Symbiosis Chapter 2

Tom woke slowly, shivering and sweating uncontrollably. He was moving inside a vehicle. Erik’s woolly face stared down at him, and although he could see his lips moving Tom didn’t hear any words.

Behind his head a loud humming machine blotted out anything he might have wanted to hear, or else he'd gone deaf. Hot air on his skin brought his blood to the surface and as he defrosted his extremities were pelted with stinging needles. Shiver after shiver fired down his back. The vehicle rolled up and down as it traversed ridges and valleys on the way back to Hershel.

“He’s awake,” someone said in the quietest of voices. “Tom, you’re okay.” It sounded like Erik Smyth, the geologist, talking to him. His voice was far away, so faint. Tom wanted to speak but his throat wouldn’t let him; he couldn't make sounds at all. “No, Buddy, don’t try to talk. You’ll be in the infirmary in a few minutes.”

Infirmary? The ice tunnel. He’d fallen into an ice tube, crack, something. He must be alive because every square centimeter of his body ached as if a shuttle had landed on him. He couldn’t have turned over if he’d tried, but on his back he felt helpless, vulnerable, like an armadillo wanting to curl up and protect itself. The warm air was like a dry, summer breeze; Erik put a heavy blanket on him and the reflexive shivering eased slightly. An air blower attached to his ventilation made the noise as well as the heat; still in EV suits, sans helmets, the rover was suitable but far from an equipped ambulance.

The six wheeled ice tractor pulled into a small garage at the far end of the underground city of Hershel. The maw shut, lights blinked on, and the room pressurized. Several medics waited just inside and rushed to ambulate him to the recovery center built over an underground geothermal pocket. The white lights on the ceiling were not much different from the white surface of the moon: too bright for human eyeballs, so he shut them.

Once again Tom woke someplace other than his last memory projected, but the faces of his wife and daughter were a welcome alternative to Erik’s.

“Tom, I was so worried! What were you doing out there?”

“Papa!” Zalara chirped, climbing into the infirmary bed to snuggle as close as possible. He put his arms around her and helped her move in. Rianya held his hand; he squeezed it gently, grateful that not only she was there, and holding his hand, but that his hand could function as it had before the ice incident.

‘What time?” he croaked. He reached for some water. Her incredible plum irises, the scalloped alien pupils, the wispy long lashes that never failed to enchant him, all smiled back at him surrounded by her cameo pink skin.

“It’s nineteen hundred something,” she told him.

“That explains why I’m hungry.” He cleared his throat several times.

“We had dinner here 'cause you were 'sleep,” Zalara said.

“Did they tell you if I can get out of here?”

“Yes, they did. No, you can’t. Not until tomorrow morning.”

“I can’t feel my feet.” Rianya swallowed hard and looked away. She perched on the edge of his bed and held his hand in her lap.

“Oh, Tom, we are more alike now than before,” she said, pasting a halfhearted smile on her face. He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but it didn't sound good. He shook his head hoping she’d elaborate. “They had to remove a little toe,” she uttered, nodding her head toward a peak under the blanket. “It was frozen. They saved the others. So, now you have four toes like me and Zalara, at least on one foot.”

Tom grabbed the blanket and flipped it off his left foot. He only saw heavy bandages then realized his foot must be anesthetized, and was indeed missing a single digit. He sighed, leaned back on the pillows and looked up at Rianya.

“I guess the question now is should I consider my right foot with five toes the abnormal one?”

“You have same toes like me and Mama, now.”

“Tom, Mr. Smyth told me you were hunting for moon rocks. When did you take up this hobby?”

“Where’s Erik?”

“I don’t know. He was here a little while and said he couldn’t wait for you to wake up.”

“Did he say what happened?” Rianya frowned and smiled at him, putting her fingers under his chin.

“Mylan, you stepped on thin ice.” She rarely used her pet name for him. He must have alarmed her, scared her, or made some kind of an impact.

“I know that; but how did I get here?” he groused. “And don’t say by ambulance.” A woman in pale green scrubs appeared in the doorway.

“If I see him I’ll tell him to come and see you. Come on, 'Lara, Papa needs to sleep.”

“Sorry, Papa, I couldn’t fix it.” Tom looked at Rianya quickly searching her face for an answer.

“The surgeon had already, uh, well, it was gone before Zalara had a chance to, you know.”

“It’s alright, Pet,” he said, stroking the girl’s hair. “Don’t worry.” She kissed his cheek and climbed down. Rianya leaned down and quietly kissed him as well. Her dark mane of hair fell around his face acting as a privacy curtain.

“We'll see you in the morning.”

He sank a little deeper into the pillow and considered the irony of nine toes. Both Rianya and Zalara had eight toes, and both of them used to tease him about having such big feet with extra useless toes. Seemed that with all the incredible advances in medicine that any body parts with the same value as an appendix weren’t worth the time to salvage.

“Hey.” Tom looked at the door and Erik Smyth strolled in. “Sure glad you’re okay. You scared the living hell out of us.”

“Thanks, Erik, I owe you one.” Erik shrugged and pulled a chair up next to the bed. “I don’t remember much.”

“You were wedged in so tight they had to melt the ice with liquid nitrogen. Then you hit the ocean.”

“So how did I lose a toe?”

“You should be glad you still have some left and that you only lost one. Your EV suit tore at the sole, on something, sharp ice probably. Hypothermia saved the rest of you, Tom.”

“There’s an irony.”

“You owe the response team your life.”

“I didn’t even get any musgravite.”

Erik stood and shoved a hand in a pocket, pulling out something he handed to Tom. The rocky chunk was no bigger than a peach pit. He turned it over a couple times and saw the vaguest glint of violet in a fissure.

