Age of Power 1: Legacy (12 page)

I heard that as he began to talk about how deeply he had cared
for his step-grandson. And although I had to look down to keep from making a
face, I had no doubt that many people actually bought into his words. I knew he
hadn’t cared about Alex. But with the way he was speaking about him now, the
unwary might think he had been getting ready to make Alex heir apparent to the
Andrews fortune. But I knew. And so did some others. Glancing around, I saw
their looks. They didn’t believe him, either. Then, out of the corner of my
eye, I caught movement from where Brand was sitting, and I looked over to see
him making a puking gesture. He saw me looking, and grinned as he shook his
head in disbelief.

Then my eyes went round with sudden anger when Andrews said,
“His father would be here, of course, but dear Brian has been so distraught
over the loss of his only child that he simply couldn’t come to terms with his
deep loss. Our prayers are with him and with the soul of Alex Shaw, and, as the
President said, we can only hope to come together as Alex asked us to. I am
certain that Alex meant for us to do as the Bible commanded.”

I stared at the man. That was not what Alex meant. I
was certain of it. I looked at Brand, and he gestured for me to calm down. I
did my best to listen to him. But just the same, I almost jumped to my feet,
ready to smack the man down. Alex wasn’t even here to defend himself.

Then a hand touched my knee. I looked to see Dana reaching past
Erick Ryan to me. She quietly shook her head to keep me calm until Andrews
finished his false homily. She pulled back only after he was done speaking.

As Andrews walked away from the podium, Dana stood up and looked
at me with a mix of deep sadness and determination. All at once, I felt this
sense of utter calm as she went up to the podium. I found myself waiting with
the rest of the crowd as she looked out, her gaze slowly panning over the gym.
She then looked down at the podium, closing her eyes. When she opened them and
looked to the audience, she began to sing.

The 
room was utterly silent, save
 for
the voice of a full lyrical soprano singing with such perfection that all of us
could only sit, enraptured. I didn’t understand a single word she sang. She
wasn’t singing it in English. Instead, I recognized it as Gaelic, the language
of the Celts. Aunt Cassie had spoken it to me a few times. She said it was what
she spoke for her spell work. Hearing this one moment of perfect beauty told me
why my aunt did so.

And even though I couldn’t understand the language, the raw
emotion in her voice tugged at this sense of utter despair within me, and then,
in the midst of that sadness, something in her voice changed, adding in a hint
of growing hope. But even as she sang that, her voice tinged the hope with
sadness so great that, even as the emotional heart healed, it would leave a
shadow in the lives of everyone it had touched. And in all that, Dana had done
it with her voice alone.

And from that voice alone, I fell utterly in love with this
beautiful woman. I 
was gifted
 with perfect
memory for sound, and for the first time in my life, I was thankful for the
gift. I’d remember Dana’s final goodbye for the rest of my life. And yet, all I
could do was the same thing everyone else did as she came to a soft whispering
finish; stare in dumbfounded shock. This wasn’t just music. This was
perfection.

At the end, with a quiet voice, Dana said, “For Alex.”

No one said a thing as she returned to her seat. Tears showed
clearly in the speaker’s eyes as she introduced the next person who would
speak. Erick Ryan stood up and walked to the podium. He wiped unashamedly at
his own eyes, and then, clearing his throat, he spoke of his first—and
only—meeting with Alex Shaw. And he spoke of what might have been.

I looked at this man, and knew that I should have recognized
him. Erick Ryan was the founder of Ryan Technologies. He 
wasn’t well known
 yet, though the company had developed
better solar batteries and advancements in the methane-fuel technology. But he
had dreams. I’d heard of a few of them from students at the Iowa University
Technical College on the southeast edge of town. Ryan called his idea the
Quantum Fission Core. And while he hadn’t gotten it working so far, rumor had
it that eventually it would match and output enough energy to make even a fully
working fusion reactor look like a firecracker going off.

