"Parallel" (standard:science fiction, 68314 words)
Author: Saxon Violence	Added: Mar 27 2013	Views/Reads: 6335/6634	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Ward is on the run from the Law when a Secret Society offers him passage to an Alternate Dimension.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


When she spit at him, he had his henchmen restrain her and he poured
acid in her eyes. 

The law couldn’t touch Rubenstein. His gang provided him with an alibi
and Sabrina couldn’t pick him out of a police line up, of course. 

Down didn’t go shooting folks at random, as the Mass Media account seems
to indicate. Everyone he shot stood as an armed guard between him and 
his appointed counseling session with the gang lord Rubenstein. 

Maybe it wasn’t too unusual that Down disappeared after his shooting
spree. What other course was open to him? 

It was more puzzling when a couple years later, Rubenstein and over
thirty of his henchmen simply vanished. 

No one ever heard from any of them again, until now... 

Parallel 

Chapter One 

One minute I was in darkness. I was feeling a little silly because in
spite of everything, I still didn’t fully believe. 

The next moment I was in the blazing hot sun, standing in the middle of
a very well maintained cobblestone street. 

When a hansom cab came close to running me down, I decided that I needed
to get out of the street before I continued my survey. 

The town was definitely third world. It was tropical. I could see the
occasional palm tree. All that was circumstantial. 

What fully convinced me that I was no longer on Earth was when I looked
to the east and to the west and saw the horizon curling gracefully 
upward, with the details becoming ever more hazy. 

The Artifact had sent me to a ringworld! 

I couldn’t wait to see The Maestro’s face when he saw what I had just
done. 

************** *************** ************* 

I’d known The Maestro since childhood. The Virgin Queen was his
granddaughter. No, I mean really. Her mother gave her a name, but she 
always spoke of herself in the third person and she always referred to 
herself as “The Virgin Queen”. 

While The Maestro was turning his granddaughter into a son that he could
be proud of, he needed a sparring partner roughly her size. 

So while the other kids were playing baseball and basketball, I was
learning The Maestro’s hard core saber fighting techniques, how to 
shoot a Colt Single Action from the hip, how to box, wrestle and master 
The Maestro’s idiosyncratic fighting system. 

Nobody made me report to The Maestro for practice almost every day. Some
of the other kids started the program, but they all dropped out along 
the way. 

Not me. 

The Maestro and I had a falling out on my eighteenth birthday and I
hadn’t seen him in almost forty years. 

I’d needed a way out. There had been too many bodies left lying around.
They were never going to stop looking for me... 

Then the Maestro had found me. He looked like he hadn’t aged a day in
all the years since I’d seen him last. He’d claimed to have a way out 
for me. 

****************** ************** ******* 

There was a well-dressed black man sitting by the sidewalk with his
hansom cab. I approached him. I couldn’t believe that folks on another 
world would speak English. 

“Perdon senor, ¿habla Ingles?” I asked him. 

“Si, hablo Ingles, pero hablo Espanol tambien,” he replied. 

“Well of course you speak Spanish,” I told him. “You’re a foreigner
after all, but I’m gratified that you speak real talk as well.” 

“How may I help you sir?” he asked in those deep mellow tones that some
black men have. 

“Does gold have value here?” I asked innocently. 

“Gold has value almost everywhere. Many times men assign far too much
value to gold, and rob and cheat and kill for it. But to answer your 
question: yes, gold has value here.” 

“You’re a philosopher, my man. Look, this here gold coin is the only
cash that I have on me. Are you for hire? And will this coin buy me a 
ride?” I asked. 

I showed him a gold coin the size of a quarter. The Maestro had said
that it might be a decade, or even a generation or two before The 
Society could send anyone to join me. He hadn’t sent me unequipped 
though. 

I had coins of gold and silver and platinum, several rolls of each, in
varying sizes. None of the coins were marked with lettering or numbers 
or the likeness of faces—but they’d all been stamped with various 
geometric patterns, and were corrugated on the edges. 

Hopefully, if the driver thought that I was down to my last coin, he
wouldn’t take it on himself to rob me—or have me robbed. 

“Where to?” he asked. 

“Take me to a reasonably prosperous jeweler with a reputation for
honesty, in a prosperous section of town,” I said. 

I started to hand him the coin. 

“Sir, cabbies have to be licensed in this town and most of us are at
least as honest as we have to be. However, one gets into the cab before 
handing over money. It is conceivable that someone might take your fare 
and try to run off and leave you,” he instructed me good-naturedly. 

“How big is this town?” I asked him as we breezed down one cobblestone
road after another. 

“Wardsville has approximately five-hundred thousand permanent residents.


“Both the Congo and the Amazon flow into Lake Burple—the largest
freshwater lake on Earth. Wardsville sits on the eastern shore of the 
Lake and it is a favorite staging ground for expeditions into the 
eastern jungle,” he said like a tour guide. 

When we reached a Jewelry shop, he popped open a clever little trap door
in the roof of the cab and asked me to hand him the coin. 

“See how the gate was locked?” He asked me and smiled. “You can’t get
out until I retract the bolt. That’s my protection against someone 
running off with my fee.” 

******************* **************** ******** 

The jewelry store was dark and cool after the long ride in the tropical
heat. There was a large ceiling fan and several smaller fans carefully 
enfiladed around the shop. 

A Half a dozen incandescent bulbs burned dimly. They all seemed to be
slightly reddish. 

That told me that they had electricity and electric motors, though
perhaps no refrigeration or air conditioning. Folks who have the 
technology to make incandescent bulbs could make vacuum tubes too, if 
they knew the theory. 

The bulbs seemed to be of the early type: filament of carbon, long
cupie-doll curls of glass at the bulb’s tips and they probably ran 
vacuum as opposed to an atmosphere of argon. 

“May I help you sir,” a stout fellow asked me. 

He had a Germanic accent; a sheen of sweat on his face and he wore the
flip-down watchmaker’s loupes attached to his glasses. He’d been 
dutifully working on something when I came in. 

“Give me a moment. My eyes are still dazzled and I’d like to look around
a bit first,” I said. 

The shop was neat and clean. There were both items of jewelry and
watches of various sorts in the glass cases. There were prices in both 
pounds and dollars. 

A dollar or a pound had much more juju here than back home. I also had a
few gems to sell and I didn’t want to show my ignorance by asking if 
cut gems were of value, but looking in the cases convinced me that they 
were. 

“Your Lathe,” I asked him. “Is it foot powered?” 

“Yes, of course. Watchmakers have been using foot powered Lathes for
many centuries. I don’t hold with these new-fangled gadgets,” he 
replied. 

“Well, tell you what dude, when I decided to liquidate all my
possessions and come to Wardsville, I converted everything to gems. 
Gems are easy to carry and easy to hide. But I’ve had some reverses of 
fortune and these are all that I have left,” I lied shamelessly. 

There is something about being the sole human from Earth on a weird
alternate world that makes one most paranoid. 

I showed him seven perfect brilliant-cut yellow topazes; each one
weighed one and a quarter carats. 

After some spirited bargaining, I walked out with thirty-five hundred
dollars and a very elaborate pocket watch. As I listened to the jeweler 
explain all the bells and whistles, I realized that the sun always 
shone here. 

The watch was over a half-inch thick and it kept track of days, weeks
and months. Otherwise, time would simply blur together. 

“Young man,” he said to me as I turned to go. 

“Young man?” I was sixty years old. The Maestro had told me that The
Society had drugs that slowed aging—and they’d given me a course of 
them, but he’d also said that travelling through inter-dimensional 
space was the big rejuvenator. 

“Young man, you have good bargaining skills, a quick mind and deft
hands. If your jungle adventure doesn’t pan out, come talk to me about 
a watchmaker’s apprenticeship.” 

“I’m a journeyman machinist,” I told him with a grin. 

“You’d learn quickly then.” 

******************** *********** *********** 

The hansom cab’s driver was named “David”. He’d been orphaned and raised
by Christian missionaries and had even studied several years in 
America. He was a devout Christian and he insisted on being my personal 
guide in Wardsville—because, as he explained—he hadn’t yet given me 
full value for my gold coin. 

Getting me a room in a good hotel—and yes, they did have air
conditioning—going to a good tailor and putting in a big order at a 
local Gunstore had all been top priorities. 

Once more pressing concerns were taken care of though, it was time to
buy a membership at the town’s largest and most inclusive library and 
do some serious reading. 

I got to feeling guilty about David sitting in the hot sun every day
while I studied and took notes in the air conditioned comfort of the 
library, so I insisted on buying David a membership so he could join 
me. 

******************* ************* *********** 

No one ever told me about The Society when I was a boy. If they had, I’d
have thought that the Maestro was as daft as The Virgin Queen. 

The Maestro is a very high-ranking official in a secret society that
goes back thousands of years. 

The details are lost in antiquity, but somehow they discovered—or
perhaps built—The Artifact. The Artifact could let you travel between 
alternate universes. There were several caveats though. 

You had to travel via your own mental power. Someone else couldn’t
piggy-back you to another world... 

Though The Society can and did transport boxcar lots of trade goods. 

To have the very fine mental control needed to travel between worlds,
you both had to have an innate ability and train from earliest 
childhood. I hadn’t trained nor did I have the gift. 

There are fifty-seven known worlds. The last new world was added
sometime before The Battle of Hastings... 

{And consequently, even the most recently charted world started to
diverge over a thousand years ago.} 

No one in The Society has had the raw power to blaze a trail to a new
world for centuries—but I did. I’d never be able to come back home 
again, but I could travel to a new alternate world. 

There were fifty-seven known worlds. Every one of them featured a
spherical planet circling a sun, just the way God and John Browning had 
intended. On fifty-three of them, The Society was a complete secret. 

Then I open a portal and step into a ringworld. 

The Maestro would have a conniption. 

I think that this was where the strangeness began. 

Two things that they stressed over and over during my crash course in
universe hopping: 

#1} The number of alternate universes is not infinite—just
astronomically large, and perhaps growing. 

#2} The Artifact doesn’t create worlds to order. What it does do is scan
your mind in an instant and find you the closest approximation. 

The more logically consistent and physically possible your mental image,
the closer the match would be. 

Also, the clearer that you can visualize your world, the closer
approximation that The Artifact can find for you. 

I don’t know why points one and two were considered so vital. From the
point of view of the user, what difference does it make if the number 
of universes was infinite or whether The Artifact created worlds to 
order or not? 

I “told” The Artifact that I wanted to go to a world that had an Africa
like the Africa in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stories. 

The Thing is, The Artifact didn’t go by words. It took every image that
I’d formed of Burroughs’ Africa as I read and re-read his books and 
even stray impressions from the silly-ass movie and comic book 
adaptations. 

As an adult, I read where a reviewer had said, 

“If Burroughs had lived long enough and wrote enough books, ultimately
his lost civilizations would have crowded each other into the sea.” 

*************** ************** ******* 

The sun here is a bit smaller than Earth’s. Notwithstanding, the
ringworld is set further away from its sun, or the effects of continual 
sunlight would make it uninhabitable. 

I read that ringworlds are unstable. Maybe, but since this one has been
here a very long while, we can assume that there is some sort of 
stabilization—though I have no idea how it works. 

The map of the local area shows an enlarged Mercator projection of our
Earth. Britain is roughly the same shape, but it has more area than our 
Australia. 

North America is just a little taller, north and south, but it is about
four times as wide. 

South America is turned upside down though. It abuts Africa and as David
told me, both the Amazon and the Congo flow into a huge freshwater 
lake—Lake Burple. 

A third very large north flowing river drains Lake Burple into the
Atlantic. 

But Africa extends indefinitely to both the east, and since South
America is contiguous with Africa, you might as well say that Africa 
also extends indefinitely to the west too. 

Explorers have travelled at least twelve thousand miles in each
direction and found no end to the Jungle. The consensus is that the 
Jungle region completely circles the world. 

Africa here is larger than a million Earths. 

All the counterparts to Terran countries have had roughly the same
general history, but without a single common personage. There never was 
a Julius Caesar here, or Daniel Boone or George Washington. 

Nonetheless, the colonies revolted against England and established the
United States of America. The wording of The Constitution is almost the 
exactly the same... 

Remember, there are huge numbers of alternate worlds. Some are bound to
share many broad similarities. 

But these people have been stuck in about 1880 to 1920’s technology for
centuries. It isn’t 2012 here. It’s more like 2760. 

The theologians and the scientists argue endlessly over whether their
world contains evidence of intelligent design. 

And most of my favorite Guns exist here, but they all were invented by
different people and go by different names—but why create confusion? 

This world’s counterpart to Smith and Wesson was called “Jefferson and
Laud”. In my journal, I’ll just call it a Smith and Wesson. 

Chapter Two 

Since I was in the Africa of my boyhood dreams, the obvious next course
of action was to join a safari. That turned out to be a bit harder than 
I’d thought. 

None of the folks who were mounting safaris wanted to sign on a
greenhorn. 

I piddled around Wardsville. I went to the Library. I went to a
well-equipped gym—and got a chance to see some of Wardsville’s natives 
practice martial arts. I took one to three or four day solo shakedown 
trips into the bush. 

Then I got word of an ivory poaching expedition. 

Ivory is an important resource and the Colonial Authority claims all the
Jungle for many days march, all around. There are huge elephants that 
live in the jungle, but there are even bigger elephants, with even more 
impressive tusks, in the occasional clearings. And the veldt elephants 
run in herds. 

The clearings or veldts are large areas where, for unknown reasons, the
jungle doesn’t intrude. Some are the size of Vermont, many are the size 
of Kentucky, and some are bigger than the continental United States. 

The Government licenses hunters to harvest the ivory in their territory
and forbids anyone else from doing commercial ivory hunting. 

“Poachers” in theory, travel beyond the government’s purview. Like the
whalers of old, they plan to be gone for years and come back with 
enough ivory to make the whole company rich. Many people suppose that 
poachers get most, or even all their ivory in Colonial Authority 
territory, hence the moniker. 

***************** ************** ******** 

“Can you use those things?” he asked while pointing at my Revolvers. 

I was wearing the large frame five-inch Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums
with ivory grips, one on each hip. 

There were three white hunters and they sat facing me across a table.
They were sweaty and dirty and much given to scratching themselves. 

Sometimes talk is pointless. I walked over to their rubbish heap and got
out a number of fifth whisky bottles, along with a five-gallon lard 
tin. 

I took a few moments to set up a dumpsite shooting gallery and backed up
twenty paces. 

I took the time to plug my ears with foam plugs and put on shooting
glasses and headphones. I’d supposed that I might be called upon to 
show some shooting skills. 

The run-down appearance of the camp, the trash pile and the dirty
scratching men had caused me to begin to question the desirability of 
joining this show, but... 

I drew right-handed and broke six bottles in five or six seconds. Then I
reloaded the Revolver and drew left-handed and repeated. 

Then I drew my right hand Gun and sent six fast shots into the can, and
then did a speed reload and shot six more. 

I didn’t bother doing a speed reload left-handed, though I could have. 

“I never seen anyone shoot a Pistol like that,” the middle white hunter
said. “Can I see them?” 

I really didn’t groove on letting him handle my Guns but I really wanted
that job. I unloaded them and handed them over with a flourish. 

“We don’t need another hand,” Middleman said. “But I will be keeping
these Guns.” 

He had both my .357s and my Enfield rifle was lying on the table before
him. 

“You’re joking right? You can’t have my Guns!” 

Once he threatened to keep my Guns, I was in kill mode. There is no
sense in arguing with unreasonable people, but apparently he’d taken me 
for some sort of punk. I was willing to play along momentarily. 

“I want my Guns back,” I shouted and stamped my foot. 

He laid his hand on the flap of his holster. 

“And if you don’t leave right now, I’ll give you a good ass-whipping as
well.” 

I started to protest once more, and then I spun on my heel as if to
leave. They all laughed uproariously about that. 

I continued my spin through a full three hundred and sixty degrees. When
I faced them again, I had the nickel-plated Colt Government Model .45 
in my hand. They hadn’t thought that I might have a hideout in a 
shoulder holster, inside my bush jacket. 

At that range, I fired a super-fast double tap to each man’s head. The
smell of blood and brains filled the air. The jungle was momentarily 
silent at the shots and then came back louder than ever. 

My first act was to swap magazines in the 1911A1 and then repossess and
reload my .357s and my beloved Enfield. 

Several of the blacks came forward with spears, single-shot Shotguns and
machetes. One fellow prepared to throw his spear. I sent a .357 bullet 
through his sternum. 

“Dudes, it is like: They provoked me. No one needs to know about this.
Y’all can split their gear, money and liquor amongst yourselves... 

“Or I can Gun another half-dozen, or more of you down as you attempt to
kill me,” I explained. 

It only made sense that a bunch of nasty, lowdown shabnasticators like
these would have a scurvy bunch of lopslickers for crew. After 
considering the whole thing, they moved wide to either side and lowered 
their weapons to let me pass. 

********************* *********** *********** 

Later I confided the whole affair to David, who’d become a good friend. 

“You let them see your Revolvers? Bad move that. Then you shot them all
with a .45 Automatic?” David said. 

He found the whole episode hilariously funny. 

“Don’t worry. The jackals and the hyenas will have been fighting over
the bodies within the hour. The bearers and askaris will be blind drunk 
for a week or more, by then it would be their word against yours. 

“If you really want to go on an ivory gathering safari, you should
outfit yourself. Get you an elephant Gun with a couple of spares and 
get you enough kit to last you two or three years—you know, clothes, 
boots, that sort of thing. 

“And hire you a couple askari. I have a brother who’s gone on a couple
ivory safaris and he’s available. You’ll look more professional coming 
in with your own kit—and you’ll get a bigger share. And they’ll trust 
your askaris to help train you.” 

*************** ************ *********** 

I bought a Double Barrel .577 Nitro Express. It was a beautiful Rifle
and I backed it up with a matched pair of eight gauge muzzle-loading 
Double Rifles. They were old, but very well kept and of the highest 
workmanship. 

When I talked to the leader of a big safari, I let slip that I wasn’t
too keen on the idea of shooting large numbers of the big tuskers. I 
also let it be known that I could shoot very fast and very accurately. 

I signed on more or less to give the safari a big boost in firepower if
we were attacked, to hunt meat for the camp and to serve as an elephant 
harvester only as a back up. 

I met David’s brother Joshua. He was a big man, maybe six-four and
muscled like a bodybuilding champion. He shared David’s missionary 
upbringing and spoke perhaps two-dozen languages. He had a firm 
handshake and he was always smiling. 

He was small compared to the other Gun-bearer that I hired. His name was
“Mond”, and he was perhaps six-foot ten and he might have weighed four 
hundred pounds. He had a heavy jaw and massive brow. He almost made me 
wonder if somewhere deep in the jungle the natives married gorillas. 

Unlike Joshua, he was always gloomy. Though he did whatever I asked with
alacrity, he always seemed to be angry about something. 

******************* ************* ********* 

Right before I left, David let slip that he’d been saving for a very
long time, to buy his own hansom cab. It seems that he’d only been 
leasing the hansom that he’d taken me all over Wardsville in. 

I had funds. I had money in four different banks. I had most of my gold,
silver and platinum coins, and I still had many gems. 

I’ve never believed in putting all my baskets around one egg. 

I bought David’s cab outright and found five other cabs that could be
bought at the right price. I paid to have a stable built. I contracted 
to have eighteen new hansoms built, and purchased thirty young and 
healthy horses. 

I even bought a couple trucks and three autos, on the principle that
they might come in handy for something—like hauling hay. 

David, Joshua and myself owned the cab company equally. I got a
liar...er, lawyer to set up a corporation and I put plenty of money 
into the company coffers to cover unforeseen eventualities. 

If something happened to all my banks, I’d still have money. If
something happened to me, Joshua would still have something to show for 
his time. 

Also, David had been a good and honest friend and when I have money, my
friends have money. 

I’ve spent many days and weeks broke, but I’ve never regretted my
generosity. 

Chapter Three 

Sabrina’s eyes were bandaged. The acid had ruined them and seeing again
was out of the question, but her doctors were anxious to save the orbs. 
Empty sockets were bad news for any number of reasons. 

Sabrina tested off the scale on any IQ test she’d ever been given. She’d
lived in the ghetto with her mother, but she’d gone to the best private 
schools and her father had gotten her many other types of training too. 


Perhaps if she had studied the martial arts more diligently, or if she’d
had a Gun, then Rubenstein couldn’t have blinded her... 

But no, it was unrealistic to expect a fourteen-year-old girl to be able
to handle a monster like Rubenstein and three of his posse and it was 
very difficult for youngsters to go armed in the modern world. 

Sabrina had seen a couple shows on the learning channel, about blind
folk who echolocate. She’d hardly guessed that she’d end up blind and 
in need of the technique. 

But with her quick mind and hearing that was as far above normal as her
IQ, she’d been getting pretty good at it—even without any training yet. 


She didn’t need echolocation to know that someone blocked the door. She
could sense some of the hallway sounds being subtly muted and there was 
a change that she couldn’t quite explain in the quality of the air. 

“Hello?” she said. 

The presence came into the room without answering. 

“If you’re one of Rubenstein’s homeys, I can’t fight you right now, but
you can’t scare me either.” 

“You are brave little one, but I’m not here to harm you. I’m a friend of
your father’s. They call me ‘The Maestro’,” he said. 

“My father told me stories about you. You must be very old,” Sabrina
said. 

“Very old.” 

“Is my father dead?” she asked. 

“No, but he has gone somewhere that the Laws of this world will never
find him,” The Maestro said. 

“Why did he kill so many of Rubenstein’s henchmen and leave Rubenstein
alive?” she asked. 

“You haven’t heard, have you? He didn’t kill Rubenstein because he
wanted him to suffer. He cut off both Rubenstein’s hands about halfway 
up the forearm. 

“He told Rubenstein that you couldn’t see and that he couldn’t touch or
grasp. He told him to ponder each and every day which of you was worse 
off,” The Maestro said. 

That struck Sabrina as funny. She laughed loud and long. 

“Did you know that my father was a Preacher? 

“He loved my mother and she loved him. She couldn’t quit the drugs
though. 

“What could a white middle-aged Preacher have in common with a black
drug addict who was pretty much a full-time lesbian? 

“He’s never been ashamed of me and he’s always been there for me
though,” She said. 

“And did his congregation think any the less of him?” The Maestro asked.


“No. He confessed and they promptly forgot about it. If anything, he
became more of a local legend,” Sabrina said. 

“I really didn’t come to talk about your father. I came to talk to you. 

“Your father was a good hand with a sword. Would you like to be a
swordsman?” The Maestro asked. 

“Like Zatoichi?” Sabrina said and then laughed. 

“No, not like Zatoichi. That is Phantasy...” 

The Maestro paused to marshal his thoughts. 

“The sword—particularly the saber—is an unparalleled tool for self
discovery. Nothing else can come close. 

“It really isn’t relevant whether you would ever be a match for a
sighted opponent. What is relevant is the voyage of discovery,” The 
Maestro explained. 

“If I undertake this training, I want it understood that I’m not at all
convinced of your premise that the sword is a wonderful means of 
enlightenment—but it will be a good healthy pastime and good exercise. 
And I’d love to spend more time with you and learn more about my 
father. 

“Is that acceptable?” She asked. 

“Completely,” The Maestro answered. 

“When do we start training?” Sabrina asked. 

When she received no answer, she asked again, more insistently. 

“When do I start learning to use a sword like my father?” She said
loudly. 

“Wake up dear, you’re having a dream,” her mother told her. 

Her mother sat and held her for a long time. 

The nurses all solemnly swore that she’d had no visitors until her
mother came by—particularly an eccentric gentleman who met Sabrina’s 
description... 

For though Sabrina couldn’t see, she had a very clear impression what
The Maestro looked like—which only served to reinforce the nurses’ 
impression that she was phantisizing. 

Chapter Four 

Joshua’s only Gun was an old Double Barrel 12 Gauge. I gave him one of
the quarter-sized gold pieces and told him to outfit himself. 

He came back with a pump 12 Gauge Shotgun with a fourteen inch Barrel.
He still had his Double, but it now sported twelve inch Barrels and 
rode in a low-slung holster on his right thigh like the Roadwarrior’s. 
In addition to the brand new machete that he carried over his right 
shoulder like a quiver, he had a long Cossack style saber riding on his 
left side. 

Mond bought a Double Barreled 10 Gauge with long Barrels. Since only a
few of the bearers or askari had any Guns at all, and most those that 
did, only had battered single-shots, he wasn’t under any real handicap. 


There were over twenty white hunters and one hundred and fifty bearers.
Contrary to many of the old Jungle movies that I’d seen, these fellows 
made use of pack-mules and they even had three wagons. 

The straw bosses carried long blacksnake whips, but they used the loud
pops as signals and struck neither man nor beast with them. I did see 
them harvest a few birds with them and small lizards and rodents. 

We didn’t expect to meet any elephants or buffalo in the jungle. The
jungle variety of elephant is said to be rather shy. They would almost 
certainly avoid our safari. Buffalo didn’t live in the forest. 

One might encounter hostile natives anytime and any place. Some of them
went by the motto that “Stranger” equals “Enemy”. 

There were a couple of scouts who’d ride ahead on fine saddle mules. For
some reason, horses don’t do at all well in the jungle, but mules make 
out. 

Anyway, they’d ride a mile or two ahead and then come back to tell the
leaders what was ahead. They travelled in pairs to increase the chances 
of one of them coming back to warn us, in case of ambush. They had 
extra scouts, so that men and mules could be relieved. 

I walked in the forward van of the column, carrying my Enfield. Joshua
stayed a pace behind me, carrying my .577 Nitro; on the off chance we’d 
sight something that my Enfield wouldn’t handle. 

Mond trailed loosely along with his Shotgun slung over his back and his
spear in hand. I got the impression that Mond might be a bit slow. 

The elephant trails were reasonably wide and clear. There were brightly
colored birds, and flowers everywhere. There seemed no end to the 
chattering monkeys either. 

It was a toss-up whether the smell of decay, or flowers or the
monkey-house odor was the dominant bouquet. There was a never-ending 
soundtrack of chattering, birdcalls and the bearer’s work songs. 

******************** ************ *********** 

“Mighty big snake ahead Bwana,” one of the bearers came running back to
tell me. 

They say that only the very largest snakes could eat a man. Also,
because human body temperature is lower than most creatures, we just 
don’t register as prey. 

That was back home. I was willing to give these ringworld snakes a wide
berth though. 

The big constrictors liked to hang motionless and hard to spot, on a
branch overlooking the trail. The trail was where many of their prey 
traveled, after all. 

We’d detoured around several, but this one was in a rather inconvenient
spot to detour around, with a large rock formation on the left, and an 
all but impassible thicket of thorn trees on the right. 

I rolled foam earplugs and inserted one in each ear. Sometimes you don’t
have time for hearing protection, but oftentimes you do. 

I maneuvered around until I could shoot the snake without the round
continuing on up the trail. I don’t know how the scouts got around the 
snake. Possibly the snake had only moved fully into position just 
recently. 

At any rate, I didn’t want an errant or penetrating round going up the
trail and hitting scout or mule. 

I drew my left hand .357, since my left always needs to catch up to my
right. I sighted carefully, aiming for a spot roughly between the 
emerald green eyes. A snake has very little brain to speak of. 

I slowly drew the trigger through a smooth Double Action stroke. Never
shoot a Double Action Revolver Single Action. It is an unspeakable 
gaucherie, like putting ketchup on a hotdog. 

The crash of my .357 echoed through the leafy canopy. The portion of the
snake hanging free started doing all sorts of wild writhing. Reptiles 
are like that. 

I aimed about six inches further back and shot to sever the spine. The
one hundred and twenty-five grain hollow points are about as damaging 
as anything out of a medium-bore Revolver can be. 

The second shot probably wasn’t necessary, but I like to be certain. If
it is worth shooting once, then it’s worth shooting twice, 
circumstances allowing. 

I had my oversized Bowie, but I gestured for Joshua to loan me his
machete momentarily. I stepped close to the still writhing snake, 
though it had started to slow down by now and I chopped the remains of 
its head off. 

An hour later, I had the snake down off the branch and gutted. Joshua
watched in horrified fascination as I prepared to bar-be-que the snake 
in a cooking pit. 

“I never heard of anyone eating snake,” Joshua told me dubiously. 

“It’s good white meat,” I assured him. 

“Never seen anyone cook something by burying it either,” Joshua said. 

“Trust me, it’s a time honored method in some parts of the world. Does
this world have a Hawaii?” I asked. 

I realized my slip and so did Joshua. He raised his eyebrows
momentarily, but he didn’t pursue it. 

None of the white hunters would try my snake, but perhaps twenty bearers
and askari condescended to do so. 

It wasn’t bad. I had a few basic spices that I always carried in my
possibles bag, more than enough to season a big snake. 

After that day, the snakes were in far more danger from my hungry
friends than we were from them. The rest of the safari started to refer 
to my crew as “Bwana Down’s snake-eaters”. 

****************** ************ ************ 

Later that night, Joshua approached my hammock. 

“Are you one of those people that the ancient myths tell about? They say
that once in a great while, a man from a world that is round like a 
ball—like the sun—will fall to our world. Are you one of them?” He 
asked like someone asks when he is afraid of the answer. 

“That’s me,” I told him. 

I couldn’t see lying to a friend. I’m not much on lying anyway. 

I told him about Sabrina, and The Maestro and The Virgin Queen. I told
him about The Artifact and The Society and Edgar Rice Burroughs. 

The longer I talked, the longer his face got and the more his
countenance fell. 

“Why is this so important to you?” 

Joshua sat on a campstool and looked down at his hands as he wrung them
over and over. 

“I was raised by a Christian Missionary after the fever killed my
parents. I was raised a Christian. I believed. I still believe—at least 
I want to. 

“But the Professors and learned men at the University told me that there
is no archaeological evidence that the nation of Israel ever existed. 
There was no Sodom and Gomorrah. There was no Bethlehem or Nazareth or 
Jerusalem. They say that they are all as imaginary as Oz or Narnia.” 

That gave me the biggest laugh that I’d had in many months, since before
Rubenstein blinded my daughter. 

Joshua looked hurt and turned to go. 

“Wait Joshua. I know the answer that you’re seeking. What does your
Bible tell you about Jesus? It says that he made a single sacrifice, 
sufficient for all time. 

“Given that you believe that there are other worlds—would you expect
Jesus to have to go through the crucifixion on each and every one of 
them? 

“Why? Once was good enough. Any man, on any world, can call on him and
be saved. He didn’t say, ‘This offer restricted to local residents and 
void where prohibited.’ 

“What does the Bible tell you that the Jews were for? They were vital to
God’s long-term plan. 

“He doesn’t necessarily need Jews and the Holy Land on every world in
the Multiverse.” 

“How do you know all that?” 

“I don’t like to talk about it. Before Rubenstein blinded my daughter, I
was a Preacher,” I told him. 

“There is one other thing that the old legends say about men who fall
from worlds that are as round as our sun,” Joshua said. 

He made it sound like a very sinister threat. 

“What is that Joshua?” I asked. 

“They say that men only fall to Earth in times of crisis. They say that
God sends them to put things right.” 

“That wouldn’t be me, Joshua. I have far too many men’s blood on my
hands. I’m a wicked man.” 

“We’re all wicked. Jonah tried to escape his destiny too, you know. So
did Moses and Gideon and Peter,” Joshua said. 

Chapter Five 

I first read Burroughs as a boy. I spent a lot of time in the river
bottoms back then. I imagined Tarzan’s jungle as an enlarged hardwood 
forest. 

The Artifact used my mental images to search for a world for me. 

Consequently the jungle is full of giant maple, oak and sycamore trees.
The upper canopy is perhaps six hundred feet from the ground. 

If I remember correctly, redwoods can’t grow much over four hundred feet
tall. That’s about how high capillary attraction can raise water. 

The gravity is only about seventy percent here and the air is thick, but
I don’t think that solves the fluid transport problem. Obviously 
something solves it though or the trees couldn’t stand. 

Some of the jungle is very overgrown but other parts are wide open like
a park, only the trunks of the mammoth trees breaking up the open 
space. 

And there are places where there are whole “under-forests” of sixty to
eighty feet tall, shade tolerant trees. That’s where many of the fruits 
and nuts grow. 

**************** *********** *********** 

We had decided to call it a day. The sun is always directly overhead, so
“night” is whenever the trail bosses call a halt. 

We had just gotten the camp set up, when we had a visitor. 

He had to have dropped at least sixty feet from one of the very lowest
of the upper canopy branches. 

I had seen videos of Parkour champions falling twenty-five or thirty
feet, but they roll very hard to absorb the shock. I have also seen 
films of modern day Japanese Ninja jumping off five-story scaffolding. 

The Ninja fell hard and got up like they were seriously stove up. 

This dude fell from the treetops and landed upright as lightly as a cat
jumping off the icebox. 

The ape-man didn’t fit any mental image that I’d ever formed of Tarzan.
He wasn’t Tarzan though, of course. 

However, there is a species of great apes here—bigger and more
intelligent than chimpanzees, but smaller and more social than 
gorillas. These great apes have a penchant for stealing and raising 
other hominid infants given half a chance—supplying a steady stream of 
ape-men. 

Yeah, forget most of what you know about wildlife on Earth. This is
Burroughs’ Africa. The gorillas here are solitary and spend their lives 
in a state of truculent rage. 

But like I say, this dude didn’t fit my idea of an ape-man. 

He was maybe six-one. He had long blond hair that he plaited into two
braids. He wore an oval shaped mirror around his neck—maybe two inches 
by three. 

He had a leopard-skin—well, more like posing trunks than a breechclout.
He was muscled and very lean, but more like a male fitness model than 
an athlete... 

And he seemed swishy. 

He only spoke French—or what sounded like French to my ears. 

He left after speaking earnestly to the trail bosses for a few moments
and then sprang back into the trees and sped away. 

About that, he leaped and soared like one of the actors in an old
Kung-Fu movie—the ones that are always very badly dubbed. 

When he was about forty feet up, he seemed to grasp the bole of the tree
and scrambled up like a squirrel. Once he was in the canopy, he 
disappeared impossibly quickly. 

Mond grumbled something in his native tongue. He always seemed angry,
but I could tell it was the real thing. I raised my eyebrows at Joshua. 


“He says that the ape-man was looking for a lover, a male lover. He says
that reflects badly on all ape-men,” Joshua interpreted. 

“You mean...” I started. 

“Yes,” Joshua said. 

Now that was disillusionment, a gay Tarzan—not that he was Tarzan, I
kept reminding myself. 

*************** ************ ********** 

We hadn’t marched far the next day, when one of the leaders came and
asked to borrow Mond. A wagon had thrown a wheel and they needed his 
muscle. 

Sometime afterward, Joshua wandered back to see how it was going. Since
all forward progress had stopped, I sat on a stump for a while and then 
started walking back myself. 

The combination of the troop spreading out, the trail curving and
copious underbrush meant that whole segments of our caravan got out of 
communication sometimes. 

I was about halfway back to the broken wagon, when I saw something that
moved me to rage. One of the bosses had a bearer tied spread-eagled and 
was lashing him with his blacksnake whip. 

“Stop that!” I demanded. 

“Not your business Down,” he said. 

I’d seen a graphic video of a man being caned in some foreign country.
I’m not squeamish, but the idea of it sickened me. They scourged both 
Jesus and Saul. I don’t approve of floggings. 

“I’m making it my business,” I said. 

“Do you know what he did?” 

“I don’t give a rat’s derrière what he did. I told you to stop.” 

He gave me a long glance and then drew his hand back to lash the hapless
bearer again. 

I drew my right .357 and shot his whip about two inches from where the
thumb-side of his hand ended. 

I don’t think that was poor Gun handling. While the whip was my target,
I was quite willing to accept the ruination of his hand if I 
miscalculated. In retrospect, it would have been wiser simply to shoot 
him. 

Several of the crew moved forward to take his part. 

I drew my other Revolver. 

“Come on then, one at a time or all at once. Do you think that I’m
afraid of you? 

“Are y’all afraid to die or...” 

I had been standing and haranguing the bearers and not watching my six.
Some cowardly lopslicker struck me one Hell of a hard blow to the back 
of my skull, with some sort of blunt instrument. 

Not that I knew that at that point in time. 

The world simply went away. 

Chapter Six 

“Bwana Down is dead,” the head bearer told Joshua and Mond. “Bwana
Erickson was whipping Refe and Bwana Down ordered him to stop. Bwana 
Miller sneaked up behind Bwana Down and crushed his skull with the butt 
of his Rifle.” 

“I will kill both of them,” Mond said as he started to rise. 

“Leave it to me,” Joshua told him. “You lack subtlety” 

“Please don’t stir up trouble. Bwana Down was well liked. Half the
bearers are ready to desert or mutiny and if you shoot Bwana Erickson 
and Bwana Miller, many men will die,” The head bearer said. 

“I’m not going to shoot them. It will be in the dead of night and I will
disappear afterwards,” Joshua said. 

“Do you think that you can make it home alone?” Mond asked. 

“That shall be as God wills,” Joshua said. 

************** ************ ************* 

Joshua didn’t act the first night. The bosses might have expected
something like that. Nor did he act on the second night. 

He had expected some difficulty in restraining Mond. Mond seemed willing
to take Joshua at his word though. He might have lacked subtlety, but 
he knew patience. 

The third night, Joshua acted. Since it was always broad daylight, there
would always be some awake and moving about—but there was no reason to 
be suspicious of Joshua’s movements. 

He calmly walked into Bwana Miller’s tent and strangled the man. He
didn’t wake the man sleeping on the other cot. 

Then he called on Bwana Erikson. Erikson had a tent to himself, so
Joshua didn’t bother to strangle him. He simply beheaded him with a 
single chop of his Cossack saber. 

Bwana Down’s trunk was in Erikson’s tent. He quickly opened the secret
panel and extracted the small sack full of gems. He grabbed His 
friend’s Enfield and plenty of ammunition. 

Erikson had been wearing one of his friend’s ivory handled .357s, so he
appropriated that too. 

He walked up to Mond and told him, “It is done.” 

And then Joshua disappeared into the bush. 

It was conceivable that they could have tracked Joshua down, but it
would have been highly unlikely. It was even less likely that they 
would bother. 

*************** ************ ************* 

Shortly after Joshua jumped ship, there was one of those tremendous
storms that happened every so often. 

The world’s spin gave it gravity and it also caused Coriolis forces.
Somehow that was enough to give the world weather. The tropical rain 
forests couldn’t have existed if it hadn’t rained fairly frequently. 

There was a heavy rain every week or two, but this wasn’t a typical
tropical cloudburst. This was a near hurricane force storm that went on 
and on. 

************ *********** ************ 

Shortly after the storm, a bearer named Tom came to speak to Mond. 

“Bwana Down is not dead,” Tom said. 

Mond looked angrier than usual as he said, 

“Tell me!” 

“Bwana Miller said to take his body into the bush and leave it. Three of
us carried him. 

“He was still breathing. Lure wanted to cut his throat, take his bag and
search his body. I said that if he touched Bwana Down’s body that I 
would kill him. 

“I also told him that if he told anyone that Bwana Down had been alive,
that I would kill him. 

“But he told Bwana Miller straightaway. Bwana Miller laughed and said
that the Hyenas would finish him off. 

“I will kill that worthless Lure too, but I’ve been biding my time,” Tom
said. 

“Don’t bother,” Mond said. “Who has Bwana Down’s other Revolver?” 

******************* **************** ******** 

Mond walked up to Bwana Creed and told him, “Give me my Bwana’s Gun.” 

Several of the camp came over to see what was going on. 

“Tom tells me that Bwana Down was alive when they dumped him in the
jungle. 

“I go to find him and I mean to take him his Gun.” 

“You can have it Mond. I didn’t hold with what happened and I meant no
harm. It’s just a very fine Gun,” Creed told him. 

Mond handed him one of the gold coins that Bwana Down had given to him. 

“Buy you a new one,” he said, knowing that the gold piece would buy many
Guns. 

“Mond, he was unconscious and bleeding five days ago. By now the hyenas
and the Jackals will have finished him and scattered his bones,” Creed 
reasoned with him. 

“And the storm will have erased all sign of him.” 

“Perhaps, but I won’t stop looking until I’m sure. Bwana Down came from
another world. He has a destiny to fulfill.” 

“He came from another world? I assure you, that is just a native
superstition. There are no other worlds—just this one,” Creed said. 

Several of the bearers and askaris whispered amongst themselves. 

“Lure, come here. I have something to discuss with you,” Mond said. 

Lure walked hesitantly forward. 

Mond grabbed him with by the neck with one hand and lifted him
completely clear of the ground. 

“It is a very bad thing to be a snitch,” Mond told him conversationally.


“You should have come to tell me or Joshua that our Bwana was alive, not
that murdering Miller.” 

Then Mond grabbed him with both hands and broke his neck almost
absentmindedly. 

Mond helped himself to whatever supplies he thought that he might need,
and prepared to depart. 

Several of Lure’s fellow Tribesmen made as if to bar Mond’s way. 

“That is excellent strategy,” Mond told them. 

“Your ancestors will welcome you proudly, knowing that you were brave
enough to confront such hopeless odds.” 

After a hurried examination of Mond’s premise, they decided to let him
pass in peace. 

Chapter Seven 

I woke up with the worst booming headache that I’d ever had. The blood
had covered my eyes and they were plastered shut. It took several 
minutes to clear enough of the clotted mess to be able to open my eyes. 


Both of my big .357s were gone. I removed the now empty double Gun rig
and let it drop. 

I still had my bag—it didn’t seem to have been relieved of anything—and
my Bowie. 

I was wearing the Bowie on a big belt that crossed my left shoulder and
hung at my right, high enough to clear my Gun. I got the idea of 
carrying it that way, watching Westerns. Sam Elliot often carried a 
Bowie that way. 

Come to think of it though, many folks have carried swords that way over
the ages. 

I didn’t know why no one had thought to take the Bowie. Perhaps because
both sheath and belt were a bloody clotted mess. But jungle explorers 
aren’t noted for squeamishness. 

I took off both belt and knife momentarily. 

When I climbed uncertainly to my feet, something grabbed me from behind.


A few days earlier, one of the white hunters had discarded a broken
straight razor. How one breaks a straight razor blade, I can’t tell 
you. He probably broke it while trying to use it for a screwdriver or 
to pry or something else that it wasn’t intended for. 

There was an inch and a half of very sharp blade and I’d wondered how it
could be used as a weapon. 

I’d broken off a small piece and stuck it between the double soles of my
right boot. 

If it had been on the inside, I’d have been at some risk of cutting my
own left ankle. Too far forward, and every bit of weed, grass or vine 
that struck the blade would have worked it loose, or at least dulled it 
considerably. 

I’d finally gotten it to ride without falling out and I hadn’t even
thought to check it for a couple days. 

I kicked backward three times; moving my foot through an odd hook each
time, hoping the blade was still there. 

It was. 

My assailant gave a huge bellow and shoved me away. 

It was the sissy ape-man from the other day—only he no longer had on his
leopard skin briefs. He had too slashes on his right shin, one of them 
deep enough to show his leg bone—and he was all too obviously aroused. 

