Chapter 27

I certainly recognized the scene. I just hadn’t realized it’d been filmed.

‘Marcia, how many cameras do you have around our place?’

‘I don’t have that many. This is courtesy of security. They were filming for their own records that day due to the visitation, plus they have fixed cameras set up for perimeter and site security on all the buildings. They have higher quality closed circuit cameras than normal – effectively studio quality – because they know how lousy normal security cameras are.’

I got to watch Air Force One land again, along with my greeting of Ronald and Walter. Mycroft started narrating then. “This meeting and demonstration didn’t have audio recorded, simply video, so I’ll explain what you’re seeing. Last August, the ‘Angels from Above’ rescued a JAL 747 that was badly damaged due to an accident, and saved the lives of more than five hundred passengers and crew. Federation President Mondale asked Cal Lewis, the Guardian of the Earth, for clarification on his abilities, and was invited to visit Moffett Airfield, which now belongs to the Kingdom of the First Peoples. As President Mondale was in Washington, having a discussion with the US President, Ronald Reagan, they both flew out.”

“As you heard in the previous segment, the three young ladies you see have the souls of the sisters who died fighting against Shiva thousands of years ago living within them. One of the things they are capable of is helping others. The Indigenous People of Australia and the Unangan People of Alaska already knew about this helping, this healing. It could only be done with the assistance of the Sacred Souls that live in Uluru and Mount Moffett, on people the Sacred Souls themselves determined to be worthy. Due to his assisting the Guardians of the Earth, President Reagan was deemed worthy. The flashes of light you just saw were the skin cancer on his nose, and his prostate issues being healed.”

There was a bit of murmuring from within the room at that and President Reagan falling into a chair, but the video continued playing.

“President Reagan was simply stunned by this knowledge, which is why he fell into that chair. Now, assisting in this are four people you haven’t met. The two older people standing by the televisions are noted science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, and his wife, Virginia. The two people on the television screens are Pahto, a created intelligence that was the pilot of an interstellar spacecraft that crashed here tens of thousands of years ago. Many of the descendants of her crew, among them the Yakima Confederation of Tribes, lived near the mountain named after her, in land formerly belonging to the state of Washington that is now part of the Kingdom of the First Peoples. The other is Mycroft, named after a character in one of Mister Heinlein’s novels. He is – I am – also a created intelligence, and was designed and programmed in the lab where Cal Lewis’s parents worked. One of the things present at that lab were shivalingam, which was thought at the time to be the reason Mister Lewis was chosen as Guardian of the Earth.”

“We now know that to only be partially correct. Mister Lewis, like the three girls, has the soul of someone who died a quarter million years ago living within him, someone who was involved in the initial colonization of Earth from Star Home.”

That got more murmurs from the world leaders.

“Now, you’ll see the three girls using the powers they have within themselves, in an attempt to show what else they can do, mentally. That is an unloaded 747, and weighs approximately one hundred ninety tons. They can jostle it, a little, without using the powers of the Sacred Souls. This is what the Guardian of the Earth can do. That is over seven hundred fifty thousand pounds he is lifting in the air, mentally, and without using any power other than what he has within himself. Now, what you are about to see could be disturbing to young children and sensitive viewers. It is quite graphic, and shows real violence. I will wait thirty seconds for anyone to leave the room that does not want to see this.”

There was a timer superimposed on the screen, as the cameras showed us riding out to the range in golf carts. The staked-down animals could be clearly seen. Once the timer was finished, Mycroft said, “The planes are stored in what was a blimp hangar during World War Two. These animals are staked down in an area that was used for storage of ammunition. There are planetary defense beam generators, left over from when Earth was first colonized by Star Home a quarter million years ago, still active. This is a demonstration of the abilities of those beams.”

After the first flash of light, Mycroft said, “That was a two millimeter diameter. two hundred fifty kilojoule beam, lasting one millisecond, killing the goat. This is the same shot, now into a cow. As you can see, it stunned the cow, literally cutting a small hole through the cow, but otherwise not harming it. This is now a twelve point seven millimeter bolt. This half inch diameter beam instantly killed the cow, destroying its heart. The next target is a one inch thick, high strength steel plate. To demonstrate a currently available military weapon, a light anti-tank weapon will be fired at it.”

