Star Matters

by David John West

  One person at the school actually knew very different indeed. Joe’s head chemistry teacher, Bill Hannigan, was Gayan of the group Guides of Dawn. This group was made up of teachers and coaches of key individuals whether they were local individuals selected to progress the human race here as a whole, or to watch over new Gayan children growing up here like Charlotte and Joe. Bill Hannigan’s mission was in his fiftieth year now and he had developed important earthly individuals and also helped other Gayans in their missions as they arose. He had noted Joe and Charlotte immediately by the red threads they had carried unknowingly as jejeune when he first met them and he made a point of being a close guide to both as they progressed through school. Charlotte and Joe had felt the same red threads to Mr Hannigan but not with the full mature recognition of the teacher.

  Bill Hannigan was a longstanding Guide of Dawn. Gayan guides typically worked alone in and amongst the local community and Bill had served as a Guide for many generations now, most recently here on Earth. The psychic red threads that connected Gayans at rebirth allowed all Gayans to identify each other and meet up if they were in proximity. Without this ability to identify each other they would never be able to function, dispersed across the galaxy in such small numbers. This meant that Bill knew of Joe and Charlotte’s arrival locally at their birth and he was put on notice to expect to guide them once they reached adolescent soulmorphosis. As a Guide of Dawn, Bill’s job was not to lead the local people personally, which would have been straightforward but would expose him to unwanted public scrutiny. His job was not to catch the fish; his job was to teach selected individuals locally how to fish. In all cases Gayans were not the celebrities of history. Not the great inventors, scientists and philosophers down the centuries. The Gayans were the unremarked second-in-commands, the vice-presidents and muses of the great geniuses of history.

  Part of Joe and Charlotte’s role was also to perform some guidance duties but they were of a different group called the Pointers of Dawn that was tasked with active project leadership of the overall Gayan development plan for the people of this emerging world. They orchestrated the key tasks and individuals to achieve significant goals. They were expected to be able to take decisive action in pursuit of these goals using their training and experience to temper their decision-making without reference to higher authority from the Worders outside their immediate small teams. They had tremendous intellectual and physical capability but only a tiny number of operatives were active in each world even at critical development stages as was the case on planet Earth. They were required to counter threats from opposition from rivals like Spargar and meet ambitious development goals for flourishing new human civilisations. This explains why inventions and revelations are clustered together in a particular culture and time. Like a galaxy held together by a central invisible black hole, a rash of scientific advancement would have Gayan Guides and Pointers hidden at its core. Major advances had to be assimilated into the general consciousness of the people as a whole before the next big steps could be made. Fortunately this helped to manage the workload as only a few Gayan operatives could be afforded to guide a growing culture at any one time. Unless something disastrous were threatening to happen and a crisis needed to be averted.

  Bill Hannigan could feel the dormant red threads to Joe and Charlotte pulse into life as they discovered their fully integrated Gayan selves at soulmorphosis. Bill called for a meeting with Joe in his private study when he was certain that Joe had emerged with access to Keeran’s Gayan knowledge, ostensibly to discuss next steps in chemistry experiments. When Joe arrived at Bill’s office they embraced as equals. Fifty-year-old Bill and sixteen-year-old Joe had full recall of the many centuries as Bill Waylon and Joe Keeran. The rebirth cycle of Gayans unified in body as well as spirit meant that their physical ages were insignificant other than expressing their bodily capability in the differing ages of life.

  “Well met, Keeran old friend,” said Bill, issuing a beaming smile for the full return of his colleague as a fully mature Gayan adult.

  “Well met, Waylon,” said Joe. “It is good to see you again as you really are. You guardians are so patient. It has been a long wait for you, only a few days for me since our jejeune has ended.”

  “It is a long wait, Keeran, but a pleasure to see you grow up nonetheless and the anticipated pleasure to see you emerge complete again.”

  “Well, thank you again, Waylon. Good to see that the system is still working well.”

  “Yes it is and just as thriving as ever. Now it’s time to give you your ripallo. It’s always a relief to get you equipped and know you are protected properly. It’s just one less thing to worry about though I have never lost a jejeune Gayan through them not being ripallo-protected. I don’t advise having your ripallo here on Earth as a cuticular implant in case it’s discovered by a medical or airport scan that would be difficult to explain. Much better to wear it all the time disguised as the battery of a cheap watch. Nobody is ever going to question that.”

  Joe Keeran took the plain-looking wristwatch that concealed the ripallo and he too felt the relief offered by its protection. “Thanks, Waylon, I feel naked without one of these things, though I didn’t even know about it again until just now.” Joe strapped the watch to his left wrist and it looked perfectly unremarkable.

  Bill said, “These are brilliant protection against small arms here on Earth.”

  “Do they always work, Bill? Do you test them out?”

  Bill sensed Joe’s mild concern so in illustration he picked up a few small ball bearings of different sizes and colours that represented atoms in chemical formulae models on his desk. He tossed them towards Joe. A small flash and a crackling noise stopped or deflected the ones that would have struck Joe; the others carried on track harmlessly.

