Meira II The Seahorse

The Matriarchs

by

Philip Newman

Book II

Meira & The Seahorse

Meira & The Seahorse is the second in The Matriarch series of novels in which we learn of the Ancients’ use of solar energy, and of The Matriarchy, under which people lived long, purposeful, lives.

Meira

&

THE

SEAHORSE

by

Philip Newman

Copyright © 2009 Philip Newman

The moral right of the author has been asserted

This is a work of fiction.

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, living, or dead, contained within these pages is purely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the author; nor may it be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other that in which it is published, and without a set of similar conditions, including this condition, being imposed on subsequent purchasers.

ISBN 978-616-90488-0-0

Published by Sothic Press

101/2 Moo.6 Maenam

Koh Samui, Thailand 84330

E-Mail:Publisher@SothicPress.com

+66 (0) 8010802178

Smashwords Edition

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Christopher Jordan

Although Meira McMahon is a fictional character the technology of the Ancients’ revealed in this story is proven, and is the subject of extensive research and analysis by Christopher Jordan, a science graduate of Sussex University. Of particular significance is the practical use of the spherical mirror, as illustrated by the Sothic Triangle, to do the work of the parabola, and of the pendulum, the Ank, to make its construction childishly simple. These two elements alone are sufficient to harness the Sun’s energy to provide high temperature, scalable, and wholly manageable heat machines. If you factor in the Ancients’ predilection for huge stones - the monoliths and megaliths, the pyramids and ziggurats, and the so called sacrificial altars – as energy storage devices, then their infinitely renewable, pollution free, total energy system stands out clear as day.

Meira and her friends are products of my imagination, but the science she shows us belongs to everyone; no one person owns it. Christopher Jordan has dug deep, and burrowed long to bring this simple technology back to the surface, so it is to him, and his persistence with the technology, that the stories of Meira are dedicated.

Philip Newman

November 2009

Meira & The Seahorse

Chapter One

The doorbell rang. It would be Gerard of course. It was Wednesday, a little before lunch, and he would turn up to say, ‘Just passing. Thought you might be hungry,’ and she would say, ‘Always hungry. Where shall we go?’ Knowing full well that it would be either La Tivoli, two streets away in the Rue de Grenelle, or Madellien’s, in Perandello. Gerard hated trying new restaurants, or even well established old restaurants if they were new to him; he liked to eat where he knew the food and the staff. More to the point, she suspected, Gerard liked to eat only where he was liked. He loved a warm welcome and light, searching banter, and fun. Fun is what Gerard is all about. He built his life around it, revelles in it, and becomes enormously depressed when he can neither find it in others or generate the stuff himself. Which is why she loved him, and stayed close to him, but of course could never live with him.

Where they took lunch mattered little in her mind - she enjoyed exploring the menu in either place - and she could count on Gerard to intervene between her and the waiter, or the owner, to guide her into his idea of what they should have for lunch in the middle of the week. ‘So important, Wednesday lunch, sweetheart,’ he would declare. ‘One needs a great big lift when one’s bogged down in the sodden turf of mid-week business.’ Then he would pause, raise his eyebrows as if to cue and wait ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty seconds before letting out a huff of frustration as once more she refused to be drawn about her occupation. Teasing Gerard, she reflected, was one of life’s finer pleasures which reminded her: the Panama hat, the one she borrowed from Fiona on a semi-permanent basis, would go nicely with the brown wool suit and the burgundy scarf from Jaquelines. Gerard hated that hat.

Only it was not Gerard, or Angelique, her travelling companion from the trip to Iceland late last summer with her frantic demands for a listening ear into which she would pour the latest of her endless frustrations; the poor woman seemed never at peace. Nor was it the ever comforting, though always testing, Fiona, to announce, ‘I have come to take my beautiful daughter to a beautiful lunch.’

It was Peter Jordan, and Myra’s heart all but stopped.