“Is this…?”

“Yeah. I did a little digging while waiting for the rescue team. It was just under the surface.”

“It’s worth a fortune,” Tom said, handing it back to Erik.

“No, it’s yours. Tell you what, I’ll have it cut for you.” Erik put the rock in his pocket. “Gotta have something for your troubles.”

Only 500 kilometers in diameter, Enceladus hid by Saturn’s outermost E ring, unlike giant Titan that boldly maintained its distance from the planet and its icy rings. Enceladus had long enchanted humans with geysers and curious ridges covering the surface. In 2120, scientists found extremophile bacteria living near the surface vents that sprayed icy water kilometers into space. With life forms that needed no sunlight, an entirely new branch of life science was born. Scoffing at the challenging living conditions, some of the brightest minds in biology and geology flocked to the small icy orb. Tidally locked to Saturn, it made a single revolution around the giant planet, and its own axis, in just under thirty three hours.

Finally home from the medical facility, Tom read a handheld daily news pad noting this week marked the tenth anniversary of the city Hershel’s founding. The Musk Science Engineering Corp had spent more than two years in EV suits tunneling out the underground city and building the research station. It took another year to finish the ship portals and docking station.

“What else was in the com you got this morning?” Rianya asked. Tom pretended not to hear her, focusing intently on his coffee and the news pad, but he owed her, and their daughter, a life on Earth as he’d promised. He yawned and refilled his cup with more ambition out of the carafe and a generous amount of cane sugar, a rare commodity that commanded a premium price. He caught Rianya’s portentous glance as he set the sugar jar in the center of the table.

“We’re going to leave soon, I might as well use it up,” he muttered. He brushed his hand over his face hoping to conceal his guilt and jubilation at the information in the message.

“How soon? Did you hear from the crew or Dr. Clarke?” she asked.

“A report Dr. Clarke published last month said the malaria gene crisis is substantially contained on Earth, finally. There hasn’t been a direct death in more than six months. Other than that, a few of our colleagues have been trying to track us down.”

Tom loathed recollecting the circumstances that led to their exile on Enceladus a year ago. Zalara’s unique DNA, a combination of his and her mother’s in somatic cells, provided a model that would cure the fatal pandemic caused by the genetic engineering of a vaccine against malaria.

In mortal danger, she’d been abducted for secret harvesting of her stem cells. After Tom emancipated her, he and Rianya offered the medical community a dozen zygotes with which to pattern a cure. In the meantime, seclusion inside Saturn’s moon had been a prudent precaution.

“How soon can we go home, then?”

“Just a couple of days until a passenger ship arrives and is ready to depart.”

“This was a good place. I earned my biology certification, and there were even a few children for ‘Lara to make friends with. But I’m glad we’re going to Earth. I need some real sunlight.”

“That’s why underground missions are limited to one year. It’s too hard on the brain in the artificial light, and a fourteen hour day is not good for a person year round.”

With the last dregs of coffee gone, Tom couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer. His foot was healed, the threat to Zalara was over, and he didn’t have any more excuses. He set his empty cup on the table harshly and drew a deep breath without looking in her eyes.
 

“The Space Administration offered me a new command.”

 Rianya pushed her dark locks of thick hair out of her face and swung her mane to one side. She set bread, cheese, and hard cooked eggs on the table and sat down. Her customary morning cup didn’t contain coffee but a mild tea made from a custom, complex variety of herbs and leaves that Tom ordered special for her from Costa Rica.

“You promised we would go back to Earth. I need real air and sunlight. Zalara too.” Rianya wore her customary docile smile but Tom saw the underlying frustration in her temples and sullen brows.

Zalara had shown more and more signs of telepathic ability, and inside their quarters she demonstrated repeated ability to heal physical insults. Although the Jacksons couldn’t hide their daughter’s very public DNA, her other gift they kept a secret and never mentioned it aloud in public for fear of another attempt on her life in humanity’s perverted quest for power over nature.

“Mama?” a wee voice came from another room. Both adults turned toward the sound and a yawning, sleepy child emerged, her chestnut hair tousled and nightgown tangled.

“We are going back to Earth,” Tom said. “Good morning, Pet, come here.” The girl hurried over and climbed in her father’s lap.

“We’ll talk more later,” Rianya said. After a long sip of tea and, silence, she got up and rummaged through a drawer. “I found this while I was looking for something,” she said and handed Tom a lacquered wooden box, a little larger than a bar of soap. He flipped the small brass latch while Zalara looked on.

“What’sat?” the girl asked. She reached in and picked up the unusual piece of jewelry made of platinum and gold. Three shiny spires formed a triangle with a canary diamond at the tip. Tom’s heart swelled that she’d not only found his astronaut’s pin but that she chose that exact moment to present it to him.

“This is the sun,” he pointed to the gem. “These are the flames that come out of a rocket.”

“What for?”

“Because Papa can fly a rocket ship between stars,” Rianya told her. “Not many people have one of those.” The girl turned it over in her hands and then grasped it tightly, taking possession.

“It’s a magic metal.” She slid off her father’s lap and danced away with his Treasure.

“Priceless,” he said to his wife. She handed him a fresh cup of coffee with a generous measure of cane sugar stirred in. 

“The girl or the pin?”

“There’s one more thing I need to talk to you about, before we go, or after, it doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to put it off.” Tom vacated the chair, took Rianya’s small hand and sat down on the small divan, tugging at her to join him. He sampled the coffee then set it down.

“Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?” she muttered. Tom hesitated. She wasn’t going to be happy about it, but with luck he could cast a beneficial light on the news, as he had when they’d arrived at the underground sanctuary where everything grew under artificial lights and the sun never shined.