“Is it factually true that I don’t know where Hope is right now? Yes. Is it factually true that I cannot personally confirm she’s alive because I’ve not seen her in years? Yes. Is it factually true that when we return I do not know how long it will take until we know where she is so that you can reunite? Yes.
“But this is what I do know. I know that Angel says Hope is alive, and she’s never been wrong before. I know the clues sent to the children suggest they are living in hiding near an ocean, and I know that Will and Elizabeth are the only two people able to find my father’s native land. And I do know that, while so many of us have changed the way we’d choose to live our lives to follow a script to make sure everything happens as it’s supposed to happen, that we’d all like to rid ourselves of Arthur’s oppression the instant—the instant—that we can, and I believe that Will and Elizabeth will appear not long after we arrive back in my present. It may be a week, it may be a month, it may be a year, Genevieve. But you will see her, and you can tell her how proud you are of the sacrifices she’s made to keep her family safe and alive.” He turned and looked at her. “Will you undo all that so that you can see her right now?”
Genevieve had spent much of the story looking away from him, out the window. And he’d felt no reaction from her, no sound, no clarifying questions.
She turned to face him after a long moment of silence. Tears streaked down her face, and she allowed the tears she’d been fighting to flow. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’ve failed her enough already. I can’t… I can’t do that again.” She wiped her tears on her sleeve. “I’ll do anything for her, even wait a bit longer to see her again.” She cracked a smile. “But I’d like to hear her voice again, so can we please fix that problem with my ears?”
Adam laughed.
The solution, it turned out, was simple. He soothed the tiny hairs in her ears with Energy, and they tested a small jump. No ill effects. At ten and twenty years, she felt the displacement, but there was no pain. He taught her how to pre-treat the symptoms, and she did.
They hopped forward to match his thirteenth century stop, and then reversed his course, arriving thirty minutes before the Adam of the future in each hop zone, giving him time to recharge the batteries. He had her punch in the coordinates—if it was any risk to do so, he’d need to turn in his Energy for so poor a judgement—so that he could focus on the batteries.
As they moved, she asked more about Hope’s life, about Will, and about her grandchildren. She suffered along with him during the stop on Atlantis, whispering the thanks to Eva she’d promised earlier, knowing full well the woman couldn’t see her.
They continued following his path in reverse, stopping only when they reached Eden in 2219. He’d have a few hours of isolation in the near present, a chance to remember just what it was he’d been doing just before he departed on his journey so many weeks before.
At least as he’d lived it.
~~~53~~~
2219 A.D.
It was with much relief that Adam deployed an Energy Eater inside the time machine and opened the lid, sitting back with an audible sigh of relief. He glanced at Genevieve. “It’s safe to get out. We’re on the ground.”
She looked at him, eyes squinted in confusion, and glanced down at the still-visible nano-based bodysuit. “Don’t you need to make us… make it so nobody can see us?”
He shook his head. “There’s nobody here. And the only people who might be here are people you’d be okay meeting.”
She glanced around, taking in the lush vegetation. A light breeze teased through the trees and ruffled her hair. “This is the island, isn’t it? This is the one where your father was born?”
He nodded. “It is. We’ve come to call the island Eden.”
“And you’re sure nobody’s here?”
“Just the skeletons my father left in the cave.”
She winced.
“This island… it has some unusual properties, perhaps because of that incident. But after my father destroyed his tribe, nobody seemed to be able to find it. When Will found it centuries later and then showed it to Hope, it wasn’t… it wasn’t where it was when my father was here.”
She blinked. “What?”
He walked to the small stream nearby and knelt, drinking deeply of the fresh water. “This island moves. It protects itself from discovery by those it deems unworthy. My father tried to return, but despite the clues from Will and his knowledge of its original location, he never could.”
She scrunched up her face. “I know you probably know a lot more about the world than I do, son of Adam. But… islands don’t move.”
He dipped his hands in the stream again and splashed the cool, refreshing water on his face and rubbed it through his hair. He’d used his Energy and small bits of water as a makeshift means of bathing during the trip, and so a true shower would be a welcome change. He’d need to take one before meeting up with the Stark children again. His fingers touched the thick whiskers on his face. A good shave as well.
He stood up and moved back to the time machine, which she’d not yet left. “Let me show you something.”
He climbed into to the front seat and pointed at the map. “This is a map, a picture, of the entire planet. The planet is actually round, a sphere like a big rock, but this is close enough for what I’m going to show you.”
She looked at the map and shrugged. “Okay.”
He pointed to the eastern shores of modern day England. “That’s where you first met my father and Arthur and Eva. This island, as you’ll recall, was a few miles off the shore.”
“Of course.”
