Next, Gea mentally transmitted the list of people involved. She didn’t need to say more. A group of guards went running to arrest those mentioned.
“Everyone knows that the penalty for treason is death,” Gea announced, while she held her sword up high. Itheus started moving forward slowly. Drops of sweat fell from his temples.
“My Queen, please, don’t...” he implored.
“I have seen to the deepest part of your mind, Itheus, and pardoning you would only mean that you betray me in the future. Your ambition has transformed you into someone unworthy to wear a crown.”
Itheus came forward to where Gea was holding the sword at the height of his mouth, opened it, and continued to advance, slowly but relentlessly.
Gea didn’t move and held her arm firm while the desperate Atlantean was slowly impaled on the sword. When he reached the hilt, he spasmed, dropped his own sword, and began to shake like a fish on a hook.
She held her arm steady while Itheus was bleeding to death, impaled on her sword. The crowd murmured in horror and Gea decided that the punishment was complete. She concentrated completely on her surroundings. She could see the waves and the components of every creature and every object within hundreds of feet around her. Suddenly she concentrated just on Itheus, who was before her. And she sent an order: “Disintegrate.” Suddenly every one of Itheus’ cells came apart. One minute the Atlantean was in agony stuck on Gea’s sword, and the next he transformed into a kind of soup that fell to the floor between Gea and the other kings. Even his clothing and sword disintegrated, turning into dust.
The people shouted in fear and everyone stepped back several paces. Some guests ran out, and one even fainted. Gea made a quieting gesture and spoke to them all with her mind.
“Those with good intentions have nothing to fear from me.”
“Tomorrow the succession ceremony for the Sixth Kingdom will take place,” she said, sitting down on the throne. “And now, without further interruptions, let’s finish the swearing-in ceremony and then we’ll continue with the party. And clean that up,” she pointed to the remains of Itheus.
“Is there a problem?” Gea directed her thought to Alexis, noting his discomfort.
“Gea...was that really necessary? People are terrorized.”
“From what I can tell, you are, too. Do you think I could do that to you, too?”
“Would you do it? I think that’s what everyone is asking.”
“Like I said, no one has anything to fear if they aren’t looking for trouble. And I know you are looking for the good. Come here.”
Alexis approached the throne and stopped at Gea’s left side. The swearing in had finished and the eleven kings who remained waited expectantly. Gea looked at Alexis.
“Kneel down.”
Alexis kneeled in front of her. When he was near enough, Gea took him by the shoulder and bringing her face to his, gave him a long kiss. When she let him go, she looked at the others.
“Alexis Pavilis is my consort and has my complete confidence. If he tells you something, it’s as if I told you myself, and he has the same authority over you as I myself have. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” they all said.
“Another thing. From now on, the law of succession of the kings of the twelve realms will be modified in the following way: Apart from the other legal and administrative requisites, only women will be able to take the throne. From this moment forward, there will only be eras of queens. The male kings who are on the throne now will be able to finish out their reigns naturally, but when they are replaced, it will be done in accordance with the change I’ve just made.”
Putting her hand on one of the floating screens near her, it lit up in green.
“The law is now in effect. You may leave,” ordered Gea.
DESTINY
MSC Grandiosa, December 2, 2027. 1:00 p.m.
They had checked the engines of all the lifeboats one by one and had to replace the small fuses that were meant to protect from the type of problem they had. Only one engine that exploded due to overload during the attacks was completely disabled.
The rest of the ship’s circuits survived without problems, though almost all the entertainment electronics were burned. Most of the TVs and music equipment were fried. In any event, when they carried one of the televisions that survived from one of the interior cabins to the bar on the fifth deck, they confirmed that there was no signal to be had.
Following Leora’s orders, Tonio started to slowly speed up the ship’s motors. They’d raised anchor a few minutes before, and the machines starting up made the whole ship vibrate. They set course for Blanca Bay and advanced slowly, flanked by the submarine. Fortunately for the submarine, at the time of the explosions, the armor protected it from the collision with the cruiser, but for that very reason, the MSC Grandiosa was dented and torn.
The boat navigated slowly. Leora was at the bridge when she received a radio message from the submarine.
“Captain, we have contact from land.”
“Survivors? Excellent! Did you say anything to them?”
“Nothing yet, they just asked about us.”
“Can we follow the contact here?”
“Precisely. Captain Robert is going to the bridge and we’re transferring the frequencies to your communications officer.”
“Captain Robert?” asked Leora when the captain arrived at the bridge.
“Pardon me, Captain. We made contact with a radio operator for a group of people on the ground and he told me he was going to put us in contact with someone more important. I thought it would be more appropriate for you to talk to them. After all, you know better than anyone the situation on your boat and the resources we have.”
Leora took the microphone.
“Captain Leora Shapira here aboard the cruise ship MSC Grandiosa under an Italian flag.”
“Rho City here, we can speak informally.”
