The Valhalla Covenant

Sasha ran the tips of her fingers delicately across Reimas’s face not long after dawn, and he woke with a warm, sensuous glow to admire her soft beauty in the early morning light.

All that had happened yesterday came back before he turned and looked out the window onto the mist-shrouded loveliness. A deep snowfall had blanketed the mountains during the night.

Turning back immediately, he looked down at Sasha’s face as her head sank back onto the pillow. The longer he looked, the more aware he became of the expression of tenderness there and of its reflection within himself. Her hair was silky and carefully tended now. The disgusting makeup that had also been part of her defence strategy was long gone, and her light chestnut hair was silky. He marvelled at her beauty.

The beauty of the physical and the wonders of the astral certainly had their contrasting merits. Sasha was complex — innocent yet amazingly aware. Also, it was marvellous that she could have so many sophisticated qualities but still be so sensuous.

Reimas gathered the fall of her hair and she smiled.

“I’m glad to be awake again,” he said.

“You’ve had more adventures?”

“I found someone I could talk to. She could see me, and a she told me about the Vezarin.

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” he replied. “I told her that I wanted answers to difficult questions about my world, and she said that the Vezarin might know.”

“Nothing else?”

“Apparently, they inhabit deep space and have no physical form.”

Sasha was left open-mouthed.

“Oh, so ‘nothing really but this alien girl has just put me in touch with the gods’,” she said, paraphrasing him with shameless irony.

“I’m not sure that’s quite …”

Her face became serious.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No. Of course I’m not.”

Sasha shook her head in disbelief.

“If it had been me …”

“I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. “It’s just that I’ve seen so many strange things lately.”

“And your life is already far outside the normal, anyway, let’s face it.”

“Yes. So, let me begin again.”

Sasha laughed.

“Don’t bother. Just tell me. When are you planning to say hi to these beings without physical form?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking we should get back to the others and tell them what we’ve done so far.”

“Don’t you have a phone?”

“No, but I can use the radio. I’ll do it now.”

Given that there was no cell coverage, Reimas used ham radio when at the bower, with a high-powered set he kept in one of the small upstairs rooms. Once on the air, and in contact, he used coded words to communicate his progress and to indicate that he had at last made it into the astral.

In the event, Laurence was more excited by his update than expected. Straight away, he got in contact with Jos on an internal line and set another process in train. On the quiet, he and Laurence had been talking with an organization based in London. Zephyr, as it was called, was the real deal in research and had been looking into remote viewing for a while. Their commitment to it was strong but had brought about only enough success to know that much more was possible. Some had managed initial separation but couldn’t keep doing it, while others had inaccurate perceptions of the physical world while in the astral, which meant that in some way the dream world was intruding. They were keen to move forward but the wall they’d hit seemed impenetrable.

One of their best people, however, was adamant that if they were not completely successful it didn’t mean that others, elsewhere, would not be. He’d kept tabs on the sale of unusual scientific equipment that might be used in mind research similar to theirs, and had soon discovered Laurence.

Given that he’d made contact initially by ham radio, Laurence was inclined to think well of him and believed that his motives were basically positive.

When he revealed exactly how strong Zephyr’s interest was in remote viewing, the commonality of their goals and interests and their openly anti-establishment attitude gave Laurence further reassurance. He’d happily agreed to share news of any significant successes — pending consultation with Jos.

Also, the contact had made it clear that Zephyr could do a lot for a smaller, younger organization in terms of financial and technical help.

Laurence had then informed Jos about Zephyr and its offers, and given that all their discreet enquiries had been met with good street-cred, they’d agreed that Zephyr should be kept in the loop.

When Reimas called Laurence, Laurence quickly contacted Jos to confirm that it was okay to inform Zephyr of the progress. As arranged, Laurence then got in touch with their Zephyr contact with news of the breakthrough, and was surprised in the ensuing conversation to learn how much he already knew about the Institute.

In return for Laurence’s cooperation, he also offered a brief history of Zephyr. Arising out of the mayhem of the first swathe of Global Unity industrial reform, it had wealthy and powerful backers that thought little of the new administration.

