Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (49 page)

"Because, sweetie, what you did to Mommy was a
wrong thing to do."

"But, Daddy, she was gonna take too long and we
had to go and save Harmony! You like Harmony, don't you?"

John sighed and said, "Yes, of course, I like
Harmony a lot. And I don't want to see her get hurt. But Sam, it was dangerous
for you to be there."

"Nah huh," she said, shaking her head. "Black
was there and he's the Protector. He would keep me safe. I know it."

"Yes, but what if he was busy keeping Harmony
safe? And then what if something happened to you? That would make us all very
sad. You have to stay safe, Sam."

"But--" she began, only to be interrupted by
Jessica.

"Sam!" Jessica spoke sharply, then stopped and
caught her breath. "Sam, you know how when Harry was a little puppy and he
wanted to go out in the road? And you had to bring him back and tell him 'No,' that it was too dangerous?"

Sam nodded. "I remember, Mommy."

Jessica continued. "And do you remember the day
he ran out in the road anyway? And that car came by and almost hit him? Then
Daddy swatted him on the nose with the newspaper?"

"Yeah, I remember I cried and Harry cried too.
But you didn't hit him hard, Daddy, it just scared him."

John asked, "So you think that we did the right
thing to punish Harry? So he could learn to not go into a dangerous situation?"

"Well, sure, Dad," Sam replied, then stopped and
stared at him, recognition slowly dawning on her face.

Jessica said, "Sam, when there is the chance
that a gun will be fired to protect someone else--that is a dangerous situation.
Mr. Johnson was sort of crazy today, and he could have shot at us in the car
with his shotgun. You could have been hurt or killed. I could have been hurt or
killed."

John looked straight into Sam's big brown eyes
opened so wide. "Sam, we are the grown-ups. We're the parents. And we have to
protect you from dangerous situations, just like we had to protect Harry from
dangerous situations. What you did to Mommy was wrong because she couldn't
protect you anymore."

Jessica shivered, and Sam let herself open up to
her mother's emotions. What she saw inside Jessica was awful. Mommy was scared
of her! Daddy wasn't, but he was scared for her. But Mommy--oh, no, she thought,
did I make her like this? 'Cause I made her go there?

"Mommy," she pleaded, "are you ever going to not
be scared of me again?"

Jessica took a deep breath and said firmly, "Honestly,
Sam, it's going to take a while. What you did was scary to me. It was wrong to
do. I don't want you to just barge into my mind like that! Not ever!"

"Do you still love me?" Sam asked in a small
voice.

Jessica replied, "Yes, I still love you. I'll
always love you. But you and me--we have to build up trust between us again. I
have to know you aren't going to do that to me ever again."

"Does that mean I gotta get a punishment?" Sam
asked. "Like I gotta get grounded?"

John glanced at Jessica and she nodded. "Go
ahead," she said.

John turned to Sam. "We think you deserve to be
punished, but we have a problem. Normally we would say no videos, or something
like that. But you haven't been watching videos lately. And if we tell you to
stay in your room or that you're not allowed to go out and play, well, you have
contact with the animals and they would still be talking to you, right?"

Sam nodded.

"So we want to know--what is it that you want
most right now to do?"

Sam grinned. "Wel-l-l, what I really want most
is to go ride on the horses. Janine told me maybe tomorrow I can go with her."
She stopped smiling and said, "Oh, no! You mean I can't go ride the horses?"

Jessica said, "That's right, Sam. You're
grounded from riding horses."

Sam's eyes filled with tears. "But, Mom! I was
talking to this one horse, he's named Sunny, and he's so nice and he said I
could ride him!" She looked from one stern parental face to the other.

"Not ever?" she asked, as tears streamed down
her face. "Can I ever ride him, ever?"

Jessica uncrossed her arms and walked over to
her daughter. Kneeling by the bed, she said, "You can't ride him until I'm sure
you're not going to go into my mind again, Sam. Someday, you can ride Sunny.
But only if you stay out of my mind--and not just me--all the people in our group
here--you have to stay out of their minds too. What that means is that you can't
try to make anyone do anything."

