But the same troubling doubts continued to fill the darkness. Her own honest introspection refused to give way, regardless of all the new pressures that surrounded her. Consuela found herself returning to the dilemmas and insecurities and unanswered questions about herself every time she was alone. This sense of flagging confidence made such problems as how to handle Rick even more difficult to face.
Again she drifted into sleep almost without realizing that she had made the passage, but instead of returning to an endless maze of frustrating tasks, this time she found herself back home. There, but not there. Standing outside the apartment building in bright afternoon sunlight, yet knowing that she was not seen.
Knowing that something needed doing. Knowing that she was there and observing for a purpose.
She moved forward, both of her own will and guided by some invisible force. Through the doors and up the stairs and down the hall and stopping before her apartment door. Sensing that what Rick had said was correct, her mother had indeed been in the hospital, but was now back home. Then hearing a sound that had been all too scarce in Consuela’s home life, a sound so rare it almost frightened her.
Laughter.
The door moved aside as though opened by an unseen hand, or perhaps it did not move at all, only she found herself passing through what was for her no barrier. As Consuela entered she wondered about that sound she had heard, for there was little in her mother’s life that brought happiness to others, and she was sure she had heard two voices sharing that strange yet beckoning sound.
And then she passed down the narrow hall and entered their living room and saw Daniel.
His jacket was draped over the back of his chair, and he was leaning forward in intent discussion with her mother. Consuela moved closer, knowing that somehow this was the key, the purpose behind this dream that was more than a dream.
Her mother’s eyes were fastened intently upon Daniel’s face. She was lying on their sofa, a blanket tucked around her. She looked thin, but more alert than it had been in a long time. Consuela searched her mother’s features and realized with a start that they did not hold the slackness of alcohol. Which meant she had not been drinking.
Her gaze still held a hint of the laughter, which was now past, but her voice was solemn as she asked, “But how am I supposed to start praying?”
The question had a devastating impact upon Consuela. She felt shaken to the very core of her being. First that her mother would ever come to a point where she could ask such a question. And secondly because her own heart seemed to respond by asking the same question. Mother and daughter speaking as one. Asking a question that felt as though it shattered the final illusions Consuela held about herself.
“First of all,” Daniel replied, his voice quiet and gentle yet intense, “you must enter into prayer seeking to know God. This does not mean that you cannot ask for things. But to pray just when you want something, only because you need something you can’t obtain for yourself, is a lie. Do you understand what I mean?”
Consuela understood exactly. And she understood more than just that. She looked at her mother there on the couch and realized just how much her own transitions through life had been propelled by her hidden anger and pain and frustration. Consuela had always thought that if she kept the feelings down deep, away from where even she could see them, they really did not exist at all. But in truth the emotions had always been there. And they continued to affect her every action.
“I’m not sure,” her mother said slowly, but the guilt in her voice suggested that she did.
“All of us have needs that we cannot answer ourselves,” Daniel told her. “It is part of the weakness that makes us human. And these very same weaknesses help us to find God, because we come to recognize that our own strengths are not enough. That we need more than what we can give to ourselves. That we cannot find the answers on our own.”
Consuela felt the winds of change blowing through her heart, clearing away the dust and the cobwebs from chambers of her memories and emotions that she had thought locked away forever. It was not by self-imposed blindness that she would find true freedom, she saw that clearly now. It was not by running away, by refusing to confront the pains that had filled her young life, that she would know happiness. It was by accepting that she could never find the answers on her own.
Daniel leaned forward, his earnestness carrying a weight that was heightened by his gentle tone. “But to turn to God only because of these needs is wrong. It is denying God His rightful place in our lives, while at the same time asking Him to give us what we want or feel we need. We are refusing to accept Him as Sovereign Lord, while trying to draw from His strength and wisdom.”
Consuela watched her mother take in the words and felt them sink deep within her own mind and spirit. Since Wander’s disappearance she had thought of praying. But she had done so only in order to have things made better. Not for God. For her own sake alone.
Yet here in this moment of devastating truth, she understood that healing did not come by asking God to do some specific thing for her. It came from surrendering. It came through seeking Him and knowing Him and living for Him. It came not through directing and limiting and pushing away, but rather through accepting.
“In prayer,” Daniel went on, “our foremost aim should be to know God. To know His will, His love, His wisdom. To humble ourselves before the Maker of all and enter into His glorious presence. To accept our place as members of His family, brought to Him through the eternal gift of Christ’s salvation.”
He leaned back, his eyes shining. “Then the Father of all creation returns us to His fold, where we have always belonged. And in His keeping, we may ask not only for the wishes of our heart but for the gift of a peace so wonderful it truly surpasses all understanding.”
Chapter Twelve
“I don’t understand,” Wander said. “You offered to destroy me?”
“You’re right,” Digs replied. “You don’t understand anything.” He heaved a self-important sigh and leaned closer. “Look, anybody who makes it through the first initiation is one of us, got it?”
