After the Wilderness

By Gordon Kearns

Chapter 4

Patty felt gravel under her feet --and a cool breeze against her bare belly. She checked her major body parts, and when she was satisfied she was in human form again, she looked up into her father's eyes. "Was it a dream?"

Patrick smiled, "No dream, Patty. Everything you thought happened, happened." Then he easily lifted the girl off the ground and set her on a side section of the altar table, after which hefted himself onto the raised middle section. Ignoring the irreverence of their positions, they sat facing each other cross-legged, laughing warmly at the experience they had shared. "To the respected father goes the higher place, of course," Patrick said in mock seriousness.

"Now that you've been in the 'wave,"' Patrick said. "you should find it easier to accept the truth of the story I'm about to tell you --a story you might otherwise have believed impossible. You better brace yourself."

Patty: "Brace myself?"

Patrick: "Right. You see, Patty, for starters, you are a true, bona fide descendant of an alien race."

Patty: "Alien race? You mean alien like from ...outer space?"

Patrick: "That's exactly what I mean. Let's go back 17,000 years ago to a planet in a solar system some 1,000 light years from Earth --the planet Athryd. There lived on that planet a race of remarkable beings --generally similar to humans: that is, they had two arms, legs, and ears, and so forth, and the same kind of reproductive system, which fortunately turned out to be compatible with humans. However, there were some significant differences. In appearance they were relatively small and diaphanous ...and fragile. They were extremely intelligent, sexually prolific --maturing at quite an early age, and they all had the genetic capacity to wave. On the down side, their life-span was only twenty to twenty-five Earth-equivalent years, which accounted for the early sexual maturation.

"They had a highly developed single society, as opposed to the multi-tribal and later multi-national societies on Earth. Their society was characterized by organization. Almost all aspects of their lives were organized: career choice, sleep, recreation, mate selection ...just about every activity possible on the planet was controlled ...except the wave. They could wave wherever and whenever they wished. The wave was their one source of freedom.

"Because of their short life-span, they evolved an easy, affluent, healthy, and happy life-style. Their one enemy was stress, since stress made them uncomfortable and unhappy ...and it threatened their physical well-being, something their short life-span could ill-afford. Organization and structure were their means of eliminating stress from their lives. Individual choice could easily lead to anarchy, the root of stress. So more and more they structured and re-structured their society to eliminate the need for free choice. I should point out that their goal was happiness for themselves, and that with every loss of freedom, their life-style improved. Their existence was totally care-free. The only hitch in the end was the wave, their ultimate expression of individual freedom. They reasoned that since their society was perfectly structured, the wave was an unnecessary anachronism. It had to go. You can't have perfect structure when there exists a means for complete freedom. Because the wave contradicted their societal goals, it was finally outlawed. Most Athrydians readily agreed to the proscription. It was very disconcerting to their efforts to enjoy themselves when fellow citizens could pop in and out without so much as a 'by your leave.' Notwithstanding, as in human societies there existed those on Athryd who for some crazy reason or another preferred the unpredictability of the wave to the perfection of the 'system.' So a small clandestine group banded together to leave the planet.

"I should point out the unique manner of Athrydian inter-stellar travel. First of all, for most practical purposes the wave could take them wherever they wished as fast as they wanted. You saw how we could travel in the wave to far, far above the Earth's surface and from Texas to California in a matter of seconds. Actually, in the wave one can move at almost a snails pace or at any other desired rate up to the speed of light ...,

Patty: "I know, 186,000 miles per second."

Patrick: "Right. But we are limited in the time we can remain in the wave, no more than two days at the outside --it really starts getting dangerous after twenty-four hours, which means that for space travel in the wave we're limited pretty much to the boundaries of a solar system. However, the Athrydians had developed a second rather involved means of space travel that was almost as remarkable as the wave. It was called universe organism. It took several millennia, but advanced Athrydian technology was able to perfect it. In universe organism travel, a specially trained pilot can take a group of travelers to anyplace in the galaxy --or beyond -- instantaneously."

Patty: "Instantaneously? Wouldn't that mean they'd be traveling faster than the speed of light? I didn't think anything could."

Patrick: "Actually, few things can. But universe organism travel is a misnomer. It isn't travel at all. When a pilot activates it for a group he is leading, they actually become a part of the universe organism, and because the universe organism is an integrated whole, it has the same composition wherever it exists. Therefore, when you become a part of the universe organism, you can re-form anyplace the universe organism exists -- instantaneously. The most important ingredients of the process were determining the target and plotting the complicated trajectory for getting there, both of which required great mathematical skill, a vast knowledge of astronomy and astro-physics, and years of specialized training. Even though all Athrydians possessed great mental capacities, only a few were genius enough to master the technique. That's why the Order of Pilots was such an exclusive group. I'll go into this more in a few minutes.

