by John Walters
She shivered, sat up, then stood.
She felt tender and easy to bruise. She wanted to curl up into a fetal position, to withdraw from the world, to protect herself, but she realized that she should do the opposite, that in a strange way that she did not understand, her vulnerability was her strength. It made her more sensitive to the input around her, both visible and invisible. To search for Paul she had to remain open to outside stimuli, but she found that by concentrating she could at least partially filter out the mumbling inner conversations and monologues and hallucinations and paranoia of those nearby. Now… Which direction? Though the acid had seemed to heighten her psychic awareness, the clarity was illusory. She found it hard to tell what was real and what was not. She kept turning around in circles, attracted by sparkles, spirals, nudges, tickles, whispers. And suddenly - she licked her dry lips - she was ravenously hungry.
* * *
Paul was awakened, hauled out of bed, half-led and half-dragged to the elevator, taken to the subterranean tunnel and strapped back into the chair.
After he had sat alone for he-didn’t-know-how-long the Furen entered. “Good evening, Mr. Traven. Or should I say, good morning. Christmas Eve. A very auspicious day. Look.” He lit a screen. Orange lights in three groups surrounded a larger yellow light. “The yellow light is the house of your friends in India. The smaller lights are my employees. They are preparing a special gift for the Ahana: complete and utter annihilation.” He pointed to a tiny digital counter. “They will not be commencing the operation for some time. Unfortunately, by then you will be in no state of mind to make any sense out of what’s happening; nor will you be at any time after that, I’m afraid. Ingestion of this quantity of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide is sure to play havoc with your neurotransmitters. I would say at best you might die; at worst you might be reduced to some sort of vegetable state.” The Furen began to attach a multitude of wires onto Paul, until he looked like a robotic porcupine. “It will be most interesting to see if the deterioration will be mainly mental or physical. My preliminary diagnoses indicate a fatal combination of both, but because of the difference of dosage I cannot be precise at this time. Have you nothing to say? I dislike monopolizing a conversation.”
Paul should have been terrified, but actually he wasn’t paying much attention to the Furen’s oration. All he could think of was the mosquito that had just landed on his ear, and the fact that he couldn’t move his hand to slap it. The tickle of its tiny legs was nearly intolerable; in agonized suspense he awaited the diminutive sting of its proboscis piercing his skin.
“Your silence is most impolite,” the Furen said. “No matter. We will commence with the… What shall we call it? Transfer of power.” He poked a needle attached to a thin transparent tube into a vein on Paul’s forearm.
“Listen to me carefully, Paul,” the mosquito said. “Don’t talk out loud or you will alert the Furen. Speak to me with your inner voice. I will be able to hear you.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Aahamarada. The mosquito is a remote, a communications device, you might say; I myself am elsewhere. As soon as I have finished a few of my other duties I will give this situation more of my attention and I will communicate with you directly. For the time being I want you to know that I am with you and you have nothing to fear.”
“There,” the Furen said. “The drug is on its way. Still no comments? Very well. See its passage through the tube? I will monitor your symptoms until I see that it is taking proper effect, then I will ingest my portion, which, as I have said, is minuscule compared to yours; merely a catalyst to expedite the transfer process.”
“I’m going to have to inject you with something to counteract the dangerous effects of the LSD,” the mosquito said. “It won’t hurt. But don’t be alarmed if you still feel some of the primary symptoms; we must make the Furen think that its plan is working so that it will take the dosage it’s prescribed for itself. That will leave it wide open for my countermeasures.”
“Do you know how insane all this sounds?” Paul said.
“I admit it must be a bit disconcerting, but I assure you that you are safe. I am from the Ahana; we are foster-parents of Jason and Jasmine.”
“Jason and Jasmine?”
“Yes. I am their guardian, as I am now yours as well.”
Paul felt a pinprick within his ear canal.
“It’s begun,” the Furen said. “Increased blood pressure, body temperature, pulse rate; dilation of pupils. Good, good. I wish you would talk to me and give me a running commentary of your experiences; it would be most useful for my research.”
“Such drugs are deceptive,” Aahamarada said. “They give the illusion of power, but no real power. Whoever experiences a feeling of extra sensory perception while taking hallucinogenic drugs does so because the ability is already present within him; but whatever that person does experience is twisted and distorted by the drug itself. You, Paul, realize by now that you don’t need LSD to use your inner voice. The Furen is, in our terminology, flat. Though none in the known universe surpass the Furen in the grasp of technical and mathematical concepts, still they are severely hampered by their flatness. Of the twenty-four known dimensions, they perceive only six or seven. They cannot comprehend the others even if they are explained to them, because most of the more esoteric dimensions have to do with the unseen states of which the Furen are completely ignorant.”
