Natara nodded, obviously unable to speak for a moment. Finally, she mastered the emotionalism. “I am supposed to escort you to speak with council once you have broken your fast,” she said, as if glad to redirect the conversation.
Which she probably was, but the new subject didn’t make Cassie feel better. She lost the last of her appetite. Nodding, she got up, picked up the robe Natara had brought and went into the bathroom to change. It wasn’t much privacy, but it was a little.
She saw when she emerged again that the watery doorway had vanished and wondered when it had. She’d grown so accustomed to it she hadn’t actually glanced at the door since Raen had left earlier. Relief swept through her. She hadn’t been looking forward to the ordeal of swimming without air tanks. That had almost been worse than the prospect of being brought before a council.
Almost.
“It seems so odd to have servants,” Cassie said conversationally as they walked along the corridor.
Natara glanced at her in surprise. “All young Atlanteans are in service until they have reached a level of maturity and education to enter their chosen field. It is the way the young are taught to respect their elders and learn the discipline of good work habits.
How do your people teach these things?”
Cassie was embarrassed to tell her their young
weren’t
taught to respect their elders
or
a good work ethic. She pasted a false smile on her lips. “Oh, parents and teachers, you know,” she lied. Unfortunately, neither the parents or the teachers had the time to teach such things, and even if they had, the entire social structure was a shambles.
No two people seemed able to agree on what constituted discipline and where to draw the line between punishment and abuse. Between the new laws to protect children from idiots who didn’t know when to stop and social taboos, children, who couldn’t help the fact that they were born savages, remained savages because they weren’t ever civilized—too many weren’t anyway.
Disaster, she was afraid, lurked just around the corner. When the balance shifted and the uncivilized outnumbered the people who had been civilized all hell was going to break lose.
Maybe she was just a pessimist, but as a manager she wasn’t feeling very hopeful.
She could barely get employees trained before they were off to greener pastures and even the ‘trained’ employees were godawful. She spent most of her time trying to beat them off of their cell phones or trying to snap them out of the state of zombism they entered every five seconds. Mentally, she shook her head, wondering why it was young people looked like they had built in on/off switches and why they seemed to go into ‘off’ mode if they weren’t talking.
The chamber Natara led her to looked like every other room she’d been in, virtually bare. Now she knew why though and as nervous as she was when she spotted the group of men and women seated on a platform at the front of the room, pity filled her.
69
She had no idea what their life had been like before, but they had nothing much now but bare walls and floors.
Nobody seemed to wear anything but the simple, white robes, but she could tell just from their stance that the handful of men and women ranged around the perimeter of the room were guards.
There was a sprinkling of people seated on hard benches facing the raised platform—Atlanteans she was sure—and she saw her companions were seated on a bench at the very front. Feeling a measure of relief, she joined them.
The atmosphere ‘felt’ like a courtroom. She supposed it was and that she wasn’t the only one that felt that it was. Although the others glanced at her, no one said anything.
The silence was almost unnerving. Cassie had the urge to make some noise just to break the tense silence—by clearing her throat or shuffling her feet—and at the same time was fearful of inadvertently making a noise and drawing everyone’s attention.
She sat stiffly, waiting for something to happen or someone to say something.
After what seemed an agonizingly long time, a sound behind her caught her attention and she looked around in automatic response.
Her heart seemed to leap into her throat when she saw it was Raen and then thump uncomfortably. He didn’t glance at her, or even in her general direction, and she looked away again, feeling snubbed for no reason she could fathom.
“High Sentinel Raen ap Aquinox,” a man off to their left stood and announced when Raen had stopped in front of the council members.
He
nodded.
They nodded back at him in acknowledgement.
An older man in the center of the group with long, flowing white hair—or whatever it was they considered it, Cassie amended, remembering Raen had said it wasn’t actually hair—spoke after a moment. “You have come before us to report your findings?”
Again Raen nodded. “The natives were detained for trespass,” he began, gesturing with one arm in their direction although he didn’t actually look at them. “After questioning them and investigating to ascertain what I could as to the truth of their statements, I have concluded that it was inadvertent and there was no intent on their part either to cause harm or to pillage.”
