Diane laughed. “I wouldn’t be the first to turn it into a parlor trick,” she said.
“OK, spill. How did you do that?” said Bob. He crouched beside them then regretted it as a jab of pain speared his knee. “Shit,” he said, which suddenly felt weirdly inappropriate. Like swearing in church. “Sorry,” he said. “Like I said, tough day.”
Lo took his hand and looked at him. He started to say something then stopped. She reached forward with her other hand and held her palm over his knee. Almost immediately he felt a wave of heat, as if he had spilled hot soup on his pants. Lo didn’t look away from him. He looked back at her, a slight, pretty, Asian woman who appeared to be about thirty but seemed much older. The heat in his knee flared briefly then was gone. As was the pain. Completely. As if it had never been. He stood up again. Flexed his knee. Walked a few steps, then broke into a jog for the sheer hell of it. Pain-free for the first time in more than a decade. When he got back to the seated group of women, he was laughing. He sat down beside them.
“If you didn’t have my attention before, you know you do now,” he said. “What just happened? Why did you rescue us? And what’s your interest in Seb?”
29
Diane looked at Meera and Bob, hesitating. Her reluctance to speak was unfeigned. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“The Order is based on orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy,” she said.
“Whoah,” said Meera. “Small words. I’m from Brixton.”
“Orthodoxy means ‘right teaching’, orthopraxy means ‘right practice’. Our founder had already seen the way religious traditions inevitably became corrupted. Even if their followers had the best intentions, arguments would break out over interpretations…look at Christianity. Started to fracture around the time of Constantine, officially divided in the eleventh century, then the Roman church split again in the Reformation. Now there are around 40,000 denominations. And they all believe they are right, or—at the very least—closer to the truth than the rest. Our founder foresaw this inevitability and decided there would be no belief system, nothing written down. Well, almost nothing. You’ve already read our equivalent of the Bible.”
“We have?” said Bob.
“Three greek words,” said Lo, pointing to the center of the garden. “Not written in stone. Written in stones, though.” Mee thought this might be an attempt at a joke, but, as she wasn’t sure, she kept her mouth shut.
“Learn, teach, wait,” said Diane, “in that order. When we join the Order, we learn. Not by reading a book or listening to sermons, but by meditating. And meditation is just a grand word for ‘paying attention’ or ‘being awake’. That’s all it is. But practice is a lifetime’s work and it’s never finished. There’s no goal, just what’s in front of you here, now.”
Lo leaned forward. Bob noticed that no one seemed to interrupt or speak over anyone else. Considering they were silent the majority of the time, when they did speak, it was with a surprising accomplished rhythm.
“Teaching is the easy part,” said Lo. “We just pass on the practice of meditation and as newer members start to develop a more unitive consciousness, we teach them how to use Manna.”
“Which is what, exactly?” said Bob.
“The world is full of places of power” said Lo. “Have you heard of ley lines? Thin places?”
“Nope,” said Mee. “Well ley lines, yes. New-agey bullshit. I should warn you, I’m a cynic. The apple thing was cool, and Bob seems as happy as a dog with two dicks—,”
Bob started to say something, but Mee held up her hand to stop him.
“I’m sure your knee feels better,” she said, “but it’s probably psychosomatic, sorry.” She turned toward Diane and Lo. “Look,” she said, “I’m just saying if you start on that tarot cards, reiki and cosmic ordering horseshit, I’m outta here. JESUS!”
Bob jumped as Mee sprang to her feet and backed away a few steps, staring open-mouthed at Lo. Bob looked too and felt his mouth go dry. Lo had gone. In her place was—seemingly—Meera’s twin sister. But whereas a twin is always subtly different, this verso of Mee was a perfect replica, down to the hint of mockery always perceptible in those deep brown eyes.
“Sit down,” said Lo and as Bob and Mee both stared, her features melted back to become her own again. Mee swallowed hard and sat down heavily.
