Autumn Mermaid (Mermaid Series Book 4) Read online

  A few years later, Ena appeared up at his cabin again, this time to tell him how Niall had mysteriously vanished once again. Alpin suspected the boy had more of his father in him than Ena would have liked but there was nothing he could do about it. He figured Niall was forming a template for a life of being a vagabond, which wasn’t a bad thing in his estimation.

  "I'm sure our son will find his own way, my darling Ena. He is an adult now."

  That was the last time he talked to his wife. Years passed before he took a journey back to the Isle of Skye only to find it deserted. Ena was gone as were Karen and Pete and all the children that once ran and laughed and played there.

  He wondered a good deal about how long he'd been away and if perhaps he had imagined it all... maybe he had never been married to a girl named Ena... it might have been one of the day dreams he was so fond of playing around with in his head as he watched the sun mount the pillars of the mountains and the seasons sweep over the land.

  He thought about traveling to Orchardton Hall and inquiring of the Ladies about what had become of his family and friends but the journey had no appeal. Besides, the last time he'd been there, he found the castle locked up and boarded over. Perhaps they too had gone away somewhere warm, tired of the monotony of living in the same damp and rainy place for centuries on end.

  He spent the night in their rotting old villa. During the night he dreamed that he heard Niall calling out to him. Waking to darkness and quiet, he laid awake listening for a voice he would never hear again for ages.

  Chapter 6—Temptations

  Micah knew better than to interfere with the dynamic workings of evolution yet the temptation was always there.

  His nanobots were fully capable of making decisions on their own... that was their great strength. It was however their terrifying weakness as well. Evolution was fraught with both potentiality as well as dead ends. Each avenue of exploration led not only to the possibility of something better but to certain annihilation as well. Every seed of growth contained shards of its own demise.

  Micah knew that but his miniature machines did not. Once a program was uploaded they relentlessly pursued it to the end even if it meant becoming trapped within a never-ending cycle of starts and stops.

  The link to Kirk had somehow been compromised. Micah couldn’t be sure if it was on account of his brain evolving into the next iteration of intelligence—enhanced self-awareness—or if the man had somehow become aware of being used as a pawn.

  Worse, Kirk might have finally died.

  Everything he knew about Kirk told him that the man was a low-grade moron. He had never possessed any spark of creativity nor was Kirk in any sense a valued member of society. They had apparently put up with him despite his proclivity for wrecking havoc on anything he touched.

  Nate was the worst offender of the lot. He actually befriended the man all the while knowing Kirk was incapable of being anything other than what he was: an idiot. Karen once told Micah how she surmised that he'd been born with fetal alcohol syndrome as Kirk had one time confessed to her that both his parents were heavy drinkers who did nothing to help raise him other than attempting to beat sense into him during their more lucid moments.

  He had no sympathy for such a man. Micah had been born into a bad situation too but he'd overcome it with hard work and perseverance. He'd been given a death sentence when he was twelve years old. He could have given up then. Anyone else would have. Instead, he created a method for not only healing his own broken body but for immortality as well.

  "Is Kirk dead, Micah?"

  "He's not breathing, Mr. Nate. I assume a body can only go so long without oxygen before it begins to die."

  He had lied. Kirk wasn’t dead. Even as he spoke, Micah knew his nanobots were weaving their magic deep inside the metal casing they had erected around Kirk's body. Given enough time, his miniature machines could overcome the calamity of the destruction of the nexus.

  It had taken three centuries for his nanobots to perfect the nexus. Knowing the control center for his nanobot nation was destroyed in one fell swoop enraged him but he couldn’t show it. He had to pretend he was glad it happened.

  He sensed he had to ingratiate himself into the social network of these strange and unpredictable people in order to recoup his life's work. That was his only hope of reviving his machines, of allowing them free rein in the ultimate game of evolution.

  They had accepted him without reservations, even Ena, who professed to have a kind of psychic ability to see the future before it came to pass. He had to admit there were times when he wished he could be one of them... just a normal person living day to day with no special designs on conquering the earth.

  He allowed her to think he was dense, besetting her with questions of no consequence... ones a dullard might ask. His feigned sincerity must have worked for he noticed her grow short with her answers, as if tired of trying to teach him things he should know.

  In another life he could have fallen in love with the girl. Ena's beauty was as unceasing as her ideas yet something stopped her from giving herself to him whole-heartedly. He wondered if she knew his game yet was loath to expose it for reasons of her own. Had she seen the future and he was it?

  Micah had to find a way of getting a signal back to old America. If the body of Kirk had ceased as a viable life force there was only a small window of opportunity through which he might salvage the nexus growing inside the man's brain. Without that central processor for his machines, all the nanobots would cease to function as a unit and become nothing more than smart sand blowing in the wind.

  He couldn’t tell Ena about his plan. Once she had a glimpse of it, she would know the end result... her prescience was that overpowering. On the other hand, Karen might be a willing participant in a flight back to old New York City if he convinced her of the need for access to the medical archives he had left behind, or perhaps a dose of guilt might suffice even better.

