Chapter Seven
The plate of food that had been shoved into the room for me remained uneaten. Vaguely I heard Christy and her grandfather talking in the background. Both of their lives depended on what I could do tomorrow.
The only thing about that though was that it was highly likely my best efforts would get us all killed. I contented myself in the knowledge that at least our enemies would die as well.
How could they realistically expect me to be able to fly a ship beyond the realms of any body of water and not only that, but take it to another world? They were crazy!
I was a risk taker from way back when, but even I wouldn’t do this if given the choice. The deck was stacked against me though.
Again and again the alarming realization occurred to me that the best opportunity to escape and to be free of types like Lawrence was off-world. This ship represented his only access to the worlds he thought lay beyond.
If the ship didn’t return then any possible bounty hunters or government men sent out on a blood vendetta would be left with little else to do other than to stare at the stars. The only problem was that I had to successfully get the ship off-world.
The headache that had plagued me for an hour now threatened to overwhelm and I forced myself to stop overthinking the situation, but it was hard. I heard someone sit down and I mentally girded myself against the onslaught of Christy’s sweet presence.
Glancing to her I saw her regarding me curiously and I quickly looked away. I don’t know whatever she thought she saw good in me, but she was badly mistaken.
I was scum and she really shouldn’t be over here. It was like dangling a succulent looking steak in front of a half starved mongrel dog.
She picked up my plate and took a noisy bite out of a potato chunk. In surprise my eyes opened more fully and in something close to shock I regarded the mischievous blonde that sat beside me.
“You’re stealing my food!” I exclaimed softly, as if I couldn’t believe what my eyes were telling me.
She shrugged, “I’m hungry and there wasn’t much on my plate.” Was all she said as the adorable quality she possessed only intensified.
“And you think that entitles you to steal what’s mine?” I exclaimed further.
“Look who’s talking Mr. Notorious bank robber, cattle rustler, and various other crimes of grand larceny.” She countered with before biting into another potato.
Blinking from the rightness of her words I looked away. When reality bit, it bit hard!
“Want a bite? I’ll share.”
I looked at the skewered potato held beneath my nose on a fork, “No thanks. Enjoy your spoils. If I ate right now with the headache I have I’d be hurling it everywhere.”
She set the plate down as she said, “Why didn’t you say so? Come here.”
Before I knew it her hands pulled me over and only halfheartedly resisting her my head landed up in her lap. Blinking in surprise I watched as she sat my hat aside, which she’d returned to me when we had entered the tunnel.
Her hands rose to my face and her fingertips began to massage at my temples in a circular motion that was amazing even as it was alarming. She could slit my throat right now and so help me I wouldn’t have noticed.
“I’m not sure what I can do tommor………”
“Shhh. Relax. Tomorrow is in God’s hands and I’m sure you’ll do just fine.” Came her consoling words in a cutoff to mine.
My eyes opened and I looked up into her eyes that had far too many nakedly visible dreams of the future easily to be seen within them as she looked at me.
Swallowing I said, “You shouldn’t be thinking about whatever it is you see of happening between me and you. I’m not the man for you.”
The dreams didn’t die off in her eyes, instead she smiled as she asked, “Why?”
“I’m a sinner.”
She turned her head to the side with a soft laugh as she said, “So am I! Many times over in fact.”
I snorted derisively and surprisingly she smacked me on the cheek and with a serious look she said, “I’m not joking!”
I believed her and all I found myself able to respond with was in repeat of her question, “Why?”
“I like what I see and I like what I think you could become, that is if you wanted to.”
“I don’t change. I’m who I am.” I said flatly.
Her eyes holding the promise of untold wealth backed up her gently spoken words, “Not even for me?”
I stared at her speechless. Finally I closed my eyes and just let myself be lulled into peace by the actions of her hands.
I didn’t have an answer to her question. At least I didn’t think I did.
