Chapter 42

The interesting thing about being a laid back Dad like I am is that when you do yell 'jump!', things go ballistic. By the time I walked into the living room, there were pretty teenage girls running in from everywhere, like bugs out of the woodwork. Either Amy had really impressed them with the urgency of my command, or, more likely, they had heard my telepathic order themselves. By the time I was ready, everyone was there, waiting silently and behaving impeccably. How rare it that with teenagers?

Every eye followed me as I walked in and stood in the middle of the room. There was not a peep from anyone. I looked at Sarah first.

"Sarah, call Christina on her cell phone. Tell her I need to speak to the President now; it's an emergency. Tell her I won't take no for an answer; a lot of innocent lives may depend on it." I saw the faces of several of the girls pale as Sarah dialed the number. My girls could kill with utter lack of compassion if it was needed, but the thought of an innocent person dying always distressed them greatly. As usual, the call was answered on the first ring.

"Chris? Sarah... Tell you later... Patrick needs to talk to the President right away... yeah, it sounds really official and it's an emergency... ask him to please interrupt everything... yeah, it's that important... no, I don't... just get him now, please... Yeah, talk to you later." Sarah handed the cell phone to me. I switched it to speaker phone to avoid having to repeat everything later.

"Hello, Patrick, what's up?" The familiar near south twang came on the line.

"Mr. President, sir, we have a potential problem brewing that I need your help with," I said.

"I thought we had agreed I was Jeff," he responded.

"Not for this, sir. This is official business. In fact, this is a conversation you might want to record, just so you're covered if things go wrong, sir," I warned him. He snorted.

"Things always go wrong in this town, my friend. If I can't trust you to be fair to me, I don't know who I would trust. I assume this concerns your family. Protect them, Patrick; don't worry about me. I have enough people on the payroll; they should be able to protect me. What is it you need?"

"Sir, there's every likelihood that we're going to be taking some type of action in Arizona within the next hour. I need you to make the area I'll designate to you as off limits to civilian and military personnel. No evacuations are needed. It's likely the action will be well contained. I just don't want others traipsing through the designated area and getting hurt. We could do this ourselves, sir, but it might look better coming from you." I could see the girl's eyes become large as saucers as I talked about impending action.

"Actually, I might disagree, Patrick. It might be better if you just cleared the area yourself if you have that capability. Plausible deniability and all that. If you have any trouble, let me know and I'll fix it for you. Do you agree?" The President asked.

"Actually, sir, I do agree. That would work best for all involved. I just didn't want to take that step without your permission. Thank you, sir," I told him.

"Patrick... I know there are things I can't talk about, and that I shouldn't even know. I don't want to push it or be nosy. But damn it, man, I love your family, and even more importantly, my girls and my wife love all of you. Is someone in trouble?"

"Yes, sir, I think someone is in big trouble. I don't know what yet, so I can't give you any details. Tell your little daughters I think they're just about the cutest little things I've ever seen and I love them dearly, too. I won't risk my life by commenting on your wife," I said. He sighed.

"I'll tell Christina and Valerie what you said. It'll make their year. Remember, after this is over, they get to come to visit. My wife loves you too, Patrick. We all do. Do you need any help? I could send some soldiers or Special Forces, or something." I heard the catch in his voice. He really was concerned, but he just couldn't ask. I gave a sharp, very unhumorous laugh.

"Please don't be offended, sir, but just one of my girls could take out a whole battalion of your soldiers, and that would be even before their eyes changed. I appreciate the offer, but I don't need that kind of help. What I need is simply to keep nosy civilians, even more nosey media members, and good intentioned military personnel out of the area so they don't get hurt. We're not going to have time to check targets or secure the area before we move in. Anything that gets in our way is likely to be shot." I could almost hear him shiver.

"I remember their eyes," he whispered. "I still have nightmares about that. What more can I do to help?" He asked. He was sincere.

"Pray for us. This is not going to be pretty. Pray that every one of my special girls comes back ok. And have those troops ready to clean up the mess and keep the reporters out when we're done. Make sure you pick ones that can keep their mouths shut." I really liked this man. He was a good man. I gave him the required information and I hung up the phone and turned back to my girls.

"Victoria, go to the gun storage area. We need an M203, an automatic shotgun, and two automatic pistols for every girl. Get lots of ammunition also. Amy, go with her to help." I saw the look on her face. "I won't say anything important until you get back, I promise." I picked up my phone and called my Dad.

