Gray Hawk And A'in Ji Lii
Chapter 33
XXXIII
Four days had passed since Max and Michael had agreed to allow all 173 displaced Mesalikos to be brought onboard the Antarian mothership, the New Granolith, until their houses could be rebuilt or repaired. With Culpepper's demise unquestioned after what had happened… and Generals Hawkins and Hawthorn both officially AWOL, neither one having been seen for the last three days, it had been fairly easy for a newly appointed General David Strickland and two F/A-18 air squadrons from Texas and Alabama, led by Dan Klein and "Eagle One," to put an end to "Operation Seeing Red."
The name Culpepper had given to his bogus maneuvers had turned out to be oddly revealing. After Judge Lewis provided him with the clues that allowed him to figure out that the "aliens" were hiding on the reservation, Culpepper had indeed been "seeing red…" and he directed that anger at the Mesaliko Indians… "red skins." His goal was to punish the Mesalikos for helping the aliens to escape from him as much as it was to recapture… or kill… the aliens themselves. And unlike most people, Culpepper was not bothered by feelings of pity or remorse. In that, at least, he and Judge Lewis shared a common bond. But Judge Lewis was still recovering at Roswell General from wounds suffered in his ill-advised tangle with Amy.
General Hawkins and General Hawthorn, for their parts, had been complicit in Culpepper's activities by giving him the personnel and equipment he needed to attack the reservation and signing the official papers approving the bogus "maneuvers." Neither general really knew the extent to which Culpepper would go, but both knew that this fact would matter for little. Both of them had known that Culpepper's maneuvers were bogus… but they had wanted the aliens back as badly as Culpepper had. They had made excuses for Culpepper's actions as long as they could then had looked the other way when Culpepper had gone over the top. They were responsible, and there was no denying it. Still, no one was sure why the two had disappeared. Ultimately, they would have to face justice, likely a court martial, if they came back. But living in the land of the disappeared didn't seem much better. Either way, they would no longer have their positions, their salaries, or their power.
General Haggerty would probably escape any blame for the reservation fiasco. He had been in Washington, D.C. the whole time and had had no part in it, but he was almost certainly complicit in the earlier shootings that had put Liz in a coma and Max, Michael, Isabel, and Maria in a dank cell on the base. After all, it had been Haggerty who had made up the story about the agents in that shooting being vets who had been drinking earlier in the night and had suffered a mass battle flashback. And it was he who had said that the victims, other than Liz, were all dead. Explaining the fake bodies in the coffins now would be no picnic for General Haggerty, and other "sins" were likely to come out as a result. Given the media frenzy and voracious public appetite for every morsel of information that was tossed to them about what had gone on in Roswell or was going on there now, there seemed to be little doubt that any guilt… or lack of it… would almost surely come out.
Work on the reservation had already begun. Jumping right into his new job, Michael had actually lined up most of the contractors needed before the sun had even set or the dust had settled on the first day… literally. About a third of the Mesalikos had signed on as carpenters… rebuilding their houses and getting paid for it, too. For their part, the Mesalikos started work early each day, as soon as the sun began to rise, but they stopped work at three o'clock promptly, and most of them returned straight to the ship as soon as they were off. Max wondered about their desire to return early each day, but Michael seemed to have no problem with it, and work was proceeding at an unprecedented pace despite having started only two days before.
One of the Mesalikos who wasn't working as a carpenter was Gray Hawk. He had chosen to stay onboard… after carefully going over the plans for his new home, complete with a new pow wow room, with Michael. He knew Michael would see that it was done right. Besides, for all his strength and stamina, Gray Hawk was an old man. He relished the opportunity to relax and let someone else do the work for once.
