Earth Legend (13 page)

We spent most of that night going from one
place to another, each chosen by Cullen for maximum visual impact.
By the time I was too tired to help even one more plant, numerous
areas of healthy cropland dotted the landscape.

"Do I have to sleep in jail?" Not that it
would matter. I was so tired I could easily have slept on the super
hard faux dirt. But I'd been in jail for a long time. Too long.

"We're not far from your apartment."

"I promise not to escape."

"I'll make sure you don't. I'll be there
too."

I moved slowly, wearily to his bike and
climbed on the back. Crawled was more like it because turning an
entire ecosystem away from death and towards life had done me in. I
wondered if anyone in my family had ever faced a task so daunting.
I doubted it because there had always been many family members
available for any job. Now there was just me. And the bulk of the
work lay ahead.

Cullen tipped my face up, his touch
surprisingly gentle. If there'd been a moon, he'd have been
silhouetted against it. I thought about that and wondered what he'd
look like with the moon as backlighting. Then he spoke in a
slightly guilty voice. "You look awful. Why didn't you say
something?"

"You were right when you said people need
hope. I wanted to get as much done as possible." He climbed in
front of me and I practically fell against his back as I waited for
him to start. Instead, he got off and moved me in front, cradling
me with his arms. I heard his low mutter before I fell asleep.
"Can't have you falling off. We need you."

We traveled through the deepening dark until
we reached New Rochelle. I think we did, I might have been asleep
except I kind of remember the feel of his arms and his solid body
and the fresh night air curling around us both.

He parked his bike and half dragged me to my
apartment. When we stepped through the door, it was like coming
home and the familiarity of the place revived me momentarily. It
was a homecoming. My plants were all there, healthy and glowing and
glad I was back. "Alicia must have watered them." I yawned.

"Unlike every other plant on the Destiny,
these are healthy."

"I'm working on strains that will thrive in
this environment." I touched a floribunda rose bush. "You can eat
rose petals."

"But that's not why you like it."

I flushed. He was right. It was gorgeous and
I'd made a special project of the bush. I'd not seen many flowers
on the Destiny. Practicality was rampant but flowers are nice. I
decided I'd check it closer in the morning. At the moment, I was
exhausted and only wanted to sleep. The plants understood, they
quieted down.

Cullen took the miniature roses from my hand
and smelled them. "Nice." Then he put it down and turned all stern
and businesslike. "Morning comes early. Get some sleep."

Somehow I found my bedroom and then my bed. I
fell across it, uncaring that I was fully dressed. I thought Cullen
pulled a blanket over me but I was too tired to know for sure.

In the morning, as soon as I awoke I visited
all of my plants, not just the rose bush. They were doing well and
Cullen was gone, my extra bedding folded neatly on one end of the
couch. As I stood, uncertain what to do next, a booted foot kicked
the door open and Cullen entered, uniform fresh though I couldn't
imagine how that could be and arms laden with breakfast. "I fixed
your coffee the way you like it. Two sugars and one cream."

"You noticed how I like coffee?"

"It's my job to notice details." He turned
away to put breakfast on the table so I couldn't tell if his face
really turned red or if it was the morning light that made it seem
so. He'd brought croissants. My favorite. And cold cuts, lots of
them. "For energy. Busy day ahead."

He was right about that. Having dotted the
Destiny with patches of thriving, growing, living crops the
previous day to give people hope, that morning we started the
grueling work of bringing the entire huge farm that was the Destiny
up to snuff. Our plan was to head for the back end and work our way
towards the front. We did just that though it took almost eight
weeks to get everything back to normal. But, by the end of the last
week, the Destiny was once again the thriving, happy world it had
been when it pulled away from Earth and headed into the
unknown.

All that time Cullen slept on my couch and it
must have been uncomfortable because he was about a foot taller
than it was long. He watched my plants with what I finally figured
out was fear. "You don't like plants?" I tried to be tactful.

