Abel’s gaze lingered on them, longer and longer. He felt his heart quicken. He took some deep breaths. Then he swung a little farther to the left and spotted the old toothless crocodile at the mouth of the Rio Palma. The old guy had actually made it back into the water. He saw several groups of maids going about their work in the main complex, and someone swimming laps, however small they were, in the pool. Faviola was out inspecting, and Abel watched with a smile as she bent over to pick up some trash and burst out laughing as her breasts actually popped one of the buttons off her blouse. She casually picked it up and went about her work, now looking all the sexier.
Ah, to be in a world of Latin women, Abel chuckled.
Finally, he sighted on his beach house, the closest one to the beach and farthest from the motel’s main building. Abel thought it looked very inviting and was glad he was staying in it. He did some more calculations in his head, adjusted the crosshairs in his scope accordingly, took deep breaths, and then pulled the trigger. Two and a half seconds later, another sand explosion, this time just in front of the stairs that went down from his porch to the beach.
Abel stood and surveyed everything around him—the island, its beaches, the river, the bay, his boat—then all the way around to the community on the mainland. His hunch had proven even better than expected. From this point high on the volcano’s island side, he could rain projectiles down on anyone or anything on the entire island with pinpoint accuracy, something he had expected but needed to test. What he hadn’t expected but thought might be possible—being able to hit targets on the mainland of Playa de Palma itself—was a shocking and sobering surprise. All this he silently contemplated as he disassembled his weapon, re-stowed it and its other ninety-four rounds in its carrying case, and searched out another small cave to cache it in. He found a space for it under some rocks where he also found the bones of another poor soul who’d given his or her life in the service of Monti, and then slowly began to descend, wishing that he had someone wiser than he to talk with about the staggering implications of this newfound power he possessed.
***
Once back to the beach, he grabbed his backpack and, for the first time, pulled out his Mk 16 assault rifle and assembled it for close-in use. Having seen the strange behavior of the big cats on the island already, along with the monkeys, he wanted to be ready for anything as he journeyed to the big shiny object he’d seen the day before. In just a matter of seconds, he had the weapon assembled, had snapped in a high-capacity magazine, and hung it over his neck and shoulder at “ready” height. He then slung the vastly lightened backpack onto his shoulders and hiked along his main meadow trail to the welcoming arches of the Green Cathedral.
There he stared at the ground, looking to see if the pen he’d left the night before had been replaced with anything. Incredibly, it had! Lying on the stump was a small, pen-sized cylinder, though it didn’t seem to have a way to eject something with which to write. Abel stared at it curiously, picked it up, looked it over, shrugged, and moved to put it into his pants pocket when he suddenly heard the zing sound again, and an instant later, seemingly from nowhere, a human figure appeared, standing not thirty feet from him.
Instinctively, he raised the Mk 16 and aimed it at the person, his finger on the trigger. Only then did he have a chance to actually look the person over. She was a woman, probably younger than he, but definitely not a child. She was considerably shorter, but also graced with a magnificently proportioned and robust physique. Her skin was a warm brown that reminded Abel of hot, rich Colombian coffee mixed with cream and sugar. Her hair, cut straight and short above the shoulders, was a dark shade of auburn. It framed her high cheekbones and bright green eyes that were much bigger in proportion to her nose and thin-lipped mouth, giving her an otherworldly appearance. The trunk of her body was covered by a comfortably fit garment that was the color of the surrounding tree trunks (a rough-looking brown) and spotted with a green that matched their leaves. Abel had no idea what kind of fabric it was made of, but he could see the protrusion of small nipples through it across her chest, so he surmised that it wasn’t thick or weighty. Her arms and legs rippled with sinewy muscle and her feet were covered in leathery shoes made from some sort of hide that was the same color as her clothes and held at ankle height by numerous laces. Except for what looked to be a small, sheathed knife strapped to her side with a thin belt around her waist, the woman appeared unarmed.
The two stared silently, their eyes taking each other in. Abel saw a human being unlike any he’d ever seen in his life. There was a side of him that figured that if Peter Pan were a woman, this is what she’d look like, the face different and captivating, like something out of a science-fiction movie. Those beautiful green eyes, so large yet not disproportionate, were mesmerizing. Though he continued to point his assault rifle at her, he couldn’t imagine using it.
Suddenly, he heard the strange birdsong he’d heard several times before, including the day before when the black pumas had followed him away from the shiny metal object. This time, in his head, he heard a firm but enchanting woman’s voice.
I am Rimi of La Catedral Verde. I have watched you for three days. Now, I must know who you are and why you are here.
Abel kept his eyes on her and his weapon trained. “I’m Abel—er—Caleb, Caleb Forrest.”
“I’m Abel—er—Caleb, Caleb Forrest,” said Rimi, this time directly to him, imitating him perfectly, even down to the stutters and his natural cocky tone.
Abel was confused by this but continued. “I’ve been sent here to explore the Green Cathedral. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Once again, Rimi spoke back to him the same words he said to her, in precisely the same fashion. Then she added, “I sense you are lying. You have weapons just like the others and say the same things they did before they tried to hurt us. Why do you bring weapons if you don’t want to hurt us?”
