GeneSys

by Roger Carter

  Part of the problem was the climate. Karen couldn’t stand the sticky heat, preferring to spend her time in the air-conditioned house or the car rather than on one of the pretty beaches or visiting a village in the bush. Another problem was shopping, which seemed to be her favourite hobby, and Honiara wasn’t a retail paradise. But the main difficulty was that she and Dawn had very little in common. Dawn was into psychology and biology and was very taken up with her dolphins, whereas Karen had zero interest in such things. She was taken up with fashion, working as she did for the marketing department of a large fashion chain.

  The day after she arrived Dawn had taken her to visit the huge artificial lagoon at Crocodile Bay, a few miles along the coast from Honiara, where the GM dolphins lived. These creatures could perform the most amazing stunts, and although they couldn’t talk they understood a vast range of commands, and most people found them enthralling and were more than happy to spend the best part of a day at the site, playing with them and learning about the project at the visitor centre. Karen watched them silently for a while, standing well back to avoid getting her expensive outfit splashed, and then complained of the heat and suggested they visit the air-conditioned cafeteria. By the end of the next day Dawn was wondering what on earth had brought her to this remote tropical island.

  She had her first clue over dinner that evening. During a pause in the conversation Karen had casually mentioned Angela Lane.

  “You might be interested in her, Dawn. She belonged to COBRA.”

  Dawn gave her a wary glance then carried on eating. No one knew that she had been responsible for the destruction of the Church of the Rapture – apart from Rick and Donna and Dr Song at the UN – and she wanted it to remain that way. There had been a media storm after the mysterious deaths of all the church leaders, but no one had ever been able to properly explain it, and although the ordinary church members had described an attack by a small red rocket ship spitting fire, no one had ever linked that to her.

  “Angela was only 18 at the time,” Karen continued. “I was eight years older, but I knew her. She went to London to attend that big COBRA meeting, the one where so many church people died, and she had been really excited about it. She must have been one of the youngest members.”

  “I suppose she must,” Dawn murmured. “Did she die too?”

  “Not exactly. Her body is alive, but she never awoke from her rapture. It seems she never left that ship.”

  “That’s odd,” Rick exclaimed. “I thought all the ordinary members returned to their bodies.”

  “Apparently Angela didn’t. There was hardly any mention of it at the time, what with all the fuss about all the leaders dying, but her unconscious body had to be flown back to Australia, and she’s been in hospital ever since. I read an article about her in the local paper. It said something about her spirit being trapped in neurospace. Apparently it’s well known among shamen that people on spirit journeys can get cut off from their body, and I suppose that’s what happened to Angela.”

  She raised her immaculate eyebrows and shot a glance at Dawn. “What do you think, Dawn? You know all about that kind of thing. I gather you’ve often been on spirit journeys with those dolphins of yours.”

  Dawn stared back at her, momentarily lost for words. She’d also read about spirits being cut off from their bodies and getting hopelessly lost in the spirit world, and her mind shot back to that moment when she’d struggled with that girl at the moment of rapture during the COBRA meeting and felt something snap. It must have been the girl’s connection to her body. That girl was Angela!

  Dawn pictured her trapped alone on that ship, after the last COBRA members had left. What on earth could have become of her? Perhaps she was still there, four years later. The thought filled her with dismay.

  “So what do you think, Dawn? Do you think she’s still trapped up there?” Karen was watching her closely, and Dawn knew then that there was more to Karen’s visit than met the eye. She wasn’t on holiday at all, she had come here with a hidden agenda. She – or whoever had sent her here – had somehow linked Angela’s misfortune to Dawn.

  They could only have done that if they had been in contact with Angela’s spirit. Someone must have visited that ship after everyone else had left and had found her there. Perhaps it was one of the church leaders. There had been hundreds of them, and not all of them would have been present at that rapture meeting. It was more than likely that one or two had been unable to attend, perhaps through illness. If so, they would certainly want to visit it to find out what happened, and all they had to do was to take a glass of that communion drug. And once they found Angela and learned what had happened to her, it wouldn’t take them long to realise that her captor had been Dawn. Angela had even caught a glimpse of her face.

  “I suppose Angela must somehow have got cut off from her body,” Dawn murmured, resuming her eating. “Though it seems amazing that she’s been cut off for four years. I suppose she’s still on that ship. I’m surprised no one’s found her, though. A few of the COBRA members must have tried to go there afterwards. Certainly a leader must have tried. They can’t all have been killed. I reckon Angela’s spirit is being held captive somewhere.”

  It was a long shot, but Karen gasped and blinked with surprise. Dawn’s deductions had been spot on. The implications were shocking. Angela was not only being held captive in neurospace, but Karen knew Angela’s captor, and now she had come here to lay some devilish trap. And she was Rick’s cousin!

  Karen had recovered her poise and was helping herself to more vegetables. “It sounds very weird to me,” she said nonchalantly. “Keeping an 18-year-old girl trapped in neurospace – what would be the point?”

  “I really have no idea. They must be using her for something, though.”

  “Well, whatever, it’s a great tragedy,” Karen replied. “Angela’s mother died a few years earlier in a car accident. I know her father, Mort Lane. Angela was their only child, she’s all he’s got.”

  Karen paused for effect, then added: “But now after four years he’s finally given up. He’s requested that the life-support system be turned off. She’ll be allowed to die.”

  She gazed at Dawn, and her eyes didn’t flicker. “It’s a terrible tragedy,” she repeated.

  Dawn stared back, startled. She wants me to save Angela’s life! That’s why she’s here. She knows I’ll try. But it’s got to be some kind of trap. Perhaps the remaining COBRA leaders have set up another evil organization, and she’s part of it, and they want to get rid of me.

  “I brought some newspaper cuttings along, in case you’re interested,” Karen continued, “and there’s stuff on the internet about Angela. Not that you or anyone else can do anything to help.”

  “I suppose not,” Dawn agreed. “But I’ll read the cuttings anyway.”

  The newspaper articles added little of substance to what Karen had already told her. Rick read them too, but he and Dawn were careful not to discuss the matter until after Karen had departed, a couple of days later, and after Dawn had painstakingly gone over the house and their clothes and even their bodies with the bug-detection device that Dr Song had given her.

  “We’re clean,” she announced. “I’ve checked everything. Karen hasn’t planted anything.”

  “That’s a relief,” Rick said, grabbing her and pulling her onto his lap. “We can start misbehaving again.”

  “This is serious, my darling. She knows I destroyed that spaceship. And that means she knows something about my powers.”

  “How can you be so sure? She’s friendly with Angela’s father, and Angela herself was a childhood friend, so perhaps she’s genuinely upset and just wanted a bit of sympathy.”

  “Not a bit of it,” Dawn replied firmly. “She wouldn’t have bothered to bring along those newspaper cuttings if all she wanted was sympathy. It’s some kind of trap.”

  “Perhaps you should get Dr Song to check up on her. A few discreet inquiries by the Australian secret service migh
t throw up something.”

  “Good idea. And in the meantime I’ll try to locate that spaceship in case Angela’s still on it. I suppose it’s still floating somewhere above the earth.”

  He laughed. “Space is pretty big, you know. You’ll never find it.”

  And so it proved. During the next few weeks Dawn flew into space on a number of occasions, circling the earth in different orbits and even travelling out as far as the moon. She came across quite a few artificial satellites gleaming hazily in the sunlight, but nothing with the sharp, clear outlines of a neurospace object, and in the end she gave up. She consoled herself with the thought that the ship had probably ceased to exist because there were no more minds on board.

  And then yesterday she had heard from Karen again. It had been a phone call to say that permission to withdraw life-support from Angela’s body had been granted. Karen said she would be attending a farewell ceremony on the ward today, and that when the ceremony was over a switch would be thrown and shortly after that Angela would be dead.

  The news had galvanized Dawn into making one final effort. She had decided to make a trip to that ward and enter Angela’s brain-dead mind, in the hope that she might be able to do something to restore its connection to Angela’s spirit. What she was attempting was almost certainly impossible, and she was probably rushing headlong into some kind of trap, but she would never be able to live with herself afterwards if she didn’t at least try.

  And so she had called the hospital to find out the name of the ward, and a map of the hospital on the internet had allowed her to pinpoint its location. Now, as she circled slowly above the blurred outline of the hospital in her Beetle, she was able to pick it out. It lay at the north-east corner of the complex.

  Closing her eyes, she dismissed the car imagery and visualized herself as a dragon instead. There was the usual brief spasm of pain, and then she was flapping her wings and diving down to the ward. Karen had told her that there would be some kind of farewell ceremony at Angela’s bedside, and she quickly found a room off the main ward with around 20 people crowded around a bed. Although her perceptions of the real world were blurred, sound as well as vision, she could tell that they were singing a hymn.

  At the head of the bed was a bank of medical equipment, and although Dawn was unable to discern any details she could make out the tubes linking it to the body lying on the bed. This had to be Angela, and they were probably singing a final dirge before throwing that switch. There was clearly no time to lose, and Dawn dived straight into her head.

  There was a momentary feeling of swimming in black goo, and then the cathedral of Angela’s mind formed around her, though it was so dark that she could barely see anything. The sound of the hymn was clear enough, however, and the words reverberated around the cathedral: the small congregation was singing Abide with Me.

  Dawn looked around cautiously, fearing some kind of trap, but the place was deserted. All she could make out in the gloom were the dark doorways spaced out along the walls of the nave, leading to Angela’s memories, and the low flight of stairs at the end leading to the grey shape of the altar. Above it was the only source of light, a faintly glowing large rectangle of pink set in the far wall. This was the stained-glass window showing the view of the world through Angela’s physical eyes, and it looked like that because Angela was in a coma and those eyes were closed.

  There was no flickering flame above the altar, for Angela’s consciousness was elsewhere. So how to restore the connection between her body and her spirit so that the flame would flicker into life and she would wake up? Dawn stared despairingly around in the darkness, at a loss to know how to proceed.

  Perhaps she should start with those black doorways spaced along the walls of the nave, leading to Angela’s memories – or rather her memories up to the day of the great rapture. There would be nothing beyond that date, Dawn supposed, for her spirit had lost its connection with her brain, but there might be some clue there.

  She hurried through the darkness to the nearest door, her claws clanking on the hard floor. To her surprise, the door was shut. In every mind she had invaded before the doors had been open. Was it possible to open this door, she wondered? It had a handle, and lowering her head she gripped it with her dragon teeth and tried to turn it. It didn’t move. She tried harder, twisting it both ways and pushing hard against the door with her strong body, but to no avail. It was jammed firmly shut.

  She trotted along to the next door, and that too was shut. Again she tried to open it, and again she failed. In the absence of Angela’s spirit, her memories were inaccessible. It occurred to Dawn that if she managed to open those doors then her spirit would return, and she would revive.

  She hastened from door to door, trying each one in turn, but none of them would budge. And now the singing was coming to an end, and her time was surely running out. Someone – a man – began making a speech, something about Angela’s childhood. Dawn wasn’t really listening, she was too taken up with those doors. She had almost reached the end of the nave, and she was wondering whether perhaps she should try burning those doors open with her dragon fire. She decided against such a drastic course, as she supposed it would inflict so much destruction that it wouldn’t be worth trying to save what was left of Angela.

  At last she reached the final door, just before the flight of steps leading up to the altar. It was open! She stared into the dark opening. Could this be the trap she had been expecting? Was an alien spirit hiding inside?

  She let her fires spring to life in her belly, and then, very cautiously, poked her head into the opening. She couldn’t sense any evil residing there, and nothing attacked her. She pushed her long neck in further, so that her head was right inside the room. Certainly there was no evil spirit in here, but there didn’t seem to be any memories either. Everything was a uniform black.

