“Not really okay,” Keith said. “But I hope you know I’m grateful.”
“Yeah, you have cause to be,” Jiggly said with a crooked grin. “You owe me bigtime, and I’ll make sure and collect.”
“Start collecting anytime.”
“How about some of those ice chips? They tell you to sip, and go slow, and I’m – like – I can’t even reach up and get the cup, and then there’s a spoon, which would mean two hands , and –”
Keith grabbed the cup and the spoon off the table set over the bed. He fed Jiggly ice chips in silence for several minutes.
“I can’t believe how much better that feels. I know I’m drugged up, but I’m still so dry and hot and …”
“I can stand here all day and do this.”
“Naw, you can’t. How’s Warrior Angel? Up kicking some butts?”
“I told her I wanted her to. Maybe tomorrow.”
“So where’s the next adventure? I’m ready.”
“No you’re not. Neither is Talia, and for sure Naddy isn’t. We’re taking a breather. You have a private doctor planning our trip to the States in style.”
“The States? I thought they didn’t let illegal aliens in?”
“What are you? Italian?”
“Well, yeah, hence the name Guglielmo.”
“Dr. Ewing will figure that out.”
“You mean that Iron Maiden who’s taller than you are? I remember seeing her. She is mean and rough. I had to hit the morphine pump hard after she was done looking me over.”
“She’s not taller than me. Well … maybe she is. But isn’t known for her bedside manner. She did promise to take good care of all my sick people. So that includes you.”
“I’d rather make you my personal slave. You owe me, after all.”
“I’m here as long as you need me.”
“Get out of here. Your wife is gonna need you. Send Sharon back in. I owe him an apology. And Cindee. Tell her not to cry, but she and the hulking brute can wait on me, too, if they want to.”
“Okay, I’ll tell them.”
“Naddy is gonna be okay, right?” Jiggly asked as Keith turned to go.
“Yeah, Dr. Ewing says everybody’s gonna be okay. If anybody can make that happen, she can.”
Chapter Sixty-five – Summer Camp
All of the rest of the hospital time and preparations for the trip were kind of a blur to Keith. David flew the plane, and he enjoyed the phony captain’s monologue over the PA about mythical sights to see out the windows. Plenty of other craziness went on during the flight as he sat beside Talia in the roomy medical plane and mostly just enjoyed looking at her.
Cindee spent most of the flight in the jump seat or the co-pilot chair, at least when David was on duty. They had two co-pilots, also Drew Summers’s employees, but David took the lion’s share of flight time, using the excuse that he was diversifying Cindee’s training.
Sophie spent the trip at Naddy’s bedside. He kept protesting that he could sit up in a regular seat but Dr. Ewing shut him down. She also cast a disapproving eye backward every time Talia got up to stretch and walk around. Jiggly never stirred out of his bed, so everyone made sure to “visit” him. He complained loudly about Dr. Ewing’s “mistreatment.” She responded by threatening to take away his morphine button to show him real pain. It took Keith a few days to realize that those two were becoming friends of a sort.
When they arrived at Precious Treasure Campground, Keith discovered that a wing of the main “cabin” had been converted to medical and rehabilitation suites. He couldn’t believe how much had happened since his and Talia’s wedding. They had a couple of hundred emails from students, and had to reassure them about the rumors of death and dismemberment in Pakistan. Something seemed to have trickled out in the international news about their mishaps and a lot of reassurances were necessary. When the pleas to sign Talia’s cast started coming in, they decided drastic action was in order.
“I think a summer camp is a wonderful idea,” Dr. Ewing said, much to Keith’s surprise. She had become unofficial Activity Director, as Jiggly expressed it, because she was so good at telling everyone what to do.
“Yeah, she’s going to put black hoods on all the campers so they can’t disclose the location,” Jiggly snorted.
All Keith knew was that one day in August Sam Ewing arrived at the campground in an extra-long van with extra-tinted windows full of kids from Bradley Central. What followed was the most wonderful and exhausting two weeks of his life.
