Shadows in the House With Twelve Rooms

by J. Price Higgins

  Chapter 43

  Sefura

  Halfway down the dimly lit hall to George's quarters, Sefura turned and stared into the deep shadows behind her. Her heart thudded against her rib cage. Someone's down there, she thought. Pressing her body tight against the wall, not daring to blink, she watched until her eyes watered from the strain. No sound. No stirring.

  You and George are the only two people in this wing, and George is behind locked doors, she reminded herself. Shaking off the fear, she continued walking toward his room.

  As she raised her hand to press the intercom button, strange scrabbling noises vibrated from behind the door. Frowning, she put her ear close to the polished wood. The unfamiliar rustling came again, concentrated on the spot where her ear pressed.

  "George?" she said, her voice low and timorous.

  I'm letting my imagination run away with me, she thought. He couldn't possibly be in the anteroom. His chair is too wide.

  Nevertheless, she said, "George, it's Sefura. Do you need your serum?" A pale bead of light flicked just above her head. He had switched on the intercom. She stepped back a little, staring at the light.

  "Open your door, George. I'm coming in. I'll fix the serum for you."

  "N . . . N . . . o." The sound came high, reedy. "Ch . . . chan . . . ging." His breathing labored from the speaker.

  "George, let me help. Please let me help." She stood on tiptoes, pressed her mouth close to the speaker. "Please."

  "G . . . go!"

  Sefura stumbled backwards at the finality, the vehemence. The light switched off and she backed silently down the hall. Reaching the intersecting corridor, she raced from his wing of the palace toward the warm light of sanity. The library door opened as she reached it and a stream of light poured across the immense ballroom floor.

  "There you are," Munoz said. "Come. Join us for coffee." His tall frame moved aside as Bianca stepped up beside him.

  "Is George all right?"

  "He didn't want his serum." Sefura looked back over her shoulder. "Something's not right. He—"

  "All that means is that he managed to give himself his own injection," Bianca interrupted. "He'll sleep now." She held out her hand.

  Sefura glanced once more toward the shadowy hall. Drawing a deep breath, she followed Bianca into the rich warmth of rosewood paneling, white carpet, and soft leather. A thousand books lined the walls. Their pages, bound within the same soft leather, exuded peace, comfort, and safety. Of all the rooms in the palace, this was her favorite. The remnants of her fear dissipated as she sipped the strong espresso.

  "Raphael and I were discussing the merits of the BH Gene," Bianca said. Chuckling, she turned her attention to Munoz. "I made the mistake of giving Sef my Dakotan dossier to read. She practically devoured the thing."

  "It was the most interesting piece of history I'd read in forever," Sefura broke in. "When you think about the logistical reasoning power it produced, then think about all the fields of science that require such abilities. It's invaluable."

  "Not only priceless in research, Sefura. The Dakotan ability to project where and when a volcano is going to erupt, or an earthquake is going to occur, has saved the world's nations countless dollars—to say nothing of countless lives," Munoz interjected. Leaning forward in his chair, he turned toward his consort. "Bianca, I say the BH Gene is worth trying to duplicate. Somewhat modified, perhaps, depending on Our ultimate needs, but it seems to me those abilities could be used—under the right guidance—to keep unruly nations in line. A first line of defense, if you will." He leaned back, tented his fingers under his chin. "Besides, if We can find out what makes it tick, We will have the answers to Our current pressing problem," he said cryptically.

  "I don't know. We might end up with more trouble than we have now. You didn't see that young man writhing on the floor with that growth at the back of his skull—blood red and pulsing as if something were clawing its way into his brain. I did."

  "I didn't read anything in your notes about a growth, Bianca," Sefura said.

  "It was something I saw at Victoria Jensen's wedding, Sef. As far as I know, it's the first time anyone outside the Dakota family has seen it."

  "Maybe it was just dividing itself," Sefura said.

  "Dividing itself?" Bianca stared blankly.

  "You know. Like your bugs do. I know brains don't usually divide themselves, but maybe whatever their great grandfather did changed that." Sefura sipped at her coffee. "Or maybe it's an extra brain that takes a long time to grow up."