  She moved her head from side to side, but no memories sprang up to greet her. And then she became aware of faint splodges of light, fuzzy pinpricks, scattered across the blackness. It reminded her of how the stars looked when she travelled into space in her Beetle. She moved her head around, and other fuzzy pinpricks appeared. Then it dawned on her that these must be the memories of Angela’s time in space!

  She shifted her head from side to side, but everywhere in the room was the same. It was filled with endless visions of space. This could only mean that Angela’s spirit was, or had been, trapped in space, and that her connection with her body had not been entirely broken. Or if it had been broken, it had somehow been partially restored. That was the implication of that open door and these visions.

  Was the poor girl still out there gazing at the stars? If so, and if she was still somehow connected to her body, then what she was seeing should be passing through the visual cortex of her brain, in which case fuzzy images of the stars should show up in that stained-glass window. Dawn withdrew her head from the room and turned to gaze at the dim pink rectangle above the altar. Sure enough, and to her immense satisfaction, she could just make out faint splodges of light scattered across it.

  The man had finished speaking now, and she heard the congregation begin another hymn. This would probably be the final farewell to Angela, and then her life-support would be turned off. And yet Angela’s spirit was alive, there was no question about it, and she was trapped somewhere in space. Maybe she was still on that flying saucer.

  The pattern of faint lights superimposed on the dim pinkness of the stained-glass window abruptly shifted. Angela’s eyes must have moved, and now Dawn could see the fuzzy outline of some kind of mechanism. She stared at it, bewildered. Anything belonging to the flying saucer would be sharp and clear, whereas this was clearly not a neurospace object at all but some kind of physical device. Dawn moved closer and craned her head and peered at the hazy image, and all at once she realised what it was. It was a lens, like the lens of a telescope. Angela was looking at the stars through a telescope!

  Dawn stared at the dim image, transfixed. Someone must
have imprisoned Angela there, but for what reason? It could only be that they wanted her to monitor the heavens for neurospace objects, that was the only thing that made sense. She was being used as a kind of spirit detector, a souped-up version of Baby!

  Dawn tried to make out the details of what she was seeing, but the image was too faint and grainy to be make out much. So far as she could tell there was some kind of gadgetry attached to the telescope, so it was quite a complex device. She supposed it would have to be, if Angela was to scan the heavens.

  And now that she had made that discovery, it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate the girl. Dawn thought at first that she would probably be on a space telescope, because a ground-based telescope would be in daylight for half the time, and Angela seemed to have no memory of that. But then it occurred to her that even a spirit like Angela couldn’t survive without an oxygen supply, so she was more likely to be on Earth. Well, it wouldn’t take long to check the space telescopes, there were only a couple of them circling the earth, and then she would check the larger Earth-based telescopes. Given enough time, she was bound to find her.

  The trouble was, there wasn’t any time. The final hymn was ending, and now the voice that had delivered the eulogy on Angela’s life had launched into a prayer. There was only one thing to do. She would have to possess Angela’s body and make everyone believe that the girl had miraculously recovered from her coma. It wouldn’t be easy, as she wouldn’t have access to any of Angela’s memories. She wouldn’t even be able to recognise her father. Well, she would have to do her best and try to fool them all.

  There was no time to lose. Flapping her dragon wings madly, Dawn leapt into the air and sped towards the dark shape of the altar. She fluttered onto it, there was a moment of blackness as she descended into it, and then everything was pink and her body was stiff and uncomfortable on that hospital bed and her mouth was dry and horrible.

  The prayer was just ending, and she could feel someone’s warm hands resting lightly on her forehead and on her shoulder.

  “Lord, we know you are the God of miracles, and the God of answered prayers,” the voice intoned. “We know that even now you can restore Angela to her family. We plead with you Lord, in this final hour, to have mercy on this precious soul. We believe you can do it, Lord, for the whole world is in your hands. Nevertheless Lord, your will be done.”

  Dawn opened the eyes of the body she was inhabiting, and above her was the face of the man who was praying. He was wearing a black suit and a dog collar, and his eyes were closed. At the edge of her vision, standing around her bed, were the faces of the people who had come to bid Angela farewell, and their eyes were closed too. Nearby was a nurse, standing by the life-support equipment. Her eyes weren’t closed in prayer, instead she was checking the equipment in preparation for shutting it down.

  The minister took a deep breath. He was about to deliver the closing words of his prayer and the final Amen. Well, there was no point in bothering with that now. Dawn licked her dry lips and took a deep breath.

  “Thanks a million,” she croaked. “That was a great prayer. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like a drink.”

  The minister jerked his hands away and stared down into her eyes. “Good God!” he whispered.

  The nurse gaped at her, hit a red alarm button, and promptly fainted. A man standing nearby caught her and lowered her to the ground.

  People all around were gasping and gaping at her, and she heard a few muttered prayers and even an oath. A woman crossed herself, and a man fell to his knees and cried out a prayer of thanks. They were all, with a single exception, astonished.

  The exception was Karen. She was standing at the foot of the bed, and the expression on her face was one of relief. Dawn thought she saw a satisfied smile play across her lips, and she realised that this had not been a trap, but that Karen had genuinely wanted her to save Angela’s body. Not because of any concern for Angela’s welfare, but because she wanted her to continue monitoring space through that telescope.

  Dawn had no idea what would happen to Angela’s spirit if her physical body died, but it seemed unlikely that she would continue to exist in neurospace. Certainly she would no longer have a physical brain, so there would be no cognition in the conventional sense and no memories. Without those, it would be impossible for Karen or anybody else to tap into her perceptions.

  A man who had been standing close by caught Dawn’s attention. He had been staring at her in utter disbelief, but suddenly his face crumpled and tears spurted from his eyes. All at once he was cradling her face in his arms and his tears were dripping down her cheek.

  This must be Angela’s father, Mort Lane. He looked the right age. She tried to raise her arms to put them round him, but they were stiff and somehow it all seemed too much of an effort. In any case, she was more concerned with getting to the bottom of what Karen was up to than in trying to bond with him.

  As the sobbing man continued to cradle her in his arms, Dawn desperately tried to think through all she had found out about Karen in the last couple of months. There must be some clue in the mass of information that Dr Song’s people had dug up that would tell her exactly what Karen and whoever she worked for was up to. What exactly were they looking for in space?

  Her brain, back in her sleeping body in Honiara, made a couple of astute connections, and she had the answer. The Watchers!

  Fifteen

  Dawn was waiting for her in the privacy of her room. Donna pulled the door firmly shut and joined her on the settee.

  “What’s up?” she whispered. There were no hidden microphones in this 16th century world, but there were always people around and it wouldn’t do for the things that she and Dawn talked about in private to be overheard.

  Not that anything could be hidden from the Mind, for every inhabitant of Eden was part of it, including Donna. Like an omniscient and omnipresent god, it was aware of everything that was said in this room as well as everywhere else in the town and in the surrounding countryside. If this had been a modern culture, with computers and search engines and electronic data storage and retrieval, then anyone could key in Dawn Goode and dragon, and Dawn’s secret would immediately be exposed.

  But Dawn had been careful to protect herself. She had imposed on the Mind the rule that it could be interrogated only through the leader of the community, who would be its high priest and representative. And that one was Donna, her dolphin soul mate.

  It was through Donna that human clients accessed the Mind. They might be governments seeking advice on economic or political matters, or scientists or business leaders seeking answers to questions spanning many disciplines. One recent question, posed by the SETI organization, was: ‘Based on your current knowledge, what is the probability that intelligent life has evolved on at least one other world in this galaxy?’ When that had been put to her, Donna’s face had gone completely blank for about a minute before she gave the answer. 99.8%, the Mind declared.

  Eden was the GM dolphins’ private dreamworld, and no humans apart from Dawn ever visited it. Such questions were therefore put to the Mind not by the humans themselves, but by members of the dolphin community acting on their behalf. These sessions took place in the temple, before the altar, which was the seat of consciousness of the Mind, and they were occasions of the utmost solemnity. During them Donna would be in a strange state of consciousness in which it appeared that her ordinary mind had been blanked out and she was totally under the Mind’s control.

  In fact she was fully aware and fully in control of her spirit body. If she so desired she could edit the answers that came to her, and she could even refuse to speak them out, saying instead that there was no answer. But only she and Dawn and the Mind itself knew that, and in practice she rarely needed to censor anything.

  Everyone on the planet knew about the GM dolphin project and about the existence of a dolphin communal mind. But they didn’t know about Eden, and the dolphins preferred to keep their Shakespearian paradise a secret from ever
yone apart from Rick and Dawn and a few other people closely involved with the project, for here they were free of human interference and control.

  Apart from control by Dawn, that is. This the dolphins willingly accepted, at least for the present, for it was she who had conceived of it, and she who had trained them in the mental skills required to call it up each day. To them she was almost a god – especially when she appeared in the guise of a fire-breathing dragon, as she did on many Sunday mornings at the temple. The dolphins believed that this was mere fairytale imagery, for no one imagined that there could be real dragons.

  Donna, uniquely among the GM dolphins, had been made in Dawn’s dragon image. Now, sitting with Dawn in her room at the edge of the temple precinct, Donna was acutely aware that this tremendous privilege was not without its drawbacks, for she was still feeling upset by that conversation with Jonah at the riverbank a few minutes ago. She was stuck between two worlds, or so it seemed: neither fully human nor fully dolphin, she was unable to enjoy either dolphin or human love. With the onset of puberty she had become increasingly troubled by this, and now all she wanted to do was to pour her heart out to her mentor and closest friend.

  When she had been younger, Dawn had cuddled her on this settee and answered all her questions and taught her how to do many wonderful human things. She had taught her how to model in clay, and helped her paint her models, and all the while they would chat about life and love and what it was to be both a woman and a dragon.

  But this was not the moment for pouring out her heart, for she could tell that Dawn was deeply troubled. “What happened at the hospital?” she asked.

  Dawn told her how she’d brought Angela Lane’s body out of its coma. “Everyone thinks it’s a miracle. They made a great fuss of me, especially Angela’s father, Mort Lane. The nurses gave me some liquid food – it tasted foul – and I told them to get some physio organized ‘cos my body felt really weak and flabby and I wanted to get it into shape. They looked at me really strangely, and I suppose that was an odd thing to say when you’ve just come out of a four-year coma.”

  “Four years! Angela’s body must be in a terrible state.”

  “They’d looked after her body pretty well, actually. There was some kind of equipment for exercising her muscles, though it’s not the same as proper exercise, of course. Anyway, I told everyone that I really appreciated them coming to the hospital and praying for me, but that I was feeling a bit tired and wanted to sleep. So the nurses sent everyone away and I vacated Angela’s body and now it’s back in its coma. I just hope they don’t try to wake her up.”

  “And you say that Angela’s spirit is attached to a telescope?”

  “Someone’s put her there deliberately, it can’t be an accident. She’s been positioned so that she’s looking straight through the telescope, so that its view of the heavens appears in the window of her mind. She’s being used to monitor the telescope’s output.”

  “But that’s silly. Her spirit is in neurospace, she can’t see physical things like stars properly.”

  “She’s being used as a spirit detector, I’m certain of it. The concept behind my spirit detector was published years ago, and someone has had the idea that if they linked up a spirit to a telescope instead of a camera lens, they might be able to detect neurospace objects far out in space.”

  “But who on earth would want to set up something crazy like that? What are they looking for?”

  “It can only be because they’re looking for intelligent life. Visitors from across the galaxy.”

  “Oh. I see. Do you think SETI is behind this?”

  Donna knew quite a bit about SETI, the organization set up to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. SETI had always taken a close interest in the dolphin project, for the GM dolphins were their only example of a non-human intelligence, or rather intelligence in non-human bodies. Donna had even met a couple of SETI scientists – not here in Eden, of course, but in her dolphin body in the Solomon Islands.

