Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (61 page)

Georgina stilled but her focus remained inward to that part of her that was Gynevra, to that place where she knew how to attune to a distant point on the earth's surface and read its energy. Merryn and Case watched her with delighted amazement while Ellen just stared in bemusement. This daughter who still looked like her socially insecure, introverted and business-like Georgina, had become a stranger.

‘For almost eleven millennia the segments of the crystal which destroyed Trephysia have lurked beneath the shifting sands on the seabed of what is now known as the Bermuda Triangle. The deeper the layers of sand and rock over the crystals the weaker and more scattered the energy. But there have been recent undersea disturbances—an earthquake. If we were able to look we'd see several fresh underwater land subsidences causing unusual currents that have moved the sands on the seabed with more force than usual. One segment of the Trephysian crystal has been partially exposed. This has caused the dematerialization of anything within its field, which is very volatile and very erratic.

‘The only way to overcome the force is to program the crystal segment to work with focus and positive direction.’

Georgina opened her eyes and looked down at her hands that were lying palms up on her thighs, with thumbs and middle fingers joined. Slowly she raised her eyes and stared round the room at her family.

Then she whispered, ‘I know everything she knew. I can do everything she did!’

‘You have the knowledge,’ Ellen said, her face pale with apprehension.

Georgina swallowed and nodded.

‘What now?’

Case looked up from the notes he'd been scribbling.

‘We fly to Miami and convince the US Coast Guard to allow us into the area to program the crystal.’

A shudder of panic ripped through Georgina, momentarily stopping her heart and scoring a tangled skein of horror-tracks through her belly. Talking to her family was one thing but—the US Coast Guard?

‘We?’

‘I seem to remember somewhere through this amazing story you talked of the critical need for balance when programming the power crystals. You can't do it alone. I've done a lot of work with crystal energy. I'm the obvious choice.’

‘She said it was dangerous,’ Merryn said, her face pale.

Dumbly Georgina nodded.

Merryn sucked in a deep breath but Case forestalled her.

‘We've got to get past the Coast Guard top brass first. Programming the crystal will likely be easy in comparison.’

‘How dangerous?’ Ellen asked, ignoring Case's attempt to red-herring the safety issue.

Georgina found her voice.

‘The energy could kill one or both of us if we fail to balance it correctly,’ she said flatly, ‘but there's no reason why we should fail. Gynevra taught the procedure to Taur. I can teach it to Case. What spooks me is explaining this stuff to Coast Guard officials. They'll just think we're nuts.’

‘Then we must convince them we're not. You've been given some very specific knowledge, George, at a point in time when that knowledge is critical to the lives of several people. Do you think that's a coincidence? I can assure you it's not. I can't promise you it'll be easy but I do recognize the Hand of Divine Guidance when I see it. We won't be alone.’

Georgina closed her eyes and basked in the quiet certainty in Case's voice. He was right. She just had to convince her sickly churning stomach.

Pressing her hands tightly against her midriff, raising her head and squaring her jaw, she said, ‘And because of Gynevra I won't walk away.’

Merryn stared at her sister, shaking her head.

‘I can't get used to you like this. It's like you're someone else, not Georgina at all. Gynevra of Poseidonia had an amazing presence, much of which you seem to have—absorbed! It's bizarre—and awesome! Do you really believe you and Case could succeed?’

Georgina let her gaze rest on her brother-in-law for a moment, then swung back to her sister.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘You're ‘seeing’, aren't you? You have the ‘knowing’, more clearly than any of us.’

‘It would seem what she was, I am. I think I've always had the ‘knowing’. I was afraid of it so I blocked it.’

‘Not surprising,’ put in Ellen, ‘when you consider Taur's edict at the very end.’

Georgina looked a little startled.

‘Could it happen like that? Could past life traumas affect us in this one?’

