“Still a bachelor.”
“What about Judy?” Ben asked.
“Judy? Oh, Judy Simmons. Yeah . . . show biz. She did these commercials and someone in New York saw them and made her a great offer. I haven’t talked to her in . . . God, almost two years. I heard she was in Los Angeles doing TV.”
“She was a nice girl. How’s your brother?” Ben asked.
“Arnie’s fine. He and Sandy moved to Atlanta last year. They have a little girl and another on the way.” Jack smiled at the two men, reading their thoughts, knowing what was coming next. “I can hear you guys thinking. I never forgot how to do that, uh, telepathing thing.”
Joe put down his beer and fixed his gaze on Jack. “So are you?”
“Lonely? I guess so. Since we finished the B Building and sold it all off there isn’t anything for me to do down at the condos. But I keep busy. I fish with Phil on the Terra Time. I gave him that boat. I still have the old Manta III - can’t bring myself to part with the old bucket.” Jack had drained his scotch. He stood up to get another. “It’s really something…you guys just walking in like this.” He reached the bar fully aware that both men were concentrating on him and blocking their thoughts from the Jack’s telepathic abilities.
Jack had been a struggling charter boat captain in Coral Gables. The Antareans, disguised as humans, had enlisted his boat and his help in locating, raising and processing their cocoons – special casings containing Antarean soldiers in suspended animation, who were left behind thousands of years before when the continent we call Atlantis was destroyed by a huge passing comet.
The pollution in our oceans had damaged the cocoons and the Antarean rescue party was unable to revive them. It was at that time that Ben, Joe and two of their friends, Art Perlman and Bernie Lewis, discovered the Antarean processing room. Thinking it was a health spa and part of their condo’s facilities, the four men used the equipment that changed them, their wives and the course of human history.
The Antarean cocoon-processing equipment, though deadly to young earth bodies, worked wonders on the aging humans. They were cleansed, strengthened and transformed into perfect specimens for deep-space travel. These four men became the core of the Geriatric Brigade – 941 seniors, processed to replace the cocooned Antarean army.
Before their departure, the Antarean leader, Amos Bright, signed over the ownership of the Antares condominiums to Jack and promised to return for him one day when his body had aged sufficiently to be processed.
Now, five years later, as Jack sat with Ben Green and Joe Finley, he knew that although he had abused his body somewhat, it still was only thirty-five and decades away from using Antarean deep-space processing as his gateway to space travel and a long life.
“So you guys here for a visit? Vacation? Maybe pick up some back Social Security checks?”
“No,” Ben began, “we’re an advance party. Joe and I came with our wives and Amos Bright on a Probecraft. The others, well, some of the others are following on an Antarean Watership.”
Joe Finley stood up and walked to the large picture window that faced out onto the golf course. Two elderly couples were playing the eleventh hole. Joe watched the ponderous, creaky golf swing of the man closest to the window. He was well into his seventies. The man’s wife sat in their golf cart shouting words of encouragement and praise as his golf ball skittered along the plush fairway and stopped fifty yards ahead. Finley also noticed Detective Cummings hiding behind a hedge of newly planted brush bottle pines that bordered the fairway.
“Does that cop hang around here much?” he remarked as he turned back to Jack and Ben.
“Cop?”
“Cummings. From Coral Gables.”
“The one who chased us that last night,” Ben chimed in.
“Oh, that cop. Is he out there?”
“He’s spying on us,” Joe said.
“Yeah, well, he comes around now and then. He was a mess after you guys left. They arrested us, you know. Phil and me and the Madman. But they couldn’t make anything stick. The Coast Guard guys were totally confused and then when old Cummings and his partner - what was his name?”
“Betters,” Joe said quickly.
“Yeah, Coolridge Betters. Well, they both started yapping about kidnapping and mass murder. For a while it was a little sticky but DePalmer got me a first-class lawyer. Eventually old Cummings began to rant about you guys and the all the old folks going over the side and the Antareans and the Mothership, and well . . .”
