she certainly couldn’t kill them.
She had noticed something curious during the individual sessions with the prisoners. It was as if the process caused her to assume a personality she didn’t know she had, as if she had become a skilled military or police interrogator asking probative questions. As she spoke with each of the captives, the incisiveness of her own questions had surprised her, the way she was looking through windows into individual personalities and motivations. At one point she even found herself examining the whole process while it was occurring, like watching herself and the prisoner Wendy Zepeda through a high-powered magnification glass.
“I’ve decided to help you,” Wendy had said. “I never liked Dixie Lou Jackson anyway.”
“Why don’t you like her?” Lori had asked. A simple enough question, not particularly incisive in and of itself.
“A lot of us on the council don’t. We’re just afraid to oppose her.”
That had made some sense, but for a moment, Lori had found herself trying to listen for subtleties in Zepeda’s tone of voice and inflection, for hesitations, for stammering. The things a professional interrogator might notice, techniques she had read about and seen in movies. She’d even looked for a flickering of the eyes, for moisture on the upper lip and brow, and muscular twitches. All might be indicators of deception.
But after only a few moments she’d discarded these methods, replacing them with another. Her visceral reaction. An almost innate sense in the pit of her stomach about what was right and what was wrong.
This councilwoman was not to be trusted, no matter what she said or how she said it. And neither were the two young guards. . . .
Now, gazing out on the desert, it looked to Lori as if it should be warmer than expected today, or at least her eyes relayed this information to her brain. But the exposed skin on her hands and face tingled with cold. And out on the desert, she saw sand carried laterally by the wind, but she felt nothing where she stood. In all, it was as if her eyes and skin were in separate realms, or separate locations.
She wished she was back in Seattle, and that none of the terrible events since the goddess circle had transpired. But she knew it was impossible to turn back the empyrean mechanism of time. Like the universe itself, it was a relentless perpetual motion machine, unstoppable in its progress.
With a deep, agitated sigh, Lori tried to accept what had happened and to tell herself that she had been given an important destiny by a higher power, that she had been placed on this path for a reason.
She recalled the strange experience she’d had two nights ago, an event so vivid that it seemed real, of a bright light with the brilliance of a miniature sun bathing her in warmth and seeming to transport her—ever so briefly—to an ethereal realm. So odd, so vivid and strangely sensual. It reminded her in some ways of the earlier vision she seemed to have shared with Dixie Lou Jackson, in which a bright amorphous shape had hovered over Lori . . . a vision that ended with her holding a female child and Jackson backing away in terror and confusion.
Hearing a noise, the teenager turned and saw the children, all eleven of them, emerging from a pair of tents simultaneously, camouflaged habitats that worked in synchronicity with the electronic camouflage over the helicopter and the work area. Wearing robes or coats, the she-apostles walked on their short legs, following Mary Magdalene toward the pilot. It still amazed her to see the babies walking, even though they were not at all proficient. Sometimes they stumbled and fell on the soft sand, but quickly got back up.
Momentarily, the children stood and watched the pilot as she worked, and seemed transfixed on her. Glancing sidelong at them as she used a spanner, Rea Janeg at first made a perplexed face, then resumed her attention to the job. Every once in awhile, she glanced back at the
She had noticed something curious during the individual sessions with the prisoners. It was as if the process caused her to assume a personality she didn’t know she had, as if she had become a skilled military or police interrogator asking probative questions. As she spoke with each of the captives, the incisiveness of her own questions had surprised her, the way she was looking through windows into individual personalities and motivations. At one point she even found herself examining the whole process while it was occurring, like watching herself and the prisoner Wendy Zepeda through a high-powered magnification glass.
“I’ve decided to help you,” Wendy had said. “I never liked Dixie Lou Jackson anyway.”
“Why don’t you like her?” Lori had asked. A simple enough question, not particularly incisive in and of itself.
“A lot of us on the council don’t. We’re just afraid to oppose her.”
That had made some sense, but for a moment, Lori had found herself trying to listen for subtleties in Zepeda’s tone of voice and inflection, for hesitations, for stammering. The things a professional interrogator might notice, techniques she had read about and seen in movies. She’d even looked for a flickering of the eyes, for moisture on the upper lip and brow, and muscular twitches. All might be indicators of deception.
But after only a few moments she’d discarded these methods, replacing them with another. Her visceral reaction. An almost innate sense in the pit of her stomach about what was right and what was wrong.
This councilwoman was not to be trusted, no matter what she said or how she said it. And neither were the two young guards. . . .
Now, gazing out on the desert, it looked to Lori as if it should be warmer than expected today, or at least her eyes relayed this information to her brain. But the exposed skin on her hands and face tingled with cold. And out on the desert, she saw sand carried laterally by the wind, but she felt nothing where she stood. In all, it was as if her eyes and skin were in separate realms, or separate locations.
She wished she was back in Seattle, and that none of the terrible events since the goddess circle had transpired. But she knew it was impossible to turn back the empyrean mechanism of time. Like the universe itself, it was a relentless perpetual motion machine, unstoppable in its progress.
With a deep, agitated sigh, Lori tried to accept what had happened and to tell herself that she had been given an important destiny by a higher power, that she had been placed on this path for a reason.
She recalled the strange experience she’d had two nights ago, an event so vivid that it seemed real, of a bright light with the brilliance of a miniature sun bathing her in warmth and seeming to transport her—ever so briefly—to an ethereal realm. So odd, so vivid and strangely sensual. It reminded her in some ways of the earlier vision she seemed to have shared with Dixie Lou Jackson, in which a bright amorphous shape had hovered over Lori . . . a vision that ended with her holding a female child and Jackson backing away in terror and confusion.
Hearing a noise, the teenager turned and saw the children, all eleven of them, emerging from a pair of tents simultaneously, camouflaged habitats that worked in synchronicity with the electronic camouflage over the helicopter and the work area. Wearing robes or coats, the she-apostles walked on their short legs, following Mary Magdalene toward the pilot. It still amazed her to see the babies walking, even though they were not at all proficient. Sometimes they stumbled and fell on the soft sand, but quickly got back up.
Momentarily, the children stood and watched the pilot as she worked, and seemed transfixed on her. Glancing sidelong at them as she used a spanner, Rea Janeg at first made a perplexed face, then resumed her attention to the job. Every once in awhile, she glanced back at the
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