While that conversation was under way, Jos arrived at the lab, intending to speak to Reimas on the radio. As soon as the contact from Zephyr signed off, he got Reimas back.

“We’re going to need you here, Blaze,” he said, without ceremony. “There’s a few more pots on the stove than you might have thought.”

Reimas and Sasha left the house within half an hour. It was midday and most of the snow had already melted from the roads. With the light midweek traffic and a fast car it was only three hours before they were back in the city.

“Could you call Jos on the car phone?” Reimas asked Sasha as they passed the enclave gates. “Ask him to send the punt over.”

She smiled and hit the send button then studied the face that appeared on the screen. Jos blinked in surprise but said hello with his usual geniality.

“Hi,” Sasha greeted him. “I’m told we’re nearly at your place. Blaze would like you to make the punt available.”

“Always at his service my dear, but for my part I suppose I’ll be glad to get my McLaren back safe and sound.”

“Oh, so it’s yours?”

Reimas shook his head patiently.

“I think it’s all still here. See you soon.”

Jos was tense with restrained excitement when they arrived, but he took them straight to the lounge room for a drink and a quick introduction to the girls before he whisked Reimas off to brief him in the privacy of Laurence’s lab.

“You’re not spinning a tale concerning this breakthrough?” Laurence asked when he saw him.

Reimas rolled his eyes.

“All right, dumb question I know, but you probably don’t know what it means for us. Have you told him, yet?” he asked Jos.

“No. Thought I’d leave that to you.”

Laurence leaned back in his chair.

“Ever heard of Zephyr?”

“Sure. Who hasn’t?”

“No, I mean the organization.”

“Maybe.”

Jos nodded, meaningfully, but let Laurence continue.

“British crowd,” he said. “It’d be no wonder if you hadn’t, really. I got a contact out of the blue when I was sourcing bits for the dream lab.”

“Seems they’ve been about for a bit,” said Jos.

Reimas raised his eyebrows.

“So they’re old. What’s it to us?”

“They’re rich — word has it that they’re wealthier than almost anything except the Catholic Church,” Laurence told him, “and they want what you’ve got.”

“Access to the astral? Why?”

“Can you do it reliably?”

“So far, three episodes. Seems to get easier each time.”

“Well that’s why. It speaks for itself. In any case there’s someone here who’d very much like to talk to you about it. Just happened to be in the country, he says. Least ways, Laurence told him about you three hours ago, and he’s been here nearly half an hour.”

“You still haven’t told me why they want it.”

“Honestly, I don’t know, but I do know that they’re anti-establishment.”

“On whose account?”

Laurence and Jos both looked sheepish.

“Theirs,” Jos answered, “and the buzz online.”

“I’ll meet the guy, but on my conditions,” Reimas told them with a frown and a shake of the head. “One of these is that you make something for me.”

“Sure, what?”

“A brain wave scanner — portable. Can you do that?”

“What sort of range?”

“Eight or ten metres, maybe.”

“That’s a tough call, but maybe if it had a narrow spread. I’ll look into it.”

“What do you want it for?” asked Jos.

“To spot freaks like you at a distance.”

“You’re upset.”

“I’m just surprised that you’d tell my news to anyone, let alone someone outside the Institute.”

“We didn’t say who you were,” Laurence reassured him, “and we both think this is a contact worth cultivating.”

“Okay, but we play it my way. I have more to tell you than you think. I’ve told you that I’ve perfected astral projection and done it extensively over the last few days, but there’s more.”

“What?”

“Try this for size. I’ve been to many different planets, an array of different cultures ... ”

“Whoa there!” Jos exclaimed. “Different planets?”

“Sure, why not?” said Laurence, shrugging. “I’d have been disappointed if he hadn’t done a bit of zipping about the place.”

“Yeah, but … yeah, we’re talking … ah, this is mind blowing,” Jos effused in an uncharacteristically rambling manner. “Places in this world was all I’d stopped to consider. So you’re saying there really are other inhabited worlds?”

