The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (18 page)

By now, the
crew had cleared the decontamination station on the ground floor,
showered, and changed clothes. The trip from Moonbase took two
days, but spending the whole time in a space suit made anyone
pretty nasty. The elevator from below opened, and a medium-sized
man stepped into the room. He had Ed’s coloring, and red hair that
fell over a high brow in a forelock, a round, almost boyish face,
smooth and pink as a baby’s butt, and gray eyes. His features
lacked the angularity of Ethan or their father. Standing next to
Jamie, he appeared to be about half her age, but the difference
didn’t seem to matter. They flew into each other’s embrace, with
the girls crowding in.

Bobby spoke
first. “Tell us, brother, how are The Greats?” Taking snapshots
with a large lens digital camera, he winked at Lorna, explaining,
“For the archives.”

Toby glanced
up from his wife’s embrace just as Bobby snapped his picture.
“They’re doing well.” He blinked testily at the flash. “Great-mom
Sam is still feisty as ever. She complains Great-pop Jim’s slowing
down in old age, and doesn’t meet her needs. She threatens to trade
him in for a younger mate. He reminds her that the road runs both
ways. “They’re joking, of course. They live for each other.”

Ed and Ethan
smirked. The rest of the family, even the young daughters, paid no
more than routine attention to Toby’s casual recounting of his
great-grandparent’s characterization of their sexual needs. Again,
Lorna remembered most vampires or lycans didn’t think twice about
this kind of conversation, even in front of children.

“Well,” Ed
asked, “What was so important Great-pop Jim needed you to deliver
in person and not use secure communications?”

Toby threw
back his forelock, giving Lorna a better view at a pair of large,
round eyes with a perpetually inquisitive expression to them, like
Great-pop’s, somebody told her later. Reaching for an accordion
folder tucked under an arm, he pulled out some papers. When they
were halfway out, he stopped, staring at Lorna.

“Father,
Great-pop was correct to insist a family member come to retrieve
what I brought. This information is sensitive, perhaps critical to
the well-being of the corporation and all of The Others.” He still
held Lorna in a wary stare. “I think we should discuss this among
immediate family first. We can include outsiders later, on a
need-to-know basis.” The papers fell back into the folder.

“What are you
saying?” Ed demanded.

“Speaking
bluntly, Father, do we know your friend well enough to trust her
with sensitive information?”

Lorna’s eyes
cut toward Toby with a fierce glare.

“Ms. Winters
has demonstrated impeccable loyalty to our family, brother,” Ethan
said. “Her skills as a veteran police detective could be of great
service.”

“
She
is an
outsider,” Toby maintained, ignoring Lorna’s building
hostility.

“I’ll wait in
the car.” Lorna started to leave, but Ed’s hand shot out,
restraining her arm with a powerful grip.

“Enough of
this bickering.” His voice boomed, but with restraint. “She
stays.”

“I think we
should all trust Father’s judgment,” Bobby added. “He hasn’t
steered us wrong yet.”

Lorna nodded
with appreciation at the rangy dark man with the manicured
yellow-nailed fingers enmeshed on his lap. Bobby answered with a
toothy half-smile, followed by a quick wink. His charm gave her
further insight why Ed favored him, at least over the irascible
returning astronaut.

“Let it go,
Toby,” interjected Ethan. “Our father has ruled on the matter. The
decision is made.”

Toby grumbled,
while bringing out the papers. Lorna wondered how much the constant
jostle for pre-eminence existing among the three brothers fuelled
the skirmish she’d witnessed.

“We don’t need
to sit through all of this.” Jamie had probably witnessed many
similar scenes over the years. “I’m having lunch in the lounge with
the girls. Anyone else with us?”

A crowd of
more distant relatives followed Jamie. Lorna, Ed, the three sons,
Karla, Cynthia, and Thomas remained. They pulled up chairs crowding
around one of the small lounge tables, all except for Lorna, who
remained in her original place, detached from the others a few
seats away. Toby removed the papers, placing them in a stack on the
tabletop, careful to square the corners so the sheets were in
perfect alignment. He glanced up at Lorna. The sternness on his
face reminded her she still had a chance to leave. With
determination, she glared back, not budging.

