“Ah, it´s you.”
Pieter stepped back to let the door open and smiled, but the touch of disappointment in his voice wasn´t lost on the siblings.
“Yeah. Hi,” Lori answered flatly, put off by the rather icy reception… to say nothing of the bizarre decor.
Blessed with all of the charm of a moldy mineshaft, the rift widened into a vaguely triangular cave the further they entered, with titanic slabs of grimy olivine intersecting in succession of crooked, viridescent arches.
However, beyond a messy first few yards of electric heaters, power cables, socket boards and garbage bags, there wasn´t terribly much to see despite a floodlight´s glare, as someone had partitioned the grotto by hanging a sheet from one of the thicker photovoltaic wires that ran back to the surface.
“Where´s Quentin?”
Turning towards Lood, the stench of stale air hit Sander before he could respond and virtually knocked him off his feet.
“Just us!” the teen grimaced back, steadying a tower of battery packs that his coughing fit had nearly destroyed.
This displeased the mumbling assembly, who gave them a final once-over and slowly dispersed, when it became apparent that neither Sander nor Lori had brought them anything… and the twins started to wonder if their visit might have been a mistake.
“Oh, don´t mind them! It´s been a hard week, everyone´s just a smidge cranky…” Sherry waved dismissively, as Amelia, Lood and her son sulked back behind the curtain. “And Quentin has been such a lifeline these last few days, I do believe we´re turning into Pavlov puppies!”
“No worries…” Lori replied, silently deciding that they wouldn´t stay long. “We´re just here for the- that.”
She pointed to the gyrotron as it peeked past the semi-parted drape... and suddenly, a sweaty Revis crawled into view.
“The twins, the twins…” he grunted, applying a length of duct tape to the floor and rising to greet them.
Still sporting a headdress of bandages, Revis had -contrary to the rest of his family- foregone heavy garments in favor of more mismatched attire, by having paired a dress shirt and tie with overalls, under a tool belt… and he pocketed his adhesive roll to come shake their hands.
“Welcome to New Nazareth!” the man enunciated in a loud, breathy whisper.
Taken aback by the weirdness of his words and delivery, the teens paused in hesitation… until Sherry again intervened.
“We´ve asked him to be quieter since moving in, what with the echoes and all…” she commented sheepishly, only half-addressing their stupefaction.
“Uh, OK… and New N-”
“Quentin said there hadn´t properly been a christening…” Revis began, reading their lips, “so we´ve allowed ourselves to baptize your beautiful gift, in a manner that truly reflects the spiritual renaissance this opportunity represents.”
A bit mesmerized by the hushed, colorful explanation, Sander couldn´t find much else to say… and followed his sister while the man beckoned them deeper into the fissure.
“You´ll like what we´ve done with the place!”
Ducking Sherry´s outstretched arm as she held the sheet open, the twins soon found themselves on a narrow causeway of tape-striped basalt that split this second portion of cavern down it´s center, and formed a buffer-zone between duelling factions of cramped, eclectic machinery.
On their left, Revis had started installing his brother´s cargo by building a rudimentary sound-stage, camera and all… but it was the busier, right-hand side of the room that captivated them, where row upon row of soft, plastic sleeves had replaced Quentin´s stiff algae-pods, and now hung like a squishy jungle of elongated I.V. bags from fluorescent ribbons, to maximize their ultraviolet exposure.
“Just watch your feet: it´s still a work in progress…” Revis cautioned.
Beneath its glowing pouches, the bioreactor culminated in a rat´s nest of hoses, nozzles, dials and pumps, that noisily deflated each sac in turn on a timer, to circulate the vital liquid through a main aeration tank.
And almost lost amid the lumpy, swaying canopy, stood the Gyrotron.
“So, what do you think? There´s a ways to go, but considering the circumstances…”
Massive in its own right, the pommel horse-shaped instrument reminded Lori of an oversized, extravagantly complex spark-plug and did indeed have a tripod of three, sturdy wheels, as promised… yet at over two meters in height, and with no visible grips by which to manoeuvre the behemoth, it wasn´t exactly clear how they´d achieve their goal.
“Man…” Sander moaned to no one in particular, struggling to imagine how they´d fit it into the airlock. “This is gonna be impossible!”
Regardless, Revis had become too invested in presenting his burgeoning television set, and misunderstood them.
“You sound like Amelia… One thing after the other! I´m sure we´ll figure out how to broadcast, when it´s all connected,” he chortled softly, slapping a turgid algae-bag. “Things have sadly gone a tad slower than expected; these lazy buggers are taking their sweet time!”
“I think they´re talking about Mister Vannevar´s machine, honey.” his wife specified, turning back to the twins before things got any more muddled. “But… aren´t you done with the repairs?”
As the elderly couple awaited an answer, their son threw open a dirty tarp that up until then had melted inconspicuously into the back wall of the cave.
