Strangely enough, she started humming the old, but still much loved, Star Spangled Banner. He knew she was up to something. Again. He distracted Pardua from his keen observation of the woman. Did the Murrach recognise the tune? “I’m sorry to hear that. I believed I could outwit you, but I was mistaken, like so many other agents before me.”
Pardua laughed, probably flattered by Harley’s words. “When the Gr’iis has taken full effect, no one will know, much less care, that I’ve taken over the universe.”
“What’s the point in ruling drugged people?” The man was definitely conceited.
“That’s the beauty of it. While the people who use the Gr’iis die off, I will be perfecting the means to manipulate genes to make all people more like the Deloricans, who are half human, if you will, and half metal. And they will all do my bidding without question. Soon the universe will be filled with people who owe allegiance only to me since I brought them to life. And can keep them alive.”
Harley felt bile rise in his throat. Pardua would take away the freedom of the people he had slyly introduced to Gr’iis.
He heard the slightest scraping sound coming from beside his right foot, but dared not look down at Odessa. If he did he might distract Pardua, who was absorbed in delusions of his own greatness.
Odessa listened to the rise and fall of Pardua’s voice. He was insane, she concluded, as she slowly slid her fingers towards the helmet. Each fraction of a movement sent excruciating pain along her spine, but she had to test her theory. If she was wrong, she had nothing more to lose. If she was right, Pardua would have made his last great speech.
The tips of her fingers connected with the netting inside the crown of the helmet. She started to pray. Her lips moved soundlessly in a plea for help as she began to focus on the world inside the helmet.
Chapter Eighteen
The crowd’s soaring crescendo swamped Odessa’s senses. She struggled through the oppressive mist as she listened to Pardua’s voice, a dissonance against so many others. If she made herself known above all the other voices, perhaps they could become a collective consciousness through the virtual reality that, unknown to her, had become a part of her on the Drifter.
In some instances, virtual reality became the reality one lived in, much like alternate universes become the reality if a person managed to cross the thread-thin line between two universes. She needed to call for help. The collective consciousness that lived within the helmet would come to her aid if she explained. After all, the universe would be greatly affected if Pardua instituted his plan on a larger scale than he already had. He could easily wipe out whole civilisations and replace them with Gr’iis users.
In her mind, Odessa had to shout to make her voice heard. The cacophony continued unabated for an interminably long time before silence descended. She spoke eloquently, outlining to her listeners exactly what was at stake. Before she knew what was happening, the power of the collective’s anger began to surge through her high-strung nerves. She couldn’t stop the flow of energy barrelling into her.
The sensation built into a stream of living, pain-filled anger and hatred at the injustice. She cried out for the people to stop, but the flow of energy continued unabated. Odessa could bear it no longer. She screamed in agony.
Harley fought back his overriding fear as Pardua delayed the inevitable and talked like the madman he was. When Odessa had pulled the helmet onto her head, Pardua had laughed manically. “See? She prefers virtual reality to the one she lives in. How gratifying to see my plan working with a woman I perceived as a threat.”
The GDA agent didn’t think that was the whole truth, but what if Pardua was right, and Odessa had fled the terrible awareness of her pain by donning the helmet?
Pardua droned on and on about his greatness, oblivious to the fact Harley was no longer listening. In the distance, a noise that reminded Harley of a vast troop of soldiers marching forward reverberated through the corridor. As the sound got louder, he heard what sounded like a million phone lines connecting at the same time.
Pardua forced him to his knees, preparing to shoot him in the head. The end was near. How could a man fight a rushing bullet? Harley waited, figuring he could tackle the large man the same way Odessa had Baylon. He discarded the hasty plan. By the time his head smacked into Pardua’s legs, Harley’s brains would be all over the floor. Then who would help Odessa—if she wasn’t dead already?
The voices rose to a fever pitch.
“I’m going to make sure you never trouble me again,” Pardua said with finality.
