EarthUnder (The Meteorite Chronicles Book 1) (16 page)

Sleep that night was filled with brilliant renditions of my old dreams. I woke thinking they must have been inspired by the long undersea swim we had taken. Mina was awake and sitting by our fire pit. I walked out of the Vug; without her there to assist me it was much more difficult to climb through the thin veil of rock between the Vug and the outside air. I figured it must be that everything was easier with Mina there to empower me. As I walked over to sit on the log she was leaning against, she handed me a coconut filled with fresh water and a nutrition pod from New Tera. She looked rested, but then she always looked ready for anything. Whether it was the magic of the Vug or being in Mina’s presence or the limited time in New Tera, I felt a magical well-being. I was feeling a strength I’d never felt before.

Mina appeared deep in thought as I looked over to her. She had the long-distance gaze of someone staring into a campfire as though last night’s fire was still burning. It felt right to leave her alone for a bit so I walked out onto the beach and turned to face the sunrise. The thought occurred to me: what a beautiful experience to wake up with early morning light coming in the sunrise side of your home. Then in the evening the long rays of the setting sun pour in the windows and doors of the sunset side. The bonus would be getting to watch the sun and moon traverse the sky north and south with the changing of the seasons. I stood there in a daydream glaring through the palm trunks at the golden globe climbing into the day and thought of so much beauty that would end if our mission should fail. Some of the simplest aspects of life on Earth carry with them the most beauty: a single snowflake, a grain of sand, a drop of water, a leaf, a flower, a wave breaking on the shore, or a wisp of wind in the trees. I stood reflecting on the Earth’s endless beauty and all that would be lost. Memories and visions streamed through my mind’s eye and faded into a wash like rain falling onto the sea. Jasmina walked past me and curled her arms around my neck. She whispered into one ear my favorite things: a campfire, a warm sandy beach, watching the sun set and rise. While we stood there together as one, watching, the dawn light intensified. She spoke of her thoughts. She said that in all of my lives she had admired the continuity of my favorite things. She went on to describe how she watched me live many prior lives. In those lives there were moments of reflection while enjoying my favorite things. These were the moments when she would most intimately connect with the man she could only observe, guide, and protect. She had watched me live those lives over and over: the victories and failures, the mistakes and lessons, the loves and lives lost. She had felt my joys and pains for generations until now, now I am the one, the one she had waited for.

As we stood in the cool morning sand, it occurred to me how much it must have hurt her to watch me befriend her sister those years ago. She whispered, “It had to be this path we have both taken. We are here now and we are the culmination of those years. Time takes its path and as creatures of time we must honor its direction. It is our time now to inspire a planetary change in direction.”

Enveloped in Mina’s comforting embrace I could feel her powerful strength and from her words I could hear her tenacity. We were already on our way to the goal as Earth spun under foot and time roared forward. Even resting here on our island refuge we were moving forward at the speed of time, and every movement was a step along our path to the end. I drew energy from Jasmina’s strength to combat the onslaught of fear. Fear is the life killer, I shall not lay down in fear.

Jasmina asked me to focus my thoughts. She coached me as we watched the day brighten to the east. She wanted me to think with my mind as if I were a “dark one” to anticipate what they might try in order to intercept our efforts. She told me that my human side was more receptive to the thoughts of deceptive action. From our limited exposure, thus far, to the Teranor, she suspected they had mastered a shielding ability that prevented her from seeing them or hearing their thoughts. She wondered if Laurent was a hybrid like me, only cultivated by Teranor to counter our mission. That would mean that there were a measurable number of Teranors here on the planet, possibly even some who had infiltrated New Tera. I told her that I knew they would try to anticipate our movement to other institutions and that our appearances at the planned locations needed to be brief and cursory. Beyond that we might need to draw from the powers of her people. She said that her people were far more powerful than the Teranor, but the powers were millions of years untested and their abilities would need to rely on my human contribution.

