Dr. Citali rounds the corner of the side trail, bioscanner in hand. She lets out a breath of relief when she sees me. “Mariah! Are you okay? Jack, thank you for finding Mariah.”
“Yes, I’m okay,” I insist. “I told you I was going for a run. I didn’t need to be found.”
“Yes, and I was trying to remotely monitor you and noticed a few anomalies,” she counters. “So I wanted to come find you to make sure you were okay.” She walks up to me and Jack, laden with not only her own bag of medical equipment, but also my satchel, which looks stuffed with everything I abandoned when I fled her earlier. Jack takes a keen interest in Marina’s beeping device, hopping up into the canopy to get a better view down at the readout. “And you seem to be okay,” Marina adds with relief, “so that’s good!”
¡Ay! She is science-experimenting me again! “If you will just let me finish talking with Jack, we can run whatever experiments you want later.” It pains me to say that, but I think it’s my best shot for getting her off my case right at this very moment. “And you can see what set off the detector—it might not even have been me! Jack was doing rangery things; it could have been his shadow-stepping.”
“Are you saying some of the ranger abilities are also based on resonance fields?”
“Possibly.”
Marina looks up. “Is this true, Jack?” So I haven’t gotten rid of her, but at least I’ve redirected her curiosity.
Jack shrugs in reply to her question and poses one of his own. “So what does that thing do then?” he asks, pointing at the bioscanner. As Dr. Citali explains how she can use it to measure resonance fields and speaks of its potential for remote sensing incoming miasma, I relieve her of my satchel.
I need to compose myself. I just feel so annoyed and exposed right now. “You should do your jumping around shadowy thing,” I encourage Jack, hoping to further interest Marina in paying attention to him instead of me.
As they conduct their little experiments, I step out of Marina’s line of sight. I pull out my dress shirt, smooth it down, and slip it on, followed by my vest. With those both straightened out and buttoned, I settle the satchel’s strap on my left shoulder, with the bag against my right hip, and adjust my Progenitor boutonniere. Then I unsling my cane from its sheath and shift some of my weight off my right leg. Being in order on the exterior is at least a step towards achieving the same on the interior.
“I don’t know what to make of these results,” Dr. Citali says after Jack performs for her. “I’m going to have to do further analysis. It’s not an obvious spike like with what Mariah does. I don’t know if this is using resonance field energy… Hmm… I wonder if this is something anyone can learn… You learned this in the rangers?”
“Weren’t you in the rangers?” Jack asks back.
“No, I was… called to do other things. My friend Ayumu was, but I don’t think you overlapped with them.”
“Yeah, well, it’s something you learn there. It’s kind of a secret, though.”
“Do they do anything to you to enable you to do this?”
“You mean like drink a hallucinogen and do some chanting in the forest?” Jack asks playfully. That sounds more like the cult than the rangers to me, given my limited experience with both.
“Or like surgery or medicine or some other kind of intense treatment?” Dr. Citali prompts him, maintaining professional decorum.
“It was just hard to learn…” Jack says, brow crinkled in discomfort. At the memories? Or something else? “I dunno,” he mutters, rubbing his forehead.
Having reached a dead-end there, Marina turns to me. “Mariah, should we get you back to the hospital to rest?”
“What’s that thing on your chest?” Jack interrupts. “That boutonniere? Is that Progenitor tech?”
“Oh this? Yeah. Have you seen anything like it before?” I ask back, ignoring Marina’s suggestion. I’m enjoying being outside, and I don’t want her telling me what to do. I still have things I want to learn from Jack.
“Not exactly like that. But other Progenitor things. They have some, in the rangers.”
“Mariah,” Dr. Citali says pointedly, not letting me spin up a whole new conversation with Jack. “I am your doctor. It is my professional, medical opinion that you have been out long enough for someone who just had a traumatic incident. This is a responsibility I have to you as my patient.” I open my mouth to protest, but she continues, “Just because the air isn’t going to kill you doesn’t mean overexerting yourself won’t.”
