Chapter 2
She had been home ten minutes. She walked in the front door of her mother’s house, set down her suitcase, embraced her mother and exchanged warm, homecoming pleasantries. Then, in the blink of an eye, her mother’s façade of happiness dropped. She told Teric that her brother was out in the backyard and would she, ‘Please, please, please go speak with him at once’. Knowing her mother would have nothing else to say until Teric talked with him, she went.
He was sitting with his back to the house on the well kept, lush grass of the back yard a couple of feet off the stone patio. Immediately, Teric felt a warm flood of loneliness. Part of it was knowing that her little brother was lost and confused, sitting alone, staring off into the distance. Another part was the sudden realization that while she was gone he had grown considerably and she had missed it. Forever.
He was no longer a short, skinny child with light blue eyes and eternally tangled blond hair. He was now a tall young man with close-cropped light brown hair. Although still lanky, she could see the beginning of what would be a powerful, muscular frame.
“Hello, Jehrac”, she said quietly.
“Hello, sis,” he replied without looking at her. “Mother said you would be arriving today.” His voice had, of course, deepened, she thought.
“And here I am,” she sat down beside him and ran her fingers firmly through the grass. “How have you been?”
“Depends on who you ask. I would say fine. Mother would have a different opinion.”
Teric tensed slightly and thought maybe it was best to jump right in to it. Her brother certainly wasn’t avoiding the topic. She said, “Mother did ask me to talk to you.”
“She wants you to talk me out of thinking about the Creator and Home World Bound ideas.”
“Neither mother or myself want you to stop thinking about anything.”
Jehrac looked at his sister, “Did you ever think there was a Creator?”
“No. But, I have thought about why some people believe there is.”
Without trying to sound like a lecturer, she briefly told him what she had discovered in thinking about such things. Thereafter, he launched into several arguments that she had heard before that supposedly proved illogical ideas were true. After each one she patiently explained false premises they contained. Then, he hit her with a new variation she had not heard before.
“Say you’re flying through space,” he began.
“Done it many times.”
“And you come across an antique automobile.”
“Very improbable.”
“And you discover that this antique wasn’t built on Home World but was assembled by random chance of material floating around out there in deep space.”
“Impossible. Automobiles are manufactured by the conscious intention of people. And you’d need an infinite series of random chances in an infinite universe, but the universe isn’t infinite.”
“Right. And a person is more complicated than an antique automobile.”
“That’s true.”
“So, how could people be made by random chance if an automobile, which is simpler, couldn’t be? There must have been some conscious intention of a Creator that made people.”
“But, people aren’t made by random chance, Jehrac. The creation and evolution of people was and is a logical chain of cause and effect events. Which, by the way, every argument for the existence of a Creator clearly violates.”
Jehrac had no reply for this, so they sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Teric, does the sky look big to you?” he asked suddenly.
This abrupt change in the conversation brought a small warm smile to her face. Even with the weighty questions and important philosophical issues dawning in her brother’s young mind, he was still capable of simple wonder and amazement.
She lifted her head slightly to take a sincere look, ”It always does on Home World. Big, tall, towering, huge . . .”
“How does it look on Sat Worlds? I mean, I’ve accessed pictures, but when you’re really there . . .”
“It looks smaller, sometimes confining. Like you could almost reach up and touch it.”
“Touch the sky? That’s pretty arrogant. Maybe that’s why the Creator wants us to stay on Home World. When you’re on a Sat World with a people manufactured sky it makes you feel big. But, when you’re here the sky makes you fell small. Like the Creator wants us to feel.”
So, she thought wearily, it wasn’t the innocence of youth marveling at the beauty of existence. It was merely a devious little stunt; probably picked up from one of his teachers.
“No, Jehrac,” her voice turned hard for the first time. “The sky looks small on Sat Worlds because the Sat Worlds are small. If we were to manufacture an atmosphere on a world the size of Home World the sky would eventually look big there also.”
He looked sullenly at the ground and slumped his shoulders. She continued.
