by Brandt Legg
“Good day, then.” Dunaway rose, bowed slightly and headed for the door. He turned, before leaving. “I’ll see you at your funeral. It will be quite an affair. Two Presidents, senators, governors, Carnegie, Rockefeller and even J.P. Morgan will be there. Sorry you’ll be inside a box. Funny, when those school kids study about Hibbs in the future, it’ll be as a footnote to history. His assassination triggered the Second American Civil War. I’ll see you back in our age, Nate, but you’ll hardly recognize it.”
I caught up to Dunaway in the street. He crushed out a cigarette. “I thought you might change your mind.”
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“You have documents that incriminate Omnia.”
“Yes.”
“I need them.”
“Forget it.”
“What, Hibbsy, ol’ boy, don’t you trust me?”
“Hibbs might trust you, but I don’t,” I answered him as Nate.
“Come on, Nate. I don’t want the originals you have stashed at Graydon in Leesburg, just the carbons and duplicate photos you keep in your office here. I assume you’ve got a few more sets hidden somewhere else. Your mausoleum? Your mistress’s home in Georgetown? Maybe somewhere in New York? I don’t really care, the more the better, but I need a set to keep you alive.”
“You think I need you to do that? I’ve spent the last thirty years cutting deals. I was born poor, and now I’m one of the most powerful men in Washington. You’re wasting my time, Dunaway.”
“I don’t doubt you’re a great dealmaker and shrewd broker, Hibbsy, but you miscalculated in this case. The President was your last shot and you misplayed. You’ve got hours left to live and there isn’t time for you to run around town flashing documents when there’s a target on your back.”
He was telling the truth. Maybe all along Hibbs had lived only until 1937 because of Dunaway’s intervention. It would be hard to say . . . time’s a funny thing and a hundred other dimensions would play out a hundred different ways.
“Dunaway, I’m trusting you.” I looked into his eyes. “Very reluctantly, I’m trusting you. Don’t screw me. You may have a strong grasp on the next hundred years but I’m no lightweight and I’ll find you in another time and undo you. Understand?”
“Hey, Nate, Hibbs has given you a little backbone. I like that.” He patted my back. “No worries, I can beat you fifty legitimate ways, I don’t need tricks to do it.”
He followed me back into my office. I led him down to a secret wine cellar. Hidden safes were a bit of an obsession for me and there were sixteen concealed in various parts of the building. The floor safe in the wine cellar contained the most important papers, including the Omnia proof.
“Stay out of sight for a few days, Hibbsy,” said the man who was Dunaway, as I handed him the roll of documents. “Don’t go to any of your usual places.”
47
As soon as Dunaway left with the documents, Hibbs departed Washington and several hours later arrived at the Woodgrove Estate in Round Hill, Virginia. The original stone home had been constructed in the 1700s. During the American Revolutionary War, the local regiment used it as a planning site. Throughout the Civil War, Woodgrove was occupied by troops and became an important meeting place for spies. In the early 1900s, a reclusive friend of Hibbs owned the twenty-room mansion, making it an ideal hiding place.
As Hibbs, I sat on the veranda, enjoying the sun setting over the distant mountains framed by the massive white columns. The scent of boxwood reminded me of the hedge at Graydon, a gift from the Prince of Wales. A red fox darted between grand walnut trees towards the apple orchard. My thoughts drifted to Nate’s world. I’d have to find Dunaway once I returned to my time and secure the Jadeo and Clastier. Spencer, also a guardian of the Jadeo, had been missing too long. Hoofbeats brought me back to Hibbs.
A bedraggled man Hibbs and I both knew dismounted from the spent horse. It took only an instant to recognize Dustin in his eyes.
“Billy . . . Nate,” Dustin nodded at me. He had forward-memory.
“Dustin, what are you doing here?”
“There’re men at Graydon, tearing the place up pretty good. Looking for you . . . and the documents.”
“Damn! Dunaway betrayed me again!”
“No, he’s good to his word on this. But Omnia’s got reach, and help from the future. They’re not more than a few minutes behind me.”
I/Hibbs yelled for his chauffeur to bring the car.
“Send the chauffeur off without you, Nate.” Dustin said, turning to the chauffeur. “Head to Harpers Ferry as fast as you can. Don’t stop until they force you. Go, man,” Dustin snapped.
The chauffeur turned to me/Hibbs questioningly.
“Nate, he won’t be able to outrun them. We have to hide you here.”
“Trusting my brother is the most difficult-easiest thing.” I inhaled deeply. Hibbs reached for his cigarette case. I stopped him.
“Go!” I yelled to the chauffeur.
The spray of dust from the car hung in the still summer air. “Where will I hide?”
“I came through here during the Civil War. I was a rebel spy in that lifetime. This place was built for secrets. Can you Skyclimb?”
“Not in this life.”
“Okay.” He pulled a rope from his saddle. “Follow me.” We came to a well on one end of the house. “I’m going to lower you; about two-thirds of the way down, you’ll see a small tunnel. On one side it goes toward the house, the other goes away from it; take that one.”