With a long sigh, I give in. “All right. Jack, walk with us?” I ask, nodding my head towards the direction Marina approached from. She may be able to wield her professional clout against me, but she can’t order him about.
“Sure!” Jack agrees. He keeps to the canopy above us, perfectly fitting his independent nature.
Yeah, good luck, Sal. Jack hasn’t settled down with a job yet; I don’t know if he can settle with a person. It also doesn’t really line up with embracing the position of power that Sal had suggested for the “Son of Earth.” Since I don’t think Jack would have an interest in the herald role, I decide to take a direct approach. It’s so much easier when it’s about someone else. “So, how well do you know Sal, this Prophet of Chiron who runs the cult?” I ask Jack. “They seem to know about you. I’d appreciate your read on this person.” That seems a safe enough start for learning what I can about the cult and sounding Jack out on his interest in, I don’t know, maybe just going out on a date with Sal? I’m just gathering information, not applying pressure.
“I think it’s great that we have a religion that’s based here on Chiron. And yeah, Sal’s done some—I don’t know, miracle is a strong word, but they’re the Prophet of Chiron, right?”
“What kind of miracle-ish things are you talking about?” I ask.
“They predicted not just the monsoon last year, but that the oceans would… What was the word they used? That the oceans would belch the creatures of the sea onto the land. And yeah, a tidal wave did in fact bring in and dump a whole lot of fish—our version of fish—onto the beach. And we, the cult, organized an effort to help get those creatures back into the water and ensure that the ones we couldn’t would be used for food. But yeah! It was a freak storm, you know? Or a freak tidal surge, I guess you might call it. Could they have predicted it with science? Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not a meteorologist. And Sal has conviction about what they say, so that’s something worth following, right?”
“Have you read this prophecy that’s at the temple?”
“Um, I’ve seen bits and pieces. I haven’t, yeah, okay, I haven’t sat down and read the whole thing. I try, you know? But there’s a couple bits like, ‘The Child of Chiron will emerge from the planet.’ So, where did you come from?”
“My cryopod was buried when it landed,” I admit with a shrug of my own.
“Huh! What do you know! Maybe there is something there. ‘Every craw and beetle, briar and beast, knows the Child as a friend,’” Jack continues.
“Or as a tasty snack,” I say with a rueful chuckle. “I don’t think I’m actually friends with any briar beasts at this point, not after what happened the other night.”
“Well, if it was perfect, that would be a con, right?” Jack says.
Marina has been holding her tongue this whole time, annoyance writ plain across her face. At this point, she finally speaks. “These are really generic statements,” she says. “And yes, tidal surges can be predicted if you know it’s monsoon season. And how many of those prophecies never come true? You make a prediction, you don’t say when it’s going to happen—Guess what? It could happen any time within the next hundred years, and you just happened to get lucky!” By this point, she’s gone from critical to condescending. Having had her say, she adds more levelly, “I’m not convinced. But people can do what they want to do.”
Jack replies with his typical shrug. “I’m just saying that it seems to add up. And it gives people something to believe in.”
“If it doesn’t hurt anything, then it’s okay,” I say, “but not if it incites people to violence and destroying other civilizations.”
“What other civilization are we going to destroy?” Jack asks. “We’re not in a position to destroy the Morgan domes, right?”
“You’ve heard Sal’s speeches, though, about not tolerating anybody who disagrees.”
“Yeah, they’re a bit… They’re a lot.”
I’ve heard that said of Jack, too. “What’s your personal opinion of Sal?”
Even while hanging upside down mid-swing, Jack manages a shrug. “Um… they’re charismatic, in a way, I guess. They bring in a lot of followers.”
Okay, that sounds like there’s no relationship here at all, not even friendship. “So they’re just the person in charge?”
