Sorrows of Adoration (72 page)

His head bowed, Zajen
told me that he revered me and respected my feelings in this. He
offered to not take the title of Queen’s Champion, but to serve
without title to protect me from harm, if I approved.

I told him that the
title was rightly his, and his kindness warmed my heart. I asked
only that he understand that I myself could not use the word
Champion to mean anyone other than Jarik. He nodded and thanked
me.

Since then, he has
proven himself to be worthy of the title, though I still do not
speak it myself. He is as watchful and attentive as Jarik ever was,
though he keeps a respectful emotional distance. I have found him
to be a very good and kind man. Though I often feel guilty for not
calling him by his rightful title or even allowing him to be a
close friend, I know that it is best to not push myself into acts
and emotions that would undoubtedly cause me pain. Furthermore, I
am fairly certain that Zajen is happiest knowing that he serves
well and without causing me heartache.

When the weather is
suitable and I am feeling well, Zajen escorts me to the
marketplace. I often bring Raelik with me, that he might maintain a
connection with the people outside of the palace. That is still of
great importance to me. Though the marketplace in and of itself has
not cured all poverty in Endren, it is a modest economic success,
and Cael is already planning a similar project in Staelorn.

Though my life is now a
happy one, with a loving husband and three wonderful children, I
still feel an empty space where Jarik ought to be. I have not
stopped loving him, nor do I imagine that I ever shall. I muse
often on how bards sing of great loves between two people and never
sing of love between three. For I know now that I loved both Jarik
and Kurit equally, and I still do. I know also that they both love
me, and, despite the terrible words exchanged in those unpleasant
times, I know they loved each other as well.

I often grow wistful
when I think of Jarik and miss him. I have observed the same at
times in Kurit’s eyes as well. I have many times pondered why it is
that love is said to be the most wonderful emotion, yet the sorrows
of adoration are the deepest pains that one can experience.

But then when I see the
joy in my children’s eyes, or feel the warm embrace of my beloved
Kurit, I understand that these sorrows run so deep because they are
so far removed from and yet entwined with the elation of love.

Though I shall never
fully recover from the pain of losing my beloved Champion, I know
that some part of him lives on. It is in you, my son. You shall
grow to be your own man, but a piece of your heart was once part of
the soul of another, and he lives with your every breath.

I know in my heart that
the rest of Jarik’s soul stands on the path to the Everafter,
watching over me as attentively as he ever did whilst alive. I pray
nightly that when it is my time to join him there, I shall be
allowed to fall into his loving arms. And when Kurit joins us as
well, I pray that we might all shed the constrictions of social
bonds and propriety and all exist freely in love and delight with
one another for all of eternity.

~ The End ~

To Richard McAteer and
Tim Chew for their help and advice regarding armour and
weaponry;

To Margaret
Plumbo and
www.parentsplace.com
for information on childbirth and the early days of an
infant’s life;

To Dr. Ian Davis for
medical information on tracheotomies;

To the denizens
of
rec.humor.oracle.d
and
alt.pub.kacees
for their interest and support back in the days of usenet
when this was first published;

To Susan Kerbel, Anne
Kerbel, Matt Kerbel, and Corran Webster for reading the manuscript
and giving me their honest opinions about the story as well as
finding embarrassing typos;

To Nathalie Moore, who
designed the cover for the original printing and graciously gave me
rights to reuse it before she passed away;

And to my excellent
editor Karen Babcock for her work on this when it was originally
published and for reformatting it for this re-release.

“THANK YOU, JUDY,”
Jason said as his secretary set the tea tray on his desk and left
the room.

He put his digital
reader down and rubbed his eyes. He missed real paper, but he’d
been much advised years before that it simply didn’t do for the
owner of one of the world’s largest environmental conglomerates to
be seen reading newspapers and magazines anymore. Thus, he’d
instituted a company-wide policy against printed reports and
distributed the readers to all staff; true comfort came only at
home every evening when he indulged in the texture and scent of his
old books.

He picked up his cup
and sipped without prior inspection, knowing Judy would have made
it to his exacting specifications. When he’d insisted on putting
“Must be able to make a proper cup of tea” in the job description
after Mrs. Carron had retired the previous year, Trish had told him
it was sexist. He’d argued that what was sexist was Victorian
ladies stealing the idea of manly tea away by wrapping it in lace
and putting ridiculously small sandwiches on the side. He told
Trish it always took far too long to train Americans on how to make
it right, and he didn’t want to have to go through it all again. He
also said he didn’t care if a man got the job so long as he could
take care of the myriad tasks required of a modern secretary and
get the damned tea made as well.

Jason leaned back in
his chair with a smug little grin. He liked it when he was right
and Trish was wrong. Judy had worked out perfectly, as did the tea,
and life was as good as could be expected.

On his third sip, his
office door burst open. The shock would have made most spill their
tea, but Jason’s hands had acquired unnatural steadiness over the
centuries.

“Bloody hell, Don,” he
muttered. “It’s 3:34.”

“Jason! You won’t
believe it!”

“I believe that it is
tea time and you ought to know better.”

Don shut the door
behind him and hurried to Jason’s desk, where he plopped his old,
beloved workhorse computer down as he asked, “Better about
what?”

Jason pointed to the
clock.

Don looked at it in
confusion for a moment and then shook his head. “This is better
than tea time. I’ve found her! I think.”

Jason glared. “Trish?
She’s back from her meeting and in her office. Go bother her there.
Leave me alone until 3:45.”

