Echo breakthrough book 6, p.31
Echo (Breakthrough Book 6), page 31
Clay grinned. “Which means…”
Alison shrugged. “Will it carry over for Dirk and Sally’s calf? Will the intercommunication somehow be easier for him or more natural?”
“That’s an interesting thought.”
“He’s so smart, John. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s true. Just listening to him try to repeat every click or whistle Sally and Dirk make shows how quickly he’s learning. Humans don’t begin speaking for months. He’s already emulating their language after just a few weeks.”
“Speaking of He, have you thought of a name yet?”
She smiled. “We’re thinking about calling him Echo.”
Clay laughed. “Perfect.”
When another surge washed over her feet, Alison stopped and looked back down at the water. “You want to hear something really crazy?”
“Sure.”
She looked back over the ocean and inhaled. “Lieutenant Tay and his team are still no closer to deciphering the alien symbols on the ship, which has me thinking. What if…” she said, slowing, “what if the language is more similar to how a dolphin brain works? What if the dolphins can help us in deciphering it?”
Clay stared at her admiringly.
“And what if Echo, growing up not just bilingual, but ‘bi-species’ is somehow able to help us figure it out? Or even just some of it.”
“Now that would be something.”
“Crazy, right?”
“I don’t think the word ‘crazy’ applies to us the same way it used to. Not after all this.”
He continued walking and pulled her along with him, splashing through the water when it surged up the sand and gazing outward as they strode, eventually passing a small group of children playing in the surf.
After a few more minutes, they passed a man farther out, casually floating over with the incoming swells. He eventually righted himself to look back at them.
Out of the corner of Alison’s eye, something appeared in the distance next to the man, then another, causing her to turn and look.
A little over fifty yards out and one by one, objects continued to appear, then multiple appearances together, until she finally realized what they were.
Dolphin heads.
She suddenly stopped and studied them, momentarily perplexed, as each of the dolphins appeared to be watching her. Then almost absently glancing at the man again, she squinted and raised a hand over her brow to block the sun. “Oh my God.”
Alison walked forward, looking closer. “Is that Chris?!”
She scanned the group of dolphins before suddenly spotting Sally. Then Dirk. And Echo, with his tiny head bobbing between them.
“John, look at that! It’s Chris!”
There was no answer.
“John–” she stammered, turning to find Clay no longer standing next to her.
He was kneeling.
Clay calmly reached into his pocket, retrieving a small red box. “I had to do it this way. They wanted to see.”
“What?”
“They wanted to see,” he repeated. “Sally and Dirk. They wanted to see what it was like when a man professed his love for a woman.”
Alison was suddenly speechless.
“When a man tells a woman that he is deeply in love and can’t live without her. That she means more to him than anything else in this world. And that she is the one thing he has been searching for his entire life.”
“Oh my God.”
“Alison Shaw,” he said, reaching up to take her hand. “You are the woman I’ve been searching for. The woman I’ve been waiting for. And the woman I am meant to spend the rest of my life with.”
Alison looked down as though she were having trouble breathing. Her mouth was agape and eyes wide as she stared in disbelief.
“Alison?”
She was trembling.
“Alison…will you marry me?”
Her eyes teared up, and her chest shuddered as she cried and laughed at the same time.
“Yes. Yes! I will!”
She bent down and wrapped her arms around him, leaving his hand outstretched and still clutching the ring before she remembered and stepped back again, giving him room to remove it from the box and slip it onto her finger.
At that moment, overwhelmed beneath a wave of emotion, all she could think about was—How in the world did he know her ring size?
Through her daze, Clay stood up, his hands still holding hers, followed by the eruption of clapping from a nearby group of onlookers.
Alison blushed and waved at them, then turned back to John. She started to speak and then abruptly stopped as she looked back at those clapping.
One by one recognition came. Steve, Neely, DeeAnn, Will, Lee, and suddenly a bolt of lightning. Her sister and her mother and father! All standing together, cheering.
“OH MY GOD,” she shouted. She tossed Clay an excited glance before suddenly breaking off into a run.
A smiling Clay followed, walking up the gentle slope until reaching Steve Caesare and Will Borger. Both stepped forward to congratulate him, followed by Lee Kenwood, and finally Alison’s father, all shaking his hand. He waited and watched while Alison jumped up and down in front of the women.
“Thank God she said yes,” said Caesare.
Alison was beside herself, hugging everyone, before noticing more faces behind them. Two friends from college and one Donna Hankinson. A former colleague who had been with her when Alison had first met Dirk and Sally.
But when she saw the last face, her look of exhilaration froze.
He was now twelve years old, with bright eyes and standing on his own two feet with the help of two crutches.
“Edwin?” she said, pushing past the others. EDWIN?!”
She immediately ran to him and wrapped both arms around the boy, smiling from ear to ear and staring into his big bright eyes, strong and healthy, before turning to her sister in shock.
“He’s been getting stronger,” she said. “Ever since your visit to the hospital.”
Elated, she stared back at Edwin and shook her head, excited and astonished.
How in the world?
III
The rumbling was deafening, emanating from an old engine well past its prime and roaring like a dying beast from the rear of the bus while simultaneously drowning out the constant squeaking of the vehicle as it swayed side to side over the small rocks, clawing its way up a steeply graded dirt road beneath a giant cloud of brown billowing dust.
It was as dirty inside as it was outside, with two dozen windows down to provide what little relief they could from the heat that felt like an oven. Every seat was filled with locals dressed in old, worn clothing, most clutching various bags or boxes on their laps.
Except one.
Near the back in an aisle seat and rocking from side to side with the others sat a young teenager of Chinese descent with long, straight black hair sitting quietly with her eyes closed as if trying hard to drown out the noise.
She opened them only occasionally to glance toward the front at a mother and child sitting sideways near the driver in a side-facing seat, the tiny child upon the mother’s lap lying weakly against her bosom for comfort.
The young girl only had clumps of hair left and was clearly sick. But Li Na could feel more than that. Not just the sickness, but the dark misery within the girl’s tiny heart, a dwindling, terminal sensation. Not of pain, but acceptance and profound sadness.
This left Li Na wondering—What might happen if the young girl was given a drop of her own blood?
MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you very much for reading Echo. I hope you enjoyed it, and honestly hope Echo, and the rest of the Breakthrough series for that matter, have allowed you an escape from what can sometimes seem a wild and chaotic world. One that sometimes feels to be running low on optimism, or on hope, or perhaps just a genuine aspiration of the human condition. A dearth of what is truly meaningful when it comes to what we might one day achieve, not just as a race, but as a species.
There is so much truth woven into these Breakthrough books that so many of the pieces feel like they are just within reach. Some so astonishingly close that they might be felt with one’s own fingertips. Pieces that could one day soon truly allow us, mankind, to take another exciting step forward in understanding not just who we are, but who is here with us.
After all, all great things achieved…must first be imagined. Right?
Finally, if you could please take a moment to leave a review for Echo, I would be eternally grateful. Being self-published, I cannot emphasize enough just how much I rely on your support to keep writing.
Thank you very much,
Michael
Visit Amazon or Click Here to leave a review for Echo.
Michael C. Grumley, Echo (Breakthrough Book 6)