“They certified him and dropped it all?” Ben said, smiling.
“Not certified. Just moved the poor guy to the back burner. He’s over the hill. Retires soon, I think…” Jack then realized he was sitting in a room with two men, once over the hill retirees, who were considerably older than Cummings. He blushed. “Sorry about that, guys.”
“That’s okay. We’ve come to realize that over the hill is an earthly term. It’s all relative.” Joe smiled kindly at Jack.
“I can dig that. You guys look like you’re gonna live forever.”
“In a manner of speaking that might well be true,” Ben remarked. “And if you recall, Amos promised to come back for you when your time came.”
“I think about it every day.”
“Good,” Ben continued, “because now we need your help once again.”
“If you guys want to use the condos again, that’s a problem. They’re all sold.”
“No, Jack,” Joe Finley said, sitting down next to the ex-charter captain, “the condo complex is way too small for our needs this time.”
“This time we’re going to need more than a few charter boats and a processing room,” Ben added as he sat down on the other side of the young man, clapping his arm around Jack’s shoulder. “And now I’m going to tell you the most wonderful story you ever heard.”
Jack took just a moment out from listening to Ben and Joe to call Phil Doyle and say he would be by later with a big surprise. He then sat down between the two visitors and listened. When they finished, Jack sat silently for a long, reflective moment. Then a wide grin turned into laughter. He let out a joyful “whoopee” and danced around the room. “Guys! This is absolutely great! Fantastic! I’m with you all the way. When do we begin?”
Joe and Ben relaxed and smiled. “We already have,” they said in unison.
CHAPTER FIVE – OH, MOTHER!
Mary Green’s flight to New York’s La Guardia Airport had been uneventful. There was a moment, however, shortly after takeoff from Miami International, when she realized that it had been years since she put her life in the hands of beings other than the Antareans or the Parman guides. She sat, feeling the DC-10’s powerful engines propel them forward, knowing that a human being was flying the airplane with a rather primitive technology compared to the transportation she had used for the past five years. The idea that she might lose her life in an earthly plane crash, no matter how remote the chance, drove home the adaptation she had made to life in deep space. She loved her life more now than she had ever imagined. Being back on Earth, in the relatively frail human aircraft, gave her a sense of mortality that she had not experienced for a long time.
At the same time Alma Finley was preparing to depart on her flight to Washington, D.C., from the Fort Lauderdale airport. The women communicated with one another, sending comforting thoughts to one another about flying in the Earth’s atmosphere. They had a good laugh about it. Still, each of the women monitored the cockpit on their flights, chiding one another for doing so, but feeling more at ease listening on trouble-free communications from takeoff to landing.
By mid-afternoon, with the late spring sun nearly overhead, Mary Green walked along the peaceful, tree-lined street two blocks from her daughter’s home in Scarsdale, New York. She had asked the taxi driver to drop her off a distance from the house so that she might approach it unnoticed.
Birds sang. A black squirrel chased a gray one across the street and up a ponderous oak. The only car that passed was a Mer
cedes station wagon carrying two preschool kids, a yellow Labrador retriever and a harried, young, affluent suburban mother. Mary’s thoughts drifted back to another such tree-lined street where she and Ben Green had once lived in Westport, Connecticut, before they retired to Florida. It had been a good life, she mused. But then, in a very real sense, she had been reborn, and in these past five years she had walked down some very strange other-worldly streets tens of thousands of light years from here.
But this was her home planet - Mother Earth. It was May, warm and blooming - azaleas, rhododendron, the last of the tulips and the first of the marigolds. She breathed deeply of the sweet spring air whose perfume filled her expanded and enhanced brain with awakenings long forgotten. Her unabashed joy at being alive quickened her pace, moving her along quickly, until she was only a few short steps away from the home of her daughter, Patricia.
