A Guardian From Earth: Rediscovery, #2

By Dan Melson

The stons were dead, but that left Grace alone to try to learn to control her new abilities.   When a solution presents itself, she begins learning just how far there is to go on the new journey she started.  A new family, a new home, and learning to adapt to a completely different environment. 

 

But for greater challenges, she also discovers there are greater rewards - and the universe always has a greater challenge in store.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Melson
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781386678755

Dan Melson

Dan Melson is married to the World's Only Perfect Woman.  They have two daughters in training for world domination.  They live in Southern California

Book preview

Chapter One

Family

Of course, Mama heard me crying.  She’d be summoned as if by cosmic reflex by any of her children crying.  The back light came on, M’IJA! she exclaimed joyfully, hugging me in her bathrobe, her golden cocker Candy dancing around her heels.  It was all I could do to not allow her to touch Aurora accidentally.  Don’t do that to me!  They told me you were dead!  I kept trying your cell phone, but you didn’t have it with you!  Papi’s old black lab Riley started doing his wiggle dance for me.  I reached over to pet him, briefly, before I got up.

There was never a doubt I would tell Mama and Papi the truth.  Mama, it’s a long story, and it’s going to be hard to believe.  Right now, I need some rest.  It’s been two days since I really slept, and a lot has happened.  When I wake up, I promise I’ll tell you everything.  Papi was following her out, the happiest man on the planet at this moment.  Of course, m’ija.  You can have your old room.  Let me take that. He started to take the sweatshirt wrapping Aurora.  I hugged him with one arm, as carefully as I had Mama.

I dodged his grab, went into the house, through the family room, and started up the stairs to my old room.  Riley followed me.  Uh, Papi, not a good idea.  Let me hold onto it; I understand how to handle it safely.  It is dangerous if you don’t know how.  Just make sure to keep visitors and young ones out of the room while I sleep.  Never knew when family might drop by.

M’ija, are you in some kind of trouble?  Do you need a lawyer?  As I said, they’ll never stop thinking of me as their baby.

I don’t think so Papi.  I haven’t done anything wrong.  I will tell you the whole story when I wake up, but I am too tired and strung out now to deal with the questions you will have.  If things are the way I think, it’s mostly good things I’ll be telling you.  Realizing that ScOsh’s allies might arrive any time, If someone comes looking for me or a man named Osh or ScOsh, they need to talk to me.  Let them in, please, and come get me.  They will help me tell you what’s happened.  If there were any stons left on Earth, my parents couldn’t protect me and trying would only get them hurt.  But if ScOsh’s allies arrived, I didn’t want them leaving without the full story and I still wanted to go if I could.

You were crying, m’ija.  Are you hurt?  Mama and Papi had followed me up the stairs, plainly wanting to hear more. I opened the door to my old room – it was a guest bedroom now, and paused in the doorway. 

I was still crying, but they weren’t going to mention that.  Really Papi, I’m fine.  A very good man died doing something important and I liked him a lot, but physically I’m fine.  I will tell you the whole story when I wake up.  I really need some time, okay?  I was pleading for special dispensation from the head of the family.

I didn’t ask for favors much, so he decided to grant it.  Okay, m’ija.  Just let us know if there’s anything we can do.

Just give me some time, for now.  I probably need to cry some more, then I need some sleep, and maybe more crying later, but I’ll tell you what happened, I promise.  And with that, I closed the door.  I dropped Aurora on the floor of the closet along with my other stuff, and closed the closet door.  I pulled the nightstand over to block the door, just to keep my nieces and nephews from accidentally doing something fatal if they came around before I could wake up, curled up on the bed, and quietly cried myself to sleep.

When I woke, the light was late afternoon.  I checked the clock – almost four.  I guessed I’d been out almost twelve hours.  As strung out as I’d been, I wasn’t surprised.  I was pretty certain ScOsh had gone the last two days plus of his life without sleep, but I didn’t know the trick to doing that yet.

