by Dan Glover
"When I became sick, I told the doctors how I didn’t have time to fight the disease that had me in its grasp. I thought I had to keep working. It was only later when I became so sick I was nearly dead that I realized I did not have to work so hard... in fact, I didn’t need to work at all.
"In this new world we are building we must take care that we do not place importance upon material things. We all have time to discover what it is we are meant to do. If we have the need for something, it is there for the taking. There is no need for fighting one another over precious things.
"If we do not guard against these feelings, however, there will come a time as our numbers increase that some will become greedy. They will seek to take more than they need leaving others without enough. This is the beginning of hate. If we allow this to happen, war will arise once again."
Now, Nate was a man proud and strong. Even though Lily had forsaken him for another, he did not complain. Rather, he spent his time working for the betterment of others: repairing power stations and cell phone towers, refurbishing jet planes, and locating old stores of fuel.
"I am thinking of moving away, mother."
Though she expected it, Nate's news sent waves of loneliness cascading through her being. They had shared Orchardton Hall for hundreds of years. Still, she knew that one day her son would leave its walls to strike out on his own.
"Where will you go, my darling Nate?"
"We are considering going to old France. Kirk has asked me to accompany him and his family. I'll miss you though. Perhaps you'll come and visit us."
"Who is 'we'?"
Nate blushed.
"I'm seeing Ginger now."
"Tell me sweet Nate... what has become of lovely Lily?"
"She is away all the time. I suspect she's keeping time with Kāne in Edinburgh Castle."
It broke her heart to see the hurt on her son's face yet the news did nothing to diminish the love she felt for Lily.
Chapter 7—Toulon
He never thought Nate would go to old France with him.
Their friendship had become strained after returning from old America. The three scientists who came home with them were on a whole other level when it came to intelligence. Kirk knew he could never match them.
"We're going to the airport in Aberdeen. Come with us, Kirk."
Though he wanted to accompany Nate and the scientists, Delilah was expecting again. Their first daughter, Little Molly, was barely out of diapers and his wife needed all the help he could provide.
"Why are you going to the airport, Mr. Nate? I thought we gave up on the idea of flying to Lake Baikal."
"I did give up on flying, Kirk. Ronald is a pilot, however. He trained on a jet fighter while he was in the Air Force. He agreed to teach us how to fly as well, if you're interested in learning, that is.
"We're hoping to find fuel tanks that are still sound. Most of the above ground tanks are rusting out, allowing water to infiltrate. Pete says it is too dangerous to fly using fuel with water mixed in it. The engine on the plane may stall out while we're in the air."
"Why not just stay on the ground, Mr. Nate? Isn't that safer than flying?"
"The bridges will eventually collapse. Even now we have to take detours around several overpasses that have caved in. The roads will become unfit to travel upon in another couple hundred years. Unless we find an alternative means of travel we will be forced to stay in Siberia year around."
"Do you ever think about moving away from Orchardton Hall like Alpin and Ena did, Mr. Nate?"
"Years ago, that's all I could think about, Kirk. I believed there might be other people left alive in the world. I yearned to travel. I wanted to see all the old cities: now, not so much. The weather here has never suited me, though. Why do you ask?"
"I get tired of the weather here too, Mr. Nate. It's always raining. When we go to Lake Baikal we travel through old France and it's sunny and warm. I thought it might be nice to live in a place like that someday."
"You're right about the weather here, Kirk; it is wet and damp most of the time. What part of old France do you like?"
"Remember the time we took the route along the southern coast of old France? We stopped for the night in Toulon. After we ate I went out walking with Delilah. We came across the ruins of a castle surrounded by a tiny village called Ollioules. We fell in love with the area. That's where I'd live if I could."
"Why don’t we take a trip there one of these days? It's only a few hours by water."
"Do you mean it, Mr. Nate? Can we wait until Delilah gives birth?"
"Of course I mean it. I've wanted to get back on the ocean anyway. I miss sailing. Let's make it a point to go just as soon as your new baby is old enough to travel."
"Can we bring Chester along?"
Though Delilah had reservations the big cat became a member of Kirk's family. Since Chester could not fit through the doorway to their old apartment, Kirk took the time to renovate an old barn on the estate where they made their home. The enormous tiger slept on the ground floor while Kirk and his family stayed in the loft.
"Chester is always welcome, Kirk. But tell me... if you move to Toulon, won't you get sick?"
"I rather hoped you might come along with us, Mr. Nate. Otherwise we won't go, of course. I would never put my family in harm's way."
"I'm genuinely touched, Kirk... thank you. Let me consider it. Lily is gone all the time now. Maybe I'll find me another woman and come along with you to southern France. I'd like to sit in the sunshine for a change."
"Delilah tells me that Ginger is asking about you, Mr. Nate. Maybe you should pay her a visit. She just might be the kind of girl who can make a man happy."
Kirk blushed at the thought of telling his friend Nate about Ginger, the girl he nearly killed by shoving her down the stairs into the dungeon deep beneath Orchardton Hall. He never forgave himself. Though he rationalized the whole ordeal away as being the fault of Marilyn and her influence over him, he knew he was an adult and fully capable of making his own decisions.
