Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (35 page)

He frowned. "That implies a real intelligence, a
plan, a strategy, if you will."

"Yes, that has been what every indication I've
seen has left me thinking. Look, I know it sounds far-fetched but--"

Maria had been walking toward them and now
interrupted. "Far-fetched? You bet it sounds far-fetched! Why did I ever let
you talk me into that broadcast? So now you're saying that 'Mother Nature' is
getting back at the humans? Do you know how nutty that sounds?"

"Maria--just hold on. Let's hear her out," Zack
requested.

"Fine," she said, throwing herself into a chair
at the big round table. Phoebe started bringing in plates of sandwiches and
tall glasses of water with slices of lemon floating among ice cubes. As they
removed the maps and began eating, Margaret explained.

"The hardest thing for you to believe will
probably be the crop circles, so let's start with that."

Phoebe choked on her sandwich and Maria looked
like she'd be yelling if she didn't have a mouthful of food. Zack just said, "Crop
circles."

"Right. We've all heard of them, some people
think they are hoaxes. Nobody has ever been really sure where they come from,
some natural phenomenon or just a big joke. I was always fascinated by them,
and I'd travel to locations around the world to see them. In the past couple of
years I've noticed two things: There are more of them and they are getting more
complex in design. It was about six months ago that I realized I could read
them--decode them."

"Oh, my God, I don't believe this!" Maria said
explosively.

"Now, Maria, just wait. Let her go on," Zack
said calmly.

"I think I need a valium," Phoebe said quietly
and was ignored.

Margaret continued. "At first it was just a
feeling. Then it became more certain, this sense that they were messages. I've
come to believe that they were messages to us. Warnings to stop our incredibly
short-sighted actions--or else something would happen to stop us." She stopped
and lifted her masses of wavy hair off her shoulders to cool off. "Oh, I didn't
believe it either at first. I have a history of, well, let's just call them
emotional problems and leave it at that."

Maria groaned. Zack's brow was furrowed. Phoebe
looked interested.

"For a while there I thought I'd gone
permanently around the bend, but then came a message that predicted or warned
of an event. The glacial flood in Peru."

"I covered that!" Maria said. Zack was nodding.
Phoebe looked surprised.

"Right. I watched your news reports. Remember
what you said then? That these glacial flood-bursts happen without any warning.
Even though we have satellites that can take photos of changes in a glacier,
nobody knows exactly when a piece of a glacier will break off and fall into a
lake that sits next to or within the glacier and cause a flood of debris--chunks
of ice, flowing mud, and rocks--well, boulders, really--to come flying down the
mountain into towns below. And it moves very, very fast. This one happened in
the Rio Santa Valley in the Peruvian Andes. Two whole villages were wiped out,
right?"

"Yes, they had no warning. It was a huge mess--they
couldn't rebuild. The survivors, what few there were, moved to other areas."

"The mess," Phoebe said, shuddering. "I remember
the pictures of the mess. It was horrible."

"And quite a few people died, too, Phoebe," Zack
said sharply. "It wasn't just the mess that was bad."

"Oh, yes, of course you're right," she said
quickly.

Maria asked Margaret, "So you knew ahead of
time?"

Margaret nodded, munching her sandwich.

"How much ahead of time did you know?" Maria
questioned her intently.

"Oh, please," Margaret said, "don't tell me you
expected me to warn the people in Peru about that?"

"Well," Maria began, but Zack was shaking his
head and so was Margaret.

"What?"

"Who would have believed her back then? Nobody.
The scientists all said there was no real way to have a warning. They could
know it was a possibility, but nobody could have known the exact time and day
it happened. And you did, didn't you, Margaret? Know the exact time and place?"
Zack asked.

"Yes," Margaret replied thankfully, smiling at
Zack. "You've got it--I had a date and a time even, but I had no idea what to do
with the information. Remember, this was all still new to me. I still thought I
was deluding myself about decoding those messages. Then it happened, the
glacial flood. Right on time. I think I was in shock, literal shock, for
twenty-four hours at least after seeing it on the news."

Zack murmured. "Cassandra. Predicting
apocalyptic events. It had to be scary."