“I hear what you’re saying.” First initiation?
“Take it from me, anybody who meets the beast and survives is a monitor. The rest is just time and training.”
Wander’s new chambers were the largest he had ever had by far—sleeping quarters with geometric wall-hangings to mask the cold stone, and deep furs to cover his bed and floor. A bath large enough to swim in. And yet another room, the size of a small hall, with great sweeping ceilings and ornate bronze chandeliers, where he and Digs now sat.
And according to Digs, these were nothing compared to how the full monitors lived.
His escort, his pinched features split by an unaccustomed grin, had arrived soon after Wander had awoken. He had led Wander down a baffling series of hallways, each corridor more lavishly decorated than the last, until finally he opened a door and announced that here was to be Wander’s new home.
Then he had shut the door behind them, brought a bulky apparatus out of his pocket, and swept the walls and fixtures and ceiling. He had then announced that they were safe for the moment, since Wander had not been expected to move so quickly. He had introduced himself as Digs and proceeded to tell Wander of his meeting with the diplomat.
Wander listened with a growing sense of astonishment before demanding, “Then why did you tell him you would break me?”
“Because if he thinks I’m doing it for him, he won’t go looking for somebody else, see?” He examined Wander’s baffled expression and snorted with impatience. “Look, you’re not the first sensitive who’s gotten on the wrong side of a senior diplomat. There’s only one hope when it happens.”
“Which is?”
“Make yourself indispensable. The diplomats may rule around here, but the monitors hold the reins. This means you’ve got to learn as much and as fast and as hard as you can. Which shouldn’t be too hard for the likes of you. You’re the first one who’
s ever made the whole trip from Citadel to the home planet the first time out. No wonder you collapsed. What you’ve got to do now is work, harder and faster than you’ve ever worked in your life.”
“I think I see,” Wander said slowly.
“Sure you do. You’re a sharp kid. I’ll be pretending to push you over the edge, which would really be happening with somebody else. But not you. What will then happen, sooner than later, I hope, is a senior monitor will catch wind of what you’re doing and what you’re learning and how fast you’re coming up. When that happens, they’re going to claim you as their own prize.”
Digs leaned back, thoroughly satisfied with his plan. “After that, the diplomat and his minions will back off. There’s always a few of the monitors who suck up to the Dark Couriers—that’s what we call them, but never to their face, mind. These monitors are the ones we’ve got to keep you away from, see, and the only way to do it is to make them think I’m doing their dirty work for them.” Digs bounced to his feet. “Ready?”
Wander found himself reluctant to face the amplifier again so soon. “You mean now?”
“It doesn’t get easier by waiting,” Digs replied, understanding him perfectly. “There’s only one way to conquer the beast, and that’s head on.”
****
“One hour and counting,” came the helmsman’s droning call.
“Pilot powered and ready,” Dunlevy responded in turn as the final check swept about the flight deck. He then turned back to Consuela and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I have to,” she replied quietly.
“For you to power up to such a level is a risk. Not just for you, but for all of us and our mission. We can go nowhere without your help.”
She looked at him with eyes open to the sad determination at heart level. “I have to,” she repeated.
“Very well,” he sighed. He keyed his console, said in the whisper-voice used when speaking to others trained in his skills, “Pilot Dunlevy to Watch Comm.”
“Communicator here, Pilot. All systems go, skies reported clear.”
“Have special request. Please power down for five minutes.”
A moment’s pause was followed by, “Repeat that, Pilot.”
“Our Talent needs to scan,” he said, doing as Consuela had requested. “She needs to scan at full power. Do you read me? At full sensitivity. All the weapons and transport amps must be powered off, and all high-level communication ceased. Otherwise we might fry her ourselves.”
“Ah, right.” The watch communicator’s tone became crisp. “Anything for the Talent, Pilot.”
“My thanks. Five minutes to commence in sixty seconds and counting.”
Dunlevy took off his headset, turned to Consuela, pointed at the switch in her lap. “Don’t let go of that power-off control. And don’t hesitate to use it.”
“Thank you,” she said solemnly. “I am so grateful for this.”
Dunlevy cracked a nervous smile. “I think I would worry less if I really understood what you were planning to do.”
“I’m not sure I understand it myself.” She turned her chair a quarter-circuit so that she looked out and over the control room, signaling that she needed to be left alone. Dunlevy subsided into watchful silence.
It had come to her at the end of a restless night. Consuela had returned swiftly from her half-dream and spent many hours tossing and turning and struggling with the night’s message. It was only with a sense of battling against herself and her pride that she finally gave in, exhausted and afraid, and prayed.
She had slept then, not long, but enough to awaken refreshed. As she had slid from the bed, she had realized that somehow she needed to make Wander aware of her departure from Avanti. And at the same time as she thought of the problem, she conceived the solution.
“All right, Consuela,” Dunlevy said quietly. “It’s time.”