*****
Cornelius stood over his granddaughter, who continued to stroke the brow of the snoring man, whose head lay in her lap. He shook his head as he witnessed the loving actions of his favorite person in all the world.
Love, it just didn’t make any sense or have any rhyme or reason to it. There was no fighting it though so he said nothing resolving instead to hold back any opinions he had on the moral character of the man his granddaughter had picked out for herself.
The man though, tarnished and with quite the reputation, by all accounts did have a decency about him in regards to how he treated Christy. That was important, as was the fact that this man more so than any dandified city fellow had the ability to keep his granddaughter safe.
Safe? What truly was safe anymore?
He’d done his best to provide a safe haven for Christy after both her parents had been stabbed in a mugging in broad daylight when she had been only four. He’d done all he could to ensure her safety in life and look where all his best efforts had ended up!
Her very life and well-being were in great peril, because of him of all people! Curse his exemplary grasp of knowledge beyond the means of his day and age that had landed him in this pit in the middle of nowhere serving to the likes of an arrogant little mouse of a man such as Lawrence!
The Lawrence’s of the world were destroying society and now they were threatening all he held dear. They had to be stopped, but his feeble old hands weren’t up to the task anymore, but perhaps this stranger was.
Had God sent a savior in the form of a lobo wolf or was the man really nothing more than a bottom feeder on society that would trash his granddaughter’s heart? Only time would tell, but for now he busied himself by praying that it would not be so.
*****
I rose up out of a dead sleep and in the dim light of the room, I took in Christy, who lay back against the wall fast asleep sitting up. Cornelius was sawing logs in one of the two cots in the room.
Gently I scooped Christy up off the floor and her head fell trustingly against my shoulder. Swallowing I carried her to the other cot and laid her down trying not to awaken her, but her eyes opened dreamily as she said, “Thank you. My bottom was killing me.”
I could well imagine that with her sitting on the stone floor with the weight of my head in her lap for hours. “You should have woke me up.”
“No, I couldn’t do that. You needed your rest.”
I went to move away, but her hand held onto my shirt, “I want you to kiss me.”
I looked at her and she added, “I’ve stared at your lips for hours.”
“Christy I don’t……”
“Please.”
“I..…… I….”
“Oh come on. I know you want to.” She cajoled.
I looked at her askance, “Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Maybe. So what if I am? Now please kiss me!”
“Only if you promise to stop trying to seduce me.” I countered with.
Pouting her lips she gave me a look of disappointment that hurt somehow to see before moving to roll on her side facing away from me and saying, “Now that, I can’t promise you.”
I stared at the side of her face in contemplation. What was wrong with this woman?
Nothing as far as I could see. Absolutely nothing at all. So then why did she want me?
Reaching a finger forward I threaded the curly blonde tresses of her hair back over her ear and away from her face. I moved back from her as the temptation became just too great.
I was a man worthy of hell, but if I messed up this girl’s life I’d be fit for something far worse than hell.
I went to the half boarded over window that moonlight poured through. “God I’m not sure you’re hearing this, but if You could tomorrow I’d really appreciate it if You could help me fly that ship thing and find a way to get this girl and her grandfather to safety. I…… I’d be very beholden to You if You’d do that.” I stopped myself from speaking further and going over to where I had been earlier I sat down.
Hunger beckoned, but one look at the plate full of crumbs and the overstuffed form of Mark laying blissfully unconscious to the world beside it changed my mind. I’d suffered far worse things in life than making it through a night with a bellyful of hunger, but the hunger I felt for Christy truly was torture.
Closing my eyes I whispered, “God help me not be me when it comes to her!”
I willed myself to sleep then, but all I could dream of was what it would’ve been like to kiss her.
*****
They would be coming for us at any moment and Cornelius still hadn’t answered my question!
“Out with it! How do I get out of these shock bracelets?”
Cornelius continued to look me in the face stubbornly and I felt myself truly begin to lose it. In frustration I turned away.
