Chapter 15

The Stanford Women’s team won the second game of their season with a final score of 86 to 71, with both Eve and Judy getting a triple-double thanks to their aggressive play. As soon as the final buzzer sounded, every fan stood up and shouted ‘CARDINAL!’ three times, then sat back down. The only ones who then moved were the fans of the other teams, as they worked their way to the exits.

It became clear to me that word had somehow been passed around to all of our fans to stay put, as the gurney was wheeled in. Diana’s wry grin as she was helped to her feet to make it down the steps to the waiting crew showed her appreciation. Softly, some members of the band began playing my anthem, while the crowd sat still.

I got up and joined the family. I could tell Beth and Dora were using telekinesis to help Diana down the steps. Once they had her down to the gurney, they waited until I joined her, then watched as I lifted her under the arms and helped her onto it. I took her left hand with mine, then leaned over and gave her a gentle kiss. That was the key for the entire arena to erupt in cheers and applause. I stayed with her as she was wheeled out, then got into the ambulance with her. Carrie came along to help with labor pains.

“Well, my King, it’s time for me to do my family duty,” Diana said with a slight grimace as Carrie’s ring flashed.

“There is no duty, my Queen. There is only love and family,” I replied, my eyes never leaving hers.

She chuckled. “I knew I’d made the right decision months ago, and that just reaffirmed it. You’d have no way of knowing, but other than changing the word from King to Prince, that’s exactly what I told Charles as I was being transported to St. Mary’s with William. His response was, ‘Of course it is. That’s why you’re my wife.’ He was little better with Harry, mostly sitting around reading a book and otherwise being bored.”

I shook my head. “That’s about what I’d expect from him, and I’ve never personally met the man,” I said, holding her hand. “You surprised me, you know. I knew you wanted to have our baby during the Thanksgiving break, and you’re quite headstrong.”

She smiled at me, then winced a little as Carrie’s ring flashed again. “Well, sometimes things don’t work out the way we’d thought they would. And then sometimes they work out so much better, you almost feel like you’re in a dream and hope you never wake up from it. That’s how it is, being married to you.”

Before I could respond, I felt the ambulance swerving and braking. I quickly looked forward and used my vision to see what was happening. We were going under an overpass. One of our Hummers had just hit a car and was skidding back across the highway. The car it’d hit ran headlong into a bridge pillar. I reached out with my telekinesis to stabilize our vehicle, and threw up a quick shield around us. It was just in time, as a second car that had swerved around the one that hit the pillar hit us in the side. I could see the passenger was still holding a camera up, trying to take pictures, even as the car he was in hit our shield and slammed to a stop.

Another Hummer took over as front escort, while one of our Suburbans stopped to help our men. A spotlight from an escorting helicopter illuminated the scene, while two other gunships dropped down for close cover, barely above treetop level.

“Goddamn paparazzi!” Sharon growled from the other side of the stretcher, where she’d been monitoring Diana’s vitals. “We’re not back to the Kingdom yet, so they figured the rules didn’t apply to them out here. They were trying to get close to us, and the lead truck was trying to get in the middle like a blocker.”

“I saw the passenger in the one that hit my shield had a camera up, still taking shots of us, and not even looking around,” I said.

“Vultures!” Diana swore. “I’ve not missed them in the least. I think the stress of being under their lens the whole time I was expecting William is why they finally had to induce my labor. I just couldn’t deliver him properly. They’d have hounded me to death, otherwise.”

Carrie chuckled. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about those guys any more. None of them had their seat belts on.”

Sharon spoke into her microphone again, then said to us, “We’re continuing on, obviously. We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Doctor Davidson is ready for Diana.” She shook her head. “Leave it to civilian photographers. Anyone smart would’ve known better. Six Hummers with machine guns mounted and six Suburbans with flashing lights!”

Diana shook her head, then sadly said, “I swear, sometimes they’re not happy unless someone’s dead.”

“Well, we’re not, and you’ll be fine,” I said with reassurance. “You just concentrate on one thing, and that’s how much I love you and our daughter – even if you still haven’t told me what her name is.”

