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Chapter 17
The weather started to clear up and we got the green light to resume preparations for the trip. Helena closed her laptop. It was the end of the team meeting and she had just read aloud the latest translation of Laura's diary. There was a deafening silence among the members of the team. Everyone was looking down at the table, or their hands, trying to absorb the emotions the text was stirring in them. Several were awkwardly trying to hide their tears. Helena pointed at some very important information gathered in this part of the diary. Laura had cancer and she had been cured by a transfusion from a baby, who was half cylon and half human. How did this happen? And who were the parents? Dr. Bordes, the molecular biologist, was in shock. The idea that cylons, described as machines, androids maybe or genetically engineered beings, could have been compatible enough to have reproduced with humans brought another layer of confusion to the team. That meant that they had a human body, physiology and all. Clearly, there were two types of cylons, the machine kind, and a human kind, skinjob, likely genetically engineered from the human genome. They may have possessed superior physical characteristics, but immortality? The team was silent, their minds stunned by this discovery. Not only they had reproduced and a baby was born, but also Laura's cancer had been cured by a transfusion of blood from this baby. The implications were staggering. Dr. Bordes suggested that a genetically engineered being could have different properties, stem cells, which could have brought temporary relief to Laura's cancer. Yet, because of the genetic profile of Laura, bearing several proto-oncogenes mutations, it was clear that her relapse was inevitable. Dr. Inoue whispered. "I think we should call it a night." And everyone silently parted, returning to his or her tents, deep in their thoughts. Helena remained in the commons. Takashi Inoue was sitting across from her.
"You should take a break." He whispered.
"Are you handling me?" She replied in the same hushed tones.
He sighed. "I think this is very hard on you. The text is hard, and it would affect anyone who has to work with such an emotional and disturbing story. When was the last time you rested?"
Helena did not reply. She knew he was right, but she could not take away the profound impact this woman, who lived such a long time ago, had made on her. She could not let it go. Not now. Not just yet. Takashi Inoue knew Helena very well. He knew that her stubborn facial expression meant she was not ready to stop her search.
Takashi continued: "I have mapped the valley region, we should search around here. We have topographic maps and satellite pictures, and we will visit several hamlets, where the Waluguru tribes are living and which are very isolated. It is very possible that their legends and history would perpetuate the story of Laura. The weather might not start cooperating until next week. We have a time window to go. I think you are going to find their culture quite interesting. From what I gather, they very well could be long lost descendants of Laura's people. We are still working authorizations and administrative paperwork."
"Laura did not have children. That is too bad. Such a powerful woman…" She reflected, almost to herself.
"It is unlikely she was alone. She talks about her people. They probably ended up settling here. What are you going to do now?"
Helena, firmly, answered: "I am going to continue working on the text and try to get as far as I can before our expedition. We will need as much information as we can get, if we are going to try to find them. Isn't that what we really are doing? Finding them?"
"Yes. Finding them to reassure ourselves that their efforts and pain were not in vain, and that their history was not lost." Takashi stood and gave her a hug before leaving the tent. Helena took her laptop, left the commons, and retreated to her tent, walking in the darkness under a fine light rain.
"Seventy first day of the cylon occupation. At the end of the month of Ianuarius of the old calendar, we used to turn to the new spring and forget the winter. Even though the weather patterns are different on this planet, it seems like the weather is changing again. Temperatures are on the rise and now we have been above freezing several days in a row. Snow is melting in dirty puddles and the mud has come back. I did not think I would love to see the mud back, but I do. We have been able to reopen the school again. First day back and I realized that some children had died from cold, starvation and diseases. I have to keep a strong demeanor and a comforting face to those who are still coming here to school and seek as much the learning as my presence. There is flooding in places where the ground cannot take any more water. Just like the ground, I feel like my soul cannot take any more pain and my eyes are dry from endless nights spent crying. During the day, I wear a mask of courage. I teach the children, and I even manage to forget our situation in their bright eyes and their innocent smiles. Maya's daughter, Isis, is growing. Seeing her life, which I care for so much for very personal reasons, gives me hope. If the weather maintains, life will get a little bit easier. I washed for the first time in weeks this afternoon. I warmed up water on the stove and, despite the chill in the air, I stripped of my clothes and finally scrubbed my body. It felt so good to remove weeks of dirt. I washed my hair and I felt more like myself again. I felt renewed. Water always has had that effect on me. Water purified me. I dressed simply in long sleeves shirt and sweater and put the jacket over it. I walked lighter, not weighted down my layers of heavy clothes, not weighted by dirt."
