by Suzanne Weyn
“Are we going into the desert?” Kayla asked.
“Yes, we are,” Dusa confirmed. “Just hope the air-conditioning holds out.”
After purchasing more than twenty gallons of water in Baker, they drove into the desert.
Kayla wondered again about her vision, remembering Kara’s drawing and being unnerved by how much it resembled what she was now seeing outside her window. But if it was a vision, why was she thinking those insane, egomaniacal thoughts? It was as troubling a question as wondering why she would ever advocate the bar code tattoo.
Dusa stopped the truck at the wide entrance of a limestone cave. Several young men and women instantly appeared at the cave’s mouth to greet them. They were all dressed for high heat. They surrounded Dusa, obviously very pleased by her arrival. Nate and Francis were among them and stepped forward to hug her. She spoke with them animatedly as the group moved back toward the cave’s entrance.
The minute Kayla emerged from the truck, the heat overtook her, sending her staggering backward. She had the panicked feeling of not being able to catch her breath. When she put her hand on the truck to steady herself, she was amazed at how the surface burned. She quickly drew her hand back. The undulating heat waves emanating from the desert floor gave her the disconcerting feeling that she was gazing into a body of water as she looked out onto the vast expanse of lowland.
“Oh, yeah. It’s hot,” said a lean, muscular guy wearing army fatigue shorts, a sleeveless white T-shirt, and an amused smile. A fuzz of blond hair covered his head. “It’s crazy hot out here, but it’s not so bad in the cave.” She thought she detected a hint of an accent. Irish? English? She wasn’t sure. He extended his hand to her. “I’ll help you inside.”
Kayla preferred to walk without help. She stepped forward, declining his offered hand. She instantly hit another wall of heat.
“You’ll get used to it,” the young man assured her, taking her hand. This time Kayla let him steady her.
As she walked with him toward the cave, she couldn’t help noticing that he was very attractive.
“When we used to have a national parks program they would give tours through these caves,” Dusa told her that same evening as they wiped the plates from dinner clean with dry cloths; those charged with washing them with water wanted to use as little of it as possible. “Now these caves are all ours. The Adirondacks were becoming too well known as resistance central. After last summer’s raids we knew it wasn’t safe up there anymore. A bunch of Drakians discovered that these caves were unused and made this our new headquarters about three months ago.”
Kayla remembered the news article Nedra Harris had written suggesting that the Drakians had relocated away from the Adirondack Mountains. Kayla wondered if all the groups were dispersing across the country. It might be a good thing to spread the resistance rather than have it all in one spot.
“Take a look around,” Dusa went on. “The stalactites and stalagmites are pretty amazing. I’d show you myself, but right now I have to go over these files with Jack that I brought in.”
“Jack?” Kayla asked.
Dusa nodded at the guy who had helped Kayla into the cave. He stood talking seriously with Nate and Francis just inside the entrance. All through dinner Kayla had tried to refrain from stealing glances at him, but she found it difficult. Aside from his good looks, there was something she found compelling in the athletic, confident way he carried himself.
“He’s the technology genius who converts these dead-person files into fake bar codes for us. He’s so good with computer algorithms that he didn’t even bother with college. He was writing incredibly advanced computer code from the time he was eleven. College wouldn’t have taught him anything.”
“Where’s he from?” Kayla asked.
“Belfast, I think.”
“He’s not exactly a computer geek,” Kayla commented with an appreciative grin.
Dusa laughed. “No. Not at all.”
Dusa went to talk to Jack, and Kayla walked into the cave, enjoying the increasing coolness. She passed rows of sleeping bags, camping lanterns, and coolers on the rock floor. At one spot, ten computer-chip storage boxes were lined up side by side. She wandered deeper into the cave. Squeezing through a narrow rock pass, she came to a high, wide cavern. Columns of stone formed as towering stalagmites jutting from the cavern floor met massive stalactites dropping from its ceiling.
The space was silent, cool, and incredible. Mfumbe would have been fascinated by it. Kayla wished he was there to see it.
It was funny how often she’d wanted to share something with him. Look at that mountain. Isn’t that sunset incredible? Nothing seemed as good, or even entirely real, because he wasn’t there to share it with her.
What was Mfumbe doing now? Was he still at his parents’ home? Was he getting better? In the cool stillness, she closed her eyes and attempted to focus her mind on contacting him. It wasn’t words that she hoped to project — at least not at first — but her image and her concern.
She made her mind a blank by focusing on nothing but the sound of her breathing. Slowly in. Even more slowly out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Over and over — until she felt the field of her own energy lift above her body. The walls of the cave no longer contained her, just as her own body could not hold her any longer. She was out on the psychic plane, calling for Mfumbe to contact her.
Then, abruptly, she was back in the cave — back in her body, more aware than ever of its limitations, of pain in her limbs, in her bones, in her skull.
An agonizing burn under her ribs made her clench her fist and ram it into her left side. A debilitating weakness forced her to sit.
Was this what Mfumbe was feeling?
Had she in fact contacted him and taken on his suffering?