At present, though, he 
was seen
 as
a rich dreamer who brought people in to create for him and to keep his company
going through small invention patents. I considered this and thought that if he
was rich enough to play around at building new things, why argue? If he
succeeded, he’d put Riverlite on the map, and then we might get more in our
Wikipedia article than a few small paragraphs about being a research slash
college town and a link to the Avatar Wikipedia page.

But Erick Ryan had a surprise for us. It seemed that he had met
Alex one night while driving home from a science symposium in Chicago. Alex had
been jogging off to the side of the road and Ryan had gotten a flat tire
just after passing by him. Alex had helped him change the tire. While that was
going on, Alex talked with him, and the sixteen-year-old shocked Ryan with the
level of knowledge he had in physics. I chuckled as Ryan said he’d been so
impressed by the depth and reach of what Alex knew that he had decided that he
was going to offer him an internship.

Ryan got the entire room clapping when he announced that since
he couldn’t offer that to Alex any longer, he was instead creating the Shaw
Scholarship Foundation for scientifically gifted graduates. Brand and I looked
at each other with a ‘who knew’ look. I had the wry thought that I should’ve
studied more science.

Finally, it was my turn. I got up and quietly went to the podium
as the room calmed down from Ryan’s announcement. As I looked out over the
crowd and saw my face on the screen and people waiting for me to speak, for a
moment, I froze up. 
So many people.
 This was
a lot more than I expected. 
So many…so many people.
 Then
I looked around at all the people who’d spoken and I rested my gaze on
Bersculini, Anderson, and finally Dana. Again, I felt a sense of calm from her.
But the room slowly filled with whispers and mutters. I stayed quiet. Just
then, it hit me. Joe Andrews had paid for the hospital bills. We owed the
bastard. If I went through with this, he might use that to hurt us. Then I saw
my mom, her eyes filled with pride, and she nodded. She knew, and, in that
moment, she accepted the potential cost of my decision. And that was enough.

“Alex Shaw killed a man to save myself and Brand Houseman from
being murdered. The guy’s name was James Jessup,” I said quietly.

Taking a deep breath, I went on, “I noticed that no one had
mentioned that. I noticed that people here didn’t mention that Alex was still
here on the day before Yama was due to arrive. That’s when he saved Brand and
me.”

I turned to look at Joe Andrews. “Maybe it was the panic on your
part. Maybe it was just bad timing, and he missed the family plane. In any
case, I’m grateful. If you hadn’t left him behind, he would never have been
there to make the decision to stop Yama.”

I turned back to the stunned crowd and saw the hard, tense look
I was getting from people in the room. “None of us knew Alex Shaw. He was too
quiet. He hid behind the leather and the black. I knew him in school, and I
knew him from reading comic books with him. Because of those comic books, I
guess I can say that I knew that he liked the idea of superheroes. And I knew
he believed that if you could do something, then you should do it. And he did
save us. But he didn’t do it because he believed himself to be a hero. He did
it because he knew that it was the right thing to do. So, while his flight to
stop Yama was as much a shock to me as it was to all of you, I felt that it fit
for who he was.”

Behind me, I heard Dana quietly whisper, “Thank you, Vaughn. Now
it’s a memorial.”

“Alex was seventeen, and he was gay. He was dark, and 
kind of
 scary to feel comfortable around. I liked him,
but I couldn’t call him a good friend. I don’t think Alex had many of those.”

I hesitated for a moment, trying to find the words. Then, taking
another breath, I continued. “Because Alex didn’t have many friends, he was
almost completely alone on the Day. But when he left us, he did it to save
everyone, good and bad. By the way, he didn’t mean to say for us to follow the
Bible or God’s will.”

I turned and looked pointedly at Joe Andrews as I said, “I’m
sorry, but Alex didn’t say anything like that. And while you can interpret it
however you want, what Alex said was, ‘Don’t abandon each other. Live. For each
other’s sake, live.’”