“They had no weapons?” an older woman sitting at one end of the platform asked.
“They were carrying none that could be construed as anything more than weapons for self-defense. Three of the males were carrying short blades. One was carrying a projectable spear.”
“Harpoon,” Ben spoke out. “It was just in case of sharks.”
The elder in the center turned to stare him down. “You are not accustomed to our laws so I will overlook your outburst this once. You will be questioned and given the opportunity to explain yourself. You are not allowed to speak out unless a question is directed to you.”
Ben reddened and then paled. He nodded stiffly, compressing his lips angrily.
The men exchanged speaking glances.
70
Cassie hoped they were wrong because she could see they thought, or at least feared, that they were going to be judged without being allowed to explain themselves, or that the decision had already been made and anything they said would be discounted.
Even so, she discovered it was hard to remain tense and on edge. No one seemed in any great hurry to finish up and be done with the ‘hearing’. Carl, she supposed because they’d somehow decided he was their leader, was called upon to recount their trip from start to finish. He didn’t embellish it or leave anything out, but he seemed to be going to great effort to make them sound innocent. Cassie cringed inwardly, wondering if he realized that only made them sound guilty of something—which they weren’t—but she didn’t make any attempt to add to the discussion or interrupt, and she did her best not to give her feelings away by staring down at her hands in her lap.
She was almost surprised when the discussion finally ended and the council members, after exchanging looks, seemed to come to a decision.
She wondered if they’d been discussing the case with their telepathy and finally decided they must have been, which made her go cold all over since that reminded her that she
knew
they had the capability and she wondered if they’d been ‘listening’ to her thoughts.
Being around people that were telepathic wasn’t something that was going to be easy getting used to.
Thankfully, the older man that seemed to be in charge said that he was satisfied and they were to be released. Unfortunately, just as Cassie was starting to feel really relieved, he followed up by telling them that they couldn’t actually leave. She wasn’t sure she believed the yarn he told about there being some kind of force field around them that prevented anyone from coming or going, but she was obliged to admit certain aspects were indisputable. The ‘freak storm’ and the shudders she’d felt herself to say nothing of the motion she’d felt since she’d been in the place.
Anger welled inside of her regardless. There didn’t seem to be anyone to direct it at, which didn’t help her feelings. They’d stumbled into this by mistake, so she couldn’t blame Carl or any of the others.
“I’m going to get fired,” she grumbled to no one in particular when the meeting was finally closed.
“We’re
probably
all
going to get canned,” David agreed. “Damn it! There must be some way to get the hell out of here!”
Cassie wasn’t surprised he shared her sentiments. What did surprise her was that the others, although obviously not entirely happy, didn’t seem to be as upset as she and David were. Linda was downright philosophical about it. Jimmy looked almost excited, and everyone else seemed to fall somewhere between the two.
“At least we’re going to be guests, not prisoners,” Jimmy pointed out. “We can have a look around.”
Cassie eyed him with disfavor. “Well, that’s a hell of a compensation! I don’t even have a damned toothbrush with me! And I don’t want another job! I
liked
the one I had, besides which I hate job hunting! How are we going to explain getting fired when we go looking for work and have no reference? Tell me that! Oh—well I got caught in this force field thing and spent a few weeks in Atlantis and my old boss didn’t believe me.”
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“We do deeply regret the inconvenience to you all, but there is nothing we can do.”
Cassie reddened uncomfortably as she whirled at the sound of the voice and discovered that it was the man who’d presided over the meeting. She felt like a worm. “I know. I’m sorry if I seem so … unappreciative of your hospitality. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I’d just rather be home. I’d rather not be in this mess at all.”
He shrugged. “So would we all,” he retorted wryly. “We will do our best to make your stay as comfortable as possible.”
Could he possibly make her feel worse? “Thank you again for offering,” she said uncomfortably. After casting around in her mind for something nice to say, she added,
“I’m sure I’ll enjoy it. Natara was very sweet and helpful.”
