by Glover, Nhys
Now he was being cruel. She belatedly realised that, what he saw as her ingratitude, had hurt him.
‘My… m…oth..er’
He looked down at a writing tablet in his hands and then turned it toward her.
It wasn’t a chalkboard as she had thought, but a small TV screen. On the screen was a newspaper story from the Sydney Morning Herald dated 24 August 1970. The headline read: ‘Mother leads cause for improved Child Protection Laws’. The story then followed: ‘Amanda Jeffersen, mother of the heroine who died trying to save the life of a young boy who fell to his death from the Manly Ferry on 4 February 1968, has led the fight in the last two years to improve the lives of children suffering neglect in Australia. Ms Jeffersen states that “It is every parent’s obligation to ensure all children have safety, shelter and food in this lucky country. I lost my beloved daughter, and her body was never recovered, all because a mother didn’t save-guard her own child on that ferry. I am determined to make sure such neglect never happens again.” Ms Jeffersen will be speaking at…’
The anger she felt at her mother’s hypocrisy was intense. She thrust the screen back at Julio, and folded her arms across her unfamiliar chest.
‘Yes, that was my reaction when I read this, too. I was concerned that your body might have washed up some time later. This is what I turned up in my research an hour ago. So excuse me if I feel no regret at stealing you away from a woman like that, who went on to have her ten minutes of fame, from your sacrifice.’
Jane wanted to snap back at him, but what could she say? If that newspaper story was true, her mother had gone on to be a spokeswoman for neglected children everywhere, when she herself had been the most negligent of parents. The hypocrisy stunned her.
It also broke her heart to realise how artificial her mother’s feelings for her had really been. How self-serving she was – to castigate Tommy’s mother, as if having a heroine for a daughter gave her the right to heap blame on another.
It sickened her.
‘Don’t think about it, Jane. I’m sorry I brought it up. I had no right to intentionally hurt you that way.’ His voice was gentle now, and she could tell he was angry with himself.
She bit down on the plump bottom lip until she tasted blood. Tears stung her eyes, and she had nowhere to hide her shame.
‘Don’t cry, Querida. She isn’t worth it.’ Julio stood, and came to her side. He cupped her cheeks in his hands, and used his thumbs to wipe away the tears from under each eye.
‘You still wear my gift,’ he noted gruffly, running his fingers down the length of her neck to claim the locket on the chain. ‘I asked them to transfer it to your new body.’
The thought that she still wore his locket filled her with such a mixture of emotions. She felt pathetic and unlovable, that the one gift she had ever received, came from a stranger who had known her for only a week. A stranger who felt sorry for her.
At the same time, she felt incredibly grateful that Julio had cared enough to give her the locket at all and had made sure she didn’t lose it. His kindness made her uncomfortable and needy. She didn’t know why she deserved it, or how to repay it.
‘No more tears for you, Jane, ever again. I have given you a new life, one where you can be anything you want. Where you can be happy.’
Lifting her gaze up to meet his fierce brown eyes, she felt a jolt of electricity shoot between them. If what he said was true, if he was a time traveller who had saved her life, then she owed him for far more than a locket. She owed him everything.
Her feelings must have been written on her face, because he closed his eyes and drew in a deep, shaky breath.
Then, very slowly, he lowered his head, and kissed her lips. It was the softest, most tender of gestures; no more than a taste of the intensity that roiled beneath his aloof, formal exterior.
It was her first kiss, if she didn’t count the slobbering mouths of her mother’s men she had not been fast enough to avoid. And it was a kiss worthy of a princess.
‘Rest now, Jane. When you awake, I am going to introduce you to someone who I know you will like. Her name is Maggie Tasmania, and you’ll stay with her until you’re ready to decide your future plans.’
‘Stran…ge name.’
He laughed then, and the sound enticed her. ‘Not as strange as yours will be. Welcome to your new life Jane NewSW.’
She pulled a funny face, and he laughed again. ‘Our last names are always taken from the state or county where we originated. It is a way of connecting us to our origins. Sleep now, Jane. I will be back later.’