  Bianca sat quietly for a moment. "It could be, Raphael," she said, eyes crinkling with excitement. "The BH Gene is a product of manipulated DNA. If the right instructions were sent—" Her voice trailed off to thoughtful silence.

  "Literally divides? That's a little far-fetched, Bianca."

  She shook her head impatiently. "Not that. An extra brain. More precisely, an extra brain region. Shortly after conception, three major brain regions with millions of superfluous neurons form from the neural tube. Normally, those extra cells, along with their trillions of synapses, are discarded by the brain in a pruning process that continues until about the age of twelve years or so. But suppose those cells were redirected right from the beginning. " She chewed at her bottom lip, lost in thought.

  Munoz and Sefura watched Bianca's face as she muttered to herself. Sefura opened her mouth to speak and Munoz placed a finger against his lips. She closed her mouth.

  "Nerve cells. Computer brains. Receptors." Bianca's eyes widened, her muttering ceased. Looking from Munoz to Sefura, she said, "That's exactly what he did. Victor Dakota created a fourth major brain region."

  "Wait a minute, Bee," Sefura said. "In order to understand how our brain processes information, I had to take a semester of brain anatomy and, from what I remember, we need all the skull space we can get. Wouldn't an added mass squash the tissue around it—more apt to act like a tumor than anything useful?"

  "Not if it's part of the conceived brain, Sef. A minute skull enlargement, and the other three regions would adjust space needs accordingly. Perhaps the new area takes over functions previously assigned to other areas. Maybe the pleats and folds become more compact. The cerebral cortex may lose one or two of its six layers or other parts of the brain could become more specialized than they already are and cell groups are reduced. I would have to do a dissection to answer those questions. But I have no doubts that Victor Dakota created a fourth region. Not only that, I believe he programmed a unique protection code for its neurotransmitters."

  "In plain language, Bianca, that means what?" Munoz asked.

  "Unlike the brains of other creatures, our brain, as well as our skull, does most of its growing after we are born and keeps on growing until about the age of eighteen. However, the cell pruning process stops just about the time puberty begins.

  "While Ellery's sons and a couple of others were trying to help her nephew, she kept asking if the bud had opened. It's all beginning to make sense." Her olive skin glowed with excitement. "My God. The beauty of it, Raphael. A fourth region—its core protected from the onslaught of pruning basic to normal growth! Virginal neurons coming of age without risk of being eliminated."

  "Brain cells that require the outpouring of male hormones to trigger them into action," Munoz said. "That explains the age the trauma phenomenon occurs, confirmed by those Dakotan families you talked to. But what's it for?"

  "I suspect it's the power source of that Dakotan ability to project future cause and effect so accurately," Bianca said. "Lord knows what else it does."

  "Probably where they store all that information they remember." Sefura set her cup on the end table beside her chair. "If I could do half of what Doctor Jensen's uncle could do, everybody would have to be a whole lot more careful about what they said around me, at least according to what I read in one of those old clippings you have."

  "What are you talking about, Sefura?"

  "President Garland's Inaugural Ball. He and a member of
the North American Federation Coalition quarreled over certain campaign promises, the usual stuff about who said what and when. Jeremiah Dakota got involved, as well as several others, and the President suddenly decided that Jeremiah couldn't attend the ball—the boy was only seventeen and mixed drinks were being served."

  "I remember now." Bianca picked up the story. "Victor Dakota was furious. He accused Garland of banning Jeremiah from the festivities because the young man had argued on the side of the Coalition. The ensuing altercation nearly ruined the Ball, until the press got involved. What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Since I don't have the BH Gene," Sefura said, "I can't quote it verbatim, but apparently there was a newsman around who had tapes to prove that what Jeremiah quoted was absolutely word-for-word perfect—right down to the ummms and ahhhs." Sefura stretched her arms high, brought them down, and stifled a yawn with her hand. "I'd say Doctor Victor was a brilliant man to have created such a flawless memory. Wouldn't you?"

  Bianca sat dumfounded. Munoz gaped.

  Sefura opened the library door. "I'm calling it an evening, Bee. Goodnight—"

  A loud, sustained outcry, doleful and malevolent, resounded through the marble rooms.

