Being of the Field

  Almost as soon as his first muscle tensed for movement, the tortured females within the apparition hissed at him in protest and he could not ignore them. He perceived their presence with his psychic senses which he could not turn off at will, having not yet mastered that art. Lucian now grabbed hold of the crown and it felt as if a thousand burning needles stuck into his hand to prevent him keeping hold. He clutched tighter as his hand went numb with the pain and managed to cast the offending item across the room before gripping his burning hand.

  As soon as the crown was removed from the queen’s head she burst into tears.

  Lucian prepared to be seized by the Valoureans he felt closing in from behind. Taking a quick look around, he noticed the spirit beings had conveniently vanished.

  ‘Leave them!’ the queen commanded. ‘Leave us.’ She struggled to regain her composure as her guards left the room. Her eyes turned to Ringbalin, whose hand she still held in her own. ‘I do understand how you feel,’ she said, her emotions beginning to overwhelm her once more. ‘I had forgotten I had ever been hurt, or that I ever felt anything at all.’

  Her eyes turned to Lucian, who bowed his head, ready to be reprimanded.

  ‘What compelled you to remove my crown?’ the queen asked directly and Lucian was unsure how to respond.

  Tell her the truth. He heard the voice of his spirit self inside his mind and drew a deep breath to follow the advice.

  ‘I am a medium, majesty.’ Lucian felt a little uncomfortable, not used to describing himself in this way. ‘A spirit advised me that the crown was impeding your majesty’s will.’

  ‘It has been anathema to me,’ she advised. ‘You are a medium, you say?’ She rose to her feet to challenge this. ‘Taren Lennox informed me that you had no Powers.’

  Lucian explained to the queen the side effect of Oceane’s atmosphere, and of the plant they had which was still generating the virgin atmosphere in a bio-containment lab on board AMIE.

  ‘You became a leper to your kind for the sake of a woman?’ The queen could hardly believe a male in his right mind would do such a thing. The move was social suicide outside of Phemoria.

  ‘I believe Taren is in grave danger,’ he confessed.

  The queen observed Lucian, her stern expression melting away. ‘It seems I have several reasons to thank you.’ She looked at the crown on the floor with apprehension and relief. ‘I have been unable to remove that crown since the day the Phemoray placed it on my head. Ironic that a man should remove it when I have been discouraged from meeting with any male. Fifty years I have had those demons in my head directing my thoughts, my decisions—’ She gulped in a deep breath then gave a great sigh of relief. ‘All the hatred, pain and torment,’ she paused to search her being, ‘has gone!’ But then the queen began to think back over her reign: the lies she’d told, the deceptions she’d woven, and then moaned in alarm. ‘Anselm saved our daughter from that sad fate. Oh, dear mother,’ she cried, grasping her chest as her heart pained her, ‘I nearly sacrificed our daughter to the Phemoray’s will, too.’

  ‘So it is true,’ Lucian said sadly. ‘Taren is Princess of Phemoria.’

  ‘Yes,’ the queen conceded, ‘but, fortunately, that fact is not well known.’

  ‘It is more widely known than you think,’ Lucian told her. ‘Where is Taren now?’

  ‘Your pilot came for her,’ she explained. ‘The Phemoray seem to think that Anselm has her. I know he will not harm her, as he’s spent his entire life protecting her from me,’ she confessed with great regret.

  ‘Do you know if Khalid Mansur is with them?’ Lucian asked, and the queen’s eyes sparked with anger.

  ‘From all reports, he is on Sermetica,’ she said warily, ‘but with that dark cloud you never can tell.’

  ‘The ghost of a lover he betrayed told me that Khalid Mansur has psychic power,’ Lucian conveyed, ‘and is building an army of psychics. He hopes to control Taren and use her as a means of blackmailing Anselm and your majesty into stepping down from your positions.’

  The queen did not find it hard to believe the man’s ambitions.

  ‘Agent Portus also claimed that he is the lover of your viceroy, Jalila Lamus.’ Lucian was not a revengeful kind of man, but he truly enjoyed ratting on the viceroy.

  ‘I knew she was treacherous!’ The queen quietly seethed for a moment and then smiled, as for the first time in her reign she felt in control of her own mind. She was now one step ahead of the game and she was astounded that she had two men to thank for that.

