Chapter 609

...”I think what rattled us as much as anything was the discrepancy in our time spent in the chamber or whatever the hell we should call that place. Morales says that we were in there...”

“A couple of minutes,” he volunteered.

“And to us, it was more than an hour and a half. Maybe even closer to two hours, I think, and Selina thinks that she spent more time after Diana and I were...

ejected, I suppose you could say. One minute we were ... talking with the entity, and the next Diana and I were standing in the ice cave with Morales. A couple of seconds later, Selina appeared next to us.”

Jasmine came over to sit on the other side of Jeff. After taking Selina’s hand, she asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Selina pushed back from Jeff to sit upright, then abruptly leaned to kiss him on the cheek before turning back to Jasmine. “I had a ... conversation with the entity. A long and detailed conversation,” she said in a shaky voice. “Did you not hear us, Jeff?”

“No, Baby. I talked with it, or at least communicated with it to some extent. I seemed to sense that it might have spoken to you, but I couldn’t hear what either of you was saying.”

Selina let out a sigh. “I haven’t been that frightened in a long time – if ever. It did more than speak to me. Surely you heard it?”

“I’m sorry, Baby. I had no idea that it frightened you, nor was I positive that it even spoke to you privately.” Jeff raised an eyebrow as he realized that Selina had again used one of her rare contractions.

“So you did not see it, either?” she asked.

“See what, Baby?”

“The...” and she realized that she had few words to describe what she was trying to convey. Nothing seemed to fit. “The ... portal,” she said as she looked first to Jeff for conformation, but when he slowly shook his head, she shifted her gaze to Diana, who also frowned and shook her head negatively.

“I can still see it in my mind. It is a ... I mean, you only have to...” Frustrated, Selina came to her feet with her fists clenched at her sides as tears welled in her eyes.

“It’s okay, Baby,” Diana said as she reached to hug the child. “Whatever it is, we can discuss it when you feel like it.”

“I cannot discuss it. I am incapable of discussing it,” Selina hissed out.

Jeff and Diana passed a glance. “Would you like to go back home?” Diana asked. “Perhaps you would feel better after a good night’s rest in your own suite.”

Selina looked as if she were holding back tears. “No,” she quietly said, even as her hands trembled. “I particularly want to stay here tonight,” she insisted as a shimmering formed in the air a few feet from her.

“Whoa,” Morales said as he came to his feet to stare at the shimmering, his comment having come a split second before everyone else’s startled exclamations. “What the hell is that?” he asked no one in particular.

“It is ... what we have been searching for,” Selina replied, her expression unreadable.

“Well, whatever it is, it’s scaring the crap out of me,” Ashley said as she eased closer to her husband only to realize that Jasmine and Christine had decided to do the same thing.

“Back away from it,” Jeff instructed Selina.

She did, but almost reluctantly. “My Prime, I did not mean to do this. The honor should have been yours,” she said mysteriously, a tremble in her voice.

“Selina, what the ... heck are you talking about?”

“I thought it had ... uh, communicated with you. I do not want this. It should be a privilege reserved for My Prime,” she said while already on the threshold of tears.

“What should?” Diana demanded.

“That,” Selina said, pointing, as her eyes filled and tears spilled down her cheeks.

“It’s some kind of communicator, isn’t it?” Jeff more stated than asked.

“Part of a triad,” Selina snubbed past her tears.

“‘Triad?’” Diana repeated. “What does that mean?”

Jeff sucked in a breath as he realized. “Oh, crap. One part is Selina,” he quietly said before wrapping his arms around the seven-year-old even as her tears increased.

After picking her up, he sat on one of the fur-covered benches to cuddle her in his lap. “Ssshhh,” he whispered over and over. “Is it hurting you in any way?”

Selina, unable to speak, shook her head as the tears continued to pour from her eyes.

“Then why are you crying, Baby?”

“I did not want this,” she choked out. “It should be you, My Prime. You are the Alpha Prime. The honor should be yours, not some seven-year-old girl’s.“

“Selina, we all know that you’re far from being just a child as you’re trying to imply. You’re a genius who has more brains in her left big toe than I have in my head. And do you intend to remain a seven-year-old for the rest of your life?”

“Of course not,” she snubbed out while trying not to giggle at the thought of brains in her toe. “I could never be your wife if I remained in a child’s body, and besides, you are trying to distract me.”

Ignoring her last comment, he continued, “So, one of these days, you will be a young woman who has the ability to transmit and receive messages across the dimensions and over vast distances – even across galaxies if that thing from the ice cave is what I think it is. You will have years of experience to go with that ability. So, what’s wrong with that?”

“Because,” she said as if speaking to someone who had difficulty comprehending, “no one else will be able to do that. No one. It should be a Prime – My Prime – who has the ability – the honor. Not me.”

