Autumn Mermaid (Mermaid Series Book 4)
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He hadn’t thought of Kirk in centuries. Now, though, a deep sense of shame permeated his psyche, as if he'd acquired a dose of Ena's ability to see into the future... or rather, to see the present from the viewpoint of tomorrow rather than yesterday. There were unasked questions awaiting answers that he did not have.
Chapter 15—The Music
Niall didn’t know exactly how he found Kirk.
Grandfather Nate told Luciana a story of how he and Micah were forced to leave his body in a tunnel that ran under the earth from an outbuilding into Cornell University. He swore that as soon as he returned from bringing the Ladies to Lake Baikal that he'd return to old America and bring Kirk home. He'd been gone so long that Niall thought Grandfather must have forgotten his vow.
Though Niall too had promised his sister he would find her husband's body and return it to her, he really had no idea how to go about it. Taking the anti gravity craft was easy enough. No one seemed to use the old prototype any longer. He wasn’t even sure it would still function but apparently whatever powered it lasted far longer than the old gasoline now tarnished and spoiled with age.
"I counseled Grandfather Nate and Mr. Pete to use my cold fusion device to power their plaything, my sweet Niall. It was one piece of advice they actually took from me."
His mother had been proud to show him how the machine worked. The simplicity amazed him and knowing Ena had been instrumental in making the craft fly had filled Niall with admiration... if only for a few moments.
"I don't understand how you know about such things, mother. Grandfather Nate and the other scientists have studied for centuries yet you seem to see just how to put their inventions to use."
"It is my way, sweet Niall. I have nothing to do with the knowing... I see what the future will bring and I help guide the present along those predetermined lines."
"Are you saying the future is set, my precious mother?"
"According to wiser ones that me, music played when the universe came into being, and sequestered inside the melody was all that would ever be... a single moment of time caught up in a web of harmony.
"Human beings, and even most of those of the Lake, have no way of sensing the harmony of the moment. They see time as an unfolding of the music. I seem to have the ability to tap into that primordial melody and read the notes already played."
"So the future is determined."
"That is not for me to say, my precious Niall. From what I gather, there are a multitude of melodies playing simultaneously, so many that anything can and will happen given the times."
"You pick the most advantageous music and follow it... is that what you are saying, my sweet mother?"
"What is appealing to me might not be so to another. Still, I do what I see is better."
Finding Cornell University had been an adventure all its own. The old City lay swamped under a torrent of mud piled high like frozen waves against rotting skyscrapers and broken towers that once must have touched the sun. He had never seen anything like it... the shattered dreams of yesterday festering in the mire of tomorrow.
"If we were to go to old New York City and try to find Kirk's body, where would we look, sweet Luciana? Isn't it a big place?"
"Dr. Karen told me that Cornell University is inside a red brick building just off the shoreline of Manhattan Island, sweet Niall. If we could find the main building, then we'd look for an outbuilding at five o'clock. That is where they entered the tunnel. Grandfather Nate said his body is still down there."
He should never have come here without leaving word of where he was going. He hadn’t even told his sister even though Luciana was the one who talked him into the trip. As was his wont he simply disappeared one day. If she missed him at all, she might assume he had gone to old America but she had no way of knowing that with a certainty.
He hadn’t meant to come that day... he had merely taken the anti gravity unit out in order to see how fast it could go. Within seconds he found himself racing over the ocean as a vast continent rushed upon him like a great tidal wave of green and brown.
There was a moment when he though about turning back... he led Luciana to believe he'd take her along when the time came. When he began considering the ramifications of traveling to a far away land, wild and untamed, he realized what danger he'd be placing his sister in.
At first he thought of asking someone else to go along... anyone who'd been there and knew the layout of the City and the location of Cornell. The options were limited, however, especially after everyone went home to their respective domiciles. Even Luciana had gone back to the Isle of Skye by that time, somewhere he thought she'd never go.
The morning he had gone he woke up to bright sunshine pouring into his open window and a sea breeze wafting over his bed. Toulon Castle was as silent as he could remember it being. Rising from bed and looking out over the rolling vineyards he noticed the anti-gravity craft sitting all alone and looking as forlorn as he felt.
Old America was a land of lush green and raging wildlife no longer competing with human beings for being the dominant species. Niall had read how millions of People once living on the continent. Now, the jungles had returned and along with them the animals that must have either migrated here or else escaped from zoos.
It had been a century since Grandfather Nate returned from his trip here to rescue Grandmother Lily. He had told Niall tales of the devastation wrought by Micah's nanobots... machines so tiny no one could see them.
"The old City is completely covered with sand dunes, Niall. The sand shifted and moved like it was alive. I didn’t realize it at first, but that sand was made up of Micah's tiny machines. They attacked us as soon as we landed. If not for Kirk pushing me out of the way at the last instant, I would have been overwhelmed by them too."
"Why did you leave Mr. Kirk there, Grandfather?"
