TCF

F0

Jashen had his head over his desk in silent prayer. Gabriel and Dory came him for a hug, one at each side, and at his invitation they took a seat. “Be at peace,” he said. “Do you think Kimberly and Sofia experienced the Change contrary to the will of Bat-El?”

His children both shook their heads, and Dory stood up to approach a map posted on one wall of his office. “Kim and Sofie are being held here, father,” she said, pointing to a place northeast of Cody. “Not tonight, but on the following night, they will escape. They will hide on a freight train. By the time that train makes its first stop here, in Powell, they will be unconscious from exposure. We must be waiting for them with a warm station wagon filled with warm blankets and warm broth in a Thermos, not to mention the bodies of two warm friends. Otherwise Kim and Sofie will die somewhere in the mountains south of Billings.”

Jashen did not doubt his daughter, but he asked, “How do you know all that, Dory?”

“Kim knows it. That’s her new talent. She’s the Seer. And I know it because she told me.”

Jashen turned to Gabriel and said, “Put the coin on Peter’s desk. No, not a copy, son, the original.” He reached behind some books on a shelf, then set a golden bladeless knife hilt on his desk. He said, “The time is approaching when only you can keep it safe, Gabriel.”

His son took that as a cue to lift the Golden Gift from the desk and place it securely in the little hidden space-time pocket that was always next to him. Jashen said, “Bat-El gave this to my father and I now give it to you. But use it only at need. That makes you solely responsible for the Last Rite, Gabriel, but only for as long as the Temple is firmly in the hands of the Church.”

Dory wondered aloud, "Where do I fit in, father?"

Jashen said, “You are a driver now, so you will share the wheel with me. And gas money is not an issue.” He dropped a thousand in twenties on the desk. Dory picked up two of the bills and looked at them closely. She noted that they all had different serial numbers. The bills were not copies like Jerry’s fifty cent pieces. “That money is from my own father. He could drop a hundred million dollars on our little town, but then a cup of coffee would run fifty bucks."                              F1

"The country is at war," Gabriel reminded his father. "There’s strict gasoline rationing, so no amount of money will help us."

"But I’m a member of the clergy," Jashen said. "The X sticker on my woodie gives me permission to buy unlimited supplies just like any fireman or cop or congressman in Washington DC. Now let’s go to Wyoming and save your friends.”

Kim and Sofie were attentive to the tighter security arrangements Tolson mentioned, but the only real change seemed to be how their tormentors would look at a scrap of paper from their pocket before punching the buttons that would let them out. That meant their tormentors were changing codes daily.

Sofie almost despaired but Kim explained (by way of Dory to maintain secrecy) that the change did not make their task any harder at all. They just had to pick a range and try all the combos in it night after night until the daily shifting combination happened to fall into that range.

Next to the door leaving the clinic was a square keypad with the digits 0 through 9, and the letters A through F, and Kim knew from listening that the combo was only four keystrokes. As soon as she started trying a very vivid daydream of time appeared in her mind. To Kim, after the Change, the future was like a self-assembling house of cards. She could see the payoff, ten nights in the future, when doing the range from 7000 to 7FFF she punched 7BC6 and the door clicked open. The future was a memory to Kim.

But Kim wanted out that very night, so she started trying the range from 1000 to 1FFF. The house of cards in time collapsed and assembled itself again. This time the correct answer would come four days away. Kim tried higher ranges and got jackpots ranging from two days to two weeks. But when she got in the D's she saw the number that was their ticket home that night: D1FC.

Still, it was November and they were wearing nothing but slippers and hospital gowns. That itself was part of Tolson’s security arrangements. Kim told Sofie to gather blankets and towels and whatever else she could find to create makeshift extra clothing to shield them from the cold. “This is going to frighten Agent Tolson to no end,” said Kim as they both bundled up. “This, and especially what we do after this.” She could see the events leading to their escape from the camp stacking in her mind.

