* * *
Beyond the gate of the Black Swan ranch, our bus rambled along a bumpy gravel road that took us through the wild landscape of Northern New Mexico, awesome granite and sandstone rock formations providing a backdrop for the surreal terrain. About half a mile in, red rock formations cropped up out of nowhere.
“Funny how this place reminds me of Sedona,” said Leela.
“Yeah, the red rocks plus there is some kind of powerful energy here,” said Jill, awestruck.
Big Mama’s disembodied voice went on in a continuous loop: “I am the great Mother Goddess of Creation. Surrender to the Goddess now….” Echoing off the rocks, the voice, a near-baritone that sounded like it was run through synthesizers, was ominous.
Our bus rolled on, driverless, deeper and deeper into Black Swan territory. It was creepy. My two psi lovers shared my feelings of vulnerability and dread as we rolled toward a showdown with…what?
The bus stopped, “Here we are!” announced Nebula Jones as he led us off the bus. “Don’t forget our chant. We need it to create and maintain our force field.”
“I can’t chant some bullshit words without knowing what they mean,” said Hacker. “What is this about, anyway, this chant?”
“It’s not the words, sir, it’s the vibration and the energy field created by the sounds of the words,” patiently explained the alien. “These sounds are described in the ancient texts of India. This is the Shiva chant, Shiva, the creator and the destroyer! Please join us in this, Mr. Hack. If only one of us does not give it one hundred percent, our force field could collapse, allowing Big Mama’s weapons, whatever they are, to penetrate our shield. This could have disastrous consequences.”
I did a quick scan of Hacker’s mind, and what I read was alarming. He was thinking seriously of sabotaging our mission. His mind was full of doubt and scorn. He didn’t believe we could pull this off.
Leela and Jill were into his mind too. Duly noted, they thought in unison. It’s Nebula Jones’ party, flashed Leela. All we can do is watch how he handles it.
“Let us practice our chant,” said the alien. “All together now: Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya.” He sounded it out, syllable by syllable. Slowly our little group got the rhythm and the pronunciation. We sounded pretty good. Even Hacker got into the flow.
We were outside the bus, standing behind a little knoll that the alien had selected as a sort of bunker. About a hundred yards in front of us was the main building of the Black Swan Ranch, a pueblo-style structure made of logs and bricks. And there she was, standing in the middle of the porch, arms folded, like a camp leader ready to greet the new arrivals: Big Mama Lakshmi.
“I can hold off her attacks for thirty or forty seconds,” said Nebula Jones, “maybe a minute. Then we must have our force field in place.”
She looked huge from a distance, at least three hundred pounds. She wore a golden robe, just as I had last seen her image in holo form at Benny Bravo’s home in Sedona. Her puffy face displayed a frightening expression of power and destructive rage. Her arms were outstretched, fingers extended, pointing at our little enclave. The eerie soundtrack continued, “I am the great Mother Goddess of Creation. Surrender to the Goddess now….”
Nebula moved swiftly, arranging his little battalion on the hard, rocky soil as we prepared for the great battle: The three Dakinis in front, standing side by side with one hand on their amulets, their arms tightly linked at the elbow. In the next row, the psi trio, Leela, Jill, and I, standing shoulder to shoulder, each clutching a crystal from the Dakini amulets in our left hand. Nebula Jones had asked us to hold the crystals in order to stabilize the Dakinis, who were in a deep trance.
Behind us, the weak links, Hacker and Greta, holding hands. And behind everyone, the entity we called Nebula Jones had suddenly taken on a new shape: the Egyptian god Horus. In his new form he was huge, more than seven feet tall and rippling with muscles, naked to the waist and wearing black tights. His head was that of a bird of prey, a falcon, perhaps. I fought to suppress a wave of laughter when I first saw the alien’s new incarnation. Jill whacked me with a hip and I regained control of myself.
Meanwhile, Nebula Jones, who didn’t bother to explain his new persona, had already started the chant. “Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya.” We all joined in, feebly and tentatively at first. I looked up at Big Mama on the porch of the ranch house; she seemed frozen in space as her extended fingers continued to point at us, looking like weapons. Maybe our alien friend really was holding her in place.
“Louder!” beseeched Nebula Jones. “Louder, please! And faster!” Om Namah Shivaya. Louder. Faster. We were all screaming it now, at the top of our lungs. Finally the force field began to form. I could feel it as a kind of crackling energy that smelled like burning plastic. It was invisible and transparent, but when I extended my arm it ran squarely into an immovable force, a kind of psychic wall.
