Chapters Twelve and Thirteen

What a figment of the imagination human beings are!  What a novelty, what monsters!  Chaotic, contradictory, prodigious, judging everything, mindless worm of the earth, storehouse of truth, cesspool of uncertainty and error, glory and reject of the universe.

Who will unravel this tangle?

“Hiding out, Red?”

I almost tore page forty-one out of a priceless volume of Pascal’s Pensées when I started and looked up.  “Eran!”

I didn’t know how much I had missed him until I heard his voice.  If he hadn’t resembled death warmed over, I would have jumped up and hugged him.  As it was, I couldn’t be absolutely sure I wouldn’t knock him over in the process.  He looked pale and haggard; even his rumpled gray tunic seemed tired.  But there was a spark, a banked gleam in his eye, and he radiated an almost imperceptible air of triumph that instantly riveted my attention.  I closed the book and laid it in my lap.

“You’re a hard woman to track down,” he said with a ragged smile.

“I didn’t know you were trying.”  I shrugged.  “To tell you the truth, I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Avoiding you?  Nonsense.  Move over, darling, and let me sit down.  Ah, that’s better,” he sighed as he sat, his body angled toward me, one arm draped across the back of the bench.  He stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles and leaned against the bulkhead, glancing around.  “Cozy little nook.  I’d forgotten about it.”

So had I, until I ran into Liriene Chancal at the Rec, and we got to talking about her favorite subject, the old-fashioned library she curated with loving care.  I hadn’t visited for some time, but the longer we talked about it, the more its book-lined peace and quiet beckoned.  When I walked through the portal for the first time in five years I thought, Why did I stay away so long? What could be more wonderful than shelves crowded with volumes bound in muted greens, blues, and burgundy;  the warm, rich glow of cherry-wood tables and benches; and spindle-backed chairs with padded leather seats?

Sitting next to Eran, I drew in the muted scents of furniture polish and leather.  I let my gaze trace the elaborate balcony scroll work and linger on the stained-glass inlay embedded in the bulkhead above and behind Liriene’s desk.  “It’s a very … human place, isn’t it?”

“Appeals to your low-tech nature, no doubt.”

“Mm.  I’ve been spending a lot of time here lately.  It’s tranquil.  Know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

For a while neither of us spoke.  Finally, I turned to look at him, “You don’t look so good.”

One corner of his mouth quirked wryly.  “I seem to remember voicing a similar sentiment about you a while back.”  He slid me a sideways glance.  “Can’t say the same today, however.  You appear to have made a remarkable recovery.”

I shrugged.  “Maybe.”  Not sure where he stood on things, I left it at that for the time being.  “I’ve been worried about you.”

He seemed genuinely surprised.  “Whatever for?”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Shouldn’t have told me?  Don’t be daft.”  He reached over to scoop me against his side, pressing my head into his shoulder.  “Why?”  I lifted my head to glance toward the portal to our immediate left.  “Relax, Kai, there’s no one out there, and we’ll know immediately, if someone comes in.  Now why do you say you shouldn’t have told me?”

I let my head rest against his shoulder again.  “Because I knew it would throw you completely out of synch.  You’d feel like the life you had been living wasn’t yours anymore, like you were inhabiting someone else’s skin.”  I paused.  “Remember the last time we talked?”

“Mm hm.”

“You said I wasn’t with the rest of you, even when I was physically present.  Well, guess what?  You were right.  Inside, I was standing off by myself, separated from everyone else by a truth none of you even remotely suspected.  I can’t tell you how many times I came this close to blurting it out.  By the Sage, it would have been such a relief to blurt it out!  But I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Come on, Eran.  We both know what a bombshell that would have been.  ‘Oh by the way gang, let me share this little insight with you.  Never mind the fact that it directly challenges the Prime Tenet.’”

“It does do that,” he murmured.

“And we both know where challenging the Prime Tenet would have gotten me.”

He nodded.  “Go on.”

“I was alone and scared, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Every minute of every day, I was trying to figure out what the truth meant to the Colony, what it meant to me.  I had nowhere to turn, and it was eating me alive.  Then there you were, my own personal knight in shining armor, determined to save me from myself.  You asked—”

“Several times,” he reminded me.

“—and even though the truth had turned my life upside down and made me miserable, even though I knew it would do the same to you, I told you.”