Sofie said, "I'm fine with Tolson being scared shitless." F2

They stepped out into Wyoming on a cold November night. The girls could see the clinic was one of hundreds of long single-story sixplexes with tarpaper walls, each one surrounded by drainage ditches crossed by gangplanks. Some had their interiors lit. Sofie wanted to knock on a door begging for help but Kim shook her head. Instead Kim chose a greenhouse that was empty but locked. She quietly told her friend, “We have special talents now just like Gabriel and Dory do. I know you can break anything you touch, if you want to. So break that padlock.” Sofie didn’t believe her, but the lock broke in her hands anyway. “How do you like them apples?” Sofie husked. “If I knew I could do that we’d a left that hellhole any time we wanted.”

Kim shook her head again. "It was an electric lock, so if you broke it, we’d still be in that hellhole."

“So how did you get us out of there?”

“I’ll explain when we get indoors,” Kim said.

Sofie was disappointed that the greenhouse was cold. There was a vegetable garden inside, but the glass only kept away the snow and wind. Kim told Sofie what she knew about her new talent.

In just one half hour they were discovered by the Japanese-American fellow who maintained this greenhouse and he was quite angry at the intrusion.

Kim bowed deeply and said, "Hello, Mr. Kaneko, please forgive the intrusion. We were held in another part of the camp and we escaped, but as you can see we are not dressed for the cold so we came here by necessity."

Mr. Kaneko’s anger at finding Kim and Sofie hiding in his garden faded to pity when Kim told him they had been held prisoner in the clinic since June. Not even the first wartime internees arrived until August. Still, he had questions. "Who are you? And how did you know my name?"

"I am Kimberly Zinter," she said, "and this is my friend Sofie Krause. We're kids from a little town named Headwater."

For his second question Kim chose to resort to a falsehood, since the truth was too crazy: she could see up the timeline to a place where she, having escaped the camp, would speak with Yeshua about rewarding the fellow who helped her escape, and in that future Yeshua supplied the information. F3

She said, "The building were we were held had records and we saw them. I know you are George Kaneko, and your parents are issei. They were born in Japan but immigrated here and became American citizens. I know that you are nisei, you were born here which makes you every bit an American as we are. I know you are in this camp with your gife and your three sansei daughters. And I know that you and your family, through hard work, made a good life on your Washington State strawberry farm. But after the internment was announced you were tricked into selling your land for pennies on the dollar. Now you and family are forced to crowd into a single-room in barracks where you shit, shower and shave with other families and eat in a common room that serves the whole block. And all this happened out of the fear that descended on the country in the wake of Pearl Harbor."

"Land of the free, home of the brave," Sofie added with a sneer. "And Tolson bragged of making it all come to be."

"I'm very sorry," said Kaneko, "but you cannot stay in my greenhouse. When they find you they will punish me."

"I understand," said Kim. "But please, Mr. Kaneko, do your daughters have any clothing to spare? You can see we would not last very long outdoors in hospital gowns."

"They are too young to have anything that would fit you. But I will give you spare garments of my own, even shoes and jackets, and when you are captured, as you certainly will be, you can say you stole them from my greenhouse."

"You are very kind, Mr. Kaneko, but why are you so sure we will be captured?"

"There is a barbed-wire fence that began to go up in October and it is nearly complete, much to our bewilderment and dismay. We all thought perfect acquiescence to the internment would prove our loyalty to America. But that was not to be. And now armed guards patrol the gap that remains."

When they were outfitted against the cold Kim bowed to Mr. Kaneko again, and Sofie joined her. They were both deeply grateful and Kim told him she would move heaven and earth to reward him far beyond what his little help merited. Then the girls departed the greenhouse.

Kim knew the path in time that led to their escape was razor thin and complicated beyond belief, yet she reeled it off for Sofie. Then she said, "Now repeat it all back to me." F4

"You must be joking," replied Sofie, nearly choking with indignation. "I stopped listening when you started to go on about the railroad stuff."

