Science Project
~ approx. 10 years
after landing, counting by the old-style Terran calendar
“Dad, I’m worried about Gonzo—she did it
again, and that’s the just… wrong!”
John Koenig looked up from his home’s computer
station to see his nine-year-old daughter standing near him, arms extended and
holding a dripping moppet almost over the keypad. He put out a hand and gently deflected the soggy creature
approximately twenty degrees to its left and safely out of harm’s way.
“Do you think she’s sick, too? She never
gets this dirty.”
John made eye contact with the little blue and
burgandy creature, one of the small native mammals that had befriended the
Alphans, and his daughter Jean in particular.
He saw tired determination in its bright black eyes. He reached out a hand and scratched the
small creature behind its nonexistent ears.
Gonzo was always tired, or at least since that savaging she took at the
mouth of a Skeksis bent on attacking John just over nine years before. Nominally ‘his’ moppet, Gonzo had been
immediately infatuated with Jean from the moment of her birth and the girl
could do no wrong in its small eyes.
“She looks okay to me. Wet, but okay. Go get a towel and dry her off.”
John sniffed. Gonzo radiated a musty, almost yeasty odor. “I don’t think she soiled herself, but I’m
not sure what she got herself into.” He
waved a hand in the direction of the lavatory in his small adobe home and
turned back to the report he was reviewing.
He heard Jean dutifully pad off, scolding Gonzo the entire way. Twenty minutes passed. There seemed to be an awful lot of effort
going into such a simple operation.
Just as he was about to get up, his daughter returned bearing a now
merely very damp and highly ruffled Gonzo.
“Dad, it’s hard to get all her fur dry!”
John took the cotton towel and moppet and
placed both on his lap. He gently and
systematically dried the creature’s fur, giving it a good scratching in the
process. Gonzo ‘hummed’ contentedly in
his lap, eyes closed in pleasure. John
smiled slightly. Just like a cat. Except for this new proclivity for getting
wet.
“Where did you find her, Jean?” He looked up to see the thin, brown-haired
girl leaning against the wooden table, running her long braid through her
fingers. To be honest, the sharp-featured
girl with her mother’s high Slavic cheekbones was not a pretty child, not like
Danae Benes. She unfortunately took too
much after him-- but she did have her mother’s elegance and unconscious grace. And she was utterly beautiful in his eyes.
“She
was, well, sneaking into the house.”
“Sneaking?”
Jean
nodded. “Sneaking. And she looked guilty.”
John had to try hard not to smile. Jean had had a recent run in with the
ramifications for inappropriate behavior after being caught sneaking into the
Aleksandr household pantry and making off with a bag of sweets. She had discovered, to her backside’s
dismay, that ‘sneaking’ was not acceptable.
“I picked her up as soon as I saw her and
brought her here. I didn’t want Mommy to get upset
again.” Jean’s face fell as her eyes
teared up.
“You did the right thing.” John held out his arm and Jean walked over
to him for a hug. John rubbed Jean’s
back and held her while she cried.
Things were difficult at present for all of Tanya’s children, but Jean
was old enough to have some insight as to why her mother was spending so little
time with her and her three younger brothers, Michel, Sasha and Colin.
“Will Paul be all right, Daddy? He just lays in bed and sleeps. He won’t eat or talk to anyone, not even us
kids!”
“I don’t know. I hope so. We need him to
get better.”
Jean nodded.
She was very fond of her foster father.
“Mommy needs him to get
better. And soon.”
Paul Morrow had been out hiking along one of
the mountain ridges above their valley home when he had been quite literally
blown off the cliff by one of the fierce wind gusts that buffeted the planet at
dusk. Separated from his commlock as he
fell, he had laid dazed and confused amongst the rocks twenty meters down the
cliff face. Alan and Kevin Taylor had
found him the next day and had used an Eagle to airlift him out of the
treacherous area. Rescue had been soon
enough for Bob Mathias to do emergency surgery to drain the blood collecting in
a clot on his brain, but not soon enough to avoid the raging infection that had
set up in his broken and mangled leg.
None of their antibiotics seemed to be effective, and Mathias was now
very worried that the unknown infection had become seeded in Paul’s hipbone and
heart. Things didn’t look good.
John wiped the tears from Jean’s face. She had moved in with him during the past
few weeks, a change of sleeping arrangements that secretly delighted him. He enjoyed her company in the evenings and
the knowledge she was under the same roof with him. During the days, when he had duties about the two communities to
attend to, she was excellent at helping to care for her younger siblings. “Where are your brothers?”
