Chapter 23

The flight home passed quickly, as I was introduced to a side of Robert I’d never previously met. After about an hour of it, I just shook my head in wonder at how filthy he’d gotten.

He said, “I’m sorry if I managed to fall off of whatever pedestal you’d put me on in your head, Cal.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that, Bob. I’m well aware that people are sexual beings. I know you and Ginny are sexually active, just like Elroy, Earl, and Gloria. It’s just...”

He grinned, then. “It’s just that when you met me, I was an old man, quietly dying. I know you didn’t have an older brother, and I’m guessing your grandfather was a lot like most older men here. He spoiled you, and taught you a lot of things, but never really got down to some dirty and just plain raunchy talking with you.”

“Um, yeah,” I said.

He turned to Jeremy. “You know why I did this, don’t you?”

Jeremy threw up a hand. “I’ve already been accused of being a corrupting influence on Cal. Don’t put more of that on me.” Then he laughed, and said, “Yeah, I do. Shared experiences, in what was effectively combat together.”

I was puzzled and quite brilliantly said, “Huh?”

“The two of you just went on what was a combat patrol in enemy territory. Yeah, I know you were just in a space shuttle. Well, rockets can blow up, so there’s that. Then you actually DID watch a rocket blow up, and a whole lot more. Cal, you know there’ve been nuclear tests done on Earth. About two thousand or so of them, ranging from little ones all the way to a couple of massive ass bombs, wouldn’t you say?”

I thought about it for a moment, then agreed. “Something to that order. I don’t have access to all the data, but there’s probably been over five hundred thousand kilotons worth of nuclear weapons tested for various reasons. I’m not too sure how effective the Soviet nuclear explosions for crushing ore were.”

Jeremy snorted. “I hadn’t heard about those. But anyway, two thousand nuclear tests, tens of thousands of actual nuclear warheads that were going to get used at some point until the Messenger came along, and how many had actually been used for combat? That’s a rhetorical question, the answer is two. Both by the United States, with one on Hiroshima, and the other on Nagasaki. How many did you just use?”

“Um, twelve.”

“Exactly. In one fell swoop, you just used, for actual violence against someone else, six times the number of nuclear weapons we’ve used for combat in the last forty-one years. I grew up in a world where the threat of nuclear weapons was very, very real. Bob was an adult in the world that invented the damned things. Hell, he probably personally knows some of the guys that designed them.”

Bob nodded at that.

“And those were what, twenty kilotons or so, each, right? What just went off in space?”

“Adding them all together, about forty-six megatons. Eleven hundred times what destroyed the two cities in Japan. What’re you getting at, Jeremy?”

“What he’s getting at is we both also know that about eight hundred thousand souls from Star Home died permanently and forever because you came up with this idea. You are, if nothing else, rather predictable in your response when faced with something like this. You pull into yourself, you talk about going to a deserted island, and you brood and worry about it. Well, guess what? You’ve said it yourself. This is fucking war! People die in war. You didn’t send those souls into those rods. They chose to do that. To get the results of what the nukes you sent up, plus what those rods did, would probably have killed Helen, if she’d had to channel that much power. Star Home souls are different from Earth souls, just like Hoover Dam is different from a car alternator. Same principle, just an entirely different scale. So, about now, you’re still wondering about why I decided to talk like a drunken sailor, describing all sorts of sexual exploits and other stuff, right?” Bob asked.

“Um, actually, yes.”

“It’s a fucking distraction, my boy,” he said as our helicopter came in for a landing. “I wasn’t going to let you spend the ride home from Vandenberg in the same funk you were when you came back into the shuttle. Not with your wives waiting for you out on the runway, to take you home because you’re a fucking hero.” He paused and held up a finger. “No stories from you later, about how they fucked a hero, either.”

Then he laughed. “Cal, you don’t feel like it right now. That’s normal. Jeremy’s been through it, Mike’s been through it, even Chuck and Dave have been through it. They did it retail, while you just did it wholesale. Now, get your ass out of this bird and go give your wives hugs and kisses, then take them home and ask them if they’d like you to grow a mustache, so you can charge them for mustache rides.”