My God, Peter. What are you doing here? The immediate chaos that his presence, here, in Paris, on her doorstep, had detonated in her mind was already retreating back toward coherent thought as she forced herself to concentrate only on relevant factors. No, no, don’t answer that, she added hurriedly. You’re here to see me. ‘Course you are. What a surprise. Gosh! Her mind was racing as she took in the crumpled trousers heaped on his sneakers with the laces trailing and his shirt bundling over the waistband, but his hair was in place: his ponytail was neatly clamped in a pewter ring much like a serviette holder. I was just on my way out, she declared: her wits regained. Lunch . . . do you mind? Gosh! Peter. Gosh! Give me a minute, we’ll go eat. Moment. She disappeared leaving him at the door in a rare state of slack jawed silence at her reaction, and then she was back, complete with handbag, a shoulder bag, a light raincoat, and, dropping the Panama plan, a brown cashmere scarf against the damp nips of early spring. C’mon, she wrestled her arm into his while wheeling him down the stairs into the street. You have to tell me all about what you’ve been doing and how you got away from ‘them’ - only over lunch. This is France, she hustled him along the pavement, and all good things are conducted over lunch. It’s not far, in fact very near, don’t tell me now, wait. Wait until we are seated and have ordered and our glasses are full. She squeezed his arm harder. Ooh. I can’t wait to hear all about you and your adventures.

At the Café St. Jerome in the Rue Monfluer she stood as he settled at a table for four; the waiter was already hovering. Two for lunch s’il vous plait. And a carafe of vin d’maison blanc right away monsieur, she was ordering while unbuttoning her coat, rummaging in her purse, then sitting tentatively. Damn. Give me a moment, she said, rising again, a quick phone call, sorry, and she was off into the crowded rear of the restaurant that was chock full of coats, and hat stands, and hurrying waiters, but where there was no phone.

She slid through the kitchen unchallenged and out into a lane that took her to the Rue Carl Kauffman and the Chase Manhattan Bank. This part she had rehearsed as if her life depended upon it, and it did: hers and around five billion other lives depended upon it. It was her number one emergency plan and it took only eight minutes to access the safe deposit box, remove the waiting travel pack, smile her way back through the bank, and enter the Metro station half a block north.

Emergency plan two was for callers outside of restaurant hours; three was for chance meetings in the street; four was for encounters on the Metro. She had practiced them all, but plan one was the slickest, the simplest, and therefore the first choice.

At the Gare de Lyon she took the non-stop TGV to Cannes and was lucky to find a place in the dining car. A lonely lunch, she reflected, for her and Peter too, but it could not be helped. Peter had found her so others would follow: possibly immediately. She could have been snatched on the way to the restaurant but it was unlikely they would have enough manpower available to be certain of success. The chances are they - who could be any group from the CIA to the Muslim Brotherhood - would have one operative following Peter and others available for support when needed. Not that Tor, or Amone, would have needed any help; either one of those thugs could have picked her up in one arm and held her tight enough to stop her screaming while opening a car door and bundling her in. No one would have stopped either of them: they were so powerfully competent and so coldly devoid of all fear. Well they were gone; she had witnessed their deaths, but there would be others, and they would be just as dangerous.

The waiter coughed and shuffled his feet. She knew he was there but couldn’t drag her mind back to the menu. The table d’hôte is still available. She looked up. He was young, smiling, fresh faced with bright clear eyes: so different from Peter with his dark orbs jigging constantly as if trying to keep up with his mind. Or the à la carte if you prefer. His words failed to penetrate: bouncing off her as if from another time. She was staring through him now to the carriage full of busy diners oblivious to the suburbs flying past in the train’s gathering speed. Her whole world seemed to be gathering momentum. She had cut herself adrift, as she knew she would one day, but not now. Not before she learned more . . . understood more. She was spinning now . . . her life out of control as if she was spinning down a vast hole . . . .

