by Mike Arsuaga
Lorna muffled a simper into the sheets.
After Ulbert left, Ed made a small frown, commenting, “Sometimes the old fellow presumes too much in our relationship. He thinks because he bounced me on his knee, he can take liberties.”
Lorna shook her head. “Don’t you see? He loves you. All of them do. They understand how hard you work, and appreciate the sacrifices, but they worry about you, too.”
“It’s not like I can die of a heart attack.”
“True, but going mad isn’t out of the question.”
Ed regarded the door through which Ulbert had departed. “Do you think so? Do they love me? They never say.”
“You might be famous and powerful, but you’re a rock when it comes to reading people.” Lorna began to dress.
Defensively, he snapped back. “What makes you such an expert?”
“I’m a cop. That’s my job. You’re surrounded by a wonderful family, not to mention concerned employees. Maybe they don’t say anything because of the way you keep them at arm’s length. Once in a while, try asking how their day went.”
“But there’s so much to do, and never enough time.”
“Trust me. The work will always be there. Ask yourself this—when you’re on your death bed, what will you recall about your life? Not the projects you completed or your place in corporation history. You’ll remember family or relationships. A child’s first word. Your wedding night. The face of a dear friend. So make time to live those moments. Don’t die without memories.” In the following silence, Lorna wondered how much of the advice she gave him applied to her, too.
“You sound like my Aunt Cassie in her later years.” Ed walked over to the curtain and peeked out. “It’s going to be a pretty day. How about a walk around the island before I put you back on the plane?”
Since abandoning plans to escape in favor of accepting Ed’s hospitality, Lorna had lived in each moment of their time together. His last remark jolted her back to reality, bringing out the certainty the visit would soon end.
Ed pulled back the drapes. A panorama of mountains and jungle with a seaside village on an aquamarine bay flooded in. They were several hundred feet above the water. The glass of the other windows in their line of sight blended into the cliff face. She assumed the same was true of theirs.
“The main house was carved from the face of a small mountain,” Ed explained. “The Operations Center, including my office and room, are in what remains of the mountain. The drapes are lead-lined for communication security.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Just in case you were curious.” He winked.
A gray motor launch turned between two outcroppings marking the harbor entrance. “Part of your navy?” she asked, perching on the edge of the bed while putting on panty hose.
“We have three of them. One’s on patrol at all times to keep out trespassers.”
Lorna admired Ed’s profile. Grandmother Sam’s face came to mind. For generations, this tiny lycan had generously contributed the genetics of red hair and bright-green eyes, along with a turned-up nose, to the richness of the family tapestry.
“Tell me about your grandparents.”
Ed paused to organize a response. “Grandmother ran the corporation before turning the reins over to my father. She’s the practical one. Grandfather Jim is the scholar and dreamer. They loved this house very much, so everyone was surprised when they moved to Mars the year after Aunt Claire, passed away. She was the last of their children.”
“Having a child die before you do must be the worst thing in the world.”
Ed turned with a concerned expression. “Do you have any children?”
“No. I don’t want to watch any of them grow old and die before me.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that. What I mean is, yes, barring accidents, hybrids die before the parents. Fight the inevitability, and all you’ll do is come to the end your life bitter and angry. Accept it, and you can enjoy your time together. My grandparents and their children, even Cassandra at the end, chose the second option. My father carried the positive view into his life with Mother. I did the same with Miriam, my wife. No one regretted it.”
For Lorna, the mention of Miriam White seemed like her ghost had entered the room. Lorna moved close to Ed, wrapping her arm around his to guard against she who sought to reclaim him. To ward off her rival, Lorna returned to the original subject.
“Do your grandparents live in a house like this on Mars?”
“Oh, nowhere near,” he answered. “Life there is still rugged. Despite the terraforming efforts, space—farmland, residential, manufacturing—all space is at a premium. They live in four rooms, doing their share along with the rest of the colony. They endure the inconveniences in the belief the future for our kind lies there, rather than here.” Ed stopped. A sad, faraway expression came over his face. “From the day he became CEO, my father ardently supported Mars colonization, gradually convincing the rest of the family and the board of the project’s value.”
Snapping out of his reminiscence, he faced Lorna, continuing in a tone filled with pride. “Grandmother is the mayor of Main Colony. Grandfather teaches in the university, while pursuing scholarly projects in his spare time. They look like humans in their thirties.” Ed smiled at the recollection, continuing, “On his last web cam visit, Grandfather announced that after almost a century together, they still copulate every night, sometimes more than once. He maintains they are the happiest couple in the two worlds.”
At first, the frank description of the First Parent’s sex life shocked Lorna, but then she remembered how, among The Others, the sexual activity of relatives and friends served as dinner table conversation. Human cultural norms, which had dominated her life for the last fifteen years, had fuelled the initial distress.
While she stared at the face of the far mountain, solar panels flashed the morning sun, silver like heliographs. Ed came up from behind, entwining her waist. In response, she rubbed the crown of her head against the morning stubble on his chin.
“I envy my parent’s and grandparents’ happiness sometimes.”