I had to do something almost as scary as fighting the basileus – tell Papi the truth, and convince him it was the truth.  Did I mention he’s a high school math teacher with forty years of experience?  He’s heard it all, many times before, and Occam’s Razor is something he was so used to applying I’d learned it by osmosis so early I couldn’t remember.  Mama was pretty sharp, too, but she’d believe me if Papi did.  I had to carefully consider what hard evidence I had.

Item: one Mindsword, no longer alive.  I could maybe buy a live mouse at the pet store to demonstrate its killer cancellation effect, or use it to cut something.  In fact, the brand new sweatshirt it was wrapped in was halfway shredded already, despite how careful I’d been.  Not exactly impressive evidence, and dangerous to handle as well.  It might be good supporting evidence, but Aurora by itself would never convince Papi.  Not unless I was so irresponsible as to let someone touch it, which wasn’t going to happen.  ScOsh, wherever his soul had gone, would never forgive me.

Item: one small hand blaster.  I checked it and the charge level was back to orange.  I remembered that ScOsh had told me to dial it up, so I dialed it back down, and the meter cycled through colors back to blue.  According to what ScOsh had told me, it should have recharged itself completely in about eight hours, so I figured the power per shot was about comparable to the original setting.  I considered turning it off for safety, then decided against.  ScOsh had been pretty certain he’d gotten all the stons, but he hadn’t even tried for whatever minions they might have, and I had no way of knowing how many demons were wandering loose around Earth, and I had no way of knowing either group hadn’t been given information that would lead to my parents.  I left it on, and put it back in my bag.  Not only self-defense, but good hard evidence as well.  Earth had nothing like it.

Item: about thirty thousand dollars in cash.  ScOsh had destroyed the rest.  Also, what appeared to be a numbered Swiss account with a balance of just shy of six million Swiss francs, as well as various other financial instruments that I might or might not be able to access somehow.  Not evidence; too many less outlandish and more morally questionable ways of acquiring it.  It would be useful to the extent I could tap into it, which would have to be done carefully, but it wouldn’t do anything to convince Papi.

Item: one logbook that ScOsh had handed me with Aurora.  Problem was, it didn’t look like anything more than a small case of some indeterminate material.  No display, no readouts I could access.  Not impressive.  It might be a miracle device for all I knew, but for all I could demonstrate to Papi, it might as well be a paperweight.

Item: one pocket.  I unfolded it.  Jackpot!  I could actually see into it, and there was not only ScOsh’s other sword, which could be handled a lot more safely than Aurora even if it was less unearthly, there were side pockets of a more mundane nature inside holding other stuff.  Some if it was mundane Earth stuff (including more cash), other items were nothing I could identify.  Nothing I was going to fool with, but what looked like the gun he’d used on the gangbangers and another similarly styled device, probably a different gun.  I didn’t know how to handle them, but they weren’t Earth made, that was for certain.  Half a dozen items like nothing I could identify.  I didn’t know for certain they were Imperial, but it seemed likely.  I wasn’t going to handle any of it more than was necessary, and I certainly wasn’t going to fool with trying to use them, but the pocket by itself was probably going to convince Papi.  Imagine your kitchen trash can.  Now imagine all that you could see was the mouth of the trash can, with no apparent trash container attached, but that still held whatever you had put into it.  The mouth was a cloth-like material about the size of a scarf or bandanna on one side with a ‘lip’ around the edges, but you could reach into the other and pull stuff out, or put it into for storage, without apparent care for what the pocket was resting on.  A three dimensional space, carried around like a two dimensional piece of cloth, and with only the apparent mass of the cloth.  Kind of like the hole that the Roadrunner was able to pick up and move like a physical object, whenever doing so would frustrate Wile E. Coyote.  I thought about putting Aurora inside the pocket, and decided ScOsh hadn’t done it despite obvious opportunity, so that might not be a good idea somehow.  Still, while the hand blaster might conceivably be not be too far beyond Earth’s technology, and I knew even less about the other pieces of hardware I had been given custody of, this was demonstrably so far beyond anything Earth could do that Occam’s Razor would tell Papi that the least complex explanation was that I was telling the truth – at least as well as I knew it.

