Eternal Life Inc. (13 page)

22

Valkyrie

For the first time, he noticed the black onyx ring edged with silver on the third finger of her left hand. Suddenly, he understood or thought he understood. “You’re Jaganmatri,” he said, “A Valkyrie!”

Diana heard the undertone of accusation in his voice and sat up very straight, eyeing him defiantly. “If this bothers you, Mr. Neuman,” she said and lifted her hand, showing him the ring. “Perhaps we should discontinue these talks and you should leave.” She stood up and offered her hand in regal dismissal.

“Whoa, just a minute!” Harry said. He was having a tough time reconciling Jake Lloyd’s beautiful, artistically talented daughter with the fabled warriors of the Jaganmatri. “You just took me by surprise…” He stopped as he realized that was just what she meant to do. She had kept that ring concealed with her left hand in her lap until just the right moment. But right moment for what, he wondered. With a Jaganmatri Valkyrie, you probably didn’t want to know.

The Jaganmatri were the sisterhood of the Church of She. The Church worshipped the Goddess in her dual aspects of creator and destroyer, and the sisterhood mirrored this duality. On the one hand, the Jaganmatri of Compassion, like the goddess Isis, served the creative aspect of the loving, caring, life-giving Earth Mother. They wore a distinctive ivory ring banded in gold on their right hand.

By contrast, the Jaganmatri Valkyrie served the Goddess in her aspect of destroyer. They wore the black onyx ring and were a sisterhood of warriors sworn to defend the Church and the earth against all enemies, natural and supernatural. Like the Goddess Diana, they were hunters, and their prey wasn’t only
dark knowledge. Their exploits in the Quarantine against the Seraphim Jihad were legendary. They were not only superb soldiers and tacticians; they were also spies, assassins, courtesans and diplomats, all in the service of the Church.

They were admired and respected by some, feared and mistrusted by others, particularly in New Hollywood, where The Great Cathedral to the Goddess dominated the skyline. The Church was the major religion of the Empire and a force to be reckoned with, especially since its intentions were seldom clear and not always those of the Empire. Even the Tongs tread carefully when it came to the Church of She and especially the Jaganmatri Valkyrie.

“You were saying?” Diana said. She stood looking down at him. Her jade green eyes held his in a cold, steady gaze. The pupils grew larger. They became great pools of liquid darkness that grew and merged, eclipsing her face and drawing him in.

He felt a momentary resistance and then let go. He knew where this was going. He’d been there before. It was like stepping off a cliff and letting gravity take over. He toppled into darkness. A deep feeling of peace swept over him and he opened his arms and let it take him. He felt his ka stirring, and his meat body heaved a deep, boneless sigh of contentment. He was going home.

He registered a distant pinprick of light and, in the next instant, he was standing in his ka on the shore of the Shining Sea of the spirit realm. Someone was standing beside him. He knew it was her. He didn’t have to look. You couldn’t hide anything here. Everything was revealed in the infinite light of the spirit realm. You knew each other right down to the…

He dropped back into his body. He swayed and grabbed hold of the tabletop. He was standing up. He didn’t remember standing up. He could still feel the residue of peace and light from touching his ka and the infinite possibilities coming off the Shining Sea.

He blinked and looked around bemused. Diana stood across from him, studying him carefully. Her skin still retained a subtle golden glow from the touch of her ka. Everything is revealed, he thought, and for an instant he saw her standing on the shore of the Shining Sea in the fullness of her ka, Diana, Moon Goddess of the hunt, infinitely beautiful, alluring and deadly. He shook his head, and the vision disappeared, and even the memory of it was gone.

“Very good, Mr. Neuman,” Diana said.

Harry sat down heavily and looked up at her. “What do you want?” he asked uncomprehendingly. He was having trouble processing what had just happened. The only other person who had been able to drop him into his ka like that was Samuel Kade and it usually took him a while to do it.

Diana smiled. “Now, we both know where we stand,” she said and sat down. “Doctor Jericho told me about your hold on the ka but,” she shrugged. “You never know.”

Harry glared at Jericho. “I thought we had an agreement,” he said bitterly. “No one was to know about this unless I agreed to it, not even Chueh. Or maybe I misunderstood something?”

Jericho refused to meet his eye and instead began to flip through the hit list of the small jukebox music selector standing on the end of the table. GREATEST HITS OF NINETEEN FIFTY-NINE was printed in gold letters across the front of the selector.

