Mekos considered that. “And Bree is apprenticed to Reena. It’s almost like all those women are working together.”
Qip snorted. “Are you so young that you thinkmencontrol the world?! Ha! Those women keep all of us in a tight circle, then they lock it down with secrets.”
Mekos sighed. “That’s probably true, but then, Aradella and I killed Valona, so...”
“Yes, you seem to have messed up their plans. Not that any of those women have ever confided in me, but I’d wager they were waiting for Aradella to grow up. Then they’d put whatever their plan was into action.”
“AndIwas part of the plan?”
“Sure. If that’s what you want to believe.”
The men exchanged looks of understanding. They were part of a very large plan and they had no idea what it was—or how it involved them.
Qip put the key back in the box and stood up. “I must rest—and we must trust. There are many people involved in this. You’re not alone.”
Mekos nodded in agreement. Hope was a good thing.
21
Frank J. Arens
Kaley’s grandfather
Frank was glad the horse he was on was so well trained. It knew its way down the mountain back to Zeon’s warm stall and abundant food. One of Zeon’s guards was behind him and another in front, so he knew he didn’t have to worry about the horse losing its way.
It wasn’t even daylight yet, and he’d just woken up. After days of no sleep, he’d crashed for hours on the cave floor. He knew he wouldn’t have had enough energy for what he’d accomplished in Haver’s cave if it hadn’t been for the three-year trip to Bellis. They had repaired him. Like he was one of Jeff’s car engines, they’d overhauled his old body.
Back in Kansas, he hadn’t even told Rita about the pain he dealt with every day. He had injuries from Vietnam and the years of hard farmwork had taken a toll on him. But when he woke up inside a pod in a spaceship, all that was gone. Later, he asked the former ship’s officer, Roal, about it. He was told that Empyreans had the technology to go back and forth to Earth in just months, but the state of the human bodies they pickedup were so badly damaged it took years to repair them. New internal organs were grown, brain and nerve damage repaired. Cells regrown. The result was that when they landed on Bellis, people who’d been in wheelchairs could walk. Diseases were gone. If genetic defects were detected, DNA was reformed.
Frank asked him why people were taken from Earth. Roal said that wasn’t his department but the gossip was that each earthling had some talent. “There’s something different about each one of them,” Roal said. “But who knows what Empyreans think is ‘special’?”
Frank thought of his granddaughter, Kaley. There was her connection with animals. When she was a toddler, he’d had to secure her bedroom window or in the morning she’d be gone. They’d find her asleep with whatever wild animal she could find. She never saw a difference between herself and them.
The horse slipped on a rock on the steep downward path. Instantly, Frank came awake.How good it is to have the reflexes of my younger self, he thought.
He looked around at the pretty landscape. Yes, Bellis was much like Earth. But the people were very different. He smiled as he remembered Tanek as a boy.
When the family met him, the poor kid was starved for the outdoors and for people. He’d spent his whole life on the ship. He didn’t know who his mother was, and his father was too busy running a ship to have much time for him. Between the birds on Earth and the doting honorary grandparents, Tanek opened up. He told them everything. By the time their dear daughter-in-law, Graceen, revealed that she was from another planet, Frank and Rita knew quite a bit about the place. When they were told that Graceen wouldn’t be allowed to stay on Earth and raise her daughter, Rita had cried—and Frank wanted to. But they’d put on a brave face for Graceen.
What surprised them—since Tanek knew nothing about it—was the talk of Solium. It seemed that the Empyreans loved the little red plant. Jeff said they were going to grow it. “And whenthey come back to get Kaley, I’m going to offer it as payment—or blackmail—to go with them.” Jeff seemed to be asking his parents if they wanted to join him. Neither Frank nor Rita hesitated. “When do we start?” Frank asked.
He came back to the present and looked around. They’d reached flatter land and were closer to Zeon’s big house.
Days ago, when he’d landed the helicopter at Zeon’s house, as he’d been told, the man was waiting for him. The idea of someone who could foresee the future was new to Frank, but the locals took it in stride. But then, humans with furry fox tails or a kid whose daddy was a bear didn’t phase them either.
He was surprised that they’d never seen a helicopter. After the wedding-that-didn’t-happen, Frank thought maybe Sojee was going to pick Tanek up and shove him into the thing. Tanek could control elephant-sized birds with his mind and he could drive a pickup, but a chopper freaked him out.
It was Roal, a master with spaceships, who’d asked, “How?” Frank knew what he meant. How had he learned to fly the noisy machines?
Frank hadn’t answered. He and Rita’d had too many years of secrecy to blab to anyone. Their son, Jeff, knew his parents’ background, and Kaley knew some, but outsiders didn’t.
He and Rita met in Vietnam. She was a nurse and he was a wounded soldier. Classic. After they returned to the US, they were given an opportunity that they took. They got in on the ground floor of the creation of computers. It turned out that they both had that kind of brain. Numbers and logic were easy for them. For years, they lived on caffeine and delivered pizzas.
What none of them foresaw was how lucrative what they were doing would be. Money, and lots of it, came in.
When Rita got pregnant, she set her jaw and faced her husband. “I wantout.” He knew what she meant. She wanted to leave the computer world where working twenty hours straight was normal. There were weeks when they never saw the outdoors. Their lives centered around computer screens.
She wanted to raise their child in a different life. “I don’t want a child who thinks eggs come from the grocery store. I want to be there to see the first laugh, the first steps. I want to learn how to bake a pie.” Her eyes told Frank she was leaving with or without him.
