by Dan Glover
Nothing had changed. It was the same at Toulon. Rather than attending the weekly dances and joining in with the others, Micah retreated into his own mind once more. The People wearied him with their inane laughter and the mocking way they had of talking to him, as if they were really talking about him.
He wasn’t as intelligent as he once was but he wasn’t stupid either. He would of course never let on to the others that they bored him... it might give away the plans he spent all his waking moments plotting.
Smiling as he worked, Micah tapped out a simple line of code. It took him nearly a century to make sure it contained no redundancies that might serve to confuse rather than elucidate the problem. When it was finished—when he was satisfied each order was correct... each nuance was sufficiently settled—he hesitated only a second before sending it on to the source.
Each individual nanobot was entangled with all the others. To upload software became simply a matter of linking into a single source. As it was, he still carried nanobots within his own bloodstream.
They were in every sense of the word inert. However, they were still capable of instantaneously responding to the rest of the nanobots, sending on any new updates to all their software programming.
It had been Micah's long-envisioned goal to create an autonomous nexus by which every nanobot in existence was linked. He was well on the way to success when Pete had decided to bombard the nest with a jet carrying a highly flammable substance thereby wiping out centuries of patient work.
At the time, he had been incensed yet he couldn’t show it. He knew that time was on his side so all he had to do was act as if he was happy at the destruction of all his dreams. Apparently, it worked. No one seemed to suspect a thing.
Now, all he had to do was wait.
Chapter 19—Strength
She couldn’t understand why she ever wanted to become a doctor.
It was fun... the first few decades, what with helping Karen engineer and implant fertilized eggs in some of the People, mostly in efforts to birth a human male. All their efforts failed.
Instead, she watched as the hybrid species flourished. Composed of a blending of the two species, as many males were born as females... sometimes more, so that soon it became apparent that the human race as she knew it was heading down the long road to extinction.
"I don’t think Kirk is coming home again, darling Amanda. I miss him. I had hoped they would at least retrieve his body so we could have closure. It's like I'm in purgatory, trapped between the living and the dead."
It didn’t grieve her to hear of Kirk's demise yet she couldn’t help but empathize with Luciana and her losing a husband. She had lost Nate about that same time. Together with Ginger, the three of them continued to harvest the grapes and produce the wine that had been a part of their lives for so long.
"I'm sorry, darling Luciana... do you think Niall ever went looking for him?"
"I thought so at first, but he's been gone for too long. He probably took up with one of the girls of the People. They're no doubt off somewhere making a passel of babies by now."
Amanda noticed how untrustworthy Niall was when the boy first came to live at Toulon. Nate had taken him in and sought to teach him the art of winemaking, but Niall could never seem to keep his mind on the work.
"Why hasn’t the casks been turned, sweet Amanda? I asked Niall to take care of that last week."
Nate had learned an old technique of hoisting casks filled with wine on racks underpinned with rollers. Once a month, the casks were turned ninety degrees. Supposedly the turning helped the fermenting process to fully develop, though to Amanda's sense of taste the extra labor made no appreciable difference.
"He's not been around, gentle Nate. I haven’t seen Niall in nearly a fortnight. I thought perhaps you'd sent him off on an assignment somewhere."
Amanda knew the boy had taken his motorcycle and gone off somewhere to the west. Luciana had once commented that ever since he was old enough to walk Niall was always leaving home without a word to anyone.
Amanda wouldn’t have known the boy was gone if she hadn’t been up early the morning that he left out. Still, she felt like a traitor by telling on him. Amanda had heard the talk about their father, Alpin, and how he had never been one to stand by the family. Luciana told her stories of how Alpin would leave the Isle of Skye for years at a time... no one would know if he was alive or dead.
One day he would show up again acting as if nothing had happened, seemingly surprised to see how the children he'd left behind had grown into adults with families of their own.
Niall was the same way. He couldn’t help it. A notion would get into the boy's head—perhaps the lure of wild places or maybe a story he read of an ancient city—and he'd be off, often times not even taking any food or other supplies with him.
It disappointed her how Nate never seemed to appreciate how reliable she was, and Ginger too. He took them both for granted. Rather than asking for help like he did with Niall, he expected it and grumbled if they took a day off just to soak in the sunshine or to take the children to the beach.
She was devastated when he left.
However, Amanda told herself how she should have seen it coming... Nate's incessant obsession with Lady Lily. Though they had made a home in Toulon together and raised over thirty children together, whenever someone spoke Lily's name a mad blue sort of light appeared in Nate's eyes, as if the mere mention of his first wife set his love for her ablaze all over again.
Knowing the propensity for capricious behavior ran in the blood of the men of the Lake didn’t make Amanda's decision to give up medicine any easier. She kept telling herself that one day—if she kept at it—she might discover the secret for turning off the dominant gene switch that prevented the birth of human males.
A century passed by, and then another, and still she was no closer to her goal. Karen had given up long ago and gave in to the lure of becoming a parent to multiple girls. Some had even married Amanda's and Ginger's sons with Nate, hybrids born of the union of the people of the Lake and human beings.
