Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (39 page)

Janine laughed. "No, you can't, but you're still
very pretty."

Sam smiled and called out, "Daddy, are you going
to stand there forever?"

She heard her father say, "What the--" Then, he
walked around to stand in front of them.

"Dad, Janine says I'm pretty."

"Well, she's right, you are. You both are very
pretty. But maybe you'd like to come in now and find a place for Janine to
sleep?"

Janine stood up quickly. "Oh, no, that's all
right. I can sleep out here with the horses, Mister, Mister--"

"Samuels. Mr. Samuels. But I think you can call
me John."

"Oh, I don't know, Mr. Samuels. This is your
place and I--"

Sam shushed her. "Just call him whatever you
want. And this is your place now too. Isn't that why you brought all the
horses? To live here?"

Janine's hands fluttered as she struggled to
reply. "I don't know. It's all just been about getting here--we never thought
much about what comes next, the horses and me, I mean."

"She'll probably just be in charge of the
horses, won't she, Dad?" Sam asked.

"We can sort out all of that tomorrow, but yes,
I'd say she's certainly in charge of these horses."

"Oh, no! I'm just a stable hand and--"

John asked, "Didn't you get them all the way
here from Kentucky? That's what Lisanne and Andy say."

"Well, yes, but, they have leaders, the horses
do, I mean. They don't need me to be in charge of them or anything."

"But you can hear them, communicate with them?"
John persisted.

"Well, sure, but that doesn't mean--"

"What it means for now is that you can talk to
them and we can't," John replied, not even glancing at his daughter, who he was
sure could talk very well to horses. "So that means we'll need to rely on you
when it comes to what they need, what we can do with them, all of that."

"Oh, well, sure, I mean, whatever you need me to
do."

John smiled at her, thinking this slight young
teenager had accomplished more than most adults could in the same situation.
Her very curly, almost frizzy, hair floated down to her shoulders and framed a
lovely heart-shaped face. Delicate features and big brown eyes created a
picture of innocence, yet John thought he could see in her eyes something older
and more adult. But when she spoke of the horses, her eyes shone with an
unmistakable love.

"Janine, how would you like to sleep in Sam's
room tonight?"

"Really, Dad?" Sam squealed with delight.

Janine nodded shyly, and then whistled. A large
golden stallion trotted up to her, nudging her shoulder with his big head.
Janine put an arm around his neck and leaned against him with her eyes closed
for a moment. Then opening her eyes, she asked, "Is Sam right? These fields
around here are okay for them to use for tonight? We don't want to trample any
crops or anything."

"Yes," John replied, grateful they'd asked. "Anything
across the road is fine. We just bought that land and haven't done anything
with it yet."

"Okay," Janine replied, closing her eyes briefly
again. Then the horse nudged her again, turned and ran off back to the herd.

"That is just so cool that they come right up to
you like that," Sam said enviously. "They don't know me yet, so they stay away
even when I talk to them--oops!" She looked up at her father.

"I know, Sam. I know you can talk to the horses
to the cats and the dogs to all of them. And it's okay with me, so don't worry
about it."

He noticed the look of relief on her face and
wondered just how much she kept from him. Kneeling down in front of her, he
took her hands and said, "Listen, you can tell me stuff, okay? I'm not going to
get scared of you. You're my little girl and you always will be. I'll always
love you, so don't even think of forgetting that! You're probably right that
you shouldn't tell everyone everything you can do right now, but you can tell
Mom and me, okay?"

Sam reached out to him and hugged him fiercely.
Watching, Janine wondered what it would have been like to have a father like
that. She was glad for Sam. And now she had horses for herself, so life wasn't
so bad.

"Hey," she said, taking Sam's hand as John stood
up, "how about you show me your room? And maybe a shower? It's been ages since
I've slept in a bed and had a shower!"

"You do kind of smell like horses!" Sam said,
laughing.

"Samantha!" John objected.

"It's okay, Mr. Samuels. I can live with
smelling like horses." Janine laughed too. "But I'd love to not smell like them
for one night after all this traveling!"

