Summer's Mermaid (Mermaid series Book 3)

by Dan Glover

  The old city of New York loomed large as Ena manipulated the globe to bring the craft to a stop. Again, there was no sense of being forced forward though the journey ended abruptly.

  "If Alpin and Maon survived, they will return here thinking we are waiting for them. I'm not sure where they will be, however. They've never been to Cornell University so I doubt that will be their destination. Do you have any ideas, darling Micah?"

  "If they walked into the city, they will have come from the west. I'd start at the eastern edge, Ena."

  "That sand we're seeing... is that your nanobots?"

  "Yes... when the nest was destroyed they became inert."

  "They aren’t dead, are they."

  From the tone of her voice he knew it was useless to lie to her. Besides, there was nothing she could do now that they were here. He had the upper hand.

  "They were never alive, Ena... so no, they cannot die. They are nothing more than silicon wafers engineered to respond to electrical impulses sent out by a central nexus. They will wait until another nest is organized and then they will regroup."

  "Are we in danger, Micah?"

  "I can't be sure but as long as they aren’t swarming I would venture to say it is indicative of their being inert as of yet."

  "Where did you leave Kirk's body?"

  "We were forced to leave him in one of the tunnels leading into Cornell. We'll never be able to move his body, Ena. He became welded to the surface."

  "Can't you rewrite the program guiding your nanobots?"

  "I can... but it will do no good without the nexus to upload it into and disseminate the information."

  "That building there, Micah... what is that?"

  "I have no idea."

  She was pointing to a glaringly white skyscraper rising out of an enormous sand dune, tilted at an odd angle as if ready to topple over. The windows looked like dead eyes staring out at the world. The building made him nervous though he didn’t know why.

  "Something about it is calling to me. I'm setting down so we can investigate it."

  When the anti-gravity craft set down it began to sink. After going down under three feet of sand for a moment Micah thought it might be swallowed up completely. With a touch on the globe between her hands, Ena enabled the craft to rise up again. Circling the building she sat the machine down in a space that seemed shallower than anywhere else.

  "Don't try to leave the anti-gravity craft until I power it down, Micah. We are within a singularity. You'll be pulled apart immediately by the competing forces of gravity at the event horizon that exists all around us."

  The simple intricacies of the flying machine boggled his mind. Micah had never been in the presence of anyone like Ena before. He loved Karen on account of her intellect being equal to his. He discovered himself worshipping Ena as a mentality of power not only beyond his but of which the world had never witnessed.

  He was in love.

  Chapter 77—Good and Evil

  The turquoise waters of the Lake wrapped around her in a way she had nearly forgotten.

  She couldn’t recall why they had stopped making their journeys here other than Lauren being angry with her. Lily sensed it had something to do with her liaisons with Kāne though her lover had never been troubled with her taking Nate as a partner.

  Lauren was still holding herself aloof. She wouldn’t come close to her as she once did even as they twirled around each other deep below the surface of Lake Baikal. Lily sensed a sadness emanating from Natalia yet she had no answer how to make it better.

  The Lake water was colder than she remembered and more full of life. Being away so long made their return seem like the first time all over again... after she'd been away so long she thought she might never make it back home again.

  She hadn’t realized the pull of the Lake at that time... the need to submerse herself in its healing waters. She thought she was getting sick. It was an all together strange feeling: she had never been ill in her life, not until she had ventured onto the land surrounding the Lake.

  Lily had married a human male. He took care of her, shielding her from the prying eyes of the villagers who hated the Lake people. They lived on the shores of Lake Baikal and she had no idea of the affect she had upon him or his kind.

  As the years passed the other villagers grew old and died but her husband remained youthful and full of vigor, just as she did. At first, it was said that they were blessed. Later, she started to be called a witch and names much worse.

  They were forced to move from their home and away from the Lake. She could no longer dive beneath its surface. As time passed the turquoise waters was all she dreamed about. She saw it reflected in the sky. She smelled it in the wind.

  "I must make a journey back to my home."

  Her husband merely nodded and grunted as was his wont. She wanted to ask him to accompany her but it was harvest time and they had to have food for winter and she knew he'd refuse.

  When she returned he was dead.

  She stood in the bedroom for hours gazing upon his oh-so-still body wondering what had happened, afraid to guess. He was all she had and though any real love for him had never blossomed in her heart she had become used to his presence as well as his protection.

  She had lied to him. She told herself she did it to make him feel better about the relationship they'd forged out of first fear and then lust. She had never made love to a man before. Beneath the Lake any amorous passions were confined to her own gender.

  Lily wasn’t sure she or her species was capable of love in the human sense of the word. They had no customs like marriage or fidelity. Monogamy was foreign to her. Jealousy was a feeling she didn’t understand. Though Nate had asked her hand in marriage and she assented, it did not mean that she forsook other lovers. He seemed fine with that until Kāne arrived.

  "I don’t know what it is about him, my darling Lily, but I don’t trust him. He seems shifty and unreliable."

  "He is shifty and unreliable, my sweet Nate. All the males of my species are the same. I never trusted any of them."

  "Lady Lauren inferred that you were once intimate with him."

