THE FINAL
Macy recalled the old line about no longer being in Kansas. But geography was now the least of her worries.
There was nothing recognizable about the place where she found herself. She was outdoors—and outdoors extended as far as she could see in every direction. It was a vast, seemingly unending plain that reminded her of Death Valley, but it was not unbearably hot. The soil beneath her feet and all around her, off into the vast distance, was dry and looked like a cracked, parched riverbed. And that was the only familiar thing about her surroundings. Macy was not the only thing occupying this endless, dry flatland.
The plain was filled with towers, spaced at regular intervals. She judged the distance from one to the one nearest it was the same as the distance across Fifth Avenue back in Manhattan. They were everywhere. Macy wondered if perhaps the entire surface of the planet were covered with them, or if they took up a space the size of a continent or a city. She looked up to the tops of them, guessing that possibly there were people—or beings of some sort—living there. It was then it struck her that there was one familiar thing about this place after all.
Each tower was topped with a formation holding a huge crystal. Putting the shape of the structures and what was mounted on top of them into context, Macy realized that these were gigantic versions of the Beacon back in the chamber in Aaron’s building. She gasped at the fact that she was now in an actual forest of Vonsahlan Beacons.
Unable to react to her situation in any other way, Macy let pure instinct take over. At the top of her voice, she called out, “Aaron!”
She had seen him in the energy bubble of the warp gate, she was sure of it. If the fluctuating warp had brought Aaron here, there was a chance that she could somehow find him, if only she could make him aware of her presence or he could find her. The pain of another realization stabbed into her heart: she had left the children back on Earth. They had called to her, asked her to stop, to come back—and right before their eyes, she had climbed through the surface of a bubble of energy that led to Lord knows where. What had she done to her children? What kind of mother was she?
A mother desperate to find their father, that was what kind. And she cried again, making her throat feel raw. “AARON!”
Macy’s voice carried into the alien air. Please, let him be somewhere near. Please, let him have some way of hearing me. Please…
A sound came back from the distance—a sound of roaring. It was small but getting bigger and nearer. Perhaps it was a dragon’s roar. When Macy saw him in the bubble, he had been in dragon form. Perhaps he still was—her husband, in his winged reptile body, flying towards her, calling back to her with a dragon’s roar. The roar sounded again, more loudly—closer. Macy’s hopes made a smile blossom on her face. Yes, it must be Aaron. She spun around in the direction from which the roar was coming, turned and looked.
There was a shape coming towards her—and her smile of relief contorted into a look of utter horror when she saw it.
At the moment she caught sight of it, a thundering sound assailed her ears and a shock of impact shook the cracked and parched ground. The thing coming through the grove of Beacon towers was the size of a truck. The only way Macy could have described it, if the horror that it struck into her allowed her any words, was that it was an enormous, fanged mouth with an elongated body like the abdomen of a colossal insect. It had four appendages that seemed as much like tentacles as legs, and when it set one thunderously down, the ground shook. So did Macy’s heart as it drew nearer.
Terror flung her into action. Macy ran. She ran through the spaces between the towers, gasping, choking back screams, scrambling in her head for what to do when being chased. She had never in her life heard anything to cover what to do when fleeing from an enormous monster that one could not even name, but there had to be something. There was nothing around her but ground and towers, and neither could offer her any cover and place to hide. Her breath burning her lungs with every step, her legs starting to ache, a sweat breaking out all over her body, Macy could do nothing but take a zigzag course from one tower to another, hoping to keep the nightmare closing in on her from lashing out with its immense mouth and devouring her in one gulp—or biting her in two in mid-stride. Its roaring and the thunder of its footfalls boomed in her ears. She didn’t dare look back. If she did, she might fall or freeze in her tracks. Then, she would be doomed for sure.
In spite of herself, Macy could not help but look behind her when another sound ripped at her, the fearsome sound of something tearing and cracking and crashing, and another terrible impact, as awful as the footfalls of the creature. She saw that the thing had bulldozed its way into one of the towers trying to get to her. The crash of its body against the tower had uprooted it from the ground and knocked it over. The hole of torn earth left by the uprooting of the tower, and the crystal-bearing structure at the top of the tower, both now gushed fiery light and sparks that hissed and crackled loudly from the ground. In response to the outpouring of energy from the sundered tower, the crystals in the other structures all around her emitted strobing flashes that made Macy wince and look down. The creature reared back and away from the ruin it had made of the structure it knocked over, and charged at Macy again. With a desperate whine, Macy broke back into her zigzagging run. The thing was gaining on her. She would not be able to flee much longer.