Leaning up a little, Diana softly said something that even I couldn’t catch. I leaned over, and then she licked my ear. Laying back, she said with a giggle, “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Fortunately, the rest of our ride went smoothly, although it was hard to maintain my dignity having just gotten a ‘Wet Willie.’

Doctor Davidson was already waiting in the room, gowned and gloved up, when we arrived. “Doctor Lewis, are you planning on assisting me?”

“I’ll be present, but on this side of things if you don’t mind, Doctor Davidson. I’m quite certain Doctor Korn plans on me helping you during my residency, but ... that’s not just yet, so unless you specifically insist, I’m declining,” I said.

The nurses had been helping Diana get undressed and into her gown while I spoke. One of them said, “Um, Doctor? I think we’ve got a bit of a problem here.”

Doctor Davidson looked, then said, “Well, I’m glad you at least made it here for the last little bit. Come on, let’s bring this baby into the world.”

Diana raised up on her elbows. “What do you mean? My contractions have been mild and only started during the first quarter of the football game and were about six minutes apart while we were at the basketball game. I haven’t even felt my water break, yet.”

“You’ve been wearing an adult diaper, to help with leakage. It broke a long time ago, and just went into that. You’re already dilated ten centimeters,” Davidson said. “If you’d been about ten minutes later getting here, Cal and the nurse in the ambulance would be delivering the baby. Look in the mirror, you can already see her hair.”

“William and Harry didn’t come out like this,” Diana protested.

“Later births are often a bit different, and typically easier. Here we go, let me get into position. All right, I’m good. Go ahead and give me a push, now.”

Diana squeezed her muscles, and our daughter slid right out into Doctor Davidson’s hands without any issue at all.

“Um, congratulations, it’s a girl, which you already knew. Cal, if you’ll come on down and we’ll get the cord tied and cut. Same procedure with the cord blood and placenta?”

“Yes, please. Wow, that was ... she’s beautiful,” I said as Davidson handed her to me. Her eyes were already open, and she was just looking around. She started crying, and I handed her to the nurse to get her cleaned up. As soon as that was done, I picked her up again.

“Hello, little girl! I’m your Daddy. Let’s go show you your Mommy.” While she’d been getting cleaned, Doctor Davidson helped deliver the afterbirth, and then cleaned Diana up. I took her to where Diana had already pulled her gown down, her breast leaking in anticipation.

Diana held her close, and let her latch on. She immediately began to suckle.

“Don’t be greedy, little one. You’re not the first one to feed there.” She looked up at me. “Elizabeth encouraged me to breastfeed Wills and Harry. She came down with measles right after Charles was born. Made for a good scandal when I did it.”

Carrie was looking a little bothered, and I noticed. “What’s wrong, Carrie?”

“This was almost too weird. I’ve helped with your other wives. Diana, I know this is your third baby, but Jennifer already had given birth three times. Jimmy was her fourth. She didn’t have it this easy, or with perfect timing like this.”

“You’ll think I’m silly, but I had a dream more than two months ago that this is how it’d go. As far as it being quite easy, and that she’d be born right after we got to the hospital, but not the whole basketball game and ambulance chase. That’s the same night I came up with her name, too. It sounded beautiful and fitting for your daughter, at least to me. Kilassanda Marissa.”

I stepped back, my knees hitting the chair, and I fell backwards into it, my face white.

One of the nurses and Carrie both rushed to me. “What’s wrong?” Carrie demanded.

I just shook my head, then really looked at Diana and our daughter. Then I looked at Carrie again, confirming that she had Madalain in her. While I was doing that, the nurse grabbed a towel to wash my face.

“I’m okay, it’s ... that was just a shock to me, is all. I haven’t heard that name in ages, and I didn’t know any of you had ever heard it before,” I said.

Diana’s face showed her confusion. “I’m sorry, my love. Like I said, it was a dream. If you don’t like it, we can change it.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s the perfect name, for a beautiful baby girl that’ll grow up to be a beautiful woman. You heard it in a dream?”