  For days, Taren and Zeven had been confined to quarters together. She had told him of AMIE’s disappearance and he was as eager as she to get in a space vehicle and go look for them.

  ‘If I could just get this damn thing off my ankle, I wouldn’t need to steal a spacecraft,’ he complained for the umpteenth time. ‘I miss my girls.’ Sadness replaced frustration and he went quiet again.

  ‘Why can’t I use this precognition of mine at will?’ Taren complained. She felt completely useless, but knew she needed to lift their spirits…they could not create anything positive from the defeated state they were wallowing in. ‘You know, I think I once achieved a tiny feat of PK.’ She left her place by the large window and came to sit beside Zeven on the lounge.

  ‘Really?’ he replied, mildly interested.

  ‘Yep, I’m pretty sure I made the clock on my bedside jump. A little bit,’ she emphasised.

  Zeven gave a slight smile.

  ‘It was magnetised…which would have increased the difficulty factor.’

  It suddenly dawned on Zeven why Taren was telling him this. ‘You can snap this thing off my ankle?’

  Taren held up both hands in defence. ‘I didn’t say that…but I can try.’

  And try Taren did, over and over, with no success.

  ‘Well,’ she concluded, ‘that was good for a bit of a laugh.’ Not that Taren had done much laughing. Zeven was fairly amused, however.

  ‘I thought you were going to burst a vein with concentration, for a minute there,’ he chuckled, and Taren hit him.

  ‘Be constructive, can’t you?’ she appealed. The Queen of Phemoria had told her that she was destined to be a great psychic, so why could Zeven do this better than she could?

  ‘Okay, let’s start with the obvious. Are you imagining the device dropping off my ankle?’

  ‘I taught you the importance of visualisation,’ Taren reminded him, ‘so, yes, I am.’

  Zeven sat up to take another look at the device. Observing a band of light that indicated the restraint was operating, he asked, ‘Maybe it only opens once it’s switched off. Have you envisaged—’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Taren awarded, looking at the restraining band. The second she imagined how the device would look when defunct, it switched off and clicked open.

  ‘All right!’ Zeven could hardly believe it, but was startled when the door unexpectedly opened. He quickly dropped his leg to the ground and kicked the device under the lounge.

  It was Anselm who entered and he appeared bemused. ‘Something odd has happened.’

  ‘What is it?’ Taren rose to meet him to draw attention away from Zeven.

  ‘Your mother has contacted me via my private channel to inform me that she knows we’re in the Phemorian system and that I have you on board.’

  ‘Has she threatened to attack?’ Taren asked.

  ‘Quite the contrary,’ he frowned. This was the confusing part. ‘She has withdrawn an order to detain this craft at the inter-system gateway and has requested a meeting before we touch down in Heavensgate.’

  Sermetica’s capital, Heavensgate, was so named because it was quite literally a city in the clouds. The surface of Sermetica was too hot for a comfortable lifestyle, so most Sermetic cities were built on giant platforms that hovered in the troposphere where the conditions were cooler.

  Each city in Heavensgate was actually a huge craft, powered on solar energy that was collected through the specially designed windows of every high
-rise building and intricately domed complex that comprised the platform cities. Such cities were originally designed as moveable mining rigs, but, following the revolution on Phemoria, the same basic design had been used on a larger scale to create the floating cities of Sermetica. These floating cities could move to different destinations upon the planet, but were too huge and open to move through space.

  Taren had only ever seen pictures of Sermetica and was excited at the prospect of seeing the giant floating cities first-hand. ‘Did you agree?’

  Anselm felt the answer was obvious. ‘Better that than cause an interplanetary incident that rehashes the ancient war.’

  ‘I thought Qusay-Sabah Clarona never met with men?’ Taren realised how puzzling the queen’s behaviour was!

  ‘Not since the last time she saw me, so I’m told,’ Anselm confirmed.

  ‘So when is this auspicious event to take place?’ Taren asked, playing up the drama, clearly more excited about the prospect of her parents meeting than Anselm was.

  ‘This afternoon, on the other side of the inter-system gateway.’

