Their sense of accomplishment disappeared, though, as a long, lean, slightly curving black form appeared overhead.
Nurse Cummings massaged Kelly Reynolds’s left leg, making sure that blood got to the unused muscles. They were on the roof of the main tower of Tripler, with the south coast of Hawaii laid out in all its splendor. The doctors were still pessimistic about the possibility of Reynolds recovering, but Cummings saw no reason why the woman shouldn’t. As far as she was concerned there was nothing wrong with Reynolds that more rest, nutrients, and sunshine couldn’t cure.
A young doctor, one of the team that had basically written Reynolds off, came onto the roof to smoke. He saw Cummings with Reynolds and appeared embarrassed. Whether because he had given up on a patient, or she had caught him smoking, Cummings wasn’t sure.
As he puffed furtively a short distance away, Cummings switched from the left leg to the right. The calf was barely larger than the bone, most of the muscle having been consumed by the body as it had attempted to keep itself alive during the stay under Easter Island.
Cummings pressed her fingers into the flesh, massaging what little muscle she could find. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a movement and she looked up quickly. But Reynolds’s eyes were still closed and she was still, a strap going around her chest and forehead, holding her upright in the wheelchair. As she went back to work, Cummings kept her attention split between leg and upper body. “There!” Cummings cried out.
The startled doctor quickly stubbed out the cigarette. “What?” “Did you see that? Did you?” “See what?”
“Her hand. It moved. She lifted her forefinger.”
The doctor shook his head. “She can’t. Her brain has—” His words came to an abrupt halt as Reynolds’s right forefinger lifted a half inch off the armrest of the chair. “I don’t believe it.”
Cummings leaned close to Reynolds’s ear. “Do it again.” The finger lifted once more. “She understands.”
The doctor put his stethoscope to Reynolds’s thin chest. “Her heart rate is accelerated.”
“Of course,” Cummings said. “She’s putting everything she has into moving that finger.” She peered at Reynolds’s face, noting the quivering around the eyelids. “She’ll be talking soon. Very soon.”
Artad exited the Talon with a dozen Kortad backing him up. As soon as he was clear of the airlock, the ship rose into the Martian sky and took up an overwatch position ten kilometers above Mons Olympus.
The Airlia who had finished the array were in front of him. As he approached, they prostrated themselves. Their leader, whom Artad had known briefly many years previously, dropped to one knee.
“We have prepared the array for you.”
They had prepared the array for him because they had no other choice, Artad knew. They could not call back to the empire and ask for help after their role in the civil war here so many years ago. They were criminals, traitors, who could only throw themselves on his mercy.
“Is it ready to transmit?”
“Shortly. It is powering up.” The Airlia got to his feet and led the way to a tracked vehicle that was linked to the array with numerous cables.
Artad paused before following. He looked about. He saw the army of mech-machines that had been stopped in their tracks when the humans took over the Master Guardian and shut down the subordinate guardians. The magnitude of the loss of a master along with its Excalibur control was staggering. His reprimand when the fleet arrived would be great. And after over ten thousand years, what would his status be? He didn’t even know what the status of the empire was. He assumed it was strong, as it had existed for many times that length of time. But what if—
Artad looked up. He knew the mothership was en route, with humans on board coming to stop him. And the Master Guardian was on board the mothership. Their arrogance was beyond belief.
It would be a much better message if it contained a more positive summary than the current status report, Artad realized.
They had a plan. It wasn’t the best, but Turcotte had served in Special Forces and he knew there was no such thing as a best plan, other than staying home and pulling the covers over one’s head.
They were just under an hour out. Everyone else was in the control room, watching the array. Turcotte knew watching wouldn’t make the time go by any quicker. He went down the main corridor until he reached the crossway leading to the hangar bay in which they had brought the ship with Duncan on board. Turcotte went into the bay and up the ramp into the ship.
Duncan was in the tube, eyes closed. A light on the side of the tube was green. Turcotte had to assume that meant it was functioning correctly, although he could not see her chest rise and fall. Her breathing must be down to an extremely slow rate, he figured.
Turcotte went over to the other tube. The light on this one was red. The man’s face was slack, the eyes full of a dullness Turcotte had seen too many times before — he was dead, of that there was no doubt.
Turcotte swung the lid open and examined the body. The skin was flawless, with no scars or other marks. The man appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties, in excellent physical shape at the time of death. He didn’t even have any calluses on the bottoms of his feet. It was as if the man had never left the tube.
Which he hadn’t, Turcotte knew. He’d seen a tube like this before. Deep under Mount Sinai. The one Aspasia’s Shadow had used to regenerate his new body. Apparently it had two functions, he realized, glancing over at Duncan’s tube. It not only could regenerate a new body, it also could put someone in deep sleep — a necessary thing, he supposed, for travel in deep space.
Turcotte looked about. The interior was sparse, emphasizing function over comfort, much like a present-day submarine. He walked to the front, where two chairs faced a control console. He sat down in the right-hand seat. It felt familiar, which irritated him. What had been in his brain? He had a good idea who had put it there.
He scanned the console. If the seat felt familiar, then perhaps other things would strike a chord. A flat screen to the right, set at an angle in the console, caught his attention. There were five buttons with markings below it. He reached and tapped one. The screen flickered, then came alive.
In rapid succession a series of scenes played out on the screen. Turcotte saw Duncan and her companion aboard a mothership, leaving their homeworld and son. Departing the mothership outside the solar system. Landing on Earth. Burying the ship at what would become Stonehenge. Raising the first “stones” there.
Then he caught quick glimpses of the two of them throughout Earth history.
On a wonderful island with a huge palace in the center that he assumed had to be Atlantis. They were dressed in local garb and ambushing an Airlia in the streets and killing him.
On a ship, pulling away from the island kingdom as it was destroyed by a mothership.
Returning to the buried spaceship, regenerating new bodies, transferring their essences via the ka, and emerging.
In Egypt, sneaking around in the dark, again killing an Airlia in ambush. A confrontation along the Roads of Rostau with what appeared to be Ones Who Wait, Airlia-Human half-breeds.
Regenerating.
Greece. In the newly completed Parthenon, watching and listening to orators. In a field, killing someone — a One Who Waits — who tried to ambush them. Regenerating.
Rome. In the stands of the Coliseum watching gladiators hack at each other with swords.
The scenes began to flicker by so quickly he could barely comprehend a tenth of what he was seeing. Every forty years or so the two would return to Stonehenge and transfer to a new body. The same form of “immortality” that Aspasia’s Shadow had had. So she had lied to him from the very beginning, which did not surprise Turcotte at this point.