It was almost dinnertime… five o'clock… now, and most of the Mesaliko workers had returned to the ship at least an hour before and were making their way to the dining room already. One thing they did not seem to lack was an appetite, and the Antarian food was definitely A-OK with them. Many of them had even asked for seeds to plant their own grelliat gardens and other Antarian vegetable patches. Max hadn't decided yet whether introducing Antarian vegetables to earth was a good idea or not. Exotic plants and animals often turned out to be more harmful than good in the end, and you couldn't get much more exotic than "alien." Still, most of the Antarian vegetables were controllable and didn't seem to pose a major exotics problem… Neither Max nor Varec had been able to come up with a good reason so far not to provide most of the seeds to the Mesalikos who had requested them, though neither had consulted the Department of Agriculture for their opinion either.
Wingman One, the pilot who had been brought onboard the New Granolith during the early part of the battle, and Edmonds and his men, who had been transported up later, had been turned over to the newly appointed General Strickland after spending two days onboard the mother ship. All of them had since returned to their duties. It was determined that they had only been following orders and had had no hostile intentions other than as applied to the performance of their duty. In fact, all of the men had been deeply impressed by the "aliens" and the ship, and several had made a genuine effort to strike up a friendship, some asking if they might return to visit the ship later or be given a tour. Max and Michael had readily agreed. The fact is, Max and Michael enjoyed showing off their ship as much as the pilots and troops enjoyed seeing it. The gardens and arboretum… and many of the other features of the New Granolith… were still the source of a great deal of pride and awe to Max and to all those onboard almost as much as to those who were seeing them for the first time.
Max and Liz… both couples… walked into the dining room together and found most everyone else already there. The younger Liz from earth had been doing a lot of walking lately, but Jeff and Nancy still smiled and became misty-eyed every time she walked into the room on Max's arm looking for all the world like she had never been paralyzed at all. In a very short few days, Liz had learned to control her "shape-shifting" so well that no one at all would have guessed what had once happened to her. Correcting for the damage by shape-shifting was becoming so normal to her that it happened almost automatically whenever she woke up now. She did it without thinking about it… just as anyone else would roll over to the side of the bed and stand up in the morning without giving it a second thought.
Max pulled out Liz's chair, and Liz smiled and sat down gracefully, conscious of the fact that most eyes at the table were watching her in awe. Her previous handicap was still so fresh in everyone's minds that it seemed that the only one who had totally adjusted to the new Liz so far was Liz herself. Liz looked around the table and smiled.
Alex grinned and nodded back, and Nancy reached over to squeeze her daughter's hand.
Meals were becoming a major affair these days. Because of the large number of Mesalikos onboard, each meal had to be done in several shifts, so the dining room was open pretty much all day. At this shift, on this day, the Antarians and their doubles were all present. Max from Antar sat at one end of the table with Liz on his right and Michael and Maria on his left. Max from earth and the younger Liz sat at the other end of the table with Michael and Maria from earth beside them. It provided an eerie balance. Either way one looked, Max and Liz were there, and beside them were Michael and Maria. It took some getting used to. Gray Hawk and Angie Lee sat next to the younger Max and Liz from earth; and on this occasion, Tess and Rayylar sat next to Gray Hawk and Angie Lee, offsetting the "balance" just a bit. Alex and Isabel from Antar sat at the Antarian end, and their earth doubles sat at the other end with their friends. In the middle, arranged along both sides of the table, were Dan Klein and Diane Casey, Varec, both Jim Valenti's, Amy, Kyle, Jeff and Nancy Parker, Phillip and Diane Evans, Charles and Gloria Whitman, thirty-two Mesalikos, and several visitors… among them, General David Strickland, Edmonds, two F-14 pilots, and one of Edmonds' men. Coincidentally, it was the one who had asked the droid which way he had gone after he had been transported onto the ship.
The droid appeared and went around the table, quickly taking everyone's order, then disappeared into the galley after leaving a drink and a small pashita loaf at each place to serve as an appetizer. Edmonds shook his head in awe and looked at General Strickland. Strickland smiled.
"Better get used to it, Edmonds. Our world's never gonna be the same again."