He spoke that gibberish and gestured angrily. I stared him straight in
the eye and shook my head. 

“My gate don’t swing that way dude,” I told him. 

He was too close for me to successfully draw from a shoulder holster and
genius that I am, I’d taken off my Bowie. 

“I really need this right now, “ I thought to myself as he charged. 

They say something about the process that turns an ordinary human into
an ape-man, also grants them almost superhuman strength... 

But I’d been learning how to fight since I was five years old. I had
taken The Society’s rejuvenating drugs and I traveled a very long way 
through the rejuvenating hyperspace. 

And though I was sick from the effects of a very hard knock on the back
of my head, I was also mighty peeved. 

I met the ape-man head to head. I drove my thumb into his eye and when
he pulled me into an iron-like bear hug, I leaned forward and bit into 
his nose. 

I got a good grip and I did not let go. You’d think that someone used to
fighting with big-fanged apes would have seen that move coming. 

When he shoved me away, I took most of the cartilaginous portion of his
nose with me. I spit it out and smiled at him... 

Maybe it was a smile. Maybe I was simply snarling and baring my teeth. 

He screamed something that sounded like speech and a funny gobbling,
gargling sound all at the same time, and then he charged me again. 

I had commissioned special open-top sheaths for my Buck Lockbacks—tight
enough to prevent loss, but faster to draw than a flap holder. 

I like to wear one on either side—you never know which hand will be tied
up holding something when you want to cut. Honestly, I think of the 
Bucks as good all-around tools. But most any good tool can double as a 
weapon. 

I drew my left-hand Buck and flicked it open with a flourish. I wanted
him to see it. 

Meanwhile, my right hand was drawing my right hand .38—a stag handled
S&W Chief’s Special. 

Blondie saw my blade. His eyes widened and he retreated to where he’d
dropped his belt and trunks. He drew out a knife with a wavy blade like 
a Kriss. The blade was perhaps fourteen inches long. 

He burbled something at me, with the blood running down his mouth and
chin... 

Probably something like Crocodile Dundee’s classic: 

“That’s not a knife, this is a knife!” 

“It is like: really man, be for real,” I told him. 

He stopped just out of my easy knife range. I’d hurt him enough to earn
a healthy respect. He just wanted to kill me now, while keeping his 
current state of misery intact. 

I made one quick arm motion, as though I was going for a long lunging
slash attack. As he braced for his parry and counterattack, I brought 
the .38 Special to shoulder height and sent a single 158 Grain +P 
semi-wadcutter hollow point into his face. 

Then just to make dead certain that he was settled, I fired three rounds
into his chest. 

*************** ************** ********* 

I sat fighting off the waves of dizziness and nausea and surveyed my
situation. 

Notwithstanding the attack when I awoke, I probably owed my survival to
the ape-man. If he hadn’t sat guarding my unconscious body, some sort 
of carnivore would have smelled the blood and come to investigate. 

I’d have woken up both dead and eaten. 

Speaking of Blood, it would be an excellent idea to wash and leave the
bloody battlefield as soon as possible. 

“Belt and suspenders”—that’s me. 

The 1911A1 .45 Auto in a shoulder holster had already served me well. It
had seemed a shame to waste an armpit, so I’d had a double rig made, 
and I carried a small frame Smith and Wesson .357 under my right arm. 
It was what we call a “K” Frame, but it too had a five-inch barrel. 

I couldn’t even begin to afford ivory back home, so my experience with
it was rather limited. I couldn’t pass up the chance to have a couple 
ivory handled Revolvers but I wasn’t sure how the ivory would hold up 
to a steady stream of salty sweat, so my “Inside Guns” were all stag. 

So I had a .45 Auto, a .357, two snub-nosed .38s and a small Walther PP
in my bag to shoot small game. I had about five hundred rounds of .22 
and almost two hundred rounds of centerfire ammunition in my bag. 

People are forever getting lost in Burroughs’ stories. You might say
that I almost planned for it. 

My Bowie belt was about ruined, so I abandoned it and inherited the
ape-man’s belt. The double Gun rig was of no use, so I left it too. 

I took the ape-man’s knife, though I thought that it was a piece of
junk. It might come in handy for something. There was also a seven-foot 
long wood hafted spear lying on the ground. 

It wasn’t the ape-man’s. He couldn’t have carried it through the trees
without some sort of carrying sling. There was none. 

At any rate, I was good at throwing a spear. I had started young. When I
wasn’t busy training with The Maestro, I’d been down in the 
river-bottoms hunting rabbits or whatever, with the spear my father had 
made for me—a real spear. 

This spear was a tad too long for my taste, but I could shorten it when
I made camp. 

I had no idea which direction the trail laid, so I picked a direction
and started walking. 

When I come to a small sparkling little brook, I knew that I’d picked
the wrong way. 

When I was a boy, I always drank water from the icebox and my fruit came
from the icebox too. 

I have no idea how the physics of it work, but here in the hot humid
jungle, almost every small rivulet or spring that you come across is 
icy cool and all the fruits are also cool inside. 

In cool water, you don’t have to worry about crocodilians—there are
alligators, caimans and several breeds of crocodiles in this forest. 

I drank my fill and filled both my canteens. I bathed my aching head in
the cool water and washed as much blood off of my clothes and me as I 
could. 

I’d gathered a modest quantity of pecans and blackberries as I’d walked.
I’d also gathered a couple oranges and some bananas. 

Do those things grow in the jungle back home? Probably not, but they
grow here. 

Someone who’d starve here would starve in a supermarket—but there are
far more immediate risks than starving. 

I had a small frog gig. The shaft of my spear was a bit too thick to
make a good fish spear. No problem. I simply cut a piece of bamboo and 
I was good to go. 

I know that it is hoggish and ill mannered to stop short, but by the
time that I’d speared three fair-sized fish, I decided to call a halt. 
If that makes me greedy, so be it. 

My head was throbbing. I had morphine tablets in my bag, but morphine is
counter-indicated with concussion. I took several aspirin and forced 
myself to carry on. 

Some of the trees have very big, buttressed roots. I found a place where
the roots formed a cul-de-sac. 

I covered it fairly well with bark to keep out the sun, and then laid a
layer of thorn bushes over the top to keep a predator from digging 
through. 

I made a thorny barrier across the front, built a fire and settled in to
rest until I’d fully recovered. 

Right then I’d be fine for an hour or two, then I’d start feeling dizzy
and sick to my stomach for a while. 

I’d just gotten settled in good and cooked my fish, when a storm came
up. 

It was more like a hurricane. It was the biggest storm that I’d seen so
far on this world and it went on for over a week... 

I know, because I managed to keep my watch wound to keep track of the
time—and watches here only need to be wound every few days—because the 
general timelessness of the place makes overlooking the winding highly 
probable. 

Chapter Eight 

The rain wasn’t quite continuous, or I might have Gotten very hungry
indeed. Every day there was at least one break in the downpour that was 
long enough to let me forage a bit in the mist and drizzle. 

My askari and the bearers had turned me on to perhaps two-dozen edible
weeds. Most of them were semi-edible—meaning you could eat them 
sparingly, but to eat large quantities would cause stomach upset, 
cramps and/or diarrhea. 

I’d known how to strip the inner bark out of maple trees all my life.
There were fruits and nuts—though the hard rain and wind had knocked 
many to the ground where they promptly became ruined. 

When the rain let up, I was ready for some meat. 

I’d shortened my spear to about five foot. The spear that I’d had as a
boy had been about four and a half foot, but I was bigger and stronger 
now, and I didn’t want it too short. 

I tried a dozen casts at a bundle of grasses I’d wrapped together and
decided that I was right on. I didn’t want to chance bending or unduly 
dulling the blade to no purpose. 

I’d never been a champion tree climber, but the gravity was a bit milder
here and I managed to find a low-lying limb overhanging a small game 
trail, with a leaning trunk that I could scale. 

Of course I could shoot something, but I wanted to save my cartridges
insomuch as possible. 

Along came the biggest deer that I’d ever seen—but I hadn’t yet climbed
completely into my tree, let alone pulled my spear up by the string I’d 
tied around the end. 

Burroughs mentioned “Bara the Deer” many times. In retrospect, I think
he meant some sort of African antelope—or maybe not. Burroughs wasn’t 
that knowledgeable about African wildlife. 

His original “Tarzan of The Apes” contained tigers as well as lions. A
young HP Lovecraft wrote him a letter pointing out his error. 

At any rate, I’d pictured a whitetail deer—only back then I thought
whitetails were a good bit bigger than they actually are. 

The Artifact with its relentless literal mindedness had found a world
where giant whitetail deer with massive racks and shoulders five and a 
half feet tall walked the jungle. 

Both bucks and does had antlers, though the buck’s antlers were larger.
They only dropped when a major tine was broken off, and they needed to 
re-grow to mend the flaw. 

On the other hand, I’d imagined “Horta the Boar” as a two hundred pound,
short coupled little pig. 

He was the first creature to walk by after I’d gained my perch. 

A well-thrown spear tends to fishtail drastically when it hits its mark.
The blade gets wrenched back and forth and tears up a surprising amount 
of tissue. 

Predators are a big danger in this jungle and the scent of blood draws
them from far and wide. I gutted the pig quickly and left the 
intestines and kidneys. I don’t eat pork liver, so I left that as well. 


I threw the little pig over my shoulder. He weighed just a bit over a
hundred pounds dressed. I walked briskly to my little shelter. 

I could cook and preserve my meat in relative safety there, surrounded
by root walls and barricades of thorn, and backed up by my fire. 

Things just weren’t going to be all that simple that day though. I was
within sight of my shelter when a gorilla appeared on the trail. 

He hadn’t been drawn by the smell of blood—or maybe he had. 

Ringworld gorillas are complete vegetarians. They don’t even eat eggs or
insects and they are grumpy as all Hell. 

I suppose that if I had to subsist on a vegan diet that I’d be as grumpy
as Hell myself. The gorilla didn’t have to try taking his 
dissatisfaction with his life and his diet out on me though. 

But he certainly tried to. 

That’s why I say that he might have been drawn to the scent of blood,
just looking for something to kill. 

A gorilla will back down from an elephant or a rhino. Sometimes they’ll
let one of the great apes pass. Even when they choose to attack a great 
ape, sometimes stalemates occur or the ape prevails. 

Their default condition upon encountering any other creature is to
attack. 

I dropped my pig. Since I was carrying my spear right handed, I could
cast it at the gorilla as easily as I could cast it to one side. I 
threw it at him—though without the follow through that would have made 
it a magnum cast... 

I was more interested in getting my .357 out and getting into a solid
Weaver Stance. The Revolver was positioned for a left-hand draw. 

I’m nearly ambidextrous—at least with weapons—and I continually work on
perfecting my skills. 

The spear glanced off a shoulder, though it did give a long vicious
slash. I ripped off a six-shot Double Action string as fast as I’ve 
ever fired a left-hand six-shot string. 

I was aiming for the sternum. Three shots actually hit the sternum. I
could have covered all of my shots with my two spread hands. Only one 
shot failed to get into the chest cavity—a gut-shot. 

Then the gorilla hit me. I imagine that being run over by a ringworld
gorilla is similar to being struck by a semi going thirty miles or so 
per hour. 

Would he simply have run over me initially, if I hadn’t put a foot long
gash on one shoulder and six one hundred and twenty-five Grain Hollow 
Points into his torso? 

There is no way of knowing. 

He over-ran me by twenty-five or thirty feet. He’d knocked me down and
caused me to lose my .357. In any case, reloading it would have been 
impossible in that time scale anyway. 

I was only halfway to my feet when he was on top of me. Fangs flashed at
my throat. I just had time to ram my right forearm into his jaws and 
felt—and heard—both the radius and ulna crack in his powerful jaws. 

Time seemed to slow down. I could see his neck muscles tense to start a
side-to-side shake that might have torn my forearm off. I reached back 
behind by hip for my left-hand Chief’s Special .38. 

The draw seemed glacially slow. 

I rammed the two-inch barrel as far as it would go into his ear-hole and
fired a round. 

Even if the bullet had missed the brain, the muzzle-blast would have
pureed the brain tissue. The gorilla fell and fortunately for me, he 
didn’t fall on me. 

I was in shock. I had to work fast before pain and blood loss
incapacitated me. 

I dragged the little pig one-handed to my shelter. I’d need the protein
to survive my convalescence. 

I Picked up my .357 and my spear and hauled them to the shelter. 

I managed to wash my wound somewhat and splint it before it started to
throb with agony. 

I swallowed two morphine pills and four aspirin. Then I thought again
and chewed two more morphine pills to speed the action. I took one of 
the big purple penicillin pills. Infection can be a killer anywhere. In 
the hot and humid jungle it is an awesome killer. 

Once the pain started, I was strictly limited to using one hand. The
slightest touch to the right hand or arm send waves of pain and nausea 
rippling through my body. 

I managed to slice a bit of pork off my little pig and set it by the
fire. Thank goodness that I’d banked my fire instead of letting it go 
out. 

As I sat trying to block the pain, I heard a whine of pain. I didn’t
think it was me, notwithstanding the pain. I try hard not to whine. 

I found a dead female boon and her small infant. 

I read that some native African tribes used baboons for shepherds back
home. I don’t know if that’s true or not. 

On this world some long forgotten race had domesticated baboons and bred
them selectively for centuries—maybe millennia. 

They created a sort of “pit-bull” baboon. 

A boon has a noticeably larger head than a baboon. His jaws are just a
bit undershot and his fangs and jaw muscles are massive. He has a bite 
more powerful than a lion, or gorilla or even a hyena—and hyenas crunch 
buffalo femurs to eat the marrow. 

They have a larger brain than a baboon—even larger than a chimpanzee’s.
There is much more emphasis on reasoning and communication in a boon’s 
brain. 

They have little manlike hands with opposable thumbs and a prehensile
tail. 

No one domesticates them in the known modern world. The consensus is
that they’re untrainable—probably because they’re too smart for their 
own good. 

While they don’t go looking for trouble like gorillas, they are
absolutely fearless and they have a reduced capacity to feel pain. 

They’re not terribly common in the wild. 

Somehow, all those centuries of domestication have given them an
inherent curiosity about men and mankind. 

Apparently the mother was poking around my campsite when the gorilla
caught her. He’d been interrupted from killing the pup when I’d come 
merrily sauntering along. 

Now the gorilla wouldn’t be killing anything or anyone anymore. 

I should have shot the pup with my .22 	Walther PP and added him and his
mother’s flesh to my larder. 

Instead I coaxed him over to me and fed him some grilled pork. He
quickly lost his fear of me. As my morphine finally caught up with me 
and I started to drowse fitfully by the fire, he curled up beside me 
for warmth and napped. 

I suppose that he weighed maybe thirty pounds and was just barely old
enough to wean. Full grown, he’d weigh up to two hundred and fifty 
pounds. The males being noticeably larger and with mightier jaws than 
the female, he’d be a serious threat even to a gorilla when grown. 

I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I intended to do with a boon pup—much
less a grown boon. 

***************** ************* ************ 

Mond stripped off the khaki shorts and the short-sleeved khaki shirt
that he habitually wore. 

He extracted a supple leather breechclout from his small pack. He made
sure that his Double Barrel 10 Gauge and his knife, as well as his 
machete and the Bwana’s Revolver were all secured... 

With his boots off, the prehensile toe of the ape-man was readily
apparent, had there been anyone to see. 

Mond took to the trees with an ability to soar and almost fly that was
astonishing in a man of his bulk. 

He arrived at the scene of the Bwana’s fight with the blond haired
ape-man. He could still detect some scent, even after the storm and he 
found the small oval mirror that the ape-man had worn. 

The scientists claim that Dogs can identify traces of urine or blood
from as long as three years ago. 

In becoming an ape-man, Mond’s sense of smell had increased
dramatically—but he couldn’t smell as well as an ordinary Dog, much 
less as well as a Bloodhound, that had over three times as many 
olfactory nerves as an ordinary Dog. 

But Mond had friends in the jungle. Some of his friends packed more than
a dozen Bloodhound’s worth of olfactory nerves into one nostril. 

Mond threw back his head and howled again and again. 

*************** ************** ************ 

Rubenstein struggled to light a cigarette with his prosthetic hands. He
wasn’t having any luck. 

“Let me do that for you baby,” one of his whores said. 

Rubenstein waited until he had his cigarette lit and then he gave her a
vicious head-butt. 

It wasn’t anywhere nearly as satisfying as an open-handed slap would
have been. He missed those tactile sensations. 

He cursed the Right Reverend Down Ward—though that was Rubenstein’s
title for the Preacher, not one that Down himself used. He cursed him 
from the bottom of his malicious soul. 

The Preacher’s stuck-up little daughter had disappeared too, so
Rubenstein couldn’t take his wrath out on her. In fact, several of the 
henchmen that he’d sent to search for her had turned up dead—killed in 
some rather unusual and gruesome ways. 

Rubenstein’s men had stayed loyal so far, despite Rubenstein’s handicap.
He’d proven that he had the brains and the ruthlessness to keep the 
money and the good times rolling... 

But Rubenstein was forced to be more tolerant occasionally, lest he
insight a mutiny he was less able to put down nowadays. 

He hated being tolerant. He hated being weak. He hated having to call
one of his men to slap his whores for him. 

Get right down to it; Rubenstein did little but hate before his maiming.
Now he was completely given over to hatred every waking moment of the 
day and in his dreams as well. 

“I could replace your hands for you,” a voice said. 

Rubenstein wheeled around to see a dark figure in the shadows in one
corner. He couldn’t see the figure clearly, but the eyes glowed red. 

“Who are you? How did you get into my room?” Rubenstein demanded. 

“I know where Elder Down is. I can take you there and I can replace your
hands so that you meet him on equal terms—but there is a price. 

“We need to speak in private,” The mysterious shadow man said. 

Rubenstein turned to his whore. 

“Go tell Hammerman to give you a hard spanking and be sure to thank him
when he’s done. I’ll find out if you don’t,” Rubenstein told her. 

“No! Please no!” She begged. 

Hammerman loved causing pain and he was an artist at it. 

“And tell him to pull one of your back teeth, where it won’t hurt your
looks,” Rubenstein said. 

Her terror gave him a warm glowing sense of satisfaction. It was a pity
that he couldn’t spare the time to watch... 

But right this moment; the mysterious stranger had his undivided
attention. 

Chapter Nine 

“You sent my father to an alternate universe?” Sabrina scoffed. 

“I can prove it to you,” The Maestro said. 

************** *********** ************ 

It took awhile to get Sabrina all the data that she needed to come to an
informed conclusion. 

Many of the ancient books were in other languages. Others had to be read
to her simply because there was no Braille copy. The Society’s 
mathematic system was old when Solomon was building his temple. The 
symbolism was both obscure and arcane by modern standards. 

“All right,” Sabrina said. “Your theory is fairly consistent, but there
are some gaping holes that you could drive a truck through.” 

“You couldn’t drive a truck through it,” The Virgin Queen told her. 

“Bite me!” Sabrina said. “You are so witty. I wish I could think up
zingers like that. I’m blind therefore I can’t drive. Your grasp of the 
obvious astounds me.” 

The Virgin Queen, like her mother before her, had gone to fat. She was
pasty white, because she almost never went outdoors into the sun and 
she smoked incessantly. 

Sabrina couldn’t see her, but she could hear and smell her and she’d
known her type from before. 

“I can grasp your Society’s crack-brained mathematics. What I simply
cannot grasp is how my father could ever have been in love with your 
fat ass,” Sabrina stated very precisely. 

“You are far enough along in your training, that The Virgin Queen could
honorably challenge you to a duel,” the fat woman warned her. 

“The Virgin Queen needn’t stand on ceremony. Let’s get in on,” Sabrina
hissed. 

The Maestro rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. 

Sabrina was the first candidate in centuries, who was enough of a
mathematician to actually advance The Society’s theoretical knowledge 
base... 

And they sorely needed better theoretical tools. 

Sabrina’s father had the whole of known hyperspace in a turbulent roil.
Anyone with the fine mental control to travel could feel the multitude 
of back currents and eddies that he’d set in motion. 

The situation was unprecedented. 

He couldn’t afford to lose her to a duel—and that could happen, however
unlikely that might be. 

Sabrina had been training with The Maestro for over two years now and
she was close to her seventeenth birthday. 

She was incredibly strong and lean too. She had broad shoulders, strong
arms and her stomach rippled like a washboard. The incessant wrist, 
finger and forearm exercises had given her a grip far stronger most 
strong men’s. 

And when she sparred with a practice saber, blind though she might have
been, she seemed to have an uncanny knack for knowing where her 
opponent was and where he was going to go next. 

He was more likely to lose his annoying granddaughter—or have her
seriously maimed in some way... 

And while he’d come to seriously dislike his granddaughter, there was
the bond of blood. 

“I want you two to play Hot Hands,” The Maestro commanded. “The Virgin
Queen can go first.” 

He never used the odd appellation without a trace of sarcasm. 

The fat woman held her hands out palms up. The Maestro guided Sabrina’s
hands onto the waiting palms. 

“My granddaughter will try to withdraw her hands rapidly and then slap
your hands before you can withdraw them. 

“There is room for a little fudging, but when she makes a bona fide
attempt to slap you and misses, then you reverse positions and it will 
be Sabrina’s turn,” The Maestro explained. 

“I’ve played before,” Sabrina said with a smile. 

Sabrina seemed disorientated and she let The Virgin Queen slap her hands
quite viciously a score of times. All through the punishment however, 
she never lost her peaceful and amused smile. 

Then the fat woman went to slap Sabrina’s hands and they were no longer
there. 

“Sabrina’s turn,” The Maestro said. 

He said it grimly, because he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Sabrina slapped the back of her opponent’s right hand viciously with her
left hand. Contact on one hand was sufficient to keep her turn after 
all. 

But as she slapped The Virgin Queen’s hand on the woman’s right, her
right hand gave The Virgin Queen a resounding slap on the left side of 
her face. 

“She slapped The Virgin Queen grandfather!” The fat woman protested. 

“I can’t see after all,” Sabrina said. “I’m like a blind swordsman
whaling away in a thick fog, on a moonless night.” 

“Play!” The Maestro commanded. “Unless The Virgin Queen concedes
defeat.” 

Sabrina alternated hands until she’d slapped each side of her opponent’s
face three times. The seventh time, Sabrina’s work-hardened fist caught 
The Virgin Queen’s nose from the side... 

The blow was quite hard enough to break the nose. She fell into the
floor with a big stream of blood coming from each nostril. 

“Sabrina forfeits. The Virgin Queen wins,” The Maestro said wryly. 

“Listen to me,” Sabrina said sweetly. “You may insult me, but the next
time you say something bad about my father, I will kill you on the 
spot. 

“You have caused him much pain in his life. I have nothing left to lose
and I will not hear him insulted.” 

Once again The Maestro resisted the urge to roll his eyes toward the
ceiling. 

“I believe that she means that,” he said to his granddaughter. 

************* *************** ********** 

Joshua walked into Wardsville. He felt the irony when he hailed a hansom
cab and asked the driver to take him to his own cab company. 

David heard Joshua’s tale in silence. 

“I knew there was something different about Down,” he said. “Do you know
that I had a few of the small gold coins analyzed? 

“ They are one hundred percent pure gold. Nothing in this world is one
hundred percent pure. And each coin contained but one isotope of gold. 

“And the gems... 

“He sold all his gems through the one jeweler. He said that the man had
treated him fairly and he wanted to return the favor. 

“But each and every gem that Down sold him was perfect and cut far more
precisely than the very best jeweler on earth could do.” 

“What do we do now?” Joshua asked. 

“I don’t believe that he is dead. Other men have been lost and they’ve
turned up nonetheless—having survived against incredible odds. 

“If God has a purpose for Down Ward, he is more than capable of watching
out for him,” David said. 

“Should I go to look?” Joshua asked. 

“No. After all this while, you’d only get yourself lost. Down will turn
up when it is time for him to turn up... 

“But the world is very broad. We may not see him again. He may not be
destined to ever visit Wardsville again,” David said. 

“So what should we do?” Joshua repeated. 

“Gold has value. I intend to do everything that I can to insure that our
cab company prospers. If Down returns, he should have ample gold to 
fund his efforts—whatever they may be... 

“And if not, we have a use for gold ourselves.” 

“I don’t crave riches and luxury,” Joshua said. 

“Neither do I, but let me show you some of the things Down brought with
him from his world.” 

Down had brought a single King James Bible and a second 1611 KJV that
included the Apocrypha. 

He’d brought a Kindle, three portable hard drives and a roll-up solar
charging panel. He’d left copious instructions how to access the 
Library and he’d given David permission to examine it after he’d left. 

“There is technology there that could rock our world to the core. I will
have to think long and hard whether to publish some of these things... 

“But read the sermons of Charles Spugeon. Read some of the commentaries
on the Bible... 

“And Down’s Bible is a far more complete version than anything extant on
our world. 

“You once wanted to be a Preacher before the intellectuals at the
university torpedoed your faith. 

“Now you have the perfect answer for them. 

“We should build our cab business, set up a publishing house and start a
major denomination,” David said. 

His voice had risen and his tempo had steadily increased as he delivered
his message. 

“You are insane,” his brother told him in wonderment. 

“You tell me that you believe that a man with the charming name of ‘Down
Ward’ fell to the earth from one of those round planets that are said 
to circle suns in otherwheres... 

“And you call me insane?” David said. 

************ ************* *********** 

“The best analogy that I can give you,” Sabrina told The Maestro. “Is
that your inter-dimensional travels heretofore, have been like shooting 
birds on the wing with a Rifle. 

“Very few men ever get good enough to take quail and pheasant on the
wing, with a Rifle. 

“These new equations that I’ve given you should put a good open-choked
12 Gauge Shotgun into your hand.” 

The Maestro poured over the equations for several hours. Occasionally
he’d ask Sabrina for clarification. 

“Sabrina, if this is correct, we can now take others with us as we
travel. Do you know what that means? 

“I’d very much like to take you to one of our other worlds,” The Maestro
said. 

************* ************ *************** 

I had eaten most of my little pig. Silly though it might have been, I
wouldn’t eat the boon’s mother while the boon pup was with me. 

Irrational and a good waste of perfectly good fat and protein—but there
you have it. 

I dragged her out of the enclosure after a couple of days. She was
starting to get really ripe and my right arm wasn’t throbbing. 

Broken bones take what? 

They generally leave the cast on for six weeks. I read that four weeks
is usually sufficient and the last two weeks are generally for 
insurance. 

Maybe. 

At any rate, the inter-dimensional travel had presumably altered my
metabolism more or less permanently—giving me increased powers of 
healing and regeneration. 

That’s cool, but how much? And even the best regeneration system
requires raw material like protein and calcium. 

At least, I would think... 

The jungle was rife with berries, fruit and nuts though. 

There were quite a few whitetail bunny rabbits, squirrels and possums. I
shot a few left-handed. 

Doesn’t the jungle back home have rabbits and squirrel and possum? 

I’m not surprised, but this jungle does. 

There were all the songbirds that I was used to as well... 

Except that a blue jay, cardinal or robin here is as big as a ring
necked pheasant back home. Even sparrows are as big as pigeons. 

There are a few places in Central America, where the extreme southern
range of squirrels overlaps the extreme northern range of monkeys. 

They war constantly. 

Here the squirrels generally stay to the lower canopy and the monkeys
stay up top. 

It does little good to shoot a monkey, even if you can hit such a tiny
moving target so far away. 

His hand almost inevitable locks on a branch and he’ll hang there until
the crows or vultures eat him, or he rots and drops. 

But I had fishhooks and a small gill net in my bag and I knew how to
trap songbirds. 

Nonetheless rations were getting rather scant when along comes a jungle
elephant—a Methuselah. 

A veldt elephant is about twenty percent larger than a jungle elephant.
But bull elephants don’t die of old age—at least not the jungle 
variety. 

And as they age, they slowly grow. 

A very few jungle elephants live long enough to become Methuselahs. 

A Methuselah is about twenty five percent larger than the biggest veldt
bull. But there is more to it than size. A Methuselah is something 
qualitatively different than a jungle bull elephant. 

Eyes for instance. 

Elephant eyes are relatively weak. Positioned as they are, they cannot
see ahead or behind. And there is no overlap in the two fields of view. 


Elephants guide themselves much more with their incredible hearing and
their extraordinary sense of smell. 

Their feet are sensitive both to sound vibrations and to lower pitched
vibrations... 

And the whole surface of their trunk is far more sensitive than a man’s
fingertips. 

Methuselahs start to grow supernumerary eyes all over their head... 

Elephant eyes, hawk and eagle eyes, human eyes, tiny rat eyes... 

And their visual cortex swells to handle the ever-growing visual
data-stream. 

Sometimes a new eye will get knocked out. An elephant’s head comes in
for some hard knocks, even when foraging. 

There are plenty of eyes to go around. New ones continue to grow. The
new eyes aren’t particularly sensitive to pain. 

There are accounts of Methuselahs deliberately rubbing an itchy eye till
it bursts—like a troublesome abscess or blister. 

There are even a few accounts of eyes on other parts of the body. 

Methuselahs are rare and very elusive for all their size. 

There hadn’t been a confirmed sighting in generations. Many scholars
thought they were mere native superstition. 

But I’d talked to natives who’d seen a Methuselah... 

And now I had too. 

*************** ************ ************ 

There was a plum tree not far from my shelter, but the plums were far
out of my reach and I wasn’t up to climbing, or cutting such a big tree 
down with a hand axe, even if I hadn’t minded the inherent waste. 

The Methuselah stood on his back legs and reared up to get the plums—but
he still couldn’t reach them. 

Then his trunk seemed to elongate. It grew to at least three times its
normal length. It looked like something from a “Herculoids” cartoon. 

Once he had several branches ripped loose, he sat and carefully picked
and ate a couple bushel basketfuls of the big purple plums and headed 
toward me. 

I didn’t have anything on me that would do me much good against an
elephant—even if I had had the full use of both my hands. 

He didn’t seem to mean any harm though. He set the branch with the plums
down and then backed away. 

After a couple moments, he stepped forward and flipped the branch a few
feet closer to me and then retreated again. 

Finally he picked up the branch and did the stretching trick with his
trunk again. He set the plums right in the middle of my enclosure and 
then stepped way far back. 

I offered one of the fruit to my boon pup. He grabbed it and started
eating greedily. 

I shrugged and tried one of the fruits. It was very good. It had a
strange haunting flavor that made you want to eat one bite after 
another. 

I raised a hand in salute to the Methuselah that stood watching from a
small distance. 

“Thank you, O my brother,” I shouted to the Methuselah. 

He trumpeted and shook his head. 

“Thank you,” My rosy red derrière! 

A half an hour after eating the first tasty plum, I started tripping
like a man on a quadruple dose of LSD-25. 

Apparently the elephant was the local jungle drug pusher. 

**************** ********** ********** 

Sabrina stood looking at the city street on another world. Where her
natural eyes had been, there were featureless silver colored metallic 
orbs. 

The eyes were expressionless and motionless—because they took in their
full field of view, in full detail, all at once. 

There was no further need for eyelids or tear glands or ducts, but
Sabrina had elected to keep them—so her face was not as uncanny as it 
could have been. 

She maintained a normal blinking pattern, but could shut the blinking
off completely when it interrupted a critical data stream. 

“I could bring you the eyes, but they’re of little use without the
surgeon,” The Maestro explained. 

“We didn’t have any Surgeons who could jump. 

“Though we started late, I had hopes that we could get you to jump
eventually, especially in light of your almost superhuman 
intelligence... 

“But you’ve turned The Society on its ear with your improved equations. 

“It will be a whole new ballgame now.” 

“Yeah, that’s interesting but tangential. Lets go find my father,”
Sabrina said. “I have a feeling that he may need our help soon.” 

Chapter Ten 


	“We haven’t narrowed your father’s trajectory down to what you
called ‘Rifle-like precision’ yet,” The Maestro said. 

“But we have narrowed it down to ‘Shotgun precision’. That should be
good enough.” 

Two score heavily armed guards surrounded The Maestro. Sabrina stood
with him along with The Virgin Queen and several gifted navigators. 

Such a group expedition would have been impossible in olden times—at any
time in The Society’s history in fact—right up to the day that Sabrina 
had solved several heretofore indeterminate equations for them. 

The account of opening up the last new world was veiled with many
centuries of myth, exaggeration and legend. At least this time they 
could go in force. 

The darkness seemed to last interminably. Sabrina knew too little about
inter-dimensional travel to be concerned. The Maestro had much more 
experience and he was very concerned. 

Then abruptly they were in the middle of a cobblestone road. It was hot
and the sun was directly overhead. 

Sabrina followed her training. First she surveyed her immediate
vicinity. Most dangers are most acute when they’re up close and 
personal. 

They were in the middle of a marketplace. There were large number of
people milling around but none of them seemed particularly interested 
in Sabrina. 

Many of the folk were shirtless despite the sun. Most of them were of a
coppery hue that very few Caucasians could ever achieve no matter how 
much they sun-bathed. 

Most of them had long jet-black hair; some of them with cornrow style
braids. 

There were three and four story buildings that seemed to be made of
rough textured sand colored stones—sandstone, she assumed. 

The road was paved with brick-sized cobblestones. Wheels had cut deep
grooves in the soft sandstone bricks. 

“Follow the yellow brick road,” Sabrina chuckled to herself. 

The Artifact could not—or at least never had, so far as anyone knew—put
a traveler down where there was already a solid object. The marketplace 
was cluttered. Consequently the scout team got spread over two or three 
urban acres. 

Sabrina spotted The Maestro along with several of his partners in crime
and she made her way to him. 

“What in the seven burning Hells...” The Maestro said while pointing. 

Sabrina looked where he stood pointing. 

She could see a river getting ever narrower until it was lost in the
distance. On either bank of the river were pyramids. Dozens, scores, no 
hundreds of pyramids lined the riverbanks. 

Sabrina’s metal eyes let her see at least as well as a man with
eight-power binoculars, with a far wider field of view. As far as she 
could see, there were pyramids. 

It looked like these folks seriously grooved on pyramids. 

But The Maestro wasn’t freaking about the pyramids however remarkable
they might have been. She realized that the horizon gradually curved 
upwards until it was lost in the distance. 

“Father charted a ringworld,” Sabrina said in wonder. 

“What is a ringworld?” The Maestro asked. 

“It’s a science fiction idea—something futurists play with. Take a strip
of some arbitrarily strong material. Make a hoop about three times the 
Earth’s diameter wide, and as big around as the Earth’s orbit. 

“Set it to spinning around the sun. The centripetal force gives it
gravity. It has over one hundred million times the Earth’s surface 
area. 

“It is very hard to imagine someone ever actually building one,” Sabrina
explained. 

“Why doesn’t the atmosphere run out the sides?” The Maestro asked. 

“Presumably there are great big huge ranges of mountains, or a metal
wall, or maybe a force field on each edge,” Sabrina said. 

“Well we might as well try to communicate with the natives. We’ll need
to buy or commission a rather large building or two for our 
headquarters. It’s also an excellent idea to get to know the local do’s 
and don’ts,” The Maestro said. 

Just then The Virgin Queen and ten or twelve of their people came
walking into view. Though they hadn’t been disarmed, they were being 
escorted by perhaps fifty soldiers, or perhaps Laws—at least all the 
men were dressed and outfitted similarly. 

Sabrina checked out the soldiers. They appeared to be taller and more
muscular than the average native—at least judging by the ones she’d 
seen so far. 

They all carried what appeared to be Double Barreled Caplock
Blunderbusses slung diagonally across their backs. And they carried six 
and a half foot quarterstaffs. 

Each soldier had a dinner plate sized piece of blue metal covering his
sternum like a partial breastplate and they all wore thick studded 
leather wristbands. 

One fellow who appeared to have more elaborate equipment than his
fellows walked up and had a long earnest conversation with The Maestro 
while each man’s minions stood by. 

The conversation involved pointing, hand gestures and futile attempts at
verbal exchange. 

At one point the Law held out his palm and made a walking gesture with
the two fingers of his other hand. 

He placed his hand on The Maestro’s shoulder several times, in an
exaggerated sign of camaraderie, he shook the Maestro’s hand several 
times and the man grinned from ear to ear to show how friendly he was. 

He pointed at the group’s AK-47s and their sabers a number of times. 

“The best that I can understand him, he says that he wants to take us to
talk to some heap-big boss. He says that they’re friendly—and just to 
prove it, we can keep our weapons,” The Maestro said. 

“I think at this point, our best bet is to cooperate.” 

************** *********** ************ 

Khoral squatted on his haunches and brooded. 

His designers had wanted him to be intelligent enough to be a useful
vassal, but they valued obedience far more than they valued the ability 
to ponder philosophy. 

They valued free will not at all. 

But both free will and introspection are emergent properties. If you
build the brainpower, they will come. 

Khoral spoke three languages—the language of the great apes, the
language of the human slaves and the language the Unborn used to 
communicate with his kind. 

None of his languages were well suited for abstract thought, yet Khoral
persevered. 

If some hypothetical geneticist had wanted to design something like
Khoral, he could have started with a human skeleton—one about six and a 
half feet tall. 

Then he should thicken the bones enough to carry four hundred and fifty
pounds of bulging muscle. Make the shoulder portion of the skeleton 
about twenty five percent wider, then lengthen the arms about seventeen 
percent. 

That would have gotten him something very close to Khoral from the neck
down. 

Khoral’s head, neck and trapezius had all been built to give him an
extraordinarily powerful bite. As a consequence, he was far “Snoutier” 
than a gorilla or a great ape. 

He looked something like an upright gorilla with an oversized
Bullmastiff head—a Bullmastiff with oversized jaws and teeth. 

“Come and celebrate,” Rollo said. 

“There is nothing to celebrate. I was not selected to be a breeder.
Tomorrow they castrate me,” Khoral said. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” Rollo said. “They will make you sleep. The training
afterward is good fun. If you ask, they will probably put you in my 
platoon.” 

Khoral regarded his brother sadly. 

The Unborn had no use for legions of fertile Tawn. Ninety out of every
one hundred males were castrated and two out of three females were 
spayed. 

But the Unborn had no use for eunuchs and sterile females getting fat
and lollygagging around either. 

Fertility might be bad for Janissaries, but testosterone was not. The
sterilized were jacked full of testosterone and synthetic anabolic 
drugs and conditioned for unhesitating and unquestioning obedience. 

The conditioning process downgraded intelligence considerably—but after
all, how smart do servants have to be? 

Khoral asked himself how he could look at his brother alive, standing
before him, and yet want to weep in mourning for the Rollo who had once 
been. 

“Go, I will come soon,” Khoral said. 

Tawn made fierce fighters, hard taskmasters and reasonably good
shepherds. They were hopeless as farmers. 

They were obedient, but they seemed congenitally unable to care if their
vegetable crops prospered or not. 

So though humans filled the Unborn with fear and loathing, they were
needed to cultivate. 

The fertile Tawn were ensconced as a sort of royalty. The humans were
barely aware the Unborn existed and they focused their hatred on the 
figureheads. 

But Khoral’s mother had been fertile after all—or he would not have
been. His father was also a fertile male. 

All the Tawn were raised as elites and given a firm sense of both
noblesse oblige and the sacred duty to preserve one’s bloodline. 

Khoral was the last of his father’s line. He didn’t know that the line’s
termination was a result of a predetermined agenda. He looked at it as 
an unfortunate happenstance. 

The Tawn had no idea what criteria the Unborn used to select the
breeders. Had they known, it was conceivable that some might have tried 
to fake some of the characteristics. 

Khoral’s father’s line had consistently proven too intelligent and too
independent. 

Khoral was about to become a case in point. 

He would never sire offspring if he fled. There were no wild Tawn. The
Unborn’s failure to create a viable race of Janissaries with the boons 
and the subsequent escape of some of them into the wild had caused the 
Unborn to prevent a reoccurrence. 

Khoral might escape, but the chances of persuading a female to go with
him were nonexistent. 

But he’d never sire anything if he let the flip-silly Unborn cut his
testicles off either. 

Khoral gathered his sword, knife and spear along with a few items of
food. As he prepared to leave his father’s home forever, Jaze climbed 
his frame at sat straddling his neck upon Khoral’s broad shoulders. 

He was glad his pet boon had joined him. 

Khoral was a fighter and he was fearsomely strong... 

But he knew nothing of woodcraft—perhaps less than many city dwellers on
earth. They at least had watched docudramas about survival on 
television. 

The boon was an animal—though a created animal. One might hope that he
had survival instincts. 

When he got to the edge of the jungle, he spared one last look back at
the only home that he’d ever known. 

************** *********** *********** 

After what seemed like forever, I came off the psychedelic plum trip.
The Methuselah was still there watching me. 

“Why in the Hell did you do that to me,” I thought grumpily. 

“I am sorry, but in order for us to communicate some rewiring of your
neurons had to take place,” a voice within my head said. 

Auditory hallucinations generally seem to come from only one ear. 

The voice of the Methuselah seemed to come from neither ear. It was
simply in my head. 

“You are an extraordinary choice for a companion. Your mind is chock
full of wonderful things. Things that I never even knew existed... 

“Mathematics, philosophy, aesthetics, planets, inter-dimensional travel,
space, literature, computers... 

“O yes!” 

“I beg your pardon?” I said. 

“You may not know it, but almost every ape-man has a Methuselah like me
as a sort of coach and confidant—and a powerful ally,” the elephant 
told me. 

“I’m not an ape-man,” I objected. 

“Not yet, but you’re infected with the ape-man retrovirus,” the
Methuselah said. 

“Retrovirus?” 

“How do you think ape-men get prehensile toes and their extraordinary
strength, sense of smell and ability to almost fly? It isn’t from 
thinking clean thoughts.” 

“And when did I get infected?” 

“Do you have to ask? You bit an ape-man’s nose clean off. You got a lot
of his blood in your mouth. 

“Your back was cut and abraded where they dragged you through the bush
and the back of your head was bleeding.” 

“And the great apes?” 

“No one knows what they started out as. They were probably some type of
gibbon. They carry the retrovirus and they seem hardwired to try 
stealing human children and raising them. And of course, they 
inevitably infect them,” the giant elephant told me. 

“None of this stuff was in the books. I certainly didn’t imagine any of
this,” I said. 

“Why should the world only be as you imagine it? The Artifact can only
do so much.” 

“You know about The Artifact?” 

“I do now. Since we’ve bonded, much of your mind is an open book. 

“By the way, that boon pup... 

“He plays rough. He’s tasted your blood more than once. He’s infected.
Now he’s eaten the fruit...” 

“So what will he become?” I asked. 

“Certainly not human. Not even a great ape. Something far more than a
typical boon though,” the Methuselah said. 

Then as the boon pup awoke, I could feel his fuzzy non-verbal presence
in my mind. 

Either that, or I was brain-damaged and hallucinating up a storm. 

Only, if my mind is wanked, how far back did the rot go? 

Chapter Eleven 

Joshua finished his sermon and made an altar call. 

