Rachel's Return

by Amy Gallow

  "We need to leave soon.” He sounded genuinely regretful. “Once we've established a proper airport, it will be different."

  They took off half an hour later, flying south as the sun touched the western horizon and landing with the last of the light, Rachael using the time to plan her assault. Jack would be aware how unwise becoming sexually involved was in their present positions. She would have to find a way of convincing him.

  The dying whine of the gas turbines and the click of the final switch plunged the cockpit into darkness, but Jack made no move to leave. “You have something on your mind,” he said. “This is about as private as we can get. There are no listening devices and the polarization of the canopy hides us from the outside.” Her silence on the return flight had warned him something was amiss and his reaction was characteristically direct. Damn, she thought. Words won't persuade him now.

  She released her seat belt, rose to stand in the space between the seats, and leant over to kiss him on the lips, pouring everything she had into a convincing argument. He cooperated fully and she found herself in his lap, the seat sliding back to give her room. It did more, reclining to become a bed. The aircraft had been designed for planetary exploration and this was its sleeping quarters.

  It was awkward and uncomfortable, but she didn't care. Her need was too desperate. She kissed as if there were no tomorrow, fumbled at the fastenings of his clothes and tried to force herself into the same space he occupied. Jack cooperated more calmly, facilitating rather than leading and this heightened Rachael's desperation. She must ignite his passion or fail.

  They were embarking on madness, nothing less would justify it.

  * * * *

  She's right. Jack would have spoken aloud if Rachael's lips weren't in the way. It is madness. She doesn't understand how much.

  A year of full use had sharpened his extra senses. There was only one other full telepath on this planet and they communicated freely now the Pontiff was gone. Anneke, Peter, Dael and his parents dropped in frequently, usually not materializing, sharing his memories and giving valuable advice and comfort, each visit sharpening facilities dulled by years of undercover work. He'd followed Rachael's thoughts so effortlessly since she arrived, he'd even mixed them with their other forms of communication and had to cover his slips. He was more careful now, but his feelings made it easier to forget.

  Anneke had warned him. “Fall in love with a Commoner and it becomes very difficult. Their thoughts become so much part of yours, you forget it's only one way. Your father was lucky. Gabrielle was a latent telepath and needed only exposure to develop. Try to change a Commoner without a latent ability and it will destroy them. They're not ready for it. Most of them would be insane within days. We have to wait until the race develops further.” Her advice had to be respected. Jack had been young when Jesse died, but he still remembered her grief and how guilty she'd been about its secret element of relief.

  He's not responding. The wail of despair in Rachael's mind brought Jack back to the present and he reassured her with action, carrying them closer to the point of no return while part of his mind searched for an answer. He could delay consummation only so long and his body was beginning to respond mindlessly. Soon it would take charge and he would be committed by his reluctance to allow her to be hurt.

  I love him so much. Rachael's mind was clear.

  Jack acknowledged the truth in her thought. Somewhere along the way, she'd fallen in love and he suspected it was mutual. There is no more severe a test of character than how a person responds to a hangover and Rachael had passed it with flying colors. No recriminations, no vain promises, just acceptance and stoic endurance until relief came with the oxygen. Even then, she'd blamed no one but herself for the lapse.

  She would be very easy to love.

  * * * *

  Rachael sensed him take charge, moving from unconvincing participant to leader, and exulted in her victory.

  He was hers irrevocably.

  The feeling was so strong it didn't occur to her to question it. She sensed his commitment as surely as if he'd spoken it aloud. Her surety might have puzzled her, if so many other sensations hadn't crowded it out of her mind.

  Jack was the lover she'd dreamt, so intimately attuned, it was like he was in her mind, feeling exactly what she felt, knowing her every need and meeting it perfectly. She soared beyond her previous bounds. Reaching for the heavens as he triggered responses she'd never known existed and she rode the whirlwind into the sky. The first climax preceded a series, each crowding in on the one before until she was no longer sure it wasn't continuous until exhaustion claimed her and she sank onto his chest, too spent to do more.

