Children of the Source (15 page)

    “That’s for the both of you to decide.   You are new personalities from the same Entities.  You have the essence memories from that time.  That is why you feel drawn to each other.  Take things slowly.  You will know if it is right to be together this time.”

    I walked over to the clinic with Judith and Krystal.
  Judith had participated as part of Betty’s energy group.  We went inside and said hello to Elaine and the baby.  The wee beastie nursed hungrily on full breasts.  Ren wasn’t around.  I checked with my mind, and found him with an alert Mike Rosen and two of his security people.  Ren was beating one of them at chess.  They were keeping him occupied.

    We excused ourselves and went into Roger’s room.
  The sleeping face no longer held the slack mouth or stress from his former physical problems.  Krystal traced his profile delicately with a forefinger, eyes absorbed with the new man lying before her.  “How old is he, Jamie?”

    “Seventeen.
  Your age.”

    Judith and I left them there, and Evan saw us to the clinic door, promising to check on Roger as the night progressed.
  Judith took my hand and we headed home.  The lights from the circling  spacecraft shown bright.  Meg O’Banion met us in front of the Arms Shack.  She rubbed her eyes.

    “I’ve been looking for you.
  I dreamed of my Mommy and Daddy.  They looked so happy.”  Her voice held a yearning.  She burst into tears and ran into Judith’s arms.

    I changed my focus.
  Chuck and Ruth O’Banion stood close by, looking worried.  Their intent was obvious, but the results had been completely unexpected.  I reassured them mentally.

    I knelt to Meg.
  “What did they say to you?”

    “They love me and will watch over me always.”

    “They will.”  I picked her up.  “You know how we had you talk to your Mom and Dad?  When you go back to sleep tonight, you can visit with them again.”

    We took Meg home, had a snack together, and then went to bed.
  In the days since coming to Cheshire, Meg O’Banion had found herself loved, wanted, and accepted.  A slow adjustment showed itself in her behavior.  A visible relaxed posture took hold, and she sought children her own age like Marilyn and Victoria.  They played around, sometimes in the duck pond, and whenever possible conned someone into going to the reservoirs.  She still kept a certain distance, but in times of stress allowed us to comfort her.  The night passed uneventfully.

    After breakfast, while I was doing dishes at the Dining Hall, Meg came up to me.
  “Greetings, Ma’am.  Good to see you.”  I bent and gave her a hug which she accepted easily enough.

    “Mommy and Daddy spoke to me again like you said they would.”

    “Ah.”

    “Yeah.
  They said you and Judith are my physical Mommy and Daddy now.  They’ll be my Mommy and Daddy over there.”

    “How do you feel about that?”

    “Okay.”  Then her face grew uncertain.  “Will you be my Daddy here?”

    I smiled.
  “I’d be honored.”  She hugged and kissed me quickly, and then spun away excited, getting ready to run.

    “Where are you headed?”

    “To see if Judith will be my Mommy here.”

    “Good.
  Now remember what I taught you ... ”, but she was racing out the door, dark hair flying,  thin body a blur.

    After my turn at dishes, I went to the clinic to see Roger and Elaine.
  She and the baby were asleep.  I found Roger sitting in a chair moving his weak leg on his own.  Krystal sat by, and I caught a brief snatch of conversation about the Minoans.

    Roger stood.
  “Thank you, friend Jamie.”  His voice sounded normal with none of the garbled sound of before.  “Look, I can move my right side.  Everything.”   He showed us.  “God, you gave me back my life.  A real life.  And possibilities.”  He looked at Krystal who smiled back.

    “You’re welcome.
  It was a community effort as Krystal and Evan can tell you.  I think you’ll find yourself completely functional.  Take things slowly.  You have muscle to rebuild.”

    “I will.”
  We moved outside, while Roger kept stretching his thin leg. 

    Mark Lancaster saw us and walked over.
  “How does it feel, Roger?”

    “Like a new leg.
  Like it finally woke up and works.”  He looked at us all, pleased and worried at the same time.  “Kind of like I’ve had half of my body asleep all my life.  Now it’s awakened.  Quite a feeling.”

    We watched in silence as Roger exercised carefully.
  He stopped and said, “I’m just worried all this will go away and I’ll be back where I was before.  Like this is a dream in a larger nightmare.”

    “Nope,”
  I said.  “Your Entity agreed to the change, and even helped make certain changes in your system.”

    Roger shook his head in angry disbelief.
  “How could an Entity do this to a personality they create?  It is unnatural.”

