As Gods Above

by Andre Labuschagne

  If something is broadcast on a specific band it can only be received by a receiver tuned to that band.

  Now, in telepathy, each individual has a specific band in which he or she thinks, so no one else should be able to hear it.

  When I answered Michael in his private mode, and again when I called Tina on her private band, no one else should have been able to hear any of it.

  You didn’t hear their side of the conversations, but you heard mine.”

  “But didn’t you just say that that was impossible?”

  “That is exactly the problem Tina was referring to. Only a relatively small number of extremely powerful telepaths would even have been aware that any communication had occurred – as you were when Michael or Tina addressed me.

  The only way you could have picked up my side of the conversation is if your mind is perfectly aligned to mine – essentially a pair of tuned circuits!”

  David pondered this for a while: “Well… We knew there was a strong attraction between us. Perhaps it was based on a physiological as well as a physical and emotional affinity. Which has been augmented by the symbiote.

  I knew we were meant for each other from the first time I saw you.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way David.

  Now that this has happened you have learnt a lot more about me than you knew before, not the least being that I am rather older than you thought.

  The strange thing is that in all these centuries I never found a man who attracted me the way you did. In a way this accident has been a god sent, if everything checks out the way it looks.

  You are the first person I have met whom I could spend an eternity with.

  As to this tuned couples thing, I know of only a few: my own parents, Awaki and Anzashi, Michael and Marianne spring to mind.

  Other than of them I can think of only three or four others.

  One thing all of them have in common: even when they drift apart for a time, they always come back together.

  I pray that our relationship will always work that way. And maybe we don’t have to have the drifting apart!”

  “Amen to that!” David exclaimed. “But back water a little. You mentioned Michael and Marianne as an example of a tuned couple.

  How come?

  They weren’t even seriously involved before we got infected?”

  “I think they’ve been involved for a long time – they just haven’t admitted it – even to themselves.

  I know she has been in love with him since that first dig they did.

  You know! That dive in India.

  And outside his work he’s actually quite shy.”

  “So they are now an item. And so are we!”

  “You won’t hear any argument from me about that!”

  Chapter 7

  Hong Kong – Peoples Republic of China – 23rd August 2035

  Peter

  Things are looking good. The Tong have finally achieved total control here in the city, and soon will have done so throughout China.

  Give the devil his due – all the directors thought Erickson had gone crazy when he let the west into China during the great détente.

  But as usual he had been right. As soon as they believed that they had free run of the country, and they were satisfied that the restructuring was well on its way, everybody went back to concentrating on America and the west.

  It has always been easier to ignore what was happening in the degenerate east as long as they were not openly denying human rights to the poor peasants and the students.

  How easy it is to forget that for years a large part of the world’s high and medium tech equipment has been produced in China and other Eastern countries.

  Everybody laughed at the stupidity of the Chinese during the growth years, building high tech production capacity as if there was no tomorrow.

  They didn’t even consider the capability of available world markets to absorb their production.

  None of those financial wizards, gleefully selling their used factories and production facilities to the credulous Chinese and Koreans, that the internal market of the east could absorb everything we could produce, and more.

  And the nervous watchdogs, carefully guarding their technological advantage ever realized how much of the latest and greatest technology was being implemented side by side with the toys, the cheap PC’s and the low quality, mass produced, household utensils.

  Much of this real production never even hit the Chinese market.

  They never realized that everything was perfectly planned, only not for their purposes or their profit.

  I cannot wait for the day that we can finally shake the dust of this one-horse planet off our feet.

  The whole place is literally infested with do-gooders. At every turn we run into those thrice damned Humanists, and their supporters.

  The only thing I hate more, are the so called neutrals. At least the Humanists have the guts to stand up for their principles – even if their beliefs are so much soft headed drivel.

  How some of the most powerful entities on this planet can fool themselves that the run of the mill peasant is their equal, is beyond my understanding.

