Chapter 5

The next week went by quickly. Thursday morning, we were talking about what we’d like to do during the weekend. Mike planned to take Cally and Carrie out shopping, then to a movie, and just letting them be kids on Sunday. I thought it’d be nice to take Toby out, so he could teach me how to fish. I figured that would be fun, since I’d never actually gotten a chance to fish with Elroy and Harry.

I’d noticed there was a really large lake not that far north of where we lived, so I asked Dave to find out about it on Friday. He made a couple of phone calls, then a couple more. Saturday, we went out and got fishing gear for me and Toby. Sunday, we got up early and loaded into a Suburban. Dave drove, with Yagyu in the passenger seat. It took him a little over half an hour to reach our destination. There was a gate blocking the entry. He pushed the buzzer, and spoke to someone through a speaker. The gate opened up, he drove through, then pulled up at a building just around a curve from the gate.

“Give me a couple of minutes, and I should be right back.”

He got out, went into the building and about a minute later came back out. A man in a green uniform came out with him, got into a truck, and then led us on a gravel road around and under a lot of large trees until we got to a wide spot in the road on the west side of the lake. He pulled over and we got out.

“Really?” the man asked.

Dave said, “Yes, really. Cal, this is Officer Dale Langston, with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Officer Langston, this is His Royal Majesty, California Lewis, King of the First Peoples and Prince of the Punjab.”

“It is our pleasure to meet you, Officer Langston. Surprisingly enough, when we were growing up, we never learned how to fish. The son of one of our wives is willing to teach us how, and with this lake being so close to our home and embassy, we had our security make these arrangements.”

Langston looked bemused as I spoke, then it was like a light bulb went off in his head. “You’re the one that was on Johnny Carson a couple weeks ago. You live just down at Stanford because you’re going to school there.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

He nodded. “Okay. Well, this is Crystal Springs Reservoir. It is completely off limits to the public, but ... you’re not public. Basically, we’ve got a little trail here that leads to a cove off the main reservoir. Courtesy of the trees and the way the cove curves around, no one on the other side of the reservoir can see this area. No fires, don’t leave any trash behind, if you have to use the bathroom, well, there’s plenty of woods. Don’t go any further along this road. I’ll be back in about four hours. Um, also, if you do catch anything in here, you cannot publicize that you caught it here. Even if it’s a state record sized fish. And lastly, this is a protected wilderness area, which means that there could be dangerous wildlife. Sometimes we do see bears, or big cats, and of course, everything smaller is fairly common. No hunting at all, period.”

“While I certainly agree with that, should a bear or cougar decide to attack us, then I will defend my Master,” Yagyu said.

“That’s different from seeking them out.” Langston frowned. “Um, just curious. I can tell that he’s obviously armed, but you’ve just got a sword?”

Yagyu chuckled, and it wasn’t nice. “I am a clan trained assassin, Officer Langston. I don’t need anything else.”

“I think on that note, I’m going back to my office. Good luck and I’ll see you in a few hours.” He was shaking his head as he got back into his truck. He turned around, then drove off.

Three hours later, we pulled back up at the office. Langston came out, a puzzled look on his face. “Everything okay, folks?”

“We ran out of room. This was a lot of fun, and we appreciate that you let us in here.”

He shook his head. “Ran out of room?” Dave got out and opened the back. We’d borrowed one of the giant ice chest coolers that NASA Ames used for some of their research. It barely fit into the rear of the Suburban even with the back seats down, because it was literally designed to hold a hundred gallons of ice.

Dave opened the cooler.

“Holy shit! There must be thirty fish in there!”

“Forty-two. We kept them on stringers until we ran out of room on the stringers, then started loading them in here. We had another, smaller, cooler with ice and drinks in it, and we put some of that ice in here, even though we don’t have far to go. Twelve rainbow trout, all in the fifteen pound range. Eighteen largemouth bass, from ten to fifteen pounds, and a dozen smallmouth bass, around nine pounds each. Cal and Toby let several much smaller fish go, and a couple really large trout and bass, because they were breeding females. These are all males.” He shut the top on the cooler.