  "That was long before I ever surfaced and learned to breathe the air and live upon the land. Why would that bother you now, my lovely Nate?"

  "Do you still have feelings for him?"

  "My feelings toward Kāne do not matter. He doesn’t remember me. And besides, you are the one who taught me about love, my precious Nate. You have no cause to be wary of my past relationships."

  "I feel like a child next to him."

  "In one sense you are a child next to Kāne. He is far older than you know. Yet all the time he has lived hasn’t served to increase his wisdom. He is a child next to you and your superior intellect in that regard. Never feel inferior to anyone, sweet Nate."

  Her subsequent actions had only served to fan the flames of resentment. She felt as if she had only mouthed the words with no feeling behind them. Letting down Nate wasn’t difficult. She had disappointed everyone in her life at one time or another. She had grown used to failure and wore its mantel well.

  This was the only place in the world where she could let go of all those old frustrations and cleanse her spirit as well as her body. But now, Lauren was sending out vibrations that threatened to put an end to this blue and watery sanctuary.

  They hadn’t been here in nearly a decade. Lily blamed herself. She had gone off with Kāne for a brief while—long enough to estrange both her husband and her lovers—and then when she returned to find hard feelings and bitter words she had left again, alone this time.

  She ignored the call of the Lake until her strength was sapped and her hair began to turn gray. Wrinkles appeared in her flawless skin as age-related illnesses ravaged her body. She did not envy human beings this frailty they carried.

  When the dragons came for her, she was ready to die. She had dreams of immersing herself in the deep sea where the salt water would turn her bones to rock and petrify her skin.
She had called the nanobots, perhaps sensing they were her only salvation. Even though Micah blamed himself for kidnapping her and bringing her to old America once more, it was her choice, not his.

  She regretted the lives lost in the attempt at rescuing her. It was in fact Micah who needed liberating. He had fallen afoul of his own design becoming locked a hell he did not recognize and so could not flee of his own free will.

  That which was meant to destroy her had healed her.

  Micah played the mad scientist part but she knew underneath the bluster and swagger of genius a little boy existed... someone who had never known love or affection. Karen had been cross with her for insisting that he come home to Toulon Castle yet she too seemed happy to see Micah again.

  "Pete died over there, my sweet Lily. I cannot help but blame Micah for his death. But I know it wasn’t really his fault... his intellect was being swayed by those horrid little machines he invented."

  "When I first arrived in old America, I was dying, my darling Karen. If not for Micah and his nanobots, I would have sunk into the sea long ago. When he expressed a desire to come home with me, it was the least I could do. Forgive me, please."

  Lauren was less than happy to see Micah's arrival as well. Her lover had experienced the same terror in old America that she did, the not knowing what had happened to Karen... the anxious moments when Chester had boarded the Nautilus... and the search for the Liberty lost in a storm.

  "You always see the good in others, Lady Lily, and never the evil. You need to learn to understand human nature and their propensity to do violence to everyone and everything around them. If you had allowed me, I would have sent Karen and her friends away that day they showed up at Orchardton Hall seeking asylum. The three of us could have lived there happily without interference from anyone or anything."

  It was an argument Lauren brought up many times. Lily had hesitated in going out there that long ago day and pleading Karen's case but something pulled at her psyche... a premonition, perhaps, or simply a soft heart, as Lauren accused her of having.

  Though Lily did not regret her actions of that day, she had a difficult time explaining why she acted in such a fashion. Her species were at an end and nothing she could do would change that. Even now, she knew her kind would never again grace the planet. Instead, she had helped give rise to a hybrid species, the destiny of which was still unknown.

  "You are right, my darling Lauren... I do see the good in those who do not deserve it. What I did cannot be undone, however. Please do not detest me for it."

  Chapter 78—Double Crosses

  Thoughts of Kirk kept cloying at the back of his mind, and the boy Niall worried him.

  Here at Lake Baikal he should be happy but serenity did not come. Instead, his dreams portended ill omens blowing his way now that he had abandoned his friend in old America.

  "He's dead, Mr. Nate... there's nothing more we can do for him. Something has happened to my nanobots that caused them to shut down. I suspect the nest has been destroyed. All these particles are entangled with the nexus, or the brain of the nanobots. If something occurs to the mind every one of them are rendered inert."

  "His body is like lead, Micah."

  "It's probably a kind of magnetic attraction. That is how the nanobots are programmed to respond in the face of shutdown."

  "Can you help him?"

  "The only way I can do that is to create another nexus. That will take a century or longer. The protoplast of my previous creation has been destroyed. I'll have to start from scratch."

  Nate didn’t want to leave Kirk behind but carrying his body was impossible. Now, instead of going back with a levitation device that might or might not negate the magnetic pull his body developed, he had agreed to bring the Ladies to Lake Baikal. Amanda and Ginger were not happy about his decision but he owed it to the Ladies.

  "They have no other way of reaching the Lake, sweet Amanda. I promised to take them. They need me."

  "Why is it up to you to always save the world, Nate? What about your family here? We need you too. I didn’t like it when you ran off to old America but I put up with it. Now you are back for less than a week and you're off again. Those Ladies have only to snap their fingers and you're at their beckon call."

