The eight of them stood and watched the vultures.
But they weren't vultures. Whatever they were, they were falling toward the Earth.
And there were more than three. There were many more than three. There were dozens of them. Then scores. Then hundreds. Specks. Falling. Falling toward them.
When they realized what they were, the eight of them quickly returned to their vehicles and slammed their doors shut.
18.20
Jay Sinclair was surprised. Surprised that, when the unseen force had picked him up and pushed him across the bar, he hadn't been smashed into a pulp against the wall. Surprised to find himself tumbling through the sky above the Earth. Surprised to see that young, up-and-coming DuPont fellow tumbling nearby. Surprised to feel how cold it was, and surprised at how quickly he'd gone numb to it. Surprised that he could not draw a breath. Surprised at how he seemed to hang there, at how slowly he seemed to be falling. And he was surprised at how beautiful the Earth looked beneath him.
Alas.
But Jay Sinclair was not hanging there. He was not falling slowly. He was falling at the standard terminal velocity for a human body, which was approximately one hundred and twenty miles per hour, having accelerated to that speed at the standard rate of thirty-two feet per second per second, adjusted for air resistance, which had been almost nil at first. He was falling back to the place from which he had been attempting to escape.
Even so, Jason Carrington Parker Sinclair still got his wish. No longer would he have to live with those miserable Sleepers. And neither would he have to live through the complete unraveling of human society, and the death of the natural living systems upon which that society had been built.
As it turned out, when Jay Sinclair spoke of the Giant Leap, he hadn't really known what the hell he'd been talking about.
18.21
One newspaper called it "The Rain of Evil Men." Another called it "The Great Shake-Down." Yet another termed it "The One-Percent Solution," referring to a nickname for the rich and powerful that had come into vogue a decade or so earlier. In the years to come, it would come to be known, simply, as "The Great Fall." As in Humpty Dumpty. As in nobody could put them back together again.
Linda, Cole, and the others lived through the Great Fall as no others had, ducking down in their mini-van seats as human bodies rained down out of the sky all around them. The first one to land near Linda's van provoked a loud yelp and a "Lord have mercy" from Brenda. It wasn't until another body slammed into the hood and flopped over onto the ground that both Linda and Cole called out. There was one. Then two more. Than a handful. And soon they were falling like a heavy rain. When it was over, it looked like a battlefield from the American civil war.
Over six thousand bodies fell from the sky on the day of The Great Fall. More men than women. More light skinned than dark. More older than younger. Mostly well dressed. They were bankers and CEOs and politicians, scientists and academics, businessmen and lobbyists and brokers and traders. They were rich. They were powerful. They were movers and shakers and behind-the-scenes string pullers. They were members of exclusive clubs and secret groups. And a large majority of them came from old and distinguished families.
They were scattered across the exclusion zone, but were concentrated around the town of Chernobyl itself. They fell alone and they fell together. They fell in clumps and piles and lines and strange formations. They smashed into paved roads and parking lots, crashed through roofs, and splashed into ponds and rivers and lakes. They went splat in the mud. One even landed in one of the higher gondolas of the still-standing but long-defunct Ferris wheel at the amusement park in Pripyat. Not a one of them, as far as anyone could tell, survived the fall. Many appeared to have died before they hit the ground.
"Jesus," said Linda, as she watched it rain. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
18.22
"So why do they wipe our memories?" asked Ted.
"I'm sorry?" asked Carl.
Ted raised a shoulder. "You know. When we go back. The reincarnation thing. Why do we have to start from zero again? Why can't we remember our previous lives?"
Carl shook his head. They were sitting side by side, staring at the wall, trying to make a second door appear, since their repeated attempts to get the first one to open had all failed. "I think a few people do remember. At least as kids."
"Yeah, but then most of them forget. But even if there's a few exceptions, why do most people have to start with a blank slate?"
"Not sure they do, Ted. People come into life with all sorts of talents and knacks and fascinations. Some seem way wiser and older from the get go. And maybe we're all informed by our past lives in terms of what we want and how we react and how we feel and things like that, even if we don't remember it."
Ted turned to Carl and frowned. "You keep dodging the question, Bro."
Carl smiled. "So what is your question, exactly?"
"My question is, if we're all in this system where we come to the physical Earth and live many lives, all to grow and learn and mature and evolve and shit, then why don't they have the system set up so that we remember stuff from life to life? I mean, in everything else we do, we learn things and remember what we learned and apply it. You don't go to school every morning with your mind wiped clean. You build on what you learned yesterday. So why do we have to start each life with a clean slate? Doesn't make much sense to me. Seems the evolution process would proceed more quickly if they allowed us to remember from life to life."
Carl cocked his head in thought. "Maybe we start with a clean slate so we can make the same mistakes over and over and really learn from them. So the challenges are greater. So we're totally free to make choices."
Ted shook his head from side to side. "But that just doesn't make any sense, dude," he said. "I mean... Christ. What are these guys? Sadists? Like, we need it harder here? Haven't we already found out what the hell happens when we just keep making the same mistakes over and over? And didn't you just speculate that we've got the collective unconscious and all sorts of built-in traits and reactions and shit? So how are we totally free?"
