Chapter 27: Save the Children

Marie appeared to Dee'rah in her dream: "Sister, please come. Ask your mother if she will come, as well. We have children who need us!"

Dee'rah woke, slipped quietly from their bed and left the room. Many moments later she returned and turned on a small lamp that barely forced back the darkness. She placed her hand on Michael's shoulder and stroked over to his neck, onto his cheek, touched his lips, and ran two fingers softly along his forehead. His eyes opened. He looked to her with a puzzled expression.

"We must get up and get dressed, Michael. The children need us."

Lyn'na-ra nuzzled her lips against Jon'a-ren's cheek, tracing gentle kisses up and over his forehead, down the other side of his face, across his chin and up onto his lips. His eyes opened, and he reached and pulled her up onto his chest, so her eyes were looking directly down into his.

He smiled up into her face: "You want something?" he asked.

"Yes. Please, we must get up and get dressed. Michael and Dee'rah will join us downstairs. The children need us."

Berl'ahan piloted the Embassy shuttle that carried the Ambassador, his wife, and Michael and Dee'rah to Penticton where they met Steve Barringer and his wife Marie Wapato.

"We have children in six locations, including one nine-year-old girl here in Penticton," Steve briefed them. The others are listed as follows: a six-year-old boy in Edmonton, Alberta; an eleven-year-old boy in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; a seven-year-old girl in Winnipeg, Manitoba; a ten-year-old girl in Toronto, and a five-year-old boy in Ottowa, both in Ontario. We need to confirm our permissions, arrange landing and pickup agreements, and get our flights underway," Steve briefed the group.

We need to provide a suitable care center for them. Marie has worked with the local Canadian officials to gain approval for a large older home we've located very near to this healing center. Fortunately this neighborhood is well located for schools and shops. Has our proposed child fostering center been reviewed and approved by the Provincial authorities, yet?" Steve asked.

"Yes, I received a verbal go-head just moments ago," Marie replied. "They'll transmit the formal approvals to our office later today."

"Excellent! Ambassador, I used my own initiative to contact our liaison in the Prime Minister's office, informing them of our proposal to gather and care for the stranded children. I assured him that your official request would be forth-coming. I also extended our solemn promise to share with their security people any information we're able to glean from the children when they're comfortable with us and are able to tell us where they came from, and what family they may have left behind."

"Very good. I'll slip away for a moment and call the Minister to confirm our request," Jon'a-ren said. "Is there anything further?"

"Yes," Michael and Berl'ahan said at the same time. Both smiled, and Michael motioned for Berl'ahan to continue.

"Sir, we need to arrange pickup points, landing permissions, and escorts. We have five to arrange, in five widely scattered locations. We'll need to arrange shuttle flights, pilots, and someone to tend the children enroute..."

"You arrange the pickup locations and the landing permissions. We will arrange the flights, the pilots, and the personnel," Lyn'na-ra interrupted. She smiled to Dee'rah who nodded her head in agreement.

Michael stared hard at mother and daughter for a moment, suspecting some unknown development. He glanced knowingly at Jon'a-ren, who nodded back. Berl'ahan stood looking quite confused. A lot of unspoken communication was passing back and forth in front of him.

"Very well, ladies. We trust you have some preferences in this matter. Would you at least share your plans for the shuttle flights so Berl'ahan can keep it sorted out?"

"Of course!" Lyn'na-ra said. "You cannot possibly think that we'll devote less than our very best resources to these children, do you? Actually, gentlemen, my daughter and I are somewhat ... astonished, that the obvious has not yet occurred to any of you!"

Michael snorted; Jon'a-ren muttered; Berl'ahan groaned.

"Husband, dear, hadn't you better use your time by confirming the appointments to gather up the children, and transmit that information to Shuttle Three, now enroute under Command of First Pilot Tib Tibbets, and Second Pilot Chuck Briggs? They are now enroute to pick up Julie and JoAnne, who will be minding and comforting the children as they gather them up to bring them here! Please, husband, time is slipping away... !"

Dee'rah confirmed her mother's suggestion by giving Michael a very pointed look, nodding her head, and moving closer to her mother.

"Really! Men! They're so slow to see the obvious, sometimes!" Lyn'na-ra said as she and Dee'rah set off to inspect that everything had been arranged properly in the new children's residence.

"Oh!" Jon'a-ren exclaimed as the cell phone he was holding unnoticed in his hand buzzed and chimed. He nearly fumbled and sent it flying across the room before he got a firm grip. He sent a baleful look towards Michael, his expression seeming to say, 'see what happens when we let the women run things?'

