by Arwen Jayne
Kit nodded, reprimand understood. She’d scraped that one in. Meta had only just forgiven Kiana’s transgression, possessing Michael’s body without his knowledge so she could offer comfort and companionship to her new best friend Sarah. Kiana had been without a body of her own at the time but that hadn’t excused her for hijacking Michael. She knew Meta was wise to the fact she hadn’t wanted to scare off the two women from what she had wanted to do last night. She’d never had any sisters, none that had survived the slaughter of her family four hundred years ago. Meta seemed to have sensed her need but she knew without a doubt that he’d be keeping score. Any similar infraction in the future and the consequences would be severe. She hoped Helena and Sathi understood and forgave her as easily.
They settled down to wait it out while Helena fought off the poison. With Sally’s help to speed the healing Doc finally gave the nod for them to move her.
17
There he was. The house had been deserted all morning but it appeared that at least one of its other residents was back. George slumped into his favorite chair in Simon’s kitchen, glaring at its owner’s back. He knew better than to try and interrogate his friend and boss on what he’d been up. He’d have his whinge moan instead. “You knew didn’t you?”
Simon, having finally managed to extract himself and his mates from the plane of limitless love they’d ended up in last night, kept stirring the sauce he was working on. He didn’t look up.“Yes but would my telling you have stopped you longing for her? Would you have believed me or would you have seen me as interfering where I wasn’t wanted?”
George grumbled. “Free will and all that?”
“Yes that...and a friend knowing when not to interfere. Things needed to take their course.”
“Bloody Hell Simon. You could have stopped me making a fool of myself.”
Simon turned the stove off, the sauce would keep, his friend was suffering. He wandered over and took the chair beside George. “George, I have visions that show me the probable future but I am never quite sure of the all the details. People make their own choices. Some say there’s a parallel universe for every conceivable scenario. How was I to know that this wasn’t the universe where you and Ally became more than friends, even though in every other universe it is different?”
“It’s because I’m black isn’t it?”
Simon groaned. “George, not everything that happens to you in this world is because of your skin color. I think Ally would be shocked you’d even consider her racist for a moment. She has the highest regard for you.”
“Yeah, for my mind.” His tone implied he had much more to offer.
“And for your friendship. I would have thought you’d lost enough family and friends back in the Sudan that you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what you have with her. You’re putting out that much vibe of rejection today the whole town’s picking up on it. Ally particularly is guilt ridden over it. Then there’s Upal and Mendal who’ve just discovered Ally’s interest in them but they’re scared of losing your friendship too. You hold a lot of power in your hands at the moment George. To scar those who call you friend or let them know they still have a place in your heart.”
“Shit, I never meant for Ally to get the guilts over it, although I wish she’d told me sooner.”
“People mostly take the easy path George. She hoped you’d lose interest. She feared the very reaction you’re having now. She doesn’t want to lose you George.”
“Hell, I’m lonely Simon. I rather fancied Ally would be the one.”
“Note your choice of word - fancy. Ally’s too much like you George, you never would have gotten past the intellectual discussion stage. It was all you had in common. Your true mate will aggravate you, excite you, stir your blood, be the very air you breathe.”
“Yeah, but where is she? Good grief Simon, you had to wait several millennia. I don’t think I’m that strong.”
“You won’t have long to wait. We’ve just been on hold until you got past this hiatus. When you’re ready I’m sure Thex would be more than happy to introduce you.”
Realisation dawned on George. “The communications officer on his team, Orea. That’s who you’re referring to? What’s she like?” His excitement now was like water on moss, bringing him back to life where there had only been a parched heart before.
“Actually I’ve never met her in the flesh. I’ve visited her stone occasionally and those that watch over her but there’s not much to tell. Her spirit is strong, indomitable even. If you want to know more you’ll have to pick it from Thex’s mind.
For the first time that day George smiled. “Well then. Where is he?”
“Right behind you.” Thex dangled some keys in his hand. “Fancy a drive in my new toy?”
George noticed the Mercedes tag on the key ring. “You can’t have gotten rid of the Hummer.”
“Actually I gave the Hummer to Daniel O’Rourke. Now he’s moved in with Frieda he’s finding it a tad inconvenient having to take his big rig out every time he want’s to go somewhere.”
“But a Merc. That’s so not you Thex.”
Thex grinned from ear to ear. “It ain’t no ordinary Merc. Try a 6x6 G class with a 5.5-litre V8 twin-turbo.”
George wasn’t that easily conned. “Can’t be. They’ve only ever made a couple of those. They don’t even make a production model.”
Thex tossed the keys at George. “Simon pulled a few strings.”
George was dumbfounded. One of those had to be in the six figures. “Cripes Simon. Just how much money do you have?”
“A bit.” Simon answered evasively. He’d pleasured more that a few kings, queens and wealthy merchants in his time. He’d made some good investments with what they’d bestowed on him. “Now before you two disappear off to play just remember it’s pizza and darts night at the pub tonight.”
