Chapter 30

The ride wasn’t that difficult for me, since I could ignore any of the physical difficulties. Jennifer and Hannah sat next to each other and tapped Morse code back and forth for most of the way, since it was too loud to talk without shouting. Elroy showed this wasn’t his first time in an airplane’s cargo bay by promptly falling asleep.

While there was a temperature difference when we landed, the four of us weren’t allowed much time to get adjusted before being hustled into one of our small buses and taken to the house. There were armed guards present, to secure the cargo for the rest of the evening. Even though tomorrow was Sunday, the vault was going to be opened up tomorrow for Steiner to have access, and they’d move the money to the bank then.

Hannah was looking out the windows. “So many of your people have decorations and lights still up.”

Jennifer said, “That’s typically something most people around here leave up until after the first of the year.”

“Oh. Most of ours are down by the end of Boxing Day,” she said.

“We don’t really do Boxing Day in the US, but I’ve seen it done overseas,” Elroy said. “I think it’s due to the whole servant thing. Not saying that people here don’t have servants, but for the most part, we tend to not consider them below us that much. There are people that do, but ... not too much out here in Kansas.”

“Good grief, do you live in a prison?” Hannah asked.

“I would have figured you’d have security at your home,” I said.

“We do, but it’s certainly much less obtrusive than this,” she explained.

“I had less than a week to make this place as secure as I possibly could,” Mike chimed in from up front. “At the same time, having razor wire and guard towers does tend to dissuade the casual intruder.”

“I’d imagine so!” Hannah admitted emphatically.

We stopped in front of our house. Elroy said, “You kids got this under control for now? If so, I’m going home. I think everything is still on schedule for tomorrow morning.”

Mike nodded, saying, “That’s right, Elroy. We’ll all meet at the airport at noon. It’s not that long of a flight, and so far, we’ve not heard of any issues.”

“Sounds good. What a mess Florida turned into,” Elroy said.

“Are you kidding? This was the Christmas Party of the century. I don’t think there’s any way we can ever do better than this one,” Mike said, grinning.

“You guys sometimes have weird senses of humor. See you tomorrow.”

We waved to Elroy as he left. Jethro came running up about then, to see what was going on. I gave him a pat on the head, as did Jennifer. He walked over to Hannah, sniffed her a couple of times, and then sat down with a little whine. “Ah, aren’t you the sweetest?” She gave him several behind the ear scratches and otherwise petted him for a minute.

He gave her a quick lick, then ran off to chase a squirrel that had dared to invade his land. “Cute dog,” Hannah said.

We started hauling the luggage into the house. Hannah looked around, but there weren’t any guards or someone else to help, so she grabbed her clubs and a couple of pieces of luggage as well. Jennifer opened the door and put her luggage in the room where her hanging clothes were. I put mine in there as well.

“I think we’ve got hanger space in the room over there, if Helen hasn’t taken all of it, you can put yours there, and I’ll grab the rest,” I said.

The phone rang while I was carrying everything else in, and Jennifer answered it. “Hello, Emily. No, we just got in. Ah, we were wondering about that. Sure, if he wants to come home. Hang on, Cal has a question.”

She handed the phone to me. “Hey, Emily. Just wondering how long Steiner will be, since we’re flying out at noon?”

“He’ll be done by ten in the morning, Cal. I heard you’ve got a bit of a deposit ... again.”

“Another seven hundred million. At least this is all already in cash.”

She chuckled. “That’s good. The KC Fed is freaking out ... well, not really, but you know what I mean.”

“It could have been worse. It was almost all in gold,” I said.

“Oh, Lord, no! Not only don’t we have enough room, but we’re having to work with the Fed on how much we actually have on our books. It’s not that you’ve broken them, or anything like that, it’s simply accounting at this point. But we’re in such a strong gold position now it’s not funny. Bye, hon, see you tomorrow! Toby just left.”

“Sounds good. See you in the morning, Emily.” I hung up and then went over to the front door.

I was down on one knee when he came running in. “Hey, son, did you miss me?”

He charged into my arms, giving me a big hug. “Hi, Dad! Did you have fun? Oh, hi, Mom! Hi, Mom Hannah. Did you bring me anything?”