Ginger never even looked at him when she visited Delilah and Molly. He made it a point to leave the apartment when she showed up, not out of deference to her but rather out of the intense feeling of guilt that he harbored for years.
Though they've been friends for what seemed like forever, Kirk still couldn't help but think that Nate only hung around because he felt sorry for him. He noted how much more time Nate spent with the scientists after their arrival. Before the trip to old America he would spend nearly every night with Nate sitting around a campfire on the beach.
They rarely spoke about the Lady at all. Kirk didn’t know how to approach Nate where Lily was concerned. She was his wife, after all, and even though he'd heard the rumors of infidelity like everyone else, he didn’t want to repeat them.
He owed both Lily and Nate his life. It was their votes which kept him from being exiled after Marilyn's coup attempt failed. He aided her... but what he did was done out of love and not from any sense of malice towards the Ladies.
He hoped Nate understood that even if Lily did not. Marilyn was the first person to ever grant him time enough to love. He knew her ideas were based upon an outmoded book that she carried around like a talisman yet when he saw the love shining in her eyes as she gazed at him none of that mattered.
Whatever she wanted, he would grant if at all possible. Kirk knew he wasn’t smart enough or articulate enough to keep up with Marilyn but that didn’t seem to concern her like it did everyone else at Orchardton Hall.
His first memory was his father telling him what a worthless piece of shit he was and he had no doubt the old man was right. He had been a stick-thin kid with bad eyes and a perpetual squint that would have labeled him a nerd if he had more sense. As it was, he knew that everyone in Kurgan considered him the village idiot and he had no reason to dispute their opinions.
By the time he took up with Marilyn, he had outgrown his thinness and somehow his eyes had miraculously heal
ed themselves so that he no longer had to squint to see properly. Still, he had never learned the basics of personal hygiene so he sometimes stank to high heaven and other times resembled a grizzly bear just awakened from its hibernation, wild and wooly.
With Marilyn, none of that mattered. What troubled her most was his propensity toward atheism. She seemed to haven taken it as a personal mission to convert Kirk to Christianity even though he had long ago ceased to believe in any god that could allow something like him to be born.
He supposed that he had loved Marilyn in a schoolboy sort of way, or perhaps like a puppy might love its master for not kicking it. Rather than outright denying his belief in her bible and god, he placated her by mouthing the words she expected... it wasn’t the best of solutions but it seemed to pacify her, or so he had thought.
Her death had not bothered him as much as the realization that he would never be king. Looking back on the whole affair, he realized that Marilyn had expertly played against his low self esteem issues in order to further her own position among the People... with the Ladies either dead or imprisoned she could wear the mantle of leader and instill within her followers a belief in god every bit as fervent as her own.
What he remembered the most about Marilyn was her habit of turning her back to him while they were making love as if she couldn’t stand to see his face. He recalled lying in bed with her one particularly rainy afternoon and wanting sex but knowing he would have to suffer through one of her sermons first.
Kirk had never enjoyed the weather in old Scotland. The days were too full of rain to suit him and the winters too long. The sunshine of old France appealed to him and though he had given up drinking decades ago he still harbored a dream of growing grapes and making them into wine.
He had never been much of a reader. Marilyn attempted to teach him by reading the bible aloud but the words rang wrong in his ears and his attention wandered so much that he couldn’t seem to concentrate on the letters strung together like hieroglyphics, indecipherable and foreign.
In the old library of Kurgan he had found books full of pictures depicting the vineyards of some country that he later learned was old France. He had no use for the words printed beneath the photographs but he became enamored of the idea of planting vines and watching them grow, of harvesting grapes and of bottling the wine he made from them.
"Do you know anything about growing grapes and making wine, Mr. Nate?"
"Not a thing, Kirk... but it sounds intriguing. If we're going to live forever, we should find an outlet for our endeavors. That sounds like a great plan. When do we start?"
Kirk wondered of he should pinch himself, just to make sure he was actually awake.
Chapter 8—Sickness
Lauren was content.
Though Lily left Orchardton Hall ages ago to renew her love affair with Kāne, the time she spent with Natalia made up for the ache in her heart caused by the loss of her sister. She understood the compulsion that drove Lily away even if she did not condone it.
Lauren never loved any man other than her son. While living under the Lake she eschewed the males of her species. Still, she was made to feel it was her duty to bear a child. Her mother picked out a suitor for her, one who came from old stock, the kind all the Ladies of the Lake admired.
They mated one time.
He was a haughty man, one who believed all the Ladies were lined up awaiting his services. Perhaps they were. Rumors came to her of the liaisons he had but Lauren didn’t care. She was only happy that he left her alone.
When Bilbla was born, a whole new chapter of her life opened up. She had heretofore never known what it was like to be needed by another sentient being. Watching him grow into the man he would become filled her with hope for the future when prior to his birth only despondency filled her days.
When she lost him, her world went black.
