Summer's Mermaid (Mermaid series Book 3)

by Dan Glover

  The new hybrid species she had a hand in creating was flourishing. In time, she suspected they would number in the millions. With the invention of anti gravity, the earthbound limits would soon fall by the wayside. The stars were calling.

  Just before the Great Dying, she had read that from the findings of space telescopes, researchers had extrapolated the possibility that billions of planets in the galaxy existing that were similar to Earth. She sensed it would not be long before Nate and the remaining scientists began to send out probes into the distant solar systems scouting for habitable planets.

  "If we're able to perfect the anti-gravity unit, sweet Karen, we will one day visit the stars."

  Pete often talked of the brilliant future awaiting them now that they had both the time and the resources to develop new propulsion devices that would replace the outdated chemical propellants now used in both ground vehicles and in flight.

  He was a dreamer. At the same time, however, he continually worked at bringing his visions to life. She missed their conversations and the drinking until dawn and she longed to feel his arms holding her at night. Often times, she would think she heard his voice in the wind twirling through the trees or perhaps in the rhythm of the ocean waves lapping at the shoreline.

  "I've never been good at mechanical devices, my darling Pete, but if you're able to develop anti-gravity machines, I would fly to the stars with you in a minute. Please don’t leave me at home."

  She secretly dreaded being alone again. Having spent the majority of her life either in non-fulfilling relationships or by herself, Karen had plenty of experience in the fine art of loneliness. Now that Pete was gone, she had no desire to be with anyone else yet at the same time she felt an overriding need to be with someone, anyone, to quench the fires of isolation brewing deep within her psyche.

  "You'll never find a man, Karen. You're too manly."

  Though she'd been dead for three centuries the voice of her mother still reverberated through her mind.

  Chapter 72—Decisions

  The nanobots weren’t dead.

  They had never been alive so of course they couldn’t die. Though he allowed everyone to believe that the destruction of the nest meant the end of his tiny machines, in actuality it only served to isolate them into tiny packets. Their core mission remained: to become better.

  Micah didn’t know if Kirk was dead or not. He assumed a man had to breathe and to have a heartbeat in order to live but perhaps there was still activity inside of his body that couldn’t be detected by the senses. It surprised him the way Kirk's body became a super-magnet when the nexus was destroyed, however. He didn’t expect that.

  In truth, he suspected his creations were busy creating a new control center—a nexus—by which to once again consolidate their forces. It might even happen inside Kirk's brain. If he had let on to that notion, however, he was certain Lady Lily would have never allowed him to come home with her.

  He liked it in old France. This was the first time he had been part of something instead of the controlling influence over everything. Since coming to New York City he had never once sat in the sunshine. His days and nights were spent sequestered inside his laboratory where he not only worked but slept.

  He had regrets, the biggest of which was learning he was responsible for the death of a number of people. Heretofore he prided himself on being able to save the lives of others with his creations. Now, however, his actions had led to the demise of them.

  "Micah... I swear you'll never be worth the powder it would take to blow you to hell."

  His father always had an eloquence unbefitting a blue-collar worker who spent his life constructing the steel shells of skyscrapers in New York City. He drank. And when he did, he not only berated his son but beat his wife to a bloody pulp.

  It was with her in mind that Micah had first conceived the idea of miniature machines that migrated through peoples' bloodstream repairing the cellular damage before it had a chance to cause a cascade effect leading to apoptosis.

  His mother seemed to die a little each time she endured a beating. Micah once had the misguided notion of coming between her and his father that had resulted in several cracked ribs as well as a broken arm. Of course if it hadn’t been the subsequent visit to the hospital, his terminal illness might have never been diagnosed until it was too late.

  Mother told the doctor that he fell down the stairs and when he got out of the hospital she informed him that he'd been accepted to Cornell University. She seemed surprised but then again she and father always thought he was slow.

  "They want you at the university by tomorrow morning, Micah. I've packed your bag. We'll fly through the night."

  He had grown up on the west coast in a small village just north of San Diego. There were no friends to say goodbye to and everything he owned fit into one suitcase. He had never seen mother after the day she dropped him off.

  She didn’t go inside with him. He got the impression she was ashamed of her only child even though he'd been accepted into a premier university at the age of twelve. After taking his bag from the back seat he stood on the sidewalk and watched as mother and the taxi drove away, the little yellow car growing smaller in the distance until it disappeared.

  She wrote him letters though he never answered them. After a while she must have given up for by his fourteenth birthday there was no more contact with mother. He wondered if she still remembered him for as time went on it became more difficult to recall her face. Finally, he couldn’t picture her at all.

  When the plague broke out, he considered getting in touch with mother again, to see if she was still alive. When he tried to call the old phone number of the house where he once lived, a woman he didn’t know answered. She seemed angry, as if she was expecting a call from someone important.

  As he listened to the news accounts coming in, Micah began to realize the extent of the sickness that had heretofore been called a new strain of Asian flu. Video feeds showed short-lived riots breaking out. People were collapsing right on the street laying where they fell.