“It was my fault,” Diana said. “I pressured him. I had to know.”

“Why?”

“You don’t belong to the Church of She, do you?” Diana asked without answering his question.

Harry shook his head. “What’s that got to do with anything?” he asked.

“But you know the Goddess is real?”

Harry looked at Doc.

“Come, come, Mr. Neuman; you died fifty-one times. You
must have seen something.”

Harry sighed resignedly. “Yeah, I’ve seen the Goddess. She’s real.”

“And despite that you don’t belong to Her Church?”

“I’m not a joiner,” Harry said. “I don’t need some organization standing between me and the Goddess, telling me what they think she said or what they think she wants me to think or do.”

“And what does the Goddess want you to think or do? What does she want from you?”

Harry shrugged uncomfortably. “She doesn’t say,” he said.

“Maybe you haven’t been listening.”

“Maybe she wants me to die for real!” he shouted as long dammed-up feelings of pain and guilt broke loose in a bitter torrent. “And some days I still wish I could!” His words washed over her like battery acid and she jerked back and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “The wound goes deep and doesn’t heal, I know.”

“What the hell do you know?” He was tired of all these annoying word games, all the hints, innuendos, half-truths and no answers. “Why don’t we cut the crap!” he said. “What do you want?” He looked at Doc angrily. “What do you both want?”

23

A Dark Matter

“Take it easy, Harry,” Doc said. “And we’ll tell you, but first there are some things Diana has to explain about her sister. She’s the key to all this.”

Harry looked at Diana. She sat patiently waiting with downcast eyes as if nothing had happened. What was it about her, he wondered, that just by sitting there she could call up such a storm of conflicting emotions inside him? He’d never met a more irritating, arrogant, stubborn, beautiful, attractive, intel-ligent…Stop it! He told himself. This isn’t helping. He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and exhaled slowly. “Okay,” he said at last. “Tell me about Isis.”

Diana glanced at Jericho and then nodded. She folded her hands over the notebook on the table and stared out the window gathering her thoughts.

Harry followed her gaze. Storm clouds continued to pile up beyond the trees but the sun still shone across the fifteen standing stones, dragging long shadows across the raked gravel. The garden had the static, timeless quality of an immovable axle around which the whole universe revolved.

“My sister was first and foremost a medical doctor,” Diana said at last. “Her primary concern was to help the sick and suffering. Looking back now, I can see how the trajectory of her career, right from the beginning, inevitably led to the Nevada Quarantine. Her Doctoral thesis explored new treatments for obscure genetic disorders and, after that, she focused on the transgenic diseases left over from the plague wars. She was especially interested in mapping and plotting the flux, the rate of genetic divergence of the new strains from the originals as the diseases continued to mutate and gradually burn out. She
became fascinated with what was known as the Norma-gene Paradox?” Her voice ended in a query, and she looked at Harry.

He just shook his head. “Another one of the many things I don’t know,” he said and assayed a half-hearted grin.

“There’s no reason why you should,” she replied. “It’s just I never know with you.” And for one unguarded moment their eyes met and clung to each other. Diana quickly pulled her gaze away and glanced down at the notebook and Harry looked out at the Ryoanji Gardens and tried to figure out what just happened. It felt as if some silent message had just been telegraphed back and forth along the lines of sight between them, but he was damned if he knew what it was.

“As I was saying,” Diana continued, as if nothing had happened, “the Norma-gene Paradox lies in the fact that the basic Norma-gene mutations of the human genome have remained remarkably stable for over three hundred years. They show no sign of flux. On the other hand, the grosser physical and neurological expressions of the disease show almost astronomical variations, with the only common denominators being the star scars, the peroxide blond hair and that husky, Marilyn Monroe voice. It’s as if the disease is mutating wildly, turning genes on and off, while the basic genome remains stable and that’s impossible, and that’s what fascinated Isis. And to add paradox to paradox, it’s this very stability that’s made it impervious to all treatment.”

“Until Rielly Logan?” Harry suggested.

“That’s also something Isis went into the Quarantine to find out,” Diana replied. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

“Isis began studying the Paradox four years ago. She had to go into the slums and back alleys of New Hollywood to find the few Norma-genes who still lived there as homeless outcasts. The exodus to the Nevada Quarantine hadn’t left many behind.

