Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5) (42 page)

Then Kelly twisted the knife. “We
all figured Laura used the last of Fucked Stupid on the ambassador to snare him
in Rio.”

Laura had been wrong about hell.
Hell was being given paradise and losing it by your actions years ago. Hell was
having your goddess mother-in-law listening to your every flaw. “I never forced
Stu.”

Then Mary asked the important
question. “What I don’t get is that you aren’t all lesbians. You clearly like
being with Mo, and you don’t want to kill him.”

“He’s already infected with CU. The
virus won’t attack anyone who carries it,” Kelly explained. “Speaking of Mo,
when does he get back? When can I talk to him?”

“Discontinue log,” Mary ordered,
terminating the audio link.

Waves of grief emanated from the
brig.
She’s probably telling Kelly what happened to Mo.

Zeiss stood up from his console.
“Laura, are you okay?”

Laura turned to her father, her
face wet with tears. She wanted to crawl under a rock, but she had too much to
do. Every second, someone else was infected with her handiwork. “Sir, Aunt Mary
squeezed a confession out of the prisoner. The plague is far worse than we
thought. Contact the UN. Tell them Nyx and Earth First collaborated. Stop the
distribution. Sojiro can provide a list of initial contamination sites and
flights to quarantine.” She sniffed and wiped her face.

“Does she have a cure?” Zeiss
asked.

“No, but we can inoculate people by
infecting them with the Collective Unconscious talent. Even a drop of blood
should do. For embryos, I’ll sign my patent for CU variant 37 over to the World
Health Organization. Check my article in the Journal of Anthropology for
disease-dispersion patterns to plan containment strategies. I could probably
suggest a couple tests to find infected people in a crowd, based on cranial
temperature and pupil response.” After a pause, she added, “We should immunize
our own crew members as soon as possible.”

Zeiss shook his head. “Just like
your mother, going in four directions at once. I’m proud of you for solving
this. You’re going to save so many lives.”

Part of her basked in his praise
like Nana’s flowers in the sunshine, yet she sensed a tension weighing on her
father’s mind. “But?”

“The last attempt against us came
too close. We can only afford one more transmission, and then we’re gone. Take
another couple hours and compose it if you need to.” Zeiss escorted her to the
medical lab. “The whole staff is yours for as long as you need it.”

Mary snuck out soon after.

Laura spotted her aura but was too
busy planning to talk. She had to drive a stake into this monster’s heart
before anyone else knew her role in creating it. No one would talk to her after
that news leaked.

Since the final message to Earth was a farewell as well as a
warning, composing it took much longer than anticipated. Laura weighed each
additional sentence, making certain that it would save more lives than those
lost during the minutes it took to compose. While she agonized over her last
technical paper, her father allowed everyone aboard to add their own last words
to the world of their birth. Based on the last contact attempt, none of the
original crew members or fugitives would be allowed to return.

After Snowflake transmitted the
entire package from a safe distance, Laura made a copy for her records, kissed
her parents, and walked home for the expected round of evasive maneuvers. Stu
was in the pilot seat this time and promised not to spill the lakes.

When Laura arrived home, Aunt Mary
was on the porch swing in her green jumpsuit snapping peas for dinner. The
borrowed belt was nowhere to be seen, probably back in the storage chest. The
happy domestic scene made Laura smile. “We did it! We gave Earth a fighting
chance and said our good-byes. We’re on our way to the new colony.”

Mary reached out a hand for the
computer pad. “Do you mind? I wanted to read your father’s final note. I always
thought he would have made a good priest … homily-wise.”

Laura smiled and exchanged her pad
for the peas. She continued snapping the ends off as Mary had done, but more
slowly. “Did you leave a message?”

“Goodness, no. I never existed as
an adult on Earth. My whole life was a fiction. All the friends and family I
have left are here with us.”

“Johann Dahlstrom is about your
age. He might be interested.”

“Hmph. I may take a lover or two,
but I think I’ve missed the window for true love,” Mary said.

“What will you do on the voyage?”
Laura asked.

“I’m an excellent manager, and I
know a fair bit about alien tech. I thought I’d lead the project to reproduce
the decontamination pods. We might not be able to rebuild a human from scratch,
but we can advance medical science by a few centuries. I think you’d make an
excellent chief scientist for the medical branch. Give me your password, and
I’ll link you to our project.”

“Rio gardens with a capital R.”

“Your first official date with
Stu.”

Laura glanced down. “I didn’t drug
him. I would never—”

“I already questioned him
discreetly, honey.” Mary patted her on the leg. “The only time you ever used
perfume was the night of Mori’s assault. If he had been drugged, you’d both be
dead.”

“I hope you reassured your sister.”

“Mercy knows you chose him over the
whole world. She won’t say anything. We edited the log so that only Kelly’s
confession remained.”

“How is Kelly?”

Mary glanced up from the pad. “She
hung herself in her cell.”

“How?”

“With a belt that contained all the
evidence against her.”

Laura dropped the bowl. “My belt?”

