# Note to Readers
This story has a surprise ending. I am posting it for you to read in the hope some of you will be willing to help. I need you to guess who/what the swarm is in order for me to determine if I have given enough clues so you'll feel you should have guessed, but not enough to give away the ending. Please send your guesses to gnilgdelf@gmail.com.

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# Prologue

# A Virgin to Lie in Thy Bosom

Something Is Wrong Here!
The Other Side of the Story
First Contact

Master the Tempest is Raging

Chapter 6

The Universe

The way humans perceive the universe is dependent upon their senses. Before Galileo, the idea that planets circled the sun was unimaginable and the concept of galaxies was blasphemy.

The nest and the swarm were limited in the same way. Neither had the ability to sense light the way man does. They could only absorb individual photons and then try to collate the myriad pieces of data into a coherent picture. The result was that they had an amazing level awareness of their immediate environment, but the further away they tried to see, the less coherent the picture was.

In summary, they knew the universe of atoms and molecules as well as humans knew the universe of stars and galaxies, and visa versa.

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Courtney was dreaming. It was not unusual for her, but this dream was so vivid that she had to pinch herself to be sure it was a dream.
In her dream, George had come to save her. She heard and saw him say something, but the words seemed to dissipate before she could grasp them. As soon as the words were finished, she felt something shift. A compulsion to powerful to be resisted washed over her mind and erased something as completely as the tide would erase words written in the sand on an ocean beach.

The old words were gone and new words appeared written in stone instead of sand. The new words were clear. After George saved her, she would belong to him. She would be his slave. The compulsion to obey settled on her mind in the form of ethereal, unbreakable chains. He was her Master.

And her Master wanted to know about the rape.

When she woke, the dream wasn’t forgotten. It continued to echo until she couldn’t distinguish it from reality.

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When the intangible alarm sounded at 3:30 AM, George’s intuition had to remind him that he was doing this for Courtney. He had, over the last 40 years, worked the graveyard shift, he’d even worked spans of 36 hours straight doing intense physical or mental tasks, but there was nothing harder than waking up in the middle of the night and trying to put your brain in gear. The fact that his brain had been engaged in some heavy stuff only made it worse.

When he finally walked in the back door of John’s restaurant a few minutes after 4 AM and saw the beaming smile on his friend’s face, he lost it. Growling, he sniped, “How can you twist your face into such a grimace at 4 in the morning.” In answer, John picked up his coffee, waved it in George’s direction and sipped. “You just can’t imagine what you are missing. One of these days you'll give in and accept the fact that there are some vices that make life worth living.”

With only scattered banter, the two worked steadily baking 30 pies, 6 turkeys and all the trimmings for a typical Thanksgiving feast. John was fascinated by the way George managed tasks that he was sure couldn’t be done without 2 hands. Like the use of a rolling pin, it was amazing. Or other tasks that no one lacking an opposable thumb would even try. He often saw George frustrated nearly to tears, but then he would stop, take a deep breath, think a minute and then execute the most amazingly inventive stunts to accomplish his current task.

It was hours before John noted there were a few things that George apparently couldn’t do. He hadn’t noticed because George was even more adept at planning his tasks in a perfect sequence where John filled in the task being avoided. If John hadn’t been paying close attention, he wouldn’t have even noticed.

Long before they were finished, John had decided that the entertainment value of watching George was worth the pies and dinner all by itself. So when everything was finished and George had his offering boxed and ready, John pulled out his wallet and handed George $20. “That’s the difference between the wages I would have paid the kitchen help and the cost of the food.”

It was only 11 when they finished, but George wanted to arrive just before noon. With nothing to do, an antsy impatience finally drove him to call Deedee.

She sensed his impatience, so she explained that the food had to pass through the kitchen to be checked for drugs and hardware before it was served. He could bring it as soon as it was ready. After hanging up, Deedee wondered about his behavior, deciding the he was much more involved than a good citizen or a friend. Most family members weren’t as concerned about their loved ones.

