The Royal Pursuit (16 page)

“
Can you imagine how highly
advanced this civilization must have been to invent such an
instrument?” Reed asked. “This is amazing.” He pressed some buttons
to see if he could activate it, but nothing happened. He sighed in
disappointment.

“
Have you checked the rooms
right below this one?” she asked Kent.

Kent shook his head. “Captain Reed
instructed us to send the probe to the top, and as soon as we told
him what we found, he insisted on coming out here.”

She nodded, figuring he would do as
much. “Well, I’d love to check out more rooms. Would anyone like to
go with me?”

Kent and Mark agreed while Stephen
stayed behind to complete his research.

The room directly below them was an
enormous library filled with volumes and volumes of books, which
were carefully preserved behind doors covered with the clear
material that was just as resistant to decay as the rest of the
city. Unlike the other rooms she had seen, the shelves that the
books sat on looked like wood, except they didn’t deteriorate. The
shelves and books were immaculately preserved, as if they waited
for their owner to return. The bookcases stood ten feet high and
circled the entire room. She glanced at the ivory-colored steps
that led to the second floor of the room, which was also filled
with books, perfectly preserved.

Her eyes turned back to the first
floor. A white desk and white plush chairs, which were trimmed in
gold, were the only furnishings in the room. She went up to the
desk. Something had been written on the paper that sat on it. She
shook her head in amazement. The paper wasn’t even decayed. A gold
paperweight in the image of the arc kept the paper in
place.

Mark took a picture of the piece of
paper. He bent down to study it.

“
Do any of the words look
familiar?” she asked.

“
I think it’s instructions
for someone,” he replied.

“
Do you have any idea what
the instructions say?”

“
It looks like someone was
explaining how to activate the machine upstairs.”

She blinked in surprise. “Do you think
someone is coming back to resurrect this city?”

They stood quietly, each contemplating
the possibility.

Kent swam over to them. “There’s
nothing up on the second floor but books.”

She quickly filled him in on Mark’s
discovery. “Do you think we should tell Captain Reed?” She glanced
at them, uncertainly.

“
I don’t think so,” Kent
said. “Something about him gives me the creeps.”

“
You, too? I thought I was
the only one,” Mark added, relieved.

“
Maybe if he wasn’t so
secretive about who financed our mission, we’d actually like him,”
Kent replied.

“
I think it has something
to do with that machine up there.” She motioned to the top of the
arc. “The captain works for the United States government. The
government doesn’t keep secrets from the people,” she joked, her
sarcasm heavy. “Can you imagine what the government would do if
they unlocked the key to making that machine work?”

“
We’d probably end up at
the bottom of the ocean,” Kent said. “After all, look where we’re
standing and all the knowledge they had.”

“
You think the machine had
something to do with the fall of this city?” she asked.

“
No. I think human nature
did. I don’t think humans can be trusted with the ability to look
into the future.”

“
Unless they were extremely
disciplined and used that ability only when necessary.”

“
Yes, but how many people
can you trust to do that? Sooner or later, someone will want to use
it for their own gain, regardless of who gets hurt,” Kent
said.

“
Like Captain Reed or the
one who’s sponsoring this trip,” Mark filled in.

Solemn, they left the room.

Chapter
Fourteen

Atlantis

Planet: Earth

Ann followed Hathor through the door
they found at the bottom of Lake Solitaire. Turning into a mermaid
happened quickly after she’d finished eating her fish. She didn’t
even have time to take off her pants, which she assumed she would
have to do since her legs turned into a large fish tail.

Instead, her clothes changed into the
tail along with her legs. Her natural reaction had been to hold her
breath when she swam into the water. Hathor breathed in the water
as soon as he went under the water, so when she realized he was
breathing without any problems, she gained the courage to take in a
timid breath. To her surprise, it wasn’t any different from
breathing air.

Now as they swam through the door, her
gaze fell on the submarine in the distance. Beyond that, she
recognized a city. She wondered what the Augurs had brought them
there for. Were the Augurs in the submarine?

They swam over to the submarine, and
she gasped in shock when she read United States of America on the
side of it.

“
Are we on Earth?” Hathor
asked her.

“
We must be.” She shook her
head in amazement. Glancing back in the direction from which they
came, she replied, “It looks like we crossed through some kind of
portal that made intergalactic travel easy.”

Curious, she inched closer to the
submarine, examining it. It didn’t look as big as the naval
submarines she had seen when she lived on this planet. What was it
doing here?

She looked at the city that loomed in
front of them. “I think the people here are studying that city over
there.”

“
Do you have people who
live under the water on Earth?”

“
No. Human beings on Earth
don’t live in the water. We don’t have merpeople here either.” She
glanced at him. “Well, at least, not that I know of.”

“
I see someone,” he
whispered. He swam closer to her in an instinctive
reaction.

She smiled at his desire to protect
her. Turning her attention to the person in the scuba gear, she
pondered whether or not to introduce herself. “Does that person
look like an Augur?”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to tell with
that heavy outfit on him. It could be anyone.”

“
Should we talk to him? The
Augurs are expecting us to meet them here.”

“
Hold on.”

She watched as he went over to a group
of rocks and picked one up that fit nicely in his hand.

When he was next to her again, he
said, “Just in case this person will try to hurt us, we can defend
ourselves.” He hid the rock behind his back. “Stay close. I don’t
want him near you if he’s dangerous.”