  “In reality,” Bill said, “as long as you keep moving, then even a sweep of automatic gunfire typically results in only a small number of incoming bullets that would actually hit you. These dangers can easily be coped with. If your assailant gets close enough to you with an automatic weapon to overwhelm your ripallo capability that also makes them close enough that you will be able to deal with them before any harm can be done! The kind of weaponry you could expect to meet in normal circumstances on this planet hasn’t developed a guidance capability for anti-personnel projectile weapons but even if they did then these devices can deal with several incoming per second.”

  “So standard manoeuvres will suffice,” replied Joe, referring to the moves of their personal combat skills training.

  “That is correct, Joe,” said Bill. “We know that ripallos are effective against small arms fire of all kinds, not so sure about explosive devices, anti-personnel mines for instance could overwhelm ripallos’ track-and-check with just the sheer number of incoming shrapnel if you stood on one. The really good news is there is no development here of tracking bullets at the personnel level so far, though they have them on a much larger scale for missiles of course. Ripallos won’t save you from a large-scale explosion. “

  At that moment there was a knock on the door and Christopher walked in. Looking at the atomic model ball bearings on the floor he said, “Oh so sorry, I didn’t realise that you were in a meeting, sir.”

  “No matter at all, Christopher, Joe was just leaving, once he picks up the models he knocked over,” replied Bill.

  “So clumsy, please excuse me, sir,” Joe agreed bending to pick up the brightly painted balls.

  Christopher stood by the doorway looking on and once again he had the feeling that something was amiss. Specifically he thought more was going on than he could quite grasp. Then confusion set in as he shook himself mentally; the scene was really quite normal so what on earth could he be missing out on?

  Joe headed for the door, “See you later, Chris,” he said brightly as he passed him by.

  Time was moving fast for Joe and Charlotte now. They still needed to tune in to their forma
l education as well as to learn as much about the world as they could from media and news. They had little chance to travel at this stage, just the occasional school trip and family vacation, so they needed to soak up information on the political scene worldwide from the media channels. It was particularly frustrating not to be able to get detailed news on their recent prior lives, such as the latest developments in Silicon Valley, California, for Joe’s prior life as Darryl. The normal social processes of growing up, added to the preparations for their Gayan mission, meant that life for them was even fuller than for other teenagers. In their day-to-day life they had exams to prepare for, social lives to maintain and critically university places to apply for.

  In addition to Joe and Charlotte, Christopher had been identified as a potential high achiever for the end of school A level examinations and they were receiving additional tuition for applicants to Oxford or Cambridge universities. This did them no special favours within the wider student community but at least this tuition was at lunchtime or after school so appeared as unwanted extra academic work to other students who were less enthusiastic about it. To counter the nerdy appearance of the extra lessons, Joe and Charlotte played in the school sports teams, Joe in the football team, Charlotte hockey and swimming teams. Christopher still aspired in his mind to demonstrate cool athletic skills of some kind but these were more in his imagination than in practice and his stock with his fellow pupils fell well short of his desires.

  The school had links with prior pupils who went to Queens’ College Cambridge so it was natural that all three applied to the group of colleges at Cambridge University that included Queens’. The Cambridge collegiate system meant that an applicant applied to a single college and that if some load sharing of talented applicants were required than that would happen across that group of colleges in their miniature clearing system. Joe and Christopher applied for natural sciences which allowed science graduates to sample a broader range of subjects than was typical at undergraduate level in science. Charlotte applied for economics. Their prior examination results and school reports gained them interviews at Queens’ College in the months leading up to the Christmas before they took their final A level exams the following summer.

  Joe’s parents invested in a new suit and tie for his Cambridge interview and his mother drove him there along the A1 southwards, spurring off to Cambridge in heavy rain. She managed to drop Joe off on Silver Street close to the Porters’ Lodge where a relaxed retired policeman in a porter’s uniform directed Joe to meet two doctors in Natural Sciences in a comfortable shabby-chic room in the Edwardian block that also housed the Porters’ Lodge. At least that meant Joe was reasonably dry as it was only fifty yards from car to lodge and another fifty from lodge to the stairwell servicing the office location of his interview.

  He was greeted in friendly fashion by a young, slightly stooped physiology doctor with glasses and slick dark hair, and a striking older doctor with wiry grey hair and a quirky smile in a thin expressive face as if every day offered nothing but pleasant surprises. He had diastoma between the few top teeth that remained, and Joe recollected that in Africa gap teeth were a sign of great good luck; presumably as it meant there were fewer dental problems caused by clashed teeth. This was Doctor McGregor, esteemed marine zoology expert. Red threads closed immediately to forge the invisible Gayan link between McGregor and Joe and this added to the general warmth of Joe’s reception at interview.

