Guardian Angel

Guardian Angel-13 Gaian and Guardians, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Jill was exceptionally quiet during lunch.  She had a lot of information to process through her chits.  Upon entering Lela’s ship, Ethan’s chits also caught up with all of the most up-to-date information of the Gaian people, or at least what Lela had processed since her last contact with home.  That current history triggered the whole recent history of the Gaian people in general which went running through Ethan’s mind at a rapid pace.  Jill, however, had swallowed Lela’s back-up work chit, so besides getting up dates from home, she had to process through all of the worlds Lela had been to, all of the Guardians she had established, and all of the work that was left undone.  Fortunately, the others were occupied, being very animated about their adventures, though poor Captain deMarcos was hardly able to follow most of it.  Inevitably, the question came.

“Who are these Nelkorians?”

“A people the Gaian destroyed long ago.”  Ethan answered for Jill.  He took her hand and let her rest her head on his shoulder.  “Only they missed a few.”  He considered that revelation.  The Elders was the name he now knew belonged to his Neanderthal and, to his surprise, some other proto-human people; but apparently those Elders missed a few Nelkorians as well.  Ethan understood that in general, the Elders, like Jill’s people, felt that the people in the worlds should rise or fall on their own merits and thus they stood firmly against the importation of technology for which the local world might not be ready.  Curiously, they were less inclined to stand against one world invading another, but in the case of the Nelkorians, they agreed that the risk of destruction to the worlds was too great.  But the Elders missed a few as well, and that told Ethan that even they were not infallible.

“Gaian?”  Alexander was asking.

“Lord?”  Manomar nudged Ethan.  Somewhere along the line, Manomar decided that Lord and Lady were appropriate titles of respect for Ethan and Jill.  To the others, they were still plain Jill and Ethan, but the others did not object to Manomar’s designation.  “Lord?”

Ethan shook himself free of his own thoughts and looked up.

Alexander tried again.  “Gaian people?”

Ethan nodded slightly and looked at Jill before he spoke.  She had her eyes closed, but she was not sleeping.  “Like everyone, they simply call themselves human beings and their world earth, but in the worlds they are known as the Gaian people.”  He looked at Peter Alexander who probably got enough information from Lela to ask the question.  Ethan looked around at the rest of the strange collection of people and ended with a look at Manomar.  He noted that the others knew nothing about it at all.  “Her mother’s name was Gaia and her father was what you would call Emperor of the known worlds.  Jillian was born on the same day they discovered the alternate earths.”

“Known worlds?”  Ali Pasha wondered if he misunderstood the phrase.

“Not alternate Earths.”  Ethan pointed up toward the ceiling and Lars got it immediately.

“The Stars!”  Lars shouted.  “I always wanted to travel,” he said, confidentially to Manomar.  Ali Pasha looked distressed.  Up until then, he had continued to think of the stars as Allah’s windows to heaven whose light was allowed to shine into the darkness.  Ethan knew that Ali Pasha would have some processing of his own to do.  Thus far, Ethan thought he had done rather well, considering he had the furthest to go in restructuring his mind and the way he always understood the world to be.

“But Gaian?”  Colonel deMartin took up where Peter Alexander left off.

“Yes.”  Ethan said and pulled himself together to speak.  “When the explorers first went into the worlds, they called themselves Gaian, the explorers of Gaia in honor of their queen.”

“I’m glad they did not call themselves Jillians,” Jill mumbled.

“In honor of her birth,” Ethan told the others, and then he answered the unspoken question.  “The Gaian discovered the Nelkorians about three hundred years ago.  The Nelkorians were preparing to spread across the worlds, and Jill’s people understood that they had to be stopped.  The Emperor gathered the fleets from the frontiers.  The ship.”  Ethan pointed to the picture of the door on the wall.  “It is a class three fighter-destroyer, much bigger than the little control room we saw.  The Gaian tracked the Nelkorians across the worlds, and concluded the war after about a hundred years, though some say there are still searchers in the far-away places.”

“They missed a few,” Alexander said.

Ethan nodded.  “I guess those far-away searchers suspected as much.”

Jill sat up and looked at the Cherokee and the colonel.  She spoke sharply, but her eyes were not exactly in focus, like a person speaking out of a trance.  “Beware of any children born without faces.  You must watch carefully over the next year, and destroy any you find.  Do not be tempted to believe they can be turned to good, no matter what they say.  Such power inevitably corrupts absolutely.  They must be utterly destroyed.”  She closed her eyes again and leaned back into Ethan’s shoulder while Alexander and deMartin passed a look.  They had not considered that there might be others, and in fact they both pictured that there might be one or more presently in the Old World even as they spoke.

“So, Gaian is a name in honor of Jill’s mother.”  Lars brought them back to the subject.

Ethan confirmed that, and then fell again into his own thoughts while the others began to speculate on what other challenges might be out there in the Worlds.

Ethan considered that at the conclusion of the war, Gaia, the one who led the charge against the Nelkorians got killed, and Jill’s father virtually shut down the explorations of the Worlds as a result.  “It is too dangerous,” the man said.  “And it is not our place to dictate who can and cannot live.”  He was the one who originally instituted the complete hands off policy, and then he promptly died of a broken heart, or so they said.  Nothing else was ever proved, despite the conspiracy theorists.

Jill’s first husband took over, but then Jillian and Archon divorced over the issue of the worlds; but no, that was not strictly true.  In the scan of a thousand years of history, and as near as Ethan could figure things out, Jill and her husband separated when their son turned twenty-one.  That meant they were really only married for twenty-two strained years.  It also meant they had been separated for some eight centuries before being formally divorced.  The worlds issue had just been the excuse to finally end things.

Ethan reached down to softly brush Jill’s lovely black hair, to keep it out of her eyes.  She shifted a little to acknowledge his gentle, loving touch, but her eyes remained closed.

Meanwhile, Ethan’s mind kept him on track.  Her first husband continued her father’s policy of hands off, isolationism, but Jill took after her mother.  She knew there were some people finding their way into the worlds, like the Nelkorians, and they had to be stopped, because if they did nothing, one day it would come back to haunt the Gaian.

The guardian program was conceived.  The guardians could do a lot on their own, and stop most threats, but they also served as watchers for the Gaian who could not be everywhere.  The Gaian rebels, and that was what they were considered being involved in an essentially outlawed activity, managed to get their hands on a large number of warships that were brought in for the war.  There were many in the military that understood the seriousness of external threats and secretly agreed with Jill.  With those ships fitted with the transitional technology developed for the war, Jill and her rebel followers were able to begin establishing guardians across the worlds.  Suddenly, Ethan felt Jill’s uneasiness in a new way.  She looked up at him.  They were truly becoming a couple, becoming unbelievably close and growing to read each other well, and their chits went a long way to bring them into sync with each other.

Guardian Angel-13 Gaian and Guardians, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

After less than ten minutes, Jill came back to fetch the others, but even in that short time, Ethan, Lars, Manomar and Ali Pasha began to grow nervous.  They heard noises in the house, guard type noises, and the guards seemed to be wondering what happened.  Ethan guessed that the Nelkorian controlled everyone in the house, including the governor, that is, if he did not take on the illusion and play the part of the governor directly, and now everyone in the house was probably dead like the man by the door.  All the same, the quiet could not last forever.  Ethan doubted the Nelkorian wasted the energy controlling the dozens of guards, and thus the living guards were beginning to rouse and wonder if something was going on that they should know about.