“Is that why we´re suffocating? Another leak?” Pieter interrupted, having heard them over the reactor´s gentle din.
Lori and Sander exchanged glances, growing tired of the hostility.
“Listen dude, we´re just doing Quentin a favor,” Sander called out, as he carefully advanced towards the electromagnetic resonator. “I don´t even know how to turn this thing on!”
His answer only served to infuriate the man, who shook his head vehemently.
“Great… that´s great. So why did he send you? This is pointless!”
“Now, now Pieter... Is that any way to speak to our guests?” his father reprimanded. “I´m sure that Mister Vannevar would have told them, if something needed fixing!”
“So how long are we going to wait on his bloody plankton?” Pieter raged. “This photosynthesis nonsense isn´t working… Mieke can barely breathe!”
But Lori had finally had enough. Leaving the Coplands to their squabble, she jammed her helmet on and joined her brother near the gyrotron, fed up by the abrasive atmosphere.
“Screw this.”
Sander did the same, relishing any opportunity to escape New Nazareth´s fetid air, and yanked open the drape to make some room.
For the next fifteen minutes, the siblings abandoned any pretences by actively ignoring their arguing hosts, as they pushed, pulled and cajoled Quentin´s bulky machine to the airlock´s lip, step after draining step.
They then lowered the gyrotron by several inches, thanks to the tripod´s telescopic legs, upon seeing that it didn´t fit under the hatch… and with one last lunge, heaved the contraption inside.
“You good?” Lori panted, waiting for her second wind while the chamber sealed shut behind them.
Too gassed to speak, Sander returned a feeble thumbs-up and squatted down to rest. Moments later, the opposite portal hissed open to Mons Rümker´s darkened entrails, and the pair dragged their load into the tunnel.
“That´s good enough!” Sander wheezed, mere feet from the still-gaping egress. “Let´s bounce.”
“I don´t think we need to say goodbye…” Lori agreed, using her hands.
“No shit, I want to go home… eat, shower… this was awful! What´s with the sign-language?”
Realizing that she´d unconsciously reverted into old habits, Lori cracked her neck wearily.
“Long day…” she laughed, flipping on her suit´s lamp.
A flash of movement caught Sander´s eye from the end of the decompression chamber, as he went to shut it… and he called to his sister, before she could hop off too far.
“Yo: check this out.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
With a contrite grin, Sherry had reappeared in the porthole, accompanied by a plate full of what seemed to be dark, knobby french-fries.
Sander shrugged back inquisitively at her, and after Lori retraced her steps, both teens watched the woman point to her mouth, waving them inside to come try some of the strange meal.
“What is that?” Lori scoffed, frowning at the unappetizing platter.
“Who knows… but I´m starving,” he sighed, “and that kinda looks like beef jerky!”
Swayed by an admittedly growling belly (in tandem with Sherry´s gestures) Lori reticently followed her brother, and they re-entered the grotto to a throng of apologies for the earlier outburst, voiced primarily by Revis` exuberant wife… although Pieter also took a break from rearranging supplies, to repent for his bellicose behaviour.
“Sorry for the scene...” he grumbled, setting down a box. “That was meant for Vannevar-”
“Coming through!”
They made some room for Lood and Revis, who had seized upon the gyrotron´s departure to roll a generator into its vacated spot, and were now looking to organize the twisted carpet of electrical wiring that their efforts had disturbed.
“I don´t know what those two did…” Pieter resumed, eyeing the two men bitterly, “but ever since installing that stupid camera, we can´t dial out to the Firmament. So I guess I had a lot… uh, bottled up. Didn´t mean to explode on you.”
“Technical difficulties…” Sherry nodded, ushering them around her husband and brother-in-law, as Pieter shuffled off to fetch another crate. “You guys are hungry after all that work, right? Come on, sit down and have a snack while they tidy up, and tell me what you think… it´s a South African specialty!”
She handed Sander her plate of dried, salted meat and guided them past the hanging algae-bags, away from the commotion.
“We call it Biltong…” she boasted, drawing the tarp that her son had previously burst through, to reveal their sleeping quarters. “Bobby and I made them ourselves, in preparation!”
Instead of the entrance´s tangled clutter, or the otherworldly luminescence of Quentin´s bioreactor, this section of New Nazareth deviated sharply to the right and better lived up to its middle-eastern etymology, by at least somewhat resembling a space-age opium den, with silver emergency blankets covering most of the walls for insulation.
On the floor, sandwiched among air canisters, water jugs, even more heaters and a privacy screen of taped, plastic panels that shielded the jumbled piping of their vacuum-toilet, two figures lay cocooned in sleeping bags as Amelia and Bobby tended to them.
“It´s not a hard process: We pick the right ingredients…” Sherry continued, inviting them to take a seat on one of the dried food containers that hadn´t been moved, “and really, it´s the spices that make a differences: Turmeric, ginger… or else, the ostrich stays too gamey!”
