Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (11 page)

"I know," John replied. "And it's probably
pretty healthy. If you didn't let yourself go ahead and feel the fear, it would
affect you more, and then it would affect your interactions with Sam. Remember
how you did the same thing when Sam first got sick?"

"Yep, that batch of fear took up half a box of
Kleenex," she said, laughing softly. "Don't you get scared by these things,
John?"

"I don't know. I guess I was scared last night
when Sam had the dream and I didn't understand it--how strange it seemed. Now
that there seems to be some kind of explanation for it, I don't feel so scared.
It probably reassured me to find out Mrs. Philpott had the same dream. Hey,
have you thought about that? Mrs. Philpott had the same dream as Sam and she's
quite a bit older than Sam, so it can't be some brand-new genetic mutation.
Today, when I saw her peering over those wire-rimmed glasses at me in her
sturdy Birkenstock sandals and flowered skirt with an Oxford button-down shirt,
well, she just seemed so solid and normal. A bit eccentric, I'll grant you
that--have you seen her latest hat?--but definitely a practical, down to earth
type. I have a feeling that she will get to the bottom of whatever this is."

"Did you see those roses in her garden? I've
never seen such gorgeous flowers before. Wonder what she does to them--some
kind of magic potion probably," Jessica said, laughing.

"I read this book once about crones--the wise
old women of the world. I would say Mrs. Philpott is a crone of the highest
order," John said.

"A crone? I'll have to read the book to see what
I think about that," Jessica replied. Stretching, she got up from the couch, saying,
"I'm so-o-o tired! Crying is exhausting. Let's go to bed. I want to snuggle
under the covers with you. A nice, warm, naked snuggle."

John followed her out of the den. "Sounds like a
plan. A good plan. An excellent plan."

Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Merlin was acting weird. Lisanne was shocked to
discover he had let her sleep until ten in the morning. And now he was refusing
to sit with her for coffee--their wake-up ritual. He just kept growling at her
every time she tried to talk to him.

Merlin was pissed off. He liked that phrase and
had considered making it literal by pissing on Lisanne's bed. How could she be
so stupid? Had the drinking really damaged her brain? No, she just couldn't
conceive of her cat using the computer. Well, he thought, I've had it with her.
If she doesn't have the sense to realize someone else lives here besides her,
then the hell with her. A self-absorbed little brat, that's what she was. He
knew Lisanne was frustrated by his inattention since yesterday. She was really
going to blow it for herself. Only a day and a half remained until the
hurricane showed up, and he sure wasn't going to stay around for that little
adventure. No way. Except the thought of her sitting at the computer as the
winds blew the sliding glass doors in on her or seeing her washed out to sea,
these thoughts continued to torment him. Could he really just leave her to die?
Even if she was a human, she was still a living creature. Was he really that
callous? She had saved his life. Didn't he owe her?

Haunted by his thoughts, Merlin paced the
apartment. He realized he'd miscalculated. All the time they'd been together,
he assumed Lisanne knew he understood her, that they were communicating. All
the conversations with her, he'd thought she understood him. The computer
message should have been so clear to her--just another achievement of his in
learning to communicate with her. But wait...maybe she really never knew. After
all, except for the humans who had discarded him shortly after his birth, she
was the only human he'd ever been around. Was it possible that she was like all
other humans? That they really didn't communicate with cats?

Merlin shook his head and scratched behind his
ear, irritated. No, that was impossible. Living creatures communicated with
each other, and everything was alive on the planet, so of course they all
talked to each other. Lisanne was just plain stupid. Deficient. Feeble-minded.
A poor, inadequate human. And where did that leave him? If it were true, then
he had been charged with the responsibility to look after one of the more
imperfect specimens of humanity. Could he just walk away from that obligation?
Was he to sink to the level of those humans who had thrown him from a car on
the highway--abandoning a helpless creature?

