CHAPTER SIX
Meanwhile back in Blue Cove, things were going as normal. Jarod asked if he could look for his mother and Miss Parker gave the usual answer, no. However she was not as emphatic as the last times.
"Willie's still around. Raines gave him orders to kill your mother if I let you search for her. However, I've given the word through that grapevine the New Species has, that no one is to harm her if she comes here."
Jarod imagined his mother getting out of a taxi just as Willie raised his gun and Roderick the Executioner dressed in a black hood and with a sickle suddenly appearing behind the sweeper. For some reason he hoped the blade was dull. Willie had to suffer before he died. "So it isn't because you don't want us to be together." He grabbed the slacks and shirt that Miss Parker threw him and put them on.
"No. Raines and Lyle are dead and so is Mr. Parker. They had a contract out on her if you searched for her after I captured you, that I was to keep silent about it until they died, I explained to Sam the contract is null and void. However, I doubt that Raines's sweeper will honor my word. By the way when Lyle first tortured you, did he do more than just that?"
"The usual touch with a cattle prod, but the whippings were done off camera, that is the usual ones. I learned there was another camera, the video that Georges received."
"I hope he didn't intend to do what Raines's planned."
Before he changed, Jarod would have said something like, "I didn't know you care," but this time he said, "It's a good thing he didn't nor Raines succeeded. It would mean a Species war. It's worse than a Race war or a Civil war, because there is no vocal opposition to it. He paused. "Prostitution and Contribution to Prostitution, which is what Raines's crime would be in the eyes of the Dominant Law, carries a death penalty." .
Miss Parker's heart skipped a beat. She had heard of race wars, civil wars, but never a species war. Jarod elaborated that a true Dominant, no matter what his station, would be honor bound to exact revenge and wipe out everyone employed in the Centre as well as their relatives and friends.. He fingered his gun that was on the table.
Miss Parker did not want the whole of Delaware to become a waste land and she certainly did not want to come up against the Dominant equivalent of, "contributing to the lack of moral fiber among our species." She ran a comb through her hair. "I did a thorough search of the Centre, went through Raines' office. Remember my mother rescued eight children?"
"They all died."
"Yes. I found out why. It appears that you are resistant to most diseases, except Spanish Flu."
"So I have to get vaccinated." Jarod had been through this before when he was at the Centre.
It was assumed first that homo sapiens and homo dominants were different species and that the latter were immune from measles, mumps, bubonic plague, and the ills of humans. However when an experiment in the Arctic when the Dominants wanted to wipe out the Sapiens by using the Spanish Flu virus backfired on them, they were classed as a different type of human. Doing this brought on renewed interest in man's descent from Adam and Eve and a rejection of evolution by many scientists. The name Species, however, still stuck just as the name Race to distinguish the Oriental, Caucasians, Negroes, etc.
"And so do our children and any other Pretenders. The Dominants from Mexico get vaccinated automatically. They call it the Copeland vaccination. I've arrange with the doctor to give you all a shot, just to be safe. I hope you're not scared of needles." She said with a smile and put down her comb. "The car's running rather sluggish. I want you to look at it." She turned on the intercom. "Broots come up," and went to nurse the babies.
"There might not be enough. Just give me the name of the doctor and I can duplicate the formula."
"Dr. Eugene Copeland, the brother of the man responsible." She gave Jarod the email address and the website and took out some diapers.
Jarod started to write an email to Dr. Eugene Copeland, oblivious to his surroundings until he heard just the babies squealing, no signs of noise from the older offspring which meant one thing. They were up to something. "I'm going to see what the kids are planning," he said.
"All right," said Miss Parker. There was the sound of something pressing, like the controls of a microwave.
He checked their room, finding it silent, and sniffed around, his Dominant sense of smell picking up traces of Dominant child scent, much less noticeable than homo sapiens. It was then he noticed the small crack on the window that opened to the large flat roof of the Centre. Quickly, he put on his jacket, and went outside.
Quietly he walked over to the edge leading down to the Centre gardens and there they were climbing down the wall, five little ones, each one talking away, not chattering for Dominant children never did. They were too small to jump even to the ledge below, but that would not stop them from trying.
Jarod bent his legs and jumped below them, grabbing each youngster as he or she prepared to do the daredevil thing.
"Caught me!" said Jarvis.
It took less than half an hour to climb back up and Jarod certainly did not want to go all the way down to the front door and explain about five little children scaling down the walls like vampires.
"What were you doing?" demanded their mother.
"Hunting," said Adrian in all innocence.
"Well no one climbs walls and only a helicopter can hover near the Centre at this height," said their father.
"Hunting helicopters," said Patricia.
"Helicopters with big guns, father," said Jeremiah, "over towards the water." He pointed out towards the bay.
"He's got the Dominant sight, that didn't come out right," said his mother.
"There is one," said Jarod, "It's a Navy helicopter heading south."
"I'll have to lock that window. Not that it'll do any good." She wondered how do you punish a Dominant child? Jarod would be the best one to do this. "You lay down the law, Jarod." And he did.
All five children had small bruises on their backs and their cheeks were red from their father's blows accompanied by "if I ever catch you again!" Unlike homo sapiens, the marks would disappear in a few minutes and no one would ever know. Miss Parker knew why Jarod was so hard. Most of the discipline he got in the Centre was beatings.
