14.2
Linda studied William with fierce intensity. The Fisherman had returned to his chair as unexpectedly as he'd departed. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what you do when you take off like that, are you?"
The Fisherman flashed his eyebrows. "Suffice it to say that I have interests back on Earth which require frequent monitoring. And then there are your interests, which I monitor as well."
"Making sure your ruse is still working?" asked Linda.
"Yes, Madam, that is a part of it. So far, all is quite well."
"And my family?" asked Linda.
"Madam?"
"You said you're monitoring my interests as well, William. My primary interest is Cole and the children, which I believe I have mentioned. My husband is down on the coast of Maine untangling something to do with aliens, you said. And the children's bodies are lying in hospital beds in Augusta while their conscious selves are trying to find me. You've assured me that they're all okay, William, but I think we can agree that this strains belief, given what we know of the situation. So I want some reassurance here. I want you tell me how 'quite well' they all still are, so that I can quit worrying so much."
The words were even, but as she spoke, an undertone of deadly menace moved into her voice like a cold fog. I will hunt you down and kill you if anyone in my family comes to harm, the undertone seemed to be saying. William nodded and leaned forward. "I assure you that I am unaware that any harm has befallen any of them, Madam."
Linda's eyes narrowed. "Such careful wording, William. Does it surprise you to hear that I do not feel reassured?"
William sat back. "I suppose it does not," he said, his face dark with confusion. "I suppose were it me..." He looked at her. "I can only beg the necessity of circumstance," he said. "As I continue to try to explain..." He inhaled deeply.
Linda shook her head and waved him away with her hand. "Just get on with it," she said.
14.3
It felt to Grace like she was slipping. Falling. She wasn't sure how she could tell that, as she didn't really seem to be feeling anything. But that's what she thought, here where thought was all she had. She was so worried about Dennis. He was getting old, and hadn't seemed himself as of late, back in the real world. He seemed smart and strong here, and he could talk now, which was new, but still she worried. He needed his people. He needed her. And, well, Grace needed him. They'd been through so much together.
The worst thing about the Murk was this: the fear that this would go on forever. Thought, forever, with no body, no feeling, no change. Thoughts, over and over, looping and spinning, chattering, bickering, doubting, analyzing. Thoughts and thoughts and more thoughts, with nothing to break them up. She'd tried to sleep but found it impossible. Apparently she needed a body for that. It was just thoughts and then more thoughts, with thoughts of sleep and of trying to sleep and of failing to sleep mixed in.
Grace called out for help. Or tried to call out. It was difficult to tell if she was actually doing anything, without a voice to speak and ears to hear. She thought out, at least. To that woman, Evlyn, who'd helped her before. To that Elder she'd met. To that Inuit woman. To Utterpok, the old shaman, whom she'd loved. She thought out to Dennis and Emily and Iain and Mihos. She thought out to her father, and to Linda. She thought out to her dead mother, Ruth. She put as much energy and force and passion behind her thoughts as she could, and imagined them blasting out in all directions, cutting through the Murk and spreading out across the Cosmos, to catch the ears of those who loved her. But no one had come. No one had responded. And so she had no idea whether her thoughts had really gone anywhere.
As scary as that skeleton had been, as frustrating as that house of glass had felt, as powerful as that red-haired man had seemed, this Murk was worse. She wished they'd never set foot back inside of it, despite Dennis's confidence. Mihos was right: they'd come to the Astral without so much as a map or guide. They had no business being here.
And yet it was Alice who had drawn them here, was it not? Alice, who had come in Grace's dreams and caused her to want so badly to do this. And that strange, gray, clawed hand that had pulled them from their bodies: that was one of Alice's people. It had to have been. Grace was sure of this if nothing else: Alice was good. She would not lead them into danger without good reason or great need.
