The Jovian Legacy (24 page)

Jack
hears the man (his grandfather) saying, “Thanks kiddo,”
to Marjorie, who in turn briefly smiles at her stepfather and starts
back up the hill on her horse again, her job done.

So
that was it. The men did all the farm work while the women kept
house. His mind cast back to Megan telling him about her upbringing,
when she used to help muster the sheep. Actually, she also helped
her mother keep the men fed too, so she really had both jobs.

We
men get off easy these days,
he
thinks pensively.
They expect their wives to help out on the farm as well as keep
house, and have children, and stay looking good for their husbands.
Whew, I’m glad I’m not a woman!

He
is shaken out of his daydreaming when he notices that Marjorie has
disappeared, and the boys have also packed up and are riding up the
track towards him. They see the pushbike laying on the track and
wonder how it got there. One of them is told by Arthur to ride it
back as he’d ridden with his brother on his brother’s
horse when they first rode down to the paddock that morning.

Jack
is relieved as it is easy going downhill on a bike but hard yakka
riding it back up again. He keeps his distance and follows them back
on foot. He spots the orchard again and this time he ducks in. It
is fenced off from the animals so Jack climbs between the number
eight wire. The orchard is so different. It is, after all, 1949,
and all the trees are still young, with only a few bearing fruit.
His favourite, the Golden Queen peach tree, bears two good-sized ripe
peaches, the limb nearly touching the ground under their weight.
Jack picks one of them and sinks his teeth into it, finding it sweet
and juicy.

He
wipes his chin.
Delicious.

In
fact, it is similar to the peaches he’d eaten on Jovian. He
realises then that the taste of everything has been perfected so
Jovian people can enjoy fruit as he had done in the ‘good old
days’, recalling that his father had once told him that fruit
bought from supermarkets nowadays tasted like water.

Nobody
knows what they’re missing out on now,
he considers.

It
takes Jack a while to walk back up the hill to the farmhouse gate.
As he opens it something else dawns on him. His six hours must be up
by now. He goes quickly into the kitchen to look at the clock. A
quarter to three. He had arrived around six a.m. so it is without a
doubt past his six hours.

“Oh
Shit!” Jack curses out loud.

“Shit!”
he repeats, fearing the worst. He recalls the time (when he
initiated his birth into a black family) that he’d been warned
he could alter the course of history if he messed around with the
dates.

“Bloody
hell!” Jack exclaims, feeling a cold chill run up his spine,
“I’m stuck! I’m bloody stuck! That’ll teach
me.”

He
doesn’t know what to do, knowing that everyone must be getting
anxious by now because he hasn’t come home from work. He feels
the blood drain from his face.

M
egan
stirred when she felt the sun on her face. She edged out of bed,
took a shower and went downstairs to join Jack for breakfast. It
seemed to be the only time of the day they had to themselves.

She
found the kitchen empty so decided to check his room. His bed was
neatly made.

Most
likely from the house staff as Jack never made his bed,
she thought wryly.

Megan
checked the kitchen again. Nothing.
That’s strange
.
His keys weren’t on the hook so his AV wasn’t there
either.

Oh
help, he’s had an accident!
Megan
immediately presumed, but then told herself it would be highly
unlikely as Jovian vehicles had a magnetic field around them which
prevented them from coming into contact with other vehicles. They
would literally bounce off each other if they came too close for
comfort. Megan knew her thinking was instinctive of being that of an
‘earthling’.

Next
thing she did was pick up the link phone and utter Jack’s name
into it. It redirected to the Thebes Federation of Science network
service.

“Good
morning Miss McGlew,” came a cheery voice in a sophisticated
Egyptian accent very similar to Sobek’s.

“Good
morning, Aya. Is Jack there?”

“I
am aware that he was in the research area yesterday afternoon as he
had activated the redirection of his calls to me because he didn’t
want to be disturbed. This was in effect last night, however, so I
am wondering why they’re still being redirected.”

“You
think he’s still in the research room?” Megan anxiously
asked her.

“Yes,
I believe so,” Aya answered. Her tone showed concern.

“Thanks,
Aya.” Megan replied, cutting her short. She hung up and went
back to her room to get dressed.

Maybe
he fell asleep at work and is still sleeping,
she
thought optimistically.

After
breakfast she told Sobek she was going over to Jack’s work.
Sobek had turned out to be worth her weight in gold, and Megan felt
blessed to have her as her clones’ nanny (
‘Metapelet’
the girls sometimes called
her)
although
she regarded Sobek more as a sister.

When
she arrived at the Thebes Federation of Science she acknowledged Aya
and quickened her step to the restricted area, where, it seemed, Jack
had spent the entire night. She nimbly keyed in the code to enter
the research laboratory and saw Jack at his desk, with a device still
at the base of his neck. She knew exactly what it was. She gently
placed her hand on his back to announce her presence. He didn’t
flinch. In fact, his body temperature felt a little too cool. Megan
felt his pulse. There was a pulse but it had slowed right down, as
if he’d gone into hibernation. This scared her. She knew she
couldn’t remove the device - that could prove disastrous. She
told herself that he will be back soon and that she simply had to be
patient. She searched for a blanket to wrap around him in an
endeavour to bring his body temperature back up. She was given a
blanket by the emergency treatment room and hurried back to Jack,
wrapping the blanket around him, hugging him.

She
gazed deeply into his eyes. “Please come back soon Jackyboy, I
miss you,” she softly said to him, wondering all the while
where he must have gone to.

J
ack
feels numb.

What
now?
he wonders, feeling his
heart start to race. He tells himself to calm down. He knows he has
to think of something.