“How so? You had a good marriage.” She turned her head and gazed up. “Didn’t you?”
“Miriam was a wonderful woman. Australian, you know. But how do I put it? She was not The One. Not someone I could spend eternity with. She felt the same, I’m sure. My parents were Christians. When they died, they anticipated reunion in a higher place. For Miriam and me, one lifetime sufficed.”
“Yet you stayed with her until she died?” Lorna asked.
“Don’t confuse love with loyalty. I owed her for all she did, for all she gave to me, not to mention the boys. I would not dishonor her or them by seeking a new mate.”
Lorna squeezed his upper arm. “She’s been gone for how long, three years? Why haven’t you found someone? You have two worlds of women to choose from. Three worlds, if you count the Moonbase.”
“That’s the problem. What I do, the power, the wealth, all of it is separate from what I am. I hope to find The One, someone who recognizes the difference.” He sighed. “I have to face that she may not exist in this life. Maybe, after my time on Earth is done, when I no longer have obligations to the world, I shall meet a special female. I will come to her, as a man to a woman in the hope she will love Ed White for simply being Ed White.”
“Maybe the difference is you love many in a lifetime, but are “in love” with only one. I love many, have loved many, but never found the one I could be “in love” with. Does that make sense?”
Ed nodded in silent, solemn agreement.
Lorna’s allusion to her own history caused her to speculate they were more alike than had first appeared. They existed at opposite ends of the social and economic scale, true, but were still two wandering souls seeking their destiny. A crazy delusion swept her, suggesting they could be good for each other. Putting the idea aside, she changed the subject.
“Well,” Lorna erupted cheerily, giving his upper arm a couple of quick pa
ts. “If we’re going to take a tour, I need to return to my—uh, your grandparents’—room to freshen up.”
“Certainly,” he answered distractedly. “I’ll call at eleven. We’ll have lunch at the waterfront.”
* * * *
Lorna sat under the blazing lights of the vanity, part of the room once belonging to The First Parents, peering out across the large, empty space. The massive elegant furniture appeared small. So much had happened since she’d awoken on the great, round bed. She’d changed, but in what ways?
For certain, she needed time alone to figure everything out. Their shared night of passion was the least part. Small things like putting his scent on the handkerchief, or the way they fit together when standing in his room at the overlook of the bay came to mind. These events, at first sight trivial, were both important and profound, up there with the surprise of discovering common viewpoints on so many topics. Ed had told her things about himself that he may have shared with others, but never, she was certain, to the depths they’d explored.
Police experience told her that. In his face arose the same detached, faraway expression suspects and witnesses assumed at a specific point in an interrogation. They came into the room determined to say nothing or what they wanted the police to know. But soon enough, she has them spilling everything. Just before they broke down to confess everything, or implicate everyone, they assumed the same mien Ed had. From then on, pure untold truth would roll out.
A picture of the two Eds came to mind. The Chairman Ed stood, vast and unapproachable. Like a god sitting in the clouds on a gold throne, detached from the individual ambitions and desires of the tiny creatures below who tilled, warred, and loved. As a conscientious shepherd, he managed the best interests of his flock, sometimes at the expense of individual members. While his charges often did not get what they wanted, they always got what they needed.
Then there was the other Ed, the simple creature residing inside of the other—the one who believed in true love, retaining hope of finding what he innocently called, “The One”. Shadow Ed, Lorna decided, she could fall in love with. While the two versions remained so far apart, the contraption of a relationship the three of them shared misfired and pinged like a poorly tuned engine. As Chairman Ed became more like Shadow Ed, the engine would settle out, until they coincided, and the only sound became a smooth purr of synchronous harmony, turning a silent frictionless crankshaft.
Like that would ever happen without a class “A” miracle!
CHAPTER NINE
“Jesus Christ,” Mike growled when Lorna appeared on her first day back at work. “Nice of you to show up.” His comment represented the only verbal acknowledgement, official or otherwise, made of her absence, which included another two days after arrival authorized by Assistant Chief Durning, himself. Acclimation time, he called it.
When she passed his office door, Captain Gregg recorded her arrival time in the more customary way, made subtler by leaving out the banter. A picture of him slipping on his own bodily fluids in the excitement to report her absence on the first day, to be deflated when Watch Commander Bell said she was covered, hung in the happy place of her mind like a treasured family portrait.
With a sigh, she began to open the mail.
After lunch in the quaint little harbor, Ed had put her on the corporate jet. Ethan accompanied her to Orlando. Two employees loaded trunks full of clothes and makeup in the baggage compartment.
“Of course they’re yours.” Ed laughed before they left the mansion. In the vanity area, a maid packed up the items provided for her when she arrived. “They won’t fit me,” Shadow Ed said.
Lorna calculated she wouldn’t need to buy cosmetics for several years. “Some of the outfits I haven’t worn. Can’t you return them?”
“The clothiers we deal with do not take returns,” Ed, the Chairman answered.
Ed—she wasn’t sure which one—kissed her on the mouth when she boarded the plane. The backwash from the engines stirred up a gust of wind, plastering trousers and silk shirt hard against his handsome frame.
