"One last quick note, Madam," Cole said. "Some of us in the Element had to go on ahead, and have chosen to forego the physical for the time being, given our destination and the nature of the work that awaits us. Call us the Fortunate, if you will, in remembrance of our forebears. And remember what I told you. Death is but the doorway to a trip back home. These bodies are simply discarded shells. I'm off to new adventures! So perchance we'll meet again. I may even find your son. Love, William."
"There's a postscript," said Cole, glancing around at the others. He read the rest. "By the way, Madam, isn't it marvelously ironic that those Heaven's Gate bozos got closer to the truth than most manage to do? Don't mistake me, they were a bunch of nutters, but they got some things right! Ta! Wm."
That was the end of William's note.
Linda wiped her face dry and looked around at her traveling companions. "You guys ready to go home?" she asked.
Everybody nodded.
19.18
Ted and Carl stared at the wall. They had yet to create a second door. Or a key for the first one.
"Does it matter what sort of door we imagine, do you think?" asked Ted.
"Doesn't seem like it should," said Carl.
"Do we both have to imagine the same thing?
"I dunno," said Carl. "What sort of door are you imagining?"
"A thick, steel door with locks and a keypad on it, like we had in the Lodge," said Ted. "You?"
"I'm imagining one of those hollow-core pieces of shit like you'd find in a cheap house," said Carl. "Painted light blue. With a spy hole in it."
"Maybe we should both imagine the same sort of door. Double our power, you know? Get in resonance and shit."
Carl cocked his head. "Sure. Maybe. You wanna imagine my door or should I imagine yours?"
"I'll imagine your little hollow core door, Carl. That sounds easier to break through, in case it comes locked."
"Okay," said Carl. They sat together and imagined a light blue hollow core door with a spy hole in it.
They sat for a long time.
"I wonder if we've got this all wrong," said Carl.
"How's that?" asked Ted.
"Well, we keep thinking it's about our personal power. Like, we have to actively imagine the door. Create it. Manifest it. Make it so." He scratched his nose. "I'm wondering if it might work better to assume that the door's already there, and all we have to do is see it."
Ted grinned. "Nice hypothesizing there, Maestro," he said. "Let's try it."
Carl and Ted sat side-by-side, trying to see the door that was already there.
They sat for a very long time.
"Maybe if we close our eyes?" said Ted.
"Maybe," said Carl. "Let's try it."
They closed their eyes and tried to see the door that was already there.
There it was.
"Son of a bitch," muttered Ted.
"I hear ya, Brother," said Carl. He reached out and grabbed Ted by the arm. "You ready?"
"To leave?" said Ted. "Hell yeah!"
"Okay," said Carl. "Keep your eyes closed and follow me."
With closed eyes, Carl and Ted stood, walked across the room, and exited through the door that had always been there.
Chapter Twenty
20.1
Zacharael had watched as the human named William Reynolds and his twenty-six companions popped out of the physical, oriented themselves to the Astral, and then blinked away to an even higher level. He found in himself great resonance with Reynolds' recorded words, which Gabrielle and her companions had just witnessed: Zacharael was not sure which choice was the best either.
But he had done all he could. All he dared. The choicemakers were all in place. Now all they had to do was choose. Zacharael did not envy them their situation. Yet he knew that all self-aware species must face such things as they grew into maturity. There was great possibility in this moment. But also danger. Not all species survived their own choices.
Zacharael hung in space above the Earth, following the slow progress of the choicemakers. The Sages were near. Zacharael had not yet seen them but he could feel their presence. He knew that they, too, were watching and waiting, to see which events transpired. And he knew, or hoped, that he and the Sages shared a common concern for the Beloved. But Zacharael did not know how these bizarre creatures might act or respond to what they perceived. Having spurned the Cogency, and having created their own, private band of reality, the Sages were not bound by the Primary.
They might do anything.
20.2
Linda sat next to the window, staring out across the ocean. Cole sat beside her, asleep. Night was chasing them back home. Soon it would overtake them. She was glad to be traveling in the daylight, if only for a little while. She needed the sun after so long underground.
