Part 18 (2/2)

The group, tired and inclined to silence slowly made for their rooms. Penny, exhausted, went directly to her room to sleep. Ric lingered with some of the delegates over a night-cap in the bar before retiring.

A mere four hours later, a little rested Ric and Penny ate a light private breakfast in the conference room to make arrangements for Lucina's visit.

'What do you think?' asked Ric over his coffee cup.

'I'm tired and not sure I'm thinking straight but right now to make it, feels like it's going to take a miracle. You saw the lengths Karl Kahn is having to go to prevent a good dozen Third-World powers from crus.h.i.+ng the empowerment of workers we have already liberated. It seems as if we shall have to arm them to the teeth and encourage b.l.o.o.d.y revolutions to s.h.i.+ft things properly and the history of violent revolution is not on our side. Besides there isn't time. The requirement for anti-personnel weapons from countries struggling to control the movements of ordinary workers and the landless are astronomical. You saw how some of them are even thinking of going tactically nuclear as a way of blackmailing the West to help them control their shaky power bases.'

She shrugged her shoulders helplessly, overwhelmed by the size of the task facing them. The despair in her voice encouraged Ric's previous doubts about her ability to continue under such strain. Her next comment made him sit down as if a heavy hand had forced him into the chair, it was her att.i.tude more than what she actually said that affected him.

'It seems to me that for every step forward we take to deny the power of capitalistic enterprise to keep exploiting either people or resources, results in a backlash which means unacceptable bloodshed or intolerable destruction. It's as if n.o.body can conceive that the future of people in the world depends on a changed model for human commercial and industrial behaviour. The worst thing is that the more you know this to be true the more ridiculous it is and the more tragic. See how the West is deregulating environmental curbs to encourage growth. This is in the teeth of all our work, which means we have to redouble our efforts. The only response to this must result in a tightening of the already destructive spiral - so that the harder we work the greater is the opposition. The harder we work - the worse they behave. We also have to deal with the political fall-out of unemployment in parts of the West and especially in Eastern Europe. I'm also very worried about the potential of migration patterns of the middle cla.s.s from the third world and its effect. China is flexing its muscles seeing the weakness of the West and India believes it can catch up with the Pacific countries even faster now. Also there are the religious fundamentalists who just want to make everything go backwards.'

Now she was walking around the room talking to the walls, to the computer screens - her mind was a whirl of conflicting images of force and counter-force. Her voice was tense, 'What I thought we are doing is certainly highly complicated, but it is an orderly strategy for change. Now it's countered step by step by an inexorable return to the status quo. It is as if there is really no alternative than the inevitable self-destruction of the human race, whatever the power of JNO might perform. As hard as I try I can't make the spectre of 2012 diminish - Ric - I just don't think we can make it in the time, barring a miracle. The forces of reaction are just too strong. It's like lemmings heading for the cliff edge simply because the momentum alone sweeps away every argument for even slowing down, let alone stopping. It's pure lunacy and everyone knows it but they can't stop. However much GRADE helps to redress imbalances, money is just not going to be enough in the time-scale we have. I used to think it would. I used to think that if it were no longer profitable for companies to destructively use up the world, the ecology movement coupled with Operation Denial would bring things to some kind of acceptable equilibrium.'

She stopped pacing compulsively and pulled a chair round to face him, 'I figured without the incredible force generated by the sheer momentum of the opposition. I knew there would be opposition but I thought enough reason would have prevailed by now. That when Governments saw the benefits of our work they would pitch in and support it.'

Ric's spirit rallied a little thinking about the important progress they had made in some quarters. 'I'm sure,' he responded. 'The time frame of 2012 is too early for the necessary changes to take hold and I don't believe in the doomsday scenario thrown out by the computer. There are too many variables for any logical machine, even for the highly sophisticated fuzzy logic of GAIANET. I'm a computer man to my bones, but my faith in the machinery and software I create is always limited by the knowledge that the input is always flawed in some degree and that conclusions are always relative to the absolute quality of the input.' He spoke calmly, taking her hand in an attempt to soften her mood.

'You've made some excellent progress in Colombia, Brazil and parts of Africa in particular. You shouldn't get too despondent Penny.' Always the realist, he tried to build up the positive elements in the scenario. 'The colleges and universities in something like thirty countries are already sending out a second generation of graduates trained via GRADE enterprises in JNO techniques and values. In eleven years there will be three generations of JNO trained graduates and entrepreneurs at the helm of world affairs. You can already see a difference in at least twenty or thirty countries and...'

'Don't you see, Ric,' Penny interrupted grasping his hand so tight that it hurt, as if grasping for her very safety to prevent her falling into the abyss confronting her mind. 'It isn't that we are on the wrong tack, on the contrary we are doing everything right and we are getting amazing results. It's just that there's not enough time! If we could prolong the prediction to say 2025 we might have just the merest chance. But as you see, even a.s.suming that scenario we are tight up against the deadline. An appropriate use of words don't you think in the circ.u.mstances.'

