Jezebel's Ladder

by Scott Rhine

  Amy said, “We survived. I knew you’d find a way.”

  “At what price? Spacely was tortured to death and I’m responsible. They ended up shooting Nick anyway,” he said dully. The military police might have intervened sooner, but Spacely had confessed to a lot of crimes before the end.

  She knelt down and put an arm around him. She was his life preserver in this cold ocean.

  He hadn’t told anyone about the notes Nick had mailed him, or the design sketch. PJ held the keys to the stars. Businesses or governments would give him anything he wanted. Did he dare give the secret to anyone, knowing it could be used as a terrible weapon?

  He buried his head in Amy’s neck, and whispered, “I can’t hold it all. It weighs too much.”

  Amy stroked his hair thoughtfully. “Relax. You’re a good man, PJ. You’ll do the right thing. You’re just tired. We’ll go away for a while until you feel better. The world will get along just fine without you for a few days. Without either of us. No one’s irreplaceable.”

  He thought about Nick, Quan, and everyone who had given their lives in this effort. “You’re wrong. All people are irreplaceable. It’s my fault several of them are dead. I’ve failed some cosmic test of ethics, and the legacy of blood will set the tone for man’s entire future of space exploration. God gave us a choice and I blew it. We’ll have to live with that mistake for the rest of our lives.”

  Jez approached them from behind. The guards, seen and unseen, parted to let her through. “There’s a new provision in our charter for redemption through restitution. Would you be interested?”

  Amy recognized the voice. The woman from behind the scenes had a bandaged hand. “Ms. Johnson?” A famous actor stood beside her. Amy fixed her hair reflexively. “And Mr. Hollis!”

  Benny held out his hands. “Finally. Someone who appreciates me.”

  “She still recognized me first,” joked the former dancer.

  “I say we give the cruise tickets to them. I’d rather have a hot tub installed in our house. Mr. Smith looks like he could use a break.”

  “Sure. After all, we have funerals to attend on Wednesday. Ms. Reese, if you accept our offer of employment, we’ll throw in a one-week Caribbean cruise for the two of you, all expenses paid.”

  Amy was overwhelmed, but said, “I’m in. PJ?”

  Jez turned to him. “Want to work for Fortune Aerospace, the people who just spent half a billion dollars on your idea?”

  The unemployed programmer blinked. “What kind of job?”

  Benny said, “Vice-president of development; Jez would be your boss. I have a feeling Fortune will be retiring soon to spend more time with his family. When Jez gets promoted, you’ll move up to the head manager of Research and Development.”

  PJ reacted adversely to the title. “I’m not a manager. Managers find things that don’t work in a product and ‘manage’ people’s expectations.”

  Jez shook her head. “Good managers have such fantastic ideas that it takes hundreds of people to implement them. How about Chief Engineer? Starting salary of two hundred fifty thousand a year, and a fantastic, attractive personal assistant.”

  “Who?” asked PJ. Amy punched him in the arm. “Oh.” After a pause, he said, “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Amy said, “Show him the code of ethics.”

  PJ still wasn’t convinced. Suspicious, he asked, “Why me?”

  Benny asked, “Do you remember coming in contact with a rectangle of gold paper recently? It may have had words or symbols on it.”

  PJ nodded. “The ‘from the library of’ sticker in the front of Dr. Reuter’s book.”

  “Did you read all of it?” asked Jez.

  “No. It was tempting, but Amy needed me.”

  Jez nodded. “That’s why. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who avoided a theta trap and still got the gist of the instructions. My theory was right.”

  To Benny, PJ said, “In English?”

  The actor sat down on the sand. “Since we’re going to be working together for a long time, and my wife is going to push you to absurd limits, I’m going to do this intake myself. Let me tell you the story of how Jez became the head of the newest international, interstellar space agency.”

  Epilogue – The 28th Page

  The next few weeks played out like the ending of the Wizard of Oz. At the funeral, Jez gave Crusader’s notes and Virus’s files on a host of criminals to Agent Normandy. His rise in the Bureau as a result would be meteoric.

  The Democratic President appointed Benny as the US ambassador to the UN, partly to keep control of the senate seat. The actor accepted, seeing it as a chance to avoid elections and lay the groundwork for lasting change. He and Jez moved to the New York headquarters. After only one day on the job, Benny had developed a reputation for successful arm-bending. Diplomats literally ran the other way when they heard him coming for a favor.

  Imaging results from the moment the drive engaged showed echoes of a large, unseen spacecraft orbiting the earth. The Eye in the Sky was nothing more than the airlock by comparison.

  Focusing on the state of Kansas and using DNA from under one of the old stamps, the Wonka project located Active Zero.