“There are, but the big surprise is how different they are to our own.”

Laurence and Jos glanced at each other briefly before returning to Reimas.

“Well, they’re peaceful for starters,” he continued. “Not one of these cultures seemed other than happy and prosperous. In the end, all I wanted to do was to find someone who could tell me why we aren’t.”

Jos shook his head in wonder.

“Did you?”

“Maybe.”

“Are you sure these places and people were real?”

“As far as I can tell. They were places I could visit repeatedly. Time passed, things happened and I returned to some places several times.”

“But couldn’t it still have been your imagination?”

“Weren’t you listening? I could come and go, only to return later to find they’d still be there much as they were before — an incredible construct of the imagination if it was, I must say. Take a look at Sasha’s drawings if you want some sort of evidence.”

“Here,” said Sasha, opening the folder.

Anna and Heidi came in and stood behind Jos. Everyone looked on in growing awe as he leafed through the dozen or so graphic pages portraying what Reimas had described to her. Some of the drawings drew gasps of amazement while others made them laugh.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Jos. “This is what you saw, the way you described it to ... Sasha?”

“Sure.”

“She’s quite an artist — and you seem to have been to a hell of a lot of places in a damn short time.”

“I’d agree with that. I found I could go from one place to another almost instantly, as long as I had an idea what it was like. Strange really. I don’t know how it works but I guess I’ll find out in the end.”

It took a few minutes to settle Jos and the girls down but in the end Jos interrupted, knowing that they had to return to the demands of the present.

“It’s time we went to see our guest,” he said. “No names though, and of course we won’t discuss business directly.”

As he entered the room Reimas noted that the stranger was of a slightly built frame but carried a strong air of carefully cultivated self-possession. He had short brown hair, alert blue eyes and sported an expensive looking hand knitted burgundy woollen vest with the obligatory blue jeans of the scientist.

Jos made his apologies for the wait before presenting Blaze, minus the name. After some polite small talk, they sat together around a low timber coffee table and got down to it.

Aware from the outset that Zephyr was involved in a wide array of research issues, Reimas wondered whether that extended to weaponry and brought up Britain’s involvement in supplying weapons to the pro GU government in the recent Romanian civil war.

As it happened, he struck a chord. The Zephyr guy was keenly interested in weapons and had followed the progress of the war right up to its particularly ugly conclusion only months earlier.

Responding enthusiastically to Reimas’s icebreaker, he made some surprisingly well-informed comments about the advanced military hardware in question, and made passing reference to the technical advantages of some weaponry items that had only very recently been released.

Impressed by the breadth of his interests in this exchange, the guest from Zephyr began to put a few things together and realized who this fellow had to be. No names had been exchanged yet and no one had said specifically who had made the astral breakthrough, but that made little difference given the information he already had.

Zephyr was, as it happened, deeply involved in scientific and military research, although nothing he had mentioned would necessarily give that away. Even so, when he began to review how much he had said, he become certain that the person he was talking to mostly was the person he’d come so far to see. Only a man of considerable presence could have successfully drawn him out like that.

“You seem to have a good handle on the matter,” Reimas observed after he’d finished a detailed summary of the tactical situation in the final days of the Romanian conflict.

“Ah well,” the stranger replied, now in no doubt that he had been finessed, “It’s all about control in the end, although I have to say that it’s distressing when weapons designed with the express intent of maiming and killing civilians are used like that. It demonstrates that we must all be informed or suffer the consequences.”

“We do need to know what we’re up against,” Reimas agreed.

The stranger leaned in a little.

“Actually,” he said, “that’s only the small stuff. Matters of the mind interest me much more. We’ve heard a thing or two about your goals and activities, and feel that any effective fighting force should move to explore other options for establishing and holding control.”

Reimas met his eyes, evenly.

“Assuming you have a good intent for such well established control, then it’s possible we might be interested in sharing.”

The stranger smiled.