  She could feel him ready within her, waiting patiently for her recovery, and wondered at his self control, a little jealous and vaguely disappointed the experience had not been so climatic for him.

  A rumble of suppressed laughter transmitted itself from his chest to hers and she managed to find the strength to lift her upper body so she could see his face.

  "What's so funny?"

  "I just feel good. It's been a long time."

  "Not long enough by the feel of things.” She moved on the flesh impaling her body, triggering sensations she'd thought sated and gnawing her lower lip at how close to pain ecstasy could be.

  "If you insist.” He guided her through the difficulties of changing places on the narrow bed formed by the fully reclined pilot's seat, managing it without breaking the conjunction of their flesh and bringing her to full readiness in the process.

  This time he tapped the darker side of her sexuality, holding her prisoner with guile rather than physical restraints, awakening an untapped source of pleasure and reinforcing her need with ecstasy. This man was the devil incarnate, delving into her secret thoughts and turning them real.

  Rachael exploded, shattering into a million shards and scattered to an unfeeling universe that flung them back, coalescing into herself just in time to ride the convulsion of his release into paradise again.

  Chapter Three

  Jack walked back from the Federation compound deep in thought. He'd coaxed an unwilling Rachael to leave the ship only by the need to conceal their relationship from the Federation for a little longer. She'd agreed with a flattering reluctance, extracting promises he'd find hard to keep. Fortunately, he knew these were her way of punishing him for being right. Dael's gentle healing was at work.

  His grandmother had used Rachael's intoxication the first night to enter her mind and tease free the linkage of certain memories, an exorcism of their destructive power, to liberate Rachael's natural recuperative powers. It was no instant cure. Rachael would never consciously recognize the change, but now she could heal herself.

  Dael had been pleased. He'd felt her secret smile when she'd left him to carry a drunken Rachael back to the compound last night. You can look after her now. Her tone had hovered close to outright laughter. She'll be more of a handful than you expect. Having lived with Peter for so long, Dael's humor was sometimes a little offbeat.

  Jack dismissed the matter. He'd embarked on a course of madness when he'd responded to Rachael. Every plan he'd made had to be recast. He entered the flyer and started the coffee percolator. He was tired and needed what stimulus he could get.

  Make one for me. Anneke materialized at his side and switched to normal speech. “I'm worried about Peter."

  "That's a change.” Jack's tone was dry. Anneke's stubbornness had created more impossible situations than any other member of the First Family.

  "I'm serious.” She brushed aside his levity. “He keeps slipping away to spend time in his own world."

  Jack was happy to be diverted from his own problem, which he suspected time would solve anyway, and poured his aunt a cup of coffee, over-sweetened as she liked it. “He has no personal timeline there now, so there's no reason he shouldn't. He can sandwich as much time as he likes between our seconds.” He handed her the coffee. “What's the problem?"

  An
neke took a sip from the anodized mug, grimacing at the bite of the freshly boiled coffee. “I don't know. He's quieter than usual and it sometimes feels as if he's taken a step away from the rest of us."

  "From Dael too?"

  "She says, no.” Anneke shook her head to reinforce the point.

  "Do you know what he's doing there?” Jack was searching for information.

  "Watching his funeral."

  "Oh.” Jack understood his aunt's concern.

  * * * *

  They were making a big thing of it. Riderless horse with boots reversed in the stirrups, flag-draped catafalque on a gun caisson topped by a velvet cushion bearing his decorations, the complete military ritual. It was understandable, he supposed. He'd been the recipient of the highest awards for personal valor in two countries and the last survivor of Black Jack Pershing's doughboys and it gave the present incumbent of the White House a free photo shoot with no political downside.

  Peter tried to be cynical. He no longer had a personal connection to the body lying within the coffin. Like the medals, the name, the sword, it had once been his, but not now. Yet the familiar ritual had the power to draw him back across the void and make him assume a parade stance in a final tribute to the man he once was.

