Uly, narrating: "I don't sleep for long any more. My Terrian friends have gone away and left me all alone. I shout in my dreams but they can't hear me. I sure hope with all my heart that it's not because they don't want to. I'm so scared that I'm an orphan like what happened to Mary. My head's empty and my stomach hurts. And worst of all, my eyes are growing darker with each passing day. Noon time doesn't help any more. I see like I used to see in my dreams before I came here. Everything's becoming like shadows. But it's doing that when I'm completely awake! I don't want to go to Julia. I don't want mom finding out. I just want my friends back. I'm supposed to be their Prince. How can I do that if our whole kingdom dies?"
Morgan Martin groaned as he climbed down from the garden bed Transrover with his water buckets.
"Make sure it's water and not acid, Morgan. They look the same. You can't always tell by smelling. Use the litmus paper Julia made before you dip. I don't want you getting burned again."
Bess Martin's husband looked up at her, completely ignoring her automatic rambling litany. "I get up every day. I scrub myself clean with sand. I eat my stalks like a good, dutiful consuming Earth ape, and then I sh*t them out three hours later into the garden bin that eventually gets dumped back on top of our lovely, eyeballed food again. What's wrong with this picture?" he said in a daze of bland emotional fatigue.
"The flies are missing." said Magus, chewing on a non-existent finger nail. "So how can any of that stuff decompose? Does that mean I could be eating what's been inside of-" her finger wavered as she pointed towards where Morgan was bending over the creekbed in analysis..."unadulterated?"
"He's hardly an adult." quipped Bess lightly, sarcastic. "So his is actually.. more like ... kid sh*t. Half of what it could be because he hasn't entirely grown up yet. Doesn't taste too bad." she said, licking her fingers around the bowl of eyestalk eyeballs and water that she was currently nibbling on without utensils. Then her pure anger blossomed. One eyeball disappeared with a pop between her perfect teeth with an audible and visible gray squish.
Magus leaned over her MagPro gun and started puking out her morning breakfast.
John Danziger smiled for the first time in days. But he didn't waste the energy to laugh. "Isn't science a b*tch, Bess? Another lesson was learned in the ranks. Magus, when you're done, go see Julia for a mineral booster. You've lost more than what Yale says is safe. Grab a meal from the hydrolizer to get caught up again. And that's an order."
"I'm sorry, Bess. I didn't mean to insult your husband. It was just the first thought I had come into my head." Magus said, still quivering on her knees in nausea.
"It was stupid." Mrs. Martin said stiffly to the woman. "I'd never grow anything that was dangerous for the group. I've spent all except a year of my life on a real Earth's surface farm. Do you think I'd forgot about the risks of cross contamination? Something that critical to our survival?"
"No, ma'am." said the ashen settler.
But the petite, spiral curled graceful Martin wasn't done yet. "For your information. I rinse everything in acid from the lake to sterilize things and then I rinse ALL food in water before its eaten."
Danziger waited until Mrs. Martin was through, then he ambled over to the woman who was still green about the gills.
"For disrespectful behavior, Magus, you're going to learn how it's done from beginning to end, from Bess. Starting tomorrow at sunup. Capisce?" said John.
Quickly, to escape her shame, Magus nodded once, tossed her gun to Danziger, and fled.
Devon Adair had a map laid out on top of a roasting boulder that was doubling as a cooking surface. True Danziger had laid out twelve neat spirulina pancakes and was flipping them over when they began steaming with a jammed door hinge. "Smells good, True. Are these snacks for anybody?"
"Help yourself. Kitty can only eat three at a time." said the youngest Danziger diplomatically.
"Thanks." said Devon. She eyed up Yale who was pouring over their schematics with his palm sensor, feeding in the latest reports from Zero on population numbers. "What's the latest?"
"Still no bacteria present. Except our own rogue." he sighed regretfully.
"The Eden Phage." said the page hair styled station elite. "I didn't think the Terrians would be able to contain the infection Bennet set free. Not easily. Using Morganite to sterilize the physical landscape was a very good idea. But nobody planned on stopping the wind."
"Fifty years is an eternity of time for a germ to run rampant." Yale agreed. "Did you know that oxygen on Earth that we depend on, was begun by such life? Earth wasn't always breathable by our standards."
"It wasn't?" asked Uly, walking up behind them, using his staff like a cane. He had on one of John Danziger's pairs of welding goggles and a hat made of burned out drive coil springs.