Having already stuffed the savory meat into his gullet, Sander choked down his astonishment and set the dish aside.
“Told you they wouldn´t like it!” smirked a gaunt Mieke, sitting up with Amelia´s help.
Despite only saying a few words, she quickly reached for one of the oxygen masks dangling beside her to take a long drag… and the twins gained a greater appreciation for Pieter´s dismay.
“Are y- Is she OK?” Lori worried, nibbling on the cured poultry.
“Of course she´s not!” Amelia chastized, drawing herself up indignantly after using the mask as well. “It´s hard enough for us: we´ve been up all night, gasping on these tubes for dear life… but she´s pregnant! And I don´t dare to envision what that poor man is going through…”
She looked over to Peepah´s geriatric contour in the corner, and Bobby held a finger to his lips for quiet. The old man let out a rattling snore to underline his request, and they recommenced more mutedly.
“Wait, so you´ve been breathing off tanks this whole time?” Sander asked, astounded at the severity of their ordeal. “What about that seaweed-stuff back there?”
“Mister Vannevar said something about our cell-cultures needing to multiply… It probably just takes longer to convert eight peoples’ carbon dioxide,” Sherry responded, trying to save face on account of Amelia´s temper. “It´s mostly just Mieke and Peepah though, the rest of us can manage.”
“That´s not what you were saying yesterday…” Amelia added grumpily.
“Amelia, please.”
And maybe it was just the distant reflections from the algae´s lighting, playing off the green-tinted basalt in the previous chamber´s walls , or simply the dreariness of their spartan, yet grubby habitat… but it was true that the Coplands possessed a rather sickly aura.
“Look, I mean… there´s got to be a way,” Lori began, not knowing how exactly she was going to finish her thought.
As luck would have it, she didn´t need to.
“So? How´s the taste?” Revis whispered, rounding the corner and noticing the plate of Biltong. “That´s a family recipe!”
“Truly one of a kind, old chap,” Sander retorted, imitating the man´s flowery vernacular while watching him crouch down to take a bite.
Before he´d had a chance to swallow, Lood and Pieter joined them in the enclave for a crowded lunch break… and with the entire Copland clan thusly reunited, a discussion once again erupted concerning their radio problems, as Sherry went to retrieve extra rations.
“It´s no use…” complained Pieter, sitting down to hug his wife and take a hit of oxygen. “We´ve moved everything out and I still have no clue what I´m looking at! Even Lood-”
“Lood is pulling your leg!” Revis said playfully. “Your uncle could rewire a VCR in his sleep.”
Lori and Sander turned to Lood like they were watching a soap opera, splitting some macadamia nuts that had been given to them.
“Don´t blame me, that´s Bobby´s handiwork.”
“Seriou- He does whatever you tell him to!” whined Pieter, catching on to the fact that they were toying with him. “Dad… you don´t have to sugarcoat it: Sander and Lori can feel it too! It’s like living in a musty airplane cabin down here! Can we at least get the place up and running, before barrelling ahead with the show? If God forbid something goes wrong, or one of us has a problem… you guys have done something to our only means of communication!”
“You´re upset because of Mieke, that´s normal… But nothing will go wrong! She´ll be chipper in a few days, mark my words. Plus, we´ll be starting the garden tomorrow!” Revis reassured him, leaning towards the teens congenially. “Always been a worrier, this one… But it´s a blessing in disguise, especially when it comes to managing money.”
He tossed a coat on and went over to stand beside Mieke, placing his hand on Pieter´s shoulder.
“Wouldn´t have made it here without you, my boy! Good son, great man… Best accountant I´ve ever seen! You know, he organized the Godsend´s whole construction back in Cape Town: Every invoice, every receipt… and by contracting the laborers on member donations, it didn´t cost a cent! That´s brilliance…”
“That´s not what the auditors thought…” Pieter relented, softening his glare under the weight of his father´s compliments.
“If a nation strays, and no longer listens to the Lord… we no longer render unto Caesar,” Lood sermoned, from across the room. “Those calumnious tongues have no sway here. We´ve acted solely for the Lord´s glory. Have faith.”
The Coplands shared an Amen and lapsed into momentary silence, that was broken by Sander´s question.
“Can I be in the show?” he asked, ripping off a portion of waffle that was being passed around.
To this, Revis laughed back heartily and clapped the teen on the shoulder.
“I don´t think it´s what you´re picturing, but you´re welcome to go on air!”
“What do you mean?” Sander furrowed his brow.
“It´s televangelism, sweetie. We´re spreading the Good Word!” Mieke told him faintly. “Are you familiar with scripture?”
Peepah punctuated her question with a bout of flatulence that everyone pretended not to hear, except Bobby who giggled merrily… and the twins, reinvigorated after the collation, knew they had to go.
