EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

“Oh, by the way, a friend of yours dropped by today and he is here now enjoying time in the lab with me; say hello,” Vanessa deferred as she handed the phone over to Claus Laurent.

“Hello, Mr. Sterling.” The slimy voice of a “snake in the grass,” my nemesis, Laurent, slithered through the air and into my brain. “This is quite an interesting specimen you have brought to Vanessa.” I said nothing as we sat there listening to the oozing voice of the miry serpent bounce off the surface of the Vug. I glanced at Mina; her face grimaced in terror and tears as the voice hissed into our ears.

All I could say was, “Laurent, what goes around comes around, and you’ll get yours.” Mina ended the call before any more words could be exchanged. She knew I had no desire to speak with the snake.

Jasmina exclaimed in utter surprise “My Bryce, this is the Teranor; I saw him when he spoke. He is a dark one from our past; he is not human and he is pure evil! He cannot see us; we are shielded by the Vug but we must leave this place.”

It was hard for me to consider leaving material behind, but our instincts were right and the extra material still in my pocket would allow us to venture on. In a whirl of thoughts I could think of several other people to go to for help with this first phase. I figured that Vanessa was lost and we needed to get as far away from here as we could. The thought occurred that most of the big name institutions would be monitored, so the same scenario might occur just like today. Mina was deep in thought while I ran through the list of researchers and locations in my mind to come up with just the right person for the job. We both lay there connecting the dots, hers from the past and mine for the near future. This encounter was a rush of information for us both. It was difficult for me to see Jasmina so rattled. She had always been so calm and collected that this reaction to a voice in thin air gave me reason to worry.

Chapter Eight

Endeavor

A
name popped into my head: Gary in Hawaii. Nobody goes to Hawaii except for vacations and the team members in the lab there were specifically working on the search for evidence of life elsewhere in the cosmos, so they would have the right equipment and the right frame of mind. My concern was that the bad guys would show up there when we did. Mina suggested that we travel to a number of destinations first to throw off any possible tracking. We made up a list of institutions starting with Houston and Washington, D.C., then New York followed by Vienna and then Frankfurt before making the long run to a small volcanic Island in the Pacific Ocean.

The hope was to disperse any efforts to find us so thin that we could have plenty of time with Gary and crew in Hawaii. Without hesitation we were on our way to Houston. The plan was that we would make brief appearances at each location to throw off the dogs. We had to keep our travel slow enough that the Teranors didn’t figure out our strategy. I asked Mina to tell me what she could about Ali’s status. She shook her head as she said, “Nothing, I think he is being shielded by the dark ones. If they are doing this, then they have him.”

There is no way my long trusted friend has turned on me. If anything, they have him, but not the stone. Ali is more of a brother than my own siblings. I will wait to hear his story of what transpired. If anyone can outsmart an entire alien race, it is my road warrior buddy Ali Baba.

The Vug began to carry Mina and me into the Gray once again. This time we were going to go slow and take days between stops on the surface. We wanted our followers to think we were using surface transportation. As far as we knew the Teranor had no clue about my knowledge of the Terans and their world below. And Mina had no clue about how many Teranor there might be on the surface.

We cruised through the Gray and out into the Void. Mina suggested that we spend some time looking around various areas of her world while on this leg of our voyage. We needed to pass time for at least a day and so I agreed that this would be interesting for me. She said that we needed to spend time with the Elder group I had met earlier, but she wanted to wait until later for some considerations to be sorted out. I am sure that Mina needed time to come to terms with information and knowledge that had been kept from her for many years. She seemed to be dealing with this pretty well. We slowly descended as the Vug took us across the landscape of New Tera. The terrain ahead was covered with dense forest. The trees were far greater in size and mass than any tree on the surface of Earth. Each tree appeared to be its own ecosystem with brilliant birds resting on branches and bat-like creatures hanging below them. There were animals grazing at the base of the trees; a mixture of creatures from other parts of the universe blended with animals from the surface of this globe. There were countless little creatures crawling through the forest floor and my favorites, the tiny fairies, flitting about everywhere.

Mina told me that the fairies were Mizlets, a tiny, winged humanoid from a planet on the other side of the galaxy. She told me that they are reasonably harmless and hardworking but if threatened or angered, they will defend themselves in such great numbers that they can suffocate their target. They are very easy to coexist with, but much like honey bees it is best to avoid making them angry. From behind the roughly hundred-foot-diameter base of the tree closest to us stepped a giant deer. This deer was huge, its antlers were bigger than a large car. I looked in shock at this majestic beast as Mina told me that the last of these deer were hunted and farmed into extinction by early man. The tree was coated with brilliant colored beards of moss woven through by vines wrapping up and around the trunk. Every tree we could see from where we were located had a similar individual environment with living movement everywhere.

