Chapter 10

Jake stepped forward from the image that Daphne had created to transport him, Geoffrey and Sibilius to Frank and Tanya's quarters. He stared around at the charred remnants of the dwelling where his friends had been staying.

"Looks like there's been a fire," Jeff muttered as the little group gradually became worried that Frank and Tanya might not be okay.

"No shit, Sherlock," Jake growled, stepping forward and hoping he didn't find any unrecognizable, or rather, recognizable as once having been human, mounds of charcoal.

"Hell lo," Sibilius murmured as he bent down to brush some soot from what looked an awful lot like a human leg. "What have we here, gents?"

"Typical space alien," Jake joked. "Talks with a British accent."

"Typical Phoenix," Sy smirked as he pulled Tanya's leg out from underneath a soot-covered Frank. "Burns down the house for a piece of ass."

"Hey! Watch it, buster!" Tanya griped as she swung wildly at her unknown molester. "Oh. Hi, Sy, what's up?"

Frank groaned as he woke up, yawned a deep breath of warm, dusty ash from Tanya's hair into his mouth and immediately began to choke.

"Oh, shit!" Tanya exclaimed and she looked around and realized that she'd completely torched their house and that Frank was choking to death on the ashes. With one hand on each side of Frank's face, she pressed her thumbs into his mouth and stared inside, taking at least two glops of sooty spittle right in the face as Frank coughed. Then Frank discovered he was able to breathe again as Tanya 'cleaned' his mouth and throat by teleporting the minute particles from inside his throat and dropping the mucky stuff somewhere outside, a trick she'd learned from Béla, way too many years ago.

"Sorry, baby..." she cooed, then hugged him tightly, anxiously searching mentally for any leftover trauma from being consumed alive with Phoenix fire. She didn't find any, and Frank was hugging her tightly, as though he really liked how close she was holding him.

"Down, boy," Daphne chirped. "There are witnesses here. You do not want to start an orgy."

"Why not," Frank grinned up at the dark-haired goddess, "You and Tanya could take on four guys easily – one on each end."

"No time for fun and games, buddy," Jake interrupted the verbal foreplay, "We need girls with power – enough to punch a wormhole into Earth's past."

"I thought Elaine and the Praetor commanded us not to try to rescue Murielle and Miranda," Tanya said, standing up and brushing soot into her skin. Brushing soot into her skin wasn't her intention; she was trying to brush it off, but the soot clinging to her had other ideas. "Grrrr!" she snarled as she noticed how much she wasn't succeeding, then she simply flamed, turning her skin into soft blue fire. A second later, she looked clean and fresh, except for her hair, which she'd forgotten.

"What about me?" Frank complained, "I'm filthy, too." Tanya turned and took his hands in hers, then flared his body so it was just as clean as her own, delighted at the fact that he didn't radiate even the smallest fear of her fiery touch. "Thanks," he murmured, then created a small black snowstorm by brushing his hand through his hair several times and managing to get soot all over his face and arms again.

"We're not after the 'M' twins," Jeff told the pair. "We need to establish a wormhole to the Mesopotamian settlement."

"Yeah," Jake added, "Alana took a team in earlier, but they got split up somehow. Elaine and her two youngest got separated from the rest."

"How do you know that?" Frank wanted to know. "I mean – if you're here, and they're there, then how do you know they're not together?"

"It seems they went through two different wormholes," Sy offered as explanation. "One was all misty and occluded, and the other was, well, normal."

"So who are we going after?" Tanya wanted to know. "Because if you're going to try for misty and occluded, I don't think I'm your best selection for a power source."

"No, but you have been to Mesopotamia," Jeff reminded her, "and you know what it looks like. In fact, you are the only woman left in New Eden who can visualize how to get there."

Tanya's naked shoulders sagged as she thought about how important her role in this so-called rescue mission might be. She considered she'd already done her bit by raising three kids – two still living, she reminded herself – and acting as the matriarch at family functions. But...

