CHAPTER 32
GOOD GRUB AND STRANGE TALES
One cannot conceive of anything so strange and implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
- Rene Descartes
As he was the only individual who knew both all the B-Team members and the Thermans, Flood performed introductions as the Team exited the Bus. The attractive young woman with the General turned out to be Kay Therman, the General's daughter. She immediately received the young Governor's attention, not only because her striking looks, but because she greeted him speaking Apache. When he tried to converse further with her in that tongue however, she confessed that she knew only a few Apache words, though she was fluent in Ute. This suited Latanna, who was also fluent in Ute, and a private conversation ensued.
To the shock of the Bus Team members, Goyahkla emerged from behind the Governor, looking quite solid and alive, shook hands with Kay, and politely asked her questions in Ute. Kay, not suspecting that she was talking to a man that had died more than a century earlier, answered him cheerfully, while the rest of the Team stood frozen by the scene and by the weather, which was quite chilly in mountainous Utah compared to Arizona. Suddenly Goyahkla abruptly laughed and faded away before the startled eyes of Kay and the General.
"Who or what the hell was that?" demanded the General.
"Sorry about that, folks!” explained Bates. "That was our new associate, a spirit by the name of Goyahkla.”
"THE Geronimo?" asked Kay, after she had gotten her breath back. A snarl echoed in the Bus.
"Please use only his Apache name Kay, he's a little touchy about that," explained Bates.
"Fine by me," she said, as she returned her full attention back to the Governor. It was possible that even on this isolated ranch she had previously heard of Governor Latanna, identified by single women between the ages of 18 and 50, according to several pollsters, as one of the ten most desirable bachelors on Earth.
Steve had in return been watching Kay closely, while he hardly took any notice of Goyahkla, or anyone else, for that matter.
"Is Goyahkla your chaperone, Governor?" she asked him.
"Do I need one?" returned Steve Latanna.
Suddenly there was so much high voltage electricity between the General's daughter and the Governor that several of the others looked around as though seeking cover. The two silently stared into each other's eyes for several long moments until the spell was broken by Winnebago, who demanded to know what his nemesis Goyahkla was up to, and by Flood, who continued with the introductions by passing both Winnebago and Latanna off to the General and acquainting Kay with Drs. Barns and Carbuncle, who were next to emerge from the Bus.
While the General and Mel exchanged warm greetings Bates pulled Steve aside anxiously. "What did Goyahkla say to Miss Therman?"
"In short, Goyahkla told her he had never seen a black Ute before, and she explained she wasn't really Native American. He also asked about her marital status. She’s single. This apparently met with his approval.”
"Approval for what?" asked Bates.
"Association with Winnebago. Remember, Goyahkla won't allow a Native American woman near him.”
"That's all he said?”
"No," answered the Governor, smiling. "He expressed some complements and made some indelicate suggestions, which Kay of course politely declined.
“Actually, he seemed rather spry for a man of roughly two hundred," noted Kay, as she rejoined the Governor.
They all went inside the ranch house and were warmly greeted by lunch, which awaited them on a long table with room to seat the entire Team. There was hot sliced beef and freshly baked homemade bread, baked potatoes, and a huge tub of baked beans and molasses, along with coffee, tea, and spicy hot apple cider. Kay gave Milo his own bowl of chopped beef. It wasn't an everything-on-it pizza, but it certainly made the always hungry dog quite happy. Between this meal and the chicken of an hour or so ago, this was the best eating that the Team had experienced since Enterprise City.
As they ate and drank, a grizzled old man that looked and sounded astonishingly like Roy Rogers' old movie side-kick George Gabby Hays clambered around the table and in and out of the kitchen, refilling food and drink containers faster than the assembled Team could empty them.
Everyone seemed pleased except Winnebago, who was clearly disturbed by the Western decor and food. "You don't have a kosher knockwurst with sauerkraut or a BLT, do you? How about soft pretzels and mustard? Or maybe just a lousy bagel with cream cheese for crying out loud?" he asked, without success. But the Gabby Hays character had a good laugh.
Between bites, Bates, aided by the others, told their tale to the General and Kay. The Thermans seldom used a VISICOM and had no idea of the strange events of the previous days. Nevertheless, they seemed to take it all in stride; it was as though their life in this remote mountain valley had somehow prepared them for any challenge, including unlikely battles with alien flying saucers and run-away asteroids.
This puzzled Bates, until the Thermans began to speak of their own strange experiences. Echoing much of what Mel had already told the group, the General first spoke of his vivid recollections of the incident involving two alien visitors a decade ago. After he and Mel had warm conversations with the aliens he had acted under orders and turned the strange visitors over to the ranking DOD representative present, and afterwards they just seemed to disappear. According to the General, that DOD official was none other than Dr. Franklin Melberg, Assistant Director of the DOD!