    “Not from their point of view,”
  I said.  “Their values and intents are entirely different from our own.  You have to keep an eye on them.”

    Mark said, “Jamie, Rosie Bateman found this strange metal box in the garden by the Dining Hall.”
  He showed me the dimensions by hand.  “Guess about eight inches thick.  Fifteen inches wide, and eighteen inches long.  It’s smooth grey green metal with no openings.  Has a burnished look to it with incredible swirling patterns.”

    “Any ideas?”
  Krystal said.

    “No.
  Someone jokingly said it came from the aliens.  The box is beautifully crafted.  Sides slope down gracefully to a flat base.  Certainly not like anything I’ve ever seen.”

    “Where is it?” I asked.

    “At the Community Center.  Lots of people speculating on it.  Think I’ll take a look at it again.”  He admonished Roger to keep up the good work.

    Charles Bareton stopped by.
  He looked at Roger and then me.  “Beautiful work.”   He chatted with Roger and Krystal for a couple of minutes.  Then he excused himself, asking if I’d walk with him to see the box.

    As we walked to the Community Center, he said, “What’s missing?”

    “Missing?”

    “You said something is missing last night in a dream.”

    I laughed.  “Oh, I didn’t think you’d get that.  It was an afterthought.  My identity.  Seems I’m all bits and pieces right now.”

    “Look at the box and let your mind roam.
  What’s in the box will trigger what you need.  You led them from the war world, as Earth was known then, to the new planets.  They did not lose their technology nor the path you set them on.  You are the reality.  What I did became a horrific legend.”

    We went into the community center, and in the main room sat the box on a table.
  “How heavy is the box?”  Jana Clayton asked.

    “Pound.
  Pound and a half.”  Mike Roseman hefted the box and turned it over.

    “No openings?”

    Mike turned it over again and shrugged.  “None that I can see.”  Twenty-five to thirty people thronged the room, so we stood on the outer edges. 

    “Does it rattle?”

    He shook it.  “No.”

    “No buttons, lights, indentations?”

    Five year old Ernie Harris scowled.  “Boring.”  He scampered off with two other boys.  Everyone laughed.  Most of the day, people examined, poked and prodded the box.     

     A sliver of a waxing moon stood in the newly darkened sky before I had time to be alone with the box.
  The council had given their approval, and I had excused myself from my family not long after dinner.  I sat in a small room at the community center.  The box rested on the table before me.  I sat there not touching the box, just letting my mind roam.

    Then a dream Laith had had came back to me.
  It was years ago, shortly after the convict army had left.  Things had settled down pretty good with them on the way.  We foraged and managed to make it into Spring.  One night I got up to put a log in the wood stove when Laith came in.

    “Dad?”
  He still wasn’t comfortable with the word, but chose to use it.

    “Laith.”
  I opened the wood stove and the strange pale red of the coals cast a soft light on our features.

    “I dreamed of you just now.
  Real vivid.  You were some type of scientist-priest in this advanced world.  The powers available to you were quite unbelievable.  I mean the things you could do.  Change things, how they looked, with your mind.  You were married to Mom, sort of.  An unlawful relationship.  Then your people left that world because it was dying from what had been done to it.  That’s where the dream ended.  You shoulda seen the buildings.  All types.  Built into the earth and such.  Fantastic landscaping.”

    “What’ d you make of it?”

    “Seems like a whole-nother life.  I know it was you and Mom.”

    “What type of person was I then?”

    “Pretty much as you are now.  But more daring, that’s for sure.  You had power, but if you were caught with Mom you’d have been put to death.  She was a queen or something.”

    “Sounds exciting.
  You mentioned changing things with my mind.  How did that work?”

    He searched my face.
  “Really strange.  Never thought it could be possible.  You molded a rock into a fantastic waterfall at a friend’s house, in their garden.  As a joke.  Some sort of Sound Language.”  He looked up owlishly.  “You think it is possible?”

    “I don’t know.
  Never heard of such a  thing.”  I grinned.  “I liked the part about your mother.  Pretty keen creature.  Keeps us on even keel.”

    My mind played on the dream.
  Then suddenly I saw the inside of a large metallic room which I knew to be a giant spaceship.  There were a large number of ships in our survival fleet trying to land on a new planet.  The atmosphere proved thicker than we thought, and several of our ships burned up on entry.  Judith died in one of these.

