Children of the Source (5 page)

    “Good.”
  I emphasized the word and it broke his concentration.  “Let’s go a short way from your followers and test our powers.”  I hadn’t the faintest idea of what type of testing, but it served to get him away so we could talk.  Then I picked  up his thinking of Elijah and the priests of Baal.  The story makes exciting reading, but somehow I couldn’t see it happening here.

    I could feel his anger, the rage simmering, all running around with this Elijah business.
  Rage because he knew he didn’t have the abilities, and anger at God for not giving him what he felt was his due.  Deep anger because he didn’t understand why I had the abilities he coveted so much.  And why I didn’t believe.   Then there were his doubts.

    “I wish I could make you believe.”
  With tiger smile, his hard eyes studied me.

    “No, you really don’t.”  He had the smell of the inquisition - the blood and gut catching terror of knowing you’re at the mercy of the merciless.
  And the cold intolerance of the Puritans - so sure of what is, that there is no room for anything different.  Eli, in your deadly belief, what would you do to me to make me believe?  And what would that do to you and your soul?  I didn’t want to know.  But there was something else.  Barely submerged so I almost missed it.  Doubts.  They were sitting there, almost neglected, but potent, powerful, and refusing to go away.  Constantly nagging.  I smiled.

    Doubts.
  And I suspected doubts with scruples.  In the God-business, scruples were often a scarce commodity.  Religious robber barons amassed vast personal and corporate fortunes without scruples or doubt.  The politicians and religious robber barons fed on each other allowing the corruption to go on and on. 

    “You have doubts, Eli.
  And ethics.  They’ve kept you from going off the deep end.  That’s worth something.”   I rubbed an itch on my nose.

    “If I have doubts, where is my faith?”

    “What is faith, Eli?  What is your faith?”

    He swallowed.
  “Knowing God and his son?”

    “How do you do that?”

    He looked stunned.  Shook his shaggy white head.  “I ... I don’t know.  Where is your faith, Jamie?”

    “For me, it is an open ended search for meaning without the confines of science or religion.
  How does everything work?  Why does it work the way it does?   What is behind it?  What is the First Cause, and does the First Cause know where it came from?”

    He stood there openmouthed, eyes blinking.
  “Then you’re saying everything is part of a larger whole.”  There was hope.  The man was thinking.

    “Among other things.”
 

    I could see a strange excitement in his eyes. “I never thought of such a thing.”

    I gave a short laugh.  “But the more you search, the more questions rear their heads.  It’s never ending.”

    The doors to the Headquarters Building shuddered and opened.
  Everyone turned.  Twenty soldiers armed with automatic rifles trotted out and formed a living corridor to the steps of the gallows.  They faced outward, rifles at ready, vigilant.  Several times gang or family members had tried to free condemned prisoners.  I raised my eyes to the roof.  Three soldiers with high-powered rifles mounted with scopes.  Since the Time of Change I’d yet to meet a soldier who hadn’t killed someone in or around the line of duty.  Other soldiers rounded up and moved the orphans away.  I walked over to the doors and waited for them to bring out O’Banion.  The soldiers recognized me and spoke.  I looked for Laith, but he’d disappeared with the orphans.  Benson looked uncertain with his group.  I saw Grant and Mike standing by our mounts and waved.  They nodded.

    I breathed a prayer for what I was about to do.
  The double doors opened again and Carson led the procession.  Chuck came, chained hand and foot, making shuffling half steps.  Four guards flanked the man, rifles ready.  Steve Deckart brought up the rear carrying a clear glass tumbler full of water.  Carson paused waiting for O’Banion to catch up.  He looked up at the spacecraft and then at me, and said, “I’ll talk with you after this is over.”

    “You may not want to,” I said and saw him grimace.

    “You have one minute with the prisoner, Jamie.”  He walked off.  The guards backed off to give us some semblance of privacy.  I could feel the tension in the soldiers and people watching.

    “Meg.
  Did you find her?”  Eyes agony, he took a ragged breath.

    “Yes.
  She’s with my son, Laith.”

    He breathed a great sigh of relief, but he was barely under control. “Good. Good.”
  Then he said, “What will I feel?”  How do you answer that?  Pretty hard unless you’ve done it.  I had.

    “You’ll feel a jerk on your neck and then feel yourself pass out of your body, seeing everything as it is now.
  Plus a few other things.  You’ll see Ruth and others who know you.  They will help.”

    “How do you really know?
  I mean how it feels.”

    “In another life I was hung as a horse thief.
  Happens pretty quick.  Don’t dwell on the body after it is over.  You can’t use it again, and it’s pretty messy.”

    “Your minute is up.”
  We turned.  Carson stood there looking tired and still.  “Prolonging this would do no one any favors.”

    I turned to look into Chuck’s eyes.
  “Do not fear.”  I touched his forehead.  He shook his head, but seemed in a type of stupor.  They moved forward through the corridor of vigilant guards and up the thirteen steps.  Carson was a stickler for tradition.

    The hangman whispered an apology to O’Banion whose face remained impassive.
  I watched the black cloth hood fall over his head.  Chains were removed, his hands were quickly lashed behind his back and legs tied.  The noose settled around his neck.  The executioner made the final adjustments.

    I could feel the tension in the air.
  I had to keep this collective tension away from me.  Compartmentalize.  I’d learned to do this.  Extremely hard.  There must have been sixty people standing around.  Some were holding hands and praying silently.  Others just looked  numb.  No one showed pleasure.  In the hushed moment I made contact with the intelligent forces and energies I needed.  I glanced over at Carson who gave me a queer look.

