Children of the Source (16 page)

    “And doing this - you expect these personalities to come back to you after they’ve found out how you set them up and ruined them?
  I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

    “It is a problem.”

    “Locus has found someone to help him.  He wishes you well - well away from him.”

    “Smart ass.”

    I laughed.  “Yeah.  I’ve been accused of that more than once.  So what is your plot with Ren?  What do I have to look forward to?” 

    The Energy gave off a wolfish satisfaction.
  “He has been programmed to do everything in his power to hurt and ruin you.”

    “But why?
  Revenge?  What happened to Locus was in another lifetime.  He bares me no grudge”

    “I don’t either.
  I simply want to experience the feelings.  To understand them.”

    I shook myself, trying to comprehend.
  “Why not try to behave yourself?”

    “What a peculiar idea.
  We try to Be as much as possible.  To learn as much as possible.”

    “And after you’re done ruining Ren, squeezing every last negative experience out of him and his physical life, what happens to him?”
  The Energy disappeared.   I felt angry and resentful that someone would be used like that.  God knows there are enough really rotten folk out there, but to deliberately create one, programming genuine crap into a personality was beyond me.  I headed home to my body, not knowing what to think or expect.

    “Not a happy experience,”
 she said.   I opened my eyes to Judith, and shook my head.

    “Nope.
  I’m afraid we are not done with our friend Ren.  How and why I don’t know.”  I put on my shoes and stood up.

    Three days later we delivered Ren, Elaine and the baby to the soldiers at the Fort.
  The train was to leave in two days.  I was never so happy to see the back of a man, and almost believed that was the end of it all.  Things settled down, we kept tabs on our hunters.  They’d located the elk herd and had culled two young bulls.  The meat had been dressed and they were scheduled to return tomorrow.

   
 Late morning I was in a meeting with our council discussing the aliens when I felt struck.   I sensed Abe and the hunters in trouble.  “Get Charles to meet me at the hunters.”  I went into a small room,  lay down,  immediately leaving my body.

    Our hunters crouched behind some low granite boulders.
  They’d walked into a hastily prepared ambush by a gang of about fifteen jay hawkers.  One of our people had a crossbow bolt in his calf.  I touched his mind to calm  him and simultaneously contacted Abe.  Our hunters set up a perimeter while Abe and Dick Clayton worked on our injured man, Clyde Johnston, a smallish determined man who had a genius for chess and wood carving.  Abe pulled the bolt out of Clyde’s leg, blood all over his hands.  I slowly constricted the blood vessels, boosted the pain block, and began to reconstruct the damage on a cellular level with the Sound Language.   Another part of me checked out the jay hawkers. 

    It wasn’t hard to locate their leader.   A bulldog like young man called Junior with a broken nose and three front teeth missing excitedly surveyed the situation.
  He felt as if he’d come on an unexpected treasure that was his for the taking.  A slim teenage girl with a long thin face was urging him to allow her to pick off the hunters one by one with her crossbow.  But her obnoxious efforts earned her a slap on the side of her face.  She fell back whining.

    “What’ ll we do?” one of the men asked. “We could pick them off like Lena said.”

    “Idiots.”  The hushed voice of the bulldog man rasped.  “And waste what little ammunition we have left?  No.  We’ll negotiate a surrender.  Get them to give us some meat and some arms and we let them go free.”

    “Free?”
  The protest, heartfelt came guarded.  “They’ll bring Bloody Carson’s men down on us for sure.”

    The leader drew a long thin knife.
  “It’s easier to cut a throat than waste a crossbow bolt.”  He grinned with yellow green teeth and drew the razor sharp blade across a piece of pine.  It ran through like butter. 

    “One is a kid,” came another guarded protest from back of the group.

    “Ain’t stopped us before.”  The leader spat.  “Read once killin’ a virgin is bad luck.”  He grinned wolfishly.  “Maybe we’ll have Lena break him in before we kill him.  Like that, Lena baby?”  He flung her away.  She landed on her crossbow which fired into a ponderosa pine high overhead showering bark.  He cursed and turned his attention to our people.

    Charles moved up next to me.
  “We’re sitting ducks.  I did notice a Federal patrol close to Snow Bowl Road.  I’ll plant a thought to move them in this direction.  Hopefully, the soldiers will come up behind these characters pretty quick.  Meanwhile we need a diversion.”

     “Indeed, a storm,” I said, looking at a clear blue sky.
  “First I’ll let Abe know.”  I moved to my son, and gently made myself known.  Slowly he smiled and nodded.

     “Dick, Dad and Grandpa Charles are going to create a storm of sorts.”

    Dick squinted at the jay hawkers.  “Hope they do it quickly.”  He looked around.  “Jamie, we haven’t much time.  Got a feeling these people aren’t patient folk.”  I explained what we were planning.  Pine needles crackled under his feet.  The air stirred.  A breeze sprang up.   A carefully placed crossbow bolt smashed into the tree above and behind his head.

    Then wind began to build, scattering leaves dirt and pine needles in the air.
  The jay hawkers looked around wide eyed and alarmed.  The sky remained clear with high scattered clouds.

    “Like I said,” Junior shouted, “we only want some meat and some weapons.
  We’ll let you go.  We’re no killers.  Trust us.”

    “We’re from Cheshire.
  And no, we don’t trust you,”  Dick hollered back.

    “Hey, that’s the place of wizards and witches.
  They do scary things.  Everyone at the Fort is afraid of them.  I heard they can control the weather.”

    Junior whirled on the man, aiming his crossbow.  He pulled the trigger, but the bolt cracked in half and flew up, cutting his face. “Goddamn superstitious jerk, shut your face.
  It’s just a mountain thermal.”

