Chapter Twenty-Eight
Eilish
She stood in the morning sunshine with her arm around Max watching the children playing and laughing. The adults from the ship and those from New Atlantis were also looking on in delight. Off to one side, she saw the youthful Luke standing with his arm around a joyous Faith. They watched as their son rough-housed with some boys on the lawn.
That boy could go from adult soldier to playful child in a matter of moments; somewhat like his adoptive father, Eilish realised with a start. She was so glad to see Luke so happy. Making the shift into a clone body had been his biggest adjustment yet, and he'd obviously made it with flying colours. Their whole society would benefit from that in the long term. Because she knew, without a doubt, that without Luke these large-scale missions would not work nearly as effectively.
She turned to see Karl and the girl called Lizzie walking across the lawn toward the moving pathway that would take them away from the centre of the city.
‘Give me a minute,’ she said to Max and slipped out from under his arm. Hurrying after the couple, she called out to them.
Karl stopped and turned back to her, waiting for Eilish to catch them up.
‘Where are you going? There’s a party going on,’ she said breathlessly as she reached them.
‘Lizzie is tired. It is after midnight by her internal clock. I am taking her home to bed. I want to show her my house by the sea. I have told her so much about it. It is past time she saw it for herself.’
‘Oh, of course. We will catch up tomorrow then at the Retrieval Centre?’
‘Yes. I will need to debrief as we all will. The virtual images of the Titanic will be quite a useful addition to our archives.’
Eilish noticed that along with contentment there was also sadness hanging over the couple.
‘We could not stop it,’ Eilish said, knowing the cause of their ennui. ‘We did what we could.’
‘I know. The rest are with their Maker now or will be Targeted in the future. Nevertheless, it still feels…' Karl shrugged eloquently, unable to find the words to describe what he felt.
‘I know. It still feels as if we only saved a small percentage of those who were lost. However, look at the woman beside you. Look at the children on the lawn. Isn't that worth celebrating?’
‘Most definitely. Even so, for me the celebration will come later when the tragedy fades a little. For now, I will go home with my soon-to-be wife and child and make my peace with it all.’
Eilish nodded sadly. ‘Yes, I imagine we will all be making peace with it in our own ways in the next few days and weeks. Nevertheless, you and I have so much more than the others to be grateful for.’ She smiled benignly at Lizzie before looking back at Karl. ‘To have found love is more than either of us would have thought possible.’
‘Indeed.’ Karl dropped a kiss on Lizzie’s head and rubbed her arm. ‘If anyone asks, just tell them where we have gone and why. I will see you soon. Good job. You Retrievers do a good job. If I did not know it before, I do now.’
Eilish grinned at his compliment.
Turning away, she headed back towards the party. Max had settled himself on the grass beside Carter and Hugo, a plate of food in his hands, watching Finn swing one of the children around in his arms. Several other tiny tots were begging for their turn. As she approached, Max grinned and held up the plate.
‘I piled on enough for both of us. This is almost as good as the restaurant on the ship. Carter says it is all prepared and processed so that it can be “reconstituted,” that was your word, yes?' He looked at Carter, who gave a nod. ‘Reconstituted in only seconds. That is a miracle!’
‘Another miracle,’ said Hugo jovially, sipping at a long glass filled with something green and icy.
‘I imagine I will get bored with the miraculous after a while,’ Max commented dryly, holding out his hand for Eilish. ‘Although I will never get bored with this woman, gentlemen. She is far more miraculous to me than time travel, moving walkways or instant food.’
‘Oh, I will hold you to that when I show you the Knowledge Centre. It will “blow your mind,” as they used to say in the 1960s. Or was it the 1970s…’
‘Blow your mind? That seems appropriate, especially after walking through that Portal. I was sure I was going to have a seizure of some kind.’
Eilish lowered herself to the grass and rested her head on Max’s stomach. She stared up at the peerless blue sky above them and wondered if this was to be the happiest moment of her life. It certainly felt like it.
‘You get used to it,’ Carter replied with a laugh. ‘It actually only lasts for a few moments. It just feels longer because your cells are transposed across the Continuum. You need to get one of the experts to explain it to you one day.’
‘Hmm.’ Max sounded doubtful as he ran his fingers through her hair. Ah, now this was the best moment! She chuckled to herself. Somehow she wondered if she would be saying that for some time to come. Each moment would seem just that little bit better than the one before.
‘Love you,’ she murmured.
‘I love you, too.’
Karl
Pia stood in all her understated glory beside Marco on the patio of Rene and Livy’s villa overlooking the cliff and turquoise ocean. The sun was shining, the sky was deep, cerulean blue and the crowd of white-clothed wedding guests looked cool and light as they witnessed their sweetest member make her vows.