We soared over rivers and lakes, waterfalls and beaches. There were no snow-covered mountains, but there were countless rocky cliffs stretching the many thousands of feet from bottom to top of this world. We toured over thousands of miles of varied terrain; as we moved along, the scenery changed just as it does on the surface of the Earth but with wildly different content. After having been back on the surface for a day, returning to EarthUnder felt much more comfortable and familiar. We had no direction and no plan while we were stalling, and I had no idea of what to ask to see. Jasmina suggested that we go somewhere fun on the surface, someplace neither of us had ever seen and a place where people go just for fun.

“I’ve got it,” burst out of my mouth with pure impulse. “Let’s lie on a beach in Bora Bora for a couple of days!”

We dipped the Vug into a pool of fresh water to take a long drink and off we flew through more of Mina’s world. I could see in the far distance another window into an ocean. Without slowing we shot through the window and into the deep sea water. Again, we were breaking the rules of physics that I had grown up with. As density changed from rock to thin air and then to water and deep ocean pressure, we soared along at the same steady, incredible speed. There seemed to be no distortion other than the blur caused by our speed of travel. Before long we were moving upward as we continued to travel the globe under water. I could feel and smell changes as we moved closer to the equator and into warmer thermocline. As abruptly as we had shot through the window into the salt sea water, we came to rest in the Gray.

We stepped out of the Vug, out of a sheer lava cliff and onto a snowy white sand beach with palm trees and a soft, warm, sea breeze that carried the aroma of sugar and salt. The sea water gently rolling onto the beach disappeared into the snowy sand, and the sun flickered on our faces through the breeze-shaken palm fronds. This was my idea of Paradise: nothing to do, nowhere to go, blue sky, warm air, warm water, and not a soul for miles. Mina had chosen an uninhabited island many miles from anything, where we could rest and play without worry. As we stripped off our clothes, I slipped Kadishya’s coin pendant over my head and stashed it in a pocket of my pants, making sure to button down the cover flap over this pocket. Laughing like children at play, we raced for the translucent, shimmering blue water. We swam and played in the water for what seemed like hours. I did my best rendition of a crawl stroke while Jasmina seemed to swim like a mermaid with fluid motion and little apparent effort. After a time we went back to the beach and lay in the sun to dry off. The sand was fluffy under the waving palm trees, their fronds rattling in the slight breeze.

We lay there stretched out on the warm, clean, white coral sand and we talked. Mina lay on her side facing me, and I lay on my front side with arms crossed under my turned head facing her. Mina asked me about dreams. She wanted to know if, when I was younger, I had experienced any dreams of other lives. As soon as she asked the question, memories came to mind of dreams I had that seemed real. They were dreams of flying, of swimming endlessly, of hunting with stone implements. “Yes,” I recalled dreams that felt like memories from past lives. But the strongest memories were of dreams where I remembered looking into eyes just like hers. It seemed to strengthen the importance of these dream memories to have her ask about them. She lay there with her head dipping into the sand, one eye closed to block out the bright sun while the other studied my face as I looked at hers.

We both had patches of sand grains stuck to our faces. As our bodies dried we could feel the tightening of salt-soaked skin in the sunlight. Mina explained that a certain number of our memories are ghosts from our genetic past. That even before we can walk or talk as infants we have these dreams which emanate from our past lives. She went on to say that when I think of these memories or when I have the dreams, she can see them, and that she can recall those events from my past.

“Your memories of looking into my eyes are the memories of me watching you,” she exclaimed. “Until now I was never allowed to intervene, only watch. Now, only in this time I am allowed to reveal myself and to change your fate. You remember dreams of flying effortlessly and swimming endlessly without the need to breathe?” As I nodded my head yes, I felt grains of sand fall free from their grip on my skin.

“Those are memories of things you have done and can still do today,” she continued. “Although you are not a Teranian, much of who you are comes from our line. We are both made like this so that it is easier for us to do certain tasks, easier for us to communicate, to feel the other near, and to transition between our worlds. It is my hope that in the future, I will be able to help you develop your instincts and abilities beyond human limits. Many Teran abilities are the result of problems overcome through evolution over millions of years. These are gifts of time and survival. They are not easily assimilated by younger races of humanoids, and therefore it was decided that you would be prepared over many generations. Sadly, now between man’s status as stewards of this planet and the revelation that Teranor are present, we no longer have the luxury of time to make the transition easy for the rest of your kind. You and I will do all we can to turn the current self-destructive direction that man has taken. And soon we Terans will need to reveal ourselves to your people. In the next two days while we are here enjoying this time alone, we need to develop your trust in me. You must try to extinguish any doubts you may have of me. First, let me show you something that will require your trust.”