  Dawn shook her head. “Not SETI. They’re looking for signals in the electromagnetic spectrum – radio signals, visible light, microwave signals, that kind of thing. They’re a mainstream organization that’s been around for the best part of a century, and I’m sure they wouldn’t be involved in kidnapping spirits. It’s someone else, another organization. The Watchers.”

  “The Watchers?” Donna stared at her blankly. “They’re not a bunch of cranks like the COBRA church, are they?”

  “I don’t know too much about them myself,” Dawn confessed, “only what I’ve read on the internet. They’re very much taken up with ideas about neurospace, though I had thought they were harmless. However, after seeing what I saw in Angela’s mind, I’m not so sure. They’re obviously on to something. They might even know that I’m a dragon.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick.” Donna stood up, holding her stomach. “No I’m not. Spirits can’t be sick. Perhaps I’ll make a cup of tea.”

  “Good idea. It’ll calm us down. We’ve got time to drink it before everyone wakes up and this place disappears.”

  She watched Donna walk over to her primitive wood-burning stove. There was a blackened kettle sitting on it, with a wisp of steam issuing from its spout. The stove and the kettle, like the temple and all the other fixtures of Eden, was firmly embedded in the Mind and faithfully reproduced each morning. Donna picked up the kettle and poured the boiling water into an earthenware teapot. She used a fish tea that was available in one of the small shops in the town. All her visitors apart from Dawn adored it.

  “What makes you think these Watchers are involved in all this?” Donna asked as she stirred the tea and replaced the kettle on the hob.

  “You remember I told you about Rick’s cousin Karen? You saw her at Crocodile Bay a few weeks ago, when she came to visit us.”

  “I remember. She didn’t seem to like us dolphins much. I was tempted to give her a soaking.”

  “That would have been fun. Anyway, she knew something about me, that was obvious. She only came to visit us because she wanted me to step in and stop Angela’s life-support system being turned off. She didn’t say this in so many words, but that was plainly the purpose of her visit.”

  Donna carried the teapot and a couple of cups across to the small table. “How did she find out about you?”

  “I’m sure she’s acquainted with a COBRA leader, one that didn’t die on that ship. It was pretty obvious that she knew what had happened to Angela, and she could only have got that from someone who had gone up to that ship after I’d disabled it.”

  Donna knew all about COBRA from her explorations of Dawn’s memories, and the thought that one of its demon-possessed leaders might still be alive and active made her feel jittery. She carefully poured out the tea, and its fishy aroma filled the room, calming her. She took a tentative sip. It was perfect.

  “There’s something else, too,” Dawn continued, turning up her nose slightly at the smell. “I got Dr Song onto the case, and she asked the Australian secret service to check Karen out. They discovered she belongs to the Watchers.”

  “So what are they? A group of scientists or something?”

  “No, they’re some kind of religious sect. They’ve only been around a few years. Apparently they lay hands on each other at their meetings and go into ecstatic states and speak in strange tongues and utter prophecies, that kind of thing. They call themselves the Watchers because they believe that their tongues and prophesies are messages from the stars, and they’re watching out for the arrival of extra-terrestrials.”

  Donna sipped her tea while she digested the implications of Dawn’s words. “And so they’ve imprisoned Angela’s spirit at the receiving end of a telescope.”

  “I’m sure they want her to look for neurospace spaceships. They must have got the idea that extra-terrestrials are travelling here through neurospace, not ordinary space. It’s like ET is on a mammoth spirit journey from somewhere deep in the galaxy. If the Watchers are right, these
visitors must be travelling at many hundreds of times the speed of light. That must be possible in neurospace, because when I was raptured up to that flying saucer it took only a few seconds.”

  Donna finished her cup and poured herself out some more. “So Angela’s their early-warning system. That makes sense, I suppose. A neurospace ship will look bright and solid to her, ‘cos she’s in neurospace too. It’ll be the only distinct object in the sky.”

  Dawn nodded. “If it’s anything like that COBRA flying saucer, which shone brightly with its own light, it will really stand out against the fuzzy dark background of space. That’s why Karen was so desperate for me to keep Angela alive. What she’s seeing through that telescope is passing through the visual cortex of her brain and being stored in her memories, and she’ll certainly remember if a shiny neurospace object appears.”

  “And all the Watchers have to do is periodically invade her mind and examine her memories.”

  “Exactly. The door leading to that part of her brain is open, and I guess that means that someone has been visiting it regularly. Probably that ex-COBRA leader. He or she would be experienced enough in spirit journeys to undertake something like that.”

  Donna stared at her thoughtfully over her raised cup and savoured the fishy aroma. It helped her think straight. “If he is an ex-COBRA leader, it’s odd that he should try to get you to help. You’re the last person he would want meddling in his affairs.”

  Dawn shrugged. “It shows just how desperate the Watchers are to keep Angela’s body alive. She’s their window into space.”

  “Would it make that much difference to them if Angela died? Their meetings would carry on, they’d still go into their trances and receive those messages from the stars.”

  “The point is, they really believe their prophecies. They’re telling them that before long the spaceships will arrive and a new age on Earth will dawn.”

  “They must be crazy. The whole thing’s crazy. A single telescope can only monitor a tiny fraction of space. It those Watchers were serious, they would want dozens of Angelas, all located at different telescopes.”

  “That’s true,” Dawn answered thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps they do have more Angelas. Or perhaps they’ve programmed the telescope to do a sweep of the skies. If these aliens are coming from deep in the galaxy, they only need to search the central part of the Milky Way. Maybe their prophecies have told them where to look.”

  “Or maybe it’s a lure, to draw you in. If those Watchers know something about your powers, they must want you on their side. After all, if extra-terrestrials really are coming here on spirit journeys, then you’re the obvious person to meet them. Maybe they’re hoping you’ll become sympathetic to their cause. After all, you can’t not be interested in the possibility of alien visitors from neurospace. They might be an army of demons.”

  Dawn was silent for a moment, mulling over that possibility. “That’s true enough. Earth itself won’t be directly threatened, of course, or human civilization, because it’s all happening in neurospace. But the dolphin communal mind would certainly be at risk. If extra-terrestrial demons managed to take control of that, then heaven help all of us!”

  Donna gaped at her, her cup and saucer held at an awkward angle. There was a sudden crash as the cup slipped off onto the wooden floor. They both jumped, then Dawn burst out laughing.

  “Don’t worry,” she said as Donna got up to clean up the mess. “Those Watchers are deluded. Extra-terrestrials can’t be heading our way. Why would they bother to come to our tiny planet at the edge of the galaxy? What would be the point?”

  Donna picked up a dustpan and brush and then grabbed a cloth that was hanging near her tiny sink. There were no paper towels in Eden. “The Watchers must think they have a reason.”

  “That’s just as crazy as everything else. They believe there’s a galactic federation out there, and that Earth is going to be invited to join it. They see themselves as a kind of welcoming committee, and they talk about rising up to meet ET in the air and then of sitting on galactic councils and reigning over entire star systems.”

  “Another great rapture, in other words,” Donna muttered as she cleaned up the mess.

  “They dress everything up as religion, with prophecies, hymns, and everything, just like the COBRA church. That’s another reason why I’m certain an ex-COBRA leader is behind it.”

  The sound of the temple bell tolling interrupted their conversation. The Mind had sensed that the dolphins were about to emerge from their trance and that soon the dream would end and Eden and everything in it would fade away.

  Donna carefully brushed up the broken shards and wiped the floor. “I’ll have to clear it up,” she explained, “otherwise it’ll still be here when I wake up tomorrow morning, and I’ll step on it in the dark.”

  “You haven’t touched your fish tea, Dawn,” she added reproachfully. “It’s no good leaving that till tomorrow.”

  “I’ll give it a miss if you don’t mind. There’s too much to talk about. I need your help, Donna. I’m going to rescue Angela from that telescope, and that means I won’t be able to occupy her body. So you’re going to have to stand in for me. It’ll only be for a day or two, until I find Angela and bring her back.”

  Donna beamed. To be a real human for a few days would be the most exciting thing ever. Especially in a hospital, with all those young doctors fussing over her. “That’s no problem at all, Dawn. It’ll be a pleasure.”

  “We’ll have to put you into one of the isolation pens at the lagoon, away from the other dolphins. Do you want us to give you a trance drug, or will you put yourself under?”

  Donna grinned impishly. “I’ll do what you do – put myself under by imagining that Rick’s making love to me.”

  Dawn ignored her jibe. “You’ll need to come out of your trance at night, when Angela’s nurses will be expecting her to be asleep. That’s when you’ll be able to feed and exercise your dolphin body. Come to think of it, we’d better give you the drug, or you might not be able to hold your trance for long enough.”

  Donna nodded in agreement. Dawn was right, and in any case she was too delighted at the prospect of being a real human for a few hours to argue the point. “I’ll also need to come here each morning, to keep control of things. We don’t want the Mind to be without its leader. Otherwise someone else might try to take it over.”

  “I can’t think the Mind would allow anything like that, but it’s best to play safe,” Dawn agreed. “Early morning here equates to midday at Adelaide, so you’ll have to tell the nurses you need a siesta. I’ll check the exact times for you.”

  “And you mustn’t forget, Dawn, that you’ve got to be here on Sunday. To perform your next Passion play episode.”

  “Thanks for reminding me! There’d be a riot if I missed that. Hopefully I’ll have found Angela by then.”

  Donna’s quarters shook slightly and the teapot rattled. “Our time’s up,” she exclaimed, “we’ve got a couple of minutes at most before Eden disappears. Have you told me everything?”

  “Almost. Swim to the isolation pens as soon as you wake up. I’ll arrange for Rick to give you some food and the trance drug. We’ll go on a spirit journey together to the hospital ward in Adelaide and you can take over Angela’s body.”

  “What about Karen? She thinks it’s you, not me, that’s taken over Angela.”

  “She’ll pretend to know nothing about that. She’s sure to come visiting, so just be careful what you say to her. I don’t trust those Watchers, after what I’ve seen today. They’ve risen out of the ashes of COBRA, I’m sure of it.”

  “At least they can’t possibly know anything about me,” Donna pointed out. “I’ll pretend I’m you pretending to be Angela.”

  Dawn smiled and took her hand. “That’s my girl. I know you’ll do a brilliant job.”

  The teapot suddenly winked out of existence, and a couple of seconds later the stove and the kettle disappeared too. At any mo
ment this room would come apart at the seams and then the dream would end and the dolphins would start to wake up.

  “One last thing,” Donna asked hurriedly. “If I’m in charge of Angela’s body, how will the Watchers get into her to access her memories of what she’s seeing in space? And will there even be any memories of what’s she seeing out there? The window of her mind will show what her physical eyes are seeing, which will be her room in the hospital. Did Karen think of that when she got you to take over Angela?”

  “Karen knows I can only occupy Angela’s body for a few hours each day. I need to feed and exercise my own body and keep everything else going. As you will too, of course. The rest of the time Angela will be in her coma, and then her view of space will return. And it’ll be when she’s in a coma that they’ll invade to check her memories.”

  “I’ll have to occupy her for more than a few hours a day,” Donna murmured slyly. “Otherwise the nurses will think something’s wrong. I really don’t mind, I’m sure it will be interesting.”

  Dawn glanced at her sharply. “Not too interesting, I hope. My heart sank when I saw Angela’s doctor – he’s really dishy. And a couple of the ward nurses are men. You’re not to get any ideas, I totally forbid it!”

  Giving Donna a stern look, she added: “It’s Angela’s body, not yours, and in any case after four years in bed it’s gross, a real turn-off. Just remember that Angela was a sweet, innocent teenager, and that’s how everyone will expect you to behave!”

  Donna was about to retort that although Angela might have been sweet, she certainly wasn’t innocent, not if she had been a fully paid-up member of COBRA, when the world suddenly came apart and she fell headlong into nothingness. Then she was floating in the afternoon sunlight in the gentle waters of a lagoon on the other side of the world, her brain a tangle of human and dolphin perceptions.

