GABRIEL (The Innerworld Affairs Series, Book 4) (36 page)

Gabriel, something doesn't fit here.

He raised his hand to stop Jarad from saying more, "We have been traveling a very long time and some information is unknown to us. It would be helpful if you could relate to us what has happened here since Poseidon arrived."

Ester nervously tugged on Jarad's wrapper and he gave her a nod. "We do not mind telling the story but we have work to do. If we don't get back with the potion soon, someone will come looking for us."

From the frightened look on Ester's face, Shara assumed a terrible punishment would be meted out if they failed to complete their task in time. "Is there something we can do to help? Then you could tell us what we wish to know while we all work."

Shara!

How bad can it be?

"You see, Ester," Jarad said. "The stories were true. The Friends
were
good and kind to the people."

Shara ignored Gabriel's mental groan as they followed Jarad and Ester onto a narrow overgrown path through the bushes. A few seconds of careful walking later, the bushes ended and they were standing at the edge of a large field completely covered by red, white, purple and pink flowers. A closer look revealed that they were poppies, planted in rows with just enough space for a person to walk between.

The use of narcotics for any purpose was outlawed on Norona a millennium ago, but as a scientist, Shara had studied it.
Opium cultivation?
Shara asked to confirm her analysis.

Exactly. Still want to help?

Whatever it takes, remember?

Ester bent over and tilted a blossom to point out the capsule where the seed develops. "It takes two days to collect the base for the potion from a flower." With her fingernail she scraped the capsule and a milky juice seeped out. "Some practice is required to apply exactly the right amount of pressure. Tomorrow at this time the juice will be solid and can be collected." She stepped over two rows and picked a tiny chunk of dried juice off a seed capsule to show them. "I scratched this row yesterday."

Jarad handed Gabriel a bucket and kept one for himself. "I welcome the help. We have been ordered to provide double the amount we usually collect for the next two suns."

Following Jarad's lead, Gabriel squatted down on his haunches to collect the tiny bits of raw opium. Within minutes his legs and back were complaining, so he switched to crawling in the dirt on his bare knees. He would make Shara pay for this later, that much was certain.

Stop whining and get him talking.
After squashing about a dozen capsules, she got the hang of scratching them exactly right to draw milk. She simply didn't allow herself to think about what she was doing.

"Why has the order been increased?" Gabriel asked as they started moving along the row, working first one side then the other.

Jarad looked at Gabriel as if he had asked a foolish question. "You are unaware, as you said. I will explain. Every twelve moons the princes of Atlantis's lesser provinces meet with King Jupiter in Poseidon's temple in the royal city for seven suns. They and their courts require the potion to keep their great minds in an elevated state throughout the gathering. Today marked the fifth sun, but on the seventh night they will need the most potion."

"Why is that?" Shara asked.

Ester's fingers pinched a capsule so hard the blossom snapped off. "Because a large quantity is required for the final ceremony, particularly to calm the bulls. There are ten that will be sacrificed to Poseidon." She took a shaky breath. "And so will an infant and a maiden."

"What?" Shara exclaimed.
Gabriel, can this be true?

If we've arrived when I think we have, I'm afraid animal and virgin sacrifices aren't the only atrocities we're going to hear about.

Jared turned to Gabriel with a pleading expression. "The king's servant discovered that our only child, Rebekah, began her menses two moons ago and he chose her to be the honored maiden. But we find no honor in such a sacrifice. Please tell us that you will be able to save her."

Gabriel opened his mouth but Shara was faster. "We'll help however we can."

Shara! We're only here to observe.

She gave him an innocent look.
They'll help us with our observations and we'll help them in return. It's only fair.

You can't change history!

What I can't do is stand by while a young girl is murdered.
They glared at each other for a moment then Shara looked back at Jarad and smiled sweetly. "Why don't you tell us what you know about Poseidon and his followers from the beginning? Then we'll figure out what we can do for Rebekah."

Jarad shuffled a little farther down the row and began the story that had been passed on to him by his father and his father before that, along with the awareness of what was right and wrong, good and evil.

"God descended from the sky, just as you did but he brought the Friends with him."

"Excuse me," Shara interrupted. "When you say
God,
are you referring to Poseidon?"

Jarad frowned at her. "Of course. Noe speaks as if it is another but everyone knows Poseidon is the most powerful of the gods."

Shara decided it was best not to get into a theological discussion at this point. "How long ago did Poseidon arrive?"

"That was eight of my family's generations ago."

How many years would that be?
Shara asked Gabriel rather than have Jarad again wonder about her lack of knowledge.

Based on these people's average life span, it could be somewhere between three hundred fifty and four hundred years. And before you ask, yes, that means the continent could blow at any time. Now let the man tell his story before I'm too crippled to walk upright again.

"At first the people were afraid of the visitors that called themselves Friends, but they were very wise and showed the people how to improve their lives. Their great powers were used to help, not hurt.

"The Friends taught the people to build shelters using the trees on the mountains and dig ditches to carry the water to land that was too dry for crops to grow. They built vessels that carried Friends and people over the water to other lands, where they traded things that were plentiful here for things that they did not have. Life was good and peaceful and some of the Friends took spouses from among the people."

"I heard Poseidon sired children with such a woman," Gabriel prompted when Jarad paused to move farther down the row.

"Yes. Two, actually. It is said he was very lonely when he first arrived, for his spouse had not survived the journey from the Otherworld. He was brought out of his sadness by Cleito, a girl child of a couple who dwelled on the mountain to the north of the royal city. When she came of age, he took her to his shelter. She bore him five pairs of male twins before she passed on. He chose another spouse after Cleito, who was said to be a witch for the God of Darkness. She gave Poseidon several more children but made his life so miserable that he chose to leave this land for his kingdom beneath the sea.

