Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (4 page)

"Please continue," the shaman said, leaning
forward with interest.

Margaret glanced at her and smiled, saying, "So
you still want to hear my story? Hmm, I'm not quite sure what that means--either
you're as nutty as I am or my story has more validity than I thought--and I think
I'd prefer it if we were both crazy! All right, here's the rest of it. I came
here and saw the crop circles in the sand. I'd read of them appearing in ice,
but these were the first I'd seen in sand. I guess we shouldn't even call them
crop circles since there weren't any crops on the ice or sand--but they were the
same kinds of patterns as crop circles. And they were amazing, more elaborate
than anything I'd heard of. I hired a small plane to fly over so I could get
pictures. Then I studied the pictures and somehow, I don't know how, they
started to make sense. It was like a puzzle, finding a key that allows you to
decipher a code, and suddenly, I could read them! It was a message."

Margaret fell silent, remembering the excitement
and stunned surprise she had felt. How to describe it? "I don't know how to
explain what that felt like. There I was in my hotel room thinking I'd
discovered something wonderful, yet not knowing how I did it. I have to say, I
wondered if I needed to be on major psychotropic drugs at that point. I'm a
person who needs logic, things need to make sense in my life, and this made no
sense at all. I mean, the message made sense, but the voice and my figuring out
the code to the crop circles...well, it was just impossible! Yet, there it was.
After a few days of looking over other photos of the circles from various
places around the world, I realized that I was getting better at it, that I
could understand almost all of them. And the whole time that was going on, the
voice was becoming clearer, more understandable. Finally, it dawned on me that
the voice must be providing the translating key, the information I needed to
de-code the crop circle pictograms. I still don't feel I understand all of
this, but I also feel strongly that it is happening, that it's real, and that I
need to learn more, to know what to do with the information I'm getting."

The shaman asked, "This voice, do you know who
or what it is?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. I have an idea,"
Margaret replied.

Irene waited and nodded encouragement for her to
go on.

Margaret hesitated, and then blurted out, "I
think it's the voice of the planet, of the Earth. I don't know if you've read
any of Lockley's books, but if I had to put a name to it, I'd say it was the
voice of Gaia, the planetary consciousness--the mind of the Earth."

"Ahhh," sighed Irene, a large smile creasing the
deeply tanned skin of her face.

Los Angeles suburb, California

Clutching the gold cross removed from around her
mother's neck, Maria gazed unblinking out the windshield of the van. Her eyes
were dry now. Jaw clenched so tight pains shot up the side of her face. Maria
repeated the words to herself spoken to her dead parents less than an hour
before. "I'll make you proud of me. I'll do a good job."

Turning abruptly to face Zack, she asked, "Where's
the cat?"

"What? What cat?" Zack asked.

"Cleo. She was Mama's cat. Where is she?"

"Uh, Maria, she's probably dead somewhere in the
house," Zack said gently. "I'm sorry."

"No, you don't understand. Cleo always, always,
slept on top of Mama's feet. She's a big tabby cat, and it was a running joke
how Mama had such cold feet even in the warm weather here and how Cleo took
care of her. That cat never slept anywhere at night but on Mama's feet. You and
I both saw the bed." Maria's eyes glazed over for a moment, the scene of her
parents' death forever fixed in memory. She shook herself. "Anyway, I didn't
see a cat anywhere in that bedroom, did you?"

"No, no, I didn't," Zack said thoughtfully.

Maria's brow furrowed in thought. "I just don't
get it. Cleo would never have left Mama's side. She was always around during
the other earthquakes they've had out here. When we get time, I want to go back
there and call for her around the neighborhood. Maybe she made it."

"We still have some time now and we're not that
far away," Zack said. "If you want to go back--"

"No. Hand me the phone. I have a job to do. I'm
calling New York. We're going live in half an hour from wherever the van is
then located. If Cleo's still alive, she'll fend for herself until I can come
back. She's very independent."

