Chapter 20: Light Passages

When our two week honeymoon was over and it was time to go home again, where to go was a simple decision. We were in the Mediterranean. A daylight jump to the Montecristo station on Meadow would put us there with our clocks already used to the local time. We planned our departure for the afternoon so could make a quick trip home to Angel's Camp before dinner.

We had each called our parents the day before and said we'd be popping in at the Parkin's house for a quick visit at 10am this morning their time. Of course they quickly agreed to meet us there. Mary said she'd make some fresh lemonade, and it was set.

We performed our arrival trick in reverse for the departure. Captain Bob and the crew had just had a nice two week vacation of their own in Monte Carlo, and were looking tanned, fit and happy.

We boarded at 4pm local time in Marseilles. Our chauffeur was the same buxom young woman who had met us at the airport at the start of our honeymoon, and she laughed when she saw the piles of boxes and bags stuffed with the spoils of our shopping trips.

As the Citation was taxiing onto the runway for takeoff I jumped Ginny and I to the kitchen in the Montecristo Station.

"Good afternoon you two!" Yela said. Her English had only a trace of an accent left. We both got fierce hugs from her. "How was the honeymoon? Can I get you anything? Coffee?"

"Coffee would be fine, Yela. We ate lunch shipboard, so we're fine until dinner. Where's Borthun?"

"He's with Constantine checking the filters on the saltwater pump for the desalination unit. Apparently they have been clogging at a faster than expected rate."

"Everyone else?" Ginny asked.

"Pete, Eru, Fred and Chet took the Aya out to collect some water samples or some such foolishness, and today is a festival day in a community called Ureda. Felicia, Cyrus, Arden, Sarah, and Alicia are monitoring it in the survey room."

With everyone occupied, and our expected arrival in Angel's Camp still an hour away, we decided to go for a short swim in the little bay in front of the cliff. The sandy beach was just as I'd imagined it would be, and the nifty gravity lift to and from the house that Con had devised was a fun touch. A little sign, obviously a little touch of Con's sense of humor, greeted us as we approached the beach itself

Montecristo Station Bathing Facility
-bathing suits optional-

We opted against, and had an enjoyable time splashing around in the warm, shallow waters until it was time to go.

We had a quick shower and got dressed, and just as quickly we were in Ginny's bedroom in Angel's Camp.

We arrived in the kitchen arm in arm and found our parents sitting with glasses of lemonade and coffee cake in front of them. Hugs and kisses all around were exchanged and we were quickly served up our lemonade. We both passed on the coffee cake, explaining that we were expected back at the station for dinner in an hour.

I handed Dad a 2 gigabyte flash card. "Here's a copy of all the SFP pictures we took. Run off copies for Paul and Mary please."

"SFP?" Mom asked.

"Safe for Parents." Ginny laughed.

"Ginny!" Her mom said. We all laughed, and laughed even louder when Paul said "Be good dear or I"ll go dig up the pictures from our honeymoon that we never showed our parents."

"We can't begin to tell you how much we enjoyed our honeymoon, and how absolutely happy we are." I said to them all. "But there is one thing we can tell you."

"What's that Son?" Paul asked.

"You are all going to be Grandparents in about nine months." Ginny said.

Chaos bomb times four! Oh man!

We had to wait right there as cell phones were brought out and other family members informed. We warned the rest of Ginny's family not to call Pete, as we hadn't told him yet, and wanted to do it ourselves.

Grandpa and Grandma Carson where tickled pink, and wanted to know if we knew if it was going to be a boy or a girl.

"We don't know yet Grandma." Ginny said. "Its too soon to know."

Grandpa A.J. asked us to come by when it was convenient and get our hugs and kisses. "And I will not respond to the name 'Great-Grandpa until the actual delivery is under way, so don't bother trying it!" he said with a chuckle.

We got back to the Montecristo station just in time to help Yela set the table for dinner. Everyone began showing up from their various activities, and we were busy handing out hugs and kisses for a while. When Con and Borthun came up from the desalination plant for lunch, they were brandishing a container of seawater. They got hugs anyway.

"Here's what has been gumming up the filters!" Borthun said, pointing at the jar Con held up for our inspection. There was a swirling cloud of tiny, almost too small to see fish, barely visible little needles.

"Apparently the shallow waters around the island are swarming with the little creatures." Con added.

Dinner was a delicious cool almond and garlic soup, sizzling seasoned strips of lamb tenderloin, grilled on skewers, and an interesting salad where the ingredients were all rolled up in a thin piece of prosciutto and sliced into flat wheels.

