Rediscovery: Rediscovery, #1234

By Dan Melson

Four complete novels - the story of Graciela Juarez from college student to hero!

It started by accident - she was in the wrong place at the right time.  But she was the right person to be in that place.  From helping to defeat an ancient enemy of humankind, to learning to stand on her own and keeping the planet from rushing off a cliff to its own destruction, she becomes a force to be reckoned with.  She doesn't do it all on her own, but she's the driving force of will behind saving the Earth from its own problems.  She truly is Amazing Grace!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Melson
• Release date: Oct 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393722298

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

My Perspective on the Rediscovery Novels

It seems to be expected for people who buy an omnibus to get some sort of author perspective on the work.

Rediscovery includes my first four published novels.  There are three preceding novels that will likely be forever unpublished in the background development of the Empire of Humanity, as well as several shorter works.  They’ve got problems I regard as unfixable, although perhaps I’ll take a new look someday.  The background and history of the Empire of Humanity was written over about a thirty-five year period, during a good part of which I’d turned away from writing fiction at all.

The first thing that brought me back was a general education requirement for my accounting degree.  Two short stories were required by the class; the professor liked both of them and gave them high praise, and I started to fiddle around with writing again.  I tried submitting them per the professor’s instructions, but got no nibbles and I eventually stopped.  It was about this time that I was noticing a shift in the publishing world, as I’ve always been a voracious reader, and it was getting harder to find the sorts of stories I like to read, but I kept writing at a low level.

Over the next fifteen years or so this was how things sat, until I had the idea that became The Man From Empire.  I’d write it differently now, but at the time I thought it sufficiently obvious where the balance of argumentative weight between the two main characters lay.  Osh Scimtar was fifteen thousand years old with corresponding experience, a recognized authority in an important field as well as a polymath with range beyond any Earthly experience, and had the experience of living through a disaster the likes of which Earth has never seen.  Compare and contrast to Graciela Juarez, a 28 year old re-entry college student desperately trying to get away from the consequences of several years of wild, irresponsible living (which will rear their ugly head in the future).  It was one long experience of culture shock to her, and whereas I’d do it differently and more heavy-handedly now to better demonstrate the unequal nature of the two, I decided to resist the temptation and release it exactly as originally written, albeit with a better, updated cover.  The Man From Empire is and will likely remain the best keystone or entry novel explaining the functioning of the Empire of Man to new readers.

Completing the first novel immediately gave me the idea for the next two – A Guardian From Earth and Empire and Earth.  They are distinct stories, however close they crowd one upon the other - A Guardian From Earth opens within seconds of the close of The Man From Empire, while the break from A Guardian From Earth to Empire and Earth is overnight.  The Man From Empire is about two opponents hunting each other over the face of Earth as seen by Grace with her limitations at the time; A Guardian From Earth is about Grace’s apprenticeship and learning of her new situation; while Empire and Earth is about the compromises necessary to deal with a problem beyond her immediate capability. 

Rediscovery is a ‘tight’ trilogy with a later follow-on or sequel.  Working The Trenches was a follow-on work, conceived later – I’d actually begun a different novel before returning to Grace and deciding to write and finish that first.  What would Grace do next, given her situation, and the influence her experience in the original trilogy have upon her?  She’s really living in Imperial society, surrounded by ordinary people of the Empire for the first time.  She’s becoming more and more comfortable in her new environment, and she’s starting to realize how unusual her husband’s family really is, even among the people of the Empire.

There are more novels – and still more planned – about Graciela Juarez di Scimtar, but they are not sequels to Rediscovery, as you can read them perfectly well without needing any reference to the Rediscovery novels or vice versa.  Similarly, the experiences of her nephew Joe on the primitive world of Calmena under the domination of the fractal demons (Chronicled in the Preparations For War series), requires no references to or from the Rediscovery novels.

The Empire of Humanity is a huge theater of the mind.  If I live another century, I’ll still be writing novels in the setting.  The idea is thinking characters each trying to do what leads to the best outcome for them.  Nobody is evil because ‘it says so on their character card.’  Real world-type consequences attend to it all, and the science of all disciplines depicted is as real as I can make it without boring the readers.  I’m trying to steer some kind of middle ground between not killing off anyone more central than the third spear carrier from the left and authors who kill off dozens of lovingly described and developed characters per novel.  Nobody is safe, but while people do get hurt, expect the majority to survive and end up somehow better off for their efforts.  It is my hope that you will be sufficiently entertained to want to revisit the Empire and my other story locales again and again.

Dan Melson

The Man From Empire

Dan Melson

Copyright 2013 Dan Melson.  All Rights Reserved

Prolog

Twenty-three kilometers up, Osh Scimtar felt the explosion through his feet.

More ominously, he immediately realized that he was no longer feeling the full force of Sharanna’s acceleration.  The building was falling.

Quick probes with his mental abilities and datalink told him all he needed to know about this disaster before it happened.  Blue Gold Arcology held fifty-two million people at the peak of the primary business day, and its’ support columns had been severed and back up gravity generators destroyed by a series of cutter bombs at the base. 

There was no time for anything but trying to save as many people as possible.  He commanded all portals within the arcology to lock into emergency exodus mode – they would lock onto the destination chosen by the first person to enter them, and would refuse to accept any incoming traffic.  Matos, his superior, beat him by less than a millionth of a second to flashing the emergency via all data channels. 

Osh wasn’t concerned for his own safety.  Like roughly a seventh of the Imperial population, he was capable of generating his own portals.  The question was how many he would be able to save with himself. 