Amanda remembered the warnings of Marilyn all those years ago; how she ranted about the human race being doomed if a child such as Nate was born into the world. She hadn’t lent an ear to such fatalistic fables yet now, it was becoming clear that the woman might well have been right all along.
She sometimes regretted shooting Marilyn. She wondered what miracles the two of them might have created. With Marilyn's fervent belief and Amanda's medical knowledge they might well have cracked the genetic code and allowed the People to go on propagating as man and woman.
Amanda had found and taken Marilyn's old bible when she helped to clean out the woman's apartment at Orchardton Hall. At the time, she planned on burning it. She couldn’t help but blame the book for Marilyn's behavior... her obsession with a god no one could see and who did not help her when the moment of death was upon her.
She couldn’t seem to shake the look in Marilyn's eyes after she'd been shot. Being a doctor the woman must have known she was mortally wounded. Immortality had been hers for the asking. All she had to do was to remain close to the Ladies.
It wasn't a look of remorse, nor was there any hint of fear in her face. Rather, Marilyn seemed to be soothed by a vision of what Amanda could only term her faith. She wondered if Marilyn had been so brain-washed by her repeated readings of that bible that she had actually convinced herself of a delitescent truth it was purported to hold.
Instead of burning it, Amanda had immersed herself in the study of the old book. It made no sense. There were stories of old men living nearly a thousand years and of a god forming the first woman from a rib of the first man. A vengeful god demanded horrific sacrifices from believers and killed off nearly the entire human race by causing terrible floods.
What struck Amanda hardest was how a man named Jesus had healed the sick by merely laying a hand upon them. It reminded her of the Ladies ability to cure others in the same fashion and how useles
s her own knowledge of medicine had become.
When she talked Karen into taking her on as an apprentice, Amanda envisioned being the person the People would come to see when they became ill or injured. It never happened. No one ever got sick and if someone happened to be hurt, all it required was a gentle touch from Lady Lily to set them upon the course to recovery.
She could recite a hundred thousand remedies and cures for common ailments that no longer existed. None of them would ever exist again, unless by chance the People were somehow isolated from those of the Lake. Of course, if that happened, they'd all be dead in a matter of hours.
Her dreams of becoming a doctor had been as misguided as her yearning for being the wife of Nate. She wondered why no one warned her. If she had seen someone going down the wrong path, she would have said something to them... at least make an attempt at changing their destiny.
Still, she had witnessed Marilyn going about proclaiming the teachings of her old bible as that which was sacrosanct. The only person who seemed to believe her was Kirk, and Amanda got the impression he was just playing along with her to pacify her incontinent moods.
Amanda finally decided she was as guilty as anyone in letting Marilyn down. She had been the one to deal the fatal blow but the woman had been walking the path to oblivion for years before that and no one had stepped up to dissuade Marilyn from her beliefs.
Amanda felt she deserved all the bad things coming her way... the loss of her marriage, the blight upon a career she had dreamed of for centuries, and even the anguish of knowing she was a murderous traitor who had never done anyone so much as one iota of good.
She wondered if she had the strength to do what needed to be done.
Chapter 20—Lost
Lauren had rarely before experienced such a surge of covetousness.
At first, she wasn’t sure what it was she was feeling. The urge to control Lily's every move had never presented itself. She had always felt her lovers were free to do what they would with who they deemed it best to do it with.
Now, she couldn’t help but press her lover for every minute detail of her comings and goings, of who she was spending her time with, and why. Lauren sensed that all she was doing was pushing Lily away but she couldn’t help herself. She had to know.
Even Natalia must have sensed the permutations of angst welling up inside of Lauren's hearts. Lying together on a hammock her lover watched with intently focused eyes as Lauren lamented the loss of their lover.
"She isn't here, my lovely Natalia."
"What does it matter if our precious Lily decides to spend some time on her own, my darling Lauren?"
"It matters to me, darling Natalia, and it should matter to you as well. She promised us that we'd be her only lovers."
"I'm sorry, sweet Lauren, but I do not recall any promise of Lily's like that. It sounds very human-like, if you don't mind me saying so... almost as if she recited marriage vows with us."
"You don't believe me, my precious Natalia? Do you really think I would lie about something so important?"
"Yes, I believe you, my sweet and lovely Lauren. I'll always believe anything you tell me. I simply said I do not recall such a promise being given in my presence. Perhaps I was sleeping, or maybe I was away at the time. If you say Lily made that promise I believe you. This is something you must take up with her, however, and not with me."
"She isn’t here, darling Natalia."
She wondered why such intense feelings were erupting inside her now. The three of them had been seemingly content for centuries. She had never abjured Lily's dalliances with Nate in the past. If he made her lover happy, then Lauren was content.
Now, a storm cloud of frustration was threatening to engulf her every waking moment and even began creeping into the safe harbors of her dreams. That she was the target of such jealous rage wasn’t fair to Natalia... the girl had done nothing to deserve that kind of treatment.