She nodded, letting him know she
wouldn’t take any unnecessary risks.

They swam up to the person who was
heading for the submarine. The person looked at them and dropped
his camera.

Startled, Ann turned to Hathor. “Drop
the rock. He’s not a threat.”

Hathor obeyed her.

They quickly swam over to
him.

“
We’re not going to hurt
you,” Hathor assured him. “Are you an Augur?”

The person shook his head, his eyes
wide as he glanced from Ann to Hathor.

“
Are you a human who lives
on Earth?” Ann asked.

The man nodded.

“
Kent, did you get a
picture of-” The female voice cut off as soon as the man’s
companion approached.

“
You don’t have to be
afraid of us,” Ann said after a long moment.

“
Ann Kerwin, is that
you?”

Ann blinked in surprise. She swam over
to the woman to get a better look at her. “Yes,” she slowly
replied. Close up, she could see Stacey’s full face. “Stacey
Richards?”

“
Yes, it’s me! Well, that
was my name before I got married.”

Ann hugged her, excited to see her
high school best friend again.

“
What are you doing down
here as a mermaid?” Stacey wondered, eyeing her fish
tail.

“
It’s a long story. Can we
go somewhere to sit and talk?”

“
Oh, yes. Of course.” She
laughed. “Let’s go into the submarine. Can you breathe
oxygen?”

Ann nodded and turned to Hathor. “It’s
Stacey, my friend in high school.”

His eyes lit up with understanding,
and he approached them.

“
This is Kent Russell, my
husband,” Stacey introduced. “Kent, this is Ann. You remember me
telling you about her. She and I were best friends in high school
until she had to move to Florida.”

“
Yes, I know who you are,”
Kent slowly replied.

Ann had a difficult time pretending
she didn’t know who Kent was because Stacey and Kent didn’t
remember the time Omin’s clone fought to control Earth. But she
managed to act casual as she introduced them to Hathor.

“
The rest of our group is
checking out the arc,” Stacey said. “Let’s go into the submarine
and talk there.”

“
What’s the arc?” Ann
asked.

Stacey pointed to the tall building in
the middle of the city. “It’s the center of Atlantis.”

“
Atlantis?” Ann asked. The
city really did exist? “How did you find it?”

“
Lots of research. But I
can explain later.”

They entered the submarine, and to
Ann’s relief, she and Hathor immediately turned back into their
human forms, and they were also dry in their dirty
clothes.

Stacey didn’t hide her shock as she
pulled off her scuba gear. “What have you been up to since leaving
Ohio?”

Ann grinned. “A lot.”

“
Kent, would you mind
giving Hathor some of your clean clothes? I’ll give Ann some of
mine.”

Kent’s shock was finally beginning to
wear off. “Sure. There’s a room where you can shower and get
dressed. It’s small but it works.”

“
Alright,” Hathor replied
as he followed him.

Ann could tell Hathor was excited to
talk to Kent. Hathor had missed Kent’s friendship since they went
back to Raz.

“
It’s so good to see you
again,” Stacey said as she led Ann to the kitchen and motioned for
her to sit down.

“
Of all possible places to
meet again, I can’t believe we met here,” Ann mused.

“
Are you hungry or
thirsty?”

“
To be honest, both. I
haven’t had a decent meal for a couple of days.”

She hesitated to tell Stacey about
being the Queen of Raz. Would Stacey even believe her? Would Hathor
think it was a good idea?

“
You know, there were many
times I wished we had kept in touch after you moved to Florida,”
Stacey said as she set a glass of water and a ham and cheese
sandwich in front of her friend. “This is about as good as our
meals get.”

“
It looks like a meal fit
for a queen,” she joked. She stared at Stacey, suddenly serious. “I
know we said we would always keep in touch no matter how far apart
we were, but we were both in high school. It was natural we’d drift
apart.”

Ann hadn’t realized how thirsty she
was until she drank the glass of water.

Stacey laughed and filled her glass
again. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were hungry and
thirsty. Would you like another sandwich?”

“
No thanks. I’m fine.
Stacey, what did you do after you graduated from high
school?”

“
I was going to go to
Toledo for college, but you remember how I started dating Kent
shortly before you moved?”

Ann blinked. She recalled that Hathor
had set them up, but she didn’t know what had become of them. Now
she knew. “Well, apparently, he talked you into staying in the
Dayton area.”

“
Yes. You thought he was
good for me, and you were right. Anyway, he loved Wright State
University. That’s where I ended up going to college. After I
graduated, we got married. We went on to get our master’s degrees.
He got his in astronomy and I got mine in anthropology. My thesis
was on Atlantis, which turned out to be right where I thought it
was. I was approached by the head of Wright State to come here, and
I got to select my team, except for the captain. Captain Reed was
picked by the person who is funding this expedition. I have no idea
who that person is though.”

“
You are troubled by that,”
Ann said.

“
It’s a bad feeling I can’t
shake off.” She paused. “You have a lot to tell me. I mean, you’re
the one who transforms into a mermaid these days.”

Ann chuckled. “Only because I ate some
special fish on the planet Lone.”

Stacey gave her a curious
look.

“
I better start from the
beginning. You know how I went to college in Florida after I
graduated high school?”

She nodded. “We lost touch after
that.”

“
Right. Well, my parents
died in a car accident about three months after I started
college.”

“
Oh no. Ann, that’s
awful.”