“Yes. Funny, I couldn’t tell who was talking, just ... I delivered her, and a voice said, ‘Her name is Kilassanda Marissa.’ It felt very right to me. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you before. I didn’t realize you’d be upset.” Diana started to tear up.

“No, my love, don’t cry. I’m not upset. I ... well, it’s Guardian stuff, is the only thing I can think. Kilassanda Marissa was my mother’s name.”

Carrie whipped her head around, the look on her face one of shock. “You’re kidding!”

I slowly shook my head. “Not in the least.”

Saturday night ended up being fairly sleepless for everyone in the family except for those under five years old, and Diana, who was still in the hospital. There was another bonfire as well, only this one was on our property, and had six women wearing only shoes and panties using it to communicate with the Sacred Souls.

In the meantime, the rest of us were discussing what the hell was going on. Having almost the entire family present, including the Kansas crew, helped make for a lively discussion. We had made sure there were granite boulders here, in Kansas, and there were already additional decorative stones at the new palace in Punjab. Emily said they’d even put half a dozen in front of both the Hollywood Museum and our headquarters building. That way there’d be someplace for those souls that followed me from Star Home to live, as it were. We knew about two billion of them had been supposed to start arriving in October, and trickle in between then and February, based upon ‘conversations’ with those that had latched onto the spaceship that brought me here.

It was interesting from my perspective when I realized that we’d been having a discussion about spaceships and Star Home when I noticed Melissa, Cindy, Leonard, and Beverly in the room as well. I caught Elroy’s eye and slightly motioned with my head to where the others were sitting. Him snorting was the last thing I expected.

“Son, you lost situational awareness. You’ll want to make sure that doesn’t happen in March, when you’re flying around in space fighting against Shiva. You’ve been able to pass a lot of stuff off as ‘Guardian shit’ to everyone, because of all the people who have abilities, you’re the only one in the room who doesn’t have a verifiable background. That’s what Dan Rather, or at least his research team, was working on the week Morley Safer and Ed Bradley were running around.”

Leonard looked at Elroy, then asked, “So, I take it the ‘60 Minutes’ crew ended up hitting as much of a stone wall as everyone else?”

Grinning, Elroy replied, “Of course. It’s so nice to be able to blame stuff on the CIA when they and their records simply don’t exist any more. It’s bad enough they really did do the nasty shit with Cally and Karen, and of course, JFK, Carter, and Reagan.”

Frowning, Leonard asked, “I thought the attempts on Carter that didn’t happen and the ones on Reagan that did, were KGB sponsored, though?”

“Again, working with the NSA and the CIA,” Elroy explained. “Hannah’s parents and the whole Bilderberg group are ... were ... so deeply entrenched in running the world behind the scenes, they may as well have had strings attached to their puppets.”

Cindy had a puzzled look on her face as well. She asked, “So, I get that Shiva is from another planet, and the girls – Carrie, Cally, and Holly – have souls from women that died thousands of years fighting him that were also from there. I thought from what I was hearing was that Cal had the soul of someone from that planet that is within him, but he died a long time ago, and that was from when the folks from Star Home were planning on moving here? They were the ones that shot down Pahto’s spaceship.”

From her television, Pahto said, “Technically, I was the spaceship, due to the way things were connected to my central brain that’s now in the original bus garage here. The best analogy I have is that you are a whole being, and if you were in an accident and lost your legs, you would still be you. Your body isn’t just a separate vessel that carries you around, you mentally control all aspects of it.”

“Okay, that makes sense. But the way you’ve all been talking, it sounds like Cal’s from Star Home, not just the soul within him,” she said.

Yagyu was standing behind her, and I could read his body language as he asked, “Would it make any difference to you if he was?”

“If you’d asked me that at this time last year – well, I didn’t know him then. So at that point in time, if I’d have just run into him on the street, it’d freak me out. But now? I have him to thank for having you in my life. I don’t really care whether he was made in a CIA lab or really is from another planet.” She moved her left hand so her engagement ring was resting on her belly. “I’m going to have a baby – your baby – and hopefully many more after this one, I’m going to have a career working with his legal team, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

She leaned her head back. “So, you don’t have to kill me because I know about him, but I would appreciate it if you’d give me a kiss.”

