Chapter 13: Belief and Flight

"I suppose I could ask you what all of that was about, but I'm not sure I would get an answer that I'd understand." Steve stared at Mike for a long moment. He had been holding his tongue, trying to sort out a mass of confused emotions and some disturbing implications.

They sat on a small hill overlooking the Wapato cabin. The valley, its scattered meadows and timber stands, and the tawny, rolling hills lay beyond.

"I can try to explain. I'm not so worried about you understanding it, as I am about you believing it. But, considering the fact that you saw what you did last night, and you haven't yet arrested the whole lot of us, or run down the mountain screaming in terror—that seems to say a lot for your trust in yourself, trusting what you've seen—and giving yourself time to sort it out for yourself."

"Yeh, well, don't give me too much credit just yet. I'm liable to decide that I'm in way over my head. I may find myself doing something irrational before I get myself under control. But, I'll try to give you fair warning before that happens. Now, how do we want to do this? Would you like to start from the beginning, or shall I drag it out of you piece by piece, and hope it comes together in something that doesn't seem like a pulp fiction novel?"

"However you'd like to start, Steve. Perhaps you'd better ask your most immediate questions first, and we'll see how it goes from there?"

"Alright. First, that scene last night. Was it real?"

"Yes, as real as it gets."

"Do you know who they were, and do you have any idea what it means?"

"I know one ... the angel. I assume the other was Marie Wapato, or at least her as a representative of her people ... or of all of us, as humanity. What it means? I'm pretty sure it was a 'meet and greet' thing. But you have to understand that the angel is not really an angel as you'd think of a religious object. And that angel is not human. She—and her people—are not from here. From earth, I mean. They're travelers from another world, and they're stranded here."

Steve sat stern-faced, scowling, for a long moment. "You know her, this angel, this alien... ?"

"Yes. She appeared to me when I nearly died in that antarctic camp, stranded there on the ice. Not physically, but as a dream, a vision. They are ... we'd call it telepathic, but it's really more than that. It's difficult to explain something we don't, normally cannot, do ourselves. But we can ... we could, I guess ... we're latent I think. It's an ability that can develop. It did with me. She helped, opened my ability, like opening my eyes."

"Slow down, Mike. Give me a minute to get this straight in my mind. You saw her, met her, in Antarctica?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. Not physically, as in face to face. They cannot. They're trapped in their ship, locked in the ice there on Siple Island. That's the object the agency has been seeing shadows of, and is anxious about. They've been stranded there for two millennia."

"My God, man! Dammit, your answers are running me off a cliff, here. Each answer you give me brings up more questions than answers!"

"Sorry! That's the problem with trying to lay it out for you all at once, I guess. Look, let me give you a quick rundown, and if you'll hold your questions until I finish, then we'll try to fill out a complete picture ... okay?"

"Sure, we've got nothing better to do but sit here in the sunshine for the next couple of hours. Have at it!"

Mike gave Steve a full briefing, starting with his first dream meeting with Dee'rah, up through his most recent ability to commune and communicate with her during waking moments. This quickly led to more specific questions.

"Oh, man, if word of this conversation gets out you realize neither one of us will ever see the outside of a mental institution again, don't you? More likely we'll never get into one. The agency will have us three hundred feet underground in tiny white rooms. We'll be the subject of endless mind-dumps to extract every last shred of whatever they're afraid we've discovered." Steve sat squirming, staring at the far hills, clearly uncomfortable with what he'd heard.

"Well, I've come too far to back out now. I can't forget what I've learned. Now tell me how the hell something can be as huge as that shadow we think we see under the ice down there. Sixteen miles long? Two miles wide? How the hell can it be that big?"

"It's not. Not really. That's just its shadow, or field of influence if you will. It's actually much smaller. Only about three miles long and something less than a half mile wide. As I understand it, there's a sort of shield that covers and protects and extends as far as the shadow indicates. Also, you've got to realize, they ... the Masi'shen, that's what they call their race ... they've been there a long time. They have habitat, areas that extend well beyond the boundaries of the ship. They come from an ice planet originally, and they were equipped to burrow and survive into the ice where they chose to set the ship down in an emergency landing."

"Three miles long? Damn, Mike! That's still pretty huge!"

"Yes, I agree. Actually, I've seen it before it was damaged. Dee'rah took me flying to show me their journey, their space voyage, and their ship. She showed me an image of the strike that damaged their ship, killed a third of their people, and forced them to land on earth. It's huge, alright, but taken in context of such long voyages and the needs of a full crew, it's appropriately sized. It's just so far beyond our frame of reference. It's pretty hard to accept."

