The Alliance (27 page)

“Blooming,” a familiar voice answered, turning Rachael back to the village. “I found this one lurking in the shadows.” Anneke escorted Jenni toward them. “She claims she was kneeling to tie up her shoe lace.”

It drew Rachael’s glance to Jenni’s laceless slip-ons.

“I was deciding whether to interrupt or go back to the Compound. There’s an urgent message requiring your attention. Head office wants clarification of your FW1076.” Jenni ignored Anneke, her nerves betrayed only by a hand straying to the middle button of her tunic and twisting it unconsciously.

FW1076 was Rachael’s transmission of Jack’s reply to the Federation and her recommendation his terms be accepted immediately. She calculated the time difference and the only people in head office would be the weekend duty staff. Jenni would know this. Either this was a rare slip-up, or something else. She studied her PA’s face and received the slightest negative response. Jenni didn’t want questions. “Thank you. I will deal with it tomorrow.”

“Lothar will escort you back to the Compound,” Anneke said, nodding toward the former priest, who’d appeared at Jenni’s back. “It’s easy to stray from the path here.” Anneke’s body language left no doubt she thought Jenni was a spy, a poor one at that.

Lothar laid his hand on Jenni’s shoulder, turning her away. She shrugged it off impatiently and set off at a brisk pace, intending to leave him behind. He lengthened his stride a little and was at her heels before she reached the first house.

“Shall we retire to the pavilion?” Gabrielle was now the host.

Rachael glanced at Jack, who shrugged apologetically. Oddly, this made her feel better. It brought him down closer to her level. “I’d love to,” she said. “My previous visits were in poor company.”

The pavilion had belonged to the Pontiff. He’d entertained off-world dignitaries there and Rachael had attended in her role as temple maiden—part of the entertainment.

“I can imagine.” Anneke’s tone sounded dry. “Peter sends his apologies.”

A window opened in Rachael’s mind, defeating twelve months of therapy in an instant, and she spoke without thought. “The Soldier.”

“I told you she’d remember.” She’d heard that voice before. It spun her around to face the man who’d appeared between her and the Pontiff to save her from the pike. “Rachael, this is Dael, my wife and Jack’s grandmother.”

Dael was the Earth Mother incarnate. Her eyes were as gentle as Jean-Paul’s, but wiser, more feminine. Her age could have been anything, but she was physically no older than the others.

“Shall we go in?” Peter was the host now, the natural leader, and he gestured for Rachael to precede him.

The pavilion was three-sided, open to the sea along one wall with a cushioned bench running around the other three. A cleverly arranged table, now laden with food, could swing to be accessible to each guest. Another gesture from Peter directed Rachael to the middle of the bench facing the sea, with Jack at her side, while the others took their places along the other walls. The Pontiff designed the space to be intimate and this group warmed it in a way Rachael had never experienced.

Her nervousness eased.

There were no questions. The conversation flowed though common subjects, open-ended gambits keeping it going, involving Rachael as if they’d all been friends for years. Peter obliged Gabrielle and Anneke by singing an ancient Earth ballad about a gypsy rover, both women lost in memories when he finished, and Jean-Paul gave a hilarious account of his dealings with some official on a world Rachael had never heard of before, a place far beyond the Federation’s reach.

These were far traveled people. They spoke familiarly of places she’d seen only in holograms, even Jack had been beyond the Federation reach. Portal technology was not new. Its invention many thousands of years in the past, nor was it confined to the Federation. The original discoverers had seen to its broad dissemination, traveling around the galaxy, demonstrating, assisting in the development like modern day apostles, and proselytizing the benefits to all. Their names were part of history: Cedric Brown, the engineer; Rashid, the commander; and Charles, the teacher. Another name, the patron saint of the new religion, was Gabrielle. Not this Gabrielle though. It would make her thirty-five thousand years old and that was patently ridiculous.