“I don’t get it. I could see you getting a few of the smallmouth bass, and maybe some smaller trout, but ... that’s not a deep part of the reservoir where you were. These fish don’t come there.”

Toby heard what he’d said. “I learned how to fish in Kansas, and we’ve got some lures that have been in my family for a long time that bass just love to hit on. Since we weren’t going after cats, I didn’t make any of the special blood bait my grandpa taught me how to make. He used to regularly catch twenty-five pound channel cats and sixty pound blues using it in the rivers at home.”

Langston simply shook his head in admiration. “Since there’s officially no fishing allowed here, I officially haven’t seen anything. But that’s going to be some damned good eating when you get them cleaned. Good job. I’ll open the gate and let you out. Pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty.”

“Ours as well, Officer Langston,” I said.

Once we were safely in the Suburban and on the way home, Toby started laughing. “Yes, grandpa knew how to make blood bait, and he did catch catfish that big with it. But he says I’ve been around you too much. A long time is relative, since we bought all the gear yesterday.”

“I can just about imagine the Fish and Wildlife guys trying to figure out how we caught all of those deep water fish in that shallow water. I really do appreciate you showing me how to cast, use the surface jigs, and everything, Toby. The only time Elroy and Harry took me fishing, I never got to ... what’s the phrase, wet a hook?”

“Perfectly understandable. It’s a good thing he didn’t think to look in any of their mouths, to see if they had hook marks.”

I shook my head. “Leave it to California to screw up something like a fishing spot. There are so many fish in there that they’re getting close to overpopulation. I knew they were messed up when we couldn’t donate the leftover food from the cow and pig roast. Now, here’s a spot where people could get enough food to feed their family for a week in a single afternoon, and no one can use it.”

We spent quite some time cleaning the fish. There were pounds of fresh fillets that were packaged and put into the freezer, as well as having some grilled for dinner that evening. Carrie helped with a couple of recipes from her people that made the fish taste even better.

The classes for the rest of the week went without trouble. After mine were all done, I stopped by my Chemistry lab, letting everyone know that if they wanted to fly to Florida to watch a shuttle launch, we were leaving Saturday morning. We’d also be bringing home those assistants who had been diligently working down there, spraying Resist Heat on the Challenger.

I think the minor detail that it also included a flight on Pacific may have influenced some of their decisions.

Mike came in for breakfast on Friday morning. “Okay, what happened?”

“What’s the TV reporting?” Beth asked.

“They’re wondering if the ‘Angels’ are back. But no one saw anything, and there were still people that died.”

She shook her head. “The good news is, our new uniforms, with Kevlar and Nomex threads soaked in Resist Heat can handle hypersonic speeds through the atmosphere. The bad news is...” She looked down at her untouched plate of food. “We’re not always fast enough, or strong enough.”

He looked at me, saw my expression, then said, “Beth, look up here at me. How many people were onboard both of those airplanes?”

She sighed. “Ninety-four. Seventy-nine on the Tu-134, fifteen on the An-26.”

“Okay, how far away were you when you saw what had happened?”

“I was looking down from low orbital height, so I could see more territory. Call it three hundred miles up, two hundred miles horizontal. About three hundred sixty miles straight line distance.”

Mike nodded. “So, from the time you saw their collision, it took you, what, a second to figure out something bad had happened, and you needed to respond, right?” She nodded. “Then you flew 360 miles in what, thirty seconds? How fast is that?”

“Almost mach fifty-seven. But I had to slow down for the last five seconds, to below the sound barrier, so they didn’t get hit by the sonic boom, so they were only three thousand feet up! I got under the Tupolev, it was spinning so fast. The wing was gone, so was part of the tail. Some people were thrown out the back! I looked over, started to reach out for the Antonov, felt it, so I could start lifting it, and it still hit the ground! I could see a couple of the people falling that had been thrown out of the Tupolev, I caught them with my mind, and lowered them. The plane wasn’t on fire, and there were plenty of people on the ground already, so I didn’t stay. I couldn’t! I couldn’t face them, not as a failure.”

Mike saw my slight nod. Quietly, he said, “How are you a failure?”

“I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t strong enough, to save all of them!”