Next question, what would happen to the mass of Blue Gold as it fell?  Either of the destroyed systems would have had no difficulty keeping the Arcology up alone, but with broken supports and no gravity generators, the hull charge on the building wasn’t enough to keep it from falling – down or over.  That hull charge was the real issue, as it was likely to cause irregular resistance as the massive arcology fell, imparting lateral force to the building as a whole.  In short, the hull charge made it more likely the building would fall sideways, into the lesser arcologies surrounding it.  The choice was to order the hull charge dissipated and hope it fell straight enough not to hit the smaller but still populous arcologies around it, or keep it on in order to buy perhaps an extra minute to escape with a practical certainty it would fall and hit at least one of its lesser brethren, more likely two or three. 

Osh ran a quick mental simulation - the structural systems of arcologies were tough.  It would take something more than bare mass to bring them down, but if Blue Gold Arcology still had its own hull charge when it hit a neighboring arcology, there was considerable doubt they’d maintain their integrity.  He linked with Matos, his superior, who concurred in his estimate, and Matos ordered the hull charge dissipated.  It wouldn’t make that much of a difference to those inside Blue Gold Arcology.

Already in the first four seconds, at least a million would have died as the lower floors pancaked, falling ever faster with the force of Sharanna’s acceleration.  Ironically, the people at the top would have the longest fall, and therefore the greatest chance to find a way to save themselves.  More than eight sixtieths of the imperial population were Guardians, and most of them would be able to rescue some non-operants as well – perhaps two or three each.  Perhaps another five or six sixtieths might make it through a portal on time.  Some few would be close enough to vehicles or spacecraft on the parking levels to get out.  Isolated individuals might figure something out that enabled them to escape or be rescued, but already the lowest levels were crushed debris, and the levels above were crashing to ground with ever greater force.  Osh estimated than probably eighteen million would die in the minute it would take for the collapse to complete itself – at the end, the top floors would be falling at supersonic speeds.  Most of the non-operants were simply too far inside the building to have any hope of escape.

Osh, Matos, and all three of Osh’s Primus subordinates were among the Guardians – one of them, Fridalisa, was a known Fourth Order Guardian, and she had already created a portal for everyone in the government office to escape the fall, with a terminus in Leading Edge Arcology, too far away to be endangered by the fall of Blue Gold.  Aided by Matos she was expanding it downwards as fast as she could – an escape column in one corner of a building several kilometers on a side.  It wasn’t much, but it was what could be done.  Matos and the Primuses had the situation in hand; that left Osh free to investigate.

He stretched his perception to the now crushed sublevels where the explosion had been.  There was a fading Instance Portal not five steps from one of the blast centers.  Where it led, he couldn’t tell, but it wasn’t the home Instance.  There wasn’t much doubt; the ston terrorist who planted the bombs had fled through that portal.  The time for action was now; in the next minute tracking down the exit Instance, let alone a precise destination, would be something that would take a specialist days at least to track down.  Osh didn’t want to emerge right on top of his quarry, so he applied a small lateral – thirty ififths.  He was confident he would be able to sort out the proper Personal Event Line from that distance.  He reached his hand into his personal pocket for his main weapon, and projected himself through the portal.

Chapter One

Riverside

––––––––

No matter what the song says, it does rain in southern California.  All the damn time in March of El Nino years.

The most recent storm had finished blowing through earlier that evening.  I didn’t like working after dark, but the compliance reports just couldn’t wait any longer.  My boss, Call me George Martinez, had informed me that the EPA was crawling all over him and that if the hazardous usage and disposal reports weren’t completed by the time he got to work in the morning, I would be joining the ranks of the unemployed.  In blue state basket case California, in the middle of the worst economy of the last eighty years.  Jerk.

Overall, Riverside’s not a bad town.  I’ve got a small apartment not too far from the UC campus.  The complex is full of students with a smattering of old fogeys too poor and too stubborn to leave, and working class stiffs, not to mention hybrids like me.  The ones I’ve talked to were alright.

But this wasn’t there.  The warehouse sits in a commercial district near where the 91 dies and turns into the 215 at the 60 merge.  There are some rough people nearby, in the old twenties and thirties housing they threw up back before tract housing.  Tiny lots, old decaying houses, ancient plumbing and wiring, never updated.  Paint cracked, chipped, and peeling.  Calling them Craftsmen would be implying a level of charm that simply didn’t exist.  Streets jammed with old junker cars.  Chain link fences, neglected lawns, junk left wherever someone dropped it because it was too much effort to clean up.  An occasional abuela put in a few flowers that just made the rest of the neighborhood look even more pitiful.  Rough people, mostly poor hispanics with the occasional white trash or black, human refuse that just didn’t have what it took to get ahead in the world as it had become.  Some were disabled, most simply never applied themselves much.  Get a second or third generation in there, and you got some real gangbanging.  Easy path to see, damned near impossible to make it work into a real life worth living.  Enough to make me appreciate my parents, who escaped that world and made sure I knew enough not to fall back.

The gangs had been cooped up inside most of the previous ten days.  El Nino storms came through one after another.  Maybe they wouldn’t drown or freeze you, but they were cold, wet, and miserable – at least by the standards of California weather.  Nobody came out when it was raining without a good reason why they had to be out there and then, but once it stopped a light jacket would keep you warm, and the hoodies would be out looking to burn off some energy.  It’s not like they had anything better to do.

And here I was, a 28 year old woman leaving the building all by myself in the dark just after eight-thirty with no one around.  Just bad luck the four guys in jackets walking up the other side of the street at the exact wrong time.  No key to get back in – damn Call me George to hell.  I picked up my pace.  If I could get to my car – beater that it is – and lock the doors there was a chance I’d be able to drive away.