Any second now, the Murrach would pull the trigger and Harley was guaranteed his life would end.
The sounds rose higher and higher. Shrieks of indignation, of raging anger.
“What is going on?” Harley heard Pardua question.
His heart raced. An enormous, pearl grey cloud headed straight towards Pardua’s head. Pardua shouted, “Stop at once!” before he crumpled to his knees, his hands clamped over his ears. “Stop! Stop!”
Harley watched Pardua scream as the belligerent cloud moved forward, wrapping itself around Pardua like a spider weaving a web around a black insect. When the maddened spiralling stopped, Pardua was nothing more than a pile of ashes.
His only concern for Odessa, Harley checked her pulse. She was barely alive.
Chapter Nineteen
After Pardua died, Harley had been lauded as a hero, but he refused to accept the accolades. Only Odessa deserved them. She was the one who had brought Pardua’s reign to an end. But she lay in a coma, hovering between life and death.
Hoping with every part of his being that Odessa would recover, and that she might want to set eyes on the trees and mountains she loved so much, he had spent the last three months on a private spaceship, flying her home to Earth. Baylon was dead and Pardua’s empire had crumbled as soon as word got out that he had been killed. The GDA had prevented shipments of Gr’iis from being loaded on ships to other parts of the galaxy, and had confiscated supplies and destroyed the manufacturing centre within the space station.
For the first time in the station’s history, a woman governed the residents and travellers with a firm but considerate hand. With Zorm’s help, Violette had raised a small SWAT team of teenagers and women who’d tackled the station guards even as Pardua breathed his last. None had been injured, but each was satisfied they had finally rid the station of evil.
All of the women on Romaydia had been given the option of returning home. Most had chosen to do so. Others, like Violette, believed their destiny was to create a safe haven where men and women alike could seek refuge from the bone-wearying effects of galactic travel.
Harley blinked back tears, as he so often had in the last few months. Odessa was only a shadow of her former self. She hadn’t moved once since the helmet she had donned had channelled a mysterious energy from her hand to Pardua, in a deadly arc of what had appeared to be shokkgun fire.
Newly arrived in Wenatchee, Harley knelt beside the hospital bed and held her petite hand in his, praying she would rise from the coma and be her vibrant self again. His misery knew no bounds, and he made no attempt to hide his tears as a nurse arrived silently and checked Odessa’s vital information for the umpteenth time that day.
He looked up at the woman in white with questioning eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “There’s no change.” She walked out, shaking her head.
Harley rested his head against Odessa’s hand and sobbed, feeling the pulse beat gently in her wrist. “Please, Odessa, wake up. I promise I’ll love you until eternity ends.”
He scrutinised her face for any sign she had heard him. There was nothing but the soft rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. Her hair had grown longer and fanned out on the pillow, golden strands against white cotton. How much longer would he be able to stand the hospital’s antiseptic smell, which was not quite able to cover the scent of lingering death?
He glanced at his wristwatch. Odessa was now in the
private hospital with a grand view of the orchards, wreathed in the russet and tan colours of full-blown autumn, and her beloved mountains hovering in the distance.
The soft tread of rubber-soled shoes invaded his wretched desolation. The man who stood in the doorway had hair identical to Odessa’s spun gold, and equalled Harley in height. “Dakoda?” the man asked.
Harley nodded, got to his feet and shook Odessa’s brother’s hand. The man could easily have qualified for GDA admission. His bulk alone would have deterred criminal activity.
“How is she?”
“There’s no change,” Harley echoed the nurse’s dismal words.
Another man, who appeared to be a carbon copy of the man, strolled in. “My brother, Jason,” Brody said, by way of introduction.
After a round of handshakes, Jason said, “You told us she has other injuries.” Both brothers hovered over the bed, examining Odessa as if they were afraid to touch her.
Harley grimaced, reluctant to admit the truth to himself, but having been forced to face the facts several times. “She had severe burns along her right arm and down the side of her neck, which are still healing but the doctor said she’ll be okay if she comes out of the coma.”