He smiled faintly and, to her surprise, patted her on the cheek like she was a well mannered little girl that he approved of. What was even more surprising was that it pleased her that he seemed to approve of her. “We will all try and then, perhaps, the time will pass pleasantly enough.”
She didn’t file out with everyone else. She sat back down and propped her chin in her hand, trying to think what she could do to avert disaster. She wasn’t going to be home to pay any of her bills, and she might even get evicted if she was away very long.
She had a small savings account, but not much in it. It wasn’t going to keep the wolves at bay if it took long to get another job.
She didn’t waste a lot of time hoping that was a worse case scenario. It was a given. If she was out of work even a couple of days without calling, she was finished.
And if she ‘disappeared’ and didn’t pay her rent they were going to decide she’d skipped out, probably throw everything she owned onto the sidewalk.
She’d been staring at nothing in particular, enumerating and elaborating on the disaster she was facing, when she finally became aware that someone had come to stand beside her. He crouched down just about the time she did become aware of him, bringing his face within her view.
Raen’s gaze flickered over her face. “Angry?”
Cassie stared back at him for a long moment and finally nodded. “At me.”
His dark brows rose questioningly.
She shrugged. “Everything that happens to us is a consequence of the choices we make,” she said and expelled a deep sigh. “If I’d just stayed home instead of deciding to meet Mark I’d still have a job and an apartment. I won’t have a home to go back to, or a job. I’ll get fired, and they’ll throw away everything I own, or sell it for the rent money I’m not going to be there to pay.”
He studied her expression for a long moment. “But then we would not have met and you would have missed the opportunity to see the city of legends.”
72
Cassie wondered if he meant ‘we’ as in you and I or ‘we’ as in their group and the Atlanteans. The thought that he might mean the former made her heart do a little tap dance against her chest wall. Unfortunately, she wasn’t certain that his expression supported that theory. She managed a smile. “There is that,” she responded.
He rose, extending his hand. “It is not much to see, now, but I will show you around, if you like.”
She placed her hand in his, not because she needed the help getting up, not because the response was automatic, but because the offer of contact was irresistible. His hand was warm and strong and well formed. It dwarfed hers as it closed around it. It was odd how such a simple thing could be so pleasurable. She was sorry when he let her hand go. Since he settled it lightly in the small of her back to guide her, though, she thought it was a fair exchange. It was still contact, and it made her a little breathless.
She was sorry he removed his hand once they’d left the council chambers and headed down a wide corridor. “This place is huge,” she murmured as she stared down the long, long corridor, glancing around in search of the lights and discovering she couldn’t actually see any fixtures. The ceiling itself seemed to glow with a soft white light.
“The Atlantis is approximately two hundred miles in circumference,” he responded, nodding. “You have no ships this large?”
Cassie snapped a look upward at his face. “Ship?” she echoed.
He sent her an indecipherable look but nodded. “It is a ship.”
Cassie glanced around again, trying to see it with the new information but it still looked like a huge building, not anything like she’d pictured a ship looking. “I thought it was a city,” she said in confusion.
“It is. Our ancestors came here in it and when they decided to stay it became the floating city of Atlantis.”
The comment sent a jolt through her, aroused vague suspicions that didn’t quite form in her mind, maybe because she didn’t really want to acknowledge what his comment suggested. And she still couldn’t resist asking. “Came from where?”
“Andromeda.”
Cassie stopped abruptly, feeling a little pale. She must have looked as pale as she felt. He reached out and closed his hand around her arm as if to steady her.
“Andromeda?” she echoed a little hoarsely. “You mean … you don’t mean ….” He couldn’t mean the Andromedan system.
He nodded. “The Andromedan system.”
She stared up at him as she had stared at the ship, trying to adjust her mind to her vision, to
see
what she thought she should be seeing instead of what her eyes were telling her she was seeing. He didn’t change. Like the ship that still looked like a building to her, he still looked like the human she’d thought he was.
73
She’d kissed him, been held in his arms. How could he
not
be human and not feel any different?