  Born in Louisiana in 1898, his parents had both succumbed to an influenza epidemic before he was a year old and his only living relatives, distant cousins of his mother, had accepted the responsibility for him reluctantly. They were subsistence farmers in America's Northwest and feared the impact of another mouth to feed.

  Joining the Army in early 1917, he went to Europe with Black Jack Pershing's doughboys and was blooded during Ludendorf's great offensive in the spring of 1918. Promoted to sergeant because of casualties, he'd met Karel Rutgers, a German Grenadier Feldwebel, in no-man's land in the middle of a bombardment the final night of the offensive. Both weary of the killing, they'd declared a personal truce and sat out the fury of explosions around them in a shell hole, talking during the lulls. They'd wished each other luck when they parted in the morning, each returning to their own lines and Peter had thought no more of it.

  Promoted again after the botched advance in the Argonne, Peter had returned to America in 1919 as a Captain, but the peacetime army was no place for a man promoted from the ranks and he'd joined the Merchant Marine rather than go back to the farm. Neither of his foster parents survived the loss of their farm in the Depression and he was alone again by 1925.

  A chance meeting with Karel Rutgers, now a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion, had led to his enlistment and they'd served together until the gathering storm in Europe had sent both to their homelands. Karel married a childhood sweetheart, Anneke, had a child and named him Peter in honor of his friend. America's entry into the war separated them completely, closing down the exchange of letters.

  The Army welcomed Peter, reinstating his former rank, and he served with distinction in North Africa, in Italy, and then in the Invasion, landing with other air-borne soldiers in Mere-St-Eglise. The end of the war had come with him a Colonel.

  He'd searched for Karel and his family in the chaos of peace and found Anneke and her son in Munich. Karel was missing in the Russian campaign and Peter took over the support of his friend's wife and child while he searched for information, using his contacts in Army Intelligence. Receiving confirmation Karel had died in Stalingrad, he'd sponsored Anneke and young Peter to America, settling them in California. He'd slept with Anneke only once, comforting her on the night he'd confirmed Karel's death, but had raised her son as his own. Retiring from the Army after Korea, West Point had welcomed the adopted son of a distinguished soldier and young Peter had gone to Vietnam, dying not far from the fort where his father had served as a Legion sergeant. Cancer had taken Anneke ten years later and Peter was alone again.

  He'd aged gently, not entering the military retirement village until after his hundredth birthday and transferring to the nursing home just before the end of 2003. A respiratory infection in 2005 had sent him into a final decline and triggered a desperate wish for an environmentally sustainable world without war.

  Waking in the Limbo of Dael's world, he'd been stunned to find himself sensing the thoughts of her world's inhabitants. Too experienced a soldier to act precipitately, he'd investigated his new environment, carrying out cautious experiments to define the limits of his powers.

  The results reinforced his caution. He had the power to change things in this world, both great and small, but the underlying logic behind those changes was not what he expected. He was angry he hadn't realized from the beginning. His wish for an environmentally sustainable world without war had created Dael's world, where the mind creatures of Dael's race, the Blood, had the immortality to give them the long-term view that made sustainability essential, controlled humanity and prevented war.

  Accepting responsibility for the situation, he planned to change it and discovering Dael gave him the tool he needed. Some accident in genetics, circumstances, or his unconscious desires, had given her a different view of the Group Mind, making her susceptible to the ideas he needed to foster. He'd used Torred to trigger her banishment from the hive, separating her from her kind and conditioning her to accept a changed reality where she could create her own host, a physical body she could inhabit. The next step was complicated when he fell in love with her, but it still worked and Karrel was born, the first new Blood of the race.

  He'd utilized one of his earlier mistakes, which had put the Blood under threat of extinction, to make his son's arrival welcome, once he'd overcome the initial reaction of the established hierarchy led by Belen. They didn't see the trap inherent in creating their personal host, the loss of their immortality, or the changes the new generation would inevitably provoke.

  The different time streams, each running at its own pace, of this world and Dael's had bought him the time to achieve his goal, but then the process of dying had caught up, dragging him back and trapping him in a failing body. His son, who'd inherited many of Peter's powers, had stepped into the breach and utilized Belen's greed to rescue him, replacing the failing earth-bound body with one created by Dael.