“I didn’t give you much choice.”

“Acting selfishly or selflessly always involves a choice.”

“You’re right, of course.”  His hand caressed my hair, and I lost track of my thoughts for a moment, because it felt so good to be with him again.

“Has it occurred to you that our lives fairly begged to be turned upside down?” he asked.   “All right, we’ll be miserably uncomfortable for a while, maybe quite a long while.  But isn’t knowing the truth worth some personal misery?  You and I have spent our lives searching out things that are objectively true—you through history, I through the physical laws.  Now, ready or not, a momentous truth has dropped into our laps.  Surely we’re not going to run from it?”

“I don’t think we can.”  And I no longer wanted to.  “I was afraid it would destroy us.”

“No.”  He said it with the calm certainty of someone who had worked it all out.  “The only truth that can destroy us is the one we turn our backs on.  If we face truth, approach it with respect and a willingness to question, learn, and change if need be, the truth—no matter how initially painful it may strike us, or what cherished illusions it may shatter—will ultimately work to our good.”

I considered his words, my head against his shoulder, my fingers absently stroking the book’s textured leather cover.  At first, as my certainties dropped away one by one, I had gone into free fall; flailing for a way back to solid ground had been instinctive.  I had feared the truth, I had resented the truth, I had wrestled with the truth.  Finally I had embraced it and decided to follow, to see where it might lead.  The fact that he had come to the same decision easily qualified as the best news of my life.

“Remember ‘mankind’s journey?’” he asked softly, recapturing my attention.  “The ‘unrelenting forward march?’”

“I remember.”

“It kept going ‘round and ‘round in my head:  What if this is our call to join in again?  Do our part to move things along?”

I tilted my head to look up at him.  “I know exactly what you mean.  The same thought occurred to me.”

“I haven’t thought about much else,” he replied, staring off across the library.  “I rather liked the idea of a call.  It sounded noble, made me feel quite heroic about choosing to answer.”

“Like a knight in shining armor?”

He grinned crookedly.  “Something like that.  Of course, that was before I realized the march had resumed all on its own the moment you were faced with the truth.”

It was easy to follow his drift.  “Because the awareness itself changed me.”

“Right.  Nothing heroic about it, you simply became other than you had been.  The Alphas knew if that ever happened to even one of us, stasis could no longer be maintained.  If one changed, gradually everyone would be altered in some way and measure.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead but, “I see what you mean.”

He nodded.  “The Alphas couldn’t countenance that possibility; it would defeat their purpose.  Hence, the psychological straightjacket approach of the Prime Tenet and the Protocols.”

“But the Alphas couldn’t guard against an epiphany that would set off a spontaneous change.”

He shook his head.  “No.  And now mankind’s journey has resumed without any conscious help from you or me.  What’s more, we can’t stop it or reverse course.  As I see it, the only call we can choose to answer is the call to journey well.  The question becomes, ‘How?’”  I had my own ideas about that but didn’t want to interrupt.  “How many decisions will be ours to make,” he mused, “and how many will be forced on us by the actions and attitudes of others or dictated by human nature?”

“And what about the choices we do have?” I said.  “How do two people who have never had to choose, choose well?  What criteria do we use?”  The future, once familiar and expected, was now cloaked, unknowable, teeming with uncertainties … and ripe with possibilities.  “We’re going to make mistakes,” I murmured.

“Without a doubt,” he agreed, “but I’m not talking about quality of our decisions.  I’m talking about the courage to make difficult choices and to make them as best we can according to the understanding we have at the time.”

“Which brings us back to facing the truth, approaching it with respect, etcetera.”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Yes ….”

“But?”

I sat up straight and turned toward him, lifting my hands, palms up.  “Eran, I agree this the way to go.  It’s the one thing I’m sure of at this point.”  Letting my hands fall back into my lap, I continued, “But we don’t live in a vacuum.  Sooner or later, the choice we’re making will show; it’ll become public knowledge.  When it does, the others won’t be able to help but see it for what it is:  an absolute break with the Prime Tenet.  Best case?  We end up defending ourselves before the Council.”

“And?”