I only partially followed his advice. No discussion of mustache rides came up, but there was quite a bit of tongue lashing done, even if there weren’t any understandable words being said by those receiving the dressing down.

Monday morning, I called Washington. After a couple of minutes, I got through.

“Good morning, Ronald. I was just wondering if the invitation to the State of the Union address tomorrow night was still extended.”

“Of course it is,” he replied.

“Good. Now, I have a serious and legitimate question. How much of a diplomatic faux pas is it if someone else says a few words during the speech, or if you show a video clip?”

“Well, I give the speech. I suppose we could show a film clip. I was planning on talking about the results of the Earth Defender mission anyway, so I presume you’re talking about that.”

“Sort of.” I spent the next fifteen minutes explaining to Ronald what I had wanted to mention. He quickly agreed to add that to his speech, and then he had to go, so our conversation came to an end.

“Are you doing okay, Cal?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m fine. How’d your games in Arizona go Friday and Saturday?”

“We won both of them. You didn’t sound too fine talking to President Reagan just now.”

I sighed. “Bob kept me entertained on the way home from Vandenberg. Apparently, I’m predictable about some things.”

She snorted. “You have been ever since Beth and Harry found you. You have both a conscience and a set of moral values that are messed up, courtesy of being a child of two worlds. Three, really. What you learned from your parents, what you picked up from reading your first night here, and what you’ve learned from actually living with us. That doesn’t mean those are bad morals, by any means. Just ones that are confused.”

Helen didn’t have any classes on Tuesday, and Diana’s professor gave her permission to skip his political science classes for the week. We flew to Washington Monday afternoon, and ended up staying in one of the White House’s guest bedrooms. I qualified as a visiting head of state for protocol purposes. The Secret Service bent their rules enough to allow my own security detachment in the residence.

Or, as Ronald told us over dinner that evening, they recognized reality and that if I had bad intentions, they didn’t have a hope in hell of doing anything about it, so it didn’t really matter if I had some Gurkhas tagging along. That Sayel was lurking around somewhere they didn’t know went unmentioned.

Nancy Reagan and my wives disappeared after breakfast the next morning, so they could get their hair and makeup done properly. That way, their crowns would fit their hair. I decided discretion was the better part of valor and didn’t ask. I wouldn’t have to wear my costume or my formal crown, but I still had to wear a three piece suit, my informal crown, my royal awards, and my khukuri. But it wouldn’t take me hours to get ready, so I had several hours to kill.

Ronald had some things to do, so he made a phone call. About fifteen minutes later, Jeane Kirkpatrick walked in.

“Your Majesty, it’s a pleasure to meet you again,” she said.

“Where’s the field artillery?” I asked with a grin.

She shook her head. “You know, my detail is probably never going to let me live that down.”

“That’s fine. We should have longer range guns for this year’s party. Or we could go for a drive in some armor.”

That got a laugh from Ronald. “No squishing buildings in Berkeley ... unless they really, really deserve it,” he said.

“Yes, Mister President,” Jeanne said. “So, I understand Your Majesty has some free time before tonight’s soirée, and since it won’t take me long to get ready, would you care for a tour of the sites of Washington?”

“Only if you call me Cal.”

She grinned. “Of course.”

The Vice-Presidential car was the former Presidential limousine, the same 1972 Lincoln Continental that Ronald had been shot in. When we got in, Jeane was startled to see that the back of the car wasn’t empty.

“Where did you come from?” she asked.

“Well, originally, I am from the Pashtun region,” Sayel said.

Her main Secret Service agent stuck his head in, when he heard the voice. “Well, damn! That’s fifty bucks we owe you so far.”

I looked at the agent. “Really?”

“We’re treating him as a training exercise. If he can make it into someplace we’re guarding and we don’t detect him, then we owe him ten bucks. If we catch him, then he owes us ten bucks. So far he’s five and oh,” the agent said.

“Just so long as you don’t kill any of the Secret Service agents, then that’s fine,” I said.

“Of course, Master. I will admit they are much better than the guards at San Quentin. At least these gentlemen and ladies are actually making an effort at protecting their charges.”

