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  ‘Are you thinking of resigning?’

  He glanced up at her in shock. ‘No, definitely not! I knew what I was getting into. I know all the arguments, for and against what we do. I know what it is to be a child, alone and frightened, being forced to…’ He stopped himself, looked away angrily, and dropped her hands. Every line in his body told her to back off and keep her distance.

  When he went on, it was with a passion that was frightening. ‘If I can rescue just a few children like me, it is worth it. But this feels… bad.’

  ‘Do you have a sense of who might have hurt him?’

  Julio shook his head and bit his full bottom lip. ‘No, and I have watched the footage of the media interviews, the police interviews… all of it. But it does not feel like we are going to be allowed to save him.’

  Jane felt it was safe to take his hand again. The fierce rejection had passed as quickly as it had happened. He was once again simply troubled and willing to be comforted. She desperately wanted to understand what had happened in his past that would make him push her away so completely. But she had secrets of her own she could never share, and so she respected Julio’s desire to keep his.

  They began to walk along the moving pathway again, holding hands. It felt such a natural thing to do. It wasn’t romantic, she told herself. It was simply a closeness that came from sharing such intense concerns. They were friends. If nothing else was clear in their confusing relationship, that was. And friends shared physical closeness when it was needed.

  That he clung to her hand as tightly as she did to his meant nothing. If he had wanted more from her, he would have kissed her again. But he hadn’t. So she must be resigned to that. Friendship with Julio was far better than romance would ever have been with one of her dream princes. Just by his presence, he fulfilled a need in her that she now knew could never have meet by those make-believe men. So it was enough.

  They were nearing the school. She could tell by the sounds of noisy, playing children wafting out across their quiet surroundings. As they rounded the corner of a building, they were presented with a sight Jane couldn’t have believed.

  A long fence about six feet high separated the school yard from the pathway running alongside it. On the path, three deep in some places, were adults looking in at the children. Some seemed desperate to catch a glimpse of them, others just stood back listening to their laughter. It was a heart-wrenching sight, and she slowed to a standstill.

  ‘They’re here for each of the breaks. And Cara says there’s more every day.’ Jane noticed Julio had once more slipped in to her informal speech patterns, now that his tension had eased. ‘The list of prospective parents is growing faster than we can supply children. Currently there are ten members of the team, two for each Retrieval. It takes about a month for all the data to be analysed, both by computer and then by the team, to decide what Retrievals will be undertaken. There are about five Jumps per month. Only one or two of the five will be successful. This program has been running nearly seven months, and we’ve only rescued 11 children. Tommy was the last successful Retrieval. There’ve been three Jumps since, none successful. It’s like finding gold in a pan of river silt.’

  ‘Do any of the children Crash and Burn?’

  Julio shook his head. ‘It appears to be as Cara indicated. Children are resilient. They go through a grieving process for their lost lives and families. But while they’re encouraged to remember their past, they’re also assisted to embrace their future. It works.

  ‘That’s one of the reasons Cara has invited you here. She thinks it would be good for Tommy to meet someone from his past, even if it was only for a second. She says he remembers seeing you calling out to him as he fell.’

  ‘It feels like another lifetime – so long ago. And yet it wasn’t even three weeks ago. Has he got new parents?’

  Julio nodded. ‘They came from one of the other communities, and have had to relocate here so that Tommy can stay in school with the other kids. It’s hugely dislocating for parents, but it’s in the best interest of the child. Once we have more children, we may well start community schools elsewhere in the Confederacy.’

  They had moved past the milling adults and made their way in through the glass front door. Here they were met by a lovely young woman with white blonde hair and a gentle, no-nonsense manner.

  ‘Jane, I am pleased to meet you at last!’ The woman welcomed her with a smile, as she extended hand. Jane took the offered hand, discomforted by this form of greeting. She had only ever seen men shake hands. It felt oddly masculine to be forced to do it too. ‘I’m Cara Westchester, as I’m called here. I’m in charge of the Child Retrieval Start Point Program. My Bonded is in charge of the In-Situ part of the program. Have you met Jac yet?’

