CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Dec 3 2001
Neither Jarod nor Miss Parker missed Raines and the official Centre report was that he was visiting a Spa for his health problems. No one questioned why he did not use the Centre, but assumed because the Inner Sanctum scandal was now out in the open, someone paid the security guard to go elsewhere while they finished off the "good" doctor and sent him to where he deserved.
A week after Raines's "disappearance," Lambourni leaped over the wall of stone surrounded his estate and bounded over to Miss Parker's house, carrying a brief case. He removed several documents while brushing off his slacks. "Your uncle may be dead, but he keeps getting money put into his account, money he will never use. I asked Lyle about it and he said that I might as well transfer it into your account. I can have Michael draw up the necessary papers." He waited for her reaction. It did not take long.
"Take money from that walking corpse?" She clenched her fists. "Take the money, Mr. Lambourni. Give it to charity. Why even buy a yacht if you wish or throw it away. I want nothing to do with that dammed blood money!"
Jarod put a program on his new computer that would prevent perverts from luring children and at the same time, looked at the "Deadbeat web site. On the desk was a book on Investigations and Detective Work, the chapter open dealing with legal resources open to parents who were looking for financial relief from their cheap spouses. The children who were now almost three months old and equivalent to homo sapiens of two years in intelligence were absorbed in putting several blocks together. Jarvis hit Patricia who hit him back. Their cries were not the normal screams of human children. Jarod stopped his work for a moment, separated the children, and then decided on another choice of action. He built a tower from the blocks. "Pretend that's bad uncle Lyle," he said.
The child fell right into the plot, trying to push or pull the blocks and having a fine time doing it.
Miss Parker shook her head. "Jarod!"
"What?" he asked with feigned innocence.
"I thought you were so logical, no feelings." She put her arm around his waist, but then Lambourni interrupted what she planned to do, taking something from his pocket hiding it in his palm. "Since you are the true charge of the Centre, could you sign this?"
She turned around and squinted. "What does it say?"
"It concerns the status of the offspring of Rachel Burke's children and Zoe's as well."
She snatched it out of his hand. "And why does that concern you?"
"Their father is your Favorite and as you know, our young ones take the status of the male progenitor. Don't worry, that so called million dollars from Raines took care of that. I knew you would refuse."
She signed it. "I gather a concubine's children are automatically free."
"I think the Dominant Council wants to avoid the problems that arose such as prostitution, spinsters, et cetera," said Jarod.
"Not to mention hie thee to a nunnery'," said Lambourni who explained how his adopted father paid money to rent a camping ground, and several descendants from the "Lost Ships" had to pay a contribution because one or both of their natural parents were captured and marked by the Centre.
Now once the Council found out about the Centre's involvement, they took steps to take as much money from that organization as they could without getting the law on their back. They did it in several ways, taking over corporations, getting Mr. Parker or Raines to sign a business deal, etc. If Jarod was smart in getting the Centre money years ago, the Council outdid him. The Centre accountants could track when someone contributed to a children's charity in their name, they did not know whether it went to Mr. Grandstorm or a Chameleon headed Grandstorm Munitions.
"Naturally, we expect children whose father is a Favorite or Slave Consort to be free," said Lambourni as he buttoned up his coat. "I may return."
Miss Parker debated between locking the door and leaving the key under the mat, or open the curtains part way so she could see Lambourni come down from his house, and jump over the fence. However, she still remembered how Daddy and Lyle had gotten in her house when she was going with Thomas, so she debated putting the key in the gutter where she was sure only a Dominant could get it without falling down in embarrassment along with the gutter itself
She did not know if 1.6rs could read minds, but she did hope so, since she did not want to get a new door after Lambourni would break the door in. On second thought, she gave Jarod a spare key and told him to run and give this to the lawyer while she took care of the children, frequently looking up what she did not know about children in one of those books written by a psychiatrist who was just as unknowledgeable on raising infants as she.
"Now we got everything in place," Jarod said when he returned, "how to get a state license, rope, gun, whip, dig a deep hole…"
She smiled. "Better not let the children hear that." Miss Parker then grew serious thinking of the supposed child of Mr. Parker and Brigitte. For some reason ever since the birth of her quadruplets, she found that she no longer despised children. Dressed in a white frilly apron, baking cookies, and being one of those motherly types did not appeal to her, or wearing slacks or shorts like those suburban wives who looked like high school girls pretending to be grown up. Some nights she imagined she was a brunette fashion model gowned out while the children walked besides her, showing them to dignitaries, saying that they were all geniuses and would be in Harvard before they reached their teens.
However this was a pipe dream she had to consider her baby brother— at least she was told he was her baby brother, although she hoped the Parker baby was hers, not Brigitte's Her father, that is her uncle, had said he would resort to incest to keep the Centre in the hands of the Parkers. Miss Parker shivered. Would he actually take one of her eggs, fertilize it with one of his supposed sperm and implant the embryo in Brigitte's womb? Did he go even farther and fertilize it with Raines' sperm because his were blanks?
