Star Matters

by David John West

  Charlotte started racing down these little paths, her feet seemingly flying along, exulting in the precision of finding sure footfalls on the precarious ground, accelerating with the downslope until a precipitous final velocity had been reached. Milder than Joe’s drama with the bullies at school, this wild ride down the hillside nonetheless lifted Charlotte’s spirit and induced the same physical and emotional response; exertion induced euphoria showing both children the dramatic future capabilities of their exotically combined earthly body and Gayan soul.

  Charlotte’s mother spotted her chasing at breakneck speed down the twisty paths. “Oh, would you look at our Charlotte, she will do herself a mischief. Please call her back, it’s time for lunch now anyway.”

  Charlotte’s father had been enjoying the respite, eyes half closed relaxing after the exertion of the long walk up, but when he turned to look he had to agree that his daughter was soon to have a calamity charging around the hillside. He clambered to his feet and watched his daughter briefly, thinking how easy life was at that stage, carefree and fun. A brief memory flashed of himself doing the same on these timeless paths under the same sun and skies and he yearned momentarily for lost childhood.

  “Charlotte!” he called, “lunch time, come on back here!”

  Charlotte heard the call and slowed her fleeting to a stop with a short slide on the gravelly sand of the tight path that scuffed the left edges of her shoes. She was uplifted by her awakened spirits and turned to climb back up to the picnic spot without feeling any exertion on her young limbs. She joined her parents, mother sitting, leaning on one arm, her skirts round her legs that were bent at the knee, feet behind her. Father was sitting cross-legged so could lean over the picnic and put out the salad on paper plates. Charlotte squatted down the same and soon she was tucking in.

  After lunch Charlotte was more calm with full tummy which meant that she was happy to explore the rocks and gullies with the adults, before setting off home. Fortunately the walk home was largely downhill and passed quickly. Charlotte was very pleased to reach their front door and more so when she could flop on the couch in the living room. Just as she was thinking What a Great Day Out!, her parents registered that she had dropped off to sleep.

  Joe had one more lesson to learn that memorable sunny summer of his childhood: if you don’t finish a job completely then it tends to rebound on you. Especially when issues of revenge leave grudging enemies behind that gather and return to haunt you. Revenge left incomplete can become a highly developed way of life in certain cultures, especially on Earth but also on worlds elsewhere.

  Joe was on an errand to the local shop only a short distance from his home. The road was clear in both directions as he walked along the pavement. A group of boys on bicycles crested the hill behind Joe and recognised him before he heard them. Turning, he saw Alec Coghlan in the lead followed by four other cyclists heading towards him in line abreast formation. Alec had no choice but to lead his gang at Joe having seen him; the odds this time were again in his favour, being mounted on bikes coming downhill – that must give him an advantage. Joe took in the situation instantly as he turned. He had nowhere to go and no wish to run. He looked around ensuring there were no bystanders this time around.

  Alec and his gang came on without speaking, urging the pedals to more speed down the hill. They did not want to call attention to the unfolding episode. They were immersed in speed and the chase. Adults would not take kindly to five boys attacking one lone boy in his home area. The road took a slight bend at the bottom of the incline next to a bus shelter. Joe moved to the edge of the pavement at the apex of the bend. The world seemed to go silent as the gang approached, only whirring pedals and wheels conveyed menace as the gang urged onward at Joe.

  Just as Alec’s bike reached Joe he stepped into the street. Alec was forced to turn slightly to follow Joe and also the bend of the street. He was travelling too fast to concentrate on anything other than control of the bike. Joe stepped towards Alec’s passing form and caught his arm with a single blow that ended Alec’s rush and tipped him off into the street. Then the other four riders were on him but each had the same lack of control as Alec himself and three similar moves to right and left scattered most of the other riders into a moaning mass flat on their backs on the street, bike wheels spinning to the air. Four of the gang were incapable of rising to carry on the confrontation. Each had abrasions from the tarmac and bruises and bangs to elbows and knees. The final rider was larger than the others. He had been unable to press in on Joe as the other four had done and pulled to a stop past the melee surveying his groaning friends with bent bikes and lazily spinning wheels flat on the ground.