  But we fooled them.

  They knew we were working in the east, making it our special preserve.

  They all thought they had broken our back, with their détente and their civil upliftment programs. Everybody celebrated when the USSR was broke down into its component states – the giant had fallen.

  This cleared the way to use the armed might of the ‘free’ world to destroy our bases in Iraq and Iran.

  It all played into our hands.

  All the upliftment programs simple strengthened our resources. Once our manufacturing capability was firmly established, we simply shut down the Bamboo Curtain again, but in such a manner that they never realized it.

  As far as the world was concerned they had free run of all the eastern countries, and no threat was immanent.

  By now we are selling their own developments back to them, and making a healthy profit. In many cases they are even dependent on our factories to produce critical components and circuitry for them – we can do it so much cheaper due to labor costs and economies of scale.

  Best of all, with the population of China as large as it is, nobody even questions the amounts of raw materials we are purchasing, or compares it to our export output.

  *** *** ***

  I wonder how Pei-Ling and his group are doing in their attempt to mass produce the symbiote. They need to modify it to an air or water borne vector.

  We will need enough to flood at least a couple of their cities. When the plaque strikes, we can use the resulting panic to our advantage, to get our next consignment of peasants off without interference.

  I think one more batch will fill our cold sleep capacity.

  I hope Frank agrees that the time is ripe to move most of our scientific staff to Hell. I don’t think that there is that much more they can learn here and now.

  The major stumbling block in our domination of the universe is still the FTL drive.

  It looks more and more as if Einstein was right. If only they had listened to me when I told them we should recruit him.

  If he had the time, he would have been able to find the flaw in the calculations. But on the other hand, he was such an airhead on non-technical matters that he would probably not have cooperated with us.

  A pity about that Hawkins kid though, if he had survived he would have brought new frontiers and old tumbling down like a house of cards.

  I still wonder what Tina and her crowd are up to. This jaunting about in the jungle is not really her style, even if Joseph and Frank think I’m going nuts.

  And whatever the situation was, it would need to be extremely important for her to travel with a slew of enforcers.

  I know I was right about the sudden surge of power I thought I detected. I must find out if Li Kung detected anything similar.

  I wish sometimes that we could get be
tter communications established within the upper echelons.

  The only way I get any information, I have to run around asking.

  Uncle Fox keeps on telling me that our biggest flaw is our lack of cooperation, and sometimes I wonder if he mightn’t be correct.

  Each of us is so busy building his or her own little empire that we will only yield information or physical resources which might give us an advantage under extreme coercion.

  Maybe I should recruit some management consultants – we used to deal with a good one – what was his name? Mike something?

  I’ll get onto it when we get back; it will help take my mind off the Great Zimbabwe thing. Maybe we should recruit the guy – having him on the inside would make him much more efficient.

  I wonder what they could have discovered at great Zimbabwe. I am willing to bet it was at least a cache of godstone.

  I always thought there had to be some that they didn’t get when they grabbed all the godstone after the last war.

  Damn Awaki and Anzashi! If they hadn’t burnt out poor Qingu, we would have won. Funny how we still haven’t been able to form a fusion like they did that day.

  I wish we could find a couple of such caches. It is frustrating having such a small supply of the godstone available.

  And we had to send a large part of our reserve with the first colony ship – their need to recruit would probably be bigger than ours – and Angra Maingru insisted.

  At least we got our ship off before they realized what we were doing. I wonder how much they know about our current colony ship.

  I must tickle a few of our sources amongst the humanists.

  We always had a few good sources of information in their organization but I have been out of touch lately.

  Perhaps it is time for me to get in touch with some of them again.

  Strangely, they have been very quiet recently.

  I had better stop this woolgathering; I need to get ready for our meeting with Pei-Ling. He’ll be here in a couple of minutes.

