Daughter of Shadows, page 3
Tracy flushed. “I’ve only just started to be friends with him,” she protested.
“Who is he?” Mason asked. “Do I need to run him?”
“No!” Tracy exclaimed. “Don’t you dare!”
“His name is Seth McCloud, and he seems very nice,” Grace put in sedately.
Mason frowned at Clemintine. “Have you met this guy?”
“Yes, I was still here when they came in the other day. He seems very quick on his feet. He managed to pull Tracy out of the path of that robot garbage truck. Hero type,” she added.
“McCloud,” Mason said thoughtfully. “There was a seaman named Gavin McCloud who had quite a name for fighting. I don’t think he came back from his last voyage. Is Seth in Foster care?”
Tracy nodded. “Yes, he lives with a family named Lawton, I think.”
Mason nodded and let the subject drop. No need to upset Grace and Tracy by letting them know he intended to follow up on this.
“Did you report the malfunctioning Garbage truck?” Tracy asked Clemintine.
“I did. According to the City official I spoke to, none of the robot programs showed any sign of having been tampered with. She put it down to a fluke.”
“You didn’t believe her,” Mason said.
“Mason, the programs they loaded into those things are pretty basic. It didn’t recognize Tracy as a human in its path. That kind of sensor failure is pretty unheard of. I find it hard to believe that kind of catastrophic failure wouldn’t show up on its records.”
“Seth thought it might have been done on purpose. Could the record have erased itself afterwards?”
Mason looked over at Clemintine. “You’re the code cracker, What do you think?”
“It’s possible. If that’s the case there would have been traces though. At the same time, I doubt that city official looked for any. All she did was run the program checker on it.”
“If anything else happens, you let Clemintine or me know about it. That goes for you as well Grace.”
The older woman nodded.
That night, Tracy had a nightmare. She had been plagued by them ever since her arrival on the planet. She awoke with a blood-curdling scream and sat up, her heart pounding. The whispers in the back of her mind had started again. A nasty whispering chant, at the edge of her mind. It was a nonsense chant; the words didn’t even make sense: crazy, Tracy, all Trapp’s girls are lazy.
Accompanied as they were with sharp jabs of pain and a sick lust to create more, it was sometimes difficult to block them out. The whispers were the basis of her nightmares. When she had first arrived on Shangri-La, they hadn’t her plagued as much as when she got older. She had instinctively blocked them. denying the emotions they aroused. Someone had taught her how to do it there were a lot of things that she had discovered she could do it should have required training.
Grace flicked on the light and came to sit on the edge of the bed, taking the girl’s trembling body in her arms.
“It’s just a nightmare, Hon,” she said.
Tracy raised her head, whispering, “I know. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Grace stroked her hair. “It was a bad one, wasn’t it. Do you remember any of it?”
“Not much. I think I was being crushed under something. It felt as if I was suffocating,” she shuddered. Even to Grace, she didn’t want to admit she heard voices.
“Clemintine brought over some tea to help us sleep. I think we can both use a cup.”
Tracy followed her out to the kitchen.
DARKNESS ON THE RISE
THE DISAPPEARANCE of their weapons from the clone breeding farms had not gone unnoticed by The Silent Insurgence. With some trepidation, they had assigned two of their best operatives to find out what happened to the weapons. The weapons had been designed to force earth-Gov to allow them the greater political freedoms of an independent colony, but still keep the support they got from Earth-Gov. Their plans had been secretive, subtle, and long-term. Involving as it did the mental influencing of the minds and hearts of those controlling the Sanctioned Colonies. The weapons had been designed to do this.
It had taken Morvan Heffernan and Powaaqa Braden several years of cautious investigating to discover what had happened.
The two sat in front of a conference table on the planet Patrimoine, one of the first of Earth-Gov’s sanctioned colonies. On the other side sat two ranking members of the Silent Insurgence.