"Back to the story: in their quest to restrict individual freedoms, the Athrydians disbanded the Order of Pilots --even the option of rejecting the new system by leaving the planet was a freedom that could not be tolerated. However, our little group of rebels was able to find an equally discontented pilot to lead them to another world. And that's how 17,000 years ago a band of 100 Athrydian expatriates joined hands, started one stride forward, and finished the step on the planet Earth.

"The choice of Earth as their target had tragic results. Earth's environment proved devastating to their delicate constitutions. The only possible chance for the survival of their race on Earth was to merge with a stronger native tribe. Such a willing tribe was not easy to find. Mostly our little band was met with fear because of their unearthly diaphanous appearance, or with aggression --both normal human reactions to things they don't understand. However, as the aliens were about to give up, fortune finally smiled on them: in the woodlands of Arcadia in what is now Greece, they ran into a friendly tribe --a tribe that adopted the newcomers with open arms. This group would become the human branch of our ancestry.

"They were almost as foreign to the rest of human-kind as the Athrydians --no one knows where their genes might have sprung from. Until they met the Athrydians, they had no interest in maintaining a history of their clan. For starters, they were the world's first on-purpose nudists. Other peoples began wearing clothes for protection from the elements; then for protection from each other; then for vanity. When they developed religious organizations, modesty was invented, along with embarrassment and shame; people wore clothes because it was shameful and sinful not to. Then they used clothes to depict caste, status, and authority --and, of course, wisdom, in the form of good taste. But not our forefathers. In all the time before they met the aliens they never wore any clothes at all, not even symbolic bits and pieces of cloth, skin, or leather. They never used weapons; they only ever used tools they could scrape from their present environment; they had no interest in possessing and carrying personal valuables; they considered themselves equal, so they had no badges to denote levels of importance; and they felt that the body was beautiful enough not to need fancy adornment. Thus, they never wore belts or straps or scabbards to hold such items. Their naked life brought them a natural resistance to climates that drove other peoples into wraps. When temperatures got too cold, they would merely migrate to warmer climes. Such moves were never a major problem: there was nothing to carry.

"Being nudists was not their only eccentricity. They were vegetarians. They had no possessions, and, therefore, no need to work to get or maintain them. Individually they developed whatever skills caught their fancy. They wouldn't live in caves or tents. They basked in the world of nature, and sought always the joi de vivre. They ran, played, climbed, explored, wondered, wandered, loved, and made love all their lives. They wouldn't trade in the fun of childhood for the artificial solemnity of adulthood. Even before the arrival of the aliens, there had developed a considerable mythology about these charming, happy-go-lucky woodland people. Traces of that mythology can be found in folk legends the world over.

"Our Athrydian and our human ancestors hit it off beautifully from the very beginning, though they could hardly have been more unlike. The aliens were used to organization and structure; the humans didn't understand the meaning of the words. The aliens' grasp of mathematics, science, and technology was unlimited; the humans had a more general and creative kind of intelligence. Nonetheless, the humans loved the aliens' intelligence, sylphlike appearance, and their magical 'wave,' and the Athrydians appreciated the humans' simple wisdom, trusting nature, happy outlook, exciting way of life, and physical hardiness --a requirement if a racial blend was to enable the Athrydians' progeny to survive on Earth. But of most importance was what the two cultures shared: a passion for freedom --and a healthy appreciation of sexual enjoyment, which assured their rapid fusion into one race, a fusion that was completed within two generations.

"The new race born of this blending contained the best (though some might say, the worst) characteristics of both. It was a strong race, fulfilling the hopes of the Athrydians. It maintained the sexual proclivities of the parent cultures. Sexual maturity reached a middle ground, now completed usually by the age of eleven. The ability to wave carried on, as did the intelligence of the Athrydians --though tempered from the technical emphasis of the Athrydians to the more general and creative bent of the humans. The way of life that resulted was much more human, with the Athrydians contributing mostly some tradition and very loose structure -- keep in mind, the Athrydians left their home in rebellion over too much structure.

"In sum, the race that was created 17,000 years ago in the woods of Arcadia was highly intelligent, creative, curious, exploring, fun loving, sex loving, nature loving, life loving, love loving, and freedom loving; a race that in the 17,000 years of its existence would never wear clothes; and a race that possessed the magic ability to wave.

Patty interrupted: "What about the short life-span of the Athrydians?"