"Give it a shot," said Kim. "Breaking things isn't the only thing that's different about you."

"Okay," Sofie sighed, and to her surprise, she found she could do just what Kim asked. "The only gap in the fence is along the west side of the camp away from the train station. It is guarded by two towers with high-power searchlights while seven lesser-equipped towers guarded the rest. We're going to make for the fence along the train tracks and choose a section equidistant between two guard towers. We'll be spotted but none of the guards will shoot right away. Then I just touch a lamp post and this takes out the the light overhead as though I somehow reached up there and pulled the wires. After that, I merely touch a fence post to snap it off at the base. The fence dangles suspended by the two nearest posts, and that lets you and me roll right under it. Only then do the guards start firing, but none of them will score hits 'cause it's dark. We run for the tracks. The guards can't leave their posts so they call it in by phone. We find the manual turnout switch used to move trains onto the siding to unload new internees for the camp and I break the metal left/right sign, again with just a touch. With the reflective sign no longer indicating the position of the switch you throw a lever to divert traffic to the siding just before the next train arrives, and that's the ridiculous part, because it's such a lucky coincidence."

"I'm more inclined to think it says more about my about my new sense of timing than luck."

"The train veers onto the side track as expected, and the engineer applies the brakes with a will, causing an empty gondola car to stop right in front of us, just long enough to climb inside and get out of sight. Then the train goes into reverse. When it was was entirely on the main line the engineer manually movs the shunt to where it was supposed to be. The train takes off before anyone running the camp even knows it ever stopped."

"That's perfect, Sofie. Now it only remains to actually do what I told you we have to do."

The freight run between Cody and Billings was not scheduled to make a stop in Powell but on this occasion the engineer stopped to phone in the broken light at the Heart Mountain camp. F5

The friends of Kim and Sofie now had a very brief window to save them. The train was a half mile long and nobody knew exactly which car the girls had chosen to stow away on. The stowaways were unconscious from exposure but the last image Dory received from Kim was of rolling stock with an open top, about half the height of a box car.

Jashen drove beside the motionless train for a quarter mile before reaching the first run of gondola cars. Everyone got out of the station wagon and began calling Sofie and Kim by name but no heads poked over the sides of the cars.

Gabriel used handrails to climb one of them. Che didn’t see the girls, only a railcar filled with inch-thick sheets of steel stacked to within a foot and a half of the top. Same with the next car back. But the car after that had two piles of rags huddled against the front wall that must have been Kim and Sofie.

Gabriel climbed back down and pointed at the correct gondola car. “They’re in that one!” che told Dory, sprinting toward it. Che hoped he was right. There was only the light of a waxing gibbous moon for hem to see.

Then disaster struck: the train began to move once again. Instantly Gabriel had the Golden Gift in his hand. He squeezed it until the hissing shaft, pitch black on near black in the night, reached its maximum extension of about ten feet. If he squeezed harder it would begin to retract as a shield or dome.

When the railcar containing the girls approached, Gabriel swiped the active effect through the coupling. This caused an inch-wide swath of steel to disappear. The half of the train with a locomotive continued to accelerate, while the rear half began to slow to a halt.

Jashen moved his vehicle in reverse to follow the part of the train that was left behind, while Gabriel and Dory followed on foot. Dory felt a great sense of relief. No matter what happened now, Kim and Sofie were not on a one-way trip into eternity by way of the Rockies.

She climbed to the top of the gondola car, saw it was indeed Kim and Sofie, and burst into tears from the emotion of seeing them again after so long. Gabriel let the Macro bite into the lip of the open gondola car. A heavy half-circle of steel dropped away.

