I JUST CALLED TO SAY. . .
I found this story while going through a box of disks looking for a different story. It sounds very much like a prelude to ABCDEtc. I think it might have been the true A story. I also found an outline that might have been C or D in that series.


I Just Called To Say...
Part 1

Julia Heller checked the vital signs of her patient, adjusted the temperature inside the amber light chamber, and stood back. She made no move to leave, to check any of the other patients in her small hospital's ward rooms. She merely looked through the clear sides of the chamber and smiled.
For two long G889 years, she'd waited and worked for the moment when she would see this patient on the road to recovery. In the end it was nothing she did, nor could ever do, that put the patient into this chamber to heal and to rest and to begin the first steps to regaining her life.
It made no difference to Julia how the miracle had happened, she was just happy to see that it, at long last, had.
She folded her arms across her chest, tilted her head to one side and simply smiled.
Inside the chamber, the sleeping form of Devon Adair was looking better already. A mere thirty hours after being taken out of cold sleep, the pallid color of her skin was returning to a normal, healthy pink. The dark circles around her eyes were the most stubborn physical signs of her illness, but even they would fade and disappear with time. The amber light would speed her healing.
In fact, Julia was mentally predicting a short four day stint inside the chamber for Devon. The amber light was quickly giving back all the illness had taken from her.
The doctor might have stood beside the chamber for an hour or more if one of her students hadn't interrupted her vigil.
"Uh... Dr. Heller? There's a Mr. Mazatl in your office to see you. He said you sent for him."
Julia turned around slowly, still smiling. "Thank you. I'll finish my rounds later, after Mr. Mazatl leaves."
She brushed past the young woman - Nelson, wasn't it? - and quickly walked along the curved hallway to her office.
The building, within which was housed her hospital, medical school classrooms and administration offices, was a modest, two story, circular structure made from a design suggested by the hospital on the space stations where she had trained. It was Julia's one concession to her former life. Besides, circles were common shapes in nature and she wanted the shape of her hospital to fit in with the land around it.
Julia opened the door to her office and saw the tall, slim form of her long time friend standing at the window looking out.
"Chris? Thanks for getting here so fast."
Mazatl turned around. "I was mapping the river north of here when I got your message," he said. "I left my survey team up there and flew down as fast as I could."
He crossed the room in three long strides to greet her with a warm embrace. He pulled away, holding her shoulders at arm's length. "You look like a woman with a secret you're dying to tell someone."
Julia's welcoming smile grew bigger. "Devon is waking up, Chris!" she blurted out. "Uly called me the day before yesterday and told me to take his mother out of the cold sleep capsule and put her into an amber light chamber. He said the planet, the mother, told him in a dream it was time to awaken Devon."
Mazatl looked at her with a mixture of surprise and excitement. "You're serious! After all this time... You mean just like that..." he stammered.
Julia laughed. "Yes, just like that! I'll take you in to see her in a little while, but first I need to ask you a favor. After I talked to Uly and Alonzo, I tried to contact Yale, but Morgan Martin said he was at the southern tip of the peninsula with a salvage team. A cargo pod washed up on shore and Yale volunteered to take a group of colonists out to bring it back to the colony site at New Pacifica. They took just one shuttle with them. I called you to ask if you would take your lander down to get Yale and bring him back here. Morgan passed the news to him, and as you can imagine, Yale would like to get here as soon as possible."
"Absolutely," Chris Mazatl assured her. "I'll leave as soon as I talk to my team."
"It's not big a rush," Julia said. "I think we'll have four days to prepare, at the least. In just thirty hours the improvement in Devon's physical condition has been phenomenal. I sent True across the valley to get the Camerons otherwise she'd be sitting beside the chamber day and night until Devon awakens. As it is, I can hardly stay away from her myself! I was just standing there beside the chamber, looking in, when my student came to tell me you were waiting."
"It's great news, Jules, but there's one thing I don't understand. Uly said the mother told him it was time to awaken Devon. What does that mean?"