“Hurry.”  Jill sensed the urgency.

Ethan was already feeling better, but Manomar helped him walk.  Lars, with his six-shooter reloaded, kept watch on the rear door while they all headed toward the garage that held the ship.  Up close, it looked even more like a mere glowing white slab no thicker than Ethan’s thumb.

“How will we all fit in that little space?”  Ali Pasha wondered.

“Transdimensionally engineered, I bet,” Ethan said, in reference to his memory of that old television show.  Jill smiled at him and helped him through the doorway.  They stepped into a spacious control room.  “That means it is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside,” he told the scholar.

“Impossible,” Ali Pasha protested.  Then Jill spoiled the illusion by explaining.

“Actually, the ship is in another dimension altogether, resting and stable on a dead world.  There is a back door I could show you, but there is not much to see.  The front door is the point of contact in Peter Alexander’s world, and it can be minimized to the size of a single complex molecule and still maintain a presence in the world.  The standard technique is to minimize it to the size of somewhere between a quarter and a dime for travel.  That is, a small coin.”  She showed the size with her hand.  “Of course, you won’t feel any movement when we travel because we won’t actually be moving; only the point of contact will be shifted from one place to another.  That point can be shifted to anywhere in the world almost instantly.”  She turned and spoke to Ethan.  “It can be shifted to almost anywhere in the galaxy, but that takes a little more time.”

 Jill took Ethan by the hand and brought him to the Main.  There were places there for a left hand and a right hand.  “We are set to encode,” she said.  “I have taken Lela’s duplicate chit and reset the controls.  Can you put your left hand here?”  She asked with a sound of such concern for him, it made Ethan pause.  He wondered how much mileage he could get out of his injuries, but he complied and set his left hand in place, and he leaned a little, not that he did not need to lean.  When her right hand was on the other palm spot, the system activated.  “We are linked now with the ship,” she concluded and removed her hand.

Ethan stumbled over to a chair, sat, and watched while Lars and Manomar stood like guards by the door.  Alexander and deMartin, having been inside for a bit longer than the others, found seats by a screen which showed in a virtual three-dimensional way what was happening outside, and Ali Pasha walked around the room and tried hard not to touch anything.

The guards were finding bodies.  They burst into the room the ship’s crew had just vacated and one pointed to the glowing door in the garage outside the window as if something was happening.  “The door is nickel size.”  Jill announced, though they could still see all around the ship as if the ship was actually present in that world and had outside cameras pointed in every direction.  “Time to go.  We have an appointment in Elizabethtown.”

“Hold on!”  Ali Pasha shouted.  He remembered his ride in the automobile in that world.  Everyone attempted to grab on to something, but Jill spoke even before the shuffling finished.

“Too late.  We are already there.”  The view screen flashed briefly, like one might change pictures in a digital camera, and then it showed a perfect view of the inside of the Inn in Elizabethtown.  Captain deMarcos was there, fiddling with some papers.

“Wait,” Ethan said before Jill could enlarge the plain, white door.  “Give it something more in line with the décor.”  He was still thinking about the police box.  Jill smiled and appeared to think for a minute.  Then she touched a few places on the Main and made a gothic door looking of solid oak with scrolls all up and down and around the frame, and carvings of gargoyle type faces on the front.  It grew slowly from nothing to stand near the wall.  The door stood upright, but with no visible means of support.

“I would normally blend the door into the wall,” Jill admitted.  “But I like this effect.”

“Allow me.”  DeMartin grinned wickedly and got into the spirit of the play.  Poor deMarcos stood up, dropped his jaw and bulged his eyes.  The innkeeper came up beside him along with a couple of soldiers who did not know whether to draw their weapons or run.  Jillian cracked the door.

“Captain deMarcos,” deMartin roared, and found that Jill had put a touch of echo in the voice.  “Is that report finished yet?”

DeMarcos went to his knees and threw his hands over his face.  The soldiers looked frozen in place, but the innkeeper had no trouble running away as fast as possible.

“Oh.”  Ali Pasha stepped up to the front and shoved the colonel back a step.  “You are most unkind.”  He pretended offence though he appeared to laugh a little.  He forced the door.  “It is only us.  We won’t hurt you.”  He stepped out.

“Not much anyway.”  DeMartin was right on his heels.  “Get up deMarcos.  We have guests.”

“Sir?”  DeMarcos did his best to pull himself together, and the soldiers straightened up on sight of the Colonel, though they fell apart again on seeing everyone pile out of a doorway to nowhere.

Ethan got a key to the ship.  “Though you can think it to you and open it with a chit since it is tuned to you as it is to me.”  Jill explained as she pointed her key at the door, and the door pushed to the wall, shrank, and ended up looking like a framed picture of a gothic door hung some four feet up the wall.

Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Something caught Ethan’s eye.  It was disguised with a masterful illusion, but he had his chits working overtime, trying to see a weakness in his opponent.  He knew it was the monster’s transitional unit, though it looked strangely fabricated out of paper and string, as Jill would say.  It was hardly the product of advanced technology.  He did not have to think, though, about what to do.  He had secreted a microwave handgun into his jacket and managed to keep it hidden, even from Jill.  It came out, and in a second he had melted half the unit.  The Nelkorian screamed and Ethan got slammed to the wall.  He felt for a moment like his insides were being torn out.  He put every ounce of strength he had into his screens, particle, psychic, energy, and even managed a final shot at the Nelkorian himself before the gun got ripped from his hand by a psychic wave and crushed into scrap metal.  He was not surprised the microwaves had no effect on the monster.  Then suddenly it was over so fast, Ethan could hardly believe it.

His actions allowed Jill the second of liberty she needed to activate the fail-safe chits planted deep in her charges.  Ali Pasha got the gun from his man who was disoriented by his master’s preoccupation with trying to tear Ethan apart.  Colonel deMartin and Lars both wheeled and fired simultaneously.  Lars’ antique heavy caliber bullets struck the Nelkorian square in the chest with three strikes which tore half the monster’s back off when they came out the other side.  They took most of the man’s heart with them.  DeMartin’s bullet struck right between the man’s eyes, or where the eyes should have been.  At the same time, Manomar’s knife hit the head dead center, while Alexander’s knife caught in the throat just below the man’s chin.  Then, not knowing what powers of repair the awful creature might have, deMartin pulled his saber and completed the decapitation of the beast.  Manomar and Alexander further divided the skull and brain as they retrieved their knives.  There was no way that Nelkorian was going to threaten or possess anyone again.

Jill was on the ground beside Ethan, crying.  Ethan felt nothing, which sadly included Jill’s kisses.  “My chits tell me I’ll be good as new in a couple of hours.  They wouldn’t lie, would they?”

Jill shook her head and smiled through her tears.  “Like a computer estimate.  They are not capable of lying, not capable of intelligence, remember?”

“Well, they moved pretty fast to keep me out of that thing’s grip,” Ethan said.