As she closed her eyes to do his bidding, her final thought was of that tender kiss. It was better than she had ever dreamed it would be. And her new heart took wings.
Chapter Five
Julio was shaking. His body was finally in shock, he told himself, although it was now eight hours since the traumatic rescue. It was the only explanation for the uncharacteristic way his system was reacting. Spikes of adrenalin were surging through him, leaving him weak in the aftermath.
Staggering to a seat in the garden outside the medical centre, he sat for a moment to soak up the sun and stabilize. All he saw was a pair of gold-flecked, green eyes that looked at him with adoration. He knew that expression, if not those eyes. Jane was already in residence in that stranger’s beautiful body, and she was still his adoring fan.
It was a school girl crush. She only thought she admired him because of his appearance. Had she met him six months ago, she would have treated him as the old man he actually was. He had no right to kiss her like that. How would she react when she found out that kiss hadn’t come from a young man her own age, but a man two hundred years older.
The idea that she would see him as a dirty old man frightened him. Used to the unwanted attention of older men, when she found out about him, she would reject him outright. And maybe that would be the best thing for them both. He’d done his job. He’d rescued a worthwhile human being. It should now be up to someone like Maggie Tasmania to introduce her to this world. She was little more than a child, with a child’s crush. Too much time with him, and her innocent adoration might lead him to take advantage of her inexperience.
But the kiss had shaken him. Still shook him. It had not just been a meeting of lips; it had been a meeting of souls. Jane had reached out from within that stranger’s body, and melded with him, like melted wax into sponge. Even after their mouths had separated, he felt branded by that kiss. And his body responded. Still responded to that kiss.
Jac Ulster seemed to come out of nowhere to sit down beside him. They didn’t look at each other, just stared out at the gardens that surrounded them.
In New Atlantis, the climate was ambient most of the year around. Located in the Atlantic Ocean, a hundred miles north of the Maderan capital of Fuchal, New Atlantis had risen from the sea during a massive quake, during the Dark Ages, which had also seen the sinking of the western seaboard of the Americas. It had been built on the remains of the first Atlantis, and modelled to reflect its pre-classical design with a few modern improvements – like the silent moving pathways that fanned out from the central government district like spokes on a wheel, linking all the concentric circled zones, or precincts, of the city to each other.
The medical centre, research centre, and the cavern that contained the Start Point Portal were all located on the circle closest to the government centre. Just across the canal lay the dormitory precinct where the bulk of the single inhabitants of the city lived, in small but luxurious one bedroom apartments. This had been Julio’s home since he arrived in New Atlantis to join the Child Retrieval Program.
‘I am glad I am not the only walking, talking miracle in this city now,’ Jac said lightly, encouraging Julio to laugh with him. Julio noted how easily Jac slipped from the informal speech patterns he used around his mate to those employed by the general New Atlantean population.
He was finding it easy to slip naturally into the informal speech patterns of Jane’s time too, even after only a mo
nth’s induction, and a few weeks in-situ. It suited him better than the more formal language of the new world. But he imagined he would be like Jac, adjusting his speech to his audience. At the moment, they were both Old Timers, and formal English was appropriate.
English wasn’t his native tongue, and so when he learned it as a child, it had been correctly taught, every syllable carefully enunciated, every word careful chosen for effective meaning. But informal speech was a living thing, reflecting the speaker, their culture and their mood. It was filled with interesting slang terms like ‘dag’, which referred to straggling wool on a sheep’s rear end, but in Jane’s culture meant an ungainly fool. He liked words like ‘dag’ and ‘avo’ and ‘drongo’. Colourful words.
‘Yes. I told you she was special,’ he replied.
‘Then why do you look like you just lost your best friend?’ Jac smiled to make his words sound joking.
Julio glanced briefly at the giant Norseman at his side. He had never known Jac in his real body. He’d taken on a dead friend’s clone body after a mortal injury, in-situ. What must it be like to wake up as someone completely different, not just the younger version of yourself all New Atlanteans were familiar with? If anyone would know, Jac would. Rather than answer his question, Julio deflected.