‘Oh and absolutely!’ said Merryn swiftly. ‘Many now believe much illness or disfigurement in one lifetime is brought on by the soul memory of severe injury—physical, mental or emotional, or even of horrific death—in a past life. It's been well documented by hypnotherapists and the like. Can you not see the parallels between how you were with Phryne then to how you are with Fran now? If you were to commune with Gynevra about it, she'd likely tell you so.’

‘And have you accuse me of talking to myself? I don't think so!’

Their laughter was a little shaky but it was laughter nevertheless. Georgina looked round her family.

‘You guys are awesome. When can we fly to Miami?’

‘Your passport current?’ Case asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then we'll be on the first flight we can get.’

‘I'll need to talk to Van. What's been happening at the shop?’ Georgina asked, her brow creasing with worry.

‘Absolutely nothing Vanessa can't handle,’ Ellen declared. ‘She's a priceless gem. You should probably think about giving her a rise, George.’

Georgina nodded.

‘I'd like to talk to her before we go though.’

Case said, ‘I'll let everyone know you're back on deck and just for once it'd be good if you took orders from ‘big brother’, took a couple of ‘Panadol’ tablets and got some sleep.’

‘I'm not arguing,’ Georgina said so meekly her family looked startled. ‘I've been on a very long journey and lost some very close family and friends,’ Emotion shuddered through her exhausted frame. ‘I'm having trouble comprehending they all lived so long ago scarcely anyone living now even believes they existed and yet the grief—is so real.’

Twenty-four hours later, Case slanted Georgina a grin from his seat beside her on the Air New Zealand 747 evening flight to Los Angeles.

‘You've survived your `ordeal by television reporter. U.S. Coastguard here we come!’

Georgina ground her lips between her teeth and tried desperately to calm her breathing. Speaking frankly to a skeptical television reporter for the National News was probably the hardest thing she'd ever done but telling herself it was practice for what was still to come had enabled her to go through with it.

‘Hey! Little sister, you can do it,’ Case said, his voice low and rough. ‘Just you keep remembering we're not alone.’

Georgina nodded then smiled a little shakily.

‘Fran would've handled this so much better than I. She'd have been right in her element charming the uniforms and the brass. I wouldn't know how to charm a cat with a saucer of cream.’

‘Which is why it had to be you and not Fran,’ offered Case seriously. ‘It's not charm that's going to win this day, but sincerity. They're going to believe you because they'll see how hard it is for you to do it.’

Georgina shot him an arrested look then closed her eyes and dropped her head back against the seat. Please God, she murmured in her mind, please Ist, Asar, and great God Ra, please Jesus and Mary and all the angels, please Divine Guidance whoever you are, take this terrible feeling of panic from me and make me strong.

For why would the trained personnel of the US Coastguard listen to the far-fetched ramblings of a civilian bookshop keeper—a
foreign, female
civilian bookshop keeper?

Why shouldn't they?

The words were almost obliterated by the hum of energy through her body but not quite. She knew she'd heard them; that they'd not been her own, and took strength from that knowing.

Wellington, NZ.  Thursday 1st November 1998 AD.

The faceless government official sitting across the desk from him in the Wellington office was getting on Torr Montgomery’s wick. He'd mentioned the ‘sensitive nature’ of the assignment several times now. Hawke, Montgomery & Templeton, International Mining Surveyors & Consultants hadn't acquired their reputation by being careless in handling government secrets. He was well aware the survey of possible large gold deposits within the boundaries of a National Park would have to be undertaken with the utmost discretion. Torr was also aware the acerbic nature of his temper had little to do with the anxious individual haranguing him, and everything to do with the fact he was in New Zealand; Georgina's country.

And he knew Gould Barrington was away on an expedition in the Bahamas with Fran. He'd had that piece of news from his partner, Hugh Templeton, who leased half his London house to Fran, and it had finally decided him to take the commission himself instead of sending Hugh or one of the other partners.

