Rhiannon had spent many months ferrying Svalbard residents and supplies from the Norwegian archipelago to California, rendezvousing with boats from the island in warmer areas to ensure the Machine did not die. The replacement Machine had eventually died, of course, as all things must; but that was okay, because Rhiannon had discovered that she, too, could speak with the red creatures of the world and ask for their assistance in making new machines. It had, as Rhiannon told it, come as a complete surprise to her that she was able to summon their help; a profound experience that had changed her, subtly. Rhiannon had become...centered, Emily thought was the best description of the calmness that had settled over her surrogate daughter. Emily was sure that Rhiannon, would, one day, help to guide the survivors down the path that they had started along together, toward a better, brighter future.
The first time Emily set foot back on American soil after her long recuperation, she had been greeted as a hero by the survivors she had helped to rescue, all unrecognizably healthy after months of freedom and food shipped via the Machine from Svalbard had put some meat back on their bones. Still, both physical and mental scars persisted; the latter a burden every one of them carried, able-bodied or otherwise. But, if the universe was kind, theirs would be the last planet, the last civilization, the last generation to ever worry about the terror that had been the Locusts. And it was on Emily’s return that those who had been present at the battle, fighter and rescued alike, had begun to discover the meaning of what Adam had described to Emily as ‘a gift’ for his mother and those who stood at her side. It manifested as skills that the recipient had never trained in; abilities they had never mastered; insight into the world around them that had not yet been uncovered; and knowledge, new and undreamed of, that granted the survivors an understanding beyond that which the old world had possessed.
Each year, as the commune continued to grow and expand, new knowledge filtered into the collective consciousness, arriving as a memory or an inspiration or a sudden awareness, seemingly from nowhere. But Emily understood where it originated; her son. Her star child.
The drip-by-drip feed of empowering information and understanding and knowledge of the world and the great universe it floated within, was Adam’s parting gift to the people. It was a gift meant to feed and nurture them, guiding them toward a greater understanding of the stewardship required for the planet and the vast complexity of life that lived upon it. Earth—humanity’s home; unique and precious and irreplaceable. A blue, red, and growing-green ball of potential.
The caldera where that final apocalyptic battle had taken place was now nothing more than a natural tombstone marking the remains of the Locusts’ time on this planet. It had been silent for many years, but as the survivors told it, for seven long weeks after the Locusts' defeat, energy had continued to pour out of the ruins into the sky, before finally, ceasing forever.
Upon her return, with the help of the Longyearbyen council and Victor Séverin, Emily and Mac had formed an interim council to oversee the original Point Loma survivors and the camp’s new Svalbard residents. One of the first agenda items the new council pondered was what to name their new society. They finally settled on Arcadia, named after the ancient Utopian ideal. A year later, the first full and free elections were held, and Emily was unanimously picked as the official President of this fledgling nation, a title and position that she accepted willingly but not without much embarrassment. In her acceptance speech, she jokingly pointed out that it had only taken the end of the world for what had once been the United States to finally elect a female president.
The first order of business for their new community had been to focus on creating a sustainable food source from the seeds stored at the Svalbard Seed Bank. With the collected knowledge of the horticulturists, botanists, and other scientist transplants from Longyearbyen, the fertile soil, and the perfect California weather, the first year saw successful crops of wheat, corn, lettuce, carrots, Chinese loquats, South American cherimoya, and other assorted vegetables and fruits. The second year saw tea and coffee, cotton, and flax. Part of the phenomenal success was due to a rich new fertilizer derived from the root of Titan trees that increased growth and yield in the crops by almost two hundred percent. That knowledge had been another gift from Adam, conveyed through, of all people, Mac, who now found himself one of the community’s leading horticulturists. With zero previous knowledge, interest, or experience in the field, the man of war, Emily’s husband and love, found himself at the forefront of ensuring that human life continued onward, a role that he accepted wholeheartedly.
And, of course, there was new life. The community now had many children, with more on the way each year. It would not be long, Emily knew, before all those children would be old enough to play in the square below. She looked forward to that day, it would be good to hear their laughter.
Emily smiled to herself. These days, she found herself waxing more poetical than ever before in her life. Happiness, she thought, has a habit of doing that to you. Her thoughts returned to the present moment as her eyes drifted past the grass and the poplar trees to the center of the square; a fountain pumped water high into the air, a symbolic representation of the day Emily, Mac, and the other survivors had helped Adam free the planet and the universe of the scourge of the Locusts. The fountain had been the last project Parsons completed before the cancer he had kept secret from all but Emily and Mac finally claimed him, almost a year and a half prior to this day. Despite the melancholy she felt at the passing of the Welshman, Emily’s smile was because this day was a very special day, and one that she knew Parsons would have given anything to be a part of.
From the nursery, Nicholas began to yell for his mommy. Mac stirred, sat up, well trained now in the habit of responding to their youngest at just three-and-a-half years of age. "I got this, love," he said, quickly pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms and heading out the bedroom door to the nursery.
"Mommy."