Surprisingly, the doctor laughed. "I don't know! At this point, though, I don't really care either. As long as she's waking and her health is returning, I couldn't ask for more."
Julia grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the doorway. "Come on. Want to see her?"
"Of course," Mazatl assured her. "Hold on. Let me leave my coat here if you don't mind. It's getting cold up north - even saw a few dustings of snow already. We had to break out the winter clothes."
"How far north are you? The leaves have barely started turning around here."
He hung his coat on a rack behind the door, and followed Julia into the hallway. "We're mapping the big river five hundred klicks north of here. The wide dark line on Yale's old map we thought was a strait or a channel. Remember it? It's just a river, maybe a kilometer and a half wide and it flows west, not east! Think of the time we would have saved if we landed a little farther north."
Julia stopped walking and turned to look at him. "It was a river flowing to the west coast? Are you joking? "
Laughing, Mazatl shook his head slowly. "That's what I said when we first reached the river. I got out of the lander and started walking in circles, going, ?You've got to be joking! You've got to be joking!' My crew was looking back and forth, like, ?What? What?' I'm glad no one had their gear turned on!"
Julia laughed. This was definitely turning into a great day. How could she possibly feel happier? They started walking again.
At the doorway to the amber light wardroom, she turned to Mazatl. "This is it. Brace yourself. She really looks great."
He smiled back. "Lead on."
For whatever reason, the need to talk in whispers in a sick room, even one as noisily humming with life support machinery as this one was, had the two of them conversing in hushed voices until they returned to Julia's office a few minutes later.
Mazatl returned to the window and looked outside. "To tell you the truth, Julia," he said, keeping his back to her, "I never thought Devon would ever get out of the cold sleep capsule. Yet, there she is, as mysteriously getting better as she mysteriously got sick. If it wasn't Bennett's rejection illness, what was it?"
"I really don't know, Chris." Julia answered, crossing her arms and going to stand beside him. "Alonzo said he would tell me more about Uly's dream when they got here, but I've been thinking about it. I have a feeling, and I think I know what they're going to say."
Turning his head only slightly, he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "But you're not ready to talk about it, are you? Okay. I'll wait. How is John these days? Heard from his team lately? Does he know?"
He could hear the smile in her voice. "Same old Danziger. He's doing fine. He's been sending back reports once a week, but I haven't actually talked to him in months." She sighed. "I sent a message to the last relay he used, asking for him to get in touch. His team has probably moved on, though. It might be weeks before they set up another relay."
"Where are they?" he asked. "Last I heard they were still on Copus."
"They were mapping near the pole and ready to start back according to his last message. We expect them back in four or five months, unless they get my message and come straight back."
Chris Mazatl turned his attention to the window and it's beautiful view of the biodome valley resplendent in full fall colors. Lachance Valley, it was called now, and the name looked right and perfect on the new maps he was helping to create. Lachance, after Mary's parents.
The director's office of the Heller Clinic had a sweeping view of the biodome, it's outgrowth of Quonset huts, and the small village growing up around it. The village was called Mary's Garden, and the territory around it was Kansa.
Looking to his left, south along the valley floor, Mazatl saw the roof of his own house waiting for his return in a small clearing between two stands of tall, white trunked trees. He liked to think of it as being three stones' throws from the biodome. Or a five minute walk.
Julia loved the view year round. It was the reason she chose the spot for the location of her clinic. Watching the seasons change around the dome and the village was a wonderful spectacle.
She said, "I sent someone down to open your house, to get a fire going, to leave a few provisions in the kitchen. You've been gone over a month. I thought it might need a little air."
"Thanks, Jules. As long as there's no hurry, I'll go down and get some rest. I'll leave to get Yale at first light."
"All right. See you at dinner?"
"Wouldn't miss it. I'd better call my people and tell them they're on their own for the rest of the week."
Julia reached out and squeezed his hand as he turned to leave. "Thank you, Chris."
He nodded. "You're welcome, Julia. See you later."