I realized that it was time to finish this speech. I turned back
to look at the people in the gymnasium and said, "Think about that in
whatever way you may. Religious, social, or secular, it doesn’t matter. To me,
it means that we shouldn’t run away from each other. It means that we should
stay, we should live in the moment, and we should love each other. That’s what
he meant. It’s about being there for each other. Let that be his
final memory. However else this goes, come tomorrow. 
Because
he gave tomorrow back to us.
 Don’t blow it. Don’t abandon each
other.”

I looked back at Joe Andrews and said softly, “Ever again.”

Those last two words echoed in the silent gymnasium. I left the
podium. But before I got to my seat, I heard the sound of a single person
clapping. I looked out over the audience to try to figure out who was doing it.
But they were looking around, trying to find 
the who
 was
clapping as much as I was. Then, as I looked up to my right, I saw a single
person standing. Angela.

Defiant, ignoring the shocked looks of her journalism peers, the
petite blonde continued to clap. Then my mom stood and joined in. My dad and
the Housemans quickly followed suit. At that point, the rest of the room stood
to do the same. I just stood watching, stunned. There had been polite clapping
for the other speakers. With the exception of Erick Ryan, none had gotten this.
I really didn’t know what to say. All I knew was that I had talked about Alex
honestly. No matter what, he deserved that. But I could only sit in silence as
the ovation continued. I felt overwhelmed.

After a few more moments, a nervous speaker came up and
announced that the post-memorial reception was beginning. The clapping
continued, and I started feeling heated, embarrassed. Slowly, though, as the
music began to announce the end of the memorial, the clapping ended. True, I’d
poured everything I felt about Alex out to the crowd. But I hadn’t expected
this reaction. However, it told me something. Whoever was pushing Alex into the
role of a saint, they didn’t have every person convinced.

The cameras 
were packed
 away as
police quietly moved in to push the reporters out. Sorry, I meant to say they
began to ‘escort’ them out of the gym while all of us on stage waited
patiently. I glanced to the front of the room at one point and saw Angela
looking back at me.

She had the oddest look on her face. A sort of sadness mixed
with understanding and just a trace of pride. I hoped she’d gotten the story
she was looking for. It made me smile to know that she had been the first to
clap. Maybe she was human, after all, and not just a reporter. It would be nice
to know, considering how I was beginning to feel about her. For some reason,
seeing her made it hard to breathe.

After the reporters were gone, people in the middle section
began to move and those of us on the stage stood up. I glanced across the stage
to see Cardinal Bersculini and Joe Andrews glaring at me. Before I could say or
do anything, Andrews began to stalk toward me with some obvious intention
of not saying nice things. Dana and Erick Ryan stepped between Andrews
and me.

Andrews’s eyes narrowed at their move and looked at Dana as he
said, “Young lady, move aside. I want to have some words with this young man.
He’s clearly mistaken about a few facts!”

Behind him, Cardinal Bersculini started to say something. But
one of his own people stopped him and pointed to one of the television screens.
I glanced above us and saw that the screens were still showing us on stage. I
had a feeling that someone outside in one of those vans decided to keep cameras
on us to see what might happen. If the old man decided to ‘correct’ my
mistakes, he’d be doing it in front of what might be thousands—if not
millions—of people.

Andrews saw it. He opened his mouth and then closed it tightly.
Then, with a tense nod, he reached out and shook Dana and Ryan’s hands. Once he
let go—very quickly, I might add—he turned to join Cardinal Bersculini and, as
we watched, they walked down the other flight of steps. On the floor, the
clergy members and a couple townspeople who managed businesses owned by Joe joined
them, and they quickly exited. I suspected a few limos were waiting outside to
take them away from here.

I relaxed, realizing that I had been holding my breath.

I said to Dana, “Thanks.”

Dana gave me a tight grin. She said, “I think I have to wash
this hand…ugh. That wasn’t fun. But it was worth it! Thank you, Vaughn.”