Jasmina rose to her feet blocking the sun from my face, her perfectly flawless, muscled body framed in youthful glowing skin surrounded by the day. Mina reached down to take my hand and pulled me to my feet. She wrapped her lissome arm around me as she led me back to the shore. We stood looking out across the water as it lapped over our toes and around our ankles begging us to enter. We continued until the water was waist deep. Jasmina stood in front of me and gave me that deep look that I have seen in so many dreams. Just then I could hear her voice in my head. Her words were clear and strong in my mind. She asked me to trust her actions and to let go of my impulses.

We dove together, arms locked, into the water and swam deeper and deeper. I mirrored Mina’s movements as she thrust her legs together as one like a dolphin. Our speed increased far beyond my ability and soon we were so deep I could feel the pressure of the deep blue squeezing my chest. My skin began to tingle with the sting of oxygen debt, my throat bursting for a breath. Jasmina continued into the deep with me in tow as my body began to convulse for air. She stopped to face me again; I heard her speak softly, telling me to let go of fear and doubt and to accept this change. Again she reminded me to use my dreams.

I felt the warmth of her body as she put her hands on my shoulders, wrapped one leg around me, and pressed her lips against mine. I closed my eyes as my body filled with excitement from the intimate contact of her touch. Suddenly, in a flash of light and memory, I realized that the need to breathe had gone. We were drifting there in water so deep that the light of day was dimmed to a simple glimmer overhead. I could hear the siren song of millions of sea creatures chirping and clicking. I could feel the dream. I felt the power of the moment. The strength and endless ability I had felt in those childhood dreams were real memories.

We had remained here for an impossible amount of time when Jasmina began to swim off. I followed her, but with difficulty. She looked back at me and told me to stop trying to swim, to relax my arms and wiggle as I had in my dreams. As I mastered the rhythm of her kicks, I began to gain on the lovely princess. It felt comfortable and familiar: swimming endlessly without breathing. The farther we went, the more powerful I felt, until every stroke felt stronger than the last. We swirled around each other and moved side by side challenging each other’s speed. After what seemed like hours in the deep, chasing schools of fish, we moved into the shallows of a lagoon within our paradise island. There we practiced jumping out of the water to see who could jump the highest. It felt as though we had fins and tails. As I tread water, watching Mina’s jump, I thought to myself “humanoids with arms and legs made better swimmers than fish.”

Mina came to the surface grinning as water drained from her open mouth. She blew the last of the water from her lips and said, “Yes, humanoids do make better swimmers. In fact,” she said, “we are able to outswim most of the predatory fish in the seas.”

She told me I did very well for a first time swimming, but that I would need more practice to build confidence in this new gift. I had to agree, it was quite a gift. We swam to shore and walked over to our clothes. This was another aspect of Terans that would take some practice: getting comfortable with nudity. Swimming in the buff made perfect sense, but then walking alone on the sand with this perfectly gorgeous naked woman was going to take some time to grow accustomed to.

Once we were dressed again, it was time to make a shelter for the night. I found a great place to build a fire and began to gather dry wood for the night. We had logs to lean against and a beautiful view of the sunset. My hope was to give Mina a small taste of the pleasure and joy I have had here on Earth’s surface. It was no easy trick, but in time the fire started crackling away and we settled down on palm fronds against a log and spoke as we watched the sun slowly lower to the edge of the horizon. After our star vanished behind the curve of the Earth, the air cooled so more wood was committed to the fire. We visited by firelight exchanging views, ideas, and favorite things from our pasts as well as concerns for our future. We lay back, resting our heads on the log to watch the star show dancing in the sky above. I asked Mina if she knew where Tera used to be. She pointed into the sand between us. Her home world was once located in another galaxy that was below the southern hemisphere. She seemed saddened by my inquiry. I reached over to take her hand in mine, smiled, and told her how fortunate I felt to have her in my world. We sat there a while longer to enjoy the warmth of the firelight, then retired to the Vug for the night. I didn’t know if Mina needed rest or sleep, but as soon as we settled into the Vug I was out for the count.