  ‘No, but Julio and Maggie have talked a lot about both of you.’

  ‘Most of it good, I hope,’ she said with a little laugh, as she gestured for them to follow her down a short corridor into a large, airy classroom that would have fitted into her old world with ease. There was no sign of any technology here, just bright pictures, cushions on the floor, and desks with containers of crayons and pencils set out on them.

  ‘This is our open plan classroom. Our target range is from two to twelve. At present our youngest is three and our eldest ten. Tommy, the boy you tried to save, is eight. We keep the children together as much as possible, as an extended family, and we’re more interested in integrating them with their new world than teaching them normal classroom subjects. We talk a lot about where they came from, and we encourage our kids to cry if they feel sad about what they’ve lost. But our goal is a positive future projection.

  ‘Children are naturally optimistic. We feed that optimism and sprinkle a lot of love into the mix. Each child has adult helpers, or befrienders, in the classroom, and extended families in the home. It’s a good way for the New Atlanteans, who are unused to children, to become reacquainted with a child’s perspective. From our point of view, the more adults who get a chance to interact in a loving way with the kids, the better.’

  They went to stand at the floor to ceiling glass doors to the outside playground, and watched the children for a little while. To Jane, they looked no different to any playground full of children. She quickly found the fair haired boy she last saw going over the railing of the Ferry.

  He must have been primed for her arrival because, once he caught sight of them, he left his new friends, and came dashing across to them.

  ‘You’re the one they say tried to save me. You don’t look like I remember you! You’re beautiful!’ He jigged around on the spot, his pale face flushed red with excitement.

  Jane tried not to be insulted. Of course she didn’t look familiar to him. She’d been Old Jane then, not the new improved version. And kids always said what they thought, without considering how people might feel about their observations. How was he to know being told she was beautiful was a bad thing?

  ‘I wish I’d been able to save you. But we’re both lucky Julio and Dorothy were able to rescue us. I don’t relish the idea of being fish food. What about you?’

  Tommy laughed. ‘Fish food, that’s funny! They could sprinkle us across a tank in flaky bits!’

  Jane pulled a funny face, and laughed with him.

  ‘They read us your stories. Some are a bit girlie for me, but I like the fight scenes.’ Tommy mimed punching an invisible enemy.

  Jane frowned. She looked a question at Cara and then Julio. Cara looked pleased, while Julio appeared uncomfortable.

  ‘What stories?’

  ‘Today’s was The Invisible Princess, I think,’ Cara answered, with a look at Tommy to check she got it right. He nodded vigorously.

  ‘The what?’ The shock had made her voice loud and shrill. Julio put his arm around her, and drew her against his side.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you…’ he said, guiltily.

  ‘You haven’t told her?’ Cara was indignant. ‘Shame on you, Julio! If I fo
und out I was posthumously famous, I’d want to know!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Jane, your mother had your stories published after your death. They became very popular with Australian children.’ Julio was choosing his words carefully.

  ‘What? No, she didn’t even know I wrote… Oh. My. God!’ Jane didn’t know whether to be happy or upset. Yet again, her mother had profited from her daughter’s death. But it was also a wonderful discovery to find that someone had read, and thought enough of her stories, to publish them. If she’d lived, they would have remained in her bottom draw for the rest of her life, unread and gathering dust.’

  ‘I liked Wobbles the Wombat, too!’ piped up Tommy. ‘The kids don’t believe the lady who tried to save me wrote those books. They think I’m just putting tickets on myself.’

  Julio looked from Tommy to her in confusion.

  ‘Bragging,’ Jane translated for him. He nodded back and smiled. He could be as stumped by her language as she was with his, even though they both spoke English.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to come back another day and read one of your books to the children? They’d love it!’ Cara suggested, as Tommy raced away to join his friends again.

  ‘I’d love to. It might sound awful, but losing my stories was the hardest part of leaving my old life. Now you’re telling me I didn’t lose them at all, it’s just great!’