"Alright, Mike. You keep talking about her as if you go face to face, or she takes your hand and you go flying around worlds and stars, and the next minute she's coming up out of your body—you sitting there half-petrified in front of a campfire—so she can do a firesmoke dance as an angel all wrapped up with a raven woman. So what's the deal here? How's this working?"

"That's the hardest part to understand. It's metaphysical. They are physical beings, but not like us. They have bodies, very similar to us. I guess if you saw one of them walking down the street, you'd not notice that much difference. But they have so much energy or life force, that's all I can call it. They can use it. They do use it, in two major ways. First, they evolved to be able to assume various useful shapes. It's not an instant process, but it doesn't take all that long, either. Think of it like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Same creature, two forms. Except they do it much faster, and it can be reversed at will. Butterfly can become caterpillar again, or something similar but different."

"So let me guess," Steve interrupted. "That penguin that flopped into that woman's raft and dropped the message in a tube, that was one of your shape-shifter friends?"

"Had to be. Only way they could do it. Actually, there's a lot of them, and please remember again, their home world is an ice planet with huge oceans. They take an aquatic form to work the oceans. Stranded here, I guess they found it easy to assume the shape of emperor penguins. They are compact, powerful swimmers, and a perfect disguise. Apparently many of them use that form as sea workers to harvest what they need for the others, who retain their terrestrial form to work in their habitat under the ice. If a sea worker chooses, they can pupate back into a terrestrial form. It takes a short time, a couple of days, and a fair amount of energy. So they don't do it as a spur of the moment thing, but they can easily enough, when they want to."

"So, what's with all those penguins running around on the ice, and standing through the winter hatching eggs, and getting eaten by seals and orca, and feeding their chicks with regurgitated fish gruel?"

"That's our earth creatures. They were the model for an outside disguise. I don't know what form was used before men started arriving in sailing ships down there—the whalers and the explorers—but after humans intruded, the Masi'shen adopted the penguin form for any work outside their ship and habitat."

"So how come they don't get caught and eaten like the other ... no, not other, because they're not really penguins, are they? How come they, looking like penguins, don't get caught and eaten? There are some formidable predators looking to make a meal of them."

"Telepathy, you'd call it; maybe mind meld if you like the Star Trek approach, except no touchy-feely is involved. The Orca are incredibly intelligent, and the Masi'shen communicate with them. We've suspected that intelligent communication goes on among the cetaceans, the orca and whales, but we've never been able to do much more than some primitive interpretation. Turns out we've been chasing the wrong paradigm. Those squeaks and squeals are songs, alright, and it's useful for staying in touch, like you shouting hellooo! from across the meadow to another hiker. But their real communication is by mind energy, telepathy, a metaphysical link. Our cetaceans have it, and the Masi'shen, who evolved as sea people, have it.

"So it's like humans don't eat each other, and the Orca don't eat Masi'shen. As for the leopard seals, the lesser creatures, the Masi'shen can outswim them and defend themselves quite nicely. If a persistent seal doesn't get the message, an Orca will swoop in to set things straight!"

Another long silence passed while Steve absorbed and pondered. It all made sense, once his mind accepted the concepts. Humans are terrestrial beings; these Masi'shen are sea creatures who evolved to live in the sea, and then under the ice that was a huge part of their home world. Somehow they developed technology and science and made the leap into space. He lay back in the soft grass and stared up at the passing clouds, looking like so many sailing ships transiting a deep blue ocean of sky.

"So, what's with the angel thing then? Why does she ... this Dee'rah of yours, why does she take that angel form?"

"Pretty easy, really. It's not physical. It's her spirit projection. It's all energy and intelligence. It's her dream shape if you want to think of it like that. Really, we don't give dreams enough credit for what they really are. Ours are so confused and haphazard and random that we don't credit them as anything much more than our minds running loose and wild like school children during recess. But it's far more than that when one's mind is focused, when its latent abilities are exercised and developed.

"Let me give you an example. In some dreams you visit places and see people you've never experienced during your waking life. Or, you read of some place that fascinates you, and you may have a dream where you go there, see things, interact with people. Or you fly, or go into space, or do all sorts of things your physical body has not or cannot do. We pass it off as aberrations or subconscious stress relief. The way we do it, that's mostly true. But there are too many historical examples where it's been far more significant.

