GeneSix (14 page)

She had left that meeting with no definite promises. After all, on one hand having the kid spend half its time with Daddy Jake would free her up to pursue the life she wanted. And yet, did she really want a child of hers spending so much time at that mountain retreat with the people Jake associated with?

Mandy had been there once. It was a spacious place, filled with lab equipment and all sorts of weird devices. They could actually teleport to different dimensions and such. Scott was working on a device that could allow them to travel through time.

Scott could think in multi-dimensional calculations, yet found minuscule household tasks to be strangely puzzling. And Jake did nothing at all to earn money. Sure, he was a hero, and he was following Scott to the edge of scientific discovery, an edge far beyond what the rest of the scientists in the world could even dream about. Yet, was it the proper environment for a child?

These thoughts raced through her head as she sat at her computer. She glanced down at her abdomen, pleased she was not quite showing yet. Soon, though. And then it would be time to hang up these hot looking outfits and go into maternity clothes.

The intercom on her desk buzzed. A woman’s voice. “Kim?”

It was the receptionist downstairs. Mandy reached over and pushed a button. “Yeah, Sally?”

“I’ve got three guys here to see you. They say it’s about superhero business.”

Mandy rolled her eyes. “Not another guy in a strange costume?”

Sally laughed. “No. They look normal. Well, relatively speaking.”

Mandy shrugged. What the hell? The day had been slow, anyway. “All right. Send them up.”

She went to the cafeteria and got a quick cup of coffee while she waited for the elevator. According to Scott Tempest the fetus was already emitting zeta radiation, which meant she could feel free to have a regular cup of coffee without feeling guilty about the caffeine. Not much on Earth could harm this kid.

She was standing with a styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand as the elevator chimed and the doors slid open.

The three walked out, and introduced themselves. Rick Wilson – her immediate take was
boring
. Quentin Jeffries, who struck her as freaky in a dark way. And Chuck Jeffries, who was looking at her like he wanted to bite into her.

She did not like men who were boring, or freakishly dark. Or who were too obvious with their desires – she liked a little cat-and-mouse game playing, rather than going straight for the hail-mary.

She shook hands with them, and escorted them to her desk. She had one visitor’s chair at her desk, and a couple more were grabbed to accommodate her guests.

“So,” she said, “what can I do for you?”

“We need help,” Rick said.

Quentin rolled his eyes. “What Mister Wilson means to say is that we need the help of Scott Tempest, and we know of no one else who can contact him.”

“Well, gentleman,” she said, “I’m a reporter. I’m not really a contact person. Yes, I see him from time to time, but..,”

Her coffee suddenly rose out of her hand and hovered in the air in front of her face. Wide-eyed, she forced her gaze from the coffee back to the three. Quentin smiled, and then with a wave of a finger, the coffee descended back to her desk.

Mandy quickly regained her composure. “That’s pretty good. Can you do pet tricks, too?”

“Please, I merely try to make a point.”

“What, that you think you can intimidate me?”

“No, no, no,” he said, pulling a handkerchief. It was then that she noticed a drop of blood rolling from his nose to his lip.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Indeed.” He mopped up the blood. “I merely wanted to show you we’re not crackpots. We’re the real thing. And this,” he help up his handkerchief, “is why we need help.”

She sat waiting, still not getting what he was intimating.

He said, “We each have an ability – we are each what you identified in your article on Jake Calder as a meta-human – but we each have something holding us back from reaching our full potential.”

Wilson said, “I can run fast. Really, really fast. Blink-of-an-eye fast, if I really turn it on. But the air friction burns me. I have burn scars on my chest and back from it. I can catch my clothes on fire if I move fast enough.”

Burroughs said, “I can generate cold. I could take that cup of coffee and turn it into iced coffee in seconds. I could even freeze the entire room in less time than it takes to talk about it. But I can’t take my own cold. If I put the room into a deep freeze, I’d kill myself in the process. I’ve given myself frostbite more than once.”

“And I,” Quentin said, “well, I think it’s obvious. I have telekinesis. I can also start fires from a distance, and can even project my own thoughts into someone else’s mind, to an extent, and read theirs. But the effort causes hemorrhaging. I went so far so to push myself into a small stroke once. My hand was numb for a week.

“What we seek is whatever help Scott Tempest might be able to give us. After all, he’s probably the only one in the world who could.”

She asked, “Why do you want to use these abilities? I mean, what do you have to gain from them? Do you work for the military, or something?”

“Good gracious, no.”

Wilson said, “We want to help mankind. To do what’s right. Make the world a better place.”

“Quite. All of that,” Quentin said, impatiently. “Can you contact Doctor Tempest for us?”

She shrugged, not sure what to do. She hated to say no, as they seemed to have a real need, and they were right – Egghead Boy was probably the only one in the world who could help them. And yet, she didn’t want to set herself up as some sort of liaison between Scott Tempest and the rest of the world.

She was about to say, “I’ll think about it,” but the first word simply hung in her open mouth as she was struck with a sudden pain in her lower abdomen.

“Are you okay?” Wilson asked.

“I...I don’t know.”

The pain seemed to pass, then it was there again, like something stabbing into her. Below her navel, between her hips.

She gasped, suddenly unable to get air. She involuntarily doubled over, and fell from her chair to the carpet.

Wilson was suddenly at her side, and Burroughs had risen to his feet, not sure what to do.

“My desk,” she breathed the words, barely a whisper. “My desk. Top drawer. Communication device.”