"How is it that two wormholes were created?" Tanya needed to know. "If I know Alana, she rarely works alone. There must've been several others helping her to focus on the destination."

"There were," Sy replied. "But ... Well, take my hand and see for yourself."

Startled, Tanya took a step backward. He was inviting Tanya to look into his mind, something she never thought she'd be permitted to do – not with Sibilius, anyway. He had too many secrets. He was ... alien.

"I wouldn't think you of all people would be xenophobic, child," Sy gently chastised the bare, buxom, dirty-haired blonde. "To me, you are the alien I'm inviting into my mind."

Tanya laughed nervously, then reached forward, hesitating for a moment before she grasped his hand. She staggered as she felt her mind brush against his – Sibilius was so ... organized. He had thousands of years of memories and she could see a progression of places and times, astonishing landscapes and strange creatures she couldn't even begin to identify – or even describe.

'Concentrate on the events of this morning, ' Sy whispered into her mind, and suddenly she was there in the goddess' circle, chanting along with Alana, Elaine and several others. She watched as the wormhole formed, then fogged over as though someone was using a smoke machine to obscure the surroundings at the other end. She grinned as she recognized Talina and Teresa, much more mature than they had been even four months earlier when last she'd visited Elaine.

But the twins were just as impulsive and reckless as ever, disappearing into the fog-filled center of the goddess' circle, quickly followed by their suddenly distraught mother, Elaine. Then Alana called the other females to her side and pulled the entrance of the wormhole over them. Even as Tanya tried to step forward to join the others, the females vanished from sight, leaving Jake, Jeff and Sibilius standing alone in the field outside the castle.

Tanya staggered and caught her balance as Sy shielded his mind and the burned-out foundation of their one-room structure became visible once again.

"Did you see how the destination only became clear when Alana regained control of the wormhole?" Sy asked, not certain if Tanya had noticed or not in that last split second the wormhole had been visible.

Tanya nodded, but didn't speak. She was still trying to regain her human sensibilities again after being exposed to how Sibilius viewed things. "You seem to have a few more senses than I do..." she murmured. "And..." she couldn't continue. To describe the vast expanses of Sibilius' mind was beyond her ability to form words.

"So, what'd'ya think?" Jake asked. "You can take us there?"

Tanya snorted derisively and shook her head. "Not by myself. Let's go visit the Phoenix Preserve and get some more battery power." Stepping forward and taking Jake's hand in hers, she reached out to Sibilius with her other hand and took hold of his, again. This time there was no merging of minds. Jeff, Daphne and Jake completed the circle, and Tanya and Daphne teleported the group to the edge of New Eden, where the slope of the ground was almost too steep to stand upright – except for the gravity, the centrifical force caused by New Eden's rotation, which was almost too weak to hold them to the surface.

Emma raced along, taking luxurious, long sweeping strides in the low gravity. Her legs were scratched from bushes and sharp-leafed grasses but she was paying more attention out of the corner of her eye to Jessika's wildly bouncing breasts as her lover raced, half-running, half-floating madly alongside her. Her lack of attention to the forest floor proved her undoing as one foot jammed under the trunk of a young tree leaning upright as much as it could manage in the skewed gravity existing this close to the axis of the artificial planetoid.

Emma went flying, almost keeping up with Jessika, mostly due to the low gravity, wildly, fearfully grasping at anything to stop her headlong flight. She hit with a fearful wail, arms folding around her head and her legs kicking out in all directions as she tumbled to a stop.

"Come on!" Jessika laughed, seriously out of breath but not willing to stop. "What're you lying around for? They'll catch us!"

Emma tried to stand up, balancing precariously as her human senses sent nerve pulses down her body and legs, continually over-compensating against the steep slope of the landscape. The light gravity was no help; not against muscles still accustomed to the normal gravity of Earth, from where they'd both come.

"Good!" Emma panted as she finally found her feet underneath her. "If they shoot me, I won't hav'ta run anymore."