Chapter 18

“Annoyed that I told him to do something in advance of you making the decision?”

That made him laugh. “Pretty much. Hello, ladies. I’m Mike Douglas, no relation and I’ve heard all of the jokes about the name. You must be Gloria, and you must be Helen. Welcome to Hutchinson, Kansas. It’s my pleasure to meet both of you. I’m supposed to be the head of security, in charge of keeping this one and all of his family safe. You’ve probably figured out that at times, that’s a losing battle.”

That made both of the women smile. Gloria said, “Considering that we only met Cal ... yesterday? Wow, yesterday afternoon, at Epcot, and here, we’re flying halfway across this country with him the very next day on a private jet makes me wonder about me sanity at this moment.”

We’d loaded into the small bus he’d brought over. He laughed again. “Don’t worry, it only gets worse. If you’d all take seats...”

Once we were all on the bus, Helen reclaimed her spot on my lap. Mike just shook his head. “Boss, only you could meet someone from halfway around the world while halfway across the country, and have this as the result.”

“Yeah, probably,” I said with a wry grin, while Helen leaned her head into my neck. “Are those our two new jets?”

“Yep. They got here this morning. Nathan is getting checked out on them now, and they both came with two pilots that are staying on with us. Wally and Joel are a little concerned, because we don’t have enough maintenance facilities for everything we’re getting, here.”

“Pull over there for a second, since I see Wally checking that one out.”

Mike brought the bus over near one of the new jets and honked his horn. Wally looked over, annoyed from being interrupted in his inspection of the landing gear, then saw us. He came running over.

“I don’t know what you’ve done, Mister Lewis, or who you know, but ... damn. Both of these are almost factory new. Thank goodness, we’re going to have to build a huge hanger here just for maintenance. I just got word we’re getting six more aircraft in by the end of this week, C-140Bs.”

“We’ll just be doing regular things here, Wally. They’ll have plenty of covered shelters and real hangers after the first of the year. And plenty of people that you’ll be in charge of, to do our regular maintenance,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know we’re getting a lot of helicopters, too.”

He nodded. “I’d heard that. Joel and I were trying to figure out who’d we be able to get to help take care of them, and for that matter, where we’d park them. It’s almost like you’re getting your own air force.”

“We are. But, the nice thing is, we’re also being given the chance to help out the US Air Force and US Army, too. So, we’re getting Vance Air Force Base and Fort Riley, as of the first of the year.”

He sat down, hard, on the concrete. “What?”

“They’re downsizing, due to the Messenger from Above. I guess they’re going to keep McConnell, over by Wichita, but we ... CEDEM ... become the landlords for Vance and Riley, and full owners after five years. We get the buildings, a lot of the equipment, and any troops that want to retire and work for us. We’ll need it. We’re going to need one really big hanger here, anyway.”

He’d gotten back up. “Yeah, I’d like to keep your 737 in a hanger when she’s not in use, so we can keep her clean.”

“That’s fine, but we’ll need something bigger than that. Next spring, we’ll take delivery of two brand new 747-200s.”

“You’re taking the fun out of my retirement, Mister Lewis. I want to turn wrenches and keep my hands dirty, not supervise a bunch of wanna-be grease jockeys!”

That made all of us laugh. “Wally, you and Joel are MY mechanics. You can hire whoever you want to supervise things, make sure parts are available, and that all of our aircraft are up and running. Ramona and Mary Ellis ... you haven’t met her yet ... are going to be our travel coordinators. With at least ten business jets and three airliners, not to mention more than a dozen helicopters ... they’ll be busy. We’re going to build two more factories for sure up at Riley. You figure out what we ought to do with Vance, and let one of my ladies or SJ know, okay?”

He looked poleaxed, but nodded. “Yes, sir. Will do.” He turned to go back to what he was doing. Mike shut the door and started pulling away. I could hear his scream of joy through the windows.

I saw Joel running over from the other plane in concern. Wally picked him up and spun him around. I looked away before I saw anything else. I really didn’t care what anyone did in their personal life. I just wasn’t wired that way.