Mistake.  The hoodies started to run.  Now there was some effort in it for them, things were looking worse for me.  Cell phone, you say?  I could grab the phone and push the number to dial 911, but it wouldn’t do me a bit of good.  Typical response time was thirty minutes.  By the time the cops showed up, it would be long over.  I was about to do it anyway when it happened.

I swear on my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that this happened.  He looked like an Angel of the Lord, minus the wings.  Hanging up there in the air.  Well, not hanging – he was falling, though not like he was getting pulled – more like he was riding an escalator that wasn’t there.  At least six five, thin as a rail, with a softly glowing sword of all the improbable things.  Wearing what looked like some kind of uniform, dark with lighter trim, cut like nothing I’d ever seen.

I don’t know what he did to call attention to himself, but all of a sudden the ‘bangers noticed him.  Not just the ‘bangers, but everything’s attention was wrenched towards him as if someone grabbed our heads, sunk hooks into our eyeballs and made us look.  Right down to the rats in the dumpsters.

That was enough for the ‘bangers.  They hauled out their guns and started banging away.  The visitor looked puzzled for an instant, then the sword vanished, and I saw a flash from him.  Something in his hand – didn’t did get a good look at what it was.  The gang members fell over so fast it was over before I could twitch.  Damn!  The guy was fast.  I’d never seen anything like that even in the movies.

One look showed four lifeless bodies with blood starting to pool.  The visitor lit with catlike grace, apparently as unconcerned as if nothing had just happened.  I had a decision to make, and I did.  I jumped in my car and got the hell out of Dodge.  I didn’t want to be anywhere in the neighborhood when the cops finally got there.  I didn’t stop to say thanks, I definitely didn’t talk to him, I just jumped in and went.  I didn’t slow down until I was home.  I might have run a red light or two; I really couldn’t tell you with any certainty.

I pulled into the parking lot, and spent a few minutes having a quiet attack of the shakes.  The steering wheel was a nice solid reassurance of the familiar world of everyday life.  Things like that just did not happen.  Bad enough to come that close to being raped or maybe worse.  I lived in the real world, and things like that happened even though you don’t want them to.  But you do not get six and a half feet of impossibly fast man walking down out of the sky to kill your enemies every day, or any day. Maybe in fairy tales or fiction, not in Riverside.

It was close to nine-thirty by the time I pulled myself together enough to get out of the car.  I locked the door of the old blue Hyundai and walked through the gate, up to my door, went in and locked the door, then collapsed into my old vinyl chair – just in time to see him step into my field of vision.  Where the hell did he come from, how the fuck did he do that?  I’m sorry, my Mama raised a lady, words like that did not come out of my mouth, but they definitely went through my mind that time.  I started out of the chair, then caught his gaze and froze.  As in could not move, gazing into those eyes.  I don’t know how long – but it felt like an eternity.

In the light, I could see he was dressed in a deep sapphire blue with golden trim, a few pieces of decoration I didn’t understand here and there – not any military uniforms I’d seen, or police, but of that nature.  He himself looked like nothing I’d ever seen.  His skin color was a deep bronze – If I had to guess based on that, I would have said Cuban because most of them have some black ancestry, and his hair was that dark brown shade of almost black of many hispanics, but his facial structure was pure north European aristocrat – aquiline nose, hawk sharp face.  The rest of his body was even thinner, if that made sense, and just as tall as I’d thought at first.  At five-four, I barely came up to chest high on him.  Obviously greyhound fit, though.  I’d expect to see someone like him at the Olympics on TV, pole-vaulting or maybe running hurdles, not killing gang members on the side of a nondescript office building in Riverside, the armpit of Southern California.  His eyes?  They were steel grey, unlike anything else I had ever seen, and just as hard as that implies.  Not unwelcoming to me, personally, at that moment, but I got the impression he would have no difficulty staring down the entire world if he thought it necessary.  Age?  Outside the eyes, he looked younger than me - I’d guess 25, or maybe younger.  He was a young vibrant powerful man, not a boy.  The eyes were older – way older.

I’m sorry, he said in a completely normal California anglo accent, not a trace of anything else.  It broke the spell holding me in place, and I started to scream at him in my parents’ native Spanish.  I got about half a word out before he made a gesture of peace, in an unhurried way but just as fast as I’d seen back in the parking lot, As you have probably figured out, I’m from a long way away.  I’d hoped to get my business taken care of and leave, but I managed to miss the people I came to see.  And then I noticed – or should I say realized that I had noticed that his lips weren’t moving and I wasn’t actually hearing him with my ears, only in my head.

Think of me as a wizard, the voiceless words went on, A long time ago, my ancestors bred themselves in a certain way.  There was a danger, and they instituted a breeding program such as even livestock had never been subjected to.  They paid a terrible price, but the breeding program succeeded.  I am one result of that program.

He continued, now starting to actually speak, a strong baritone, but I somehow knew tenor or bass would be just as easy for him.  I didn’t mean to frighten you, and I apologize again.  I simply had no place better to go,  and when I missed my business meeting, I decided there was no point in going to someone else who hadn’t seen what happened.  I thought I might as well keep the witnesses to the ones that already had seen something.  I need to track down someone, and I need to keep myself out of his sight while I do.  The fewer people who know anything of my errand, the higher the odds of success.  I’ll stay out of your way, and I’ll see that you are well compensated for your trouble.  If you don’t want me around, I’ll leave.