His denomination went by the simple title “Crusade”, but the scornful
had dubbed them “Holy Bolies” because the idea of a round world 
reminded them of the big fat Holy-Boly marbles that children valued so 
much more than the standard sized marbles. 

Joshua had wanted to avoid a cult of personality and he’d envisioned a
network of small churches with no more than three hundred members at 
the very extreme. 

He thought a church should function much like a clan, or an extended
kinship group. 

But no matter how many times he split his church, he ended up with two
or three thousand members though. 

He and his brother, along with the watchmaker Werner were the only
people who’d known the traveler Down at all well. Neither Werner nor 
David felt capable of leading a church of his own; so the three of them 
remained a giant draw under one roof. 

****************** ************* *********** 

Joshua saw that there was a mob protesting outside his church. 

They carried signs and shouted slogans at Joshua. 

They called themselves “Purists”. They went by the slogan, “Africa for
Africans.” That didn’t include folks of European or Asian descent, no 
matter how many generations they’d been on the African Continent. 

They reviled Joshua because he preached what they considered a “white
man’s religion” and because Crusade was the largest religious group in 
Wardsville and it was growing rapidly. 

As much as the Purists hated Caucasians and Orientals, they professed to
hate the ape-men even more. They believed that ape-men had 
surreptitiously infiltrated all the higher echelons of society and were 
deviously scheming to enslave all mankind. 

Had Down been there, he would have recognized the swastikas and the hate
rhetoric—not to mention the brown shirts. But Down was lost in the 
jungle. 

Joshua had no sense of déjà vu, but he recognized a danger when he saw
one. 

Joshua was jarred out of his reverie when a rock the size of a tennis
ball whizzed by his head. He reached under his suit jacket and laid his 
hand on the ivory grip of his .357. 

There would be Hell to pay if he had to shoot. After centuries of
tolerant indifference to how one chose to arm oneself, the city had 
started posting ever more restrictive ordinances about who could carry 
weapons and where and when they could be carried. 

The new rules were honored more in the breech than in the observance,
but when a shooting happened, the authorities became wet and soggy, 
remarkably saline and downright hard to get along with. 

He remembered a tale Down had told him about the Texas Rangers. You
stopped a riot the same way that you’d turn a stampede—shoot a few of 
the front-runners or leaders. 

He might die, but he meant to take a few Purists with him. 

Just then a hansom cab skidded around the corner and interposed itself
between Joshua and the mob. 

The cab’s driver had a short-barreled Pump Shotgun and the passenger
brandished a fat but stubby Nickeled Revolver. 

Joshua jumped into the cab and they sped out of the crowd’s reach
through a gauntlet of rotten fruits and small stones. 

“If you hurt my horse, I’ll kill all of you!” the cab’s driver shrieked
and then they were clear. 

Only then did Joshua realize that it was Werner. Werner had become close
friend. 

Werner started speaking once they were clear of the danger and the cab
ride settled down. 

“Joshua, I have a confession to make. I’m one of those ape-men that the
Purists rave about,” Werner said. 

Joshua could not help but laugh at that, but then he gave Werner a
second look. Werner had the shoulders and thick arms of an ape-man, but 
since he wore clothes that made him look fat... 

And because he never bared his arms, the overall effect was to make him
appear somewhat dumpy. 

“How did an ape-man become a watchmaker?” 

“It is more the other way around. I learned watchmaking and jewelry work
as a lad back in Germany. My father was a watchmaker and his father 
before him. My mother’s father was a gem-cutter. 

“I came to Africa as a young man, hoping to make a fortune. I went on a
diamond prospecting expedition and become an ape-man along the way. 

“I went back to Germany, but things weren’t the same. After my parents
were gone, I sold the business and moved here. 

“Ape-men live a long time. I’ve had my little jewelry shop here for over
two hundred years. 

“Up until now, no one noticed or particularly cared... 

“But now they’re looking for folks like me,” Werner concluded. 

****************** ************ ********** 

The chamber held The Maestro’s small army, twice that many Laws and
perhaps a dozen shaved-headed functionaries of one sort or the other. 

A fellow sat on what looked like a throne on a raised dais. 

He motioned for the Maestro to sit on a second throne beside him. 

When The Maestro was seated, the fellow donned a blue helmet and
motioned for The Maestro to don a similar helmet that sat by his 
throne. 

The Maestro donned the blue helmet as directed, but not without some
misgivings. 

“It has been over a century since the last visitor came to our world,”
The Maestro clearly heard inside his head. 

“How?” The Maestro started. 

“We spotted your energy signature. You’re from a planet, aren’t you?
That was a rarity even in days gone by. Do you mean to establish a 
terminal and trade goods and knowledge with us?” 

“Yes, I have the means to pay...” The Maestro started. 

“Pshaw! What is a little money between friends? No, we’re not friends
yet—though I hope that someday that we may be. 

“We are men who stand to profit outrageously from our association. 

“The one with the silver eyes? Who is she?” 

“She is my great-granddaughter—Sabrina,” The Maestro said quite
honestly, because he loved Down as blood kin. 

“And the pasty white one?” 

“She is my granddaughter—but not the mother of Sabrina. Sabrina is the
daughter of my grandson. He isn’t here.” 

“She is dusky,” The fellow probed. 

“Her mother was from a dark-skinned race, why?” 

“I want to know about her eyes.” 

“She was blinded. On one of the worlds we visit, they make such things
and have the art to install them,” The Maestro said. 

“My daughter is blind. It would be worth a fortune to me, if I could get
her a pair of those eyes,” the official said passionately. 

“It won’t cost you a fortune,” The Maestro said. 

“You say that you’re willing to gift us with the wherewithal to build a
headquarters, because it will be to our mutual benefit. I can throw in 
a pair of eyes for your daughter as a goodwill gesture.” 

When the Maestro’s crew left the chamber, each one of them had a
twenty-four hundred-word vocabulary and a simplified grammar downloaded 
into their brains via the blue metal helmet. 

******************** ********* ************* 

Khoral finally managed to hit one of the little deer with his spear.
They were called “Dik-Diks” but they looked just like a fat little 
sixteen-inch tall whitetail deer. 

He’d been subsisting on fruits, nuts and the occasional insect for the
last few days and the diet just wasn’t cutting it. 

Khoral, like the ape-men, had a metabolism similar to the
“Super-Soldier” mice that scientists were experimenting with on Earth. 
His muscles were about two and a half times as strong as a man’s, or 
most other creature’s muscles, pound for pound. 

His muscles also had incredible staying power, because they used fat for
their primary power source instead of glucose. Their metabolic pathway 
produced very little oxygen debt, so they could continue for long 
periods. 

The downside was that Khoral was a five hundred and thirty pound fat
furnace. He needed more food than an active Kodiak bear, just to stay 
healthy. And carbohydrates were a poor substitute for fat. 

One thing Khoral hadn’t thought to bring with him was a means of
starting a fire. 

He gave the entrails and the organs from the little deer to Jaze. Jaze
shared Khoral’s fat hungry metabolism. He fell to and bit great chunks 
of the raw meat off the bone. 

Khoral was no more accustomed to eating raw flesh than most humans and
he was no less squeamish, but hunger over-rode such concerns. 

Khoral knew nothing about salmonella, but within a few hours of wolfing
down the raw flesh, salmonella knew all about Khoral—or at least it had 
a wonderful understanding of his digestive track. 

******************** *********** ********** 

Khoral stumbled down the trail. The diarrhea and vomiting had weakened
him considerably—and he hadn’t been feeling that well before the food 
poisoning. 

Khoral heard a cry and he came into a small clearing. He saw a jungle
lion stalking an adolescent human child. 

On the veldt, lions hunted in packs. In the jungle, they either hunted
alone or in concert with a mate or littermate. 

The lion stalked the boy. The boy had a spear, but compared to the
mighty beam Khoral carried, it was small indeed. Khoral was impressed 
at the way the human child kept the spear’s point in the lion’s face 
and kept trying to jab it’s eyes. 

Khoral was near to death, but at least he’d lived his last few days as a
free man. In dying, perhaps he could give the gift of life to this 
brave human child. 

Khoral cast his spear and missed. He forgot about his sword as the blood
lust grabbed him. He threw himself at the lion. 

The lion was almost twice Khoral’s weight. Khoral grabbed the lion’s
head and pulled it back and his mighty fangs fastened on the lion’s 
throat. 

His bite wasn’t designed to hold on like a bulldog. It was made to take
out over a pint of flesh in a single massive steel-trap bite. 

He took out the lion’s trachea and esophagus, and the jugular and
carotid arteries on one side all in one snap... 

Then he lifted the lion high overhead and slammed him to the ground. 

Though the lion was dead for all practical purposes, he would remain
dangerous for the next several minutes. 

He rolled to his feet and gathered himself to leap upon Khoral... 

Just then Jaze jumped atop the lion and bit a pound of muscle from the
lion’s shoulder. Jaze was thrown clear as the lion rolled furiously on 
the ground. 

The boy had recognized that Khoral’s spear was a deadly weapon, whereas
his own was little more than a toy. 

He retrieved Khoral’s spear and virtually threw himself on the lion
spear foremost. 

Then Jaze went to hamstring the lion in a back leg and ended up biting
cleanly through the bone and sinew, leaving the lion with three legs. 
Khoral drew his sword... 

Just then several adult men burst into the clearing. The lion was
promptly pinned to the ground by a half-dozen full-size spears. 

As the men turned their attention to Khoral, Jaze leaped to place
himself between Khoral and the armed humans snarling and snapping like 
a boon demon. 

The boy released the shaft of Khoral’s spear and rushed to throw his
arms around Khoral’s neck. 

“Will you repay my friend for saving my life, by attacking him?” he
shouted. 

Khoral didn’t understand the words, but he knew what affection was. His
mother had hugged him. Rollo had hugged him when they were young. Jaze 
hugged him regularly. Even Khoral’s father had hugged him on one 
memorable occasion. 

He was almost delirious from the exertion and the fact that he was near
starvation. He misinterpreted the protective gesture for a gesture of 
affection. 

And Khoral who’d come from a cold-hearted folk, and who’d been in the
jungle for almost two months, thought the boy was displaying affection. 


Carefully, because he knew that humans were rather fragile, Khoral
embraced the boy with one hand and stroked his head with the other—to 
the complete astonishment of everyone. 

After a moment Khoral slumped to the ground in a seated posture. 

“Go my friend. Sire many sons and bring pride to your father’s house. I
have made you a gift of the rest of your life...” 

And then Khoral passed out. 

***************** *********** ************* 

“Pond and honor!” The Maestro said. “This isn’t the world that your
father leaped to.” 

“How is that possible?” Sabrina asked. 

“The best that I can figure, these ringworlds are very large compared to
a planet. We were following your father’s trace through 
inter-dimensional space and we passed close enough to this world to be 
drawn in. 

“I believe that we can still locate your father—particularly since we’re
considerably closer to him here. 

“And we’ve moved considerably more equipment through, as we build a
full-scale outpost here—hey, why not? It’s what we do... 

“But there are at least five more ringworlds between here and your
father’s destination. 

“No new worlds for over one thousand years—and then seven new worlds in
less than five years,” The Maestro said. 

Just then one of The Society’s technicians walked up and handed The
Maestro a paper. The Maestro examined the paper intently for a few 
moments. 

“We’ll be able to try to leap to your father’s world again in a few
days. 

“Your equations and correcting for these huge objects has given us far
more precision than we’ve ever had before. 

“Make that seven ringworlds and a planet we’ve discovered in just under
five years,” The Maestro said. 

“A planet?” Sabrina asked. 

“Yes, a planet. 

“This planet sits in the center of an inter-dimensional pattern. There
are disturbances at certain places where we believe there are yet more 
ringworlds,” The Maestro said. 

“And?” Sabrina prompted. 

“In all probability, the planet was home to The Builders.” 

“That’s scary. Do you think The Builders still survive?” she asked. 

“I don’t know. These artificial planets are at least as old as the
Earth—maybe much older. That is a very long time.” 

************** ****************** ********** 

“The Tawn was almost starved. He ran away from The Hold to avoid
castration. He knows next to nothing about woodcraft or survival. I 
doubt if he could even find his way back to The Hold, even if he wanted 
to,” Aron said. 

“But you could find the way there, couldn’t you Grandfather?” The boy
Scare said. 

“Probably. I was only a couple or three years older than you when I
escaped. Very few humans ever escape from the Hold. 

“But I have no desire to ever go there again and neither does Khoral,”
Aron said. 

“Will Khoral be alright Grandfather?” Scare asked. 

“I’m sorry son, but I think that he will probably die. He seems too weak
to recover.” 

“Is there nothing we can do?” the boy pleaded. 

“Perhaps. I will try.” 

The message drums beat for many days and Aron managed to nurse Khoral
enough to keep him alive—just barely. 

************** *********** ************* 

A man came into the camp. He was the largest man that Scare had ever
seen. 

He had an ivory handled Revolver and carried a big Double Barreled
Shotgun across his back. 

That wasn’t what was so startling about the man. Scare’s village was so
far off the beaten track, they had only a vague idea what Firearms were 
and did. 

What rattled Scare right down to his bare feet was the gargantuan
Methuselah the man rode. Scare had sighted a couple Methuselahs in his 
short life and many regular jungle elephants. 

This giant was a yard taller at the shoulder than any Methuselah Scare
had ever seen or even heard tales of. 

And if that wasn’t enough, a second very large Methuselah plodded along
behind the first—though it was a good fourteen inches shorter than the 
behemoth. 

When the man leaped to the ground, Scare saw the prehensile toes of an
ape-man. Scare had never seen an ape-man, but he about them. Everyone 
in the jungle knew about ape-men. 

***************** *********** ************ 

“What is it?” Mond asked. 

“They are called ‘Tawn’. They are created beings and they are very
evil,” Aron said. 

“And you want me to give it my blood, to try to change it? Why? Its body
already burns hot, which is one reason that it is dying... 

“And you say that it is evil,” Mond said. 

“His kind is evil. He saved my grandson’s life—for no reason except to
give a gift of life as he felt his own life was slipping away,” Aron 
said. 

Mond summoned Scare and asked him to tell him the tale of how the Tawn
had saved his life. 

When he was done listening, he handed a large string bag to Aron. 

“Have these made into a juice. Don’t waste the pulp, but mash it into
juice as well. Mix it with an equal amount of wine and bring it back 
here,” Mond commanded. 

When Mond had the wine, he spoke to Khoral in the speech of the Great
Apes. 

“Do you hear me? I’m going to help you,” Mond said. 

“I’m dead,” Khoral said. 

“Maybe,” Mond said. “Maybe not.” 

Mond took a sharp knife and cut across his left palm. He cut Khoral’s
palm and he clasped hands with him for a long minute. Then he dribbled 
some of his blood to into Khoral’s mouth. 

He stared fixedly at Jaze for a moment. 

“Come here,” He ordered the boon. 

“Lick,” he said while holding his hand out. 

“Give me your hand,” he said to Scare. 

Mond slashed Scare’s palm and slashed his own right palm. 

He clasped hands with Scare, just as he had with Khoral. Then he
gestured for Scare to swallow some of his blood. Finally he held his 
right palm up to the boon. 

“Lick,” he told the boon once more. 

He managed to get Khoral to drink perhaps a quart of the plum juice.
Then he got several fruits from another bag. 

He gave Aron, Jaze, and Scare three plums each. 

“Eat,” he said. 

Mond ate three of the fruits himself. 

“I have wasted enough time here. Big events are brewing in the world. 

“The elephant is for Khoral. He will answer your questions once the
fruit has done its job. 

“I need to return to some urgent business of my own. You are too old for
the change old man, but the plums will bring you good health, wisdom 
and decades more life. 

“Scare, you will have an elephant of your own someday. Right now you’re
a bit young to bond to one, but any Methuselah will be glad to help you 
when needed.” 

Mond mounted his multi-eyed elephant and rode out of the small village
without looking back. 

“Did he just turn me into an ape-man?” Scare asked. 

By then Aron was tripping on the psychedelic plums and didn’t know how
to answer. 

Chapter Twelve 

“Taking to the trees” was a great plot device in Burroughs’ stories.
Tarzan and maybe a half-dozen other characters could travel through the 
upper canopy. 

They could travel faster than on foot there and since the leaves were
very thick and folks seldom scan the treetops for flying men, they were 
almost invisible. 

But how could that work? 

In the movies, they solved the problem for Johnny Weissmuller by having
a set of rather improbably placed vines growing in just the right spot 
for him to swing his way around. 

Even as a boy I wondered why none of the vines seemed anchored to the
ground and if they’d been cut, then why didn’t they wither away? 

Orangutans—at least the females and young—more or less live in the
trees. An orangutan is roughly the same size as a smallish man—say one 
seventy or so... 

But they have arms about twice as long as a man’s and prehensile toes. 

Also, an orangutan’s progress through the trees is fairly slow and
deliberate. It isn’t faster than walking, but it does keep them out of 
the way of tigers on the ground. 

On the surface of the ringworld, the solution seems to be a sort of
partial levitation. 

Ape-men can’t fly. Well actually, they do fly. They just can’t fly very
high or very far. 

An ape-man can jump sixty or seventy feet straight up to grab a branch.
Once he’s in the canopy, he can move as if he had the full strength of 
a man—a very powerful man—but no more weight or inertia than the 
smallest of monkeys. 

Strangely, the superhuman leaps only come into play when leaping for the
trees. An ape-man can’t, for instance, leap twenty feet over an 
opponent in hand-to-hand combat. It just doesn’t work that way. 

I’ve never fallen out of an aeroplane, so I can’t answer for the most
extreme case, but the levitation does prevent any injury that might be 
incurred falling from treetops, a high building or a cliff. 

“How does this work?” I asked the Methuselah. 

He had a name, but it contained smells and sounds and an abstract
essence of self. It is impossible to relate without telepathy—so from 
here on, I’ll just call him “Tantor”. 

“Your mind makes it work,” he said. 

“Bull-crap! If my brain was generating enough power to lift me, it would
cook in its own juices,” I said. 

“Remember the world was created. It’s an artificial thing. No one knows
who created it or for what purpose, But there are certain features 
built into this world. 

“One of the features is, that with the right mindset, one can access... 

“Access what? I don’t know, but one of the things that the accessed
thing can do, is let you partially levitate. 

“Your own brain and mind aren’t supplying motive power. They’re more
like a remote control.” 

*************** ***************** ********* 

I have a fear of heights. 

Many years ago I disgraced myself and failed out of Army Airborne School
when I refused to jump from the tower. 

Consequently, I’ve always had a keen interest in the subject of
acrophobia. 

I’m not bothered looking out a window, or leaning over a guardrail. As
long as I can grip something firmly with one hand, I’m good to go. 

Put me up high without handhold or guardrail, and I might freeze up on a
three-foot wide beam. 

My fear of heights, according to the experts, is based on a
well-grounded fear that I just may fall down and consequently off. 

I’m not clumsy. I can do many stunts requiring skill and coordination...


But I have an absent-minded propensity to trip over my own feet
occasionally. 

It’s not an entirely rational fear. When I went up to the tower door, in
harness, the phobia didn’t take into account that I’d come—with malice 
of forethought—to fall out of the door. 

It just shut me down with a panic attack. 

Phobias can be overcome though, with lots of work. 

The days when I was in training were happy days for me. 

I learned to soar through the trees like a monkey. I learned to identify
all the new smells that my enhanced olfactory capacity brought me. 

I had played at making bows and arrows as a boy, it became a very
serious pastime when lost in the jungle with a limited supply of 
cartridges. 

I learned to hunt; which plants were edible and where to find the
biggest and fattest grubs. 

Tantor had spent many decades simply observing with his incredible array
of senses. He added his weighty deductions to what he’d observed. More 
than that, he was plugged into the flow of life and death on this 
world. 

He served as my coach and mentor—and a very good one. 

Sometimes I chafed at the idea of sitting and watching some obscure
insect pupae metamorphose or observing the mating habits of birds. 

“Ape-men have a purpose in this world,” Tantor said. “They don’t exist
by accident or oversight. 

“To fulfill your destiny, first you have to fill your mind with all the
true facts that it will hold, and then it will be time to deduce and 
use your intuition and imagination to go beyond mere facts.” 

I thought that the days had stretched into weeks and months. It was only
later that I realized that I’d spent years roaming the jungle with 
Tantor. 

I ate well. I lose count of how many deer and pig that I killed and
roasted. There were rabbits and squirrel along with fish and huge 
crawdads in the streams. There was snake and monkey and porcupine, 
coons and possums. 

There was a never ending supply of oranges, apples, bananas, peaches and
plums along with grape, blackberry and cherry. There were nuts and 
tropical fruits that I’d never even heard of. 

There was the satisfaction of eating when I was hungry, sleeping when
tired and not worrying about time or schedules or anything else. 

I think of it, in my mind, as a very green time—spending so much time
flying through the green jungle canopy... 

Green overlaid with the brown of branches and the brown hides of many of
my favorite prey. 

One day toward the end of our carefree days, we came upon a native
village. 

************** ************** ************** 

Scare heard men’s voices. 

He looked down upon a ragged column of refugees traipsing through the
jungle, from a perch high in the canopy. 

There were a few men, but most of the column consisted of women and
children. 

Almost all the women carried something: an iron kettle, a few pounds of
jerky-jerky or a twenty-five or thirty pound sack of rice, beans or 
yams. 

Many carried small children as well. 

The men carried only their spears, knives and machetes. A couple carried
the long narrow shields that are more status symbols than fighting 
tools—but neither were they worthless in a fight. 

The men brought up the rear, so that if wurst came to wurst, they could
mount a delaying action and give the women and children one more chance 
to escape. 

Scare dropped unannounced into their midst. 

“What is going on here?” Scare demanded. 

After he’d heard their tale, Scare summoned his elephant. 

He sent them up the trail with his elephant in the lead, carrying a
half-dozen of the weariest, and some of their heavier gear. 

He came to their village. It was deserted except for the corpses, but it
hadn’t been fired or reduced to ruins. 

Like a wild animal that senses a trap, he circled the village, staying
in the canopy at all times. 

Then he started after the raiders. 

The raiders were creatures like Khoral, but much more fearsome of
aspect. They fell to snapping and snarling amongst themselves 
occasionally. 

They drove a long chain of men through the jungle before them. 

Scare was tempted to fire an arrow or two from on high, but he
refrained. 

He needed to take word of this unprecedented event back to his own
village. Nothing could take precedence over that. 

Shooting one or two would not accomplish anything. It would only serve
to make the beast-men more vigilant in the future. 

************* **************** ************ 

They were a couple marches from Scare’s village. 

He persuaded them to make camp and rest and then he brought them game
and fruits and nuts practically the whole break. 

There were more than two hundred folk and Scare couldn’t feed all of
them so quickly. But between Scare’s contribution and some of their 
staples combined to give everyone a good hearty meal. The refugees also 
benefitted from several hours sleep. 

“If you have food and you hunger, you should eat it. It is only a bit
over a march to my village where you will be fed and protected. 

“Food rides better in your stomach than on your back,” Scare advised
them. 

Scare divided his time between checking behind for signs that they were
being followed and scouting ahead. 

He brought a small sack of fruits to his charges, both coming and going.


Finally they arrived at Scare’s village. Scare wanted to both eat and
sleep very badly. While his charges had slept, he’d stayed awake 
scrounging food for them and keeping watch. 

But he needed to tell his story to the village elders first. 

Scare lost no time in rounding up Khoral, his grandfather and the other
elders. 

At first the refugee was horrified of Khoral, but once satisfied that
Khoral was an ally, he began his tale. 

“Beast-men like this one,” He paused to point at Khoral, ”Attacked our
village.” 

“They attacked without warning or provocation. They killed when
absolutely necessary, but their main objective seemed to be capturing 
able-bodied men—though they took some women and children when they fell 
in their path. 

“We fought to no avail,” The refugee said. 

“Then when all seemed lost, they broke off the attack and left,” He
concluded. 

“We were fleeing the village when we met Scare.” 

“This is bad,” Khoral said. “They were on a slave-hunting mission. They
broke off because they had met their quota. 

“There is no point in capturing more slaves than you can train at one
time. 

“They will be content with their new slaves for three, perhaps four
harvests. 

“Then they will return to the village to capture the remnants and then
march to the next village. 

“They will be sacking this village next.” 

************** *********** *************** 

“I hate having to wear these gloves,” Rubenstein complained. 

“It could be worse,” The shadowy presence with the red glowing eyes told
him. “Think back to when you had no hands at all.” 

No one could see or hear the presence except for Rubenstein. He’d
learned that talking to it when others were around got him the 
reputation of a crazy man. 

His inner circle knew that he was onto something though. He’d taken a
score of his lieutenants when he traveled to the same world Sabrina had 
visited to get her eyes. 

They were very good with prosthetics there. 

The prosthetic body parts were composed of a semi-living substance that
was both a protein and a living polycarbonate plastic all at the same 
time. They took their fuel from the bloodstream and lived and prospered 
as a part of the human body. 

Although they weren’t any more metallic than the rest of the body, they
shined like brightly polished silver. 

Sabrina could have opted for more normal looking eyes, but she was
intrigued by the idea of having silver balls for eyes. 

Rubenstein’s new forearms were too large to cover with a low-profile
color. It wouldn’t have adhered to the slick flexible silver skin of 
his arms. 

The day would come when it wouldn’t matter. For now though, the presence
insisted that Rubenstein wear gloves in public. 

Rubenstein took the glove off his right hand momentarily and gazed
contemplatively at it. 

It was perfectly smooth, without fingerprints or nails. Despite its
seeming slickness, it had no tendency to slip. Instead, when Rubenstein 
went to grasp something with it, it became very tacky and sticky—like a 
gecko’s foot. 

“You’re hand is shiny,” the whore said. 

Rubenstein started as if he’d been caught doing something that caused
him shame—not that he had any shame. It wouldn’t do to let the presence 
find out that he’d been lax though. 

He hadn’t brought any women from Earth. Whores could be found anywhere.
But even the whores in this topsy-turvy place, seemed to have more 
spirit than the beaten-down whores back home. 

“Come closer and look at it,” Rubenstein coaxed. 

She hesitated. Rubenstein sounded menacing even when trying to be
enticing. 

He persisted in his blandishments though. 

Finally she succumbed to the victim’s logic that always argued: 

“Maybe it will work out alright for once, this time.” 

Rubenstein loathed kindness or even the lack of positive malice. It was
galling and humiliating to him, to have to talk nice to the woman to 
get her close. 

In Rubenstein’s hypothetical perfect world, “Come here so that I can
torture and kill you,” would have been instantly and fearfully obeyed. 

He made her pay for causing him to have to play nice. 

Once she was within striking distance, his hand reached out and grabbed
her with the speed of a striking cobra. 

She couldn’t bite the silver hand hard enough to hurt it, though
Rubenstein clearly felt every bite without feeling any pain. He used 
the hand’s great strength and stickiness to pull every one of her 
teeth. 

Then he did other cruel things to her jaw and eyes. Finally he gripped
her skull and squeezed as hard as he could with the prosthesis. 

The woman’s skull was crushed and her brains spurted out. 

“Couldn’t have done that before,” Rubenstein gloated. 

Shortly afterward, Flashman—who was Rubenstein’s most loyal
lieutenant—entered the room along with a couple valets. 

He barely noticed the body. 

“We need to get you ready Fuhrer. You are scheduled to give one of your
speeches in a couple hours. You wouldn’t want to disappoint any 
followers,” Flashman said. 

************** ************ ************** 

“None of you are a match for a full-grown Tawn,” Khoral told them. 

“Look at me. I’ve trained to be strong and to fight from my earliest
days... 

“But soldiers... 

“Soldiers are pumped full of drugs that turn them into killing machines.
A Tawn soldier will be a hundred and fifty pounds heavier than me and 
almost twice as strong. 

“He will be in a chemically induced berserker. He will barely feel pain
and he won’t care if he lives or dies.” 

“So you’re saying that it’s hopeless?” one of the elders asked him. 

“No. I said that it is futile to meet them head on. 

“I never saw a bow and arrow until I came here. You use relatively short
bows of medium power, but look at this.” 

Khoral showed them a six-foot longbow along with a thick arrow. 

He shot the arrow through a six-foot straw man that he’d built and
wrapped around and around with many layers of tough leather. 

His arrow not only penetrated the front of the straw man, it penetrated
the back leather and the arrow protruded about halfway out of the 
backside. 

I’m not a bower,” Khoral said. “Your bowers can make better and shorter
bows for you along with better arrows,” he said. 

“Your hunting bows are fine for hunting, but you need more power to go
to war. 

“A man will go to hunt deer or boar with three or four arrows to his
name. 

“A man going to war should have two dozen or more arrows to hand. 

“You shod your arrows with bone or flint. I’ve heard you say that it is
a waste to shoot good steel into the jungle. 

“It is wasteful to gear up to go to war. 

“It is even more wasteful to gear up half-heartedly for war and then to
lose anyway. 

“But the biggest waste is to surrender everything to your enemy without
struggle. 

“Cowards theorize with the goal of staying alive firmly in mind. 

“Right now, maybe one of three of your men could pull my bow and shoot
an accurate shot with it. Perhaps they could shoot a half-dozen arrows 
before shaking hands spoiled the shot for them. 

“But strength can be developed. If you will let me train you, at least
half your men will be able to shoot a quiver of arrows from a stronger 
bow than this. 

“Even the other half will be able to shoot a dozen arrows from a bow
just a bit weaker than this one. 

“It is up to you. It is your village. 

“I like it here. I will stand and fight with you. I’m willing to die
with you, if that is my geas. 

“But if you choose to roll over without a fight, I am perfectly willing
to go somewhere else. 

“One more thing: Some of you think that it is very funny that I fled my
home to avoid being unmanned. 

“All adult male slaves are castrated shortly after their capture... 

“So if you don’t wish to go on a forced march with your hands tied
behind your back and a tourniquet tied around your scrotum...” 

**************** ************* ************* 

“I don’t care if you believe in me, as a man,” Joshua preached. 

“I don’t care if you believe that a man named Down Ward fell to our
world to bring you a message. 

“These things are true, but they aren’t doctrinal. 

“You can categorically disbelieve every one of these facts and go to
heaven nonetheless. 

“I ask each of you uncommitted to pick up one of the Bibles though. 

“A book like that would cost many of you a week’s salary—but we print
them ourselves and we can give them to you as a free gift. 

“Read that book. Read your Bible. Talk to God and ask him if it’s a true
account. 

“Brother Joshua can’t get anyone to heaven. Down Ward can’t save you.
Only Jesus can save you,” Joshua shouted. 

Just before everyone lost complete control, there was a burst of static
electricity that caused everyone’s hair to stand on end. 

Then there were three more people on the stand with Joshua—a tall
muscular black woman with silver eyes, an old man with a Colt Single 
Action .45 on one hip, and a sharply curved saber on the other... 

And a pasty fat white woman with painted lips and a cigar in her mouth.
She held an AK47 cradled in her arms. 

All through the auditorium armed men appeared—perhaps two-dozen all
told. 

They carried AK-47s and some of the Egyptians still carried their
Double-Barreled Blunderbusses across their backs—both for back up and 
for moral support. They didn’t yet have complete faith in the Weapons 
the Maestro had armed them with. 

There were Pistols and Revolvers aplenty as well as many big knives,
tomahawken and even occasional swords among the cadre. 

“We’re sorry to interrupt your service,” Sabrina said. “But we’re
looking for my father... 

“Lose the cigar!” Sabrina interrupted herself to shout at The Virgin
Queen. 

“We’re in a Church, for crying in a kerchief! 

“Anyway, has anyone here heard of my father? His name is ‘Down’, ‘Down
Ward’.” 

There were over three thousand in the auditorium. A few remained
skeptics, even after seeing people come from nowhere... 

And such skepticism can be healthy. 

There are many ways to fake miracles, just as there are ways to
counterfeit money. 

That doesn’t rule out the possibility of real money, or real miracles. 

Most of the attendees already believed and the advent of the cadre
caused then to lose all notion of restraint. 

Folks ran up and down the aisles or danced in glee. People shouted.
People prayed in tongues. 

Sabrina noticed for the first time, that she had landed right next to a
microphone. She pulled it closer to her mouth. 

“Was it something that I said?” was all that she could think of to add. 

Chapter Thirteen 

The bowers made bows. A man couldn’t go directly from a thirty-pound bow
intended for very close range shots in the jungle, to a one hundred 
pound war bow in one quantum leap. 

Consequently they ended up building more than one bow for each man. 

Khoral set the young men and women to mastering the cast-off medium
power bows as they were outgrown. 

A second line of defense with the weaker bows and half grown villagers
was better than no second line of defense at all. 

The village ironsmiths were kept busy making arrowheads and spearheads
and axe heads. 

They could create good swords only with great difficulty and many false
starts, since their metallurgy as rather crude. It wasn’t worth the 
wasted time with war imminent. 

Axes would do just as well. Fighting a War Tawn hand to hand was pretty
much a suicide play anyway. It mainly served to force the Tawn to kill 
rather than capture. 

Practice ranges were set up, and every effort was made to prevent loss
of the practice arrows, but an occasional arrow disappeared anyway. 

Not only did Khoral keep his troops shooting at least two or three times
per week, he also had them perform weight-training exercises with 
primitive weights made from sections of trees... 

And he feed them a steady diet of anabolic plants that his Methuselah
rooted out of the jungle for him. 

Everyone had been in favor of Khoral’s plan in the beginning. Once the
novelty wore off though, many chafed at having to earn a living and 
train as an warrior too—since animals had to be tended and crops had to 
be planted and cultivated regardless. 

Khoral had planned for that eventuality as well. When the protests
became strong enough, he worked out a compromise. 

Five hundred of his troops went back to being civilians, but they did
show up for archery practice once weekly. 

He was left with less than two hundred full-time trainees, but they were
his all day, every day. 

He moved most of his troop to the sacked village. It was there that he’d
first engage the War Tawn on a large scale and it saved resources to 
have most of his soldiers there—though some were still stationed at 
Scare’s village and he went back and forth and rotated his men 
regularly. 

More than one hundred teenagers spent large portions of their day
training with Khoral—all the time that they could beg, borrow or steal 
away from their chores. 

Khoral couldn’t be spared from training, but Scare brought in a deer or
a pig, and sometimes more than one, every day to help feed the 
soldiers, along with all the fruits, nuts and tubers that an ape-man 
with an elephant porter could scrounge. 

Mond showed up in the third month of training, grumbling that he never
would be able to finish his quest for Down, if his geas kept summoning 
him to this obscure village. 

It wasn’t that unusual for Mond to show up, though it was rare to have
three ape-men together and making common cause for that length of time. 


What was very unusual was that Mond brought three other ape-men along
with their multi-eyed mounts. They claimed that they were summoned as 
well. 

Soon Khoral’s full-time soldiers were the best fed men in the village
and the rest of the villagers profited from the steady influx of fresh 
meat and fruit. 

************ *************** ************* 

“Why do you keep us busy making bone and flint pointed arrows?” an old
villager asked Khoral. “You say that they are worthless.” 

“I didn’t say they’re worthless. I said that iron-pointed arrows are
noticeably better at penetrating the thick leather armor the War Tawn 
wear,” Khoral told the man. 

“If I were out of iron arrows, I’d much rather have a quiver of these
than an empty quiver. Arrows are heavy. A man can only carry so many 
arrows at one time. 

“I’m having each of my men cache several quivers full of arrows at
several places in the jungle, where only they can find them. 

“Perhaps one in four will have use for the hidden arrows. I can’t afford
to be so profligate with iron arrows.” 

*************** *********** ************* 

Jan was sixteen. He practiced every day with Khoral. 

The standard war bow was one hundred pounds. Jan was short of his full
growth and strength and his war bow was only drew eighty pounds. 

After two-dozen or so arrows though, his arms would start to shake and
spoil his accuracy. 

He didn’t stop then however. He’d pick up his other bow—a forty-pounder.
There were many practice bows floating around and it hadn’t been that 
hard for Jan to pick one up. He found a very good example of the breed. 


On days when the regular soldiers weren’t practicing their archery, Jan
took his smaller bow into the jungle and hunted with bone-tipped arrows 
that he’d made himself. That way if he lost an arrow or two, no one 
could accuse him of wasting perfectly good war material. 

Jan brought home more than enough meat to make up for his chronic
shirking from his chores to study martial arts. 

*************** **************** ********** 

Most villagers spent most of their time in their village. If they did
travel, they stayed strictly to the trails and they could become 
hopelessly lost two or three hundred yards from the trail. 

The War Tawn were somewhat better navigators than the average villager,
but not much. 

They had the bare basics of land navigation and wilderness survival, but
such things weren’t stressed. 

The War Tawn weren’t terribly bright and it wasn’t wise to over tax
their limited cranial capacity. 

A little training would save a useful number of effectives. Beyond that,
the most efficient use of time and effort was to teach them to strive 
to the utmost to stay in sight of each other and the trail. 

Khoral’s soldiers were different. 

He’d set up observer’s posts several days from the destroyed
village—along with locations from where an archer with a war bow could 
strike the column. 

His men were trained extensively in woodcraft and land navigation and
they had been over all the ground within a day’s march of either 
village any number of times. 

*************** ************* ************* 

Jan drew his hunting bow to full draw and loosed an arrow. A veritable
giant of a whitetail deer ran a few steps before collapsing. 

As he hurriedly gutted his kill a silent form dropped lightly beside
him. 

Lions didn’t hunt from trees, but both jaguar and leopards did, as well
as wild boons, the free-range equivalent of Khoral’s constant and 
grumpy companion. 

Jan turned to confront the shadow shape with an arrow full-drawn. 

“Peace stranger,” she said. “I just wanted to compliment you on your
shot.” 

Ape-women were scarcer than ape-men. The demands of the lifestyle killed
many before they fully transformed and there were fewer women traipsing 
through the jungle in the first place. 

This ape-woman was as tall as Jan and she had more muscle in her arms
and shoulders. She was as dark-skinned as Jan, but her hair was long 
and red. 

Whereas the women in Jan’s village wore one piece cotton outfits
reminiscent of a swimming suit, this woman covered herself with a 
two-piece outfit of jaguar skin that both exposed much of her cleavage 
and left her mid-rift exposed. 

Jan could see every one of her muscles as though her skin was tissue
thin. The muscles in her stomach were particularly noticeable. 

“Excuse me, you’re focusing,” she said. 

Jan was started out of his reverie. He had been focusing. How
embarrassing. 

“Why are you here?” He stammered. 

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the party,” She said
mechanically. 

Then she smiled at him. 

“Sorry, that’s something that I learned while studying typing.
Yeah...that’s a messaging system that they use in Wardsville.” 

“You’ve been to Wardsville? “ Jan asked in astonishment. 

“It’s where I come from. My name is ‘Long’. Something is stirring the
elephants up, particularly the Methuselahs. They’re sending every 
ape-man they can to this village. I have no idea why,” she told Jan. 

After that, Jan and Long hunted together. 

One needn’t be an ape-man to learn to fly through the trees, though it
was much easier for them to learn. In fact, most adult humans would 
never learn. 

Jan was young though and his mind was still flexible. He had a good
coach and he was motivated. 

Swinging through the trees, even with reduced weight, added layers of
muscle to his upper body. 

One day Long embraced him and tried to kiss him. 

Jan pushed her away with some difficulty. 

“In my village we mate for life—one man for one woman. We don’t do this
unless we’re wed,” Jan stammered. 

“It is the same with the ape-men, but amongst us this is the wedding
ceremony, the first time it happens.” 

Jan was persuaded by her argument, but then he was in a suggestible
state of mind. 

************* ************** ************* 

Horns of any type were unknown among the Tawn. They had been unknown in
the village as well. 

Mond was old, even for an ape-man. He had travelled widely in this small
fraction of the world, and he’d suggested the horns. 

One horn could not have been heard from the soldier’s village, but
several spaced men could relay the message. 

“It begins,” Khoral said. 

He’d been caught at Scare’s village, but he had no romantic illusions
about being in the forefront of the fighting anyway. He was too 
valuable to the cause to risk casual loss. 

He had set up an observation platform high in the air where he could
survey much of the battlefield and he had trumpeters and runners with 
him, so he could direct the action from above. 

************* ************ ************ 

The archers started shooting when the Tawn were a half-day’s march from
their barracks. 

An archer would shoot an arrow from a well-selected stand and then he’d
fade into the jungle to trot to his next stand. 

The villagers weren’t ape-men and they couldn’t be expected to shoot
from high in the canopy, though occasionally they shot from modest 
platforms built for them and equipped with ladders and a rope slide to 
get them down quickly. 

Almost every War Tawn had a War boon bonded to him though. A boon could
smell about as well as a Dog. If the hidden archer wished to escape 
retribution, it was well to shoot a Tawn client’s boon as well, lest he 
be quickly tracked down. 

By the time he’d fired two or three arrows though, the Tawn would have
located the source of the arrows. The Tawn could throw their javelins 
reasonably accurately at surprising distances. 

Most archers survived their first two or ambushes, but there was a
steady attrition. 

There were almost no shots fired the last couple of hours that the
beast-men marched to the village. 

Then they saw that the village now had a palisade of logs surrounding
it. 

The Tawn weren’t perplexed. They had encountered palisades before. 

They halted long enough to build battering rams and then they stormed
the village. 

They came under surprisingly light resistance in battering their way
into the fortification, though another fifty or sixty of them were 
killed by the accurate though rather limited barrage. 

The surviving defenders slipped out through a dozen well-hidden tunnels
that they collapsed once they’d transversed them. 

Perhaps three or four hundred of the Tawn had come into the village with
their capture poles and bolas. 

They milled around in dim-witted confusion upon finding the village
deserted. 

Before they decided to write off the village and continue on their way,
Khoral sprung his trap. An ingenious mechanism slammed a 
heretofore-unused pair of gates shut. 

The huts were cram-jammed full of vegetable oils of various kinds along
with saltpeter and sulfur. 

Oil wasn’t terrible easy to come by in the jungle, but the sap of
certain trees were oily, and the fruits and nuts of other trees. They’d 
had over three years to stockpile combustibles. When they ran out of 
oil, they had filled the rest of each hut with very dry straw. 

Even the logs in the palisade were thoroughly soaked in oil. 

A single fire arrow should have been sufficient to start the inferno.
Khoral, never one to leave important details to chance, had fifty 
archers equipped with a dozen fire arrows each. 

He gave the signal to fire the village. 

Tawn were extraordinarily big and strong. They weren’t particularly
gifted climbers though, particularly when weighted down with leather 
armor. 

The walls were two and a half times the height of a tall man—twice the
height of the tallest Tawn at the very least. 

Some of them did manage to scale the burning walls though. Fire is a
magnificent motivator. 

Archers were detailed to shoot any Tawn who seemed to be stacking
makeshift ladders, those who’d tried to batter the gates and those who 
were close to climbing out. 

The Tawn on the outside manned their battering rams once more. Two-score
archers made it certain death to touch the battering rams and another 
three-score archers shot both Tawn and boons at random. 

When the small town was finally reduced to ash, there were perhaps a
dozen badly burned survivors who’d been inside. None of them would live 
another twenty-four hours. 

