Chapter 21

For another second, Elaine could see right through New Eden. Stars were impossibly visible behind an increasingly transparent landscape. As Tabatha sealed the wormhole, the landscape became firm again. The southern sun was still shining and a soft breeze blew as though nothing disastrous had almost happened.

In the courtyard outside the queen’s palace, a small group of women and two men staggered to their feet, looking as though they’d been caught in a mid-afternoon storm.

“What in the names of all the goddesses did you do?” Alana fumed at the blond Seeker. “You sealed her off! Not only can she no longer come to us, we can never go back there! What were you thinking?”

“Leave her be,” Tabatha interrupted, interjecting her body between the Queen and the Golden Goddess. “She did what was needed to save us all. And – she didn’t do it! I did! Place the blame where it deserves to be. On me!”

“But ... but why?” Alana was in tears at this point. She had spent four thousand years on Earth leaving people behind, but she was always the one who left. She’d never deliberately trapped anyone in time... ‘Except for ... Tomas!’

That thought sobered her considerably. She had trapped Tomas de Torquemada in a future time where he couldn’t hurt anyone. And she had done it with no remorse whatsoever. It had been necessary to protect humankind from his evil, and there were no humans left for him to harm in the time period where she had left him.

“What happened?” Alana asked Tabatha, suddenly appearing much calmer. “You and Elaine ... What ... No, I know what you did. I want to know why!”

The pale redhead turned to include her blond collaborator. “I saw something happening to New Eden. I don’t know what it was. It was terrifying. I’ve never seen anything like it. You told me to seal the wormhole. I could see in your mind that sealing the wormhole was the only way to save New Eden from what I was witnessing. So ... I ... I did it.” Tears began to flood down Tabatha’s face. “And now Miranda will never be able to get to New Eden from that time period.”

“What was it that Tabatha saw, Elaine?” Alana asked, still behaving in an unnaturally calm manner.

“Alana, Tabatha, a ‘reality wave’ was rippling across the landscape,” Elaine explained, a deathly shudder in her voice. “New Eden was ... evaporating. The closer Miranda came to the wormhole, the more of New Eden’s landscape disappeared. The very act of bringing her back – of rescuing her – would somehow change history so that New Eden wouldn’t exist. I don’t know what else she might have changed, but the closer she got to that wormhole, the less solid New Eden became. If she had succeeded in actually passing through it, she would have disappeared – along with all the rest of us.”

“I understand,” Alana sobbed, fearing that this was probably the reason. “When Katie...” She stopped for a moment, then looked at Tabatha. “When you were trapped in the past, there was a moment when Lisa and I could have rescued you. But Elaine...” She looked at Elaine, now. “You appeared and told me not to do whatever it was that I was about to attempt. You said it would destroy everything.”

“I don’t remember that,” Elaine murmured, frowning with confusion.

“It didn’t happen in ‘this’ reality, so of course you wouldn’t remember, but I do, and Lisa probably does as well, though she was very young at the time,” Alana explained. “Somewhere in all the universes, there is an Earth where I died in the sixteenth century and none of my sisters were ever resurrected from the Praetor. In that reality, I never met Jake, I never saved all the people we brought here. New Eden would be a desolate, disease infested place.” She turned back to Tabatha. “All because I almost rescued you.”

“Well, I don’t remember much about that period, but you might have died in the sixteenth century because, if you had brought me back to ‘heaven’, back to the twenty-first century, I would never have sought you out. We would never have met in fifteenth-century Spain. You might not have survived Torquemada without the mind powers you learned from me.”

“So...” Tia asked, beginning to understand what she’d been forced to be a part of by calling the wormhole down on top of the Seeker’s Circle, “is Miranda supposed to do something in the past that makes all of this – all of us – possible? How can you know that sealing her back there will ensure that she does what she’s supposed to?”

“Oh, I know that one,” Tara quipped. “We’re still here. If Miranda didn’t do whatever it was that we almost prevented her from doing by bringing her back, we’d all be dead.”