Christy tugged on her grandfather’s hand, “Please tell him Grand Papa!” She urged.
“And what if I do! Then he’ll go off and leave you here in this murderous den of vipers! He isn’t to be any more trusted than they are!”
“Grand Papa!”
“What! You don’t know this man’s reputation? His face is on every billboard in the Southwest! The man’s practically a legend for pulling off stunts of robbery and mischievery!”
Gritting my teeth I moved away to the room’s solitary window. Staring out it I grimly acknowledged that he had a very well reasoned point. I was not a man of honor so why should I be trusted as such?
I found for the very first time since I could remember the desire within me to be respected and trusted by others. Sadly it was too late for that.
How was I going to get Christy out of here? More than anything in the world I wanted to see to it that she had the ability to keep on being nice and in a setting surrounded by equally nice people.
I could hear the two of them arguing, but not the gist of what they were saying. Cornelius was suddenly beside me and once again regarding me with those piercing eyes of his.
Christy remained by the door and I tried once more to convince the old man, “Look, I honestly just want to get your granddaughter out of here. I perhaps better than you know full well what will happen once either you or she outlive your usefulness to Lawrence. I don’t want that for her! I’m really telling you the truth on that Sir!”
Cornelius nodded and said softly, “I believe you young man. Forgiven an old man his doubts. Christy is very precious to me.”
I nodded full well understanding how that could be. I wouldn’t trust her with someone like me either and yet he’d just said he believed me.
“You no doubt must have come to the conclusion that the best opportunity to escape Lawrence is when we’re off-world?” Cornelius inquired.
Nodding I said, “Providing I get us off-world successfully to start with.”
“Oh I have no fear of that. You’ll do fine today. It’s in your blood after all.” He hesitated for a moment, but then said, “You must also realize that there is no safe way my granddaughter could ever come to live on Earth in peace again thanks to men like Lawrence who rule and reign in extreme positions of power behind the scenes of our very own government?”
“The idea has crossed my mind Sir.”
“Well what are you prepared to do about it?” Cornelius pressed.
I took my hat off and twisted it in my hands before acknowledging my own lack of an answer to the problem at hand, “I don’t know Sir. She’s at risk no matter how I see it.”
Cornelius nodded before pointing at me, “But gentle soul that she is she’s safest when with you of all people.”
I shook my head, “That’s not safe at all. I don’t know anything about women like her. I’m somebody who really has…….well just plain made a mess of it and she keeps looking at me as if she thinks I’m something special. I’m not and I know it!”
Cornelius was looking at me in an intense fashion that said he was seeing something that he hadn’t before. Finally he spoke, “If you want to know how to be free and to save not only your own life, but hers as well then you have to do two things.”
Looking at him out of the same depth of intensity that he was looking at me I said, “What are they?
“You have to keep my granddaughter off-world and not let her ever return to Earth. That’s one condition.”
I nodded, “I’ll agree to that. What’s the other?”
“You have to marry her right here and now.”
“What?” I squeaked out in a voice that sounded more like the mouse in my pocket had spoken.
“You heard me! Now what about it?”
I glanced to Christy, who had come close, only to see her equally shocked at her grandfather’s change of heart.
“You were just arguing against him and now you’re for having me marry him?” Christy asked in a small voice.
Cornelius waved his hand through the air, “I changed my mind! I’m entitled to do that and anyway things are different, because I can see he loves you.”
“I don’t……” I started to protest, but Cornelius overrode me, “Oh yes you do! In fact you love her so much that you’re willing to give up your precious free roaming lifestyle because you know it’s what she deserves and that her being with you gives her the best chance of survival! Am I right or not?”
I remained silent as I couldn’t say otherwise, but what he wanted wasn’t right. Before I knew it he was explaining how among other things than being just a scientist and a mathematician he was also an ordained minister and then he started spouting out the vows of marriage that I’d never expected to be heard said over me.