  Sixteen

  It was the middle of the afternoon when Dawn returned to her body back in her office. She shook her head a couple of times to clear it, took a drink of water from a jug on her desk, and then picked up the phone and spoke Rick’s name into it. He answered almost immediately.

  “Hello Angel. How’s Angela?”

  “Angelic. I left her in a coma.” She quickly told him the bare bones of what had happened. “Donna’s going to Adelaide on a spirit journey to take over Angela’s body. She should be at the isolation pens now, waiting for you. You’ll need to give her some food and the trance drug.”

  “Sure. Are you going with her to Adelaide?”

  “Of course. And afterwards I’ll check out those space telescopes, in case Angela’s spirit is incarcerated on any of them. I’m afraid you’ll have to do the dinner tonight, my darling.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” he said with exaggerated relief. Cooking was not one of Dawn’s strong points, and if they ate at home it was usually Rick who prepared the meal. Apart from Wednesdays, which was Dawn’s half day, when she would cook a romantic candle-lit supper for him.

  “Watch it, you horrid man!” she exclaimed. “There’ll be no love-goddess kisses for you tonight!” It was an empty threat, of course, and he laughed. She always insisted on making Wednesday nights a special occasion.

  After Rick got off the phone she switched on her computer. She had 20 minutes or so before Donna would be slipping into her trance, which was enough time to search the internet for information on the orbits of those telescopes.

  Half-an-hour later she met up with Donna in neurospace, and the two of them squeezed into the Beetle. Donna had never been in her flying car before, and she was really impressed when Dawn put her foot down and they roared out over the sunlit waters of the Pacific, smoke and flame billowing out behind. She was even more impressed when Dawn spoke the destination address into her satnav and the car skidded to a halt at more or less the exact spot a couple of minutes later.

  Dawn dismissed the car, they both transformed themselves into dragons, and shortly after that they were diving into Angela Lane’s head and the dark cathedral of her mind was rising up around them.

  Being dragons, they could detect emotional telepathy, and they both sensed the invader immediately. They glanced warily at each other and Dawn pointed with her head towards the gloom at the far end of the nave. She couldn’t see anything, but it was a dead certainty that the spirit was inside the room housing Angela’s memories of space.

  The two dragons crept forward. Dawn had no fear of what awaited them there, and she hoped that Donna hadn’t either. It wasn’t a demon, she was sure of that, for there was no sense of evil, and even if it was it would be no match for two fire-breathing dragons. In case the invader was also telepathic, she calmed her emotional state so as not to betray her presence, and she sensed Donna do the same.

  As the two dragons crept down the dark nave towards the dim rectangle of pink at the far end – Angela’s version of the stained-glass window – Donna was able to make out the faint splodges of white scattered across the pink that Dawn had told her about, though there was no sign of a telescope mechanism. They neared the open doorway, and although it was too dark to see it properly the sense of a presence lurking in the blackness beyond was now very strong.

  Dawn inched forward. The spirit had not detected them, for there were no feelings of alarm coming from that room, only a sense of urgency. It had a job to do, and it wanted to do it quickly and make its escape. She paused in front of the doorway, trying to detect what other emotions might be coming from within. She was expecting to sense malice or other negative emotions, but there was nothing.

  But she wasn’t take any chances, for it could all be a trap. Sucking in a draught of air she let the fires in her belly flare up. Then, with her jaws open and ready to deliver death, she cautiously poked her head through the doorway and peered into the blackness beyond.

  Whatever was in there must have been completely absorbed in its task, for there was still no sense of alarm. Stretching out her long dragon neck, Dawn poked her head in further. Now she was bombarded by Angela’s memories of space, and it was a real effort to push the fuzzy splodges and points of light out of her mind and focus on what her dragon eyes were seeing. No wonder the invader hadn’t sensed her!

  She needed some light, and there was only one way to get it. Quietly sucking in more air, she allowed a filament of fire to erupt up her neck and into her throat and out through her jaws. The flames licked around her dragon lips, lighting up the room, and there, in front of her, was the invader.

  He froze, startled by the sudden light. The lower part of his face was covered by a mask, so that he would not be recognised, but it was obvious that he had been one of the COBRA leaders. He was golden and clothed in the same tunic that the men on their flying saucer had worn, there was a stump of a horn in the middle of his forehead, and he had shrivelled wings protruding from his shoulder blades. Here was a fallen angel, if ever she saw one, bearing the scars of his lost demonic powers. For some reason he had not gone up to that ship on that fateful day, and it occurred to her that his demon might have been one of those patrolling the entrances to the auditorium, that she had fought and destroyed.

  He might have lost his demon, but his reactions were lightning fast. He spun round to face her, and she looked straight into his eyes. She was startled by what she saw, for there was something about those eyes that she recognised, but before she could think what it was he had reared up and leapt sideways, away from her. Immediately he sprang again and disappeared through the opposite wall, leaving Dawn rooted to the spot in surprise, and then all sense of his presence was gone.

  Dawn cursed herself for her tardiness. If she had had her wits about her she could have leapt after him and followed him to wherever he was going, but it was too late for that now.

  Donna had glimpsed the light shining from Dawn’s jaws, and consumed with curiosity she pushed her head through the doorway too. It was a bit of a squeeze, and now there was nothing to see anyway. The two dragons retracted their heads, and Dawn transformed h
erself back into her human form, so that she could speak. Never having had to exercise her dragon vocal chords, she had yet to discover that dragons possessed such things and could talk perfectly well.

  “The spirit’s gone,” she said. “I caught a quick glimpse of him, and he turned tail and bolted. He’s more afraid of us than we are of him, that’s for sure.”

  Donna transformed herself as well and replied: “That’s a relief. What did he look like?”

  “He’s an ex-COBRA leader all right. He was masked, so I only saw his eyes, but I’m sure I’ve seen him before. I know I have.”

  “Did he see you? If he did, then he knows you’re a dragon!”

  “He saw me all right. That’s why he was so scared. He must have seen my dragon fire too, though I doubt he realises its significance.”

  “Dawn!” Donna grabbed her arm in alarm. “He can’t not realise its significance! It was fire that destroyed the COBRA spaceship, he’s bound to make the connection. If he didn’t know much about you before, he certainly does now. You’ve blown your cover! Don’t you see what that means? We mustn’t do anything to upset those Watchers, otherwise he might retaliate. His spirit might be scared of your dragon body, but what’s to stop him coming to the Solomon Islands in the flesh and attacking your physical body?”

  Dawn stared at her protégé in the dim pink light of the stained-glass window. “This is turning into a disaster. I’ll have to get in touch with Dr Song. I’ll get her to investigate the Watchers and find out who he is. Then we can nobble him first.”

  Donna’s eyes lit up. “Kill him you mean? Let me do it, I’ve never used my dragon fire. You’ve had all the fun, now it’s my turn!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. How many times have I told you we must never use our fire to satisfy our personal desires?”

  “OK, I was only joking. Anyway, we can find out who he is from Karen. She must know him, and we can easily force the information out of her. Just threaten to muddy her clothes, that should do the trick.”

  “We’ll talk about that later. You need to take over Angela’s body now, before those nurses start getting worried. I’ll pay a visit to those space telescopes – hopefully I’ll find her spirit.”

  “Be careful! You don’t know what’s out there, Dawn. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “And you watch yourself. I don’t want you having too much fun in Angela’s body!”

  Donna turned from her without replying and moved a few steps away before transforming herself back into a dragon. She had every intention of enjoying herself in Angela’s body, whatever Dawn’s views on the matter. Leaping into the air, she flapped her wings and in moments she was fluttering down onto the dark shape of the altar. There was a moment of blackness as she sank into it, and then she was lying on a hospital bed and someone was shaking her very hard. She managed to open her eyes, and stared up at a white ceiling.

  A couple of female faces swam into view. They were in nurses’ uniform.

  “She’s OK!” one of them exclaimed, visibly relieved. “I’ll tell her father,” the other replied, and disappeared from Donna’s vision.

  “You’d slipped back into your coma,” the first nurse told her. “We thought we’d lost you.”

  Donna stared up at her without speaking. Although she’d sometimes shared Dawn’s body, she’d never been totally in charge of a real human body before. Her dreamworld human body in Eden had been easy to control, but this Angela body seemed very alien. She could feel its various parts, but she wasn’t sure how to move them. She wasn’t even sure if she could speak. And the sheets encasing her body felt unyielding and claustrophobic, not at all like the freedom of the sea.

  Dawn had tried to prepare her for experiences like this, as she had prepared her for so much else. “Don’t think too hard,” she’d told her. “Let the automatic responses of your new body handle everything. If you want to walk across the room, for example, just picture what you want to do in your mind and let the brain that you inhabit do the rest.”

  The best thing, Donna decided, was to pretend she was in Eden, in her dreamworld body. She closed her eyes and imagined that she was the high priest, and that these nurses were her congregation. Dawn had told her that there were crowds of people in here earlier, and she wondered if any of them were still around, and if they fancied some more hymn singing. She was good at leading hymn singing.

  “Angela! Are you OK?” The nurse had started shaking her again.

  She opened her eyes. “Of course I’m OK,” she exclaimed without thinking, and then realised that she really could speak.

  Encouraged by this small success she experimentally wiggled her toes and her fingers, and then twisted her head sideways to the left and then the right. Apart from the nurse and some complicated-looking equipment and a few chairs, she was alone in the room. And yet Dawn had spoken of quite a crowd of people.

  “Where’s everyone gone? Are they waiting outside? Tell them it’s time for some more hymns.”

  The nurse stared down at her, her face a picture of bemusement. Hymn singing seemed not to be on her agenda. There was the sound of a door opening, and the nurse glanced up. “Here’s your father,” she murmured.

  A man’s face appeared above her. Although his hair had started to turn grey at the edges, Donna thought he was quite good looking. He looked like he had been crying.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said cheerily. Now that she was getting the hang of this human body of hers, she was going to make the most of it. No point pretending to be weak and sickly when she could be up and about and doing all kinds of exciting things.

  He broke into a smile. “Angela! My darling! Are you all right?”

  “Sure I am. When are we going home, Dad? There’s so much I want to catch up on. It’s been really, really boring stuck in space for so long. I want to do lots of exciting things. Like going to church.”

  The delight in his eyes became a little glassy. “But darling, you always hated church.”

  “Did I? Well, I fancy it now. And I want to go to the beach and swim in the sea. The exercise will do me good.”

  All the dolphins had spent some time in their mentors’ minds, absorbing their knowledge, but in Donna’s case this had gone to extremes. She had spent probably hundreds of hours in Dawn’s mind, absorbing not just her knowledge but her life experiences, and some of her personality had rubbed off on her. Not only that, she also shared Dawn’s dragon genes. It was inevitable, therefore, that as she grew older, she became more and more like Dawn, especially when she reached puberty. She was just as assertive and just as self-confident, and, although she would vigorously deny it, just as bossy. In fact, she was worse. To all intents and purposes she had been fashioned in Dawn’s image.

  Mort Lane was staring down at her in total bewilderment. “I can’t believe you want to swim in the sea, Angela. You always hated the water. You were never keen on any kind of exercise.”

  “Really? How extraordinary. I guess I’ve been through a life-changing experience, stuck in that coma for so long. There are lots of other things I want to do as well, of course. I especially want to meet some nice men – and don’t tell me I was never keen on men!”

  “You’ll have plenty of time for that later, my darling. First the nurses here have to make you fit and well again. They’ll be making sure you get the right exercise, and they’ll be weaning you onto proper food.”

  “Well, tell them to make sure it’s fish, that’s all. Proper fish.” She gave the nurse a hard stare. “I’ve heard stories about hospital food.”

  Her father gave an exasperated laugh. “But you don’t like fish, Angela. You’ve always hated it!”

