But not Bei.
Not the other Syn-En.
“They are alive.” The air sparkled. A form took shape near the desk. Female. Sturdy. Sensible shoes and floppy blue hat. The woman before her was a cross between Miss Marple and Mary Poppins. “Perhaps, this image will not disturb you.”
She plucked at her ankle-length wool skirt then spun on her heel.
Nell wasn’t disturbed by the Hollywood mash-up, but the mind reading was another matter. She didn’t always want to be inside her head. Having some fermite deity with a full access pass, made her teeth ache.
“Ah, I apologize.” Mary Marple’s face settled into serene lines. “We are so accustomed to being one with others that the notion of privacy is quite alien.”
Nell snorted. “Funny.”
At least the whoo-whoo beings had a sense of humor. But she should have known that in the way the universe kept messing up her plans. She shifted to face her husband and her hand automatically slipped inside his. His fingers didn’t close around hers. His fingers always closed around hers. Her vision swam. “Can you wake him?”
“Our business is with you, Nell Stafford.”
Business? The Meek controlled the fermites. They could create anything from the atomic-sized machines. What business could they possibly have with her?
“We have much to discuss.”
Nell’s skin prickled. Mary Marple hadn’t shape-shifted into a man. There was another fermite/Human projection of a Meek in her room. Good Lord, how many of them are there?
“Twelve thousand.”
“Stop that!” Nell sat up and faced the Meek. “If I want you to know something, I’ll tell you. My thoughts are my own. Mine. Not yours or anyone else’s to eavesdrop on.”
A young Christopher Plummer stood beside Mary Marple. He cocked his head to the left and an amused smile curved his full lips. “But you allow others to hear your thoughts. A perfect blend of technology and Humanity.”
“I do not always allow my husband or his men to hear me.” At least not intentionally. Nell mentally corrected. “I like to work things through in private and come to my own conclusions.”
Right now, she was concluding that she’d had a fascination with musicals featuring British actors. She might stop watching them for a while. A decade or two at the most. Except for the Disney animated ones. A girl had to visit a world where folks spontaneously broke into song. Although, if the next Meek she encountered appeared in three-dimensional technicolor and cartoon lines, she’d reconsider.
Mary and Christopher’s lips twitched.
Nell knew they were still tuned to the Nell Stafford comedy channel.
Christopher fiddled with the button on his dark blue lapel. “Perhaps we should wake her mate. He may see the advantages clearer.”
“He is very protective of her and the children.” Mary clasped her hands demurely in front of her. “He may become violent.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” Nell squeezed Bei’s hand. “Anything you have to say to me, you can say to him. I’ll tell him anyway.”
Raising her chin, she glared at the two characters.
“Very well,” Mary sighed.
Bei’s hand tightened around Nell’s. He brushed her mind, rejoiced in the connection. Then he noticed her fear. Releasing her, he sprang toward the intruders, and halted mid-air—frozen in time and space. What the hell? Not even an eyelash moved.
“I knew he would become violent.” Mary’s shoulders bowed from the weight of being right.
Who are they? Bei’s voice came through their private connection.
The Meek. Rising on her knees, Nell balanced on the soft mattress.
Shit. They’re real.
In a now-you-see-them, now-you-don’t kinda way. She lifted her hand and set it against his leg. Even when she pushed with all her weight, he didn’t budge. She faced Mary and Christopher. “I get it. You control the vertical and horizontal. But he wasn’t going to attack you. The doofus was placing himself between you and me, to protect me. Kindly release him.”
We’re at their mercy. She squeezed his thigh.
Christopher smiled. “On the contrary, we are at your mercy, Nell Stafford.”
Nell snorted. “Then release my husband.”
Bei completed his journey in slow motion. His limbs unfolded as he arced toward the deck. Once he landed, his body twitched.
The Meek had given him back control.
Christopher leaned against the metal bulkhead. “Perhaps now we can negotiate.”
Bei held up his hand. “I would like to see my men and our ship first.”