It was only a few strides behind her now. The crash of its legs into the ground felt like the first taste of what would happen when it finally bore down on her, which was sure to be any second. Running from side to side, practically feeling the creature upon her, Macy also felt the tears pouring down her face. She sobbed as she ran, her mind echoing with the words, Goodbye, Aaron. Goodbye, my babies. I’m so sorry…
The next footfall hit right in the spot near one tower, from which Macy darted only a second before it. The cruel impact, which she could feel in her bones, knocked her from her feet and sent her rolling and sprawling. There was another crashing and tearing. Macy felt the upheaval of the ground and heard the awful, deafening thud of another tower falling. She could almost feel the discharge of power from the broken ground and the top of the sundered structure. Prone on the ground, she gazed up through the flashes and strobes of the surrounding towers. The mouth of the creature loomed into view, the collection of savage, ripping teeth at the ready. Macy flung her arms across her face and braced herself. She held the images of her husband and her children in her mind as the things she would take with her from this life. She felt the hot and ugly breath of the creature blowing down at her.
And then came another sound. It was like a shredding noise, a shredding not of cloth, but somehow a tearing at the air itself. With it came the dreadful, ear-splitting din that could only have been made by something in sudden, shocking pain. Macy took her arms from her face and looked up at the monstrous form of her pursuer, reeling to one side with what looked like smoke rising from one side of its body. It staggered and swerved away from her, giving her a chance to pull herself up to a sitting position—and look up and over at the source of its pain.
A mechanical shape hovered in the air, just over the fallen tower that the monster had knocked over before bearing down on Macy. It was a ship—oval or almond-shaped, made of something ruddy and bronze-like; it could have been metal. Whatever it was, it had glowing lights at the front of it, and Macy guessed that these were the source of whatever had struck the beast. Her guess was quickly confirmed. The stricken thing reared up and roared at it, showing the object the mouth which a moment ago had almost torn Macy to bloody bits. The ship’s forward lights discharged searing, blinding beams that stabbed their way into the monster’s face and hide, penetrating the body and making the behemoth scream from a mix of animal rage and pain. It toppled and staggered backward, smoke pouring from its open wounds, and hit another tower. Both creature and tower fell over with a heart-pounding BOOM! The gouged ground and the crystal atop the fallen tower erupted with fire and sparks, and once again the surrounding towers strobed as if in protest. Then, everything was still.
Shuddering, whimpering, Macy sat where she was, watching the object that had slain her monstrous attacker. What would it do now? Would she meet the same fate as the beast?
What appeared to be a hatch opened at the bottom of the hovering craft, and figures descended from it. Macy recognized them at once: the silvery, astronaut-like garments, the wings, the tails. She gulped, remembering where she had seen such figures.
They descended on their flapping wings to the ground between the towers and quickly moved towards Macy. She still sat there, oddly calm, as they came nearer. One of them strode briskly ahead of the others—and called out her name.
“Macy! Don't worry, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid. We’ve got you.”
She dissolved into tears at the sound of the caller’s voice. “Aaron? Aaron?”
The figure at the front morphed himself from dragon to man as Aaron reached Macy and crouched beside her, gathering her into his arms. “It’s me, sweetheart. You’re all right. I’ve got you; you’re okay…”
And now, she exploded into open sobs, clinging to him, burying her head on his shoulder. “Aaron! Aaron, what happened to you! What is this place? What…what…”
Macy’s words trailed off. She felt like a balloon with the air leaking out. Her mind grew fuzzy, and the world around her spun like water down a drain.
In a moment, Aaron was holding his wife passed out in his arms.
_______________
The next thing she knew, Macy was lying on something soft—a bed or a cushion of some sort—in another unrecognizable space, one with walls and fixtures that told her that she was inside something, somewhere. She remembered the craft that had saved her from the monster. She remembered the monster. In a fit of fright, she bolted upright, gasping with remembered terror, from where she was lying—and Aaron, sitting by her side, scooped her up in his arms again. She looked into his reassuring face and wanted to cry again, but found herself all cried out. Instead, she flung her face against his shoulder and moaned, “Oh, Aaron… That place…that thing… What happened? Where are we?”
“We’re with the Vonsahlans,” said Aaron. “We’re safe with them.”
Macy looked up at him and past him and saw other figures entering the chamber where they were sitting. They were two-legged dragon beings, like Aaron in his half-dragon form, clothed in technological-looking silver outfits.