Wilson pulled the drawer open, and fumbled through the jumble of pens and paper clips, and found a rectangular object. “This thing?”

She nodded. She tried to speak, but it was all she could do to even breathe. She noticed blood streaming down the inside of one thigh, from under her skirt.

“We need help over here,” Burroughs called out.

Others came running. Sharon, a temp mainly there for data entry. Skip, an assistant editor. He said, “Someone call nine-one-one.”

Mandy forced the words out. “Open the device. Call Jake.”

Wilson pushed a button at the side of the device, and it flipped open. “Hey. Just like on Star Trek.”

One thing Jake Calder didn’t think he would ever grow tired of was soaring through the mountain air. He was in his aqua and blue battle suit.

He intended to get Scott to design him a battle suit that did not reflect 80’s coloring patterns. Maybe a solid blue, or blue and black or something like that. Maybe get April to do it. Scott might be the most intelligent creature to ever walk the face of the Earth, but if you wanted something done right, you asked April.

At the moment, Jake was in the sky, using technology developed by Scott to override and manipulate the Earth’s gravitational forces. Jake had little patience for scientific chatter, however. All he knew was,
My God,
I can fly
.

He was powered-up enough so he wouldn’t freeze in these temperatures. His altitude was easily ten thousand feet, if not more. He was also powered-up enough so he didn’t have to breathe, which was a good thing, because at this altitude the air got a little thin. But he could feel the wind in his face, catching his hair. He shut his eyes and spread his arms out as though he were a human plane.

He changed direction, did a loop-de-loop, and then came in low over a series of snow-capped mountain tops.

Further down, below the tree line, he could see ponderosa pines forming a sort of green blanket stretching along the side of each mountain.

Powered-up like this, his vision grew unusually acute. On a mountainside below, he could see a ram running about. He could see a bird in a grove of pines a mile away from the ram take flight.

“Hey, Captain,” Scott’s voice came over the comm-link in his wrist band.

“What’s up?” Jake asked.

“I’m running some tests on April, and it’d be nice if you were back here for this.”

“What kind of tests? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. I just had a theory, and we’re about to see if I’m right or wrong.”

“And you know how I love to hear all about your theories.”

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“I’ll be right in.”

The mountain looked just like any other from the outside. Trees, rocky ledges. The top, above the treeline, was all rock. But underneath, there was a facility unlike anything else on Earth.

Jake flew toward one particular ledge, and beneath it, as he drew nearer, a section of rock seemed to fade from view. In reality, it had never been there at all. Or, it had been until it was removed by Jake months earlier, when he was hollowing out the mountain top so they could build this facility. The section of rock was now nothing more than a solid holographic projection that served as an entryway to the hangar deck. As he approached, Scott’s central computer read the code transmitted from Jake’s comm-link, and the hologram shut down long enough for him to fly through the entrance. When it was activated, it would even feel like rock if you were to climb outside and touch it. Another piece of technology created by Scott.

Jake landed on the floor of level one, which housed the landing bay. The floor and walls were made of concrete, and interlaced with steel girders for support. Though, at the moment, this level served as the landing bay for only one vehicle, and it was only partially completed.

When it was finished, this vehicle would be a space craft. With Scott’s teleportation field functioning so efficiently, able to beam them anywhere on the planet within the blink of an eye, there was little need for a ship. However there was one place Scott wanted to go that was beyond the range of the teleporter – Europa. The large moon orbiting the planet Jupiter.

Studies he had run had convinced him there was water on Europa, possibly a gigantic ocean covering the entire moon. The water was covered by a layer of ice, in some places many miles thick. But the water beneath the ice was not frozen and the atmosphere was primarily oxygen, giving the hope that life would be discovered in the water.

It would most likely be only microbial life, but still life. Not as dramatic as finding an extraterrestrial civilization, but Scott had said more than once he was not after drama. He was seeking discovery.

The vessel they were converting into a space craft was actually an old World War II era bomber, with a rusty hull and only one wing. Jake had rescued it from a junkyard in Oklahoma. The hull had to be refurbished, a new wing attached so it would fly, and the interior totally remodeled to include sleeping quarters and lab equipment.

Very little fuel was needed, because Scott intended to design an energy field that would allow them to manipulate gravitational fields in space, and the ship would simply fall through the vacuum between Earth and Jupiter.

One problem was, even at their best speed Europa was still about a year and a half away. The laws of physics couldn’t be broken. As such, the Europan mission was currently on the back burner, along with a couple dozen other projects.

Jake stepped into an elevator, and rose to the next level, which held Scott’s extensive laboratories.

The doors slid open, and he found Scott staring into a computer monitor. He was sitting on a wooden stool, his lab coat’s tails falling behind him.

April Hollister sat beside him. Running shorts cut nicely short, and a tank top. As an athlete, she had great legs, but Jake doubted Scott noticed. He was too intrigued by whatever he was observing on the computer.

“Hi, Jake,” April said, ever chirpy and cheery.

“Hi, April. Scott.”

Scott waved a hand at Jake, but didn’t divert his eyes from the computer.

A male human voice filled the air about him. “Hello, Jake.”

It was Scott’s computer. Not the one he was gazing into, but his main unit. The one that essentially ran the place. A photonic computer, he called it. Scott had threatened once to explain what a photonic computer was, but Jake told him not to or he would jump out a window. Not that this facility had any windows, but the point was made.

“Hello,” Jake said to the computer.

He was still not entirely comfortable with a computer that could actually talk to you and carry on a conversation. The thing didn’t simulate conversation, it actually made it.