Cleo's not the only one, Zack thought as he
handed her the phone, swerving through the maze of downed trees and utility
poles.

Cape Fair, Missouri

White lace curtains fluttered in the cool
evening breeze as Mrs. Philpott sat down to dinner in the sunroom. She called
it the sunroom because it had eight windows that let in brilliant sunshine
every morning to nourish the jungle of plants lining the walls. The room was
mainly used as a dining room. Mrs. Philpott loved the feel of the old oak table
under her fingertips. Tonight the bare wood expanse was unadorned by tablecloth
and held Mrs. Philpott's china dinner plate, cloth napkin, and a silver fork.
The china had been her mother's and had tiny blue flowers etched on the rim
that were covered up now by a slab of lasagna, salad and garlic bread. Mrs.
Philpott made terrific lasagna. However, she wasn't concentrating on the taste
of her dinner.

As she watched the gathering shadows outside the
windows, she thought about her dreams. Lately, her dreams seemed more vivid
than at any time in her life. They also seemed connected. Every night for the
past month, Mrs. Philpott felt she had been seeing a story unfold in her
dreams. Except for one night a week ago, when she had dreamed about an
earthquake in California. She hadn't thought much about the dream until two
days later when the morning news was interrupted with the story of the "big one"
hitting California. An earthquake of 9.8 magnitude at least, the geologists
were now saying, but essentially an earthquake of immeasurable force.

Mrs. Philpott had always been a practical woman,
not given to flights of fancy. She read constantly; usually she had three books
going at once. As a scientist, she believed there were things that could not be
explained in this world, but generally felt that was only because we had not
learned enough to figure them out. She was brought up as a Methodist, but
decided around age forty that most religion was based on myth and legend. The
supernatural might be fun to read about in a Stephen King novel, but it never
entered into her daily reality.

She put down her fork, straightened her
shoulders, and took a deep breath. "All right, Virginia," she said to herself, "go
ahead and say it out loud. You are having an inexplicable experience. It wasn't
a coincidence you dreamed about the earthquake. It was a dream of precognition.
Something fantastic is happening in your dreams. The dreams of the past month
are a story--and not one you made up. I think...I think someone or something is
communicating to me through my dreams, crazy as that sounds."

Sonoran Desert, Arizona

At first she did not believe the shaman when she
talked about shape-shifting. To become a wolf, bear, or eagle was not possible,
thought Margaret. But from what the shaman said, it sounded like she'd be in
the mind of the animal. A mind-meld type of thing, where she would be able to
see what the animal saw, know things from its perspective. The whole idea
scared her. What would it be like to lose the sense of her body entirely? She
remembered dissociating to cope with the abuse in childhood, remembered how it
felt to be less and less there. It had taken a lot of work to not feel that
mind and body were separate. Would this bring up the old responses? Was it a
form of dissociating? Could her mind get stuck in the animal's mind? That
shaman had better have some good answers.

Cape Fair, Missouri

I can't believe it took her two weeks to
figure out what was going on. She's not a stupid woman, but she is human.
Sometimes it's difficult to depend on their obviously weak powers of
observation. Thank goodness the California earthquake made the news, or else
she might never have put it together with her dream that predicted the quake. I
wonder how she will interpret all this. Mrs. Philpott is a fairly pragmatic
woman, and I am sure she is not going to be happy about the planet talking to
her in her dreams.

It wasn't such a shock to me since I've heard
that voice my whole life. Well, maybe not so directly and loudly as recently (a
planet with attitude can be pretty loud), but it was familiar to me. Still, she
should be able to understand what is happening. She's read the same books I
have--actually they were her books--that discussed the problem: human culture.