“Farewell, Aliff,” she muttered, the name now etched in her consciousness.
She slept for most of the flight. When she stirred, Ethan stood over her, presenting a snack tray. “Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
With an insipid hand wave, she declined the food, but a need to explain her sound sleep lingered. “I usually nap in the afternoons. I work four a.m. to one p.m.”
“That’s a tough schedule.”
What would you know, boss’s son?
His kind expression didn’t change. “You’re thinking what do I know about tough schedules since I’m the boss’s son. ESP research candidate, remember? Father didn’t let any of us slide. I spent a year on Mars and another in the Congo, doing charity work.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Beaming down on her in a way that brought Ed’s image to mind, he continued. “My father cares a great deal for you, but the CEO part of him is afraid to let anyone get too close. Be patient. It will work out.”
A hand nudged her on the shoulder. “Ms. Winters,” said the flight attendant. “Wake up, Ms. Winters. We’re landing in thirty minutes. You have time for a comfort break before we have to put on seat belts.”
Lorna snapped her head back and forth, disoriented before realizing the previous episode with Ethan had been a dream. Seated at the front, he, also, stirred from a nap. Rising to his feet, his eyes engaged hers, and he nodded pleasantly...
Returning to the present in the midst of early shift bustle, Lorna paused in the repetitive, almost robotic, process of dealing with mail. After flipping through half the stack, she stopped. An envelope with the corporation’s return address topped the remaining pile, addressed to her personally. Inside, she found a letter from Ed, thanking her for their time together and listing various contact numbers. Among them, the number of the director of the DNA laboratory in Miami stood out.
A phone call later, the samples taken from the Gomez murder site headed south. Two days after that, the names of a pair of lycans, Michel and Grace Felder, crossed Lorna’s desk. They lived in East Orlando.
“I have hits on the DNA from the Gomez case,” Lorna said, walking into Captain Gregg’s office. “I’d like to send S.W.A.T. to check it out.”
Gregg peered over a set of thin glasses. “What’s wrong with a patrol car or two? Isn’t that their job?”
Thinking of Ed’s suggestion that they were dealing with a ring selling human organs rather than a bunch of ferals, she said, “The operation might be bigger than we think. I don’t want uniforms scaring them off.”
“Do you have something to suggest it’s more than ferals?”
“Not specifically, just a hunch.”
Gregg had been filling out a report the whole time they were talking. He stopped, looking up. “Hunches don’t count. Evidence does.”
“Okay, let me take Mike Geurin for a drive-by.”
He appraised the proposal with a skeptical frown “Just watching them? Nothing else?”
“Nothing else, I promise. We won’t do anything without backup.”
“Okay, remember don’t get killed. The paperwork is a bitch.”
Lorna left behind a stink-eye for him to ponder. Upon clearing Gregg’s doorway, she bellowed, “Geurin, you’re with me.”
“Right away, boss.” The volume of the reply, diluted by the distance across the room, still bore familiar nicotine-scarred hoarseness. A yellow, plaid coat flung around the shoulders of a shirt with sweat-stained armpits and neck, Mike shuffled toward the elevator, pushed the button for the ground floor, and waited for Lorna.
“Just like old times, eh?”
Lorna put a full clip in her firearm. “Yeah, Mike. Just like old times.”
Mike checked the car from the motor pool, which meant he got to drive—again, just like old times. Lorna didn’t care. Her mind dwelt on the case, together with what they might find at the de
stination.
“Remember, no hot-dogging. We’re supposed to check the place out. If we see something, call in the Marines.” A favorite expression, she often used it. The allusion was to an elite military force noted for valor, but abolished when the United States combined the military branches sometime before the Dissolution.
“Got it, Princess.”
Lorna rolled an unserious, reproachful eye at him, like the expression a teacher would use on an incorrigible but charming child.
On the ride over, Lorna consulted the OPD search engine for information about their destination.
“East Orlando was once a fashionable area, but the hard times, exacerbated by population decline, left large numbers of abandoned homes and commercial buildings.” She read aloud from the information on the monitor. “Many slid into ruin, of no use to anyone, but others became gang hideouts or drug labs.”
And if Ed’s hypothesis is correct, a lot worse.
The address yielded an abandoned private storage facility, hundreds of cinder-block-walled cubicles in long rows. Each sported a corrugated metal door in various conditions of repair. “They could be anywhere,” Mike said.
“Ya think?”
They made a drive by. Nothing moved inside. Mike swung back, parking behind the abandoned hulk of a truck cab. They couldn’t be seen from the storage units.
“If they’re home, they’ll be stirring soon. Let’s just sit here and be cool,” Lorna said.
From experience, Lorna knew Mike got fidgety on stakeouts. When they were partners, he’d made the coffee and food runs, anything to keep busy.
After leafing through a handbook on firearm regulations, followed by a fashion magazine wedged under a seat, he ran out of things to do. “Did I show you my new piece? It’s a Magnum. I can stop a grizzly in its tracks.”
The long-barreled, dull-gray weapon hung suspended in Mike’s grip.