George didn’t look too sure. “Yeah right. I get that you can use a gluten free base but pizza without chilli, mushrooms, cheese or garlic? How the hell’s that going to work?
“Ye of little faith. Jeff and I have worked up and already tested a recipe but I’m not giving you any spoilers. Just be there okay.
18
“I’m not sure I want to wake from this dream Zex.” She leaned back into his shoulder, enjoying the companionship and the moment.
“Yeah, I know. I’m not real keen to get back home either.”
Helena winced. She didn’t like the thought of the beautiful man contained so brutally within his crystal prison. “You know I’ll be coming for you.”
“I know.”
“Just don’t get any ideas about making some claim on me. I’m a free woman. I don’t want to be imprisoned in a relationship any more than you are in stone.”
Zex sighed but knew that any future with this woman would be on her terms. “Just let me into your life, Helena, that’s all I ask. You make the terms. I’ll do my best to abide by them.”
“Hmm...” Helena didn’t sound convinced. “We’ll see.” She had her career, she had Anya to protect, although maybe not now Anya had Andrew. Helena frowned, her world was changing. “I’ll speak with this Simon character you all talk about and once I know the how I’ll come and set you free.”
Zex had no doubt his woman would keep her word, even if she didn’t yet think of herself as his woman. “I’ll look forward to taking you to meet my people.”
“Your people? You’ve got friends? How? Do they see you too?”
“The shamans do, although I’ve never appeared to them as anything other than a condor I have communicated with them telepathically. I’ve tried to guide them as best I can. It’s been frustrating not being able to help more. I see them suffer Helena and I cry.”
Helena raised an eyebrow at that. “I’ve never actually met a man who could cry, or at least admit he did.”
“Oh I cry alright Helena. When you’ve seen some of the misery, violence and oppression you’ve seen on some of the third dimensional worlds I’ve visited y
ou cry. I doubt it would surprise the commander that I’m such a softie.”
“The commander?”
“Thex, you obviously haven’t met him yet. He’s the one that asked me to come on this mission. I don’t think he was convinced of my value but on the advice of the seer, the Council requested I tag along. They’d hoped I’d broker a deal with the Din.”
“Kit’s explained a bit to me about them. They seem a pretty greed ridden bunch. How would you have negotiated with them exactly?”
“Negotiation is always about finding out what each side wants. We wanted to them to leave the Earth as it is, a place where beings can exercise choice. The main choice being whether to reawaken and claim their destiny. The Din wanted to avoid the lessons of this plane. They didn’t want to spend many lives learning compassion and the need for reconnecting with the all-spirit. All they wanted were the pleasures and comforts of the material world without the downside of entropy, mortality, loss and pain.”
“So knowing that?”
“It needs a carrot, so to speak. They have to see what they are missing. They need some reason to go beyond their current model of enslaving all beings to mine their wealth and feed an ever growing economic empire.”
“I doubt they’ll stop while there are still beings to work for them and still wealth in the ground. When they run out of stuff here they’ll just move their operation to another planet.”
Zex’s jaw gaped, she’d hit on the answer. He kissed her passionately. “That’s it! Brilliant!”
“What, what did I say?” But at that precise moment her dream faded away and she woke. Opening her eyelids she looked up, straight into the worried eyes of her sister. “Don’t you hate that Anya, when you think you’ve dreamt something fundamentally profound and the whole thing evaporates as you wake.”
Anya helped Helena to sit up, adjusting the pillows behind her head. “What I’m glad about is that you’re alive and awake.” But at Helena’s frown she knew the dream must have been important. “Maybe it will come to you later.”
“Suppose so. Any chance of a cup of tea around her, I’m dying of thirst.”
Anya passed her a glass of what looked like bright green sludge. “Drink this.”
Helena sniffed the glass and looked at its contents with a certain amount of doubt. “That’s not tea, Sis. It looks and smells like pureed grass.”
Anya laughed. “Slightly better than lawn clippings. Try it. It will help to detox the snake poison from your system and help you with the other stuff your body’s going through?”
Helena notice the slight edge to Anya’s voice. “What other stuff?” Come to think of it certain bodily functions did seem rather urgent. She clutched her abdomen as a cramp tried to strangle her gut. Her insides hadn’t been the best since she’d woken this morning. Must have been the Thai curry. “Shit Anya. Help me find a bathroom will you.”
Anya winced, feeling for her sister. Helena was older than her. The change to Malakim would be a little harder than for someone in their twenties. Already Helena’s scar was fading. Anya was grateful she’d only had the retrovirus. Its change was slower. It was up to the DNA repaired inhabitants of the town, like herself and Andrew, how far and how fast they evolved before ascending to the level the Malakim were at. Helena instead was getting an instant makeover. She didn’t know how angry to be with Kit or whether to be angry at all. What Jnarn’s adopted daughter and Tyra’s semi-sister had done last night had been timely to say the least. She certainly didn’t begrudge her sister the extra powers that would start to come online after she completed the change. Anya would catch up with her in her own good time without the trauma her sister was now going through. They both had all the time in the world now and no-one was going to take it away from them. She would make damn sure of that. What she wasn’t sure of was how her sister would take being told she was now immortal.