She stared at the menu; her eyes were reading the words but her mind was dancing around her two short years in Paris and her lovely flat in the Rue Vesale and the friends she had made. Damn. She had some nice clothes now. Perhaps Fiona, her mother, would keep them safe, although she would certainly reclaim the Panama hat. Damn and shit. She didn’t want to give up her life as a Parisienne; it was too early. She needed more time here; there was too much to do to be running around in another master spy escape plan. It was all so childish.

Mademoiselle?

The waiter was back – had he ever gone away? He looked worried, poor soul. Sorry, yes, thank you.

Table d’hote, merci bien, he took the menu from her hands and hurried away.

In Cannes she registered at the Ambassador Hotel as Mina Martin, a citizen of New Zealand, who was only twenty-four years old. There were aspects of this extraordinary life of hers that almost made all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense worthwhile. Six hours ago she was twenty-eight: the same age she had been two years ago when she ceased to be Miera MacMahon, from Brisbane, to become Myra Mitchell, from London. That was her first identity change: brought about by Bill, her dearest and most missed friend from her epic journey through the war torn Middle East to Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and Laos to Cambodia. She had witnessed murders on a daily basis but none came closer to home than the violent struggle between Amone and Tor in her own hotel room. At its height, when she found herself staring into Tor’s eyes and seeing her own death hanging there, a stranger appeared and simply shot him dead. It was not a moment to forget.

She had escaped her pursuers under a new identity and remained hidden until this day when dear Peter turned up under the pale grey sky that is Paris in early spring. Tomorrow, as Mina Martin, she would sleep late, stroll down the Promenade de la Croisette wearing something bright in light cotton – she needed to shop - have a light lunch and maybe take a ride out to the Lycklama Museum to see the Cuneiform tablets and the magic amulets there. Later she could do a movie then linger over a white wine in the hotel bar just to see who was there.

The day after she would drive along the coast, through La Napoule, St. Raphael, Fréjus, Ste. Maxime . . . perhaps spend the afternoon in St. Tropez before returning late, after dark, when the back roads would be quiet, and she could be sure there were no lights in her wake. If all went well - if she remained convinced she was alone and unobserved - she would look for a boat: a small cruise ship, or a yacht in search of crew. Either way she had to cut herself off from the outside world, and allow her trail to cool, for she was certain that Peter could not have found her without help: probably from a large organization with extensive resources. In all likelihood he was an innocent, but that did nothing to offset the danger. In fact it decidedly increased the danger as he would have been so wrapped up in his own enthusiasms as to fail to see that he had been used: that he had only been given freedoms so that he might sniff her out with instincts only he possessed, because outside of the matriarchal line, only he shared her knowledge of the Ancients. On reflection that probably wasn’t true, there must be others, but she had not met any so she could not be traced through them. Peter Jordan was the one known link to her, and she was the one known link to her mother, and her mother was the only one capable of passing on the knowledge. Myra Mitchell had to disappear completely, utterly, and without trace before a link could be made.

She’s fucked off. Must’ve scared her. Course you fucking scared her you silly bastard. She’s cut and run. You pop up out of nowhere and expect her to hang about. You must be mad. Anyway you lost her now. She could be anywhere. Any-fucking-where. She ran before because they knew you; now she’s run again: same reason. She don’t know they don’t know you now. How could she, you stupid bastard? How could she?

The waiter in the Café St. Jerome returned for what seemed like the thousandth time with the obvious question on his eyebrows. No she hasn’t come back you sneering montage of arrogant imbecility. And yes, I am going to finish this carafe all by myself, and I’ll damned well let you know when, and if, I want to order food. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Now I’ll have to start again

