Children of the Source (29 page)

    Jesse and his family had made camp about a mile from the Castaway.
  I touched Felice and told her of  the Siberian Tiger.  Felice told her people, but changed the tiger to wolves.  They built up a good fire and tethered the horses close.  Jesse, weak but healing, ate and fell asleep almost immediately.  I’d recruited healers from the Other side to work on Jesse’s physical body.  The children and Marcy with Allen took turns mounting watches and feeding the fire.  I took Jesse, out of his body, to a healing center and turned him over to friends. 

    I went back to my physical body and then to dinner with Abe, Meg and Victoria.
  I reassured them about Judith, Laith, and Greg.  That everything seemed to be on course.  We enjoyed our evening together with friends playing tumbling towers, pickup sticks, snakes and ladders, and poker.  Then after everyone went to bed, I stretched out on an easy chair in front of the wood stove with its small fire and dozed.  Sometime during the night someone tucked a couple of blankets around me with a neck pillow.  I woke early, wrote a note to Abe, Meg and Victoria, and went to the map room.   

    Severin sat waiting for me.
  An old friend and associate.  “When are you going to tell your people?”

    “About?”

    “Your son and the Transition in your system.”

    I smiled. “I was waiting for
you
to tell
me
.  I wasn’t sure you knew.”

    “How much does Laith know?”
  Severin busied himself making herb tea.

    “I can’t say.
  He’s knows his abilities are far from normal, and must suspect they have some special use,” I said.

    “You know the trigger?”   Severin stopped, eying me, holding the teapot, steam curling out the spout.

    “A supernova at the heart of our galaxy.  He’s part of an ancient Entity who helped create the Earth.  That Entity was part of an older Entity who helped create our galaxy.  These Entities still take an active interest in the Earth.  They have lent their knowledge and expertise to Laith, helping craft abilities and conduits of knowledge and energy.”  I took a breath.  “The best I can come up with is opening some dormant abilities in mankind as a whole that can lead to what we have in the Four Planet Federation.”   I saw Severin, start.  “And you thought you were in for a prolonged collective disaster.”  I grinned.  “There wouldn’t be any point in our coming unless there was a collective vehicle for change.  What we have in the Federation is for maturing Entities.  This system is ripe for change.”

    “Thank you, Jamie.
  I am relieved to hear it,”  Severin said, bringing two steaming cups of herb tea.  A honey pot sat on the table.  “I took the liberty of bringing your favorite tea from the ship, Haqesta.”

    “Wow. I’d almost forgotten.”
  I picked up the mug and savored the tangy aroma from the steam.  This particular herb helped focus our energies to get information from our Entities.  A channel. 

    “You do pretty well on your own,” Severin said, “but it doesn’t hurt to supplement at times.
  Your memories are almost complete.  But you don’t trust your Entity.”

    “Entities have their own agenda, Severin.
  It’s the personalities they create that often suffer for it.  Learning is wonderful, but ... ” I said.

    “I can’t argue that.”
  Severin savored the tea. 

    “Enough of
that,”  I said.  “This transition will allow more give and take, more communication with the Entity.  There will be less manipulation by the Entity and more of a partnership between the two.  It will provide the landscape for faster maturation.”  I spread my hands. “That is why we are here.”

    “In a nutshell,”
  Severin agreed.  He bent over the map and the converging colored pins.  “You sure you want to take the chance?  There’s still time to intervene.”

    I closed my eyes, sipped my tea, and did some special breathing.
  Then I was at my lighthouse, the day sunny, warm with a few fluffy white clouds sailing slowly by.  The great pine trees scattered the sunlight on the garden below.  My Entity perched on the rock as before, old eyes watching veiled with humor and some fathomless knowledge. “Welcome,” she said. 

   I did a double take. “Calm yourself, Jamie. You know we Entities are a balanced combination of both male and female.
  At least we work at that.  Last time I represented myself as a male.   Aren’t I beautiful?.”  She was; exquisite, mature, stylish, and something else.

    “Don’t,” I said.

    “I’m sorry,” she said, and dropped the essence of my mother.  “I wanted you to feel comfortable.  I can get her to come.”

    “No thank you.
  Not today.  I know she’s safe and happy with my father.”  Another story.

    “How can I help you?”
  She studied me.   “You don’t trust me.”

    “I’d like to.”

    “Have I ever lied to you?”  The wise eyes studied me.

    “No.”

    “Let’s go with that.”

    “I’m looking for information dealing with what will happen this morning with the three groups of people involved with my brother.”