Patrick hesitated: "Oh, yes ...the life-span. The influence of the human genes did help. Barring some misfortune along the way, members of our race can expect to live to the age of forty, though a rare few manage to scrape through another year or so. The dying itself comes quite easily --and quickly. We are warned about a month ahead with a few non-crippling harbinger strokes. Then when the time comes, we just lie down and die. Sometimes headaches and blindness immediately precede the dying, but it's only momentary; no real suffering takes place. Once dead, there occurs another unique phenomenon with us. Whether by accident or illness or by our time running out at forty, when we die our bodies disappear --they just dissolve into the organism of the universe."

Patty, biting lightly on her lower lip, asked, "Does ...does all this about dying and dissolving ...does it include me?"

Patrick took her hands in his. "I'm afraid so," he said. "It's a genetically dominant package. The intelligence, the sexual drive and early sexual maturity, the naturalness of nudity, the wave, the forty year life-span, the disintegration of the body after death, and a few other things I'll mention later --these are inescapable facets of anyone born to the lineage, no matter how distant the connection might be."

Patty: "I... understand." She showed a small smile as Patrick squeezed her fingers. "Please, Patrick, tell me more about ...our people."

Patrick: "Sure, Patty ...our people. Let's see: I suppose the children are as good as any place to start."

Patty: "The children?"

Patrick "Yes. You see, with us, children only stay with their parents for the first five years of life. A child's fifth birthday is 'growing up time,' when she decides her name and goes out on her own. Up to that time children learn all the basic necessities for living independently."

Patty: "That's hard to believe. Five years old ..."

Patrick: "There's not really that much to learn: only the most important survival techniques: finding and preparing natural foods; maintaining cleanliness and body hygiene; avoiding, eluding, and evading dangers of the wilderness --and humanity; and caring for illness and injury. They also get the same cultural lore I'm giving you now. And they learn to handle the wave with skill. That's all there is to our formal education --all completed by five years of age. I'll admit our inborn intelligence helps."

Patty: "But what about reading and arithmetic and history and grammar and..."

Patrick: "When you come down to it, almost everything human children learn in school is for the purpose of getting along with humans in a human-manufactured world. Even mathematics isn't taught so much for its own sake or for advancing knowledge as it is for providing skills for a technical profession. However, for getting along with life, the requirements of education are simple.

"I should say here that going out on one's own doesn't mean being thrown to the wolves. We have a community --at least up to now --and we look out for each other and help each other with dogged loyalty when it's necessary. We are responsible folks, in the most altruistic sense of the word.

"Our community establishes loose, seasonal home bases, which represent comfortable havens where we know we have acceptance. As I mentioned earlier, because of pre-historic tradition, and because nothing can be carried in our wave, we have absolutely no need or desire for personal property. We don't covet what each other has --nobody has anything. We claim no land, and we've never been tempted to go to war to get land or hold land. Aggressiveness is not our nature; we wouldn't harm any living thing to gain a benefit for ourselves. So our community is open and honest. We enjoy our company. We laugh together, we cry together, and we play together.

"Our community has no government or laws. We have a nominal leader, whom we label king --to make the job sound important. Actually, he has almost no dominion over anything. When you come down to it, he has but three responsibilities. First, it's up to him to keep track of the whereabouts of all our people at all times, to be up-to-date on births and deaths and what children took what names, and to call meetings of the group in case of emergencies --and to present alternative suggestions for meeting the emergencies. Second, he has to name his successor. Third, in the event of insurmountable threat to the group's welfare, he has the authority to order the current pilot to plan and execute a universe organism exodus to another planet."

Patty: "Current pilot? Do we have a pilot?"

Patrick: "We did until two weeks ago ...but let's wait until later to get into that. For now," he chuckled mischievously, "I think you should learn about the sexual behavior of our species."

Patty laughed: "Sounds good to me."

Patrick: "As I already indicated, we're a people who love sexual activities. This interest comes as result of a combination of factors: our genetic structure, our cultural tradition, and the natural sensuality of open nudity. From the time children are old enough to notice their bodies, they readily play with their own and others' body parts. Boys and girls enjoy 'making out' --kissing, feeling, masturbating each other. It is common for them to have their first real intercourse by twelve. Though this, as in other areas of our life-style, is not a hard and fast rule; young people sometimes wait until their late teens or early twenties or until they settle down with a mate. It's an individual thing. Still, our nature is a pretty demanding mistress. There are no strictures at all concerning sex, no taboos, no you-better-nots. Gender makes no difference: boy-girl, boy-boy, girl-girl. No one, then, has to make a tortuous choice between 'isms;' he or she can follow the urging of his or her libido as the occasion indicates. Even incest is not a problem for us. There are no terrible hereditary repercussions for babies born of such matches. However, in practice it occurs seldom. After the normal explorations of childhood, most of our people look for their love interests

outside the immediate family circle. In sum, it's pretty much 'anything goes' in sexual matters. In ALL our activities, we treat each other with the utmost of respect: no one is ever pressured into doing anything he or she does not want to do; and we would never hurt one another --we never get involved with sado-masochism." He laughed. "Other than that, there are very few sexual experiences we're not willing to try. We can get pretty kinky at times."