Michael laughed softly, and shook his head.

"Accept it, father-mine. They're right. We're clueless!" he laughed.

Berl'ahan, suffering the terminal ignorance of bachelorhood, groaned to himself. He quietly slipped away to arrange van transport for the new arrivals that would be coming in a matter of hours.

Safely away from the women, and reassured that Tib and Chuck and their wives were enroute and making the pickups as they flew across Canada, Jon'a-ren, Michael, and Steve were questioning Pietor and Bob about the circumstances of the children who'd been smuggled in as potential victims of the US plot to discredit the healing centers.

"First thing I'd like hear is a briefing on how you two were able to so effectively uncover those husband-wife teams? From the video, they looked like any other middle-class parents. How did you score six for six, almost from the moment they sat down for their med screening?"

Pietor laughed, and Bob joined him with a big, all-knowing smile.

"You forget, once again, that you are clueless men!" Pietor snorted. "It was quite simple, once we realized the correct psychology for the families involved."

Steve snorted. "Alright, I'll bite! This 'clueless male' wants the answer. Spill it!"

"Think! You are familiar with lie-detector technology, correct? The changes in heart-beat, breathing, perspiration, eye movements, nervous gestures, and all that?

"Yes, of course you are ... but the secret, my friends, lies in knowing what questions to ask. What elements are most common to parents who face the probable death of their child, and the miracle of hope, of new life for their child? It is obvious, no? Simple questions to real parents would evoke very strong emotional responses, no?" Pietor explained.

"No such emotions are present in false parents when they are asked the same questions. And ... ahh, their Achilles heel ... when they are asked certain questions about their life together with the child, concerning those special moments, their proud achievements, and those terrible moments of diagnosis and fear! All those events are literally burned into the memories of the real parents. These emotional responses would be most telling by their absence in the false parents.

"Gentlemen, we had the benefit of extremely sensitive sensors and recording equipment in the interview room, even built into the structure of the chairs in which they sat. But more to our benefit, we had the powerful emotions of love: the love of parents for their child, and their fear of losing that child.

"It became quite obvious. After the first half dozen or so probing questions mixed with routine medical history questions, we had them! The false parents were revealed like a grotesque masquerade. I'll wager a year's earnings that no false parents will ever be able to slip a child past our screens, so long as we maintain this protocol." Pietor sat back and smiled.

Jon'a-ren, Michael, and Steve exchanged looks. 'Yes, damned obvious, ' Michael thought to himself, 'once a brilliant mind has been inspired to recognize the elements of human psychology!'

"Pietor, I speak for all of us. That is brilliant! You and Steve and the staff of the healing centers have saved six children from brutal murder, and you have saved countless others by safeguarding these healing centers. Thank you!"

Pietor mumbled something, turned to Steve and shrugged his shoulders, and slumped back into his chair.

"I think he meant to say, 'Awww, shucks ... it was nothin'!' Steve laughed.

Michael and Jon'a-ren smiled and nodded knowingly at their embarrassed friend. They realized that all of them had grown closer together as a team with an important mission.

"Steve, I'd suggest that the two of you write this screening process up, and include copies of the question sheets. Make sure that it get to our friends in the provincial government, and their federal counterparts in Ottowa. I'll say again, this is purely brilliant. We'll have to trust Jon'a-ren's judgment concerning the sensor technology. Perhaps such sensors are available in the human inventory. Anyway, we'll leave it to their 'geek squad' to figure it out," Michael said.

"Our immediate problem, a really ugly, hairy problem, is to learn where those six kids came from. How did those vicious bastards get their hands on six critically-ill children? Did they kidnap them, stealing them away from their parents? Did they leave behind brothers and sisters? Did they snatch them from their hospital or hospice beds? Did they kill their parents? Were these children orphans who were doomed to die alone, unwanted?

"There's too damned many heart-breaking questions with no apparent answers. It breaks my heart to even think of asking those questions of any of these children, after all they've been through," Michael lamented.

"Thank all the benevolent spirits of the universe," Jon'a-ren said in a whisper.

"Thank them?" Michael asked, staring in disbelief.

"Yes, thank those merciful spirits that we have a host of loving women to succor and comfort the children. The children will flourish with their new health, they will forget the horror of their abduction, and they will welcome the love that is offered them. And soon, my son, my friends, the children will speak.