  “I want to be your bodyguard,” he said slowly, clearly impressed with Joe. “You can be my manager and I will fight anybody you want me to.”

  Joe looked at the larger boy and considered the leadership offer he had neither sought nor wanted, but noted the significance that he could be seen in that leadership role. He paused for a long moment, some satisfaction, some awe, largely making the point that he could cope by himself. Slowly he turned and continued on to do the shopping he had been sent for. On his return the gang had disappeared, this time to decide to leave him alone for good.

  *

  The following year Joe, Charlotte and Christopher progressed to secondary school, carrying top marks academically. The school was enormous to their eleven-year-old eyes, over two thousand children in six houses catering for eleven to eighteen year olds. They wore school uniforms in the early years with ties of differing colours showing which ‘House’ they belonged to. Like a mini university each house contained their class groups and they joined with students from other houses depending on subject matter of each class. The three friends were in different houses but met in these classes as they were each in highest streams and the school was so large each major subject had three streams.

  Alec and his gang were also attending the same school but their paths crossed little except for occasional meets between lessons or on the bus home as they came from the same neighbourhood. This secondary school had a much larger catchment area that dwarfed their little junior school, a fat tutorial spider in a web of student routes gathering in from all around.

  When it came to the choice of specialist subjects for their final examinations the friends followed both the gender stereotyping of the educational system and their own inclinations so that Joe and Christopher specialised in science and Charlotte arts and business. On the edge of adolescence, the two Gayans were now truly integrated with their earthly bodies, but not yet enlightened by their past lives, and Joe and Charlotte were physically highly capable. They represented the school teams in football and hockey and in athletics in the summer term. Christopher remained lanky and uncoordinated but pressed Charlotte and Joe hard academically in end-of-year tests.

  Joe was mature enough to realise his test results could appear too perfect. On scoring ninety-nine per cent in his second-year chemistry, his head of science, Bill Hannigan, jested in private that he would not be getting that score again. The following year Joe was pleased to see that the score was ninety-seven per cent; he had tried to produce a more acceptable score than previously.

  Christopher had always been envious of the easy friendship between Joe and Charlotte. In what already seemed like a lifetime to Christopher the other two had always enjoyed an intimacy that he did not feel a part of though all three would claim to be best friends to outsiders and adults. Christopher supposed that Joe and Charlotte would soon become boyfriend and girlfriend as it seemed to flow naturally from their obvious closeness. This made his silent longing to be together with Charlotte all the more poignant and he indulged in fantasies of being her hero and that his physical prowess would grow to match hers and especially Joe’s. In his bed in the time before sleep he reigned supreme as Charlotte’s hero in his imagination; during the day he took his subordinate place as the slightly awkward geeky Chr
istopher.

  The moment of adolescence is even more momentous for Gayans than the overnight changes in earthly humans. The release of adult hormones in Joe and Charlotte triggered by the maturation of their nervous system and brain released the full stored knowledge of their prior Gayan lives like the transformation of a desert suddenly erupting into bright flowers from horizon to horizon. Along with this realisation came their accumulated knowledge of many generations. This would seem to be so momentous as to be impossible for an individual to cope with but in fact it was completely normal to Gayans. One moment they were normal kids growing up wherever they had been born, perhaps with a sense of waiting for meaning to arise, the next moment they were fully aware of being an adult Gayan with complete command of their knowledge and skills. This blooming into adulthood was helped by the fact that all the earthly children of roughly their age were going through a similar, albeit much more limited, transformation all around them into adulthood. This melting pot of young people provided camouflage for Joe and Charlotte of their sudden change and of course they knew to be silent about their Gayan knowledge; history and experience that had been locked somewhere in their limbic systems waiting for the pieces that were Keeran and Amily to be discovered once more had to be kept secret. One day they were schoolkids getting by a little better than most; the next they were masters of the known galaxy, the knowledge of generations past and the science from across a thousand worlds at their disposal.

