The First Book of the Pure (13 page)

M & R, Inc.

Maximus and Robert were getting very good at
all this, having time to plan and then test plans, execute plans
and even time to hide for years when things went awry. They were at
first unrestrained by moral codes or rules. They simply did
whatever was expedient, and they usually did it pretty well. When
his life should have ended in Normandy, Robert moved on with his
Uncle Max, took the wealth they’d accumulated and stolen from
Normandy and started new lives, far away.

First they worked their way across Europe,
changing identities as needed. They worked once as town
“Magicians,” and stayed there much longer than anywhere else. Their
magic seemed to be the source of their unending lives to the
locals, and so they had the freedom to stay for a prolonged period.
That era in their lives was a story in itself, to be told another
time. They’d learned enough to truly be of help to the people
there. The local king had taken them in, and Robert had so
impressed him that he’d been made the Magician of the Realm, while
Max was the respected assistant to Robert. At that point in time
and for about forty years they were known as Merlin and Maximus.
Max had a thing about keeping his own name, and insisted on it.

Living as long as they did in that time and
place, they outlived the king they’d come to know and serve. They
found the next king to be far less accommodating. Robert was sure
the new king felt threatened by them in his new position. They
continued to function as they had for forty years, and started
butting heads with the king. After an unfortunate run-in with him
that could have proven fatal for them, they decided to leave. They
produced quite a show to stage the great Merlin’s death, and
sneaked away, as always, with some treasure.

***

Eventually they moved to what had become New
Orleans, and started over as loan sharks and problem solvers in
general. Often the “problems” were people who were in the way of
others, and needed to be removed. That was their specialty. The
police had tried often to catch these mysterious assassins, but to
no avail. They were too experienced and too smart to be caught, or
at least that was what most people in this line of business thought
of themselves. Their employees became many, and their operations
were varied.

Eventually they came to a point at which they
had a decision to make, which would change their lives, perhaps
dramatically. Max, being much older, was ready for such a change,
but Robert was not. Age is somewhat relative. Part of it is
experience. Robert hadn’t experienced nearly as much as Max, and
had never experienced a “skip.” Max had, and he knew it was time to
do it again. They had amassed great wealth, built an enormous
fortress/home, and had a small private army and a host of employees
to enforce their will and their rules. Unfortunately for them, the
rival crime gangs had united with the local governments to take
them down. Everyone would win, except for Max and Robert, of
course.

Max had planned a “skip” that would bring
them out after all this was long gone, and which would amass still
more wealth and power, even as they slept.

“But Max,” Robert whined, “you can’t know
this will work. I could die doing this!”

“You won’t die Robert, and you’ll have to
trust me because I’ve done this before. You’ve lived several full
lifetimes already, so why would you think you can’t do the rest
that comes with our abilities? It’s a gift you have, and one you
need to use now. It isn’t like suicide; you just will yourself to
be still and stop breathing. As I understand it, the body of a
Normal wouldn’t let you do that, so don’t worry about it. If you
can’t skip, it won’t hurt you to try. There are just too many
forces against us. These are forces we can’t possibly defeat. We
were too impatient, too greedy, and too power hungry. I allowed the
exuberance of your youth to cloud my usual caution. One reason
these schemes of ours work so well is because we have the time to
make small changes over long periods of time. This time we got
greedy.” Silently Maximus thought,
My old teacher, Mudar; he
would be disappointed with me during these last years. He always
said I could do much good if I chose to do so
. “Truth be told,
Robert, I see too much wrong in what we do. I’m tired of seeing
people hurt, and always thinking only about us.”

“You no longer sound like my Uncle Max,”
pouted Robert.

“Perhaps not, but even in my marching days in
the legions of Rome, I learned that sometimes you have to wait a
long time for the balance to tip in your favor. We have the ability
to wait this out. I, for one, don’t want to live through it and
fight to keep every nickel we’ve managed to accumulate.”

“Tell me again exactly what we have to
do.”

“All right. I know you don’t want to hear it,
but this is it. We know some about the future, because we’ve seen
so much of the past. History is nothing if not repetitive. We know
that some things come and go and come again, like styles, and
political views. Some are in favor, and then not until they are
again. We need to use our money to purchase land: vast tracts of
land. We need to buy land because it’s always good to own land, and
land can give us a home, a base, when we come back. Who knows,
maybe the timber will eventually be worth a lot, and eventually
minerals could be too. Land is cheap, and they aren’t making any
more of it. We can buy it from governments, from individuals and
from land banks. I’ve figured out that if we …”

Robert lost his temper and started yelling.
“
You
figured it out?
We
haven’t figured anything out
yet. That’s why we’re discussing it now! You can’t tell me what to
do!” His red-faced snarl clearly showed his anger.

“All right, Rob, let me tell you what I’ll
do. I’ll buy the lands I’ve researched, and I’ll skip till the
trouble we’re in is old history, until we should be dead, and then
re-enter as a different person. I’ve done that before, and in the
same way I’ll reclaim my power and wealth. You can do whatever you
want. Half of our money is mine.”

“Hmmm, that is so. I care for you, Max, and I
really do understand that you have a plan, and as far as we go,
you’re the planner, and I tend to be the doer.” He smiled a
narcissistic smile and continued. “You haven’t convinced me. I just
don’t see it, and half our money, as you just pointed out, is mine.
See you around!” He pivoted on his heel and headed out the
door.

Maximus could easily have stopped him, but he
let him go.
I could force him to stay, but I couldn’t ever force
his agreement. Ah Rob, I hope you’ll be back.
He’d give him a
reasonable length of time to consider things, and if he didn’t come
back, Max would take his own steps.
This time
I’ll be
tough, but not heartless. I’ll be successful, but not use people
up. Robert might not be able to take the new and improved version
of Maximus Palamos, but then, it is what it is.