"Yela has become a TV addict!" Fred said. "She can't get enough of the Food Network. Especially that Italian Chef, what's his name?"

"Mario!" Came the reply from everyone at the table, followed by a round of loud laughter. It sounded as if perhaps Yela had been getting teased about this a little already.

After lunch we asked about the festival in Ureda, and what they had observed. As the observers began filling us in, Pete excused himself, saying he'd be right back.

"It is called the festival of Nemoth." Sarah said. "It is a three day celebration. The first day marks the defeat of an invading army. The second day celebrates Prince Nemoth, who defeated, in single combat, the 'evil and cruel' warlord who led the invaders, Adyx of Esprala. The third day marks the signing of a peace treaty called the 'Uredian Accords'."

"From what we can gather, this marks the beginning of what has now been ninety years of peace." Cyrus said.

"We were observing the first day's events yesterday. There were athletic contests and races and demonstrations of skill and knowledge." Alicia added. "What I found particularly interesting was that there seemed to actually be as much emphasis on intellectual achievement as on physical prowess. The people of that area are in the middle of something of an 'age of enlightenment'. At least as far as their attitudes towards learning are concerned."

"I'd say the enlightened attitudes cover religious tolerance as well as sexual and cultural." Sarah added. "Of course the extremes of cultural differentiation that we are used to on Earth never seem to have developed here."

"Tomorrow, the second day of the festival is a day of parades and exhibitions. There are active and organized guilds and trade groups in the city who will try to outdo each other with their parades." Felicia added. "The exhibits are more to show off the latest craftsmanship and achievement. This is also when the local artists display their latest works."

"The third day will be the big feast. It is what I would describe as probably the biggest potluck you'll ever see." Alicia added.

"Most folks bring something that they've prepared and add it to the table of whatever guild or trade house they are aligned with." Cyrus added. "Every family is aligned with a guild or trade house. Travelers do have a table where they can bring dishes if they want, but for the most part visitors to the city are considered guests of the Innkeepers guild."

"Perhaps we should consider attending some of the festivities in person tomorrow?" I asked.

Oops! Chaos bomb! I sat back with a small smile of amusement as I watched the chaos. Things had just about settled back to normal when Pete returned to the table looking fit to burst.

"Dave! I know why the people of Meadow are shallow water only sailors!" Pete told me.

"Why?" I asked.

"This!" he said, holding up a jar, which appeared to contain nothing but a little water.

"Sea Water?" I guessed.

"No! Watch!" He said. "Ava. Tight focus UV light beam on the object I am holding up please."

with a beam of Ultraviolet light shining on the jar, I could see a swirling, cloudy mass within it, as if a sheet of fuzzy white film floated in the liquid.

"On Earth, there is a creature called Teredo Navalis, or the shipworm, which eats wood." Pete explained. "It is actually a clam, not a worm, but it was the bane of all the world's sailing ships until it was discovered that a thin plating of copper on the a ship's hull prevented them from boring into the wooden hulls. Modern wood-hulled ships use a copper-based paint, which gets re-applied regularly."

"That thing is a clam?" I asked.

"No!" Pete said. This is not even marginally related to the shipworm of our world, but functionally it plays the shipworm's part in Meadow's oceans."

"If we overcame the shipworm on Earth, why wasn't this alternate overcome in a similar fashion?" I asked.

"Because this critter is like a shipworm on acid. They are really a kind of chondrophore, a colony organism made of single celled organisms called hydrozoa, like a Portuguese Man-of-War. It's taken an odd evolutionary path compared to what we're familiar with on Earth. This Meadow chondrophore has achieved its own form of immortality, but it has done so by developing a specialized cell that can do two things. Convert sunlight to energy and eat cellulose at a very rapid rate.

The dissolved cellulose, or the process of dissolving it must be associated with the reproductive cycle somehow, I haven't figured that part out yet, but it has led to the trait being selected for, and becoming dominant.

I call it the Sea-swarm. It has developed into what some would call a super-organism as well. There are not multiple colonies here and there on the oceans of Meadow, there is a single colony that entirely covers the oceans. Almost entirely, anyway."

Pete looked at me with an evil grin.

"Dave, here's a riddle for you. If the sea-swarms are so terribly efficient, why do we see small boats and rafts in use near the shoreline?"

"And the answer is?" I asked.

"The other piece of the puzzle." He said, and pointed at Constantine's jar and its cloud of tiny little fish, almost too small to see individually.

"Well since you're pointing at Con's filter cloggers, I"m going to assume its because of them?"