Compensated how? I asked, thinking money.  If this guy really was a wizard – and so far the evidence was strongly in favor - maybe this was my opportunity to tell Call me George Martinez to go to hell

Money is certainly possible, but it’s going to take me a little while.  I don’t have anything I can sell quickly, but I can start with this, and suddenly I felt better, sharper than I had ever felt in my life.  Completely awake, refreshed, not hungry despite having not eaten since lunchtime.  My feet didn’t hurt, my backache went away, my eyes weren’t tired at all.  My vision looked weird, I popped my contacts out, and saw crystal clear.  For the first time in my life, perfect vision.  No coke bottle glasses like I’d grown up with, no special contact lenses that even Wal-Mart charged an arm and a leg for.  I had to break down and cry for joy.  It was a moment.  While I was marveling at that miracle, I could feel other, deeper changes.  I felt queasy while it was going on, but it wasn’t painful.  Any particular area was altered almost before I could get the idea he had moved into it.  I got the impression he had had a lot of practice, but when it was done, I felt better than I ever had before.  Perfect vision was only the most obvious change.

Stay as long as you like, I managed to choke out.

I should tell you that this will not last forever, he said, I can fix you so that you’re as healthy as possible, but it’s human nature that your body falls apart as you get older.  I can’t fix that with one treatment, or ever.  Even with recurring treatment, critical organs may fail catastrophically.  Even our own people don’t live forever.  All I can do is move you back to where you should be.

Forever? I asked, How long do you live?

Guardians like me, we’re not sure.  It’s been about thirty square years since we really mastered the skills we needed to improve ourselves, and we keep improving still.  Those of us who haven’t been killed are still around, my father among them.  He’s approaching thirty square.  Ordinary people, like you, between fifteen and thirty prime.  But all one treatment can do is make you as healthy and as young as you could possibly be.  You’ll still age normally

Fifteen prime?

Fifteen times sixty, Nine hundred years.  As a lower limit.  Maybe twice that.

Thirty Square?

Thirty times sixty squared, he said, and continued when he sensed I needed it converted, You use base ten, so one hundred eight thousand.

Damn.  I later found out their years were shorter than ours - just under seven tenths.  But still, damn.

"How old are you?" I asked, a little bit hysterical.

Five, fifty eight, thirty seven.  In decimal form, 21,517.  This guy wanted me to believe he’d been born thousands of years before my ancestors came to America.  Literally Paleolithic Era.  Humans were barely sapien at that point.  It was too much.

He sensed my incredulity, I told you, I’m from a long way away.  Time runs in strange ways, and usually unevenly between places.  Especially separated as ours are.  My sister could tell you more than I can.  She’s a specialist.  I’m just about able to follow the markers laid down by others.

In fact, he said, I’m not even certain I can get back once I’m done here.  I assumed the Instance Portal went somewhere we’d know about, and have markers laid down.  That’s a lot of territory, and most of us don’t have any reason to go outside of it.  But this guy did.

I got the picture- he wasn’t exactly lost but he didn’t currently know the way back.  I figured he’d augmented my brain when he fixed my vision.  What are you?  You wouldn’t have done that for a business deal.  Why are you here?

Good question.  Right now, I represent our government.  I am in pursuit of a criminal, an agent of a hostile government.  One who killed millions of our citizens in one act.

So you’re a cop?

Not as you understand the term.  There’s more to it than that.  But yes, I enforce the law.

What’s your name?

Osh Scimtar di Baryan.  Call me Sosh, he said, with a long O.  I later found out ScOsh would be more nearly correct, but the c equivalent was soft in his family name and hadn’t been audible.  I was speaking to him not writing, so it’s not important, but I think he deserves to have his name recorded correctly.  You can imagine me calling him Sosh if you like.

Why do you think this criminal is here?

I followed him through an Instance Portal, but he’d already Ported himself again before I got there.  Instance Portals are major manifestations, trivial for anyone of us to follow them while they last, and for a few seconds after, specialists for years, given a chance to investigate.  You’re bridging between two different instances of creation – it takes something strong to do that.  Kind of like a monumental building.  Even once it falls down, you can tell it was there, and where the bridge led, although that gets fuzzier faster than anything else.  They fade over time, but I sent an amplifying signal when I arrived.  It’ll take them some time to dig through the remains of what he destroyed, but they’ll be able to follow me here eventually.

Personal portals within an instance are different.  You’re not punching a hole so much as stepping between two places.  Unless you have them somehow tagged right when your target moves, there is no way even the Blue Prince can trace it.  Maybe there are powers somewhere that can.  But none we are acquainted with

"Instances of creation... you mean different universes?"

Not really.  There is only one universe, but there are different instances of creation within it.  Like rooms in a house, if you can find the doors between them.  They may occupy the same space, separated in ways that cannot be seen without the appropriate senses.  But they all connect if you know how.  The connection to get between this place and where I am from is likely long and tenuous under most circumstances, but I think it likely that it has been used before.  Your genome scans as human as mine, with only minor variations.  I’d estimate the divergence at not more than about two thousand generations on your side.  We have been places where that estimate is much larger, but they’re still people.  By the way, have you anything to eat?  I may be a wizard, but I still expend energy.

He looked like he expended a lot of energy.  Even my Mexican cousins down in the interior weren’t as thin as he was.  But he was definitely a hardbody, all lean muscle.  I’d known a racing greyhound – one of our neighbors growing up adopted one from Greyhound Rescue.  He had that look – crossed with the grace of a leopard.  He moved like a dancer.  I got the impression nothing short of a cannonball could knock him off balance, and I’d seen he was fast enough that a cannonball was likely to miss.  No leftovers worth the name in the fridge.  So I grabbed a couple frozen dinners and threw them in the microwave. 

You mean we’re the same species? I asked as they cooked, a certain spring in my voice.  You show me a young healthy woman who’s not attracted to a man like that.  Certainly she wasn’t the woman who looked me in the mirror every day.  Especially not with her engine tuned up like he’d done to mine.