“Get up. Come with me,” he ordered. She looked at him in shock, as he’d never used his command voice on any of us before. “I didn’t mean whenever you feel like it, I mean now!”

She got up and followed him into the living room. Mycroft had figured out what was going on, and had already turned on one of the televisions. Even though we didn’t get Russian television, he was hooked into enough computers and other communication networks that he was able to play what they were broadcasting.

“Sit! Listen!” Mike ordered.

The announcers were talking about one thing; the miracle at Lviv. They hoped that this meant the return of the ‘Angels’, but if not, then this truly was a miracle. Ninety-four people would have died due to an air traffic controller error. Instead, seventy-four people that should have died, were still alive.

“You can’t save them all, Beth. I’ve tried, before. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t. If you hadn’t already decided to bring the Angels back, how many of those ninety-four people would be dead right now?”

She blinked. “All of them.”

“You can’t save everyone. The last time you were on a rescue mission with Cal, the only one that died was the one that started the fire. Then, a bit later, you showed you understand what the power of high justice means. It sucks, because you’re such a good, such a caring, and loving young woman. You’ve killed to save your family, you’ve killed to help make things better, but now you’ve learned one truth. Sometimes you can’t save them all, no matter how hard you try, or how much you want to do so. I saw when that crash happened. Instead of happening in the middle of the night here, what would have happened if it’d been in the middle of your last class yesterday?”

“They’d all be dead.” She was quiet, and he let her alone while she thought about things. “Mike ... I don’t like it. Cal, I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier. I understand it now, some of what you’ve been going through. Just a second.” She closed her eyes, and it was obvious she was talking to the other girls. Opening them, she said, “Okay, I had to apologize to my sisters. All of them. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass having them in my head all the time.” She took in a deep breath, then let it out. “Okay, I don’t have to be happy about it, but I understand.”

Mike put a grim smile on his face. “Welcome to my world, young lady. Been there, done that, as your grandfathers say, got the extra assholes and zippers to prove it. You may not realize it, now, but this is going to help you, later, going up against Shiva.”

Both of us looked at him, puzzled.

“If it comes down to any kind of fight, you know there’s going to be collateral damage. That’s such a polite way of saying that innocent people are going to get hurt or killed. It’s one thing to intellectually know that you may have to do that. It’s another when you watch the explosives in the command center go off, and they just took two young girls in there for pleasure toys not five minutes before. You’re doing good. You’re all doing good. Even the two that I presume are in India right now.”

“They’ll be home tonight. There was still an issue with some of the Sikh separatists, even with everyone present. Just because Cal is Prince of the Punjab, they wanted to push for a little more. Helen is showing them the error of their ways.”

She frowned. Carrie and Cally came running in.

Carrie shouted, “Get all but three shivalingam! You need to go to India, now!”

Within two seconds, I was in my uniform and had grabbed all but three of the shivalingam, shoving them into my pouch. Beth was stumbling. “I can’t move fast! What the hell is going on?”

I grabbed a double handful of them out, pushing them to her. She took them, stuffed them in her bra, and then started to get into her uniform. Carrie yelled, “No, Beth, you need to stay here!” She nodded, a look of horror on her face.

I hurried through the house, to the tunnel. Yagyu was in the room, practicing, and stepped back, startled, when I came in.

“I’ll explain later!”

With that, I dropped into the tunnel. I stayed subsonic for ten minutes, before climbing up to my usual height and was landing at my compound in India ten minutes after that.

“You brought enough? Good!” Helen exclaimed. “Come on, we need them in here.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. All of my ladies, except Helen, were unconscious, laying on beds and barely breathing.

“They need the shivalingam,” she said.

I quickly dug my hand into the bag, pulling them out and giving one to each of them. That seemed to immediately stabilize them. Dora and Eve were both still out. I had a thought, and grabbed twelve more for each of them. That did it.

“What the hell is going on?” Hannah asked. “One minute we were talking, the next I could barely move or think!”

“A damned trap is what happened,” Helen said. She looked off into the distance, then nodded, a grim smile on her face. “Beth got to the other three in time, so they’ll be okay, as well. That’s why she couldn’t come with you, she had to save Margie, Marcia, and Jennifer. I see you figured out that Dora and Eve needed thirteen.”

