The Eye of Venus: Book One of the Eye of Venus Trilogy

By Lawrence Martin Cooper

This book, ‘The Eye of Venus’, is Book One of a trilogy. The other books are entitled ‘Twenty Years On’ and ‘The Return to Chiaros’. This series, set hundreds of years ahead from now, and on another planet, is what I call (soft) Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Science and history are background to the story.
The story is of a quest for an emerald, a special emerald. The emerald is part of a device that was used for inter-realm passage.
The main competitors are Satanic forces, and a secret Catholic Church organization known as Probono Dei.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664108950

Lawrence Martin Cooper

Lawrence Martin Cooper was born in Central Ohio. He has lived in several states, and abroad. His employment history is in International Banking, and then Education. Retired now, he enjoys writing, gardening, reading, and listening to music—Classical and New Age. His education background is philosophy and history. He has previously published through Xlibris a collection of poetry entitled ‘In the Course of Things’. He is a lay Buddhist.

Book preview

Prologue

It was the year 50,102 BCE on Planet Earth, though none of the native humans there at that time were tracking years in that manner. In the gray-haze, frosty calm of an early autumn morning, on a grass-covered clearing on the lower slope of one of the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, a brightly glowing, small ball of yellow light appeared. It grew to about six meters in diameter. After peaking, the light diminished to reveal eight human beings huddled together, heavily clothed, and bent over and clinging to each other.

Slowly they disentangled themselves, stood straight and tall. They all looked about the meadow, at their green and quiet surroundings, and the snow-streaked mountains that towered around them. Every one of them took several deep, and appreciative, breaths of the crisp, cedar-scented air.

They each gripped a large back-pack. As they separated from the huddle, they came together in four groups of two—one male and one female in each grouping. They were all young adults, in the prime of life and health.

One of the males held in his hand a large piece of green-blue emerald, a circular, flat and thick, emerald tablet that was about 8 cm across. In the interior of the tablet were groupings of lines. Putting down his back-pack, he took from his outerwear pocket a small laser-gun. He placed the emerald tablet on the ground and cut it into four equal, pie-slice, pieces.

Then he spoke to the others, May the goddess Aditi bless and watch over our undertaking. He paused. Each person bowed their heads and with their right hand touched their forehead and then their chest.

The speaker continued, "Each couple will take a piece of the tablet and then we’ll go our separate ways. The tablet can never again be used for inter-realm transfer unless all of its parts are brought together. Our home planet, Vena, will thus stay safe from access by the Evil One. We have forsaken, and not brought with us, any artificial means of communicating group to group in order that there is no danger of our technology falling into other hands. Before we leave this spot I will destroy this laser-gun.

We all have food to sustain us for 60 days. After that we live off of the land as we have all been trained to do. Though we will normally not be meeting with each other, we will leave evidence of out presence by means of the seven-circle spiral, symbol of Aditi, the Infinite One."

They all, again, bowed and touched their head and then their chest, where under their outer clothes they wore, on a gold chain, a gold disc inscribed with the spiral. The males’ spiral went to the right, the females’ to the left.

The leader took a moment and, silently and searchingly, looked in turn at each of his companions. Then he asked, Are there any questions? No one spoke. He put the laser-gun on the ground, took up a rock, and smashed the gun to small pieces, which he picked up and threw in several directions, scattering them.

He said, Before parting, let us bow our heads in a brief prayer. Aditi is love, and she has made us in Her image, spiritual. We exist to express the love of Aditi, which is unconditional love. We pray to Aditi to guide and assist us in our mission to bring learning, and eventually civilization, to the humans of this planet. They all repeated the touch motions.

After which, the leader looked around at the grouping and said, Let us separate. The people all hugged each other individually and exchanged wishes to fare well. Then each pair walked off in a different direction.

39234.png

The tablet and the eight people originated on the planet that we call Venus. The Venus that we ‘know’ is not the true Venus. It actually is a planet with a very moderate climate, with continents, oceans, abundant plant life and animals. It is the origin/inspiration of the Garden of Eden story. The higher animals, mammals and lizards, live in harmony—the carnivores among them are strictly carrion eaters.

