by Sandy Nathan
Table of Contents
Praise for
Also By Sandy Nathan
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Part Two
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Part Three
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
Part Four
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
About the book
About the author
From award-winning author Sandy Nathan - The Angel & the Brown-Eyed Boy
From award winning author Sandy Nathan - The Headman & the Assassin
Lady Grace
& the War for a New World
Sandy Nathan
SANTA YNEZ, CA 93460
Praise for
LADY GRACE & the War for a New World
FIVE STARS! A Modern Sci-fi Masterpiece … Lady Grace was first-rate science fiction and one of the most absorbing page-turners of that genre that I’ve read in years. Author Sandy Nathan exhibits the imagination of Ray Bradbury combined with the whimsicalness of Douglas Adams. That’s high praise, but it’s warranted. The story includes so much action; tense, suspenseful drama; and two charming love stories that it’s irresistible.
Lady Grace is the second book in a proposed series. Enough backstory is included that Lady Grace could be read as a stand alone book, but I recommend reading The Angel & the Brown-Eyed Boy first to get familiar with the story and the characters, especially Eliana (Ellie), an angel-like alien from another world.
– Jim Chambers, Amazon Top 50 Reviewer
(Current ranking: 23)
Lady Grace holds its own with the best of today’s sci-fi page-turners while accomplishing much more. Nathan’s second book in the Earth’s End 1s just as much a spiritual and psychological exploration as it is science fiction/fantasy thriller. Nathan has created a unique niche that leaves her without rival in the canon of contemporary fiction.
– Nathan Fisher, MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business
A gripping original sci-fi tale that brings politics, spirituality and personal responsibility into the mix. As in all interesting tales of good versus evil, the path to outcome is not predictable but the trip is super enjoyable and will keep you clicking for the next page.
– Consuelo Saar Baehr, author of Daughters
I LOVED Lady Grace! From the first moments, I could not put it down. Sandy Nathan has done it again. Within her believable, gripping tale of people who have somehow survived a thousand years, Sandy explores instant telepathic teleportation, human-animal relationships, survivalism, personal relationships, social experimentation, dehumanization, and the most of these … Love. The twists of Jeremy’s evolution with Eliana and his mother, Veronica Edgarton, are breathtaking.
– Ilene Dillon, MSW, Host, Full Power Living Internet Radio
www.emotionalpro.com
Also By Sandy Nathan
Stepping Off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice
Numenon: A Tale of Mysticism & Money
(Bloodsong Series I)
Tecolote: The Little Horse That Could
The Angel & the Brown-Eyed Boy
(Earth’s End 1)
The Headman & the Assassin
(Earth’s End 3)
Copyright © 2014 by Sandy Nathan
Vilasa Press
A Division of Vilasa Properties LLC
PO Box 1316
Santa Ynez, CA 93460
www.sandynathan.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Publisher’s note: The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011944248
eBook Cover and Interior Design: damonza.com
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN-13: 978-1-937927-02-8 Trade paperback
ISBN-13: 978-1-937927-03-5 eBook
Nathan, Sandra Oddstad.
Lady grace : Earth’s End 2/ Sandy Nathan.
p. cm.
Trade Paperback: 978-1-937927-02-8
eBook: 978-1-937927-03-5
1. Future life—Fiction. 2. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction. 3. Nuclear warfare— Fiction. I. Title.
PS3614.A864 L34 2012
813—dc22
2011944248
To my family: Barry, Andy, Zoë, & Lily
Part One
1
“Come on, Ellie! They’ll let us go this time.” Jeremy dashed out of the tiny place where he and Ellie lived. His waist-length dreadlocks flopped behind him and his bare feet slapped the smooth surface of the hallway.
The door’s membrane tried to catch Eliana, but she slipped through. His wife was as agile and beautiful as the day they’d met.
He carried two bags of survival gear that he’d created from intergalactic junk. The goldies had swept the heavens to get him raw materials for construction projects. Before they’d given him something to do, Jeremy’s boredom-induced screaming fits had traumatized the planet.
He and Ellie ran through a translucent passage in the planet’s depths, bells booming all around them. Chimes always sounded on the planet, carrying messages. These bells were alarms.
Horrified faces wailed in the walls, pointing at them with luminous fingers. They were the souls of the departed elders and formed the elastic, semi-transparent substance of the golden planet. The whole world was some shade of amber—ranging from glowing yellow to almost black. Lights shone from the planet’s depths, raking arcs like searchlights and then fading.