Okay, okay, calm down. Where would you go? Not to an airport, definitely not an airport with all that security and passport inspection and tickets with names on. No, no, no. Take a train, or a bus, or a boat. A boat would be good. You can go a long way along the coast on a boat and no one can find you until you arrive somewhere. So go to Le Havre and the English Channel, or La Rochelle and into the Bay of Biscay, or even further north to Calais and the dark and dreary North Sea. No, no, no. This is a sunshine babe, a child of the desert and the bleached Australian tropics. She’d be drawn south like a moth to a whatnot. Head for Golf du Lion, for Marseille, or Nice. Yes, yes, Nice. From Nice she’d take a big fat cruise ship, or an accommodating freighter, or . . . she can troll along the Côte d’Azur to St. Tropez, and Cannes, and all those little seaside spots where fat cats park their obscene yachts. Would she do that? Would she head for the fat cats? Nah. Nah, she’d head for obscurity, for a cruise ship or maybe for nothing. Maybe she just needs to be in a crowd in the sunshine and near a busy port. Maybe she’s still here, in old Paris. Maybe she’s just taking the piss – giving me a bad time. And maybe she’s on the fucking TGV high tailing it out of here at a great rate of knots. You daft bastard, frightening her off like that.

***

Wearing off-white shorts, a pastel green wrap blouse, and silver canvas sandals, she sat in the peace of the late afternoon at a sidewalk table of the Le Bon Auberge. A heady background of sun oil, and coffee espresso, filled the light breeze off St. Tropez as she relaxed: gave herself up to the flapping colours and clinking boats to watch the comings and goings along the quay. Despite the crisis and the upheaval to her life she was at peace: her nerves calm and her head level. Was that the longer memory kicking in? Was the greater perspective breaking through to give her this confidence?

She decided not to think but to let her mind drift . . . poor Peter . . . such an intellect . . . such a pace to his life. She loved the mental agility of that amazing man but he was too dangerous . . . too vulnerable . . . too exposed. Professor Peter Jordan was lovely but she could never risk being seen with him again. All that madness at his apartment in Los Angeles, all those pictures of the altars and monoliths, and his knowledge of Ogam . . . how many people knew about Ogam? The earliest language found to date carved indelibly into the heaviest, most permanent, structures on the planet yet few people could read it, and many academics refused to even acknowledge it as a language. Well she knew more now. With the language stone from her father’s safe she could translate Hieroglyphs, and Cuneiform, and Ogam, with certainty and if that wasn’t enough, if the accurate translations of the Ancients wasn’t enough for one young woman, there was the increasing awareness of her greater knowledge: a knowledge of a depth and width she was unable to measure because it lay deep, very deep, in the lower recesses of her mind and it was changing her outlook. Frightening. Or was it? The exercises were working – that’s all. She was getting tangible results.

‘It’ll be subtle at first,’ her mother had said. ‘You’ll be rewarded with little things you didn’t know you knew but it will grow quickly, subconsciously. Your mind will be busy without your conscious participation and your dreams will start – oh what dreams will come your way my darling girl. I almost envy you.'

Almost, she had said, and meant precisely that. Making the connections to memories placed in her mind by her mother while still in the womb was daunting because it was not just her mother’s knowledge she was gaining. How many lifetimes did her mother inherit in grandmother’s womb and she in hers? How many Matriarchs precede her and how long did they live? Her mother would never tell her age but she must be more than one hundred fifty because she let slip little snippets about her early years in America and her first child. Would she one day see all that as she sees her own experiences, or would she just possess the knowledge as a distillation of events? Either way it was daunting and she could expect her dreams to be busy affairs given the need for sorting all that information. How would that make her feel? Let it happen girl: just sit back and let it happen.

Seahorse, a twenty metre sailing catamaran in spotless white, with two chrome and steel winches big enough to service a liner on her aft deck, was moored stern to, not ten metres from her table. A silver canvas bimini shaded the spacious well-deck, and an aluminium passerelle, propped. with careful Mediterranean nonchalance, over her immaculate transom, connected the boat to the shore.