"Dad, I need your help. I need all military personnel and civilians restricted out of a particular area in Arizona. The President suggested you would be ideal to handle this and assured me you had all the authority from him to do anything as long as you didn't blow off any nukes. Can you handle it?" I heard Dad break a pencil in half as a heavy silence filled the room.

"Son, if this is in Arizona, tell the President I can't guarantee about the nukes. I know who is there, Son, and heaven will not help anyone that has hurt her. I'll kill Bandor myself if he has hurt my little girl," he said softly. I didn't say anything. I was stunned that he knew the name Bandor. Who was my Dad? "Let me know when, and it will be so," he said.

"Starting right now, sir," I said politely. "I'll let you know when the request expires," I assured him.

"Help her, Son. Save her. There's nothing I won't do for her. And Son... after you get her back, you really need to do something about Bandor. Take care of him, Son, or I'll have to kill him myself."

"No offense, Dad, but I'm not sure even you can take care of Bandor," I said, trying to be polite. I heard my Dad snort as I said that.

"Hell, Son, I've already killed him three times. I'll do it a fourth time if he is fucking with my girls. Thanks to information I have from Richard and Megan, I know how to kill him permanently if I need to. It would certainly be better if you did it, though, Son." I listened in stunned silence as my Dad spoke. It took awhile for me to get my voice back to answer him.

"I'll take care of him, Dad, but it has to be at the proper time. The Ancient Prophecy must be fulfilled." I heard Dad snort again.

"Son... has it ever occurred to you that the Ancient Prophecy won't come true if he kills one of your girls? Think about it, Son. I will not lose anymore of my family." He hung up. What family had he lost? And just who the hell was he?

By the time I was done talking to him, there was a pile of guns in the living room floor half the size of New Jersey. I saw pretty little teenage girls strapping holsters on their hips. Even Katie and Becky and Little Sarah, for God's sake! I didn't even look at any of their eyes. The look in their eyes would be nothing compared to what I would see in a few minutes when I told my girls what I knew, and what I suspected. Soon, there were no guns left on the floor anymore. They were spread all over the furniture now, nestled next to each of the girls as they sat once more, behaving themselves. This was going to be messy. Amy looked at me.

"Ok, Dad, time to tell us what's going on." I agreed. I shuddered as I realized that she called me Dad. That meant that either she was mad at me and I was in trouble, or a whole lot of 'beings' were about to die at the hands of a very pissed off Amy. I was betting on the latter. I've said it before; don't piss her off if you want to live.

"Girls, check in mentally on Megan. See how she's doing." One by one, I saw them tilt their heads to the side and concentrate. One by one I saw a look of panic cross their faces. They all looked at Amy. Her face was white, her eyes as haunted as I had ever seen them.

"We can't feel her, Dad! She's not... is she?" Amy asked, with a catch in her voice. I smiled at them reassuringly. I wasn't trying to be cruel. It just had never occurred to me that they would think she was dead.

"No, honey, she's not dead. I just talked to her a few minutes ago. I believe she's in trouble, though," I said. "She believes the area she was excavating to be related to our ancestors somehow. I half expected it to be shielded from the effects of our abilities, as a precaution to protect those that used to dwell there.

"What kind of trouble?" Julie asked, looking scared.

I pulled out my cell phone. I have always had a very special cell phone. I don't get my phones at a regular cell phone store. I get them at a store where the FBI gets their phones. Mine has a lot of neat features, but one of the best is that it records every call made, both sides of the conversation, incoming or outgoing. I opened it up, set it on speaker phone, and set it down on the table.

"You tell me, honey," I said, and hit playback.

"Hello?"

"Hi, honey, it's me." Pause.

"Yeah, hi. What do you need?"

"Oh! I just wanted to call and tell you I loved you and missed you."

"Thanks. Anything else you need?"

"Well, I just hadn't heard from you in awhile, Megan; you missed the last five phone times and I just wanted to make sure you were ok."

"Well, I'm really kind of busy here, Patrick. I'm working hard here, not just lying around having a good time with your wife Victoria, her friend Julie, and a bunch of teenage girls like Megan, Elizabeth, and the others. You might try working once in a while to see what it's like."

"Oh."

"Megan..."

"God damn it, Patrick, stop bothering me! I'm fucking busy, do you fucking understand? It's not like you have any ties with me. If you want to monopolize my time, divorce that little tramp Elizabeth and ask me to marry you and you'll have the right to demand my time. You haven't seen fit to do either of those things, so fuck off and quit bothering me." Dial tone.

Nobody said anything after the recording stopped. You could hear the air molecules moving. I looked at the girls, one by one. I saw some things I didn't think I would ever see.