  "It was my fault that Kirk was overcome by the nanobots, darling Ena. I'd love to be able to bring his body home to Luciana for a decent burial. Would you go with me again to old America so we could search for it one more time?"

  "That's so good of you, sweet Micah. Of course I'll help you. Niall has taken the second anti-gravity craft, however. We'll either have to build a new one or wait until either he or Nate returns."

  The workshop was housed in the corner of what must have once been an enormous warehouse. The old building sat behind Toulon castle. It was still full of wooden crates with labels written in French which he could not read even though he had studied the language for years while in school.

  He had noticed a plethora of facts that he once knew by heart had disappeared from the recesses of his mind over the past few months. It didn’t faze him as much as it might have a hundred years ago, however. He put it off to becoming human again after a long sojourn into the metal maelstrom that had been his only intercourse for centuries.

  Still, when he walked into a room intent upon getting something yet suddenly coming up short not able to remember what it was he was after, the consternation began growing around the faded edges of his psyche.

  He had always prided himself on his photographic memory. Even as a child his encyclopedic knowledge intimidated not only the other students around him but his teachers as well.

  Now all that knowledge was falling silent. It didn’t seem fair... he had so much to offer the world. A genius of his caliber only came around every few centuries or so. To lose touch with his own mind seemed as great a malady as the disease that once afflicted his body and threatened him with an early death.

  There was only one answer... he had to reactivate the nanobots... or at least help them to reactivate themselves. The answer was there, somewhere. He just had to think, to plan, and to execute.

  Micah sensed everything revolved around the man previously known as Kirk. If what he thought had happened had really occurred, that man no longer existed. Still, deep inside the man's brain the
nanobots were busy crafting a new world order, one that would not be snuffed out so easily next time.

  He had to be sure.

  Walking to the workshop always caused his heart to flutter and his senses to become heightened ever since he glimpsed for the first time a figure glaring at him from a distance. He recognized it instantly.

  He hated the tiger. It sat on a hill gazing at him as if meting out the chances of eating him with no one being the wiser. Micah knew it was the tiger that one of his protégés had named Chester. He had performed experiments by injecting it with nanobots when it was a cub continuing the trials until the tiger's growth rate surprised him. He had set it free with hopes it would flounder and starve on its own. Instead, the beast thrived.

  It was still an enormous monster and as long-lived as all the others here. He didn’t know if it had more to do with his nanobots or with being close to the Ladies of the Lake. He did know that the creature remembered him, even now, after he'd been transformed back into human shape.

  Even evolution had its dark side.

  Chapter 7—Giving Up

  She had given up on life as she knew it.

  Waiting at the Isle of Skye for a husband who'd forgotten her and for children who never visited grew as old as the passing centuries. Luciana arrived home on a sullen day morose and unsettled at the loss of a man she should have been happy to be rid of—her daughter could never seem to shake those incipit feelings.

  Alpin refused to stay at home for more than a fast meal and an even quicker screw before he was off into the mountains again. She was tired of waiting. The future she'd seen in the north of old Scotland had unfurled in full and now was coming to an end. Soon, the cold and misery of the place would begin to weave its way into her bones until she could scarcely tell herself apart from the land upon which she walked.

  "I'm going to Toulon, darling Luciana. Come with me."

  She knew her daughter would refuse yet out of habit she had to ask, beg if need be. Only then would her conscience be clear of what she knew was coming. Soon, she would leave this world forever, never again to see those she had loved so dearly and for so long.

  Grandfather Nate, Pete, and the scientists had the answers they required to finish their work. They no longer needed her—in fact, her presence was unsettling to all of them. Though she had never sought credit for any of the marvelous inventions that sprang forth from the workshop behind the tattered old villa where they lived, they must have known they could never have done it without her help.

  It bothered them all to be upstaged by a girl without any training in science and who couldn’t care less about any of the work accomplished through her directions. It was better to leave now and allow them the dignity of designing the interstellar craft that would ferry them all to the new worlds waiting at the edge of time.

  The passageway to the stars would be opening soon, and once it burst into flower, like the spring in old Scotland there would only be a brief interlude in which to take advantage of smelling the blossoms of new experiences before the cold winds of autumn began to blow.

  "I'll be fine here, mother. I'm waiting for Kirk to return."

  Ena wanted to ask why the man would return to the Isle of Skye when he left her in Toulon but something in Luciana's tone of voice stayed her tongue. The girl was still in mourning. It was a trait shared by the Ladies of the Lake. While their men tended to forget, they couldn’t help but remember.

  The beaches at Toulon were just as she remembered: warm and tranquil, completely unlike the stormy seas that raged against the coast of the Isle of Skye. No one seemed overtly happy to see her but neither did they appear unhappy.

  Micah seemed preoccupied, untalkative. She wasn’t sure if something was troubling him or if he was perhaps still holding old grudges over the time she made him go along with her to old America.

