Part 14 (1/2)

Prometheus: Even if together we can hold back the waves of the past, I fear we have less hold on the future.

Athena: Do not forget I understand Zeus better than you.

(an allusion to her birth which also implied her mind was as his except female in form and therefore more likely to have understood more of the subtlety of meaning and relations.h.i.+ps between things than he would wish to acknowledge was in him) He likes all his life-forms and delights in the way they re-make themselves in their myriad ways. But, like us, he affects humans best. For all his irritation with them, he prefers their likeness to us and their need for us despite their forgetfulness. We remain deeply embedded in them, in their unconscious minds, secretly supporting and steadying them to maintain their correct place in the world. We must continue to trust Zeus to keep the past in its proper place, and keep it and the present working in harness to shape the future. Hades would have mortals stay in the past, constantly reworking what is gone, safe in the known and the knowable. Zeus holds the past and lets the future in, link by link. He will not have the future from Yhawhe for he takes it too far into an abstract nowhere. Yhawhe is in this much closer to Hades than He is to Zeus, whom he paradoxically professes to hate. Yahweh is wary of too much creativity in mortals for it challenges his supremacy. Nevertheless despite all His works, He will never be as real for mortals as we.

Hephaestos: I fear the big battalions of the long dead. We cannot enlist the unborn and those in the present are too few in number by comparison. If the barrier between the past and present is breached......

(Here Hep indicates that there is too much generality being communicated and that something more practical needs doing, and that soon, if Hades is to be stopped from believing he can take advantage of Zeus' apparent weakness.) Hades is making a deal with Chronos even now. I believe he has found a way to listen into the Chronosphere and may be able to follow our communication and...

Athena: What! How can he? There's no way to cross!

Hephaestos: I may be wrong but I am sure he has tried to tap into the human internet to follow their communications and he is probably seeking a way to enter the 'sphere as well. He may be using Persephone as his messenger, but I doubt it - she has always been loyal to Demeter. I agree it's unlikely he has broken in, but it's only a matter of time. We also have to consider that we may have a traitor in the camp somewhere.

Prometheus: I am using all the powers of foresight at my command and see Zeus and someone huge in a vital communication - it might be Yhawhe but equally it might be Hades and Chronos.

Athena: There is a great change ahead. I feel it. But what of Gaia - she is the cause of this...

Prometheus: No. She has to act for her own sake, she has no choice, but the cause is in mortals and Zeus knows it. I fear Hades sees this last chance he is giving them as betraying a great weakness. Gaia does not care who saves her. She would prefer it to be Zeus, but she is angry with him for risking casting her off to the very mortals that are doing her the harm. Hades brings her certain relief. Past realities are entirely predictable without the unexpected tumults of the living. He has mult.i.tudes enough and can maintain majesty over them for as long as he needs. He may even have plans to bring his mult.i.tudes back into our realm if Zeus' plan fails. If that happens time will stop and there will be no more moving forward. That will suit Gaia well enough. Then what of us? An interesting question.

Athena: What do you see Yahweh doing if this is true?

Prometheus: I cannot read Yhawhe. Zeus' challenge to Him is unprecedented. He is giving mortals the chance to be free of G.o.ds, to absorb our essence in them and take their own charge of Gaia for their own sakes and not for ours or Yahweh's. It cannot be known how the three elements of Hades, Zeus and Yhawhe will interact. Yhawhe has always been paternalistic, I doubt he will allow people to take control and deny his Heaven. For Europa's children to look the G.o.d of the Hebrews and His Christ full in the eye and say 'NO' to him with complete consciousness; is to court unknown effects on the human psyche. No, the effects on Yahweh are unknowable. Zeus has made his will and is determined to give mortals their freedom. Yhawhe has no concern for Gaia but only for His own hereafter...

Hephaestos: Enough of this speculation!

(What was communicated was more a sense of complete understanding of the historical relations.h.i.+p of G.o.ds to people in all their manifestations and a serious question of the future relations.h.i.+ps of the external and internal worlds of the human mind. Hephaestos nuanced his input with an impatience which requested the meld turn its powers of communication to heading off what seemed to him to be an impending catastrophe for the Pantheon.) - We need evidence of Hades' activities on both the human and the divine levels and in particular knowledge about his relations.h.i.+p with Chronos. We need to get him here and negotiate. I want no more wars. There are stirrings in Tartarus which I fear will spill out of their dark confines into the light.