“I’m sorry to have to scare you like that,” said Lo, “but we need you to listen and believe us. It’s not horseshit, Meera.”
Meera nodded, dumbly. “Yeah yeah,” she said. “Ok. I kinda got that.”
Once Meera was breathing normally, Diane spoke again.
“ ‘Thin places’ is how the ancient Celts described places where God seemed closest,” she said. “And when I say the word God, feel free to substitute ‘reality’, ‘the ground of all being’, ‘great spirit’ or ‘emptiness’, whatever feels right. We don’t use the word ‘God’ because the amount of cultural baggage it caries makes it next to useless. Our experience of reality means we just don’t recognize the concept a theist believes in or an atheist dismisses. We prefer to acknowledge Mystery with silence.”
“Clever way to avoid arguments,” said Mee.
“Perhaps,” said Diane. “But most people have felt Mystery somewhere. Often in nature - forests or mountains, sometimes in very old buildings given over to prayer or meditation. In some European countries, druids built stone circles around the thinnest places and tried to soak up or use the power they felt buried there. Our founder told us to seek out these places, he taught us that Manna can be found there. There is a thin place only a few miles from here. We visit it regularly. All users of Manna have to. It’s as important as food, water, or sleep to us.”
She turned to Mee. “What Lo did to Bob’s leg wasn’t psychosomatic,” she said. “Could you show us, Bob?”
Bob rolled up his pant leg and stared down at his knee. No scarring, just smooth skin. No hint of the land mine damage that had given him pain and a limp since Iraq in the early nineties. He grinned. “If I hadn’t seen it myself…” he said.
Mee grunted. “It’s really healed?” she said. Bob just nodded, tears suddenly and unexpectedly in his eyes.
“It’s part of what we do,” said Diane. “We use Manna to heal. We also use it to feed the hungry. Every night we supply soup kitchens with hot, healthy food. The garden supplies most of the vegetables - a little help from Manna keeps it producing healthy crops all year round. Everything else we supply in the same way I produced the apple.”
Meera thought back. “So, the food you’ve served us here? The pancakes?”
“That’s right,” said Diane. “No eggs, no milk. Nothing but dirt and Manna.”
“Guess that explains the thing with the stoves,” said Bob. “I kept wondering why you didn’t have any.”
“Decent tasting dirt,” said Meera. “So, you can grow magic food and heal the sick. Why don’t you do something with that? Plenty of hungry, sick people in the world. Why are you sitting here on your arse when you could be doing some good?” She sat back on her heels and glared - a facial expression that had rattled people twice her size in the past. It didn’t seem to have any discernible effect on the two annoyingly calm women seated in front of her. She snorted in an attempt to disguise her surprise at their composure, then stood up and paced restlessly.
Lo stood up and spoke gently.
“That’s exactly what we do do, Meera,” she said. Every night, one of us makes the run around the soup kitchens and shelters in Las Vegas, delivering food to those who need it most.”
“We help the sick, too,” said Diane. “We visit hospitals, or sometimes just sit in Emergency Rooms for a shift. We do what we can, but we do it without drawing attention. We wouldn’t ordinarily do anything as obvious as removing microscopic particles of shrapnel from a knee, then growing new, healthy tissue to mend the damage. Questions would be asked. The media would love a story like that. Occasionally, we’ve been careless and a healing story gets out.”
“All those miraculous cancer remissions? Disappearing tumors?” said Bob.
“Yes,” said Lo, taking Meera’s hand and gently pulling her down to sit with them. “Luckily, the human brain is hard-wired to provide explanations when presented with insufficient data, so no one has ever come looking for us.”
“Carrot juice every morning?” said Mee.
“The power of prayer?” said Bob.
“Amongst others,” said Diane. “There are so few of us that we can only make a tiny contribution toward the alleviation of hunger and sickness, but we do what we can.”
“Many of the so-called witches burned alive in the seventieth century were members of the Order who’d got a little careless,” said Lo.