They had no rigid camp schedule except for Sam blowing Reveille every morning at six am, followed by prayer and flag-raising at seven. David led exercise times, including an impossible obstacle course that kept growing every day. He had a whistle he blew at random intervals, day or night, the signal for a run, a workout, some mild mixed martial arts instruction, or a “mystery activity.” All of the kids tried to keep up with him. Emphasis on tried.
“That guy has gotta use steroids, right, Mr. Bradley?” Tom asked.
“I don’t think so.” Keith grinned.
Sometime between breakfast and lunch they had Bible study. It was led by a different “campground elder” each day. Afternoons they swam, canoed, hiked, mostly under Keith’s supervision, or answered David’s whistle. Dr. Ewing taught a pretty intensive First Aid course and she and Talia took the girls through a self-defense course. In the evenings they had more Bible study. David and Cindee also took some kids through flight simulations and gave helicopter rides.
Bart Matthews had crews to start making repairs to his abused dinosaurs, something the kids regarded as a job from heaven. They learned to work with animatronics, molded foam, and spray paint, and refused lunch and dinner one day because the T-rex would go through a thousand motions but would not lie down on its rolling framework to be loaded into a trailer after it was fully repaired and wrapped to go with a traveling exhibit.
A pizza delivery saved the day and the life-size dinosaur finally submitted. Mike and Mary, the husband and wife truckers who had helped get the Tesla and Keith and Talia to the campground, were glad to share the pizza and extremely grateful to finally get on their way to deliver the dinosaurs.
Jiggly stayed in the medical wing out of sight. Keith didn’t really have time to worry about him. Besides the physical activities, he got a dozen lab partners together and set up to analyze the Bible turned to dust as well as samples of the different forms of amphibian skin and other materials they had encountered. Dr. Ewing had more access to equipment and expertise than any lab he had ever dealt with. He was able to teach the kids a ton of Science and investigative techniques while learning at least some of what he wanted to know.
Just as he and Talia were ready to collapse into bed one night, a week and a half into camp, Keith got a text message that Jiggly wanted to see him. He dragged himself away from Talia and over to the medical wing.
“What’s up, Jiggly?” he asked.
“You promised to be my slave for life,” Jiggly said, bundled up in blankets but sitting up on his bed. “I’ve hardly seen you since we got here.”
“I’m sorry,” Keith said. He knew this had to be some sort of con, because Jiggly had constant care, plus he was getting around pretty well and gaining strength every day. “We’ve been busy with the kids. You need some more ice chips, or what?”
“Well, I just thought you would like to know that soon I won’t need you anymore.” The blanket slipped away and Keith staggered back, seeing an elaborate metal arm mounted to Jiggly’s thin torso. It reached out, extending a hand. “Let’s shake on it so you know there’s no hard feelings.”
“What is that?” Keith gasped. He reached out to touch the flexing fingers.
“Dr. Ewing’s been working on the specs since the day they took my arm off,” Jiggly said, a huge grin decorating his homely face. “This isn’t really attached yet. I was just messing with you.”
He revealed his other hand, manipulating joystick controls under the covers. “But she�
�s got people coming in to do the surgery first thing in the morning, so I’ll be back to needing more of your fealty temporarily, I guess, and then I’ll ascend to cyborg status and will need no mere mortal assistance.”
“Hang on. I’m gonna go get Talia.”
“Nah, it’s okay. Warrior Angel needs her sleep.”
“Not that bad. She needs to see this.”
Talia was, in fact, already asleep, but when Keith picked her up out of the bed, blankets and all, she almost went into warrior mode on him.
“What are you doing?” she cried, pulling her fists in just in time. “Put me down!”
“C’mon. You gotta see what Jiggly’s been up to.”
Talia stood there, wrapped in blankets, barefooted, putting Jiggly through the paces with his arm and hand movements.
“Will it really work this well when it’s part of you?” she breathed.