  Charlotte of course matured first. Amily, as the soul of Charlotte, was aware over the generations that she went through soulmorphosis ahead of male colleagues born together in much the same way that local girls went through adolescence before the boys. There was no more earthly learning required for Charlotte after the release of her knowledge and experience from Amily perfectly preserved from her prior fifty generations. Her moment of enlightenment, known as soulmorphosis to Gayans, had come in one sudden rush once her body and soul reached unified maturity and her earthly hormones produced her first sign of womanhood. Charlotte knew to keep this secret, essential as that was if their Gayan mission were to be successful. Amily had learned over recent generations that she needed to encourage Keeran to catch up as it could be many months between the two of them maturing if she waited on nature alone. She knew that she would be impatient until he joined her in enlightenment and they could move on with their mission as fully capable Gayan humans on Earth. To this end Charlotte engineered a country walk with Joe one Sunday afternoon in the early summer. Joe had noticed the sudden maturity coming to Charlotte but similar changes were taking place in all the girls as they lost their childhood ways and became young women. Joe was interested and mystified by Charlotte’s offer to meet and walk but was very pleased to accept nonetheless, innocent in his hopeful fantasy this was some kind of coming-of-age adventure.

  Charlotte and Joe met where the footpath started off the street over a wooden stile of crosspiece steps secured between high posts, the path leading into the woods and fields near their homes. It was just after lunchtime. The sun was high, the sky mostly the thin blue of northern England in summer. There was a healthy breeze pushing a patchwork of small white clouds along. It was a perfect day for a walk through alternate woods and meadows, occasionally skirting farmers’ fields of burgeoning green young crops. They chatted about school and friends; Joe took leadership of their route, Charlotte took leadership of their conversation. They followed a tiny stream out of the woods into a wide meadow where the dense bracken on the banks of the stream gave way to flower-strewn grassland. Charlotte suggested they take a break and sat in the sun where the silver birch trees gave way to the open meadow. Charlotte sat close to Joe head tipped to one side to lean against him. Joe laid back and put his hands behind his head staring up to the sky.

  Charlotte leaned over him, “Joe,” she said softly. “You do trust me, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” he replied, not quite sure where she was going with this.

  “I want you to try something – it’s a kind of spiritual thing. Just close your eyes and listen… ”

  “All right,” said Joe. He closed his eyes. He was conscious of the noise of the meadow. Small birds were calling, the slender, whipping boughs of the birches whispered in the wind. Sunlight played pink through his closed eyelids. Charlotte was very close, leaning over him.

  “I am looking after you,” Charlotte said softly. “I am going to count down from twenty and I want you to keep saying the word ‘Keeran’ over and over in your mind while I do it.” She started to count, each number quieter than the last. Joe realised that the name Keeran was familiar to him though it eluded him on the edge of his memory. The recognition grew stronger as he repeated it while Charlotte counted down. When she got to one she was very faint and part asked, part commanded softly, “Remember Keeran, remember Keeran, remember Keeran… ”

  Charlotte’s repeated words sparked memories in Joe. In his mind it was like a wall being overwhelmed by a flood. He was seeing Keeran’s prior life as Darryl, his times in California with Robert, his ill-fated rescue attempt to Braganza. As Charlotte kept repeating ‘Remember Keeran’ very quietly, more walls, further walls were breached, memories flooded back of lives before Darryl, many lives on several different worlds. All Keeran’s knowledge of the culture Dawn of Gaya, their goals for him here on Earth, their technology, their history, came to him and reset his mind from his schooling of the early technology age here on Earth to that of race Dawn that travelled between the stars as a matter of course and understood the close relationship between the spirit and the science. Keeran’s knowledge was now fully ready to join with Joe’s mind and body to provide the wisdom of five thousand years of skills and learning.

