Chapter Thirty-Six
MANA
1
Slater knocked on Lucy’s bedroom door.
‘Come in, Slatey.’
He entered the room.
‘I’ve brought a visitor, Nana. She’s just outside.’
‘Where are your manners, Slatey. Haven’t I taught you anything? Don’t leave a guest standing outside the door. Ask them to come in.’
He beckoned Thebe in. She entered the room, shy as a doe.
‘This is my new friend, Thebe, Nana.’
‘Oh, my Lord!’ Lucy exclaimed, reacting to Thebe’s beauty. ‘Come,’ she beckoned to her, ‘come closer, child, and let me take a proper look at you.’
Thebe smiled a sheepish smile as she came over to the bed and sat down next to Lucy. She gave her her hand to hold and said,
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
‘Call me Lucy, child.’ As she held Thebe’s hand, she looked her up and down and declared, ‘My, my, you are a pretty one.’ She then looked her straight in the eyes and whispered, ‘and clear as a mountain stream as well.’
Slater sat on the opposite side of Lucy’s bed. He reminded Lucy of the letter left by Adam five years earlier.
‘Do you remember in that letter, Nana, from a few years ago, the one in which Adam said that a girl would come to look after me?’ He looked at Thebe. ‘Well, it seems that Thebe is that girl.’
‘Really?’ Lucy said with a surprised tone in her voice.
‘There’s more, though, Nana. How shall I put this?’ Everyone looked at everyone in turn.
‘Er … Thebe isn’t actually from around here.’
‘Well, I’m not stupid, Slatey. I can recognise an American accent when I hear one.’
Thebe stroked Lucy’s hand and smiled as Slater revealed,
‘Er … oh, she’s from a bit further away than that, Nana.’
‘Well, Slatey, you can’t get much further away than America, unless you come from the Moon.’
‘Er … further than that even, Nana.’
Lucy’s jaw dropped. She looked at her grandson, and then at his new friend, then she whimpered,
‘I think I need a bloody smoke. Could you hand me my stuff please, Slatey.’
Slater rose from his side of the bed and retrieved Lucy’s old coffee tin containing her marijuana and paraphernalia to smoke it with. As she rolled her ‘jayjay’, she spoke calmly to Thebe.
‘Slatey saw Adam get taken away in a space ship. Not long after, we received a letter from him. In it he mentioned a girl that would come, but he never mentioned from where. If you are that girl, where exactly are you from?’
‘I am from Rama, from the stars Vesna and Vanja, from the galaxy Andromeda.’ Lucy’s voice quivered slightly.
‘That’s a fair hike for a young girl like you. And your mum and dad, they don’t mind you gallivanting all over the universe on your own, do they?’
Thebe smiled affectionately at Lucy. She took Lucy’s hand to her mouth and kissed it, then replied,
‘Dear no, not at all. Actually, they are quite proud of me. Also, I am not quite as young as I look.’
There was a momentary pause in the conversation as Lucy lit her smoke. After taking a big drag, holding it in for a while, then blowing it out, she asked,
‘So, do you mind me asking how old you actually are?’
Thebe replied matter-of-factly,
‘As I told Slater earlier, I am one hundred and twenty-eight years old, which is quite young amongst my people.’
‘That’s more than double my age!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘How the hell do you get to look so young?’
Slater, looking slightly uncomfortable, changed the topic.
‘What is Rama like, Thebe?’
Thebe closed her eyes and sighed,
‘Well … for a start, Rama is the most beautiful planet in the universe, and I love it like my mother. It is an almost carbon copy of the Earth, although there are far fewer people living on it. We don’t have cities or towns and we don’t have transportation networks such as roads and railways. We don’t have centralised anything, like power systems or governments. There are no jobs, no taxes and there is no money. Instead there is trading, sharing, doing favours and everyone has many skills. There is an abundance of everything. Also, on Rama, everyone makes their own power at home. Everything is powered by gravitation. This power is free, unlimited and ubiquitous. Everyone is free and independent. We also are all telepathic and we live for an average of 900, or so, years.’
Slater and Lucy sat there speechless, for a moment, as they attempted to assimilate the new reality. Finally, it was Lucy that broke the silence.
‘So, pray tell, Thebe, what brings you to our neck of the woods?’
Thebe smiled. Her smile was a contradiction to Lucy as she recognised the wisdom of an elder in the face of a child.
‘I will tell you the truth that to this day has been a carefully guarded secret, but before I do, I seek permission from you to begin a healing process of your back injury.’
Lucy looked surprised. ‘So, you reckon you can do what the quacks can’t do?’ She chuckled, ‘Yeah, OK.’
‘Thank you, Lucy.’ Thebe reached into her bag and produced her gold container of Mana. ‘It begins with the Mana,’ she said, ‘however it is not complete until we share the Fish.’ Opening the gold container, she took out of it a small, intricately-carved, white, ceramic pipe and loaded it with a small amount of the brown, crumbly Mana. She handed it to Lucy saying, ‘One inhalation of this will double your lifespan, as well as make your back feel a whole lot better.’
Lucy gave Slater a ‘who’s your mate that you brought?’ look.
Thebe smiled. ‘This is part of the reason I’m here, just a small part.’
Lucy scrutinized the Mana in the pipe and observed,
‘It looks like hash.’
‘Actually,’ Thebe replied, ‘it is made from the essence of a distant relative of the Cannabis sativa plant. We cultivate it on Rama and it also grows wild on many other planets. It is the reason why we live to nearly a thousand years. Without it, our lifespans would be similar to yours.’
‘Will I feel anything?’ Lucy enquired.
‘You will feel life, Lucy, and the feeling won’t leave. This high is permanent. Anyway, you must keep partaking of it to achieve your full lifespan potential.’ She turned to Slater.
‘I would like you to partake of it as well,’ she said to him.
Slater smiled, ‘OK, Thebe, I will do as you recommend.’
They all smoked some Mana. Lucy offered to roll a joint for Thebe and she accepted. Slater brewed some tea, put on Jackson Browne and they all engaged themselves in blissful conversation that went on well into the night. They told each other stories from their lives. To Lucy and Slater, Thebe’s stories sounded like total science fiction. She told her stories with a skill that could best be described as that of a master storyteller. They became completely mesmerized by her.
Storytelling is considered a high art amongst the Rama. Although speech is the main component of it, it is by no means the only component. It must be remembered here that speech is not the main form of communication between the Rama, making up only about 30 percent of it, telepathy is. So, because speech is used fairly sparingly, it is considered special and has evolved a wide variety of very artistic styles. The storytellers create telepathic realities in the mind plane while they tell their stories and immerse their listeners within them.
2
Even though she was repeatedly invited to stay in the house that night, Thebe chose to sleep in her van. She wasn’t sure how many nights she would need to sleep like that before she felt comfortable accepting their kind invitation.
…….