Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(120)

Aided by her augmented neural system’s control over her human growth hormone production, her physical injuries had healed. The same couldn’t be said of her mental wounds. Heather knelt beside Mark, tears leaking from her eyes to drip from nose and chin into the rich soil. And as Mark wept unashamedly beside her, Jack and Janet stood watch a short distance up the hill.

It was an odd place for a memorial service, no pastor or priest, only Mark and Heather kneeling together in the barren vineyard, crying and laughing, as a lifetime of Jennifer memories played through their shared minds. And though they had nothing of Jennifer left to hold in their hands, she would live forever inside them.

Their last sight of her standing beside Raul in the Rho Ship was almost too painful to bear, but they replayed it, sending out the good-byes they’d never had a chance to voice. Jennifer had launched the Rho Ship into its own wormhole, leaving nothing of herself for them to bury. Heather raised her face to the heavens. Somewhere in that vast emptiness between the stars, Jennifer’s body floated, entombed with Raul inside the Rho Ship. The loneliness of the vision loosed a new round of sobs that left Heather shaking so hard that, had not Mark swept her into his powerful arms, she would have sunk to the ground.

When the sobs died away, she leaned back, wiped the tears from her face and then from Mark’s, kissed him full upon the lips, and rose to her feet. Holding tight to his hand, she led him back through the vines to where Jack and Janet waited. Then, without a word being spoken, they began the half-kilometer walk back to their rented farmhouse.





The panelists on This Week with Carl Langford included Missouri Senator Fred Charles, Ohio Congresswoman Beverly Francis, and Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Freddy Hagerman.

Senator Charles interrupted Congresswoman Francis. “Of course you’re going to support the president. That’s what you do. But there are a growing number of people who aren’t toeing the official line, including many in the scientific community. You and those of your political persuasion have convinced yourselves that we narrowly averted an alien invasion facilitated by the Rho Project Gateway Device. Isn’t it possible, even likely, that what we witnessed on the video feed from the ATLAS cavern was first contact with an alien race that has done nothing but provide us with highly beneficial technologies, a badly botched first contact?”

The congresswoman snorted. “Did you miss the way your ‘friendly’ aliens attacked our people?”

“Their first sight, upon stepping through the portal, was of a device that they would have identified as a bomb, along with security people who began shooting at them. Why wouldn’t they defend themselves?”

“And what would you have us do? Rebuild the device?”

“I think we need to give the matter careful consideration. Clearly this alien race has benign intentions. Look at all the good that has come from our Rho Project research. Perhaps we can improve upon Dr. Stephenson’s gateway design, send through a message expressing our deep regret at what happened in that first encounter, explain what we were trying to do with the anomaly.”

“Senator.” Freddy Hagerman practically spit the word onto the table. “Let’s look at all the good that has come from your beneficial alien technologies. We have wars breaking out across the Middle East because of cold fusion. The Russians and Chinese have begun widespread distribution of their own versions of the nanite formula to their populations, starting with their military personnel. Blood-worshiping gangs of virtual zombies are draining nanited people in parts of Africa and South America. We’re on the verge of the most catastrophic population explosion in history.”

“All the more reason to seek a guiding hand.”

As the argument escalated to the point that the host had to go to commercial, Janet called out from the kitchen.

“Jack. Turn that thing off and come to dinner. I think I liked it better before we installed the satellite dish and generator.”

Pressing the OFF button on the remote, Jack walked into the kitchen.

“Perhaps you could provide a little distraction.”

“Ha. That’ll have to wait.” She handed Jack the spoon. “Here, stir this for me.”

Walking across the room, Janet stepped out onto the raised platform, her voice breaking the rain forest’s late-afternoon silence.

“Robby. Come inside.”

“But Momma...”

“No buts. You can play with your imaginary friend after dinner.”





As the metallic tan Camry cruised along the rural New Zealand highway, Lilly Cravits adjusted the picnic basket on her knees and turned to look at Caroline and Wanda in the backseat.

“It’ll be so fun to see their faces. Such a nice young couple. They’ve been working so hard to fix up the old Wagner farm.”

To her right, James Cravits glanced up from his driving and harrumphed. “How do you know they’re nice? You’ve barely met them. They could be on the run from the law for all you know.”

“James! Really! Where do you come up with this stuff? They’re nice.”

“I don’t know. They can’t be older than twenty-five. How’d they get the money to buy the Wagner place? Why would young people want to move to rural New Zealand if not to get away?”

Turning her attention to her two friends in the back, Lilly rolled her eyes. “Well, I had a very nice talk when Amanda and Robert stopped by the store yesterday. They were software developers and made a lot of money off a cell phone app they created.”