Both the agent and Jeane looked at me with wide eyes.

I just shook my head. “Don’t ask. But you’ve been complimented, so let’s just leave it at that, shall we?”

The agent slowly nodded, then backed out of the car with even more respect for Sayel in his eyes, so Jeane and I could get in. Once we were in, our small little convoy took off. We only had four escort vehicles, one of which was for my Gurkhas.

The weather was chilly and it was misting, but it wasn’t snowing or freezing like it so often could in February in Washington. That did cut down on the tourists, though.

“Is there any place in particular you’d like to see?” Jeane asked.

“I leave myself in your capable hands, Jeane.”

“Thanks. There are literally so many museums and memorials, it’d take more than a week doing nothing but visiting them for you to see them all. How about Ford’s Theatre and the Petersen House to start?”

The National Park Service didn’t have any problems allowing us to spend several minutes actually in the President’s Box at Ford Theatre, allowing our imaginations to fill in what had happened that night. Then we went across the street and went into the bedroom. While the bed and other furniture in the room were replicas, the pillow and pillowcase with Lincoln’s blood on them were original.

“He’s in neither place that I can tell, Jeane. I know there’ve been people that have tried to communicate with his statue in the Memorial. While I don’t particularly like the Messenger, I also have no reason to doubt his word that Lincoln’s not there, either. Either way ... for all those deaths and assassinations, to control things, to set them up just so – what we’ve figured out was for nothing?” I shook my head.

Jeane put her hand on my shoulder. “It was definitely for the wrong purposes, but it wasn’t for nothing, Cal.”

I turned and looked at her, confusion evident on my face.

She smiled and said, “If things hadn’t happened the way they had, we wouldn’t have you. The CIA did a lot of shitty things during their four decades. Funding the lab your parents worked at wasn’t one of them. Oh, I’m sure there was all sorts of stuff being researched there that wouldn’t have been for the betterment of mankind. But having you as the result? Well, you’re the best thing to happen to the human race since we got to this ball of mud. Come on, let’s go look at some other stuff.”

We got back into the limousine and drove around the US Capitol building, then along Madison Drive so she could point out the Smithsonian buildings to me. I nodded, remembering the night Beth and I had walked here. She’d told the agent our next destination, so we parked on the circle drive around the Washington Monument.

There were umbrellas for us in the car. Two agents went with us as we walked to the Monument. I stopped at the base and looked up.

“This is the tallest obelisk in the world, and for five years, it was the tallest structure. A fitting monument to the first President of the United States,” I said.

Then I looked around, at how empty the area was due to the weather. “You know, I read that there are inscriptions on the aluminum capstone up top.”

Jeane nodded, replying, “Yes, I’ve seen the replica displayed inside.”

I grinned. “Yeah, but that’s just a replica. Let’s go see the real thing.” I lifted myself up and used my telekinesis to bring her up with me. I’ll give her credit, she only let out a mild squeal of alarm.

It was a bit windier over five hundred fifty feet in the air. She breathlessly said, “Oh, shit! Damn, that’s a hell of a lot different from being in a glass elevator!” Then she looked at the capstone.

“Wow! Ron was up here, but just being carried.” She reached out with one hand and touched the inscription in the aluminum that read, ‘Capstone set, December 6, 1884.’

“Am I the first person to touch this in over a hundred years?” she asked.

“No. The fiftieth anniversary, they came up here to replace the lightning rods with what we see now. There are actually inscriptions under the band that holds the lightning rods, but they’re basically illegible,” I explained. “But, so far as I know, you’re the first to see this in person since 1934.” I moved us around to the east face, so she could see where the ‘Repaired 1934 National Park Service Department of the Interior’ inscription was. “The band covers the inscription ‘Laus Deo,’ which originally was the only carving on this side.”

“I was eight years old and in Oklahoma in 1934, so that’s not something I would’ve studied then. Wow. I was going to give you a tour, and here, you’ve shown me something I didn’t know. Thank you, Cal,” she said as I lowered us back to the ground.

“You’re welcome.”

One of the Secret Service agents on the ground said, “Ma’am, Sir, it looks like there were a couple of witnesses, but no real public spectacle like when the Messenger was here with the President.”

