The servants were swift in carrying out their orders. Within twenty minutes, they had set up a pavilion, covered the stone with thick carpets and brought comfortable chairs and tables, arranging everything very carefully.
Lord Neville escorted Eugenia to a chair as soon as the servants began scampering away. Dionne and Khan followed, taking seats across from Eugenia. Genie glanced at her son several times and finally possessed herself of his hand, holding it tightly.
“As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I was released from the bio-pod long years ago--by Neville’s father, Prince John. I was--terrified, let me tell, to find myself in this--backwards society. It was disconcerting to be looked upon as a sorceress, but I didn’t try to correct the misconception. It seemed--safer than trying to explain the truth.”
Dionne understood that much without difficulty, but part of the story was still confusing. “What convinced them that you were a sorceress?”
Eugenia shrugged. “The bio-pod itself, in part. The weapon I used to try to frighten them off. As scared as I was, I couldn’t bring myself to actually harm anyone. Then there was the--ah--immaculate conceptions--particularly the first.”
Dionne nodded, understanding. “And Lord Neville is…?”
Eugenia shook her head fractionally. “Not one of the first twins.”
“I see,” Dionne said, nodding.
Eugenia chuckled. “I’m not sure you do,” she said wryly. “The--uh--experiment was a complete success. Two by two the first were born--and thereafter, also. There were times when I thought some very bad thoughts about the lab technicians who’d come up with the brilliant plan. But it was at least a little easier for me than it might have been. When John and I were married, there were wet nurses and--an entire staff of servants to take care of the babies I filled the royal nursery with.”
Dionne glanced quickly at Khan, then settled back in her chair to digest that.
“How many?” she asked finally.
“Twenty eight in fourteen deliveries,” Eugenia supplied, not without some pride.
“Oh my god!” Dionne was horrified. In their own time, such things simply did not happen. There had been birth control to prevent women from having one child after another. Historically, she knew that hadn’t been the case. Women had produced until they no longer could, or died, which ever came first. She also knew that it was no part of ‘the plan’ to limit the number of children the ‘mothers’ produced. They wanted the women to ‘seed’ civilization with off spring carrying superior genetics. But an abstract vision of the plan hadn’t prepared her for the shock of actuality.
Eugenia shrugged. “There was no help for it. I was--alone.”
Dionne blinked at that, brought back to the conversation with a jolt. She felt a little ill as the full implications of that comment sank in. “The others?”
“Only you know the location of all the bio-pods,” Eugenia said, shaking her head. “The two entombed with me….” Her chin wobbled faintly. “The other two bio-pods were destroyed when part of the building collapsed. Neither Deborah nor Amelia made it. I was the lucky one.”
Dionne quelled the urge to cry as images of the two young women rose in her mind. They truly had been sisters in every way that counted. All of them had been bio-engineered and they had grown up together in the lab nursery, been trained together for the roles they would play.
Eugenia smiled sadly. “I truly was lucky, not just because I survived, or the fact that the collapse was what eventually led to my discovery, but because it was Prince John who found me and set me free. I loved him, very much. In spite of everything, I’ve had few regrets about my life. The only real regret I’ve ever felt was that circumstances prevented me from following the plan as it was intended to be implemented and the knowledge that I couldn’t make the difference I’d hoped to.”
Sensing that Khan was looking at her, Dionne glanced at him. She couldn’t read his expression, but she thought she saw understanding in his eyes.
Eugenia grasped her hand, capturing her attention again. “You can, though. Nothing seems to have gone as the project founders hoped, but we can still make a difference to these people. You can make a difference. The lab? Is it … intact? Functional?”
Dionne nodded. “Actually, we did excellently well all things considered. We lost nearly forty percent of the batches, but the rest seem to be in good to excellent shape.”
Eugenia smiled. “Then I will send my children to you. They are--really exceptional. They only need the ICTD. There’s still time for them to make tremendous progress.”
Dionne frowned. “The others?”
Eugenia looked uneasy. “We can’t change what’s happened, but we can prevent the project from being a complete failure if we act quickly. Tell me where to find them and I will send men to remove the bio-pods and bring them to you--if they still live.”
She studied Dionne for several moments, growing angry and distressed when Dionne still seemed reluctant and doubtful. “We have mine!” she said urgently. “Don’t throw away what we have for something that might not even be possible! Surely you can see that even what we have now is better than nothing at all?”
Dionne could see it, but she couldn’t just abandon the guidelines of the project without considering every angle carefully. “I think you are probably right,” she said slowly, soothingly. “But I still have to consider everything. Just give me a little time to think.”
Eugenia stared at her for several moments in frustration, but finally nodded. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but I know you’re right. And I know you’ll do what is right for everyone.”
She rose from her seat. “I’m old,” she said almost apologetically. “I’m going to return to the encampment to rest and give you time to reach a decision--but please consider this, we have twenty eight brilliant minds that need only knowledge to reach their full potential.”