The brothers nodded in unison. “We’d love to have you stay with us.”
“Yeah, we would. We even cleaned up the kitchen.”
Brody elbowed his twin. “Along with the rest of the house. Took us three months, but we managed.”
Despite the sorrow and worry he felt, Harley smiled at their liveliness. “I’d like that, but I’d better warn you. This might take some time.”
“We’re not going anywhere in a hurry, although we better warn you, Uncle Peter might enlist you for KP duty.”
“Odessa mentioned him many times.”
“Just wait until he sees her. It will break his heart,” Brody said.
“Maybe send him to an early grave,” Jason added.
Before Harley could state how much he wanted to meet the old man, a piercing voice interrupted. “Don’t push me along so fast, son.”
A white-haired man entered the room at a brisk pace, with a matronly nurse speeding after him. “You can’t smoke a pipe in here, sir. It’s against hospital policy.”
The old man abruptly stopped in his tracks and faced her. The nurse collided with him. “I’ll be damned if anyone tells me—at my age—what I can or cannot do, lady.”
The nurse’s outrage turned into a scowl and she strode away, quite possibly to get the hospital’s security staff.
“That’s Uncle Peter,” Brody said with a chuckle.
“This is Uncle Peter,” the old man corrected.
“Instilling the fear of God in everyone,” Jason said with a flourish of his hand.
Uncle Peter didn’t acknowledge Harley in any way. He no longer seemed to hear his chattering nephews, but bent down by the side of Odessa’s bed and took her hand in his. Her small hand was swallowed up by his hefty one. “Odessa. You’ve got to come home. If I told you I was dyin’, I’d be lying, so I won’t pull that stunt, but you gotta come home.”
“Yeah, don’t let him pull that stunt on you. He’s madly in love with Joanna Petrocheeni,” Brody offered.
“Yeah, he’s as old as the hills but he’s never going to die,” Jason put in.
Harley suddenly wished he had a supportive family, the way Odessa apparently had. Their banter soothed his nerves and allowed him to think that better days might lie ahead. The past few months of worrying about whether Odessa would come around had taken their toll. He’d slept very little and knew he had lost a lot of weight. Often he’d had to force himself to eat, fearing there would be no one around for Odessa when she needed someone.
“Son,” Uncle Peter said, looking up Brody, “why don’t you take your brother and find a coffee shop, and get me some of that new fangled fruit coffee while I talk to your sister?”
Brody didn’t move. He folded his arms across his chest.
“She doesn’t hear you, sir,” Harley offered.
“Horse’s patootie. She hears everything I say. I have no doubt about that.” He turned to his niece and smoothed the top of her hand. “Listen, I read about what you did on that space station. Agent Harley made no bones about how you saved his skin, along with those of the innocent. We didn’t even know how much danger we were in from that Murrach guy. But nothing to fear from now on, little one. He’s gone and your man’s waiting here for you to wake up, just as if you were Sleeping Beauty. Plus, he wants to marry you. So you see, your uncle remembers some of the fairytales you came home and told him when you were no higher than a cricket. And let me say to you, this man, he loves you more than words will ever express. So now, girl, you gotta wake up and give me some little pattering feet to keep my heart ticking. I got kind of addicted to having you little ones around.”
Brody coughed, but Jason said with a hint of levity, “And he isn’t getting any younger, either.”
Harley couldn’t help but smile at the old man’s plucky spirit. Odessa had the same gutsy nature. She’d let nothing deter her from standing up for herself, especially if she believed she was right.
“You should try to convince her to wake up and get better, not get pregnant right away,” Brody protested.
“Rubbish. She’s right there somewhere.”
Brody shrugged and muttered, “Have it your way.” He walked over and stood beside Harley. “I’m sorry. He always says what’s on his mind.”
“Only way to be in this world, son. Especially at my age.”
Harley liked the old man’s forthrightness. “I’m afraid the helmet disconnected some of her synapses.”
