Everyone hushed and focused their eyes on her, some with confused mistrust. Annette could sense their internal questioning of whether or not she was in charge. “My name is Annette, and I called you here to address a problem, but seeing as speculation has already been put forth I’ll give you a preview of tomorrow’s announcement. Rumors and speculation are correct Sanctuary is indeed under threat. The fact is we are only a few weeks from its destruction. There is no recourse.” The room erupted in an uproar loud enough to weaken Annette’s knees.
Sinclair stepped forward and held up his hands, then he roared, “People Quiet! Ms. Peterson has not finished, you all need to shut up and listen to her! She’s in charge!” Everyone fell silent.
Annette regained her strength, “True Sanctuary is toast, but we are prepared, we have designed and constructed Refuge. It is bigger, better, and ready for us to move in. The evacuation kits Sinclair and his people brought are spares. Take this as an early opportunity to familiarize yourself with them for your own use in the move. Right now we are on a rescue mission. The dark has been setting off crunch bombs, which is incidentally the cause of Sanctuary’s down fall. While the destruction of Sanctuary is our main focus we cannot forget our mission to help, so we are currently heading to an Earth about to bite the big one. Our job is to evacuate as many people as we can. Is everyone clear?”
Sober nods filled the room.
“Then grab some evacuation kits and let’s head out!” Annette said with a smile. There were a few moments of pandemonium as everyone grabbed kits, and a few more as they gathered in teleportation groups. Next they all stood in a day-lit wooded field on earth waiting to spread out. Annette spotted Donovan waiting by the trees and gestured him closer.
“Mr. D’lliano,” Annette shouted as he approached, “My name is Annette, we spoke a few minutes ago.”
“You came faster than I expected, I haven’t been able to get much of an evacuation group together myself, mostly just friends and trusted acquaintances,” Donovan responded.
“Why didn’t you go to the head of the government?” Annette asked.
“I approached the president, he decided to be paranoid and to, by address, make the rest of the world paranoid. I’m sorry but for all of your effort we may not be able to save as many as I hoped. He said aliens were responsible for the show in the sky, and that they, a.k.a. me, would try to kidnap them. Half the planet is now UFO crazy,” Donovan pointed up at the large bright whirlpool dominating the sky even in the daylight.
“We’ll do our best, because that’s all we can do,” Annette turned back to the milling crowd of factors, “ People! Head to churches and other public gathering places, try to convince as many as you can to come. Offer them evacuation kits to gather their belongings and get them through your stasis loops. We’ll sort them out later in Refuge. Everyone remember we only have a short time,” Annette stopped and glanced at Donovan for an estimate. He mouthed eight hours. She turned back to the crowd, “Eight hours before radiation and the like fries this world. So move fast!” The crowd dispersed on cue.
- - - - - - - - - -
Angela leaned back into the wet paint on the wall. It didn’t matter she was covered in paint anyway. She was a mess inside and out. What’s more she knew it. Annette’s two visits had shaken her badly, especially since the girl had been so right. Angela looked back on her actions since the quake made Sanctuary’s flaws apparent. Even before the quake she had been sliding down the slippery slope of uselessness. She was worse than past her prime. She was an old tired woman who had given up. Why had she just started pulling factors, she could have made a gesture at rescuing refugees.
Angela smeared paint through her hair as she rubbed her scalp. She didn’t know what to do, and Annette did. It wasn’t a problem was it? She’d been hoping and praying that someone would see, as Annette had, that Angela no longer wanted to or was capable of being the chief.
Annette had been different during the second visit, she had been surer of herself. Angela wished she could remember what that felt like. Angela slid to the floor feeling tears welling in her eyes. She wanted to be a normal person again, and Annette was making it happen. Angela couldn’t understand the tears.
Angela fought open another can of paint and began flinging it with her mind. She emptied it and another can before it sunk in that paint wasn’t drawing out the pain anymore. Frustrated, Angela focused on the paint cans. Almost spontaneously the remaining cans popped open their contents exploded onto the walls.