When he returned as the man named Kāne she knew he was the same person and yet Bilbla no longer existed. He had died that day when Lily came to her bearing a tale of him being dragged into the depths of the Lake. She hated Lily for a long time afterwards though she feigned love.
When she thought Lily was dead, it did not trouble her. In fact, it gladdened her. She left Lake Baikal, seduced a rich man, and lived a life of luxury never before afforded her. The day she returned to the Lake and saw a woman, one who reminded her of Lily, Lauren told herself it could not be her. She didn’t want it to be Lily.
Meeting Natalia that first time took her breath away, however.
Before she realized it, she had invited both Lily and Natalia to return to Orchardton Hall with her. Though she would have gladly left Lily behind, she knew the two girls were enamored with each other and where one went the other would be sure to follow. Having never trusted any member of her own species she suspected Lily would once again stray and the years proved her right.
She never wanted Bilbla and Lily to become a couple. She knew they were incompatible from the beginning yet she held her tongue and allowed their relationship to progress into something more than infatuation.
She blamed herself more than Lily the day Bilbla died.
She should have stepped in. She knew the love they felt for each other would come to no good end but she allowed it to flower anyway. There was no telling the discoveries Bilbla might have made if he'd been left alone to his own devices. Instead, Lily sought to seduce him into a love that could never be.
Lauren never knew what a thin line there was between love and hate until her sister taught her that lesson. They'd been lovers for ages. She felt bereft when Lily began spending time with her son Bilbla of all people. It was as if she purposely picked the one male whom Lauren would have forbid her to be with and made him her own.
When she discovered Lily and Natalia staying at the little stone cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal, Lauren felt an intense wish to throttle the life out of her long lost sister. It was all she could do to quench that desire while simultaneously falling madly in love with Natalia.
Now, they were finally alone together.
The years hadn’t quieted those feelings of both hate and love. In fact, they raged ever fiercely in her twin hearts, as if making war upon each other. When Lily decided to leave Orchardton Hall to renew her acquaintance with Kāne, Lauren did not discourage her... in fact, quite the opposite.
Though she knew Nate would be temporarily distraught, she also knew he would rebound and find a truer sort of love with the women of the People, those who appreciated him for who and what he was rather than using him for her own advantage as Lily had always done.
This hate for Lily had been her secret cross to bear for centuries. When Kāne appeared, a wraith of Bilbla and nothing more, she knew that he saw more than he let on so far as her feelings went. Yet perhaps out of the love he still felt, he said nothing. Then again, perhaps his leaving Orchardton Hall was predicated on what he read in Lauren's mind those few times she let her guard down and allowed her son inside her feelings once again.
"We must pay a visit to our darling Lily. I fear she needs us and yet cannot bring herself to come to us on her own. If we do not go to her soon, she may leave us once again and this time she may never return."
Natalia came to her in the garden where she spent most all her days. The sweet girl was worried about their former lover and though Lauren wished nothing more than to keep Natalia for her own, she understood any reticence on her part to visiting Lily would send signals that were better not sent.
"I had no idea she had even returned. When should we pay her a visit, lovely Natalia?"
Lauren wondered when she had become so proficient at lying to those she loved the most. Looking into Natalia's excited eyes, she encountered a rush of guilt flowing over her like a waterfall. Knowing she should stop made no difference to Lauren... she was in too deep to ever give up the love she felt for this woman... a human being of all things.
They were her species only real rival left in the world. Not that it mattered... sh
e and Lily were the only ones left now out of tens of thousands of immortal beings. She often wondered how such a calamity washed over her friends, lovers, and family. The myth of blaming the monkeys who climbed down out of trees and learned to walk upright had been handed down to her from stories told by the elders of her race.
Now, she suspected something more profoundly evil was occurring. It was too easy to rationalize away their plight by abjuring the relationship they shared with those who walked upon the land and breathed the good air.
Though she was against it at first, she had come to see the wisdom of what Lady Lily preached: the union of two species separated by twenty five million years of evolution. Nate was the answer to that ambition. She wondered silently if perhaps that was why Lily had forsaken him for Kāne... for that matter, she had forsaken everyone for him.
Natalia desired to kindle anew the flame of love that once grew hot and bright with Lily. Though Lauren could think of no reason why such a desire should not come to fruition, she still could not shake the feelings of mistrust and betrayal that continued to flourish in her hearts. Each time she thought of Lily, she felt nauseous and faintly dizzy, as if she had eaten something rotten thinking it was palatable.
She could think of only one way to alleviate that sickness.
Chapter 9—Crossed Signals
She remembered how she could not stay away.
Though Lily knew Nate would be devastated when he found out—and find out he would—she visited Kāne more often with each passing month. Edinburgh Castle was but an hour's drive away and though she felt guilty at the deception, Nate was too busy with the three scientists from old America to notice.
"We are going to the power plant tomorrow, my darling Lily. Ronald and Freddi are certain we can restore power with minimal effort. You are welcome to come along."
"Thank you, my lovely Nate, but I plan on traveling to the Isle of Skye tomorrow with Natalia to visit Ena and Alpin, and of course little Catan. Wouldn’t you rather accompany us than those dreary scientists?"
