Chapter 7: The Human Mind

The Family

Cole spent most of the morning in the Forest Service office again. Arlen was sympathetic, but felt his hands were tied. Next, Cole picked up Mary Beth and Ashley and they drove to Cheyenne. It might seem unlikely that a rancher could walk in and visit the governor, but Wyoming was a state of only 600,000 citizens, ranked tenth in total area for states, but 50th in total population. The elected officials knew who the influential ranchers were in their state.

“Cole, I know you didn’t support me in the election, but that doesn’t make a difference to me. I know and you know that you were responsible for saving my daddy’s ranch back during the range wars with that bastard Joe Teine. Don’t bother to deny it. I know it’s buried too deep to ever prove, but you were the one. I just know it. Frankly, I wish Harry Harrison had won the damned election. Then I wouldn’t be presiding over a state that is becoming the target of every angry environmentalist in the country,” Governor Meade said.

“George, there has to be something we can do about this,” Ashley said. As president of the Cattlewomen’s Association of Wyoming, she carried influence in her own right.

“I wish,” the Governor replied. “I can’t even send state troopers up there. It’s Federal land. I know we’ve had a policy of encouraging energy exploration, but none of these licenses that Shale Oil is using come from the State of Wyoming. They are issued straight from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The very people who are supposed to be looking out for your interests. The Forest Service is part of the USDA. After the Department of the Interior rolled over on the Yellowstone site, USDA just followed along. Whoever had the bright idea of putting National Parks and National Forests under two different departments was loco.”

“What about pressure on Richard and Elaine?” Cole asked. Wyoming’s two U.S. Senators had been quiet on the whole affair.

“They don’t even return my phone calls,” George said. “I’d guess the money that paid for their elections came from Shale Oil and other big energy companies. Aside from the fact that they’re ugly, we could put a hundred windmills down by the Laramie River and power the entire State. The only reason we need oil is for money. How many barrels of oil is a fat steer worth? Believe me, the projections for output from those new wells is a lot more than that. But do you think the state will see any of it? It’s not ours. It’s Federal.”

“You can’t eat oil,” Mary Beth said.

“I’d like to try force feeding a few of those bastards,” George grumbled. “What I am going to do is talk to my National Guard liaison to see what we can do to protect the village up there. I don’t want private militias deciding to take action by themselves like at Standing Rock.” The Governor looked intently at Cole. The message was for him, as well.

Second Live Report

“This is Sarah d’Angelo coming to you from the Yellowstone Grizzly Village where tensions are mounting after yesterday’s surprising appearance of buffalo—excuse me, bison—approaching over the far ridge to stand looking at the Shale Oil drilling site. The Park Service has estimated that there were more animals in the herd than had ever been counted in Yellowstone. As you can see, the spokesperson called Earth Sister is just cresting the earthworks to approach our cameras.”

Drums picked up a rhythm from the village, perhaps louder than the day before, though it was difficult to tell on the television. The echo reverberated throughout the basin.

“Earth Sister, thank you for taking time...” the announcer began.

“Today the elk come,” Earth Sister interrupted the reporter. “This is not a protest of one human economic class against another. It is not between the corporation and the People. This is Grandmother Earth rebelling against the way you have treated her. She has been passive and you have ignored her. Now, she becomes active.” The spokesperson swept her hand toward the horizon and elk poured from the tree line. With the elk, however, were also whitetail deer, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, moose, and bighorn sheep. The fact that well over a thousand animals appeared on the horizon was almost overshadowed by the number of species represented together.

“These are her representatives to warn you. Depart. The wolves are near,” Earth Sister concluded. She handed her microphone back to the technician standing by even as Sarah d’Angelo was trying to ask a question and turned to go back to the village. As silently as they had appeared, the animals moved back into the trees. The news cameras panned over the encampment.

It was assumed the People had moved into the park via over-snow vehicles during the winter. By the time regular roads opened in April, over a thousand people had taken up residence. Few people knew that Park Rangers who had been granted admittance to the village found the settlement had the appearance of having been there a hundred years. The village even included an earthworks fortification so that anyone coming across the meadow could not see into the village but could be seen from the ridge. From the position of the television crew, people could be seen going about their everyday business in the village close to a mile away.

Satellite imagery was ordered, tracking the site for the past several months. The results were classified as top secret. One day in March, the scene was a tranquil winter basin. The next day, a village occupied the space. Officials were baffled, but were not letting the sudden appearance be known. The civilization represented by the primitives in this village had not been encountered before.

When tourists began to show up in May, they found the northwestern part of the Park closed. The Grand Loop Road was blocked from the Fishing Bridge to Old Faithful. The north and west entrances were barricaded by the park service with only access being granted to the drilling site from the north. Yet the protesters’ village survived without resupply.

