by Elsa, Sandra
They stood in the doorway of the suite, looking with trepidation at the pair of us kicked back on the couch like best friends. “So what have we been talking about?” Harrison didn’t sound like he really wanted to know the answer.
“This and that.” I grinned at him. “Jordan Drover. Harold Jallahan. Who stowed away on a sailboat on the source when he was eight years old—“
“I knew better than to send you off together. She went all the way back to eight?”
I grinned at him.
He sighed. “Please tell me she didn’t break out the photos.”
“You mean to show me that picture of you in a cape trying to fly off the house, convinced you could levitate?”
“Mom!” He rolled his eyes. “Out. Go on. You’ve done enough damage for one night. She’ll never respect me again.”
She laughed. ”I’m going, but I’ve got a standing invitation to stop by anytime I want. You’re going to need me, so don’t think you can lord it over me just because you’re all grown up.”
“Need you? I want you with us Mom but need is a steep word.”
“Sooner than you think. I’ll leave you two alone now.” She cupped her hand over Harrison’s cheek then patted him with a grin.
When the door closed behind her and my father, Harrison asked, “What was that all about?”
“She’s volunteered to babysit.”
“Ba— Poppy. That’s what Poppy was so excited about.” He stood across the room wringing his hands. “How?”
“Well if you don’t know, maybe we should send you through sex education.”
His hands tore through his hair. “I know all that, but the doctor in Fifty-Five told you birth control should work for at least a year.”
I repeated the theories Paul and I had decided on most likely reasons behind the event, and said, “We only have the word of a dolphin on it for now.”
“She seemed pretty certain though.” He’d been standing in the same spot staring at me from across the room for five minutes. Finally he asked, “What will you do?” His hands wrung again. “I mean…you didn’t seem upset when Mom was here.”
“I’m not. My only requirement is that Jordan Drover doesn’t learn that he managed to put one over on me. Oh…and our parents will have to live close enough to babysit.”
Three strides brought him across the room. He bundled me up off the couch and carried me to the bedroom. The only time he’d been more passionate and tender was the night we got married. Not that I ever had anything to complain about.
#
My father was at our door by eight o’clock the next morning. Fortunately it looked like Nan had passed on more than the information because he didn’t have any questions about how, when, or why. He just wrapped me in his arms and held me tight. “Promise me I get to be a part of his life.”
“What if it’s a her?”
“Even better. I get to experience what I missed.”
“Of course you’ll be part of her life. We will have to step up plans though. I didn’t plan to have children underfoot until we were settled in our final destination. Now…I’m thinking we may move just as soon as we figure out what the storms will do to us.”
“We promised father a phone call at six months,” Harrison said.
“Didn’t promise where we’d call him from or what we’d be doing in those six months. He’s the one who assumed we would stay here. Don’t think we even tried to mislead him on that score.”
“You’re right. Not like he lied about no more media circuses.”
“Nan said something about the Rocky Mountains for a final destination,” my father said.
“It’s one of the places we talked about,” I told him.
“You know what would come in handy in the Rocky Mountains?” he asked.
“Many things. I’m afraid you’ll have to explain exactly which one you’re gloating over.”
He looked at Harrison, eyes wide. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Sorta got sidetracked on Poppy’s news last night.”
My father spun to the door. “Don’t go anywhere.” Nan held the door while he ran back to his room. When he returned he said, “Maybe we should go eat breakfast on the boardwalk before we discuss this.”
“I can eat,” I agreed, more than a little curious what they were up to.
We chatted on our way down the elevator but only about mundane events.
On the boardwalk Nan and I sat at an octagonal table while Harrison and my father went off to buy breakfast. No sooner did they sit down, than Dee and Ryan appeared.
“You two still hanging out in paradise,” I asked.
“Tell her moving into District Seven wouldn’t be the worst thing she could consider doing,” Ryan sounded a little desperate. I looked between them.
Dee looked relaxed, but she said, “You’re talking to the wrong person if you think Frankie’s going to back your game plan. I don’t intend to be dependent on anybody and what do I know to earn a living in District Seven.”
I held up a hand and stopped her. “Jeffrey Drover wants to see you. He said something about a reward for services rendered. Plus, I told Jerry I was sending you five thousand of his, to pay for his miraculous recovery of his talent. You do have a viable talent that would probably be appreciated, but I have a better offer.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Already?”
“You know most of the game plan Dee, so I’ll let you brief Ryan, but we’re looking at setting up permanent camp in less than six months. We’ll need colonists and you volunteered.”
“Thought the plan was to experiment for a while, then find a place to call home.”
“It was. Circumstances beyond our control have moved up the schedule.”
Ryan looked confused, but he listened patiently. “These circumstances don’t involve Jordan Drover, do they?” Dee asked.
“Only in a roundabout way. He instigated it. But we’re going to run with it.”
“Good. I don’t want to be anywhere close to that man. Didn’t care for the way he looked at me at all. Like he was trying to figure out what exactly I could do and how he could exploit me. That’s the main reason I balked at going to District Seven. Don’t want to register any more than you do, girlfriend.”