Jill nodded this time.  “Their programming is very sophisticated.”

“Microwave handgun?”  Lars interrupted.  He held up the scrap metal.

“Doctor Augustus know about this?”  DeMartin asked as he joined them.

“Yes,” Ethan said.  “He insisted I take it.  He was worried about Jill, and I could not argue about that, but secretly I think he just wanted an excuse to get rid of it.”

“Scrap metal now,” Lars said.

“So is the Parallel Earth Mover.”  Alexander spoke from across the room and used that name for the Nelkorian transitional unit.  Now that the illusion was gone, the primitive unit was plainly visible.

Ethan looked at Jill and she smiled again, without the tears as she spoke.  “I always liked the name Dimensional Watch.”  She shrugged and turned her head toward the chief.  “You need to finish the job.”

“Yes I know,” Alexander agreed.  “This must be completely dismantled and melted down, like it never existed.  I know my job, but God willing this will be the one and only time I have to do this.”

There was a loud moan by the door.  Manomar was there with Ali Pasha.  The black headed man rolled on the floor and he did not look well at all.

“By the Prophet!” Ali Pasha yelled and took their attention.  “Look!  The bullet is coming out.”  He tore his bloody sleeve.  He had been shot in the arm and the bullet had lodged against the bone.  They all looked.  Sure enough, they could actually see the bullet coming up to the surface.  In a moment, it clattered to the floor and Ali Pasha’s wound began to close.  “Remarkable, amazing, outstanding!”  Ali Pasha spoke with glee even as there was another moan from the man on the floor.

Manomar knelt down, now that he knew his Master was going to live.  He quickly turned the man’s head.  The man vomited all over the Persian rug and then stopped moving forever.

Jill held Ethan on his feet with the help of Lars’ strength on Ethan’s other side.  She spoke.  “Anyone possessed for a long time will probably not survive.  Theory says they die after a time, but the Nelkorian can keep their personality and body functioning for years.”

“You wiped them out?”  Ethan asked.  He remembered what she said earlier.

“Even the Neanderthals helped on that one.  Doctor James Nelkor perfected a technique for genetic manipulation and enhanced psychic abilities by removing all sensory distractions.  It was a monstrous thing to do, but then the monster killed him in true Frankenstein fashion and began duplicating himself in what he called his children.  If they had simply destroyed their own earth, it would have been bad enough, but once they broke into the Worlds, we had to act.  Even my ex-husband understood that much.  I thought we got them all, but apparently we did not.  I only hope there are not too many of them left and hiding.”

“You gave us the chit to escape them, though.”  Alexander spoke up from the corner.

“Yes, but it was dormant and only as a precaution.  It had to be activated.  I think that needs to be changed now across the worlds.  I need to get to Lela’s ship and contact the coordination team.”

“Right.”  Alexander stepped up and pulled his leather and gold necklace out from beneath his shirt.  There was something like a magnetic bar on the end of the leather chord.  It was not a magnetic bar, of course, but a key, and Jill took it and went out back with Alexander and deMartin to guard her, while Ethan sat in a comfortable chair and Lars and Manomar covered the dead.  Ali Pasha sat beside Ethan and still stared at his own arm.

“Wounded for the cause.”  Ali Pasha said proudly and he pointed to his arm.  It was a real badge of honor even if in another hour, it would be as if it never happened.

Ethan had another thought, and he was not smiling.  “I was wondering what might happen if a Nelkorian got loose on my world.”

“Or mine.”  Ali Pasha quickly sobered

“One Guardian per world hardly seems enough.”  Ethan thought out loud.

“I hardly thinking this was easy.”  Ali Pasha reverted with his words again, but Ethan understood.

************************

Next Monday, (Tuesday and Wednesday)  Some things straighten out even as some things get complicated in Guardian Angel-13, Gaian and Guardians.

Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

They reached the outskirts of Balazarius, the port city of the Byzantines, around eight the next morning.  Runners had gone out the night before so they hoped everything was in place and ready to go.

“I remember you telling me about your Fourth of July.”  Alexander explained to Jill and Ethan.  “I thought we might call it Cherokee Peace Day, or maybe Cherokee Pride.”

Ethan hardly had time to wonder what Alexander meant as the first rockets and fireworks cracked in the sky.  Soon enough, there were firecrackers and such going off everywhere, and quite a few Byzantines appeared to join in the fun while the crew closed in on the Governor’s Palace.

When they arrived outside the palace, Peter Alexander signaled someone in the crowd and a whole flock of children ran to the front door of the palace with flowers in their hands.  “Come and see.”  They shouted in their excitement, while they showered the guards with flowers and banged on the front door.  “Come and see.  Come and see.”  As was hoped, the guards from the entrance to the Governor’s gardens went to see.

“Now,” Jill said.  She dragged the crew across the street and straight through the garden gate.  If she had not insisted, Lars, Manomar and Ali Pasha would have stayed to see the fireworks.  Colonel deMartin, Ethan and Alexander each had to grab a man and drag them forward.  When they got inside the garden, Alexander swore.  The ship had been moved after all.

“Actually.”  The voice came from the porch where the same black headed man dressed in flowery clothes and sporting feathers, who had argued for war in the face of General Gordon, and who had berated the Cherokee in general, and Peter Alexander specifically as cowards, sat sipping what looked like sweet tea.  “My Master has sheltered the vehicle inside a covering to keep it out of the weather.”  He smiled and motioned with his arm to invite them in.  “Please,” he said.  “My Master is waiting for you.”

Lars looked mad at having been caught.  Ali Pasha and Manomar thought nothing of it.  But Jill and Ethan both looked at Alexander and Colonel deMartin.  Both men shrugged at the word “Master,” and Alexander whispered.  “Even the Byzantines no longer keep slaves.  Why should they when modern machines can do the work better, faster and cheaper?”

They went in.

A man with a glass of whatever that liquid was had his back to them, while the man they knew from the peace talk went to stand by the door and await orders.  The ship, meanwhile, was clearly visible through the back window in what looked like a hastily built garage without a front door.  Ethan stared for a minute, because the so-called ship looked like no more than a door.  It was a shimmering white slab of light, nothing more, and hardly what he expected.

“I made mine look like a British Police Box in London.”  Jill whispered.  “That was before I ever heard of the Good Doctor.”

“I remember that show.  I used to love him as a kid.”  Ethan whispered back hastily.

“Who?”  Ali Pasha wondered.

“Exactly.”  Jill and Ethan agreed, but quietly because the man by the window looked ready to speak.  He appeared first to take a large whiff of air.

“A Gaian,” he said.  “I had the last one’s head on a platter.”  He turned around and Jill gasped.

“Nelkorian!”  The man had no face; no eyes, ears, nose or mouth.  He had gloves on his hands besides, so no skin showed at all apart from the overly large head covered in motley colored gray-green and wrinkled skin.  “You freakish mutant.  We wiped you out.”

The Nelkorian raised a finger.  “You missed a few.”  Ethan felt the wicked smile.  There was no other way to describe it.  He saw features form on that bulbous head, but they did not quite look real to his eyes, and he wondered if his nano-chits were acting on his vision to be sure he did not forget the truth.  Then he felt something probe his mind.