A slim, dark haired, woman in her early thirties wearing the almost obligatory halter top and crotch hugging denim cut-offs appeared from the inner workings and was striding purposefully shoreward on thick soled, pink and white, deck shoes. As she approached Mina noticed her legs were lean: the skin pale and thin with blue shadows pushing the surface. A heavy smoker. Over her shoulder was a canvas shopping bag declaring the superiority of San Solare sun screens; one of the handles had slipped off her shoulder. Deftly, in almost perfect timing, as she passed the café, the dangling handle caught the stanchion supporting the long sunshade wrenching her, inelegantly, backwards into Mina’s table. There was a rattling of silverware and crockery, an awful grinding skid, and a short, gasped, Oh, as the unfortunate woman’s denim posterior was dumped firmly onto the pavement.

Mina went to her aid, settled her at the table, poured water and made solicitous enquiries. She appeared to be all right, but she sat at the table a while all the same and began chattering. Her name was Gloria, from Southall, Middlesex, on the western end of the London suburbs, she spoke with heavy, flat, back-of-the-throat, suburban London vowels and had never been married. Lot of Indians where I lived, not that I got anything against Indians – some of them boys are pretty good looking - and they make the money alright. Nah, but the families are tight, like Jews really, they don’t marry outside their kind much. Keep to themselves they do. Not that it mattered much, I din’t want to spend any more time in Sah-fall than I ‘ad to. This life’s alright, no money in it, but you don’t need much anyhow, food and accommodation’s all taken care of . . . you just need a bit of spending money. She rummaged in her bag, pulled out a single cigarette, then rummaged some more until she found a bright, pink, plastic, lighter. She lit up expertly, blew a long grey cloud from a deep inhalation, and went on, ’Course I’m paid crew. Not many of them jobs. Plenty of people crew for nuffin’, makes it ‘arder for us professionals, but there’s nuffin’ you can do abahd it.

Are there many captains looking for crew?

Gloria threw her head back and grinned, to submerge her laughter, as another huge inhalation of smoke was processed deep in her respiratory system then blown as a long cloud into the air. Plenty lookin’ darlin’. Ain’t all wantin’ strictly crew. You need to be able to look after yer’self if you’re gonna sail miles from anywhere with men you ‘ardly know.

Thoughts of both living and dying by the sword crossed Mina’s mind, but she left them unsaid. Perhaps a couple looking for help . . .? Mina ventured.

They usually prefer young men. At least the woman does, and she has all the say. A strong guy on board is more useful. There’s still plenty of heavy work. Even on the smartest new boats anchors need to be cleaned and manhandled into lockers and lazarettes, heavy ropes and chains have to be repaired and I ain’t met a woman yet to go up the mast on a rolling sea. Nah, women ain’t so useful, and they’re competition to wives. You want a job, you look for a big boat, it’ll have more crew. ‘Course then you got more than the captain to fight off. Another deep inhalation seemed to seal that pearl in the woman’s mind as she blew, dragged hard again, then stubbed the hot little cigarette into the glass ashtray of the adjacent table. Gotta go, shopping to fetch. Nice talkin’, sorry about crashin’ into your table. She gathered her San Solare bag up tightly and bounced away on her air cushioned soles. Mina watched, and noted that her departure had also caught the ever attentive eye of the waiter. She signalled for the bill.

She was keeping her distance, and only half heartedly watching, but Mina was following Gloria for reasons she did not really understand. It might have been the determined steps and a sense of purpose, that seemed to exceed that of a routine shopping trip that drew her, or it might have been the dallying conversation, or something else, something less finite. Whatever it was she was pleased she followed because an increase in pace as Gloria neared, what proved to be, her destination, told her to be more attentive. Mina propped herself against a concrete bollard to watch the woman quickly skip up the gangplank of a black hulled boat, with a pristine white deck festooned with glittering chrome winches, and immaculate stainless steel safety rails. Immediately a male head, balding and weathered, with alert eyes, appeared from the companionway but was quickly obscured by Gloria hopping familiarly down from the gangway to what was, for-all-the-world, a lover’s welcome. Mina retraced her steps with a plan forming in her mind.

