Star Matters

by David John West

  Daniel was preparing to leave for physiology practical when Duncan arrived. Duncan was relieved that he would be communicating his news to Daniel soul to soul as this allowed for a greater breadth of message with emotion than just words alone. It allowed for a much more subtle and accurate expression, which he would need to break the news of Anya’s seeming treachery to Daniel. Duncan replayed the morning’s events to Daniel with the first surprise of the discovery of an Omeyn directing operations locally, immediately overwhelmed by the news of Anya reporting their activities and clearly doing so in a systematic way over a period of time.

  “What you experienced may be so, but I do not accept that Anya would do this to us, to me!” Daniel exclaimed on processing the shock news from Duncan. Duncan emoted the shock he had also felt and the sympathy he extended to his fellow Gayan in the face of him being betrayed and deceived.

  “You would not be the first young man to be fooled by the sweet embrace of a beautiful woman.” Duncan stated the obvious while cushioning the words with his spiritual support.

  “But I am young in body only; my soul may be older than you overall. There is nothing new to me in this world of human relationships. I recall them all, good and bad,” replied Daniel. “Anya is true to me. This much I know.” Daniel’s head hung low and his words were tense, anguished. “But what you saw is honest witness and that cannot be denied either. I appreciate you coming to me with this news first.”

  “Of course,” was all Duncan needed to say.

  “So now we must take this to the others. Are you aware of their whereabouts?”

  “Charlotte is with Professor Kitteridge for their regular meeting. Joe is in town so I can fetch him to meet us at Professor Kitteridge’s room when you get there.”

  “Let’s do it. I will see you there in fifteen minutes.” Daniel was pleased to swing into action and move on from his dark thoughts. He disliked dwelling on awkward matters, especially personal ones. He grabbed his keys, phone and wallet, stuffed them in his jeans and set off for Professor Kitteridge’s office at St John’s College.

  The porters signed Daniel in and allowed him through. It was common for Professor Kitteridge to have meetings with University members from all over town and this impressive young student fitted the profile exactly.

  Daniel rapped on the door and Charlotte answered. “Daniel! What’s wrong?” she asked as she showed him in, clear upset playing across his expressive features. Professor Kitteridge was sitting crookedly in his favourite chair, his ill-fitting patched tweeds hanging off him more than they used to. He looked up and gave Daniel a watery smile through his thick-lensed glasses. He said nothing. He noted that Charlotte was immediately very concerned and he had every reason to trust her first reaction to Daniel’s unexpected arrival.

  Daniel helped himself to a chair. He thought about providing just a simple statement of the facts, but that would not do. He took them both through Duncan’s story.

  “Oh, Daniel!” Charlotte exclaimed when he described the fact of the meeting between Omeyn MuneMei, Haruka and Anya in the drawing room in Grantchester. Daniel had gone silent then. Charlotte stood, moved across to him, perched on the arm of his chair and protectively draped an arm across his shoulder.

  Professor Kitteridge blinked and was grateful that Charlotte was handling the necessary emotional response. He felt the same way, of course, but showing it appropriately was not something he had ever been comfortable with. Then there was the fact that Anya was reporting on all his own movements and that she had such close access to him as his trusted nurse.

  There was another knock at the door and Joe entered looking grim. He announced to Professor Kitteridge that Duncan was right there with him and to all that Duncan had apprised him of concerning today’s events on the way over.

  “We have to face up to the fact that she must be a Zarnha plant. Setting her up as the Professor’s nurse is an obvious play and with their own spirit spying on us then they must have made the connection to the rest of us,” Joe stated flatly.

  “Anya is no Zarnha agent, Joe. I know her. It just isn’t possible,” Daniel protested.

  “She is shaky on her childhood memories, Daniel,” said Charlotte calmly. “She has some knowledge of growing up of course but when you push her she dries up on the complete experience and memories she should have. There is not enough emotion about her family, too little detail on the places she would know so well. Just as if she were abducted in her childhood in fact and her legend from then onwards came from the objective material known to the Mind on Spargan.”

  Professor Kitteridge coughed. They turned to him. “You are indeed the experts on what can be achieved by Spargar and its agents but I would agree with Daniel that Anya seems genuine in my dealings with her. It is hard to believe she has ill will towards me or any of us in this room.”

  “Well, facts are facts,” Joe said. “She is reporting to our bitterest enemy right in our own backyard. Whether she is doing it knowingly or under some kind of duress is just a matter of how we deal with it later. Right now the one good thing is that she is unaware we know what she is up to. That must stay that way. Agreed, Daniel, no having this out with her?”

  “Oh all right, agreed,” Daniel replied. His first instinct was to find Anya and force her to explain the truth. Joe knew that this would be his response. His second reaction was repulsion at maintaining the status quo with Anya, pretending he was unaware of what she was doing. Ultimately, Joe was right that whatever his personal reasons to sort out the matter with Anya they would have to wait until their current mission was played out. Daniel would have no choice but to play along. He consoled himself that it would not have to wait for long, the rate at which matters were coming to a head.