The house was just a few doors down from his own and Karl would have volunteered to have the impromptu wedding there, except that his place didn’t have a patio and was somewhat smaller. And with the amount of people here to celebrate, smaller would not have worked.
It had been two days of celebration. Two days since they’d returned from the Titanic to the open arms of a waiting city. Just as the New Atlanteans had welcomed those traumatised women and children from 1942 several years ago they now greeted these new survivors. But unlike that last welcome, this one had been a truly joyous occasion, largely due to the children who still saw it as part of a big party they had been invited to.
Yesterday the children and adults had begun to settle into their new home. They had been assigned to the Interim Centre, the specially set up quarters for the Nazi victims. It was felt that keeping them together and minimising their contact with high technology was the surest way of introducing them to their world gently and effectively. It had worked with the 1942 survivors and it would probably work with this group. Although, no one expected it to take very long for these people to adapt to their new surrounds.
Karl had seen Bart sneaking a few of the older children out of the Centre yesterday to see the Start Point Cavern. Watching the children walk amongst the high tech equipment as the Portal activated and deactivated was a marvel. They were all filled with excited questions and wonder.
No, the children would be fine. It would be the adults who would need time to come to terms with the lives they’d lost.
The sinking of the Titanic was still with them all, playing like a sad refrain in the background of their happy melody. Lizzie voiced the feelings for the adults well when she told Karl last night as they watched a wild storm come in off the sea through their bedroom window, that it felt wrong to have such happiness when so many others had suffered such terror, pain and death. And he supposed that such feelings were not so different from what the survivors of the LGP had felt, once they had new bodies and a fresh new world to build. It didn’t seem quite fair.
But what did they know about the bigger picture, the balance in nature or God’s plan? They didn’t, and so fairness was only the child-like mind of Man trying to understand the mind of the Creator.
Of course, Lizzie and Max were not amongst those at the Interim Centre. Lizzie had gone straight home with Karl and enjoyed the wonder of his home and his bed. And from the tired, but satisfied look on Eilish’s face, Karl could imagine that something similar had been going on at her small villa yesterday with Max.
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Now, on day three, they stood together on this patio in the sunshine rejoicing in a different way. They celebrated the victory of love over adversity, symbolised by Pia’s marriage to Marco. This joining of one more reawakened couple, one more set of soul-mates who had found each other across centuries, was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Karl Brandenburg, a minister of the German Evangelical Church before the LGP and a Researcher who had spent many lifetimes in the Early Christian era, was here to officiate. Appearing to be a man in his late fifties with sunburned skin and bleached blonde hair, he wore only a gold stole as his vestments. He said that such simplicity was the way of it in the early church before the Holy Roman Empire got its hands on the ritual.
Simplicity had been the Christian message in those early years and Karl believed that simplicity was the way of the future for his faith. So he stood before them now in a white tunic no different to what they all wore, with his gold stole draped around his neck as he intoned the ritual words.
Pia was glowing; a simple wreath of brightly coloured flowers on her brow and a silver threaded shawl around her shoulders over the floor-length gown both Jane and Livy had worn before her. At her side stood Marco, resplendent in his simple, white tunic, which brought out the darkness of his olive skin and the whiteness of his smile. He was grinning so broadly, Karl had to wonder if his face would ache later on. Next to him stood Paulo, the boy who was not supposed to have been saved. He was best man and, if his manic grin was any indication, he was settling into his new life very well.
All around the happy couple were the well-wishers, mostly Retrievers, all present to witness this very special moment.
While the sea breeze brushed the long, straight wisps of Pia’s hair back from her face and the sun lit up her skin, she turned to face the man she had met four hundred years ago and fallen in love with instantly.
‘… I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.’
While the cheers and clapping erupted around them, Marco drew his bride gently into his arms, his dark eyes glowing. He kissed her as if she was the most precious thing in the world.
At Karl's side he felt Lizzie shift and turn. Sensitive to her every nuance, he turned to see what concerned her. She was staring off to the back of the gathering where Faith was gripping her stomach, bent double, as Luke tried to keep her upright. Even from where he stood close to the front of the group, he could hear Luke desperately whispering to her as she shook her head.
Unobtrusively, the couple began to back through the sliding glass doors into the living area of the villa. Karl began to ease his way through the guests to follow them.
This was not good. Citizens of New Atlantis rarely became ill. It was mainly accidents that kept the small Medical Centre busy. That and clone Integration.
But Faith looked seriously ill. Could she have a ruptured appendix?
Luke had his pretty, young wife laid out on the sofa by the time he reached them. Lizzie followed him out and stood at a distance, watching silently.
‘I am all right, Luke. I just feel sick, that is all. I have been feeling like this for a few days. It passes,’ Faith was saying in an exhausted voice, her pale face even paler than usual.
Karl drew out his Tablet and connected to the Medical Centre. He would have a Medic here within seconds and he told Luke as much.