Expecting his impatience to abate, George left immediately. After he carried in the food, he was dismayed that, instead of going away, his impatience had grown to a level near panic. When Deedee brought him a bag of clothes and told him he had to change before joining the girls for dinner, he was distracted enough so that his impatience receded temporarily. But after he was dressed and while being led to the room where they’d be eating, the near panic re-surged until he could hardly breath.

And then he saw her and the cause of his near panic was crystal clear.

She was looking at him with a smile that caught in his throat with a grip much tighter than a drowning man’s hold on a rescuing lifeguard. The feeling in his chest reminded him of the time, as a child when he’d lost a cherished pocketknife, cried for days and found it again, but this was multiplied a thousand times. Although the emotions he was experiencing were familiar, their intensity was beyond the most virulent he’d ever had.

With the feelings came total war. He didn’t want to give up his rational orderly life he’d evolved after similar feelings had been ripped away the last time he cared. He wouldn’t give up control. But that was his rational, cynical side speaking. The part of him where he kept his emotions told him he’d found the other half of himself and that he could no more turn his back on himself emotionally than he could physically.

In spite of the war and without a trace of it showing, George entered the dining room. As soon as the guard was no longer between them, Courtney launched herself with absolute faith that George’s arms would be open. He was the life preserver she’d been tossed, after being thrown overboard from the only life, the only security she’d ever known.

With an equal intensity, Courtney’s lips found George’s in a scorching kiss. The odor-taste hit him like an ice-cream migraine and seconds later the antsy impatience was nothing but a memory. Though he’d never been addicted, he recognized the symptoms. Realizing there was nothing he could do about it in the time immediately after receiving a fix, he focused on the girl in his arms.

Clinging desperately, George’s emotional half called for a truce, allowing his rational side to assert control. “Courtney, calm down. These other ladies will be jealous if you don’t let go. Won’t you introduce me?”

Courtney had lost her security 8 years ago. Although she’d never realized it, her father had been her anchor. She’d never had to turn to him because he’d been there whenever he was needed. And then she’d been cast adrift. She didn’t even realize it because her security had simply been an integral part of her world. When he’d left, her world had slowly shifted and changed in some way she’d never been able to define. Like a frog in a pot of cold water placed on the stove, she hadn’t noticed the loss of her peace-of-mind as it dribbled away.

But the first time George had touched her, HER World had turned around again. It didn’t happen the way she’d lost her security. Instead, it came as a shock like that of jumping into ice water after soaking in a sauna.

She didn’t recognize it as security, the world just felt right, the way it should be. Contact with George made the change real. The first time he’d caressed her hand, she felt the shift but thought it was due to George’s offer to help. When he gave her that first hug and whispered in her ear, her world shifted again. She thought it was because he’d given her hope. Then when he’d washed her hair, she began to suspect that the shifting was being caused by George himself.

She didn’t understand how or why, but she knew. HER WORLD was stable only as long as she was touching him. She clung to him as though her life depended upon it. There was no rational reason for the effect of his touch, but she still felt compelled to seek it and to obey his every word.

Submitting to this new irresistible compulsion, she backed away from her full body contact. Still holding his hand with quiet desperation, she felt a thrill as she did what her life preserver had ordered, “George, please let me introduce you to Theresa and Denise. Theresa, Denise, this is George Marshal. He is like the father my mother chased away when I was a kid.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Courtney realized she’d weakened her hold. Though she’d never resented him for it, her father had left. If George were like her father, would he leave too? Without even thinking, she sensed that her very life was dependent upon holding on to the island of security that made HER WORLD stable.

He couldn’t be like her father. She wouldn’t accept him as a father that might leave. She needed him too much to take any chances. She wasn’t willing to think the word for what she wanted him to be, but if she had, it would have been “master”. Accordingly, she decided that whatever he wanted, whatever he asked of her, she’d offer it willingly. She didn’t want, couldn’t allow him to ever leave. Suddenly, the unexplainable compulsions fit her world as if they’d always been.