"Yes, yes, it was," Margaret said wearily. "I
got a few other warnings, storms and things like that, but finally I truly
believed. That's when I found out about the L.A. earthquake." Holding a hand up
stop Maria's outburst, she continued, "And no, nobody believed me. I did make
phone calls, dozens of phone calls. Nobody would listen. I was dismissed as a
crazy person. About that time I realized I could hear the animals and what
seemed to be a voice coming from the planet herself. I came out here to see a
shaman I'd heard of to try and get answers. And I kept trying to warn people,
but until recently I thought it was hopeless."

Zack leaned forward, arms crossed on the table,
his food forgotten and shoved out of the way. "But now you don't think it's
hopeless? Why not?"

"Because more people are having the dreams. More
and more people can hear the animals. It's not just me anymore. So maybe we
have a chance, a chance to fix things. Humans can change their behavior. If we
can survive."

Conway, Missouri

"I can't believe you ate all of that," Nathan
said, shaking his head.

"So? This may have been my last order of fries,
my last big mac, my last large coke, my last fried apple pie," Alex said
dramatically.

"Yeah, but what about the soft tacos you had
from Taco Bell on the way to Mickey D's?"

"I was hungry! What does it matter, anyway? If
we're going to die soon, I'm not worrying about gaining weight, that's for
sure!"

"Who says we're going to die? You keep calling
Cape Fair a 'safe zone,' so doesn't that imply we're heading for safety? And I
wasn't worried about you gaining weight, you nutcase, I was thinking you'd be
so full you'd just want a nap instead of driving for a couple more hours."

Alex yawned. Nathan frowned at her and she
laughed. "I'll be okay. You know I'm in my element behind the wheel of any type
of automobile." She stopped, pondering, then said, "What'll happen when there's
no gas? No more fast cars."

"The world will be a safer place for the rest of
us with you off the road. That's what'll happen." Then Nathan said, "Ouch!" as
Alex punched him in the arm. "You do realize I have a permanent bruise on my
arm from you hitting me?"

"Sorry. It comes from my family. Everybody hit
everybody on a regular basis. Believe me, I've improved with time." She started
grinning. "Hey, you realize we're criminals now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well," she drawled, "we just wrote a ton of hot
checks to buy all this stuff. We're officially on the lam!"

"Shhh. You could say that in a quieter voice,"
Nathan replied, glancing around them in the restaurant.

"I hope your sister is happy with all this stuff
we're bringing them--considering that she's corrupted us with her demands for
supplies!"

"You were already corrupted. And what's with
blaming my sister?"

"Where else would I be getting the information
from, the list of what they need there? Has to be your sister now that we know
she's there."

"Don't start on me again about that. How could I
know? You only said Missouri. You never said Cape Fair in the beginning. Plus,
we've kind of had a few major things to think about besides where my sister
lives. End of the world precludes remembering my sister's address."

"Maybe. I'm wondering now, though, if it wasn't
your sister, who could be sending me those messages? I think it's her. She's
probably leading some kind of survivalist community there. Hey, maybe it's a
cult she's started!"

Nathan sighed. "You don't even know my sister.
Why would you say that? Jessica's actually a very stable, happily married,
mother of a cute little girl who I forget how old she is. Jessica works from
home and is perfectly ordinary. She'll probably be blown away when we arrive
and tell her about all this stuff. Her husband, John, now he's a science
fiction writer so he'll probably believe it's really happening more easily than
my sister. But it will be hard on them. I mean they have a little kid and all.
We'll have to be careful how we break it to them. Don't want to scare them all
at once."

"Yeah," Alex said glumly, "that would be a
bummer. To see your kid sitting there and thinking about how the world is going
to end. Not good."

"Well, maybe the world won't end. We're bringing
supplies, it's a 'safe zone' and you're getting messages from someone out
there, so all may not be lost."

"No matter how you look at it, the
world-as-we-know-it is going to end."

"Yeah," Nathan said grimly. "C'mon, let's head
out. Can't wait to spread the cheery news."