“People fear what they don’t understand,” said Diane. “It’s a cliche for a reason.”
Mee fidgeted a little. “So Manna is what? Magic?” she said, her mistrust still obvious in the tone of her voice.
“Many Users think so,” said Diane. “The Order has been far more hesitant about labeling it, although there is speculation even among us. We are taught to think of it as a natural resource. Just one that is little known or understood. We had no way of comprehending what it is we were encountering until the 1940s, when one possible explanation became a clear frontrunner.”
“What explanation?” said Bob at the same time as Meera said, “What happened in the 1940s?”
“Advanced technology,” said Lo to Bob then turned to Meera. “You’ve heard of the Roswell crash?”
“Aliens?” said Mee, snorting. “You get your power from aliens?”
“Well. Not exactly,” said Diane. “Manna was around before humans crawled out of the slime, so far as we can tell. As I said, we’ve always treated it as a natural resource. But in 1947, the conspiracy theorists had it right for a change. There was an event of some kind. We know because of what was left behind after the crash at Roswell.”
“Which was?” said Bob.
“A new thin place,” said Diane. “The first time it’s ever happened, we believe. And it caused a stir among users of Manna worldwide. Whatever the beliefs of Users, we all felt this event take place. It was like an earthquake felt globally, we were all shaken up by it. Some Users found a way of fitting this new development into their existing world view. Many found themselves scared and confused by what had happened.”
“Why?” said Mee. “If you’ve been using this stuff for centuries, what real difference does it make if some new place shows up full of it?”
“Three reasons, really,” said Diane. “First, as I said, this was apparently an unique event in human history as far as anyone knows. Second, everything pointed to extraterrestrial involvement.”
“But I thought all that was discredited pretty quickly,” said Bob. “I remember the military report saying it was a barrage balloon. If anything bigger than that had landed in Roswell, someone would have found some hard evidence by now.”
“The government covered it up quickly and thoroughly,” said Diane. “No trace of any extraterrestrial was ever found. Most users of Manna are only vaguely aware of other Users, but the Order has always been extremely sensitive in this way. We can even sense those who have been touched by Users recently. It’s how Lo found you.”
Bob and Meera exchanged a look. This wasn’t getting any less weird.
“If an alien carrying a new supply of Manna had arrived on Earth, we’d expect to know about it. It would be like every car alarm in your street going off simultaneously. Not something you could miss. We sensed a brief flare, a fraction of a second, so we knew where to head for. And we went.”
“To Roswell,” said Meera.
“Yes,” said Diane. Thousands of Users made their way to Roswell the first few months after the event. Blended in with the sight-seers and alien spotters. They wanted to absorb Manna from this fresh thin place, they were inexorably drawn to it.”
“You said there were three reasons people were scared,” said Mee. “What was the third?”
Diane’s hands were absently smoothing the dirt. Tiny blades of bright green grass pushed up between her fingers as she spoke. “The third reason was the most disconcerting of all,” she said. “No one could use the new thin place. Not a single User. The most powerful people tried, the oldest and holiest member of the Order tried. Nothing. We could all feel the potential, the energy waiting. It was as if the ground itself were humming with power. But not a single soul could access it.”
“It’s like an itch we can’t scratch,” said Lo, “but it feels far worse than that. Imagine going without water in the desert for a couple days then finding an ice box full of bottles of cold water. But there’s a huge padlock on the door and no way to get to the water. That’s how it feels.”
“An unfortunate result of Roswell was that the factions of Users hardened their positions, stopped talking to each other,” said Diane. “Threats were made, there were skirmishes. For a while it looked like open fighting would break out, but the main players saw sense in the end. There’s still a lingering suspicion among many Users that Roswell is being secretly controlled by one of the groups.”
“Which groups? What factions?” said Bob. “Who the hell are these people and what do they want with Seb?”