  They were burying that earth-bound body today and he'd come to do it honor.

  * * * *

  "Jean-Paul's back.” Anneke's announcement was a conversation stopper. It was a hundred years at least since Peter and Dael's youngest child had left, deliberately disappearing without trace. “He appeared at the Beach Camp, gave Dael a hug and sat down to demolish everything Peter could cook."

  "How did Peter react?” No one in the family could understand Peter's lack of concern for his son, or his absolute prohibition on anyone searching for Jean-Paul.

  "He made a remark about the fatted calf and continued cooking until Jean-Paul was satisfied.” Anneke was smiling. “The three of them walked along the beach together afterwards and I came to see you."

  "Does Karrel know?"

  Anneke nodded. “He and Gabrielle were at breakfast. I suspect my older brother has secrets from the rest of us. He didn't seem surprised."

  Jack nodded Peter and Karrel shared things beyond the rest of them, probably because of common memories shared during Peter's rescue from Earth, or perhaps something more. Jack didn't know. He and the others encountered this bond very rarely and its nature was beyond them.

  "Has he changed at all?” Jean-Paul was only slightly older than Jack. They'd grown up together, uncle/nephew relationship notwithstanding.

  "Not that I noticed.” Anneke's brow furrowed. “Yet, there's more of the quietness in him. He seems one step removed from me.” She laughed. “Nothing's changed, he always was."

  It was Jack's turn to nod. Karrel and Anneke were indisputably Peter's children. They thought like him, acted like him, bore the same responsibilities for the world they inhabited and acted. Jean-Paul was Dael's son. He'd inherited her compassion and acceptance. He disagreed with his father's assumption of responsibility for the world and took no part in the Fir
st Family's crusade against the Federation. There were no arguments, no friction between them. Both had measured the other's thoughts and accepted their differences. Jean-Paul's departure had not been a rift. He'd gone to see what existed outside the galaxy dominated by the Federation. “I'll look forward to seeing him."

  "He asked about you. Don't be surprised if he turns up.” Anneke seemed to hear a secret summons. “Bye. Gotta go,” she said, and was gone.

  Jack washed her mug and cleaned up the galley. He kept the flyer on standby for emergencies and was meticulous in having it prepared for immediate instant lift-off and he had an hour's work in post-flight checks and refueling before he could leave.

  Jean-Paul's return was great news. His uncle had been in Dael's womb when Gabrielle had swapped places with Feodar, jumping thirty-five thousand years into the future to become Karrel's wife and Jack's mother. She'd been the commander of a scout ship from Earth, searching out habitable planets for the great colony ships that followed—fleeing a trashed Earth.

  Karrel had used Limbo's special nature to travel back in time and find Gabrielle in orbit above Feodar's World, the Blood's home planet, and under attack by Belen's hive of subordinate personalities. To avoid bloodshed, he and Peter, had manipulated both sides, persuading the Blood to transfer willingly to a new home on the edge of the galaxy and freeing humanity from limitation of light speed through a physical universe.

  Feodar, a Hive Master who had resisted Belen when Peter came to the Blood's present day home, had met Gabrielle and recognized an opportunity, proposing a deal to swap places with her in return for a free hand on their former world. It satisfied the temporal equilibrium and gave Gabrielle near immortality to match Karrel's.

  Two hundred years later, Jack had been sent to Feodar's World when the original Feodar was long dead and his bloodline weakened. His job was to oppose the Federation's planned colonization by providing the dissatisfied population with an alternative head of state. He'd met Rachael there, an undercover Federation Agent working as a Temple Maiden. She'd sabotaged Jack's ship, forcing him to voyage back to the Treaty Port in a small boat and become famous as the Pontiff hunted him with increasing desperation. Distracted, both by Jack and by Rachael, with all his forces committed to the hunt, the Pontiff had fallen prey to an uprising which had saved Rachael from his wrath and installed Jack as President in his place.