Maybe
I accidentally typed in sixteen hours instead of six. That’ll
make it ten tonight when I’m supposed to return.
He
feels himself relaxing at the possibility, and decides to wait until
then before freaking out.

He
realises that he hasn’t had anything to eat all day and, after
the long walk up the hill, is feeling quite hungry. He decides to
help himself to some food, waiting until no-one is in the kitchen
then seizes the moment. He quietly opens the cupboard door and sees
a few items: Edmonds Baking Powder in a tall round tin, a jar full
of sultanas and a bag of salt. Below the cupboard is a tall narrow
pullout drawer, the opening at the top and hinged at the bottom. In
it sits a large sack of flour. Beside it in another pullout drawer
is a large Hessian sack of potatoes.

Jack
spies the tomatoes ripening along the windowsill and thinks a tomato
sandwich will do the trick for his now grumbling tummy. He finds
some leftover bread that Marjorie has made that morning, and proceeds
to make his sandwich. He tucks into the sandwich and finishes it in
less than a minute. Though he still feels hungry, so has to make
another one. He is unaware that Marjorie has walked into the kitchen
at that moment.

Poor
Marjorie sees a knife slicing into a tomato all by itself and then
sees the sliced tomatoes jump onto a piece of bread, the salt shaker
fly through the air and sprinkle salt over the tomatoes, and then
jump back to its original position on the shelf. She gasps in horror
as she witnesses the top piece of bread fold itself on top of the
bottom piece and the whole sandwich raise in the air by itself, a
bite being taken out of the sandwich, then another, and another until
it has all disappeared.

Jack
looks behind him, realising Marjorie is there, and the instant he
sees her she sucks in her breath and lets out a scream that makes his
toes curl. She brings the whole house down. She also gives Benjamin
a terrible fright, who is in the next room playing. Jack hears his
sudden wail.

He
thinks he’d better bugger off, and retreats to the bedroom that
he’d woken up in that morning. The time is a little after
three p.m. so has another seven hours to wait to see if he will be
transported back to his Megan, and out of this sticky situation.

M
egan
stayed by Jack’s side that day holding his hand, listening to
his breathing. His eyes were focussed straight ahead, blinking in
the normal manner, every five or six seconds. Megan was quite
surprised at how many times a person blinked.

Not
something one would particularly dwell on.

Someone
from the research team brought her lunch, which she gladly accepted,
though felt sad she couldn’t share it with Jack; she thought he
must be getting hungry by now.

Jack
continued to stare straight ahead as if he were in a coma, though
wide-awake. It was quite unnerving for Megan to see him like this.
If he didn’t snap out of it within the next few hours, she
determined, she would consult a medic. Jack had to get some sort of
sustenance into him sooner or later.

She
solemnly reminisced about when they’d first met and how she’d
fallen in love with him, how she was in turmoil over discovering he
was her cousin, and then learning he wasn’t biologically
related to her after all. The elation she’d felt when they
knew they could eventually become husband and wife. She’d been
so happy ever since.

The
unexpected ‘arrival’ of her twenty-four sisters all at
once was mind-blowing, but she wouldn’t be without them now.

After
a moment Megan became saddened at the prospect of returning to Earth
for their ‘mission’, having to leave everyone behind.
She didn’t want to think about it so decided to concentrate on
Jack; the only trouble being there was nothing else to do in that
research laboratory except dwell on things.

J
ack
sits in the room by himself, listening to the movements of the
household. He is so glad he hadn’t grown up in this era;
everything seems like such hard work. No electrical appliances to
make life easy.

And
with families - this family - so large with young babies
, he
thinks, bringing back to mind the young Benjamin Dunlop.

“That’s
really scary!” he says to himself. It is as if Benjamin knows
he is being thought about because he hears the now familiar sound of
a crawling baby coming up the hall.

Baby
Benjamin pokes his little head around the corner of the doorway and
chuckles with glee when he sees Jack sitting there on the bed. He
giggles excitedly when he makes a beeline towards him, this time to
Jack’s outstretched arms.

I
guess there’s no harm in cuddling him. Except they’ll
probably wonder how he got himself up onto the bed. Oh, what the
hell.

Benjamin
feels soft and warm and Jack can’t help but cuddle him.
Benjamin snuggles deep into Jack’s chest, his tiny fist holding
on tight to Jack’s shirt. It is as if he loves Jack like his
own father. There certainly is a strong bond.

“This
is so so weird.” He pulls Benjamin off him and plonks him down
at the top end of the bed. Jack sits at the other end, facing him.
They sit there staring at each other. Something in little Benjamin’s
eyes makes Jack feel quite strange, and it brings to mind the saying
that a person’s eyes are the windows to their soul. Benjamin
has a deep soul. It is almost like he can foresee that Jack is going
to be his son one day. Jack observes his father in this young body,
this little man who appears way beyond his years and isn’t yet
a year old. Benjamin crawls up to Jack and snuggles into him again.
Within a minute he has put his thumb in his mouth and is fast asleep.

Although
it is only a short time ago that he had eaten the two tomato
sandwiches it feels to Jack like he hasn’t eaten for days, and
begins to feel quite weak. He finds it hard to stay awake after such
an exhausting day, and he too closes his eyes and falls asleep;
father and son sleeping soundly together.

M
egan’s
heart started to sink when she saw the time. Eleven hours had
passed while she’d been at Jack’s side. He hardly ever
went on one of his journeys for this long. It was usually only two
or three hours at the most. His face was pale and Megan knew she had
to do something. Jack had had nothing to eat or drink since
yesterday. She couldn’t remove the device so there was only
one option. She had to get the medics to put Jack on life support
right there in that room. Right now.