There’s something wrong beyond the walls of the Melding Minster. It comes to me through my old senses. The ones I was born with - sight, smell and touch. They report subtle errors, reminding me that there is more to life than glorying in the arena of the mind which the white meditation has just gifted to me.

The sun is setting behind the hill, casting the shadow of the temple out over the land below and on to the waves. There’s a strange taste in the air and a strange light in the evening. The sea is burning. A carpet of orange flames spreads out from the shore across the dark still surface as far as the eye can see.

Oak is waiting on a flat shelf of rock overlooking the sea. “Take this,” he says and hands me a silver torc which sits on my head like a coronet. “It’s an Amnyine amplifier. It will allow you to maintain the field you have now gained access to, so long as your pilgrim band sticks together.”

“The Zed men knew about Eastedge,” the seedling continues as we all stare at the unnatural fire below. “We underestimated them.”

He sounds weary to me. In my new state I am so much more attuned to subtleties of thinderin emotion which meant nothing to me before.

“They’ve found a way to cut off our reinforcements by setting the sea alight. Their patrol flights were dropping a thin layer of some hydrocarbon binding agent, a little like oil but clearly engineered for this purpose. It has spread over the surface and now it makes a barrier of flame. It won’t last long, there isn’t that much of it, but it is a clever trick. It will last long enough for their purposes and leave us with a nasty cleaning up operation afterwards.”

“We do not have much time. They have changed tactics. They were holding hostages down in the village,” he says. “Willow and Hessuru. They demanded we release you, but I decided you must complete the final meditation. It might have been wrong of me. Come! Let us go down to meet them. They make their assault on the Temple now.”

I read sorrow and regret, emotions I had never expected to find in cool thinderin minds. They had always been so difficult to interpret before but they were always there and now I can perceive them.

There is a fast way to the Dome of the Great Prism, an elevator which takes us all from the melding Minster down to the floor level of the Dome in two minutes. Oak shepherds us through a room we haven’t visited before, a vaulted vestibule that opens onto a balcony sitting right above the main gateway to the Temple. From here we can more clearly see the approach to the Temple, the village and the sea.

I expand the range of my mental perceptions with ease. I’m getting the hang of using the Amnyine mental field. It’s easier to read things from a distance but altering thoughts will require closer proximity. I find the minds I had some former connection with the easiest to locate.

Hessuru is hurt! The perceptive and subtle fusheyea who ministered to our human pilgrim band so faithfully and mentored the fushem with wisdom and kindness lies in a heap below the village bell, leaking clear alien blood. I can feel her pain and bewilderment. Does she know what happened to Rahelo and Frenane and their babies?

And Willow too! They’ve tortured and burnt her. I do not know if she will recover.

I feel sick to the core and angry. There must be no more of this. I can clearly sense the new arrivals, quite distinct in their red and gold uniforms. It is the Zed Men looking for their pathogen. The sea is a wall of fire behind them and the village is destroyed. They have forced their way through the barricades before the great Temple entrance, killing the Light Guards in their way and striking at any bilachai who dare to question them or interfere with their progress.

Have these soldiers no shame? The Zed Men are marching boldly up the hill now as though the Temple was only a hiding place and its violation a matter of no importance. Have they no fear of the repercussions of this sacrilege?

But of course, these are stupid questions. They are Zed Men.

It doesn’t matter. My organisation has caused their leaders some trouble on Earth but now I have a different way to infect my target and the Zed Men are too late. Hunting down the enemies of the body politic can be dangerous.

They’ve declared me to be a pathogen of Gaia. Very well. Now this pathogen has mutated. I recall an old viral plague that troubled humanity at the beginning of the millennium: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It struck at the heart of the immune system, infecting precisely those agents whose purpose was to defend the body. Well, I have acquired my own skills and these Zed Men will be my target. Let the false rulers of Gaia beware!

I reach out with my newfound perception, touching the thoughts of the captain as he strides up the main path to the Temple. So far, I have treated the wider world of Silusia-Alpha with respect. So far, I have confined my struggles to the prescribed arena inside the temple. But no longer.

The time for meditation is past and at the end of all meditations must come action.

Only those who have succeeded in the final White mediation are granted the full powers of my action, the power to change minds and dreams in the waking world by seeking and finding chromatic fault lines to exploit. I toy with the grey notions of duty and the petty anger inside the soldier, turning them over like bright jewels. His sordid little xenophobia disgusts me but I steel myself and marshal my new powers.

My ideas pierce the walls of his mind and pass into his consciousness with all the invasive skill of a virus. The captain is a lucky man. He and his comrades will be the first of the new culture - the vectors of my virus.

I speak quietly to Oak. The Light Guards on the balcony fall back. I hold out my arms and from the pediment they cast down rope and vine ladders which will bring my foe to me. Come to me my foe! Come to me my prey! At the edge of the parapet, I call out simply, “Here I am”

The Zed Men are hesitating now. They glance anxiously round, suspecting a trap. It’s been too easy to get to this point. Something is amiss. But the captain is anxious to meet his new master and urges them on. The troops scramble up the face of the temple past the balconies and inner chambers where I have laboured and which they will never comprehend.

By the time the captain reaches me I am calm. He doesn’t draw his gun and his men take their lead from him. I have my instructions ready and I speak them clearly to my new escorts. Solar Group Abstraction vessels are waiting in orbit.

The King and Queen are expecting news of me. Crester Brock and Mohamad Janjua are expecting news of me. I shall not disappoint any of them. I shall visit them in person and there will be a reckoning. It is time to return to Earth.

21/11/2021 - DMFW