Civic Duty (6.3)

"From this point on, Dan, it is imperative that you think of nothing but Mars. This is only the second time I've traveled this way, if you don't concentrate on Mars I can't promise we won't end up on the other side of the Galaxy," Rivi said. Dan nodded in acknowledgment.

Rivi folded the ship into hyperspace and then, thinking about Mars, she brought the ship back out again.

"We are going to try to land now. I don't know how smooth this will be," Rivi said in a shaky voice.

"We're already at Mars?"

"Yes," Rivi replied.

Rivi opened her computer and focused on the screen, which showed the desert landscape of Mars. Reaching with her mind through her computer, she manipulated the panels on the wings to slow their descent and control where they landed. A few minutes passed, and they finally came to rest on the landing pad of the station. A motion-sensor-controlled airlock extended out to where the standard Earth shuttle door would be. Rivi and Dan walked through the wall.

Rivi decided to leave her ship outside and headed down the hall that connected the airlock with the station. Dan followed close behind her. As they passed through a set of doors, they were confronted by a stressed-looking man in a uniform.

"You must be Rivinaig and Daniel."

"Yes, sir," Rivi answered politely.

"My name is Herman Schultz. I am the head official of this station. I just received word that you'd be coming to help us. I must say that I had my doubts when I heard that you two were kids. However, I also didn't expect you to get here so fast."

"All the facts must be present before a conclusion is made, Mr. Schultz. Or, as most humans may say, 'I am no ordinary child.'" Rivi replied with a polite smile. "Where is your problem?"

"Right this way," Mr. Schultz replied, leading them down a series of hallways. "There was a construction accident in Area 5."

"Punctured dome?" Rivi asked.

"Yes! Some civilians and prison workers are trapped in there. The door's security features kicked in before they could all be evacuated. The atmosphere levels, although falling, are still safe for now, but it won't be long before they are down to critical levels. We still can't get the doors open," Mr. Schultz replied. "Everyone else has been ordered to stay in their quarters to keep them out of harm's way."

Rivi nodded, understanding his reasoning. As they walked down the fourth hall, Rivi noticed a few men and women working on a door's electrical controls and trying to cut through the door with torches. As she approached, she could see through the window in the door that the people inside were obviously getting worried. Rivi cocked her head to see the focus of their concern, a long thin crack in the metal dome was allowing precious atmosphere to bleed out of the sealed room.

A dozen or so people sat among the debris of what looked to be a collapsed crane, while a few brave souls attempted to climb the support frames of the walls to try to close the crack.

"Area 5 is right through here," Mr. Schultz replied, pointing to the set of double doors Rivi had been looking through.

The men and women working on the door all glanced behind them for only a second before resuming their work.

"Any luck, Gwen?" Mr. Schultz asked one of the workers who was working on the electrical circuits of the doors.

The woman, who appeared to be about twenty years of age, straightened slowly. She rolled her cramped neck as she did.

"No, Dad, we still can't get them open!" Gwen replied, as she smacked the door frame in frustration and then turned to look at her father and the newcomers. "Did you get in touch with the techies on Earth?"

"They sent us some help," Mr. Schultz replied glibly, as he cocked his head toward Rivi and Daniel.

"Two kids?" Miss Gwen asked in disbelief. "What on Armstrong's Crater could they possibly do to these doors that we haven't tried?"

Rivi closed her eyes. The control panel behind Gwen came to life, and the door opened with a swish. Ignoring all the others in the hallway, who were gaping at her like a school of fish out of water, she gestured toward Dan, who followed her into the large, domed room. Bare structural skeletons of rooms and halls stood unattended and unfinished as the workers of Area 5 shuffled among the debris.

With everyone talking at once, the noise level was approaching migraine levels.

"We can't have that happen," Rivi murmured to herself.

"All right, everyone stop talking and pay attention!" Rivi commanded to the whole area in a loud voice so she would be heard above the commotion.

The incessant talking lowered into a curious murmuring, as the workers struggled to find the person who had just spoken.

"I said, stop talking!" Rivi commanded again.

She had been informed earlier by the colony's main computer that many of the menial workers were prison convicts. They were being put to work in a controlled environment, where they could still help humanity instead of sitting in prison.