“And we would be fools to think everyone will understand, let alone agree with us!  Some will refuse to abandon the Tenet and the Protocols, some simply won’t be able to.  But the truth is, we’ll never get that far.  The Colony can’t tolerate people like us.  That’s what Alpha Genesis is all about.”  I gazed at him searchingly.  “What do you know about the Protocol?”

He shook his head.  “Not much.  Is it that bad?”

“Worse than you can possibly imagine,” I assured him grimly.  I repeated Enid’s description of the intervention nearly word for word.  “That’s what we have to look forward to if they catch us.”

His troubled gaze held mine for a long, silent minute.  Finally, he sighed heavily and looked away again.  “Look, I admit I don’t have all the answers and no comforting guarantees, except my steadfast-if-idealistic conviction that the truth will be best for all of us.”  He fell silent again, stroking my upper arm.  After a while he suggested softly, “Let’s take it one day at a time, all right, Red?  It’s enough for now that we start to work out this thing in our own lives.”

“And what do we do about the rest of our world while we work it out?”

“We carry on as best we can.”

“I tried that, remember?”  His lips curved when he caught my wry tone.

“Ah, but you tried to carry on alone.”  He gave my shoulder a bracing squeeze.  “We’re in this together now.”

Together. It was enough for the moment.

“Okay.”  I reached across to pat the hand resting on my upper arm.  “We’ll carry on as best we can, just the two of us.”
I felt him go still.  Heard him take a deep, quiet breath, and involuntarily tensed in reaction.

“Kai.  Look at me.”

I did and was instantly snared by his vibrant-green gaze.  The gleam I had noticed earlier was no longer banked.  It blazed.  My breath caught.  “What?”

He shifted on the bench to face me, took both my hands in his.  “It won’t be just the two of us.”  He paused.  “There are others.”

“Others?”  My mind stumbled to a complete halt.  I stared.  “What …” I had to stop to moisten my lips.  “What do you mean … ‘There are others?’”

“I mean,” he answered in sotto voce triumph, “quite recently this truth dropped into other laps.  We’re not the only ones thinking about the importance of each unique individual, of beginnings and endings … of the journey.  Others have been led to question and follow to see where the truth will lead.”

“How do you know?” I asked slowly, then, picking up speed, “How many others?  Who are they?”

“Well, I didn’t take a public poll, if that’s what you’re afraid of.  As to how many … two that I know of.  If you’re up for it, I’ll introduce you to them right now.”

He stood, pulling me to my feet.  When the book slid unnoticed from my lap to fall open on the deck, he bent to retrieve it.  “What’s this you’ve been reading?” he murmured, scanning the page.  “Pascal, eh?  ‘So it is true to say that everyone is under an illusion, because while the opinions of people are sound, they are not thought out.  They think the truth lies where it does not.’”  Closing the cover, he stared pensively at the spine before handing the volume back to me.  “Tuck the old Frenchman back on his shelf, darling, and let’s be on our way.”

“Where are we going?” I asked as I slid the book in next to a slender volume of Descartes.

“To the garden.”

Ω

Chapter Thirteen

The corridor smelled faintly of antiseptics as Eran led me past the Gen-Lab.  I glanced through the wide bank of windows to our left and found everything in the Womb Room exactly as I had left it, up to and including the blue-masked personnel gliding between lab stations.  The hush that blanketed the world behind the windows extended into the corridor, broken only by our footfalls.

Beyond the Gen-Lab, we started through a system of locks and portals, traveling through cool, dimly lit spaces where ductwork hugged the overheads and quietly humming machinery lined both bulkheads.  About the time I was ready to ask Eran if he was sure he knew where he was going, we stepped through another portal, and the light changed, warming from anemic blue-white to sunny gold.  I noticed the shift more or less peripherally; most of my attention was riveted on the enormous near-transparent dome in front of me.

I was still gaping at it when a cold fog descended on us.  I glanced around.  “What—”

“Bactericide and fungicide, probably an antiviral agent as well,” Eran explained.  “To protect the crops.  It sanitizes both externally through contact and internally through inhalation.  Don’t worry, Red, it won’t kill any microbes you need.”

“Glad to hear it.”  I edged closer to the structure, squinting against the bright light inside as I tried to see past the condensation.  “I can’t make out anything.”

“Patience, darling.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Only a minute more.”