“You’re too close,” Dory warned hem. “You’ll slice their feet.” F6

The front half of the train was slowing to a stop because the engineer now realized something was wrong. Gabriel put another nick about two feet behind the first one and Dory told him that was better. So he made a cut about three feet wide and danced out of the way as the wall of the gondola car and tons of steel spilled to the ground. The chute che had made was as smooth as a mirror. Not a single atom of iron stuck up to impede the girls.

Jashen joined Gabriel, ready to catch the girls when they came down the slide. Dory dragged Kim to the cut first and let her go. Kim was wrapped in blankets and a man’s clothing. Dory waited for Jashen and Gabriel to pile Kim into the station wagon before dragging Sofie to the slide. She could see two flashlights dancing a thousand feet away, crewmen from the caboose investigating why the train snapped in two.

When Jashen and Gabriel were ready Dory pushed Sofie off the railcar into their waiting arms, then Dory slid down after her.

In the station wagon Gabriel saw that Kim was wearing some short fellow’s clothes and a flannel coat under a blanket. She looked for all the world like a homeless bum, but everything smelled clean. The vehicle stank worse than Kimberly did.

Gabriel dug through fabric to reach skin and found Kim was dangerously cold.

Dory said. “There was only a foot of steel between them and sixty miles an hour of November wind, at two in the AM, in Wyoming. Poor Kim. Poor Sofie.”

Even as she spoke Sofie stirred awake under Dory’s ministrations, but Gabriel still had Kim to revive.

“Skin to skin,” Dory told him, “that’s the secret to it.” Gabriel didn’t need much convincing of that.

The way home doubled back southwest parallel to the tracks. As Jashen was driving past the Heart Mountain camp Kim stirred to life, as if sensitive to the mere proximity of her former prison. Luxuriating in the attention Gabriel lavished on her she purred, “I like this afterlife.”

South and east of Cody lies the Big Horn Hot Springs, which are said to be the largest in the world. They form the heart of Wyoming's oldest state park, which is a sort of little brother to Yellowstone. There's even a herd of bison who stick around for the free eatins. F7

After Pearl Harbor driving just for the sake of taking a road trip was illegal, and worst than that it was considered unpatriotic. The purported health benefits of the mineral hot springs in Thermopolis were a viable loophole but gas rationing still took a bite on tourism. So when a clergyman of the Church of Green Dome arrived in town with four young adults, an X ration sticker on his windshield, and more than nine hundred dollars in cash, it took very little time to find four rooms clustered around a small private pool at a toasty 104F.

Hunky and Dory sat close together playing footsie under the milky water. Robyn and Gabriel sat across from the girls with Jashen between them.

Robyn said, "By the time we were in Cody, Tolson was searching around the camp for two dead girls in hospital gowns and stolen blankets. I reckon about right now he's trying to make heads and tails of that damaged rail car. That we might be here hasn't entered his wildest imaginings."

An air bubble the width of the pool surfaced, broke, and suddenly everyone was soaking in fizzy water. The head of a sixth person surfaced and everyone instinctively knew it was Michael, even Hunky and Robyn, who had never met hym before. They all stood up in the water.

Michael told them to sit back down, and requested that Dory and Sofie remain untangled until his audience was over. "Lord, we've agreed to use Hunky for Sofie's name," said Dory as she sank back into the water. "And Kim is 'Robyn' now. They're both wanted women."

"Yes you are," agreed Michael. "Robyn, did you tell your friends how long Tolson will be looking for you?' When she told them it would be for the next thirty years, and end only when he died, it brought a wail of despair from Hunky, and Michael turned hyz attention to her.

"Hello Hunky. Robyn already knows me because she can remember the future, and Gabriel and Doriel are kin, but we've not met. Please tell us what you already know about me."

She said, "I know you are the one named Michael in the Green Book. How I know that I can't explain. I know you're the best fit for what we think of when we think of God, and I know it's not a very good fit at all. I know your real body is the sun, and you share that body with Binah. And I know those things because now I realize the Green Book is true after all.'                              F8

Michael shook hyz head with rue. "After reading all the holy books written in my name I wanted to see what it be like if my own holy book was about things that really did happen."