  Though he believed the nanobots he had injected himself with would offer him immunity to the disease, he couldn’t be sure. Rather than leaving the building, he watched—like a detached observer—as the city died, and then the world.

  He didn’t mourn the loss of either of his parents any more than he lamented the near-extinction of the human race. Now, though he should feel guilt over the deaths that took place in old America, he didn’t. He hadn’t asked anyone to make the journey there. So far as he was concerned, they got what they deserved.

  "It's good to see you out of doors, sweet Micah."

  Karen surprised him by coming down to the beach a few days after Nate left with the Ladies on a return trip to Lake Baikal. Micah didn’t understand the need they felt to revisit eastern Siberia; he had never been enamored with any particular spot. Even the top floor at Cornell University—his home for three hundred years—held no appeal for him.

  He hated those cold and desolate rooms yet at the same time he was afraid to leave the safety they offered. When a British girl arrived one spring day he had opened up to another person for the first time in his short life, and for the last.

  "I've discovered an affinity for the sunshine I never knew before, darling Karen. It is as if I am absorbing the light. The open sky used to frighten me so I hid myself away. I didn’t realize what I was missing until I arrived here."

  "Pete never cared about the sunshine; he fancied cool and cloudy days... that's why we lived in the north of old Scotland. I prefer it here in the south of France but I could never get him to move here."

  "You must miss him."

  She had sat down beside him on the green and white plaid blanket he'd spread on the sand without saying a word. He knew he'd said something wrong but the right words didn’t come. He wasn’t in the habit of interacting with other human beings. Even here at Toulon Castle he kept to himself rather than associate with the strangers always watching
him out of the corners of their eyes.

  Karen was different, however. It wasn’t just her English accent that served to add to her allure in ways Micah had never comprehend... he wouldn’t ever admit it to her or even to himself but he had fallen in love with the girl the first time he saw her.

  She had changed since those long ago days... she was no longer a starry-eyed teenage dreamer who was going to change the world... of course, neither was he. Whatever other influences the Ladies had conferred upon her, Karen's beauty had blossomed. The sharp lines of her face softened; her misshapen body had grown curves where none existed before; her hair... formerly the same tint of faded rat fur... had taken on a sheen that was unmistakably golden in color without artificial highlights.

  That first time they met he wondered what it would be like to press his lips to hers. He hadn’t the nerve to do so, however. Now, he felt the same attraction, the same urge to take her in his arms, to kiss her like the man he was and not like the child he used to be.

  She already had a man but he was doubtlessly dead. Still, Micah had no idea how to compete with his memory. Reminding Karen of him was not the proper way to go about it and he knew it. On the other hand, saying something—anything—was preferable to the silence that ensued as soon as she sat beside him.

  "I loved him more each day."

  Though it was hardly a whisper her voice startled him out of his reverie. He had no answer. He had worshiped Karen from afar for centuries and now that she was right in front of him—a living woman, flesh and bone—he sat dumbfounded.

  To Micah, love was something eternal. Either he loved someone or he didn’t. There was no quantity to love; there was no adding to it or subtracting from it. It filled whoever had the great fortune to feel it and those who didn’t were left bereft and feeling forlorn.

  He felt a space opening between this gentle woman who knew love and the man-child he had become... a person that longed for adoration but the quest of which would be forever denied him.

  His nanobots demanded nothing from him while this woman would surely swallow him whole.

  Chapter 73—The Go-Between

  Natalia sensed a discord growing between her lovers.

  Watching them twirl and cavort a hundred and fifty meters beneath the turquoise surface, it was nothing she could put a finger on yet there was a kind of enmity radiating in waves off both their bodies.

  "I've missed you, Lady Lily."

  Lauren had spoken so formally at their first meeting since Lily returned from her abduction to old America that Natalia thought she might be addressing a stranger. Obviously some sort of friction was still riling her lover.

  "This is our darling Lily, my precious Lauren... why are you speaking to her in such a tone?"

  The words had leaped from her mouth before she had time to consider them. She knew Lauren was still recovering from her injuries yet there seemed to be more going on than the healing of hurts.

  "I fear our sweet Lauren is cross with me, my darling Natalia. Please forgive me. I should have explained my plans and purpose more clearly than I did. If I didn’t follow the path that I walked then our history would have ended with the three of us clinging to a ball of burnt rock circling around a dead sun.

  "Now our species has an opportunity to survive and even thrive in ways that were impossible three centuries ago. I know I caused you both a lot of hurt and pain and for that I am sorry. I could rationalize it by saying it was necessary but I would have been better served talking to you both and explaining myself more fully."

  The trip to the Lake took but minutes. Nate's new anti-gravity machine sped across the land at what seemed light speed although he assured them the craft was capable of even faster travel.

  "I'm not entirely sure, my sweet mother, but according to our calculations we should be able to exceed the speed of light in a vacuum. That means traveling between the planets and even the stars can be accomplished."