  Wu Pei-Ling

  After all the centuries I’ve known him, Frank still gives me the creeps. I wonder if he ever has any doubts – he always seems so self-possessed. And Peter is not much better. At least with him you know where you stand – but I have never had even a glimpse of Frank’s real thoughts.

  I know I have nothing to worry about, all my projects are going well, but the way he seems to look deep into your soul, and weigh your sins still upsets me.

  I wish we had more of the godstone available. We have managed to synthesize the same nucleic acid core as the symbiote.

  The only problem is, it refuses to come to life. So far the only way we have found to get infected, is to touch the godstone directly.

  I hope that the latest theories are correct, that by caching it in its active phase, just after infection, we will be able to isolate the actual viral form. Then we can combine it with an airborne non-malignant virus, to create the new vector.

  Once we are able to do that, the only problem remaining will be to propagate the new virus fast enough to get sufficient stock for their purposes.

  At least the new Tong is working out. Replacing the top structure with enforcers has eliminated the tendency to cheat management which has been growing for a while. I think we can safely start expanding the structure throughout the country.

  Production of the required supplies for the generation ship is going well, And by the fact that the storerooms are being emptied as soon as they are filled, I am led to believe that the second generation ship is just about complete.

  I wonder anything new has happened about the FTL drive. I know we haven’t been able to build one – and I doubt that the enemy could.

  I wish the ship was ready and loaded – if only I could just board the ship and go away.

  But they would all be coming along too…

  Hong Kong – Peoples Republic of China – 23rd August 2035

  The meeting began well. Frank Eriksson was in a good mood. Pei-Ling had arranged with the management of the Hong Kong Hilton Imperial for an excellent buffet meal, including all Frank’s favorite dishes.

  The news was good in general, except that none of the experiments on the symbiote had yet been viable.

  This didn’t bother Frank, since it matched theoretical results exactly. He approved the new approach with the virus based technology.

  He emphasized that the timing could be critical.

  If they could not get it ready in time, they would need another distraction when the Ship was about to launch.

  He suggested that they forward relevant suggestions to him for presentation to the supreme counsel.

  The new Tong structure was approved. The cell structure and parallel chain of command was a lot more efficient and corruption was found and eliminated much quicker.

  Propagating the structure through the rest of the organization was approved pending confirmation from central council.

  The agenda wound up with the production schedule for the next five years and the economic impact of the region on the world economy.

  Greater Zimbabwe – Southern Africa – 23rd August 2035

  Once again Michael was the first to notice the change in Joseph’s life signs. He immediately called Tina and Dianna, then he and Marianne strolled over to meet them at the field hospital.

  When Joe opened his eyes, The first thing he saw was his four friends standing about him. Tina brought him a glass of energy drink, which she fed him while David and Michael held him up.

  “So you three beat me to it!”

  “Michael was first out.” David remarked.

  “You all look well.” Joe remarked. “As a matter of fact, you four are positively glowing.”

  “There’s a lot of news for us to bring you up to date on.” Marianne interjected.

  “We’ve been rather busy while you’ve been lying around here resting. But I gather that time will be the least of our problems.

  In the meantime, I have heard that we will be doing some traveling as soon as you are feeling better, so I think we will let you get some rest.”

  “Did you pick up anything from him?” she asked Michael on the private band.

  “Not a touch” He replied. “Maybe we should try him on the public band.”

  “I don’t think that telepathy is his major talent.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t really know, I just have a feeling.”

  “I suppose we will just have to wait and see. But Tina did say that we showed our powers very quickly.”

  “I am just glad that he is alive and with his intelligence intact.”

  Then Tina, David and Dianna joined them.

  “How is he, Tina?” Michael inquired.

  “Everything is looking good, Michael. I did a quick mental assay, and there is no damage. He is not yet showing any powers, but that is not exceptional. Historically we have seen that some people need months or even years of training before they are able to use their powers.

  But I have a strange feeling that whatever powers he may have will start growing quickly if he hangs around you and Marianne.”