He smiled wryly, he was about to say he did not believe in artificial deadlines - but her mood did not allow it. She continued, becoming ever more agitated.

'There's no time Ric! Your computer is the most advanced yours and Hep's technology can make it, and you're the best there is. I know you don't believe the date business - No don't tell me! It's probable that the rest of the group, possibly with the exception of Matsuko, who alone of them has met Lucina, is of the same opinion. But believe me the date is not simply a computer prediction with a plus or minus leeway...'

'My dear you are so right,' Penny heard the familiar voice more in the mind than through the physical involvement of the ear. She was not sure if it had been heard by Ric. Both however turned in surprise to the hallway to see the majestic figure of Lucina Dodona, a galleon in full sail, enter the room, accompanied as usual by Pannie Ljeschi who danced about her before spiralling his crooked body round them and upped himself cross-legged onto the table among the gadgetry. Lucina flashed a glance at him and as if he had been physically lashed, he slid off the table and insinuated himself into a chair. Lucina pealed with laughter. 'Pannie, behave or...' She turned to Penny and Ric without finis.h.i.+ng her threat. 'Penelope, please to introduce me to your friend.' This was an instruction disguised as a simple pleasantry. Penny did not like her tone. It was as if Lucina read the depths of her heart even to the parts of it she herself preferred to leave unvisited. Lucina clearly disapproved of their relations.h.i.+p. She conveyed at the same time approval of the work they did by her manner towards him. As usual in the presence of her benefactor, Penny felt her loss of control. Ric on the other hand was as charmed as he was supposed to be by her majesty and graciousness. Penny was helplessly irritated by the effect Lucina had on Ric. It was however only to be expected and she was surprised at her own reaction. She supposed she had hoped, without actually voicing her feelings to herself that Ric would be somehow immune from the effect of Lucina - above it in some way. She had no reason to suppose the power Lucina exercised over her would not be felt by him. But she was disappointed nevertheless. If she did this to him, the Advisory Group had no chance. Under the gaze of her mentor, Penny made the introductions, 'Lucina, this is Ricardo Trefoil, our computer expert, he and Hep have made our system what it is- second to none.'

'Ah Hep, how is he? I see so little of my family these days. He works well for you? - ne? Mr Trefoil I have heard so much of you. Delighted to acquaint myself at the first hand.' She beamed at him.

Unable to prevent himself Ric had risen at her entry and although he simply intended to shake hands, he found himself compelled to kiss the proffered extremity instead. Lucina spotting Penny's distaste at the gesture, laughed merrily and stretched her other hand in a motherly caress of Penny's cheek. Having thus established her presence she sat in Ric's seat at the table and motioned Pannie to a spare seat by the door.

'I am ready Penelope my dear. Ah - they are at breakfast, please do not disturb, so this gives me a little time to...how you say?...catch up with you. I have been examining your HIGO and GAIANET machines. Pannie here talks to Hep, do you not my boy?'

Pannie merely grinned more broadly.

'I don't actually know how it all works but Pannie here tells me the main points. You are surprised at the 2012 date I hear you speak of it. To tell you the truth I also am surprised. You would be amazed at the efforts I have put in to extending the timeline. The plain truth is that not even I with all the means of the Firm at my disposal, nor, it seems even Zarian, can alter this scenario. The plain fact is that it is out of our control. But I am into the substance of my subject for this morning.' She penetrated Ricardo with a gimlet eye, and he recoiled inwardly. 'You are a good man, Mr Trefoil, I can see it,'

Ric knew for certain she really could see into him, it was as if his psyche had been pulled from his mind and stretched like wet cloth on tenterhooks - on full view.

Lucina continued. 'I have to say I do not altogether approve of Penelope in relations.h.i.+p with another man, other than my poor brother, especially at this time, but if there will be a man - you will be he, I think it so. I like you and I trust you. Penelope is careful and knows her people. And you are her lieutenant so I will trust both of you with the information I bring you of her son Alexander.'

Ric started, Alexander was dead. What possible news could she have of him? Penny would not have lied to him about such a thing. Suddenly he became aware of Penny's changed manner in the shadow of Lucina and the words of Matsuko Morii rang in his head. It was happening to him. All contact with this formidable woman was being made on her terms. A great revelation fell into place in his mind - whatever Penny got from the Dodona's was involuntary on her part. He was in the presence of a mind more powerful than his own and even than Penny's. He disliked the feeling intensely and knew that Penny did too. This was why he had been deliberately kept away from the senior partners in the Firm. He felt a great urge to reveal his thought to her but knew that he was too easily read by Lucina and resolved to have it out with Penny as soon as they were alone. He had the uncanny feeling that his thoughts were being read by Lucina anyway, and there was nothing he could do about it, he could only let this woman speak what she had come to say and deal with the aftermath.

