The Zul Enigma (33 page)

During their
conversations Erika had described how she’d first met Carlos all those years
ago when he and Drew were working at Goddard. She’d always kept in touch with
Drew, she’d said, and it was clear from the way she spoke about him they were
very close. However, it was only when she’d spoken to Corrinne the day before
that it became clear just how close. When Corrinne told Erika Carlos was
dropping by the office, it was obvious from her reaction that Drew had shared a
lot more information about Carlos’s situation than she had originally let on.
Corrinne liked her for that, for her discretion. Corrinne had no time for
blabbermouths.

‘Carlos,’ she said
sitting down next to him. He looked other-worldly and insubstantial compared
with the bulky substance of the cushions on the sofa. ‘Carlos,’ she repeated,
‘look. Here they are. They’re from the ‘60s, all with features on the Stones.
See? Two NMEs and one
Melody Maker
. Here, take a look.’

Although he leafed
through them it was obvious that even the vintage music magazines couldn’t
spark his interest.

He slid his briefcase
from the coffee table onto his lap, unsnapped the catches and took out his
wallet. He fished out a fistful of Euros, gave them to Corrinne and after
tossing the wallet inside pushed the briefcase back onto the table without
closing it. She counted the notes. ‘It’s too much Carlos,’ she said, trying to
hand some back.

‘She can keep it. I
won’t need it where I’m going.’

A wave of something
flowed through the length of Corrinne’s body. It made her feel quite weak. Was
it empathy or pity? She wasn’t sure.

‘Carlos,’ she touched
his hand, ‘do you want to speak to her? I can’t let her in your office, but I
could open the door so you could…’

‘Speak to her? Didn’t
she tell you? About her ex-boyfriend and my wife?’

Corrinne pursed her
lips. Erika hadn’t betrayed any confidences, although she’d said enough for
Corrinne to know Carlos wanted nothing more to do with Drew.

‘I didn’t know,’ she
said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

***

‘I asked him if he wants to talk to you,’ Erika raised her brows but Corrinne
shook her head and sighed, ‘but he doesn’t. He’s in a dreadful state. Worse
than when I spoke to him yesterday. He’s lost so much weight… his suit’s just
hanging on him.’

‘Do
you
think
he’s ill?’

Corrinne shrugged. ‘I
always thought he was depressed, but seeing him now? It’s like he’s had a
breakdown,’ and she shuffled some papers around on her desk.

‘How long’s he here
for?’

‘In Vienna?’

‘No. At the office.’

‘A couple more hours?
Just now when the Secretary-General left, he told me to let him know when
Carlos had finished packing up his stuff. But from what I’ve seen he hasn’t
even started.’ She shook her head. ‘He can’t be well – he hasn’t even
touched the coffee I made. Normally he’s addicted to the stuff.’

‘I bought some cakes in.
I thought you’d probably skipped lunch again.’

Corrinne ducked her
head. ‘You know me so well,’ she said, making Erika smile.

‘Look, I’ve got my
babysitter till six – why don’t I keep you company for a while? We can
brew Carlos a fresh pot of coffee and this time you can make sure he drinks
it.’

Corrinne carried the tray out of the kitchenette that separated their offices.
She tapped on Carlos’s door and entered without waiting for a reply.

‘I made you fresh
coffee,’ she said walking over to the sofa, ‘and here’s your favourite mug.’
She poured the coffee and added a dash of milk. ‘And there are a couple of
cakes.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ he
said.

She
handed him the mug, standing over him until he took a sip. ‘That’s right. Even
if you won’t eat at least drink that all up. It’ll help keep you going.’

He looked up at her, and
like a child obeying his mother, drank some more.

She looked across the
room at the boxes. ‘You haven’t made a start on those. Shall I go through them
with you now?’

He shook his head. She
scooped up the magazines from beside him on the couch, put them in his
briefcase and closed it. ‘You don’t want to forget those. They’ll give you
something to read on the plane.’ Her concern deepened. He was even more
withdrawn than earlier, if that was possible.