Jeremy galloped past Belarian’s grand, bejeweled palace. “Bitch,” he shouted and kept running. Belarian, the
“mother” Eliana had missed so much when she was on Earth, was really her owner. She had tormented Jeremy.
He made a quick turn, going up another corridor. Jeremy thought living in their adopted home was like being inside someone’s guts. Undulating, ribbed tubes ran everywhere. The tunnels moved and shifted. But Jeremy knew where he was. They were on a major thoroughfare that didn’t change.
“Come on, guys! It’s on!” Jeremy shouted as they ran past James and Mel’s “place.” That’s all they had: places. No street names, no addresses, nothing but places. The natives didn’t need anything more than knowledge of a place’s existence to find it, but finding anything was hard for the humans.
“Come on, we’ve got to go!” Jeremy yelled to the guys.
A glass-like amber sheet locked Mel and James into their space. Mel kicked at it with the bottom of his foot. The wall retracted before he touched it. He and his partner, James, slipped through. They took off after Jeremy.
“Trouble?” Jeremy called.
“Nah. It’s chicken. They’re all chicken.”
They jogged up the corridor. No real need to hurry at this point; the bells had tipped the golden world to their escape attempt. They couldn’t get away anyway; they were on an unidentified planet without the technology to get off it. The goldies would capture them no matter what they did. Their objective was to get their message out.
“Henry! Lena! We’re on!” Jeremy slapped the door of their tiny nook. She and Henry emerged and joined the others.
The hallway emptied into a huge lobby, the antechamber to the hall of the elders. Ribbed and folded like living tissue, the foyer’s walls seemed permeable. They weren’t, unless they wanted to be.
“Let us in,” he shouted at the portal. “We have to talk to the elders.” A face appeared in the wall. It scanned them carefully. The door did not open.
Jeremy didn’t have the right mumbo jumbo to make it work. He’d seen Ellie’s “mother,” Belarian, unlock it. She had stood where he was and intoned in the goldies’ wordless way, Open, portal, we are here at the will of the elders. She had held up her hand with authority and the barrier admitted them. Of course, Belarian was a big cheese in the golden world.
He held his hand up to the door and made various gestures, ending by flipping it off. “We know you’re in there. What you’re doing is illegal. You brought us here under false pretenses.”
Jeremy had to leave, couldn’t stay a moment longer. The golden planet had been unbearable since he discovered the real reason the goldies had granted them sanctuary.
Ellie’s first pregnancy had been long and hard. After a difficult delivery, the golden people took their baby without letting them so much as hold it. He and Ellie had never seen any of the thousands of children she had borne since. Ellie was a pet; he was her mate. They had the same rights as dogs in a puppy mill. Once he realized that, every second on the planet was misery to him. Every instant.
He choked out his message to the elders. “We thought you had a free society. We thought we would be equal citizens. We didn’t know you brought us here to experiment on!
“Let us in! You know what I’m saying is true!” He didn’t feel afraid. The elders had confined or tranquilized him after his previous outbursts, but they’d never hurt him.
“We can’t stay here any more!” Jeremy slammed the door with the flats of both hands. “We’re United States citizens! This is unconstitutional!”
With that, he shot away from the portal, finding himself stuck to the wall on the far side of the foyer. The others were lined up next to him. They seemed unable to move.
The elders’ faces appeared in the doorway. Eight of them, all different heights and shades of gold. Tall and elegant, they moved like dancers. The tallest one, a doctor, spoke. He’d helped Ellie with her pregnancies and births.
What do you want? Jeremy heard the doctor’s silent message inside his head. The goldies didn’t talk. What they wanted to say just appeared in his mind, not even in words, either. It was all intuition. The humans had to put words to the aliens’ communications.
“We want to leave. We hate it here and you hate us. The experiment has failed. Let us go home. Earth must be free of radiation by now.”
Shimmering bells indicated the elders’ amusement. The experiment has failed? the doctor transmitted. You don’t know that. You don’t even know how long you’ve been our guests.
“Let us go back, please. We can’t live this way.”
The elders surveyed them, craning their necks, blinking with expressionless gold eyes.
Do you think you can live on Earth? The question came from all of them.
“Yes. With the survival packs I made. We’ll have the tools we need as long as the radiation is gone.”
The silent response: The packs will become very hot as you enter Earth’s atmosphere. They’ll kill you if they travel with you.
“You can put a protective coating on them … Or you can send them later.”
