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  ‘No, no. I really appreciate it. Is it difficult to deal with that increased testosterone after not feeling it? Does it make you panic?’

  Jac laughed again and scrubbed a hand over his face in embarrassment. ‘I freaked out when it started happening. I thought there was something wrong with the clone I’d just integrated with. I was so way out of my comfort zone, half of me wanted to run away from Cara, the other half wanted to throw her to the ground and have my way with her.’

  ‘Julio…’ She stopped, not sure whether she should share her worries concerning one of Jac’s employees.

  ‘Julio what, Jane? Everything you say to me remains confidential, I assure you.’

  ‘Julio does that. One minute he looks at me like I’m a meal for a starving man, the next he’s running away like I disgust him. And I don’t know if it’s this beautiful exterior that has him salivating, or if it’s what disgusts him… He never looked at me sexually when I was Old Jane. His reactions to me then were a lot easier to understand.’

  ‘Okay, so now I’m getting why you asked about the jealousy. Are you jealous of this New Jane, as you call her, because you think Julio is attracted to her?’

  ‘Yes! I know it’s irrational. But sometimes I wish I could scratch her big, beautiful eyes out, when I catch Julio looking at her like she’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen. I want to scream at him to pay attention to ME not her.’ Her voice wavered with the force of her pent up emotion.

  ‘I don’t know Julio well. He joined the team this year from one of the outer communities. He had that indifferent, bad-boy, Latino thing going on that pissed me off when I saw how it affected Cara. But then I realized the indifference wasn’t part of an image, it was real. I never saw him look twice at any of the lovely women we have here. He was like the old me in that way, but with an edge. I’d almost go as far as to call it an intentional disinterest, almost disgust.

  ‘Then he came back with you, and suddenly all that Latino passion erupted as he fought to save you. His partner reported that she felt physically threatened by him. When you live here long enough you’ll realise how unprecedented that fear of violence is. No one gets that angry here.

  ‘But I recognised in him what I felt after I met Cara. One night I stood on a street corner and yelled at her, I was so furious. I threw all my training, all my years of experience, out the window that night, simply because she rejected my kiss. It was scary for her; and even scarier for me. Because, for almost three hundred years, I thought I knew myself. Suddenly, I didn’t anymore. It was one of the most terrifying periods in my life. Almost as terrifying as when I thought I’d lost Cara in-situ.’ He was lost in troubling thoughts for several long moments. When he resumed, his voice was calm again.

  ‘Something changed Julio, during those ten days he was in 1968. Or someone did. And maybe he doesn’t know what to do with this new aspect of himself, like I didn’t know what to do with that new aspect of myself. Or like you don’t know what to do with the new Jane. It’s all new territory, unpredictable and unsafe.’

  Jane stared down at her long, beautiful fingers as they knotted together, just as the Old Jane used to knot her fingers together when she was nervous or upset. What Jac was telling her seemed so far from her explanation for Julio’s behaviour as it was possible to be. She had to reconsider every assumption she’d made.

  ‘Why is he keeping his distance, if he’s madly in love with me, then?’ Her chin was out, just as the Old Jane would stick out her chin when confronted by an overwhelming challenge.

  ‘Why don’t you ask him? But before I send you off to do just that, I want to finish what I was saying about Cara and my changing faces. When Cara saw her younger self with me, she said she was jealous. She hated that we looked ‘right’ for each other, where the ‘real her’ hadn’t looked right. She’d been really messed up with body image issues back then. And my reaction to her clone really hurt her.

  ‘When I took on Hakon’s body, Cara had to go through something similar to what I’d gone through with her younger self. She loved the way I used to look. She’d met Hakon, the real Hakon, a few times before he died, and she didn’t seem to like him. He could be a cold fish. So there were a lot of times in those early days when I saw disgust or guilt or fear in her eyes when she looked at me. I had to win her over, all over again, with this body.’ He chuckled as he remembered what he wasn’t prepared to share.

  ‘What we ultimately learned, from all this body swapping, is that none of the outside stuff matters much. Once you see the real person, then they’re always that person, no matter what the exterior looks like – old, young, pretty, plain, blonde, brunette or redhead. None of it matters.’

  She stared intently into those ice blue eyes for several long seconds, trying to absorb the truth from his words. It felt as if she had been given the meaning of life: her life, anyway.

  ‘Thanks, Jac. I really mean that. Thanks!’

  As they walked away from the Retriever’s Centre, Julio knew something profound had changed for Jane. She seemed bemused, troubled, and yet strangely confident. He wanted to put his arm around her, and protect her from whatever this latest turmoil was. But the new confidence intimidated him. His little mouse had finally disappeared for good.

  ‘So what do you think of Jac?’

  ‘I can see why Cara is mad about him. There’s real sensitivity under that macho man exterior. He surprised me how openly he talked about his relationship.’

  Julio bristled at her praise of his boss. He couldn’t see what women found so appealing about Jac. Sure, he was a nice guy. And he had a good body, at least the clone of another man did. But what made him so special?