“No!”  He fought it off.  “Psychic defense.  Psychic screen.”  He strained for a minute before he calmed.  Jill grabbed hold of him, but she seemed to be in her right mind as well.

“But he is not Gaian.  I am sure,” the Nelkorian said.  He took another whiff of air.  His lips had moved, but they looked to Ethan as if they were a little out of sync with his words.

“My husband,” Jill said flatly.  “Let these people go.”  She put some strength into her voice, and Ethan saw what was happening.  Colonel deMartin drew his gun as Lars drew his.  They aimed at each other.  Manomar and Alexander had their knives out and faced each other as well.  Poor Ali Pasha was confronted by the man at the door.  That man had drawn a gun and he aimed it point blank at Ali Pasha’s heart.

“He has no sensory organs, but a mind capable of taking over others and sensing things through them.”  Jill spoke hastily as Ethan watched the man across the way lift his glass.  The Nelkorian did not even bother to put the glass to his pretend lips.  Some of the liquid just vanished.

“Taking over others?”  Ethan asked.

“Possessing them.  Maybe thousands,” Jill responded.

“Ahh.”  The man sounded refreshed as if he had actually drunk some of the liquid.  “I do have sensory organs, only they are all internal and able to enhance the experience, shall we say.  But possession is such a nasty word.”

“Let them go, Nelkorian,” Jill demanded.

“Hardly.”  The Nelkorian laughed.  “I want to add your head to my collection, and your husband’s head as a matched set.”  He turned his back again.  Ethan figured with no eyes, the Nelkorian hardly needed to look at them to see them.  “I had planned to turn your ship into a flower pot, and I will as soon as I learn the secret to breaking in.  This is a fine world with much potential, don’t you think?  My brothers and I will enjoy living here, and by the time the husk of this world is all that remains, we will be numerous enough to invade all sorts of places.  Perhaps your husband’s world.  I caught quite a good glimpse of his Earth before the psychic defense of your nasty, inhuman bits went up.”

A young woman’s head, severed at the neck, lifted slowly out of a wicker basket and floated in the air right up to face the couple.  She was a very dead young woman, and Jill had to hide her eyes in Ethan’s shoulder.

“Being possessed by a Nelkorian slowly drains the life force.”  Jill whispered into Ethan’s shoulder while Ethan looked once again at his friends, who were ready to destroy each other.  Apparently, they had no psychic defense, or an insufficient one to fight the Nelkorian.

“The Elders will come,” Jill said.  She turned again to face the monster.  “You will be destroyed here as you were in your home world.”

“I think not,” the Nelkorian responded.  He turned and raised his finger again.  “I believe I have learned how to block even their tracers.  They will hardly know what is happening until it will be too late, even for them.”

Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian, part 1 of 3

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Ethan heard the shouts, and the laughter.  They surprised a young couple out in the woods, doing what young couples do.  “Paul Bear and Mary Margaret.”  Peter Alexander knew them and named them, and he gave them his best elder stare.

“Chief Peter.”  The young man also knew his elder, and the young couple hurriedly pulled themselves together.  “We did not hear you coming.  We thought no one was around here.”  The young woman hushed the young man so he held his tongue.  Ali Pasha and Manomar kept their composure, but Jill, Ethan and Colonel deMartin had to turn away to keep their laughter to a minimum.  Lars did not bother turning away.  He could not help the guffaw that escaped his lips.

Peter Alexander kept a stern face.  “You need to fetch your fathers and the village council.  I will be along in a minute.”  The young couple stood and stared at the Chief.  “Hurry!”  Alexander shooed them off, and they ran, holding hands, like two deer running from a hunter.

Ali Pasha sighed.  “I see some things remain true, no matter the world.”

“Even across worlds.”  Ethan said with a grin, his eyes on Jill.  The men grinned with him, but Jill turned a little red.  “Oof!”  Jill pushed the briefcase into Ethan’s solar plexus.

“Here.”  Then she grinned at him.

“But they are married, yes?”  Ali Pasha turned to Alexander and pointed at the couple still visible in the distance.

“Not yet.”  Peter Alexander responded in a gruff tone that suggested they might as well be.

“But then this is not good.”  Ali Pasha looked up.  “Don’t you think, Manomar?”

Manomar paused and glanced at Lars before he spoke.  “I think since the Doctor was good enough to heal my, er, condition, I think the whole idea is very interesting.”

Lars guffawed again.

Ali Pasha puffed.  “Then I will get you a wife, and maybe several wives, and then you will think differently.”  Ali Pasha threatened the poor man.

“This way.”  Alexander interrupted, and the Colonel stepped up beside him as they started to walk.

“Quite right.”  DeMartin confided to the chief.  “Some conversations are best left alone.”

When they reached the village, some of the elders had yet to arrive.  Peter Alexander spent the time catching up on the actions of the other chiefs since his mysterious disappearance after the parlay with the Holy Romans.  There were a couple of unfortunate incidents during the withdrawal, and that suggested they were still a long way from real and lasting peace.  Colonel deMartin vowed he would reprimand the offending soldiers, but Alexander stayed the colonel’s anger.

“Our work must cut deeper than that,” he said, and the colonel agreed.  He could not reprimand every overly zealous soldier in the Empire.

The actual council meeting was brief.  As far as anyone knew, Lela’s ship was still in the garden of the governor’s house, but no one knew for sure.  Jill accepted that it was still there.  She knew no one in that world had the means to budge it an inch.  She told the Cherokee Elders that they needed a distraction to get her crew into that garden without being stopped.  That was not going to be easy, but Chief Peter had some ideas, and he, Colonel deMartin, and Lars stayed to discuss those ideas with the willing volunteers while the others got taken to rooms in the inn down the street.

As they walked, Ethan remarked that the village was not what he expected.  There were neat little row houses all along the street, with thatched roofs and gardens lush enough to make an Englishman proud.  There were several larger buildings in the town as well, including the Council Chamber and the Inn of the Green Crow where they were going to stay, and there was also a market square they traveled through, complete with an outdoor fountain topped with a statue of a warrior on horseback.  It was the kind of market square where goods were sold in the open as well as in the shops.

“Somehow, I imagined tents, deerskin clothing and infants squalling from papooses—Papoosi?”

“That is so Hollywood,” Jill said with a small laugh.  “But I think in this world, the Native Nations have learned from the Europeans rather than being overwhelmed by them.”

Ethan understood.  “But colonization started late here, if I understand it.  I imagine it will pick up as the Old World becomes more and more over crowded.”

Jill also imagined that was sadly true.  “But with immunization and early antibiotics, the Natives might not be devastated by foreign diseases in the same way they were in your world.  If this Earth parallels your Earth in that respect, then the Americas are far more populated than you might think.”

“Vespuccians.”  Ethan said.

“What?”

“You know.  Amerigo Vespucci.  God bless Vespucciland.”

“Stop.”  Jill giggled and reached for his arm.

Ethan slipped his arm over Jill’s shoulder.  “Kind of makes me want to come back some day and see what happens.”  Jill took his hand as she agreed.  Meanwhile, she was not going to let his arm escape.