“Well? What have you found out?” Cassie Marshall demanded. She was a Tall, slim, blond with the kind of beauty that aged well.
It was Powaaqa who spoke first. Powaaqa was a motherly looking woman with a round face and kind blue eyes, Her sharp, almost genius level intelligence had proved invaluable in the past. “We think they were taken to one or more of the Outlawed Colonies.”
“I was under the impression those colonies were a myth,” said Sam Dawson. The other ranking member. Sam was a heavy-set man, with a comfortable body, who looked every inch a normal businessman.
“Earth-Gov would like you to think so,” Morvan answered this. “However, our investigation kept running into roadblocks ending in the rumor of illegal colonies based in the small mountain town of Laughing Mountain.”
Sam frowned. “How are they getting supplies?”
“Our informants in the Portal Authority say there are several illicit Portals set up in small towns in the Western Sierra Mountains who supply trade goods and sometimes colonists to them. The PA doesn’t have a solid location though, just some colony names which might or might not be accurate.”
“What makes you think the weapons were taken there?” Cassie asked.
Powaaqa shrugged. “We don’t have any proof, but where else would they be taken?”
“We’re fairly sure the four youngest weapons were in Franklin’s Compound when a mob of wild clones raided it. We didn’t find a trace of them among the bodies, so either all the special toddlers and infants were taken away that day or destroyed.”
“What about the file records?” Sam demanded.
“No current files on children living there were found. According to the Sheriff from Laughing Mountain, who initially investigated the massacre any records were either gone or destroyed.”
“Why was he the one who investigated it? Why not state troopers?”
“The college students who reported it apparently came from Laughing Mountain.”
“What do we know about Laughing Mountain?” Cassie asked.
“Nothing much. The town holds events at least once a month which draw substantial crowds. Apparently they got some kind of grant from Arcadia, Inc. to test an air sanitation system which is supposed to prevent the spread of the pandemics. I guess it works—there’s never been an outbreak traced to Laughing Mountain.”
“Funnily enough, one of the rumored Illicit colonies is supposedly named Arcadia,” Powaaqa put in.
“Well find out, dammit,” Dawson said. “In the meantime, we need to get started on creating a new weapon.”
“You’ll have to start over with the new Chairman of Franklin’s compound,” Morvan warned. “The guy we were dealing with was murdered in a home invasion a few weeks before the compound was raided.”
“What about the Jezebel clone?” Cassie asked. “If she lives, she’d be around sixteen now.”
“We think she was also taken to one of the illicit colonies,” Powaaqa said. “But we don’t know which one.”
“How many are there?” Sam asked.
“We don’t know.” Powaaqa admitted. “Rumor says Laughing Mountain deals with about five or six, but a couple of other small towns are also suspected of hiding gates. It could be any of them.”
What the two operatives hadn’t shared with their bosses, was the difficulties of inserting agents into the Laughing Mountain community. The population, while friendly on the surface as befitted a tourist town, were extremely suspicious of strangers; especially strangers asking questions about illegal colonies or Portals. The town was also under the protection of a powerful militia group who were even more paranoid than the town citizens.
Several agents sent to investigate had simply disappeared. Others had suffered fatal or near fatal encounters with the Blue Moon Militia and were too scared to return.
A SON OF THE MOUNTAIN
THE COM CALL from Clemintine that morning sent Grace and Tracy out to survey the bird coop and barn adjacent to the house after hurriedly gulping down breakfast.
“I don’t know anything about taking care of animals,“ Grace said in dismay as they eyed this new part of their domicile.
“Me either,” Tracy confessed. She took a deep breath and pulled open the stable doors. The morning sun brightened the dark interior. A faint aroma of musty hay drifted out.
“How is anyone supposed to see what’s in here?” Grace demanded.
“Maybe there’s a window,” Tracy suggested, following her into the barn.
She found a window on the far wall and flung it open. It let enough light in to show stalls on one side, and four raised milking stations on the other.