  Several armored, black vans parked in a wheat field. Jez personally walked up to the weathered, wooden farmhouse. She wore a golden jumpsuit for the occasion. Jasper Inez answered the door warily.

  The ancient farmer in denim overalls asked, “Is this about my taxes? ‘Cause my dog does help around the farm; I just pay him in kibbles.”

  She shook her head and extended her empathy aura.

  He felt it wash over him. “Oh. I’ve been waiting for one of you for decades. I’d given up hope.”

  She smiled. “The teacher said I was ready for the next step.”

  The old man nodded. “I was hoping. This way,” he said leading her into his home.

  Framed on the wall was a copy of the emancipation proclamation. When Jasper took it down, she saw a flash of gold on the back. “This is for you.”

  “Thank you. Could we offer you anything in return?”

  He thought for a minute. “I could use help repairing my old tractor. Maybe one of your boys out there could help me with the jack.”

  “I have a small island in the Pacific if you’d rather have that.”

  The man laughed. “Too hot. And not my style. A man can’t help but be what he is.”

  She nodded. “Very well.” Into her lapel mike, she ordered, “Carl, get someone to fix this man’s tractor while I talk to him.”

  “Roger, sir.”

  Jez let the framed document dangle as she said, “It’s a lovely place. Would you like to show me around?”

  The man smiled and jumped at the lady’s request.

  After he pointed out a few of his land’s best features, she asked, “What is this page, exactly?”

  “It’s the one I found on top, the master index. If you’re holding that one, the others won’t bite you. There’s some other instructions on it, but I couldn’t make out the writing. I reckon you’ll figure it out.”

  She nodded. “How did you find them, Jasper?”

  He sighed. “It was right after that tornado. I’d lost everything. I was driving down to Texas to stay with my sister for a piece, but I-35 was closed off. You know that red dirt they have down in Oklahoma? The tornado had been so big that a whole field of it had been dumped across the road.”

  The old man’s eyes got distant as he spoke. “To one side, there was a hole in every rooftop as far as the eye could see. To the other, in the middle of this cornfield, was a truck, just dumped there, upside down. Damnedest thing.”

  He stopped walking. “There, plowed into the ground, I found the box.”

  “Where is it now?” she interrupted.

  Jasper waved his hand. “When I touched it, the box unfolded in a weird way, into what you called the pages.”

  “That’s why it’s fireproof—it had to survive reentry. The tornado was prob
ably caused by the lens getting close enough to drop the box!”

  Jasper shrugged. “I’ve no idea. All I know is that there was a gemstone in the middle. That was my payment for finding good homes for all the pages. It took a while.”

  “You did a good job. So you bought back your house with the gem?”

  “No, got me a fine woman with that stone, Louisa. This farm was her daddy’s.”

  “Is Louisa…?”

  “She’s dead. I buried her with it.”

  “I understand,” she said, enjoying the peace in the wheat field, the wind teasing at the stalks. “Did you learn anything during your stewardship that you’d like to share?”

  “The first line says it all. We begin this in love, in repayment for all that has been given unto us.”

  For a moment, Jez lost focus. The index page responded to the words the way a piano did to notes sung into it.

  When they returned to the house, there was a John Deere semi parked by the barn. She gave him a business card. “In case you think of anything else, or just want to talk about her to someone who will listen.”

  ****

  When Jez opened the vault to perform her experiment, Benny said, “I still think we should do this one at a time under controlled conditions.”

  Jez rolled the index into a thin tube and raised it like a conductor’s wand. The twenty pages Fortune, Midas, and the Virus had collected floated out of the safe. As she concentrated, the gold papers assembled themselves into shining columns.

  Eyes still closed, she said, “To enter our ranks, send a representative of each page to the gate. There, the key will open the way.”

  “Key?” asked Fortune.

  “The crystal-ball controller,” said Jez, opening her eyes again. “Evidently, you build a football-stadium-sized car remote.”

  “I want to push that button,” said Daniel.

  “What does my page do?” asked Claudette.

  Jez smiled. “I’m not certain, but it comes immediately before the Icarus page. I think it’s the safety feature.”

  ****

  After months of gathering data about the shape and behavior of the alien artifact, Fortune Aerospace began constructing the docking craft. Jezebel handled the people, and PJ guided the technical vision. Soon after, the UN formed a college for training and monitoring actives. Benny was the first Dean, but it was officially a rotating leadership position. Because of health problems like Elias Fortune Syndrome, the new college ruled that no person was allowed to read more than two pages. With the added participants and safety margins, instead of the five years Jezebel had predicted, the revised plan called for a full decade to assemble the complete team needed to reach the Eye in the Sky.