“There’s a small dot on that map. That tells us where the time machine is right now. We’re on that island.”
She squinted, likely staring at the same shoreline, but didn’t find the dot. Adam pointed at the shore, then dragged his finger southwest until she saw it.
She wanted to argue, to say that the machine made the mistake, but seemed to realize that a machine capable of flying between two locations without human assistance must have some means of knowing where it was and how to get to its destination. She glanced at him. “Oh. Is it… normal for islands to move, then?”
He shook his head. “There are specific island-like structures that form naturally and move around, but those are typically not habitable places like this. Most islands are attached to the ocean floor, and that means they aren’t going to move.” He climbed back out of the time machine. “There’s a lot we don’t know about this place.”
She finally climbed out as well, stretched out her arms and legs, and then followed his example, making her way to the stream and drinking deeply. Once satisfied, she turned back to face him. “Is this where I get to see Eliza—Hope?”
“I doubt she’ll show up here today.”
She wanted to be angry, but after their last conversation, she’d learned patience. She merely nodded.
“I think she and Will may have lived here for a time, but I think we’re here today because Will somehow switched the numbers for our trip home.” He offered a faint smile at her look of confusion. “I’ll explain later. But in a few hours, I’ll show up in the time machine with your grandchildren, and we’ll all be quite surprised to see where we are, and we’ll all go exploring the island. I need to be sure that they don’t think I’ve been gone long enough to grow a full beard.”
He stroked his chin, feeling the bristly hairs. He kept his face clean-shaven these days, and it was a sensation he’d forgotten.
Genevieve chuckled slightly at his attempted humor, then turned serious. “Why is my daughter living here, and away from her children? That… that doesn’t sound like her.”
Adam sighed. “That’s one of the reasons we’re here. I need to remember what I’ve forgotten about this time, and we need to teach you as much as possible so you know the answer to questions like that. I don’t mind answering them, but some take a lot of time to explain and provide context. That question is one of them
. It will take a long time to answer all of the questions you’ll have.”
“I want to know all of it.”
He grinned. “Once you’re reunited with her, you can learn it all directly from her.”
Genevieve’s smile told him just how much she looked forward to the reunion.
And it made him wish he could start that reunion right now.
~~~54~~~
2219 A.D.
They picked fresh fruits from the nearby trees and ate, savoring the juicy fruits after days of packaged foods. As they did, he went through his physical transformation, leaving the Cain Freeman look behind—perhaps forever—and returning to his normal form. Genevieve’s eyes grew wide as she watched the bizarre display, looking on as his face narrowed, his hair thinned, his eyes changed shape.
When the process was complete, she stared at him with such intensity that he felt mild discomfort. “You really do look just like him,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Will Stark will get to know me over the next two months, and then will meet my father in the past. He was convinced that the difference in our personalities was simply the result of my father mellowing with the passage of time.” He offered a wry grin. “It was a bit of a nasty shock to him when my father died right in front of him, moving in to take a sword thrust meant for Hope.”
“Hope is Elizabeth’s name now, correct?”
He nodded. “I’m sure she won’t mind you using her birth name, but when you get the chance to meet people in the present day, you’ll need to remember that few of them actually know her birth name, or her supposed familial link to Arthur. She doesn’t want him to know she’s still alive.”
She moved to the time machine and leaned against it. “Tell me more of what I need to know. Information like that, things that don’t need a long time to explain.”
He thought for a moment as he gently scraped the beard from his face, using small tufts of Energy like a razor. “As far as Hope goes? Most think her parents are long dead, a small number know she’s Arthur’s daughter, a smaller number know her birth name, and an even smaller number know the correct answers to all those questions. It’s best for you to act around others as if Hope’s parents are long dead, which is the truth for most of our kind.”
She scrunched up her face. “So many lies believed true.”
He offered a faint smile. “Well, everyone knows that Adam and Eva are really siblings and that they’ve never met my mother.”
She kept the scowl and added an eye roll. “Another foolish lie. I cannot understand why the Adam and Eva I knew wouldn’t insist on correcting the mistake.”
“I think there was another reason, but that’s one of those answers that needs a story to make sense.”
She chuckled. “I think I have time to listen to a story.”
He thought about how to begin his tale. “Most of our people live for a very long time. The secret to that is a special fruit called ambrosia. When you eat the fruit, your body changes. It stops aging, and operates in a perfectly healthy manner.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“Yes, it is, but there’s a problem. Do you remember what it was?”
“Wait. Was it… Elizabeth had to stop the ambrosia because… she couldn’t have her babies. Right?”