  “And wake up now Keeran,” Charlotte intoned, seeing the changed expression had just dawned on Joe’s young face.

  Joe opened his eyes slowly, now completely aware as Keeran. He regarded Charlotte in full recognition for the first time in this, their latest and most critical lives on this world. He knew that they would always be Charlotte and Joe until this life’s end but on this one very private occasion he celebrated his soulmorphosis12 by saying her name out loud, “Hello Amily – and Charlotte,” he smiled. “So you used your trick to get me to wake up as Keeran again when it suited you. You are getting good at it – you should get a job as a hypnotist.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte replied, “at least you mature quicker than Alron, but I am always first, so good that I can bring you back to all your senses. The important thing is that we are finally grown again now, jejeune is over and it is time that we got down to business. Welcome back, Joe – and Keeran.”

  “Well met, Charlotte – and Amily,” Joe said knowing he should not refer to Charlotte’s Gayan name even in private.

  “No escaping me I’m afraid, young Joe,” Charlotte replied with a smile of the ages. They embraced long and deep. Words were not required and would be totally inadequate. They were colleagues and friends and were meeting again as they had many generations before. Memories of past lives and quests spanned back through time and space, centred on Gaya Prime, their home world, but also other worlds and most recently their ongoing campaign focussed on this emerging planet Earth. The last memory they had as Amily and Keeran was back on Snowscape on planet Chamarel. This was overlaid now with their growing up together again, this time as Charlotte and Joe. All these memories were comfortable and gave their spirits pleasant meaning and they could not have been easier with each other.

  Their mission for these new lives was a continuation of their prior lives with their additional agreement on Chamarel that this time would be when they made the major step for Gayan Enlightenment in the face of Spargar opposition. They did not speak of it to anyone else; missions were confidential between Gayans in their small teams on Earth and on other worlds elsewhere in the galaxy. Gayans on different missions did not communicate specifics of their goals as that could derail their work or be discovered by
enemies. Missions were long in nature, often spanning a whole physical lifetime or even more than one life. They were largely about moving the culture of a new world forward by revealing a new technology or philosophy at precise moments, but could equally call for dramatic action to correct a catastrophic event, actual or in the making. Their ultimate goal was to aid similar human life forms across the galaxy to progress through healthy awareness rather than risky revolution, to avoid the dangers of progress into dark alleys and at the same time continue to grow their own knowledge as they found it across their quests. In this way the off-world activities of Gaya helped developing worlds to achieve their potential as effectively as possible, and helped also to avoid the cataclysmic dangers of developing human cultures if their more extreme tendencies were allowed to run unchecked.

  Joe and Charlotte returned from their wondrous walk in the woods immensely comfortable in each other’s company. Now Joe had joined Charlotte as a fully capable Gayan on planet Earth, they had several hundred years of shared experience as the basis of working together in this new life. This was the start of the best times of their new Gayan lives and the portents were most promising.

  Most of their family and friends saw only that Charlotte and Joe had transitioned into being young adults as they would expect at this age. One person, however, was watching them carefully and he saw that something really major was happening to them very quickly indeed. He was downhearted as he ascribed it to them now being teenagers in love. Christopher was looking most carefully at his friends and saw the quiet change to instant maturity in them and thought his fears were realised; Charlotte was now with Joe as a couple as he had always feared would be the case. Joe and Charlotte’s parents also noted the startling change, best described as a new serenity in their offspring, but thought it to be the natural change from teenagers to young adults. Once again their parents thought this was a natural part of growing up. After all, Joe and Charlotte were their first children respectively and they had no earlier children to compare them with. They had no prior knowledge of what to expect. Pop culture suggested that major changes were to be expected and that was what they were seeing. How would they know any different?