As she loaded the tray
with the used cups and saucers and pot of cold coffee from earlier, her iTab
buzzed. It was an incoming instant message.

She went to the terminal
on the desk, logged in with her tag, walked to the holographic conference table
and pulled out a chair. ‘Carlos, bring your mug over here. Someone wants to
talk to you.’

Like a zombie Carlos
obeyed. Corrinne leaned over him and whispered in his ear. ‘You’re not supposed
to communicate with anyone other than the Secretary-General and me. So this is
our little secret. If anyone checks, the records will show the call came
through my session, okay?’ She patted his shoulder. ‘Now, your friend Joseph
wants to talk to you.’

She accepted the
holovideo call and sat down next to Carlos.

‘Carlos.’ Joseph’s image
looked so realistic it was as if he had actually appeared in front of them.
Although his Hugo Boss suit jacket was perfectly tailored, it couldn’t disguise
the bulk of his muscular shoulders and chest. The contrast between the physical
conditions of the two men was stark.

‘Hey,’ Carlos mumbled,
shifting in his seat, ‘what do you want?’

‘I wanted to see you for
myself. I hear you’ve had a rough time. That you were detained in DC.’

Carlos sniffed. ‘I
wonder who told you that.’

‘This isn’t about Drew.
It’s about you. You need help and I want you to know I’ll do everything I can
to make sure you get it.’

‘Quite the man, hey
Joseph? But why? Why do you want to help
me
? You’re not stupid. You must
know I never liked you.’

‘You were practically a
god back at NASA. You have no idea how much everyone admired you. You made it
all look so easy. And you know why? Because everything you did, you did with passion.
It’s a rare gift, Carlos. Not many people have it. Well it seems your passion’s
been missing for a while and I want to help you find it again. Carlos?’ Carlos
was staring at his mug. ‘Are you listening?’

He picked up the mug and
drained it.

‘Carlos…’

‘I don’t want to talk to
you. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Stop bothering me.’

The door opened a crack.
It was Erika. ‘Corrinne,’ she said. Then she called again more urgently,
‘Corrinne!’ She raised her eyebrows making her blue eyes look enormous. ‘Your
phone’s ringing and there are lights flashing. I think it’s the
Secretary-General.’ Corrinne bustled towards the door, leaving Carlos staring
at the table in front of him.

‘Carlos. Listen,’ Joseph
said, ‘the Americans aren’t going to take you to Madrid.’

Carlos looked up.

‘We won’t let them.
We’re going to get you away from them. I promise.’

Carlos stared at the
image of Joseph. Then he slid his hands off the table onto the armrests of the
chair, which he clasped, making his knuckles turn white.

CHAPTER 20

Carlos paced up and down his office. His body felt like it didn’t belong to
him. His chest was heavy with anxiety that threatened to mutate into rage and
his brain was an amorphous mass seething out of control. He had to get rid of
the confusion haunting his mind before he lost it completely.

The next thing he knew
he was sitting on the couch with a glass of water in his hand and no
recollection of how he’d got there. He didn’t know how long it had been since
Joseph’s hologram had dispersed – in fact he wasn’t even sure if there
had been a hologram – for all he knew he’d imagined that as well. His
memories of the past few days were brushed with more than a hint of the
surreal. He was sure he was going mad.

As Carlos fought to make
sense of his jumbled thoughts, his attention was grabbed by a rustling coming
from behind him on the other side of the conference table. When he looked round
he gasped. Standing there was a holographic image of the most beautiful woman
he had ever seen. She was over six feet tall, slim and sensuously proportioned.
Her blonde, wavy hair framed her exquisite face and fell to her waist like a
stream of light.

She smiled and Carlos
caught a glimpse of even, sparkling teeth. Her skin glowed, smooth, healthy and
bronzed.

‘Hello, Carlos.’

And what a voice! The
voice of a siren.