“I hear ya. But now, my husband and father have something they wanted to gloat about, which is for the moment secret, so why don’t you look us up on the beach this afternoon, after you’ve had time to present possibilities to Ryan.”
“Sounds like a plan. We’ll see you around one, or so?”
“That’ll work.”
“All right, girlfriend. You have a good morning.”
“You too. Good to see you again, Ryan.”
He nodded and clutched Dee’s hand as they wandered off and picked up food, then sat down several tables away. My father opened his folder as we ate breakfast. He flipped over several printouts with images of unicorns and dragons. And many variations of recombinant strands of DNA. Which I only identified because they were neatly labeled under each image.
“While we were tinkering yesterday,” my father said, “we started with your unicorn. We’ve done most of the workups and should only have to apply them once we have the Narwhal DNA. Then we moved on to the dragon and did mock ups of Komodo Dragon DNA combined with Bat DNA, since that’s the structure most dragon wings seem to follow. Like the Narwhal, We’ll have to order the Komodo DNA so we really didn’t have anything we could actually create. Then Jesse got the idea for creating a winged horse.” He flipped over a few pages and their winged horse appeared in front of my eyes. “It’s not a Pegasus like in the fantasy books, because we were getting a feel for the DNA we intend to use. We put bat wings on a horse.” She was not a warm fuzzy looking creature that children would dream of flying on. But she was utilitarian.
Harrison flipped two more pages as I examined their work. “Thought it beat the hell out of the hang glider you were looking at in the museum. She wouldn’t rely solely on win
d currents and luck, we make her smart enough to have a decent survival instinct and she’d work wonderfully for cross country travel or visiting somebody on the next cliff up.”
“So you didn’t alter the intelligence factor? Basically she’s going to be just a horse with wings?”
“Who knows how smart a horse really is. Books vary considerably in presenting a horse’s intellect,” Harrison said. “But for this first one, no we didn’t alter the intelligence at all.”
“The wings would have to be huge to lift something the size of a horse.”
“You wanted them to carry a dragon. We altered their structure a bit, made them stronger, bigger. The biggest variation is in the horse though. We combined the bat DNA to give her the hollow bones of a creature capable of flight. It may still be too heavy but that’s what experiments are for.”
“And you’re actually cooking one of these up right now?”
“As we speak. Be a week or two before we have noticeable growth but we can see where the genetic structures break down. What we need to change to accomplish our goals as it grows.”
They sat back and stared at me like children eager for approval.
“Will the first ones survive at all?”
“Always a crapshoot,” Harrison said. “It’s unlikely, but there’s a possibility. First exercise is usually to see where we went wrong. Second stands a better chance of survival but probably still won’t be able to fly.”
“So how long do they take to grow?”
“Depends on size. Being an experiment we went with pony DNA. It should take less than a month with Lizzie monitoring it and injecting growth hormones at all the right stages.”
“Lizzie? The AII?”
“That’s her.”
“Cool. So by the time we leave here, we could actually have a flying horse?”
Harrison and my father grinned maniacally. “Yes. Unless we end up needing to add magic to get the wings to mass ratio correct.”
“What kind of talent would help with that?”
“Levitation. And we already have a willing donor.” My father puffed out his chest.
“You guys went above and beyond.”
“Still nothing compared to the life you’ve started.” Harrison’s grin didn’t look like it would ever fade.
“We--started. Emphasis on we,” I said.
He leaned over and kissed me. “I love you.” And that about covered that.
Chapter 31
We were nearly finished eating when Jeffrey Drover appeared with Lisa and Annabel clucking after him. He sat down beside me, leaving his wife and sister to find their own chairs at the next table over. “Have you had a chance to talk to Prince Charming yet?” No, good-morning, Lovely day. Pleasure to see you under better circumstances. Straight to the heart of his concerns.
I could grow to like Jeffrey Drover. At least if he held up to closer scrutiny. “I told her you were looking for her. She’s right over there.” I nodded toward her and Ryan.
He stood up. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
Lisa got up. I thought she was going to follow him over to Dee, but instead she went to a boardwalk café and bought food for two. The two turned out to be her and Annabel.
Jeffrey sat down beside Dee. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I figured Dee’d give me a rundown later and turned my attention back to finishing my food. Jeffrey returned carrying his own food just as we were finishing up. “Do you mind staying around a bit?” He directed his glance at me and Harrison.
Nan and my father stood up. “We can take a hint,” Nan said. “Always a pleasure Jeffrey.” She didn’t make it sound like it was ever a pleasure. I’d have to ask her later for her opinions. “But I do believe there was a specialty shop I wanted to investigate on the other side of the district.”
Once they left, Jeffrey circled his hand above his head and suddenly there was no outside sound. I looked for magic. A hunter green net encircled us, closing over the top. I pulled my null field tight to avoid interfering with the magic that cut off the rest of the world.
