by Laer Carroll
Prince Enterprises had been told by the spaceship crew that “Dr. James” was returning their box. But neither she nor it arrived when and where they were expected, at a Welcome Home Hero event on Long Island staged by Prince PR . Instead the box was discovered a day later in a back lot of the Long Island complex, it’s airlock door closed but unlocked. It contained neither her nor the experimental space drive.
There was world-wide speculation about this mystery. At least until the next big scandal or mystery or celebrity marriage.
When asked at a press conference about the whereabouts of the famous doctor and the space drive Ana Prince said, “I wish I knew.” She also said that the research project would have to be started completely anew because the doctor and the drive were gone.
“When can we expect some useful results from this program?”
“This will be a top priority for Prince Enterprises. The reaction-less drive will revolutionize space travel and open the Solar System to humanity. But starting from scratch—maybe ten years. At the earliest.”
She was lying, at least about the doctor and the drive. The day she returned Bethany had called Prince on a private line.
“Hello, Dr. James.”
“Please, call me Cynthia.”
“Is that anywhere near your real name?”
“I wanted to apologize about not giving Prince a PR event.”
“Perfectly all right. I was sure you wouldn’t show up. But I had to schedule the hero’s return. People would be suspicious otherwise .
“Now. Will I ever see you again?”
“Probably not. But who knows? My vacation on your charming planet is far from over.”
“I suppose you’ll be here for a few decades.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m guessing you’re immortal and measure personal time differently. Advanced civilizations must eventually solve the problem of old age. Why, one of my own research programs is working on that. John Hopkins has made some promising discoveries and we’re working with them on it.”
That set Bethany back in her chair, a bit stunned. She’d lately come to realize she was immortal, or at least unable to die of old age. This had saddened not gladdened her. She could imagine all too vividly how it would feel when her loved ones aged and died. Now she might have a reprieve.
“Whatever. I just called to say Goodbye.”
“Goodbye. But I must say you’ve left me with a problem. Now I have to start a space-drive program for real!”
Bethany laughed. “Oh, you poor billionaire!” She hung up hearing Ana Prince laughing too.
·
After the Mars rescue troubleshooting for all her business interests was a bit dull. Then she had an interesting case in Japan, and later one in Australia. Her interest picked up.
She dithered about accepting a college or university position. She was feeling the need for more education in business and other matters which would help her be a better manager of her businesses. But all of the degree programs seemed too rigid for her unique needs.
Then something happened which changed her life yet again.
·
Dreams-not-dreams were an almost weekly occurrence. They were always fragmentary and often featured some alien life form. Some of those had almost become old friends, such as the cat-like blue centaur. Others were rare. Only once had she been a sea-serpent, on a planet with a big red sun and a tiny blue one.
A few were human, such as the (not very frequently “visited”) clock maker in (she guessed) Vienna. Most of them recently were of Roberto Rodriguez.
She shared being a Comanche medicine man, a Galician Spaniard, an Arab war leader, a Japanese samurai, German general, and West Texas gunfighter. Rather, she’d shared the usual fragmentary memories.
One of them was very short.
“Mary McCarthy, you come down from there! Or I’m coming up!”
Feminine laughter. A red-headed woman grinning down at him from an oak tree.
·
The next day she remembered something her mother told her. It was about work.... And a guest...lecturer?
At dinner she said, “For some reason last night I remembered you talking about a guest lecturer who really impressed you. A surgeon? Something in your line of work.”
Rayanna Corcoran finished a sip of her wine and applied a fork to flaky fish on a dinner plate of finest china.
“That must have been Mary McCarthy. An impressive woman. She’s said to have never lost a patient. Teaches over at U Cal Montebello, a basic med course of all things. Head of Montebello Emergency.”
She ate a bite of fish, took a sip of wine, thinking. Bethany let her, worked on her steak. Said, “Thank you, God. Or should I say Nicolas?”
She grinned at her chef step-father. He smiled back.
“I remember now. She’s married to a rich old Californio, Roberto Rodriguez. His father made a fortune in oil.”
Roberto Rodriguez!
·
“Sandrine” gave Bethany no more troubleshooting jobs. Instead Bethany applied herself to the InterWeb and to searching for references to the two names her mother had mentioned.
There was much to discover. Mary McCarthy was rich in her own right, from various medical patents and a private practice in plastic surgery. She’d also inherited a small fortune from her mother, who’d had the same name. Mama McCarthy had been an early talky movie star, very glamorous.
Roberto Rodriguez II was heir to an oil fortune. He owned the land upon which the University of California at Montebello was built, and leased part of it for 99 years to the university. For 99 cents!
But he was anything but an idle scion. He owned a string of Mexican restaurants among other businesses and had a degree in botany. He taught at UCM despite not having a doctorate. And it was not because, or only because, he owned the land.
He also owned a research ranch which turned out some useful grafts and genetic modifications of plants. The deserts of the Middle East were being reclaimed by a vine which protected the soil from the hot winds of the area. It also secreted water from the air and was a food and water source.
