Earth(39)

"Stop it, Susan! She's already used my name anyway!" I snaked my arm around Susan, grabbing at her shirt, trying to pull her off me. I wasn't really motivated to hurt her, unless she kept pushing her luck.

"I refuse to sit by and keep letting you put us in danger!"

I froze; so did she.

She recovered first, standing up and backing away. "Sorry; that came out wrong."

I stood as well, not bothering to brush off bits of dead leaves. "No it didn't."

"What?"

"You said exactly what you wanted to." I picked up Bee, who looked like she might cry, and put her on my hip. "What did it mean?"

Susan's face crumpled at Bee's pouting lip. "The disasters that have been following us…"

"What about them?"

"Oh, come on, Kaitlyn. I don't want to do this now."

Not without Alex, I thought. So they can gang up on me.

The handset laying on the ground between us sparked to life again, "Kaitlyn?"

"Look, we don't know for sure what’s causing them." I walked to the radio and picked it up. "And until we do, I'm not going to be separated from my child on a theory." I pressed the talk button. "Sorry, Margie. I'm here – everything is fine." The bite in my voice would tell her otherwise, even over the air.

"Um, ok. Things here aren't so good; there has been an earthquake."

My eyes opened wide; so did Susan's. Without breaking our shocked stare at each other, I put the handset back to my mouth. "Say again?"

"Earthquake, over."

I shook my head. "Impossible, we're not that far away. We would've felt it."

"I was able to contain it. Did some damage to our immediate area, though. We lost most of our supplies when the river surged. Half our group doesn't want to continue; we've been arguing back and forth. What should we do?"

"Um…" I trailed off.

"Say again?" asked Margie.

"Hold tight. Don't go anywhere. I have some thinking to do. Over and out." I dropped the handset, and brushed by Susan.

"Kaitlyn?" I heard her ask behind me.

I half-turned my head. "I said I have some thinking to do."





* * *





"Not now, Arnold."

He had been trying to catch my ear all day. Unfortunately, being with the slower group meant being with Arnold. For the most part, I was able to avoid him by using Bee as an excuse. Bee needs to pee. Bee needs to eat. Bee wants to be at the front of the pack. But now Susan had Bee, and I had no more excuses.

"I just wanted to talk about Fukushima."

I sighed. "You mean the nuclear meltdown in Japan? The tsunami that caused the release of radioactive material into the ecosystem."

"Yes – that was an example of our worst fears with nuclear power. And you know what we discovered?"

"What?"

"That it really wasn't that bad. Losses were minimal—" He tripped over a root sticking out of the ground, caught himself on my arm, and almost brought me down with him.

I smiled to myself. Was that Earth trying to tell him something?

When we both caught our footing, he continued like nothing had happened, "Scientists also agree there will never be an observable cancer increase in the Japanese population attributable to Fukushima."

"Way too early to know that." I didn't say what we were both thinking…because of Daybreak, now we'd never really know.

"But nuclear is just…dangerous," I said.

"Oh." He clicked his tongue. "That’s just fearmonger talk. More people die each day from coal pollution, or did before Daybreak, than have been killed by nuclear power in 50 years of operation."

"But we're not talking about coal. We're talking about renewable energy."

"Listen, in another time, I might have been all for renewable energy. But we just aren't there yet – we don’t have the capability of supporting large population masses on just that. And now, thanks to Daybreak…" He gestured up to the night sky and the green streaks of the aurora borealis. "We really don't have the chance."

I sighed. He was right – and it was because of my failure to stop Shawn. "Okay, so say we go the nuclear way—"

"You mean the right way," he interrupted.

I glared at him.

He cleared his throat and said, "Sorry."

"If we have nuclear power plants running all over the world, we still need Uranium to power them. How do we find that without gas to run the machines, or power to run the instruments?"

"Well, for starters – I think some of you magical folk can do it. I've been talking to some of your Earths—"

"Earths?" It was my turn to snort. "I've never seen an Earth powerful enough for that; not even Margie – I don't think."