She’d come here tonight half inclined to accuse Jack of being an immortal. Having met his family, she knew he wasn’t. Immortals don’t have families. Their longevity made them environmentalists
par excellence,
and they’d understand the danger of overpopulation in ways mortals couldn’t grasp. Jack’s family was very special, truly Elite, but they were a family, the generations clearly defined, not by physical appearance but by attitudes. No one could doubt Peter’s position as the patriarch, or Jack’s as the grandson. It was the same with Dael, Anneke, and Gabrielle, the generations clearly defined. Peter’s son, Jack’s father, must be the Elite of Trygon, the only missing link and they were expecting him shortly. She’d never met him while she served the Pontiff.

“Have you left me any food?” A voice answered her thought and the final member of the party entered the pavilion. “Hello, you must be Rachael. I’m Karrel.” He crossed the floor, kissed her cheek, and sat down next to his wife, taking her hand in his in a natural gesture of affection. He and Peter were very close, not only in appearance, but in manner as well, both leaders, both aware of their responsibilities, but unabashed by their extent. She could sense mutual respect between them and the subtle homage paid by the others. In this group, such an accolade would take some earning.

“I think I like you.” Jack’s mouth was close to her ear. “What do you think we should do about it?”

“Slip away as soon as we can.” She spoke with minimal movement of her lips, her tone soft and private.

“You don’t like my family?” He pretended shock.

“I need something else more.”

A throaty chuckle, almost a purr, from Gabrielle drew her attention, but Jack’s mother looked at Karrel and brushed a crumb from the corner of his mouth. She was too far away to have heard.

“What are you going to do about it?” Rachael put the onus squarely on Jack.

“That’s a weighty matter. It deserves some thought.” He teased her with the hand concealed from the others by their position and it was Rachael’s turn to purr.

“Don’t think too long or I might shock your family.”

“This lot’s pretty hard to shock,” he warned, shifting his hand a little higher.

“I’m getting desperate.” She shifted to give him better access.

In truth, she enjoyed herself. These were good people to be with and she sensed their approval. They might be implacable enemies of the Federation, but they’d accepted her without question. This had to be the current generation of the mythical Alliance.

They’d probably fostered the myth of immortality as a tactic. Karrel and Peter were so alike, it would be hard to tell where one ended and the other started. Succession would be seamless to outsiders and Jack was well on the way to copying his father as closely. Their natural longevity as Elite helped, blurring memories as their earlier contemporaries died. Rachael felt a little smug at having worked it out, even discounting her privileged position in their midst.

“I was on your world a week ago.” Jean-Paul interrupted. “Your family’s prospering with the extra money you’re sending. Peter asked me to look in on them on my way home.”

His admission drew sharp looks from half the gathering and caused Rachael a pang of guilt. She‘d not contacted her parents in over a month. Such lapses were forgivable when she was undercover, but not now. She would rectify it tomorrow and tell Jenni to remind her frequently. “Tell me all the news,” she said. “I’ve been a bit remiss of late.”

“They understand the pressures of your new position and said to give you their love.” He went on to list the doings of everyone, keeping all the relationships in order, which was a difficult task in Rachael’s convoluted family, close knit as it was.

A secondary thought popped into Rachael’s mind. There was no ostentatious display of wealth here, but the journeys they’d all taken were not cheap and the
squeeze
all Federation officials demanded to facilitate secret movement wouldn’t have come lightly for known enemies. That sort of money should have appeared on the Federation’s radar. It might be monolithic, but the Federation was not lax. Internal Security monitored such things obsessively. There were never any arrests, just monitoring and surveillance. Knowledge was power in dealing with veniality.

The Pontiff had taunted her with the extent of Internal Security’s reach while she was undercover in the Temple. She’d let it slip in the debriefing and an Internal Security officer had paid her a visit, bargaining for her silence with a threats and promises. There was even a hint they were not above the secret disposal of the recalcitrant. They knew everyone’s secrets and their power was untrammeled.

Jack’s hand shifted again, destroying her train of thought.

