As soon as Jim left, John created a stasis field surrounding the portal. He was not about to be caught off guard. As he expected, a group of invaders came right back through the portal. Helen came first, closely followed by her two guards. Then Isis came on board, followed by the rest. Jim allowed the stasis field to expand to give them all a little more room. Isis was a little disappointed that she hadn't caught John by surprise.
John had in mind to delay her a few minutes from returning to earth. He knew Isis would greatly desire to speak to him. He was certain she had no idea of their relativistic velocity and would not be prepared for the time difference once she returned to earth.
"Hello Helen. Did she force you to bring her here?"
Isis spoke to Jim, "She's my prisoner and I understand you intend to destroy my fleet."
"It would suit me better if you would turn them back."
Isis indicated that she would comply. "All right father, you have checkmated me. Allow me to return to my fleet with my subjects. I'll even release Helen to you. Once on board my own ships, I will direct them home. I promise."
John was a little suspicious, but he did have her in a bad position. He also was not really in a position to refuse her plea. He didn't feel that he could refuse her. He looked at her and agreed to let her go home with her fleet. "It shall be a few hours before we intercept the fleet. I will extend the stasis field to allow you all to use the living quarters. Access to ship controls and other such strategic items and spaces will be protected by access denial and stasis field barriers. I'm giving you room to make you comfortable, but I'm still the captain."
Isis made another request. "Can you please show me the Box?"
John decided to let her entertain her curiosity somewhat. "The technology of the box, as you call it, requires a comprehensive knowledge of the laws which govern it, in order to safely control. Why Isis, you don't even understand the mechanism of the portal; how can we allow you access to hypertemperalspatialdistortional graviton control?"
"I don't want to know how it works, I just want to see you do something with your Box."
"Well it is being currently used to maintain the stasis field. Unfortunately, that limits me somewhat as to what forms such a unit has to maintain for its own appearance. Essentially both Jim and I use this device to transport ourselves and to provide our material needs. The unit essentially creates matter and anti-matter out of the void. The unit exists only partially in the same dimension as you and I. The anti-matter it has created, is contained just on the other side of time, as you would call it. Singularities contained within the unit can effectively remove the anti-matter from local time. This material I can retrieve and use as an energy source. The beauty of the unit is the fact that it truly has an infinite power source. I have spent your entire lifetime learning to master this device and I am still but a babe in the woods. I understand your desire for the unit, but it and earth are not yours to have."
"I heard that Jim talks to his box to control it. I didn't see you talk or manipulate controls to restructure the stasis fields. I didn't see you make any preparations to do what this unit has done. This is magic, John, nothing more; and you said your science was not magic. You ridicule my magic. Well John, I'm on board with you now, and you feel my consciousness pervade your very nerves at the moment. I know the magic I instill in men, and I know you are feeling me. It is my will John, that you father some children promptly. John, you have been without a true woman for my entire lifetime. You ran away from mother and she died of heartbreak. Furthermore, I sense that you can give me twins. I shall invoke the ritual. I know my spell can penetrate your magic. "
John, captivated by her charms, was not quite prepared for her to come on to him. Isis knew Jim had a well-developed resistance to her charms only because of repeated practice. She knew how weak he was after a time of no practice. John, on the other hand, being as smart as he was, had been away from the Amazon female for too long and his immunity was not as keenly developed as it had once been. Before he knew it, she had maneuvered the stasis field between him and her to nothing and then she made physical contact and that was all it took.
The scent of ambrosia hit John's nostrils and old primitive desires reawakened within him. He gave in and indicated a desire to embrace her. She was not about to let off once her attack had started.
"It is the time and the season for the encounter," she said. "Give me the Five Fold Kiss, John."
He kneeled before her and kissed both her feet, both knees, her belly, both breasts and her lips."
The others had noticed by now and were eagerly awaiting to join in. They sang praises to their queen as she clearly seemed to have John under her dominion. They sang that it was good that John should be on his knees kissing her feet begging to touch her breasts and lips to gain the favors of her womb.
She cried out an invocation as she rose victorious with John subject to her will:
I invoke thee my witnesses to witness the fruitfulness of my seed as I take from his strength and create a male and female to rule the universe after me.
She directed him on his knees as she permitted his fingers to touch her breasts.
I command this small moon of the stars
and I am the ultimate desire of all men.