    My mind came back to the room.
  I laid my hands on the box, and silently an unseen lid swung open.  A light from inside the box played on a metal wrist cuff of multi shades of blues and greens that swirled naturally and led to two clear blue green stones where pleasing eddies of smoke curled.  Approximately six inches wide, I knew it was mine.  Almost unconsciously I put it on my left wrist, closed it, and heard a soft snap.  It felt good and natural against the skin.

     I turned my attention to the case.
  The inside was shaped by natural contours to hold the wrist cuff.  A queer looking half-Egyptian hieroglyphic script letter sat raised on the inside of the lid.  It symbolized the name ‘Kodus’.  This I knew.

    How long I sat there I didn’t know, but suddenly I found the door had opened to the room and our council stood inside waiting silently for me to return to the waking frame of mind.
  I looked up.

    “The aliens?”
  Jana asked.

    I nodded.
  “A triggering device to prepare me for the meeting to come.  It belonged to me in another life with them.”

    “No one else could open the box,”  Grant said.
  “It must be yours.  Excalibur.” 

    “They knew my molecular frequency and constructed it to open to my touch.
  A common method of making storage containers for them.  A wee bit more sophisticated than eye, fingerprint, and palm print locks.”  I grinned.  “Probably sell great to the super rich.”

    “Maybe they can beam things down like on Star Trek,” Bob Hardin said.

    “What’ d you learn?”  Alice Lopez liked to cut to the chase.

    “They are much more advanced than any of us realize.
  Witness the box.  We are ... how to put this ... an advanced group of these aliens who have reincarnated to await their arrival.  Even as this has happened, other events will awaken essence memories in all of us.”

    “A dangerous spot for us with General Carson,”
  Alice said.

    “Fortunately no one in authority would believe this to be true,” I said.

    “Unless they start putting things together,”  Bob said.  “Your abilities and the incidents attached to them.  The healings, the Pillar of Fire, O’Banion’s hanging.  All the many powers and abilities attached to you.”  His eyebrows arched.  “Now, the wrist cuff, and the melted rifle.  Our abilities to control the weather, gather information, our fantastic and abundant crops.  And Ren who knows most of all this information.  He sticks his nose into everything.” 

    “Who would believe Ren?” Alice said.

    “Right. Who would believe Ren?”  I said.  “The evidence is buried, and he is an obnoxious and windy fellow.  I think we’re safe.”

9

     I wrestled through the night from one uncertainty to another.  Every time I thought I’d solved a problem another reared its head until I was driven out of bed at dawn.  I dressed silently, leaving Judith asleep.  Outside in the brisk morning air, I shook the night off, and the uncertainty.  The alien spacecraft still circled, and pale light of dawn reflected off their grey green hulls.  I walked to the Main Gate and chatted with the guard and then came home.  Abe was up packing his gear and sleeping bag.  He greeted me with a hug, and poured me a mug of hot catnip tea. 

     “Big hunt today,”
  I said as he put the finishing touches on his rig.

    “Yep.
  Walk me to the Arms Shack?  I don’t want to wake anyone up.  Tell Mom not to fret.”

    “Sure.”
 

    But a tousled Judith came out in her bathrobe  “Larks,” she said, looking gorgeous but sleepy.

    Abe looked bemused, walked over and kissed his mother.  “Sleepyhead.”  He gave her a hug.

    “Enjoy yourself,” she said.

    “I will.”

     Judith went back to bed.
  We walked to the Arms Shack.  The others arrived within minutes.  When everything was checked, they headed for the Dining Hall for a hardy breakfast.  I joined them.  Afterwards I watched them disappear up the highway toward the Grand Canyon with two mules to carry the meat back.  I went home.

    Judith was awake and dressed when I got there.
  “Abe get off okay?”

    “Yeah.”
  I smiled.  “Never seen anyone so excited.”  We walked to the Dining Hall with Victoria, Meg, and Laith.  Elaine and the baby were already there, Ren in tow.  Bob Hardin sat with Ren, who studied me with open contempt.  He had actually shaved and had his hair cut, looking almost civilized. 

    Hardin elbowed the man.
  “Manners, child.  You’ve been living in and on the edge too long.”

    Ren sneered.
  “The man is a menace ...  ”

    “The man reactivated your body.
  You’re sitting here because he did the right thing.”

    Ren looked away, every plane on his face hard and angry.
  He’d been with us for less than three days.  His anger was way out of line for what had happened. 

    Elaine nudged her father.
  “Dad, face it.  You’re like a damn dog that doesn’t know when to let go or quit.  I love you, but that’s why you could never hold a job.  Never earned the money to keep us out of the rain and fed.”