“Behave yourself,” she whispered, turning her head to bring her lips close to his ear. “I’m meeting your family for the first time.”

“Of course,” he said, withdrawing his hand.

“You don’t have to go that far.” She shifted closer.

“They’re a fearsome bunch. You’re right to be cautious.” His expression looked a little too serious. “They start eating babies after the second course.”

Rachael started. Her mind had strayed to the Federation slanders, including the asinine claim of unnatural practices and child sacrifices. These were nice people, genuinely funny at times, who liked each other. There were no sniping remarks, no carping dialogue, they shared fun equally between giver and taker and respect was given, not imposed.

She liked them and wanted them to like her.

Limbo still fascinated Peter.

He’d named it from a vague recollection of religious instruction received in an isolated rural church from a man whose faith exceeded his theology by a country mile. Soldiering had overlain those childhood memories with hard-won pragmatism and, if his faith was non-existent, he still remembered the Reverend Black with affection. He’d slipped into it when the gathering at the beach pavilion broke up. The others all had business elsewhere and he had time to himself and knew what he wanted to observe.

Through the portal into his old world, Arlington was particularly beautiful. It was easy to forget political spite had requisitioned it illegally and hatred for an honorable enemy had established it. Robert E. Lee would have felt himself at home among the honored dead, while the place of the man who requisitioned it illegally is more questionable.

“Peter.”

He turned as Dael joined him, struck, as always, by her beauty. “Yes.” His tone made it a question.

“What are you doing here?”

He smiled, reading her concern. “I’m not sure. Honoring a memory, perhaps?”

“I’m worried.”

He sensed the truth and opened his arms. “There’s nothing to concern you here. Belen paid the price in full. If I had any vestige of a physical connection to the man lying in the coffin, then the time I’ve already spent here would equate to thirty years at home.” He used the term deliberately to prove he no longer thought of Earth as his home.

Dael buried her face in his shoulder and held him tight. “I can’t think that clearly when it comes to you.”

He held her until she was calm enough to accept a diversion. “How’s Rachael?”

“Remarkably well. Being in love is good for her.” Her arms tightened. “Have you been giving lessons?” He could feel her suppressed laughter.

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” He chuckled. “I thought of it as grandfatherly advice. Our version of a rite of passage, so to speak.”

He felt her test his memory and give grudging approval.

“You need more practice,” she decided. “Leave this nonsense and we’ll go to the beach camp.” Dael would never tire of the place where their love had begun and the others understood its special nature. None came there except by direct invitation, not even their children.

He knew there must be no argument. “Let’s go.”

They joined hands and were there.

* * * *

Jack felt Rachael’s rebellion as they walked toward the Federation compound and a glimpse of underlying pain trapped him into going deep enough to discover her fear of his immortality.

She would die. Dael and Jean-Paul would prolong her life for many years, probably doubling her life span, but in the end, she would die. He wasn’t immortal, not in the true sense, just incredibly long-lived. None of the Alliance had aged beyond maturity in the two hundred years since Karrel’s birth had broken the gentle tyranny of the Hives.

Anneke, Jean-Paul and Jack had developed normally through the first twenty years of life, as did all the children of the Hive who’d followed Dael’s example, reaching full physical maturity in their early twenties. At twenty, the aging process slowed and, at thirty, stopped altogether. Peter believed they would die eventually, and he was seldom wrong, so Jack accepted it intellectually. It was the trade-off for a physical reality and the ability to reproduce, the salvation of his grandmother’s race.

Was she right? Would pity replace his love as her beauty withered
? It hadn’t with Anneke and Jesse, but he was not Anneke’s equal.
Could he kiss a crone and feel the Rachael within
? Not all the loving in the world would ease the hurt of a single slip on his part. The prospect appalled him. The family was right. Rachael saw further into the future than he did. Guilt made him stop to embrace her, and then allow lust to redirect their steps toward the inn and his bedroom.