The Jovian Legacy (21 page)

“Oh,
oh!” Megan interrupted holding her hand to her nose and fanning
the air. “Go and brush your teeth or have a gargle or
something,” she protested, feeling quite ill.

Nothing
was going to phase Jack that morning, so after he’d done as
Megan wished, he sat her down and went through the previous night’s
discussions.

After
a couple of minutes of taking it all in, Megan jumped up cried out,
“Oh my God!”

“What?”
Jack answered, startled.

“We
have no biological connections. Jack, we are not biological
cousins!” she announced, elated.

He
looked at her blankly.

“You
know…for later-on stuff!” Megan elaborated with glee.

Jack’s
glazed look transformed into jubilant exhilaration.

Chapter 17

A
s
the weeks went by, and Jack and Megan had an excited, newfound
outlook concerning their future, everyone began to realise something
quite interesting. Although the girls were clones and were their own
mirror images, each one was developing her own unique personality.

“How
can that be possible when their genes are identical?” Megan
quizzed.

Jack
was completely baffled by it all as well. “Search me.”

“Maybe
it’s God’s way of retaining some individuality in each of
them and telling us that we can’t beat Mother Nature, no matter
how hard we try,” Nancy said philosophically. Ben agreed, his
eyebrows raised and lips in a thin line.

Bo
(Clone 19) was an enchanting little girl who loved to make paper
clothes for her dollies, colouring each little paper garment in with
her laser pens, sometimes creating a design way beyond her three
years.

Jack,
Megan and Sobek had chosen Egyptian names for some of the girls.
Akila was very outdoorsy and had a certain mischievous way about her.
She loved to kick her ball, which was half her size, on the front
lawn with anyone who was within kicking distance, and displayed
endless energy in doing so. She loved playing practical jokes too,
and one afternoon, quietly slipped into the kitchen when no-one was
there, emptied the entire contents of the fridge including the racks,
hiding everything in the cupboard. She turned the fridge off at the
wall and climbed inside, leaving the door ajar so she still had air.
Then she waited. For an hour she waited, until an unsuspecting
kitchen staff member opened the door.

“Yaah!”
yelled Akila.

The
poor old dear farted in fright. The elderly cook must have been
around a hundred in Jovian years, and didn’t think much of the
antics of her young charge. Akila giggled hopelessly on the floor,
even though she knew she’d probably get into trouble.

Zesiro
(meaning a twin) loved to listen to music. She had the uncanny knack
of listening to a song once on the sound system and then singing the
entire song after it had finished, remembering all the words. She
had such a sweet little voice, and it was so nice to hear her
singsong around the house all day.

Cecile
was a tomboy, so much so that Jack jokingly talked about renaming her
Cecil, which, according to him, would have suited her better. She
was their ‘lovable little ratbag’ as he put it. She
showed a determination to get or do anything she wanted. Cecile
would love to tinker with boy things and didn’t care if she got
her clothes dirty. Her rough and tumble nature was softened by her
love of cuddles.

Then
there was Chione. Sweet little Chione; quite the opposite of Cecile.
Very girly-girly, who possessed everything pink and loved wearing
princess dresses. She had a row of dolls all dressed in pink. Her
dolls accompanied Bo’s dolls, adorned with their little paper
dress creations. Chione loved to sit in their shared room for hours,
redesigning her dolls’ pink dresses by gluing sequins in a
variety of patterns to the material. They looked professionally done
and were hard to imagine they had been done by a three-year-old.

Kamilah
loved to solve all kinds of puzzles. She could finish a
nine-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle in a week, gluing each piece onto
the board as she went, and then would hang the completed puzzle on
her bedroom wall. One wall of her bedroom, which she shared with
Akila, was covered with jigsaw puzzles, making it an interesting
feature wall. Kamilah also had the knack of picking out a puzzle in
which its colours blended with or complemented the colours of the
puzzle hanging alongside it. Furthermore, if one looked at the wall
for a while, the viewer would be able to see a shape of a giant heart
formed from the combination of the puzzles.

Kenza
was a painter, and had her own special little place for her easel and
paints. Rows of jars filled with brightly coloured paint would be
ready for her to do as she pleased. Instead of using her brushes,
sometimes she would be up to her elbows in paint, painting with her
bare hands, on a large canvas board on the floor. Startling as it
was, whatever she did, however she did it, her piece always turned
out to be a
remarkable
piece of work. And
her work attracted public attention. Jack and his family were blown
away by her talent and were very proud to have an article written
about her. Kenza became flavour of the month in the artist world,
and offers to buy her work streamed in. Sweet little Kenza was quite
oblivious to the fuss and didn’t care two hoots about her
popularity. As long as she was left alone to do her painting she was
happy. She was endearing to watch. She almost danced as she swished
her brushes or her hands over the board, and finish a
two-by-two-metre painting in an hour, losing interest in it even
faster, when she would be onto the next one. Megan or Nancy would
quietly remove the painting and place it somewhere to dry before
adding it to her collection in a viewing room for the public to
purchase. The purchase money was placed in a trust fund that Jack’s
father set up for her.

In
the evening when the little girls were all tucked up in bed and their
rooms glowed a soft green hue from the nightlights, Jack, Megan, Ben,
Nancy and Sobek spent a little time with each of them, giving them
copious amounts of cuddles.

Megan
loved this time of the day, her little girls smelling so nice, still
with their baby-soft skin. Although they were her clones, and would
be geniuses in adulthood, she regarded them as her little sisters,
and whom required love and caring like any other three-year-olds. To
Megan they were typical energetic toddlers.