“What are those?” Tracy pointed at the milking set up.
“That’s where you milk your goats,” a man said.
Both women jumped, not having heard him come up. He was standing in the lighted doorway, so All Grace could see was his outline. “Who are you?” She asked.
“Malcolm Culpepper, ladies. I’ve brought you some goats, Vicuburas, and some Red Pheasant chicks.”
“Oh,” Grace said. She peeked around him to see a wagon pulled by a matched pair of caramel and white Llandaffs. Bleats and wickers came from the wagon bed. Curiosity overcame her trepidation, and she walked toward the wagon to look over the rim.
“Do they come with instructions?” Tracy asked. “We don’t know anything about taking care of them.”
Malcolm laughed. “No, I’m afraid not, but I can show you how to take care of them.”
Grace turned to look at him and caught her breath. He was a completely different type of man than Greg, her late husband had been. While in comparatively good shape for a city dweller, Greg would have looked soft and weak compared with this man. Malcom was of average height, with wiry muscles partially concealed by his comfortable fitting clothes. His dark auburn hair was tied back in a long tail. He was clean shaven, with sharply carved features, and hard grey eyes over a thin-lipped mouth. His bronzed complexion showed he spent a lot of time out of doors.
Taking stock of Grace LaSalle, he saw a too thin, but still beautiful woman. She looked as fragile as a fine piece of China.
After Clemintine’s com, they had been in too much of a hurry this morning for Grace to take the time to scrape her hair back into its usual tight bun. In consequence it drifted in shinning waves around her face. He decided his friend Mason had done him a favor by recommending him to Clemintine when she expressed a wish to find her mother and Tracy some animals so they could begin to wean themselves off dependence on the Augury for food supplies. Shangri-La was rich in resources, yet there were shortages everywhere: Food, power, clothing, water; just about all of life's necessities were in short supply.
Many citizens had kitchen gardens where they grew extra vegetables to supplement their food supply, and raised fowl and goats for extra meat, milk, and eggs. Every year the controllers came by and counted the livestock to make sure no one had more than they were allowed. If they had extra, it was taken and redistributed. The necessity of hiding enough food from the Collectors to live comfortably was the reason for the concealed storage areas attached to many houses.
Most citizens of Shangri-La didn’t think of this as wrong; they might give lip service to the socialist manifesto under which the colony operated, but secretly resented giving up the fruits of their hard work. Some families even had hidden herds and flocks up in the hills behind the city and only brought down a few when the Collectors were around to count them. For the most part, the flocks and herds were tended by colonists who had decided not to be a part of the Shangri-La socialist community. Regular citizens referred to them as Wilders. Some of these ‘Wilders’ as the rebellious colonists were called, had pirated satellite and internet service for schooling. Malcolm tended some of the herds kept for community use, so he was aware of the additional herds running up in the hills behind Fortuna. However, his ties to the Shadow Government meant he made no effort to report any stray animals he found to the Augers.
Mason had said Grace was a widow. Malcolm wondered if he could talk her into a coffee date later. Right now, he had to find out how much he was going to need to teach them about caring for their new charges.
“I don’t suppose either of you have milked a goat or collected Vicubura hair for weaving?” he asked in resignation.
“Sorry,” Tracy said cheerfully. She too had been peering over the wagon rim and discovered the box of Red Pheasant chicks, who were stirring restlessly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in delight, “what are these?”
“Those are your chicks.”
“Why are they blue?”
He chuckled, a warm masculine sound. “They just come that way. They’ll lose the blue fuzz when their feathers start to come in. Until then, they need to be kept in the kitchen where its warm. Think you can handle that?”
“Yes,” she was utterly charmed by the little birds.
Malcolm lifted out the high-sided box. “Lead the way to your kitchen. Its Tracy, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She held open the door so he could walk through.
“Where do you want to put them?”
She looked around the neat kitchen. “Where do you suggest?”