‘What was it like for you, looking in the mirror and seeing your dead friend?’
Jac turned thoughtfully quiet for a moment. Then he held his large hands up in front of his eyes, studying at them closely.
‘It was challenging, I will not lie to you. Even though I was prepared for it, the first time I looked at myself in a mirror, I almost crashed. I tried to see me in these pale blue eyes, and could not. Still do not, if I am honest.
But I do not spend a lot of time looking in mirrors, so most of the time I just feel like me. I have become used to the added height and width, looking down and seeing pale skin, not tanned. And Cara likes this body, so I cannot complain. I get jealous sometimes, when she admires this body. I wonder whether she would have fallen in love with Hakon, if he had Retrieved her. I don’t tell her that, though.’
Julio was shocked by Jac’s honesty. It felt like an intrusion to be given such intimate details. But he understood the reason for the sharing. If he was to help Jane, he would need to understand something of what she was experiencing.
‘I think you might need to talk to her, once she starts to deal with her new body. You are the only one of us who has any insight into what she is going through.’
‘Yes, Cara has already informed me of that. I am not a counsellor, Julio. I probably will not say the right thing. But I will try to give her honest answers to her questions. I have had a lot of experience answering women’s questions.’ He laughed at his private joke, and Julio made no effort to get him to explain. They had shared more than either of them was comfortable with, already.
‘How do you feel about her new look?’ Jac asked, after a moment.
Julio shrugged his broad shoulders and looked down at the grass at his sandalled feet. ‘She is pretty stranger. But I can see Jane in there, luckily.’
‘Pretty? She’s breath-taking! Any man would be attracted to her.’ Jac laughed loudly enough to draw the shocked attention of passing researchers.
Julio glanced up at his boss sharply, gauging his meaning. Jealousy sliced through him like a knife. When he realised Jac was intentionally trying to get a rise out of him, he backed down.
‘She is nineteen years old! She just turned nineteen years old. I cannot even remember what it was like to be that young, can you? And she is inexperienced. She may not be a child, but compared to me … I am an old man, an ancient man…’ He was shocked by what he was admitting.
‘Age is such a dilemma for all of us. I know some researchers who have lived nine hundred years in-situ, and they are as youthful as those children at the school. I know Newcomers little more than fifty years old, who act like they are ancient.’
‘Dorothy.’ Julio pulled a face.
‘Hmm, yes, Dorothy. I have seen her Debrief. I gather you were not a good match.’
‘No, not a good match. She would have left Jane behind because of Protocol. She would have left her there to die.’ He couldn’t keep the fury out of his voice.
‘She was within her rights to leave her. You took a huge risk Retrieving that girl. It was the right call. You have good instincts. But Protocol is there for a reason.’
‘Am I to be reprimanded?’ Julio wondered if this was the reason Jac had so obviously sought him out.
‘No. We encourage our people to trust their instincts. But you cannot make a habit of breaking Protocol, Julio, or we will have to rethink your position. If others, with less honed instincts, follow your lead, all kinds of temporal displacements might occur.’
‘I understand.’
‘And back to the age issue. Cara held me off, when we first met, because she saw a twenty year old man when she was forty five. My frustration with that nearly had been aborting the mission. I stood on a street corner, yelling at her that I was the one who was old, not her. I’m three hundred and thirteen, and she just turned forty six. Now that is an age gap!’
‘It’s not like that with me and Jane. She really is a child. I’m not interested in her sexually…’ He wondered if his quick denial was meant for Jac or himself.
‘No matter how inexperienced she is, Julio, nineteen year olds of the latter twentieth century were not children. That is a young woman in that bed. Don’t try to deny what your body is telling you.’
Julio snapped upright, and shot Jac an angry glare.
‘These clones can become sexual beings, given the right incentive. I can speak from embarrassing personal experience. If your body starts behaving uncharacteristically, it is not a flaw in the clone. It is …’ Jac didn’t finish the thought.