One
day Akila tripped over and landed on a jagged stone, which cut deep
into her knee. Blood poured everywhere, and her sister Jonie
attempted to carry her up to the house. It was heart-warming to see
one little girl struggling to carry her sister, who sobbed her little
heart out while holding her knee. Jonie wasn’t bothered about
getting covered in Akila’s blood; she was crying too, not from
pain but as a gesture of empathy over her sister’s suffering.

It
wasn’t unusual for one little girl to be sitting on Ben’s
lap enjoying a cuddle when another would climb onto his lap as well,
the first making room for the other, both sisters clutching his
clothing as they nestled into him.

For
their fourth birthday they were each given a pet, which meant the
family suddenly doubled in size. Kenza’s chimp was so
humanlike that he sometimes painted with her, although the end result
was a little different. It was great interaction, and something that
few Earth-born children had the chance of ever experiencing.

Jordan
had a baby wolfhound she named Shiz, so cute and furry that everyone
wanted to cuddle him. Shiz and Cecile’s pet Chihuahua
sometimes play-fought and growled at each other, with Shiz trying
hard to look tough but succeeding only to appear cutesy. Jordan
shared her toys with Shiz and gave him a special soft toy that the
pup took on as his own. Shiz took his soft toy with him everywhere
he went. One day Jordan and Cecile were playing with their pets in
their room. Jordan told Cecile that her pet Chihuahua looked like an
inside-out rat. Jack entered their room, noticing Jordan’s pup
trembling and making little whimpering noises and glaring at the
Chihuahua. He looked across at Cecile’s pet, which had taken
the soft toy off Shiz and was humping it in the corner. Before the
girls noticed their respective pets’ behaviour, Jack quickly
swept the Chihuahua up in his hands and passed the toy back to Shiz,
the pup staring at it like it had betrayed him.

Sundays
were special. The entire family: Ben and Nancy Dunlop, Sobek, Jack
and Megan and their girls attended the Thebes Temple of Worship; each
time a full house, and the singing heard for miles. A massive choir
accompanied the service, the congregation drowned out by their
singing that sounded like a thousand angels. It was an incredible
sound. Even the girls stood on their chairs singing their little
lungs out, clapping and smiling, and rocking from side to side.

“Isn’t
it great how things have transpired,” Ben said to his wife in
bed that night.

“Hmm, yes,” she responded,
“never in a million years did I expect this.”

Chapter 18

J
ack’s
job became very busy towards the end of March. He was required to be
on call for a new project that the Thebes Federation of Science had
begun, taking up a lot of his time. They had made a new contact with
Earth, a gentleman who lived in Cairo who had some unnerving news
about occurrences in his neighbouring countries. War had broken out
between the Western world and Iraq, and whose president had gone into
hiding, he being the primary target. The gentleman’s name was
Jamahn, who was very informative. It didn’t appear to phase
him that he’d been contacted by another planet, and seemed
genuinely happy to keep it to himself. Perhaps, thought Jack, that
he imagined he would be ridiculed if he told his mates that he’d
been contacted by aliens, as Jack had. Or maybe he simply didn’t
believe them. Jamahn was an intriguing man though. Jack pictured
him as having very dark features with a brooding look.

As
they continued their association with Jamahn, it became apparent from
his script that something was very wrong. A lot of children were
dying as a result of being caught up in an adult’s way of
sorting things out. Jack knew it was unfair, but felt helpless as to
what he could do.

The
next day, when Jack and Megan had finished their lunch, they looked
out the kitchen window to see all the girls sitting cross-legged on
the grass chatting amongst themselves. Cecile beckoned them to join
them and told them to sit in the middle.

“They’re
probably playing a trick on us,” Jack sniggered, as they sat
down cross-legged as well.

“Okay,
so what’s the deal?” he asked, humouring them.

Cecile
said, “There’s something I have to show you.”

It’s
just like Cecile to take centre stage,
he
thought, amused.

“There’s
a man that you have to go and see. He said his name was Siptah.”

Jack
and Megan looked at each other in astonishment. “Cecile, how
do you know this man? Where did he come from?” Jack asked,
feeling anxiety creep in but trying not to show it.

Cecile
picked up something that she had beside her and handed it to him. It
was a box. A Lucre Box. It was the same shape as Jack’s,
which, when put together with Megan’s, formed an Egyptian
symbol.

“Where
did you get that from, Pumpkin?” questioned Megan, grasping
Jack’s hand.

“The
man gave it to us and said we had to give it to you. He said you
have to go see him tonight,” Cecile repeated matter-of-factly,
looking innocently up at her adopted brother.

“Did
he say where?” Jack asked, trying to contain his voice.

“There’s
a map in the box. He says he’s related,” she answered.

That
evening as they drove along, Megan gave directions while looking at
the map. Neither of them said a great deal. As they rounded a bend
they saw a magnificent Egyptian building with a lit-up pathway
leading to what must have been their host’s residence, though
it resembled a grand entrance to a temple, with arched lines and
double doors. They didn’t need to knock, as the doors swung
open as they approached.

A
man who looked as old as Noah greeted them. He led them across a
courtyard encircled by pillars, leading them over large wide stone
slabs with green trimmed foliage between, framing them. The
courtyard looked very neat and manicured. ‘Noah’ led
them through another set of double doors where he asked them to wait,
and quietly slipped out, shutting the doors behind him, leaving Megan
and Jack alone. They surveyed the expansive room. Exquisite
Egyptian art decorated the walls, encrusted with intricate gold
patterns and reaching the ceiling.

Another
man appeared, looking almost as old as the first, but with imposing
dark Egyptian features, precisely as Jack had pictured Jamahn.

He
greeted Jack and Megan with both hands extended, and his solemn face
splitting into a welcome grin, revealing perfect white teeth.

“I
am very pleased you came. “I am Siptah, descendant of the
Pharaoh Siptah, and your distant cousin,” he spoke with a heavy
accent.