Mike drove our bus not just through town, but all the way down US 50. We’d only been gone for a few days, but the amount of work completed on the first three sites was staggering. There were several towers and a lot of piping installed on the Ice-X site. There was a double wide trailer in front, and walls appear to be going up for what I presumed would be the offices. After we got to see that, then he took us home.

Marianne met us at the front door to our modular. “Your father won’t be home for another couple of hours. I already told him that he and I are sleeping at Emily’s house tonight. Emily should be home in about an hour, and for you to give us a call if you would like to eat, or are able to eat, with all of us. Harry brought some things home earlier, and left them in the barn for you.”

Margie said, “Mom, this is Gloria and Helen.” They all shook hands, then Marianne went next door while we went into our house.

Once we were in the house, and everyone took their jackets off, Margie said, “Well, that could have gone a little better. But, neither Mom nor Dad know everything about Cal. I never really got into it with them about Jennifer joining the family. It was tough enough for her when it was only four of us.”

“Before we do anything else, I think I need to use the bathroom.”

Beth said, “Sure, Gloria. This way. We may as well give you the quick tour of the house while we’re at it, since the home in California is going to be nearly identical to this one. Albeit, with two other modulars hooked up to it.”

While they were doing that, I walked over to the barn. Just inside the door was a heavily welded together steel basket. The six balls of lead with the jewels in them were sitting inside the basket. I went up into the hayloft and moved the bale that was covering Mike.

“Hello, Cal. I thought you were going to be on vacation until next week. However, I can tell from my passive sensors that there are two additional women in your home that I have never measured. I presume that one of them is the Helen that had been mentioned.”

“That’s correct, Mike. And they know quite a bit about what happened 10,000 years ago here. They may even be direct descendants of the original colonists, from a quarter million years ago.” I picked his case up, carried it downstairs, set it on top of the container with the weights in it, then quickly carried the whole thing back over to our house. Beth had the front door open and waiting for me.

“Gloria, Helen, this is Mycroft Holmes. Mike for short. Mike is a fully functioning AI that my grandfather programmed before I left Star Home. Mike, before I continue, do you need me to hook you up to the local power supply?”

“Yes, please. I have already surmised that I will be doing full DNA scans on everyone. Combining that with the other scans I normally do for brain functions, will require more power than my internal capacitors possess.”

I spent a couple of seconds hooking him up, double checking everything to make sure he would be at full power. There was a knock at the door before I could do anything else. Beth opened it.

“Hi, Dad. Looks like the plant is almost done.”

“Yeah. Want me to get my forklift and bring the weights over?”

“I already got them, Harry. Thanks, though. Harry Watson, this is Gloria Awarai and her daughter, Helen.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m going out on a limb here and guess you know a bit about our Cal here.” He’d noticed that Mike’s cabinet was set up in the living room.

“That’d be an understatement, I think. Although I gather you’ve known the lad a bit longer than us,” Gloria said.

“I gather that Marianne wasn’t that happy to see you home, with someone new.”

“That’s astute of you, Dad. How’d you know?”

“Because my wife called the construction office and told me her mother called and was pissed off about the ‘Playboy of Reno County’.”

Margie sighed. “I’ll go see if I can talk some sense into her.”

“She’s been that way since Jennifer moved in; you just haven’t seen it yet,” Harry said.

“Go tell her that she’s going to be the chairwoman of the new Hospital Charity Foundation, the one that’s going to be funded with the golf winnings,” I said.

“That’s a brilliant idea. You’d already mentioned that, anyway. I bet that’s her biggest problem. She’s gone from being relatively important in Kansas City, to right now, just someone else’s wife here.”

Margie put her jacket and coat back on, then went to the other house.

“One nice thing. The remodeling is complete, so they’ll have a nice room to sleep in tonight. So, realizing that you don’t necessarily have to do so, why two lovely young Australian Aborigine women?”

“The proper term is Indigenous Australian, Harry. Aborigine indicates a certain level of backwardness that their people don’t have.”

He nodded. “Apologies, then, ladies. Cal and Betty know I’m not the most cultured man around.”

Gloria laughed. “Harold Watson, the minor detail that you consider me young, when I’m old enough to be your mother, is apology enough for me.”

He shot a look my way.

