The Jovian Legacy (25 page)

Megan
got up and gave her boyfriend a kiss and went off to organise it.

A
team of medics screened off the area and gently lay Jack out on the
comfortable wide gurney. Megan lay down beside him after the team
had inserted the intravenous tube, cuddling him and listening to his
heartbeat, until she too fell asleep.

J
ack
is dreaming of a banquet when he is woken by the sound of baby
noises. Benjamin is lying on his arm talking to himself. He’d
had his sleep and now wants to play. Jack curiously feels much
better too after feeling so weak the night before. He feels great in
fact, and full of energy. He is not hungry anymore, which is
strange, as he hasn’t eaten anything apart from the tomato
sandwiches. Then realisation dawns on him that he is still here in
the 1940s in his father’s farmhouse. The words,
“You
may alter the course of history”
drums in his head, haunting him. He fears that he’ll never see
his family again.

He
needs to use the bathroom so he gently lifts Benjamin off his arm.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed and is about to stand up
when he looks up to see the entire family standing in the bedroom
looking at him, absolutely shocked.

My
God, they can see me! What the heck does that mean now?

Benjamin’s
mother quickly grabs her baby boy up in her arms and tells her
husband to ring the police.

“Please
don’t. I’m not a bad man or paedophile or anything,”
Jack blurts.

“A
pedda what? What the hell is that young man? And who do you think
you are bedding yourself down in our house as you please? Are you a
drunkard?” Mr Dunlop questions.

“Please...let
me explain. My name is Jack, Jack Dunlop. I’m your…er…
relative,” he falters.

Mr
and Mrs Dunlop look at each other, stumped.

“Arthur?”
Jack hears Benjamin’s mother say. Mr Dunlop senior shakes his
head at her and shrugs his shoulders.

“Please
let me explain,” Jack quickly repeats, wondering what in the
world he is going to explain. He is merely biding his time so they
don’t ring the police. He knows he’ll get thrown in the
slammer for sure.

“All
right, we’ll give you a chance,” Arthur softens, “Come
into the kitchen. Margaret, be a dear and make us a cuppa tea.”

“Oh,
I suppose so,” Margaret grumbles. “Don’t know why
we should be giving him a tea party though.”

Jack
has a mug of tea shoved in front of him, hot tea splashing onto his
hand as he goes to accept it gratefully.

Man,
my grandfather must’ve loved his mate heaps to have married
this old dragon.

Arthur
Dunlop stares at him. “Well?”

“Well…,”
Jack replies taking a sip of his tea and putting it down slowly on
the table. “As I said, my name is Jack Dunlop. I came up from
the South Island looking for you.” He feels himself redden.

“How
on Earth did you come up from there? Shanks’s pony?”
Arthur questions, glaring at him.

“Well,
that’ll explain the God awful clothes!” his wife chips
in.

“Margaret,
that’s enough,” Arthur scolds his wife, his own cheeks
flushing. It takes Jack by surprise; he didn’t think the old
man had it in him.

Looks
like he’s a bit scared of her though.

Margaret
turns her back and grumbles away to herself.

Jack
is allowed to continue. “I came across on the Aramoana and
then by train from Wellington. My…er… father gave me a
some money and told me to find you. He has always wanted me to meet
you, but didn’t get a chance to get us up here. He told me
this just before he passed away.” Jack is on a roll,
surprising himself.

Arthur
looks uncomfortable. “Oh, I’m… ah…sorry to
hear that, Son,” he says.

He
called me ‘Son’,
Jack
says to himself, a little smile creeping across his face.
Little does he know how close to the mark he is.

“What
was his name?” his grandfather quizzes, still staring at him.

Jack
tries desperately hard to remember the names of his father’s
ancestors. He remembers looking at the family tree once or twice,
that was folded up inside a huge family Bible which he used to lug
out of the end cupboard to look through sometimes.

“Samuel,”
Jack answers when a name pops into his head. He’d seen a few
Samuels in the family tree.

Arthur
looks towards the ceiling, squinting, thinking hard. “Ah yes,
I believe I do have a cousin Samuel. Quite distant though,” he
adds.

Jack
breathes a sigh of relief. Arthur puts his hand out and Jack and he
shake hands. He has, in fact, never met his grandfather, as he’d
died before Jack was born. All he remembers is looking at his
grandparents’ wedding photo as a boy. Now he is shaking his
hand. It feels very surreal to him indeed.

Jack
is served breakfast by Marjorie: fried free-range eggs on toast.

Good
old Kiwi breakfast,
he thinks
and smiles to himself.

His
nice thoughts are destroyed when he hears that scratchy voice again.

“Well,
you don’t think you’re going to have free board and
lodgings, do you? You’ll have to earn your keep,” the
old trout snarls. “Otherwise you can go to Halifax.”

“Where?”
Jack queries, looking to Arthur for some help. Arthur smiles and
winks at him.

“Don’t
take any notice of her, she’s always growling about something,”
he jokes.

Margaret
mutters a “humph” and stomps across the kitchen to go
outside. Jack looks down at her feet and sees that she has the
widest feet he’s ever seen.

Great
slabs. No wonder the floorboards are rickety.

“Samuel,”
Arthur repeats, his ‘distant cousin’s’ name. “Hang
on a minute, I’ll just go and get something.

After
a few minutes of ratting around in the bedroom Arthur comes back into
the kitchen and drops something down on the table with a thud. It is
the family Bible, big enough to sink a ship, the same one that Jack
had been thinking about. It is in perfect condition.

“This
was my father’s,” Arthur says. “It’ll go to
Benjamin when I’m dead and gone.”

Of
course,
Jack realises.

