Venus Libitina

(Version 1)

The Senshi of Fire and the Grey Lady had divined the most auspicious time and  place. The time was the midnight closest to the equinox. The place they had assumed they would choose from the chamber hollowed out of the rock a hundred yards below the Mansion of the Gates, a lonely rode in rural Honshu, and a particular desolate spot in one of the most arid regions of arid Botswana. But none of these were chosen.

Minako saw Yaten stir. She watched him, silently, wishing she cold put him to sleep, to sleep through the coming day and the terrible night—which would come so soon. <So little time . . .>

But he did not return to sleep. He lay there, his back to her, not really changing position, but Minako could tell that Yaten was no longer sleeping.

Others were stirring. This was a school day, the last full session before the Christmas break. Most of the children sounded like they were up—but not Minako’s babies, not yet. She guessed that Ishtar and Sarah and perhaps Naru were taking steps to see that she was not disturbed, yet.  But Isis, Achilles, and little Aphrodite were not early risers, anyway; they were like Minako on most mornings, like their father . . . Ishtar had to be up by now, but she was like Mamo-chan. <Like Mamo-chan.>

Much as she wanted to remain quiet next to Yaten, prolonging this precious time, there was something she had to say, again. "Yaten, you do not have to do this. You are the one who is needed now. Not just by me; by your people. By your Princess, your Sovereign."

"Moon-sama is my sovereign now," said Yaten.

"And she agrees with me," insisted Minako.

"She has given me leave," said Yaten, "To do what I must. Will you help?"

"I don’t know if I can . . ."

"If you do not," said Yaten, turning to face her, and caress her face, "Moon-sama will give herself. You cannot say Usagi is expendable."

As the mansion in Kensington, California began a deceptively normal day, the Reverend Johnny Lee Swainson had already been up for nearly four hours. He always did two Christmas shows, a short one at midnight on Christmas Eve and a longer one on Christmas Night. Some of it would be live, but there were pre-recorded pieces to be prepared. Almost all of these were "in the can" to use the now-ancient jargon which referred back before the digital era and even before video tape, all the way back to actual film.

Now there was a decision to make, a decision he had been putting off. Should he ask Benny to do a piece? His son was going to have one, and it would look especially bad if she were absent two years running and her brother cruising around on the USS Nimitz backing up the President’s latest policy, keeping Indonesia from intervening in the Malaysian Civil War.

Finally he decided he could wait no longer. He called his daughter directly. She didn’t pick up, but a signal came back saying her phone had taken the page.

At noontime, when his daughter called back, Swainson was with a couple of assistant producers and Dodgson, a straight-arrow elder of the NGC from Biloxi, Mississippi. Dodgson, 83, well-remembered Johnny Lee’s great grandfather; he had started out as a child singer on the New Gospel Radio Hour in 1938. Dodgson had sung at every Christmas broadcast since then except for a couple of years in Korea. The old man shushed the others when Swainson took the call.

(Daddy?)

"None other, child. Listen, y’all want to say a few words to the folks for Christmas? Look kind of funny if you don’t. Your brother’s gonna be on."

Swainson saw Dodgson turning up his hearing aid.

(I don’t know . . . I’m going with Pelly’s family tomorrow. You knew that, didn’t you?)

"Yes, I know about you going with your friends. But this won’t take but a little bit."

One of the assistant producers had something to say, but old Dodgson again brought silence.

(Can I do it tonight? I have something I have to do after school. I’m not sure how long it will take.)

"I can arrange it. Won’t be far to go. Will you do it for me, Benny?"

(I’ll call you back.)

It was ten in Orinda. Betty asked Pleione, "This thing, whatever it is . . . will we be finished by evening? Daddy dearest wants me to do a little TV work. Just say hello to his people, play Daddy’s good little girl, you know . . . I should probably do it. My brother’s doing it; I don’t want to get him on the spot."

Pleione asked, "Are you sure you want to go with us?"

"Your mother was the one that asked me."

"Yes . . . I suppose you will be back in time."

"What’s going to happen? Sarah must know."

"She won’t tell if she does."

"Well, how bad can it be? After finding Zoe’s leftovers . . . C’mon, we’ll be late for Biology."

The studio wasn’t part of the New Gospel Network, but it had done work for Swainson’s church before. Located in an old building at the formal Naval Base at Mare Island, most of Carquinez Productions’ income came from producing telecourses for several school districts, training videos for Northbay companies, and commercials. The NGC was an important, but not a vital customer.

Shooting a few minutes of a teenager making holiday greetings to the faithful did not seem particularly appealing to the staff, excepting a few New Gospel Church members. Few at Carquinez intended to remain longer than they had to, including all the creative people, and this job looked to be more annoying than most—again, to everyone but the NGC members, and they were all on the business side of the business except for one ancient electrician. Rounding up a crew to stay late was not easy, with that exception and one other: T. Nelson Sonneberg. TNS (or "The Next Spielberg" as his rivals referred to him behind his back) saw opportunity where others saw drudgery.

