by Mike Arsuaga
“So, Uncle Ed,” Cynthia asked, “When are we all leaving for Mars?”
Ed rolled his eyes while twisting his mouth, whimsically pretending to do calculations in his head. “Not for at least a week.” Ed had changed so much since first meeting the three-foot image of him in the room with the great round bed.
“Is there room for all of us?” Cynthia asked.
“When the three colonies are completed, there’ll be room for anyone who wants to go.”
“What will the total capacity be,” Lorna asked.
“One hundred and forty-four thousand.”
“So many?” Cynthia questioned. “Wow. There are only a couple of thousand of us.”
Ed did his little impression of calculating with the rolling eyes accompanied by twisted mouth again. “Three thousand sixty of The Others and eighteen hundred hybrids live on earth at the last count. Nineteen hundred of The Others, six hundred hybrids, and seventy humans are on Mars. I get weekly counts.”
“Poppy, why so few humans?”
“In space, humans suffer from bone loss and cosmic radiation. The hazards are insignificant on passages to and from the Moonbase, but going to Mars is different. In the days before Pulse Engines and Solar Sails, the trip took six months. Neither humans nor hybrids could take the trip. Leading a crew composed of The Others, Aunt Claire’s son Charles completed the first successful trip. With improvements in propulsion, the travel time decreased, making the voyage practical for hybrids. Humans are still another matter.”
“How are there any humans on Mars?” Lorna asked.
“Not without sacrifice. In the early days, humans who made the voyage arrived in bad shape. Cosmic radiation reduced their lifespan by an average of twenty years. Bone loss turned many into semi-invalids, even in the reduced gravity. Cancers killed most, but before they died, a few had children. Their descendants live in the colonies today.”
The large monitor above the refreshment stand flashed a promotion for the newest television series, Gang Country.
Lorna frowned when a knot of teen hybrids cheered the fierce gang leader with tattooed scalp on a shaved head while he gunned down a rival in a show of gore reminiscent of the old blooder kills. “Just what we need. Another program to glorify dirtballs.”
“I read somewhere the network’s putting it against Gangs of America on the Government News Network,” Cynthia said.
“That damned GNN. I can’t count how many good officers were hurt or killed by some little doped-up kid who fancied himself to be one of Simon’s gang leaders,” Lorna said bitterly. Simon George produced and narrated Gangs of America.
“Well,” Cynthia said. “At least the Man-boy love fad seems to be fading.”
“About time, after twelve years. Don’t get me started on them.” Lorna said.
“Hopefully, we’ll leave all this behind when we move to Mars.” Ed’s phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, he raised a single finger to excuse himself to take the call. Meanwhile, a documentary about The Dissolution began. The screen filled with vivid, colored images of hardy National Guard soldiers setting fire to Washington, D.C.
The image of an unfurled region flag profiled against the burning skyline seemed to snare Cynthia’s attention. “Aunt Cassie had a role in that. She was career military, you know.”
When a large smile swept over Ed, Lorna’s face jerked upward with anticipation.
Thanking the caller, he hung up. Turning to the three women, he said, “We have a cure.”
“Really?” Lorna squealed. They collapsed into each other’s arms. Several heads at nearby tables turned her way.
“Yes,” Ed explained. “They gave ten volunteers the vaccine, isolating them from pregnant females. All were cured within twenty-four hours. We can inoculate everyone by the end of next week.”
“I have to tell my mom,” Cynthia exclaimed.
“I’ll come with you,” Valeria said. They walked toward the apartment wing, arms entwined at the elbows in the fashionable South American style of proper upper-class women. The disappointment among the young men at their departure was almost palpable.
Ed’s stare followed them, the statuesque paper-white female with long strides beside the tan, finger-thin blonde who moved with a dainty mincing walk. Yet, paradoxically, Valeria kept pace. His eyes didn’t leave them until the entry door closed behind Valeria’s slender, tanned butt, packed into a white thong bikini.
