The Titan Drowns: Time Travel Romance by Nhys Glover (highly recommended books .txt) 📕

xml:lang="en-AU">‘Sorry I am giving you my life history and you just asked about my Jumping.’ Eilish shrugged and grimaced as she became aware of how she was running on.

‘No, go on, I’m interested… better than Varley, the Vampire, anyhow. If we’d been in the back-end of this century, I could’ve got Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but hey, Eilish the Restless Irish will do as well.’ He laughed, visibly more relaxed now that they‘d started talking. Making quick work of it, he slipped off his shoes, sat back against the headboard and leaned his elbows on his knees. He watched her with bright, blue eyes that didn’t seem to miss a thing.

‘Ha, do you know how many times people have played on the “Eilish, the Irish” thing? Not very original. But anyway, if you feel like being entertained by my life story, here goes.’ She flopped over onto her stomach and rested her head on her hands, elbows bent to support them.

‘So, for a hundred years or more, I just moved around the communities turning my hand to anything that needed doing. I got to see the world, sometimes getting to take excursions into the major cities. Once the bodies had decomposed, it was no longer a health hazard to go into previously populated areas. I would be part of collection details, foraging for anything valuable or interesting. It was the grass roots end of the Knowledge Centres. I had done the compilation end of the process as a kid.

‘Then, about seventy years or so ago, the news came out that they had been able to perfect time travel. Of course, they had been teleporting for years before that. But when they worked out how to transpose molecules across time as well as space, it was big.

‘People immediately saw how we could maybe change the past so the Second Dark Age never happened. Not all of it. We all knew the geological disasters were not man’s fault. But the rest... what could we do if we went back and changed things for the better?’

‘But you never did that. Changing the past is against the rules, even if it were possible,’ Luke interrupted fiercely.

‘Yes, but in the early days people had wild ideas. They thought we could fix everything. Luckily, there were enough sensible heads at government level to make sure none of those wild ideas took hold. In the end, we were all satisfied by the idea of Retrieving people from the past so that humanity could go on.

‘I applied to become a Retriever as soon as it was clear what that would involve. Even though I was not anything special, I had a good brain and most of the other attributes they felt necessary for a Jumper. I did my training with Jac and Chen, and right from the outset, I loved it. I got to travel and see the world – not the hollowed-out shell of what was left of the world, but the way it used to be. Like this! My god, it was exciting – really exciting – and every Target I brought safely home made me feel like God Almighty. And my success rate was even higher than Jac’s and he was one of the best.’

Luke frowned and shook his head. ‘You’re not like the rest of ‘em, are you? Old Timers never get excited about anything. That’s what Faith told me anyway.’

‘Yes, I know. I am abnormal. I never really fitted in. I am able to keep my passionate nature well hidden mostly. But sometimes it is impossible. But now that things have changed and more of the Old Timers are starting to feel more intensely, I do not feel so out of place.’

‘Does that mean…’ Luke stopped mid-sentence and blushed. He coughed and made much of looking for a handkerchief in his pocket.

Eilish laughed light-heartedly. ‘No, my passionate nature has never extended into the sexual arena. I think it is because I was pre-pubescent when the LGP happened. I never had sexual thoughts, not that I remember anyway. And by the time I reached puberty, I was so sick that sex was the last thing on my mind. Then, of course, once I had a clone, there was never much of a drive to be sexually active. I haven’t missed much, from all I have heard.’

She laughed as she watched Luke’s expressive face mirror his contradictory thoughts.

‘You aren’t attracted to men at all?’ he asked tentatively, after chewing for a while on her information.

‘No, not really. And before you ask, I am not attracted to women either. In that way, I am no different from most of the Old Timers.’

‘Hmm,’ he grunted and seemed to want to say more.

‘What? It is all right to talk about this you know. We are a very liberal society, as I think you have probably discovered.’

‘Yeah, but not as liberal as the back end of this century. Their media is obscene.’

‘Porn? Yes, it is rather off-putting. I have seen a bit of it while in-situ. Anyway, what did you want to ask?’

‘It isn’t my business, forget it.’

‘Now you have me curious. Come on Luke, we are going to be spending a lot of time together in the next month or more; you may as well clear the air. I will ask you inappropriate questions as they arise. I am famous for it.’

‘Okay, you asked for it, doll. You’re 200 or so, right?’

‘Actually I’m over three hundred years old, given my time in-situ.’

‘Yeah, right. Well, you’re a beautiful gal. In all that time, you’ve never… oh, forget it. It’s not important!’ He threw up his hands in disgusted embarrassment.

Eilish liked watching him blush. She‘d never seen anyone blush as he did. It required intense embarrassment or shame to elicit the physiological response and no one in her world felt intensely about anything.