"People had dreams that foretold the future, that warned of some life or world-altering event. Others dreamed of a magnificent destiny for their child that came true. The father of a boy who grew to found a major world faith dreamed of his son's future. Others dream dire warnings. They ignore the warning and fulfill the terrible prediction. These things are too powerful to ignore, but we haven't really been able to grasp the reality of it; to understand it, to shape or use it."

"The Masi'shen—more advanced with an immense life energy and spiritual component as essential elements of their being—they use a form of dream projection to reach out beyond themselves, to see, to communicate, to travel and learn. Problem is, the distance is limited. They cannot go beyond our local galaxy, as an example. It's too limited for them to phone home for help."

Steve sat bolt upright and stared at Mike: "Too limited!? No farther than our galaxy!? Jeezus, man, I'd hate to see your definition of unlimited! They can assume a body ... an energy body, and go flitting around the galaxy for a Sunday drive? Do you have any idea how nuts that sounds?"

Mike stood, stretched his numb legs, feeling the ache and stiffness from his recently healed wounds. He took a few short steps back and forth, did a few simple leg stretches, arched his back and did a couple of easy body movements. As he felt his muscles warm and respond, and the blood flowing through his stiff leg again, he turned back to Steve.

"Hell yes, I know how nuts that sounds! Here's the even nuttier part. I went with her. Or should I say, she took me along with her. My body stayed behind, asleep and safely tucked in my sleeping bags. My essence, if you want to call it that, went with her. Imagine yourself in a really vivid dream. You float, move, touch, see and talk, hear and sense that you are altogether yourself, but you're not heavy and gravity-bound as you normally feel. So imagine yourself as a dream traveller and you'll get the idea. She and I went flying off to have a look-see in space, way out beyond our normal limits, but still within our galaxy. I think she took me somewhere near the outer limits, but how the hell should I know? I didn't have a road map with me.

"Here's the kicker. She also projected her vision of historical events. We went back two thousand years and she showed me, like I was there when it happened, what destroyed a big part of their ship and forced them to land here. They had no choice. It was pure chance and good fortune that earth was a suitable long-term refuge for them. They chose the south polar cap for a good reason. It's a solid continent, covered with deep ice, surrounded by the greatest expanse of ocean on our planet. For them, it was perfect. Habitat, seclusion, resources, and survival. Except we've become a threat. We humans are becoming too advanced with technology but we are too retarded spiritually.

"At best we humans, as a race, are savages. Some of us are better, some worse. Somehow, they've accepted that I'm different, a high spirit she calls me; Michael-mine she says. They don't kill. It's anathema to them. If we attacked them, the thought of them using deadly force in defense is unthinkable. It's a concept as foreign to them as eating our own children would be to us. She tells me that to their knowledge, we are alone in the known universe that way.

"They've encountered numerous other races, aliens, and without exception all of them are non-violent. Space-faring people must shun violence. Those who don't evolve beyond aggression and wars always perish before they get off their rock. They inevitably turn their technology against themselves. If they don't control their aggressions, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's like our nuclear weapons. If we don't advance spiritually enough to absolutely guarantee to ourselves that such terrible devices will be shunned and destroyed, then we'll certainly destroy ourselves. One day we'll go poof! No galaxy-hopping for us. We'd never give ourselves a chance."

"Okay, Mike, I get it. But you do realize that you're sounding like a raving pacifist, right?"

"Sure. Why not? What the hell is the alternative—mutually assured destruction? Is that our future? Our leaders walk around with their fingers on a trigger until some inevitable day a lunatic among them starts a chain reaction of total destruction? And that is supposed to be rational for God's sake? Get realistic for a minute. Forget the damned conventional thinking. One terrorist suitcase nuke gets exploded and takes out a city. You think it will stop there? Hell no! The nearby survivors, choking on the smoke and dying from radiation, will demand that somebody must be punished, and soon there's another smoking crater. Missiles fly. Neighbors strike back and our planet gets well and truly pooched! Steve, that's the future if we don't stop thinking that this insanity is rational!"

"No, Mike, it's not rational. To a madman, maybe, but we've accommodated ourselves to it and learned not to think about it too much. And it's sure as hell not a popular discussion on the political circuit or around the banquet table. We're ostriches, I admit, but we haven't got our heads stuck in the sand. We've got 'em well and truly up our own backsides. But it's nothing we can change at the moment. So, what's the deal now with Dee'rah and her people, the Masi'shen, you say. What now?"