The round blew a hole through the steel. “Now, there will be five, one millisecond shots using a planetary defense beam.”

After the flashes, Mycroft said, “With magnification, you can see the five holes poked through one inch steel. The next to last test is the seven hundred millimeter front composite armor from an M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.”

There was a brief flash of light, and the armor could be seen to slightly move. The view zoomed in. “As you can see, there are now two, half inch diameter holes, going through more than twenty-seven inches of armor.”

Then it showed me running into the field. I heard several voices in the room raised in protest as I took my position. There was the quick flash of light, then I was picking myself up off the ground, and looking down where two holes could clearly be seen in my shirt.

“His Majesty, King California Lewis, is the Guardian of the Earth. The weapons you just saw used will be deployed to destroy as much of what remains of Halley’s Comet as possible. Cal Lewis himself will fight Shiva. It is hoped that Shiva has no more powers now than he did when he was here ten thousand years ago. Just as before, there will be damage. But with the Guardian of the Earth defending us, we hope it will be minimal. Thank you.”

The screen faded to black.

“One moment!” Marcia yelled out.

The screen lit back up again.

“The following is a supplement to the preceding video. Cal Lewis played football in high school and college. At no time during his playing on the field has he used any power that he had conscious control over. That means when he threw these passes...” the video showed all three of my long passes. “ ... that was literally due to his natural skill as a football player. This is a still shot from a fight to the death he was involved in, in December of 1984. As you can see, Cal is bleeding. Ramaeshwara Randhawa, known as the Thug, was also a user of shivalingam. It is only through his natural athleticism that Cal survived that fight. That is also after he made the first of those passes you just witnessed. He did not know, at that time, of the Sacred Souls or of the soul living within him. He could get hurt, and did. He could not mentally pick up two 747s. Keep in mind when he recently said this...” it showed part of the conversation I had outside the gates of Vandenberg. “ ... there were people actively working and seeking to have Shiva control Earth, such that they even had acquired nuclear weapons to aid Shiva by killing those who would work against them.”

Jack Elway came up on the screen. “I am Jack Elway, coach of the Stanford Cardinal. I have known for some time that Cal Lewis could not be hurt on the football field. Those of us in the Stanford community have known for some time he is the Guardian of the Earth. At no time, during any of our games, did he use any of his abilities in playing football. He is a man of honor, and I trust him with my life.”

It switched. “I am Terry Goodman, the Pac-10 NCAA representative, and this is Keith Reynolds, NCAA Vice-Chairman in charge of football. We have met with Coach Elway, and we personally witnessed Cal Lewis play football for the Stanford Cardinal. In light of what we now know about him – and what we knew about him before he came to Stanford and when he was playing high school football – the NCAA officially does not see any reason to investigate. This is a game with rules, and Mister Lewis has shown himself to be someone who follows those rules.”

It cut back to Mycroft, who said, “Thank you for watching. Good luck, Godspeed, and let us all hope and pray that the Guardian of the Earth is successful in defeating Shiva.”

This time, when it faded to black, Marcia said, “Okay, that’s it. There might be a few more things added, but that’s what I’d planned on showing the world next month.”

The lights came back on. She stood up and turned to look at everyone. “Now, one thing that did not, and will not, make it into the final production is this. Everyone in here knows what a Saturn V rocket is. You saw Earth Defender in the background shot of Vandenberg. The first stage of that rocket is, by itself, one hundred thirty eight feet tall, thirty-three feet in diameter, and when empty, weighs three hundred thousand pounds. How many of you have seen the old Stanley Kubrick movie, ‘Doctor Strangelove,’ with Peter Sellers and George C. Scott?”

I think she was surprised when nearly all of them raised their hands. I know I was.

“Good. Then you know the scene where Slim Pickens ends up riding the bomb that is dropped from the B-52. There was a slight deviation in the launch of Earth Defender, due to one of the boosters actually being too effective. My husband rode the side of that rocket up and into space, correcting the flight path, and making sure it would fly right, to meet Halley’s Comet and blow the shit out of it. After it separated, the first stage would normally either burn up or splash down somewhere in the ocean. Cal brought the damned thing back down, and set it in the parking lot at Vandenberg. At that time, he said ... well, let me play you the tape.”