Mary hesitated, unsure of how it would be to suddenly appear after so many years; after such an abrupt departure. Ben had written the letter they had left behind for the immediate family. Jack Fischer had delivered it, as he had delivered all the other letters left behind by the members of the Geriatric Brigade who had families on Earth they cared about. So many had no one. So many had been abandoned or sent of to South Florida to live on inadequate Social Security or, in the worst cases, welfare. During their travels in space, as the members of the Brigade got to know one another, horror stories were related by many rejuvenated elderly space travelers of degrading treatment, neglect, and for some physical abuse.
But in the case of the Green family, things had been different. Theirs was a solid, loving family that supported one another. Mary was sure that after the initial shock of seeing her mother alive, Patricia Green Keane would welcome her with open arms.
In their letter to the family, Mary and Ben had written of their love for their children and grandchildren. They explained the great adventure they had been offered by the Antareans; of the chance to live a long, full and useful life. Without knowing what really faced them in outer space, they had speculated on being among the first humans to meet beings from other planets in our galaxy, and how honored they felt to be chosen to walk among the stars. The letter was filled with love and kindness and a hope that the family would understand and be happy for Mary and Ben.
As Mary approached the large Tudor, set back from the street with the driveway hidden beyond a row of hedges, she noticed the front door of the house was open. She stopped and looked beyond the hedge to see her daughter unloading groceries from the rear of a new Volvo station wagon. The woman, a forty-year-old clone of her attractive seventy-two-year-old mother lifted two packages and walked through an opening in the hedges toward the front door. Mary Green stood still.
For a moment, Patricia was frozen in her tracks, unwilling and unable to believe her eyes. Mary reached out to her daughter telepathically with comfort and love. “Yes,” she thought, “it’s me. I’ve come home.” Pat dropped the groceries and flew across the neat, freshly cut lawn, weeping tears of joy, thrilled to overflowing that her mother was home.
The women embraced as Pat sobbed and laughed and cried, unable to let go, afraid that Mary was just an apparition that might vanish if she loosened her grip.
“Darling,” Mary said after nearly a minute had passed. “I’ve come across our galaxy, over sixteen light years, to see you and you’re squeezing the breath out of me.”
“Oh . . . oh Mother,” Pat said as she loosened her hold and stepped back, keeping her hands on Mary’s shoulders. “It is you? Oh God, how we all missed you. Dad? Where’s Dad? Is he okay?”
“He’s just fine. He’s in Florida. You’ll see him soon. He sends his love.”
“Mom! Oh God . . .” Pat could not contain her emotions. She embraced Mary again. Tears streamed down her tanned cheeks. A moment later, after Pat realized they were standing out in the street, both women walked hand in hand to retrieve the scattered groceries and then disappeared into the house to catch up on five years of separation.
Ben Green, riding in Jack Fischer’s car toward the marina at Boynton Beach, felt all of his wife’s emotions telepathically, as did all of the commanders. They knew the Green family could be a test case - a measurement of how the other families might react to the sudden reappearance of the geriatric space travelers.
CHAPTER SIX – EX-BOSS AND OLD LOVER
Alma Finley’s flight to Washington, D.C., had been delayed. When she finally landed at National Airport it was four P.M. The rush of business people trying to get out of the nation’s capital, as well as those arriving to do business the next day or returning from forays out among the population, turned the small terminal on the Potomac into a madhouse of briefcase and garment bag toting humanity. She had called Caleb Harris from Florida and advised him that she would be late. They agreed to meet in a small watering hole that the media frequented. It took Alma the better part of an hour to locate a taxi and get clear of the airport traffic.
Although it was May, the temperature was close to eighty degrees Fahrenheit and D.C. humid. The taxi was not air conditioned. How far this is, she thought, from the advanced technology she was accustomed to on Parma Quad 2 and Antarean Motherships. Even the diminutive Probeship was luxury class compared to her transport during the short journey from Florida to Washington today.