The company groaned at that news. Melberg again! That certainly explained the incomplete report contained in the DOD data cube, and the ordered hasty departure of Mel from the scene. This did not bode well for the two missing aliens. Surely Melberg had long since disposed of the two unfortunate representatives of the Galactic League.
Evidence to the contrary came from a completely unexpected quarter: Kay. Ten years ago, the evening after the two visitors from afar met with the General, Mel, and then Melberg, an even stranger visitor met with Kay. The young teen had been alone gathering stray cattle in the high country only two days away from the house by horse when her sleep was interrupted by what she described as a 'voice in her head' that told her not to be afraid.
Naturally she was terrified. Opening her eyes and putting on her glasses, she was astonished to see, revealed in the soft light of a full moon and the glow of her dying camp fire, an exquisite, shimmering, glowing white horse-like creature that continued to speak to her, apparently through thought alone. The long spiral horn that extended boldly from its forehead identified it immediately as a unicorn.
The creature told Kay that the telepathic thoughts of a stranger had recently gotten its attention. The thoughts were not those of an entity that the unicorn referred to as the Dreaming Great One, but of another, much closer entity. The thoughts were unusually strong, strong enough to be heard faintly despite the noise made by the Dreaming Great One, Kay was told, although who or what the Dreaming Great One was wasn’t explained.
The unicorn told Kay that the stranger's thoughts were very odd; thoughts of great glowing machines traveling in empty blackness, and of establishing friendly relations with a new race. Most of these thoughts were very human-like, mortal concerns, things that she, a unicorn, perhaps did not fully comprehend, but could repeat from memory.
And yet, the unicorn could tell that the thoughts were not human. This the unicorn knew for sure, for she had long studied to understand human thought patterns, though with only partial success.
The unicorn told Kay that the thoughts of the stranger continued strongly for only a few hours. She had paid little attention to them, as they were human-like and somewhat incomprehensible. She shut most of them out, as she did the noise and nightmares of the Great Dreaming One. After all, Kay was told, that was a unicorn's greatest power.
Then, related the unicorn, an even odder thing happened. After a period of a few short, frantic seconds, the psychic thoughts of the str
anger were cut short, though not by death as mortals knew it, or the spirit would have been heard from.
Instead, almost complete silence had come to the previously noisy stranger. Not sleep, yet not death; the unicorn did not know what it was. However, in the last moments before final silence the stranger desperately attempted to communicate with a human known as General Mike, Kay's father, but had been unable to, as the General was deaf to all such voices.
The stranger's last desperate thoughts that had reached the unicorn were clouded in fear and agony; the thoughts were a plea for rescue from a dark place described as being near General Mike. So desperate was the plea that the unicorn, who usually shunned the affairs of outsiders, took pity and sent a return thought of comfort to the stranger, along with a pledge that the message would be passed on to the General, and that further aid would be rendered of an undefined nature also by the unicorn.
As the General, like the stranger, was at the time in a place of humans that the unicorn could not comfortably abide, the stranger's message was passed to his kin, Kay. When finished with its story the unicorn struck a nearby Aspen sharply with its horn, and told Kay to return to the Aspen with the stranger when he had been found, and help would be given to the stranger as promised.
Finally, the unicorn said that so she and her father would know that the message was truth, a sign would be given. As Kay sat on her bedroll unable to move, the unicorn walked to her. Its motions were all grace and bespoke fantastic power, yet its footsteps made utterly no sound. Though helpless, Kay felt no fear as the unicorn curtsied by kneeling with its front legs and lowered its great, sharp, glowing horn to ever so gently touch her head. At that point the girl blacked out.
Kay woke at midday, feeling wonderfully refreshed but disoriented. Where was she, and why was she here? Then she noted her faithful horse grazing nearby, as, oddly enough, also were all of the stray cattle that she now remembered that she had been searching for. Starting down the mountain towards home, she felt marvelous, though she still retained a feeling of apprehension, whenever her thoughts turned to the strange and vivid dream of the night before.
Hours later as she came out of her daze more completely she finally realized that she wasn't wearing either her special glasses, or her hearing aids. Since the car accident 10 years before, both her hearing and eyesight had been seriously impaired. Since she was a small child she depended upon powerful glasses to aid her one remaining functioning eye, and a sophisticated hearing aid to boost her hearing towards normal. Until now. Now, if she could trust her senses, she could hear and see perfectly well without use of any aids!
In her knapsack she found the glasses and hearing aid, right where she had put them the night before. No, not the night before, because there also was her watch, which indicated that two more days had passed than she could account for! The gift referred to by the unicorn became clear at that point, as did the reality of the creature’s strange, dream-like visit.