As Faith continued to shake her head and say she was fine, the Medic arrived, teleporting into the living room not far from where Karl was standing. Karl could have done the examination himself, but it was the equipment the Medic brought with him that would give the best diagnosis.
He watched as Jason Otago, the medic, withdrew the patches through which information on Faith’s condition would immediately be relayed to his Tablet. Walking up behind the Maori, Karl watched over his shoulder as the familiar diagnostic graphs began appearing on the screen of the small device.
That couldn’t be right. He looked more closely at several of the higher than normal readings. Jason turned to him in consternation. Wordlessly, Karl shook his head and took the machine from him.
‘What is it?’ Luke demanded anxiously, his voice loud enough to attract the attention of the other guests outside. They were starting to come in through the glass door now, curious about what was going on.
‘Jason, keep them out there for a few moments will you? We do not need a lot of bodies in here getting in the way,’ he said to the big medic hovering at his side.
Bart ducked in before Jason could coax the rest of the guests back onto the patio. He dashed over to his mother’s side, his face a mask of terror. Not even in those terrible days after he’d been brought here from the Death Train had Karl seem Bart look so terrified. He dropped down beside Faith, who was still pleading for them all to stop making such a fuss over a bit of sickness.
Then her face turned green and Luke was rushing into the kitchen for a bowl. He got it back to her just in time. She retched agonisingly into it.
Karl looked back at the device in his hands and continued to gauge the readings.
‘This cannot be,’ he muttered under his breath, quickly asking the device to compare the results with those on file in the Medical Centre. They had readings for every complaint known to man stored in the archives.
‘What is it?’ Luke’s voice had got higher and louder and he was bordering on violence. What did he say to them? It couldn’t be true. Such a condition was unheard of in Old Timers.
However, from the way Luke was shaking and from the terror on Bart’s face, he needed to tell them something now, even though it couldn’t be right. The device couldn’t be right.
‘It is nothing serious,’ he said slowly. ‘Calm down Luke. Faith is perfectly all right.’
‘All right? All right? She’s spewing her guts up here, doc, nobody gets sick like this here. Damn you, what is it?’ Luke sprang to his feet and for a moment Karl was concerned that the man meant to do him harm. But Luke simply tightened his fists at his sides and glared at him, nose to nose.
‘It cannot be true. The machine is faulty. I will need to take her back to the Centre for more tests.’ Karl stepped around Luke, shut down the device and packed it into the Medic’s kit. From the bag, he then withdrew an anti-convulsion patch and applied it to Faith's skin before removing the diagnostic patches.
‘The nausea and sickness will pass in a moment,’ he told Faith, patting her damp shoulder. She nodded tiredly and lay back against a cushion on the sofa.
‘Doc, what can’t be true?’ Luke said in an ominous voice, his fists shaking at his side.
‘I would rather wait until I can check the results on our equipment back at the centre,’ Karl said firmly.
‘No! Now, Doc! I want to know now! You say she’s all right but that your device is wrong? Then how can you know she’s okay? Spit it out buddy before I really get mad!’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Luke, this is not helping. The indications are that Faith is pregnant. That is why the device must be malfunctioning. She cannot be pregnant!’ Karl snapped angrily, his own discomfort manifesting in an emotion he could hardly recognise. He was never angry.
‘Pregnant?’ Faith whispered in stunned amazement, looking down at her flat stomach.
‘Do not jump to any conclusions. As I said…’
‘Pregnant?’ Luke echoed, looking at Faith as if she had just grown another head.
‘Morning sickness,’ Karl muttered tersely.
‘Morning sickness?’ Bart echoed frowning. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s what women get when they’re going to have a baby,’ Luke answered stiffly, his face now as green as Faith’s had been only moment’s ago.
Karl could hear several of the guests passing the word along. This was getting out of hand. The results weren’t conclusive. If he didn’t stop this now, there would be rumours all over the Confederacy before they were completely sure.
This was possibly the most momentous occurrence of the last two hundred years. The
ramifications – if it were true – were mind boggling. Could a clone body sudden become fertile? Even if that were possible, Luke had not been in a clone body when he impregnated Faith. Passing through the Portal should have sterilised him. Wouldn’t someone have picked up on that when he was recovering from his bullet wound? Or later, when he was being prepped for integration into his first clone?
He turned to the guests and raised his hands. ‘Please, do not get too excited. It cannot be possible. You all know that. It is most likely a faulty diagnostic. Do not start passing unfounded rumours that could cause untold damage if they are proven to be wrong. Give me a little time to check the results. I will get back to you shortly.’
With that, he looked at Jason who took out his teleporter. And while Karl and Luke helped Faith to her feet, the Maori activated the mechanism. Luke and Karl assisted Faith through the portal to the Medical Centre with the Medic and Bart close behind.