The First Jumper

05: Gerleesh: A Purpose

Alone in the tiny space that was all she had left as her own, she finally looked at the pamphlet. It said that surgery to remove a bonded egg so a Tarshen with a damaged pouch could again reproduce was expensive and difficult, but it could be done, with a high probability of success. It was only available, however, to those who had performed extraordinary service to the Tarshen people.

It then listed the types of service which enabled a Tarshen to qualify, and Gerleesh was appalled. They all involved what seemed to be extremely high risk factors, and probably involved changes to her body that would be both permanent and either partially or totally discomforting.

One didn't seem so bad. She could be an interstellar explorer, surveying planets for possible colony sites for her people. That actually sounded like fun, so long as she could get home again.

The thought of moving permanently to another sun was anathema to Gerleesh, as it would have been to nearly all the Tarshen. Linked as they were to one another and all their mothers, the idea of leaving their planet was almost inconceivable. Gerleesh, however, worked with those who studied the results of the recent flares. She knew what had been happening to the plants and animals, but she also had talked to the physicists who studied the binary.

One of them had told her that the flashes were getting progressively worse, and the star that had most recently flashed was very close to going nova. When Gerleesh asked what that meant for the plants and beetles, she was told to calculate the effects from a flash a million times brighter than the last one, which went on for a month.

Gerleesh didn't need to calculate it. The last flash was having devastating effects, all across the ecology, and it might have been directly responsible for G'hosh's bad egg, now sealed in Gerleesh's pouch. Much of the material would eventually be absorbed by her body, but most would not, forming a hard mass that was fused to her pouch. She would be forever pregnant with her dead child, unable ever to give birth.

A flash a million times as bright wouldn't be devastating in the same way. It would torch their planet out of existence. Their oceans might not boil nor their crust melt, but nothing at all would be left alive on it.

Looking at the pamphlet, Gerleesh realized that they only had one position available. They didn't actually need someone to do fifty years of underwater mining, outfitted with gills. Nor did they need someone to spend thirty years inside an active volcano. Nor any of the other things, which all now seemed absurd.

"We need explorers," Gerleesh said to herself. She shook at the idea of being away from her mother and her home, but there was no other way to have a child, and she could be helpful to all of them. Finally, she had something positive to anticipate. "I am perfectly suited for it, since I have not had a child yet." She looked down at the commitment. It required ten years of training, followed by fifteen years of exploration. Twenty-five years, and she could have a child. The world would have hope again. I will apply tomorrow.

She slept poorly that night, and was so confused that she almost followed her routine and went to work in the morning. Instead, she went over to the Exploration Group, which was conveniently just a short walk from her dormitory.

On the way, she looked up again at the binary, which was just rising. Sometime soon, the little white star would explode, killing their entire world. The physicist hadn't been able to tell her when it would happen, but they were pretty sure it would happen in the next thousand years. It could theoretically happen at any moment.

Gerleesh stopped at the doors to the big building and shook for a moment. She wanted her friends. She wanted her mother. Then she realized that absolutely nothing would make a difference in her situation, or that of her people. She needed to be able to have a child, and her people needed a new home.

She took a deep breath, and went in.

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