If she could have sighed, Grace would have sighed. If she could have shed tears, Grace would have sobbed and moaned in fear and worry and grief and pain and loneliness. If she'd had lungs to scream with, she'd have howled in fury. But she didn't have any of these things. She had only her thoughts, and they wouldn't stop, and they wouldn't go away, and they wouldn't leave her alone.
And she kept on sliding. Falling. Falling. Falling.
14.4
William sighed deeply and continued. "Right," he said. He shifted in his chair. "So as I said, the aliens stepped up their presence on Earth in the last decade of the 19th century. Some in The Families took note of their presence, and began to look for ways to meet them. It was not until much later that we understood why they had come: already the first signs of major Earth changes were appearing, and the aliens had grown concerned."
"By 'Earth changes' you mean climate, right?"
"Yes. That and the many other effects of rapid population growth and industrial activity."
"And you found a way to meet with them."
"We found a way to meet with one group of them, yes. A small circle of Family members met in the library of an old German castle one evening. This was the spring of 1897; the same day the first oil well was drilled in Oklahoma, or so the story goes. Anyway, those present, using ancient rituals of meditation and concentration, succeeded in calling one of the aliens into the room." William scrunched his nose and leaned forward to look Linda in the eye. "He was tiny. Slight of build. With a large head and huge, black eyes. He was the Life's first ambassador to Earth. And eventually we learned that his favorite human food was french fries." William smiled slightly. "We called him Spud."
Linda sat back and shook her head. "Jesus," she whispered. She inhaled deeply and blew out a heavy sigh. "So, what happened?"
The Fisherman flashed his eyebrows. "That's the thing, Madam!" he said. "Nobody really knows!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean nobody knows, Madam. Those who were there remember bright lights outside the library windows. They stood and went to look, then heard behind them a high-pitched cough. Whirling about, they found Spud, standing next to the blazing fireplace, ripping pages out of a book and tossing them into the flames. Some of them swore he disappeared again almost immediately. Others were sure they'd engaged with him in a long dialogue, although what they'd discussed no one could say. One man, my grandfather, was certain he'd been taken on Spud's craft and flown about the solar system. All they could agree on for certain was that, when they regained their wits, Spud was gone, the fire had gone cold, and the sky was beginning to brighten with the dawn."
Linda shivered. "That sounds like Spud to me," she said.
"Indeed. It was only when those present underwent hypnosis that they were able to recall bits and pieces. There had been a long discussion that night, though none of them could remember what they talked about. My grandfather had been given a ride in Spud's wok, but he could not remember what it was he'd been shown. And two weeks later, one of the castle's groundskeepers discovered a tiny version of the aliens' craft in an unused shed. It was the first of many such gifts."
"And that's how it all began?"
"That's how it went for a long time, Madam. Strange meetings, only partially remembered. Sightings around the planet. Reports of face-to-face encounters from time to time. And every now and again, a bit of physical evidence left behind, including the odd ship or device. We eventually met openly with three different alien species, but the Life were always the most accessible. Finally, in 1913, the first of us were brought to one of the Life's lodges, the one underneath Buckingham Palace. We learned that there were m
any such facilities around the planet, and that some had been constructed centuries before. It was there that our scientists began to work directly with alien representatives, and took their first baby steps toward understanding the source of the aliens' vast technological supremacy."
"All of which meant lots more wealth and power for you guys," said Linda with a smirk.
"Yes it did. And that's what most members of The Families cared about. But to a man, those who'd been there in that castle library had been strangely touched, and cared only for the spiritual and philosophical implications of Spud's manifestation. Those folks formed the core of what became the Evolutionary Element."
"And it was the promise of alien technology and wealth and power that fueled the secrecy?"
"From our side, certainly. At first. But things changed, as they always do. The First World War came. Then the Second. And the aliens responded. All of a sudden they were everywhere. Sightings began pouring in. To my grandfather, it seemed as though we'd angered them; they were swarming, like a nest of hornets. But I think we frightened them terribly. Hiroshima, you see. Nagasaki. Not only our power to destroy, but our willingness. In their eyes, the human species was going mad, and was on a course for self-destruction. I think they felt like they had to do something."