“To protect me,” replied Abel, still with his weapon aimed. “I don’t know who you are, or who ‘us’ is, or where you came from, or how the hell you can talk to me in my head in perfect English.”
Rimi stepped gently closer to Abel with her hands down as if to calm him.
“I can answer all your questions soon enough, but you must lower your weapon. The others would point them at us and shoot bullets into us. They killed some of us, so we killed them, as you know. Please, lower your weapon, and you and I will talk.”
Abel quickly assessed his situation. He was face-to-face with an alien-looking woman who seemed harmless enough, and wanting to talk, but once you’ve been lulled into complacency by a Taliban woman begging for help only to watch her pull out an AK-47 as soon as you let your guard down and riddle your team members with bullets, you have second and third and fourth thoughts about lowering your weapon in any kind of standoff with an unknown. He had a sinking feeling who “us” might be, but nothing else living appeared to be around at the moment. Finally, he made his decision.
He unhitched the strap that held his Mk 16 up. “Okay, I’m lowering my weapon,” he said.
She advanced a little more toward him. “This is good. All will be all right.”
Abel started to put the weapon down but also backed away, not comfortable with Rimi coming closer.
“Stay where you are, and I’ll put down the weapon,” he said, continuing to lower it and back away.
Rimi stopped, but suddenly the three black pumas from the day before appeared. One dropped from a nearby tree, and the two others sauntered out of the shrubs behind Rimi.
Startled, Abel backed away some more and began to raise his weapon again. “What the hell? You want me to drop my weapon with those things prowling around?”
Rimi took another step forward, her hands open and calming.
“They are my friends, my guards. They go wherever I go. They will not hurt you.”
Abel continued to back up. “Oh, yeah? You told them
that, huh? Forgive me if I don’t—”
Suddenly, Abel’s foot hit a tree root behind him, and he pitched backward. He flailed his arms to catch himself, but his right hand squeezed the trigger of the Mk 16 as he was going down. Shots rang out! Abel fell to the ground on his back, his head bouncing off another hard tree root. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was three angry black pumas descending on him like avenging demons.
LA CATEDRAL VERDE
17
—
The first thing Abel noticed when he awoke was that he couldn’t move. He tried and tried, but nothing budged, and with each attempt, zings of pain raced through him.
“Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” he heard a rather nerdy-sounding male voice command from somewhere. It had a distinct metallic sort of after-ring to it.
“Bibi, stop!” said another voice, a woman’s voice, which Abel vaguely thought he’d heard before. “This is not the time to use those words. They are threatening words. Abel-er-Caleb Forrest is badly injured. He cannot hurt us.”
“But he has to stop moving,” the whatever-it-was that was called Bibi replied. “He’ll ruin the healing process if he doesn’t.”
“This is true,” replied the woman, “but you must use gentler words. Like this.” After a brief pause, Abel saw the woman’s face looking down at him. She spoke with the same calming voice that he was gradually remembering.
“Calm yourself, Abel-er-Caleb Forrest. You must continue to lie still for several more hours, or your injuries will not heal properly.”
The other voice replied, “Ah, so more like, ‘Relax, take it easy. Everything’s gonna be fine.’”
Abel wasn’t listening to the chatter. He was staring into those green eyes.
“You can just call me Abel,” he said.
He then glanced around at his surroundings, noting lots of futuristic-looking electronic gadgetry on the ceiling, and the same around him inside what seemed to be a rather cramped, spherical room. He then looked down as best he could from lying prostrate on his back and barely being able to move anything. His body was naked, that was for sure, and there were many angry-looking cuts and claw marks all over it, or at least the parts he could see. The entirety of his body, save for his head, was wrapped in a transparent film made up of spiderweb-style threads wound over and over again. Thus mummified, his body was placed in a metal cocoon where a soft white light interacted with the filaments of his wrapping. He could feel things going on all over his skin but had no idea what. He looked back into the woman’s mysterious green eyes.
“Where am I, and what’s being done to me?”
“You are inside my escape pod. He is called Bibi, the other voice you heard. You are now wrapped in a healing cocoon, which is used by the healing cylinder to repair whatever it detects is not functioning properly on you. The cylinder finds what is wrong, then activates the proper nanobots in the cocoon to go to work repairing whatever damage has been done. It will be several more hours before your entire body will be scanned and repaired, but it will take days more for the repairs to heal.”
Abel squirmed, or at least tried to.
“Days! I can’t be here for days. I’ve got to—”
Suddenly, Abel was interrupted by a painful shock that zapped his entire body. He instantly stopped squirming.
“Fight the healing cylinder and the healing cocoon will only cause you to have more body damage, and therefore more time that you’ll have to stay in it to be repaired. And then it will take more time for the repairs to heal,” said Rimi gently.
“Yeah, well, that’s just great,” said Abel, “but I’ve got stuff to do, and if I don’t get back later on today, someone’s going to get suspicious, so I’ll just be—” He tried with all his might to break out of the mummy wrap he was in, but once again he felt painful zaps.
