New Atlantis Bundle, Books1-3 Page 6

  ‘So, let’s go spend some time in the sun.’ Jac strode over to her, and took her arm in his.

  Cara realised now, why he’d seemed such an enigma when she first met him. Not only was he an old soul in a young body, but he was a stranger from a different world. It must be difficult to get the jargon right, the body language cues, and all the little details that made up successful integration into a place and time. He was good. His language was excellent. But she didn’t know too many twenty year olds who would take a woman’s arm, and rest it in the crook of their own. It was a gesture that belonged to another era.

  ‘You’ll get few funny looks, if you walk arm in arm like this with me,’ she pointed out, as they made their way down the flights of stairs to the street.

  ‘Does it worry you?’ He looked down at her with a frown creasing his broad forehead.

  Cara thought about it for a moment. Did it worry her to be seen clinging to the arm of a man who looked young enough to be her son? Would she care if someone she knew saw her, as they most likely would, given the size of the town? She thought about the looks the women at the gym had thrown at her, when Jac had stopped to talk to her. The momentary cringe factor had been insignificant.

  ‘No it doesn’t, actually. You want to hold my arm, then go right ahead. It’s rather nice.’

  Jac smiled broadly, his white teeth brighter in the sunlight. Her heart did a little jig again, and she couldn’t help smiling back at him.

  ‘I bet your Retrieval rate has a lot to do with that smile,’ she quipped, leading him down the street toward the park. ‘Especially amongst your female quota.’

  Jac turned to look down at her, puzzled. ‘My smile?’

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s a knock out. Women fall at your feet, when you flash those pearly whites.’

  He frowned for a moment, and she wondered if she’d insulted him. Or maybe he didn’t want her to find him attractive. But he had kissed her, hadn’t he? And it hadn’t been the sort of kiss you’d give your maiden aunt.

  ‘I don’t smile much,’ he said, after a few moments of thoughtful silence. ‘I’m the serious type. There’s a saying you have “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” I am known to be rather dull.’

  She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. There was nothing dull or boring about this man. Sure, she could see that he took his work seriously. Who wouldn’t, if you were saving lives the way he was? It was important work, and if he didn’t get it right, then people died. But he wasn’t dull. Far from it.

  But knowing that his smiles were rare, made her feel all the more gifted to receive them. With a little more lightness in her step, she walked beside him into the park. She was determined to make him smile more often, enjoy himself more. If he had to be here until she crossed over, one way or the other, then there was no reason why he shouldn’t enjoy it. And she would enjoy it, too.

  The township of Lake Innes was named after one of the smaller catchment reservoirs for New York. It was a popular tourist destination, as well as home to more than a thousand city commuters. The park that graced the southern side of the lake, and marked the northern border of the town, was one of its most popular tourist spots. And on a warm Sunday morning in early summer, such as today, the park was guaranteed to be filled with families making the most of its attractions.

  As they crossed the quiet road and wandered into the park, they saw picnickers scattered across the grassy slope of the hill. Several impromptu football matches were taking place.

  Suddenly, a Frisbee flew past Cara’s ear, followed immediately by an excited Dalmatian. The dog leapt high into the air to snatch the bright red plastic from its arc.

  Jac pulled her out of harm’s way, laughing. ‘Dogs are amazing!’

  ‘Please don’t tell me there aren’t any dogs in the future,’ she pleaded.

  ‘They were heading for extinction, along with other domesticated animals, about two hundred years ago. But we managed to save a few, and now they’re doing fine. Not as many breeds as you have now, but man’s best friend is still man’s best friend.’

  Cara breathed a sigh of relief. Although she didn’t own a dog anymore, because she wasn’t home enough to keep it company, she still loved them. Her childhood memories all contained dogs – a labrador, when she was really little, a spaniel, when she was in her teens at her grandmother’s, and finally, when she had her own family, a beagle she’d adored.