"There were all those UFOs hovering over nuclear missile silos, right?"
"Sometimes they shut them down, Madam. Once they even stole the missiles away! You can imagine how disturbing that was to some people."
"And so you had another reason for secrecy."
"When the aliens stepped it up in the late 40s, The Families quickly wrested control of the situation. We created a culture of ridicule and denial to minimize public layer interest, and used incentives and threats to keep those who had a need to know under our control. Most were only too happy to comply. This gave us the time we needed to figure out our own next steps, and to develop our Plan."
"And the aliens could have exploded your cover-up at any moment, and they didn't."
William pointed a finger at Linda. "As we have said, Madam. Yes. The Prime Directive, you see. They chose to honor that guiding principle, and yet act in such a way as to keep their commitment to the evolution of consciousness."
"They couldn't just land on the White House lawn, because that would have been too disruptive to our culture." She cocked her head. "It would have taken away our freedom, in your words."
"Indeed," said the Fisherman. "But they could show up at the periphery of our cultural vision and irritate us, an anomalous speck in the eye we could neither dislodge nor clearly see. Something to push us out of our comfortable worldview."
"The strange lights in the sky," added Linda, nodding. "The impossible flight paths. The reports of little green men."
"Little green men who float through windows," said William with a smile.
"Coming into our bedrooms because they wanted to wake us up?"
"Exactly right," said the Fisherman. "To give us a choice: whether to remain asleep inside of our comfy materialist paradigm, or to go outside and look up at the skies and wonder if maybe there was more going on than we had supposed."
"But weren't they also breaking their Prime Directive, William? I mean... they were still working with you behind the scenes, were they not? Somebody helped you build those structures on Enceladus, right?"
William nodded. "In their minds, working with us was not in violation of their rules. By reaching out to them as we had, we'd proven ourselves ready and able to meet them on their own terms, at least in some small ways. We had already reached the point where open contact was allowable."
"It was those tuxedos."
The Fisherman grinned. " We were well versed in matters both spiritual and scientific, and were already dedicated to the evolution of human consciousness. We understood how old paradigms unraveled and new ones arose. And because of our wealth and power, we could manage the need for secrecy and align with the Prime Directive. This put us in the middle of things from the beginning."
"And behind the scenes, you were working on this Plan you keep mentioning," said Linda.
"Yes," said William. "It was apparent to some of us that the human race was turning the sharp inflection point on the exponential growth curve, and that we were facing the eventual unraveling of the entire global social system. We saw, with the aliens' help, the possibility of escaping that fate, and so updated our centuries-old Plan. Our aim had long been one of steering the course of human history. But we'd only ever seen that project in terms of how it unfolded on Earth. Now our goal was to leave our planet of origin and seed the stars with human life. The ultimate in 'breaking away,' you might say."
"So The Families could see the current mess coming as far back as the late-40s?"
"We could, Madam. It's preposterous to think that we were simply stupid and could not see the obvious, as so many of your people love to believe. We had access to much better information than you, and we always had it first. We just didn't respond to it the way you wanted us to."
"When the going gets rough, the rich get going. Does that about sum it up?"
"For many in The Families, it was indeed a matter of saving their bloodlines. But we in the Element were keen to join the Cosmic Community, and to help keep the human experiment going in the physical bands, should it end entirely on Earth."
Linda stopped and looked down at her lap, shaking her head slightly from side to side as though the pieces wouldn't quite fall into place. Her face was dark and lined. "So the aliens helped you with that. Helped you build your own woks, for instance. Propulsion systems. Weapons. Space stations. All of that." She looked up at the Fisherman. "So what did they get?"
"They demanded that their secrecy be maintained. And they demanded the right to continue to interact with individual humans on Earth however they saw fit."