    My Entity jumped down from the rock.  “Stroll with me.  You’ve done an excellent job of manipulating all parties involved, but you don’t know what will happen.  You neutralized Kirfin without violence.  Nice touch.  You’re using other parts of me, even if you don’t want to admit it.  I’m not a malicious degenerate and you aren’t a puppet on a string.”

    “I’m not so sure of the last part,”
  I said.

    “True.
  But being brand new in one sense, you had no say.  That is the catch twenty-two every Entity goes through when they create a personality out of their energy.  So, your questions?”

    “How can I make this work -
  sparing Jesse’s life?”

    “I wish I could tell you.
  Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and trust.  The trouble is you’re dealing with more than just yourself.  You are dealing with how many people - three army men, one shooter - your Castaway, Judith, Laith, and Greg from your community, and all of Jesse’s family?  Each Being has an input.  Each Being has an intent.  Each Being has an hoped for outcome even if they may not be aware of the coming incident.  Each Being is a variable that affects all the others.  Whatever probability doesn’t happen in your physical reality will happen elsewhere. That is for others more developed than you to deal with.”  She took my hand, and walked with me into the lighthouse.  I could feel her energy course through me, blending until I wasn’t sure where I ended and she began. 

    She led me up to the
light and the splendid view overlooking the sea.  “One day, after you are done with this life.  I will lead you up here and show you the panorama of our Being.  Yes,
ours
.  For I am you and you are me.  At some future Moment Point, you will have my awareness and knowledge and understanding.   For now, do not fear the future in your realm of reality.  Go back and have faith in your Moment Point.  There are lessons that need to happen for a number of people involved so the future, as you think of it, can unfold in a fruitful way.”

    Unfold in a fruitful way.
  Unfold in a fruitful way.  I opened my eyes on my old friend who sat quietly, in helpful silence, lending his energy in a supportive way.  “And?”

     I shook my head.
  “No real answer.  I think I was being gently told it wasn’t my place to create a final outcome.  Playing God.   Others have input, too, and I might manipulate it only so far, and then I have to trust the future.  You can’t live other people’s lives.  We have saying here
, bug off
,
man
.”

    “Curious idiom,” Severin said.
  “So?”

     “I go with the flow.”
  But I felt like a restless bear, knowing what I wanted, but not being able to do anything about it.  Gawd Almighty.  

16

 
      Abe, Meg and Victoria came by the map room, and we went over to the Dining Hall to have breakfast.  There we joined Greg’s wife Alice and son Issac, an energetic redhead of fifteen.  I assured them Greg was okay.  But Alice was distracted, plainly going to be focused on her man until Greg walked through the Main Gate.  Issac, polite, sensed there was something he wasn’t being told.  He had a gift for sensing the truth.  He was a close friend of Laith’s.  I often suspected they were related - not from the same Entity, but from a family of Entities all related to the same source.  Children of the Source. 

    “Greg, Judith, and Laith will meet up with Jesse’s family today,” I said.

    Issac said, “And the army patrol you arranged?”

    “Insurance,”
  I said.  Then I told them of the Castaway and the sniper’ s rifle.

    “And?”
  Issac stared at me.  Crap.  I should have known he knew there was something else.

    I grimaced and said carefully.
  “There’s a Siberian Tiger in the vicinity.  That I did not see.”

    “Not good, but thank you,” Issac said.
  “You’re running interference as far as you can, Jamie.”

    “Not as much as I’d like,”
  I said, and turned to my breakfast.  Helen joined us, plainly preoccupied with Laith.  “He’s safe.”  She nodded, smiling faintly.  I patted her shoulder.  Charles and Mary showed up, and decided to stay with Alice.  As I sat there, I realized Judith, Laith and Greg were hiking past the Castaway across the dry lake bed.  He just sat there watching, unnoticed in the brush two hundred feet away.  They’d have to go back the same way.  He had only to wait. 

    An hour later at the map room, I sent one of my selves with our people.
   I watched as they met Jesse and his tribe.  The excitement as the food, shoes, and clothes came off the pack mules.   The wonder in the children as they tried on the new clothes and shoes.  The beginning of the let down from their long journey, realizing they were really almost there.  But they still had to make it past the dry lake bed.  Tomorrow.

    I left a portion of myself with my family and went to find Burt and his patrol.
  They were three miles away.  I had to move them closer.  This required delicate work.  I had to give Burt a reason to head for our people.  Burt and his patrol stood on a rise using binoculars to scan the area.  As Burt looked south he saw a large undetermined animal in the brush.  I intercepted the image and changed it in his mind to a large cat.  “Tiger,” Burt said, pointing south. 