“Very good,” she said, starting to walk back to her car.

I stayed by her side, but looked at the agent. “No other comments?”

“Sir, I have no desire to go for a swim in the Potomac. San Francisco Bay was enough.”

I shook my head and grinned apologetically. “Yeah, sorry about that. I may have had just a bit too much to drink that night.”

“That’s understandable,” the agent replied, then sighed. “Considering what we now know about you, we’re just glad you didn’t see if you could throw us across the bay.”

“Probably,” I said as I got into the car. “And as much as I don’t want to, I think our next couple of stops are places I need to go. Take us over to Bacon Drive first, and ... stay in the car. Please.”

“Yes, Sir,” he said.

Jeane looked at me. “The Wall?”

“Yeah.” I was quiet.

“Even if there weren’t tourists at the Washington Monument, there’ll be people there.”

I nodded. “And it’s about time people found out there’s a Guardian of the Earth, don’t you think?”

She started to say something, then stopped. Then she smiled and shook her head. “It’s funny. Ron was asking me just yesterday if you thought he’d mind making reference to us having someone to defend Earth that wasn’t the Messenger, since most people are still just living their normal, everyday lives like you’d talked about last fall, when we found out that Halley’s was heading this way.”

“That’s the best thing they can do, Jeane,” I said.

It only took a few minutes for us to get there. The agent got out and opened the door for us, then shut it and took up a position by the car as Jeane and I walked along the pathway. There was a National Park Service ranger waiting at the top.

“Ma’am, your protective detail radioed ahead. We’re here all the time anyway, due to the ... well, the men who live here. The researchers – the biographers that try to talk to the men here – they’re not here today, due to the weather. So the only people here are those who would be here normally.”

“Thank you,” she said.

There were still more than a dozen people standing just along this half of the wall. A couple of men were in their old uniforms, sitting on folding chairs and just touching the wall. I looked at the ranger, then back at the men, the question on my face obvious.

“It varies. Sometimes there are a dozen or more, depending upon the unit and how close they were to the men who died. I wish it was easier for them to communicate, when a family member comes along, or some of the men they fought with. Combat can make you closer to someone in your unit than to your own brother.”

“That sounds like the voice of experience,” I said.

“It is, Sir. I just got lucky, is all. I was in a transportation outfit, and all of us that went over also managed to come home, at least mostly in one piece. A few of our guys were wounded, but we didn’t lose anyone over there.”

I nodded.

‘Grandfather, are you sure about this?’ ‘It’ll actually make it easier for those from Star Home. We almost have too much power.’

“Well, then I guess I’ll have to see if I can do here what I did at Arizona, even if I don’t know how the hell I can do it.” I walked over to a stretch of the wall where I could just make out a couple dozen barely glowing names, and put both my hands on it.

‘All right, listen up! My name’s Cal. I’m the Guardian of the Earth. I know something about sacrifice. I just watched about eight hundred thousand souls in a state similar to what you’re in now give up all their energy to help make it easier for me to beat someone who thinks he’s a god. He’s not. There’s also a few billion others from that world that’ve come here, and they understand about sacrifice, too. They also have a bit more power than they need, so they’ve made an offer. If there’s anyone who would not like a bit more power, so you can interact with the world that is, or to move on if you’d like, then raise your nonexistent hands. Oh, I guess that won’t work, so just pull back into yourself, and this’ll pass over you. You’ll have my countdown from five. Five, four, three, two, one, zero!’ When I mentally got to zero, I pushed some power that my grandfather was channeling from the souls of Star Home into the material of the wall, allowing it to move through and help strengthen the souls that were within. It hadn’t been totally obvious before which names had souls living in them, as many of the souls didn’t have enough power to communicate even with all the efforts that had been made over the last fourteen months. Out of more than fifty thousand, there were barely three hundred that could reliably talk to someone.

That changed instantly, as every name that had a soul living in it blazed bright yellow in the gloomy Washington weather. Over seven thousand men now had enough power. I stepped back from the Wall, over to the Park Ranger.