He did so.

Melissa nodded and said, “Thank you for trusting me with this, even if it was inadvertently. I’ve been dealing with the lab experiments on a daily basis for months now. Some of the cellular and genetic items we’ve been working on are simply so far beyond the current state of the art that having them come from aliens is the only thing that actually does make sense.”

Dora chuckled then. “There’s just one problem with that, Melissa. He’s not an alien. He’s just from another culture. Oh, he was born on another planet,” she said at Melissa’s confused look. “The people from Star Home were the ones that colonized Earth, a quarter million years ago. Neanderthal as a species was here first, but they weren’t from here, either. All the planets in this portion of the galaxy were seeded with humanoid life forms by a really alien race. He’s human just like us. Genetically, he’s more closely related to the Indigenous Australians and a lot of tribes from Africa, but those are minor differences. Remember, we’re just like dogs, to a certain extent.”

Melissa nodded and said, “Of course. If you’re the same species, then you can breed. That’s why the whole ‘race’ thing regarding skin tone is an artificial social construct. Granted, I’ve never seen or heard of a Saint Bernard mix with a Chihuahua, but they could happen. It’s the same thing with lions and tigers – I have seen a liger, or at least pictures of one.”

Leonard just shrugged. “I’m your wife’s attorney. And you know my wife. This is all somewhat more secure than Fort Knox as far as we’re concerned.”

Elroy smiled at me. “And that, Son, is why we’re family.”

We ended up in a discussion regarding the concerns everyone thought I would face when, or if, the public learned about my abilities. Due to everything else that had happened around the world in such a short period of time, the consensus was we’d still be able to blame the CIA for everything I demonstrated.

A couple of hours later Mike came in. He had an interesting expression on his face.

“They’ll all be here in a little bit. They went to the guest building, to take a quick shower and get rid of the smoke smell, and sweat. Gloria felt like she was too far along to actually dance, so she simply walked around the fire, adding to the connection and supervising. Karen was helping as well, due to her connection. But it was almost scary, watching Helen and the girls. They were glowing, from the amount of power that was flowing through them. It was also sort of disturbing to me.”

Chuck looked over at him. “Vietnam street girls?”

Mike nodded. “Saigon, and outside of Kadena, on Okinawa. My daughters and Holly are all pretty well developed for their age. While they were dancing and things were ... bouncing. I had a flashback to some of the stuff I saw over there, some of the girls I saw over there. It was a little disturbing, because some of their dancing was pretty damned erotic.”

“Here or there?”

“Fuck you, Harry.”

“Emily knows I had a sleeping dictionary. I know what you’re talking about, and what you need. Would one of you please get General Douglas a glass with a couple of ounces of the good stuff in it? I don’t have flashbacks any more, but I still have the memories, so I know exactly what he’s thinking, and what he needs.”

“Thank you, Eve,” Mike said when she handed him a glass. He slammed it back.

“Good,” Karen said as she walked in, her hair still a little damp, and saw him doing that. “Where’s the bottle? I need one of those, too.”

“You’re pregnant and shouldn’t be drinking,” Melissa said.

Shaking her head, Karen said, “I’ve done more drinking during my pregnancies than you can even consider. One drink only isn’t going to hurt anything.” Eve handed her a glass as well. “Thank you. Ah, that’s smooth. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything that good.”

She glanced down at where her husband was sitting. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. How did you even make it in here with that thing?”

“It was ... difficult.”

She nodded. “I remember a group of entertainers from Men-nefer – Memphis, in Egypt – that were taken to Rome. I think that’s the only time I’ve either seen or taken part in anything that ... well, erotic.”

Helen and Gloria walked in. Gloria walked over to Elroy, held out her hand, and said, “You, me, the guest bedroom, now!”

He simply got up and allowed her to lead him away.

Helen shook her head, then said, “Mike, you’ll want to stay in another of the guest rooms here tonight. Toby, you’re definitely staying here tonight. Karen, how come you’re not dragging Mike away by his...”