“Or worse,” Elaine corrected her. “We might never have existed.”

“Uh, ladies,” Sibilius interrupted everyone. “Where’s my Praetor?”

Everyone looked around for a few seconds until it dawned on Tabatha; “Oh, shit – We sealed it back in the past with Miranda.”

“Is that bad?” Tara asked, upset that she’d neglected to include that stupid Praetor when she’d helped to force the wormhole down over the circle.

“Well, we’re still here...” Elaine replied, sounding worried as well. “Maybe it was supposed to be with Miranda.”

“We’ll probably never know,” Tabatha conjectured. “Unless somehow, it exists somewhere today and managed to record the events it witnessed into the data banks that the other Praetors can access.”

“Hey!” Tia exclaimed excitedly. “Maybe we can find out what happened after we sealed Miranda in the past. Maybe everything went okay for her ... after...”

Her voice trailed off as she finished. She knew she would be devastated if something like that happened to her, and she didn’t believe that she would ever be ‘okay’ after such a traumatic event.

But maybe...

‘Praetor... ‘ she anxiously called out with her mind. She didn’t access a Praetor very often now that she was a full-fledged Phoenix, and she was mildly startled to get an immediate reply.

‘I am listening, Tia.’

‘Please provide information on the events surrounding the Phoenix, Miranda, after we sealed her in the past, ‘ Tia requested.

‘You are not authorized to review that information, ‘ the metallic voice of the Praetor responded.

Alana tried next. Having mentally heard Tia’s request and the Praetor’s refusal to comply, she ordered the Praetor to release the information.

‘Request denied.’

“That wasn’t a request!” Alana fumed. “Tell me what happened!”

‘Carte Blanche, I cannot.’

Alana hadn’t been called that since she’d died as Béla and awakened as Alana. The fact that the Praetor addressed her as Carte Blanche meant that, even though she had the highest priority of access to the Praetor’s database, that information was being denied her. There was something she could find out, though...

Alana fumed; ‘You know what I mean! Did the body inhabited by Miranda die?’

‘No physical body is capable of surviving millions of years. Of course she died.’

‘You are sooo infuriating!’ Alana screamed in her head. If she’d been a Phoenix, she’d have been covered in flames, she was so mad. ‘Did Miranda die immediately or soon after she was trapped in the past?’

‘Miranda was a Phoenix. She lived and died many times during her existence as a Phoenix.’

“Oh, Isis – we killed her!” Elaine gasped. “The Praetor said she was a Phoenix. That means she isn’t one anymore.”

Tia and Tara held each other and began crying. Tabatha couldn’t stop her tears, either, and sank to her knees, then sat down on the warm cement, unable to stand.

‘To ease your minds, I will tell you this, as I do not enjoy recording your discomfort, the Praetor volunteered. ‘Miranda died and lived again as Miranda after the wormhole was sealed.’

“Thank you,” Elaine sobbed. “That’s something, anyway.”

“Did she ever find Murielle, her sister?” Tara asked. “It’d be terrible if she had to live all alone in the dinosaur age with no one to talk to.”

‘Murielle was devoured on the day of the last pterodactyl hunt. She was reborn as a pterodactyl.’

“Oh, God, she’s all alone,” Tabatha moaned. “We lost them both.”

“And Miranda wasted all that time searching for her...” Tara said, almost breaking into fresh tears. “I’d search forever if I ever lost Tia...”

“Wait a minute...” Alana demanded, her mind racing to understand exactly what the Praetor was saying. That artificial alien mind loved to play word games with its lessers, and she was certain that it was playing one now. “How do you know what happened to Murielle? There was no Praetor there to record anything!”

‘That information is incorrect. A Praetor was left behind when the wormhole was sealed.’

“The Praetor is lying!” Elaine suddenly realized. “It doesn’t want us to know what happened! Murielle and Miranda found each other, whether Murielle was a Phoenix or not! That’s the missing piece!”