“You can tell the press that this is courtesy of the Guardian of the Earth, when they ask. And that’s all you know at this time. I suspect your morning is about to get a lot busier. Have a good day.”

I walked with Jeane back to the limousine.

“Is that what it looked like at Arizona?” she asked.

“Close. There were very few men lost there that didn’t pass over, from their sense of duty and need to see the job done. This is a memorial, so a lot of guys would’ve either not transitioned like this, or would be content to stay where they actually rest. You’re wondering how I know so much, right?”

“I’ve visited with the Pope, and held the stone he has. I know you’ve talked about what lives on in Uluru many time, and I’ve even been to Pearl and talked to some of the men there and at the Punchbowl. But how you know about it, no, I don’t have a clue.”

“You remember meeting Cally, Holly, and Carrie, of course, and you know about the souls that live within them,” I said as we sat down. I looked up at the driver. “The US Marine Corps War Memorial, then to Arlington and the Tomb of the Unknowns.”

“Yes, Sir,” he said.

“Well, I have the soul of someone who died a quarter million years ago, living within me. That helps, and may be the reason I’m the Guardian. But he’s never affected me any other way that I know of. Well, that’s not totally true, two of my wives have the souls of both of his wives in them. You might also say that I’ve known about souls continuing to exist ever since I was a young child, though.” I pulled my necklace out, so she could see the dart. “Touch it.”

‘Hello, Vice-President Kirkpatrick. I’m Cal’s grandfather.’ She pulled her hand back. “You’ve kept some things very close to the vest.”

“Considering what the CIA ended up doing to Karen Douglas, plus everything else they and other wonderfully moral and ethical groups have done over the years? My parents were well aware of the existence of souls living on after death. Why do you think I was so wary about going to Pearl Harbor and the Punchbowl? I don’t think they knew about Shiva coming here, so I’m presuming their deaths weren’t directly caused by the Bilderberg group. But they were smart enough, they didn’t necessarily tell me everything. Who better for them to disclose ... well, everything to, but the man who also programmed the created intelligence that I brought from their lab with me. And, oh, yeah – it’s not like you can torture him. He’s energy, for God’s sake. Oh, and this isn’t the first thing he’s inhabited since his physical body died, it’s just a bit more ... well, inconspicuous.”

While she sat in silence digesting my remarks, my grandfather said, ‘You’ve definitely been influenced by Elroy and Robert. That was the most convoluted bunch of sentences that were unrelated to each other I’ve ever heard.’ ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘Don’t worry, it gets better. Or, as Elroy has told me, if I can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then I baffle them with bullshit.’ ‘While I don’t know what a bull is, I get it from context. I’m beginning to wonder if I really need to stick around with you.’ ‘It’s up to you, but you do make it easier for me to talk to everyone else. A lot like what we’re going to find here in a few minutes,’ I told him.

“Cal, that’s ... I don’t know. I find my discussions with you are somewhat unsettling. Are we even going to have organized religions, or religions at all, when this visit with Shiva is finished? I’ve already had reports about what you said about Mohamed.”

“Jeane, I ... I just don’t know. I was raised atheist, because my parents knew that the standard definitions of what were being used as the basis for most religions were wrong. Then I became agnostic, because I realized that there might be a God. While it’s obvious that Shiva was an alien, the teaching of Saṃsāra as part of Hindu religions could be correct, as, again, shown by Carrie, Cally, and Holly. Yes, I know that raises the question about how my parents knew about souls existing after death. I would certainly love to ask them that question. For all I know, they got the idea from Bob’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ and just applied scientific research to it to find the truth. What it’s going to mean afterwards? I believe we have free will, but I also now believe that there must be a God who’s setting some things up, as it were, then letting us do with it what we will.”

I gave off a big sigh. “What scares or at least bothers me is that the Mother Fucking Alien had no trouble killing twenty million Chinese civilians to teach their government a lesson, but then left not because he killed all those people, but because he broke a rule about interfering internally with a nation. There’s something wrong with that. As part of the Federation government, yeah, we’re supposed to leave nations alone. But we’re not going to allow a nation to intentionally harm their own citizens, because those citizens are also residents of Earth.”