  Not one to limit her focus to only one impossible task, Jez began another project. Due to the array of medical problems the pages caused, it was almost impossible for her to conceive. After a year of invasive and expensive procedures, she finally did. However, the pregnancy ended quickly. Benny found her slumped over her desk when he came to pick her up for dinner that night. She was rushed to the emergency room with a near-total collapse of her endocrine system.

  As usual, Benny was there when she awoke. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

  “If I had been five minutes later or the helicopter had been gone…” Benny began. He steeled himself to lay down the law to her. “I know I can’t stop you from working, but we’re making sure that you’re never alone again. Trina has taken out the walls to your office. You now share a suite. When she’s teaching classes for new actives, we’ve hired nurses to sit with you.”

  “I’m not a child,” Jez said weakly. Then her face changed. “The baby?”

  “It was a boy,” Benny said. His wall of resolve collapsed, and they both cried.

  Doctor Weiss visited half an hour later, his face grim. “I know you want your own child, woman, but this attempt took ten years off your life. Another one would be pure suicide.”

  Trina stood in the doorway. “I keep telling her she needs to delegate more.”

  Jez locked eyes with her. “Thank you.” To Benny, she said, “Are you really okay with using Trina as a surrogate?”

  “We had the forms filled out a year ago. You’re the one who wasn’t ready to give up control,” Benny laughed. “Even Daniel’s on board.”

  Trina nodded and walked to Jez’s bedside.

  “How’s he going to handle that six weeks of no sex after the birth?” Jez asked.

  “We have other ways to share. Besides, I told him my breasts are going to get bigger,” Trina explained with a crooked smile.

  After she finished snickering, Jez said, softly, “I can’t think of a greater gift. Yes. What can I ever do to repay you?”

  Trina shrugged. “I’d like get married before I get pregnant.”

  A week later, Jez had pressured Fortune into signing his permission. All it had taken was a word from Claudette. Triniel had their wedding ceremony on a private beach in the Bahamas.

  ****

  Three years into the project, Trina went into labor. Being a broadcaster, few actives or guards could stand to be near her. Jezebel drove her to the hospital and held her hand throughout, sharing every contraction. When even non-actives began to feel the waves of pain, they were forced to perform an emergency C-section instead.

  Benny and Jezebel named their daughter Miracle Redemption Hollis.

  Mira, as they called her, had a crib in her mothers’ office suite where someone was always there to dote on her. Trina and Jezebel started digitally scrapbooking security footage of the child. Mira was undeniably photogenic, charismatic, and intelligent.

  Around Mira’s second birthday, Elias Fortune died. He was cremated and his ashes were incorporated into the Ptah mission as a passenger. Jezebel had promised him the stars and she would keep her word.

  At the reading of the will, Daniel noted another issue. “Between the rights to patents from Jez, Wannamaker’s estate from Trina, and my father and those wills, this little girl could become the richest person on the planet.”

  This surprised Benny. “You’re not going to have one of your own?”

  The boy shook his head. “Jez offered her eggs, but that would just be too weird—my swimmers and her. Besides, Trina is happy the way things are. With two children, she’d always be wondering if she was being fair and giving each enough attention. I don’t know; maybe I just don’t want to share any more of her time with others. If we had kids, we wouldn’t go kayaking or whitewater rafting as often.”

  “I still can’t believe you can do that.”

  “I have the upper-body strength and we can communicate seamlessly as a team. Beating a river together is one of the best rushes I’ve had out of bed. You should try it.”

  “My body hurts enough as it is,” the actor insisted. “So everything is going to Mira?”

  “Starlet is the executrix. I told her we wanted a house and a small donation for the horses, but other than that, we don’t want anything from the Fortune name.” Daniel gestured to Claudette, fussing over the toddler. “Together, Claudette and Jez control Fortune Enterprises. Do you really wonder where all that stock is going?”

  “Do you think she’s going to get spoiled?” asked Benny.

  Daniel changed the subject, trying to be tactful. “The press couldn’t get enough pictures of Mira at the funeral.”

  “We’ve had to fire employees at the estate for snapping photos of her. The bounty has gotten ridiculously high.”

  “It’s just beginning,” warned Daniel. “With your empathy skills and all that money, that little girl is going to be a force to be reckoned with.”

  Benny snorted. “You don’t need to tell me that. I put her to bed at night. She has her mother’s assertive personality.”

  ****

  A few months later, one of the security guards leaked a video showing the little girl casually using alien technology while her mothers’ backs were turned. She liked using the controller ball,
zooming in on the new planets and watching the pretty colors spin. She made the cover of Time magazine, which heralded her as the first true child of the Interstellar Age.

  The headline was the single word—Miracle.

  ###

  Continue the adventure with Mira in book two as she studies to become an astronaut at “Sirius Academy.”

  In book three, “Sanctuary,” travel with PJ’s daughter Mercy to the artifact.

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