Chapter 31

Jonna said, "Yes, but only within our group. We cannot read either of you. This is fairly common on my planet. Some people are born with this ability already strong. We are trying to see if everybody could do this with suitable encouragement. So far it's only Lauren and Tiffany. We think it's because they have come in contact with the silver icons a great many times. I think I was the one to trigger the ability in your son and he has encouraged the rest of us to work hard at it."

Mom and Dad did a lot of thinking and looked at me. I said, "I can only read those that have their brain conditioned. That's why we don't need a wedding ceremony. They know I love them and I know they love me."

Dad said, "We went through those portals a lot and you used that heart on us."

"It's cumulative and you both were passive. Neither of you tried to use the icons so you got none of the benefits."

"So we could if we tried?"

"I don't see why not. If the experiment works, then we all learn something. If it doesn't, we learn from this, too."

The questions now changed and I was happy to see that Mom and Dad were not too upset. Christiane had been a bit upset when she had been told a week earlier. She was now eager to learn. In time, perhaps my parents may be as eager.

At midnight we did not go to bed. We got out the headbands checked on the coins planted near Jackson's men. Mom and Dad asked questions and Caiti was the one to answer them.

Near one in the morning, the day shift was getting to bed and two men were now in the barn watching our house. Over the last week, we moved a coin into the upper level of the barn and then moved it to a better place when we used the portal.

Mom kept asking what was happening until I said, "You can start to learn about this but it takes a while to reach a few kilometres. We can do nearly a sixty now. If you try, your mind will alter just a bit until we can talk to each other. You already know that you don't have to talk and you can block off your thoughts. It's situations like this where it's better to be a participant."

"You only have three headbands."

"We need only one. The rest can sort of piggyback and see the same thing but it's not as clear."

There was a pause again but she finally said, "I'd like to try." She said this while looking at Dad.

I turned to Dad and said, "Your love will get stronger, I think. You'll become more compatible. Two brains work better than one. In my case there are eleven of us and soon a twelfth that will go over any problem we have."

"I'll think on this a bit more even though your mother seems to like the idea."

"That's fine, but I warn you that all of my children will try to read your minds if you don't have some sort of shield. You can read theirs though. If you're babysitting them you'll know when to put them on the pot or to feed them."

"That young?"

"I have no idea but it may work."

At one thirty Lauren, Jonna, Tiffany, Fislu and Matra accompanied me to the house containing the three men. They all looked asleep. There were alarms but we were behind them now. We carried pistols with silencers and three juffa nets reminiscent of Hollywood gladiators.

The nets went over the men and only Jackson awoke and struggled violently. I used a sap twice and he quieted down. When the all clear was given, the lights went on and I began working on the leader to make him mine. In half an hour he was bound much tighter than the juffa could hold him. The other two were next.

By three o'clock Porta said to Camsa, "Oh, Mark, is it safe to do it in the barn. I mean there could be mice."

The men awoke more and hurried to the ladder and didn't hear the steps behind them. I jabbed a taser into one man's neck and held his collar. "I have a taser. You move fast and I let go of you and pull the trigger." At the same time Tiffany was saying something similar to her man. Two other voices added their sentiments and poked the men with their guns.

A half hour later we had two docile men that were going back to the house now to go to sleep and meet me at ten in the morning.

We picked up our coins and ported home. Mom and Dad were waiting for us and were more than happy about how well the operation went. I was just happy to get some sleep.

Mom and Dad couldn't both play hooky so they both went to work.

The five men came right on time and I admitted them into the house. They looked and acted normal except they called me Master.

The girls took the men to other rooms and used tape recorders when they questioned them. I found that Jackson was really Melvin Slater.

I said, "I guess your name is what got you into fighting the same as me."

"It did, Master. I still — dislike my father for giving me the name."

"Is hate a closer feeling than dislike?"

"Yes, Master."

Melvin or Jackson began to tell me how much he knew about us and what he could guess. The latter covered a lot of area and his surmises were not even close. We went back further to when and why he was recruited. Willie's name came up three times but it was just because he was dealing in gold.

Like the other men, I found out Jackson's talents. He had been in the Canadian military as a pilot. He reached the rank of Captain before he left. Two senior officers were killed but the authorities couldn't find enough evidence to prosecute Jackson. They did give him an honourable discharge and a partial pension. In his own mind he was a good soldier and just got ticked off at people making fun of him on a constant basis.

He was not currently married. He had two children that he was putting through school. He then gave me his own observations of his men including those that were now in Woodland. I got a clearer understanding of the men but nothing was startling. An hour later the others joined us and we sat down to eat a civilised meal.