"You mean the pressing, right?"

Jessica looked uncertainly at John. He asked, "Is
that what you call it, sweetie? Pressing?"

"Yeah, that's what it feels like when I do it,
like pressing against something."

Jessica smiled tentatively at her daughter. "Well,
okay then. No more pressing--no more mind press. And Sam," she added, "the trees
have agreed to watch out for you doing any pushing. So they'll tell me if you
do it."

"The trees?" Sam squeaked. "How'd they find out?"

"Never mind how, they just know these things. So
you be on your best behavior, and no mind pressing of anyone in our group, and
then after a while we'll see about you riding Sunny, okay?"

"A while? A while will take forever!" she
wailed.

Washington D.C., the Oval Office

"You're telling me the Mississippi River is
going to flood and I can't do anything about it?" the President yelled at his
science advisor.

"No, sir. It's nature--you can't stop the rain,
and the rain will cause some flooding. But we don't think it will be too
severe," Hutton replied.

"Oh, you don't, do you?" the President said
sarcastically. "Seems like I've heard this refrain before."

"We're just going to have to wait and see, sir.
But in the meantime, I've located that woman, the one on the news the other
night. Margaret Larson is her name. We think she's in Washington State
currently."

"You think? Hutton, are you ever going to
know
anything?"

"She's not staying at a motel. But we know her
plane landed there. We've put agents at the plane."

"And what's her story?"

"She has a history of emotional problems, sir.
But from everything we can determine, she's never been associated with any
foreign governments or terrorist groups. So it's extremely unlikely that she is
causing these events in any way."

"She just has visions of the events," the
President said.

"Yes, sir."

"And you're telling me that Nature is
responsible for all this? That there's nothing to fight? No way to stop it all
from happening?"

"Well, sir, no--unless you want to fight Mother
Nature. I'm sure that's not what you want to do." Hutton laughed weakly. Then
he stopped as he saw the look of interest appear in the President's eyes.

The Samuels' House

Black walked into a house full of the aroma of
roasting beef. He found John and Jessica in the dining room setting up a very
long table, adding leaves in the middle.

"John, I have good news."

John looked up at him wearily. It had been a
long day. "I could use some about now. Tell." He motioned to a chair and Black
sat down across from him.

"I bought out the two gun stores in the
immediate area."

"You what," John said, incredulous.

"Look, the way I see it, we'll get some
scavengers, some looters, some people running away from other places. When they
come through here, we don't want them to have access to a bunch of guns in a
deserted shop. So I got together with your mother, Gracie, and we pooled our
money and bought out the two stores. She wired money here from New York."

"Oh, Lord!" Jessica said, and left the room.

Black raised an eyebrow and looked at John,
questioning.

"It's a long story, and frankly, not one I care
to discuss right now," John said. "But I think you're right about the guns. We
don't want them just lying around to be picked up and used against us. Do you
have a place to store them?

"Gracie says to use one of the barns at the
farm. She and I will work out an alarm system. Don't worry, we've got it
covered."

John smiled wanly. "Well, that's good to know.
Listen Black, I need to ask you to do something--or rather, to not do something."
He paused and then continued. "Don't ever take Samantha with you on a mission
to rescue anyone. Today--when she went with you guys--that shouldn't have
happened."

"I wondered about that," Black conceded. "Everything
happened so fast. They were in the car before I realized what we were heading
for with Harmony. I'm sorry about that, John. It won't happen again." He
stopped and scrutinized John's face. "There's more to this than you're telling
me, isn't there?"

"Yes," John responded. "But I'm not going to
tell you the whole story, Black, so I hope you can live with that. If it turns
out later that I need to discuss it with you, I will."

Black stood. "Fine with me. And that food smells
fine too! What are we having at this dinner?"

John laughed. "It's Mrs. Philpott's Freezer
Feast. And I dare you to say that ten times in a row. We found out today the
generator for her house didn't arrive. And the power is going to go out
tomorrow night. Our generator isn't hooked up to her house. With our freezers
stuffed full, the women decided to clear out her freezer. Turns out she had two
nice-sized spoon roasts in there--they should be fork-tender about now. Plus
some frozen broccoli, so Abby made her famous broccoli casserole. Potatoes and
carrots with the roast, just because, according to Jess, they taste so good
cooked with the beef." He paused to watch Alex and Lisanne walk in.