  “I believe I am the first person to next see Anya,” Professor Kitteridge volunteered. “She should be at home when I get back shortly. I think I can carry on as normal with her if you can, Daniel.”

  Charlotte offered to accompany Professor Kitteridge home but that would appear novel and they could not change without alerting Zarnha spies. They agreed all would carry on as normal with regard to Anya. Other than that their plans would need to be speeded up. Time was running short. Enemy forces were moving in.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Professor Kitteridge arrived home and Anya was already there ahead of her afternoon care shift for him.

  “Hello, my dear,” he said. “Busy at the office for me today.”

  Anya smiled, “You must try not to exhaust yourself, Professor. You push and push and not doing you any good. You know you must get rest.”

  “Thank you, Anya, I will get some rest for the rest of the day. Tell me, did you have a good morning?”

  Anya looked up at that and seemed mildly confused. She shook her head briefly as if trying to recall, “It must have been very dull, Professor, nothing come to mind, never mind, hey?”

  Professor Kitteridge regarded her closely, eyes somewhat shrouded by his thick glasses giving him the appearance of kindly consideration. He had the distinct impression that she was not dissembling; she appeared genuinely confused about recalling the morning’s events.

  Charlotte, Joe, Daniel and Duncan remained in Professor Kitteridge’s rooms at St John’s College after the professor had left to return home.

  Joe was keen to bring events to a close in the short time before Omeyn MuneMei had the chance to pull the whole story together and mount an offensive against the Gayans. Omeyn MuneMei’s forces were clearly gathering locally and would soon move against Professor Kitteridge’s group to stop their flow of discovery against Spargan’s immediate political interest. Most importantly they had pulled together intelligence close to identifying the underlying Gayan group that was motivating the discoveries emanating from Professor Kitteridge’s group.

  “We need to misdirect Omeyn MuneMei’s flow of intelligence and somehow disrupt what she must be planning,” s
aid Joe. “However Anya is linked to the Zarnha operations, we have a short-term opportunity to use that connection to throw a spanner in their works.”

  “I am just not sure about using Anya in that way. It may be really dangerous for her,” Daniel replied, conflicted between his duty and his lover.

  Charlotte played the mediator. “Look, Daniel, Anya has already been at risk for some time with her involvement with Zarnha and she has been safe so far. Presumably that will continue as long as they find her useful. The safest thing for her must be to continue without them realising there is any change at all and for us to fix things before they find out. That must mean keeping her in the dark until we come up with a plan to fix the whole situation long enough to finish our work here.”

  “I am good with that so long as we don’t put Anya at more risk and that this situation does not go on very long at all,” Daniel agreed.

  “They must be working on identifying the Gayan group from the rest of Professor Kitteridge’s astrophysics lab people and his social and work contacts,” mused Joe. “We could help them with that by taking the prime suspects, us here, and tempting them by doing something out of the ordinary, something to interest them. Somewhere they could risk action against us.”

  “It would be normal for Anya to report that if you mentioned our plans to her,” suggested Charlotte to Daniel.

  Joe volunteered, “I could decide to stay over at Stephen’s field experiments in the old flint mine field in Thetford Forest. We know that is a busy area for Zarnha activity related to the military bases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath. On my own that would not be out of the ordinary but what if I invited you both to join me camping there for a few days? That would look very suspicious and could be too tempting for Omeyn MuneMei to ignore if she wants to move against us.”

  “All you would need to do is mention that to Anya, Daniel,” Charlotte added, “and she would be bound to report it back to Omeyn MuneMei at the next meeting. That would protect Anya’s cover as well as getting our message across. I presume you will make the rest of the arrangements, Joe?” Charlotte turned to Joe, who nodded thoughtfully.

  *

  Stephen had been a little confused to begin with when Joe pressed him urgently to spend more time helping with the field study to monitor the heathland bee communities in Stephen’s research program. Joe was suddenly happy to be available for periods of a couple of nights away despite previously being only mildly interested in Stephen’s work on insect communities. Their conversations about the level of sophistication of cognitive development needed to make social animals interesting once again led Stephen to believe Joe’s interest was in the higher orders. However, Joe was right that he would need a specialist project for his zoology course the following year. This project had to be the right size and scale to produce results over a six-month period and also give sufficient scope to show Joe’s considerable zoological talent within the context of his undergraduate science course. Therefore a sub-project within Stephen’s studies of complex bee and ant colonies in the forests to the east of Cambridge was a very good fit with Joe’s degree project requirements. Stephen was also pleased to have an extra pair of hands contributing to his project of studying the complex interactions of many social animal communities over the broad area of heath and forest at the field study site.

  It was when Joe suggested that Daniel and Charlotte would like to keep him company on the camping trips to the field study area that Stephen thought this was bordering on over-enthusiasm for his heathland bee communities and was spilling over into worries about what this group was really up to. He confessed as much to Christopher who was aware that Charlotte was planning to accompany Joe on his field trip but not Daniel as well.

  “I thought it was pretty natural for Charlotte to want to stay camping with Joe, as they always looked the ideal couple,” Christopher had said with a sorry note when Stephen had explained, “but Daniel as well? Two’s company but three’s a crowd! Did Daniel want to take Anya along as well?”