“Sounds like a Joanna Petrocheeni movie to me,” Uncle Peter murmured. “What are these synapses?”
“It’s the point from which a nervous impulse passes from one neuron to another. It’s the physical aspect of how we think,” Harley replied, rubbing his temple. Exhaustion was beginning to set in.
“How did she know she could talk to Uncle Peter through the helmet?” Brody asked.
Harley shrugged. “My guess is she loved him enough to be able to communicate with him at a distance. The helmet amplified her thoughts enough to enable her to communicate.”
“I understand the technology wasn’t ready to be tested on humans yet.” Jason sat on Odessa’s bed and held her free hand.
“No.” Harley shifted from one knee to the other. He had destroyed all the helmets himself, and he doubted any scientist could replicate them. Why did technology that was meant for good always become tools for men like Pardua?
The old man got to his feet and shuffled out of the room. He seemed to have aged by twenty years from the time he had arrived to visit his niece. Harley felt sorry for him. They could be in for a long wait for Odessa to come out of the coma, but he was willing to bide his time.
“I don’t think Uncle Peter will want to stick around long,” Jason said to Harley. “I’m going to take him home, otherwise he’ll start walking and it’s quite a ways. Would you care to come with us? Uncle makes apple pie which is the talk of the town, and we made up a room for you.”
“Thanks. But I’ll wait some more. Maybe today she’ll come home for good.”
Jason nodded in acceptance and Brody left the room with him. Their anguished looks stabbed at Harley all over again. If Odessa didn’t wake up soon, what would happen to Uncle Peter and his nephews? He surmised they would support each other.
Harley knelt down beside the bed in the spot Uncle Peter had vacated. Odessa’s family was going out of their way to include him, although Uncle Peter had a rough spot here and there.
Harley took Odessa’s hand, the same way he had done so many times in the past few months. “Odessa,” he whispered, “your family is a hoot. If not for me, will you wake up for your Uncle Peter? I swear he aged twenty years just in the time he spent visiting you.” He knew he shouldn’t have told her that. He didn’t want her to feel guilty.
“I know that,�
� came the softest of hoarse whispers.
Harley jumped to his feet as she struggled to open her eyes. To his utter disbelief, she blinked open the sapphire jewels, and gazed on him with tenderness. Joy, an emotion he had thought he would never possess again, made him want to find wings and fly.
“I can’t believe it. You’re awake,” he murmured, feeling a wreath of a smile light his face.
Odessa tried to sit up. “Promise me one thing.”
“No, don’t sit up until I get the doctor. But I’ll promise you anything.”
“That you won’t make me wear a helmet again.”
He reached out and brushed her hair away from her cheek. “No, never again if you don’t want to. But you have to promise me one thing too.”
She flashed a weak but mischievous smile. “I think I know what you’re going to ask.”
“You do?” he teased, and kissed her lips gently.
“You’re going to make me promise to marry you as soon as possible.”
“Have you been reading my mind?”
She motioned for him to lower his head. “You told Uncle Peter I couldn’t hear him. He told me I should marry the most wonderful man in the galaxy and beyond. His words made me come away from all those voices.”
“You could still hear them?” Harley asked in astonishment.
“Yes, but they were getting fainter and fainter. They were nanobots, weren’t they?”
“Yes, princess. They were. They wear out without a fresh supply to feed on. When you told me you were hit by a bullet, why didn’t I find any evidence of the injury?”
“Roland made me wear a helmet on the Drifter once. I don’t like wearing hats or helmets or anything, and I told him so. He wouldn’t listen. I still don’t remember exactly what happened while I had the awful thing on. Apparently there was something inside it that gave me the power to heal extremely quickly.”
“The nanobots,” they said together.
He smoothed her cheek with the back of his hand. “You might have heard this already, but I love you more than words can say, and I would give you the moon on a silver platter if I could—”
Whispers in the Dawn Page 16