  ‘You would have been Targeted for the adult program had you lived long enough. You’re what they call here a worthwhile human being.’ Cara smiled at her again.

  Jane found her accent pleasantly American. And she didn’t follow the local trend of formality in her speech. It was like talking to someone from home.

  ‘That’s good to know. I did feel like I was a tag on – only here because Julio felt sorry for me…’

  ‘Hey, that’s not true!’ Julio looked angry and flustered by her statement.

  ‘Okay, I know, you thought I was “a remarkable young woman”, and deserved a second chance. But it still felt like I was a ring in. Just in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘Some might say being cut to pieces by a propeller was being in the wrong place at the wrong time!’ Cara exclaimed with alacrity.

  ‘But I didn’t feel anything except the panic of drowning. And in exchange, I got this,’ she indicated her new body, ‘and all this!’ She gestured toward the world outside.

  ‘I’m glad you see it that way. We’ve all been worried about how you’d take to being here in a new body. You should talk to Jac about that side of it sometime. He’s our other miracle.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to him.’ Jane felt uncomfortable with the idea of talking about her feelings about New Jane with a strange male, but it also felt like he might hold a missing piece to the puzzle that was her new self. For that reason alone, it was worth opening herself up to a stranger.

  Chapter Nine

  Jac was an overwhelming presence. That was Jane’s first impression when she went with Julio to meet him, a week after the school visit. Nearly six and a half feet of pale, Nordic muscle, with a face as beautiful as it was severe, he was not the sort of person who could pass unnoticed in a crowd. As he smiled and offered her his hand, Jane’s first thought was that he would not blend in well, as Jumpers were supposed to.

  ‘Come to the staff kitchenette. I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ he offered. ‘And you can go do some work, Julio. You have a Jump in two days. I’ll bring her back to you when we’ve had our chat.’

  Julio bristled at the summary dismissal, but smiled stiffly down at Jane incouragingly. Then he strode of toward one of the glassed-in rooms, which led off the central atrium of the Retrievers Centre. It was a complex that she knew housed both the adult and the children’s Retrieval teams, and included classrooms and research access points. From the busy comings and goings around them this morning, it was clear that there were a lot more people than just the Jumpers, who were involved in the Retrieval process.

  Jane felt oddly cast adrift with Julio gone, as if her protection had been torn away, leaving her to stand on her own two feet for the first time. In the four weeks she had now been in New Atlantis, she’d been constantly shielded from it by Julio. Suddenly, it felt oddly satisfying to confront the new, alone.

  ‘He’s very protective of you.’ Jac spoke chattily in the informal speech patterns that were alien to most Old Timers like him. Knowing he was adjusting to her, not expecting her to adjust to him, made him just a little less intimidating.

  ‘Julio has been wonderful. I doubt I could have handled all this without him.’

  A door opened automatically as they approached it, and they entered a pleasant cafeteria style room that overlooked a lush, exotic garden. It never ceased to amaze her how these people surrounded themselves with natural beauty. It was a requisite of every living and working space she’d seen. And it soothed her in a way little in her own world had ever done.

  ‘I think you sell yourself short, Jane. From the reports I’ve received, it appears you are the type of young woman who could handle anything thrown at her. Who would have guessed that the little ‘mouse in the shadows’, as Julio described you early on, was really a lioness.’

  Jane felt herself blush at the unexpected praise. Jac, just like Julio, praised her for who she was, rather than for the clone’s many attributes. It was deeply satisfying to been seen for herself.

  ‘I’m not sure about the lioness or the mouse. I was just me then and me now. I learned to fit in as best I could when I was growing up. I suppose that’s what I’m doing here. Maggie has helped. She’s really nice…’

  ‘Fitting in can mean making yourself into something you’re not – being a chameleon, and hiding your true self. Knocking the edges off your square peg, so you can fit into a round hole.’

  Jac handed her a cup of tea, and led her over to a pair of sofas arranged around a low set coffee table of white wood. No one else was in the room, and the only sound was the soft, classical music playing in the background.

