I heard a chuckle.
* * *
"The Gates of Death!" exclaimed Amanda suddenly.
"What?" responded Jon.
"This is what Kali meant, isn’t it? The jump points into the Death system could be called the 'Gates of Death'."
"I don’t know about you, but I assumed she meant actual death."
"I did too, but think about it. Kali knew we were coming here, and she told us we would, only not in a way we would understand at the time."
"She knew you wouldn’t want to come here," added Aleesha, "so she allowed us to mislead ourselves as to her meaning."
"You could be right," Jon said. "It would be like her, and this is the gateway to the Death system."
I heard another chuckle.
"Could she have meant it both ways?" asked BA.
"You had to say it, didn’t you," said Alana.
"Had to be said," added Dick.
"So," Jon said, "You think we shouldn’t go in there?"
No-one answered. He made the decision to delay going in until the morning.
I figured this was a good time to see what was coming. I moved into the future along this timeline, and was very surprised to find I could.
Prometheus went boom. BigMother went boom. The galaxy ended. The universe ended.
Ouch.
I fed the first part of it to Jon as another dream.
* * *
"Study mostly," said Jill. "Mum won't let me fall behind. I've never been much for school, but your Library is incredible. I've never seen anything like it. Jane showed me how to do a search, and instead of conventional information coming back, it delivers six hundred years of accumulated knowledge."
This was news to Jon, and me. Music, and flat and hollo screens, Jon had brought with him. The rest sounded like Outback's copy of Galactica's main archive, continually updated in the centuries since she vanished. But how had Jane obtained a copy of it?
I shifted to the Bridge, and asked her.
She laughed.
"The first time we took Gunbus to Outback, there was a delivery to the ship while Jon was off it. It was a data storage device, and from it I uploaded the whole Galactica-Outback-Gaia database. It was accompanied with a request to not tell Jon about it. It had a return address on it, so I sent it back with the same delivery droid."
"Any idea who it was from?"
"No, but I figured the only people with the access and authority to copy it, who might want Jon to have a copy, were the Keepers."
"How would they know?"
"How do they know any of this?"
"Good point."
* * *
For the record, I accept no responsibility for most of Jon's dreams. The ones in the corridor, and the cat fight, for example, were purely his.
* * *
"I could make up models of the six systems," offered Jane through coms, to the meeting of Generals. "Jon could then watch a motion display of how each system looks through a period of time, looking for something to become familiar to him. But it would require a ship to visit each system, and gather the data. It would likely be a month or more before I had all the data I needed."
One appeared beside me.
"Twelve is organizing this now," she said.
"Why?"
"So it's available as soon as Jon meets the Keepers."
"How?"
"We have our resources now, within Human society. It costs credits to do anything, and we made sure centuries ago we had the means to do what needed to be done."
"What's needed to be done?"
"Humans are so easy to get to do what you want them to. A credit here, a credit there. Some of them even stay bought."
"So you bought the system data they need?"
"Yes, if you look at it that way. Twelve is dealing with it now, and has been for most of the past year. We sent AI piloted ships, designed and built specifically for the task, into those six systems to drop recording drones almost a year ago. The data will be on BigMother, without anyone knowing, when they reach Outback."
"What else have you spent credits on?"
"Stopping the media creating mass panic around what they now call the Hunter Memorandum, for one thing. That was expensive."
"Good call."
"That’s what I'm here for."
"What's our credit levels like then?"
"Enough for our purpose. When the time is right, certain groups with the right level of karma will be saved, because we have the credits to build what will save them."
"And those who don’t have the karma?"
"They will reincarnate somewhere else."
* * *
As BigMother jumped into the Gaia system behind Galactica, One, Twelve and I stood in space and watched them go.
"What a year!" I said.
"Indeed," agreed Twelve.
"It worked out," said One.
We looked at her, puzzled.
"We had to do too much altering, for my liking," she said.
"Still, as you said, it worked out."
"Yes, it did Thirteen. You kept him alive, he became the leader we need, and now we get on with the next phase."
"Next phase?" asked Twelve and I together.
I was hoping for some R&R. Jon had a beach going begging at the moment, and no-one being there was a good time to go visit it. I could even take a full form for a while, and see if one of the local beach babes wanted a dirty weekend with a handsome stranger.
"Thirteen, stay focused."
I shook my head, and looked at her. There was the makings of a grin there, being suppressed.
"Now what?"
She nodded to Twelve, and he vanished.
"Come Thirteen, we have things to do."
"Beaches, babes, and really wild things?"
"No."
"Spoilsport," I mumbled.
She took hold of my shoulder, and we shifted.
2615
We went back in time about ten months, and found ourselves standing outside a freighter, watching Jon and Jane walking away from it with a cat cage.
As soon as Jon was out of sight, One pulled me solid, so we both appeared to be normal people dressed as an executive couple, and pushed me along to the entrance of the ship, where we met Richard Hurndall.