  That loveable little guy had got her through the terrible days of the divorce. And then later – Billy’s death. It had broken her heart when she’d been forced to give him away to a good home. But it wasn’t fair to keep a dog, used to a big backyard, locked in a tiny apartment all day. His needs were more important than hers.

  She reached down to give the Dalmatian a pat as it chomped on the Frisbee. It was obviously a dog who had not learned to fetch yet. She could see his frustrated master calling to him from further up the hill.

  ‘Beebee was no good at returning balls, either. Drove Billy mad. They’d end up playing chasing around the back yard. Beebee thought it was loads of fun.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Billy,’ Jac said, after a few heartbeats. His green eyes no longer twinkled.

  ‘Yeah, well, death is rather final, isn’t it?’

  Then, as she considered the ramifications of her new insights into death, her heart kicked into overdrive. Was death as final as she had always thought? She was being offered a fresh start, her own chance to beat death. Why couldn’t Billy? Jac could Retrieve her son, and they could live happily ever after in the future.

  Her thoughts must have been on her face, because Jac started to shake his head. ‘Can’t happen, Cara. What you’re thinking, it can’t happen. You buried your son. You saw his body in his coffin. There is no way we can change that. It’s part of your time-line. We have no idea what would happen if you were not to see your son. If his body disappeared at the accident scene. You’d have spent the last six years looking for him. It would play havoc with the Continuum. Butterfly Effect, Cara. Remember the Butterfly Effect.’

  ‘But Billy isn’t a butterfly. He’s a boy. And he didn’t deserve to die!’ She turned to look up at Jac, her eyes blurring with tears.

  ‘Oh Cara, I know he didn’t. No one should die before their parents. But there’s only so much we can do. We aren’t God. We can’t go back and save your parents. We can’t save your son. Do you know how few people fit the criteria for Retrieval? An infinitesimally small number. It takes weeks to identify just one Target, and gather sufficient data to make Retrieval possible. We can’t save everyone.’

  Cara stepped away from him, as if it was his fault. It was unfair of her. But, in that moment she felt as if he was intentionally withholding her son from her. If he really wanted to, he could have made an exception for Billy. Just one exception. He’d been too young to die. If she could swap her Get Out of Jail Free card with him, she would. After all, she’d lived forty-five years, he’d only had fourteen. It wasn’t fair.

  In that moment, she just wanted to get away from everything Jac represented. Cara stalked off on her own, making her way up the hill, toward the tree line. Here she found a secluded oak tree, and sat down under it, her back resting against its trunk. She looked up into the branches, and watched as a grey squirrel scampered from bough to bough, in its frenetic quest for food. Birds sang unseen above her, and as she listened to them. Bit by bit, her riotous emotions started to come back under control.

  Jac hadn’t followed her. Instead, he’d wandered off over the hill toward the edge of the lake. On days like this, the lake would be alive with canoes, pedal boats and other non-motorised craft. Hardy souls might even be swimming.

  But tourists didn’t know how dangerous the lake could be. Storms could come up quickly from beyond the mountains, and the calm, serene waters could become life threatening, at a moment’s notice. No matter what warnings were posted, at least one person died per season, on the lake. She shuddered at the thought.

  Th
en her mind turned back to Jac, and what he had told her since the night before. She didn’t know when she had finally accepted the truth of what she was experiencing. There must have been a point when her brain stopped struggling to find other explanations, including her own insanity, and just taken up the new reality.

  Now she accepted that she was going to die, sometime soon. Or she was going to risk Retrieval, and hope that she wasn’t part of Jac’s 3% of Crash and Burns. The idea of going crazy from the experience was incredibly scary. What must the world of the future be like, that someone could be so overwhelmed by it that it drove them insane? So far, although it was all pretty challenging, there was nothing she didn’t think she could handle. She might panic and scream a bit, but ultimately she’d deal. Wasn’t that what she’d always done?