Patty: "Isn't it a problem when the younger girls --you know: twelve and thirteen --when they get pregnant?"

Patrick: "Really, it's not. Our girls are fully capable of safe child-bearing when they achieve menarche. The adults of the community are willing to help if a girl feels anxious about raising a child, or, should a girl be totally overwhelmed by her responsibilities --an extremely rare occurrence --others will be glad to take the child in. In any case, the male involved will never desert the girl, before or after she has the baby. Such problems are usually never an issue. Because of our sexual proclivities, birth control becomes an important priority. With us, there is almost no such thing as an accidental pregnancy. A normal part of a girl's daily routine is the eating of a special contraceptive herb that was known to our human culture since before the arrival of the Athrydians. It's a common herb readily available in woodlands the world over. So normal is the practice that it's an unconscious habit a girl develops from before menarche. To get pregnant takes the positive step of NOT eating the herb that morning --a girl has to get pregnant on purpose."

Patty: "And the partner? the male involved?"

Patrick: "We have no marriage ceremony, no wedding, no formal --or informal --exchange of vows. When a man and a woman love each other and want to spend their lives together, they do. We recognize neither civil nor ecclesiastic authorities; loyalty and responsibility are intrinsic to our natures. We need no outside agency or oral contract to verify what love assures. I believe the success rate of our uncluttered 'matings' holds its own more than satisfactorily when compared to the solemn rituals of our human cousins.

"As we find it, the climactic thrill is only a part of the fun of sex. It amounts to a few moments of pent-up anticipation, a few moments of orgasmic release, and a few moments of warm-down. I find some depictions in modern drama and literature of these relatively simple moments of genuine pleasure to be wildly over-stated --super-human, in fact --and ludicrous. Sex play is fun: the climactic thrill is uncomplicated enjoyment. But the pleasure that reaches deeper into the soul and that remains with it longer is the excitement you feel from another's allowing you inside his or her personal space to press your bare skin against hers and to caress her body contours with sensitive hands and lips, and the excitement one feels from making oneself vulnerable by allowing one's partner the same privileges. Sexual fun is no more nor less than this.

"But humans don't trust natural feelings. They think pleasure needs embellishment; they think they have to prove their enjoyment --otherwise, they might appear unsophisticated, a grievous sin in the outside world. In football games, look at the grotesque dances and over-acted spikes after touchdowns. In Olympic championships, winning hockey teams parade their flags around the rink, chanting over and over, 'We're number one. We're number one.' The feeling of accomplishment in scoring the points and the pride in winning the game are of less significance than the shows one puts on as a result of them. Humans put their hopes for enjoyment in things --trappings --and in systems. Achievement is HAVING a cruiser on the lake, HAVING a

great tan; HAVING a carpeted bathroom; GOING to the Bahamas; HAVING sex; BEING a partner; MAKING A KILLING on the market; OWNING a Renoir; ATTENDING an Ivy League school; BEING the president; GOING TO the opera; HAVING three children; DRIVING a Porsche. Humans often don't know what they're supposed to get out of what they've accomplished. How sad it is that for so many of them life ends with the refrain, 'IS THAT ALL THERE IS?'

"Our people find our satisfaction in savoring the feelings we get from what we do. Standing in a meadow at midnight watching clouds drift over the face of a full moon, with the long grass tassels tickling our legs, and a west breeze powdering our bodies --we derive worlds of pleasure from these simple activities because we look for nothing more. Our pleasure comes from ourselves. God, how good such experiences can be when you let yourself feel them from the inside out. We take the time to feel our feelings. Humans who know about it envy us for our ability to wave. But if they could do it, most of them would soon enough tire of it. After all, you can accomplish precious little with it. You can't take anything with you. You can go from here to there, and you can see a lot of things while in it --but that's about it. What's to enjoy is the feelings we get from going from here to there, and from seeing a lot of things --and the feelings we get from sharing it with someone else. Our lives end wistfully wishing we could have more of the same, but satisfied with what we had."

