Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.33 Of witches, artificial gods and a great sorrow

The day after we returned to St. Albert's from our trip to Paris, I met Jake Ferguson. He was sitting at his familiar place at an outside table of a small Arlesten cafe.

I was alone this time – Natty and Nancy were busy checking out the newest records at the Music Store – and I took the opportunity to give him a brief update on what we had found out about Roth and the missing women. Jake listened attentively.

"That's interesting," he agreed. "I think it is fair to assume that those missing women are members of the group referred to as the Meddling Natives by my former team. I imagine that before his unexpected  return to his own temporal era, the Pyrtar who went by the name Roth here left information about several members of the Meddling Natives for the cleanup crew recruited from temporal natives, together with instructions to capture and possibly question those individuals."

"No offense, but I figured out that much by myself."

If he felt my remark was out of line, Jake did not show it.

"From what you told me," he continued, unruffled, "it appears that at least a few of the Meddling Natives, such as your classmate's grandmother, avoided capture when their residences were raided. In the absence of evidence that any of them were captured, we may even assume that all of them escaped and went into hiding, where they may be waiting for the cleanup crew to give up the hunt."

"Yes, that's plausible," I agreed.

"But who are these people we refer to as Meddling Natives, for lack of a better name?" he prodded.

"For starters, it appears that they are all female," I recapped. "If we believe what Erin's grandma, Granny Morgan, told her granddaughter, they may all bear a certain 'gift', a skill or talent that runs through the generations in certain families, and which is inherited in the female line only. From going through the papers in Roth' apartment I learned that while most of them hold fairly ordinary jobs like teachers, lawyers, accountants and whatnot, once you check their genealogies you find that at least for some of them it is documented that several of their ancestors in medieval times were accused of practicing witchcraft. As far as I found, none of them was actually convicted, though."

"So perhaps they are all descendants of witches," Jake mused. "If you are willing to believe in that kind of thing. Witchcraft, I mean."

I shrugged. "Who knows, one way or another? The more relevant question is, what are they up to? And how did they come to sufficiently annoy the team of Operation Terminus to act against them in such a drastic manner?"

We both kept silent for a moment or two as I racked my brain for any additional scraps of information that might help us figure out what the Meddling Natives were about.

"Oh, there is one more thing. It appears that all of the missing women used to visit Wales at least twice per year, and they would all travel to Wales on the exact same day. Which suggest that they used to meet there regularly."

"That's really interesting," Jake repeated. "So we are dealing with a clandestine organization that has regular meetings and probably also a specific purpose. Except that we have no idea yet what that purpose might be."

"There is no  straightforward way for us to find out about that, I am afraid," I replied. "We need additional information."

"What about your classmate Erin Morgan, herself? Do you consider her a member of that secret organization or cult of witches or whatever it is that the Meddling Natives are?"

"She is a member of one of the families where the females tend to have that so-called 'gift'. And it looks like Erin does carry that unspecified talent or gift, herself. According to her grandma, this is one of the cases where the gift jumped a generation. Granny Morgan has the gift, and Erin inherited it, but Erin's mother apparently did not. After she had gone into hiding the old woman sent Erin a letter where she expressed regret at having neglected to teach her granddaughter everything about their family and the gift and whatnot. However, I doubt that Erin knows much about her family and its mysteries beyond what we have learned already."