I said to Jackson, "I'm going to give you back your men. You are all my employees now. Go home, pay your bills, enjoy your families, but in two weeks I want you to call Bakhtin for orders. Some of you will be returning here to continue your jobs as armourers."

"Yes, Master."

There was lots I could have these men do for me. Collecting copper was beneath them and I guess Bakhtin and his friends could do this for me. I needed people that could use modern weapons and Jackson was one of them. Two of his men had infantry training though they had not excelled. I could use an army of men like Jackson but they would make my life difficult after they had finished their jobs unless I renewed the conditioning on them every year or so.

The men stayed in the house as Lauren went to gather the twelve survivors. They had to get into their old clothes or some of the used clothing I brought. An hour later they showed up. The men were given money to compensate them for the shot up cars they owned or rented as well as for wages. In the latter case they were to say the vehicles were stolen. Additional money was given to help support the families of those that died.

Mom and Dad came by after work and Dad asked, "How did it go? Is it safe now?"

"I let all of the men go including those in Woodland."

Mom said, "Won't they talk?"

"Not for a while. They may need another talk in a year or so but they won't mention where they were to their friends or anybody else."

"They're gangsters and they're bound to talk sooner or later."

"That's right, Mom, but as I said I have to talk to them later."

We had a nice meal and Dad said during dessert, "I've given the idea a lot of thought all day and your mother and I would like to take you up on your offer of teaching us to — read — minds."

"Dad, you're only going to be able to read Mom's and our thoughts and that will happen only when we allow you to."

"That's what I meant."

I said, "There are some icons in Shreff that can open your mind just a bit first to get you started. We can start with them."

"That's fine with me. Ah — I wanted to ask you something. That portal you have, would it allow you to walk into a bank at night and into the vault. You could take all the money you wanted without the gold."

"I'm trying to be ethical. If I steal now, I may never stop. I admit that I have taken money and goods from people that were trying to kill us or take back what we own. In that case they bet their lives and their goods against mine, and lost."

"You didn't do that with the men that were after us."

"They weren't rich enough. They had to have enough resources left to support their families."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that. I'd would have liked to see the inside of a bank vault at night just to know that I was there."

"That may be fun too but it's a temptation I don't need."

Mom donned the headband and Dad said, "You should be wearing shorts."

"Why?"

"You look like Wonder Woman."

"I do not!"

I said, "You do, Mom. A rope at your waist and silver bracelets and you got it made."

A small smile crept to her lips but she said, "I'm too old for that and I move much too slow."

Dad quickly said, "You're far from being too old. You move like a girl of eighteen."

The smile got bigger and my girls waded in and told Mom how young she acted. I personally figured she and Dad acted a lot more like they did when young. The bedsprings creaked at night in their room when we were not making too much noise in ours to hear.

The test went well and in an hour they could see inside a paper bag. We had a few breaks but stayed at the task until it was time to go to bed.

Jake Headricks phoned me with a code word disguised as a wrong number. Our negotiating for the refinery and coin making machinery were in the final stages. He had received the go-ahead to buy it under a phony company based in the Bahamas.

The next morning, Mom and Dad had headaches and I used the heart on them. There was something different about their brains and I worked hard to find out just what. This was research so I stayed at it until I could record what I saw. Jonna and Matra checked too and confirmed my observations.

Mom said, "You took a long time. Is there really nothing wrong?"

"You're very healthy Mom. Others will learn to understand what happens in time so I just wanted to start this off with a few basic observations."

After my parents left for work I went back to the large rooms with the stone floors. I chipped out four more of the smallest portals and brought them out. Again I worked at least semi-scientifically and logged everything I did. When I checked the world spheres I noticed that another one looked similar to Bejek. This got me excited.

The frame itself was cleaned and put in contact with the large frame in the barn. We had large lightning rods now that fed their power to the frame and other heavy cables took the power away to be grounded. It got charged regularly and without any extra effort.

When the portal was energised, I saw a view of soil but it had to be soil from someplace on Bejek. Without a key I could not even dig a way through to find out where.

The family were monitoring me and soon they were using all the keys we had to see if the portal could be opened. The three other portals were cleaned and energised. Two were unresponsive as if there was no terminus at the other side. The last was in a dark area similar to what the rest had been. It was another corridor someplace else. The keys didn't work on this one either.

Caiti brought a sphere next and I asked, "Why did you bring this?"

"It looks like Bejek too."

I looked at the silver globe and said, "You're one smart girl. We catalogued them when we removed the other portals but didn't try them." These icons had not been shown to Osston and I wanted to get his opinions about them.