I am the love of your nature.
From me your life has come and
from me your new life shall proceed.
Behold my face, to you to be beloved.
Let thine innermost self be prepared to be enraptured by my being
as our lives our about to merge to bring new life.
Rejoice and act with love and pleasur
so that out of our mating
there shall arise beauty and strength,
power and compassion.
I am the end of your desire.
The rest immediately recognized the greatness of the magic about to be performed here and they recited an ancient chant:
In between two worlds we lie.
his brave new world which is before our feet to conquer,
And our homeland which is mother of all civilizations,
His world has no right to know it,
And the worlds beyond will tell nothing,
For she rules the stars with no compromise,
Her great works of magic self proclaim,
We see these two great pillars, she and him
He at the shrine to her womb.
These two are the great powers of nature,
Our greatest forces together in union.
Opposites of each other,
Forever in continuous warfare.
A brief respite we celebrate here.
This is our Beltane of the stars,
As we find ourselves passing through timeless space.
We have caught the master of time,
Before we set him free, he must promise to deliver
To us the way into the past.
O great queen, at this enchanted hour
We ask you to take your boon
While fortune's favor falls.
We rejoice in our sphere.
These two who are ancestors have set up to be the
Master and mistress of magic.
The Queen of Artemis has caught her son
Who is also her consort.
They must mate so that the empire may bear fruit and man and
animal may live.
At this time, they all approached John and overwhelmed him. Isis was preserving John's initial surge of strength for herself, but the ritual required him to be in a complete state of subjugation. The amount of ambrosia required to do that was not underestimated. John was given ambrosia to drink, as she poured it down his mouth. Godiva and Medusa undressed him and anointed him in preparation for her. They massaged his body bringing his senses to an intense state of arousal.
She rode John and cried aloud in ecstasy as she took over his body.
Deep within the dreams, John found a need to get away. Yet, Isis had never posed any threat nor did she ever imply any desire to do harm to John. It was clear that she was actively seeking to control his will and she seemed to be doing quite a good job.
Remembering clearly from his younger days, John went with the flow of her energy. He would save his strength for a quick burst at the right moment. It was a contest of mind against mind and nothing else as the two were locked together in an eternal struggle for control. Of the same blood; they felt the same heat. John did not contradict her on the father term. Apparently he had impregnated Aphrodite before he left, but he didn't seem to share the distant memory that Isis had of her father. He dismissed the concept of a child's mistaken identity; the confusion of him with another of Aphrodite's lovers after he left.
The game had grown much more dangerous. Only a few hours before, he thought his plan was home free and here he was now in his eternal struggle facing she who knew all his weaknesses. It was not a good situation to be in. A silent contest of wills. Images flashed through his mind from the ambrosia, as her nervous impulses passed through his body and her mind began to penetrate his own. It was time to show her the Box.
As if in a dream, he touched a ship's telephone and commanded his unit to materialize before them as a pyramid. He told her that he could use it to travel time. He asked her if she would like to travel time. She responded that she would like to go back in time to earth's pre-history and set up her race to rule the earth. She led him on to believe that she would keep him as hers forever to by her side. Enchanted, as if in a dream, he did not realize that he was actually doing these things. The Amazons and their queen systematically kept John between the verge of consciousness and unconsciousness, as she probed his mind, and got him to do her will when she willed it. She heard him tell her that the unit could gain access to any point in space and at any time. By carefully inserting in his brain the desire to take her to far away kingdoms and far away places, his mental state became confused between dream and reality. John's system was heavily laced with Ambrosia. The Amazons held back enough to prevent him from going to sleep. Throughout their inquisition, she had also managed to inquire about the secret of time travel to the past. Portals allowed simultaneity. Space travel slowed aging. How is it possible to go to the past? John fought, but the harder he fought, the more she was sure he was hiding.
"Enter the black hole," he said. He fell asleep.
Isis and her crew entered the pyramid while John slept. Immediately, they were amazed at the immensity of the interior. It defied her comprehension just as much the infiniteness of space defied her imagination. Doors led to chambers, each was larger on the inside than the outside. It started to take on the appearance of a very tough maze. She commanded her crew to suspend exploration and exit the pyramid. She was relieved that everyone had found their way out. Her instincts led her to believe she was walking into a trap. She disliked the interior intensely. From the exterior, the pyramid appeared small enough to move. Exerting a great deal of effort, Medusa and Godiva, were unable to budge the pyramid. It seemed molded into the floor of the Pegasus. She directed her captains to turn the Pegasus about towards earth and directed her there full powered applied. It seemed that the pyramid was somehow linked into the controls of her ship and made her incapable of doing that.