Forest creatures were taking their afternoon meditations; silence surrounded the naked father and daughter sitting on the woodland altar. The sun's rays probing through barren branches discovered and pondered their unassuming, unguarded skin. The air shifted its position now and then as it waited for Patrick to continue his story.

Patrick: "For almost ten millennia we enjoyed a serene life on Earth. The human population was sparse. Our forefathers could wave the girth of the of the planet without noting evidence of more than a few scattered tribes. They explored the ocean depths, the polar caps and receding glaciers, and the lakes, rivers, plains, and woodlands of all the continents, amassing herbological and ecological data from which we benefit even today --and much of which I'll be teaching you in the next several days. But always they would return to their beloved Arcadia.

"But starting about seven thousand years ago and continuing through today, our fate has been wrapped up in the six most insidious penchants of humankind: their taking and holding of land; their undisciplined multiplication; their drive to be important; their attachment to violence, their disregard for the consequences of their decisions; their thoughtless destruction of things they don't understand; and their indifference to the rights and needs of other beings.

"With the rise of the city-states in what is now Greece, our ancestors began to feel the pinch of the human race. The humans spread their horizons, taking over the hills and woods for hunting, hiding, warfare, travel shortcut, and amusement. Incidents of contact increased, along with incidents of abuse. Our people were harassed, beaten, and killed in such contacts; their nudity taken, as it has forever been in the centuries since, as an invitation to persecution. Our talent for the wave is a great escape hatch in threatening situations --but it is our only 'magic.' We can be surprised, ambushed, sniped at, and duped. Capture isn't all that difficult. All you have to do is cover us with a net or cloth, and put us in a chain, or tie us with a rope. In the end we had to leave our beloved Arcadia; our position was too vulnerable.

"We separated into several septs. As a whole we'd have the same problems anyplace on Earth as we had on Arcadia. Humans were congealing into civilized societies. Mostly they were settling in cities and the environs of cities, although many evolved into nomad tribes --but these, too, developed governing systems and social structures. In order to cope with the humans' nearly omnipresence, we had to live in groups small enough to enable us the maximum mobility.

"We learned to live on the fringes of civilization. Rather than avoiding contact, we deliberately plotted it --in measured doses. We traded on the natural superstition of humans. Remembering how we had been looked upon as forest deities by many of the Greeks, we set about really creating an aura of mysticism about ourselves, taking advantage of our nudity, wave, and intelligence to convince the humans we were supernatural. We hoped that the awe we were inspiring might give us a leg-up on survival. So it was that we found our place in the folk literature of the world. Patty, my love, when you hear them talking about faeries, elves, sprites, leprechauns, peris, the Huldra, and little shoemakers, they're talking about your kinfolk. An interesting aspect was that the humans built up greater, more fantastic stories from their imaginations than anything we provided. A little magic goes a long way. Keep that in mind. If you time your wave right, and do it with a good old Irish-Greek-Athrydian flair, people will think you're the old sorceress Morgan Le Fay herself.

"The ruse bought us time --but only time, time that would run out in the twentieth century. We lasted okay through the dark ages: people loved their superstitions back then. But even then it was no better than a treadmill for us. They did catch the leprechaun occasionally, and when they found he had no gold, that was the end of him. But is was tolerable: man's plagues and wars made up for his uncheckable birthrate. However, through it all, our own birthrate slowed and slowed. Living the life of fugitives does not lend itself to the development of a booming population. In the nineteenth century, the quality of human healthcare improved; great discoveries in the field of medicine made human life less hazardous --so they developed a booming population, which was bad news for us. They grew; they cut down more forests, they took more land, they made more wars, they built better weapons, and they began to mistrust their fears. We dodged more, re-settled more, spent more time in the wave, were caught more, died more, and bore fewer children.

"With the twentieth century came the beginning of our end. There's no acre of the planet that isn't under human control. They even have satellites hundreds of miles above that can pinpoint life with deadly accuracy. Nothing is out of their purview. And their wars have produced massive kills --of humans and us: atomic bombs, nerve gas, napalm don't know the difference. Idiots run around the woods gunning for deer --and tin cans and chippies -- with high-powered rifles and assault weapons --shooting indiscriminately at every movement, or shooting on purpose at a silly looking nude darting between the trees. And their souped-up cars have gone off-road now. The twentieth century has been devastating to us. We dodged and ran until we could dodge and run no more."

Patrick was having trouble keeping his voice natural. He looked down at his hands --sadly, very sadly. Patty reached across and touched his hands with hers. "What happened nine days ago?" she asked softly.