“Rho City?” Leora thought for a moment, but couldn’t locate any important city by that name. “How have you survived the pandemic?”
There was a long pause. Leora waited, more and more uneasily. And what kind of name was ‘Rho’ for an Argentine city?
“Hello?”
“It would be better if you spoke with our rulers. Wait a minute, please.”
Leora had never felt so adrift. It seemed like an alien movie cliché, “Take me to your leader.” What the hell was happening? How many people were there on land and why were they so evasive? She looked at Robert to ask him what he thought, but she saw by his expression that he was as bewildered as she was.
They sat down to wait for them to contact them again, but a minute later, Robert’s communicator sounded.
“What’s up?” asked the captain.
“Captain, it would be better if you came. Urgently,” Lionel asked.
“We’re about to speak with someone on land, can’t it wait a few minutes?”
“Captain...I’m sorry for the interruption but I must reiterate the urgency. We have satellite images and don’t know how long the contact will last.”
Robert looked inquisitively at Leora.
“I promise I’ll tell you the whole conversation later, if you don’t get back in time,” Leora told him.
“I’m sorry, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He excused himself, shrugging his shoulders and returning to his submarine.
CONTACT
Rho, December 2, 2027. 1:30 p.m.
Sofía had remained prostrate since she had put on the tiara. Damaris and Althaea went immediately to her side, but they couldn’t wake her up. They finally made her comfortable very carefully, putting a jacket as a pillow under her head.
“We need a cot in this room—people keep ending up on the floor,” joked Althaea.
Damaris looked at her angrily, while she tried unsuccessfully to remove the tiara.
“In case you didn’t notice, Sofía has fainted, and this thing is stuck to her head.”
&nb
sp; “Calm down, you’re right, it was a bad joke. Her temperature is normal and so are her vital signs. I’d say that her nanites and her brain are adapting to the information and characteristics of the tiara. Or the other way around. Whatever it is, whenever someone else tried to use the tiara, they were never able to connect. The fact that she can’t take it off indicates that they’re compatible. Let’s wait a little bit.”
At that moment, Ponteus entered abruptly.
“Sofía, Althaea, you have to come see this,” he asked from the door.
“We’re having a small crisis at the moment, what’s so urgent?” asked Althaea.
“We just had contact with a nuclear submarine. It’s near the coast in Blanca Bay.”
“Are they threatening us?”
“On the contrary, they’re asking for help. But wait, the help isn’t only for them. They say that a few days ago, while trying to find someone alive, they accidentally found a cruise ship in the Atlantic. They just put us in contact with the captain.”
“A cruise ship? How many people are we talking about?”
“From what they said, about four thousand people, between passengers and crew. What happened to Sofía?”
“She’s getting used to Gea’s tiara, we hope.”
“She put on the tiara?” For a minute, it seemed he was going to say something more, but he pursed his lips and didn’t say anything, though he looked at them with clear disapproval. “So who’s going to talk to them?”
“I’ll do it. Have them transfer the communication to this office,” ordered Althaea.
Althaea went to the radio console, while Damaris stayed with Sofía. Ponteus worked at the console for a few seconds and then established communication again.
“Captain Leora? I have our representative here, you’ll want to talk to her.”
“Captain Leora here. Yes?”
Ponteus gestured to Althaea. She thought for a moment. What should she do with these humans? That Tzedek didn’t want to kill them was clear, but he also didn’t want to leave them as they were. But now that they were all dead, how much harm could a few humans do?
“Captain Leora, it’s a pleasure to hear of survivors. I imagine you want to know what’s happening.”
“You imagine right. What is your position, where are you and what is your situation?”
“My name is Althaea and you might say I’m temporarily in charge of this city. We’re a city of several thousand inhabitants and we would love to help you.”
“A city? And may I ask how you survived?”
“We have a vaccine for the illness that killed everyone.”
Althaea could hear several people discussing it beyond the microphone, but couldn’t hear what they were saying.
A minute later, the conversation finally continued.
“Will we be able to disembark on land to meet?”
“Definitely not, Captain. If you haven’t had any symptoms until now, it’s because you were at sea, isolated. From what we know, on land the bodies as well as animals can be carriers of the virus. If you get off the boat, you’ll get sick and die within a short time. Hmm, and if you get near the coast, be careful with the birds.”
“Thank you for the advice. What kind of vaccine are we talking about?”
“It’s a preventive recombinant vaccine. It won’t work if you’re already sick, so it’s imperative that you don’t get infected, but it’s one hundred percent effective to prevent illness. Also, there haven’t been any harmful side effects that we know of from injecting it.”
“I’m afraid to ask but...can we get the vaccine? Do you have doses?”
“Well, that’s the main problem. We have some doses frozen, but probably not even a hundred. You said you have several thousand people there?”
“Yes, a little more than four thousand between crew and passengers.”
Althaea looked up some information on her computer console. The factory and the laboratory in Rho had a good production capacity, but every lot of vaccines took a couple of weeks to produce and the maximum processing capacity was about a hundred vaccines per batch.