  She kept expecting Luciana to appear before remembering her precious daughter was still living at the Isle of Skye. The castle here was well-cared for, unlike her old villa. The irate and impetuous weather in the north of old Scotland was not conducive to the well-being of buildings: the shingles needed repair, the sill around the base of the villa was beginning to rot causing the structure to teeter precariously to one side, and the basement constantly flooded allowing fungus and other noxious molds to grow unabated.

  "This old place is falling down around our ears, my beautiful Luciana. We cannot stay here much longer without performing major renovations."

  "There's nothing wrong with this villa, mother."

  Her daughter had seemed to be in a sort of daze for years. Ena hoped she would come out of her malaise with the passage of enough time but now she was starting to wonder. Perhaps something was physically ailing the girl. She'd read where the People who lived before the Great Dying often went mad and had to be medicated or in the worst of situations institutionalized.

  They called it insanity. Some doctors believed it was caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and so prescribed various concoctions and potions to alleviate the bedevilment. Others thought talking out the problems their patients suffered under would help cure their ailments.

  "I'm sorry, darling Ena, but I wasn’t trained in psychology nor am I a psychiatrist. I suspect Luciana is suffering from what used to be called post traumatic stress syndrome."

  "How was that condition treated, sweet Karen?"

  "There was a lot of debate about that, my precious Ena. Each patient seemed to respond differently. There were no set options for treatment."

  Karen was no help. Now that she was in Toulon she thought she might bring the matter up with Amanda. The girl was in her opinion a superior practitioner of medicine, much better read than Karen, or perhaps simply more widely. She still marveled at how Amanda had saved her mother's life when Sileas had suffered a fractured skull on their storm-shortened trip to old America aboard the Liberty.

  Ena had been in love with Amanda once, so deeply that it frightened her to test the true depths of her feelings. If only she could have been sure Amanda's emotional attachments were as solid as her own, life might well have played out differently for the both of them. Instead, Ena had withdrawn and gone back to Alpin despite her many misgivings.

  Now, she wondered not for the first time if her choice had been a wise one. Perhaps there was no choice to be made... she had simply been following the music that played on incessantly... the melody that dictated every action.

  Had she ignored the music life would have grown discordant, not only for her but for the world in general. She wasn’t sure how she knew that but she did. One misplaced move would have a ripple effect eventually causing a cascade—a veritable avalanche—to engulf everything they were attempting to do. Looking about she wondered if perhaps the worst had already happened unbeknownst to her.

  The vineyards were in ruins. Ena remembered her first visit to Toulon and how the whole estate was vibrant and alive. Now, buildings sat empty with roofs caving in and broken gaping windows that reminded her of dead eyes staring into infinity. The vines were fallen down off their support rack with clumps of grapes crawling with insects and rotting on the ground.

  "What has happened here, sweet Ginger? It looks so different than last I was here."

  "We never seem to get things done like we did when Nate lived here. Catan is a big help but he has other interests... he has always been more the artistic type like his father. There is only so much I can do and Amanda is busy most of the time too. I'm sorry you have to see the vineyard looking like it does. I am embarrassed by it."

  "We all do what we can, darling Ginger. Please don’t take what I said as a condemnation. I understand what it is to have no one to help with the upkeep of an estate this size. I'm glad you never visited us in the Isle of Skye. It looks as forlorn as Toulon."

  "Is Luciana still there, my wondrous Ena?"

  "Yes, my sweet Ginger. She insists upon staying. I worry about her but she's a grown woman who has to find her own path."

  "
Why didn’t she want to come to live here, my darling Ena? Is she angry with us?"

  "She said she's waiting for Kirk."

  "Kirk is dead, isn't he, darling Ena?"

  "I'd love to say yes, my precious Ginger, but I see portends of things to come that include the man. Perhaps Luciana senses that too though I never knew her to exhibit the prescience that infests my mind. At the Isle of Skye they all looked up to me as if I am some kind of sage yet they seem to avoid me too.

  "I would rather live here at Toulon and just be Ena. I never chose to see the things that come to my mind. It's a curse I carry, not a gift."

  "Nate always used to talk about how he could never have perfected his invention without your help, sweet Ena. He said that he didn’t understand what you were saying at first, but you were so patient with him."

  "He said that?"

  "Yes, and many other good things about working with you."

  Ena had often wondered if anyone appreciated her help. Nate had never once said thank you to her. She got the impression that he'd rather take credit for the creation than acknowledge his debt to her. At the same time, however, she had always admired Nate's work ethic and his enthusiasm for creating things that brought comfort to so many others.

  She had never been an inventor. She had no desire to teach. Living her life from the future moment that had yet to blossom meant being privy to mysteries she'd rather not know. She suspected if she peered far enough ahead she might even catch a glimpse of her own demise.

  On the other hand, she had to relate to those who had only the present moment even though time meant nothing. She was part of that culture whether she liked it or not. Always comporting herself to social norms had tired her, however. She desired isolation. Perhaps Alpin was right.