Our security team was helping the girls with water and making sure they were okay. Chuck looked at us. “We’ve got this, you two go ahead.”

I realized that there were more members of my team in here than knew our secrets, but ... it didn’t matter to me, only the safety of my wives did. Since Chuck said it was okay, I followed Helen into the other room, where she collapsed in a chair.

“Love, that was tough.”

I felt perfectly fine, so I directed some of my power into her ring to help her.

“Wow!” I could see the strain literally fall from her face. “Oh, that’s better. That wasn’t pleasant, let me tell you. Thank goodness I could access the Sacred Souls, or I wouldn’t have been able to contact Carrie, Cally, and Holly. The four of us always have our rings on. Just a second. No, they’ll all be fine, now, girls, thank you for saving everyone. No, you did it, because I couldn’t even talk to Beth. I was cut off from all of them. Not from their time? I figured as much, let me talk to Cal now. Thank you, love you.” She shook her head, like she was clearing it.

“You’re the rocket scientist, among other things. How much Earth astronomy do you know?”

“I’ve read a couple of hundred books on it since I’ve been here. Why?” My eyes went wide. “Oh, shit, I never made the connection!”

“Don’t worry. There’s no way you would have, no way we could have. No one’s ever had thirteen shivalingam before that we’re aware of, so it’s never come up.” She paused. “Okay, they’re all okay. I’m linked with everyone again. Just listen in, I’ll talk to Cal. You all need to rest and recover. Beth, wait until Cal gets home. He can fix it, you need to rest, too.” She saw the look on my face, gave a little shake of her head. “It’s minor. Marcia fell from her chair, fractured her wrist. The babies are all fine, it didn’t affect them at all.”

“Meteor showers,” I said.

“Yeah. I should have figured it out, but ... it happened after he’d been destroyed or locked up in the Comet. The thing has been making that trip in and out for a long time. The Eta Aquarids in May, the Orionids in October. They’re made up of debris from when Halley’s Comet actually crossed Earth’s orbit,” Helen said.

“The ones now were dumped in 530 and 607 AD, the other was in 836 and 763 BC. I don’t understand something, though. I was certainly able to do my thing last October. I never felt anything when the Orionids were falling then.”

“You didn’t feel anything this time, either. Only they did. I’ve never felt anything before, either, but ... I have the organ naturally. Hannah is the only one who was closest to you before you changed us, and she didn’t have the organ before she became one of your wives. Beth, Dora, and Eve had the organ, but it wasn’t active, or giving them full powers. Powers that they could use to fight whoever it was that inherited Shiva’s power next April.”

I nodded. “Like you said, he set a trap. Carrie, Cally, and Holly come by the organ naturally as well, so they’ve never had any issues, but without shivalingam ... lots of them ... they wouldn’t have enough power. Anyone else that someone or other might end up getting made into a potential foe would find themselves suddenly without their powers and helpless. This had to have been set up with the Romany in mind. If they ever managed to get enough of the medical shivalingam, they might be able to grow the organ in their bodies and complete their revolution against him. He never considered that someone else might show up from Star Home and activate the retro-virus that was in everyone’s DNA here except those that already had it as a dominant gene.”

“Net result is that for about two weeks in May, and two weeks in October, you’re all going to have to have a shivalingam on you,” I said. Then my eyes got wide. “That also means we can’t upgrade anyone else, either. Thirty-nine of them for Beth, Dora, and Eve. Nineteen more is fifty-eight. That’s ALL we have. Hang on! I still have two in my pouch.”

“We also have Junior and Peace at home, too. Carrie and Cally gave their rings to Beth, so she’d have thirteen. Admittedly, they’d like to have them back, because they couldn’t go to school today carrying two large stones with them all day. Oh, and I just told Beth that the twenty people killed in Russia go on Shiva’s tab as well. The meteor shower had already started to affect her, or she’d have had the power to save everyone. She’s ... pissed off isn’t even close.”

I spent a few more hours with the family in India, making sure that they were okay. I also talked with Chuck, who told me not to worry.