An image came to her, spreading behind her clenched-shut eyes. He was in his bedroom, tossing among tangled sheets and blankets. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his eyes were dull in a kind of waking trance. She sensed that he was making a tremendous effort to get out of bed, but something was keeping him from doing it.
Kayla. Too many drugs. Can’t think. Where are you? Need to think.
It was as if she could feel the hot slickness of his sweat-soaked skin. She felt the hoarseness in his throat, as though some constriction was stopping him from speaking — and was also now stopping her from breathing.
Don’t call or contact in any way. More words came to her, delivered haltingly and with great effort. Someone is watching here; they’re watching for you. Not safe.
There was so much she wanted to talk to him about. Maybe she counted on him too much, but he was smart and she trusted his judgment. Who did he think Kara might be? What of their shared visions? Why was someone looking for her? Was it as Kara thought, because they could see the future? What did he think she should do next?
All this had to go unsaid and unasked. He was too weak to handle it and she was, too. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand this.
I’m still with Dusa. I’m okay. You’re hurting, she struggled to tell him. She attempted to project her location to him, thinking of the desert she’d seen so that he might see it.
“Are you all right?” another voice asked.
Startled, Kayla whirled toward the voice, her connection to Mfumbe abruptly snapped.
Gasping great mouthfuls of air, she stumbled back against the cave wall.
Jack had come up behind her noiselessly — or maybe she’d just been too involved with Mfumbe to notice.
“You were somewhere else,” Jack said, having observed her trance state. “Someplace pretty banged out. Where’d you go?”
The open, genuine concern in his expression made her want to respond the same way. As the hammering of her heart slowed and the pain subsided, she felt strong enough once again. He sat beside her, listening intently as she told him about how she had learned to communicate telepathically with Mfumbe and others who had gon
e into hiding in the Adirondacks. She explained how she’d studied with Eutonah, learning to use her mind at a heightened level. “Does it sound too unbelievable to you?” she asked, afraid he might think she was strange or even making it up.
“Why should it? It’s like ants,” Jack replied.
“Ants?” she questioned.
“Or bees with a hive mind,” he went on. “It’s called hive mentality when an individual is part of a collective consciousness. It’s just another kind of communication, if you think about it. Lots of insects communicate with chemical signals. Ants leave chemical trails that are a kind of collective map. Speech is really a very superficial, limited form of communication. A direct mental link — a psychic connection — gives insight into the mental imagery of the sender.”
“I don’t know. Is it the same thing? I’m not sure,” Kayla admitted. “My teacher, Eutonah, always said that we could tap into a deeper consciousness that was all around us. We did a lot of work with her on it.”
“Are there a lot of you psychics now?” he questioned.
Kayla nodded. “Hundreds, I’d guess. Didn’t you meet them when you were in the Adirondacks?”
“I was never there. I came on board when the movement started coming west. The Drakians who were in the mountains mostly kept to themselves. They kind of shunned everyone else as being too passive.”
“A lot of us were working on our mental powers. I don’t think that’s passive,” Kayla countered, feeling irritation at the criticism.
He began to pace, as if seized with a sudden idea that was making him restless. “No, it’s not. It might even be the key.”
“The key to what?”
“Gene Drake was onto something, and we’ve got to find out what it is.” His vivid blue eyes brightened with an intense gleam as he warmed to the subject.
“Something worse than our genetics being encoded in the tattoo?” Kayla asked, as though that weren’t bad enough. “Yes, worse!” he answered. “And it was in that computer that he gained access to, but he was shot before he could tell anyone.”
“He never told Nate or Francis?”
“They say no,” he replied. “And the guy who gave him the passwords killed himself the same night Gene was shot.”
“How do you know who he was?”
“Nate knew him slightly. He was a brainy computer professor from Caltech. Maybe he was stressed out about Gene or afraid Gene would turn him in.”
“Maybe it wasn’t really suicide,” Kayla suggested.
“That’s possible,” Jack agreed. “But whatever the reason he killed himself, he’s the only person we know of who was able to hack into the Global-1 bar code file.”
“Dusa told me you’re a genius hacker. No luck?”
“I get way into the system, and time after time I hit a block. I’ve configured and reconfigured the computer algorithms every way I can think of and — no go.”
“How could psychics help?” Kayla asked.
“Somebody has to know how to get into that file,” he said. “Somewhere on earth, someone has access to that information. Someone who can read minds might be able to discover it.”
“We don’t exactly read minds,” she said.
“Okay, no offense, but you somehow link up mentally, right?”
“Right. But a psychic would have to know who to link up with,” she explained. “Any idea who would know the formula?”
“None,” he said dismally.
“Maybe somehow we’ll find out who it is. Then my psychic strengths or someone else’s will be useful. It’s stellar to think that all the work we’ve done on our psychic abilities might really put these G-1 creeps out of business. Then you’d appreciate how important mind strengthening is.”
“We work on strengthening the mind here, too. It’s very important to us,” Jack said. “This is a major struggle we’re involved in. We have to be unafraid — physically and mentally strong for it.”
Kayla’s curiosity was piqued. “How do you work on it? Telepathy?”
“Come on outside and you’ll see.” He put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her back through the narrow opening.