‘What? What is it?’ Julio demanded angrily.
‘Love.’
With that, Jac stood up and walked away, leaving Julio reeling.
When next she opened her eyes, Jane saw a stranger staring down at her. The woman, whose long, dark-auburn hair fell like a curtain on either side of her face, smiled brightly at her.
‘Hey, kiddo, how’re doin’?’ The young woman spoke with an Australian accent, and her friendly smile put Jane immediately at ease. She was even more at ease when her visitor backed off and sat on the chair beside the bed, rather than looming over her.
‘Okay, I guess. A bit freaked out by all this. Are you a time traveller, too?’ Her thought was to catch the woman off guard to see if the story Julio had spun her was fabricated.
‘Only as much as you are. I was Retrieved from 2008. I got lost hiking Cradle Mountain, and would have died of exposure if they hadn’t Retrieved me. I’ve been here in New Atlantis for two years now.’
Jane looked at the woman, and guessed that she must have been Retrieved at about the same age Jane was now. But from 2008? It seemed impossible.
‘And just to help freakng you out some more, I was born in 1946, so if we’d met in Sydney in 1968 I would have looked a bit like I do now, but with short curly hair.’ She giggled. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t do that to you. It’s hard enough to adjust to all this without throwing time travel and clones into the mix. I just get a buzz out of it sometimes. Doesn’t seem quite real.’
‘Yeah, I…I get that.’ She suddenly stopped, and considered how easily she had been talking to the woman. Not only was she not shy and tongue-tied, but she was also in control of her words. This ‘clone’ was improving, not that she knew what a ‘clone’ was. She assumed it was a cyberman or human-like robot. It felt real enough, though.
‘So, I’m Maggie Tasmania, and Julio has asked me to take you in for a while, just until you get acclimated. Normally you’d go to the dorms for the first month or two, but as you are something of an anomaly. We felt you might be better off in a private home. My place is way too big for me, anyway. I only got it because I’m an artist, and it has a huge studio overlooking the ocean. Fabulo
us! You’ll love it!’
Jane was suddenly shy. The thought of moving into a mansion with this bubbly young/old woman felt daunting. How was she to relate to someone like her? She wasn’t good with people at the best of times, preferring to stay on the periphery of groups, a reluctant hanger on when social interaction was necessary.
‘Here’s Julio with the hover-chair!’ Maggie announced brightly, as her prince came through the open door directing a strange vehicle.
‘How’re you doing, Jane?’ He gave her his customary greeting, with no sign of a change in their relationship. It was as if the kiss had never happened. So it had meant nothing to him. She should have known better. A man like Julio would kiss women every day of the week. And it had been a gentle kiss, a tender kiss of friendship, not passion.
Hiding her disappointment, she smiled shyly at him.
‘Hey, Julio. I’m doing better, thanks.’
He seemed delighted by her speech. ‘Wow, you’ve got your voice working well now. I didn’t expect that control for a day or so.’
‘How long have I been here?’ she asked him, as Maggie assisted her to a seated position, and drew her legs over the edge of the cot.
‘Twenty four hours. It’s mid-morning, and although it’s a bit overcast outside today, on the whole it’s a pleasant enough day for early Spring.’ Julio answered her, as he moved around the hover chair to put an arm around her shoulders. He then draw her gently off the cot onto her wobbly legs.
For a moment, she stood pressed to his side, her eyes level with his throat. Although she had never stood so close to Julio before, she was sure she would not have even reached his shoulder before. Her five feet three inches had made her small in stature, if not in weight. The shock of her changed height had her losing control of her limbs.
As she felt her legs go out from under her, Julio was ready to grab her. Swinging her effortlessly off her feet, he deposited her in the chair.
Being so close to him reminded her of the kiss. She breathed in the earthy spice of him, and wished she could just shift her face a little, so she could taste his dark olive skin above the white of his tunic. It would be so easy to do, as he busied himself making her comfortable.