The fog finally dissipated and the lightly frosted portal slid open.  I followed Eran through but didn’t get more than two steps inside, because my first look at the gardens stopped me dead in my tracks.  Between one breath and the next, I found myself pierced by an almost unbearable longing—an aching suspicion that this was where I always yearned to be, was meant to be, only I never knew it.

The air was warm and moist, kissed by a gentle, blossom-scented breeze.  Straight ahead, sun-drenched fields rolled out of sight to the left of the wide path we stood on, orchards to the right.  As I did a slow one-eighty, fine gravel crunching and shifting beneath my feet, I wasn’t sure I would know an apple tree from a rutabaga, but I knew one thing with totally illogical certainty:  This felt like home.

My gaze was drawn to a sudden commotion in a sea of five-foot-tall plants growing about a hundred yards down the left-hand side of the path.  Long, blade-like leaves topped with pale yellow tassels rippled, rustled, and finally parted, as a wiry, dark-haired man dressed in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved blue work shirt stepped into view.  He caught sight of us, smiled widely, and waved.  As he strode up the path, I decided his must be what the ancients would have called the “outdoorsy look:”  lean muscle, black forelock curling almost boyishly to thick eyebrows, skin a light bronze.  I knew he was one of our agronomists; although I didn’t know him well.  Not many people knew the agronomists well, because they tended to keep to themselves.

“Eran!  You came back already!  Lexi,” he called over his shoulder, “didn’t I tell you?  I told her,” he assured us.  “I knew you would come back soon.  And here you are!”  Another stride carried him close enough to seize the much taller Eran in a brief bear hug.  He released him, stepped back, and turned his dark, sparkling gaze on me.  “And you brought your lady friend!  Welcome, Kai-Lee,” he said, took my hand and kissed it.  “Don’t look so surprised; Eran told us about you, of course.  But where are my manners?  I’m Jordan Zane.”  His arms opened wide, as if he wanted to embrace the entire garden as he announced, “And this is where I live.”

“Figuratively speaking, of course,” called a warm, husky female voice.  She stood at the right-hand edge of the path, dappled in the shade of a tree frosted with white blossoms.  Dressed in much the same way as Jordan, except her blouse was sleeveless, she moved toward us with a strong, easy grace I could only envy.  Her hair was loosely caught in a dark blond ponytail, her skin the color of honey.  Smiling warmly, she held out her hand.  “Lexine Shiri.”

“I’m so glad to meet you,” I said, clasping her lightly calloused hand warmly.  I glanced over at Jordan.  “Both of you.”  Glad?  Try ecstatic.  Close to overwhelmed.

“I decided it was time she did,” explained Eran.  “She thought we were the only two, you see.”

“Not anymore, you’re not,” said Lexi.  “Eran told us you were the first.”  She shook her head, her expression sympathetic.  “Trying to handle the awakening all alone … poor thing.”

“Awakening?” I asked.

“Naturally.  What else would you call it when sleeping minds become conscious of truth?”

“She’s got a point,” Eran figured.

That she did.  I smiled.  “The awakening.”

“Yes, but it must have seemed more like a nightmare to you in the beginning,” murmured Lexi.  “When you were alone.”

“I did struggle a bit.”  Eran snorted derisively.  “Okay, a lot.  I struggled a lot.”

Lexi slipped her arm through mine.  “Well, you’re with friends now, isn’t she, Jordi?”

“Absolutely.  Now there are four of us.”  He clapped a hand on Eran’s shoulder.  “Come.  We’ll show Kai-Lee our small slice of Mother Earth.  And we’ll talk.”

# # #

Their “slice of Mother Earth” seemed anything but small from where I stood.

“Tiny.  Minuscule,” Jordi assured me over his shoulder as he led us between rows of broccoli.  (I had never seen the thick stalks and wide, ruffled leaves fully assembled before, but I recognized the crowns of tightly budded purple-green florets.)

“It must take up the whole aft section,” I protested.

He nodded.  “We have about twenty acres.  The ten to your right are, as you can see, devoted to fruit-bearing trees—apple, pear, peach, and orange.  The ten acres to your left, on the other hand, contain our soy and vegetable crops.”

“Twenty acres sounds big to me.”

“In terms of the space it occupies on this ship, yes.  But our garden is a mere speck compared to the vast fields of Earth.”