“Cal, everyone that doesn’t know you’re the Messenger knows you’re the Guardian. They ALL know you have a lot of powers, including telekinesis. So far as they’re concerned, you just flew here that way, instead of your regular flying. Oh, and one thing that this is going to help. You don’t realize it, but you didn’t have your mask on when you flew here. You’re not in the Messenger uniform, you’re in the one Mike had made for you. Which means that the members of the Sikh group that were still being a little argumentative saw you, your face. Their Prince, the new ruler of their nation, is the most powerful man on the planet.” He made a throat cutting gesture with his hand. “End of discussion regarding not listening to what Diana and Helen say to them. Period fucking dot.”

I looked down, and realized he was right about my attire. “Um ... two things. One, do you think it’s going to get out that I can do that? And two, did you mean to make that joke?”

“First, you already showed everyone at Pearl you can do it. The governments KNOW, and now they know you’re getting stronger. It also helps that they all figured you’ve been sandbagging, because you didn’t want Shiva to know how strong you were getting. And two ... it’s dot, not feather, or feather, not dot.”

“Noted.”

I made sure to give all my women kisses and hugs, then flew back to California. I still went in and out via the tunnel. Once home, I gave Beth the two extra shivalingam I had, so she could give the rings back to Carrie and Cally.

“Thank you. We did some testing while you were gone. I only need one to actually remain awake and not have the meteor dust affect me. We need thirteen to have our full powers, though. Dora and Eve will be home shortly. You didn’t know, but if you’d waited a couple more hours, all of you could have flown home together. We’ve been discussing this with Mycroft. This is some kind of modification of a weapon from Star Home that was described, but apparently never used, to deal with enemy families.”

“It’s probably better that we didn’t. It’s bad enough everyone’s going to know I was sandbagging, as Chuck called it and I figured out from context, on my powers and abilities. At least that way, if they saw me, they didn’t see me with them and really wonder.”

“No, we’ve got that figured out, too. We’re the Angels, and it’s ... what, between onion layer four and five? You’re the planetary Guardian, from here, but also considered the Messenger. That way the Angels will help you now that Caelistis is long gone. Oh, and since they had Junior and Peace anyway, you don’t have to worry about Marcia’s hand. Carrie fixed it without any problems. For the first time in a long time, I’m tired.”

I was the only one up early the next morning. I’d stayed awake, just to make sure everyone was okay, and greeted Dora and Eve when they finally got home close to four in the morning. Apparently, losing their powers had also drained everything they’d had stored. They’d had to spend some time in the sunlight in India getting a ‘charge’, then flew far enough up that they were completely out of the atmosphere. Interestingly enough, once they were five hundred miles up, they easily topped up, like it was something in the lower atmosphere that was affecting them. They’d made sure that all they had to do was drop straight down to the tunnel and come in that way.

While being out of the atmosphere had boosted them, they were still mentally exhausted. I made sure they got to bed okay.

I also spent a lot of the night talking to Mycroft.

Mike, Yagyu, and the kids were the only ones in for breakfast. I thought I was going to have to do some kind of major explaining to Yagyu. He surprised me by just telling me that it was pretty neat I was the planetary Guardian, and he was honored to keep my secret until I told him otherwise.

Mike was telling me how the response teams had handled things yesterday, in helping the women, and listening to my explanation on why it’d happened when the phone rang. Toby got up to answer it.

“Good morning, Lewis residence, Toby speaking. How may I help you, Sir or Ma’am?”

“Sir, I’m barely ten years old, so if you’d kindly ... thank you. Now, would you care to refresh your request? Certainly, Sir. One moment.” He pushed the hold button. “Dad, it’s Hugo Sokalski. He was pissed off until I mentioned my age.”

“Hit the speakerphone button. That might help,” I said. Toby did. “Hello, Toby said that you’re Hugo. I put you on speakerphone here. I’m Cal.”

“Tricky, thinking I won’t curse you out for what you’ve done with a kid in the room.”

“If you’re referring to yesterday, that wasn’t me.”

“What the hell do you mean, it wasn’t you? Was it the damned Messenger coming back or something then, since one of his Angels saved a plane?” He was still angry.

“No, to both. It was Shiva’s AI. I’m going to give you some information, freely. One of what we call the shivalingam ... if you’ve someone that’s enhanced, is what they need to survive for the next two weeks.”

