Chapter 9: Pipe Dreams

Formerio met Dad and I for lunch at Rodz Grill. Everyone else had decided on takeout pizza, so we phoned in the order and then I jumped Arden over to my house to wait for it to be delivered. I'd jumped him back to Meadow with pizza boxes in hand before Dad and I headed to lunch ourselves.

We had an enjoyable lunch, Dad and Formerio talked a lot about local politics, something I had never taken much interest in, local or otherwise. We took our car back to Dad's house, since Formerio had just walked over the couple of blocks from his garage. During the ride he asked where we would be picking up Grandpa A.J.

"We'll be picking him up after we get there." Dad told him. "He's still in North Carolina at the moment."

I think that casual answer had him speechless for a while, as the conversation screeched to a halt until we got to the house.

Once in the house, Mom greeted us and gave Formerio a kiss on the cheek.

"Relax!" She said as she patted his shoulder. "Dave has only lost one person doing this, and he was always a little bit not-all-there anyway!"

I didn't wait for a reaction, I just jumped us straight to the living room on Meadow.

"You do know that Beth was only joking, right?" Dad said as soon as the scenery changed.

"Fine time to be telling me!" Formerio answered.

"Hang on while I get Grandpa." I said to them.

<Grandpa, are you ready?> I thought to him.

<Go ahead Dave. Ready to go.> He thought back.

I reached out and he was there.

Grandpa and Mr. Sabarte had met of course, but exchanged pleasantries anyway.

"Ava, where is Fred?" I said to the room.

"Fred is out on the patio." Ava answered.

"Dad, please say hello to Ava." I asked him.

"Hello Ava." Dad said.

"Hello Mr. McKesson, welcome to our home" Ava said.

"Mr. Sabarte, if you'd please say hello to Ava?"

"ehh, Hello Ava. How are you?" Formerio said with uncertainty.

"I am fine sir, thank you for asking." Ava answered.

"Grandpa? If you'd be so kind?"

"Hello Ava, a pleasure to meet you." Grandpa said.

"Good afternoon Mr. McKesson, a pleasure meeting you as well." Ava said in response.

"Ava, would you please tell everyone that we have arrived, and are in the living room?"

"Certainly Dave."

"If you find yourselves alone in the house, just ask Ava for help. She can either tell someone where you are or help guide you to where you were trying to go. She will turn lights on or off for you, shade the windows, adjust the room temperature, just about anything that can be tied to a normal household function."

The rest of the crew, spearheaded by Fred, who came and hugged his father immediately, entered the living room. I tried to head of the room-filling babble I knew was coming.

"Listen up Legionnaires!" I succeeded in heading them off at the conversational pass. " Mr. Sabarte just experienced his first jump, ever, and just met Ava. He's about to see and ride in the cruiser. Lets try and keep things from getting too riled up before we get to that point, shall we?"

"Lets get this joyride moving then!"

To minimize the congestion, I asked everyone but Fred to go ahead of us to the cruiser. I reached out and jumped three of the white "Grotto" bracelets from my pile of spares in the basement.

"Please put these on your wrists." I said. "They look solid, but they will stretch to fit." I waited until they had them on.

"In the event something should happen, and I am unable to return you home, grab the bracelet with your free hand and think 'Home!'. You will wind up in Grandfather's grotto in North Carolina, but better there than stuck here forever, right?"

"How likely are we to need this, Son?" Dad asked.

" I hope never in your lifetime or mine Dad, I really do. But right now it is a better lifeline than I thought I would be able to offer."

"Fred, I'll let you lead the way with your dad. Grandpa will want a hand getting down the steps, so you should go first."

By the time Grandpa, Dad and I got out the door, Fred and his Dad were standing about halfway down the path to the landing pad. Formerio was rattling on in Basque about the impossibility of this whole situation, and how we must have all slipped into madness a long time ago, or been seduced by the devil, or something beyond human knowing, etc...

After quietly enjoying the looks of amazement on Dad and Grandpa, I hollered at Formerio, in Basque.

"Old man! You might want to be a little more polite. Everyone here except my Father and Grandfather can understand every word you are saying. You will begin to hurt their feelings soon!"

"Old man!" He said, still in Basque, "What makes you call me old man all of a sudden?"

"Well, only old men and fools yell at the things they do not understand, and I have too much respect for you to call you a fool!" I answered.

He caught himself then, and laughed shaking his head. He switched back to English.

"I think I told you once that you were wiser than your years, didn't I? I was not wrong then, and you still are."

As Dad and Grandpa caught up with us Dad said "You guys all speak Basque now?"

"And Russian." Fred said. "German too."

"As well as Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, Korean, Taluatan and English of course." Ginny said, walking up and guiding Dad towards the rear entry to the cruiser.

"You will have to convince me!" Grandpa said in very passable Russian.