“Outrageous!”  Ali Pasha complained when they finally reached the Inn.  “Nine gold coins for three small rooms.  Why, that is three coins per room for a single night.  Outrageous!”

“There has been inflation since your age.”  Ethan suggested with a grin.

“I should have introduced myself as Peter’s Cherokee Princess.”  Jill apologized.  “Maybe a little Cherokee blood would have gotten us a discount.”

“Never mind,” Ali Pasha said with a smile.  “It is not that important.”  He was honestly willing to shrug it off until Manomar spoke.

“It is only the money my Master borrowed,” he said this with a straight face.

Ali Pasha put his hand to his head and looked sick.  “No reminding me.”  He reverted to his old way of speaking.  Jill and Ethan laughed; but then they all settled down to a hot meal that did not come out of a vending machine.

Alexander, deMartin and Lars came in shortly, and the first thing Alexander did was get Ali Pasha’s gold back.  “I told the innkeeper to charge it to the army, and if the army did not pay his price, he could send a bill to my wife.”  Alexander laughed loudly.

“Eh?”  Ethan and Manomar looked up.

Alexander laughed again.  “We own the Cherokee Trading Post in Champagua.”  He pulled out a map of the Eastern United States that he had gotten to show deMartin.  Ethan saw no states, of course, only tribal territories whose boundaries looked rather fluid.  Alexander pointed to his city and Ethan, having recognized the outer banks, realized he was pointing to Charlotte, North Carolina.  “Our central city, what you might call the capitol.  We sell a little of everything at the Trading Post and cheaper than anyone else.”

“Wal-Mart,” Jill joked, as she took Ethan’s arm and leaned forward for a look at the map.

“But the innkeeper groaned when I said bill my wife.  She is a well known miser.”  Alexander laughed again.

“Mine, too, keeps a tight fist on her money,” Lars said, seriously.

“My former wife was only good for spending money, I think,” Colonel deMartin said.

They looked at Ali Pasha who threw his hands at them.  “You don’t even want to know.”

Ethan sat back and placed his hands behind his head.  “I have no money.  It simplifies things.”  They all looked, but Jill shook her head and paraphrased deMartin’s earlier comment.

“Some conversations are best left alone.”

Everyone laughed and ate while Alexander explained what they had in mind.

Guardian Angel-11 Trouble in Paradise, part 3 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Things improved between Ethan and Jill after that, though there were still some difficult moments.  Ethan could not shake the idea that as soon as he was in place at home, she would leave him.  At this point, though, he did not let it control him.  He felt that every moment he had with her was blessed.

“Vulnerability is from the neck up,” Jill said in her teaching.  “We have a saying in my universe that everyone has to die sometime, but you can even survive a wound to the heart if it is not too extensive.  If your chits have time to repair the damage and keep the blood circulating to the brain, you will survive, but from the neck up you are irreplaceable.  Understand this.  Brain cells can be regenerated and memory can be restored, but only as long as your brain continues to receive blood and oxygen.  Four minutes is about as long as you will survive otherwise.”

“Princess Jillian.”  Peter Alexander had a question.  He often referred to her in that way, but everyone imagined that he was referring to her by her quarter of Cherokee blood.  “I am still unclear about the screens you speak of.  I understand how a particle screen can ward off small particles, but the energy screens confuse me.  I do not understand their purpose.”

Jill nodded.  “We have already been protected against the low level of radiation that lingers in this place since the war, but I know you cannot see that.  That is something I was concerned about, and so I concluded that another demonstration was in order.  Doctor?”

The Doctor got up from his seat as a student and turned to help teach.  “I was hoping we would not have to do this,” he said, as he picked up what everyone recognized as a rifle, though none had seen its like before.

“This is a Legionaire-47, a state of the art weapon in the war.  It fires a high concentration pulse of microwaves guaranteed to turn your enemy into toast.”  He lifted the weapon to his shoulder and pointed it at the target that had been set up.  The target was a straw man, like a scarecrow, dressed in clothes and a kind of makeshift armor.  “I hate these things.”  Doctor Augustus mumbled as he took aim.  When he pulled the trigger, the straw man burst into flame, and even the armor melted.  “As you can see, it works all too well.”

“And now the demonstration,” Jill said as she stepped forward, while Ethan put out the fire.  The Doctor checked to be sure the rifle was charged for another round, and then he aimed it right at Jill’s heart while everyone held their breath.  He fired.  Jill merely smiled.

“Even if you cannot see the microwaves, you can see that I remained unaffected by the weapon.  This is a rather simple weapon.  The energy screens will protect you from far more sophisticated and powerful energy sources, but do not depend on them.  There are some weapons strong enough to fry you like the straw man, despite the screens.  My own people have such weapons, and there are a few others we know of.  The nano-chits can only generate so much power.  Even the particle screen cannot deflect an arrow, spear or bullet head on, nor can it stop a knife or sword delivered directly with strength.

“Still, that is remarkable.”  Ali Pasha spoke up.  “May I see that rifle as it is called?”  Everyone laughed a little.  Ali Pasha wanted to see and touch everything.

When the morning session was over, Ethan found Jill in his arms.  “Are you ready to go?” she asked.  They intended to go to Peter Alexander’s world and attempt to retrieve Lela’s ship.

“Tell me again why I am going?” he responded with a question.

“Because I can’t do this without you,” she answered.  She was getting tired of answering such questions.

“Yes you can,” he said and gave her a little kiss.  “You made a transitional unit on my world out of paper and string.  I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”

“All right.”  She accepted the compliment.  “Then I don’t want to do it without you.”

“And I don’t want you to do it without me.”  He kissed her again.

Jill returned his kiss and then went to get her things for the trip and wondered why he could not just love her without hesitation and without all the questions.  She needed him, even if he thought she did not need him.  She loved him.  How many times and in how many ways did she have to say it?  She had been alone for centuries before finding Ethan.  In him, she found someone she could love again.  That was something she once thought she would never be able to do, after Archon.  She knew there was no explaining it, him being from a middle high Earth and her being from paradise, and as hard as she tried, she could not seem to convince Ethan that it was true.  But it was true all the same.  She loved him.  Why couldn’t he just love her in return?  She wiped her eye and put her smile back on before she turned to face him.

In a short while, Ethan and Jill were in the front seat of a hovercar driven by Doctor Augustus.  Peter Alexander and Colonel deMartin were in the middle buckets, Lars and Manomar with Ali Pasha squeezed between them were seated in the back, and they were all headed toward somewhere on the Maryland shore.

###

“This is a red area.  That is, a heavy radiation area.”  The doctor spoke as they searched around for some landmark, which might help Alexander get his bearings.

“I’m trying, but the landscape seems so changed,” Alexander said, and not for the first time.  “Even the coast looks altered.”

“I’m not surprised,” the doctor responded.  “The North Augustine Imperial Capitol was not far from here, up the Pontus River.  This place took a real pounding during the war.”

“There.”  Alexander pointed suddenly, though the Doctor could not see his finger.  “Those rocks are known to me.”

“That jetty?”  The Doctor asked.  It looked to him like a thousand others that stuck out into the sea, but he nodded.  It was almost directly over what had been the city of Balteninus.