‘You like what you see.’
It was a statement. She emphasised the amusement flickering in her shining
green eyes by arching one finely plucked brow and contracting the corners of
her mouth in the minutest of smiles.

It was not so much that
Carlos liked what he saw. He couldn’t
believe
what he saw.

The woman laughed and
tossed her head, sending a wave of shadows rippling down her hair making it
shimmer like a satin curtain.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Astraea. From the
fourth density.’

She held her slender
arms out wide in front of her, palms uppermost and made a little bow. ‘Yes,
Astraea, that’s me. I chose the name. It comes from your Greek word “aster”,
which means star. Astraea was a Greek goddess on your planet.’

This woman certainly
looked like a goddess, Carlos thought. She wore a green ankle length dress that
clung to the curves of her body and as she did a twirl the skirt spun out from
her hips in an undulating emerald wave. ‘It was fun making a human shape that I
thought you’d like,’ she said.

Carlos shut his eyes and
reopened them but the woman was still there. Was
she
another figment of
his imagination?

‘Come on Carlos,’ she
coaxed, ‘say something,’ and she sat down, tapping her fingers on the armrest
of her chair. They were long, slender and unadorned. She wore no jewellery. She
had no need. She was already beautiful enough.

‘Okay… Astraea…’ Carlos
shrugged, ‘where are you from?’

‘I already said, I’m
from the fourth density.’

‘
Sí
… okay… so
what’s it like there?’

‘You already know that
to evolve to fourth density an entity must be over half committed to service to
others?’

He nodded.

‘That means that we are
very
nearly
half committed to service to self!’ She threw her head back, opened
her mouth and laughed a laugh like a song. Her behaviour was not at all what
Carlos expected from a fourth density being.

‘You mean you also have
much to learn,’ he snapped with more than a smack of irritation.

His words amused her
even more. ‘You’re so serious, Carlos. Don’t you humans do jokes?’

‘I don’t.’ He tried
again. ‘So tell me about fourth density.’

‘Entities of fourth
density have no physical body – you already know that. Our goal is to try
and understand the concepts of unity and love at a deeper level.’ Astraea
rested her elbow in one hand and put the forefinger of the opposite hand under
her chin, giving Carlos a prolonged meaningful look. ‘Now, that’s something I
could help you with Carlos, if only you’d let me.’ She locked him in her gaze
and he could feel his face flushing. He was tongue-tied, like a little boy.
Astraea smiled. ‘So, what else can I tell you?’

‘You say you don’t have
a physical body, but what’s that?’ he nodded towards her.

‘This?’ she ran her
hands over her breasts and hips. ‘This is something I must manifest, like my
voice.’

‘How?’

‘I alter the vibrational
rate of my energy to form matter. It’s not difficult but it feels odd managing
a physical body. It’s clumsy, inhibiting. But I like the female human form
– it’s fun to manoeuvre.’ Astraea gave her body a mischievous little
shake and beams of light bounced off her hair in a dance of molten metal.

‘And Zul sent you.’

As she considered the
question her expression lost its former guile, making her look innocently
child-like and her beauty even more stirring. She replied in a low voice. ‘The
Galactic Federation knows everything about the lower densities.’ She looked
over Carlos’s shoulder into the distance. ‘But Zul isn’t President in the way
you understand the word. They only used that title, because it’s a familiar one
to you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The image you see of
the one you call Zul represents multitudes of consciousness making up the
Galactic Federation. There are no separate constituent parts. There is no one
element that is more or less important. It is blended consciousness. It’s not
easy to explain and even less easy for you to understand.

‘It exists in fifth and
sixth density. By seventh, it’s no longer needed because the collective
consciousness of the billions of galaxies have begun to unify into a purified
state. Now I can’t explain that in detail either because I don’t understand it
myself. All I know is that during seventh density consciousness learns to
re-form into the One of the eighth density, to realise the successful merging
of all consciousness representing perfect unity and love, which is both the end
and the beginning of the evolutionary cycle.’