Grace flickered in dim sadness. "We will miss you," she said.
Mihos wrinkled his nose. "I think you'll find a pleasant surprise back in the physical," he said. "Yer gonna need a litter box."
Emily knelt down and put her hand on the cat's sleek back. Grace knelt beside her. "You need to be really careful, Mihos," said Emily, petting him gently. "And you need to get word to us that you're okay. Will you do that?"
"If I can, I will," said Mihos. He stepped forward and touched each of the girls nose to nose, then sat back on his haunches and began to lick his front paws. "Go," he said to the girls, glancing up only briefly. "Momma's waitin' and this cat's gotta plane to catch."
Emily and Grace said their last farewells and then dove down into their bodies.
16.3
Jay Sinclair sat with his back against the cafeteria wall and poured his tea. There was little to do now but wait. His life as Guy Legrand was finished. His time here on Earth was drawing to a close. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours, he and his wife would be boarding one of the huge colony ships and heading out to the stars.
He sighed sadly. This should be an exciting and happy time for him. It was not. His daughter, Gabrielle, had evaded all of his attempts to find her. Now he had run out of time. He couldn't find her himself, and all the agents he might have trusted with the assignment had been called back to Urbem Orsus. Whatever had caused his daughter to run away, whatever it was that was fueling her hatred and distrust of him, and of their people, it was now too late for him to fix or heal or counter. He might find someone who could pinpoint her via the Astral level. He knew there were people who could do such things, and surely many of them were now here in the vast underground city from which the Giant Leap would originate. But for some reason, he hadn't gotten around to trying that. As much as he wanted his daughter to accompany them, as much as he feared for her future should she remain here on Earth, there was a part of him that knew that, in this matter, he had to allow his daughter the freedom to make her own choices. What was difficult for Sinclair was trusting that her choices were truly free.
He sipped hesitantly at his tea, wondering again about the water and the radiation, deciding again to trust The Families' technicians. Approximately five hundred feet overhead stood the ghost town of Pripyat, evacuated in 1986 the day after the disaster at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power station. Though most of the radiation from that catastrophe was now held in soils and water, the Directorate's experts assured them that the systems in place in Urbem Orsus were equal to the task of keeping them safe and healthy. Sinclair knew that his people were unlikely to take unwarranted risks at this late stage of the game. It had taken them centuries to get to this fateful moment. He could not believe that his hesitancy was anything more than his own, personal psychological reactivity.
It was a clever choice, Pripyat. Where better to congregate, if one wished to avoid prying eyes? Construction on the underground city had begun just months after the Exclusion Zone had been put in place. They knew that they'd need a great deal of space in which to finish construction of the colony, scout, and defense ships, to gather the tens of thousands of human souls who would be chosen for this journey, and to gather the supplies and equipment the colonizers would need. They knew there would need to be a great deal of coming and going as the work was finished, and that this would include accelerated use of the woks, which tended to attract attention out amongst the Sleepers. So when the disaster occurred, plans were quickly made to move their operations to Ukraine. Compared to the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, Ukraine would be a relative paradise, radiation or no. And its central local would make everything easier.
Back then, of course, they had been working directly with the Life, so they had more access to alien ships and technologies. Since the Great Defection three years ago, The Families had had to put the finishing touches on things by themselves. While that only delayed the Giant Leap, rather than stopping it entirely, it had caused some great concern and inconvenience. Since human-built woks did not have the full invisibility and shape-shifting capabilities of Life-built woks, they had to be ever more careful about security issues, which made the use of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone seem an even wiser and more prescient choice than it had already.
It was the Life's installation of the Grid that has proven the greater challenge, as it necessitated a great deal of study and testing, and then a massive effort and allocation of resources to design and build the huge scalar cannon array and antigrav clusters that they would need to punch through the aliens' rather annoying little interdict.
And it had taken finding and coordinating with a rogue element of the Life, someone who was willing to disable the Life's astral qputer system - which coordinated the continual regeneration of the Grid in the physical bands - long enough for The Families to get away. In the end, that strategy had been the most contentious aspect of the whole affair, as they'd never been able to know, for sure, whether the beings responsible for installing the Grid were actually the same beings with whom they'd worked for so long. There were simply too many types of "Gray" aliens, and they were far too enigmatic, for humans to ever trust that they could fully understand them. Though few of the Directorate wished to openly acknowledge it, Jay Sinclair knew that their reliance on this alien mole boiled down, of necessity, to a matter of trust.
In any event, there was, in Sinclair's mind, a delicious irony to the whole affair. Urbem Orsus, City of Beginnings, had risen from the ashes of one of the greatest nuclear accidents in history, just as the colony ships would rise from the ashes of a spent, depleted planet. The city didn't rise, actually, since it had been built far below the rapidly decaying ruins of Pripyat, but the metaphor was close enough for Sinclair.
In the end, it didn't matter, these names and metaphors and ironies. What mattered was that he and his people would finally head off to the stars, a project on which The Families had been working much longer than he had been alive. At last the day was upon them, when they could leave behind this depleted planet and the poor, sick, dumbed-down masses who were eating it alive. Sinclair was excited about the future and proud of his role in making it come to pass. The continuation of the human species was now in their hands. He couldn't think of anybody more qualified for that responsibility. Though it broke his heart to leave his daughter behind, he did not regret the course they had chosen.
