by Dan Glover
While Kāne was gone, Lauren attempted to unwrap the umbilical cord fearing it might strangle the baby. She felt Ginger's muscles tensing with each contraction and heard her moans of pain wishing with all she was worth that she could take it onto herself.
"If I die, Lady Lauren, please do what you have to do to save my baby."
Ginger was clearly exhausted as she panted the words out in single syllables taking deep breaths in between each. Lauren didn’t know how much more of it the girl could take.
"I promise I'll do my best to save the baby, darling Ginger, and I'll save you too. Keep your strength now, precious one, hush."
She had never actually witnessed it, but Lauren understood the last resort in such circumstances meant cutting open the mother's stomach to rescue the infant before it might suffocate in the womb. She shuddered at attempting such a feat yet she felt if help did not arrive soon she might well have to do it on her own.
She wondered what it would feel like... the pressing of sharp metal through soft flesh, the odor of blood, and the inevitable shriek of pain erupting from deep within Ginger as her insides were turned outside. She couldn’t do it yet she must.
The night pressing in from outside seemed to darken Lauren's heart as well as her eyes. Wind rattled the old loose windows of the castle causing the draperies to dance rhythmically like skeletons upon strings. Though she heard some of the People praying at times she didn’t understand the concept or why they believed in something they could not see.
"It makes us feel better, Lady Lauren. If we place our fate into god's hands we absolve ourselves of sin. It means we give ourselves over to a higher power."
She heard Marilyn's words echoing through the night's dark breezes ruffling the thick draperies covering the slightly open window as if the woman's restless spirit was about. Despite the coup that the woman had attempted to perpetrate, Lauren found herself wishing Marilyn could be in the room tonight. She knew Marilyn's presence here could help save Ginger's life, and the baby's.
The door burst open startling Lauren out of her reverie. Kāne was followed by a thin and frail mousy-looking woman whom Lauren knew by sight but whom she hadn’t spoken to in all the years they'd lived at Orchardton Hall.
"Ginger needs help but I don't know what to do."
Lauren felt like weeping but stayed strong for Ginger. She knew it would do little good betraying how hopeless the situation was becoming. Mindy stepped forward putting a head on Ginger's stomach while examining the position of the baby.
"Oh God... it's a breech birth. Let me wash up. We have to turn it. Either that or we'll be forced to do a Caesarian."
"Please do whatever you need to do to save the baby, mom."
"Don't worry, sweetie... we'll save you both. Please, Lady Lauren... I will need more light. And if you haven’t done so already, please begin boiling some water. We need to sterilize the instruments if we need them."
Lauren watched in amazement as Mindy unwound the umbilical cord before she caringly manipulated the baby before drawing him from Ginger's womb. There was so much blood.
"So far, so good, but I'm afraid the baby has torn the uterine wall. I'm going to try and staunch the flow but Ginger's going to need a transfusion of blood."
"What can we do to help, mother Mindy?"
Kāne's voice was laced with concern. Lauren sensed that he too had little if any contact with this woman.
"Please check the water you've put on to boil. We'll need it. Once I'm done I'll go to Karen's laboratory. I know what we need. Please keep still, sweetie... I'll be back soon."
Watching Mindy walk out the door, Lauren got the distinct impression they wouldn’t see her again, at least not tonight. The woman was doing what she did best... fleeing when the difficulties mounted too high... just like every other human being Lauren had ever met.
No sooner had the thought entered her mind she chided herself for such generalizations. It wasn’t true of her lover Natalia or of Dr. Karen. There was good and evil in everyone and that included those of the Lake.
These days she rarely considered the hardships she had endured beneath those azure waters. She only dwelled upon the good while pushing the horrible into the dark recesses of her mind reserved for such calamities.
While their existence beneath the waves should have been idyllic it was anything but. A rigid social hierarchy demanded obeisance to not only all the elders but to any male. The cold waters numbed her body during the hard winters and her stomach never ceased to grumble with hunger during the all too short summer months. To be famished was more a rule than she cared to remember though at the time it never occurred to Lauren that things could be any different than they were.
In that Lake world where death had no meaning, life seemed to have as little value as the watery depths from which it sprang. The expectations of society trumped any dreams of the individuals. Now, Lauren sensed the same thing beginning to happen at Orchardton Hall.
Once, there were artists plentiful and thankful for the time they had to generate splendid new creations of all sorts. Of late, however, no one seemed interested in plying their trades. The painters sat pouting in puddled shadows while the writers wordlessly worried over their forgotten skills and silent keyboards as the singers were somnambulistally silent searching for the music only they could hear.
Perhaps it was the price they had to pay to conquer death. When Nate and Maon brought home their pilfered artwork from the great museums and cathedrals of a dead world, it set Lauren's hearts to fluttering just knowing such imagination existed in the world.
She wondered again if she had been wrong to detest all human beings when they were capable of such beauty. Of her own species, only her son ever exhibited any artistic talent and his while it was stunningly magnificent it was also a copy of what long-dead human beings had once wrought.