  “That was years ago, Dad. My tastes have changed. I want fish. Fresh fish, not those fake fish fingers.”

  He glanced awkwardly at the nurse. “Don’t worry, Mr Lane,” she murmured sympathetically. “People come out with all kinds of strange things when they’ve been unconscious for a long time. Angela doesn’t know what
she’s saying.”

  Donna glared at her. “I know perfectly well what I’m saying. I want to go to church, I want to go swimming, I want to meet some nice men, and I want fish. In reverse order. Fish first.”

  “I guess you’d better humour her,” Mort Lane murmured apologetically. “Fish will be good for her. Better than all that junk food she used to like. Get in special meals, if necessary. I’ll pay for them, of course.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I really appreciate it. Can I kiss you?”

  “Of course, my darling.” Mort leant over and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

  “Dad! You’ll have to do better than that! I’ll give you some lessons. We’ll have you married off in no time.”

  Another face appeared above her. A young man’s face, Donna noted with pleasure. “This is Mr Jenkins,” the nurse said. “He’ll be organizing your physio – I mean your exercises.”

  “I know what physio means,” Donna replied caustically. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Right, Angela,” Mr Jenkins said brightly. “We’ll soon have you up and about. We’ll take things steadily at first, some gentle exercises in the pool, that kind of thing. Are you OK with water?”

  “Can’t get enough of the stuff. When do we start?”

  “Straight away, if you like. The nurses will help you into this wheelchair, and we’ll take you down to it.”

  “Great. What’s your first name, Mr Jenkins?”

  “George.”

  “Wow, that’s a really hunky name! It was Saint George who slayed the dragon and rescued the damsel in distress. Have you rescued many damsels in distress, George? I bet you’re really good at it!”

  Seventeen

  Donna met up with Jonah again after the temple service the next morning. She was expecting Dawn to visit her in Eden for a debriefing, so instead of walking by the river she took him back to her room.

  Donna often invited friends back to her little home. It was a convenient venue, being so close to the temple, and it was spacious enough to seat up to a dozen people in reasonable comfort. She always served fish tea, and sometimes she entertained her visitors by reading from her collection of books. Mostly these were fairy tales, culled from the brain of a dolphin whose mentor was an authority on such things and conjured up by the Mind as part of the temple library.

  Donna had always enjoyed fairy tales – Dawn had sometimes read them to her when she was little – and she had appropriated these books as soon as she had discovered them in one of the temple storerooms. That had been several years ago, shortly after Eden had been founded. Dawn, who had secretly prompted the mind to produce the books as a gift to her young protégé, had pretended not to notice the large bookcase that had appeared one day in the corner of her room.

  Jonah sat on the settee while Donna brewed up the tea and recounted her adventures at the hospital. She didn’t tell him anything, of course, about becoming a dragon, or about that encounter with the invader in Angela’s mind.

  “The physio – George – is really nice. He was ever so pleased with me. I made Angela’s body do all kinds of things in the water, which he thought was brilliant for someone in such poor shape. Not that I did anything much, of course. He told me I’d be walking and running about in no time at all. Anyway, I left her body about 9 o’clock last night, safely tucked up in bed. That was when my dolphin body woke up from the trance drug that Rick gave me. Then I had another dose of the drug first thing this morning and Dawn took me to her again.”

  “For another session with this George, I suppose.”

  “That’s right.” Donna replied, carefully carrying the teapot and cups on a small tray and placing it on the small table beside the settee.

  “Are you jealous?” she asked hopefully as she sat down beside him.

  “Of a human? Of course not.”

  “Well, you should be.” She tossed her head in the way that Dawn might have done in this situation. “I told you I was more human than dolphin.”

  “So how long is this Angela nonsense going on for?”

  “Until Dawn rescues her spirit. She told me she hadn’t found her on those space telescopes, so it’ll be a few days. Actually, I hope it goes on for longer than that. It’s fun.”

  “Fun? Being cooped up in a hospital bed?”

  “It’s great. I really throw my weight around, I can tell you. I boss all those nurses, and the doctors as well, insisting on this and that, and I make a big fuss if anything’s not right. They’ll be glad to see the back of Angela Lane, I can tell you.”

  He gazed at her admiringly. “You boss humans around?”

  “You bet I do. The miraculous recovery of Angela Lane is in all the papers, so I’m quite a celebrity. It means they can’t do enough for me. Anyway, what’s your news? Did you miss me last night?”

  “Several females wanted to know where you were. A couple of them hung around for quite a while.”

  “Now you’re trying to make me jealous.”

  “You know how I feel about you, Donna. I want more than a platonic friendship. If we can’t have a proper relationship, then I’m going to find another female. It’s not what I want, but it’s what’ll happen in the end.”

  Donna looked at him sadly. He was right, of course. It was bound to come to that. She turned and poured out the tea, then handed him a cup.

  “Will you wait awhile, until this Angela business is over? I’ll resolve it one way or the other, I promise. Perhaps I’ll ask Dawn if I can have therapy. It might be possible to reorient me sexually so I want to mate as a dolphin.”

  His face lit up. “Would you really do that for me, Donna? That would be wonderful! It almost makes me want to hug you.”

  “You won’t get up to anything with those other females who were hanging around, will you?”

  He laughed. “Of course I won’t. It’s you I want. Actually, they didn’t hang around for long, I chased them off.”

  She smiled at him, and they sat silently together, sipping their tea and thinking their private thoughts.

  She touched his hand. “Did you mean it when you said you almost wanted to hug me?”

  “Well, if you’re prepared to undergo therapy, then the least I can do is to try to hug you. But no, I can’t truthfully say I want to.”

  “Perhaps if you close your eyes and imagine I’m a big wet dolphin it might not be so bad.”

  He shook his head. “It won’t work. You don’t smell fishy. You don’t even smell salty. Even worse is your skin – it’s not all wet and rubbery, like it should be. Human skin’s like dried-up medieval parchment, it’s a real passion killer.”

  “Oh. Why not try hugging me anyway?”

  “Well, OK, I’ll do my best,” he said gamely, putting his cup down. He closed his eyes, and she slid into his arms. Then she squeezed herself up against him, and started stroking his hair. She knew exactly what to do, having studied Dawn’s techniques.

  “It’s not too horrible, is it, my darling?” she whispered in exactly the tone of voice that Dawn might have used.

  “No, I guess not,” he admitted reluctantly. “But please don’t stroke my skin. And try not to drag things out too much.”

  “What about one of those kisses I told you about?”

  “No, really. I couldn’t face that.”

  “Sure?”

  “Positive.”

  She gently released him. “You did very well, for a first attempt. Perhaps if we tried it every day, you might get used to it.”

  “Perhaps.” He sounded a little green about the gills.

  There was a knock on the door and Dawn walked in. She looked flustered, as though she had rushed to get here.

  Jonah stood up politely. Considerable resources had been devoted to the education and training of the GM dolphins, and they were quite at home with the basic rules of etiquette in traditional western culture.

  “Hello Jonah,” Dawn said. “I’m afraid I need to talk privately to Donna.”

  “That’s OK,” Jonah repli
ed, turning towards the door. “I was going anyway.”

  Dawn sat down where he had been sitting, next to Donna. “I wasn’t interrupting anything, was I?” she murmured as Jonah quietly closed the door behind him.

  “No, nothing at all. Unfortunately.” Donna briefly explained her predicament. “I don’t know what to do,” she said miserably. “I’m the problem, of course. I’m wondering if it’s possible to re-orient me sexually.”

  Dawn looked at her doubtfully. “Why not re-orient Jonah? That would be much easier.”

  Donna stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Make him want to have human love. We’ll have him sit in on Rick’s experience of love, like you sat in on mine. You can come into me at the same time, so it’ll sort of be the two of you doing it. A few sessions of that and he’ll lose all interest in your dolphin quickies.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Won’t Rick object? You told me you liked to do it in private.”

  “I’ll tell him he’s got to. We’ll make the first session next Wednesday evening. I won’t tell Rick till then – he’s always much more amenable on Wednesday evenings, especially if I get in a good wine.”

  “But what about Jonah? He’ll need some persuading.”

  “Tell him that if he’s prepared to do that, then you’ll let him mate with you in your dolphin bodies. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. It’s just that I would really hate it. It would be bound to show, and that would spoil it for him.”

  Dawn shrugged. “Close your eyes and think of England.”

  “How would thinking about England help? It sounds a really boring place.”

  Dawn sighed. “It’s an expression. I’ll explain what it means later – we’ve more important matters to discuss now. We haven’t got long, there’s only ten minutes before the dolphin trance ends and this place disappears. How are you getting on in that hospital?”

  Donna visibly brightened. “I’m starting to get the place organized. You would be proud of me, Dawn.”

  Dawn couldn’t help being amused as Donna recounted her story, and she started to relax. “It sounds like you’re making medical history. Don’t get too carried away, though. You’ve only got Angela’s body for a day or two.”

  “More’s the pity. What’s your news? You’re not overflowing with joy, so I take it you still haven’t located Angela’s spirit.”

  Dawn nodded grimly. Her spirit journeys to the larger Earth-based telescopes had been as futile as those to the space telescopes. Not that her trips to the latter had been entirely without benefit, for she had learned a little more about her dragon nature. She had established conclusively that her dragon body could live in the vacuum of space, and she had deduced from this that her dragon blood must be transporting oxygen from her physical body. This in turn had led her to realise that this magical blood, flowing through the jet engine of her Beetle and delivering energy to it, replenished the oxygen in the vehicle’s cabin.

  “I haven’t offered you any fish tea,” Donna said apologetically, lifting the lid of the teapot and checking the contents. “You will have some, won’t you?”

  Dawn suppressed a shudder. “There isn’t time, dear. I wanted to discuss that ex-COBRA leader we encountered in Angela’s brain. You remember what you said about him?”

  “That I wanted to kill him, because he now knows about you, that you’re a dragon and everything.” There was a glint in Donna’s eye as she reached to pick up her cup of tea.

  “I’ve been thinking we should bide our time and try to find out what’s going on. Perhaps those Watchers really are on to something, maybe they really have been receiving messages from the stars. After all, that’s where our forebears came from.”

  Donna almost dropped her cup. “You think dragons might be coming here?”

  “I can’t tell you how much I long for that, Donna! I’ve wanted to meet my own kind ever since I became aware of my dragon nature. You’ve had me to bring you up, Donna, but I had no one. Sometimes I’ve felt so lonely, like I was an orphan.”

  “Lonely? But you’ve had Rick.”

  “I know, and I love him to bits, but I can only share the human part of my life with him. He can never know the real me. The dragon me.”

  “You can share your dragonness with me, Dawn. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You’re just another me, you know nothing of our heritage. Dragons must have an incredible history and culture, and you and I are totally cut off from it. I want to be part of it, I want to discover my destiny. We’re the rulers of the universe, I can feel it in my blood, and yet we’re stuck on this tiny planet at the edge of nowhere. I know I’m fulfilling part of my destiny by helping you dolphins, but I can’t see the bigger picture. There must be thousands of intelligent species out there, probably millions, and I imagine dragons are involved with most of them. But why? What’s our history? Where have we come from? I’ve got so many questions.”

  Donna shrugged. “That’s because of your human curiosity. I’m interested in those questions, of course, but they don’t bother me so much. Perhaps they’ll never be answered. It’s pretty unlikely that those messages from space actually come from dragons. For all we know they come from demons, and thousands of them are on their way here.”

  “That’s even more reason for us to bide our time and find out more. So we can be prepared.”

  “I still think you’re taking a huge risk. What if that COBRA leader wants to get rid of you…”

  “I’ve told Dr Song what’s happening, and I’ve asked her to get the Australian secret service on the job. I hope they’ll find out something about him. And I’ve arranged for Rick to take Baby – my spirit detector – to Angela’s ward, so we’ll know if any spirits come prowling. That COBRA leader is bound to return, ‘cos he’ll want an update on Angela’s telescope sightings.”