    “I think I see it, too,” Rich agreed, young voice excited.
 

    Marve licked a finger and raised it to the air.
  “We are up wind of what you see.  Won’t affect Frankie.  But once she gets a whiff of our striped friend, she’ll be thata way.”-

     “Amen to that,” Burt said.
   “Pack what you need in case that happens.  You know what to do.”  They spent the next half hour getting ready.  Burt carried his rifle slung across his chest and the sniper’s rifle on his shoulder.  They began to move south toward the dry lake bed.  Satisfied, I went to look at the Castaway.

    The thin man sipped water
sparingly from a plastic bottle.  Then got up to pee and stretch.  He shook himself like a dog and settled down.  He must have been in incredible pain with his broken black big toe and swollen bicep, but seemed to have it under control.  A light bulb went off in my head.  Use the Sound Language to change the molecular structure of the explosive in the bullets.  Gawd, why didn’t I think of that before?   I focused on the bullets, but came up against an energy wall.  The Castaway’s Entity.  “Meddlesome creature,” It said.  “You think I’m going to let you ruin a spontaneous future.  Take your Sound Language and leave.”

    “I will do anything to save my brother Jesse.”

    “He doesn’t need saving.  He will survive physical death whether it’s now or years from now.”  There was scorn, almost contempt in the thought. 

     “Why would you allow your personality to destroy a promising future for my brother?”

     “His
future
, as you see it, is only one of many.  He has, like every personality, many futures that will be played out.  You, even you with all your vast abilities, are so parochial in your viewpoint, that you cannot see this.  You yearn that the future, your pitiful one future as you see it, is protected to the point where no spontaneity is available.  You’re trying to trap your brother into a bloodless future that cannot exercise itself to give the best result to all concerned.  And my personality, too.  Even I don’t know what is going to happen.  Choices!   It all comes down to choices.  Each of the personalities makes choices, and more choices, and then more choices.  Where does that lead?   Almost endless futures.  The roads not traveled
are
traveled.  Portions of us travel all these roads.  They all get played out.”  I could feel a brittle humor.

    “Come sit with me, and I’ll explain.
  I’m not an ogre or a degenerate as you see my personality.  Come.”  His familiar energy patted a log a hundred feet from the Castaway.  I came and sat, feeling drawn irresistibly to his Energy.  “Everything happens in the Moment Point.  You see your past as already happened, but everything is fluid and changes from what you do in the Moment Point.  As your past changes so does your future change.  Think of the Moment Point as an eternal ripple going out from a pebble in a pond.  You are the pebble and the ripple.  The ripple, the choice, goes out not just into the future but into the past.  Everything - every thought, intent, and action has an energy signature, a frequency, that leaves its mark on the Skein of Time some call the Akashic Records.  Because of  what you do in the Moment Point, The Eternal Now, changes everything.  That’s why it is notoriously hard to predict the future.  You can never leave the Moment Point.  It is your access to Reality.  You can view and experience the past and future from the Moment Point, and if you stayed a while you’d see both the past and future change.  Go and trust the future.  And remember.  Remember.”

     I left.
  Tail not between my legs, but close.  The Castaway was one angle I couldn’t work, and maybe the most important angle.  Gawd Almighty, where do I go from here?  But he had a point. Robbing people of their free will, their ability to make choices, creates what?  I’d done what I could short of that.  I needed to back off.  And then the words
remember
,
remember
. I sat there with the words dominating my mind.  Remember. 

   
 I went back to the map room, to rethink what I could do.   As I opened my eyes from the easy chair, Severin sat there patiently waiting.  “Didn’t work?”  he said.

    “Not like I wanted,”
  I said.

     “Meddlesome creature,”
  he said.

     I laughed.
  “You don’t miss much, my friend.  Yeah.  The Entity was right.  How do I release this present and future in my mind?”

     He handed me some tea.
  A mug of my favorite tea - Haqesta.  The citrus aroma filled the room. “You need to or else you won’t operate successfully in the moment.  Would you want someone to take your free will away?  Of course not.  Emotional blocks cause a wound in your moment that causes an imbalance.  Kind of like being forced to veer off the road.  Leads to all sorts of unnecessary events.  Let it go, my friend.  We need you, of all people, to operate in a balanced way.”

     “I know,”
  I said, and sighed.   Images of a long ago time exploded within.   A car accident and a phone call that changed everything.  My father dying in front of my eyes as he listened to the phone.  The gut catching shrieking within - how can I go back in time to prevent what happened.  And much later after all the begging, and pain, accepting that that Moment Point was sealed forever.   Where are you!   Where are you!