Angela stood in the center of the room and flung the paint clinging to her clothes, skin and hair outward until she stood spotless at the center of a paint whirlwind. She knew she should pull it together. Sanctuary needed her! It was going to be destroyed and she knew it, and she should be doing something, anything about it.
She teleported herself to the hall outside of the room. No more hiding away from herself and everyone else! She felt the desire to go back into her room and paint some more. It was just so much easier to paint than it was to face the ugly realities outside of her little room. Annette was dealing with so much, how could Angela put so much on a girl not even half her age?
Angela started down the hall to her office, and changed course halfway. She headed left towards the medical center. Then changed her mind again teleporting directly to Tina’s waiting room. The receptionist leapt in surprise when Angela stepped up to speak to him. “Can I see Tina?”
“Just one moment Chief,” the receptionist tapped at his monitor for a moment then Stood, “Follow me please.” He led her to an exam room then quickly left.
In no time Tina entered the room with a smile, “What can I do for you today?”
“I’m crazy. I think I’m depressed or something?” Angela blurted plopping down heavily on the exam table.
“Hmm, you finally noticed, “ Tina quipped, “I was wondering when you’d get around to noticing that you’d cracked.”
“Oh, I think I noticed a while ago. I just thought to have you do something about it,” Angela bantered.
Tina’s smirk disappeared, “What, you like think there is some kind of magic pill or therapeutic device that will make you all better?”
“Is there?” Angela asked, a little too hopefully.
“Nope, sorry! You went crazy slowly and getting better will take a while too. If it didn’t you’d just go nuts faster the next time.”
“So I’m going to stay nuts?” Angela asked in a panic.
“No, of course not, the fact that you came to me is a good step, you just aren’t done walking yet,” Tina replied, “Now let’s start with your mother. . ..”
- - - - - - - - - -
Max joined the rescue team evacuating an earth alternate. It seemed appropriate. He wasn’t too sure about the young briaunti running things, but she seemed to know what she was doing. Max knocked on the door to the church, it swung open and he stepped inside. It was empty, a note tacked inside said it had already been cleared by a factor.
Max glanced at the page he’d stolen from a local phonebook, there were three more in the close area. He checked his watch and the sky, not much time left by either of them. Randomly he chose one and teleported there, it too had been cleared. Max leaned against the door jamb and wondered if there were any people near enough for him to help.
Suddenly out of the blue he was hit by gut wrenching pain, and dizziness. Yllera was badly injured, she needed him. Max didn’t think, didn’t form the impulse to help, he just teleported to her. She was lying, barely conscious, on a bed of seaweed in a cave, which by the smell was near if not under an ocean. She wasn’t alone. Kavir, wrapped in a seaweed loincloth, hovered near her bouncing a crying infant in his arms.
“What should I do Yllera? Tell me how to help you! Tell me what is wrong with you and this child?” Kavir pleaded. He oozed concern and worry so palpable it nearly knocked Max over. There was no threat in it, only a burning lust and need to care for Yllera. It turned Max’s gut to sense Kavir thinking of Yll
era possessively as his woman.
“What happened?” Max growled, finally making his presence known on the scene.
Kavir spun and glared Max down, “She is my woman, you cannot take her from me!”
“She’s dying! Can’t you sense it?” Max growled back rushing to blot the blood hemorrhaging due to childbirth, “This much blood isn’t normal! I- we have to get her back to Sanctuary where they can save her!”
“She is mine! I will not let her go!” Kavir growled back.
“Then you’re letting her die!” Max hissed.
“But she gave herself to me! She birthed our offspring and this,” Kavir shoved the crying infant at Max with disgust, “Thing!” Kavir nervously checked several large vats each with a blob of blackish mucous. He cooed at them as though they were infants.
Max automatically cradled the newborn in the proper fashion and began a soft rocking motion, “Let me take them to Sanctuary, Tina can help them both.”