She half-whispered, “The Vonsahlans. It’s them. It’s…them.”
“Yeah,” said Aaron, “it’s them. They’re friends. We’re on one of their ships.”
The fear draining out of her, Macy swiveled her legs around the side of the piece of alien furniture to sit upright beside Aaron. Another welcome sight greeted her. In behind the Vonsahlans stepped Rudd and Weathers and the rest of the party, including the technicians, that had gone into the warp before her.
“Rudd!” she called. “You’re all right!”
Nodding and giving her the thumbs-up again, Rudd said, “We’re okay.”
To Aaron, Macy asked again, “But what happened? Aaron, I don’t understand…”
“Before I tell you,” said Aaron, “I want you to meet someone.” He looked over at the Vonsahlan who had entered the room first. “I told you about my wife,” Aaron addressed that being. “This is Macy.”
The dragon being to whom Aaron spoke stepped forward. “Welcome, Macy Jacobs, to the Vonsahlan patrol ship Eskaar. I am Patrol Leader Gordanir. It was very fortunate that our patrol found you before the yogrox could have its way with you.”
“Thank you,” said Macy. “And…I guess I should also thank you for saving me from the…is that what that thing was? A yogrox?” She shuddered at the returning memory of it.
“Yes,” said Gordanir. “We’ve been attempting to move the population of them off this planet, which is a central nexus or hub of our energy system. Because of a property of the rock strata, we missed locating one of their underground nests until it hatched out and the creatures began to attack our tower units.”
Aaron explained, “The Vonsahlans have explored and catalogued so many worlds in so many different universes, they have this huge system of power sources that connect all the Beacons that they leave on the worlds they visit. It’s like an energy grid across dimensions. The yogrox, which are very hostile, were burrowing under the towers or attacking them on the surface and knocking them over, disrupting the system. Every time a tower fell, there was a massive power spike in all the beacons in the other dimensions—including the one back home. The spikes started to happen at the same time as I was supervising an inspection of our Beacon—and that’s how I got here.”
“And,” Macy sighed, “how I got here.” She looked up at Rudd and the rest of the contingent from home. “And all the others. It was because of those things.” A sick and horrified look came over her. “Oh, Aaron, I saw you. Through the warp gate, I saw you and…your friends…fighting those things. I was scared out of my mind; I thought… I was scared of what I was thinking. I went into the chamber and…I left the kids back in that observation room where you keep that Beacon.”
Startled, dismayed, Aaron blurted, “The kids? You had the kids there?”
“I had the kids there.” Macy nodded. She bowed and shook her head. “They saw me go into the warp. Oh my God, what must they be thinking…?”
Aaron lifted her face back to his. “Macy, what are the kids doing at the Beacon? Why did you take them there?”
“The kids are how we got the Beacon system working again. They helped your people fix it and turn it back on!”
“They did what?”
“They knew how it works, the way they know how everything works. The kids supervised your people, Aaron, and they got the system working again!”
Dumbfounded, Aaron blinked and looked off. “The kids. I’ll be damned…”
Gordanir gently interrupted. “Am I hearing correctly? Your children—your offspring with Aaron, who are Nathairfear themselves—they are the ones who enabled you to travel here?”
“They did,” replied Macy. “They’re just young children, but they have this…gift…”
The dragon leader narrowed his eyes in a very human manner. “Indeed. They possess psi powers, then—gifts of the mind…”
“Not the way you’re thinking,” Macy said. “They’re not ‘psychic’ in that way. They don’t read minds or see the future; they didn’t read the minds of the people who work for Aaron. They’re just…unusually inventive.”
Gordanir flicked his tongue between his reptilian jaws. “That is unexpected,” he said. “When we created the first Nathairfear from the humans who lived in Kinross Green and left the Beacon for them to use to guide us back to Earth through the shifting energy matrices between dimensions, we used a psychic transference technology to help them to understand the concepts that we were introducing to them: for your Earth was a world without technology, a world where the inhabitants had not advanced yet to that point. That involved inducing a secondary mutation, one that would be partially passed along to future generations. That would be the source of the psi gifts of certain Nathairfear.”
“Aaron and I know one of those,” Macy said, remembering Sophia. “She told me I had to bring the children to the Beacon because they’re…”
“…the realization of the Prophecy of the Dragons Three,” Aaron finished for her, shaking his head. “I might have known. How f…ing ironic is that? We did everything to keep the kids away from those superstitions—and the damn superstitions came to the rescue.”