I never read any books until I moved in with
Mrs. Philpott. My life was a miserable, yet sadly normal, experience. In my
first year of life, my previous owner, Carolyn, decided she wanted a calm cat,
one that wouldn't scratch her or her furniture. Without any consideration of my
feelings in the matter, she had my front paws de-clawed one day. Carolyn wanted
a designer cat, designed to her specifications, to fit in with her designer
life. She saw me as a live exhibit in her cult-of-decoration lifestyle. When I
refused to conform to her rules of captivity, running off into the woods behind
her house every chance I got, climbing trees she thought were impossible for me
to climb without claws, and generally not meeting her every whim as the
perfectly precious Siamese that fit in so well with her oriental-theme living
room furniture, she refused to feed me.

I subsisted on lovely little sparrows and rodent
kills until she forgot why she was angry at me. The final straw that led to the
turning point in my life came when I arrived at the front door wounded from the
previous night's fight with a stray determined to take over my territory.
Picking me up, unaware of the various puncture wounds and scratches covering my
body, Carolyn proceeded to fly into a rage when drops of my blood soaked into
her white linen suit. Muttering about how she should have had me "fixed," she
drove me directly to an animal shelter to be "put to sleep."

Mrs. Philpott happened to be in the shelter that
day looking for a cat. Her fifteen-year-old feline had died a month before, and
she was ready to share her life with a cat again. Rescuing me from the clutches
of the overly-perfumed, overly-coifed Carolyn, Mrs. Philpott took me directly
to her veterinarian, and then to her home in Cape Fair. The past four years
spent here have been idyllic for me, and I think I have filled a void in Mrs.
Philpott's life as well.

Tonight, however, will be another turning point.
I wonder if she will see what the dreams are telling her. I've been aware my
entire life that humans were the biggest problem the planet faces. They've wanted
to run the world, or better yet, the entire universe. What silly, dangerous
creatures they are! A culture that produces the Carolyns of the world is not
a healthy one. Humans have played out their fantasy of domination, believing
they were royalty, the end product of evolution, determined to control anything
that is nonhuman. In the process they have exterminated species, fouled the air
and water, and molded the very earth to fit their designer specifications. What
humans never seem to realize is that the planet herself might eventually
have something to say about her destruction.

When I first began to perceive Gaia's plan, I
have to confess I was in awe of its scope and depth. As any cat knows, training
humans can be a frustrating and exhausting business. To hear of a plan to not
just train, but drastically alter the behavior of millions of humans was
overwhelming. It wasn't until I realized to what lengths Gaia was willing to go
that I believed it could work. The loss of human life will probably be massive,
but then the loss of nonhuman life has already reached astronomical
proportions. And it must be done.

I've wondered if some will see Gaia's actions as
murderous. Is it possible that Gaia is responding in a human way? Has she
been infected by the human culture story and is now going to take over the
role of conqueror? Living in close proximity to humans affects us. Plant,
animal, or planet, we have been changed to some extent by human culture. I see
Gaia's response to humans as natural. It is a survival response. Human
behavior must change or the planet will die. It is that simple. The only
question is, how long will it take, how many humans will die, before they
understand and change their ways?

Will Mrs. Philpott understand that human life
has become unnatural, that the need to re-make the world in an unnatural format
has put the freedom of all life at risk? As I look at her writing furiously
on yellow legal pads, I imagine that she will. The changes in our
relationship could be drastic. Even though she has always treated me well, she
has never truly seen me as an equal. How will she react when she discovers
that I do, in fact, have a language--and that I can read and understand her
language? When the coming disasters cause interruptions in food supply, will
she learn how to hunt with me?

Well, I think I've spent enough time ruminating
here in my favorite chintz-covered chair. I wonder how long it will take me
to get Mrs. Philpott into the computer room so I can really talk to her? I
know she will be surprised to see me talking to her through the use of her
keyboard, but after all, humans really should have expected this development.
What cat could stay away from a machine with a mouse attached?

On a plane over the Atlantic Ocean

"Have you noticed anything strange in the past
few days, Alex?" Nathan asked tentatively.

"What do you mean, strange? I've been running
from one mode of transportation to another, not sleeping, eating junk food,
just about everything looks strange to me right now," Alex responded testily.