Chapter Nineteen
Dionne slept on it. Long before the sun crested the distant horizon, she knew what she would do. She had no data to either defend her position or oppose it, but she had realized that the plan simply could not be implemented as conceived. She had to do what she felt was right in her heart.
It occurred to her that her heart might be leading her astray, but she dismissed it. Bio-engineered or not, scientist or not, she was still merely human, and subject to her emotions. She would do what felt right, and accept whatever came of it, because she knew she had done the very best she was capable of.
Eugenia didn’t appear to have suffered a great deal of doubt over the outcome. Either that, or she was simply hopeful. She’d summoned her children, explained to them the best she could and told them to prepare to go with Dionne to receive the gift of knowledge.
Dionne answered the questioning look Eugenia gave her with a smile and the locations of the other nine pods. Only she had been separated, left in sole possession of the most critical lab of all. A shortage of money more than anything else had determined that the others would be secreted in four other locations by threes.
Summoning her best men, Eugenia and Dionne went over the locations with them, described what they were to find and how to transport it, and the men departed to search for the ‘ladies of the casks’, the long lost sisters of Queen Eugenia.
Feeling more at peace with herself than she had in many months, Dionne joined Khan at the head of the procession that was returning to the lab. She was surprised that he seemed a little cool and distant, and disturbed by it, but even that didn’t dim the sense of hopefulness that filled her as they began their trek to the lab.
Despite the fact that they traveled now with horses and carriages and she’d made the trek to the forbidden lands on foot, it took almost as long to make the return trip as it had before because of the difficulty in getting the carriages over the mountain.
In some respects, Dionne’s spirits lightened the closer they came to home base, but she couldn’t help but notice that Khan grew quieter and more distant and nothing
she could think of to say would draw him out.
Her good spirits began to wane under that dark cloud, until she felt almost as miserable as she was puzzled.
Why, she wondered, was he so withdrawn? Was he that set against the implementation of the plan? She didn’t know why, but she’d thought he might have changed his mind, that he had come to see how much it would benefit everyone, and that he would be happy about her decision.
She supposed his coolness was indication enough that she’d been wrong.
She was still confused. He had seemed very upset when she’d told him she was considering abandoning the project and returning to the bio-pod to wait for a more opportune time to implement it. She had thought that meant that he was as tortured by the thought that they would not be together at all as she was.
Now she had the chance to discharge her duty and still have something for herself, him, and it seemed he didn’t care at all.
Almost without exception, everyone was tired and on edge by the time the tediously slow procession at last hove into sight of the ridge overlooking the lab.
Dionne, who was riding at the front with Khan and his brothers, gasped when she saw that the Kota had gathered at the ridge above the lab. She glanced at Khan. “They came!” she said, breathless with excitement.
Something flickered in Khan’s eyes. He sent his brothers a warning frown. “I see,” he said finally.
His reaction dimmed her excitement. “You’re--not pleased?”
His lips curled into a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I am pleased for your sake.”
“But….” She stared at him in dismay. “It isn’t for me! It’s for them!”
It was an uneasy, distrustful group that gathered outside the lab and settled to make camp. Dionne chided herself for allowing the atmosphere of impending doom to kill her excitement, but it distressed her nonetheless and she was glad when she escaped the crowd and entered the quiet of the lab, away from the uneasy whispering, the distrustful glances.
Dismissing it with an effort, she hurried to the lab first, to check the progress of the embryos. Relieved when she saw that everything was proceeding as expected, she returned to her quarters, indulged herself in a long hot bath and collapsed in exhaustion on her bed.
She began testing the following day. As Eugenia had claimed, her offspring were excellent specimens and Dionne began the ICTD sessions, alternating those sessions with testing the Kota, Khan’s brothers at the forefront.
She was pleased to discover that, despite the fact that they had not advanced as far as Eugenia’s people, there was no significant difference in physical or mental development.
A week later, a troop of Eugenia’s men arrived carrying three of the pods and the anxiety in the back of Dionne’s mind that none of the others had survived was eased when she programmed the computer to revive them and they emerged in perfect health.
Two weeks passed before the remaining pods arrived, but the six women resting in the bio-pods emerged as strong and healthy as the others and Dionne’s cup of happiness overflowed.
Until she had revived them all, she hadn’t realized she’d feared from the time she first climbed into the bio-pod so many years ago that she would never see any of them again. Despite the work they all faced, when Eugenia arrived with the last of the pods, they gathered in Dionne’s quarters to celebrate their reunion and mourn the loss of the two who hadn’t made it.
Eugenia entertained them long into the night with anecdotes of her life among the medieval society she’d emerged in. When it came Dionne’s turn to tell her own story, she realized she had very little to share. Her experiences were mostly confined to reminisces of Khan, and she found she didn’t really want to share that.
When she looked for him the following morning, she discovered that he was no where to be found. Frowning, she probed her mind for the last time she’d seen him and realized that she hadn’t seen him at all since shortly after they’d returned.
How could she have been so tied up as to have failed to notice that he had gone, she wondered in dismay?