"Demanded?" asked Linda.
William sighed. "Spud is one tough gannet, as my mother used to say."
"And ya'll were happy to go along with the secrecy, since it served your interests too."
"Of course. We had no idea, at the time the deal was struck, that one of their projects would include the creation of human-alien hybrids. Imagine what people would have done, had they suspected that the creatures coming into their bedrooms at night were there with our permission."
Linda leaned forward in her chair and pierced the Fisherman with her eyes. "Because it's been pretty painful for some of them, hasn't it William?" she asked. Her voice quivered as she spoke, and her hands shook. They both knew that Linda herself had had her own terrifying experiences.
"Aye," answered William, looking down. He exhaled heavily. "Aye."
Linda sat back in her chair and pulled up her legs. It looked as though the Fisherman felt bad about what had happened, but whether his feelings were frank or feigned she could not be sure. He was a member of this "breakaway civilization." No longer a member of the human community. One foot already out the proverbial door. So how much empathy could he really have? She watched him for a moment as he sat there, looking down at his hands, pulling at his fingers. He looked more frail to her than he had at first. More in need. More uncertain. "I wonder," she said, "if sometimes you and your people look back on those agreements you made and think that it was then that you sold your souls to the Devil?" He seemed to want her understanding. This was all she had.
The Fisherman looked up and smiled weakly. "Did I not say, Madam, that they offered us an opportunity that was worth grabbing at any cost?"
14.5
It was all exactly the same, and yet it wasn't. The ride up the beam. That weird door that muddled her memory. The table. The strange screen. The pinball machines and boxes of yarn. The ribbons. The poking and prodding. All the same. And yet, in her mind, that single word rang like a bell: amends. These beings did nothing by chance or lack of design. Amends meant something.
She was in her bed now, flat on her back, unable to move. Were they making amends, these aliens? The four identica
l beings stood in a line, back to front, facing the window, ready to leave at any moment. The fifth being, the robed one, the tallest of them, stood at her bedside, gazing down at her. Was he making amends? It was hard to see how, unless they'd done something to fix her father's horrible ways. But they'd never done that before, and they'd had plenty of opportunities.
The robed one cocked his head again, and his face crinkled slightly. It looked like he was trying to smile. Almost. The being shrugged, then turned to the others, and nodded once. They all began to slide toward the window.
WAIT! cried Mary, though she made no actual sound. Her mouth would not move. Her voice would not work. All she had were her thoughts. WAIT! she shouted again. They were leaving. If they wanted to make amends, they could start with her. TAKE ME WITH YOU! Mary strained to move her head, to follow them as they moved out of her field of vision. But all she could do was roll her eyes. WAIT, YOU BASTARDS! she yelled, hoping maybe that would get their attention.
The four-in-a-line glanced back at her with mouths agape, then turned and floated up to the window. The first one passed through. Then the second. STOP! shouted Mary as loudly as she could think. She pushed against the invisible restraints, the ropes, the straps, the heavy, immovable weight. The veins in her neck pulsed and bulged as she pushed and struggled, trying to sit up, to twist around, to push her hand into the air. STOP!
All of a sudden her head whipped to the side and she saw the last of the four pass through the glass. The robed one rose in the air toward the window and Mary lifted her head and shouted again, this time with voice and mouth and air and sound. "Take me with you!" she shouted. "Take me! Take me with you!"
The robed being stopped, turned, settled back down to the floor, and regarded Mary. It was like being observed by a praying mantis, that wild, shivery feeling you get when you know that the Other knows that you are there. When you feel their eyes on you. When you find that your mind is in theirs. "Wait!" said Mary again, this time softer, and punctuated with sobs. "Wait... please..." she said. She pushed again and was able to roll onto her side, to bring her hand to her face to wipe away the tears. "Please," she said, turning her face up to see the robed being looking at back at her. "Please. My father is going to kill me. Please take me with you."
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 47