Well, that wasn’t really true anymore. She’d spent time with Julio and he was the epitome of intense. Although, from what he had told her, that wasn’t the case before he met Jane. She brought him painfully back to life; but Julio was an Old Timer, and so little embarrassed him.

‘If you are asking if I am still a virgin at three hundred plus years, then the answer is yes. I think I shared a few pre-teen kisses during spin-the-bottle, but that is about it.’

‘Don’t you miss being touched… held?’ The question was out before he had time to censor it. And after it was, he clamped his mouth shut tightly, obviously angry with himself.

Eilish leant her cheek against a shoulder as she thought about his question. ‘I never had it as a child, so I do not think I miss it. But sometimes I envy you couples – Jac and Cara, Julio and Jane, you and Faith… and the others that are popping up everywhere these days. I wonder what it would be like to be close to someone, feel their warm skin on mine. Even so, it seems to me that for every pleasurable moment such a bond gives you, there is an equally painful one. I am happy to forgo the pleasure to avoid the pain.’

Luke’s face had closed down as he considered her words. Eventually, he looked up and caught her with his intense gaze. ‘Me and Faith, we’ve had our painful moments, especially in the early days when I couldn’t accept New Atlantis, but I know for a fact that neither of us would want it any other way. The highs… the highs are incredible, and I don’t mean just in bed; I get high just holding her. It’s like nothing I’ve ever known before. And I was pretty damned experienced by the time I got to Faith, I gotta tell ya. But, just holding her is better than sex with any broad I ever had. I don’t think I could live without her now. And the brat… well, holding him is almost painfully intense sometimes.’

‘Brat?’ she whispered, moved more than she thought possible by his open sharing.

‘Bart. I call him Brat because that’s what he is most of the time. God, that kid is enough to test the patience of a saint. And ain’t nobody puttin’ me up for sainthood anytime soon. From the moment I met him, hovering around his fallen companions on that death train tryin’ to drag them out…’ He stopped speaking while he tried to get his emotions under control.

Eilish had been there. She had assisted with the extraction of those 150 traumatised women and children on the train that was to take them to Belzac Death Camp. She’d been moved by those children, as all the team had been moved by their innocent fear and pain, and she'd been told Bart’s story in outline but never from the source.

Eventually, Luke felt able to go on. ‘From the moment I met him, it was like I’d found another little piece of myself. Faith gave me a piece, a big piece. And then Bart came along with another piece I didn’t even know I was missing. He’s like me, you know. Like I was when I was a kid. And my pappy beat the bejeezus outta me for it. I guess I always thought I deserved it. But Bart is one hell of a kid, and he’s special and likeable, and I can’t imagine anyone wantin’ to beat the bejeezus outta him. Oh, a quick clip upside the head, maybe to pull him in ta’ line, but nothin’ else. And so the more I came to love him, the more I stopped believin’ I deserved what my old man handed out.

‘So every time I hug that little brat, it’s like I’m huggin’ that little kid I used to be.’ He shook his head and scowled. ‘That makes it sound like I only love him because he reminds me of myself. That’s not true. I love him for who he is – the brave, rebellious little soldier who wouldn’t leave a man down, who’ll take on a bully twice his size to defend someone weaker, who questions everything, who seems to have an innate sense of justice and who still doesn’t believe his good luck in being part of our family. And I’d have to love him simply because he loves Faith so much it makes him cry. Jeezus, how did we get into all this deep and meaningful cr… garbage?’

‘I do not know, but I am glad we did. I was nervous about working closely with you, Luke. You scare a lot of people. I am glad I had this chance to get to know you.’

‘To see I’m not scary?’

Eilish laughed as she sat up and began to pull the last of her wreckage of a hairdo down so she could comb out the lengths with her fingers. ‘Oh, you are still plenty scary. But in a good way, I think. I feel safer knowing you are here with me.’

Luke’s face broke into a bright smile and he ran his fingers through his own lengthened, pomade coated hair. ‘Good, that’s good. Scaring gals is not somethin’ I wanna do. You’re safe with me, Irish.’

‘Eil… oh no, do not start calling me Irish! I am not your Brat!’ She tried to sound severe, but all she could do was laugh at his boyish, cheeky grin. How did he get to look like he was eight years old when he was clearly a war-wearied man in his mid-thirties?

‘Anything you say Irish, er, Eilish.’

She picked up one of the long pins she had removed with her hat and waved it at him threateningly. He laughed as he scrambled from the bed, trying to escape her.

At that moment there was a loud thumping against the wall, and they both realised their noise was disturbing the neighbours. They hushed.

‘Does it feel wrong to you that we are rescuing some people, like our Target, and then leaving others to die?’ Eilish said softly, manoeuvring up so she could sit leaning against the headboard as Luke had been doing. The pencil-thin skirt she wore made moving difficult, and her