Patrick looked up again. Then he hopped down from the altar, after which he helped Patty down. "Here," he said, "take my hand." In that moment they disappeared.

They moved as if riding on a lightening bolt. They followed the contours of the land some thousand feet or so below. In ordinary travel at this rate the trees, rocks, highways, and cities would have been a multi-colored blur, but in the wave Patty could sense every detail of the countryside. Her background of grade school geography enabled her to judge their direction as generally easterly. "Right," she heard herself --Patrick --say. Then they abruptly slowed and stopped, and Patty felt herself standing on the ground again.

It was a forest --not unlike the one they had left. Oaks and hickories predominated with a sprinkling of green pines. The sun was lower here, and in the shadows of these round-shouldered grandfather mountains there was an evening cast. The leaves were still crisp beneath the bare feet of Patty and her father. They were in a small valley clearing just above a fast moving spring-fed stream. The remains of a once-cozy campfire were gathering a blanket of dust. A coffee pot lay on its side by the dead ashes; two overturned cups were situated indifferently nearby. To one side was a sleeping bag, also covered with dust --and two randomly placed, neatly folded blankets. There was a backpack, torn apart, its contents strewn about the area --obviously the victim of foraging critters. A battery-powered tape recorder rested by a brown paper bag spilling mini-cassettes onto the ground.

Patrick hand-dusted the sleeping bag, and he and the girl seated themselves on its polyester-fill comfort. When they were comfortably settled, Patrick resumed his narrative. "There were sixteen of us, that was all: sixteen. After seventeen millennia of magic --of providing the world with the stuff of its legends, of inspiring beautiful tales of sorcery and wonder and faeries and leprechauns --all that remained were the sixteen who found themselves seated around a crackling campfire on this spot through the night of November 7 and morning of November 8. And, of course, there was Robert, a remarkable, sensitive human --a school teacher on a holiday trek through the woods. He had developed a close relationship with two of our young people who met him along the way, and who later adopted him into our little circle --a stroke of almost miraculous good fortune as it later turned out.

"Dennis, our king, had called us together here in the Irish Wilderness area of the Ozarks to discuss the distressing plight of our race, and of more importance, to exercise his prerogative of ordering the current pilot to activate a universe organism exodus from the planet Earth. It was his conclusion that we were headed for total extinction and that there was no more than the slimmest chance our children could survive to live their normal life's term in the present state of human development and temperament. There was no safe refuge left for us on this planet. A new home untouched by human hands was the only hope for our future.

"Our pilot, Eileen, was an exceptionally capable young lady. I think you'd have liked her, Patty. She was your age, with an abiding interest in the physical sciences and mathematics. It was quite unusual for one as young as she to be a pilot. And she was a redhead, like your friend --the girl we waved back at the lodge ..."

Patty: "Rachel."

Patrick: "Yes, Rachel." He paused thoughtfully, then continued: "Eileen was much frailer and paler looking and shorter. But she had spunk ...and integrity. As I've already indicated, our people do not accept anyone or any government as having dominion over them. So when Dennis gave the order for the universe organism exodus, no one was obligated to go along. In fact, only about half of the group did. Of the original sixteen, two couples decided to slip over to the outside world --join the humans; one of the couples took along an infant son. A third couple agreed with the need for the exodus, but

they were in their mid-thirties and preferred living out their years coping with the problems here on Earth. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I begged out for the same reason. I'm thirty-five now. At my advanced age I didn't need the hassle of pioneering from scratch on some distant rustic planet. Down deep inside, though, I... I still held onto the hope that someday Marianne ..." He laughed. "And, as it turned out ...Well, anyway, that left just the six children, ranging in age from six to twelve, Eileen, and Dennis. And then Dennis informed us he was dying --he was forty-two, on borrowed time --and he felt he'd just be a burden if he went along. Eileen, even though she had accepted the responsibility of being a pilot, knowing that there was always an outside chance she might be called upon to utilize her skill, and having taken advantage of the job to advance her own interest in the whole field of astro-physics, even considering these facts could have refused to activate the universe organism. No one could or would have forced her. But she stuck to her duty, with full knowledge she'd never have on their primitive new world the facilities for study she'd be leaving behind. But it had now become a frightening prospect: six children heading off to God knows what perils under the leadership of a precocious seventeen year old girl.

"That's when the children's human friend, Robert, came through. Prompted by his feelings for his new young friends, and perhaps especially for his attraction to one of the girls in particular, and his empathy for children in need, Robert joined the group that left Earth early in the morning nine days ago --from just over there on the other side of where the campfire was. As Dennis put it immediately after they'd left, "The naked children in the forest are gone."