The cave was empty but she heard voices coming from the front. Something orange-red was aglow on the desert floor. She turned to him, questions in her eyes.
“Are you ready for your first fire walk?” he asked.
Nate went first. The roughly six-foot rectangular bed of glowing coals threw shadows on his face. Drawing in a concentrated breath, he calmed himself, and in the next second he was off, briskly walking barefoot across the coals.
Francis stood in front of the coal bed next. The glow drenched his white undershirt with a vivid, flickering orange.
Images of fire blasted into Kayla’s thoughts, seeming to collide with one another. She saw again that searing fireball racing up the hallway of her house. The dream image of her mother, hair ablaze, returned to her with shocking force. She saw her own face alight with flame on the billboard in the night.
Francis took off his wire-rim glasses, drew in a very long breath, and stepped out onto the coals.
Feeling too shaken to watch, Kayla turned away from the group and walked into the desert on her own. A slight breeze carried the pleasant smell of a plant she couldn’t identify. The sky was a vast blanket of brilliant stars. In the dark she couldn’t see the distant mountains, which made the desert floor seem to stretch on to infinity. She was aware of the low, encouraging murmurs of Drakians behind her, but the farther she walked, the more deeply she was engulfed by the immense silence surrounding her.
Ahead in the distance she spied a flickering spark of light. Curious, she walked toward it. When she had advanced several more yards, she thought she saw a dark figure sitting in front of the light, which she now could smell. A fire.
Something was burning in the fire. It reminded her of the plant smell she’d noticed earlier. As she closed in on the person, she heard a low, rhythmic chanting.
She knew the voice.
“Eutonah?” she spoke into the darkness.
The woman sat in front of the fire, looking very much as she had the first time Kayla had encountered her. She wore a cowboy hat that boasted a wide band of gorgeous feathers. Her tank top and jeans were faded and plain. “The sagebrush makes a nice smoke out here in the desert,” she observed calmly, lifting her eyes to watch the rising white smoke.
Kayla crouched near the fire, gazing at her mentor’s regal face and fathomless black eyes. “They released you?” she asked.
“They don’t have to release what is already free,” Eutonah replied.
“You’re still in the Global-1 prison?”
“Part of me is, but my spirit can travel, as you know.”
“Eutonah, who is looking for me, and why?”
“I have no new information, but I’ve come to tell you that I have had a strong dream of you. I saw you as a tree with many parts. Lightning struck, and the parts splintered into scattered branches. All the branches came alive and began screaming to be reunited. You are a being that is calling to itself, longing for itself. You must do things you will find terrifying. You must prepare for this by conquering your fears.”
“Kayla!” The voice carried through the still night, and she turned toward it. Someone from the group was calling to her. When she turned back to Eutonah, the wise woman was gone. Only her small campfire remained. The scent of sagebrush lingered.
“Kayla!” Someone was walking toward her, calling her name. As the figure grew closer, she recognized the voice as Jack’s. She met him halfway. “Why don’t you try the fire walk?” he urged when they faced each other. “There’s nothing left to be afraid of once you conquer your fear of walking on fire.”
Eutonah had dreamed of her as a tree struck by lightning. More fire. She’d instructed her to conquer what she feared most. There were many things she feared. Was fire the greatest?
Wild terror arose inside Kayla. The desire to run away was close to overwhelming. A fi
erce heat emanated from the glowing coals, giving her the sensation that her bare feet and ankles were already burning.
She remembered the dream in which she’d gone up in flames. The crowd of Drakians eagerly watched her in silence, no one encouraging her to go forward onto the coals until she was ready. The only advice she’d been given was that once she started she mustn’t allow herself to become paralyzed with panic or even to hesitate. “Just keep going, no matter what,” Nate had told her.
Like jumping off a high place, she stepped out into the unknown. Her mind was a blank as she moved quickly across the coals.
The soles of her feet were immediately hot, but she wasn’t aware of pain. Her only reality was the need to move.
Move!
Move!
Movement became all she was. There was no other Kayla other than Kayla in motion.
And then it was over.
Leaping from the burning coals, she stumbled to her knees and began to sob uncontrollably. If anyone came forward to speak to her, she wasn’t aware of it. She buried her face in her hands as wave after wave of powerful emotion threatened to swamp her, to engulf her into their depths.
It was everything. Everything.
Her father’s suicide. Her mother, burned to death. Mfumbe gone. Betrayal everywhere. Confusion! The world! How had the world turned into this world? How could she live in such a world as this?
She lay on the dry, sandy dirt and drew her knees into a fetal position. Closing her eyes, she fell instantly asleep. And she dreamed.
She dreamed she was on a raft, swirling in a tempestuous storm of raging waves and howling winds. A wave lifted her on its cresting edge only to fling her with reckless abandon into the valley of the next swell. As she clung desperately to the side of the wooden raft, the immense force of the ocean roared around her on all sides.
The raft tilted abruptly just as a jet of flame sprang up at its center. The fire spread in a line, burning upward as the raft was sucked down into a whirlpool, spiraling with increasing speed into the center of the raging sea.