“Well, this was a Christmas party for adults, and we didn’t get much of a chance to go shopping. But, just a second.” I went into my luggage and pulled out the set of nunchaku. “These are NOT a toy, by any means. But I think you can handle them.”

“Wow! Neat, Dad!”

“Not in the house!” Jennifer said. “In the garage, or outside. You’re too likely to break something in here.”

“Okay, Mom! Am I staying with Emily again tomorrow night?”

“Yes, Dear. We have to go out of town again, but this will just be for a short trip. We should be back by Monday.”

“Okay. She already fixed me dinner, so I’ll go get ready for bed. Dad, do we have time to play slot cars for a little while?”

“I think so, Son. We just need to finish getting Hannah’s clothes put away. Where do you think we should put these?” I pointed to the trophies we’d won.

“In the lobby of the headquarters building, when they finish getting it done. That way, they can have a replica of your State Football Trophy there, and the football.”

“That sounds like a good plan to me, little man. Thanks!”

He headed off to his room.

Hannah was just standing there, watching my interaction with Toby. “I ... uh ... Mom Hannah?”

“Yeah. You’re part of the family, we said.”

She shook her head a little. “I understand that. But I’ve never met him before. How did he know who I was?”

Jennifer smiled. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, of course.”

“No, I wouldn’t expect you to,” Hannah said, a frown on her face. “Or, to rephrase that, I wouldn’t expect us to do that. Sorry, still a little adjusting to do. But ... I’m rather confused. Shouldn’t there be a lot more women here?”

“Yes, there normally would be,” I said. “You’ll meet all of them tomorrow, if things go the way they should. Do you need some help with that?”

“Yes, thank you. This one tends to have a stubborn lock on it. I ought to replace it, but it’s the first suitcase I ever got. This is an interesting way of doing things, having clothes racks from a store here.”

“Just made sense. There was no way to have enough closet space for clothes for what was, at the time, three women and me. Then adding in three more, plus Toby, and instead of being overkill, it became too small. The minor detail that there’s only three bathrooms in here is going to be an issue when we finally come back from California.”

Jennifer laughed. “Well, I doubt at that point that we’ll be moving back into here. At least in California, the other two homes are attached and they all have three bathrooms in them as well, so we’ve at least got lots of them, even if you may have to go into house two or three to do so.”

“I know there was some concern about the house in California, but even with it being even more impregnable than here, you would have been more open, so we could gather more information.” She shook her head. “I’m ... I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to ever apologize for what they did.”

I casually said, “Other than simply being some rather attractive bait, and doing a little bit of what Tess and Serena wanted, I can’t see you being that deep into things.”

Hannah shook her head. “I wasn’t. Keep in mind that while I’m 22 years old, I’m still considered a female as far as they were concerned. It’s only when you get to the next generation up that women were allowed to have some say in things, and of course, whatever the Baron and Lady Rothschild says, is what goes.”

I could hear that she was telling the truth. I’d noticed that the cabinet with Mike in it was still in the house.

“Just curious, what do you know about my computer programming ability?”

“You’re incredibly dangerous to the status quo. Better than basically anyone out there, and able to create programs that are useful and marketable. Probably at least a dozen years, or more, ahead of anyone else.”

I nodded. “Sounds about right. You know I have a lot of medical knowledge, as well.”

“Of course. Whatever treatment you gave to Jennifer, to heal her cancer and cause her to physically revert to a younger age had to have been experimental. I know you’ve given credit to your mother for many things, just as you have your father. But while they’re the ones that gave you the information, you’re the one that utilized it.”

“Yep. Good answer, too. I presume that would mean you wouldn’t be too surprised at just about anything, would you?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Put something a little warmer on. Toby, you want to play slots?”

He was out of his room quickly. “I’m here and ready, Dad!”

“Good. There’ll be three of us tonight, while your Mom gets a few things straightened out, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure. Mom Hannah is about Mom Marcia’s age, so she hasn’t forgotten how to have fun yet.”

“I heard that, young man! I don’t think I’ve forgotten how to do that.”

“No, Mom, you haven’t. But things have been awfully serious around here while you and Dad were gone to the party.”

“Go have some fun for now, Son, and we’ll talk about it later.”

Toby led us out to the garage. Hannah had slipped a sweater on. The heaters were on, and we had chairs set up so we weren’t sitting on the cement floor.