Rimi held him with a startlingly firm grip. “You must stop struggling, Abel. You’ll only make things worse. You’ve already been here more than a day, and nothing bad has happened.”
“What!” exclaimed Abel. He struggled more, ignoring the pain shooting through him. “Shit, Faviola’s probably already given away my beach house and thrown out my pictures. Help me get out of this!” He cried out as the healing cylinder zapped him again.
“Stop struggling,” Rimi ordered in a voice packed with authority.
“Not likely, sister,” said Abel. “You’ll have to knock me out first.”
Rimi saw that Abel was actually stretching the mummifying strands to the breaking point. She’d never seen such strength in an Earth human, or such stubbornness. But she wasn’t about to see Bibi’s healing systems be damaged, by him or any other.
“Fine!” she said. “It shall be as you wish.”
Abel, sensing he was making headway with his wrappings, grinned crazily at Rimi and was about to say something else when he noticed, Rimi’s eyes change to a fiery red color, and something coming out of his peripheral vision. Then something that felt like a baseball bat hit him flush on the cheek, and he was out cold again.
Rimi dropped her fist down as she saw Abel once again was unconscious. She straightened his body gently and positioned it properly again in the healing cylinder. She found more of the mummifying material and placed it on Abel’s face where her blow had connected with it, then pushed him a bit farther into the cylinder.
“See that he stays asleep until all procedures are accomplished, Bibi. I have been angered as I haven’t been since the last Earth humans came here and killed some of us. I must run for a while and calm myself.”
With that, she simply walked through a part of Bibi’s wall that was not covered with machinery and the next second, stepped out into the clearing where the shiny ball lay half-buried, one part of it quickly closing behind her as if it were made of liquid. She began to jog, then suddenly swooshed out of the clearing so fast it was as if she’d simply disappeared.
When Abel awoke again, he was no longer in the healing cylinder, and flashy metal tentacles were peeling away the healing cocoon that was still partially around him. Remembering what had happened to him before, Abel didn’t struggle this time or try to get up. Not seeing anyone immediately in his limited field of vision, he called out, “Anybody home out there?”
“Of course, I’m home,” replied Bibi. “I have never not been home. It’s so good to be home.”
“Yeah, right . . . ” replied Abel, mostly to himself. “So, are you some kind of AI robot or something?”
“I am a special kind of ground operational device called a ground operational living device. GOLDs have many purposes. Mine is to act as an emergency escape system and semi-permanent dwelling for my human owners. I am fully equipped with all options standard. What you see is what you get! I can handle anything that Mother Nature throws at my human occupants. I’m one tough GOLD!”
“Jesus, you sound like a bad car commercial,” quipped Abel.
“You bet yer ass I do,” said Bibi in an Old West drawl. “Where ya think I learned all that fancy lingo, any-hoo?”
“You gotta be shitting me.”
Suddenly, Rimi walked through a wall in the sphere and was among them. Abel, who’d just raised himself enough to see what was being done to him, nearly dropped his teeth. Rimi went over to his side and began examining his body.
“It appears that the repairs have all been made successfully.” She felt his jaw where she’d smacked him. Abel moved it back and forth, up and down. It seemed to work fine, and it felt like all his teeth were in place, but it was very sore and stiff.
“I’m especially glad that this seems to be fixed,” said Rimi. “Please forgive my anger. I must learn to control it better.”
“I think I asked for it,” replied Abel. “How’d you do that anyway?”
“What, hit you? Well—” began Rimi, but Abel interrupted.
“No, walk through that wall,” he said
. “How’d you just walk through that wall?”
Before Rimi could answer, Bibi spoke up. “Another miracle of modern engineering!” he exclaimed. “My body is made of a liquid metal alloy from my home planet that can assume almost any shape and is virtually indestructible. It can be so dense that even laser beams cannot penetrate it, or so porous that someone like Rimi can walk right through it. Imagine the possibilities! Get yours now for just nineteen ninety-nine, and your shipping is free. But wait! Order now and we’ll double your order. Just be one of the first ten callers and—”
“That’s enough, Bibi. I will talk now,” said Rimi with a sigh. “I can understand the language of most any animal innately, which of course includes Earth humans, but Bibi needs to listen to speech patterns to learn new languages. So when we came here, he used his radio wave sensors to watch and listen to television shows that were broadcast in the area. That is also how I learned much of what I know about this world.”
“So you’re . . . not from . . .” began Abel, not sure quite how to broach the subject of talking to an alien.
“No, I am not from this world,” answered Rimi. “My parents came to this world many of its years ago as explorers. They found a civilization near this area that was very open to them, and my parents and their crew taught these people many things. They were eventually called home, but promised those people they would come back to them one day. When my parents came back, this time with me, over a hundred of your years ago, something happened. I don’t know what, but there was a malfunction of some kind that dropped our ship out of orbit, and our descent was uncontrollable. My mother put me into Bibi and ejected me from the vehicle, and I have no idea what happened to it. All I know is that I am alone. There is no one else like me anywhere that I know of, and I miss my mother and father very much.”
The Green Cathedral Page 15