***

Robert did, however, return in four days. He
looked resigned to something, and Max was very curious about what.
“So, what do you think now, Rob?” he asked easily, with warm
camaraderie in his voice.

“Okay Uncle Max.” Max couldn’t help but
notice Robert dropped back into the family mode of address he
seldom used anymore. “I’m not really convinced, but I want to talk
about it some more. These are plans you shouldn’t be making for us
alone.”

“Fair enough. Tell me something: just how
will we get out of this mess if we stay here? What plan do you
have?”

Robert just stared at him. As arrogant as
Pures tended to get, Robert knew Max had him. He didn’t have a clue
how they would survive this mess. Neither of them expected the law
and the crooks to partner up against them. “All right Max, I
will
go with you. Explain in more detail, one more time, how
this will work.”

“We need to plan for our next advent into
life, so we need to invest in things that take a long time to pay
off. We won’t be around watching the clock, so how long it takes
doesn’t matter. We can buy thousands of acres of land that’ll grow
great forests if handled right. And we can set up trusts that will
pay people to plant and tend the ‘crop.’

“We can afford great stretches of land that
very probably hold copper, coal and oil. Eventually they’ll be even
more valuable commodities than they are already. We can afford to
place some bets on companies that will most likely take a long time
to grow, but when they do, the profit will be great. And we can
afford to take a nap for 60 or 70 years and let this all happen for
us.”

“I like it, Max. But where shall we take this
‘nap’ you’re talking about? I’ve never skipped, and I have to
admit, I’m a bit worried about it. Let me ask you something you’ve
never mentioned before: how long is the limit of a skip, or do you
even know?”

Max decided to lay it all out. “I don’t know
for sure of course, but I expect that much more than the time I
have planned could be fatal. It has to use some small amount of
energy, and it’s possible we could use it all up and simply not be
able to revive. We’d be dead. We don’t dare wake up trapped where
we can’t get out or we’d die from starvation. Once revived we still
need food, water, and a way to communicate. We’ll need everything
any other person needs to stay alive.

“Also, let me suggest that we keep some
personal boundaries for this skip. It’s not that we shouldn’t
really trust each other with the future. We could revive at
different times, and the temptation could be to go it alone, and
that could be bad for the other one. So I propose that we each find
our place to skip separately, agree on a rough time frame, and
whoever wakes first will get to business and take over the running
of the things we set in motion. Let’s put some things in your name
and some in mine, so either one of us can get started when we
revive. Honestly, I was alone too long. I enjoy being a team, and
I’ll wait for you and make sure you’re part of it, and I hope
you’ll do the same. But that will be up to you. I didn’t track you
to Normandy and work with you all these decades just to dump you
now.

“I also want to assure you that, as I’ve
experienced skips before, when you revive you have the energy and
vigor of youth again. I want to know if there are more Pures around
somewhere, too.”

“Why? The only other one I knew was cruel and
selfish.” Robert had a vivid flashback to his father, William, or
Karl, slashing him to find out if he’d heal.

“We’ve been pretty selfish, and sometimes
cruel too. Maybe others have changed, like we seem to be doing
now.”

Robert looked pretty dubious. “Maybe. While
my father was a good enough reason for me to not want to go looking
for more Pures, you’re the reason I might want to do that
someday.”

“Robert, it’s good to not be alone.” Max
grinned at his adopted nephew.

Robert agreed to the plan, and they set to
work putting their future bets on land, minerals, and businesses in
place. They hired a good law firm and made them set up an
unbendable way to determine their offspring, and to give them their
respective parts of the businesses. There wouldn’t be any blood
tests, fingerprints, or any newer, more scientific methods used to
determine who their children were. They would show up with a
certificate of ownership and a document saying who they were. The
documents would be much like “Bearer Bonds.” If you were bearing
them, the property and money were yours. If someone showed up with
it, that person was their progeny and would inherit. That was all
there was to it.

From that point on the law firm would work
for their kids, or grandkids. They made it clear this was a long
term deal, perhaps 50 to 80 years. The legal firm drew up the
appropriate documents and agreed to be the custodial firm, thrilled
at the prospect of such future income. It gave them massive
retainers, and a long term continuation of revenue from the
investments they would maintain and monitor. They automatically
became a very profitable company, and that would go on for their
foreseeable futures. The partners of the firm were ecstatic. Maybe
nobody would ever show up to take things back. Maybe they’d manage
this vast wealth forever, and just get richer and richer from
it.

Max and Robert took the three senior partners
aside before it was all sealed, and had a chat with them. “You boys
know me,” Maximus said, “and you should know that any children I
have will be just like me: tough and inflexible. If they arrive and
find that you, or your partners, or your children’s partners,
cheated us, blood will be spilled. Our family won’t resort to
anything as mundane as legal processes. We’ll butcher every last
one of your employees, your families, their families, and the blood
bath will be on you.”

The three men, all upper class, smooth and
refined in their manners, looked terrified, and one protested. “Oh
stop. We could never…”

Max had the man’s collar in a painful grip as
he lifted him off the floor. “You will listen, and you will do as I
say. We’ve set other firms to work for us, not just you. Those
firms will be checking on things from the backside, and if things
aren’t right, it will cost lives, specifically yours. Got it,
Slick?” He sounded right then much as he had when he and Robert had
run their crime organization in New Orleans.

The eldest partner nodded, and was
released.

“We know some of your clients and their
actions. Don’t play at being completely legit with us! We, on the
other hand, have done nothing illegal, and everything you’re going
to do is above board as well. The real key here is the length of
time involved. In order for this to work for our progeny, it’ll
take honesty on your firm’s part, and many years of solid investing
and care.