  Taren noticed Anselm seemed nervous, when he was usually so calm and collected. ‘Do you think the Phemoray will accompany her?’

  ‘Always,’ he said spitefully. ‘That is the curse of being a Phemorian queen.’

  ‘Did you know her before she was associated with them?’ Taren asked, curious as to the queen’s prior character.

  ‘Briefly,’ he replied, his voice lacking the usual resentment. ‘She was very much like you are now…smart, ambitious, beautiful, charming—’

  ‘I want to be there,’ Taren decided, ‘at the meeting.’

  ‘No,’ Anselm insisted. ‘I have no defence against the Phemoray. No one has—’

  ‘I do,’ Taren argued and Anselm gave her a startled and questioning stare. ‘I have a benevolent spirit watching over me—’

  Her father scoffed. ‘Personal guardians are a fiction of children’s bedtime stories.’

  ‘Actually, they are our spiritually evolved selves,’ she stated. ‘Mine has saved me from the Phemoray once already. Zeven arrived after my astral form had been moved to safety.’

  Anselm looked at Zeven, who stared blankly back at him and shrugged. ‘Give me my memory back and I’ll be happy to tell you what I knew,’ he said.

  ‘Trust me,’ Taren implored Anselm, ‘there are higher forces at work here.’

  Anselm took a deep breath, disposed to believe her. ‘We’ll be passing through the gateway very soon. I’ll return to fetch you to the meeting before the queen comes aboard.’

  ‘I’d greatly appreciate that,’ Taren replied. She was done with allowing others to decide her destiny.

  As soon as Anselm had departed, Zeven ducked under the lounge to retrieve and pocket the restraining device and then got to his feet. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Go where?’ Taren wondered.

  He gawked at her. ‘To find AMIE. Remember that?’

  Taren looked to the door through which Anselm had just exited. ‘I really do want to be at that meeting.’

  ‘Why? Please don’t tell me you care about that snake or your insane mother!’ Zeven was still annoyed about his missing memories.

  Taren looked at the pilot, imploring him to understand. ‘In fact, I do trust Anselm. There’s something deep within me that knows him. As for my mother…my higher self told me that my parents had loved each other. Perhaps if they meet again, after all this time, they’ll be reminded.’

  ‘But they’ve both done things—’

  ‘We’ve all done things,’ Taren rebuked him. ‘Hell, we made a whole planet disappear!’

  ‘That wasn’t our fault—’

  ‘Yes, it was. If we had never taken that sample, none of this could, or would, have happened. Our fault!’ Taren said firmly, pointing emphatically to Zeven and herself. ‘And it’s up to us to put it right.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Zeven posed in all seriousness. ‘I mean, I’ve heard some visions of grandeur in my time but that one beats all.’

  ‘When I was a mere mortal I expected to move mountains,’ Taren enlightened him, ‘but now I am a super-being I expect to move planets, cross galaxies, shift universes! We have to think outside the box. You cannot measure what we are capable of by what has been achieved by others before us. There have been none like us before, and if there were, they never united.’

  ‘Yeah, they did, and drove the entire male population of Phemoria off the planet!’ Zeven reminded her. ‘That’s why the rest of the civilised galaxy fears psychics.’

  ‘That rift can be mended, I know it,’ Taren said. ‘I know the source of the disease now…although I’m not quite sure how to heal it. Getting Anselm and Qusay-Sabah Clarona on speaking terms would be a good start, don’t you think?’

  Zeven stood back a moment, for it had really only just hit him. ‘You’re actually starting to sound like a princess. In a good way,’ he added, so she would not mistake his meaning. ‘All the issues you’re passionate about are fricking huge undertakings…ultimately, all I’m worried about is whether I have a job to go back to and if I’ll get laid tonight.’

  Taren frowned and smiled. She knew he was deeper than he cared to admit. ‘Well, I’m worried about those issues, too.’ She considered how much time she had to spare…‘I guess we could go check on AMIE and be back before the meeting starts.’

  ‘Good call.’ Zeven approached and took hold of her hands. ‘You ready?’

  Taren nodded, and Zeven closed his eyes to focus.

  As it seemed to be taking a while, Taren became concerned. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Damn it!’ Zeven let her hands go. ‘It’s not working.’