“But how do you know all this,” Diana asked as she sat to hug them both.

“It ... told me an instant before that appeared – just as it showed me how to communicate with it,” she said as she nodded to the shimmering in the air a few feet away. Even as they stared, the shimmering coalesced into itself, reducing from an area of approximately three feet across to something much more dense-appearing and closer to six inches in diameter.

Selina stared at the portal, shook her head and sniffed.

“Here, Hon,” Ashley said as she handed Selina several tissues.

“Thank you,” Selina returned with a trembling smile. “Uh, when I said that it told me, that was not a completely correct statement. It did not actually tell me in the normal sense of the word but filled my memory with everything I needed to know about the portal at the same instant. I did not have to learn anything; it is almost as if the knowledge has been part of me for as long as I have existed, and it feels similar to my understanding of how to teleport. It is just part of my being.”

“So, not only are you our Navigator, but now you are our Communication Specialist as well,” Jeff said with a big smile.

“But it should be you,” Selina insisted in a trembling voice.

“Oh, I’m positive that the ability went to the perfect person for the job,” Jeff said with a grin just as Diana added her agreement.

“Jeff can already do so many things that the rest of us cannot. This would have swelled his head wayyy too much,” Diana said while teasing her husband.

“So, how does it work?” Morales asked Jeff.

“Don’t ask me,” the Prime returned. “I have no idea. I don’t think that controller or whatever it is back there even likes me – quite the opposite – but it was apparently talking to Selina while we were there. I didn’t realize it was through with us until it put us back in the ice cave.”

Selina wiped her eyes, turned her back and discreetly blew her nose. As she turned back, “It is a portal,” she said as she nodded at the nothingness that hung in the air a few feet from her. “It is maintained by that being’s version of an AI. We will leave one part of the portal on Earth. I will be able to communicate with it from anywhere in the galaxy and establish a link between it and the other half of the portal. Once I have established the link, I will disengage from it as the communication continues.”

“Oh, the entity chose well,” Jeff said. “Better than that, even; it chose perfectly.”

Selina glared at the Prime, but said nothing more just then.

“So, when are we going to test it?” the Clan Queen asked.

Christine spoke up. “Morales could use the crawler to take Selina along the ridgeline, and we could see if we could talk to her from here.”

“We could do that with a radio,” Morales reminded.

“Selina could plot our course, and we could jump back to Earth,” Diana offered. “That would be an actual test because Earth is in another dimension and light-years away.”

“We don’t want you guys to go yet,” Jasmine objected.

“So, we’ll come back whether the test works or not.”

“Sounds good to me,” Jeff offered.

Later

“Are we ready?” the Prime asked.

“Yep. Since we’re coming right back, we need not take anything with us,” Diana responded.

Selina stepped over to the glowing white ball of nothingness that hung in the air. Apparently she communicated with it, because an identical ball detached itself from the first one and followed her as she turned toward the door.

“Check the screen for animals,” Morales reminded, but Jeff was already doing just that. Seconds later, Diana, Selina and Jeff were outside, and Ship’s inertialess tractor beam put them and the ball aboard.

As they stood on Ship’s bridge, Diana turned to Selina. “I’m assuming that the two ... balls or whatever they are, communicate with each other, so what is your part in the triad?”

“I form the linkup, and I could repeat what the person on the other end said, but that would become tedious over time; therefore, I establish the link between the two points, and the portals remain linked until I break the connection.”

Selina put her hand on the ball which had suddenly become much more solid in appearance. A frown creased the little genius’ forehead just before an image of the inside of the cave appeared – at first, the size of the ball before it quickly grew to an area approximately three feet in diameter.

They distinctly heard Morales’ “Ah, shit,” as he sensed something and spun to stare. “It fu ... friggin’ works,” he almost shouted as he stared at Ship’s bridge. “Wow! It’s as if I could reach through and touch you guys. Where are you?”

“Still in orbit. Selina is just starting to plot our course to Earth. It will probably be a couple of minutes yet. I don’t know whether we’ll lose you when we jump or not,” Jeff returned.

“My Prime, I have finished my calculations,” Selina said from her Navigator’s Console.

“Go for it, Baby.”

“Warp in five, four ... three ... two ... one ... Initiate,” Selina’s voice said from the other side of the bridge.

When Ship jumped back to Earth, the image wavered and was lost. As Earth came up on the big screen, Selina walked back over to the couple as they sat in the Command seats.

“We must have lost the connection,” Jeff commented.

Selina shrugged, then concentrated for a moment until the image reappeared, at first roughly six inches in size before it quickly expanded into an approximate three-foot circle again while again showing the people in the cave.