Chapter 21
Frank J. Arens
Kaley’s grandfather
Frank was glad the horse he was on was so well trained. It knew its way down the mountain back to Zeon’s warm stall and abundant
food. One of Zeon’s guards was behind him and another in front, so he knew he didn’t have to worry about the horse losing
its way.
It wasn’t even daylight yet, and he’d just woken up. After days of no sleep, he’d crashed for hours on the cave floor. He
knew he wouldn’t have had enough energy for what he’d accomplished in Haver’s cave if it hadn’t been for the three-year trip
to Bellis. They had repaired him. Like he was one of Jeff’s car engines, they’d overhauled his old body.
Back in Kansas, he hadn’t even told Rita about the pain he dealt with every day.
He had injuries from Vietnam and the years of hard farmwork had taken a toll on him.
But when he woke up inside a pod in a spaceship, all that was gone.
Later, he asked the former ship’s officer, Roal, about it.
He was told that Empyreans had the technology to go back and forth to Earth in just months, but the state of the human bodies they picked up were so badly damaged it took years to repair them.
New internal organs were grown, brain and nerve damage repaired.
Cells regrown. The result was that when they landed on Bellis, people who’d been in wheelchairs could walk.
Diseases were gone. If genetic defects were detected, DNA was reformed.
Frank asked him why people were taken from Earth. Roal said that wasn’t his department but the gossip was that each earthling
had some talent. “There’s something different about each one of them,” Roal said. “But who knows what Empyreans think is ‘special’?”
Frank thought of his granddaughter, Kaley. There was her connection with animals. When she was a toddler, he’d had to secure
her bedroom window or in the morning she’d be gone. They’d find her asleep with whatever wild animal she could find. She never
saw a difference between herself and them.
The horse slipped on a rock on the steep downward path. Instantly, Frank came awake. How good it is to have the reflexes of my younger self, he thought.
He looked around at the pretty landscape. Yes, Bellis was much like Earth. But the people were very different. He smiled as
he remembered Tanek as a boy.
When the family met him, the poor kid was starved for the outdoors and for people. He’d spent his whole life on the ship.
He didn’t know who his mother was, and his father was too busy running a ship to have much time for him. Between the birds
on Earth and the doting honorary grandparents, Tanek opened up. He told them everything. By the time their dear daughter-in-law,
Graceen, revealed that she was from another planet, Frank and Rita knew quite a bit about the place. When they were told that
Graceen wouldn’t be allowed to stay on Earth and raise her daughter, Rita had cried—and Frank wanted to. But they’d put on
a brave face for Graceen.
What surprised them—since Tanek knew nothing about it—was the talk of Solium.
It seemed that the Empyreans loved the little red plant.
Jeff said they were going to grow it. “And when they come back to get Kaley, I’m going to offer it as payment—or blackmail—to go with them.
” Jeff seemed to be asking his parents if they wanted to join him.
Neither Frank nor Rita hesitated. “When do we start?” Frank asked.
He came back to the present and looked around. They’d reached flatter land and were closer to Zeon’s big house.
Days ago, when he’d landed the helicopter at Zeon’s house, as he’d been told, the man was waiting for him. The idea of someone
who could foresee the future was new to Frank, but the locals took it in stride. But then, humans with furry fox tails or
a kid whose daddy was a bear didn’t phase them either.
He was surprised that they’d never seen a helicopter. After the wedding-that-didn’t-happen, Frank thought maybe Sojee was
going to pick Tanek up and shove him into the thing. Tanek could control elephant-sized birds with his mind and he could drive
a pickup, but a chopper freaked him out.
It was Roal, a master with spaceships, who’d asked, “How?” Frank knew what he meant. How had he learned to fly the noisy machines?
Frank hadn’t answered. He and Rita’d had too many years of secrecy to blab to anyone. Their son, Jeff, knew his parents’ background,
and Kaley knew some, but outsiders didn’t.
He and Rita met in Vietnam. She was a nurse and he was a wounded soldier. Classic. After they returned to the US, they were
given an opportunity that they took. They got in on the ground floor of the creation of computers. It turned out that they
both had that kind of brain. Numbers and logic were easy for them. For years, they lived on caffeine and delivered pizzas.
What none of them foresaw was how lucrative what they were doing would be. Money, and lots of it, came in.