“Oh, this isn’t too bad out here. It gets cold and damp in England, too.”

“Well, when the cars go whizzing by, we’ll see,” I said, grinning.

There were four lanes set up, along with crossovers, bridges, and even banked curves. We put cars down on the starting line, and then Toby hit the automatic timing tower. It counted down to green, and we took off racing. An hour later, we called it quits, before it got too late.

Hannah had given Toby a good run for his money, but he’d always managed to win against her. My car was sort of going around the track, but not really that competitive with either of them.

“Okay, little man. Time for bed now.”

“No problem, Dad.” He came over and gave me a hug and kiss goodnight, then surprised Hannah by doing the same with her. “Good night, Mom Hannah, and Grandpa says ‘welcome to the family.’” He ran inside, while I started putting the controllers up.

She rubbed her cheek a little. “I ... wasn’t quite expecting that. It was nice.”

“Yeah, well, you know how kids can be at times. Very open, and most importantly, not able to be fooled.”

Her eyes saddened then. “Is that what you think, that I’m trying to fool you?”

“Me personally? No. I’m quite capable of telling when someone is lying, as I mentioned to Tess. I’m not the problem, though. Keep in mind that you’ve got six other women to convince.” I walked into the house, with her following me.

“Six? Does that mean that Jennifer believes me, believes in me?”

“Of course I do,” Jennifer said. “You’ve been around Cal long enough that there’s basically no way you’ve not fallen under his charms. I don’t think you’re going to have too much of an issue with the others. Now, with Toby off to bed, and us having a fairly early day of it tomorrow, I think it’s time for bed for us, as well.”

“Definitely. It’s been one hell of a day, I’m ready for sleep,” I said, feigning being tired.

“Sleep, hell. We both missed enjoying you last night for the obvious reason. I’m not missing out on you tonight. Not when I now legally DO have the last name of Lewis.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Right away, Ma’am. Is there anything else I can do for you, Ma’am? Or should that be do TO you?”

Hannah was rather amazed by how large our bed was. After a few minutes, she didn’t care how big it was, she was busy with other things.

The next morning, Hannah received an introduction to a standard breakfast. The minor detail that I’d gotten up half an hour before she did and had everything ready made it easy.

“Gods new and old! You do your own cooking? I haven’t been allowed near a range for years, and then being at school, we didn’t do much there, either.”

“Dad makes great chocolate chip pancakes, too.”

She looked at Toby’s plate. Two pancakes, with eggs over easy on top of each of the pancakes, and two pieces of sausage. “I don’t know that I could even eat that much!”

Jennifer sat down with a plate of food that rivaled her son’s. “When you’re eating for two, you’ll learn that keeping your slim and trim shape just isn’t in the cards.” She glanced down. “This one is number four, and I’m in better shape than I was when I had number one, so I don’t think it’ll be too hard on me. At the same time, we’re all rather active, and you’ll find that you burn off a lot of calories just trying to keep up.”

“It’d be nice if I was eating for two, that’s for sure. I doubt it, though. My ... oh, with the whole moving around in rooms, then the poisoned rattlesnake, I haven’t taken them for a couple of days.”

I looked inside her. “We’ll find out for sure in about two weeks, unless you want me to make sure that you’re not. I can do that. I learned something from my Mother about making a pill to insure that you don’t conceive, when you’ve been off protection for a little while.”

“Two weeks? I thought it took at least a month ... oh, never mind, I forgot. Like you said, computers and medical knowledge.” Hannah looked at the pile of food on the stove, then picked up a plate, putting two pancakes, two eggs, and a piece of sausage on it. “If I’m not eating for two, I at least need to find out how good a cook our Cal is.”

Jennifer laughed. “So, no interest in the morning after pill?”

“Do I look daft? I’ve been in love with this man ever since the 16^th hole. I’m just sorry that there’s no way to know right away whether or not I’m pregnant.”

“Give it a few days. If you feel funny inside in about five days, then you’ve implanted,” I said. I winked at Jennifer, giving her a slight nod when Hannah wasn’t looking. My powerful sperm had struck again.

Hannah got a slightly worried look on her face. “Um, I know this is all family and such, but is Toby old enough for this conversation?”