Yes, he responded, There are some minor differences, but nothing to create a species barrier.  I doubt you’d even need one intervention if humans from here wanted to breed with humans from back home.

I was starting to regret not cooking something real.  Mama taught me how to cook, I just didn’t do it much outside of the weekends.  I sure wasn’t going to hesitate to throw over my occasional boyfriend if I could land this one.

He interrupted I apologize again, but I almost can’t avoid reading your surface thoughts.  It’s not polite to pry, but Guardians are telepathic, and you’re practically shouting at me.  Had you grown up where I did, you’d have learned to guard your thoughts so as not to be doing that, but since you haven’t, I can’t help but be aware of your thoughts.  My face had gone red as a beet, but his voice became very gentle and he became very sad, as in remembrance of something, I wasn’t hinting, I was talking biology.  I am older even than most Guardians.  I have had experiences you will never have unless life is exceedingly cruel.  I’m not saying this to hurt you or insult you, Graciela.  You are remarkable within the environment you’ve grown in, but I can no more be interested in you as you are now than you could be interested in a ten year old, and even if I could, it would be criminally irresponsible of me.  My vision of self would consider me a spoiled child, with inadequate control over myself, and I doubt that I can convey the level of revulsion I would feel for such a person without more intimate mental contact than you would willingly permit.

The microwave dinged.  I was being pulled in too many ways too fast.  I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I simply opened the door and handed him one of them.  Beef and cheese enchilada with rice and beans.  I had machaca burrito with the same sides.

Soon as I started eating, I realized I was ravenously hungry.  It hadn’t just been ten hours since I ate, I realized that ScOsh had used my own energy to fix all the little things wrong with me.  Among those had been the blood sugar drop that signals hunger most of the time, but once food started going in, it was hard to stop.  Soon as I finished the dinner, I grabbed bread and sandwich stuffings from the fridge, and started putting them together.  PB&J, turkey, ham and cheese, another PB&J.  I kept building them and handing him every other one until I’d had four.  He’d had the same, and we’d finished the bread.  I was torn between thinking I’d gain ten pounds and that I would be doomed to keep eating forever hungry and getting thinner like the guy in some myth I’d heard once.

Just a one-time thing, Graciela

You can call me Grace, I said, Everybody does.  Well, at least everyone who’s not close family

Just a one-time thing, Grace, he repeated, Your body will replace the energy I used, then go back to normal, although it will want more for a while.  You were about forty, I’ve moved you back to a thirty year old body

As I said, I’m 28.  You tell a woman she was an old hag and you’ve helped her by moving he back to two years older than she is and see what happens.

ScOsh sensed my anger, and said, We consider thirty to be the first flush of physical maturity.  It’s also the age at which we expect our children to have become adults for most purposes.  Maybe our years are shorter than yours.  As I said earlier, he told me the next day that the years he talked about were 255 Earth days, almost exactly.  The decimal conversion he told me was 0.698.  So normal people where he came from only lived about 630 to 1250 Earth years, and he was only a little over fifteen thousand Earth years old.  Give or take.  It didn’t make much difference to resentment and anger I felt, but at least I was an insanely healthy 21 year old now, not the forty year old hag I’d been imagining (who was really the same 28 I was)

Is there somewhere I can learn more about Earth? he asked, I need to find out as much about it as fast as I can.

I pointed to the computer, I have an internet connection right there, I said, "But why should I help some bourgeois pig who lives hundreds of lives, who thinks I’m a little girl despite being an old hag.  I’m about half a second from throwing you out."

I can’t help how I was born, or how you were born, Grace.  It isn’t a product of innate superiority or the opposite.  It just is.  As productive to whine about how some creatures only live a few days and why they can’t have some of your lifespan as well as mine.  If it strikes you as bad, the thing to do is what you can to remedy the situation.  It wouldn’t help to chop off my life, or that of every one of my people.  Your people would still die just as young and ignorant as ever.  All it would do is kill something beautiful to feed the resentment of someone too young and inexperienced to know better.  Instead, work to improve your people and the world they live in.  I think you’ll find that easier now – the thing I improved the most was your mind.  You think we’re good at improving bodies, just wait until you understand how much your mind has improved.  It’s a gift, one that I would give to every human on earth if I could, but I have given it to you.  And Grace, he finished, You’ll find you are able to help yourself and every other human on Earth more than you expect.

Crap.  He had me.  My anger and resentment dissipated, or at least diminished to the point I could think past them.  I could tell, just from our conversation, that my IQ was higher.  I didn’t know any more, but I was making connections I wouldn’t have, just a couple hours earlier.  Figuring things out faster.  I’d never been a fan of Star Trek or any of that garbage, but you pick up on things that are so common everyone hears about them.  Even the class geniuses I occasionally encountered suddenly weren’t looking so brain smart right now.  I booted up the computer, and showed him how to get online, When you get tired, there’s the couch, I said, I’m going to bed.  Goodnight.

Goodnight, he responded, immersed in what he was doing.

I brought out a spare blanket before I really went to bed.  Hospitality was something Mama took seriously.  Then I shut the door, got undressed, and slid between the sheets.  But I couldn’t get to sleep for a while.  He really had tuned me up good.