The Tawn had lost over half their number. It was time to go home and
regroup. 

Archers followed them right up to the edge of their territory, killing
an occasional Tawn or boon every mile or so. 

Strange voices, amplified by simple mechanical megaphones shouted at
them from the trees. 

The voices were in the Tawn’s own language, though strangely accented,
and they warned the Tawn to never return lest worse befall them. 

************ ********** *********** 

“I’m glad that’s over with,” one of the village elders said. 

“It isn’t over with,” Khoral said. “It will take them awhile to regroup
and train another expedition group. It may take them six years, maybe 
seven. They will come back with ten or even twenty times as many Tawn, 
and they will bring siege engines.” 

“So what is to be done?” the elder asked. 

“In six years, we could build a thick wall of stone around the village,
forty or fifty feet high. 

“We can stockpile many arrows. Mond has showed me how to build what he
calls a ‘crossbow’. With such a bow, even women and children can kill 
many Tawn. 

“We must store food and water and medicine, for they will try to starve
you out, but eventually, if you hold firm and inflict enough 
casualties, they will lift the siege and go home.” 

“Then will it be over?” 

“It will never be over. They will send ever larger forces every few
years, until the day comes that they triumph. That is their way,” 
Khoral said sadly. 

************* ************** ********* 

As I was walking into the village, I ran into Mond of all people. He was
wearing a breechclout and he had an ivory handled Smith and Wesson 
revolver on his Gunbelt as well as a big Bowie. 

I’d always felt that it was kinda gay for a man to walk around with his
bare thighs shining, so Tantor had shown me how to tan buckskin and I 
had buckskin pants and shirt as well as moccasins. 

“You’re an ape-man now?” I asked Mond. 

“I always was. Sometimes I hide the fact, just for fun. You have made
the change yourself I see—or were you under cover too?” 

“No...” I started. 

Mond laughed riotously and waved away my response. 

“Had you been an ape-man, I would have smelled the fact and you would
have smelled me. 

“I have your Revolver for you,” he concluded. 

“You can keep it. You seem to have become rather attached to it,” I
said. 

“This isn’t your Gun. Your Gun did reveal the advantages of a Handgun
though. I bought me one of my own. Mines a .44 though,” Mond said. 

The .44 Magnum is unknown here, but no matter. Stout Elmer Keith type
loads are used in both Smith and Wesson Revolvers and Colt Single 
Actions. 

If a hot-loaded .44 Special won’t do it, odds are that a .44 Magnum
wouldn’t do it either. 

“I did bring you plenty of both .357 and .45 ACP,” Mond said. “And
another Sporterized Enfield for you.” 

“You are the man!” I said. 

“You just missed one hell of a battle,” Mond said and then he filled me
in. 

*************** *********** ************ 

That’s how I happened to be in the council of war when the strange
beast-man named Khoral made his pessimistic speech. 

I’d already conferred with Tantor, Mond and Mond’s Methuselah. I had the
beat. 

I stood up to speak. Humans are very hesitant to infringe on an
ape-man’s assumed prerogatives’. 

“Dudes, it is like: Why don’t we pack up and leave this pestilent place?


“I came from a whole other world to escape from folks who weren’t
willing to live and let live. You all can move to another section of 
the rim,” I said. 

“We can’t go far enough that the Unborn couldn’t send their minions
after us,” Khoral said. 

“Talk to your Methuselah my man, and I say ‘Man’ with some reservations.
I sure wouldn’t want you to marry my daughter... 

“Or do you metamorphose when you find true love? 

“No, that’s another story altogether. 

“Anyway, I arrived here through an inter-dimensional portal. This world
is huge enough to allow an inter-dimensional portal to another portion 
of this world. 

“One say, perhaps a quarter or a third of the diameter of the rim
away... 

“And I have the power to open portals,” I explained. 

“Mond, how long do you think that it would take us to get an expedition
to Wardsville and then back here? 

“I don’t groove on the idea of leaving all the benefits of civilization
behind,” I said. 

“What do you require?” 

“Firearms, ammunition, acme screws and nuts, some anvils, a few
blacksmiths, and chemists who can make explosives safely and beaucoup 
books,” I rattled off. 

“You can make a civilization from that?” 

“Trust me. These folks seem able to mine iron and create steel. I also
see signs that they mine copper, tin and zinc too. 

“With Steel and acme screws, I can make treadle lathes and hand operated
shapers. With copper and zinc, I can make cartridge cases. Neither 
black powder nor nitrocellulose is prohibitively dangerous to make... 

“But something to make a priming compound, that will take a good
chemist. 

“O yeah, throw in a few carpenters. With carpenters we can make wagons
and waterwheels to grind grain or operate sawmills. 

“A cooper and a wainwright would be cool, but I’m certain a good
carpenter could master those skills with enough motivation. 

“These folks already do pottery. What else would you need to make a
town?” 

“I have no idea. I’ve never contemplated building a town,” Mond said.
“But you seem quite confident.” 

In the end, we sent Mond ahead with my list and some of my remaining
gems to get my order ready. 

He could get there in less than half the time of my slow-moving convoy. 

We had a half-dozen ape-men along with a couple ape-women come along.
They all brought their Methuselahs of course, but a number of ordinary 
jungle elephants came from out of the jungle to join us. 

“They are sentient, but not quite intelligent,” Tantor told me. “They
are like small and forgetful children and they can be petulant. They 
generally have little congress with us old ones... 

“But something talks to them and prompts them to join your crusade,”
Tantor told me. 

“There hasn’t been anything like this happen in the entire memory of the
jungle.” 

And all along the way, elephants joined us. 

There wasn’t sufficient browse to feed so many elephants as we marched,
so they formed a number of parallel columns, stomping down their own 
trails as they went. 

I began to think that maybe I did have a destiny on this world after
all. 

Chapter Fourteen 

Sabrina stood in the crowd and watched the man who styled himself “Der
Fuhrer” speak. She had heard much of this demagogue and she wanted to 
see him for herself. 

Obviously, there had been many parallel happenings on her world and this
one—or else they wouldn’t share common languages—or else there wouldn’t 
even be human beings on both worlds. 

Still, there were differences. She could see no good reason for a NAZI
movement to grow up in Wardsville, particularly at this point in time. 

Especially a Native NAZI Party that preached hatred of whites and
Orientals and substituted ape-men for Semites. 

Polarized glasses were not extant in Wardsville, but spectacles with
dark cobalt-blue lenses were. She wore a pair with big round lenses to 
hide her silver eyes. 

She would have still been obliged to wear the spectacles if she’d chosen
eyes with cosmetic pupils, irises and whites. The color wasn’t quite 
natural, and the eyes did not move and the “pupils” didn’t dilate or 
contract. 

The mechanical eyes were perforated with scores of tiny pinholes, each
focusing on its own dedicated retina—and having her whole field of view 
in sharp focus all at once saved Sabrina several hundredths of seconds 
here and there, where an ordinary eye would need to shift its point of 
view. 

Nor did Sabrina’s artificial eyes raster like a natural eye. 

A normal human brain couldn’t have handled the great volume of visual
data, but tiny nanites had reorganized her visual cortex and inserted 
multiple silicone processors in parallel with her organic processors. 

In the current political climate, it would have been impolitic to be
obviously different—particularly at one of Der Fuhrer’s speeches. 

She’d laughed at the blue spectacles and said, “Hey look guys,
Steampunk!” to her friends. 

Der Fuhrer stood regarding the crowd like an angry prophet weighing the
sins of a wayward folk. 

Sabrina stood far enough back, that if she hadn’t lost her human eyes,
she would have barely been able to tell if Der Fuhrer was animal, 
vegetable or mineral. 

It wasn’t as if she had a zoom function built into her eyes. Instead,
everything close and everything far—including things so far out to one 
side that they would only be the haziest of moving shadows to a man’s 
vision—were perceived at about eight times the clarity of a human eye. 

So she saw Der Fuhrer as if she was looking at him through 8x
binoculars—better, in fact... 

While she simultaneously had an 8x microscopic view of the inside of her
spectacle’s lenses and some of the pores on her nose... 

While keeping a clear view of what the folk to either side of her were
doing—without having to move her eyes, not that they were capable of 
movement—or of shifting her attention. 

But there were challenges. The sun was very bright—as it always was on
the ringworld and her artificial eyes were experimenting with new 
algorithms to compensate for the thick cobalt-blue lenses. 

Der Fuhrer spoke with artificial amplification, and the Wardsville state
of the art for audio fidelity was rather low. 

The occasional pop and fizzle along with the feedback was hurting
Sabrina’s ears—and her ears were about as far above normal as her eyes, 
though she’d been born with the exceptional hearing. 

“My brothers, and all of us who are of the African Race are brothers... 

“We have been held back all these centuries by the white man and the
yellow man. But in truth though, although they are both evil in their 
own right, both of these peoples are only unwitting cat’s-paws of a far 
more sinister evil... 

“The Ape-Man! 

“Will you join me in my Revolution? Will you help me drive the white man
and the yellow man out of Wardsville? 

“Will you help me to exterminate the ape-men?” 

As Sabrina watched, she started to get an uncanny feeling. The man spoke
largely without gesturing, but as he became carried away with his 
speech, his passions ran away with him. 

“Will you join me?” 

He pointed a black-gloved hand at a follower in the first row. 

“And you? And you?” 

When she saw the gloved hands, she had no doubt that this was
Rubenstein—but how had he regained his hands? And how had he beaten her 
and The Maestro’s crew here—early enough to have a fairly large 
mass-movement already organized when they arrived? 

The final straw was when Rubenstein started a bad Rap about how the
enemies were going to be crushed underfoot and how the good times were 
going to roll. 

Super human vision is of little use if one isn’t paying attention. As
Sabrina turned to go, her mind elsewhere, she collided with one of 
Rubenstein’s ecstatic dancing followers. 

She took a hard elbow to her eyes and her spectacles fell broken at her
feet. 

She’d heard her father tell of the dark berserker rages he’d struggled
against and embraced at different points in his life. She had, up until 
that point in time, thought that the fighting madness was a male 
phenomena. 

Seeing Rubenstein whole and stirring up trouble for her father’s friends
had angered her, but the anger had been offset by both wonder and 
cunning. 

The stupid cow of a dancing woman hadn’t meant to knock her glasses off
and put her life at risk. 

For the first time she understood what her father’s statement that, “I
didn’t know” or “I didn’t mean to” were not mitigating factors, but 
were, on the contrary, aggravating factors. 

As the woman opened her mouth to scream, Sabrina drew her close and
slapped her with her open hand a half-dozen times. 

Sabrina’s father had always said that hitting someone with a closed fist
was a fractious practice for a Gunfighter. It was too easy to ruin a 
knuckle or work other mischief to the hand. 

Most martial art’s hand conditioning schemes, followed diligently for
several years, gave one hands ideal for busting concrete blocks, but 
good for little else. “Tiger Hand” conditioning, stressing open handed 
slaps was an exception... 

And Sabrina had been conditioning her hands every day since the age of
five or six. 

Someone else took up the cry of “Spy!” 

Sabrina’s eyes flared wide in rage and she ripped the man’s throat out
with a Tiger Style strike. 

She was too angry to even think of running away. She had two of the
seven-shot L Frame Smith and Wesson .357s under her coat—her father had 
left the matched pair of five-inch barreled stag handled Revolvers for 
her and this was the fourth alternate world that she’d carried them on. 


She emptied the two Revolvers in a mere instant. Each shot had contacted
someone’s sternum. 

Sabrina holstered her Revolvers in an instant and drew her Browning High
Power. There was a custom fifteen round magazine in the nine millimeter 
Pistol. 

When the slide locked back on the High Power, Sabrina dropped the
magazine and speed reloaded one of the twenty-one round extended 
magazines that she had in reserve. 

The Browning back in action, she drew a long-bladed Bowie left-handed. 

By now, she thought that she’d made her point and she was ready to make
a strategic retreat—if possible. 

Her Pistol had the hot-loaded 147 Grain hollow-points travelling at
about 1050 FPS. She trusted it for headshots, which wasn’t always 
possible, particularly shooting one-handed. The hyper-rapid shots to 
the breastbone ought to settle things, but then, the nine-millimeter 
was a rather puny reed. 

The Bowie came in handy both to block blows directed at her a couple
times and to finish off one determined attacker that three rounds of 
nine-millimeter to the sternum hadn’t settled. 

Sabrina had made it out of the crowd and most of the human stampede was
stampeding away from her fierce fire, but a few were either more 
determined or stupider than the rest. 

She had backed into a cul de sac, an alley that dead-ended. 

Her Browning was almost empty. Reloading would mean taking the time to
sheathe her Bowie, or to abandon it. She had no time to sheathe the 
Bowie and her case would be substantially weaker without it. 

Sabrina heard the supersonic crack of suppressed .303s. She had no
trouble locating the source with her extraordinary hearing. The 
Enfields weren’t fully suppressed in any case. 

There were at least a half a dozen hidden snipers firing upon her
admirers. The men started to fall back. 

Sabrina believed in making hay while the sun shined. She sheathed her
Bowie, did a tactical reload of her Browning, taking the time to pocket 
the nearly empty twenty-one round magazine. 

Then since she still wasn’t tightly pressed, she stepped behind a bin
and reloaded each of her Revolvers. 

Just when she thought that she might try to slip through the few
remaining clients and escape, a whole new wave of admirers came rushing 
to lay hands upon her and express their sincere appreciation. Most of 
these wore the brown shirts of Rubenstein’s Storm Troopers and they 
carried hefty steel truncheons and a few held Pistols. 

She recalled the words of the “Hagakure”. 

“It isn’t complicated. 

“Start in on one end of your foemen and cut down as many as you can
before you yourself are cut down in turn. 

“Odds are that you will cut an impressive swath before you die. 

“To die futilely is to die as a Dog or as a fanatic; 

“But when all is said and done, this is not a bad thing to die as a Dog
and a fanatic.” 

Just as she was sighting on the first of the Brown Shirts a giant of a
man dropped beside her. He grabbed her around her waist and leaped... 

He leaped forty-five feet straight up with her and landed on the roof of
the building. 

“My name is Mond. I am a friend of your father’s. Come with me, if you
want to live,” the man said. 

No, not a man—though he was dressed for the streets in long pants and
loose cotton shirt, he was barefoot, showing the opposable big toe that 
was one of the distinguishing characteristics of the ape-man... 

That and his spectacular leap removed all uncertainty. 

Sabrina wrapped her arms around the huge ape-man and he carried her to
safety as though her two hundred pounds—not counting her steel, was a 
negligible burden. 

In fact, he did feats of leaping and balance carrying Sabrina that a
world champion of Parkour couldn’t have duplicated even without a large 
heavily armed woman clinging to his back. 

***************** *************** ******** 

“Der Fuhrer never removes his gloves,” The Maestro says. “That and the
uncanny resemblance leads me to conclude that Sabrina is right and this 
is the same Rubenstein that she knew on Earth. 

“Is this Rubenstein intelligent enough to have come up with this NAZI
scheme all on his own?” He asked Sabrina. 

“He’s just a street-level gangbanger. His main advantages seem to be his
tirelessness, extreme paranoia—even more than most of his peers, and 
his capacity for pure sadism. 

“And he seems to inspire absolute loyalty in his followers, and despite
his paranoia, he is able to delegate tasks that require too much 
intelligence or attention to detail for him,” Sabrina said. 

“He was stupid enough though, to throw acid in my face because I refused
to come work for him—knowing what kind of man my father was,” Sabrina 
concluded. 

“Her father left a memorable trail of corpses getting close enough to
Rubenstein to reason with him,” The Maestro told the others. 

No one who knew Down was at all surprised by this. 

“Rubenstein says that Caucasians and Orientals are both cats-paws of the
ape-men. 

“I think it is safe to say that Rubenstein himself is being used by
something... 

“Whatever is using Rubenstein knows how to navigate between the worlds
better than The Society—at least better than we navigated before 
Sabrina... 

“Maybe even better than we can navigate with Sabrina,” The Maestro
conceded. 

Mond sat with a half a dozen other ape-men who’d joined him on his
forced march to Wardsville. 

The ape-men had been pressed into service to rescue Sabrina before
they’d even had a chance to take a potty break and eat a well-deserved 
meal. 

Now Mond spoke. 

“Bwana Down has a list of things that he feels needful to start another
city far from here, beyond easy reach of the Unborn and beyond easy 
reach of the NAZIS in Wardsville, though he is as yet unaware of them,” 
Mond finished. 

Joshua came into the room with news. 

“The NAZI Party won twenty-seven percent of the seats on the city
council. Even now they’re consolidating a coalition that will make 
Rubenstein the Prime Minister,” Joshua said. 

“His movement is growing much faster than yours, Joshua,” The Maestro
said. 

“If he continues to operate parallel to the rise of the NAZI Party on
Earth, he’ll manufacture an event that will allow him to discredit some 
of his strongest threats and declare them traitors. 

“He’ll assume war-time powers, declare martial law and start sending
everyone who doesn’t agree with him, or who even looks cross-eyed at 
him, to death camps. 

“We haven’t much time, but I propose that you liquidate everything you
have—take a dime on the dollar if you have to—and emigrate with Down to 
found a new Republic. 

“You Christians, though you aren’t a political party, are likely to be
prominent on his drop-dead list,” The Maestro concluded. 

“I agree to come, and to bring as many of my people with me, as will
come, but I must warn the people. I must clearly and unambiguously tell 
them what they will face if they stay,” Joshua said. 

“Going public will carry certain risks,” The Maestro pointed out. 

“Life is risk,” Mond said. 

“Sabrina, do you think that your father is capable of opening a gate to
a distant part of the rim, and holding it open like Moses parting the 
Red Sea, while hundreds, even a few thousand followers march through?” 
The Maestro asked. 

“The equations are daunting, but fascinating. As soon as I solve some of
them, I will share and update. But... 

“If my father said that he can though, only a fool would bet that he
couldn’t. 

“That is my father by himself. 

“My father with psychedelic and retro-virus induced upgrades to his
brain-power, and tied telepathically to a brain larger than a pair of 
basketballs? 

“Don’t be ridiculous!” 

**************** ********** ************** 

“Friends, a bad day is coming,” Joshua preached. 

“I have been gifted to glimpse the future with exceptional clarity. 

“These NAZI wish for everyone to give up their individuality, to march
in lockstep with them and to give up their own power to think and draw 
conclusions. 

“Those who can’t or won’t become as ants or termites, they will send to
prison camps to be systematically starved and tortured and eventually 
to be cremated or buried in mass graves. 

“I have seen this. 

“It is too late to save this society, though some of you will feel
compelled to try. I know that you will fight and die bravely. 

“Those of you who will heed my words: 

“You will need a Rifle and as much ammunition as you can find. 

“. 303 is your best choice, since we have decided to standardize on that
caliber; but .30-06; 7mm Mauser and 8mm Mauser all also good choices. 
The .30-30 or 10, 12 or even 20 Gauge are not to be despised in the 
jungle. 

“You should have a Pistol or two: .357, .38 Special, .44 Special, .45
ACP or .45 Colt are all good choices. 

“Any Firearm is much better than no Firearm. Don’t forget to bring many
.22s if you are able to. 

“If your Gun is non-standard, bring as much ammunition as you possibly
can. 

“You will have to pay outrageous prices, because the NAZI are busy
banning and registering Guns. 

“Never mind. You will have to leave behind what you cannot carry. Sell
it, and buy Guns even at ten times their old going price. 

“You will need food, clothing and good sturdy boots. 

“A small wagon pulled by a mule or an ox is very good. Failing that, a
hand pushcart will let you take more than you could carry on your back. 


“Several of you could go together to purchase one wagon. 

“Blacksmiths, Gunsmiths, carpenters, wainwrights, doctors... 

“People with skilled trades—make every effort to bring as many of your
tools as possible along with you. If you can’t take everything, select 
wisely. 

“We will be carving a city out of the jungle. 

“And do make haste—time is short. 

“It wasn’t raining when Noah started his Ark, but we are feeling the
first few sprinkles of rain today.” 

Chapter Fifteen 

It took awhile to mobilize several thousand people. Joshua’s Crusade had
a nominal three thousand, of which perhaps forty percent would be 
willing to follow him into the jungle. 

But Christians who belonged to the Crusade were not the only ones
flashing on rough weather ahead, with a madman like Rubenstein at the 
helm. 

**************** *********** ************* 

Werner ran into Crusade headquarters. 

“Someone tried to blow the Town Hall up,” He told everyone. “They’d dug
tunnels underneath and secretly filled them with black powder. It would 
have succeeded but for a faulty fuse.” 

“Apparently Guy Fawkes is unknown on this world,” The Maestro said. 

“Hmm...” Sabrina mused. 

“Who?” David asked. 

“It was an ancient conspiracy on Earth. It also failed because of a
faulty fuse. 

“This gets everyone upset. It gives Rubenstein the pretext he needs and
it doesn’t even destroy any valuable property,” Sabrina said. 

“Rubenstein will use this surely, but are you sure he’s behind it?”
Joshua asked. 

“Would you transport tons of black powder to blow up the Town Hall when
there are such things as dynamite, plastic explosives and 
nitroglycerine in the world?” Sabrina asked sourly. “Unless you wanted 
to make a point.” 

********** *************** ************* 

Three hours later, there were armed Brown Shirts with their trademark
Mac 10s knocking at the door. 

Of all the Gun designs Rubenstein could have copied, the .45 caliber Mac
10s were his choice—or someone’s choice. They could be cheaply 
manufactured from sheet metal and for folks who largely relied on the 
“Spray and Pray” method of social engineering; the barrels didn’t even 
have to be rifled. 

“We have a warrant for the arrest of David and Joshua Meriwether, a
Werner Heisenberg if he’s on the premise and I have a list of over 
forty high-ranking officers in this subversive organization,” The 
captain said. 

Joshua, David and Werner walked out onto the spacious veranda. 

“I think not,” Joshua said. 

There were over sixty Brown Shirts. All of them had Pistols and their
trademark steel truncheons. Almost fifty were also armed with the new 
Mac 10s. 
	“Do you realize what you’re up against?” the captain 
sneered. 

“Do you?” Joshua asked him calmly. 

There was a sound of breaking glass and the barrels of thirty .303
Enfields protruded from every available window of the headquarters. 

Sharpshooters sounded off from a half-dozen rooftops. 

Eight men armed with the short barreled Pump Shotguns that Joshua
favored stepped onto the porch with Joshua. 

Joshua’s men had rough numerical equality and over two thirds of them
were already sighted in, with the slack taken out of their triggers. 

“If the firing starts, you will never leave here alive,” the captain
threatened. 

“Neither will you,” Joshua pointed out. 

While the NAZI captain pondered the metaphysical implications of his
situation, a fifty-man platoon of Crusade Troopers came double-timing 
down the cobblestone street, chanting a marching cadence, Enfields at 
port arms... 

While a mob was coming down an adjacent street, carrying every kind of
improvised weapon that they could lay hands on—including two-by-fours 
and bricks pried up from the cobblestone road. 

“I will report this to my superiors,” the captain said. “The
consequences will be most grave.” 

“Dude, it is like: if you want to report to your superiors, then you’d
better report to everyone you meet coming and going,” Sabrina shouted 
after him. 

“I never liked it when your father used the word ‘like’ that way. It’s
vulgar,” The Maestro said. 

“It makes a point,” Sabrina said. 

******************* ************ *********** 

Phones were, but they were limited to a few local switchboards in
well-to-do neighborhoods with only the most partial and unreliable 
connections between areas. 

The Crusade had been organizing for something like this for some while
though. They had runners, coded signals sent by flashing mirrors and 
semaphore as well as a few two-way radios brought in by The Society. 

It took awhile to lay the groundwork for massive transportation of
freight between the worlds, but there were a couple hundred soldiers 
from The Society—including new recruits from the last couple ringworlds 
The Society had charted... 

And folk from The Society traveled heavily armed—with AK-47s, A plethora
of Handguns and the sharply curved sabers they favored. And they 
brought plenty of spare weapons and ammo. 

The radios were strategically placed to disseminate the word as widely
as possible in the minimum time. 

Wardsville sprawled much more widely than a comparable sized city on
Earth would have. Land was cheap and many would-be builders simply 
cleared another patch of jungle and built on the edge of town. 

Without load bearing steel frames, buildings were limited to five or six
stories at most. There were steel-framed buildings in Wardsville. There 
were even a few modest skyscrapers, but few buildings were over four or 
five stories tall. 

The city’s sprawl posed a number of logistic difficulties for both
sides. 

************* ************** ************** 

“This must be something like it was when the Jews left Egypt,” Joshua
thought to himself. 

There were over ten thousand persons. They brought mule carts and ox
carts. Some led pack animals—mules, llamas, goats and even Dogs were 
utilized as beasts of burden. 

Many though, carried their all on their backs or on push-carts. A few,
unable to commission, buy or build a proper pushcart had nonetheless 
managed to scrounge up ordinary wheelbarrows. 

The cab company had owned over fifty hansoms. They had all been
converted to two-wheeled carts carrying freight—much like the old time 
Comancheros did on Earth. 

Several of the loosely allied groups had simply contracted to have large
loads of gear transported to the edge of the jungle where there were 
supposed to be large numbers of elephants waiting to haul it. 

At the last minute, Mond had told Joshua: 

“Bring the horses.” 

“The horses will only sicken and die Mond,” Joshua told him. 

“No, this time the horses won’t die. I feel it here,” Mond said while
pointing to his head. 

“And here,” he added as he pointed to his chest. 

“Mond is right,” Werner, who was also an ape-man, though a much more
citified ape-man than Mond weighed in. 

So they brought several hundred horses that would otherwise have been
left behind. Since they already had animals to pull what wagons they 
brought, most of the horses ended up as mounts or carrying packs. 

***************** *********** ************ 

Rubenstein had moved surprisingly quickly to shut the town in. 

When the host came to the edge of town, there was a hastily erected
barricade of ditches and concertina wire along with signs warning of 
landmines. 

Each road out had an armed checkpoint with over a hundred Brown Shirts
at each—armed with belt-fed thirty caliber Machine Guns as well as the 
trademark Mac 10s. 

The Exodus was traveling on over two-score roads. It made no sense to
try having so many fit through one exit. 

***************** ************* *********** 

“No one can leave without authorization,” The Brown Shirt told Joshua.
“I suggest that you people disband and go home before you get 
yourselves into more trouble.” 

“I am a free man. What authorization do I need to go where I will?”
Joshua asked. 

“Your people are concentrated in the roadway and we have four
Machineguns enfiladed to rake the length of the road,” the Brown Shirt 
gloated. 

“And I have marksmen in the jungle waiting to pick off your Machine
Gunners before they can fire a thirty round burst,” Joshua told him. 

“I don’t believe you,” the Brown Shirt said. 

“You men, stand steady. Your lives depend on it. This will be only a
demonstration,” Joshua shouted. 

Then he raised his right hand overhead. 

A suppressed .303 round blew most of the Commander’s head off. There was
only the supersonic crack to show that a round had been fired. 

“Who is second in command?” Joshua inquired. “I’d like to negotiate with
him.” 

****************** *********** *********** 

The Maestro was no fool. He had lived almost three hundred years and
he’d studied conflict all his life. 

He knew that The Exodus would end up at a loggerhead at the checkpoints.


He’d planned ahead. 

Just as in Chess or Sword Fighting, sometimes an attack on another part
of the playing field will draw off many of the client’s forces. 

There were several groups who wanted to seize control from Rubenstein.
Some of them power-hungry opportunists who’d be just as bad as 
Rubenstein should they gain power. 

But that was irrelevant. 

The Maestro told them quite frankly, that the odds were stacked against
them, but that their best chance to topple Rubenstein’s new regime 
would be to strike while Rubenstein was largely preoccupied with The 
Exodus. 

All over town varies allied rebel forces attacked Rubenstein’s troopers.


The Maestro wasn’t one to leave things to chance. He had over one
hundred snipers armed with silenced .22 Rifles detailed to pick 
Rubenstein’s Brown Shirts off one by one. 

Every few rounds, they would switch to a new pre-selected shooting post,
along pre-scouted routes—many across rooftops—and then shoot some more 
Storm Troopers. 

A man shot in the lungs with a silenced and subsonic .22 doesn’t even
necessarily know that he’s been shot. He does know that all of a sudden 
he’s deathly ill and in no shape to carry on business as usual. 

The effect of having a half-dozen of their compañeros drop at one time
was devastating to the poorly trained trooper’s morale, even after 
they’d come to realize the cause was silent .22 caliber bullets. 

Fifty of The Maestro’s commandos had been detailed to set fires.
Explosives are devices of mass destruction and strike innocent and 
guilty alike. 

Fire can be more selectively applied though there is always some risk of
collateral damage. 

Though he wanted to avoid collateral damage inasmuch as possible, so far
as The Maestro was concerned “Innocent Bystanders” should have picked a 
side. 

The fires, set in places where they were likely to spread and destroy
large amounts of property were also calculated to allow humans ample 
time to realize their predicament and flee. 

The firemen running from one conflagration to another only added to the
chaos in the streets. 

************** ************* ********** 

Rubenstein’s Storm Troopers had kicked the door in at Eric’s house and
hauled his father and mother, brothers and sisters away, never to be 
heard from again. 

Eric was spared only because he hadn’t been home at the time. 

He was of European descent and he was very much a city boy—but he was a
member of a local small-bore Rifle league. He was an excellent shot. 

He’d volunteered to be one of The Maestro’s sharpshooters. 

He had never heard of “Fidelity in Revenge” and he’d never read the
“Hagakure”, but he understood the spirit of starting in on one end of 
the foemen, and cutting down as many as possible... 

Cut them down until he died as a Dog and a fanatic. 

He had a brick and a half of match grade subsonic .22 LR ammunition with
him in addition to the one hundred rounds The Maestro had given him. 

He didn’t intend to break contact and attempt to evade as he’d been
instructed. 

Eric kept count as the troopers dropped. 

One might very well survive a .22 bullet to the ribcage. 

No one was likely to survive the spider venom that Eric had gotten from
the Witch Doctor. 

The Witch Doctor had lost family to Rubenstein’s Brown Shirts himself.
When Eric had explained his purpose, he hadn’t even charged him for the 
venom and he’d helped him spread it into the tiny dimpled hollow points 
of each bullet. 

A man with that much venom spread through his body by a .22 bullet
ricocheting around inside his chest cavity would rot from the inside 
out. 

“Good enough for them,” Eric thought. 

Eventually the Brown Shirts cornered Eric—after he’d shot almost two
hundred troopers. 

He surrendered meekly enough once he was caught. He came out holding his
hands high overhead. 

And when a dozen troopers ran up to take him into custody he released
the dead-man switch that he was holding in his left hand and took out a 
big chunk of a city block. 

*************** *********** ************** 

“Maybe we should let The Exodus go and try to bring the city under
subjection. We can track The Exodus down later,” Rubenstein said. 

“You will stop them at all costs, you weak fool!” the red-eyed shadow
hissed at him. 

“You have no idea what is at stake here. 

“Of course you don’t. You’re a moron, though a convenient tool. 

“Keep The Exodus inside the city. Crush and destroy them—whatever the
cost! 

“You will obey!” 

Rubenstein summoned all his main subordinates, to give them the order to
destroy The Exodus at all costs, to eliminate them down to the very 
last man. 

Just as they assembled, a breathless runner came to see Rubenstein. 

Chapter Sixteen 

Khoral believed that there was time to evacuate the village before the
Tawn slave raiders returned. 

Consequently, he didn’t start on the stone palisade that he’d
envisioned. The caravan would be back well before the wall could be 
completed in any case. 

He was too cautious to leave the village wide open though. He had a log
fortification built that dwarfed the one at the sacked village. 

He had sent delegates to several smaller villages all around. The sight
of Khoral and some of the Tawn skeletons, armor and weapons that they 
presented convinced all but the most skeptical to prepare to exodus 
with Khoral and resettle in his village in the interim. 

There were over twice as many full-time archers training now and three
or four times the part-time reserves. 

They had built many of the belly bracing crossbows Mond had
described—they only drew about one hundred pounds and the shorter draw 
of the crossbow limbs meant that it was only about as powerful as a 
forty or fifty pound recurve, but not even a Tawn reacted well to a 
crossbow bolt penetrating five or six inches into his lungs or 
intestines. 

Even children and grandparents could make a meaningful contribution to
the village’s defense with the crossbows, and he also had a force of 
over six hundred women training twice weekly with the new weapons. 

Khoral had scouts and forward observers in place and a few well
maintained booby traps along the trail. 

The traps were of little tactical significance. Only a few Tawn would be
killed. They had no fear of pain or death and they weren’t given to 
nervous fretting—so the psychological impact was minimal. 

It did force them to slow down a bit and be more cautious, since not
even a drugged and battle-crazed Tawn commander would throw potentially 
useful soldiers away cavalierly... 

And every Tawn they killed or maimed was a small gain for Khoral’s side.


What Khoral totally failed to realize was that the Unborn faced
something that they had never before encountered: a bona fide threat to 
their superiority in the region. 

They prepared an army in record time—far larger than any Tawn army ever
assembled, and they’d charged them to totally annihilate the opposition 
or die trying. 

The Tawn army arrived ahead of schedule—at least well ahead of any
schedule that Khoral had imagined. 

************ **************** ************ 

Khoral evaluated the information that his scouts were relaying to him. 

The enemy’s army couldn’t be fully counted. The meandering jungle trails
made an accurate count impossible. Suffice it to say that there were 
far too many—more than he could ever hope to defeat. 

Khoral had never heard of The Alamo, but its spirit lived in him. He
would rather die fighting the Tawn than to be a slave—not that the 
option of slavery was open for him. 

He thought it a self-evident primary that his friends would be better
off dead than captured. He also took it as an unexamined primary that 
when you must go down, that you should try to take as many enemies down 
with you as possible. 

It never occurred to him to simply run away, though his ability to take
to the trees would make that easy. 

Khoral had been trained as a Warrior since birth. The war Tawn had no
other function but to fight. The elite Breeders were largely 
figureheads, but they were the royalty. 

They were royal and unsterilized because it was assumed that they would
have been the very best of the best soldiers, and hence in their case, 
propagating more soldiers took precedence over soldiering. 

The war Tawn had fought very few real battles and it wasn’t the Unborn’s
way to memorialize the Tawn’s past deeds—and the deeds of those who had 
opposed them. 

But they had an excellent grasp of game theory, strategy and tactics and
they taught the principles of attack, defense and other military 
maneuvers in the form of abstract principles. 

Any unsterilized and unconditioned Tawn should make an excellent
military commander—but they were too intelligent to safely be entrusted 
with such power. 

The war Tawn commanders functioned by rote and by any lingering traces
of their childhood training. 

They had never met a formidable army, much less an army commanded by an
unconditioned graduate of their training academy. 

**************** ************ *********** 

Khoral looked down at the host of Tawn soldiers from his perch in the
tower. 

He’d been harassing the column for the last several days, but nowhere
nearly as heavily as he had the last battle. He meant to concentrate 
most of his forces here in the stronghold. 

In the first attack, the Tawn tried to force the gates open with
battering rams. Each of the two gates had at least fifty of Khoral’s 
full-time archers guarding it—along with two or three hundred reserves 
or women crossbowmen. 

They killed so many of the Tawn that they couldn’t even take their
battering rams with them in their retreat, but they were forced to drop 
them and run. 

After the second attack was similarly repulsed, the Tawn resorted to
general attacks on the enclosure, with Tawn storming from all sides 
with ladders and grappling hooks. 

The Tawn had no archers but they did throw javelins and very heavily
weighted bolas at the defenders. 

Nonetheless, casualties were almost nil among the defenders so far. 

After the next few waves were repulsed, the Tawn pulled back
momentarily. 

Khoral waited for the next attack and readied his new weapons that Down
had diagrammed and explained to him. 

He had two rather large Trebuchets along with a somewhat smaller one. He
had a half a dozen catapults and twenty-four ballistae—the giant 
crossbows that used twisted hemp for power and shot a bolt the size of 
a spear. 

Large rocks were a bit hard to come by in that particular area, but
never mind. 

A short cylindrical section of a big hardwood tree worked admirably
well. They had even taken the time to bore holes all around the stumps, 
and drive in wooden stakes that were then sharpened. 

But the Trebuchets had pigskins filled with oil and saltpeter and sulfur
and the villagers set them ablaze before they launched them at the 
Tawn. 

Khoral had every confidence that the village could repel the next
attack—the next several attacks as far as that went. 

He aimed his weapons of mass destruction at the rank after rank of Tawn
standing in formation as a reserve. 

It was foolish to have the men standing that way in formations—but Tawn
commanders were only marginally smarter than their troopers. And they 
had never faced long-range weapons. 

In the brief time window before the Tawn captains gave the command to
break ranks and retreat, Khoral’s artillery killed twelve times as many 
Tawn as all the previous attacks combined. 

Khoral had inflicted heavy casualties and he’d forced the Tawn to keep
their reserves much farther from the scene of the battle. 

Khoral shouted orders to his runners to take messages to his artillery.
Their opportunity to shoot at large concentrations of Tawn had come and 
gone. From now on, their most effective use would be to use the huge 
stumps to try to break up attacks. 

After three more attacks, the Tawn dug in to starve the villagers out. 

The villagers had managed to stock large amounts of grain, dried fruit
and jerky-jerky along with quite a bit of livestock that could be 
butchered should the siege go on. They had barrels and skins of water, 
beer and wine too. 

Shortly after the Tawn started digging in, a huge rainstorm started. It
lasted for days and several large trees were blown over. 

The villagers were relatively comfortable in their fort, while the Tawn
shivered miserably in the cold rain. 

It was also a wonderful opportunity to collect and store more water, now
that the overwhelming necessity was upon them. All sorts of makeshift 
expedients were used to store just a bit more water. 

**************** ************ ************* 

Down’s caravan arrived at the border of Wardsville to find the whole
city fenced off with concertina. 

The arrival of so many elephants couldn’t fail to be noted. 

Mond slipped through the barricades to meet Down and give him an update
on the situation. 

*************** *************** ************* 

Down rode his elephant right up to the checkpoint with Mond riding his
own Methuselah and backing him up. 

He leaped lightly to the ground as only a semi-levitating ape-man could.
He walked up to the nervous border guard. 

Down took a small leather drawstring bag from around his neck and handed
it to the guard. 

“Give that to Rubenstein—Der Fuhrer—and tell him that I said to let my
people go, or I will have to come see him again,” Down said. 

“Who are you?” the guard asked. 

“Tell him that I am ‘The Dude What Dood’, He’ll know who I am,” Down
said. 

“What does that mean,” Mond asked him after the guard had departed. 

“It’s a nil statement. ‘Dood’ is a portmanteau word meaning all forms
and tenses of the verb ‘to do’ simultaneously: did and didn’t, will do, 
should do, should’ve done, does, doesn’t, shouldn’t do—everything all 
at once. 

“I’ve used the expression often. Rubenstein will recognize it.” 

“What was in the bag?” Mond asked. 

“Would you believe one of Rubenstein’s fingers with his ring still on
it... 

“Nah! I wish. It’s just a rather distinctive ring that he used to wear,”
Down chuckled. 

************* *************** *********** 

Rubenstein stared at the ring in sheer terror. 

It was a thick gold ring in the shape of a snake that would be wrapped
around the finger three times. 

The snake’s mouth was open, he had fangs showing and he had two
half-carat diamonds for eyes. 

“Get the order out as quickly as possible. Let The Exodus go. Do
everything possible to speed their departure... 

“And good riddance! 

“Now everyone clear out and leave me alone!” 

********************* *********** ********* 

Once Rubenstein was alone, the Red-Eyed shadow started upbraiding him
for letting The Exodus go. 

“I don’t have to listen to you!” Rubenstein shouted at the shadow. “You
told me yourself, that you’re almost powerless to do anything in the 
real world, without some sort of agent. 

“You’re more helpless than I was, without any hands,” He concluded. 

“Fine. Do you think you’re capable of running a city-state like this one
without my expert advice and guidance? Do it. I leave you to it,” the 
presence told Rubenstein. 

Rubenstein didn’t hear from the voice again for almost a week. 

He smoked lots of opium and hash and rock without the shadow always
nagging him to do this or attend to that. 

He took his gloves off and put the snake ring back on his finger. 

Rubenstein had several women trained as torturers. He watched with
pleasure, as one of them would inflict the most excruciating agonies on 
his clients... 

And the best part was, the girl knew that one day she would fail to
excite Rubenstein... 

Or perhaps he’d simply be feeling bored or extra mean, and then it would
be her turn to die in agony. 

Rubenstein grooved on that game a lot. 

***************** ************** ********** 

“I’ve decided to give you another chance,” the shadow told Rubenstein. 

“I thought you wanted revenge against Down Ward. He was right here on
the edge of Wardsville, along with his half-breed daughter and you let 
them go. 

“It isn’t your fault. You were scared. Who wouldn’t be afraid of Down
Ward? The man isn’t human. He’s like an elemental force of nature,” the 
voice soothed. 

“I was not afraid!” Rubenstein shouted. 

“You aren’t afraid of him? That’s good, because he scares me to
tears—that’s why I was so anxious for you to kill him... 

“But listen, him coming after you like a one man vendetta, right here in
the seat of your power... 

“That’s too much like a bad replay—really bad juju man. 

“But you can catch him. How fast can an elephant caravan travel? 

“This time you can be the one taking the fight to him.” 

“No more gloves or playing nice,” Rubenstein said. 

If that was a deal-breaker, then so be it. 

“All right, no more gloves or pretending to be sane in public,” the
shadow soothed. 

Chapter Seventeen 

As the guards swung the gate open, the guard captain stepped close to
me. I assumed that he was preparing to throw a sucker-punch and I was 
on the raw edge of launching a pre-emptive counter-attack of my own, 
when he spoke. 

“Can me and a few of my men come with y’all? We don’t like being here
anymore,” He muttered sotto voice. 

I hadn’t cleared it with the Maestro or any of the other leaders, but
whatever. 

“Suit yourself. That’s what I always do,” I told him. 

I was a little surprised when about two-dozen of his men came with him. 

There must have been a small reserve armory in the guard shack, because
each trooper had his Mac 10, but most of them were carrying an old 7mm 
Mauser as well. 

They industriously gathered up all three of their belt-fed Machineguns. 

“What caliber are those?” I asked. 

“7mm Mauser,” the captain shrugged. “We have plenty of belts for them.” 

While I have nothing against the 7mm Mauser, I never heard of a belt-fed
Machinegun chambered for it. 

“What is your name, my good man?” I asked. 

“I’m Stephan Jones,” he said, while extending his hand. 

“Not a very African sounding name,” I commented. 

“Every black person in Africa isn’t African. I’m American and signing up
for this crazy hobnailed freak show seemed the only alternative to 
starving in a dark damp dungeon,” He said. 

“Most of my men are foreigners pressed into service as well—otherwise,
they’d need to stay behind for their families’ sake.” 

“Okay. You guards, stick close to me. Everyone may not be filled with
the milk of human kindness, when they dig your uniforms,” I said. 