  Donna nodded approvingly. Dawn seemed to have done all the right things.

  The temple bell tolled, signalling that the dolphin’s dream world was about to end. Dawn took Donna’s hand, and spoke in the businesslike manner she adopted when she was in a hurry and in the middle of something important.

  “Baby’s linked by satellite communications to a receiver that I’ll be carrying, so if he does appear I’ll know immediately. I’ll go into a trance, and I can be at the ward in less than five minutes. Hopefully I’ll surprise him again, and this time I’ll follow him back to his body and discover his identity.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Donna replied, trying to sound businesslike as well, though in truth what interested her more than anything was the prospect of returning to Angela’s body. “When will Rick reach the ward? I need to make sure they’ll admit him, in case it’s outside visiting hours.”

  “He’s flying there now, and he should get there about five o’clock this evening, local time. He’ll go straight there from the airport. He’ll show you how Baby works. You’ll need to set her up on your bedside table, so she can monitor Angela in bed, and make sure none of those nurses tamper with her. A red light will flash if there’s a spirit around – but don’t say anything about that to anybody. If someone asks, tell them that Baby is a special kind of video camera and you’re using her to keep a record of your experiences.”

  Donna nodded. “Anything else? You’re going to carry on searching for Angela’s spirit, obviously.”

  “The Watchers have hidden her well, I’m sorry to say. She’s in none of the obvious places. I reckon they’re counting on me not finding her.”

  “But if you don’t find her, they know you’ll abandon Angela’s body, and then she’ll be back in her coma and the hospital will switch off her life-support.”

  “No they won’t. Angela’s father will hope she’ll revive again, so he’ll make sure she’s kept alive, even if it’s only for a year or two. And that’ll be ample time for the Watchers, as they believe the visitors from outer space are already on their way and will soon be here.
I’ve bought them that time, and now all they want is for me to abandon Angela.”

  Donna stared at her thoughtfully. “You could be right. All those bastards ever wanted was to raise Mort’s hopes so that he would be conned into keeping Angela alive. The poor man. I feel really sorry for him.”

  “Karen’s the bastard. All through this saga she’s been leading him on, pretending to be his friend and pretending to care about Angela. I wish you’d given her a good soaking when you had the chance. I don’t suppose she’ll ever visit us again.”

  “I’ll do more than soak her if she does,” Donna muttered grimly. “I really like Mort. He’s sweet. He’ll be devastated if Angela’s taken from him again.”

  “Let’s just hope I do manage to find her.”

  The room shuddered slightly, and a couple of ornaments disappeared.

  “The trance is ending,” Dawn observed, then added hurriedly: “Do we need to discuss anything else before you disappear? I’ve organised for Rick to give you some food, same as yesterday, and the trance drug. I’ll meet you in neurospace, at the isolation pens, in about half an hour and take you to the hospital.”

  A smile lit up Donna’s face. “It was great, travelling in your jet car. I want to be able to fly like that. Will you show me how to make my own jet car? Then I’ll be able to take myself to Adelaide.”

  “But you can’t drive. You’ll have to learn how to steer and change gear and use the pedals and everything.”

  “It’s easy, I watched how you did it. Anyone can drive a car. Anyway, that satnav of yours did almost everything. And I don’t want a Beetle, I want an Aston Martin, like in those old James Bond movies, with guns and secret weapons and automatic gear change and stuff like that.”

  Dawn sighed. That was typical of Donna. She always wanted the best. Whereas everyone else in Eden was content with the sober garments of Elizabethan England, she insisted on wearing high-heeled shoes and glamorous dresses.

  But she could never deny Donna anything, and as had happened so often before she found herself giving in to her. “Very well. What if I come to the hospital this evening, about 7.30? Tell the nurses you want an early night. Rick should have installed Baby by then, and she’ll start flashing a red light when I appear. Then you can leave Angela and I’ll give you some driving lessons.”

  “Thanks, Dawn! Wow! I can’t wait to get started.”

  But then the walls of her room started to flicker, and her furniture started to disappear, and shortly after that Donna found herself back in her dolphin body on the other side of the world. Flipping her tail, she headed towards the isolation pens where Rick would be waiting. Since Angela had come into her life, she had spent more time in neurospace than in her real dolphin body.

  Mort Lane visited the hospital that afternoon, just after Donna had returned to Angela’s body. He’d spoken to her on the phone earlier in the morning, to check that she was well, but he had been unable to visit then because of a business appointment. He’d told her he ran a company that was in the business of security – alarm systems, surveillance, that kind of thing. She’d said it didn’t matter if he couldn’t make it because she had a full programme of physio and medical tests to undergo, and she’d warned him about her midday nap and told him to come after three o’clock.

  One of the nurses had told her she was to be moved from her private room into the main ward. She had kicked up a great fuss about that, telling them in no uncertain terms that she needed to be alone with her father when he visited as those times were bound to be very emotional and they had so many private matters to discuss. Her real reason was that other patients would find Angela’s periods of total unconsciousness very strange and might comment on them to the nurses. As well as that, they were bound to be curious about the spirit detector and might even tamper with it when she was unconscious. Donna could be very assertive, and in the end the staff had given in to her demands.

  When Mort arrived she was sitting in her bedside chair by the window reading a paper that one of the nurses had given her. It had a piece on the front page about her, though it didn’t say much as reporters were being kept away from the ward and Mort had refused to speak to them.

  He was looking haggard and baggy-eyed, the way humans do when they haven’t slept too well. She guessed he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what had happened.

  “Are you OK, Dad?” she asked, concerned.

  He pulled up a chair with a disconsolate shrug. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Worried? I’m fine, in fact they reckon I’ll be home in a few days. Everyone thinks I’m doing brilliantly.”

  “I’m sure they do.” He sat down with a weary sigh. Yesterday’s elation seemed a distant memory.

  “How’s Woofer?” she asked, trying to cheer things up. “I’m really looking forward to seeing him again. Is he still alive?” The newspaper report had given some background about Angela’s childhood, including the fact that she’d had a puppy called Woofer. Donna very much fancied playing with a dog.

  “He got run over about six months before you went into your coma. You were heartbroken.”

  “Oh. I’d forgotten. A lot of my memories are a bit patchy, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s not the only thing that’s wrong with you, my darling.” He gazed at her sadly. “You’re not the same person any more. You’re not my Angela.”

  “I’m four years older, Dad! And I’ve had a life-changing experience. What do you expect?”

  “You look like Angela, and you’ve got Angela’s voice, but you’re different inside. Angela would have reacted quite differently to being in hospital, and she would certainly never have said the kind of things you’re coming out with. You’re much more mature, as if your mind has been somewhere else while you were in a coma, learning things and changing. Completely changing.”

  Donna stared at him silently. It was inevitable that he would find his daughter’s new personality surprising, but she hadn’t anticipated quite such a strong reaction.

  “Karen Holmes came to see me yesterday evening,” he continued. “Do you remember Karen?”

  “She was a few years older than me. Brown hair.”

  “That’s right. I see her now and then. She came to ask how you were doing. I shared my feelings about you, and she said she believed you’d been taken by aliens to a distant star, and that you’d been returned to prepare the way for alien visitors. She said not to worry if you sank back into a coma, like you did yesterday afternoon, because you were just going back temporarily to your alien host. I’m really privileged, she told me, because you’re going to be very important in the new world order.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Dad! You don’t believe all that rot, do you?”

  “She always had crazy ideas about flying saucers and visitors from the stars. She belongs to the Watchers. You won’t have heard of them, of course, but they’re into flying saucers and little green men from Mars. I don’t want to believe her, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  Donna gazed at him thoughtfully. Karen knew perfectly well that it was Dawn who had revived Angela’s body, and she believed that Dawn was possessing her now. She’d told Angela’s father this ridiculous story to make him believe that it really was his daughter that was inhabiting Angela’s body, and to make sure that he kept her body alive when Dawn was forced eventually to abandon it.

  It would be the easiest thing in the world to go along with Karen’s story, but that would be doing Mort Lane no favours at all. What if Dawn managed to rescue Angela and returned her to her body? The story would then be manifestly false. And what if Dawn failed to find Angela and returned this body to its coma? Mort would have endless more years of futile hope, never being able to lay his daughter to rest. No, she would have to tell him the truth.

  “I’m not your Angela, Mr Lane,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice, “you’re right about that. But forget what Karen told you. It’s nonsense.”

  Mort stood up abruptly and stood
by the window, gazing out with unseeing eyes. He looked close to tears. “If you’re not my Angela, then who in heavens name are you?”

  “Do you believe in guardian angels, Mr Lane?”

  “Guardian angels?” He turned and stared at her. “Is that what you are?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. You can think of me as Angela’s guardian angel.”

  “You’re not one Karen’s extra-terrestrials?”

  “I certainly am not. I come from Earth, but I have powers that come from the stars. I know that sounds like a riddle, but it’s true.”

  He continued staring at her, as if in a dream, then he seemed to pull himself together and sat down heavily in the chair.

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he muttered. “If you’re Angela’s guardian angel, why have you taken over her body?”

  “Because you and the hospital were going to let her die. Her spirit’s still alive, and I think I can rescue her. Then you’ll have your daughter – your real daughter – back. It should only take a few days.”

  “You think you can rescue her? What if you can’t?”

  “I’ll leave this body, and it will return to its coma. Then you should let Angela die, Mr Lane. Don’t believe what Karen Holmes tells you. Those Watchers have somehow imprisoned Angela’s spirit on a telescope, to monitor the heavens for the aliens that they believe are coming. That’s why they want her body kept alive. If it dies, then her spirit will go too.”

  “You sound just as crazy as Karen, but I guess you’re making a kind of sense. And at least you’re giving me something definite to go on – either Angela’s spirit is restored, or her body reverts to its coma.”

  His earlier sadness had disappeared, and he seemed genuinely intrigued by what she was telling him. “What are your chances of rescuing Angela?” he asked.

  “Nine to one in favour, I’d say, Mr Lane,” she told him rashly. “Rescuing lost souls is what we guardian angels do best. So I suggest you stop worrying and leave everything to me.”

  He gazed at her with a bemused expression. “You’re a pretty weird guardian angel, you know,” he said after a while. “You don’t talk right.”

  “What d’you mean, I don’t talk right? How am I supposed to talk?”

  “Well, in a religious kind of way. Like they talk in the Bible.”

  “This is the 21st century, Mr Lane. Nobody talks like that anymore. Not even guardian angels.”

  “Yes, but… You just don’t sound like a visitor from heaven. Can’t you work a miracle or something to convince me?”

  “I raised your daughter’s body from the dead, dammit! What more do you want?”

  He couldn’t help smiling at that. “I don’t know. You must be able to give me some kind of proof that you’re her guardian angel.”

  It seemed a reasonable enough request, though she really didn’t know how she could actually prove something like that. Especially as she wasn’t really a guardian angel at all but a disembodied dolphin.

  “I can’t exactly prove it,” she told him eventually, “but I can provide some mind-boggling evidence. I could come into your mind and possess you, though you might find that a bit scary. Or you could use a spirit detector to see me, which you would find entertaining. I’ll flap my wings and fly all round the ward and do cartwheels in the air, that kind of thing. I could even make myself look like a dragon and breath out fire. How does that sound? I’ll start off by possessing you, if you like. Lean back in your chair and close your eyes and relax…”

  “I’ll stick with the spirit detector, if you don’t mind,” he said hastily. “Not that I’ve ever heard of spirit detectors.”

  “They detect spirits. But don’t tell anyone, especially not Karen Holmes.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t want people thinking I’m mad.” He glanced around the room. “I don’t see any spirit detectors. I suppose they’re invisible, like the spirits they detect.”