Chapter Two

She did not receive a call until the following afternoon as she sat in her room quietly gazing over the jetty and the small marina beyond. I’m George Hastings, owner of the Seahorse: An authoritative voice, barely polite, and decidedly employer to perspective employee. She waited for him to continue. You left a message with my deck hand about crewing for us.

Thank you, yes. She had watched the Seahorse the previous afternoon carefully choosing her moment to approach the muscular young man scrubbing the foredeck with a long handled brush. Her first guess, that the he was a factor in Gloria’s presence on the Seahorse, and that he might be pumped for further information about the boat, and her crew, was clearly wrong. The moment she looked into his steady gaze she realised she had made a mistake; he was not the sort to have an affair with the Glorias-from-Sahfall of this world. Quickly she changed her plan: requesting only that he pass a message to the owner.

I’m looking to sail, though I’m willing to pay my way, she told George Hastings.

Why don’t you come over and talk about it? Cocktails around six-thirty? It was almost a command; she instinctively backed away. Cocktails lead to dinner, and dinner to an awkward late night departure with everyone a little drunk.

This evening is a bit awkward – how about tomorrow? She ventured, testing him.

Lunch then. Around noon.

Lunch it is. See you tomorrow. She hung up with the last word fresh on her lips, which, she thought, might be another mistake. If she wanted to sail in quiet waters she should not be entertaining a battle of egos.

George Hastings was not a tall man, around five foot nine, or less maybe, but with a good head of light brown hair greying only along the temples in attractively benign streaks of silver. His eyes were a passive brown under a dark mass of eyebrow foliage grown wiry with twists of grey curling upward to form tiny horns. He moved easily, rising to greet her as she paused to remove her shoes, then watched as she placed her first barefoot step on the Seahorse passerelle. Welcome, welcome Mina, he reached forward to take her free hand. Welcome to Seahorse, my poor, but entirely dependable chariot. He continued to hold her hand as she stepped carefully down into the well of the bridge deck. Come meet Andy, my sailing master and life long friend.

Andy stood, beer glass in hand, a big smile under an entirely bald head, and pale green eyes crinkled into a large, friendly, face. And Carina, George continued, our second mate, housemistress, and as of this moment, only female member of the crew. She was small, dark, Mediterranean, and wary. Mina sat beside her. There was no sign of the deck hand.

Would you like some wine Mina? Said Andy, still standing, his eyes fixed upon her, taking in her silver-grey provocatively front buttoned dress, the wide silver belt, and the silver plastic fuck-me shoes dangling from her right hand. Or a gin, vodka maybe . . . we have a good bar.

Wine please, she said. Light and white, and preferably cold.

Champagne perhaps, suggested George, already too long silent, his eyes all over the big silver buttons. Mina merely raised her eyebrows. Champagne it is, he declared. Pop down to the forward cold box Carina. Bring up a couple of the Cordon Rouge. There was a moment’s breathing space after Carina obediently disappeared in which the two men took her in: their eyes passing evenly from face, to shoulders, to upper body, and immediately to her legs. She was being examined; the jury were currently out, deciding if they wanted her aboard. She smiled as she let the front loader and the belt do their work but was increasingly conscious of the need to do something with the damn shoes. Finally she placed them face down on the seat beside her.

Andy seemed alright, she mused, placing him around the late forties, maybe early fifties: so difficult to tell now men take such good care of themselves. He was about one point eight metres tall and on the lean side - leathery was the word that came to mind – and bore all the signs of having been worn down by hard work and unhappy relationships. If his ugly brown belt, and the ink stains in his shirt pocket, were an indication there were no women in his life now, which might become a problem as time went on, but for now, she decided, he was benign

George was not so easy to place on the age scale. He had a youthful appearance, and was quick in his movements, but the skin