"One shower and one bed coming right up," John
said as he marched them across the lawn to the suddenly very full house.

Salmon Creek, Idaho

"Oh, sure there were people who were starting to
wonder. Wonderin' if humans would survive. If the animals would end up runnin'
the place. Some of us wondered if our safe zones were really all that safe. And
some few of us noticed nobody dreamed of any future 'cept ones with disasters
in 'em. Was it the end of everything? Were we doomed? Some folks couldn't think
much on any of it. They just went from one thing to the next and were so darned
busy they didn't have time to worry. Sure they were scared. Weren't we all
scared? 'Course we were. But we weren't goin' to just lie down and die. We
figured we were gettin' dreams and hearing from the animals to keep us alive...that
there was some danged reason. Maybe we were starting to know that there was not
gonna be some 'rescue,' something we would do and everything would go back to
the way it was before. The world, the whole big world, was not going to be the
same anymore. It was changin'--changin' fast.

Within Gaia Mind

Evolution. Change. So simple. So profound. Of
course there is sense to it all. It is not random. It is not chaos. There are
patterns within patterns. Connections. From the tiniest particle to the
vastness of space, we are all connected. Humans...will they see it? Will they
believe it? The end of the world...the beginning of the world...timeless patterns.

Jessica woke to the smell of bacon frying and
the scent of dark roast coffee wafting up the stairs, tantalizing her taste
buds and making her stomach growl. Turning over, she saw John was still asleep,
and as she shook him awake, she woke up enough to wonder just who was in her
kitchen cooking breakfast. John opened one eye and said groggily, "You made
breakfast, hon?"

"Nope, but it smells good. Guess we'd better get
down there and see what's up."

John rolled onto his side and used one arm
across her abdomen to pin Jessica to the bed. "Now, let's just think about this
for a minute," he said, feeling more awake as he explored Jessica's body
through the silky men's pajama top she was wearing.

"John, we have a house
full
of people,"
Jessica began, only to catch her breath in a short gasp as his fingers found
more interesting places to wander. "Okay, maybe, but--" she said, panting a
little, "you did lock the door last night, right?"

"I'm positive," he said softly against the skin
below her navel. "Just try not to make too much noise, hon," he said teasingly.

"Oooh, you brute, you cad," Jessica said
breathlessly as his kisses went lower and lower, "doing this to me, while we have,
ahhh, people all around, hmmm, waiting for us probably, ohhh!" She bit her lip
and tried to keep her mouth shut as John expertly helped her to wake up fully
in a haze of luscious sensations.

"John? Jessica?" A voice called through the
door. "Breakfast is on!"

John's arm snaked up from under the covers to
clamp a hand over Jessica's mouth as moans came from deep in her throat.

"Be right there, Abby," John called out. "You
all go ahead and start without us."

"Okay, dear." He heard and waited for the
footsteps to fade away.

As he removed his hand from Jessica's mouth,
head poking up from beneath the sheets, he proposed gravely, "So maybe we
should get down there--"

"Don't you dare stop now, John Samuels!"

He laughed against her, and she shuddered
deliciously.
We may be facing the end of the world we know,
she thought
fleetingly,
but this man could make me forget it all
. And then all coherent
thought fled.

Mrs. Philpott's House

Perceval watched Mrs. Philpott puttering around
the kitchen, pouring her favorite cereal, Product 19, into a white glass bowl,
slicing a banana to top it off, and covering all with two percent milk. She
poured some milk in Perceval's bowl, too, and he sighed, thinking of the carton
of cream he knew was in the back on the top shelf of the fridge. Mrs. Philpott
had ideas about how much cream was healthy for him to drink. Perceval felt all
rules like that should really be abandoned at this point in time, seeing as how
none of them knew if they would survive one day to the next.

But then, he thought, Mrs. Philpott was
currently in planning mode, thinking constantly about the future. She was
trying to think of everything she could to give this community an edge, to
insure their survival. So healthy eating made more sense to her than to him.
Yes
, Perceval thought,
I am quite fatalistic, perhaps even pessimistic. I just
don't believe humans can pull it off. Or even if they should.