One introduced us, using fake names, which he already knew us by apparently, and he sent us inside. We met Suzy and her mum there, and the kittens were still playing on their kitty castle, around their long suffering mum. They were seemingly unaware they were one fewer than they had been.
We sat, and one of the seal point males came up to me and rubbed himself against me.
"He likes you," said One.
I tickled him under the chin, and he purred, smooging against me, and wanting more. I ruffed him up the wrong way, and smoothed his fur back, and he demanded more.
"We like each other," I said.
Suzy and her mum were happy one of them liked us. As happy as anyone can be when they know they need to find kittens good homes, even though they really don’t want to.
I picked up the kitten, and cuddled him, and we went through the motions of seeing the kitty litter box and food preferences, and when we returned to the kitty castle, Twelve was there with a butler droid, which was controlling a grav chest, with a carry cage on top.
I placed the kitten in the cage.
"What are you going to call him?" asked Suzy.
One looked at me.
"Max," I said.
I'd known a Max once before. It had belonged to the original Jon. And now Jon had once read about one when he was little. The cat in the story was Burmese, but the original Jon's cat had been Siamese. It didn’t matter.
"Why Max?" asked Alice.
"He reminds me of a Max."
They looked confused.
"From the book?"
Still confused.
"Max and the Gang of Five?"
None of them seemed to know about it.
"Tell you what, I'
ll get a copy sent to Suzy when we get home. I'm sure she'll love it. It's really old, but it's really good."
Everyone smiled, and Suzy thanked me in advance.
The five of us left.
Once out into the hubbub of the station, I turned to One.
"Why do we need a kitten?"
"We don’t. You will. Come."
She led us to a temporarily rented office. Inside, Twelve vanished. The butler droid plugged himself into the office computer, and I watched it order a copy of Max and the Gang of Five, and send it to Suzy.
"What are we doing here?" I asked One.
Kali appeared before us.
"Oh," I said.
She took the kitten cage, and vanished.
"Huh?" I said, now totally confused.
"Come," said One, again.
She laid her hand on my arm again, and we shifted.
2605
"Where are we?" I asked One.
"Gaia."
I blinked rapidly for a moment, catching up.
"When?"
"Ten years back from where we were."
"Why?"
"You need to complete the rest of this phase of Jon's journey."
"Please tell me I don’t have to live here as one of them."
"I won't tell you anything then."
She grinned at me, and led me out of the room we'd appeared in, to find a living room with a single occupant.
I looked myself in the face.
"Huh?"
The man before me changed appearance.
"What?"
They were laughing at me, and it took a moment to understand the joke.
"Hi Fourteen. Why are you impersonating me?"
One interrupted.
"Your part is done Fourteen. Thank you."
"Where did you say that beach was?" asked Fourteen.
"Gold Coast. Just go ten years into the future, and follow Gunbus."
"I will."
And he was gone.
One turned to me. She was still grinning.
I was past the ability to speak, and just stood there with my mouth open.
"Oh come on Thirteen. He was kidding."
"Yeah, right."
I knew Fourteen. He hadn't been kidding. He'd already be on a beach somewhere scoping out beach babes. And I was stuck here, doing… What was I doing here?
"What am I doing here?" I asked.
"There is one last task to do, concerning Jon. But it will take ten years to do, and then another year spent preparing the system in general, and the parents in particular, for his return. Fourteen has been here a long time pretending to be you, so you wouldn’t have to be born and do the whole lifetime here."
"He did the whole being born thing?"
She nodded. Okay, now I didn’t begrudge him the beach and the babes. He'd had a worse assignment than I had.
"And the kitten?"
"Kali has already delivered the kitten to you, at the same time she took it. All you have to do is catch up and take delivery when she arrives."
"And Jon?"
She told me.
I should have guessed.
Jonathon Hunter
returns
in
Home is where the Hero is.
Acknowledgements
Once again, a big thank you for Helen Ellis, sounding board, ear that listens, and experience which talks.
Thanks goes to Elliott Webber for the cover design for this book.
A Message to my Readers
I’ve had a lot of fun writing this book. There is still a lot of story to come, and I invite you to come along for the full journey with me.
If you have enjoyed this book, I hope you will take the time to leave a review on the Amazon site. All reviews are greatly appreciated, as they help assist purchasing decisions by other readers. Sales and reviews will help me to focus on the next book in the series, which impacts how fast the next installment is released.
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Max and the Gang of Five can be found here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P0J2UW2
Thank you.
Also by Timothy Ellis
These Kindle eBooks can be found on
Timothy Ellis’ Kindle Author page.
These links can also be found at TimothyEllisAuthor.com.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00HRTTIJG
The Hunter Legacy
Part One
Hero at Large.
Hunted Hero Hunting.
Send in the Hero.
Make or Break the Hero.
Hail the Hero.
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The Long Road to Gaia Page 16