Perhaps she would be nicer to him, just a little bit.
When the children were quiet and occupied, she broached the subject of why did they choose 1959 and 1960 to capture Pretenders?
"Your parents were born in 1945 and you were born in 1961 rather than in 1959 because the Centre thought you were your oldest brother who died at birth of that year. That mean's I'm older than you," said Miss Parker, "but that doesn't explain why the Centre captured all those children born in 1960 rather than those born earlier given that eight year old rate. If we back track the DSAs, we might find the passengers, that is, your grandparents, who were on those two ships."
"1945, they didn't have CDS or DVDS then, not even VHS. It'll just be film."
"But the Centre converted the films to DSAS. However, we found some old films still in the original cans. It might show the reason my grandmother was murdered. Anyway, Broots would know. I'll have Michael bring them all up." She got on the intercom. "Broots are you still there? Get Michael, that kid in Security and Records, tell him to bring the boxes dated from 1945 to 1954, and about fifty blank dvds."
When Broots came up with Michael carrying most of the boxes, they set right away to convert the DSAS to DVD format. They found that Neogeneis two was not perfected until 1960 and that Margaret had been rendered temporary infertile until 1959.
"So until 1960, the drug was not effective or too effective," said Jarod
Broots gave a long winded explanation couple with who he got that information from, as usual, but the main point of the subject was, "They experienced with the drug and got the children they captured calmed down, but they could not use them as Pretenders. Too many memories and hey!"
"What is it Broots?" asked Miss Parker. She could a girl with white hair and blue eyes. It was a wedding picture, but both couples looked a little too young, the boy around eight or nine years old.
He quickly took out the DVD. "Wrong one."
"Put it back in."
"All right Miss Parker." The computer genius then scanned through the various scenes, turned up the music in the background which was a mariachi band playing Italian opera arias. He moved to the index, finding the entry that said 'Origins.'
"It's a Dominant DVD all right. We' d say something like "Our Wedding."
"I thought that Antonio had a weight problem when he was small."
"Apparently not. He probably felt that we wouldn't take too kindly to child marriages." The girl, Antonio's late wife, a Dominant, was descended from a Russian couple on the paternal side and a Polish couple on the maternal side. "Why when the Dominants were so careful, they'd marry Antonio to a Russian girl?"
"It's because of the Russian immigrants moving to Brighton Beach. The Council's careful when going into a new area. You have to look as though you came on the boat from Moscow. Although looking at Lambourni's children, they favor him," said Jarod. He found the correct discs and handed them to Broots who said he would convert the rest after he worked on the films.
"They're the original Centre storage data," he said, "most of them have been put into VHS and later DSA format, but apparently these haven't." He explained in frustration. "This is impossible. There are about four days worth of shots in here, not like the DSAS."
"There must be something relevant on them," said Jarod, "I'll get the projector." The projector was stored in Sublevel Two, he brought it up and set it up. "All right, I'll start the film."
"How about I do it," said Broots, "you get the camera and film each shot. No that'll take too long. We'll have to bypass the photography and feed each shot into the computer. There's a fast conversion rate here I'll have to fix the shots later." He and Jarod got everything ready, and set up the transfer. It took about an hour, during which time Michael sorted out each DSA according to year while Patricia hovered over him like a tiny vulture.
"What's that?"
"DSAs. The Centre stole the idea from Sony."
"Mario?" Her face showed disappointment.
"Not that's Nintendo. Put that back!" He glared at her. She practically dropped it, and he grabbed it before it fell on the floor and continued sorting.
"Okay. Here's the first one or part of the film. That looks like Miss Parker's grandfather and another man shoving someone or something into a room. Now they're locking the door," said Broots at last.
Jarod looked at it, the actions appeared familiar, another captive being imprisoned by the Centre. "The original Pretender project."
"They didn't call it a Pretender project then, just since the 1960s, although they called it them Pretenders even then," said Miss Parker, "and they didn't call them test subjects either. I believe the official name of the project was 'Intelligent Assets.', but they figured that someone would put two and two together and come up with "Very Smart Slaves."
"Or brainy robots,"said Broots.
They all ignored him and waited until he started the second section. Finally, after they took out some TV dinners, he had it ready.
"I'll put it on fast forward," he said, "there's not enough room on the hard drive, so someone'll have to shove in each DVD as soon as the other one's finished." He started with the first DVD, and then the second, which showed the general area quite bare. He continued taking each DVD, putting one in and taking one out until Jarod stopped him.
"They're opening the door where they shoved that man in."
"Right. According to the time that was four days ago. Don't let Miss Parker see this." He put his hand on the screen.
"See what Broots?"
Broots turned around. "The man they put in that room is dead and he looks a little like Jarod, only shorter, but they didn't eat as well in those days. The War." He froze the picture and looked again at the canister. "It says 'Intelligent Asset Failure 1; and this one says 'Intelligent Asset Failure 2'" He quickly took out that DVD, and inserted the next batch, and then the next. "Miss Parker, Jarod, they're all the same and if I enlarge this one, it shows a set of shovels near a door, and there's something on them."
"It looks like someone's been digging," said Miss Parker, "or disposing of bodies."
"So that's what happened to my grandparents," said Jarod, "they're all dead and they're probably buried on the Centre grounds here."