I stood there with the warming sunlight soaking into my face and listening to Mina’s mentoring. Her reference to my contribution made no sense in the big picture. She reminded me that Terans share every thought and hide nothing. To deceive was beyond her natural ability. Digesting this train of thought I pondered several things that didn’t add up, knowing she would hear my thoughts: thoughts about Kadishya and both of their missing husbands, thoughts about the Teranor and how they had suppressed their presence, thoughts about her Elders and what they might know that she didn’t. I could see the shock in her face as she reacted to my thoughts. I had opened questions she would never have considered plausible. We walked out onto the open beach and sat “crisscross applesauce” knee to knee and discussed possibilities. There were several advantages in our movements. We had the Vug, the elements of surprise and deviation. We still had a piece of the brain bone meteorite. And we still had a plethora of allies here on the surface and below as well.

Today we would make the journey to Houston and tomorrow we would then hop over to Washington, D.C. I told Mina that we didn’t need to meet with anyone as long as we were seen in the area by someone I knew. This would be enough to throw the dogs off the scent. Not knowing who would be waiting for us meant difficulty planning our moves. I did know that once we were in Houston I would call Vanessa to make sure she was safe. We were enjoying these final minutes of solitude together on the shores of Paradise. Soon it was time to head out to our next destination. As we walked to the cliff that held the Vug I couldn’t help wishing we could remain. The world had a morbid feel as we walked into the stone face of the cliff. This would never again be the world I thought I knew. So much had changed so suddenly that my brain burned with feelings of doubt and a paucity of courage.

Soon we were under way through the Gray and into the ocean. Before long we were passing into the Gulf of Mexico, according to Mina. As we shot towards Houston, Mina asked me to watch the sea floor here as we slowed. She told me that this portion of the gulf was a rapidly growing dead zone. I could see that everything was black or gray and there were no fish at all. She went on to say that the Gulf had been a nursery for multiple species of the world’s tuna and sailfish as well as many other species for millennia, and its destruction had only begun in the past seventy years. Thinking in geologic terms, this wasn’t even a partial blink. Mina looked at the shock on my face and she nodded as she reminded me that the Earth needs not Man but Man needs the Earth. The shock of this scene inspired a greater sense of urgency in my conscious thought. Eventually we cruised beyond the black waters of the Gulf and into the Gray of the land below Texas. From there it was minutes to Houston. We came to a halt and stepped out of the Vug onto the shaded concrete staircase of a sports arena.

Across from the Vug I found vending machines and a phone to use. First, I called a friend at NASA/Johnson Space Center to let him know we were in town for a visit. I told him we would be in to visit the lab in a few hours and he said that would work fine and to look for him in his office. Then, I called Vanessa at the Natural History Museum in London to check up on her. Vanessa surprised me when she answered the phone at her desk. The tension stretching bones to the breaking point let go when I heard her cheerful voice vibrate through the earpiece. Vanessa said she was fine, but that she had some unfortunate news; the crumb she had used in the ion probe had somehow mysteriously vanished without a trace. But she had gotten great gobs of information from that tiny fragment that made no sense at all.

It tickled, listening to her pleasant British verbiage. As she began to explain, her words of the specimen making no sense, she interrupted herself to say she had forgotten about the piece she sent off to the tech for thin sectioning. She had gotten the slide back and was beginning to look at it with the Scanning Electron Microscope. She just started asking me if I had any idea of what I had when the phone clicked and the voice of Laurent interrupted our call, “So, hello, Mr. Bryce Monroe Sterling, you are in Houston now; ha, where will you go next?”

I looked at Mina but she already knew what was happening. We ran for the Vug and left immediately. Mina showed intense concern; I reached over to put a hand on her shoulder and reminded her that this was just what I expected. From what I saw they were playing right into our hands. I didn’t think the Teranor had any magic on their side. It was a simple connection through a bugged phone in Vanessa’s office.

Now I worried about Vanessa again because he learned she had another piece. I knew I couldn’t reach her on her cell phone because the lab and her office were so far below ground. But the cafeteria was in a solarium on the top floor of the museum. I had joined curators there for lunch several times. What I needed to do was to guess when she might go there for dinner and call her to speak or leave a message telling her to get the heck out of there with the slide.

We would now travel to Washington, D.C., to make another appearance, but we needed to lag enough to make it look like we took surface transportation again. The thinking was that after visiting Vienna we could shoot over to Hawaii to see Gary and the diversion would provide us with two to three days and nights before we would need to run again.