From the moment his plane had touched down at Wellington Airport that morning he'd had the crazy impulse to abort this surveying commission for the New Zealand Government, board another plane and fly to Auckland to see Georgina. He'd honed the edge on his temper with vivid visualizations of her in Barrington's arms to resist following a course destructive for both himself and Montgomery, Templeton & Co.

Wrestling with oneself was exhaustive and counter-productive Torr decided when he finally dropped onto his bed at Mt. Cook National Park Headquarters that night. He'd left Wellington at midday in a chartered plane feeling he'd won a major battle with himself by flying south instead of north. He'd kept his mind busy all afternoon checking and packing the supplies he'd ordered for six weeks survival alone in the wilderness. But now, as he lay on a soft mattress for the last time for the next several weeks and told himself to sleep well and make the most of it, his mind kept returning to the thought that it would only be the work of minutes to get Georgina's number from directory service, ring and hear her voice.

With the dawn came relief he'd made it without succumbing to temptation and a renewed determination to put Georgina out of his mind and concentrate on the job he'd contracted to do. By mid-morning he was setting up camp in a Department of Conservation hut in a remote area of the Park with only a field telephone for emergencies. He'd come prepared for six weeks though he estimated the job would only take five. In the interests of self-preservation, he figured, he should try to trim several days off the time by working every moment of every daylight hour and getting the hell out of the southern hemisphere while he still had his sanity and before he did something he'd regret.

For a week the weather was as near perfect as he could've wished. It was late spring with clear, warm days and cool nights, the first four of which he spent in a Department of Conservation hut with four bunk beds and an open fireplace with a corrugated iron chimney. On the fifth day, after returning the night before to find a party of trampers sharing the hut, he made three trips carrying all his gear and setting up camp in a relatively inaccessible spot by a stream in deep bush cover. Fortunately he'd heard voices as he approached the hut and had been able to stow his tell-tale pack of tools and bag of carefully labelled rock and soil samples under a fallen log out of sight.

But where there was one party of trampers there was likely to be another and he couldn't take the risk of having some nosy camper riffling through his gear. He'd lost a day in shifting camp but he'd reckoned he was already a day ahead by working from dawn to dusk and only stopping to eat and sleep after dark. He was still well on schedule and the only disadvantage was the rest of his stay in the Park wouldn't be quite so comfortable. That he'd even thought of comfort irked him a little. Was he becoming soft as he grew older? Time was when the rougher, more challenging the accommodation he had to contend with the better he liked it.

He'd be thirty-six next birthday. Was he ready to opt for a softer way of earning his living? Certainly not yet, he decided abruptly. Lying with his head near the open tent flap he could watch the night sky and test his knowledge of the unfamiliar southern star clusters and enjoy the richly layered music of the alpine stream rushing over its rocky bed, the wind through the lofty heads of the great podocarps and the varied sounds of the few hardy nocturnal creatures who called the forest home.

By day he tied down everything in the tiny camp as firmly and closely as he could to discourage the curious olive green kea with its destructive hooked beak. By night with the tent wide open he lay hoping for a visitation from the rare and secretive brown kiwi. Twice as he lay waiting for sleep he thought he'd heard the peculiar cry for which the bird had been named. His camera lay ready to his hand should he be deemed worthy of a visit.

Gazing up at the stars, which would be as familiar to Georgina as the northern constellations were to himself, he mused over his sense of oneness with the wilderness places of the world. Sometimes he thought there were two Torrens Montgomerys. Most saw the successful and knowledgeable geologist, younger son of a wealthy British peer of ancient lineage, who loved adventure, fast cars and flying. Some of these knew he was afraid to enter the sea or large bodies of water but there were probably only two or three who knew the inner Torrens Montgomery, the man who would sit for hours in stillness hoping for a glimpse of one of the rare creatures of the Earth, who looked at the sky in awe of his own minuteness, who found the wilderness places of the planet strangely companionable.