by Glover, Nhys
‘Can you tell me your name?’
His habitual reply to that question came immediately to mind – name, rank, date of birth, serial number. That would be all he would give. That was all he was required to give under Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention. But she wouldn’t require his rank and serial number would she? What good were they in Heaven?
‘Lukasz Danielewski, July 28 1912, First Sergeant, Company A, First Ranger Battalion.’ He skipped his serial number.
Her surprised expression told him that he had given her more information than she required. Just as he expected, Heaven didn’t need ranks.
‘You are Polish? Is that a Polish Battalion?’
He barked a laugh, which left his chest hurting. ‘No ma’am, your friend had it right. I’m a Yank. The Rangers are a battalion of the US armed forces. My parents were Poles, hence the mouthful of a name, but I’m called Luke Daniels now, as Uncle Sam’s secretaries have a problem with all the extra letters. But, as this is the Afterlife, I assumed you’d want my birth name. For your records.’ By the time he was finished he was exhausted, and in desperate need of something to drink.
Anticipating his need, his angel brought him a covered mug with a straw. He sipped the sweetest water he had ever drunk, and sighed deeply. So far Heaven was stacking up just fine: pretty angels, sweet, refreshing water, and a comfortable bed. What could be better?
‘This is not the Afterlife, Lukas, this is …’ She stopped, and looked away, as if checking with her friend before going any further. The response she received must have been enough to convince her to go on. ‘This is your future. No, that is open to misunderstanding. Let me see if I can phrase it more clearly. You came from 1942. You are now in 2332. And this is New Atlantis. My name is Faith, and my friend is Jane. She came from 1968.’
Luke blinked several times, trying to take in her words. It didn’t make any sense to him. 2332… What sort of number was that? Surely she wasn’t suggesting he had done a Rip Van Winkle and slept for nearly four hundred years? If that was the case, she wouldn’t be the girl who had helped him into the Light. She’d be her great, great, granddaughter or something. But hadn’t she said he’d saved her from the Gestapo agents? Not her ancestor, then.
‘I think you’re confusing him, Faith. There’s time for more when he’s recovered.’ This was the Australian angel. But wait – if this wasn’t the Afterlife, then maybe they weren’t angels. He decided to test his theory.
‘Are you an angel?’
Faith’s beautiful smile was back, and it lit up her eyes until those grey pools shone like silver. ‘Thank you for the compliment. But no, I am not an angel. Just an ordinary woman.’
‘Ain’t nothin’ ordin’ry ‘bout you, Babe!’ He couldn’t help slipping into exaggerated Pittsburg English to make his point. Never one for flattering women, like many of his cohorts, he said only what was true for him. Maybe she wasn’t an angel, but she was far different from any woman he’d ever met. And woman was what she was. Not the girl he had taken her for that night.
He watched her blush and look away. Her friend’s laugh filled the room. ‘Oh, I think you can rule out cold machine. That’s definitely a warm blooded male.’
Luke frowned and tried to work out what they were talking about. In the end, he gave up. He was so tired. Though he wanted to stay awake while ever Faith was with him, his lids were too heavy to keep open. Drifting back into slumber, he tasted her name … Faith. An angel’s name to go with an angelic face. But, he had to admit, he was glad she was just an ‘ordinary woman’.
‘I can see why you’re taken with him. He is handsome, in a tough guy, rugged and manly kinda way.’ Jane smirked at her from the doorway as she prepared to leave.
‘Don’t let Julio hear you say that or he’ll be jealous.’
Jane laughed gaily. ‘He’s handsome but not that handsome. Julio has nothing to worry about.’
Faith knew her friend was trying to lighten the mood, and she was glad to go along with her play. But as soon as she’d disappeared, and she was alone with Lukas Danielewski again, she felt her heart squeeze tight in her chest once more.