"Maybe it's more a matter of what choices we make when we're not totally free," said Carl.
Ted shook his head in disgust. "You sound like you must work for them, Carl," he said. "You got an answer for everything." He returned his attention to the wall and concentrated on imagining a door into existence.
Carl sat and thought for a while, then cleared his throat. "Maybe the clean slate is so that we don't get stuck in one place," he said. "Cuz we also learn all sorts of things that limit us and shut us down and close us off. We get our minds made up and we fall into ruts. Maybe the clean slate is a blessing. A second chance. A do-over. A release from the accumulated garbage of a previous life, so we can try some new things. Like waking up in the morning and feeling refreshed and clear and clean and ready to go, rather than tired and bogged down and filled with toxins like the evening before."
Ted sighed but didn't look at Carl. "Maybe," he muttered.
"You just don't want to be a baby again, do you Ted," asked Carl, smiling.
Ted shook his head. "I hate them little buggers," he said. "Shit all over everything."
"Perhaps it would be good to have that judgment wiped clean before your next life, then, eh?"
Ted sighed and stared at the wall. Carl joined him.
They stared.
No door appeared.
Chapter Nineteen
19.1
Zacharael was filled with self-doubt. He understood, now, the reticence of the others of his kind to get involved. It was impossible to know whether he had done the right thing, or whether there even was a right thing. This was why the Primary had been formulated and adopted so very long ago.
Hanging in space above the Earth, he looked at the makeshift nullspace he had taken from the colony wok, just before it had departed forever. His observations and deductions had convinced him that the girl, Gabrielle, was inside. Bu
t what to do with her? He'd hoped to mold her into an instrument of choice, to create for her possibilities and options she might not otherwise have, and to put her in a place where her actions might have a significant impact on the fate of his Beloved. But he knew that his interference could shut down choices as easily as open them up, and that continuing interference might trigger her reactivity, causing her to rebel against him. To steal her away from this human exodus: she might not thank him for that. With her father having been selected against, and her human mate from her school having been selected for, she might have preferred to have been included.
The anguish of the Beloved roared away in the background of his being like a fusion furnace. He was both surprised and delighted to see that some justice had been exacted, and pleased that the Inter-Life had taken a stand. But he knew that the larger question remained, the more important choice had yet to be made. That choice was not in his hands. But there was one last action he was willing to take, as hopeless as it felt.
Zacharael gave the nullspace container a mental push. It began to move, dropping slowly down toward the Beloved. Zacharael followed, casting out his awareness through both time and space until he found the perfect spot. He guided the container gently to the Earth, following the general path taken by the woks as they made their exodus. He lowered Gabrielle to a field of wild flowers near the old cooling pond of the entombed nuclear power plant. The field was strewn with twisted bodies. More bodies had fallen into the pond and were now being nibbled on by the giant carp that lived there.
Zacharael landed the nullspace container right next to the body of Gabrielle's father. The body had landed feet first on the overgrown gravel roadway that surrounded the pond, shattering both of its legs and pushing the crushed bones up into his rib cage. The Angel touched the control panel at the container's end and waited for the mechanism to work. When he heard the top unlatch, and saw the cover begin to swing upward, Zacharael disappeared.
19.2
It would take many days for the thousands of bodies from the Great Fall to be collected, transported, identified where possible, and either cremated, buried, or sent back to their home countries to be cared for there. Many of the bodies were horribly mangled, either from the fall itself, and from what the body landed on, or from the predators and scavengers that fed upon them. When it was mostly sorted out, it was clear that those who had died in the Great Fall, at least those who could be identified, were invariably rich, powerful people who'd been responsible for vast amounts of human suffering and environmental destruction over the years. Many of them had turned out to have almost no public presence whatsoever, and what little was known about them simply tied them to one of the world's richest families. Many were never identified.
But what mattered now to Linda, who knew none of this yet, was what to do next. It was difficult to tell, from their particular vantage point, exactly what had just happened. It appeared, from what they could see in the sky before they'd retreated to their vehicles, that there had been thousands of bodies falling. And it looked as though those bodies were falling all across the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. But they saw no sign of the woks themselves. No huge ships plummeting toward the ground. No large pieces from an explosion. It was Linda's guess that the ships themselves had made it through the Grid, and that perhaps many people, perhaps the vast majority, given the size of the ships and how many there were, had made it through, to make their escape from the dying Earth.
And so one of Linda's objectives may have now flown out of her reach: to stop The Families from escaping the planet they had helped to destroy. How could she know? Did those woks hold the entirety of what William had called "The Families?" If so, who were these that had fallen from the skies? They seemed to be predominantly rich, older men of European extraction, if such generalities could be made from skin color, hair, and the quality of their blood-soaked clothing. Were they the worst of the bunch? William had told her that the matter had been accounted for, that those who had done great evil would not get off scot-free. Was that what they had just witnessed? A dramatic sifting out of the most destructive and psychotic of the bunch? A culling of the Family herd?