  Sefura froze.

  Bianca leaped for the door and yanked her sister back into the library. "You stay here. Don't open that door unless you know it's me. Do you understand?"

  The howl smashed through the rooms again. This time, it sang Bianca's name.

  "I'll need your help, Raphael. George is into second stage metamorphosis. We'll have to take him to the island. Tonight. When this is over, he'll be too dangerous to leave unattended." She whirled to Sefura. "No one is to come in," she repeated. "And you are not to leave this room, no matter what you hear."

  Sefura nodded and Bianca raced from the room with Munoz right beside her.

  Chapter 44

  Ellery

  Ellery watched the shadows of the dancing tableau on the beach below. Beside her, Ned Harris clutched the deck railing, his knuckles white.

  "I don't know about this, Ellery," he said, his voice cracking. "Letting Vickie dance—there's so many people, so many minds. How do you know it won't injure the baby? How can you be so sure?"

  "She's a Dakotan, Ned, and the child she carries is a Dakotan. By joining with the others, my daughter is passing a great gift to your daughter. They'll be all right." She turned her face to the moonlit sands.

  Below, the flickering shadows seemed to gather into rippling rings of gold, locking one into the other, flowing across the sands in ever widening circles as the dancers lifted arms high, pressed palm to palm, swooped down and back and lifted again. The pattern was always changing, always circling, joining.

  Mesmerized, Ellery held her breath as immense power surged and ebbed above the sands. Colors flashed. Shapes formed, paused, fell back into the flowing power like kaleidoscopic images turning on a wheel. A glint of gold brushed across her feet, whirled away with a dizzying spray of light. Her mind stilled as she watched sand ripple like a still pond of water into which a stone is dropped. Deep in her being a great longing reached out, rushed headlong toward the widening circles. She fought to keep her balance as her body strained against the deck rail.

  I belong there.

  The thought sang.

  Her eyes searched for, and found, an approaching spiral of gold. She balanced on one foot, the other poised to meet the ring. Of a sudden, a great plume of fire shot upward, curled down upon itself. Before she could cry out a warning, the spinning mass exploded around the dancers, billowed outward, and raced toward the house. Up and over the deck it rolled. For a moment, a rose-colored haze enveloped her body, then flashed back across the sands. In its place was joy inexpressible and a sense of assurance, of triumph and wonder unlike anything she had ever known. Deliverance from the finite to the infinite came and she understood immortality in all its guises. In that instant, she knew she had glimpsed the immensity of the Whole: a meaning and drift to the universe and man impossible to describe. Even as she struggled to define the emotions and knowledge, they slipped away.

  Ellery wiped a film of moisture from her forehead, unable to stop the question that slithered to the forefront of her mind. A delusion? After all, delusions could possess the mind just as firmly as facts and were just as easy to believe.

  "No," she muttered to herself, shaking her head back and forth. "Not delusion. There is something in man that is neither mind nor body. Something that is not subject to the conditions of space and time, of flesh and bone, of blood and genes." Existence by those terms is but a shadow of what we truly are, she thought. Like a dream without a dreamer; fragmented and soon forgotten. Not so what I felt. That was whole, limitless, and eternal. That was reality.

  "My, God, Ellery. I feel like I am watching creation itself." Ned clutched her arm in a viselike grip. At her gasp of pain, his hand fell away. "Sorry," he mumbled.

  The spell was broken.

  Body trembling, she nodded, but did not speak. Somehow, Papa Victor, you found the key, she thought. You have given us what you didn't know you had—a pearl of great price.

  Her mind raced with the implications. The Dakotan memory is important, she thought, but as nothing compared to the true gift they'd received. She gazed at the shadowy figures spread across the beach, still dipping and swaying as if listening to a magnificent concerto, united, disciplined, and in control. From their seed would come future avatars: teachers of peace and unity, givers of power and wisdom. Given time—and practice—the whole world could become Dakotan in thought and action. Now it was doubly important that the BH gene, their legacy, be protected.

  As if on cue, the dancers stopped.