  “Don’t be daft. One will appear at five o’clock. It’s arriving by special delivery.”

  “On the wings of an angel, I suppose.”

  “By airplane. Someone called Rick is bringing it. He’s on a flight to Adelaide. He’s human, in case you were wondering.”

  “That’s a relief. I should be interested to meet him. Is he crazy too?”

  “That was uncalled for, Mr Lane. He’s actually very nice. If I was human and if he wasn’t married already, I wouldn’t mind marrying him. It’s another hour and half before he gets here, so how about giving me some exercise? You can take me outside in the wheelchair, and then you can lift me out of it and we can have a short walk. You’ll have to support me, of course.”

  “You’re really bossy, you know, ordering me about like that. That’s one thing that you and Angela do have in common.”

  She laughed. “You’ve got spirit, Mr Lane, I’ll give you that. For a human, that is.”

  Eighteen

  Dawn didn’t visit Eden again until Saturday morning, two days later. By then Donna was able to report progress on all fronts. Jonah was now able to hug her without flinching, provided they were wearing plenty of clothes and their skin never actually touched. Angela’s body was responding well to the physio, and the hospital hoped that she would be able to go home on Monday. And she and Mort Lane were getting on like a house on fire. They had even started playing board games together, which for some reason greatly amused the nurses.

  Much to Donna’s approval, it turned out that Mort was a regular churchgoer, and so it hadn’t taken much to convince him that she really was Angela’s guardian angel. Baby had performed faultlessly, and on her screen he had watched Donna in the form of a tiny human figure emerge from Angela’s head and float around the room and through the walls and the ceiling and the furniture, while her physical body remained slumped unconscious in the chair. She hadn’t turned herself into a fire-breathing dragon, though, as that might be a step too far.

  He had even cancelled a couple of business appointments to spend more time with her. Donna had told him not to be so silly, because she wasn’t really his daughter, but he’d insisted, saying that according to the Bible it was important to entertain angels. She suspected that the truth of the matter was that he rather enjoyed her company, and she couldn’t help wondering if his real daughter, if she was found, might not prove to be a disappointment.

  Dawn, however, had made no progress at all in her search for Angela’s spirit. “I’ve searched all the major telescopes,” she told Donna despondently as they sat together in her room around a pot of tea. “I’m running out of options.”

  “Perhaps they’ve hidden her on a secret military telescope?”

  “Perhaps. Wherever she is, I don’t think I’ll ever find her. I’ll have to abandon the search, and that means abandoning Angela’s body.”

  “We can’t do that to her father, we really can’t. That COBRA leader knows where Angela is, he put her there. Surely we can prise the information out of him. What about invading his mind?”

  “If we can discover who he is. Fortunately we’ve got Baby monitoring Angela’s body, so if he enters her I’ll know, and I might get there in time to track him back to his body. Then we’ll have him. We’ll wait a few more days, and hope he makes his move. He’ll want to return to Angela soon, to check if any alien spaceships have appeared.”

  The two women sat silently for a while, pondering the matter and listening to the noises from the temple forecourt outside. Seating was being arranged for the next episode of Dawn’s Passion play.

  “You haven’t forgotten tomorrow, have you?” Donna asked. “Everyone’s getting very excited, they can’t wait to find out what happens next.”

  “I hope they won’t be disappointed. I’ve not developed the plot much, I’ve been so taken up with trying to find Angela. I guess I’ll have more time now that I’ve given up on her.”

  “I guess you will,” Donna agreed sadly. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said, brightening. “A scientist wor
king for SETI has contacted Mort. He wants to see me – I mean Angela. On Monday evening.”

  “Why does he want to see Angela?”

  “Because she’s been marooned in space for so long. He thinks she might have picked up evidence of ET, and he wants to quiz me about that.”

  “So are you going to see him?”

  “I thought I would. It sounds like fun. He might turn out to be young and handsome.”

  “But what are you going to say to him? About Angela’s time in space, I mean.”

  “Oh, I’ll think of something. The thing is, he might be able to tell us something that might help find Angela.”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think we’ll ever find her.”

  The two women sat disconsolately sipping their tea. The temple bell tolled, signalling that the Mind had sensed that Eden was about to end, and in an effort to revive Dawn’s spirits Donna said: “I expect Rick has returned home from Adelaide.”

  “He got back yesterday.”

  “Give him a red-hot kiss from me, then. He wouldn’t let me kiss him at the hospital, so I couldn’t try out my love-goddess skills. I thought he was most unsporting.”

  Dawn groaned. “The sooner we get you out of Angela’s body the better. I’ve told you not to mess around in it. You’re terrible!”

  Donna grinned. “I was trying to wind you up. You don’t seriously think I’d do that, do you?”

  “I certainly do! You can practise your love-goddess skills on Jonah, once we’ve got him re-oriented.”

  “It won’t be the same in neurospace, I know it won’t. The way Angela’s body reacted to Rick, and to some of those doctors… Wow!”

  “Forget it, Donna. You’re a dolphin, and nothing’s going to change that. You’ve got a few more hours of being Angela, and then that’s it. So forget all about making love in a real human body, OK?”

  “OK,” Donna replied dejectedly. “Let’s not bother trying to re-orient Jonah, it’ll be a waste of time.”

  The room started to shake, and the pot of tea vanished. “Your trance is ending,” Dawn observed, taking her hand. She was about to tell Donna not to get too upset about her love life, because things were sure to work out right in the end, but most of the furniture in the room had disappeared and then Donna herself flickered and vanished too. It was time to go.

  Dawn conjured up her red Beetle, and a few moments later, when Eden had fully disappeared, she said “Honiara, Guadalcanal” into the satnav. The engine roared into life, and then she was hurtling southeast over the ghostly mountain landscape.

  Early the next morning, shortly after Eden reappeared and while it was still dark, there was a great hubbub as people congregated in the temple precinct. Seating for about half the population had been set up the previous day around the perimeter of the forecourt, and Donna watched from her balcony as late-comers jostled for seats or stood at the back and everyone chatted excitedly as they waited for the next episode of Dawn’s awesome Passion play.

  This long-running saga, performed on the first Sunday of every month, was the result of an experiment that Dawn had conducted some years earlier. She had come to believe that her dragon fire somehow tapped into the creative force of the universe, which was why it gave rise to fertility and love on the one hand, and why it overwhelmed the destructive forces of evil on the other. Having witnessed its power in both her human body and her dragon body, it was inevitable that she should wonder what would happen if she called it up while she was controlling the dolphin communal mind.

  In the early days she had often had to take control of the Mind in order to make her vision of Eden a reality. At the very beginning, when the dolphins were young, she had joined them in their trance and called into being the great altar, which to begin with was in a cathedral but which eventually took on a more oriental appearance and became a temple. The vision was quickly extended to include the forecourt and the buildings round about, and after that the remainder of the township and then the countryside round about until, after a couple of months, the whole elaborate vision of Eden was firmly impressed upon the dolphins’ joint imagination. After that she was able to possess and control the Mind in the same way as she might possess any intelligent being, by alighting upon the great altar.

  And so, one day, when everyone had left the temple after the morning service, she had carried out her momentous fire-breathing experiment. Transforming herself into a dragon, as she always did when she took control of the Mind, she fluttered onto the altar and was absorbed by it, so that she and the Mind became one. It was an experience that never failed to excite her, for being one with Mind made her feel like a god. It seemed to her that she held the whole of Eden in her hand, for she was aware of every cobble in the temple forecourt and every brick in the temple wall and every tile on all the roofs of the houses round about and every blade of grass in the fields beyond as well as every thought of Eden’s inhabitants.

  On this occasion, however, she ignored this big picture and instead narrowed her attention down to an uninhabited patch of land at the edge of Eden. Now, very cautiously, she allowed her fire to erupt.

  Through invisible eyes she watched as flames burst out of thin air and danced over the ground, taking on strange shapes and colours, and suddenly they were no longer flames but a variety of bizarre creatures. Trolls and dwarves and witches and elves and flying horses and other fairy-tale creatures frolicked on the grass, seemingly as alive as anything else in Eden. It was a false life, of course, they were merely spirit puppets dreamed up by the collective imagination.

  She watched in wonder as the little creatures ran around over the grass, and then her wonder turned to dismay as their frolicking became more aggressive and they started shouting abuse. Suddenly they were attacking each other with a mindless ferocity, and in moments the air was filled with blood-curdling screams, bodies were being torn limb from limb, and there was blood everywhere. It was like a vision from hell.

  Aghast, Dawn cut her fire. The nightmare puppets immediately disappeared and peace returned. She stared in bewilderment at the empty ground. What was all that about? It must have come from the collective subconscious of her dolphins, she decided, and it was an expression of their aggressive instincts. Not just dolphin aggression, but human aggression too, for they had human brains. As for the fairy-tale creatures, the dolphins were probably more familiar with fairy tales than most humans, and the powerful imagery and messages of those stories had become firmly lodged in their subconscious minds. Those imaginings had never before been expressed in Eden, for they had been suppressed by the power of her own vision for the place, but now, by the creative force of her dragon fire, they had come to life.

  At first Dawn had been very troubled by this. She had thought that in Eden she had created a true heaven, but it was clear that beneath its idyllic surface lay something much darker. By breathing out her fire she had, in effect, allowed the mind to dream, and so express the collective subconscious. But as she mulled over this, she told herself that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, in fact it was probably quite healthy. Both humans and GM dolphins needed to dream, so why not the Mind?

  Then it occurred to her that if she were able to control this dreaming, she might be able to use its mindless ferocity for her own purposes. If she placed those living puppets in a fairy-tale setting, and imposed on them a fairy-tale plot, then she might be able to channel their aggression into a fight against evil. And so, after a few more fire-breathing experiments, Dawn’s amazing plays had been born. It was Donna who insisted on calling them Passion plays, because they usually had a hidden religious message. There was in fact a Bible study group which met after the temple service on the second Sunday of the month to discuss the hidden meaning behind the previous week’s episode.

  Now, on this particular passion-play Sunday, the temple forecourt was unusually crowded. The long-running saga had reached a climax and no one wanted to miss the next episode. Jonah, as usual, joined Donna on her balcony, and today Donna had also
invited Clara, her new assistant, to join her. Clara had never attended Dawn’s Passion plays before, and the view from the balcony was excellent. The sun had not yet risen above the mountains to the east, but to the west its rays had touched the snow-tipped peaks, turning them gold. An expectant hush descended upon the congregation. All faces were upturned as the people searched the brightening sky.

  Someone called out and pointed to the western peaks, and everyone looked in that direction. A speck of red was speeding across the sky. It passed over the highest peak and then dived down into the valley, disappearing behind the cluster of roofs of the township. There was a moment of silence as people waited with baited breath, the silence stretched to five or six seconds, then suddenly there was a mighty roar and a red dragon rose above the rooftops, its wings flapping noisily. The mighty creature circled the forecourt a couple of times, while the crowd clapped and cheered, and then it dived and swooped down to the entrance to the temple, disappearing into the darkness beyond.

  No one had been in the least bit frightened by this impressive spectacle, for they all knew that the dragon was Dawn, and they also knew that once inside the temple she would flutter onto the golden altar and be absorbed by it, so allowing her to possess the Mind. Everyone, that is, apart from Clara, and Donna had to explain to her what was happening.

  “Dawn always arrives like this on Passion-play Sundays,” she whispered. “Some people think it’s because she likes to show off, but that’s not the reason. She does it so that people won’t forget that she really is an exceptional human and there’s no one more able to protect our interests.”

  Clara nodded but said nothing. She always kept her thoughts to herself, and Donna wondered what was going through her mind. Although Clara was a most willing and efficient helper, and brilliant at her temple chores, there was definitely something odd about her. Dawn’s Passion plays had been running for almost three years now, to huge acclaim, and it seemed impossible that Clara had never managed to attend any of them.