    Dick shouted back, “The wind is our friend.
  It is helping protect us.  It will get stronger.  Soldiers will come up behind you.  You’re finished.”  The wind did increase, concentrating around the jay hawkers.  One man bolted into the forest.  Then another.

    “Hey, goddammit!.”
  Junior aimed his crossbow at his people.  “They ain’t for real.”  Then a burst of automatic rifle fire tore the air.  The rest of the jay hawkers broke and ran.  Junior waved his crossbow.  A look of shocked surprise lit his face.  The last thing he saw through his physical eyes was the icy face of Lena looking across the sights of her crossbow.  The bolt stood in his heart.

    Sergeant Burt Clark stood with Dick Clayton looking down at the body of Junior, lying spread-eagled on his back, shot through the heart.
  “Your work?” Burt asked.

    “No.”

    “Nice shooting,” Burt observed.

     Junior looked astounded, in stunned recognition, at his physical body.

    “Amazing, isn’t it?”  I said humorously.

    “I’m dead.
  Goddamn, I’m dead.”

    “Your physical body is, but you, Richard ‘Junior’ La Grue are obviously very much alive,” I replied.

    “Hey.”  He waved a hand in front of Dick’s face.  “He can’t see or hear me.  What’s going on?”  He faced me.  “You’re the Wizard everyone talks about.”

    “Slow down,” I said.
  “One thing at a time.”

    “How’ d you know my name?”
  he began again.

    “How’ d you know who I am?”
  I countered.

    “I just knew.
  It came to me.”

    “That’s one of the way things work here.”

    He pointed to his body.  “I don’t understand this.”

    “It’s pretty simple.
  The physical body you inhabited doesn’t work anymore.  Lena’s a very good shot.”

    “But she was my old lady.”

    “How’ d you treat her?”

    He stood there a long time, and finally said, “Why can’t they see me or hear us?”

    “It’s kind of like this.  Remember TV with the different channels?  We’re on one channel and they’re on another.”

    He stopped and waved his hands.
  “What about the windstorm?”

    “I and another person created it, with the help of the Earth, as a diversion to save our hunters from you folks.”

    “An exception to every rule,” Junior said.  Four of his gang sat sullen and guarded.

    “If you know what you’re doing.”

    “I feel drawn to my older sister, Maggie.  I don’t know why.”

    “She has come for you.
  Turn with me.”  We turned and saw a middle-aged woman smiling at us.  Her welcoming energy surrounded Junior.

    He sobbed, overwhelmed.
  Maggie and I stabilized his energy.  When he calmed, Maggie said, “I can take him now.  Thank you for your help.”   I bowed.  They vanished. 

    I turned back to our hunters and the soldiers.
  Charles said, “They are deciding whether to go back with the soldiers or continue with the hunt.  Burt is counseling returning as the escaped jay hawkers might ambush them again.”

    “Future probabilities say they will be safe,” I said.

    “I agree,” Charles said, “but the thought will nag them and our people at Cheshire.  There is always another day.  Call off the hunt.”

    I touched Abe’s mind and explained our thoughts.
  Abe gave the information to Dick who rubbed his unshaven chin.  “We have most of what we came for.”   He walked over to Burt.  “We’ll go back with you.”

    We went back into our physical bodies, and explained to our waiting people.
  Our people waited anxiously until our hunters and the soldiers entered the Main Gate a day later.  The four jay hawkers were placed under guard at the picnic table under the pavilion at the Arms Shack.

    After giving us big hugs Abe looked a little apprehensive. “Can I still go again?”

    “It’s okay with me,”  I said, looking at a relieved Judith.  “But we’ll study the probabilities a wee bit closer.”

    Judith frowned, hesitating.
  “As a mommy I have certain reservations, but I’ll keep an open mind mostly.”   She laughed and hugged our son again.

    Burt and his soldiers stayed for lunch.
  The jay hawkers ate at the heavily guarded table.  Helen asked Burt if we could check an injured jay hawker.  Burt agreed and looked at me.  “You’re not going to work on him?”

    “Evan McPherson and Laith will do that,” I said.

    Burt reached over and touched the wrist cuff.  “Kodus,” he said.  Not expected.  I was stunned.

    “How?” I asked.
  We’d known each other for about eight years.  Ever since he came out with an undermanned infantry  company.  Carson offered him a commission, but he turned it down.  Mustangers were common in the Army now.  Promotion by merit alone. 

    He nodded and jerked a thumb toward the Peaks.
  “I dreamed I went into their ships.  Hard to describe.  Huge.  There wasn’t a square room in the place, and the room sizes seemed to shift and move.”  He scratched his head.  “They got larger or smaller depending on how many people were in the room.” 

    “What did the people look like?”
  I eyed him.

    He looked at me dumbfounded and shook his head.
  “I never saw them.  They were there and I knew it, but, ya know, I never saw them.”  He stared at his tea cup.  “That is the oddest thing, but it’s blank.”

    “Where’ d you get my name?”

    “You’re well known up there.  They are eager to meet you and us.  Seems you were a part of getting them started - their civilization.  Something about eugenics and a forbidden relationship.  I didn’t get it all.”

   “Forbidden relationship?”

    “It was a very big thing.  A world was involved.  Actually a whole civilization was dependent on an inviolate person - a Queen.  And you put it all at risk.”

    “My goodness, I must have been a bad bad boy.”
  I smiled.

    Burt looked irritated.
  “Reckless.  You and this Queen were willing to compromise everything for the sake of this relationship.”  He shook himself.  “God, I almost sound like I had a stake in this past.  Doesn’t make sense.”

    “So, you were part of all of this.
  What does that tell you?”  Just then Judith walked up.

    Burt sputtered and backed away.
 

    “God, Burt, what’s that all about?”
  Judith said, alarmed.

    Burt turned back, eyes wide.
  “You were the alien Queen, Judith.”