Helping her pick up the mess, Mary
explained, “Don’t worry. She wasn’t pregnant. I told her that Mo had committed
suicide after meeting Koku, which was true. I implied he did it because he
couldn’t face being bonded to a mass murderer. I ‘accidentally’ left the belt,
and she did the rest. Just as well. Putting her on trial as the widow of a hero
would have been impossible. I just couldn’t leave that loose end. I mean, one
murder you could overlook, but a few hundred thousand indicates a pattern of
behavior. Kelly showed no remorse.”

Shock and guilt warred inside
Laura. In the end, relief won out. She wasn’t sure what that said about her as
a person, but her family would be safer without Kelly’s threats and schemes.

Mary deleted the file labeled
DeathToTyrants off Laura’s computer pad. “Sojiro has asked Koku to erase the
Trumpet research from memory to avoid anyone else from concocting a similar
horror.”

“You’re covering for me?”

“Yes, I wiped your fingerprints,
dear. You’re starting clean. If you want to mend fences with Nyx, approach your
friend Evangeline about carrying Mr. Onesemo’s child. Call it a tribute. Lord
knows, Mo deserves better use of his DNA for the world to remember his heroism
by.”

“Stu would support that.” Laura
scrunched up her brow. “Why are you helping to hide my part in this?”

“With Stu’s feminist rhetoric and
alien tech, people would assume that he incited Nyx to spread Trumpet, you
manipulated him, and I funded it.”

Laura shook her head. “Stu is the
best man I know. Even the accusation would crush him.”

“With our help, he’s going to be a
great leader some day.”

“And a great father,” Laura added.

Mary smiled. “Exactly. Stu must
never find out, and I know how to keep a secret.”

****

In the months it took to reach Saturn, Laura kept busy with
pod research, and her belly grew ever so slightly. People began congratulating
her in the dining hall and on her daily walk to Olympus. Stu accompanied her
each way, whether he had a work shift or not. She caught herself smiling more her
first month of marriage than the rest of her previous life combined. It was a
good life.

The community expressed constant
optimism about how much better the colony would be than Earth: less sexism, no
pollution, no corporations, and no wars. The mantra seemed to be, “This time,
we’ll do it right.” Mary laughed every time she heard the statement.

The spread of the Last Trumpet
slowed but didn’t halt entirely. Too many people refused the vaccine on
religious grounds or to “preserve the purity of the race.” The purists were
decimated by infection, so their enclaves developed detection devices that were
99 percent accurate. Those attempting to cross borders with Trumpet were often
held in prison infirmaries until death. A cure was possible, but both expensive
and dangerous.

Listening to the news feeds made
Laura glad she didn’t live on Earth anymore.

Ships orbiting Saturn tried to
prevent
Sanctuary
from reaching the nexus, but Koku inevitably prevented
the weapons from firing. She enforced the charter in space with an iron hand.

Stu thanked the AI for honoring
their deal as he lined up
Sanctuary
for their first subspace hop of the
journey.

Only then did Laura sit down to
read her father’s final message to the planet.

We begin this mission in love,
in repayment for all that has been given unto us
.

Sanctuary
has done all it can to
keep Earth alive while it makes its painful transition to a new age, even as
you try to kill us all. My son-in-law, Stewart, gave you a taste of what we
could offer and provided critical intelligence regarding the Seven Seals. My
daughter, Laura, taught you how to heal your children and your sick even as you
ridiculed her. In fact, all those Stewart invited were people you rejected.

Mankind has proven capable of
sentient action but has not yet chosen to mature and follow that course as a
race. That is how others will see us—not as men or women, black or white, but
as humans and fellow souls. The moment we invented the star drive, we ceased to
be a collection of mythical nations distinguished by land masses, ideology, or
ethnic history. With the cure to the Trumpet, we are more alike than ever.
We’ve shown you that bodies can be adapted, regrown, or left behind completely.
Our identity transcends appendages or tint.

You know the coordinates of the
planet where we are traveling. We will be waiting to welcome you into the Union
of Souls if you care to join us. We haven’t abandoned you; rather, we left the
Lunar Koku as your shepherd and instructor in the space charter that we all agreed
to. We intend to return in about a century to check on you. If we find no one
alive, we will place a marker on your grave and sing your loss to the other
races we meet. If, on the other hand, you reach our colony and find no life,
know that we gave our all in the name of humanity. Our ship and all the
treasures you coveted will finally be yours. But in that case, we hope that you
will have worked together to build something better.

The Earth is not your
destination but your chrysalis. Finish your metamorphosis, and break free of
history. We are not your enemies, only the first of many to awaken.

Sincerely,

Commander Conrad Zeiss

###

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the Jezebel series. My next
project is an epic space adventure set in the same universe, roughly 400 years
in the future. Stu and the Anodyne colony will have a huge historical
influence, but the main character will be Max Culp, a medic for Union Special Forces,
who is still recovering from his role in the Gigaparsec war and trying to
transition to peacetime life.

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