Mr. Bluebird had outdone himself this time. The return flight was direct from Kiev to Augusta: a large, richly appointed private jet with a shower, comfortable furnishings, and high quality food and drink. And the sky was smooth this time, rather than choppy. How much of that was due to the skills of the flight crew, whom they had not met this time, Linda did not know. She was just thankful to not be jostled around. The turbulence inside was enough.
What had happened back there? Linda's mind was a maelstrom of thoughts and memories and imagined conversations. And her heart was deeply exhausted. The Families were gone. She now knew what William had meant, when he'd told her that the evil ones had been accounted for. Had the aliens been involved with that? Had Spud? Had the Grid served as some sort of sieve that strained out the demons and cast them back upon the face of the Earth? Linda sighed. They might never know. But it felt to her as though, in some way, the Life, with their Grid, had taken a stand. Not to help the humans on Earth, perhaps, but at least to insist that they be left alone to work things out on their own.
She felt some relief at that. It was good to know that the secret cabal was no longer on Earth to threaten her. And it was good to have the aliens step away. Perhaps she and Cole and the children would be safe now. At least as safe as anybody could be on this crazy planet. But beyond the relief, she felt sadness. And anger. Sadness that humanity had become so polarized that some of them no longer felt like a part of the species, so much so that they'd chosen to leave. And anger at their leaving. Because there was judgment in The Families' departure. The "beautiful people" had flown the coop, leaving the poor sleepers to muddle through on their own until the end of the world. William was right. It was very difficult to step out of that reaction.
Much of her sadness was for William. Or for herself, if she was honest. The sight of William's dead body had disturbed her greatly. Her physical self had recoiled. She'd wanted to flee. The reaction was one of bone and blood, something built into the flesh. It did not matter that she knew and understood with her rational mind that William's consciousness continued on somewhere else. He'd gone out just as he'd wanted to, in control of his destiny, working for the things he valued the most. But here, now, in this world, in her body, it was so very difficult to hold onto that understanding, especially in the presence of his body. William was dead. Dead meant gone.
She imagined the scene: William and his fellows all meeting in that strange spiral room. Greeting, perhaps. Hugging. Making plans. Excited that the time had finally come for them to leave the Earth and make their way amongst the stars and galaxies and realities. Had those bombs been bursting overhead as they'd done so? Had the woks already departed? Had they already seen the culling of the evil and twisted members of their people? What then? They lay down on those spiral steps, head to toe. They straightened their clothes, neatened their hair, took a deep, calming breath. And then... what? Some gentle poison? A pill? A drop of liquid? A haze of deadly gas? Whatever it was, it took them quickly and painlessly, if the evidence of the bodies could be believed. And then there they were, freed from their bodies, their husks, their shells, and hovering in the air just above. Did they congratulate each other? Did they cheer? Did
they cry? And did they then dive down through that strange, black, glossy alien-eye at the bottom of the room, and onward to their next lives?
Linda shook her head. Was she angry because she hadn't been invited to go along? Or had she been invited? And was the invitation still open to her, if only she were brave enough to put that poison to her own lips? Linda reached up and wiped away the tear that was crawling slowly down her cheek. A part of her was ready to do just that. She would welcome the rest.
No. She was angry to be left alone with the mess. Angry to be left to deal with the fact that The Families, in enacting their centuries-long Plan, had actually made things on Earth worse than they would otherwise have been. And angry to be saddled with the burden of having to make a terrible choice. She thought of the old Inuit saying the shaman Utterpok had shared with her out on the ice. "We must entertain the spirits," he had said, his eyes wrinkled with amusement. Linda frowned. "I hope you're enjoying the show," she muttered to herself, glancing at the cabin's ceiling.