“Well, surely you wouldn’t have me believe we should let inferior minds continue to lead world affairs?” he said. “You must know how ignorant and incompetent our current world leadership is, and to think that such bombastic tyrants will but slink away into the darkness unchallenged would be naïve in the extreme.”

“It’s not enough simply to defend reactively against the evil doers and their actions?”

“Of course not. Allow them to be the initiators and innocent people suffer. A man of superior intelligence should have the knowledge to anticipate evil and give it little room to move.”

“That can be easily justified in a pragmatic context, but how would you define the concept in moral terms?” Reimas asked.

“Purely defensive strategies are not only woefully ineffective,” the visitor replied, “but cowardly as well. If you could be sure that wearing flak jackets would save you every time, you still wouldn’t be making a stand against evil by wearing them. We should all ensure we’re effectively armed against ignorance and oppression so that we can put it in its place whenever it rears its ugly head.”

Reimas raised an eyebrow a little.

“It seems to me that a reactive strategy is what leads to the infernal merry-go-round,” the visitor continued. “Initiators build freedom. Only a superior man who thinks ahead with discipline can short-circuit long established patterns of poor behaviour, and that’s why such men must be allowed to lead.”

“Granted,” Reimas replied, “but if superior minds should take the lead, that implies the need to determine who has the best mind.”

The newcomer laughed.

“You have me, there,” he agreed. “In fact this issue has been very much at the heart of debate within Zephyr in recent times.”

Laurence, hitherto silent, shook his head dubiously.

“Seems to me you’re talking about elitist leadership and outright firepower in the same breath,” he protested. “Surely that’s been a formula for disaster so many times. I mean, just look at the ruddy Bolsheviks in 1918?”

Jos nodded approvingly, so he went on.

“Even on an individual scale, I don’t see how you could fail to agree that weapons designed to kill must be a temptation to their owners. They’re like a canker wreaking evil from within, a vote of confidence in the violent bottom line.”

The guest sighed. His blue eyes were keen, yet held a sort of veiled melancholy. A careful observer might gather the impression that he thought perhaps too deeply about things than he ought for his own comfort.

“So if a man was to cave another man’s head in with a simple cudgel,” he replied, “it would be appropriate to burn all the trees and the pieces of wood because they were potential weapons?”

“You ignore, perhaps, that the trees and sticks were not designed to kill,” Reimas countered.

“Truth to tell,” the visitor said shaking his head grimly, “we can never be sure that our neighbours hold no weapons, or that they will never use them against us. The very fact that the Bolshevik’s opponents were either too poorly armed or too reluctant to use them was what led to that satanic maelstrom of their rule. Bear in mind if you will that at one point, Sidney Reilly’s operatives at that embodiment of evil, Felix Dzerjinsky, at the end of a gun-barrel, but were too gutless to kill him.”

The guest stretched out on the lounge with elaborate self-assurance. Debate for him was far more a pleasure than a chore.

“Maybe so,” Laurence admitted, “but the Bolshevik revolution just goes to show that weapons can fall into the wrong hands all too easily.”

“No. What that incident shows, is that men of morality and justice can’t let the Dzerjinskys of the world take or hold power.”

“And that sometimes a bullet is the only solution?”

“Well, you could use a stick, I suppose.”

Everyone laughed at that.

Reimas had hoped to hear such things. It certainly clarified some issues for him. What clinched it though, was the fellow’s sincere regard for consciousness and individual responsibility.

“I like your style,” said the newcomer, with surprising timing, considering that Reimas had at the same time been thinking more or less the same thing, “and I fully understand the merits of this sort of discussion.”

“I applaud that you understand it,” Reimas replied.

Sean looked around briefly as if to check that no one else had entered the room.

“Indeed, and since we understand each other so well, I’ll be direct with you. My name is Sean, to get things moving, and I have a seat on the inner congress of Valhalla. You appear to have guessed that we research and build technology and obviously you know that we’re interested in the astral.”

Each of the four men sat in a relaxed fashion in armchairs around a table. There was a notable increase in tension at the fellow’s mention of the astral, however, and the three began to look very hard at the fourth.