He finished his tea and glanced at the clock. Almost seven in the evening. The Directorate would be meeting soon, in one of the spacious, comfortable conference rooms on the level just below. William Reynolds was back and would be giving a report not only on the destruction at Squirrel Island, which allowed them to finally put Project Changeling to rest, but also on his recent out-of-body trip to Herschel Colony, where he had spent the last few days overseeing the preparations being made there. Sinclair was looking forward to hearing Reynolds' reports, as he was one of only a few of their travelers who'd proven able to pass through the Grid at the non-physical level. Perhaps, after the meeting, Sinclair would ask him about the feasibility of finding Gabrielle in that manner.
It wouldn't hurt to ask.
16.4
Their reunion was bittersweet. Cole and Linda made it to the kids' hospital room just as Emily, and then Grace, opened their eyes. Their parents were on them with hugs and kisses even before the girls could sit up, kicking Ness's weird construct aside like a silly toy that had been left out on the floor.
"You're so cold," said Emily, reaching up to put a hand on Linda's gray-toned face.
"I'm still here, sweet girl," Linda said, shaking her head to ward off the tears. "Just like I said I would be."
Grace just buried her face in her father's chest and sobbed.
After a while, they turned their attention to Iain's comatose body lying nearby.
16.5
The rest of the Cole's crew gathered in the visitor lounge, to allow the family some private time, to find their own footing after the events of the last few days, to
share their stories and learn of each other, and to begin the discussion about what to do next. Gabrielle sat amongst them and listened and thought.
The forces in play now swirled about them like the storm at the coast. Obviously the dark, secret levels of human control were still active in the world, as they'd all known they must be. They'd kidnapped the American President, held her captive, replaced her with a computer simulation, and lied to the world about her condition, all for reasons none of them could quite comprehend. No doubt the hidden elite were involved in the Greensleeves epidemic that was now spreading around the planet. That epidemic had hit many of them personally.
There were still aliens active in the world as well. Not only had Alice returned, but she'd had something to do with the kids, and their fool's errand into the Astral realm. And now she'd confronted them with a city full of hybrids and a list of demands. They'd seen woks coming from and going to the island. And the Grid still shone in the sky. There were aliens involved, but none of them knew whether they could be trusted.
Then there were Cole's new-found powers. There was the Church of the Stranger and its prophecies. There was the Church's warning about Linda Travis, and how Cole had to stop her, though none of them knew from what. There were Sten and Eddie's broadcasts. There was some monster called the Murk. And there was Hurricane Alpha, that huge, blasting storm that, even here in Augusta, assaulted them with wind and rain.
Gabrielle sat in the corner under the silent television, stroking the small black cat that lay in her lap. This cat had led her and the President up to the landing pad, and to their escape. Then he had leapt into the wok to join them. Nobody there knew his name, but Gabrielle was determined to take care of him. She ran her hand gently along his back. Having dried the rainwater from his fur as best he could with his tongue, the cat had fallen asleep, though he purred continuously in response to the girl's loving touch.
Eventually Stan asked Gabrielle about herself. Slowly, in short sentences and vague references, she began to tell them a bit about who she was and what she knew and what she had been through. She told them of her father, and of what she knew of The Families' plans to leave Earth. She told them she'd been in communication with a strange being called Zacharael, who'd been responsible for her appearance on Squirrel Island. She told them what she knew about Zacharael's great concern for the living beings on the planet, and what little she knew about Greensleeves. She told them how she'd found Linda in the facility underneath her cottage, how they'd escaped to the surface, how the cat had led the way.
But she did not tell them about the vial in her backpack. That was not hers to reveal.
16.6
Mary did not participate in this conversation. She'd been relieved to learn that Keeley was still alive, but angered to learn that Keeley was still at the hospital in Augusta, and in the care of the hybrids. She didn't care what these so-called Middle Children were demanding, or whether their demands were fair. It was just wrong to have moved Keeley to another room and then lied about it, telling Mary that they'd taken her partner, her love, her Keeley, sick with the deadly alien flu, to Squirrel Island. Why had they felt the need to do such a thing?
She pushed through the front door, dragging Danny, wet uniform and all, by the hand behind her. Forgetting her usual cramped hesitancy and wary step, she marched right up to the main nurses' station and slapped both palms down on the counter. "I demand that you tell me which room Keeley Benedict is in," she said to the tall, red-haired man who looked up from his computer screen. The fact that he was a hybrid, or that his field was closed to Mary, did not frighten her now. Alice was obviously their leader, and Alice wanted something from them. "Well?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
The red-haired man smiled warmly. "She's in the isolation ward, Ms. Hayes. Third floor. Room eleven. You can check in with the nurses up on three." He swiveled his head and looked at Danny, whose tall, strong frame and handsome face were a match for those of the hybrids. "Glad to have you back with us," he said, his eyes crinkling with secret delight.
