Authors: Pamela Foland
Yllera took another long deep drink of water, “It is cold, and very fresh, the best of Sanctuary’s water stores. Please wise fathers and mothers, do drink.” She held it out again and again it made the rounds everyone drank except for the seer, who held onto the now nearly empty bag.
“This water is fresh and clear,” The seer replied, “May our alliance be the same.” Then the seer raised the bag to her lips and drank all the remaining water.
Yllera sighed with relief, and behind her Tatia cheered. They had completed their mission, at least on this world, there were still an infinite number of alternate Jelaria’s with which Sanctuary was un-allied. The good news was that if it could be done once it could be done again, and it hadn’t really been so hard.
Yllera ran fingers through
her hair accidentally combing free a few loose feathers.
The seer handed back the empty water bag. “Now let us share food in celebration!”
Yllera leapt to her feet and helped the old woman to hers, “Good, I’m starved, I was too nervous to eat before.”
“Why child? You are the chosen one, the question was never really in doubt,” The old woman said beginning to shuffle off to the much larger room set with a banquet of traditional Agurian dishes.
“Yes but how were they to be sure of it?” Yllera asked.
“You smell of shifting. All of the old muscles and tendons have awakened within you. They are all old enough to remember.
That is why I chose to call these elders, and not others. They all remember what it was like before. They are all elated to know they have lived to see things return to how they should be, I know I am,” The seer answered.
“But I’m the only one who can do it!” Yllera replied, holding the seer back with her hand.
“Where there is one mother, many children will be. Yllera you will be the mother of a new race, one which will do many great things, one of honor and loyalty, a race which is every good thing we Agurians used to be,” The seer replied.
Yllera shivered, as a cold chill passed up her spine. The seer’s words carried a lot of weight with her, but there was some kind of ominous second meaning to them which the seer didn’t seem aware of and which Yllera only dimly sensed.
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Chapter 13
Let’s Shake Things Up!
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Angela woke up with an urgent sense of disaster. She couldn’t place it, perhaps it was merely an extension of her breakdown over the recent deaths. Tina still had her on medical restriction and Angela had no idea whether or not things had gotten worse, especially since the cover story Tina had concocted to explain the medical leave was a sudden telepathic hypersensitivity. The very real suppresser Tina had put her in had deadened Angela’s telepathic senses. Until she put it on, Angela had no idea how loud other people’s thoughts were in her own head. It was a big stress relief to have enough mental quiet to hear herself think, but it meant she couldn’t even casually pick someone’s brain
in communications for news.
Instead Angela had been casually strolling through every department and public space in Sanctuary trying to distract herself. But this morning felt different. She awoke with the urgent need to run. Angela glanced at the clock, it was four in the morning,
Since running randomly through the hallways that early
wouldn’t look right, Angela decided to avail herself of the track in the main factor training cavern. After all, who would be up at four a.m. there.
Angela carefully edged her way out of bed. She was careful out of habit, Daniel and the kids were
on a camping trip on earth. She had slept alone last night.
The urge to run grew stronger as she showered and dressed, so she skipped the idea of breakfast and teleported herself to the training cavern. The lights were already on in the cavern when she arrived, that meant someone was there. Angela saw no one.
Thinking perhaps the lights had just responded to her arrival with extra speed, Angela began her run. She pounded the track with her feet, and her heart beat quickened, though not with exertion but anxiety. It was as though she expected something to happen.
Halfway around the track, she felt someone enter the room. She stopped and searched the cavern with her eyes. She had to turn 180 degrees before she found a solitary individual stepping out of the girl’s locker room wearing a purple jumpsuit.
Angela scratched her brain trying to remember which year purple signified. Coming up unusually empty of that trivia, Angela jogged towards the woman.
The woman’s face looked familiar, though Angela couldn’t recall the name it belonged to. Angela passed into conversational distance, still without a clue.
“Chief? What are you doing up at this hour?” The voice too held familiarity, but no real clue to name.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Angela answered, “Why are you up, uh, um?”
“Annette,” The woman responded, “I metamorphosed, I guess you haven’t seen my new face and all,” the woman replied.
Angela blinked, Annette?
The girl with all of the potential was now a woman? “What has you up at this hour?”
Annette kicked the floor for a moment, “I can’t sleep either. I had some kind of nightmare, and well, there is this low un-sound, like a ultrasonic rumble. I’ve heard it before but it usually goes away. This morning it almost seems like it’s getting louder.”
Angela closed her eyes and tried to listen for the sound, nothing, “I don’t hear anything.”
Annette grimaced, “I’m not surprised. No one else has either. I think it’s either in my head or I hear it because of my M.H.S..”
“Hypersensitivity syndrome? Ouch,” Angela replied. She considered the soundless sound and wondered if on some level that wasn’t what was agitating her. “Still, what has you in here, you could be in your quarters studying or eating or anything. Why here?” Angela wondered at the impulses that had brought them both to the same place.
“I have a training class to help with in a few hours, I just figured I could run until they get here,” Annette answered, “Now it’s your turn to tell me why you’re really here.”