The sun was behind the mountains, throwing Mary's Garden into twilight when Julia left the clinic and drove her dunerail to her home in the biodome. She was wondering how things were going to change now that Devon Adair was about to join the people living in the planet's three major settlements.
It was going to be a shock for her to awaken at the advance group's winter campsite. Would she understand the reasons why the colony at New Pacifica was being abandoned? Why the advance group and the surviving colonists did not want to stay there?
Surviving colonists.
Those two words alone would require an encyclopedia of information to explain.
Devon and the group had been so looking forward to reaching the western ocean, the beaches of New Pacifica, the Sea of Antius. Was she going to be able to understand why they simply couldn't stay there?
It wasn't going to be easy explaining everything that had happened to the group, the colonists, the children, the colony ship...
"Oh, god!" Julia said aloud and brought the vehicle to a dead stop in the middle of the trail.
The excitement and the happiness of the last two days was suddenly overwhelming. She turned off the rail's engine and laid her forehead against her hands at the top of the steering wheel, and she began to cry.

Waking up was the hardest thing Devon Adair could ever remember doing. She wanted to awaken, but her eyes wouldn't stay open. Not that they were working correctly, anyway. All she could see were rows of brilliant brownish colored lights in front of her
.
She opened her eyes again. Someone was talking. A human voice saying things impossible to understand. She closed her eyes against the sound and drifted off.

Her eyes opened slowly. She wanted them to stay closed. The funny colored lights were still so bright. She took a deep breath and fell asleep again.

The next time she opened her eyes the lights were not as bright. In fact they were a dim glow in front of her. A voice coming from all around her was telling her to take her time, don't rush it. Silly voice! What did it think she was trying to do?

Devon was aware she had awakened again without ever realizing she had fallen asleep. Waking seemed to have become her life's work. She was doing it a lot lately. Something was different this time. A blurred someone was looking at her sideways. How were they doing that? Oh. Not sideways. From above. Devon was flat on her back and looking up. The person was leaning over her and doing something with her arm.
The person was saying something, but darned if Devon knew what it was. It didn't matter, anyway. She was still sleepy and her eyes were closing.

"All right," a familiar sounding voice was saying. "This is it. Open your eyes, Devon. Time to wake up."
Devon did as instructed and the familiar voice belonged to a familiar face. She could focus her eyes now and the light didn't hurt so much.
Julia Heller was leaning over her, looking all serious as she watched the readings on her diaglove. Her eyes flicked to Devon's and the businesslike manner vanished. In it's place was a brilliant smile.
"There you are! I think you're going to make it this time, Devon."
She must have looked puzzled, because Julia drew away her arm with the diaglove and sat down on the side of the bed. Her face was ?upright' in Devon's vision now and her smile looked even brighter.
"You've been trying to awaken for a day and a half, Devon. I think you've finally done it." Julia looked away and reached for something.
When she turned back, Devon felt something touch her lips and click against her teeth.
"This is water, Devon. I'm going to squeeze a little into your mouth. Okay? Here we go. Just a little."
It was the best water she had ever tasted. Where did they get water like that? She swallowed it quickly and Julia squeezed in a little more.
"How long?" Devon tried to ask, but her voice came out a harsh, unintelligible whisper.
Julia smiled again. "Don't worry. It'll come. You're just a little out of practice." She squeezed more water from the bottle. "Let me know when you've had enough. Just say stop."
Devon did better. She said, "That's enough."
Though her voice sounded as ancient as Julia had ever heard a voice sound, to Devon's own ears, her voice was strong and vibrant.
"Uly?" she asked. "Yale?"
Julia adjusted her position on the edge of the bed. She clasped her hands in her lap and gave Devon an earnest look. "They're both on their way," she said. "Devon, you were in cold sleep for a long time. Your waking was not a planned event. I'll explain it to you later, so for now just try to understand that none of us were expecting you to wake up when you did. We brought you out of cold sleep two days ago. I was planning a slow, four day recovery period for you, but your body has other plans. Your recovery is two days ahead of schedule. Everyone - including Uly and Yale - are busy at one task or another away from here."
"From here where? Where are we?"
Julia looked at her very earnestly. "Well, at the moment you're in a bed in a room in my clinic. I have a lot to tell you, and I hardly know where to begin. Why don't we first let me play doctor and give you an examination, alright? With that out of the way, we can talk."
Without waiting for a reply, Julia began to pass her diaglove over Devon's head and upper body. Though Devon tried to ask questions, she was ignored as Julia split her attention between the device on her arm and the medical equipment positioned around the bed.
Try as she might to fight it, Devon fell asleep.

Part 2 coming soon. . .