Emily turned to see Eloise standing in the doorway Mac had just exited through. The little girl dangled a teddy bear by its arm. "Hello, baby girl. Come and get a hug." Emily crouched down and held out her arms. The little blonde girl, her eldest now at almost six years of age ran across the space and into her mother’s waiting arms. Emily pushed a stray lock of hair from over the child’s eye and kissed her forehead. "Are you ready for this afternoon?" she asked.
Eloise nodded and snuggled into her mother’s neck. Emily closed her eyes and stood with her child for a few moments, savoring the feeling of completeness, before reluctantly lowering her to the floor. "Let’s go get ready, shall we?" They walked out of the bedroom toward Eloise’s room. "Come on, Thor," she said as she passed by the bed.
Thor stretched and climbed down off the bed. These days, the malamute was a little grayer around his muzzle and a little stiffer in his joints, but age had not curbed his love of life. In the corridor outside the bedroom, Samantha, the White German Shepherd Emily had first met at her owner’s home in Longyearbyen, lay sleeping on the cool tile of the corridor. She opened her eyes and wagged her tail when she saw Emily and the little one leave the bedroom. Samantha got to her feet and followed alongside Thor, who nuzzled and licked at his mate’s face.
Edith Vikra had given Samantha to Emily when she moved to Point Loma in the first wave of relocated islanders. "They just seem to belong together," Edith had told Emily, "So who am I to deny true love?" In return, Edith had received her pick of the first litter of six puppies born to the two canine lovebirds. There had been three more litters since then.
"How’s he doing?" Emily whispered, pausing at the doorway to the nursery. Mac held Nicholas to his chest, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, trying to coax the child back to sleep.
"We’re good," Mac said, winking at his two girls.
"I’m going to get this little devil ready, then we can head out," Emily whispered.
Mac smiled and nodded.
Ten minutes later, Emily met Mac back in their bedroom wit
h a freshly washed Eloise.
Mac had showered and slipped into a pair of home-spun linen pants and a matching shirt.
"You look very handsome," Emily said, straightening the collar of his shirt. She handed Eloise to her husband and headed to the shower herself. A little later, clean and refreshed, she changed into a comfortable summer dress and rejoined her husband. Mac successfully collected Nicholas from his bed without waking him.
"Are we going to see Aunty Rhia?" Eloise asked, holding her mom’s hand as the family headed downstairs.
"You bet we are," Mac replied, smiling broadly.
By the time they closed the front door and walked to the square, six rows of chairs had been placed in two neat sections on the western side, with space left between them to form an aisle. Up front of the chairs, near the fountain, was a small dais, a lectern placed on top of it.
Guests were already beginning to take their seats. Emily greeted everyone by name; smiling and shaking hands, hugging friends, kissing their kids, as she and Mac slowly made their way down the aisle to the front row of chairs. Emily sat with Eloise and Nicholas, while Mac took a few moments to talk with a young Belgian man named Pascal, who was sitting in the first seat across the aisle with his parents. Pascal made eye contact with Emily, smiling nervously. Emily winked and smiled back. By the time Mac rejoined Emily, a four-piece band—named, appropriately enough, The First and Last Band—had set up just to the left of the dais, and most of the seats were now full.
Captain Constantine took the seat next to Mac. The woman he had been dating, a statuesque Danish climate researcher, sat next to him, and the foursome chatted quietly while the last of the remaining guests arrived.
"You ready? " Mac asked Emily after ten minutes had passed, checking his watch.
"Is it weird that I feel so nervous?" Emily answered him.
Mac laughed. "Course not. It’s a big day; no need for you to be nervous. And there’s a first time for everything, right?"
Emily took a deep breath then she and Mac handed the kids off to Captain Constantine and his lady. Emily stepped up to the lectern, while Mac headed in the opposite direction back down the aisle. Pascal and his father rose and joined Emily at the foot of the dais. The young man’s father placed a reassuring hand on his son’s shoulder. When The First and Last Band struck up the opening notes of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March Emily removed her handwritten script from her pocket and placed it on the lectern in front of her, spreading the creased pages out.
Dressed in simple white and wearing red flowers in her hair, her smile larger and brighter than the afternoon sun, Rhiannon walked gracefully down the aisle, her arm linked with Mac’s as he guided her toward Emily. Rhiannon had long ago abandoned wearing the sunglasses Mac had given to her, the strangeness of her crimson eyes paling by comparison to her intelligence and kindness, while only adding to her ethereal beauty. Thor and Samantha trotted alongside them, tails swishing happily back and forth.
For his part, Pascal outwardly looked calm enough, but as Rhiannon and Mac reached the front of the aisle, he flushed bright red, a slight tremor noticeable in his hand as he adjusted his shirt. And well he should quiver, Emily thought, because there were no words to describe how radiant Rhiannon looked.
The two had first met when Rhiannon ferried Pascal and his parents from Svalbard, where his mother had worked as an engineer, his father a botanist. The two youngsters had quickly struck up a friendship that had endured and eventually grown into love. Three months ago, when Rhiannon celebrated her twenty-first birthday in this very same square, Pascal had asked her to marry him. Now he stared deeply into Rhiannon’s red eyes, his own eyes wide and glistening with moisture.