“With Aunt Sandra.”
John nodded.
Sandra, Alan and Peter had immediately stepped in and assumed care for
the three-, five- and seven-year-old boys.
They juggled childcare and their own work responsibilities to make sure
one of the three of them was almost always with Tanya, helping her take care of
Paul.
“Wouldn’t you rather stay with them? You could bunk with Danae.”
“Uh huh.
I’d rather stay her with you.
It’s too busy-busy over there.”
John had to agree with that. Alan had designed and built a very
generously sized home, but three adults, three Benes children, three Aleksandr
children, and one Osgood fosterling along with five or so moppets was much too
‘busy-busy’ for his taste, too.
“Even if you get to play with all their
moppets?”
Jean nodded and reached out her thin arms and
gave John a tight hug around his neck.
“I like having you all to myself, Daddy.”
“Me too.”
Gonzo hummed contentedly.
~~~~~~~~
“Daddy, look.
There she goes again.” John
looked up from getting dressed the next morning. Jean was hurriedly pulling on her tunic and pointing to Gonzo who
was padding out the front door. John
had to admit there was great determination on the moppet’s small, fuzzy pointed
face. And she didn’t look anywhere as
frail as she usually did.
“Come on, Jean. Let’s see what she’s up to.”
He took a moment to check in with the command center to let him know he
would be late reporting to duty, and then with Tanya so she wouldn’t worry
about their daughter not showing up for breakfast.
John held out his hand to the girl, finger
over his lips for silence, and the two of them followed Gonzo out into the
early morning light. It was a mark of
the animal’s determination that she did not seem to be aware she was being
followed, especially as Jean had the average nine-year-old’s inability to keep
quiet for long.
The quick-paced walk lasted almost thirty
minutes and led them ‘up-valley’. Here,
there were dense forests that the Alphans had yet to do much to and which
remained largely unexplored. Looking
around, John realized that it had been not far from here that Paul had taken
his fall while scouting out new hardwood for his projects.
The small moppet wound in and out amongst the tree trunks, and
John and Jean had to stay attentive to keep the animal in sight through the
deepening shadows. Gonzo’s blue
coloring made her seem to be just one more shadow amidst shadows. It was only to sharp vision of the child
that caught the movement when Gonzo darted into the fern-like plants
surrounding a clump of small hardwood trees.
Smaller only in comparison to their towering seventy-five meter
neighbors.
“Here, Daddy.
She went through here.”
Before John could stop her, Jean had bent over
and slipped between the giant, blue, fern-like fronds covering the ground. He prepared to call her back for a scolding
when she stuck her head back out and motioned him to be quiet and follow
her. Checking his irritation, John did
as the child bade and got down on his knees to follow her into the ferns.
There, only a meter or so away in the midst of
yet more ferns was a shallow, malodorous pool.
There was a green-blue shimmer on top of the scummy water and small
waves disturbed its flat surface… waves that were from Gonzo very deliberately
and carefully rolling herself in the cloudiest part of the water. Soaking wet, she looked up to her two
Alphans… and sneezed.
Jean sighed in exasperation and was crawling
through the ferns to go fetch her pet, when to John’s surprise Gonzo performed
one of her old gymnastic moves he had not seen in years. She executed a two-hundred a seventy degree
turn, briefly folding herself into the shape of an old Terran pretzel and then
leapt up and over Jean and darted away.
“Daddy!”
Jean stood up and stamped her foot in frustration, spraying a quantity
of smelly mud over herself and her father.
“Ooops. Sorry.”
John grimaced and wiped his face. As he considered what to do next, Jean was
already crawling back through the fronds the way they came. Following Jean, he backed put of the hollow
and stood slowly, stretching cramped back muscles and again considering what
to. Jean’s impulsiveness was a
worry. The child needed to learn to not
be so darn impetuous; this planet still held its share of dangerous surprises.
“Come on, Daddy. We’ve got to get home. I
bet she’s heading back there.” And
then, before her father could get a word in edgewise, Jean lead John back at a
quick trot, soon leaving him too winded for a scolding. Reaching the log-framed Alexsandr home, Jean
quickly found what she expected by the open front door.
“Look… little wet footprints. I knew it!”
And without thinking of the consequences, Jean burst into the house to
search for her pet.
