I’m comfortable enough with where the anthology is to get back to work. This, for all contented porpoises, will be Part Three of the novel. I not only introduce the character everyone has been talking about, but here and the next few segments get off into weeds about what is a new race and what might be some of the implications of that. Very interesting.

Kinda funny that it opens with Graf recovering from his flu. Last week I was sick for four days, with the third giving me a very high fever, chills, and shakes so bad my wife had to help me to the bathroom. All one week after my flu shot. Gotta love Big Pharma. I’m sending Elon a precis for a startup making crosses; there are going to be a lot of people hanging from them shortly.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

He opened his eyes and looked up.  A barn ceiling?  Light was streaming through several holes in it.  Where…?

“Awake, are you?” a woman’s soft voice asked.  He looked right.

Right at someone who looked like his mother, but with redder hair.  And a halo and crystalline wings.  “M…Mom?” he barely managed.  “Am I dead?”

“Hah!  You’re funny for a human!” a girl’s voice laughed from his left.  Graf rotated his head…

Another angel.  Somehow younger than the first.  Same halo, but her wings were very different:  rather than crystalline sheets, this one had what looked like four large blue crystals hovering in the air behind her.  Shockingly, her entire eyes were black; no white, no pupil. All black. He finally noticed that rather than something like a gown, she wore a white shirt tucked into a blue skirt held up by suspenders.  That reminded him to look back to the first.

“You’re not my mom,” he stated.  Now he saw that she had a low-cut black tee shirt with a black leather jacket over it.  Her eyes still had whites, but the rest was so gray as to be black. She was kneeling down next to him so he couldn’t see if she wore a skirt or pants.

“That’s correct, Graf,” she smiled.  “I’m the reason for your mission.”

“What?” He was still a bit out of it from his flu.  Then he realized.  “You’re Ildi!”

“Ding, ding, ding!” the younger one cried.  “A winner!”

“Doe, please,” Ildi admonished her.  “I see a thousand questions in your eyes, but you are still recovering; your fever was very bad.  Now:  Pai is perfectly safe and fine and doing some recon in the nearby city.  My granddaughter and I were in the area and she asked us to keep an eye on you until she gets back.”

“Grand…” he looked at the other one then back to Ildi.  “Can you help me sit up?  And, where are we?”

“About ten miles to the outskirts and twenty to the heart of Buenos Aires,” she replied, helping him.  Doe held a cup for him to drink from.  It tasted funny.

“Some medications and a lot of electrolytes,” the young one said.

“Doe.” He stared at her.  She’s really pretty.  “As in female deer?”

“Please don’t start singing that,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him, “or I’ll hurt you.”

Safer, he looked around.  “We’re in a barn somewhere?  Smells like a lot of chickens near us.”

“Trust a farmboy like you to know that,” Doe’s face relaxed into a smile again.  Dodged that bullet.  “Yes, we’re just outside a village called Cañuelas, southwest of the capital.  There’s a light rail leading into the city.  That’s what your wife took to go look around.”

“Can she speak Span – “ He froze, realizing what a stupid question that was.  “How long was I out, us here, and you two helping?  And, by the way, thank you very much.”

“To answer your question before I order you to take a nap,” Ildi said, standing.  Black trousers but a heavy fabric.  It’s like she’s a soldier.  But with nine kids?  “Is you were in a bad way for four days.  Pai, like all of those Mendro morons, has an exaggerated sense of duty, so rather than taking you to an hospital in the imperium for fluids, she went to the next destination of your mission.  Here.  Your ship, Caper, is in the copse of trees just behind the barn.  We got here later at night, at which point she took the train into town.”

“How did you two get here?” he asked.

“Not tellin’,” was her clipped answer.  “Doe?”

“Human?” she asked, leaning in close enough that Pai would attack her if she saw that.  “If you don’t go to sleep, I’ll make you.”

“You are a very dangerous girl, Doe,” he allowed, closing his eyes.  The smell of the barn was like home.  It was restful and making him homesick at the same time.  “How old are you?  Married?  Ouch!”

The last was her flicking his forehead.  Hard.

“Don’t think of adding me to your stable, human,” she both snarked and laughed.  “We have our own breeding program.”

“We?” he asked, rubbing his forehead and trying to get a little more comfortable on the hay bale.

“We are a step beyond demi-humans, Graf,” Ildi said softly, walking toward the barn’s main door.  Her wings were spread wide, nearly twenty feet from tip to tip.  “We are Fusions.”