  In the silence, ever so faint, came a mournful howl: malignant, Evil. Ellery lifted her head and listened to the night. Shivering, she hugged her arms close against her body. The hounds of Hell, she thought. They are loose. Victoria! She's in danger. The child, too. Beside her Ned stood rigid, his head raised into the breeze. She reached out and lightly touched his arm. He jerked back.

  "I'm sorry, Ellery," he said sheepishly. "For a moment, I thought I heard a howling." He shrugged his shoulders.

  "You heard it, Ned. I did, too. Now listen to me. I want you and Vickie to move far away from here."

  "What?"

  "I'm serious about this. I want you to take her away. She's not safe here anymore. Don't ask me how I know, I just know."

  "But my job! Our house!"

  "Forget that. I'll sell your house for you. You will find another job. She's in terrible danger. I can feel it, smell it. If I put out my hand, I will touch it."

  "But where will we go, Ellery?"

  Below, two figures walked slowly toward the house, pausing every few steps as if to rest. Three more followed behind,. The Dakotans were coming.

  "Kansas," Ellery blurted. "Katie Hudson will let you come. Take Victoria to Kansas, Ned. Do not write or call. If I need to get a message to you, I'll find a way. Above all, let no one else know that Victoria is Dakotan or that you are from anywhere near this area. Agreed?"

  "I don't know. You're asking us to take a big step into nothing." He stared down at the figures. "There's Vickie. I'll talk to her." He raised his hand to wave, stopped the motion in mid air. "She's in labor!" He charged toward the steps.

  Ellery whirled to the rail then raced after her son-in-law.

  Matthew supported his sister as she struggled to move across the sand. Half bent, her hands clutched at her swollen belly. A low moan of pain escaped her lips. She slumped to the sand. Her eyes squeezed into thin lines. Kneeling beside her, Ned patted her face with his big hand. He looked up at Ellery.

  "What can I do? What can I do?"

  "Victoria Danielle!"

  Vickie's eyelids flew open as Ellery knew they would. They always did when she used her daughter's formal name.

  "The contractions—when did they start?" she said softly.

  "There was a sound, Mama. A horrible, evi
l sound." The young woman looked at her husband. "It wants my baby," she cried. "It wants my baby."

  "Nothing's going to take our baby. Nothing!" He bent and kissed her forehead. Vickie cried out, her face tightened.

  "The contractions, Victoria. During the dance?"

  "No. When the sound came. The baby jumped and began to flail her arms and legs. Then the pains came." Vickie grabbed at her stomach. "Mama, she isn't going to wait."

  Ellery nodded. "Ned, you carry Vickie to the house. Matthew, I'll need hot water. Lots of it."

  "We can help, Doctor Jensen—my two sisters and I. We've birthed each other several times. Leave the gentlemen out of this one. We know what to do."

  Ellery looked into the calm face of Katie Hudson and nodded.

  As Ned lifted Vickie into his arms, she tilted her head back, gazed upward and said, "The baby's coming early, Mama. Does her angel know it's time?"

  Turning her own face upward, Ellery smiled as she traced the patterns of twelve constellations in the star filled heavens. Two months shy of her fifth birthday, Vickie had asked the magic question—where do babies come from, Mama? The story of a house with twelve rooms where souls waited to be born seemed the perfect answer. And it was. In fact, it had become a favorite bedtime story. Memories flooded her mind, vivid and real.

  How she had once fancied the idea of angels and babies living in a house in the sky; a house with twelve rooms just like the one she lived in. Eyes fixed on the star-filled firmament, lost in childhood reverie, her mind ticked off each room with its guardian. She frowned. Who guarded The Twins—the sixth room? The name flitted at the edge of her memory. It wouldn't come.

  "Mama, does he know?" The voice held a touch of fear.

  Ellery reached over and gently touched her daughter’s face. "Yes, child. Her guardian knows."

  She watched Ned carry Victoria through the French doors and disappear into the house. My granddaughter will draw breath on the sixth day in the sixth month, she thought. The Rings of Maat have linked, John would say. The day of Truth from the room of Truth. Her hands reached out and upward toward the night sky. "Truth shall keep us free," she whispered to the stars. Her step was light as she entered the house and followed the three women into the bedroom.