Chapter 12

2076 a.d.

The Prophet

The storm had passed and the crystal sun was shining brightly once again.

Jeff gave Béla some of Greta's clothes to wear. Surprisingly, they fit. Béla considered herself extremely petite and was hoping the clothing Jeff offered her would be too baggy to wear. Then she could have convinced him to let her run naked; at least between settlements.

They both explored the storage room, separating out what they wanted to take with them. They only needed the basics – a backpack for each of them, a bedroll for each pack and an ice pack for carrying perishables, although this early in the spring, there wasn't likely to be anything available that wasn't already frozen.

Béla found a standard first aid kit, complete with gauze, white tape, snakebite medicine, hydrogen peroxide and several syringes. There were also bottles marked penicillin, aspirin and niacin.

"What's the niacin for?" Béla asked, curious.

She needed to empty at least one of these vials to store some of her blood in, just in case they got separated somehow. It was her blood, after all, that was the cure for this wasting disease.

"Niacin?" Jeff asked. "Oh, that's for radiation poisoning. It helps the body to negate its effects, somehow."

Béla had taken niacin before. With her, it had created a sunburn effect that had convinced her that radiation poisoning was what she had. But, the effects did wear off after awhile. She had wanted to know what a sunburn felt like, so Jake had sadistically fed her a handful of B3 tablets, so she could find out. Then he'd practically rolled around on the floor as she frantically stripped off her clothes and stood, naked, trembling and terrified, in the middle of the room with her arms and legs spread carefully not touching anything! She still flushed (infuriated) when she thought about that!

She didn't really know if Niacin would cure radiation poisoning, like sunburns and such, but, back on Earth, there was a philosophy of medicine that believed in using minute doses of natural substances that actually created the symptoms to cure the condition one suffered from. Béla had never been sick, so she never bothered to learn more about it. In the end, it was the aspirin that got tossed. Béla hated drugs and the effects they had on her more than just about anything else. At least, B3 was a vitamin...

After raiding Jeff's kitchen and ice cellar for food to pack along, they looked around the horizon, deciding which way to go. Béla knew that cargo was being unloaded at the South Pole, so they decided to head that way. One of the odd things she noticed about navigating around New Eden – on a clear day, it was impossible to get lost; your destination was always visible on the horizon, above you. In fact, the only visible horizon occurred where the land curved up behind the clouds.

Jeff estimated that it would take four to six weeks to reach Southern, the town nearest the South Pole Depot. Béla had the misfortune of landing nearer Northern than Southern when she'd taken her morning sojourn a little too far from the great ship, and they were going to have to cross the equator to reach their destination.

They had seven weeks until the southern crystal sun began shining, transmitting its share of sunlight into New Eden. If they arrived later than that, Béla would have to wait two more months until the northern crystal sun was in shadow, and then travel halfway around New Eden to Northern in order to get transportation back to the great ship and her sisters.

"I remember, in my studies, there was a rail system here," Béla was saying as they traveled. "Why haven't we seen any tracks? They should be all over the place."

"They are," Jeff replied. "We just haven't walked far enough."

He pointed up to their destination for the day – a small town with a visible rail line running through it. There was smoke coming from what looked like the Town Square. It was blowing away from them.

"We should be there in a couple of hours," Jeff continued, "It's only seven or eight kilometers."

It looked close enough to Béla for her to just hop over into it. She craned her neck to look higher. Further away, the detail of the landscape disappeared into haze. At this time of the year, there was too much moisture in the air to see more than twenty miles or so. There were only two towns she could see. They both seemed to be on fire.

"What are they burning?" she asked, not certain she wanted to know.

Jeff looked up at the town. She could feel in his mind that he was upset at where the smoke was coming from. He knew the layout of New Hope and there was no reason for a fire to be where it was.

Béla withdrew from his mind and kept her thoughts to herself. She had seen town squares burn before, and suspected she knew what they were burning.

Plague victims!

Béla stopped walking. Jeff walked a few more steps, then turned around to see what the problem was.

"We should get off the road," Béla said, squinting as she studied the road before them. "There are guards ahead."

"Guards?" Jeff laughed, "Are you daft? There are no guards here."

"Yes. There are," Béla told him, urgently. "There are guards and they have guns!"

"Nonsense!" Jeff said, and turned back to the road.

He walked away from her, then listened to her bare footsteps as she caught up to him.

"At least let me walk in front of you," Béla insisted.

"Why, for Christ's sake?" Jeff asked, exasperated, now.

Béla stopped and looked at him. "You remember who Christ is?"

Jeff scrunched his forehead in thought. "Yes. I think so," he replied. "Since I've met you, things are coming back to me about my life before. This..." He held his hand up, indicating the surrounding landscape. "This isn't natural, is it?"

"No. It's all artificial," Béla replied. "If you dig down far enough, you'll find the metal shell I showed you last night."

"So that was all real, then?" Jeff asked, his eyes widening.

Béla looked at him, annoyed again.

'What is with these humans that they can't believe what they see in their dreams?' Béla asked herself, frustrated. 'No wonder they have such trouble communicating with each other!'

They walked another hundred yards, then Béla suddenly pulled Jeff off to the side of the road, tumbling the both of them into a shallow ditch. There was a distant 'crack' of a rifle shot.

"What is wrong with you?" Jeff yelled, indignantly picking himself up.

"We're being shot at, you jackass!" Béla yelled at him.

Startled by what she said, Jeff swung around, trying to look everywhere at once. The ground erupted next to his foot, making him jump. They heard another distant 'crack'.

"Goddess! Somebody's shooting at us!" Jeff cried, and dove for the ditch, much more willingly, this time. Hiding behind his backpack, he looked at Béla, sitting at the side of the road.

"Aren't you going to hide?" he hollered at her, not believing that she would just sit there and let someone shoot at her.

"No," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "They aren't shooting at me...

"Besides," she continued, "I can't be killed with a bullet."

"I beg to differ, Goddess," Jeff explained, sounding like he was talking to a child, "but I happened to see your revered Goddess Mother bring you back to life! She had to make you mortal so you could live again. Being mortal, Goddess, you can certainly be killed with a bullet!"

Dirt and gravel kicked up next to him. They heard another 'crack'.

"They're not trying to kill us, you know," Béla explained. "One person is keeping us pinned here while the others surround us."

"You're kidding!" Jeff told her. "And you know this because..."

Dirt showered down on his head from another ricocheted bullet, making him duck again.

Béla sighed at the ridiculousness of his delayed reactions and stood up as though she was daring the sniper to shoot her. She stripped off her backpack and tossed it across the road. Then she stripped off her clothes as Jeff watched, mouth agape at what he was seeing. Naked, Béla raised her arms straight out to her sides and turned around slowly, displaying her naked body to the shooter.

"What are you doing?" Jeff demanded to know, too frightened for her safety to control the trembling in his voice.

"I'm showing them I don't have the disease they're afraid we're carrying," Béla replied, managing to sound bored.

Then she walked around in front of Jeff and lay down, offering herself as a barrier between Jeff and the shooter.

"Get your first aid kit out," she told him, lying naked on the ground in front of him.

He pulled the white box out of his pack and almost dropped it in his nervous haste.

"Now, hold it in the air," Béla said. "Make sure the white part with the Red Cross symbol is toward where the shooting came from so they can see it."