The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (34 page)

“The place
turned out very well, if I say so myself,” he answered. “We’ve a
home you could spend the rest of your life in.” His last statement
hung heavily between them. The ominous prospects of 2107 threatened
to put strict limits on the concept of “the rest of your life”.

Lorna shook
off the depressing thought. “Take me on a tour.”

“Happy to,
madam.” With relief, he began. In the past, there’d been some very
stressful interactions when the subject time remaining came up
either in conversation or in the form of a reminder through current
events.

Ed opened the
cut crystal double front doors. The day before, the movers had
delivered the furniture. Ed had supervised the placement.

“I wanted to
be there,” Lorna said. “Men are so incompetent when it comes to
furniture arrangement. I’m not sure I trust your judgment.”

“Don’t worry,”
he retorted. “I had plenty of advice from the daughters-in-law and
Cynthia. Trust me. You’ll be pleased. Besides, if you supervised
the move, who would’ve taken care of little Jimmie and
Samantha?”

“That’s what
babysitters are for.” Lorna sighed in anticipation of having to
perform a large rearrangement. She needn’t have worried. “You
missed your calling,” she said, finally. “If you ever need a second
job, consider interior decorating. Donatello would be proud of
this.” For an instant, she wondered how her former Fairy Godmother
liked his new home on Mars.

“Gee,
thanks.”

They’d named
the children after The First Parents. “There have been too many Eds
in the family,” Ed had asserted. “Great-pop doesn’t like “juniors”,
but technically, the kids won’t be.”

Lorna laughed.
“What are they going to do? Disinherit us?”

In a mimic of
their namesakes, Samantha, or Sammi, had the red hair and green
eyes, while Jimmie exhibited the dark eyes and coloring Lorna
shared with Great-pop. The boy also seemed to inherit Ed’s height
and build.

On the house
tour, Lorna and Ed passed through the tiled foyer into a
high-ceilinged dining room. The two chandeliers from the mansion
hung suspended on brass chain, part of the furniture, personal
effects, and fixtures retrieved from the island. The collection
filled a small freighter, ending up in the homes of various family
members.

Lorna surveyed
their bedroom, featuring the massive round bed with the history of
love and happiness contained therein. “It safely made the
trip?”

“Yes, but you
understand it is only on loan. My grandparents can’t wait to get it
back.” He led the way to an adjacent sitting room. “Look what
showed up.”

“You got the
little bed!” Lorna squealed with excitement. Appearing isolated in
a much larger room than the sparse cell on the island sat the
iron-framed pallet where they’d first made love, freshly made up
with a white comforter. New pieces provided company. The movers had
consigned the old furniture to the scrap heap.

A memory of
dear, sweet, courageous Ulbert flashed through her mind.

“
And sir,”
he said on the morning he found us together. “It is good to see you
entertaining again.”

“Yes. I had to
personally rescue the old thing from a scrap heap,” Ed replied,
returning her to reality.

As if seeing
old friends after a long separation, Lorna smiled at the model
airplanes hanging from the ceiling. Turning toward him, she pressed
her pelvis against the flank of a hard thigh. “What do you say we
try it out? A quickie before the sitter brings the kids?”

Ed didn’t have
to be asked twice, immediately spanning her waist with two large,
sure hands. She amazed even herself at how quickly she’d regained
her figure after the children were born. With humans and hybrids,
recovery took months, if at all. In Lorna’s case, six weeks after
giving birth, she appeared as if she’d never been pregnant.

While she
breathed hot moisture in his ear from red, painted lips pursed into
something approximating a triangle, he lifted her up. A pair of
firm legs wound tightly around his waist. The white chiffon of her
camisole did little to shield the feel of aroused nipples. Feeling
his manhood growing to full size under his denim jeans, she warmed
and moistened down below. Supporting the firm bulbs of her
buttocks, he slid her in the bed.

Lorna threw
off the chiffon blouse, revealing hard, erect, coffee-colored
nipples. Ed peeled off the jeans and shirt. As always, she admired
the coppery head-to-toe tan of his hard male form before her gaze
came to rest on a specific part that tilted down and slightly left,
steel hard, but warm to the touch.

