Chapter 20

When David returned to the cave he tried to hide the jubilation he was feeling at having taken care of Ben at last. Beckie knew her mate too well however, and she picked up on his mood immediately.

He had already returned the pulse rifle to where he had stolen it from so there were no visual clues to tell her the magnitude of what he had done, but she knew something had happened.

When David refused to meet her eye at first, she began to worry that he had done something that he knew would make her angry. He had claimed that he was going off to pray for guidance, but looking at him now she feared the worst and she decided to tackle him head-on.

"Why are you in such a funny mood?" she asked. "Look at you, you can hardly stand still! What's going on?"

Despite himself, the emotion David was bottling up erupted.

"I've done it! No one can call me a victim anymore; no one can say that I allowed myself to be the victim!"

"David! What have you done? Tell me!"

"I've taken care of Mr High and Mighty Ben once and for all. The sinner, the blasphemer, he who would be God is gone."

Beckie felt sick to her stomach. The crazy look in David's eyes and the lop-sided grin of triumph on his face told her that he really had done something awful.

"David, what do you mean 'he's gone'?" she asked fearfully.

"I shot him through the heart. One shot, that's all it took, one shot. So much for being a God — one little shot and look how powerful he is now!"

David broke into an uncontrollable fit of giggling at his own words. Beckie screamed out a wail of horror and that brought Elizabeth running to see what was wrong.

When Elizabeth entered the cave she found Beckie on her knees retching vomit up onto the floor. David was still giggling like a maniac and Elizabeth rushed to try to help Beckie.

"What's going on? What's wrong with her?" she demanded.

David couldn't answer, he simply continued to giggle. Elizabeth replicated a glass of water and helped Beckie sit back on her haunches. She could see that the other woman's face had lost all of its colour and her eyes were like those of a frightened rabbit.

"What's wrong Beckie?" Elizabeth asked again.

Beckie shook her head weakly, unable to answer right away. Elizabeth helped her take a few sips of water and waited impatiently for Beckie to speak. Eventually the words came out.

"David says he's shot Ben through the heart," she blurted out and then threw herself forward as she spewed once more.

Elizabeth sat for a second, dazed by what she thought Beckie had said.

"I must have misheard her, surely she didn't just say that David has shot Ben?"

She turned to look at David and forced herself to ask the question.

"Did she just say that..."

David's laughter grew more manic if anything and he nodded his head vigorously up and down to confirm Elizabeth's worst fears.

"AAaaaaaaiiiieeeee!" she screamed and stood up before rushing from the cave.

Thomas heard and recognised the scream as coming from Elizabeth and he roused himself from the sofa he was lounging on to see what was going on.

As he stepped out of the cave, he saw Elizabeth disappearing down the tunnel and he set off in pursuit. It didn't take him long to realise they were headed in the direction of Ben and Sarah's quarters and a minute or so later they arrived.

Elizabeth was still slightly ahead of her twin (Thomas wasn't prone to running fast) and when he entered the cave behind her she was already on her knees. Thomas could see that she was tentatively dipping her fingers into a pool of red viscous liquid on the floor.

"What is it? Why are you screaming?" he asked.

"He's shot Ben. He's killed him," muttered a clearly distraught Elizabeth.

Thomas realised that the liquid on the floor was blood, Ben's blood by the sounds of things.

"Who shot him? Elizabeth, you're not making any sense. Who shot Ben and why?" he asked.

Sarah got a grip of herself and shouted for Simon and Kirsty to come and help her. Her first-born twins came running when they heard the urgency in their mother's voice, but came to a juddering halt when they entered the room and saw the state Ben was in.

"Don't just gawp, help me get him to the new infirmary!" snapped Sarah.

The twins helped their mother lift Ben and between them they carried him as quickly as they could to the infirmary that Sarah had insisted Ben have built.

Most of the modern technology was automatic, so all they had to do was lay Ben down on one of the custom-made beds and watch as he was moved quickly through a scanner. The scanner was programmed to identify what was wrong and to take immediate steps to stabilise a patient, but instead of doing so it began to emit a series of loud alarms.

"Why isn't it working?" squealed Sarah, wringing her hands together.

"It's picked up something that shouldn't be there," answered a slightly less frantic Kirsty.

The bed moved back out from under the scanner and to her surprise, Sarah saw that Ben's eyes were open. It was clear that he was trying to speak so she moved closer and put her ear down to his lips.

"It's alright; I'm going to be fine. You can stop worrying," rasped Ben.

Sarah's head shot backwards and she looked into her twin's eyes. Already she could see that he seemed stronger and she dared to hope that what he was saying was true.

"But how ... You were shot in the chest, the heart. How... ?" she faltered.

In reply Ben's right hand lifted ever so slightly from the bed. Sarah could see it was taking a great effort and she hurried to take the hand in hers.

The familiar feeling she got when 'travelling' with Ben and sharing his 'worldview' returned and Sarah found herself high above the planet looking down at the surface.

Her stomach lurched as her perspective zoomed towards the continent that she recognised as the one where Aetherkraal was located and then the familiar features of their community began to become clearer.

Sarah's journey didn't stop above the camp, but instead continued rapidly downwards and she realised she was heading for the infirmary building. It was eerie to pass though the infirmary roof and see herself holding Ben's hand while Kirsty and Simon looked on with worried expressions.

She wasn't prepared for what happened next. Whereas before, Ben had always halted their perspective so they could watch and listen to what was going on at whatever location he was interested in, this time he didn't. Sarah found her perspective rushing downwards still until she was looking inside Ben's chest.