Unlike Standing Rock, the protest occurred on Federal land, so local law enforcement had no authority to even assist Park Rangers attempting to keep the protesters away from the construction sites. But they found themselves in a non-confrontational situation. The protesters welcomed the Rangers, fed them, and thanked them for their care of the land entrusted to them. They insisted that they were witnesses only, and that stopping the construction and pseudo-fracking was Earth Mother’s task and she would take care of it.

Even as Earth Sister finished her daily warning in front of the news cameras, huge drums changed tempo. It was the same every evening. The natives danced and summoned the power of Earth Mother.

The Family

“I did some research,” Aubrey said. “While you were all out taking care of business today and I had a baby on my tit, I looked up information about Earth Sister. She’s been seen at many tribal gatherings for different tribes all over the country. She is known by her tattoo and as the Voice of Twin Wolves. Some drum maker has been talking up the need to resist the rape of Mother Earth among all the different Native American Nations and he frequently cites the words of Earth Sister. That absolutely has to be Merv Longsteer’s granddaughter, Mandy Stevens.”

“They are there, aren’t they?” Mary Beth whispered. “Who else could talk to the animals and lead them into valley? Into the valley of the shadow of death. Who else could move supplies and people in and out without using the roads? Our children are going to lead the attack.”

The family cleaned up the meal and put Theresa and Katherine to bed. Then they returned to the office. Ramie got the box off the mantel and turned to see who would read. She faced her own dear wife, Aubrey, who held out her hands.

“I’ll read tonight,” Aubrey said. “I’m the only one here who isn’t blood related. And I’m a third, like Mandy. I’ll read their story.

Caitlin: Mapping the Future

We were out early and took Bells and Bows out for a little ride before breakfast. I don’t think anyone noticed that Mandy rode double with me as we trotted down the road and let her off at the Bear Claw to get her car. She came back later in the day to go for a ride, but we didn’t have a conference. We were busy with all the boarders and pleasure riders who came out.

Phile and I rode scout along the trails to make sure they were safe and no wolves were prowling the area. We hadn’t heard anything from them since Christmas, but I didn’t trust them. Pa was still debating whether to drive the cattle up to the leased pastures, but we all figured that’s what we’d be doing the day school got out.

“See if you can do it while I’m out riding,” Mandy said. “Only don’t go having any orgasms. I might fall out of my saddle.”

She took off and we linked easily so we could ride with her. Of course, we had work to do. It’s never a holiday on the ranch. When we had to concentrate on a task, like driving the tractor load of hay down to the bottomlands for the rescues, we found we could easily transfer the link to Wolf Riding Woman and Wolf Rising. They were used to our time as well as their own. We really weren’t four people. We were two people with four bodies. Regardless, it was a thrill to Mandy to be directly in touch with us in our other lives. She had a million questions and assured Wolf Rising that she wanted to make love to him as much as to Phile.

It surprised me that she spoke Cheyenne to us, even though the dialect was a little strange. Turned out that Merv had been teaching her so she’d be able to understand us better.

“No secrets from you, are there, woman!” I shot at her.

“Never have been,” she answered. “Even before I knew the language, I recognized things you were saying. That’s why it finally occurred to me that you could get into my head. Oh! Look at that beautiful doe and fawn!”

Of course, we saw them through her eyes. We didn’t control her; we were just along for the ride.

We decided to see how long we could keep the link open. Mandy went home and we had no difficulty staying connected as she drove to her house, nor reconnecting after dinner. We all pleasured ourselves that night, one at a time so the other four could all experience what we felt. The feedback loop was once again intense, even though we were miles apart and only one at a time entered the circuit.

“Na-mé’oo’o,” I whispered gently. “Na-mé’oo’o, awake and hear me.”

“What? Who?” Mandy sat upright in bed.

“It is Wolf Riding Woman, my beloved.” I’d concocted this experiment myself and I was surprised that it was working.

“You’re ... Is Caitlin... ?”

“My other self is sleeping. But I wanted to reach out to you from here in the Oxėse.”

“Why? I mean, this is fantastic! You contacted me across centuries! From a different world. I knew you were present with us when we joined, but that you could reach me like this is amazing,” Mandy spluttered. “Why? Are you okay?”

“Yes. But it was more than an experiment. I wanted to tell you, my sweetheart, that I love you. I don’t know why it is important. I am the same person as Caitlin, but if she were here with me, I would make love to her. Perhaps one day we will be united. It is important that you know that I love you across all ages, na-mé’oo’o. Even if my hand never touches your face, you are my beloved and Wolf Rising’s. We love you across his chasm, just as Caitlin and Phile love you in their bed.”