Don pulled a chair up.
“No, not Trish. Gaia.”

That name did make
Jason’s hands shake for a second. He set his tea down. “That’s not
a subject to be joked about,” he said darkly.

“When have I ever told
a joke at work? Successfully?”

Jason continued to
glare at him, but the scientist paid no heed to his wrath, as was
often the case. He kept tapping at his keyboard frenetically while
explaining, “I was going over some stuff from one of the west coast
biotech labs, and something was not right, so I checked it out
and …” Don trailed off mid-thought, which also happened
frequently.

“Don,” Jason
prompted.

“What? Right, sorry.
I’m still piecing it together, but I think I’ve found her, or
someone like her, or something. I’m not sure. Well, sure enough to
come tell you but not sure enough to be really sure.”

Jason closed his eyes
and sighed. He tried not to think about Gaia at work, despite
having named Gaia Global after her. He preferred to do his brooding
over her at home, something both Don and Trish knew quite well, yet
here Don sat pestering him.

“Hamdon BioTech needed
my override for some equipment they wanted for …” Don looked
over his computer at Jason’s annoyed expression. “Right, sorry, you
don’t need those details. They’ve got her.”

“What do you mean, ‘got
her’?”

“Uh …”

“I need more details
than that, Don, even if I don’t require the minutia of what
captured your attention.”

“Sorry. Hang on.” He
tapped for a few seconds more while Jason pushed his tea aside and
folded his hands on the desk patiently.

“Here,” Don said as he
turned his computer around.

Jason looked at the
screen. “Paraquat? Why is that name familiar?”

“It’s a very powerful
herbicide. It kills photosynthetic material on contact. Nasty
stuff.”

“The one we can’t beat
with our organic line or get the Third World weaned off?”

“Yeah. It’s ‘restricted
use’ here, which means you can’t just go down to the hardware store
to pick some up. They’ve been ordering tons of the stuff on the sly
because they don’t have a license for it.”

“Do they have a reason
to use it?”

Don looked at him as if
he were insane. “They’re biotech.”

“Right, so could they
be—”

“Using it in some kind
of experiment? No, not based on what I know of what they’re
researching, and we own sixty percent of them so they shouldn’t be
researching anything without us knowing about it.”

“Okay, how does that
lead to you coming in here going on about Gaia?”

“Because I thought,
‘Shit, if they don’t have a license, they probably don’t have the
proper storage facility,’ since they could probably get a license
if they did. And if they don’t have the proper storage facility or
licensing, our lab could be on the hook for any legal issues, and I
don’t want feds giving us a hard time, so I looked up their
building specs, and that’s when I found this,” he said as he
brought up a window that displayed a building schematic.

“What am I looking
at?”

“There’s a hole in
their building.”

“A hole?”

Don pointed to the
screen. “This corridor goes to an elevator shaft, but there’s no
listed elevator.”

“Okay.”

“So I looked up
elevator licensing records, even though it’s not on their official
floor plan. They do in fact have an inspection record for a
one-hundred-ninety-foot elevator. But they only got it once when it
was first built, and it’s expired.”

“Wait. One hundred
ninety feet?”

“Yeah, I know—weird,
huh? It looks like they hired a mining company to do some
unspecified work just before that, so I’m guessing they’re the ones
who dug it. According to the licensing information it only stops at
the top and bottom.”

“What the hell are they
doing down there?”

“I researched what that
depth could mean, were they maybe after the water table or
something geological or what. They’ve got aquifers around but not
close enough for that to be the explanation. That depth gets them
to bedrock, I think, but what’s more interesting is it turns out
that it’s significantly further down than any root system outside
of a handful of desert trees that wouldn’t grow there anyway.”

Jason’s jaw
dropped.

Don nodded at him.

“They’re keeping
vegetation away from someone down there,” Jason whispered.

“Seems like it.”

“Oh god, they’ve got
her down there.” His heart pounded.

“I don’t know for sure,
but when that popped into my head I went through a bunch of other
purchasing records—”

“How long have you been
looking into this?”

“Couple of days. I
didn’t want to tell you until I had something more definite.
Anyway, they’re also purchasing pre-made meals from a catering
company with a bunch of weird specifications that amount to no raw
fruit or vegetables. In fact, they’re using some kind of
nasty-sounding vegetable substitute paste stuff along with
processed chicken meat for the most part. I did some calculations,
and based on their ordering, it’s probably about enough for one or
two people a day going back almost ten years.”

“Good god.”

“Then I carefully went
through their project list, and I found this buried in another list
where it totally didn’t belong. This clinches it,” Don said,
flipping to yet another window.

Jason
read aloud, “‘In an attempt to isolate the
Elementum Curans
, the blood product will be
subjected to the following examinations.’ That’s Latin for ‘healing
component’.”

Don sat back in his
chair. “They’re trying to figure out how someone heals quickly like
you do, and they’re trying to replicate it.”

“It’s got to be
her.”

“Or someone like her.
It stands to reason that if there are two of you, there could be
more.”

“Either way, I want to
meet them, and if Hamdon BioTech has anyone locked up underground
against their will I want it stopped.”

As Jason began to reach
for his phone, Don exclaimed, “Whoa! Whoa! You can’t just call
them!”

“I was going to call
Trish in here.”

“Oh. Yeah. Do
that.”

When Trish entered a
few minutes later, she shut the door roughly, crossed her arms, and
barked, “How come he’s allowed in here during your precious tea
time? You snark on my ass if I come to your office during tea
time.”

Jason replied, “Because
he found Gaia.”