“How about over here?” He selected a place near the stove that would be warn but out of the way of foot traffic. Once he set the box down, he picked up two long skinny feed troughs and handed them to her. “This one is for water. Fill it about halfway up so it’s harder for them to spill.”
When she set the tray down in the box, several of the blue pieces of fluff immediately started gulping water.
“This one’s for feed. You need to keep an eye on the chicks to make sure they all get to eat and drink. And the straw should be changed every day, or it will start to stink.”
“Okay. Where do I get clean straw and feed for them?”
“I’ve got a package of food and a bale of straw out in the wagon. When they’re older they’ll also eat any vegetable scraps left over from cooking.”
He left Tracy cooing at her new charges and came back outside to find Grace tentatively petting one of the two Vicuburas while a goat nibbled experimentally on her sleeve.
“Let’s take a look at your barn,” he told Grace, who flushed a little at being caught petting the animals.
The barn was in good shape. He opened a back door Grace hadn’t realized was there and walked out back to the fenced area. Like all Shangri-La homes, the small pasture sat next to another fenced area usually set aside to grow vegetables. Along the far edge were newly planted fruit and nut saplings. It would be at least two years before they produced anything fit to harvest.
Malcolm went to the back of the pasture and tested the gate. “It’s a good sturdy gate,” he told her. “Let’s go and bring in your critters.”
Glad to be free of the confinement of the wagon, the goats jumped around and showed a tendency to run around exploring. By dent of a shepherd’s crook, Malcolm headed them toward the barn, where they dashed on through and out into the pasture. The Vicuburas had followed the two humans closely as they persuaded the goats to enter the pasture.
“What about these two?” Grace asked, nearly stumbling over a Vicubura tagging along on her heels.
“They stick pretty close to home,” he said opening up one of the stalls. The open rear door led out into the pasture as well. “Once these guys realize this place is home, you don’t actually need to worry about them going exploring the way the goats will if you don’t latch a gate properly.”
He showed Grace how to pump water to fill the water trough, and all the animals checked it out.
“What about food for them?” Grace asked.
“Your older daughter arranged to put your home on the animal fodder delivery route. There will be a delivery this afternoon, And once a week after that.”
“Is this the birdseed you mentioned?” They turned to find Tracy holding a bag of cracked corn.
He nodded approvingly. “Yes. You can leave it in here in that tub.” He pointed to a wooden barrel. “Just fill their food dish after you rinse it and the water dish out. I like to use a feed on demand option, so you’ll need to keep both of them full. You’re going to see a lot of me for the first few days. I’ll be back this afternoon to give you your first milking lesson.”
“Milking lesson?” Grace asked faintly.
“The goats need to be milked twice a day. It’s also a good time to get your Vicuburas accustomed to being handled by giving them and the goats a good brushing. I’ll come by tomorrow and take a look at the bird coop to see if it needs any repairs.”
“Okay.”
As promised, Malcolm returned late that afternoon for the milking lessons. Camila, The nanny goat Grace was going to attempt to milk came in eagerly and hopped up on the wooden shelf to be milked, bleating impatiently for the grain she knew was coming. Grace gave her the promised grain and asked, “What do I do now?”
“First, you wash your hands, and then you wash her udder.”
Gingerly, Grace washed Camilla’s udder. “It feels awfully tight,” she said.
“That’s because its full of milk. Take hold of the teat and squeeze downward,”
“But won’t it hurt?”
“Not if you do it right.”
Grace tried to follow his directions. “Nothing is coming out,” she exclaimed in dismay.
Malcolm laughed at her. “That’s because you’re doing it wrong. Here, let me show you.” He placed his hand over hers on the goat’s teat. “Relax your grip,” he said. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his big body and smelled the faint masculine aroma he gave off. For the first time in years, she felt a small frisson of desire. “Let the teat fill up. Now start at the top and slide your fingers down.“ A stream of milk squirted out. “There! See how easy that was? Now do it again.”
