Back at the cave, the Drakians welcomed Amber and were fascinated to hear her story of how the bar code tattoo had destroyed her life.

“I wonder what’s wrong with your codes?” Nate said.

“Bipolar disorder,” Amber replied. “Aunt Emily made me suspect it, and when I asked, my dad admitted that it runs all through my family. My mother’s side is full of Parkinson’s disease.”

“But they cured Parkinson’s with stem cell therapy years ago,” Kayla pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Dusa. “They don’t even want to be bothered treating it. They’d rather eliminate people with the disease than pay for their treatment.”

Kayla had been standing nearby listening when she suddenly felt limp with fatigue. Jack noticed her leaning against the cave wall, her arm extended for support, and joined her. “You’d better lie down,” he suggested, gently touching her shoulder. “You were pumped with adrenaline; now you’re feeling the letdown. Plus, that desert sun can wipe you out. I should build some kind of roof on the swing-lo for shelter.”

He grabbed a sleeping bag from a storage trunk and led her to the back cavern where the stalactites and stalagmites were so abundant. “It’s quiet and cool in here,” he said, spreading out the bag. “You should rest.”

Kayla did feel wiped. She stretched out on the bag and shut her eyes. Sleep didn’t come immediately, but instead she rested in a semiwaking state, aware of the slow drip sound coming from somewhere in the cave. Its repetitive steadiness was soothing….

She is in a black room. Outside are the crashing waves of a vast and tumultuous ocean. In dim light she is looking at a hand. A voice says, “It’s up to you to stop this. Help will be called from the sky, though I do not know if it will come in time to save us all.” A right hand traces the line of a palm on another right hand. She recognizes the hands, the slim fingers, the curve of the palm. Both of them are her own.

With a shudder, Kayla awakened from her trance.

Two right hands? she wondered.

 

Later that evening, Kayla walked out in the desert with Jack. “Do you think the swing-lo could get us to California?” she asked.

“Don’t know. I’d be interested in testing it, though. California isn’t that far. Why do you want to go there?”

“I had a … a … vision.”

“Oh, right. Your psychic visions,” Jack said.

“Yeah. I think I was born with some natural ability but I got better at it during the time I spent studying in the Adirondacks with Eutonah. She’s a powerful shaman. Even now, she can project her spirit out of her body and travel.”

“Astral projection,” he said. “My grandmother in Ireland claimed she could do it.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Hey, did anyone ever think I’d be zipping around the desert like George Jetson?” he replied. “I think anything’s possible.”

His words brought back a memory of Allyson’s last letter to August, the one where she said the same thing: Anything is possible.

“I’d like to go see my friend Allyson at Caltech in Pasadena,” Kayla told Jack. “And I had a vision that I believe was of the person Kendra called KM-4, the palm reader. In the vision, she was reading my palm. She told me help would come to me from the sky.”

They had walked far enough from the cave that their only light was a blanket of stars. He knelt and took matches from his back pocket to light a tangle of dry sagebrush that had slowly tumbled toward them. It burst into flame instantly.

A distant look came into his eyes, as though he was calculating something. “I wish I knew how high the swing-lo can fly. Maybe if I get it going I’ll be the one who’s able to help you.”

“Why don’t you test it?” she suggested. “The desert seems like the perfect place.”

He stared into the steadily glowing fire of the tumbleweed. “I’m afraid of heights,” he revealed, a note of embarrassment in his voice. “The fire walk didn’t cure you of your fears?” she asked gently.

He smiled sadly, still staring into the fire. “Do you know why your feet didn’t burn?”

Kayla shook her head. She assumed it had something to do with mind over matter — but otherwise she had no idea.

“Most people don’t know, so when they do the walk it takes enormous courage. But before my walk, I already knew that ash is an excellent insulator. The heat from the coals doesn’t travel through it easily. If the fire has been burning long enough and there is a good layer of ash covering the coal bed, you won’t get burned as long as you keep moving quickly. The ash is like a blanket of protection over the coals.”

“I had no idea,” Kayla admitted. “So you’re saying that you didn’t get the benefit from it because you already knew you could do it?”

“Right. If I take the swing-lo high into the air, that would be overcoming my greatest fear. To help you, I might be able to do it. I’d be willing to try, anyway.”

She looked at him there in the flickering light and their eyes met. She knew he was acknowledging the feeling that had been silently growing between them, a strong attraction that was both physical and emotional. She felt a powerful urge to kiss him — it would have been the most natural thing to do at that moment. But she also thought of Mfumbe, trapped in his bed by sickness and injury — her Mfumbe, who had gone through so much to stand by her.

This thought made her refrain from the kiss, offering only a warm smile instead. Still, she wondered how much longer she could keep herself from moving into his arms.