She pulled out a cassette tape player, pulled out the audio plug from the projector, and stuck it into the player, then pushed play.

“Call it a statement of good intentions, and a gift of good will. It’s certainly one thing for me to show you what a planetary defense beam is and can do. This? Well, I’ve said before that I’ll die before I let Shiva win. If so, then this can be my tombstone. Which I have too many reasons to allow. So, call this a trophy, or a monument, or a memorial to those who will die, because we know that’s going to happen. But this ... this is the first step in cutting those casualties.”

You could see her shut off the tape, but you couldn’t hear it, from the applause in that room coming from everyone present.

I went to the front of the room and gave Marcia a hug. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket so she could dry her eyes after playing the tape, then went to the other side of the table, so I was facing everyone.

“First off, thank you all for coming today. A minor detail; Presidents Mondale and Reagan witnessed other things that day that are irrelevant to our discussion. If the two of you wish, I’ll talk about that with you, later.”

Mondale shook his head. “In light of everything we’ve seen, I don’t believe that will be necessary.”

Reagan nodded his agreement.

“Thank you. Now – other than Hugo, I’m going to guess that some of you are curious about some of what you just saw. Hugo, when we’re done with this, I need to spend some time with you in a private discussion.”

“I agree, my brother,” he said.

“Cousin, actually, but that’s for later,” I replied with a smile, just to throw him off. “Cris is, too, but that’s also for later. Now, if you’d care to raise hands? Yes, Missus Thatcher?”

“When Her Majesty agreed to everything regarding Princess Diana, did she know you had all of these abilities?” she asked.

“She had seen the first tape from the hangar, of course. I think what ended up convincing her was when I was sitting at my kitchen table at Stanford, and destroyed both a lamp and the cane Prince Phillip was using, while they were seated at Buckingham Palace. Well, that and my comment that Diana would be Queen Regent for William, with Lady Ogilvy fourth in line for the throne, because no one would be left. I’d heard about what you told her to do under your official power as PM, which I appreciate. When I also heard that she considered Diana an embarrassment to the crown, and there was a bit of hope that perhaps she might get killed, well ... I’m sure you can imagine my reaction.”

Margaret Thatcher shook her head. “Thank you for not destroying Westminster Palace and all of London!”

I grinned and said, “That would’ve been a bit of an overreaction. I did consider simply crushing Charles’ head, though. But that might’ve caused a bit of an issue with relations between the US and Great Britain.”

There was a bit of amused laughter from the rest of the world leaders, with an audible groan from Brent. I looked his way and said, “Hey, it all worked out okay. I even made Phillip a new cane,” then looked back at the room.

“Yes, Chairman Xi?”

“I am slightly confused by two things. First, I was part of the last conversation with Caelistis before he left Earth. He said those devices that we call shivalingam were made by his people. Since then, we have found out they were actually from Star Home, and that Earth itself was colonized by Star Home. To me, that almost sounds like he also was from Star Home. What are your thoughts regarding that?”

“A question back, for clarification. Have you spoken with Pahto?”

He shook his head. “No, I have not had the pleasure yet of speaking directly with her.”

“I suspect he was making things up out of whole cloth, but that’s just me. The reason I asked if you’d spoken to Pahto is she might have explained this better. It’s a long story. Probably a million or more years ago, there was a race that went through this spiral arm of the galaxy and dropped off on different planets some animals that they planned on harvesting later for food. In her case, they dropped off those animals about eight hundred fifty thousand years ago. They didn’t put the same animals on every planet, because they wanted ... some variety in their diet. Sort of how we raise different breeds of cow. On Earth, they dropped off variety two, a slightly different breed of food animal. Nowadays, we call that particular animal by another name, because we don’t know what the aliens that put them here called them. We call them Neanderthals.”

It took a good two minutes for things to settle down before I could continue.

