Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (22 page)

Andy sat in awkward silence, not knowing what to
do for her, questioning just who he had gotten hooked up with and wondering why
he had followed a dog's advice. All his doubts returning, he started marshaling
his arguments and explanations to tell her why this was nuts and that he was
going back home.

Just as suddenly as they had started, Lisanne's
tears stopped and Andy turned to face her and saw that the cat was sitting in
her lap staring into her eyes. She was softly petting the cat and nodding. Then
she looked directly at Andy.

"I'm sorry...again!" she said. "We don't have
much time and we do need to know each other's names at the very least, and we
don't have time for me to go getting upset no matter how crazy all this feels
to me, so, yes, I'd like to know who you are, and my name is Lisanne Locklin
and this cat is Merlin. He's very smart and he saved my life today. I'm a
recovering drunk, astronomer, occasional computer expert and up until a couple
of days ago, a general goof-off and party girl."

Andy watched as Lisanne took a bite of crunchy
onion rings after completing that speech. Her cat saved her life? While he was
contemplating that, she said, "Oh, and can you order me a large coffee 'cause I
think I'm going to need it--you should get one, too, since we'll be driving all
night."

"Sure," he said, and without a single question
he ordered two large coffees to go.

"Wait a minute! Drive all night? To where?
What's going on? What--?"

"First...your name? Rank? Serial number? Some
info on you would be nice before we go further, if you don't mind," asked
Lisanne a bit primly.

"Oh, well, okay," said Andy, taken aback. "I
guess you don't really know me--"

"More than you would realize, but go ahead."

That brought a raised eyebrow before he
continued, "My name is Andy Jordan, I'm twenty-nine, a meteorologist at a
Biloxi TV station--oh, you know that already--what else? I live alone, except
for Waldo, my dog, who is a Black Labrador. Single, never married. Only child.
Parents dead."

"Hmm. Similarities are that I'm single, never
married, and also an only child and my parents are dead, but I doubt that those
facts have anything to do with this," said Lisanne, brow furrowed as she thought
over the information he'd provided. "Although, really, how do we know what
factors play into this?"

"So? Are you going to tell me what's wrong with
Waldo? And who you are, really? And how you knew about the hurricane?" Andy
asked impatiently.

"What? Oh, yes, I was just thinking...not that
thinking about this has gotten me very far at all. But I'll tell you what
little I know. Let me just say at the outset that you won't be satisfied with
my story, that you will end up with more questions than you have now, and that
you'll never look at that dog or this cat in the same way again," Lisanne
assured him.

Air Field, Atlanta

"I can't! I can't get on an airplane! They
crash--I can't leave my home--I--I--" Phoebe stuttered. Her usual perfect appearance
was marred by smeared makeup due to several bouts of hysterical crying that had
occurred at her apartment. Maria finally had to drag her out the door and shove
her into the car. She already made her take one valium and was handing her
another one now.

"Here, Phoebe. Take this pill. It will help you
sleep on the plane so you won't even know what's going on. You can just fall
asleep and rest. You really need to rest."

"Y-y-yes...I d-d-do need to r-r-rest. But I'm
to-too scared to get on the pl-plane!" Phoebe cried out, tears beginning again.
At that instant Zack came into view at the top of the stairs of the Learjet.
Maria motioned him down the steps.

"What's up?" he asked, looking at Phoebe.

"We need to get her on that plane. We need to
get her to take this pill. I'll get the bags if you'll do whatever it takes to
talk her into going up those steps."

"Sure thing," Zack said. He promptly turned to
Phoebe and before she knew what was happening, picked her up and carried her up
the steps into the plane.

"Well," said Maria to a steward who had appeared
to help with the bags, "that's one way to solve the problem."