Finally, item: Graciela Juarez, newly operant but without much practice and only the most basic level of training.  I decided against telling them anything I didn’t have to about the changes I’d been through.  I’d last been home on Sunday, so it had been less than a week.  They had to know that I’d been through a change of some sort because of the difference in my appearance, but I wasn’t going to tell them their baby girl was now a bruja.  Papi was only one generation removed from Mexican farmworkers who might as well have been medieval peasants.  Abuelo had been a wonderful warmhearted man who got his two sons through college through incredible hard work and saving, and educated his three daughters at least through high school, but some of the superstitions I remember him having when I was a little girl were more than enough to persuade me to keep my mouth shut.  Abuela, who’d only died a couple years ago, had been sweet and cheerful and happy, tough as nails beneath, and even more superstitious.  Mama’s family wasn’t that much different.  No, Graciela Juarez was not going to say one word about the marvelous things she might be able to do someday.

I heard some scratching on the door.  It was Riley.  An older, smallish lab, I’d still been living here when Papi brought him home from a trip to the grocery store.  I let him in and sat down on the floor to get some cuddle time in.  He wasn’t permitted on the furniture, and he knew it.  He didn’t even try to change that when Mama got Candy, her golden cocker spaniel, and proceeded to spoil her rotten after I moved out.  Candy was allowed on the furniture, given too many treats, and otherwise completely indulged.  Riley was too good a dog or too set in his ways to try and follow suit.  To Candy, I was competition for Mama’s attention.  To Riley, I was part of his pack, a stray puppy that came back home sometimes, to be welcomed firmly.  To me, Riley was a welcome companion.  I have him a big hug, and he positively glowed with the attention.  It had been too long since I got down on the floor with him, and he melted with the attention.  I reached out to him to see what I could learn with my new senses, and was surprised by the realization that he was a lot more aware than people thought.  It wasn’t a verbal and sight oriented intelligence like people; it was a social and smell oriented one.  Papi was his god, but Mama and I were objects of veneration as well.  He was sad that he wasn’t allowed to get away with any of the things Candy did.  He thought he must have somehow offended the people, his gods, but grateful he was allowed to linger in our presence.  Still, it upset him that Candy was rewarded with attention where he wasn’t.  I reached out with my new senses, not needing to speak to tell him what a good boy he was, and I’d never be able to explain Candy’s privileged status to him.  He would never understand why Candy got away with it, but I was able to communicate that he was the one who was special to me, and to Papi.  Despite being close to ten years old, he was wriggling with joy after a couple moments, and for the first time in years, asking for a belly rub.  I gave him a good one.  The whole encounter was good therapy for both of us.

M’ija? it was Mama at the door, Candy dancing around her heels, You awake?  At home, we switched back and forth between Spanish and English, sometimes in the same sentence.  Mama and Papi grew up in an era when Mexican kids were punished for speaking Spanish in school, even to other children at recess.  Now the schools in my area taught classes in other subjects in Spanish.  Still, the two of them understood the way the world worked, and made certain to teach us English so we could get ahead, even though they preferred Spanish.

Yes, Mama.  She came in and sat on the bed while I sat there on the floor with Riley.  Candy, of course, jumped up to be with Mama.  Riley felt a pang of jealousy, and I reassured him.  Candy was simply a self-absorbed, self-entitled little personality.  I didn’t feel the empathy for her I did for Riley, but I could tell that humanity’s relationship with dogs would need some re-working if and when Earth humans ever got to have a critical mass of operants.

It’s almost four.  Your papa should be home from school any minute.  Are you in trouble of some kind?

No, Mama, not that I’m aware of.

This man you were talking about who died?  Was he your boyfriend?  Did he hurt you?  Are you pregnant?  The machine-gun Mama questions, fired off so rapidly you couldn’t answer them as they came out, put together by nearly fifty years of experience raising four girls and gossiping with friends about the troubles their daughters were having.

No, Mama, he didn’t hurt me, he wasn’t my boyfriend but I wanted him to be, and no, I’m not pregnant.  Was that a whiff of frustration and disappointment I felt from her?  All of my sisters were married with kids before they were twenty-eight.  It suddenly came to me she would have been happy if I was pregnant, even unwed.  Mama, I’m sure I’ll find the right man when it’s time.  I promise I’ll keep my eyes peeled, and I don’t want to get pregnant until I am married, okay?