It is imperative that I take care of this situation accordingly. Other innocent people live in this station too, Rivi thought. She shut the door to the area to keep the workers detained.

The group of workers gradually fell to whispers and then to nothing at all. As everyone fell silent, Rivi pointed Dan toward a first-aid kit attached by the door and told him to go make sure everyone was okay. She then let her attention fall to the few workers hanging onto the support rafters, still trying to climb up to fix the deadly tear in the metal that was sucking priceless oxygen out of the station.

"Come down," Rivi ordered in a cool tone.

The normally stubborn workers complied, more out of curiosity than obedience. Even the technicians in the doorway were staring through the windows to see what the fourteen-year-old would do.

"You have nothing to fear from this simple crack," Rivi said with such conviction that no one thought to argue.

Rivi looked up at the metal walls of the dome and focused on the crack that shone with pale red light from the Martian environment outside, which was threatening to allow all of the oxygen in the room to escape and asphyxiate everyone. Rivi searched for something metallic to stand on and changed its atoms to support her as she floated up toward the metal holes in the wall. Closing her eyes and raising her hands toward the holes, she mentally pulled the ragged metal edges back together and heated them until they were sealed tightly.

Rivi opened her eyes and smiled in satisfaction at the repair.

Dan came up to Rivi as she floated down from the repair site.

"Most of the workers have only minor injuries," Daniel replied.

"Good," Rivi said. "I am not a healer. I don't have the energy to take care of all of them. We better let the people of this station get back to doing their jobs. The medics can take care of the injured."

Rivi used her mind to unlock the double doors to the area to allow the medics and security officials, waiting out in the hall, into the area.

"Still feeling under the weather from the school fire incident?" Dan asked in concern as he watched Rivi rub her temples.

"A bit. I have to keep reminding myself to take it easy," Rivi said with a slight shrug.

"You sure helped these people out of a tough situation, though," Dan exclaimed. "A day with you is certainly not very boring!"

"Never thought you'd be on Mars this soon, huh?" Rivi asked with a chuckle, as she and Dan headed toward the double doors.

"Nope," Dan replied, laughing as the doors sheathed open and he stepped out into the hall with Rivi.

Mr. Schultz was still standing in the hall.

"You surprised us all here, Rivinaig. I'd love to ask you how you did it, but there's work to be done," Mr. Schultz said with a sigh. "Oh, the president wishes to speak to you, when you get a chance. There's a communications terminal at the end of the hall."

"Thank you, sir," Rivi said, as she and Dan turned and headed for the terminal.

#

Dan frowned as Rivi ended her talk with the president. He had asked to talk to Rivi privately, and Dan stood a few feet away to be polite. From Rivi's expression, the discussion was about something troubling.

"Is everything okay?" Dan asked in concern, seeing her step away from the terminal in a daze.

"Apparently, Earth sends convicted criminals to sites where they can be of use instead of harm to human society," Rivi answered.

"Yeah, they've been doing that for some time now. Many of those workers in Area 5 were past offenders," Dan answered.

"I know. President Malcarosi thinks I should meet someone who is being held in the detainee housing area," Rivi explained, hugging her arms across her stomach.

"Do you want me to come?" Dan asked, a bit concerned that meeting this person seemed to cause Rivi distress.

"No, I'll be fine. A bit of my past needs to be faced today. You may want to find Mr. Schultz again. Ask him if the colony has some spare rooms. We will probably have to stay the night. I don't think I'm going to be up for any hyper-dimensional travel tonight," Rivi said, waving her hand.

Dan watched in concern as she walked away, down the hall toward Area 8: Detainee Housing.

#

Rivi entered through the double doors of Area 8. The doors were locked, but she paid the computer no heed and walked right through the middle of the entryway. She was met with rows and rows of cube shapes. Each one was a type of dorm room and had no windows. The walls of each cube were pushed almost seamlessly end to end into rows. Rivi followed the directions she had found in the computer system. She paused before a cube dorm halfway down the third row and verified the names of the occupants with the colony's computer.

Rivi's face was emotionless and cold as she walked through the locked door into the dorm. Two sets of bunk beds were lined up along the far wall and the wall to her left. Four women stared at her in surprise. Rivi quietly observed the features of each one. One woman in particular caused Rivi's memories to resurface, and she closed her eyes. The woman's hair was thin and limp, her brown eyes carried a haunted look about them.