Taking a few deep breaths, John entered more
slowly. He knew he was always welcome
in Tanya and Paul’s home, but he still felt more like a visiting relation than
a part of the immediate family. He
always had. He slipped off his muddy
boots and brushed the worst of the smelly mud that had dried on his pants and
shirt. Straightening, he looked about
the front room and noticed how empty it felt without the rambunctious noise of
four children. The beautifully
hand-made cabinets, tables and chairs seemed incomplete without children
playing on and about them. The
fireplace was dark and cold, and Paul’s abandoned guitar leaning against the
tall settle caused a pang of sadness.
Paul had made that for Tanya when she was pregnant with his first child.
As the demand for a Controller lessened over
the years, Paul had discovered an unexpected gift for working with wood. Through trial and error, he had revived many
of the old techniques he had found in the data bases brought from Alpha. He had filled their home with simple,
refined pieces that he had stained in a rich, deep color to highlight the fine
grain of the wood from the neighboring trees.
John knew first-hand how skillful Paul had become; his home also held
many fine pieces built over the years.
John walked to the back of the house to the
bedroom area and found Jean on hands and knees in the back hallway. Whispering loudly, she was trying to coax an
exhausted-looking Gonzo to come to her and not enter the open bedroom.
“Come on, come here, Gonzo. Come on, girl.”
John saw the dripping moppet take two slow
steps in Jean’s direction, her head bowed in apparent submission, when suddenly
the animal whirled about on her hind feet and dashed into the bedroom.
“Gonzo!”
Jean stood and marched into the open room, but
John saw her stop just beyond the door.
He walked up behind his daughter and looked in, saddened by what he saw.
Paul was laying quietly on the bed in a fever
and narcotic induced haze. He was a
pale shadow of his usual athletic self, and had the wasted appearance of a man
who has lost too much weight too quickly, and Paul had not had that much weight
to lose at the onset.
Tanya and a nurse were at Paul’s side changing
the dressing on the deep, festering open wound on his right hip, the one from
the fall seven weeks earlier. Paul’s
leg was already showing marked wasting, and that was in addition to the muscles
Mathias had removed in his ineffectual attempt to limit the spread of the
infection.
Tanya looked up and acknowledged their
presence. She smiled sadly at her
eldest. “Jean, please go with your
father. I’ll call you when we’re done
and you can visit then.” She looked at
John and the thin smiled faded. The
adults knew the situation was almost hopeless.
John hoped that when his time came, he died quickly and didn’t linger
like this. This was hell. He placed his hands on Jean’s shoulders and
started to turn her about when a blue flash caught everyone’s eyes. Gonzo.
From under the bed, she ran into the middle of
the room and then pivoted to leap high to the top of the pillows, evading the
frantically grasping hands of Tanya and the nurse, and ignoring Jean’s commands
to get down. The small, still dripping
animal jumped lightly over the barely aware Paul and landed immediately next to
the large open thigh wound. She wheeled
around and backed up right next to Paul’s skin and then against the open
wound. When Tanya reached for her, she
did something no one had ever seen a moppet do. She growled.
Tanya flashed dismayed eyes at John. He stepped up to take the creature by force
if need be, when Gonzo shook all over, just like a dog shedding water, and
soaked everyone and everything in her vicinity with thin, green, smelly
slime. Now standing on wobbly legs, the
bright light went dim in her eyes, and John watched as she fell over onto her
side and lay perfectly still.
“Gonzo!”
Jean cried out in horror and ran to her pet’s side. She scooped up the much less wet animal and
clutched it to her chest. “Is she dead,
Daddy?”
John glanced quickly to see that the nurse now
had everything in hand and was busily cleaning off mud and slime from Paul’s
leg. Tanya just stood next to the bed,
tears running down her face.
“Jean, go outside and wait for me. Your mother needs me just now.” He gently pushed her toward the door.
“But, Gonzo…”
“Will wait.
Go.”
Jean looked up, distressed at her father’s
dismissal of Gonzo, but when he used that tone of voice, she obeyed. “Yes, sir.”
John saw Jean walk out and then went over to
Tanya’s side. He placed an arm around
her shoulders and gently guided her to a corner for some privacy. Once there, he turned her to face him and
wrapped both his arms around her, pressing her head to his chest. He provided unspoken support while she
sobbed quietly. Eventually, she
collected herself. John tilted her
chin up and kissed her cheek.
“You know it won’t really make any
difference. We’re going to lose him.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be here for you.”
“I know.”
Tanya held John tightly for a few moments more
and then returned to Paul’s side, once again the cool, collected operative he
had long admired. He watched her take
Paul’s hand as she wiped the slimy splatters off his face, then turned to
follow Jean and Gonzo.