William had said that she'd agreed to her choice long ago. Did he mean that the burden came with the Presidency, and that simply by seeking office she'd accepted the burden? Or did he mean something else? There were, stored safely in the back of her mind, memories she'd yet to access and bring to the light of consciousness. Memories of them. The Life. Memories of Spud and his cohort, of dark, strange nights and frightening experiences. And she just a young girl. Was it then that she'd accepted the burden of this choice? Or did it go even further back? To before this life? To between the lives, in some other realm? To a time when she had not been Linda Travis? Was it even weirder? Was she, like the Church of the Stranger considered Cole to be, somehow alien herself? When all the rules were broken, when consciousness could live life after physical life in body after body, when spirits could flit about the cosmos and take an infinity of forms, the words "alien" and "human" got very fuzzy around the edges.
The scariest thing to Linda was the possibility that her mind and heart had been captured by William. Enthralled. Changed. Manipulated. She sensed that Cole was worried about her. And she knew that Annabelle trusted neither Linda nor her mission to Chernobyl. Was her love for William, her caring, her sobbing, her wish that he were still here, just a simple case of the Stockholm syndrome, that strong bonding that can form between captive and captor? Or was it a right and natural reaction to a good human being who was trying to do his best for others and the world, according to the values he held and the wisdom he'd garnered during his life? Had the same thing happened with the aliens during those lost, early meetings? Had she been warped? Molded into something they could use? Programmed?
There was no way to tell.
Linda closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
Maybe she wasn't really alone with this. When she thought of William being gone, she felt alone. It was not wanting to be alone with this that had compelled her to drag these people half way around the planet. But was she alone? Cole was right there. He'd do anything for her. Give her anything. And she sensed that Gabrielle might as well. Perhaps even Marionette. Back home were Stan and Mary and Keeley and Ness. There was Stendahl Banks. There was Alice, newly returned to Earth. There were the Middle Children. She could gather them together. They could sit for hours and hours, looking at the situation from every direction. Examine all of their assumptions and beliefs. Argue their positions. Take votes. Try to convince each other. And these good, well-meaning people who loved her would do their best to help. But in the end, it felt to Linda that it would always be on her. The final word. The decision. The choice. And she'd already wasted enough time on this strange trip to Urbem Orsus. The serum had been analyzed and successfully tested. The urgency felt more palpable by the minute.
In the end, Linda was not sure now that she even wanted help making this decision. That thought made her wince, as she'd been taught not to think of herself in such "high and mighty" ways. But Linda was not convinced that any of her friends and advisors were capable of making this choice. Not in the way that she was. She knew then that she believed what William had told her: she had agreed to this. She had been made ready. It was her burden. Perhaps it was even her honor. She wanted this choice. There was no one else she could trust it to.
And that's what William's last grand gesture had been all about. To point to the spot she needed to get to, where she could make the choice she needed to make. The top of the mountain. Where both slopes, no matter how awful they looked at first glance, also felt like invitations to adventure and learning and growth. Something skipped in Linda's heart then. A twinge of excitement. A gasp of cold water on her tired mind. Like a new possibility spied out of the corner of her eye, peeking from behind the edge of a tall, solid wall. Like a step into the field that Rumi had described. She couldn't wrap her mind around it. Couldn't clothe it in thoughts or understanding. When she tried to she lost it. But when she closed her eyes and remembered William's face as he lay there on that spiraling step in his silly Hawaiian shirt, she could begin, just barely, to feel it.
And she knew. And perhaps that was the scariest thing of all.
Linda knew what she was going to choose.
20.3
Keeley waved her hand and sent another email off into the ether. The Families' One-Two Punch had been visible hundreds of miles from Chernobyl. The falling bodies had been seen from outside the Exclusion Zone. So word of the strange aerial phenomena and the departure of a large number of huge UFOs was already racing through the global media. And local Ukrainian and Belorussian emergency response teams were working through the night to recover the dead. Very few knew what to make of it.
Back in Augusta, Stan and Mary and Keeley knew a bit more that most: The Families had fled the scene of the crime. Stan had been in contact with Linda and Cole directly by phone, once they'd left the Exclusion Zone. The connection had been poor, but they'd managed to tell him the gist of it. The danger had passed. Ness and Mary and the kids could come out of their nullspace hiding place. The President was returning to Augusta.