Toby began the
presentation. “Last February, Great-pop told us he’d discovered
something new in the Malvina Papers. Two weeks later, I received a
message in which he confirmed the discovery. It was too important
to risk transmitting electronically.”

“Since we can
penetrate X-10’s encrypted traffic, we should assume they have
similar capabilities with respect to ours,” Ed explained.

“Conveniently,” Toby continued, “I already had a scheduled visit to
Mars in connection with other matters, and agreed to retrieve the
information.”

“Why didn’t
Great-pop send it by courier, or even in a sealed package?” Thomas
asked.

“Because, dear
uncle, he wanted to take no chances of a compromise.”

Karla’s
patience reached the end. “Then, what is it that was so
important?”

“Great-pop
found the names of the original First Parents, along with other
things that I’ll explain.” Toby riffled the papers, pulled up a
sheet and read. “The male was Uliffe, a lycan.” He paused to
consult the sheet again. “The female, a vampire, was named
Kathia.”

“That’s not
right,” Lorna said. Her voice, outside the center of the group,
sounded distant, seeming to come from above like a divine
revelation. “The names aren’t right.”

Every face at
the table turned toward her. Toby’s sarcastic taunt followed. “And
you learned this from where?”

Lorna crossed
her legs, drawing the pants of her business suit tight on thighs
and hips, a sight which captured Ed’s attention along with Bobby’s.
“I don’t understand how I know, but I do. His name is Aliff. Hers
is Cithara.”

“Aliff,
Aliff,” Ed mused aloud, “Where have I heard that name?”

“I’ll tell you
later, but those are the correct names.”

While the
crowd mulled over Lorna’s announcement, Ed continued the debriefing
with Toby. “Besides being the original First Parents, is there
anything else Great-pop told you about them?”

“Oh yes. Much
more,” Toby answered, the earlier bickering forgotten for the
moment. “In her last decades Kath–ah–Cithara became a priestess at
an oracle named Oom located near modern day Pamplona.”

Karla said. “A
news article about excavations there crossed my desk recently.”

Ed sat up. “We
need to find everything there is about the site. Please make a
note, Thomas.”

Thomas, the
consummate personal assistant and non-technocrat scribe, wrote
something in the notebook he kept in a vest pocket.

Toby
continued. “Aliff and Cithara spent their lives together. They were
a pair bond for at least two hundred years and had over a dozen
children. She became priestess after he died in about 220 A.D. In
her time, she made over a thousand prophesies.”

“Prophetesses
are a dime a dozen in history,” Bobby said. “What makes her
special?”

“Great-pop
completed a translation of documents written in archaic Basque.
This is the first time they’ve been seen in English,” Toby said. “I
have them with me. Here are two of the most interesting.” He spread
two sheets on the table. On each, Jim White wrote a six-line
passage.

The first one
read:

God’s eye will
blink in the lands at the Eastern edge

Of the
world,

Brought in the
belly of a silver bird,

Her name is
Gay

Life will be
displaced from the land below.

The war will
end for a time.

The second one
read:

A pestilence
from Man will be blamed on God’s doing.

Many men will
die.

The Shadow of
Darkness will return.

God will not
be mocked

And the
perpetrators will be consumed

As nations
dissolve.

“The first
passage is about the Atomic Bomb falling on Japan,” Lorna said. “I
wrote a paper on it in college. The man in charge of the mission
named the airplane carrying the bomb “Enola Gay” after his
mother.”

“What’s the
second one about?” Ed wondered aloud.

“She refers to
the Great Plague,” Thomas said. “For over thirty years, the world
believed it to be a natural occurrence, until a man named Ruben
Shad proved members of the Department of Homeland Security started
it. Sixty percent of the victims were males. Isn’t the world worse
off now than before the plague, not to mention most of the great
nation states are broken up?”

“These are
eighteen hundred years old, and until Great-pop, no one translated
them beyond Archaic Basque?” Ed asked.

“Correct, Dad,
which means no one can claim they were written after the events
they predict,” Toby answered.

“What else did
the priestess divine?” asked Ed.