He was handsome, in a decidedly different way to Julio’s Latino good looks. His hair was light brown, like hers, and close cropped, as was standard in New Atlantis. But there was no lock of hair falling over his high forehead to soften his stark features. The rugged plains of his long face were chiselled sharply, as if his Creator marked out his features hastily with a few heavy, angled lines. Eyes the colour of a summer sky looked out from beneath heavy brows, she had noticed when he was conscious. And those eyes did strange things to her. They made her previously unsexual body melt like warm wax, setting off an ache in her chest she had never felt before.
He was not a heavily built man, more muscle and sinew than bulk. But his bare arms were light golden brown and strong. She remembered what it felt like to have one of those arms wrapped around her, even though it had only been to assist him. From those few close moments, she had gauged him to be tall, but no giant. She would expect that her head would just reach his shoulder when he stood upright.
What would it feel like to have those strong golden arms around her, as she pressed her face into his chest? Even sweat-stained, dirty and bleeding from his exploits, she had liked the smell of him. Now clean, freshly shaved and bandaged, she liked his smell even more. There was something undefinably male about it. Something exotic that fired her senses.
Leaning in, she sniffed appreciatively. As fast as lightning, his head twisted to the side where her cheek poised inches from his own. Without opening his eyes, his mouth found hers, and one large hand came up to cup the back of her head – holding her in place.
The kiss was deep and probing, so different from those she had experienced before. It was hard too, as he ground his mouth into hers, as if he was hungry for her. ‘Devour’ was the word that came to mind. He was trying to devour her.
Jerking back, she broke his hold, and stood staring down at his sleeping face, her fingers pressed against tender lips. He had kissed her in his sleep. It hadn’t meant anything. His body has simply responded to a woman’s proximity. She could have been anyone. And once she was gone from his proximity, he simply relaxed and rested again.
How did she feel about that kiss? It had scared her. Not because of its sudden intensity, or its ferocity. But because she had felt something leap to meet him in that moment – something just as ferocious – that came from deep inside her. Something she had never known was there.
That scared her.
Before she could think better of it, she leaned in and kissed his lips again, softly this time, wanting to taste him with her senses, not just her emotions. She wanted to savour the feel of his smooth lips beneath hers. Wanted to breathe in his breath as if it were her own.
This time, Lukas’ lips stirred beneath hers and opened. Like butterflies mating, they gently began to move with hers, touching, tasting, and gently exploring. The moan that came up from deep inside her was a shock. And again she pulled back.
What was he doing to her? He wasn’t even awake, and he could draw these intense responses from her clone. It was frightening.
The next time Luke Daniels surfaced it was to the sound of more voices talking. A man and woman this time. He recognised the woman’s voice immediately. She was his angel: Faith. The man he didn’t know. With his eyes still closed, he listened.
‘You need to debrief. This man is in expert hands, now. Leave him and complete your tasks.’ The man’s voice was young, but commanded obedience.
‘He is terribly confused by what has happened to him. I want to be here when he wakes again, to make sure he is recovering emotionally as well as physically. You know the risks of C and B as well as I do, Jac. I will debrief when he sleeps again, I promise.’
‘You have placed us in an extremely precarious position. This man is a loose cannon. If he should Crash and Burn, he could become dangerous to us all. We may also have caused Tempora
l Displacement by removing him from his time-line.’
‘I have started data retrieval based on the information he gave me. Preliminary research indicates that he went Missing in Action on August 10 1942, after parachuting into enemy territory on a special reconnaissance mission.’
‘But was that always the case?’
‘We’re all still here. If Temporal Displacement did occur, it has not caused any significant shift in our world. As we have been postulating in recent times, it may be that I was always destined to Retrieve Lukas Danielewski, just as we were always destined to Retrieve a livestock car full of women and children on their way to Belzec Death Camp.’
‘I am uncomfortable with such glib justifications for potentially dangerous behaviour. IF you, and those who agree with you, are wrong, by the time we discover the anomalies, it will be too late.’