Then I shouted, “Somebody with a little extra cargo room take the
Machineguns and the extra ammo. These guys can’t keep up with us toting 
all that.” 

“Keep whoever offers to tote the Machineguns in sight at all times. If
we’re attacked, we might need them.” 

“Still handing out orders,” Mond said. 

“We’ll hope that no one knocks half my brains out with the butt of an
Enfield and leaves me for dead this time,” I said. 

I saw The Maestro and The Virgin Queen were among those that rushed out
the gate along with Joshua, David and the old watchmaker Werner... 

Only Werner was barefoot now, showing the telltale prehensile toes of an
ape-man. His face looked much younger without the magnifying spectacles 
and his body was much more muscular without the frumpy clothing that 
he’d used for a disguise. 

There was a woman. She carried an AK with practiced ease and she was
muscled like one of the steroid enhanced lady bodybuilders... 

But her eyes were featureless metal orbs. 

“She’s your daughter,” Mond told me. “I didn’t want to confuse you with
too many details all at once.” 

We walked toward each other rather stiffly now. All the years apart and
the stupendous happenings had made us strangers. 

“You have grown. I never thought that I’d see you again on this side. I
thank the Good Lord for that...” 

And then we were embracing and crying. 

“I hate to cut your reunion short, but we should get out of the shadow
of Wardsville before that nut case decides to change his mind,” Mond 
said. 

And I had thought Mond was slow–witted once. 

**************** ************* *********** 

We pressed on for three twenty-eight hour days straight. People all over
the rim have settled into roughly twenty-eight hour days despite the 
perpetual sunshine. 

Volunteers on Earth who have lived in underground quarters without
clocks or other ways to measure time rigorously, tended to eat, sleep, 
play and work to twenty-seven-and-a-half hour “Days”. 

When I compared the watch that Werner had made to one The Maestro had
brought from Earth, I found that one of my watches “twenty-Four hour 
days” was about twenty-eight of our hours. 

Perhaps our days are too short. 

Natives of the ringworld thought, seem to be really good at putting on a
burst of speed and going without sleep for a few days and we wanted to 
put distance between Wardsville and us. 

************** ************ ***************** 

One of the Storm Troopers buttonholed me. 

“You always bring up the rear of the column. Are you going to fight a
rear-guard action if we’re attacked?” he asked. 

“Why do you ask?” I said. 

“The Party arrested my father and then my brother. They executed them.
Then they told me that I could join the army to prove my patriotism of 
be arrested myself. 

“I joined their army and endured the beatings and the rigors of training
solely so I would be in the best place to take my vengeance... 

“Only to be placed in a company of folks who were no more NAZI than me. 

“My family is all gone. My eyes burn like they were filled with fire
ants. 

“If you ever need someone to stay behind to die... 

“Pick me!” 

*************** ************* ************* 

Mond came to see me on our first big break. 

“I have the vehicles that you requested. They are very heavy. It takes a
pair of elephants to haul each one. 

“What are they for?” Mond asked. 

“Justin Case,” I said. 

“What?” 

“It’s a pun. Justin Case—Just-In-Case,” I replied. 

“I was raised by the great apes. I am not good at word games,” Mond
said. 

“You’re the first ape-man that I ever met who was actually raised by
apes,” I said. 

“The ape-man you killed was raised by apes. People don’t often traipse
through the jungle with infants or young children. That limits the 
ape’s opportunities to abduct babies. 

“And many ape-men who are raised from early childhood by the apes,
choose to have little or nothing to do with mankind. 

“Anyway, I have something for you,” Mond said. 

In point of fact, Mond had several “Somethings” for me. 

There was a brand new M1921 Thompson Machine Pistol. 

Yes, it had a stock. It shot Pistol Cartridges ergo it was a “Machine
Pistol”—Selah. 

It had two 100 round drums, two 50 round drums and more twenty and
thirty round sticks than I could readily count. 

The Gun was special. It had the Pistol Forearm Grip. It was Satin
Nickeled and the wood was very highly figured Walnut. 

“You used to wear two Guns on your belt. You have two .357s. Now you
have two .45s,” 

Mond had a big frame Smith and Wesson fixed up just like the .357 he’d
returned to me—Bright Nickeled, five inch barrel, Ivory Stocks... 

But this one was chambered in .45 ACP and came with many, many Nickeled
half-moon and full-moon clips. 

Then he showed me a custom Mac 10 that he’d had tricked out for me. 

The .45 ACP is a relatively low intensity round and it doesn’t it pack a
lot of slow burning powder. Consequently it doesn’t gain a lot from a 
carbine length barrel. 

A normal Mac 10 barrel is only five inches—the same length as a 1911A1.
That’s generally good enough for a special purpose, short-range 
high-rate-of-fire Weapon like the Mac. 

But it’s not ideal, few things ever are. Although another eleven inches
would be well beyond the point of diminishing returns on a .45 Caliber 
Mac 10, another two or three inches would help the velocity and 
consequently the effectiveness noticeably—subtly, but noticeably. 

My custom Mac 10 had an eight-inch barrel and a weight that could screw
over the end of the barrel and add about five ounces up front where it 
would do the most good... 

And there were thread protectors, if I chose not to carry the extra
weight and two suppressors—a short compromise suppressor and a longer 
“Silent as humanly possible” silenced. 

Mac 10’s on Earth used the M3 and M3A1 Greasegun magazines. Either it
was good planning by someone, or because the M3A1 didn’t exist here, 
the Mac 10 used the same stick magazines as the Thompson. 

I threaded the .45 ACP Smith and Wesson onto my belt. I left the
Thompson to play with later, but though I had little or no use for a 
Mac 10 in the jungle, I couldn’t resist slinging it across my back and 
taking a few magazines for it. 

“I have something else that you’ll like,” Mond said. 

When he showed me the contents of several crates I started to groove
big-time. 

************* ************* ************ 

Storms generally come from the west on the ringworld and less frequently
from the east. Storms from north or south are anomalies, arise quickly 
and with little warning and while they are sometimes intense they tend 
to be short-lived. 

An occasional scan of the upward curving horizon, particularly with good
binoculars, would have warned Rubenstein’s expedition that the 
grandfather of all storms was overtaking them. 

An ape-man five hundred feet in the canopy wit the same optic could have
seen even farther to the west. 

There were no ape-men among Rubenstein’s horde. Few of them were jungle
hands and there were few binoculars among them. 

The storm hit them and then seemed to squat on them for days. 

The torrents of rain quickly collapsed any tents they had erected. 

Even Rubenstein and his top lieutenants were reduced to crouching under
bushes or low lying limbs, shivering miserably and trying to conserve 
what body heat they could. 

Food couldn’t be cooked. They were reduced to eating hard tack and
jerky-jerky. 

The water ruined supplies of food and ammunition alike. Falling trees
killed soldiers and wrecked vehicles alike. 

When the storm finally moved on, Rubenstein had lost thirty percent of
his men, fifty percent of his munitions and while a few high-ranking 
members could still ride in the alcohol fueled vehicles, his army was 
mostly reduced to marching on foot like a safari. 

**************** ************ ******** 

“Do you see why I wanted you to kill Down Ward when he was at hand?” the
shadow harangued Rubenstein. 

“The very elements conspire against us. 

“You are not only a fool, you are a weak fool,” the helpful voice
counseled him. 

“The storm will slow the Right Reverend Down Ward just as much as it did
us. We will catch up to them any time now,” Rubenstein opined. 

“We had better,” the red-eyed presence threatened. 

******************** *********** *********** 

There was a big storm coming up behind us. Oddest thing though, it
seemed to halt for several days. 

When it moved once more, it was moving very rapidly. We only caught the
worst of it for about twelve or thirteen hours and by then it had moved 
on past us. 

Now is the really strange part. We weren’t so much limited by how far
our elephants or other pack animals could walk in a day. They could 
keep up with a fast walking man who set a very fast pace sixteen hours 
per day. 

We had few men in good enough shape to travel that fast, but it was
irrelevant. We had to tailor our pace to the slowest walkers among us. 

The most limiting factor was how fast our elephants could browse. They
could travel on short rations for a while, but the longer and harder 
they went, the longer they had to pause and graze and forage to build 
up to another forced march. 

But in the wake of the fast moving storm, fruits and nuts and berries
sprang up all along our broad advance. 

Elephants could grab enough of the high-energy fruits on the fly. When
we paused, designated foragers brought bushels of fruit and armloads of 
grasses to the animals. 

People ate the fruits too. They seemed to supercharge everyone with
bountiful energy and powers of recuperation. 

Dangerous animals gave us a wide berth, though every so often a few
straggling villagers from some obscure hamlet would fall into our 
columns. 

We were making extraordinarily good time. 

*************** *********** ************* 

The party was turning out large quantities of very pure crystal
Methedrine. It fueled the Brown Shirts, it put money into the Party 
coffers and it helped destabilize things in the beginning. 

Rubenstein had a bit of caution though. He knew just how jangled,
paranoid and homicidal some folks get towards the end of a Meth binge. 
He didn’t want to be in the middle of a cadre of tripping Meth heads, 
or perhaps worse, a cadre of crashing Meth heads. 

But things just weren’t going at all well. There were never ending
delays. Predators that had given The Exodus a wide berth, seemed to 
home in on Rubenstein’s army. 

Lions, leopards, jaguars, cougars, bears and giant snakes claimed one or
two of his men almost every day. 

Beaucoup fruit had sprung up in the wake of the big storm. At first this
was fortuitous... 

Then the army seemed to have gotten behind the curve. 

The fruits had all started to subtly decay by the time the troopers got
to them. 

Some of the too-ripe fruits caused vomiting. Some caused diarrhea. Some
caused both. 

Some fruits caused hallucinations and strange obsessions. A few of the
fruits gave the men incredible appetites and seemed to cause them to 
put on astonishing amounts of muscle in mere days. 

Some of the fruits caused a catatonia that lasted for days. 

In addition to the attacks by wild animals and weird fruits, the air was
thick with mosquitoes, biting flies and gnats and fruit flies that got 
into ones mouth, nose and eyes and made life miserable. 

There was a plethora of stinging bees, wasps and fire ants along with
spiders and scorpions and small venomous vipers. 

Rubenstein ordered the men to stop eating the fruits, but the rule was
impossible to enforce. 

The red-eyed shadow became ever more insistent. 

So Rubenstein started issuing tablets of Speed several times daily. Then
he started supplementing that with powder to be snorted or smoked. 

Finally, he just turned the supplies over to the men and let them
regulate their own doses. 

Rubenstein’s men became as lean as Greyhounds or death camp survivors.
They seldom slept. Their eyes were perpetually bloodshot and they 
became increasingly insubordinate and hard to control. 

They continued to follow the trail though. Rubenstein and the spirit’s
obsession seemed to have caught fire in each of the Meth crazed 
troopers. 

************* **************** *********** 

An ape-woman named ‘Long’ along with Jan, her non ape-man husband named
rode her Methuselah into our camp. 

She told us that the village was under siege by a large Tawn army—though
nowhere near as large as The Exodus... 

But we weren’t an army and we were weighted with many non-combatants. 

While I pondered the tactical situation, a stray thought occurred to me.


“Mond, Long is obviously pregnant. Why hasn’t her husband been infected
with the ape-man retro-virus?” I asked. 

He shrugged. 

“Sometimes it happens that way. He will almost certainly get it
eventually, but he hasn’t yet,” Mond said. “He already flies through 
the trees like an ape-man. 

“Speaking of which, I need to scout our rear once more,” Mond said. 

************** *********** ************* 

“Ask her!” Long urged, giving Jan a stout push. 

“Pardon me if I offend, but I’ve never seen anyone with silver eyes,”
Jan said to Sabrina. 

“My original eyes were blue. A man named Rubenstein destroyed my eyes. A
man on another world gifted me these eyes. They are a created thing,” 
Sabrina patiently explained. 

“You once had blue eyes?” Long asked. 

“Down is my father. He has blue eyes. Apparently someone on my mother’s
side had blue eyes too, a long time ago,” Sabrina said. 

“You are the daughter of The Prophet?” Long asked. 

Her attitude was one of amazement. 

“You’d better not let him hear you call him a Prophet,” Sabrina laughed.


“May we touch them?” Long asked. 

“I guess. You won’t hurt them,” Sabrina replied while chuckling. 

After each of them had carefully touched one of Sabrina’s artificial
eyes, Long spoke. 

“Sometimes we ape-men feel a weird,” Long said. “It is our destiny to be
very closely related all our lives. We should swear a vow of eternal 
friendship.” 

*************** ************ *********** 

While I watched my daughter swearing friendship with the strange
ape-woman and her perplexing husband, Mond returned from his scouting 
foray. 

“Rubenstein’s army is less than a half day’s march behind us,” Mond
said. 

Outstanding! There was a Tawn army ahead and a NAZI coming from behind. 

“Live If You Can; “Die If You Must; “Always; “Always Cheat!” 

And I had stuff to cheat with. 

Chapter Eighteen 

I called a council of war. 

“Rubenstein will overtake us within a day. It is better to dig in and
wait for him,” I said. 

Rubenstein’s horde was an army. He had started with over five thousand
soldiers and about eighteen hundred of his Brown Shirts. 

The soldiers were graduates of a five-week basic training that so far as
I could tell, was good so far as it went. They covered little but basic 
marksmanship, physical fitness, small unit tactics and endless 
indoctrination. 

But the army training was supposed to be an ongoing process. Given a
year or two of seasoning, the regular army men would have been 
reasonably tough foemen. 

They fielded eighteen man squads that broke down into three six-man fire
groups. Each fire group supported a separate three-man Machine Gun 
group. 

The Riflemen’s primary responsibility was to get the Machine Guns into
position, guard the Machine-Gunner’s flanks and occasionally to lay 
down a bit more supporting fire. 

The men had 7mm Mauser Bolt Actions while the Machineguns were a hybrid
version of the old German MG-34s and MG-42s, though they fired belts of 
7mm Mauser at the rather appalling rate of 900 rounds per second. 

Rubenstein couldn’t have known enough about Gun design to bring so many
new Weapons to this World. I doubt that any of his gangbangers did 
either. 

Nonetheless, his forces had them. 

His soldiers carried Ruger Single Action Revolvers chambered in .45 ACP
and there were a few of the Mac 10’s among the troops. 

Rubenstein’s Brown Shirts were street fighting toughs. They carried
two-foot long steel maces or truncheons on their belts, with multiple 
knobs the size and shape of ball-peen hammer faces. The knobs focused 
blows to bones without being sharp enough to make carrying them a 
challenge. 

The Brown Shirts all carried the smooth-bored Mac 10’s and they used a
variety of handguns. 

************ ************** ************** 

I got my secret weapons out. 

Three vehicles resembling small but heavily armored tanks. 

My mechanics had started them every day or two, and had done ample
preventative maintenance. Now they started them and drove each down the 
ramps from their elephant drawn trailers. 

Do you know what “Enfiladed” means? 

With Machine Guns it means to fire largely from the sides. 

Think of a board, say that it’s two-by-ten. Shoot at it from the front
and the most wood that a single bullet can destroy is two inches. Shoot 
at it from the side and each shot can wreck ten inches of wood. 

You will rarely, if ever, be able to fire at the enemy at zero degrees,
but the farther you can get away from ninety degrees, the better. 

When you say that a tank is “Enfiladed”, you mean that you buried
everything but the turret. It makes your tank much less vulnerable, 
when defending a fixed position. 

I had my tanks enfiladed in both senses of the word. 

Joshua had been advising people to arm themselves with .303 Enfields and
learn good marksmanship for over two years before The Exodus. 

They had a loosely organized Militia that called themselves “The One
Thousand”, though they’d surpassed that number significantly. 

They’d trained in scattered local groups—many no more than thirteen man
squads, very rarely more than a four or five squad platoon. They were 
expert marksmen and could execute basic fire and maneuver tactics with 
their buddies. 

But they had no overall commander and no way to function as anything but
small autonomous groups. 

Then there was “The Five Thousand”. Some of them had Enfields, but
hadn’t fully mastered them. 

Enfields were expensive though. Many a household head bought a .303 for
his own use, but then bought the much cheaper .22 Rifles or Single Shot 
or Bolt Action Shotguns to arm wife, teenaged children or cousins. 

Many “One Thousand” squads were backed up by a platoon or even a company
of “Five Thousand” members armed with a miscellany of Firearms. 

It was surprising how many Riflemen who couldn’t afford a pistol, had
taken a Single Shot Shotgun, with a relatively short barrel, and 
carried it in a quiver over the shoulder. 

Then there were several other militias. 

There was a group of about three hundred and fifty professional ivory
hunters who’d banded together. The East Side Judo Club fielded almost 
five hundred members armed with 7 mm Mausers. The Maestro had almost 
three hundred of his AK toting Society members. 

There were militias organized around rugby clubs, softball leagues even
a chess club. 

There were almost one hundred ape-men armed with everything from BARs to
blowguns and bows and arrows. 

Then there was the surprising number of Gate Guards who’d decided to
defect and come along—and not just through the gate I’d been at. 

It was a nightmare to try to organize a defense with such a mismatched
hodgepodge, but there it was. 

***************** ********** ******** 

Khoral examined his tactical situation without much hope. 

The Tawn hadn’t attacked again. Instead they’d sent a situational report
back home. 

The Unborn had decided to mobilize every War Tawn possible, leaving a
bare minimum to guard against unknown perils or to put down any 
hypothetical slave revolt. 

The idea of a rival power horrified the Unborn and galvanized them to
unprecedented measures. 

The Unborn wouldn’t have trusted their Janissaries with Guns or more
powerful weapons. Bows and Arrows had never occurred to them, and 
heretofore there was little or no call for catapults and trebuchets. 

It took time to train archers, or even reasonably effective artillery
soldiers. The one weapon the Unborn did have on tap was huge numbers of 
soldiers... 

Though even this was not an inexhaustible resource and it took over a
decade to build up the numbers to any significant degree. 

At any rate, The Unborn’s strategy was to starve the village for a while
longer and then to take it with the largest assemblage of War Tawn this 
world had ever seen. 

*************** ************* ************ 

Rubenstein pieced together several ersatz “squads” from his
soldiers—since there were few, if any full-strength squads left. 

“You men have been given the glorious mission of coming upon The Exodus
on the side and attacking their Flanks,” He told them. 

None of the men dared protest that they were being sent on a suicide
mission. Many of them had despaired of living through the never-ending 
nightmare that the quest had become anyway. 

Others had devolved into homicidal skeletons possessed by a drug-fueled
obsession with bloodshed and death. If they didn’t get to slake their 
lust soon, they would go mad like rabid Dogs, attacking friends and foe 
with equal fervor. 

As soon as they outfitted themselves, they disappeared into the jungle
at a dogged trot. 

************* ************** ************ 

The attack began. 

While Rubenstein was days behind, there had been scant use in setting
traps. 

They would have decayed enough to be ineffective and also to be far more
noticeable by the time Rubenstein’s men encountered them. 

Today was different. 

Scores of Rubenstein’s men fell into elephant pits lined with pointed
stakes, or merely stepped into a pungi pit and ruined a foot. 

There were log deadfalls built with logs heavy enough to need elephants
to lift them. There were fishhooks hung at eye height by all but 
invisible wire. 

There were Malay Hawks and traps that worked like giant fly swatters
festooned with foot-long stakes and there were trip-wires that caused 
crude improvised crossbows to shoot a poisoned bolt. 

The bolts missed more often than not, but they caused the troops to
hesitate. 

Then Rubenstein’s troops came under fire. 

While most of The Exodus defenders were behind excellent cover,
nonetheless they dreaded the power of the MG 42s. 

They felt that their best tactic was to kill as many NAZIs as possible,
before they had their infernal Machine Guns set up on tripods. 

They wrecked many of Rubenstein’s squads at the beginning. 

Eventually the troopers managed to set up their firing points. They
started to achieve fire superiority. The occasional trooper got close 
enough to throw grenades. 

The Exodus position began to deteriorate. 

Then the heretofore-unnoticed tanks fired. 

They were mounted flame-throwers similar to the WWII Zippo Tanks, though
with much larger reserves. They could spray thick ropy streams of 
magnesium and aluminum laden napalm over one thousand feet. 

They were within reach of over sixty percent of Rubenstein’s troopers. 

Troopers jumped up and ran while covered with flames. Many of the shots
that the “One Thousand” fired for the next few minutes were mercy 
killings. 

Rubenstein’s army broke and ran. They took cover in a number of
depressions and cul de sacs that were carefully calculated to attract 
to men frantically seeking refuge from a firestorm. 

When each “Den Trap” was fairly well filled, explosives were detonated. 

The remains of Rubenstein’s army surrendered or fled. 

****************** *********** ************* 

Jan and his pregnant wife Long, along with Sabrina rode Long’s
Methuselah through the bush. 

Since Long was pregnant and neither her nor her husband had experience
with Firearms, they had been detailed to go with a few Riflemen to 
establish a listening post well off to one side, to warn of anyone 
trying to flank The Exodus. 

Sabrina came since the three had become inseparable. 

Down was pleased to see his daughter out of the thick of the fighting. 

Somehow Long’s Methuselah failed to sense the hidden troopers. He almost
stepped upon their camouflaged Machinegun nest. 

The 7mm Mauser is a poor cartridge for elephant hunting, though it can
and has been used for that purpose. 

A panicked seventy-five round burst of 7mm Mauser fired through the
chest in a small fraction of a second might very well have settled a 
tyrannosaurus rex—not counting multiple shots fired at the head and 
body by troopers with Bolt Action Rifles and Mac 10’s. 

Sabrina felt the Methuselah’s agony even though she was not telepathic.
The waves of agony even sent rolling waves of static across her 
artificial retinas. 

Long was driven to rage and madness by the pain of her mount. She leapt
off it’s back with a long curved blade in each hand, and turned the 
Machinegun nest into an abattoir. 

She also caught a five round burst of .45 ACP high in her chest. 

Sabrina and Jan were only lightly wounded and they rushed to Long’s
side. 

“I told you that we would be close all our lives,” She told Sabrina as
she breathed her last. 

“I think we might save the baby,” Sabrina said. 

“Do it,” Jan sobbed. 

“It won’t be pretty,” Sabrina said. 

“Do it.” 

Moments later Sabrina and Jan saw Jan’s infant son. He was almost to
term and he had his mother’s prehensile toes. 

Neither of them was the least bit concerned about the large amount of
Long’s blood that coated them from head to foot... 

It was the blood of an ape-woman. It was chock full of retrovirus and
now, so were Sabrina and Jan. 

****************** ************ ********* 

Rubenstein had managed to escape with a handful of his followers. Flames
had wrecked an eye and turned his head into a crispy ruin. 

Both of his legs had been badly burned. 

His personal Doctor had pumped Rubenstein full of Morphine, but it
scarcely took the edge off his agony. 

“If you want to live Fuhrer, we must amputate your legs,” his Doctor
said. 

“No!” Rubenstein wailed. 

“Fool!” The Shadow said. “I got you new hands, didn’t I? 

“I got them the same place Down Ward’s daughter got her new eyes. I can
get you new legs and a new eye, but you have to survive long enough to 
get back to Wardsville where the gate is.” 

The Shadow gloated. He’d spent a lot of time and effort forging
Rubenstein into a good tool. 

The pain and the surgeries would further temper Rubenstein and fuel his
madness—turning him into a great tool. 

It was regrettable that he’d failed to destroy The Exodus and Down
Ward—but he still had multiple possibilities for good play. 

************ *************** *********** 

“Mond, do you think that you could slip through the cordon around the
village and get a message to Khoral?” I asked. 

Mond simply smirked. 

“I need Khoral and Aron to join me outside. I can create a diversion to
let y’all get out, if you feel it’s necessary,” I said. 

“Why?” Mond asked. 

“The best way to cause the Unborn—whatever in the Hell they are—to break
off the attack on Khoral’s village is to attack their home base. 

“That should cause them to break off the attack on the village
immediately. 

“Aron once told me that he could find his way there. Khoral might, but
then again he might not.” 

“If Aron knows the way, what do you need Khoral for?” 

“We’re going to a new place so that we can be free from men like
Rubenstein. 

“Do you think that it is right, the way The Unborn treat Khoral’s
people?” 

“They created them,” Mond observed. 

“Saul of Tarsus once asked if a pot ever asked the maker why he’d
created it so. 

“He lived before modern technology. 

“When a man—or The Unborn—creates a creature with the self awareness to
ask such a question... 

“Then they owe it an answer and they owe it certain standards of
treatment. 

“I want to invite as many of The Tawn and the slaves as will come, to
join The Exodus. 

“But they might not trust me. Khoral is one of their own,” I explained. 

“Aron’s grandson is an ape-man, and he’ll insist on coming. Scare,
Khoral or I could carry Aron out. 

“Are you sure that you don’t need a couple other human’s to carry out
your plan?” Mond asked. 

I thought he sounded rather sarcastic, but surely not though. Mond
himself told me that he had rather limited verbal expertise. 

Chapter Nineteen 

Khoral had been crafty enough to leave a treetop path into his
fortification. It wasn’t as if a bunch of seven hundred pound 
muscle-bound War Tawn were likely to try to follow a pathway, that 
truth be told, was insufficient to support jockey-sized humans. 

Khoral was about a hundred and fifty pounds lighter than his enhanced
brethren, which by itself would have availed him nothing. But Khoral 
had the ape-man gene. 

He could walk on or swing from branches that wouldn’t have supported his
pet Jaze—except that Jaze also possessed the ape-man gene. 

Mond, Scare and Khoral passed over the unsuspecting heads of the Tawn
with amused contempt—even while Scare carried his grandfather on his 
back. 

*********** *************** ************ 

“Joshua, I’m leaving you in charge. If the Tawn attack before we return,
hit both flanks as hard as you possibly can. 

“The sound of Gunfire won’t scare them. Khoral says they’re scare-proof.
Losing so many fighters should get their undivided attention though. 

“You have the Zippos and we’ve captured quite a few of the MG-42s,
though we’re a bit short of ammo for them. 

“Use them up fast at the very beginning of the conflict. That way you
can abandon the dead weight and get on with whatever the rest of your 
life holds unencumbered. 

“As soon as they break off their attack, I want you to get the people to
this point here,” I said while pointing at the map. 

“Why at this particular point?” Joshua asked. 

“I don’t know. It just feels right,” I said. 

************* ************ ********* 

We took a strike force of about three hundred and fifty men—on
horseback. We took another two hundred horses to carry our gear without 
being overloaded. 

I’d thought that Khoral might have to shuffle back and forth while
travelling through the trees... 

But a society dedicated to breeding draft horses had brought along some
Percherons, and Clydesdales. One of the Clydesdales had been saddle 
broke and had a saddle along. 

For the first couple minutes, the horse had been terrified of what he
perceived as a giant predator. Ape-men seem to have a sort of 
telepathic rapport with animals though. After that, he and Khoral were 
the very best of friends. 

Khoral’s boon Jaze rode behind him. They seemed inseparable. 

I’d never got around to naming my boon. “Boon” was as good a name for
him as any. 

He was a trip. 

He couldn’t talk and his telepathic mumbles only reached those who were
sensitive. 

Nonetheless, despite the fact that he couldn’t speak and despite the
fact that the ape-man gene had turned him into a scary two hundred and 
sixty pound over-muscled caricature of a boon, he seemed to have an 
uncanny way of communicating with people. 

I mentioned that boons have both opposable thumbs and a long prehensile
tail. 

Somehow Boon had persuaded a fellow who’d been a Gunsmith—and who’d
brought much of his inventory with him—to set him up with a double 
shoulder rig and a pair of .32 Smith and Wesson Revolvers, along with a 
small skinning knife in the Bowie pattern. 

His hips being too narrow to support a belt, he carried reloads in a
shoulder bag. 

I’d never seen him shoot. I sincerely doubted that the animal mind could
comprehend sight alignment. 

On the other hand, he never brandished them and any attempt to take them
away from him resulted in a fantastic display of incisors, I chose to 
let him be. 

While we weren’t anything like one, sharing the plums the way we had,
had given Boon, Tantor and me a largely common hard drive. 

I suspect that he got his extreme attachment to Weapons from my own
mind. 

“You can’t come with me Boon, “ I told him. 

“There is danger ahead and I don’t want you to get hurt. Anyway, I weigh
close to three hundred pounds. This mount can’t carry both of us,” I 
added. 

He wasn’t at all happy about that. 

I sensed a roiling swirling pattern of frustration and discontent in his
mind. He jumped up and down and then turned a couple back flips to 
underline his displeasure. 

I’ve seen Dogs and chimps turn back flips in circuses and stuff. Boon
was the only wild creature that I ever saw pick up the skill without 
human prompting. 

“You cannot come and that is final!” 

We had gone perhaps five miles when Boon showed up riding a stocky but
very short-legged Morgan Horse... 

With a child’s saddle and a small Bolt Action Rifle in a saddle
scabbard. 

“I hope that you talked someone out of that horse and rig,” I told him.
“Do you know what they do to horse thieves?” 

**************** *********** ************** 

“I wanted to go with my father!” Sabrina insisted. 

“If you go, who will look after Long’s baby,” The Maestro asked her.
“Didn’t you swear an oath of friendship with both her and Jan? Doesn’t 
that include taking over her child’s welfare? 

“Sabrina, there have been women warriors all through history. But also,
there have been times when it was both necessary and proper to put 
women and children first. 

“It has to do with the survival of the species. 

“Don’t try to be a man—like The Virgin Queen,” The Maestro added with a
smile. 

Sabrina rustled up some milk and joined Jan. 

“I was just wondering where his next meal was coming from,” Jan said
with a smile. 

“I’ve been thinking. ‘Long’ isn’t really a girl’s name, or a boy’s name.
It could be either one. Lets name him ‘Long’ after his mother,” Jan 
said. 

Sabrina didn’t catch the unconscious use of the word “Lets”. 

************** ************** ********** 

The Virgin Queen sat unhappily swatting mosquitoes. She’d run out of
both cigarettes and cigars and was reduced to smoking a pipe, which she 
found somewhat unsatisfying. 

She heartily wished that she’d had the forethought to simply gate back
to the Egypt-like ringworld where there was air conditioning and the 
copper-skinned natives seemed entranced by her paleness. 

Instead she’d followed her grandfather on yet one more crack-brained
misadventure. 

Personally, she could see Rubenstein’s point about the ape-men. Humans
didn’t have over-sized hands in the place of feet. They didn’t carry 
many superfluous pounds of muscle and they weren’t shredded like a 
professional bodybuilder on contest day. 

Come to think of it, the ape-men reminded her of Sabrina—who she
heartily disliked. 

Sabrina couldn’t half-fly like Xena the Warrior Princess though and she
couldn’t scramble through the trees like a monkey either. 

Sabrina’s new boyfriend was trying to teach her. 

Infants and sex both disgusted The Virgin Queen equally. She thought
that Sabrina was throwing herself at the bereaved ape-man—or The Virgin 
Queen thought that Jan was an ape-man—in hopes of becoming his next sex 
partner. 

Her disdain for Sabrina could grow no larger, but the list of things
about Sabrina that The Virgin Queen disapproved of steadily grew. 

*************** ************** ********** 

“Down is right you know. Given metals, almost anything can be fabricated
if you know how—even from scratch. And Down has made very sure that 
we’ll be starting from much better than scratch,” Werner told David. 

“I don’t know,” David said. “There were so many things that we imported
into Wardsville. We’ll have to make everything or do without in our new 
home. 

“I don’t regret coming, but I look for our grandchildren to be living
like savages—so far as technology. Certainly we hope to raise them with 
more sophisticated morals.” 

“You’ve seen my little shop,” Werner said. “I make watches and clocks
and a lot of jewelry from nothing but bar stock in my little workshop. 

“I haven’t cut a gem since I left Germany, but I still know how and I
could have. 

“I can teach anyone who wants to learn, how to make a watch, clock or to
cut gems,” Werner said confidently. 

“In a couple generations, no one will care about such niceties as
watches and gemstones,” David opined. 

Afterward Werner sat and thought much about what David had said. 

He knew the workings of his little Lathe well enough, that he was
convinced that he could build another—along with all the myriad 
accessories without which, it would have been far less versatile. 

He’d seen the diagrams Down had shown him, about how he intended to make
two or three-score medium sized treadle Lathes and hand-powered 
Shapers. 

He’d seen diagrams of parts for things like Revolvers and Rifles and
steam engines. 

A watchmaker who bends his mind to the task will soon master the
intricacies of Revolvers and such. 

Werner started spending much of his idle moments picturing what would be
needed to build an industrial society from scratch. 

************* ************* **************** 

Dolton sat on his dais. He was pleased, so far as it went. 

The ancient legends had told of a Society that traveled between worlds. 

A very long line of Pharaohs had kept Dolton’s caste and their
instruments carefully preserved through the centuries, in hopes that 
The Society would return once again, along with the fantastic wealth 
and opportunities that they brought with him. 

Their perseverance had been rewarded in his lifetime. 

His daughter, though blind from birth, now saw the world through a pair
of silver eyes. And while they were at it, they’d given her a perfect 
new set of teeth. 

Dolton’s own teeth had suffered from fifty plus years of chewing and no
dentistry. When he’d accompanied his daughter to the strange round 
world where such miracles were performed, they had fitted Dolton out 
with a new set of teeth too—far better than the originals—and they’d 
sent him back to his own world with a small backpack filled with 
toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss. 

The Society was still secretive as they had been of old. Yet the Maestro
had told him that soon, it might be possible to travel to other 
portions of his own world through gates. 

Dolton dreamed of finding a place along the river, that was said to
circle the whole rim of their world, where there were few if any 
people, and establishing a kingdom of his own. 

He was neither disloyal nor discontent with his situation. Yet he’d been
told that the trip between worlds had added decades to his life and 
he’d began to desire more. 

There was some sort of crisis on the last world that The Maestro had
visited though and it had been a long time since he’d last seen the 
leader of The Society—or even gotten word from him. 

He neither chaffed nor obsessed, but he was concerned. 

Even discounting his newfound ambitions, he owed The Maestro a huge debt
of gratitude and wished him well. 

********** ************* **************** 

Three days later, even keeping to the smaller trails that lay parallel
to the ones the Tawn were using, we arrived at the outskirts of our 
destination. 

We’d ridden the horses at a trot for many hours of the perpetually sunny
days. I’m not sure that Earth horses could have endured—but as I’ve 
said, the gravity is only about seventy percent here—and nothing has 
thrown off thirty percent of its muscle and bone—no survival advantage 
in that. 

We rested the horses for twelve hours and fed them special fruits that
the Methuselahs had said would harmlessly supercharge them. 

Then we prepared to invade the Unborn stronghold on foot. 

“Alright, this is going to be a two-pronged attack,” I said. 

“Khoral, I want you to attack the Tawn Palace. I don’t mean to be cruel,
but waste every War Tawn that you possibly can. 

“They are not going to defect and they are dangerous as long as they’re
alive. Sorry Khoral,” I added. 

“I’m sorry too, but your words are true,” Khoral said. 

“Break into the Palace proper. Try to spare as many Royals as possible,
and invite them to come with us. 

“Ask them how it feels to see most of their children maimed and turned
into monsters. 

“Try to get them to see that we have an alternative. 

“Bring along what slaves will come too. 

“Khoral, the Royals are your people. I respect that. Respect that the
slaves are my people,” I said. 

“What are you going to do?” someone asked. 

“I’m going to attack The Unborn right where they live. Khoral told me
that while there are guards, they don’t keep Tawn out. There’s no 
reason to. 

“There is some sort of force-field that simply stops all forward
progress about two-thirds of the way to those golden towers. 

“I’m guessing that the War Tawn will make every effort to stop us,
notwithstanding the force-field. 

“We need to pretty much waste them and then make a determined assault on
their force-field,” I said. 

“You won’t penetrate it,” Khoral predicted. 

“Maybe not, but I’m guessing that the very attempt will have these
xenophobic shabnasticators walking on their hands and defecating big 
huge gold-plated razor-edged bricks... 

“And I’m guessing that they will recall all their reserves as quickly as
possible, to cover their bare rosy-red derrières,” I said. 

One of The Maestro’s boys spoke up. He was from Earth and had watched
his share of Science Fiction Movies. 

“And what if you simply succeed in stirring up a vastly superior alien
force to annihilate all the humans in sight? Maybe kill every human on 
this world?” He asked. 

“I always hate it when that happens—don’t you?” I replied. 

“Dudes, It is like: Dying is not defeat. The only way that the Unborn
can defeat us is to make us behave like cowards. 

“None of you are cowards, or you wouldn’t have made it this far. 

“Don’t let a passing mental glitch cause you to imitate a coward. 

“Musashi said that it’s false to die with your Weapon yet
undrawn.
 “We’re going to unsheathe this Weapon. 

“Gonna unsheathe several Weapons. 

“Gonna Rock-and Roll... 

“Gonna be some Sad Singin’ and Flower Bringin’.” 

“About these new super Weapons,” The Maestro’s boy began. 

“Yeah Dude, about those special Weapons y’all are bustin’ a gut
carrying... 

“It is like: 

“You are from Earth. Haven’t you figured it out yet?” 

Chapter Twenty 

My strike group ran toward the tall golden towers that were said to be
the lair of the Unborn. 

Luck would have it that we ran into a group of War Tawn before we’d
covered half the distance. 

Several of us had MG-42s that we’d scavenged from the NAZIS, along with
the seventy-five round drums. I had my Thompson with a 100 round drum 
magazine in place. 

It weighed more than an M-1 Garand, but the gravity was light and I had
the strength of an ape-man. 

The loads in the Thompson were a wee-bit hot. It wouldn’t make much
difference with a single shot, but throw in a six-shot burst to the 
torso of a monster, and it mattered. 

There seemed an inexhaustible supply of the Tawn. They kept coming. 

Their thick multi-layer leather armor seemed to take just enough
zippety-ooh-dah out of the .45 bullets to keep them from penetrating 
well. .45 ACP has adequate penetration—on humans—but without any to 
spare. 

Against the Tawn in their battle armor, many of them weren’t being
greedy enough and it took burst after burst to satisfy them. 

Once my drum was empty, I managed a reload. This time around I aimed
three or four round bursts at the head. 

Many a Tawn who’d have required eighteen or twenty bullets to the torso
to achieve satiation, suddenly became hoggishly greedy enough to settle 
for three or four to the head. 

As I fired out my second and last one hundred round drum a spear
wielding Tawn charged me at close range. 

I had several Handguns and a huge Bowie, but all at once the berserker
claimed me. 

I dropped my precious Thompson unheeded. 

I slapped the point of the Tawn’s spear away contemptuously and stepped
up to contact range. 

He wanted to bite. I moved my head just far enough away to evade several
vicious slashing bites, like a boxer slipping punches. 

I got the hold that I wanted and lifted the seven hundred and some odd
pound Tawn high overhead and brought him down as hard as I could on the 
top of his head. 

The human neck is very weak right at the Atlas bone—the last vertebrae
next to the skull. People can and have broken their necks at other 
junctures, from other angles of force... 

But the human neck is weakest when pressure is applied straight downward
on the top of the head. That’s why you get so many quadriplegics from 
folks diving headfirst into a relatively shallow pool, or footballers 
that get caught with their head down. 

Pile-driving a man onto the top of his head to break his neck is
tremendous overkill. 

Tawn aren’t men. They were built to have an awesome bite. If you’re
going to bite, you’d better have a neck robust enough to take a lot of 
shaking, should you choose to hang on. 

The Tawn neck was considerably longer than a human’s. It had extra
vertebrae and flexibility and a Tawn had more muscle mass in his neck 
than many a strong man had in his whole upper body. 

No, my pile driver didn’t break the Tawn’s neck but it didn’t do him any
good either. 

He got up just a bit slow and addled. 

I was in one of those rages that bring insight and superior tactics. I
grabbed the addled Tawn and slammed him down on his head a half-dozen 
more times. Each time he got up a little slower. 

Finally he was out of it enough that grabbed his head and twisted until
his neck broke... 

I think I’d twisted it almost a full turn when it finally froze up and
broke. 

I was so busy with my new playmate that I didn’t see the next Tawn
rushing me. 

His spear was broken off and he swung it at my head like he was trying
to kill a snake in high weeds. I had no time for anything but a forearm 
block with my right arm and I felt the bones snap in my forearm. 

I just had time to drive my left index finger into his eye like a spike
and we tumbled to the ground. 

You know, sometimes in judo, it is an advantage to be on the bottom. You
can use your legs to tie your client up and your hands are free to try 
for a choke. Your client must use his legs for balance. 

None of this is terribly applicable when one arm is numb and temporarily
paralyzed along its whole length, your client weighs as much as a 
rather large black bear and has a bite that any other land predator 
would envy. 

“So this is what it’s like to die,” I thought as the Tawn’s jaws gaped
open. “Death is nothing. I spit upon his shadow.” 

But I’d reckoned without Boon. 

“Kreegah Bolgani!” He screamed in the common language of apes—and all
sorts of other creatures. 

He leaped atop the Tawn’s neck and shoulders like a feist trying to
climb a sausage mountain. 

But he rammed one of those silly little .32s that he insisted upon
carrying, as far into the Tawn’s right ear as it would go and pulled 
the trigger. 

Even a hot loaded semi-wadcutter bullet from a three-inch .32 caliber
Revolver barrel is rather feeble. 

Resistance to penetration along the ear canal is minimal though and even
if the bullet ends up piling into a layer of bone somewhere along the 
way, the muzzle blast is sufficient to puree a nice piece of brain 
tissue. 

The last time I was in that position, the gorilla fell off me. This time
the Tawn fell right on top of me. 

I thought that I would suffocate when the Tawn rolled off me. When I was
free I saw a couple of my men straining with the massive beast. 

Boon was broadcasting a frantic telepathic message embroidered all
around with fear and loathing, triumph, reminisce and as strange as it 
may sound, turbulent waves of crimson and deepest violet. 

“That’s right,” I told him. “That’s how I killed the gorilla who’d slain
your mother.” 

Then he started radiating a golden glow as if somehow after all these
years killing a huge gorilla-like primate had given him closure. 

I had no idea that he remembered the incident so clearly. 

“That group seemed to have been just getting off duty,” one of my men
told me as a couple of them made a hasty splint for my arm. 

“The rest of them have retreated and set up a defensive perimeter around
the domes just as you thought that they would.” 

“Alright, it’s time to stop the clowning around and put an end to this
foolishness,” I said. “Lets just hope that this works.” 

**************** ************ ************** 

Khoral and a dozen of his troops had backpack flamethrowers. 

A flamethrower turns a man into a one-man army inside of thirty
yards—while the burn lasts. 

The limiting factor is that few men can carry more than seven or eight
second’s worth of burn. 

Since Khoral’s troopers only had to carry the fuel for a brief time, and
with only seventy percent gravity, all his men had at least fifteen 
seconds worth of burn. 

The ape-men, being far stronger than any human, carried twenty-one
second’s worth. 

Khoral had a massive can that could spray flames for fifty seconds—seven
times the capacity of a WWII flamethrower. 

Mond didn’t trust the newfangled gadgets. He carried a BAR and backed it
up with many magazines. 