Equally mystifying to me was the sound of my voice in reply to the same vows. In a trance I heard Christy’s voice repeat the same and then Cornelius wrapped it all up by saying, “You may kiss the bride later. Right now I think I hear them coming.”
Gesturing to my bracelets he said, “It’s really rather simple. They made a colossal error in putting two bracelets on you. Men like Lawrence always think overkill is better, but it often proves their undoing. All you need to do is get one of them mad enough at you to give you a zap. You then touch both bracelets together and they will short each other out and fall harmlessly off your wrists.”
Blinking I asked in a whisper as I heard the door being opened, “All I have to do is touch them together?”
He nodded and I turned to the door as I relied on my best poker face to hide how shaken up inside I was at the recent turn of events. I was a married man. Literally everything had just changed about my life.
Lawrence came into view, “Alright let’s get the process of making history underway. You two come with me. The girl stays behind.”
Cornelius was about to erupt into an angered outburst, but I preempted him by saying, “Fine by me boss, but you do realize it’s your first mistake.”
Cornelius took a quick breath and looked at me as if I’d gone nuts. Lawrence was speculative in his study of me, “How so?”
I shrugged, “She’s a loose end no matter how you look at her. Leaving her here opens the possibility of her escaping and talking about all she knows. I’d just shoot her and be done with it.”
With a gasp Christy pulled back from me as I kept my face a mirror image of the cool calculation that Lawrence manifested.
Cornelius cut in, “You harm one hair of her head and I’m through! I’ll sabotage your little get up here until the wires won’t spark off each other! I’ll……”
Lawrence waved his hand dismissively at Cornelius, “Alright she can come, but she had better behave!”
Lawrence left the room and I felt Cornelius softly pat me on the back. As for myself I felt myself breathe again.
That had been close. Married one moment and almost a widower the next. Not the start I’d envisioned to my marriage, not that I’d ever envisioned any such thing in the first place.
I moved to leave the room and Christy impulsively grabbed at my hand to hold it, but I shook my hand free of hers and catching on she dutifully separated away from me as it would appear only natural for her to do from someone who’d just said she’d be better off dead. I couldn’t resist taking one glance at her though and she gave me a quick wink in return.
It was a struggle not to smile at her impulsiveness but her life depended on it. Strangely being yoked to her didn’t seem like the prison sentence I’d always viewed marriage as. She certainly deserved better than me and I would do my best to be better. God help me!
*****
I sat once more in the seat I had the day before and the windows and dash before me came alive with symbols and all kinds of riffraff.
“Now what?” I asked dumbly.
Cornelius was at a panel off to the side behind me and at my question he said, “Now we open the doors and then you very carefully are going to move us outside.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Think about going forward. Think about moving forward very slowly that is!”
The wall before me separated and moved off to either side and I was greeted by an unencumbered view over the canyon system beyond. I did as he said and the craft moved forward with only a little turbulence as I bounced it off the floor of the vault once.
“Easy with it Logan!” Lawrence said testily.
“Shut it!” I responded tightlipped, as a concentrated all my willpower on what I was doing.
“I won’t have the likes of you talking to me in such a way!” Lawrence hotly responded.
“Then shock me or shoot me in the back!” I offered, as the craft edged out over the rim of the canyon that fell off steeply below us. Lawrence was silent, but I could feel him fuming with the urge to push the button.
Like it or not he needed me and right now his survival depended on my ability to fly the ship, which so far was going surprisingly well. I thought upward and the craft lifted above the canyon until we were overlooking the plain of the desert that lay stretched all around us.
“Now what?” I asked.
Lawrence stepped up to Cornelius and handed him a paper, “Here are the coordinates of the world we wish to visit.”
Cornelius took the paper and studied it with interest before he began to hit a series of buttons on a wall panel. “The course is set. Logan do you feel an urging to let go of control of the ship?”
“Yes.”
“Then do so.”
