Of Blood and Angels (The Two Moons of Rehnor, Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Katie

“Maybe I shouldn't go back to space,” I
said.  We were in the kitchen and I was making his favorite dinner which was a
dozen eggs cooked as runny as possible.  I think he would actually have
preferred them raw, shell and all but I insisted they be cooked.  “I could
continue working for Admiral Tim.”

“You need to go back.  We have already
discussed this.  It is your dream to be a Starship Captain.  You are not going
to give up your career for me.  You must do this while you can.”

“Yes, but I'm very happy here.  I'll miss
you.”

“It is only for six months.  I will come
visit you often.  May I have more, please?”  He held out his plate.

“What about your cholesterol?  Or is that
not an issue when you have cool powers and stuff?”

“Not an issue for me,” he replied, so I
filled up his plate again.

“What is your dream, Senya?” I asked,
placing his dinner down in front of him.  “To be King?”

“You should know by now that is my
nightmare,” he scoffed.  “Not my dream.”

“So what is your dream then?”  I made him
some more toast.

He sat pensively for a moment.  "My
dream was always to live in a house.”

“Live in a house?  Like this one?”

“No.  A small house would have been fine. 
All I have ever wanted was a little house with a little wife who would cook me
dinner and match my socks and find me ties to go with my shirts and yell at me
when I leave my clothes on the floor and who would let me make love to her all
night long.”

“Really?  Then you must be a very happy
man now.”  I sat down on his lap and let the toast harden in the toaster.

“I am happy now.”  He wrapped his arms
around me.  “I have never known this.”

“This?”  I kissed his closed eyelids where
the skin was so soft.  “Happiness?”

“Ay yah.  Happiness.  This is a very good
thing.”

“I shouldn't go back to space.  I don't
care what I said before.  I want to be with you."

“Ach,” he sighed.  “Go back to space.  I
will be right here when you come home.”

“It sounds like you're trying to get rid
of me,” I teased.  “Have you got something more important that you need to be
doing and you want me out of the house?”

“Actually, yes.”

“What?”

“Come,” he said and taking my hand, he led
me out into the garden.  “I will show you how Takira-hahr and Kalika-hahr have
been reclaimed while the rest of the planet is still dust.”

“How?”  I followed him through the garden,
past my scraggly collection of rose bushes and behind the gazebo to an area
that I was going to use for fruit trees.  At this point, I was still working
the dry, unfertile dirt.  I had wanted to get some compost from the home store
next to the Fashion Mall but I hadn't had a chance yet.  I figured I'd get back
to it when I came home from my tour.

“What do you want here?” he asked,
stopping in front of my empty plot.

“I was going to put in some soft fruit
trees here.  I was thinking maybe an apricot or peach.  Perhaps some citrus
trees like oranges, lemons, or grapefruit.”

“What do you want right here?”  He pointed
at the ground next to his foot.

“I don't care,” I shrugged.  “What do you
want?”

“Do you want a lemon tree?”

“That's fine.  I'd like an Improved Meyer
Lemon actually.”

“Improved Meyer Lemon?”

“I'll pick up one when I get back.”

“No.”  He shook his head and repeated. 
“Improved Meyer Lemon.”  He took off the bandage that was covering the long cut
on his right wrist and picked at the scab.

“What the hell are you doing?” I cried.

“Improved Meyer Lemon tree,” he said
again, making the cut weep.  A drop of his blood fell on the dirt.  He replaced
the bandage.  Then, he held out his hands and magically, they pooled with
water.  He released the water on to the dirt in the same place.  I stared at
the wet red dirt and waited for something to happen.

“The Karupatani continent here was
decimated,” he said, almost reverently.  “The ecosystem is dead.  I need to
bring it back.  Once I do, once it begins to rain over there on its own, the
whole planet will be restored.

“How are you going to bring it back?” I
asked, still watching the dirt.

“In my blood, my plasma, there are
proteins that are…not common.”

“Not common?”

“Well more than that.  These proteins are
what…” he paused.

“What make you different?” I offered,
looking up at him.

“There it is.”

“There what is?”

“Your Improved Meyer Lemon tree,” he said
and knelt down to cradle a tiny sprout rising out of the dirt.  It grew as I
watched it, first a seedling, then two small leaves and then two more.

“Holy moley!” I gasped and turned to stare
at him.  “You did that?”

“I did all of this,” he waved his hand at
our garden, the lawn, and the forests surrounding us with towering firs.  “I
did this in Kalika-hahr and now I am doing this in Karupatani which is why I
have cuts on my arms.”

For a moment, I was speechless.

“I don’t always go around breaking things
and killing people.  Sometimes, I can even create things and heal people.”  He
smiled and took my hand.  “Come on.”  He led me back to the gazebo.  “I have a
little problem though.”

I shook my head.  “A little problem?  Your
blood creates life and you have a little problem.”

“As I use the proteins I make more.  And,
as I make more, I need to get rid of them otherwise they will continue to build
up and then possibly…usually…if I lose control…they sort of erupt and I will
have a seizure and then…”

“Then what?”

“Things happen.”

“You have a seizure and things happen?” I
squeaked.

“Mhm,” he nodded.  “So, what I need to do
is get the proteins out before that happens.  Bleed them away.  I can feel them
building up again now so while you are in space, I will be spending a great
deal of time in Karupatani…seeding.”

“Seeding,” I repeated and collapsed on the
swing chair, sending it wildly into motion.  “Seeding?”

“Sort of,” he shrugged.

“And you’re going to be doing this in
between all your meetings and speeches and surgeries?”

