Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1)

All rights reserved.
This is
a work of fiction.

Any
resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, characters,
events, locations, or businesses is purely coincidental.

Kalahari Desert, Africa

Tiknay lay flat on the dusty ground, sun baking
her dark brown skin in ninety degree heat. Her face was still, hands clenching
sandy dirt by her sides. The wailing voice she had heard for months was
changing. A new tonality was surging through the vibrations of the music of the
earth. The woman trembled as she sensed rage in the defiant tones. What did it
mean?

She had heard the music all her life. It was
there as she gathered the mongongo nuts and it was there in her dreams. The
pulsing constant voice of the earth changed in its tones like the rhythm of
seasons, but she had never been afraid. Even when the voice had changed
dramatically in the past few months to the eerie keening wail, she had not been
afraid. The voice of the earth told her through the years about animals who
were dying and warned her of poisoned water her people could not drink, so she
could understand the music of grief that wound itself around her body and mind
day and night. The wail mirrored her feelings as she watched her tribe dwindle
in numbers. It accompanied her delivering misshapen babies who lived only for
minutes, watching the young men leave the tribe for the new ways of the white
man and his paper money. Still, there had been no fear in the old woman of the
tribe until today. She had performed the dances and sung the songs meant to
heal the earth, but she had no remedy for the rage she heard now.

The old woman rose slowly and walked back to her
hut. She knew this anger was not directed at her people, but she also knew they
were in danger. She must persuade the tribe to travel far away from the ones
who caused this. Something terrible was about to happen.

Salmon Creek, Idaho

"I guess you could say I was there at the very
beginning. Well, maybe not at the beginning, more like the beginning of the
end. But I sure was there on duty at my station the night Miss Maria got the
call that sent her flying outta here like all the bats of hell were nipping at
her heels. That's how I knew she was onto the biggest story of her career.
Guess it turned out to be the biggest story of all time, didn't it? But how I
knew this was she practically threw her keys at me and tore out of that
revolving door so fast it just flew around a couple of times after she was
gone. And that's how I knew, 'cause she never left on a story without a smile
at me and saying, 'Wish me luck Fred and water the plants please!' Even when
there was that scare in the Mideast about a nuclear bomb, even then she still
smiled and asked for luck. But not this time, no sir, she just ran.

"And another thing was she looked scared, and
she never looked scared before that night. She's got that kind of skin that
always looks tan, but that night it was like it had turned white underneath.
Yep, it was a scared look and that scared me 'cause I know she knows things
before almost anyone else. She'd have to, being the best damn reporter SNN ever
had! And her so young and pretty. Have you ever seen hair so dark brown and
shiny like satin and her eyes? Why they're that kind of brown that is almost
black--but it doesn't matter if she is the prettiest reporter they've got, she
is still the best and they always call her first when anything big is
happening.

"So when she left, I reached under the counter
and turned on my little TV set. I always said even if a doorman is on duty he
still needs to know what's going on 'cause people are always asking, 'Hey,
Fred, what's going on?' and I liked to be able to tell them the very latest.

"So I kept an eye on SNN, but sure enough that
night there wasn't any news right away. It was probably an hour before there
was anything about California, which is probably how long it took for Miss
Maria to get to the station and get it all figured out for them down there. Of
course, it turned out to be an even bigger story than Maria Santiago could
handle by herself."

Sonoran Desert, Arizona

Sometimes Margaret thought her sole purpose in
life was to provide amusement for the cosmos. What she had discovered in the
stark, sandy beauty of the Arizona desert was hard for her to believe. It also
scared her to death. She had known for a week a major earthquake was going to
hit California--who would want that kind of knowledge? Earlier in the week she
had tried to convince various people in positions of authority that the quake
was coming. But no one had believed her. She was left with her dreams of the
dead, knowing she was powerless to stop the carnage that was coming. The
involvement of crop circles added just the right note of insanity. It was so
ludicrous and so awful, tears and laughter had caught her unexpectedly all
week. Tonight would be the beginning.

Kalahari Desert, Africa

"Did they say why they were leaving?" Alex
asked, tossing her waist-length braid over her shoulder.

"No, they won't talk. It's maddening," said
Nathan. "A year of research down the drain because they decide to stop talking
to us and move away."

Alexandra Hobson and Nathan Ames had spent a
year, which was the beginning of a five year study, taking detailed histories
of this tribe of Kung. They were following in the footsteps of other
anthropology research groups who had come to the Kalahari Desert to study an
indigenous people who still lived a true hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Their
interactions with this tribe had gone well, in part due to their intense study
of the language before arriving in the desert. Alex was thrilled when the
oldest woman of the tribe, Tiknay, who appeared to function as a healer, seemed
eager to share her knowledge. Nathan's work with the men of the tribe had not
gone as easily, but he felt he was making progress every day. Then today the
old woman came to their tents announcing, "We are leaving," and had walked
away. When Alex ran after her, she refused to talk. Nathan had just come back
from questioning the men, who told him nothing.

"I don't know what's going on, Alex," said
Nathan. "They looked at me like I was the enemy. Definite animosity in their
posture toward me."

"Well, I'm not just going to give up," said
Alex. "Come on. Pack up your gear. We're going to follow them until they agree
to at least talk to us."

SNN Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia

Under the icy calm that Maria exuded was sheer
terror. Please let them live, please let them be alive, she prayed over and
over. They're my parents, always there for me, so strong nothing could hurt
them--could it? No way. Impossible. They're fine, they have to be fine. Please,
please, please let them be okay, let them be safe.