“That’s it, that’s it!” yelled Nebula Jones. Suddenly the air was filled with pale blue bolts of electricity from Big Mama’s direction. Each bolt hissed wildly as it came our way, then bounced harmlessly off our force field. It was working! “Keep chanting, people, keep chanting!” urged the alien.
We continued with renewed energy. “Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya….” Dancing in place, jumping up and down with the energy, celebrating our rejection of Big Mama’s deadly weapons. And then I heard a foreign sound, like foreign words, inappropriate words, not in the rhythm and definitely not in the flow.
“Shiva ram, Shiva om, kiss my ass and let’s go home.” It was Hacker, my dear old friend, who was shouting out his own message, trying to sabotage our mission. His shouts nearly drowned out our chanting.
“Mr. Hack, what are you doing?” screamed the alien. “What on earth are you doing that for? You could weaken our force field! Please continue with our chant!”
Hacker ignored him and continued his own personal chant, even louder. “Shiva ram, Shiva om, kiss my ass and let’s go home.”
I heard a sharp cracking sound, like glass breaking or hard wood splintering. Suddenly our force field became visible, took on a rectangular shape and a pale, silvery greenish-blue color, shimmering; call it electric blue. There was a blinding flash, and something hit me hard in the middle of my forehead. My Third Eye. I crumpled to the ground, dizzy and disoriented.
“Marty, Marty, what happened?” cried Leela and Jill in unison. “Are you all right? Are you wounded, or….” Each of them grabbed me by the arm and helped me to my feet.
“Don’t stop chanting! Don’t stop chanting!” cried Nebula Jones, then he amped up the volume of his own chant. “If you stop, Big Mama’s energy bolts will continue to penetrate our force field and kill you all! Keep chanting, everyone!”
Somehow I managed to continue the chant, but something was very wrong in my head. Something was missing. Oh shit. Oh no. My psychic powers were gone. The light had gone out.
“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Powers!” said Nebula Jones/Horus. He knew what had happened, obviously by tuning into my panicky thought process. “I will fix you when we have taken out Big Mama! Meanwhile, everyone keep on chanting!” He grabbed Hacker by the shoulders, spun him around, and got into his face with that big falcon head.
“Mr. Hack, if you continue to sabotage this mission, I shall have to neutralize you. Do you understand? Now, turn around and continue chanting. Please!” Hacker meekly obeyed. You don’t mess with the god Horus.
The chanting continued. The force field held. Nebula Jones made a sudden announcement: “The time has come, ladies and gentlemen. Time to confront Big Mama and strip her of her powers. Keep chanting. I will now move the Dakinis into position in front of our force field and ready them for the attack.”
Which he did, quickly and efficiently, then shielded them with his huge physical form. Big Mama launched her en
ergy bolts at this vulnerable little group, but the alien easily deflected them. “Now, ladies, now,” he shouted to the Dakinis. “Put your amulets together, let them touch, and aim the lot at Big Mama. Put your heads close together. That’s right. Don’t be shy.”
They were still in a trance, which was fortunate. If they had been awake, they would have been bickering and probably smacking each other. Instead, they meekly obeyed. I watched through the force field, which was again transparent and invisible, intact, holding. When the three amulets came into contact they seemed to lock together, as if magnetized. A soft golden light emitted from the Dakinis and began to spread outward.
“No!” shouted the besieged Big Mama Lakshmi. “No, no, no! Stop! Stop! Listen to me, Dakinis, listen to your goddess!”
Her deadly beams of energy had stopped. She raised her arms skyward. Suddenly a bright red beam of light shot out from the fused amulets, directly toward Big Mama’s heart. She staggered backward. The red beam then swept over her body, from her head to her chest and to her ample belly. Nebula Jones must have been guiding it.
The chanting had stopped and our force field had dissolved, irrelevant. Our team watched the unfolding drama, breathless and speechless.
The red beam paused at Big Mama’s loins, then swept down to her feet, and back over her entire body again. A very strange cry came from her lips, a moan, a keening, a sound of dying, a sound of total exhalation, of total exhaustion. She began to collapse, although collapse is not the right word. It looked like she was imploding, like her life force was draining away. She appeared to be melting as she slowly crumpled to the ground.
