Chapter Thirteen

"It is not easy to explain the reasons for your actions when by all rational standards you look insane. I spent the first days on Terra Two mixing mud. I spent the next years on Terra Two mixing mud and watering. I wish I could invent something noble and heroic, a glorious story that may live in legend, as it is fitting for this extraordinary endeavor of ours, but it would be a lie. We spent our early years on Terra Two pumping and desalinizing water to dump onto the ever thirsty dirt. We watered day and night, until the vapors turned to clouds and the clouds blessed us with rain. We watered until the dirt absorbed all the water it could contain and the air was filled with all the water it could carry."

"We didn't send progress reports, like the other teams, who built infrastructure with the speed and efficiency expected of them. We didn't comment on the first five crops that were completely compromised as the dirt sucked up all the water with the hissing sound of a hot iron placed on a wet shirt. We did nothing but water until we saw clouds, until we saw rain, until we saw harvest. And it was good."

 

The sun popped above the horizon startling the sisters who were already awake. The satellite lit up faithfully as soon as the sunbeams reached it.

Sarah got up, stretched her painful limbs and was quite ready to fall right back to sleep off the muscle aches, but she met Seth's stark stare half way through the move and quickly reconsidered. She sighed, got up and opened a can from the food rations. She felt more like a cat every day, if cats were able to open their own cans of food: the rations were tiny, round, and contained all the nutritional supplements required for a healthy diet in a vaguely meat-like product with not too much sodium. The sisters were all awake now, listening to sister Joseph complain about her lumpy mattress. Sarah remembered the old story about the princess and the pea, but she kept the smart-aleck comments to herself.

"Can I have your attention, please?" spoke Seth, in a firm tone of voice. The mumbles slowly ceased. "Where is the time schedule?"

Sister Felix, who was closest to the desk, pulled out the timetable on which the first week was marked with a tiny dot.

"Today we start construction on the vegetable beds. Sisters Benedict and Abigail, this is your task. Sister Roberta, could you put your new macromolecular binder to good use and weld the corners? Sarah, start multiplying the microbe cultures, we'll need as much as you can produce as fast as you can produce it. Sisters Mary-Francis and deAngelis, build the trellises. Sister Jove, make sure we have something to eat. Sisters Joseph, Jesse, Therese, Novis and Felix, start assembling the housing units".

Everybody got to work as fast as their aching bodies allowed. The long trip had taken a toll on their fitness levels and they weren't as spry as they used to be when they were working outside all day in Perpignan. The memory of their suspended garden brought a smile to Sarah's lips and all of a sudden the barrenness surrounding her disappeared and left way to images of wonderful songbirds, butterflies and fragrance. While she was daydreaming about scented lavender fields an air current moved the oxygen pocket she was in and got her winded. She gasped and kept dumping dirt into the trough in front of her, a wide open bin ten foot by ten foot where a slimy mud mixed with bacteria already started bubbling and thickening in the warmth of the morning.

The sight of Sarah working hard to yield muck looked so absurd to the engineering teams, who were feverishly establishing communication lines and fresh water processing stations, starting power generators and verifying topography, that many questioned the wisdom of the Space Science Academy for bringing these resource consuming, ridiculousness proposing, deer-in-the-headlights looking bunch. They didn't say anything out loud, of course, but decided to work around the sisters and made sure they didn't get involved in anything crucial in nature. Some had heard rumors about sister Roberta's laser bonding tool but since nothing good could possibly come out of the 'flower children', as they called them, it was discounted as another one of their nonsensical make-believes.

It was this very moment, though, this all important moment when their fates depended on concerted effort from everyone that the sight of Sarah mixing mud in a trough brought the most vigorous indignation out of all but the most God-fearing people. If it weren't for their disciplined training they would have protested for sure, but they contented themselves to work faster and more aggressively to consume the bounce in energy that their annoyance generated. Sarah was oblivious to the quiet ire and kept stirring the contents of the trough like her life depended on it. All around her small ATVs, surveyor teams, logistical groups, laser wave carriers and reverse osmosis fresh water pumps moved constantly in a mindful chaos, each team going about its task without interfering with the others.

"How much organic matter do we have so far?" Seth asked, breathing down Sarah's neck as usual.

 "About seven hundred cubic feet, we need a few days for the microbe cultures to mature."

"Start another bin, they are almost done with the growing beds, we want to get everything going as soon as we have a water line."

A quick look at the lima beans determined that the constant 82 degree temperature was going to be an issue in the absence of water so they moved half of the trays back inside. This change increased the energy consumption for growing lights and watering systems and Seth was not pleased. She said nothing but her transparent eyes spoke volumes when they scattered lightning bolts on every one who happened to cross her path.

"We need to work faster", she said. She would have liked to put some urgency under the team in charge of water distribution but since the horticultural experts weren't exactly a top priority she chose her battles and reconsidered. One could see that every second that passed elevated her anxiety and annoyance levels and the sisters who knew better found ways to be out of sight for a while in order not to be on the receiving end of a very sharp tongue and frightening stares. To be sure nobody slept well until they had water to the site because the more dire the lima bean situation looked the more irate Seth became. Between the increasing tension of the team and the cat food diet, Sarah started to remember her early days in Perpignan and kicked herself mentally for being such a push-over.

At the end of each day she sat on a sewer pipe left over from civil works and opened the unthinkable food ration with hands covered in dust and sweat while her fiery hair lit up in the rays of the setting suns.

 

***

 

Four days later, to the complete shock of the rest of the settlers, the experimental farm was ready, both hardscape and landscape completed, the housing units finished, the storage facilities prepared, all waiting for water.

The head of the water distribution team happened to meet Seth's gaze and started wondering if indeed it wouldn't be a good idea to make sure the crazies had what they wanted before they started going off the rails. After all people who travel twenty light years to mix mud in a trough can't possibly be in control of their mental faculties. They mumbled about the waste of their time but installed the piping, the solar pumps and the reverse osmosis systems quickly so they could get out of the nut factory as soon as feasible.

Sister Jesse planted quickly the surviving lima beans, watered them deeply and prayed for the best. Years later when the stable atmosphere carried moisture and rain clouds it seemed impossible to believe how precious water was in the beginning and how difficult it was to keep it where it was needed. The hot dry air absorbed water like hygroscopic gel, no amount of watering would last more than a few hours, and keeping the pumps running constantly became their most important activity for the following years, until the atmosphere absorbed all the water it could hold at 82 degrees and the system reached balance.