I let go of the double handles and the ship floated upward with speed on a targeted direction of which I assumed had been put in place by Cornelius just now. The complexity of everything around me was overwhelming.
I glanced back to where Christy was sitting towards the rear. Her face wore the same look of incredibility that my own must reflect.
Seeing her sitting back there brought me to ground so to speak. The incredibility of all that was around us, while awe-inspiring, wasn’t suitable to mask the dire situation we were faced with.
Even now I had one of Lawrence’s people hovering over me looking at what the screens and lighted buttons were all about. Three more were hovering about Cornelius studying and asking questions of everything that he did. It was clear that the process of learning to replace us had already begun in earnest.
Soberly I did my best to study the instruments before me. A lot of the controls and features on the screens were in the form of irregular shapes. Shapes I recognized!
As a boy both my brother and I had inherited a set of wooden building block toys. We’d played and created new shapes and structures with them endlessly for hours. Not one toy block was exactly the same as another.
The toy blocks had names carved into them and certain ones allowed you to build certain structures. Some of the structures had been quite grand and Taran and I had always been competing to see if we could create something uniquely original.
In most aspects Taran had excelled more than I in both aptitude and fighting, but with block wars I’d held my own and even won some of the time. Now I began to see that the blocks had really just been the rough form of representation of the lines that made up the outlines of the blocks. Did the shapes still go together in this virtual world?
Reaching forward I touched the lighted outlines on the dash and they moved with the pull of my fingers across the surface. Cool!
Smiling softly I started to create interweaved shapes.
“What…… what are you doing?” Asked my apprentice in a hushed voice as if blown away by what was being manifested by the twisting of my fingers on the dash and even the lighted panes of the window before me.
I ignored him, but he became insistent, “What are you doing?”
“Playing.”
“What?” He exclaimed.
He began to speak again, but Cornelius who had come up unawares behind us spoke, “Shut up and leave him be!”
The man made to speak, but Lawrence also in attendance waved his hand no. I forgot the gathering of the others around me as I focused on what was before me.
The exotic names of the blocks had come back to me along with configurations I had thought long since lost since I had moved beyond the realm of childhood. More and more the truth that my people had come from the stars became unquestionably real to me.
There was no denying it now and somehow my forefathers had equipped me for this day without directly telling me. I’d have lived life with the greater aspect of my existence unknown and so it would have continued if the greed of a clan of individuals bent on power and the acquirements of more of it hadn’t meddled in the natural course of events.
Words to shapes and shapes realigning into forms of geometric complexity steadily evolved before me. The shapes were a language and the more I built and modified them the greater my understanding of the language grew. The pictures on the screens before me were opening up some hereto for hidden memory in my mind that I didn’t remember ever having been taught.
I knew how this ship worked. I knew the way the engines combined with particles of light to realign them up within an internal array which focused and re-magnified their power into a greater output than was first received in the initial input.
I knew all this about this ship and how it worked and yet I still didn’t know how it was that I could know, but the more I played the more I learned or as it seemed to be to me, remembered.
“Just what are you doing Logan?” Cornelius breathed out.
“I wish I knew.”
“Don’t give me that Logan!” Lawrence cut in angrily. He went on, “You will teach my man what it is you’re doing and I mean now!”
Not looking from the dash and the glass screens before me as I became more adept by the moment in the creation process I had begun I said, “No dice Lawrence.”
“What!!!”
“You heard me. I ain’t training anyone to take over for me so you can just kill me.”
Lawrence lost his temper then and began screaming all kinds of dire threats, but I pushed him to the back of my attention. Finally though he said something that attracted my attention back to him, “Bring the girl over here!”
Glancing away from the game of shapes I turned to watch Christy be drug forward roughly. Lawrence pulled a knife out and held it to her throat, “Tell us now or I’m going to start carving her up like a turkey and don’t bother trying to lie to us about how you don’t care for her! I know different and in fact that’s why I decided to bring her along in order to properly motivate you to do my will if need be.”