Amy was madder than I had ever seen her before. Go figure. Cindi was highly pissed off too. I could count on one hand and have at least three fingers, maybe more, left over for the number of times I had ever seen Cindi really mad. Julie and Sammi were crying. That was rare also. The real rarity was the reaction of Katie and Becky. I had never, ever seen them mad like that before. I was really glad Megan wasn't in the room. Sarah just looked sad. Then they all got a hold of themselves.

"What do you think, girls?" I asked. Amy answered first.

"That wasn't Megan," she said flatly.

"The DNA signature and voice print tracking says it was her cell phone and she was the one talking on it," I said reasonably.

"I don't care. That wasn't our Megan," Amy repeated. I always said she was a genius.

"Julie?" I asked. She knew her mother well.

"Amy's right. That wasn't Mom. If I find out when she gets back that she really said those things and meant them, I will personally kick her ass until she can't sit down and I will do everything in my power to make sure you marry me and not her," Julie said softly without a ghost of a smile on her face. I looked at her face, ready to laugh at her joke, and then realized she meant it. "I noticed a number of interesting statements and inconsistencies in there," Julie continued.

"Hold that thought. Amy, list off any inconsistencies you see. Anyone else, jump in there if you see something we missed," I said. I worried briefly that Julie might be mad that I was letting Amy steal her thunder. Julie smiled slightly. She was glad I picked Amy; Julie hated to show off. She hated to be the center of attention. I figured she had probably picked the wrong job, a Scribe, if that was true. She knew Amy loved both being the center of attention and showing off and was perfectly happy to let her do so.

"Ok, first of all, she sounds totally bored with hearing from you. Megan loves you, 'completely and desperately'," Amy said, teasing Cindi and digging her in the ribs, reminding her of her dramatic use of that term before. Cindi had the good taste to blush. "She would never talk to you that way, nor take talking to you that cavalierly. She would never treat your relationship in such a trivial manner."

"Next, she refers to Victoria as your wife. That was in the last cycle. She is your sister in this period, and only your sister, not your wife."

"Then, she calls Julie Victoria's friend. That implies about the same age. That was last cycle also. Julie is a teenager this cycle, and although she and Victoria are friends, people of that divergent an age range are not usually referred to as each other's friends." Amy held up her hand to forestall comment. "I know, that's weak, but it may mean something taken in context with the other points."

"Then, she refers to herself, Megan, and Elizabeth, as teenagers. Elizabeth was your wife and a grown up and Megan is herself and a grownup also in this period. Again, last cycle references."

"She knows that you have a job. She might actually be right here, that you don't do much, though," Amy allowed. I stuck my tongue out at her, trying to relieve the tension. It got a few nervous twitters.

"Megan says some derivative of the 'F' word three times in this short conversation. She doesn't use that word." Everyone grinned a little; neither did Amy, and couldn't even bring herself to say it as an explanation. She was too cute!

"Finally, Megan knows Elizabeth is dead, yet refers to a divorce, which is obviously both impossible and unnecessary, and then apparently ignores a marriage proposal that already exists. Almost everything she said makes reference to the previous cycle, which we know from Becky, is still running. Could she be stuck back in there again?" Amy looked at Julie. "How'd I do, Scribe?" She asked. Julie smiled politely.

"You only missed three things. I will hold my comments until Patrick lists the possibilities of what is happening here." Julie responded. Amy looked at her, surprised she had missed anything. I wasn't. They were subtle, yet the most significant of all.

"What do you think, Patrick?" Julie asked. Patrick. She was the Scribe right now. Just like her Mom, all business when it came to her duties.

"I think there are three possibilities," I stated calmly.

"One, she really is mad at me. I have no idea why that would be, since the last time I talked to her she was madly in love with me and missed me, and was still that way when we hung up. However, I have learned over the years that a logical reason is not by any means a prerequisite in this family for the females, especially redheaded ones, to be mad at me," I foolishly added. Nine tongues were stuck out at me in unison. "That also doesn't account for the strange contradictions in the phone call. Even being mad wouldn't account for those."

"Two, she could be caught in a time warp or something like that and is somehow really in the last cycle, or thinks she is. Julie, you're our resident Scribe and expert on Scribe-like things, including cycles. Is that possible?" I turned the floor over to her. She didn't like it, but she'd do it.

"Sir, I hate to ever say something isn't possible, since we shoot colored lightning, heal people magically, teleport, and have shields. That's not even commenting on an intelligent, talking cat that we know is going to marry a human. However, it's just not possible in this case." Julie went on to patiently explain, as Sammi looked alert after the 'cat marrying a human' remark.