Her husband was thinking of escaping. They both knew it wouldn’t be so easy, but planning at least gave the illusion of having some control over their future. Just so you know, they can read our minds.
I wouldn’t have expected anything less.
Mary tucked a lock of snow white hair under her straw hat. “Perhaps, we can begin while we take you to your crew.”
Twisting at the waist, Bei offered his hand. “My wife calls it multi-tasking.”
Nell slid her palm against her husband’s and laced their fingers together. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she scooted off the mattress. She tightened her grip when she transferred her weight to her legs. They didn’t wobble a bit. Odd thing that. She would have expected a wet noodle response.
Mary turned toward the wall behind the desk. The bulkhead dissolved when she stepped forward.
Right. Nell shifted her paradigm. This was a fermite world, not the real one.
The four of them walked abreast, with the two Meek book ending her and Bei. Blue sky and green trees emerged behind the curtain of her cabin. Birds sang in pine boughs. Cicadas chirped from the wooly bark of Ironwood trees. Buttery flowers of the Cassia bushes scented the air with candy-hearts.
Familiarity cascaded through Nell. “This looks like Arizona.”
A conglomeration of different cities in her native state, but Arizona just the same. What else would she see that they grafted onto their world to make her more comfortable? And why did they want her comfortable anyway?
Patience, love. Bei tugged her close, until their shoulders brushed. The Meek will reveal things in their own time. The Meek— He stiffened. “When Nell vanished from the ship, Davena Cabo said Nell was with you.”
Mary brushed the pine bough. Brown needles drifted to the ground. “Davena. She was our emissary on the planet you call Surlat.”
Christopher stuck his hands in his suit jacket pockets. “She didn’t reveal our presence when we first appeared to you as her deceased father, despite her attraction to your healer.”
A path threaded through the cathedral arches of trees. Sunlight dappled the dirt and the temperature dropped a few degrees in the shade. With her free hand, Nell rubbed the chill from her skin. “Do you often imitate dead people?”
Mary’s lips curled. “Some are more comfortable with it than others.”
Nell glanced behind her. The path disappeared as soon as they stepped off it. She almost wished for breadcrumbs, yet nothing remained of the cabin where she’d woken up. How was she to know what was real and what wasn’t?
“Everything is real.” Next to Nell, Christopher shrugged. “Many of Earth’s plants were used to seed this world.”
Mary turned to her. The brim of her straw hat shaded her eyes. “To make us more comfortable.”
Maybe it was the shock, but Nell knew they’d skipped a step somewhere. “Why does this make you more comfortable?”
Bei’s eyebrows rose. “Your ancestors were once from Earth.”
Nell stumbled. Well, duh. Slap a pointy hat on her and call her a dunderhead. She should have seen that one coming. “You were once Human, right?”
Probably from Atlantis.
Mary threw back her head and laughed. “Not Atlantis, Nell Stafford. The name of our civilization no longer appears in any Earth records. The Erwarians made certain of it.”
Bei sent her a file on the a
ncient race that once inhabited all of known space, including Earth.
Nell ignored the information. She wanted the Cliffnotes not a dissertation. Besides, she hated history. Her superpowers hadn’t changed that about her. “Erwarians?”
A look passed between Christopher and Mary.
Nell’s gut clenched. Whatever she was about to be told was a shade of the truth, not the bright light of it.
“The Erwarians favored Humans.” Christopher’s lips pursed.
Somehow Nell suspected the supreme alien’s favor wasn’t exactly manna from Heaven.
Bei accessed the ship’s CIC for a translation.
Mary’s ice-blue eyes lost focus, and her edges blurred. “More like a trial by fire. We were brought here to serve.”
“But we couldn’t do so in our natural state.” White ringed Christopher’s mouth and his steps became jerky instead of fluid. “They forced us to ascend.”
“Ascend?” Nell wracked her thoughts. “Doesn’t that mean die?”
A doe leapt across their path.
Bei drew up short then thrust Nell behind him. A Sabertooth tiger stalked the deer. The large cat slowed to stare at them. Saliva dripped from his long fangs.