“Too many centuries of experience. I know you’re their Queen, so you didn’t get hit with quite the amount of side effects that everyone else did. Don’t worry, he’s going to have a good time in a bit. But we need to let everyone else know what happened, and why Diana did what she did.”

Helen nodded and said, “I agree. Wow! Where to begin? Cal, you remember how we said there were two billion souls coming here?”

I nodded.

“We were wrong.”

I frowned. “But ... the population of Star Home was six billion, and only a third of them were actually coming here.”

“The living population of Star Home was six billion. There’ve been more than ninety billion that lived on Star Home over the millennia. Between Uluru and Mount Moffett, there are a couple million Sacred Souls. There were more than twenty billion on Star Home when it was destroyed. You’d mentioned a family casserole dish that had someone living on in it? Well, there’s a third of all the living people that were killed, and a fourth of all the ones who were already souls, that are coming here.”

“You’re talking about seven billion souls?” I asked.

Helen nodded. “With three billion of them already here. I ‘talked’ to more than two dozen of them at random before we finally figured out how to organize things with them, at least started doing it, anyway. That’s going to take a while, since the only language we have in common is Hebrew. Well, that and Aramaic. Thank you for helping with that, Karen. In the meantime, I talked to our Sacred Souls, and because they know you, we found some information out for you.”

Karen nodded. “Just a moment, I’ll be right back.” She got up and walked into the room where Mycroft’s cabinet and all the shivalingam were kept while I was home. She came back carrying the dart my youngest wives had created.

“He’s been right here, because when this was created, no one thought about any of the Souls being in your ship. No one thought to check it for one being there, either, because you had no reason to do so. When they made this dart, he moved into it, to be here in your home, with your family. With his family. There was a reason it didn’t penetrate you like it did everyone else. Your grandfather would never hurt you.”

She tossed it to me, and I instinctively grabbed it out of the air with telekinesis. Once I had it in my hand, I concentrated on it, like I’d done at the Wall.

‘About time you figured things out, boy! I’m sorry about giving your wife that dream.’

‘Grandfather!’

Once everyone had gone home, Helen had been incredibly sexually needy. It seems the difference in the wavelengths between stars didn’t just affect me, it also affected the souls from Star Home.

Before everyone went back to Kansas Sunday afternoon, there was a meeting between the three girls and their boyfriend in the courtyard, with Harry supervising. In the meantime, I was introducing Elroy and Gloria to my grandfather. Both men had similar personalities, as far as their view on things, so I stayed in the middle to make sure no one was too bothered.

Once they were gone, it was a meeting of my wives, the girls and Toby, Karen and Mike, Robert and Ginny, me ... and my grandfather. Diana and Kilassanda had been released from the hospital, so Diana was also present, holding our new bundle of joy.

“Now, what the hell is going on?” Mike asked. “Not that I exactly minded a part of the results, but we’ve had more security issues this weekend than we’ve had in months. There’s got to be a connection.”

“We were at both the football and basketball games, and things seemed off, then,” Bob said. “We waited until the crowd cleared out from Eve’s game – congratulations on your win, by the way – and saw the accident on the way home. But with the ambulance not involved, and it seemed things were under control, we waited until this afternoon to come over.”

Helen just shook her head. “I almost don’t know where to begin. There are so many things that have been happening that we didn’t know to look for, it’s not funny. I think I should’ve been prepared when our Sacred Souls complained about Cal’s delay in getting a spot for the Souls from Star Home ready originally. But I grew up with the knowledge there had been souls purposely accumulating in Uluru for ten thousand years. It’s been longer than that – practically since Earth was colonized – but I knew they existed, they had powers, and they could ‘talk’ to me. Mount Moffett is the same way. Between the two of them, there are about two million present.

“They’re not the only places that souls accumulate, as we know. Arizona, the Punch Bowl, Arlington, the Wall, the Cenotaph, just to name a few places that are confirmed. I’m going to make a guess that Gettysburg, Shiloh, and all the military cemeteries in France and Germany are as well, just for starters. It turns out the two main conditions that have to be happening for a soul to remain local, as it were, are for it to have great mental anguish at the moment of death, or – and this is the big one – to have a fixed purpose for remaining. Most of those in Uluru knew they would be needed to fight Shiva again. Those from before Shiva’s presence here were giving their energy back to the land, to help it remain fertile and a paradise. I think it’s easy to say they were unhappy when Shiva turned Australia into a desert.