“But...” Tia countered, finally understanding exactly what she had seen in that last instant before the wormhole was sealed and Miranda’s countenance vanished forever. “Miranda was using Phoenix fire to try and reopen the wormhole. She would have used it all in one last-ditch effort to save herself. That’s why Tabatha had to seal the wormhole with a time shield. Neither Tara nor I were strong enough ... No, that’s not what happened. We couldn’t allow Miranda to use up all her life force by fighting us. I stopped fighting her before we could close it.”

“So did I,” Tara admitted.

“That’s why I ordered Tabatha to close it,” Elaine confessed. “Only she could see what was really happening. She is the Time Walker, as I am the Seeker. We were both needed at this point in time and space to save New Eden.”

“But you see,” Tia continued, “that’s what I mean! Miranda used all her life force in her attempt to reopen the wormhole. Without someone there to reenergize her, she would have died.”

“So Murielle had to have saved her,” Tara suddenly understood, “if the Praetor was telling the truth about Miranda living after she was trapped in the past. Only Murielle could have done it.”

“But the Praetor said that Murielle was reborn without her Phoenix powers,” Annalisa added. “How do you explain that?”

“Somehow, she got them back, obviously,” Tabatha interrupted. “It didn’t exactly say she was no longer a Phoenix – only that she was ‘reborn as a pterodactyl’. The assumptions we have been making do not disagree with what the Praetor told us. It wasn’t lying ... it just wasn’t telling us everything.”

“Vile word games,” Alana spewed out. “Praetor, you think you had us, but we figured it out in spite of you!”

‘Why do you believe that I did not want you to ‘figure it out’?’ the Praetor replied, and Alana was certain she detected a note of smugness in its attitude.

What they’d figured out was somewhat satisfying, anyway. At least, Miranda had survived – for a while, anyway. Now, another question: ‘What other information exists that I’m denied access to?”

“I cannot tell you.”

Alana was stunned. ‘There’s more?’

‘There are worlds of information that you do not have access to. You do not even know the right questions to request such data.’

‘Look. I realize that there is abundant data regarding all the worlds where Praetors have recorded information. I’m not asking about those things. What I want to know is ... Is there vital information I don’t have about the people I know that has occurred in, say, the last ten years. Is that specific enough?’ Alana fumed at having to play these infernal word games with that abominable machine, but...

The Praetor didn’t respond to that. It wasn’t a query.

“Jeez, my head hurts,” Tabatha muttered. “Remind me not to eavesdrop on the Queen and her Praetor anymore.”

“You got that right,” Tia and Tara said in unison.

“I wonder what it meant,” Annalisa mused, “some answers will come sooner?”

“No idea,” Tabatha replied. “And I’m sure I don’t want to know.”

Tanya grunted as she changed positions once again, relieving another part of her anatomy that she had been resting on. “God, Frank, shoot me or something. I really hate these rail cars. I have never been so shaken up and bounced around in all my life. Do you think stagecoaches in the Old West were this awful?”

“Probably,” Frank replied, grimacing as he shifted from his right rump to his left. “But at least, stagecoaches had padded seats. These fucking boards are just crude.”

They both looked over – glared at – their only son, Frank Jr., who was idly sleeping through most of this disagreeable trip. His wife, Ivory, one of Amber and Roland Cutberg’s daughters, cradled his head in her lap as she rested against the front wall of the railcar. She seemed to be asleep, as well. Frank and Tanya’s loving glare was interrupted by the other passenger – the reason they were all stuffed into this unadorned boxcar.

“Well, that’s because most of the citizenry travels by foot or wagon,” the Mayor of Utopia explained, standing briefly and turning away to adjust his clothing so that his arousal from spending the last three hours trying not to stare at the way Tanya’s succulent legs disappeared up into that way-too-short skirt she wore wasn’t too obvious. And every time she moved, she showed him...