It was the end of Patrick's story. Both he and Patty remained silent for some time, until Patty broke the spell, "I... only have a couple questions. First, the couple with the baby: Both they and he ...they still have to face that forty-year-old thing ...and the disintegration ...won't they?"

Patrick: "Oh yes. Hopefully they'll tell their child about it. But no matter what, there's no escape."

Patty: "Doesn't ...won't humans thin Is it strange when ...when bodies disappear like that?"

Patrick: "It happens. But the world today doesn't accept magic. Such incidents are played up in the tabloids a week or so, and then fade out of the news. People think it all comes from the imagination of creative reporters."

Patty: "This Eileen, how did she do her studying? She was ...a nude like the rest of you ...us, wasn't she? Where did she get her knowledge of astro-physics and stuff? And didn't you say that formal education ended at five years old?"

Patrick: "Ah, yes, formal education. It's true, formal education does end by the time a child gets to be five ...but learning never stops. Generally, we avoid contact with humans; however, that sage bit of caution does not apply to human institutions. Our children consider schools and classrooms, public and university libraries and private collections, and any laboratory anywhere their playgrounds ...naturally, only during those times when they aren't open to the public: holidays, weekends, after hours, lunch periods, and so forth. Our wave gets us in and out; there's no such thing as a locked door to a wave. We teach ourselves to read and write --usually in several languages --using textbooks and materials from those places we invade. You understand that there is no such thing as homework. Remember the basic rule about the wave: you can't wear or carry anything with you. The only things we can take with us from these places are what we can store in

our minds. There are no rules or structure or deadlines or continuity to our learning. We just go in whatever direction our whims take us. When I said 'playgrounds,' I meant it; all our studying is done for fun. Humans would never accept it, but one learns more faster in this way --a concept beyond the comprehension of most humans.

"Now Eileen was a master at purloining education. No possible source was considered forbidden to her. She waved all the major educational institutions in the world, carried on quantum mechanics experiments in the most advanced laboratories --including the largest cyclotrons around. She was an expert at out-foxing security systems. She took special pride in playing with the computers of the FBI, CIA, and KGB. Her specialty was robbing brains; she loved to wave the heads of the most renowned scientists in the world. They might hold secrets from each other, but not from Eileen. Patty, you might find this fun after I teach you how to wave ...that is if you want to stick with it."

Patty folded her arms tightly to her chest and feigned a chill. "The more I hear, the more bewildered I am. I have no idea of what I'm going to do about all this. What I do know is that the more you tell me, the more I want to hear." She looked into Patrick's eyes. "Do you think I can learn how to wave?"

Patrick smiled: "There's no doubt about it. But it's like learning to walk: you have to start easy and work your way up. But if you'd like to start right now, I think we could have you doing some short-hop soloing before nightfall."

Patty's eyes widened with excitement as she jumped to her feet trying to pull her father up with her. Laughing, he stood up beside her. "Can we start now?" she asked with wonderful childish enthusiasm. "I'm ready now ...no wait ...just a second," she said. She stepped quickly to the side and let fall an eager stream of urine.

They began with some slow circles together in Patrick's wave, staying low --no more than ten feet above the ground. He deliberately took them through some big oaks so that Patty could get a good feeling for the capabilities of the wave. "Let your mind open to what I'm thinking," he told her. "We're sharing the same soul right now: my thoughts are your thoughts. Notice how I 'think' our speed faster, or 'think' us slower, or up or down, or turning or banking. We aren't riding on the air so we don't need to bank for a turn, but it does broaden the scope of our experience." They shot into the ground and then up and out. "Everything is made of atoms. and atoms are mostly empty space. .We travel through those spaces without disturbing their make-up, construction, or function. They moved straight up to about two thousand feet and then began to coast slowly. "It's fun, and the passing panorama is always fantastic. But never forget you have to be in control of the wave. The second you stop moving you will reform into your body, and if you're high above ground as we are now, reforming could prove a bit dangerous." They slid gently back toward the clearing. Hold my thoughts now, Patty, as we come in for a landing. You have to kind of slip in to your target area at a moderate speed, and, when you're almost to the spot, slow down suddenly, turn sharply, and stop for the reformation." They were now standing again by the abandoned campsite.

They spent the next hour practicing starts --"you know how it feels in the wave, so think that feeling and think movement, as you would in a dream" --and circles and climbs and accelerations and decelerations and landings -- "Remember those quick slow-downs and last second sharp turns."

"Now it's time for you to take the wheel." Patrick said.

Shocked, Patty put her hands to her cheeks. "Me? Now?"