Kavir turned back from his vats, “I cannot leave my children, and if I let you go with her you will not return her to me,” he caressed her sleeping cheek, “But I cannot let her die, take her, but promise to let her return to me if she so chooses. I cannot take her as I did before, our time together has changed me too much.”
Max felt oddly bound to make the promise, and to keep it. Kavir wasn’t evil, just new to love and emotion, “I promise Kavir.” Max settled the baby in one arm and wrapped the other around Yllera. Then teleported them all to Sanctuary. They arrived in an empty examination room. Max lowered Yllera’s head to the exam table and carried the infant out to call for help. “Somebody! Anybody! I have a medical emergency! Woman bleeding to death in here!”
Tina instantly appeared from around the corner, “Who’s bleeding to death?”
“Yllera, she had a baby and she’s hemorrhaging!” Max answered, gesturing with the baby.
Tina pulled out a pop-pad and yelled into it, “I need a pediatrician in exam five, and a suture kit,” Then she turned back to Max, “How did you find her?”
“She called me to her, needing help,” Max answered, bouncing the child again to quiet it.
Tina nodded absently as she bent to examine Yllera. Tina’s indrawn breath was enough to worry Max even further. Max was ready to challenge Tina for some answers when several other doctors entered. One surreptitiously relieved Max of the infant. Then Tina rose and gestured for Max to take a seat. Behind her two doctors started working on Yllera.
“She’s not doing well, you got her here in time though, I think,” Tina smiled stiffly, “Now the best thing you can do for the both of them step outside. That’ll keep you out of the way so we can help them.”
Max sat up straight, he wasn’t leaving Yllera, “No, I need to stay.” Tina glared at him until he rose and backed out of the room. He stood in the hall wondering how he’d been removed, but at least relieved that Yllera was receiving proper medical care. Still, just then he was feeling a little troubled by the amount of time he’d spent waiting at Yllera’s sickbed.
He paced the hallway for minutes which felt like years, until finally Tina stepped out of the room with a satisfied look on her face, “You can see them now.”
Max raced inside, the exam table had been replaced with a proper hospital bed, and Yllera sat propped up in it. She had her arms around her baby and her eyes on Max. “Max you came for me! Thank you! I couldn’t pull myself away from him. He had my mind, and clearly my body in his control,” Yllera cried.
“It’s okay you’re here now, and I’m never letting you go again,” Max walked to Yllera’s side as though pulled by gravity. He couldn’t be angry at her. She hadn’t chosen to bear Kavir’s spawn. Yllera reached around him with her empty arm and pulled him closer. Max buried his own tears in her shoulder as he embraced both her and the baby girl she held. “We’re a family, or at least we will be if you’ll marry me?”
Yllera blinked at him shocked, “Yes, of course as long as you’ll accept Ariel as your daughter.”
“Ariel, yes, I’ll think of her as a head start, though I hope you’ll give me a chance to make more of my own.”
Yllera smiled at him with tears still falling down her face, “Of course.” Max felt a bubble of happiness float through him, he couldn’t care less if Sanctuary was doomed he’d found his pairmate and the world was good.
- - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 18
It All Comes Tumbling Down
------------------------------------
Annette threw her pop-pad at the wall, there was barely five minutes remaining until the evacuation had to be complete, and there were still fools whining about wanting more time or calling her with last minute glitches. Annette was tired of hearing about last minute glitches. Of course mass evacuating eighteen thousand people wasn’t going to be easy, she hadn’t expected it to be. What she had expected was that the adults of that number would act like adults. That expectation was way off, since the announcement she’d received no less than five thousand complaints requesting more time to pack or say goodbye to their quarters or to dig up their dead pets to bring them along and re-bury them in Refuge. Two announcements later some people still hadn’t gotten the idea that she wasn’t in charge of when Sanctuary would collapse.