He hunched forward to avoid touching a lovely
carrot growing in a small glass of water. "I grew up mostly on
space shuttles. Not many plants around." And a very small space
most likely. Which was why he didn't like cramped places. In the
following days I noticed that he came to a wary agreement with my
plants. He didn't stomp on them and they ignored him. It worked to
a degree. Eventually, about the time I felt comfortable and rested,
we stared at one another across the breakfast table with nothing
more that needed doing. It was time to face the future.

I started the conversation. "I'm still a
stowaway."

"Yes." He coughed and looked away. Found
himself staring at the floribunda rose bush and back quickly
because he hadn't yet come to terms with something that existed
mostly to be beautiful. Space shuttles are utilitarian vehicles.
"You are a stowaway and that must be dealt with."

"So what happens now?"

He looked me straight in the eyes though I
suspected it was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. The tiny
lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper, more noticeable and
there were lines on either side of his mouth that I'd not seen
before. "I wish I could say that everything will be all right but I
won't lie. It's the Captain's call and no matter how severe your
punishment is I won't be able to alter it. Furthermore it'll be my
job to carry out your sentence." As he said those last words, he
finally looked away. My future could be worse than even Cullen Vail
was willing to admit. "But I don't have to bring your case to the
Captain right away. I can put it off a while."

Which made me feel worse than ever. What kind
of person was the Captain? What would my punishment be?

Chapter Nine

I tell the Captain my story.

I didn't sleep that night. I thought about
escaping. I suspected that Cullen would pretend to be asleep if I
slipped past his bulk on the couch, but I didn't even try. At first
I didn't know why I stayed where I was, but as I thought about it,
I knew.

I was done hiding. Done running. Done being a
felon. In some distant recess of my mind, I figured I'd done my
best, I'd saved the Destiny, and if that wasn't good enough to
warrant a light sentence, then neither the Captain nor the people
on the Destiny deserved my continued work on their behalf.

And they would need me again. Crops would
fail again because they always do now and then and eventually the
problem would once again be so severe that nothing would keep them
alive if I wasn't around. If I escaped and hid, then I'd be there
when that time came and I could save them. It's what my family has
done for thousands of years. Hide and help.

But I was alone. More to the point, I was
tired and beyond caring. So I stayed where I was and we had
croissants and coffee and sausage for breakfast as we'd done every
morning since I left jail and Cullen kept his word and didn't
immediately mention me to the Captain. So it was another week
before word got to the Captain in a roundabout way that there was a
stowaway on board who needed to be dealt with. With the plants
healthy, he was no longer unapproachable.

"I told him there was more to the story than
just you stowing away. I suggested that you aren't the usual
stowaway. I did my best." Cullen raked fingers through his hair. "I
don't know if it helped but he does want to meet with you privately
instead of on the bridge."

"Thank you." I took a deep breath. "When?
Where?"

"Today. Now. In his private quarters."

"That's a good sign, isn't it?"

"I don't know."

I followed Cullen into the Captain's quarters
in the largest house in a small community just off the government
center. I supposed they were the homes of officers and their
families and Cullen said that was right. As we knocked on the door,
I wasn't afraid. I couldn't figure out why not until I realized
that I was resigned and past the point of caring.

The Captain was in his living room in a huge
easy chair that rather resembled a throne. He wasn't the grizzled
old man I thought all captains must be. Instead, he was middle-aged
though I suspected that his wife, who was hanging around pretending
not to watch while she took everything in, was quite a bit
younger.

She was pretty, all brown hair and eyes and
soft skin and lots of rings on her fingers and toes that showed
through the skimpy sandals she wore. She looked like an artist and
seemed like a nice person, not at all the kind who'd marry a grumpy
old man. But I thought she might be the kind who'd fall in love
with a dashing Captain and stand by his side as he guided a ship on
a one-way journey through space. She smiled at me as we entered.
The Captain didn't.