Athena: Then we will fight them as before.

(She introduced a frisson of excitement into the mind-meld. Her warrior instincts were touched, and like Hephaestos, she pulled the communication round to a more active inclination. Prometheus introduced a philosophical dimension to the prospect of action and held them together with a vastly complex a.s.sessment of the relations.h.i.+p of G.o.ds, mortals and the prospects for the continuation of the human race in a psychological world without external G.o.ds in which mortals had to rely on their own devices. At this point in the meld the voice of Hera winged its way via the timelines.) Hera: Shh! You stir my husband with your thoughts. He hears you and knows you from old. He fears your speculations and will have you more practically bent. Athena - go arm our friends and their hordes but do it softly so neither Zeus or Hades hears of it. Hephaestos, see after Alexander. Prometheus, get you into the mind of Gaia I must know where she is placed in this. Know that Zeus pursues Yhawhe. We are in dangerous times.

The meld ended. It left merely a trace on the 'sphere, and only the keenest watcher would have noticed it had happened at all. However, watchers were getting more alert all the time. It would not be long before private communications on the timelines would be hard to accomplish in safety.

In a timeline nearer to us, Alexander and Marina stepped out of Phoenix airport into the bright, desert suns.h.i.+ne of Arizona. Half an hour later Marina was driving their hired Cherokee Jeep Northwards on Route 17 towards Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. Just beyond Flagstaff they turned off on Route 89 and left the hurly-burly of the USA and entered the Navajo Dinatah - 'Land of The People.'

Alexander had been to the USA many times before. Marina too had learned much of her surveillance skill in New York and the cities of California. Neither however, had spent any time in the hinterland of the continent and they were new to the Southwest. As they drove, the contrast of the country with the England they left only that day was hard to take in. For speed they had used JNO's Lear jet for the flight to Phoenix. Even so Alexander was tired and a glance at Marina showed she too was less crisp than usual. Their fatigue however was somewhat overtaken by the unfolding country before them.

'It's like someone was unravelling a travelogue in front of the car - it's every cowboy film you ever saw!' Alexander was entranced by the sheer size and magnificence of the country as he watched the sun begin its spectacular evening performance with the supporting cast of mountains, mesa's and valleys. In particular he was as excited as a kid by the outstretched arms of huge cacti silhouetted against the arc of the sky.

'It certainly is something!' echoed Marina. They rode in silence for a while each watching the country, thinking their own thoughts. Alexander was simply relis.h.i.+ng being alone with Marina. He kept stealing glances at her throughout the journey when he thought she was not aware. He was in danger of losing sight of his work. Marina was clearly aware of this and did nothing to encourage his amorous inclinations. His mind was in a turmoil, her lack of response made him wonder if they had a relations.h.i.+p at all. They had to have something after all. But she had paid him so little attention and had prevented him even touching her.

'We're at work.' She'd made it plain before setting off.

He did his best to be matter of fact, but her perfume, the crisp sheen of her hair, the fineness of her facial bone structure, in short everything about her made him want to grasp her at every opportunity and her resistance was causing him actual physical pain.

She for her part, was thinking that this couldn't go on, there was work to do and they needed to be highly concentrated if they were to succeed. Part of her was touched at his predicament and she was a little flattered that someone with his genetic structure was besotted with her. On the other hand she was used to male reactions to her s.e.xuality, which always set up a harsh reaction in her. Having suffered because of it at a time when she was innocent of her effect on men she now deliberately used her s.e.xuality as a weapon to get what she wanted. She had had enough pain from that source in her life and had learned to control it for her own ends. She had given him enough of herself to satisfy his urges and get his infatuation out of his system, and that would have to do until things were clearer. She was aware nevertheless she had some feelings developing for this son of her boss which she quickly dismissed as irrelevant to the task in hand.

'How far to Tuba City?' she asked.

Alexander consulted the map. 'About a hundred miles, a couple of hours, it'll be pretty dark when we get there.'