Inside
is the same family tree, folded up as Jack had remembered it. There
are the Samuels all right; a favourite name amongst the Dunlop clan.

“Now,
tell me, which is your lineage,” Arthur asks. Jack looks at
the family tree of five generations and picks the one that has a
Samuel in it, in his generation.

“There,
that’s my father.” Jack points out. The only thing is,
that Samuel doesn’t have any ‘Jacks’ as children.
He does, however, have a John. As quick as a wink Jack points to the
John and says that is him. He says his real name is John, but gets
called Jack for short.

He’ll
know I’m lying for sure,
he
thinks, cringing.

“Well,
actually Jack
is
a version of John. It’s quite common
for Johns to be called Jack,” Arthur confirms, believing
everything Jack has told him.

Better
stop while I’m ahead.

He
wants to go through the family Bible again like he did as a boy.
“Um….would it be okay if I had a quick squiz?” he
asks cautiously.

“Well,
sure, Son,” Arthur replies, intrigued, passing him the large
book.

Jack
opens the Bible to beautifully detailed illustrations etched in gold,
pages so thin they are almost transparent. He knows exactly where his
favourite illustrations are. He didn’t so much as read one
word of the Bible as a boy, instead spending hours quietly looking at
the pictures.

Margaret
marches in at that moment and, surprise, surprise, starts complaining
again, saying something to Arthur about how the family Bible is out
of bounds to their children and yet he lets a perfect stranger handle
it.

Jack’s
grandparents then proceed to have a bickering match in the kitchen.
He hasn’t heard two people bickering in a semi-whispering way
before, like they are hissing at each other. He finds it quite
amusing.

“Well,
how long do you plan on staying?” Margaret asks bluntly, giving
up on the argument and turning her attention back to Jack. Jack
hadn’t planned on staying at all. He wishes he could go home.
Before he has a chance to answer, his grandmother speaks again.

“There’s
work to be done and you can chop the wood. You
do
know how to chop wood, don’t you?” she questions when she
sees Jack’s surprise. “If you’ve come from the
freezing South Island you’d know. That’s if you’re
telling the truth of course,” she says, squinting suspiciously
at him.

Man,
she is one sour cow!

“Yes,
Maam,” Jack fibs, trying not to show it, which proves difficult
with Margaret’s cold eyes boring into him. In fact, he’s
never chopped wood in his life apart from competing in a competion at
a school gala. He’d got the axe stuck on his first swing.

“Good!”
she barks, “there’s a pile out the back of the washhouse.
After you’ve finished that you can churn the butter for me.”

Churn
butter? Lady, haven’t you ever heard of a dairy?
Jack
thinks, cracking up.

Chopping
wood is one thing; he knows he is already going to be the laugh of
the century.
But churning butter? What is this, the Waltons?

In
his peripheral vision he observes that she is still glaring at him,
so decides to retreat and go look for the axe.

“I
hope I get taken back home again before I have to churn the friggin’
butter,” he mutters to himself, his mind racing.

Man,
their lives must’ve been boring if they had to make butter all
day. To think that we would get up around 9, maybe do some skiing
before lunch and then have a barby with our mates, watch some videos
until eleven and go to bed at midnight. And these guys would’ve
spent most of their day churning butter!

Jack
resigns himself to the fact that he is stuck in this era for a while
and that he’d better get used to it. He takes the axe from the
two nails holding it up on the wall, and prepares himself.

M
egan
woke up in the research laboratory. At first she wondered where she
was and struggled to get her bearings, until she realised she was
still in Jack’s office, lying beside him on the gurney. Her
boyfriend was still in his semi-conscious state, awake but staring
straight at the ceiling. Megan knew he was well and truly stuck
somewhere in his virtual reality world.

She
swung her legs off the bed to go and freshen up after a surprisingly
restful night’s sleep. When she returned a breakfast trolley
was waiting for her. Feeling famished, she sat down to eat.

A
medic approached to her. “You may as well go home to your
family Miss McGlew, there’s nothing more you can do here.
We’ll take care of Jack and will let you know as soon as he
wakes.”

“Oh,
okay,” she reluctantly agreed. “As soon as he wakes?”

“Yes,
of course,” the medic assured her.

Megan
dutifully drove back home.
I wish there was something I could do.
I want to go into his world and rescue him, and pull him back to
reality.

She
felt helpless, frustrated, angry, and most of all, a deep-seated fear
that her beloved boyfriend may never return.

She
began to feel annoyed. “If he comes back, I’m going to
kill him! That’ll teach him to meddle with his computer. Well
he might’ve changed the course of bloody history alright!”

Then
she began to weep, stopping the car in the driveway as she couldn’t
see through her tears. She turned the key off, buried her head in
her hands and sobbed her heart out. After a few minutes she heard
people running towards her on the pebble driveway. Her door was
opened by Ben, who had, along with Nancy, a worried look on his face,
expecting the worst kind of news. The girls started to mill around
the car as well, with Eshe climbing inside and throwing her arms
around her big sister. Megan pulled herself together, giving Eshe a
quick hug.

“I’m
okay, don’t worry, Jack’s okay too. He’s at work,”
she quickly explained. She saw the relief on everyone’s faces.

“Well,
what’s going on then?” Ben asked, wondering why she was
so upset if Jack was fine.

“Jack
is
at work….but he’s not there working. He’s on a
virtual reality journey. He’s been on it for over twenty-four
hours now,” she said, pausing. “I think he’s stuck
in a time slot.”

The
look on Ben Dunlop’s face turned from relief into anger.
“Damn! What in God’s name has that boy done? He’s
been warned by the researchers many times to stick to the rules of
the program!”