With that decision made, Courtney found herself fighting her own internal war. On the one hand, her worldview was of girls growing up to be independent, getting married and having families. She couldn’t even imagine another path. If George was her master, how could she have a family with a man so old? And sex! How could she have sex with a grandfather? A part of her wanted him to ravish her while another part found the prospect loathsome.

He was well padded around the waist, had hair growing out of his ears and walked with a limp. Definitely not handsome. What would happen when he grew to old to take care of her? The world she grew up in and the world she couldn’t live without were suddenly at odds.

The internal struggles in which both George and Courtney were engaged had little affect on their outward demeanor. The conversation with Denise and Theresa was awkward, but they all thought it was the setting. No one but George paid any attention to Courtney’s desperate attempt to maintain contact, first holding his hand, then while they were eating, keeping her hand on his leg and finally after dinner was over, keeping her hand on the small of his back.

Neither warrior tasted the food. They ate mechanically and the meal could have been cardboard and mud for all they’d noticed. Both wars were so evenly matched, irreconcilable and pitted parts of the warring parties so integral and critical to their personalities that no intelligent psychiatrist would have predicted any chance of either war ending with sanity intact.

Although there wasn’t a single overt sign of the internal struggles, they eventually caused a silence so strained, that like a high-tension steel cable bearing too much weight; it threatened to break with devastating consequences. Deedee came and took first Theresa and then Denise back to their cells. The tension finally reached the breaking point when she came for Courtney.

With the realization she’d finally have to let go, she threw herself in to his arms and sobbing hysterically, cried in his ear, “Please don’t leave me. I’ll die if you go away. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll go anywhere you ask. Just, Please, don’t leave me.”

The effect of her outburst was devastating. The truce was over and George’s emotional half launched an all out attack without warning. The rational George reeled and collapsed. No longer able to hold his legs locked, he sank to his knees without letting go.

Although his rational side was incapable of making decisions because of the emotional assault, he could still perceive reality and knew he couldn’t hold on to her yet. She was still in jail and there was nothing either of them could do to change that. Hating himself for doing it, he used her own words to get her to let go. Pushing her back so he could look into her face, he asked, “Anything? Will you have faith and trust me to come back tomorrow?”

His question completely missed Courtney’s concern. The thing that worried her was that part of her didn’t want him to “ever” leave. With absolute faith and trust, she answered, “Of course, I know you’ll come back and I know you’ll save me, just please don’t leave me.”

Like two cars searching for each other in the dark without lights, George and Courtney’s words passed each other without even being aware of the other’s existence. Like oil and water, they couldn’t mix. They were speaking in different languages even though the words were the same. The rational and the emotional have no common ground. “Courtney, listen. You promised you’d do whatever I wanted, so I want you to go with Deedee. It’s really important that you cooperate so that I can get you out of jail as soon as possible. Remember, don’t answer any questions or give anyone permission to examine you unless I’m here. Will you do that for me the way you promised?” George ordered, wiping at the tears running down her cheeks. The familiar odor became so strong it made him dizzy.

With the look of a little girl seeing her puppy run over by a car, Courtney let go of George’s hand and turned to Deedee, “I’ll be good because he wants me to,” she said holding out her hands for the restraints.

George sat back as Deedee fumbled with the restraints. Normally, he’d have been smirking over her attempts to see through her tears, but now, he was fighting his own tears almost as hard as she was. She finally finished and escorted Courtney away, flinging a command over her shoulder just before she disappeared, “Don’t leave, I need to talk to you before you go.”

The implications of, I'll do anything you want, had gone completely over George's head, but not Deedee's.

George sat down and let the war rage on. He’d stay in control. He’d never allow himself to be wrapped in emotional chains again. He missed her already. How could he go on as half a person? What would he do when she was out of jail and free to leave? What would she do when she didn’t need him anymore? How could he survive if she wanted something he couldn’t get and she became angry? What if she didn’t understand his mission? Compromise was impossible.

The war was so intense George didn’t notice Deedee’s return. She actually had to nudge his arm to get his attention. His emotional side lashed out, “Oh Deedee, what will happen to her if I can’t set her free?”