Good God! That kitty was the size of a van, and of everyone present, she was the one thing that was edible. Nell eased fully behind her husband. Rising on tiptoe, she peeked over his shoulder.
Fermites twinkled in the air, then the cat sneezed and stalked away.
Bei ushered her forward so she stood between Christopher and him. “If ascend means dead, how is it that you are here? Interacting with our world.”
Oh, Nell knew the answer to that one. “You’re ghosts, right?”
“No, not ghosts.” Mary flicked a pine needle from her shoulder. “And we aren’t dead, either. Our consciousness was ripped from our bodies and kept here to serve the Erwarians.”
Nell wasn’t sure there was a difference, but she’d been wrong before. “And what happened to your bodies?”
Again, Christopher and Mary exchanged a look. He arched an eyebrow; she shrugged.
After a moment, he combed his fingers through his slicked back hair. “Since they no longer served a purpose, the Erwarians destroyed them.”
“Nice.” Nell’s skin itched. “They don’t sound like someone you’d want to meet in a dark alley.”
“They were not all bad.” Mary studied her fingernails.
Christopher’s hands balled at his sides. “They left us in an untenable position.”
The path curbed up a hill and the trees thinned. Grass fringed patches of raw stone. In a valley to the right, a black obelisk nearly pierced the Stratosphere. The noonday sunlight sparkled on the mist of fermites migrating through the meadow.
The hair on Nell’s arms stood on end and her skin tingled. Intuition told her the energy came from the pillar. “I can feel the power of it from here.”
Bei grunted.
She knew he recorded every detail and had maxed every sensor in his body to study this world and their new acquaintances.
Mary raised her hand. It became transparent then reformed. “You were born on Earth. It, too, once had a pillar designed by the Erwarians.”
“We do not know if Humans were born with an affinity for the power, or if the Erwarians grafted it into our DNA.” Pausing, Christopher faced the pillar and closed his eyes for a moment.
Bei swept Nell into his arms and carried her over the last bit of rocky path. Grass and shrubs sprouted from the top of the plateau. Their ship rested in the center of it. Fermites swarmed the hull, repairing the damaged ship to its former glory. After kissing her temple, he set her on her feet. “I am detecting the life signs of my men and our pilot. They are all sleeping peacefully.”
Christopher jogged to Nell’s side. “We did not bring you here to harm you.”
Nell stilled her tongue. She’d learned not to ask questions she didn’t want to know the answers to. Alas, she doubted her husband had a cowardly bone in his body.
Bei draped his arm around her shoulders. “Why are we here?”
Mary pulled a parasol from the knitting bag on her arm and unfurled it. “We know that you are at war with the Founding Five.”
“That’s hardly breaking news. Davena, your oracle, would have told you that six months ago.” And yet, the Meek had just now made contact. On Nell’s right, a white gazebo grew from the ground. A matching wrought iron table and chairs joined it, as if they were being extruded from the same 3-D printer.
Christopher guided them over to the seating area. “We also know that while Humanity’s alliance is making great strides in building defenses, you will lose the war if the Scraptor Fleet launches a major attack within the next three months.”
Bei’s eyes narrowed. “And do you know the name of the traitor among our allies?”
Mary flashed her palms. “Your allies will sue for the best peace offering the Founders will grant, if the Scraptors gain much more ground. They know the ruthless way the conquered are treated.”
Anger flashed through Nell. “Then why don’t you stop them? You have the ability to knock them back to the Stone Age, yet you sit here in your ebony obelisk and watch from the sidelines.”
Easy, love. Bei eased a seat from under the table and gently pushed her onto it.
Christopher dropped into the chair on her right. “Do you honestly believe that advanced technologies malfunction of their own accord? Our fermites had maintained the balance of power since the Erwarians… left.”
Ramrod straight, Bei sat across from her. “You’ve sabotaged everyone’s technology.”
“And prevented any species from tampering with Human DNA.” Mary removed a china plate from the stack that materialized on her right, then passed it to Nell. “Having had our lives disrupted by a technologically advanced society, we are loathe to tamper with the natural evolution of others.”