Lying back,
she opened for his entry. Hovering above, he gently occupied her
mouth with his tongue and their faces joined together. Hot inner
thighs molded themselves around him. Their faces remained plastered
to one another while scents of sex mingled among those of new
construction. Their passion gained momentum. The springs of the
small bed protested with their usual gusto against their amorous
locomotion. Lorna cupped a butt cheek in each hand, pushing him
inside until his hips pressed against her. Disengaging from his
kiss, she threw her head back. Keening wails of building climax
surrounded them in an invisible blanket.

Ed reached
below to manipulate the wet folds at the top of her femininity,
searching for a particular small, slippery knot of flesh. Lorna
gasped each time he circled the small wet bud with a large, blunt
index finger, stopping every fourth time or so to refresh the
wetness from her fragrant internal secretions.

“Is this
right?” he inquired.

“After all
this time, you have to ask?” she countered in a display of
desperate eagerness. “Press on.” Planting a lingering kiss, he shut
her up.

Eventually,
they arrived at the state of complete physical contraction ending
in convulsive release. They embraced on a level beyond mere
physical contact as the last barriers separating the perfect
communion of mind, body, and spirit dissolved for a magic
instant.

* * * *

They avoided
thinking about the possibility all might end in a flash of
radiation and tried their best to live by Mike Geurin’s dictum.
“It’s not how much time you have, but how you spend it, that
counts.” Or something to that effect.

Grandmother
Sam coordinated the migration effort on the Martian end in
conjunction with Ed on Earth.

“Are you
saying they elected her Dictator for Life?” Lorna asked in the
spring of 2105. The migration had entered the last stage, with just
over two years until the first possible Doomsday. Scholars who
examined the images from the Oom tablets calculated the date to be
June 15, 2107.

“Not exactly,”
Ed replied. “Well, sort of, I guess. They put her in charge of
anything concerning the migration, which includes just about all
colonial resources, and projects.”

“Why? Talented
grandchildren and other colonists are everywhere. One of them could
pick up some of the burden,” Lorna said. They sat on a balcony
overlooking the St Johns River. The water stream snaked through the
green of pine and palmetto, absorbing the evening sunlight into
opaque brown depths.

“Everyone
believes she’s the one to keep everything together. Even Toby
agrees.”

Toby’s girls
had turned twenty earlier in the year, and his family had joined
Ethan’s.

The Aurora
Borealis fluttered across the northern sky. Solar activity had
increased, but for the Northern Lights to be visible from Florida
in early evening was even more exceptional.

Ed regarded
the green shimmer with wariness. “There seems to be something
building,” he commented. “Another mini-CME, perhaps?”

A white crane
glided over the lush green toward the river. “Perhaps. Europe
hasn’t recovered from the one that hit France earlier this
year.”

The CME struck
the Franco-German border without warning, knocking out power in
most of Western Europe. Some didn’t have service restored for a
month. There were riots. The affected parts of the former countries
declared martial law, which didn’t end after the crisis abated.
Thousands died.

“They
experienced a minor one, compared to how bad they could be,” Ed
answered.

Remembering
her dream about the end of the world, a chill ran through Lorna. “I
know.”

“No matter.
Whether it strikes in 2107 or later, we stay together. I couldn’t
live without you and the children.”

Lorna
grimaced.
No
one knows what he can bear until they have to.

She clamped
small fingers on his forearm saying, “I love you, Edward
White.”

* * * *

Early in the
spring of 2106, the White family drove to Orlando to attend
Cynthia’s farewell party. The month before, Karla had passed away.
After ordering her mother’s affairs, Cynthia, accompanied by
siblings and their families, booked onto the next ship to Mars.

“After Cynthia
leaves, Thomas is the only relative left, besides us,” Lorna
said.

Thomas—poor,
sad, old, bachelor Thomas.

“You’re
forgetting Sadie, Cassandra’s daughter.”

“If we can
locate her.”