"You have to understand about Scribes and their relationships to time and the cycles. Time and cycles mean nothing to us. We remember everything, in its proper context, regardless of time or cycle. That's why we have the job. We cannot get confused. Even though the last cycle is still running, you can see with Sammi and myself that we can only exist, as far as our actions and consciousness are concerned, in one place at a time. We're pregnant, yet we don't appear to be pregnant here. That's because we're pregnant there, and can't be pregnant in both places at once with the same baby. I bet if you gave us a pregnancy test here, it would be negative. The only reason you know we're pregnant is because of a psychic power some of us have that the normal population has no access to, allowing us to detect the pregnancy, and that power transcends time and cycles. The proof that Megan isn't stuck in the last cycle lies in her references to herself and Elizabeth. She refers to both her and Elizabeth as being in the last cycle and the current period at the same time in the same conversation. She refers to Elizabeth both as Patrick's wife and as the teenage girl she was in the last cycle. She can't be both. Not at the same time, as a reality to Megan, the person talking. Not in Megan's mind. Elizabeth must be one or the other, not both. There isn't even a remote possibility that Megan doesn't know and understand that. Also, she refers to herself as a teenage girl that you're lying around with, doing nothing. Yet she's speaking herself as an adult and must know she's not that teenage girl. Both examples are inconsistent. It can't happen. Megan is the Scribe, and as such is unparalleled in talent and ability. She is the best that has ever existed at her job. These aren't mistakes that she could make accidentally or as a result of being confused or caught in a previous cycle. That's as close to an impossibility as you'll ever encounter in the universe, sir. These aren't mistakes at all. She knows exactly what she's doing and saying, sir. There's also no evidence whatsoever that indicates it's even possible to go back into a previous cycle, even if it's still ongoing. Of course, a cycle has never continued after we were ejected from it before. There's one other thing all of you might have missed. Whoever has her, it isn't Bandor. Or at least, he's not there with her. Whoever has her doesn't even really know who she is."

"How do you know that?" Becky asked. Julie explained.

"Whoever has her doesn't know Elizabeth is dead, doesn't know Victoria is Patrick's sister, not his wife, doesn't know Megan is engaged. They don't know Elizabeth was Patrick's wife. They don't even know that Megan is the only Megan we know. Otherwise, they would never have let her give that incorrect and inconsistent information in the phone call. Unless..."

"Unless it was let through as a trap to suck us in," I finished her thought. Didn't matter; we were going anyway. I nodded in appreciation. Amy looked at Julie with a mixture of awe and irritation.

"Very good, Julie. That brings us to the third possibility." I didn't even get a chance to explain the third choice. All of the girls whispered the same thing at the same time.

"It's a code!" They said together. Hours of practice couldn't have made it come out any better.

"I think it is, yes. I think Megan is in big trouble and this was her way of letting me know," I explained. Amy still looked mad. So did Cindi. The two other little geniuses had very little smiles on their faces. They had already figured out why Megan did it the way she did. I really love Katie and Becky!

"But why did she have to be so mean to you? That wasn't fair. She could have devastated you if you hadn't... Oh. I see." Amy shut up. Cindi still didn't understand. She doesn't know how to be underhanded and devious. Well, except when she's trying to seduce her father. In that she excels.

"Megan knows I'm clueless most of the time. She knows that because that's how I act. I'm not sure she knows that I'm not nearly as clueless as I act most of the time. She was afraid that I wouldn't understand what she was trying to do, so she deliberately tried to upset me so that I would go to all of you about it. She knew you could explain it to lil ol' clueless me what was going on." Cindi giggled suddenly as she got it. It was a repressed, almost sad giggle, but it was there.

"Question is... what do we do about it?" Rhonda asked. I looked over in surprise. I had forgotten that she was there. I saw John asking the same question with his eyes. Amy, Cindi and Victoria all three laughed. Katie and Becky grinned. Julie and Sammi looked resigned, but a little excited too. Sarah giggled.

"Daddy has a very complex, involved plan to rescue his fair maiden. If you'll sit down, blank your mind of everything else, and concentrate really hard, I'll explain it to you. It is very complex though, so you need to really pay attention," Amy said with a straight face. I loved how my girls could have fun even in the direst circumstances. It helped a lot. John and Rhonda didn't really understand her sense of humor, though. They sat down and waited expectantly. Amy rolled her eyes at them, but turned her head so only I could see it. She didn't want to hurt their feelings.