It
had
felt different, though, she realized. She had never felt that way before when any other man—any
man
—had held her and kissed her. Was that because she’d sensed a difference even though she hadn’t been aware of it? Or did it just not matter because it was a chemical attraction that defied the laws of nature? Or was it something about him
because
he wasn’t human?
His hand tightened on her arm. “I thought you knew—or had at least guessed.
Jimmy ….”
She felt weak and heavy and hot and then cold. “Jimmy’s a UFO nut,” she mumbled through lips that felt strangely numb and awkward. “No one pays him any attention,” she added a little faintly.
He studied her face for a moment and moved closer, slipping an arm lightly around her and urging her to lean against him. She stiffened, but she really did feel peculiar. Relaxing after that instinctive flinch, she leaned against him, closing her eyes as she pressed her cheek to his chest. The moment she did, she felt enveloped by him.
His warmth seemed to surround her, chasing the sudden chill. His scent invaded her, spreading a tingling warmth inside of her. The steady beat of his heart beneath her ear soothed her.
Falsely, she thought—told herself, but she still felt comforted as she leaned against him, felt the light stroke of his hand on her hair and along her back.
“Councilor det Ophelia told you the reason you could not leave was because of the force field created by the traction beam from the mother ship,” he said gruffly.
Cassie dragged in a shaky breath. “It sounded like something out of a Star Quest episode—a movie,” she muttered. “Not real. I guess I didn’t really take it in. Or maybe I was too focused on what not getting home meant. I don’t know.
All
of this has just been too much to take in or really accept.
“I think when he said ship, I just thought ship—a regular ship, like a big boat that sails in the water—not
space
ship. I’ve been trying to make everything fit in to what I
know
, what’s real to me, and trying to ignore everything that didn’t seem to fit, I guess.”
She pushed away to look up at his face. She didn’t know what she’d expected to see—some change—things she hadn’t noticed that would’ve told her he was an alien if she’d just had her eyes open. All she saw, though, was the same face she’d thought was so handsome, creased now with a look of concern, something in his eyes—wariness maybe? “You’re not like us,” she said, dismayed, trying to
make
herself accept the unbelievable truth. Chaos reigned along the fringes of her mind, though, so many conflicting thoughts that she was only dimly aware of the general trend of them.
She watched his throat work as he swallowed, watched several different expressions flicker across his face before it hardened. After a moment even the anger vanished, though, or most of it. “What was it like to be kissed by an alien?” he ground out.
“It was ….”
“Different?
Frightening? Disgusting?”
Cassie swallowed with an effort, but
that
hadn’t changed just because she now knew, without a doubt, that he wasn’t human like her—like she’d convinced herself he was. “None of the above, actually—except different.”
74
His gaze flickered over her face. Some of the tension seemed to go out of him.
His dark brows drew together. “Different in what way?” he asked cautiously.
“Not in a bad way,” she said wryly, almost wishing now that it had been.
He searched her gaze and then his gaze settled on her lips. Her mouth went dry.
He lifted his head after a moment and glanced up and down the corridor, as if he’d just remembered where they were. He seemed to wrestle with himself and then, to her vast disappointment, he moved away from her. “Are you all right now?”
Cassie nodded, although she wasn’t, not really. She still felt as if she’d been caught up in some sort of bizarre dream and the jury was still out as to whether it was a nightmare or a good dream.
It was a disturbing one. That was the only part she was really certain of.
“Do you feel up to a tour? Or would you rather return to your quarters?”
She was still shaken by the abrupt cave in of disbelief vs. belief. She almost felt as if she
needed
to lie down. The problem was she wasn’t certain of whether he’d suggested it because
he
thought she might need to or because he wanted to pick up where they’d left off before, and unfortunately she wasn’t sure if she wanted to or not.
Actually,
she
was
certain she wanted to. She just wasn’t certain she should give in to her wants and let reason and doubts go hang.
“I think I could use some fresh air.”
He nodded, but his lips twisted wryly. “I can not say that it is all that ‘fresh’.”
He looked at her questioningly as he turned once more in the direction they’d been walking. She turned to follow him.
