by Mike Crowson
* * *
It was raining in Kirkwall when Gill and the others landed. When they crossed the Tarmac to the terminal building they were surprised to see Steve.
"Ali let me bring the car across," he explained. "It was raining and there was nothing else to do. Did you get the rings?"
Gill kissed him first, then said, "Talk about jet lag! I'm completely disorientated by all this flying. I hope you're going to help me down to earth."
"Did you get them?" repeated Steve.
"Yes. They're in our bags, so your money's well spent."
"Our money," he corrected.
"Our money," she agreed, and kissed him again.
As they walked out to the car he said, "You know, I had the craziest dream the other night."
"I know," said Gill, "but it wasn't exactly a dream. I'll tell you what happened later, and then you can tell me how your dream fitted in."
"How was Spain?" Steve asked the other two as they climbed into the car.
"I enjoyed practising my Spanish," said Alan. "It was interesting but tiring."
"Besides the work," said Manjy, "I had a pleasant and intriguing few days. I'm glad I went and grateful to you Steve for helping with the money."
"'You're welcome', as Frank would say," said Steve, imitating his American accent.
After the meal that night, when the volunteers had gone, Alicia sat herself at the table in a businesslike way.
"Can you all come here for a moment," she said "I want us to tackle the last remaining question."
"What's that?" asked Frank. He had been about to get up to leave but settled himself back down.
"The question is, 'What do we do with the rings now?'," answered Alicia
"Couldn't we just bury them somewhere?" asked Alan.
"No," Alicia replied. "They might be found sometime. That wouldn't be enough to keep them safe for all time."
"Could Gill do the same ritual again in reverse?" Manjy wondered out loud.
"Ask her," said Alicia.
"Well ... I think I could, but there are some problems."
"Such as," Manjy wanted to know.
"The first problem is that the professor-priest could easily get them back in some future lifetime if he knew where to look. Or anyone else with wrongful intentions, and I suppose there are plenty of those. The second problem is what sort of a guardian I could leave. He must have been consumed by malice to leave a guardian like that one - and I don't even hate him!"
"For the first problem, you hide them somewhere unlikely," said Frank.
"Where's unlikely?" asked Gill. "Don't think I haven't considered the point. It's got to be quiet enough for me to do the ritual, so he could perform it too. Then where wouldn't he think of? In one of the houses here? He'd think of that. A stone circle somewhere? Some other prehistoric or historic monument? I rather think that an occult expert could probably find something on the astral wherever you hid it."
Alicia was thoughtful. "The professor said he was going to send the ring a few seconds forward in time," she said.
"It wasn't so much forward in time as out of time," corrected Gill.
"I know," said Alicia, "but couldn't you actually send the rings back in time, so that they would get further and further off. Eventually they might be impossibly far off."
"I don't know," admitted Gill. "I'll read the notes carefully and see if there's any clue as to how I might do it. The question is still where."
"Ah," said Alicia, "The question presupposes that we need to be able to find the place again. But that's not actually true."
Manjy almost jumped up. She saw at once the implications of this. "What you mean is, just go somewhere in the middle of nowhere and do the ritual with nothing to mark the place at all?"
"Right," said Alicia. "We won't be able to find the spot again, but we won't need to. The point is, nobody else will be able to find it either."
"We could certainly try that," said Gill, "but I'm still worried about leaving the rings unguarded."
Steve had been hovering in the background with a tea towel still in his hands. "Since you can't out hate an evil person, can't you out love them?" he asked.
Everybody stopped short at that. "How d'you mean?" asked Gill.
"Well," said Steve, "if you leave a guardian which will stop an ill intentioned searcher with a stream of good thoughts, the rings would be safe. You've nothing to fear from anyone whose intentions are for the general good, have you?"
Gill thought about this. "No-o-o," she said cautiously. "I suppose a stream of good thoughts and constructive vibrations might stop an evil soul as much as malicious ones. But I think I'd need you all to help, if it's even possible. I need to think about it all."
"You mean we'd all have to follow you?" asked Frank.
"I told you last night," said Gill, "The ritual took us along the paths of the Tree of Life. That was an uncanny enough experience, but I went onto the astral alone. This time you'd all need to come with me."
"I'm not sure I believe in it," said Frank.