“I don’t appreciate being talked to like a fool. And, it makes me sad that you would talk as if you were a fool, which you are not. You are an intelligent young man.”
Their mother opened the back door and leaned out, “Who’s hungry? Mid-day meal is almost ready.”
At that, Jehrac got up without a word and walked into the house leaving Teric sitting alone on the lawn watching him retreat into the house.
• • •
“Gorsh,” Teric thought to herself.
So much contained in one single word.
She was driving her mother’s seldom used aircar to see her long time friend and confidant, part time colleague and lover: Gorsh Dakjium. The last time she had seen him in person was a little over a year ago at a medical seminar on SatFour. He had delivered a lecture on the problems that would be encountered in setting up the new Med Complex on SatSix and how to counteract those problems. He had done his usual brilliant job, which resulted in him being offered the responsibility of overseeing research and treatment of the newly discovered virus that was the cause of the project. He signed on as a consultant with the option to become more directly involved if he desired in the future. He companies financing the project were pleased to have him involved in any capacity he wished.
He was justifiably considered the foremost expert in his field: extraterrestrial virology. Thus, some people were surprised when they learned he spent most of his life in his private labs on Home World, rarely visiting Satellite Worlds. Most of his work consisted of viruses originating on Home World, mutated by long space flights and new planetary environments. However, the remaining minority, more exciting to him, was dealing with viruses and quasi-viruses discovered on Satellite Worlds once they had been terraformed and atmosphered. To the companies that set up surveying mining outposts and atmosphere manufacturing equipment on the harsh frontiers of space, getting future Sat World sites ready for habitation, men like Gorsh Dakjium were absolutely invaluable. He was a wealthy man.
Teric had communicated with Gorsh more regularly than usual after the seminar. She wanted to know if he had seriously considered going to the construction site of the new Med Complex on SatSix; or even being stationed there for the beginning of its operation. He told her that his decision rested on the outcome of a few projects he had currently underway in his labs. As well as some personal issues. He wouldn’t offer more on the subject and Teric knew not to push it. Even though he was a very private person, she was not accustomed to him withholding information on ‘personal issues’ from her.
Now Teric had been informed that she was first in line for the line job of Administrator on this new complex.
If she wanted it.
“If?! IF I want it?!” she had thought to herself. She had kept up to date on the project by getting her hands and mind on all the information about it that was available. It was exactly the sort of thing for which she had planned, studied, worked and spent her whole career. The head of a historic undertaking, a project with solar system wide implications, a mountain-sized pile of money and more important than all the rest: the challenge to do a job never before accomplished by anyone.
Teric had worked at the Med Complexes on every Sat World. She ran the show on most of them. She had five different degrees in various medical fields. She was considered a specialist in three, four or all five depending on whom you asked. She had started in one field but simply could not confine herself. Within two months of her first job on SatOne, Home World’s largest moon, she was running two departments with the thanks and blessing of the administration as well as the director of the department she took over.
Perhaps, ‘took over’ was the wrong way to say it.
Teric was not territorial or politically backstabbing about it. She was simply more competent: she made life and death medical decisions more quickly and accurately. She started helping out here and there in odd moments or when others seemed to be stumped by a particular problem. Because of her overwhelming ability and confidence it didn’t take long for everyone to automatically refer to her as the boss: even her superiors. Within six months she was running the entire complex without title.
Once, in the second year of her career, a director of a Med Complex department that Teric was beginning to ‘invade’ challenged her authority on an important issue. Teric was proved correct by the facts of the situation, but the director persisted in his complaints. It took Teric a long time to finally grasp that this man was not interested in right or wrong concerning the facts of medical science. She had never conceived that a person could be obsessed with the prestige of a job title without regard to the competence required to earn it. The director was relieved of his post and Teric assumed his responsibilities in addition to her current ones. At the start of her third year she was promoted and formally granted the title Med Complex Administrator.
Only fifty people in her entire civilization currently had that job title.
Now, only a few days before she was to leave for the most important, and perhaps, the longest assignment of her career she had to know: was Gorsh going to be there?