Chapter Two

The Morning After

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The alarm went off at 6 AM exactly, same as always.  My first thought was, What a weird dream! but then I realized I was still seeing my bedroom sharp and clear, and no, I hadn’t left my contacts in.  Habit forced me to make the bed before padding into the bathroom.  Shrugging out of my robe, I looked at myself in the mirror.  I was still Graciela Juarez – but with a difference.  I was younger, like ScOsh had told me, and things had been redistributed.  I didn’t think I’d lost any weight, but it was moved around some.  Where before I had been something of a couch potato, mixing night school and work, and my body showed it, now I had real muscle tone.  Not bodybuilder muscle, either, but the kind of lean muscle that comes from long hours of aerobics.  I had a definite hourglass shape now – my waist had shrunk at least three inches.  My breasts may have been slightly smaller, if anything, but firmer – perkier.  Turning a bit, oh boy did I have a nice butt.  Breasts are fat, butt is muscle.  My face was still my own – not much change there – but my skin glowed with health.  I’d have to start making at least occasional time for the gym, thanks to ScOsh.  I wasn’t going to let this waste away.  I’d also have to get used to a lot more male attention – I wasn’t a beauty queen, but women notice what attracts men and I was definitely something they’d notice now.  I had that petite bouncy athletic look I’d always envied, instead of the slightly couch-potatoish one I’d had before.  My hair was about the same, shoulder length and wavy, so dark most people call it black, but hair had always been my one eye-catching feature, and I took care of it. 

I showered, dressed, and put on make-up.  I never used a lot, needed less now, and wanted to not draw attention to my changed self, so I made myself as low key as I could.  I opened the door into the hall expecting to see ScOsh crashed out on the couch.

Instead, there was a neat handwritten note on my computer Went out for a while.  Back as soon as I can.  That, together with the remains of our meal the previous evening in the trash, was the only evidence he’d ever been there.  I set the coffeemaker going, and made my breakfast – scrambled eggs, since there was no bread for toast - and my phone rang.  It was Mama.  I’d forgotten to call her last night when I got home.  She’d known I was working late, and worried.  She was right to worry, but I was damned if I was going to tell her about last night – anything about last night.  The opening act would just scare her to no good purpose and the rest would make her certain her baby girl had lost it.  Did I mention I’m the youngest of five – four girls and a boy?  Yeah, Mama was overly protective of me, and worried way too much.  If we both lived to a hundred with great grandkids of my own, I’d still be her baby girl.  I’m fine, Mama, just got done so late I figured you’d be in bed by the time I got home.

"Hija, you shouldn’t be working so hard all the time for that man, she told me, He doesn’t leave you any time for yourself.  How are you going to meet a nice boy to marry and give me grandchildren if you’re always working?"

If you know Mexican families, there really isn’t any response to the husband and children thing unless you’ve got the ring and at least a child on the way.  That didn’t keep me from trying, Mama, you’ve got fifteen grandchildren already.  Peter is almost my age and sure looks serious about that new girlfriend of his.  Peter had finished his MBA the previous summer and Mama couldn’t be more proud.  He wasn’t making much yet, but he did have a good job putting his degree to work.  She crowed over him for a couple minutes, and let me get off the phone.

It was time for work, but my phone rang again.  I didn’t recognize the number, but it was long distance, so I gave it a chance on case a family member needed help.  It was ScOsh, Grace, I have two million dollars for you.

A statement like that does get your attention, especially when you’re scrabbling for twelve bucks an hour so you can go to school part time.  He’d already refused my virtue, such as it was, so I was pretty certain that wasn’t his objective.  What was?  Um, thanks, I think.  Why?

I offered you compensation, and you accepted.  You may not realize it, but you are running a risk by hosting me.  What is your schedule today?

Nothing special.  Work, then school tonight – Organic chem.  There’s an exam I haven’t studied for

Can you call in sick to work today?  There’s a risk I have to show you how to minimize.  You should be fine by tonight.

For someone paying me 2 million dollars I can.  When do I get it?  And risk?  What risk?  And what did you DO to earn two million dollars overnight? To myself.

I’ll explain when I see you.  Stay in until then.  I’ll be there within an hour.  An Earth hour.

So I called in to Call Me George Martinez and told him I’d caught a cold from all the rain.  My first sick call in two years.  He wasn’t happy, but I’d finished the EPA report he needed, so he had to let me slide.  If ScOsh was as good as his word – and he had been so far – I might never come back.  Then I cracked the O-chem book. 

I amazed myself.  I had struggled with the differences between aldehydes and ketones, but it was a snap now.  I not only understood, I was drawing connections the book wasn’t making – at least not yet.  Better yet, I was remembering them.  I satisfied myself, pulled out my calculus book from last semester, and suddenly understood calculus for the first time in my life.  Ditto my Tuesday night Molecular Biology class.  I went back to O-chem.  I remembered it all.  I read three chapters ahead.  It was dryer than hot desert sand thanks to the writer’s pedantic text, but it wasn’t hard.

I got the impression more time than an hour had passed, and I was right.  It had been an hour and ten minutes.  I couldn’t have done it in less than four hours before.  Then I remembered ScOsh was ten minutes overdue.  The way he came and went was creepy, but he seemed to have it pretty well under control.  Where was he?

He stepped out of the hall closet just then.  God alone knows where he found the room, but he did.  He wasn’t carrying anything that looked like it could hold a million dollars, but I’d reserve judgment on that.  He hadn’t been carrying the sword I’d seen, or the other weapon, the one that killed the gangbangers, either.  Sorry I’m late, he said, But exchanging the money turned out to be more complicated than I thought.  I found out about your physical libraries last night after you went to bed, so I walked through first your local college library, then the Library of Congress.  Then I went to Atlantic City, and went through all the casinos there.  Then Las Vegas

"You cheated the casinos? I interrupted, incredulous, You cheated the mob-owned casinos?"