   The executioner stepped back.
  Deckart moved forward, handed the tumbler of water to General Carson, and stepped away, distaste in his eyes.  Carson raised his tumbler to the sun.  He was praying inside.  The lever was pulled.   A great gasp rose from the crowd.  An awed horror.  The water in the tumbler turned blood red, but Carson didn’t seem to notice,  brought it to his lips, and drank.  He tasted the change, spat, and dashed the tumbler to the ground.  It shattered on the pavement, splattered his boots, fatigues, and dribbled down his chin.

    O’Banion’s physical body swung lightly, completely limp.
  Physical death was instantaneous.  But everyone’s attention was riveted on General Carson.  He knew I was  responsible.  He spun around to face me and stopped short.  The fantastic energy exchanges and alterations hung in the air.  He saw my face and felt my words.

    “You have his body, but he lives.”
  I pointed to the base of the thirteen steps where another form slowly coalesced.  Carson turned.  The filmy, but distinct form of Chuck ‘Dregs’ O’Banion took shape and spoke.  The power, belief, and emotion of the sounds cut the envelope of stillness and captured everyone.

    “My God!
  I live.  Look at me.”  Then he pointed at the slowly swaying corpse.  “That’s not the end.”  His tears fell on the ground.  He remained there visible, weeping with joy, for over a full minute, and then faded from sight.  A woman rushed forward, and knelt, brushing the tear stained ground.

   “They’re real!
  They’re real!”   She held up her left forefinger and I could see the moisture reflected in sun.  People rushed to touch the ground where the tears had fallen and gathered the red splotched glass and tiny pools which lay sparkling crimson in the sun.  One man tasted the red on his fingers and said incredulously, “It’s blood.  Blood.”

    Carson stood stunned, but regained his composure quickly,  ordering his men to disperse the crowd quietly.
  “Clean up this mess.” Face convulsed with anger, he said, “You come with me, goddammit.”  We went inside his office in silence.  Behind his desk, he leaned on it and snarled, “I don’t know what the hell you did out there, but I know
yo
u did it, and everyone saw it.  I want an explanation.  Sit down.”

   “Believe me, I took no pleasure in what happened to you.
  The water turned to blood to symbolize what was being done.  O’Banion’s appearance was real enough and so were the tears.  The message’s pretty obvious.”  I paused.

    Carson sat in
stony silence, blood stains on his shirt.  “There has to be a way ... .  To hell with the symbolism, man.  I want to know how you did it.”

    “I’m trying to think of a simple way to put it.
  Remember the Kirlian        photography I showed you once?”

    “Yeah.
  Energy below the threshold of physical sight.  Increased light from fingertips when we thought about it.  I remember.”  His eyes narrowed and lips compressed.  Not a good sign.

    “The fingertip stuff was on an individual level, but energy also acts on a collective level.
  I took it to the collective level.”

    “An example being?”
  He looked out the window of his office.

    “The best example is the Fatima manifestations in Portugal where eight thousand people witnessed a promised incident where the sun seemed to spin in the sky and plunge to earth.
  Where it was raining and muddy, everything was completely dry minutes after a drenching rain.  This was October nineteen-seventeen.”

    “A collective invention,” Carson said.
  Little did he know.

    “Yeah, but you need to remember all energy is living and conscious.
  Plus all energy can be communicated with.  There are Beings on the Other side who know a great deal about manipulating energy and are willing to help.”

    He watched me, blood drying on his shirt.
  “Then O’Banion wasn’t O’Banion.”

    “No.
  O’Banion was O’Banion.  I knew of his emotional disbelief in life after death.  Emotions carry enormous energy.  They’re ideas rooted in the energy.  So much so a person dying in one part of the country can project and materialize to a loved one in another part of the country.  What you saw was done on a collective level.  I and others lent him energy to do what he did.”

   “Well, whatever happened, the tears will dry and vanish, and so will the bloodstains.
  We’ll wash them out.  Then things will get back to normal.”

    I shook my head.
  “They will stay.  Watch.”  Carson’s face tightened. “The people need a reminder,” I said.  “Let me take O’Banion’s body.  Someone will make a shrine of his grave if you don’t.”

    “No thanks to you,” he said.
  “And the spacecraft?”

    “They were here once before.
  In those days they came from a planet they almost destroyed with their minds.  It would make our conventional wars seem as nothing and nuclear ones laughable.  Their planet was many times the size of Earth.  They vowed to the Creator they would war no more, but once on Earth the leaders squabbled and fought again. But not before some of their people left and built what they had long ago, peace and a unity, where potentials could be directed in areas other than conflict, strife, and adversary roles.  They made it.”  I pointed to the spacecraft.  “You see them today.

    “The factions that stayed, warred.
  Their original leader, when he was the only one left, stood before the seared land, and the shells of the once living and cried aloud to the Creator in agony over what they had done. He begged to know what he could do to repair what he had done. Before him came a great vision of the future of the planet, its needs and potentials.  So he made a vow to the Creator that he would stay and use his abilities to bring the planet to the point of its greatest potential.  He has had many lives.”

    “Is this Christ?” Carson leaned forward on his desk. “There are legends he has come many times.”
 

    “No.
  This is an entity who has evolved into one of the custodians for this planet.  The entity is here now reincarnated as a man.  He will guard his identity.  He has kept his vow.  We are moving into this time of greatest potentials.”

    “And who are you, Jamie?”

    I smiled.  “Just a generic man who walked through a door the Creator Within opened for me.  Everything else followed.”

    “What of these aliens?
  How will they deal with us?  I’ve already notified Western Command.”

    I got up and stretched.
  “Our biggest problem is ourselves.  Our leaders and others who act in fear.  The aliens will not create a problem.  They might go elsewhere if we make poor choices.  But that is up to you, your staff, your soldiers, and others who come from Western Command.  They will send a senior civilian bureaucrat.  He might be a handful.”