Keeley, though still in the hospital, was back at work. If the President was going to come back from the dead and resume her duties, she was going to need her Chief of Staff. Keeley was finally feeling up to the job, even though she still tired easily.
The first order of business would be Linda's miraculous rescue. It would have to be handled well. After a full day of national, media-led grieving, and that on the heels of two weeks of orchestrated worry about her health, the public might not take well to the idea that they'd kept Linda's rescue, and her subsequent Ukrainian holiday, a secret from them. Better to stage a second rescue. That was Sten's opinion, at least. And while they'd need to wait for Linda to return to sign off on their plan, there was nothing stopping them from working out the details.
Sten was full of ideas. He wanted to stage a brave adventure, with scuba divers descending into the dark, underwater caverns of the flooded medical facility underneath what had once been Linda's vacation cabin. They'd find Linda alone, afraid, but still alive, trapped in an airtight room in which the oxygen was rapidly depleting. It would make for a marvelous show.
The problem was, there were now so many levels of truth, so many events and circumstances that only a few of them knew about, so many questions that were left unanswered, that neither Keeley nor Sten knew what they could or should reveal. All of that would have to be hammered out upon Linda's return. It was going to be a busy time, when their President's plane touched down in Augusta.
But they couldn't just clobber her with questions and demands. Linda and her family had been through the wringer these past weeks. Iain had not yet returned. They would need time to just be together and process it all.
Keeley sighed. She closed her laptop and stared for a bit out the window, watching as the afternoon sun slipped slowly toward the horizon. She was thankful that the hospital's air conditioning worked so well. Mary had told her that the high had topped one hundred and ten degrees just after lunchtime. She h
oped that Chapin, whom she'd been assured was being well cared for by one of the Middle Children back at the Presidential Home, was doing okay in this heat.
There was no time. That was the thing of it. Part of Keeley wanted to usher Cole and Linda directly from the plane to home, reunite them with their children, and then put the house under armed guard, deflecting all visitors and phone calls. But she knew that Linda would not go for that. The matters of her reappearance, and of Greensleeves, could not be put off. She would make some time for her kids. Cole would no doubt give them all the time that he could. But the Linda Travis that Keeley knew was going to come home and get back to work as quickly as her own health allowed. There would be no stopping her.
Keeley picked up her laptop and started an email to Sten, who was no doubt back in his office now. She didn't think that Linda would go along with grabbing footage of her being hauled soaking wet out of the Squirrel facility and rushed away on a helicopter. The last thing she'd want to do, probably, was go back to the Squirrel at all. Could they concoct a scenario that had her being pulled from some collapsed building? Or was there was a large pool in which they could recreate that scene right here in Augusta?
Then she wrote another short note to Stan. He'd have the latest ETA. From that, they could schedule a meeting. Get everybody together. Talk through options and scenarios. Get the go-ahead on the Greensleeves cure. Strategize and plan. Maybe tomorrow morning? Give Linda and Cole and the kids the evening together? Keeley hit send, and then closed her eyes. Perhaps a short nap. That would feel really nice.
20.4
Stan monitored things from his office in the State House. For now, the Middle Children were meeting the obligations of their chosen roles in government, medicine, business, and the military, holding down the smooth operation of the city of Augusta, and helping to hold together the federal government. That would no doubt all change at some point, seeing as how Linda had agreed to let them stay here and share the Earth, and that she'd agreed to give them Augusta as a starting place. Where she and her family and the U.S. government would end up next was anybody's guess. Maybe there would be no next. Maybe Linda would turn the running of the country over to the hybrids altogether. Take Cole and the kids and go hole up somewhere that nobody could ever find her. Stan wouldn't blame her if she did. He wouldn't wish the presidency on anybody at a time like this. In any event, Stan was thankful that most of the executive responsibilities had been transferred over to Speaker Simpson in Kenosha. That would make it easier for Stan to do what he had to do.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 75