Dan Klein picked up his glass in a toast. "Here's to change!"
The others all smiled and raised their glasses in agreement.
"I heard there were some reporters onboard yesterday," Dan added after taking a swallow of his drink.
Max nodded and set his glass down. "Yeah. Diane brought Jeff and Glenna back onboard… and a couple of her other co-workers. They filmed a video tour of the ship. It aired last night. It was good!"
"Now every other reporter in the world seems to want to come onboard, too," Michael said. "…We've been deluged with requests from at least thirty countries!"
"You gonna let 'em come?" Dan asked.
Max shrugged. "We're considering the logistics. Maybe we might let some of them come… one or two at a time. Right now it's too soon, though. There's too much going on. We already knew Diane… She's like one of us already."
Diane smiled, and Dan looked at her and grinned… "I guess your boss is happy."
Diane nodded. "I'll never be called Kitty Kashizzle ever again. It's 'The Evening News with Diane Casey' now… and he gets me my coffee."
Everyone at the table laughed.
When the laughter had settled down, Angie turned to Gray Hawk… "Grandpa, Tell me about my past."
Angie Lee already knew what Gray Hawk's response would be. It was always the same…
"You were my gift, A'in Ji Lii. You came from Heaven. It is not necessary to know more. Earth is our mother; sky is our father. We only need to know that to be happy."
Angie Lee had heard it a thousand times before, and she expected to hear it again. She had the answer memorized already. She could repeat it with him word for word… but Gray Hawk put his pashita loaf down and looked into Angie Lee's eyes. Then he smiled. It was something of a mixture of a sad smile and a happy one. Angie Lee's heart began to race. Gray Hawk was going to say something… and it would not be his usual pat answer. Angie Lee knew him well. She could see it in his eyes… and written in the lines on his face. Angie Lee put her bread down and took a quick sip of her drink then looked at Gray Hawk.
Gray Hawk held up his hand… his palm aimed toward Angie Lee… and instinctively, Angie Lee placed her palm against his.
"Do you feel it?" Gray Hawk asked softly.
Angie Lee shook her head but then began to nod. "I don't… I don't know. Yes… I feel something."
Gray Hawk lowered his hand.
"In 1947, I was a young man… only twenty-three years old. There was a lot less out there on those hills in 1947 than there is today. I hunted in those hills then… almost every day… and one day, when I was hunting, something fell out of the sky. It was much like this… machine… that we are in now… only not so large… much smaller. I saw the light fall from the sky, and I ran to see what it was. When I got there, though, there was nothing to see. I was confused and thought that the ancestors were playing a strange joke on me. I looked everywhere, but after a long time of looking, I went back home.
The next day, I went back and looked again, but still there was nothing to see. I sat down on a rock to think, and I heard something… in my head. It wasn't a sound like you or I would make to make someone hear us… it was more of a… a thought. But I heard it. I turned around and looked again, but there was no one there… only the hills… only the grass… only the trees… and the wind…
But there was something… The wind seemed to be blowing on me from two directions… It was blowing on my face from the left… and from the right… but not from straight ahead. It was like a void was there where the wind dared not to blow… Instead, it went around the void and blew on my face from both sides. I walked toward the windless void in front of me, and I walked right into something that I could not see. I touched it with my hands. I ran my hands along it for many paces in both directions. I followed it to the other side. It was something big… something that could not be seen. I was… scared… but I was more curious. So I stayed. I sat on the rock again and asked the ancestors why they were taunting me. Were they taking my mind away from me when I was so young… or trying to teach me something that I needed to know. Sometimes they will do that.