    Ren.  Locus.  Now I remembered.  The eternal weasel.  He’d tried to kill me a couple of times when he was Akenton’s minion.  The second time he ambushed me in a park.  He never learned to use the Sound Language spontaneously.  There was always the hesitation, the laying the groundwork.  It gave him away.  I was walking in a park of huge old growth pines .  Limestone outcropping.  Late morning on a breezy Summer day.  The sound came like the clearing of a throat.  In that instant I knew and put up a sound shield.  The killing sound broke on my shield.  I tore his sounds apart, turning found him huddled, broken on the ground.  Kneeling, I turned his face to me and delicately destroyed the place in his brain that facilitated the Sound Language. 

    Later that day I met with my brother.
  Akenton sat in his garden enjoying the fish in his pool.  Three of his underlings stood silently, twenty feet away.  “Brother, you didn’t come here for an idle chat.”

    “No,”
  I agreed.  “Send your creatures to the Pillar Forest to fetch Locus.  They will find him by the Main Gate.”

    Akenton’s lips twitched.
  “What has he done now?”

    “Tried to assassinate me.”

    “Inept,” Akenton observed.  He raised his eyes to his followers.  “Bring him.  What did you do to my man?”

    “Made it so he can’t use the Sound Language again.
  If he’d been a wee bit more clever, I’d have had him publically executed.”

    “Like you did my two people last week.
  Quite the spectacle.  A hundred thousand people gathered to watch, and you had it broadcast all over the planet.  Was it necessary?”

    “They were practicing eugenics on unsuspecting citizens.”

    “To improve them, obviously.”

   “They had killed five children and twelve adults.
  It took a month to straighten out the genetic damage done to the rest of the local population.  You don’t do that to people.”

    “Peasants.
  Great material to work with, well-rounded genetic stock.”  His nostrils flared and lips turned thin, eyes ice.  “It almost worked.”  He turned his pale blue eyes on me.  “You made the executions very painful.  They deserved a trial.”

    I snorted.
  “A trial?  What a novel idea.  Would you want their minds emptied on the viewing screens for all to see the horrors of what they did?  To get you involved?  I made their deaths as painful as possible.”

    “You are chief counselor to the Queen, and as such govern the planet.
  By law she is inviolate.  What if it were made public you and the Queen were lovers?”  He smiled, perfect teeth and dagger blue eyes.

    I shifted my feet.
  To kill my brother.  I sent the thought away.  “I’m trying to keep a lid on this mess you’ve created.  To stop an all-out war.  Be pleased I convinced Mator, our chief of security, to side-step this incident.”

    “He knows?”
  Akenton sat up, every sense alert.

    “Of course.
  He knows most everything you and your minions do,” I said,  keeping an eye out on one of my brother’s minions.  Can’t be too careful.  “You’ve almost wrecked our planet practicing eugenics on our plant and animal species.  We stopped that but it is questionable if we can repair the damage done.  Our people are the last straw.  That we will not tolerate.”

    “You’ve sent fifteen of my best people to prison for life in this last incident.
  That is unusually harsh.  They’re innocent.  I need them,”    He said, keeping his voice oddly unconcerned,

    “Your super-men and women will grow old and die in prison,”
  I said, and did not hide my pleasure. 

    Akenton made a small smile.
  “You’ve heard the prophecy about the Queen?”

    “From?”

    He sat up pleased. “The Mayaan Elective.” 

    I felt a sickening lurch inside.
  They rarely missed anything.  I cleared my throat.  “What was that?” I asked as casually as I could muster.

    “Th
at her current rule is her last. That she would return as the wife of wizard on an ancient world when our people would return to rebuild a failing civilization.  Madness.  Yes?”  He stared at me, loving to hurt, to mix the pain with syllables and sounds.

    “Madness,” I agreed, becoming frantic inside.
  To lose the absolute love of my life - my greatest fear.  Beyond imagination and pain.

    Akenton smiled to himself, knowing what he’d done - to sow the seeds of anguish with his own brother.
  I should have seen it coming.

    “If it were made known about your relationship with the Queen?”
  He smiled.

    “You’ve had a dozen opportunities to go after the Queen.
  Fortunately you don’t control the loyalty of enough of the clans to overthrow the her.  You know this.   The real reason, brother mine, is the people don’t trust you.  You’re hated and feared for what you do and how you do it.”  I shook my head.  “I don’t have to go after you.  You’ve done that all by yourself.   You think I haven’t gone after you because you’re the head of our House and Clan?  Out of some sort of clan and brotherly loyalty?” 