Descending into blackness, I clutched a small torch. The stone walls narrowed toward the bottom. “This tunnel is dammed small!” I yelled up to Dustin, while wedging myself inside. The low ceiling required me to stoop. The rope pulled away as soon as I untied myself.
“You’ll be fine. Follow it as far as it goes.”
The torch revealed twenty feet ahead; beyond that, darkness. I didn’t move until I heard Dustin ride away. There was no way to climb back up.
I wound my way underneath the Virginia countryside. Hibbs’ body was stiff and sore, ready to give up. I reminded him of Dustin’s instructions to follow it to the end. The torch blew out a few minutes later. I missed my night vision as Hibbs panicked. “There’s no light!” Air rushed in from up ahead. I trudged forward and soon stumbled out into the night. A thicket of brambles and honeysuckle concealed the entrance. I lay against the slope breathing in fresh air.
The Outview came at an awful time. Having one within another was rare and usually left me scattered for days. The stunning fjords of Norway greeted me at the end of the first millennium. I didn’t have forward-memory, nor any participation; the Outview simply presented, leaving me only as a viewer. And as the viewer, I recognized Omnia agents but could do nothing to prevent their actions. The Viking longboat headed toward the sea, as a great voyage lay ahead. My lifetime as a Viking sailor seemed too insignificant and long ago for Omnia to bother with.
Night soon fell and the three agents, living as fellow shipmates, came at me while we slept on deck. Even if I woke in time there was no chance against three intent assassins. They approached with swords at the ready. The first raised his weapon . . . a spear landed in his chest. He collapsed, bloody, across my body. A warrior always wakes ready and my sword swung full around as I pushed the attacker off and jumped to my feet. Two others approached from behind. I could see one was Linh, but my Viking incarnation had no such recognition and he backed away from both groups. At Linh’s side was a second incarnation of mine. The importance of this lifetime was becoming clearer. If two of my souls had two separate incarnations occurring on the same ship, and Linh was there too, it must be a critical piece of the future. An intense fight ensued. Battle axes, swords, spears and mace clashed and chipped, waking more of the ship. Linh followed her first kill with fatal blows to the other two. I had no way of knowing if she had forward-memory but judging by her killing skills, it was unlikely. With order finally restored, I saw that I had died in the Outview but no
t the one they had attacked in his sleep; instead, the victim was the one trying to save me with Linh. I wondered what change the outcome of the battle a thousand years in the past would have on our current contest with Omnia.
48
Finally, Yangchen’s healings took hold and I woke on the third morning back at the lake house feeling strong and healthy, but confused and desperate to know the outcome of my time as Hibbs and the tunnel escape.
I found Dustin on the astral.
“Did Hibbs live?” I asked him.
“Of course he did. I’m only a screw-up in this lifetime. Throughout history, I’ve been a warrior-wizard of extraordinary skill.”
“And modest.”
“Someone has to tell my story.”
“So Dunaway didn’t betray me?”
“Dunaway betrays us all as he seeks his goals but, because they coincide with ours, mostly he ends up betraying himself.”
“What about the Viking ship? Did the right incarnation die?”
“Can’t help you there, brother. The only Vikings I know anything about play football in Minnesota.”
Linh, completely back to her old self, had spent the time during my illness working theories about completing the list of nine. “You had Amber worried,” she said, flashing a sly smile.
“What about you?”
“I knew you had things to do which would be more difficult with the weight of your human body.” Over the years, Linh had developed the ability to conjure and explore visions. It was part of the Timbal power in which Rose and Spencer excelled. Each had a specialty and Linh’s brought wide views of different events across time and dimensions whether they involved her or not. “A useful yet troubling trait,” she often said. “Can we talk about the nine?” she asked.
“After we talk about the morning in the fjords.” I watched her carefully for any recognition.
“I’d rather not.”
“You did have full memory . . . yet you used violence.”
“Nate, our non-violence pledge was made in this lifetime.”
“But you were acting from this lifetime.”
“That’s not true, I was a Viking. Fighting, raiding, exploring made up my entire existence. I did it with honor, no other person on that ship could match my experience and skill.”
“But you acted to save me. Would your Nordic-incarnation have done that had you not intervened?”
“We were friends, it is difficult to say for sure, but I think so.”
“Two of my incarnations fought, only one lived . . .”
“We saved the right one. If not, you and I would not have been born.”
“You sound like Spencer.”
“I discussed it with him.”
“Is he back?” I asked excitedly.
“No. We talked about the Vikings months ago.”
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
“It never occurred to me you’d recognize me.”
“I didn’t, I saw it through an Outview.”
“Oh, that explains why you didn’t seem to know, because you didn’t. Anyway, it was one of those gray areas and there could be no debate.”
“Why?”
“Because, Nate, you sometimes act as if this is a game of principles and absolutes. If it wasn’t for Spencer there would have been more mistakes made that we couldn’t recover from for thousands of years, even tens of thousands.”
“How the hell does anyone know what’s real or not? It all seems to be sliding and shifting constantly.”
Yangchen walked in. “Back?”
“Yes, thank you for helping to restore my body.”
“You may not need it to traipse around time but it does come in rather handy here.”