Please please Mary, Precious Virgin, Mother of God, let my little brother be like Ethan and not like Lyle or Raines. Better still, let him be really my son and don't let him be the product of incest!
She did ask Broots to sneak in the lab and steal a DNA sample of her, Jarod, Daddy's and Raines with all those born on that certain July the twelfth plus that of the Parker baby, so she could take them to an outside lab to see if there were any similarities. As for those born in July, she was sure that Daddy would not put in the Tower because that would send a red flag even though there were three who had the correct qualifications. Unfortunately, Broots gave her the bad news that someone tampered with the samples so they were contaminated. She told Jarod about it, giving him her theory. Since Frederick's and Margaret's was A negative, she was sure that it, being the most common of the negative blood types, would be in her first born.
She got Jarod to look into it and he came with the affirmative, but there were eight regulars, not including transients and those of the large Basque population from the fishing fleets, no one could tell who donated since they used codes rather than names.
"I could ask around," the Pretender said as he put his arms around Miss Parker who sat on the same chair. Both were in a compromising position and he was preparing for the eventual when Adrian started crawling up his leg followed by the three siblings.
"Now I know why the reason for the Merging," said Miss Parker moving aside so all four youngsters would get between their laps, "It was because we would have only a minute to make love."
"Do you want some little brothers and sisters?" Jarod asked the children, "Just nod your heads and go and play Smash Uncle Lyle.'"
"I don't think they understand."
"Smasunly," said Patricia and climbed down.
"They understand," said Jarod, "I could have gotten in the Centre and found out who did it."
As he entered her, Jarod figured Lambourni messed up the samples himself. He knew that the Centre would lock him in the sub basement if they suspected the lawyer was his son which was the only conclusion Jarod came to, considering the ages of he and Miss Parker were when they first mated. It was the hazel eyes of the lawyer that threw them off unless Catherine's mother married someone from Scandinavia.
"Not with Raines and Lyle putting you on their death list," said Miss Parker, "careful with my slip. It's a Paris Original."
"Oh Paris U.SA."
Someone knocked at the door.
"Lambourni have returned," said Miss Parker, "answer the door."
"It's Broots."
The Computer genius was practically shaking, a normal response for him and quickly closed his eyes. "Miss Parker," he said, "Geraldo's tearing up the place."
"You can open your eyes now Broots, we're finished," said Miss Parker, pulling down her skirt.
"Sorry. Geraldo, he's Lambourni's son, found out where the Centre kept that information on how the Parkers turned evil. So he drew his own conclusion. Look I have a Buddha clock and he smashed that and that wooden statue the Triumvirate gave you as a birthday present, he threw it in the fire." Broots gave detailed information on what steps Geraldo was doing to remove the Centre curse. "He even went in that secret room, the place no one goes, except Raines and Mr. Parker once in a while, the place where Mr. Parker came out and threw up?"
Miss Parker grew pale. "The home of the demon?"
"It's a good thing Giuseppe's not here. He believes that stuff. Why he even believes there is such an organization known as Angel Investigations," said Jarod.
"Don't be so smug," said Miss Parker, "you would have believed it as well if the Centre had allowed you to choose your own television programs."
"What does Geraldo believe?" asked Jarod, "Power? Revenge?"
"Are we in any danger?" asked Broots who looked at Jarod who had an evil Dominant smile and shivered.
"I won't kill you, Broots," he said, "but it looks like one who might is coming with Lambourni. Charles Lewison, but you don't have to worry. You aren't into devil worship, are you?"
"You know he isn't," said Miss Parker.
Seeing through the joke, Broots went on about what he heard from "a certain government source" that Lewison's father was a Lewis, a Mentor of the New Species. He interspersed that with what Lambourni asked him if "the Dominants were part of the human scheme of things?" It appeared as though the lawyer was seeking for something. "Lambourni believes in God, that's what he told me. If the Dominants appeared suddenly, then evolution is wrong, but if evolution is right, why were they not hear from them hundreds of years ago?"
Miss Parker yawned. "Broots I'm getting tired. Get on with it and make some sense."
"Miss Parker, but if they are human, why don't they act like us?" It was then he realized something. "The sweepers in the Centre—Maybe they are more like us than we realize."
"If you read the CD," said Jarod opening the door to the Mentor and the Lawyer, "you would realize that the doctors made sure that certain of the seed to produce the Dominants survived, the strongest not the fastest. You're homo sapien because the fastest sperm got to the egg, I, my children, Lewison, Lambourni, and the others are Homo Dominants/Pretenders because those doctors made sure the strongest sperm survived."
"And we will survive," said Lambourni and went over to Miss Parker. "It is now time for the Ceremony. Come Jarod."
"Wait," said Miss Parker, "Is it necessary?"
"He's a very important part of it," said Lewison..."You can come to, although I would suggest, not until ten tonight."
"Yes," shouted Lambourni as they walked off, "you might not stomach the Ceremony until then. You'll know it by the screaming and Jarod will not be doing, but he'll be watching." He added something else, but Miss Parker could not hear it.