The story of the banishment of Adam and Eve is rooted in the transfer of this group of eight from Venus to Earth, though it was actually not as a punishment. The story of the temptation of Eve is a ‘made up’ story. The Devil, the Evil One, has never had access to Venus. If, however, the Devil could acquire all four pieces and thus restore the Emerald Tablet, he, and his minions—they think anyway—could gain access to Venus and there, also, do their dirty work.

Elements of the Catholic Church, know about the tablet and Venus and the Devil’s objective—to acquire the four pieces and then Venus. There is a secret organization in the Catholic Church known as Probono Dei. It was founded in the mid fourteenth century A.D. (CE) in Constantinople. It is at present made up of about 20 lay members of the Church and several Cardinals. There are also a variable number of agents. The leaders of the organization—the Cardinals and a couple of lay members knowing of the background and the history of the pieces of the Tablet, are very conscious that a one-time high Church official gave one piece of the tablet to the Devil. They, subsequently, do not trust the Church’s hierarchy.

At the time of our story, 2421 CE, though the organization is headquartered, secretly, at the Vatican, it operates mostly out of the St. Paul monastery in Siberia. (The Roman Catholic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Greek Orthodox Church have reunited, and are known, now, as The Catholic Church.)

39236.png

One piece of the tablet was found by a Russian peasant in the Minusinsk River basin in the 1700’s. His plough uncovered it. He gave it to the Russian Orthodox Church. It currently is hidden in the monastery of St. Paul, secreted there inside a statue of the Bogomater.

One piece found its way across the temporary land/ice bridge between Siberia and Alaska and down the North American West Coast and into the hands of the Maya. The Aztecs took it from them. The Spaniards, in the conquest of Mexico, took it from the Aztecs and gave it to one of the Devil’s minions in return for help in the conquest.

One piece went to India where it was taken by Alexander the Great. He had it placed in a gold setting, strung on a gold chain and gave it to his wife Roxana. After her murder, the piece came into the hands of Ptolemy I of Egypt. During civil strife in Egypt, shortly before the Roman take over, it was stolen and taken to Ascalon, where the Templars, during the Crusader conquest in 1153 CE, found it. The Templars held it until the early 1300’s when the Roman Catholic Church Pope Clement V, persuaded by the Devil’s minions, destroyed the Templars. The Church officials seized the emerald and a highly placed Cardinal gave it to one of the Devil’s minions. So Satan has two pieces of the tablet.

The fourth piece, by way of Atlantis, wound up on Malta, as part of the altar decorations in a shrine set up for the worship of Gaia. A Roman general raiding the island, while it was under the rule of Carthage, stole the piece and gave it to the priests of Venus, in Rome. He was seeking the favor of the goddess in wooing a young woman. The priests had it and a similarly-colored stone placed as the eyes of a large, wood and plaster statue of Venus, for in their temple. The statue was known as the emerald-eyed Venus. The statue stayed there until 410 CE, when the Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome.

The emerald was gouged from the statue’s eyes and taken by the Visigoths. This piece of the tablet, which became known as the Eye of Venus disappeared. It reappeared in the late 23rd century when a European private individual gave it to the St. Catherine’s monastery on the planet Chiaros.

Chapter One

AEOLIAN SECTOR OF THE MILKY WAY

PLANET CHIAROS

EASTERN CONTINENT (EASCON)

ST. CATHERINE’S MONASTERY

2421 CE, EARLY MARCH

18:15 LOCAL TIME (JUST BEFORE SUNSET)

Brother Raimond felt a little lightheaded and saw the usual small, black spots swimming in front of him as he brought his overweight body up abruptly from the bending position. In both hands, he clasped bunches of weeds he had just pulled from among his cherished garden plants. He was mildly upset that the Brothers working the garden earlier that day had not themselves removed these invaders. As Supervisor of the Gardens, Brother Raimond would give those Brothers a tongue-lashing tomorrow morning.