She’d begun to regret the decision before they finally reached a door and pushed through it. The tang of salt air pelted her instantly as she stepped through. She sucked in a deep breath of it. What had begun as a deep breath of pleasure, though, ended in a shocked intake of breath.
The false dusk of a storm surrounded them, but there was no storm. The thing that blocked the sunlight was terrifyingly massive and just as frightening in its nearness.
She jolted to a halt, holding the breath she’d inhaled until her chest hurt.
She flinched all over as Raen’s hand settled on her shoulder, as she felt him move up closely behind her.
“My god!” she breathed when she could breathe at all.
“There is no danger.”
Cassie glanced up at him over her shoulder, unconvinced that there was no danger the thing hovering over them might fall and squash them as flat as a pancake. How it had become airborne to start with was a mystery to her. She swallowed with an effort. “No,”
she managed to say weakly, “we don’t have anything this big--unless you’re talking about states.”
A gleam of amusement entered his eyes. “It is impressive. In its day, the Atlantis was, also, but compared to the Andromeda Prime, it looks like no more than a scout ship.”
Impressive wasn’t the word she would’ve used, but she couldn’t think of an adjective adequate to the challenge—awesome didn’t even come close. Horrific, maybe?
The comment dragged her focus to the ship they were standing on, however, and she scanned the distance between them and the far horizon. From her viewpoint, it was hard 75
to see a vast difference between the two—in size, anyway. She’d have to take his word for it.
There was a tremendous difference between the two ships otherwise. Its size alone made the Atlantis look more like an island than a ship—or the ‘continent’ it had been described as in lore. She could easily see why it had been mistaken for one by the ancient people that had seen it, though they must have wondered why and how it had come to be such a perfect circle. There was a waterway, a perfectly symmetrical channel, in the near distance that formed a ring around the area where they stood, making it into a smaller island, and much further away, she saw what must be another such channel.
Sprinkled sparingly over those distant strips of land between the channels were small structures that might have been cottages. They looked intact for the most part, but she knew the distance could make that impression deceptive and that it was unlikely they actually were. Nearer, on the island where they stood, that was certainly not the case.
There were what appeared to be the hulls of fallen buildings and in many cases no more than jagged, partial walls and piles of rubble.
It looked like a war zone.
Looking at it, it was hard to imagine that it had ever been a city, beautiful or otherwise.
Almost as if he’d read her mind—which he might have—Raen stepped away from her. “This was once the commercial center of Atlantis. Time has almost finished what the meteor shower began. It was a place of great beauty then, though. We have never seen why a structure must be ugly to also be practical and our artisans take great pride in their work.”
Cassie turned to look at him as he spoke, trying to imagine what it must feel like to awaken to a scene of such horrific destruction. The attempt failed. She supposed the victims of hurricanes, tornados, fire and flood—and war—could have, but she’d been far more fortunate than they. She’d never seen anything like this, had certainly not experienced it personally.
It occurred to her abruptly that seeing what was left of their home had to be stunning to the point where they hardly knew how to cope with it or what to do first.
Weeping would’ve been at the top of her list.
Remembering how upset Natara had been, seeing how carefully impassive Raen’s expression was as he looked around, she felt like weeping
for
them. “I’m so sorry,” she said, knowing the words were woefully inadequate even as she said them.
He glanced at her sharply, his gaze flickering over her face speculatively. Finally, he looked away again. “Thank you. It will take time, but we will rebuild. It will be as beautiful as it once was.”
Cassie swallowed against the hard knot of sympathy in her throat, wishing there was something she could say or do to help, anything except an inadequate ‘I’m sorry’. It occurred to her, though, that there was a way she
could
help. “We’ll help. I know if everyone knew about this, they’d want to help.”
Again, he looked at her sharply in surprise.
“Americans are generous, good hearted people. They’re always willing to help their neighbors in times like this. People everywhere, really. There were people from all over the world that offered help when we had disasters in the U.S. They always help—do whatever they can—when they can when there’s a disaster like this. Y’all have shelter, 76
but we could start a drive to collect food and clothes and personal items. And I’m sure there’d be plenty of people that would volunteer time to help with cleanup and rebuilding.”