“Yeah, I know. Gives a whole new meaning to Charlton Heston’s line, ‘Soylent Green is people,’doesn’t it? They weren’t that successful, actually. Anyway, about six hundred thousand years ago, Pahto’s folks had developed all sorts of neat technology. They were much closer to the core worlds than we are. The distances involved are, to be accurate in description, truly astronomical. To use a poor analogy, Chairman Xi, imagine you’re only a foot tall, like the G.I. Joe doll that my son, William, just got. That means instead of being able to walk, say, twelve miles per day, you could walk two. And that’s your only means of transport. The core worlds are Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Ningbo. That means it takes you five months if you start in Shanghai, go to Hangzhou, then Ningbo, and return directly to Shanghai. There are other, smaller cities within that triangle. Pahto’s people would be about Wuhan, more than six months just one way. We’re way out in the middle of nowhere, compared to that. About the equivalent distance from Wuhan to Islamabad, just to give you some idea based upon distances we can understand how damned far out we really are, because twenty-six thousand light years is an ungodly amount of miles.

“Just to make it more fun, that’s straight line distance, and not the way Earth sits in our spiral arm. Anyway, before your eyes glaze over too far, Pahto did have a faster-than-light drive, along with stasis beds for her human crews – if you saw the movie that came out a few years ago, ‘Alien,’ similar to that – because it might take them ten years or a hundred years to reach their next destination. That’s just how far out we are. Anyway, something she told me was that, within a one hundred light year sphere around Earth, there are – or were – a total of ten systems that could be inhabited, with four of them requiring special equipment. When her people first came through this area, they saw there was already life here, so they bypassed Earth and colonized Star Home, again, six hundred thousand years ago. By the time they swung through again, they found there was an issue with a radiation being emitted by Corvala – and so they abandoned their colony and left the people there at their own request, because they thought they were all going to die.

“Well, they didn’t. About a quarter million years ago, those people had figured out how to change their genetic code, at about the same time they also figured out how to make a faster-than-light ship. They knew about Earth, but not about Neanderthal, and sent some people here to colonize Earth. Those Neanderthals that still lived here had never been successful, so they were little more than primitives. But on other worlds, they’d flourished. They invented their own faster-than-light ships, and visited Star Home. They wanted to trade, because we all know, trading peacefully helps everyone. While Star Home never really did more with their own FTL drive, they made a deal with the space Neanderthal people to bring more colonists here, and maybe there could be some peaceful trade deals made. So, they did, dropping off hundreds of more people. Then, the space Neanderthals realized the primitive people living here were their cousins and decided to do something about it.

“Remember seeing that planetary defense beam? That’s why they couldn’t. It shot their ships up. But then they met Pahto’s people, and told her how to find Earth. They thought maybe she could crack the defenses. She couldn’t, got shot down and crashed in what later was the State of Washington, and her surviving crew started living in that area. In the meantime, the people from Star Home forgot all about Earth and their colony here. So, we have a bunch of people that lived on Earth, some with limited technology, and who could all breed together. But Earth was very tectonically active then, and the technology they had wore out, leaving them with education, but no way to do anything with it. Imagine you have a very nice car, sitting in the middle of a jungle, and you’re out of gas. That car is now useless, and you can’t even take it totally apart, because you don’t have a mechanic’s tools. You do the best you can, but you’re soon back to primitive living yourself.

“Couple hundred thousand more years pass, along comes Shiva and his shit, and we all know everything since then. Now, from what I’ve found, the shivalingam were all made between two and four hundred thousand years ago, to help the people of Star Home live there. So, that whole very long answer means that Caelistis may very well have been descended from the people of Star Home. But as we already know, Star Home itself was destroyed quite a while ago. I think he was probably lying about some things, while telling the truth about others. I doubt we’ll ever truly know which was which.”

Xi looked thoughtful, then nodded. “That does answer my first question, and makes what I had planned for my second question a moot point. However, that raises another question in my mind. Do you think the ‘Angels from Above’ will assist you?”