Then I heard the thought again. It wasn't in words… I don't think there were words at all… It was more like… a feeling. I stood up and followed where it led me… It seemed to be leading me toward one place, and I bent down and stepped forward. I expected to hit my head on the windless void again, but this time I did not. I stepped inside something that my eyes could not see from the outside. And from inside, I could not see outside. The thing that I was in was a machine… made out of iron… but not like the iron we make knives from or any other iron I have ever seen… not then and not since then. It was different. It was… solid… but like liquid. It would bend, but it always returned to what it had been before. I followed the lights inside the strange machine-void to several other rooms, and in one of them, there were several strange, glowing sacks. Near the sacks, there was a man. He was lying on the floor, and his eyes were open, but he seemed to be dying. He was different. When his eyes closed, a black eyelid closed over them and made his eyes look very large… and black. But then he opened them again and he looked like us… except somewhat paler… and thinner… and his fingers were relatively slender."
Gray Hawk looked at Rayylar and Varec. Their fingers were also more slender than might be expected. It wasn't a very pronounced difference. In fact, none of the others had ever noticed. But Gray Hawk did. Of course, he knew now that the man he had seen in 1947 was indeed like Rayylar and Varec, but he had not seen anyone else like them before.
"In my mind, I felt a thought… no, a compulsion… to help, but I didn't know how. Something seemed to be leading me to the glowing sacks… and to one of them in particular. I looked… and then I saw… what I saw…"
There was a total silence at the table until Angie Lee broke it…
"What, Grandpa? What did you see?"
"A tiny hand. It pressed against the side of the sack… from the inside… with its palm and five little fingers open. At first, I wanted to run away… I was shocked. But instead I reached down and placed my hand against the tiny hand inside the sack… and that's when it happened."
"What, Grandpa," Angie Lee asked quietly.
"A feeling washed over me… like nothing I had ever felt before… very powerful. It touched my heart and ran through my whole body. I knew who you were. I knew YOU. I knew the dangers you had faced… And at the same time, the other voice in my head was telling me that you would face danger again… from others… here. When I took my hand away, I felt like… I know it sounds strange, but… like a bond was broken… a special bond, like the cord a mother shares with her baby… I felt like if I let you go you would drift away in some strange, unseen river and be lost forever. We had been one for a moment… and now I might lose you again… forever. And at the same time, I was you… the child… and I felt myself drifting away… away from a mother or father… I felt both of our emotions, A'in Ji Lii… yours… and mine… mixed together… inseparable."
Angie Lee placed her hands over her face and choked back the tears that brimmed up in her eyes…
"I made you love me, then. It was all just some alien thing. It wasn't what your heart really felt… It was just an alien trick… meant to guarantee my survival… to make you think you loved me so you would protect me."
Gray Hawk shook his head. "No
A'in Ji Lii. That is not true! The voice… the feeling… inside my head took me
to another sack in the room after that one… I placed my hand against the hand
in that sack, too…"
"Who was it," Angie Lee asked.
"It was you, A'in Ji Lii."
Gray Hawk could see that Angie Lee was surprised by this… and confused.
"The voice in my head was trying to protect YOU, A'in Ji Lii… but there were more than one of you. I didn't understand it then, but I knew that some of the other sacks in that room were you, too. When I touched the hand in the second sack, though, it made me jump. It seemed to grab me. I mean… it didn't actually grab me… but it felt like it did. It was a feeling like it wanted to… like it would protect itself at any cost. It gave me a sense of danger… fear for my life… I felt like I needed to escape. But when I touched your hand… I felt only love wash through me. Love… and loss."
"Did you touch any of the other sacks… with me in them," Angie Lee asked.
Gray Hawk shook his head. "No. The voice in my head said that you were the right one. It seemed to know it… and I seemed to know it. You did touch my heart, A'in Ji Lii. But it was not a trick. It was you. I felt love… like a father or…"
"A grandfather?"
Gray Hawk smiled and nodded. "A grandfather, yes. Like a father, I think, at the time… but you were not ready to come out into this strange new world yet. When you finally were, it was many years later, and I was a grandfather."
Angie Lee smiled and kissed Gray Hawk's weathered face.
"You've been both a father and a grandfather to me, Grandpa. I love you."
Gray Hawk nodded and hugged Angie Lee to himself.