Then, his eye caught something that pricked his curiosity. A light had just come on in a window on the third floor, the top floor, of the long, saffron-colored, sand-stone dormitory and administration building, known as the Central Building, located just a little ways south of the garden. Brother Raimond counted off from the left the number of windows and confirmed what he thought. It was the room of Brother Arnold, the Abbot’s Secretary. Now what is he up to, wondered Brother Raimond, who had never liked the Secretary, who in turn had never liked Brother Raimond. He reflected that all of the monks, including Brother Arnold, should be in the church for Vespers, which at St. Catherine’s was held at 1820 hours.

Brother Raimond turned his head west towards the church. The high and Romanesque, cream-colored, limestone building partially blocked the setting sun. He could hear the start of Evensong, as it was carried to him by the west wind blowing onshore and into the desert beyond. The gardener in him noted that in a while, the wind would reverse. Then he muttered, He should be in there.—meaning Brother Arnold and the church. Yeah . . . and so should I, he admitted, with some chagrin.

He hurried towards the church, depositing his handfuls of weeds in a compost pile. On his way, he noticed that in the sky to the north and just outside the monastery wall there hovered a large bird. He paused and thought at first that it was a Desert Hawk. But then he saw that its wings were swept back and he identified it as a Booth’s Night Hawk. It was one of the not many native birds that had survived the human occupation and introduction of Earth flora and fauna on Chiaros.

The short-winged bird was virtually stationary as it rode the breezes. Brother Raimond felt that the hawk was watching something. Prey, maybe? Was it waiting for him to leave the garden? No. The hawk seemed to be taking special care to remain outside the two-meter-high, tan, stuccoed wall, and thus outside the monastery’s formal boundary. Though Brother Raimond could not at this distance discern its eyes, the hawk appeared to him to be watching, and watching fixedly, that lighted window on the third floor of the Central Building. Brother Raimond felt a disquiet and wondered. Booth’s Night Hawks don’t usually come out until well after sunset.

The Brother continued on to the church, and on entering he noted with a satisfactory smile that everyone was intent on the service. By staying in the back of the church, he would not be noticed as coming in late. He took a deep and soothing breath of the cool air inside the church, which always seemed to him to be sanctified, especially, like now, with the scent of burning candles and the slight, lingering scent of incense. His eyes enjoyed the muted yellow of the church’s inner glow from the evening rays of the setting sun shining through the large red, blue, green, and predominately yellow, stained-glass windows behind the alter.

39238.png

In the hawk’s eye and behind the lighted window in the Central Building, the dorm/ admin building, Brother Arnold, the Abbot’s secretary, was sitting at a small, rectangular, wooden table. He ran his long, age-dried fingers over a small, dark ebony box. The top of the box was an intricately carved scene. It consisted of a quarter-moon shaped boat with one sail, surrounded by marks that indicated storm waves. In the boat stood the figure of Christ, raising his hands to calm the waters. Around Christ, cowered a half a dozen figures, the apostles. The Brother ran his fingers around the border of the scene. The border was carved with symbols both Christian and pagan—a cross, a fish, a swastika, a maze, a Celtic cross, and a spiral.

The box had a brass lock. The key was in the lock. Brother Arnold opened the box. Its plush velvet lining cradled a sizeable blue/green emerald. It was shaped like a quarter piece of a pie. It had one rounded side, and two straight sides that met at a 90-degree angle.

The length of the straight sides was four centimeters, the curved side about six centimeters. It was a bit marred from the thousands of years of handling. The series and groupings of lines inside were not readily distinguished from the scuff marks. The Brother took the emerald from the box and caressed it with his right hand. He smiled to himself as he thought of the wonderfully warm, smooth, and curvaceous young body of Gynna and how much he enjoyed running his hands over her. Then he held the emerald up to the window, as Gynna had requested.

After a few seconds, the hawk gave a loud shriek and flew off to the East. Brother Arnold put the emerald back into the box, locked it, and pocketed the key. He took the box out into the hallway and put it in on a shelf of an old and ornately carved, dark wooden, standing cabinet. After locking the cabinet, he pocketed the cabinet key.