“No! No Jennifer cures, Gloria just naturally looks that young, even being nearly sixty,” I protested. “Beth and I met Helen three weeks ago, in Australia, at Uluru. Um, you’d know it as Ayers Rock. Helen is sort of like Marcia or Margie regarding her lobes.”

Harry nodded. “Okay, that explains that. Not a problem. That explains why you got Mike from the barn. I’ve gone out and talked to him a couple of nights. I didn’t want him to be lonely while you’re gone.”

Mike said, “I’ve told him that wasn’t necessary, but ... at the same time, I appreciated it. I was busy during your space flight, so I didn’t notice being alone. Since then, since you reactivated me ... and I just realized that I’ve never properly thanked you for that, for which I sincerely apologize ... I’m feeling ... I don’t know. It’s very strange.”

“I was so invested in helping your grandfather find a solution, one that didn’t exist. I felt like I failed him. Then, when we were crash landing here, the last thought I had was that I hoped you would survive. Since then ... to see you not just survive, but to thrive and to triumph. I’m not sure what it is. I know about AIs, but not everything.”

Beth smiled. “You’re feeling proud of Cal.”

“That’s ... thank you, Beth, the description of that emotion is exactly it. Now, since I’ve had enough time, due to Gloria and Helen being close enough, I have measurement results for them, including DNA analysis.” He paused. “I think if I had facial features, I would blink, because these numbers don’t match planetary norms at all.”

“As you’ve no doubt been told, there are four lobes of the brain. Three of them measure general intelligence and problem reasoning skills, with the higher the score, the more intelligent the person is. The fourth measures what we’re calling the psychic abilities, the ability to mentally link, and also the ability to perform the abilities that Cal and Beth have. In addition, while human DNA has 6.4 million base pairs, only 22,000 of them are important. For example, Harry is now a slightly smarter than normal human, measuring at 1.2 in three lobes, with a measurement of 1.0 in the fourth. His DNA randomly matches with Cal at 0.2%, and should be at 50% to Beth, as her father.”

“Should be?”

“Yes, Harry. In previous analysis, you were that match. The last time I measured Beth, her DNA was a 40% match with Cal. It is now a 45% match with Cal, and only a 45% match with you. Even though they not present, I used the extended network to check both Marianne and Margie. Last measurement, Margie was a 30% match with Cal, 40% match with Beth. Now, she and Beth are 45% matches with each other, and a 40% match with Cal. Margie is also only a 45% match with Marianne, as well. Her child is a full 50% match with she and Cal.”

Beth said, “Full siblings measure at 50%, plus or minus about 11%, if I remember right. When we’re calling each other sisters, it’s not just because we feel that way, we’re really, physically, doing that, becoming them.”

“Correct. You were already 50% matches with Eve and Dora. I also show your DNA structure hasn’t changed in that way, so it appears that may be all the further it changes.”

Harry frowned. “Do you think they’ll move further away from me, from us?”

“I do not believe so. I believe that they will peak out at 50% match with Cal, as their bodies finish adjusting to both the vestigial organ and his DNA absorption.”

“Now, Cal still ‘pegs the meter’ at 10,000 for the first three lobes, while Beth is now at 6,740. Cal is at 3,505 in the fourth lobe, with Beth at 1,810. In comparison, Margie is now at 136.4, and 47.3. Gloria measures higher than Sophia did with the stones. She measures 6.9 and 9.7, very indicative of the DNA results, showing her to already be a 37% match to Cal, much higher than Sophia. Helen ... doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been studying what I can about Uluru and the history of the indigenous people. You measure 72.4 in the three lobes, and 16.8 in the fourth. You show to be a 48% DNA match to Cal.”

Helen and Gloria both looked incredibly puzzled by that. Beth and I both did the same thing. We looked inside Helen and Gloria.

“Well, doesn’t that just kill corn ass high?” Beth said.

“I do so love another damned mystery about this planet. Just when we think we’ve got it figured out, let’s add ANOTHER twist to things,” I said.

The front door opened, with Margie coming back in. “I didn’t quite catch everything, so I made my excuses to Mom and came back over. She’s fine now, I think. What’d I miss?”

“Not only is Helen stronger in her lobes and closer a DNA match to Cal than Eve, Spic, or me were before we were enhanced by the jewels, she has the vestigial organ growing inside her that we thought was what gave Cal his powers.”