"At the hospital that afternoon, I met with Cottle and we went over the numbers again. More were missing, adding to those who died from lack of food, illnesses and cold. The list was getting long. It was a list of grief and pain. I was talking with the doctor when we heard footsteps and saw a shaking colonel Tigh brought in by his wife Ellen. He had been incarcerated for over two months now. He looked fifteen years older, white beard grown and… oh my Gods, his right eye missing. I turned around not to stare into the black void of the eye orbit, while Cottle was making sure the wound had healed well. I remembered the eye they handed me in my cell. My stomach unsteady, I tried to erase the picture off my mind and willed my nausea away. I directed my attention to Ellen. She was pale and her face bore the telltale bruises of cylon abuse. I wondered what she went through. Maybe I did not have to ask. One look at her, and I knew. She was withdrawn and, when she thought nobody was looking at her, she was shaking. She caught my look and straightened up, too proud to show her pain.
'What happened to you?' I whispered. My question was too direct and I saw her retracting from me.
'We do what we have to do for those we love. Whatever it takes.' She looked at me and in her look I understood what it meant. I understood the pain and the horror of what she had been through. I never was a friend of Ellen. Her promiscuity in the fleet, her actions and influence on Saul Tigh was enough for me to dislike her. But at that moment, there was something true that I realized. We were deeply the same. We had loved. We had suffered and while our actions and their goals were opposite, we both wanted the same thing, to be happy with our family together. We wanted to be in peace. I looked at her and reply softly.
'It is not your fault, Ellen. It is the cylons. It is war. It is life.' She looked at me and nodded. In our pain, maybe there was somewhere a common ground to become friends. Cottle was finishing the exam on Tigh, who had broken ribs and multiple contusions. He prescribed him bed rest, which he knew he would not follow. Then Tigh walked by me, limping slightly from his injuries. He stopped right in front of me and scrutinized me with his single eye.
'When did you get out?'
'I was released four weeks later' I replied.
'What did you give them?' He grunted.
'Nothing. I had nothing to give.' I shuddered wondering if that was a lie. What if I had given them something? I would not know. I would not remember anymore that I remembered being beaten up. I felt I could not be trusted. It was not even a hypothesis, it had happened already. I could not remember.
His old weathered face looked suddenly very tired and sad.
'That's right. You had nothing to give. We'll keep it that way. That's your best protection. If you want to stay alive, you stay away from what we are doing. We will need a president eventually, hopefully not a dead one.' He put a hand on my shoulder. 'I heard you.' Then he left. I stared down on the floor. I knew what he meant. He meant he heard me in the cell, when I screamed, when I cried. Maybe he even heard Cavil too. He was in the cell right next to me. There was gentleness in his comment. It was not meant to humiliate me, but to let me understand that he knew what happened. Gods, he heard me. I wondered how much he heard of those moments I could not remember."
"With Tigh released, the insurgency picked up. The milder weather allowed them to get organized faster. Explosions were shaking the ground every day, killing cylons. But it did not matter; cylons would come back just the same. I heard that the insurgents were using an underground network of caves, both occurring naturally in the limestone and tunnels dung to connect them. This was a very smart way to avoid detection. Now we were working hard to identify the men and women working with the cylons. The cylons were advertising to enroll them in what they called the 'New Caprica' police, a force made of humans. We had pictures of the people recruited and we were trying to identify them, especially since they were masked when working and we did not know who they were. They could be anyone of us. I had a hidden reason for wanting to identify their men. I was hoping I would be able to know who my guards were. I am not sure why I needed to know. I wanted to see their faces, put a human name on my pain, and see if they could face me without concealing their identity. Maybe I wanted to fill the gap filling my soul. I wanted to get information, to know what had happened to me. I kept on burying myself in the work, in the hope that we still could fight. The violence between the insurgent and cylons kept rising. Informed of every move by their source in the government, the insurgents kept targeting those who collaborated."