'Penny she knows he is not dead but on a mission of the gravest importance to you all. You should know he risks more than merely his life which in the scale of things is little enough. He risks all of you. Only we at Psathi know this. I share this with my Penelope for she is his mother and has the right. You Ricardo Trefoil are her man and she needs you. If you do not know all she knows you will mistrust her and may endanger everything. Mistrust grows like a virus in the system until it eats up all the good. So I tell you of him but you do not tell the advisory group of him. When they rea.s.semble I will talk to them of 2012 and what they must do. You alone will know what Alexander does and what my Zarian must also do. The advisory group has their role a.s.signed and they are doing well, this I will say to them. You have chosen well my Penelope as I knew you would. But as you say time for the people of the world is short and they cannot do enough in what is left without help. The powers of la.s.situde, ignorance, greed and above all the past - will slow you down too much. This Alexander confronts in its own realm. The weight of the past drags the heels of the future and will not allow you to surpa.s.s the present. Alexander works in the gap between past and future for all of you. If all goes well he will return to you.'

'And if not?,' Penny asked tremulously.

'If not - then there is no future for him nor anyone else.' She proceeded to explain Alexander's mission, and Pannie's grin widened until his face was in danger of splitting in two.

At this point the others could be seen drifting from their breakfast into the conference room in ones and two's. They sat down eyeing Pannie and Lucina in the manner of people who see a celebrity they do not know personally, and not wis.h.i.+ng to be obtrusive, keep them in view by glancing self-consciously in their direction. Pannie was too strange a creature to be ignored and Lucina was gorgeous in a light gold chiton, clasped by a large jewelled pin at her left shoulder. Her hair was piled high on her head exposing the marble of her neck and shoulders. Her presence, a fraction larger than life, flooded the room like light. Only Matsuko approached her directly as if to receive her blessing. She bowed her head in the traditional j.a.panese greeting and involuntarily bent a knee ever so slightly. Lucina beamed at her and touched her hair lightly. No words were uttered and Matsuko, thus blessed, sat at her seat at the table. A palpable silence fell over the a.s.sembly. Lucina's smile of welcome lit her eyes with an intensity which commanded the close attention of all present. Even the hard-boiled Johann Pettershonn was entranced by the illuminated face. What occurred next, none of the partic.i.p.ants was ever able to share with anyone else as long as they lived.

Each found themselves addressed by this radiant G.o.ddess. Each uniquely; their individuality isolated and recognised. A gentle radiance invaded every mind separately, probing thought patterns and following them to their origins. Whole lives from pre-birth to the present were explored and then re-worked; private thoughts were a.n.a.lysed and made clear to them - many for the first time. So intense was the connection, they would be unable to convey the profundity of the experience.

An intense clarity about the purpose of their lives and the role of humankind on the planet flooded each one of them. They were praised for the integrity of their commitment to their task and any doubts they may have held were dispelled by the clarity of their own thoughts. It was as if they had always believed they had thought correctly and now they knew for certain. This was no dogma, believed because a greater power said thus and thus to be the truth. This was a clear rational a.n.a.lysis of everything they had known or experienced which, where it had been vague and mis-understood, was newly brought into crystalline flawlessness in tune with all they felt. The responsibility for what they each did became easier to carry and they faced the future with eagerness for the struggle, fully armed with a knowledge of the past and present to illuminate their path. They each saw with a unique and renewed vision the meaning of the year 2012. They understood the significance of the date of the Maya. With this understanding came a revelation. This was no arbitrary date, plucked from the air, nor was it a computer prediction. It was the last challenge of the G.o.ds to their race. It was not negotiable. Their earth would survive with or without them. They had just the time left to get the message across.

Lucina pa.s.sed before them and blessed each one by placing her hand on each head in turn - and then she left with Pannie in tow.

The room was somehow empty. Ric's voice, even though he spoke as softly as he could, seemed harsh and alien as it broke into the ensuing stillness.

'Matsuko was right. Lucina's message is clear. The next session is the crucial one. I propose we waste no time. I have put you in three groups to tackle the three themes of production, ecology and politics. We will work until tomorrow morning and report back to HIGO and see where we get.' They worked long into the night and the next day. when they had finished - They had a strategy.

Chapter 8.

What treasure?' asked Alexander on L1 in his meld with Hermes.