  ‘Yeah, he sure doesn’t mind talking about his private life. Seems a bit too personal to me.’ He knew he sounded bad tempered, but he couldn’t help it.

  ‘I’m not sure I could be so upfront about things… but it helped.’

  They walked on in uncomfortable silence.

  He’d been struggling to keep his distance from Jane for weeks. It had proved to be the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. There’d been many times when he’d started to explain his behaviour to her, after seeing the confusion in her eyes. But each opportunity he’d let slip by. And, with each missed chance, he felt her drifting a little further away from him.

  She had proven herself to be so much more than the shy, little drudge he’d first met at that corner shop, a little more than a month ago. All of the promise he had seen in her then had now been fulfilled. No longer a diamond in the rough, she was a bright, shiny gemstone, precious to him in ways he couldn’t hope to understand.

  He loved her. He’d admitted that to himself weeks ago. But that didn’t change the fact that she was still an inexperienced child compared to him. His lust for her would frighten her, if he let it out. She would be repulsed by his sexual need. It drove him. And he hated it. He didn’t want her to have to deal with that. Not until he was under control. Not until he could treat her with the respect and gentleness she deserved.

  The kisses they’d shared had become the rack on which he tortured himself, night after sleepless night. And every time he saw her again, saw those lips that weren’t Jane’s, but were, he had to armour himself against his weakness. Soon she would be adjusted to her new life and body. Then he would tell her how he felt. Then she could choose.

  But he knew the postponement was just an excuse he was using to protect his vulnerable heart. It wasn’t that he was afraid she would reject him. How she felt about him was written all over her face. It was losing control of his turbulent emotional/sexual state that he feared most. Feelings, intense feelings, hurt. It was safer not to feel. It was easier. Once he let Jane open that door, he would be lost forever. Other doors might open that were better kept closed.

  Jane didn’t know who she loved. The suave, super-confident Latino who had stolen her heart wasn’t him. She didn’t know the pathetic little creep that lay beneath the flashy exterior. She’d never met the
worthless street kid, who should have died back there in that long ago place, when far better people had succumbed. If she knew what he had done to survive, she’d be disgusted by him. If he opened that door …

  The painful, ugly memories flooded his mind, and he fought them back. That was long ago, he tried to argue. He wasn’t that child anymore. The past was the past. Dead and gone. That door had been closed a very long time ago. It needed to stay that way, forever.

  Chapter Ten

  Although staying with Maggie had always been a short term arrangement, they had rubbed along so well that neither had raised the subject of moving out. Maggie worked in her studio most days, and went out in the evening to visit friends. Jane spent most days out, and prefer to curl up, with a good book on her Tablet, at home in the evening. They shared meals and small talk as they each went their own way, and it was easy and comfortable for them both.

  Julio was a regular visitor to the villa, and had come to be treated as a third housemate. He never rang the doorbell anymore. And it was a common sight for the two women to walk into the kitchen to find him brewing them tea or coffee, or making them a snack in the Kitchen Chef.

  But for all the relaxed familiarity of Julio’s presence, Jane still felt as if there was a wall up between them. She still felt uncomfortable in their growing silences. And the one they had shared that morning, after her visit to meet Jac, had made it all too hard. She had to find some way through this impasse. It was destroying her.

  She had said her goodbyes to Maggie shortly after dinner, and after reading for a few hours, had headed off for a shower before she settled in for the night. She loved the shower, and found any excuse to use it, sometimes two or three times a day. The fact that her body could be dried by delightfully warm air was certainly a major selling point. But it was the pleasure of the multiple jets that could provide gentle misted rain in every direction, or a single focused deluge as hard and drenching as a waterfall, which was its major selling point. It was as far from the awful bath she and her mother had shared, in their tiny flat, as it was possible to go. Pure, indulgent luxury was the only way to describe it.

  As she left the bathroom and headed for the kitchen for a hot chocolate to help her sleep, the gentle unseen lighting glowed to life as she passed from room to room, making the empty villa seem warm and welcoming. As she passed through the living room she looked beyond the huge window and saw unbroken darkness. It made her feel cosy to be inside, in the light, while the darkness wrapped around the villa like a comforting blanket.

  As she moved silently across the room, she was surprised to see Julio sitting on the heavily stuffed sofa, his head bent over his Tablet. How long had it been since she’d first seen that gadget? Four weeks? Had she really been in New Atlantis for only four weeks? Time was becoming strangely elongated these days, like a piece of melted glass. Days seemed like weeks, weeks passed like days – and yet felt like years. It was all so odd and unsettling, and yet so endlessly exciting.

  Her eyes took in the man as he concentrated on his work. It was always a pleasure to watch him; that huge, muscular body relaxed in repose, midnight black hair draped so negligently across his brow. Straight, finely chiselled nose and cheekbones covered by darkly tanned skin, set off so well by the white tunic. It seemed amazing to her that he could look so masculine dressed in something that was really nothing more than a dress. And yet masculine was exactly what he was.

  And she wanted him with an aching need that had her gasping with shock.

  The sound must have been loud enough to attract his attention, because Julio looked up at her and frowned.