‘There is nothing glib about Novikov Self-Consistency Principle or the Time-Line Protection Hypothesis. And I did not glibly pull a man out of his time-line. He was dying. He would have died. I saved his life, as he saved mine.’ His angel was standing up to the man in a way he would have considered impossible. She seemed such a gentle, unassuming creature.
‘Yes, you are right. In his case, you were probably justified – from his time-line’s perspective. But what about ours? Is he a warrior by choice or circumstance?’
His angel was silent for some time, and he sensed that the answer to this question could affect his future in a way he couldn’t yet comprehend. This man – this Jac – didn’t like him; that was obvious. And he didn’t want him here. Wherever here was. Faith’s answer would provide Jac with the ammunition he needed to be rid of this uninvited ‘warrior’.
‘Water…’ he said, attempting to redirect the conversation, so Faith didn’t have to answer.
She took the opportunity, and hurried to do something to the bed so that his torso was lifted into a more upright position. Then she got him the tumbler of sweet tasting water. While he sipped innocently on the straw, Luke looked over at the man whose conversation he’d been listening in on.
Hot Damn, he was massive! He looked like a poster boy for Hitler’s Arian race: white-blonde hair; tall, muscular physique; ice blue eyes; and young, very young – no older than his early twenties. But what was he wearing? A white dress? It couldn’t be. A roman toga? That seemed unlikely. Whatever it was, it fell to his muscular thighs and was pulled in at the waist by a thick, gold belt.
And now that he knew Faith wasn’t an angel, her get-up was just a weird. She was clothed in a white, diaphanous gown that fell to just below her knees. Its elegant folds, drawn in just below her breasts, accentuated to soft curves of her delicate body. And her straight hair was long and loose, falling way past her hips.
The world seemed to be getting wackier and wackier.
‘How are you feeling now, Lukas?’ His angel seemed inordinately pleased to be able to refocus her attention on him. And from the expression of frustration on the youth’s face, he was obviously aware of the opportune distraction. Jac was not going to be getting his answer quite yet.
‘Better. Is there food? I could eat a horse!’
The look of disgust that crossed the male’s face was just what he’d been angling for. Why did he love to needle people like him? This guy probably thought he genuinely wanted to eat horse meat, being the ‘warrior’ that he was.
‘Of course, I’ll send for something. That’s a good sign.’ Faith pulled out a rectangular object about the size of a thin book, and studied it for a moment. Then she looked back at him and grinned.
‘No horse on the menu, but I have placed an order for chicken and vegetable soup. Hope that will suffice, for the moment.’
He laughed, and then groaned, as the sudden shift of his chest hurt like crazy. ‘I’d prefer something I could get my teeth into.’
‘I am sure you would, but you are only just out of surgery. Soup will suffice.’
He caught the Arian giant smirking at the easy way she put him in his place. It seemed she stood up to any male who crossed her – not just kids in skirts.
‘Lukas …’ the guy started to address him, and then looked a question at Faith.
‘Bedford,’ she supplied quickly.
He nodded and went on. ‘Lukas Bedford, well met and welcome. I am Jac Ulster, Head of In-situ Child Retrieval here in New Atlantis. Because of Faith’s intervention, you’re life has been saved, and you have a chance at a new life here. We are a peaceful society. You can be assured that you are now safe and have no need for concern.’ His speech was starchy and formal, and Luke had the urge to hit the guy upside the head to get him off his high horse. But he was not in any condition for such an action, and it wouldn’t serve to antagonise his ‘host’ further. His life depended on this man’s favourable opinion.
‘Thanks Jac, for your welcome. But my name is Daniels, not Bedford.’
‘Here in the Gaian Confederacy, we all adopt the surname of our county, province or state of previous residence. I came from Ulster County in Upstate New York. Faith came from Lincolnshire in England. You are from Bedford County… Pennsylvania, if I recognise the accent correctly.’
‘Yeah, Penn. Okay, I can live with that. People have been playing with my name all my life. I’ll answer to “hey you”, if it gets me what I want.’