“She made contact with a small group and in the course of her work met an old Norma-gene with psychic powers. The old man
usually kept them well hidden. Norma-genes haven’t forgotten the bigotry and fear that fired the witch hunts a half century ago. Despite this, Isis managed to earn the old man’s trust, and he showed her how he could move objects with his mind.

“The phenomena fascinated her, and she began researching it in her free time. With the help of the old Norma-gene, she gradually met others with hidden powers. They told her that all psychic powers were based on the ability to see and manipulate an unknown form of energy that’s all around us. It’s around all healthy, living organisms, but also around grav-cars, repeller-fields, and especially around the spin-generators at Eternal Life. There were also certain geographic areas where the energy concentrates. Some Norma-genes claimed to be able to use these areas to see into other worlds; some said even into worlds of gods and demons. These areas often coincided with ancient holy places.

“Isis developed a theory based on what the Norma-genes told her and what her own research showed. It incorporated a number of almost forgotten theories from late twentieth century physics, among them the theory of dark energy.

“Dark energy?” Harry asked.

“Another one of those things you don’t know?” Diana teased.

Harry grinned more easily now and shrugged. “What can I say?”

“Well, don’t feel bad, there aren’t many people today who have heard of dark energy. After all the horrors of the Crash, science was more concerned with the practical problems of healing and rebuilding. A lot of promising research was destroyed in the Crash or later just got lost in the shuffle.”

“If it wasn’t for those time tombs that pre-Crash civilization left scattered across the country, dark energy would have been lost too. The theory is based on solid measurements and observations of gravitational attraction, the discrepancies in the orbits of planetary bodies, and the movement of galaxies. Physicists in the
late twentieth century calculated the entire mass and energy of the universe…”

“They could do that?” Harry asked.

“Yup,” Diana nodded. “Isis showed me some old articles. Anyway, when they finished making their calculations, they found that the amount of energy and matter in the universe was far less than what it should be. In fact, it was over ninety percent less. So the big question became, where was all this matter and energy? And since matter is only another form of energy, the question was simplified to, where was all this energy?”

“Maybe they calculated wrong,” Harry said.

“That was the first thing they thought of,” Diana said. “But after checking and double-checking countless times, they were still left with the same question. And the only answer they had was the theory of dark matter and energy. It went something like this. Since by all calculations this energy must exist, it must be in a form unknown and invisible to us and all our instruments. Therefore, it must, in contrast to everything we know, be dark energy.”

“That doesn’t say much, does it?” Harry asked.

“No, not really.” Diana laughed. “But giving the unknown a name always makes people feel more secure and in control. Why should scientists be any different?”

“What does this non-existent, existent dark energy have to do with repeller-fields, Eternal Life’s spin-generators, Rielly Logan, or even black ka-eating wolves?” Harry asked.

“You might want to add magic, religion, and the future of the human race,” Doc threw in with a mad bomber glint in his eye.

“You gotta be kidding!” Harry said.

Doc shook his head. “I wish I was.”

“Well let’s just start with something I know for a change, like repeller-fields,” Harry said.

“Oh ho, so you know all about repeller-fields?” Doc asked with the look of a hungry cat that just cornered a tasty mouse.

“Why sure, everyone does.”

“What are they then?” Doc pounced.

Harry looked at Diana for help, but she just smiled encouragement. “Well, they’re, ah, a kind of force field,” he said.

“And what kind of force would that be?”

Harry squirmed. Doc could be merciless sometimes. Like most people, Harry took repeller-fields for granted. They’d been around all his life. They powered his cars, his home, his whole world. They were even responsible for his resurrections. “It’s a kind of anti-gravity,” he said, thinking of his grav-car; and ninety-nine percent of the people in New Hollywood, not to mention the rest of the world, would probably have backed him up.

“That’s just what Oskar Danzig thought when he created the first repeller-field and sent a steel ball through the roof of his house a hundred years ago,” Doc said. “And it’s what most scientists believed for the next seventy-five years while the Danzig spin-generator was adapted to push, pull, lift, and power just about everything.

“Then about twenty years ago, we learned not only to bend and form repeller-fields but to give them feel and texture too. By varying the crystal resonance or the shape of the rotating coil or by changing the iridium labyrinth, we could suddenly give a repeller-field the feel of wood bark or animal fur or even human skin. And that shot a lot of holes in the anti-gravity theory.