I just want to see you happy, m’ija.  And I really understood for the first time that being married to Papi and mother to the five of us and grandmother to my nieces and nephews was what made her happy, and why she was always after me on the subject.  She wanted me to have what made her happy.  Is there anything you want talk about before your papa gets home?

What I have to tell you is long and complex and it’s going to be hard enough to tell it once.  I’d rather wait until Papi gets home.  I thought about telling her of my decision to go to the Empire, if the offer was still open, and stopped before I opened my mouth.  One, there was no need to get her upset when she didn’t know what it was about and might think it was one of those sexual slavery things like in Taken.  Two, I didn’t know when ScOsh’s allies would arrive, or even that they would arrive, let alone whether the offer would still be open.  Better to plan to put my life back in order as well as I could until such time as the opportunity presented itself.  Worst case, thirty or forty thousand dollars cash would let me finish my degree quickly.  I’d work a little, maybe get a waitress job again just for cover so the government didn’t wonder how I was living, and I thought it pretty likely I’d be able to get ahold of the Swiss account.  Mama, do you know what’s going on with my car and my apartment?

No, I don’t.  They didn’t bother asking me to come see if it was you they found, they just told us it was.  I’ll get the officer’s card.

Mama, it’s four PM Friday.  I call right now, nothing is going to happen until Monday except they come bother me right now instead of Monday.  Just because it’s not my body doesn’t mean they didn’t find one.  I definitely wanted ScOsh’s program of what happened up in Oregon to complete before getting the police stirred up here in Riverside.  The less that was unexplained, at least in the minds of the investigators, the fewer questions they would ask.  Besides, I was going to have to think hard to come up with an explanation for the bogus body ScOsh had created, and the Lord only knew what they’d come up with on forensics.  I decided not to borrow any trouble, until I knew what questions they’d ask.  Maybe a lawyer was a good idea.  Better idea, call them about it Monday, and see what develops.  If they came and arrested me, it would be natural to demand a lawyer.  If they asked me to come in for questioning, I’d bring a lawyer.  But there had been cops looking through my apartment before the attack – they knew I hadn’t been hiding anyone.  If they just let me take my life back, no reason to get their suspicions up.  Maybe I’d go visit the live-in manager tomorrow or Sunday, and I still had my keys.  There was also Call me George Martinez to still worry about.  I wasn’t certain what a lifehook was, and so I had no idea what a coroner would show as cause of death.  I figured I’d just call the police to tell them My parents told me you said I was dead.  I’m not, and see what happened from there.

The dog perked up.  Papi was parking the car.  I gave Riley a one last scritch beneath the chin, and stood up.  Time to face the music.  I put the pocket in my bag, next to my hand blaster.  Aurora I left wrapped in the closet behind two closed doors.  It was the best I could do at the moment.  I’d have to figure out how to better protect against someone accidentally touching it pretty quick.  The first idea that occurred to me was a coating of some sort, if I could figure out how to get it done without killing the person doing the work.  Mama, make sure the dogs are out and close the door?  There’s one item in the closet that will deliver a deadly shock to anyone that touches it.  I know you don’t want it in your home but I couldn’t leave it lying around for someone who doesn’t know better.  I’ll figure out how to deal with it but giving it to the police will start worse problems than it solves.

M’ija, what have you gotten into?

I’m about to explain that, Mama.  Do you have an empty tin can in your recycling? 

I think so m’ija.  I used a can of tomato sauce a couple nights ago.  You want it for something?

A demonstration.  I want to start out by showing you and Papi evidence of what I’m going to tell you.  I want you to understand early that this is not something like anything you’re familiar with.  If I can get past that hump early, this will go a lot easier.

I’ll get it. 