Realizing he’d been caught, Ed diverted his stare. Not fooled, Lorna shook her head with mirthful reproach. “Males are pigs.”
“Well I—uh—I don’t know what to say,” he stammered.
“Say nothing,” she said, placing a finger over his lips. “We’ve been saved. The prophecy was fulfilled. Little else matters.”
Ed held the hand with the finger crossing his lips. His face grew serious when he replied, “Yes, but the second, more difficult one, lies ahead.”
* * * *
With the quarantine lifted, Lorna returned to work at OPD, staying long enough to resign. Ed offered her a position as Deputy Head of Security, a job that paid more in a month than she made in two years with the police department.
“Think of your lost retirement benefits,” Watch Commander Bell said at her going-away party, in a last attempt to keep her.
“I did, sir, which is one of the reasons why I’m leaving.” To smooth over her directness, she added a short dissertation of gratitude for all the wonderful opportunities the OPD had provided over the previous twenty years.
He accepted what both knew had been no more than an exchange of polite lies. “If you need anything from us, don’t hesitate to ask.” Unspoken was a request that she pay her old workplace the same courtesy. After the recent budget cuts, corporation resources outstripped those of the city, maybe the region.
“I won’t,” she said, “If we can be of any help, just ask.”
They hung a farewell banner across the squad room. Someone had recycled most of the letters off the one from the New Year’s Eve party. The lettering on the cake read, “Farewell, Lieutenant Winters. May All Your Arrests result in Conviction.” At the end of her last shift, she walked to the checkpoint, escorted by a uniformed officer, because she no longer possessed a slide card to exit. Around her neck, she wore the Civilian Service Medal the department had awarded her. The gold plating demonstrated a high degree of regard, considering the metal exceeded thirty thousand dollars an ounce.
Lorna didn’t give up the early-morning wake-ups easily. Usually, she awoke before dawn, lying in the darkness pressed against Ed, listening to his sleeping life signs while daylight broke over the façade of the opposite wing. The night turned to blue or gray sky, depending on the weather, and the silhouette of the structure across the way emerged like a black cut-out against the lightning backdrop. On days when he fed, she detached from the embrasure of his arms to prepare breakfast.
This particular morning, Lorna awoke to see light from the study where Ed worked. Throwing on a robe, she joined him. From behind, she ran fingers through his luxuriant red locks. Exhaling contentedly, he tilted back, showing a triangle of chin above the desktop. She couldn’t see, but she knew he smiled. “The corporation bought the excavation at Oom,” he said quietly.
“Have they found the steles?”
“No, not yet.”
“Should we go?”
“We?”
“I have the link with First Mother. Didn’t she choose me to decipher and understand them?”
“But what about the babies?”
“Pregnant lycans are tough. A plane flight won’t hurt.”
Ed patted her belly. A week before he felt the babies’ first movements, faint whispers of motion on the flanks of her baby bump. “Grandmother Sam always said never argue with a pregnant lycan. And she should know.” He chuckled. “I’ll book the flight.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
From Madrid, they took the train to Pamplona. Not the sleek, powerful express they’d hoped for, but a loc
al that stopped at every town and village on the Madrid-to-Bilbao route. It was, however, the only train to accept attachment of the corporation car.
The slow pace frustrated Ed. Bad enough a Spanish national air traffic controller’s strike cancelled both local commercial and private flights, but to be stuck onto the back end of a temperamental train subject to all of the delays of a low-priority local must’ve maddened a man not used to the experience of anything less than travelling at maximum dispatch. For the first day, he stomped back and forth in their coach, as if the physical act of his restless movement could speed their progress.
“We’ll be fine,” Lorna pointed out in soothing tones. “We have all the comforts of home. Besides, the ride will be lovely. Try to enjoy it.”
At first, he answered with a grumble, but a day later, she slipped in behind him while he took cell phone pictures of a village on the face of a distant mountain. The tiny, ivory-colored buildings seemed carved from the dark granite.