When Rita got pregnant, she set her jaw and faced her husband. “I want out.” He knew what she meant. She wanted to leave the computer world where working twenty hours straight was normal. There were
weeks when they never saw the outdoors. Their lives centered around computer screens.
She wanted to raise their child in a different life. “I don’t want a child who thinks eggs come from the grocery store. I want to be there to see the first laugh, the first steps. I want to learn how to bake a pie.” Her eyes told Frank she was leaving with or without him.
He was calm. “I hear that Kansas has soil so rich you can plant steel and it’ll grow.”
Rita, already flooded with six hundred times the normal female hormones, burst into tears.
A month later, they’d packed up what little they owned and bought a farm outside Kansas City. They had an investment account
full of stocks that would continue to grow.
Over the years, Rita didn’t keep up with the computer world, but Frank did. He’d complained loudly when the system changed
from DOS, the disk operating system where the user had to know a lot, to cute little icons that someone with no brain could
use.
All that had led him to where he’d spent the last three days. When Kaley told him of a cave full of smashed computers, Frank’s
ears perked up. She knew her grandfather was a genius with computers.
“Where?” Frank yelled over the sound of the helicopter.
“Zeon!” Kaley shouted back.
Frank got the coordinates of the demolished Homestead from Roal. He dropped his passengers off, then said he was going to
get fuel. He knew his daughter-in-law ran the Museum of Earth and that she had cars and gas. She’d know about this man, Zeon.
It was almost as though someone had foreseen what would be needed, he thought with a one-sided smirk.
He flew to the museum and refueled. He didn’t see his son or daughter-in-law, but then they hadn’t seen each other in years.
They were “busy.” Ha ha.
Again, everything seemed to have been anticipated. Jeff had left a note for his father.
I know you want to see Haver’s computers. Zeon will be expecting you.
He’d left a map that Frank could follow. He was to go high up over the Mist, then on to Zeon’s house.
On the ground, in front of the closed door of the museum, was an old-fashioned, fully charged generator. The islands had spaceships
but no electricity to run the computers.
There was also something else Frank was to take. There were three big bales of the Solium that they’d grown. Wisely, they’d
given only a portion of what they’d grown to Jobi. Rita’s cartons of books had concealed big packages of the dried algae.
It was an easy trip and Zeon was not only waiting for him, but had horses and guards ready to lead Frank up the mountain to
Haver’s cave.
At his first sight inside the cave, Frank was glad to see that whoever did the bashing of the computers didn’t know about
them. The motherboards weren’t hurt, and the hard drives were intact. It took him just twenty-four hours to get them working.
He was thrilled that they were run on the old DOS system. There was not even one cutesy, annoying little icon. He truly believed
that smiling faces did not belong on a computer!
Zeon sent food and set it outside so Frank could take his time in searching for information.
After he’d found all he could, Frank fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, it was very early morning, but he wasn’t surprised
to see the horses saddled and the two guards ready to take him down the mountain. Had Zeon told them the schedule before it
happened?
When they got to the house, it wasn’t Zeon who greeted him, but Tanek and Kaley. Their faces showed their concern. Tanek wanted
to go to wherever his son was. Frank had seen that Kaley was with Tanek no matter what happened.
“Think you can stand my whirlybird?” Frank asked. “Or are you going to try to get me on one of your bird-headed lions?”
Kaley kissed her grandfather on the cheek. “He doesn’t know what a lion is. They have no cat species here.”
“What?” Frank nodded. “Right. Cats eat birds.” He looked at Tanek. “You have a map?”
“Yes. Mekos is on an island called Abicis. Aradella is there and it’s possible that Sojee’s youngest daughter is with them.”
“Which means that World War Three has begun,” Kaley muttered. “Those girls hate each other.” She looked at Frank. “Let’s go
inside and you can clean up. You stink. We want to hear everything you’ve been doing, then we can go to the island and save
the girls from killing each other.”
Frank had no intention of telling them what he’d found out in the cave. At least not yet. “Sounds good.” He looked at Tanek
to see if he agreed.
“Yes,” was all Tanek said. It was obvious that he was worried about his son.
What the hell has happened on Pithan? Frank wondered. With an evil queen and a witch mother, what hideous thing could happen? He almost laughed at his own sarcasm.
They went into Zeon’s house.