“Exactly. But we didn’t always know how to stop the ambrosia. Elizabeth ate the fruit, and only then did someone tell her the effects. By then, she knew Will had been born in the distant figure and traveled back in time for her, and she also knew that their children were essential to making that happen. If their children weren’t born, Will wouldn’t show up. If Will didn’t show up, then Elizabeth would likely be dead.”
Genevieve shivered. “That’s not a cheerful thought. But I’m still not sure what this has to do with Adam and Eva refusing to tell the world that they aren’t siblings, and about…” She paused for a moment, her lips moving, and he could feel the growing understanding. “They didn’t tell anyone about themselves… because it might raise suspicions that you were their child… and if you were their child…?”
He nodded. “If I was only Adam’s son, as widely believed, then it was easy enough to ignore the difficult question. My father might have a strange immunity to that part of ambrosia that couldn’t be replicated. For all anyone knew, I’d been born long before my father became immortal. Nothing that couldn’t be explained away by chance or randomness. But if I’m born after my father’s immortal, and my mother is also found to be immortal… that becomes far less likely to be random chance. There would be reasonable questions about how two people had miraculously bypassed ambrosia’s effects at exactly the right time, resulting in a child nine months later. In their minds, it was best to retain the rumor of my mother’s death, and then, when that was obviously untrue, to maintain the myth of Eva as my loving aunt, maintaining a home with me after my father’s death left me orphaned at the ripe young age of two hundred ninety-six.”
It took her a moment to catch the age reference and laugh. “So, to be sure I understand: they didn’t want people to know that the sibling rumors were false because it could mean suspicion about them both being your parents.”
“Right.”
“But why is that a problem? You yourself have told me of the importance of Will and Eliz—Hope’s children. Your parents knew that as well. If they knew it was so important, why not just tell everyone the secret? Why risk everyone’s life?”
He arched an eyebrow at her, and she blushed, holding up a hand. “Yes, I am the person who was willing to risk everyone’s life for my child. But it’s a reasonable question. What made them think that keeping that secret was worth the risk?”
“First, they had set a date by which they’d agreed to tell Will and Hope everything, but we never got to that point; when Dad knew he’d die, he basically gave my mother permission to give up the secret right then. They also hoped that the constant research being done on the topic would yield the correct result. The research yielded quite a few great inventions but nothing specific to this topic.”
“That’s not really an answer. That’s them avoiding giving an answer for as long as possible in the hopes they’d never have to speak.”
“That’s accurate.”
“So why didn’t they talk right away?”
“They were afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Everyone.” He held up his hand. “The solution to reversing ambrosia involves taking the blood of one’s parents, blood that’s never been touched by ambrosia, and injecting it into your body.”
“Yes, I saw you give Adam the blood he and his children would need.”
“So think about this. I was born in the year 1645. At the time of my birth, both of my parents were many centuries old.”
“Right.”
“If the clean blood of one’s parents is needed to reverse ambrosia, and my parents had been immortal for centuries… how did they get their parents’ blood?”
“Well, you gave your father…” Her voice trailed off. “But how would your father know to get his father’s blood before your father even knew what ambrosia was? And same for Eva.”
“Exactly. My father had clean blood from his father, conveniently stored away decades before he became immortal and centuries before he’d need it. Just a bit too coincidental, don’t you think?”
“But—”
“They weren’t protecting their reputations, or worried about the repercussions of holding such critical information private, Genevieve. They were trying to protect me.”
“I don’t… how… that doesn’t make sense.”
“My parents enjoyed incredible luck, what with both being so old, so far removed from their long-deceased parents, and just happening to have random strangers show up to give them just what they needed at the only point in history it’s possible, even though they’d never even heard of ambrosia or thought about immortality or children at the time. It’s almost as if someone knew those secrets, knew the precise times
and locations they’d be, to deliver information and gifts.”
Her eyes boggled. “They knew you were going to do this. They knew if word got out, if the means by which they got the blood was common knowledge, people would figure it out. They’d come to you for answers about how you’d orchestrated those coincidences.”
“More than that. They’d figure out that I had, or would develop, a means to travel through time. How valuable would that be? How much would Arthur like to get his hands on a time machine?”
She shivered. “Suddenly, it all makes sense.”
Adam smiled. “Parents will subject themselves to all sorts of sacrifice and suffering on behalf of their children, won’t they?”
Genevieve smiled.
~~~55~~~
2219 A.D.
“I know how your father got the blood he needed. But what about Eva?”
Adam grimaced. “Ambrosia is named after the first immortal man, Ambrose. It was he who figured out the effects of ambrosia and who identified how to reverse those effects for brief periods of time if one so chose. He lived for thousands of years and had many children. Care to guess the name of one of those children?”
Genevieve gasped. “Eva?”
Adam's Journey (The Aliomenti Saga - Book 8) Page 26