If he were
positive that every human would end up like Sam, then yes, he could
whole-heartedly support the idea of human survival. But that wasn't going to be
the case. There were going to be all sorts of problem humans out there in the
world still and perhaps even in this community. He lapped at his milk and
pondered the incredible stupidity, viciousness and short-sightedness of many
humans.

"So, Perceval, how are you today?" Mrs. Philpott
said brightly.

Perceval growled at her.

"Oh, don't be such a grouch! You should be happy
today--didn't you tell me last night that all the travelers we were expecting
made it to John and Jessica's?" She chuckled. That big house was filled to
bursting today, and she knew she'd have to bring some of them home with her.
But she'd escaped last night to have one final evening to herself, alone in her
own home. That would change today.

She pulled out her lists and jotted things down.
Find a place for the lab. That was a must-have item, a lab to create medicines.
If they could find the right doctor's office, she mused, then some problems
would be solved. The problem was that there was only a small hospital in Cape
Fair. The question was whether or not any of the town's doctors would be
staying in Cape Fair.

Farming. Planting. This was the most urgent
priority. If they didn't get crops in on time, and according to weather and
agricultural zoning maps she'd checked, the planting season started in the next
week or so--if they didn't get things planted, they'd most likely not have
enough food. Although, from what she'd heard from the cat, Nathan and Alex had
brought a truckload of canned goods with them. Still, it was important to plan
for the future. And this area had always been known to be good for tomato
farming. She remembered reading a history of Cape Fair and being surprised that
tomatoes were a popular crop back when the town was first settled. Of course,
they probably wouldn't be able to keep the tomato packing plant running, but
they could damn well plant plenty of tomatoes.

Shelter. Harmony had started keeping track of
empty houses. There weren't too many yet, but enough that they could probably
settle some of the newcomers in them to give John and Jessica some breathing
room. Which meant they still had to deal with real estate agents and banks
because the infrastructure of the town was still functioning...hmm. Maybe they
should wait a couple weeks until things fell apart more before taking over
abandoned homes.
Oh God
, she thought suddenly.
Here I am suggesting we wait
until things get worse for people, just to make it easier for us!
She shook her
head, irritated with herself.

Taking off her wire-rimmed glasses, she rubbed
her eyes and wondered if it was possible to do this sort of planning without
becoming calloused to the events shaking the world right now. She slowly
realized she was twirling her glasses around and around...glasses! Did we put an
optometrist, an eye doctor of any sort on the list of desired professional
skills? What if her glasses broke? She couldn't read without them. Grimly, she
reached for the phone and made an appointment in Branson to get her eyes
checked. She'd ask for three pairs to be made. Just to be safe. And she'd check
with everyone in their group--who knew if any of them wore contacts?

The Samuels' House

"So who do we thank for making this huge
breakfast?" Alex asked, scooping up more scrambled eggs, yummy cheddar cheese
melted within, onto her plate and grabbing another piece of bacon.

"I think I heard my mom--that's Abby, the one
over there," Nathan said, pointing to a short, slightly rounded bustling woman
in the kitchen. "She said she helped, but Gracie--that's her over there, John's
mother--she's the one who took over the kitchen this morning. Pretty good cook."
He stuffed another large forkful of fried potatoes and onions into his mouth.

Alex watched the pretty older woman wearing an
apron as she pulled another tray of biscuits from the oven. She didn't look
like she'd been slaving away in a kitchen since early morning. Her short,
stylish, frosted hair was perfectly in place and her makeup, Alex observed, was
really excellently done. She even had on jewelry to match the pantsuit she was
wearing! Looks more like a sophisticated ladies-who-lunch type, not one who'd
get her hands messy in flour and butter, Alex thought. At that moment, Gracie
turned and saw Alex watching her. She flashed her an intense, brief smile, one
that showed up in her eyes and not just on her face. Alex said to Nathan, "Well,
she sure doesn't look like the type to be a good cook, but this food is great!"