That made Toby laugh. “No, I’m not, but that’s okay. Grandpa tells me when it’s okay to know things, and makes me be careful.”

“Grandpa? I’m sorry, but I’m confused. I know Elroy and Earl consider themselves...”

Toby shook his head. “No, those are Cal’s grandpas. My grandpa, the one I’m named after. Show her his medal, Dad.”

I pulled it out from under my t-shirt, leaning over so she could read it. “I’ve seen you wearing this, of course, but ... Tobias Kennedy?”

Jennifer nodded. “Yeah. My dad.”

“Okay, maybe I’m a little dense, but I haven’t met Mister Kennedy, have I?”

Toby laughed. “Of course you have, silly. You’ve met me. Grandpa says that there really aren’t any gods new and old, just people like he is.”

“People like he is?” Hannah was still confused.

“Yeah, you know. Dead. But since when you die, you don’t necessarily just die, you can either move on, or move into something, or someone, that’s what screws up history. People that died that should have moved on to somewhere else and instead, hung around like they were still here, and not being helpful, like Grandpa is, since he knew I was slow, you know, up here,” Toby stated matter-of-factly, tapping his head.

“That may have helped a little in learning how to talk to the soul that’s living in the sword,” I said. “How’re the pancakes?”

Hannah’s eyes were flickering around the room. “Good. I’ve never had them with egg yolk on them before. What ... how? That’s so much like what Ramaeshwara talked to me about, it’s not funny. I know you said you’ve learned how to communicate, but I’ve never heard of a soul being in another person before.”

“It happens, albeit rather rarely. Of course, it does help that I may have a bit of another advantage. I mentioned computers and medical technology for a reason. Mike, what do you have for me this morning?”

“Good morning, Cal, Jennifer, Toby. Miss Rothschild, allow me to introduce myself. I am Mycroft Holmes, a computing device that Cal did some work on. My nickname is Mike, which is amusing since Mister Douglas is also Mike.”

Hannah’s eyes widened again. “It’s my pleasure, Mike. Are you ... an artificial intelligence?”

“I prefer the term created intelligence. While I’m not made of flesh and blood like the rest of you, my components fulfill similar functions. That means that there’s really nothing artificial about me.”

“I see. Sherlock Holmes smarter brother, of course. A fitting name for an incredibly smart person, then,” Hannah said.

“Not a Heinlein fan, eh?”

She shook her head. “Sorry, Cal, who?”

“Stranger in a Strange Land? Time Enough for Love? Podkayne of Mars?”

“Ah, no, I see. I’ve of course read all of Tolkien, but I’ve not read much science fiction. I prefer fantasy, I think because I grew up in a land where castles exist. There’s a new book that came out a couple of years ago, ‘Magician’, by Raymond Feist, that I like a lot.”

“Well, never mind, then. Mycroft Holmes was the name of the computer in ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, by Heinlein,” I explained.

“I’ll read it, of course. But you mentioned medical technology as well.”

“Scan results, Mike?”

“To use the term, fascinating. I’ve run a full scan on Hannah, then did it again. How many times have the two of you had sex?”

“Grandpa says to hold off, I need to go brush my teeth and get dressed, so I can go back over to Emily’s after we get done at the bank. Some things aren’t meant for my ears, he says.” With that, Toby got up and went into his bedroom.

“Once in Florida is all, then of course, last night. That’s it.”

Hannah gave me a look of, ‘Are you kidding me?’, when I said that, like there hadn’t been an interruption from Tobias.

“Then she is also an aberration. From a physical perspective, Hannah, you are quite healthy. Your weight, blood pressure, and human blood chemistry are within the normal range for someone of your age, weight, and sex. Where things become odd, which seems to be the norm around here, are in the four lobes of your brain, as well as your actual DNA composition.”

“Excuse me?”

“There are four lobes in the human brain. Activity within the first three tends to be a measure of not just regular intelligence, but other things, such as your ability to adapt to new situations. An average human will measure at 1.0 in all four lobes, presuming there is such a thing as an average human. As a point of comparison, Bill Gates measured at 2.8 in his three lobes, and 1.0 in his fourth. I mention this because you measure at 32.8 in the first three lobes, 4.4 in the fourth lobe, and are a 22% DNA match to Cal.”