  Even though Jac had only been gone from her side for five or ten minutes, Cara realised she missed him. She knew she’d hurt him, by blaming him for his inability to save her son. It wasn’t his fault. And he was right; her innate fairness had to concede. So many of the decisions she’d made in the last six years hinged on her seeing her son, dead in his coffin. Realising he was really gone.

  If he’d disappeared after the accident, if no body was ever found, she would have gone crazy searching for him. She would have quit her job, and spent every penny she had trying to find him. Her time-line would have been impossibly compromised. And she knew enough about her impact on the world, the people she helped, to know that the ripples created by her change of direction, could be significant. She might have died before this. May never have had the opportunity to be Retrieved. And then Billy wouldn’t have had the chance to be rescued, and the time-line would loop. Over and over again.

  No, she had to accept that Billy was gone. But what about all those other children; the ones that disappeared by their thousands every year. Couldn’t they be saved? If their bodies were never found, couldn’t they be Retrieved? Given a second chance?

  She scrambled to her feet, and hurried after Jac. Maybe it had already happened. Maybe the children who disappeared every year were safe in the future, living healthy and happy lives.

  It took her only a moment to spot him from the top of the hill. He was out on the end of the pier, talking to some kids who were fishing. They were giving him directions of some sort, as they were pointing in the direction of one of the boat houses. She wondered if he was thinking of going out on the lake. It had been years since she’d been out there. When she was a kid, she’d loved to sail with her dad. Sailing, along with so many other pleasant childhood pastimes, was lost to her when her parents died, and she’d moved away to live with her grandmother. And she’d never been able to interest Bill or Billy in sailing.

  It would be good to sail again, she realised. It was a heady experience, feeling the wind catch the sail, and power you forward. She imagined it was similar to hang gliding or surfing. Any sport, where man’s puny efforts could be amplified by nature’s awesome power, would have the same buzz.

  Suddenly, she was running down the hill toward Jac, her heart soaring. Her shoulder length hair flew loose and free behind her, like a flag being carried proudly into battle. For a few brief, exhilarating moments, she remembered what it was like to be young and happy, and sure of life promises. She was so tired of forcing herself not to look back, because of the sadness such memories brought with them. By focusing on the future, she’d been able to keep those memories at bay.

  But in this moment, she wanted to relive all of the joy the past still held for her. And she wanted to look forward with optimism, like she had back then. More than anything, she wanted to start living that way again!

  Jac saw her running toward him, and took off to meet her. When they reached each other, he opened his arms, and Cara went into them, willingly, hopefully, and committedly.

  With a loud, happy laugh, he picked her up, and swung her around. She didn’t think of how inappropriate it was. How people would stare at a middle aged woman being embraced and swung around by a much younger man. None of that entered her head, as she let him make them both giddy enough to fall onto the grass in an absurd heap, still laughing.

  ‘I’m going with you,’ she said at last, when her breath was hers again. She lay back on the grass, and looked up at the sundrenched, blue sky above them.

  ‘I know, and I’m glad. You have no idea how glad. Are you okay about Billy?’ He shifted so that he could rest his head in her lap. She gave in to the temptation to brush the miscreant hair off his forehead. He closed his eyes, as she stroked it back, almost as if he enjoyed the contact.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry I got irrational back there. I know there are rules that have to be followed. God knows what would happen to us all, if there weren’t.’ She was pleased to see him smile again, before she launched into her next question.

  ‘The children that go missing every year. The ones that are never heard from again. Do you Retrieve them?’

  His face became suddenly serious. ‘We don’t Retrieve children. The clones have to reach maturation before the amalgam can be formed. And you couldn’t put a child into an adult body. It wouldn’t take.’

  ‘So why not just wait until the child reaches fifty, and then put them into a clone? They would have had all those years to become acclimated to their new world. Less likely to C & B.’

  Jac’s face became very still, and she looked down to see his eyes close. She could see strong emotion surging beneath his calm exterior.