Cattle forgotten, she raced back up the mountain to her campsite. When she reached it, she was astonished to find that all traces of her campfire were gone, as were all footprints, though the ground was soft and moist as though from recent rain. While walking towards the Aspen touched by the unicorn horn in her dream, she looked behind her and saw that the footprints she was now making also disappeared magically in seconds! When she reached the aspen, she found that it had doubled in girth, and that all its leaves were incredibly green and perfect for so late in the season. She explored the area for another hour, without finding any other signs of the unicorn, before finally turning again for home.
When she reached home the two ranch hands in attendance were stunned and joyous at her new appearance. They COMed her father at the Base, but were so incoherent that the General rushed home by helicopter in panic. The phone call and his subsequent trip home reminded the General far too much of the nightmarish incident ten years earlier, in which his wife was killed, and Kay, his only child, had been maimed for life.
When his Air Force helicopter touched down on his front yard this time, it was a healthy and joyfully glowing Kay that ran to great him! The General at first had some difficulty believing his daughter's story, but he could not deny that a miracle had taken place. Of course his own experience of a few days previous, in which he met and spoke to two space aliens, had already enlarged his own perspective of the Universe somewhat.
Therman tentatively identified the 'stranger' referred to in the unicorn's story as Krog, the larger if the two aliens, who had repeatedly referred to him as 'General Mike'. The story confirmed the misgivings he had felt after turning over the two friendly extraterrestrials to Melberg, an instantly dislikable individual. Though Melberg had reported that the aliens had departed the Base, the unicorn's story suggested otherwise. So Therman returned to the sprawling Air Force Base to search for the aliens, but without success.
General Therman also contacted Melberg, who told him, in effect, that he, the General, was threatening National Security. Shortly thereafter, the General was contacted by Peter Lund, Head of the newly established National Police, who told him much the same thing. Lund didn't even seem to know what the secret was, but he informed Therman that it was a Government secret that needed to be kept secret. It was a Government matter of National Security, and the retiring General was no longer part of Government. This angered Therman greatly, but he was a man who believed deeply in Governmental and Military authority. So, against his personal judgment, he kept his silence.
For several years thereafter, he told himself that the President would soon announce the historic contact with the space beings. It would have been a momentous occasion. But that day never came, and as time went on, the General further lost faith in the Government.
The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the visit of the aliens was much too important an occasion to be kept a secret by any Government. Perhaps the greatest event in human history since Christ, kept secret by a Government that derived its powers from its people? No way! They had no right to keep such a secret, and every obligation to make it public. Period.
Further, Therman realized that he was himself a part of the dastardly cover up. But what could he do? Go to the press? If he did, he'd probably end up incarcerated in a funny farm. No, first he would need proof.
And so, three years after the aliens' visit, the General decided to again take matters into his own hands. With a team of trusted ex-service men, he broke into the now abandoned Air Force Base and again searched for signs of the aliens. After two weeks of searching, again nothing was found.
In the meantime, his daughter had no success in again contacting the unicorn. She returned to the unicorn Aspen many times, and watched its continued amazing growth with awe; but the unicorn itself was not to be found. In the meantime she read all that she could find about unicorns, but what was fact and what was fantasy of what she read, there was no way to tell.
Her experience seemed to agree with legend in several respects, however. For example, the unicorn horns of legend were said to have healing powers, in agreement with Kay's miraculous recovery of sight and hearing. Also, the steel fences surrounding the Air Base should indeed repel unicorns, if as in the legends, iron troubled them. That could explain why the unicorn described the Air Force Base as a place that it didn’t want to go.
The General led two other break-ins and unsuccessful searches of the Base in the years that followed. As more years went by however, Kay and the General thought less and less of the strange events of years ago, and even came up with rationalizations to explain them away. Ranch life kept them too busy to do otherwise. Life anywhere in the Great Basin region of the continent was harsh, even in the relatively lush Uinta foothills.
Then they heard from Flood.
So now what? The Team discussed what should be done next, and quickly agreed that they must search the General’s old Base again. "But how can strangers hope to succeed, where the General and his men, all familiar with the Ba
se, had repeatedly failed?" Barns asked.
"I don't know; let's go find out!” said Bates. The Team, joined now by the Thermans, piled into the Bus carrying several days of trail rations.
As they flew off, Bates mulled over the bizarre events of the last few days, and what was happening to his outlook on things as a result. First there was the asteroid and the space aliens, and then a ghost, and now there was a unicorn with magic powers!
Until he was forced into this current adventure, he had been naively living life with blinders on, while unnoticed, mysterious and marvelous things had all along been going on in the world around him. All his life he had apparently been looking at only the surface of things, and forcing a twisting, squirming, kaleidoscopic reality into easy, comfortable, but trivial shapes and dull hues. It was as if he had been contentedly studying static, colorless abstract spheres and cubes, while behind the scenes the actual world romped about like hula dancers wearing fluorescent grass skirts. Now reality was bursting out from all confining boundaries and revealing itself to him, its beauty as well as its terrible secrets.
He was scared shitless, but exhilarated.
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