I did no such thing, he said, It’s not cheating to use skill.  If they don’t have rules posted that forbid it, it’s not cheating.  There were rules posted, but absolutely nothing about using any of the skills I employed.  I borrowed a chip from someone for a few minutes, and used it to win.  Then I gave the original chip back to the owner with interest.  I went from casino to casino.  Didn’t win too much from any of them.  When people started to take an interest in my winning, I lost a little, then changed tables and started winning again.  I know how not to be noticed.  Speaking of which, that applies right now.  You’re about to have visitors.  I’m not here; don’t expect them to find me no matter what they do, so act natural.  Don’t do anything out of the ordinary.  Your planet doesn’t have the technology or the wizardry to catch me.  I want to keep it to a minimum because there’s at least one person around who can.  Then he simply disappeared right in front of me, just as there was a knock on my door.

I went to the door.  The spyhole showed two cops in uniforms, right out of central casting.  One Mexican, one Anglo.  Can I help you? I said, loudly enough to be heard through the door.

Riverside Police.  Ms. Graciela Juarez?  The Mexican’s accent was medium strong.  Probably didn’t grow up around a lot of Anglos, like I had.

That’s me.  Can I see your badges?  You don’t let cops in without making sure.

Yes ma’am.  First one guy, then the other.  Looked normal enough, not that I was sure I’d be able to tell bad ones.  I opened the door and stood there.

They looked me over in a way men never had before.  I wasn’t certain if I liked it right now, but I could tell my earlier surmise about male attention was correct.  They were both appreciating the scenery.  There was a wedding ring on the lead cop’s hand (the Mexican) but not the Anglo’s.  Neither was too far from my age.

There was one thing they might be there about.  They’d also have a pretty good idea I didn’t really have a cold already.  So I decided to tell some of the truth.

We found four bodies in the street in front of your office last night.  We asked if anyone had seen anything, and Mr. Martinez said you had been working late.  Building security logged an exit at 8:38, and the bodies were killed sometime between seven thirty and nine.

Yes officer, I saw the bodies and I panicked.  I came out, started walking to my car, saw them and ran.  I’m sorry, I know I should have called, but I was just so scared.  All the while doing my best little girl at the horror movie act.  I drove home and just shook a while down there in the parking lot, then I ran up here and ate.  I was so hungry, I hadn’t eaten since lunch, and then I ate some more because I sometimes do that when I’m upset, and before I knew it I had eaten like 5 sandwiches.  Then I went in the bathroom and threw up.  Then I sat there for a while, on the bathroom floor.  Then I went to bed, and shook until I fell asleep.  I don’t know what time that was.  When the alarm went off this morning, I just couldn’t go back yet.  Please don’t tell my boss I’m not really sick!  Please?

Mind if we come in and look around?

This was it, the moment of truth.  I decided to take ScOsh at his word.  He’d been more than fair with me.  Actually, he had already been absurdly generous and was promising more.  But solid citizens don’t just roll over for the cops.  You got a warrant?

No, ma’am.  The Anglo.  I could tell he’d bought the fear, hook, line and sinker.  Maybe a little too well.  Just want to take a quick look around, make sure you’re okay here.  Never know if their friends tracked you down.  Some of these people, they don’t care if you had nothing to do with it, didn’t see a thing.  They want to know who offed their homies and they don’t take too well to ‘I don’t know.’  We could probably arrange protective custody if you want.  He winked suggestively.

Dios Mio!  Someone who’s just had a scary experience like that and you’re hitting on her!  Still, I decided to ignore it.  Okay, take a look around if you want, but no protective custody.  I have an exam tonight.  I need to finish my degree.  I’ll make myself be okay by then

They came in, took their time.  I was grateful Mama made me learn good housekeeping.  I hadn’t cleaned the bathroom last night, but it was clean enough to look like maybe I had.  No puke or residue or anything.  The bed was made, of course.  The kitchen trash backed up my story.  No obvious holes, except, Who is this blanket for? the still-unused blanket was on the couch. 

I was just about to watch some TV when you knocked.  Anything to have some voices around.  And it’s cold.  Maybe ask Mama to come over, or my sister.  If they can.

You sure you don’t want protection? the Mexican asked, Maybe it’s not such a good idea to bring your family into it if the gangs get nasty.  We got women we could put you with.  So his partner being on the make was at least faintly embarrassing to him.

No, but thanks.  I was pretty certain I had better than they could possibly offer, if I needed it.

Okay, Ms. Juarez.  Thankyouforyourcooperation.  It all came out like it was one word.  He would have said it many times.  They left.

They couldn’t have been more than halfway down the stairs when ScOsh appeared, again right in front of me.  Jesus it was unsettling how he did that.  I jumped and started to wind up for a good yell but he shushed me, No loud noises.  I’ve lulled their suspicions, but if they heard you yell, I’d have to do something overt.  That would draw notice.  They’re normal Earth humans, but I’m not the only one who has tampered with them.  I had to be very careful.  He started pulling money – cash – out of somewhere.  I couldn’t really get a good look at how or what or where.  He said, Pocket as if that explained everything, but it really did make an impressive pile.  $2 million doesn’t sound like a huge amount of money any more, what with all the talk about millionaires and billionaires and lottery advertisements, but it turned out $100 is the biggest bill in circulation, and $2 million is twenty thousand of those.  It fit on the table, but it wasn’t in the neat bundles you see in the movies and it wasn’t a small pile.  I stuffed as many as my wallet could comfortably hold there, then pulled out some old plastic grocery bags to hold the rest and stuffed them in the back of my bedroom closet.

Suppose you level with me?  Tell me exactly what is going on?

Okay.  First though, I need to teach you to guard your thoughts just a little.  If the opposition spots you, you’ve got to have a charade that’s believable on the surface.  Of course, if they get interested enough to take a real look at your mind there’s nothing I can do that will stop them from getting what you know.  It’s for your protection and mine.

