30 MONTREAL

It had been almost one hundred days that they had been apart, and during that time, there had been some of the worst attacks of the London Blitz.

Jonathan had returned during a slight lull in the bombings. A week later, another large-scale attack followed on March 19, when hundreds of houses and shops, many churches, six hospitals, and other public buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged.

They rode out the attack in their home's cellar. While Jonathan was away, Evelyn improved upon the makeshift shelter there. She also led a local committee for all the residents on Royal Avenue to work and share all their resources as ‘doing their small part for the war effort.’

For his efforts, Jonathan was summoned to meet with the King. Believing it to be just an informal meeting to thank him for his efforts in America, he was surprised to receive the award of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath in a private ceremony. The Order was awarded to military or civil service members for exemplary service. With it, it carried the granting of the title ‘Sir.’

The Battle of the Atlantic wore on, but on land, all was quieter on the Western Front, as the land campaigns centered on Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete. In North Africa, the situation was much more fluid. 

The remainder of 1941 held two events that would change the course of the war and the world. In June, the Axis, without renouncing its pact with Russia, invaded the Soviet Union. In December, Imperial Japan attacked the United States. In a macabre way, although both of these actions would lead to the deaths of tens of millions of people, they served to lessen the assault on England and would put America fully on a war production footing.

For another four years, the war dragged on, raging across the globe and touching almost every nation. 

With the cessation of hostilities in Europe, the Authentic in Killarney requested Evelyn’s presence.

In a meeting with Evelyn, the Authentic said that she would stay in Ireland for another year before returning to Paris, and she asked Evelyn to be her eyes and ears in establishing a new Colette network on the Continent. 

Later, when Jonathan was invited into the meeting, she informed him of the status of Olan Marcano and the other Devi, who had gone rogue or ‘devenu voyou’.

“Jonathan, your old friend and more recently dangerous foe, has been located. He is being held in prison as a war criminal. There are dozens of claims against him for the most heinous of acts. Usually, as the Authentic, I have to assist the Devi in these matters, but he and about 30 others… well, they are no longer our concern.”

In the spring of 1946, they were invited to visit and stay with the former Prime Minister and his wife, Clementine, in their Chartwell estate in Kent.

Churchill, now free of state administration, asked Jonathan if he would explain how and what being a Devi was. Given the stateman’s knowledge of most things, including that he knew St Croix was ancient despite his youthful appearance, Jonathan explained in detail what a Devi was.

At the end of the explanation, Churchill shrugged his shoulders and muttered, “Where the hell were you when I was a fit lad of thirty-something, slogging about in the territorial army? I suppose I am too old at this age to live forever. But a more youthful vigour would have assisted greatly in our recent troubles.  Nonetheless, fascinating, simply fascinating.”

Over the next few hours, Jonathan patiently answered a flurry of questions, and with each answer, the old bulldog seemed to think of a few more.

Within a year, most European matters concerning the Devi had been restored, except that now no Devi were functioning east of the Iron Curtain.

They had decided to move out of London and return to North America. Moving to the United States was not an option. There were still people with memories of Jonathan, images in the background of photographs taken at the Whitehouse, and people in the State Department who would remember him, so they settled on Montreal.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Montreal was a prosperous city with a growing economy, substantial employment, and a vibrant nightlife. Investment in the city boomed, particularly in natural resources, as the minerals and ore deposits located during the wartime surveys could now be exploited for commercial markets.

The suburbs were being developed and expanded as returning troops married and started families.  Yet, in the downtown core, gambling dens and bookmaking counters were common, as was prostitution.

The media market was expanding, and there were many opportunities there. Johnathan joined the ranks of producers at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or Radio Canada. Evelyn used the city and its port to process displaced European Devi to locations across Canada.

“This is perfect, John,” Evelyn said, as she had stopped using the formal Jonathan in informal and intimate situations. He had taken to calling her both Eve and Evie.

“Perfect. How so?”

“Peace and contentment and world peace. A happy home. A new experience. If we wish, we could take a short train trip to New York or stay in the city and visit any of a few dozen exquisite restaurants.

We have direct flights to Europe. Every day, so many choices. I feel like I did with our first excursions to Lisbon or Wellington. A whole new life.”

Working in sports media and production for the Montreal radio and television stations. He had become popular with many of the sports personalities in the city.

During the Montreal Canadiens hockey team's glory years, he and Evelyn were regulars at the Montreal Forum on Sainte-Catherine Street West. They became close friends with several players, including Henri Richard, Jacques Plante, and coach Toe Blake. 

They had been in Montreal since 1947, and with the expanding bureaucracy worldwide regarding paperwork and licenses for almost everything, staying anywhere for more than 10 or 15 years was difficult.

At Evelyn’s insistence, they moved out of the city to a farm outside the small town of Saint Maurice, north of the St Lawrence city of Trois Riviere.

She reasoned that it was 1962, and Montreal had just been awarded the 1967 World Exposition. It had been almost forty years since the Barcelona Exhibition, and no one would notice the massing of Devi among what would be tens of millions of visitors. As the farm they bought was just over 120 miles from Montreal, it, along with two other Devi homesteads in the area, could help with logistics.

“The Authentic, you are as radiant as ever.”

“I hope so. I would be troubled at any other greeting, Evelyn.”

“How was your flight from Paris?”

“The flight? I was never as scared since the witch trials in France in the late 1580s, but fortunately, we were able to sway the Parlement du Paris not to institute an insane national witchcraft ban. That saved hundreds of Devi. Nonetheless, it was a difficult fifty years or so.”

“Jonathan, as they say, you look as fit as a fiddle.”

“Fresh air and horses have always been good for what ails me.”