The last time Lauren felt so depressed was just before Micah's mad creations from hell had arrived at Orchardton Hall en mass to carry Lily away. She wondered vaguely if that situation was about to repeat itself but everyone assured her the nanobots were dead and gone.
"Pete flew his jet plane into the central nest, darling Lauren. Without that, the nanobots had nothing to guide them. They ceased to exist as viable entities."
Lauren sensed Karen was telling the truth as she knew it, but she also got the impression that Micah wasn't. That boy still had a few tricks up his sleeve and she knew he wasn’t afraid to pull them out when he felt they were most needed.
"If that is so, sweet Karen, how did Pete survive so long on his own? From what Maon told me, Pete endured an entire week on his own. Any other human being would have perished within hours."
"From what I gather, darling Lauren, the residual nanobots still in Pete's body worked to ensure his survival, and consequently their own as well."
"So just some of Micah's nanobots were affected by the demise of their nest?"
"I'm not privy to all the details of Micah's work, my precious Lauren. If you have questions, perhaps you should address them to him. He's been nothing but forthcoming to mine."
Lauren didn’t tell Karen that she had already inquired of Micah about his tiny terrors and whether or not they still represented a hazard to life on earth. He had spouted the same nonsense that Karen did. Obviously, the woman couldn’t or wouldn’t open her eyes to the possibility that they were all in mortal danger.
The man was lying. She couldn’t prove it any more than she could walk upon water but Lauren had long ago learned to trust her instincts on matters pertaining to human beings and their treacherous ways.
Lauren kept dreaming of Kirk. Each night she set up her dreams to include Lily and Natalia, just as she'd done for centuries. For the first time, however, she failed to obtain the desired deep level of sleep to produce those delicious visions of love and want.
Instead, as soon as she closed her eyes, Kirk appeared. He had changed somehow. As long as she had known him the man always had a coarseness about him that reminded Lauren of one of her first human husbands who made his living embalming dead bodies in the home they shared. Knowing the man was not also averse to selling pilfered body parts to the needful did nothing to disenchant him from a place inside her hearts as long as he continued to provide a roof over her head and protection from those more inclined to learning her secrets.
When he died, like all her human husbands did sooner rather than later, she took what was his to make her own. They used her. She could think of no justifiable reason why she shouldn’t use them as well.
Kirk had used her as well, only not in the carnal sense. Instead, he had stayed close by, like a leech sucking the vital essence from her and Lily's bodies. She had voted long ago to exile the man, to send him away from Orchardton Hall where he would doubtlessly meet his death in a gruesome and deserved fashion.
Once again, Lily intervened.
Now, the man was haunting her every sleeping moment, like a black death shroud threatening to slowly suffocate her. Though his countenance had changed, there was little doubt it was Kirk. He had an extremely distinctive gait when he walked, as if his feet pained him unless he stepped with toes turned inward.
He was trying to tell her something but when his mouth opened only a sort of black sand emerged forming a cloud around his head until it reminded Lauren of the swarm of ground wasps she had once inadvertently disturbed while planting flowers in her garden and how they thronged about her bumping her in the face until she was forced to flee.
She could see two parts to Kirk in her dreams. One was a monster who raged through life taking advantage of everyone and everything that he encountered. The other was a savior who stood stone still in front of an enormous beast advancing upon his friends, allowing himself to be devoured if it might spare their lives.
She hadn’t realized it at first, but thinking things over one day she considered how it was about the same time the dreams of Kirk
began infesting her sleep that the overwhelming jealousy she felt for Lily manifested itself. It didn’t seem likely that the two seemingly unrelated incidences of her mind playing tricks upon her might be related yet in the world of magic Lauren inhabited, she took nothing for granted.
The People had made a habit of counting the years which both infuriated and intrigued her simultaneously. They marked off the years by counting the solstices and every century would stage a vast celebration to mark the anniversary of the Great Dying with groups coming to Orchardton Hall from all the various colonies that had sprung up over the last thousand years.
Though Lauren detested the celebrations—she always got the distinct impression that she was constantly being blamed for the near-demise of humanity—she also enjoyed seeing all the faces that had once been part of the life at Orchardton Hall.
Her son never appeared.
She knew he was still out there somewhere in the world probably practicing his art as he had always done in some isolated spot on the globe where no one would ever see the fruits of his labors.
Kāne had always been a man of his own mind, never staying put for more than a month, two at most. He was nothing like Bilbla, the son she remembered from her days beneath the Lake. Though her son had come home to her, he had died countless centuries ago and an imposter had taken his place.
Often times Lauren considered searching him out. His was such an energetic being that she always thought she could sense his presence from thousands of kilometers away. Of course the reality of things was different. She lost track of him as soon as he stepped from the room.
The short time he had spent at Orchardton Hall had filled Lauren with hope that Kāne had finally gotten past his penchant for isolation. When he took up with the girl Ginger, Lauren did not approve at first... but as the days went by and she saw the love filling her son's eyes she had a change of hearts.