"We had no choice. When the nanobots were rendered inert, Kirk's body became highly magnetized. Micah said it was on account of the reverse polarity between them and the earth. Opposites attract. His nanobots carried a positive charge while the earth is a vast negative ground.
"The nanobots had begun to render Kirk's body into iron. When they were interrupted, they automatically reverted to their primitive state. Kirk body was attracted to the earth's surface. We couldn’t carry him.
"I planned on going back for him but then we found Lily and the others so we were forced to leave without Kirk. We simply didn’t have enough room. Besides, I knew his body would be safe where we left it. Luciana isn’t happy that I've decided to take the Ladies to Lake Baikal before going back to old America but they are the living."
The trip to old America took only a few minutes. Niall suspected the anti-gravity craft would have gone even faster if he pushed it. Zooming into the old City, he managed to spot the red brick building that Luciana spoke of in just a few minutes. Most of the other old edifices were crumbling into disrepair but that one building stood out like a bastion against the weathering effects of age and neglect.
After spotting the outbuilding at roughly five o'clock, he set down next to it and disembarked from the machine taking care to allow the warp field to discharge entirely before stepping out.
The door to the shed was locked from inside but it surrendered after one decent kick allowing him entrance. Remembering the wild animals roaming about, he shut the door behind him and blocked it by sliding a large cabinet in front of it. After searching for a few minutes he located the hidden trap door that covered the stairs going down into the earth.
For just a second a shiver of fear ran up his spine. He wasn’t sure what he'd find down there in the darkness and he had forgotten to bring along a flashlight. In a minute, however, his eyes had adjusted to the dimness so he began his descent.
"Be careful, darling Niall... I love Kirk with my whole heart but I do not wish to lose you in an ill-fated attempt at retrieving his dead body."
Luciana's words ran through his mind as if she was there beside him. The stairs seemed
solid. With each step into the darkness boldness grew in his heart. Images of Luciana's smiling face danced in his mind's eye as he thought of how happy she would be to finally have closure over Kirk's death.
When he reached the fourth step, it was rotten and gave way beneath him sending him tumbling head-first into the abyss. Though he made a grab at the hand railing it too was disintegrating and offered no purchase. At the same time, a blunted hook of a nail sticking out of the wood had caught the sleeve of his shirt pulling his arm behind him.
As he fell, he remembered having time to wonder how deep the tunnel was. A dim sense of floor rushed up on him nearly as fast as the anti-gravity craft had moved across the sky as he flailed about trying to free his arm snared on the nail. If only he could dislodge it, he could put both arms out to brace his body for the coming impact.
He must have landed just right for there was no pain. At least, that's what he thought when he woke in the dark. His pupils had by now fully dilated so he was able to see in the darkness that threatened him like a thunderstorm about to break loose over his prone body stuck to the floor.
There was something there... or was it someone?
When he tried to sit up, he discovered his muscles would not cooperate. He remembered hearing a crack when he hit the floor which at the time he assumed had been more of the stairs breaking or perhaps his arm. Upon reflection, he realized it wasn’t wood at all and he hadn’t managed to get his arms in a position to stop his fall. That nail on the stairs... it had kept his right arm behind him despite his reaching back with his left to free it. As a result, his head had hit first taking the full brunt of the impact.
It was his neck that snapped. About the time darkness began to manifest itself in the periphery of his vision he realized that he could no longer breathe. While falling backward down a tunnel Niall felt the life force of his body ebbing away wondering what it would feel like to hit bottom.
Just as his vision fade to black, he saw a figure of a man step up to his broken body, bend down close to him, and place a hand over his face.
Chapter 16—Mermaid
She felt more like a scientist than a doctor.
Researching potentially habitable planets had taken most of her time for the last few decades. With the advent of the invention of anti-gravity, it had become clear that a trip to the nearby star systems was not only possible but inevitable.
"We are planning to send a probe to the Bernard's Star system, darling Karen. Mr. Nate has re-engineered the anti-gravity device to produce a warp signature that will allow the craft to reach multiple speeds of light. Ena is helping us too but he said we need some pointers from a medical expert too so far as what to expect from extraterrestrial life."
"I've pretty much given up medicine, my precious Pete. You know that."
"That doesn’t mean you no longer have anything of value to offer, my lovely Karen. We need to get away for a bit anyway... let's plan on a trip soon."
"What do I know about life in another solar system?"
"You never give yourself enough credit, sweet Karen. With your input, I'm certain we can develop specialized instruments capable of sensing life even if we aren't familiar with it."
She had never been able to say no to Pete. There were times when she managed to circumvent his intentions without him knowing it, but if his mind was set upon a certain goal there was no stopping him.
That's why she loved him, she supposed, as well as why he aggravated her so often. She had never really forgiven him for lying to her all those centuries ago when he flew his jet to old New York City. Trust in someone had never been easy for her to establish and once broken it was almost impossible to repair.
She knew he did it out of a sense of altruism. Lady Lily had saved his life, just as she had saved Karen's. Still, she had always suspected Lily had an ulterior motive even if it was a thickly veiled one that only she could know.