     “You’ve never found your older brother after all these years?.”

     I swallowed and shook my head.  I lost a brother when I was young and it set me on the road I’m on today.  Made me almost paranoid about losing Jesse.  “No.  Never have.  That has been the biggest hole in my life.  I’ve looked on the Other side, but nothing so far.”

     “May be you weren’t meant to find him.
  The catalyst to keep you on the road you are now on,”  Severin said.  “One day you’ll have your reunion.   It just hasn’t been the right timing yet.”       

    That had never occurred to me.
  “You’re saying somehow I’ve kept the meeting from taking place to keep me on the straight and narrow?”

     “On some level it was blocked.
  Your Entity or maybe you on a personality level.”  Severin sipped his tea and devoured a oatmeal cookie.  Something he’d become fond of since coming to us.  He’d introduced us to a citrus flavored cookie which was a favorite of the aliens.

     “And Jesse?”

     “This doesn’t mean you’re going to lose him.  A second brother.  But you need to give him his due.  His moment.  You’ve done as much as you can.  The rest is up to him and the others.”

     I nodded, letting out a great sigh.
  I went back and watched as Burt and his patrol made their way to within a quarter of a mile of the dry lake bed and made a fire less camp.  The Castaway dozed on and off until morning, oblivious of Burt and his men.  He had one focus.   

 
   Mid morning found Jesse and his family with Judith, Laith and Greg trekking toward the dry lake bed.  I struggled to stay focused and let things take their own course.  Toward noon Jesse’s party arrived at the dry lake bed.  They saw the Castaway’s sweat stained cowboy hat and understood the reckoning to come.  Burt and his patrol were finishing shoeing their skittish mule.  Rich turned at the sound of a rifle cartridge being loaded into the rifle chamber.  He aimed his binoculars at the sound and grabbed Burt.  Finger to his lips, he handed the binoculars to Burt.  In a couple of heartbeats Burt had his sniper’s rifle aimed and ready.  The two rifle shots echoed almost simultaneously.

     I watched incredulously as the older prisoner jumped in front of Jesse at the last second.
  Jesse said something, and then lowered the stricken man to the ground.  Then Burt and his patrol were with Jesse’s family dragging the dying Castaway over.  In one crazy moment the Castaway  grabbed Jesse with a kitchen knife at his throat, but sagged when a girl kicked the knife away.  A soldier stepped on the Castaway’s neck and snapped it.  The girl child ran into Jesse’s arms and it was over.

     I touched Judith and Laith.
  They could sense my palatable relief.  Then I remembered a funny little dream of years ago when we were children and I saw Jesse as an old man.  Just that.  Nothing more.   I found myself back in the easy chair in the map room.

    “So you got your wish.
  Brother Jesse is safe and life goes on,” he said. 

    “Yea verily, as my father would say.
  He will live to fight another day.”

    “’Live to fight another day’?”
  Severin arched an eyebrow.

     “An expression.”
  I explained in alien. 

     “Ah.
  We do have our work cut out for us.  It must be a vast change your son and his people will work considering the Earth is known as the war world.”  Severin sipped his catnip tea and ate an oatmeal cookie.

    “I agree.
  Years ago I couldn’t imagine this happening until we finally had a separation of government and big business.  Like when the United States began by keeping a separation of Church and State.  Now with the global economy gone there is no support structure for big business and no clients for the war industry.  That opens up a lot of possibilities.”  

   
 I ran my hand over my wrist cuff and the living blue stones with their swirl of living energies.   “You know how those living stone cuffs work?”  Severin set down his tea mug and watched me.

    “Not really.
  The full memories aren’t here yet.”

     “They’re a type of communication device that is conscious and aware.”

     “A personality of sorts?”

     “Not exactly.
  It’s a facilitator which allows you  access to other parts of yourself.  Witness the ability to move other parts of yourself at will.  Fragment yourself yet keep your full awareness in each part simultaneously.  It’s tuned into your personal frequency.  An ancient device designed and created by your Entity.  It was passed from one personality to the next.  It has been in our custody until this time.”

     “How long from the last personality to me?”

     “Four hundred of your Earth years.  We knew of the larger plan, including this,”  he gestured to the room, “and you.  We have been in contact with your Entity all this time.”

     “I have the essence memories.
  Not the details.”

    “Yes, that’s why we have a natural affinity for each other.
  Our Entities have kept personalities incarnating at the same time.  Our friendship is, you could say, of long-standing.  We go back to Kodus,” Severin said.