“That matches with Hannah being approximately equivalent to Marcia, except for the DNA match. That’s pretty high. It sounds like the Rothschild family inbreeding really was being done on purpose,” Jennifer said.

“Very much so,” I agreed, nodding. “The characteristics that would allow for a member of the family to be able to interact with Shiva, in the comet.”

“That’s what I told you,” Hannah said. “I realize that having an independent confirmation is always a good thing, but...” She paused for a moment. “Good Lord. Just because I haven’t read that science fiction you mentioned doesn’t mean I’m a complete naif. You’ve invented a better version of Doctor McCoy’s medical tricorder. No wonder you found Jennifer’s cancer. But it’s totally experimental, because it’s tied into Mycroft.”

“Based upon what you know, that’s a logical assumption,” Mike said. “Please keep in mind that not everyone knows of my existence, including the security teams.”

“Of course not. Politely, you’re the ace in the hole. Thank you, Cal, for trusting me with this knowledge.” Hannah shook her head. “Mother was so wrong about you, about all of you.”

“You can explain while we’re getting dressed. We do need to go to the bank, and to the airport,” I said.

“Certainly.” While we were getting ready for the day, Hannah continued explaining. “I’ve already told you why they wanted you, because of the comet. What they didn’t tell me, specifically, but I figured out, was that not only did they hope to control you while you ran the world government, they wanted your knowledge to solve all of their issues. Someone with the ability you have to find solutions would explain to them why their efforts had failed in the past. You could make the council work, together.”

“I remember hearing Nayef mention that he’d been a part of a council. Same thing?”

“Yes, Cal. He’s quite right about the wealth of Saudi Arabia. One of the concerns he’s had is what happens to them when the oil dries up? We know there are numerous other sources of oil around the world, they’re just not as easy to get to, and of course, that also makes it easy to get the environmentalist fringe fired up.”

“How far back in history does this conspiracy go?”

“Honestly, Jennifer, I don’t know. More than five hundred years, possibly a thousand. That’s from our western culture, of course. I know that Ramaeshwara told me that his family had legends that go back more than five thousand years, nearly to the end of the reign of Shiva.”

I blinked. “Hang on. I think we may have been making some assumptions here on our side of things.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you’re thinking about. Shiva arrived ten thousand years ago. He ruled the planet for more than three thousand years. Then the battle, the one that turned Australia and Egypt into what they are now, lasted close to five hundred years.”

“We’ll continue this later. We need to get to the bank.”

The bus was waiting.

“Emily, this is Hannah Rothschild. Hannah, this is Emily Watson, the woman I said that if she was a bitch, this would have been harder to do.”

“That’s such a glowing recommendation, Cal. I’m almost glad I’m related to you.”

“Thank you. It could be worse. I’m not sure how, but I’m sure we can find a way.”

Hannah giggled. “That must be like me needing to get a corncob out of my ass.”

Emily laughed. “You’re such a romantic at times. But yes, something like that. I’m just glad that I’m getting out of the headache of having to run your piggy bank. It’ll be so much easier, simply sitting in an office in the trailer and just telling someone to go buy things.”

“Trailer?”

Emily nodded. “Hannah, we’ll run you by there when you get back in town, so you can see. The entire corporate headquarters right now for CEDEM consists of a double wide trailer. The minor detail that it’ll be four more months before the three story office building is complete has something to do with that.”

“Now, over here on the right is the Ice-X plant. That’s now up and running. The Cisco plant will be finished by the end of January. The first Microsoft building will be done about the same time, too. And lastly, my Dad’s baby, the Siemens plant will be finished by the end of March.” Emily shook her head. “I don’t know whether to simply take one of the helicopters, or one of the small jets.”

“Whichever you want,” I said. “Just tell SJ. Hell, take one of each. You’re going to be sending people to Riley and Vance all the time, anyway.”

“I know. We’re working with Sandy and Len about figuring out how to hook all of our computers into a network with the office buildings we’ll have there, and Bill is already excited about some new advance that a lab has made in fiber optics,” Emily said.

“And here we are. Amazing how empty downtown Hutch is on a Sunday morning,” I said.

“That’s because the police have cordoned off the block again. You didn’t notice that the armored cars weren’t at the house,” Brad said, from behind the wheel of our bus.