“Oh, Ho’néené’šeohtsévá’e, I love you.”

In the morning, I would tell my others about what I had done.

Phile: Night of the Wolves

The three weeks that followed our first ride on Mandy were exciting, exhausting, and filled with adrenalin rushes. And lots of orgasms. We were linked together while we took our final Social Studies exam. Wolf Rising thought it would be fun to masturbate and the three of us in the exam room let out a gasp and sigh right in the middle of the exam. Mr. Hanratty made us empty our pockets on the table to make sure we weren’t receiving messages through an electronic device. He always seated Caitlin and me on opposite sides of the class, but now he looked strangely at Mandy, too.

Of course, it wasn’t all having orgasms and fun. But there was a lot of that. A subtle change had come over our school in the past two years. Guys were getting bolder and it seemed like they were caring less about women. We’d all heard rumors about rapes, but there were never any court cases. I’d been in the bathroom between classes and Mandy wanted to find out if she could feel me pee. She said it was different than a girl. I had to work a little at getting things tucked back into my jeans with the things she was thinking. I walked out of the bathroom and saw Mandy at her locker about twenty feet away. I looked past her and some big oaf had Caitlin pinned against her locker with a hand on her breast. She was pushing at him.

“Mandy!” I screamed in her head. “Caitlin needs help to your left.” I was rushing toward them, but Mandy was fast. She spun and reached between the guy’s legs and grabbed. I could feel her squeeze and gave her a little boost of my own anger to make it harder. The guy threw back his head and screamed. In front of him, Caitlin, suddenly free from his attack, reached out and grabbed both his nipples and twisted as hard as she could. He screamed again.

“You grabbed my balls!” he screamed at Mandy, jerking away and putting both hands over his nipples.

“Oh. Sorry,” Mandy said. “I wanted to feel your cock, but I couldn’t find it. You sure you’ve got one?” I was willing to bet that if he did, it was all shriveled up in horror.

“And you!” he screamed rounding on Cait. “My nipples!”

“You were pinching mine,” Cait said. “What did you expect? I just wanted to see what it felt like.”

“That’s assault!”

“The Attorney General says grabbing someone’s genitals is not sexual assault,” I said. “Want to take it to court?”

“You freaks aren’t human. Fuck you!” he said as he backed away, then turned and fled. I leaned against a locker and casually slipped my knife back into my boot. We’d long since found that our bone knives didn’t show up in the metal detectors at school. I was glad in a way that he ran away. I was sure Mom Mar would beat my ass if I put a knife in him.

It was too bad that Mandy couldn’t initiate the link. At the same time, it was probably a good thing or we’d have fallen off horses, swerved off the road, or hurt ourselves pitching hay when she showed up. She had a bit of a headache after I’d screamed in her head. We walked her over to her grandfather’s and Merv nodded at us as we went out back. Nobody could see us out there and we fell together in a hot make-out session for about ten minutes.

We were all linked together and could feel the growing pressure.

“Tonight,” Mandy whispered. “Just link me in when you start to make love. I want to be with you.”

“We should all be together,” I protested.

“Two of my lovers will be in a different time zone,” Mandy whispered. “It’s our season. I will feel everything you do if you bring me along.”

“Mandy, you know how much we love you, don’t you?” Caitlin said. “How much I love you.”

“I sure do. And you, too, Wolf Riding Woman and Wolf Rising. I think I’ll have you tattooed on my chest so I can carry you with me all the time.” I touched the chest in question and she pushed herself into my hands. We heard Ramie’s voice in the store and Mandy slipped home while we went inside.

Seemed like it took forever to get the family celebration over with. Nothing against Kyle’s birthday, but we really had more important things to do. I had a feeling my other siblings wanted to get to their apartment, too. Caitlin and I stripped down and collapsed onto the bed together. I kissed her hard in both timelines. Wolf Riding Woman and Wolf Rising were as ready for this in Oxėse as we were in now-time. We’d gone to the trouble of building our own special wigwam next to a hot spring on the ridge overlooking what I knew would eventually become our homestead. We’d piled it thick with furs we’d collected over the winter and were naked and waiting.

We all sat facing each other. That sounds strange, but when I looked out of my eyes I could see both Caitlin and Wolf Riding Woman. She could see both Phile and Wolf Rising. We took hold of each other’s hands and concentrated our thoughts. In a second, Mandy was in our minds and we were in hers. And it wasn’t that she shared with one of us. I could feel her disorientation as she experienced seeing all four of us through the others’ eyes. And then we were in her head as well and I could see myself looking at Caitlin.