"Is one of you Alice Ernestine?," Rivi asked the group of women quietly.

The women looked at her as if she was crazy and went back to what they were doing without a word, but the woman with the haunted, brown eyes stood, confirming Rivi's suspicions. Rivi's breath caught in her throat. Fearing her knees would not support her, Rivi sat on the hard, cold floor. Taking a deep breath, she beckoned for the woman standing in front of her to do the same.

"Mrs. Alice Ernestine, have you ever had a child?" Rivi asked, as a void formed behind her eyes.

"No ... Well, yes. Once, when I was younger," Mrs. Alice said.

"Was it a boy or a girl?"

"A girl."

"What happened to her?" Rivi asked, already knowing.

"I lost her," Mrs. Alice said.

"You mean you gave her away," Rivi said.

Alice paused.

"Yes. There were these freak storms in the area that night. We'd never had tornadoes before then in that area. The child was in the living room when I heard the sirens. I headed into the living room to get her as two creatures came through the patio door off the living room. Before I got to the girl, they told me that if I would let them take her, they would allow me to live," she explained. "The tornado warning sirens blared on and the rain was loud against the windows. I turned around and ran back toward the kitchen cellar."

"How old was the child?" Rivi asked.

"Hmm, I believe she was a little older than two." Mrs. Alice said, shrugging her shoulders.

"Do you remember what happened next?" Rivi choked.

"No," the lady replied, frowning. "All I remember is the child crying, and a few minutes later a huge pain ran up and down my spine. When I woke up, the child was gone. The only other thing that the aliens took besides the child was a book of research papers my husband had put together about the stuff he was working on at his job. "

Rivi looked down at her knees for a few moments. She studied the lines in the floor as she fought to hide her disgust. The coldness of the floor mingled together with the emotional pain that bubbled inside of her.

"You didn't even try to keep them from taking her? She was your daughter!" Rivi looked up, suddenly angry at Alice.

The lady waved her hand and leaned against the bunk bed. "No, I was too young, anyway, to take care of her. I had other things I wanted to do with my life."

"Where is Dad, I mean, her father?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him for eleven years. He worked long hours at some sort of research facility. The child was the only reason I stayed with him," Alice answered glibly. "I've answered your questions, now how about you answer mine. Who are you, why do you care about my past, and how did you walk right through the door?"

"I walked through the door by changing its atoms, and I care about your past because it's mine as well," Rivi answered quietly. She stood and looked down at the shocked woman. "I'd also like to let you know that I wouldn't ever give my child up like that."

"What do you know about anything?" Alice asked.

"As you've managed to destroy most of your life, I suppose I know quite a bit more than you do." Rivi said. Her eyes went dull again, and she turned and walked resolutely back through the dorm door.

Rivi hung her head, tears streaming down her face. She now knew that another section of her nightmares, a part that she had always refused to believe, was actually true. Rivi stumbled down one hall of the Mars colony after another. She wanted to keep walking until the pain went away. Suddenly, a hand touched her shoulder.

Rivi looked up at Dan, her eyes drying as tears would no longer surface. Dan looked confused and worried. Rivi managed a feeble smile.

"What happened, Rivi?" Dan asked. "Who did you go see?"

"I'm not certain that I feel much like talking about it. I'll be fine. A good night's sleep will be the best thing."

"Okay," Dan replied, confused. "Our rooms are down there. Yours is number 36. Mine is number 38."

"Good," Rivi said in a worn-out voice. "See you in the morning, Dan."

Dan frowned with worry as he watched Rivi walk down to her room and close the door.

#

Rivi leaned against the door, looking absently around the room. It was an eclectically furnished suite. Nothing seemed to match with anything else. While looking around, she checked for anything breakable and stored the various objects: desk lamps, a glass dish, and a few cups from the bathroom into the empty chest at the end of the large bed by the far wall. She had a feeling her nightmares would be worse tonight.

She climbed into bed and gave in to the sleep that she so desperately needed. Her mind allowed her a decent seven hours of sleep before pitching her into the worst dream she had experienced in years.