Ulster bristled at the arrogance in his tone, just as he’d planned. His angel frowned at him. Why did he have to needle this guy? It would only cause him more problems. But, for all his good intentions, habits of a lifetime were hard to counter. His mouth ran off, no matter what his head counselled.
He remembered his first day at school. The big kid, who made it his mission to bully the little kids, was already on the job as he came out into the playground. A few smart mouthed comments had the bully refocusing his attention on Luke. That day, and for the next few weeks until the school put a stop to it, he went home with cuts and bruises for his trouble. But it hadn’t stopped his mouth, or knocked the chip off his shoulder. Nothing ever had.
‘When you are up and around, I will need to find out more about you, Lukas. Until then, rest and enjoy your new life. Faith will be your Liaison and will orientate you to your new environ. Treat her as the lady she is.’
It was Luke’s turn to bristle. He didn’t need some overgrown kid in a dress telling him how to treat a woman.
‘Wouldn’t think of doin’ anything else.’ The iron in his tone wasn’t missed by either the kid or his angel.
Chapter Five
Without another word, the towering blonde left the room. And before an uncomfortable silence could fall in his wake, another guy in a white tunic arrived with a tray of steaming soup. Faith took the tray from him, with soft thanks, and put it on the table bedside the bed.
‘You shouldn’t antagonise Jac. He is a good man and you would do well to have him on your side,’ Faith chided him gently.
‘”Man” is a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? Is his Pappy the bossman around here?’
‘Pappy? Oh, father. No, Jac’s father would have died long ago. What makes you ask that?’
‘The only way a kid like that could get into a position of power is if his father gave it to him.’ Luke tried not to sound disgusted by such nepotism, but he knew it seeped through. He believed in promotion based on merit, not by favouritism.
Faith’s laugh surprised him as much as it delighted him. It was as musical as tinkling bells. Her eyes shone silver with merriment.
‘You have so much to learn, Lukas! That ‘kid’ is over three hundred years old. He holds a position he has well and truly earned.’
Luke nearly choked on the first mouthful of soup Faith fed him. What the hell? Three hundred years old? Not possible!
Faith waited for his coughing fit to subside before resuming her task. She frowned as she worked.
‘I know how strange that must seem to you. There is so much you need to learn about our world. I just do not know where best to start.’
‘St
art by telling me why it’s so important that I not be a “warrior by choice”.’
‘I thought you must have been listening. Your intervention was too well timed.’ She shook her head at him, as she ladled another spoon of the delicious soup into his mouth. ‘We are a peaceful, utopian society. There has been no war here for more than two hundred years. If you are to find a place with us, and gain meaning and purpose from your new life, it will need to be by following a path of peace, not war. Those who are innately warlike find our world difficult.’
Luke swallowed the rest of his soup in silence. He had joined the army straight out of school, determined not to follow his father down the coal mines. In those early years, training was more of a game than preparation for war. No one believed the US would be involved in the European conflict. There were rumblings concerning Japanese Imperial expansion, but it was all just theoretical games of colour: Orange Operation, Red Operation…
He was intelligent and physically fit, so he worked his way up through the enlisted ranks quickly. By the time Poland was invaded, he was a Top Sergeant, the highest rank for a non-commissioned officer.
Over the years, he’d been recommended for Officer training, but his roots made him suspicious of authority and men like Jac Ulster, and he never willingly sought to become one of them.
There were those in the US Houses of Power who prepared for war behind closed doors, long before it came to Pearl Harbour. His Polish heritage and his ability to speak German and Polish drew the attention of those planners.
Unofficially, he’d been deployed on reconnaissance missions with a small, anonymous team, since shortly after war in Europe was declared in 1939. More ghost than soldier, he’d moved in and out of German held territory gathering Intel, co-ordinating resistance – particularly with the Polish AK and Zegota, and disrupting German deployment and supply lines, wherever possible.
He’d even undertaken ‘commando’ training with an elite unit of the British forces in 1940, before the US officially activated the 1st Ranger Battalion, and had them trained at Achnacarry in the Scottish Highlands.