“Ah.”

“Small, of course, should not be confused with insignificant.”

“Ah hah.”

“This acreage is very significant.  In the first place, it provides good food, natural food.  Where would we be without that?  Sick, maybe even dead, right?  And just look at the opportunities this place provides for research!  All right, yes, the Primes collected the DNA of hundreds of thousands of plants for study … and, of course, in case a supply might be needed once the Colony reaches its destination.  Samples are all well and good, if you all want to do for now is genetic research.  But where can we study the plants themselves?  Where can we test the effectiveness of our engineering?”  He swept one arm wide.  “Only here.”

Lexi leaned in to whisper apologetically, “He doesn’t get many chances to hold forth.  You’re in for it, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t mind,” I whispered back, and I didn’t.  I actually wanted to know, to drink in everything about this inexplicably familiar Paradise I had discovered.  Not that I wasn’t itching to get down to brass tacks, but that wasn’t the kind of conversation you could dive into right off the bat.  I figured we would get around to the volatile stuff when the time was right.

Unaware of the byplay between Lexi and me, Jordi continued,  “Each of these crop varieties was designed to provide the highest possible yield in the smallest possible space.  Just one tomato plant, for example, can produce up to one hundred pounds of fruit during a single growing season!  We supply almost all the ship’s fruits and vegetables.  It’s an amazing achievement, when you think about it.”

“I’ll say!  But what do you mean this farm supplies almost all the ship’s fruits and vegetables?  Which ones don’t you raise?”

“Some of the more exotic produce, items in extremely limited demand:  kumquats, cherimoya, adzuki beans, and okra, for example.”

“So where do they come from?”

He shrugged dismissively.  “Some lab on Deck Five.”

“Jordi won’t touch the manufactured stuff,” Lexi confided with a wink my way.

“Why should I?”  He sounded mildly surprised.  “It’s tasteless pulp.”

Tasteless pulp?  Well, that certainly didn’t sound appetizing.  I wondered if I should cross “try strange and exotic foods” off my list of upcoming explorations.

“Speaking of your achievements, you promised to tell me about the hydroponics,” Eran interjected.

Jordi stopped and turned, his expression half-doubtful, half-thrilled.  “You really want to know?  I thought you were being polite.”

“Trust me,” I said, “he wants to know.”

“He is polite,” Lexi pointed out.

“Thank you, Lexi.”  Eran glanced back at our host.  “And Red’s right;  I really want to know.”

“Oh, and he really wants to tell you,” drawled Lexi.

Jordi wasted no time launching into the requested lecture.  “Hydroponics,” he began with obvious relish, “is, of course, the science of cultivating plants in water.  Soil was never an option for our purposes.  Raising plants in soil would have required too much water and taken up too much room, severely limiting our harvest.  Soil is also easily depleted and prone to contamination.”

I held up a finger.  “Wait.  You’re saying growing plants in water actually uses less water?”

“Exactly.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Recirculation?” guessed Eran.

Jordi nodded.  “This deck sits atop a number of reservoirs, each filled with crop-specific nutrients in solution.”  He squatted, pointing at the base of a plant with thick, ivory stems supporting loose heads of deep green leaves.  “Take this bok choy:  Dedicated pumps send specially enriched water through channels beneath each row, feeding the roots.  Direct feeding facilitates the rapid growth and high yield programmed into the plant’s genome.  The nutrient solution is then drawn on down the channels to collection tanks and recirculated.”

“Nothing is lost to evaporation,” Lexi added.  “We use a minuscule fraction of both the water and area soil cultivation would require.”

“And a fraction of the minerals, don’t forget!” boasted Jordi, standing again.  “Plus, we have nothing to dispose of, no waste that might contaminate the environment.”

“So where does the dome come in,” Eran wanted to know, “if nothing is lost to evaporation?”

The two agronomists smiled, clearly pleased with the question.

“Polite and observant,” Lexi murmured.

“The dome has several purposes,” Jordi answered, then gazed at us, one eyebrow cocked expectantly.

“Protection,” I said, remembering the fog and Eran’s explanation.

“Climate control, naturally,” added Eran.  “But it’s also a fact that this many plants under cover produce water, probably quite a lot over time, in the form of condensation.”

“The condensation I saw when I tried to look through the glass,” I recalled.