  Natalia had once worked in the aerospace industry procuring parts and materials for the manufacture of rockets and the capsules in which cosmonauts were hurtled into orbit. She knew a bit about theories of propulsion and wondered about the nullification of Isaac Newton's third law of action and reaction as well as the claim of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity concerning the impossibility of faster than light travel.

  "If such a thing is possible, darling Nate, wouldn’t reaching the speed of light require more energy than the entire universe can muster?"

  "Ah... you've been holding out on me, sweet mother. You are as well-versed in physics as you are in battle."

  Lauren had told everyone of Natalia's exploits at the old stone barn in the north of France when she came to her rescue by hewing down literally hundreds of the deranged chimpanzees with but a scythe.

  "In truth, you are right, darling mother. According to the laws of physics it is impossible to attain the speed of light. But those rules only operate in this universe. Our anti-gravity machine operates by creating a warp bubble around the craft effectively phasing into an alternate universe where a simple impulse will propel us past this universe at any speed desired including faster than light capability."

  "Is that why we do not feel the force of acceleration and deceleration, darling Nate?"

  "That is exactly why, sweet mother. Inside the warp bubble we are no longer subject to the forces of gravity that guide our universe."

  "How did you discover such a miraculous machine, my lovely Nate?"

  Lily and Nate had become great friends once again. Natalia was fairly certain they might once again resume their matrimonial bonds, possibly even including Ginger and Amanda in their family.

  "That was the problem that vexed us for over a century, sweet Lily. Pete was certain once the warp bubble was established we'd be able to influence it from inside. That proved impossible, however.

  "It was Ena who came up with the answer. I have to admit we didn’t take her seriously at first. She sensed that. So when we had gone to bed one night, she entered our workshop, made the adjustments she insisted upon, and left before morning to fly to old America.

  "She made the same alterations on our prototype too. At first I didn’t understand why but then I realized she didn’t have the time to build two full size machines. So she made sure we knew how to get it right so we could fly to old America too. She was worried about you, my sweet Lily. She's quite a lady."

  "Our Ena lives in the future much as her Father lives in the moment and we live in the past. It is almost as if she is living her life backwards. You all saved my life, my darling Nate. I was feeling alone and unwanted. I know a lot of that was my own fault for the way I acted. I shouldn’t have gone off like I did but I didn’t know how to tell anyone what I was feeling. It was easier just to run away. I' m sorry, everyone."

  Natalia had taken Lily's words to heart but apparently they didn’t convince Lady Lauren. She had seemed cold even before they left for the Lake. She had to be convinced to come along even though Natalia knew she needed to renew her body in the Lake's healing waters.

  Now, watching the dance while treading water a hundred and fifty meters above them, Natalia couldn’t help but notice how far apart the Ladies stayed from each other. In years past they twirled so close that their bodies seemed as one. Now, they were a good meter apart.

  "It's going to take some time to undo the hurt that our darling Lily caused to sweet Lauren."

  Natalia started. She hadn’t noticed Nate surface just five meters away. He too had been enjoying the crystal blue waters of the Lake for the first time in a decade. Heretofore they had always made the journey at seven year intervals. She wasn’t sure why that pattern had been interrupted but Natalia suspected it had something to do with the nanobots infiltrating old Scotland, perhaps to pave the way for an all-out attack.

  "She did what she had to do, darling Nate. I am sure Lady Lily never meant to harm anyone. She once told me if she had stayed with you, our species would both go extinct. That must have weigh
ed heavily upon her. I know she loves you still."

  "I'm sure you're right, my precious mother. But whatever I felt for her is over now. I've moved on. Perhaps Lauren feels the same. Can you blame her?"

  "I just know how Lady Lily saved my life. I can never repay her. If what you and she had is over, so be it. That doesn’t mean you cannot be her friend. I have a feeling she needs a few of those right now."

  "I wouldn’t be here if I thought otherwise, my lovely mother. Do you think Lily might be trying to insinuate herself back into my life again?"

  "But you just said you are over her, my darling son."

  "What I said and how I feel are two different things, my sweet mother."

  Chapter 74—Spite

  Though Nate assured her that he was over his love affair with Lily, it seemed odd how quickly he jumped to her rescue.

  Now, he'd only been home a couple days and he was off with her again, this time on a trip to Lake Baikal. Though she asked to go along, it soon became apparent that because she was a human, she wasn’t welcome.

  "The anti-gravity craft only holds four people, darling Ginger. I'm the pilot. Natalia and Lauren are going too. Lily will take the fourth seat. I'm sorry but there's no more room."

  Ginger knew that to argue was useless.

  The Lake men were treacherous beings to deal with. She had learned that when she fell in love with Kāne. Once she was out of his sight, he forgot all about her. She wondered if Nate would be the same.

  She didn’t expect to be Nate's one and only wife... when Amanda arrived at Toulon Castle it only seemed natural to make her part of their family. She had grown up with Amanda, however. Their friendship made sharing a husband palatable in ways that it might not otherwise be.

  Lily was not a friend. She had always been standoffish with the People. Ginger could not remember even one congenial conversation she had been part of with the Ladies. She felt like a peasant in the presence of royalty every time Lily approached.