“I mean, they’ve been very welcoming to me as a new member of the cult, but I feel like they’re probably welcoming to most people, aren’t they?” Not quite my experience, but things were a bit different for me. “They’re probably under a lot of stress, having to be this prophet,” Jack continues.
“You know, it’s probably pretty lonely, being in a position of power,” I observe, thinking of both Sal and Deirdre. “It’s true for a lot of people.”
“Yeah, probably, but Sal had it thrust upon them. They didn’t choose that.” Jack’s most recent move has brought him down to ground level, and he stands there now, still for a moment, looking down at his sneakers. His usually sunny demeanor clouds at what I presume to be thoughts of his mother.
He must think Deirdre chose power over him. But she complained to me that leadership here was not what she came to Chiron for. “You know, your mom didn’t really choose to have her position of power either,” I tell him.
“She ran for election, didn’t she?”
“Your mom does a lot of things because she feels she has to. She’s a brilliant scientist, but she doesn’t have the luxury of being able to spend all her time on that because of the responsibility she feels to the people around her. Even back on Earth, she was such a great boss. I didn’t work for her, but I saw the effects of it on the people who did. She brought out the best in them, even though it cost her her own time in the lab doing what she really wanted to. Life doesn’t always let us spend our time the way we want. We’re put into positions to act, and sometimes the way we can help the most people is not by satisfying our own individual desires. She’s giving you the freedom to be who you want to be. And yeah, she’s putting some pressure on you, but she hasn’t stopped you from doing these things. Look at the number of things you’ve tried.”
That’s a lot for Jack to mull over, and after a pause, he grumbles, “I’m trying things… maybe to get her attention or something…” He lets out a frustrated huff of air, “I dunno.”
At least I’ve given him something to think about. Now to segue back to my other point. “Well, speaking of people trying to get other people’s attention… Sal’s kind of got a thing for you,” I tell him with all earnestness.
Jack looks at me quizzically. “Are you sure?”
“I am sure. Sal told me. Me being the Child of Chiron and all, I have an inner track to the Prophet of Chiron,” I say, letting my eyes flash purple again.
“Okay, are you actually the Child of Chiron and you know it?” Jack asks me straight up.
“I don’t know that. I haven’t seen these prophecies, and I don’t really believe in prophecies anyway. But Sal believes I’m the Child of Chiron. And, hey, this isn’t a prophecy thing. This is Sal, a person, a human being, telling me that they’re interested in you and not being sure how to get your attention.” Ah, maybe I can accomplish two things at once here… “Look, I’m asexual, okay? I don’t really pick up on those kinds of signals between people,” I tell him. And that Marina is here to also hear it, so much the better.
“Oh, yeah, my mom’s like that,” Jack says, needing no further explanation.
“But Sal specifically said that they’re into you and that they wish they could be with you.”
“It’s kind of weird that they never said anything about it to me…”
“Maybe they were worried about a power-dynamic issue, that you would feel like you—”
“I’ll be honest,” Jack says, “that doesn’t sound like Sal, as anything they would worry about.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt there. So let me be honest, too. I don’t know why they haven’t said anything to you.”
“Huh.” Jack twists his face in consideration, hands bobbing up and down like scales as he considers his options. “You know, I’ve never really thought about them that way. Maybe? I dunno. So, wait, am I supposed to go on a date with them or—”
“Nobody is ever supposed to go on a date with anybody,” I state firmly.
“Is there, like, a prophecy around this?”
“No. You do with this information what you want. I’m simply informing you of it in case maybe you just hadn’t looked at them that way before. And now that you know, maybe that’s a thing you want to explore. But that’s entirely up to you. Or maybe you don’t want to be anywhere around them. That’s also a perfectly legitimate approach.”
“Okay, well, that’s maybe going a little far,” Jack says.
Okay, yeah, that may be my discomfort with Marina bleeding through. “Like I said, I don’t know how you feel. That’s entirely up to you.”
“Huh. Cool. Thanks for sharing that, Mariah. That’s actually… that’s good to know.”