  ‘Maybe your field has yet to stabilise,’ Taren suggested.

  ‘What if they did something to me and it’s gone?’ Zeven stressed.

  ‘But I thought you wanted it gone?’ Taren queried, not understanding his distress.

  ‘I know I did,’ Zeven whined.

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Taren reminded him again.

  ‘But I dig it now,’ he appealed, as if Taren had some say in the outcome. ‘My whole life I’ve loved to move with speed and for a while I didn’t need a vehicle to do it!’

  Taren was pleased that he’d finally embraced change. ‘I’m sure you just need to allow your electromagnetic field to come back into balance. Why would they have bothered restraining you at all?’

  ‘You’re right.’ Zeven stopped panicking and sat down to begin trying to move things with his mind.

  CHAPTER 25

  TRYST

  When her communicator sounded, Jalila knew who the caller was. The timing was not convenient, as she was currently with a number of Valoureans in the royal vault of the queen’s craft, where they had been asked to place the crown of Phemoria.

  ‘Leave me,’ the viceroy demanded, ushering the guards out so she could answer the call, but one of the Valoureans remained obstinate. ‘Her majesty specified that no one was to be left alone—’

  ‘She did not mean me, you idiot. Now go, before I tell the queen that you have a crush on one of her new prisoners,’ Jalila threatened, and as the viceroy could have her discharged in a heartbeat, the Valourean turned and followed the others.

  Jalila answered the call. ‘I’m alone,’ she advised, and hung up, swinging the vault door closed.

  Khalid was with her in an instant. ‘Why has the queen withdrawn the arrest order? How am I going to disgrace Anselm without a charge against him?’

  ‘I don’t know what changed her mind. She’s been very secretive and is acting out of character.’

  ‘Does she suspect something?’ he quizzed. ‘We really don’t need her to wake from her self-absorbed coma right now.’

  ‘If she did suspect, I would have been arrested by now,’ Jalila reasoned, ‘and she certainly would not have given me the job of escorting her crown to the vault.’

  Khalid looked around, only just noting where they were situate
d. ‘The crown of Phemoria is here.’ Khalid smiled with delight, as Jalila directed him to a large silver-white metal case, tightly locked, with an electronic touch pad.

  ‘The case is made of osmium and the lock is DNA-activated,’ Jalila explained.

  ‘How nice,’ he said, wriggling his fingers with anticipation.

  ‘You’re not going to open it!’ Jalila was mortified at the thought. ‘It is said to be cursed to all bar the true Queen of Phemoria.’

  ‘And one day soon, my lovely, that will be you,’ he stated and Jalila smiled in anticipation.

  ‘We’ll just keep it in safe keeping until then, shall we?’ He placed a hand upon the case containing the royal treasure.

  ‘You cannot take it,’ Jalila objected. ‘I am alone in here. If they discover it missing, I’ll be the prime suspect!’

  Khalid held up a hand and manifested a case that looked identical to the one he was intent on stealing. He swapped them over immediately. ‘That ought to confuse them for a bit. I intend to uphold the arrest order,’ he told her. Jalila went to object, but Khalid placed a finger to her lips to stop her speaking. ‘Hopefully, the little princess will get lost in the confusion.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jalila said, enlightened.

  ‘Just make sure they arrive at Heavensgate and I shall take care of the rest.’

  ‘But…’ Jalila began to query how he expected her to ensure such a thing, but he vanished, along with the case containing the crown of Phemoria.

  Several hours passed before Zeven finally got a glass to fall over and smash in response to his will. ‘All right!’ he cheered as it shattered all over the marble floor.

  ‘Starman,’ Taren complained. ‘I’m barefoot?’

  ‘Uh…oh, sorry.’ He looked back at the scene of his offence; the shattered pieces of glass gathered together and appeared to jump onto the table. ‘I guess we’re good to go.’ He rose and reached for her, but Taren backed up.

  It had been quite some time since they had passed through the inter-system gateway and she figured her parents’ meeting must be imminent. ‘I can’t go. Nobody gets to choose their family and the universe knows no one in their right mind would pick my parents, but I’ve spent too long wishing I had family to walk away now that I’ve found mine.’