“Users of Manna suffer from the same frailties as everyone else,” said Diane. “Although many are loners by nature, they like the security of belonging to a group, something that provides a belief system making sense of what they can do. There are many such groups around the world. Most are harmless.”
“Most?” said Mee.
“There are some factions that believe Manna is an evil power, so they must commit evil acts to keep using it,” said Diane. “The Order believes that whatever we bring to our encounters with Manna taints it somehow. That’s why we try to bring so little. We want to be part of Manna, not bend it to our will. Other belief systems employ complex rituals in their quest to control Manna. We have anecdotal evidence of animal sacrifices, perhaps even human sacrifices. Outside America, many such groups have grown over the centuries.”
“But not here? Why not?” said Bob.
“Oh, there are groups, but they are kept small by the faction that pretty much runs the country.”
“What?” said Bob and Meera together.
“This country has a proud history of striving for freedom, with some serious missteps along the way,” said Diane. “But we have a concurrent history of corruption and organized crime. Our political system and these criminal groups grew in a symbiotic way over the last few centuries.”
“In other words, the mafia and the rest of them always had politicians in their pockets,” said Bob.
“Exactly. Then, in the 1970s, someone carefully and systematically took overall control of all notable crime syndicates. It was an unprecedented and audacious move by a group with enough information and resources to bury every politician or gang boss of note in America.”
“Oh, come on,” said Meera, “no one could get away with that. What is this? The Illuminati? The Knights Templar, some shadowy group pulling the strings of puppet governments?”
“Not quite,” said Diane.
“Then what?” said Bob.
“One man controls this faction,” said Diane. “He has no real interest in power in the traditional sense. He is only interested in finding out more about Manna. Eventually, controlling it. He is so powerful that no one has been able to stand against him, and every User in America, sooner or later, has to pledge loyalty to him or be eliminated.”
“Eliminated?” said Bob.
“Killed,” said Diane. “He doesn’t make idle threats. He doesn’t tolerate disobedience. And his use of Manna is unmatched, anywhere. Or was.”
“So you pledged loyalty?” said Mee.
“No,”said Diane. “We think he doesn’t see us as a threat. Or, more significantly, as an opportunity. He can’t use us in any way so he lets us be. Or, at least, he has done so far. But everything has chan
ged now.”
“What’s changed? And what do you mean this loser’s use of Manna was unmatched,” said Mee.
Diane and Lo stood up, as co-ordinated in their movements as two dancers. They walked to the middle of the garden. Mee looked at Bob. He shrugged and followed them, Mee trailing behind.
The women had stopped by the stone words. Diane pointed at the last word: περιμένετε.
“ ‘Wait’,” she said. “That’s what the Order has done for nearly 2,000 years. Waited. Learned, yes, taught, yes, but mostly waited. In 1947, some of us thought the wait was over, but it was a false alarm. Then, early morning, three days ago in Los Angeles…” Her voice faded. For the first time, she seemed unsure which words to choose.
Bob stepped closer to her. “What happened to Seb?”
“We don’t know,” said Diane, “but we know he feels different to us. Unlike any other User we’ve ever come across.”
“Different how?” said Mee.
“The way Manna forms within him,” said Diane, “we recognize it. And if we recognize it, everyone, every User worldwide recognizes it.”
“Recognizes what?” said Mee.
“The Manna he carries,” said Diane, “it’s similar to the earthquake we felt in 1947. Somehow, your friend is using something like the Roswell Manna.”
Bob was silent, thinking. Eventually he looked up. “What exactly have you been waiting for for 1800 years?” he said. Diane didn’t answer, but Lo turned toward him, eyes shining with tears.
“The Messiah,” she said.
30
Waking in a king-sized bed with three sleeping naked women draped across him while a fourth snorted cocaine from the surface of an antique roll-top desk, Seb couldn’t help smiling. He slid out of bed and padded over to the bathroom, turning the power on full in the massive shower. As he grabbed the body wash, he heard the door open. And two other bodies joined him in the steam.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 23