The shoot went well. The girl showed up much later than he had expected, but had been cooperative, for the most part. She had picked out a uniform from the ones he’d borrowed from a local porn producer and donned glasses she didn’t need. She gave up her dayglow green wig, and her friends braided her long black hair so that she looked years younger than when she had stalked in. <A performer, like her father,> TNS had thought. She didn’t follow the script, but did well ex tempore. Her friends cooperated, giving him some extra footage that might be useful if the bit was to be expanded.

Still, there was something not quite right, something beyond the nasty little . . . surprise that had necessitated the bandages on his fingers. Sonneberg decided to take pre-emptive action. He put in a call to the girl’s father, the Reverend Johnny Lee Swainson.

12:19 PST

John Pinkney Brown saw Pleione Umino turn round the corner, and rushed over to her, calling out, "Jelly Pelly, wait up!"

She and her companions stopped. One was Betty, as usual, but the other surprised him. It was Sarah. "Hi. Sarah, what are you doing here?"

"I came to pick up Pelly and her friend."

"With your mom?"

"Well, I don’t drive yet, do I."

"Can I come along? I could afford to miss Math today. It’s just review, anyway."

"No, Johnny," said Pleione firmly, making him think of his mother.

"It’s just a girls thing," said Sarah. "You wouldn’t like it."

"Oh . . . well, have a good time."

He let them leave, but he had an excuse to catch up again—he’d borrowed Pleione’s phone. But when he got outside, they were gone. Johnny peered down the hill. Orinda High was at the end of a long, blind street with a couple of switchbacks, down a slope too steep and rocky for developers to have ever put in anything. About half of it was torn up waiting for repavement. It wasn’t a street you would go tearing along unless you had some kind of off-road monster, and certainly not in the old van Sarah’s mother drove—the only car she could drive, probably.

How had they disappeared so quickly?

"God Bless all of you out there, especially my brother George. I guess you’ll be out in the Java Sea or something when you see this, I guess. I’m proud of you. Next Christmas I hope I can see you at home."

That was all. Johnny Lee Swainson knew his daughter was acting, of course, not only for the audience but for him. Faith had fled her long ago, even before he found out about her grandfather’s true fate. Still, this was disturbing. There was nothing that could harm in in the performance. But Swainson had the feeling his daughter had put into the performance something only he would pick up. Not George, of course. <A fine boy, but he doesn’t have the stuff in him to run the Church. Now Benny . . ."

"Why the flower?" he asked the producer-director over the videoconferencing link.

"I don’t really know . . . Don’t you like it?"

"It’s fine. I’m sure people are going to ask about it."

"Yeah. Well, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure . . . she had it, so I used it."

The Reverend could not read Sonneberg’s mind from two time zones away, but he didn’t have to. His ambition was written on his face clear as a sign in Times Square. But the man was canny enough not to lie right away, smart enough to wait until the Reverend gave him his opinion, and then smart enough not to take the full credit for the flower—but he had enough wit to claim a partial credit. Obviously the flower was Benny’s idea . . . was that the private signal? But what the devil could it mean?

"So, what do you want to do," said Sonneberg. "I shot more stuff I could add if you want to plump it up, stretch it out."

"Send everything you got along with your preliminary version. And your comments, of course. And," he added, pausing to enjoy the anticipation of the director, "Don’t make plans for the holidays you can’t change."

The Reverend didn’t allow any reservations about Benicia’s performance to disturb him. She had done it, and it was a sign she still knew where here true self belonged. He slept more soundly than he had in many months, and without the help of Jack Daniels Green Label.

Chikuma Naori dressed sensibly for the mysterious errand, but she found when Takao’s sister drove up that her mother was in kimono, made up as geisha. Moreover she was not wearing one of her wigs; she had gone to the trouble of having her own half-silvered hair done up, arranged as perfectly as a sculpture’s.

Since her mother’s hair was piled so high, she obviously had to have the front seat alongside Haruka. Naori squeezed into the back of the old Italian sports car, one she had never seen driven but remembered from a picture—it had been one of Takao’s father’s cars. She shared the cramped rear compartment with Michiru.

No one made much conversation on the ride, which was a long one, winding from city through farm to mountain country. Finally in a dense fog, they stopped. When Naori got out, she saw her mother disappearing with Haruka into the fog. As she made to follow, Michiru stopped her. "Wait here, please."

"But my mother—"

"Your mother asked for this. Wait here. Someone will come."

There were no mirrors, of course. There were no convenient puddles of still water, nor were there likely to be, for this place was as dry a one as one could find on the planet Earth. But with the eyes she now possessed, Sailor Earth could see her shadow in starlight, and that shadow had wings.

"So many," wondered the girl who still thought of herself as Benicia sometimes. "I didn’t know there were so many."

"There are senshi in many lands," said Chibi Moon.

"More awaken each year," said Sailor Pleione. "You aren’t the only newbie here, Betty."