In The Arms of an Angel - 47. Trinity

Arm in arm, Pasha, Uzzy and Gabri’el followed Ari through corridors that first reminded them of a hospital and then, rather uncomfortably, of some kind of spaceship.

Ari stopped in front of a metal door and pressed his hand to a panel in the wall. A familiar green glow appeared between his fingers, and the door swung silently open.

Immediately, the hall was filled with sound – whirring, clicking, humming, buzzing, and a high pitched alarm. Ari swore and ran inside.

“It’s the climate alarm,” Uzzy whispered. “It means there’s a disaster somewhere. There are supposed to be indications and warnings in advance to give Ari the chance to control or divert it, but Ari’s useless at it.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Ari said, staring intently at a huge screen where a cluster of red dots was flashing frantically. Ari’s fingers flew over a massive touchpad and the dots grew rapidly bigger then resolved into a map which zoomed in to scene of carnage, with houses mere mounds of rubble, severed power lines twisting like snakes with fireworks tied to their tails, fires springing up and people crawling, hobbling or carrying each other away from cracks in the earth as wide as car. In some places cars were half inside the giant maws as if about to be crunched and swallowed.

“Earthquake,” Ari said. “It doesn’t count as climate.”

“You’re still supposed to keep them under control, though.”

“I know,” Ari ground out through gritted teeth. “God here, remember? I know everything.”

“Except how to control climate and avoid earthquakes.”

“The science is very similar.”

“Which explains why you’re as useless with earthquakes as climate.”

“If you think you can do better, by all means give it a try.”

Uzzy looked a little startled, then walked forward and frowned at the touchpad. “Why don’t you reduce the pressure over there,” he said pointing at the upper left corner. “And that graph line is unstable. If you increase the pressure here and here when you reduce it over there, it will bring the baseline up and make it more stable.”

Ari stopped work and glared at him. “Oh well, if you know better than God, then feel free to take over.”

Gently edging Ari out of the way, Uzzy gazed at the map with a dreamy expression on his face as his hands began to move slowly over the touchpad.

“Pasha, can you help me? Gabri’el, come over here.” Pasha hesitantly took his place next to Uzzy. “Look,” Uzzy said, “see there? I think if we move this and slide that the pressure will even out. Gabri’el, if you move over to that pad you can handle the hurricane headed for the coast of Brazil. Can you see what to do?”

“Yeah,” Gabri’el said, shock in his voice. “I can. I really can.”

While Gabri’el set to work Pasha examined the touchpad and blinked as the random symbols and flashing lights began to resolve themselves into a pattern. Looking up at the screen and watching the way Uzzy’s fingers flew over his own patch of symbols, Pasha soon saw a pattern which he started to repeat and gradually transform into a whole new set of patterns.

As they watched the heaving earth stilled and settled, the fissures groaned and closed, taking the cars with them, and the dust began to settle. In Brazil, the hurricane dispersed leaving nothing more than high waves and a rather severe rainstorm.

When everything had settled the three angels moved back in unison and grinned at each other. “That was fun,” Uzzy said.

“Stressful fun.”

“The best fun always is.”

Ari cleared his throat and they all turned to him. He looked sulky. “How did you know what to do? How did you fix things to easily?”

Uzzy shrugged and spoke for the trio. “It was obvious once you saw the pattern.”

“But how did you know how to work the controls?”

“I don’t know, I just did.”

“But… Hmm…” Ari wandered off and started examining a different set of equipment and when he hadn’t come back for five minutes the others wandered around for a while examining the strange machines and delicate equipment, then Uzzy led them back to the comfortable room, where they sat together on the sofa and held each other while staring into the fire.

When Ari came back, Uzzy and Pasha were asleep and Gabri’el dozing, although he came instantly awake as soon as the door opened.

Gabri’el woke the other two and they sat up, rubbing their eyes and staring expectantly at Ari.

“It was the DNA,” he said. “I knew you three were special I just wasn’t quite sure how. It seems as if you’ve somehow acquired concentrated amounts of DNA from my people. At least Uzzy does. I took some samples when he came – with his permission,” he added quickly as Gabri’el leaned forward.

“Your DNA?”

“No.”

“But you said that you created angels my mixing your DNA with humans, and that when you mixed it with Atlanteans you created super angels.”

Ari laughed. “Not exactly ‘super angels’, but that’s it…kind of.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was an accident.”

“Now why am I not surprised?”

Ari glared at Gabri’el. “I carry DNA samples from some of my own kind, in case of emergencies.”

“What kind of emergencies?”

“Destruction of my species.”

“Is that a possibility?” Uzzi’el asked , alarmed.

“It’s always a possibility. There are dangerous beings out there. Everyone who travels off planet takes a set of DNA of all the most important members of our society with them – just in case.”

“And?”

“I got some of the samples mixed up. I thought it hadn’t really made any difference but it now seems that it did.”

“What kind of difference?”

“I don’t really know. I’ve never done it before but I have a theory.”

“Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“I think I accidentally created the Trinity.”