She chuckled and replied, “I heard about your talk with President Mondale regarding the situation in Colombia. Having seen the picture of that young woman that perished due to that government’s inaction, I completely agree.”

She stopped talking as we drove by Arlington National Cemetery. She looked out the windows at the rows of headstones, then at the trees as we approached the Marine Corps Memorial.

In a quiet voice, she asked, “How many souls are out there?”

“A lot.”

The car stopped. The Secret Service opened the doors for us, and then one of the agents walked with us up the steps and the path to the Memorial. “I put my twenty in before I got on the detail, Sir. I didn’t know what you were doing at the Wall, or I’d have escorted you there, regardless. These men are my brothers.”

“I understand,” I quietly replied.

I gingerly approached the Memorial. I could already tell there were a lot of souls here. Not as many as in the Cenotaph, but these were US Marines. I decided to let Jeane and the agent hear my side of things as I put my hands on the Memorial.

“Is this the US Navy Men’s Department?”

I actually felt the Memorial shake just a little when I said that.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Devil Dogs! Semper Fi! I think it’s time you men got the chance to show the Army, the Navy, and the world that just because you’re dead, you really are guarding the streets of Heaven!”

With that, I put a burst of power into the Memorial. I could already tell there were thousands of souls in it. That extra power not only caused the location names around the base of the Memorial to light up and shine from within, five of the six men holding the flag also lit up.

The Secret Service agent went ramrod straight and raised his hand in salute. “Carry on, my brothers. I will gladly join you when my time is through!” He brought his hand down, then walked over and touched the Memorial reverently.

Jeane looked at me, then out at the Arlington Boulevard and Richmond Highway, where traffic going by was slowing to see what was going on. “I think we probably ought to go to the last stop. There’s going to be a lot of people here shortly.”

“Of course, Jeane.”

The agent nodded that he’d heard, stepped back and saluted again, then escorted us to the limousine. “Thank you, Sir. If you want to throw me in San Francisco Bay again, that’s perfectly fine with me.” Tears were running down his cheeks.

We got back into the limousine and our escorting convoy headed for the Cemetery now.

“Why were five of the Marines lit up?” Jeane asked.

“Those five men are now deceased,” the agent said. “Apparently, the history books are wrong with the names of who they were. Corporal Block, PFC Sousley, and Sergeant Strank were all killed on Iwo, anyone who’s heard ‘The Ballad of Ira Hayes’ knows what happened to PFC Hayes, PFC Keller died of a heart attack six years ago, and PFC Schultz – the one that didn’t light up – well, they’re waiting for him, when it’s his time.”

“Really? That’s not the list of names I remember reading in my history books,” I said.

“The other men were up there, on top of Suribachi. They took part in helping with the raising, helping take the first flag down, moving the pipes around, stuff like that. I think – well, I didn’t ask, and I won’t – that after being on that hellhole and seeing some of the things they did, and with three of the men that did help raise it getting killed, that there was some confusion in their own minds when it came time to come home. Call it shell shock, battle fatigue, operational exhaustion, or that new name, post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s all the same stuff. I have to undergo a psych evaluation every year I’m on the detail, because I enlisted in ‘55, was in Lebanon back in ‘58 and then three tours in ‘Nam. I got out in ‘75, and I’ve been on the detail since ‘79. They want to make sure I’m not going to pull my gun out and shoot the President,” he said.

“I’m surprised they’d even allow you to be on the protective detail, if they were concerned about your stability,” I commented.

“Yeah, well, there’s also a reason there’s a very nice long gun in this car, too. I won Camp Perry three times before I joined the detail, and twice since then,” he explained.

“Reach out, reach out and touch someone ... from half a mile away,” I joked.

“Something like that, Sir,” he said with a grin.

The other agent in the car said, “We’ve called ahead, so they’re actually expecting us. We’ll be coming up from the east side, so away from the general public.”

We were quiet during the rest of the short drive. Our small convoy stopped, then both agents from our limousine, as well as three of my Gurkhas, got out to accompany us. I saw Major Pandit with them.

“You’ve left us alone at the last two. Why now?” I asked.

“We wish to pay our own respects, if that is allowed,” he said.