“If I’m a good boy, and make the therapy work, Dr. Ewing thinks so,” Jiggly replied. He was squirming with excitement.
“Is she sure – really sure … ?” Talia chewed her lip. “I mean, that it won’t fail, or hurt you, or become this … thing for you to drag around?”
“Hey, don’t be such a downer,” Jiggly grumbled. “Think positive.”
“I’ll pray hard for you,” Talia said. “I wish you’d told us sooner.”
“It didn’t come ‘til about an hour ago. I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Anyway, yeah, praying is good. But that was Dr. Ewing’s ‘unspoken’ she said she’s been making at the prayer meetings every day. She says all her prayers have been answered – how fast my infections cleared up, how good I’ve been healing, how I’ve been getting on in my therapy. She says miracles come in all shapes.”
“I guess they do.” Talia advanced and kissed Jiggly on the cheek. “I kept thinking – Did you lose your arm because of my grabbing onto it, making the injury worse? I’m so glad God is giving you a new one. So glad.”
Jiggly went red and made the mechanical arm pat her on the back. “Didn’t Keith tell you? I’d give my right arm to save you, Warrior Angel. Even this one. Go back to bed, you two.”
After they had prayed with Jiggly and returned to bed, Keith and Talia lay awake a long time. “I don’t know whether I’m more glad for Jiggly, or scared,” Talia whispered.
“Let’s just be glad. And pray. And, since we’re suddenly insomniacs, I want to bounce an idea off of you. Not about Jiggly. We’ll pray for him again afterwards. This is about our next adventure.”
“Okay. Bounce away.”
“So, we found Britomartis and her ax,” Keith said, sitting up. “That was near Crete, and the Guardians have been messaging me and telling me that the city within the city in Olous really was made of artificially-grown corundum crystal. They have a theory that the corundum should have made the city pretty much indestructible. I tended to agree, and we were all still wondering why, number one, they would have built it where it would sink the way it did, and, two, how it was reduced to ruins. We wondered if the enemies had a super weapon that could penetrate the kind of force field the corundum makes.
“But, after learning about the Harappan nuclear power, and that maybe it was Pipali’s people who unleashed it, I changed my idea. What if Britomartis’s people had the same problem? They had to stop the enemy, whatever the cost, and their disaster plan was to destroy the city when the bad guys took it over. We came up with some kind of sound wave weapon that caused the devastation to Olous.”
“Yes, that would be the way to shatter the crystalline structures,” Talia agreed. “Like a high soprano can shatter a glass?”
“That’s the general idea. They are experimenting with the ax, and found that swinging it hard and fast produces a tone above human hearing range. At first they had all the dogs howling within a couple miles’ radius. But when they rigged up a machine that could spin it really fast, stuff started shattering. Big stuff. They had to stop testing before they ran out of high-resistance glass.”
Talia giggled, then sobered. “So the ancient faithful quit running, and started fighting, but destroyed their civilizations in the process?”
“Yeah, that’s the conclusion we’re coming to. The Guardians are theorizing that the tone, at the right intensity, causes damage to all kinds of things, including human cells. Hey intend to start combing through the Gondrani and Harappan artifacts, looking to see if there’s any remnant of the nuclear device they might have used to cast out the demons of Mai.”
“How does this tell you where to go on our next adventure?” Talia asked.
“It doesn’t,” Keith replied. “Since you have more field archaeology experience than I do, I was hoping you would come up with something.”
“We need to brainstorm with Amu and Zanamu,” Talia replied. “Tomorrow.”
Chapter Sixty-six – Where To Next?
The next morning the “camp staff” and other adults at Precious Treasure got together before Reveille and prayed for Jiggly and the campers. David, Sam, and Dr. Ewing took off and Keith and Talia opened up their brainstorming session to everyone who remained over coffee.
Everyone listened to Keith repeat what he and Talia had discussed the night before.