“Now you sure you want the NBC on Michigan? ‘Cause we got that NBC place over on Kentucky too,” the cab driver asked.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“There’s those executive folks over there. I know ‘cause my sister, she works there, and they go home pretty early. About five for sure, and with this traffic and all, we won’t get there ‘till maybe five-thirty, ma’am.” The man was honestly concerned.
“I know,” Alma answered softly. “But they expect me. I called ahead.”
“That’s smart of you. You must know DC.” Alma nodded and mused to herself - A world long ago and far away,,, as he turned up the ramp leading from the parkway onto the 14th Street Bridge.
Off to the left, Alma gazed at the Jefferson Memorial and felt a twinge of homesickness. She was a reporter on a local New York television news program. It was there that she met Caleb Harris. He was a senior editor for NBC. They’d met at a New York Emmy Awards dinner long ago, just after her divorce and before she’d met Joe Finley. Harris and she had a brief love affair until she realized it was just part of her loneliness and that she didn’t love him. The affair ended, but they remained friends. Caleb Harris offered her a network reporting job after he had become NBC’s New York network anchor. Now he was Washington Bureau Chief for NBC and a senior vice president of the network. He had become a trusted “grand old man” of broadcast political commentary.
When she first called from Florida, he’d been coy on the telephone. “So you want to come up to seduce me again after all these years?”
“Now how could an old woman like me seduce a famous TV personality like you? You must have your pick of the intern pool these days.”
“There’s never been anyone like my Alma.” He laughed.
“You’re damned right,” she’d said. “Now let’s make a date so I can get on with this seduction.”
“Are you okay, Alma?” he asked, genuinely concerned. “I mean calling me out of the blue after all these years.”
“I’m fine, Caleb. Perfect. And I promise you an evening you’ll never forget.”
“Now you’re talking, sweetheart. Bring it on . . .”
They sipped gin and tonics and munched on a mixture of peanuts and pretzels at a tiny corner table. The bar, a gathering spot for network news people, was busy. Once in a while one of them threw a curious glance in Caleb’s direction. If their eyes happened to meet, Caleb’s icy gaze exorcised the intrusion immediately. He enjoyed the power, especially when Alma noticed it.
“You are beautiful beyond belief,” he told her and then quickly followed with, “Jesus that sounds like the worst cliché . . . but I swear you don’t look a day older than wh
en I last saw you. What is it, fifteen years?”
“Twenty, sweetheart, and you’re very kind.’’
“I’m being honest. That Florida climate must agree with you, Alma.”
“Well, let me be honest too. I’ve been away from Florida for a while.”
“Traveling?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “You would definitely call what I’ve been up to traveling. Could I . . . ?” She pointed to her empty glass. He signaled to the attentive waiter for another round. Alma then slipped a thought into Caleb’s mind. The newsman frowned, turned, and in a loud voice called to the waiter. “No limes this time, Jimmy.” He turned back to Alma, an expression of disorientation on his face. “You did say no limes, didn’t you?”
“No, but I thought it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You asked me what I’ve been up to? I need you to just listen. Don’t get up, don’t humor me and whatever you do, don’t make a scene. What I’m about to tell you is the news story of the century, perhaps of all time. And before I begin, you have to promise me you will keep it completely confidential, except to those I designate.”
“Wow. Now that sounds heavy.” Caleb mulled over the idea that Alma Finley might be a bit senile. He recalled his own mother’s bout with an illness late in her life that today had a name. Alzheimer’s.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Alma said, reading his thoughts.
“Who said anything about that?” The waiter arrived with their drinks, cleared the empty glasses and quickly departed.
“You thought Alzheimer’s.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“You thought about your mother too.”
Caleb leaned across the table “Jesus, Alma… what’s going on here?”
“Like I said, Caleb. A wonderful story.” She took a sip from her drink. “For the past five years I’ve been on four different planets in our galaxy.”
The Cocoon Trilogy Page 27