Desserts of every variety of chocolate filled up the serving dishes. Whipped cream swirled atop a cup of hot cocoa, then the sprinkles appeared.
Nell swallowed the saliva pooling in her mouth before she drooled. This was chocolate heaven. Her nails bit into the bone china. She wanted one of everything. “Are you certain I’m not dead?”
Christopher chuckled. His fingers wiggled over the food before he selected a ramekin dusted with powdered sugar. “You are very much alive. And we would like to keep it that way. We can weaponize the fermites. You can command them to destroy the Founders’ technology without harming yours.”
Nell selected a cube of fudge. Bypassing her plate, she popped it directly into her mouth. Sugar and chocolate danced over her palate.
Bei winked at her from across the table. Enjoy it. Everything is edible.
Her tongue stilled. Doh! Nell hadn’t even considered whether it was real or not, or poisoned. She’d just stuffed the fudge into her mouth. Her Achille’s heel was made of chocolate.
And the Meek knew it.
Mary selected a wedge of German chocolate cake. With the side of her glistening fork, she cut off a piece. “We will enable Davena to heal your soldiers as soon as the enemy wounds them. Your army will be invincible.”
The Meek knew all their weaknesses.
And were being very helpful.
Too helpful. The fudge turned to paste on Nell’s tongue. “What’s the catch? What do you want in exchange for your help?”
Christopher licked the chocolate smear from his dirty spoon. “More of what you’ve already given us.” He smiled, revealing a food-capped tooth. “Children, like the one you already carry.”
Chapter 19
“You took my child?” Across the table from Bei, Nell leapt to her feet. The picnic table and gazebo dissolved in a shower of fermites.
“No!” The Meek female Nell thought of as Mary stepped back. “You’ll carry the children, birth them, and raise them.”
“I don’t understand.” The birds in the trees stopped singing. Nell crossed her hands protectively over her stomac
h. “What do you mean, I’ve already given you a child?”
Bei’s body filled with pride. He loved his wife’s protective streak. But this time it might be misguided. The alien’s assessment of the situation was correct. If the Scraptors launched an offensive within the next few months, the Alliance and the Syn-En would fail. He’d been enslaved before. But that had been by his fellow Humans. The Founders would be worse, much worse.
And just the thought of what they’d do to Nell was enough to make his pathways short out.
Mary flashed her palms. “When you became pregnant, the fermites and brain box copied the fetus in a mixture of biology and technology. It is into that child that we can enter.”
“No.” Nell shook her head. Her blond hair slapped her cheeks. “I’ve seen this movie and all its remakes and spin offs. You create some Kahn-esque superHuman and suddenly the rest of us are nothing but disposable props.”
“Perhaps you’ve seen too many movies.” Bei uttered the words, knowing the instant they left his lips they were a mistake.
Paling, Nell raised her hand as if to ward off a blow. “How could you, of all people, say that?”
“Because, I would do anything, make any bargain to keep you and our babies safe.” Bei wanted to go to her, but his movements were slow, gummy. He’d run diagnostics, but no malfunctions registered on his scans. The power fluctuations in the pillar might be the source of the anomalies but his batteries should have compensated.
He was missing a data point.
Nell’s face scrunched as if she experienced physical pain. “And I would do anything to keep you safe, but this is a deal with the Devil.”
Christopher gasped. “We are not the Devil. But if you want us to play the part, we can always offer this deal to the Scraptors. They wouldn’t even think twice before accepting this alliance.”
“You see! As soon as he doesn’t get his way, he threatens us.” Nell pointed to the male Meek. “Do you really want someone like that with superpowers?”
The Meek already controlled the fermites. Their abilities exceeded Nell’s. The knowledge threatened the stability of his circuits.
Mary waved her hand at Christopher. The ET disappeared in a burst of glitter. “I apologize for his outburst. You see, for the first time there is a possibility that we can leave our prison.”
Syn-En: Pillar World Page 17