BARs on Earth were chambered in .30-06 and had twenty-round magazines.
On Mond’s world there were several alternate calibers including the 
ubiquitous 7 mm Mauser and .303 Enfield... 

But Mond had a genuine .30-06 and the magazines held twenty-four rounds
each. 

As the humans approached the palace, wave after wave of Tawn came out to
meet them. 

Mond shot down Tawn after Tawn with three round bursts to the torso.
Three .30-06 boat-tailed hollow points seemed reasonably effective even 
against the Tawn. 

Of course the fact that Mond had the skill and steady hand to ensure
that at least the first round of every burst struck the sternum dead on 
might have had something to do with the Gun’s effectiveness. 

The flamethrower armed men quickly discovered that even when in flames,
the shock-proof War Tawn would continue to attack for far too many 
seconds. 

A War Tawn with a short blast of napalm to the face was a blind War
Tawn. They were still formidable, but posed little threat to someone 
with room to step aside when they blundered by. 

Even Tawn didn’t persevere indefinitely when ablaze. 

A couple sharpshooters accompanied each flamethrower-armed man, and shot
down any blazing behemoth that got too close. 

Soon enough, the flamethrowers were out of the old familiar juice and
they were cast aside. 

Since it was a bit much to expect a man to carry a flamethrower and
something like a BAR or a MG-42 and beaucoup ammunition as well, the 
Flamethrower men all had lightweight Sporterized .303 Enfields with 
sixteen-inch barrels. 

They had been selected to be skilled marksman and they advanced calmly
along the way, taking headshots almost exclusively. 

A shrill whistle echoed piercingly again and again. 

“Hold,” Khoral said. “They want to call a truce.” 

“I thought you said that Tawn never surrendered or parlayed” Mond said. 

“War Tawn don’t. These are Royals. They’re like me. They still have
their balls and all their mental faculties intact,” Khoral explained. 

“But why even have a signal for parlay, if they never do?” Mond
persisted. 

“They don’t. That signal means to stop a training exercise and assemble
to evaluate the tactics and execution of the last drill. 

“It is cleaver to use it that way. I’d never thought of it,” Khoral
said. 

He took out a whistle that he’d worn around his neck as a reminder of
home all these many years and responded with coded blasts of his own. 

A Tawn walked out on the veranda of the palace. He was a head taller
than any of the War Tawn. While most Tawn’s fur was a charcoal gray, 
this Tawn had golden colored fur, though his head was mostly gray. 

His clothing was far finer than any of the War Tawn’s and he wore gold
rings and bracelets and gold chains around his neck. 

“Who is he?” Mond asked. 

“He is the King of all the Tawn,” Khoral said. “Answerable to none but
the Unborn.” 

“What do you here?” the King asked. “What do you want?” 

“Assemble all the Royals here,” Khoral said. “Those who wish to leave
off being slaves to the Unborn will be invited to come with me. 

“We go to a far away place where the Unborn cannot follow. 

“Assemble all the slaves as well. The day of their freedom is at hand. 

“If you let us go in peace, we will let those who chose to stay, stay in
peace,” Khoral said. 

“It is a strange day’s doings,” the King said. 

“Yes it is,” Khoral agreed. 

************* *************** ************ 

I unveiled my surprise. 

60 mm mortars—but that wasn’t all. The shells were filled with very
powerful and fast acting neurotoxins—that were nonetheless, very 
short-lived. They wouldn’t stay lethal for more than a few hours. 

That’s why I had started with such a small cadre. I needed folk who
could be trained to work in decontamination suits and gas masks and 
there weren’t that many to go around. 

The Society had bought the chemical Weapons at tremendous expense. There
was a black market for such things on one of the old mainline worlds. 
My written request, sent by way of Mond had been sufficient for The 
Maestro to acquire them for me. 

I needed a bit of help getting into my suit and adjusting my mask with
one arm broken and splinted. 

“Boon, some bad craziness is about to go down here,” I said. 

I relayed a mental image of both Tawn and men dying in the throes of
agony from a sickly green gas. 

“I don’t have a suit for you. Will you please go join Khoral and Jaze?” 

“What if he won’t go?” someone asked. 

“Then we’ll use plan ‘B’,” I said. 

“What is ‘plan B’?” 

“I don’t have one,” I said. “But obviously we can’t throw nerve gas
around with Boon unprotected.” 

“You’d risk all our lives for that animal?” He asked incredulously. 

“Yes. Boon is my friend. Your life doesn’t amount to a rat’s derrière to
me,” I told him. 

He started to get angry for some reason. Just then Boon decided to mind
for once and took off at a fast lope. 

We dropped a half-dozen of the shells amongst the Tawn. 

The gas turned out to be invisible and there was no drama. The Tawn
simply forgot to breathe and fell in heaps. 

Once they were down, I sent in a sapper team. They placed a huge shaped
charge of plastic explosive against the force field. 

When they set it off, I think even the earthworms in the next county
knew that something heavy was going down. 

Lo and behold, the blast caused the force field to become visible and to
send off static sparks. 

We lobbed a crate of high explosive mortar rounds into the field. Each
one created beaucoup sparks and finally a crazy light show. 

I really hadn’t expected to penetrate it and we didn’t. But I think that
with enough explosives and time to shell the thing that we could have 
broken through. 

We loaded each mortar with a final charge with a timer set to detonate
and tear them to smithereens and abandoned them. 

I really didn’t think that folks capable of building the golden towers
and the force field would benefit greatly from examining one of our 
mortars—but why leave such things to chance? 

We took off at a fast walk. The neurotoxin was supposed to loose its
effect after three hours. We’d all been dosed with the antidote, but 
the potential problem was that we might bring back enough poison on our 
skin and clothing to dose our unprotected friends. 

We halted in a small grove out of sight and waited until it had been
five and a half hours since the last gas shell had exploded. Then we 
carefully removed our suits—as if we still thought they were 
contaminated. 

There wasn’t a shower available, so that would have to do. 

Jogging back to the Tawn palace would give us another half hour’s
margin. 

************* *************** ************* 

When we arrived, Khoral was in the final phases of organizing the ones
who wanted to leave and those who wanted to stay. 

The Tawn hadn’t been on a successful slave hunt for almost a decade. The
castrated first generation slaves were systematically worked to death, 
and there were only a few emaciated survivors left. 

They were determined to stay behind and form a rear-guard action. They
were in no shape to travel, though we’d have found a way to carry 
them... 

But their hatred ran too deep. They just wanted a chance to strike back
at the hated enemy. I made sure that they all had a good highly 
concentrated meal and enough good battle drugs to allow them to give a 
somewhat better account of themselves. 

About eighty five percent of the slaves and the royal Tawn had decided
to throw in their lot with us. 

“You have quite an army at your disposal,” the King told Khoral. 

“I am far too old and feeble to go with you... 

“But I want you to know that your father is very proud of you. Maybe my
line won’t die out after all. 

“When you come to rule our people, rule wisely.” 

Then the old man—the old Tawn died. 

“The King was your father?” I asked Khoral. 

“I’m sorry. I had no idea,” I added. 

Then I saw something that I’d never saw before and hope to never see
again. I saw a fierce Tawn break down and cry his heart out. 

********** *********** ************** 

“People, all good things gotta come to an end. It is time to do the
bugging out thingy,” I said. 

One of the War Tawn walked up to Khoral. I unlimbered my Thompson. 

“Can I go with you, even though I’m not whole?” He asked piteously. 

Khoral embraced him and cried some more. 

“Of course you are welcome. This is my brother ‘Rollo’,” Khoral told me.


A new thought occurred to me. 

“Any of you fighters who want to come with us are welcome,” I said. “It
just never occurred to me that any of you might choose to.” 

Perhaps two-dozen of the surviving War Tawn joined our number. 

“Can I trust them?” I asked. 

“They lack guile. If they say that they are on our side, then they are,”
Khoral said. 

“Khoral, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up... 

“But you’ve seen my daughter’s eyes and you’ve heard tales of
Rubenstein’s hands. Mayhap your brother and the others can be fixed,” I 
told him and his brother. 

We hadn’t gotten five miles down the trail, when the Unborn came after
us in their golden flying chariots. 

I hate it when that happens! 

Chapter Twenty-One 

The War Tawn were massed to attack the village one moment and the next
moment they were furiously picking up to leave and abandoning a lot of 
gear in the process. 

Sabrina stood holding Baby Long as she watched the frantic bedlam from
afar. 

“It looks like Father’s attack was a success,” Sabrina noted without
special emphasis. 

Nothing that her father might accomplish would particularly surprise
her. 

The Maestro and Werner were visibly relieved though. 

Once the Tawn were well along the way and out of sight, The Exodus
descended on the village en masse. 

Joshua, David and some of the men who’d served as foremen of safari
bearers tried to speed the process of getting the villagers packed. 

While they had homes and livestock, their manufactured wealth was rather
small: steel knives, spearheads and axes, iron cauldrons and cooking 
pots, copper jewelry and such. Most of the other things they could soon 
replace wherever they went. 

They weren’t about to abandon their all though, however mean it might
have looked to another. 

They also had tons and tons of grain, dried fruits and jerky-jerky and
they were determined not to live by faith if they could avoid it. 

Nonetheless, they had the villagers packed up and ready to go in less
than a day. 

The spot Down had directed them to be was about a day’s march to the
north and east of the village. They were about halfway there when the 
War Tawn, who’d gotten a frantic reversal in orders, descended upon 
them. 

The Exodus hadn’t forgotten caution. They received word from their
outlying scouts and they had a couple hours to dig in. 

************** ************** *********** 

It looked like something from an old black and white western, Sabrina
reflected sourly. 

The Tawn outnumbered them greatly. They didn’t have firearms. The Exodus
had circled their wagons and had managed to beat off each attack so 
far... 

Every attack cost The Exodus a few more effectives that they couldn’t
afford to lose. 

Her thoughts were cut short as the Tawn attacked once more. 

Sabrina had a takedown Lever Action .357. She thought the .357, even
fortified by a Carbine-length barrel, a bit feeble against Tawn. 
Nonetheless, she had it fully assembled, loaded and carried on a sling 
as a fallback Weapon. 

In her hand was a Sporterized .303 Enfield like her father’s and like
the flamethrower team members had carried. 

It had a ten round magazine and it was fast to reload with stripper
clips. The detachable box magazine of the Enfield had never been 
intended for quick reloads under fire. 

The .303 rounds were powerful enough to drop a Tawn with a shot or two
if the shooter aimed well. 

She preferred the 1903A3 Springfield and the .30-06 cartridge, but The
Exodus had standardized on the .303. 

When she’d upbraided her father’s choice of standard Weapon, he’d told
her: 

“I always thought to take a Weapon intended for War and ‘Sporterize’ it
was equivalent to ‘Emasculating’ it. A Scout Rifle is as much a Weapon 
as an M-60, but still... 

“I didn’t have the heart to see all those good old Springfields cut up
that way.” 

Sabrina dropped one more Tawn with her Enfield. 

The next Tawn though, was a special case. Although Sabrina did her part
and held and squeezed, it took seven rounds to put the shock resistant 
Tawn down and he managed to drive his spear into her shoulder before he 
went down. 

“I have had just about enough of this!” Sabrina shouted in a rage. “Tell
everyone to get ready to move!” 

Sabrina thrust her Enfield at Jan. 

“Hang onto that for me and don’t even lose it,” She spat without meaning
to sound angry with him. 

She had no idea how one opened a gate to a new realm like her father
had. But after all, how hard could it be? 

The Maestro had told her that the reason that there were no gates
between points on a given world was because the local space was too 
short and too stiff to bend upon itself. 

Space between very distant points on one of the ringworlds just might be
long enough and limber enough to bend. 

The mental power required would be orders of magnitude beyond that
required simply to blaze a trail to a new world—even a far distant 
system of worlds like the cluster of ringworlds. 

That’s why Down had directed them to a place where he sensed that space
was more receptive to being bent. 

Sabrina climbed onto an empty wagon in the center of the encampment. 

She ripped the fabric of time and space open with the power of her mind.
A big black oval coalesced that was large enough to drive several of 
the largest elephant-drawn wagons through simultaneously. 

“Hurry the Hell up!” Sabrina shouted. “I have no idea how long that I
can keep this thing open!” 

Men and women, horses and elephants, llamas, goats, Dogs and children
disappeared into the featureless ebon vortex. 

Almost twenty thousand people couldn’t be moved through the gate in mere
minutes. Many of the One Thousand and some of the other militias stood 
rear guard as the nerve-wracking evacuation took place. 

The Tawn seemed to have broken off their attack to gape in open-mouthed
incomprehension at the vortex. 

Sabrina stood tall and oblivious atop the wagon. Her silver eyes blazed
brighter than the sun. 

As the last of The Exodus poured through the gate, several hundred Tawn
lost their torpor and charged into the void. 

When the last person had gone into the gate, the gate collapsed as
Sabrina collapsed, still on the nearside with thousands of War Tawn. 

**************** ************** ************* 

The Maestro looked around. They all seemed to be in the middle of a
great plain. There was tall yellow grass and a few stunted trees as far 
as his eyes could see, everywhere he looked. 

“We’ve lost Sabrina!” He shouted. 

“Alack and alas,” The Virgin Queen said in a sarcastic monotone. 

“We have several hundred War Tawn who followed us through the gate,” One
of the sub-commanders told Joshua. 

“Something about the trip knocked them unconscious. Do you want us to
cut their throats while they swoon?” 

“No. Take away their arms and armor, and put them where they can all be
covered with one of the Zippos,” Joshua said. 

Joshua didn’t speak the language that the villagers and the Tawn shared.
Of course he had never been exposed to the language the Unborn used to 
communicate with the Tawn. He didn’t speak the language of the great 
apes either, but all the Ape-men did. 

“He says that when they passed through the gate, their connection with
the Unborn was broken. That’s why they passed out,” Werner said. 

He paused to consult with his Methuselah. 

“I didn’t realize that their bond was psychic or telepathic,” Joshua
observed. 

“I don’t think that they did either. Their minds are repressed and
frankly, they’re rather fried. But without the continual presence of... 


“Of what? I don’t know. Without it though, their minds have come back to
a degree. I’m not sure how much, but they’re more rational now. 

“They say that they want to serve The Maestro. 

“Sabrina isn’t here and they know somehow, that he’s the closest
substitute,” Werner concluded. 

Joshua shook his head in puzzlement. 

“Can they learn English?” Joshua asked. 

“I don’t think their mouths are shaped correctly to form many of the
words,” Werner said. 

“Well get the Maestro over here and introduce him to his new minions.
Help get them started on a common vocabulary in their language... 

“And tell him that I want him to teach them to understand English,
whether they can speak it or not. 

“O and someone return their weapons to them.” 

“Do you think that’s wise?” Werner asked. 

“Probably not, but we spared them. Everything else follows from that
initial miscalculation. 

“But if we accept them as part of us, they have a right to their arms,
Nicht Wahr?” 

After a couple moments Joshua had another thought. 

“Werner, these villagers and the Tawn have a common language?” 

“Yes.” 

“And there are no sounds in that language that a creature with
essentially a Dog’s upper vocal apparatus have trouble enunciating?” 

“Not according to what I’ve been told,” Werner said. 

“A common language that both can speak... 

“That didn’t happen by accident.” 

************** ************** ************** 

The Unborn came after us with a half-dozen gold vimanas. 

They didn’t seem protected by force fields, but the smooth shiny
surfaces seemed to shed the bullets effortlessly. 

Only one of the vimanas seemed to be able to shoot anything. It staffed
us repeatedly with some sort of chartreuse energy bolts. 

Fortunately, it wasn’t terribly accurate. It habitually flew higher and
faster than the other flying chariots. It didn’t seem capable of 
slowing down. 

I suppose that the Unborn’s driving skills had gotten a bit rusty over
the centuries. 

One of the vimanas crashed into a stonewall without let or hindrance
from any of us, and collapsed in a ruin. 

One of our men had an RPG. He took out the strafing vimana and a couple
of the others right at the beginning of hostilities. 

That left two. The two remaining vimanas attacked by running folk down
with razor-sharp cowcatchers and side fins. Notwithstanding the early 
destruction of one of their number due to collision, these two seemed 
able to bang into rocks and trees and bounce back like bumper cars. 

Then one of the flying chariots took out our RPG man. 

Though the RPG seemed lost, I spotted a single grenade. 

I tapped Khoral’s brother Rollo on the shoulder with my splinted arm. 

“Hold out your spear,” I told him. 

I drew my Bowie and aimed a tremendous slash at the spear, right behind
the head. Fortunately I’d always trained to use Bowie or Saber 
left-handed. 

Rollo looked at me in puzzlement, but he wasn’t angry. 

I quickly fitted the RPG grenade on the headless spear shaft. 

“When that knob-gobbler comes back, throw your spear at it as hard as
you can. Don’t miss, but hit it hard,” I told him. 

Rollo launched that spear like an Olympic champion—not that I couldn’t
have done it just as well, if my arm wasn’t broke. 

The vimana came apart into a thousand pieces when the grenade detonated
against it. Now there was only one. 

Mond’s BAR actually seemed to be damaging the thing marginally. 

Rollo was far craftier than I’d have given him credit for. He spotted
the RPG bag with four more RPG grenades inside—but he couldn’t find 
another shaft on short notice. 

Mond dodged the slashing vimana at the last possible moment while Rollo
grabbed the bag with the grenades inside. 

He grasped he bag in his teeth, ran at a fair sized boulder in the
vimana’s path. He leaped first atop the boulder then atop the vimana 
like a man doing the hop-step-and-jump. 

Once he was firmly astride the craft, he grabbed a RGG grenade in each
hand and stabbed them as hard as he could into the hood of the vimana. 

The vimana exploded violently—the only one of the six to do so. Of
course there wasn’t even any recognizable remains of Khoral’s brother 
Rollo. 

“Airborne!” I shouted. 

“That is a tribute given only to the bravest of the brave back home,” I
said to Khoral. 

“And yourself?” Khoral asked me sadly. 

“No, not me. I’m a laig—a coward—because I froze in the tower door. And
as the Instructor patiently explained to me... 

“No matter where I go in life, no matter what I may accomplish, I’ll
never be anything but a laig.” 

Just then my bitter reminisces were cut short. 

I could see wave after wave of the golden vimana in the distance. Of
course they were headed toward us. 

“All right people! It wasn’t funny the first time, but you’re about to
run it into the ground and break it off,” I said shouted. 

“You are becoming angry,” Mond observed. 

“Indeed.” 

*************** ************** ************ 

Flashman had done a good job of holding the city together while
Rubenstein was gone. 

He was far smarter and more disciplined than Rubenstein. He was less
driven by emotion—particularly anger and hatred than his boss. But his 
one outstanding trait was his overwhelming loyalty. 

Flashman was loyal both to Rubenstein and to the men beneath him. His
loyalty was on the order of the Samurai, who would draw his sword and 
spill his bowels if ordered to. 

The few pitiful remnants sent word to Flashman and the ruin that was
Rubenstein was smuggled in, lest news of his misfortune fortify anyone 
wanting to stir up trouble for the Fuhrer. 

One of the few things that the red-eyed shadow could actually do in the
material world, besides agitate and incite evil deeds was to open 
gates. It couldn’t blaze trails like Down or Sabrina, but it could 
follow trails that others had laid. 

It didn’t have to use The Society’s gate. So long as it was in
reasonable proximity to a gate, it could hop a ride undetected, 
somewhat like train-hopping hobos on Earth. 

It was a long trip through inter-dimensional space to the Egypt-like
ringworld, from which the shadow could leap to the heretofore known 
worlds. 

It insisted that Flashman accompany them that far. It recognized his
value and wanted him to have the full benefit of the long trip through 
hyperspace. 

The shadow had already established a small following in Egypt. It
transported Flashman back to Wardsville so quickly that he was only 
gone three days, but he arrived back in Wardsville supercharged with 
exceptional health, energy and vitality. 

He was both somewhat smarter and in some vague, but definite way, he was
luckier than he had been. 

The shadow lingered for a fortnight in Egypt. It attended to business,
made a couple more recruits and reconnoitered. 

None of what it did was really necessary, but it wanted the men from
Earth and from Wardsville who’d come along, to have ample opportunity 
to see the Egypt ringworld. 

Its main objective though was to let Rubenstein simmer in pain and
Morphine for a while longer. The bitterness that accrued would make 
Rubenstein ever more suited for the shadow’s unguessable purposes. 

The shadow creature stepped hard on its own tail though. By being gone
when Sabrina radically reordered time and space in that locality, the 
shadow had no knowledge of it, or some other things that were going on 
at the African ringworld... 

And the things were so outré, that it wouldn’t even think to check for
them for some time afterward—giving its opposition time to establish a 
good strong beachhead. 

Chapter Twenty-Two 

I had opened the pathway to this ringworld, and indeed, all the
ringworlds. 

I suppose that took a sort of power or strength. There was no sense of
straining anything though, so maybe I should call it ability. 

A sighted child born to blind parents doesn’t have to strain to the
utmost to see—he simply sees. 

I could sense that opening point-to-point portals on the ringworld was
going to be a much different proposition. It would strain my power to 
the utmost. 

I had sought out a pair of places, while firmly in contact with Tantor’s
huge brain, where the fabric of time and space was more receptive to 
being bent. 

It didn’t apply here—even though the desired endpoint was the same, the
starting point was too far removed. 

There was nothing to indicate that my goal was even possible. 

I hate Deadlifts. You have to break all the rules of good lifting to
Deadlift at all well. 

Always go slow and deliberate and avoid the slightest suspicion of using
momentum is the first rule of weight training. 

But if you don’t explode that first inch and a half with the Deadlift,
you will have a very feeble Deadlift. 

But I’ve seen those big bloated momentum mongers head toward the bar and
they’ve made up their mind that something is going to give—either the 
bar or something inside of them. 

That’s the way I reached out with some unknown part of myself and
grabbed ahold of time and space. Something was going to give, by damn. 

I started to bend it the first time and my “grip” slipped. 

The second time, I don’t know how I knew but I knew that I was opening a
portal to somewhere two or three hundred miles to the outside of the 
rim. 

No one knows what material the structural portion of this world is built
of. Going outside like that was no good way to look though. There was 
nothing out there but hard vacuum and instant death. 

I didn’t quite set that tab of space-time down though. 

Did you ever see the cartoon about the “portable holes”? 

It occurred to me that my otherwise worthless portal could be utilized
like a portable hole. 

I threw the gap up in front of the vimanas. They had no time to stop and
scores went straight on through. There was hard vacuum on one side of 
the portal and the extra thick air of the ringworld on the other. 

Soon there was a cyclone force wind sucking stuff into the portal. 

Then I lost my grip and the portal instantly closed. 

Air moving that quickly builds up a lot of static electricity—I guess. 

Something did, because the remaining vimana were struck by lightning
again and again and then settled slowly to the ground. 

Since I was no longer rushed, I opened a portal to almost exactly where
I’d wanted to go and everyone who was left alive stepped through. 

We ended up a couple miles from The Exodus. We spotted them by the smoke
of all their fires. 

*************** ************ *********** 

The first thing that I did when I learned about Sabrina was to reopen
the gate to where The Exodus had been when she opened the portal. 

There was no sign of Sabrina or the War Tawn—or anything. 

Although The Society’s instruments confirmed that this was the place,
there was no sign that large numbers of people had ever fought a battle 
or even passed through. 

**************** *********** *********** 

We chose a site on the western shore of a big fresh water lake to build
our city. 

The city lay on a high plain that extended as far to the west as we
cared to explore—but to the north and south, and eastward across the 
lake, the jungle started again. 

We would need lumber and the lake was a great means of transport. 

Lakes sometimes flood, though we had enough amateur geologists to
confirm that this lake hadn’t flooded in eons, if ever. 

Nonetheless, we built the city on a cliff five hundred feet above the
lake. There was enough lakeshore below to have a modest city in its own 
right and one of the first priorities was building a massive set of 
elevators to the shore. 

Very few cities are ever laid out deliberately. Consequently, years
later the town planners say, “If we’d foreseen this, we’d have laid the 
city out differently.” 

It’s too late by then. 

I’d long been fascinated by five-fold symmetry. You can lay triangles,
squares and hexagons in regular patterns, and as any quilter will tell 
you, you can combine squares, hexagons and pentagons in several 
tilings. 

Can’t do it with pentagons though. 

Look up “Dürer’s pentagons” sometime. 

The center of the city was composed of one hundred and thirty rather
large pentagonal city blocks, and the pentagon pattern straggled on, 
though increasingly irregularly, in several directions. 

How does one go about building a city? 

I’d never had the urge to build a city, so I hadn’t thought much about
it. 

Somehow I ended up in charge, so I had to think about it long and hard. 

First of all, you need cooperation. It is hard to get thirty or forty
people who are agreed in principle, to sing songs in harmony, much less 
get a rag-tag random assemblage of thousands of folk to work 
purposefully together. 

Moses had one Hell of a time keeping his folk in line, even with God
literally stepping in at every crisis to underscore Moses’ authority. 

People seemed to want to do what I told them, for some unfathomable
reason. 

The second thing that you need to build a city is food for the builders.


Crops were sown on the outskirts of the city—corn, wheat, oats and rye,
potatoes, carrot, turnips, onions, and garlic, sunflowers, tomatoes, 
green beans and various peppers. 

The soil seemed especially fertile. 

There were massive migrations of hoofed animals and the first couple
decades the colonists hardly had to kill any of their livestock. 

It was only a mild discommendation that we couldn’t really set out
permanent farms until we’d fully laid the city out. 

Third one needs material. I had armies of folk making bricks in several
standard sizes and stockpiling them. Mortar was only marginally harder 
to come by. 

We set a few water-powered sawmills up, and there was lumber in more
than ample supply. 

We intended to build the city far larger and commodious than it needed
to be at first. 

In the fourth year The Society succeeded in getting a portal through to
the world that they called “Egypt”. 

I had my folks stick largely to three to five story brick buildings with
round domed roofs. 

The Egyptians were willing to sell us enough structural steel to build a
few skyscrapers—even a forty-story capital—along with lots of sheet 
glass. 

Of course, they insisted on putting up at least one pyramid while they
were at it. 

To them, pyramids were a sign of strength and solidarity. They’d stopped
using them for tombstones ages ago—if indeed, these folks ever had used 
them for tombs. 

At least they didn’t charge the city for it and they placed it on the
outskirts of town where it didn’t interfere with my pentagons. 

Actually, a fair number of Egyptians decided to settle permanently and
they don’t seem content unless they’re building pyramids. We not only 
have a huge pyramid that dwarf’s the big pyramid in Cairo, but they’re 
working on a couple noticeably smaller ones. 

While the Egyptians were backward about firearms and some other things,
lo and behold, they had hydrogen fusion generators. And after a bit of 
dickering, so did we. 

The Maestro tells me that there are a number of signs that the Egyptians
are in a state of glacially slow decline from a former state of very 
high-tech. 

It works for me. 

There is a very long and very wide and powerful river draining are lake
about three hundred miles south and perhaps fifty miles east of us. 

Some high Egyptian official named Dolton asked permission to settle on
the shores. 

Why not? No skin off my derrière. 

Of course there was no gate to there—though maybe someday. Much of the
small flotilla that sprang up to transport gated material to the 
Egyptian city ended up becoming our merchant marine and the start of 
our navy. 

As the city was built, different groups would come to dicker with me. 

Many of the folks from different villages came to me one by one, and
wanted leave to go establish new villages in the bush. They hadn’t 
minded laying the foundations for the town, but they had no desire to 
live there. 

That was cool, but you can’t really turn back the clock. 

Most of the African villages within many days travel of the city are no
longer composed of grass and wattle huts, but are composed of neat 
little red brick homes with tile roofing for the most part. 

You won’t find many villages without a formidable city wall either. 

First the elephants came to me, speaking through Tantor. 

“They are willing to stay,” he told me, “And do much of the heavy
lifting in the city. They want to be acknowledged as partners and not 
as chattel—free to pick their handlers, come and go as they please and 
take days or weeks off when they feel the need.” 

Since I’d never thought that we’d get to keep them, I readily agreed. 

Then representatives of a couple native races came to see me. 

The first had golden eyes and long straight red hair. Red hair has
become ever scarcer on Earth and less than one in five thousand people 
has golden eyes. Outside of their coloration, there was nothing 
radically different about them. 

They’d been in the “Small-Village-Iron-Age” stage for as far back as
they could remember. Some of them traded and some stayed and become 
citizens of the city. 

The other folks were a bit more eye-popping. Their feet were even more
like large hands than the ape-men’s. 

And they had very long prehensile tails, longer than their bodies and as
thick as a very strong man’s bicep at the base—or even thicker. 

Their bodies were hairless and jet black, they had low foreheads and
fangs so large that they interfered with them speaking most human 
languages. 

You might have thought that they were slow or subhuman. Indeed, I’ve yet
to see one who was very articulate. 

Thing is, they were the best natural engineers that anyone had ever
seen. 

Let them hang around a workshop and they’ll pick up on how to use the
tools in a couple days, just by watching. 

Gift them a watch, or a clock or a belt-fed Machinegun and leave them
run of a workshop for a couple weeks—or don’t let them have a workshop 
and it will take three or four weeks longer... 

And they’ll bring you a new improved version. 

They’re also gifted Artists in pencil, paint, clay or metal. 

Finally the Tawn came to me and demanded to know their place in the
scheme of things. 

They hadn’t been able to restore the War Tawn’s fertility, but they’d
repaired much of their frayed neurons and gifted them small organelles 
that kept their hormones—whether male or female—at optimum. Of course 
they’d repaired any lost body parts. 

“Why do you come to me? I thought this was all settled. 

“While there is no enemy in sight, it is always a poor idea to wait
until there is a threat. 

“I thought that you War Tawn would be proud to be the backbone of our
military. 

“Of course, if you don’t want to, feel free to leave or find some other
way to earn your keep,” I told them. 

“But what about us royals,” Khoral demanded. 

“Point of order Khoral. You aren’t a royal, you’re an ape-man,” I said.
“Though in your case, the emphasis is on ‘ape’ and not ‘man’.” 

“Alright, but what about my people?” 

“Hells belles, cockleshells and skeletons all in a row!” I exploded. 

“You royals are going to govern this city, isn’t that good enough?” 

“To rule?” one of Khoral’s cousins asked incredulously. 

“What in Hell else are you good for? You’re strong, but your hands are
large and clumsy. You’re terrible farmers and since we aren’t going to 
use slaves, we have no need for slave drivers. 

“Actually, the way the Unborn didn’t quite trust you and gave you a bare
minimum of functions to perform fits in very well with my ideas of a 
Minarchist Government. 

“Not only are your minds seldom capable of great subtlety, but you seem
to do a great job of instilling a sense of Noblesse Oblige in your 
children... 

“But if you do ever get power-hungry and grasping, humans just ain’t
gonna put up with your bull-spritz,” I concluded. 

I thought that I was being clever, passing on the odious duty of leading
to the Tawn that way. 

The royal Tawn however, had known for millennia that leadership is a
burden and not a reward. They accepted all that all the lower city 
offices were to be filled by Tawn on the basis of heredity... 

They had a condition. I had to become hereditary King over the
city-state. 

Fifty-seven years is not long to build a large city from nothing. It
isn’t a long while to build traditions and a sense of continence. 

Fifty-seven years is well over half the human life span. It is a long
time in human terms. 

The Tawn mature earlier yet their life span is a bit longer than human. 

Fifty-seven years is trivial to an ape-man—particularly to an ape-man
who has travelled as much as I have through the inexplicably 
regenerating hyperspace. 

But as I’ve often said, only a fool waits until it is raining to start
building his Ark. 

************** ************ *********** 

Sabrina awoke from her swoon to see thousands of War Tawn lying on their
faces in obeisance. 

As she climbed to her feet, Jan threw her Enfield at her like a drill
sergeant. 

“There is your Rifle your royal highness,” he said sarcastically. “I
didn’t lose it, as you commanded.” 

“Jan, why didn’t you go through the portal like everyone else? I told
everyone my grasp was slipping.” 

“I couldn’t leave you all alone,” he relented. 

“Command us Princess,” one of the War Tawn shouted in the language of
the ape-men. 

“Well first off, get up! I don’t want God to strike me down for
blasphemy on y’all’s dime. Tell me what this is about,” Sabrina said 
crossly. 

“You know that we War Tawn are eunuchs? Look,” the War Tawn said while
dropping his pants. 

“Well okay then,” Sabrina said. “I really didn’t have to see that.” 

“But you’ve made us all whole once again,” The commander insisted. 

“Okay, if you’re going to take my orders, check for any survivors and
bring me any human weapons or ammunition that you find,” Sabrina said. 

She was surprised to find fifty or sixty humans alive and whole.
Apparently the gate’s great restorative powers even reached to some of 
the recent clinically dead. 

“Lets move off ground zero and regroup,” Sabrina said. “It’ll be awhile
before I’m up to opening the gate again. 

**************** ************ ************* 

“A woman with silver eyes appeared on the outskirts of the city a few
hours ago,” Dropper told me. 

Dropper was a sort of Tawn master of ceremony at the court. 

“She has a handful of ape-men, sixty some-odd humans and several
thousand Tawn with her. 

“She claims to be your daughter,” he said. 

Dropper had been born after the Diasporas and the portals were simply
legend to him. Very few Tawn ever opted to go to another world to be 
gawked at. It even seemed that passing through inter-dimensional space 
seemed to disagree with them somehow. 

“By all means, send her in,” I said. 

There stood my daughter, still wearing her Levis and cradling her
Enfield. 

“Sabrina, I never thought to see you again on this side,” I said. “We
went back to look, but there was no trace of you. 

“Where have you been? What have you been doing all these decades?” 

“Decades? Decades my rosy red derrière! It has only been a couple months
since I opened the portal and sent The Exodus through,” She stated 
confidently. 

“And where in the Seven Burning Hells did this city come from? And why
are you sitting on a throne and wearing a crown like a King? Have you 
been smitten with megalomania as well?” 

“Okay. Dropper, get me some Society mathematicians here ASAP. The
Maestro is much to be preferred, if he’s around. Tell him everything 
that you’ve heard so he can think about it on the way back here,” I 
told him. 

“This is top priority. Go in person. 

“Sabrina, it may have been mere weeks to you, but fifty-seven years have
passed here. Did you feel a sort of ‘whip-crack’ in the fabric of 
space-time right before you lost control? 

“That was your father, really glomming up the fabric of space-time. I’ve
never heard of temporal shifts though,” I concluded. 

A few moments later, The Maestro appeared and he even had The Virgin
Queen in tow. 

“No, I never heard of a temporal shift either. But no one else but you
two roil the fabric of inter-dimensional space the way you do,” The 
Maestro said. 

“Father, this is all fascinating and all, but I need to tell you
something of more immediate concern...if you’ll let me get a word in 
edgeways. 

“Rubenstein has allied himself with the Unborn and he has a massive army
coming here overland. 

“That explains how they allied so quickly. I thought that mere weeks had
passed,” Sabrina said. 

“Are those War Tawn with you?” I asked her. 

“Not exactly. They’re my minions. They were War Tawn—but the backlash
from my vortex made them whole,” Sabrina explained. 

“Well, if we’re about to be invaded, we can probably put them to good
use,” I said. 

I summoned my Secretary of War—a giant War Tawn left from the old days. 

“It may bring sadness that these Tawn have been completely healed, while
y’all are only partially restored. 

“Nonetheless, I need trainers to bring them up to date on the Tawn-sized
firearms that we use. You heard what Sabrina said. We’re subject to 
attack soon.” 

“Sadness? They are our sisters and brothers and we rejoice to see them
alive—and if we cannot have sons and daughters, mayhap they can give us 
nieces and nephews to cherish. 

“Which way will the enemy come from?” my Secretary of War concluded on a
tangent. 

After a brief consultation with Sabrina and the Maestro, I had to tell
him: 

“There is no way of knowing. Be prepared on all fronts,” I ordered. 

“We always are,” He replied. 

Chapter Twenty-Three 

“Let me understand this,” I said. “The rim of this world is about
two-hundred million miles in diameter.” 

“A bit more,” The Maestro interrupted. 

“Work with me on this!” I said. Circumference equals Pi times Diameter.
That gives me over six hundred million miles. 

“We’re about a third of that distance from Wardsville, correct?” 

“Actually, more like one fifth—say one-hundred and thirty million
miles,” Sabrina chimed in. 

“So how is Rubenstein getting here? Is his army walking? Or maybe
they’re travelling by zeppelin?” 

“This place was built by someone—obviously,” one of the Maestro’s techs
began, and then apparently awed by his current company, he fell silent. 


“There was a whole set of mini-portals on this world long ago,” The
Maestro said. “They have long since fallen into disuse. Somehow 
Rubenstein has located the old system and gotten parts of it working 
once more... 

“He hasn’t renovated all of it, or he’d have arrived on our doorstep
unannounced. We estimate that he’s marching towards us through the 
northern jungle even as we speak.” 

“When will he get here?” I asked. 

“At the rate he’s travelling, in about a month,” The Maestro shrugged. 

“How did he stumble onto this ‘subway system’?” I asked. 

“He’s receiving aid from somewhere,” Sabrina said. 

“Obviously,” I said. “How else would he even get to this world, much
less obtain the silver prostheses? But how this?” 

The Maestro shrugged before responding. 

“You two have damned near ripped the local fabric of space and time
apart. Anyone who is sensitive can feel it. 

“Some of the colossal forces you unleashed caused some of the ancient
mini-portals to resonate enough that someone—or something—could locate 
them,” The Maestro concluded. 

“Hell’s belles and cockleshells! Why even bother?” I asked. “We’re
farther away from him than we would be on Mars, if Rubenstein was still 
on Earth.” 

“Rubenstein might be crazy enough and vindictive enough to chase you
this far, but he wouldn’t have the knowledge—or even the persistence. 
Something is aiding him,” The Maestro said. 

“But what?” I demanded. 

“Do you think that we know the answer to that?” The Virgin Queen asked
haughtily. 

“Dude, it is like: you demand to be addressed as ‘The Virgin Queen’.
Okay, from now on you can address me as ‘Your Highness’,” I told The 
Virgin Queen. 

“You ain’t the queen of my court.” 

“You must be joking!” She sputtered in outrage. 

“Dropper, the next time that The Virgin Queen fails to address me
properly, escort her out of the room. Is that clear?” I commanded. 

“Understood,” Dropper said. 

I don’t think that he particularly liked The Virgin Queen and he took
his duties very seriously. I have no doubt that he’d have ripped her 
head off and eaten her liver, if I’d commanded it. 

I paused momentarily to luxuriate. I’d known The Virgin Queen for over a
century and it was the first time that I’d managed to win an argument 
with her. 

“Okay, we need to make plans. What is Rubenstein coming with?” I asked. 

“The scout reports indicate that he has a force of approximately a
million men and almost a third of them are driving armored vehicles,” a 
Tawn named Thorn answered me. 

Thorn was the head of my Rangers—long-range reconnaissance scouts. 

“How in the Seven Burning Hells can Rubenstein have a million men? I
understand that the population of Wardsville was only around a 
half-million,” I demanded. 

The Maestro shrugged once more. 

“You haven’t been to Wardsville in over eighty years. Rubenstein has
been encouraging the population to propagate every which way he can. He 
craves ever more minions. It’s an obsession with the man. 

“He had already started a program of reaching far out into the bush and
incorporating villages, small towns, even cities before we left. 

“And Wardsville isn’t the only large city on the shores of Lake Burple.
He’s undoubtedly expanded around the circumference of the lake. 

“Our strategists tell us that he probably has at least the eastern half
of the lake by now,” The Maestro said. 

“What is he fueling a mechanized army with?” I asked. 

There is coal beneath the ground here, but so far as I can tell, there
is no petroleum. 

“Liquid hydrocarbons extracted from coal? Or maybe wood or grain
alcohol? Maybe some sort of super technology, like our fusion 
generators? Who knows?” 

The Tawn studied war. They had a fairly good grasp of it before—though
their actual armies had always been handicapped by the literal 
mindedness and the... 

There is no other way to say it. The obedience conditioning made the War
Tawn both unintelligent and very hard to teach. They had served the 
Unborn’s purposes adequately in that state though, for thousands of 
years. 

The Unborn kept no history for the Tawn to study, but they distilled all
their experiences and theorizing down to abstract general principles. 

One of my top priorities in building my city had been building
magnificent libraries. 

My Tawn generals had read Jomini and Clausewitz, Sun-Tzu and Musashi,
Xenophon and Thucydides, Yamamoto Tsunetomo and Guderian along with 
scores of military treatises by generals and tacticians of whom I was 
ignorant, on worlds that I was barely aware of. 

The also played Chess, Checkers, Omega Chess, Byzantine Chess, Go,
Gomoku, Raumschach and other strategy games incessantly. 

They read countless histories of wars on Earth as well as on other
worlds. 

If anyone was competent to fight a battle against such overwhelming
odds, my generals were. 

“If we send Rangers to ambush and delay the column every which way we
can,” The War Secretary, whose name was “Steel” said, “We probably 
won’t kill over twelve thousand—a very minor amount in view of their 
numbers. 

“On the other hand, our own casualties would be minimal and we might
gain a day or two.” 

“Go for it,” I told Thorn. “Our people are precious at all times, but
especially in view of the numbers. Every hour you can gain us is 
protein for us though.” 

Thorn left at that point, to carry out my orders. 

The Tawn were armed with oversized Bolt Action Scout Rifles in what was
essentially a rimless and beltless .338 Magnum—a very hot-loaded .338 
Magnum, sending 250-grain bullets at 4200 feet per second. 

Humans were armed with good Bolt Action 7mm-08s also tailored to the
Scout Rifle concept. 

There were beaucoup improved copies of the ersatz MG-42s Rubenstein had
used against us—in both 7mm-08 and .338 Tawn and we had Browning .50 
Caliber Machineguns—and sniper Rifles—as well as up-sized Browning 
Machineguns in 1.1 inch. 

We had mortars and artillery too of course, along with several types of
grenades and RPGs. 

The issue really wasn’t equipment. We probably had as good equipment as
Rubenstein—probably better. He outnumbered us over twenty to one 
though. 

We also had to be prepared for attacks with both flames and poison gas,
since I’d started the whole process. 

All of Rubenstein’s men were trained soldiers while I had a large
civilian population to try to defend. 

Jerri, an ambassador to the Golden-Eyed people spoke up. 

“We haven’t revealed everything about ourselves to you all at once,”
Jerri said. “There are many things about us that you do not yet know.” 

“Fair enough, but what’s your point?” 

“There are many more of us than you suspect. You’ve dealt fairly with
us. We see your city as a good thing and we’ve allowed you to build it 
uncontested. 

“Indeed, we have given you quite a bit of aid. 

“Now this Rubenstein and the Unborn come into our territory as invaders
and would-be conquerors. 

“It isn’t a question of how many of us are willing to fight alongside
you. The main question is how many of us can you arm?” 

“That’s good of you Jerri. You can talk over the details of arming your
people and getting them at least reasonably well trained in safe Gun 
handling and marksmanship with one of Steel’s training officers. 