About the time she gave up on Mindy's return the door burst open and the woman entered carrying an array of tubes and glass instruments for which Lauren could see no earthly use while speaking in a tone which should have irritated her but under the circumstances only served to mollify the worries wrinkling her brow.
"Come, Lady Lauren, and help me please. We don't have much time."
Chapter 58—Rage
After all he's done he couldn't believe how everyone deserted him.
Micah knew Karen would go. She had no place here and he now realized it was wrong to keep her against her will. But the others were like his children. If not for his expertise they'd be dust a century ago.
"Come with us, Micah. If you stay, you'll revert back into what you were before we arrived, more maybe even something worse."
He heard real concern in Karen's voice. It nearly swayed him into going. Yet to abandon his life's work was asking too much. He considered surreptitiously smuggling the Try-Rights aboard the ship Karen said was waiting in the harbor but he knew his efforts would prove useless in the company of the Ladies. Whatever magic Karen brought with her was more powerful than his science.
He needed time.
There were possibilities he had yet to explore. The Try-Rights were evolving into autonomous agents which led him to believe they would one day soon become self-aware. When that occurred, they would meet or exceed the intelligence of humanity.
He considered leaving the Try-Rights to their own purpose. They no longer needed human beings to care for them... they manufactured their own sustenance by scouring clean all the grit and grime that once adorned the walls. They were self-replicating. Their evolutionary patterns would continue to advance towards the impossible goal he programmed into them from the beginning: to become better.
At the same time, however, he desired to know the end result, but of course there would be no end. They were his creation, his babies. Though he was sorely tempted into leaving Cornell and going away with Karen it would be tantamount to dumping everything he had ever cared about. The Try-Rights saved his life. They were as much a part of him as he was part of them.
"We're g
oing too, Micah."
Speak regained his sense of speech a week after Karen arrived. His beautiful body reverted to the ugliness that it was a hundred years ago. See and Hear did not say a word; they didn’t have to. Micah saw it in their eyes. They were leaving too.
"You'll all die."
"You may well be right, Micah. But whatever happens, it's better than the life we've been living here."
"You'd all be dead but for me. And now here you are, leaving me alone in the lurch... is this how you repay me?"
"We all appreciate what you did for us, Micah... but we were monsters. We have a chance at a real life. Come with us. There's nothing for you here."
"Get out before I change my mind."
He should have let them all die. Not only that but despite knowing better he'd grown used to having Karen around too. Micah hadn’t counted on missing her so much. It was a rare thing to encounter another human being, especially one as intelligent and beautiful as Karen. He found it odd how she blossomed into the amazing woman he saw in front of him.
When she first showed up at Cornell University a hundred years ago she was one of the most unattractive women he had ever met, almost manly. He knew his Try-Rights could never effect the changes in her in the same way the parasites from the Lake ladies had done.
"I'm part and parcel to the dying of nearly every human being the world, Micah."
"Come now, Karen... you give yourself way too much credit."
"We made a discovery, Micah... something I never dreamed existed. We found her on the shores of Lake Baikal in Siberia. We thought she was dead but she had only swooned. We brought her back to CDC headquarters and spent seven years studying her.
"Her species is incredibly older than ours but when we sequenced her DNA we found we share a common ancestor. Apparently they evolved biological agents in defense of our own ancestors who constantly harassed them ages ago."
"Why are you telling me fairy tales? You know better. And why on earth were you at a godforsaken place like Lake Baikal in the first place, Karen?"
"A colleague at the CDC in Russia called my immediate superior in for a consultation. Villagers on the shoreline were coming down with a deadly infection. My boss thought it wasn’t worth his time to pursue so he sent me and a couple others."
"So what did you find?"
"I've lived with her for a hundred years and I am still not sure exactly what she is. She says her ancestors evolved spontaneously twenty five million years ago when Lake Baikal was formed by an earthquake. She and her kind have gills to breath under water and yet they also have lungs to breath air.
"That in itself is pretty amazing. But we also found she carries a parasite that is deadly to human beings. One touch is all it takes to transfer. The legends of the villagers were true. They told of beings emerging from the Lake spreading a dread disease before going back beneath the waters.
"What I discovered, however, is even more incredible. If these beings stay in close proximity to people after infecting them with the parasites, they confer virtual immortality upon them. The parasites act as agents that not only retard aging but enhance all the finer qualities in human beings.
"Look at me, Micah. I used to be an ugly duckling. You saw me. Now, I look into a mirror and I don’t believe what I am seeing. I know I am not a raving beauty but I'm actually pretty! People who I thought would never pay attention to me are suddenly seducing me. And I let them."
"So let me get this right... this creature you found somehow caused the plague that swept the world killing everyone in its wake. But since you were with her, you lived."
"There are others, Micah."
"Do they live with the yetis too?"
"Scoff if you want, Micah. I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t witnessed it all firsthand."
Now Micah was wondering if as fantastically implausible as it sounded Karen was actually telling the truth. Walking to the mirror he looked into it long and deep suddenly liking what he saw.