I paused, thinking back over the last few months. One of my younger wives had made it down to Los Angeles at least once a week, so the ‘Angels’ were visible doing some good things, like stopping robberies or rescuing people. Then I said, “Chairman Xi, I doubt they will help against Shiva himself. I sort of got the idea that we’re here, on our own, as far as dealing directly with him. Having said that ... there’s still the debris from Halley’s Comet coming our way. I would hope they would assist with that, because the planetary defense beams simply aren’t going to be enough. I’ve already spoken with Pahto and Mycroft, because they’re going to be the ones prioritizing and picking the shots. If it’s under fifty feet in diameter or looks like it’s going to be heading for empty water, they’re going to ignore it. The problem is, there may be a piece that’s two hundred feet in diameter directly behind the smaller piece, and they may not see that one until it’s too late. Yes, President Wirahadikusumah?

“What is your definition of open water?”

“Anything more than fifty miles from known inhabited land, with certain exceptions. Rather obviously, allowing something to hit in the middle of the Sulawesi Sea would be a bad thing, even if technically it’s fifty miles from land. The same thing applies to the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf of Thailand, the South and East China Sea, the Sea of Japan, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. That’s not intended to be an all inclusive list of spots we’re going to prioritize, by any means. But if the course shows it’s going to hit a hundred miles east of Tahuata, then we’re probably going to let it do its thing, if that means not taking a shot at something headed for Jakarta. Um, do we have a map of the Earth available?”

Daniel Eklund got up from his seat and walked to the side of the room, coming back with a regular slide projector and a pointer. He placed it next to the film projector, plugged it in, and turned it on.

“Will this be sufficient, Minister Lewis?”

That gave me a ten foot wide map.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, levitating the pointer so it was in front of the map. “This way, I’m not blinded by the light and can still see and talk to everyone. I think some of my professors would’ve liked being able to do this little trick.”

There was some laughter, as well as a couple of people agreeing with me.

“Okay, this is a standard world map, that happens to have Africa dead center. One of the reasons most maps are made this way is, politely, that the Pacific Ocean is so damned big, it skews the whole planet. It’s just over sixty-nine hundred miles from Lisbon, Portugal, to Tokyo, Japan. That’s a lot of land between there. It’s nearly eighty-five hundred miles from Sydney, Australia, to Quito, Ecuador, and over five thousand miles from Tokyo to San Francisco. You can really see this from space. The Pacific Ocean is, by itself, bigger than all the land areas on Earth – combined. The old story is that seventy-five percent of Earth is covered by water, right? Well, thirty-two percent of it is covered by the Pacific Ocean. The Atlantic covers another twenty percent, so that’s over half the Earth, there’s just not as many small and inhabited islands in the Atlantic.”

I looked at everyone. “Okay, now for the fun part. Sorry, there’s some actual science and math involved. For purposes of discussion, Halley’s Comet was about nine miles long, five miles wide, and five miles thick, and had a volume of slightly over thirty-three trillion cubic feet. That’s close enough for my purpose of helping explain our priority targeting. The nuclear weapons vaporized a chunk of that. Call it ten percent. There’s another one hundred fifty billion cubic feet that’s mostly Shiva’s ship, with some rock around it. If the rest of the comet was turned into chunks two hundred feet to a side, that’s three million, seven hundred thousand chunks of ice. At a hundred feet to a side, it goes up to twenty-nine million chunks of ice. Courtesy of the bombs, half of those will miss, and we don’t have to worry about them. Oh, and each of those chunks is still going at cometary speeds, which is thirty one miles per second. Actual best estimate is that we’ve got about six million chunks of ice of various sizes that have the potential to hit the Earth over the course of twenty hours.

“You all witnessed what happened when a one millisecond blast hit tank armor. It poked a hole in it. When that same blast hit me, it knocked me on my ass, because it imparted kinetic energy from the beam to me. The same thing will happen to these ice chunks if they get hit with a beam. But ... the bigger the target, the more energy it’s going to take. A fifty foot chunk may take two or three shots like that. A three hundred foot chunk may need ten shots, maybe even more. These things were designed to poke holes through space ships – which I think we would all agree is a very bad thing if you’re in that space ship – not blow up chunks of ice. Unfortunately, the chunks of ice aren’t coming in like nice little soldiers, all lined up by size. The beams will have a total of sixty seconds to lock on, fire, see what effect they had, and then either fire again at that target, or switch to another target. If each beam destroys one target per second – sixty every minute, which is thirty-six hundred per hour – that’ll take out about ninety thousand targets every hour. That leaves about two hundred thousand chunks, every hour, that will hit.