The view would have been gruesome and she would probably have been overcome by nausea if it wasn't for the fact that something miraculous grabbed and drew her attention. She was looking at her twin's heart — only it wasn't his heart, or it certainly didn't look like it should.

Instead of the pulsing pink/red muscle, Sarah was looking at a golden heart made of extremely ductile metal. As she 'watched' the heart beat rapidly and seemed to function as a normal heart should, but Sarah knew that this was something far from being a normal heart.

She had watched the metals pour into the hole in Ben's chest and now she had no doubt that for some reason they had formed themselves into some kind of alloy and either encased his natural heart or completely replaced it. Kirsty's worried voice intruded and snapped her out of the sense of awe she was feeling.

"What's happening? Why have you both just zoned out on us?"

Sarah dropped Ben's hand and opened her eyes. She could see her twin was smiling at her and he even managed to shrug his shoulders a little as if to tell her he had no idea how this had happened.

"It's okay, your father is going to be fine," Sarah announced.

"How can he be fine? He's got a wound in the centre of his chest and there's blood everywhere!" said Simon.

Sarah picked up a pair of surgical scissors and cut the remains of Ben's shirt from his chest. She used a swab to wipe away the worst of the blood and heard her children gasp when they saw that the hole in Ben's chest had closed and was already starting to shrink. There was still a thin, livid, burn mark crossing his ribs to where the hole was, but the hole itself was fading before their very eyes.

With Simon's help, Sarah managed to half-roll Ben over and they pulled the shirt from his back to find that the same was true of the exit hole there.

"How is that possible?" asked Simon in amazement.

"I don't really know, but I'm eternally grateful for whatever's caused it to happen," replied Sarah.

Ben was already feeling stronger. There was still some pain in his chest, but it was if the metals were rapidly working to make him whole again.

Kirsty almost fainted when her father actually sat up unaided and spoke as if nothing had happened.

"Your mother is right; I'm going to be fine. Sorry for scaring you all like that, but I didn't exactly choose to be shot."

"I didn't realise these machines were that good. Nothing I've learned about them suggests they can perform miracles like this," said a still awed Kirsty.

"Oh, this has got nothing to do with the machine, so don't be thinking it will be able to do things like this in the future," cautioned Ben. "This is down to something else entirely."

Simon was the one that spoke next.

"It's got something to do with the nuggets, hasn't it?" he asked.

Ben was surprised. He didn't realise that any of his offspring knew about the metals. In fact, he had worked hard to make sure that no one knew about them. Sarah saw the look on his face and actually laughed. The laugh released the tension that she had held inside herself and it quickly turned to tears.

Through the half-tears, half-laughter, Sarah managed to speak.

"You don't think that you could have lived among all these very intelligent children of ours and have kept the nuggets a secret do you?" she asked.

Ben shook his head, unsure of what to say.

"Dad, everyone here knows about the metals. We know that you've used them to help everybody; we also know not to talk about them. We're all so used to seeing both you and Mom with your little pouches that it's kinda obvious now that they're missing," said Simon.

Ben glanced down at his belt and noticed for the first time that his pouch was gone. A glance at Sarah showed that hers was gone too and there was some charring on the material of her skirt.

"Whatever happened, it took my nugget as well," said Sarah when she saw where Ben was looking.

"Does the telepathy still work even though you don't have a nugget?" Sarah heard in her head. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she nodded to let Ben know that she could 'hear' him.

"I'm going to have to try things out, but I think I might be able to do everything I could before but only better now that the metals are actually part of me."

"I'm just glad that you're alive," said Sarah out loud.

Kirsty and Simon looked at her, as it was clear she was answering a comment from their father that they hadn't been able to hear.

"Try just thinking your answer," she heard in her head.

"Okay, but I don't see how that can work any longer when I don't have a nugget."

"Neither do I, but it seems to work just fine," came Ben's response.

Are you two 'talking' to each other?" asked a bemused Kirsty.

Both her parents had zoned out again only this time it was different. They had their eyes open and were looking at each other and Kirsty could swear it looked like they were communicating together.

"Don't be silly," said Ben, "how would we do that? Come on, the excitement's hopefully over for the day and I'm suddenly very hungry. Who fancies a nice juicy steak?"

"I just can't believe you did this," said a still dazed Beckie. "From everything I've seen and heard Ben has only ever done things to help you and me. He's even saved our people. Why did you kill him?"

"We can talk about that later," replied a now much calmer David. "We need to leave before the Stellarites take exception to what I've done. You pack up while I start rounding up our people."

The Celestialites were well-drilled and the entire squad were ready to leave within an hour. David led them outside the caves with a minimum of fuss and they loaded into their hover-vehicles for the journey back to their own camp.

Beckie remained quiet and withdrawn during the journey and David felt that she was shying away from him. When they arrived home there was a scene of joyful reunion between the squad and those that had been left behind. David noticed that Beckie didn't join in and he followed her as she walked listlessly towards their house.

Once inside he tried to reason with her, but her response made it clear that things wouldn't be returning to normal anytime soon.

"Beckie, you heard him condemn himself with his own words! All these years he has been duping us, playing us for fools. Surely you must see that he had to die? No one can be allowed to take God's holy name in vain."

"I'm not so sure that our God is the kind of God that would demand someone's life. That's not how I think of God when I reach out to him. I've already said that it's not our place to try to second guess what God is thinking. If he was upset at what Ben had done, he could easily have stopped him.