“Oh,” he exclaimed guiltily, like a child caught in a minor infraction. Sheepishly, he explained, “I thought those back home would like some pictures.” He took a moment to appreciate her outfit—a brief pair of tight, denim shorts, accompanied by a halter top.
Lorna shook her head in an amicable reproof. “If you learn nothing else from me, remember to let yourself enjoy life’s small pleasures.”
Arching a mischievous eyebrow, he returned the smile. Glancing in the direction of their bedroom at the rear of the car, he filled her wish. “We can enjoy a lot better from in there.” Taking her arm, he walked with her to the room, closing the door.
The accommodations were small—the width of a standard railroad passenger car. An abbreviated double bed occupied the curved back wall. The upper half was an observation window wrapped in a semicircle. The train rattled along a straight run of track. Two lines of tattered silver rail raced from the back of the car to converge at the horizon. The pace of the click-clack of wheels on rails told them the train had attained cruising speed, which lasted thirty minutes or less between stops.
“Draw the curtains,” Lorna said, brushing against the front of him. Shedding the shorts and halter, she slipped under the covers, but not before he alerted on her scent. “The sway of the car makes me horny,” she admitted.
He answered by pressing his mouth on hers.
They dozed until there was a soft knock on the door. “It’s Thomas, Ed,” the voice on the other side said. “There’s been news about Bobby.”
Ed hopped out of bed, dressing in a flash. By the time Lorna caught up, the two men sat at a window table in the next compartment. “He was positively identified at an X-10 gathering outside of Mobile,” the prim, elder hybrid said. “By the time the State Police arrived, he’d left, probably headed for one of their compounds in the northern part of the state.”
“Are the authorities pursuing?”
“I don’t think so. He could be at any of a dozen locations in Alabama alone.”
Ed dropped his head in despair. “If I could speak to him.”
Thomas placed a smaller, wrinkled, liver-spotted hand on top of Ed’s. “Dear brother, I understand he holds a special place in your heart, but he’s done a great evil to you, personally, not to mention the rest of us. Additionally, he murdered a human female. He must pay for this.”
Ed’s sullen stare dropped to the table top. “I understand. I want to talk to him. I think I can convince him to give himself up. He needs therapy as much as punishment.”
Thomas drew back in anger. “If anyone else were the subject—your other sons, Karla, me, anyone else—you would not be saying this.”
Lorna and Thomas jumped back when Ed slammed his fist on the table. “Enough! Bobby is our family.”
The little fellow didn’t back down. His pale-blue eyes locked on his much larger brother. “He most certainly is not. He gave his birthright away when he murdered almost a hundred-and-fifty of us. He’s an anathema. You’ve been a wonderful Chairman, perhaps the best ever, but any attempt to mitigate or interfere with the consequences of his actions will reflect on your competency to lead the corporation.”
Ed reared back to say something both emotional and devastating, but checked himself. “Lorna,” he asked, “What do you think?”
The train crossed a trestle spanning a wide lake. The afternoon sun riffled across the water’s surface, making the dark, green forest lining the far shore stand out. She chose words the way she’d choose steps when walking through a minefield, “I think to speak with him for the purpose of encouraging surrender, assuming you get the opportunity, is okay, but Thomas is right. If you interfere or take extraordinary steps beyond what you’d do for any of The Others, relative or not, it will most certainly end badly for all of us.”
“Brother,” Thomas said. “The challenges are not over for our kind. We need your leadership and wisdom more than ever. If nothing else, think of the greater good.”
Ed had calmed down. “As always and forever.” The Chairman sighed with resignation, walking back to the bedroom.
Lorna started to follow, but Thomas restrained her. “No. He must be alone. He’ll think the problem through and do what’s best.”
* * * *
They’d been at the Oom dig for over two weeks. Whatever Ed had decided to do about Bobby, he kept to himself. Finding and interpreting the steles returned to top priority.