“There are
twenty more. Eighteen are about events that have happened, but two
made no sense to Great-pop. I brought them home for further
analysis,” Toby answered.

“Can we see
them?” Lorna asked.

Toby started
to object, but before he could say anything, Ed stood up. “Lorna
identified with great confidence the true pronunciation of the
names of the original First Parents. I believe she has something to
tell us, if we’d but listen.”

All eyes
riveted on Lorna again. Unsure of what they expected, she began
slowly. “I have dreams. When I wake up, I can’t remember any
details, but this I’m sure of. They’re about the couple I
described. They lived a long time ago. Moreover, before I emerged,
I dreamed about a kind lady. Those memories are also distant and
featureless. There’s nothing more.”

“Father,”
Ethan said, “Perhaps Lorna could tell us more if Doctor Montana
hypnotized her.” Turning toward Lorna, he asked, “Would you be
willing?”

Lorna frowned.
“Let me think about it. I don’t favor the idea of someone fishing
around in my head.”

“I think
Lorna’s right,” Bobby said. “She’s new to the family. To lay such a
task on her is presumptuous of us.”

“Thank you,
Bobby, but I can speak for myself,” Lorna said. “Let’s see the
mysterious passages.”

Toby turned to
Ed, who nodded a quick approval. With a frown etched in his rounded
jaw, Toby placed the sheet on the table top.

In English the
words read as follows:

A pestilence
will afflict the New Children of Humanity.

The unborn are
the solution.

The New World
beckons.

Beware of
treacherous spawn.

A viper is at
the breast of Salvation.

A female at
peace prevails.

And the
second:

A new phase
will come to pass.

Sugaar will
scour most of Man from the land.

A new race
descends

To repopulate
cleansed Earth.

God will
bless

The New
Children of Humanity

“Any ideas?”
Toby asked Lorna skeptically.

“Nothing comes
to mind,” she answered. “Maybe if I studied it.”

Toby lost
patience. His large, owlish eyes locked on her. “Study it, nothing.
You don’t know any more than we do. Father, let me turn the papers
over to our linguists.”

“With all due
respect, my brother,” Ethan said. “I think she does. Send the
papers where you may, but Lorna, I implore you to let our
scientists place you under hypnosis. I believe you are the
key.”

The key? The
key to effing what?

CHAPTER TWELVE

L
orna lay on a
couch in a curtained room at the back of the corporate headquarters
building in Orlando. Beside her, in a well-stuffed lounge chair,
sat a small, human male. A low table separated them. Across the
room, in straight-backed chairs against the wall, Ed and Ethan sat
with identical carriage, like bookends.

“This is a
very routine procedure,” Ed had argued. “I’m not sure what good my
presence will do.”

“I have a
feeling it won’t work, otherwise,” Lorna said.

“What won’t
work?”

“I don’t know,
but unless you’re there, nothing will happen. I’m sure of it.”

Ed rolled his
eyes skyward. “All right, I’ll come.”

Dr. Montana
supervised the corporation’s research into what Ethan generically
referred to as “Matters of Second Sight” which included telekinesis
and ESP, as well as what lay folk referred to as mindreading. In
her case, Lorna wasn’t sure what they hoped to find.

At the initial
meeting, a tiny human extended a proportionately scaled hand. Lorna
couldn’t help but notice how out of place he appeared in a dark
three-piece suit—walking the corporation hallways, surrounded by
men in slacks and open collar shirts or women in dresses or skirts
and blouses of a more casual cut—but upon entering the long, narrow
room gerrymandered into the end of one of the hallways, he blended
in. Sitting beside Lorna, he exuded a scholarly aura, accentuated
by good pipe tobacco. All around them, glass and metal knick-knacks
populated the furniture and shelves lining the walls. A pair of
liquid brown eyes, appearing capable of understanding the vilest
motive, observed her. Lorna surmised that in his line of work, the
quality came in handy.

“Now, Ms.
Winters,” he said in a soothing voice that matched the
all-accommodating eyes, “I’m going to put you into a different
level of consciousness, from which we may draw information.”
Pouring a cup of tea from the steeping pot on the low table between
them, he offered the fragrant beverage to her. “Before we begin,
drink this. You will be relaxed.”