Emily cleared her throat. "Well," she said, addressing the seated guests, "these are words I never dreamed I would speak." She took a deep breath and from behind a wide smile, began the ceremony, "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the union of Rhiannon and Pascal in matrimony..."
The ceremony lasted twenty minutes. Rhiannon read her vows from memory, Pascal from a slip of paper that shook slightly either from the cool breeze that blew across the square or nerves. The couple exchanged rings carved by the groom’s father from wood he salvaged from the leg of a scrapped oak table. With the rings exchanged, Emily concluded the ceremony, "And, by the power vested in me as President of Arcadia, I do hereby pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the—"
To cheers and laughter, Rhiannon pulled Pascal to her and kissed him passionately.
The band began to play an up-tempo tune, and the crowd cheered again as Rhiannon and her new husband made their way hand-in-hand down the aisle for their first dance, both smiling so widely that Emily just knew their cheeks would ache tomorrow.
As the night moved in to surround the celebrations, torches were lit around the square, bathing the area in their subtle glow. The wedding guests danced and ate and drank and laughed and talked and loved and did all of the things that make being alive, being human, such a wondrous, fleeting, amazingly fragile experience. Finally, as the evening turned to night and the music grew slower, Emily excused herself and wandered away from the celebrations, toward one of the poplar trees. She sat, her back against the young tree’s trunk, watching from the sidelines for a change. Mac and the children sat at a table off to her right; the kids enjoying the constant attention they received, Mac, smiling and talking freely, as relaxed as she had ever seen him. Every now and then, his head would turn her way, and he would smile. She would smile back. Pascal guided Rhiannon from table to table, talking to the guests and smiling at the compliments that fell from everyone’s lips.
Everything was right with the world. Finally.
Emily allowed herself to relax, her mind to drift. Between the kids and work, it was rare that she found even a moment to herself these days, but when she did, she liked to take advantage of it, to just think.
Inevitably, her mind would always drift to Adam.
Knowledge. That had been the gift that her son had given to his people; what they chose to do with it, well, that was up to them. Everyone who had been present at the last battle; soldiers and survivors had received that wondrous gift of insight.
Emily’s gift, though, was different.
It was a special gift from Adam to her, and for her alone.
Emily closed her eyes. She felt a momentary disorientation when, instead of the black screen of the inside of her eyelids, she found herself hurtling through space; ahead of her, a star, bright orange and shot through with strands of purple and red growing larger by the second, coming at her so fast her hands dug into the grass beneath her fingers. She breathed in slowly, allowing herself to relax, reminding herself that she was only a passenger in Adam’s mind, observing these events through the augmented eyes of her son. Adam was millions of light-years from where his mother rested beneath the tree, traveling the lanes between worlds and star systems and galaxies. Following a route invisible to her, tracking back along the path of the Caretakers. Moving from star-system to star-system, inexorably searching for the last alien civilization the Caretakers had helped before their encounter with the Locusts' had irreversibly changed the destiny of both the Caretakers and Earth.
Over the last six years, each time she linked with her son’s mind, Emily had witnessed for herself the destruction the Locusts had wrought; dead, barren planets followed one after the other. All evidence of the life she knew had surely once existed on them swept clean. The planets’ histories, every accomplishment, experience, or discovery...wiped away forever.
In her mind’s eye, a speck, no bigger than a pinpoint appeared. The speck quickly grew into a planet as Adam altered course and sped toward it; a black disk silhouetted against the brilliance of the alien star. Emily felt her stomach lurch as Adam began a graceful spiraling arc to intercept the planet. Closer and closer, until the new planet began to fill her vision. They passed between two moons revolving aimlessly around their larger brother, both as barren and gray as earth�
�s own satellite.
Adam guided his craft toward the planet’s twilight zone where night turned into day, crossing the terminator line as though he were the bringer of dawn. Below her, Emily saw a huge continent resolve out of the darkness; half of the land obscured by cloud, gray and white and voluminous. Lightning flashed here and there across the great storm, but beyond the storm’s edge Emily saw mountain ranges capped with snow rising high into the air, giant fingers of rock stretching across the continent; vast tracts of forests and grasslands spread swirling, bountiful greens and vibrant yellows, like a Van Gogh watercolor; rivers cut through the swaths of color snaking down to an iridescent aqua-green sea, where islands and archipelagos peppered the ocean.
Life! There was life on this planet.
It was, without question, the single most breathtaking moment Emily had ever experienced.
Fire appeared around the periphery of Emily’s vision as the ship penetrated the planet’s atmosphere, drawing ever closer to the surface. Clusters of light appeared across the land, reflections of the rising sun bouncing off the faceted sides of towering glass-spire cities that thrust into the air like spears of white crystal. She counted eight similar collections of these magnificent structures caught in the dawn’s early light, each at least a hundred kilometers in diameter.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 25