  “Anya was not mentioned, Chris,” Stephen replied. “But I only have space for three people in the car with some camping gear and I am not ferrying tourists to party on my site. Frankly, I was surprised enough at Joe’s change of heart becoming so interested in my insect colonies. But that’s nothing compared to an economist and a medic suddenly wanting to record data on a bunch of bees! I guess it is possible they just want a camping adventure in the good weather but it’s just not enough to justify this level of interest.”

  “It’s extra peculiar when you add it to all the other strange things that have been going on for a long time, as I said before,” ventured Christopher.

  “Well, I have agreed now and I will be heading out there Friday lunchtime after lectures and dropping them off at the site. I can hardly complain at their enthusiasm – I am always looking for volunteers to help out with collecting the data,” said Stephen.

  “We could always get a box of beers and pop in on them on Saturday afternoon if you are free?” Christopher suggested. This seemed a great idea as it gave Christopher the chance to meet up socially with his friends, Stephen the chance to visit his project and both of them to assuage their curiosity as to whether anything really strange was occurring here.

  *

  Daniel was researching the human nervous system in his room as he waited for Anya to call after her care shift at Professor Kitteridge’s home. The recommended textbooks Daniel had purchased for his physiology course were anatomically correct but lacked any insight into the meaning of how they were spiritually inspired. It was like seeing a railway network and yet having no knowledge of how and why it was used. There was plenty of scope for enlightenment in medicine on planet Earth at the start of the twenty-first century when it came to the nature of consciousness and how it controls the body. He was thinking that Anya would be arriving soon. It was hard for Daniel to concentrate on his studies when Anya was on her way to see him. He would concentrate for a short time on his studies then thoughts of her would intrude, and do so increasingly often until she arrived.

  Anya was equally distracted on the short walk to see Daniel at Jesus College. She was thinking of being wrapped in his big body, enfolded in his powerful arms with the bulging ropes of muscle. He would be careful with her as if he were holding a small bird so as not to hurt her accidentally. Soon she climbed the stairs the two floors to face the familiar door to Daniel’s room and she stood a moment to slow her heart racing from the combination of the walk, the exertion of the stairs and the alluring thrill of imminently seeing Daniel again. She knocked softly on the solid wooden door.

  Daniel had given up on the physiology text. Anya was slightly late and he could not concentrate on anything else. He heard the familiar quiet knock and knew she was there. He got up from his chair and crossed the few short strides to the door. He opened it and a thin slice of Anya’s body was framed standing there smiling impossibly widely, unconstrained in her happiness. Daniel was affected too and beamed back at her, totally uninhibited in their private world. He pulled her in to him through the portal and closed the door with a combination of his arm and her back and rear pushing it closed. Anya continued to smile widely at him as she pulled him on to her body braced against the door. Daniel leaned over her and she raised her head so their lips met, heads crossed to kiss deeply, tongues mingling. Their spirits entwined behind the long kiss, spiralling in to each other, their prior anticipation rising with the arousing reality of the hard press of their bodies together.

  Eventually Anya broke free and they both took a long breath. Anya took his hand and pulled him towards the single bed in the corner. She regarded him with lowered lids looking back to him over her left shoulder as she coaxed him along. Daniel followed guilelessly, facing Anya as she pulled him along, half turned away to accentuate her tiny waist and the swell of her behind in tight black trousers. She paused at the bed to put her small bag on the cabinet, shrugged her whit
e work blouse up and over her head and pulled her trousers down and off. She stood in matching cream lace thong and bra as Daniel less elegantly threw off his jeans and sweatshirt. Anya reached both arms out to the bed and made a slow diving motion like a cat across the pillows, back arched, bottom up in the air alluring and prominent. As her stomach touched the bed she rotated on to her right-hand side, reaching out to Daniel to join her. He leaned forward and pulled her thong over the tight domes of her buttocks and down her thighs. She raised her left knee high up the bed opening herself in readiness for him to enter. Daniel looked down to see her rump pert as a peach push backwards to engulf him. She turned her head to face forward again and exhaled soft and long as she stretched and started rocking on him. Her platinum hair was thrown back along her arched back, a muscular channel carving down from her shoulders through her narrow waist then voluptuously up to the middle of her raised pelvis. Soon they were rocking furiously against each other, lost once more in the passion of their storm-tossed lovemaking.

  Daniel felt the explosion of the winds and the rain first, his climax drawn out inside of Anya so that he felt like he was coming some small distance outside of himself. Anya was clawing the bed like a dervish with sharp fingernails, arms bent at right angles at the elbows, left knee drawn up high, right leg extended. Just when Daniel considered his climax was ending he felt Anya go over the edge. They both extended the moment, milking it for every last ounce of gratification before Daniel pulled away and dived left, rolling onto his back, body exhausted in a sheen like oiled mahogany.

  Anya lifted herself to fit against Daniel’s left side, legs scissored against his left thigh, head resting between the vee of his left bicep and his chest. “Oh we fit together so well, Daniel, I can hardly believe it possible,” she breathed.