Ed’s eyes
lingered on the intent face of his new wife, drifting downward to
the compact body. “Everyone advises Thomas to leave. Among all of
us, he has the least to hold him to Earth, but my brother cannot
leave what makes him comfortable. It’s been his nature since we
were boys.” He spoke without deviating from his wanton stare.

“Stop that.”
Lorna smirked. “The children are in the jump seat.”

He raised his
handsome head to face her. “I will remain properly honorable.” He
winked. “For now.”

They
approached the outskirts of town, where an armed corporation escort
picked them up. A line of ragged people, starting at a closed
corrugated steel door, snaked around the block. The solemn,
dispirited faces touched Lorna. “Lining up for drug prescriptions,”
she muttered. “There must be a better way.”

The rumor
persisted that the prescription drug arm of government health care
had run out of money and would have nothing more to dispense until
the beginning of the next fiscal year, or in six months, so people
were trying to stock up.

Ed pushed back
the cloth vertical blind shielding his window from the outside to
see what Lorna referred to. “Seeing this, I understand why the
Regional Attorney General tried to sue us to supplement their
health care program.”

Lorna’s eye
came to rest on a threadbare woman in the line. Two small children,
about the twins’ age, stood by her. Her solemn gray-eyed stare
seemed to be able to penetrate the tint of the car window to engage
Lorna. One of the children, the boy, had vivid red cheeks, a sign
of pneumonia.

“Can we do
anything for them, Ed?”

“I’m not sure
what. Even the corporation has limits.”

“There must be
something,” Lorna insisted.

Ed shrugged,
picking up the car phone. “I have an idea.” Seconds later he spoke
to the director of the company clinic. “That’s right. Send five
thousand penicillin prescriptions to the Semoran Station. Tell them
the donor wishes to remain anonymous.”

After he hung
up the phone, Lorna asked, “Why be anonymous? With all the bad
press the media gives us about conspiring to abandon humanity, we
could use the good publicity.”

Ed turned
toward her. “If the media learns what we did, they’ll stir up
controversy regarding the motive. What made them favor this
location above the others? Are you aware you’re helping so-and-so’s
re-election? We live in mean times where no good deed goes
unpunished.”

At the
reception, Cynthia’s presence overwhelmed the scene. Floating among
the knots of guests, she wore a tight black gown, leaving
enthrallment in her wake. Since the crisis on the island, she’d
begun to experiment with different hair coloring. A bright gold
streak ran the length of her otherwise black mane. By her own
admission, Cynthia’s desire to separate herself from comparisons
with her namesake grandmother provided the motivation.

“Why don’t you
stay a few more years?” Lorna asked. With the party winding down,
they stood alone together. “Your projects to restore the Everglades
are just showing results.” Cynthia had fulfilled the promise she’d
made after all the troubles and Bobby’s execution. She’d developed
a talent for organizing successful causes.

“I know, but
our future is on Mars.” Her bituminous eyes stared from a
milk-white face. “Out there, I think we can use what we learned
from restoring the honey bee here on Earth.”

“You and your
grandmother are indeed two of a kind,” Lorna said, raising her
face, for Cynthia in heels stood nearly a foot taller. Sensing the
younger woman’s annoyance with the comparison, Lorna added. “You’ll
be an important aid to Uncle Charlie.”

“Yes, if he’s
able to get an expedition together to explore Jupiter’s moons, I’ll
be there to hold his coat.” Brushing back a strand of glossy hair,
she appraised Lorna’s supple form. After a second, she smiled
suggestively. “You know, you might consider trying something
different. If you’re ever in the mood…”

Lorna
self-consciously smoothed her skirt against slim, rounded hips. “No
deal, dear,” she retorted. “I love you like a daughter, but I want
mine without breasts.”

Cynthia
smirked. “Your loss.” And the languid, exotic mechanism named
Cynthia May departed to bestow her presence upon another
appreciative group.

* * * *

On the ride
back, Lorna asked Ed, “Did you know she was a lesbian?”

Appearing as a
large dark shape, he sat in the corner beyond the orb of the
convenience light. “Not really,” he replied. “I suspected so when
she never kept company with males during her first decade.”