The globe was changed and so did the location. It now showed a cloth covering. On second glance the cloth was juffa silk. The material was in many layers so I hurriedly got a powerful light and shined it into the portal. I could vaguely see the markings of another chain similar to our gates. To one side was a lump that had to be an icon of one type or another.

I had to think about this. I said to our group, "We changed the globe and we got a different place. It looks like a different place on Bejek but I'm not sure. The major concern is why this happened. We used a globe for the small portal and another globe for the large portal and they lead to the same spot more or less. How come our globes don't do this?"

Selna said, "What about what we saw wrapped in juffa?"

"That's important but I think my question is more important."

The ideas came in fits and starts and I wrote them down just in case. It was much later in the day that the ideas started to gravitate to a few basic ideas. My favourite was that the original portal on Bejek was part of a group of portals. Small creatures used the small gates and larger ones used the larger gates. Their focus was close enough that they would work on what was a nearby gate. I really needed Osston to look at the details now.

Mom and Dad came and got a synopsis of what we had discovered. Mom said, "Did you try the keys again on the new site?" I didn't have to answer because the girls took the keys one at a time and touched them to the portal. We soon found that none of them worked.

We closed the portal down when we ran out of ideas. Dad asked, "What did you want the portals for?"

"Light goes through the portals even without a key. I want to introduce the internet to Bejek at some time in the future. If a gate closes then the cable is severed. If laser light works, then we may be able to use a fibreoptic cable to make the transition."

"That sounds like a good thing to do. Will radio waves go through too?"

"I'm not sure but we can try with our own portals. We just have to remove the key. Why do you ask?"

"Two reasons I guess. You could get radio and television in Bejek and it could be rebroadcast in cable or through the air to whoever wants to have it. It also strikes me as a way to find where this cache of silver really is."

"How's that, Dad."

"Use a transmitter to push a strong signal through the portal and then use a receiver on Bejek to get a fix. Do that a few times and you know where the other end of the portal is."

"That sounds great. If I had one of those special transmitters, I may be able to push a signal through the dirt at the other end and find it, providing it was not deep."

Dad said, "I watched an old war movie where the Germans were racing through some place in Norway looking for a transmitter. They had a truck with a loop on top that caught the signal."

"I may have seen that but I was pretty young at the time."

"That's ok because I saw it. Another thing is that your grandfather had an old radio and when I say old I mean old. The antenna was varnished wooden tube about eight inched in diameter. Oh, I forgot you don't know inches. It was twenty centimetres across and say ten in the width of the thin ring. Anyway there was about fifty turns of thin wire wrapped around the ring and varnished so it would stay in place."

Dad paused long enough for me to say, "I saw a picture like that once."

"Good. What I wanted to get at was that you had to aim the antenna at the station. My dad's antenna even had a gimbal arrangement on it. It worked well but was selective to where it was aimed. When the signal came from the side the signal that was received dropped rapidly. That was the trick that the Germans in the movie used. When the edge of the antenna was in line with the signal source there was a rapid decrease in strength."

"I can kinda see that, Dad. I think I can give it a try. My transmitters work best at low frequencies to get around the planet. I also know that an FM station does not work in a metal building very well. We use AM for almost everything."

We tried some experiments right away. We dressed and put on our vests and carried our weapons. The walkie talkie worked with the key removed from the portal and the stronger radio stations came through too. We had surplus military radios and they worked just as well. A small portable television did not work as well when it used rabbit ears.

We used the large military radio to contact Artlam who was now in Limka to work with the militia. All of Mendab was preparing for another invasion because we knew that at some time in the near future the Army of the Righteous would arrive. Preparations were being made to protect all of the cities but I knew for a fact that only a few would be even partially prepared.

A convoy of trucks had left Woodland and distributed the material that had come from Montreal. Mantoya's responsibility was mainly in this area. The last shipment was a considerable number of the old M72 rockets. These particular units weren't as old as those used in Vietnam. They were a variant that carried a high explosive fragmenting head along with an improved launcher assembly.

There were three light field howitzers of two kinds. There were shells for one kind and it happened to be the type we had two of. Old style machine guns had arrived but not nearly enough 50 calibre shells.

We had a chance to check the gun works. The AKs still being produced. We had tonnes of ammunition for the rifles. I hoped that we would have a chance to get enough surplus bullets purchased to fight a real war. The shells were available from China and some of the old eastern block countries. Buying enough, getting them shipped to Canada, passed through customs, delivered to my warehouse, and finally transported through the portal to where they were needed was a daunting task.