  He knew Amanda was right but he'd made a promise. Still, that didn’t make leaving Toulon Castle any easier. Ginger cornered him in the kitchen the morning of departure. He'd gotten up early to avoid another fiasco like the last time he left.

  "Amanda told me you're leaving again, my darling Nate. Weren't you even going to say goodbye to me?"

  He hated to see her weep. Her flaming red hair contrasted with her emerald green eyes in ways that made him want to hold her forever and never let go. And here he was, sneaking off like a burglar of love.

  He remembered Ginger as an ugly child who was always attempting to get him to play dolls with her. He'd been born six years after her birthday but he grew more quickly than human children. She annoyed him. He had his Lucy and could see no need to cultivate a relationship with any of the girls, especially Ginger.

  She had reminded him of a troll: her hair was always dirty and greasy and sticking up in all the wrong places. Her eyes were set so close together that many kids called her Cyclops. Her nose was bent as if broken twice and reset badly each time. Her whole head had a misshapen appearance as if she'd slept on it wrongly and left it permanently indented.

  She had a habit of following him although he did his best to ignore her. Little Ginger must have waited for him, knowing he'd be going to the creek that meandered through the fields behind Orchardton Hall where he spent nearly every summer day.

  An image of grabbing one of her dolls and tearing its head off flashed through his mind. He had hurled it into the weeds that grew along the creek bottom where she had sought him out. She had sat down and begun to cry just like now... not a great sobbing bawl but a simple whimper, as if she was ashamed to show her feelings.

  "What do you remember about growing up, my darling Ginger? Was I..."

  "Not much, sweet Nate... I don't remember much at all. You were always swimming with Lucy."

  When she mentioned swimming he knew she recalled his moments of meanness just as he did yet she was too gentle to admit such transgressions against her spirit. It killed him to remember how cruelly he treated her. And now he was doing it all over again.

  "I'm not trying to sneak away, my precious Ginger. I just didn’t want to wake you."

  "You're going to Lake Baikal with Lady Lily."

  It was an accusation that he couldn’t deny. He wanted to explain that it wasn’t just Lily who was going but Ginger knew how he felt about his former lover. He had never gotten over the hurt she caused him by leaving him for Kāne. Even now the memory of betrayal surfaced each time he looked into Lily's face.

  There was no antidote.

  He wanted to explain that to Ginger... that there was some pressing need growing inside of him to know why he had been forsaken by the woman he loved. Was he deficient in some way he didn’t understand? Ginger had been intimate with the man who Lily left him for... perhaps she knew the answer.

  His shame stopped him.

  "Yes, I am taking Lady Lily to Lake Baikal. I'll be gone for a week, no more."

  "Take me with you."

  "I can't take you with me, sweet Ginger. There isn’t enough room."

  "You need to eat something before you go. Sit down and I'll make you breakfast."

  She was so compliant he wanted to scream... to wake her up... to tell her to be angry with him. It'd have been so much easier to leave with anger rather than tears. Now, he was sitting beside the Lake and a campfire watching the sun lower itself behind tree-bespeckled mountains as a cool evening summer breeze blows across the crystal blue waters causing tiny whitecaps which remind him of miniature seahorses cavorting on the surface.

  Luciana walked past him just before he was leaving. From the look on her face he knew she was incensed about his renegin
g on his promise to go back for Kirk's body but she said nothing. That worried him more than if she had berated him. Something was up. Furtive plans were afoot but he had no time to winnow them out. He loved Niall but Luciana's little brother was sneaky... enough so that he would slip off to old America to retrieve Kirk's body himself.

  He put all that out of his mind.

  The three Ladies had adjourned to the cabin. He knew instinctively they needed this time together so he slept in a yurt-like tent he and Pete developed for their sojourns into old Europe and beyond. They used carbon-based steel rods for the inner structure—light yet strong and assembled in seconds—and a Kevlar-like skin that contained thermal qualities well in the excess of R-40 to provide comfort in both hot and cold climates. The entire yurt could be broken down and carried in a backpack making for ease of storage.

  The tent reminded him of Pete. He hadn’t realized Pete, Maon, and Alpin had flown to old America until he returned to Toulon Castle with Lady Lily and Micah in tow. Ena and her Father had returned in the other anti-gravity craft with Kāne critically injured. Karen had been the first to approach him upon landing.

  "Did you see Pete in old America, darling Nate?"

  "No, sweet Karen... I had no idea he was there."

  "He left with Maon to find Alpin, and to help Lady Lily."

  He had wanted to leave for a return trip immediately but Ena volunteered to go in his stead. She had no desire to take the Ladies to Lake Baikal and though he'd rather not, he had promised.

  "I'll join you there, sweet Ena, just as soon as I return from Lake Baikal."

  "If I find them we'll be at Cornell University, Grandfather Nate. I think Alpin died in the crash, however."

  The news of an explosion—a jet crashing into the ground—had rendered any joy he had at rescuing Lily moot. It was either Alpin or Pete... he was sure of it, or perhaps both. And that great grandson of his was gone too... he was certain of it.

  Chapter 7 9—The Healer

  She couldn’t believe they were home again.