She adjusted her headset. “Is the amp on full?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice registering his concern.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, hoping it would be true. She reached for the dial at her right temple and slowly began to turn.
As the power began surging in, she found herself recalling those earliest times of expansion, when there in the unfathomable distance she had sensed her own heart’s yearning. As though it were out there beyond her reach and within her at the same time. Consuela shifted the dial another notch and realized that perhaps the answer was in accepting her own need for God and His strength at times such as these.
Another notch, and her mind began its expansive journey beyond the ship’s confines. She shut her eyes and ears to the flight deck’s humming excitement, increased the power another notch, then another, and another. Refusing to follow the easiest path, out along the lightway and removed from this planet’s continual noise. Turning instead so that she raised unsheltered and unfettered into the planet’s higher atmosphere, and there she hovered, pushing the dial up one notch after another, until she knew that if she increased the power by a single degree further, her mind would literally explode.
Then she let her heart cry aloud.
No words could be contained in the message, she knew that. Nothing that some monitor might overhear could mention anything about their mission, or who she was, or to whom she sent this message. It could only be her heart, and it had to be so clear that Wander, if he did somehow manage another mind-journey, would have no doubt that it was she.
She sang the tragic heart song of her yearning for him, her loss over his departure. Her wordless missive was a silver cloud of emotion, spun within a finest web of love. A shimmering veil was left hovering above the planet’s surface, a wordless appeal for him to come, to return, to be with her. All of this wrapped about a single thought, an anguished announcement that they were leaving the planet, saying nothing more, terrified of having someone else detect the message and endanger his survival.
Robbed of the chance to speak in comfortable words, driven to ultimate risks by her own leaving, Consuela sang to him with the open helpless vulnerability of her growing love, of her yearning to be together, and of her hope that her departure would lead her to him. She gave it all to him, her awakening passion, her unanswered longings, her undying need.
Somewhere in the vast distance of physical reality, she sensed more than heard as Dunlevy whispered the five-minute mark. Consuela let the veil go spinning away, drawing from herself one final note of love, rising higher and faster and swifter than all else that her heart had sung, flying with all the force her love could give, soaring out into the uncharted depths of her loneliness, filled with the hope of a tomorrow shared with him.
And as Consuela returned, empty and hollowed and scared and weak, she felt the silent clarion call rise both from without and within, and sensed that somehow, even in that moment of greatest solitude, she was ever comforted, and never alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Consuela left the flight deck and returned to her cabin, drained but pleased. She had done her best. What was more, she was comforted by the sense of presence, the same feeling she had carried with her since her defeat at dawn.
She halted, her hand on the door-control. No, it had not been a defeat. Rather, her pride had been forced aside, and she had accepted her need for something more. She had been compelled to accept that her insecurities and her pains could not be solved by herself alone. But this was not defeat, not if she were accepting the truth. Consuela keyed her door open, certain that it was indeed the truth that she was finally facing.
“Consuela! Hey, great, just who I was looking for.”
She turned, and the moment of internal honesty granted her the wisdom to know that it was false—both the surprise that Rick played at and the great smile with which he greeted her. He was nervous, he was uncertain, and he was ready to push their friendship over the brink of his own unfettered pride.
Consuela started to thrust him away with an excuse—she was tired, she had just come off a difficu
lt watch, she needed a moment’s rest before returning for lift-off. But before she could speak, she saw the need to confront this now. The realization was not something that came from herself. It was a gift of wisdom from somewhere beyond herself, clear and quiet and certain.
She smiled back. “Hello, Rick. Are you settling in okay?”
“Sure, great. Too much to do. Guns has assigned me a squadron, a pair of former airship pilots. They’ve never been in space at all, never flown anything bigger than the craft that brought us here.” He grinned, less self-consciously this time. “Listen to me. As though I’ve had years of the stuff, right?”
“Come in.” She stepped over the threshold, called for chairs, heard the ship’s monitor sound the forty-five minute mark. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Sure.” As he lowered himself, his nervousness returned. His hands played on his knees, with his belt, his cuffs, and his eyes were just as active. “Look, what I’ve wanted to tell you is—”
“Rick,” she said softly, leaning forward and catching his hand with hers. The unexpected action froze him solid. She looked into his eyes, and in that moment she understood both why it was time to face him and what she should do. The open vulnerability caused by her message to Wander was still there for her, and this allowed her to show him not the pride and defensiveness that he usually brought out, but rather the truth. The only truth that might, just might, still his headlong rush and permit their friendship to remain intact.
She saw the hope kindle in his eyes and responded with the wisdom that was still being gifted to her, a sense of knowing beyond time and self-interest, a giving of what was truly her. Her gaze steady, she said softly, “I am totally in love with Wander, Rick.”
The light in his eyes dimmed as fast as it had risen. There was too much truth in her words and her voice and her eyes for him to doubt. He looked down at his hand in hers. “Then there’s no hope?”
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