Meanwhile Papi was coming in the front door, Riley doing his happy wiggle, but tonight Papi had eyes only for me.  M’ija!  I was starting to worry it might be the hallucinations of an old man, but you’re still here!  I hugged him, hard, Yes, I’m still here Papi.  What I’m going to have to show you and tell you will be a lot easier if I can start with a demonstration, and have you examine a couple things with your own eyes.  First, I asked Mama to get me a used tin can, and here she is.  I took the sauce can from her, went out only the spaced tile walkway behind the house, set it down, then thought better of it, picked it back up and handed it him.  Take a good look at it.  Decide for yourself whether it’s a completely normal can with no abnormalities, or if you think it’s in some way unusual, say so.  And I can wait a couple minutes for you to say hi to Riley, too.  Probably a good idea if he and Candy are in the house when we do this.

Looks normal to me, hija.  I’ll go put the dogs in the house.  It was a couple minutes later when he came out again, carefully closing the back door so the dogs wouldn’t get out.  Set the can down on one of the tiles, Papi.  Take a good look at where you set it down before you do.  They were all identical, square masonry tiles he’d set down roughly eighteen inches apart in a line back to the patio near the back fence just after we’d bought the place.  They were weathered, but solid.  Ok, but I don’t understand.

You will in a moment Papi.  I took the hand blaster out of my bag, made sure it was on and aimed it at the can.  Actually, I didn’t know what the hand blaster would do to a can, but I was pretty certain it would do something.  You don’t blow a hole clean through someone’s head with less power than it takes to shoot tin cans.

Actually, my first shot missed the can completely.  Fw-crack!  It blew a hole in the tile the can was on and cracked it from front to back, into two pieces.  He and mama both jumped in alarm.  M’ija, what did you do that for? Papi demanded, I knew I should have taught you to handle a gun.  This isn’t the place!

Papi, look carefully.  This isn’t a gun.  It doesn’t shoot bullets.  Stand back.  Then I carefully squeezed off another shot.  Fw-clink-crack!  I hadn’t dead centered it, but there was now a hole in the can, and it had moved just a little.  The poor tile it sat on was now hopelessly shattered.  I held the studs in back, watching the indicator go black.  The blaster is now safe.  Examine the can if you will.

Papi knelt down.  The first thing he did surprised me.  He looked at the tile underneath the can, then the dirt underneath the tile.  He felt around in the dirt, which had formed narrow divots.  Your shots appear to have pierced both the can and the tile. The tile is warm and so are a couple of places beneath it where I believe the shots hit, but I cannot find a bullet.  The edges of the holes in the can are consistent with there being no physical bullet as well, as there is no bending back or tearing of the edges.  It appears to be a clean hole like a laser might make, but I don’t know of any lasers that powerful.

I don’t know that it’s a laser Papi.  In fact, I don’t know anything about it except what ScOsh told me in order to shoot it.  I can dial the power level up or down, I can turn it on or off, I can mostly read the power indicator, and I can tell you that this this weapon was completely drained this morning and recharged itself while I slept.  And before you ask, yes, I was in a gun battle, kind of.  I’m not hurt, but I’m the only survivor.  Are there any other tests you would like to make to determine whether this is a thing that can be made anywhere on Earth?

Let me shoot it once, hija.

Alright, watch me.  I showed him how to shoot it, turn it on, squeezed off another shot of my own at the helpless can, which he’d set down on the lawn.  I missed, again, sending up a tiny protrusion of displaced dirt and grass.  I turned it off and handed it to him.  He turned it back on, and shot, but Papi hit the can with his first shot.  The indicator went from blue to gold briefly and then red.  ScOsh wasn’t kidding about high power drain while the weapon was powering up.  I didn’t know how much we’d burned, but that last shot had to be significant to change colors twice.  Papi shot again. Hit the can again.  The indicator stayed red, so the power up must have been complete.  Mama was obviously upset almost to the point of rebellion, but then he turned the weapon off and handed it back to me.  I’m convinced, no real recoil, smooth mechanism with no difference between slack and pull range, and I am pretty certain nothing made on earth can do that kind of damage without weighing at least a hundred times what that thing does.  Not to mention that the power indicator is completely different than anything I’ve seen from Earth engineers.  But it looks like it was designed for a human hand?"

Yes it was, Papi.  The man who gave it to me was as human as we are.  He just wasn’t from Earth.  Let me show you one more thing, even more unusual.  But this we can do inside.  We’re done with gun discharges, I hope.  With that, I put the gun away and pulled