“However it happened,” said Macy, “I’m just glad I found you. I’m just glad this is over.” She hugged Aaron tightly and let him reassure her with the crush of his arms before she drew back with a start and asked apprehensively, “It is over, isn’t it? We can go home now. Tell me we can go home now.”
“We can go home now,” said Rudd, who had been quietly watching and listening to the whole exchange.
Aaron shot a smiling glance at his chief employee, then returned his attention to Macy. “We can go home now. With, I think, some company.”
“‘Company?’” Macy repeated, still apprehensive and now a bit puzzled.
“The Vonsahlans want to visit Earth again,” Aaron explained.
Macy rose now from where she sat, Aaron standing with her and helping her up. Finding herself steady on her feet after everything she had been through, and with Aaron safe and sound at her side, she approached the dragon leader. “You’re coming back to Earth again—after all these hundreds of years?”
“It hasn’t been that long for them,” Aaron said.
Uncomprehending, Macy glanced back and forth between her husband and the reptile being. “What do you mean by that?” she asked Aaron. To Gordanir: “What is he talking about?”
Gordanir began, “We travel not only between worlds, but between physical universes, of which there are an endless number. The fabric of space and time is fluid and flexible, and challenging to navigate. This is why we leave the Beacons in our wake…”
“They’re like spacetime lighthouses,” Aaron added.
“…and there is always a time differential from one universe to the next.”
Macy shrugged, still not understanding. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Aaron said plainly, “that a hundred years for us may be only a few years for them. From their perspective, they haven’t been away from Earth that long.”
“But now that we encounter the descendants of the beings we created,” Gordanir went on, “we wish to know more of the world in which they now live, and what they have become in that world. We wish to see what has been made of the Earth since we departed.”
Now, Macy got it. “So, to you it’s only been, what, maybe ten years, more or less, since you were on Earth? You won’t recognize the place when you see it now.”
“The centuries always bring change,” said Gordanir. “The constant of any universe is change. Some changes are for the better, some for the worse. And some changes may be chosen over others. Life and destiny are sometimes malleable things. But always there is change.”
“That’s true enough,” said Macy thoughtfully. Then, nervously, she asked, “Wait…you said there’s this ‘time differential,’ and time goes by at a different rate for you than it does on Earth.” Abruptly seized by shock, almost to the point of panic, she grabbed Aaron by the arms. “Oh my God, do you know what that means? Andrew, Kate, Sam—they were kids when we left! Years have been going by for them when it hasn’t even been a day for us here! They’ll be grown up, maybe almost middle-aged, by the time we get back! We’ll have missed their whole lives! They’ll have grown up without us, probably felt abandoned! Oh, Aaron, what if they hate us for being away all that time? What will they say to us? Will they even want to…?”
Aaron shushed her. “Ssshhh…ssshhh, sweetheart. It’s all right. It’ll be okay.”
“What do you mean it’ll be okay? Didn’t you hear me? We’ll have been gone for our kids’ whole lives! And what about the rest of the world? What kind of world did it become while they had to grow up without us? We’ve got to go back—now!”
“Macy,” said Aaron, “will you please calm down? I asked the Vonsahlans about this already. It’s covered. It’ll be good.”
“How?”
Gordanir replied, “Another function of the Beacons. So long as your children have maintained the Beacon as it was set when you departed, we can return you to those coordinates on the same day. No significant time will have passed.”
“And if I know our kids,” said Aaron, “they’ve got that figured out already. Or at least they haven’t changed the setting or let it change. They’re smart. Maybe smarter than their parents.”
The tension drained out of Macy’s body. Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed, long and deeply. “Yes,” she admitted, “they are. If I didn’t learn anything else today, I learned that.”
“We can return you home now,” said Gordanir, “or at any time you wish.”
“In a moment,” said Macy. “I’d like a word alone with my husband first. Then, we can all go.” She paused for a moment, considering. Then, to Gordanir, she said, “You know, there are a lot of people on Earth who are going to be really excited to meet you. You’re all that some of Aaron’s people ever think about. When will their creators be back? Will they live to see it? Will their children see it? And then, there are my people. I can’t even guess how they’ll react to you showing up.” After a meaningful beat, “No, I can guess how some of them will react. Fighting yogrox is a walk in the park compared to dealing with some humans, believe me.”
Gordanir reared back his dragon head and neck slightly, not knowing how to react to that. “‘A walk in the park?’”