Deedee had been an employee of the jail for a long time and had seen the worse dregs of humanity, so it hadn't surprised her in the slightest when Courtney expressed her willingness to use sex to hold onto George. What disturbed her was that George seemed oblivious to the girl's desperate need.

“It won’t make a lot of difference, even if you can’t,” she answered, shocking him. “But if you abandon her, whether she is in jail or out, you’ll completely destroy her life and any possible happiness. If you hadn’t come to help, Courtney would probably have survived. It wouldn’t have been with much of any happiness, but she could have survived.”

“When you made the decision to help her, you crossed a bridge and burned it. There’s no way back now without leaving her devastated. I’m happy that you’re here and I don’t care why. I do want you to understand that if you try to back out now, if you leave Courtney hung out to dry, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“You burned the bridge to the only path she had and I’m burning yours. I’m not threatening, I’m promising. Is this plain enough for you to understand?”

With an amused expression, George’s emotions resonated, “I see she affects you the same was she affects me. Rest assured, I have no intention of abandoning her. I’ll be there for her as long as she’ll let me. There isn’t anything I won’t do to assure her freedom and her happiness. So, please understand that I’m leaving her in your care, only because I have to, and I’m holding you responsible for her well being.”

“Okay, we’re obviously on the same side.” She didn't know what motivated George, if it wasn't sex, but it was plain the girl had something he wanted. “Please understand, I had to make sure. Girls who are raped are never the same and it makes me feel terrible when I can’t help them. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her as well as we are permitted until you come through for her. How are the plans for getting her released coming along?”

“The last remaining unknown is the prosecuting attorney, Michael Edmonds. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about him, would you?”

“Well, I know he was elected as the County Attorney only a few weeks ago and I’m pretty sure I have one of the brochures he passed out when he was running for office. Would you like me to see if I can find it for you?” she offered.

“Yes, please, and while you’re at it, could you get me a copy of the order placing her on suicide watch? And if it isn’t too much trouble, please see if you can find Judge Adams home phone number. It should be here somewhere in case of emergency.”

After returning with all of George’s requests, Deedee asked, “Will you be in to see her tomorrow?”

“A squad of US marines couldn’t keep me away, but I’m going to try to get her released on bail and that is the first priority. So I’m not sure when or for how long, but I’ll definitely be here to visit, if not to carry her away.”

The good byes were a little awkward after the aborted show down, but they were soon over and George was left at loose ends for the rest of the holiday. He couldn’t bring himself to call anyone who might help on a holiday, so he didn’t have anything to do. Finally, he gave up all pretense of patience and headed for the only place he knew he’d be welcome on Thanksgiving afternoon.

On the way, a sweet song echoed in his heart;

Gaily bedight, a gallant knight
In sunshine and in shadow
Did journey long, singing a song
In search of Eldorado
_______
But he grew old this knight so bold
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found no spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado
________
And as his strength failed him at length
He met a pilgrim shadow
Shadow said he where can it be
This land of Eldorado
_________
Over the mountains of the moon
Down the valley of the shadow
Look in your heart shade replied
If you seek for Eldorado

Chapter 7 My Soul’s Mate

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Reader's guesses about the story's surprise ending.
No idea at this time, Paul, but the comment about the chromosomes in an earlier
comment will, I believe, be an integral part of this surprise. I expect George to be replicated
as a perfect Man, and Courtney as an Eve. The carrier of the swarm will be their perfection,
and it looks like we have a kind of Messianic aspect looming.
_____________
No guesses here, but I would like to really commend you for the story, the plot
and the ability to have realistic dialogue, even in, admittedly, unreal circumstances. Thanks.
____________
At least metaphorically, the human body. You may be heading for a resolution along the lines
of the Bene Gesserit's control over their own bodies, at a molecular level, in Frank Herbert's _
Dune_ universe. Incidentally, there are definitely genetic inabilities to smell certain things.
The "bitter almond" scent associated with cyanides is one.
____________
A group of living symbiotes.They interact with a human (George) as a single mind. WHat
their actual structure &/or system of living is is umimportant at this point in my exploration
of your fantasy world.

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