionless form.
Within seconds she could see the problem. True's system was overrun with toxins—trace metals, odd chemicals, both organic and inorganic. The odd particles she'd been researching had been broken down into a variety of substances—some of which were very nasty indeed.
"Baines, we have got to begin filtering these toxins out of her body. Her system can't handle the load," Julia declared urgently. It was serious, very serious, but a part of her was relieved. This she understood. This she could deal with—provided she could work quickly.
On the Dreamplane, John and Bess stood in the open field—the meeting place. Terrians surrounded them. True lay on the ground, half submerged in the loose earth.
Uly and Alonzo stood in the circle with the Terrians. Strange cries echoed in the air, haunting calls from the Terrians. They slowly began to circle True's still form. John and Bess knelt beside her.
"What do we do?" Bess asked quietly.
"I think I know," John replied. "I need you to keep an eye on me to be sure I don't go too far."
"What are you talking about?" she answered.
"This," he said holding out the sunstone before him with one hand and placing the other on True's chest. The stone began to glow with a brightness they'd never seen before as John poured his own energy into the link between the planet and his child.