The Brother frowned, again thinking of his relationship with Gynna. She had somehow found out about the emerald and was threatening to tell the Abbott of her and the Brother’s affair unless Brother Arnold gave her the emerald. She had asked him to bring it with him on one of his regular visits to the Western Continent (WesCon), but he had said no. If it were found missing, immediate suspicion would fall on him. So together they cooked up a theft plan in which the guilt would fall on an outsider. He did not feel a lot of confidence in trusting his lover, but he had no choice, not really. He was too smitten with Gynna. He was not about to break off the affair.

As for stealing from the monastery, though he had, at first, struggled with the idea a bit, the Brother was able to stifle his qualms about the stealing, with his resentment of the Abbott. Brother Arnold had been at St. Catherine’s far longer, and in more leadership and managerial roles, than the Abbott. When the Abbott position opened up last year due to the death of the then Abbott, Brother Arnold was passed over, and a younger person, one whom Brother Arnold saw as merely a university-level teacher and who had had little administrative experience, was given the post. This ‘put-down’, as he considered it, was frequently in the Brother’s thoughts.

A remembrance of his last meeting with Gynna flashed into his mind. As they lay together, naked, in the hotel room bed, he had asked her, What is it about me that turns you on? Is it the gray hair? Am I a father-figure to you?

Gynna had laughed. She said, Power. Power is what turns me on. She looked at him seriously, and said, You have the power, but not the title. Brother Arnold reflected that she was right, that the Abbott was really just a figurehead. The Brother admitted that he had the real power over not just St. Catherine’s, but all of the monasteries on Chiaros. And all of the schools, too. But he strongly felt that he should also have the title.

39240.png

From a short distance north of the monastery wall, William Halice, commonly known as Big Goober, had watched the hawk fly off. He, too, wondered what a Night Hawk was doing out so early. Big Goober trod easily across a soft sand area. He had come down from the northern Magdalenian settlement to visit kinsmen who lived about five klicks east of St. Catherine’s. The monastery was the turning point in his trek. His mid-height and stocky body negotiated the desert with the ease of forty-plus years of experience. He was a descendant of the original human settlers on Chiaros, people who were to have been removed from the planet by the UN after a scandal about the demise of the native, intelligent species of lizards, known as the Lizzies. In the general removal, some people had, obviously, been overlooked.

The settlers on EasCon deliberately, because they were of a religious organization, The Church of the Magdalene. For political reasons, the UN did not want an incident with them. The present remaining Old Timers (OTs) on the Western Continent (WesCon) were few, and lived in semi-nomadic tribes in desert areas.

The OTs on the Eastern Continent (EasCon) were much more numerous and lived mainly in two large settlements, one in the north-central part of EasCon, and one in the center, near St. Catherine’s. The OTs on EasCon were all members of The Church of the Magdalene, a matriarchal Christian church that had been subject to persecution on Earth. Both TriCom Mining Corporation (TCM), which controlled the Western Continent (WesCon), and the Catholic Church, which controlled the Eastern Continent (EasCon), usually ignored the OTs, though the Catholic Church, namely St. Catherine’s monastery, sometimes did some trading with the Magdalenians.

Big Goober reflected that it would be after dark when he got to his kinsmen’s settlement, but he would have no problem moving across the desert by means of the light from the asteroid belt that circled Chiaros’ sun and was close enough to Chiaros, and dense enough, that it provided the planet with night light, and a small tidal effect.

This solar system, SL22, is located in the Aeolian Sector, 46 parsecs from Earth. The sun is a G star, the same as Earth’s. There are four planets and that thick asteroid belt in the system. The sequence is sun, Planet Ocala, Planet Chiaros, asteroid belt, Planet Symnos—a gas giant, and Planet Eros. Only Chiaros supports life. The overall climate of Chiaros is warm and dry. Parts of both major continents, EasCon and WesCon, experience, but not at the same time, an annual two-month season of frequent, and sometimes sever, weather. Storms can happen at other times of the year, but not often. Snow falls only in the high mountains, and occasionally on the North Pole and the South