"Before he left, however, he divided the land up into ten provinces and gave each twin one to rule. To his firstborn, Atlas, he gave the most valuable portion, which bordered the sea facing the neighbors with whom they traded goods. Poseidon appointed Atlas king of all the land, which he then named Atlantis. Atlas's twin, Gadir, received the property surrounding the royal province so that he might protect his brother's interests as well as his person, for God knew that not all of his children had warm hearts."

He stopped his tale to take his and Gabriel's buckets over to a large woven basket and empty them. When he returned, he needed no prodding to continue.

"By the third generation of my family, all the first visitors had gone to join God in his undersea paradise and Atlas and his brothers began to make changes. The people were put to work building a great temple in honor of Poseidon and Cleito. New laws were set that forced the people to spend a longer time laboring in the fields and quarries and prohibited them from traveling when and where they wished. Punishments were delivered to any who disobeyed.

"Fearing the growing power of the neighboring lands, especially Libya and Athens, Atlas required a certain number of men from each province to train as soldiers in his army to protect the island.

"He also eliminated the law against brothers taking sisters as spouses, since he lusted after his own sister, Hesperis. They had many daughters but only one son, and he was killed in a storm. So when Atlas went to join his father under the sea, his youngest half brother, Saturn, became king. Saturn was the son of the witch, born the year that Poseidon departed, and it was believed that she taught him her evil spells and removed his heart so that there was no bit of goodness in him."

Jarad noticed Ester checking the position of the sun as it began its descent toward the horizon. "Do not worry, woman. Thanks to these Friends, we will have the basket full and the potion delivered to the palace before the stars begin to shine."

Gabriel desperately needed to stretch his cramped muscles. "Tell me, Jarad, is there a place we could hide our... vessel while we're here?"

"If you put everything in the bushes, they should be safe enough."

Gabriel promised to be right back and headed toward the beach to secure all of their belongings. Shara decided he needed help and hurried after him. "Is Beauty getting all of that?" she asked once they were out of earshot.

"Yes, but so far it correlates with most of the information already recorded. What I didn't know is that there was a second set of visitors. As near as I can figure, Norona must have sent an inspection team to Terra to follow up on the development. They would have made note of the problems they saw arising and gone back to the Ruling Tribunal to report. Several hundred years would have passed before anyone could have returned to take action."

"Then it's possible that there's a messenger of death, so to speak, here on Atlantis right now, preparing to carry out Norona's decision to destroy the continent."

Gabriel shrugged. "That could explain Noe hearing
God
warn him to save his family, others like him and the animals. But I've always thought there was another possibility and that's the one thing stopping me from insisting we get out of here while we have the chance."

Shara concealed her smile as she noted that he didn't hesitate to use his mind to lift the raft and their bags in the air. He brought it all down in the center of a clump of bushes. "Don't keep me in suspense. What's the theory you're hoping to prove?"

He started to correct her phrasing then realized she had worded it the way he had in his own mind. "I've always thought the wholesale destruction of an entire continent and a great number of innocents in order to punish the degenerated descendants of the Noronian rebels was too radical on the part of a ruling body as reasonable as the Tribunal.

"Instead, consider this. What if a righteous person was sent here by the Tribunal to issue warnings or place restrictions on the rebels' dealings with the natives? What if that person found a situation so depraved and out of control that he believed the instructions he'd been given were inadequate to stop the cruelty? Knowing how long it would take to go to Norona for the support of a security force and return, he may have taken matters into his own hands."

"Then why would history state that it was the Tribunal's decision?"

"Perhaps it worked so well to increase their omnipotent image, they chose to take credit for it then publicly regretted that such extreme measures had been taken."

"The interesting part will come if your theory is correct and you try to release information that could puncture a hole in the Tribunal's power base."

Gabriel winked at her. "Let's take one step at a time." He kneaded the muscles in his lower back.
"By drek,
I'm going to be sore tomorrow."

Putting her arm around his waist and pushing him back onto the path, she said, "I'll give you a good massage before you go to sleep tonight."

He gave her a quick kiss for the offer. "By the way," he said as they made their way through the thicket, "did you happen to notice that your fine-tuning of the tempometer's destination program had the opposite effect that it was supposed to?"

She pinched his side. "What I did should have worked. But we were practically hit by a bolt of lightning at the same time that we hopped, remember? The electrical charge undoubtedly threw something off. You'll see. Next hop, we're going to hit the date we want right on the dot."

"I certainly hope so, since the next hop is going to be home." He waited for her agreement but she kept silent. "Well? Isn't it?"

She smiled up at him as they arrived at the poppy field. "Of course, Gabriel. Whatever you say."

Why do I detect some insincerity in that statement?

I have no idea.

And speaking of insincerity, you never answered me before the hop—

"Oh my, Ester. Look how far you got without me. I'm afraid I'm not much help."

"Nonsense," the woman said. "You're doing very well for your first time."

Gabriel's reaction to the idea that there might be a second time for them at this task distracted him from concern over Shara's insincerity. She determined to make sure that he wouldn't spend any more time doing something that would sour his disposition before he discovered her deceit. Besides, they could only learn so much in a field full of narcotic-producing flowers. Somewhere nearby meetings were going on with the descendants of the original Noronian exiles. She needed to get hair samples from every one of them, particularly if Gabriel truly intended to go home on the next hop. "Jarad, please continue your story. Saturn had just become king of Atlantis."