He shrugged again.  “It doesn’t take me
long.  I only have so much blood.”

“Right,” I nodded.  “And how do you feel
them building up?”

He sat down beside me and lit a
cigarette.  “It is almost like having high blood pressure.  I get headaches,
migraines and…and there is a constant noise.  I hear everything, every thought. 
I have to be very careful that my own thoughts do not materialize.”

“And when you bleed it out, you feel
better?”

“Ay yah.”  He blew a puff of grey smoke
into the air.  “Much better for a while, until it builds up again.”

“What chapter was this in your user's
manual?” I sighed.

“This was in one of those appendices.”  He
took a long drag on his cig.  “The one right after the chapter entitled, How
Sehron Controls the Weather and Other Planetary Functions.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

He just smiled.

“Hi Katie, it's Gina,” the woman said.  I
didn’t recognize her.

“Hi?”

“Listen, Berkan is coming in town for
meetings with Thad and he's bringing his wife, Luci.  We're going to go out to
the Cowboy Corral for drinks and dinner, maybe someplace else for dancing and
dessert later.  You guys want to come?”

“Um…Gina?  I'm going back to space.”  By
this time, I had figured out Gina was Thad's wife.

“I heard that but Thad said you weren't
going until Monday.  You want to come out with us on Saturday?  Come on!  It'll
be fun!”

Fun?  Thad was a fun guy.  Berkan was
okay.  Gina, I had met once and didn't say anything beyond hello, despite her
casually greeting me as if we were old friends.  I had never even heard of
Luci.  I wondered if Senya would like to do this.  We had never gone out with
anyone before.  Actually, we never went anywhere.  He wasn’t kidding when he
said all he ever dreamed of was a house and wife.  He had no interest in films,
dancing, music or restaurants.  He liked to come home from work, eat dinner and
go back to work in his home office.  The only diversions from work that he ever
took were to spend time with me and to listen to a football game.  I would have
liked to go out with friends.  It would be fun to eat at a restaurant and get
drinks and maybe go dancing.  I had missed socializing even though mostly I was
tired from working all day at the Landbase and being up half the night as a
newlywed.

“Okay,” I agreed.  “What time on
Saturday?”

After I hung up on Gina, I went to find
Senya in his office.  The room was completely dark even though he was at his
desk typing away on his netbook.  The light from his screen reflected in his
glasses and I could see Rozarian words scrolling across his lenses.  I turned
on the light.  His desk was covered with scale models of some equipment and
there were drawings that had been discarded on the floor.  There was also a
brain in a jar on the corner of his desk.  As I moved closer, I saw that the
brain was in several pieces.

“That is so gross,” I said and tried not
to look at it.

He waved his hand distractedly and the jar
flew past me and into a cabinet.  Before the cabinet doors slammed shut, I saw
other jars lined up in there.

“Your spare parts?”

“No.”

“How would you like…”

“No, he repeated.  “I do not want to go to
dinner with Thad and Berkan and their wives.”

“Can you at least give me a half a second
to ask the entire question before you answer?  And why not?  It sounds like
fun.”

“No,” he spun around in his chair and
grabbed another glass jar on the credenza behind him.  Inside it was a long red
and blue worm looking thing.  “I am busy now.”

“I can see that,” I mumbled as a surgical
tray now soared across the room, landing in front of me.  He pulled a pair of
tongs and a scalpel out of his desk.  Taking the tray, the thing, the
instruments and one of the devices from his desktop, he got up and went into
the adjoining room which was set up as a lab.

“What are you doing?” I stood at the door,
not sure if I wanted to follow.

“This spinal implant device is not working
correctly,” he snapped, holding up the device.  “And those bleeding idiots who
are each earning six figure salaries from me to develop these things cannot
determine what is wrong.”  He reached in the jar with the tongs and pulled out
the worm thing, slapping it down in the tray and then shoving the device into
it.  I watched data start to stream across one of the overhead vids because
watching what he was doing to the worm thing with his scalpel and the device
was making me ill. 

“So about dinner, Thad and Berkan are your
best friends.  Why can't we go out with them?”

“I do not like Gina or Luci.”

“I will talk to Gina and Luci.  That’s my
job.  You don't have to say a word to either of them.”

“I like to eat at home.”

“But that's no fun,” I protested.  “We
never go out anywhere.”

“You are going away and you will not cook
for me for six months.”

“What if I made a bunch of stuff for you
and put it in the freezer?  Come on, Senya.  I want to go out with friends for
once.”

“Ah!  There it is!”  He held up the
scalpel and then rattled off a bunch of numbers and things which the vid
displayed.  “Always, it is in the software.”  Tossing everything aside and then
washing up at the sink, he came back into his office, sat down at his netbook
and started typing away again. 

“I'm going to give you a haircut before we
go out to dinner.”  I stood behind him and finger combed his hair, pulling it
into a pony tail.  “It's getting too long.”

“Lucky me, we are going to play beauty
parlor again,” he mumbled.

“Is it okay?  Can I?  You're not like
Samson and going to lose all your cool powers if I cut off a couples inches or
so?”

“No, Delilah.  My cool powers do not
reside in my hair.”

I got a clean set of surgical scissors from
his sterile tray and proceeded to chop off a good four inches.  It curled
around his collar.  Any shorter and he'd have to go to someone who knew what
they were doing.  I liked it though.  I admired my handiwork as I dropped the
clippings in the trash.  “Maybe I should hold on to these,” I teased.  “The famed
black hair off the head of the great and wondrous Prince of Podunk could be
worth a lot on eBay, don't you think?”