Harry walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out a beer. “Gloria, would you like one of these?”

“Yes, please. We’re grown-ups. I raised Helen, teaching her our history, our traditions, everything there is to know about the Guardian. Even though I just met you all, I know the seven of you have been mind-talking for weeks. Did you have any idea of this?”

Margie shook her head. “No. I started growing the organ when I became pregnant. I’d been exposed to Cal’s semen, been improved and ... son of a bitch!”

Helen bit her lip, then nodded. “Recessive DNA. It’s in all of us. Tell me, can you see if this organ within me appears relatively new, like it’s freshly grown, or if it’s something I’ve had since I was a child?”

I brought my hand to my chin, looking first inside Helen, then Gloria. My brow furrowed as I looked inside Beth, then Margie, and finally down at my own chest. Then I looked into Helen again.

“Beth?”

“I just did the same thing you did, Cal. It’s not new, not grown within the last three weeks, so it’s not something we caused by meeting her. I can tell the difference between the one in Margie, which IS a new organ. Same with mine. Hers is like yours; it’s been there since birth.”

“What was it Henry said? ‘She knew the old ones had woken up.’ When I touched Uluru, I felt ... old souls. Very old souls. Not like at the Cenotaph in London. Damn! Toby said it. Or Tobias did. They’re not bound by temporal restrictions. They knew I was going to be here, and they changed you, maybe before you were born, so you’d be ready.”

Gloria looked at me, then nodded. “Of course. I’ve felt the departed ones. We tend to Uluru, to those who rest there. My mother was still alive. She and I went to Uluru one day, a regular summer day, in December of 1961. I was complaining about something your older brothers had done. Mother laughed, like she always did, then had me touch the rock in a special place. Your father and I made you that night.”

Helen nervously laughed. “Last time I looked, I don’t have any special abilities. No flying, no beams shooting out me eyes, no indestructible skin.”

I was going into deep thinking mode, when Harry blurted out, “What about the fourth lobe?”

I started laughing. “Harry, you’re a damned genius!”

His eyebrows went up. “Sometimes I don’t think so.”

“Trust me, Dad, you are. That makes perfect sense, now. Lover, do you feel as stupid as I do about now?”

“Yeah. We never bothered to check to see if the organ was growing in Eve or Dora before we upgraded them, or in Sophia. We made assumptions that may end up biting us in the ass. There’s more factors at work here. Dora and Eve were testing lower than Gloria does right now in the fourth lobe, but they’d received my semen, making their bodies able to be upgraded without an issue, just like you, Beth. Margie, you, Jennifer and Marcia are pregnant with my child, and that activated the growth of the organ. Helen is already close enough to me genetically, and she has the intelligence and psychic powers needed to activate the retro-virus, so she’s got the latent organ inside, laying dormant until it gets activated.”

Gloria and Helen looked at each other. “The Mother,” they both said at the same time.

Gloria continued, “One of our legends. Remember I said that we knew about Star Home and the first peoples who came from there? After the battles, legends say that our people were decimated, nearly destroyed. A woman came to us, brought us back from the brink. We never knew where she came from, just that she helped. We’re her bloodline,”

I nodded. “And Sophia only measures half of what you do, because she’s not. Her people were descended from the people that fled India, fled the abuses of Shiva. They had some of the powers, and they had the medical stones.” I nodded to the lead weights.

“I ... Cal ... Mother ... I’m so confused right now. My body ... I yearn to feel his arms around me, to feel him inside me, to share everything. But if I can have the power of the others, the ability to help them ... should I do that?”

“What does your heart and soul tell you to do, my daughter? You have always prided yourself on your intelligence, on your ability to see things logically, rationally. You are their sister, you are his woman, no matter what,” Gloria said.

Margie and Beth looked at each other. “Gloria, my brother-in-law and I will introduce you to my father and sister, especially since you’re going to be dating my uncle. Come on.”

She quickly grabbed her coat, as Helen stood up, taking my hands in hers as I stood up as well. Beth stepped forward, putting her hands with ours.

“I am your woman, you are my man. We are together forever. We know not what the future will bring, but we shall face it together,” Helen said.