“The Wicked Witch of the West,” murmured Greta.
But Big Mama Lakshmi didn’t exactly melt. She lay on the porch floor on her side, twitching and jerking as if having a seizure. We moved in closer. She was foaming at the mouth. Her eyes were wide and wild. She continued to thrash and twitch like an android coming to a bad end. Then she lay still, on her back, her huge belly still heaving, her golden robe riding up her treetrunk thighs, her eyes wide open.
Something was emerging from her bloated body: It looked like a small white cloud. “It’s an orb,” whispered Leela. “The orb is leaving her body. Her powers are gone. Finished.”
“That’s right,” agreed Nebula Jones. “My colleague, Cosmo Kincaid, has finally escaped the prison of that woman’s body. Now we can resume our program to save the galaxy. But first, observe.” We watched transfixed as the orb gradually morphed into a white dove, spread its wings, and flew in circles above our little group. The Dove of Peace? Or were the aliens simply in bird mode, now, what with the falcon-like head adopted by Nebula Jones?
Greta suddenly shrieked, “Look, on the porch, behind Big Mama! I’ve seen that man before. In Switzerland!”
A tall, gaunt man in leather pants, vest, fancy boots, and cowboy hat, had been watching this spectacle from a doorway. My psi powers were gone, so I had no idea who it was. I suddenly felt helpless, ordinary, clueless.
“It’s Wolfgang What’s-His-Face, the head man of Black Swan Galactic,” shouted Jill. “There’s a chopper behind this building waiting to take him away. To the launch pad, you know, to their orbiting space station.”
“Right,” said Leela. “Big Mama was supposed to create a distraction so he could slip away unnoticed. Guess it didn’t work out, eh?”
The man slipped through the door and disappeared into the house. The helicopter engines fired into life. “There he goes!” cried Jill. “I’m gonna stop that asshole!” And she jumped onto the porch, lithe and athletic as hell, and disappeared through the door into the ranch house.
“Jill! No!” cried Leela. “Stop! Don’t go there! We’ll get him later!”
“Don’t bother,” said Nebula Jones. “I already know what’s going to happen. We have to let these events play out without interference.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Leela, who could see what was happening inside the house through Jill’s eyes. And feel what Jill was feeling as well. “Those horny bastards in there are holding her down and someone’s coming with…oh, no, the chloroform! He’s putting the chloroform rag over her…oh shit, she’s out already. Marty! Marty, where the hell are you?”
Leela was freaking out, her body language unfamiliar and kinda scary. Her hands were twitching crazily as her bewildered mind tried to make sense out of what was happening. She seemed disoriented. I rushed to her side, but with my psi abilities shut down, the best I could do was hold her trembling body close to mine.
“They’re carrying her out to the helicopter now, Marty,” she whispered hoarsely in my ear. “Why would she do something as nutty as this?” She turned to Nebula Jones. “Mr. Jones! Nebula Jones! Please do something to stop this! You have the power to make things happen. Stop them, please,” she pleaded.
“I can see what is happening, Ms. Powers. Your friend Jill is already on the helicopter, a prisoner. Let her go.”
“Let her go!” cried Leela. “How can you just let her go? These people are crazy!”
The Black Swan helicopter was in the air and already headed south. To the waiting rocket and its launching pad. My heart sank.
32 Jill in Space
Soon we were in hot pursuit, heading south in a helicopter that had been commandeered by Nebula’s colleague, Cosmo Kincaid, recent occupant of the body-mind of Big Mama Lakshmi and the source of her power. Nebula explained that the liberated Cosmo had flown to nearby Los Alamos in his white dove form, assumed the shape and attitude of an Army colonel, hypnotized a few security people, and “borrowed” a helicopter from the Air Force installation in Atomic City.
The chopper must have ranked among the fastest and most technically advanced on the planet. But the mood inside it was grim, to say the least, an emotional disaster. Leela couldn’t stop crying; Hacker held his head in his hands, obviously wracked with guilt; Greta wavered between paranoid hysteria and paroxysms of laughter, her short-term memory completely wiped out. And I, feeling clueless and retarded without my psi powers and expanded consciousness, stared mutely into space.