Okay, but don’t think you can get away with fobbing me off after.

I won’t.  He actually pulled out some kind of writing implement, and wrote, I promise to tell Grace everything she wants to know on the notepad I kept on the nightstand. He handed me the note, The people I’m after, they know all the stuff I’m going to tell you.  So there isn’t any reason not to.  But the mental guard stands a good chance of keeping them from spotting you.

His demeanor got very serious, and he asked, We can do this quick and easy but unsettling – like how I learned your languages only in reverse - or slow and hard but not so invasive.  Most of our people – non-Guardians anyway - learn slowly over their first thirty years or so.  That’s not an option for you, so it’s going to be a long day if we do it the second way.  Especially since what you need to learn is a bit harder than the basic skill

Which would be better?

With one day of practice, you’re not going to be perfectly seamless, so rapport will work just as well, perhaps better.  The other way is trial and error.  It’s more convincing in someone with a lot of practice, but you’re not going to have that practice.  If they look that close, you’re going to be caught anyway.

"If that was rapport back when you followed me here, it wasn’t so bad.  We could do that.  That was how you learned English so fast?"

I’ve got what you might call a natural supercomputer in my head.  It’s one of the basic Guardian skills.  He paused a moment, then continued, "What we are really good at, better than anything else, better than anyone else we have ever encountered, is mental augmentation.  From that, everything else flows.  If you’re smart enough, you can figure out how to do things.  Almost anything else.  I’m fast and I’m strong and I’m agile – I could win any athletic contest on Earth easily on my first try – but it’s because my people are smart and have figured out self-augmentation, so we’re stronger and more agile and even more precise and balanced and faster.  I’m not the smartest of my people – I’m only the first rung of the ladder up from basic level.  In fact, I was quite old when I became operant, so old that I and everyone else had expected me to die without becoming operant.  There were over a million people just as strong as me or better in the building I was in just before I came here.  But enough of that for a while.  We need to get your lesson done."

But how did you do it?

I linked us up in rapport and read out your language center.  It’s one of the easiest areas of the mind to locate and read if you know how.  You knew two languages, although you were more comfortable in this one, so that’s what I talked to you in.

"What else did you read?!" I hissed at him

Nothing.  Well, surface thoughts, but the way you throw them off they don’t really count as reading.  I’m hoping to put that under your control, if you’ll let me.  We, or at least my people, don’t go around stripping the innermost thoughts of everyone we pass in the street.  People get upset.  Before too long, someone gets upset enough to do something about it, so even our operant children learn to follow polite rules.  My arrival here was a special situation, or I wouldn’t have even accessed what I did.  It wasn’t wrong by our rules, but it was rude even if it was necessary.  Please accept my apology?

How many sisters do I have?

Three, but you just shouted that answer at me.  Okay, I was convinced enough.  I had thought about the answer when I asked the question.  He was plenty quick enough to have played dumb, so his answer convinced me when a denial might not have.  Maybe he wasn’t telling me quite everything – who does? – but there was credibility there.

So what do I have to do for this rapport thing?

You don’t have to do anything – I do - but eye contact does make it easier.  It’s mostly symbolic, but it does work that way, at least for Second Order Guardians like me.  Just look at me and relax.  I started to ask about Second Order Guardians but he stopped me, repeating Just look at me and relax.

I looked at him.  He hunched a bit, to make it easier, and then we connected.  I don’t know how to explain it, really, other than kind of like a computer connection direct to your brain.  I found out later that this was considered a very narrow rapport, Guardians can open a channel for anything up to something that’s kind of like an instant mental nirvana and soul graft between two Guardians that trust each other that much.  Kind of like two yogis communing with each other, but really communicating on hundreds of levels at once.  He began that mind talk I had experience briefly last night, but this time he didn’t switch to spoken words after a few seconds.  He was also able to demonstrate what he was talking about on a level I could understand.  It couldn’t have been more than a couple minutes later that I had a basic understanding of what levels of thought exist in natural state humans, which and the difference between a thought that was practically a mental shout for attention, one that was merely easy to read, and one that was more difficult – and how to route my thoughts between the various levels.  No, don’t ask me to explain – there are concepts we don’t have words or context for in English or any other Earth language.  Then he went in to the hard part – building a surface presence that didn’t stand out by its total lack of exposure.  Normal Earth humans, without Guardians around to tell them they’re mentally shouting, shout everything constantly.  So things like "hungry" and "cold" had to be on that surface shout level.  If they weren’t, it was like a big neon sign to any Guardian close by, saying, Warning!  This one is different!  ScOsh had encountered a couple people who were able to keep their thoughts under closer control, but so far as he could tell, it was strictly natural variation, and they were rare enough that he had evidently bored down into both of them to make certain they weren’t enemies or controlled by enemies.  I didn’t want the details.  "I’m going to the post office" needed to be casually readable if someone tried, because that was the case with everyone around me.  It was only things that needed to be hidden that got buried more deeply.   The next hour and a half was a lot of things like, Grace, pretend I’ve asked you to go to the store for me to get ammonia, which meant that store and drive and things like sight and hearing had to be on the surface shout level, ammonia needed to be under the surface but casually readable, and why I was doing it and who I was doing it for had to be down where casual scans wouldn’t reveal them.  He cautioned me repeatedly, "If you draw their attention, it’s all over.  So the entire point is to not attract attention by being in any way interesting.  Think routine and same as everybody else.  It’s a good thing if you can act disengaged or bored.  I’m keeping you out of it as much as I possibly can.  I know it’s exhausting, especially running a