“Now, there were more than fifty thousand souls in your spaceship, Cal, including your grandfather. About two billion of those killed when Star Home was destroyed have been following your path here, and about another five billion that had been part of the family after they’d died are also coming here. How many will finally reach here isn’t known. We know energy equals mass times the speed of light, squared. What happens when something is all energy and has no mass? But actually traveling like they are uses up some of their energy, sort of like draining the charge from a battery. At the same time, there’s a finite number of souls that can fit inside an object. And just to make things more fun, once there was serious power being put into reworking your ship, that gave the souls that had ‘piggybacked’ a ride here with you a tremendous boost over and above what they would’ve normally had.”

“Is that how grandfather was able to project into Diana’s dreams?” I asked.

“For starters, yes. The question I have is when were the sisters going to come clean and let the rest of us know about them?” Helen asked.

Carrie and Cally looked startled, then they looked pissed.

“What do you mean, you didn’t think of it? You’ve been living within my head for fifteen years, since before I was born, even!” Cally angrily stated.

“A surprise? For who? I’ve known my whole life I was going to die, just like you did, to stop Shiva! I wasn’t just ready for it, I was expecting it! Everyone from Adak that’s part of the People knew about it. Of course, Cal coming along and being what he is changed things. Why do you think I’m now working on getting physically fit? It’s because I felt I had a chance now, to grow up, to love, and to be a mother myself,” Carrie yelled.

Cally looked at Helen. “Holly’s just as pissed as we are. We’ve never kept anything from each other. This feels like we’ve been betrayed.”

“You haven’t been,” Karen said. “You’re young women, and you’ve had a change in your own mental thoughts since you’ve met Cal. What’d you say, Carrie? You were expecting to die, but now you’re not. I wasn’t a part of their mental discussion, but I know what they were thinking. I was prepared to die; I’m still prepared to die if I have to do so, to protect Earth. So is Cal. You weren’t told because you’re Guardians that were created by the planet, and still are, but now you’ve got the attachment to life that you just couldn’t have previously. The willingness to be the sacrifice that’s asked for. Cal has an incredible attachment to life, but that gives him even more desire to fight to make sure he wins, even if he himself doesn’t live. That’s why Hugo’s his backup, and I’m Hugo’s backup. Cal showing up, which no one here on Earth either expected or planned for, has thrown all the plans by the local Sacred Souls into disarray.”

“The difference in energy between Corvala and Sol also makes a difference,” I said. “To use an analogy – and this is a reach, I’m just trying to make things understandable – the average soul by itself may have one one-millionth of a watt of power. But when you combine them, that doesn’t just add, it progresses almost logarithmically. When you have a million of them, their power doesn’t add, so they have a whole watt. They have one times ten to two hundred megawatts of power. Around Corvala, they would’ve just added. That’s what makes things so different – and so much more dangerous – now. There won’t just be a couple million enhanced souls here by the time Shiva arrives. There’ll be seven billion enhanced souls here. There’s just one problem.”

Robert nodded in understanding and said, “They need a focus. Otherwise, all they can do is the light show like what happened at the Punch Bowl. The girls wouldn’t just die fighting Shiva. They’d die before their powers could even be used, because their bodies, no matter how enhanced from that extra organ, are still Earth human. Yours isn’t. But Hugo...”

Karen shook her head. “Hugo isn’t, either. Remember, he’s ... Irhaal’s descendant, and he was genetically planned so that Khalfani would also be pure Star Home blood and acceptable to Shiva.”

She shook her head. “Ideally, I should be Cal’s first backup. But his chivalry puts that to Hugo.” She put her hand on her belly. “I will be giving birth three weeks early. I have a love of life that I’ve not had in too long. I will not allow those that I love to live under Shiva – or be killed if the Souls become petulant because Cal and Hugo lost.”

“Don’t the three of us have any place in that?” Beth said with some anger in her voice.