  ‘You lied to me.’ His words were harsh but the tone was not. She wasn’t sure what was going on.

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes. I was just remember that time you said you wanted to be a reporter. But that wasn’t true was it? You wanted to be a writer of children’s books.’

  They hadn’t mentioned her stories since her visit to the school. She had wanted to ask him why he hadn’t told her what his research had thrown up. But somehow, she never found the right moment. It made her uncomfortable knowing he had knowledge about her old life that she didn’t.

  ‘I read them and then told Cara about them. I didn’t know she’d read them to the kids. They’re good, by the way. They’re very good. Why didn’t you tell me about them back then? It was obviously your passion, and yet you came across as a kid who had no idea what she wanted to be.’

  Jane wondered if the sense of the surreal would ever ease up in this world. Every moment seemed to present her with another jarring shift of perspective. She remembered being that girl back then – the girl who was so embarrassed by her desire to write that she hid it from everyone – the girl who hid her secret self from an interested, mysterious stranger, afraid that he would laugh at her pretentions.

  Now, no more than a few weeks later, she found herself in a different time, in a different body, in love with that mystery man she still knew so very little about, who appeared to be her own age but was over two hundred years older. She had found out that her mother had traded in her grog for a demonstrator’s placard after her death. And that same mother had not only read her secret stash of stories, but had them published, obviously to cash in on her daughter’s heroine status.

  ‘Jane, come sit down. My manners leave a lot to be desired, don’t they? You had every reason not to confide in me back then. I prodded and pried, without ever sharing anything of myself.’ Julio patted the cushion next to his own, and she had no other choice but to join him.

  Silently she looked over at the screen of his Tablet. It showed a book jacket. A picture of a beautiful, cartoon princess was on the cover and the title above read ‘The Invisible Princess’. Her name was at the bottom. Julio tilted the tablet so that the princess blinked in and out of sight on the screen. She was fascinated.

  ‘Simple holograph. They had them as early as the end of your century, although it wasn’t widely used until they perfected the process and made it cheap to produce. What do you think?’ He held the tablet out to her so she could have a better look. She took it, and ran her fingers over the screen reverently.

  ‘This is what the book looked like? It doesn’t seem quite real, even after hearing Tommy talking about it last week. Why didn’t you tell me? I deserved to know.’

  ‘I was trying to keep your focus on this new life. And you’d reacted so badly to your mother’s hypocrisy I thought you might feel even more bitter that she made money off your talent. I suppose I was protecting you.’

  ‘Jac said that about you. That you were always protecting me. You know I’m not as fragile as this body might lead you to believe. I’m doing okay.’

  Julio reached out and took her hand, holding it between his own. It made her feel needy and vulnerable to see how gently he held it.

  ‘I was upset with my mother when I first heard. But then I realised that I got to have my greatest daydream come true. I got to be a writer, even if I wasn’t there to know it. And if I hadn’t jumped off that ferry and disappeared, it would never have happened. I would have spent my life as a shop assistant, my writing piled up on a shelf, never seen by anyone but me. And my mother would have drunk herself to death.

  ‘My whole life changed in that one moment, didn’t it? And the ripples from that one random act just keep growing. It’s amazing! We can’t possibly know, can we, what might happen because of one unplanned, spontaneous action?’ Her voice was filled with thoughtful awe.

  ‘Hence the reason for caution when we Retrieve.’

  ‘You got in trouble for Retrieving me. You broke Protocol, which is a sin in this world, for me.’ She looked into his darkly handsome face as he looked at the graceful hand he still held.

  ‘A bit of a caution, that’s all. And the more my research turned up, the more correct my decision turned out to be. This is the sort of evidence that would have been used to Target you, if you’d lived long enough. Our society would deem you a productive and wo
rthwhile human being.’

  She smiled at that. Had anyone ever seen her that way, in her lifetime? No. Julio was the only one who had seemed to see her that way. He’d called her remarkable, when everyone else just called her plain. Without his impetus, she probably would never have gone to the beach to celebrate her birthday. Would never have caught that ferry.

  Did that mean he was always part of her past? How did that work?

  ‘You changed history somehow. If you hadn’t come into my shop and given me this pendant, and said it would be water proof in the surf. If you hadn’t told me that I needed to celebrate my birthday, I wouldn’t have gone to Manly that day. I wouldn’t have been mentioned in your records as having tried to save that boy. How does this time travel stuff really work?’

  He put his arm out and drew her against his side. She came into his embrace naturally, as if it was something they had always done. She felt him drop a kiss on the top of her head.

  ‘Sometimes it’s like all our concerns about changing history are pointless. If we were meant to have an impact on the past, then we already have. If I wasn’t meant to meet you, then your details wouldn’t have come up with Tommy’s. There would have been no choice in whether I would meet and influence you in 1968.

  ‘Jac tells the story of a card he wrote to Cara being found after her death. It was in the police records of the time. He bought it for her shortly after he met her, without realising why the card looked familiar. So, unwittingly, he fulfilled the events of the past. These paradoxes are all part of what we do.