Every night, Ed participated alongside Lorna in a ceremony where they sat in the light of a kerosene lamp, waiting for the twins to start their routine. At first, the happy couple anticipated the ritual with excitement, but with time, movement became more frequent, and intense. The experience wore on Lorna, while thrilling Ed every time. For his sake, she bore the inconvenience with good spirits.
Also, every night, Lorna went to bed expecting Cithara to visit her dreams, but there was no contact. The excavation team continued their meticulous work. The site lay a few dozen yards off a paved secondary road. For centuries, an olive grove had covered the location, but when the owner discovered a sealed jar containing scrolls from the second century of the Christian era, an American museum bought the land, and launched the dig. They removed most of the olive trees, crisscrossing the property with a precise grid of tight yarn. The brown soil, cut vertically and horizontally into stepped terraces as if by a great carving knife, allowed the team to sift through the layers of time. After almost two years, they uncovered Cithara’s meditation room.
The day they arrived, Lorna toured the space. The wall images were faded, but she recognized them. An irregular band of thick soot from centuries of temple fires covered the top half of the walls. After almost two millennia, the room smelled the same.
“This is the place,” she announced, feeling the priestess’s spirit close at hand.
“We found no steles,” the director of the dig said. “We combed the room for hidden compartments, even used ground penetrating radar. All we have are fragments of tablets scattered around the temple. We believe they’re pieces of a crude calendar. There’s nothing special about them.”
“We’ll find the answers,” Lorna said on that day.
* * * *
A week later, they were still looking.
“We’re so close,” Lorna told Ed, despair creeping into her voice. “I can’t believe Cithara would desert us.”
“The answer must be something else. Perhaps she’s not ready, or the time’s not right,” Ed answered.
“I hope so…”
Cithara knelt before a newer version of the altar at Oom. The wall drawings showed clear, bright colors, the smoke stains ringing the walls a light gray. “You have come,” Lorna stated, “And not a moment too soon.”
Observing the priestess, Lorna gazed upon an older version of Cithara than she’d seen before. Her hair had streaks of gray. Knots at the joints of her fingers announced the arthritis peculiar to vampires in old age. Cithara stumbled when she tried to get up. Lorna rushed to her aid, but, of course, couldn’t touc
h her.
In reflex, Cithara waved away the impossible offer of assistance. “I am all right.” She rose up on bent, trembling legs. “The novices feed me as much as they can spare from their own blood, but the quantity no longer suffices. Soon, I will join my Aliff.”
“Nonsense. You will have many more good decades.”
A distant, meditative glimmer came to Cithara’s eyes. “You are kind, but I know the truth. I have lived almost three centuries. Everything must die, to be reborn, thus to continue the cycle.”
“If we cannot determine the second threat, there’ll be no more cycle,” Lorna said. “We’re here to find the steles. Do you know where they are?”
“You will know them when you see them. To you alone will they speak just like the room with the round bed did.”
“You were there?”
“I’m with you always.”
Ed snorted and rolled away, waking Lorna and breaking the bond with Cithara. The twins conducted the nightly rampage in her belly. Realizing a return to sleep was out, she walked to the entrance of their tent, pulled back the flap, and surveyed the sleeping camp. A gentle breeze wafted between the rows of dark tents. Somewhere, a horse neighed fitfully, probably catching a wolf’s scent. There were a good number of packs in these parts, but the men on guard wouldn’t let any near. Under the bright moon, a worker stumbled from his tent to the latrine at the other edge of the camp. Lorna continued to compare what Cithara said in the dream with the accomplishments of the dig thus far.
The calendar fragments!
“Quick, get up,” Lorna said, pushing against the inertia of Ed’s sleep-saturated form.
“What?” His grumpy grunt announced an unwillingness to move. “What’s going on?”
“The answer has something to do with the calendar fragments.”