'I've got reservations at the Tuba City Motel, Manuelito Kanuho is expecting us the day after tomorrow. We meet him at 'Fourthworld' at nine. He has asked us to stay with him in his home in the Grand Canyon, imagine that, he actually lives down there! I thought a day first alone in Tuba City to check out the ambience would be a good idea, to acclimatise a bit. Okay by you?'

Alexander was in a state of suspended animation. Internal and external phenomena were becoming more and more blurred and he was treating them together as a whole. The membrane that divided tangibility and illusion was breaking down in him, and on top of everything there was Marina. There, but not there.

Behind him was the collective history of the earth. In front of him was the aggregated potential of mortals; between them, the world lay open, naked and vulnerable - Gaia was calling him and he felt the pang of her hurt and sensed the work of the G.o.ds as a busyness on the 'sphere. The net under his s.h.i.+rt quivered slightly on his arrival in Phoenix. Like a dousing rod it seemed to sense changes of activity on the 'sphere both within him and when it occurred outside. Arizona had something in its atmosphere which registered as he entered the Navajo and Hopi tribal lands. He and Marina had read-up the history and current situation of these nations and Nemmi had supplied information about their cosmology and world view.

Nemmi too was enthusiastic about the way these Native Americans faced their origins and continued their own relations.h.i.+p with the earth, despite the genocide they had suffered at the hands of the invading citizens of the land of the free, intent on the destruction of them and their land. Through the net around his shoulders he felt he could hear her voice separate itself from the background static, communicating on L2. She re-enforced the message; 'They share the Pantheon's understanding of Gaia and keep their respect for her in spite of all they have suffered. Even through the impact of modern life they keep her with them always. They have her inside them and they live for her well-being, which increases their own. They suffer as she suffers and will continue to do so while those who afflict her, try and force them to weaken their roots in her. Their story-tellers weave the strands of their people's past into a complex but unified whole which can be read in the designs of their rugs and jewellery. 'Fourthworld' represents the last of four worlds of creation - the fourth glittering and bright where all people coexist with all forms of life including that of the earth mother herself. None has dominion and there is no hierarchy. The all has intrinsic value in its parts. Despoliation is unthinkable and punishable by the inevitable reaction of the despoiled. They wait for the children of Europa to be educated and despair of her offspring's intemperate behaviour. The Earth will have her revenge in due time and they, The People, know they will be virtuous in her eyes when this occurs.'

The setting sun splintered the resplendent horizon and they stopped to fully admire the light play with the palette of the Painted Desert. They watched the changing colours until the light dimmed.

Alexander was conscious they had left the USA somewhere behind them. The land of the Din The People, was free of the h.o.a.rdings, and other clutter which normally decorate the American roads. Here the road shot ahead clear and straight for miles and where it bent, it merged with looming bluffs and again shook itself into line once past. The road marked by telegraph poles marched in steady ranks into the far distance.

A low double-wire fence at the roadside kept travellers off the land. Here the road was the intruder to be fenced in bounds. Smaller, unmade tracks went off at crazy angles, and were lost behind hillocks of dense mesquite and the occasional clump of alders and pinion pine, marking the presence of mostly dry, water courses. An arid land needing its vastness intact to sustain life. Occasionally he glimpsed in the gloom a lazy, rising plume of smoke denoting the presence of a family dwelling or hogan.

There was little traffic, no more than three other pick-up trucks shared the route after the turn-off to Tuba City. They arrived at the motel in the dark. There were no outskirts of the kind he expected of the USA, no string of out of town filling-stations, no Taco-Bells, pharmacies or shopping malls. One minute they were in the open country and next they were in town. In the gloom, 'town' seemed to be no more than an overgrown crossroads.

The following morning they set out to explore. If Alexander had expected a 'city' he was mistaken. His surmise of the previous night was correct. Tuba City was an overgrown crossroads. They saw Fourthworld sited behind the motel, a collection of wooden pre-fabricated huts. Apart from the visitor's centre and the motel itself, all the buildings were single story higgledy-piggledy wooden huts or mobile homes. There was a gas station and a small minimart in its precincts. The dusty towns.h.i.+p, sprouted usefully where roads met to encourage travellers to stay awhile, spend some money, refresh themselves and make or remake acquaintance. Were it not for electricity and telephone lines, mobile homes and asphalt, he might be in the last Century. Nearly all the people abroad were Navajo. His most potent thought was that he really was not in the USA but truly in another, an original landscape. He also felt particularly ashamed and guilty of being European. From the moment he became aware of the countryside spread before him, he sensed dimly what he supposed every Navajo he saw carried in their genes. Strolling like tourists in this place, he felt acute embarra.s.sment from the way his own race had treated them and, he also reflected, Marina's forebears. He felt acutely face to face with the genocide committed by his race. He turned to his companion self-consciously aware of her African origins.