“It would take us quite a while to create the vaccines. How much time can you stay on the boat without getting anything?”
“Not much longer, Althaea. We were close to the end of the journey when we found out about the pandemic and our reserves are almost exhausted. We’ve got a couple of days’ worth of food, at a maximum.”
Althaea shifted in concern. Feeding more than four thousand people for several days would be a lot of provisions. How were they going to do it? She looked at the others and saw that they were thinking the same thing.
“We need a little time to figure out a plan of action, Captain.”
“Is it possible that some of us could get the doses that you have, to be able to leave and go back on the ship?”
“No problem with sending you the doses that we have, it takes twenty-four hours to take effect, so that’s the minimum time that you should wait before getting off the ship. The problem is that once on land, you could become carriers of the virus. You wouldn’t get sick but if you return to the ship, you could infect all of those who aren’t vaccinated. And I’m afraid the same could happen with the food that we send, unless we can find some way of quickly and securely sterilizing it. We have to test it because the truth is, we don’t know for sure. The thing is, one mistake and...”
“I understand the situation. I assume that in your city there isn’t room for several thousand more people?”
“I’m afraid there is no physical room. However, there are nearby towns that have become, um, available. We could send you the doses we have, and a group of your people could come and prepare the place where you want to establish yourselves, if that’s what you’re thinking of doing. Wherever you go, you’ll have to empty the space of cadavers, clean it, replace burned transformers and power lines, get power to it, and many other tasks. Surely many of our inhabitants would volunteer to help, but it you who are going to live there so it would be better if you choose the place and everything.”
“Agreed, that makes sense. Given the situation, you’ll understand that we must discuss a bit to decide who will disembark and what to do. Meanwhile, how will you send the vaccines without us getting infected when taking them?”
Althaea thought for a moment.
“Ponteus, if I’m remembering correctly, we have a drone?”
“I don’t think so, but we can look for the plans and sent the directions to the factory. We can put together a quadcopter. We just have to assemble it. It could be ready in a few hours.”
“And do we have what we need to sterilize anything that we send to the ship?”
“There are barrels of pure distilled ethyl alcohol for medical use. We can spray it to disinfect anything. It won’t be sterilized, but it should be enough to kill any remaining virus and keep it that way if nobody else touches it.”
Althaea picked up the communicator again.
“Captain Leora, when you’ve decided, let me know, please, how many doses you’ll need now. We’ll start preparing things. We can get the vaccines to you by drone, if you send us the coordinates.”
“A drone? Excellent, I’ll communicate with you again shortly. We have to discuss the issue.”
“Very well, we’ll talk,” Althaea rang off. She left the controls and went to where Sofía was. Damaris was taking care of her.
“How is she, any change?”
“Still nothing.”
Althaea was getting nervous. What would happen if something happened to Sofía? Juan Carlos depended on the knowledge that she might be able to bring from Gea’s memories. And they had to figure out how to rescue the people on the boat. Sofía remained unchanged, so she retired to continue organizing rescue operations.
What else could go wrong?
SHARED
Rho, December 2, 2027. 2:30 p.m.
Sofía opened her eyes...
“Damaris? What happened?”
&
nbsp; “You lost consciousness when you put on the tiara. Do you feel okay?”
“Who are you? Why are you holding me?”
“What do you mean?”
“What am I doing here? Where is my baby?”
Sofía sat up suddenly, touching her belly. Damaris moved away, and surreptitiously called Althaea.
Sofía was examining her body, suddenly saw her hands and screamed.
“What the hell did you do to me! I demand answers right now!”
She frowned.
“Who the hell are you and how are you controlling my body? Leave me alone now!”
Sofía fell into the nearest chair.
“I’m alive. Where is my baby? What am I doing in a human body?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Gea, of course, Queen of Atlantis.”
“You aren’t Gea. You aren’t alive. You died many thousands of years ago.”
“That’s absurd. Tell the truth, child.”
“My name is Sofía. And you appeared when...l put on the tiara. I was seeing memories of your existence, but I put on the tiara to help my father. Not to return you to life.”
“Sofía? Are you okay?” asked Althaea, coming up to her.
“Althaea? Weren’t you exiled to Africa? Where are we, by the way? Oh, how annoying this is, could you stop doing it?” She put her hands to her head.
“This is my body,” she growled.
“Be quiet, little girl,” she exclaimed.
“You be quiet, you’re dead,” she grumbled again.
“But how disrespectful. I’m a queen, a little girl isn’t going to...”
Althaea, who was listening with her mouth hanging open, raised both hands in a peremptory gesture. She was a fast thinker, and deduced what had happened. Although it was incredible, it was evident that the tiara kept more than the mere memory of Gea.
“Gea?”
“Where are we? Where is everybody? Alexis? And Papa? And more importantly, where is my baby?”
Althaea hung her head.
Earth Keepers Page 36