  Jane shrugged, feeling uncomfortable with that all-too-accurate description of what she did.

  ‘You don’t have to hide anymore, Jane. We want you to be totally yourself. It might seem that our world is very structured and confining, but we’re starting to embrace the new. Look at me!’ He laughed as he ran his fingers through his wavy, ash-blonde hair that would have reached his shirt collar,, had he been wearing one.

  Suddenly she was struck by the oddity of his hair. Every man she had seen in this world, including Julio, wore his hair army short except for the lock that fell over their foreheads. Jac still had the lock, but the rest of his hair was almost as long. It was beautiful hair. The type that made you want to run your fingers through it. That inappropriate thought she dismissed hastily.

  ‘Cara likes me to leave it longer than is the fashion here. It took a long time before I felt comfortable flaunting that silly rule. But now I feel oddly free because of it.’

  ‘But are you simply swapping one dictate for another? How would you like to wear your hair?’ Jane couldn’t believe she was willing to challenge this mountain of a man after such a short acquaintance. But she could no more control her words than she could her thoughts.

  Jac looked surprised, and then laughed loudly. ‘You are remarkably like my Cara! Julio said you were. I don’t care one way or the other about my hair, to be honest. I care about pleasing my woman. I enjoy the way she can’t help running her fingers through it.’

  Jane felt her face begin to burn as she realised that this young man’s partner liked to do exactly what she had wanted to do. It was the hair – soft, silky white-gold. Who wouldn’t feel drawn to stroke it?

  ‘How are you adjusting to seeing a stranger in the mirror? Is it still a shock?’ Jac took a sip of his tea, as he looked over at her with intent, ice-blue eyes.

  ‘I have nightmares that I wake up, and the Old Jane is in the mirror again. So on some level, I’m glad to be New Jane. But I…’ She paused, trying to
find the words to describe her feelings. Jac waited patiently for her to go on. ‘Sometimes I feel I’m ashamed of Old Jane. Like she was a pathetic, ugly loser, and I’m happy she’s gone. At other times, I feel like everything that makes me me is gone, and I’ve blinked out of existence. When I feel like that, I want to tear this face off so I can find my real one underneath. But I know I can’t.’

  For several long minutes, they sat sipping tea and looking out at the garden. Then Jac cleared his throat, as if he’d been clogged up with emotions only moments before.

  ‘You have a very vivid way of describing your feelings. And I realise that, even though we share some elements of this experience – this walking around in someone else’s body – there are elements where we diverge dramatically.

  ‘I don’t find Hakor’s body a drastic improvement on my old one, so my ego isn’t challenged that way. What I do relate to is feeling like I’ve lost me, and wanting to tear the mask of my old friend off my face, so I can find me again. I sometimes stare in the mirror – at these pale, arctic blue eyes – and I want to see my ‘earthy green’ ones, as Cara described them, so badly it hurts.’

  Silence fell between them again.

  ‘Do you feel jealous that Cara likes to play with this other man’s hair? Or that she’s attracted to him?’ Jane couldn’t stop from asking the personal question, as her thoughts turned to Julio. If anyone could understand her dilemma, Jac could.

  ‘What you need to understand is that, with us the outside was always changing. I met Cara when she looked a curvy middle-aged woman, and I looked like a tawny haired kid. I hated that she threw away the Cara I was so attracted to. For a while, I literally rejected her, because of it.’

  ‘You wanted an old woman rather than a young one?’ Her astonishment made her tactless, and she watched Jac bridle.

  ‘Cara was not old. And being young is not the only beauty there is. Until I could really see my Cara in her younger version, I wasn’t attracted to her at all. These clone bodies can be largely sexless. I went years without feeling aroused by a woman. Then I met this beautiful, womanly woman, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. My body was out of control. It was like I was a pubescent boy again. And when I lost my Cara, I lost that over-sexed response, too. The young Cara just became one of a hundred pretty young faces that filled my days. It wasn’t until the real Cara shone through that my attraction to the young body started. I hope I’m not being too personal telling you these things. I don’t mean to embarrass you.’