You can survive?
“With the packs, yes.”
We will send you now. We will send the others later, and your bags.
Jeremy found himself sitting in the middle of a wide grassy field. He looked around, amazed. Brilliant blue sky. Trees bordering a meadow. Something else: the crash of surf. He was on Earth! He took a deep breath. Good old air. The place looked gorgeous. The trees were huge. Obviously the danger from radiation had been over for centuries.
He stood up and examined his surroundings. None of the buildings were left standing, but he was sure he was at the estate. His family had owned Piermont Manor for hundreds of years. His bones recognized the place; his blood felt at home. He had grown up here, as had his mom and countless ancestors.
The big house had stood in front of him. He could see it in his mind’s eye, lacy stonework and tall parapets. A fifty-thousand-square-foot confection built in the eighteenth century. His mother’s garden had sprawled on the mansion’s other side. The village, where the staff and workers had lived, had been behind the house and to the west. Everything was gone.
His eyes returned to the place where he thought the main house’s back door had been. He could almost see it. The door flying open and Ellie leaping out. Ellie and he had fallen in love on Earth’s last night. He had played his clarinet in the ballroom while she danced. They had spent their wedding night in his room, loving for the first time, both of them. The glow they had created seemed to illuminate the air. Jeremy shivered.
The next morning, they’d walked out the back door. Sam Baahuhd, the headman of the village, waited for them. They hugged him and said good-bye. Jeremy had felt warmer toward Sam that morning than he had felt his whole life. Then they ran across the meadow to the huge blob of light the goldies had sent to carry them away. It hovered by the cliff above the ocean. All of them ran, he and Ellie, Lena and Henry, and James and Mel. They ran away from nuclear Armageddon and toward a brilliant future in an alien world.
A cynical snort escaped him. How many years had passed since they made that run for freedom? How many years had they been prisoners?
Jeremy turned toward the sound of the surf. That was the Atlantic Ocean. He knew the sound of it and the smell of it. This was the estate. He was home. Jubilation grew inside of him. His chest swelled and a smile stretched across his face.
He’d been returned to Piermont Manor. He was Jeremy Bentham Piermont Edgarton, heir to all he saw. He was in the good ol’ USA, in the great state of Connecticut. They’d send the others and his stuff soon. Everything was A-OK.
2
Hours later, Jeremy stood at the cliff’s edge, watching the sea throw itself at the rock face below. The surf roared and exploded. The jagged rocks and undertow would destroy anyone down there. If life got too bad, he could end it with one step.
He backed away quickly. No need to think like that. His stuff would come. The others would come.
Twigs and rocks threatened to puncture the soles of his feet. They hadn’t touched anythi
ng but the smooth surfaces of the golden planet for how long? He had no idea. After dozens of prickly steps, Jeremy stood in the middle of a rough pasture, which he remembered as the manicured lawn behind his family’s mansion. That’s where he had landed when the elders dumped him earlier.
Jeremy had returned to this spot again and again, looking for what they’d promised. Nothing.
He’d arrived naked, the way they’d lived on the golden planet. He looked down at his long arms. Goosebumps decorated them. The late afternoon was chilly. His skin was café au lait, thanks to his African-American father and white mother. His arms looked like sticks with robotic joints and Halloween monster fingers. His legs and feet were the same.
All the humans were emaciated like him. Jeremy thought the goldies were trying to make them appear similar to themselves: tall, graceful forms gliding around. Or maybe the way the humans looked was simply the result of eating seeds and tasteless golden glop for a couple thousand years.
He was too nervous to be still, so he kept walking. He could feel his dreadlocks brushing his waist and back. He didn’t have any body hair; the goldies didn’t like it, so none of the humans had any. They really liked hair on the head, though. And on pets.
A snort of a giggle escaped Jeremy. When they first arrived, they had been blown away by the golden aliens lounging around like ballet dancers on downers, the lights undulating, and the faces looking out of the walls. But the alien life forms—the furry slugs, blue crows with four legs, Day-Glo lizards with eyeballs on stalks, and so many more—were the most bizarre. The goldies couldn’t have children, so they sent pet hunters throughout the universe capturing anything cute by anyone’s standards. The place swarmed with weird creatures.
The pets weren’t the only surprising thing. For enlightened overlords, the people of Ellie’s planet had a surprising appetite for the good life. They piled on jewelry and decorated their spaces like palaces. Before seeing the goldies, he had thought his mother was the universal champion of conspicuous consumption.