“We are your women, you are our man. We are together, forever. We know not what the future will bring, but we shall face it together,” Beth and Helen both said together.

Margie nodded, tears flowing down her cheeks. “The others who are not physically present witnessed through my eyes. We agree. Welcome to our family, Helen Lewis.”

Harry, Gloria, and Margie left our house, while Beth led Helen and me into the master bedroom.

It was close to midnight when Margie and Gloria came back over to our house. Gloria went into Toby’s room, to sleep in his bed. Margie joined the three of us in our bed. Helen was sleeping peacefully, her head on my shoulder. There were some towels in the bed that would need to be burned; they were slightly bloody. Beth moved over, so Margie could slide in between us.

Quietly, Margie whispered, “She fits next to you so well.”

“She fits with all of us,” Beth affirmed.

Once Margie was snuggled up in bed, then I closed my eyes, so I could sleep.

Our shower was only supposed to be big enough for three. We made it fit four the next morning. Beth had some clothes that fit Helen, albeit a little tight across the chest, while Gloria fit into some of Marcia’s.

Before we went over to Harry and Emily’s for breakfast, I asked Mike to measure Helen again.

“She now measures 76.3 and 18.4. I do not measure any significant difference between her DNA matching numbers last night and today. I failed to mention last evening that Gloria is a 22% match to Beth and Margie, and Helen is a 44% match to them.”

“That’ll go up in about five days, would be my guess,” I said.

“Why is that?”

“Simple, Gloria. Or should I call you Grandma, since in about five days, if the cells implant, Helen will join Margie, Marcia, and Jennifer in motherhood.”

We changed the sheets and threw the bloody towels out into the burn barrel. Jethro ran up to us when we were walking over, which caused a brief stop while he was introduced to Helen and Gloria.

The kitchen had been remodeled so that there was room for all of us to sit around the table. Before Emily and Allen introduced themselves, Marianne stood up.

“I sincerely apologize to you, Cal. And to all of you. Inside, I truly had not accepted your ... unconventional ... relationship. Last night, when you showed up, I found out that things I’d learned that were wrong from my parents, that I’d thought were long gone and completely out of my system, could rear their ugly heads.”

Margie laughed a little. “I suspect that the phone call you were still on when Gloria and I left had a bit to do with that as well, Mom.”

Her face blushed. “My brother has quite the turn of the phrase, doesn’t he? I don’t think he’s ever chewed my ... ass ... quite like he did last night.”

“So, Allen Miller, this is Helen Awarai. And this is Emily Watson, Harry’s wife.”

Helen was glowing this morning, looking so much more self-confident than she did last night. “It’s me pleasure to meet you both.” She shook both of their hands.

As we were taking our seats, Allen said, “It’s my understanding that you’re similar to our Margaret, as far as being quite intelligent.”

“In me four years at uni, I earned a Masters of Engineering, a Bachelor of Science, and a Diploma of Project Management. We tell our major areas of study separate from the actual degree, like you do here in the States. Me majors were electrical engineering and chemistry.”

Allen snorted. “This may sound crude, but that definitely qualifies you to be one of Cal’s older women. God help us when you’re all done at Stanford.”

I chuckled. “What’s the matter, Allen? Think we’re going to totally upset the apple cart and change the world beyond how you recognize it now?”

“Son, you’ve already done that. Pass the butter, please. Thank you. I’m trying to figure out what to do. Corinna and Randall are flying back out Monday. We’ve redesigned the plant four times, and we’re not sure what else we CAN do. We’re already at five years’ worth of back orders on the big turbines. Even if CEDEM lets us use some of the land allocated for Microsoft, we don’t have enough room, enough rail supply, and enough manpower.”

I frowned. “Do you think Siemens would consider a second location, so long as it was still in Kansas?”

“Definitely! We’re trying to do a balancing act as it is, because we’ve got two years’ worth of back orders for the medium turbines, and no room at all now for small ones.”

“What about you, Harry? What does Ice-X need?”

“Two more sections of land. This is insane. Charlie and Dave got an order from the Russian government for a half a million gallons. I could use four sections, with rail access, and buildings I could convert for bottling and canning.”

I sighed. “Well, fine. I guess it’s a good thing we’re getting some helicopters. Can I use your phone?”