  “Dawn’s enacting the story of Sleeping Beauty at the moment,” Donna continued. “I expect you remember seeing the movie years ago, at the lagoon.” Again Clara nodded.

  “We’ve reached the part where the wicked witch has managed to get the beautiful princess to prick her finger, so that she’s fallen asleep and everyone else in the castle has fallen asleep too. Years and years have passed, and now a great hedge of thorns has grown up around the castle and no one can reach it. Of course, Dawn changes quite a lot of the story, and the characters sometimes do unexpected things, ‘cos they’re alive in a weird kind of way, so no one knows exactly how it’s all going to work out in the end. That’s what makes her plays so exciting.”

  A beam of bright light, as if from a spotlight, suddenly shone out of nowhere, illuminating the central area of the forecourt, and there was a brief impression of dancing flames. The flames solidified into walls and turrets, more walls and gates and windows sprang out of nowhere, and suddenly there was a miniature fairy-tale castle, about 5 metres high by 15 metres across, surrounded by a dense thicket of thorns reaching to within a couple of metres of the innermost row of seats.

  “Dawn’s taken over the Mind,” Donna explained, “and she’s using it to create this castle. Can you see the people asleep in the grounds? They’re small, so they fit the castle perfectly.”

  “They only look about 20 centimetres tall,” Clara observed wonderingly. “When they’re awake, can they think, the same as us?”

  “I suppose so. They’ve certainly got minds of their own. Dawn has quite a job controlling them sometimes.”

  Dawn, at one with the Mind, was dimly aware of this conversation, as she was of everything else in Eden. She ignored it, however, for she was now the fire-breathing puppet master and her attention was focussed on the castle that the Mind had called up together with the sleeping princess and all the sleeping servants. They were doomed to sleep for all eternity unless a saviour came to wake them.

  She called up an image of a handsome prince, riding on horseback. As the image solidified in the collective imagination, she allowed more fire to erupt from the depths of her being. At once a flame flickered at the edge of the forecourt, near the temple entrance, rapidly taking on the form of a miniature white horse, dressed in full regalia. She let out more fire, and now the horse had a rider, a prince in shining armour with a long sword dangling from his waist.

  The horse knew what was expected of it, and it cantered around the outside of the thicket, looking for a way in. When it had circled the entire perimeter, the prince dismounted and examined the thicket closely, testing its sharp thorns with his finger. Then he took his sword and started swinging it backwards and forwards, hacking at the dense branches with huge blows. It was an arduous task, and as he slowly made inroads into the bush the thorns reached out to him in what seemed like a malicious manner, finding gaps in his armour and drawing blood, so that eventually he was forced to retreat.

  Dawn was resigned to this kind of thing happening in her Passion plays. The dark underbelly of the mind had a nasty rebellious streak, and it always managed to show it in unexpected and sometimes quite vicious ways. Often one of her characters turned bad, but in this case it was the vegetation. Although she told herself that it was not a bad thing that the mind was able to work out its subconscious aggression within the controlled environment of her Passion plays, it always left her feeling distinctly uneasy.

  The prince stared at the impenetrable thicket in disgust, then he thrust his sword back into its scabbard, mounted his horse, and rode back the way he had come, towards the temple entrance. He might be gallant, but he wasn’t stupid. He would seek out some other damsel in distress.

  The audience started murmuring, then someone booed, and at once the whole crowd was booing. But the prince, ignoring their jeers, kicked the horse’s side with his heels and galloped into the temple. As he disappeared a hush descended on the forecourt, everyone wondering what would happen next. Dawn’s fairy stories always had an unexpected twist.

  No one saw what happened next, not even the prince, for it took place within the horse’s mind. Dawn focussed her attention on it and implanted in it a powerful desire to make the ultimate sacrifice. It would give up its brief moment of existence to save the princess and her people. It could never clear the thicket, for it was too wide, but it was not terribly high, so it could leap over most of it and throw the prince across the rest.

  Within the temple the horse abruptly turned to face the entrance and started pawing the ground impatiently. Dawn visited the prince’s mind and told him what was about to take place. She, the god of his tiny world, was taking charge of things, and he’d better hold on tight and be ready to jump at the last moment.

  Now she entered the horse’s mind again, determined not to leave anything to chance. Through his eyes, she eyed up the thicket in the forecourt beyond the temple entrance. It looked a long way away, but that was because the horse was so small. She snorted a couple of times, took a deep breath, and charged.

  As she emerged into the light a huge cheer went up from the crowd. She thundered over the cobbles, heading straight at the hedge of thorns. At the last moment she took a huge jump, putting all the creature’s effort into it, so that she cleared the top of the hedge easily and continued some way over it. The audience went wild with excitement, but she knew she could never clear it. As she started to fall towards it, she kicked her rear legs as hard as she could, sending the prince flying upwards and forwards while she fell sprawling onto the deadly vegetation.

  The horse’s body writhed in agony as a hundred vicious thorns gouged its flesh and blood spurted out. Real spirits didn’t have blood, of course, but this creature wasn’t real, though she could feel its agony and hear its screams. She was aware, too, of the horrified gasps of the audience. The agony and the squealing lasted several seconds and then, mercifully, died away, and the horse became still. The thorns had put an end to its sham life.

  Just beyon
d the thicket, in the castle grounds, the prince lay in a crumpled heap. If he wasn’t dead, then he must certainly have suffered several broken bones from that headlong fall. A shocked hush descended over the forecourt. The horse had died the most horrible death, and now the prince was incapacitated. Never before had one of Dawn’s fairy tales ended so calamitously.

  Dawn focussed her attention on the unconscious body. The puppet was certainly in a bad way, with a couple of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder and severe bruising. Only a miracle would save her Passion play now. She hated having to resort to miracles in her stories, for it always seemed like cheating, but at least the prince’s body was covered in armour so the audience wouldn’t see what she was up to. She breathed out more fire, so that for a brief instant it enveloped his body, and then the puppet was restored to its former self.

  The prince stirred and slowly sat up. Very gingerly, he rose to his feet, and then he walked a few steps. Amazingly, nothing seemed to be broken. He jumped up and down a couple of times, and then he waved to the audience. Someone clapped, and then everyone was clapping and cheering, for it seemed as if he had been raised from the dead.

  Now he ran over the grass to the tallest tower, leaping over the bodies of sleeping groundsmen. He ran through the entrance and bounded up several flights of stairs, to the room at the top where his princess was sleeping. All the windows were open, so the audience could follow his progress, and when he reached the princess’s bedroom everyone cheered again. He paused by the bedside and gazed down at her beautiful face, and then he leaned over her and gave her a tender kiss.

  Flames appeared out of nowhere and danced briefly over the princess’s body, and she began to stir. The flames leapt through the window and onto the sleeping body of a servant, then jumped to another and another, and soon the fire had touched all the bodies in the castle. Everyone stirred and yawned as they emerged from their deathlike sleep, and in a few minutes the place was alive with activity as the people went about their tasks as if nothing had happened. It was like a resurrection from the dead.

  Meanwhile, in the small bedroom at the top of the highest tower, the happy couple walked to the window hand in hand and waved to the audience, and everyone clapped. Then the dense thicket surrounding the castle grounds disappeared, and with it the dead horse, and finally the servants left off their tasks and faced the audience and bowed. The audience rose to its feet and gave them a standing ovation, and then the castle and its inhabitants vanished in a puff of smoke and the performance was over.

  Shortly afterwards, as the congregation dispersed and the hubbub died down, Dawn released the Mind from her control. There was a moment of disengagement, and then she found herself in her human form sitting on top of the altar inside the temple. She clambered off it and collapsed into one of the seats nearby. Her Passion plays always left her exhausted, for they required a continuous stream of fire to sustain them. And she always found it stressful when the rebellious underside of the Mind tried to scupper things, as it had today, though even she had to admit that it made her story much more memorable. Donna’s Bible study group would have a field day next Sunday, picking it to bits and reading into it all kinds of lessons and interpretations.

  After a few minutes the murmur of voices outside the temple faded into the distance, and she guessed it was now safe to venture outside. The last thing she wanted at the moment was people rushing up to greet her. A quiet chat with Donna was her only desire, and even perhaps some of her pungent fish tea.

  It was then that she became aware of someone shaking her physical body and calling her name. It must be Rick trying to rouse her from her trance, and he would only be doing that if something had cropped up requiring her urgent attention. Well, at least it saved her the bother of having to call up her red Beetle and fly half way across the world.

  Relaxed into the seat, she let her mind drift. In moments the temple and everything in it faded from her consciousness and she was lying on her bed at home, gazing up into her husband’s eyes.

  “Hello, my love,” she murmured groggily. “What’s up?”

  “That satellite receiver linking you to Baby – it’s been buzzing. Angela’s been visited by a spirit!”

  “What?” Dawn gaped up at him, wide awake now. “Is it still buzzing?” she asked, sitting up.

  “No, it stopped a few minutes ago.”

  “Damn! It’s bound to be that COBRA leader! He’s invaded Angela’s mind again, and I’ve missed him.”

  “I guessed that. I didn’t wake you earlier, ‘cos I knew you’d be in the middle of your Passion play. I waited until I knew you would have finished.”

  She nodded. “The dolphins are my priority, there’s no way I could cut that short. That invader sure picked the right moment.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “There’s nothing I can do now. Except to tell Donna. Baby will have recorded everything, so we should be able to get a good look at him.”

  “Donna will be back in Angela’s body later this afternoon,” Rick observed. “You can phone her at the hospital.”

  “No, I’d better speak to her at the lagoon, before she leaves. She needs to be on her guard when she enters Angela. I should go with her, but I’m too shattered.”

  Rick smiled. “She’ll enjoy flying there by herself, in that fancy James Bond car she’s dreamed up. She was full of it when I saw her at the hospital on Thursday night, telling me about its swish interior and swept-back wings and enormous rear engine throwing out fire and smoke. She was like an excited child with a new toy.”

  Dawn yawned, then slipped her legs over the side of the bed and pushed her feet into her slippers. “She’s only 13. I know we’ve speeded up the dolphins’ brain development, but they’ve got the hormones of adolescents.”

  She stood up and held out her hand to her husband. “I’m starving! I hope you’ve got the dinner on.”

  “I certainly have, your highness. And several of your favourite puddings as well.”

  “You’re an angel. How long was Baby’s radio link buzzing, by the way?”

  “I think it was about 20 minutes. Enough time for Angela’s spirit invader to check her latest memories of space, I suppose.”

  Dawn frowned and sat down again on the bed. “That COBRA leader timed his visit exactly right,” she muttered. “He must have turned up at Angela’s ward the moment I started my Passion play, and disappeared as soon as I finished. It’s almost as if he knew.”

  “What? How could he know?”

  “All the dolphins know when my Passion plays are to take place. Perhaps he’s got an informant.”

  “A dolphin spy, you mean?”

  “Perhaps. Though if there was a spy, the Mind would certainly be aware of it, and I had no sense of that.”

  “So…?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something very odd going on. The Mind’s always been a bit rebellious during my Passion plays, making things difficult for me, but recently it’s been getting worse. Things got quite gruesome today. I’ve always put it down to the collective subconscious of the dolphins, working out the natural adolescent rebellion and aggression of their human minds, but perhaps there’s more to it than that.”

  “You think something evil has infiltrated the Mind?”

  “If it has, then it’s keeping well below the surface. I would have felt it otherwise.”

  “Maybe it’s like the Eden of the Bible story,” Rick mused. “That was a perfect place, but the serpent lived in it, and he managed, very stealthily, to ruin it.”

  “Rick! That would be my worst nightmare! I’m going to have to get hold of Angela’s invader and squeeze every last drop of information out of him. I’ve got to know how he managed to time his visit so well!”

  Part 3: Angels