Mary and Roberto lived on his ranch, Rancho Milagro. It was nestled into the nature preserve to the east of Montebello city.
Reasonably confident she knew her quarry she took to the air one day and flew toward the city. It was to the east a dozen miles or so and a bit south of Burbank.
There! A tall hill or short mountain thrust up from the flat Los Angeles basin. Atop it was the university, a dozen or so buildings with red-tile roofs and faux-adobe sides. Some were multistory, some were not. In the center was a tall domino of a building with smoky-glass sides.
Dotted all over the “beautiful mountain” were oil wells pumping oil still, enriching Roberto Rodriquez still. They were all camouflaged by green plastic or wooden walls which hid the wells.
Bethany had read about other measures Milagro Oil used to lessen environmental impact of the wells. They were less visible but just as real.
On the lower reaches of the mountain to the west a huge indoor mall curved around the mountain. To the south was a sprawling city, Montebello, where the houses and businesses ran all the way from quite-up-scale to middle-class and below. Rodriguez owned several Mexican restaurants there, some up-scale and some very down-scale.
The thought of Mexican food stirred Bethany’s appetite, never far away from her thoughts. A shapechanger’s body demanded a lot of food.
This diverted Bethany down to the lower-class side of city. She alighted in a parking lot between two big trucks and blinked into visibility. Inside the cavernous restaurant a smiling young Mexican hostess escorted her to a table and gave her a menu.
The shapechanger ordered the biggest combination meal and dug in happily when it arrived. She ordered the “muy caliente” sauce and used it lavishly. She could drink boiling water and munch red peppers, so this sauce was only mildly piquant to her.
An hour later she lifted into th
e air and sailed around to the eastern side of the mountain. There lay many square miles of greenery, the Rio Hondo nature preserve, its center a long winding lake. Closest to the mountain was a square ranch: Rancho Milagro.
There was a large two-story ranch house in its center in true adobe California style. Behind it were a couple of barns and smaller houses and sheds. In the front nearest the mountain were several plots of crops and bushes and trees, all in regular patterns.
There were several boxy sheds interspersed around the experimental plots, or so Bethany guessed they were. From one came a man who looked up in the air directly at her. Then he waved and lifted up from the earth.
Son of a bitch! This must be Roberto Rodriguez. And he could fly like her. And see her.
He approached in a leisurely fashion, slowed to a stop a few feet away.
“Hello. Bethany Rossiter, I presume.”
Her momentary panic cooled, Beth replied.
“Roberto Rodriguez, I presume.”
He smiled, a quick flash of teeth white against his light brown skin.
“Yes. May I invite you inside for cool drinks and a chat? And I’d like to invite my wife to join us.”
“Lead the way.”
He did, pivoting in the air and moving quickly toward the ranch house. From a pocket he took a cell phone and spoke into it for a minute or so.
Bethany followed, alighting when he did and walking a bit behind him and to one side to the ornate double doors to the house. He opened them and walked inside. She followed, closing the door behind her. A big living room revealed itself.
“She’ll be here in about ten minutes. She was up at the university.”
“She doesn’t fly? ”
“No. She has other talents. Now, iced tea sound good?”
At her nod he walked across the floor carpeted with a Navajo-design rug and into a doorway. Down a long hall was a door-less doorway into a large kitchen.
It was nice, modern, but hardly what one would expect of a multi-millionaire many times over. He gestured at a table of thick dark wood with a half-dozen chairs surrounding it.
“Sit if you’d like. I’ll put on the water and get out the fixings.”
The far side of the table was near a tall counter separating the dining area from the sink, stove, and refrigerator. She settled herself in a straight-backed chair with a cushioned seat.
She watched him as he took out a kettle, filled it, and set it upon the stove. Then he took down a tray and loaded it with cups, sugar and cream dispensers, and a pot of tea bags.
He was of average height and strong build with an athletic shape, but not body-builder chunky. This was deceptive, she knew. He was like her, ultra-strong but not showing it.
He was dressed in jeans, boots, and a short-sleeved blue-and-white checked shirt. His face was more Spaniard than Mexican, good-looking more than handsome.
He set the tray down on the table and sat opposite her, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs.
“I’ve known you existed since you left me a message in each of my old European accounts. The miracle of automatic message forwarding. But I don’t know much about you than what is on the Interweb. Mind telling me a few things while we wait for Mary?”
“Better I save that for her. Suppose you tell me about yourself. I have only fragments of dreams to go on. I know you were born in Galicia, were a Comanche medicine man, samurai, Arab leader, and general in the German Army.”
“Prussian army actually. Germany as it is today didn’t exist till later. And I was a ronin, not a samurai. They have masters, ronin don’t. They were not quite outlaws, but close.”
“My latest memory was of you as a West Texas gunfighter.”
He sighed, grinned. “Have just one little gunfight and forever after you’re a gunfighter. No, I settled down in West Texas and ranched. After a century of being a warrior all over the world fighting got tiresome. Pity it took me that long to go from overgrown boy to a grownup.”
He and Bethany had been hearing the approach of Mary McCarthy for some time, first her car in the distance, then the sound of her car door closing, and a back door (likely from a garage) close. Now Mary came into the room from another door into the kitchen.