“My vision is starting to blur,” Paul said. “My skin is tingling. Usually at this point I start hallucinating.”
Aahamarada said, “I want you to understand something: I am not an illusion, nor is what is going to happen next. It may be tempting for you to think so when you consider the amount of LSD you’ve just taken; you probably figure that anything can happen. But this is reality. Now… I’m going to pull you out of here for awhile and leave your body on automatic. You need to understand some things that are best explained elsewhere. Do you feel up to handling a few surprises?”
“I’ve had more than my share of surprises,” Paul said. “I could do with a holiday from surprises. I wouldn’t mind a nice quiet place where I could do nothing but sit and meditate for a few months.”
“The point is certainly well taken. Unfortunately, the timing is wrong. Now, may I transfer you?”
“Yes.”
“Blood pressure, pulse, body temperature; yes, yes, yes,” the Furen was saying, as it fiddled with instruments and dials and studied flickering and shifting computer screens. Its voice became more and more faint. Paul realized that he was no longer in his body, though he seemed to have some sort of substance that bound him together. A shimmering tunnel formed above him through which he shot like a bullet in slow motion. “This is a force field, for your protection,” Aahamarada said. The walls were a smooth shiny milky white streaked with rainbow colors, as in the interiors of sea shells.
It’s the acid, Paul thought.
“No it’s not,” Aahamarada said. “It’s reality; I warned you to resist the temptation to think it’s not real.”
The tunnel abruptly ended in a dimly-lit room that appeared to be circular. Overhead an opaque covering slowly retracted, like a huge eyelid, to reveal a transparent dome. Outside were stars. Not stars such as are seen from Earth. These stars were stunningly bright, steadily glowing, multicolored and innumerable.
“Where am I?” Paul whispered.
“You are within me,” Aahamarada said. “I am a spacecraft orbiting the Earth. I am Ahana, but this is my present shape. During the plague years, as our corporeal forms were decomposing, we invested much time and resources in coming up with solutions to the problem, to preserve our species. We developed a technique to blend organic matter with inorganic, forming a composite that is more versatile than the sum of its parts.”
“Should I ask questions, or are you going to tell me everything?”
“Everything? Hardly. I will try to explain what you need to know now.”
“And that is?”
&nb
sp; “I am Ahana; our opponent is Furen. We are two of many known intelligent galactic species - although sometimes I’m not sure I would call what the Furens possess ‘intelligence’. They are scavengers who prey off other life forms. They generally infiltrate clandestinely, as they did here, assume the shape of the dominant resident species, gradually seize control of important sectors of society: media, politics, religion, and so on, suck the world’s resources until they are depleted, and then move on. When they discovered us, the Ahana, our mental prowess made it impossible for them to deceive us, so they developed a virus, hoping to eradicate us. They’re good at what they do; it wasn’t an easy bug to get rid of.”
“But you did?”
“Actually, no. What we did was abandon and destroy the infected body parts. Before we perfected the technique, though, our population suffered considerable losses. We were concerned that we might face extinction and became desperate to preserve not so much our species as the wisdom we had acquired and the way of life we had learned to live. So we searched for a species similar enough to ours so that we could impart to them that which we knew. And that’s when we discovered…”
“Us.”
“Earth.”
Paul thought of sitting down, but then realized he wasn’t substantial enough to do so. “Listen, I don’t want to interrupt. It’s a fascinating story, no doubt. But is my body still back there in that chair?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s still strapped down and full of acid?”
“I have rendered the LSD harmless, as I told you, but yes.”
“Well, despite the fascination I’m a bit worried about that body there all by itself. I don’t really like being so far away from it and I’d like to get back.”
“I warned you against considering this as an illusion. But perhaps your inability to see this as reality is a mental defense mechanism. Do not be alarmed. Your body is safe for now. We have a little more time and I have somewhat more to explain. May I? I will not hold you against your will.”
Paul’s curiosity got the better of his disorientation and uneasiness. “Go ahead. Tell me.”
“Humans seemed close enough to us physiologically, but psychically they seemed too locked into their isolation to be able to understand and absorb what we wanted to teach them. Since time was a factor and the human race was the most similar to us we’d found, we decided to conduct an experiment on new, fresh humans.”
“Babies?”
“Foetuses.”
“This is getting weird.”