The Authentic was at the head of the table, with Jonathan to her left and Evelyn to her right. The table stretched through two house rooms to accommodate the 23 other guests. After dinner, the talk was light. Many people had not seen one another for decades or more than 100 years. The first two subjects that were discussed in small groups were the escalating American war in Southeast Asia and the possibility of America at the same time landing a man on the Moon in the next few years.

Then, it turned to political détente, tensions between the East and West, and the opposite counterpoint of the peace movement and environmentalism. As strange as it seemed to many, all those issues would affect Devi.

The Authentic called for quiet in the room, “You all know that our hostess here has forever been running special errands for me. And since the end of the influx of Devi to Canada and the United States, she has, tactfully and unobtrusively, been conducting a global census of the number of Devi.

As far as I know, that has never been attempted, and I have no idea how many of us there are. This is because our records under Paris are old to the point of being ancient. Some were damaged during the war, some were moved, and others were missing.

When the radio, telephone, and airplane were introduced, I said the new technology would be both a boom and a bane. I still hold that opinion. The bane aspect makes it more difficult to hide or move. The boon aspect is communications.

When the numbers are revealed, Evelyn has not told me the number, so the shock of either joy or dismay will be genuine, or dare I say, authentic.”

Evelyn picked up a sheaf of papers off a side table.

“My Grace, fellow Colettes, Communicators, other guests, and my dearest Jonathan, I have contacted Colettes, the Continental, regional, and local over the last four years. I have contact with the PBTs, the individuals who are the ‘power behind the thrones’, our operatives in every country.

In other instances, I have contacted individuals, removed duplicate names of reported Devi, added new ones, and checked the list twice. According to the United Nations, there are 3,459 billion people worldwide, and 49,500 Devi are spread worldwide.”

Everyone in the room murmured or reacted to that number. After a few moments, the Authentic asked for quiet and requested Evelyn to proceed.

For every Devi, there are about 69,800 Standards.

Given our understanding of how our bodies, or even spirits, absorb energies by the notion of unused life energies from premature or proximity death. If all things were distributed equally, and each group member's deaths of 69,000 Standards granted one Devi one week's worth of unspent life energies, each Devi would receive 69,000 weeks of life or one thousand, three hundred and forty years of life.

However, many deaths occur without a Devi in adequate proximity.

As we have all lived through the past few decades, this is exceptionally morbid; if the higher estimates of the Second World War casualties are used, the 70 million dead granted each Devi 27 years of life.

The Standards' feelings of fear, dread, mourning, rage, and other primal emotions as sources of our renewal cannot be added to this as they are unquantifiable. 

So, if you were in a war zone or battlefront area, the fear and emotions of that single event—and I do not mean to diminish them—could have added another decade or two to your lifespan. 

The room was silent; each could not applaud the deaths of millions or look forward to the deaths of billions. Nor could they express remorse or grief as the deaths of Standards granted them life. It was just the nature of their physiology to live with this cursed blessing.

Jonathan walked up to Evelyn and whispered, “I love you” into her ear.

The Authentic walked across the room and poured herself another glass of wine. “Forty-nine thousand five hundred. I do not know if that is a good or bad number. Did you ask how many were under three or four hundred years of age?”

“What I could ascertain and what the Colettes knew was that about one out of five or six are like myself, Devi Youth. So, between eight and ten thousand. The colonies of Devi that moved to the Australian outback around 1900 have produced almost 1,000 new natural Devi.”

The Authentic repeated to herself, “49.500—is that good or bad?” She walked to a window and said, “The sun is setting. I do not often get to see a sunset in a natural setting. I miss the sun, the fresh air, the chances to roam and play and be what I was and what I am.

49,500 Devi is too many Devi. Yes, the world is smaller, and we are almost forced to live in the squalor and stink of the cities of the Standards. But if we increase our numbers, it is not that there will not be enough life energy to sustain us. But the more of us there are, the greater the chance of exposure. The greater the chance of many Devi of a whole community going rogue.

LaJade in the Caribbean is rogue, but she plays by the rules and does not allow her number to escalate. Their islands are confined spaces with limited resources to be shared. With almost 50,000 Devi around the rest of the world, I fear that the world is not big enough and is no longer safe enough. We must tell Australia to stop having natural born and tell all the Devi that it is now forbidden to turn Standards,

Centuries ago, we could walk through battlefields, and every local petty king, prince, or tyrant slaughtered peasants almost for sport. Now, battlefields are closed off and distant. 

We must allow natural attrition to lessen our numbers or wait until they multiply. The Standards breed like rabbits or even vermin. The soft niceties of life are making the Standards complacent. Where they once feared for their lives through famine, war, or pestilence, now fear is showing up late for an appointment or missing their favourite televised show or movie. We should try to spread ourselves out in a broader area, perhaps, but to areas with larger populations. To feel the emotions of the city and the masses.

Most of you were in Paris thirty or forty years ago. We could feel the life and vibrancy in the city. Now, everyone is fixated on other things that are worthless or just on themselves.

We should not increase our number until there are 150,000 standards per Devi, and the world will have more than seven billion people. Not strictly to hide and blend in, but at that number, they may begin to fear again—not because of war, but because of their sheer number. They will fear for their future in ways we cannot understand yet.

Some discontent was in the room, and a few people voiced concern. Every argument was made, and in the end, everyone agreed with the Authentic.

Two days later, she was leaving for Dorval Airport in Montreal to return to France. Jonathan would drive her in the lead car of the four-car convoy.

Just before entering the car, she walked over to hug Evelyn goodbye and almost imperceptibly whispered in her ear, “Someday, we may need to kill again for feeding. I know that is against everything we stand for. I do not condone that, but I fear for the world and humanity. The greater the number of Standards and the fewer of us, the more we can hide in the numbers. If it comes to transgressing our Cardinal rule, so be it.