"Did you take me with you, Grandpa?"
Gray Hawk nodded. "I looked at the man on the floor. He seemed satisfied. I think it was his thoughts that I kept hearing. He seemed to be telling me to get you away from there… and I knew somehow that there were other sacks that had already been taken away somewhere and protected… with other babies in them… not you. He was supposed to protect you. You were his responsibility. I wrapped the sack in a cloth and took it with me. But when I stepped outside, I noticed that there were two other men like him standing outside the ship. They hadn't been there before.
For a moment, we all just looked at each other… then I started to go, but one of the men stopped me and put his hand on my chest. The moment he did that, I heard the voice in my head shout… very loudly… 'Don't!' It wasn't in words… It was a… a thought… but I understood it.
The man stood there for several moments with his hand pressed against my chest, and I could hear thoughts and emotions flying back and forth between him and someone else… too fast… too many… for me to understand… between the one holding his hand against my chest and the one inside the ship, I think. Finally, he lowered his hand… but he seemed angry about it… as though he was not getting his way.
The voice in my head seemed to plead with him to rescue another sack. He looked at me for a moment, then he went inside the ship and returned with the other one that I had touched…"
"The one that made you afraid, Grandpa?"
Gray Hawk nodded. "The man gave me a final look… a sort of angry, cold, sullen look… then he walked away carrying the other sack. Then the man who had been with him went into the ship and brought out another one of the sacks. That's when I noticed that there were two more of these strange men lying on the ground outside the ship. I hadn't seen them before. They may have been dead already. When I started to check on them, though, the voice in my head said very loudly to go… I could come back later… but to protect you first. I was never able to get back again, though. The Army came that same day, and it was impossible to return. I never knew what happened to them. But I knew this… Their only thoughts were to protect you… and the ones they had saved already."
"Even the angry one, Grandpa?"
"Yes. I think he would have preferred to kill me first and then save the sacks… but your safety was the most important thing to him. I never knew if that was his choice or… something else. But in the end, it makes no difference really, little yellow coyote. He let me take you, because it was the only way that they could save as many of the sacks as they could… and the dying man inside the ship commanded it."
"What… what did you do with me… with the sack… Grandpa?"
"I took it to my house. I kept it there… in a special room."
"Since 1947…?"
Gray Hawk nodded. "Forty-six years. It was forty-six years before you finally decided to come out."
Angie Lee looked stunned. "You took care of me all that time… for nothing in return?"
Gray Hawk smiled. "It wasn't so hard, A'in Ji Lii. You didn't eat or need a bottle… I didn't even ever have to change your diapers…"
Angie Lee blushed.
"All I ever did was come in your room several times a day and press my hand to yours. You always knew when I was there, A'in Ji Lii. Your little hand and fingers would press against the inside of the sack as soon as I came in the room… like a child asking to be picked up. So in a way, I held you… by pressing my hand to yours. It made you happy. It made… me happy."
"Grandpa… you said that you knew who I was… that you knew me… and the dangers I had been through… the first time you touched my hand. You must have got that from me. Why don't I remember it myself?"
"I don't know why you do not remember, A'in Ji Lii. The information is there… in you… because I felt it the first time I touched you. Maybe it disappeared and… you just forgot. You were only a… a…"
"A sack?"
"No, A'in Ji Lii… More than that… Much more."
"Who am I, Grandpa? Where am I from?"
Gray Hawk looked at Max and Michael then at Varec and Rayylar…
"A planet known as Antar… their planet. You were its queen… and his wife… until your enemies killed you."
tbc
Coming up: Max and Liz, with Tess' help, have a lot of explaining to do to Angie Lee and Gray Hawk, and Jim Valenti shows up at a Roswell town council meeting with Amy and takes on the city "leaders" for going along with Judge Lewis when the judge arrested Liz and Alex on trumped up drug charges and sent them off to an asylum miles away from their families and friends, putting their lives in danger.