If so, then who had done the sifting? Who had called the triage? And how had they decided who would make it through, and who would end up lying in the radioactive dust and mud of the CEZ? And where was William, then? And his inner circle he called the Evolutionary Element? Off to the stars? Sipping their champagne and laughing at the poor Sheeple back on Earth? Congratulating each other on their success in breaking through the Grid? And were there aliens sitting at the table across from them?
Perhaps this had all gone just as William had thought it would. Even the timing. Maybe he'd wanted her right here, to watch what happened. And maybe there was still something else.
"So what do we do now?" asked Cole. He'd stepped around the body of an ancient white-haired man and stood beside Linda as she surveyed the carnage that stretched around them as far as they could see.
Linda turned and gave Cole a bitter smile. "I think we keep going," she said. "We're so close now."
Annabelle spoke up from her spot near the second van. "Surely this Fisherman character is either long gone or amongst the dead," she said, waving toward a pile of three bodies not far from her.
Linda nodded, then took Cole's hand and walked him back toward their van, avoiding the bodies as best she could. She stopped near the van and looked at Annabelle. "That may be," she said, "but we keep going in any event. William's last words to me were 'Urbem Orsus.' I intend to go there, to see the place The Families built, and to see what it was that William wanted me to see."
"How do you know he wanted you to see something?" asked Annabelle.
Linda's eyes tightened. "I told you before, Annabelle. I'm following my nose." She started to say more, then stopped herself. There was no use fighting this old woman and her fears.
Annabelle scrunched her face in distaste but said nothing more. Linda looked at Brenda, who stood near the driver's door of her van, seemingly in shock. "Brenda? Can you still drive us?"
Brenda swiveled her head, snapping to awareness. "Mrs. President?" she said.
Linda pointed in the direction from which the woks had risen. "To Pripyat. To the nuclear plant," she said. "I think we need to see the place where The Families launched their ships."
Brenda glanced up at the road, to determine if it would be passable now, with all the bodies. She looked at Linda and nodded. "I'll do my best."
Linda smiled. "Good." She knelt down to speak to their old Ukrainian guide, who'd remained in the back seat of the van. "Raf?" she said. "Will you still guide us?"
Raf keyed in on Linda's face as though she were the first living person he'd seen in decades. "Da," he said, blinking rapidly. He glanced out his window at the bodies, then back at Linda. He gave her a thumbs up. "We go now," he said, as if he hoped they would be away from the bodies in just a moment, as if he thought the bodies had only fallen in this parking lot. Linda sighed. He'd find out soon enough.
Linda turned to see Muriel already in the driver's seat of the second van. She nodded to Annabelle, who then turned and spoke a few words under her breath to Doobie and Marionette. The three of them got in their van. Linda and Cole got into the first van with Brenda.
The vans' engines started without a moment's hesitation now. Brenda put her van in gear and began to pick a slow, winding path between the bodies. She got to the road and turned left, taking them toward the center of the town of Chernobyl.
19.3
Gabrielle didn't remember much after she was lifted in the blue beam of light. She recalled screaming and struggling, but then it all got hazy and dark, like a half-forgotten nightmare. She had a snippet of memory of being inside the small ship. Her father was coming at her with a needle. She remembered his voice, all slow and wobbly, saying something about this being for her own good. She remembered feeling like she'd been buried alive. And then there was bright sunlight coming in around the
edges of some top or covering and she pushed it up and breathed deeply and shielded her eyes against the glare. After a moment, she sat up and blinked, getting her eyes used to the light. She was sitting in a metal coffin on the edge of a small lake. There was a tall round thing, a cooling tower it must be, in the distance, and a shorter one next to it. And all around her, littering the ground, were what appeared to be dead bodies.
She pulled herself up, swung her legs over the side of the coffin, and sat on the edge. It was warm and very humid and there were huge dragonflies skimming the surface of the lake. A light breeze blew from the direction of the late-afternoon sun. There were no human sounds. No traffic. No machinery. The trees and grass and flowers all had the healthy green glow of spring.
She tried to piece together what had happened. Her father had found her. Somehow he'd known to look for her there at the airport. He no doubt meant to force her onto the colony woks, which were soon to depart, and had blown up the President's jets so that Linda could not follow him. From the cooling towers, and the fact that their group's destination had been Chernobyl, Gabrielle guessed that that was where she was. But how had she gotten away from her father? What was this coffin? And where were the rest of them, Linda and Cole and the others?
Something awful had happened to the colony ships. That's what all the bodies must mean. They must have taken off, and then one of them exploded or something. Gabrielle pushed up to a standing position and stretched her arms over her head. She bent to look inside the coffin. Her backpack was not there. Probably gone for good. Which meant she had no drinking water. Gabrielle sighed with frustration.
It didn't make sense. If a ship had exploded, wouldn't there be emergency crews here looking for survivors? The Families wouldn't just abandon their own people, would they? And shouldn't there be pieces of the wok itself here? Crash debris? The colony ships were huge, according to her father. Surely they'd leave wreckage everywhere?
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 70