Isis and her warriors worked on John some more; arousing him and letting him slumber into even deeper subconscious states. Once again, Isis worked her spells on him. She had their bed moved slowly to inside the pyramid as she caressed every part of his physical being. John drifted sublime in ecstasy. Whatever problems may arise, he would work out later. His free will kept losing ground. Soon he would be nothing but an empty shell. Still, she could not understand why he could not remember Jim and her in their infancy. This defect in her father's memory left her to question his judgment somewhat. How could a father not remember playing with his infant children? This created a huge mental block for Isis in her mind probe of John. He had revealed a lot of useful information, but much could never be relieved in spite of her mind probes.
Science accounts for the inadequacies of the observer. The observer shall always be limited by the laws of observability. Ultimately, the conflict still involved the mentality of correctness of inferences, and what actions could withhold the test of time. John and Jim were on the brink of proving morality has no sense of time if they could chose their time of existence as easily as deciding which number to type. They both subconsciously felt this fact. She was on the brink of time travel herself and didn't realize it. John knew that she would next penetrate the black hole itself; then she would do the unimaginable.
The secret was that Isis did not realize her full capabilities. John and Jim had done the research and testing very cautiously only to discover that if absorbed by the black hole, one would actually go back in time. Laws of conservation of local space-time continuums could preserve the form of any field that successfully remained intact during displacement. The Pegasus was also capable of traveling backwards in time if it were absorbed into a black hole. Jim had designed the field generators of sufficient capability to preserve the contained energy forms. The ability to neutralize gravitational effects would effectively shield occupants from the rendering effects of the singularity. Instead, the shield generators are stimulated by the excessive amount of energy available and the vehicle is effectively shielded by the devastating power of the created energy by effectively being displaced slightly out of phase induced into the future.
The power source for such futuristic displacement comes from the anti-matter particles which were created by the intense nuclear energy of the singularity interacting with the immediate time zone. This technically unlimited power source need only be tapped to draw one's energy expectations. The beauty of the propulsion system comes from the power is in the technique of control and not so much in the power source itself. Harmonic and synchronic natural effects give the power. The trick was where and when and how much stimulation to give.
Timing was indeed critical. Perhaps everything else was unimportant. John envisioned twenty-five more minutes until fleet communication was established. Time was also John's ally. In spite of the immense effects of ambrosia, eventually he sort of got used to the effects. With equilibrium established, he was delighted to discover to find that he had allowed himself a time for disadvantage due to enemy counterattack. Now, he was recovering. The time was ripe now to take advantage of her weakness and to deal the judging blow.
He would allow Isis to take Pegasus now and he would travel to the past. He felt it was necessary. It was destiny. It was more important that he stop her existing influence on earth now. He would have to deal with the present first and then the past. If he braked the Pegasus to fleet relativistic velocity, he could watch the fleet make its about turn and then he could return to earth to help Jim clean up the aftershocks.
As he came back to full consciousness, he made his way inside the pyramid. And had the entrance sealed off. Locked inside he jumped up to gain access to a control terminal. He applied hyperspatial control and transported Isis and the Pegasus back to Artemis space to about the same location where the Pegasus disappeared when Jim escaped. He would then release control of the Pegasus to her and rematerialized his craft to the space that he had previously left. He set up a communication channel to Isis to bid her farewell.
She smiled at him and thanked him for the wonderful time. She could not understand why he left in such a hurry. Perhaps he left mother in the same way, she mocked. She was unaware of the transition that had actually occurred. There was no evidence of ship displacement during the transition. She had been successfully implanted with twins and he had given her what Jim hadn't. She expressed that she would ever be grateful to him. She thanked him for the Pegasus, but she explained that he was just giving her back what was hers in the first place. She thanked him for the lift home, but she decided to invade earth anyway. She hadn't yet realized she was back near Artemis.
John had taken her back where he felt she belonged.
VENETIA
Chapter Twenty-One
Isis Takes Pegasus