Patrick: "No better time than right now. This time I'll be riding with you --right inside your soul, but you'll be in charge. Just remember what I've been teaching you, especially about those landings. Things are happening too fast during the reforming for me to offer guidance."

Slowly and very tentatively Patty took her father's hand. They disappeared, only to reappear three seconds later tumbling along the ground fifteen feet away. Patrick laughed heartily as he got back to his feet. Patty was rising more slowly, dusting herself off as she did. "I... I'm sorry," she said. "I think I panicked. When I found that I was really making myself ...us ...fly; everything I remembered from your teaching deserted me ..."

Patrick: "Not to worry. Actually I expected something like that to happen. I'm just glad it didn't happen when we were above the treetops. But now that you've had your first crash, let's try it again."

This time Patty kept her wits about her. The flight was pretty herky-jerky, as when you get behind the wheel of an automobile for the first time. But she stayed with it, taking three or so circles before coming in for a bouncing landing that found them both in undignified sprawls on the ground again. "Too fast," Patrick said patiently. "When you don't pull in slow enough, the momentum will carry you even after you reform. But don't be upset. It's going to take you a long time to get sophisticated enough with your landings to drop on a dime without raising a fleck of dust. So now, take us up again."

And again and again and again. Patty was a quick learner. It wasn't long before she could fly with confidence and some little skill, although her landings continued to be rough, if not so bloody. Then after another hour of practice, when Patty reached for Patrick's hand, he pulled away. "Not this time, my little aviatrix. This one will be your official solo."

"You really think I'm ready?" Patty asked.

Patrick: "What do you think?"

Patty thought for a moment before answering. "Why not? Sure, I guess I'm ready."

Patrick: "Then take it away. Do the same kind of short hop we've been working on --breeze through a couple of trees, take it up to five thousand, and bring it on back. And watch that landing!"

Patty didn't linger for further encouragement. She dissolved quickly into nothing, guiding her wave as Patrick had taught. "God, how wonderful this is," she thought. "I'm invisible, I'm flying, I'm going through trees, I'm looking down on the world like from an eagle's wings." She took a few extra circles and climbed twice as high as she should have before she side-slipped in for a most ungraceful landing.

Patrick helped her off the ground and kissed her proudly on the forehead. "That was your official graduation. You're one of us now."

Patty snuggled in to her father's chest under his secure hug.

"There's nothing more I can show you about the wave. From now on you may wave whenever the mood strikes." he said. "Clock in a lot of practice. Explore: try new moves; play with speed and acceleration; zip people --I'd suggest not zipping friends, though, as a matter of courtesy. Your main problem in the beginning will be getting lost, losing your direction. If that happens, just head straight up; the higher you get, the easier it is to re-establish your orientation. The wave opens doors to adventure you could never have dreamed.

"However," he said with mock severity as they broke apart, "you aren't finished with your education yet, young lady. For the next few days, I'm going to give you a crash course in woodslore: recognizing friends and foes in the natural environment; knowing the plants, flowers, leaves, bark, and roots that can be used for food, healing, cleaning, combing, shaving, contraception, and a whole bunch of other things you've never imagined they could be used for."

He glanced around the darkening woods. Taking the girl's hand, he said, "We'd better get back. You drive, Patty. And don't be afraid of night flying. Nothing can hurt us in the wave. Just head out generally west, and we'll catch up with the setting sun; then you can follow the landmarks in --you know, Tulsa, Albuquerque, meteor crater, Grand Canyon. If you get confused, I'll give you whatever navigational help you need. Let's see how fast you can get this wave thing to go."

The trip back was slow only in comparison to the trip out. Patty was leery of trying the limits of the wave, which Patrick had said would have gotten them to Bollinger's in less than a second. But she was steady and confident. They arrived at the chapel in exactly thirty minutes. Naturally, the landing cost them a couple of skinned knees, but she even showed marked improvement in this difficult maneuver.

"You need a few hours for everything you've heard today to sink in before taking on your lessons as a 'magic people' in earnest. So I'll let you go for now. Relax with your friends for a while. Get a good night's sleep. And we'll take up again tomorrow afternoon. Tell your friends you'll be with me for several days so they won't worry," Patrick said. "I think you're in time for dinner." He held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes for a silent moment. Then he kissed Patty on the forehead, and said, "A man could not ask for a more wonderful daughter." As he turned to leave, he said, "See you here tomorrow at one." And he was gone.

Patty stood without moving for a few minutes. Then she, too, disappeared into the wave, but only for a few seconds. She was just making sure she hadn't dreamed it all.

On to Chapter 5

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Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18

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