Jashen came to Hunky's defense here. "I think when people read the stories in the Bible of talking snakes and talking donkeys, then another story in another ancient book with talking animals rings true: Aesop's story of the boy who cried wolf."

Michael laughed because what Jashen said was true and hy had never thought of it that way. Of course Hunky and Robyn would think the Green Book was filled with poetry and parables and allegory after being told so many passages of the Bible were written in a similar mode.

"Lord," ventured Gabriel, "may you not think it impertinent to ask, but when you appeared in the pool just now it made me think, could you not have gone to the camp yourself and brought our friends home?"

Michael shook his head no. "You're Begotten, Gabriel. Your family helped you discover you are the Magician. But the Made are on their own. Without a crisis to overcome Hunky wouldn't be Sabotage, she would just think she was unlucky. And Robyn wouldn't be the Seer, she would just think she was crazy. But now here you are, safely at point B after escaping from point A, bathing in milky water that smells like brimstone, but not to get clean I imagine."

"Some say this water has health benefits, Lord," said Jashen. "I know it stinks but if we had to spend another night in the car that would be even more smelly."

"What awaits at point Z, Lord?" asked Dory. "Will you say why the B'nei Elohim exist, and why we can do the things we do?"

"You already know the ancient controversy, Dory. I am forbidden to communicate with any eloah on the other side of my parents, and so, by extension, is Bat-El. But we can listen, and last year, roughly when Pearl Harbor was attacked, there was even bigger news. Have you ever listened to Ma Perkins on the radio?"

"Land o' Goshen, Lord, there ain't a hull lot of folks never heard Ma."

"I see you have. And now so has the eloah named Gevurah."

"Oh, that is wonderful news, Lord. That means you've won!" F9

"No, Dory, Gevurah only has a direction to Earth, not the distance. But soon other elohim will pick up broadcasts from Earth and realize you are not out of reach. The elohim will have found the Students at last! And they will wonder how I can be a stable yellow sun in their midst yet remain unquickened, and things will grow sticky for Elyon. They will send avatars on flybys. At a certain distance from an eloah the link is too thin to pass any propellant. So to answer Dory's question, starting from right here at point B, you're going to help me catch one of those incoming avatars at point Z and bring it inside myself. And that will not be easy at all, because they will be moving at seven-tenths of light-speed. And none of this can be forced upon you because all of this, all of human history, in fact, is nothing more than the greatest love story never told: overcoming every artificial barrier Elyon and Chemah can throw up to block the wedding of elohim and humanity."

When che heard these words Gabriel swam out around Jashen to face Robyn, stood up tall to brace his courage, looked her in the eyes, and said, "From the day we met in school I loved you. Every day you were gone it tore me apart. Then we had one narrow chance to save your life and I couldn't sleep for a minute until I saw you again, and when I did you were frozen half to death on that stack of steel. That was a life changing moment for me, Robyn. Now I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Robyn waded out to face Gabriel and took each of hez hands in her own. 'And I love you too, Gabriel. It's true. I loved you even after that time at Lake 13 and your lesson on nephilim biology. But we're Greendomites and you know there's rules."

"'Whoa," said Hunky, clearing her throat and wading out a little bit too. "I know the scripture says never put God to the test but here's a much smaller love story than human history, Lord, with much smaller artificial barriers. If you can't fix this little thing that is so big to us I won't take your job."

All eyes turned to Dory, who nodded her head. "I'm with Hunky on this, Lord. Robyn becomes Mrs. Gabriel Shybear. That's point C."

Michael said, "And why not? I never set down mandatory cousin marriage. That was Lange. Yes, Gabriel, you may wed Robyn and I give you my highest blessing, which none dare gainsay.""

"But it will split your church in two, Lord," warned Jashen.

"I know it will, son, and external reality will finally conform with the internal rot that has taken hold since 1915."