She climbed the steps and entered the plane to
find that Phoebe was already belted into a seat with eyes closed, Zack beside
her talking softly and rhythmically in a deep, low voice. Maria found a nearby
seat as the co-pilot let them know they would be taking off immediately.
Glancing at her watch, Maria thought whoever this Margaret Larson was, she had
organized their exit from Atlanta with precision as they were leaving exactly
on time. Maria leaned back in her seat and willed her body to relax. The
tenseness of the past hours, the guilt of knowing so many people were about to
die while she would be saved, knowing she couldn't save them, the days of
seeing so many dead, of so much loss--she felt as if her body was weighed down
with a ton of grief. Without even noticing, tears spilled from Maria's eyes and
she tried to blank the awful images that rolled across her mind. Gradually the
sound of Zack's voice, measured, melodic and warm, became an anchor to her in
the waves of grief she felt crashing over her. She tuned in to his voice and
closed her eyes. In minutes she was fast asleep.

Highway 55, heading North from Jackson,
Mississippi

Andy's cell phone was plugged into the battery
charger which was plugged into the lighter receptacle. His mind reeled as he
steered a course behind Lisanne's Mustang, and he thought that he needed new
words.

"Right, Waldo? There have to be words beyond
'amazement', 'total shock', 'utter disbelief'...except that I can't say I don't
believe any of this because it was
the cat
who thought of having us
exchange cell phone numbers so we could talk on the road while driving, and it
was
the cat
, again, who typed in the word 'battery' on the laptop...maybe
he picked up some kind of electromagnetic thingy that told him the battery was
running low...." Andy's voice trailed off.

Waldo stretched out in the back, dozing on and off,
only half-listening to Andy ramble on trying to sort out his emotions. It
didn't seem like such a big deal to Waldo. Of course, he'd had more time to get
used to the whole Merlin thing than Andy, and he knew already about
communication between animals. Still, it seemed like Andy was really fighting
the whole idea. Of course, he was human and humans did have the idea that they
were top dog, so to speak, as far as intelligence went. But there were all
kinds of intelligence out there in the world if you only knew where to look and
how to look. Merlin had told him they were on their way to see more people and
at least one more dog, which sounded good to him. This really had been the most
remarkable day of Waldo's life. Thinking about it now, he decided that Andy
could handle driving without him for a while, so he settled in for nap.

Meanwhile, in Lisanne's car an argument was
taking place.

"First of all, you didn't let me get my idea out
about stopping somewhere to buy CB radios. Those would probably be better than
dealing with cell phones," Lisanne said in an irritated tone.

Merlin just looked at her.

"Secondly, before I could tell him about it, you
just jump in and start typing! You scared him half to death doing it that way!
There's a right way and wrong way to announce this kind of news, and I think
you should have let me handle it."

Merlin growled low in this throat.

"Oh don't you growl-meow at me! Thirdly, you
haven't told me where we are going. Sure, you head us north toward Memphis, but
I know that's not our final destination. And you won't say why or where or when
or what the hell is going on! You could have at least taken the time to tell us
that back there!"

Merlin reached out a paw and sunk his claws into
her thigh.

"Ouch! You monster, that hurts! What the...oh...sorry...you
need the computer to answer all this, don't you? Um, sorry. Here you go," she
said, driving with one hand and flipping open the laptop with the other.

As Lisanne concentrated on her driving for a few
minutes, she heard the keys of the computer slowly clicking. When they stopped
she glanced back and forth from the road to the computer screen as she read.

CB LATER - NO TIME

HURR EFFECTS WILL HIT JKSON

FASTEST WAY

MEMPHIS - CROSS MISS RIVER

GET OVER BEFORE IT FLOODS

Lavender eyes opened wider as they focused on
Merlin briefly, and he heard her say succinctly, "Oh shit!"