Nebula Jones was calm and contained as he piloted the chopper over the brown New Mexico landscape at high speed. Cosmo Kincaid, now returned to his white dove persona, perched nonchalantly on Nebula’s right shoulder and seemed to be napping. Jill, the other member of our little team, was of course missing, having committed a totally un-Jill-like rash act by going after the head of Black Swan Galactic and getting herself captured, chloroformed, and spirited away in a Black Swan helicopter.
We had left Big Mama Lakshmi behind, still writhing, twitching, and foaming at the mouth, stripped of her awesome powers. We also left the three Dakinis at the ranch, still in a light trance, ordered by Nebula Jones to keep an eye on their former goddess in case she tried to escape. To insure that none of the fifty or so Black Swan personnel still at the ranch couldn’t flee, the alien set up a force field around the perimeter of the property.
Leela had somehow managed, through wracking sobs, to send an encrypted message to the State Department regarding the situation at the ranch, and to suggest that they send a contingent of FBI agents to the scene to arrest everyone still on the property, including one overweight ex-goddess. Leela also managed to transmit the wireless ten-digit code that would allow the Feds to disable the force field and bust the bad guys.
As our chopper hurtled across the open sky, I finally summoned the energy to speak up. “What is going on here, Mr. Jones?” I demanded. Admittedly, it was a little weird talking to an alien with a falcon’s head. “Why is everyone on this chopper, except you and your fucking bird, that is, an emotional basket case?” I was resting both hands on Leela’s shoulders, trying to calm her down and get her centered. I had never seen her like this. She sat in the seat in front of me in the six-passenger helicopter, softly sobbing and mumbling something about Jill.
“It??
?s basically simple, Mr. Powers. When your friend Hacker broke our chanting pattern and triggered a small rift in our defensive force field, some of Big Mama’s energy bolts penetrated our shield. You knew that immediately because you were knocked to the ground and your psychic abilities were compromised; the light shining on your pineal gland was snuffed out by the blow to your head from an energy bolt.
“All of the humans behind the shield were affected, and all of you sustained a form of brain damage. The effect on Mrs. Powers and the others was more subtle, and took some time to manifest. I believe the damage occurred in their limbic system, that part of the brain usually associated with human control of emotion and behavior. Some of you are displaying the symptoms of damage to the limbic system, such as inappropriate crying or laughing, rage, fear, anxiety and depression. The damage to your own brain occurred in a different area, more toward the center of the organ.”
“Just lucky, I guess,” I said.
The alien was silent. The white dove spread and fluttered its wings, turned its head around to look me in the eye, then settled down.
“So can we be fixed? Or are we all stuck in this condition forever? After all, it was you who got us into this mess. Can you do something to help us?”
“As I said, Mr. Powers, it was your friend Hacker whose misbehavior caused your present condition. And, to be perfectly frank, it was the misbehavior of the people of Earth—all of you, collectively—which caused your planet to be in its unsustainable condition. Yes, I can probably fix you and your companions. Unfortunately, I cannot fix your troubled planet. The damage is irreversible. Now, please close your eyes and be silent.”
In seconds I felt his large, cool hand on my forehead, then his powerful fingers massaging my Third Eye. I breathed deeply as the familiar feeling of expanded consciousness returned. Slowly, slowly, I was filled with pure energy and light. The babble of others’ thought forms returned, like a whispering waterfall, and it was an untidy chaos: my poor wife, confused and distraught; Hacker, racked with self-condemnation; and Greta, a hysterical mess talking to herself in tongues.
Nebula Jones visited the others one by one, putting both his powerful hands on the crown chakra of each person for a minute or two after quieting them down. The chopper was apparently on automatic pilot; the white dove had taken up a position on a small shelf above the pilots’ seats.
When he was finished, we all fell silent. There was nothing to discuss.
“I’m sorry I can’t help your friend Jill remotely,” said the alien minutes later. “I am sure the damage to her brain caused her to commit uncharacteristically rash acts. Perhaps I can help her when we reach our destination.”
“And that would be…” probed Leela, tentatively. She had returned quickly to her “real” self, quick, sassy, and self-assured.
“The Black Swan spaceport at the White Sands Missile Range,” said the alien. “America’s largest military installation, thousands of square miles, desolate, mostly desert, most of its facilities now taken over by Black Swan operatives.
“The takeover was easy. Most of the US. military is now on the streets of your cities, trying to maintain order. Those military types who remained at White Sands were easily bribed or persuaded to leave by threat and intimidation. We are well on our way to the Black Swan launch site now.”