"Certainly, nothing easier." Chet replied in Russian as he came and offered Grandpa an arm to help him up the ramp."

We got everyone on board and I decided that instead of cramming the newcomers into the three available seats in the flight cabin, I activated all the side displays in the main cabin. I heard Mike in the back going "Oh Yeah! This is great!" And I knew they'd found this option themselves on their own joyride.

"First stop is the big attraction that got all our attention when we first began looking at Meadow through our new survey system." I said over the cabin's intercom.

I pulled up the survey overlays onto the nav display, found the red dot that indicated the herd of buffalo we'd been tracking and laid in a course to get us there quick. The heads up display was telling me we were doing 500 mph, and climbing.

"We're at 500 mph and climbing rapidly." I relayed. I glanced at the display again. "ETA 20 minutes."

Our time with the buffalo herd went as you might expect. All three were in awe of the vast ocean of flesh moving below us. The rest of us were still in awe, despite having experienced it already. I moved us up to a higher altitude so we could see most of the herd at once. The view, and the concept of so many animals of that size, all moving together boggled the mind.

"I'll take requests later, but there is one place I've been wanting to go to for a long time now, so we're headed there next." I zoomed the nav display in on the East coast, and set our course for Chocowinity. As soon as I set the course I got a little pop-up in my heads up display warning me that maximum atmospheric velocity was 4500 mph, and asking me if I wished to continue with atmospheric travel or plot an extra-atmospheric route. I decided to stick with the atmospheric travel for now, and laid in the course. The ETA popped up with 23 minutes. I locked the course in and slipped out of the pilot's seat and went back to the main cabin.

"ETA is 23 minutes." I told everyone. Since we've got a little time Fred, why don't you explain the survey system we have in place to our guests, and show them some of what we've discovered."

I watched Fred give a clear and comprehensive rundown, in 30 minutes, of our survey platforms, their capabilities, and then a little sample of the various observations we'd made so far. Intelligent questions were asked and answered. Dad spotted our audio shortcomings immediately, and that got us back on the topic of language. When we arrived at our destination, I could really feel the pull of the nearby focus, and had no problem taking the controls again and manually navigating the cruiser the remaining distance. I slid the cruiser in and 'parked' it, letting the rear access ramp slide open. I had not told anyone where we were headed, and didn't tell them anything more now, except

"We're here!"

I slipped out the access ramp first. I had parked with the ramp facing the water, so I had to look around the side of the cruiser and past its bow to see the focus itself.

Grandpa, old guardian that he was, sensed it immediately.

"This is the grotto!" He said the moment his feet touched the ground.

"Yes it is. Meadow's version of it." I replied. "Lets walk up towards the spot and see what we get."

"Do we get something?" Dad asked.

"I will have seen four focuses now. On my home of Taluat, on Earth, on Obsidian and now this one. Each has been unique and hauntingly beautiful." Eru said in response.

Beautiful indeed.

The focus on Meadow was a mineral spring that rose from a mound of smooth, glistening stone. The cascade of stone, wherever the water from the spring didn't cover them, was laced with tendrils of wild grape and honeysuckle vines. The soft sound of the water running over the rocks, and the sweet smell of the honeysuckle, already into its spring bloom, was both calming and intoxicating at the same time.

Evening was approaching here in the East. We spent a quiet half hour enjoying the warm afternoon sun and the scented air in the calm quiet, but then it was time to go.

"Grandpa, do you want me to jump you home from here, or would you like to take the ride back to our house first?"

"You might as well send me home from here Dave." Grandpa said, sliding the white bracelet off his wrist and handing it to me. "But I think I'll have to fly out for another visit soon."

"We'll be happy to have you when you do come out." Ginny said, kissing him on the cheek.

A quick wave and goodbye to everyone and Grandpa was back in his study on Earth.

"We've got a few hours of daylight to burn heading West." I said to the crew. "Who wants to show the three of us the Grand Canyon, Meadow style?"

Fred took the pilot's seat, and we let his Dad sit in the copilot's seat alongside him. It took another 30 minutes of very high speed travel to get there from Chocowinity, but watching the country zip past you at 4500 miles per hour is mesmerizing. The Grand Canyon at 200 miles per hour is a pretty fun ride as well. I wanted to save the real sightseeing for some other time though. We didn't want to overwhelm Mr. Sabarte his first time out.

When we got back to the house and were safely on the landing pad, I asked Dad and Mr. Sabarte what they wanted to do. Mr. Sabarte said he needed to return to his garage, and Dad said he'd like to take me for a little drive once we were home. Everyone else was itching to spend some time with their families back on Earth, so we buttoned up what needed buttoning and I reached out to home on Earth and quickly let my senses feel for anyone in the area. All I found was Mom, so I jumped us all to the patio in the back yard.