“The Port of Balazarius,” Alexander said.  “The whole coast is covered with Byzantine farmland.  We will have to go inland to come down unobserved.”

“How far?”  The Doctor asked.

Alexander quickly calculated and translated at the same time.  “Ten miles should be enough.  We should arrive on Cherokee land.”  The Doctor turned the car and headed due west.  He brought them down to a point where they drove a mere ten feet off the ground.  There were no trees, bushes, or life of any kind to obstruct their progress.

“I can hardly imagine how you can see anything familiar in that landscape,” Colonel deMartin said as he sat back against the comfortable cushions.  The others nodded, but Alexander assured them of his certainty.

“I am positive,” he said.  “But even if I am a bit off, I know this is the right area.”

Ali Pasha tried to look out the windows, first around Lars and then around Manomar.  He could not see much, but it all looked like empty desert to him, and it all looked the same.

When they landed, Doctor Augustus hugged Jill and shook everyone’s wrists in his fashion.  “It was lovely having company.  I wish you good luck and Godspeed.”

“Are you sure you won’t come with us?”  Jill asked once again.  “There is no reason you should have to stay in your dead world.  I could find you a guardianship elsewhere, and it would save me the headache of having to find someone local and risk making a poor selection.”

“I am sure,” the Doctor said.  “There are more survivors than I let on at first.  There is a small farming community of some forty families northwest of the hospital, by the Darius River.  They survived the thirty-year winter with me in the hospital and only just moved to begin again.  I think I should visit them and see how things are turning out.  There are others scattered here and there.  I will be all right.”  He kissed Jill on her forehead like a loving father and turned back to his vehicle.

Jill wiped a small tear from her eye and found that Ethan had already wired the dimensional watch, as he still called it, and booted up the computer.  It only took a moment to type in the information.  “Everyone hang on,” she said, and when they were ready, she hit the enter button.

************************

Next week: Guardian Angel-12 Nelkorian…a person more creature than human… Don’t miss it.

 

Guardian Angel-11 Trouble in Paradise, part 2 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Ethan found himself on the roof.  He needed to be alone for a while.  The ambulance was parked there, and there were also a couple of benches for people to rest from their labors and a couple of tables for the staff to have lunch al fresco.  Doctor Augustus said the hospital was a hundred and fifty years in that place.  It had been built as close to the radiation area as they dared, originally to treat the survivors of that first bomb, the men and women with melted faces.  Curious, Ethan thought, the destruction of New Rome was no deterrence from all-out war, and somehow, he doubted Hiroshima would deter the determined madmen in his own world.

Ethan shook his head.  He had his own worries at the moment.  He felt so afraid of losing Jill, but at the same time, he was driving her away and he knew it.  He just could not seem to prevent it.  He felt used, though he said nothing.  He assumed that it was obvious.  He simply could not get past the idea that she merely used herself and the knowledge of his feelings to get him to agree to be the Guardian for his world.  When he agreed, he imagined she would move on to her next victim.

Even so, he discovered that he was in love with her and he could not stop himself from wanting to be with her.  He would not leave her, as long as she was willingly by his side, but he saw his need for her as a weakness and he began to hate himself for it.

Ethan walked once around the edge of the roof and looked out over the empty homes where doctors and nurses once lived and worked, and where the forest was now establishing a new presence.  After thirty years of winter, he was surprised to see that enough trees survived to replenish the area.  There were also some birds in the trees, remarkably enough, and once he thought he saw a squirrel.  He stopped, then, when he reached the side that looked out from the town of Ridgetop toward the Eastern shore.  The view took him all the way to the ruins of great buildings on the island he called Manhattan.

“I have come here often.”  Ethan heard the voice before he turned and saw Colonel deMartin sitting on a nearby bench, taking in the same view.  He patted the seat beside him on the bench and Ethan went to sit next to the man.

“I bet it was a great view before the destruction,” Ethan said.

“One can only imagine.”  The Colonel responded without emotion.  “I imagine it would have given the people in my world a sight to behold, but between you and me, I would rather they look at the sight now.  That might do some good.”

“Do you really think so?”  Ethan asked hopefully.

“No,” deMartin answered with blunt honesty.  “I only wish it would.  I have spent a great deal of time over these last few days trying to understand the differences between this world and my own.  Doctor Augustus was gracious enough to share a chit in addition to the ones Miss Jillian gave me so I could read and understand his histories.”  Colonel deMartin put his hand on the book that rested beside him on the bench.  “But for all of the cultural, social, and technological differences between this world and my own, I can hardly see any differences at all among the people.  I think people are people and we have all sinned and fallen short, if you know what I mean”

“Oh.”  Ethan was unhappy to have his own feelings about his own earth confirmed.

“I would say, given the chance, this could by my own world in two or three hundred years,” he finished.  Ethan merely nodded and looked to the sky.  There were rain clouds forming, coming from the West.  It looked like a good blow brewing, but it would be rain.  He was still trying to imagine thirty years of winter.

“You are a lucky man,” Colonel deMartin said.  He interrupted Ethan’s thoughts.

“I’m sorry?”  Ethan did not know to what he was talking about.

“Miss Lucas,” he said.  “To be young and in love.  I was once, you know.”

“News flash,” Ethan countered.  “From what little I have been able to piece together, I would guess Miss Lucas is way more than two hundred years old.  That is not exactly what I would call young and in love.”

The colonel only looked a little surprised, but then he shrugged.  “Still, she loves you very much.  Everyone can see that clearly, regardless of what world they have come from.”

“If only I believed that,” Ethan said in a voice that was almost too soft to hear.

“Oh, believe it.”  The colonel caught what he said.  “But, if I may be frank, everyone is also wondering what is wrong with you.  Ali Pasha said he would give his left hand for the love of such a woman.  In my world, we do not speak in terms of losing body parts, it is more loss of fortune and privilege, but I well understand the sentiment.  Yet, you seem to be doing all of the wrong things.  What is it that troubles you?”

Ethan sat for a minute and let the question hang in the air before he answered.  “It is just that when I am settled as Guardian of my world, I am afraid she will move on and I will never see her again.”

“You think she is just using you?”  The colonel understood right away.  “That’s ridiculous,” he added, and after a moment, he added another thought.  “That woman is all business, more than most men I know.  I suspect she is not given to playing such games.  But I think you may lose her if you keep on as you have been behaving.”  He sighed, stood and picked up his book.  “But now, if you will excuse me, since my tour of duty in the new world, my new world, I have developed an addiction to coffee.  It is not as bad a habit as Lars and his pipe, but it is still bad enough.  I hear a cup calling out to me even now.”  He gave a half-hearted salute and walked off.  A moment later, Ethan heard another voice.