“An expression we have,” said Macy. “You’ll understand when we get there.”
“We look forward to understanding many things,” said Gordanir. “We shall leave you to your talk with your mate, and be on our way to your world once you are done.”
The Vonsahlans and the party from Earth filed out the way they came, leaving Aaron and Macy alone in the chamber. They waited for the hatch to close behind them.
Aaron held out his arms to Macy. “Come here,” he said lovingly.
Macy held up her hands to stop him. “Not yet,” she said, frowning hard.
Befuddled, Aaron asked, “What…?”
“Don’t you give me ‘What,’ Aaron Bedford! I am fit to kill you right now!”
Now even more bewildered and stung, Aaron asked further, “Kill me? What the hell for? What did I do?”
“You know what you did!” Macy snapped. “That…that ‘temple of the beacon’ or whatever you call it, there in your computer complex! How long has that been there? How long have you been keeping that there and not telling me?”
Caught dead to rights in what amounted to a lie of omission, Aaron sighed resignedly. “Oh…that. I was working on the deal to take custody of that before we even met. I was closing the deal the week after my birthday when we slept together all weekend. I was in the process of having the Beacon delivered to Westchester and getting the place ready and having it all set up when you came to me and told me I’d gotten you pregnant.”
“So, for our whole relationship, our whole marriage, you’ve been guarding that dangerous thing, and you never told me,” Macy fumed.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Aaron said. “There are things we don’t discuss with humans. You’ve known that from the beginning. I couldn’t share that with you.”
“You couldn’t share that with me? With the most important person in your life? Your lover, your wife, the mother of your children, and you couldn’t share it? Seriously? I am not just some human, Aaron! You cut me out of the loop completely!”
“Macy, I couldn’t tell you, plain and simple. And it had nothing to do with you; it was about my people. I was Nathairfear before we met, and I always will be.”
“And do you expect to always be my husband?”
“Damn right I do!”
“Then when there’s something as important as this,” Macy demanded, “you share it with your wife!”
Aaron stood his ground. “Do you tell me everything? Do you discuss your business with me? Things that are only between you and your employees, or you and your clients?”
“There’s nothing between me and my clients that could kill one of us and destroy our family!” Macy argued back.
“Okay,” said Aaron, throwing up his hands. “All right. Well, that’s a moot argument now anyway. Because this is the only thing I’ve ever kept from you, the only thing I’ve ever not told you. Now you know everything about me, Macy. Now you know it all. There are no secrets anymore, none. Nothing’s left.”
They fell silent now, just standing there, looking at each other, breathing heavily from the emotional outburst of their quarrel. Macy eyed him with her arms crossed. Aaron stood, not knowing what to do with his arms, knowing only what he wanted to do.
Finally, he said, “Now…will you come here?”
Macy fumed at him silently a little longer. The anger boiled and evaporated out of her; she could not hold it. Not when he was standing there looking so remorseful and contrite, and as sexy as the night they met, the night he took her to bed and ravished her for the first time. She hated him for that—because she loved him so.
She went to him and was at once wrapped up in her favorite arms, and she thought how much more wonderful it would be when he was not dressed in a silvery alien uniform.
Aaron kissed her—a long, long kiss, a kiss to love away all the fear and panic of what she had been through. A kiss that might not make her forget, but would at least let her know how much her love was returned.
Holding her close, Aaron said, “I’ll make this up to you when we get home; I promise.”
Macy rested her head on his chest, knowing full well how he meant to compensate her for her ordeal: with the two of them naked, and Macy on her back, legs in the air. Aaron was the gift that would always keep giving. And giving. And giving…
_______________
Andrew, Sam, and Kate Bedford were, after all, the fulfillment of the Nathairfear Prophecy of the Dragons Three—not through any supernatural agency or psychic revelation, but through the extraordinary gifts with which they were born, which may have truly been just a further mutation of what the Vonsahlans gave to the long-ago people of Kinross Green. It did not matter to Macy and Aaron. It mattered to them only that their family was together, and that their triplets would grow up to be remarkable by the standards of man or dragon. The dragons from another world and another universe were greeted by the descendants of the first humans who had become the first weredragons so many generations ago. The Nathairfear, rejoicing in their reunion with their creators, introduced the Vonsahlans to humanity and were greeted with all the wonder, all the curiosity, and at times all the shock and fear that was to be expected when human beings faced the unknown. But life and love and the world went on as they were meant to do, on Earth or anywhere else in space and time.
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