'To have had all this land, as it were, within you, and to be dispossessed by an incoming horde of alien invaders. They must be sick at heart.'

'Oh my little Eurocentric! My, but it was a long time before you got it!' she replied, sarcastically.

'Sorry, but well...I didn't think it through properly before. I know it of course, but being here, seeing this land and these people, as themselves in this country, this crazy USA...well...this isn't the USA. This is Navajo land, truly belonging to the Navajo. But not really after all, the reservation is only a poor attempt at something given back. What a terrible irony it must be for them to be given back a bit of what was theirs as a kind of consolation for being overwhelmed by a genocide that is quite ignored.'

'It's far worse than that...it's not even as if it were theirs - the land - it is something they share with all life-forms. Every life taken of any form was apologised for before, after or during the event. Killing was never justified for its own sake, only in necessity is it allowed. Your race of total barbarians have to own everything, and what you own you can destroy without conscience. This land was never the Navajo's to own, so how could it belong to white people? Its destruction was and is utterly unjustifiable. These people know it so far into their roots and the crime is so immense, their cries of despair flow back to creation and forward into the vastness of the universe to be heard by life-forms everywhere. As for me my lovely boy: I was born in Streatham.'

'Don't you feel dispossessed, from your own roots I mean?'

'You feel for their dispossession and so do I. But it's more to do with the utter insensitivity of your people to anything they can control. Europeans are such control freaks that they miss the intrinsic value of everything. Why do you suppose I fetched up in JNO. Penny, Rick and the Dodona's are the only Europeans I have ever met who feel deeply about this relations.h.i.+p between people and the Earth. I know others do as well, but the Dodona's are doing something practical about it and I am helping. But just feeling is not enough although it's a beginning. Humpty has had his great fall and no one has yet put him back together. It's not just the Native American who has been dispossessed, we all are. If you think I yearn for a lost Africa of my soul as the Navajo mourn for their lands - I don't know about that - perhaps somewhere I do, but I think it's more global, more to do with the loss of a world where I can be myself, in relations.h.i.+p with it. More whole...somehow...where things are less fragmented.'

It did not take long for them to walk round the whole of Tuba City and they had walked in a circle back towards the motel.

As they entered the foyer a short, stocky, weather-beaten, Navajo man of about sixty, in a large dazzlingly white straw Stetson, jeans, colourful waistcoat and dusty, tooled, patent leather boots was waiting by the desk to greet them.

'Mr Alexander Conway and Miss Marina...er...I'm sorry I don't know your second name...they are important...names...they tell a story. Forgive me...I am Dr Manuelito Kanuho MA Oxon, Ph.D. Please call me Manny. I'm sorry to accost you thus before our scheduled meeting tomorrow, but your being in Tuba City is of course noticed, and I am too impatient a man to see you and not introduce myself. It would be rude for you to know I had been watching you from afar and not to acknowledge the fact. Please sit and take refreshment with me in my office before I take you round Fourthworld.'

Marina thought he spoke as if taking care to be what he seemed, and in so doing she found him pompous. Alexander was struck by the n.o.bility which belied his apparel and immediately forgave his manner of speech. English was probably not his first nor favoured language. He was aware that he too did not know Marina's second name. She made no reference to this omission and did not help him out.

'Dr Kanuho - Manny, what a pleasure, Alexander and I thought to acclimatise a little. We are far from home and...'

'My dear friends, you are at home here in Tuba City. I have taken the liberty of checking you out of this motel, fine though it is, and have arranged for your valises to be taken to my place. In the meantime I would like to show you our little operation here at Fourthworld.'

Before they were able to comment, Manny had them walking briskly behind him the few hundred yards into the pre-fabricated huts of his empire. He spoke continually as they walked, and maintained his monologue within the fake-panelled walls of his office as he arranged coffee and cookies.