“Any word of Spencer?”
“No, I suspect he’s on the hunt for the Jadeo. I think it’s time we help him out on that front. As you know, he takes that commitment more seriously than any other. It’s the most likely explanation for his absence.”
“We need to talk to the three remaining names: Marie Jones, Kevin Morrison and Helen Hartman,” Linh said.
“We have to find them first,” I said.
“We have to find one of them before Omnia does, or he’s dead.”
“Omnia already knows where Marie Jones is. They just don’t know who she is,” Yangchen said.
“You know where she is?”
Yangchen nodded. “She works for the Federal Reserve.”
“Oh my God, that means she works for Omnia.”
“More than that. She is Nate.”
49
“We’ve been scouring the universe for incarnations of Nate, hoping to protect them before Omnia destroys your every existence,” Yangchen said. “And we got lucky with finding one in this time and then I recognized the name as one of the nine entrusted. The complexities were increased dramatically once we discovered she’s high up at the Fed.”
“Without the Fed, Omnia could not hold onto power,” I said. “Can we use Marie Jones to somehow destroy the Fed?”
“It’s not that easy. Look at Dustin and Storch, you and Fred Means, Ren and Fitts. I know of no example of one personality changing another through a common soul,” Yangchen said.
“Forget changing her,” Linh said. “What if Nate can get inside Jones’ head and find out things to help the Movement and take advantage of the situation by having Jones do stuff to harm the Fed from the inside?”
The Federal Reserve Bank was the financial arm of Omnia. It had actually been created by Omnia back in 1913 at the same time they got the federal income tax enacted, only the Fed is a private bank illegally given the right to print the nation’s money. Movement historians had shown me how the Fed orchestrated the 1929 stock market crash and the ten-year Depression that followed. It was the greatest shift of wealth in the history of the world, at least until they did it again in 2008, when, over the course of eighteen months, the U.S. Treasury was looted and mortgaged into oblivion. In both panics, and many smaller ones during the intervening years, the Fed and the wealthy bankers who controlled it bought land, companies and other assets at pennies on the dollar and created enormous amounts of debt, all payable back to the Fed with interest. The money they lent, like all currency in the modern central bank system, was created from nothing – simply printed. That system allowed Omnia unlimited power because they controlled the wealth. The masses, meanwhile, were left with endless bills to pay. “Keep them entertained with sports and scandals and they’ll never notice that all they do is work to earn enough to pay debt, taxes and inflation,” a former Fed Chairman said privately. The discovery that my soul had a part in the scheme really bothered me.
“Deal with it, Nate,” Yangchen said. “We all have dark aspects. Duality is a great teacher. But Linh has a good idea. If you can use your incarnation as Marie Jones to harm Omnia or help the Movement, it could be the momentum shifter we need.”
It took some time, deep meditation and using an Outview but I got into the head of my soul-counterpart. Jones presented me with a different look at Omnia villains. A committee she chaired in 2009 made specific recommendations on policies that would enrich the cartel of bankers who owned the Federal Reserve. Jones knew of the corruption and had trouble sleeping. Through an Outview, I witnessed a conversation with her sister in 2009.
“You wouldn’t believe how big this is,” Jones said. “They have consolidated their position in banks, buried the U.S. in debt the country can never get out of, insuring they will control things for . . . well, forever.”
“You’ve got to let me write about it,” her sister, a well-known author, said.
“They’ll kill you . . . and me.”
“I’ll weave it into the plot of a novel.”
“They aren’t stupid.”
“Neither am I.”
“I don’t think you get it. They’ve created almost every crisis and war and then funded them. If a private company gets too big, they take it over, either by friendly overpayment with fake mone
y, or by destroying it and picking up the pieces cheap. When someone figures out how the Fed really works, and makes any noise about it, they’re either labeled a quack or . . . they die.”
“They aren’t going to murder a fantasy author. Although that would make a good plot twist.”
“Forget it.”
“Then what are you going to do? Keep working for them and let them take over the world?”
“They’ve already taken over the world.”
Even with her awareness, I’m ashamed to say that Marie Jones went on working for Omnia for many more years, until I showed up.
Within days, by using time manipulations, Outviews and especially Solteer, I expanded her doubt and helped her decide to gather evidence. She had access to information that made the roll of documents Hibbs had amassed look like a comic book.
“Be careful, Nate,” Yangchen cautioned, as I updated her and the girls over dinner.
“I’m being extremely careful. Do you have any idea what this will do to Omnia? We’ll Air-Project it the same night we put up the Carst videos!”
“That’s not what I mean,” Yangchen said, quietly. “It is a dangerous thing to mess with a person’s destiny.”
“How do you know this isn’t her destiny?”
She scowled at me. “If this were her destiny, you would not need Solteer to make her do these things.”
“She’s doing them because we share a soul.”
“That does not give you the right to lead her life. You have Nate to be.”
“I don’t know, Yangchen, where is that written? I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but how are you so sure that I don’t have the right to manage every incarnation of my soul?”
“If you were acting from your soul, you do have that right. But you are acting from Nate, and denying Marie Jones her free will to complete her optimal destiny.”