Lexi shook her head.  “Not glass.  The dome is actually constructed of a silica gel, a nearly weightless solid.  As a matter of fact, it weighs little more than air.  In addition to having unsurpassed insulation capabilities, it can hold many thousands of times its weight in applied force.  For all practical purposes, it’s impenetrable and indestructible.”

“And the condensation?” Jordi prompted Eran.

“I would venture to guess,” Eran mused, “you need it, because, although your system precludes evaporation in the normal course of events, over hundreds of years, some loss is bound to occur.”

“Very good,” answered our host, “and true as far as it goes.  But our hydroponic system isn’t the only system replenished!  Only a small percentage of the water produced by our plants enters this system; most of it is channeled into a separate purification reservoir.  It may surprise you to learn our small slice of Mother Earth makes a significant contribution to the ship’s water supply!”

When I stopped to think about it, his announcement didn’t surprise me.  Maintaining an adequate water supply on the Janus meant every available drop of fluid had to be used and reused.  Thankfully, water molecules were fairly common in space, and the ship’s hull was fitted with mirrored arrays designed to attract and collect them.  On board, every drop of waste water was purified and recycled.  But it was curiously satisfying and exciting to learn that some of our water sprang from a more earthy source.

“I presume it contributes to the oxygen supply, as well?” Eran supposed with a slight smile.

“Absolutely!  Yes, to the oxygen supply as well!  Plants, as you may know,” Jordi explained for my benefit, “take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.  So now, my friends, you understand why I say our small slice of Mother Earth is very significant!”

“And very wonderful,” I told him and felt myself blush as I couldn’t help adding, “I know this sounds … well … crazy, but I feel like I’ve been looking for this place all my life.”

“We all have, in a sense,” said Eran.

“Well, something like it, anyway,” agreed Lexi.  “Like it, but … more.”

“Man,” Jordi announced, “can never be truly at home in a dead, metallic shell like this ship.  He was born close to the earth!  He needs life, plants, and animals!  He needs to feel the soil beneath his feet, the sun and wind and rain on his face!”

We stood for a moment, up to our knees in bok choy, silently contemplating the fact that the four of us would never experience that kind of world in our lifetimes.  At least, that’s what I was thinking, until I again noticed ….

“Speaking of sun and wind, am I imagining things, or do I feel a breeze?”

“You’re not imagining it,” Lexi assured me.

“What you call ‘a breeze’,” explained Jordi with a grin, “we call horizontal air flow.  It’s produced by a state-of-the-art air circulation system, and it’s as important as it is enjoyable.  Can you smell the apple blossoms?”

“Apple blossoms,” I repeated, smiling.  “So that’s what that is.”

He nodded.  “Our breeze does other things, besides carrying delightful aromas to appreciative noses, of course.  As it circulates and exchanges the air, it increases the amount carbon dioxide contacting the leaves.  Very important for vigorous growth.”

“And as the stalks and branches sway back and forth,” Lexi put in, “they become stronger and bigger, better able to bear heavy yields.”

“Don’t air currents help you maintain a consistent overall temperature, as well?” asked Eran.

“Keep it up, my friend,” Jordi grinned, “and I’ll be forced to offer you a job!”

The tour lasted another hour.  I never did see a rutabaga—not much demand for those, according to Lexi—but I learned that the tall, tasseled stalks were corn.  I tasted a the crisp sweetness of raw snow pea and picked an impossibly large orange off a small, sturdy tree bursting with them.  Jordi told us about the golden light.

“Artificial sunlight,” he said.  “The plants thrive in it, but it’s not nearly as brilliant as the real thing!  Still, it’s good you came late in the day.  With your skin?  You would have been as red as that tomato over there.  Lexi and I use lotions to block the more harmful rays.  We’ll make sure you get some before your next visit.”

As the garden deck grew dim, Jordi led us back up the path.  When we reached the portal, he stopped and turned.  It might have been a trick of the fading light, but his dark gaze suddenly seemed particularly intense.  “Did you know,” he said, “plants grow at night?  Darkness is necessary to growth.  But light always follows darkness.  Always.  Come,” he said as he opened the portal waved us through.  “It’s time we talked.”

Ω

© Kathy DiSanto, 2010, all rights reserved.