“Can we talk?”  Jill asked, and Ethan scooted down to let her sit beside him.  They sat for a long time in the still silence of that world as the gray clouds moved in to cover the blue sky.  The wind picked up, and it brought a chill to the bones.  Jill and Ethan snuggled for warmth, but as close as they were, both had questions that seemed to be pushing them apart

“I’ve been thinking I need to apologize,” Jill said at last.  Ethan felt curious, so he said nothing.  He took her hand, and she wrapped both of her hands around his and looked down at them as she spoke.  “You see, I have known you far longer than you have known me.  I knew you when you were in college.  I was working for Doctor Grimly even then at the Academy, I mean the University.  I don’t think you ever saw me, but I followed your career and had strong feelings for you even then.  When Doctor Grimly agreed to go to work for the Company, to get our hands on some state of the art equipment, I followed, of course.  When you graduated, I made sure you followed as well, and that was when I knew I was in trouble.”  She paused to laugh a little, like she made a joke, but the laughter was near enough to tears.  “Oh, but Ethan, if you don’t feel the same way about me, I understand.  You have not known me for very long, I mean really in the way I have known you.  Maybe someday.”  She stopped talking because his free hand had come up to stop her mouth.

“I love you so much, I cannot tell you and I am the one who works with words, remember?  But there are not words strong enough or beautiful enough to describe how I feel.”  He paused and found that now he was the one who had to look down at the rooftop.  “I’ve been afraid, that’s all.  I have been afraid that once we get back to my Earth, you will go home and I will lose you.  Jill.”  He looked up at her.  “I don’t want to lose you, but I keep screwing up.  I have never been good at relationships.  I’m sorry.  I think I am the one who needs to apologize to you.”

“You don’t,” she said.  “If you would just hold me, I will not ever leave you.”  He did, and after a while she added a thought.  “We are like two lost souls from worlds almost infinitely apart, but we have found each other.  Can’t that be enough?”

“Me the fool, and you the rebel with a heart as big as all the worlds.”

“You are not a fool,” she said.

If I let my fear drive you away I would be the biggest fool in all of the worlds combined, he thought, and they sat while the rain came, and continued to sit and held on to each other until they were good and soaked.

Guardian Angel-11 Trouble in Paradise, part 1 of 3

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

The next three days were rough for Jill as her relationship with Ethan became terribly strained.  They stayed together, but said little to each other.  They touched, even kissed, but it was not the same as it had been.  She felt as if something was broken and she did not know how to fix it.

Jill worried that she had pushed Ethan too fast; that despite what she felt for him, maybe he did not feel the same for her, or maybe he was not ready for that kind of relationship.

She did her best in those days to teach in the hospital auditorium, and Ethan tried to sit and listen, but it was hard for either one to stay focused.  He looked so sad and lost.  He looked so alone, and she felt at a total loss.

On the third day, Jill set up a demonstration on the natural healing abilities of the nano-chits.  “The Doctor and I can talk to you all day about fighting disease, but there is nothing like a practical demonstration.  Please come close.”  As she said this, Ethan let the others move up front while he kept a little to the back.  Jill laid her bare arm on the table.  “Whenever you are ready.”  She spoke to the doctor.

“I would say, rather, when you are ready.”  Doctor Augustus responded, and when she had shut her eyes and nodded, the Doctor pulled out a knife about six or seven inches long.  Jill shut her eyes tighter as he pushed the knife right through her naked arm.  They all heard it thunk into the table, even above the shrill sound of Jill’s cry.  Peter Alexander shut his eyes.  Lars cried out with her.  When the Doctor pulled the knife out again, Jill’s eyes filled with tears, and she bloodied her lip as she bit it to keep a second cry at bay.  Ethan could hardly watch and soon turned away.  The others looked too stunned to move.  Then Jill’s face turned calm again, and she spoke without the least waver in her voice.

“I have instructed my chits to temporarily deaden the nerves in the area to end the pain.  The arm is now numb, like with a powerful anesthetic, and I cannot feel a thing.  You will also note how the wound has stopped bleeding, and it is already closing.  I have instructed my chits to completely heal the wound and restore the arm to perfect working condition.”

“I can see.”  Ali Pasha verbalized his amazement in his markedly improved English.  “The wound is already closing up.”  In only a few minutes, there was no longer a sign of any cut on the surface.

“It will take longer to heal the internal destruction to the muscles and all, but within an hour, certainly, it will be as if nothing ever happened.”  Jill finished speaking and raised the arm, pointed to the chairs and invited the others to sit.

“And these chits can be projected through the hands for the benefit of others?” Ali Pasha asked.

Jill nodded, “but only a few will be available for that at any given time.  You can heal some things by the laying on of hands, but not many people before you become depleted and exhausted.  Then the chits will need to grow again from the seeds within you.”  Jill looked up.  Ethan was not there.  He had left at some point and she had not even noticed.  Doctor Augustus, an old-time doctor with an excellent bedside manner, knew immediately what was happening.

“I think that is enough for today,” he suggested.

“No.”  Jill shook her head, but the doctor interrupted.

“Jillian.  Give your arm the time it needs to heal from the trauma.  You have given your charges more than enough to think about for one day.”  Jill did not argue.  She had reached the point where she wanted to cry, but it had nothing to do with her arm.

Guardian Angel-10 End Game, part 3 of 3

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Most were silent in the afternoon.  The food vendors were functioning and well stocked, so there were no worries there.  Lars and Ali Pasha received their nano-chits by injection, but Jill opted to put her teaching off until the morning.

“They need the time to make the adjustment,” she said, but it sounded like an excuse.

She admitted that she was too upset to teach, and no one argued with her.  Colonel deMartin spent the afternoon in quiet contemplation.  He considered his family’s “Long and distinguished military service,” as he put it.  Manomar simply stayed quiet.  He found a block of wood and spent the day until dusk, carving with his long knife.  Even Ali Pasha’s passion for new things seemed blunted as he struggled to imagine what it must have been like.  Peter Alexander spent most of the time in the hospital chapel in what he called a Cherokee custom of remembering the dead.

Ethan avoided Jill, which did not help matters with either of them.  They needed each other, but Ethan was feeling used and he could not shake the feeling.  When the evening hours signaled that it was time for bed, Ethan felt a little surprised to find Jill in his room.

“You don’t have to pretend to be my wife in this world,” he said.

“I don’t want to pretend.”  She sounded honest enough.  Ethan smiled, but in his heart, he doubted.  He imagined he was just another selection, another Guardian, and having thought about it all afternoon, he decided that he was willing to guard his home world, whatever that meant.  As for Jill, he imagined that she would move on soon enough and leave him to his world and his work.  He curled up with her that night, but he talked about other things.

“So, do we have any allies in this work?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” she answered.  “Last I knew we had only found four groups that had been world hopping longer than ourselves, and only two whose technology might be called superior.  None of them are concerned one way or the other, and we are only glad that we have not run into a troubling group with better technology than our own.  Three other groups are enthusiastic about the idea of guarding the worlds from external intrusion, but two can do little to nothing about it.  One, in particular, really stumbled on transitional technology before they were capable of handling it.  In one world, the technology itself has become a hotly divided political issue.  There are others, but to be honest, most worlds are self-committed.  Do you know what I mean?  The ones that we stand against and worry about would be just as quick to fight each other as fight us.”

“It sounds like everyone is just into themselves,” Ethan said, as he had another thought.  “So how many think they are the only real world and everyone else is sort of a poor photocopy.”

“There are a few that think that way,” Jill said.

“But basically, everyone is parochial to the extreme.”