“We did not take them; they were given to us. We brought them up in the best of conditions, with the best of training. You yourself can see the results in Jason and Jasmine.”
“Who would give an alien a human foetus? That’s crazy.”
“But true. It was a surprise to us as well, to discover that some human mothers, for various reasons, would discard their unborn children. We merely set up a clinic that provided a means to discard those children to us.”
If Paul had had his stomach with him it would have been hit with nausea; as it was, his insubstantial substance trembled with uneasiness. “Where was this clinic?”
“San Francisco.”
“And when?”
“Twenty-two years ago.”
“That’s the year that…” A picture of a foetus floating in a pool of blood. A picture of a slim, dark-haired girl lying motionless on a bed, an empty syringe on the table beside her. The sound of demons laughing.
“No. Wait. Listen to me,” Aahamarada said.
“I’m still on the snowfield, aren’t I?” Paul said. “I’m dying and this is all a crazy fantasy I cooked up to assuage my guilt. What a ride, what a ride. How do I wake up? Sometimes in nightmares I used to be flying or running, trying to escape something evil, and I knew it was a nightmare and that I was asleep, but I couldn’t figure out how to wake up and escape. How do I escape? How?”
Aahamarada did not answer.
Finally Paul asked, “Why was Jason following me?”
“For the same reason that they all originally came here. Though they learned the ways of the Ahana and had never known anything else, still they were not Ahana. They wanted to know who they were. They wanted to find their parents.”
“Then Jason is…”
“Your son.”
“And the foetus in the pool of blood…”
“Does not exist.”
A silence and stillness as vast as space; then Paul said, “I have lived with that horrible image in my mind for the past twenty-two years. Whatever I did, however I tried to forget it, it was always there. I feel…healed.”
“That is wonderful. However, much as I would like to give you time to meditate upon these revelations, time is running out, and there is one more important matter in which I must instruct you. The Furen that has captured you is the pack leader on this planet, and the place where you are incarcerated is the command center. Though we Ahana normally do not resort to any form of violence to settle issues, in this case we find it imperative to impede Furen progress until we can formulate a more permanent solution. I have received permission to instruct you in the use of burnout. Once I have placed this weapon within your mind it will remain there dormant; it is a source of tremendous power, and you must vow that you will not use this power on your own initiative, without counseling with others of the Ahana-trained.”
“What are you talking about? What is ‘burnout’?”
“We will practice activating the neuronal impulses that will bring about this phenomenon. Note the sequence…”
* * *
The last to arrive were Zephyr and Rain with Randy Whittaker. They flew into Bombay on the night of the 23rd, got on a short flight to Panjim, and took a taxi to the villas.
While the newcomers rested, the others prepared for the union.
Margaret, Valiant, and Jasmine cleared the main living room and arranged cane chairs with flower-patterned cushions into a large circle.
“How many?” Valiant asked.
Jasmine answered, “Since the last team arrived, forty-three: we twenty-four, and seventeen newcomers.”
“Wow.”
“What’s a union?” Margaret asked. “I can figure out what it sounds like, but what is it exactly?”
“You really have to do it to understand it,” Jasmine said. “We all take off our personalities, kind of like you’d take off your clothes, and we put all our - how would you call them - souls, or spirits - together into one place. They all fit together because they’re not exactly substantial the same way our bodies are. And when we do, it’s - well - it’s hard to describe, but it’s kind of like an incredibly fantastic orgasm. Each person that’s added increases the effect exponentially. It gets pretty intense. It’s love, that’s what it is. We have nothing to hide behind; our core, our essence, is exposed. It’s uniting like nothing else is or can be.”
Then Margaret said, “Wow.”
* * *
On the roof of the villa Jason, Patrick, and Chuck Townsen poked their heads above the parapet and looked around.
“I don’t see anything,” Jason said. “But they’re out there.”
“It’s them,” Chuck said. “It’s Finwinkle and his thugs. I know it. I don’t see how they could have followed me, but they must’ve.”
“It might not have been you,” Patrick said. “They might have followed any of the teams.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jason said. “Don’t blame yourself, Chuck. It might or might not have been you, but we know if it was you that you didn’t do it on purpose. However they found us, you can feel their spirits, like dark shadows, up and down the beach and in the hills.”
“Maybe we should postpone the union,” Patrick said.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s almost time to start. We can all discuss it.”
* * *
“I think we should go ahead.”
“So do I.”
“We’ve been planning this for day
s. We’re all together now. Who knows what might come up and whether or not we’ll be separated again in the days to come?”