“What’s Valhalla?” Reimas asked.

“Zephyr’s true name. It must be kept secret. In revealing it, I demonstrate to you our great interest in the Institute and our commitment to establishing a firm alliance. I assure you that Valhalla is a force to be reckoned with and it’s much older even than we led you to believe.”

Jos leaned in a little.

“Really? How old?”

“Very. It was founded long ago in Estonia. Remnants of the Templars sought to secure their future with it after the famous purge instituted by King Phillip of France in 1307.”

“So that’s the source of your enormous wealth?” Reimas asked.

“The foundation of it, would be more accurate,” Sean replied. “It’s grown great by any standards yet there are still forces more powerful, more destructive. We’ve long known that we’d have to cooperate with others to fight it, and have had the Institute under surveillance for many months now to that end.”

“Why us?” Jos asked.

“I wouldn’t be here now if we weren’t satisfied that our philosophies were compatible.”

“These forces …” Reimas began.

“Yes, Reimas …”

The others stared. No one ever used a key operative’s real name, and this outsider was not even supposed to know the field names.

“Forgive me,” he said, his demeanour serious and respectful. “Only once will I do that. I had to prove the strength of my assertions. We know more than you might think. As for the forces arrayed against us, we believe they’re older and far more powerful than you could possibly have thought. They’re secretive and we in Valhalla have long held theories about why.”

“If you mean to alarm us …” Jos began.

“Alarm, perhaps, is not what I intended, but awareness, yes — and that in any measure we can only truly achieve by joining forces. I know that you’ll draw the line at sharing your astral discoveries with us unless that happens so there it is; we need an alliance.”

Laurence and Jos looked to Reimas.

“Of course,” he said, to Sean’s relief. “It’s essential. If we find allies and can’t join with them, we’ll ultimately fail.”

Sean leaned forwards and offered his hand, which each of the others shook in turn.

“There will have to be full disclosure of resources on both sides. Naturally we don’t wish to know anything of your day to day methods, but we will help you to fill in some of those cracks in your security.”

Reimas smiled.

“You’re welcome to the astral research. What can you offer?”

“Funds, technology and information.”

“What sort of technology?”

“I came here, as you may have observed, by water taxi, but in truth it was a decoy and I made no use of it. I’m confident that you will, given time, excuse my little deception. I think you’ll be impressed with our latest toy. Could I ask you to accompany me outside?”

He stood and, with his hosts behind him, made his way downstairs.

Out on the main steps, he smiled, and before anyone could ask why, an aircraft appeared on the lawn behind him, and not just any average aircraft. Clearly, it was the most advanced sort of fighter jet although larger, and there was still no indication of how it had got there.

“You travelled here in this?” said Jos.

“Yes. Our cloaking technology is truly astonishing, if I say so myself.”

“You were involved in its development?” Laurence asked with intense professional interest.

“Yes.”

“But the drive …” said Jos. “Vertical landing would have to be noisy and I heard nothing.”

“Quite. There’s much that we can show you.”

“Why, with all this, do you need us?” Reimas asked.

“As you said before, we need each other if we are to succeed against the forces arrayed against us. Besides, we have less of the activist element than you might imagine. Valhalla is a haven for thinkers. We create, we observe, we discover, but we know now that more is required — much more. Our approach has been largely theoretical but, as you have done, we must learn to engage more with the circumstances of the day.”

“Are you truly aware of what an alliance between us could mean?” Reimas asked.

Sean looked him straight in the eye.

“Of course I am, which is precisely why I knew that some petty factional activist group in Britain would not have served.”

Reimas nodded.

“There are such groups, of course,” Sean continued. “There are too many and they’re too busy fighting with each other to set their sights on the real goal — the real enemy. The Institute is much more focused and has the seeds of a wider movement in its association with the Little River.”

“That’s true,” said Laurence.

“And it’s important,” Sean stated emphatically. “Our criteria are rational and our objectives long-term so our people would never consider taking the next bold move without the fundamentals being right.”

Reimas turned to his two companions.