Harry looked at me like I’d lost my head. “Of course you can.”

I dialed the number from memory.

“This is Jim Rogers, how can I help you?”

“Hi, Jim, this is Cal. How’s my favorite and overworked general contractor doing this morning?”

“Right now, I’m calling everyone I can in Nebraska to come work here. This has gotten stupid. You need to come up with some more land, because I simply don’t have enough to build what your people need right now.”

“If I talk to Marcia, would it help if we kept those Marine Construction Battalions a little longer?”

“Of course, Cal. But I can only move so much dirt around here. We’re about ready to start building, and there’s no place else to expand.”

“I see. Just curious. We have, or will have, anyway, some rotary wing aircraft. If you had a secondary job site that was near Manhattan, would you fly there and be the general for up there, or would you rather have someone else do it?”

He sighed, then was silent for almost twenty seconds. “Roberto can handle the builds here. Other than making sure they stay on track, we’ve got crews doing the highway and the airport that need minimal supervision. What are you thinking?”

“Effective January 1^st, CEDEM becomes the landlords of, and can build on, two places. One’s in Oklahoma, and it really won’t need much done, because it’ll effectively be perfect as-is for what I want to do with it. The other includes within the property both Junction City and Manhattan. Fort Riley. All of it.”

I heard the phone drop. From behind me, I also heard a glass break as it hit the floor.

Jim picked the phone up. “You wouldn’t kid me like that. Sorry, that just took me totally by surprise. What are you getting in Oklahoma?”

“Vance Air Force Base. The military is divesting themselves of property. We’re going to have the opportunity to hire people that are stationed there to work for us, and we can build on the properties. I’m going to use Vance as our air fleet maintenance facility, since we’re going to have a lot more jets in our fleet, and it’s only going to get worse. Riley is a lot of land, with rail access, and a puny airport that’s perfect for helicopters. We can build a Siemens plant there that’s twice the size of this one, and triple the Ice-X production.”

“When can we get in there?”

“Marcia said we take possession on January 1^st. We’re actually still on vacation, but I’ll have her check, to see if we can get surveyors in there sooner.”

“That’ll work. You have my number, obviously.” He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Damned if you haven’t pulled another miracle out of your butt, Son. Sorry, that was crude, but ... Jesus, Kansas is going to become something else, you know?”

“Sounds good. I’ll have Marcia call you, Jim. Bye.”

Beth had cleaned up the glass that Allen had dropped. Harry knew better; he’d sat down as soon as I got on the phone.

“There’s what, ten thousand troops up there? What are we going to do, kick them out onto the street?”

“No, Emily. When we come back off vacation, we’ll finish up the contracts. All of the branches of the military are being a little cute. They’re afraid of the Messenger from Above, but are hedging their bets in case he’s not around for long. We get all of the properties for a nominal fee, we have to maintain them just in case they’re needed, but we can also build whatever we want on them. At the end of five years, we get full title to everything there if he’s still here. If not, then we get to keep our improvements – the factories and such, and keep access – and the government hasn’t had to spend money to keep the bases up that they may not have. And in the meantime, those soldiers that want to take an early release from active duty can finish their service time in the National Guard, but have jobs with us,” I explained.

“From their perspective, that’s brilliant. And ... you just took a huge load off my mind, and probably Harry’s, too. Hon, I know you’re going to be flying back to Florida soon, probably right after breakfast with us, but could you call your sister-wife, and see if she can get permission for us to get on property on, say, Tuesday?”

Margie blinked a couple of times. “Daddy, I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say that about any of the other women.”

“Your mom and I had a long discussion last night, after Elroy chewed her a new asshole, and after you left. I want to be able to see my grandkids, all of them, play with them, and watch them grow up. I’m not going to let some 19^th century prejudices get in the way of that. That also means, Gloria, if you end up making an old man or two happy, more power to you, dear. In other words, welcome to the family.”

We were halfway back to Florida when Chuck finally came into the back of the plane. “I don’t suppose you could let me in, even a little bit, on what this sudden trip was all about? I know the discussion about Fort Riley could have been handled over the phone, even though Mike is now completely freaking out that we’re going to be taking over not one, but TWO, active military bases as part of our responsibility, come January.”