“The opinion on the ‘grownup’ status is divided. Hello, I’m Mary McCarthy.”
The woman who walked toward Beth was tall with wide shoulders and hips with a matronly waist. Which countered the appearance of athleticism. Likely intentional.
Her hair was curly, very bright red, her face pretty but not very much, and she had freckles. She was dressed in mildly formal attire, a dress suit with the jacket discarded somewhere.
Bethany stood. Mary walked around Beth and the table and touched the hand Roberto raised to her. For long moments they just smiled at each other.
This reminded Beth that Rodriguez and now Mary did not offer to shake hands with her, the customary greeting in Europe and North America. Shapechanger etiquette? Not to probe others or let others probe them?
The whistle of the tea pot on the stove had been getting louder. Mary turned toward it and brought it back to the table along with a pad to protect the table from the hot metal. She poured near full the coffee cup in front of her husband, already waiting with two tea bags inside it.
She looked at Bethany. “Men! Using coffee cups instead of tea cups, tea bags instead of loose tea.”
Beth grinned back. “I’m afraid I’m a barbarian too. Hit me hot mama.” She held up her own coffee cup.
Mary poured, saying, “‘Hit me hot mama’! What children are coming to these days.”
Nevertheless, she placed a tea bag into her own coffee cup, poured it full of water, set the pot on its pad, and seated herself at the table’s end with her husband on one hand and Bethany on her other.
“Now, pay attention. Sugar first, THEN milk,” she said, demonstrating. “Only barbarians, or men, do it the other way.”
Her husband had been watching her, a smile on his face.
A pang struck Bethany. The love between the two was obvious, and the sense that between the two nothing was held back. Very unlike how she and her lovers dealt with the other.
As his wife lifted her cup to sip Roberto said, “I’ve been catching Bethany up on my life. At her request, I should add. Now suppose you do the same.”
Bethany said, “Please do so. But first, what happened after West Texas?”
“I came here around the turn of the century, got involved in business, discovered oil, and my life has been pretty ordinary since. Except I met a movie star and got involved with her.”
Bethany said, “I guessed from my reading that both of you masqueraded as your children. You, Mary, were in film, then you as your child studied medicine.
“What about before all that?”
“Oh, but I’d rather hear about you.”
“She’s modest,” said her husband. “In Ireland she became the first female doctor in that benighted country to practice medicine, invented the telephone, lots of other devices, introduced the germ theory of disease, and basically revolutionized science and industry everywhere.”
Mary shrugged off his praise.
“More interesting is you, Bethany. May I call you that?”
“Beth is shorter. What do you know about me?” She wasn’t sure how much she should trust these two despite the ease she felt around them.
“Mostly what are in the newsblogs,” said Mary. “When you were 16 you died the first time—”
“Wait! The FIRST time?”
“You are immortal, dear. You don’t stay permanently dead, even if your body is completely destroyed. You come back inside an embryo before it develops a soul.”
“You mean I’d keep another soul from being born?!”
“Don’t get upset. Souls don’t come into existence at conception. Until there is a nervous system there is none in the embryo. You take up residence very early. When the nerves develop you come awake and begin recovering your memories and
impressing yourself on your brain. You don’t nudge aside some soul which has been floating around waiting for a body.”
Bethany was unsure about that. It upset her to think she might prematurely kill a baby. But she’d come back to this subject.
Mary went on. They knew about her family situation, school years, and cheerleader history. They knew about her two personas, Sandrine and Ming. They knew about her recent work as a troubleshooter as Bethany for her Sandrine identity.
Prompted about herself she told them about her shapechanging abilities, healing, and flying. She said nothing about her weapons. Nor had they volunteered such, though she was certain they also had built-in weapons.
When she mentioned her language abilities and how she’d honed them all over the world they got excited .
“You can travel to the other side of the planet in a HALF HOUR?!”
Oops.
“Sure. I go up above the atmosphere and from there I can basically go to anywhere in the solar system.”
Roberto’s built-in flying ability could not, or did not, save air in another universe. It did shield as well as Beth’s did, against inertia and collisions.
More questions were cut short. All three were hungry.
“Let’s go to Chateau Marmount. We can continue this on the way,” said Mary.
“Well, I can take you all in my bubble,” said Roberto. “We’ll get there faster. Despite being limited to a thousand-foot ceiling.” He scowled theatrically at Bethany.
“No way,” said Mary. “I’m driving. I love to drive. An accomplishment this lout avoids.”
“Hey, I have basic skills. I can get there and back.”
“Not without taking annoying chances. He thinks because we’re immortal a car wreck is a merely an unfortunate inconvenience. Come on. Let’s primp.” She lifted a hand toward Bethany but did not touch her. More shapechanger etiquette, she supposed. They stood.
“Dear, wear one of your hidalgo suits. He looks so wonderful in a uniform, I swoon.”
“There hasn’t been much swooning lately,” her husband grumped.
“I promise to swoon tonight. I’ll even be Glamorous Mary Movie Star.”