I swung around in the chair that swiveled smoothly to the accomplishment of the task. Christy had a brave face on, but the knife was hard to ignore.
Looking Lawrence directly in the eye I said, “Touch her and you die. Don’t believe me then go ahead and keep holding her like that and you’ll find out.”
Silence strung out for a long moment as I let all the apathy of spirit I felt for this man come into vivid focus within my eyes. I’m known for being intense at times, mostly I shield that aspect as to be too intense made more of an impression on people and helped them to pick your face out of a crowd as that of a notorious bank robber.
Lawrence wasn’t liking what he saw and grudgingly he released her.
Nodding I said, “Wise decision. Now I’ll toss you a bone. Did you know that the world you have us headed for is still inhabited despite having taken heavy damage in a slave revolt of some years back?”
Lawrence’s eyes widened and he breathed out in question barely loud enough to be heard, “How do you know that?”
“Couldn’t tell you if I tried. Suffice it to say though the more I play the more I learn. Now drift away and take him with you and I’ll get you to where you want to go.”
Obediently Lawrence did so and it appeared that things were well in hand. One of his goons started to drag Christy away but I said, “She stays and sits right here beside me.” I said in indication of the seat across from mine.
Lawrence nodded in ascent and Christy quickly shook her arm free and headed to the chair and sat down beside me.
Calling out after Lawrence I said, “In addition to being still inhabited the world also has some surviving structures of its earlier cultural societal makeup.”
Lawrence suddenly looked as if besides himself with glee. He moved off toward the back of the ship armed with those tidbits.
Everything I had said while true had in point been a deception. A deception I intended for him to find out for himself in vivid detail.
In a gruff whisper Cornelius said, “I recognized some of those symbols from Greek classical literature. We’re not headed to Atlantis are we?”
It was weird. Everything he’d just said should’ve been Greek to me, but for whatever reason I now seemed to be linked with a vast depository of knowledge and I in turn knew exactly what he meant.
“Not Atlantis itself. A one time galactic outpost of it however yes.” I whispered in reply to his query.
“It’s still occupied?” Cornelius breathed out with concern.
“Yes, but there is nothing to fear Cornelius. We’re going to take Lawrence there and if all goes according to plan that is where we’ll leave him and his crew.”
“I don’t understand.”
Truly neither did I fully, but in part I did and that was enough for me to take faith in. Cornelius moved off and it was just me and Christy.
Glancing over at her it was to the welcome look of her ever inviting smile. I shook my head, “How can you smile like that in this stressful environment? You just had a knife held to your throat.”
She shrugged and said, “Because I’m happy.”
I glanced from her to the screen full of interconnected shapes before me. She was happy to be with me?
I wasn’t sure I comprehended how that could be, but I wasn’t wishful of what she’d said changing in any way.
“I can’t wait for you to kiss me.”
My jaw gripped hard. I glanced at her feeling every bit the big bad wolf and said, “There’s a lot more about being together than just kissing Christy.”
“I know.” She said softly looking more excited than scared.
It hurt to look at her and yet it was impossible not to. She was beauty and innocence personified. Troubled I looked away from her.
“What’s wrong Logan?” She asked concerned.
“You should have a better man than the likes of me.”
“I could ask for no better a man than you. God has greatly blessed me with you Logan.”
“How so?” I asked doubtfully, as I stared outward past the shapes into the darkness of space beyond the window.
“Well I know you care for me even as you have cared for me. You love me enough to risk your own life for me as you have already on several occasions and no doubt yet are going to do so again in the future. You’re handsome and although I know you have a past I yet have confidence that you’ll be faithful to only me from now on. Am I right?”
I nodded dutifully.
“What’s not to love about you Logan?”
“A great deal. I’ve stolen and killed more than you can imagine. The guilt I bear is more than can be forgiven.”
“That’s not so and you know it!”
I looked to her and she went on. Raising a finger she a