Cape Fair, the Samuels' House

"So," Rachel said, "you're telling us the world
is ending? What about my job? My life back in New York? I'm just supposed to
accept what you're telling me and stay here?" She stalked angrily away from
John.

John sat down in the redwood chair on the
slate-rock patio. He watched Rachel pace back and forth in front of him, her
body trembling with fear and rage. Rachel had always been the fiery-tempered one
of the two siblings. Sure, he could be intense, but he'd been putting his
emotions on paper for most of his life, so he wasn't apt to blow-up in anger.

"How could you do this? How could you bring us
out here on some pretense and then dump this fantastic story on us? What about
Mother? This kind of thing could be too much for her. I just can't believe you
did this!"

"Gracie seems to be handling it just fine.
Better than you, anyway."

Rachel glared at him. "I just can't accept it!
Talking animals and prophetic dreams--come on! Are you telling me you just
accepted all this without question? You, the guy who researches everything
before he writes a story? You, the guy everyone called 'Renaissance Man' in
college because you had so many different interests? You studied everything!
How can you just suddenly start believing in this psychic crap?" Then she asked
suspiciously, "Is it because it's like one of your books?"

"No, actually, it's not like one of my books.
Well, it is, in terms of it being rather amazing and unreal-feeling, and yes,
probably my writing science fiction has helped me to cope with it. But that's
not the reason I believe it." He leaned forward in the chair, gazing at her
intently. "I believe it because I've seen my daughter--and the dog--after one of
those dreams." Rachel flinched.

John continued, explaining, "I've had the dreams
myself--I can't remember much, just bits and pieces, but I've seen the evidence
that this is true. I've seen my daughter change over the past few weeks. And I'm
scared, Rachel. Maybe more scared than you right now."

"You--scared? I don't believe it. You've always
been a rock. Solid and grounded--that's why I don't understand how you believe
in all this nonsense."

He shook his head in frustration and rubbed his
eyes. "I'm scared, Rachel, scared for my daughter. First, she seems to be
changing in ways I don't understand. I don't have the ability to talk to
animals, but she does. I don't know how she is coping with the dreams she is
having. She gets the full-blown version, you know, with all the death and
destruction in living color. She knows things she should have no way of
knowing. I don't know where it will end for her."

Rachel stood stock-still listening to the fear
and yes, grief, in his voice. Riveted, she asked, "You said 'first' – what's
second?"

"Second, I'm afraid of what kind of world will
be left for her to grow up in--will it be safe for her? Will there be any 'civilization'
anymore? That guy, Black, who just got here. Do you know what he's got out in
his camper and trailer parked in my driveway? Guns! Weapons, of all kinds, to
protect us when our society falls apart. I've never been all that fond of guns,
but I do believe in my protecting my family. I've always had a shotgun--well,
you remember how Dad was about guns."

"Let's not bring up Dad right now, okay? I've
got enough to deal with."

"Rachel, I wish it had been different with you
and Dad--" but Rachel stopped him from talking, putting a hand over his mouth.

"Like I said, let's not bring up Dad."

John nodded. "Right. Anyway, Black is here to
help with protecting this little enclave we're establishing. Sam seems to know
all about him and the weapons. Seems to approve of it. Rachel, she's only six
years old! Yet she's in on a lot of planning meetings. Hell, she's the one with
most of the information! So we sit there, being guided by a little girl, my
sweet, innocent little daughter, telling us what we need to know to survive the
coming days. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel as her father?" He
stomped off angrily into the backyard. Rachel ran to keep up with him.

"Okay, okay, I hear what you're saying. I guess
I just have trouble believing all this is real. You've evidently had weeks to
live with it and let it all soak in. To get used to it. Give me some time, big
brother. I just need some time to sort it all out."

John stopped walking and put his arm around her
shoulders, giving her a quick hug. "Thanks, Rachel, thanks for giving it a
chance--and for hearing me out. Sometimes it's hard to know who to talk to about
my feelings. Jessica and I talk--but she's going through her own stuff about
this, and we both end up not wanting to burden each other. She's really come
through like a trooper, been really brave about Sam, but I don't feel I can
tell her all my worst fears."