Alex said, "Keep talking! I heard you from the
hallway. My mouth is already watering, this sounds so good. What else? Is there
more?"

He laughed, saying, "Of course! A huge tossed
salad with those little grape tomatoes--I love those, and Jessica's balsamic
vinegar and oil dressing. Gracie made gallons of lemonade iced tea, using up
the frozen lemonade. Jess made her rolls. You all will love them. She makes the
best bread. And finally, ice cream, lots of ice cream, for dessert. Turns out
Mrs. P was a closet ice cream addict."

"What's a spoon roast?" Lisanne asked.

"I can answer that one," came a voice from the
hall. "A roast that cooks up so melt-in-your-mouth tender you could eat it with
a spoon," said the well-built man of about 5' 7" who strolled into the room. A
shock of his straight black hair fell over one eyebrow, almost into his light
green eyes. He looked about forty years old, and he had a ready smile as he
gazed upon the others.

"Doc!" John cried. "Everyone meet Dr. Mark
Shapiro."

Dorena-Hickman Ferry, Dorena's Landing,
Missouri

Captain Joe stared out at the rising waters of
the Mississippi. It wasn't a flood, not yet, but if this rain kept up, he would
head back to shore.

"That damn fool girl and all those horses," he
muttered to himself. "Said the river would flood and now it looks like it just
might. And the way the White House has been denying it, sayin' it ain't going
to, well, that just means it probably will!" He thought about how sure the
young man and woman had seemed about a bad flood. And she had said there was a
safe place. Now where the heck was it?

"Cape Fair, that's it," he said aloud, snapping
his fingers. "What could it hurt? I take a little vacation, head on out there,
and I can always come back here when there's no damn flood."

The Samuels' House

The dining room was filled with people eating,
talking and laughing as they got to know each other. John presided at the head
of a table laden with food, Jessica sitting at his right hand and Mrs. Philpott
at the other end. She was talking to Clay about boats.

"I don't think you have to go get a fishing boat
tomorrow," she said, laughing. "There are plenty of them around and I'm sure
that even if some are damaged in the earthquake, you'll still be able to find
one."

Abby interjected, "Yes, but he wants the perfect
fishing boat, not just some old thing. Clay," she said, turning to her husband,
"we simply can't afford it! I won't let you spend the money. And how would we
get it back to San Francisco anyway?"

Clay stared at her for a moment with Mrs.
Philpott looking on. Something was wrong here, she thought. They all knew money
would be worthless soon, didn't they? And San Francisco?

Clay slowly nodded. "Abby, you know I always
listen to you when it comes to money, so we'll just wait and see, okay?" Abby
smiled and turned to talk to Gracie.

Mrs. Philpott leaned toward Clay and asked
quietly, "Is something wrong here? With Abby?"

"I don't know. I thought she was coping okay. I
knew she was worried, but Abby's always been a worrier. But she's said a couple
things this afternoon that made me wonder if she's in denial about what's
happening."

"Well," Mrs. Philpott said firmly, "keep an eye
on her, but don't push her to accept it. Personally, I've been amazed at the
level of sanity everyone has maintained with so many shocks and with knowing
what's coming. We all have to keep an eye on each other and help each other
out. This is so huge--too much to hang onto all at once. We'll need time;
everyone will need time, not just Abby, before we are truly adjusted to the
situation. Just go with the flow for now."

John glanced down at Mrs. Philpott and Jess's
father talking seriously. He sincerely hoped it wasn't another problem. The
sudden tones of silverware against glass made everyone quiet down and John saw
that Gracie was the instigator. She was looking at him, a question in her eyes.

"Attention, everyone!" John began. "We have a
few announcements. First, I think you are all aware that Sergeant Wachowski and
Tommy are working hard at the power station this evening in preparation for the
shutdown tomorrow night. After we're finished here, Lisanne has volunteered to
take them some of this great food."