Merlin meowed plaintively. Resignedly. No, the
contract between humans and cats was a long-standing one. From the royal courts
of Siam where stealing a cat was an offense punishable by death, to the Egyptian
tombs where cats were found mummified along with their masters, cats and humans
had been joined in a bond of fellowship, love, and mutual protection for eons.
It would not be proper for him to heedlessly abandon the commitment simply
because he was involved with a human who happened to be an idiot. He would have
to make the attempt to save Lisanne...or die trying.

Las Vegas, Nevada

The pyramid of ice gleamed in the blazing
morning sun. A glistening tomb of frozen death encased the city of Las Vegas.
As the helicopter circled above the unbelievable sight, Maria had to remind
herself to breathe. Overwhelmed by the incongruous structure, she felt
weightless, dreamy--except this was more like a nightmare. Finally, she turned
to Zack and said abruptly, "Are you getting this on tape?"

He didn't answer for a moment and then seemed to
register that she had spoken. "Yes--getting it--it's...what the hell is it? Are
they sure this is Las Vegas?"

"It's Las Vegas, Zack. Or rather, it used to be,"
Maria said. "I don't understand how...what happened...some freak weather system?"

Zack stared through the lens of the video camera
as a thrill of fear went zinging through his tense body. He imagined this was
the way people felt when they first came upon Niagara Falls or the Grand
Canyon. The immensity of the structure of ice in such an unlikely location was
enough to scramble his senses. It felt supernatural, not quite real. Awed by
the impossible sight, he wondered if fear was appropriate to feel. The power to
create such beautiful devastation...yes, he thought, you either fear it or
worship it. Or maybe a bit of both.

Maria was mesmerized by the crystallized city,
eyes watering as she forgot to blink. There seemed no place within her mind to
conceptualize what she saw below, no way to make any logical sense out of it.
Maria's strength was in the perseverance she exhibited to understand any
problem that found its way into her life. She never read science fiction or
fantasy growing up because it didn't fit into her practical view of the world.
In her broadcasts, Maria tried to show the reasons behind the chaos that seemed
to reign in everyday modern life. Confronted by the vast pyramid of ice that
was Las Vegas, she wanted desperately to believe there would be a logical
explanation. But the frozen fingers clutching the pit of her stomach said
otherwise. It was ice, a natural phenomenon, but Maria knew instinctively that
the pyramid below was the most unnatural thing she had ever seen in her life.

Biloxi, Mississippi

Andy Jordan flopped onto the sandy beach and
stretched out, only slightly winded from his morning run. Drooling saliva
dripped onto his face from the open mouth of his dog, Waldo, who panted above
Andy's head.

"Yuck," Andy said, sitting up to move out of the
line of dribble. "That's definitely gross." The black Labrador grinned at him
with a wagging tail. "You don't even care, do you, big fella," Andy said,
laughing.

The fact that Andy owned a dog was a minor
miracle. He had grown up on military bases, moving every year or two as his
father was promoted up the ranks in the Air Force. Throughout his childhood he'd
had a dog as a pet, but never the same dog. Accidents happened with increasing
regularity to each dog, usually just as Andy became strongly bonded to the
animal. There had been dogs who escaped the yard to get run over, dogs that ate
pest poison to die from the toxins, but mostly dogs that just turned up
missing. His parents told Andy dogs take it in their heads to run away
sometimes. The worst accident happened in the garage. Andy opened the garage
door to get his bike and found Tonto, a Dalmatian puppy, with his head smashed
flat under a large roll of newsprint that was stored in the garage. The sight
of Tonto's smashed head haunted Andy's dreams for months.

The truth of the accidents was revealed to Andy
on a hot, humid night in Marietta, Georgia when he was twelve. He was unable to
sleep and had gone outside to sit on the patio in hopes of catching a breeze,
thinking any movement of air would be an improvement over the stuffy bedroom.
As he quietly opened the sliding glass doors, he heard a muffled yelp from the
back yard. Rolf, his cocker spaniel puppy, had a doghouse outside and Andy
wondered anxiously what was wrong. As he crossed the yard, the clouds separated
to allow light from a full moon to banish the shadows across the
night-blackened lawn. Revealed in the moonlight was Andy's father, Captain Mel
Jordan, pilot of B-52's, slitting the throat of the puppy. Andy's mouth opened
to scream as he watched blood spurt when an artery was cut, but no sound came
out. Choking back the yell he wanted so desperately to make, Andy knew in an
instinctual way that it was vital to his own survival that he not let his
father see him. Creeping back to the house, he turned for one last helpless
look, tears streaming down his face, to see his father's grim smile as he
smeared blood across his bare chest and gazed up at the moon.