He had no idea why the beast had done what it
had. It was utterly inexplicable. Then again, maybe it was some unknown ritual
of moppet-kind they had yet to see.
These small creatures were more than mere animals, as they had
demonstrated on numerous occasions, and he reminded himself that he would be
wise not to forget that.
He found Jean seated on the front doorstep,
Gonzo now awake and stretched out limply in her lap. He folded his long legs and sat down next to them. He reached out and stroked the drying
fur. “Is she okay?”
“I think so, Daddy. Why did she do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she thought she was helping. You know how the moppets always care for one another.”
Jean nodded her head. There was a long pause. “Paul’s going to die, isn’t he?”
John sighed and leaned back, his hands braced
on the floor behind him for support.
“Yes.” He looked down at his
daughter expecting to see tears, instead he was surprised to see determination
on her solemn face.
“Then I’ll have to be the strong one for Mommy
and the boys.”
John felt a glow of pride as he wrapped an arm
around his daughter.
~~~~~~~~~
The next morning John was awoken by Tanya’s
distant cry and footsteps rushing outside his window. Jean ran into his room, her eyes wide with fright as he hastily
pulled on clothes.
“Daddy?”
“Dress quickly, Jean. I want you to go to the Benes’s until I find
out what’s happened.” Jean nodded,
tears running down her face. Both
father and daughter know what was expected.
John walked quickly over to the main
home. He entered through the open door
and pushed past Alan to reach the bedroom.
Mathias was leaned over Paul, and to John’s
surprise, Tanya actually had a smile for him through the tears. He walked to her side to see better, and
found Paul looking up at him. He eyes
were clear and lucid for the first time in many days.
“Commander.”
Paul’s weak voice was scratchy from disuse, but plainly his.
Amidst a wash of relief, John smiled
slightly. “So formal, Paul? I thought
we agreed on ‘John’ years ago.”
“Reporting back to duty should a formal
occasion, though, don’t you believe?”
John glanced at Bob who nodded his head
encouragingly. “Parts of this wound
look remarkably better. Gloria says she
cleaned some mud off yesterday. I want
samples of that mud. Now.”
“That can be arranged. Do you think it helped?”
“Nothing else has.”
“Alright, let’s go. Grab your kit and I’ll take you there now.” John looked back to his old friend. “Paul, when Mathias clears you, I’ll take
that formal report.”
Paul smiled.
“Very good, Commander.”
As they headed out, John saw Paul pull Tanya
down to him. Things were looking up.
~~~~~~~~
2 weeks later…
“Daddy, what’s growing in all those little
bottles?”
John and Jean, Gonzo perched on her shoulder,
were walking through the Medical Center’s ‘research wing’, a dry, low-humidity
cavern set up to explore medical uses of local plants and minerals. Just now, the row after row of small glass
Petri plates and sealed jars growing green slime reminded John of an old high
school science project he once did cultivating bacteria collected off public
drinking fountains. After that project,
he’d never used a fountain again. Here
and now, the main focus was growing and purifying the odd, unicellular life
form found in the slimy water Gonzo had showered into Paul’s wound. Dr. Mathias walked over to them and smiled.
“That, Jean, is the local equivalent of
penicillin. The algae we found in
Gonzo’s pool extrudes a sort of chemical that kills many of the local bacteria
we have isolated.”
Jean looked up at the doctor, a frown of
concentration on her face. She knew
what penicillin was, and she also knew it hadn’t worked on her foster
father. She seemed to remember
something one of the medical staff had said when she didn’t know Jean was
eavesdropping on their conversations about Paul.
“Local germ warfare to fight the local germs?”
Bob looked at John in surprise and then back
to the girl. “Exactly! We just hadn’t stumbled across this one
yet. Thanks to you and Gonzo, a few
more weeks’ treatment with this anti-bacterial and Paul should be up and
about.”
“Will he be able to walk? I mean, you cut such big chunks out of his leg…”
Mathias didn’t want to lie to the child. “Paul will be able to think clearly and even
care for himself…” Bob looked at John, “…in time.” He looked back at Jean.
“Walking is within possibility, but that will take months, and he’ll
always have a nasty limp.”
Jean lit up and started bouncing on her toes,
once again the happy child John knew.
“That won’t matter, will it, Daddy?”
“No, Jean.
It won’t.”
Jean gave Gonzo a tight hug and skipped out of
the cavern, hand in hand with her father.
~~~~~~~~
And the
message of The People went forth: Help
them survive. Protect them.
18
December 2006
MGK
Since October 12, 2006
photos by E. Kausch