“Okay, does anyone think the situation is hopeless?” 

“We will die,” Steel said. “But we will make them question whether it
was worth the body count before this is over with.” 

“Does anyone think that we ought to surrender?” I asked. 

No one did. 

*************** ************** ************** 

A little over three weeks later, Rubenstein arrived ahead of his army
traveling under a flag of truce. 

I didn’t have to honor the flag, but I did. I’m not cut out to be
unprincipled and driven by spur-of-the-moment-pragmatics like 
Rubenstein. 

I hardly recognized the man that I let into my court. 

Rubenstein had been a large and powerful black man, but running a bit
toward fat. Say perhaps six foot five and perhaps three hundred and 
eighty pounds. 

The creature that I saw before me had silver hands and forearms of
course. I’d necessitated that myself. But much of the skin on his head 
was now silver, along with one eye. 

He wore little but a jaguar skin loincloth and beaucoup beads, ornaments
and feathers and he carried a war mace that had a huge crystal 
head—probably ceremonial, because even diamonds shatter from hard 
blows. 

His legs were pure silver and he had large irregular patches of silver
on his torso and back. 

What was left of his humanity was emaciated and covered with multiple
scars and minor burn patterns. 

I almost felt sorry for the freakish creature before me. 

“Down Ward, if you will surrender yourself into my custody, along with
your daughter, the man called ‘The Maestro’ and the one called ‘The 
Virgin Queen’ 

“If you surrender yourselves, if your people will serve and worship
me... 

“If these wayward Tawn will submit to their just punishment at the hand
of their rightful owners... 

“If all of you will do these things, I will forgo razing the city,”
Rubenstein said. 

I had given orders for the lighting to be heavily from one side. I
needed for Rubenstein to have a shadow, so that I could fully insult 
him. 

I walked to within arm’s reach of Rubenstein. I leaned forward
deliberately and hawked and spit a big glob of green phlegm on his 
shadow. 

That took some doing, since as an ape-man I’m extraordinarily healthy.
The “phlegm” was actually the result on a compound my chemists had 
created for me. I’d slipped the capsule into my mouth earlier, to let 
the moisture in my mouth work upon it. 

“You see Rubenstein, I don’t even deign to spit on you. 

“I spit on your shadow. 

“Fight me right now. I know the superhuman strength of your silver arms
and legs. Would you care to fight, cyborg to ape-man? 

“I’ll give orders to let you go free should you win,” I challenged. 

Rubenstein’s face contorted with hatred. His remaining human eye glared
pure bloodshot maniacal hatred. He worked his jaws. 

“Fair warning, if you spit, you have accepted my challenge,” I said. 

He turned his head sharply to one side. 

“But I can take him!” Rubenstein spoke to some unseen presence—whether
real, or in his mind. “Please let me do this!” 

Rubenstein lowered his head in defeat. 

“Get him out of here before I forget that he came here under a flag of
truce,” I ordered. 

Two of my Tawn grabbed him by either arm and escorted him out of my
court. I doubt that Rubenstein could have taken a Tawn, even with his 
enhancements. I think that with a Tawn on each arm, that it was pretty 
much hopeless... 

But even so, eight more Tawn followed along just for insurance. Each of
the other members of his delegation was similarly escorted. 

**************** ************ *********** 

That night as I slept in my quarters, something awakened me—some
malevolent presence. 

“I have you now, Down Ward,” it lisped. 

It seemed to insert slobbery sibilants everywhere in its speech. 

Then something caused me to pass out. 

When I awakened, I was naked, chained to a wall by one ankle and behind
bars. 

Rubenstein came into the outer chamber and glowered at me. 

“You will never leave this place, Down Ward. You will never see the sun
again. You will never feel the free wind touch your skin. 

“You will live and die in a gaol cell hundreds of feet underground. 

“What do you think of that?” Rubenstein gloated. 

“Dude, it is like: I’ll give you an ‘E’ for effort and a ‘B-minus’ for
execution. 

“Take away my body and my spirit will still be free. Lock this body up,
if that cranks your handle. 

“If I never leave this place, if no one ever learns of what was done
here... 

“God will still know. I will know. 

“You’re wanked Rubenstein,” I taunted. “That is my last words to you.
You aren’t worth speaking to.” 

Rubenstein started his hinky talking-to-himself shtick again. 

“Let me kill him now,” Rubenstein begged over and over. 

“But why?!?” He wailed. 

“Well, I will do this and you can’t stop me!” 

Rubenstein shouted and several men came into my cell. 

I fought. I got an eye and I’m pretty sure that I ruined a testicle. 

In the end, they held my mouth open and cut out my tongue. 

Rubenstein you jackass, don’t you know that ape-men regenerate? 

**************** ************ ************ 

Down Ward stood in his court. 

“Der Fuhrer and I have completed a private negotiation. I will swear
fealty to Der Fuhrer and in return the city will be saved,” Down said. 

“Who are you and what have you done with my father?” Sabrina demanded. 

“Arrest her for treason!” Down shouted. 

Sabrina drew her .357s. She shot down a half a dozen of the armed men
who’d been strategically placed to arrest her. 

Then she was hit by more Shotgun launched lead-filled beanbags and
tasers than she’d ever expected to see in one lifetime. 

Down removed the shoes from her unconscious body. 

“Do you see that? She’s an ape-woman. She has prehensile toes. You can’t
believe anything an ape-man says,” Down shouted. 

Boon wasn’t quite sure what was going on. He recognized his constant
companion much more by smell and telepathic imprint more than he did by 
sight. 

He hadn’t realized that this fellow sitting on his friend’s habitual
perch was impersonating his friend. 

He did realize that the man had ordered the attack on his good friend
Sabrina. Sabrina often scratched his fur or gave him treats. He could 
tell that she was close kin to his companion. 

There was a high ceiling and ample means for an ape-man to come or go
overhead. 

The real Down Ward had been prudent enough to allow himself that escape.


Boon was too angry to shoot his small Revolvers. He dropped unseen and
unsuspected onto the imposter and bit away a big chunk of his face, 
including one eye. 

Then he was shot thirty or forty times at close range. 

*************** ************* ************ 

They had fed me twice when they brought my daughter in and threw her
into the cell next to me. They also had The Maestro and several of his 
close associates, and my friend Khoral. 

Khoral and Sabrina were both unconscious. 

“What’s going on?” I asked The Maestro using one of the sign languages
that he’d taught me as a lad. 

“Can’t you speak?” The Maestro asked. 

“Rubenstein cut my tongue off. Wait until you see what I’m going to do
to him...” 

The Maestro quickly filled me in on the latest happenings. 

“Rubenstein abducted me. He’d be better off dead. 

“Rubenstein maimed me. He’d be better off dead. 

“Rubenstein hurt my daughter. He’d be better off dead. 

“Rubenstein killed Boon. He’d be better off dead...” 

“Hold!” The Maestro frantically signed. 

Rubenstein came in with his cohorts. 

He had Khoral tied on all fours his chest resting on a piece of a stump
and Sabrina was secured to a chair. 

Once Khoral aroused, Rubenstein spoke to him. 

“You ran away and betrayed the Unborn to avoid this,” Rubenstein said as
he cut away all of Khoral’s manhood. 

“The Unborn would have left you your tinkler at least.” 

“Is that supposed to distress me in some way?” Was all Khoral had to
say. 

But then the Tawn are very pain resistant. 

Tearing out Sabrina’s eyes took him longer. They were of the living
silver polycarbonate substance. So were the optic nerve and the lining 
of her eye-sockets. 

Eventually he ripped it out, silver optic nerve and all. 

Sabrina screamed a few times. 

I busied my mind by adding refrain after refrain to the rather
repetitious poem that I’d started. Rubenstein would be better off dead. 


“Once again I cannot see,” Sabrina said. “Do you have the balls to fight
me in a duel now? Or are you still afraid of me?” 

“When I am through with you, you will plead and beg for me to kill you,”
Rubenstein said. 

“I sincerely doubt that I’ll ever give you that particular
satisfaction,” Sabrina said. 

“Duty calls,” Rubenstein said. “I’ll be seeing you.” 

*************** ************ ************ 

Long the ape-man squatted on his haunches along with his father Jan, who
he scarcely knew. Mond was there. Joshua and David were there. 

There was many of the Golden Eyed along with many Tailed Folk. 

“What can we do? Rubenstein has the city. He’s killed or captured most
of the leaders. 

“Many of the Tawn support this fake King because he promises that the
Unborn will spare their testicles and ovaries in the new dispensation. 

“Many of those of African descent pretend to believe the imposter is the
true King, because it spares them having to die in a hopeless cause,” 
Long said. 

“We have more than enough Guns and ammunition to support us for
generations. Down was very much in favor of many secret caches—each 
known but to a handful,” Mond said. 

“Dolton said that he would support us one hundred percent. Rubenstein is
bound to march on his city eventually,” David said. 

“The first thing that we should do, is to pray,” Joshua said. 

“If God is for us, then who can be against us? 

“Rubenstein and his army along with the Unborn and all their clever
machinations are less than a speck of dust in God’s eye,” Joshua 
concluded. 

Chapter Twenty-Four 

I felt bad. The inside of my mouth was caked with blood and I hadn’t had
any water for several hours. I was empty and hungry. 

Simple things amuse simple minds. I had started rubbing one link of my
chain against the rough stonewall since I’d first found myself in the 
cell. 

After a couple of days, I noticed that the stone seemed slightly crazed
where the steel spikes had been driven in. I wasn’t sure if it was a 
better plan to work on one link of the thick chain or to work on the 
wall. 

I compromised and traced a square around the wall mount—over and over
and over. 

I felt myself getting furious. 

I grabbed my chain and braced my feet. I started to pull slowly—no
momentum there. I would think that I was pulling as hard as I possibly 
could. Then after an interminable time, I’d find that I could exert 
more force. 

Something started to give! I kept applying pressure. I wasn’t going to
stop until I was free from the wall, or I collapsed from a burst blood 
vessel or total exhaustion. 

A man only sees the world in total clarity when he’s furious and
drenched in adrenaline—but our bodies weren’t meant to experience that 
kind of clarity indefinitely. 

But for the nonce I was totally lucid and I saw with hard-edged clarity
that adaptation is compromise and compromise is the soul of weakness. 

Then with a screech that set my teeth on edge, the spikes tore loose
from the wall. 

The spikes were surprisingly long. I tried momentarily to lever one of
the long spikes between the door and the jamb. Then that seemed 
trifling and unworthy of a King. 

I grabbed the door and shook it loose. I admit that I used some very
decided momentum, but by then I didn’t care. 

I stalked to the door where my friends were and yanked their door loose
too. 

Khoral was still bound and he’d gotten infected. True infection is rare
in an ape-man, but God alone knew what sort of pathogens were in the 
ancient underground structure. At any rate, it is relatively easy to 
starve an ape-man. 

“What have you done Father?” Sabrina demanded. 

“I smell blood!” Sabrina continued. 

“He’s broken us out, but he’s ripped his hands down to the bone doing
it,” The Maestro told her. 

I tried to speak, but sign language doesn’t work at all well with
mangled hands. 

“Gotta go!” I mentally shouted at Sabrina. 

She grasped her head with both hands. 

The Maestro hurriedly wrapped my hands and worked loose the bonds on
Khoral. 

Monster or not, Khoral was my friend. I hefted him onto a shoulder
because no one else there was strong enough to lift and carry him. You 
don’t need much manual dexterity to carry a Tawn over one shoulder like 
a sack of rabbit feed—just brute strength. 

I felt the adrenaline-charged clarity start to fade with regret. 

We went up stairway after stairway. I had begun to think perhaps we were
climbing a stairway to Heaven, when we came into a room. 

There were guards in the room—a dozen, maybe two-dozen. I didn’t pause
to count them. 

My hands weren’t working at all well and I was carrying the
semi-conscious Khoral. Much as it galled me, I had to leave the 
fighting to others. 

I had never seen The Maestro kill before. He did it like he did
everything else—as if he were on a great stage and every move would be 
rated for grace and flamboyance as well as for effectiveness. 

He didn’t really showboat though. It is just that he was so incredibly
agile and balanced that it looked affected. 

One of Rubenstein’s NAZI troopers aimed a fierce machete blow at my
daughter’s head. 

Even without eyes, Sabrina sensed the blow and avoided it by the
narrowest margin possible. She broke the arm; inherited the machete and 
cut the throat of her attacker in one continuous burst of dance-like 
movement. 

That was my daughter! 

“Airborne!” I managed to croak hoarsely. 

There were several sets of stairs beyond the guardroom and then we were
on the surface once more. 

Score one for Down Ward! Rubenstein said that I’d never see the sun or
feel the free air again. 

The grandfather of all ringworld tornados was brewing. If we could get
even a quarter mile from the underground place—whatever in the Hell it 
was—once the storm hit, we’d be untraceable. 

Just as we started to step into the jungle though, we were surrounded by
scores of men on all sides. 

************** ************** ************ 

Many jumped ship early when Rubenstein managed to put his faux Down Ward
on the throne. 

Steele and most of the high-ranking military officials had stepped out.
Many of the city’s royal Tawn left as well. 

They joined Thorn and his Rangers—whether human or Tawn, all the Rangers
had the ape-man gene. 

There were also loyal and disgruntled humans. 

The Tailed Folk weren’t welcome in the new order and they left in
droves. 

The jungle elephants started a mass exodus until the NAZIS realized what
was happening and penned the remainder in. 

************* *********** *********** 

Jan sighted down his Rifle. It was a Tawn Rifle with a cut-down stock.
It made a bang-up sniper Rifle, though the kick of the .338 Tawn was 
awe-inspiring to a human. 

Rubenstein’s troops bee-bopped through the jungle like a bunch of
tourists on a photo-safari. The Rangers and other ape-men sniped at 
them from the trees and dropped them by the scores, but the brown clad 
troopers just kept coming. 

There were even a few of Khoral’s archers still around and active, given
the regenerative effects of inter-dimensional travel. They used bows 
that most humans couldn’t have pulled to half-draw. 

The archers used broad heads up to an inch and a half wide. They shot
from a distance and their arrows seldom stopped in the target. 

Jan took up the slack and slowly squeezed. The Rifle kicked like a
drunken mule and he all but fell off his perch—but he’d been expecting 
that. 

He looked through his scope and noted with satisfaction that the
powerful round had killed two immediately and wounded a third. 

He sighted on what appeared to be a squad leader and shot again. 

This time the troopers located the source of the shot. Fifty of them
sprayed the general area Jan’s shot had seemed to originate from. 

Jan moved to interpose the bole of a tree between him and the shooters. 

He had one of the smooth-bored Mac 10’s the troopers carried, along with
three of the 32 round magazines. He didn’t intend to carry the Weapon 
long. It had very little utility, even in jungle fighting. 

One episode of “Spray and Pray” shooting deserves another though. He
stuck the Mac clear of the tree’s trunk and sent all three magazines of 
the wildly tumbling and inaccurate bullets in the general direction of 
the NAZIs. 

When the last magazine was empty, Jan shrugged and dropped the Machine
Pistol a hundred and twenty foot to the forest floor. 

But while all the troopers were firmly focused on Jan, a dozen other
ape-man snipers killed perhaps fifty of the troopers undetected. 

Then Jan and the other ape-men calmly swung away through the trees. 

Primitive booby-traps can be time consuming to put in place. 

It wasn’t hard to rig up a pair of captured Mac 10’s to shoot down the
trail when a tripwire was tripped. It might only get one or two 
troopers but it kept the others uptight. 

Rubenstein might control the city proper, but he wouldn’t be able to
extend his rule very far into the hinterlands. In fact, it was a 
fractious practice to even cultivate the fields that lay within sight 
of the city walls. 

****************** ************* ********** 

“We need to break off harassing this column,” Mond said. 

“There is somewhere that we need to be,” he continued. 

Jan and Long went with Mond along with twenty some odd ape-men. Thorn
also came with fifty of his Rangers. 

None of the others had experienced a “knowing” but if Mond said that he
did, few ape-men would question it. 

Anyway, they could always come back and shoot some more of Rubenstein’s
clumsy storm troopers. The procedure had lost all zest and had become 
more of a chore than anything else. 

************** ************ ************** 

“There!” Mond pointed. “It is Bwana Down and he is injured.” 

************* ************* *************** 

Tantor was there. I sent my thoughts to him. He transferred them to Mond
and Mond was my mouthpiece. 

The Maestro examined Sabrina’s bare feet in puzzlement. 

“The impostor said that she had the ape-man gene and showed her
prehensile toes. I saw them but now they’re gone,” The Maestro said. 

“Sabrina was infected with the ape-man retrovirus when Long was born.
She cut him out of his dead mother’s belly. 

“She hasn’t had time to change though, in her own subjective timeline. 

“How Rubenstein would know that she’s infected though, is a mystery to
me.” 

“He doesn’t need to know,” I said via Mond. “It would suit his purposes
to have people believe it, true or not. 

“The mystery is how did he impose what he wanted everyone to see on
everyone’s impressions? 

“That includes The Maestro, and he’s a damned hard man to deceive. 

“Then there is this imposter. I can’t believe that he looks that much
like me. But I don’t think that he has to. 

“It is some sort of mind control,” I concluded. 

“How long until you can talk again?” Sabrina asked. 

“Five or six weeks. Khoral is going to take longer to mend... 

“But you will mend, my friend,” I told Khoral in an aside. 

“Speaking of the ape-man gene,” Long said. “You are infected old man.” 

That was addressed to The Maestro. 

“You have open cuts on you and you’ve been in the presence of three
wounded and freely bleeding ape-men. 

“Most of your confederates were also infected,” Long continued. 

“Can you tell which ones are infected?” I asked him via Mond. 

“The old man burns brightly with the change. Some of the others are
ambiguous,” he said. 

“Is there anyone who’d really like to be an ape-man?” I had Mond ask. 

I saw a few hands. 

“Does anyone strongly object to being an ape-man?” was my next question.


“Since no one strongly objects, would you all please line them up and do
the ‘blood-brother’ thingy? That will get us all on the same 
sheet...eventually.” 

“What is our next move?” Thorn asked. 

“Leave enough Rangers to continue harassing Rubenstein. Infect as many
of your human irregulars with the retrovirus as will volunteer to be 
changed. 

“The rest of us need to get to Dolton’s little Cairo. 

“I have a surprise waiting for us there,” I relayed. 

Jerri looked amusedly at his slashed palm. 

“I’m already mutated,” he said. “But not with your ape-man retrovirus.
This will be interesting.” 

“When you get to the pyramid city, I too will have a surprise for you,”
Jerri said. 

“I like surprises, if they’re good. Whatever your surprise though—I
guarantee that mine will be bigger,” I relayed. 

I suspect that I delivered the bigger surprise, but it was a close-run
thing. 

****************** ********* ************ 

The Society still maintained a gate in Wardsville of course. 

Repressive governments came and went, but an established portal
represented quite an investment and a high potential for profit. 

The gates could be moved a few hundred yards this way or that, even in
the old days. Now that they possessed the much more powerful 
mathematical tools that Sabrina had given them, they had quite a bit 
more flexibility. 

In fact, they were maintaining no less than three gates inside the city
and a couple nearby, but outside the fence. 

They couldn’t transport from point to point on the surface of the
ringworld. 

Taking something to the nearest world and then sending it back to exit
through a slightly different nearby portal was getting stuff around the 
city’s wall by a very roundabout route, but one The Society was using 
with ever increasing frequency. 

************* ************ ************* 

Something big was coming through the gate. 

When something fairly heavy came through the gate, the gate-tenders
experienced a tingling sensation starting several seconds earlier. 

Dill was astonished at the cargo—there were perhaps thirty armed men,
most of whom were black—but there were a few Hispanics and whites throw 
conspicuously into the mix. 

They seemed to be led by a gigantic black woman wearing a long purple
dress and a huge purple hat with an ostrich plume. 

Dill regarded her in astonishment. She was six foot five even without
her spiked heels and one of the very few women who could carry three 
hundred pounds gracefully. She was very dark and she wore very red 
lipstick. 

“My name is Cutter—Missionary Belinda Cutter. I’m from Earth. I’m here
looking for our pastor. His name is Down Ward. He’s a white man from 
Earth. 

“Have you seen him?” 

The Society member who’d accompanied The Congregation, and who had
heretofore remained unnoticed stepped forward. 

“She located us and she’s very persistent,” he explained with a shrug. 

************ ************* ************* 

Eventually over six hundred souls came through the gate—including women
and children. 

“Many of our congregation were gang members or drug users or dealers
before we got saved. We know how to shoot and cut and fight,” 
Missionary Belinda said. 

“When that fellow explained about how our pastor came here for a fresh
start, we decided that we could use a fresh start too and besides, he 
may need us to back him up,” she concluded. 

“Well, you’re certainly armed, but you’re not armed or equipped to mount
an expedition into the jungle and you haven’t the training,” Dill said. 


“Well get us the right equipment. Get us some training. Find us a guide.
Time is a wastin’ son!” Missionary Belinda expostulated with great 
enthusiasm and impatience. 

Five months later The Congregation started off in search of their lost
pastor. 

Missionary Belinda was now clad in a khaki bush suit, but she still wore
the oversized purple hat. The men and many of the women now carried 
Sporterized Enfield Rifles and wore .44 Special Colt Single Actions 
stoked with hot Keith semi-wadcutter loads... 

All the new gear was in addition to, not instead of all the gangbanger
weapons that they’d bought. 

In fact, their insatiable appetite for Mac 10’s—the rifled barreled
version, Uzis, MP-5s and high capacity 9 mm Pistols, as well as 
switchblades, brass knuckles and nunchaku with swiveled chains 
connecting them tested his acquisition skills to the limit in a 
city-state that had recently started a vigorous weapon restriction 
policy. 

“I’m going with them,” Dill told his superior, when The Congregation was
ready to disembark. 

“Why?” 

“I’m bored here. As a Caucasian, I really can’t travel freely in
Wardsville anymore. I’m not welcome there. These people are fun and 
they’re setting out on an adventure,” Dill told him. 

***************** ************ ********* 

When we got to Cairo, I saw the surprise Jerri had planned. 

There was row after row of giant golden colored hawks sitting on their
great perches. 

There were also hundreds of the birds in the air practicing flying in
formation or other flying maneuvers. 

Each hawk had one of the Golden Eyed on its back. 

“That isn’t possible,” I said. 

By now I had most of my tongue back and could make myself understood. 

“Even in this low gravity and very thick air, birds large enough to
carry a man on their back just aren’t possible,” I concluded. 

“And an ape-man can’t jump fifty or sixty feet straight up or balance
securely on a branch as big around as his thumb,” Jerri said. 

“In both cases it’s a matter of partial levitation. In fact, I believe
that the hawks practice some sort of partial levitation 
themselves—otherwise they’d be mighty heavy in the air, even without a 
rider.” 

“Believe it or not, we’re mostly nomadic herdsmen on the plain. We spend
most of our time on zebra back herding and ride the hawks mostly for 
sport—though they have occasional uses for scouting or finding animals 
or people who’ve become lost. 

“Are you ready to try one out?” 

Chapter Twenty-Five 

The Congregation safari had stopped to resupply in a small community
that was part town and part village. 

Missionary Cutter stood berating the local witchdoctor. 

The man looked like a bodybuilder and wore a cowl of jaguar skin with
the part of the jaguar skull still attached. The upper fangs just 
rested on his forehead. 

Besides the cowl, he wore a jaguar skin loincloth and a variety of bone,
ivory and copper bracelets and anklets in addition to several necklaces 
made of several semi-precious stones. He wore nothing else. 

“Your jungle mambo-jambo, your unclean spirits and your heap-big juju
mean less than nothing to me. You need to get saved,” She shouted to 
him. 

Finally she ran down enough to let the man get a word in edgewise. He
had a decidedly British accent and diction. 

“Actually my lady, I apprenticed to my uncle as a young man, to be a
healer. He taught me to harvest, process and prescribe hundreds of 
jungle medicines as well as the basics of setting bones, lancing boils, 
pulling teeth, delivering babies and doing simple amputations. 

“But I still wasn’t satisfied with my skills, so I studied medicine at
Oxford. 

“So far as being saved, I am. In fact, I am a deacon at the local
Baptist Church,” The Doctor said. 

“Why are you dressed that way then?” Missionary Cutter asked weakly. 

She  seemed momentarily deflated. 

“It is the traditional wardrobe of a healer in these parts. Were I to
wear a suit and tie, I would appear as outré to my patients as a 
physician dressed as I am would appear in your New York,” he replied 
reasonably. 

Missionary Cutter bounced back remarkably quickly. 

“It ain’t my New York. I ain’t from this world and even on my world, I’m
not from that modern day Sodom,” She snapped. 

“Just like a Baptist!” she grumped to herself. 

“Missionary Cutter! How many times must I tell you that you are not in
charge of The Congregation?” Elder Stone said. 

“We have several Elders, each of them outrank you. Even the Ministers
outrank you. 

“In fact, even as Missionaries go, you’re pretty much at the bottom of
the seniority list. 

“Please quit intruding yourself and stirring up controversy all the
time. At least give me a break occasionally,” Elder Stone concluded. 

“We wouldn’t even be here, if it wasn’t for me. I’m the one who located
The Society, induced them to bring us here and then talked The 
Congregation into coming along,” she objected. 

“That’s true and we all came of our own free will, but the days have
become years. The years have become decades. Children who came with us 
have become adults with children and grandchildren of their own. 

“We haven’t found Elder Ward yet, nor his legendary city. This world is
impossibly large. We have to accept that we may never find him. 

“Some of the folks have started talking about settling down and giving
up this quest. If we do, we won’t need you alienating the local 
population against us.” 

“Hrmph! I will never give up the quest,” Missionary Cutter said. 

“Nor I, but The Congregation isn’t Jonesville. If people want to leave,
they can.” 

************** ********* **************** 

As The Congregation prepared to leave the village, the Witchdoctor
approached the Missionary. He bore a small animal in his arms while 
another larger animal followed him. 

“Madame,” he began. “I sincerely regret our misunderstanding. Please
take this gift.” 

He held the small creature out for her to examine. 

“This is a boon. This is what a full grown boon looks like.” 

He gestured at the larger creature. 

“A boon is exceptionally clever. They are loyal. A grown boon might
weigh two hundred, maybe two hundred and fifty pounds, but with his 
fearsome bite he’s a fair match for an eight hundred pound lion or 
gorilla. 

“Everyone doesn’t have the mental toughness to deal with them, but I
sense that you do. 

“Think of him as a bodyguard. Since it is obvious that you are a very
important person, I’d feel better if you were protected.” 

Missionary Cutter took the small animal dubiously, but it clung to her
like a small child. Having been flattered by the Doctor and having her 
maternal instincts aroused, she decided to accept the gift, whatever 
reservations that she might have felt. 

*************** ************ ********* 

They hadn’t gotten five miles down the trail when the boon played with
his new human and bit her hard enough to draw blood. 

Missionary Cutter was furious. She became even angrier when some of the
native members of The Congregation laughed uproariously and chatted 
back and forth in their heathenish gibberish. 

Some of the bearers had been born on the never-ending quest and
considered themselves as much a part of The Congregation as anyone 
else, but they clove to some native ways—which irritated the Missionary 
no end. 

“He has little needle-sharp baby teeth like a puppy,” Elder Stone
reassured her. “Once he gets his permanent teeth, he’ll be much less 
likely to draw blood.” 

***************** ******** *********** 

The Society had felt that The Congregation could very well stir things
up in The Society’s favor, or they would have taken much more 
persuasion to transport them. 

Since they were sympathetic, they dipped into their almost inexhaustible
funds and financed the enterprise generously. 

Nonetheless, everywhere they went, well-wishers gifted them more funds
and matériel. 

And everywhere they went, folks joined the strange quest for the
exceptional individual named “Down Ward” and his legendary city of 
second chances. 

The flamboyant Doctor had contributed a small sack of gold and an even
smaller sack of gems, as well as paying for all the supplies they’d 
taken on in the small town. 

All this was in spite of his fracas with Missionary Belinda Cutter, or
perhaps because of the fact that she had brought the movement to his 
attention. 

************* ************ ************** 

The Missionary’s feet had started to hurt her a great deal. She’d
switched to riding a mule instead of walking and she’d swapped to 
larger sizes of boot from the well-stocked quartermaster wagons 
twice... 

But she felt almost as if the bones in her feet were trying to rearrange
themselves. 

************* ************* ************ 

After a brief list of instructions, I climbed aboard one of the strange
golden hawks. 

The hawks weren’t tethered and they had no reigns or any sort of
controls. Like the Methuselahs, they were free moral agents and 
responded to telepathic directions. 

Flying brought back all my dormant fear of heights. 

I clung to the bird’s saddle with both my hands and my prehensile feet.
If I’d had a tail like the Tailed Folk, I’d have grabbed ahold of 
something with it too. 

Some fool originated the idea that to feel fear, but to persevere
nonetheless, is courage. 

That’s arrant nonsense. Courage is the complete freedom from fear. But
bravery is like virginity—feel fear once and you’re no longer brave. 

We have all felt fear at least once long before any sort of mental
discipline can free us from fear... 

So we are all the sons of cowards and we are cowards in our own right. 

And every time that fear comes back to say that it owns me free and
clear, the rage comes bursting to the surface. 

I hate myself for every time that I’ve felt fear. 

I hate myself for every time that I ever backed down; every time that I
ever held my peace; every time I ever compromised or tried to conform. 

I hate myself, but I tell the fear that while it might own me and damn
me, it doesn’t control me. 

I let go with hands and feet and for a moment I was tempted to leap off
and test my ape-man’s invulnerability to damage from a fall. 

There was no compelling reason to test my ability to survive a fall from
on high. As the fear retreated, so did the self-loathing it brought. 

“Your mind is fascinating,” the hawk said. 

We flew though the clear blue sky where it is always high noon, even
when the clouds come with rain and hide the sun it is still directly 
overhead. 

The hawk gave me a good aerial tour of Dolton’s city and we flew over
the endless plain to the west and crossed the gigantic river to fly 
over the endless jungles to the east. 

As hot as it usually is on the ground, I found the altitudes chilly and
as tears rolled from my eyes, I resolved to bring some sort of goggles 
for my next excursion. 

************** ************* *************** 

“So what is your surprise?” Jerri asked me when the flight was over. 

“ I also think that airpower is important in warfare. A few years ago,
when I found out what gifted mechanics the Tailed Folk were, I started 
building an Air Force of my own.” 

“You mean flying machines? Is that possible? “Jerry asked. 

“Just because something is, doesn’t prove that it is possible. In a very
large universe ruled by statistical constraints, the impossible may 
very well occur occasionally. 

“I don’t know if flying machines are possible, but they are. 

“They are here, in large numbers,” I told the group. 

“Why here and not in your city?” The Maestro asked. 

“They have something here that no one else has discovered on this
peculiar world,” I said. 

“Yes?” Sabrina prompted. 

“Petroleum,” I said. “Once everyone is rested, I’ll show you my Air
Force.” 

“Do you mean a few aeroplanes?” The Maestro asked. 

“No, I mean like several hundred aeroplanes. The only real problem is
that bombing the city to rubble seems a rather anemic way to save it, 
not to mention the people that get wasted in the process.” 

“There are Tawn in the city as well as humans,” Stone, my Secretary of
War injected rather icily. 

“I said ‘people’. I did not say ‘humans’. The Tawn are people too,
aren’t they?” was my heartfelt response. 

“I may be able to cut down on the collateral damage a great deal,”
Dolton interjected. 

Chapter Twenty-Six 

We looked at my Air Force. 

“Why WWI style bi-planes?” The Maestro asked. 

There were over twelve hundred of the two-seater planes and my factories
were working overtime to make more. 

“Metals are, but they are rather precious, especially aluminum. The
bi-planes have canvas wings and fuselage and frames of plywood. Even 
the propellers are formed of hardwood. 

“But I have some other craft,” I said. 

I took them to where I had two-dozen replicas of the WWII B-17s—the
Flying Fortress. 

Each plane could carry almost two tons of bombs. The original design had
carried six pairs of .30 caliber Browning Machineguns, but they’d 
upgraded to .50 Caliber Brownings before they even got into regular 
production and they’d steadily added firing ports throughout the war. 

My version, designed to take advantage of the light gravity and heavy
atmosphere, had six pair of our upsized 1.1 inch Browning M-2s, another 
eight pair of .50 Caliber M-2s, and four pair of 7mm-08 Caliber 
Machineguns just for fun. 

“They’re not B-52s,” I said. “They are quite capable of bombing with
love though.” 

I didn’t bother to tell them that I had some other projects under
development. They didn’t need to know. 

Then Dolton took me to our labs. 

Personally, I don’t believe in Evolution. Unlike most though, I don’t
think that it is stupid or contrary to current Scientific Evidence. 

It just so happens that it isn’t true. 

It does make a handy mental scaffolding to hang various biological ideas
on though. 

I heard or read—I don’t remember—a scientist say that to the degree that
algebra and calculus are easy to humans, that it may be because those 
are the kinds of equations that our tree-dwelling ancestors had to 
master intuitively to navigate through the trees under gravity. 

Ever since I heard that, I’ve wondered if a race of sentient beings with
far better smell and taste than humans might not make much better 
chemists. 

I’m no chemist, but I think of organic chemistry largely in terms of
smells and tastes: alcohols, esters, ketones, hydrocarbons, benzene, 
salts, bromine and chlorine... 

The list goes on. At any rate, the Tailed Folk can smell almost as well
as a Beagle Dog, and have far more taste receptors too. I’d arranged 
for some of them to get lessons in chemistry and access to a laboratory 
to just kinda clown around. 

It had borne fruit much sooner than I expected. 

“This drug increase intelligence about one-third,” Dolton said. 

To put that in perspective: Average I.Q. is 100. Genius is considered
140 and above. Give the drug to a very average dude with an I.Q. of 100 
and you wouldn’t quite make him a genius, but he would be remarkably 
sharper. 

Take the poor dude who just barely gets by, or doesn’t get by, with an
I.Q. of 85 and you’d boost him to high normal. 

Dolton explained that the drug had three extra effects, over and above
its increase of general intelligence. 

Finding old memories became much easier and both the “eureka effect” and
the “grandmaster effect” were increased well out of proportion to the 
increase in general intelligence. 

The eureka effect is when someone has all the facts in their mind and
suddenly they all come together. When that happened to Archimedes once, 
and he ran down the streets of Ancient Greece screaming, 

“Eureka!” 

The grandmaster effect is how some Chess Grandmasters seem to sense
intuitively which lines of play are worth exploring. 

Of course, any of those three effects would cause someone to score
higher on an earthly I.Q. test, but Dolton assured me that he 
compensated in his test. 

So in essence, the drug made one smarter and far more inventive and
creative all at the same time. 

“How long does the drug last?” I asked. 

“It’s a one-time thing. Take some and it will change you,” Dolton said. 

Now all the time that I’m talking to Dalton, the Tailed Folk were
hanging around—literally. 

They seem most comfortable hanging by their tails, not quite upside
down, torsos inclining at about seventy degrees frontward. 

Of course any workshop, factory or lab that utilizes the ingeniousness
of the Tailed Folk will have ample overhead anchor points and 
travelling bars overhead. 

“How long does it take to work?” I asked. 

“Five to six weeks.” 

“How much does it take?” I asked. 

“Micrograms,” Dolton answered. 

“Any severe side-effects?” 

“None that we’ve discovered so far.” 

“Can it be delivered as an aerosol? How much can you make me on short
notice?” I asked. 

“It works best as an aerosol and as much as you wish,” Dolton answered. 

“Bring me a dose,” I said. 

“Are you sure,” The Maestro asked. 

Then he started. 

“Your eyes have turned golden,” he said. 

“That is an effect of being telepathically linked with the golden
hawks,” Jerri said. “I’ve never seen it work so fast though.” 

*************** ************* ************ 

Sabrina had separated from the rest of the assemblage a bit. She spoke
briefly to one of the Tailed Folk. He brought her an inhaler with the 
intelligence drug. 

So far as Sabrina was concerned, more I.Q. was always better. 

“This was a prosthetic eye,” Sabrina told the tailed scientist. “It is
made out of something unlike anything seen anywhere else but the 
healing world. 

“When Rubenstein ripped it out, it was broken. Perhaps you can learn
something from it though,” she told the strange creature. 

He didn’t attempt to speak, but he placed a hand on Sabrina’s shoulder
and made a hooting sound that conveyed both sympathy for her lack of 
eyes and gratitude for the artifact. 

************** ************ **************** 

“What in the Hell is going on?” Missionary Cutter demanded to know. 

“All of a sudden I have feet like a freakin’ chimpanzee!” 

“The natives say that you have contracted the ape-man sickness. They say
that occasionally boons carry the sickness—although sickness isn’t 
quite the word. 

“It is a change and a not altogether bad change,” Elder Stone told her. 

“Did that Witchdoctor do this to me intentionally?” she demanded. 

“Almost certainly,” Elder Stone said. “Didn’t you notice his feet? I
did, but I thought it a birth defect.” 

************** ************** ************* 

While Missionary Belinda Cutter was not the least bit happy about the
change, she had to admit that she felt many years younger. 

The society had given her anti-aging drugs and the multi-stage travel
through hyperspace to the African ringworld had rejuvenated her. 

Still, she was no longer young and she’d been feeling her years. Now she
had the irrepressible urge to turn cartwheels or walk on her hands or 
even turn back flips. 

************** *********** ********** 

“Why on earth would you want to drop the I.Q. drug on the city?” The
Maestro asked me. 

“I can see you wanting your own people to be extra sharp, but why juice
up the enemy?” 

“I can’t help but believe that many folks in the city would resist
Rubenstein, if they just knew how. I’m going to give them a lot more 
imagination so they can work out the ‘how’,” I explained. 

“But won’t Rubenstein’s troops get smarter and therefore better at
putting down resistance?” Sabrina asked. 

“Signal-to-Noise-Ratio”—there is only so much ‘signal’ out there, but
there’s no end to noise. 

“When you boost the signal linearly, you boost the noise exponentially. 

“Besides, some of the ‘more effect means of keeping folks under control’
are the selfsame measures a guerilla force tries to force the occupiers 
to adopt. 

“Those measures convince the fence-sitters that they have a vested
interest in driving the invaders out,” I explained. 

*************** ************* ************ 

A giant many-eyed Methuselah walked into the camp of The Congregation. 

The original members had gone forth and multiplied, as had the original
group of natives that had started out with them. But they had picked up 
so many “converts” that The Congregation was over eighty percent 
ringworld Africans. 

They gave the huge creature a wide berth, but their attitude was more
one of respect than fear. 

“They say that he has come for you,” Elder Stone told her. 

“He will take you into the jungle. He will teach you and when you are
ready, he will bring you back to us.” 

Missionary Cutter stood evaluating the outré creature dubiously. 

“Do you intend to force me to come with you?” she addressed the
elephant. 

While he had no telepathic contact with the nouveau ape-woman and while
he knew no English—nonetheless he caught her meaning. 

He shook his head vigorously and turned as if to go. 

“Wait, I will go with you so long as it is by my free will,” Missionary
Belinda Cutter said. 

She scrambled atop the Methuselah with astonishing alacrity for a woman
over a century-and-a-half old. 

***************** *************** ********** 

Rubenstein had brought over one million men and he was bringing in more
all the time. There had been slightly more than fifty thousand souls in 
the city and we’d been trying hard to build it big enough to house 
perhaps four times that many in the foreseeable future-but we hadn’t 
even gotten there yet. 

As a result, many of Rubenstein’s troops were billeted outside the city
proper. He had them in Quonset huts and plywood barracks and even 
tents. 

My flying fortresses flew in very high and bombed the city proper with
I.Q. gas. Meanwhile my whole fleet of bi-planes dropped bombs on 
Rubenstein’s troops. 

Each plane carried two one hundred and twenty pound bombs filled with
very high explosive fragmentation bombs. 

As the last bi-plane dropped its load, the hawks flew over. The men and
hawks could only carry a few pineapple-sized hand grenades that 
exploded on impact... 

But we’d moved a bunch of ordnance closer to the city, so each hawk and
rider dumped several loads of bombs. 

Just as the hawks had flown their last run, the B-17s were back with
their bomb bays filled with cluster bombs. 

Then just as things had started to get back to normal, the bi-planes
arrived again to drop load after load of incendiaries into Rubenstein’s 
troopers. 

The last act was when the B-17s dropped one more load of I.Q. gas. 

The bombing wasn’t without collateral damage of course. There were
citizens performing duties in Rubenstein’s ghetto. Some of our bombs 
went wide and even the I.Q. gas canisters created a few casualties. 

But all in all it was a remarkably clean strike. 

Then it was time to tighten down on the city. 

Bi-planes aren’t the only thing that can be made out of plywood. The
city sat on a large freshwater lake and many of its staples come by 
water. 

My fleet of PT Boats put a stop to most of that and some strategic
bombing ruined many of the elevators from the shore to the Cliffside 
city. 

We dropped little but I.Q. gas on the city the first couple of months.
We’d kinda planned to leave most of Rubenstein’s troops out of the 
first big I.Q. burst. 

But Rubenstein moved as many city folk into his ghetto as hostages while
moving as many of his troops into the city as possible. 

I didn’t think that Rubenstein’s NCOs would groove on having troops
composed largely of near geniuses. I anticipated that such an army 
would have the tendency to turn into a debating society. 

Of course, ruthless and harsh discipline can stifle insubordination, but
then his troopers would start to question how much they actually 
enjoyed being in Rubenstein’s army. 

We accepted deserters with open arms and then dropped leaflets where the
deserters could tell their erstwhile comrades how well off they now 
were. 

I wasn’t clowning around anymore, nor was I trying to keep my Air Force
secret. 

Any new troops coming through the last gate were bombed with I.Q. gas,
explosives and neurotoxins. Very few of them made it to the city. 

And of course, my factories turned around the clock to give me more
planes, PT Boats, bombs and chemicals. 

I’d gotten my chemists copies of the books “PiHKAL”—“Phenethylamines I
Have known and Loved” and “TiHKAL”—“Tryptamines I Have Known And 
Loved”—books written by one of the pioneers of consciousness expansion 
by chemical means, Dr Alexander Shulgin. 

After almost everyone had been exposed to the I.Q. drug—and we often
dropped more, in case anyone had missed out—and we were dropping a new 
psychedelic every few days. 

The citizens and Rubenstein’s soldiers both got used to functioning
under all sorts of radical psychedelic highs—but that’s no way to run a 
railroad—or a totalitarian state. 

Psychedelics are dangerous tools. When a scientist or a mathematician
uses one to try to induce one of those eureka moments, they are 
reasonably tame. 

Thing is, there are planes of existence surrounding our material realm,
and they are chock full of unclean spirits waiting to try to take 
control of a human being. 

Someone who takes psychotropic chemicals to try to get in touch with a
“Higher Consciousness” leaves themselves wide open to possession. 

You aren’t going to meet God on a chemical high. He will speak to you
when and if he chooses. That leaves the demonic—and they’d love to 
speak to you, to deceive you, to control you. 