The next day when his father told him Rolf was
killed jumping over a picket fence, impaling himself, Andy said he didn't want
any more pets, that they were too much trouble. But within a month, his father
brought home a new puppy, shoving it into Andy's limp arms saying, "For you,
son. Every boy needs a dog." Andy suffered the torment of watching more animals
disappear for the next three years until the day of his liberation, the day his
father was killed during a high-speed car crash. Andy's mother was a mousy
woman who had been completely under the thumb of her husband's iron rule, and
as Andy matured he wondered what indignities she must have suffered at the
hands of his unbalanced father. She never offered to buy him any more pets, and
Andy swore he would never have a dog again as long as he lived.

He never knew what caused his father's bizarre
obsession with killing animals. In college, he read psychology texts and
decided his father was at the very least a sociopath, probably made worse by
what he'd seen during his tours in Vietnam, but was never able to forgive his
actions.

One evening, after the 6:00 broadcast, Andy
overheard the feature reporter talking about the segment profiling animals at
the shelter for adoption. She was describing a litter of puppies who'd been
abandoned and said she didn't think all would be adopted and how sad it was
that some would be put to sleep. Visions of dogs stiff in death from poisoning
by his father came to Andy's mind and he walked away. That night, he suffered
from nightmares about dogs dying and realized in the morning that he had to do
something to save at least one animal, or he wouldn't be able to live with
himself. The connection between Waldo and himself was immediate, and the
relationship was the most cherished in Andy's life.

Las Vegas, Nevada

It was quiet. Too quiet. No normal sounds that
come from a city alive with people--engines humming, cars running, horns
honking, just...nothing. The few people who had driven to Las Vegas seemed to be
in a state of denial as she interviewed them. All they kept saying was, "This
is just not possible. It can't be happening," over and over again. Yet it was
happening and suddenly Maria found herself asking "Why?" with a different
sense. The earthquake and now this...it could not be a coincidence. Maybe
everyone was right and it couldn't all be happening at once. So, if it was
happening, then something was making it happen.

"Whoa, girl! Something is making it happen?"
Maria asked herself out loud. "Right. There is 'something' out there that can
control nature. I must really be losing it." Shaking her head, she reached for
her Styrofoam cup of cold coffee and gulped it down. Her cell phone rang. She
answered it, hearing Phoebe say, "Maria, you have to leave Las Vegas for
another story."

"What?" she practically yelled into the phone.

Zack heard and wandered closer to learn what was
up.

Maria continued in a slightly less loud tone, "I'm
standing in front of a pyramid of ice! It's like I'm in Egypt or something
except it's here in the U.S. and it's bigger than those pyramids over there and
it's a whole freaking city! Why do they want me to leave here? What earthly
reason could they possibly have for me to leave here?" she rapid-fired the
questions into the phone.

She heard Phoebe say in a trembling voice, "Um,
there are tornadoes, big, bad, you gotta see-them-to-believe-them tornadoes. A
lot of people are gonna be dead, Maria. A lot."

Maria held the phone away from her ear and just
stared at it for a minute, and then said into it, "Well, just what do they
think we have in L.A. and now Las Vegas, a
few
dead? That this is just a
minor skirmish here?"

Phoebe replied, "You know how rare an F5 tornado
is, Maria? Well, right now on the radar they are looking at ten of them! With
more to come it looks like. So they're sending transport for you in half an
hour." And with that she hung up. Phoebe was rattled, Maria thought,
distracted. Must be the thought of tornadoes, all that mess. Phoebe couldn't
abide mess.

Suddenly Maria realized she was just standing
there with the phone dangling from her hand. Zack was looking puzzled, waiting
for her to do or say something.