F. Paul Wilson - Ground Zero

She’d always suspected something like this, but to hear it from Jack, of all people . . .

She turned to him. “How do you know all this?” She pointed to the Compendium —how she hungered to dive into it—where it sat on a side table. “And how did you get hold of that?”

“Jack is one of the Heirs,” Veilleur said.

“Heirs to what?”

“To the position I held for thousands of years—leading the Ally’s forces against the Otherness.”

“Jack?”

She almost laughed, but that was because she was thinking of the teenage Jack. Then she remembered how he’d killed five men over the course of a dozen hours and it didn’t seem so ludicrous. The sweet, faithful Jack she’d snuggled up to in the bed— what had she been thinking?—had turned into a cold-eyed killer when threatened, and was now back to easygoing, affable Jack.

Two Jacks, polar opposites . . . how did they coexist?

She stared at him. “Really?”

“Really,” Jack said, sounding none too happy about it.

His expression made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the job.

“It’s a long, long story,” Veilleur said. “Back in the First Age, when the Conflict was out in the open, the Ally’s forces prevailed after a seemingly endless string of battles. As it retreated, the Otherness triggered a worldwide cataclysm that wiped out all civilization. Humanity had to start from scratch again. I was made immortal and put on guard, because the Otherness had not given up. It had its own immortal at its disposal, and we battled through the millennia. In the fifteenth century I finally trapped him and locked him away—for good, I thought. But on the eve of World War Two, the German army released him. I slew him before he could escape.

“At that moment, with its victory seemingly complete, the Ally released me to age. It retreated, turning its attention to hotter spots in the Conflict. But the Adversary was not finished. He was reincarnated in 1968. In response, Jack and a few others like him were conceived and prepared to take up the role of Defender should that become necessary. So far it hasn’t. We hope to keep it that way.”

She stared at him. “Jack . . . you’re immortal?”

He shook his head. “Hardly. And not going to be if I have anything to say in the matter.”

“How . . . how long has this been going on?”

The Lady said, “The Conflict began before the Earth was formed and will continue long after the Sun’s furnace goes cold.”

Weezy closed her eyes as she felt the facts and ideas and suspicions and suppositions that had filled her brain shift and expand and form new patterns. Because if all this was true—and she sensed it was—it explained so much.

And now, more than ever, she was certain that the nine/eleven attacks were part of the Secret History, which meant ultimately part of the Conflict.

But the what and how and why remained elusive.

“Okay,” Jack said, “we know who I am, we know who Weezy is, and we know Mister Veilleur.” He leveled his gaze at Mrs. Clevenger. “But who are you?” He held up a hand. “And please don’t tell me you’re my mother. I thought you were many, but was told you were only one. You’re the Lady. I thought then that you might be Gaia or Mother Earth or something like that, but you said it wasn’t that simple. So what’s the truth? You’ve popped in and out of the entire course of my life. I think it’s time I knew the truth.”

She nodded. “So do I.”

Jack leaned back and folded his arms. “You have the floor.”

“Where to begin?” she said. “Be patient with me. I have never had to explain this before. In the past when you’ve asked, I’ve said I was your mother, but that’s not even remotely true. I say that because I am female and because I am older than any living thing on this planet.” She nodded toward Veilleur. “Even our friend here.”

Weezy leaned forward, fascinated. Was Goethe’s “eternal feminine” more than just a concept? Was she a real being?

“But I am not your mother in any sense. I have never called myself Gaia, though I have called myself Herta, but I am neither. I did not create you; you created me. I do not nurture you; you nurture me.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “That’s who you aren’t . . .”

“As to who I am, perhaps another name would help. Remember what I called myself in Florida?”

“Sure. Anya.”

“Anya Mundy, to be exact.”

“Anima mundi!” Weezy said. “Soul of the world!”

The Lady smiled at Weezy. “You always were a quick one.”

Jack was shaking his head. “I was thinking of the guy who wrote King of the Khyber Rifles .”

“Helps to know Latin,” Weezy said.

He looked at her. “ Another language?”

She shrugged.

The Lady said, “ ‘Soul of the world’ is closer but not quite accurate. I am, for want of a better term, the embodiment of the sentience on this planet. I was born when the interactions of the self-aware creatures on the planet reached a certain critical mass. Like any infant, I had limited consciousness at first, but as Earth’s sentient biomass expanded, so did my awareness. Eventually I appeared as a person—a child at first, then an adolescent, then fully grown.”

“The noosphere,” Weezy breathed, seeing it all come together. “Vernadsky and Teilhard were right?”

The Lady nodded. “Vernadsky originated the concept, but Teilhard was closer to the truth.”

“You’ve lost me,” Jack said.

Weezy spoke as the facts popped into her head. “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit who theorized that the growth of human numbers and interactions would create a separate consciousness called the noosphere. Needless to say—but I’ll say it anyway—this did not endear him to the Church.”

“Are we talking cyberspace?”

“No,” the Lady said. “There is nothing electronic, nothing ‘cyber’ about it.”

“But where can it go from here?” Weezy said. “What’s the next evolutionary step?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I sense other noospheres out there—other worlds, other realities with sentient populations—but I can’t contact them. I am bound to my creators, to humanity. But perhaps the next step will be our noosphere achieving enough breadth and depth and strength to enable it to reach out and contact other noospheres.”

Weezy had an epiphany. “And maybe that will lead to a community of interacting noospheres, which in turn will give rise to yet another level, an übersphere of collective noosphere consciousness.”

Weezy felt herself trembling inside. This was wonderful.

Jack leaned forward. “Sounds like you’re talking about God.”

The wonder of it struck Weezy dumb for a few seconds. “Yes . . . maybe someday we’ll create God.”

They all sat in silence for a moment, then something occurred to her.

“They call you the Lady. Why? Do you always appear as a woman?”

She nodded. “Always. I don’t know why. Strictly speaking, I should be considered an it , but I always appear as female. I can choose my appearance—any age, any race, any level of beauty or ugliness—but for some reason I can appear only as female. And I must appear, must be physically present in the world. I can be anywhere, but I must always be somewhere .”

Jack frowned. “You can’t simply disappear, fade back into the noosphere?”

“No. The noosphere is everywhere, and I am its physical manifestation. As such, I must exist in the physical world.”

Weezy feared she might explode with . . . what? Glee? Rapture? Triumph? Vindication? But she reined herself in. She believed every word that had been said at this table, but should she? Shouldn’t she doubt? Shouldn’t she do what she had always told everyone else: Ask the next question?