“We know the first Guardians of the Testaments moved into places where ancient faithful had formerly settled,” Sophie replied, “but also suddenly disappeared. Guardian record-keeping was not the best; understandably, since they were fleeing to protect the tablets, just as their predecessors fled for freedom to worship the true God.”
“This daughters-in-law of Noah theory you mentioned makes sense,” Larry Stokes said, “given it would explain somebody thought of as a goddess, but really just a woman with a long life span and maybe other unusual genetic features. It seems like you have to find that third daughter-in-law, figure out where she settled, and you’ll have the third site to search for tablets.”
“The holographic map you mentioned doesn’t tell you that?” Fran Taylor asked.
“The map only pointed us to Ugarit,” Naddy explained. “We would not have even gotten on to the additional tablets, at Harappa and the Caves at Gondrani, if our friends with the taxi hadn’t heard about Britomartis and made the connection.”
Shouldn’t they have enough tablets to get started, anyway, with translation or decoding or whatever it is?” Bart Matthews asked.
“Here’s the problem,” Keith said. “You know what it means to triangulate a position, right?”
“Yes … I think so,” Eva Sanchez said. “If you know the location of three points, you can calculate a fourth location?”
“Right,” Keith said. “What we’re still lacking, even if we find and decode all the tablets, is a dissemination system, for getting the message out, fast, and all around the world. We’ve got antennas, but we’ve got no transmitter.”
Joshua Bradley chimed in. “I think I know where you’re going with this. Once you have the three locations of the ancient faithful settlements, you’ll be able to triangulate a fourth. And that’s where you hope you’ll find the transmitting equipment.”
Talia nodded. “Even if the transmission equipment is at that third location, the home of that third daughter-in-law of Noah, we still have to find it.”
“What do we do, then?” Sophie asked. “There are so many vanished civilizations, all over the world.”
We must start going to each of them, looking for evidence of the third daughter-in-law of Noah,” Naddy proclaimed, getting up as if he was ready to start.
Saul Taylor, who served as groundskeeper now that his cancer was in remission, said, “Can’t you narrow it down, based on what you already know about the other two daughters-in-law of Noah?”
Naddy considered. “Britomartis was Minoan, one of the earliest civilizations outside of the Fertile Crescent. Harappa is considered one of the earliest of the Indus Valley Civilizations. That is even farther outside the original area where people would have started fleeing Nimrod and other persecutors.
&
nbsp; “We can assume they’d have to move farther and farther away to try escape the tyrants,” Sophie said. “Legends talk about strangers arriving from faraway places claiming to be gods and having the power to fly, to come up out of water, and to kill massive numbers of people.”
Keith nodded. “We can assume, whatever the truth in among the lies, the bad guys may have had some advanced ancient technology. Could be they stole it when they overran Noah’s other faithful descendants. They ran out of people to steal from or subjugate close to home, so they spread out, searching for more slaves. They also wanted to destroy people who taught about the true God and denied the false gods.”
“Maybe the third settlement would be as far away as people thought they could get,” Cindee mused. “Where can we find the earliest evidence that matches elements we saw with Britomartis and Pipali – A woman as a protector, teacher, provider? Where would this third woman have to go, to keep the work of protecting and sharing the Word going?”
“A provider is a good idea,” Sheila Matthews said. Maybe she was a Proverbs 31 woman – some kind of merchant.”
Sophie nodded. “Her culture would have valuable trade products and evidence of interaction with others. We saw the evidences in the artifacts that seem to have messages as part of their design. They would have opportunities to share and spread the Word while hiding it in plain sight.”
Talia was silent, considering. “The one thing a woman can’t live without – Chocolate,” she finally said, smiling at Keith.
“Chocolate?” Keith said with a grin. “Isn’t that from South America?”
“Ancient Mexico,” Eva corrected.
“And rubber,” Naddy added. “Unique and valuable cultural contributions of the New World to ancient civilization. I think we should look into the Olmecs.”
The Great Thirst Boxed Set Page 39