“Come on, it’s not like its thirty tons of gold, or anything like that,” I said.

“No, that was in the garage. This is being brought in from the airport hangar. You know that we all thrive on this shit, if you’ll excuse my language, but this is bordering on the asinine and the ridiculous.”

“Look at the bright side. I think the funds for the gems are going to be transferred electronically, and all you’ll have to do is escort Steiner back to New York with the gems.”

“That’s such a relief to us, Cal, you have no idea.” The sarcasm was dripping from his voice.

“And here we go,” Emily said. She got out of the bus and walked up to the bank with her keys, to unlock things. We followed her up, with the night guard actually letting us all in.

At the same time she was doing that, Dave and Steiner pulled up, and came walking in. “Ah, Mister Lewis, it is a pleasure to see you again. I completed everything last evening, and I made my phone calls already. Shall we go in and conclude our business?”

“Sure. Watch yourself, they’re bringing some more things in,” I said.

Steiner stopped, then looked at the noise from the street as the LAV pulled up leading a delivery truck. Armed guards bailed out and took up positions around the building.

“My heavens, are we being robbed?”

“No, it’s just that I’m making a bit of a large deposit. Come on in, to Emily’s office, and let’s get things sorted out.”

“Of course.” He followed me to her office, with Jennifer, Hannah, and Toby following him. Once we were all in her office, he said, “I sorted things out, and I have basically kept one box of the diamonds for you, as you requested. Everything else ... well, I had told the buyers that I would attempt to keep it at five hundred fifty million if possible. In all fairness to you, it is not possible. As soon as I have your signature upon some documents, then we shall wire transfer the funds to your bank here.”

“That’s fine. I presume you have them ready?”

“But of course.” He pulled out several pieces of paper, handing them to me.

I glanced at them, then looked back at him. “Considering the games that were played with the initial set of stones for Marcia, I halfway expected there to be something hidden in here. There’s not.”

“Uh, no, Sir. You ... let’s just say that you remind me of someone, and leave it at that, if you please.”

I signed all of the papers for Steiner. “Come on, let’s get your jewels out of the vault, so we can get you on a plane for New York and then home.”

There wasn’t room in the cage for all of the pallets of cash, so those had simply been shoved into a corner. I pulled one of the pallet jacks out from a stack of cash, then loaded the boxes of gems for Steiner on them. “The truck will take you, Dave, and the gems back to the airport, so you can get loaded up and fly out of here. Just a second.”

I walked over to the messy pallet, pulled some of the shrink wrap off, and then grabbed a dozen straps of hundred dollar bills. “You’re getting paid, of course, from the buyer, and it’s a nice little commission check. This is simply a bonus from me, thanking you for a job quickly and nicely done.”

He looked shocked, then smiled. “Thank you, Mister Lewis. I appreciate that. It’s ... well, thank you.”

Dave said, “Come on, let’s get this back into the truck, so they can get us to the airport and I can get back home in time for the late night football games.”

I handed the papers to Emily. “Here. Six hundred million, being wired in.”

“Jesus, Cal. I’m going to have to transfer some of this out, at least until we can build a bigger cage. Seriously? Seven hundred million in cash, and then another six hundred million?”

“Makes it easy to pay for the Siemens and Ice-X plant up at Riley, doesn’t it?”

She shook her head. “That it does. I’m glad we’re done fairly early. Elroy already called, he’ll be waiting for you at the airport. Ben, can you swing back here once you drop them off, so Toby and I can get a ride home?”

“Not a problem, Emily.”

He took us to the airport, where Salthawk One was waiting. SJ nodded to us. “Elroy is already waiting onboard. We just need to disconnect ground power now that you’re here, and you can take off.”

“Thanks, SJ. Hannah, this is Jennifer’s oldest, Stephen, Junior. Thus, the SJ. SJ, this is Hannah Rothschild.”

“Hi, Hannah. Welcome to the family. You’ll be an easy fit. You already look quite a bit like Mom and Eve already, and not just with the hair. Not quite sister, maybe first cousin.”

Jennifer nodded. “Thank you. That’s been bothering me for the last couple of days.”

“It’s obvious to me. Hopefully, we’ll see all of you tomorrow evening.” He stepped back and made a signal with his hands. The pilots in the plane had been watching for it, and started up one of the engines.