'Why the thing that links you to the timelines of course. The past as it shapes the future. It's like a kind of DNA in the timeline system that makes you mortals what you are. Your Darwin was the first of you to understand the concept. But it's more than simply natural selection. There's consciousness to it. Your Freud got an inkling and Jung got pretty close, but who listens properly to any of them any more - if they ever did. The failure of memory in your race will kill you all in the end. Barboncito has remembrance, his people, and those like him whom you have despised and despoiled for so long will have the last laugh because they have the treasure. Without it you can do nothing properly creative. Inventive, yes. You can invent anything - and you do. But you do it as if you owned the stuff of which it's made and you don't. You just think you do, but it's an illusion. You have to use the collective memory of what the treasure is and what it can do. You must find it and add it like leaven to all you do if you are to survive. But from what I hear it's too late. The future is too unpredictable and the present too manic to listen to the past. That's why Hades will win. Zeus has lost control over you and Yahweh is too preoccupied with what ought to be than what is or what was. You have to stop dealing with should's and ought to be's until you have remembrance. You come from the earth not the heavens. You are made from good, honest clay. Your feet are stuck in the ground not floating somewhere in the great beyond where you fancy your heads to be. But now then brother, that's more than enough of my ramblings. I'm just the messenger and my job is to get you over the Styx without being detected. - Now this visor thing of Hephaestos'...'

'Is the treasure to be found here in Hades?'

'Of course it is, like I said it's in the past! - Now will you please listen and carefully observe this visor!'

'I'm sorry, Hermes - but there are things I need to know and Pannie said you would help me.'

The lanky being, gently placed the helmet on a convenient boulder. He positioned himself on another, higher up, and letting his long legs dangle, folded his arms across his thin chest. He let out a large sigh and in an exasperated tone said, 'Alright, my boy, since you're a recent relative and I've not had time to get to know you as well as the others I'll give time to get questions out of the way. Themis said you were full of doubt and that's very dangerous material down here, so I'd better help you as best I can. What do you want to know?'

'This treasure, how will I know it?'

'You won't know it as such. You feel it at work in the mind. Without the patina of experience the mind has nothing substantial to grip on except its present self. Thought becomes meaningless. It simply rehashes old truths as if they were discoveries. The treasure of remembrance is not just history, you have to struggle to keep its meaning alive, the meaning over the fact. The fact exists of course and what you have to do with it in the now is to take its meaning into the future. You can't just import facts as if they were truths or make truths into facts. Truths are living realities to be fas.h.i.+oned into states of being, into action and reaction, they are alive and doing, whether you heed them or not. The G.o.ds know this of course. That's why you need us. You let us do this for you and receive our wisdom as if it were given, coming from outside you. Which of course it isn't. You know all these things but basically you are mind-lazy, you no longer act on what you collectively know is true as a species, you act only on what you think you can prove in advance as fact. In the absence of provable fact you either leave it to the G.o.ds to act out your truths and you regard them with uncritical wonder, which leaves you off the hook of responsibility, or you search for truths well beyond your own realities in some promised hereafter where you hope all will ultimately be clear. Can't you see that it's all there inside each of you to find for yourselves? You don't really need G.o.ds of any kind because you've got yourselves. That's not to say there are no G.o.ds. It's that you don't really need them. We, on the other hand, can exist without you, no problem about that my friend, but so far you can't live without us. You've tried to subst.i.tute for us your inventiveness, what you call science, but it doesn't work. Making the earth do things for you is clever I grant you, ask Hephaestos he loves it. (That's probably why he is helping your mother) We think invention is fun too, but no more than that; without the use of the treasure it is destructive in the end as you are beginning to discover too late. Still if you get to Hades in time there's a hope for you. Not that I care...'

'You're just the messenger!'

'Exactly. - Any more questions?'

'Yes, What do you mean when you say Hades will win and that it's too late?'

'A question of balance of power, what you call real-politik. Think of the past as an active force not a dead weight to be got rid of. You ignore the past and think you are so clever in the here and now, while, on the other hand you are always being pushed forward from the point of origin whether you know it or not. That's Hadean business if ever I saw any - and that's the main point; you don't know it but it's there, it's from there that comes the momentum that drives the human spirit. Pushed from behind rather then pulled from in front. Hades knows this as do we all. Up till now, Zeus was clever enough to have made sure Hades cannot enter the now and has kept the realms apart so you could develop unhindered by your past overwhelming you and taking over (which of course is Hades' main objective now Zeus has set up the challenge). Mnemosyne maintained Remembrance for you but you ignored her and left Zeus on his own; the result was the take-over by Yahweh. When you forgot the past; ignored the present and dwelt too much on the hereafter, so you were pulled by the future - which by definition you don't know - unlike the past which you do - despite your forgetfulness. Once the future was seen for what it is - un.o.btainable in your short life-times - you lost your bearings altogether and left with the present, which you filled with your cleverness for making things, you ignore the treasure of the past and cannot contemplate the future. Things are closing in though because you damage your ability to maintain the present by pulling the rug of Gaia from under you. You know the rest.'

'Do all the members of the Pantheon know my mission then?'

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