"Maria!" yelled Phoebe. "I've got you on
military transport leaving in forty-five minutes with Zack."

"Phoebes, you're an angel. I'm voting you
secretary of the year," said Maria. "How did you ever finagle this for me?
Never mind, I don't need to know."

"Did you eat anything on your way in?" Phoebe
asked. "You know how you get airsick if you fly on an empty stomach."

Maria smiled ruefully. "Are you kidding, Phoebe?
What would I have grabbed to eat from my refrigerator? All I have in there are
onions and cucumbers, and I don't even like cucumbers!"

"Don't worry, boss, I'll have the commissary
send up your favorite."

"Thanks, I'll be in Bob's office," Maria said as
she left Phoebe dialing for food. Please, please let them be alive. They have
to be okay, they sacrificed so much for me, oh God, please let them live.

"It's coming over the fax now," Bob Rutherford,
her producer, was saying to Zack as she walked into her producer's office.

"What is?" Maria asked.

"Info on the quake from the USGS about the
magnitude--initial estimate only," replied Bob.

Hands shaking, Maria ripped the page from the
fax machine. The paper felt like a bomb as she stared at it, unable to
comprehend the symbols on its slick surface.

"Well?" Bob asked. "What are we
looking at? Is it the big one?"

She thrust the paper at Zack Tyler, her
cameraman, who looked at her quizzically, then read. "USGS unofficial estimate,
blah, blah, oh, here it is, oh my god--9.8? I didn't think that high a number
was even possible!"

Maria sank into the black leather chair in front
of Bob's desk. No, no, no, please no, she thought.

Sonoran Desert, Arizona

Margaret found herself thinking about how she
ended up in the desert, sitting under the stars with a Navajo shaman. It had
taken years in therapy with Dr. Grainger to understand and accept a horrific
childhood and its effects on her life. Dr. Grainger had encouraged her
explorations of alternative healing methods, so perhaps this visit to a Native
American wouldn't seem so strange to him. But even good old Dr. Grainger would
have labeled her crazy this last year. Had life ever been simple and normal for
her? Not really.

Margaret Larson, attorney-at-law, graduate of
Columbia Law (with honors). Law school had been torture for Margaret. She had
expected black and white in the law, good or bad, right or wrong, all clearly
delineated in the law. Instead, all she found was gray--umpteen different
shades of gray. She was encouraged to argue any issue, any question, from both
sides. It became a game when she went out with friends, every topic argued
endlessly among them. And Margaret played the game like an expert. Adjusting
herself to accommodate any perspective was something she'd learned as a child
as a way to survive a severely dysfunctional family.

However, the panic came more and more
often--that fluttery feeling in her throat, like her heart, had decided to
change location and imitate the wings of a hummingbird in her chest. After
graduation, Dr. Grainger entered the picture. It took quite a while to face the
emotional and sexual abuse of her early life. It took even longer to move
beyond the flashbacks, the horrid memories that bubbled up to the surface,
triggered by some simple, small, every day event. Falling while walking across
her bedroom. Nothing in her way, just one minute she was walking, and the next
she was sprawled in a tangle of limbs that seemed to belong to someone else.

Science fiction, in movies and books, was always
her escape. She liked to think that we were all put here by some alien species,
a student's lab experiment. Studying crop circle formations seemed like a
natural outgrowth of her interests, such an innocent pastime at first. Margaret
felt drawn to the unnatural circles found by farmers in their fields. If aliens
were not causing the crop circles, then what was? Following discussions about
this phenomenon on the internet, Margaret educated herself. Her vacation time
eventually was spent on trips to locations around the world to see the
evidence. The puzzle of the crop circles first amused, and then intrigued her.

A year ago, she became fed up with the legal
mumbo-jumbo of her career and decided to focus her energies on herself. To her
law firm's amazement, Margaret distributed her work among the other partners
and walked away without looking back. In her reading on healing, she was most
often drawn to beliefs found among Native Americans. As she made the decision
to move to the Southwest, Margaret didn't tell her friends about the recent
increase in crop circles in that area. She told herself it was something she
might investigate if she had the time.

Kalahari Desert, Africa

"Alex, slow down!" yelled Nathan as his head
banged into the metal strut of the jeep's rooftop.

"If you hadn't taken so long to get your things
together, I wouldn't have to be driving so fast," she replied curtly.

Nathan glared at her, but clamped his jaws shut
so he wouldn't bite his tongue on the next jolt of the jeep as it traveled over
the rough terrain. There weren't any real roads in the area they were
searching. Alex's remark stung, the latest in a series of criticisms. "She is
so impulsive," he thought. "Probably would have started on this adventure
without checking any of our supplies, and then where would we be? Stranded
somewhere in the desert without food or water. But does she think of any of
that? No-o-o, no that would mean she'd become a reasonable person who gave some
thought to her next action, and if that ever happens, I'll die from the sheer
shock of it--that is, if I don't die in this jeep first."

Nathan and Alex had known each other for two
years. Their relationship was one of constant fluctuation due to diametrically
opposing personality types. Nathan was organized and thoughtful, reflecting on
any decision before making a move. Alex was scattered, jumping into things,
functioning on an intuitive level most of the time, following her impulses,
which were usually correct. Both were brilliant in their field, and their
qualities dovetailed into a working relationship that gave them both some
balance. It also created heated debates over how to best proceed in any
situation. The saving grace that kept them working together was that they had
learned to compromise...sometimes.