“Yes and no.”  Jill repeated the phrase.  “There really are only two options for the worlds.  One is not to interfere with other worlds in any way.  There are some who explore and visit, but bend over backwards to leave no imprint.  The ones ruling my Earth, at this time, feel that is the way we should be.”

“You don’t agree?”

“No, of course not.  Given some of the groups already traveling across the dimensions, sticking your head in the sand is not an option.  Isolationism will not work because no one has figured out how to keep others out of your own world.  Eventually, the bad guys will catch up with you.”

“But you said two options.”  Ethan yawned.

“Well, the other option seems to be to exploit the worlds.  Some seek better technologies.  One steals art and artifacts.  Some seek to control, even enslave other Earths.”

“That’s where you draw the line.”  Ethan suggested.

“I don’t like exploitation of any kind,” Jill responded honestly.  “But if we don’t stand up and help worlds like the ones that Lars, Ali Pasha and Alexander come from, they will soon be under someone’s thumb.  Wouldn’t it be a big surprise to the rulers if suddenly all of the Muslims in Ali Pasha’s world became slaves to grow food for the Megaron, or if Colonel deMartin suddenly had to defend his Christian world from a highly advanced Islamic Jihad?”

“I see,” Ethan said and yawned.  He did see, but his doubts about Jill’s intentions and their relationship in general was clouding all of his other thoughts.  “So what is with those Neanderthal?  That is what they are, isn’t it?”

“Oh.”  Jill spoke softly.  “Yes, they are, and they style themselves as a sort of dimensional police.  They do not like the transfer of any technology, as if keeping it out of certain hands is going to prevent them from developing it themselves once they know it is possible.  On the positive side, they have agreed with our seeding the worlds against the advent of the Chernobyl, and they have even turned a blind eye to our establishing Guardians for the worlds, as long as we select, or as they say, as long as we only corrupt one or two people.  I think the Guardians are different for them and they can accept it because we are giving our technology away in a strictly limited sense rather than someone trying to take it.  For the most part, though, they are against the importing and exporting of technologies across the dimensions.”

Ethan was quiet.  “By the way, I rigged up an AC plug to recharge the laptop.”  Ethan’s only response was a deep breath.  He had fallen asleep.   Jill looked long into his sleeping face and whispered.  “What have I done to make you so unhappy?”  She laid her head against his chest and soon enough, she also slept.

************************

Jill and Ethan enter a difficult time.  Jill needs to teach and Ethan needs to learn, but it is hard when feelings get in the way…  Monday, Guardian Angel 11, Trouble in Paradise.  Don’t miss it…

Happy Reading.

Guardian Angel-10 End Game, part 2 of 3

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Everyone stopped walking.  It was a very hard concept to grasp for anyone who had not at least seen old film of an atomic blast.  Jill continued to explain while everyone contemplated the magnitude of such a weapon.

“Of course, that bomb fell eighty years before I got here, and I was here about eighty years ago.  No telling what happened since, but keep in mind the increase in their destructive capabilities, given another hundred or hundred and fifty years to work on things.  I hope it never came to war.”

“Hoping?”  It was Ali Pasha who verbalized for everyone, even if he could barely frame his thoughts into the Englander tongue.  “Such war is not for thinking!  Madness!  To destroying with such greatness, it is not war.  It is madness!”

People nodded, including Ethan, when they heard the dim sound of a slight whine in the distance.

It turned out to be a ship of some sort, or maybe a flying car or truck, or an ambulance, Ethan decided as the vehicle came closer.  There was something like a red cross on the side of the vehicle, and he associated the snakes on poles with the medical profession.  The vehicle was definitely air-born and moved like a helicopter despite having nothing as crude as rotor blades.  It set down in a clearing not too far from their location.  Jill led them straight to that place where they saw a man in the same kind of white lab coat Jill used to wear.  He got out and waved to them.  He invited them to join him.

“Come.”  The man said in a language only Jill and Ethan understood.  “This area is still designated orange and I only have a limited supply of Ronolion to treat radiation sickness.”

The man opened the back of the ambulance and Ethan motioned for the others to get in since Jill’s arms were both still busy holding him upright.  “And don’t touch anything!”  Ethan commanded as a precaution.  He looked especially hard at Ali Pasha and sought Manomar’s agreement, which the man gave with a nod of his head.  Jill helped Ethan get into the front seat where he sat between her and the man who drove the vehicle.  He did his best to remain upright without leaning on her too much.

“Good to see you again.”  The man started up the conversation right away.  “I expected you to come back about sixty years ago.”

“There were complications,” Jill said.  “I got stranded in another world for a time and lost my ship.  I picked up a husband, though.”  She hugged Ethan and Ethan hardly knew what to think, except that maybe this charade had gone on long enough.

“I thought you said one husband in a lifetime was enough,” the man responded with a fatherly glance in her direction.

“I changed my mind.  Ethan, this is Doctor Flavius Augustus, surname Galias.”

“Flavius is sufficient, or Doctor Augustus,” the Doctor said, and he stuck out his hand.  Ethan reached for the hand, but the man shook his wrist so Ethan responded in kind and tried not to feel foolish at having gotten it wrong to start with.

“Doctor?”  Ethan made the word a question.

“Medical.”  The man gave the one word answer.

“I selected Doctor Augustus to be Guardian for this world.  It was one of the last contacts I had before being stranded on your world.”

“I take it Ethan’s world did not have the technical expertise to repair whatever happened to your ship,” Doctor Augustus said.

“No more than your world,” Jill responded.

“But we have advanced in the years since you have been gone, you know.  And we proved it by nearly wiping out the human race.  I am glad you did not come back sixty years ago.  The war happened.”

Jill and Ethan sat in stunned silence for a minute.  They tried hard to absorb the news.  Doctor Augustus spoke again after a moment.

“What the war did not kill, the thirty-year winter did.  I can safely say that this was a war without winners.  There are some people still alive, mostly in equatorial regions like deep in the Amazon and the Congo where the winter was not so bad and where the level of civilization did not warrant destruction, but most of them cannot read or write.  Civilization is completely wiped out.”  With that comment, he brought the ambulance down to a dock on top of a large building in what was obviously a ghost town.  Jill spoke when he turned off the engine.

“Doctor, you can come with us to another place if you like.”

“No.”  The Doctor shook his head.  “There are still people here to protect, and who knows, perhaps over the centuries they may make a better show of things than we did, if there is someone here to give them that chance.”   He got out like an old man who had spent too much time in the ambulance service.  Jill and Ethan got out as well.  Neither knew what to say.  They let the others out without a word and went down into what was obviously a hospital.

The building appeared well kept, but most of that was automatic.  The doctor had rigged up some long-life generators that he said would run for ten thousand years, and he seemed to spend a lot of time repairing and tinkering with the mechanicals, as he called them.

When they went down off the roof and went inside the upper reception area, Jill spoke again.  “Doctor, two of these men are volunteers for their worlds.  I need two serum preparations for nano-chit injection.”

“I can do that,” the doctor said, and he added a note as he walked off down the hall to the lab.  “I wish them better fortune with their charges than I have had.”

With that, Jill had to tell the others what happened.