Annette had begun to let Prima handle her calls, only accepting ones offering new information. That extra help from Prima brought to the forefront of things one problem that had slipped through the cracks. Sentient programs were responsible for much of Sanctuary’s day to day running, from life support to basic food distribution. Artificial intelligences kept Sanctuary humming, but not a thought had been given to what would happen to them when Sanctuary went kaput.
That knowledge had given Annette more than a moment’s pause. Many programs could be transferred with only mild consequences to daily life especially as people began stepping across the event horizons of stasis loops to the official arrival date in Refuge. The problem lay in the areas of life support which couldn’t be transferred until Sanctuary was cleared of its population, but the transfer would require some person or program to remain behind and initiate the transfer. If it were a program they’d be stuck behind, if they were a person they risked being caught in the implosion. That’s where Annette stood, barring some cataclysmic glitch she would throw the final switch, shutting down Sanctuary in slightly more than five minutes.
Annette telekinetically retrieved her pop-pad and checked it, almost everyone was out. Only one other life sign was still wandering the deeper corridors. Annette cringed and teleported herself to join whomever it was in the practice cavern. It was a tall man with an overall tan and ice-blue eyes. “Excuse me sir but you need to get to an evacuation portal now! There are only a few minutes until the big implosion. You can’t be here when that happens.”
The man just stood looking at her, with big wet tears threatening to fall, “I’m sorry Annette, I just had something I had to do.” He spoke with a tone of familiarity that made Annette want to hold him, comfort him, do anything just to keep those tears from falling.
“Okay, I hope you’re done, cause you have to go now!” Annette managed to growl tapping her pad for emphasis.
The man leaned forward and kissed her, Annette kissed back. Before Annette could respond further the man disappeared.
Annette checked her pad and found he had joined the last of the evacuees. Annette then teleported herself to the computer core and began the final shut down and transfer operations. All around her circuit, relays and lights went cold and dark. The ventilation system stopped and soon the only light came from her pop-pad. She was alone in Sanctuary, not even Prima was with her. Annette set her pad to use as a flashlight and teleported to the Evacuation portal she had chosen, it was still held open from the other side.
Sanctuary was eerily silent, now that even the air recycling system was shut down. Annette paused savoring the idea that she was the last person to set foot within Sanctuary. As she passed through the portal Annett
e felt a strange cold shiver up and down her spine. It felt like she was stepping through the doorway of her own tomb. For half an instant she thought she had been caught and would be destroyed with Sanctuary. Then she was there, Refuge. The air was sweeter than Sanctuary’s had ever been, full of the distant smells of life, plant, animal and otherwise. Behind her the portal flashed brightly for an instant then disappeared. That was the end, of Sanctuary anyway.
Annette crossed the grassy clearing to an elevated platform in front of crowd of people all of which had arrived in Refuge at nearly the same time. Annette stood on the makeshift platform and stared out at the milling crowd. Over fifty thousand people, Annette knew from the evacuation counts. To her eyes and her mind the concept of the number blurred. Never had Sanctuary held this many, in one place or otherwise. They may as well be a million, trampling the sod that had only recently taken proper root. With the eyes of a city planner she made note that the area would have to be re-seeded after this.
Annette tapped the microphone and the speakers floating over the crowd amplified the sound drawing the crowd’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, old friends and new, I would like to declare the evacuation successful and to welcome you to Refuge.”
The crowd roared, verbally and telepathically, to the point that Annette had to project one of Carl’s bubbles of silence around herself to shield herself from discomfort. She held up her hands and peeked telepathically, waiting for the crowd to subside.
Finally, the noise abated, “As I was saying, welcome. Now I would like to introduce someone most of you know and respect, our chief factor, Angela Daniel’s.” Again the crowd roared, this time Annette stepped back leaving the mike to Angela and retreating into her projected buffer of silence. She looked down at the crowd and blurred the focus of her eyes, comfortably distancing herself, until Carl jabbed her in the rib.
“Annette, wake up and say something,” He poked into her mind.
“What? What about?” She asked him telepathically.
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