In college, I had enjoyed a few terms of Karate lessons. The teacher was an ethereal philosopher who shared his ideas with regard to self-awareness, personal improvement, and the responsibility that comes with power over others. I asked him once after a class of sparring how he handled conflict with his ability to take down an opponent. He gave me a very cool look and said, “Always remember that no matter how advanced you are in this martial art, it’s impossible to outrun a bullet.” In encounters with bad guys, I would always hear the instructor’s voice reminding me to avoid conflict.

Mina took us back to the Void to meet with her Elders. We had some time and she felt a need to confer with them. When the Vug came to rest on the floor of New Tera, the Elders were waiting there for our arrival. Mina asked me to stay by her side as she moved out of the Vug. Her posture was rigid, and her voice was hard and sharp, cutting through the air like a battle blade. She expounded with surprising volume in the faces of the attentive group of Terans. “What have I not been told!” she screamed with a growl in her candied voice.

As the closest Elder began to reply, Jasmina interrupted with temper and concise accusation. The power of my little Mina was expanding as fire from the mouth of a dragon. “I am questioning my trust in our people right now! There are things that have been kept from me! How can you expect an entire race of humans to trust me if I cannot trust my Elders?”

In her current, succinct fashion, she demanded to know everything. And she demanded that all speech be in audible words for my benefit and edification. Again, I was feeling more faith in my savior than ever. Mina was winning my conviction. I felt her strength coursing through my veins. Standing there next to her while she raged gave me a part of her strength or so it felt. My gut told me to never make this woman angry. Here we stood waiting for answers.

The Elders looked down, which gave me a bad feeling. The nearest Elder began again, “Jasmina, we are saddened for having done this, but our actions were purely involved with Teran security. We have known of the Teranor threat for some time. They have been performing a silent invasion. We are far more powerful than they suspect, but a conflict could endanger the people of Earth, and our hope is to once again eliminate their threat. But they have deceit on their side and they are armed with their own genetically altered human/Teranor population. We have tried to monitor their efforts, but our work can only be performed by the people of your line. Please, Jasmina, believe us when we tell you that the less you knew the better. We will answer your questions, but it is better that we do all we can to assist you on your quest. As both of you know well from your own life memories, fear kills. We all know that fear and panic could cause a global meltdown of the society on this planet. Therefore, we have chosen to keep the knowledge of specific threats from both our populations. Elders have known for millennia that the Teranor were coming. We have lost many planets to their invasion over millions of years. Our colonies are only half what they once were, and those lost worlds are now populated by the dark ones or they are dead globes of rock and ash. I am feeling a question that you and your sister have pondered for ages and I must address this with you now. Both of your husbands have been lost to us during their journeys to our outer colonies. We have confirmed that they are expired, but sharing this with you might have revealed the threat. We know this is going to make your next move difficult, but you have been chosen for your array of strengths and we hope you will endure. As you know we have mastered interstellar travel folding the ribbon of space. Now the Teranor have devised a method for corrupting our mental technique and thus for now, we are trapped on this planet. This we believe is why they are making such a relentless effort to stop you in your mission.”

The Elder explained further, “This information we felt might lessen your effectiveness and we chose to keep it from both of you. In recent time we have revisited the prospect of using wormholes to travel but our minds are still not able to control the turbulent chaos that resides within a wormhole. We were spoiled by the ease with which we were able to utilize the fourth dimension ribbon and fold the space between our worlds. Now it is known that we have lost the option to move elsewhere and thus we have lost the ability to communicate with many of our colonies. This compounds the sense of urgency that we try to reverse man’s destructive direction. We have yet to learn what the Teranor intend, but we must assume it is nothing benevolent. They maintain the embodiment of pure evil and we must act accordingly. There is one more subject that I am required to reveal to you at this time. In the years of our concern over this matter, we Elders chose to build an army of soldiers to defend our world against Teranor offense. They will only be utilized if a need is recognized and will be assimilated into the population once this threat is diminished. Jasmina, you and Bryce can trust that any other information is either an oversight or is negligible. Our knowledge is yours.”