Karen lied to her that long ago day when she arrived at Orchardton Hall sick and dying. She had purposely picked up children in town suspecting their presence would make it more difficult for Lily to turn them away. Her plan worked. Standing there that day—ready to fall down upon her knees and beg Lily to allow them to stay—Karen would have said or done anything just to live one more day.
For the life of her, however, she thought they had only picked up three children: two girls and a boy. The fourth child seemed to materialize out of thin air. Karen had put it off to her encroaching sickness... her brain was doubtlessly swelling and causing hallucinations.
Though she had told Lady Lily she was an authority in the field, Karen had little training in the process of invitro-fertilization. Yet Lily didn’t know that. As far as she was concerned, Karen was an expert in the field. There were abundant medical texts to study in the old archives and she had always been a quick learner.
Her success surprised her.
Her medical proficiencies always leaned toward the diagnosis and treatment of obscure diseases that appeared in the backwater countries of the world, not out of a sense of saving lives, but in a futile search of recognition and fame.
Though she had been at the top of her class all during her university days, she considered herself a poor student. Her mind was not open to new possibilities but always homing in on the known. She was a learner who one day dreamed of being a great teaching professional.
Any spark of creativity had been killed when as a child she brought home a portrait she had painstakingly painted in her advanced art class while she proclaimed her desire to be an artist when she grew up. Her mother had quickly quashed any hopes she once harbored in that direction.
"That picture is nothing but trash, Karen. Throw it away before your father gets home and sees what terrible work you do at that school he spends so much money to send you to. I swear, I don't know how on earth you could have tested so high in anything but stupidity. There must have been some kind of a mistake made."
She was so ashamed. How could she have thought her work was any good? Mother was right. Mother was always right. She had quietly balled up that horrid painting to stick the canvas into the garbage can, shoving it way down deep where no one would ever see it. It had been a portrait of a mermaid, not a traditional one, but a tall blonde-haired lady with green eyes and regular legs with huge flippers for feet and webbed fingers on her hands and gills where her ears should have been.
She had forgotten all about that picture until the day she found Lady Lily washed up on a garbage-strewn rocky beach on the shores of Lake Baikal. It was as if her old painting had magically come to life. Of course by then Karen did not believe in magic but in hard and practical science, otherwise she might not have made that fateful decision to take Lily and lock her away to study.
Being with Pete allowed her the luxury of exploring her limited interests in ways she had never experienced before. He not only tolerated her little eccentricities but actually approved of them. When she expressed an interest in astronomy, he insisted they begin taking trips to the Effelsberg Radio Telescope in old Europe.
Together with Maon and Sileas, they were able to refurbish the old telescope and later confirm a number of earth-sized planets orbiting stars in nearby solar systems.
When Pete asked her to go to Toulon and work on the new probe being sent to Bernard's Star, she felt the same way she did that day she brought her mermaid painting home to show mother and father. She wasn’t good enough. She'd never be the person qualified to do anything other than drink home-made booze and dabble around the edges of a profession that was no longer required.
"I've read that some star systems are much older than ours, darling Karen. Not only are these solar systems older, but they will endure long after our sun becomes a red giant."
"Yes, my precious Pete... I recall reading that same thing. If I'm not mistaken, they call those older stars red dwarves. They're supposed to be the most numerous stars in the galaxy."
"From what I've gathered, my sweet Karen, a red dwarf produces energ
y at a slow rate by way of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. They emit little light so an inhabitable planet would by necessity have to orbit close to its surface. What intrigues me is that red dwarves are much longer lived than are stars like ours.
"In another billion years, our sun will have swollen to such proportions as to make earth unlivable. On the other hand, a red dwarf could conceivably last ten trillion years. If we make a migration to the stars, it seems to me that we should concentrate upon discovering habitable planets circling red dwarves."
"Do you really think any of us will live a billion years, darling Pete? That has always seemed unrealistic to me. I can't even imagine living so long. Surely we are not true immortals."
"All I know, my lovely Karen, is that my father died in his sixties and I fully expected to do the same. We have a genetic risk factor in my family that causes a predilection for heart disease and arteriosclerosis. I'd known about it for years.
"I'm a thousand years old now. I would have never imagined I could live so long. So now I am considering that we may all live on indefinitely. Perhaps I'm wrong. But it seems a shame to think we might live so long as to see the earth swallowed up by its own sun and we along with it.
"That's why we work so hard and so long on constructing a star ship. I don’t know if we can achieve warp capability. Perhaps we can't. In that case, we may well have to reconsider our plans and construct a vessel that will take forty thousand years to reach the nearest star system to our own.
"Either way, we'll do it. Yes, I do think we will all live a billion years and longer. The only thing stopping us will be the heat death of the universe itself, if that theory holds true. Of that, I have my doubts. Rather, I would bet that the universe is a self-sustaining repeatable loop that will regenerate itself."