“It’s going to be noisy, and there may not be a window left in any building on Earth. Because we’re going to be prioritizing, If it’s under a hundred feet in diameter, we’re going to let it through. That may allow some small pieces from each chunk to hit, but it’ll just be like an artillery round going off overhead, meaning a lot of noise that may break some windows. Those that are allowed to explode over water may cause two to three foot tall waves. It’s the bigger pieces, those that are two, three, or four hundred feet in diameter we have to shoot. A four hundred footer hitting the ocean will cause a nine foot high wave a hundred miles away. That same chunk hitting land leaves a crater a mile in diameter. Northern Canada or Russia, the middle of the Sahara, that’s fine. The middle of Piccadilly Circus or Tokyo, that’s a problem. Some of them may get taken out by the Moon, too. So ... President Wirahadikusumah, we’ll try. But if it comes down to the literally split second decision to let a two hundred foot chunk hit Paliat Island directly while shooting another, one hundred foot chunk that would hit just offshore of Surabaya, well ... Paliat Island is going to take the hit. And I’m not just saying that to pick on Indonesia. The same thing applies to every other country in the world.”

I stopped, then snorted while shaking my head.

“You know, this is all quite survivable, if everyone pays attention to what I told President Reagan to ask of his Congress. From everything that’s coming in ... Well, I was a good boy and never got shot with rock salt when I was younger. I’ve been told it stings a lot, but doesn’t really hurt you. This is going to sting, and we will lose a lot of windows and maybe some buildings. I’m honestly figuring less than fifty thousand total dead, a couple hundred thousand injured, around the whole world, from the chunks. It’s the actual fight with that asshole that’s going to kill people, and what he ends up doing with his ship. At current speed, and if it’s one solid mass that hits land, it’s about a fifteen mile wide crater. Anything within two hundred fifty miles of it catches fire, and that includes people. The impact point is the epicenter of an earthquake registering about eight point six on the Richter scale. Having said that, I’m going to try to make sure it hits the Moon.”

I chuckled, then. “Maybe it’ll clean up the vandalism that was left by the Mother Fucking Alien, as my team calls him.”

I’d hoped by injecting levity that it might break the intensity that some of the leaders had on their faces. It was only partially successful, with some of them laughing. Not all of them did, though.

Helmut Kohl asked, “What if you can’t, and it comes down on, say, Frankfurt?”

I took a deep breath, then let it out. I pulled a quarter out of my pocket, and levitated it over so that it was casting a shadow on the map. I moved it a little closer to the screen.

“That shadow is about a four hundred mile diameter circle. Everything from Leipzig to Eindhoven to Reims to Munich is gone. Most structures destroyed, most of the people killed. There’s no radiation, just heat, but you’re talking about a one million megaton explosion. Yeah, that’s bad, and we’re definitely looking at more than twenty million dead – probably closer to seventy million. But keep in mind, that’s only if it hits a densely populated area.”

I moved the coin so that the middle of Greenland was covered. Then moved it over most of northern Canada and Alaska, then parts of the Soviet Union, China and Africa. Then I even slid it down to the middle of Australia, over Uluru.

“There are lots of other places on land it could hit and not kill anyone, or only a few thousand people. There are some places on land that it would be much worse if it hit, too. Yellowstone Park in the United States, or directly on the Circum-Pacific Belt, which is more commonly called the Ring of Fire. That could light off every volcano from southern Indonesia up and around the Pacific all the way down to southern Chile. That qualifies as a ‘very bad thing’ in disaster planning. But ... seventy-five percent water coverage. It hits just offshore of Hawaii, where the water is only a couple miles deep. Well, obviously everything in that island chain is dead. Then, eight hours after impact, San Francisco gets hit by a tsunami wave between twenty-five and fifty feet tall. Twelve hours later, Japan gets a wave between seventeen and thirty-five feet tall. It hits the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, where it’s three miles deep, then basically every coastline in North America and Europe gets hit by a twelve foot wave – all at once.”