  Both doctors were more at ease in the lab or with their scientific papers than interviewing so the small talk was mundane and led by the physiology doctor who was keen to understand how things were going at Joe’s school that had after all supplied several Queens’ scholars in the past. Doctor McGregor was more comfortable quizzing Joe about his ambitions in science. Joe explained in general he wanted to study the comparative anthropology of social animals to man. He knew he was sounding a little out of his depth when he said, “What lessons are there for human races in comparison to social animals from whales on the one hand right down to ants on the other?”

  Doctor McGregor smiled at the sweeping generality of Joe’s comment and followed up, “That is very interesting but what would be the purpose? Is it of sufficient significance?”

  Joe replied, “I can think of little more significant to understanding the nature of life in the Universe.”

  The two interviewers paused to exchange glances at that thought but silently agreed there was no cause for laughter at the young man’s ingenuousness.

  Doctor McGregor asked, “Please develop your ideas with regard to the structures of whale society and what significance that may have for the rest of us?”

  He was delighted when Joe replied, “I am really interested in the meaning of whale song and what that may mean for communication in whale society on the one hand and whether there are any lessons for our communication methods on the other.”

  This happened to be McGregor’s speciality in more ways than one; firstly as Doctor of Zoology, Cambridge University, and also in his Gayan studies to learn whether large marine mammals had capabilities for interplanetary communications that could be used by human races. Whales, like all advanced marine mammals across the galaxy, had no access to electricity-driven technology development. Underwater mammals were inconvenienced by immersion in salt water that really hampered electrochemical research. This constraint had channelled their higher thought processes into musical and spiritual communication within the water layers of the seas. Whalesong within pressure layers could be amplified by planetary resonance if ringed by several whales simultaneously at key points and depths around the globe. It was this advanced use of ultra powerful musical resonance for communications purposes that had attracted Doctor McGregor to come to Earth to study marine mammals and see if their methods could be incorporated into Gayan long-range communications between galaxies through deep space.

  The earthly part of this conversation occupied most of the half hour allotted and Joe was surprised his time had flown by when Doctor McGregor drew the conversation to its close and escorted him to the stairs. Joe had to wait a few weeks for his official offer to study natural sciences conditional upon achieving three A star grades in his A level examinations due the following May. He was pretty sure the offer letter was going to come after he exchanged wide smiles with his fellow Gayan Doctor McGregor as he showed him the door on the way out.

  Charlotte had a different but equally positive interview for economics at Queens’ college. The economics PhDs giving the interview were both quite young and academic-looking in a self-important manner suitable to their subject as a social science, which some even referred to as the ‘dismal science’. They both had limp dark hair and thick spectacle lenses in heavy black frames. They welcomed Charlotte briefly and affected an officious manner that they struggled to maintain in the face of this attractive young woman, who was truly mature beyond her years, which the interviewers found unsettling and unfathomable. They took the conversation straight into esoteric mathematical modelling of a couple of economics issues (as mathematical justification was becoming the core of economic thinking in the absence of any of its conflicting theories proving accurate in the real world).

  This line of enquiry was easy work for Charlotte who, after all, was skilled in the likes of the Razoricus theorem of the inverse relationship between the breadth of path and energy required to drive a warpwave connecting through spongy dark matter. This theorem described spirit transfer mechanics over great distances without the need for costly warpships capable of transporting living people. In these interview conditions the greater challenge for Charlotte was to simplify her cosmic knowledge of maths and extemporise their own models with the economics doctors without seeming condescending. Charlotte’s many generations on Earth previously had given her many social skills in handling the lopsided relationship between the sexes in a way that she could get her missions accomplished through getting the men in her life to do her bidding wi
thout realising that was even occurring. It was the perfect example of influence through stealth that Pointers of Dawn sought to achieve in their missions over the centuries. These skills allowed Charlotte to fully succeed in concealing her superior mathematical knowledge but equally she certainly convinced her interviewers of her capabilities. Her conditional offer letter to read economics would soon be in the post.

  As the days shortened and the skies grew steelier with the onset of winter all three school friends received these university offers. Parents and teachers were pleased at the prospect of their youngsters going to the famous university. Christopher, Charlotte and Joe were more thoughtful about it once it dawned that getting the offer was just stage one. They now needed excellent marks on their final examinations if their offers were to turn to reality and this requirement for perfect scores did not leave any room for error. All three were now committed to their extra lessons for the remaining six months until their final exams came around.

  They did manage to continue their social lives allowing themselves some freedom from school work especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. They would catch the bus to a disco in a local village that ran a live band at the weekend. The heady mix of indie bands trying to make their mark in front of crowds of young people provided the ideal place for youthful relationships to bloom and bust under the close scrutiny of their schoolmates. Part of the excitement was the intrigue of exploring their feelings with each other away from the school environment but another part was the frisson of danger of mixing with youthful strangers from around the area. There were inevitably bust-ups between couples, sometimes involving youths from other villages attracted to the girls from their school transformed by their make-up and their scant clubbing outfits looking more like extras at a Hollywood party than the girls the boys were accustomed to from classes at school.