“I take it you’re in?” he asked.

“You forgetting that we brought you here?” said Jos.

“No, of course not, but it still doesn’t mean that your agreement to this proposal’s automatic.”

“I guess not.”

“We’d be able to expand, as we said we ought,” said Reimas.

Sean cleared his throat.

“Would any of you, at least in theory, have any objection to the Institute becoming the public face, so to speak, of Valhalla? With our technology, and our vast accumulation of knowledge, speculative or otherwise, concerning the enemy, it would seem wise to keep Valhalla as the inner sanctum.”

Reimas’s expression cooled.

“I understand the advisability of protecting Valhalla’s assets,” he said, “but if this amounts to us giving up decision making power, I could not agree.”

Sean shook his head.

“I understand, but that was never my intention. I meant only to have access to Valhalla restricted to the few. As key elements of the Institute, you three would have complete access but, by the same token, Valhalla would wish to have representatives involved in the process of expanding the Institute.”

“Yourself?”

“Most likely, with no more than two or three others. Our membership is largely old and few of them are keen about taking on activist roles in this change of direction. They know that it’s necessary but, as I said, they are creative minds, not men of action.”

“Then, in principle, I think we have an agreement,” said Jos, confirming the statement with an interrogative glance at Reimas and Laurence.

With that, Sean re-engaged the cloaking on the ‘flyer’ as he called it, lest any see it that ought not, and took them for a closer inspection.

A dark hole, apparently into nowhere, appeared and from it, a ladder descended. Only when they passed through the strange hole could they see what lay within. A surprisingly stylish and spacious interior was even larger and more comfortable after they ascended via an internal lift into the main cabin. More like the interior of a luxury cruiser than a fighter plane, the only part of the cabin to display any obvious instruments was the actual cockpit.

“How fast?” Reimas asked.

“I can’t tell you precisely,” Sean replied, “if only because no one yet has dared to find the limits, but I can tell you that I was in the air only a couple of hours from London to Sydney.”

Jos whistled.

“What about armaments?”

“Yes.”

“And cloaked, of course. I still can’t quite believe it.”

“I’m curious,” said Reimas. “At those sorts of speeds, wouldn’t you need some sort of gravitational dampening?”

Sean looked at him sharply.

“For the time being, my friend, I can tell you no more. All in good time. What we really need to concern ourselves about, now, is a plan to expand our numbers in the reasonably short term.”

“Others in our local group will need to hear about this before we initiate any contact with our other discrete branches around the country,” said Jos. “Will you stay overnight?”

“It would be a pleasure.”

“Good. We’ll meet tomorrow morning and I’ll make as much of this situation as plain as I can.”

Throughout the remainder of the day, Jos organized the proposed wider meeting while Laurence and Reimas introduced Sean to the dream lab and much of the data accumulated so far.

While details of the first lucid dreams experienced there were fascinating to Sean, he found the new material Reimas had so recently returned with most astonishing. Such information would be surprising for anyone, but Sean had built sufficient experience in Valhalla’s own labs to know that, with this sort of breakthrough, the sky was literally the limit.

Even so, had he not already established that Reimas was an agent of the highest calibre, not to mention a man of both charisma and learning, he might have wondered about some of the details. In the event, however, he listened at length to Reimas’s descriptions, perused Sasha’s drawings and took on board the bizarre matter of the Javoran astral guide, the Aereons and the Vezarin, with intense interest.

Reimas at no point gave any indication that he should apologize for such extraordinary information and in the end, the only challenge Sean put to him was to ask why he had delayed seeking out the Vezarin.

“I’ve felt that I should wait for the right time since the situation is so delicate and there are so many variables,” Reimas replied.

Eventually he excused himself, feeling the need to get out and spend some time alone. At first he started up the hill, but on a whim decided to turn around and make for the pier.

Pleased to find that the last warm rays of sun lit the beach with a special glow, he felt that the deepening colours did much to enhance perception. Even the sensation of sand beneath his feet felt good.