Mary turned to her brother. Danny raised his shoulders in puzzlement. Neither had any idea what the redheaded hybrid was talking about, and Mary didn't have time to wonder about it. With a curt thank-you, she took Danny's hand and headed for the elevator.
"We do not yet fully understand the etiology of this disease," said a tiny female with huge green eyes and small, flat ears. She was leading Mary and her brother down the third-floor hallway. "We do know that the virus attacks only human beings and has no effect on the Middle Children." She came to a stop at door number eleven.
"When we do understand," said Mary, speaking more from intuition than certain knowledge, "we will know that there is no infectious agent as we would normally understand it. Please." Mary nodded toward the door. "I must see her."
The tiny female turned and punched the keypad to open the outer door. There was a faint shimmering in the air as the door slid opened, like someone had tossed a handful of glitter in celebration of their reunion.
"You sure about this, Sis?" asked Danny? "I mean. I got a shot more than a week ago, but you?"
Mary smiled grimly and entered an anteroom, in which stood another of the Middle Children, the first she'd seen that looked old, her face wrinkled and her hair short and straight and gray. The old nurse, clad only in scrubs herself, insisted that Mary don protective garb, not only a mask and gloves and hat and gown but pants and shoe covers as well. Mary complied without question and dressed quickly, glancing through the glass into Keeley's room. When the old woman was satisfied that Mary was as safe as they could make her, she thumbed a button that opened a second door. Mary entered Keeley's room.
Keeled lay on her bed, looking almost exactly as she had when Mary had last seen her. Her hair was flattened and messy but her face, even with its bright red rash, was calm and peaceful. She was asleep on her back, her chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly. The monitors babbled gently in the corner. Mary walked quietly across the room and sat softly on the side of Keeley's bed. She took her love's hand in hers, noting the warmth of Keeley's body. She breathed deeply and waited.
How could two days have passed? Mary couldn't account for the time. The hybrids had shut her out, so she'd tried to find some answers in the Astral realm. And yet that hadn't worked either, and all of a sudden she was back in the physical, in that wok that had appeared in the garage, and she made it to Squirrel Island just in time to help Cole and Linda and their new friends get away from the soldiers and the storm. Had she fallen asleep in that wok? Had she been that exhausted? Or had something else happened? There were vague memories in her mind, leftovers from a now-forgotten dream about her childhood. Surely she could not have slept for that long. Unless the Life had known more about what she'd needed than she did.
Probably it didn't matter, though the mystery continued to nag at her. Her first concern was Keeley, and Mary had a strong sense that if she tried hard enough, she could see into this Greensleeves, and figure out how to cure it. But then there was Iain, who'd gone missing in the Astral. How could she help find him? And there was the complex mystery of her friend Ness. And Alice, whom she had loved so dearly.
And she hadn't even heard Danny's story yet.
16.7
Danny watched as his sister entered Keeley's room, then made his way back past the nurses' station to the elevators, ignoring the hybrids as best he could, knowing they could look inside his soul if they so desired. Next to the elevators was a stairway and he pushed through the door, taking the steps quickly down to the ground level. There he found an exit door that promised an alarm were he to pass through it. Taking a chance that it no longer worked, and not much caring if it did, he pushed the heavy handle and stepped outdoors. If there was an alarm, it did not sound at the door.
The storm continued to churn overhead. The wind still gusted, but the rain had stopped again for a bit, for which he was thankful. Danny stood in the shelter of the doorway and stared out over the river, the n
ame of which he didn't know. The waters were brown and roiled, like Willy Wonka's chocolate river, stirred up by the storm. Beyond he could see a large park, with what he guessed was the State House on the far edge. The current seat of the American government, with abandoned construction scaffolding in place. He wondered if that building had been overtaken by the hybrids, like the hospital and military had clearly been occupied.
Danny pulled a cigarette from a crushed box in his back pocket and lit it with a tiny butane lighter. He pulled on the cigarette and sighed a cloud of smoke into the rushing air, then reached up to loosen the top buttons of his damp uniform shirt. He chuckled to himself. It was crazy. Whatever this was, it was just nuts. He'd been working with some faction of The Families for most of his adult life and never had he seen things so out of control.
He'd served for almost a decade as a security specialist with The People. After their dissolution three years ago, he'd driven a desk at the BlackBay Services office in London, serving as liaison with the security chief at Herschel Colony. Anxious to get back to fieldwork, he'd jumped at the chance to go deep undercover in the U.S. military. He'd been keeping an eye on Project Changeling, and Colonel McAfee, and reporting back to his contact at BlackBay in London for the past four months. It had all seemed rather routine, and utilized his gifts and abilities fully. It had made sense. It had paid well.
And it had stood in stark relief to the childhood he could only vaguely remember. His mother had died when he was born, and he had no memory of ever having even seen a picture of her. His father had been a monster. And upon the old man's death when Danny was just a kid, he and Mary had been given to a nice, middle-aged couple in Washington D.C. who raised them with love and respect. His new father was a Senator. His mother a lawyer. Danny and Mary had gone to private schools and had had every advantage. Compared to life with his old man, his new foster family had been a gift from the gods.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 58