"I don't think that really matters, so long as you don't actively reject it," Gill told him. Frank didn't look very convinced.
"Look," said Alicia, taking charge again, "Three questions: Firstly, can Gill send the rings backwards in time? Secondly, where do we do the ritual? And thirdly, can Gill conjure up a 'good' guardian, as opposed to an evil one?"
"'Conjure up' is hardly the right expression," said Gill, "but I take your point. With regard to the question, the more I think about it, the more possible I think it might be. As to the first question, I'd have to look into that, but I think that's possible too. What we need to do is this: you all discuss question two while I go away and think about one and three."
She got up. "Come on Steve," she said.
Steve had more-or-less finished putting things away, so he hung up the tea towel and followed her to the door. She turned back a moment. "Here's another thought. Alicia's been through a series of lives too and she was a priestess long before me. I think there may well be enormous power amongst us."
She turned again and went out, followed by Steve. "I've done enough searching on my own for now," she said, "I've got the beginnings of an idea I want to talk about." And she closed the door behind her.
"Right. Where?" asked Alicia briskly.
"Get a map of Hoy and pick a place to start from and we walk to the middle of nowhere from there," suggested Frank.
Alicia reached for a map from the top drawer of the filing cabinet, opened it up and spread it out.
"How about taking the Landrover to the end of the Rackwick road and turning left along this track," said Alicia. "The track just peters out, but we can stop somewhere along here and just walk."
"I think one place is as good as another," said Manjy.
"If it's night we could strike a boggy patch of moor," Alan pointed out.
"Tomorrow's Sunday. If the weather's good we can go for picnic in the afternoon and pick a spot for the ritual later. If the weather isn't kind to us, I'll get Steve to drive off alone tomorrow and pick a general area," said Alicia. "He can make sure it's okay, and nobody else will know in advance where we're going. We'll pick the exact spot together on the spur of the moment"
"Sounds fine to me," said Frank. "What say we go out and enjoy what's left of the day?"
They all got up to go except Alicia. "I'll see you later," she said.
Frank nodded and they drifted out. Alicia locked the cabinet again and pocketed the key before returning to her diary of the dig.
Steve was sitting back on the bunk in Gill's room and Gill was lying down with her head in Steve's lap, the late professor's papers scattered around, mostly on her stomach.
"I think I see how it might be done," she said at length. "What worries me is the power we need. Perhaps if you made love to me there might be enough power at the climax."
"With everyone watching? I don't think I fancy that."
"Well if they all did too
..."
"I don't think Alicia or Manjy would thank you for suggesting an orgy. No I don't think that's a runner either."
Steve couldn't tell how far Gill was joking when she said, "I can't really see how to get the strength for the guardian otherwise."
"Well," he said, "you did say there may be enormous power between us."
Gill gathered the papers together. "Let's go for a walk along the beach while I give it some more thought," she said, struggling to a sitting position and then reaching to the floor with her feet. "I think I need to drop the subject altogether for a while," she added.
"If you want to think about something else for a few minutes, when do you have in mind for a wedding?"
"In some ways I feel married to you already," answered Gill. "I feel as if I've known and loved you in other lives than this."
"Perhaps you have."
"Interesting idea," she said speculatively. "Anyway, about our wedding. I'd like it to be soon," she continued, "But it will have to wait until this expedition's over in seven week's time, I think." She paused then said, "I'd rather like to go back to southern Spain for a honeymoon."
"Then the honeymoon will have to wait 'till my parole's up at the end of September," he said getting to his feet and adding as an afterthought, "But the wedding needn't wait that long." With that they went out.
The sea was placid and, though there were still scattered clouds around, the sunset was a deep pink and getting redder all the time.
"You mentioned Alicia having been a priestess," remarked Steve.
"Yes?"
"I wonder what we all were in past lives other than the one connected with ring. Frank was quite a character in his story and Manjy was a sort of sacrifice besides Alicia."
"You mean," said Gill, "that we're all of us souls that have many lives of service?"
"Well, I was just wondering. Perhaps there's the power between us."
"Maybe," said Gill, thinking of a book called 'Windows of the Mind' that she had read once. "Given time we could possibly find out, but time is something we don't really have."
They wandered along the beach with the sky turning redder, promising good weather the next day.