A sense of urgency gripped her then. She had to find him, to see him and assure herself that he hadn’t abandoned her.
Leaving the others in charge of the lab, she struck off for the Kota village.
Khan was not in his lodge, nor anywhere in the village that Dionne could discover. Dismayed, fearful, she called the cougars and ordered them to track his scent, watching in anxiety as the cougars wandered back and forth and around and around, crisscrossing each other’s path. After watching them for some time, it was borne in upon her that too many days had passed. His scent had faded and even the cougars couldn’t help her.
She stood in the middle of the village indecisively, trying to think where he might have gone but nothing came to mind. She was too distressed to think beyond the horrible sense of loss.
She was trudging unhappily through the village, heading back the way she’d come, when she heard a sound that stopped her in her tracks. Her heart skipped several beats, surging with hope when she realized it was the sound of hoof beats that had finally penetrated her abstraction. Crushing disappointment filled her when she saw that it was Rikard. She went to meet him anyway, hopeful that he would know where to find Khan.
“I can’t find him,” she said, trying to keep the thread of desperation out of her voice.
His lips tightened. “He is gone.”
Fighting the urge to wail like a lost child, Dionne simply stared at him while she mastered control. “He left? Without even saying goodbye?”
Some of the anger seemed to leave him. He shook his head. “He left many days ago. If you had cared you should have sought him out then.”
Giving up the impossible task of controlling her emotions, Dionne blinked as tears filled her eyes. “I do care! Please! If you know where he’s gone, tell me! I need to talk to him.”
His expression hardened, but she could see indecision in his eyes. “He loves you. Even I can see that he would gladly move heaven and Earth to have you, but you are not for him and he knows this. If you care about him as you say, leave him in peace. In time, it will be easier for him to accept.”
Dionne stamped her foot. “I don’t want him to accept, damn it! I love him! Why would he leave now, when we can finally be together? I don’t understand this at all.”
Rikard’s lips tightened. “Did you tell him?”
“I did! I told him he was my dearest friend and companion in the world!”
Rikard gave her a look of disgust. “Then I don’t wonder that he left, only that he stayed as long as he did!”
Dismay filled Dionne. “I said it wrong?” she asked unhappily.
Rolling his eyes, Rikard gave her a look of disgust. “I have never seen two people who made more of a muck of things. He has been so fearful that you would flatly refuse him, he was afraid to take the chance and ask, and you have been too busy saving the world to consider saving your part of it. I suppose, though,” he said grudgingly, “that it is only human to screw up the one thing most important to you both.”
Dionne reddened, but she didn’t try to deny his accusations, merely continued to look at him hopefully.
He studied her thoughtfully for several moments. “Go back the lab. I will find him and persuade him to take one more chance. You will know what to do when he comes, or you aren’t the woman I think you are. If you two screw this up, I wash my hands of you!”
She wanted to argue, to demand that he take her to Khan at once, but one look at his face was enough to assure her that he couldn’t as easily be persuaded as Khan was--and Khan had been next to impossible to budge an inch. Nodding miserably, she watched until he’d turned his horse and disappeared and finally trudged back to the lab.
By the time she saw the lab, hope had surged back and she entered the building purposefully. Ignoring the activity, she headed straight for her quarters.
She paced for a while, trying to rehearse what she would say to Khan, but her ner
ves were on edge and nothing brilliant actually materialized. She’d said so much that had turned out all wrong already that she wasn’t certain anything she could come up with would make any difference at all.
She kept thinking about what Rikard had said, though. When it finally dawned on her what he’d meant, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked around the room, trying to think how much time had passed. It didn’t help. She couldn’t think, couldn’t begin to calculate the time that had elapsed since she’d spoken with Rikard.
Pushing that aside, she rushed to the locker where she’d stowed the clothing Eugenia had brought with her as gifts to all her ‘sisters’. As thrilled as she’d been with the presents and Eugenia’s thoughtfulness, she hadn’t worn any of it. The dresses were beautiful, but hardly the sort of thing to wear in a lab. The leather tunic Khan had given her was far more suitable.
She’d already decided on a dress when it occurred to her that it wasn’t exactly seductive--beautiful, but not alluring. Besides that, it would take too long to get out of the damned thing.
That was what Rikard had hinted at, she knew. The only thing she could do now to convince Khan that she was in deadly earnest was to prove to him that she considered him far more than merely a friend and companion, dear or otherwise.
Naked seemed a little too blunt. Khan might not object, but he might also think that she was taunting him and bolt.
Grabbing a sheer wisp of a nightgown, Dionne charged into the bathroom and bathed frantically, leapt from the dryer while she was still sticky and fought with the nightgown until she’d managed to settle it. The mirror was fogged up. Deciding not to wait to see what she looked like, in case she lost her nerve, she dashed into the main living area and began pacing again, trying to calm her frayed nerves, trying to decide how she should approach her seduction of Khan.
Chapter Twenty
Twilight's End Page 16