His voice changed from anger to curiosity. “How do you figure that?”

“More than a thousand years ago, Halley’s Comet actually passed through Earth’s orbit. We’re at the start of the Eta Aquarids meteor shower. It’s literally stuff he dumped here as a trap for someone who has the shivalingam. Same thing will happen in October, with the Orionids.”

There was a clunk as he set the phone down, then things were quiet from his end for almost a minute. I could hear through the phone that he was doing something, but not exactly what. Then I heard the sound of air flowing through tubing, being shut off, and people coughing, then breathing on their own. I could tell the people coughing were all women.

He finally picked the phone back up. “I guess you’re not quite the asshole I thought you were. How’d you know?”

“You don’t think you’re the only one with a woman or two enhanced, do you? They’re going to be tired. It’s just going to take them some time to recover. If they have the shivalingam when the meteor shower hits, they should be fine. And ... if any of them are pregnant, their babies should be fine, too.”

“I want to meet with you. I’m not going to say that I will do what Bauman did, but ... now I think we need to meet.”

“I can do it next weekend, or the weekend after that, pretty much anywhere in the world that you want to meet. I have to go to Florida this weekend for the Challenger launch, and we’ve got celebrations for Memorial Day here. During the week is out, unless you come here, because ... I’m still in college.”

He laughed. “So I understand. You’ve been busy since you were decanted.”

“That was Cris, not me. Sorry, Hugo, I’m a one hundred percent naturally born human.”

“It’s okay, dear. Just lay there, and rest. Sorry. Damn you, you were right.” He was quiet again. “I know your schedule. I prefer to not meet with you when you have that ... my apologies, I was going to be rude, let me start over. I would prefer to meet you, even if it is at your own home facility there in California, without the Priestess present. Therefore, since I know you do honor your word, I will arrive next Saturday afternoon at your Moffett Field. I will not have a nuclear weapon in my airplane’s cargo hold. I also prefer to not have the ... what do you Americans call it ... dog and pony show that you did with Bauman.”

“Acceptable to me. Do you have any dietary requirements? Halal, or otherwise?”

He chuckled. “Surprise me. We are neither Arabs, Jews, nor Hindus.” The phone clicked as he hung up.

I immediately got up, picked the phone up and dialed Cris Bauman.

When he picked up, even before he could say hello, I said, “Cris, this is Cal Lewis. Are you or any of your ladies having any issues?”

“Uh, good morning to you? No, why?”

“Okay, just confirming something. I just had the most interesting phone call, from Hugo Sokalski.” I spent the next fifteen minutes going over things with him.

“Well, that confirms what you thought, Cal. He is like you, able to utilize the shivalingam. I don’t know how many of them he has, but I would say that some of his women are like your women, pregnant with his children.”

“Aren’t you in a similar situation?”

“Yes, well, that’s beside the point, isn’t it? Certainly not like Margaret, and due next month. But yes, all three of my loves are due in December. They’re not happy, as that’s our summer.”

“Foot rubs, and I’ll get you something that Jennifer found that worked for her, as your children grow, and their bladders shrink.”

“Very good, thank you. Oh, and congratulations. I was talking to Walter last night, he said that the last issue regarding creating Punjab has been resolved. You will be ruler of a new nation in January.”

“Thank you, I think. Okay, I just needed to discuss Hugo with you. I’ve got to go, our schedules are always busy even on weekends.”

“I completely understand, my brother. Take care, and wish your ladies well from me and mine.”

I hung up, then. “When do we need to leave?”

I spent ten minutes working with Dora and Eve, packing overnight bags for all the ladies, under their verbal directions, then helping them get dressed and ready. With the assistance of our security, we got them all out and loaded onto a bus for the trip to the airport. We were the last ones to arrive. Looking at the stairway, I shook my head and found Wally.

While we didn’t have one of the portable jet bridges, we had the next best thing. We had an airplane catering truck. We put the women in the cargo bed, then it drove up to the plane, they opened the door, and we helped them into the front section where they could all sit and rest some more. I suspected that being in the airplane and getting several miles up would help all of them. It turned out I was right.