  ‘We do not allow children into our world. Because the race is infertile, it is considered too painful to introduce children into our world. It reminds us of what we cannot have.’

  ‘But that’s silly. It would be the perfect way to get a sense of reproduction. Retrieve children, and have them adopted by loving couples. It would feel almost as good as the real thing. And children are amazingly resilient. There wouldn’t be nearly as many C & Bs.’

  ‘Children are an unknown. Their personalities are not formed. We could retrieve potential mass murderers, revolutionaries, who knows what. We choose only stable, well-adjusted adults who have proven to be useful members of society.’

  ‘But isn’t that so limiting? People who stir up the mix can be very good for the culture. Change is good.’

  ‘Cara, please. You are trying to change our world before you’ve even seen it. Wait, see, become one of us, and then if you still feel there’s an argument for children, then you can present it to the appropriate government bodies. There’s no hurry. If those children are to be Retrieved, they will be, at the moment of their disappearance. That may be in 2332 or in 2452. For the child who is Retrieved, it won’t matter.’

  Cara considered that. It would take a bit of getting used to, the flexibility allowed by time travel and an extended life-span. She wondered whether she would be allowed to Jump, like Jac, or whether that was only the domain of people who were born in that future time-line. Johnny-Come-Latelies, like her, would probably be at the end of the queue.

  But what if she could Jump, like Jac. How wonderful would that be?

  Chapter Seven

  After having a late lunch at the Old Boat House Restaurant on the lake, they ambled back to her place. Cara couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself so much, for all the emotional roller-coaster ride it included. It seemed to be weeks, not just hours, since she had discovered her fate, and taken her first step through Time. It still seemed unreal.

  While Jac poured her a fresh glass of wine, Cara turned on the sound system. She put on a Billy Holliday CD. Then sat back, humming to it, while she waited and watched the youthful body moving, with concentrated focus, around her kitchen. Of course, she understood that odd concentration now. He was trying to keep his new motor functions operating smoothly.

  ‘I heard Billy Holliday sing, in person, one time. Back in the late 30s. She had such stage presence. And that voice and delivery… perfection. Made every song her own. The fact that people are still listening to her, sixty or more years later,
says it all,’ Jac said as he handed her a wine glass, and sat down next to her on the sofa. He drew her in, wrapping her close, as he put his loafer covered feet up on her coffee table.

  ‘I guess Jumping is restricted to authorised personnel only? No holidaying in the South of France in 1905?’

  She felt the rumble of his laugh beneath her ear, and it sounded relaxed and happy, just as she was.

  ‘We don’t turn everything into a commercial venture, as you people did – do. No pleasure trips on the space shuttle, for the right price. Because of the inherent dangers, only researchers and Retrievers Jump.’

  It was her turn to laugh. She had the image of a tawny haired golden retriever, with Jac’s eyes, jumping into a lake, after a downed duck. He would make an adorable dog.

  ‘What will I do? It would seem that in the Brave New World there’s no call for my current profession and skills.’

  ‘You’ll be retrained, of course, into a field you’re interested in. Most of your skills won’t be wasted.’

  ‘Can Retrieved people train to be Retrievers? I think I’d like saving people.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. It’s painful work. People don’t like to be told their life as they know it is going to end, no matter how you dress it up.’

  ‘I guess. It’s taken me a while to get my head around it. I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning, and have to start all over again.’

  ‘You are a remarkably quick study, Cara. Your optimism is rare. Even having picked at all the less than perfect aspects of our society, you seem to have embraced us. It isn’t usually so easy.’

  She lifted her head off his chest, so that she could look into his eyes. She was struck, once again, by his youth, and by the old eyes that stared out at her from that handsome, young face.

  ‘You make it easy, Jack. I’m not sure how I could have handled all this, if it had come from someone other than you.’

  He took her glass from her, and put it with his own on the coffee table. Then he turned back to her, cupping her face in his hands. His green eyes were electric, as he stared into hers.