“But what finally killed it was one of those urban legends about accident victims miraculously coming back to life when they got caught in the gravity field of a passing car or the backwash of one hovering nearby.

“We all recognize that weird prickly sensation when a nearby grav-field passes over us. It’s supposed to be harmless, but if you were dead, it looked like it could sometimes bring you back to life. It didn’t always happen, but it happened often enough that rescue units at the scene of fatal accidents routinely put the
victims beneath hovering vehicles for short periods of time.

“Many of these people came back to life and came back with very clear after-death experiences. I saw it happen once, and it started me thinking. From there it was just a short step to creating an “Eternal Life” spin-generator that’s nothing but a modified Danzig coil spinning through the pzio-electric field of a resonating crystal. And despite what some of my colleagues are still teaching, there is no way in hell that the theory of anti-gravity is going to explain why certain resonating crystals and patterns of iridium can tag and then pull in the souls of dead people!

“But to be perfectly honest, I had no idea what I was dealing with until I read one of Isis’…” Jericho stopped and looked over at Diana, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “This was supposed to be your show and here I am hogging center stage. It’s a bad teaching habit. You know, old lecturers never die; they just blabber away.”

“Don’t apologize.” Diana smiled. “I enjoyed the show.”

“Well, now that I’ve totally destroyed young Harry’s intellectual credentials,” Jericho said with a playful chuckle. “Maybe you can take over but try not to strain his limited abilities.”

“One of these days, Doc…” Harry said and drew an imaginary knife across his throat. Doc grinned and Diana laughed, and the residue of the strained atmosphere from before seemed to evaporate.

“Seriously though,” Harry said, turning to her. “I think I see where this is going. Your sister thought that repeller-fields were somehow utilizing dark energy, right?”

“Yes and no,” Diana said. “Because no one knew what dark energy was or where it came from or why it could capture kas and bring dead people back to life or give some Norma-genes visions of alternate realities.”

She looked at Jericho. “Thank you for letting me get a word in edgewise, but I really do think you’re better qualified to explain
this part than I am.”

“You’re being too modest. The Church maintains the best schools in the world at the Holy See in New Omaha, and the Jaganmatri receive the best education those schools can give.”

Diana glanced uncomfortably over at Harry. He wondered what kind of game Jericho was playing by purposely reminding everyone that she was Jaganmatri.

Jericho beamed at them with all the grandfatherly benevolence of a child molester offering a couple of kids a bag of candy. “But since you insist,” he said, spreading his hands in a what else can I do gesture. “You know how much I love to put my vast intellectual abilities on display for poor ignorant Harry.”

Harry looked over at Diana and rolled his eyes in mock despair. She smiled tentatively.

“Isis developed a kind of unified field theory that tied together two of the major concepts of twentieth century physics,” Jericho said. “And then tied them together with the realm of the spirit that had always been the preserve of religion.”

“From what you’ve told me, Harry, every time you trance-walk into your ka, you always walk out onto the edge of what you call the spirit realm, that manifests either as something you call the Shining Sea of the Gods or the Astral Planes. You say that in reality the spirit realm is neither of these things. It’s just how your mind, using reference forms that Samuel Kade taught you, tries to define the indefinable. Now, having said that, I’m going to try to define it.”

He cleared his throat and as he started speaking, his voice took on the dry, objective tones of a lecture hall. “Isis’s research opened a back door to an almost forgotten branch of twentieth century physics called quantum physics. Twentieth century quantum physics postulated the existence of what they called a quantum field, a field of infinite potentiality beyond the finest, most subtle levels of material existence.

When physicists began exploring the field of atomic and
subatomic particles, they discovered that high energy particles could appear out of nowhere and disappear into nothing and this, according to Newtonian physics, was downright impossible. To make matters worse, not only was matter and energy being created and destroyed along the borders of what we call physical reality, but the processes taking place at that level were responding to the conscious expectations of the scientists performing the experiments.

“The conclusion they finally reached was that there had to exist a field, a quantum field or vacuum state, containing infinite amounts of energy and matter existing as pure potential, as virtual particles or probability waves of vacuum flux, in other words, a field of nothing containing the infinite possibilities of everything.

“Our universe not only sprang out of that field of nothingness but was constantly being created and recreated out of it. To top it all, this nothing responded to consciousness and therefore also had to be a field of consciousness. Not only were the borders of physical existence becoming porous but they were becoming consciously porous.