Angela cocked her head to the side, the girl was demanding an answer, “I woke up and felt the need to run. I wonder if it mightn’t on some level have something to do with your noise.”
The girl’s expression suddenly shifted and she cried out.
“What? Did I do . . .” Angela was cut off mid-question by a loud rumble and a shaking beneath her feet. The floor lurched up three feet slamming her into it.
Both Angela and Annette were knocked to their feet.
A loud crunching above their heads heralded a huge chunk of the ceiling falling towards them. Angela flinched holding her arms above her and closing her eyes. The impending impact never came.
Angela looked up and the boulder hung in mid-air above them. Angela checked herself, she wasn’t telekinetically responsible. She looked to Annette just as another sharp lurch brought the floor up to nearly meet the rock. That shook Angela up enough to telekinetically shove the rock to the side before it could crush them.
The rumbling and shaking continued for a few more seconds then subsided.
Angela dusted herself off and stood, Annette seemed reluctant to do so. Around them chunks of rock littered the cavern floor.
This was a major emergency! Angela couldn’t deny the fact that everyone very much needed someone to rely on right now, she felt the need too. Too bad that the someone everyone else would need was her. She was too much in shock to call up her internal Chief right now. There had been an earthquake, in Sanctuary, and that shouldn’t be possible.
“Chief, what do we do?” Annette asked finally coming out of her fetal curl and standing.
Good question, Angela thought to herself. No, Angela couldn’t use that answer. She needed to pull the survivors together to bind them all into a cohesive whole which would succeed through the trials and tribulations the universe tried to throw at them. Too bad all Angela really wanted to do was curl up and cry for her mommy.
Angela looked to Annette, who stood with a dazed glazed over expression. Angela knew she had to take charge. First things first, she should call all the factors to a central meeting place. There were only two rooms large enough in all of Sanctuary, the boulder strewn training cavern and the great hall, which hadn’t been used since the last caucus to select the design for the residential level. Angela grabbed Annette’s hand and teleported them both to the hall. There was damage but not as much as the training cavern. Annette still stood dazed and preoccupied despite the change of place.
Angela pulled out her pop-pad and tried to send a message to all factors to meet in the grand hall. The pad kept giving her error messages. Finally Angela gave up and ripped off her suppressor. The instantaneous pressure of thousands of fearful minds almost floored her. Instead she managed to transmit her message telepathically.
Angela looked around the grand hall; it didn’t seem so grand now. The molded plaster cornices had fallen in heaps at the bases of the walls. Much of the painted sky fresco from the ceiling lay crumbled on the tables leaving new false clouds of bare plaster where none had been before.
Worse than the devastated room, was the sight of factors slowly trickling in. Most, if not all, were bleeding from one wound or another, and there were fewer than Angela had expected when she chose the room. So far there weren’t enough to fill the conference room where the morning meetings used to take place, even though she had included all factors from the tertiaries on up. Most that had arrived were primaries.
The low numbers worried her all the more for knowing that this was the main week for the annual evaluations. Most of the factors should be in Sanctuary by now.
It was taking too long for them to gather.
Angela glanced at her watch, almost forty minutes had passed since the quake. She thought briefly of putting the call out again but hesitated, would she sound too desperate or worried if she did, and it might inhibit any recovery efforts that had organized themselves. Then the second call became moot as factors began appearing in clumps. The most psychokinetically powerful in each of the clumps then disappeared, reappearing a moment later with another group. Angela was briefly shocked by the forethought of the industrious secondary and tertiary factors who had received the message and then taken the initiative to help those who weren’t able to come. Even factors which couldn’t teleport were managing to get to the meeting this way. Angela caught the eye of several primaries and drew their attention to the acts of the secondaries and tertiaries.
Then, as one, the primaries disappeared to return shortly with more factors.
Soon the numbers arriving began to justify the size of the meeting place.
Still no primes had arrived, but that didn’t worry Angela too much. She knew the primes would be handling scattered emergencies which couldn’t wait. They could be trusted to take care of such things. With their training and experience they were probably handling the situation better than Angela was. That knowledge made Angela wait. She wasn’t sure if she was the one to handle this emergency. She glanced at Annette, who still stood at her side, with that glazed, stunned, look on her face. Angela knew she had to pull it together.
Angela cleared her throat, and raised her arms in preparation to speak. As she did, all eyes in the room turned their focus on her. Their attention, far from strengthening her, weakened her resolve to take charge of the emergency. Thankfully several primes and department heads arrived at that moment. Drawing the fearful haunted looks away from Angela, if for just a moment. Angela lowered her arms and counted her new arrivals, Tina, Sinclair and Niri among them. Then the time to speak returned. “Everyone, please, let’s take our seats. We can look forward to enough work that a little rest now might do us all some good.” Yes, that was a good non-committal beginning.
Several telekinetics In the group rapidly cleared dust and debris from all of the tables and chairs. Angela nodded at each of them and took a seat on the elevated table at the front of the hall. Annette followed and sat next to Angela. Angela looked at the girl briefly. As clearly distracted as the girl was, Angela chose not to send her elsewhere to sit.