Salmon Creek, Idaho

"When the dreams started, I thought my wife
Gladys was going crazy. She woke me up, shaking like a leaf, yelling, 'The
water, Fred, the water!' It took a while for me to understand what she meant.
See, we'd been having plumbing problems for a while and I thought she was
worried that the pipes were still not fixed and was dreaming about that, so I
told her not to worry and go back to sleep. But she kept holding onto my arm
babbling about lots of wind and finally said it was a dream about a hurricane.
I still didn't think anything of it--who would have, back then? A person has a
bad dream, so what? And that was before Miss Maria started reporting about the
dreams too. But my wife, Gladys, well, she just couldn't stop thinking about
it--burned my toast the next morning and fried my egg till it was hard as a
rock 'cause she was so distracted by that damn dream. Like I say, I thought she
was bonkers for a while there. When it happened, though, the hurricane, well,
that was a different story. It was eerie, I tell you, damn eerie, like one of
those Twilight Zone shows on TV or something. Gladys was pretty shook up, too,
wondering if she'd turned into one of those psychics since she went through the
change of life. Well, let me tell you, if it wasn't for Gladys pestering me all
mornin' about that dream we'd prob'ly be dead right now, and that's for sure,
make no mistake. Finally, she just put her foot down and started packing all
our clothes into suitcases and made me call the airport for tickets. Said no
matter what I wanted, we were going to visit her sister Louise here in Idaho
and that was that! If you know my Gladys, you know there's no talking to her
once she gets in one of her moods, so I took some money out of savings and got
us on a plane out of there. And damn if she wasn't right. Like I said, it was
eerie, downright eerie."

Highway 55, heading North to Memphis,
Tennessee

"What are you doing?" Lisanne asked Merlin.

Merlin didn't reply, just kept typing.

"You know I hate that when you don't answer."

Click, click went the keys.

"There has
got
to be a better way to
communicate with you!" she shouted.

Merlin tapped her arm with his paw and pointed
to the screen. She saw some kind of list, and then in big letters:

THERE IS A BETTER WAY.

"What? What? What do you mean there's a better
way? I got you the best computer they had. What more do you want? What better
way?" Lisanne's frustration meter was reaching its limit.

Click, click went the keys.

She glanced at the screen again.

OPEN YOUR MIND.

"Open my
what
? Open my mind? Have you
lost your marbles? Have you...hey, wait just a doggone second here...you did sorta
get into my mind before, didn't you? How did you do that? Like telepathy...cat
telepathy...oh, boy, I'd better never go see a shrink again because I'd get
locked up for sure! Okay, okay, let's think about this. You did tell me
stuff--how did I know it? I just kind of
knew
it, without really knowing
how I knew it. Well, that's helpful. How exactly do I open my mind, oh, Merlin
the Great?"

Click, click went the keys.

The screen said, RELAX.

"Hello? Anyone inside that skull of yours? Duh,
I'm driving! I don't think relaxing and driving go real well together." Her
tone getting more sarcastic, Lisanne went on. "Let's see, I'll just go into a
little trance here right on the highway doing sixty miles an hour and then you
can talk all you want to me--but, oh yeah, that's right, it won't matter
anymore 'cause we'll be
dead
, you numbskull, after we run off the road
or slam into a bridge abutment or something like that!"

Click, click went the keys.

Angrily she looked at the screen.

It said: YOURE AN IDIOT.

Lisanne exploded, "
I'm an idiot!
That's
what you write? That I'm an idiot? Why you four-legged excuse for an
intelligent being! I'll tell you what you are--you're a--you're a--you're...a
cat
!"
and then she started to giggle, realizing how ridiculous and wonderful the
entire thing really was. "Oh, Merlin, you're a cat! And we're having an
argument! Isn't that delicious!" And in that moment she relaxed and Merlin got
into her mind.

Behind Lisanne's car, Andy's emotions had ranged
from disbelief to limited acceptance back to denial of all he'd experienced
today and then to resigned acknowledgement that he was, in fact, following a
woman he hardly knew to Memphis based on the advice of a cat and a dog. He had
picked up the cell phone to give her a call when Lisanne's car swerved to the
right lane, narrowly missing a white Toyota. Speeding up to pass the Toyota,
Andy managed to maneuver his Range Rover behind Lisanne again and then punched
in her cell phone number, wondering what was wrong. Her car was still weaving
in the right lane.

After three rings she answered, her voice
sounding soft and fuzzy. "Hello?"

"Lisanne!" Andy said sharply. "Did you fall
asleep?"

"Wha--What?" Her voice began to change. "What's--What's
going on?"

"Lisanne! It's Andy, behind you. You've been
weaving all over the place and you almost took out another car--"

"Merlin! I told you this was going to happen!"
he heard Lisanne saying sternly.