"No, sprite." said Yale, picking him up and setting him down near the cooking cakes so the boy could steal one for snacking. "Carbon dioxide and at one time, methane was the primary atmosphere. That is, until microbes came into being. Then, the very air was changed permanently by their living and dying processes, into what exists now to this very day."
"So where did this planet's oxygen come from?" the boy asked. "Did it come from germs, too?"
Yale and Devon looked at each other in surprise. Then the cyborg tutor spoke up. "I do not know the answer to that, Uly. Not yet. G889 is not like Earth where microscopic life forms ultimately rule as either diseases or as biological processes which control atmospheric chemistry. Here the very large has the ultimate say over the very small. Have you noticed how the Kobas obey humans or the Terrians? Or how Grendlers and humans do, for the flowers, when the spring orchid meadows are in bloom?"
"Yeah. Terrians told me once that it was because the Mother is the boss." Uly replied.
"She seems to be. Yes." agreed Devon. "We don't know how She communicates with all evolved life on the surface. We don't even know what this Mother is. Do you?"
"No. I only know she talks to me and the Terrians. But why is She silent now, mom? Is it because She died or something?"
The boy collapsed in his mother's arms and sobbed.
Devon's heart ached for her son. "We don't know what's happening, Uly. Not yet. But I promise you that we will keep going until we find out."
Yale added more. "There is no native bacteria here, Uly, and that is why we have this depopulation problem. Nothing here on G889 has evolved that has any immunity to Earth's introduced cell size invaders. That's because lifeforms so small have never been born here with a chance to develop a synergy long enough to become part of a balanced ecology."
The young Adair actually stabbed his staff deep into the ground so he could lean on it, like a sacrifice, by a wrist.
"This is wrong.. All the dead things we've been finding.." the boy said, with tears in his voice. "Can't you feel it? WE'RE ...all wrong. Even me. We never should have come here in the first place!" he sobbed, throwing down the cake he had grabbed. It landed onto the most center heart of the stove, where it burned to crisp, instantly. Leaping away, Uly disappeared into the dead brush, running away from camp.
"Uly!" cried his mother, getting to her feet.
"Let him go, Devon. He has had a lot on his mind lately. I've seen it. Perhaps he needs time to sort things out on his own." said the tutor.
"But.."
The teacher reassured her. "Zero is watching. He will not allow the boy near any caves or lakes."
Devon slowly sat down, tears of her own forming in her reddened eyes. "Do you think it's time, Yale."
"Time for what?" the big Jamaican man with the robotic hand and temple asked.
"I think its time we try to go find the rest of the penal colonists." she replied, hugging her arms to herself tightly for warmth, in spite of the hot sun. "We've been putting it off for too long. If anyone's discovered a friendlier way to survive on this planet than we have, it'll be them."
A cacaphony of protests split the air above the bonfire at their most recent main night camp.
"No, Devon!" shouted Cameron. "No way! Not in my lifetime..." agreed Travis.
Even John Danziger stiffened up at the suggestion. "Devon, the penal colonists still remember Gaal. He wasn't exactly the nicest guy on the planet. He tried to steal away my very own daughter!"
Devon spoke up. "Gaal had trade dealings with them, John. Remember? He couldn't have acted badly towards them or any business never would have exchanged hands."
For long moments only the blue flames crackling on the fire could be heard. Then their leader who was a mechanic sighed.
"Okay, all right. It's agreed that we need to find new answers. This is one way to do it." John gave in. "The colonists aside, Devon, these abandoned prisoners aren't the only risks we would be facing. Who the H*ll knows how those d*mned Grendlers out in the Waste feel about us humans now since they've learned how to commit murder. I'm sure Commandern O'Neil would be turning over in his grave if he knew we were actually thinking about going back out there to conduct anything, let alone attempting a truce talk."
Morgan reluctantly raised a hand until he was noticed, even through his nervous flinching. "Uh,.. it's been almost a year now since we've landed. Don't you think the Z.E.D. would have wiped them all out by now? They were here first."
The Eden Project group fell quiet as options collapsed around them at the suggestion.
"Only one way to find out." Devon whispered.
"How's that?"
"We send Zero on ahead to investigate." John replied.
Sleep was long time coming for everybody that night. It was as if the dying ground was screaming out its pain into their very hearts.