Neither did he ignore us. In a bored way, he
indicated that we sit so we did, on a couch, Cullen by my side,
stiff and official and not touching me while the Captain leaned
back in his chair and steepled his fingers.

"So you're the stowaway." I nodded. "But
Cullen here seems to think I should be lenient." He moved then and
leaned towards me, bushy brows hiding sharp, intelligent eyes above
a hawk-like nose and a sharp chin. "Can't figure out why, which is
why I asked to see you here. Cullen is the epitome of law-abiding
citizenry, the upholder of the law, the keeper of the peace." The
Captain watched for my reaction but I was careful to give nothing
away. "So when this paragon of legal virtue pleads for leniency on
behalf of a felon of no particular value, I'm curious. Why does he
speak up for you?

"I know it's not love or even lust because
our Cullen here would never let either get in the way of duty. He
lives and breathes duty. So I want you to tell me what's going on.
Why he thinks you are special." Still leaning forward he put his
hands on his knees while his wife, in the background, moved closer
in order to hear better. "So start talking."

I told him about my family. "We go back a
long way. Thousands of years."

"So does everyone."

"We trace our ancestors to ancient Greece and
Rome."

"Do tell." He was losing interest. I saw
myself being sent out the airlock.

"One of those ancestors was Ceres. Another
was Demeter."

Those bushy brows knitted until they touched
over the bridge of his nose. "If I remember my mythology correctly,
you are talking about the goddesses of the harvest."

"You know your history."

"Not history. Mythology because that's what
Ceres and Demeter are. Myths. Legends."

"They were real people." He snorted in
disbelief but he didn't stop listening. He'd promised to hear me
out and he would do so. "And what they did was real. When crops
were failing, they stepped in and saved them. In the process, they
saved the lives of everyone who depended on those crops."

He sliced a hand through the air to shut me
up. He knew where this was going and didn't like having been conned
into listening to garbage. "Myths don't save lives. Legends don't
save people."

"Ceres and Demeter weren't legends and
neither am I. They saved lives by protecting the crops all those
years ago and I saved the people of the Destiny in the last several
weeks by saving the crops that were dying."

"Preposterous." From the corner of my eye I
noticed the Captain's wife creep closer and at mention of Demeter
and Ceres, those brown eyes opened wide. This was a juicy story and
she would hear and remember every word. Did she and the wives of
the other officers have tea in the houses we'd passed? Did they
gossip as they sipped Chamomile with lemon and sugar?

The Captain was the only person whose opinion
was important, though, and he didn't believe me. No one ever did
and just like everyone who'd heard our story he dismissed it out of
hand as if I'd not said a word. "The botanists saved the crops. Our
wonderfully talented and very pampered scientists figured out what
was wrong and fixed it."

Cullen coughed to get the Captain's
attention. "The greenhouses are full of dead and dying plants."

"Really?" The Captain's attention was
diverted to Cullen for a moment, but only a moment. "Even if that's
true it doesn't prove a thing. Of course they would concern
themselves with the harvest first. If that meant ignoring their
experiments for a while, then that's what they'd do."

His attention was fast fading and he was
growing restless. Not so his wife but she knew better than to
interrupt her husband. In one last desperate move, Cullen blurted
out, "She can prove that what she says is true."

The Captain turned back to me, still bored,
still unbelieving. "Can you?" I nodded. "How?"

Cullen put his hand on mine to quiet me so he
could talk. He knew the Captain, he knew what would convince him.
"She brought a sick tomato plant back to health in front of my
eyes. It took less than a minute and I saw her do the same for
every single crop on the Destiny."

"I can't believe you expected me to listen to
such a ridiculous story."

Cullen looked around. "Do you have any sick
plants?"

"I do." The Captain's wife disappeared in
another room and then reappeared soon after with an African violet.
I knew by the way she held it that she liked growing things. That
was good to know.