After a few initial doubts he decided that the new turn of events was definitely for the best, and thereafter became calm, meditatively facing the darkening sky and the quiet rippling water.

Eventually, as his eyes adjusted he caught sight of a slender figure not far away on a rock at the end of the beach. With the sight came a subtle fragrance of attraction, and he looked more carefully.

Moving closer he saw that it was Hope. She sat up, hugged her knees and said hello. As he came closer still their gaze met and he had the strange thought that she was at once distant and familiar, as if he had known her somewhere in the unseeable past.

“I wondered where you’d got to,” he said.

She smiled provocatively.

“Oh, I’ve just been hanging around.”

“I can’t help feeling as if I know you from somewhere, though I don’t mean only from the other day.”

She laughed.

“Perhaps in another life.”

“If so that could just as well be a terrible thing as a good one.”

“I hope not. I’d hate to have been waiting such a long time for a bad thing.”

“So how long have you been waiting, and how did you know where to find me?” he asked, lightly.

“An old gypsy lady told my mother when I was born that I’d meet a tall, dark-haired stranger while lying on a rock, and he’d come over and say to me, ‘I feel as if I know you from somewhere.’”

“Ha! The rock might have been anywhere,” he rejoined.

“I always lie on rocks wherever I go.”

“Then your chances of meeting tall, dark strangers are extremely high, especially with that smile of yours.”

“Why thank you, and that may be the case, but not all of them have your eyes.”

“It’s time you went back to school, young lady. All this idle lying around is breeding mischief.”

“You know as well as I do that I’m a prisoner, here.”

“Not mine.”

“Yes, yours, if only because now that you’ve saved my life, you won’t willingly see it endangered again.”

“How perceptive you are. Well, I’ll have to see what I can do about that.”

“You’d kill a man for me?”

“I’d kill that man.”

They walked together back along the beach then up through the garden, surrounded by the scent of flowers — Port Wine Magnolia and Daphne, Reimas thought — following a path that led up to a side porch with vine covered trellises.

From the main lounge’s large stone chimney came a mildly aromatic smoke that lifted only lazily into the cool evening air. The gentle sound of the almost imperceptible waves on the beach rose up, mingling with the smell of smoke and evening scented flowers to caress the senses with a unique patina.

Reimas’s habit of deliberate perception gave him the impression that in some way Hope seemed larger than life, that somehow she was extending her mind beyond her normal self.

In the wake of that thought, she leaned in towards him and relaxed with her head and shoulders resting against his chest. Even so, he sensed that her mind was positioned somewhere well away from her physical being, watching and directing like a puppeteer.

He perceived a strong will in her and was concerned that she might think affection could be used to gain some sort of control over him. Sometimes added complexities were helpful in stimulating the mind, but right now he had a surfeit.

Hope suspended her own internal speculation as if in response to that thought, and looked more closely at his face.

“I thought I’d like you and I do, maybe more than I thought, but I’m not in the game, am I?”

“There’s no game — not at the moment anyway.”

“That takes the sparkle out of things.”

“Maybe in one sense, but there are payoffs.”

“What — for you?”

“For you, also. You’ve a long way to run yet, and the ground’s uncertain at best.”

“I suppose,” Hope conceded, “and I guess nothing’s totally bad until you make it that way yourself.”

“Without doubt. I’m sure everything will work well for you in the end, if it does for any of us.”

While they were talking the moon had risen and was shining, deep yellow, just above the water. Most of the beach was visible from their vantage point on the porch. It was another lovely picture. Slightly larger waves rolled into the beach now, gleaming until they hissed against the moonlit sand.

Together they looked up toward the rocks at the north end of the beach where an occasional, more powerful wave burst into white spray, clearly visible in the gathering moonlight.

Reimas thought of the rich tapestry of stars that was currently hidden by the moon and the nearby city lights. He hungered, as he always did when he looked at the city night sky, for the wide-open spaces where the stars blazed true.

Equally appreciative, each sat comfortably with their backs to the sandstone wall and enjoyed the organic warmth radiating from it, as the indigo evening sky darkened and the brightest stars emerged.