“Not particularly… but actually, woah! Look at the time, we really should be going…”
Framing their flight like a necessity, rather than an escape from New Nazareth´s cloying company or recycled, headache-inducing air, they surrendered their leftovers to Sherry and quickly made up an excuse to return to the Firmament.
“Thanks again for the grub… I´ve uh, never had anything like it,” Lori offered, grabbing her brother to get to her feet, and leaving as gracefully as the situation permitted. “We just really have to get back… for chores…”
“I´ll walk you out!” Revis declared, taking a deep breath from one of the masks.
He pulled the tarp and escorted them through the base, lavishing Quentin´s work with praise that he made them swear to pass on.
When his family was out of earshot, he continued. “Oh, that reminds me…” the Reverend winked, shaking Sander´s hand, “Could you also inform Mr. Vannevar that we need a new coaxial cable, for the radio? He´ll know what it is… And from the bottom of my heart, we are forever indebted.”
Revis closed the airlock door before receiving an answer and waved through the window.
“Ok, that was weird…” Sander said, once his helmet was secure.
“What?”
They waved back as the pressure whooshed to an equilibrium around them and exited the chamber.
“Didn´t you hear him? The dude knows how to fix their radio!” he explained, trying to make sense of the man´s parting words. “Why the secrecy?”
“He´s a TV preacher… what do you expect? Those type are all about mind-games and stuff,” Lori shrugged, crossing the tunnel. “I´m amazed they aren´t weirder.”
“Yeah but still…”
Unsure what to make of the encounter, Sander tailed his sister up the ladder and reemerged from the sinkhole into a haze of pale lunar light, killing his headlamp with a click.
Perhaps because they´d grown slightly more accustomed to the terrain, climbing down from the volcano´s flank ended up being as advertised: markedly less complicated than their initial trip… and the duo snaked back towards the hardened lava-flow to begin their descent in earnest, alternatively mocking and lamenting the Coplands´ dilemmas as they went.
“Hey… Is that who I think it is?”
Letting herself gently float off a ledge, Lori squinted to the foot of the mountain and spotted a minuscule silhouette, crouching near the Firmament´s underbelly.
“Oh yeah…” Sander responded, as he landed beside her and switched frequencies. “Yo! Quentin!”
Below them, the tiny contour jerked up and twirled around… yet took a few seconds to locate them on Mons Rümker´s baroque geometry.
“There you are…” Quentin smiled, detecting them at last. “So, how was it? I was about to come check on you guys!”
“Ghastly…” Sander replied, suppressing an exasperated snort. “Maybe give us a heads-up next time?”
“What do you mean?”
With several hundred meters of terraced regolith left to go, the siblings waited until they had regained level ground, before answering.
“Hang on…” Lori grunted, hopping ever closer down the hill.
As they approached the ship, Quentin reiterated his question… and neither of them knew where to start, speaking over each other in a frenzy, now that their footing no longer demanded such stringent focus.
“Woah, woah… take turns!”
“You´ve gotta do something, man… They´re barely surviving up there!” Sander urged, describing New Nazareth as vividly as he could. “There´s garbage everywhere, they´re all gray and weak… and I can´t tell if it´s the algae or what, but the whole place is cold and damp, and reeks of like, sour-”
“Moldy hot-dogs,” Lori tacked on, taking advantage of a lull in her brother´s tirade, while he sought for an apt comparison.
Shocked by their report, the man´s toolbox slipped from his grasp.
“The air is gross?” he scowled, appalled at the news. “You´re joking, right? I spent all week fine tuning it… Why didn´t they tell me?”
“Oh yeah, Revis said they needed a… coaxial cable? Their camera setup fried the radio.”
Quentin stared off wordlessly, then raised his eyes to the heavens and cursed in despair.
“This motherfucker…” he fulminated. “I told him a million times, they can´t pipe their bullshit through my signal! And let me guess: the algae bags were static, right?
Lori thought back, cocking her head.
“I mean, they looked OK…”
“They´re all supposed to be in constant movement… swelling and shrinking, like lungs!” Quentin spat derisively. “No wonder they´re anaemic. I bet he´s siphoning power!”
Hands on his hips, their captain glowered off into space… and the teens left him to his troubles, having done enough for the day in their opinion.
They bounced off to call down the ship´s elevator, joined briefly by a choleric Quentin as he fetched his spare part, and mounted aboard the Firmament with a rush of gratitude for all the luxuries that they´d unwittingly taken for granted.
“Dibs on the shower!” Sander teased, first to rip off his helmet… which suited Lori just fine.
“Yup! I´ll be in the garden, if anybody needs me… Hi Sergei!”
Crossing the Russian´s path on his way to the gym-room, Lori flashed a quick grin and went to sit among the plants, in dire need of some peace and quiet.