The Path of the Four
Chapter 19: Popping Off Earth

“Once upon a time, on Earth,” Faz-Gar said. “A little frog was lost and in the kingdom of great dangers. It had to cross a mighty, raging river. An alligator offered its help. The little frog was hesitant, and afraid. After all, it was only a little frog, and the alligator was an alligator. Together, the frog and the alligator discovered the flood that was coming, and that they were each other’s relatives. In the kingdom of great dangers, even a little frog and an alligator are family.”

“Uh-huh,” Joe said. “Even I understood that.”

Ariana Orlando said, “Test?”

Joe Whitney said, “Test?” He rubbed his few strands of remaining hair on his balding head, close to the back of his fat neck.

Because of the immediate echo from Joe, Ariana turned to Voh-Heem. “I don’t what this new revelation is about, but did you know about it?”

“Like all Zah-Gre, I knew what was in the Fourth Book,” Voh-Heem said. “I knew that the Inner Clan shared some kind of confidence, but I knew nothing more, and much remains mysterious to me.”

Ariana felt two seconds of skepticism over that statement. There were members of the crew, up on Vertex, who for weeks had passed the Tool Closet, the Medical Center, and Atmosphere Control--who weren’t quite sure where to find the Tool Closet, the Medical Center, and Atmosphere Control. They weren’t stupid. Their duties didn’t concern those areas. Voh-Heem had been walking near secrets and had felt no compulsion to part the curtains and sneak a peek.

“You couldn’t ask?”

Joe sounded annoyed.

“I am Side Clan,” Voh-Heem said, as if that explained everything, and, Ariana thought, it did. “Some create, some shape, some participate in other ways.”

Ariana wondered what that last sentence meant but Faz-Gar continued.

“After Vur-Zah, called Yamato, went away from Earth, he went to see Ab-Druh, here on Zah-Gre. He, Vur-Zah, said there was a great lack of balance from Earth, so great it threatened to tip the universe over.”

Ariana blew some of her brown and gray hair out of her eyes. Perfect, Ariana thought. Yamato understood, understands, wherever he is now, just how to explain the Alpha Covenant to the Zah-Gre. She found it easy to imagine Brantley and the Better World Foundation, at some point down the line, extending the regime of the Paladins of the Promise, and the Alpha Covenant, to here, to Zah-Gre, and then into Further Space. Welcome to paradise, shake hands with utopia. Here’s the ticket: murder. Don’t sweat the admission price. We’ll pay it and never tell you.

“And for anyone to correct it,” Faz-Gar went on, “there would need to be a test. So who would take up the task of the Greater Turning would fit the great effort ahead.”

“Not be like some killing machine, like Brantley’s assassins,” Ariana said.

Joe nodded.

“So I didn’t take Bud or Mac’s head off--I always get them mixed up--and I got an ‘A.’”

“And I just saved the life of my brother’s killer. I wanted to kill him, you know. I wanted to put Joe’s gun in his mouth, and pull the trigger, and watch the back of his head fly off and smell his blood and brains.”

“Uh, anyone else here uncomfortable with what science girl just said?”

“But,” Faz-Gar said to Ariana, ignoring Joe, “you didn’t do what you felt like doing.” He paused. “Inner Clan of the North Land -- do you know the Hermes Lattice?”

“Sure. It’s the hypothetical successor to the Meta-Net. It, when somebody figures out how to build it and does so, is supposed to cross over the line from a telecommunications medium that it is almost like an artificial intelligence--as the Meta-Net is now--to being both a t.c. medium and an a.i. Our Babe is an a.i. that operates inside all of Vertex’s systems. The Hermes Lattice would have no boundaries.”

“Vur-Zah has told us the Hermes Lattice exists, now, and sits on the desk of Roger Brantley’s private office in the Human community of Armstrong City.”

Ariana visualized Brantley in his office on Earth’s moon, and outside the blue planet hanging in the lunar sky, the world Brantley had made into his toy, with the best, most noble of intentions.

That’s when Ariana started to hate him, maybe because she had stopped hating Peter Hargrove moments ago.

“Wouldn’t be the whole Lattice,” Ariana corrected Faz-Gar. “It would only be the control unit.” She blushed. “I’m sorry. That sounded a little rude.”

“Brantley uses this gizmo for whatever communications network hooked up with these Paladins bozos.”

Ariana, Voh-Heem, and Faz-Gar all looked at Joe.

“Hey, she’s the scientist and spiritual leader. I’m the ex-guerilla. I know about these things. So if somebody trashes this gizmo, that’s it for this whole rotten setup?”

“I doubt it, Joe,” Ariana said. “We’re talking about a secret, malevolent institution that has been around for more than twenty years. ‘Trashing the gizmo’ will give the Better World boys a bloody nose. However, stopping what they’ve done is going to take a lot more work.”

She looked at Faz-Gar.

“And that’s the Greater Turning, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Faz-Gar said.

“I want to know how Yamato is popping off Earth, and then over here.”

“The same way you will be able to.”

Ariana looked around, to see the source of the new voice.

Akira Yamato, coffee cup handle ears, smiling round face and all, stood in the water behind the boat.

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