19
“You asked to see me.”
“I’d ask you to take a seat but you’d see me as a male giving you an order.”
Helena laughed. “You’re probably right.” She decided she take the seat. “So you’re the all knowing all powerful Simon I’ve been hearing so much about.”
It was Simon’s turn to laugh. “Maybe. Here, have a cookie, I just baked them. And no that’s not an order either.”
Helena kind of liked the man. She took a bite out of a cookie. “Well you’re a damned good cook, that much is obvious.”
“You seem to know I have a bit of a, how should we say it, a discomfort with men.”
“They often rub me the wrong way.”
“And that’s the problem Helena. That combined with the fact that you are now Malakim. As you are you will never achieve your body of light. You will be stuck on this planet in physical form long after we have all evolved on. Hundred’s of millions of years from now when the sun swells then burns out you’ll still be here but then Earth will be a cold rock, drifting in space until it eventually gets vacuumed up, hundreds of billions of years into the future by the black hole at the centre of this galaxy.”
“You’re not painting a very pretty picture Simon.”
“Sorry but you need to know what you are up against.”
“So achieving this body of light would probably be a good idea. What’s stopping me? How do I do it?”
“A good first step would be to forgive your father.”
Rage instantly flared within her but she squelched it, outbursts were never conducive to rational discussion. “Like that’s going to happen in a hurry.”
“Note what you just did Helena. You felt rage but your rational mind over-ruled it. Have you ever wondered where that natural tendency comes from?”
She had. She feared the answer. She’d done some analysis on her own genes. Letting out a deep sigh she relaxed into the chair. She’d never bared the darkness within her to anyone before but ... “I’m a borderline sociopath. Brain the size of planet, a natural aggressive instinct to survive that comes from certain genes within me, including a genetic attraction to alcohol which I’ve avoided like the plague since I discovered that particular flaw in my genome. I have the ability to block emotion that gets in the way of me doing what I need to do. I enjoy pain, both the giving and receiving. How’s that all for a hell of a mess?”
“You’re honesty is breathtaking. What if I was to tell you you chose those traits?”
“My preference would be to hit you over the head but that wouldn’t achieve anything would it?”
“No, it wouldn’t. For one thing your arm would just go through me if I didn’t want you to connect with the material manifestation I’m projecting.”
Got to give it to the man, he was the equivalent of a metaphysical nerd, she could appreciate that. “So how do you think I ended up this way?”
Simon took a seat across the table from her. “Several reasons. Firstly and most obviously the genetic makeup and circumstances you were born into and the experiences that came after. Secondly the habitual habits chosen and honed through previous lives. But more important than any of that you took it on because you knew you had the capacity to be a transformer, that rare ability to take the worst and turn it around, purify it and make it whole.”
“So how is being a borderline sociopath a good thing.”
“It isn’t but what gives you that tendency can be harvested for good. It gives you a powerful mind for one thing. It also makes you a leader and a warrior, someone who can make the hard decisions even knowing the consequences. But you could be so much more if you reactivated your heart.”
“I love my sister.”
“No you protect your sister. You’ve cared for her, done what was in your power to make her life the best you could but I wouldn’t call it love. A moral sense of duty and family honor perhaps. Isn’t that why you avoid long term relationships? You think you can’t be what other people want from you. You’re even afraid you might become like your father.”
Shit. As much as she wanted to rail at what h
e was saying she knew it was true. “I’m not going to argue with you Simon. I’ve looked into the psychopathologies that commonly manifest in people with my genes. If you have a loving upbringing you can bypass most of it but when you’ve had the trauma I’ve lived through...Hell, Simon, I have the potential to be cruel.”
“And yet you have it in your power to heal your DNA, not just your own but others too.”
“How?”
“I have it within my power to express the persona of any soul. Would you allow me to show you your father as he was?”
“Role play.”
“Oh more than role play.” He went to retrieve a bottle from a shelf in one of the kitchen cupboards. It was empty but he filled it with water from the tap then placed it on the table with two empty glasses. “Let me set the scene. We’re at a bar, somewhere in downtown Moscow, not far from where your father lives with his family. He’s too young to be legally drinking yet but he’s snuck out with the little pocket money he has. You’re a good friend, not his daughter so call him Ivan, not dad, ok?”
“Okay.” Before her eyes Simon shimmered and in his place solidified a younger version of her father. It took everything in her not to react with repulsion. Maybe if she addressed him by his name she could react to him differently. “Ivan?”
Ivan’s eyes locked on to hers. “Dimitri, It’s good to see you. Da’s home in one of his moods. If I’d stayed I’d have got a thumping. Still might when I get home but I thought I’d take the risk. The old bastard might be asleep by the time I get home. Have a drink?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Helena poured the water from the bottle, wondering how this was going to work but the man took a sip from his glass and seemed to be satisfied.