"We started to get the population organized for the time when we would get rescued, if that was going to happen ever. But that hope was the only hope that kept us going. We did evacuation drills, disguised in fire drills. We organized the population into groups with meeting points. We slowly were starting to get ready. Without this rescue, we would be hopeless, I did not see how we would be able to get to the ships and fly off this planet with the cylons chasing us and no other help. But if Bill and Lee Adama were ever going to come back with the Galactica and the Pegasus, this would be our hope. I was holding on, energized only by this hope the insurgency was bringing to us. Their strength and their sacrifice was enough to keep the rest of us going."
"I would set into a rhythm for the day. Teaching in the morning and afternoon, then, Tory and I would go over the numbers. Insurgents had taken pictures of the New Caprica police force, hoping to identify some of the human traitors. Later in the day I would go to the hospital and gather more information from Cottle and go over the lists of the missing and dead. We were hoping to get a good census of the population that way. I guess to be able to account for each life gave us back a little bit of control over our destiny."
"There was one more task I needed to do. Bill had not come back and we were all pretending he would be, after months of waiting. The population was surviving with this hope. I needed to bury that life we had imagined in the tenderness of the summer. A cabin by a lake, a stream with water clear as glass, aging together in peace and love, all of this would never happen. Those were dreams, brought in by our naivety. If we ever got out of there, if Bill was indeed alive and coming to get us, we would have to resume fighting. We were at war, and maybe, just maybe, our real and only hope was to find Earth. If one lived under the constancy of a gray sky, it would be cruel to show her the sun, only to take it away later and forever. I saw the sun; I saw the glimpse of a life that could have been mine, but never will be. Dreaming impossible dreams was a dangerous game, a game of deception, of lies, of denial. I went in the crate where I was storing my few belongings and retrieved the red skirt and top I wore on Founder's day, when we made love for the first time under the stars. Unfolding the fabric, a half smoked join fell on the floor. I picked it up like a fragile object and secured it with a small piece of tape inside the diary I wrote, right by the text talking about that joyful summer. I hid the booklet back under my bed. I put the red dress in a bag and left my tent in the coolness of a damp day. I still knew the way to the lake, the path clear in my memory, even if it was so muddy now that the landscape was barely recognizable. It seemed it belonged in another life. In half an hour, I was there, standing on the flat rock, my flat rock. I sat there, like I used to do. Before. It was completely silent, the New Caprican birds gone. Patches of snow were still sticking to the rocks, some of the tall trees and the grass in shaded areas by the far side forest. The lake was still partly covered with ice along its banks, away from the swollen running stream, which was carrying broken pieces of ice sheets in turbulent and now muddy waters. The water of the lake was dark and gray, maybe a more accurate reflection of my soul at that moment. The water had lost its transparency carrying brown and grey clay and sand. I could not see multicolor pebbles on the bottom anymore. It had changed. I had changed. I had to let go. I scanned the banks for a fairly good size rock, which I could pick up. When I found one, I took the dress out of my bag. The carmine red fabric was wrinkled. It had been thin and light in the summer. I buried my face in the soft fabric, inhaling its scent, bringing memories of weed, alcohol and love, the last physical connection to a destroyed reality. I let tears flow in the fabric for a little while until I was ready. Then I took a deep cleansing breath. Wiping my eyes in the fabric, I got up and retrieved the large rock and wrapped it inside the fabric of the dress, tying knots around. I carried the rock, wrapped in the beautiful red fabric by the edge. I stood solemn for a few minutes, holding the rock, caressing the softness of the dress. A cold wind created ripples on the lake, as if the depths of the waters were calling my dreams. With both hands I lifted the rock and threw it as far as I could into the black waters of the lake. It splashed loudly, echoing in the distance, and I saw the red fabric slowly disappear down the dark waters amidst a cloud of bubbles. I stood there for a minute watching the ripples on the surface of the water, extending circles bigger and bigger until they touched the banks of the lake and then disappeared. Then, without looking back, I turned around and made my way down, back to the town. I knew I would never come back."
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