His eyes swiveled back to me and he said, savagely, “Jasmine received a brain to brain communication from the Visitors.”
Five
A lot of thoughts flashed through my mind in that moment. I logged them and watched Jasmine with interest as she sat next to Dehan and sipped her coffee. I wondered if he would let her tell her own story, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t, and he didn’t.
“We had a radio which we had adapted to transmit and receive signals on a very wide range of frequencies. We also had visual scanners which were capable of picking up both high and low frequencies of light beyond the visual range in the night sky. Macomb Mountain, where we were, near the peak, affords a spectacular view of the heavens, and we were able to see and pick up a number of phenomena. A lot of it was suggestive, some of it was highly suggestive, none of it was conclusive.”
Dehan failed to suppress a sigh. “Could you tell us about…”
“I’m coming to that! It was about two in the morning. The fire had started to burn low and a number of people had withdrawn to their tents. There were half a dozen of us who were still talking about what we had seen: lights moving across the sky, doing right-angle turns, turning back on themselves at speeds of several thousand miles an hour…” He dismissed these things with a wave of his hand. “The usual stuff.”
I asked, “Who remained after the others had retired?”
He sighed. “Uh… Danny—he was inexhaustible, and deeply committed—Dixon, Rafael, Paul, Jane, and myself.”
Jasmine spoke for the first time. Her voice was small, but, like her eyes, it carried a strength that suggested stubbornness, even obstinacy. She said, “I was also there, Donald. That is how you know I went into the trance.”
He stared hard at his pipe for a moment. I could see his jaw muscle going. “Clearly,” he said at last. “Jasmine was also there. She had been sitting in her sleeping bag. At about ten past two, she lay down. At about twelve minutes past, she began to tremble, moving her arms and her feet up and down in jerky movements. Then she began to speak. I remember it vividly. At first she made inarticulate noises, mainly vowels, but then she suddenly spoke, and said, ‘We have chosen you for communication. Jasmine is our channel for the simplicity of her mind. Daniel is our actor for his energy. He will spread our message. Donald is the rock on which we build. Dixon, Paul, Jane, you shall make paths for others to tread.’”
He stopped abruptly. I became aware of an old grandfather clock against one wall. Its ticking seemed surprisingly loud. Through the front window, I saw a woman talking silently to a postman. The midday light seemed to glare through the net curtains.
Jasmine said, “That is not all the message said.”
Dehan turned to her and studied her for a moment. “What else did it say?”
She looked at her husband and I was astonished to see real affection in her face. He scowled down at his pipe. She gazed at him, smiling while she spoke.
“I believe Donald saved my life that night. Because the message went on, ‘Daniel and Jasmine, follow the path to the glade now, for direct contact, to meet with us.’” She turned to Dehan. “But Donald would not let me go. The glade was half a mile away, through the forest. He forbade it. I think if we had gone, they would have killed us both, as they later killed Danny.”
“So did Danny go?”
She shook her head. “No, Donald stopped us. He knew it was not safe. Danny said if Donald didn’t want us to go, he would not go.”
I scratched my chin, turning the events over in my mind, trying to visualize them. I asked her, “What was it like?”
She frowned at the carpet, like she was wondering where the voice had come from.
I said, “Receiving the message: what was it like? What did it feel like?”
She looked at Donald, who ignored her. Finally, she turned to me and said, “It was strange. It was as though my own thoughts had taken on a life of their own. As though invisible hands were moving my thoughts. And then, when I began to speak, it was as though my own will had been cancelled, and my mouth was speaking on its own. I had no control over what it was saying.”
“You were not aware of the presence of thoughts in your mind that were not your own?”
The thought seemed to be something new to her. She frowned and after a moment shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”
I nodded. “This was Friday night?”
Kirkpatrick nodded and stood. “That was Friday night. Early Saturday morning we returned.” He walked over to a bookcase located behind my back and returned with two paperbacks. He handed one to me and one to Dehan. “Heaven’s Fire. Everything is recounted there faithfully from the notes I took at the time. I don’t think there is much more we can tell you.”
I took it and examined it. The dedication read, This book is dedicated to my friend and colleague, Daniel Brown, whose destiny it was to spread the message.
“Thank you. There is just one more thing. I believe there was a party on Saturday…”
He snorted. “Hardly. We were all tired. We had a few drinks, discussed what had happened—or not happened—Paul and Dixon