    I shook myself and came back to the present sitting in the Dining Hall with Judith, the Queen of so long ago.  Charles and Mary walked in.  Akenton and Mator.  They’d made their peace.  After getting their food they sat down at our table.  Charles introduced himself and Mary . 

    Ren took his hand and released it as though burned.
  He stared at Charles.  “Why do I feel I know you?”  He shook himself.  “I’ll be glad to leave his place.”

    Charles nodded.
  “Smart.  There is nothing here for you.  Go back East.”  The supreme confidence and almost arrogant surety of old showed in the eyes and turn of his lips.

    Ren’s eyes changed to some sort of recognition, then he shook his head frowning.
  “There is more here than meets the eye, Jamie.  I can’t pin it down.”  He raised his hands.  “All of this is part of something  ...  something larger, already done and still to come.”  He passed his tongue over his lips. 

    And I prayed to the Powers-That-Be that the memory bubble wouldn’t somehow burst.
  Made you wonder what an Entity was capable of - awakening some part of its past in an innocent present personality.  The essence memory was one thing, but Locus had died badly from complications of my surgery on his brain.  At least that’s what Akenton told me.  If that memory was awakened, so that he wanted revenge even though he didn’t understand why, what could that lead to?  How could I keep the door closed?  Innocent personality?  Ren had killed an old man for a sick horse and would have killed my daughter if I hadn’t stopped it.  It didn’t appear that Locus’ Entity had learned anything about respecting the rights of others.  But then if you knew that you and everyone else were immortal?  What value system did it use?  I had to find Locus. 

    I waited until late morning when my biorhythms took a natural dip so I could more easily get out of my body.
  I closed the curtains in our bedroom and lay down on our bed.  The natural dip allowed me to roll out of my body.  I focused on Locus.  I had no idea what I’d find.   Then I was in a mountain glen by a stream and an elegant two story cabin.   These were a mental construct.  I sensed the personality of Locus, but altered from when I’d known him. 

    “God, I thought we were done with one another,” came the tired voice.

    “I need to know about your Entity and its new personality Ren.  I have no interest in disturbing you more than needed.  Akenton told Kodus you’d died because of the surgery done in the Forest of Pillars.”

    “A small thing now.
  It is true.  The drama for me is done.  I left it long ago.”

    “You’re different,” I said.

    “You learn to go on.  My Entity was not dependable or interested in helping me change so I formed an alliance with another Entity who has helped me.”

    I could sense the profound change.
  Maturity.  “I can feel it.  Can you tell me about Ren?”

    “Sometimes an Entity creates a powerful persona
lity with dynamic qualities so It can observe and experience what it can do.  Artist, soldier, politician, healer, criminal - anything.  They can operate on an international, national, or local level.  Ren is one of these.  He’s been programmed with native cunning and a nasty suspicious mind.   A great desire to get even.  And no conventional sense of good and evil.”

    “Is there anything you can tell me about Ren that would help me and mine?”
  I asked.

    “Nothing of comfort.
  He will not have the Sound Language, but he has a magnetism that allows him to influence others.”  He perched on a rock overlooking  the sparkling brook.  “You have the Sound Language of old.  Not something I’d wish on anyone.  Your Entity must be quite sure of you to hand you such responsibility.”

    “I don’t understand it myself,” I said.

    He leaned forward.  “Sometimes an Entity will set up its personality with an ability or aptitude which may seem beneficial, but can have disastrous consequences if not handled with great care.  It happened to me with the Sound Language.  Too much temptation without enough safeguards.  Please consider this with the Sound Language.”

    “You don’t trust your Entity,”
  I said, touching the rough layered bark of a pine tree.  A type I’d never seen.

    “Nothing to trust.
  Very hard creature.  No empathy.  No care of its personalities.  No one wants to rejoin with It.”

    “So what do those personalities do in the physical body and after?”

    “There is an Order of Beings that step in and help when needed.  They can be called on in times of trial and crisis.  I am studying to do this.”

    I thanked him for his help, and on the way back felt a huge energy blocking my way.
  I recognized Locus’ and Ren’s Entity.  The energy pulsed with a living curious intelligence.  “You think I’m a son-of-a-bitch.” 

    “It had occurred to me.
  Doing what you’ve done makes no sense to me.  Why would you set up one of your personalities for failure and pain?  Or many of your selves?”

    His emotion
s felt hard and vaguely amused.  “We learn as much, maybe more from failure and pain than from what you call success.  Success is often the easy way out.”