“I suppose you have questions for us,” Harrison said.
“I had questions for you. Now I want you to fill out the form with essay answers. But we’ll start with the easy ones and work our way to what happened yesterday. Or is that two days ago? You have my thanks for involving your friend. However that mess happened. First easy question; has Jordan left the district yet?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“He didn’t insist on knowing where I was?”
“We may have insinuated that you rented a car and drove ahead of everybody else,” Harrison said.
“Very good. And again you have my thanks. Did he leave any of his men?”
I jumped in with, “As far as we know he took everybody who still worked for him. Leo Sorenson is still down here.”
“Sorenson?” he rubbed a hand over his chin. “Ahh yes, the Were. Tell me how that came about.”
It surprised me that he knew Leo was a Were, but I told him what I knew, from the moment Leo let us walk by without sounding an alert, to the moment Jordan left.
“And what are your feelings on his honesty about having quit?”
“Untrusting, even though he feels real?”
“He probably is real. He’s young and Jordan overworks his men. Especially the Weres. After all they’re only animals, right?”
“Many of my best friends are Were.” I got indignant for Rollick and Leo and Ralston among many other wolfie friends I’d had over the years.
“And deserving of your friendship, I’m sure,” Jeffrey soothed my temper. “I was merely stating Jordan’s view of them.”
“Did you know Salas?” I asked.
“Another fine man, worn to a frazzle, by my brother. I heard he quit recently. I believe you got blamed.”
“Probably a fair target on that one. I did offer him other employment.”
“Very good.” He switched his focus to Harrison and dropping all pretext of relaxation he said, “So tell me Harrison, how did you come across your lovely wife and why does she drive my brother to do mad, impetuous things.”
Harrison told the story of our meeting, everything including the siphons and his own missteps. By the time he got around to admitting that he’d broken back into my apartment and begged me to take him on as a client, Jeffrey scarcely remembered to eat his food. When Harrison mentioned I’d seen him through a cloak of shadows and night and resisted his persuasion, Jeffrey was on the edge of his chair. “And now, tell me why Jordan is so enthralled by her, yet refrains from rolling over her like a steam roller.”
“She’s a null, Uncle. And she’s an incredibly brilliant, self-reliant, private investigator who graduated valedictorian of her criminology class at the age of sixteen. She has proven difficult to steamroll.”
“He hasn’t lured you back by offering you the watch?” Jeffrey turned and scrutinized my expression as he commented.
I snorted. “Who in their right mind would want the top position in any district’s watch, much less District Seven’s. Yes, he’s offered it. Twice.”
The hand rubbed over his jaw again. “So continue with your story.”
Harrison talked, leaving out only the time we spent outside the dome and the biogenetics lab and experiments. “Then Mother decided we needed to have a proper wedding and here we are.”
“That was her? Not your bride?”
“My bride fought tooth and nail to get out of Mother’s machinations. Frankie’s not big on ostentation.”
Jeffrey leaned back in his chair, fingers tugging through long blond hair a smile flitting across his face. “That’s got to poke your father in the ribs. He finally gets to acknowledge you, and she wants nothing to do with big mushy family scenes.”
“And that pretty much brings us up to two nights ago,” Jeffrey said. “Explain what happened to me and what the place with all the blinding colors was.”
“Before we get into that, you
need to understand some of the things we’ve discovered about nulls,” Harrison said, and proceeded to tell Jeffrey about the way nullspace collected spells and talent. “When I realized it was you, she felt casting a spell, I thought a spell like yours would be a good one to have in storage.”
“Stop. What happened on my first attempt?”
“She felt the magic building and just turned your spell off.”
“Ok. That’s what it felt like. You did say she was Jallahan’s daughter…I jumped right back on it because I thought it was him. OK, continue.”
“Well, I thought if she stood near your cross she would be able to absorb the spell. Guess I didn’t take into account the fact that when you’re in transit, you’re pretty much all talent. You ended up in nullspace. The bright lights would be her collection of spells. Even I see the colors in there…so for you…I imagine they left you near blinded.”
“Add a distinct lack of oxygen and I had no choice but to try one more time to get it right. I can see your logic and I felt you tug me out of there, but please just ask next time.”
“No problem. Learned my lesson, Uncle.”
“All’s well that ends well. So we have a null. I’m assuming your father has figured out what she is. Although mother did seem quite put out that you married somebody without talent, so at least he hasn’t shared with her.”
“I have a null. And she’s my wife, and nobody’s going to exploit her talent, not even me,” Harrison said in a tone that left no doubt as to his seriousness.
“You said, your father gave you a year before he drags you home.”
“He doesn’t believe it’s going to happen. He’s trying to hold his temper in the hopes our children will be more exploitable. We have said he’d be permitted to see them.”
“And when do you anticipate presenting him with that prize.”
“Seeing them and spending time alone with them are two vastly different things. Think I’ll take a page from my mother’s book and chaperone any visits, warning them frequently of what sort of man their grandfather is.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”