He was no longer a monster nor was he a skinny kid with a bad complexion. A man stared back at him, straight and tall and on the borderline of handsome. Muscles rippled under the taut and toned skin on his body and when he smiled at himself his whole face lighted up in ways he couldn’t remember it ever doing in the past.
He jumped to his feet and bolted out the door. Though the night was extinguished and a new morning peeping over the horizon he hoped beyond reason that it wasn’t too late.
Chapter 59—Submerged
She choked on salty water rising up to her chin.
Amanda didn’t remember what happened. They were in the hold attempting to stuff a tarp into the gaping fissure in the side of the hull when the floor lurched violently under her feet causing her to lose her balance.
She woke to the shock of cold water and darkness. Reaching out she found the ceiling was only inches above her. She was confused at the arching timbers until she realized the Liberty must have capsized. The back of her head hurt where she must have struck it against the bulkhead.
"Hello? Is anyone else here?"
The air pocket was getting smaller by the second.
"We're sinking."
She said the words in a matter of fact way, the way a detached scientific observer might comment on an experiment being run at their own expense. She knew the others could breathe under water. She was not so equipped.
"Don't worry, sweet Amanda. We have lifejackets."
"I'm not sure a lifejacket is going to do me much good in this storm, darling Ena."
"We're not going to abandon you, precious Amanda... I'll stay with you no matter what happens."
"Hello? Ena? Are you here?"
Though she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, it did no good. It was profoundly and utterly black. She suddenly had to tilt her head to breathe as she realized there was no choice... either she stayed here and drowned or she tried for the surface.
The darkness made it impossible to get her bearings. She tried to picture the entryway to the hold while taking several deep breaths before submerging. Almost immediately she ran into someone floating motionless in the middle of the hatchway. She grabbed the body by the shirt collar to pull whoever it was along with her out of the hold and up to the seething surface of the ocean. Lightning illuminated the sky for brief instances before plunging her back into darkness but she had time to see who it was she had saved.
It was lovely Ena.
She was bleeding from a gash on her forehead but she was alive. Amanda grasped the capsized hull of the Liberty with one hand while holding onto Ena with her other arm around the girl's chest. She searched the night for signs of Maon and Sileas but monstrous waves and howling winds made it impossible to see more than a meter or two even with the lightening.
"Wake up sweetie. Please wake up."
She shouted out the words in order to be heard over the cacophony of the storm. At first she thought she heard an echo but then she realized it was voices in the wind she was hearing and not a reverberation of her own.
"Hello! We are over here!"
The wind ripped the words from Amanda's lips hurtling them up and away from her. Ena was still unconscious in her arms. Waves washed over the capsized ship rocking it and threatening to dislodge her tenuous grip.
Maon materialized out of the misty darkness. He was shouting but his voice was but a whisper in the wind.
"Is Ena okay? Where is Sileas?"
"Ena's alive. I don’t know where Sileas is at. We were in the hold trying to stop the leak. The next thing I knew I woke up floating upside down in a little air pocket. I found Ena when I swam out. Sileas has to still be down there."
"I'll be back."
"Wait..."
But she was too late; the night and the waves swallowed him up and she was left holding onto Ena while desperately trying to keep from slipping away from the Liberty. The salt water she had swallowed made her nauseous and when she retched it burned her throat. If only she had a drink of
fresh water.
She couldn’t be sure but the storm seemed to be lessening and the sky in one direction seemed to be just a bit clearer than the rest. Perhaps they were still in the eye. Though she searched the horizon when she was at the top of the swells it was impossible to see anything other than an endless parade of monstrous waves heading their way.
She had to get Ena out of the water otherwise she was going to lose her grip on the girl. Trying to push the girl up onto the floating wood to which she clung proved impossible. She had nothing to give her purchase. Finally, by first pulling herself on top of the capsized Liberty, Amanda was able to use the boat as leverage to hoist Ena aboard too.
In doing so, though, she had used up what remained of her energy reserves and she knew if they were indeed still in the eye of the storm she was done for. She hadn’t the strength to hold on. If only she was able to secure Ena to the Liberty somehow it would no longer matter what happened to her.
She had dreamed of her death ever since she was a girl. Even though the others told her that no one grew old any longer, she knew she was destined to die. Sometimes she was falling from a great height and though she called out for help no one was there. Other times she found herself deep under water trying to hold her breath but knowing she couldn’t.
She wondered now what it would feel like, that first lungful of water rushing into her lungs... she was certain she'd gag on it but what if in fact she might actually be able to subsist on the oxygen caught up in the sea water even all the while knowing she couldn’t.
What would it be like to die? Was death the end of it all or was it possible that consciousness survived it? She had read of various theories about the afterlife that once abounded in the bygone era when death was as much a part of the world as water in the ocean and birds in the air. It seemed to her that the people of old were so frightened to die that they would believe in anything to keep from the finality of it all.
Some of the stories she read pointed to what they called near death experiences... how people who had indeed died yet had been resuscitated came back to tell tales of going backwards down a tunnel and seeing a bright light and loved ones who had gone before them.