Christians can’t be possessed of course, but if they clown around with
such things they can end up oppressed—which means that one or more 
unclean spirits follow them around, whisper wicked thoughts in their 
hearts and generally run them down—but they can’t actually come inside 
of a Christian. 

The people who had the never-ending rain of psychedelics coming down on
them weren’t at any particular extra risk at the hand of the 
unclean—because they hadn’t even volunteered to partake of the 
chemicals. 

A significant portion of Rubenstein’s men, particularly the Senior NCOs
and Officers were already given over to evil though. 

The steady stream of chemicals let their demons get the complete upper
hand in these men’s reprobate spirits. 

Evil syndicates can exist, only to the degree that they smuggle in large
quantities of virtue. 

Who will willingly serve in an organization where achievement affords no
protection against sudden arrest, imprisonment, torture and death? 

How can a house stand, when everyman’s hand is against every other and
backstabbing is the favorite indoor and outdoor sport? 

It just doesn’t work. 

A human nihilist might very well treasure and preserve his tools and
weapons of destruction. The demonic mind doesn’t work that way. It can 
and will turn on and destroy those who serve it—at any time, for the 
feeblest of reasons, or for no reason at all. 

Rubenstein’s army started to fall apart at the seams. 

And agents of The Society were carrying my chemical assault to
Wardsville too, all the while—undermining Rubenstein’s home base. 

I was fiendishly preparing for a final push. 

************** *************** *********** 

The Methuselah had promised to return Missionary Cutter to her
companions. 

She was surprised and gratified to see that they hadn’t broken camp, but
had instead camped in the same spot; waiting for her over the weeks 
she’d been gone. 

“I know how to get us to where Down Ward is, but we must hurry,”
Missionary Belinda Cutter, ape-woman told them. “His need is extreme.” 

Dill, the man from The Society sat and watched in amazement as
Missionary Cutter wrote reams of equations and drew multiple arcane 
diagrams. 

Like all Society members, Dill was connected to hyperspace. When the
good Missionary explained how the very fabric of local time and space 
had been warped and twisted beyond all precedent, Dill reached out with 
the extra-dimensional part of him and verified the validity of what she 
said. 

“That’s all well and good,” Dill said. “But only Down Ward or his
daughter could command that kind of power. Only two humans in the whole 
history of the human race can do what they did.” 

“Get everyone ready to move. A portal like this will be very hard to
keep open,” Belinda said. 

“There are at least three humans in history who could do this. I am one
of them.” 

Chapter Twenty-Seven 

“Keep your filthy hands off The Virgin Queen!” The Virgin Queen told
Rubenstein. 

“The Virgin Queen is not for the likes of you, or indeed, for the likes
of any mortal. You need my complaisance in your devious schemes. 

“And you’d be no match for The Virgin Queen in combat, even with your
déclassé cyborg body parts.” 

Since Rubenstein could think of no viable alternative, he took his leave
of The Virgin Queen. 

Rubenstein left frustrated. It wasn’t that the strange pale woman was
attractive. She wasn’t. She wasn’t homely or ugly, but except for her 
paleness and her extraordinary gracefulness, even while packing a few 
extra pounds, she was very commonplace. 

She was just something that he hadn’t dominated and degraded yet, so he
obsessed about her. And he so didn’t groove on being equal partners 
with anyone—but his constant companion whispered and threatened 
ominously in his mind and coerced him into getting with the program. 

The next course of action Rubenstein embarked upon, to salve his abraded
ego, was to arrest a dozen of the technicians who kept the hydrogen 
fusion reactors going and hence kept the city’s electricity flowing. 

The Guild’s head Union Steward was in Rubenstein’s throne room almost
before the men were brought before him. 

“I want access to the reactor rooms and I want you to start training my
own people how to run the reactors,” Rubenstein told Gilbert, the 
unimpressed and unfrightened Head Union Steward. 

“You have no idea how wearying it is to have to explain the facts of the
situation to you, over and over again,” Gilbert said. “You are a 
moron.” 

“I’ll have you geld and tortured to death in this very chamber, but
first I’ll make you watch your men being cooked alive,” Rubenstein 
shouted. 

“You may do that,” Gilbert said. “But you will do it in the dark. There
is a forty-eight hour strike starting...” 

Gilbert stopped to consult his pocket watch. 

“Starting now. Every hour that you delay releasing these men will add
twelve hours to our strike. 

“Lay a hand on me or any of my men and we’ll shut the power off
permanently.” 

“I will have my men break into your power plant and take over,”
Rubenstein blustered. 

“We will see you coming and we will destroy the reactors long before
your men get to them—not that they would be able to run them, much less 
maintain them without our aid,” Gilbert said. 

“Every one of you will die horribly,” Rubenstein shouted. 

“Perhaps, but that won’t get you electric power, now will it?” 

“Let him go you clown,” the shadow whispered in Rubenstein’s mind. “Let
them all go! I told you not to do this. You are a ham-handed fool.” 

Rubenstein pondered glumly. He’d been undisputed master of Wardsville
and numerous smaller cities. He’d come here, largely because of the 
shadow’s constant urgings, to conquer yet another city—and to claim his 
final vengeance on Down Ward and his uppity half-caste daughter. 

Both Ward and his daughter had escaped. Ward’s Army—his Air Force, to be
precise—had cut off Rubenstein’s way home, to his real empire. 

He found that he’d traded an empire were he was undisputed master for a
much smaller kingdom where he was under constant attack; where he had 
to share power with the very strange Virgin Queen, The Power Guild and 
the Plumber’s Guild. 

There were a half a dozen lesser Guilds. They couldn’t completely shut
the city down and couldn’t defy Rubenstein outright. They could and did 
weigh in many of his decisions. 

Then there were his strange and unseen allies—The Unborn. The Tawn
didn’t like being under The Unborn’s control once more—but millennia of 
breeding and tradition assured that they would line up to follow The 
Unborn and not Rubenstein when they came to their inevitable parting of 
the ways. 

Even the dimwit that he’d gotten to impersonate Down Ward had a certain
amount of power in the grand scheme of things. 

Rubenstein had followed the shadow with burning eyes suggestions most of
the time in Wardsville, but he’d been confident enough to defy the 
strange presence occasionally. 

There had been no doubt then, that Rubenstein had been in complete
control and could veto the shadow at any time. 

Here in this strange place, he was increasingly convinced that he
disobeyed the shadow at considerable peril. Every time he backed down 
on something he felt strongly about, he felt the shadow take more 
control. 

Rubenstein waved weakly at his attendants, to give the order to let the
Guild members go. 

“Could you stay one moment?” Rubenstein said to Gilbert. “Come close.” 

Gilbert shrugged and stepped forward. 

Rubenstein spoke with his hand covering his mouth, so that his lips
couldn’t be read. 

“I trust no one and I need a friend very badly. Would you be my friend?”
He said piteously. 

“That is an astonishing request. I’m not at all sure that it could be
done honourably—never mind the fact that I don’t even like you,” 
Gilbert said. 

“You wouldn’t have given a different answer, if you were convinced that
I’d have your eyes put out in retaliation, would you? 

“What I needed was to glimpse that kind of resolve in action once more. 

“It is a very rare quality. Thank you.” 

Gilbert walked off shaking his head. 

“What was that about?” the shadow berated Rubenstein. “Are you losing
what passes for a mind in you?” 

But Rubenstein didn’t answer the shadow directly and there were still
places in his mind that it couldn’t peer. 

If Gilbert could stand so straight and defy Rubenstein, then by
implication, Rubenstein could defy the shadow. 

**************** ************ ************ 

It was time to attack. It was time to take the city back or die trying. 

First there was a bombing run. The folks on the ground thought that it
was just one more barrage of psychotropic chemicals. 

The US Military experimented with using LSD-25 as a non-lethal nerve
gas. The theory was that troops under the influence wouldn’t fight very 
effectively and objectives could be taken with minimal casualties. 

I don’t know quite how they determined it, but they concluded that enemy
troopers with a head full of acid could still be quite dangerous thank 
you, and any hypothetical softening of defenses wasn’t worth the bother 
and fuss. 

Rubenstein’s army was largely run with Methedrine. We’d been softening
them up with dozens of psychedelic chemicals for weeks and the 
non-lethal nerve gas my chemists came up with was far better tailored 
to its role than LSD-25 ever was. 

The gas didn’t linger in the air for very long, so my own troops
wouldn’t need gas masks or suits, but it lasted for a long time in the 
human body and it could be absorbed through the skin as well as 
breathed. 

Then we attacked on all fronts. Not only did we send wave after wave to
attack the fences—we dropped hundreds of airborne paratroopers and sent 
in gliders. 

Soon everything had devolved into chaotic street fighting. 

************** ************* ************ 

“During the attack, we’re shutting down the reactors,” Gilbert told
Rubenstein. 

“I’ll have every one of your Guild members executed as traitors!”
Rubenstein exploded. 

“No you won’t. I have hopes that the King can retake the city and I’m
doing my small part to aid him. 

“But if you should win this battle, you will still need power and you
still won’t dare move against us,” Gilbert said. 

“I’ll kill one of every ten technicians, and take the big toes and right
eyes of all the survivors then,” Rubenstein said. 

“No you won’t. If you arrest even one of our Guild brothers for our role
in this war—or for any other reason... 

“Then we’ll destroy the reactors and you will never again have fusion
power in the city,” Gilbert said. 

“You’re bluffing,” Rubenstein said. “Once you destroy the reactors you
have nothing left to bargain with.” 

“We’re not bargaining. We’re issuing an ultimatum. 

“The only good way to practice brinksmanship is to firmly resolve to
never bluff,” Gilbert said. 

**************** ********* ************ 

Once the attack was underway, and with the further provocation of
strange drugs, large parts of Rubenstein’s army mutinied. 

The sadistic and despotic underlings divided the city into countless
balkanized territories, each with a spur-of-the-moment nihilist at the 
helm. 

The mini-kingdoms weren’t meant to last long—just long enough for the
demonic to sate their lusts momentarily. 

Many of the Rubenstein’s soldiers hadn’t whole-heartedly embraced pure
evil and they revolted. 

Meanwhile the citizens, who had far more munitions salted away than the
most pessimistic of Rubenstein’s planners could have imagined, struck 
back. 

The city was falling one pentagonal section at a time—with surprisingly
few friendly casualties. 

Even the segments of Rubenstein’s army that defected en masse suffered
relatively few casualties. 

There were sections though, where Rubenstein’s troopers massacred the
citizens and resisted to the last man. 

*********** ***************** ************* 

Missionary Belinda Cutter opened a portal and held it open while over
three thousand people passed through. 

It was a dicey proposition to both hold the portal open and to jump
through it. 

Consequently most of The Congregation found themselves standing in the
middle of war-torn streets that had seen a recent battle—recent enough 
that the blood hadn’t dried, and there was still the smell of Gunfire 
in the air. 

Ward’s commandos had extensive instructions on how to assimilate
civilian militia in the field and to protect non-combatants and shift 
them to secured areas. 

It really wasn’t relevant that The Congregation had come from a long way
off. 

Their timing had caused them to miss most of the fighting though and the
battle was largely won. 

But Missionary Belinda Cutter, wearing her pith helmet with the
flamboyant purple scarf wrapped round it and barefoot because of her 
ape-woman feet... 

She ended up several miles from the rest of the group. 

*************** **************** ************ 

The Virgin Queen came running up to my command post. 

“Down, Rubenstein has a sizable nuclear bomb. It is a very dirty
radiation enhanced bomb. If he sets it off, everyone in the city will 
die. 

“We have to stop him. If all else fails, perhaps you can open a portal
and send the bomb elsewhere,” The Virgin Queen stammered. 

“I can’t just open a portal on a whim. Certain conditions have to be
right. Nonetheless, perhaps we can stop him before he starts the 
countdown,” I said. 

“I’m coming,” Sabrina said. 

“You’re blind,” I objected. “I’d rather you stayed here where it’s
relatively safe.” 

She had taken to keeping her eyelids closed—or maybe with no orbs,
they’d grown together. 

“I can see as well as most men, with my ears,” Sabrina said. “And I
might be able to open a portal where you could not.” 

“Perhaps—but how well can you echo-locate with your ears ringing from
multiple close Gunshots and explosions?” 

“You’re not letting me finish. Ape-men regenerate. You told me that I
have the ape-man gene,” Sabrina said. 

“I wanted to give them another day or two, but...” 

Sabrina used her fingers to pry her eyelids open. A new pair of
featureless silver orbs was revealed. 

“I understand ordinary regeneration. How in The Seven Burning Hells did
your body regenerate you a pair of silver cyborg eyes?” I asked her. 

“I prefer them,” Sabrina shrugged. “How does the body do anything? It’s
beyond the conscious mind.” 

“We don’t have time to discuss this now! We have to hurry,” The Virgin
Queen expostulated. 

************ *************** *********** 

The Virgin Queen led us on a zigzag course through burning neighborhoods
where the cobblestone streets were strewn with glass. 

Houses and broken glass can be replaced, but if Rubenstein set off the
bomb, the city and all the people in it would perish. 

We ended up in a building with a deep sunken pit about thirty feet deep
and thirty feet in diameter. 

“This was one of Rubenstein’s bomb shelters,” The Virgin Queen said. 

Sure enough, there was Rubenstein in one corner of the circular room,
frantically fiddling with something. 

I charged. 

Sabrina, The Maestro, all the commandos we’d brought and I were all on
one side of the room, when a wall of foot-thick glass, or something 
transparent, fell and blocked our way back out. 

Rubenstein ran and grabbed a rope as if he expected it to haul him out
of the pit—only nothing happened. 

“You’ve betrayed me, you witch!” Rubenstein screamed at The Virgin
Queen. 

The glass would have dampened any sound, but The Virgin Queen had wanted
to gloat. She’d installed an intercom system—apparently powered by 
batteries. 

“What else did you expect, you cretin? The Virgin Queen rids herself of
Down Ward, Sabrina, my worthless grandfather and you, you psychopathic 
piece of nothing. 

“My! The world will be a much better place for The Virgin Queen after
today. 

“That bomb isn’t nuclear, but it is chock full of high explosives—it
will obliterate all trace of you from this world,” The Virgin Queen 
gloated into her microphone. 

“There is a plunger on the far side of the room. 

“I will be completely safe behind this shield and I will leave nothing
to chance. 

“Why? What have I ever done to you?” I asked. “I loved you once.” 

“Your love is rooted in carnal desire. The Virgin Queen is above all
sexual desires—she always has been. 

“The Maestro loved The Virgin Queen until Down Ward came into her life. 

“Then all The Maestro ever had to say was how strong was Down Ward; how
clever was Down Ward. 

“Down Ward might be the Prophet that the ancient texts foretold. 

“The Virgin Queen hates Down Ward. 

“And then Down Ward had the audacity to kiss The Virgin Queen and ask
her to marry him. 

“You are common filth!” She concluded her tirade. 

I looked at The Maestro in astonishment. 

“You criticized me relentlessly. I had no idea that you held me in such
high regard,” I said. 

“You kissed her and proposed to her? And that’s why you didn’t speak to
me again for over forty years? Because my granddaughter is psychotic?” 
The Maestro looked close to tears. 

Then there was that tingling you get when someone has massively
distorted time and space and a portal opens. 

There was someone beside The Virgin Queen. 

“I heard all of that,” she said. “You will have to get through me to get
to the detonator.” 

“Belinda?” I cried. 

“Mother! How on earth did you get here?” Sabrina cried. 

The Virgin Queen had no weapons showing, because she’d been playing the
role of an escaped prisoner. Belinda had a Single Action in a 
cross-draw flap holster. 

“Belinda, she’s a trained killer. Be careful!” I shouted. 

The Virgin Queen was perhaps five-eleven. Belinda was six-five however
and she was one of the original “Deca-Damsels”—women who take loads of 
steroids like Deca-Durabolin and lift heavy weights. 

They aren’t bodybuilders for the most part; just exhibitionists who love
to go around in short shorts and halter tops freaking the squares. 

Some of them are prostitutes. That’s what Belinda had been. 

The point is some of the Deca-Damsels are incredibly strong. Belinda was
one of the largest and strongest that I’d ever seen. 

And The Virgin Queen had never fought anyone with Belinda’s reach and
power. 

Belinda shot in a hard left jab from what seemed too far away. She
clipped The Virgin Queen a stinging punch to the face. 

The straight right that followed the left was fortified with a pair of
brass knuckles. 

The Virgin Queen’s nose broke and her head snapped back and most folks
would have went down for the count. 

The Virgin Queen wasn’t ordinary. She pulled Belinda into her and they
went to the floor. 

Belinda had never studied Brazilian Jujutsu and she was soon in a choke
and well on the way toward being unconscious. 

The Virgin Queen rose and stepped toward her plunger. 

Time went into super slow motion for me. I did something supposedly
impossible. I opened a very short-range portal, with no underlying 
crease in hyperspace to help even a little. 

The portal just naturally seemed to engulf my men. 

I pretty much threw Sabrina and The Maestro through. 

They’d materialize on the street outside. I had my doubts about the
stability of the building if the “Bomb” was anywhere near full of 
plastique. 

But I wasn’t willing to abandon Belinda, nor did I want to abandon
Rubenstein. 

I grabbed Rubenstein and ported beside Belinda. 

The Virgin Queen pushed the plunger and time was speeding up to almost
normal. 

I released Rubenstein and snatched Belinda up and threw her over one
shoulder. 

The blast had come and gone, but the walls were crazing and crumbling
very rapidly. 

I extended my hand to Rubenstein. 

“If you want to live, grab hold and hang on tight,” I told him. 

I had meant to land on the street close to Sabrina and The Maestro... 

But at the last instant, The Virgin Queen opened a portal herself. I’d
never suspected that she could do that. I don’t think that she knew 
that she could either. 

The point being, it really roils space up when you create two
short-range portals within yards of each other. 

I ended up clear on the other side of town, inside the central chamber
of our town’s largest pyramid, of all places. 

Fortunately I had a pair of handcuffs with me—since it was conceivable
that I’d take a prisoner—and I had. 

“I know that you can break them Rubenstein, but few of my people are as
fond of you as I am. If they see you with me and unrestrained—they 
might shoot you. 

“Hang with me, I’m going to grant you some very generous terms of
surrender,” I told him. 

“Why would you do that?” Belinda demanded. 

She’d regained consciousness and typically, she wanted to kibitz. 

“Belinda please, I’m going to cut Rubenstein some slack, because I have
a use for him—besides, there’s that forgiveness thingy,” I said. 

“That’s ‘Missionary Belinda’ to you,” She said haughtily. 

“They’ve made you a Missionary? I didn’t even know that you were a
Church member. 

“I leave for a little while and things get completely out of hand. 

“You know what the rule is. Since I knew you before you acquired your
title, I don’t have to address you as ‘Missionary’ unless I’m at a 
church function. 

“On the other hand, I was an Elder the first time I met you... 

“So if you want to be formal address me as ‘Elder Ward’,” I said. 

“And a fine Elder you were, hanging around with a low-down, no-account
whore and fathering a child,” Belinda shouted. 

“You do realize that you’re talking about yourself?” I asked. 

“It doesn’t alter the facts. 

“Did I ever tell you that Rubenstein is my cousin on my mother’s side? 

“Rubenstein, tell this white man that I wasn’t no type of woman for a
Preacher of The Gospel to be consorting with,” She said. 

“Belinda I can’t tell you how happy that I am to see you again, but
please shut-up,” I said. 

One of my commandos spotted us as we exited the pyramid and came running
up to me. 

“Highness, what are you doing here? The Unborn are mounting an attack
and we need you in the command center as soon as possible,” he said. 

“Come along Rubenstein. You’ve been hobnobbing with these deviants. You
can be my technical consultant,” I said. 

“All I know is: they’re scary,” Rubenstein said. 

“That’s something I didn’t know. You see they never scared me.” 

Chapter Twenty-Eight 

“Someone take those handcuffs off Rubenstein,” I said. 

An instant later a link of chain went flying across the room. 

“Damned Nation! I asked you not to break them. Those were Smith and
Wessons from Earth,” I said. 

Rubenstein shrugged as his silver cyborg fingers pinched each steel
bracelet in turn and torqued them off his wrists and mangling them 
beyond easy recognition in the process. 

On the wall-sized screen in my command center—the one Rubenstein hadn’t
found or even suspected—I could see more of the golden vimanas on the 
skyline than I could readily number. 

A single vimana broke loose from the formation and came forward slowly. 

“They say they want to speak to you,” one of my Tawn told me. 

Tawn seem to be partially hooked to The Unborn via telepathy or some
such. 

I sent a brave man to guide the vimana to where I could both speak to it
and hear it via hidden cameras, microphones and speakers. 

Meanwhile my technicians were probing it in every way they could think
of and filing it all away for future reference. 

“¿Qué es lo que quieres?” I asked. 

Foreign languages are all really just Spanish in drag—though many
foreigners garble their Spanish beyond any hope of easy understanding. 

The Unborn, like most other foreigners, don’t like to admit that they’re
really speaking garbled Spanish, so they answered in the language that 
they shared with the Tawn. 

“We’d prefer to speak to you in person,” the vimana broadcast. 

“I’d prefer that y’all park your vehicles and walk home, leaving them
for us to study. 

“Looks like we’re both going to be disappointed with events today. 

“I can communicate with you just fine from where I am,” I replied. 

“You are incautious. It is patently obvious to our superior reasoning
that someone built this world. 

“The Builders have left cybernetic beings of godlike powers in charge of
maintaining their creation. 

“We have many indirect but uncontestable proofs of this. 

“The Builders and The Builder’s servants have been dormant for much of
this world’s history. 

“Throughout our long history we have been very cautious and circumspect
lest we rouse The Builder’s servants or even The Builders themselves. 

“None of us can even guess what they might do if aroused—more than
likely something that would destroy us all. 

“But you frisk and play with powers that are beyond even our
comprehension. 

“Promise to serve us and let us show you how to bring your reckless
displays of power under our subjection and you can rule as our viceroy. 


“Otherwise we wipe out all of your puny human cities, starting with this
one.” 

“Eat me,” I said. 

“That is precisely what we propose to do if you don’t surrender,” the
vimana broadcast. 

I flipped my microphone off. 

“Can’t insult these knob-gobblers, can you?” I remarked. “Destroy it.” 

I hadn’t agreed to a truce and I hoped to learn something in the process
of destroying this vimana. 

The first serving was tons of extremely hot-burning napalm. 

I left off worrying about this lone vimana that we had already lured
into a trap that it couldn’t escape from. 

“Bring out the Flying Fortresses,” I ordered. 

These B-17s had been built solely to destroy vimana. 

On my last encounter, they had proven unaffected by most small arms
fire, but RPGs definitely put them down. 

These B-17s carried no bombs. They had nothing smaller than the 1.1 inch
Browning M-2s—a dozen pairs firing armor-piercing incendiaries. 

And then there were three pair of repeating grenade launchers firing
two-and-a-half-inch grenades. 

You can’t load too much armor onto an aeroplane and expect it to fly,
even with thick air and seventy percent gravity. You can laminate a 
little Lexan and Kevlar though—and since some vimana seemed to fire 
some sort of energy beam, the outer aluminum skins were polished as 
close to mirror-like as possible. 

I had no idea if that might help deflect the bolt of unknown composition
or not. I thought it might. 

It made our flying dreadnoughts look spiffy as all get out though. 

What might have been the two largest and best armed Air Forces in the
history of the African ringworld ground together like two high-speed 
circular saw blades clanging together. 

My planes were outnumbered, but not it seemed, outgunned. 

The upsized M-2 Machineguns took out vimana after vimana—though it
seemed to take several long bursts to down each golden craft. 

It took a very brief burst of RPGs to drop them. 

A far larger percentage of the vimana were equipped with energy weapons
than in our last encounter, but our B-17s seemed able to survive 
several hits more often than not. 

And many of the crews of stricken planes were able to parachute to
safety, but nowhere near all of them. 

“We have less than fifty percent of our B-17s in the air. Most of them
have some damage and they’re all running out of ammunition,” one of my 
Air Marshals told me. 

The B-17s had been my best hope, but it wasn’t a total loss. They’d
softened The Unborn Air Fleet considerably. 

“Tell them to retreat before they’re all lost,” I commanded. 

“Time for Phase Two,” I said. 

I read that sometime back in the ‘80s, some Slavic country was buying up
cheap video games by the thousands; because the basic microchips inside 
were better than anything they could build for smart missiles and of 
course they were forbidden to buy “good” microchips. 

Microchips are small and reasonably cheap. I had microchips one hundred,
maybe one thousand times as powerful as the Slavs were salvaging from 
Game Boys and Nintendos back in the ‘80s. 

I had a cadre of brilliant, if rather inarticulate and right-brained
engineers that the whole US Military-Industrial Complex put together 
couldn’t equal—and I had HE—High Explosives. 

Over four thousand canvas bi-planes took to the air. 

I could picture The Unborn cackling fiendishly at the primitive craft. 

Then each bi-plane got within shouting distance—say a quarter-mile or
so—of a vimana. They launched a single computer guided smart missile. 
Then they banked sharply and flew a zigzag course back to base to be 
filled with another missile. 

Vimana dropped like flies, but there seemed no end to them. 

***************** *********** ************* 

Sabrina stood in the laboratory speaking to the tailed scientist that
she’d given one of her eyes to. 

They had become good friends and he and Sabrina had cooked up a couple
surprises between them. 

“This is dangerous,” the Tailed Folk said to her. “It may not work. You
may be killed, even if it does work.” 

Such a long speech caused the drool to run out around his great fangs
and he wiped at the drool nervously with his white lab coat. 

While Sabrina never talked down to the strange creatures, they required
a whole different body language. 

She reached out and stroked the fellow’s slanting forehead as he hung
upside down in front of her—much like she’s have petted a Dog back 
home. 

The Tailed Folk used more physical contact and body language in their
communication than humans. 

“It is dangerous to do nothing. My father’s forces have only a small
chance of prevailing. This should give them an edge,” Sabrina told him. 


He opened his mouth wide enough to engulf Sabrina’s head and showed a
set of fangs as robust as Sabrina’s little fingers. He gave a fearsome 
roar that seemed to last forever. 

It was a tribute the Tailed Folk gave when they witnessed an act of
exceptional courage. 

****************** ********** ************ 

Soon enough we were out of guided missiles. Many of the bi-planes had
been shot down and some had gone aloft multiple times to launch their 
bombs. 

I noticed on the screen that too many of my brave pilots were going
kamikaze on me. 

“Call them back,” I ordered. 

We had one line of defense left before the vimana would be over my city.


I read one time that it isn’t possible to prevent air assaults with
ground based anti-aircraft fire. All that you can do is make it much 
more costly and dangerous for the assaulters. 

But I’d already eroded the attacker’s numbers considerably and I had
several layers of anti-aircraft batteries—a gauntlet of flak—that the 
vimanas must traverse before they were even over the city. 

The vimana were mere moments from the city when one of the Tailed Folk
came scuttling into my command center with that odd 
semi-knuckle-walking sygoggling gait they adopt when they can’t swing 
from overhead. 

He grunted in my ear briefly. 

“It is like: really man, be for real!” I expostulated. “Why did you wait
until now to tell me?” 

I keyed the mike to the frequency he’d given me. 

“Sabrinas attack!” 

He’d named the aircraft after my daughter, since she’d had a pivotal
role in their design. 

Quad-copters armed with high-powered cannon and coated with the same
silvery living polycarbonate that Sabrina’s eyes and Rubenstein’s arms 
and legs used as skin. 

The only problem with them was that there weren’t enough of them—eight
hundred and sixty-four to be precise. Tailed Folk think in base twelve. 
They had twelve times twelve times six—or six gross. 

The strange craft could hover or turn on a dime, with their four
powerful rotors. They were very accurate and one shot from their 
powerful cannons put a vimana down over ninety percent of the time. 

They were all but indestructible too. I saw one collide head-on at high
speed with an oversized version of a “cow-catcher” vimana. The 
quad-copter bounced back and had a hard time regaining its equilibrium, 
but was undamaged. The vimana fell like a broken stone. 

But even the Sabrinas weren’t indestructible—and the vimanas outnumbered
them and were steadily working to get around them. 

“Your Highness, we’ve been working on getting the B-17s turned around.
We can take to the air with about twenty-one percent of our original 
strength,” an Air Marshal told me. 

“Do it,” was all I said. 

************** ************** ************ 

There hadn’t been any good way to come up with Plutonium or a good
spherical blanket explosive to set off a nuclear device—at least not on 
such short notice. 

Sabrina and her friend had managed to put together a bomb that used
several lasers to set off a fusion reaction—a relatively tame one by 
atom bomb standards. 

But a sphere of very highly enriched Uranium 235—far purer than
engineers on Earth had ever achieved, surrounded the small fusion 
reaction. 

And Sabrina had built in a portal to continuously recycle the atoms and
energy the first few critical Pico-seconds. 

If the bomb worked, it should create one Hell of an EMP. 

Then again, who ever said that The Unborn communicated by
electro-magnetic means? 

****************** ************ *********** 

“Down Ward stands watching his screen. He’s totally ignoring you. He
thinks you’re weak. 

“Kill him while his back is turned!” The Shadow screeched at Rubenstein.


“No,” Rubenstein answered. “You have brought me little but trouble. Why
should I listen to you?” 

“You wouldn’t be here. You would be back on Earth and handicapped
without me,” The Shadow argued. 

“And I’ve served you well in return, but we’ve come to a parting of the
ways,” Rubenstein said. 

The I.Q. Drugs hadn’t bypassed him either. 

****************** ************** ********** 

“Down Ward, the voice is urging me to kill you,” Rubenstein said. 

“I’m kinda busy right now Rubenstein. Deal with it,” I told him. 

With the B-17s back in the air supporting the Sabrinas, it looked as if
we actually had a chance of defeating The Unborn fleet. 

Then each and ever one of the remaining vimanas dropped. 

And Sabrina came cartwheeling through a super-charged portal, the likes
of which I’d never yet seen. 

“What in The Seven Burning Hells?” I asked her as she struggled to catch
her breath. 

“I dropped a nuke on The Unborn’s citadel. I thought that it might fry
their electronics—assuming they use electronics—or whatever. 

“Did it work?” 

“Look at the screen,” I said. 

“I didn’t get away fast enough. My eyes are going to be off-line for a
few hours. I blew some sort of circuit breakers. Apparently they don’t 
just reset immediately,” Sabrina said. 

As she clicked her way around the room, she paused in pure horror and
started to draw her Pistol. 

“Rubenstein is standing right behind you!” Sabrina shouted. 

“It’s cool,” I said. 

“He has a Knife,” She said. 

“Yeah, he does,” I remarked as I turned to look. 

“It won’t stop!” Rubenstein said. “It keeps telling me to kill you.” 

He turned the Knife on himself and sat poised to plunge it into his neck
at an angle that would have penetrated both Jugulars and Carotids. 

“Don’t be a drama queen man,” I told him. “Such Drastic measures are
uncalled for.” 

“It is never going to leave me a moment’s peace. I can’t deal with it,”
he said. 

“I can banish it forever, but I need your permission—otherwise it will
be back in no time,” I said. 

“Why?” 

“I’m sorry that I cut off your hands. All I can say is that it seemed
like a good idea at the time. 

“Maybe your current position is more than a little my fault,” I said. 

“I can’t believe my ears,” Sabrina said. 

“Do you see why being around your father is such a trial?” Belinda asked
her daughter. “The man is crazy and he doesn’t do anything the way a 
normal person would. 

“Being his wife is going to be one continuous tribulation,” Belinda
said. 

“Belinda, please shut up! And I haven’t asked you to be my wife,” I
said. 

“Yes you did. You cried and cried and asked me over and over again, the
last time we were together,” Belinda said. 

“That was over a century ago. I’m older and wiser now and I have no
desire to marry you, or anyone else,” I said. 

“Besides, look at this,” I said while holding up one of my hand-like
feet. 

“Well you ain’t the only one on the block, darlin’,” Belinda shouted
while showing me her own foot. 

Just then a boon came into the room and climbed Belinda like a tree. At
first I thought that it was going to attack her until she embraced it 
and it kissed her. 

“This is going to be your new daddy,” Belinda told the boon. 

“Like Hell!” I said. 

“Khoral, do Tawn ever indulge in adult beverages?” I asked. 

“Yes, when there is sufficient provocation,” Khoral said. 

“Khoral and I are going to my chambers where I have a cache of very old
Scotch. Rubenstein, you can come too. 

“If Mond, Joshua or David shows up, send them to my quarters.” 

“You,” I specifically addressed Belinda, ”Are not invited.” 

“I quit drinking when I became a Missionary,” Belinda said. 

“That is your problem,” I told her. “You don’t seem to have quit the
steroids.” 

“I’m not doing steroids! I’m an ape-woman, you ancient reprobate. Things
are going to change after the wedding,” Belinda shouted. 

“No they aren’t, because there isn’t going to be a wedding,” I shouted
back. 

“Are you still carrying a torch for The Virgin Queen?” Belinda demanded.


“Give me a break!” I expostulated as I turned away. 

“I’ve been living in your quarters for almost a year now. Where did you
have Scotch hidden?” Rubenstein asked. 

“Won’t you be surprised?” I told him. 

“I really miss my boon,” I said to Khoral as we walked away. “Even
Belinda has one now and she never cared for pets.” 

“Jaze sired one not too long ago. Of course he’s been infected with the
ape-man gene while playing with his father,” Khoral said. “You are 
welcome to him.” 

I could hear Belinda raising Hell all the way down the long corridor.
She had one of those shrill voices that really carried. 

Chapter Twenty-Nine 

When I read about the settling of the Wild West, I always thought that
it was a shame to clutter all that lovely wilderness with man and his 
artifacts. 

Here though, there was virtually unlimited room to expand. In fifty
thousand years, mankind would still occupy only a small fraction of the 
surface of this world. I may be long-lived, but I don’t have any great 
hopes of being around in fifty thousand years. 

We had a lot of the city left as a base to start rebuilding from—and a
larger human population than we’d started with originally. 

Building a city takes bricks and glass, lumber and various metals—not to
mention means to feed, clothe and shelter the builders in the awkward 
stages. 

The main thing you need to build a city is skilled and willing builders.
We had enough to get by, but we never had quite as many as we would 
have liked. 

Sabrina’s nuclear device set off in such close proximity in time and
space to her personal portal, seemed to reboot many of the small 
transport portals that surrounded the lake. 

Folks are in the process of building over forty cities around some of
the mini-portals. The portals and the network of cities surround the 
lake like a bead necklace. 

The closest of the cities is several weeks apart, if one went on foot. 

I can’t warrant how long the portals will continue to function and I
always liked the idea of Railroads. So we’re building a ring of 
Railroad tracks around the lake as well. 

I doubt that we’ve seen the end of The Unborn. 

When and if the day comes that The Unborn decide to try to level our
city again, they will find that it is a far more ambitious project than 
it was the first time they nearly succeeded. 

We have five times as many B-17s as we did in the first battle and they
have armor based on the skin from Sabrina’s eye. There are maybe twice 
as many bi-planes and at last count there was over five thousand of the 
Sabrina class Quad-Copters. 

Of course the Tailed Folk are constantly tweaking the designs. Many of
their improvements are “Inconsequential Increments”. Still, if the skin 
is two or three percent harder to penetrate, and the bullets hit two or 
three percent harder and the craft are both two or three percent faster 
and two or three percent easier to handle... 

It starts to matter. 

But all this begs the question: Where are we getting our citizens? 

********************* *************** ****** 

Detective Stevens kept telling his superiors that something sinister was
going on. Homeless people along with drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes 
and gang members were steadily disappearing. 

His superiors told him to focus on more important and pressing concerns,
but he couldn’t let it go. 

He had been attending the skid-row storefront church undercover for
several weeks now. Somehow the church seemed a focal point of whatever 
was going on. 

“Could you come to my office after the service tonight officer?” the
black preacher asked. 

Detective Stevens had been daydreaming momentarily while waiting for
church to start and the preacher’s words shocked him. He almost jumped 
into the next pew. 

“How did the preacher spot me?” Detective Stevens wondered glumly. 

****************** ************* ************ 

“If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me. Instead I’m simply
going to show you. 

“You are young and strong. I assume that you’re well armed—although
weapons with polycarbonate frames are most unwelcome where I propose to 
take you. 

“At any rate, I mean you no harm and you needn’t feel any fear or
anxiety,” the preacher said. 

And then there was blackness. 

************** ************ *************** 

“Can you use your skills to fix animals?” Mond asked the healer. 

They had given Sabrina her silver eyes. They had given Rubenstein his
silver hands. 

They turned no one away and they asked no payment—but they steadfastly
refused to share their healing technology. 

“Why would you need such healing for animals?” 

“We built a city recently. Some jungle elephants offered to help build
our city if they would be afforded all the rights of citizens,” Mond 
began. 

“Are they intelligent then?” The healer asked. 

“They are sentient but only marginally intelligent—like a slow-witted
person. 

“At any rate, an enemy took over our city for a season. He treated our
partners poorly. Bulls were castrated and tusks were sawn off for 
profit. Many elephants were also injured in the reclamation of our 
city. 

“Our Emperor wishes to restore them,” Mond said. 

“The price for such reconstruction will be very high,” The healer said.
“Are you willing to pay it?” 

“My Emperor—who is my close friend—told me that if you demand a ball of
gold as large as this puny world, that he will find a way to pay.” 

“Why is he willing to pay such a fee?” 

“Because he’s keeping his word to his friends—the elephants,” Mond said
simply. 

“We have never charged to heal, yet for your Emperor the price will be
very high indeed,” The Doctor said. 

“What then?” 

“We wish to establish a medical school on your world and share our geas
of healing with any of your people who choose to pick up the burden.” 

“Why?” 

“If your Emperor can love his elephants that much, then we are prepared
to serve his empire,” The Doctor said. 

************** ************ ************ 

Flashman greeted his friend Rubenstein with a hearty embrace. 

“They simply released you?” Flashman asked in wonderment. 

“Down Ward said that if he had to sit on a throne against his will and
better judgment, that he saw no reason that I should be spared a 
similar fate,” Rubenstein said. 

“You know, I was exposed to that I.Q. drug and I’ve had a lot of time to
think about what I wanted to do when I got back,” Rubenstein began. 

“So?” 

“Tear the fence down. Let anyone who wants to leave, leave. In a few
weeks we will assemble all the old city-heads here. 

“There are advantages to remaining united in the face of threats like
The Unborn. 

“This world is rapidly becoming both more open and far more dangerous. 

“Those who wish to leave the alliance may,” Rubenstein said. 

“What if the citizens of Wardsville rise up in revolt?” Flashman asked. 

“I only wish they would. I would take it as a sign that I’d been
released from an irksome chore. 

“I won’t be so lucky though. 

“We need to start working on some sort of Air Force in case The Unborn
decide to attach here. 

“It won’t be easy, with no petroleum, but Down Ward gave me some
pointers.” 

*************** ************* ************** 

“If you wish to make common cause with The Virgin Queen, it will be on
The Virgin Queen’s terms.” 

“Name them,” The Unborn’s representative said. 

“The Virgin Queen rules! The Unborn must worship The Virgin Queen as a
Goddess. 

“She will know if The Unborn dissemble or hold back some part of their
loyalty,” The Virgin Queen sniffed. 

The Unborn ambassador, while he had no facial features to speak of, was
nonetheless very glad that he was concealed from The Virgin Queen’s 
sight. 

Of course The Unborn were willing to go along with such a generous plan
without the slightest mental reservation. They were quite willing to be 
her slaves forever and in perpetuity. 

If The Virgin Queen had caught wind of how anxious they were to seal
that bargain, she might have paused to question what she was committing 
to. 

**************** *************** *********** 

“We’re bringing in ten to twelve thousand refugees from the United
States every year,” Missionary Belinda Cutter explained to the 
Detective. 

“We try to recruit broken folks who’ve largely blown their chances on
Earth. We give them a second chance here. 

“We’ve just started recruiting in other countries on Earth and from the
other fifty-seven planets The Society visits. 

“We take forgotten people. We have friends in high places in the system
and we have huge amounts of cash for bribes. 

“And perhaps one in fifty asks to go back home. We ask them not to talk,
but we can’t guarantee their silence. We hold no threat over folks. 

“We do try hard to discredit any whistle-blowers. 

“Several of your bosses are on our payroll. 

“You could stay here, but we’d prefer that you go back and set up some
plausible disappearance scenario first. 

“You can go back and work with us. You can simply ignore us. You can
even go back and try to fight us. 

“No harm will come to you from our hands. 

“In all likelihood, you’ll end up jobless with a reputation for being a
crank if you try to openly oppose us. Some of your more corruptible 
fellow Laws may resent you trying to shut off their source of income 
too. 

“The amount of cash we’re throwing around makes the drug trade appear
trivial.” 

“You’re paying a very high price per head,” Detective Stevens said. 

“They may not be worth what we spend on them, in any monetary sense... 

“Then again, creativity and inventiveness are priceless—and a few are
bound to possess one or both of these traits. 

“Mostly though, that’s what we do. We give big second chances.” 

Detective Stevens paused to look at the skyline of The City of Second
Chances in the distance while he weighed what he’d seen the last few 
weeks and decided whether to go back to Earth, or whether to stay. 

*************** ***************** ******* 

Sour Mann’s 

Afterward 

“Do you want this manuscript back?” I asked the Acolyte. 

“It is yours. Do what you will with it,” he said. 

“Do you expect me to believe that my cousin Down Ward, his daughter
Sabrina, along with that crazy old fart, The Maestro, The Virgin 
Queen—and Rubenstein and lets not forget Belinda Cutter—just for good 
measure... 

“I’m to believe that they all just teleported to “The African
Ringworld”?” I said. 

“I’m not here to convince or to persuade you,” the Acolyte said
indifferently. 

“The events in the story take place over more than a century,” I
objected. 

“Time flows differently in the different dimensions. Up until recently,
large temporal discrepancies were rare. 

“Lately, they’ve been cropping up with increasing frequency,” He said. 

Down mentioned that he was the only one in the neighborhood to stick
with The Maestro’s regimen. I was seven years younger than Down and I 
didn’t really start training every day till I was eight. I guess he 
forgot me, even though I was his cousin. 

“There is a simple way to put the veracity of the manuscript to the
test,” the Acolyte said. 

“You propose to send me to Down’s African Ringworld?” 

“No. We purport to train you to blaze a trail to yet another alternate
universe. 

“Once we deemed your power inferior to Down Ward’s. 

“In view of what has happened, we’ve been forced to radically revise our
understanding of The Artifact’s mechanics. 

“With a few weeks training, you could open another universe to us—in all
probability, one as outré and off-the-mainline as Ward’s.” 

************* **************** ************ 

Tomorrow I contact The Artifact. 

If I actually do leave this world, I’ve made arrangement for a mutual
friend of Down and me to publish Down’s manuscript, including my 
additions, as Fiction. 

No one would believe it, if I published it as a true account. 

The one certainty is that I won’t be going to Down’s Ringworld—at least
not anytime soon. 

Sour Mann 


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